the little apartment that shook

Gale force winds outside tonight (what is the exact force of a 'gale', anyway?)
My apartment is shaking as branches snap and bottles go skittering around the parking lot. It always makes me nervous how much my apartment shakes in the wind... the way the gusts snap around my walls sounds **exactly** like big waves breaking, so with the movement of my little NE facing apartment bobbing up and down on its support beams, I feel a little bit like I'm out to sea.

Really tired, so I won't do much more than a numbered list for tonight:
1. Christmas. Awesome. Obscenely quiet. Lived at my folks' house for almost a week, which hasn't happened since I was a receptionist home from college over the summer.

2. My annual Bachelorette Party. Even more Awesome-- now with 20% more fun. Photos available on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/21442478@N02/
I love my friends so much, it hurts.

3. Work- I did another 'let's make fun of everyone I work with' skit, which got big laughs, did not result in me getting fired, and gave me the very unusual chance to use the word "skit" outside of the third grade. Beth and Robin filmed & edited the whole thing, which reminds me that video nerds live up to our name

4. Meredith and I did a Christmas Eve gig for our our friend's Pastor, which somehow morphed at the last minute into us being in a Christian rock band, complete with electric guitars, keyboards, drums, mics, our own monitors, a light show, and a seriously difficult time keeping a straight face in front of a congregation of Christmas Eve worshipers. Next time, I will write sad things on the toes of my shoes so I will have an easier time looking solemn while playing a heavy metal bass line on my acoustic cello while a slide show projects "Halleljuah, GOD IS NEAR" in confusingly capital letters over my head.

5. My parents are pretty much the coolest people I know. I can't imagine dad rallying any harder for the holidays given how absolutely shitty he feels. Despite the fact that my family lives close by, it's a lot different to move in with them for a week than to just occasionally drop by for dinner or a movie... it was hard coming home after having a really, really bittersweet 4am crackers-and-peanut-butter chat with my dad. He's a different person right now than I've ever known and it scares me and moves me at the same time.

6. Holy. Mother. It is INSANE outside right now! Wind, wind, wind, wind, BOOM... every 30 seconds or so, branches are coming down everywhere. I don't know where to move my car, but I'd prefer to move her into my kitchen until the Apocalypse is over

7. Had about 3,000 reunions over the past week, including anyone I ever met before 1990. There's a fast way to have a BALL and lose all self-esteem at the same time. Glad to have seen everyone, but I also have that post-reunion emotional hang-over thing going on

8. One thing that my (VERY WEIRD) job makes me think about a lot is something that bothered me when I was little-- how hysterical people get over whether their baby is a boy or a girl. As a little kid, I was downright frustrated with that because I didn't understand why that would POSSIBLY matter. And as an adult, I have unfortunately picked up the same reaction to every newborn that crosses my screen... a GIRL, she'll be a mom someday. A BOY, oh, his son will probably play soccer just like him. Gender does pervade the brain so deeply.
This morning I was wondering about gender differences.

I'm more gender-savvy than I was at age four, and I still strongly dislike gender-based discussions, but the one thing that I *will* say after my long day of contemplation is that I hope men appreciate what women go through to someday bring their little mini-me's into the world. I was in a bar a couple nights ago where a guy was drunkenly complaining that his crazy "ex" was a psychotic PMSing bitch (not to mention a series of thinly-veiled racial slurs that he threw in the mix... not to mention that it was painfully obvious that he was still "with" said "ex" and "playing the field at the same time"). I digress. Obviously he was just a drunk idiot, but my friends and I had to really hold ourselves back from not stuffing a sock into his yapper from frustration.

My personal opinion is this: if you're a drunken guy in a bar who will never, EVER in your lifetime have to deal with a *miserable* monthly phenomenon that doesn't even have a name cute enough to use in mixed company; if you will never EVER be asked humiliating questions by your doctor about your chances of being pregnant just to get a cold medicine prescription; if you can go to a party and drink your face off, get amorous with the cutest girl there and stumble home at the first light of dawn while she gets a hangover cure of anxiety, loneliness and the fear of whether or not drunken protection may have been the 2% that the contraceptive companies warn you about... well, DON'T be that guy in the bar. Because while girls are in no way victims or 'entitled' to any kind of sympathetic treatment, those girls are your friends; your sisters; your girlfriends; your co-workers. It's like the old song says-- mama said there'd be days like this. And it's great to be a woman, but drunken idiot in the bar, the shitty country songs do not lie, and it is hard to be a woman sometimes. So do yourself a favor and just pay your tab and go home. Chivalry is DEAD... we're not asking for you to joust for our attention, we're just asking that you do not loudly demean us in public. (*on a side note, I am not damning All Males Everywhere here. And surely, as a female, I forget what's tricky about being male. Suggestions are more than welcome)

9. At one point, this was an attempt at a light-hearted, positive, upbeat numbered list

10. Mama said there'd be days like this.

11. Goals for the new year: (spontaneously. to be re-visited)
1. fix dad
2. work on staying as positive as possible, even under duress
3. stay on top of things that can fall through the cracks: financial organization; contact with very far-away friends; putting laundry away instead of letting it live in the dryer for a few days on end; etc
4. major positive job change (in any meaning of the word 'change')
5. Stop, at all costs, discussing boring dreams, even if it's just to myself here online

12. Last number for the night: I had the craziest boring dream last night.
Sort of a vampire/zombie combo dream. Weirdly Holocaustic (surely, I just butchered two words here)

A bunch of us were herded down a very claustrophobic colorless street-- Italian, probably-- as people passed us. We knew that we were getting herded into sort of a group mind-f*ck vampire-inflicting kind of situation, but we couldn't fight it. Instead of drinking our blood, they('they'- an unseen, terrifying presence that we could only feel by the hair going up on the back of our necks) just kind of forced our demise into our minds, and I realized that everyone else around us had been inflicted because their faces and necks were breaking out in deep scarlet rashes. My uncle passed me on the street, and he had a rash that was creeping up around his chin, and he had dark red candle wax crusted all around his eyes... the thick wax had a faintly raised pattern on it, like the wax seals on letters. He was peeling it away from his face when he noticed me looking at him, and when our eyes met, I realized that his pupils were bright red, too. I shrunk back in horror and he closed his eyes firmly before opening them again-- they were pitch black, and it was impossible to tell where the pupils ended and his irises began.
He smiled at me and started picking the wax out from underneath his nails. I could hear his nails scraping on his skin, and his eyes were so bloodshot that it looked like fractured pieces of wax had just melded into his whole body.
It was awful... everyone around me had fallen expressions; their faces had blotchy red patterns bursting out all over and their lips were cracking from a clammy dryness as they looked around blankly for their next victim.

Then the alarm went off, and I knew that it was time for Monday...

the longer side of the vee

I was looking at a picture of a sleeping toddler earlier... struck by how sweet her little flushed cheeks were, hair flung out in all directions across the pillow, clutching a stuffed pony in the crook of her arm. It's like she was running somewhere at full-speed and sleep just leveled her.

Sleep is such an odd thing. I was looking at her and thinking about all the other little kids across the world who are sleeping in their beds-- little fingers splayed out the same way, hair scattered, cheeks flushed, stuffed animals watching over them protectively. Sleep is like a plot device from a really good science fiction novella... the sun leaves the sky and all humans are unwound slowly until they topple into blankets, mother's arms, stairwells, whatever will hold them until the sun comes up again.

There's a bittersweet loneliness in tucking yourself in at night with no one to talk to. I wonder if there will ever be a night where turning out the light won't feel a *little* strange without someone to pat the covers around me. Do we always half-expect our parents to linger in the doorway for a minute, watching to make sure that we're safe before shutting the door behind them?

It's bitterly cold this week... it feels strange out here when the temperature stays below zero for more than a day at a time. I associate this kind of cold with my Hamilton days, except the bitter, biting 'moisture' is gone... it's a dry cold, with a sarcastic sun that shines down from the clear blue sky without leaving a trace of warmth.
My apartment has the most insane drafts from the windows. I should REALLY fix this. I either pay out the nose for the inefficient heating attempts, or get a knot in my back from contorting into the shape of my quilt for a couple of hours on my tiny, comfy couch.

On my way home, I got stuck at The Train (tm) on East Pearl, and then the same Train (tm) on Hwy 119. It was one of the longest trains I've ever waited for... it's on the same route that's been an endearing part of my summer and many travels to and from Longmont at Train O'Clock, but tonight it was an endless, endless string of round black cars. It was so cold that I could see my breath in the car all the way home, even with the heat blasting. A 40-something man in an SUV next to me looked at me, waved and smiled... and I was so preoccupied with my own train-waiting thoughts that I didn't even have the reflexes to smile back. We waited there *endlessly*, and sat next to each other*endlessly* again in the same lane trying to turn off the diagonal.

There's something warmly familiar about waiting in traffic on bitterly cold nights. Everyone's lit by the faint glow of their dash... tinkering with the radio dials, chatting on the phone, shifting from first to second over and over as a symbolic 'systems check' in consideration of all the ice on the road. For the most part, everyone just sits quietly, facing forward, buried under down jackets and puffy hats. They all share the same quiet, bemused look. Sometimes it twists my heart a little... because I'm a bleeding heart type and everything's a poem in motion, all the time...

This morning, three huge flocks of geese flew overhead as I was walking into work, and I stood in the parking lot watching in amazement as two flocks combined, some geese maintaining their place in line, and others switching flocks in perfect synchronicity. Each goose was spaced out at exactly the same distance from the next, and it dawned on me how much 'fine tuning' they have to do to move into that exact spot while flying.
Why do they change Vees like that?
Do they all try to keep up with each other? Are the geese who traded lines solitary travelers, without a mate?
Do some of them leave their mates behind to join a new line?

Do geese have regrets? Do they ever feel afraid?
Do they all fly at the same rate, or do some Vees travel much too fast for new members, leaving them jittery and aching at the end of the day?

What do their echoing honks mean... trumpeting back from member to member until they reach the end?

I came inside to an empty department, blinking in the dark, cavernous hallway with pink ears and cold rushing all the way down to my core.
Our UPS delivery man came in, smiling.
"Morning Ms. Jane, what's up with the Geese Watch?"
"Oh- just appreciating their technique. They're pretty amazing."
"You know how sometimes one side of the V is much longer than the other?"
"YES! Oh my gosh, what's up with that?? Does it throw the whole flock off, or is it intentional?"
his expression dropped, looking more surprised than pleased now.
"Oh. That's just... just when there are more geese on one side"
He grinned at me. I blushed, realizing that he was making fun of me.
"Psh. What am I signing for, wiseguy?" I said, smiling in return as ice dripped off of my low-tops in big sheafs.

The rest of the day was spent half-heartedly trying to stay on top of meaningless emails... the view of geese obstructed by the blinds.
Back to the work week we go.

and Bella walks again!

I can't sleep.

Dad goes in tomorrow for surgery...outpatient surgery, but an invasive and extremely painful procedure on top of the chronic pain he's been in for months and months and months. Chronic pain is so easy to type and say and think. But it's such a high-voltage and wordless thing-- he and I have barely even acknowledged what's been going on even though it's been such a heavy and constant weight, day after day.
If kidney stones aren't even the worst part of any given day of his... I can't imagine what those days must be like!

I'm extremely worried, which does no good. So I sit in my bed with my laptop on my stomach... its warmth feels good against the twisting knots in my belly.

Today: work was pretty tedious, but I got a decent amount done and contacted some top-notch researchers whose work excites me. It started to snow fairly hard as I drove off into the low gray cloud (thinking of Stephen King's "The Mist" and the family fight I had about it last year... does everything tie into a philosophical conversation with my dad?)

I did something for the first time today-- I got my hair done at a nice salon; not one of the tiny lean-to house salons where it's me and a bunch of blue-haired ladies getting a perm. Lately I've been craving something relaxing, and for some weird reason I just keep thinking about the days when I was a little kid and I had really long white-blond hair that my friends or my parents' friends were always braiding or flipping up into a ponytail. Nothing feels as amazing as someone playing with your long hair-- it's the single most relaxing feeling on the planet. So off I went to a nice salon because I'd read that a brand-new beauty school almost-graduate was giving cuts and color for half-off.
"Please don't cut my hair," I said to her. "I've been trying to grow it out forever. And I don't really want a different color... can we do highlights that are basically exactly the same shade?"
She looked at me in the mirror. I looked at her. She gave me a very knowing smile. The owner of the salon, standing over our shoulders, didn't flinch. I think she's seen many frazzled people sitting in that chair who don't want hair that's shorter or a different color... they just want to sit in the chair and pretend that they're five again with waist-long hair.

Two hours later, I was released into a heavy snow storm with wet curly hair that looks almost exactly like my normal wet curly hair, except it cost me a small fortune and probably added a year to my life.
Sometimes, being a little shallow is the antidote for being a little overwhelmed.
I would gladly give them money I barely have for the same thing I already had again. Seriously.

Yesterday: Spent almost 6 hours painting my bedroom. It's really hard to paint by yourself! I missed my painting buddy. The fumes start getting to you and then the panic sets in that you have to finish, perfectly, or you will never leave your fume-y apartment again. At 6pm I staggered out of my home for the first time all day-- exhausted but triumphant. Today, when I came home and flopped down on my bed in this room with no light switches or paintings on the walls, I looked up to admire my handiwork and discovered that the paint I used on the trim was exactly .000001 shade lighter than the paint that covers the rest of the walls.
The trim only took 5 of those 6 hours.

Game face on. I will triumph over $16 paint! I will learn to be a domestically capable person! Baer paint, $20 shampoo, tiny washing machine in my closet, schizophrenic stove range, Safeway strange & unusual-tasting vegetable bins... you can take my pride, but you cannot take my soul! I ate an artichoke for dinner, and by the end of this week, I will have beige walls and beige trim, or so help me, god!

(*apparently sleeping in potent chemical paint fumes and then getting potent chemical crap applied to your hair results in extremely long, pointless rants about domestic insecurities)

After painting, Tom, Thad, Sam & Kate joined me to celebrate Lance's belated birthday with a blue collar bowling extravaganza. Tom discovered an enormous purple ball with a thumb hole the size of Mount St. Helens that he coined "The Gaper". One round consisted of having to USE the Gaper to bowl, and it was the hardest I've laughed in a very, very, very long time. I had to use two hands and basically throw the ball in the general direction of the lane just to get it rolling.

Last week: a week of good things and very, very strange things. There was a scary car accident right outside my office window, where we've seen many accidents and even more near-misses over the past two years because of a particularly precarious two-way stop that SHOULD be a four-way stop with the national guard out there every evening to get people to stop going 60 in a 45 and blowing the only stop signs that are there. A lady blew the stop sign and got plowed into by a pickup truck... she ended up in the ditch, I ran out to call 911 and see if they were hurt. Both drivers were dazed, but within about 30 seconds she went from pale and incoherent to white and panicked. Screaming-- incoherent screaming is all I remember as she dove into the back seat and all I could think was, "child. Small child. Can't remember this address. Hurt child."
She reappeared holding a small black lab whose hind legs were dangling helplessly. The woman turned in a couple of hopeless circles and then sat next to the car, rocking the dog in her arms and sobbing.

It was awful. I felt sick-- first the sound of two cars crunching together in the street; then relief when the woman came out of the car in the ditch; then this. The woman wanted to take her dog away, but a man who had pulled over behind them helped me talk her out of it-- he'd called 911; her face and chin were scratched and bleeding; they both had to report the accident. Without so much as looking at each other, we both put her dog in the back seat of his very nice SUV and peeled out of the parking lot. I think we made it halfway to Longmont before I even asked what his name was, as he nervously looked in the rearview mirror at me with a large dog on my lap who was shaking so badly that I thought she might be having seizures.

To make a long and scary story short, after four stops at emergency vet clinics that were decoys, we finally got Bella into the vets, where she was whisked away and put straight into surgery. Hours later, she emerged from spinal damage surgery. I was relieved that they hadn't put her down, but very nervous about her outcome.
At this point, I was covered in dog hair, glass dust, some dog blood... I had so much adrenaline that the zippers on my boots were audibly clicking as my legs shook.
Over the weekend, the dog's owner called to say that Bella not only made it through surgery, but a few days later, she was eating, could control her bladder, and was even putting weight on her back legs-- something the vets said might not ever happen at ALL, but if it did, she wasn't expected to for several days later. Bella is expected to make a full recovery!

If there is anything as sweet as those words, I don't know what is. I'm so, so happy that she's ok... it sounds stupid, but I really bonded with her on our 30 minute panicked drive to the vet's (and more vets) offices. For all the pain she was in, she literally didn't whimper once-- she just shook in my arms and flailed around a little bit and rested her face on my chest and watched me.

It's difficult to worry about things that are out of your control. But every once in a while, a situation comes along where you barely have time to worry before you're able to leap into motion.
I much prefer motion. It feels so much better to be stroking her and saying what a good dog she is than standing back at your desk, wondering if she made it or not.

If only life gave us more options to leap...
leap, and the net will appear.

the continuing theme of my quarter-life crisis.

Randy, Daddy's not going to 'kill' Ralphie

Not feeling great tonight, so it's bed and freezing hands and the quietest neighborhood in the world.

Unconnected and non-important thoughts:

1. I need a permanent reminder of the kind of jobs that would be my Dream Jobs, capital D, capital everything.
All this recession / economy / political turnover / terrorism in Mumbai / media everything really does wedge itself into your brain... this morning I was feeling so grateful to have a job, and people who need me working on projects that are scheduled out until June and August of next year. But this is not the rest of my life. I need to start kicking my ass very hard to make it into something that's bigger and better and more ME.

current best dream/fantasy jobs:
1. Writing for Pixar
2. Writing for Reading Rainbow (circa 1992, unfortunately)
3. Writing and producing for Kartemquin Films
4. Making an incredible artistic/cinema verite film about children in foster care while working on my novel / play / book of poetry while preparing to make a high-budget documentary about my dad's writing career
5. Children's book author (and YA author... maybe 2rd grade - 8th grade)

2. I got a long scathing complaint yesterday from a client who was totally put out that my last prenatal health video series featured both single parents and couples. She returned her video because one out of the three videos' covers had a couple on it... wearing... wait for it... wedding rings. She's disgusted that we would depict commited couples at all because she works with single teen moms and feels like our video would not be emotionally healthy for them.

How does one respond to this?
I'm supposed to be all tail-between-my-legs about this stuff, but you know, I really wanted to just call this lady and ask her to bite me. Actually, I wanted to call and say:

Dear crazy woman in Texas,
I sincerely apologize for the horrifically traumatizing effects that my prenatal health video must be having on your teen mother viewers. I realize that 50% of our video shows couples eating right, exercising and preparing for the birth of their child, and I also realize that this is sick and wrong. Couples have nothing to do with pregnancy, childbirth and parenting. In fact, men have nothing to do with babies at all!

Certainly, the young impressionable mothers in your class should NOT be exposed to happy, committed relationships, and the idea of having a stable male figure in their child's life should be cut out and trampled on our editing room floor.
I truly apologize for this blunder. I can't believe that I didn't take your specific (crazy) needs into account while making this video, which will be shown in every hospital across the country. Did I say country? I meant internationally. But obviously such a LIMITED market will have the SAME NEEDS as you, so why should I include a diverse cast of moms (and dads) of all ages?

3. What was I saying about job security? Er...

4. I sent my dad's agent an email out of the blue to thank him for the friendship he's shown my dad for the past 26 years, especially as of late, with his nearly heroically genuine and compassionate gestures toward dad during this awful summer/fall/winter of illness. He sent a response that made me bawl my eyes out. It was one of the most beautifully written and heartfelt letters I've ever received. This year, I don't have to think hard to remember what I'm thankful for during the holidays

5. The day before I left for Chicago, I remember thinking, "I haven't cried much in a really long time".
It's always really, really dangerous to think such things.

6. I spend a decent amount of quarantined mental agony on the stupidest sh*t ever. For instance, "what should I do about a gym lock? I buy them but then forget the combination. But it's irresponsible to just leave stuff in the locker with no lock" (repeat 18,000 times during the week to self) and "my shoes aren't winterized. I am a bad person for wearing non-waterproof shoes. I'm nothing but a lazy, vain fool with cold feet"

7. Last night I had an incredibly realistic dream that I discovered a jar of homemade jam that a social worker made for me on my kitchen counter. Disgusted with myself for letting it sit out unrefrigerated, I mentally berated myself, carried the jam to the refrigerator and put it on the middle shelf, tapping the lid to make sure that it was airtight and I could still enjoy my tasty treat without dying of food poisoning.
It took me ALL DAY to determine that this was, in fact, a dream, and that the jam in question has been in my fridge (on the middle shelf, with the airtight lid) all along.

I'm not sure which I feel more strongly-- that these uber-realistic dreams* are the trippiest thing EVER, or that my jam dream is the most boring thing that's ever happened on this giant green earth of ours.

(*the uber-realistic dreams are the only quasi-cool side-effect of the G.I. Joe internal organ warfare of 2008, but they're driving me bat-shit. Last week I dreamed that Mer was leaving for London and Lance was about to buy an Audi... two things that they've often talked about. It took me DAYS, literally, to decide-- after much, much consideration-- that I had dreamed these conversations) Other uber-realistic dreams: jam, Thad talking to me on the phone, Tom skiing in really deep powder, people breaking into my apartment. LOTS of those dreams lately.

8. Ooh! I won't type up my Philadelphia haunting story here because I'm going to sleep in 10 minutes and I don't want nightmares. But I had another creepy experience this morning after my profoundly boring jam dream... I was caught in the sheets a little bit so I was flailing around at about 6am, grumpy to be awake an hour before my alarm was going to go off. I was flailing, falling asleep, kicking the sheets, dozing off, when right behind my head... CLICK. It was the exact sound of someone flipping on my light switch, but ridiculously loud. I just about levitated out of my bed... but no lights were on. No light switches were flipped. Nothing in my closet had moved, nothing had fallen off my bed... I've stripped the room down to paint it, so there aren't even screws in the wall, just my bed in the room.
How freaky is that?!
It's the second consecutive night in a row that I've sat bolt upright in bed, with waves of real adrenaline pumping in my heart from crazy noises. (Yesterday was the sound of someone super shady walking up and down the stairs and snooping around my door and my neighbor's door at 3am.)

Ok. Must leave before I scare myself with more nighttime (boring) terrors.

for next time:
philadelphia haunting
crack baby dolls that are actually being sold to public high schools as educational material
reasons why I believe (subdued) chivalry is the most underrated and dead sexy thing ever
crazy embryonic development facts
a manifesto for the working rebellious urban cowgirl

love,
Jane Kathryn