At the moment, I feel a bit like a creaky old lady. My right hip (the one that was so badly bruised last September) has never really stopped being sore and sometimes still showing light bruising. There's still a lump in there. My right hand (the one that I broke a few years ago) is the best damn weather predictor in the universe. I like to hold up my fingers dramatically and call out weather to astonished onlookers, who must believe that my hand is truly magical. I had been suffering intermittent headaches that were directly related to my consumption of French Press versus coffeemaker coffee. Basically, my normally healthy body curled up and went into its 80's.
Meanwhile, I went on retreat with other colleagues new to the Diocese of Oregon for program called Fresh Start. By this time in my career, there's not much new under the Fresh Start sun, but I go faithfully and I enjoy it because it connects me to new colleagues. Doesn't matter if the module we are being taught is way-old-news (family systems? snore!)- what's important is the time with other colleagues. I mean, when else will I get 6 hours to talk things over with other people who don't know this Diocese that well or whose spouses are struggling to find work in their field or who are also facing an imminent move to the apartment they've been wait-listed for?
It's worth its weight in commiseration gold.
Usually I'm a huge extrovert, but this time around, I was actually pretty miserable. Tuesday morning I did my workout for the 35 workouts challenge, and felt pretty dang good. I'd been feeling pretty good all along this month, between the runs and the rides.
But this time, I was bushed. I curled up in the backseat of the carpool (in the truck we have affectionately nicknamed "The Thing") and slept most of the way to the retreat. By the time we got out at the retreat center, my right hip was sounding delightful klaxon bells. I was miserable most of the retreat.
Long story short: the little September bike crash with the resulting huge hematoma seems to have weakened the injured area in my hip and my abs have been compensating. There is either a great deal of Pilates or some physical therapy in my future. I'm going to hope that Pilates will help me regain that deep strength and avoid PT. And some TRX. I hope I can get back to biking and running ASAP, but trust me I have no desire to stress out my hip at the moment.
Another benefit of the retreat was talking to some other colleagues who also have iPhones. They shared a few new tricks and I spent some time today setting up my iPhone and color coding everything. Work is purple and home is green.
And I discovered that the vast majority of my calendar is work-related. With the exception of my day off (which I write down every week to try to force myself to be disciplined), I have sometimes only one or two "home" events every month.
Um, right. Month. Perhaps that dramatic imbalance also has something to do with the feeling of tiredness. That, plus my guy staying a few times this month that he doesn't feel that I've been home much... maybe it's time to schedule in more "green" time.
So I think I need to start scheduling in more things. I do a pretty good job of working in a workout and stuff like that, but I think I need to work in more actual scheduled time when I plan other things that are not work.
I think I'll make this one of my Lenten disciplines. Plan better use of non-office time so I don't end up with an all purple calendar.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Stupid Questions
Over the past week, I have become aware of the existence of something called a "meme". It's pronounced "meem" like "dream", even though all normal people (like me) will want to pronounce it "mee-mee". Do not pronounce it "mee-mee", because people will laugh at you. And this will be a problem, because as we see in this particular rendition of the meme, people are probably laughing at you anyway.
I won't go into my problems with the copy-cat meme concept at this point, because I think the bigger issue is the mean-ness of this particular video. I am told that the actors are all seminarians. As seminarians and young ministers, we were all exposed to these questions for the first time at some point. By now, most of us have gotten pretty much all of these questions, give or take a few.
If this had been a video shown only for, say, a seminary-audience-only variety show skit, it would be different. These are exactly the questions we all know and laugh about when we are in groups of colleagues, sitting around with a nice single malt at a table after the clergy conference meetings have wrapped up for the day. These are the questions that I tell my husband about over the dinner table, or sometimes, to some very cool parishioner friends, share the latest "Guess what I got asked today?". I would never want to be the wet blanket of the group of clergy at the next sushi/coffee shop Bible study, because these questions ARE funny.
My problem with this meme is the Queen Bee attitude, the snarkiness and the willingness to point fingers while not seeming to be self-aware enough to project empathy. To me, there seems to be a real sense that the actors are mocking what they perceive as "stupid" questions from the dumb people they are unfortunate enough to interact with every day. (Don't even get me started on the hipster glasses on one or the unkempt long hair on that man. I'll leave the appearance critiques to Peacebang's Beauty Tips for Ministers.)
My problem is that "oh, my Gawd, I can't believe I have to put up with your stupidity". And in the world of ministry, the second you start believing that you as the minister hold a special sort of intelligence, or that your ministry population is beneath you in any way, you have already lost. The second you start dismissing and making fun of your people for "stupid" questions, you have already shot yourself in the foot as their minister.
Our people- human people- aren't there to be MADE FUN OF.
This is valid whether your parishioner is a professor at the local university and a published author, or a PhD who rides bikes 8,000 miles a year, or a person recovering from a TBI, or the person with schizophrenia, or the local bike shop wrench. The second you start making fun of your people, you as a minister dishonor your profession.
Making fun of your people is different from laughing with them or recognizing that people do dumb and funny things all the time. (And laughing at the dumb things people do is different from despising them as human beings, and this is a distinction I make all the time in the emergency professionals world. All emergency professionals have laughed at people who had dumb accidents, myself included. That is different from resenting all stupid humanity.)
Just yesterday, at the local bike shop, I got the question of, "Oh, so it's your day off. They let you have those?" It didn't mean the bike shop wrench was just a dumb grease monkey. You know what it was? That person had seen me both in my collar and in my bike shorts on a ride, and felt comfortable enough to ask me some questions about my world.
I think I returned the favor with some of my dumb questions about the latest tri bike that has a space for a water bladder on the bike. I'm sure the wrenches go into the back of the shop after I leave, saying "Oh, my Gawd, she was in again today and I had to fix her stupid derailleur yet again!" but my favorite wrenches never miss the opportunity to tell stories and to engage me in the world of the bike.
See the difference? The wrenches never shame me. They recognize that I'm just not dialed into the bike world like they are, and that answering my "stupid" questions gives them the chance to share about part of their life that they love.
That's what I see lacking in this particular meme. It's not that we don't get those questions. It's not that the questions aren't funny. It's not that I have never rolled my eyes after being asked for the umpteenth time "What? You mean you get a day off? Really?" But part of being a professional in the world of ministry is realizing that these questions often aren't being asked out of ignorance or meanness, but just because people ask questions as a way to connect with other human beings.
I think I have one other reason why I have such a strong reaction to this particular meme. It's all these fully able bodied people walking around whining about getting stupid questions. Hello, I'm deaf. I have a cochlear implant. I have dealt with stupid questions and stupid reactions from people my entire life. "Oh, you can just turn me off when you don't want to listen to me." (I hate that one). "Where does the cochlear plug into your head?" (It's magnetic, it doesn't plug in.) "Can I feel the bump?" (Depends on how comfortable I feel with you...) "Can you color coordinate those things?" (I can, actually.) "How did you go deaf? Did your mom do something wrong? Did you listen to too much heavy metal? I think I'm going deaf like you. Maybe I should get hearing aids, and then I can be like you. Do you speak sign? Do you want to be the deaf campus chaplain in Gallaudet instead of here in Eugene?" And on, and on, and on.
I had to learn how to not be annoyed by those questions a long time ago. I had to learn how to treat them as an opportunity to engage other people. And I get really, really annoyed by these able-bodied hipsters who act as those they are the only ones who ever had to deal with humanity. This huge problem of theirs is nothing I didn't have to learn to deal with in another way years ago.
So to the cooler-than-thou twerps who pointed fingers and made fun of the world, please just get over yourselves. Getting asked "dumb" questions is nothing that doesn't happen to all of us at some point. I had to learn to suck it up and deal when I was a little kid. Learn a little empathy for humanity, or get out of my beloved line of work.
I won't go into my problems with the copy-cat meme concept at this point, because I think the bigger issue is the mean-ness of this particular video. I am told that the actors are all seminarians. As seminarians and young ministers, we were all exposed to these questions for the first time at some point. By now, most of us have gotten pretty much all of these questions, give or take a few.
If this had been a video shown only for, say, a seminary-audience-only variety show skit, it would be different. These are exactly the questions we all know and laugh about when we are in groups of colleagues, sitting around with a nice single malt at a table after the clergy conference meetings have wrapped up for the day. These are the questions that I tell my husband about over the dinner table, or sometimes, to some very cool parishioner friends, share the latest "Guess what I got asked today?". I would never want to be the wet blanket of the group of clergy at the next sushi/coffee shop Bible study, because these questions ARE funny.
My problem with this meme is the Queen Bee attitude, the snarkiness and the willingness to point fingers while not seeming to be self-aware enough to project empathy. To me, there seems to be a real sense that the actors are mocking what they perceive as "stupid" questions from the dumb people they are unfortunate enough to interact with every day. (Don't even get me started on the hipster glasses on one or the unkempt long hair on that man. I'll leave the appearance critiques to Peacebang's Beauty Tips for Ministers.)
My problem is that "oh, my Gawd, I can't believe I have to put up with your stupidity". And in the world of ministry, the second you start believing that you as the minister hold a special sort of intelligence, or that your ministry population is beneath you in any way, you have already lost. The second you start dismissing and making fun of your people for "stupid" questions, you have already shot yourself in the foot as their minister.
Our people- human people- aren't there to be MADE FUN OF.
This is valid whether your parishioner is a professor at the local university and a published author, or a PhD who rides bikes 8,000 miles a year, or a person recovering from a TBI, or the person with schizophrenia, or the local bike shop wrench. The second you start making fun of your people, you as a minister dishonor your profession.
Making fun of your people is different from laughing with them or recognizing that people do dumb and funny things all the time. (And laughing at the dumb things people do is different from despising them as human beings, and this is a distinction I make all the time in the emergency professionals world. All emergency professionals have laughed at people who had dumb accidents, myself included. That is different from resenting all stupid humanity.)
Just yesterday, at the local bike shop, I got the question of, "Oh, so it's your day off. They let you have those?" It didn't mean the bike shop wrench was just a dumb grease monkey. You know what it was? That person had seen me both in my collar and in my bike shorts on a ride, and felt comfortable enough to ask me some questions about my world.
I think I returned the favor with some of my dumb questions about the latest tri bike that has a space for a water bladder on the bike. I'm sure the wrenches go into the back of the shop after I leave, saying "Oh, my Gawd, she was in again today and I had to fix her stupid derailleur yet again!" but my favorite wrenches never miss the opportunity to tell stories and to engage me in the world of the bike.
See the difference? The wrenches never shame me. They recognize that I'm just not dialed into the bike world like they are, and that answering my "stupid" questions gives them the chance to share about part of their life that they love.
That's what I see lacking in this particular meme. It's not that we don't get those questions. It's not that the questions aren't funny. It's not that I have never rolled my eyes after being asked for the umpteenth time "What? You mean you get a day off? Really?" But part of being a professional in the world of ministry is realizing that these questions often aren't being asked out of ignorance or meanness, but just because people ask questions as a way to connect with other human beings.
I think I have one other reason why I have such a strong reaction to this particular meme. It's all these fully able bodied people walking around whining about getting stupid questions. Hello, I'm deaf. I have a cochlear implant. I have dealt with stupid questions and stupid reactions from people my entire life. "Oh, you can just turn me off when you don't want to listen to me." (I hate that one). "Where does the cochlear plug into your head?" (It's magnetic, it doesn't plug in.) "Can I feel the bump?" (Depends on how comfortable I feel with you...) "Can you color coordinate those things?" (I can, actually.) "How did you go deaf? Did your mom do something wrong? Did you listen to too much heavy metal? I think I'm going deaf like you. Maybe I should get hearing aids, and then I can be like you. Do you speak sign? Do you want to be the deaf campus chaplain in Gallaudet instead of here in Eugene?" And on, and on, and on.
I had to learn how to not be annoyed by those questions a long time ago. I had to learn how to treat them as an opportunity to engage other people. And I get really, really annoyed by these able-bodied hipsters who act as those they are the only ones who ever had to deal with humanity. This huge problem of theirs is nothing I didn't have to learn to deal with in another way years ago.
So to the cooler-than-thou twerps who pointed fingers and made fun of the world, please just get over yourselves. Getting asked "dumb" questions is nothing that doesn't happen to all of us at some point. I had to learn to suck it up and deal when I was a little kid. Learn a little empathy for humanity, or get out of my beloved line of work.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Saturday At Home
I'm not really into fung shui. But ever since I participated in a liturgy course with the All Saints' Company out of St. Gregory of Nyssa in San Francisco, CA, I have believed in energy in buildings. Did you know that if the presider stands as little as one or two feet out of place, that person is not only very hard to hear, but actually looks smaller.
Energy flows in our home too. Growing up, my mom's kitchen table was always cluttered hopelessly with piles and piles of mail. It's not that we were all slobs. It's that we didn't know how to work with the energy of that house to create a "landing strip" to drop keys and shoes and mail to sort.
So on this sorta-rainy Saturday, after spending sometime tidying up the study, I realized I was ALWAYS tidying the study, ALWAYS shooing the cats off something, ALWAYS stubbing my toe or not printing a document. I never wanted to spend much time up here. After 10 months, it was time to re-arrange.
After M graduated, we kept our two desks to let ourselves experiment with how we were really going to use workspace in our house. After all, simple graduation does not mean he's stopped studying or working at home! Being a priest, I regularly work at home. So having a functional study is important. Looking around, I realized (among other things) that all the light was on the same side of the room. Deciding to figure out how to get light on the other side of the room is what sparked the rearranging. I wanted better light for my piano and more light in the corner furthest from the window.
We finally decided to let go of our "teacher desk". This was a great old solid wood piece that I bought off a yard sale in 2004 when I was in Arlington. It was a big old clunker that was a perfect desk for its time. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent there.
Then, last year, after my parents' move, I was gifted with the old secretary desk/object of my lust. My dad and I refinished that, and it quickly became my new favorite desk.
The old clunker went to Freecycle and now lives with a local super-poor college student who had no furniture at all. He now has a desk, and someone gave him a bookcase, and I think he's going to get a tin cup soon.
All I really did in the now-clunker-desk free study was move things from one side to the other, leaving the books entirely alone because I can't bear the thought of moving all those books right now. My muscles ache at the mere thought. But I am amazed at how much more 'space' is suddenly in this room. The heat register is free and I can have heat in this room at last! (It used to be covered by the futon). The music cabinet is near the desk so (gasp) the printer can be hooked up! I admit it was getting a little tiresome to constantly be walking over to the printer, balancing the laptop on my leg, and standing while things printed out. First world problem? Heck yeah.
We'll see how it is to live in the new study space! And we'll also play the game of "drop really obvious hints to M and see how long it takes him to realize that furniture is in a different spot". He's an intellectual guy. It sometimes takes him a while to realize that things have been moved or that he has no socks because I threw all his piles into the laundry.
Energy flows in our home too. Growing up, my mom's kitchen table was always cluttered hopelessly with piles and piles of mail. It's not that we were all slobs. It's that we didn't know how to work with the energy of that house to create a "landing strip" to drop keys and shoes and mail to sort.
So on this sorta-rainy Saturday, after spending sometime tidying up the study, I realized I was ALWAYS tidying the study, ALWAYS shooing the cats off something, ALWAYS stubbing my toe or not printing a document. I never wanted to spend much time up here. After 10 months, it was time to re-arrange.
 |
| The new entry into the study. The classic music stand was in the other corner, the piano had been under the window, and the secretary was next to the window where the futon now is. |
After M graduated, we kept our two desks to let ourselves experiment with how we were really going to use workspace in our house. After all, simple graduation does not mean he's stopped studying or working at home! Being a priest, I regularly work at home. So having a functional study is important. Looking around, I realized (among other things) that all the light was on the same side of the room. Deciding to figure out how to get light on the other side of the room is what sparked the rearranging. I wanted better light for my piano and more light in the corner furthest from the window.
We finally decided to let go of our "teacher desk". This was a great old solid wood piece that I bought off a yard sale in 2004 when I was in Arlington. It was a big old clunker that was a perfect desk for its time. I can't even imagine how many hours I spent there.
 |
| Being unable to find a picture of the Clunker, I give you SOME of the boxes of books we own. The cat was packed in a different box for his moving. The Clunker is barely in the photo at the left. |
Then, last year, after my parents' move, I was gifted with the old secretary desk/object of my lust. My dad and I refinished that, and it quickly became my new favorite desk.
 |
| Yeah, actually, it IS hot. |
The old clunker went to Freecycle and now lives with a local super-poor college student who had no furniture at all. He now has a desk, and someone gave him a bookcase, and I think he's going to get a tin cup soon.
All I really did in the now-clunker-desk free study was move things from one side to the other, leaving the books entirely alone because I can't bear the thought of moving all those books right now. My muscles ache at the mere thought. But I am amazed at how much more 'space' is suddenly in this room. The heat register is free and I can have heat in this room at last! (It used to be covered by the futon). The music cabinet is near the desk so (gasp) the printer can be hooked up! I admit it was getting a little tiresome to constantly be walking over to the printer, balancing the laptop on my leg, and standing while things printed out. First world problem? Heck yeah.
We'll see how it is to live in the new study space! And we'll also play the game of "drop really obvious hints to M and see how long it takes him to realize that furniture is in a different spot". He's an intellectual guy. It sometimes takes him a while to realize that things have been moved or that he has no socks because I threw all his piles into the laundry.
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Actual New Year's Resolutions
So this year, I actually have a few resolutions. Usually, I start New Year's during Advent, but I was a little discombobulated this year. When we had severals deaths rolling in during December, we decided to stop holiday everything. No tree. No presents. No cookie baking. No codfish balls. Nothing. And it was necessary, and ultimately, good.
1) Wean self off Facebook Addiction. Facebook is necessary for work, and it's the easiest way to keep up with far-flung family and friends. But it's easy to overdo it. Facebook isn't the center of the universe- I have to remember to connect in real life and real time too.
2) Study for and take the GRE. I think I'll even register for it. That'll force me. And go buy a GRE book to study from. GRE results are good for 5 years, so I might as well get it out of the way. This. Means. Math.
3) Keep researching graduate school options and considering what is possible. See, the thing is that I like my job, and I'm not open to leaving my job entirely for full-time school. Besides, I will never be able to afford that. (Because right now, I am committed to accruing no more debt in my life, other than a mortgage. We are paying off what we owe. I just don't trust society enough anymore to carry debt any longer than I have to. In college, we were told that educational debt was always good debt. Then the triple-dip recessions started rolling.) I wonder what others have done in lean economic times, to pursue one's intellectual hunger and balance it with one's practical financial needs?
4) Compete in more than one triathlon, with an emphasis on running speedwork. I've got the distance base down (for an Olympic, at least!). I think I can aim for keeping my 10K COMFORTABLE under 1 hour. I'm totally jumping on the Butte to Butte bandwagon with all my friends and the Boss and the U of O chaplain and half of St. Mary's and most of the tri club.
4A) Come up with goofy workout names. I already have the Holli, a regular 5K running route, named after a friend and colleague who uses a wheelchair asked us all to spend her "wheelchair anniversary date" enjoying our legs. And I have the Bad-Mood Garbage Run, a funk-mood buster involving sprints from garbage pail to garbage pail on trash day. I should name other routes, right?
5) Seek enough balance to achieve 1 workout every day that I hold office hours. The thing with tri training and my job: well, I work a lot and sometimes have trouble giving myself permission to go in late or take lunchtime for a workout. I struggle with wanting to have the appearance of being in the office and working all the time, even while I know that represents a horrible, unhealthy model for all work. (Especially work like clergy work!) I know I'm in a place where my parish and boss blesses balance. I know that I use my study at home very well, especially writing and thinking and working during hours that are not typical office hours. I suppose my boss and I should mutually explore this in supervision, since he probably has the same struggles!
6) Get together with new friends to make codfish balls. Of all the holiday traditions (Star Wars sugar cookies with royal icing decorated in peppermint! Chocolate Italian ball cookies! Trees with jingle bells), this is the one I missed. And I have a new Portuguese friend (who's a chef) who needs to have herself some codfish balls. I think we need to invent a January holiday this year, to eat codfish balls with a lot of salad.
Happy 2012, everyone! Enjoy the Year of the Mayan Apocalypse!
1) Wean self off Facebook Addiction. Facebook is necessary for work, and it's the easiest way to keep up with far-flung family and friends. But it's easy to overdo it. Facebook isn't the center of the universe- I have to remember to connect in real life and real time too.
2) Study for and take the GRE. I think I'll even register for it. That'll force me. And go buy a GRE book to study from. GRE results are good for 5 years, so I might as well get it out of the way. This. Means. Math.
3) Keep researching graduate school options and considering what is possible. See, the thing is that I like my job, and I'm not open to leaving my job entirely for full-time school. Besides, I will never be able to afford that. (Because right now, I am committed to accruing no more debt in my life, other than a mortgage. We are paying off what we owe. I just don't trust society enough anymore to carry debt any longer than I have to. In college, we were told that educational debt was always good debt. Then the triple-dip recessions started rolling.) I wonder what others have done in lean economic times, to pursue one's intellectual hunger and balance it with one's practical financial needs?
4) Compete in more than one triathlon, with an emphasis on running speedwork. I've got the distance base down (for an Olympic, at least!). I think I can aim for keeping my 10K COMFORTABLE under 1 hour. I'm totally jumping on the Butte to Butte bandwagon with all my friends and the Boss and the U of O chaplain and half of St. Mary's and most of the tri club.
4A) Come up with goofy workout names. I already have the Holli, a regular 5K running route, named after a friend and colleague who uses a wheelchair asked us all to spend her "wheelchair anniversary date" enjoying our legs. And I have the Bad-Mood Garbage Run, a funk-mood buster involving sprints from garbage pail to garbage pail on trash day. I should name other routes, right?
5) Seek enough balance to achieve 1 workout every day that I hold office hours. The thing with tri training and my job: well, I work a lot and sometimes have trouble giving myself permission to go in late or take lunchtime for a workout. I struggle with wanting to have the appearance of being in the office and working all the time, even while I know that represents a horrible, unhealthy model for all work. (Especially work like clergy work!) I know I'm in a place where my parish and boss blesses balance. I know that I use my study at home very well, especially writing and thinking and working during hours that are not typical office hours. I suppose my boss and I should mutually explore this in supervision, since he probably has the same struggles!
6) Get together with new friends to make codfish balls. Of all the holiday traditions (Star Wars sugar cookies with royal icing decorated in peppermint! Chocolate Italian ball cookies! Trees with jingle bells), this is the one I missed. And I have a new Portuguese friend (who's a chef) who needs to have herself some codfish balls. I think we need to invent a January holiday this year, to eat codfish balls with a lot of salad.
Happy 2012, everyone! Enjoy the Year of the Mayan Apocalypse!
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Ultimate Christmas Present
Remember the year of the Cabbage Patch Kid?
It was the year that everyone in the universe decided they had to have a doll with a rubbery head, simple yarn hair, and a cloth body. They came in boy and girl models, so all the boys and all the girls wanted one. They did not light up, walk, talk, or connect to our computers. (This is probably a good thing, since in the mid-80s, all computers really did was play Pong and maybe give you dot-matrix printouts on computer printers that we had to load with special paper with perforated sides with holes in them.) Cabbage Patch Kids were decidedly low tech. We wanted them SO BAD.
Parents and other grownups began appearing on the TV at night, in dire stories featuring mug shots taking after the latest fight. In one story, reportedly, a woman in a babushka aimed a flying roundhouse kick at an off-duty police officer buying ice cream for his Little Brother, and a scuffle ensued, with a huge fight in the middle of the store aisle. I'll never forget the images from the news that night as they dragged that nun away, screaming "You'll never get my orphans' cabbage patch kid!" while the firefighters hosed everyone in the vicinity, gleeful that the dolls were finally theirs.
My parents solemnly sat us down and explained that they would not be joining those adults on TV, and they would never fight other people for a toy, and we would not be getting a Cabbage Patch Kid.
Christmas Eve came. As a child with Portuguese heritage, Christmas eve meant three things: we always went to church, we always ate codfish balls, and we always spent time with my mom's side of the family. Those were great nights.
But then came a big surprise: my brother and I were told that we could have one present from Santa... early!
We were both given a large box, which we naturally immediately destroyed. Inside the destruction, we both found... a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Terror rose swiftly in both of us. We had seen, first hand, the shame of children who went to the playground with fake Cabbage Patches. There were signs of real-ness which were essential to avoiding playground shame, including the doll's belly button and the signed butt. We had both seen the bullies who exposed button-less-bellies of "fake" dolls, and to this day, I'm not sure those children have ever recovered from the shame.
My brother rammed his hand down the nightclothes of his doll, longing, fear, anticipation all etched on his face until his little hand found the belly button. "He's REAL! He's REAL!" he started screaming. I was busy seeking my own doll's bottom to look for the cursive writing, because everyone knew that real Cabbage Patches had signed butts. I've got some speech issues, so I'm not sure how coherent I was in that moment when I found the writing and knew finally that the dolls were real Cabbage Patches.
The real Christmas miracle that year was learning that we had parents who knew how to bend the rules and to get around the unimportant stuff to thrill their kids with what was really essential.
Church.
Codfish balls.
Family.
Dolls with belly buttons and cursive writing on the butt.
I didn't post a picture of the doll's tush, where you can still see the writing years later. That's partly because posting a doll butt just seems too weird for the internet, and partly because the writing includes real names and the year of 1985, and I try to keep real names private.
In 1985, I was 6. You see, at that age, neither my brother nor I could read cursive. All we knew was that the squiggly writing was important.
We got our real dolls, with the belly buttons and the signed butts that night.
It would be a few years before we'd be able to read cursive and would learn that the writing on the butt was our mom's own name. She'd found a kit somewhere and stitched them together secretly in the late nights. But we didn't know that then... all we knew was the our dolls had a belly button and cursive writing on the butt.
Real.
Best. Christmas. Ever.
Oh, it was pretty great that neither of our parents had gotten arrest for fighting while Christmas shopping. That would have embarrassing.
It was the year that everyone in the universe decided they had to have a doll with a rubbery head, simple yarn hair, and a cloth body. They came in boy and girl models, so all the boys and all the girls wanted one. They did not light up, walk, talk, or connect to our computers. (This is probably a good thing, since in the mid-80s, all computers really did was play Pong and maybe give you dot-matrix printouts on computer printers that we had to load with special paper with perforated sides with holes in them.) Cabbage Patch Kids were decidedly low tech. We wanted them SO BAD.
Parents and other grownups began appearing on the TV at night, in dire stories featuring mug shots taking after the latest fight. In one story, reportedly, a woman in a babushka aimed a flying roundhouse kick at an off-duty police officer buying ice cream for his Little Brother, and a scuffle ensued, with a huge fight in the middle of the store aisle. I'll never forget the images from the news that night as they dragged that nun away, screaming "You'll never get my orphans' cabbage patch kid!" while the firefighters hosed everyone in the vicinity, gleeful that the dolls were finally theirs.
My parents solemnly sat us down and explained that they would not be joining those adults on TV, and they would never fight other people for a toy, and we would not be getting a Cabbage Patch Kid.
Christmas Eve came. As a child with Portuguese heritage, Christmas eve meant three things: we always went to church, we always ate codfish balls, and we always spent time with my mom's side of the family. Those were great nights.
But then came a big surprise: my brother and I were told that we could have one present from Santa... early!
We were both given a large box, which we naturally immediately destroyed. Inside the destruction, we both found... a Cabbage Patch Doll.
Terror rose swiftly in both of us. We had seen, first hand, the shame of children who went to the playground with fake Cabbage Patches. There were signs of real-ness which were essential to avoiding playground shame, including the doll's belly button and the signed butt. We had both seen the bullies who exposed button-less-bellies of "fake" dolls, and to this day, I'm not sure those children have ever recovered from the shame.
My brother rammed his hand down the nightclothes of his doll, longing, fear, anticipation all etched on his face until his little hand found the belly button. "He's REAL! He's REAL!" he started screaming. I was busy seeking my own doll's bottom to look for the cursive writing, because everyone knew that real Cabbage Patches had signed butts. I've got some speech issues, so I'm not sure how coherent I was in that moment when I found the writing and knew finally that the dolls were real Cabbage Patches.
 |
| This is Melissa. |
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| This is Melissa's bellybutton. |
The real Christmas miracle that year was learning that we had parents who knew how to bend the rules and to get around the unimportant stuff to thrill their kids with what was really essential.
Church.
Codfish balls.
Family.
Dolls with belly buttons and cursive writing on the butt.
I didn't post a picture of the doll's tush, where you can still see the writing years later. That's partly because posting a doll butt just seems too weird for the internet, and partly because the writing includes real names and the year of 1985, and I try to keep real names private.
In 1985, I was 6. You see, at that age, neither my brother nor I could read cursive. All we knew was that the squiggly writing was important.
We got our real dolls, with the belly buttons and the signed butts that night.
It would be a few years before we'd be able to read cursive and would learn that the writing on the butt was our mom's own name. She'd found a kit somewhere and stitched them together secretly in the late nights. But we didn't know that then... all we knew was the our dolls had a belly button and cursive writing on the butt.
Real.
Best. Christmas. Ever.
Oh, it was pretty great that neither of our parents had gotten arrest for fighting while Christmas shopping. That would have embarrassing.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Year's End
These are the Zombie Portuguese dolls. When I was a little girl, someone in my family gifted me with this set of dolls dressed up in Portuguese clothing- the little black biretta on the boys and the 17 skirts on the girls.
For some reason I was terrified of them. Perhaps it is because their eyes broke early on, forever rolling up in their heads and revealing the empty stare of blue plastic. I became convinced that the dolls were alive and attempted to throw them out. (I'd seen snatches of Chucky playing at the video store. I knew how to take my movies seriously.)
No matter what I did, the dolls always returned. I'd find them under the bed... sitting on the bookshelf... laid casually at the foot of the stairs.
This only increased my terror of the dolls. In fact, perhaps it had something to do with my deep fondness for both Little Pony and G.I. Joes. Little Pony never looks like possessed zombies in traditional Portuguese clothes, and I was confident that G.I. Joe could kick the zombie's butts if need be.
I thought I had thrown them out for the last time when I moved out and took my stuff out of the basement.
When my parents bought their new house and moved thirty miles away, I found the dolls in a box in the attic.
I threw them away again, cackling in glee, convinced they could never survive a moving-house purging.
Last year, my mother found them... in a box, in the Christmas stuff.
She cackled with glee herself. And put them in her Christmas tree where they probably still are to this day.
Merry Christmas, everyone.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Podium???
So today I ran a 5K. I ran the Jingle Bell Run with The Boss. He'd been doing "Couch-to-5K" and wanted something else to do, so I suggested we run a race. He found the Jingle Bell Run and off we went.
For the first time in my life, I almost missed the race. The town of Eugene does not have its park parking lots street addresses listed. So the address to which GPS, iPhone, and the town's own website directed me to was somewhere in the middle of nowhere or perhaps at the back of the park... nowhere near parking, packet pickup, or porta-potties.
And I'd had a LOT of coffee this morning.
Let's just say there was some frantic calling of The Boss, some driving while simultaneously GPS-correcting and phone-wangling, and finally, a desperate pull over to the side of the road when I saw two people wearing santa hats and candy cane codpieces to ask for directions. God bless the candy cane codpiece couple. They got me right on track.
The Boss declared I'd outrun him as he planned to run a 10:00 mile and just wanted to finish. I was feeling extremely tired after a long drive to Portland yesterday and being up late, so I was fine with slow.
Then The Boss took off and held this punishing pace of 9:12. Um, yeah, my average pace so far has been in the 9:40s. So this was 30 seconds faster than I normally run. I hate it when my body proves how much harder I can push it. It was a hard run, but a good hard run.
You see what pushing things does to me? I start saying things like "good" and "hard run" in the same sentence, AND I'M A CYCLIST! I'm not supposed to enjoy hard runs. They are supposed to make me suffer.
The course was mostly nice and flat with a charming little uphill swell right in the middle. We only saw Santa at the beginning of the course, though, and the carolers weren't caroling for us as we ran off. However, the race director had a charming touch of using a giant candy cane as the front-of-the-race pace pole. Near the turnaround, I saw the fast people chasing the kid with the cane.
As always, the first mile and a half were misery and pain and blackness of the dark night of the Achilles tendon. But around mile 1.5, something cleared up and the running became smooth and easy. I'm starting to associate that with finally getting fully warm. It takes me a LONG time to get happy, but once I hit that happy point, it's... easy to hold a strong pace. So the second half of the race was pretty charming and happy. Even my tight hip flexor was warm and mobile.
I'M A CYCLIST! I SWEAR! I SWEAR, MY BELOVED TREKS! YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FIRST IN MY LITTLE HEART!
Nearing the end, The Boss had a strong sprint left in him, and I managed to drag myself over the finish line in a surprising 28:40. The Boss's wife, being sharp of eye and attuned to what her husband and I REALLY run races for, pointed us to the many boxes of pizza. Bless you, Boss' Wife, for you do rock greatly. Whatever ire was left from the getting-lost situation earlier dissolved as I saw what looked like dozens of pizzas- ample pizza for everyone- and floated away on a sea of pepperoni steam. Maybe all winter races should provide steaming hot pizza.
I've just checked the official results, and discovered to my shock that I was actually 3rd in my age group. The unofficial results had me at #5 in my age group, so we didn't stick around. And now I've discovered that I won a ribbon, and blithely strolled away from my first running ribbon and podium finish here in Eugene!
Good job to The Boss for a strong run! Clearly, we need to do this again, because he's got a lot of speed left to build, and I must go get another ribbon. And now that I've discovered that I can hold a 9:14 pace, there's no more 9:40 slacking off for me. I'm ruined, I say, ruined.
For the first time in my life, I almost missed the race. The town of Eugene does not have its park parking lots street addresses listed. So the address to which GPS, iPhone, and the town's own website directed me to was somewhere in the middle of nowhere or perhaps at the back of the park... nowhere near parking, packet pickup, or porta-potties.
And I'd had a LOT of coffee this morning.
Let's just say there was some frantic calling of The Boss, some driving while simultaneously GPS-correcting and phone-wangling, and finally, a desperate pull over to the side of the road when I saw two people wearing santa hats and candy cane codpieces to ask for directions. God bless the candy cane codpiece couple. They got me right on track.
The Boss declared I'd outrun him as he planned to run a 10:00 mile and just wanted to finish. I was feeling extremely tired after a long drive to Portland yesterday and being up late, so I was fine with slow.
Then The Boss took off and held this punishing pace of 9:12. Um, yeah, my average pace so far has been in the 9:40s. So this was 30 seconds faster than I normally run. I hate it when my body proves how much harder I can push it. It was a hard run, but a good hard run.
You see what pushing things does to me? I start saying things like "good" and "hard run" in the same sentence, AND I'M A CYCLIST! I'm not supposed to enjoy hard runs. They are supposed to make me suffer.
The course was mostly nice and flat with a charming little uphill swell right in the middle. We only saw Santa at the beginning of the course, though, and the carolers weren't caroling for us as we ran off. However, the race director had a charming touch of using a giant candy cane as the front-of-the-race pace pole. Near the turnaround, I saw the fast people chasing the kid with the cane.
As always, the first mile and a half were misery and pain and blackness of the dark night of the Achilles tendon. But around mile 1.5, something cleared up and the running became smooth and easy. I'm starting to associate that with finally getting fully warm. It takes me a LONG time to get happy, but once I hit that happy point, it's... easy to hold a strong pace. So the second half of the race was pretty charming and happy. Even my tight hip flexor was warm and mobile.
I'M A CYCLIST! I SWEAR! I SWEAR, MY BELOVED TREKS! YOU WILL ALWAYS BE FIRST IN MY LITTLE HEART!
Nearing the end, The Boss had a strong sprint left in him, and I managed to drag myself over the finish line in a surprising 28:40. The Boss's wife, being sharp of eye and attuned to what her husband and I REALLY run races for, pointed us to the many boxes of pizza. Bless you, Boss' Wife, for you do rock greatly. Whatever ire was left from the getting-lost situation earlier dissolved as I saw what looked like dozens of pizzas- ample pizza for everyone- and floated away on a sea of pepperoni steam. Maybe all winter races should provide steaming hot pizza.
I've just checked the official results, and discovered to my shock that I was actually 3rd in my age group. The unofficial results had me at #5 in my age group, so we didn't stick around. And now I've discovered that I won a ribbon, and blithely strolled away from my first running ribbon and podium finish here in Eugene!
Good job to The Boss for a strong run! Clearly, we need to do this again, because he's got a lot of speed left to build, and I must go get another ribbon. And now that I've discovered that I can hold a 9:14 pace, there's no more 9:40 slacking off for me. I'm ruined, I say, ruined.
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