First Meme of the New Year

I hadn't thought about doing a meme, but came across this one that I sort of liked, so...why not...? It came from a blog called Where's My Plan, who says she got it from a blog called Stone Castles and Night Skies.

1. Where did you grow up? Where do you consider home?

An interesting couple of questions. The first is easy. I grew up in San Francisco and have only lived in California. As for "where do I consider home?" up until maybe 15 years ago, I would have considered San Francisco my home, even though I hadn't lived there since 1960. But San Francisco has changed, and I have changed and I think that I really consider Davis my home now. San Francisco is someplace I love to visit, but would not like to live there again.

2. If you could paint your car any color with no loss in value, what color would it be?

Well, I don't expect it would affect the value any, but I would love to have a bright, bright red car. Basically I don't really care all that much, but red is my happy color.

3. What do you think comes after death?

I have lost so many people that I think about that a lot. I think it brings us great comfort to imagine that there is a life beyond this one, and so I believe that. I believe I will get to ground Paul and David for all eternity (after I give them huge hugs) for causing such pain by doing stupid things that they knew better about doing. I have read enough about near death experiences and communication with those who have passed that I believe there is something. And of course, after 25 years, Gilbert is still finding me parking places, so I know he's out there somewhere. If I can, I'll come back and let you know. :)

4. Name a TV show that should NOT be renewed for another season.

For me, anything with "Housewives of" in it could die the death and it would not bother me at all. But to each his own taste.

5. If you could have a free subscription to any online service, which would you like to have?

For fun, perhaps Shockwave, but I've had difficulty subscribing and then playing their games, so maybe not. Also the NAPP site (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). I am a NAPP member and have that service, but it would be nice to have it for free.

6. Where did you think you’d be at the age you are now?

Pretty much where I am now, though I never dreamed I'd travel as much as we have, and I thought I'd have more grandchildren than we do. (another reason for grounding Paul and Dave when I see them again. Paul's widow is remarried and has one child and is expecting twins. Would those have been my grandchildren if he'd lived?)

7. What did you want to be when you grew up?

The first thing I remember wanting to be was a Carmelite nun because I was inspired by reading the biography of St. Therese of Lisieux. I can't see me in a cloistered nunnery! I wanted to be a mother. I wanted to be a missionary. I wanted to be a dog trainer. When I read Sue Barton books, I imagined myself as a nurse, but the thought of changing bedpans killed that idea. After seeing "Interrupted Memory" I wanted to sing opera (my poor mother for enduring those months of my warbling at top volume while washing dishes!) At one point I wanted to be a door to door person who conducted interviews...kind of like writing a meme for other people. The one thing I did NOT want to be was a teacher, which is what my father insisted I be when I went off to college. So in the end, I got to be what I wanted: a mother.

8. If you were to suddenly become famous, and were forced to change names, what would you choose as your stage name?

Oh good lord. That would mean I would have to have...you know...imagination or something. I liked the old studio days when they told you what name to use. Like Vickie Lester or something. (Now there's an obscure reference probably only my gay friends will get!)

9. What is the first book that you can remember reading by yourself as a child?

I know I read lots of books before the 4th grade, but in the 4th grade my friend Stephen Calegari loaned me his copy of "The Black Stallion" and I absolutely loved it. I then had to read obsessively all of the books written by Walter Farley and then I had to read all the horse books I could get my hands on.

Thursday Thirteen

Borrowing an idea from Forgetful One here are 13 things about my 2010 in books.

1. I read 40 books last year (I keep a database), not as many as I would like, but still more than I read in 2009.
2. Two were written by friends, “How to be Sick” by Toni Bernhard and “The Weight of Gold” by Ruth Chambers.
3. Eight of the books were by Michael Connelly, including his latest, which he autographed for me at a book store event. I have now read all of Connelly's books.
4. I had Lee Child recommended to me and I read 3 of his books. Two were good, one was not so good.
5. Two were in preparation for our trip to Russia, “City of Thieves” by David Benioff and “The Madonnas of Leningrad” by Debra Dean. I finished "Madonnas" in St. Petersburg, which was the perfect place to read that book.
6. I read five books about dogs, “Oogy” by Larry Levin, “Rose in a Storm” and "Izzy and Lenore" by Jon Katz, "The Art of Racing in the Rain" by Garth Stein, and “Word” by Florence Petheram. (“Word” was also primarily a children’s book.)
7. “I read 3 books by James Patterson and just now finished another one. I am convinced that when he writes alone he's head and shoulders above when he uses a co-author.
8. One book was really a cop out, “Cake Wrecks,” by Jen Yates, since it’s mostly pictures, but it’s still a book.
9. I decided to try the Steig Larsson books, liked them, and read all three (“Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” etc.) Before his premature death, Larsson said he could have written 100 books about Lisbeth Salander. I don’t think so. I loved her stories, but didn't want to know more at the end of the series.
10. Five were autobiographical-ish books, Carol Burnett’s “This Time Together,” Hala Jarber’s “This Flying Carpet of Small Miracles,” about rescuing children in Baghdad, Lara Adair’s “The Granny Diaries,” "The Woman I was Born to be" by Susan Boyle, and Meghan McCain’s “Dirty, Sexy Politics” (McCain’s book was one I never in my wildest dreams thought I would enjoy, but I did. Thoroughly.)
11. I was thrilled that Armistead Maupin added another to his Tales of the City Series, "Maryann in Autumn."
12. Erica Bauermeier’s “The School of Essential Ingredients” inspired me to want to become a better writer.
13. I only read one Diana Gabaldon (“The Drums of Autumn”) but if you’re reading Gabaldon, one a year is probably enough!

Shakin' the Night Away

Well, it certainly was an interesting night last night.

I don't remember whether I fell asleep in the recliner or not, but at some point I wasn't asleep and couldn't get to sleep. I did what I usually do, and decided to go sleep in the living room, only when I stood up, I had this very sharp pain in my hip and what I can only assume was some arthritic pain in both of my thumbs.

I had been on the treadmill in the afternoon and had gotten my speed up to 2.1 mph, which is fast for me when I'm just starting to get back into the routine of walking on the treadmill again. I'd been going at 1.8 mph up to that point. I thought that maybe this was my body complaining. The thumbs problem could have been from grasping the rails of the treadmill tightly.

I limped into the living room and set up the couch and got under the quilt and the dog. But when I settled down, I realized I was shaking like I had palsy. Shaking so bad my teeth were rattling against each other. I wondered if it was kind of a "shocky" thing because of how bad the pain in my hip was.

I lay there and shook and shook and shook and tried to get my leg comfortable. I finally relaized that if I changed position on the couch, i.e., put my head at the other end (I almost never sleep on my left side), I would be able to stretch the leg out farther, because the leg would now be on the outside instead of the inside, so I tried that. In the process, I got another blanket to add to the quilt.

I still lay there shaking like a leaf, but the leg was more comfortable, and in time I finally fell asleep for an hour or so.

Around 3 I was wide awake, but at least had stopped shaking.

I hobbled out to the kitchen and got the thermometer to see if just maybe I had a fever. You might say that. It was 101. I climbed into the recliner under a blanket and the dog and went back to sleep, disappointed because Walt and I had tickets to see the Impressionist exhibit which is at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, and which is leaving at the end of this week.

By the time Walt woke up, my fever was down to 100, and my hip was feeling better, but I knew there was no way I was going to the exhibit.

Before he left, I had a call from the lady who had come to Petco the week before Thanksgiving, interested in adopting Polly. My heart sank...did she want her? But she was calling to tell me why she didn't want her and when I told her that Polly had been adopted--by us--Walt, who had just come into the room, came over and robbed Polly affectionately on the head, which I assume is the same as "yes."

Walt went off, giving Polly and me a pat on the head and a sad look as he went out the door, and I settled into my sick chair for the day.

Near as I can tell I pretty much slept almost all day long. The Today Show morphed into the last half of Regis and Kelly and then back to The Today Show again. I don't remember anything about any of them.

At one point I was watching a taped episode of "The World's Worst Cooks" and fell asleep so that when I came back to consciousness again it sounded like the cooks were all attacking each other, and I had some mental picture of a knife that was transparent and all you could see was the outline...but it was just that some crime drama was on now and my brain had somehow combined the two.

Around 3, I got up to get a bagel to eat, and then stumbled to the computer, just intending to check e-mail, but I had some messages that involved setting up some interviews for the next couple of weeks, so I was at the computer longer than I expected.

I turned on the end of Chris Matthews but slept so long I completely missed Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow and there was some other news show on when I woke up. I had missed Jeopardy entirely.

I never read a thing or listened to any book, or used any of my gadgets for anything. I just slept all day.

Walt got home around 9, I guess. He had "lunch" at 5, so didn't need dinner, which was nice because I didn't feel like cooking anything. He had wonderful tales of the exhibit, but I was glad I hadn't gone because I don't think I could have handled 2 hours of walking through crowded rooms.

It is now 10 p.m. and about time to go to sleep, and I"m wondering how my night is going to go. But that's OK because I never got to see any of the evening dramas that I usually watch because I slept through them, so if I can't sleep, I have a whole night of DVR stuff to watch.

But my fever is gone, finally. It's not that I can "sit up and take nourishment" again, but I can "sit up and write a journal entry again" !!

Girly Stuff

I finally got my hair cut today (though it doesn't really show in this picture...it really IS shorter).

I always go through angst when I have my hair cut. I hate the question: "how do you want it cut?" I don't know from hair. I just tell them how long I want it and that I want bangs. It's a crapshoot. Sometimes it turns out the way I want it, sometimes it doesn't, but since it still has vestiges of a natural curl, it usually does what it wants anyway.

My mother set and styled my hair until I was about 18 years old. When I was supposed to be entering the convent, my biggest fear (and this should have been kind of a big clue that I was not cut out for convent life!) was not that I couldn't do the work, or that I might miss my family or that I didn't know if God had really selected me, my biggest fear was that I would have to do my own hair for the first six months and I wasn't sure I knew how to do it. It was no big deal. As I recall at the time I set two pincurls on each side of my head and that was pretty much it. But fear of doing my own hair was one of the big things that kept me out of the convent.

I never really learned "girly stuff." My mother has never looked anything but completely put together. She goes to the hairdresser once a week, gives herself a manicure once a week, She has shoes for every occasion and a closet full of perfectly pressed clothes, with all sorts of coordinating pieces that match.

She buys most of her clothes at the Hospice of Marin thrift shop, so though her closets are full of clothes, it's not like she spends a fortune on them. She just has a great clothes sense and knows how to wear clothes and coordinate an outfit.

I have five pairs of black sweat pants (most with dog claw holes in them), one pair of non-sweat pants that I rarely wear because they need to be ironed and a pair of faux velvet pants, my good pants, which I've had, again, for about 10 years and which are going to fall apart any.day.now, but which I wear to most theatrical productions because I can't find another pair like them. I have three drawers of t-shirts and a handful of what might loosely be called "blouses," though most of the ones in my closet no longer fit.

I don't wear skirts because my legs look like this:

See how the skin darkens as you go lower on the leg? I asked a doctor about that and he explained the problem (which turns out to be "something that a lot of my older patients have" and another one of those old age things I have learned to live with). Pants cover it up, skirts don't, though thinking about "squat toilets" on the China trip makes me wonder if I should buy a skirt.

Until last week when I got my Wicked Witch of the East shoes, my "new" shoes were 10 years old Birkinstocks. My walking shoes were chewed up by some puppies a couple of years ago, but I keep wearing them because I hate shopping for shoes. My "good" shoes were purchased when I was still working for Women's Health (I quit there in 1996) and they are finally starting to look worn outside, though the lining inside has looked like it was home to a family of moths for years (creating embarrassment when I have to put them through the scanner at the airport).

But I don't know how to shop for clothes. I couldn't coordinate an outfit if I had to and I usually stand in a clothes shop, look around, and then leave because I'm too embarrassed to admit that I don't know what I'm looking for. I did manage to buy a couple of things for the Russia trip (including the aforementioned iron-needing pants), but when I got them home, they didn't look the way I thought they would. My mother has taken me shopping (before it started to be painful for her to walk) and I would buy the things that she gushes over, though I never wear them when I get home because they just aren't me...and she usually took me to shops that don't carry clothes big enough for me anyway.

I don't wear makeup, mostly because I'm blind without my glasses and so I can't see to put makeup on!

As for hair, I'm a total dork. And I never learned how to use a hair dryer. The best haircut I ever got was when the kids were all in school. Some high priced hairdresser had come to a local beauty shop to give a demonstration on how to cut naturally curly hair, but when his model failed to show, someone grabbed me as I walked past on the way to the supermarket and asked if I could be their model. Free haircut for me. Though the stylist kept up a running stream of conversation with the hairdressers about how he didn't understand how any woman would let herself be seen in person like I looked (as if I coudln't hear what he was saying), it was the best haircut I ever had. That's when I learned that there is such a thing as "cutting to the curl."

For many years I thought I was sounding so smart by asking to have my hair "cut to the curl," but nobody ever really knew how to do it. So I stopped asking for that and just tell them how short I want it and ask them to "layer it." I don't know what that is exactly, but if they do it right, my hair usually looks better. They always fix it so that the hair sweeps back behind my ear, despite the fact that I always brush my hair forward. I fix that with a shower. Sometimes they brush bangs for me, usually not. That, too, can be fixed by a shower.

Growing up I was a real girly girl. I always had to have dresses that "twirled," the frillier the better. But somehow along the line there was a fashion disconnect between me and the rest of the world.

Having "The Other Talk" Again

In October, I wrote that Walt and I had had "the talk" and that, despite everybody's suggestions to the contrary, we were not going to adopt Polly.

Wellllll.....

Now we haven't actually filled out the paperwork yet and Walt hasn't actually said "OK" yet, but I have finally admitted that I want to adopt her.

As I told Kim, from the SPCA, I have grown to love the little pain in the ass. And now that I am looking at entries that I wrote a year ago when she first got here, I am remembering how scared she was and how badly she reacted to any change in her routine, and how nice it was when she finally decided to trust me...and how rewarding it was to watch her finally let that little tail wag a mile a minute when she sees Walt.

I remember how I had to lock her in a cage to feed her because she was so terrified of the other dogs that she wouldn't eat, and how funny it is to see that she now bosses them around.

She still shakes when she's unsure of something. It could be something as innocent as my reaching out for her in a way she finds threatening, or my starting to put a leash on her.

I know she's happy here and I know she feels secure here. Each night as we settle into the recliner, with her tucked firmly into my armpit, her head resting on my chest, looking up at me, licking me on the nose and giving a sigh before she goes to sleep, or going to the couch, lying down and having her instantly take her place somewhere between my waist and halfway up my side (she only weighs 8 lbs, so I hardly notice her), where she sleeps until I get up, I think about how difficult it will be for me to give her to someone new and how she's going to feel going to a strange new home.

I think about how she's still not housebroken and wonder how it would be for her to have someone start being strict with her about that.

I thought about this every day for the past month and I finally told Walt I want to adopt her. He didn't say no. (He also didn't say yes.) Each day I'm letting myself think about her as having found her forever home and trying not to be irritated about her little irritating quirks. I didn't take her to Petco this week.

If anybody ever told me I would want to adopt a chihuahua, I would have told them they were nuts.

I also told Kim that I'm taking a break from adopting. I keep saying this is the longest time we've gone without a foster dog (obviously I don't consider Polly a foster dog any more). Sheila and Lizzie are absolutely delighted.

Sheila had stopped interacting with me throughout the day. She just kept to herself, staying at her post all day, guarding the house from mailmen, bikers, high school students and dog walkers.

Lizzie was Lizzie, but once we got rid of the puppies and didn't bring any new dogs into the house, things underwent an amazing change.

Suddenly mealtime became a ritual again. Where Sheila rarely showed up for mealtime, but would eat at some point throughout the day, now she's back at her food bowl spot, jumping up and down excitedly as she waits for me to fill it.

She has actually brought toys for us to play with with her. We can't remember the last time she did that.

She and Lizzie are wrestling with each other again and chasing each other up and down the hall. She she seems to have stopped chewing on her backside.

As for Polly, the scared little skin and bones dog who wouldn't eat when any other dog was around her, who spent her first weeks in my chair peeking around the corner at me, trembling is now the queen bee. She sits on my lap while the others are wrestling and when she thinks they are getting too rough, she leaps down, barking and separates them. If either of them wanted to they could pick her up and throw her over their shoulders, but they just separate and go off on their way again.

I dunno. It just feels right. Jeri told me at Christmas time that I was going to adopt Polly and that Polly was meant to be our dog ("C'mon, Mom...you know she's your dog..."). I adamantly said that I absolutely was not going to adopt her.

Jeri was obviously right.

Media Blackout

I have not been coy about admitting that I am a TV addict and that the television is usually on all the time in this house.

I go in spurts, sometimes watching inane comedies, sometimes watching crime marathons, sometimes glued to the 24/7 news stations (usually MSNBC).

Today, however, someone on Facebook sent me a link to a site called Cruise Critic, where people can read about all things cruise and where, this woman told me, there has been a thread going since 2005 about Viking trips to China. I started reading the entries posted in about 2008 and forward and was just fascinated by the stuff I was learning and the photo albums I was able to check out. I am currently on page 167 of 198 pages and may soon actually get to entries posted in 2011, and maybe meet some folks who will be on our cruise.

It felt like I had spent my day in China. I have a better feel for how the trip will go (there was almost unanimous praise, over all those years, for how well Viking handled everything). I also have a better feel for how much walking it will involve (even though "leisurely" seems to be the accepted pace and someone in some message said that the median age of the travelers seemed to be about 75).

Someone named Peregrina651 has gorgeous photos, but this one had me a bit concerned.

The circled thing is the steps we will have to walk from the ship to the buses. Slippery, she says, and no handrail, and we will be carrying luggage. (Our friend Suellyn from the Russia cruise has already warned me about the difficulty of getting onto the Great Wall.)

It inspired me to walk half a mile on the treadmill, hoping to do this several times a week and gradually build up distance and strength in my legs. While walking, I listened to my James Patterson audio book and, again, did not turn on the television. (This may have been the longest daytime television blackout since I first got a television, unless there was a power outage.)

I had heard about the shootings in Arizona in several shocked status updates on Faceboook, but had not listened to any news about it. I just knew that there had been a shooting, that several were wounded and 6 killed and that Congresswoman Giffords was in the hospital, having been shot in the head.

I was appalled, of course, but with all of this China stuff going on and no newscaster talking about it in the background, I kind of forgot about it until I heard from Char tonight, saying that she had sent several hours watching MSNBC newscasters. I tried finding news at midnight, but lots of luck with that on a Saturday night at this hour.

There are people pointing fingers at the likes of Sarah Palin as the root cause, along with others who have used incendiary language, and other people pointing fingers back and accusing the first group of taking advantage of the situation for political gain and that we have no idea what the shooter's motivation had been.

Well, OK. I'm all for not jumping to conclusions, but this Congresswoman's office was vandalized after she supported the health care bill, which was about when all those tea critters started lockin' and loadin' and talking about exerting our "2nd amendment rights."

I don't think anybody in his/her right mind would take that as a call to arms and an order to go out and shoot people you disagree with, but this was probably someone not in his right mind and who knows how little it takes to set someone like that off.

I don't want to say that Sarah Palin and her little chart of targets with crosshairs on them where all the objectionable people are (including Gifford) was to blame for this incident, but posting graphics like this and calling for a "2nd amendment solution" if things don't go the way we want them certainly doesn't help cool the emotions of people on the edge.

I wonder if Palin and anybody else who has stood in front of a television camera or an auditorium of people and, with a cute smile and a wink, has used veiled threats of violence against those in office with whom they disagree can look the mother of 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, who was murdered, in the eye and say their words had NO effect whatsoever on the mind of the shooter, and that they played no part, however small, in the slaughter.

From Marty Kaplan on Huffington Post: If you're worried that violent video games may make kids prone to bad behavior; if you think that misogynic and homophobic rap lyrics are dangerous to society; if you believe that a nipple in a Superbowl halftime show is a threat to our moral fabric - then surely you should also fear that the way public and media figures have framed political participation with shooting gallery imagery is just as potentially lethal.

Words have consequences. We may just have realized that in Arizona.

Pluses and Minuses of Sponsorship

I received this cool photo of Anjali today. Her birthday is in September and I had sent a check as a gift. She writes that she bought "two frocks" and that she likes yellow and white.

It's strange to realize that I have been sponsoring this little Indian (from India) girl for nearly three years. Two and a half years, actually.

What is odder, I guess, is that of the kids I either sponsor or write to because their sponsors don't, she is one of the kids that I know the least.

Writing is obviously not her strong suit. At first I attributed it to her age, but she's 11 now so that should not be the problem.

I think part of it has to do with the person who translates her letters, who writes as if she were transcribing an interview. I think every letter I have received from her has been pretty much the same. And every sentence begins with "She says..."

Nonetheless, the purpose of sponsoring a child is not to make me happy, but to help better that child's life.

For a relationship with sponsored children, I have Fred and Shallon, both of whom are not children for whom I contribute money, but children to whom I write. Fred doesn't write his letters, but his mother writes long newsy letters and we have as much of a dialog going as you can get when it takes 3 months for each of us to get the other's letter. It also helps that Lydia (Fred's mother) writes in fluent English.

Shallon, from Uganda, is also someone with whom I am beginning to make a deeper relationship. She also writes in English, so the letters don't have to go through a translator. She writes very long letters and our corrrespondence begins to sound like...well...a correspondence.

Pablo, from Brasil writes rarely. His letters are fun, but I almost never hear from him. He's a Brasilian boy. No surprise here! I have dealt with Brasilian males for a very long time.

And I also almost never hear from Briana. But she is in Haiti and I don't even want to think about the problems that groups helping children are going through in Haiti. Fortunately, Briana is in the north of Haiti, which seems to have escaped earthquake, hurricane and cholera problems, but I think that letters go through the main office Port au Prince, which is ground zero for all of the social and health problems in that country, so I'm just happy if anything arrives.

And then there is Esther, from Indonesia. She's kind of half-and-half about writing, but I don't yet have a feel for her, as she was the last of the children to be added to my correspondence roster.

A disappointment is Clarisse, from Rwanda, whom I am sponsoring through Women to Women. I was under the impression that I would hear something from her so I would know something about her, but it's been months and emails to the group have been yielded nothing. I have no concerns about where my funds are being spent. I believe Women to Women is a reputable organization, but I've been disappointed.

Again, the purpose was not to make me feel good, but to provide support to women who have been affected by war in their countries so that they can move forward and be able to live independently and support themselves and their families. I continue to write what I hope are supportive messages to her, but I am disappointed that it seems like I am writing to a brick wall. When my period of support for her ends, I may use that money to support another child at Compassion, Intl.