Happy Thankslisting

Richard from Texas told Elizabeth Gilbert (a.k.a. Groceries), "Keep cultivating gratitude. You'll live longer." Hard to believe he's the first one who thought of this. Here's this year's thanksgiving list, in no particular order:

1. Cat Power. A year ago I could hardly identify her songs. Now, I can't imagine my life without her. (Not to mention Laura Gibson, M. Ward, The Ting Tings...)
   
2. Obama inaugurated. Yes, really. Really, really.
3. Trip to Portland with Joel, celebrating 10 years of marriage to this beautiful man.
   
4. Life-changing books. You know the ones.
   
5. Kickboxing, Grr. Running, Wow. Yoga, Ahh.
   
6. Stella starting kindergarten, an entirely positive experience. The girl is reading books and writing stories.
   
7. One-on-one time with Rosie, my little heart.
   
8. Baths.
9. Dreams.
10. Meditation.
11. Rose petal tea.
    
12. Charlotte, Philadelphia, NJ shore, Tallahassee.
13. The fact that yet again, the list goes on and on.

Late tomorrow night, while the coolest people are at the theater seeing New Moon, we'll be driving north. Philly cheese steaks are on the horizon, but more importantly, turkey & stuffing & mashed potatoes & pie & family. And most thrilling for me personally, is the fact that I will be boarding a bus, solo, to New York City for a blissful 24 hours or so with my most favorite older sister in my most favorite place in the world. And hopefully I'll catch some Edward v. Jacob action with my most favorite mother-in-law. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Here's to living longer...

Is it just me, or...?

It was like a nightmare come true. Walking down the hall of the surgeon's office, my husband leaning on me helplessly after undergoing foot surgery, and then...that sound. All too familiar, all too haunting, instantly taking my mind back to New York subway rides. The most disturbing thing on a New York subway? Not the loud group of politically incorrect tourists, not the crackhead mother begging for seventy-five cents every night, not the smelly drunk peeing in the corner which everyone else noticed and moved away but somehow you missed the warning and are the only person with a close up view of the urine fountain. No, the worst thing is hearing that sound, the click-click sound, then looking up to find your suspicion confirmed, that yes, somebody is indeed clipping their fingernails in public, in front of you. In public. In front of you. The resistance of the unyielding nail, as they squeeze harder to remove it, feels like your very heart is being compressed. Sharp little barbs fly off haphazardly, usually in slow motion, but sometimes so quickly you don't know what happened until you're hit with it, pierced by the unwanted portion of human fingertip--a complete stranger's fingertip. And then you focus in on the floor. Down there, in the midst of briefcases and shoes and, Lord Have Mercy, grocery bags, is a pile of dirty yellow fingernails, once used for scratching and fine manipulation, now gathered like infected needles, lying in wait to catch unawares innocent dependents of public transportation. [shudder] As we walked out of the surgeon's office yesterday, I recognized that sound, looked up in response and saw a nurse clipping an old man's toenails. [chills, the bad kind] I want to be a nurse someday, but I would rather watch a scalpel remove an old man's prostate than witness or participate in the clipping of his toenails. Actually, I have witnessed the removal of an old man's prostate, back when I worked in the urology department of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, answering phones for a young Persian surgeon. I'll take a prostatectomy over a toenail-ectomy any day. Well, I don't have a prostate, so I would never take a prostatectomy, but I would observe one again. I'd rather smell the burning flesh and view the guts. I don't know, I guess I'm weird like that. And I realize the irony of this public clipping pet-peeve, because I have been a nail-biter most of my life, not the most beautiful of habits. Some things are better done behind closed doors: peeing, smoking crack, clipping your nails. Right? In any case, Joel's foot is healing as he keeps it elevated and pops his painkillers. I get to play nurse for the week, and on Friday I have a meeting with a real nurse at a local college to discuss a plan of study so I can become a real one too. That would be a dream come true.

Glowing, Howling, Kissing, Candy

There is always a light bulb burning out in my house. Every day it seems. Does anyone else have this problem? The question is not How many Jennys does it take to change a light bulb?, but How many effing light bulbs does Jenny have to change?! And have you ever noticed that ceiling light fixtures look like boobs? Glowing boobs dangling down from the ceiling. Lovely. As for actual loveliness, I surprised Stella at her school for lunch this week. She looked up, smiling, and said, "I had a feeling you would be here today!" That's my intuitive little wild thing. I had her and Rosie howling at the full moon this week. We were driving home from the Y, howling all the way. I told them I was a wolf; Stella couldn't decide whether she was a bat or a cat. I said, "As long as you're wild!" Rosie gets this growly voice and says, "Where the wiiild things are..." Adorable. Anyway, I went to see Stella in her cafeteria with three intentions: 1) To see my girl, 2) To chat with her teacher, and 3) To check out the boy who asked to kiss Stella last week. Can you believe this? Well, yes, but my baby! He asked if he could kiss her, and she said, "No, but we can hug." So they hugged, and he turned to another boy and said, "Watch, I'm going to marry Stella." She told me she might want to marry him too. So, in the cafeteria, I asked her to point out her future mate. He is a cutie. Of course, all kindergartners are cuties, but there he was, missing his front teeth, sporting an orange polo shirt and blue fleece, and the kicker: high-top Converse All*Stars. I gave him a knowing smile. Meanwhile, the red-headed boy next to Stella was grossing us out with his slimy eyeball candy. And by grossing us out, I mean making me and the 5-year-old girls around giggle with glee. Speaking of Halloween, let me post some pictures of my creatures...

Wishing/Treasuring

Monday morning, New month, Full moon. Wish list:

1. More time and focus to read everything I want to read
2. Full body massage
3. New socks
4. This cheese grater I saw in a magazine
5. My own copy of Eat Pray Love
6. Better guitar skills
7. A bicycle, or a new tire for the totally rad vintage Schwinn in my garage
8. To go dancing or roller skating, soon
9. A clean house
10. My dog to stop shedding
11. A trip to India with my sister
12. Understanding (What was that blade of grass? What was that hiding-star?)
13. Wild patience. Wild, wild, ever wild.

That being said, I lack nothing I need to exist at this precise moment. Same goes for you, you beautiful treasure of a person. [wink, smile, peace]

Five Sets of Sisters

Last week we had family visit from out of town. Out of state, actually. My aunt and two cousins flew down from Pennsylvania, and another aunt and uncle brought their motor home from Denver. As we gathered at my mom's house, I had Stella count all the sets of sisters. My mom & aunts + me and my younger sis + my cousins + my kids + my nieces = five sets of sisters! In one house! Of course, there were a few gaping holes in the gathering in the shape of my older sister and my alpaca-raising Coloradan cousin. But we had so much fun, eating and catching up and eating and looking at old photos and eating and singing family songs. We always sing when we get together. We may not sound like the Von Trapps, but By Golliwog we sing! We sing The Old Rugged Cross and When You Wore a Tulip and a folk song about the Titanic sinking that is quite tragic and could be pretty if sung slowly and seriously, but we've always done it in a disturbingly upbeat fashion. When Uncle Mike from Denver joined the family, he brought with him Bob Dylan and other essential Americana artists in his big notebook full of songs. We sang some of those last week--I tried to keep up with him on the guitar, and my aunt played the dobro (a lap-steel guitar.) I took Mike and his mandolin and my aunt and her dobro to Joel's school to join the middle schoolers in some after-school fiddling. That was some fun-fiddle-tastic music-making. Also fun music-making happened on our last evening together. We were playing a family game of Beauty Parly, meaning we were styling hair in my mom's kitchen. I sat up on the counter with my dad's old Gibson and strummed the blues while my aunt improvised narrative lyrics. Every now and then I would take one of her lines and sing it soulfully and we'd suddenly have a chorus and a room full of laughter. As well as being so fun, this was an important visit. Well, any time family gets together is important. I mean, we are related by blood. We share DNA and we share a story, our history. I can't even begin to understand the mystery of that bond. Yet we see each other so infrequently, only speak once in a while. This visit, for me, strengthened our bond, gave me a sense of my place as a woman in the family, and left me feeling grateful. So grateful. We may be spread out across the globe, but we are a tribe with a song--a beautiful, eccentric medley of songs.

Oh, Joyful Starlight

I am steering by starlight, thank you, and I haven't had a typical week for years.

Last night I finished Martha Beck's book Steering by Starlight, though it is one of those books you never really finish. It is a self help book (no shame!) about finding your right life, using the metaphor of your own North Star (your right life/destiny) and the process of following it (steering by starlight.) Man, oh man, does Martha speak my language. I remember reading her articles in Real Simple magazine back when it first came out. Now she writes for O. I picked up another of her books a few years ago, but put it back down because she said to put it down until you start taking 10 minutes a day to Do Nothing. I suppose I could pick it back up now, since I do spend time in my quiet corner almost every day, lighting my candle and breathing and meditating. Anyway, I've been reading Steering by Starlight since March, I think, and I can truly say it has been a magical experience. Following the line I quoted at the beginning of this post, Beck writes about Einstein, how he said there are two ways to look at life: as though nothing is a miracle or as though everything is. Like Martha, I choose "everything." Nothing seems typical lately; the pain and the pleasure feels magical, the big bursts and the little bursts, it all feels like part of a big beautiful picture, a skyscape. I'll leave you with a passage that particularly resonates with me:

I see life as a cosmic gymnasium where we have come to be broken and healed, broken and healed, for the joy of the process and because we have decided to become strong... This is how strength training goes in the soul's gymnasium: Life breaks us. We hurt. We seek healing. We find the path to our North Stars and know instinctively that following them will lead to healing. We act on that instinct. We heal. We learn to trust that the path we've taken is the one we're meant to take. And with every experience taken through to its conclusion, we become more able to experience joy.

Man, oh man!

[achoo]

sometimes what you need is to sneeze
sometimes to feel the seat under your knees

These are the words from an old email in my "Drafts" box. No recipient or subject. Just something I wanted to remember, I guess. The start of a song, perhaps? I'm thinking now that what I was thinking at the time was how I was sitting there thinking about all these abstract subjects and felt the sudden need to put my hand on the bench where I was sitting down thinking so that I could touch and feel something solid and not at all abstract. And with the simple touch of the wooden bench, a wave of relief came over me and my thinking returned to present reality. As far as sneezing goes, it is impossible to sneeze and not be present in the moment. Sneezing takes over whatever else is going on. Even if you stifle it, the stifling itself is a strong reminder of present reality. So, yeah. Saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes, on the other hand, has nothing to do with present reality and has to be one of the most absurd social mores still existing. I don't know, I could be persuaded to think otherwise. But, it is strange... People will hardly say hello or make eye contact, but if you spasmodically expel air from your nose, they will bless you. They will interrupt their conversations to wish you health and stop the devil from claiming your freed soul. Huh, when I think of it that way, it's actually pretty nice. Bless my little Stella, she had her first sick day today, for sneezing and coughing. I'm popping pills and chugging water and resting when I can in hopes of staying healthy. I am determined not to get sick nearly as much as last year. That was just mean of the Sick Season to pick on me and my family so often. What the Sick Season doesn't know yet, is that I am stronger and wiser than I was last year, and I will sneak attack its sneeze attacks. That's right... Bless you, Sick Season. Bless your evil little heart.