Stark-raving pissed off. Oh, and writing.

A coworker is driving me barking mad (arf!). Just barking. She's obsequious, disingenuous, self-serving. Her time-management skills mock the term. She was witless enough to alienate her department's admin within a week of her arrival nearly a year ago. She makes promises about my services that I can't keep (not only because her promises are ill-informed, but because they are usually ridiculous). She calls in me and my services as though I were her gifts to offer. Her products. And I'm not even a member of her department. It's clear that in a company whose internal motto is "We are here to make lives better," my coworker is here only to make her portfolio better. I rant, I know. But I seethe. She's been making me nutters for almost 12 months. I've tried talking with her, coaching her, baldly saying what she needs to know. I've tried different approaches, saying the same thing many different ways in case she has an unusual way of learning. All to no avail. She just keeps getting upset when I don't fulfill the promises she makes in my stead. It's unbelievable. So today I sent an incendiary 360 review form to her boss. I feel bad, but only marginally so, and that only because I have to deal with her now. (We work on the same floor of the same building, she in Public Affairs on the north side of the building and me in my little cube hosted by Public Affairs on the south side of the building. Which makes me hope her boss even marginally agrees with my assessment of her, because otherwise I may be out of a seat. No matter. I can work from home and other remote locations.). I heeded the advice of my longtime friend and dear mentor, J.H., and didn't put anything in the review that I haven't said to her face. Still, I'm certain she'll act shocked and hurt, probably even betrayed. That's because no matter how many times or how many ways she's told something, if it doesn't fall in line with her own objectives or perceptions, she doesn't retain it. It's kind of like talking to a brain-damaged person who has no short-term memory. I have to keep repeating myself. Now, I'm one of the most forgiving, mentoring, second-chance-ing, patient people I know. But once I've been crossed too many times, my patience runs out and then I am not a supportive person. No, not at all. So I'm starting with the negative review. We'll see where it goes from there.
+++
I owe fiction at our next group meeting, 2/12. Eeep! I have some pretty raw stuff and now I have to sit down and hold it against the shaping and buffing wheels for a while. Wish me luck.

Holidays' end

Our first Christmas tree met an undignified end on Sunday night: we unhooked the ornaments, unwound the strands of lights, hauled it out to the balcony and pitched it over the rail to the sidewalk below. Once we got the tinder-dry pine out onto the balcony, I threw on a jacket and went down to the metal-cage security door that opens out onto the sidewalk on our busy SoMa thoroughfare. I looked both ways, then shouted up an all-clear and ducked back behind the steel mesh. The tree hit the sidewalk sideways, rustling on the way down. Then my fiance came zipping downstairs and dragged the sad castoff to a pile of windfall across the street. The city is scheduled to come by, saw up the all the trees that fell in the big storm last week, and take the pieces to the mulch yard. We figured that'd be a better use for our Christmas tree than being chucked into a landfill. Still. As much as I love the fragrance and cheer of a live tree, I really regret having a dying plant in our home and using it as a symbol for renewed life. I'd much rather have an aluminum tree and funky silver ornaments. But my fiance doesn't have a retro molecule in his body so that's never going to happen. Ah, well. More news over at 1+1 (see link at right).

Demon-free for another year

Today Theophany was celebrated in the Orthodox Church, complete with the Blessing of the Waters. Along with an uncommonly long commitment of TIC (time in church), this involves being sprinkled with holy water, which feels pretty good, particularly when the guy doing the sprinkling is His Eminence Metropolitan Nikitas of the Dardanelles. I got to take communion from him, too. Nikitas is a cool metropolitan. He mentioned during his little chat exhorting parishioners to stay after liturgy for the whole holy water to-do that he's a Florida Gators fan, so he understands the die-hard commitment of waiting in the rain and snow until the end of a close game. Any priest who brings football into his preaching is OK in my book. After the liturgy and blessing of the waters, everyone was free to pick up a vial of holy water from a tray in the narthex. Cool. Tap water that through the power of 20 minutes' blessing can safeguard my home, car, spirit, bodily health* and even allegedly my peace of mind. I nabbed a bottle and left almost immediately afterward, DFH (dear future husband) in tow, to meet friend Andrew for lunch. Andrew, a wit and fellow convert who now attends an Orthodox church a bit south of mine, said they celebrated theophany/epiphany at his church, too, and that "nobody had burst into flames so it was all good. No vampires." Then he allowed as to how the whole sprinkling with holy water thing was handy, as once a year it allows the priests to check their congregations for demons. One thing I really appreciate about Andrew is that he's a churchgoer with a wicked sense of humor.

*The whole bodily-healing thing really had me going there for a while. But I tried it on my mom multiple times. Either holy water just works on the Orthodox, or I wasn't enough of a believer. Or it wasn't in God's plan. Or maybe it's just that nobody gets out of that final train ride and my mom's car was at the blasted station. Whatever. It didn't do anything for her bodily health and even though I find holy water charming, I'm also still a little bitter about that.

Whew!

Much better now. Being inside and cozy while a huge rainstorm is blustering outside has added substantially to my now-much-lighter mood. We woke up this morning to see many trees split or downed in the tree-lined alley across the way. Huge limbs blocked both ends of the alley, and a good 40 or so cars were blocked until mid-day when the city showed up with big power saws and cleared the way. Power was out until 2. I'm happy my good spirits are back, and not even the prospect of a party-less birthday (my birthday is tomorrow!) is getting me down. Our friend Arthur, who was going to make dinner for me and dear future husband and a small group of friends, came down with a bug. So that's probably off. But now that the power is back on, my sweetie can make the cake he was planning to bake, so there will (if the storm gods are with us and don't take the electricity back out) be sweet chocolatey goodness on the morrow. Bonus: my older brother sent me a present and it arrived by FedEx today. I love getting packages in the mail.

The elevator and the candle

I made it through Christmas just fine. But sometime in the days afterward, a funk snuck up on me. The best visual to describe the emotional sinkhole I've gone into would be a mine shaft elevator. Somehow I descended from serenity and calm happiness into a sorrow so deep that the strongest urge I feel is to just shut down and shut out everything, even the light. I'm finding myself leaning back on an old remedy: Find one thing every day to be happy with, and somehow that day will go by OK. It doesn't have to be a big thing. It can be the print a leaf leaves on the sidewalk after a rain. It can be something silly and charming, like the the word "tacky," which is such a singularly human construct that the word always makes me appreciate my species. It can be seeing my fiance cheer at a football game or my cat stretch in front of the fire, or getting a friend's writing to look over, or watching a dog run zany circles in the park across the street. I wait for these things, and they get me by. I know from times before when I played this game that it works. These little talismans light my way to each new sunrise until steady cheer dawns in me again. The trick is to avoid wondering when that will be. I've got a story due in 17 days, so that ought to keep me occupied.

Holiday catch-up

It's been a while since I last posted, and that's because I was insanely busy with Christmas preparations. It's the first time I've ever not gone to my hometown for Christmas. Notice my use of the term "my hometown" rather than "home." Now, for the first time, I feel like my home is here, in San Francisco. It was a good decision to stay here for Christmas. But it meant that I had to have everything ready and into the mail by last Monday. Gifts for everyone I was giving gifts to; chocolates for everyone I was mailing or handing them to; cards sent. In the past I could just wait til the last minute with just about everything except cards, then put it all into the car the night before and drive it all to Santa Barbara. Not this time. I put together 18 calendars in iPhoto, made a tutu for one of my nieces, made 20 pounds of chocolates (truffles, caramels, barks). I was a good holiday citizen and got all my cards into the mail early.

It was my first Christmas away from my hometown and with my new family--my fiance--and while I've had some sad moments thinking about what can never be again, it was a good, self-supporting decision to stay up here rather than go to Santa Barbara to be where everything would remind me of loss rather than the joy of Christmas. But not being there at this time of year was so new to me that I wasn't quite sure of how to go about it. So I thought we could begin by figuring out what some of our holiday traditions would be. I requested we see a choral performance, since choir music means Christmas to me. So on 12/23, we went to see Chanticleer at St. Ignatius here in the city. It was the most exquisite a cappella singing I've ever heard. And the church was a stunner, too. It was so beautiful it nearly made me want to go Catholic (I'm still safely Greek Orthodox). We were so blown away by the whole experience that we decided to make Chanticleer's Christmas concert one of our permanent holiday traditions. We may add a nutcracker next year. In fact, next year we may just get each other Christmas concert tickets for gifts instead of the "under-the-tree" kind.

Last on the holiday catch-up list to write about is a dinner we put together tonight for 10 of our friends. We made crostini for appetizers and served that with sherries. Then came the main course: turkey with cornbread and roasted vegetable stuffing; mushroom gravy; lemon-roasted green beans; cranberries with port and cinnamon; bread and butter; pinot noir for the wine. Dessert was a chocolate panna cotta cake that came out wonderfully, paired with various ports and sauternes. The calorie load was staggering. Our guests were charming and fun. One of them brought the board game Taboo and we played a round, then chatted and drank more dessert wine until around midnight. The carnage in the kitchen was so complete--every dish out and every wine and cordial glass used--that we had to snap some photos. I'll post 'em later. Now I've got to head over to my wedding blog and catch up there. Then it's time for bed, at last.

My first Christmas tree ever

Believe it or not, I've never had my own Christmas tree. I always went home to Santa Barbara for Christmas; usually to help decorate the tree that went up shortly after Thanksgiving, and then again for the Christmas holiday itself. This is the first year those ornaments from my and my siblings' childhoods won't be unpacked from their boxes out in the garage. They'll stay there through the cold nights until one day next year we'll divide them. Meanwhile, my first-ever Christmas tree stands, lit and fragrant, in our living room in San Francisco. We bought it for $37 at a tree lot outside the Grocery Outlet in Redwood City. It's a six-foot fir tree. The cat loves to play underneath it. Thanksgiving was profoundly depressing for me. But the idea of Christmas, here with my fiance, with our own tree and our own new traditions, makes me feel peaceful. There'll be no sibling politics to deal with. No driving, except maybe to the store for any stray dinner ingredients. No house-where-parents-aren't. We'll go hear Chanticleer on December 23, open some bubbly on Christmas Eve, and make dinner for a few friends on Christmas Day. When I think of Christmases past, I feel so sad. But it's Christmas Now, and I can feel happy about that.

The bad, the ugly, and the good

The only good things about the Thanksgiving weekend trek that (1) I was with Bob, and (2) we got to visit with relatives. Oh, and (3) we took a trip to March Field Air Museum, a place where I feel strangely at home. We drove 1,100 miles, from San Francisco to Nuevo, then Indio, then Santa Barbara, and back to San Francisco. We were exhausted and cold-ridden when we returned. I'm sneezing as I type and contemplating which cold med will decongest me enough so I'll be able to sleep tonight. Whine, whine. On the good side of things, my Christmas present (early) is a bazillion more sessions with the trainer. Woo! Another sizable bit of good fortune is that I received a story written by my dear friend and mentor, and I can't wait to tuck into it.

Discouraging

I heard the other week that one category of submissions that always makes publishers cringe is loss-and-grief manuscripts. Word is they're almost always pitched into the toss or sendback pile. This is not encouraging news, since I'd planned to compile my journal entries and emails into a journal-style book about my mom's death. On top of this, I face spoken and unspoken criticism from writers I know who think laboring over fiction is somehow more legitimate than the writing project I plan. Of course, I'm beginning my work. But as I go, I'm struggling to not feel like just another hack.

Personal environment

I have two visits to go with my personal trainer. The effects of all my iron pushing started showing up a few weeks ago and continue incrementally. I have better muscle definition and I'm starting to lose a little body fat. It's a huge relief to be in shape again, and now I know how to use the free weight section of the gym, which used to intimidate me. Now I shoulder past the big, sweaty men and take my place at the cable machine or on the weight bench and go through my sets. It feels good. I'm sleeping more. Writing more. And have a generally cheerier outlook. Marred, currently, by the fact that an idiot skipper ran his container ship up against a Bay Bridge support and spilled a crapload of fuel oil into our bay. The sludge has encircled Alcatraz, coated untold thousands of birds, and is washing up on various beaches. Nightmare.

May His Memory Be Eternal

My friend R.D.'s father died on Monday. I just learned about it tonight, a few moments ago, which doesn't bother me in and of itself. I understand the chaos that happens and the weird time warp one enters when a loved one dies. But I wish I could have been there sooner for my friend. He's exhausted, naturally, and grieving. I'm bitter that lung cancer has claimed another victim. My mom would have adored Mr. D, who was a wonderful jazz musician. I'll call my friend tomorrow and see how he's doing.

How Am I? "Miserable, darling, as usual!"

I'm constructing a Cruella de Vil outfit for Halloween. Here's how it's working out:
- From home I'm using a long slinky black skirt and a sleek black tank.
- From TJ Maxx I bought a pair of red pointy flats.
- From House of Humor, a local costume shop, I bought a cigarette holder, a pair of elbow-length red gloves, a white wavy wig, and some black spray-on hair color. I'll spray half the wig black.
- From JoAnn fabrics, I bought four yards of white fake fur and four yards of dalmation-print lining fabric, four packets of red bias tape, four large black buttons, four large snaps for under the buttons (I don't want to bother with making bottonholes in fake-fur fabric), and 2 smaller red fabric buttons.

I drafted a pattern for a wide-collared white "fur" cape that'll be lined with the spotted material. All seams will be bound with red tape, to go with the red gloves and shoes. I'll do dramatic brows and red lipstick. I wish I had the movie so I could study the character, but I'll have fun regardless.

Back to the cape: I spent a good deal of time measuring and drafting, then cut out the pattern pieces. Tomorrow I'll cut and begin pinning and sewing. I figure Monday evening will be devoted to doing the trimming (sewing buttonholes on the inside tabs that'll make the cape close into "sleeves" when needed). I'll buy red lipstick on Tuesday, then be all ready for Wednesday's big Halloween party at work.

This is the first creative project I've been really interested in since my mom died. For some reason, the wedding planning interests me deeply, but not consumingly so. But a good Halloween costume...now there's a craft worth obsessing over at least a little.

Sad news from the east

My paternal uncle, the father of my dear cousins out in Boston, is gravely hurt and has been in the hospital for the past week. He was supposed to have surgery this morning, but at 6 a.m. today, his family got a call that their dad was back in the ICU, on a respirator, and they'd best all get down there as soon as possible. We'd all been praying daily for his recovery, and what a crushing setback we've gotten instead. Again, I'm left wondering (childishly, I'm sure) about the usefulness of prayer in doing anything besides making people feel like they're doing something at the time they're praying. Of course, I continue to pray, and in faith, but there's this weird little stream of thought going at the same time that says "pray all you want; it won't matter. What's going to happen is what's going to happen, and your prayers will have nothing to do with it." Maybe that's why a lot of people say we should pray for God's will to happen, and for ourselves to accept it with strength and with grace. I just want my uncle to pull through, so my aunt can have her husband and my cousins can have their dad for a few years longer.

My priest would not approve. Nevertheless...

Thanks to my cousin Wednesday42.

You are The Empress

Beauty, happiness, pleasure, success, luxury, dissipation.

The Empress is associated with Venus, the feminine planet, so it represents,
beauty, charm, pleasure, luxury, and delight. You may be good at home
decorating, art or anything to do with making things beautiful.

The Empress is a creator, be it creation of life, of romance, of art or business. While the Magician is the primal spark, the idea made real, and the High Priestess is the one who gives the idea a form, the Empress is the womb where it gestates and grows till it is ready to be born. This is why her symbol is Venus, goddess of beautiful things as well as love. Even so, the Empress is more Demeter, goddess of abundance, then sensual Venus. She is the giver of Earthly gifts, yet at the same time, she can, in anger withhold, as Demeter did when her daughter, Persephone, was kidnapped. In fury and grief, she kept the Earth barren till her child was returned to her.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

*honk*....*snrfl*...$&#@!!

Sick again. I had a few days to enjoy being over the flu and then a cold virus jumped me. Damn. I hate being congested; hate it with a white-hot hate. I don't get to go to the gym. I had to cancel two fun weekend events I'd really been looking forward to. *Sigh*. And I just IM'd with a friend whose dad's lung cancer, I found out this very moment, has spread to his liver and brain. Which makes me feel like an utter loser for complaining about a cold. Errggghgh.

Gave me fever

I came home on Wednesday feeling tired, strung-out really, and with my back tingling in that special way that means I'm probably coming down with something. But I went to 24 Hour Fitness to meet my trainer anyway, because (1) I'm bad-ass, and (2) I thought maybe a workout would kick-start my immune system. I was wrong on the latter count. As I warmed up, I was feeling pretty OK. Almost normal. But then Mr. Evil (my nickname for Mark, my trainer, who I really like) came along and started putting me through my paces. It's a given that at the end of each workout with him, I feel like an overcooked strand of linquini. But on Wednesday night, I thought I was going to either faint or hurl. I'm kind of stubborn when it comes to taking everything that guy can dish out, so I just kept my head down and did my reps on each exercise until my muscles trembled and threatened to fail. Normally I sweat like a dock worker when I exercise, but this night I noticed that no matter how hard I pushed, I didn't perspire. Finally, Mark looked at me and said "We'd better stop. You look kind of green." I crept home and took a long bath, and two hours later found out I was running a temparature. I ached all over and my eyeballs felt like hot marbles. My heart rate was 111 per minute, and it stayed there for hours. Flu bug anyone? Arghgh...I laid off of work for a day, napping and gabbing with friends on the phone. Old pal Ron called me up from Bozeman. He asked if I was feeling sorry for myself, and when I said "no," he said "Oh yeah--it's us guys who feel sorry four ourselves when we get sick. Women just start throwing kleenex all over the house." Ron cracks me up every time we talk. I drank juice and watched bad TV and scanned the 'net for weird news and slept more and let my fiance pamper me a little and I felt better by Friday morning. Whew! Just in time for the weekend.

Silence of the homecomer

I got a check in the mail yesterday. Which, I suppose, is better than having to put a check into the mail. This is a cash disbursement of one-fifth of my late mother's stock holdings. So. Money in the mail. Money I have to start a checking account for. Money I'd rather not have. But I'll bank it, and I'll use some of it, and invest the rest, and I'll work up some gratitude, eventually.

The last few weeks weren't easy. I found myself so deep under the water of grief that my best defense from it was to just try and hold my breath and live my everyday life. But that's about all I could muster. And so whenever most people asked me how I was doing, I'd say "fine" and leave it at that. But "fine" had been redefined. It no longer meant carefree. It simply meant I was still here; I was maintaining. The hunky scientist fiance and I have been watching recorded episodes of Ken Burns's "The War," and after seeing the images and hearing the veterans' stories, I began to understand why so many of them came back and never said much about what they'd experienced. What could those young men say to their relieved mothers, to the wives they'd grown up alongside in those loamy farming towns, to explain the shattering their lives had undergone in the bloody mud of far-off places with names like "Peleliu"? No words could begin to adequately explain, except to others who'd experienced a similar thing, and then no words would be needed.

i've never occupied a world where words have lost their power. But it didn't matter, as motivation for wordworking was in short supply. But I've come back above the surface and am back to writing, to the imperfect striving that at times brings me closer to grace. And I'm back to wedding planning. We moved our wedding date up by three months (no, I'm not pregnant), to late February, so there's a lot to do.

Come again no more

I spent a few days back in my hometown last week, celebrating my brother's 50th birthday and hanging out with family and friends. And though the visit was full of cheer and good times, it was difficult for me to go over to my parents' house (now ours). For starters, without our mom around to remind him of his chores, my brother has let the yard to go hell. The hedges have grown scrubby and skyward and weeds are pushing the bricks in the back walkway apart.

When my mom and dad first bought that house, we lived crowded into an apartment on the same street. The day they got the keys, mom and dad took us kids across the street and we waded into thigh-high weeds and started pulling them out, exposing good damp earth that would one day hold a lawn and flower beds. The place doesn't look as bad as it did that day, but it has never come closer to reminding me of then. That sight, as well as having to go through the garage storage in search of important papers, left me restless and angry, sad and weary. And today, I've been close to tears a number of times. I bought a used CD of appalachian music while I was there. It's called Appalachian Journey and features Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor, with guest artists James Taylor and Alison Krauss. Track 3 is perfect for my sentiment today:

Hard Times Come Again No More
(by Stephen C. Foster)
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all swap sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting by the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.

Tis the song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.

Draft submitted

I finished Draft 2 of the short story I finished over Labor Day weekend, and sent it off to the fiction group for dissection and review. It was the longest stretch I've spent writing in oh, I don't remember how much time. And it was painless. There were no itchy urges to mop, dust, straighten, hem, pluck errant eyebrows, or to do anything other than write, snack, write, browse for facts, and write. Whew.

Trapping myself into writing, with you the unwitting accomplice

I'm going to spend most of my Labor Day weekend writing. I have a short story to turn in before the next time my writer's group meets, mid-month, and I'm way behind. Gah! I'm feeling panicky. So on Saturday I'll work at my church's Greek festival from 11 til 3, come home and write, have a little dinner and resume writing. Then Sunday and Monday will pretty much be all about writing, with breaks to snack and run to the loo, plus two workouts of about an hour and a half each. I have to keep up the momentum on that. I'll report on Monday night or Tuesday about how much I accomplished. There. Now I have to write because otherwise I'm going to have to announce that I didn't. Which would never do.