My Spring Inspiration Board

My vision of Spring

 

 

I'm not a visual artist like my mother, but I do like assembling found images, like collages and mood boards. It's very relaxing, actually. It's important when you're making a collage/inspiration board not to aim for the perfect aesthetic, but to go with whatever comes to you. I know that sounds airy-fairy, but it works. Since it's your idea of inspiration, your mood, you can't do it wrong. I like projects where I don't have to worry about the potential for failure. More of  life's tasks should be approached this way, but unfortunately we often second guess ourselves.

At least you're not Jodi Arias

 It could be worse, you could be one of these two people

Whenever I feel like I've been stood up by Luck, who decided to take out another woman with longer hair and tighter abs, I reflect on those who have it worse than me. That may sound harsh, but it's not like you don't do it, too.  In fact, if you need to feel better about your situation, just keep reading this blog post.

Anyway, if you're sizing up where you fit on the social hierarchy, isn't it better to look down below you, like someone standing on a long line intermittently turning around to see the poor schmo in back of them? That's certainly preferable to focusing on the smug jerk who's way up in front of the line, who is in fact getting what he wants RIGHT NOW.

I'm unemployed, but am currently trying to establish a freelance writing career that, should my dream job materialize, I can do in my spare time for extra cute bag money. While I try to spend at least half of my day at home being productive, I find that around 1:30 or so my energy starts to lag, and I think, there isn't much that's good about this whole "no job, no money situation" so I may as well take a nap. Or eat a cookie. Or eat another cookie. Or switch over to Huffington Post to read the latest on the Jodi Arias trial.

For those of you who don't know who Jodi Arias is (and be glad if you're in that camp because it means you likely have a good job and a busier social life than me), she is the 32 year-old comely Arizona woman who murdered her boyfriend Travis Alexander and is now on trial claiming she acted in self-defense because he was abusive. I first came across the case when I saw a picture of the defendant and thought, she looks very normal--in fact she's pretty and her glasses make me think she's probably smart, too. How could this fortunate-in-the-looks-and-brains-department woman be on trial for her life? 

Yes, I judge a book by its cover. That's why in publishing they should let the marketing people like me, and not the editor, choose the cover art. 

So I start looking at the crime scene photos (and this case is perfect visual fodder for the web because Jodi is an amateur photographer and was snapping pictures right before she knifed the guy), juxtaposed with the happy photos of the two lovebirds in front of various cliche backgrounds, like a waterfall and a sunset. Then I watch the interrogation video where Jodi lies about the murder, claiming two intruders killed Alexander, and then when the interrogator leaves the room, decides it's time she did a headstand. Perhaps she was just attempting to get the truth to flow to her brain. And because I was now a few hours into my own personal investigation of the case, I listened to the phone conversation Jodi taped with Alexander when they were still seeing each other but not "in a relationship" (if you're a woman that probably sounds a little too familiar.)

My assessment, along with everyone else who is not on jodiariasisinnocent.com, is she's guilty. She's already established herself as a liar with the two intruders story. She later changed that to confess that she killed him, but only because he had done abusive things like swat her possessively on the derriere when he noticed other guys checking her out, and take her to a hot air balloon festival while secretly phoning another girl.  I know this guy--I have unfortunately dated this guy in my 20's--and telling him off and never seeing him again seems a much smarter alternative than setting up the shower scene from Psycho.

My fascination with the case is hard to explain. But I knew I had a problem when I started watching the trial on HLN, home of Nancy Grace-less, while folding laundry. They show a snippet of the courtroom drama, then cut away for more eye-rolling-she's-totally-guilty commentary by anchors who look like they would otherwise be forecasting the weather. A half hour of after-lunch testimony drags into rush hour.

There are people who are more engrossed (read: sadder) in this trial than me. On the Huffington Post Jodi Arias discussion board, one woman was complaining that she had "made pasta sauce, did my laundry, took a shower and got dressed, all so I would be free to watch this trial, and now they're postponing it because that Jodi wench has a migraine?  Oh boo hoo, honey. At least you're not lying in a pool of your own blood like Travis!!!!!!"

Jodi, like the rest of us, should at least be grateful for that.

Paging Cesar Millan

 Carmelita sort of, kind of listening to me

I have a bad dog. I don't mean she's an aspiring Cujo. She's actually a very sweet pup. But she doesn't interact well with others, in particular the ones we'd most like her to be on her best behavior around--namely small children and other dogs.

It's all our fault, really.

You can tell a lot about a person by their dog's behavior. Carmelita speaks volumes about our inconsistency. Sure, we took her to the requisite Puppy Play and Learn classes at the MSPCA. But she spent a lot of time huddled under us on our plastic chairs, like a child sticking close to Mama on the first day of school.  Like that wary child, however, she eventually did join the other dogs in her size range for an extended game of tag. But when she was ready to go to the next level and we learned the multiple-week meeting was on a weeknight in Jamaica Plain, we balked. At the time we figured, she'll get socialized at the dog park. No problem. After all, we had spent $75 to get her a Green Dog license, a yearly program you pay into if you want your dog to be admitted to Brookline's exclusive dog parks.

My husband took her once. She was a bit intimidated by the bigger dogs, which meant she was loudly obnoxious, "talking trash like Kevin Garnett," as my husband likes to put it. Her usual approach when she feels threatened.

But then I was at my in-laws, where I got the chance to catch up on the latest Reader's Digest, the right-wing's answer to my beloved New Yorker. I noticed an article listing veterinarian's advice that "you won't hear at your pet's next exam."  Why they're keeping secrets from their patients, most of whom love their pets so much that they're willing to wipe their dog's little behind with baby wipes after they do their business (oh, is that only me? Awkward...), well I can't say. But one of the advisories was about the dog park. The vet maintained he would not bring his own dog to one because he had seen too many dogs come into his practice with various injuries, some serious.

I imagined Carmelita having to wear a little eye patch because some neighborhood toughie--likely a Husky, I've known at least one that was a total jerk--took her eye out for sassing him. If Brookline had a small dog park I think it would be OK, but as far as I know they don't. They just throw them all together and hope for the best--like public high school, but with claws and teeth.

Kids in our neighborhood have said under their breath, "There goes the BAD dog." And I wince, like I'm escorting a delinquent. The problem with training Carmelita was I didn't want to cap her enthusiasm.  She gets so excited about romping around outside. She loves rolling in grass; no matter how often she does it I always laugh. I admire and envy her unabashed joy.  I don't want a dog that just walks next to me with a blase look on its snout. I want a dog that shows me what it is to live in the moment without fear of being admonished.

Of course, people will say it's actually kinder to discipline the dog--that they look for leadership and authority in their owner. If you don't teach your dog to listen, you could end up with a nippy, high-strung pup who doesn't want to be out of your sight. When our cousins watched Carm for the weekend, they remarked afterward "she's a needy dog."

My consolation was that she didn't pee on their furniture or on them. Much.

Easter comes to Pinterest

Tired of displaying the same holiday decorations year after year? Looking for some new ideas? Own a glue gun or have a dollar store near you? Then forget Martha Stewart--for new seasonal accents go straight to Pinterest, the social media site that allows users to create and share "pinboards" of visuals under categories ranging from the popular New Recipes to the more obscure Felt Creations.

Pinterest goes beyond the traditional (and prissy) ideas we're used to from Ms. Stewart. The visual media site offers ideas from the sublime to the silly to the what the F%&k?.

Take an upcoming holiday as an example. Easter is on March 31. You could decorate with ho-hum peace lilies and PAAS egg coloring kits. Or you can spend an afternoon (or three) creating a wreath using Marshmallow Peeps Yellow Chicks!

  Why eat Peeps when you can make them part of your home decor?

If you were planning to shop at Target or Walmart for new Easter decorations, you might consider a stop at a local thrift store or antiques shop instead. There you might find the sorts of hare-raising vintage tchotchkes that at one time drove children to tears when they went to grandma's house. These kitschy chicks and bunnies are all the rage with some Pinterest followers.

This poor chick has had the top of its head removed 

Speaking of eggs in egg cups, another popular craft project on Pinterest are handmade egg cup cozies. Make one or a dozen--you never know when you're going to need egg cup cozies to keep your guests soft-boiled eggs warm and snuggly!

This is the Carmen Miranda egg cozy

If you don't have time to crochet, you can still get ideas from the Pinterest crowd--like this project, a Sweet Bath Pouf Chick. All you need is a yellow bath pouf, orange craft foam, scissors, and that hot glue gun and you have yourself, well, something vaguely related to the Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Quack Quack

Hey Cutie

Me with my first Valentine, my dad

I like Valentine's Day. I don't care about the naysayers, the scoffers, the "let's-stick-it-to-Valentine's-Day-by-reading-our-essays-about-bad-breakups" people. Hey, not everyone gets to be feted on other made-up holidays, like Mother's Day or Secretary's Day, but I'm not complaining about that.

Valentine's Day has all the elements I favor: pink, flowers, chocolate, fancy restaurant meals, champagne, "presents for pretty girls," as Lucy Van Pelt would say. Too bad Schroeder was too young to be interested in girls.

Sure, I have had some lonely Valentine's Days, especially as a teenager. On Valentine's Day in my high school you could buy carnations to give to your girlfriend/boyfriend or to your best friend. Pink carnations were for friendship and red were for love. That moment when they're giving out flowers at the front of the room was always one of mixed emotions for me. I was fairly certain I would get one from my best friend, Donna, who always had a boyfriend and thought that sending me a carnation signed "Your Secret Admirer" would cheer me up and assure I wouldn't leave the classroom dejected and empty-handed. As sweet at she was to do that, it only made me feel pitiable. But despite my frizzy hair and flat chest and general gawkiness, I also held out a small but unspoken hope that I would get a red carnation from someone I was crushing on.

In my Junior year I got a pink carnation from a guy who I had suspected had a crush on me. He was a shy and quiet towheaded boy whose pale hair and skin seemed to erase him from sight. If I had been smart I would have sent him a carnation, too, thereby assuring myself a date to Prom. But I was holding out for sparks, and there was only weak static between this boy and me.

My elementary school years were much more successful. I remember writing on the backs of dozens of diecuts of Pepe Le Pew and Bugs Bunny to give to my cadre of girlfriends and to any boys I had my eye on. At that age I was outgoing and full of myself, and I hadn't yet mastered the art of subtlety (I would in fact not learn that lesson until much, much later in life.) Most little boys were more interested in the Dukes of Hazzard poster I was giving away from the latest issue of Dynamite! magazine than in receiving valentines from girls.

I remember one Valentine I got in second or third grade. It was a piece of notebook paper, folded over into the shape of one half of a heart, and hastily scribbled red. On the front in black crayon someone had wrote "Hey Cutie" and inside "?" It was the most intriguing Valentine I had ever received. Who thought I was cute? Who was "?" I kept that Valentine hidden away (I didn't want my parents to see it and think I was having sex). I still have it and the mystery remains unsolved. I had my eye on a few suspects: there were two Tonys in my class (I went to school in New Jersey so most of my classmates were Anthony or Dominic or Joey) and unlike the other boys they both liked to flirt with girls.

I had a brief relationship with one of the Tonys--a relationship that lasted from the time he picked me as his partner to sit next to on the bus going on a field trip (that morning my mother had braided my hair and pinned both braids to the top of my head so I looked like a dairy maid in a yogurt commercial--he thought I looked like Princess Leia) to the time when we got off the bus and he started holding hands with another girl.

The other Tony had thick golden blond hair like Ricky Schroeder and used to make semi-obscene comments to me about the Vienna Sausages his mother had packed for his lunch. I didn't understand what he was talking about, but I had enough feminine intuition to suspect he liked me.

Now that I'm married I have a guaranteed Valentine's date for as long as we're together (which I hope is a lifetime). Still, I kind of miss the suspense of wondering who will be my Valentine this year. Who will surprise me this time with a flower or a crudely-folded paper heart?

Becoming my parents

Photo from avonbytheseanj.com

There was an interesting interview on On Point yesterday about people in their thirties and forties realizing that, unlike the independent and unique adults they thought they were, they're actually becoming their parents. The interviewee was James Wood, whose article "Becoming Them: Our Parents, Our Selves" appears in the January 21 issue of The New Yorker. I went and read that essay today and was really moved by it.

Growing up as an only child, I spent most of my childhood idolizing my parents. They were my first and only world for a while. My calm, patient, lovely mother and my handsome, industrious, and outgoing father. It would not be so bad if I was more like them. Sure, I went through some teenage rebellion when I felt my parents were impossibly old-fashioned: my mother warning me against trips to New York City though she traveled alone to Sweden when she was just a girl, and likely rode the subway when she was growing up in Brooklyn; my father disapproving of the short skirts I wore when I was in my early twenties, when my mother had worn skirts of the same length when she was a young woman and he hadn't seemed to mind.

As I got older I also saw shortcomings in my parents that I didn't see when I was younger. As I was realizing what a self-centered little brat I was around them (and still am, at times) when I was growing up, I also saw my mother's irrational fear of traveling alone, something that she wouldn't have given a thought to when she was younger. I saw how my father was taken in by outside appearances, and how when he described a woman--any woman--he would almost always mention her looks. Meanwhile when asked about someone or when telling a story about a new acquaintance, I immediately mentioned their age or what I guessed was their age. I didn't realize I was doing this (and likely my father doesn't, either) until my husband pointed it out to me. How odd, I thought. For years I felt indirectly judged by my father's assessment of people's looks, but here I was doing almost the exact same thing!

I have those wow, I'm becoming them moments more now. When I'm entertaining a guest, even a good friend, I try to outdo myself with the presentation--I overbuy imported cheeses and berries and make a signature cocktail for a crowd of two or at most four people. When a friend of mine came over for tea recently, it was supposed to be a little catch-up time over a cup of tea and maybe some store-bought cookies. Instead I took it as an opportunity to throw a tea party, going as far as to look up ideas on Pinterest for tea sandwiches and table settings and appropriate fruit spreads. This is not unlike what my mother does when she has guests over and what her book group used to admire in her when it was her turn to host meetings. She wanted her guests to feel special--even, or especially, if they were good friends. It wasn't necessarily about impressing people, but treating them with kindness. The amount and quality of food I like to purchase is really a nod to my father, who, on Christmas Eve of this past year, waited on line for 3 1/2 hours outside of Villabate in Brooklyn to get us pounds of fresh cookies and cannolis from the famed bakery. It made the dinner my parents hosted extra-special.

Wood writes in his essay about how in becoming our parents we're also mourning our inevitable loss of them. I have tried to fathom a world that doesn't include my parents' physical presence. I have been lucky to have them in my life for 39 years now. But I also get superstitous about such luck because the longer I have them, the more attached I feel. This might be because I don't have any children of my own, but from reading accounts of other people who do have children, the fear of being orphaned is no different. It's a universal dread.

Wood tells how his father used to like to listen to Beethoven's sonatas on Sundays. He finds himself doing the same thing when he's middle-aged, and he finds it comforting. But when Wood discovers that his now elderly father doesn't listen to classical music on Sundays anymore because of a broken CD player he hasn't replaced, Wood writes, "This idea of him is an old memory of mine, and thus a picture of a younger man's habits--he is the middle-aged father of my childhood, not the rather different old man whom I don't see often enough because I live three-thousand miles away, a man who doesn't care too much whether he listens to music or not. So, even as I become him, he becomes someone else."

I see my husband experiencing some of these moments when he thinks of his own parents, who are twenty years older than mine. But I've been noticing differences, too, in my sixty-ish parents.

When I was visiting them last December without my husband, we had a spontaneous and distressing (to me) talk about what would happen when they die. They wanted me to know that they both preferred cremation, and that they would like their ashes to be scattered over my mother's brother and sister-in-law's horse farm in Jonkoping, Sweden. As much as I had allowed myself to imagine the specifics of their funerals, I had hoped they would ask for side-by-side burial plots so at least when they were gone I could have a visiting place that I could decorate with flowers and mementos of their lives. When they said they wanted their ashes scattered over Lalleryd, I started to cry. I had no problem with my Swedish relatives or their farm--they're good people and it's a beautiful setting. But this was not how the narrative was supposed to go. I grew up with them in New Jersey, a short drive to the Jersey Shore. That is where I wanted to scatter their ashes--over the dunes in Avon-By-The-Sea where we visited as a family and where we walked the boardwalk, my mother taking picture after picture of seagulls and cement benches painted aqua, and the pavilion with windows on all sides. I assumed they felt the same as I did about staying close to where they had spent their years raising me. Again I was displaying the arrogance of children believing they are the center of their parents' universe. It had not occurred to me that they might have other ideas.

Of course, Hurricane Sandy worked its own schism in my plan for my parents' final resting place. Sandy came along and hit and lifted up and slammed down Avon's boardwalk and sand and the white-washed pavilion of my memory. I had convinced my parents to let me spread some of their ashes in the Atlantic Ocean. What I could not do was keep them frozen in time, the same parents I had known and idolized when I was growing up. I had moved on, without fully realizing that they (and my hometown) would too.

The enemy of joy

     Maybe it's because it's the Christmas season or the end of another year, but I've been thinking a lot about the concept of joy: what it is, how we know we're experiencing it, where it comes from, and how we can get more of it. I've experienced fleeting happiness, I've been giddy with delight, I've laughed-out-loud.  But Joy with a capital J? I associate that with religious experiences, the birth of a child, or an exquisite experience in nature.  Joy is deep and heady; it's serious business to be joyful.

In Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, author Brene Brown, PhD, describes joyfulness as "probably the most difficult emotion to really feel.  Why? Because when we lost the ability or willingness to be vulnerable, joy becomes something we approach with deep foreboding."

That statement floored me.  For most of my adult life I have had an uneasy relationship with joy.  An example: when my husband first told me he loved me--at a subway station in Times Square--I remember feeling a woosh in my whole body.  I couldn't stop smiling, even after we parted ways to go to our respective offices.  I positively vibrated with joyfulness and it must have showed because a young man approached and started talking to me as we were waiting for the Walk sign to light up.  It had to be because of my smile--my default expression is usually one of distraction or mild annoyance, and neither are exactly inducement for flirtation. 

But I can place a pushpin right on the moment when my joy turned to fear.  Not an overt fear of what it meant to find the person you planned to marry, but the more subconscious kind, the dangerous subterfuge that tricks you into thinking that the laws of the universe dictate that joyfulness must always be followed by sorrow.  I became obsessed with my health, imagining all the ways I might die young, right at a time when I had found someone who loved me.  Like in a Julia Roberts movie, I would be stricken by Cancer and die young.  Love would become my enemy.

Ms. Brown would call this "rehearsing tragedy."  It may sound like something only neurotic, Woody Allen-types would practice, but according to Brown it's actually a common technique used to arm ourselves against our own vulnerability.  

"Softening into the joyful moments of our lives requires vulnerability," Brown writes, "When we spend our lives (knowingly or unknowingly) pushing away vulnerability, we can't hold space open for the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure of joy."

It is easy to see why we're uneasy with joy. Everyone likes to blame the media for society's woes, but I would agree with Ms. Brown that if not directly responsible for our insecurity, media certainly aggravates it.  Today I had the radio tuned to the news and heard the awful story about the school shooting in Newtown, CT.  Even after I had heard the account in as much detail as was known, I continued to listen throughout the day for updates.  I heard the same sound bytes over and over, the increasing number of dead, the predictably frantic response of the parents, the fact that the children all knew what a "lockdown" meant, which was heartbreaking in and of itself. The talking heads argued over whether or not it was the appropriate time to discuss gun control and I listened to a criminologist who described the type of deviant who would commit such a sick and desperate act.

Finally I had to turn the radio off.  Not because I didn't care but just to save my sanity.  Although I don't have any children of my own, I can still empathize with the pain of the parents who have just lost a child, and I could also imagine the fear that the families whose children were spared must be feeling as their veneer of safety living in a sleepy New England town is torn off with such ferocity. 

We are confronted by these tragedies all too often.  But I'm learning that dwelling on them for too long and worrying constantly about when the next shoe will drop won't make me or my loved ones any safer.  Such constant dread will only rob us of our human birth right to experience undiluted, uncompromising joy.