Mitzvah

I just read my post from last week and I don't even know what to think about what I was thinking. Rude phones and stowaways and banana muffins. That's pretty much the whole post. What? I mean, really. REALLY.

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Now I'm all business. I'm trying to improve my Excel skills, so I'm watching online videos and tutorials. My company offers free access to a training platform that used to be OK until it rebranded itself (well, you know what I mean) and now it's not so good. But the county library offers free membership to Lynda.com, so I'm going to try that, just as soon as I renew my long-expired library card.

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I'm going to Ireland in March. I'm kind of dreading the trip, but I'm sure that I'll reconcile myself to going, until I even begin to look forward to it a little bit; and then I'll be sad when it's over.

And that? That is my whole life, in one ridiculous sentence. Did you think that this post would be better than the last one? Think again, gentle reader. Think again.

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Friday: I worked all day, though I didn't finish anything, other than one newsletter article. But I have at least half a dozen very solid drafts that I'll be able to finish on another, more focused and less distracted day. I'm glad they caught the bomber; and I'm even gladder that he was apparently an incompetent bomber, having failed to actually blow anyone up.

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Saturday: I love it when a plan comes together. I went to the library this morning to renew my library card, and today just happened to be the day of the Friends of the Library Book Sale. Two birds, one stone. Six dollars, 11 books, including three that I'm especially excited about:

Unscientific Americans, Roz Chast. I am a huge fan of Roz Chast, and her writing is almost as good as her cartoons. If you haven't read her writing, then I really recommend Going into Town and Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant. This one is just cartoons, not stories, but I'm happy to add it to my little Roz Chast collection.

Speaking Freely: A Memoir, Nat Hentoff. This is an uncorrected proof, probably donated by a book reviewer. I admired Nat Hentoff for his fierce defense of free speech and his outspoken opposition to abortion, which cost him writing contracts and speaking engagements. I haven't read a lot of his work, so I'm looking forward to reading this.

Muriel Spark, The Biography, Martin Stannard. Muriel Spark is one of my top five favorite authors. She wrote an autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, which was criticized for being vague and incomplete and lacking in detail. This is exactly how I'd write my own autobiography. Writers get to decide how much or how little of their own lives they want to tell about in their writing. But according to the book jacket, she cooperated with Martin Stannard, sitting for many interviews and sharing her papers, so I don't feel that I'm intruding on her privacy by reading this. She obviously wanted it to be written; she just didn't want to write it herself.

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Our neighbor, who is crazy, is also an Orthodox Jew. My husband is a police officer, and like most police officers, he does occasional off-duty security work, including a regular Saturday morning gig at a local synagogue. Crazy neighbor came to the door on Sunday, to thank my husband for serving the Jewish community, and to express his sorrow over the four police officers who were shot in Pittsburgh.

Yes, he calls us at all hours, and he corners us to complain about other neighbors or the government or his ex-wife, and he takes a rather unconventional approach to pest control; but on a day when he'd have been completely justified in thinking only of himself and his own community, crazy neighbor took five minutes to express gratitude and concern for someone else. It's not all bad. Some people will keep trying, but they can't stamp out basic decency and kindness.

Reality and dreams

I saw an article online, which I now can't find, no matter how I search. It doesn't matter. The article was about a phone that's supposed to help you avoid smartphone-induced distraction and stress. More specifically, it's a phone that offers only a few apps, so you can remain in touch with family and friends, and avoid the constant intrusion of social media and the Internet. Of course, it's an adjunct to your real phone, and it works only when connected to the mother ship. So for just $400 or so, in addition to the $600 or so that you already paid for your smartphone, you can have a phone that keeps you away from your phone.

My favorite-ever phone was a Samsung slider phone with a perfect little QWERTY keyboard. It was small and neat, and a pretty red color. Like most messaging phones of that time (around 2009, so smartphones were around, but messaging phones were still widely used) it had an alarm clock and calculator and messaging and calling, and a low-resolution camera. You could even play games with it; not that I ever did, but I could have if I'd wanted to. No navigation, though; and no email, and no Google. So I don't know if I could go back. But it's nice to think about. It's nice to think about being out with friends and having a spirited and good-natured argument about which actor was in that one movie, or what year it was that some team ended a long drought to win a championship, without someone settling the question with a pocket full of Google.

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I worked from home on Friday. I had promised to review an SOP for a coworker, and while I was on a conference call, she texted me to ask me if I'd gotten a chance to look at it. I noticed the text, but I didn't respond right away because I was taking notes during the call. Or at least I thought that I hadn't responded. Because on Saturday, I was going to text her about something altogether different, when I noticed, to my horror, that I had actually responded to her request on Friday. "Nope." That was it. Not "Sorry, I forgot about it but I'll do it now." Not "Sorry, I won't have time today but I'll have it back to you first thing on Monday." Just "Nope."

I'm using third-party keyboard and messaging apps, which normally work pretty well. But the messaging app suggests responses that don't even resemble any words that I would ever write to anyone, ever. My normal workaround is to just ignore the suggestions and write my own texts, complete with fully spelled-out words and complete, correctly punctuated sentences. But now I have to make sure that I don't inadvertently hit send on an auto-response and make myself look like a jerk. 

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Later that weekend, I had a dream. I was in Taiwan with some coworkers, including the one to whom my phone was so rude. Yes, Taiwan. A third coworker was, for some reason not known to me, holding on to some valuables for us. We walked down the corridor of our hotel to ask our third coworker for our things, and then we noticed that we were on an airplane. The plane began to taxi, and it was too late for us to get off. "Where is this plane going?" I asked my coworker.

"Shanghai," she said, barely looking up from her Chinese-language newspaper.

"We don't want to go to Shanghai!" the first coworker and I exclaimed. But it was too late. The plane had already taken off.

It was a strangely realistic dream, the kind from which you awaken slightly panicked and disoriented, with your brain straddling reality and the dream world. Even as I thought about what to make for lunch that day, I also worried about what the Chinese authorities would do with me when I arrived in Shanghai with no travel documents. It wasn't until halfway through my coffee that I realized that I had dreamed about actually being Shanghaied.

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I changed high schools after my freshman year. At the time, it seemed like a big deal. Now, 35 years later, I sometimes forget that I went to the first high school. One of my old neighborhood friends invited me to a Facebook group for my old school's upcoming reunion, and although I have no plans to attend, it was nice that people remembered me.

When you look at the Facebook profiles of old friends and acquaintances, you compare. You see their lives (such as people represent their lives on social media), and you wonder how yours measures up. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you're not one of those people who looks in the mirror because you literally don't know what you look like. Maybe you don't worry at all about what other people think about you. Maybe you're pretty clear on the difference between your friends' and neighbors' social media images and their real selves. Maybe you don't wake up expecting to spend the rest of your life in a Chinese prison. Maybe you don't worry that your phone will go rogue and be insufferably snotty on your behalf.

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It's the end of the day and I am worried about the world. I'm worried about displaced and homeless people who can't find welcome anywhere in the world. I'm worried about pipe bombs. I'm worried about systematic devaluation of human life.

Mother Teresa said that if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. It's the end of the day, and I'm going to make some banana chocolate chip muffins that won't solve any crises or end any wars or cure any of my ever-growing number of neuroses and fears. They'll just be a nice breakfast treat for teenage boys on a cold morning. Love is the only thing that has ever changed anything and the only thing that ever will.

Don't cry for me Argentina

Monday: Did I promise more book notes this week? I think I did, I think I did. I remember writing something about abandoning Edna St. Vincent Millay and Nancy Mitford after one page. And then the FAFSA intruded.

I realize that people file the FAFSA, and the 1040A, and passport applications, and all kinds of other bureaucratic forms and applications all the time. I just hate it more than most people.

Anyway, back to the books. I just read The Clancys of Queens, a memoir by Tara Clancy. I liked it a lot, and not just because I have some things (but not all) in common with the author. Like me, she grew up urban working class Catholic; and like me, she had an unorthodox family situation, in a time and place when most families were of the traditional variety.

The similarities end there, but I felt a sense of kinship with her, and I like her writing. I like her voice. Rough around the edges, a little boastful, but sensitive and thoughtful and genuine. A nice break from the early USSR.

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Now I'm reading Evita, First Lady: A Biography of Eva Peron. 

Yeah, I know. Just when I get out, they pull me back in (in as in early to mid 20th century). But at least it's not Europe or the Soviet Union. I'm just a few chapters in, but it's very good so far, and I'm learning a lot. I know absolutely nothing about Argentina under Peron, except the part where Madonna sings from a balcony, and it's starting to occur to me that that might not have actually happened.

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In other news, I submitted the FAFSA and I didn't punch anyone (that you know of).

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Thursday: Heart-attack stressful day at work today; the kind of stress that seems not to affect other people in the slightest but that leaves me a hyperventilating, panicking mess. But I think I held it together well enough that observers wouldn't have suspected that my chest was about to explode. It's 7 PM now, and my heart and respiratory rates are back to normal.

When I get stressed out, I get scatterbrained and foggy, and maintaining my compulsive housecleaning routine helps me to settle my brain and organize my thoughts. But scatterbrained and compulsive, terrible traits individually, are even worse combined.

Let's say you were a normal person, who just likes to vacuum on alternate days because she likes a clean house. And it's Thursday, and you can't remember if you vacuumed on Wednesday or not. Do you:

A. Look around and say to yourself "Well, it looks pretty clean around here, and so I could just let it go until tomorrow regardless?" OR

B. Vacuum, because you can't remember if you vacuumed yesterday or not; and if you didn't vacuum yesterday, then you HAVE TO VACUUM TODAY.

For our hypothetical normal person, the person for whom cleaning is an activity prompted by the presence of dirt, the answer would be A. For me, of course, the answer is B. So I have to vacuum. And I'm pretty sure that I also just dusted the same room twice. Pretty sure, but not 100% sure; this is why I had to dust it (again) just to be 100% sure.

Are you thinking to yourself that it must be exhausting to be me?

OMG, you're so right.

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Friday: Much better today; the crazy is under control and I accomplished quite a bit today, performing each necessary task once and only once. I'm still reading about Evita, and although I sometimes envy women like Evita, who never waste a moment with anxiety and confusion and panic and indecision, I can also take comfort in knowing that at least I'm not a Nazi sympathizer. So that's something. Adios until next week.

Hand me a fork

It's Friday night and the FAFSA is making me want to walk right into the ocean. God help me. God help us all. 

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Let's talk about books instead. So after I finished Lina and Serge, I visited the opposite end of the political spectrum, with The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss. Actually, I have no idea what Auchincloss’s politics were (though I’m pretty sure that he was on the not a Communist sympathizer like so many writers of the early to mid 20th century). But he came from and wrote about the very rarified and inbred society of 19th and 20th century New York City aristocracy, as far from revolutionary Russia as you can get.

I liked the stories, and I’d read more of Auchincloss. Almost every one of his characters is a New York lawyer, as was Auchincloss himself; and most of the stories are set in the 20th century, though he also set a couple of them during the mid 19th century. Those stories were almost as believable and effective as the contemporary (to Auchincloss) stories because he had a thorough understanding of the inner life of people such as his characters, and of human nature in general. I don’t think that his focus on a narrow stratum of society limits the artistic merit of his work; I think that he just recognized that a writer can’t write about everyone and everything. That made him a good writer, not a bad one.

Segueing from plutocracy into anarchy, I read To the Barricades, the Alix Kates Shulman biography of Emma Goldman. It was OK. I’m not an admirer of Emma Goldman (nor of Ms. Shulman) but she saw through Soviet Communism far sooner than most early 20th century radicals. Aside from the hagiographic tone of the book and the frank admiration of Goldman’s total commitment to politics at the expense of everything else, I completely reject Shulman’s premise that anarchy has been misunderstood and poorly executed and that true anarchy is the means to a just society. Humans have an innate need for leadership, and many (maybe even most) people need a structured and organized society, with recognizable authority. And defending the weak against the strong would seem to be impossible under anarchy. Though I have to admit that if I lived as a poor person in early 20th century America (or even in early 21st century America), I’d be hard-pressed to see the value of the state, which does an absolutely shitty job of defending the weak or reining in the strong. But just because no government can ever be truly just (because we live in a fallen world), it doesn’t follow that we shouldn’t try.

After Emma, I started on Savage Beauty, the Nancy Mitford biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay. It's totally coincidental that I chose another biography of a famous woman written by a different famous woman. Of course, Emma Goldman was much more famous than her biographer, but Nancy Mitford was probably just as famous as Edna St. Vincent Millay. Anyway, I stopped after one page. I'm sure it's interesting, and I'll return to it eventually. But after Emma Goldman and Louis Auchincloss and the Prokofievs, I've had enough of the 20th century for now. We are hurtling toward a replay of the years 1929 through 1944, and I don't need to read the handbook.

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Speaking of handbooks. Hey FAFSA: What the fuck does this mean? 

How much did your Parent 1 (father/mother/stepparent) earn from working (wages, salaries, tips, etc.) in 2017? This amount is your Parent 1 (father's/mother's/stepparent's) portion of IRS Form 1040-lines 7+12+18 and Box 14 [Code A] of IRS Schedule K-1 (Form 1065).

Does that seem to you like a straightforward question? Well riddle me this: Why, first of all, do you need to see our two individual wage incomes when we filed jointly? And WHY do you ask for the EXACT SAME THING for Parent 2? Same lines: 7+12+18. There are only ONE OF EACH of lines 7+12+18 on the 1040, and WE ONLY FILED ONE. Again: Married, Filing Jointly. What. In the ACTUAL HELL. If I had a fork, I'd stick it in my fucking eye.

Son of a bitch. 

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So that's me, filling out forms. That's the real reason why I lie awake worrying about a return to Soviet-style totalitarianism. It's not because of the gulag or the interrogation cells. It's because I imagine that every task in life would be prefaced by a 47-page-long web form that demands administrative details from 11 years ago, secured by two-factor authentication, and designed to time out every time your session is inactive for over 7 minutes and I just can't.

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It's Sunday now. I just read this over, and it reads as a little crusty.

I'll adjust your gross income!

I think that a break from the early 20th century and a break from the FAFSA would seem to be in order. Additional book reviews and procedural notes to follow. Be afraid.

Downtime

Monday: Christopher Columbus was a terrible person, and Columbus Day is a stupid, stupid holiday. But after years of 1099 contracting, I am grateful for any paid day off. I didn't do any work today. This does not count. Nor does the laundry.

Some of my friends have been urging me and other friends to do less. Reject chronic busy-ness, reject overwork and overscheduling, and just be. "You're a human being, not a human doing," they say. "You're a person, not a productivity machine." "You're allowed to exist without having anything to show for it."  All true, I suppose, but that's not how I live my life. It's not how I roll. Like Toad, I'm a veritable slave to my to-do lists; and when I'm not doing something, I worry that I should be.

But I didn't do any work today. I went shopping and bought some new things. I went for a walk and waved to Running Lady. I took a nap while my kids watched "The Office" on Netflix. I did some housework. I read a book. It was delightful.

Tuesday: The best thing about an officially sanctioned weekday off is that no one else worked, either; so you're not behind. Everything was just as I left it on Friday. If not for the password reset debacle, it would have been a good day.

But there was a password reset debacle, and I have only myself to blame for it. Last week, I had to reset my password for the timecard system. Yes, that timecard system. I was sad that I had to reset the password, because first of all I hate resetting a password like I hate rodents and invasive medical procedures. And because my old password was awesome, comprising a sharply worded insult to the company that invented the timecard system and the required capital letter, number, and special character. It made me laugh every time I logged in, and that's worth something.

But I had to change it. And I decided to outdo myself and make an even funnier password. And so I did. I created a funny funny password, and I confirmed the funny password, and I completed the captcha, chortling with glee the whole time. What could have gone wrong? What could I have possibly have forgotten?

Yes, the super-creative password is the Internet version of hiding something so well that you'll never ever find it. I played chicken with the log-in screen, refusing to click on the stupid stupid "forgot your password?" link, knowing all the time that it would lock me out after too many unsuccessful attempts. And I made too many unsuccessful attempts, and it locked me out. And that was the end of that.

So after the system administrator bailed me out of Internet jail, I created a new password. And I wrote it down.

Which is good. Because it's hilarious.

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Thursday: I didn't actually skip a day here; I just wrote something that is becoming a little too long to be just a daily journal entry, so I'll expand on it a bit and post it next week. I'm sure you're all agog waiting to read it.  

Several minutes of your life that you can never reclaim

Wednesday: Yesterday, I took my normal lunchtime walk through Twinbrook, and I fell down, hard. I really have no idea why. It wasn't wet or icy, and I didn't trip on anything, or step into any holes. I fell off my shoes. That's the best way I can describe what happened. One minute I was up, and the next minute I was down.

I don't generally wear high heels at all. Whenever the subject of shoes comes up, I always joke that I have to be able to run for my life in my shoes. Everyone laughs at that joke. Only I'm kind of serious. But I was wearing a kind of chunky-heeled sandal, and I guess I stepped the wrong way. I skinned my left knee pretty badly, and scraped my right hand, with which I partially broke my fall. I'm pretty sore today, but it could have been so much worse.

Like most adults who fall for no apparent reason, I immediately looked around to make sure that no one saw me fall. I'd just walked past several other people who were walking, and had passed a house where two people were sitting on the front porch. When no one ran to my aid, I couldn't decide if I should be relieved that no one had witnessed my embarrassing failure to remain upright, or outraged that witnesses who had likely seen me fall to my knees didn't rush immediately to my aid. But as I said, the damage was relatively minor, and so no aid was needed.

But still.

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Friday: I'm working from home again today, as I normally do on Friday, so I'm marinating in the blend of fake outrage and indignation that is emanating from MSNBC, which is on as background noise. How is it possible that McConnell and Feinstein and Grassley and Schumer can even maintain straight faces as they decry hyper-partisanship and lament the passing of civility and reason in politics?

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Saturday: Well.

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Sunday: I'm so cranky today. No, not because of that. That doesn't matter. It was all but inevitable.

Well, it does matter. But it's not why I'm cranky. I'm cranky because I'm in the middle of the FAFSA. Which I started right after I registered one kid for winter sports, which is a 40-step process that meanders along through 27 or so electronic pages. Then after the thousandth click, the long-awaited "submit" click, you see the dreaded red error message, and you carefully examine each page to find the one error that is preventing your exit from this hell. And you find that the error was your failure to answer one required question: In addition to the sport for which your child is registering (Boys' Swim and Dive) is he or she interested in participating in pompons?

This was a yes/no question, but perhaps they could just offer pompons as a sport for which to register, thereby obviating the need for this question. And what is a pompon? Why only one M? Everyone calls them "pom-poms."

According to Grammarist, the original word was pompon, but because most people misheard it as "pom-pom" (of COURSE they did), the two-M version has come into more common use, and now each version of the word is equally popular. Grammarist might be right about the origin part, but they're dead wrong about the relative popularity of "pompon" vs. the far more common (and rightly so) "pom-pom."

So that was fun.

Then I had to pay for a field trip for another kid, using another 40-page web form, which required me to first create a "profile" of my student, and then select that profile from a drop down.

And now I'm on the FAFSA.

And I'm a little stabby.

And my knee still hurts.

So that's all for now. I wrote about something real last week. This is the best I can do this week.

Pompons. 

Ridiculous.

Testimony

I was at work last Thursday, so I didn't get to watch most of the Kavanaugh testimony. I listened on the radio on my way home. I believed her. I didn't believe him. That's probably all I have to say about that.

Last year when #metoo started as a movement, I thought a little bit about the line between inappropriate but overlookable behavior and real sexual assault. #metoo was just the beginning, as all of the millions of women who spoke up then are now sharing what happened in the aftermath, or what didn't, if they chose not to report.

I graduated from high school in 1983, just like Brett Kavanaugh. And I had a bad experience at a party. And I didn't say a thing about it. It wasn't as bad as what happened to Dr. Ford. The boy was just being a jerk, and he stopped when I told him to stop. Well, he stopped after the second or third time I told him to stop. The point is that I was angry and upset, but at no point did I feel threatened. But if something worse had happened, I promise you that I wouldn't have said a thing about it. In 1983, it was always the girl's fault. Always.

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So I believe her. And I don't believe him, not just because I believe her, but because it also appears that he lied about his college drinking, which was apparently anything but moderate according to classmates who have come forward since last Thursday. Even if you believe that Dr. Ford might have mistaken the identity of her attacker (and I don't; I believe that she's quite clear about who held her down and covered her mouth when she tried to scream), then it's still likely that he committed perjury.

There's no good ending to this, sadly. My guess (if I were a betting person, it would be my bet) is that he will be confirmed after a hasty and very limited FBI investigation that will unsurprisingly reveal absolutely nothing. This will be a bad outcome for everyone; for every woman who is convinced that women are systematically devalued, for the Senate as an institution, for the Supreme Court; and even for Judge Kavanaugh, who will serve his lifetime appointment with the proverbial asterisk next to his name.

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I was working from home on Friday, and I was watching as Senator Flake got up from his seat on the Republican side of the room, walked over to the Democratic side, and tapped Senator Coons on the shoulder. Later, I saw the video of his elevator confrontation with those two anguished women. And I looked at his face, and I saw real compassion, and something else, too--he seemed genuinely unsure how to proceed. He had already declared that he would vote to support Kavanaugh, and I think that those women gave him pause.

Yes, I know that it's not enough. I know that the White House has already placed constraints on the FBI investigation that will make it all but a waste of time. And I know that unless another bombshell drops this week, Flake will be among the Republicans voting to confirm. And I know that the Republican leadership under Mitch McConnell doesn't care--AT ALL--about doing what is right for the country, or even what is right for their own stupid party. They only care about winning each stupid street fight as it breaks out, and doing as much damage as possible in the process. But it still makes a difference to me that a Republican Senator listened to those two women instead of closing the elevator door. It makes a difference that he listened to them as if they mattered, and then tried to do something, however little. It's not enough, but it's something. I'll take something.