Unprofitable servant

I keep thinking that this year can’t get any crazier, any weirder, any more goshforsaken terrible, but it keeps surprising me. Now the President has the damn ‘rona. And no, of course I’m not happy about it. I can’t understand how anyone celebrates another person’s sickness. 

*****

It was a very busy work day for me. I had to develop a slide presentation for a high-level meeting next week; high enough level that I myself will probably not attend. I took notes and scribbles and vague suggestions from a whole kitchen full of cooks, and I ended up with something that nearly everyone was happy with. They were happy, so i was happy. 

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Screwtape reminds us that the devil is happiest when we are satisfied with ourselves. In The Hope of the Gospel, George McDonald reminds us that we should never seek the admiration or approval of others. When we do what we should do, we should regard ourselves as the unprofitable servant, having done only what was expected and required. 

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I thought about this as I tried to separate satisfaction at a job well done from enjoying others’ praise for a job well done, and as I tried to avoid congratulating myself for not being a person who revels in the sufferings of others. An unprofitable servant, I did what was expected and required. Most days, that’s all I can do. 

A handful of total nonsense

It’s a Tuesday night and I’m watching Capitals hockey, my ever-present proof that October isn’t all bad. It’s not that good, but it’s not all bad. I was just reading my backlog of drafts. I have so many that I forgot about some of them. They’re like handbags. They’re like eggs or milk or strawberries--I get more than I need and then some end up going bad. Some of those old drafts are no longer relevant to anything in either my life or the world at large. OBE, as the Feds say--overcome by events.

Ten million (give or take) drafts in progress, but nothing to write about today. It’s OK. Even the most brilliant creative minds only have a few ideas at any one time, and I’m not a brilliant creative mind. I’m just a girl with a cluttered pile of Google Docs drafts, sitting in front of a keyboard, hoping that a post will finish writing itself.

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It must have been about two weeks ago when I wrote that.

Actually, it was just over two weeks. October 8, to be exact. Today is October 24. I realized, because I’m just that brilliant, that Google Docs must have some way to track versioning; and after I realized this, it was but the work of a moment to figure out how to do it. And so I did, and now I know exactly when I started writing this. My literary executors will need this information .

I’ve published three posts since October 8, including one from my draft backlog. Of course, I also started another draft, so I’m still overstocked with drafts. Maybe I’ll have a sale.

It turns out that there’s another good thing about October; that is, when your favorite baseball team is playing in the World Series. I love the World Series no matter who is playing as long as they’re not in New York or Boston. But I love it so much more when my team is playing. And it’s too early to say anything more about that.

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It’s Friday night now and we’re watching game 3. That’s not a prediction or anything, just a statement. It’s OK to mention that we’re watching a game; it’s just not OK to speculate on the outcome.

If I’m being honest, which I always am, I’m not 150 percent sober right now. I’ve only had a glass and a half of wine, but my tolerance is not what it was. I just registered my son for his first year of high school swimming, completing an online form that makes the FAFSA look like an Amazon order. I’ll recover my will to live, I”m sure, but it will take days. I should have taken screenshots. I’ll need to document the entire process so that I’ll be able to repeat it in the spring when I have to register him for baseball. I’ll have to remain clear-headed and sober. I’ll have to train. Maybe a few days of fasting and meditation first. Or maybe I’ll make my husband do it next time.

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Now it’s Saturday morning. I have some plans today but right now, I’m the only person in the house who’s awake, so I’m reading and writing and watching old movies. Yes, you can do all three at once.

I have always disliked Woody Allen movies rather intensely. Even before poor Dylan Farrow (who I am sure is telling the truth) told the world about her childhood sexual abuse, I found his movies annoying and self-indulgent. But “Match Point” might be the exception to my no Woody Allen ever rule.

Right after “Match Point” ended, “A Handful of Dust” came on. I didn’t watch it because I love the book, and because it was time to get off the couch and do something. I mean really. But “Match Point” seemed very much like what Evelyn Waugh (who wrote the novel A Handful of Dust) would see in 21st-century life, especially among the English upper classes, and especially in the relationships between men and women. I’m pretty sure that Woody Allen wouldn't expect anyone to compare him to Evelyn Waugh, but there it is.

Waugh was smart enough that he would have known that once abortion is available as a choice, then it’s not long before the choice is no longer in the hands of the pregnant woman but instead in the hands of the unwilling father of her baby. He would also have known that a man who demands that a woman abort his own child would have no problem killing her when she fails to cooperate.

The murderer in "Match Point" gets away with it and the viewer has no reason to think that he’ll ever pay for his crimes, but I still think that Waugh would have approved. He was smart enough to know that bad people get away with things all the time. He also knew that there are always consequences; if not in this life, then in the next.

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So that’s what happens when you let me get mixed up with movie reviews and theology. I’m competent at neither. I just know what I know.

It’s the last Tuesday in October now, and I’m still not making any World Series predictions (though it’s do or die tonight). I’ll say only that this weekend didn’t go quite as we expected. Much like this blog post, in fact. Maybe it did write itself.

The real enemy

It's Friday afternoon. I procrastinated with my latest proposal assignment, and so instead of being finished at 5:00 PM, I'll need to continue working for two hours or so. Or three, if I continue to waste time writing about my random thoughts and observations, rather than about IT quality assurance.

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Now it's Saturday morning, and my proposal assignment is in the red team's hands. My biggest problem now is the ever-growing pile of forms and paper that the first week of school always produces. I'm ignoring it for now. Maybe it'll go away.

*****
I took a walk after some morning housework and miscellaneous tasks, not including the paperwork, which sadly remains, having failed to deal with itself. Hope springs eternal. Anyway, I listened to music, as I often do.

In 1992, Sinead O'Connor, appearing as the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live," performed Bob Marley's "War." At the end of the song, she held up a photo of Pope John Paul II, said "Fight the real enemy," and tore the photo in half. I was actually watching the show at the time, and remember feeling vague shock, but I didn't think it was a big deal otherwise. Then, like now, pop stars tended to do and say shocking things. But of course, it was a huge, controversial, scandalous big deal. Sinead O'Connor was vilified, for years afterward. Even Madonna took a shot at her.

Hindsight is always 20-20, isn't it? When the first revelations of sex abuse in the Catholic church were made public in 2002, certain priests and bishops were exposed and punished, but I don't remember anyone even suggesting that the Pope (John Paul II or any other Pope) might bear some responsibility. Of course, I wasn't really a practicing Catholic at that time, so I wasn't paying much attention. I was a full-time working mother of an infant. I wasn't paying much attention to anything.

Now the scandal has re-emerged, and this time, it seems to go all the way to the top. Cardinal McCarrick, once-beloved Cardinal-Archbishop of Washington, resigned from the College of Cardinals amid revelations of his apparently habitual sexual misconduct; and his successor Cardinal Wuerl is accused (probably correctly) of covering up hideous abuse by priests when he was a bishop in Pittsburgh. And of course, Pope Francis has been accused of protecting abusive priests when he was a bishop in Argentina.

I returned to the Church, after a long absence, in 2010. I've been a faithful Catholic since then. The horrible crimes of priests and bishops and maybe even Popes (I can't have been the only person who wondered if Pope Benedict's resignation had something to do with with misconduct by priests under his supervision when he was a bishop in Germany), though horrifying and heartbreaking, have not shaken my faith. The Church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints, and priests are sinners like the rest of us. And the sins of priests don't alter the truth of the Church's teaching, not one bit. But something has to change. The Church has to suffer now, probably for a long time. Priests and bishops will have to stand trial, and some will probably go to prison. Cardinal Wuerl should certainly resign, and maybe Pope Francis should, too. And I love Pope Francis. It's a sad and confusing time to be a Catholic.

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The Sinead song that made me think of her SNL performance was "The Emperor's New Clothes." And that's a whole other subject, for a whole other day. The ground beneath our feet is no longer solid, if it ever was. But I did fight my way through the pile of paperwork, including enrollment forms for my eighth grader's last year of religious education. Shit's going to get real, but we already know how the story ends. The gates of Hell will not prevail.

Time's up

Sunday: I was going to live-blog the Golden Globes, but then I got bored. Because it was boring. So so so boring. Boring and predictable. Not only did I predict the hours of insufferable, preachy identity politics (not that this took any special psychic powers) but I also predicted the very predictable post-show social media backlash.  Seth Meyers was funny, and I was happy to see wins for Rachel Brosnahan and Sam Rockwell and Elisabeth Moss (who also wore my favorite dress of the night), but I couldn't watch the rest of it. Because I was SO BORED.

So I missed Oprah's speech, and I haven't gotten around to watching it. Another thing that I predicted (again, this didn't require a sixth sense, nor even a fifth one) was the proliferation of Oprah 2020 enthusiasm. I don't mind Oprah. I'm not a particular fan, but I certainly admire what she has accomplished, especially coming as she did from virtually nothing. And she'd be better than Trump, of course, but so would I, and I'm an idiot.

I think that what bothers me about the Oprah groundswell is that people keep expecting politicians to be saviors, and when the politicians fail, they expect celebrities to do the job. And they can't do it either, because someone already did.

Monday: I have been without a day planner for a full week of 2018, which means that I don't have a to-do list, which means that I don't know what to do.

I ordered a planner, which came right after Christmas, but it wasn't quite right. I thought about going back to my beloved Filofax, but then I decided to order another of a pocket planner that I had in 2015 (which is actually also pictured in the Filofax post from 2014, rereading which has prompted me to ask myself why I wrote an 800-word illustrated post about day planners, but that's a question for another day).

Wednesday: My new day planner arrived in the mail, and not a moment too soon. It's exactly the same one that I had in 2015, as I'd hoped. The second week of a new year without any sort of calendar, or agenda, or to-do list, and my life was in shambles. Another day, and the whole operation would have fallen apart.

Thursday: Just for fun, I decided to get the worst haircut that I have ever had in my entire life. Not so much too short, just crazy angles and layers and choppy ends that yielded the overall look of a crazy woman who impulsively cuts her own hair, And not necessarily with scissors.

Friday: I spent 25 minutes with a flatiron this morning, trying to organize and subdue my hair, but to no avail. 25 minutes might not seem like much, but I'm accustomed to a five- to seven-minute hairstyling routine. 25 minutes puts a serious dent in my day. I mean, if I have to spend 25 minutes a day fixing my hair, then when will I have time to blog about nothing? It's an issue.

My husband texted me later in the day, to tell me that he felt a bit flu-ish. I texted back:

I'm sorry to hear that. But I have a shit show growing out of my head. There are worse things than flu.

Though I was loath to let anyone wielding scissors near my head again, I made an emergency hair-fixing appointment for Friday night. The hairstylist looked at my hair with a mixture of puzzlement and dismay. "Wait," she said, "a hairdresser did this?"

"Right?" I said. "I know that you're thinking that I must have cut it myself, but I promise you that I paid someone actual money to do this to me." My hair was horrifying, but validation is always satisfying.

"Hmm," she said. "Well, I can give you a really good haircut, but it will be much shorter than you're probably used to. Or I can just clean this up as best I can. It won't be perfect, but you'll be able to live with it."

I opted for Plan B. It's not perfect, but I can live with it.

Saturday: My house is full of teenagers, only two of whom live here. It's loud, so I'm holed up in a bedroom, reading and writing and watching "Breaking Bad" reruns.  I emerge every so often, just to prevent breakdown of law and order.

Sunday: I went with friends to see "Lady Bird," which I loved; except that we had to sit in the front row, which I hated. The front-row seats, which were the only ones available, cost exactly the same as the seats from which you can actually see the screen, which doesn't seem fair to me. It's an artsy theater, which prides itself on offering a superior movie experience, so later on, I sent them a sharply worded email, just like my grandmother would do, if she knew how to use a computer. I don't expect them to do anything, but I'll probably troll them via email for a few weeks, just for fun. 

Hmm. Maybe I should spend more time on my hair.

Children play in the dark

I haven't gotten around to writing my 2017 book list yet. It won't be as long as the ones from 2016 and 2015. I'm one book into 2018 now, having just finished Joan Didion's The White Album. This was my first for 2018, and my second Joan Didion  and I think that I like her non-fiction better, at least based on this limited selection. She's pretty prolific, so I'll probably read a few more. 

In "On the Morning After the Sixties," one of the last essays in The White Album, Didion writes about college life in the early 1950s, when she studied at Berkeley, and "the extent to which the narrative on which many of us grew up no longer applies." I remember reading, a long time ago, something about hand-washing wool sweaters and blocking them on Turkish towels. I think this might have been part of Jacqueline Kennedy's famous Prix de Paris essay, which I cannot find online (Joan Didion was also a Prix de Paris winner); or maybe it was advice from one of the characters in The Group. I didn't know what it meant to "block" a sweater; though I assumed that it meant simply to reshape it so that it dries neatly; and I also didn't know what was special about a Turkish towel versus any other variety. 

The point is that Joan Didion, born in the 1930s and educated in the 1950s, is a member of the last generation of American women who would have known how to block a sweater, and who would have been able to identify a towel as Turkish without looking at the label. 

I was thinking about this as I sat at a table at Chadwick's Restaurant in Audobon, PA, with my husband and sons and my sister and brother-in-law and nephews. It was December 28, a weeknight, still early enough in the holiday week that you can revel in several more days of leisured Christmas coziness, but late enough that you're already thinking about the return to work, and school, and daily routines.  Chadwick's is a nice place, so I found it odd that there wasn't a convenient coat rack to be found, and we had to hang our bulky coats and sweaters and scarves on the backs of our chairs. This would have annoyed Joan Didion, I thought; enough that she might even have written about the sad decline in standards that has made it perfectly acceptable for nice restaurants to offer paper napkins and paper packets of sugar and paper-wrapped straws, and no place to hang your coat. 

*****
The live musician was just starting a break when we arrived, so the restaurant played recorded music. In the Philadelphia suburbs, you can switch stations on your car radio all day long, and never hear anything recorded after 1985 or so, and the recorded music selection at Chadwick's did not vary from local custom. The first track we heard was England Dan and John Ford Coley's Light of the World. 

*****
You know, sometimes I lose the thread on these things. I start with an idea, but I forget details. And sometimes, I remember every detail, but have no idea why they're relevant. I think I had a point when I started this, but I can't remember to save my life what it was. Something about Chicago? But it's too late to abandon it now. I'm too far in. 

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Oh, I know why I was thinking about Chicago! It was the band Chicago, and not the city! Because of the Gateway Pharmacy. That's it. 

Yes, I see that I need to back things up a bit. I'll begin (yes, I know--too late) by saying that I'm not particularly nostalgic about most things. Time marches on, and all that. Things change. But like any other almost-old person, there are things about my childhood and youth that I miss. One of those things is old-fashioned neighborhood pharmacies. No, not the kind with the soda fountains, because I'm old, not ancient. I'm talking about the kind of neighborhood pharmacy where you could buy candy and gift items and greeting cards and perfume and I suppose you can buy all of that at Rite-Aid, but it's different.  The Gateway Pharmacy is like the 1978-1983 Tardis stop. And I'm not nostalgic for that particular period of time at all, but drugstores were definitely better then.  I didn't know that they still made Alyssa Ashley Musk, or Vitabath, or Fa, but apparently they do, and the shelves full of vintage toiletries aren't just nostalgia props. I thought about the extent to which so much of the narrative on which I grew up no longer applies, and smelled the Charlie tester, and sang along to Chicago's "Make Me Smile." 

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And once again, I don't remember how I was going to finish this now way-off-the-rails post. Joan Didion would probably be horrified at this rambling mess. I'm reading Fire and Fury now, because of course I'm reading Fire and Fury. And although I can't resist "stable genius" jokes (which are never going to get old), I'm actually sorrier for Trump now than I am angry at him, because I believe that he might be well on his way to losing his mind, and it's never funny to see the deterioration of a human person. But I'm plenty angry at the sycophants who are loyal to Trump at the expense of loyalty to right over wrong; and even angrier at the cynical politicians who are willing to use this falling-apart mess of a man as a tool toward their own ends.  The narrative on which I grew up no longer applies; and the narrative on which my children are growing up gets crazier every day.  And love is still the answer, and always was, and always will be. 

Pax in terra

I'm mobile blogging right now,  southbound on I-95. No, I'm not driving. Punctuation is the hardest thing about writing on a phone. Punctuation and sudden stops.

*****

We're listening to a road trip mix now. I should probably turn on the radio to see if we've bombed Pyongyang yet, or if North Korean missiles are en route to Seattle,  or if the Klan has descended on Silver Spring. But I'd rather listen to Erasure.

"Weight of the World." How appropriate.

*****

We're about 45 minutes away from home now. It's hard to believe that I woke up at the beach this morning. 

*****

It's Sunday morning , and we're home, so I'm writing on a real keyboard. Anyway, about the beach. We alternate vacations--we visit a new city one year, and then spend a week at the beach the next. It would be nice to do both every year, of course, but we're lucky that we can go away every year, no matter where it is. 

A city vacation is different from a beach vacation because you don't really fall into a routine in a new city. At least, we don't. We fill up every day and night, determined to see as much of our new city as possible. At the beach, though, we establish a routine on day 1, and by day 3, it's like we've always lived in Avalon, and always will. 

One common element of the beach and the city vacations is the early-morning outings with my now 12-year-old son. He and I are both naturally early risers, and we like to go out and do things while the rest of the family sleeps. In the city, this usually means exploratory walks around whatever neighborhood we happen to be staying in, with a stop for coffee and breakfast, which we deliver to my husband and older son just as they're waking up. At the beach, it means morning bike rides. 

Taken on Tuesday morning. It rained all day on
Monday and rain seemed likely on Tuesday,
too. But it turned out to be a sunny day. 

We usually ride for a few miles; sometimes south to Stone Harbor and the shops on 96th Street; and sometimes north to the center of town in Avalon. Sometimes we go farther--to 122nd Street, and Stone Harbor Point; or to Townsend's Inlet, across the bridge from Sea Isle City. Seven Mile Island is as flat as a prairie, so even with wind resistance, a long ride is pretty easy and pleasant, if you like to ride. Not everyone does. My whole family goes to the beach (we stay in separate places) and my sister suggested to my nephew, also an early riser, that he should join us one morning. He scoffed. "What am I, Lance Armstrong? Do you know how far they go?" Not that far if you're a serious rider, but I guess pretty far on a beach cruiser in August. 

The water was perfect last week. Slightly rough surf and a bit of an undertow, but so warm that you could just walk in, and no jellyfish at all. I've never been to the Caribbean, but everyone who has been complains that it ruins them for the Atlantic Ocean on the northeastern coast of the United States. This means that I should never go to the Caribbean, because I never want to not want to swim in the Atlantic Ocean. 

This boy was exactly as I'd have expected him to be in the surf. Knocked down by a wave and scooped up by his father before the current could pull him under, he spluttered and struggled and yelled "Put me down! There's another one coming!" Surrounded by a gang of 9- or 10-year old boogie boarders, he stood his ground, yelling "You guys gotta get outta my way!" And they did, shaking their heads and wondering who the crazy little kid was. 

*****

During city vacations, it seems like the world continues to do what it does, and I'm just as attuned to current events as I am at home. I followed election and Olympics coverage in Chicago in 2012 and Boston in 2016; and in 2014, even South Korean news media was covering the events in Ferguson, MO. ("What's happening in your country?" our tour guide asked us.) At the beach, though, the only news I seem to hear concerns the weather and the water temperature and the movement of the tides.  Somewhere around Wednesday or Thursday, it started to emerge that war with North Korea might be a real and actual threat; and then on Saturday, we watched "white nationalists" and Klansmen and neo-Nazis converge on normally peaceful Charlottesville.  

And so, as we drove further south, over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, into Maryland, toward Baltimore and finally nearing the Capital Beltway, the world once again continued to do what it does, and it felt less like a day that had started at the beach. There's only one kind of peace that matters, anyway, and it doesn't come from the ocean. Not even from the ocean. It's Sunday afternoon now. 

Wait!

Isn't faith itself a work?

I can't possibly be the first person ever to have thought of this.