Goodbye, 2007

2007 is ending with a whine for me, instead of a bang or a whimper. Well, there may be a little whimpering. I have seamlessly (though not soundlessly) transitioned from fever and mucus to fever and stomach cramps (with some residual mucus), all compounded by a hellish visit from, how shall I put this, (cover your eyes, father-in-law) my monthly visitor. God help everyone who comes in contact with me, I am a whiny bitchy nightmare.

I'm very much looking forward to 2008, though, and not just because my stomach has to settle down at some point in the next 365 days. This will be the first year of my life that I've entered with a firm sense of purpose regarding career direction. My children are all well and mostly happy, my husband is lovely, my mother enables me in a wonderful way, I have amazing friends, and I have freedom of choice in just about everything I do, which I recognize as a very rare gift. Combine being able to do just about whatever I want and actually knowing what that is, and I'm a very lucky girl.

And, since I'm silver-lining-mining, this stomach bug is launching my annual effort to stop resembling a marine mammal nicely. I ought to shed those 5 holiday pounds in no time.

Sure is quiet around here

And I'm not even just talking about the deafening silence of my blog. My love and nemesis, the six year old, is off on a 4 day jaunt to the beach with his stepsiblings and their family. It is simply amazing how much easier my little three are to watch without the human noise egging them on to shrieks and stupidity, and how much less is the ringing in my ears without his incessant tonsil-less drone. What really is surprising, though, is how much I miss the little bugger. The vacancy he leaves is as large as you'd imagine, but more poignant than I predicted. I hope he's doing okay. Brave little toaster.

In other news, our Christmas was good. I remember how pointless and brief Christmas seemed to me during the years between childhood and childbearing. Christmas with my herd of monkeys is joy and chaos, the constant frenetic effort of weeks paying off in 30 minutes of flying paper and shrill happy voices. I caught my husband's cold just as I finished the last absolutely necessary task of holiday preparation and collapsed happily enough into my fever and mucus, grateful even through my whining that it hadn't hit me even a day earlier.

I leave you all with the Christmas picture I never got around to making into cards this year. Better late than never, right?

A meme from Cole

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower (in a pond at night)
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Holland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Culebra
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children (in the process)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

That was really fun, you all should do it! I'm too lazy to elaborate on all/any of them, so post questions in the comments if you simply must know more.

A Long December

The holidays are taking their time reaching my grinchy heart this year, and I keep thinking sad and kind of hopeless thoughts. I've started listening to NPR in the car, which is not helping - whether the topic is this criminal administration or the too-long-ignored crisis of global warming, just driving around town is starting to affect my blood pressure. I am thinking too long and hard about big things I can't fix, can't even touch, and I'm starting to shrink in my own view. And then here at home, with my children to ground me and make me feel present and necessary, I am fretful and ineffectively concerned about someone I love. Her sadness is as big and far from my reach as anything on NPR.

For Christmas this year, I have more wishes to give than gifts. My wishes for my friend: That your sentence of grief is not long, and that time blunts the edge of pain soon, so you can visit your sweeter memories without getting hurt. That the world surprises you with moments of grace and beauty, now while you're doubting its capacity for goodness. That the friends and family you nurture so lovingly are able to reach you through your sorrow, so you know you're never alone.

Shark Puppies: The unspoken global warming threat

I am experiencing a return of the mysterious North American Sleeping Sickness I contracted last month, so I took a coma-like 3 hour nap this afternoon. During my blissful escape into unconsciousness, I had a very vivid dream. Global warming had proceeded apace, and I was walking along an icy shoreline with a leading scientist-of-the-future, who explained to me that climate change had resulted in a drastic evolutionary leap in sharks. The sharks, who were swimming conveniently right at the edge of the land so we could observe them, were now all having live birth, and their young lived on land and looked like puppies. While we spoke, one of the sharks had some of the aforementioned shark puppies, which were cute and round and black and brown, and the puppies started frolicking on the beach. My children, who appeared at this point as if from nowhere, were naturally drawn to the cute baby creatures, which then turned and bared their horrifying shark teeth, scaring the holy bejesus out of me and the kids. I really wish I had any artistic ability, because the vision of the gnashed-teeth shark puppies is really haunting me. Maybe I'll give it a shot later, I don't want to deprive anyone else of the horror.

Thoughts on a tragedy

I had four majors in four years as an undergraduate, which should come as no surprise to people who know me well - I'm not terribly decisive. My sophomore year major was Political Science. In typical young-liberal fashion, I was determined to change the world, and I thought the best way to do so was from inside the system with which I found so much fault. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to law school or run for office or start a grass-roots change organization, but my enthusiasm waned quickly as I saw more and more seemingly insurmountable problems and felt my own smallness.

I still feel that uncomfortable mix of cowardice and helplessness when confronted with social issues that move my soul and turn my stomach. In this, the most powerful country in the world, there is so much simple human unkindness, so many things that would be different if only we could all agree to look out for each other. So many laws that try to be one-size-fits-all and end up suiting no one well. So many stupid rulings from stupid old men who choose convention and ingrained misogyny over compassion and common sense.

One such topic that has touched close to home recently in horrific fashion is domestic violence. In a nation that often seems to adopt "every man for himself" as its motto, women and children are far too often left with no place left to turn, trapped in lives of fear and secrecy. When a woman does muster up strength I can only imagine and leaves her abuser to save herself and her kids, she is almost entirely on her own. The few laws that are set up to protect her are weak and ineffectively enforced. If she tries to get child support (often desperately needed) and/or gets a restraining order (because the abuse and threats almost always escalate when she leaves), the abuser all too often uses her temerity as an excuse to snap entirely, and front-page tragedies ensue that leave pundits shaking their hands and wondering, dumbly, how this happened.

Isn't it obvious how this happened, how this keeps happening? If a man assaulted someone to whom he was not related, he would likely serve jail time. If he threatened a politician, he'd be locked up just for the threat and charged with terrorism. If he stalked a movie star, the star would get private security to supplement the extra police protection. But if he hurts his wife, his children, our society still turns a blind eye. If he threatens them, the woman has to choose whether to disappear (in defiance of laws protecting the man's rights to visitation, regardless of the heinousness of his crimes) or to try to live as normally as possible, hoping reason finds the unreasonable. If he kills them, some sick people will say the woman drove him to it with her unreasonable demands for support and security.

I don't have the answer. I hope smarter people do. This Christmas, in lieu of gifts to many of my nearest and dearest, I will be donating money to The Heartly House. I encourage everyone to consider donating to a group doing similarly critical work to protect mothers and children, either locally or at a national level. This Christmas, I'll be even more thankful for the serenity of my home and the safety of my children.