October Recap!

And done...

One of my special project sparkly stars for October was "Get Through It" so yay! Got that one!

It was a month, that is for sure.

So how am I doing as we close in on the end of the year?

Fitness/Weight! Well I'm back on the gym bandwagon. Got that going again this month so that was good. Trying something new right now with circuit workouts instead of splits, I'm not sure I like it but I've only been doing it for two weeks so I'll give it until mid-November to see for sure.  Weight is the same on the 31st as it was on the 1st so I guess it could be worse. I can feel myself starting to prepare for a diet though. Nothing crazy, but I really am pushing the limit for what my clothes can hold. It's understandable, I have good reason to eat my feelings right now, they are delicious as well, but soon I'll have to do something about the extra extra I put on. There is only so far acceptance can take you, and right now it's taking me right out of my jeans.

Reading! I'm still four books ahead so that's good. Got a Discworld read and currently reading the next one on the list so that only leaves one more for the year to hit that goal. I've also got a long flight coming up so I should knock out an extra book this month. Which is great. Any ahead I can get in November makes December just that much easier.

Writing! Didn't hit the original monthly goal but I've been trending ahead for awhile so I only have like 22 more to go for the year. Totally doable. Need three of those to be fiction, so I'm feeling kind of fat and sassy there too. And I got my last submission turned in. If the rejection for that comes quick enough that will only leave two fiction pieces needed, but I don't think it will.

MasterClass! I did one by Alice Waters as my October class. It was okay. Not great. Just okay. I'm trying to think if I actually learned anything new, aside from I am not as rich as Alice Waters, but I don't think so. Doing RL Stine right now which will count for November. It's much more amusing.

Museum/Attraction! The Oregon Historical Society had a Darcelle exhibit that I wanted to see so it was a repeat museum, but not a repeat in what we saw. And this time we did the rest of the museum as well because the Darcelle exhibit was kind of a bust. It was cool, but it was only like 5 dresses and two sets of jewels. I really thought it would be a bigger deal. Darcelle has been hugely influential in the Portland LGBTQ community, not just performing as Darcelle, but activism as Walter as well. I really thought it would be more of a retrospective of that, but it was like a closet visit. Oh well.

Long Term! I got the table ordered and delivered and I really like it. I wrote the submission piece. I got through it.

Whew.

November!  What's ahead? Well, we are going to take a quick vacation so that will be fun, and, of course, Thanksgiving. Looking at the list of things to do in 2019 and I guess maybe this month I need to tackle the fan situation or painting the baseboards. Neither sounds great but I'll do one for sure.

So there we are. October in the books.

Whew.

The Ring...

It wasn't really her style. A little too flashy. A little too much. And yet it did have its own charm. You'd never miss it that's for sure. A ring like this will get you noticed. No need for the subtle and not so subtle hand gestures some recently engaged women had to do to call attention to their small rings. No, this one stood out. If hit with a direct beam of sunshine it would probably blind an airline pilot.

She waved her hand back and forth watching the stones sparkle.

She had a friend in college who hated engagement rings. She thought they were barely a step up from a ring through a bull's nose. Just meant to control you. To show ownership over you. And diamonds were all mined by slave labor, everyone knew that. Engagement rings were the absolute worst thing ever. As she watched the light reflect from the pure, clear, stones she wondered if her friend would change her mind if presented with a ring like this one. It was easy to take a strong ethical stand if it was all hypothetical.

Three month's salary. That was the advertising campaign. You should spend three month's salary on the ring. And you should add anniversary bands to it on the milestone anniversaries. Which used to be 25 and 50 but now seemed to start at one. They were all being sold to all of the time. More, more, more.

The stones twinkled like they were in on the con.

Do you need an extra insurance policy on a ring like this one? Did you leave it at home locked in the safe when you went on vacation? Maybe only wear it on special occasions and have a plain band for everyday wear? Just so you didn't look like you were trying to lord it over people.

But then again...she waved her hand.

A ring like this was meant to be lorded. That was the point. You wanted people to notice a ring like this one.

She practiced holding her hand naturally. What a weird thing to think about. How do you naturally hold your hand? Maybe after wearing it for awhile it would feel totally normal and she would naturally hold her hand naturally. She laughed a little at the thought. Naturally hold it naturally. Well, naturally of course.

But right now she felt the need to wave her hand back and forth watching the stones catch the light. Twinkling. Sparkling.

Was it a bigger love if the ring was bigger? Or was it more like what she had thought with her girlfriends? The ones with the most precarious relationships were always the ones talking about how wonderful they were. How incredible their boyfriend or girlfriend was. She thought there was probably a formula out there that showed the inverse relationship to how good a relationship really was to how often someone said how great it was. Kind of like cool. If you really were cool you never had to tell people. If your relationship was strong you didn't have to say anything.

So what did that mean for the size of a ring?

And then she wondered how he got the actual size of the ring? Did he sneak out another ring he knew fit and matched that? Or was he just that good at guessing?

She waved her hand back and forth a few more times.

It wasn't really her style, it was a little too flashy.

The ring shifted on her finger.

It wasn't her size either, it was a little too big.

But he hadn't bought it for her.

She dropped the ring into her pocket and took one last look around the room.

She wiped a few more surfaces and then turned the AC to full before leaving the apartment.

A ring like that will get you noticed.

That's not always a good thing. 

Fabric of You...

"Does this seem smaller to you? Like the roof is lower?"

"Yeah."

"Weird. It's not like I'm taller than I was."

Thinking about the funeral. And not just the funeral but everything around it. But not in the grieving way. Or at least not in the specific grieving for Mom way.

The conversation above happened when we were walking from the church sanctuary over to fellowship hall after the service. The same walk I took when Dad died, so I had done it as an adult, and I did it a lot as a teenager, and though I might be wider than I was then, I'm not any taller. But the hallway felt really small. The roof really low. The walk really short. It was an odd sensation.

Being in the church is always an odd sensation. And when I say THE church I always mean Ridgecrest. We attended First and Valley for small bouts of time, but Ridgecrest is THE church. It's the one I was born into, the one I spent most of my time, the one I was married in. And it's the one the others spun off from once upon a time.

That was what we Ridgecrest kids always held on to. First and Heights had more money, especially First, Valley was newer and had a really beautiful building, but Ridgecrest was there first. When we went to camp and the old cabins were named for the founding families that started it, Ridgecrest Families were featured prominently. Sure, First might have raised the money for the new dorms, but they would always be called that, the new dorms. The named cabins? Those were ours.

When you are broke you tend to hold on to history and pride a little tighter.

But Ridgecrest was home. I think I was still too shell shocked at Dad's funeral to really take it all in. This time, because of time, I wasn't as foggy. And maybe because I really believe that that was the last time I will be there I paid a lot of attention. It was all so familiar. Home in its own way.

I told my nephew I used to count the woodens slats in the roof, Larry our minister at the time, had certain words he would always use, verbal tics, and when he would say one I'd start counting the other way. Brian told me he would count the stained glass in the lights and windows. We both realized that we should have had a good indication that we weren't really meant to stay at that point.

I also looked at the books in the church library. There were ones that were old when I was a child that were still there. At one point in time I could have told you how far I had read in almost all of them. We spent so much time at the church while my parents were doing various things and if I didn't have a book with me I would pull one off the shelf and read it. There were mostly devotional books but a few fiction. Christian fiction. The bar is fairly low on what good religious fiction is. People are so desperate for message books they will let the quality slide. I read a lot of really terrible religious fiction books growing up.

There were changes as well. Where the library is the other half of that room used to be wide open, it was the original fellowship hall, long before I was born, but now it's closed off with walls and doors to make it private classrooms. What was the stage and storage area in the current fellowship hall was taken out and a big new kitchen put it probably 20 years ago now, but it still seems new to me because it wasn't there when I was growing up. We had the hallway, galley kitchen and we all spent a lot of time in there, getting communion ready, making coffee for potlucks, eating pizza with the youth group or preparing snacks for VBS.

The church is filled with memories for me. It's a big part of where I grew up. It's a big part of my growing up.

Good and bad.

And at Mom's service my Aunt Carol (Mom's best friend) talked about the first time she attended, meeting Mom and Dad as they taught the Young Married's Sunday school class. Thinking about Denny and Carol being Young Marrieds made me smile. And, of course, I don't think they could have had better class leaders for a good marriage example.

My sister-in-law also talked about first meeting Mom and Dad as they were greeters the first time she came to Ridgecrest. And then about how Mom would call her on Sunday after she and John were first married and tell her that they really could use her in the nursery next Sunday. And she did that until they came back to church regularly.

Carol also talked about how Mom and Dad started the church. How Mom hadn't really wanted to work on getting a new church established when they moved to New Mexico but had been called to do it anyway. She also talked about how Mom only demanded one thing from Dad and that was that they would go to church.

Now, I happen to know that she also said he had to stop smoking and he couldn't drink but once a year or so. My mother might have given the advice that men don't change, but she still believed in making a few alterations as needed. Though to be fair, Dad didn't change. He wanted to do whatever would make her happy. That never changed.

As I talked to people before the service and after it, there was the recurring theme. Mom (and Dad) had been instrumental in establishing the church. She had been part of the fabric of church life. She had touched a lot of lives through the church. It was her great joy to have raised her family within those walls.

And I smiled and thanked them.

And wondered how many of them knew I left at 18 and very rarely looked back?

I also spoke at her service. I talked about what a great woman she was. I talked about our relationship just a bit. I also talked about how much I knew she missed Dad and how glad I was that she didn't anymore. Which I know that 90% of the people in the congregation took to mean she and Dad are together in heaven right now. But that's not what I said.

I didn't say anything about her religion at all. Though it was a huge part of who she was. It's just not who I am. I bowed my head when the minister prayed, out of respect for those around me, but not because I thought he was talking to god. In fact, when ministers pray I think even they know they aren't talking to god but are talking to their congregation. Mini sermons. But I can have respect for my mother's beliefs and not take them on myself. I've had years, decades, of practice.

It was hard to leave the church. It was woven into the very fabric of who I was. My parents started that church. My first friends were all members of that church. I still have people I grew up with in the church that I am friends with today. A large contingent of my family believes the teachings of the church. And they pray for me. Which I think is sweet of them and I hope it makes them feel good. It's not going to change things, but I do honestly think it's nice that they still try. Even if it's a little bit condescending at times. But that's okay too.

And I talked about it when Dad died. There is great comfort that can be had when someone dies if you believe you will see them again. It makes you feel better to imagine a big grand reunion. I don't have that, though my brothers and sisters do. I have what we had while they were alive and that's all. And, for me, that's enough.

I have a lot of memories of the church, and of camp, and of countless bible studies and youth group rehearsals for tour, and bible bowl competitions and time on the bus and lessons and sermons and more than a few "Listen here, young lady" lectures. It was part of who I was. It's still part of who I am. I love those memories, well most of them anyway. I have been able to pick and choose from the lessons and apply them to my life even now.

My mother's entire philosophy of not abiding by rudeness had a religious component for her, it doesn't for me, yet I still practice it. She believed in being kind to strangers because the bible told her to do it, I believe in being kind to strangers because it's the right thing to do. I practice a lot of what she preached, I just don't do it to get into heaven later. I do it to make the world around me better now.

Walking down the hallway in the church it seemed much smaller, but it was the same.

I have just outgrown it.

Memories...Mine, Yours, Ours...

Last weekend when we were home for the funeral I was talking to my sister and she said something about memory that made me smile. Because it's something I say all the time. Something I harp on. Something I read up on. Something I know to be true.

Basically your memories are yours and mine are mine and even if we are remembering the same event we don't necessarily have the same memory of it.

Memory is not trustworthy.

We all think it is. "I remember that clearly!"

But it's not.

Our memory is fickle. And each time we remember something we change it just a little. It's a memory of a memory. We can even start to remember things, in remarkable detail, that never happened. Brian Williams was a really public example of this. People hung him out to dry, but he probably honestly believed what he was saying. One of the ways you could tell is by how his story morphed over time. He started out with a pretty accurate (from other accounts, though we know those aren't really all that accurate either) then he added one detail, then another, and eventually the story he remembered and told was different than the one he started with.

And people do it all the time.

I've told the story of almost drowning and the only other person there at the time has a very different story than I do in some key areas. And that was from the start. We both lived it, but we lived it differently and what we remember is different.

I've had people tell me stories about things happening to me, or things that I've supposedly said, that I have no memory of at all. But they will swear is true and happened.

And for years, before I realized how fragile memory was, I relied on my own memory heavily. And there are times I still do feel like I must be remembering something exactly. I mean I can picture the room, I can tell you what people are wearing. I can tell you who said what and when. And I could be right. But then again, I might not at all.

We all remember things differently.

And sometimes we remember things the way we want them to be. Or need them to be.

I have friends who have changed relationships with their parents after they died. Which you would think would be tricky right? Like you had a relationship with them when they were alive and that's what it was, you could have changed it then, but not now. But really? It's easier to change it once they are dead. Because they aren't there fucking up your rewrite anymore. I've seen people who were estranged from their parents suddenly have the tightest mother/daughter bond you have ever heard about. I've seen a lot of rewriting of personalities, and not just with parents but with a lot of people. The world's biggest asshole is now tough but fair.

I think the whole don't speak ill of the dead thing comes in to play here. And if you spend enough years not speaking ill of the dead you forget that they had a lot of ill to talk about.

You all also know I don't buy in to that. If you don't want to be spoken ill of after you die then don't be a dick while you are alive. I'm not polishing your legacy for you. I might not speak of you at all, or might not contradict the polishers, but I won't add to it. They need to do what works for them, and if that means that their memories shift, then okay. As long as it doesn't hurt someone else then okay.

And sometimes you'll hear something about someone you knew that doesn't line up with your own memories and you have to figure out how to deal with those as well. For me? I fall back on that belief, your memories are yours, mine are mine.

And that's okay.

Memory is shifty. It really is. Just don't think your memories are any more reliable than someone elses and you'll be okay.

Middle Of The Night Thoughts...

Woke up in the middle of the night with something in my head and thought, well that's got to be a blog doesn't it?

Ready?

It was:

Great minds think alike, but exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

And then as I was thinking about it my head gave me a little more to ponder.

We say great minds think alike but we also worry about groupthink being a problem. So what happens when your group is all great minds does that cancel out the bad part of groupthink? Or is that groupthink is more likely to happen when you have one or two great minds thinking alike and the rest of the group deciding just to follow that thought?

And then can it become an the Emperor has no clothes moment?

Just waiting for an exceptional mind to point out the error.

But...then we have the other problem. Small minds don't think at all. They do something much worse. They know.

I know this is right because...

I know this is the truth because...

And it doesn't matter how many things you show them, they don't change because they aren't thinking about it, they are knowing.

And great minds in one area can be small minds in another. They can even be exceptional in one area and then just a "knower" in another. A knower not a grower? Something like that.

And it can even be worse if you are an exceptional thinker you can convince yourself that you are right in an area where you are not thinking at all. I just listened to a podcast about this recently, maybe the You Are Not So Smart one...if you're interested I will try and find it.

We can all be susceptible to the knowing problem.  And it depends on how attached you are to the identity that goes with what you know on how willing you are to give it up. Tribalism is all based on knowing. Even if a lot of what you believe is based on great minds thinking alike. And even if it started with an exceptional idea.

Anyway....

This is what was in my head at 2 AM. Great minds think alike. Exceptional minds think of things never thought of before. Small minds don't think at all.

What are you?

And if you aren't exceptional would you even want to admit it to yourself?

I know I wouldn't...

I Remember You...

"Okay, I give. Been staring at the cursor blinking on a blank page for 20 minutes...maybe further inspiration will hit later today. I see a funeral and a very well put together older lady sitting in the back row. Hopefully she will tell me who she is and who is dead soon so I have something to write today."

That was my status update from five years ago today. As soon as I read it I thought, "Oh I remember you." And then I wondered how long she sat with me before I figured out who she was. Turns out I wrote the short story later that day. I just had to walk away from the computer for her to finish talking to me. But I do have a vague memory of her kind of hanging out at the edges of my mind for a few days before that.

That happens a lot. I can see it. Visualize it. Like there is another person sharing my head just waiting to talk to me. It makes me understand people who are schizophrenic. Who hear voices. I mean, I hear them as well, I've just figured out how to channel them.

Watching R.L. Stine's MasterClass right now and he is seriously amusing me. Sometimes because of how much I relate to him, he doesn't view writing in the same lofty way that some of the other authors I've read about do. And sometimes because we are really different in our approach.

One of the things he was talking about in a lesson is that he is a big outliner. He outlines the whole story before he ever writes. He maps out his twists and his cliffhangers and knows exactly how the whole thing goes before he ever starts writing. And while he was talking about this he talked about authors who say things like, "I wait for the character to tell me where the story goes." He does not believe this is a thing that actually happens. "Nonsense, you are in control." He thinks that this is something authors tell people interviewing them to sound more interesting.

I love that he said that. I laughed incredibly hard. He has reached the stage of his life where he is successful enough and old enough that he has zero fucks to give about anything else.

Now, I don't agree. At all. Because I am one of those people who waits for characters to tell me what happens. I view the people in my head as being pretty much real. They have a story they want me to tell. They tell me, I tell you, we are all surprised by how it turns out. Now, I get it, I do, I am making them up. They aren't real. But...

They sort of are.

To me.

And depending on how well I write their stories to you as well.

My voices have been fairly quiet lately. I think they are letting me grieve. But I'm hopeful they will start to chatter again soon. I know we have a lot of stories to share. I'm looking forward to seeing what they are.

Oh, and just incase you don't remember her as well as I do, here is the link to that story.

Promises Not Kept

I'm Not...I Didn't...We Didn't...

I'm not cleaning house today. I'm going to do my best not to clean house this week. Like more than just normal keeping it tidy cleaning. I mean the CLEAN HOUSE cleaning. I did offer to go home with Christopher and clean his place. He's been doing a big sort and clean and I would speed that right along...

I didn't spend the weekend drinking, though I "joked" about doing it. More than joked, absolutely considered it. But I didn't.

We didn't fight. At least nobody fought at the service and nobody fought at the house afterwards or dinner that night. What happened when I wasn't around is a mystery but as far as I know everyone played nicely.



They've already started sorting Mom's things. Bags of things out of the closet were already donated or tossed. But the jewelry was waiting for all of us to sort through and pick and choose what we wanted. My mother had a queen size bed, the bed was covered. And there was a good sized table as well. And a couple of other jewelry boxes. And a box filled with just watches. And boxes like you'd find at Home Depot to keep small screws and such in filled with earrings who had lost their match but had never been thrown out. Just so much jewelry.

 This was part of the bed collection

Some of it I remembered from when I was younger. She had sets that she would wear for a time period and then move on to the next. So there were things that I absolutely remembered her wearing. There was a set of earrings that I remembered playing with when I was little. I would put a shirt on my head like long a scarf and hang those earrings from the inside of my ears and pretend I was a fortune teller. My sister said, "Take them!" I said, "I'll take a picture of them."

I would play with these for hours. I thought they were the fanciest things I'd ever seen.

There was the set that I remember her wearing when she would get really dressed up. There was a bracelet and earrings and at one point there was a necklace though that disappeared. The charm that hung from it was found and David is going to use that in a memorial piece he is making. 

The dressy jewelry. Aunt Carol took this set. It reminded her of Mom in the 60s as well.

I picked up a lot of the sets and looked at them.I tried on a lot of her rings, her fingers were bigger than mine so it was all thumb rings for me. Remembering Mom wearing some of them. Wondering if she had ever worn some of the others. She had a QVC Home Shopping Network issue and there were things that I don't think were ever worn. Just purchased. Her style was always more is more. I'm kind of minimalist by taste and by allergy. My metal allergy is significant enough that just handling all of Mom's things caused a reaction and I had to take out my own earrings. Yep, the metal that I can wear was like, okay if you are going to insist on handling metal you know you can't wear we're going to remind you what happens. It was crazy.

And then there were the books. Hundreds of books. And the knick knacks. She had owls, and angels, and hummingbirds, and Noah's Ark things, and stuffed animals, and these weird little things that move in the sunlight that I think would make a great Black Mirror episode, and Southwest inspired pieces, and...well there was a lot of stuff. So I'm not cleaning out my house right now. But it's hard not to. 

All it takes is a trip home to remember that I have addictions built right into my DNA. Food, alcohol, smoking, drugs, shopping, hoarding...it's all there. And believe me, I know that my reaction to it, my I'M IN CONTROL OF IT, is also an addiction. The need to have things clean. The need to have open, empty space. The too much then not enough around food. The almost paranoid level of control around alcohol.

It was a force of will to get a drink on the flight home. I had a couple on the flight down no problem but then as soon as I hit the funeral I was as sober as I've ever been. Not like I was drunk from the night before and sobered up but like the thought of having a drink wasn't a good one. I could see another stone cold sober stretch in my future, and it might still happen. As far as addiction issues go, not drinking isn't a bad one. But I don't want to be that tight about it. I rarely have more than one at a time. I generally only have a few a week. I don't have a drinking problem. But I do know that I could. I know that in the past I've walked right up to the line. I do know that it's in my blood. I know that my grandfather and all of my father's siblings were alcoholics. So I'm careful. To an extreme. 

I've gotten really loose with shopping lately. Like if I want something I'll buy it. That's going to be paused for a bit. When I feel like I can sort more things without the drumbeat of GET RID OF EVERYTHING playing in the background I will do some of that. And I will go ahead with my plan from last month to add things that I know I need, but first I will sort everything and make sure I don't already have things that I've forgotten about, or things that I can make work. And I will go back, after that, to really questioning if I want something or if I need it. 

As far as the not fighting goes, well I left town so that should make it easier on everyone. You're welcome, family. You're welcome. 

I'm not.
I didn't.
We didn't.

Whew...