Snow

It used to snow here; I remember. When I was a kid, I remember being at my grandparents’ house and walking up the sidewalk to the front porch with walls of snow on either side. Of course, this was from my grandfather “scooping the walk” and allowing the snow to pile up on the sides, but the walls were higher than I was tall, and I have always been tall.

I remember one snow storm where my sister and I were playing in the yard across the street from my grandparents’ (these people didn’t have any children to play in the snow piled in their yard, so my sister and I did the job for them). Anyway, the neighbors had huge juniper bushes on either side of the door, and they were completely hidden under the drifts of snow. My sister and I spent what seems like an entire day excavating the bushes from the snow.

There were always a couple of snow days every year; the plow-trucks simply couldn’t keep up with the snow. There was always plenty of snow for snowmen, and the main color of the landscape was white, not sandy brown.

Once I was in high school, and throughout college and so on, the snow didn’t seem to come any more. Rarely was there even enough snow to worry about brushing it from the car windows before leaving in the morning; let alone “scooping the walk.” But things are different this year; the snow has returned.

This is my first winter in Idaho in a few years, but the snow is definitely back. Of course the accumulation doesn’t seem quite so grand, but I don’t know if this is because there is less snow or I am a grown up. My sister commented on the “scoop truck” (she is 26, “scoop truck” an artifact of our childhood) driving in front of us the other day. My nephew has had a snow day this school year, and it is only January. I have actually shoveled snow twice in the last month or so, and each night when I make my way to the RV from the big house, I have to don boots, rather than my normal slippers.

My favorite part of snow is the sleep that it brings. There is nothing so peaceful as sleeping during a snow storm, and waking up to a world softened by a sweet, sparkling coat of snow. I don’t even know how to describe it, but it is more than quiet; it is what I imagine the peace to sound like.

And, since I am currently sleeping in the RV, a few scant inches away from the metal ceiling, the snowy sleep I have had the last few nights has been divine. The snow falling gently (it is never hard, regardless of how strong the wind blows) on the metal roof, and the clear, plexi-glass vent is the most comforting, peaceful sound I have ever heard.

I am throughly enjoying my time in the trailer right now. I spend my time in the big house until bed time when I make my way out to the RV. I don’t use the heat in the RV, but have an electric blanket. It feels amazing to sleep in the crisp winter air bundled under my electric blanket, on top of a featherbed with the sound of the snow falling so lightly; some nights I am almost tempted to open the vent above my bed and let the snow fall on me. But I don’t; that would somehow ruin it all.

Oh, and tonight, there is a full moon and a crystal clear sky. Have you seen what it looks like when the ground is covered in snow and the moon is lighting the world? It is almost as bright as a slightly cloudy day. It is amazing; something you should certainly see at least once.

30 Days

In 30 days I will by 29. I always give myself until my birthday to officially start my new year. This one is going to be tough. I am nowhere near where I thought that I would be when I turned 29. Here are the facts:

• I am single (I feel spinsterdom sneaking up)
• I am heartbroken (and it is really hindering by progress more than I thought it would. I really, really, really believed he was the one, and don’t want to let go of that… I want to hold onto hope. Silly, I know.)
• I am unemployed.
• I live with my parents again.
• I am depressed.
• I am in debt.
• I am overweight.

But on the positive side of things (I try really, really hard to believe there is one…)

• I am really smart.
• I have been heartbroken before (though not this badly) and survived it to love again.
• I have $2000 in savings, enough to get me started at something new.
• I can lose weight.
• I can become happy (the most important step in all of this I think).

So what am I going to do about all of this? I don’t really know. I am applying for so many (30?) jobs everyday, just to find something, somewhere different from here. I don’t really care where said job is, just somewhere other than here. I have had a few leads so far, so all is not bad on the job front, and it is the week of Christmas.

I am so frustrated with the guy (that one). He wants to talk to me almost everyday. I miss him so much. He must miss me if he talks to me all of the time, right? I think that all he wants from me is to be more independent, and I am trying, but when do I get to reap the rewards? When will I have done enough? I get so many mixed signals from him. I just want to scream. Maybe I just won’t talk to him anymore. Maybe that would be easier. I want us to be together again. Silly, isn’t it? But half of me feels like it is missing without him.

Why does it have to be like this? I just don’t understand. I want a concrete answer. But I can’t have one. That’s that.

Since the Peace Corps plan fell through, this is what I am planning, I think.

1. Move. Houston, Austin, (I like Texas), or somewhere else warm.
2. Get a job (hopefully before I move).
3. Make some friends.
4. Take some classes.
5. Learn to weld.
6. Learn to play golf.
7. Play some sports.
8. Go to law school.
9. Forget about him.
10. Find someone new (or him, don’t know) and fall in love again.

I feel so weak and silly that love matters this much to me, that I can’t just do. Never have been able to.

I will just keep on keepin on.

No More Job…

I was laid-off today. Right before Christmas. Nice. It seems as though the company is going under, or almost. My departure was apparently one of a few adjustments to the budget. Not that I was happy there, or wanted to stay at all, but still; it stings when someone doesn’t want you for no good reason. Merry Christmas (insert any expletive you like) to you too!

OK, Ok, Okay

Which one is right? Are they all? My least favorite is OK. Even when written in a non-email/chat/text message format I think it is loud. It conveys a sense of annoyance or exasperation at the least and tones of utter hostility at the worst. (This is of course all determined by context, and maybe just my crazy brain.)

Ok is a little better, but most applications, this one included, think that this is incorrect. Ok with initial caps simply won’t do. Interestingly, when I hover over and control click the initial caps Ok, the loud mouth version is not even a suggested replacement. Here are the options I am given to correct my misspelling:

• k
• O
• ck
• pk
• bk

How are any of these choices better than the initial caps Ok? ck, pk, and bk don’t even make sense, and k and O are simply letters. Why isn’t OK one of the choices? Things that make you go hmmmm. (hmmmm is also misspelled. According to WordPress or FireFox, not sure which one, I am trying to spell ohmmeter. Right.)

My preferred okay (Tokay is apparently what I am trying to spell says WordPress/FireFox) is the spelled out version. Most applications think that this isn’t a real word, but I don’t care. It is in my opinion the best (and only real) way to spell okay. It is more genteel, it has grace. It is a word, not an abbreviation, not two letters rammed together as a shortcut. It is in short, the right way.

What do you think?

Tokay = famed Hungarian wine. Who knew? Other than spellchecker that is.

Trent who?

Today during the incredibly monotonous drive after work, I once again fell into a freeway coma. I was listening to Only by NIN (which is, I think, one of their best. Comes close to Head Like a Hole, Down In It, etc.) and my mind began to wander as it generally does during freeway coma time. I was thinking about seeing them at Voodoo Fest right after Hurricane Katrina. The event organizers gave all of the relief workers (and I don’t know who else) free tickets. It was awesome! They were incredible. Queens of the Stone Age rocked too. I thought about this band, and that band. The video for The Perfect Drug with its masterful rendition of Victorian/Gothic England, or at least my version there of; I swear that Rochester is about to top one of the moors in the video. (I could spend hours analyzing the video; absinthe, Orientalism, and so sexy.) Johnny Cash singing Hurt and making me bawl; and the video; ridiculously good, better even than the original (sorry guys). And how sexy Trent Lott had looked in person, now that he had been hitting the gym…

Trent who? Yeah. In my head I was calling him Trent Lott, Republican senator from Mississippi. I’ve had politics on the brain, but I didn’t think it had done any damage…

I don’t know if I like technical writing…

So there it is. For as long as I can remember, I have been doing technical writing of some sort. Even when I worked at Albertson’s as a teenager, I felt the need to compile a book full of helpful hints about how to correctly close out the lottery machine at the end of the day. (One of my co-workers who often worked the evening shift, while I worked the morning, could not do the number crunching correctly, and I had to fix it almost every morning). This helped. One of my supervisors took it to some hifalutin corporate meeting and they actually implemented some of my writing as store policy. Pretty neat.

Even before that I wrote with an audience in mind. I remember being in grade school and getting some accolades from the teacher for an essay I wrote about my grandpa. So I kept making my writing more and more grandiose until the teacher finally said enough! too many adjectives and gave me a B (oh the horror!).

In college, I actually had a professor teach me how to write better. She was the first person that basically said, “you’re not doing well enough, I know you can do better.” Up until that point, I won every essay competition, was the best writer in my school according to one of those standardized tests, blah, blah, blah.

Once I finished school, I took a job at one of the computer giants doing technical writing. This seemed like everything I should want. Good company. Good pay. Close to my family (they thought this was a good thing, and I did at the time). In a nutshell, it is what everyone thought I should be doing.

But once I started the job, I met with conflict; I really had a hard time with my boss; she simply didn’t like me. Nothing paranoid here, those are just the facts. And, it was so boring. I need to have five thousand things piled up on my desk, working under some ridiculous deadline to feel like I am working hard. Maybe (probably) that is something I should change, but that’s what I need to feel like I am doing a good job.

So I got laid off from that job, joined the Red Cross, took a job as a trainer in New Orleans, couldn’t hack it, curled up in a ball and returned to Idaho, to what? take a job as a technical writer. Am I maybe the dumbest person on the planet? What happened to the learning from mistakes path I was on?

Bottom line, Idaho is comfortable. Technical writing is comfortable; good money, it is easy, but it is so damn boring! Working for myself freelance technical writing is not as bad because I can get it all done in bursts rather than being a slave to someone else’s schedule, but it is still boring. So what do I do?

Well, it kind of seems ungrateful to not write. I mean, I can do it, so shouldn’t I be using it? But I need to figure out how to do it differently. Maybe I should only write for purposes that make me feel good, like stopping procrastinating and finishing the New Orleans stuff and sending it off to McSweeneys. Finish it and move on.

So what then? I need to see results from whatever I am working on. I want a finished product, and I want someone to tell me I have done a good job; silly, I shouldn’t need that, but I do. I feel like I need to create something to be satisfied with work.

I have been thinking about moving to Austin (’cause it’s neat, and warm), and becoming a welder (craft, art) or upholsterer. (While waiting for news from the Peace Corps.) Crafts are a dying way of life. It is so rare to hear someone speak about being a carpenter (not houses) or anything like that (I couldn’t even think of another example). Now, everyone does something with computers. Computers make all of the things that we used to make; furniture, books, signs, shoes, almost everything. Computers definitely aren’t a bad thing; I love them and they make my world better. But what have we lost with the shift from man made everything to computer made everything? Pride in our work? Pride in general?

I think I would be happy running an upholstery shop. It is definitely a skill that I want to learn. But I want to make a living at it; a good living at it. I make good money in my industry, and I should make even more if I stay in the field. But that’s not enough. But, I’m also not willing to live a life that is not financially comfortable (not rich by any means). So how do I do it? How do I combine the two; a vocation and a good living? Combining the handcrafted (or machine crafted, through the guidance of a person) with computers? Simply using the computer to plan and market? Hmmm…

I definitely need a change. I need to be doing something with tangible results. Something that leaves something behind that I can touch, look at. Something that I can be proud of.

I’ve got to solve this riddle. And quick. How long did it take you to figure out what to do with your life? And how did you deal with the uncertainty it brought?

Thinking about the Peace Corps…

I am a computer nerd at heart. As much as I have tried to get away from it I can’t; it’s me. I love learning new things in every program imaginable, just as much as I love lying on my back wiring a network to full connectivity. When Hurricane Katrina happened, I had recently been laid-off from Hewlett Packard, and was feeling very badly about myself. But Katrina was too big; it snapped me out of my funk, and drove me to do something. As soon as I heard about what had happened, I logged onto the Internet to find out how I could help. To my surprise, I was quickly contacted by the local chapter of the American Red Cross. I explained that I didn’t have much money to donate but that I had plenty of time. I was signed up for volunteer training the very next day.

Initially I was trained to work in Sheltering and Client Casework (or some similarly named groups); almost every volunteer was being trained in these fundamental disaster relief areas, and my chapter didn’t have a technology volunteer group, so I didn’t even know it existed. When I arrived in Louisiana, it was amazing, in good and bad ways. The damage done by the storm was horrific, but the volunteer response was uplifting. Since almost every volunteer on the disaster was assigned to client casework or sheltering, there was a lot of waiting. While waiting for assignment, I noticed some people wiring a network. What was this? Other nerds? So I walked over to take a look.

This is how I was introduced to the Response Technology Group. I asked if I could help with anything, and in fact they needed several volunteers. I worked with the group for the day, and was asked to join that function by the end of the day. So began my nine months in response technology with the Red Cross. I was euphoric; I could actually help people with my nerdiness?

During my time with the Red Cross, I worked with amazing volunteers from all over the world who were working toward the common goal of helping people rebuild their lives after Hurricane Katrina. I learned so much from others, and know that I taught many people many things. Many of the volunteers coming to the disaster had never used a cell phone, let alone a computer. As part of my work with the Red Cross, I taught grandmothers in their nineties how to make functional Excel spreadsheets; I taught Americorps members how to wire networks. It was amazing.

Since my time with the Red Cross, and specifically during the last year, I have been trying to focus on what I really want out of life; what will really make me happy; which path my life should take. Through this searching I have figured out a few things: 1) I crave helping people; my world is not right unless I am giving back, helping someone. 2) I am a computer nerd; it is me, I may as well be happy with it. 3) I am good at teaching people, and really good at teaching people about technology. 4) I crave experience with other cultures; I have spent my life (aside from my two years in Louisiana) Idaho. Idaho is great, but it is small potatoes (I am funny!); there is so much more to the world. The two years that I spent in Louisiana were amazing; the culture is very different than that of Idaho. I enjoyed very much learning about and interacting with the people, taking part in cultural traditions such as Mardi Gras, and of course eating all of the wonderful Cajun and Creole foods.

Through the soul searching I have done (and I have really, really been searching for the past little bit) I think that serving in the Peace Corps is the next step in achieving my life’s goals; those that I know of anyway. I am at a crossroads in my life; the crossroads. I have finally figured out (I think anyway) the path I should take; this path began with the American Red Cross and Hurricane Katrina, and will be continued with Peace Corps service. Where will it go after that? I haven’t a clue; I only know that service with the Peace Corps is right, is home. The Peace Corps encapsulates all things that make me me; it is where I belong, where my skills work the best, where I am at peace, where I am at home.

But maybe the Peace Corps (And the Red Cross was too?) is running away from my life? I wonder this sometimes. I think the feeling comes from that American Dream ideal that is supposed to be the aim of every good American; well that just doesn’t work for me, yet the draw to it is magnetic, unconscious; we cannot escape it, or can we? I want to, I need to. I would not be happy in this life, I would be settling and selling myself short. Because of the perfunctory draw of the American Dream, anything that is not it, feels itchy, wrong; that is why I sometimes feel that I am running from my life (you know, the one with the two kids, house in the suburbs, etcetera, etcetera…). But its not; for me, for someone I love very much; it is just not it. Its a shame that I felt like I had to live that life; it is a same that anyone feels that pressure. But there are those that love this life, that would live no other. I do not look down on them, no I almost envy them. To those that are really, truly happy, I wish them well. I however, could never be happy in that life, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself that I was.

Success = Happiness (I think; for now anyway)

My dear friend Louise commented on my earlier slightly irate (No!) post about not being able to feel good with the place I am in right now, or be patient planning, waiting, for the things that are important to me.

Louise asked me to define successful for myself. Hmmm… I didn’t think it would be so hard. I guess that although I have never really put my finger on it, success to me has always been (and mind you this has only been in the background, it is not something that I have worked toward or anything like that) that inane American Dream version of success; house in the suburbs, two cars, two kids, dog, cat, jobs that pay well, etc.. This is the default version of success for most people my age (or at least I think it is). Because I had never defined success for myself, I guess this is the version of success that I was driving toward (I am guessing it was there in the back of my mind because this version of success is crammed down your craw at every turn); crept right in there. Ridiculous.

I know for a fact that this American Dream would never in a million years make me happy. I had my chance at that dream (more than once) and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But something held me back; and now, I am so utterly happy that I didn’t take that road; for me all that is at the end of that path is a big old Dead End sign. (Did you see/read The Hours? Remember Julianne Moore’s character? That would be me; hopped up housewife trying to escape her dream turned nightmare.) As silly as it seems, this revelation is just now coming to me. Sean and Louise (much smarter and wiser than me.), always told both Ben and I how lucky we were that we were going through this struggle to find what truly mattered and made us happy (really, really happy) as individuals now rather than later; having a quarter-life (okay, slightly beyond that) crisis rather than a mid-life crisis. It is awful to be wrapped up in the middle of it right now, but they are right; this would be so much harder if I had already started down the traditional American Dream path, and then found myself miserable and had to regroup. (Or, how sad would it be if I never came to this realization? Never found out who I was? Never followed my true way?) Now there aren’t kids, dogs, and houses; responsibilities in the way of letting me find my happiness. And there is the benefit of finding my true path early on, and not having all of the muck left behind by taking the wrong road the first time.

I sort of wavered from success to happiness there. But you know what? That is what success is to me; being happy with myself. Having confidence in myself. Being me. Loving me. Showing the world that I love me. Success to me is being happy with who I am. Happy with myself, my place in the world, all of me. This is such a hard thing for me to do. Why? I don’t have a clue. I just know that I have to do it; no one is going to do it for me, and until I am happy with myself, I won’t be happy with anything else. I have to start at home.

Since I can’t seem to write about Louisiana…

I will write about the books I am reading, or have just finished. I am always reading something. Right now, I am reading The House of Spirits. Lately, I have been on a Latin American/magical realism kind of kick; I just ploughed through One Hundred Years of Solitude for the third time. I love Marquez’s works. I think I have read them all, my favorite being Memories of My Melancholy Whores; fantastic. I like Allende because she reminds me so much of Marquez, in a lesser sort of way. There are so many instances in her books that I am struck by how similar the writing is; some of the plot lines are even the same, especially the grandmother making her granddaughter prostitute herself until she pays back all that the grandmother is owed theme. I don’t know if it is intentional or not, but the writing is SO similar.

The thing that I like the best about both Allende and Marquez is the way that their writing makes me feel. It is hard for me to remember distinct details from either of their writings, but this is due to the soothing, melodic way of their writing. Both writers use magic and an alternate reality. When I read their books, I feel that I am there. I am lulled into the worlds of Allende and Marquez, and everything is wonderful. I love nothing better than to read one of their books, even only a few lines, while taking a bath and then fall into bed for a lovely night’s rest. Both of these authors allow me to do something I can do with no other; I can pick up any writing by either of them, and read only a few lines, words even, and be transported into that world, relaxing my real world’s troubles away, calming me, pacifying me. They are the only two (well for the most part) that I can read again and again.

On a completely different note, I have just finished The Eyre Affair and Into the Wild. I was so excited to read The Eyre Affair and have been since the novel came out a few years ago. The novel started out fabulously; plenty of literary allusions, as the name promised, and great characters, but in the end, I found the female lead’s character a bit lacking, but I think this was due to the author being a man; sorry, men often can’t get women right. And, by the middle of the book the novelty wore off and I was a bit bored. It was a story like so many others in the end; although quite cleverly done.

I picked up Into the Wild at the Seattle airport, bored with the above book. I have to say, I don’t generally buy popular books like this, but (alas!) I was sucked in by Eddie Vedder’s fantastic rendition of Hard Sun (here comes the junior high crush again!) and the fact that Sean Penn had everything to do with the movie version of the book. I read the book in a day or two, and couldn’t put it down. The writing wasn’t necessarily fantastic, but the story was so good. Alex/Chris is so real (I know he was real). I saw so much of myself and someone I love in him. He was a passionate young man who took his extreme feelings to the ultimate end. This is what can happen if we don’t lead a balanced life.

For a very long time, I tried to stay away from books that Oprah had as part of her book club. In the beginning, she would only do works by living writers, and this pissed me off to no end. Recently though, she has been including some of my favorite books. I remember the first (I think) work by a dead author that she covered, Anna Karenina. How can anyone not love this book? It is definitely one of my favorites. And now, she is doing a second book by Marquez; bravo! East of Eden (a book that actually made me contemplate moving to Salinas) is another good book she picked. Just thought I would throw that in there. I love John Steinbeck too! And Cather, and Hemingway, and Abbey, and almost every other author except Shakespeare. (Would you believe I actually made it through school, as an English major no less, without taking a single course about him? Hooray for me!)

I know. Not New Orleans. One day, I want to go through and clean out all of the posts like this, leaving behind those strictly related to Louisiana. But for now, since only non-New Orleans things are about all that I can write, they will stay.

I’ve lost my writing mojo…

Hmmm… . This is definitely not fun. I can’t write about New Orleans in an amusing, or even angry sort of way. I have sat down several times during the last few days and… nothing. Where did my writing mojo go? What happened? (Did you read Thursday’s post? Rubish!) There is so much I want to say about the place. It was such a huge part of my life. Maybe that’s the problem? I can’t sort anything out? I don’t know.

I know, I know. I just need to start writing, get the juices flowing that sort of thing. I don’t know. I have been doing plenty of other writing, just not here. In an effort to get back on the writing wagon, here is a list of some of the more defined sections (don’t know what else to call them) of writing about New Orleans that I have stored up in my brain. (Forgive me if I wander a bit!)

• My first days as a volunteer
• The general setup of the Red Cross headquarters; I think it is pretty interesting that an empty WalMart was turned into the control center for the response to Hurricane Katrina. The logistics fascinate me, and hopefully, will fascinate others.
• Relationships at the DRO — DR wife/husband (keep reading the blog and you will find out what that is!); actual relationships; cheating on one’s significant other who was safe at home while their mate was out doing good (I did not participate in this, but it seemed almost a disease on the DR; everyone was doing it).
• Some of the interesting people I met and probably never would have outside the Red Cross (Vito, etc.).
• Gossip, gossip, gossip.
• Brushes with fame and celebrities as part of the Red Cross

This is a small representation of the things I want to include here, and hell, they aren’t even as defined as I thought they would be. I have the before I went to Louisiana, and the first couple of days clearly recorded as I like, but cannot seem to move past that point. I have a scribble here and a scratch there about my time there, but I cannot seem to put together another cohesive piece that could be loosely referred to as an essay. That’s going to make it really hard when I try and sell my idea to a publisher!

I do have one piece I have been working on (it requires research) regarding New Orleans and Detroit. As we all have heard by now, Detroit was named the most dangerous city in the country. How can this be? Have the researchers even set foot in (or heard of for that matter) New Orleans’ crime rate? Anyway, it should be an interesting piece once I finish it.

So for now, I will stay stuck. I want to, need to, write about Louisiana, but can’t. Hopefully the writing gods will be kind to me soon.