just be.

the evergleam tree is up and has its first seven ornaments on it: one knitted initial for each of us plus pair of tiny red beaded slippers that remind me of my wedding shoes.

recovering from a post–long day hangover. lots of fun last night, but i am grateful for a three-day weekend to recover.

bull

i'm a fan of dr. phil and his show and books. i've learned a lot and changed a lot as a result of what he's written and said. he does a lot of work on bullying—why kids bully, what happens when they do, how bullied kids can handle it, the whole spectrum. i feel so sad for the kids who get bullied—kids get bullied to the point that they internalize what they hear, and some of them even kill themselves. but it's taken till now for me to figure out what touches me so much about them.

i realized today, watching today's episode, that i was bullied. kind of a lot. i used to get teased a lot about my nose. if you've never seen me in person, trust me: it's a thing to inspire awe. it's huge. and bony. i hated it. i wanted nothing more than rhinoplasty for most of my youth; the only thing that finally convinced me that i'd never do it was reading a magazine article explaining that the doctor breaks your nose—while you're awake—then resets it. yeah. that was *not* happening. so now i try to tell myself that it gives me character, though i still loathe photos in profile.

i remember being bullied in middle school—sixth grade, i think—a lot a lot. i had a close circle of friends, and at some point, they decided that i was going to be the target, and they were pretty good at it. they started a rumor that i was a lesbian; i didn't get how that was an insult and totally laughed it off, so that one died relatively quickly. then one of them challenged me to a fight. a fight! girls' bathroom, friday at high noon, be there. seriously! i maintained all week that there was no way i was fighting anyone, especially not my friends, that they could show up and i wouldn't be there. i was scared inside, of course, because i'm totally not a violent person and couldn't even begin to imagine what this meant, to fight someone, but i stood firm that i wasn't going to go to the appointed time and place. fortunately, nobody came and grabbed me and took me there, and the time passed and no fought took place.

when i got to the summer before freshman year of high school, i was a target again. this time, i saw it coming: leta was having a big party and everyone was going. but i thought there was going to be pot there, and i didn't want anything to do with that. i didn't go, and that felt like a turning point. after that, none of my friends was my friend any more. we didn't just stop being friends—i would pass them in the hallways at school, and they'd literally look the other way. avoided me like i had done something horrible. i was a pariah. seriously. it was awful. i felt so alone. i made a couple of new friends, but i still missed my old friendships and didn't understand why they'd been ripped away from me.

the worst was when a rumor started in english class about me and the teacher pulled me aside to scold me. i can't remember all the details, but i do remember that the teacher was strident in her accusations and wouldn't believe my truthful denials. i remember being completely flummoxed about where her information had come from. i also remember that she was the mother of a girl of whom i was jealous because she'd landed a part in a play that i'd really felt i was meant to play—strange, but i remember that losing that part was incredibly painful for me for some reason, and i was sad that this girl would be playing the part instead of me. the fact that this teacher was this girl's mother made the pain of the wrongful accusations and scolding even more acute.

after that, things were never the same in high school. i had some other issues, particularly with a boy in the neighborhood who made me feel very threatened and vulnerable sexually. i wish i understood why, but it was intensely difficult. 

my parents took me to a psychiatrist, which i guess means that it was as bad on the outside as it was on the inside. after a few months, the doctor recommended that my parents give in to my pleas to transfer me from that high school to another one. i wanted that transfer so badly that, when my family took a monthlong trip to japan and i had to choose between starting at the new school on time and going on that trip, i started at my new school. seriously. i know. ubergeek, right? but i really thought it was the right thing. i think it probably was.

at the new school, i made new friends and renewed friendships with childhood classmates. i was never popular, but i wasn't ever really bullied again, either. i didn't fit in with any one clique, but i had some really true friends.

postscript: all the friends involved in the threatened fight of 1977 are now my friends on facebook. i've thought of them a zillion times over the years, especially the girl who was actually supposed to fight me, and always wistfully. wishing i knew what had become of them, wishing we'd stayed in touch. when i joined facebook, i looked for her particularly and found her. we are now looking forward to reuniting next time i'm in our hometown. we talk on facebook most days and always get a big kick out of each other's sense of humor. all of them have turned into beautiful women with beautiful families, grade-school kids of their own. it makes me really happy to see the photos of them. the fight incident was one of those weird blips on the radar that just seems...weird. nothing more or worse than that.

postscript 2: i'm 43 and have still never tried pot. it kind of baffles me, but there it is.

y'all,

srsly. it's the *cia*. is it really a surprise that they conceal? obfuscate? hello? are you *new*?

hpapy bithday to me!

at least, i think that's how pooh spelled it. wobbly and all.

and a hpapy bithday it has been indeed. lots and lots of good wishes from friends here and far, productive errands to start the day, fun knitting time at the shop, a catnap, and a fabulous dinner out with my guy. knitting time was extra-awesome thanks to the visit of eight-year-old amanda, a new knitter, with her four-year-old sister lucy and their mother. amanda sat beside me for a nice chunk of time and practiced her knitting in "her blue": hawaiian blue. adorable. lots of stories, smart and funny girl. the kind i'd want to have if i had a daughter. my favorite thing she said, i think, was "this is my favorite yarn store. everyone is so nice. <thinkthink> i think, if i ever go to another yarn store, i'll still think this is my favorite and first. well, it'll still be my first, but i hope it's still my favorite." squeezeyay.

my favorite remark of my own of the day: on the way to eleven for dinner, i said to smartboy that my favorite thing about taking off on a friday was that it felt like saturday so, when it was all over, you felt like you'd had a three-day weekend.

rather than tell you what smartboy replied, i'll let you fill in your own reaction as that sinks in. i'm sure they will be similar.

dinner was teh yum. the amuse-bouche was a tiny little grilled cheese sandwich made with pleasant ridge cheese, morels, and pesto. teeny tiny crispy good. then we had a couple of cheeses for appetizers; the triple cream was as smooth and mild as it sounds. yum-o. i had a mesclun salad with a goat-cheese dressing—i don't care for goat cheese, but i must have accidentally ordered the wrong thing. it was still really good. then came the vichyssoise, to which i'd looked forward for days, and it was every bit as delicious as i'd hoped. i don't know why it's not on every summer menu—it's cheap and easy to make, hard to screw up, yummy, and cool and soothing summer food. eleven makes its with tiny crisps of fingerling potatoes, adding a wonderful saltiness. and of course i saved room for dessert, which was a s'more, eleven style. this meant a thick graham-cracker triangle on a plate drizzled with chocolate sauce, with a small scoop of marshmallow ice cream on it and a cut-out of the same cracker atop that. scattered across the plate were a few truffle-looking scoops of some kind of chocolate ice cream—so good—but the best part (elbowing space with the vichyssoise for best part of the meal) was the homemade marshmallow, a heavenly, creamy sploosh about the size of a lime, browned perfectly with a torch. as andrew put it, it was like the best part of a toasted marshmallow: not the black char, just the creamy part and the brown crispy part. definitely not your run-of-the-mill jet-puft.

oh: another favorite of the day was a sign outside big mama's. the chalkboard sidewalk sign read,

peach cobbler $3.50
parking $45.00
total $48.50.

(big mama's is a barbecue joint a few blocks from downtown.)

anyway, tomorrow is lots of cleaning and houseworky kinds of things that should be very gratifying. plus knitting, because i have a lot of that to do. and it'll feel like i had a three-day weekend to do it.

p.s. dan abrams is hot. he makes the ridiculosity of michael jackson coverage much more pleasant. that is all.

news

okay. it is sad when someone dies. it was sad when neda was killed. it was sad when ed mcmahon died. it was sad when farrah died. it was sad when michael jackson died. death is sad. but (a) one celebrity's death does not need to dominate the news *all night long* in lieu of other world events, and (2) if you're going to spend all night covering celebrity death, at *least* give farrah as much time and reverence as you're giving michael. come on.

fathers.

i have lots of parents. two birth, two step, and two in law. i should have done this on mother's day, too, but i'll try to make up for it here.

my mother and i have our difficulties, but she really is a wonderful woman in so many ways.  she sacrifices for those she loves—most recently, the years she's spending nursing my ailing, elderly stepfather through his deteriorating physical and mental health. when i was younger, i was so grateful that she had such great skin; i seemed to have inherited it, but i fear that i haven't taken very good care of this gift and don't predict aging as well as this. for all the pain in her heart, i am so, so sad. i hope that she finds some peace.

i wrote on veterans' day about my stepfather, jerry. what a character. he already looked terrible at the wedding, in september 2005; he'd been diagnosed early that year with alzheimer's, but before that, he had been vibrant, funny, and full of good stories. i miss him.

then there's my own dad.

you might be thinking, "how unfortunate that the photographer gave him that crazy look in his eye." you'd be wrong. that's how he always looks. growing up, i heard him get called "groucho" a lot, but i always thought he looked a lot more like einstein than marx. but he really does make me laugh. a lot. you can see that i look a lot like him—i've inherited his crazy white hair, his curls, and, of course, his nose. and i either inherited or learned his sense of humor and his sailor's mouth.

and my stepmother has been with us since i was in college.

this isn't at all how i picture her. i think i've seen her in a dress like four times, ever, if that. usually i picture her in scrubs (she's an ob/gyn) or in sweats or pjs (since she's always on a freaky sleep schedule, being a doc who delivers babies who are rude enough to insist on pressing into the world at all hours) or in hockey gear. but i do always picture her smiling and talking; she, like my dad and me, is full of opinions, and the house is always full of lively conversation and debate. i love that. she's also big into entertaining—one of my favorite things about life at their house is the sheer number of people who come and go, especially for holidays and celebrations. always tons of food, and never the kinds of stuff i'd expect to be helping to make. and lots of cultures—our friends anna (russian) and vijay (indian), handan (turkish) and everette (virginian), and nathan's birth family are always representing.

and my newest parents are a complete grand prize for me: my mother- and father-in-law.

rudy was a monk before he married my mother-in-law back in 1962. (i remember their marriage year easily because of this awesome, dated painting that hangs in their bathroom.) he remains one of the most thoughtful people i know, in both senses of that word. i am so grateful that we didn't lose him a few years ago to some nasty complications from bypass surgery. he is smiling in this photo, if you can't tell; he adores nancy, and the house is always full of laughter and smiles (and opinions and stories—i love that there, too). nancy is a talker and has an easy laugh; we (half) joke that andrew married someone exactly like his mother. it really is kind of scary; it's a good thing that i love her so much.

these are my parents, all six of them, in different ways, of whom i think on days like mother's day and father's day. and lots of other days. i am so, so lucky to have all of them.

so, when i hear and see the news about what is happening in iran this week, i am all the more grateful that my parents are not likely to be shot in the streets, that they can speak their minds freely, and that they do not need to watch me die in the street from government-ordered gunfire. i am heartbroken for the parents risking—and some losing—their lives, their health, their jobs, their livelihoods; for the children they may lead behind; for the parents who may have to nurse their children back to health, guard them from danger in the street or their homes, or mourn them, maybe even having watched them die. i cannot imagine anything worse. please hold these parents in the light today and every day until they have peace.

the world is a confusing place.

you know how people always say don't put anything in an email you wouldn't want the world to read? i blew it tonight.

using twitterific, i feel like my mother-in-law: i love the benefits of the newfangled technology, but i don't always get it. the differences between direct replies and general tweets are not always (okay, almost never) clear to me. and that's where disaster entered the picture today.

my friend katie and i had been having a conversation on the facebook about who would play us in a movie (i can't remember how it started, but there it is). we have never met in person, and i'm not even sure we've ever seen photos of each other—we met on ravelry and continued our friendship in email and fb. anyway, i declared that i pictured helen hunt or julia louis-dreyfus. she sent me a direct tweet saying, "can't remember her name, but I picture you played by Best in Show trainer." (that is one of my favorite movies, so that endears me to her, of course.) so i tweeted back, "Omg. She very dykey, but he is hilarious. The one who hooks up with jennifer Coolidge and starts bitch magazine?"

now. if you know me, you know that i'm using "dykey" ironically (and you're as shocked as i am that someone i've never met in person nails my persona so accurately. i talk way more like jane lynch than like helen or julia, though i'm nowhere near as willowy and pretty as any of them). but i am *mortified* that i sent the message out. without the context of what we had said before the tweet, it sounds like (a) i'm using "dykey" as a slur and (b) either i'm talking about some guy or i'm talking about the same woman and saying that she can't be dykey and hilarious. or something. i have been shaking and sick to my stomach ever since i hit send and realized that i'd sent it to all my twitter followers—some of whom know me but many of whom don't—and not just katie.

so i'm apologizing for any pain or confusion i may have caused anyone who read it, out in public like my words were. i hope that putting it into context alleviates any concerns, but really i'm just sorry i said it and humbly ask for forgiveness. it's not the worst thing i've ever said and wished i could swallow—but those are stories for another day. and yes, i know that putting it here on the blog opens it to a way wider audience than my twitter followers, but i'd be terrible at apologizing in 140-character snips, and i believe that an apology should be given as publicly as the wrong involved. so here it is on the blog.

and i'm getting rid of twitterific in search of an app that is a little more my speed. (speed 16.)

and now to the headlines:

• dick cheney continues to astound me with his awfulness.
• i wish i were half the wife nancy reagan was—and continues to be—to ronald.
• lawrence o'donnell was better when he was less rabid, less rude, and used fewer of his words to call people names than to state principles.
• you don't have to be a racist to oppose someone of a different race from yours.
• someone who attempts to glue your locks—twice—and who cuts the lines for your surveillance system and who drills holes in your roof is not committing vandalism. that person is preparing your location for a crime that he or she does not want you to escape and does not want watched or recorded for evidence. a crime like, say, using explosives or gas to kill everyone inside. we knew this 15 years ago when i interned with the national clinic access project. these are not new techniques or ideas. nor are they secrets. they are well-documented, widely published, nationally known methods used by a sick, misguided, sad segment of our society that is smaller than, but not qualitatively different from, any loose coalition of terrorists motivated by political or religious rationales. so let me give you a little tip for them, in case you see them: political voices can and should be expressed by voting and free speech. religious voices can and should be heard through free speech and free exercise of religion. spread the word. seems the message (and the methods) aren't making it around to everyone.

no pithy headline tonight.

• killing someone for doing something legal within his or her profession is not legal, no matter how abhorrent that something is to you. it is not self-defense.
• it is really, really cool to see a space shuttle piggybacked on a jet.
• fish should not be 15 feet long.

a little editorializing:

i have three friends who i know have had an abortion. i'm sure there are more—those are just the ones who've told me. two were single teens, one of whom had a child already and did not want to increase her family while she tried to put herself through school and lived partly on public assistance. another was married and had children already and was already overwhelmed.

abortion is heartbreaking, to me. i do believe that life begins at conception—that is, life in the sense that any organism is alive. when the one friend i knew while she was wrestling with this wrenching decision was agonizing over it, i asked her whether i could adopt the child if she carried it to term. (my husband and i do not intend to have children biologically or through adoption, and i have had my tubes tied for 11 years.) when she decided to terminate the pregnancy, i mourned the loss of a child with genes contributed by this wonderful woman and her amazing husband, a sibling for her other children.

but in no way do i believe that it is my place—or my government's place—to force any of these women, or anyone else, to carry a child to term if that woman does not believe that she can do so. it is not my place to tell her that (fill in the blank) is not a good enough reason to end her pregnancy or to make any other determination about her physical or mental health. that is up to her and her doctor, perhaps with the help and guidance of some spiritual authority or her partner or both. but it is never up to me, and it shouldn't be. my belief that the thing inside her is alive is not the same as believing that it is a person in the same sense that she is a person.

it certainly is not the same as believing that a medical professional who performs a procedure on her—a legal procedure, with her informed consent—is a murderer. and it is not the same as believing that vigilante punishment or vengeance against such professionals or their clients, families, or associates is in any way acceptable, let alone laudable. shame on randall terry and his ilk.

i am easily entertained.

i offer this as a preface, as i am about to review a movie for you, and i want you to have some context. before i met smartboy, i dated a guy who told me that i had an easy laugh. he meant this as a compliment. and more than one person has echoed the remark, so i figure it's probably true. i've also been told that i'm easily entertained or amused, most recently yesterday by anna. it could mean that i'm simple, or it could mean that my movie reviews aren't really that useful because any old movie would make me happy. i do love me a movie.

but i promise that i am not being simple when i say that "up" went from never seen to in my top five favorite movies of all time when i saw it yesterday. not immediately—immediately, i knew i liked it, as i love all things pixar. just minutes into it, i knew that i loved it more than most pixar movies, which is to say more than most movies; i was crying and laughing and so in love with the main characters that i was already sad that the movie would end—in two hours. and the longer i watched, the more i loved it. by two-thirds of the way through, i knew it was stuck. stuck in the list of top fives forever. my number 1 favorite movie cannot be budged ("it's a wonderful life"), probably never will be. but "up" has displaced "monsters, inc." in spot 2 and joins it and "the princess bride" in the list that i think will persist for a long time. spot 5 isn't fixed, but top 4 doesn't sound as important. ironically.

so i'm saying: get thee to see "up," preferably in the theater. and if you need a buddy to see it with you, consider yourself buddied. and see whether you can pick yourself out among the characters.

woof,

dug.