Category: Writing

Essay: Patricia’s Money Philosophy Series. Part II of IV: Debt

I believe in paying attention to your money.  I think that how you care for it and what you spend it on make a difference—not only for your own piece of mind, but also in the context of the universe and energy and whatnot.  Money ignored is money that won’t be around for long.  So here’s an incredibly long and detailed four-part series about how I manage my money.  To see the entire series look for the tag “Money.”

I avoid debt as much as I possibly can.
Aside from a brief period in my twenties, where I combined my lack of skills with an iffy job market and no clear idea of what I wanted to do for a living, I have avoided credit card debt.  At the time, I had about $800.00 charged to a
high-interest card, which was the only kind I could get due to the fact I did
not establish credit while in college.  I also had a $2000.00 computer loan and $16,000 in student loan debt.  And I had no job.
I often read financial stories of people who come into a windfall and happily pay things off, or realize that they could sell the rental property they own and make more money than being a landlord.  These stories leave me with an intense feeling of jealousy.  “I wish I just had a windfall like that.” I mutter to myself. But the truth is, I had a windfall and it saved my bacon.
Beginning when I was in elementary school, a check used to arrive every month made out to Patricia and Chris Collins.  Every month my brother and I would endorse it, with me grumbling that I had to write my full name (I was Patty then) while Chris got to write his nickname.  The check was for $128.00 and change and was a mortgage payment made on my father’s boyhood home.  I’ve never really understood why we got the mortgage payment monthly, but it happened for twenty years.
The money was deposited into an annuity account, which I’ve since learned was a horrible investment vehicle for children still in elementary school.  My brother and I cashed out the annuity in our twenties and the amount I received was enough to pay off the credit card, the computer and the student loan, along with putting something in savings.  This gave me the heady feeling of being debt free, which not only was an amazing feeling, but also kept me from ever wanting to carry credit card debt again.  So I had my windfall and something good came
of it.  But I am also happy to accept windfalls in the future too.  I am just
putting that out there, universe.
I do have debt, though. When I went to graduate school I took on student loan debt again.  Because I had used the windfall to pay off my undergraduate loans I left graduate school with loans that totaled just a bit under what I expected to earn my first year as a teacher. Loans equal to or less than expected first-year salary is the phrase that is bandied about when advice is given about student loans.  I’ve slipped into the passive voice in that last sentence because I know
that I read that advice multiple places and yet I’m not sure who is giving it,
or if it is good advice.  I’ve been paying those loans for seven years now and have thirteen years left to go and I’ve yet to work a year as teacher.  To say these student loans drive me crazy would be an understatement.  My monthly payment is one I can easily meet each month. I was faced with bleak employment prospects coming out of graduate school, so I chose the graduated repayment plan over 20 years.  Right now I pay $160.00 per month.  Would I love to accelerate those payments and get rid of this debt early? You betcha. Would I be willing to work 40 hours per week instead of 32 to do so?  Not in my current job, no.
The other debt is the mortgage.  Mortgage debt seems a fact of life for everyone I know, so I don’t begrudge the debt, though when I look at the interest-to-principle ratio my tightwad self shrivels a little.  However, while I regret the student loan debt, I think we did it right with the mortgage.  For one thing, we didn’t overbuy.  Our house is modest, but is as much house as we need, as far as I’m concerned.  Also, we bought our house from a land trust, which means that the land trust owns the land below our house and we pay a small fee for the lease. Since the value of the land isn’t included in the purchase price, our mortgage is that much less.  When we bought the house, I felt comfortable that I could lose my job tomorrow, pick up temp work while I looked for a new opportunity, and still be able to meet the mortgage.  In addition, should we ever decide to sell our house, it will be resold to another first-time homebuyer, which preserves an affordable stock of housing for people who would have otherwise been shut out of the market, like we were.  This is a very important concept to me.
For me, owning a house was important psychologically—once we got into the house and unpacked, I felt incredibly settled.  Here was where I could live for the rest of my life, if I so chose.  This brought a feeling of peace that was not present through the apartment living period of my life.  Apartment living has its
advantages, but I always felt an underlying bit of tension.  You never know when the landlord is going to raise the rent, sell the house out from under you, or tear down the beautiful building to build a parking garage.  I didn’t like that feeling of insecurity.
There are tradeoffs, though.  Before I bought my house, homeowners told me that they were astounded at the amount of time they spent on the house.  “Oh, but I will love that time spent,” I told them, all heady with the idea of projects.  I’ve done a lot of projects over the five years we’ve lived here and they have been mostly satisfying.  Before the house, I used to be bored on a regular basis.  After the house, I think I’ve been bored maybe two days.  This is good and bad.  Sometimes the house can seem a bit overwhelming, but at least I don’t have a regular sense of ennui.

Essay: Swimming

I have been swimming recently, something I have not done since training for the sprint triathlon, which happened in 2006.  How time does fly.

 I grew up swimming, though the dearth of indoor pools in Boise made it a summer-only activity.  Once in a great while my girl scout troop or a church group would travel to the YMCA downtown and we would pay the admission fee and wander down staircases and through locker rooms with naked ladies full of hair in odd places showering to emerge in the heavily chlorinated room with the pool.
Summer was different.  The public pool was right next to the high school, a short drive away—though today we would probably ride bikes, as it was close enough for a short bike ride and much too far away to walk.  Come to think of it, I walked that distance often in high school, it wasn’t far for my adolescent legs. But for a mother and two children it would have been a long walk in the hot Boise summers.
Mom always signed us up for the first round of swimming lessons.  She never learned to swim herself and so we received the largess of a skill denied to her.  We did the first round of lessons because she liked to get them out of the way for the summer.  As a child this sometimes meant the pool was frigid, and as I got older and realized there were other lessons sessions, I lobbied for a later date–to no avail. This seemed tremendously unfair at the time, but now I would do the exact same thing.
Swim lessons were fun, taught by the lifeguards, with varying degrees of competency.  My brother and I progressed through the levels. He always passed everything with flying colors; I passed everything except diving.  The skill of diving came late to me. It was scary to plunge head-first into water, even clear,
chlorinated water I could see the bottom of.  I eventually mastered it, and eventually could do something besides jump off the diving board.
But swimming lessons weren’t the point of the pool, the afternoon swim was.  We had a family pass, which was used by the children in the family, not the adults. My father worked when we went swimming and since my mother didn’t swim, it was my brother and I with the round patches sewn to our swimsuits who entered the pool every day. My mother probably walked us in when we were younger, and then took her place in the covered bleachers outside the fence.
I headed off to the right, toward the women’s locker room, my brother to the left to the men’s.  The locker rooms were bare bones, a few changing stalls (none of which had curtains) a bench and some hooks to hang the green bags while you stuffed your clothing and shoes into them.  There were showers, which I never used despite the “take a shower before entering the pool” sign.  No one seemed to follow this adage, so I didn’t either.  There were toilets, which I didn’t like to use because the seats were always wet.
From the locker room my brother and I met up at the lifeguard station, where we turned in our bags for pins with numbers on them.  After pinning our numbers to our suits, we headed to the pool.  Like most things in childhood, the pool was huge and grew smaller as I got older.  If I viewed it today it would probably be
tiny.  The main area of the pool was six lanes and 25 yards, ranging from four feet deep to 12 feet deep.  During open swim times, there were no lanes.  The four foot area was blocked off from the “deep end.”  Though there were about two lanes worth of swimming area, most of the deep end was taken up with receiving the people coming off the diving board.  We had a “low dive” and a “high dive.”  The low dive was a standard diving board, with the high dive being 10 or 12 feet.
It was a rite of passage to take your first jump off the high dive.
Directly off of the main swimming area was the kid’s area.  It was about 12 by 12 feet and ranged from two feet to probably three and a half feet deep.  It was here I logged the most hours as a child.  The four foot area of the pool was too deep for me for all of my childhood.  It was also where the adolescents hung out and thus not only too deep, but too scary for me.  But the kids area was just the right deep and full of fun.  We played.  We had goggles and messed around with them, we did handstands and somersaults and played “Marco Polo” and other invented games. The pool in the summer was my favorite place to be. In my mind, we stayed there for hours, though I bet it was 90 minutes, max.
As an adolescent, I joined swim team and became intimate with all 25 yards of the bottom of the pool, swimming back and forth with my fellow teammates.  They were good lap swimmers, some of them had been on the team since they were six, so I had some catching up to do.  My years of lessons meant I had the technique down for three of the four strokes.  I had apparently not progressed far enough in the lesson series to learn the “fly.”  After some tutoring from my teammates, it became one of my favorite strokes, so splashy and powerful.  I
became a good swimmer.
I’ve swum off and on during the years.  In college my first PE class was Advanced
Swimming and Diving taught by Professor Needham, a jolly older woman who
parlayed her teenage lifeguard experience to a life-long career teaching women
to swim, or to swim better.  We worked on our stroke technique, swam for distance and learned how to dive.  As an adult, I loved the precision of diving,
but diving opportunities in these litigious times are few and far between.  Professor Needham also taught me Lifeguarding and Synchronized Swimming.  I loved her classes.
Currently, I’ve been swimming at Columbia Pool, which is an indoor pool located in a park near my house.  I suffered a few delusions of grandeur before my first visit, hoping that there would be a sauna.  My first visit had me chuckling because Columbia Pool is the exact sort of bare-bones setup of my childhood pool.  There is a changing room, showers, toilets and the pool itself.  Forget the sauna, there aren’t even lockers.  I put my street clothing in a
green mesh bag exactly like the bags of my childhood and hang it on a rack in
the pool area.  Columbia Pool is even more bare bones because there is no bag check.  Though it is covered, giving me a year-round swimming opportunity fairly close to my house.
I’m quite happy there.  The majority of the swimming population consists of what I call “fat old ladies” women who come regularly to do their exercises, water walk, and chat.  They are quite friendly and I look forward to joining their ranks someday, though I prefer lap swimming to water walking.  The plus of my exercise companions being 30-40 years old than I am is that I feel like the young, fit one.  There are few people in my age demographic and they too, mostly do not fit the super athlete profile.
I like swimming’s solitary nature.  There is optional chatter in the changing
rooms, but the entire workout involves putting my face in the water, leaving
little time to chat.  In addition, I count the number of laps I have swum, and due to my inability to keep numbers in my mind for very long I repeat my lap count over and over again, much like a counting meditation.  Swimming is also
one of the few athletic activities I do well.  My arms power through the water and I feel strong and fast.  Because I can only compare myself to the people in the lanes on either side of me, I have limited data that will challenge my “I’m good at this” feelings.  It’s wonderful.
So I’ve become one of those saggy women with hair in odd places showering in the locker room.  I hope to keep up my swimming habit when school begins again.

Essay: On Keeping Things.

Except for my teenaged years when I was amazed and delighted at the opulence of the Street of Dreams,* I have always loved small houses. There is something about a tiny space that is comforting to me.  Maybe it is that a small space forces people closer together or that in a small space putting things away is both more
necessary (there are fewer places to kick aside your stuff) and also easier.  Also, cleaning is a snap.

 Recently, I have fallen in love with tiny houses—the definition is not yet officially set, but they are usually houses of less than 300 square feet with many of them being 100 to 200 square feet.  I first found Jay Shafer’s Tumbleweed Tiny House designs while spending copious amounts of time dreaming about buying a house.  Now there are many websites touting the small living lifestyle.
I have plans to build my own tiny house one day, because building one would probably scratch that “build your own house” itch I have and also because they are so darn cute.  I am not sure if I could live in one though, and the main reason is because I still need to drag around things from my past.
I am incredibly nostalgic, and I also majored in History in college so I know the importance of primary source material.  I carry with me a good amount of primary source material, still in paper form. Though I have winnowed all of the boring “landscape” photos from my collection, I still have a substantial number of photos with people in them as well as all the negatives of my analog pictures.  I have kept a journal since seventh grade and the term “a journal” refers not to one book of my writing but over a dozen at this point.  I was one of the last
generations to write letters in college and early adulthood so I have a
tremendous pile of them sitting around.
I cannot just get rid of this stuff.
I have gotten much better about other things.  The advent of digital photos helps.  This past winter I let a number of vintage dresses go back out into the world to find new people to wear them.  Because I could photograph them, I could keep
a part of them with me and writing about them for the blog meant that I
recorded why the dresses were important. In fact, getting rid of things has become a regular feature called “Requiem” where I show the object and tell the story before I send it out into the world or the trash heap.  But I can’t really do that with letters and photos and journals.  They are a part of me that cannot be made digital.
I have searched testimonials and writing from people who live in tiny houses to see what they have to say about keeping things from the past.  Dee Williams, one of the more famous Tiny House persons has said that she felt a relief getting rid of those markers of who she was in the past. Tammy Strobel, who writes a blog called Rowdy Kittens about the tiny living lifestyle, keeps a journal, but when she fills one, she pulls out the relevant pages, scans them, and then shreds the entire journal.  Both of these practices make me shudder when I think about applying them to my situation.
In May, I went through my boxes of stuff and I learned a lot of things, revisiting who I was then.  Sure, this activity threw me into a state of manic energy for a few days and was soon followed by a crash, but looking back like that now and then is important.
Take this example.
Everyone has stories they tell about themselves—a personal narrative that makes them who they are.  One of mine is that I always have to make the first move with boys I like.  This is true to varying degrees.  Sometimes I orchestrate the situation, setting the scene carefully like a Hollywood director carefully managing her meet-cute.  Sometimes I just go for the kiss, sometimes I flat out say what I am thinking.  Other times I am a bit more subtle, but for
most boyfriends, my story goes, I make the first move.
In going through my things I found a letter written to me by the guy I now refer to as Boyfriend #4, though his name is actually Kevin**  Checking the date, I saw that it arrived in my mailbox at college at the tail end of my freshman year.  At this point, I knew this guy a little.  He was a good friend of the only ex-boyfriend
I managed to remain friends with (#2, as it were) and so our social circles
crossed frequently.  At Christmas break in December we had crossed paths again this time in a smaller circle.  He had a lot of things I liked. He was smart,
good looking, not too tall and had a head of the most incredibly gorgeous long
hair that reached nearly to his waist.*** We had music in common and
reading.  I liked that he came from a poor family (cheap dates were a necessity) and had not yet gotten around to getting a driver’s license.  At the time
I was still in my “improving” phase of girlfriend and there was some good
potential there.
Our most recent encounter was on my last night in Boise at Christmas break,
when we found ourselves together in the back seat of Boyfriend #2’s car, with
another friend riding shotgun.  As we drove around, the boys were explaining a version of the game of “Chicken” to me, wherein a boy, finding a girl’s hand on his knee prods her to move it up his leg and calls her “chicken” if she doesn’t.
“The guy wins either way!” they exclaimed to me.
I laughed at their logic and put my hand on Kevin’s knee.  In the back seat, I played my own game of chicken, slowly inching my hand up his thigh without being prompted.  At one point, caught up in the game, he shifted position, slumping down in the seat so my hand took a big jump closer to “winning.”  When we got to where we were going, we both held the position until someone opened one of the car doors which turned on the overhead lights.  The guys in the front seat peered back at us.  Kevin shrugged, his hands giving that universal, “what can you do?” while I smiled up at them.  We broke off our game and went
back to our respective lives, never saying anything about what had happened.
The letter Kevin sent me doesn’t bury the lead.  He opens by calling me a “damn cool female” and noting that because of that he can “write the real shit without offending you.”  He goes on to tell me that he is, “constantly trying to be suave when you’re around,” and chalks it up to me being a “college woman.”  Then, there is my favorite sentence written in his idiosyncratic style: “Also in there is the fact that you listen to what I say, and don’t judge me over if you
disagree.  Helping that right along is the other fact, of you going an attractive person physically.”  He goes on to say he hopes this doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable, which is a sentiment I never expressed the times I have
laid things on the table.
He continues with general chit-chat, he’s a senior in high school and things are winding down, all of his boys (the friends we had in common) were doing well—they were all going to get more than a 3.0.  At this point I have to interject and say
that this strikes me as a funny thing for him to comment on.  Were they really sitting around and talking about grades?  It doesn’t seem like them, and even less normal for him to report to me. I will chalk it up to nervous letter conversation.
When I found this letter and read it in May, I had absolutely no recollection of receiving it.  There is no envelope, so perhaps it came with a letter from Boyfriend #2 as we corresponded, albeit infrequently.  But what was weirder to me was that I remembered nothing about the feelings I had when I read it.  I can
guess that I was thrilled, as we ended up together for the summer, but the
feelings I felt during the initial reading are gone from my body.  It would be interesting to cross reference this letter with my journal from the time period, but it is currently being stored at my Aunt’s house.
I think I forgot receiving this letter because it does not fit into the personal narrative of “I always make the first move.”  And this letter proves me wrong.  If I discarded the letter along with the other flotsam and jetsam of my life, I would not have the opportunity to come across a reminder of a different version of the story I have been telling about myself.
A friend is currently editing his travel journal of a year ago and publishing it on a blog.  His travel journal seems to have been the recipient of the feelings he was working through about the demise of his marriage and the entries about the exotic location are juxtaposed with memories from different relationships with
women.  It is fascinating reading, both for the content and his writing style.
He commented to me that it is also interesting for him, because he clearly had thoughts and feelings he wrote down, but he does not remember thinking or feeling them.  Journals are good to have around for that reminder.
I worry, as we switch over to an electronic world, that these moments of insight will become inaccessible to us.  Roger Ebert wrote a beautiful tribute to his wife and remarked that he has saved all the correspondence of their courtship,
locked away in a safe on a disk drive. He can’t easily read any of it, because the computers we have today do not run what the computers the correspondence was written on, but the words are still there.
So right now, I will not be getting rid of these vestiges of the old me.  My tiny house may need to be a bit less tiny, but they will stay with me.  They will be vulnerable to fire, flood and bugs, but for a long as they go on existing, they will be a handy reminder of myself then.
8/26/12 update:  I’ve just read a blog post where Tammy Strobel says she is now keeping her journals.  Whew!
*In Portland this is a street of new homes where builders and decorators showcase their design prowess with opulence.  The rabble pays money to tour the homes and get ideas for their own, smaller dreams and then the houses are sold to rich people who probably just redecorate them with their own designers.

**The number system broke down in that tumultuous time after college when the relationships weren’t very solid.  Was that two week thing that burned out fast Boyfriend #6?  The college boyfriend is Boyfriend #5, though I mostly refer to him as “college boyfriend John” and Matt, the current boyfriend doesn’t have a number.  He’s either six or probably 10, I would have to take a careful accounting, which is the last thing I want to do, revisit those relationships.

***This prompts dialogue from the movie Singles:
–“He probably has a ponytail right?”
–“He does not have a ponytail”
–“He’s Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Man.”
–“He’s not Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Man.”

Essay: Tired.

My relationship with sleep is troubled.  I always want more, but there are periods in my life where the insomnia returns and even though I am very tired and would like nothing more than to be asleep, my body is awake in the middle of the
night for an hour or two.  Of late, there have been a string of these nights which is “fun” not just for me, but the people around me.

When I am tired, I feel it in my eyes the most.  There’s tension in them that expands across my nose.  It is a tight feeling—uncomfortable.  Also, my brain is
lethargic and my thoughts turn often to sleep.  My hunger signals are harder to interpret.  I feel hungry all the time, though experience tells me I am not really and eating constantly will not help the problem.
I mostly associate these physical sensations with the misery that is insomnia.  However, last night I was thinking about times I feel overtired, but with a sense of elation.  It happens. Here are some examples.
I am in college, and writing my first long paper for anything and I am a bit out of my element.  The paper is for Western Civ. and must be eight to ten pages.  I have researched my topic, found four sources—one more than required!—in the college’s tiny library.  I have made quote cards to avoid plagiarism and have a bibliography done already.  The problem is that the paper is due tomorrow and I have not yet written it.  I have made some attempts, but they have trailed off into a few tepid paragraphs.  It is nine pm, my other work is finished and the clock is ticking.
I write my first draft in longhand on paper I have grabbed from the recycling bin and I type it into my word processor as I edit.  As the hours pass, I revise and polish, catching mistakes here and there, adding details and clarifying points.  At two in the morning I set my word processor to print while I walk down to the basement of the dorm for a soda to keep me awake awhile longer.  I take the printed copies and begin the arduous task of reading each sentence individually from the last to the first, to catch my many spelling and grammar errors.*
At four o’clock I have finished, printed my final copy and stapled it with the stapler my mother sent me to college with.  I collapse into bed for three hours of sleep and arise with that exhausted feeling.  Still, I am pretty pumped. I wrote the paper, it exceeded the proscribed eight to ten page minimum by a few pages and I am pleased with my work.  Even as a college student, a good night’s sleep was important to me and I swore I would never do that again, a vow I mostly kept for my remaining years of college.  The paper got an A and went on to win a writing prize, forever associating that exhausted feeling with a worthy payoff.
/////
I like a boy. This situation could be any number of examples as I like boys a lot and the process of liking one was a familiar one from elementary school. However, beginning in high school, they started to like me back, which changed the game entirely and was much more rewarding.  So I like a boy.  We’ve been hanging out more and I am pretty sure he likes me, but I do not want jinx anything by admitting it aloud.  I can read the signs, which range from the
hand casually resting on my shoulder or arm to the out-of-nowhere, “what’s up
with you” phone call, to the group gatherings that are suddenly being organized
by mutual friends that always include the two of us.
It is late and I have to get home. I have a curfew, or work early in the morning or just need to end the evening.  The two of us have circled closer together: maybe the group gathering has dissipated leaving only us; maybe we have gone for a walk and our bodies bump into each other more regularly; maybe we are talking intently on a couch and in our excited conversation have inched closer together.  There is a tension in the air, and euphoria. Everything has grown brighter as the potential for something grows before us.
We part. Maybe with something to seal the deal like a kiss, maybe with firm plans for the next day, maybe with a hug that lasts longer than one between friends usually does.  But I come home, giddy that the signs that have been pointing in a direction have not been false.  Something is happening.
Home, I go through my nightly ritual, maybe running through the whole thing if it is not too late, maybe just crawling into my pajamas and flopping into bed if it is.  But I don’t fall asleep.  I am high on the possibilities, giddy with like and thrilled that my feelings are reciprocated.  Sleep comes eventually and I wake in the morning exhausted and amped and full of possibility.
/////
I am a junior in high school.  Junior year is the sweet spot when you have the
high school thing down and do not have the many pressures of senior year
hanging over you, or at least it was for me.  I have been hanging out with a girl who is not yet a friend.  Our boyfriends—who have broken up with both of
us over the summer—are friends and our social circles overlap a bit, but we
have not quite advanced to the “official friend” stage.  It is a Saturday night in early September, a few hours before my curfew and we are chatting.
I can’t remember why it was just the two of us, other people might have had earlier curfews or wandered off to their own potential romance or just gone
home to bed.
It is one of those conversations where you are meant to be going, but the conversation is so delightful that it kept going, despite the fact we were standing out on the sidewalk in the dark.  We talked into the warm September night, first standing, then leaning against the car, finally giving into the inevitable and sitting on the sidewalk, our feet in sandals resting in the gutter, our arms crossed against the promise of autumn chill.
Sitting there, I can remember thinking, “I really want us to be friends.”  New friendships have always been trickier for me than new romance.  In a romance, when push comes to shove, I can always just kiss the boy and find out if things are going to go in the direction I think signs are heading.  There is no similar marker for a friend.
Our conversation did have to end eventually, but I really did not want it to.  Curfew called, though, and we reluctantly parted.  At home, I was tired as only teenagers can be—that potent cocktail of hormones and growth and figuring out who I really am combined with an urge to stay up late and not the best eating habits with a bit of schoolwork and part-time jobs thrown in is incredibly exhausting.  But through my exhaustion, I felt the happy connection to a new friend that bolstered me the next day.
/////
So it is not always a bad feeling, this tired feeling.  Sometimes there is energy behind it, from accomplishment, new love or new friends.  Maybe when I am tired just because of boring old middle-of-the-night insomnia I can tap into some of that good energy and boost my day.
 *Something, it should be noted, I do not do for these essays.

Essay: Older

Some years ago I remarked to a friend, “I thought getting older would mean my body would stay the same, but it would just be more wrinkly.  I didn’t realize my body would actually start breaking down.”  I was in my late 20s at the time and psoriasis had begun its march across my flesh.  But getting older—something we are all doing, even three-year-olds—has all sorts of surprises.

When I was sixteen and working in my first job at a tiny restaurant, I rang up a customer, and enquired how his day was.  “Fabulous!” was his reply.  He had just attended his twentieth high school reunion and had a blast.  From him I learned that, “your tenth, it’s okay, but people are still trying to make something of themselves.  By their twentieth, they’ve relaxed and are just fun to catch up with.”  I filed this away for that day in the far future when I would attend my twentieth reunion.  The far future has nearly arrived because my twentieth high school reunion is next year.
When I was 22, a newly minted college graduate, I moved to the big city and I landed a temping  job that first sent me to a posh private high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I was to assist in the bookstore, selling books to the returning high school students.  I was young, but they were younger and I will never forget the realization that when they looked at me selling books in their bookstore, they saw an old person.  I was only five years older than some of
them, but I could see in their eyes that I had moved from their “part of our
group” classification to a different “old person” classification. Though, to be
fair, it could have just been an “old(er)” classification, at the time it felt like
the same thing.
This week I went for a drive and cycled through radio stations, singing along as I drove.  One of the stations was a classic rock station and not once did it play the classic rock I listened to during my adolescence: Led Zepplin, the Who, the Eagles. No, this station playlist consisted of, as they told me several times, “the
New Classic Rock.”  The new classic rock is what was the new music of my adolescence: Bon Jovi, Tesla, Guns & Roses.  There’s nothing like a marketing
scheme branding a seminal part of my youth as “classic” to mark the passage of
time.
I have also recently had another realization.  After seeing Magic Mike, I was checking up on Channing Tatum on IMDB.com and I realized that all of the up-and-coming hunky stars are younger than me.  And not just by a year or two, or even the four years difference that separates the boyfriend and me.  Channing Tatum was born in 1980, the year I started Kindergarten.  Our age difference is enough that we wouldn’t have been in high school at the same time.  Chris Hemsworth?  Nine years younger.  Shia LaBeouf (not that I find him particularly
attractive) is twelve years younger.  If any of these dreamboats ever want to enter into a relationship with me I will have to probably explain a lot of things like the ‘84 Summer Olympics and the first term of Reagan.  They might not
even know that John Cougar and John Mellencamp are the same people.
And the thing is, I didn’t see it coming, though I should have.  When I was little, movie stars were old.  Harrison Ford?  Old.  Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd? Old.
Richard Gere? Old.  I didn’t haveenough concept of age to know how old they were, I just put them in the rather broad “same age as my parents” category.*
Though actually, all of those actors except Harrison Ford are actually
younger than my parents. After years of leading men being old, there was a sudden transition when dreamy actors were just a bit older than me.  George Clooney would probably have to explain bits of 70s culture to me, but we could make it work. Actually, he’s 13 years older than me, and nearly the same age as Richard Geer, who I have in a completely different “old” category.
Then suddenly, actors in Hollywood were just a little bit older than me, if not the same age or a bit younger.  We could have gone to high school together.  Ethan Hawke and Joaquin Pheonix?  We’re pretty much the same age.  Joaquin Phoenix is two days younger than I am and I have liked him since “Space Camp” when he was Leaf Phoenix.  Ethan Hawke I’ve had my eye on since 1985’s the Explorers.  But let us go on.  Ben Affleck and Matt Damon?  Two and four years older, respectively. Edward Norton, six years older, Leonardo DiCaprio only two weeks younger than me.  Christian Bale is born in the same year. Mark Wahlberg is three years older.  We are in the same demographic group.  Theoretically, dating would not be a problem.  It was also exciting to watch someone my age
win an Oscar for best adapted screenplay, or be “King of the World.”  Once that begins to happen to people substantially younger than me, I foresee an old-lady grousing of “whippersnapper” and “upstart.”
The problem is that now if I like a breakout actor I probably have to face facts that he is too young for me to theoretically date.  I can follow his career, see his movies, sure, but it is more like a nephew or a favorite neighbor boy.  We did not come up at the same time and we were not shaped by the same things. What’s more, I have to face the realization that actors in my age demographic are not the young up-and-coming actors any longer, which means that I am past up-and-coming, myself.  I do not really need to up-and-come, but it is a little odd to be in the “older, established” category so suddenly and when I do not really feel established.
This is only the beginning.  Soon, more and more actors making a name for themselves will be born when I was in fourth grade, then junior high school and eventually high school.  After that they will all be in the “I’m old enough to be their mother” category which just leaves me with an “ew” feeling should my liking turn into movie crush.
And actresses?  In about four years, the few actresses my age still acting will have shuffled off to the over-40 actresses retirement home.  I will see them now and then playing the mother of someone nine years younger than they are** and then now and then in their 50s playing a grandmotherly sort.  But that’s an entirely different essay.
*This category is so broad for children it makes the early elementary school students I work with fun to question.  When I ask them how old they think I am sometimes they come back with an incredibly unrealistic answer of “seventeen” and sometimes they completely overshoot and go with “fifty-six.”  Every once in a while they hit the “just a bit younger” sweet spot which gives me an odd feeling of elation that is entirely out of proportion to the random nature of their answers.
**The Graduate reference

Essay: Fat

So I am fat. Not even fat, really.  I am not sitting solidly in the “overweight” category I’ve spent most of my adult life.  Those days spent miserably overweight seem like a thing to strive for now that I have completely living in the obese segment of the BMI chart.  And man, there’s a difference.  It used to be, when I looked down and saw my stomach pooching out I could suck in and still have a waist.  Now, I look down, suck in and only reach the “before sucking stage” of before.

How did this happen?  I blame two things.  One is that I have really let myself go. The “let yourself go” phrase is usually lobbed against women balancing children/husband/home/work but I’ve managed to do it without the children or the husband.  In the last year I just gave up taking care of myself.  The exercise fell to minimal levels and I ate what I wanted when I wanted and damn the consequences.  The other factor is that for the first six months of 2011 I went on a diet and lost 20 pounds.  This was in combination with following a naturopath’s plan to avoid gluten and dairy.  The combined restrictions of the diet and naturopath were at first comforting, but then started to chafe.  The whole thing went down last summer and I threw off all restrictions, eating sandwiches and macaroni and cheese with abandon and packed on 30 pounds, regaining the 20 I lost and adding 10 more.
So now I’m fat and I hate it.  My skin has folds to it, I don’t like the way I look in any clothing, I feel slow and slovenly and kind of disgusting.  A class at the gym the other day involved a backward lunge.  My hand rested on my waist and I could feel my stomach fat fold over my thumb as I performed the exercise.  It was frustrating and no amount of sucking in my stomach could fix the problem, believe me, I tried.
Here’s the worst thing. My disgust with myself and my fat frame has spilled over to others.  I’ve noticed that I continually evaluate women’s body types as they move in and out of my frame of reference and I feel the same disgust of women who are as fat, or fatter than me as I do me.  Why can’t they take care of themselves?  What has brought them to this point?  These are all questions I would do better asking myself then applying them to anonymous women. (It’s always women I judge, never men.)
I’ve sworn off diets forever.  This swearing joins the pledge I made about five years ago: to never again pay someone to tell me how to lose weight. I’ve read the figures, I know how much money the diet industry makes each year.  I know that, except for a few people for whom diets work, diets don’t work.  So why should I pay someone to tell me what to do when that thing they are going to tell me most likely won’t work? The diet I went on last year I didn’t pay for, I got around that restriction by checking out a book from the library.  That worked until it didn’t and I’ve accepted that following someone’s plan is not the way for me to lose weight.
Here is the other thing I know.  I’ve had moments of normal weight in my life and I wasn’t following a diet.  I ate right—and I think we all have a good idea of what this means—and exercised—I think we all know how to do this, too—and lost weight.  Why could I do that then and not now?  Where did this amazing source of willpower come from?  How could I meet this astonishing feat?
It wasn’t willpower or some magical combination of elements, I lost weight during those times because I knew who I was and my place in the world and was reasonably happy.  I felt secure, I lived in the present, not worrying about the future, and I took care of myself.  I haven’t been in that place in a very long time.  So now, I’m working on getting there.  I’m not sure I know who I am—certainly the harsh taskmistress who can put me through the paces so I lose weight isn’t me.  But I’m pretty sure this lazy, whiny, “don’t wanna” person isn’t me either. 
I’m working on eating less.  Eating right hasn’t really been a problem, I’m good with the vegetable/fruit/protein/carb balance and can prepare all of those things for myself.  I’m not very good with leaving the table just at the full mark, or even leaving the table a little bit over full. I’ll work on that too.  But also I need to live in the present, avoiding worry about the future, regrets about the past.  I also need to keep my present as comfortable as possible.  This means cleaning the house when I don’t really feel like it and cooking when I would rather collapse on the couch with a book and do nothing. It also means backing off on the judgment of my overweight self and my similarly overweight brethren.
So the conclusion of this post will not have me forswearing off sugar, or carbs or meat or dairy or gluten or any of the things that supposedly will save me from my weight.  I’ve actually sworn off all of those at one time or another in my life.  When I have, I have not seen a miraculous change in me.  Eliminating things from my diet only makes me want them more.  I’ll conclude this post by committing to be my authentic self and take care of myself, with food, with exercise and with psyche.   It’s no promise to lose two pounds per week, but I have put in my time with those promises and I know they don’t come true.

Essay: My healthcare journey.

When I was a freshman in college, the country was abuzz
about the potential Health Care Plan proposed by President and Hillary Clinton.  I was interested in the
plan and followed the story through various media sources.  I remember one news magazine reported that if
the plan passed, coverage would begin in 1997 and it even had a mock-up of what
the medical cards everyone would carry.

“That’s perfect timing.” I thought to myself.  “I will just be getting out of college and my
national health coverage will begin.” 
The moment when I had those thoughts came back to me again and again in
the nearly 20 years that have passed since then.
Growing up, I always had health insurance.  Both my parents were teachers and they made the same trade off so many teachers have over the years:  less pay, better insurance.  The first time I ever heard of someone paying
a $10.00 co-pay I was shocked.  All our
co-pays, for everything, were $5.00. 
Overall, I was pretty healthy growing up, and my health care “needs”
only really began as a teenager, when I started to take medication for acne.  While acne is not a life-threatening health
care need, in our society, a teenager with acne is treated differently than a
teenager without acne.  Both my parents
had suffered through adolescence without a dermatologist, so they were happy I
had the option.
My post-college years included a patchwork of health care
options.  Like many people in their
twenties, I tried on different jobs. 
Sometimes I had coverage (of varying capacities) through my employer,
sometimes I did not.  I also had some
luck.  At a time I did not have health
care I was diagnosed with major depression.  Because I lived in Massachusetts at the time
and I didn’t make a lot of money, nearly all of my treatment was covered.  This was before Massachusetts had moved
toward universal coverage, but even then, the state seemed to fund health
insurance more than others I’ve lived in. 
It was a great feeling of relief when the nice man at the hospital took
my pay stubs, crunched some numbers and told me that I would be paying about
$40.00 per month for my treatment.
Aside from that, my health care needs were few.  When I had a boyfriend, I paid for my birth
control myself—I usually went to Planned Parenthood for that.  I had an accident involving wisteria and my
eyeball that involved an emergency room visit, some drugs, and two visits to an
ophthalmologist.  That was also in
Massachusetts and also nearly fully covered.
Then I turned 27 and soon after had a mysterious patch of
flakes appear on my scalp.  It wasn’t
dandruff, because it was isolated and somewhat scabby. I had no idea what it
was.  I moved to Oregon, leaving
Massachusetts’ excellent health care for the poor behind me.  In Oregon, I started temporary work, and
preparing for graduate school.  My head
got worse, much itchier and more scabby and flaky and finally, I looked up dermatologists
in the phone book, called a few to find out how much they cost and took a long
bus ride to see one of them.
Psoriasis.  It seemed
I had an auto-immune disorder, never a good diagnosis for someone with health
insurance, much less someone without it. 
He proscribed a solution for my head, I wrote him a check for $150.00
and the pharmacist another check for $50.00 and entered into the non-health
care, non-healthy world.  The solution
dialed back the itch and the flakes, but it didn’t stop the spread.  As I continued temping and continued waiting
to begin graduate school I watched as the mysterious scab on my knee never
healed.  It turned out to be psoriasis
too.  And slowly but surely, the psorasis spread
from my head onto my body.
Once in graduate school, I happily paid the extra fee for
health insurance and went to see the campus health services.  They gave me a steroid cream for my legs and
referred me to the teaching hospital on the hill.  The doctor there saw me and prescribed four
different creams, none of which were covered by insurance and all of which were
more than I could afford as a graduate student. 
I didn’t fill them, left the pharmacy in tears and never went back to
the specialist.
As graduate school ended, I found myself in a panic about
the end of my health insurance.  The term
“pre-existing condition” was featured strongly in the health care news.  If I didn’t do something quickly, I was going
to be one of those people with a pre-existing condition and no one would ever
cover me.  Someone told me that if I had
continuous coverage I would not have a pre-existing condition, so I bought a
catastrophic health insurance plan. I paid $125.00 per month through six month
of unemployment, and crossed my fingers that this continuous coverage plan
would work.
I did get a job and entered the land of the fully insured with relief.  It was hard to see a
dermatologist—my health insurance company is great with preventative care and
great with computer records and skimps on the specialists.  When I did see one, he proscribed creams and solutions
and I began to beat back the scabby skin that had spread while I was uninsured.
That was in 2005 and I’ve been insured for seven years now
through my employers.  I’m incredibly
thankful, for I know what it is like to not have health insurance. But the
insurance also holds me hostage to my job. 
The job I had in 2005 was not a good fit and it took me 18 months to
find another one.  Those were a very long
18 months.  Every day I wanted to quit
and every day I got up and went to work because I didn’t want to lose my health
insurance.  Right now, I’m looking to
change careers again.  It would behoove
me to quit my current job and to take a part-time job in my preferred field.  I could do this, and find another part-time
job to make up the difference.  But I
don’t do this, partially because neither one of those part-time jobs will give
me health insurance.
I’ve also flirted with going back to school for a degree in
a different field.  I won’t be doing that
because the program would have me finishing with a crazy amount of loans and
also because I would have to buy my own health insurance.  I’ve done the research and obtained quotes.  If I buy my own coverage, I would be paying $150.00 per month for a plan that did not cover
prescriptions.  I know the full cost
of my prescriptions, for my insurer lets me know how much they have covered every
time I fill one, I would have to pay over $400.00 per month into health
insurance to ensure I could fill my prescriptions.  That wasn’t going to happen.
So I’m partially held hostage by my insurance coverage.  I know I’m not the only one.  How many would-be entrepreneurs stay in their
jobs because the jobs provide the health insurance for their families?  We are not a nimble and quick nation in the
realm of health care.  I write the check
every month for my employer health care plan and I know how much it costs to
keep the eight of us insured. It is an incredible sum.
What would I like?  I
would love a single-payer system, as no one has yet convinced me what the point
of keeping insurance companies if everyone is insured.  Talk about wasteful spending, just think of
all the money that could be saved without all the complex coding.  But I’m happy to settle for living in a
country where my health insurance does not seem like the incredibly tenuous
thing it is now.  I’m hoping the
Affordable Health Care Act will move us in that direction.  But nearly 20 years as an adult with a health problem has made me
wary.

Essay: Etta.

Just as I can recall where I was when the spaceship
Challenger exploded* and when I heard that Jerry Garcia died,** so I can tell
you exactly where I was the first time I really heard Etta James.
My time with the Fresh Pond Bread and Circus was brief, from
a life-span perspective.  I only worked
there about two years.  But the short
amount of time spent there coincided with a period in my life where a lot of
things were happening.  It was a period
like High School.  High School is three
years—at least it was in my case—which seems like forever when you are in it,
but is a small amount of time overall. 
However, so many things are going on during those three years, that the
story written of your life about that period would be a weighty tome, full of
John Irving-like labyrinth plot combined with Michael Chabon-dense prose. Whereas
the story written about the three years of work you did mid-career would be a
short, (and most likely boring) novella. 
See: Shopgirl.
At Bread and Circus, I worked in Prepared Foods.  In less fancy grocery stores, Prepared Foods
would be known as the deli section.  We
sliced and packaged lunch meat to order—never ahead of time.  We scooped various vegetable, grain and meat
dishes for picky people who couldn’t be bothered to cook for themselves: “I’d like the carrot, onion and potato dish,
but I don’t want any onions.”  We cut
cooked chicken into quarters and scooped tubs of mashed potatoes and macaroni
and cheese.  We gave samples to people,
refilled the dishes when they were low, put away everything at night and pulled
it out again every morning.  When we
needed a break, from the customers or the monotony, we would wander back to the
kitchens to grab some water and chat with the cooks.
In my opinion, the cooks had the better job.  They avoided the customers, cranked out a lot
of the food we sold and actually made something.  Out front, we were like the ocean, lapping at
the shore. A dish would run low, we would refill it.  It would run low, we would refill it.  After all the refilling, the tide would go
out at the end of the day and all the dishes would be emptied back into the
containers.  In the morning, the new crew
would take that same food out of the same containers we had placed it in eight
hours before and put it back in a dish and begin the refilling process.  Whereas, I watched the cooks actually do
something like take massive amounts of eggs, some of the prosciutto ends, a bit
of spinach and several pie crusts.  With
a bit of chatter among their colleagues as they worked and some chopping,
mixing and stirring, six quiche would appear from the ovens, ready to sell.
The cooks also got to listen to their own music while they
worked.  Out front, we were held hostage
to whatever the muzack station was playing. Sometimes that wasn’t a bad
thing.  By that point, muszack had
expanded to playing actual music on genre specific stations.  At times, we were even lucky enough that the
otherwise straight-laced manger put on the 70s hard rock station.  I can guarantee that most of America has not
had the pleasure of scooping Orzo Salad, humming along to Led Zeppelin, only to
emerge from the case with a full container to hear the “lady who lunches” with
the fur coat and the coiffed hair say in a voice of upper class outrage, “What are they playing? It’s entirely too loud!”  Alas, the lady would then usually march over
to customer service and complain and this happened enough that pretty soon we
did not hear the 70s hard rock station played very often.  Mostly it was middle-of-the-road adult light
rock, but I did hear Dan Bern played a few times, much to my excitement.
The cooks’ taste in music was eclectic and so it was always
interesting to hear what was going on in the back.  One day, 
I was taking a long drink of water and Andy changed out the CD.  A great sweep of violins filled the space,
followed by two sustained notes by an amazingly powerful voice.  We were four measures in and I was
hooked.  “Who is this?” I asked.
“Etta James.” Andy told me.
I’d never heard of her, but I found reasons to wander
through the kitchen again and again as the CD played.  It wasn’t long before I had my own copy.  Etta James. Her best.  Then, I would annoy the cooks and sing along,
telling them that my voice was just like hers. 
We all new that it wasn’t, and they felt free to remind me.
I lived with four roommates at the time—all women, all in
similar life transitions as I was.  Given
that we were young and in our twenties, we all smoked and would often sit
around the kitchen table drinking cheap wine, smoking and talking.  There would usually be music playing and Etta
James was in heavy rotation.  I’m glad I
don’t smoke anymore and that my life is not as full of transitions, but I
wouldn’t trade those conversations around the table.
It seems like everyone knows, “At Last.”  I once read that countless brides have swept
down the aisle to it, and it was played at Barack Obama’s inauguration.  One year at Boston’s Fourth of July Fireworks
celebration, I even saw fireworks explode in time to it. It’s a good song and I
like it too, but it’s not my favorite Etta James song.  That would be “Sunday Kind of Love.”
I’ve rejected marriage for myself, so I won’t be sweeping
down the aisle to “At Last,” but even if I was going to get married, it would
be the choice anyway.  It’s a song that’s
bit too sure of itself, and I sometimes worry that the singer maybe isn’t quite
able to see the whole picture. That perhaps she’s overcompensating in some way.  I mean, “my lonely days are over, and life is
like a song.”?  I’ve read enough novels
to know that you can be lonely, even after your love has come along and “life
is like a song” is a bit too fairy tale for me.
“Sunday Kind of Love” however is more of a classified ad, or
a nice list of goals.  The song starts
with just her big powerful voice, telling us that she “wants a”—and then the band
comes in on “Sunday kind of love/A love
to last past, Saturday night.”  At the
time I heard this song, I was in what seemed at the time  to be an extended
period of not being in a relationship. 
In fact, Linda McCartney died and Paul McCartney mourned and remarried
and I was still not in a relationship. 
“I’ve been single longer than Paul McCartney!” I exclaimed to my friend
while looking at the magazine cover of the wedding picture while standing in line
at the store. The older woman behind me snorted with laughter.
I dated, which was no fun at all, and cycled through some
relationships that were Junior High in length—no more than a few weeks.  My lack of a steady relationship was one of
many unsure things in my life: When would I move to Portland? What would I do
for a living?  Should I go back to
school? Would that job over there be better for me? Who, exactly would love me?
I related to Etta James “Sunday Kind of Love” lament.  And I eventually figured things out, mostly.
*Watching on TV with the rest of my fifth-grade class
**Working at a liquor store in Boise, Idaho.  I’d just come from my other job at a Super 8
motel and I heard the news on the radio. 
My friend Sara, who worked there too, commented that she thought I had
heard, or she would have told me.

Cougars, Coeds and Chick Lit.

I am here to tell you that I reject the following terms and
will not being using them: Cougars, Coeds and Chick Lit. I invite you all to
join in my campaign.
Cougars.  This has
come into fashion in the last few years, its name even graces(graced) (ahem) a
TV show.  A Cougar is an older woman who
is dating—or married to—a (much) younger man. 
They have now split, but the Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher union comes to
mind.
Coeds.  For years, I
read books that included the term Coed and I assumed it meant college student,
either male or female.  I assumed that
once colleges opened their doors to both men and women, the education was
coeducational and thus the students were called coeds.  I can still recall the feeling of horror I
felt my senior year in high school when the sentence structure I was reading
did not support this definition and I was forced to consider that the term only
applied to females.  I refused to believe
this, at first, but double checked with my mother who confirmed the grim news.
Chick Lit.  First of
all, this is an awful term because when it is said it aloud, a large percentage
of people think you are discussing gum (Chiclets) and then there is usually a
weird cognitive dissonance moment.  Chick
Lit is a novel written primarily for women and it usually contains some
elements of a romantic story and happy ending, though it should not be
considered the same as a “romance novel.” 
There is often something of one of these elements:  zaniness, work drama, conversation with best
friends.  Sometimes there is great
tragedy to overcome.
Why do we need to end our use of these terms?  I reject them all because they are all terms
focused on women that have no equivalent
for males.  What do you call an older
man who dates/marries a much younger woman? 
There is no term, as it is an accepted practice in our society.  If you are channeling your inner frat boy,
you might call the man in question “lucky” and snigger after saying it.  What do you call a male student at a
college?  A student.  There is certainly no term that suggests that
they are added on to the scene and maybe it is okay they are there, they are
pretty and all, but they are not real students.
As for Chick Lit, are there no novels of fluff written for
men?  Of course there are.  What do we call them?  There is no term.  There are many genre specific terms of kinds
of fluff novels that are primarily read by men: 
science fiction, fantasy, spy thrillers, etc.  Though those genre specific books aren’t
looked upon as great literature, they are also not dismissed out of hand with
an overarching title:  Sperm Lit,
perhaps?
Language reflects our values and beliefs and none of these
three terms reflects an equality between women and men we pretend we have in
society.  Granted, our language
concerning gender is at a disadvantage from the get-go as the common terms we
use to describe the not-male part of the population (women, woman, female)
cannot be used without summoning the male part of the species.  Undoing this would be quite a feat and it is
not what I am here to do today.  Today, I
am just asking you to think before you use the above three terms.  If you chose to use them, what are you saying
about women’s place in the world?