Rhubarb Pie

Bats!

Last night NBT and I joined a small gathering of oddballs who trudged into the woods at dusk to watch and listen to some bat biologists trapping, measuring, banding, and releasing bats.  It was part of a cool nonprofit organization's outreach efforts, probably related to raising awareness and public support and likely money for what they do, and although I can't help with the money part I will certainly do my part and start talking about them.  

I'm too rushed right now to write anything long and lush and descriptive, but I wish you could have been there to feel and see it for yourself.  It was great to walk along in the woods with friendly strangers, mosquitos humming in my ears.  It was nice to be there in the gloaming darkness, chilly, as the light faded and the stars began to pop out.  I liked that we were all sort of companionably looking up at the place where the trees met the open sky, looking for the flicker of wings going by.  I liked that it seemed like all of us were equally curious and dorky -- people were comparing notes on their homemade bat houses, and all of us seemed to be listening politely but impatiently while the executive director talked about the organization and its broad goals.  What about the bats, we were all thinking. 

And it was fun for me to watch the scientists at work with their headlamps, calmly telling us about a bat while shining their headlamps on it, showing us parts of its wing, telling us what they measure and look for.  One guy measured and weighed and banded; the other guy wrote things down. Meanwhile the bat was squawking and flapping around, pissed as hell, biting at the rubber gloved hand of the bat scientist without effect.  

I loved the whole thing.  But the truth is, the sad truth about me, is that when I do something like this, the curiousity that it awakens is about the people.  I wanted to know about the bat scientist, and about his community of other bat scientists, how he ended up doing this work, what he does every day, whether he is living his dream.  I wanted to hear about the outreach coordinator and I wondered about the older couple who walked back with us through the woods talking about the beehives at their house -- how long have they been married, and what do they do, and how did they end up here with us tonight?  There was a lawyer there who I knew and admired back when I was practicing, and a young dad with a little girl.  There was a woman managing the fundraising for one of the candidates for governor. More than I wondered about things like how to tell a juvenile bat from an adult (the calcification of the bones), I wondered about the reasons that brought these other folks out to stand in the dark beside me, and where they would go when we walked together through the rustling, fluttering trees back to the bright lights, and our cars, and our lives.  

Last weekend.

With a completely full weekend booked, Ali needed an art project.  Actually, Ali needs an art project all the time.  We choose the screen door.  I wish I'd taken a picture of it, ripped and broken and plain and functional.  This might show you some of it.

We took it down, made it beautiful and re-screened it.  Now it looks like this.

Things you miss? Like your co-blogger?

Oh darlin, I owe you many and long posts.  I haven't not-written for any good reason.  My laptop was broke for a while, and then I was slammed with a big report for work.  Then friends are here every moment and my house is full.  Ali is back, staying with me this weekend.  We had friends to see for long evenings every evening, and Pie Contest to throw and errands to run.  So of course we took on a huge gratuitous house project.  I cannot wait to show you pictures of it tomorrow.

Talk soon!  But not really!  Because my friends are here until next week!  But soon!  I miss you and the blog!

Things I Miss

I've been noticing a sort of quiet wistfulness in myself lately, and I was just starting to identify it by name when along comes Jeremy Blachman and writes something almost exactly hitting what I was noticing.  

I miss writing honestly.  I miss the sense of discovery of myself that happened on my old blog.  I miss the searching I was doing, not because I wish to be lost but because that sense of urgency felt so good, as did the sense of connection when I could find and name something, and the sense of excitement when someone would read it and respond. 

(Once, in the summer of 1995, I remember a vivid summer night when I felt this crashing awful loneliness.  I remember the stars that night and the smell of grass on the warm air and the road I walked along in Camden, Maine.  That night I longed for a boyfriend who had moved far away and had moved on, and I gave into it and just cried and cried and cried.  And I remember even in the sadness feeling this strange awe, because of how clear the feeling was.  It was awful to be so sad but there was something nice about for once not being at all confused or torn or mixed up about the source of my own feelings.  I was sad, and I knew exactly why, and in my twenties there were so many times when I felt a big blend of things and couldn't sort out all the feelings I had.)

I guess I miss my old voice.  I miss both the itch I used to have and the feeling that scratching it gave me. 

Like Jeremy, I'm not sure what happened.  I'm still me, and good heavens, I'm still searching, though it doesn't feel quite so urgent to sit down and blurt it all out here.  I can't name why that is.  My job right now is an outlet for earnest conversations and for writing.  I think I know better who I am now, and I'm helping other people figure out who they are.  I'm married now, and with marriage comes something that maybe I used to get through writing.  Maybe it is balm for the fear that I'm not loveable, and some of that fear and anxiety drove me to think and therefore to write.  Maybe it is the constant presence of a companion who's interested in a lot of the things about the world that I'm interested in, so thoughts get spoken instead of being blogged.  Maybe it is that the anxieties I have now aren't mine alone, but rather are shared and therefore entitled to more privacy.  Maybe it's that I'm busy with new things -- the job I have captivates me because it is so very hard to do it really well, and takes so much of my attention and energy, that at the end of a day I am satisfied, yes, but also spent, and I want to sit quietly with my dogs.  

I also miss walking outside daily.  I need to start doing that again, because it wakes up a part of me that I need.  

What I'm Thinking About

Life just got super busy at work, as the new school year begins and conscientious students come swarming in to plan their futures.  

I don't generally like generational stereotypes, although I read and pay attention to lots of them, since it is my job to understand and win the trust of college students.  I'm always testing what I read against my direct experience, and many of the things people say about millennials strike me as silly.  

But one thing that is true is that college students aren't very comfortable with uncertainty, with the total lack of structure and the enormous variety of choices that will face them when they graduate.  I think that's not unique to college students.  I think people aren't very comfortable with uncertainty, and our fear of uncertainty makes us grab after things that seem clear, even if we know they aren't what we want.  It takes a lot of bravery to persevere when you aren't sure what the answer is.  

I do think that maybe this generation of college students has had even less experience, good and bad, with spontaneity and serendipity and unstructured time.  So they are facing the uncertainty of adult life, with all its competing choices and indistinct possibilities, without a lot of experience and practice creating their own structure and goals in otherwise unstructured time.  

So I'm thinking a lot about what it is I've learned about uncertainty, and what the sources of answers are for students.  Not answers, actually.  That's probably not my job.  Courage -- what's the source of courage.  Basically, students have to face what they are unfamiliar with and probably rightfully afraid of, and they have to make thoughtful decisions even though they are afraid.  I'm thinking a little bit about what there is that I can teach about that.  

If You Lived Here You'd Never Be Hungry

Bon Appetit magazine likes the food in Portland, and has a lot to say about it. 

What I like is that according to Bon Appetit, who says we're the best place to eat, Portland is a "small town" and pegs our population at 64,000.  But a couple of months ago, when Forbes.com named Portland the "most livable city" it stretched our "metropolitan region" so that it included 513,000 people. 

Super busy at work with the start of school, and loving it as much as ever.  I think I'll be better at my job this year, and perhaps even Really Good.  NBT lost his job, which is as lousy as you'd expect, though not lousier.  September is exquisitely beautiful so far.  

How to Be Captivating

An old college friend got married recently, and although I couldn't go to her wedding, she's been on my mind lately.  Maybe that's why I remembered a conversation she and I had back in college.  She was telling me about a conversation she had overheard, between Dreamy Guy 1 and Dreamy Guy 2.  They were talking about Bitchy Girl, a particular rival of ours who we acknowledged was prettier than either one of us, though not *that* pretty, and who was not outstandingly smart, and certainly not very nice.  Definitely not nice, not warm, not kind, not friendly.  Dreamy Guy 1 was telling Dreamy Guy 2 that he'd gone on a few dates with this woman, and "she's captivating."  My friend and I fixated on that word, because it seemed so implausible that a college guy would say that in the first place, to another guy.  And we wondered, bitterly, what this woman had that we didn't have, and what on earth we would have to become in order for any man to find us 'captivating.'  She certainly didn't seem captivating to us, but rather good-looking, snooty, and prone to social cruelty.   

You've remarked to me that you think Twitter and its ilk satisfy a sort of primal need we have to seek (you referred to this book, which is now on my dratted to-read list).  That reminded me of something I've been thinking about a lot in the past eight months or so, about social networking services and why they feel compelling, even though mostly the content of them is inane and insipid.  It's the reason people think slot machines are fun but vending machines are boring, even though vending machines are a better place to put your quarters.  We are fascinated by intermittent rewards.  (Everyone knows this, and I think BF Skinner is the guy who gets the credit for proving this, but I can't remember quite where I last read it.  If you really want a citation, here's the best one I could get in a quick Google Book search.)

So your comment that seeking is a source of dopamine in itself reminded me of this observation I've been mulling over for a while, that we come back to Facebook or Twitter or blogs not because we need to know what our 7th grade classmate had for lunch, nor because what is written in these places is always more compelling than the physical world around us, but for the ever-renewing possibility that we will discover something really interesting.  It is the constant novelty and the constant refreshing that triggers our interest.  Someone's always pulling the lever and you just have to watch to see how the tumblers line up.  Maybe this time you'll hit the jackpot.  It can be captivating, even if it isn't reliably high-quality. 

Which made me remember my very high-quality friend, and think about how mystified we were, and how eager we were to figure out how to become captivating.     

Extraordinarily mature, too.

Hey, hon.  I'm going to the doctor in an hour, for the first time in twenty years.  I am both curious and grumpy about the prospect.  Grumpy because the staff have already been annoying, giving me precise directions in the parking lot that I won't use because I ride my bike, telling me to fill out paperwork (I'll grant this one some useful purpose), and telling me to be half an hour early, so that the doctor doesn't wait for me.  How about I be on time, so the doctor doesn't wait for me?  I could use that half an hour to dick around and do nothing.  But they act like the doctor is the important one here, even though I am the one hiring her.  Well, I'm already grumpy, so I should stop dwelling on very small annoyances.

I am also a little curious about the physical.  Will she tell me that I am extraordinarily strong?  That would be good.  I wonder a little about my cholesterol.  I think my family has genetically high cholesterol.  Will that show up again, even though I don't eat meat?  Will she say that I am obviously in glowing health, and don't need to come back for another twenty years?  We can hope.

I  don't even dislike going to the doctor.  I haven't avoided it so much as not-needed it.  If I weren't intending to get pregnant soon, I wouldn't be going now, either.  (Although I did have a scare a month back when someone from my gym was thought to have swine flu and I realized I had no clear path to medical treatment if I came down with anything.  One should have a doctor, I suppose, whom one never sees.  Best of both worlds.)  I get injured occasionally, which I treat with ice and massage.  I rarely get sick, which I treat with feeling sorry for myself, ginger ale and romance novels.  So far, I've gotten better.  I am afraid a doctor will try to add in other annoying things, like following directions and schedules for medication.  I should tell her this morning that that is off the table.  (Unless I come to her begging for help and newly obedient.)

Anyway, going to the doctor in an hour, for the first time since my pediatrician.  If I get sick any time soon, we'll all know what caused it.

UPDATE:  It was uneventful.  She was pleasant, thought the gap in medical treatment was fine for a healthy person.  She did not exclaim on my amazing muscles, so I retain some scepticism about her professional judgment.

We're having unusual weather too!

Oh hi, darlin'.  We've had a cooling streak here, in which the weather got down into the mid-nineties.  A break from the real heat, about 105, where you can actually feel the sunlight land on your skin.  I have to admit, and I know this is reveals a lack of willpower, I am less eager to swim at lunch on these cool days.  I mean, on the hot days, I can't wait for the contrast between the heat that radiates from the concrete walls and floor and the hot yellow light, and the cold, cold water.  But on these days with a bit of nip to the air, I don't especially look forward to that first shock of jumping in.

Fortunately, despite the cooler days, the evenings have been staying warm.  This is the glory of Sacramento, sitting on a porch late in the evening with the air perfectly warm and gentle.  No need to put a shirt over your tank top, no need to put on jeans, no need to go inside.  The nights are so very soft (even if a hot day did pound you a little), meant for talking on the couch on the porch, sipping water with crushed mint and ice and cucumber, watching folks ride by on bicycles, creating their own dark warm breeze.

Heat Wave

Friend, it has been over 90 degrees for days and days.  Like, for four or five days, in a row.  It is impossible to think in such weather.  I lie in bed with a wet towel on top of me and listen to the fan and a fly buzzing somewhere, and I can't imagine mustering the strength to lift my head.  I can't sleep, but reading would require turning on a light, and lights produce heat, which is totally unacceptable.  How do people live in places where this is part of life?  When it is cold, you can put things on your body that make you less cold.  When it is hot and thick like this, what can you do except dive off the dock into the ocean?  (I did that at lunch on Monday, and it was wonderful, but unfortunately I couldn't stay in the water all day.)    

Today we will get a thunderstorm, I am told, and this terrible heat will break.