Just Being

For years I taught with a man who always rubbed me the wrong way. We rarely interacted, but when we did it was never comfortable or enlightening. I don't want every interaction to be enlightening, but he just seemed so self-centered and manipulative that it was hard to even listen to his tone of voice let alone work with him on a committee.

Everyone else liked him. I'm not sure why. Generally it was women who liked him. They'd fawn over him when he was upset or seek his advice in difficult discussions. An outdoor-kind-of-guy, he wore his Gramicci pants, his latest high-tech wicking t-shirt, a stocking cap, and slippers. Yes, slippers. He'd cycle into work every day and after taking off his cycling shoes, those special numbers with clips on the bottom to hook into his equally special shoes, and put on slippers.

Before teaching, he was a rock climbing instructor and on his days off he climbs or rides competitively in cyclocross races. One day, during a faculty meeting, I watched him navigate the internet on his computer. He was looking at wheels for his bicycle. At the end of the meeting I asked him if he'd found the wheel he was looking for.

"Yes," he said smugly, "but it costs $1000 and this job doesn't pay me enough."

I knew how to joke around with him. I've worked with lots of men and I know how to navigate around their moods and arrogance. I never liked it though. I always felt a bit dishonest. Inside I knew I didn't like these men, but when they pulled one stunt or another, I rarely called them on it. It wasn't ever worth the effort.

How ironic then that I should find myself in my new job supervised by such men. Not all of them are as smug , but my direct supervisor has the same aura as this past teacher-colleague. It's not that he wears slippers or that he has all the women attending to his emotional needs, rather it's this personality of vague superiority that reminds me of my past co-worker.

Unlike my former teaching colleague though, I'm not invested in my supervisor's antics. He's an okay enough guy, but it's odd to be supervised by someone almost half my age who is more concerned about the latest outdoor gadgets than running a meeting smoothly or effectively.

In college I worked in a bike shop. I was surrounded by similar men, though most of my co-workers were really nice men -- gentle, thoughtful, and considerate. Lloyd, the owner of the bike shop, spent time with every employee making sure they understood expectations and providing detailed lessons when he felt they were needed. Through him I learned that, despite my SAT scores, I was very mechanical and spatial.

And there was Dennis, a quiet man who thought nothing of riding to Mt. Rainier and back (over 100 miles) on his day off. Later he'd have a terrible bicycle accident fracturing his skull to the point that he could no longer hear out of one ear and had very limited hearing in the other. Since our ears are our balance systems, his accident prevented him from ever cycling again. Most men would be crushed, but not Dennis. Instead, he worked for Lloyd for years until he became a bicycle salesmen, got married, and now has two great kids.

There was Daniel, the brilliant mechanic, who was truly arrogant and demanding, but if you handled him right, he'd be there for you whenever you needed him.

The other guys, most of whom I don't remember, came and went at the shop. They never lasted more than a month or two and like the former teacher I worked with and my current supervisor, they were more concerned about their own position in the world to be bothered by working on their attributes of kindness and humanity.

I'm learning a lot in this job. There is all the technical stuff -- how to use the cash register, how to "punch in" with an electronic time clock, how to tell the difference between objective lenses and exit pupils -- but I'm also learning a lot about myself.

First, I've learned to let go of irritations like outdoorsy men who see the world built for their adventures. While my supervisor may be annoying, he respects me if only because I am much older and have had, in his mind, a "real" career. He hasn't said this exactly, but the way he behaves around me it's pretty obvious I make him kind of nervous.

Next, I've learned that the rest of the world doesn't work at the pace of a teacher. I thought that teaching was like every other job in the world. To be successful at teaching one had to be organized, creative, and a diligent worker. Doesn't everyone else work like that? Apparently not. While I find myself always asking "what's next?" or checking my watch to see where I need to be and at what time, my co-workers at REI are very laid back. No one rushes. No one worries either about the job they're doing or about what is expected of them next.

While I find this a bit unnerving, I think it is the thing I've wanted for years -- less stress. It makes sense though, doesn't it? Messing up at REI might mean the loss of a sale, but it doesn't mean some 5th grader is going to fail at learning math concepts or writing paragraphs. I might not know how to operate a GPS system, but I know that I'm conscientious and competent, I know I'll be on time for work and work hard when I'm on my shift and that seems to be all that is expected of me.

Which is the last thing I've learned and in a very direct way it's helped me tremendously. I now can sleep through the night. Last night I woke up thinking, "How do I punch in a gift card item on the register?" Then I laughed myself back to sleep realizing that it didn't matter. I didn't need to solve this dilemma nor worry about it because if I didn't remember, I could always ask someone. In teaching, you're sort of an island unto yourself. There are co-workers, but they aren't in your classroom and they aren't responsible for the curriculum behind your door. They have their own worries and I met very few good teachers in my day who didn't have fitful sleep because of the responsibility they carried.

For years my sleep has been interrupted by endless worries that one student or another was failing or that a phone call wasn't made to a parent or an important contact. I flipped and flopped my way through sleep trying to hold all those things I had to remember -- that no one else had to remember about my classroom and students -- in some sort of organized list. I woke up many a-nights in a cold sweat realizing I hadn't completed the district paperwork or reminded my students of an important test.

No wonder my hair is gray.

Even today, a Monday day off, feels a bit luxurious. I have my list of to-dos, but none of them pertain to my job...well, one does, but it's minor. Instead, I can take the dog for a long walk, prepare a meal for my friends who are coming over tonight, take care of some laundry, and even nap on the couch if I so please. There aren't any papers to grade. There aren't any phone calls or emails to make to parents or volunteers. I don't need to plan the minute-to-minute details of the upcoming week in a classroom filled with hormones. I don't dread the amount of energy it will take to make it through a day or a week of teaching.

I can just be. It's a nice feeling. And when I allow myself to feel it, my blood pressure bounces down to that healthy level. Getting used to this kind of pace takes daily practice. I find myself trying to gear up for work, pacing around thinking I should be doing something important when really, there's nothing all that important to attend to, but that which I deem to be important.

For now it's baking some bread, writing a bit, brushing the dog, and perhaps checking out a new CD on iTunes. Then I'll switch out the laundry, make some guacamole for tonight, and fetch Ann from her teaching workshop. Finally, an evening with our dear friends and their energetic daughters, share in some good food and sweet dessert, and then to bed in preparation for a day on the floor with my young supervisor selling sunglasses to the gear-geek who is willing to spend $200 for a specific name-brand.

True, I make a whole lot less money, but I'm finding that sanity and relaxation have a very different price tag.

It's definitely one I can afford.

On the floor

We are in recovery at this house. Ann is now sick with the bug I've had for over three weeks, though I don't think she'll end up on medication. I broke down and popped the antibiotics yesterday after an early morning shift at work. I was desperate and I needed to try something, anything to feel more myself so in addition to the Neti Pot, a million supplements, any over the counter medication I could think of, and gallons of fluids, I started the course of antibiotics.

I'm not sure which of the many combinations worked, but something is working. I feel better and even now, 15 minutes after getting up this morning I have yet to have a coughing fit. That's big. No, that's huge. Especially after yesterday.

Yesterday I was asked to come in early, earlier than the store actually opens to be trained for my "official" job -- a clerk behind the optics counter. From all my previous general training days -- learning to fit backpacks, understanding the differences in sleeping bags and tents, practicing with the camp stoves -- I've learned that optics is perhaps the toughest job on the floor.

Great.

What makes it tough is that there are a bazillion items in our department. Everything from map sheets to fishing knives to GPS systems to sunglasses to watch batteries to tripods -- it's an endless stream of outdoor knick-knacks. It took Steve, my trainer, over an hour to go through the various GPS systems and another half hour to explain binoculars. While I know how binoculars work, even Steve admits that he only knows what the GPS systems do, not the details of how each one works. Not only do I have to learn about each piece of merchandise in the department, but I have to figure out where it can be found once someone wants to purchase it and the finding can be daunting.

And then there are the endless stream of customers. I got to watch Steve work for an hour and in that hour 11 customers came to the counter some with minor needs -- a battery for a certain watch -- and others with very detailed and specific needs -- one guy wanted a lesson on how to use his GPS (luckily we can't get reception in the department so he was referred to tech help after much discussion) and a woman holding her year old baby wanted to purchase some binoculars, but only after a lengthy discussion about the differences between the 30 kinds displayed.

I am not looking forward to my 8 hour shift on Tuesday. Luckily, someone will be there with me, but this is going to take awhile and I'm certain I'm going to piss off more than one customer with my ineptness.

The early shift was a challenge not only because I was still learning, but also because I was still coughing. I've felt self conscious about it during every training. The trainer will be with us out on the floor showing us how to use the torso measurer for backpacks and I'll start coughing. I 'd popped a bag of cough drops into my mouth like a chain-smoker of lozenges, but to no avail. Other times I'd have to remove myself from the training and just find a corner where I could hack away and make a hurried attempt to catch my breath.

Yesterday morning, right before the store opened, everyone on the floor met in a "morning huddle" to hear from the store manager about all sorts of store details. As she gave her speech, I felt a ripple at the back of my throat, like feathers and gravel, and I knew I was about to cough uncontrollably. I held it long enough to worm my way around displays and hide behind a wall of cash registers, but that didn't mean people didn't hear me. In fact, in the middle of my attack, 3 separate people came over to see if I needed help (3 women...never men...why is that?). Some offered me water, some offered to pat my back, some just stood next to me looking worried.

I could not talk. I could only cough and at one point, I coughed so hard I thought for sure I was going to vomit. This lasted for a good 5 minutes followed by another 10 minutes of sporadic coughing. By this time I found a bench at the back of the store and sat myself down practicing any meditation tools I could think of to get a grip. By the time the morning huddle was complete, my coughing fit was done though I was worn out beyond belief.

And I still had an hour left on the floor.

When I got home I took one of the large pills the doctor had prescribed and gave in to the fact that perhaps antibiotics were the only thing that would touch whatever was wrecking havoc in my sinuses. I slept on the couch for two hours, my cheeks flushing as the temperature of the day pushed 90 degrees. I watched Olympic coverage and woke up to Days of Our Lives.

And when I woke, I felt amazingly better. Not 100%, but better. I was not dying. By the time evening rolled around, I had had minimal coughing fits and I could actually hear out of both of my ears. My head didn't feel as clogged and the waterfall of slime that had cascaded down the back of my throat was merely a trickle.

I took another dose of antibiotics before I went to bed.

I slept well though the heat made it difficult to fall asleep. Still there is improvement and there is something to be said about improvement.

Changes

Learning to take care of myself has always been a challenge. After three weeks of being sick, and the past two days of really doing NOTHING, I decided I needed a change in my life...or the life that I post here, on this blog.

So, I messed around with the colors, slapped on a very old photo from my summer teaching gig in Alaska, and worked with the font, though in the end I left it as it is.

Boring? That's how it feels here in the house of the recovering. I am still coughing, though not nearly as much as yesterday. The Neti Pot is working albeit slowly. I searched for advice on the internet and was informed that I can Neti as many times during the day as I'd like though 2 times a day is recommended. So, I'm thinking of washing my sinuses clean again this afternoon in hopes that it clears this junk out and stops dripping down my throat.

Ann, on the other hand, just returned from her "surgery" at the dentist where they cut away some of her overhanging gum in the very back of her upper teeth. It's all done with lasers and while she's not in pain now, the dentist assures her the pain will come. So it's a diet of smoothies and applesauce for her, which is probably something I should do as well in an attempt to soothe my rough and worn throat.

And then there's Monty who we whisked away to the ER last night after his stomach bloated to the size of a basketball. I stayed back while Ann and Monty's mom, Colleen, made the trip to the Animal ER. All is well, but it was a scare as poodles are known to bloat and once the gut twists, if it twists, it can be a very quick descent. Luckily, all is well. The doctor gave him some medicine to induce vomiting and then some medicine to make him feel better. We walked him this morning and he was still pretty woozy and we're about to check on him again, so hopefully he's a little less wobbly and a bit more of himself.

Meanwhile, Rubin thinks we are boring, boring, boring and I have to agree. Taking care of yourself by doing NOTHING is very boring, but hopefully tomorrow, we'll all feel better.

And I work again tomorrow. Hopefully this time I won't cough through the whole thing like I did last time. My co-workers probably think I have TB or something...I could visually watch them move away from me every time I hacked out a cough.

I had an ah-ha, though, today. This time of year (for the past 22 years) has always been a time when I've had to gear myself up for long hours and focused work preparing for the upcoming school year. Now I don't have to, but I still feel myself wanting to gear up my energy for something exhausting. I walk into work all gung-ho and ready to exert as much energy as I do when preparing for a school year. Today it hit me that I don't need to push that hard EVER AGAIN! I only have to work 3 days a week and if I choose to work more, I can. I don't have to hold a bazillion things in my head --well, I have to keep track of 17 different kinds of water filters, and 74 different kinds of sleeping bags, and 12 different kinds of camp stoves and on and on -- but none of that requires the same kind of energy I've had to have for the past 22 years.

So whew...glad I figured that out! It actually made me feel a bit healthier just to realize it. Of course, then I coughed immediately after it, but at least the coughing didn't last for 10 minutes.

Off to Neti...

Me and Neti

I have been sick (again) for about 3 weeks. I went to the doctor today who diagnosed clear lungs, clear ears, and a lot of "post nasal drip." Duh. This is why I'm coughing, I suppose and this is why I have trouble sleeping at night. This is perhaps why I am exhausted.

The doctor prescribed two courses of action -- a prescription for antibiotics BUT ONLY AFTER I clear my passage ways with Afrin and the Neti Pot treatment for three days. If that doesn't work, then use the prescription.

My brother gave me a Neti Pot last Christmas as a way of helping with my allergies. I have been afraid to use it until recently and then, once I mustered up the courage, was frustrated that NOTHING came from it. When I mean nothing, I mean nothing flowed out. Instead, the saline solution that conveniently comes with the Neti (slang for Neti Pot), backed up in my nostrils and felt similar to those times when I've gotten salt water up my nose while swimming in the Sound.

Yuck.

"I've tried the Neti," I told the doctor, "But nothing comes out."

"Nothing?" She seemed surprised by that then told me to try Afrin nasal spray first. "Be careful, though," she advised. "Don't use it for more than three days. It's a saint and a demon."

Turns out, she'd never prescribed both together before. Her hope is that the Afrin will clear the way for the Neti and frequent saline flushing will clear up my apparently clogged sinuses.

Too much information?

Yes, it is what I thought as well and is precisely why I've struggled using the Neti Pot in the first place.

"God," said my neighbor, "It's one of the greatest feelings in the world when you get the flow going!" She uses the Neti on a daily basis. "The flush is amazing!"

I can think of things that feel much better, can't you?

So this morning, after seeing the doctor and paying for the Afrin, I headed up to the bathroom, squirted my nose with the WOW of the Afrin and then prepared to flush my sinuses with the Neti Pot.

At first, I gagged. The saline solution went straight down my throat and never made it to my sinuses. I tilted my head and what do you know, a small stream at first and then, whoosh a steady flow.

Did it feel wonderful? No, not in the least, but I did feel successful in that I finally got the water to flow, trying NOT to picture exactly what it was flowing through or around. Do I feel better? At first, no, but now I'm a bit less congested though still incredibly tired and worn out.

I've tried napping, but am still coughing from the drip drip drip of my nasal congestion. And the neighbors next door are working on their deck, the contractors are pounding away on the house behind us, and now Ann has filled the kid's pool with water and Rubin and his friend Monty are racing and chasing and barking in the backyard.

Another treatment tonight might be just the thing, but I have contemplated getting the antibiotics and using them as well. "Research has shown that Neti Pots work better on sinus infections than antibiotics," the doctor told me, but I am so in search of instant relief I'm willing to try them both.

"Be patient," Ann tells me, "Just relax." But relaxing is not my specialty. I like to feel 100% and right now I'm creeping up to 50%. Thank god the Olympics are on. At least I'm not forced to watch soap operas and endless episodes of Top Chef or Law and Order. And thankfully I don't work until Thursday afternoon. I hope I feel better by then.

For now I'll go watch the crazy dogs at poolside. A little laughter may be just the ticket. That and lots more water (I've had at least a gallon so far) and more flushing for me and Neti.

Today

I slept last night. Thank you, Rubin. He slept as well. Right next to me, stretched out the full length of my body. With Ann away this week, he's taken over for her and last night it was particularly comforting as I'm still trying to kick this nasty bug that has invaded my body again. He was hesitant to nuzzle up to me at first. Getting close meant he had to smell the Vick's Vapor Rub lathered on my chest and lingering on my fingers (hard to wash off), but once he figured he could put his head toward the foot of the bed and his back legs on the pillow, he was set.

I put in my first shift at REI, though I did not work with any customers. Instead, we were "trained" though as a "former" teacher, there wasn't much training that occurred. Rather, we listened to the store manager go through the key policies, values, and benefits that we'd been asked (and paid) to read in our Employee's Handbook. I was thankful to just be sitting and listening yesterday as this bug has zapped me of my spunky (ha!) energy.

It's hard, though, to shake the teacher in me. After the four hour session, I thought to myself, "If you stop repeating yourself, that training could take 2 hours." Oh well, at least I'm getting paid for it, which is the biggest difference between working in retail and working in education. As a teacher you're "expected" to do a lot of work without any rewards or benefits. Granted, you're on a salary, but still, the job description seems incredibly all-encompassing and generally means anything that needs to get done, you, as a teacher, are expected to do.

In retail, well in my limited experience, your job description is specific and detailed. If you are asked to work a 5 hour shift, you are asked to log in your overtime work so you can get paid. If you are asked to read a handbook, you are paid for reading the handbook. If you are asked to take on a new job, you're trained and that extra training job is paid for.

I could grow to like this.

Of course, minimum wage can't touch my previous teaching salary and perhaps that's the reason they can bleed more work out of you in education. For now, it doesn't matter. I like the clean lines of my job and the extra measures my managers take to make certain my job doesn't ooze over into areas where it doesn't belong.

Meanwhile, I feel left with a dilemma. I am struggling with how to settle into three jobs -- REI, dog-training, and writing. When I initially made this leap away from education, the goal was to make head space, creative space, and time for writing. I have it now and while I struggle with exactly what to do with it (a whole other topic), I'm feeling pulled by two "jobs" outside of the writing.

My retail job pays me and therefore I feel a bit more committed to it. Dog training is simply voluntary and while I love dogs and love the idea of working with them, there is so much to learn and so many hours to put in with a variety of dogs before I can actually make money as a trainer. I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it to me. I'm beginning to wonder if this is where I want to put my limited energy.

This is what Leah was talking about, I think, when she said I need to practice being a flake. It was her humorous way of saying I needed to decide where I wanted to put my energy to benefit my writing. To choose a paying job over an apprentice job is an appropriate choice, but it will require backing out of the dog training job and that's the tough part for me. I don't want people to think I'm a "flake," that I'm not a committed and competent employee. In other words, I don't want the dog trainers with whom I've be working with to think less of me, to think me a flake. Leah's point is that that is MY issue, not theirs. They'd rather that I be honest than commit to something that I cannot completely commit to.

Yesterday, while listening to the store manager, I realized that REI is a good choice for retirement. It's clear they support their committed employees, but it was also clear (as stated in their Six Core values) that balancing one's life between work and real life is important to them. I quit teaching to find that balance and in the process, filled my plate with more than perhaps I could handle.

Is that why I'm still sick with this never-ending cold? Is that why I might have bronchitis?

The lessons never stop, do they?

Ann comes home this evening. I am glad. Rubin will be thrilled. He's tired of me and frankly, I'm a bit tired of him. We need some variety in our lives and Ann is just the ticket.

So today I shall clean the house, shop for some groceries, and change the sheets on the bed. Today I shall move slowly and take a nap and drink lots and lots of fluids in an attempt to break up this congestion. Today I shall live in today.

The Mind of a Dog

Rubin was tired last night. We'd played a rousing game of fetch and he got chased by Decoy, the large and young yellow lab puppy at the park. Rubin LOVES to be chased so by the time we got home, he was pretty exhausted. We headed up to bed, I smeared Vick's Vapor Rub on my chest, downed some cough syrup AND a Tylenol PM and prepared for a long, relaxing night of sleep.

At midnight Rubin woke up and needed to go out. Okay, that made sense as he hadn't done all of his business before he went to bed. Out we went and all of the sudden, Mr. Sleepy became Mr. Spunky and he would NOT, for the life of me, come back in the house. He wanted to play chase again only this time he wanted ME to chase HIM.

Drugged and still sick, I was NOT in the mood. (This is a post that REQUIRES many words in all capital letters.) In fact, I was PISSED. It was midnight. I was tired. I was feeling an urgent need to sleep well as I hadn't for the past few nights. I've been re-fighting a cold and feeling as if the cold was moving into something a bit more serious -- like bronchitis and I DID NOT want bronchitis. And there he was, bouncing around the backyard, barking at me.

I tried everything. I came into the house and sat in the living room waiting for him to follow. He did, but then, when I got up to close the back door, he raced out the door, bounded off the deck and barked some more. I followed him around the yard TRYING to herd him back into the house, but he has the "loop" down and knows how to avoid me and my outstretched arms.

This was a dog who was exhausted at 10, so exhausted, he barely made it upstairs to the bedroom and flopped onto his bed at the foot of ours. Two hours later, he was possessed -- a young and wild puppy again who wanted only to play keep away.

My next attempt was to go back to bed. I left the back door open and just hoped it neither got too cold nor too inviting for local criminals. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't ignore the quietly growling dog at the end of the bed. He sat there, like a statue and softly whispered a groan again and again as if to say, "Hey, we're not done playing yet!"

So I got up and he raced down the stairs and leapt off the back deck ready for me to follow.

"What would the Dog Whisperer do?" I thought in my sleepy, drugged stupor.

I grabbed the various pieces of deck furniture and blockaded the brat into the corner of the yard. As he always does when he knows he's caught, he came right to me, his head bowed and his tail down. "Damn," I heard him mumble under his panting breath.

After closing the back door, we headed back up to bed. I was still steamy and he knew it. He went straight to his bed, flopped down, sighed that impatient sigh of his, and didn't even ask to come up on the bed with me. He knew better.

This morning, I could smell the rain through the open windows. Rubin was still on his bed and with one work, "Okay" he knew he was absolved of his sins and allowed up on the bed. We cuddled for awhile and I asked in vain, "What's going on in that mind of yours?" He just sighed, licked his lips, and nuzzled under my arm with a breathy snort and a gentle thumping of his skinny, flaring tail.

I go to my first day of work at noon. I have a few chores to take care of before I hop on my bike and pedal to work in the rain. One includes a long, exhausting walk with the dog currently snoring under my desk. He's tired this morning. No doubt. He's not as young as he used to be though sometimes, around midnight it appears, he fancies himself a cute, tiny puppy who has not yet learned to listen to his mother.

Ahhhhhh!

I woke to a breeze this morning, a breeze not generated by a fan. The skies are gray though the weather report predicts sunnier skies this afternoon. I'll take what I can get.

I have decided the blueberry is Fruit of the Gods. Simple but potent, a perfect blueberry can make my day, though I eat a handful at a time not one at a time. I bought some the other day. Organic. They are large and juicy and even when buried in my cinnamon/nutmeg/brown sugar/apple oatmeal, they dominate.

I am a happy girl.

This despite the fact that I slept like shit. Muggy, hot and sweaty it didn't help that I coughed for an hour before downing a slug of cough syrup. My cold is rattling around awhile longer, but I refuse to let it roll itself into bronchitis. I am forcing myself to have a productive cough, which is exhausting. Rubin looked annoyingly at me from his stretched out perch on Ann's side of the bed (she'll be home Sunday evening and won't Mr. Dog be bent out of joint when he must give up his favorite new spot).

But today is a busy day. Well, it's a busy afternoon and evening so I must get to my chores, fit in a nap, and conserve my energy for the long haul planned later on.

I'm practicing being nice to myself. It's hard. It takes effort. I had a list of 20 "must-dos" yesterday and still have 4 of them staring at me this morning. I'm trying to focus on the 16 I got done and not the 4 that still await, but I am not so good at complimenting myself. The items left on the list feel more important and urgent than the ones I completed yesterday which begs to question, why didn't I do them first?

And there you have it...my ability to punish myself in the midst of blueberries.

One of the leftover items is to read the REI employee "Base Camp" packet. I think about all those assignments and letters to parents I've written over the past 22 years knowing how few of them were ever read or read with any thoroughness. I feel obliged to read this new employee information in the most exacting way if only to honor those who toiled over the words, words like "You Trail Starts Here" and "Your dedication is appreciated."

I can already see the shift from an education environment to a retail environment. Hell, I get paid time and a half for holiday or overtime work. Granted the time and a half doesn't even come close the "hourly" wage I made as a teacher, but at least it's acknowledged that I did more than what was expected.

I can also win awards and not awards I've had to apply for myself. Ironically, this is how it was in teaching. I was once nominated for Teacher of the Year by a family of one of my students. Honored by the support, I was immediately overwhelmed with mounds of paperwork that I had to complete as well as recommendations I had to enlist and essays I had to write. Now, whenever I see a teacher holding an award in their hands, I know they earned it not by their teaching expertise, but by there industrious perseverance to promote themselves.

According to the REI Employee Handbook, I can get an award for "embodying the values and spirit of REI" and these rewards are not just monetary, but include kayaking trips, promotional gear, and time off. Nice.

My brother wrote me an email last night sending his (and his wife's) enthusiastic encouragement. In a series of exchanges I wrote to him that I have to remind myself that even the worst customer can't hold a candle to my worst students. He begged to differ, but then I told him that even if it was bad, at least I didn't have to come home and call the customer's parents in the evening!

Then my friend Jeanne called. I told her of my email exchanges with my brother and she laughed. "Did I ever tell you what Lisa did?" Jeanne asked referring to her partner.

"No, what did she do?"

"A guy at Home Depot came onto her and she got home and called his wife to let her know!"

Of course, Lisa is also an educator so perhaps it will take me awhile to shake the "communication" habits.

Okay, the day is slowly (thankfully slowly) getting warmer so I should grab the dog, the leash, and my walking shoes and head out the door for a long morning walk before I sit down to thoroughly read this handbook.

Whether or Not

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted --

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

...from Mary Oliver's "Morning Poem"

The haze of the morning sky is slightly orange. This is not beauty rather it is a warning not to breathe too deeply today, yet still I feel the need to do so.

I slept fitfully last night. The neighbors to the north danced in the dark in their dirt backyard, not yet groomed to be the patio they've been working on. Their music, an interesting Mexican folk song, played over and over while they practiced the gentle rhythms and pirouettes. Their Spanish conversations peppered with laughter threaded themselves into my dreams until I woke to the sounds of the neighbor to the south pulling ladders out from his shed.

It was 5:30 in the morning. I wanted to sleep more, but there was no point. Today is predicted to reach 90. It's already 75 degrees in the house though I've opened all the windows, turned on the fan, and blocked the sun from filtering into the kitchen. This day calls for early rising and afternoon siestas.

I finished "Under the Banner of Heaven" yesterday and was left with nothing to read, so I pulled Mary Oliver off the shelf and reread her poems. I want to say I understand them. Her language is both simple and intricate, but I can read a poem seven times over and still be struck by its detailed ambiguity.

Don't bother me.
I've just
been born.

That's exactly how I feel today. I like the silence of this orange morning. There is, of course, no silence at all -- I can hear the neighbor taking a shower, the planes flying south overhead, the music on the radio, the dog snoring quietly under the desk, the birds chasing after wilted cherries, and a distant neighbor's dog announcing the morning news. The garbage trucks are one block over and far off, there are the trains rumbling into town. But the morning feels slow and I want to drag my heels against the inevitable pull to move forward.

It's time to water the tomatoes. That's next on the list of today's duties. Then take the dog to the lake for a refreshing swim. In the heat of the day I'll empty the dishwasher, sort laundry in the cool of the basement, and then go for a swim at the pool myself. Then we shall lie around, the dog and I, and wish the day would pick up its feet and move into something less weighty and slow.

Humid

I woke this morning covered in sweat. Not a pretty picture. I rolled over and said, "Damn, it's muggy."

Ann laughed. She always laughs at me when it comes to the weather, but this morning she laughed a bit more emphatically. This morning she flew out to Madison, Wisconsin to visit her family. We checked the weather report. At 10:30 in the morning it was 85 degrees with 89% humidity in Madison.

"Damn, that's muggy," Ann smirked as we looked at the weather for the week ahead.

So, she is gone and we are here (the dog and I) enduring the warm temperatures and the muggy, muggy weather. Yes, in my opinion it's muggy and the news even agrees that it's "thick" air. That's what the reporter said this morning, "thick air" with an advisory for those with breathing problems.

I have a sweating problem.

I just received a phone call offering me the position at REI. Ann is not here to celebrate with me, so I did a small dance with the dog though not too exuberantly because we are both too hot for such enthusiasm.

I am headed to REI shortly to fill out paperwork. I should ride my bike. I brought it upstairs from the cool basement, but the thought of riding downtown in this heat and humidity makes my pores open in anticipation. "Hi, you just hired me, but you may reverse that decision after you see how profusely I sweat on muggy days such as this."

How inappropriate would it be to drive the car?

Oh, to hell with it. I shall drive and save the sweating embarrassment for later.

Ann should be landing in Minneapolis soon. Then onto Madison. Rubin is wandering the house in search of her, though he knows she got out of the car and never got back in. I shall take him swimming later, perhaps with his friend, Monty. And if it's not too crowded, I shall submerge myself as well.

So glad I don't live where the weather is like this all summer long. I'd be miserable...

...and sweaty!

This Morning

There is oatmeal on the stove, bubbling and burping in that slurpy and thickly kind of way. Oatmeal is a cold weather meal and though the sun is out, last night's rain has chilled the air. The wind doesn't help either. Still, the dog sits in his favorite spot on the back porch step, squinting against the sun and wind, his curly hair lifting in the breeze.

I have been fighting a cold and now the cold has won. It's not a wipe-me-out kind of cold, but it's enough of one to make me a tad bit cranky. This is one of the reasons I've chosen to make oatmeal. That and the fresh blueberries our friends brought us as a thank you gift for watching their dog while they hiked part of the Pacific Crest Trail. While they had a great time, they slept in rain and woke up to snow.

It is August 1 today and there is snowfall in the mountains.

Generally, this would be the time of the summer that I would lament my return to school. There would be only 2 weeks left before I'd have to gear up to get ready for the onslaught of meetings and preparations. Ann is starting the process now. She had a 3 hour meeting yesterday and moaned the whole time before she headed out the door.

"If it makes you feel any better," I shared, "It's kind of weird NOT to be getting ready for school."

I had an interview yesterday afternoon with REI. It went well, I think, but it's hard to know how others really perceive you while being perceived. The interviewer was a young man, handsome and maybe 30 years old. He was kind, soft-spoken and very comfortable with asking questions.

I saw him write "GREAT" with a funny exclamation point on three of the questions. I think that means I did a great job. He understood how "sales" was very much like teaching and laughed when I answered this question: Describe a time when you took initiative to complete something when no one asked you to complete it.

My response: That's my whole teaching career.

His response: Every teacher I interview answers that question the exact same way.

I hope he realizes that it is a truth for all teachers. I think he did.

If I get the job (I'm supposed to hear in the new few days...after the background check) I will be working in the Optics/Camping department. I will be helping people choose sunglasses and GPS systems, camp stoves and water filtration systems. The only downside at this point is that IF I get the job (I don't want to curse myself), we will have to cancel our weekend away in the San Juan Islands for that will be the weekend I'll learn to operate a cash register.

It's an all-day training. When did cash registers get to be so complicated?

Leah, the life coach I've been working with, will ask me if I really want this job and question my eagerness to get it as more a reflection of my need to feel that I have a job, not necessarily the job I want.

Yes, I want a job and while Optics/Camping is not my favorite, it sounds interesting and it gets me in (and out) the door. Once there, I can move about if other opportunities open up. An August paycheck from REI will be a nice addition to my last teaching paycheck.

I am rambling today, but that's the sort of day that it feels like...rambling.

Ann leaves for Wisconsin on Tuesday. This weekend we head out to the cabin in Wenatchee to spend time with our good friends and get away from the Seafair craziness -- Blue Angels will practice again today and the dog will shutter under the thunder of their engines as they pass over our rooftop. They are so close we can see the pilots' faces. The hydroplane races begin tomorrow, but we'll hear them practicing today. They are not as loud as the jets, but we'll hear their wasp-like buzzing for most of the day.

And the parking will be atrocious especially on Sunday when the Seafair-goers clash with the church-goers.

It's a good weekend to get away and IF I get the job, it will be our last summer vacation.

That's hard to swallow.

But my oatmeal went down smoothly and quickly, spooned in between sentences. I feel better because of it. The dog has come in from his morning sun bathing. He's now curled up under my desk. He's starting slow this morning, too.

Whimpers

The dog is whimpering underneath my desk. He is sound asleep despite the fact that we just got up from a long night of rest. He didn't move from his bed all night and was the last one up this morning. Once doing his "business" outside, he curled up under the desk, fell fast asleep, and began his twitchy doggy dreams. Hence the whimpering.

It's cold out. It was cold yesterday, too. June was cold and while most of July was warm, there is a touch of fall in the air. Tomorrow is August and yet the air smells like September. How can that be?

This is a full day though it's fullness won't hit me until later. I have an interview (yippee) in the afternoon followed by a meeting in Woodinville to get my volunteer instructions for next week's Reading with Rover event. I have been fighting a cold and woke this morning with a snot lump in my throat, well almost in my throat. It hung there and made me snore most of the night. I shall take something powerful before the interview, muster up some energy and put on my congenial face.

Everyone tells me to just be myself and the interviewers will feel compelled to hire me. Today I don't feel like myself very much, but I plan on doing so when the time is right. Good thing that is hours away.

In the meantime, I need to finish my resume and cover letter, head to Office Depot for some nice paper, and walk the already tired dog. He's had a big week so far. So many friends stopping by, the endless training as we continue to find the exact tool to teach him not to bark so hysterically when someone arrives at the door, and the exhaustion that comes from keeping track of everyone during the busy summer days.

Though it's not summer today. It's some other season. Not quite autumn, not quite summer. Autmer or sumumn.

I'm trying not to whimper.

Beauty Marks

My mother calls them beauty marks and on Marlena Dietrich that is what they look like. I call them moles and on me they more and more resemble their "homophonic" connection to the little varmints with furry bodies and long tails.

I have many stories about my moles. A favorite took place when I was in college and an elderly woman sat down next to me on the city bus. We talked for a moment. She was on her way downtown to shop at Frederick and Nelson's (a now defunct department store, but back in the day a posh business where many an old lady in blue hair enjoyed shopping). This older, almost blue-haired old lady was on her way to purchase a new coat for the upcoming winter. I'm not sure where I was headed, but I distinctly remember her destination as it became the topic of conversation, the exact details of which escape me now.

No matter.

As the bus bounced along and she went on to describe the kind of coat she was looking for and the need for "versatility" in such due to the unpredictable Seattle weather, she reached into her clutch purse, retrieved a tattered tissue, gave it a lick and then reached toward my face saying, "My dear, you have a smudge on your cheek. Let me wipe it off for you."

In attempt to be polite, I didn't pull away nor did I decline the rather slimy offer thinking that, in fact, I had some crust of jam or some other foreign object clinging to my cheek. She gave a rub and then rubbed harder and finally clucked with frustration and said, "Well, I wonder what it is. It simply won't come off!"

Just as she was about to pull her compact mirror from her purse it struck me -- She's trying to wipe off my mole.

"Oh," I said, "I'm so sorry, but I think you're trying to wipe off a mole." And then I laughed. She laughed slightly and then inspected my face through her bifocals just a bit more intensely.

"Why you have quite a few moles on your face, don't you?"

I've never actually counted the moles on my body, but there are at least 10 on my face of various sizes and I'd venture to say about 50 or more covering my body. If I count the smallish ones that look like freckles, I might have close to 100 moles in total.

When I go to the doctor for my yearly physical, she has me stand naked in the middle of the room and she examines me front to back, side to side for any irregularities. At first, it was embarrassing and chilly, but now I'm used to it and know that she is simply, and thoroughly, scanning for any changes to my skin and my moles.

I don't mind the moles really except the few on my face that sprout thick, rigid black hairs that if unchecked, can grow to look spooking. Which leads me to my second favorite mole story.

I was working with one of my students at her desk, crouched down beside her trying to help her choose a topic for her writing assignment. She stared at me long and hard, which I took to mean confusion on her part. Then I realized she was staring at my neck just below my left ear.

"Is there something wrong?" I asked.

"I think you have a spider on your neck," she offered.

Quickly, I swiped at my neck, not in a panicked sort of way because spiders don't freak me out like that, but in a matter-of-fact kind of way because the thought of a spider on my neck was rather unappealing. But I did not feel a spider. Instead, I felt the rough hairs of my mole so neglected and long they curled into what, no doubt, looked like the many legs of a spider.

"Oh," I laughed. "That's just my mole."

"Yuck," squirmed my student, "You have a hairy mole?"

Now, as I approach 50 my response to her reaction would be much different than it was then. "Yes, well..." I stammered back then, "It's not uncommon, really, it's just the way this mole is."

Today I would say, "Yep, moles get hair on them and as you get older, you'll get hairier. Just you wait, little Missy. You'll be plucking and trimming every morning for the rest of your life!"

And it's true, for me anyway. Not only do I trim the hair on my "spider" mole on a regular basis, but the same has to be done on three other face moles and one on my neck. In addition, the same determined black hairs poke out on my chin and my upper lip and with much grimacing, I pluck those out with tweezers at least twice a week.

I wish I could mature enough to not care about my moles or the hair that grows out of them, but I have yet to grasp the beauty of such marks. Most of the time, I am unaware of them until a photograph is taken, up close and personal, and I see not only the moles, but the expanding gray hair on my head.

In high school, when we had our senior pictures taken, the studio photographer painted out the moles on my face. The photograph hangs in my parents' spare bedroom and when I look at it now, my skin looks almost porcelain, very clean and very smooth. While I can see the resemblance between that person and my older self, the girl in the photograph looks fake, almost like a painting, an artist's abstract rendering of the teenager before him.

I heard on the radio the other day how doctors are offering minor plastic surgery options at their general practitioner's offices because they can make more money than waiting for insurance (Medicare mostly) to pay for normal, every day health care. One doctor commented, "In the future, we'll have a lot of really good-looking sick people in our country."

A doctor once told me I could have my moles removed and, in fact, almost recommended it to avoid possible future bouts of cancer. Though now I see the idea as outrageous (and my current doctor does as well), at the time I almost took him up on the offer. Not because I was worried about cancer (though I was slightly), but because I knew I wouldn't have to put up with an old lady's wet tissue or the fear of spiders on my neck.

Is that vanity? I think calling the black spots on my face beauty marks is more vain than possibly removing them all, but in the end I've done neither. The moles are still here, speckling my skin and occasionally growing bristled hairs just in case they think I've forgotten about them.

The Penis: One Lesbian's Perspective -- Part One

At 8 weeks of age, our puppy had a boner. A hard on. An erection as hard and long as an adult male's.

At 8 weeks old.

We'd just arrive home with him in our arms after a long trip from Seattle to Oregon and then back again. On our doorstep when we arrived was a large package -- his dog bed that we ordered from an online pet store before we'd left to retrieve him. We opened the box quickly, pulled his bed from the plastic wrapper and laid it out on the kitchen floor so he could climb in and feel at home.

Instead.

Instead he climbed onto the edge of the bed, pulled it underneath him with his front paws while grabbing the canvas with his mighty puppy teeth, and began humping like a mad man. My partner and I stared at each other in shock and disbelief. We'd read in all the "New Puppy" books that "mounting" was a sign of dominance and to be discouraged when it occurred on people's legs or on other dogs, but no where in our expensive owner's guides did it tell us what to do when our puppy mounted his own bed.

We had a quick committee discussion.

"He is a boy," I said.

"True," agreed my partner, "And it's not like it's inappropriate on an inanimate object, is it?"

"I guess as long as we limit where he can hump..." and I left my words hanging, flaccid and unfulfilled.

At this point in the discussion, Rubin, the viral puppy slid sideways on the floor lying with the bed still between his legs and his whole body pumping against the canvas. The hardwood floors proved an obstacle what with all the sliding and slipping. Ingeniously, he figured out that a prone position served his desires more effectively.

"He seems to be having fun," my partner laughed.

"Or possessed," I chimed in and at that moment, Rubin stopped, his back legs still moving slightly as he pushed the bed away, his mouth releasing his once firm grasp.

And then he tried to stand up.

This is perhaps when we laughed the most. He couldn't walk. He could barely stand up. His back hunched, his tail down he walked like an injured football player after a particularly brutal tackle to his mid-section. He looked up at us as if to say, "What the hell just happened to me?"

Later that afternoon I emailed the breeder in Oregon to ask her if this behavior was common.

"I've NEVER had a dog do such a thing," she wrote complete with the capital letters. We fretted for a few days especially when he proceeded to hump his bed on a nightly basis. Finally, to keep the bed from getting "soiled" we let him hump his stuff animal, a large dog that we'd bought to act as his "momma" when he slept in his crate at night.

We stopped referring to it as his "momma" though when her role clearly shifted from a comfort object to an object of nightly lust.

Now, over a year later and one stuff animal demolished, he humps his "Floppy" (a new, larger stuffed dog) on a regular basis. Occasionally, he'll growl at Floppy, frustrated that things are going as well or as quickly as he'd like. "Oh," observed a friend who'd witness his encounters, "angry sex is always the best."

As lesbians this nightly sexual rendezvous took a bit of getting used to. Well, more of an adjustment for me than for Ann, my partner. I was, we learned from watching the "L Word," a Gold Star lesbian and she was not. In other words, I have never been with a man sexually while she's had numerous boyfriends in her distant past. It is the stuff of humiliation and embarrassment when we are with certain friends.

"Never?" a good friend will ask.

"Nope, never."

And then the fun begins...for them anyway.

"Have you ever seen a penis?"

"Define 'seen'?" I'll ask, which only spurs on their aghast giggles.

"You know, up close and personal. Have you ever looked at a live one?"

"Not that I can remember and I think that's something I would remember."

"It all depends!" they'll guffaw and then tell their own personal stories about various "peni" they've encountered over their lifetimes.

The storytelling always ends the same way. "We've got to find some guy who'll let you look at his penis!"

"NO!" I'll scream. "Why is it so important?"

And they'll provide so many descriptive reasons why it is somehow vital to my experience to see a real, live penis that they convince themselves of the value.

"I've seen the dog's," I'll offer in attempt to fend off their advances.

"Oh, that's not even close," they'll complain. "You need to see an adult male's in full action!" And they'll begin scheming, wondering which of their male friends would be willing to even consider the opportunity to educate a Gold Star Lesbian.

This is when I generally leave the room or find the dog and offer him his "Floppy." He is always willing.

I try not to watch, but I have to admit, it's fascinating in an odd sort of way.

Very odd.

Wedged

Last night, as we sat in bed reading aloud to each other, we heard people singing. Loud voices carrying a lively tune just under our bedroom window.

"If I'm not mistaken," I said to Ann, "They're singing 'Happy Birthday' in Spanish."

"They" were are neighbors -- Antonio, Sequoia, and Aldo. The birthday was Ann's, her 49th. The dog barked, unaccustomed to troubadours at any time of the day, and raced down the stairs with me hot on his heels. Ann pulled on another shirt to cover her pajamas and we opened the door to see the three neighbors standing on the walkway, guitar in hand, belting out the Mexican version of Happy Birthday.

It was sweet -- not a word I use often, but there you have it.

I did not sleep well. Wedged between Ann's hot body and the exhausted dog, I tried to sleep curled around my pillow in my quarter of the bed. Struck by numerous hot flashes, the covers flung themselves from one side of the bed to the other as I tried not to disturb the birthday girl or the tired puppy who'd played like a wild man earlier that day.

I woke this morning to the sound of the blinds tapping against the window casing, the wind strong enough to bend the large maple at the front of the house, and the amplified hymns of the singing Ethiopian priest at the Coptic Church the next block over. I was still wedged, not only between Ann and the dog, but between cultures represented in song. Still sweating from the last hot flash, I stretched my leg onto the floor and stared at the ceiling trying to make out the tonal rhythms of the priest.

It was barely 7 in the morning.

"Do you think he's singing words?" Ann asked.

"Yes," I said, "But I can't make out any patterns. Just the same tune over and over, distorted by the cheap microphone and speaker system."

The dog didn't lift his head -- not for the sound of our voices or the sound of the priest. Stretched out fully, he takes up a good half of the bed and the half he occupied was mine, his curly body pressed up against my sweaty leg.

"How did you sleep?" Ann asked.

"Not well." I motioned to my space, the ball of sweat my body made in the corner of the bed. "You two demanded a lot of room last night."

"We just wanted to be close," she smiled.

"Yes, well, then you should know the repercussions of your actions," and I wiped my sweaty arm on across her exposed belly.

"Ewww," she moaned, but did not move. The dog didn't move either.

I got up, went downstairs to make coffee, turned on the radio to hear that it was National Sleepy Head Day, which is celebrated in some parts of the world by bands of awake citizens finding the last person asleep in their village and once found, throwing the sleepy head into the ocean.

In our house, the sleepy head was the dog. He's still asleep now, stretched out on his bed behind my chair as I type, wedged comfortably between the wall and the file drawer, his eyes and paws twitching slightly whenever the priest's voice rises above the maple leaves tossed by the chilly summer wind.

Flake Practice

As a gift for my departure from teaching four of my favorite co-workers purchased three 1-hour sessions with a life coach, Leah M. We've worked with this coach before -- she's consulted on some crucial issues at school -- and I have the highest regard for her so I was very pleased to receive the gift.

Today was our first "hour" though as hours go, it went a bit longer. I'd met with Leah once before at the beginning of last school year when I was thinking about this transition away from teaching and toward something else.

Okay, I'm not supposed to say "something else." I'm supposed to name the thing I want to be seen as, so therefore I must say, "away from teaching and toward a life as a writer."

Whew, that was hard.

What I like about Leah is her clarity. She is able to listen for 10 minutes to my babble about this past month of "chosen unemployment" and cut right to the chase.

"It seems to me," she said in that deep-voiced way she has of summing it all up, "you need to practice being a flake."

I laughed on the outside, but cringed on the inside. If there is one thing I don't want to be seen as it's a flake. Of course, Leah heard the laugh and saw the cringe.

"That feels scary to you, doesn't it?" at which point she laid her hand on my arm.

"Yeah, I suppose it does." At least I was truthful. "Tell me more about what you mean."

And with that invitation, Leah spent the next 50 minutes exploring my biggest issues. They are as follows:

1) My self image

This is complicated, but her message was actually quite simple. Our lives are our stories. How we wish to tell that story has a multitude of possibilities, but often we tell the story based what we think others want to hear or assume others have formulated about us.

Case in point: Over the Fourth of July weekend, Ann and I went to visit my brother and sister-in-law in Oregon. They were headed to a potluck the day we arrived and invited us along. In the drive there we talked about how I struggle with the question, "What work do you do?" because I am currently not working. They offered up suggestions. My job was to practice with people I don't know and may never meet again.

Within a matter of minutes of arriving at the potluck, the question came up. Ann, my brother, and sister-in-law all looked in my direction. They waited for me to say some of the lines we'd practiced in the ride over. "I am retired." "I'm choosing to be unemployed." "I'm in transition."

A long pause ensued. Finally in the silence I heard each of them offer up a response. "She's going to be a dog trainer." "She's taking time away from teaching to explore her options." "She's a writer."

"Why couldn't you say any of those things?" Leah asked me.

"Because none of them feels honest," I replied.

"What's not honest about them?"

"Well, I'm not a dog trainer yet, I'm not really exploring my options, and I don't see myself as a writer yet."

"Why not?" and before I could answer, Leah went on to say, "Because you have yet to publish? You write, don't you? You write every day. Okay, so maybe you haven't published yet, but that's not writing, that's the business of writing. You write and therefore you are a writer. You need to say it so you can come to truly believe it and when you truly believe it, you will live it."

This is when we started the discussion about success and what it meant to me. What a loaded question. I have no idea, though Leah claims the way I live my life means I do have a very firm, though unstated idea of what it means. "You're afraid of being a flake," she said. "You're afraid others who don't even know you will look at your life and say, 'Now there's a flake,' but that's the story you're telling yourself that they're telling themselves. They aren't saying any of that and besides, what's wrong with being a flake? What if you spent the next few months practicing being a flake? What would be the worst thing that could happen?"

Which lead us into the discussion about...

2) Living in fear

At various times in my life, I have let fear control my choices. Every time I overcame the fear and moved forward, I have been a happier person, rewarded for not living in fear.

This is one of my crucial obstacles with writing. I must send out work and face rejection. Therefore, to avoid the rejection, I don't send out work.

"Rejection is an indication that you are doing the right thing," Leah interjected and her statement stopped me in my tracks. "If you don't put anything out there, you'll never have an acceptance, you'll just constantly assume you'll be rejected. You're going to be rejected and rejection is the nature of the game. They aren't rejecting you. They are rejecting that what you've offered doesn't work for them at this time. But at some point, what you've offered will fit in with someone's desires and you will have an acceptance. Once you get that, you begin working the relationship. Rejection is only 10% about you. It's 90% about them. Crave rejection. Go after it and rejoice when they come back to you because that means someone's reading your stuff, someone's listening. And the more you throw out things that might be rejected, the more acceptance you'll find."

Which lead us, in a roundabout way, to this...

3) Success means I need to be doing something at all times...

"We are products of our middle class upbringing," Leah said. "We have learned in the most subtle of ways that if we aren't doing something, then we are failures. But we must learn to change that language and select what we wish to be doing. This may mean doing a lot of things for a short amount of time, but eventually you define yourself as desiring to do this and not wanting to do that. You define who you are by doing and by not doing. You get to choose."

My homework for the next week:

Try out different experiences. Apply to different jobs, but go into them knowing that I get to decide if I want the job or not. If there is one I want to do and end up not liking it, try something else. I am not a flake if I do this. I am just trying to find what fits best for me. Give myself space to write, send the writing out, and let the "job" come to me, the one that works well with the writing.

In other words, practice being a flake or what I define as being a flake.

I'll see how it goes...

No Obligations

I don't do well without obligations. I'm uncertain how to structure my day and so I find myself creating obligations through detailed lists. "Clean the house" is on my list as are laundry, grocery shopping, grooming the dog, exercising, and watering the tomatoes.

Then I feel compelled to get it all done. If I don't, I feel like a failure, which is incredibly silly because 1) I made the list and it was arbitrary and 2) no one but ME is keeping track of the list's completion. It's laughable when I stop to think about it, but I'm not laughing most days. Most days I'm moving from one item to the next trying to get them all done during the day so I feel accomplished.

My stress about it all is even worse when spontaneity gets in the way. Ann is my nemesis. She has no lists. She just moves through the day based on her whims. She wants to mow the lawn, so she does. She sees an ad in the paper for a night stand so she wants to go check it out. She sits on the couch and reads the paper, drinking her coffee in the morning sun and feels no rush to get started on whatever needs to get started on. She wants to read a book and fall asleep in the lounge chair on the deck, this is exactly what she does. No worries, no stress, no self-imposed guilt.

"Time's a-wasting," I'm thinking and I verbally poke at her to figure out what her vision of the day might be. But even if she can tell me her plan, it's never set in stone. The neighbor will walk by and all of the sudden Ann is in a long conversation about random topics and then the neighbor invites us over for some shaved ice or to see her latest photographs from her last trip. Ann never feels inconvenienced. Rather she jumps at the chance to stray from the schedule, the schedule she has no idea exists.

I go into a panic. It happened yesterday. We went for a long walk with the neighbor and after, she invited us over for a cool iced treat. I could feel my stomach tighten. We'd just spent two hours walking, which I'd planned on, but now we were going to spend unscheduled time with the neighbor, who I really like, but she wasn't on the list and all those other items on the list would have to be put off to a later time.

I went straight to the bathroom.

Ann headed to the neighbor's house. Once I'd calmed myself down, I headed to the neighbor's and then found myself getting antsy when we sat in her living room and "chatted." I don't do chatting well and I worked on my deep breathing to avoid being irritated that Ann was not as wedded to "the list" as I was.

Okay, so I hadn't even written the list nor had I verbalized it to Ann. I just needed her to know that visiting with the neighbor WAS NOT in my plans for the day. She doesn't get it. She's still very patient with me, but she doesn't get it.

It happened again today. She mentioned a few things we'd like to do and the next thing I know, we're doing them. When I don't make a list I have nothing to follow, no regiment to stick to and I end up following along, which makes me very tense. So there I was, following Ann to the Sculpture Park, driving to Cost Plus for a nightstand and a laptop sleeve, buying a water bottle holder for the neighbor at the bike shop, and stopping by the bank to get some cash.

"I didn't realize we were going to do all of this," I snipped and she looked at me like I'd just made a mountain out of a mole hill.

I guess I was, but in my mind there were things to be done. What those things were...well, I hadn't had time to make the list so I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be doing.

And when there is nothing really to do, I'm not sure how to fill that space. I always feel as if I should be doing something or going somewhere. The "next thing" is the goal, not the "now thing" especially when that now thing is empty of obligations.

"You're stuck in the shoulds," my friend told me. "You need to go out and do some should nots."

"What?" I could feel myself forming a knot in my already tightly wound stomach.

"You know," she flipped her hands gesturing to something concrete that I had yet to see, "All your life you do shoulds. Like you should go visit your friend, you should go to the concert, you should clean the house, you should stay at the job you hate and you get stuck there doing all of things you don't really enjoy or want to do. So, do some should nots."

"Give me some examples," I said, skeptically.

"Oh I don't know what your should nots are. Maybe reading on the couch all day or buying the expensive olive oil. It's up to you what those should nots are."

"How will I know when I see them?"

"I don't think you see them," she said in a very confident tone. "I think you feel them. Just listen for them and then try one. Not the really scary ones, but the ones that are incidental and will give you practice at not always doing the shoulds."

On one level I get what she's saying and it's not like I can't stop cleaning the house. I have on a number of occasions. It's that I feel guilty about it because IT WAS ON THE LIST and I didn't do it. Even if it's not on the list, I feel like I should clean and if I don't, well then I've failed. And it's not just cleaning. I should be doing something at all times.

"I still don't get it," Ann smiles at me when I try to explain it.

And when I think about it, I don't get it either. Random should be okay. It's what I longed for when I was mired down with school and work. Now that I have it, I'm not sure how to work with it. It wasn't as if "following" Ann today was keeping me from something. When I relaxed into it, it was kind of fun to shop around or walk through the park and look at the art next to the most spectacularly blue day.

This then is one of the many areas of my life I get to practice now that I really have no obligations. Random and spontaneous.

Rubin is a good teacher for this next lesson in my life. He wakes in the morning, takes care of his business in the backyard, and then hangs out on the back porch in the sun. He can spend hours just lying there sniffing the wind for the morning rituals of the world around him. He has no obligations and he knows how to really relax in that space. (see above picture)

I need to learn.

Otherwise I'll be spending panicked hours in the bathroom, missing out on a life without obligations.

One man's bagpipes are a pawn broker's dream

Our neighborhood has experienced a rash of burglaries. The list of stolen items includes flat screen TVs, bicycles, fountains, lawnmowers, computers, DVD players, and perhaps the oddest on the list, bagpipes.

"Please help recover my prized possession. Authentic Scottish bagpipes..." an announcement reads, stapled to every telephone pole for blocks and blocks.

I was walking with the neighbor when we spotted the computer generated sign complete with an intricate drawing of the bagpipes (apparently no photo exists of the beloved). My neighbor doubled over in laughter. "Why would anyone steal bagpipes?" she guffawed. And we kept walking and wandering, the signs like flags following our path.

We have been fortunate to have avoided the pillage of these brazen burglars. "They broke a side window," explained one neighbor, "and then carted everything out the front door and into a waiting van...in the middle of the day!"

These neighbors were almost next door, one fence away. They have two dogs who bark constantly and throw themselves at the fence in the backyard every time we walk by. But the dogs were to no avail. Locked in the backyard, they no doubt threw themselves at the sliding glass door with the same vicious verve they display to the innocent passersby, but what threat is that to the kid ripping your TV off the wall? So much for guard dogs.

We leave our dog inside when we go, but it doesn't make me feel any safer. If they are bold enough to break into the house on the corner during the day, what would they do to our dog if they confronted him in the middle of a burglary? I have no doubt that he would bark aggressively and posture menacingly, but would he bite them? Would they attack him?

Everyone in the neighborhood is trying to figure out who is responsible for the recent increase of thefts. The recent robbery was apparently committed by three teenagers (someone saw them, but didn't think anything of it -- three kids carrying a flat screen TV into a van) -- but did remember their descriptions later when interviewed by the police.

Others suspect the teenagers at the end of the block. They are home now, though there are times in the year when they are never home. We suspect they are in jail and once released, they come live with their tired mother and the burglaries increase.

One neighbor reported blue painter's tape outside on his walkway, "as if I'd been tagged," he said, but no one else has noticed such a mark before they were robbed.

Our mail carrier suspects the creepy looking older man she sees driving around the neighborhood. "He's in a different car every week," she tells me one day. "And I always see him emptying stuff out of the back of one vehicle or another with teenagers and prostitutes there to help."

"You should call the police," I tell her.

"Yeah, right. I'm a sitting target. They see me see them, day in and day out. Don't you think they'll know who called?"

Good point. "Call me," I suggest, "And I'll call the police."

She agrees, but has never done so. I don't blame her. I've seen the slimy guy and his cadre of miscreants and they scare me, too. And what do you tell the police? "Hey, there's this guy with a bunch of kids unloading stuff from a car, a van, a truck. He looks suspicious." We can't even get the police to come by when there's an even more substantial threat in the neighborhood. "Yes," we say, "He's got a gun."

"Are you sure it's a gun and not fireworks?" the dispatcher will ask.

My god!

Actually, I should be nicer. The police have upped their presence and have responded in a more timely fashion, but many of them still have the attitude "if you choose to live in this neighborhood..." and look at us with a bit of sympathy, but not too much.

"I called the local pawn shop," one neighbor reported, "And the thief was at the counter trying to sell my TV! Imagine that!" She called the police, but the suspect was long-gone by then, nervous that the pawn broker was stalling a bit too long.

On our block, everyone's keeping an eye open for suspicious characters, but even I must admit, we have more than our fair share of dicey drifters wandering up and down the street. Who is a thief and who is down on his luck is difficult to decipher.

In the meantime, we lock our doors, look up the prices of installation and monthly charges for alarm systems, and leave the radio on loudly when we go away. We randomly turn on lights and even bought one of those timers so the lamps turn on and off as if someone were home. While we are trying to teach the dog not to go ballistic every time someone walks by the house, we do let him bark so they know he's here.

Is all of this enough of a deterrent? Hard to say. So far, we have yet to be robbed. I wouldn't be surprised if it happened, but so far we have yet to be tagged. I'm thankful we're fairly simple folk -- no flat screen TVs, no Blue-ray DVD players, no exotic fountains.

But I have been thinking about getting a nice set of bagpipes. Perhaps I should rethink that purchase.

Writing Exercise

"I am no longer a teacher," I explained to an acquaintance the other day. "I have decided to leap into something else though I'm still figuring out what the 'else' looks like."

She smiled and said, "Good for you," but it was without much enthusiasm or sincerity. Later, I told a friend about my exchange and how it made me feel doubtful. "As if I can't generate enough doubt on my own, here comes this woman that I hardly know to hand me some more!"

My friend said, "Perhaps you should change the word 'leap' to a more accurate statement as in 'I am leaping' like you are in the act of and not yet landed."

This is a friend who is very supportive of my desire to pursue writing more in my life. She says, "good for you" with the utmost conviction and the most heartfelt sincerity. She is also my cheerleader of patience.

"It doesn't just happen like that," she snaps her fingers. "Writing is like exercise. You've got to do it every day to get any results, don't you think?"

Yes, of course she's right and for me, it's not just about writing every day, it's about getting actual exercise every day. That's where the ideas come from. Like today. I woke early to water the garden and begin the tedious process of staining our very large fence. When the warmth of the day crawls over the fence, staining is torturous. I lifted that big brush, dragging it back and forth, up and down until I finally needed a break.

"I'm going to take the dog for a run," I told Ann who was working in the shade of the house on the south side of the fence.

"That's a great idea," she agreed because the dog was growing impatient and threatening to get down right rowdy and make fence painting even more laborious than it already was.

I changed into my running clothes, laced up my shoes, leashed up the dog and headed out into the mid-morning sun -- not too hot and not too cold.

I can't run like I used to. In the past, I'd head out slowly and then pick up my pace until I could feel my heart pump from my head to my toes. That kind of running was meditative. I could lose myself in the exertion.

I've recently resigned myself to the fact that it is I no longer run but jog and when I feel myself itching to go faster, I stop myself by walking. This is not only easier on the dog, but is far easier on my old knees, creaky back, and often swollen heal.

I've given up running on a number of occasions, but I always come back to it because I need it to clear my head of all the gobbledygook I collect over time. About 10 minutes into a nice jog -- when my pace feels relaxed and sustainable -- I start thinking about things. While I hate the word "things" there really isn't any specific word to put in its place. Thoughts float through me and ones I find most curious, I grab onto and decide to run with (ha!).

This morning I thought about writing topics.

I often wish, when I am exercising like this, that I had a tape recorder in my brain, one that would record all the gibberish and then, once plugged into my computer, spew out every thought. Those thoughts that I find most interesting, I could highlight by blinking my eyes when I think them and then, when they printed out off my computer, they'd be highlighted and I could avoid my superfluous meanderings and focus solely on the purest thoughts.

Of course, my mind does not work like this and so I write whole stories out on a jog and remember only snippets of them when I return. I know writers who take notebooks with them every where, but writing while jogging I have yet to master. I have enough difficulty finding a place for my house keys let alone a notebook and pencil.

Mary Oliver wrote, "I have a notebook with me all the time, and I begin scribbling a few words. When things are going well, the walk does not get anywhere; I finally just stop and write."

I've tried this, but the walk (or jog) and the ideas depend on each other. Once my legs stop moving, my mind does too and I am left standing in the middle of the path, pen aloft, and goosebumps forming on my sweaty body. So, I end up just walking or jogging and try to "recreate" the thoughts when I return home.

Over the years, I've resolved myself to the fact that more ideas will be lost than will be remembered. Hell, whole novels won't be written because they are lost in jog -- to the trees, the skies, the gnarled roots I must navigate.

But there is something to be said for these "writing exercises" because they help me gain my confidence back. Perhaps it's the endorphins that clear away the doubt or maybe it's just giving myself time to wander through the doubt and deconstruct it so that it loses its power over me. Regardless, if I do not physically exercise, I do not physically write. I stagnant and stagnation leads to a dam of doubt, a log-jam of uncertainty, and finally the pressure to find some relief. At one time that relief came with an exhilarating and exhausting run. Now it comes with a shuffled jog.

I am leaping. I am leaping. I am leaping.

Watch me.

15 minutes

I have 15 minutes to write. Well, actually 14 minutes after the time it took to sign in.

Regardless.

I've got gargantuan cinnamon rolls in the oven. I got up on a Sunday morning at 6:30 to pull the dough from the fridge, the dough I made yesterday in the 90 degree heat.

Okay, maybe it wasn't 90 degrees, but by 4 in the afternoon, it felt like 90 degrees. It was so hot that we got in the car with the dog and headed over to Doris and Steven's for a dip in their unheated pool. The dog, too.

He loves it. We love it. He wears a floatation device, we wear swimming suits. He leaps off the side of the pool, we ease ourselves in, sucking in air the whole time. He swims around in circles chasing after tennis balls, we swim around after him. He is a much faster swimmer than we are.

We came home to a hot house, but feeling pool cooler we ate a dinner of leftovers and watched the women's basketball game. The dog slept. Like the dead. He looked like a 10-year old boy who'd spent the day at the city pool. His reddish blond hair curly and sun-dried.

Later, we went for an evening walk with Monty from up the street and his owner, our friend, Colleen. It was cooler, but still hot. The dog was still tired, but Monty, recovering from a strained left front leg, was raring to go. He has had little exercise in hopes that rest will help him heal a bit. Rubin did his best to keep up, but his swimming legs were tired.

And then we came home. Ann had made a Clafouti(?) using cherries from our cherry tree. Very good. Not too sweet, not to dry.

15 minutes, when you really use them, is a lot of time.

Next door the new neighbors are tearing apart their house and their yard. Young and industrious, they have ripped the back of the house off and are building an enormous deck. They ripped up the front yard, planted grass, and are waiting to finish the deck before putting in a brick patio and garden.

I gave them some cinnamon rolls. The first batch.

And I gave two more to the neighbors up the street. They saw me deliver the first batch, so I felt guilty and delivered a couple to them. The neighbors from the other block were walking by with their dog, so I'll need to drop off some cinnamon rolls at their house from the second batch.

I got up at 6:30 and it is now almost 9:30. Three hours of baking and delivering; 15 minutes of writing.

And still there is more time.

Rubin is refusing to eat his breakfast. He wolfed down his dinner last night. Swimming always makes me hungry, too, but he acted famished. I thought he'd eat more this morning, but instead, he's curled up on the bamboo floors just at the place where the cool air from the office window meets the cool air from the back door.

He is content.

I am content.

Ann is in the garden and she is always most content there.

I'm waiting for the buzzer for the second batch, but still I write.

The radio is on and I'm not listening to NPR. Instead, it's Sunday Brunch, a local station's attempt to play some mellower sounds, but right now they are playing commercials.

And I can smell the cinnamon rolls. This batch will include a delivery to Colleen (Monty's mom) and Dely up the street. And the neighbors on the other block. I shall eat one, too, though Ann couldn't finish hers and she let me eat the last two bites.

I love cinnamon rolls, but this was a long process.

"I think I'll make these maybe two or three times a year," I informed Ann.

"Ah," is all she said, as in "ah" that's too bad.

And there is the buzzer.

15 minutes and so much can get done.

Between Boom and Crisis

"How's it going?" I asked once I'd settled my body, face down, onto the massage table.

"Not bad," said my shy and contemplative massage therapist.

"You have enough business these days?"

"It's always good if I'm between boom and crisis," she sighed and then dug her powerful thumb into my stress spot just behind my scapula on my left shoulder.

I liked that idea. I like to think that contentment is about life not being too good or too awful, that somewhere in the middle of those extremes is a space (a wide one at that) in which to comfortably move about.

This philosophy fits my massage therapist. She doesn't seem like someone who panics too much or overly worries about life's roller coaster.

I'm taking notes. I've been a person who jumps from one extreme to the other -- too much to do and worry about or nothing to do and then I worry about that.

If I can keep emotion out of it, unemployment is an interesting place to be. Obligations are created not directed. If I am too busy it is of my own making. While I used to believe I had control of my own destiny when I was working, unemployment has offered me a much different perspective. Now I literally have choices and if I choose, for instance, to take a class then I am ultimately to blame when the course I'm taking offers up way too much homework.

Or if I choose to go to walk to the Farmer's Market and sweat all the way there, I have no one to complain to for I made the choice on an 80 degree day.

I suppose choice is always of my own choosing (for lack of a better word), but when I was elbow-deep in teaching -- grading papers, planning lessons, attending meetings -- there was often the feeling that I was being led around my life by my earlobe, someone else grabbing it and giving it a tug. Now, as I sit with a world of possibilities before me, I have to take my own earlobe in hand and tug in well-thought-out directions lest I end up doing activities that aren't really so appealing.

This is the case with the current class on Oceanography that I'm taking online. It's interesting, but it's overwhelming on many different levels. I am not a scientist, though I am very interested in science. I'm also no longer a teacher and the final project for this class requires that I write a long and involved lesson plan. Therefore I'm doing a lot of work for something I'll never really use. The assignments are complicated and require a great deal of time to comb through the readings and the videos and even dredging up more information on the internet so I can intelligently take part in the online discussions with science teachers from across the nation.

Of course, I am my own worst enemy since I hate to appear dumb and therefore work way too hard to achieve and "EE" grade -- "exceeds expectations" -- when and "ME" or "meeting expectations" would be enough.

Years ago I remember my therapist saying to me that my life's work was to be "good enough" not in the sense that I must actually BE good enough, but that I must see my work and myself AS good enough. Even in unemployment this concept is difficult to grasp.

Of course, I've only been unemployed for a month and technically speaking, my teaching salary goes through August so in actuality, I'm not unemployed yet. Still, the boom of overworking is still clear in my memory and the crisis of true unemployment -- financial worries, piles of bills unpaid, no job prospects -- is not part of my reality. In fact, what I've found is the more I let go of obligation, the more potential opportunities present themselves.

Just last night, for instance, having dinner with our good friends and their children steered me to another friend who is now the manager of a local bookstore. "She'd be thrilled to hire you," said my friend and inside I could feel this sigh of relief along with a deeper awareness that I have choices, I will always have choices.

Whether I grab my earlobe or not is up to me. That's the beauty of the wiggle room between boom and crisis. I can live there, in that space between, but it's going to take some practice. Good thing I don't really have any obligations yet. I can practice to my heart's content. Or perhaps I can practice to heart's necessity.

Chance meetings are so unpredictable

The last place you expect to see your long ago ex-girlfriend is at the dog park, but there she was standing cooling in the shade while the dogs frolicked in the muddy water of the river. She didn't recognize me at first, but when I lifted my sunglasses to the brim of my baseball cap and called her name, she looked at me as if I were vaguely familiar.

Not until I said my name did her eyes flash and a genuine smile replaced the polite one. I don't blame her for not remembering. It's been well over 25 years since we last saw each other. And it wasn't on the best of terms.

Rewind...
She'd just returned from the Bering Strait where she'd been an interpreter for an American fishing vessel translating with the Russian fishing crews who haggled over species and quantities, and vodka and Communism. It was hard work, she later told me, and depressing not because of the dwindling fish populations, but because, as she said, the Russians were a "beaten people."

She, by heritage, is Ukrainian. She spent the first years of her life in a farming village outside of Chernobyl before her parents moved her to New York City. It was years later before nuclear radiation melted her homeland, and when it did, I pictured all that beautiful agricultural landscape she'd described to me covered in some kind of dirty, glowing slime.

She lived in New York until right before we first met. In the early 1980s she moved to Seattle to try something different and though she didn't have a job when she first arrived, she was in high demand as an interpreter once employers knew she could speak Russian.

We weren't girlfriends for long. In fact, I'm not really sure how we met. I think it was at the University in one class or another, perhaps in the hallways of the History department or maybe in the Women's Studies offices where I worked part-time. As time will do, I don't really remember why we were attracted to each other. She was calm and reserved. I was athletic and humorous. She enjoyed carpentry and modern dance. I enjoyed long bicycle rides and softball.

I met her after I'd broken up with another girlfriend. That relationship ended when my then partner had an endless stream of affairs with women from her work. She got the apartment we lived in when we split-- a wonderful top story of a house down by the lake -- and I ended up living in a studio apartment off the freeway. It was a horrible dive of a place, but it afforded me enough distance to lick my wounds and figure out what I wanted to do next.

What I did next is complicated and a little awkward. I quit my profitable job at the television station and went back to school. I'd actually done that just before the break up, but now I'd really done it as I was truly on my own and venturing into new territory. I went back to school to earn a history degree and the next step was to earn my teaching certification, but my new found freedom often got in the way of my success.

I had a job at a bicycle shop, played on two softball teams, took a full load of classes, and without a car, rode my bicycle back and forth across the city five, sometimes six times a day. That was the complicated part.

The awkward part, which wasn't really awkward back then feels a tad bit embarrassing now, the "what were you thinking" kind of embarrassing. I had three girlfriends at the time. One played on my softball team, the other was a good friend (we still are today) and the third was the Ukrainian New Yorker. While the other two knew about each other, no one knew about the Ukrainian New Yorker nor did she know anything about the other two. Hence the endless pedaling from job to sex to school to sex to job to home to more sex.

I had a lot of energy in my mid-twenties.

I'm not sure why I didn't tell her about the others. She seemed more fragile perhaps or less open to "sharing" and when she went off on the fishing boat, there wasn't any real point to telling her what I was doing while she was away.

She'd write these beautiful letters to me that often arrived in bunches since it was rare that mail left the ship with any consistency. I wrote back occasionally, but never with the same verve or commitment. I was hoping through my negligence, she'd get the hint that she wasn't as important to me as I appeared to be to her.

It all sounds so cruel now, but really it was more stupidity and innocence, the inability to be honest not only with everyone in my life, but even with myself. I could list out all the reasons why I needed to be so devious, but it not only sounds cruel, it sounds as if I was beyond irresponsible and venturing into reckless.

If you truly knew me -- then and now -- reckless is not a word that comes to mind. I am fairly cautious and always have been. These then can be classified as my wild years when I threw all caution to the wind and lived only for myself and my earthly desires.

When she did return ,smelling of fish and still swaying from the crashing swells of the ocean we hung out together for a few weeks, but even she could feel the distance between us. Finally I told her I needed to end it, though I'm certain I wasn't that direct. I do remember that she cried. I understand why. She'd poured out her guts to me in those letters and I'd just walked away carrying all that love on the back of my traveled bicycle.

I walked away from one of the other girlfriends, too. It was a mutual decision -- she was seeing someone else as well and wanted to pursue it as a potential relationship. As for the third girlfriend, we tried for a few years, but eventually she had an affair with her best friend and I was left right where I started -- alone and living in a dump.

I landed my first teaching job shortly after that and left all of them behind to start out fresh in a completely different environment -- a small town two hours and a ferry boat ride from the city. My luck with girlfriends didn't run much better after that. I dated an alcoholic for awhile and then another woman who also had affairs during our relationship. Finally I settled down in a long-term relationship and after 10 years, I was the one to leave finally figuring out that nothing was going to fill the void I felt inside except for me.

My life has landed here -- in a relationship that feels exactly right, in a house that feels spacious and warm, and with friends who value what I value -- laughter, nature, and monogamy.

So when I spotted the Ukrainian New Yorker standing under the shade of the tree I was surprised.

Pleasantly.

"My god, you haven't changed a bit." Her New Yorker accent was thick and rich with hints of Ukrainian rattling around in the background.

"Twenty pounds heavier and a whole lot grayer," I laughed and pulled up my baseball cap.

"I know the feeling," she smiled back. She didn't though. She was gray around the edges, but she was still petite and thin, her dark Ukrainian eyes the prominent feature on her face.

It's amazing what 25 years of distance can do for you. Maybe, like me, she didn't remember all the details of our last meeting. Maybe she'd forgotten that I was an ass, insensitive and self-absorbed because she greeted me and talked with me as if we were long lost friends and not bitterly parted lovers.

"What are you doing now?" I asked.

"I live in New York and teach Modern Dance at NYU." If her accent hadn't been so edgy I could have easily guessed she'd moved back to New York. "And my partner and I have a 10-year old son."

"That's great," I exclaimed and then we stood there awkwardly catching glimpses of each other out of the corner of our eyes while we pretended to watch the dogs play in the river.

"And you?" she asked.

"Currently unemployed after 22 years of teaching." I'm still working on how to introduce myself and my new path, but it worked.

"Wow! What's next?"

"Dog training, perhaps. A dog walking business. Something different than kids," I laughed, a tad worried I'd just offended her son that I didn't even know.

"Oh wow," she smiled and turned to another woman who was standing close by. "This is Maureen and we're here at the park because she owns a dog walking business."

And from there the conversation flowed around dogs and business-owning and everything else that really didn't matter.

In the end we exchanged phone numbers. She's in town for another few weeks and her partner and son will join her next week. I'm not sure who will call whom first or if we'll just let the chance meeting remain a chance meeting.

We hugged then and parted. I walked toward the grassy fields to dry off the dogs and she headed up the wooded path with Maureen. A half hour later we saw each other in the parking lot. We'd parked right next to each other.

"Odd that I'd meet you once, but now twice!" She threw up her hands and looked amazingly like the woman I dated 25 years ago.

It was her smile, I thought on the drive home. It was that smile that attracted me the first time.

The last place you'd expect to see a smile like that is at a dog park on a hot summer's day, but there you have it. Chance meetings are so unpredictable.

Awake

When I was a kid, my parents took me to a dentist who hypnotized his patients before he worked on them. At 8 or 9 years of age I had no idea, I just know I was convinced he never gave me a shot of Novocaine. He did, of course, but I didn't "feel it" as I was in la la land for the duration. My mom said that when she came to pick me up, I'd be asleep in his chair my head nodding toward the porcelain spit bowl.

He lost his license, so my mother tells me, for not having the proper license to practice hypnosis. It seems silly now as I felt very comfortable at the dentist and didn't really develop a fear of them until I was an adult.

It's not that I fear them actually -- I never make an appointment, or shake in the chair, or break out in hives -- but as an adult, I've somehow figured out how uncomfortable sitting in that chair with my mouth wide open and smothered in a rubber dam can be. I don't even mind the shots, but I hate and despise the drill. I can't think about what they're doing to my tooth with the whining, buzzing, digging drill.

Since my fear has increased over time, I've tried to stick with one dentist -- a dentist I trusted -- and faithfully go for cleanings to avoid any major procedures.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always worked out that way. I have my father's teeth -- they are soft and prone to decay -- or perhaps I have my mother's teeth as she has worn dentures for most of my life. It doesn't really matter. What matters is that I have a number of crowns, a whole new mouth of fillings (they got rid of all those silver ones), an implant, and a number of root canals.

And all of these procedures have been done by one or two doctors.

Today's procedure was a dentist I'd had once before, when my regular dentist was out of town. Dr. L was a great dentist and though my time was limited with her, I was sad when she left on maternity leave and never came back. I liked her so much I hunted her down on the internet and to my pleasure (though I hate to use that word in the same sentence as dentist), she had just opened up a new practice. I went on my first visit today and to avoid being reexamined, she just gave me the temporary crown my previous dentist (her old employer) was going to give me a week ago.

Dr. L's office is very new. It even smelled new, and is a "certified green building" with bamboo floors and recycled materials used to make the counters and the cabinets. She has a massage therapist as her receptionist, so just when you're finishing up, this tall, thin European woman comes and massages your shoulders or your jaw or your hands or your feet or all of them if you so request.

I really like Dr. L. She's patient and kind and never asks ridiculous questions when your underneath that rubber dam. She's a perfectionist, too, which means her work is admired by other dentists. It also helps that she's very cute. When the drilling gets annoying, I open my eyes and stare at her delicate nose and petite ears.

Dr. L is a very good dentist, but today's procedure tested her perfectionist nature. The drilling went well, but the impression took forever. I stayed fairly relaxed, but when she said, "the tooth is awake" I had a chill move from my molars to my toes clenching my hands along the way.

I didn't really quite know what "awake" meant, but I found out quickly when she stuffed another cord into it (which I'm not really sure why they do that...disinfectant?). I winced. She placed her hand on my shoulder and asked, "Was that unbearable?"

What could I say? I was trapped under rubber, my mouth so wide open I could put my fist in it. I nodded "no," but then doubted my answer the second her pokey tool went for the cord and the tooth.

The tooth is awake...what the hell kind of jargon is that? I didn't know teeth went to sleep. I knew my leg can fall asleep if I curl it under me for too long while sitting. I knew they put me "asleep" when I had my back surgery. But teeth are like inanimate objects, aren't they? Sure, I know they hurt and have roots and all of that, but most of the time, I don't notice them at all. When the pain shot through my gums and along my jaw today I was thinking this isn't awake, this is bloody painful!

Dr. L apologized and kept letting me know that she was almost done. I tried to stare at her smooth and silky complexion. I tried to trace her jawline down to her softly curved chin. I even looked for gray hair amidst the golden blond of her pony tail, but to no avail. Three and half hours into it and I was ready to have her yank the damn tooth out.

Okay, so it wasn't that bad. After 800 mg. of Ibuprofen, I'm feeling much better, but when I stop to think about the whole thing, I get the willies. Still, I'll go back to her. She's kind, she's funny, she's really good at what she does, and she's very attractive.

Maybe I'll just send her a brochure about hypnotism before my next visit.