Cheesesteaks and Soft Pretzels

Scars

For as long as I can remember (ok, since I was 5), I've been very self-conscious about this smiley-face scar below my belly button. All through high school and college, when other girls were wearing bikinis, I avoided them because of this scar. I thought it was enormous, the kind of thing that you'd see from across the room and wonder how it came to be.

You'll probably wonder what the origin of such a scar would be. I'm not sure about the details, but I was born with an umbilical hernia -- the muscle wall behind my belly button never closed over like it does in a normal person. Without repair, if I ever became pregnant by abdominal wall would basically burst from the pressure. How pleasant. Do you think this might have something to do with my underlying psychological reservations about having kids? So when I was five years old, I went to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia to have it fixed by Dr. Schnaufer. What I remember about the day is this: mom crying; walking into the OR with Winnie, my nurse; having them ask me, at 5, if I knew how to count backwards from 100 -- I got to 97 before I blacked out; waking up in the recovery room, completely disoriented and in awful pain; getting my stuffed polar bear from Winnie (I named him Chopper, for Children's Hospital... wasn't I a creative little kid?); and the recovery room nurses trying to get me to sit up so they could get me out of there, and I refused because it hurt (my one act of spoiled only child defiance in my life, I suspect).

So while I don't remember much about the procedure itself, the scar still lingered. They said it wouldn't, but when it hadn't gone away 10 years later, I kind of guessed that I was stuck with it. I hated it. To me, it was this glaringly obvious defect, and I'm sure I was convinced that the scar, along with my braces, glasses and freckles, would make me completely undesirable to every man on the planet.

Over the last few years, fashions have changed to low-rider jeans and shirts that don't quite cover my entire belly, leaving the scar exposed. Suddenly today it dawned on me that I haven't been the least bit self conscious of it during this whole time. I don't know what's changed in me, but I'm not bothered by it. It's quite possible that it's been seen by friends, coworkers and complete strangers who pass me on the street, but I don't really care. I also seem to have gotten over the birthmark on my left thigh, but I suspect that's because I can't really see the back of my own thigh -- out of sight, out of mind.

So I'm wondering, as I get older, if I'm becoming more comfortable with my body. I know that pilates has helped somewhat. I've got a great back now, and I'm working on killer arms. Flat abs are another goal, but whenever I think that they're not the way I want them, I look around and notice that no one's abs are the way they want them, and then I feel better. I have this feeling that at 30, I'm stronger, healthier and quite possibly sexier than I've ever been before (I may be wrong about any or all of those, but hey, it's about how you feel inside, right? And if I feel stronger and sexier, I am stronger and sexier. Case closed). There might be room for improvement, but everyone has room for improvement. Why should I be any different?

Emotions

Sometimes I get all emotional for no good reason. Right now I'm going mildly nuts due to a combination of work-related claustrophobia and this general feeling like I'm never going to amount to much of anything. I feel like I'm holding back this enormous flood of potential, but that I have no way to let it out. All I really want is to do something spectacular, something that doesn't fit the mold, something that would shock people. Of course, since I'm largely considered to be the "tall, quiet girl" (direct quote from my former boss), pretty much everything I could do would shock people. I briefly thought about changing my hair color to something dramatically different, but what would that achieve, really (and why is it that women tend to change their hair in times of crisis or angst? do we really think it will change anything?)

Back on Vacation

Not literally, of course, just in my head. It seems that with three months to go, I've already descended into that mental place where you're always thinking about your next vacation. I had a dream last night about train schedules in France. Clearly, I'm a bit preoccupied.

I'd love to extend our vacation by several days (or weeks, for that matter), but I know that I just can't get that kind of time off from work. Of course, that makes me want to quit, but without the bonus income I'll be feeling very awkward about spending money on the vacation. It's a catch-22, you see. But in all honesty, it would be great to have the time to travel like that. I used to have the time when I worked freelance, but not anymore. If only there was enough work out there to sustain me. Of course, people say to me, "If only you'd write a book..." Oh, right, it's that easy. Just sit down and do it. I have enough trouble just creating some of the lesser-quality short stories that I've posted here. A novel seems just unbearably daunting.

Strange Dreams

I had a dream last night that my big crush on a guy (I don't have any idea who he was, blonde and cute though), and he completely spurned my advances. It was so disappointing. I really thought he was hot. So I woke up sort of bummed out, and for reasons I can't explain I haven't been able to shake that feeling. I went and worked out this morning and I feel a little better now. I'd like to curl up in my reading chair and catch up on a book or just be a lazy slug. It's just that kind of day. I feel like doing stuff for myself, just taking a day for myself.

Interesting Segway....

Rode a Segway today at The Tech Museum. It's interesting. I'm not sure I know how to explain it. It's kind of like standing upright on a boat or subway or something where you need to keep your knees soft for maximum balance. While the Segway is well-balanced and won't ever fall over, that's not to say that you're balanced enough to stay on it at all times. I was fine, but I saw others who weren't so lucky.

My favorite feature is the turning radius. You can turn 360 degrees without moving forward or backward. Very cool.

Understanding

All my life I was rail-thin. When I was in high school, the guidance counselor would slip anorexia and bullimia pamphlets into my locker because she thought I was a compulsive dieter -- clearly she had never seen me polish off a cheesesteak or half of a large pizza. Over the last few years my metabolism has slowed and even though you'd never know it, I weigh 35 pounds more now than I did in college. I have these moments where I get sort of upset that I suddenly have hips, or that my stomach isn't completely flat, but then I realize that this is totally normal. I've been taking real pride in my workouts, not just because they make me feel better, but because I can catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realize that you can see muscle tone in my arms for the first time ever, or that I have a great back that's no longer dominated by my bony old chicken wings.

Last night, at S & A's wedding, their friend L was in attendance. I first met her two years ago, but in the time between she became vegetarian and somehow went down a slippery slope that led to an obsession with eating and exercise. Once it became clear that she was an anorexic, her doctor gave her the "change your ways or die" speech. She's been eating more and exercising less, and S says that there's been some improvement, but when I saw her last night she just looked like a ghost. You could see stringy muscles beneath thin, pale skin, bones and veins protruding from her arms. She looked so lifeless and frail, and I half expected her to just collapse in the heat.

I think that seeing people like L makes you remember that we all have imperfections, but that you can't obsess over them. You just have to roll with what you've got. While I'd like to live healthier -- less fast food, more fruits and veggies -- I don't really believe in dieting. I believe in lifestyle change, and trying to do the right thing for my body. Since the whole asthma/pleurisy thing of the winter, I've pretty much ruled out my occassional recreational smoking, and I hardly ever drink. So I basically need to learn to limit the chocolate intake and spend more time focusing on "real" food: meats, cheeses, fruits & veggies. No more of this heavily-processed sugar-loaded cereal for breakfast. No more two cheeseburger value meals at McDonalds. Little to no Coke consumption. Pizza remains on the acceptable list, just because I would be a miserable person without it. I think these changes might make a difference in how I feel.

The Wedding

My friends S & A got married last night. Yes, on a Thursday. Yes, seriously. No, I'm not kidding. No, it's not some sort of weird religious reason, it's just because that's the only time they could get the place they wanted to have it. Yes, I'm serious. (This is in response to the standard questions posed by coworkers and friends. If you have any more specific questions, feel free to e-mail me.)

Anyway, the wedding was outdoors in this beautiful park in Berkeley, scenic natural backdrop and all. The problem? It was 100 degrees yesterday. We all cowered in the shade until we got the all-clear sign to be seated for the wedding, and then we dashed to the seats for a wedding ceremony that was performed at a sprint. But it was lovely, and you could just tell that they were both delighted to have made it through the planning process and were able to stand there and share the vows. They're fabulous people, and I wish them all the best. I think they'll do just fine because underneath it all, they're best friends.

Interesting observation that I made last night: of all the weddings I've attended in my life, none have ended in divorce. Most of the marriages have passed the 5-year mark. Do you think I'm a good luck charm? I should start a service where people can pay me to show up at their wedding so my good luck will rub off on them.

It's funny... but it's not

My husband, C, is a really smart guy. I have the utmost respect for his intelligence. It's just that sometimes he's a guy, which makes him do stupid stuff.

Case in point: the car. He drives an 8-year-old BMW that's got 140,000 miles on it and has survived one major accident involving full frontal reconstruction. He likes driving his German car, and thinks it's a great idea to set the on-board diagnostic computer to German. This would be wise if he knew a word of German. He does not. So two days ago, two messages flash at him. Neither is readable. He writes them down and takes them into the office to get a translation from one of the bosses, a German guy, but unfortunately Dieter is out of the office. He ignores the messages and goes on with his day.

Last night, while driving home in 95-degree heat, the car completely overheats on the highway. Clearly, the messages of the day before meant something. I'm thinking that they were either an expiration date for the car or a message that says, "No coolant, I'm fucked!" in German.

30 and Senile

First I forgot to bring my camera for my friend's wedding tonight. I go home at lunchtime to grab it, and in the process it seems that I've left my phone behind. I never lose or forget things, so it definitely bothers me that I've forgotten two things in one day. Seems like a bad sign.

Audi

I love my car, a 2002 A4. The only problem is that the company really sucks. I've had half a dozen problems with it (bad enough in its own right), but the company's interest and support (or lack thereof) really pisses me off. Yesterday my windshield wiper shredded -- totally ripped into a dozen pieces. I went over to get it replaced, something that would have taken me 15 minutes to do on my own, and I was there for an hour and a half. What the hell? Can you tell me what could possibly take so long? The only consolation was that my service consultant was Roger, the 20-something guy with the beautiful blue eyes.

Relationships

I'm really quite lucky in the relationship department, and I know it. As cheesy as it sounds, I am honestly married to my best friend. From our first kiss I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I was going to spend the rest of my life with him. He's the person that I want to share everything with. 10 days of vacation together isn't nearly enough. We don't fight. That's not to say that there aren't disagreements, but we work through them and they're no big deal in the end. For the longest time after we moved out here to CA, I was really bitter, and I took it out on him because he's the one who brought me here. It wasn't fair of me to do that, because for all of the challenges of the move, it really was probably the best thing for me, to move away from the family for a while and learn to be on our own. But at the end of the day, every day, I'm just ridiculously delighted to be sharing my life with him. He loves and adores me. This is all good. So imagine my surprise the other day on vacation when he tells me out of the blue that I have the freedom to go out and explore the world sexually if I want to -- other men, women, whatever. I don't know that I could say the same to him. I think that the thought of him with someone else would tear me up inside. But his reasoning is that anything that helps me learn, grow and find myself can never be a bad experience, and that our relationship is strong enough that he knows I'll always come back. He's right, I would always come back, but I don't know if I could handle the guilt that I would place on myself. This probably makes no sense. All I know for sure is that I don't ever want to do anything that risks screwing up our relationship, not even the romantic relationship but the underlying friendship that makes the rest of it work so well. Am I nuts? Probably. But when I curl up next to him in bed each night, I want to sleep peacefully with a clear conscience and the knowledge that there are no secrets.

The New Stuff

Met with the new boss this morning. She seems pretty hands-off, which is how I prefer my managers to be. I think that working with her will be fine, but I'm still not sure about the role itself. I think that everything would be a challenge at this point.

Last night I started my latest Stanford class, Medical Advances in Genetics. It's just an overview course, not a lab/deep science class. So someone actually asks this professor a) if we're going to clone anything in this class, and b) to explain in detail how they cloned Dolly the sheep. Uh, call me crazy, but you can't do the first without a lab, and can barely explain the second to really educated, wise people.

My big telco partner launch was pushed back today from 6/30 to 8/27 because they want to wait until we release our next version upgrade before they release to the masses. Not unwise on some levels, but you'd think they'd be in a hurry when you consider that it's been more than two years since they first began negotiating the contract. I would personally be eager to get this darned thing up and running to prove to management that there's some value to this partnership.

Almost There

I've almost made it through my first day back. Remarkably quiet, although I don't expect that to last forever. I start my latest class at Stanford tonight, so I'll need to be leaving soon so I have enough time to eat, buy my textbook at the bookstore, and figure out where the heck my class is. And then tonight, when I get home, I have to start to settle into the routine of real life again: laundry, paying bills... all the fun stuff.

Letting go of vacation hasn't been easy. I'm not terribly pleased with reality. Actually, the sad part is that my life is going pretty darned well, but work takes so much time out of my day that it just completely overshadows a lot of really good stuff, which is why I really need to find a way to get out. Maybe I'll open a pilates studio. Then I can exercise and help people feel better about themselves without having to work here. Oh, that's actually a lovely thought. If only it could be that easy.

Why?

I'm gone for an hour -- shopping at Target for laundry detergent & paper towels, etc., followed up with a McDonalds stop -- and I come back to zero e-mails. There used to be a time where I'd have 15 waiting for me by the time I got back from the ladies room. You can't tell me that this doesn't mean that I'm utterly useless. So why am I here?

The Fish

It's salmon season in Alaska. My visions of salmon season trace back to those Discovery Channel shows where they show tons of salmon leaping upstream with bears reaching out and grabbing them. In reality, at least where we were, it's a placid little river with no leaping fish and no bears.

So C, lifelong boat child and fishing aficionado, decides that we simply have to go salmon fishing. I somewhat reluctantly agree, mostly because I don't really have any desire to sit in a boat the size of a ceramic bathroom tile with a motor all afternoon -- this is a six-hour adventure. But it's Alaska and how often do you get the chance to do this sort of thing, right?

So it's us, Norm (owner and captain of Rainbow River Expeditions... that's Norm holding the prize fish on the right), and Craig, Norm's fishing buddy. We head out at 12:30. It's peaceful, serene... just beautiful. Maybe this isn't such a bad day after all. There are eagles in the trees, the sky is blue and everything smells so fresh and clean.

I get the first chomp -- I say chomp because this isn't like a normal fish situation, with the nibble-nibble-bite process. This is an all-out assault, a yank that could jerk the rod out of your hands, but I don't jerk back fast enough and I don't set the hook deeply enough. Little fishie gets away. Then Craig, the fishing buddy, gets two bites, but loses both.

An hour and a half into it at 2pm, C gets his first bite. Having watched the two of us lose our fish, he knows to jerk back hard to set the hook. He reels in an absolutely stunning 17-pound King salmon, silvery-fresh -- the guys say that it hasn't been in the fresh water for long because it's still all silvery and hasn't turned the pinkish color that they turn in the fresh water. Having caught his one fish (state limits of one per day, five per season), C kicks back with his camera, relaxes and sort of mocks me, telling me that I'm going to catch the big fish. Yeah, right.

We sit, we wait. We cruise to new fishing holes. We sit, we wait. Nothing. C's feeling mighty proud of himself. We wait some more.

4:10, buddy Craig yells "fish on!" and everyone scrambles. He reels in a 19-pounder, kicking and fighting all the way to the boat. Two down, now it's just me. We've got nearly 2 1/2 hours left on the clock and they're just waiting for me. I'm the only thing that stands between them and calling it an early day with a beer at the bar. Crap. Pressure.

Somewhere around 4:20-ish, I get the bite. I pull back with all of my power, however limited that might be, and set the hook as deeply as I can. I've never felt anything fight like this. I pull back and try to reel, but I'm only making it about half a turn on the reel. I have the rod dug into my hip for leverage so deeply that I'm reasonably certain that it's going to go straight through and end up protruding through my left buttock. So for what seems like hours, I'm pulling, reeling in half-rotation increments, and cursing like a sailor (at least in my head... I have no idea if I even uttered a word out loud). This bastard's taking line, totally undoing all of my reeling. My arms are starting to shake, and I'm wondering how the guys made it look so easy, because this is damned hard work. I have this vision of the rod slipping through my fingers and being carried upstream by this damned angry salmon, leaving me with a damned angry boat captain, but I managed to hold on. Puuuuulllll.... half-reel.... Puuulllll.... half-reel.... Finally, he's beside the boat. Jesus Christ, I'm looking at this fish and I'm thinking I caught a whale. It's enormous. When captain Norm finally nets him and brings him in, he's 36 pounds of fish. Holy hell. I slump to the seat and just stare at him in disbelief. My arms are like jelly and shaking like crazy from the strain and adrenaline. Buddy Craig makes some joke about throwing him back and I shoot him a look of death at the suggestion. Nope, me and my fish are staying together, thank you very much.

The boys over at Tundra Meats have been kind enough to smoke the beast -- 18 pounds of meat, when all is said and done -- and it should be arriving in California either today or tomorrow. Insane, huh?

Where do I begin?

I have a million things in my head as I return from vacation. I guess the first of which is the fact that I've been offline for 10 days, and after a few days of detox I actually enjoyed it so much that I didn't even dial in when I had the chance this weekend. But I guess the lack of contact with the outside world would have gotten old eventually. Or maybe I just need to make myself believe it.

I've already talked about the sun, but I don't think that any description can do the experience any justice. Definitely fabulous.

Oh, there's the fish story, but that deserves its own heading.

If you've never seen a glacier, you really ought to check it out.

They're building an ice hotel with an ice bar in Fairbanks.

I have never seen so many lesbian and/or heavily tattooed women as I did there. The two aren't directly related, but they're worth noting together.

As a culture, they seem to be fascinated with Foster's beer, followed by MGD if Foster's isn't available.

11PM. People wear sunglasses. Children are not only awake, but they're outside playing. No one sleeps.

Most of them talk with this southern twang, they wear flannel and they carry guns. Therefore we've developed a theory: the further north you go, the further south you get.

The Alaska pipeline: does it seem odd that you can walk up and touch something that's filled with a zillion gallons of oil? Does this seem less than secure?

Darkness

After 10 days of constant sunlight (22 hours from sunrise to sunset, with a beautiful twilight sunset effect for the remaining two), it's really disorienting to look out the window and see darkness. I loved the light. Really. No problems sleeping at all, although I did have the most intensely vivid dreams I've had in ages. I'm sure I'll write about them eventually.

Overall, can't say that 30 feels any different than 29 or 25 or any other age, for that matter. I'm just me. If anything, I'd say that the odds are leaning towards me being even more interesting, and definitely more sexy than I was at 21. So maybe this aging thing isn't so bad. I'm definitely more secure with myself than ever before. It's a good place to be. I'm liking it. Honestly, the only drawback to my life at all right now is the job, and I'm starting to think that I might have a plan for getting out of that.

Time for bed. Say goodnight, Gracie.

I'm back!

Did y'all miss me?

Surprise! I'm going to come back from Alaska on the 23rd and have houseguests. I vaguely remember C mentioning something about this months ago, that people would be coming in June. I just don't ever remember hearing when in June.

Career Personality

Trinity, your career personality type is ISFJ

That means that based on the standard measure of personality traits, you are a strong team player and believe the needs of the group come before the individual. You generally care about the people around you, which allows you to provide a personal touch at your workplace. That sense of caring allows you to feel personal accomplishment and acceptance from your co-workers who know they can turn to you for help. You are generous with your time and spirit and look to make the present moment better for everyone.

Your emotional strength combined with a pragmatic approach to work makes you a strong asset. You don't like juggling multiple projects at once and would rather get one project off your desk at a time. Because of your internal value system, you don't need false flattery from others. You have a strong work ethic and inspire others by your example. Because of this, you are a strong leader on any team. To you, your work speaks for itself.

The reason employers and recruiters might be on the lookout for you is that only about 7% of the U.S. population shares the unique characteristics of your personality type. Research shows that businesses succeed when employers create a good balance of personality types in the office. And since only 7% of the U.S. population shares your type, that means employers are looking for you. I'm right here! Come and get me!

Children

Discover Your Parenting Style

Trinity, your parenting style is Type IV

You offer your children a lot of freedom and independence. Research shows that your parenting style yields strong-willed, capable, and independent children.

But without the proper checks on your parenting style, your children are more likely than others to under-achieve in academics and display impulsive behavior. Oh great, I don't even have them, and they're already impulsive underachievers.

Don't unknowingly handicap your child's chances of achievement and development as a person. Find out how you can prevent behavior you don't want to see in your kids while encouraging the traits you want your kids to develop.

Sex

Discover Your Sexual Personality

Trinity, your sexual personality is Phi-ETDN-9.

Your sexual personality is determined by your sexual persona (Phi), 4 sexual scales (Emotional/Physical, Look/Touch, Daring/Modest, Verbal/Non-verbal), and your libido score (9).

As a Phi, you have a good sense of yourself and your sexuality. You know how to turn on the sex appeal when it suits your needs, and have a fair amount of confidence when it comes to your sexual performance.

How do we know this? How do we know that you focus more on the emotional than the physical connection with your partner while having sex?

Because while you were taking the test, you answered different kinds of questions — questions that measured what you're like in bed as well as your sex appeal, sexual confidence and sexual awareness.

ESP (yes, I'm bored)

The ESP Test

Trinity, when it comes to psychic abilities, you have an unusually strong talent in the area of Precognition

This means you have an uncanny ability to look into the future and know ahead of time what is going to happen. You might, for instance, simply know that you're going to get that job before the interview even happens with a certainty that exceeds what you would expect to have simply knowing the facts of the situation. You might have a sense of dread before going out for the evening only to later have a flat tire on your way home. These little hunches are easy to ignore but for you especially, quite often lead to a true prediction of what is going to happen. These predictions can be used to generate positive outcomes, and the more you know about how to use your talent, the more you will be able to distinguish between fantasy of the future and an actual reality you are seeing happen, before it has actually happened.

Inkblots

Emode's Original Inkblot Test

Trinity, your unconscious mind is driven most by Resistance

You approach the world with your guard intact because unconsciously, and perhaps consciously, you want to maintain an element of control in your relationships with people. You tend to hold your private experiences just out of reach of others. You're not one to immediately show all your cards, to let people into who you really are until you're ready.

Unfortunately, that sometimes means you also hide things from yourself. You may find that your desire to remain guarded backfires, affecting your self-awareness. Why are you like this? It's possible that you act in this manner because of a deeply-rooted fear of being exposed, or of truly expressing yourself. To protect yourself from this fear, you act in the opposite manner — you are guarded.

There is a certain respect that comes with resistance, an unconscious understanding that the human psyche is very vulnerable. We all feel we have a lot to hide, and you are not one to be intrusive or thoughtless about how you approach sensitive topics with others. Therefore you inspire a sense of safety in others when they are around you. Your psyche is very deep, very rich, and the more you can let yourself know (both the good and the bad), the more you will be able to appreciate who you really are.

Though your unconscious mind is driven most strongly by Resistance, there is much more to who you are at your core.

Tires

So I decided to go home for lunch so I could throw some laundry into the dryer and maybe pack some stuff for vacation. So I'm driving past the high school with what we affectionately call a Junkwagon behind me (it's one of those ratty old pickups, typically driven by Mexicans, that's packed to the gills with things like old refrigerators and battered furniture that looks like it's all rusted into the truck bed, which you hope it is since it's usually only held down with twine). Anyway, the Junkwagon is making this horrible noise that sounds like a deep vibration, like some part of the truck isn't attached properly. Very ugly. About four blocks later I make the turn onto my street and realize that I still hear the noise even though the Junkwagon is gone. I pull into my driveway about half a block later, get out, and discover the flattest flat tire I've ever seen. I suppose I should give my suspension credit, because my car was not riding rough or pulling to one side or anything. Just making nasty vibrating noises. I'm glad it didn't happen on the highway.

I'm not typically this lazy, but I called AAA to change the tire because I still had stuff to do around the house and I didn't feel like changing my clothes to have to work on the tire. Sure, Mr. AAA thought I was a helpless, pathetic woman, but hey, sometimes you just have to do things the easy way, pride and self-sufficiency be damned.

Awful Conference Call

I'm bored to tears on this call and starving on top of it all. Between all of this and the fact that my brain is already on vacation, I've just got no attention span at all.

All This Work...

The telco that I've been working with for two years is scheduled to launch June 30. What else is happening June 30? Oh, right, my company is refiling years worth of Enron-quality financial statements, after SEC and DOJ investigations have led to criminal charges against former execs. Ah yes, lovely. Needless to say, the press releases for my telco will be drowned out by these announcements. I can't seem to convince them to wait a day or two to release their PR. Oh well. If they want their stuff to get lost in the shuffle, that's their problem.

Writing for Kids

I've gotten some amazingly positive feedback about the stories I've submitted in my writing for kids class. I wonder if I'm actually good at this, or if it's just mimicry. After all, I do spend a lot of time with kids' books when I'm volunteering. Is it possible that I'm just imitating things I've seen before? My next step is to write something for the middle school grades. I'm much less familiar with this group than the other two, so we'll see how this goes. I really should be working on this right now, because once I go on vacation I automatically fall a week behind the others.

Really, I only took this class so I could come up with ideas to make a cute picture book for my friend's twins. Anything more than that is just a bonus.

Ranting

It's very rare that you will hear political commentary spilling from my brain, but sometimes I do have a throwback moment to my days as a Political Science major. This is one of those moments.

This whole War on Terrorism thing makes me uneasy. Terrorism, at its heart, is guerilla warfare. It's about small, tactical, pinpoint attacks in unconventional situations at unexpected times. A war, on the other hand, involves fronts and organization and strategic targets. It doesn't account for enemies that don't play by the rules of battle. So let's just say that we've got this war thing going on. What happens? Do we bomb the crap out of every rebel group around the world in the hopes of forcing them into submission? How do we know when we've won? Will Osama bin Laden appear at the White House waving a white flag and signing a public cease-fire treaty in the Rose Garden? Fundamentally speaking, there is no end to this sort of war. For every terrorist or guerilla or revolutionary or freedom fighter (what you call them all depends on your perspective, right?) that we kill, brothers and sons will rise up in anger and seek revenge. As Americans, we will never again be safe. The policies of imperialism that we've demonstrated so clearly over the last century will come back to haunt us. We claim that we're trying to make the world a safer place, but for whom? For the people in the "liberated" nations that we occupy, or for ourselves and our own social, cultural, political and religious interests?

Also, you can't tell me that hunger and sickness don't feed the desire for revolutionary discontent. If I had lived for more than a decade in Iraq under economic sanctions, I'd be bitter towards the Americans, too. There are huge portions of the African and Asian continents that are living with extreme poverty, drought, famine and devastating illness. You can't tell me that assisting populations with food, clean water, medicine and education wouldn't make a tremendous difference in the future of the world. But when we don't offer medicine and leave children orphaned by AIDS, when we don't stop violence against Muslims in Israel and Chechnya, when Iraqis are starving from sanctions that they know we pushed hard to implement... how can we expect the hatred of the underprivileged to remain contained? How can you watch family and friends die from violence, disease and hunger and not hate people for not offering their assistance? This isn't political. It's about humanity and feelings and how people respond to the pain of loss.

Coworkers

Why can't I work with someone who hands out five-figure checks?

Care to Join Me?

I'm living a little fantasy today. I'm going to pretend that I'm on a beach in Hawaii -- this one will do just fine -- feeling the soft white sand, listening to the waves crash on the beach, enjoying the insanely blue sky and water. However, I do need someone there to assist me with sunscreen, otherwise this lovely fantasy will end with me turning beet red and peeling. We don't want that, do we?

So if you'd like to join me in my island paradise, let me know.

Writing Exercises

For the past few days I've been avoiding my next lesson in my children's writing class. I'm pretty good with the early reader stuff, K-3, because I volunteer with that age group and I understand the need for repetition, basic words, etc. But this lesson is for your young readers under grade 5, and this is much more challenging for me. I just can't seem to manage the strength to make this happen. The concepts and language simplicity are unbearably complicated for me; it doesn't come naturally.

On the flip side, though, I don't really have anything else to do, so I ought to give it a shot.

Just when you think you can count on certain outcomes.... Our softball team lost tonight. We were playing the other company team, a lesser squad if ever there was one. They did get some lucky breaks from our really, really crappy umpire (it was his first night... always a bad sign), but overall they were just hitting more consistently than we were. I went 2 for 3 with two runs scored, so at least I performed acceptably.

After the game, one of my favorite guys on the team says to me, "So where does your husband live?" Uh, with me? He thought that C lived elsewhere because he's never home. It's really sad when perfect strangers think you live separate lives, although I suppose not as bad as last summer when we were both on different travel schedules (we saw each other a grand total of three days in a month and a half) and the neighbors thought we had separated.

Dentist at 8:15AM. Time for the bi-annual wisdom tooth lecture. You'd think I'd just stop being a baby and do it, but I just don't see a need for elective surgery. Give me a problem and I'd be happy to consider it, but "you should really have them removed" just isn't critical enough.

Live & Learn

Never eat oranges while typing. My finger has permanently stuck to the S.

Mondegreens

You know how people often misunderstand the lyrics of songs? Evidently the phenomenon is called a mondegreen (I never knew). Some classics are in this Yahoo article.

My personal favorites:
1) A girl in high school who thought that "Rock the Casbah" was "Ralph the cat's bald". No explanation as to whether it was refering to a cat named Ralph, or if someone was exclaiming, "Ralph! The cat's bald!"
2) Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant" refers to two main characters, Brenda and Eddie. There was a girl I knew who thought that the song was about one person, a woman named Brenda Renetti.

The Guy I Couldn't Ditch

In high school, I was one of the guys. On weekends, there were five or six of us that would always hang out together, and I was the only girl (this is the story of my life -- I was convinced that I'd die elderly and single, surrounded by guys who wanted to sleep with any woman who wasn't me). Midway through my senior year, we picked up a new guy from the theater group. We'll call him Bill, to protect his identity. Looking back, best as I can tell, Bill's entire reason for existence was to be near me. He would hover around when we were out in a group. He would take long walks past my house in the hope that I might be coming or going at that precise moment. He would spend endless amounts of time waiting by my locker. He freaked me out. Don't get me wrong, he was fundamentally a decent person, he just came from a really crappy home life and saw in me his salvation and hope for the future. I'm reasonably certain that he was planning our life together before we ever kissed.

The kiss was a mistake. I was goofing around and flirting like I always did with the guys, and suddenly he kissed me. I thought it was a one-time deal. He considered it a betrothal. A little insight into my world at 17: guilt was a very effective tool at the time, so when everyone convinced me that ditching this poor, helpless guy would shatter his heart, I just couldn't bring myself to break up with him. He showed up at my house on the night of my senior prom and spent hours standing outside watching me have my picture taken with my date and the other seniors in our limo. He followed me to basketball games. He never missed a weekend to hang with me and the guys. And all the while I just wanted to get out. Do you know how awkward it is when someone clearly loves you more than life itself, and you just don't feel the same way about them? It feels like guilt. I kept thinking that, over time, I'd be able to convince him that I wasn't right for him. Turns out that the more of a bitch I became, the more he wanted to be with me.

Every time I would try to break up with him and get my nerve up to do it, someone would always inflict guilt. "You can't dump him now!" they'd say. "Not right before his track meet/midterms/college applications/prom/graduation/first day of college/final exams!" Yeah. This is how I spent more than two years with someone I didn't love, someone I didn't even want to talk to or touch, someone who I didn't even consider to be a friend. It was a great time. Really. And after I finally, finally broke up with him, he decided to spend all of his time sitting out in front of my house just watching my comings and goings. Yes, like a stalker.

My mother still talks about Bill. "He was such a nice guy," she says. Oh, for god's sake, you didn't know him like I did! Don't you remember him sitting out front in the car? "He just missed you, that's all." I still don't think she fully understands that this wasn't normal behavior. "You hurt him so badly by breaking up with him, the poor guy." Did I mention that she just had this conversation with me last weekend, more than 10 years after the fact?

Early Morning Airport Dropoffs

Had to be up before 5:00 to take C to the airport. It sucks when you have to be awake before the birds. The contrast to this will be Alaska next week: current sunset at 12:32 AM, sunrise at 3:09 AM. I really don't know how I'll sleep.

Our two company softball teams play each other tonight. People are talking about it like it's the grand championship of co-ed slow-pitch softball. Really it's just all about the beer.

Flash of a Memory

In the eight or nine months between my engagement and wedding, I developed this unnatural fixation with daytime talk shows, 90% of which are relationship-themed. I desperately needed to understand why relationships failed so I could avoid the pitfalls. I was really panicky about it. I remember getting over it when I was watching either Montel or... oh, I can't remember the other guy's name... anyway, they were doing a show on people whose marriages failed because they slept with their spouse's sibling/parent/cousin/child. That's when it occurred to me that the reason these people can't sustain relationships is because they're totally and completely effed-up white trash. Granted, things can happen to sabotage relationships, but I can be certain that sex with my in-laws ain't gonna be one of them. After that, I felt better. I don't really understand why.

Photography

Maybe it's because I live in a 100+-year-old house, but I love pictures, maps and books from the late 1800s and early 1900s. This is a favorite, New York on a rainy day. The streets are so deserted that it seems impossible that it could be Manhattan. This picture of Boathouse Row in Philly is amazing because it looks exactly the same as it looks today. And even 100 years ago, they were selling pretzels from carts on Philly streetcorners.

Books

Maybe I should write kids' books. They're shorter, anyway, and stick with such nice, neat, basic themes. No convoluted grownup crap. There's something to be said for the brilliant simplicity of Dr. Seuss.

Concerns

Ok, here's a concern that I've been dwelling on lately. C says he wants to get his PhD through this new program at Stanford that's run by all of these docs that he works with anyway. Great, more power to him, he'll learn lots of great stuff and be on the cutting edge of all of this brilliant medical technology. But. There are a lot of buts. But he'll never be around anymore, except to come home late at night and crash, like a roommate passing in the night. But he'll continue to move along on his brilliant, educated path while I continue to stagnate as a sometimes-writer with a useless English degree, destined to never be anything more than The Wife, not just to him but also to those around him that we'll be having contact with. But what if I want to go back to school (for what? well, I haven't fully determined that yet), because we know that there's no way to afford both of us in school at the same time, especially since I'd have to quit my job and go full-time to get any sort of worthwhile degree, unless I decided that I really liked the idea of the eight-year part-time plan. I'm just selfish and whiny. I can't hold him back from doing great things, but I just feel like I'll be left in the dust as it happens.

Early Morning Conference Calls

Nobody is saying anything. The caffeine must not have kicked in yet. And somebody's phone is clicking, completely drowning out the speaker, which makes the experience that much more exciting. I'm glad I got up early and came in to participate in this joyous event.

Personally, I don't care about security patches or network protection. How the heck did I fall into this industry? Granted, it's more beneficial to the public than jewelry, but with security we sell fear (and at least with jewelry it's about selling dreams and happiness for a ridiculous price).

Since I'm getting a new job, do I get a new title? New quarter, new business card.

Why am I so restless?

How does my brain work? http://www.mindmedia.com/brainworks/profiler

Your Brain Usage Profile

Auditory : 41%
Visual : 58%
Left : 60%
Right : 40%

Ali, you are somewhat left-hemisphere dominant and show a preference for visual learning, although not extreme in either characteristic. You probably tend to do most things in moderation, but not always.

Your left-hemisphere dominance implies that your learning style is organized and structured, detail oriented and logical. Your visual preference, though, has you seeking stimulation and multiple data. Such an outlook can overwhelm structure and logic and create an almost continuous state of uncertainty and agitation. You may well suffer a feeling of continually trying to "catch up" with yourself.

Your tendency to be organized and logical and attend to details is reasonably well-established which should afford you success regardless of your chosen field of endeavor. You can "size up" situations and take in information rapidly. However, you must then subject that data to being classified and organized which causes you to "lose touch" with the immediacy of the problem.

Your logical and methodical nature hamper you in this regard though in the long run it may work to your advantage since you "learn from experience" and can go through the process more rapidly on subsequent occasions.

You remain predominantly functional in your orientation and practical. Abstraction and theory are secondary to application. In keeping with this, you focus on details until they manifest themselves in a unique pattern and only then work with the "larger whole."

With regards to your career choices, you have a mentality that would be good as a scientist, coach, athlete, design consultant, or an engineering technician. You can "see where you want to go" and even be able to "tell yourself," but find that you are "fighting yourself" at the darndest times.

Devils win the Stanley Cup! I do envy K & J for being there to see it, although they didn't get to see the totally comical press conference with Martin Brodeur puffing on a cigar and chugging champagne on live TV. I can imagine that the FCC loved that.

I'm sitting in my newly-created reading room in my delightfully cushy reading chair, aided by the soft glow of my Ikea lamp. It's a great place to read and do a bit of writing, now that I've got wireless internet.

Ever since yesterday I've been stuck in that crisis mode again, the one where you need to discover the meaning in your life and live life to the fullest. I don't want to be old and withered and sad and wish that I had done things when I had the chance. I'm afraid of that. It's the missed opportunities that scare me, not the big mistakes.

Now What Do I Do?

My Pilates studio is moving from its convenient location in Willow Glen to Los Gatos, about 30+ minutes from home and even more than that from work. Crap. I've looked online to see if I can find another studio, but there aren't many and I don't like what the others offer. This means I'm going to have to resort to home workouts, which are never as good as having an instructor there to critique. Crap crap crap. Well, so much for all of the effort I've put into it over the last year. A few weeks without a studio and I'll be as inflexible as ever.

Balloon Dog

Can't help it. Love this.

An open apology for being a bitch

Since I was such a raging bitch yesterday, I feel a need to apologize to the universe in an open forum.

To the first Continental lady: I should not have snapped at you when you told me that my reservation wasn't valid and that I'd be lucky to get home by Monday. Granted, you were the one that was mistaken, but that's not the point.

To the second Continental lady: While I did take personal offense when you told me that I clearly don't know how to use the eTicket machines, I should not have gotten defensive. After all, you were the only thing between me and a night in a roach motel in Newark. If I had known that threatening to call the OnePass service line was all it took to get you to assist me, then we wouldn't have needed to do battle at the Special Services desk for nearly an hour.

To the Continental flight attendant: In spite of the fact that the old man and I had both been given boarding passes for 21F, I can tell you that it would have taken the NJ State Police and all of the airport security you could manage to drag my ass out of that seat after all I had been through. When you told me, very casually, that I might have to leave the plane and spend the night in Newark, you really ought to be grateful that I was buckled into my seat. After battling with your desk compatriots for the last hour and a half, I was feeling no love for Continental, and all blue-suited employees were going to be feeling my wrath, just as a matter of principle.

To the woman who sat next to me: I'm glad that after trying 34 seat cushions, you finally found one that wasn't "too squishy" so that we were finally able to push back from the gate. Here's a news flash: all seat cushions are the same, and all are completely uncomfortable. My only advice is that perhaps they would be more comfortable if you actually wore underwear under your thin white pants. Just a suggestion. And one more thing: don't ever get rid of that immature sap that you were flying with, because I don't know anyone else who would tolerate your baby talk and give you foot rubs throughout a six-hour flight. And another thing: when the feature movie is Daredevil, please don't spend the majority of the film criticizing the dialogue. It's Daredevil, for god's sake. It's not supposed to be good.

To C: No, I shouldn't have yelled. Granted, I was just venting in your general direction, and wasn't yelling at you, but you clearly didn't see it that way, especially when you told me there was nothing you could do and told me that you were going back to working on the porch. All I wanted was a little sympathy and the perception that you might actually want me to come home. I promise never to call again in times of raging crisis, because we both know you're not good on the phone. I'll keep my simmering rage to myself.

I think that pretty much covers it. If anyone else feels the need to get a halfhearted, sarcastic apology, please feel free to e-mail me.

Hope it's just situational

I've realized that I lack passion. Have you ever watched someone and known that they're throwing their heart and soul into something? That's passion. I don't think I have that. Sometimes I feel like I'm too ordinary to be passionate about anything.

On the other hand, I'm hoping that this is just part of the job-sucks blahs, and if given an opportunity I'd be able to give everything I've got.

Monday

Another week begins. It was so hard to get up this morning because we had that early fog that sometimes rolls in overnight, blocking all of the daylight that usually kicks me out of bed in the morning.

Desperately tired today from the whirlwind tour of the east coast. If anyone would like to come to my office and give me a backrub, you're more than welcome.

Gotta get out of the office at a reasonable time so I can go home and (hopefully) watch the Devils win the Stanley Cup. I think K&J are there tonight for game 7. K already saw the Yankees win the Series in game 6 in 1996, so it will be really impressive if he's there for a game 7 Cup win tonight, all before the age of 28.

Couldn't log on yesterday, which didn't make me happy. I had about a million things running through my head and had no place to put them.

Here's some stuff about my visit with my grandmother:

I had been prepared for what I was about to see. I knew she was dying, and that there’s little hope or vibrancy in the eyes or body of the dying person. And yet, on some level, I was still surprised.

She sat in the wheelchair with her back to the door, portable oxygen tank hanging from the back of the blue canvas, clear tube snaking past the left wheel and into her nose. She was slumped down in the chair, in spite of the extra padding and pillows she sat on to cushion her bony, fractured pelvis. Coming around, you could see that she sat with her chin practically resting on her chest. She was not asleep, but seemingly too exhausted by life to bother exerting any additional effort. Her skin hung loose and translucent over her porous bones, revealing frightening puddles of blood beneath the skin, bruises from failed attempts to insert intravenous lines or draw blood. The entire back of her right hand, from wrist bone to finger joints, was a pool of purple, not likely to heal. Her blue eyes stared lifelessly, lashlessly, and her skin drooped from her face like an oversized mask. The glasses, reasonably sized when they were purchased, now dwarfed her face. She would wave to say hello, but in an absentminded manner that reminded visitors of someone clearing cobwebs from their path.

She pretended to listen to conversations, and seemed to nod at the appropriate breaks in monologue, but you could tell that she wasn’t listening, just going through the motions. She always asked the same questions: “Is it raining?” “Did you eat yet?” “Did you plant a garden?” The answers were meaningless – I could have answered in French or Dutch and she would have shown the same reaction.

She didn’t cry when I left, for the first time ever. I don’t think she understood that I was there in the first place, so there was no one to miss when I left. She took my hand with her gnarled, bony fingers, knuckles swollen with arthritis, and gave it a squeeze, but I had seen her do the same thing with nurses, doctors and aides who had come to the room. It had just become the habitual gesture of the hospital, nothing more.

I’ll call tomorrow to check on her, and get the same questions again: “Is it raining?” No, grandma, it’s not raining. “Oh, it looks cloudy.” Her voice will be weak and flat, and she won’t make any rude comments about my hair or clothes. I’ll know she’s gone, and will calmly and politely wait for the call to come.

~~~~~

I'm in an utterly foul mood. Be glad you don't live with me. I'm hoping that I'll be able to sleep it off.

Lost

What on earth do you say to a friend who has lost the love of her life to an unwinnable medical battle? How do you move on from something like that?

Not Mine, Not Fictional

From my friend, detailing the birth of her new baby. It's all true and, if you know her, par for the course. It was too comical not to share. Names have been changed to protect the humorous. :-)

10 p.m. Hey, Honey, I keep getting this strange feeling every few minutes, but it doesn't hurt or anything. Do you think it could be the baby? Nah.

10:30: Yep, I think it's the baby, but it must be long off because it still doesn't hurt. Kinda weird, though, that it's already coming every six minutes. I'll keep my eye on the clock.

11:00. The Practice episode ends. Hey, Honey, let's get on the computer and see what they have to say about contractions. I'm still not sure if it's the baby, but I'm getting a weird tightness around my stomach every five minutes.

11:30. Looking up baby names...ouch. That one hurt. Maybe I'll finish the laundry.

11:40. I have to stop the laundry to sit down for a second. This is starting to hurt, and is lasting 40 seconds at a time already. Still not doubled over or anything.

12:00. Honey, call the doctor and get your parents over here to watch the girls...this hurts A LOT. It's definitely the baby. I'll finish packing my suitcase, then get a shower.

12:05. Every time I get up to get another item for the suitcase I end up curled up on the bed in extreme pain...this is weird. I don't remember it hurting this bad and coming so fast with the girls. Gee, amazing what you forget, eh? It's something like every two minutes and is lasting a minute at a time.

12:10. HONEY! OUCH!! This is killing me. I can barely talk. You finish the suitcase, I'll get a shower. (Walk into the bathroom...crawl back to my room) Ok. Forget the shower. We have to get out of here.

12:20 Water breaks...very dissimilar from when it happened with the girls. I start to panic...something might be wrong...every ounce of water in my body seems to have come crashing out. I run into the bathroom, fall on the floor screaming in pain (but desperately trying not to)...I can't move. HONEY!! Call the ambulance... the baby is coming RIGHT NOW!!! I have never felt such unbelieveable pain in my entire life!!!

12:25. His parents arrive...clueless about the urgency of the situation. They call my doctor from Hospital A to tell them about the change of plan...(Get this...) she insists on speaking to me personally!! Um...I'm dying on the floor in the bathroom, completely unable to move, crying because I think something awful is happening to the baby...believe them, I'm not going to make it to Hospital A!!!

12:35. Ambulance arrives. EMTs completely freaked out...obviously have never delivered a baby...ask my husband whether or not I took childbirth classes!!!??? Um, we're kinda past the breathing thing...what's in the next chapter??!!

12:45. Wheeled across my front lawn on a stretcher in the rain, but sweating so bad that I want to stay outside in the cool air. Still crying. Still screaming. Still trying not to and apologizing in between howls. Get in the ambulance...back of my mind thinking, "So, this is what it looks like inside one of these things, huh?" OUCH. Attention shifts back to the fact that I can feel the baby trying to get out, and finding it quite ironic that I'm putting more effort into keeping it in rather than getting it out!

12:55?? Through the oxygen mask, trying to warn the EMTs that the baby is definitely coming at that moment and suggesting that, like it or not, they should probably take a look for themselves in case they don't believe me.

12:56. Two very distraught EMTs radio the hospital. My husband hears the hospital tell them that there's a labor room ready, and hears the EMTs respond that we're not going to make it...have everyone ready in the trauma room immediately. Freaked out driver speeds up, EMT yells to slow down.

1:02 or 3. Arrive at Hospital B. Chaos in the trauma room...reminds me of ER, but worse because it's real and it's me! Literally, there are about 25 doctors and nurses running along side the stretcher into the nearest trauma room introducing themselves briefly and urgently...Dr. So and So, OB...Me, I'm an emergency guy...me, I'm a pediatrics nurse...who are you. Etc, etc. Everything is fuzzy. I'm scared to death...I still think there's time and need for drugs. Ha! My husband gets shoved behind the stretcher, still holding my suitcase...I can't hear anything.

1:06. Next thing I know, all the pain stops and my husband leans over, smiling, and tells me it's a boy! They hold up this beautiful little guy who is screaming hysterically, and hand him to me. I'm shaking uncontrollably and afraid I'm going to drop him, but can't stop kissing him and laughing.

1:07. The doctors and nurses ask me what my name is!! How humiliating!! "Um...who are you?!"

I do NOT recommend having a baby this way!!!

WTF?

I just lost my last post. It did the posting thing and then... nothing. Clearly it must be a sign that I had nothing useful to say.

I'm marveling at the fact that it's already June 5. Didn't we just have new year's? How is it possible that each day drags so much and yet the year moves so quickly?

3:02PM. Only one hour and twenty-eight minutes until I can leave for pilates. Hopefully that will leave me tired for my flight tonight.

Thoughts for Thursday

Minor crisis this morning at work. I got to miss most of it because my chair was being delivered.

I booked my flights for Europe in September. I'm going to be taking 14 consecutive days off from work. I really suspect that this will send my boss into a frenzy, but I'm really not sure that I care. I'll be going to Paris to see a friend, spend a little time in the French countryside, lots of time in Switzerland and then maybe a short excursion down to Italy because I still haven't seen Venice. Friends of ours just got back from their vacation and they stayed in Wengen. Looks beautiful, and I want to go. Now.

Redeye flight tonight. Hopefully I'll spend a lot of time writing to compensate for my airline-induced insomnia. I'll post commentary and stories when and where I can. Back from the east coast on Sunday night, and then I only have to make it through one full week before my vacation to Alaska starts on the 14th. When I come back, my schedule goes berserk: new class at Stanford on Tuesday, softball on Wednesday, S & A's wedding on Thursday and the local writers' conference Friday through Tuesday. No, not busy at all! You'd think that in that list I'd mention something about work as a time commitment, but I don't seem to see it that way anymore. Speaking of which, there were supposed to be layoffs today, but I heard nothing. I wonder what happened with that?

Haven't Cubs Fans Endured Enough?

For those of you that haven't heard, Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa was ejected from yesterday's game for a corked bat.

In spite of the fact that I grew up in Philadelphia, I was a Cubs fan from my earliest memory. Maybe it was the beauty of Wrigley Field, with its outfield fence of ivy-covered red brick, and fans camped out on rooftops across the street. But, I suspect that it had more to do with my bleeding heart. The Cubs haven't brought home a World Series trophy since they won back-to-back in 1907 and 1908, and my heart goes out to them in the same way that it aches for lost puppies and baby kittens. No matter how effectively they start the season, it seems that each year they end up battling for the bottom spot in their division, fighting valiantly as they fall more than a dozen games behind the leader. Their fans support them through thick and thin. They have the spirit of the underdog. I loved them desperately.

In recent years, the Chicago fans got the boost of a lifetime: Sammy Sosa. This good-natured, smiling man could hit baseballs like few others, and sits 17th on the list of all-time home run leaders. He went head-to-head with Mark McGwire for the home run record in 1998, an event that brought many longtime fans, soured by the memory of the 1994 strike, back to the sport. With more than 500 career homers to his name, he was looking like a potential candidate for the Hall of Fame. And then, in the first inning of an otherwise uneventful interleague game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (a talentless team that would be delighted to have Chicago's loyal fan base), the bat shatters. The evidence of a corked bat is unmistakable, and the umpires had no choice but to eject him from the game. With Sosa gone for an estimated suspension of 7-10 games, the Cubs are without their most powerful bat. But the damage goes much deeper. He has lost the trust of his team and his fans, cast another black mark on the sport, and quite possibly lost his chance at the Hall.

The question remains: how will Chicago recover? Will team loyalty be lost if fans believe that the last five years of home run brilliance are eclipsed by this very public display of cheating? (Allow me to note that I hardly think that he's the only one who corks his bat, but much like the issue of drugs in baseball, the scapegoat is always going to be the one who gets caught.) For now, I can only hope that the fans continue to stream through the gates at the corner of Clark and Addison, and that they keep the hope alive as they have for the past 95 seasons, and continue to maintain faith that this just might be the Cubs year.

Your Job

Check out the exercises at the bottom of the page. I particularly like the one with the open eyes and mouth where it looks like he's been jabbed with a branding iron.

We Should All Look So Good

He may be older than my father and rapidly approaching an age where he can collect Security checks, but Harrison Ford is still one good-looking man.

Wednesday Morning

Martha Stewart has been indicted. I don't mean to laugh, but it's oddly comforting to know that money and power can't always save you from the feds.

New classes started at Barnes & Noble University today. I know it sounds cheesy, but it gives me something to do at work, and also makes me read and think in ways that I wouldn't on my own. The writing classes were interesting last session. This time I'm learning about Mozart and how to write children's books (I'm hoping to come up with a good story and self-publish a book for my friend's kids).

No change on the homefront. Grandmom's still in the hospital, weaker than ever before. We're really just waiting for all of her failing systems to completely give in. I'm astounded that I'm going to see her this weekend. Every time I say goodbye, I swear it's for the last time. How could she possibly live until another visit? And then, much to my surprise, she keeps going. I'm baffled.

Planning my August trip to Europe. Going to see a friend/former coworker in Paris, then spending a lot of time in Switzerland, I think. But for right now, it's just a matter of cashing in miles and getting the dates I want. Hopefully I'll have that straightened out today.

I Look Back and Laugh

I just stumbled across the webpage for a guy from high school. He was always adorable and quite popular, one of the two blonde guys in a predominantly dark and Italian-descended school (we had a dramatic shortage of blondes in our hallways -- exchange students from Europe were always a hit, especially the Germans -- which could explain my fixation with them once I got to college... but I digress). Anyway, looking at his pictures online, now he looks so... ordinary. Not bad or anything -- he's still decent-looking -- but he just lacks that captivating mystique that he held in school. Or maybe I've just outgrown my fascination with blonde soccer players. The revelation really made me laugh. I guess we're all just ordinary people now, no more cool kids and no more nerdy outcasts.

Help!

I have absolutely no clue what to get my dad for father's day. Suggestions appreciated.

Ok, One More Thought

The recent computer viruses and worms have been fast-spreading, but none of them has delivered a significant payload designed to seek and destroy. SARS, a moderately-virulent strain of coronavirus crops up in a small region in Asia and spreads quickly around the world, but doesn't become anything more than a publis-health nuisance to most of the modernized world. So here's my what if scenario: what if both are just proof-of-concept tests, conducted by independently owned & operated bad-guy networks who are looking to sell their technology and techniques to bigger guys with broader scopes and larger pocketbooks? Just a thought.

More Random Haiku

Gotta love any form of poetry that's this short and regimented....

Emptiness beside
I reach for you in twilight
Your pillow is cold


Birds chirp at daybreak
Earth rises to golden light
I stretch; sleep again


Silly laughing girl
Never too old to have fun
Ticklish, gasps for breath

Thank god for De Beers

My right hand had been feeling so naked and neglected, I'm so delighted that someone finally noticed it was there. "Simply put, if the left hand represents love and commitment, the right hand stands for self-expression and independence." (insert gagging sound here)

After-Lunch Sluggishness

Mornings might not be pretty, but afternoons are brutal. They seem to go on forever. Plus, for reasons that escape me, after lunch I'm utterly desperate for chocolate. What the hell happened to me? I used to have willpower once.

Got the call from Crate & Barrel... my cozy reading chair will arrive on Thursday morning, weeks ahead of the anticipated schedule. I'm very excited, especially considering the amount of reading I do (or want to do, but don't have a place to do it). I bought a lamp at Ikea a few weeks ago to complete the whole reading nook effect. I have an obsessive fascination with Ikea, not with the furniture (a little modern for my taste, generally speaking), but with that marketplace area downstairs. I could spend several days and hundreds of dollars buying easy-to-assemble stuff like floor lamps.

Pilates tonight. I'm thinking about ditching Catherine's class in favor of an independent machine workout. Catherine's great, but she's much too stretchy-dancerish to really inspire me on most days. I want to break a sweat and feel my muscles ache. Isn't that the point of working out? Oh, sure, there's the added benefit of looking good, but that's not immediate gratification (and, in my case, can be easily outweighed by chocolate consumption).

Oh lord, my cube neighbor is eating curry that actually smells spicy enough to make my eyes water. You can't tell me that continual consumption of spicy foods doesn't cause some sort of long-term damage. It has to.

I'm going home for the weekend, leaving on the redeye on Thursday night. That's really just asking for an unnecessary amount of stress, yet I can't seem to stop myself. Grandmom is still in the hospital and my mother is in full hysterics about grandmom's condition and the fact that she's unable to host the same cheesy birthday party that she's hosted for me for the last 29 years. She just doesn't seem to get that I'd be delighted to just go out for dinner like a normal person. She's also crushed that I would rather be in Alaska than home on my actual birthday. Most normal people would support me on this one.

I signed up for summer league softball. I'm really not sure why. I think it's peer pressure. Our facilities guy is the coordinator and he seems to really want me to play. He thinks I'm good at it. I don't suck as much as some people, but I'd still think that "good" might be an exaggeration when compared to the rest of the universe.

Have I bored you enough? Probably. That's all for now.

DIY

Next, on Home & Garden TV... build your own cruise missile in the garage.

Weddings

I think we all missed a lucrative calling in the wedding industry. Hey, I could coordinate weddings! They wouldn't be dramatically ornate, because I don't believe in all of that fluffy "biggest day of your life" thing, but it would be simple and elegant.

More Fiction

Even into adulthood, my sister and I fought like children. We battled for our parents' attention until the day they died. We battled to be the best mother, the most beloved aunt, the best cook. It wasn't out of anger -- I actually held a deep respect for my sister -- but because we were born only 15 months apart. I never had my glorious period of only childhood, at least not that I remember, and she never had a sister who was too old to want to play with her toys. So we competed, constantly, and it became the white noise of our relationship.

The older of the two, I was engaged to be married first, a fairy-tale church wedding with my high school sweetheart. Not to be outdone, two weeks before my wedding day, my sister went off and eloped with a boy from the next town. I say boy because he was barely 18 and legally able to marry her when they ran off; my sister, a worldly, wise 19-year-old, dominated the relationship throughout their decade-long marriage, before he left her and their two girls to "find himself" in the city. What he found was that he didn't like to be henpecked by a domineering wife, and found a submissive first-generation Vietnamese woman to live with. My sister had a difficult time maintaining the farm and two school-age girls on her own, but she never asked for help, and wouldn't accept charity from anyone in town, especially me. Part of me admired her strength, but publicly I called her a stubborn old mule.

I lived your standard country life with my husband and our twins -- girls, of course. He would work in the fields from sunrise to sunset, and I would spend my days cooking, cleaning and running into town for errands. It was a traditional life, but the only one we really knew. Few people ever left town, and even fewer came back, so we believed that there were two worlds: ours and Hollywood. Our lives might have been boring, but they didn't have the drama, intrigue and pain of those Hollywood stories.

The most dramatic moment of the year came each Fourth of July, when the town would hold its annual parade and pie bake-off. This year I was sure I was going to win with my fresh peach pie, a recipe that I'd been perfecting since shortly after I was married. But, not to be outdone, my sister arrived with her mile-high apple pie, a dessert that set mouths watering for three counties. She won. My twins did their best to comfort me, eating my peach pie and loudly exclaiming that they loved it. But it was just another example of how I couldn't win.

In September, as the first leaves began to change color and fall to the ground, I got the news: my sister had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. None of us went to the doctor all that frequently. We relied on the tried and true remedies that our families had used for generations to cure most of the basic illnesses. But when she found the lump, she panicked. She kept trying to convince herself that it would go away and heal itself, but of course, cancer feeds on ignorance and denial, and in my sister it found an all-you-can-eat buffet.

She went to the county hospital, a 45-minute ride from our farm, to have the radical mastectomy. While they were removing the lymph nodes, they realized that the cancer had spread to her lung and bones. There wasn't much time left. They attempted intensive doses of chemotherapy, but that only made her hair fall out and her stomach churn. The cancer charged ahead, unabated.

Her death left me with a dramatic void in my life. I took in her children to raise as my own -- my eight-year-old twins, and my sister's girls of seven and five -- but even their energy and resilience didn't help me to snap out of my depression. When I buried my sister, I had lost my reason to push and compete. I had lost my spark. Nearly a year had passed before I had a breakthrough, compliments of my oldest niece. "Mommy always said you were the best," she told me. "She never felt like she could live up to your standards." I began to cry, because I felt the same way about her. My niece wrapped me in her arms to comfort me. It was at that moment that I felt my sister in her touch, and knew that she had given me the strength to carry on with my life.

My nieces are grown now, and I can see in them the fire that made my sister so special. They argue with each other constantly, each trying to better the other, but mindful of the advice I once gave them: Competition may be good, but there's no standard so great as the one you set for yourself. I can only hope that they pass along this advice to their own daughters. If that advice is my only legacy to this world, I'll be doing ok.

Words

I think I'm afraid of my words. Would I be writing anything if it weren't behind the protective anonymity of the blog format? Probably not, or else I'd just be restricting it to my laptop and never letting it out of my sight. Words can have so much power, written words especially, because they can't be taken back later. There was a girl I knew once, and she'd tell her boyfriends that she loved them, but would never write it down. The written word was too formal, too permanent for her to handle, but the love she felt at any given moment could be freely expressed verbally. So what happens if I write something, maybe something that's based on my own experience (who am I kidding? all writing is based on your own experience in one way or another), and years down the road I absolutely panic because there's just too much information in it, too much truth and not enough fiction? Only a select few have access to this blog, and I doubt that they all read it, so there's something comforting and acceptable about that. In a lot of ways, I could confess things here and no one would ever really know. But I suppose the drawback to that is the fact that I'll never have any incentive to improve my writing, never be driven to succeed unless I face some crititcism and let the world read my words. Do I really care what people think? Should I care? Would I be devastated if one of my fictional efforts turned out to be too transparent and I let the world see my bared soul? Would it be used against me later, or would it bring my reader closer to me? I should just do it. I should share with you my pain and my joy, my passion and my hatred. You are the nameless, faceless reader, passing silent judgement. Do you want to know me? Do you want to reach out? You can always talk to me. E-mail's on the right.

Goals

I'm working on a 60-day plan to get stronger and better. Here's a nice Pilates goal. It's so much harder than it looks. If I can even get halfway there, I'll be in great shape.

Two Intense, Freaky Dreams

The first one was the dream about the gnarled, old hands reaching for me out of the darkness. It had me really creeped out and when I woke up in the darkness I swore I could still see them.

The other (and this one really freaked me out) was a dream that I was pregnant and about to deliver the baby. I was scared to death and for some reason I was supposed to be having the baby in the upstairs guest room of my aunt's house while she had a party downstairs. No one was coming upstairs to help me, and I was totally terrified. I tried to walk downstairs in a ratty blue terrycloth robe that I found hanging on a hook, but I ended up getting weak from the pain and falling down the stairs. Of course, falling dreams always end up with you jerking yourself awake violently, and I nearly shot myself off the bed. My first thought was that I had to check my stomach to make sure there wasn't really a baby. It was all very upsetting.

Things That Infuriate Me

I love starting my day with a lecture. "L (my boss) told me that you would be responsible for this massive project. We talked about it last week. What do you mean you're not finished?" As usual, it means that I never heard about it before this moment, and now I'm breathing fire and ready to scream. When these things happen, nobody looks upon her as the slacker, it's always me because it was my action item whether I knew it or not. This is not how I wanted to start my day.

Because everyone needs a little haiku...

Awake in darkness
Dreams fading in consciousness
Remember little

One Week

If you had one week to live, what would you do?

Writing

If a writer writes only in an anonymous blog, does it make a sound?

5.3 seconds left in the 3rd...

0-0 tie, going to OT. Let's go De-vils. (clap, clap, clap-clap clap)

Word of the Day

60 seconds to write the first thing that comes into your head. Go!

Becoming: I find myself becoming one with a memory, aligning with a past I barely remember but can't forget. I'm becoming the person I wanted to be and feared I'd become. I'm becoming older with each letter I type, each word I express.

Fact of the Day

Tomatoes are sexy. Don't believe me? Tomatoes are the red, ripe perfection of summer. They are a cool, sweet, juicy respite from sultry summer days. Bite into one and watch the juice run down your chin. There's something magical about it. Yes, I know I'm weird, but do you know anyone else with such an interesting perspective on fruits & vegetables?

I Knew I Was Smart!

Got an A in my Marketing class at Stanford. If I may quote: "Great work on the marketing plan. You clearly understand your product, pain, and market." I wonder if I can convince anyone else....

Reasons to Quit

Someone outside my cubicle is talking about how he has to quit smoking because his wife is pregnant. It seems that nearly everyone will quit for the sake of a baby's health and wellbeing. The interesting thing is that hardly anyone will quit for the sake of their own. Interesting.

Miscommunication Makes the World Go 'Round

For over a year I was working with this partner company, a telco, to get them launched with our service. They've nitpicked, pressured, insisted, demanded and have otherwise put themselves on the top of my "Things to Avoid" list. However, there was supposedly a call today wherein they claim that I'm singlehandedly withholding 80 pages of information that is absolutely critical to their development and even to their very existence. I've presented proof that I submitted my comments on these 80 pages approximately 5 months ago, and still they're not satisfied. Now I have sales breathing down my neck because I'm delaying the process. Let's see, you started contract negotiations two years ago, and they're still not launched? Call me crazy, but I think that there might be other problems that don't directly involve me. Just a hunch. Now this is being called a "miscommunication" and I'm supposed to start dialing frantically to correct my mistake. However, since it's still not my mistake, I'm having a really tough time feeling inspired to call folks up and play the role of scapegoat.

How much do I like having a paycheck? Would I really be unhappy if I didn't have one?

Blah

Lunchtime has been so boring since Jenna quit. Nobody to hang out with.

Memory

I'm just writing this directly probably because it's not fiction, and because I woke up with a memory of it that was so strong... I'm not sure why. Maybe because grandmom is in the hospital and I always expect to see him....

One of my best friends from high school was Margaret. She was from your large Irish Catholic family, #4 of 7. We were close with her next older brother, Tim, and his friends, Shawn, Chris & Brian. Brian was a great guy, but the other three had somewhat neanderthal leanings -- deeply racist, violence-prone, musclebound blue-collar workers who loved their beer. I state this merely as a fact, not as a condemnation, because for the most part they could be kept in line with one strategically-placed glare.

Shawn and I always had a rocky relationship. He was the only person in the world that I've ever had shouting matches with. He had little patience for someone like me who was good in school, and I had little patience for his drinking and temper. The odd part of it was that he was a male nurse, and at work he was everything you could want from a caregiver.

One weekend, in college, we all congregated at Penn State for the weekend -- me, the boys, and lots of Margaret's roommate's friends. It was one hell of an alcohol-soaked weekend, which hit its peak on Saturday night when we attended the party of one of Margaret's friends who lived in an off-campus apartment. For reasons I can't remember now, I was sober that night. We were dancing and hanging out, and of course the boys were just standing on the sidelines drinking beer and watching. I remember heading for the couch to rest after dancing for a while, and Tim asking me, "who the hell are you?" Out there dancing with strangers, with my newly-cut short hair, glasses ditched for the evening, I suppose I was suddenly different than the dorky girl they remembered from high school. Back to dancing, having a blast until a slow song comes on. A few people are dancing close and I take my rightful place off to the side of things like the wallflower I've always been. Next thing I know, and much to my surprise, I feel two large arms wrap around me from behind. "Dance with me," Shawn whispers in my left ear. I'm totally thrown by this. Not 24 hours ago we nearly traded punches in a particularly bitter fight, and now... well, this was clearly not a casual dance. I dance with him, and never before or since have I been held so closely. Actions speak louder than shouted words sometimes. Whether this was an apology or something more, I didn't know. I appeared perfectly calm on the outside, but internally my confusion was dizzying. I can't remember the name of the song, but it lasted forever, giving him enough time to kiss my neck and make me go weak (how is it possible that some people just instinctively know how to make you lose all rationality?) Eventually, the song ended, and as soon as we pulled back and made eye contact, it was like nothing had happened. I kind of ducked away and headed for the kichen to get some water when I ran into Brian watching from the loft. I stammered, "well, that was weird, wasn't it?" Brian (who I didn't realize until later liked me as much more than a friend), yells, "Shawn! Don't ever f*%#ing do that again!" The tone was angry and I kind of slumped into a chair, knowing that those words had started a testosterone free-for-all that couldn't amount to anything good.

Less than 10 minutes later, Margaret's roommate started dancing with a black guy. Combine this with racist tendencies and the free-flowing testosterone, and you can start to imagine the melee that ensued. Or maybe you can't, because I remember being shocked by it at the time. I remember seeing Tim grab the poor guy by his throat and slam his head into the wall, leaving a nice dent in the plaster. Margaret and I are shouting. The rest of the girls are too drunk to understand the significance of this, or maybe they just don't know them well enough to be afraid. I start herding the girls out the door like a cattle wrangler, eventually getting stuck behind and pinned against the railing, unable to move. Eventually, however, we all made it outside and began to run for it as the police sirens approached. Tim grabs me by the arm and tells me I'm coming with him because it's not safe. I remember screaming, "I'm not your sister, I'm not your girlfriend, and I don't need your help! I can take care of myself!" I yanked my arm away and he tried to grab me again, but this time I hauled off and hit him -- a fairly decent shot to the chin -- then ran like hell.

Miraculously, when we all returned to Margaret's apartment, no one had been apprehended by the cops. I spent most of the night outside in the hall, and when I finally came inside, there was only one available place to sleep, a spot on the linoleum between Brian and Shawn. It was never mentioned again.

A year later, I graduated from college with a kidney infection and got to spend Christmas in the hospital. Every day, like clockwork, he'd come down to check on me. Even when he didn't come to the room, I could see him at the nurse's station, checking my chart to make sure I was ok. He brought me a little teddy bear and watched over me. A year later, my grandfather was dying in the hospital, this time on Shawn's floor. I saw him nearly every day; he took fabulous care of Pop, and always kept me posted on his condition with more clarity than anyone else offered. I never had the chance to thank him for that. I always woke to the news radio station in Philly. One morning I was awakened with the news that Shawn had been stabbed to death the night before. Supposedly he didn't do anything to provoke it, but knowing him like I did I wouldn't have been surprised to learn that he'd shot his mouth off to the wrong person. They were drinking at this guy's house, another nurse from the hospital, and supposedly the guy got up from the table, walked to the kitchen, picked up a chef's knife and plunged it into Shawn's chest. Tim had to call 911 and watch his best friend die while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.

To this day, there's so much I don't understand. A lot of my time with them seems so far away that it could have been a movie. It was several lifetimes ago. Was I really there? Did it really happen? Could Shawn really be gone? How could life just end like that when you're only 24?

Maybe it's a good thing that I moved away from home. It's never a good idea to build a life around drunken brawls and shooting pool. Sometimes it astounds me that I've gone from that to this.

Realization

As of today, this is officially my longest job. I never would have guessed that I'd be here this long.

June Already

19 Days until my 30th birthday. Everyone around me is making a huge fuss over it because of the 30 thing. To me, it's just another birthday, and I can't see why it should be a big deal just because it ends in a zero. The cool thing is that there's only 12 days until vacation, off to Alaska and the midnight sun.

More fiction....

The theme is real, the scene has been changed... plus a few details have gone hazy in the last decade.

~~~~~

He had come to visit her the night before, stumbling onto her doorstep in a drunken haze. His commitment to the Army beckoned, and with less than 48 hours before reporting to basic training, he had come to say goodbye and tie up the loose ends of his life. Unfortunately, by the time he reached her apartment, his lack of sobriety had completely drained his memory of his well-rehearsed speech, and even the main topics of what he wanted to say.

She opened the door in spite of her better judgment. His lean, blonde form slumped against the doorframe, cigarette dangling from his right hand. He tried to stand up straighter when the door opened, to make a good impression, but he only succeeded in holding the pose for a moment before tipping to his right and resuming his position against the frame. He smiled, gathered as much charm as he could muster, and slurred, “Hey, beautiful.”

She was tempted to close the door. It would have been the easiest way to handle things. But at nearly 3AM, logic did not prevail. She stepped aside and let him stumble into her apartment, closing the door with a solid click.

“Why are you here?” After two years of ups and downs, there was no need to play games anymore. She was tired of the bullshit.

“I wanted to spend my last night of freedom with the girl I love,” he said, slipping his arms around her waist. The smell of cheap beer and Marlboros overpowered the cologne he had applied hours before.

“Oh, I see,” she said, gently pushing him away. “So when she wasn’t available, you came to see me?” She walked towards the kitchen to get a glass of water, hoping to wash down the knot she felt in her throat. He followed.

“Don’t you know how I feel about you? Jesus, you mean everything to me I love you.” He hovered behind her like a shadow.

She sighed. “This isn’t the time or the place to be having this discussion.” She was exhausted, and knew that no good would come of a lengthy conversation with a drunk man professing his love.

“But I came to set…” he stumbled over her area rug and tried to regain his composure. “I came to set things right.”

“In the morning,” she said. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. Come on, let’s go to bed.”

He flashed his trademark grin. “Bed, huh? See, I knew I’d get you into bed eventually.”

“Nice try, cowboy.” She wasn’t taking any of his shit tonight. “Sleep only. Come on, let’s go.”

She led him to her bedroom and made him take off his shoes before climbing into bed fully clothed. Again, the smile. “You’re the best, you know that? God, you’re beautiful.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the drunken beholder,” she replied. She climbed into bed next to him wearing her pajamas, an old t-shirt and a pair of boxers. She certainly didn’t feel beautiful.

He was asleep within minutes. She lay next to him, head propped up on her hand, watching him in the gentle light from the streetlamps. Bare, wiry branches cast long shadows across her ceiling, swaying with the late winter winds. She didn’t sleep at all that night, just watching him sleep fitfully.

Morning came slowly, as the sun rose cautiously behind the clouds. Spring would be coming soon, and it would ease her desperate need to see life begin with the first daffodils of the season. She rose from bed and took a long, leisurely shower, debating what she would say when he awoke. In spite of his claims that he loved her, she simply didn’t trust him. There was no negotiating that point. Trust was trust, and if it wasn’t there, then there couldn’t be anything more to the relationship.

He continued to sleep as she got ready for work. They were rapidly running out of time to talk, but she didn’t wake him until she was nearly ready to leave for the office. She shook him gently and watched his eyes dart around the room with confusion, wondering where he was and how he got there. His eyes came to rest on her, standing in the doorway, pulling on her jacket.

“You’re going?” He sat bolt upright and stared, stunned.

“Did you expect me to go to basic with you? I’d think you’d get laughed at by the other soldiers.” She turned and headed back towards the kitchen. He was right behind her in a matter of seconds.

“Listen to me,” he began. “About last night…..”

“What about it?”

“I just wanted to make sure I didn’t say anything stupid.”

“Oh, but you did,” she said. “You told me you loved me.”

“I do love you. How can you not see that?” He was indignant now

“Love?” She nearly cried out. “You don’t know what love is! You love the chase. Seriously, if I slept with you, would I ever hear from you again?” Her tone softened. “The answer is no,” she nearly whispered. “You just like the idea of me. You like the challenge. It’s not me in particular.“ She paused for a moment. “You don’t even know me.”

“You could not be more wrong.”

“What color are my eyes?” She closed them so he couldn’t cheat.

“Brown,” he said without hesitation.

“They’re green,” she replied, opening them. She had secretly hoped that he would answer correctly and prove that she was something different to him, someone memorable.

“Brown, green… so what? I love you and you know it. You just don’t want to admit that you’re wrong.

“I wish I was, because there’s something about you I just can’t shake. But I just can’t keep doing this.” She headed for her dresser to put on earrings.

“I don’t love anyone like I love you.” He was practically pouting now.

“You will, someday. She’ll be better for you. More patience.”

“I don’t want someone patient. I want you. It’s all or nothing here, and this is it.”

“I want a one-woman man,” she replied. “Have you been faithful to me for more than two days at any one point in the relationship?” His silence gave her the answer she needed to know.

They rode downstairs in the elevator in silence. When they reached the lobby, she turned to face him one last time. “Please take care of yourself. I’ll always be thinking about you.” She kissed him on the cheek.

He dropped to one knee on the busy sidewalk. “Marry me. Make me prove that I’m serious.” She smiled weakly, as though all of her available energy had to keep that smile going. “Love isn’t about proving, it’s about trusting.” She touched the side of his face. “Keep smiling, cowboy, and stay out of trouble. I love you.” She kissed him on the cheek once again and darted down the block to catch her train to the office. He stood still, staring, wondering how he could have let her walk away. On the relative silence of the train, when her heart stopped pounding, she started to cry, mourning what might have been.