This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.*

Dear readers,

Here's a hug. (I think Katherine's words are more eloquent...)



Okay, so the first try did not work. When my dad emailed this to me and I then emailed it to my favorite folks, it was not a static image but it moved. I think this is a static image. But you get the idea. I'm off to try my hand at mall-walking, as it is raining a little here and I really want to go to the Westmoreland Museum's display of New York paintings--my reward if I walk five days this week.

Yours til Niagara falls,

SL

__________
*Katherine Mansfield

Dear dear readers (updated)

Dear readers (especially Culiann, Amy A., Sarah O., and Katrina),

Thank you for always reminding me (but especially yesterday) that giving birth is not the only pedigree for entrance to the "women's club." I had lunch yesterday with Sally, and on the way to Mad Mex (this really fun Mexican rest'raunt here in da Burgh) I said, (about Tuesday at Bible Study) "sitting there, I thought I need to get new friends." And she said, "Nah."

Having lunch with her and your comments have restored my faith in women--what is it they say? I hate people in a group, but one by one they are manageable. I needed to hear about the angst of soccer practice, T-ball practice, grumpy family members. And I needed to share the bizarre fact that two nights in a row I had dreams about Max. Dreams where we were just friends.

The bizarre thing about my schedule (I work two nights, every Saturday) is that I can attend this Bible Study peopled by married women (it meets Tuesday mornings.) I have attended it on and off since 1991 (when I was a sophomore in college) and I've almost always been the only single/childless woman but the difference between how that feels at 19 and how that feels at 36 are huge.

Amy's comment really was wonderful:

I hate that circle thing. When I run things I make people say who they are, where they are from and what their favorite 'whatever' is... perfume, food, color, etc. That way it really is about us and not about how many times we have or haven't given birth.

I love my kids and my family, but sometimes it's not all about them.

I have found this (and everyone else's comments) to be true--I'm friends with a lot of married women, I get their "it's not about the kids/the husband" vibe, but I guess I needed it extra much* after Tuesday's overwhelming event.

But I still do think I need a single friend and/or mentor, preferably someone who hasn't given birth. I have one woman in mind actually--she also went to the women's college I went to, but years before. Hmm.

Of course, I need to remember to not put a certain lifestyle choice on a pedestal or in the trash (which I think I'm pretty good about except when I'm slammed...)

Which brings me to the segue, this book I'm reading in the loo: Body Drama.

This is the book we all wish we had when we were 13-17. Put it on hold at your public library, purchase it from Amazon, go to your favorite independent or big box bookstore. It won't make up for the years of agony we had back then, but it will make you say, "really?" and "oh..." and "Why didn't I have this book???"

Nancy Amanda Redd, who was a Miss America swimsuit winner, a Harvard grad, etc. knocks down all the myths about our bodies, with chapter headings that include:

• I fried my hair
• I sweat more than other girls do
  
• I'm harming my body

(and tons of other body dramas--I'd give you the entire TOC (table of contents) but I have an allergist appt. in 20 minutes.)

You MUST at least go look at the Amazon page on this book. Some of us might still benefit from some of the topics discussed, and we all know a young woman who would benefit from some "get real" talk. I remember being the last one of my friends to get my period, not knowing a thing about shaving my legs...

Yours til Niagara falls,

SL

PS I'd do the linky thing, but hello, allergist appt!!

PPS: Moms, read the book first. I know yins to be discerning, but believe me, as great as this book is, it lets EVERYthing hang out. It assumes the national averages about teenage sex. Sorry I forgot to mention that yesterday.
_________
*it's my blog, I'll make up non-grammatical superlatives if I want to.

D-liver D-letter, D-sooner, D-better (random thoughts on lefters and a bit of angst)

One of the advantages to postal mail is that if you're waiting for something, you can blame the weather, or the post office. With email, you know there's a person on the other side that hasn't sent a reply yet.

This morning I thought I would have a couple replies, so I made sure to give myself sufficient "online time" to work on that and check FB and blog...alas, nothing.

Ah me.

********

I bought stamps on Monday. They're of pollination. The link is to a USPS press release, which I skim-read and is actually pretty interesting.

********

Mail yesterday: Ladies Home Journal, a flyer from Obama, and junk. Reading LHJ, I realized again what I realized yesterday as I went to Bible Study for the first time in months: women often relate to each other based on their children. Which is probably why I every once and a while think, oh, I want one. Because I want to be in that "club." After the third woman had introduced herself saying, I have three children, one's in junior high, etc., I introduced myself (almost on the verge of tears) saying, I'm an outsider here: no husband, no kids, I don't even attend this church on Sundays...I got a laugh and a "no you're not" (an outsider). Which is what I needed to get me through the remainder of the room, there might have been a total of twenty women. There were only two other unmarried women, but those women had children AND grandchildren. They were all pleased as punch to just gab about their progeny, nothing wrong with that. But as they went around the room, I thought, I need to get new friends.

Not that I would get rid of these, no, never, these women enrich my life, as do their children, the ones that I know. (I adore the fact that Sally's kids accept me as a piece of the furniture at their house.) But I need some women that are successful not because they have children and grandchildren, but because they've worked hard at a profession. I need women who are successfully single and childless. Where are the "Fabulous Four" when I need them? Yesterday my del.icio.us page got beefed up with a few new websites and items on singleness. Cause here's the thing: I don't want a man right now, or children. And that's got to be okay, but dammit, the only woman I know here, that I communicate with, that I know, that reflects that, is the one I see in the mirror.

Whew! Didn't think that's where I'd go when I started this post, and ding! my little chicky time clock just told me it's time to hop over to the bathroom. So more single lady angst another day.

And if you are a grandma or a momma (or a wanna-be) reading this, please know that that is fabulous, that I think you are fabulous. I don't knock your experience, it's just not my experience.

Lucy...how I love thee, let me not count the ways

Bwah ha ha!! This is my reaction to the men who think I should hold onto my dying car. They seem to have not remembered any of my earlier complaints...

(The minor ones at the moment: rear panel has started rust out and a portion of car is attached to...air; the glove compartment won't open.)

Dear men who sold me this car,

You are rotten.

Signed, Sarah Louise

This post brought to you by the letter M...

M is for Moses...RIP to Charlton Heston, died yesterday at home. He was married for 64 years, and little tidbit, the baby Moses in the Ten Commandments was HIS son, 3 mos. old.

M is for Monday...I have been screaming at my Avast! virus thingy...OMG. How geeky can you get?? (It requires more than 4 steps...) (but it's free, so...) (but still!) (yes, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed...)

M is for Michigan, as in Lake...my friend Wren writes about the Holy Spirt (misspelled on purpose by us, read more for explanation.)

M is for money--today I finally do my taxes!

M is for mail--today I will mail that package.

M is upside down W--today I will go for a walk. (I went for a 15 min one yesterday.)

M is for Mediterranean Nachos. Lately they've been making them with less cheese, so I asked for lots of cheese and got WAY too much. (Sharp Edge, how I love thee, let me count the ways)

M is for many babies. I got to meet L last night, one of the few baby girls in our extended community. What a cutie! Drool city...

A Sunday afternoon letter

Dear readers,

How are you? I am fine. The weather in Pittsburgh is warm--in the upper 50s. I haven't gone for a walk yet, but I did go to Mickey D's and got some food. I read a great book, A Crooked Kind of Perfect,* by Linda Urban, which is WONDERFUL. I read it in one sitting and on my brand new stationery from Walgreens, I'm going to write a by hand to the author letter. Having my own private mental health meltdown, it was a relief to read about a father who had agoraphobia and a mom who worked too much and a girl who like me, dreams of playing piano at Carnegie Hall, like Horowitz.

At Walgreens, I also got more Boost and some Michelena's frozen macaroni and cheese. And two magazines. Martha Stewart's Weddings (it's been years since I've bought one, it was a weak moment) and a magazine with Britney Spears on the cover. Who knew that me and Britney would ever have anything in common? I don't know if she's I or II, but she's been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. Well, if I thought that she'd get the letter I'd write her on my Walgreens stationery, I might write this:

Dear Britney,

You will make it through. It will be a very bumpy road, but you will make it through.

Yours til Niagara Falls,

Sarah Louise, Bipolar II, diagnosed in 1998.

I had a coupon for $1 off Boost, so my total "retail therapy" session was under $40. And no, I didn't need the $8 pink pajama pants, but the clear container is a way to start a dent on my dishes (they didn't have dishpans at Walgreens.) Well, no time like the present, I'm going to go take a walk. For real.

Yours til the side walks,

Sarah Louise

P.S. I have a new blog wherein I'm me, not SL. I'll link it up soon. It's sort of bizarre to think that I'm "coming out of the closet," and what that means...but the other blog is my "professional" blog, wherein I talk about writing and librarianship, not the fact that I had a Big Mac for brunch.
________________
*Link includes an "anonymous" comment from Linda herself.

Sunday morning letters...

Years ago, I went to church on Sunday mornings. I'm grateful that my church of choice has evening services (at the moment, exclusively) as Sunday is the only day I get to lollygag in the morning, stay in bed until I wake up, get on the computer and catch up on my blog-reading...

When my grandmother was alive, Sunday before church would be when I wrote her letters. The "Sunday letters" became a ritual. I remember reading once in a magazine short story about a woman reading a letter from her sister. It arrived every Thursday, as her sister wrote her a letter every Tuesday. I remember thinking that was the way things should be. I have retained that bit in my mind for over twenty years. (Ah, those were the days, when women's magazines published short fiction.)

My life at the moment doesn't have that kind of discipline. Living alone, working odd hours, coddling my "inner child"-- all of these have ruined any kind of ritual, and I apparently can't even trust myself to take a walk five out of seven days. Depression doesn't help. Social isolation, which happens slowly and all at once, doesn't help.

But I do, for this one month, have this discipline: to write a "letter" to you, my readers, every day. Maybe with this small step, other small steps will follow. I won't fool myself that blogging every day in the month of April will solve all the ills in my life, or bring world peace, but it is a small step. It is one step.

One of my favorite singer-songwriters, Carrie Newcomer, is coming to Pittsburgh next Thursday. I work that night, so I'll miss it. Her song, "Take one step," is a reminder to me to just take the first one. (I looked, there are no online lyrics. Sorry. But her 1994 album, Angel at my shoulder is a great investment.)

As a diehard perfectionist (it's true), I often don't do things because I won't get it right. Reasons I've stayed home instead of gone for a walk: what if I don't get it right? This may sound silly, but it's true. For a walk to "count" in this study that I'm in, it has to be 25 minutes. Twenty five minutes of hard walking with a cool down of two minutes. Well, I could walk to get my brunch at Tazza (though they've stopped carrying my favorite tomato and cheddar on a croissant sandwich) but it wouldn't "count." So it's easier to stay here in front of the computer screen and starve. It looks silly in black and white (or black on pink) but this rule-ism is what rules my riddled mind.

My eyes are stinging with tears, Jewel is singing in the backround, and I think I might just have to take one step.

Tomorrow is the day after today...

So I was supposed to go for a walk after work. Yeah, that didn't happen. It was a long day. I had lunch with Marian and her beau, who is visiting from upstate New York. We went to Wendy's. And in between, I got a lot done, I did. But there was enough other stuff and negative energy in me (it's too easy to manufacture) that the good parts didn't make a dent. It's a shame.

Instead, I came home, watched Second Hand Lions (which might be a good movie when you're not in a rotten mood.) (C'mon, Haley Joel's hair was too well cut. He was living with those uncles long enough to grow corn, and they did not seem like the type to care about barbers.)

But right now, I'm sitting at my computer, watching the most brilliant sunset paint the sky pink, and writing to you, my dear readers. I'm eating a bowl of popcorn (because I was supposed to go to the grocery store.) (Let's not go there.) (Tomorrow I'll do dishes...)

The whole letter thing, I thought, well, I could give you another kind of letter. So here's one of my favorite blue monsters...



So now I think I'll put in the other movie I got from the library, Tea for Mussolini and hope the hairdressers have a little more reality.

The last bits of pink are peeking through the houses and trees. Thanks for sharing this moment. Depression sucks, but sunsets, popcorn, blue monsters, and readers make it worthwhile to get through to the next day. I don't have to feel better today. (But I am smiling as I write, because this is a really wonderful sunset.) And the popcorn tastes good, and I do like writing to you.

I just have to wake up tomorrow. And tomorrow is my day off.

The sunset is gone now. But I'm smiling, so that's worth it. I'll go for a walk tomorrow.

Cheerio...

Letters mingle souls...

Dear Readers,

How are you? I am fine. I'm in the middle of my morning blog fix...

This is off in a rush, which I know one should never do. And one should never write something for publish when one is irked.

So, [deep breath] [deep breath].

On March 31st, in preparation for this month, I searched hither and yon for quotes that might be useful (about letters.) (see title, for which I don't have time to look up author...)

One of the things I love about letters is the stationery. Now, I am a sucker for good stationery. And pens.

I remember once telling someone that I had re-written a letter five times before I sent it. And that person said, wow, you must not know that person [getting the letter] really well. Which was in fact true. I thought I did, but the fact that I had to self-censor and be sure the letter wouldn't offend was telling. While I'm no longer in contact with either party, I am grateful for the insight I gained both from the exercise and the conversation.

I often find with email that if someone writes in red (to me it feels like the English teacher correcting me) or in all bold, I get tense. And while email is short, quick, there is no way to get tone of voice. So the only way to get sense is from the words themselves--so if someone is flip, you have no idea if they're

a) being flip
b) mad at you but not saying it aloud
c) rushed and trying to get this email out.

At least with a letter, you get a sense of penmanship or stationery. There are none of those buffers with email. Which makes it hard to email with someone you don't know if you are emailing about time-sensitive issues--often the person's quick reply comes off as a rebuff when they honestly just had three seconds to dash off an answer to your email. And I generally answer time-sensitive email right away, as I know it will get buried in the onslaught of the next day's email.

So I try to remember to address the person I'm writing to. And to "sign" my name at the end. Those two things at least personalize an email that might just be, "I need a meeting room for x day." ("Try" is in bold because I often forget.)

The fact that it is so easy to send email makes it more dangerous. And the fact that you can send it to multiple people, even adding blind carbon copies...one of my bosses actually writes: Dear Marian (cc to Julie, Ann, "x" dept. staff.) So right away, the person knows who the email is going to--there's no confusion that this is a private memo, or who the other recipients are.

I have been at the butt end of too many emails--and even though I've received many more "nice" emails, the memory of the bad ones sometimes makes me flinch when I get an email from someone that doesn't often send me emails--I'm afraid I've said something and they're about to lambast me. Which makes me ever more grateful for nice emails that are like mini-letters -- recently on our neighborhood list-serv, someone said, reminder: street cleaning starts this week. And at the end, he added something about how he liked to move his truck and sweep the street on the days the street cleaners came--and the way he said it, it was like a little window into his life. It had gone beyond mere information to a moment shared among friends, a moment that stayed with me yesterday, as I walked to my car that was parked on the other side of the street and half way down (because of street cleaning).

Ah, the foibles we get into electronically. Yes, I am self-censoring--because, dear reader, I don't know you THAT well. And, because this has a million "blind cc's" -- it's called the world wide web.

Oh look at at the time. I'm off to the last Summer Reading Club training--this summer our theme is "Catch the Reading Bug!"

Have a great day, and tomorrow meet me here, we'll talk some more about my favorite things: letters!

yours til Niagara falls,

SL

Mail from my dad...

Dear Caroline,

How are you? I am fine. The weather in Pittsburgh...

These days, mail from my dad is generally the electronic kind. He most recently sent me a NYT article about book tastes being a dealbreaker in romantic entanglements. Since I dated many a sci-fi reading male and am friends with Babs who reads books I can't stand and I read books she can't stand and we're still friends, I don't think I would break up with someone based ONLY on their book taste.

But I was talking about letters. Pre-e, that is, before I had email, my father would cut out the Metropolitan Diary from the New York Times, print out a sermon from Craig Barnes, and send them to me in a number ten business size envelope, with a "Love, Dad" on a Post-it.

My dad generally uses cool stamps, so often I will save the envelopes he mails checks in, just because I like the stamp. This astounds Sally, when she is helping me rid my apartment of its detritus, but she allows me a few quirks.

I'm kind of exited that April is "letters" as so much of my life has been about writing and receiving mail of the personal sort. Oh, I meant excited. That was one of the words my maternal grandmother would correct my spelling on in our correspondence. Later in her years, her spelling and typing got worse, so it evened out. I have a card from her on my refrigerator--she used the same manual typewriter for over 20 years.

Lorelei and I had a long correspondence that is still going, although these days the gaps between letters yawn long. When we were just getting to be close, at the end of my senior year of high school, I moved and she went on vacation, and we wrote and wrote and wrote. This was pre-email, pre-cell phones--we often would write 3 letters in one day, numbering the envelopes. We were crazy, but it meant that I had mail every day my freshman year of college. I've pulled some of those letters out and I don't know if I'll quote them, but they will at least give me things to write about when I write about letters.

***

In other news, the second therapist that was recommended only works on Tues-Wed, which are crazy days for me. So I've put in a voice mail to the third therapist on the list. The lady I saw Monday seems like she will do nicely, but since this next therapist (step right up!) will be #4 in 5 years, I'd like to do a good look around before I settle. And Ms. Monday night is fine with that.

I'm pooped! I may just turn on the TV and watch American Idol...tomorrow is soon enough to play games of Scramble, bring up my laundry, and start doing research for my taxes.

Yours til Niagara Falls,

Sarah Louise

a letter to my readers...

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