Not really about Argo, starring Ben Affleck.

Author’s note: this is a complex piece, memoir format. It is based on memories from me as an eight year old, a seventeen year old, a 27 year old, and now, as a forty year old. It is me, trying to piece together my life and memories. My relationships with my parents are very different today (as one would expect) from when I was seventeen, and they are two of my favorite people.

I went to see Argo because Ben Affleck was sporting a Barry Gibbs beard, I liked the trailer, and I have an interest in Tehran. My mother taught in Tehran at the Community School (a Presbyterian mission school) from 1966 to1969, before my parents were married. My mother met the Shah's wife, there's even a newspaper picture of my mother with the Shah's wife. It was through some Girl Scout event. My mother was a Girl Scout leader.

My mother is a very private person, so I'm always trying to learn more about things that connect to her life.

Little did I know that Argo would bring up all sorts of things about my father. Things that were in a black box so tight that it took me until Wednesday morning to admit them to myself, out loud. I admitted them to myself in a crazy depressed vibe Monday night and Tuesday morning, but Wednesday, while pouring raisins into my cereal bowl, covering the raisins with Grape Nuts and Kashi Heart to Heart, I admitted to myself that the reason I was so upset about Argo was that my father wouldn't let me live in Poland when I was in college. I had to go to college, I was not allowed to take a semester off.

I was seventeen, depressed, homesick, and my parents were halfway across the world. All of my abandonment issues are rooted right there in a few conversations with my dad, me pleading to come home and him refusing.

In retrospect, I am glad, for I wouldn't love Pittsburgh as much as I do now. I had to make it on my own. I did make it on my own. I made decisions. I found people to help me, and through those people I found other people and it blossomed. I found my place. I grew up fast, but I did, indeed, grow.

But more than twenty years later, Argo, a movie about a lost piece of American history, brought up that forgotten seed of bitterness and perceived abandonment and bloomed itself into a tree. A rotten tree whose fruits were disappointment and loneliness.

In 1979 and 1980, which is the time frame for the movie Argo and the actual events it depicts, I lived in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Due to my age and location, I was in what could be called a black hole for news. The Internet did not exist, and as an eight year old I didn't read the newspaper except for the comics or watch television except for cartoons and Little House on the Prairie. I never saw television news coverage about hostages in Iran. I sort of knew the hostage crisis was happening, I probably heard my parents or other adults talking about it. But it was not a part of my memory in any sense of the actual television coverage that shows up all over the place in Argo.

So on Monday, I walked into a movie because Ben Affleck looked cute in the trailer and it had to do with Tehran, a city I’m always interested in because of my mother. I had no idea how graphic the movie would be, and I had no idea that two of the characters were a couple I met during the time my parents lived in Warsaw, Poland, in the early 1990s.  

I heard the names, Mark and Cora L****, and I knew that I knew them. I knew they were friends of my parents, good friends. And something deep in me might have known they were from the Poland years. This was confirmed later.

When I graduated from high school in 1989, I moved to Pittsburgh, to go to college. My parents moved to Poland. Polish language training had taken up an entire year of my father's life. My father was prepared to speak Polish. He was not prepared for what happened: the communists were voted out of office a month after my parents’ arrival to Poland. Poland was on its way to democracy and privatization, and my father was in for the ride of his life, as the U.S. Embassy’s head economic advisor.

Back in Pittsburgh, I sat in the phone booth at the end of the hall in my dorm. Poland wasn't a third world country, but it wasn't first world, either. My phone calls had to be connected first through AT&T operators in Austria, or Germany, and then to Poland. I would dial a number in Austria only to hear the recording, “All circuits are busy, please try again later.” I tried again right away until I got through, dialing up to seventeen times, praying, please God, let me get through. There was a six hour time difference, so depending on the time of day, I talked to my dad in his office, or I talked to my parents at home. I don't think I ever talked to my siblings on the phone during the Poland years. The phones could be tapped, vestiges of Polish Communism, you couldn't be sure. And phone time cost a dollar a minute, so you didn't talk very long. 

In those phone booth conversations, it was either a business call, this is how I'm doing, with a list of talking points, or me pleading with my father. Please. Can't I take a semester off? And him, answering my pleas every time, with the same answer, no.

I know more now: it was probably the hardest point of my father's career. Communism had just fallen in Poland. My father was the head of the Economic Department. Privatization was an unknown to most of the people he was trying to help. The currency was going into hyper-inflation. Congressmen wanted to visit every other week to see democracy and free trade in the making. All these things meant my dad worked every day, all day, even Sunday. Everyone did. The officers (mostly husbands) showed up for church in the back of the Marine Bar in the Embassy, ate lunch with their families at the Eagle Club and then back to work. It was probably the hardest time for my parent's marriage. I remember coming home at Christmas and my parents were bickering. Growing up, my parents never fought, and if they did, it was in a room far away. Were they on the brink of divorce? This was not a place for me to come home to, this was not the time for me to take a semester off and be in Poland. I see that now.

To be clear: Poland was not a dangerous place, nothing like Tehran in 1979. But it was no place for a 17-year-old who wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life. Better for me to stay in school and work towards my bachelor's degree in the requisite four years. 

I came home every Christmas and summer vacation. Summers, I worked in the American Embassy as an intern. My first summer, I worked in the Consular office, where they gave out tourist visas, work visas, fiancée visas. For the first month that I worked in the Consular office, I was responsible for reading and retrieving cables three times a day. I was responsible for shredding cables on a regular prescribed schedule. When Albanians protested in July, 1990, I was responsible for writing a document in Albanian (transcribed from a cable) in case Albanians came to the Embassy seeking asylum. Copies were given to the Marines at Marine Post 1 and 2.

I was a normal college student with a normal summer job. Except that my normal summer job was involved in international affairs in a country that was undergoing political and economic transformations every week.

I worked with people who had chosen their lives to be far away from home, defending the American way of life to the world. Warsaw was a "hardship post," and I imagine Tehran was, too, at that time depicted in Argo. You got "hardship pay" for being in a situation that was more dangerous, or more squalid. Poland was not dangerous in 1989. But in 1979, Tehran was volatile.

In Argo, when the angry mob breaks through, gets into the Embassy yard and then into the Embassy, it was like the worst horror movie, it was REAL for me. When the Marines were being told to throw tear gas as a last resort, they were my Marines, and I remembered my crush on a marine named Roland. When the Consular officers decide to leave, escape, because they had access to the only direct street exit, first destroying the metal plates that were used to imprint passports with tourist visas, I saw the Consular office in Warsaw. It was as if I was watching two movies, one on the screen, and one tightly guarded in my memory but now playing loudly and with garish music. Only one of the movies was true.

During the whole movie, I ached to call my father and say, who are these people? How do they fit into my story? Why didn't I know this part of the story, this story that belongs to me as an American child of the seventies and the story that belongs to me because I knew two of the people depicted on the huge Hollywood screen.

And when I did call, as the credits rolled, my parents didn't answer. My mother picked up as I was in the middle of leaving a message about the movie. Which told me one thing. They were having dinner and they had screened the call. My parents don't have caller ID. So, right now, as Independents, they are of course getting all sorts of annoying phone calls from both parties. And my father, about 8 years ago, decided that he wasn't going to have dinner interrupted, it was interrupted his whole life as a child because his father was a pastor. The phone rang during dinner and I think maybe it not only meant that dinner was interrupted but maybe that his father left the table and maybe the house.

I should ask my father sometime. Because my issue with the fact that he screens my calls? Goes back to a different time, a time when I had to leave voice mails, which was not Poland, but another time, when I was falling into the twisted abyss of bipolar disorder as a 27-year-old. The voice mail person would say "x person" is not available. And those words, that my father was not available to me? That cracked me in a place where I was already cracked.

So while I was telling my mom about the movie, my dad was telling my brother about how the Canadian diplomats visited the L**** while they were in Poland. And as I'm talking to my mom, Jimmy Carter's voice comes over the credits and my mom says where are you and I say I'm at the movies, it's the credits and she says, I'll let you go, and we hang up. I'm so upset that I drive straight home instead of getting dinner at Panera (but I'd had movie nachos anyways, so I wasn't that hungry.) I ate some chocolate ice cream, took my dinner meds, and tried home. And no one answered. Well, weren't they done with dinner? The child in me wanted to talk to her dad. Where was he, and why wasn't he answering the telephone? And so I had to leave a cheerful message, because my mother brought me up right, but I felt horrible.

And so I searched the Internet for any scrap of information about the “Houseguests” and Argo. I read the Wired article from 2007, I read Tony Mendez's story in the CIA history archives online. I learned that Hollywood did, of course, compress the timelines, dramatize dialogue and events. But the emotional drama? That is something you can't show on camera, not really, so I forgive Hollywood for the police cars chasing the plane, because if you are escaping a country, in your mind, until you are safely in the air, you feel as if police cars could be chasing you down.

Tuesday morning was so bad that I called the house but didn't leave a message when I heard my mom's voice on the answering machine announcement. I spent the morning huddled on my bed watching any YouTube video about Ben Affleck and Argo. I tried to piece things together. I cried. And as I write this now, on Sunday morning, I can't tell you anything else, because the black box has closed again. But I will tell you this. I had to be at work at 1 p.m. I was 15 minutes late and that is without even taking a shower. That's how bad it was. I was glued to my bed, glued to finding any scrap of information that might make me feel okay.

It's a bad coping strategy, I know. But research seems to be my "go to" for "I don't understand what's going on in my mind." My other coping strategy is writing, and rewriting, which is why this post, which I started on Wednesday morning, is being edited on Sunday. It's now afternoon, the seminary bells just rang out three minutes ago.

I recommend Argo. I'm going to see it again tomorrow, partly because there's nothing else worth watching at my Monday $5 movie theater, but partly to open up the black box again and see if it's as scary the second time around. Boo!

Tweeting my way to a post...

Preface, in 140 characters or fewer, tweets from this morning.

Is every woman in love with Booth and want to be Dr. Brennan or is it just me?

Realizing as I watch Bones Season 5 that I wasn't so much in love with the boy as I was in love with the IDEA of him.

And no way was he ever in love with more than the idea of me b/c we never shared enough of each other. 

***

Deep thoughts for a Sunday morning? I have been watching Bones exclusively...even the shard of Friends the other night didn't appeal, and I DID NOT like Elementary. The idea of Sherlock Holmes as a junkie in recovery that needs a handler? I admit I have never read the original books, but I am too neurotic myself to enjoy watching neurotic people for entertainment.

I'm still in the grieving process...living in an alternate world of research for my poster session--TUESDAY and watching, like I said, exclusively, Bones. My therapist agrees that if I'm not watching any other TV that 3 episodes a day it is not unhealthy. (Thank God!)

(I did watch 4 yesterday, but I'm in the midst of a medication change. We went up on my antidepressant dosage b/c I was depressed. I took the dose back down on Friday morning b/c I was exhibiting "high risk" behaviors.) I use the quotes b/c I've never been one to spend thousands of dollars on shoes while manic. But I spent over $8 in the library's book store this week, $8 I really didn't have for magazines I really didn't need. (It wasn't ALL magazines, I did score a very nice messenger bag which will be great for carrying my laptop to the conference.) Friday morning, I called people cute on Twitter. I said, "I want to eat you up" to someone. And, thanks to my dear friend Gabrielle, of Hormonology fame, I was able to assess, in the shower, that oh! I'm in week 3. I should be feeling grumpy, not "You're so cute, I could eat you up."

So, on Friday, I modulated my meds. Which meant that I was in a mixed state both yesterday and Friday. Today I need to focus on the poster. (Which basically means, after this blog post, it doesn't matter what my mood is, I have to power through.) More on that once I'm done...I promise a more complete post later this week. To me, there is something wonderful about Sunday being the first day of my week. I start the week with Sunday and Monday as my days off, which is why I HATE calendars that use Monday as the first day of the week and give Saturday/Sunday teeny tiny boxes, as if you couldn't have anything important enough to write there.

I kicked, well, tush, yesterday at work. While I did spend the morning mostly gabbing with our wonderful Saturday volunteer, in the afternoon I knocked out over 15 Blu-rays. And that's impressive, because a lot of Blu-ray records are incomplete or non-existent. I generally have to do some original cataloging for every third record. I admit that my work was not up to the standards of my former boss, but a Blu-ray is NOT a facsimile of a Martin Luther book and I got the record (and the item, which is in high demand) out. Other librarians can come along and tweak the record I worked on, that's why it's a cooperative cataloging system. Haters gonna hate, but I mostly love OCLC, without it, my work would be much more gnashing of teeth than it already is.

I've gotten into a rhythm of work on Saturdays without Jean. Mornings, I talk with our volunteer Jenny, afternoons, I knock out Blu-rays, and with my last 20 minutes, I check to see which DVDs are in the system, such that any of the library assistants could just add the items to the record. This rhythm will likely chance once we are done with Jennifer's order (yes, a lot of women with J names), but for now, this work rhythm will last for at least a few more weeks, since we don't even have the Barbie videos that she ordered.

I live my life out in stories, and relationships. So it follows that I learn from stories, and from the relationships found therein. As much as I do NOT like the character of Daisy Wick, I learn from her relationship with Lance Sweets that the boy and I were not well matched. Intellectually, maybe, but emotionally not at all! And while Booth and Brennan are not a match intellectually or emotionally, they both seek to learn more about the other's process.

I think the next guy I date should be someone who reads fiction. I haven't dated a fiction reader since the last millennium. Max did read a fiction book I recommended, but we never discussed it. I'm looking for someone who I can talk to about stories. Because above all else, I traffic in stories.

Thanks for tagging along into this post...it's more "journally" than I like to set out as a finished product.

"You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar"

(My mother.)

ARGH. I so wish I was the kind of person that folks wanted to help. What I mean by that is, that I could be the sort of person that could talk to a car salesman who didn't get the detailing done on my car (there are ASHES still in the ashtray) and say, "oh, (dripping with honey), I'm sure you just want to double check to see if this was taken care of."

Meanwhile, I'm "your guys didn't do it, and I'm going out of town this weekend, I need it taken care of, and now, or tomorrow."

This is the summer of SQUEEZE SARAH LOUISE.

I don't have 2 days to play phone tag and be nice. And I don't even have my phone ON right now because I had one bar of battery. (Sometimes if I turn it off and then turn it back on, I get another bar back.)

It's a goal, then. Become the kind of person that is grace under fire. Right now, I just feel like I'm on fire, and "stop, drop, and roll" isn't doing the job.

"But life is good, right?" my mother would interrupt RIGHT HERE.

Yes. Life is good. I got paid today, I have food at home, I have a car (albeit one that needs new rotors), I have a roof over my head, and I have good friends, and a great family. I had a WONDERFUL week off at the Lake, so wonderful. I have never in my life needed a vacation as much as I did this year and for the first time in my life I didn't want to go home when it was time to go home. (I am weird that way. When vacation is over, my body clock/GPS says "home, take me home.") But not this time. Can't I just STAY gone for a little bit longer?

Well, there's a stack of books that need Dewey numbers to be checked, so if I have bad grammar, it's because I wrote this all at once, no major edits.

See you on the flip side. Or as another blogger once said, MTC (more to come.)

"Life is messy, wear a smock..."

(from a greeting card)

This winter, three of us librarians on twitter were in a good place, having deactivated our OKCupid online dating accounts. We all had boyfriends, we were happy. This summer, D. got dumped, I was in limbo land, and K. got engaged. And then I was no longer in limbo land, I was in no boyfriend land.

My last post tied things up nicely, sort of like a Jane Austen book. The reality is less like a bow, more like a tangle. Now that I can't have him, I want him. (Well, I never didn't want him, he was the one that ended things, however murkily.) At work, I see him, he smiles, we have short conversations. I'm like a moth to the flame. Messy? You betcha.

I have seen my friends do stupid things for love, I have done stupid things for love, and I don't anymore want to be that girl that does stupid things for love anymore, except, well, oh. When I see him, he is just so cute.

It's not about the eye candy, it's about the fact that we had a connection. We were us, once upon a time.

Hopefully, over time, I will develop other interests. But right now, with my stress levels at gazillion, I just want a date, a hug, a kiss, with the man I knew in February. (Yes, I know that man doesn't exist anymore, you can't step in the same river twice and all that.) 

I'm a romantic, and I confess that I still hold out the teeny tiniest hope that the boy could turn out to be "The One." However, I'm more and more thinking that he's probably like Charlotte's first husband, Trey MacDougal, from SATC. He seemed so good on paper, (and often in person) but in the end, he didn't have that "stick to it" quality that you look for in a mate.  

In other news, I am looking at cars. Online, in person (today I went for a test drive) and I've started the financing game. It's all about how long have you lived where, how long have you worked where, what's your gross income, etc. Boring stuff, but working the same place 10 years, living the same place 11 years, well, that helps.

And my life is all about doctor's visits. Between three visits a week to the chiropractor, and followups on the blood tests I had in mid July, I have been to see a doctor of some sort every day this week. Yesterday, while AT the chiropractor, I got a text from the chiropractor's office reminding me of my appointment for today. Every time my phone chirps and I get a text from the chiropractor, I think, I USED to get texts from my boyfriend.

Life is good, but it is hard. I'm hanging from a very thin thread, but as my father says, "we know from spiders that a thin thread can be very very strong."

"Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia."

(Judith Viorst)

I totaled my car. The details are of course important, but they are not for public consumption, so let's just say, I was driving and then all of a sudden, I was in a crash.

This all happened on July 21st, which was Saturday a week ago. I was driving to work. Suffice to say, I didn't get there. Instead, East End Sally picked me up from the emergency room (no broken bones, just a few scratches and of course, whiplash). We had lunch at Wendy's, and then cleared out my car. You might imagine, if you know me at all, that there were many library books, magazines, books on CD, and other car related detritus, such as maps. Also, most importantly: my house keys. They had been on the passenger seat, not in my purse, and so that is why Sally and I went to clear out my car, so that I could get back into my apartment. Also retrieved from car: my EZ Pass, the contents of my glove box, and my license plate. I took a picture of my bumper stickers: an "LW" oval sticker for the Lake We Go To, a political bumper sticker, and most recently added, "Got Milkweed?," which refers to the fact that milkweed is the host plant for Monarch butterflies. 

My mother decided to drive up from Virginia, bless her, bless her, bless her. She stayed with me in my apartment through Monday evening, doing motherly things like cooking meals, making me fold laundry, and helping me get rid of a little bit more of my clutter. Also, listening. Also, talking. Also, hugs. 

Since then, it's been chiropractic appointments, calls to and from my insurance company, emails to and from my insurance company, rental cars, copious amounts of paperwork, faxing things, notaries, and not a lot of time to do anything besides go to work and sleep. 

In other news, I have gotten to a place where I am ready to say, that was a great relationship. A short winter diversion. Time well spent with a sweet funny man. Who changed. And there's nothing I can do to change the fact that he changed. And there's no way I could have known that he was going to change, there's no way I could have seen that it was going to end badly. A friend reminded me today that I was very thoughtful about every step of the relationship, from the beginning, whee!!, to the middle, hello?, to the middle middle, the waiting game, to the end, a whimper, not a bang. It was good to have that reminder. I cried a little.

I'm ready to give him back his Michigan sweatshirts. And I'm ready to stop badmouthing both of us, we were just a couple of kids who did some kissing and stargazing on some cold winter nights. 

"It's been 7 hours and fifteen days..."

 (Sinead O'Connor)

So, it's been a week since he broke up with me. Or rather, said, not in a cute Billy Crystal voice, "I would not be good for anyone right now."

And I've been doing a lot of thinking. And a lot of reading. Watching Friends. Thinking about hooking my DVD player up so that I can watch Bones and SATC.

And here's the problem I keep butting up against: I don't think the boy is right now "leading man" material. I want to be "leading lady" material, but it I'm really honest, the boy would be a two episode guy, like the new neighbor that Rachel fogged out with pesticide in the basement and then went on a date, but it turns out he had a really inappropriate relationship with his sister.

And I want him to be like Chandler, who knows that he loves Monica. He actually does remind me of early days Chandler. He also reminds me of Mr. Big, the good, the bad, the ugly.

And the fact of the matter is this: RIGHT NOW, he is not available for anyone. (Which is actually sort of comforting.)

And right now, neither am I, as I grieve what was. We had two amazing months. Because I am a romantic at heart, and because I loved him, I can't, not right now, say "NEVER AGAIN, MR. BOY." I cling to the stories of my mom breaking up with my dad again and again over nine years. (Now happily married for over forty two years...)

This post is full of me writing things and then erasing them. But it just takes time. I've been listening to the audio of "It's called a break-up because it's broken," which was helpful when my high school best friend said she didn't want to be friends anymore. (Because there are no good books about what to do when your best friend breaks up with you.)

I vacillate: is he Mr. Big? Or is he Berger? Or is he that two episode guy? Right now, he's the guy who broke my heart. And I'm the girl who needs to heal. 

And comments are closed. I don't need advice right now. I just need cupcakes. Where I need to get? I will get there. I'm right on time.

post script to a long long day...

There's a station that I rely on for what I call the Sunday afternoon movie. It's called THIS. I couldn't tell you what I watched this afternoon. But this afternoon, I watched something, while I worked through all of the followers on my Twitter account. I did a lot of blocking. Why?

Last night, a woman who used to work at my library (at least a year or so before I did) tweeted me with this:

@sarahlouise: As someone who used to work with both parties involved, heartache sucks, but move on...and I'm sorry. #unsolicitedadvice
 

@sarahlouise: You are welcome. On the west coast now, but I still care about what happens to the xPL folks! Hang in there!

I have no idea how this woman knows who I am. Or thinks she knows who I was dating. 

She is a librarian. Yes, a lot of librarians follow me on Twitter. And I suppose if you had followed me way back when my professional blog was linked to my twitter account, you could figure it out. Or if you knew someone at my job. But wouldn't you think you would establish a relationship before you would tweet "as someone who used to work with both parties involved"? It's like a parlor trick. That one moment when you can say, "I used to work with both parties" (untrue, since I never worked with this woman) and "I still care what happens to the xPL folks!" (ah yes, the caring of a stranger creeping you out, late on a Saturday night.)

Since she followed me, I could direct message her. She couldn't direct message me, since I don't follow her. But she could have answered via tweet. I didn't think about it very long before I just blocked her.

What's strange? Her tweets to me have disappeared. I only have them because I copied them into a Facebook chat I had with a coworker who helped me figure out who this could be and how they might think they knew who I was.

I haven't decided if I'm unprotecting my twitter account. It's not that I tweet state secrets. But just like in real life, I wear my heart on my sleeve, and when a complete stranger, someone who thinks she knows who I am because she knows my name, knows my place of employ, someone who has been reading my tweets...

Well, anyways. 

The most boring broken hearted blog post you ever read...

Maybe watching The Country Network isn't the best choice for an afternoon of sitting on the bed, pink Kleenexes all around, a deep voiced man singing about how being a man makes him love this beautiful (oh look and pregnant) woman.

[CLICK]

Am NOW watching, well, a carpet commercial.

[CLICK]

Okay, now, the wonderful Serena Williams, on Trust us with your life, an improv comedy show. Um, I think you need to kind of need to watch it. I mean this is silly silly...

[CLICK]

and now I'm watching "I love Lucy." A much better choice.

Maybe I should go to the grocery store. Which would require maybe taking a shower. So...maybe not. Maybe I'll go get my newspaper, if they haven't stopped delivery...the bill is on the kitchen table.

Oh, here starts another episode of Lucy. Saved...

Okay...we just went in the opposite direction. We just had the episode where Little Ricky was a drummer and now we're having the episode where we find out that that he has a natural talent. Ricky secretly orders a drum. Lucy buys Little Ricky a doctor kit.

[CLICK]

This is what happens. Every time a commercial I hate comes on, I [CLICK]. So I [CLICK]-ed over to PBS and heard the end of "Cat's in the Cradle" and now I'm hearing "All out of Love," the first song that I heart ached over when I realized that my first crush didn't know I existed. It was 1980 and I was 9.

I'm all of love
I'm so lost with out you
I know you were right believing for so long. 
I can't be too late to say I was so wrong
What are you thinking of 
What are you thinking of?
What are you thinking of?


I'm all... oh. He doesn't...WHAT IS HE THINKING OF??

I'm so lost without you...

This Guy Is Butchering This Song. How can they be applauding him? What is this show? Oh it's Celtic Thunder. Now they're doing the sort of song they should do. A song with fiddles and such.

And now it's the PBS guys, asking for money. Um, after you butchered the first love song that made me cry?

[CLICK].

"I even tried writing a song about it... but... I can't think of anything that rhymes with Unnnnnnngh"

(Phoebe Buffay, played by Lisa Kudrow, Friends, "The one with the memorial service")

If the library kept a record of the books I checked out, (which they don't, for privacy measures*), a pattern might emerge.

An abridged list of my checkouts, March to present day:

In March: a slew of books on Catholicism

In April: Too good to leave, too bad to stay: a step-by-step guide to help you decide whether to stay in or get out of your relationship by Mira Kirshenbaum, Is he Mr. Right: everything you need to know before you commit (same author) 

In May: I returned all those. 


In June: Act like a lady, think like a man: what men really think about love, relationships, intimacy and committment by Steve Harvey; Why smart men marry smart women by Christine Whelan. 
(oh, and I also re-joined the Catholic Church, so took out books like Story of a Soul, which is Therese of Liseux's autobiography)


In July: Boundaries face to face: how to have that difficult conversation you've been avoiding. (audio) I listened to this ages ago, I can't remember what the difficult conversation was that I was trying to have...

Requested, today, after lunch with the boy: It's called a break-up because it's broken by Greg Behrendt. (audio) I listened to this a few years back when I was dealing with the break-up of a friendship, so I know it is good.


***


In Fiction, I have been reading and re-reading The Meryl Streep Movie Club (also from the library, although I think I will shell out the cash for my own copy soon), by Mia March. It is a wonderful book about four women who are in different stages of dealing with loss of job, loss of spouse (an affair), potential loss of mother/aunt to cancer, and loss of freedom (as in, should I marry this guy??) It is just what the doctor ordered and it just lowers my blood pressure just enough. Also, I'm going to start watching Meryl Streep movies. On Sunday, by sheer chance, Lions for Lambs was on TV, and I have ordered Out of Africa from, where else, the library. 


_______________
*as soon as you return a book, it is taken off your record. Items can be traced back to the last person that checked it out, if there is damage, or a missing disc, or you left your personal disc in the case instead of returning the library's disc.

R.I.P. Nora Ephron, 1941-2012

"People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it'll be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll be just a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right." 

from You've Got Mail, probably the most blogged movie on this blog. 


Filmmaker Nora Ephron has died at 71 (CBS News)
Writer and Filmmaker with a genius for Humor (NYT obit.)


Blogged, here: 

Sarah Louise Goes off her Rocker on Politics
Vacation Rocks 

Wow. There are a lot of posts where I just use quotes from the movie as titles, etc. I just took a tour through my blog. A lot has changed. Well, some things have stayed the same. I still dislike summer.  


If you want to watch some great Nora Ephron movies, I recommend "You've Got Mail," "Julie & Julia," and "When Harry Met Sally." 


Her latest books, I hate my neck and I remember nothing, are WONDERFUL. They are essays about growing older, sure, but they are also about the history of cooking in America, Nora's salad years...I learned here that Craig Claiborne is the reason Americans eat more than just iceberg lettuce. 


I haven't read Nora's other books, but I put a whole bunch on hold last night as soon as I heard the news, to beat the rush.

Things I found while rummaging around: early comments from Helen (hi!), mentions of the boy when he was just another guy at work, mentions of Gerald Ford's death (something the boy also blogged about, I discovered earlier this year when I did my "Google vetting before the first date"). And a lot of old history, things I had forgotten about. 

Bonus: I had written about two books, one that I had forgotten the title (I had actually been thinking recently, what was that book?): Washed Up, which is about beach flotsam (it's really good) and one I forgot about reading:  An Alphabetical Life, about working in bookstores. 




 

The Desert Bloggers: in a liminal place

It seems we are all experiencing a little bit of liminality. So in an effort to aggregate some of the great posts written in the past few days on this topic, here you go:

Kristin Tennant: Halfway to Normal: "The Practice of Being Inbetween"

Sara Zarr "Press Pause."

Drew Tatusko: Notes from Off Center "In between suffering and faith"

And you have my collage project, below.

February...or that shortest longest month

This February was a long month for me. It was a month of waiting. Would I get into that midwestern school and at long last start the course towards my PhD?

(Spoiler alert: I did not.) (Which made me all the more grateful for this project.)

I think I have to blame Lilly for this one: she is all about creating projects, often during Lent. Since this month would be a time of waiting, a time of hoping, I decided I needed a project. Something tangible. I love making collages and I had been making them more often since I realized making them was something I used to love doing. So my assignment, should I accept it, was this: to make a collage every morning for the month of February. I could only use new magazine clippings, since part of this project was reducing my stash of magazines. As I read the book Yarn Harlot, I realize all crafters have our stashes. There ARE some magazines I will never cut up. But then there are the magazines that I buy willy nilly, with the sole purpose of cutting them into these:

(Yes, this is the product of my month of collages.) I started February 2nd, but since this was a leap year, I would still have 28 collages at the end of the month, whether I got into grad school or not.

Collages may not be your thing. Find something that is. But make it manageable, and preferably tangible. One poem per day. One blog post per day. The key is to set a short time period. Few of us can make a collage every morning until the end of time. But the discipline of one a day, for a short period, helps the focus, helps with the desert, helps with the waiting for what may come.

Here are a few of my favorites: 

 not officially part of the set, but a precurser that inspired the project

 First one.

 (detail)

 I made use of strips of color, like the aquamarine from a Tiffany ad on the right edge of this collage.

 (detail) I liked using words like stitches to "mend" a seam.

 Did this one on the day I woke up to the news that Whitney Houston had died.

 an early one, with spinning thoughts in my head concerning my new relationship.

 Left side: diptych

 Right side: diptych

I did a few with Emma Stone as the "face"/background.

And on the back, I journaled a little, either about my feelings, or about the collage, or both. It was a great exercise in craft, because I wasn't making these as art pieces, they were for my own consumption. They taught me a lot about making collages, as I had to create daily. Best of all, in the deep of a Pittsburgh winter, this project got me out of bed every morning. And, that, my friends, is worth a lot.

"I hearby bequeath...": the Sophie Kerr Post

Unless you went to Washington College [Sophie Kerr page on WC site], you've probably never heard of Sophie Kerr [Baltimore CityPaper]. No matter. (The CityPaper article linked is a great introduction.) Sophie Kerr was a romance writer in the 1930s and 40s who bequeathed her estate (over $500,000) to Washington College, my alma mater. She stipulated that the money be invested and each year, the interest would be split: half would go to bringing authors and literary speakers to the college, and half would go to a student writer. The year I graduated, I think the sum was around $20,000. I didn't win. But it did not diminish my love for this woman, who provided so much richness to the reading and writing community in Chestertown, Maryland.

So imagine my delight, when one day at work, among the antique magazines that sometimes show up at the Book Nook, our little bookstore, was this copy of Cosmopolitan, with "Fiction by...Sophie Kerr"!!! I had never read any of Sophie's works and this was just such a thrill.

HAIR!!

Hey you guys!! My hair is finally long enough to put up in a teeny tiny ponytail. Which is wonderful since the WALLS in my apartment are hot. Thankfully, the a/c hellps...some.

But no Lego tonight, the front room was just too warm.

Earlier today I was cleaning out and found some pictures of me with long hair. These are not they, but here are a few from the same time period--Montana for my dad's 65th birthday. He turned 70 today.

 Lake Jenny

 Glacier National Park

My dad. The greatest guy I know. Happy Birthday!!

Penelope thinks about Odysseus, as she unravels her father-in-law's shroud for the nth time...

Yes. I am scared as crap that our last conversation was a joke. That the next time we talk you'll say "oh, you thought I meant x? Oh, well, I figured you'd understand I meant y."


***

There is a certain glee (as well as sadness)  in tearing apart a Lego house that you just put the finishing touches on this morning. It was too hot in the front room (think sauna) to complete the job, but all that remains is green, gray, and white rubble.

Bile.

I'm too tired to be angry. And it's too hot to get upset. So I guess I'll eat some breakfast and draw my morning bath.

But if I was going to be angry, this is what I'd say: What right do you have? 

And I'd probably be mostly talking to the person in the mirror.

it's a two posts kind of day

so...summer reading has begun at our library. Which means everyone and their momma is at the library, wanting to know if we have more movies, books on Engineering as a career, hair braiding books, how do you sign up for summer reading, how do you sign up for summer reading, booklists for 11-12 year old boys, books on whales, I got a special prize, how do you sign up for summer reading, are there any computers free?

My favorite questions are the dear sweet people that think we have any copies of the Hunger Games books (dream on) or that we might have the movie in. No, it JUST left the theaters. We keep up with new materials, but even we aren't that quick. 

All that PLUS a bomb scare. Yep, right in the middle of the afternoon, we get an announcement to evacuate the building. So that was fun. No, there was no bomb. But we all fussed and fretted about the fact that our purses were inside, because we didn't grab them when we were told to "evacuate immediately." Forty five minutes later, we were open again for business as usual, and I went to dinner about 10 minutes late.

I churned out a Classic Books for boys in 4th to 6th grade  book list, to go with my Classic Books for girls (same grades.) Basically, if a book was 15 or more years old and we had more than 3 copies, it got on the list. I am eternally grateful to Great Books for Boys by Kathleen Odean, but for my next book list (books that aren't so old) I'd like something that was published more recently than 1998. Looks like Great Books for Girls was revised in 2002.(Dear Ms. Odean, I would LOVE a revised edition...luv, Sarah Louise.)

I'm exhausted. I came home, ate some cheese, and have played many games of Free Cell, read Twitter, checked FaceBook, checked my mother's email about the family vacation (looks like August is a go), and basically just fretted through all of those. I think the best thing is to just push A Few Good Men into the VCR, take my bed meds, and pray for sleep. Because tomorrow will be a full day too.

Goodnight, sleep tight.

Don't let the bed bugs bite.

If they do,

hit them with a shoe.  

(Anon.)

"Writing is making sense of life."

(Nadine Gordimer)

When I was in college, Nadine Gordimer won a literary prize. My friends, who knew that I liked books, bought me her book, in hardcover. I never read it. I don't even have it anymore. The thing is, I have always liked children's books better. Where life is still within the provinces of parents and siblings and there isn't all the complexity of romance broken up, adultery, dysfunction. Yes, Maurice Sendak brought out the demons, the Wild Things, but he still placed them in a child's world. And there are plenty of children's books with dysfunctional families. Those are the ones I tend to avoid.

My dad had a newspaper route in Bergen County, NJ, when he was a kid. He saw people go off to jail for being in the Mafia, he got great tips from those still in. He didn't understand a lot of it until later. When people ask him, "Did you see the movie the Godfather?" he says, I saw the play.

I was never abused as a child. I didn't live in squalor. But I knew people who had been abused, though I didn't piece it together until later. And I saw many people living in squalor. And my mother wanted more children. She had miscarriages and then two angel babies, children that were so premature they never left the hospital. The doctors at Georgetown let my parents hold Joy Cherene as she died. When Peter died, we got a phone call from the hospital. And I said, "Oh, rats." I was in second grade.

We all have pain. We all have sorrow. I always got mad at people who said, "I haven't suffered enough." Well, as the saying goes, "Everyone either just had a crisis, is in a crisis, or is about to have one." The happy moments are in between. The happy moments are what make the suffering have meaning. Only focusing on the squalor helps no one. But only focusing on the beauty misses the point. And there isn't really enough beauty to focus on it all the time, anyways.

A friend asked me, in follow up to an earlier post, how I got help after my mania took over. Was I hospitalized? Did my family help? I was one of the lucky ones. I did spend an afternoon in the ER, waiting for a psych evaluation. But then I was sent home, because I wasn't a danger to myself or others. I was a "rule out" for bipolar, because at that time my only symptom was depression. I started a day program that met half days. I saw people there who had it so much worse than I did, and I thought, I don't belong here! Eventually, I quit the program and my dad came to get me to take me home for Easter. This all happened before my mania (see Stanley Cup Fever, sort of.) I went home to Virginia and Easter was nothing to me. I felt nothing. The term used in psychiatric circles is "flat." It's a good descriptor, as everything had one dimension, my complete disengagement.

In Virginia, I started meeting with a psychiatrist and a psychologist. We started to work towards getting me back to myself, and ultimately, the goal was to get me back to Pittsburgh. Which happened. But when I got back to Pittsburgh, I had a bad experience with the psychiatrist that had been chosen. He didn't have me in his appointment book, I waited for hours in a dark hall, and the first thing he asked me was a question that I thought was not at all appropriate or germane to my mental health. That experience was a trigger, and coupled with the new drug cocktail I was on, I cycled into mania. Which brings you up to date with my former post.


(to be continued...)

It takes 15 minutes to destroy a house. It takes 6 days to put one up....

 ducks at work. you can tell we are waiting for a book order by how empty the shelves are.

 Um, how will the next level attach to this SMOOTH surface? 

 Seriously, it's a SMOOTH SURFACE.  But oh, look pretty rose bushes.

 Yes, this is supposed to be the next story on this building...

 OH! Ye of little faith, there is more than one way to skin a cat 

(or attach a story to the next story of a Lego building)

 Look Ma! Architectural integrity!! Oh, and check out the WORKING see-saw.

 This is how the roof attaches...

 Dormer window!

 Finished!!

 Side angle.

So. I have now finished all of the Lego houses that I have instructions for in this particular kit. Every time I demolish a house, I feel like Penelope destroying the weaving from the day before. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, who fended off suitors while her husband was on his way home from (where did he go?). I think I'll start back with the first house. There is a new set, a beach house, but Mama does not have $50 to just throw at a new Lego kit. Tomorrow I take my car in for a new serpentine belt.

Stanley Cup Fever (sort of)

[I did not hit publish on this one lightly. I'm not proud of everything you are about to read. But I own it. It is a part of me, of who I am today.]

I don't remember what year it was. It was 1998 or 1999.

I was back in Pittsburgh, "better" we thought, from a scary depression which had started in March, gone through April, and into May. And now I was back at work, in Pittsburgh, and it was June. The Stanley Cup Finals were about to start.

Innocuously, a co-worker at Fox Books asked me why I was still living in Pittsburgh.* And because I didn't know I was on the verge of a manic spree, I thought the reason must be my ex-boyfriend. All of a sudden, I had an obsession with all things yellow. Post-it notes, the colors on the Newsweek cover that featured Michael Jordan (my ex's hero) and before you could say "crazy like a fox," my shift was over, I was out in the rain, over to Burlington Coat Factory to buy some sneakers, because the weather was iffy and I needed shoes that I could wear if it continued raining. I was chatting up EVERYBODY as I got on a crosstown bus, brandishing my copy of Newsweek, (or was it Sports Illustrated?) telling them that tonight being the first night of the Stanley Cup finals, my ex would be so glad to see me. As I walked towards his apartment, I noticed that his roses needed pruning. I just pushed into his apartment, without even knocking. I suppose if this had happened today, I would have warned him with a text.

He was NOT happy to see me, he was on his way out the door to see someone he was dating. I convinced him to drop me off at a nearby shopping center where there was a Fox Books, not the one I worked at. I remember going into a now defunct restaurant, Abate, where I ate some pizza and watched the game. I talked up the waitress, discovered it was a good place to work, and did everything short of applying for a job. Eventually, I called a friend (this was in the days of pay phones) who came and picked me up just as the Fox Books was closing. I tried the patience of many friends that week, as I unraveled.

Eventually, a few days later, in a not so pretty way, my boss walked me out of the door of the Fox Books where I worked, and said, "don't come back until you are better." I fled again to the South Side, to my boyfriend's apartment. He wasn't home. I thought I could prune his roses. I bought blonde hair dye at a drugstore, almost got run over as I crossed the street, picked up free pamphlets about the Catholic Church in a thrift shop. I was thinking about that thrift shop today, since I no longer own a rosary and find myself a revert to the Catholic Faith. I was an adult convert in 2003, and in 2005, I was at a healing workshop where the Catholic Church was reviled and because I liked carrying my rosary beads in my pocket, they were with me. I threw away my beautiful pink rosary beads in the bathroom trash. Eventually I got rid of the other rosaries I had--one with baby blue plastic beads that a friend had given me in college and one with navy plastic beads that I chose out of Sister Bernadette's box of rosaries. Sister Bernadette was the nun who conducted my RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, how you convert to Catholicism these days.) I couldn't attend the group class because it was on Thursday night, when I worked, so she worked with me individually on Wednesday evenings.

That boyfriend got engaged later that summer, that boss came into my library a few months ago with her husband and brand new foster sons, two brothers. I couldn't tell you who won the Stanley Cup that year. But I can tell you this. The madness I experienced that week was the beginning of my sanity.

Madness is never just madness. It is a way of coping when sanity will no longer do. --Renita Weems

_____________________
*(It's a vapid hobby of people who don't realize that this town is a diamond and not so much in the rough, people that have lived here all their lives and wish they were living in New York City.)