Thank You for Breaking My Heart

Today's guest post is by Calvin Rey, of 17aDay fame.

A little less than a year ago, I was staying at the Heartbreak Hotel, aka bzzzzgrrrl’s guest bedroom. It was looking like my relationship of 10 years was ending kind of suddenly. And also not suddenly, because later, when I thought about it (when I could think), neither of us had been happy for a while. Whether we were the cause of one another’s unhappiness or not, something needed to give. You know?

And it gave. I spent some time in a friend’s attic space before I found a more permanent home, which turned out to be more of a temporary home, and now I am very satisfied with my beautiful apartment and with the two hilarious, genuine, kind people with whom I share it.

Getting dumped couldn’t have happened at a better time, either. I was working with a talented and huge-hearted group on a community theater project around gender and mental health, so built-in support system. I had just bought a car very cheaply from one of the cast members, so independent transportation. I had (and still have) a job that demands I be present with members of my community who have immediate needs, so daily distraction. Aforementioned friend’s attic space had just opened up, so private space to reflect and grieve. The friend’s house is downtown and within blocks of other friends, so excessive drinking followed by a safe walk home.

Of course, it hurt like hell. Still hurts a lot some days, and I struggle with all these new-again problems like dating and sex and roommates and sleeping alone and holidays and sharing friends and negotiating shared space in a small town. But mostly, my self-awareness and community connections and capacity for emotion and appreciation of life and its beauty have expanded like the shockwave of a supernova. Often I’m a mess and there are particles everywhere, and my friends love me anyway. And so do I.

So I’m grateful to my friends both local and far away who offered me shelter, food, hugs, an ear, a shoulder, or a drink. And I’m grateful to the person who spent 10 formative, turbulent, adventurous years with me and then had the wisdom to call it quits. And I’m really grateful to my resilient, messy, boundless, still-beating heart that now splits open every time I see the moon or fall in love or feel sunlight on my face (i.e., almost daily).

Over at my blog, 17aDay, I end my posts with a three-line poem of 17 syllables. (I call them haiku for short, but it’s complicated.)

Haiku for a Month of Gratitude

Letter to my heart:
Remember, the more you break 
The more room you make

Thank you

Happy Thanksgiving.

I think we've discussed before that I feel conflicted about Thanksgiving; for some of why, see Cal's blog. It's worth knowing that the things we were told about Pilgrims and Indians is beyond sappy and inaccurate; it's dangerous, willful propaganda.

But then there is pie, which is not such a big deal, and the one time a year my mother's side of the family is together, which is a big deal, and an opportunity to reflect on gratitude, which is the biggest deal of all, to me.

So, conflicted.

I try to separate the great gifts of this day from the reason for the season, and I do OK, because like most Americans, I do just fine at ignoring history, mostly — but ignoring history has a price, and I am lucky enough that I'm not the one paying it, mostly.

Sorry, didn't mean to be such a downer. It just seemed wrong to have you along for this ride for a whole month without my saying anything.

And today's piece of gratitude, about which I feel unconflicted, is you.

It's everyone who reads this blog, ever.

And it is most especially those of you who've helped me out this month.

• bzh, and
• April, and
• Amanda, and
• Joe, and
• my Rock Star friend, and
• Bread Truck Grrl, and
• the happily married, and
• Mike, and
• RI, and
• Kay, and
• Calvin Rey 

The eleven of you have enriched this month for me through your stories and your generosity and your taking some of the pressure off me.

Day 28 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for you. Thanks again.

Tony Chestnut knows...

Today's guest post comes from dear friend and semi-frequent commenter Kay.

I am grateful for my daughter Amanda's curly brown hair.

This gratitude comes with some basic background gratitude. I am grateful that Amanda exists at all, which means that I am grateful for the miracle of life that makes sperm and eggs make embryos. I am grateful for the scientific discoveries and freedoms that have allowed in vitro fertilization to develop, so that Amanda’s particular embryo could live. I am glad that her embryo came along with her sister’s embryo, and that they both held the genetic material of lots of people who came before us, many of whom I love. Many of whom had hair.

I’m glad that Amanda’s hair is brown. It looks like mine, though not like mine did when I was her age. I’m grateful that the twins had different hair colors; everyone except my willful uncle Bill could tell them apart as infants. Amanda’s hair, once it grew in past its puffy six-month faux-hawk, is a nice chestnut color. Toe-knee chest-nut nose eye love you. Chestnut hair will let her blend in more places than her blonde sister will. It keeps her head from getting sunburned, unlike Elisa’s air-colored hair. Amanda's hair color looks like my mom's hair color and my grandmother's hair color. It looks like the color of the wooden farmhouse table that she and Elisa are eating popcorn at right now. I'm grateful for the table, since you mention it. Dad made it. Now he’s Grandpa.

I’m grateful that Amanda’s hair is full and curly. That means I am grateful for the genetic background that shaped the hair follicles on her scalp. I’m glad she doesn’t have really bad lice or cancer, or anything that would make her hair not be there. I’m really glad, by the way, that she doesn’t have cancer. I am glad that she is a well child, a hearty and hardy child. Her nutrition is good, and I am grateful for that. Her hair puffs off her head like a cloud, except when the weather is cold. Then it statickly clings along her round Betty Boop face.

I wish that Amanda liked her hair. She wishes it were straight and blonde like Elisa’s. Elisa's is very similar to Barbie's hair. It is similar to the long, flat beach when the tide has washed out. The sand is wet and vacuumed flat and thick and firm against the ground. It can be dug into, with some effort and with some beach toys. It rarely needs smoothing. Amanda’s hair is like the newly tilled ground. It smells of life and dirt, it houses things like worms and fireflies, buttercups and clover. The occasional rock. It is not hard to work your way into the shiny locks on the side, rub up against the matted tangles in the back. I am not especially grateful for the tangles; I am grateful for the purple bottle of de-tangler spray.

What I love most about Amanda’s curly brown hair is that in the middle of the night, or once she has fallen asleep, or before she wakes up in the morning, I can go love it. I nestle my nose down by her ear, into her warm cloud of hair. Her hair and her head are warm. Wrapped around pillows and under blankets, they surround her perfect set of tiny grinding teeth. Her hair keeps her dreams warm. I nuzzle my face into her hair and smell childhood and parenthood. Humanity and sleep, warmth and comfort. I feel peace and reassurance.

And there is something else, a little bit more of something that I can't name. I don't have any words for this feeling, since I didn't know about it before I put my face in Amanda's hair a few months ago. It separates me from everything else out there. It makes everything in the world finally make sense. And it makes everything else not matter at all. It gives me a feeling of big peace and tiny, infinite thanksgiving.

I’m grateful for my daughter Amanda’s curly brown hair.

By the book

So I was flipping through my copy of The Seventeen Book of Etiquette and Entertaining (1965), as one does, and went to the index, as one does, and landed on this corner of this page:

Now, what I initially appreciated was the suggestion that there are only a very few types of wedding a person might attend:

• Episcopal
• Jewish
• Quaker
• Roman Catholic
• judge's office
• home/hotel/rectory/club

Just as well to be clear about what is and is not appropriate.

But what made me make the leap from smirking to myself to taking a picture, flipping it, and posting it to the internet was "typing, as way to meet boys." 

Because neither typing nor meeting boys have ever been my super-strong suit, but it is not my impression that that's likely to be successful, unless we're talking about actually embarking on a secretarial career to meet men, right?*

Day 26 of our month** of gratitude: I am thankful for books — old books in particular — and the collected wisdom of the ages. I am thankful for rules*** and guidelines and instruction on expectations. But I am even thankfuller for a discerning mind that permits me to follow those guidelines when they apply, to laugh at them when they are foolish, and to reject them outright when they are dangerous.

*I did eventually read the passage in question. Turns out it's the college (high school?) equivalent of a secretarial career: Learn to type, because boys need their theses typed. Ohforcryingoutloud.

**I initially typed "moth." I thought that was funny.

***Unrelated to anything, but amusing to me: My current color of nail polish is called "Princesses Rule." The nail polish company gets points for literalness, I guess.

RIconnected

Today's guest post comes from RI.

Ever since bzzzzgrrrl asked if I’d like to do a guest post for this month of gratitude, I’ve tried to be conscious of all the blessings in my life — of which there are plenty. Going through the world with that eye, I found that many of the things I am most grateful for are connected. I am also grateful for that connection because not only does it make for a simpler post but also because it is my safety net. My support. What I’m talking about is my community.

Although I wasn’t conscious of it, I’ve been searching all of my life for a group of folks with whom I could be supported, encouraged, accepted, loved, inspired, rejuvenated, appreciated, strengthened, and held dear by.

And without even trying, I stumbled upon some of the most wonderful people I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. I learn something new about the world or about myself all the time with these incredible souls. Through them, I find the courage and strength to be genuinely, wholly, truly myself. It’s extraordinary.

From time to time, I step back and survey the scene around me and think, how did I get so lucky? What did I do that was so right to deserve all of this? Really, I don’t think it could be summed up into one right choice I made or one quality about me.

Except one.

I love to bowl.

After moving back to my hometown after years of being away, I went to the bowling alley looking for community. And, boy, did I find it. I’m telling you this because I want to give credit where credit is due. And that credit belongs to your faithful blogpostess bzzzzgrrrl. I met her at that bowling alley. We became close friends soon after.

It was through her that I met the people who would become my buddies, confidants, teammates, roommates, role models, and the inspiration for the best halloween costume ever. We talk about how miraculous it is that we found each other and all of the amazing people in our lives. We are continually dumbfounded and astonished by our luck. I don’t think it’s luck though. It feels more purposeful than that. More intentional.

Regardless of the why, I am fiercely grateful for the sequence of events, right choices, and fated meetings that has led me to this place in my life.

To sum up, in no particular order, here are some of those connected things that I am thankful for: community, Yankee Lanes, pie for breakfast, cartoons, okcupid, The Future Collective, karaoke, Brattleboro, my dad, mixtapes, Six Billion Utopias, queers, Important Things with Demetri Martin, Green Mountain Crossroads, the magic of barbershop, Facebook, mohawks, Weird Al, dance parties, road trips, foosball, Aimee Mannacle, Out in the Park, my mom, The Restaurant at Burdick Chocolate, Rainbow League, drag shows, haiku, Janet and her planet, Homo Promo, butchesholdinganimals, Brohaüs, softball, stickers, bowties, GCC, Morris dancing, Rockit Queer, Trivial Pursuit, Rock N Roll High School, and Adventure Time.

Possibly but not definitely less athletic

Note: On the Facebook page, I mentioned a little while back that I had a folder full of drafts I never finished: More than 60 of 'em, in fact. I'm going through that folder now, deleting what's not worth it, posting what might entertain you — or what makes my month of gratitude a little easier. This dates back to September 4, 2012. 

I know, I know, I'm always bragging about the family.

But I counted, and, in my generation, there are:

• 2 cousins on my mother's side
• 7 cousins on my father's side
• 1 sibling
• 1 me

...and I got to spend time with all but one of those people this summer. Awesome.


And a generation down, there are:

• 4 first cousins once removed on my mother's side
• 7 first cousins once removed on my father's side
• 1 niece
• 1 nephew

...and I got to spend time with all but three of those people this summer.

And here is what I have learned from those experiences:
I am related to better-than-average people in most ways. Better looking, funnier, more interesting, more interested. More loving, and with better stories. More adventurous.

Day 24 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for my family of origin and the people who've joined the fold, including but not limited to the twenty (or so) people I'll spend this Thursday with.

Honey comb's big, yeah yeah yeah

Sometimes, I forget to post for two days, and then my next guest poster is ready to go. The bad news is, I am two days behind. The good news is, it has never before happened that we got this far into November before I missed a day (or two).

Many of you who read regularly do not also see me regularly, but I lost my comb a couple of weeks ago, and just re-found it this morning. There have been stopgap measures (fingers, ponytails, borrowing RI's comb), but, well, it hasn't been pretty.

Day 23 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for what once was lost but now is found. And to have a comb again.

Cheers

Keon Ioannou almost certainly would not have known my name.

He might or might not have remembered that we ever met, or that he'd seen me around the bar of his restaurant.

We weren't friends, though we had friends in common.

His brother Steve is almost a friend, I think — he's a hell of a bartender, and we've shared both conversation and laughter, and he definitely knows my name, though if he thinks of me at all it's probably to wonder why I haven't been in in a while — and it would shock me a little to know he thinks of me that much. He might still know my food order, though my drink order changes frequently enough that he can't be expected to retain that, even if he is my favorite bartender in town.

Between the two of them, though, these things were true:

• They have a real lot of real friends, much realer than I, and
• They made my go-to spot in Keene my go-to spot in Keene.

Tony Clamato's is not the fanciest place in town, or the cheapest, but it has (had?) solid food, thanks to Keon, and an atmosphere I really enjoy, thanks to them both. It was the closest thing I had in New Hampshire to an Iota. It's welcoming and pleasant and kind of dark, and though there's not generally live music, the piped-in stuff is better than you expect to hear in the background of a bar.

People in Keene know this already, because it's all we've talked about for a few weeks, but Keon was not a big enough deal for national headlines: He was biking home from work when he was struck by a car and killed November 2. The driver kept going, made no attempt to slow down before or after, apparently. The person who's been arrested in connection with his death is a waitress from the restaurant, who lived with Keon, along with her two children. I'm deliberately being a little vague here because I have been burned on believing I knew the facts before I did, and because I believe in our whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing, even if you wouldn't always know it to hear me talk out loud.

But regardless of the rest of the facts, Keon is gone and will be sorely missed in this community. If you are looking, as I was, for a way to help his family, help care for his dogs, help do good works in his honor later, there's an indiegogo for that.

Day 22 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for people who make homes for strangers, and for people whose loving natures touch people whose names they would not reasonably remember.

Ain't a state like Maine or Virginia

Today, after I left work (having spent most of the day working fairly autonomously), I went to see a movie about a closeted gay kid in 1984 with some friends.

From there, we went to a bar for a drink and some board games, and met a guy who's a day out after seven months in prison.

And then (having waited a suitable amount of time between the drinking and the driving), I headed home, radio blaring, and heard stories of the newly pardoned Scottsboro boys and the three women in London who recently escaped decades of slavery.

I don't think my evenings often have themes, but when they do, they do.

Day 21 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for more kinds of freedom than I can count, including but not limited to the ones I so often take for granted.

Transgender Day of Remembrance 2013

Today is the Trans Day of Remembrance.

I wanted to mark it here, but don't want to be the cisprivileged person who co-opts something that is, really, a memorial.

The TDOR link above contains lots of information, including where you can find real, in-person events today in your area.

A quick Google search will give you names of those we memorialize, statistics, and things written by people who know better than I do why this day is necessary.

And here are a few links that have been shared with me today by other folks. If you have other links to add, please feel free to comment.

• Transgender Murders 50 Percent Higher Than Gays, Lesbians In July 
• We Matter! Transgender Day of Remembrance 2013 
• Transgender, Dead, and Forgotten

Day 20 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for the lives of both those who have died and those who have survived, as I am hopeful that the epidemic of violence — both individual and systemic — against transpeople will end.

Thanks for the lift

Today's guest post comes from frequent commenter and dear friend Mike, who is also the writer of my favorite literal thank-you note ever.

I’m grateful for a ride. A specific one, in the spring of 1996. My friend Alison was getting married, in New Jersey, and I was a twentysomething activist in Maryland in that independent consultant/do-gooder mode described by pragmatists as “unemployed.” I couldn’t afford a train ticket. I even knew the trick where you take a bus to Philadelphia and then a series of local commuter trains to New Brunswick and it costs less than two large pizzas, but I couldn’t even do that.

My friend Paul, who had introduced me to Alison in college, said he was planning to ride to the wedding with his friend Jose, a former colleague in the field of pizza delivery, and Jose’s girlfriend Gina. I could come along. I don’t remember whether Paul actually warned me that he was afraid Jose and I wouldn’t get along and might actually strangle each other; if you skip to the end, though, it turns out Jose was the best man at my wedding 11 years later.

So I got in a car with Paul and two strangers for a long evening’s road trip. That was a Friday night. The wedding was Saturday afternoon. Sometime after breakfast on Saturday, Gina told Jose (and his passengers) that she’s gay. Rather unwelcome news to a guy who had recently concluded that he wanted to marry her. But something similar had happened to me once and we bonded over it.

The wedding was nice. That is to say, the wedding pleased the bride’s Christian elders and pagan friends, equally, and her ex-girlfriend was the maid of honor, and she gave each of her bridesmaids these cool silver pendants that tell time like a sundial if you line the perforated edges up a certain way in the sunlight. Alison and I had been close friends in college, but I’d never met any of her family except her new husband. It was therefore nice – not momentous, but nice – to meet her sisters, brother and oldest niece, Grace, at the reception. I even got to dance with 4-year-old Grace.

In 2007, Grace became my stepdaughter, along with her sister Ruth, who was a crawling baby at Alison’s wedding. I remember shaking hands with Heather in the receiving line, but that’s all; I didn’t get to know her until she moved to D.C. in 2000. And even then, it took me much too long to realize that [mushy stuff] and also [NSFW].

Much sooner after that weekend in New Jersey, I started hanging out with Jose and some friends of his, eventually including Gina once Jose made peace with the fact that he had somehow caused her to break up with our entire gender. (I know, I know, that’s not really what happened, but I didn’t blame the guy for feeling like it.) Gina and I became very close and she briefly reconsidered whether she’s entirely gay, but yes, she is.

And in 2003, she brought her fiancée along on a camping trip. Jose, Paul, Heather and I all got to meet Melissa, who had just returned from deployment in the Persian Gulf to her regular post at Bethesda Naval Hospital. (Don’t ask, don’t tell.) They wanted to have kids. There were jokes around the campfire about enlisting one of us as a sperm donor. Predictable juvenile banter about the relative merits of turkey basters vs. the old-fashioned way. They were planning to move to Massachusetts after Melissa’s enlistment was up, get married, and have children – not necessarily in that order. We all told our old friend Gina we approved of her fiancée. That was that.

Three weeks later, e-mail from Gina: she hadn’t been kidding. Would I be the father of their children? They specifically wanted someone who would be known to the children and involved in their lives while respecting Gina and Melissa’s parenthood. They trusted me, which was a ponderous leap of faith (and the most amazing compliment I’ve ever received). Our daughter S was born in the late summer of 2004; our daughter E was born 51 weeks later. I held baby E and wrangled toddler S when their moms got married by a small-town justice of the peace in Massachusetts. Now they ride horses (not ponies – fricken huge horses) and sell me Girl Scout cookies. They have two stepmoms, too: Gina and Melissa eventually parted and Gina remarried (Sally also rocks), and they count Heather as their stepmom ’cuz she’s married to their dad, right?

So that was a good weekend, that one road trip to New Jersey back in ’96. Thanks, Jose, for the ride; thanks, Paul, for setting it up; thanks, Alison, for inviting me. Heather, Grace, Ruth, Gina, Melissa, Sally, S, E: thank you for everything.

Piñata Colada

Inevitably, during the month of gratitude, I hit a weird kind of writer's block.

I'm not stranger to regular writer's block; I've been writing for a living for maybe 9 years now, and there have been a decade and a half or so of school assignments that have suffered from that crushing inability to write anything.

This isn't that.

And it's not, quite, that I am struggling to find things to be thankful for. I can look around my surroundings and find half a dozen things within a couple of feet of me for which I'm grateful, either actually or symbolically. My life is full to brimming with blessings.

This is more like — rebellion. And it happens every year. This is when I've had a couple of tough days (all things being relative, of course — my rough days are not so awfully rough) and I can still see all the things for which I should be thankful and I just. Don't. Feel like it.

It feels, inside, exactly like a temper tantrum. I'm cranky and fussy and just don't want to do what I perceive as being asked of me. It's the same feeling that makes a teenager scream "I hate you!" at people she obviously loves. I guess it's ingratitude, but it's a specific kind of frustration and ingratitude that we've all had, all watched unfold in our younger selves or children.

And I think maybe that right there is the point of this whole damn exercise.

I am, and think many people are, pretty good at maintaining a base level of gratitude. I don't always say it out loud, to the people around me, or even to God, but I do often say it out loud. I say "thank you" a lot, all year round. And I am hugely aware of my own blessings, of my own privilege, of the ways those things enrich my life and also could spoil me if I let them.

The trick is to find that gratitude when I don't want to, when things make me tired or mad. That is not why I started this series, but it does feel, right now, very much like why I should keep up with it every single day, rather than playing catch-up when I feel more inclined to.

Day 18 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful. For paper and pens and computers and telephones and my car keys and clothes on my back and heat and tissues and volunteer work and cough drops and friends and eyeglasses and electricity and hair elastics and a relationship with the Divine and television and movies and sports and ... I don't know, all that stuff is kind of magical, right? But today, I am also thankful for being required to remember how thankful I am and should be. When I was a kid at the mall on the verge of a meltdown, my mother would get me an Orange Julius. I am thankful for Orange Julius.

Lessons of Gratitude from my First Year of Marriage

Today's guest post is from a dear friend of mine to another dear friend of mine on their first wedding anniversary.

My beloved,

A year ago today was the very best day. Do you remember?

We woke up in a beautiful hotel room on the Charles River on the kind of fall day that is one in a million in a Boston November. We spent the morning surrounded by laughter, love, and some of the people we love most in the whole world. That afternoon, after months of planning and a little (okay, okay, a lot) of stress, we made promises to each other. And then, we celebrated. We ate grilled cheese, drank sparkling cider, and danced until our feet hurt. I’m also still having dreams about that amazing cake.

We’ve laughed, cried, and grown so much together in this first year of marriage. You’ve taught me so much about being the kind of person and partner I want to be. Remember the words we said to each other that day? I think of them almost everyday as I think of all I’m grateful for from this first year:

I promise to love and sustain you in the covenant of marriage, from this day forward: 

• Thank you for the quiet way you stand by my side. I never have to double check. I just know you are there. 

In sickness and in health… 

• Thank you for that time I had the flu and was so sick I could hardly get out of bed, and you waited on me hand and foot for days and days. 
• Thank you for the small moments of this beautiful life we are building together. I think I love them most of all. 

In plenty and in want… 

• Thank you for everything you do to take care of us and provide for our family. 
• Thank you for reminding me everyday that money isn’t everything and can’t buy happiness. You make me happier than I ever dreamed was possible. 

In joy and in sorrow… 

• Thank you for all of the times we have laughed so hard that tears have poured down our faces. You make me laugh everyday. 
• Thank you for all of the times you gave me more grace than I gave to you when I was mean, cranky, overtired, or frustrated and didn’t live up to those vows I made to you. My grandmother was right about not going to bed angry. 

…As long as we both shall live 
It was always you, and it always will be.

 Happy anniversary love of my life. Here’s to a lifetime more. I’ll never stop being grateful for you.

Sweet

Friday night, Laverne Cox from Orange is the New Black came to speak on campus.

Thursday evening, I quick invited a handful of friends to come over for a drink and dinner beforehand. And the group grew, and strangers were added to the friends, and suddenly I had nine people coming over to my house for beef and sweet potato stew.

At around noon on Friday, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize*, asking if they could stay in my guest room that night.

And my first thought was, "sure."

Eventually, it occurred to me that that should probably be conditional — that I should probably only actually say, "Sure," if it was someone I knew and liked and who was ideally going to Laverne Cox.

But, you know, whatever.**

Day 16 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for my home. I am grateful for its shelter, but also for the chance to open it to family (and the police) and friends and strangers, for stews and dilly beans shared of an evening, for latenight conversation, for morning cups of tea in the kitchen.

*After my phone issues a few weeks back, a few contacts were wiped out. I thought I'd figured them all out, but apparently not quite.

**If you must know, it was RI's sister, who was, in fact, going to Laverne Cox.

Welp. I'm here now.

Today's guest post is from someone long-time readers will remember as Bread Truck Grrl.*

In general, I'm not big on moving in straight lines (or doing anything straight for that matter, but that's another story). I get side-tracked easily, wander off down windy roads just to see where they lead, head out without a clue where I'm going or forget along the way what my destination was supposed to be. I like to think that makes me delightfully spontaneous and open to enjoying the journey, rather than just focusing on the end goal. Sometimes it actually just means I have no clear goals, so I set out hoping to stumble on something good to claim as my end goal later.

I was moving in a totally straight line one day last March, though. I had a destination in mind. I knew how to get there. I knew why I was going there. Then, quite unexpectedly, I was cut off and found myself somersaulting over the handlebars of my motorcycle. As these things tend to do, it all happened very fast and also in extremely slow motion at the same time.

I landed on my back in front of the car that had pulled out in front of me, and I remember very clearly thinking to myself "Welp. I'm here now. This is not quite where I planned on being right about now, but here I am." I took a mental inventory of all my parts: Legs? Check. Arms? Check. Breathing? Check. Brain? Check. "Well, self, let's stand up and see what's going on."

For the worriers out there, I was not going all that fast and did hit the brakes. Also, I wear a LOT of protective gear when I ride. I was mostly unscathed, aside from aggravating an old wrist injury. My bike fared less well, but overall the situation was not nearly as bad as it could have been.

So, I guess I should say now "I'm grateful to be alive!" and of course I am, but that's not what I'm getting at here. This may be a strange way to get to this point, but what I remember most vividly about that accident was realizing that I was not going to get where I had planned on going and that I might as well just take a look at where I was instead and go from there. I'm grateful for the moments in life that snap you out of autopilot and make you look around, inventory what you've got going for you, appreciate those things and head off in a new direction with a fresh perspective.

Those moments are not always potentially life-threatening. Maybe it's meeting someone new and amazing right when you were about to give up on love and take a vow of celibacy. Maybe you found out you're pregnant. A new job. An eye-opening conversation. The wisdom of a child. Anything that stops you in your tracks and makes you reevaluate everything you're doing. I'm grateful for those moments and for the grace to (usually) take them in stride and use them as chances to learn and grow and truly appreciate the things I have.

*If you click that link, you'll get to every post in which I refer to Bread Truck Grrl as BTG. But I can't not also connect BTG to this post, though, because it gave BTG so much joy to write. Mean, mean joy at my expense.  —bzzzzgrrrl

Windsor knot

Note: On the Facebook page, I mentioned a little while back that I had a folder full of drafts I never finished: More than 60 of 'em, in fact. I'm going through that folder now, deleting what's not worth it, posting what might entertain you. This dates back just to June 26, 2013. 

I have a new financial advisor. He does not replace an old financial advisor; he just replaces my wildly inaccurate view of myself as someone who can afford to just not pay attention.

And when I got him, I asked around to be sure I was getting someone who'd worked successfully with queer folks in New Hampshire in the past, because laws are tricky and weird and inconsistent, and my current needs are not queer-specific, but who's to say what the future brings? I don't want to have to change financial advisors mid-stream.

And I found this guy I like, who came very highly recommended. He's straight himself, but he seems generally to get it, and he understands my weird money hangups, so, fine.

This morning, he sent me this e-mail:

Subject: DOMA Provision Overturned! 

Hi [bzzzzgrrrl],

Just received news that the Supreme Court overturned a provision in the Defense of Marriage Act. We will be waiting for the details as they become available. 

All the best,
[financial advisor]

Now, yes, this is basically just him doing his job, and yes, it does boil this morning's decision down to being all about money. But honestly, cynically: It is all about money. A (sweet, adorable) elderly wealthy white woman can now avoid paying the same taxes a straight wealthy white woman would avoid paying. That was the case before the Court. It was a good choice, because many of the Justices can probably relate to being elderly and/or wealthy and/or white.*

And it is nothing short of amazing to me to think that this guy would think to shoot me an e-mail of that kind. This is not the heartwarming kind of equality, maybe, but having the professionals who work for me treat my life as, like, equally important to "regular" people's would have been unfathomable to me even ten years ago.**

It's a big day.

Day 14 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful that the world and my country are changing, even when the change is slow and even when it is imperfect.


*I have no doubt that Edie loved her wife Thea. I have seen the documentary, and if you haven't, you should think about it, because it's beautiful. But it is not love that won that court case. Equality, perhaps, and justice, perhaps — and thousands of people will benefit from the outcome. Hey, binational couples! Looking at you!

**A little less than ten years ago, in fact, a doctor neglected to prescribe me medication that would have helped me with a medical condition because I was not married and she did not want me to get accidentally pregnant, without even explaining that, much less offering me the option. At the time, an accidental pregnancy could literally only have been the result of a rape. Less than ten years ago, in an urban environment, the reality of my life did not cross my doctor's mind.

Feist tells it like it is... kind of.

Today's guest post comes from my Rock Star friend, who lives in New York and is welcome to drink coffee outside in her pajamas at my house any time.

"In the meantime I've got it hard
Second floor living without a yard
It may be years until the day
My dreams will match up with my pay."

This weekend I had a minor meltdown about how hard it is to live in New York City. It's exhausting, it's expensive, it's loud, it's dirty, the people at the grocery store are mean, it takes a long time to get everywhere, etc., etc., etc. I was in tears dreaming of a little, quiet house of my own where I could sit outside in my pajamas and drink coffee.

I may have grumpily insisted that it will never ever get better and I will spend the rest of my life in a 6th floor apartment, living below someone who plays basketball indoors (true story!), schlepping all over hell's half acre just to find a goddamn can of tomatoes (why don't they have them at the corner store???), staring out my window at a creepy dude on his balcony staring back at me, sleeping with my blinds closed every night due to distaste of aforementioned dude, and generally hating it on a regular basis. And then just in the nick of time, as I was surrendering to a bleak vision of my future, along comes my blogging friend reminding me that I agreed to write a post about being thankful.

So first and foremost I am thankful for this assignment which has forced me to think about all the pretty great things I have going on.

I may not have a patch of grass to call my own, but thankfully I do have:

• My boyfriend Ed's endless supply of patience 
• My mom, who always is excited to talk to me when I call 
• Gummy candy 
• Friends who love me, even when I'm terrible at being in touch 
• An apartment next to the park 
• A fluffy kitty who sleeps at my feet 
• The means to eat delicious food on a regular basis 
• Sunday afternoons at home with Ed 
• 5,000 amazing things to do, eat, and drink within 5 miles of my apartment 
• My liquor cabinet (and Ed's ability make fancy drinks) 
• Zappos free returns 
• My best friend, Hannah, aged 4 
• More than one Shake Shack location 
• The chicken stew I made yesterday 
• The extreme hilarity and wit of my extended family 
• The knowledge that I never have to take another @$!%(@ bar exam again 
• Sunday morning services at All Souls 
• 5 big closets to hide all my stuff 
• 4 years at boarding school with the best ladies I know 
• My sewing machine and beautiful fabrics 
• Camp Takodah memories 
• A warm and cozy bed with clean sheets 
• Sharp knives (to cook with!) 
• My parents' divorce, because everyone is so much happier than they were 
• My lovely pink living room rug 
• Nanaimo bars 
• My curly hair 
• Air conditioning in the living room and the bedroom 
• Tickets to see Neil Patrick Harris in Hedwig and the Angry Inch 
• Egg sandwiches, bloody marys, and the Sunday crossword puzzle on Saturday with Ed at the Farm on Adderley

Things are looking up on the 6th floor.

Devil is in the detailing

My car, as longtime readers know, is a 1990 Oldsmobile.

Mostly, it's great.

A few weeks back, for a number of reasons, I took it to a horrible place to have its interior detailed. They returned it to me soaking wet, and, in what I believe was a related situation, the radio buttons didn't all quite work right.

Over time, the car dried out, and over more time, the radio magically started working properly again, which is good, because that's my only source of entertainment in that car.

Tonight, on my way to the bowling alley, the "scan" button wasn't doing exactly what it should. And then the volume wouldn't turn down, though it would turn up. And then the power wouldn't turn off. And then scan worked again. But the volume still wouldn't turn down. And would still turn up. (For those of you keeping track, I have now turned up the volume twice but cannot turn it down.) And the radio still won't turn off.

Which means that most of the way to the bowling alley, and all the way from the bowling alley to the supermarket, and all the way from the supermarket to my house, the radio HAS BEEN SCREAMING AT ME AT VERY TOP VOLUME. IT HAS TOLD ME ABOUT THE TYPHOON AND THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT AND WAS JUST ABOUT TO TELL ME ABOUT JIMMY KIMMELWHEN I got home and could turn the whole car off.

Edited to add: I was listening to conservative talk radio, as I sometimes do on short trips, and opted not to change the station. I know, it seems like that would be the worst, but it seemed more tolerable than listening to pop or country music at that volume, and less incongruous than trying to listen to NPR announcers calmly yelling at me.

Day 12 of our month of gratitude: Today, I am thankful for a blissfully short commute, which I can drive in three minutes or walk (sans radio) in twenty.*



*OK, so yes, I realized as I was writing that I could, and probably will, in the morning, just pull the fuse to the radio to turn it off. But again, only source of entertainment, so my gratitude stands. Also, these are the kinds of thoughts I am incapable of having when someone is screaming at me in a confined space.

Love and loss and a Sherman tank

Today's guest post comes from longtime reader and frequent commenter Joe.

This post started out as a tribute to my wife. We were married seven years ago today and I can honestly say she is my best friend, my rock and my reason for getting out of bed each day (along with the two kiddos we were blessed with).

But being Veterans Day, it also makes me think of my Dad, who served 23 years with the National Guard’s 169th Infantry in Connecticut. He was a master sergeant, my Dad, and I’m sure he managed his troops in the same way that he kept our household in line for all those years. His penchant for order and discipline is one of the things that I occasionally despised as a kid. But he was also even-keeled, fair and compassionate, and I like to think that I have inherited some, if not all, of those qualities.

And if I have, it explains why I was lucky enough to land my beautiful wife. Dad died eight months ago, so I need to give thanks to the man who made this all possible for me. So here’s an open letter to my father:

Dad, I hope I can be half as good a father to my children, and husband to my wife as you were to me and Anne, and Mom. I have not forgotten any of your life’s lessons. To always look somebody in the eyes when you are talking with them. To be honest at all times. To treat everyone equally and with respect, no matter how they look or what background they come from. And to do a job properly, or to not do it at all.

Remember the summer of 1988, Dad? I was 16 years old and, like most kids that age, my top priorities were my own free time and hanging out with friends. And you gave me those opportunities. But not until we put in a few hours each night – after you already worked a full day – building the new deck in our backyard. It’s still there today, Dad, and yes, you could probably still park a Sherman tank on it and it wouldn’t budge (loved it when you said that). I only wish I picked up more of your carpentry skills.

Remember when you lost your job as I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school? You reminded me that I was part of the Coombs family, and that we “never give up.” I wondered at that time how the family would manage or if I would be still able to go to college, but somehow you made it all work out. You showed me that nothing worthwhile comes easy, and man, I think of that every day.

Most importantly, you taught me to always be true to my family, my friends and to God. They are all that matters in this life, you said. “You can make a ton of money (still haven’t quite nailed that one down, Dad), you may be famous and you may have all the possessions in the world, but that does not make you a real man,” you told me. And you were right.

I kept to myself for quite a while after you died, Dad. I have not really told too many people what a great man you were. Everyone grieves in their own way, I suppose. I think I have spent most of my time staying strong for everyone else in your absence. There are many hard days, especially when Matthew tells me, “I sure do miss Papa.” Because I do, too.

I also have reminded myself that many people are not this lucky, to have spent 40 years with a parent who has taught them so much, and made them the person that they are today.

I sure am lucky, Dad. And I am thankful for you, today and always.

...and apple cider doughnuts

This weekend has been full of many little blessings, like those of us who are lucky enough to live in New England in the fall and have good people around us get.

Here's a partial list of things for which I am thankful as I wind down on this Sunday evening:

• Fireplaces
• Birthday parties
• Humor
• My sister's family and friends
• Crossword puzzles
• The Office on DVD
• Newly discovered local doughnut shops
• Discount grocery stores
• NPR
• Phone calls with friends and family
• Brussels sprouts
• Drives in the bleak rural November
• Future plans
• Leftovers
• Shared kitchen time
• Windblown outsides that make inside cozier
• So, so much love

Day 10 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for nearly perfect weekends that don't have to end on Sunday night.

Moral: No good comes of candlepin

Last night, I went to a birthday party for a stranger who was turning 30.

Her boyfriend is a friend and former temporary coworker of RI's. He'd arranged a party for a few dozen people at a local candlepin bowling alley.* It's a cute little small-town place with a bar in the entry and eight lanes of very old-timey-looking candlepin lanes; they don't serve food, so people brought cupcakes and snacks, and standard practice is that you leave your shoes and coats on or around the unguarded coat rack by the door, and then cross the bar to get your bowling shoes by the lanes themselves.

So we ditched our coats and shoes and then got into a conversation in the bar, standing around in our sock feet, which was clearly no big deal. At one point, my nose started to itch, so I went back to my coat to grab a tissue.

I should back up a little.

I have over the last few years owned a bunch of jeans that ranged widely in quality and in time bought, but the universe has colluded so that all of them became unwearable in roughly the same six-week period. I was out of jeans, which, bummer, because I wear jeans all the time. So last weekend I stopped by my favorite TJ Maxx and found one pair of nearly perfect jeans.

They fit great.

They look great.

They were very cheap.

But... the front pockets were fake. Like, there's stitching where the pockets should be to look like pockets, but they are not pockets. The back pockets are regular, and real.

And I bought them anyway, because they fit and look good and were cheap and I was entirely out of jeans, but, well, if there are any aspiring jeans designers out there who think maybe women don't want to use front pockets: It is way easier to just not use pockets that are there than it is to use pockets that are not there. Jackasses.

All of which is by way of explaining why my phone, car keys, and tissues were in my coat pocket. My wallet was in my back jeans pocket, which would horrify my chiropractor, but whatever. I went back to my coat to get a tissue — except my coat wasn't there. My plain black winter coat was just gone from the rack. I assumed someone had taken it thinking it was theirs, and my first concern was whether they'd left the party completely or just gone outside to smoke — because the phone would be easy enough to retrieve, since our host knew everyone and was nearby, and I could use bar napkins as tissues, but without the car keys, we weren't going home.

And as I was trying to decide exactly how much to freak out, I saw, out the window, the birthday girl, wearing my coat, complete with the pin my grandmother made. Now, that was mostly good news. She was unlikely just to take off and not return to her own party, and even if she did, her boyfriend was still in the bowling alley.

So I turned my mind to the matter of worrying about whether when I did get it back, it'd smell like smoke and make my whole car smell like smoke.

Meanwhile, through my internal meltdown, RI was deep in one of those conversations where there's not really a break to interrupt. Eventually, after probably ten minutes that felt like years, I explained what was going on, and the person we'd been talking to was very concerned. But what was I going to do? "Happy 30th birthday, please don't steal my coat"?

I was just going to have to wait it out.

And wait it out I did, until she returned. I didn't actually notice her, but RI's conversation buddy did, and nudged me, and I scurried back to the coat rack to move my coat to a less visible location, where it remained until I retrieved it.

Day 9 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful to have my coat back, smelling surprisingly unlike smoke. Further, I am thankful to have a warm winter coat at all.


*Yes, that is a real thing up here. No, that is not the kind of bowling RI and I normally do.

God is great; God is good...

Today's post will be quick, but it will also include two Monadnock-area restaurant reviews, so you're not really likely to do a lot better than this.

Tuesday night, RI and I went to Piedra Fina in Marlborough, NH, which has been open about three weeks. If you are local, please, please go to this restaurant, for two reasons:

1. You will like it, and
2. I need it to stay open.

The food (Latin American) is fantastic. The service is pleasant and fast. The atmosphere is lovely. It's comfortable. It's pretty. It's not too loud. It's delicious. It's not that expensive (I had the most expensive special, for $16, and RI had the most expensive meal on the menu, for $13, which even by New Hampshire standards is excellent for a really good meal). It's different from everything else in the area. I never wanted to eat anywhere else again.

And yet, the next day, for lunch, I did.

I went to Shack 'n' Cheese, on Main Street, in Keene. It has a very different vibe than Piedra Fina, which is by any reasonable local standard a fancyish place. Shack 'n' Cheese's counter is made of stacked firewood. There's a counter you order at, and a couple of tables to sit at, and it's in pretty much the back room of the Piazza. But also, you can get delicious macaroni and cheese there (with mix-ins! And crunchy toppings, if you want!), or a burrito, which has been missing from Keene since Armadillos closed. It's been open two weeks. Please, if you're local, go there, too.

Day 8 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for food, both in its abundance and in its transformative power. We've had a complicated relationship, food and me, and sometimes still do, but that is all on me. Food, itself? Is good.

Spinning

Today's guest post comes from writer extraordinaire and massage therapist absolutely extraordinaire — if you live in the D.C. area, seriously, go lie on her table — Amanda, who I know because she had to edit my first bumbling attempts at professional writing. This isn't about that.

I'm thankful for Lance Armstrong, hyper-competitive old runners with bad knees, the mind-numbing routines of step aerobics and some L.A. asshat who crashed his car into a competitive cyclist out on a night-time training ride in the mid-80s.

Those forces combined to birth the chronically trademarked Spinning® classes in 1996 (See Evolution of the Revolution here — That's not the real headline. That's the headline of the story someone should have written about Spinning's takeoff). Back on track (pun, as always, intended): Without those sweat boxes of neon lights and testosterone, I may have been grape-vining across a plastic Reebok step or running in the cold that one fateful day in January 1999. Instead, I was where I was almost every Saturday morning in the late 90s: in a Spinning class, the required 10 minutes early to snag the bike on the right side, waiting for someone to yell at me to pass invisible riders on an imaginary hill while Peter Gabriel sang about Solsbury — you, guessed it — Hill.

That's where I heard a fellow "rider" complain about the multiple edits his article for The Washington Post Magazine. Someone pointed to me and said "She's a writer. Maybe she can help."

He'd have to wait for me to burn approximately 500 to 700 calories to get that help, but an hour later, he continued to rant and pant about a simple interview he'd done with a jail guard (that got my interest) and how the editor said he'd overwritten it (much like I've done to this sentence). The column, "First Person Singular," was meant to be told in the voice of the person interviewed and kept short. My heart rate shot back up. Thanks Sport and Health for providing those straps of bacteria, er, those shared chest straps.

You mean, you just had to interview someone with an interesting job, drill it down to the basics, put it in some kind of logical order and turn the sucker in? No worrying if your transitions were tired. No searching and searching for the perfect lead to introduce this character who needed no introduction and could do the introducing much better herself? It would be just like a radio interview, except no one would have to hear my mouth full of potatoes introduce the subject.

I'd been training my radar to find these characters since journalism school, when fed up with covering student athletic council meetings, I started pitching and writing stories about campus characters: the hot-dog cart guy who catered to the drunks at 2 a.m., the resident assistant who worked part-time at the townie bar, the manic step aerobics instructor (I've always sweated the details!) who had a messianic following of sorority girls and was married to an equally buff instructor. My wheels were turning!

But back to the spinning-his-wheels writer/rider pal: I gave him some suggestions. Pretend you're introducing this guy to your family -- what three anecdotes or details would you share before he came over. What's the first thing you told someone about the guard after the interview. He said he'd try again. Then I asked for the editor's phone number.

I've been writing First Person off and mostly on since. My first? An improv guy who took two hours to finally admit why he'd spent his adulthood acting like a child, and encouraging others to do so: All of the men in his family had died before 55; he expected to do the same. Why figure out what he going to be when he grew up? I got this detail and got past his "act" and comic routine after sharing my own loss. It helps to be human when interviewing humans.

I've focused on people without their own people, trying to avoid PR trolls, canned anecdotes and mediarelations@somebigplace.com addresses, but more importantly trying to give the microphone to the guy in the back, the one you see all the time but never slow down to listen to. The stock character who is much more than a maid, a Girl Scout leader, a lunch lady, or Dominos pizza manager. They've let me into their Byzantine basement workshops (the Cuckoo Clock doctor I ran into at — wait for it — my gym), their messy lives (all of us) and their swank D.C. dens, where pictures of them schmoozing with presidents failed to elicit a "tell me about that." (Everyone already knew about THAT!) They've let me make this big city small.

And yes, they let this small-town girl get her byline in a big-city paper. That wore off quickly. I've had the intense joy of watching someone say something about herself for the first time; realizing a fundamental truth about why they do what they do and are the way they are. No byline ego stroke can compete with that.

Not every column has been riveting, but I'm thankful for every one — yes, even the one about the mean cheesemaker who snarled through the interview and the snarled-through post-publication email complaining that he came off as a sour, snarly man. Note to cheesemaker: Don't say you prefer cows to people and then be surprised to not come across as a people person. They've kept me connected. They've kept me curious. They've kept me fully aware of the best coffee shop/wine bars in the area and the worst of my tendencies to interrupt and nod in an agreement a bit too aggressively. They've kept me in journalism, despite my big shift into a new profession.

And they've made me realize not everything has a nice narrative arc. Sometimes, things just end and you have to figure out if it's the end of the story or the chapter — or some other lame metaphor. By the time you read this, I'll have written my last First Person.

So thanks, Spinning for getting my Lycra-ed butt in that room. Thanks, dude who never did get his guard story published. Thanks, every single human who opened up to me. I've learned so much! I'll never look at a LEASE NOW! sign spinner the same again. I'll never, ever regret finally acting on the hunch to interview a photo restorationist. If nothing else, go read that one.

I'll get used to being just a massage therapist — connecting without a deadline, editor, or tape recorder between us. And for that too, I'm thankful.

Where the eagles cry, on a mountain high

I met RI more than two and a half years ago — more than two years before we even considered dating each other. We have been teammates and close, important friends for essentially that whole time, have supported each other through all kinds of things, have laughed together, loud and often.

And we are fond of saying that the whole romantic connection could not have happened any sooner than it did — we weren't ready, we were with other people or getting over other people or in too complicated a place in our lives.

And all that's true, but, I think, more to the point: We each needed the exact friendship we'd found in each other, as it was, without the pressure of figuring out a life together. For then. When we were ready, we were ready — but we were not ready sooner.

And now that we are? Amazing.

Related: I have an ex, now a good friend. I wish I could say we're still friends, but this is definitely an again-friends situation.

We weren't exactly friends before we started dating; we had mutual friends, and were friendly, and had a quick and real connection, but the dating for sure started as dating.

That relationship was OK — occasionally wonderful — but complicated and sometimes confusing. It wasn't, it turned out, the right thing for either of us. Still, there's a real bond there, that we're lucky still to have. The ex has found someone else who sounds wonderful, and the ex knows RI and has been among our biggest and best cheerleaders, as a couple. I am incredibly blessed to have a friend who knows me this well, and even in this capacity, who was prepared to salvage the best parts of that connection.

And I have dozens of stories like that, including some of you who read this.

Day 6 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for the people who stuck around long enough to figure out how we best fit together. I am thankful for friends who became partners, exes who became friends, friends' exes and exes' friends and dates and bosses and service providers and coworkers and crushes and directors and classmates and neighbors and professors and campers who became some of the most important people in my life, in the exact way they were supposed to, and let me figure out how to fit into their lives, too.

Tell Me a Story

Our next guest post comes from my college roommate, April, a master storyteller herself.


I'm a children's librarian, which is pretty much the best job ever. So maybe when I say that I am grateful for stories you will respond in the manner of my daughter and every other eight-year-old by saying, “Well, duh.”

I am grateful for the kind of stories you can find in my library – even The Day My Butt Went Psycho, because maybe that's the book that convinces some kid that she does like reading, after all. But right now I'm thinking about the kind of stories that may never get written down and almost certainly never get published; the kind that help us understand who we are and who the people around us are; the kind we trade like jewels when we're building relationships; the kind we repeat because they help us hold on to truths and times and people we might otherwise lose track of; the kind we hear about someone we've never even met that resonate so strongly with our own experience that we feel like kindred spirits.

My children call my mother-in-law Grandma Honey. They do this because of a story she told them years ago and has repeated countless times since that goes like this:

When Uncle Andy was about four years old he noticed that Grandpa didn't usually call Grandma by her name; he usually called her “honey.” Uncle Andy decided that “honey” was much better than “mom” or “mommy,” so one day when he was upstairs in his room and needed something from Grandma, who was down in the kitchen, he came to the back stairs and called, “Honey?!”

Now, because Grandma is an excellent storyteller, the kids usually laugh uproariously at this point and then demand to know whether or not she answered Uncle Andy's call. And the response is always the same: Grandma was not about to have any four-year-old calling her “honey” so she pointedly ignored Uncle Andy until he addressed her properly.

Like lots of good stories, this one is about love and hope. It shows that a harried mother who was not willing to have her son call her “honey” can grow up to be a grandmother more than willing to have her grandchildren call her “Grandma Honey.” It demonstrates that even heroes like Uncle Andy were once four and did silly things, and so maybe there's hope for all of us.

Our stories connect us. Tell me a story. Or tell someone else a story. If you're lucky, maybe they'll tell you one right back.

The cake is a lie

I used to cheat at online Scrabble.

I've written about that before, without admitting what it was.

I was not proud of it, and continue to be unproud of it.

And then, I figured out, with the help of a good friend, that the easy way out was that I could quit playing online Scrabble, which would eliminate the cheating from my life, since, generally, I'm not a cheater.

It totally worked.

More than a year later, I eased back into playing online Scrabble, with a couple of trusted friends. I was completely honest with them about why I'd quit playing before, and made the deal with them that if I felt inclined to cheat, I'd quit again, rather than cheating and feeling horrible about it.

And I have been tempted a couple of times, when I was losing a game I thought I should be able to win, but it has only been a couple of times, and I have not succumbed. And here's the thing: My score, my ranking, has suffered almost not at all.

Which means I cheated all that time, felt awful all that time, beat myself up all that time for no reason. Cheating didn't actually make me better at Scrabble. It only made me feel like crap.

Now, that's not quite literally true. The other thing it made me feel was safe. It made me feel like other people might not know how dumb and inadequate I was. But that safety was a big lie, because my ranking was the same. Cheating bzzzzgrrrl appeared exactly as dumb as non-cheating bzzzzgrrrl appears.

I have a similar story about artificial sweeteners: After decades of consuming them, I quit them completely a little more than two years ago. I have gained no weight as a result, even though I now drink nasty soda full of corn syrup (which I will also some day quit). That's because I'm not messing with my metabolism anymore.

I've struggled with other demons, addictions, more serious moral dilemmas, and I am coming to see how often the struggle itself is a lie. So often, what feels safe offers no real benefit over the thing that feels scary.

Day 4 of our month of gratitude: I'm thankful for those little glimmers of awareness that the harder right thing to do is actually, often, not that much harder than living with the consequences of the easier wrong thing to do. Those glimmers aren't always evident, but when they are? I'm thankful.

Great and full

And on Day 3, we're ready to start with the guest posts. This one's by bzh. Enjoy!


I'm not sure where someone like me starts in being grateful.

Is it with God, whose presence in my life has been strong and terrifically comforting in recent days? Or my parents, who raised a feisty, driven, independent child, and then foot the entire bill for her education? Or Husband, whose patient resolve has held our marriage together during more than one of my desperate attempts to kill it? Or my Urchin, who teaches me something new every day of her delicious existence? Or my company, which pays me well to do what I do best all day every day? Or my mentors, who've taken me under wing and shown me how to navigate the high road with grace, courage, strength and speed? Or my out-of-network therapist, whose ability to help me own my shit has dramatically reduced the amount of shit I own?

Truth is, gratitude is a bit of a cliché in a life like mine. Everywhere I turn there is something to be grateful for. And how great is that?

It's pretty damn great. It's also pretty easy to take for granted, so I work hard not to every day. Like people who live in the Alps or the Rockies who can no longer see the splendor, members of the lucky sperm club like me can go blind if we're not careful. We can handily forget that what we have, the life we lead, is not real for everyone. For many — maybe even most — it's Fantasyland and we're goddamned lucky to have landed here.

I work hard to keep my eyes open wide — for myself, sure, but especially for my Urchin. I'm not there yet. I forget sometimes that the road I travel is paved with smooth stones. Lucky for me, I have dear friends who help me remember, from time to time, just how good I have it. They're gentle about it, mostly, when I say or do something bubbleheaded. Every once in a while, though, it takes a good hard smack in the noggin. And they're not afraid to do that, either.

So on this day in November, as we approach our national day of Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the members of my Village who help me keep my journey honest and true. And love me with every step.

Peace,
bzh

Sweet dreams

Hey, I'm exhausted.

And I couldn't figure out why, and then I plugged the numbers into Google Maps and realized that in the last 55 hours, I have been in a car for roughly 300 miles, roughly 7 hours. I didn't drive all of it, but I drove most of it.

A normal day for me? Includes a 3-minute commute to work and a 3-minute commute home.

Day 2 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for sleep, for rest, for the opportunity to reset every night — or sometimes even just by taking a nap for 20 minutes in the afternoon. So, gonna go do that now. Enjoy your extra overnight hour, everyone.

Just folk like me

November 1 is traditionally the beginning of my month of gratitude, and this November 1 is no different in that regard.

I am lucky to have a few excellent people who've signed on to be guest bloggers this month (though I'm open to more if you're interested), but most of the posts will still be mine.

Last year, I wrote a little about how November 1 is also All Saints' Day, and I will say this about that: Wikipedia is a wealth of information and also excellent turns of phrase on the subjects of saints and "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God."

So let's go back to that hymn from last year. The gist of it, basically, is, "I could do that."

And it's true.

And people love it. In fact, according to Wikipedia, "The hymn remains a popular favourite with American churchgoers who have grown up with it. In a 2003 survey of 'desert island' hymns run by the website anglicansonline.org, the hymn was voted 14th."

Now, there's kind of a lot going on in that last sentence, and I do not know what a desert island hymn is (I mean, I can guess, but — is that a thing?), but it's a pretty neat thing that a hymn written to suggest to children that the world is full of good and holy people and that there's no reason for said children not to do the same is that popular, especially when we sing it once a year, pretty much.

There's a lot of crap in the world. And say what you want, Hymnal 1982 committee, about that hymn's alleged lack of theological profundity, but that idea — that goodness is real and present in our lives, and to be emulated — does not feel so shallow to me.

Day 1 of our month of gratitude: I am thankful for the saints as they are evident to me in my life, for those who are role models and teachers and sources of benevolence, for those who reflect or connect the divine to us, for the patient, the brave, and the true.






Hey, if you're new around here and not sure how you feel about this religious mumbo-jumbo, please stick around. I don't always talk about saints. Sometimes, I talk about radical politics or animals in buildings or food that makes me angry. Often, I tell funny stories at my expense. Poke around; there's really something for everyone.