Black Monday

My grandmother died yesterday. It wasn't unexpected, but it still hit me like a blow to the chest when my dad called me at 7:30 a.m. and relayed the news in a shaky voice. I was at work, in the middle of writing an e-mail, bragging about how the bionic woman was still with us. But she wasn't. The strongest woman, the ultimate farm girl, the powerful physical figure who I was often compared to had left her shrunken, broken form for somewhere better.

I am not a highly religious person, but I am a believer, and I believe my dad when he said he felt her escorts come to get her as he held her head in his hands. And I did not doubt, looking at the shape on the bed that was so clearly no longer her, that she was gone. I have had the fortune of making it to 29 years of age without seeing a dead person, as those who I have lost were not lost in my presence, but I calmly broke that barrier yesterday, looked into her lifeless eyes and said goodbye.

There were moments of great joy yesterday. Everything seemed funnier than usual and I found myself in hysterics at the strangest moments--like when we found the unopened bottle of morphine and half the family fought for it while the other half wouldn't let us have it. Or when one of my aunts relayed her tendency to steal toilet paper out of the trash and collect leftovers from potlucks at work. Or when Walgreens called to remind us to refill my grandmother's prescriptions.

There were also moments yesterday that may haunt me forever. When the undertaker came with his stretcher and his body bag and my grandfather fled to the other room to shake with sobs. And when my most emotional aunt arrived her grief was so palpable it ripped me apart. She sounded almost like an animal, her pain was so raw and so wild. I loved her even more for her ability to feel such unmasked love. But somehow I couldn't really cry until I went to bed that night.

After they took her away my most organized aunt made us go for a walk. We bundled up, I in my black overcoat and giant black sunglasses, my father in his dress pants and shoes--all of us in a strange array of whatever we were wearing when we hear the news--and left for a three+ mile hike through the scrap of woods left in Bellevue. We watched a bunny hop in front of us and stopped at a waterfall and creek where my dad used to play when he was young and we inspected the new Microsoft buildings being built on the edge of what used to be thick woods.

As is typical in a family full of engineers, physicists and techies, we lapsed into blessedly distracting discussions of flow meters, my dad's new smart car and cell phone towers. The stupid dog provided entertainment as well. Silence felt oppressive.

Today I feel like cardboard. I'm tired as hell.

Self Indulgent Rambling

Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. Twenty-nine years ago today one of my oldest friends was born. And today I will cross the threshold of my first house in Seattle.

It's a classic Seattle April day here, with rain drip-drip-dripping noncommittally and dove grey skies robed in mountain-country clouds. I woke to remembrances of Dr. King on NPR and drove to work listening to the Decemberists spout literary glamour. "Decked by a Japanese Geisha with a garland of pearls" indeed.

My car is full of painting supplies. My apartment is full of beer and wine at the ready for tonight's open house. I am full of maudlin; of sentimentality, excitement, fear. I love change but I sometimes feel lost after I've caught whatever change I'm chasing.

This mindset is pretty much central to who I am and how I think, which I think can be pretty maddening for many people who watch me along the way. A friend once put a song about Virgos on a tape for me (yes, a tape) with some pretty damning, hilarious lyrics, but my favorite part went like this:

Virgo has to know the why, the who, what, when and where

She'll strive to reach perfection, and then improve from there!

Whether or not you believe in astrology, that is pretty much spot on. I'm restless for constant improvement and I have to know every damn detail on everything. Improvement equals change. Ergo I'm constantly changing elements of my life trying to find the best option, or a way to make myself better. Even after we bought the house I went on the real estate site every day to compare the new houses on the market to the house we purchased. I simply had to know that we got the best option in our price range. (We did).

Both Hombrelibre and my sister think I'm insane for doing this. My sister said that the second they bought their house she stopped looking at what else was out there. I simply cannot do that. It might be physically incapable for me. Ignorance is never bliss for me. It is only by knowing that I can relax.

The more I know, the better I feel. It's not knowing that sends me into a panic. My default assumption, when I'm ignorant, is always something much, much worse than the truth. I will imagine every horrible scenario that I can fathom. If I didn't look at houses every day I would convince myself that 18,000 better, cheaper houses came on the market the second we closed on our house. When I was fainting regularly at shows for awhile a few years back I decided I was dying because I didn't know what fainting felt like. Before I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis I was (yet again) convinced I was dying, or at least had cancer which was pretty understandable considering I was crapping myself regularly and my hair was falling out in clumps every day. Now that I know what fainting is like I don't stress about it. Now that I know what ulcerative colitis is I can spend countless hours researching alternative therapies and harassing doctors and reading about it.

So for those of you out there who think you're protecting your Virgo friends when you don't tell them something...you're not. For the love of god, tell them if you're mad at them or if they have a piece of spinach in their teeth or if they need deodorant. They might look temporarily taken aback, but by god, they'll love you for your honesty in the end.

'Swearin.

Planned Obsolescence. Or Get Thee to a Knocking Yard

The last couple of days I've done something I absolutely hate to do; namely tinkering with technologies I'm not overly familiar with. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the worst student ever and a complete and utter brat when it comes to learning things I'm not innately gifted with. Hombrelibre still shudders at the memory of teaching me to drive. As a result, I'm pretty much self-taught in almost everything I do. And sometimes it really shows.

Yesterday I was burning pictures onto disks, which is at about an ape-level skillset but something that regularly flumoxes me. It's not as if I haven't done it before, but every computer has their own set of drama associated with different programs and what not and I was burning massive files and a shit-ton of snaps which only complicated the matter. After a lot of tinkering and swearing I finally got three disks burned, then just about had a coronary when my coworker couldn't open them. Much like in setting up a blind date, you had to make sure the fuckers are compatible.

Today I was creating a flier in InDesign, which again, isn't altogether that challenging but definitely a program I have just enough familiarity with to be dangerous. I was patting myself on the back for remembering how to text wrap and color match but my flier still looked painfully amateurish. I'm such a design snob that my inability to create something truly spectacular made me want to rip out my eyes and fling them at the screen, which makes about as much sense as a beginning piano student blowing their head off for not mastering Chopin. Welcome to the Virgo brain.

In any case, all of this strang und durm got me thinking about how many of the skills I learned while growing up are rapidly growing obsolete. I'm not even 30. I wonder how the 80 years olds feel right about now with all those crazy kids and their cell phones and blackberries and Ipods, texting a collective "the future is now" while we stand hopelessly by.

My 60 year old coworker, whose methodology pains me at times, is like a walking billboard for obsolescence. She prints out every single email she gets and diligently files them. I caught her the other day printing out websites for reference. I don't think she knows how to cut and paste, much less resize a picture. And none of this would really matter if she weren't in a department that depends explicitly on all of these technologies. Lately, I've noticed my rage toward her verges on the irrational. Granted, she has a nasty habit of singing classic show tunes at full tilt pre-9 a.m. which is no doubt grounds for murder in some countries, but my knee-jerk vitriol at her inability to navigate powerpoint may belie some deeper impulse in me.

One might surmise that she represents everything I'm starting to fear as I creep toward my next decade of life. That I'll be somehow left behind, rapture-style, as the young and clever are sucked toward career heaven, leaving me to languish in early-thirties purgatory. No longer young, not quite old, I fear I'll dog paddle my way through the next chunk of my life, clinging to my proverbial MySpace as the kids gravitate toward Facebook. Or whatever the hell they like these days. I can't keep track.

"Oh my god, Becky, look at the size of her vest!"

I am wearing a vest today, something I haven't done since 1992, when I was in middle school and liked to wear my hair in artfully labored-over bang constructions. It feels good.

I've always dug the menswear look, which is a shame, really, since my body type is about as far as you can get from a man's. I have equal parts hootertown to my padunkadunk and a whole lotta thigh to match. Suffice to say, I don't even really do proper justice to most pants, much less vests, suspenders or pork pie hats.

I have friends, wily lanky friends like glassmongoose and knitsybitsycycler who look so good in this stuff it makes your teeth hurt. I watch them effortlessly pulling off aspects of Annie Hall aesthetics and think, "damn, that looks good. I should try that." But like the consumate younger sister I am, trying to emulate all that inspires me, such flights of fancy are often best left to paper doll fantasies than actual fruition.

So I look like a dork. I know it. I'm wearing a vest covered in stars, straining where it should be relaxing, and as cool as I want to feel right now, I am patently aware that my outfit screams "Ren, ren, rennnnnn!" That's Ren as in Rennaissance, for you non D&D-eschewing homies out there.

But what the fuck. I am Ren. I read Harry Potter. I have a NeverEnding Story tattoo. I play D&D. I don't live in my parent's basement and I am getting laid, so really, what do I have left to prove?

The vest, she stays.

The Unbearable Lightness of the Return

I like returning things. It brings me an enormous sense of relief and almost, dare I say it, a high. This is partly due to the fact that I'm cheap. Spending money makes me nervous. But the true underlying impetus is that I get off on feeling unfettered. I'm a freedom junkie with an almost physiological need to purge. My shopping trips are roundtrip: I almost never escape a purchasing excursion without a return trip scheduled for the not-too-distant future.

My mother is a bit of a hoarder. To this day, she won't let anyone into the basement as it's so full of stuff. She lives in a three bedroom house with a full footprint basement and every room is at saturation point. She's definitely not a full-blown hoarder. Nothing to Oprah-expose levels or anything like that. But the woman certainly clings to things and feels physical stress at parting with even old magazines or well-worn clothes.

It doesn't take more than a semester of Psych 101 to draw the connection here. Many of us feel compelled to remake ourselves in the inverse image of our parents, and I am no exception. Material possessions equal burdens. So I unburden myself.

I am in the process of buying a wee house. Not a small house, mind you. A wee house; an almost midget house weighing in at a mighty 810 square feet on the main floor with additional basement space. I'm beyond thrilled about this, yet cautiously thrilled as our inspection won't happen until tomorrow. It's so cute you could puke at the cuteness. It's hobbit meets hello kitty with all the class and sass of old Hollywood and art deco. It's both old and moderne--a cozy hidey hole perfectly proportioned with curves in all the right places. And soon it will be mine!

But as mentioned, I'm a compulsive returner. So what am I doing? I'm continuing to scout the house ads every day, just to torture myself. Is there anything else? What else is out there? I feel a manic need to compare and contrast. Just in case. My itchy trigger finger longs to release, daring me to back out, to run before it's too late. But like many a well-chosen Target purchase before it, my gut tells me this house is staying with me. It's already chiseling out a little castle-shaped hole in my heart.

And if we buy it, if we really truly buy it, I'm already excited about all the purging of my possessions I'll get to do before we move in. A small house demands disciplined streamlining of objects. I can hardly wait!

Que sera sera

Whatever will beeeee, will beeeee.

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself. Over and over. As I rock back and forth. Baaack and forth.

We lost out on the house we bid on. Bid on, and, I might add, shelled out four hundred dollars for an inspection on. And wasted god only knows how much psychic energy on. Bah. Apparently some fucker paid cash and offered more than us. I hope they get mauled by a bear.

The hippie/spiritualist in me says "it wasn't meant to be." The really bat-shit crazy superstitious freak in me says, "you offered a number comprised entirely of threes and sevens and there were 13 offers. What did you expect?"

Does anyone know what the fuck I'm talking about? This is what happens when you're the only one of your friends who attended Sunday school. You can take the girl out of the church, but you can't take the church out of the girl.

So back on the horse or bike (neither of which I can operate, I should point out). Tomorrow is another day.

What Brown Can Do For You

I'm dead serious about chocolate. I don't fuck around. When it comes to general sugar I'll eat just about anything, from Necco wafers to peeps. I'll even down a stale marshmallow circus peanut if I'm desperate. But for chocolate, I have standards. I won't eat a Hershey bar, for example, and Snickers are taken only grudgingly. And while I might scarf down Halloween candy at a friend's house or from the front desk at work I certainly won't buy most mass-manufactured chocolate.

I like the good stuff. High quality, well-sourced, local, organic and fair trade if possible. 3400 Phinney and Theo's, Fran's, oh my. Or Vosges from Chicago. Or Dagoba and the sinful semi-sweet ultra dark bars from the co-op. Dear Lord.

I was just reading about how Seattle's Fran's Chocolates (a.k.a. "The Best Overall Chocolateir in the United States" according to the "Book of Chocolates" and more importantly, yours truly) is opening another shop in the belly of the new Four Seasons Hotel. Sure, I'm excited about this, but I'm also still smarting from my last visit to Fran's.

You can buy their gold bars all over the city, but to get their coconut gold bars, which are basically like crack to me, you have to actually drive to one of their retail outlets. Unfortunately, they hire what appears to be the slowest, most incompetent work force I may have ever encountered in a retail environment. Everyone who works there is frail, skinny and scared-looking and moves at a snail's pace, which are not attributes I typically associate with chocolate consumption.

Shit, if I worked around chocolate I would be ecstatic. I'd probably be about 50 pounds heavier, but I'd look like I was in the throes of an orgasm and greet each customer with manic energy and joy. I would move at a blur, slowed only momentarily to throw back a shot of hot cocoa between raucous bursts of laughter. How can someone look nervous and pinched around chocolate? Did chocolate beat you as a child? Does chocolate yell at you? No, my friends, chocolate only gives. Gives joy, gives pleasure, gives cellulite dimples to your ever-widening thighs, but by god it gives.

So there I was at Fran's, standing in line with my coconut gold bars, my mouth filling with drool, when I witnessed what can only be described as a new level of inneficiency playing out before me. There were maybe 15 people in the store, roughly ten of whom were, like myself, just trying to purchase items they could grab from the store shelves. The other five people were purchasing boxed chocolate. There were four employees.

Two of the employees, looking as if they might break at any minute, were sloooooowly and deliberately packing chocolates one by one for two of the customers who were picking individual chocolates. One of the employees was sloooooooooooowly and deliberately wrapping a box of chocolates and the fourth employee, who I assumed was the manager, looking very much like a praying mantis but without the sex appeal, was talking to a customer. No one was at the register. No one was ringing up the ten of us who just needed something rung up. This went on for 15 minutes.

By the end, I was literally sweating, I was so angry. I am horribly offended by innefficiency, to be sure, but this was amazing. I almost expected people to jump out and announce we were on Candid Camera or something--such was the ridiculousness of the situation. Finally, after loudly suggesting someone actually man the register, to the murmured agreement from my fellow patrons, I screamed "this is ridiculous!" threw my gold bars onto the counter and stormed out.

I haven't been back.

I miss my candy, though. I'm not willing to punish myself by living a gold-bar free life for the sake of driving home a point. But I'm pissed. So what's a girl to do? Slink back and admit defeat? Force feed the anorexic bitches running the place until they speed up? Complain directly to the company? I want my motherfucking coconut gold bar!