When I ride backwards in busses and trains, I get ill. Despite this fact, if I'm riding up Nob Hill in the morning, I always want to ride facing backward. Sure, I'm nauseated after the fact, but I love seeing the foggy Bay Bridge framed in the window.
My friend Olivia has allergies and gets ill easily, but she doesn't mind sitting backwards. This summer she did a bit of looking backwards metaphorically as well. At the end of her trip through South America, she turned 30, before returning home, returning to work and the rhythym of life she has found.
I'm feeling a bit reflective myself, but it feels the thing to do when beginning a new decade.
These past 10 years seem an eternity, but really, they're just half my life. I really like where they're ending vs. where they began.
This morning I jumped into looking forward and that doesn't make me ill, but apparently makes me cry. Not in a bad way just in a "oh my!" kind of way. Our young, handsome, fecund architecht kept talking about how his young family have their apartment, in order to help us think about what we want for our apartment. Oh, sweet André, no worries, there have been conversations, interviews and things typed up about how we anticipate raising our family.
The beginning of the month often makes me sad. I think it might be similar to getting one's period for a woman who is trying to start her family naturally. Our time to be chosen is running out and the fantasies of the last month fade away. This month feels different, however. Not because we only have two months, but because we still believe. "We Believe" does not mean, we believe that we will be chosen in the next two months (though we hope and believe that that is true) but that we believe that we will have a family some way. We feel confident that we will be able to find a way to internationally adopt with as much openness and good conscience as is possible.
Until then, there are videos of bassett-hounds to look forward to and motion-sickness wristbands for looking backwards.
Mittwoch, 31. August 2011
Donnerstag, 18. August 2011
Two Opinions Diverge in a House.
We've divvied-up writing assignments for our Rt 66 book and are now on State number 2. State number one was easy. I laid alot of groundwork with information on public transport and differentiation guidelines for hotels/motels. Here in Missouri, Ivo is waxing romantic about the Jesse James and other fun history he's discovered and fallen in love with and discribing the less flattering sides of American history. Meanwhile, I'm writing what feels like an obituary.
I had fun writing about the cicadas and telling the history of the comical Burma Shave sequence ads, but even the latter began to show the mournful nature my contributions to this book have taken. Even while on the road, Ivo saw beauty where I saw a a grave-sight. He wanted to photograph the dillapidated towns, while I wanted to cover them in proverbial shrouds. Like some sort of confused Ebinizer Scrooge, I was unsure if this was a vission of what was or what is still to come.
I'm currently writing an "info box" on food. As the writer who has searched, researched and contributed lists of every possible farmer's market and organic food store, I am also the person to write about why one may need to stock up at these points. Writing about food deserts and the evolution of the diet in these economically depressed areas that surround the old "mother road" is a bit gloomy. I'm unsure of how factual I need to be and how negative I should let myself go.
Here in the Mijnssen home, Ivo's singing "American the Beautiful" , while I'm moaning the tune to "American Pie".
I had fun writing about the cicadas and telling the history of the comical Burma Shave sequence ads, but even the latter began to show the mournful nature my contributions to this book have taken. Even while on the road, Ivo saw beauty where I saw a a grave-sight. He wanted to photograph the dillapidated towns, while I wanted to cover them in proverbial shrouds. Like some sort of confused Ebinizer Scrooge, I was unsure if this was a vission of what was or what is still to come.
I'm currently writing an "info box" on food. As the writer who has searched, researched and contributed lists of every possible farmer's market and organic food store, I am also the person to write about why one may need to stock up at these points. Writing about food deserts and the evolution of the diet in these economically depressed areas that surround the old "mother road" is a bit gloomy. I'm unsure of how factual I need to be and how negative I should let myself go.
Here in the Mijnssen home, Ivo's singing "American the Beautiful" , while I'm moaning the tune to "American Pie".
Montag, 15. August 2011
Lame meditation on Love
Today at my UU church, the man in front of me turned to make sure that he was not in my way. (He stands 7 foot tall). The fella behind me complemented the lady behind me on her necklace. The woman in front of me smiled when she recognized me from the food pantry and then the interim minister preached about our covenant. He's new here and wanted to discuss the phrase: "Love is the spirit of this church and service is its prayer", which is what we say at the beginning of every Sunday.
The minister is engaging enough, but my mind started to wander. I started to think about love. My mind quickly flitted over the first boy I ever said "I love you" to. He was of no real consequence. My siblings called him "hair-band" and I didn't really love him, as much as the new role that he gave me as someone's girlfriend. In my family, we tell one another we love each other each time that we speak and it never seems to dillute the strength of the phrase. But my sister warned me about saying it to just anyone, specifically to hair-band, as he might get the wrong idea.
My thoughts on love quickly turned to a man who sits on the corner of Clay and Battery streets. The first time I passed him on the way to get coffee, I thought that I'd misheard him when he said "I love you", but he'd said it so genuinely that I knew what I'd heard. Thereafter, I would see him and he would say "I love you" and I would mumble some sort of thing like "aaaww". He never asked for anything and I was always on my way somewhere and he would say "I love you" and I would smile.
One day, on a different street corner, I saw that man coming out of the pharmacy that I was headed to. He staggered a moment and I felt scared for him. After all, he loves me.
I began to think about that man, and the churches covenant and I began to think of "I love you" as another way of saying "I see you". Having love in one's heart and showing it to strangers and friends means that one truly sees them and hears them, I suppose. So, thanks to that mind-wander, I know now what I can say, to that man who offers me a heart-felt "I love you" many mornings. I needn't be embarasssed or think it insincere. I can answer "I see you too."
The minister is engaging enough, but my mind started to wander. I started to think about love. My mind quickly flitted over the first boy I ever said "I love you" to. He was of no real consequence. My siblings called him "hair-band" and I didn't really love him, as much as the new role that he gave me as someone's girlfriend. In my family, we tell one another we love each other each time that we speak and it never seems to dillute the strength of the phrase. But my sister warned me about saying it to just anyone, specifically to hair-band, as he might get the wrong idea.
My thoughts on love quickly turned to a man who sits on the corner of Clay and Battery streets. The first time I passed him on the way to get coffee, I thought that I'd misheard him when he said "I love you", but he'd said it so genuinely that I knew what I'd heard. Thereafter, I would see him and he would say "I love you" and I would mumble some sort of thing like "aaaww". He never asked for anything and I was always on my way somewhere and he would say "I love you" and I would smile.
One day, on a different street corner, I saw that man coming out of the pharmacy that I was headed to. He staggered a moment and I felt scared for him. After all, he loves me.
I began to think about that man, and the churches covenant and I began to think of "I love you" as another way of saying "I see you". Having love in one's heart and showing it to strangers and friends means that one truly sees them and hears them, I suppose. So, thanks to that mind-wander, I know now what I can say, to that man who offers me a heart-felt "I love you" many mornings. I needn't be embarasssed or think it insincere. I can answer "I see you too."
Montag, 1. August 2011
_____ weather for a _______ holiday
My mother is coming for a visit and I'm excited and nervous. We have all manner of things planned and we've had practise showing off our city. One things that we still seem unable to do is helping visitors know what or how to pack. I told Olivia to expect gray, fog and cold temperatures and then we had an unexpected warm, sunny week.
With Jonas and Oli, so went the gorgeous weather. It's been cold and foggy, with a few hours of afternoon sun in the afternoons, but here comes August. "July gloom" should soon ebb away. This does not mean that we will be any better at working out how to dress for the day. We've got to wear our light layers and inevitably wind up over- or under-dressed.
Tomorrow is first of August, the swiss national holiday. As will recurrently be the case in my life, I'll be in another country while family is joining together and celebrating some tradition or other....
With Jonas and Oli, so went the gorgeous weather. It's been cold and foggy, with a few hours of afternoon sun in the afternoons, but here comes August. "July gloom" should soon ebb away. This does not mean that we will be any better at working out how to dress for the day. We've got to wear our light layers and inevitably wind up over- or under-dressed.
Tomorrow is first of August, the swiss national holiday. As will recurrently be the case in my life, I'll be in another country while family is joining together and celebrating some tradition or other....
Donnerstag, 14. Juli 2011
Warning: lame ahead!
Our adoption case-worker recommends finding little things to look forward to. Things that have nothing to do with adoption. It's good advice and makes sense and the year we've been having in the States has provided plenty of those. Some are silly adventures, like Rt 66 and sky-diving. Some are meaningful things, like the birth of our nephew this week in Aarau and the coming birth of our niece or nephew in Boston. We are reminded that waiting to adopt is a part of us, but not all of us.
I'm finding that I have a child-like response to these exciting adventure things: a proverbial grabby hand of "ok, that happened, now I want what we're really waiting for." Luckily, the meaningful things are so worth waiting for and I can't wait to meet Luan and my future niece or nephew.
One of the more frivolous waits have been in anticipation of Harry Potter. As lame as that is, lamer still is that I'm gonna blog about it.
When Harry Potter began....well I have no idea when the first Harry Potter book was released because I was utterly disinterested. By the time I was forced to read it for an assignment in my "Literature of Imagination and Fantasy" course, it already had a cult following. Up 'till then I thought, "I like that kids are psyched to read, but this fandom is a bit crazy."
I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but I read the first Harry Potter in the autumn of 2001. I include this information because, while the media was full of "witch-hunts" and terror, I was reading about "death-eaters" and a man who must not be named (meanwhile, the media's main villan could not be named often enough.) I enjoyed the fantasy and the idea of magic in the book, as I was entering my twenties and nostalgic for my childhood.
I may well have left the series unread, save the first volume, had I not been stranded in West Warwick. I was house-sitting an car-sitting and the car had to go into the shop and the weather was awful. In an attempt to keep myself entertained, I nabbed the 2nd Harry Potter book from one of the younger resient's rooms and read it completely. Those three days house-sitting, I devoured books 2 and 3, Neverending story-style: barely remembering to eat and sleep. I was hooked.
I don't remember the circumstances surrounding Books 4 or 5, but I do know that I waited in line for book 6 at midnight. It was an on-campus bookstore and I was terrified of being spotted by an undergrad. I was TAing a class about Myth and was sure that I'd meet one of the students in costume. I didn't. I also didn't get my book, as the bookshop closed their doors and said to come back next day. But I couldn't come back! In 3 hours I was meant to be en route to New York in order to fly to Zürich for a month. What could I do?! Luckily, JFK had a stand just opposite the entrance just selling Harry Potter and the half Blood Prince books and I bought one and began to devour it straight away. Best international flight ever. (Despite the polish man next to me getting drunk and spilling red wine on my jeans.
While I was in New York and pleased as can be, my brother was in London chapperoning a teenaged theater group. These teens insisted on waiting on line at midnight at the bookstore for Harry Potter. While I'd been ducking my head to avoid being spotted, he had to shield his nubile charges from pub-destined Londoners who will assume that any "queue" at that hour is for a club.
Book 7 was released on July 21st 2007 and the only reason that I have that memorised is that it is my wedding date. At said wedding, both my mother and father told me separately "you know it's quite a compliment that so many people are here..."(I'd imagined that they meant the distances people traveled to celebrate our union) ".....and not holed-up somewhere reading book 7!"
I'm excited for the film and even though I'll go see it with a fella who's never read any of the books, he can be counted on to see the films and enjoy himself.
(Afterwards, I imagine that I will feel satisfied and happy - - that is until I put out my hand, wanting what I'm truly waiting for.)
I'm finding that I have a child-like response to these exciting adventure things: a proverbial grabby hand of "ok, that happened, now I want what we're really waiting for." Luckily, the meaningful things are so worth waiting for and I can't wait to meet Luan and my future niece or nephew.
One of the more frivolous waits have been in anticipation of Harry Potter. As lame as that is, lamer still is that I'm gonna blog about it.
When Harry Potter began....well I have no idea when the first Harry Potter book was released because I was utterly disinterested. By the time I was forced to read it for an assignment in my "Literature of Imagination and Fantasy" course, it already had a cult following. Up 'till then I thought, "I like that kids are psyched to read, but this fandom is a bit crazy."
I don't mean to be overly dramatic, but I read the first Harry Potter in the autumn of 2001. I include this information because, while the media was full of "witch-hunts" and terror, I was reading about "death-eaters" and a man who must not be named (meanwhile, the media's main villan could not be named often enough.) I enjoyed the fantasy and the idea of magic in the book, as I was entering my twenties and nostalgic for my childhood.
I may well have left the series unread, save the first volume, had I not been stranded in West Warwick. I was house-sitting an car-sitting and the car had to go into the shop and the weather was awful. In an attempt to keep myself entertained, I nabbed the 2nd Harry Potter book from one of the younger resient's rooms and read it completely. Those three days house-sitting, I devoured books 2 and 3, Neverending story-style: barely remembering to eat and sleep. I was hooked.
I don't remember the circumstances surrounding Books 4 or 5, but I do know that I waited in line for book 6 at midnight. It was an on-campus bookstore and I was terrified of being spotted by an undergrad. I was TAing a class about Myth and was sure that I'd meet one of the students in costume. I didn't. I also didn't get my book, as the bookshop closed their doors and said to come back next day. But I couldn't come back! In 3 hours I was meant to be en route to New York in order to fly to Zürich for a month. What could I do?! Luckily, JFK had a stand just opposite the entrance just selling Harry Potter and the half Blood Prince books and I bought one and began to devour it straight away. Best international flight ever. (Despite the polish man next to me getting drunk and spilling red wine on my jeans.
While I was in New York and pleased as can be, my brother was in London chapperoning a teenaged theater group. These teens insisted on waiting on line at midnight at the bookstore for Harry Potter. While I'd been ducking my head to avoid being spotted, he had to shield his nubile charges from pub-destined Londoners who will assume that any "queue" at that hour is for a club.
Book 7 was released on July 21st 2007 and the only reason that I have that memorised is that it is my wedding date. At said wedding, both my mother and father told me separately "you know it's quite a compliment that so many people are here..."(I'd imagined that they meant the distances people traveled to celebrate our union) ".....and not holed-up somewhere reading book 7!"
I'm excited for the film and even though I'll go see it with a fella who's never read any of the books, he can be counted on to see the films and enjoy himself.
(Afterwards, I imagine that I will feel satisfied and happy - - that is until I put out my hand, wanting what I'm truly waiting for.)
Freitag, 24. Juni 2011
Back in SFCA
Our arrival in San Francisco just about coincided with the re-opening of the California St. Cable Car line. This means that one of my favorite schadenfreude occupations is gone. As this cable car is my route home from my super market, I rode the temporary shuttle often. Nearly every time I rode it, a gaggle of excited tourists would be waiting at a shuttle stop and stare askance at the ugly grey electric bus that approached the cable-car sign and opened it's doors. They would hesitate and then the driver (who often seemed less than pleased to be driving the bus instead of the cable car - - except when it was raining) would ask "You waiting for the cable car?" The tourists would nod excitedly, clutching their maps and travel guides. "You're gonna be waiting a long time! Haw! Haw! You'll be waitin' 'till June! Haw! Haw!" I would chuckle as well. Poor folks. What are they doing in that neighborhood if not for the thrill of riding that fabled San Francisco treat *ding ding*?
Now that I'm back, it's Pride month, it's summer time and apparently, the active cable car has not put an end to encountering the pain of visitors. The number of people chugging up Nob Hill has increased at least 3 fold and so now, whenever I head east from my apartment or arrive from the west, I encouter winded tourists. They reach the corner, almost, but not quite done with the blasted hill (the last street is the real killer). Often there are sharp words. One family member pants and then expreses their hatred of this idea in whatever their native language is. Poor sods.
I've just been touristing all over, so I don't feel bad smiling at these peoples frustration. It's a smile and chuckle of kinship. "Been there, brother." I think. I don't merely mean the trip we were just on where I pronounced things in a way that was comical to locals, or where I had to learn the value systems for certain types of etiquette. I mean that I have literally been there, on that corner of Pine and Powell, looked uphill, cussed under my breath, turned to my partner and said "naja, warum haben wir die Strasse gewählt?!?!?!"
Now we feel more or less at home here. Just in time to make preparations to leave. But before we do, we will wring this town of all the fun it offers. We'll enjoy it's parks, jump out of it's planes, see it's free movies in the parks, see it's fireworks, bathe at it's beaches, celebrate it's uniqueness.
Until then, I will unembarassedly continue my habit of cheering people as they climb the hill "Almost there! You've almost made it! Not much further now!!"
Now that I'm back, it's Pride month, it's summer time and apparently, the active cable car has not put an end to encountering the pain of visitors. The number of people chugging up Nob Hill has increased at least 3 fold and so now, whenever I head east from my apartment or arrive from the west, I encouter winded tourists. They reach the corner, almost, but not quite done with the blasted hill (the last street is the real killer). Often there are sharp words. One family member pants and then expreses their hatred of this idea in whatever their native language is. Poor sods.
I've just been touristing all over, so I don't feel bad smiling at these peoples frustration. It's a smile and chuckle of kinship. "Been there, brother." I think. I don't merely mean the trip we were just on where I pronounced things in a way that was comical to locals, or where I had to learn the value systems for certain types of etiquette. I mean that I have literally been there, on that corner of Pine and Powell, looked uphill, cussed under my breath, turned to my partner and said "naja, warum haben wir die Strasse gewählt?!?!?!"
Now we feel more or less at home here. Just in time to make preparations to leave. But before we do, we will wring this town of all the fun it offers. We'll enjoy it's parks, jump out of it's planes, see it's free movies in the parks, see it's fireworks, bathe at it's beaches, celebrate it's uniqueness.
Until then, I will unembarassedly continue my habit of cheering people as they climb the hill "Almost there! You've almost made it! Not much further now!!"
Freitag, 17. Juni 2011
The journey is the destina--blah blah blah
Wednesday June 1st we started our trip. We disagreed about how to get to the car rental agency, we got stuck on one-way streets and I zoomed past the first Rt 66 land-marks before Ivo could photograph them. It was noon and Chicagoans seemed serious about getting to lunch.
Today, June 16th, we ended our trip. we disagreed about how to get to the Santa Monica Pier, I zoomed along the harbor before Ivo could enjoy any sense of ceremony and we crawled along LA noon-day traffic, not basking in the glow of the trip but herrumphing about how it ended. The glow came later when traffic thinned and we approached LAX and before-hand as we had crawled through traffic from San Bernadino to LA all morning long.
Beginning and ending aside, our first road-trip has been a bit of a success, I think. Over the next few weeks we'll organize notes, do some more research and get to remember the good bits. Some parts will benefit the cyclists who might read a guide book: the big blue whale in Catoosa, the cute little unexpected sandwich shop in that town in North West Oklahoma, the crazy old guys who talk for an age about old stuff. Some parts will benefit our future selves and our future child: the emotional roller-coaster of our first screening call, the amount of compromise and communication required in getting across the country, the readiness for adventure together.
So now I'm back in San Francisco and practising some of the things I learned from the trip: the importance of relxation, the importance of hydration, the importance of not taking non-fried non-carnivorous food for granted and the importance of not taking Ivo's presence for granted.
Today, June 16th, we ended our trip. we disagreed about how to get to the Santa Monica Pier, I zoomed along the harbor before Ivo could enjoy any sense of ceremony and we crawled along LA noon-day traffic, not basking in the glow of the trip but herrumphing about how it ended. The glow came later when traffic thinned and we approached LAX and before-hand as we had crawled through traffic from San Bernadino to LA all morning long.
Beginning and ending aside, our first road-trip has been a bit of a success, I think. Over the next few weeks we'll organize notes, do some more research and get to remember the good bits. Some parts will benefit the cyclists who might read a guide book: the big blue whale in Catoosa, the cute little unexpected sandwich shop in that town in North West Oklahoma, the crazy old guys who talk for an age about old stuff. Some parts will benefit our future selves and our future child: the emotional roller-coaster of our first screening call, the amount of compromise and communication required in getting across the country, the readiness for adventure together.
So now I'm back in San Francisco and practising some of the things I learned from the trip: the importance of relxation, the importance of hydration, the importance of not taking non-fried non-carnivorous food for granted and the importance of not taking Ivo's presence for granted.
Abonnieren
Posts (Atom)