happy birthday, old girl!

you wouldn't know it to look at her, but miss iz is 7 years old today... well, yesterday to be precise, but she is being very gracious about my having forgotten her birthday. i'm taking advantage of the fact that she has a brain the size of a peanut to shrug-off my inclination to buy her a birthday present. i have a feeling that when i have a kid who turns 7-years-old, i won't be able to get off as easily.
**
most of the time my job is relatively boring. it's nothing like my brief stint as a theatre manager when there was usually at least one good story per day... the woman who wrote to us to get reimbursed for her tickets to the 1982 production of 42nd Street she missed (this was 2002)... the lady who was nearly thrown out of the theatre because she refused to keep her shopping bag in her lap (this was shortly after 9/11, and we had a strict "no bags in the aisles policy")... ah, and who can forget the ushers having oral sex between the blackout doors during a performance?

then again, there's something to be said for boring. since i left, i've never gotten a call at 10:30 on a saturday evening informing me that the sewage pump has backed-up into the backstage area... in the middle of a performance, and can i come by to see what can be done about it. (you can imagine the joy of the 60 tap-dancers who had to shuffle through poo just to get to the stage... they were sure happy to see me.) ah... the good old days.

i have to admit it...

i think i'm falling for barack obama. i've been resistant, seeing how crowds of college-age youngsters follow his every word. even my level-headed office-mate went from cheering on john edwards to plastering herself with "obama" stickers and standing out on cold, new york street corners on super tuesday. i was on guard. i don't want to be a fanatic. i like to keep my options open, but hillary clinton is starting to look more and more like a sore loser instead of a graceful politician. i wish i were on her staff... i wish i could tell her to grow-up and face this race like the practiced lawyer you are. but i can't, so i'm stuck watching her campaign crash and burn. i'm a little sad... i feel like i've been let down, not because i was ever a big hillary supporter, but because i thought, if anything, she would go out like a pro... our first serious female candidate... instead she's a poster-child for why people don't think women can handle the pressures of the office. she's letting obama get under her skin, and she's having a hard time hiding it. i know it must be tough watching a younger, smoother-talking politician muscle into the nomination you've been working towards for the last sixteen years. but if anyone should know the fickle, shallow nature of politics, its senator clinton. her husband was the smoothest, most amiable president since jfk (spoken like a true gen-y-er who can even remember reagan's campaign let alone carter's). unfortunately, you can't learn charisma in school... or in the senate for that matter. and just because you are qualified doesn't mean they'll vote for you.

that said, if by some stroke of luck, clinton wins the nomination, i will be out there in the streets with my clinton stickers, harassing passers-by. and if neither of them win, i'm voting for this guy. i could always use a little good luck!

waking up is hard to do

i'm the first one to admit that i'm lazy. i love sleep, and sunday nights are generally dedicated to the cause of getting to bed early. for some reason, last night, i flouted my own rules. there was an oscar party out in red hook, and i couldn't help but attend... despite the knowledge that the oscars never end before 11:30pm et. so here i am, monday morning, utilizing every ounce of self-restraint to keep my eyes open and my head off of my desk. this doesn't leave much cognitive-control left to actually accomplish any work, but it does at least allow for the appearance of industriousness.

this morning i woke up to this. i guess "nurse with wound" came after "carol king" on my ipod. i don't know, but i was convinced that i had been transported onto the scene of a car crash where roland -- the adorable, psycho kitty from the party the night before -- was hissing his disapproval. i generally like nurse with wound, but waking up to this particular song was the audio equivalent to a bucket of ice-water.

so, as you can see, i finally uploaded my colorado photos. i don't love the exposure on these, but at least you can see how pretty and snowy it was...

babysitting, part 2

so, my brother, his wife, and lmsp have come to nyc for a visit. lmsp seems to just get cuter by the day. she's still a wiggly, giggly little thing, but now she can speak. she says "hat," "ball," "up," "out," "mama," "dada," and "amah." you know what that last one is? me! she apparently repeats my name over and over again when i'm not around, hoping i'll climb out of the cabinet i must be hiding in. it's pretty spectacular to be a kid's first name after mama and dada. it's a bittersweet victory for me, knowing that it should have been "gamma." as i lay next to her, rubbing her back as she tried to fall asleep, wiggling her little tush as she settled into place, i couldn't help but think of how my mom should be there in my place, snuggling and shushing lmsp into dreamland.

being in that apartment... laying on the couch she so often napped on, drinking from the cups she always set out at dinner, seeing her handwriting on little notes jotted down on her "bird lover" stationery... feels like walking around in a haunted place. the ghost of my mom is everywhere there... even in lmsp's gigantic, life-loving smile. there's a pang every time i see something of hers... sometimes it's a big pang that catches my breath in my throat. others, it's just a little poke at the bruise on my heart. with lmsp, it tends toward the latter... it's just hard to get caught up in my own grief when she is shuffling around in my over-sized shoes with my mom's basket-weave purse dangling between her feet and a big, goofy grin spread across her face.

frustration

i have yet to load my colorado pictures onto the computer, so i apologize that you'll have to wait for photos of the thriving metropolis of minturn, co.

in the meantime, i thought i'd express my frustration with what strikes me as a very ignorant, sexist campaign against hillary clinton... not from the obama camp, or even the mccain camp... i think it comes from the same brilliant minds that refer to obama as "b. hussein obama." yesterday, as i went shopping for birthday cards in the conservative mecca of new york's upper west side, i ran across several cards emblazoned with unflattering, grainy pictures of clinton remarking how disasterous it would be if she were president or with a tear photoshopped in to remark on how sad it is that you are growing older. best yet was the clinton nutcracker... "is america ready for this nutcracker?" wow, what a jab. are men really this frightened of a powerful woman? i'm not saying that she's the best person for the job, but come on, we can do better than novelty gags, can't we? look who we have in the white house now:



no matter what you say about hillary, it's hard to be more comical than that.

eco-travel

so, you may have gathered that i travel a lot. this is not because i am a jet-setting kind of woman... since most of the trips are back and forth between houston and new york, but it seems too be the nature of my life. after the guilt of playing the eco-game i mentioned back in november, i decided to pay the $7.32 it cost me to off-set my plane travel to vail this weekend. given the price of airline tickets, $7.32 seems like a small price to pay to ease my eco-guilt.

week 3

so, i am now three weeks into my photography class, so i should have something to show for it. here are a few products of my most recent homework assignment... i wanted to do arty photos of people on the streets of new york, but i found that being limited to a 50mm lens and manual shutter/ aperture/ focus makes for pretty painful portraits. no one has the twenty minutes to wait while i adjust everything "just so" while still looking natural and not pissed-off at the stranger trying to take their picture. hopefully, as i improve my technique, i can start including surreptitious shots of people passing by. i'm a little cowed by the fact that one of my classmates had a homeless woman threaten her life for taking a picture of her -- in rockefeller center, no less.



one guess as to where i was last weekend...

i'm a sap

i love this little video... happy year of the rat!

and if you're uncommitted...

you might find this little tool handy

huh?

really? somehow getting further into debt is better for our domestic security and our economic position? wow, now i didn't take economics 101, so maybe this is right... but i fail to understand how owing china and saudi arabia more money makes the american economy better. unless by "better" they mean "worse." any closet economists? i'd love to learn if there is data to support this conclusion...


this weekend i discovered a new bird store in my neighborhood. this is a dangerous thing. i have fantasized about getting another bird since... oh... the month after i brought izzy home. i don't know why... one bird seems to make enough mess and cause enough aggravation. i'm sure there are better, less destructive, more cuddly pets out there, but these feathery, gawky-looking animals always tug at my heartstrings. these two were rolling around in their paper prior to my bringing out the camera (isn't that the way it always happens?)... so cute.

don't forget to vote on tuesday (or whenever your state holds its primary)... we democrats are getting a pretty exciting race this year. have you picked your favorite yet? if so, i'd love to know...

cramming

i start my photography class tonight... i'm pretty excited, but i'm also a bit nervous... going into a classroom situation where i don't really know what i'm doing or what kind of people will be there. are they all going to be art snobs or talented photographers? or west village moms who need something to do? i don't know. in the meantime, i am sneaking peeks at my camera manual under my keyboard because i was supposed to have read it before the first class.

grrr...

there's something about sheryl crow complaining that "people feel like music should be free, that the work [she does] is not valued." huh? later talking about touring around with her 8 month old son and her two yellow labs. yes, sheryl, life is very tough for you. no one values your work... they just pay for your fancy tour bus and your farm in nashville. i'm sorry, but mix tapes have been around as long as i've been alive. people have shared the music they love with friends and family for as long as there has been a tape recorder*... and most people, if they really like an album still go out to buy it. some even pay hundreds of dollars to sit in nosebleed seats to listen to you and your musical cronies in concert. yes, the music industry is on the verge of demise. i think of her in her luxurious farmhouse, and then i think of the people who flip burgers at micky d's or traverse dangerous new york city streets on their bikes to deliver food to people like me making maybe $7 an hour... yes, it's the musicians who are suffering.

anyway... sorry for the randomness. i was actually going to write something about obama and the fact that he's irritating me... what with the not answering questions in any kind of strightforward way. why can't politicians just be themselves for a minute? i would have been much more impressed if he said, "yes, i complimented reagan on his methods... not his policies" rather than saying, "no, i wasn't really complimenting him... i was just saying that he was able to cross party lines and get the opposing party to vote against their entrenched interests -- the way that we should learn to do as democrats." um, that's a compliment.

* i realize that internet music sharing goes well beyond the the mix tapes of my youth, but i still think that plenty of people buy cds and mp3s... and ridiculously expensive concert tickets!

new idea

so, i may or may not have mentioned that i'm starting a photography class next week. hopefully it will be one small step toward a new career. we'll see... with this in mind, i've decided that i might switch up my blog a bit. i think it would be fun to start blogging my photographs as a way of telling the oh-so-exciting story of my day-to-day life. i'm hoping in the process it will help encourage me to take my camera with me more often and maybe, just maybe, help me become a better photographer. i just went by b&h yesterday to get a new lens for class, and now i know that a 1.4f = large aperture = good dim light shots. see, i'm learning already.

new experiences

so, i spent the weekend in houston. i had two experiences i never thought i would:

1) having a child and a dog watch me pee.

2) waiting up for my dad to come home.

i had forgotten that when you babysit a small child, you can't just close the door when you go to the bathroom lest they get into certain dangerous mischief in the two minutes it takes for you to do your business. i also hadn't accounted for the curiosity of certain canine and human residents at my brother's house... it was very awkward to say the least.

i also didn't realize that now that my dad is single i would worry about him coming home late at night from dinner out with a friend. as the clock ticked past 3am and i couldn't reach him on his cell phone, i found myself pacing back and forth wondering if i should call the police. i think he finally paid me back for the few late nights i kept him waiting up for me in college. (and, yes, he's fine... i found that out only after waking mil up at 4am new york time to express my panic.)

the highlight of the weekend, however, was hearing my name uttered by lmsp. pretty friggin' cute.

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primary season

since i pretty much dropped off the face of the earth as the nominees started ramping up toward the primaries, i feel a little behind the game. i haven't actually even picked a candidate. i like different candidates for different reasons... i like obama because i think he's pretty electable (barring any major gaffes between now and november... which is always possible) -- in the sense that he is charismatic and intelligent and doesn't have a long history of partisan politics... though he is most definitely liberal. i like clinton because she's smart and seems to know the politics game backwards and forwards (then again this is also what i don't like about her). part of me wants to support her just because she's a female candidate, and she's getting sh*t for things a male candidate would never have to deal with. a male hillary would probably have half the hurdles she has... but they might also be half as interesting... this is where we come to edwards. edwards is cute... he seems pretty smart and charismatic, but there's no there there. i feel like he could get the independent voters that perhaps hillary could not (perhaps just because he's male and has a good smile, and he hasn't been in the limelight as long), but i don't know that he could get enough people excited about voting for him. i'd worry that he'd wilt under a strong republican campaign...

when i don't think about november, i actually think that hillary would be the best president. she knows the scene, and i think she would know how to get things done. i think her goals are in line with moderate liberals -- health care, education, getting out of iraq with as little fallout as possible. sometimes i wonder if she'll get us in deeper in iraq and iran, but i think her pro-war vote was more a political maneuver than a representation of deeply held position for war. i think she's the smartest and most prepared of all of the candidates, but then i think about november. i worry that middle of america independents won't be won over to her side... either for personal (she stuck with bill after the whole monica business... wtf?) or political (um... whitewater) reasons. what are you guys thinking??

if you aren't already reading obsidian wings, i highly recommend checking it out...

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why i love new york

this happened in my neighborhood. nuts!

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new digs

so it seems mil and i might have found new digs... there are still some hurdles between us and our new place, but we're getting excited nonetheless. the biggest shocker -- to you and to us -- is that it's not in brooklyn. its a mere 11 blocks from our current abode... 11 blocks further from brooklyn, in fact. mil seems to be entranced enough by the second bedroom and the washer/dryer to ignore this rather glaring flaw. the walk-in closet might have helped as well. i, of course, will then be 11 blocks closer to work, so it doesn't work out too bad for me either. i will keep you apprised of the situation as it moves along, but long-distance friends will hopefully have a room of your own to stay in when you visit. yay!

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a bit of magic

this morning as i was riding the subway to work, "invisible ink" by aimee mann started playing on my i pod. i don't know what it was about the song, but i started to think about how much i wanted to call my mom. thinking about the sound of her voice, i started to tear up as i walked up the steps behind earl hall. i felt so empty, i just wanted her back. i thought to myself how nice it would be to see a hawk on campus today. i only saw a hawk once before on campus, but i thought if my mom had an emissary on this physical plane it would be a red-tailed hawk... after a few glances at the empty branches of nearby trees and the blue-gray sky, i finally saw one... just sitting quietly on an upper branch of an oak tree several yards away. i stopped to sit down on a cold, cement bench, overwhelmed by my emotions, and the hawk flew down to a lower branch closer to the path. as i walked by her, i was maybe five feet from where she sat, glancing at me briefly before returning her gaze to the squirrels scurrying beneath her, ultimately chasing one down a grassy knoll alongside low library.

i've was never raised to believe in a biblical heaven, but i've also never really doubted the existence of some kind of "life" beyond the physical one we experience with our five senses. little events like this one make me almost sure that our consciousness lives on in some non-physical way. sometimes it's comforting... knowing that my mom is still there... somewhere... other times it just reminds me of how much i miss my physical mom... the sound of her voice... the feel of her cheek next to mine. other than this morning, i've been feeling a little better since coming back to new york after the holidays. the pain is a little less constant. maybe it's just having the holidays over and done with. maybe it's a little didstance... maybe it's guitar hero... i'll take it though.

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camp

as you may have guessed from the title of this blog, i have a bit of a nostalgic streak. while my adulthood (up till now) has been relatively happy and worry-free, there's a certain care-free self-comfort i had as a child that i haven't quite been able to reclaim since adolescence reared its ugly head. not surprisingly, my mom's death has made me all the more nostalgic for the early days, long, long ago in the before time, when i thought my mom would live to one hundred and two, and all the world was a stage (or at least my driveway, the garage, the foyer, my neighbors backyard...) on which i was to entertain the masses.

for some reason -- perhaps it was the discovery of my 1986 camp olympia yearbook as i cleaned out my closet last weekend -- i've been especially fond of my camp memories. i went to camp o (as we used to call it) for 9 years... starting out as a wee 8-year old in shorty-shorts and ending as a pimply 16-year old with my oversize t-shirt tucked in only at the front. i had many a camp crush (one ending in my first bumped-nose kiss) and a few camp quarrels. i remember planning a skit for the talent show and designing a booth for "carnival." the notes i wrote home were often short -- a list of the things i'd done that day, a request for deodorant at 9 (because my armpits were apparently stinky), the declaration of the name of my new pound-puppy "melinda."

i also recall the anticipation of the end of the three weeks, when i would pack all my clothes and camp momentos back into my trunk. we'd wait on the tennis courts, trying to occupy ourselves with a game or activity, as we nervously looked for our parents amongst the throngs of "old" people flocking the camp grounds. i was always so eager to see my parents after three weeks away. eager to show them the tschotsckes i'd made in arts and crafts and the bunk where i spent my nights. i had had my fun, but now i wanted a hug from my mom and a kiss on the nose from my dad... to be home. it's now three weeks since my mom died. i feel like i should be seeing her again... i feel like if i just go back to camp and wait on those tennis courts, she will come back for me with a big smile and a warm hug. she always did before.

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m.i.a.

i'm sorry that i've been missing in action. unfortunately, it has been for a very sad reason. my mom passed away last week. i left new york to be with her in mid-November when she was in the hospital getting her feeding tube. unfortunately, the feeding tube was only the beginning of her worries. the feeding tube never worked, and many other things started to go wrong. it turns out that there were many tiny, sub-radiographic tumors surrounding her organs causing strictures throughout her bowels and fluid build-up in her abdomen. she ultimately died of a cerebral hemorrhage... quickly and relatively painlessly, but long before any of us ever wanted to see her go. she was a treasure of a person. looking back, i'm not so sure she wasn't an angel. she loved every minute of every day and took pleasure in other people's accomplishments. she was never thoughtless or petty... just warm, caring, and joyful. i honestly can't think of a mean or selfish thing that she ever did or said... i'm sure there were a few times she had been pushed past her limit, but they were so rare and inconsequential, i can't bring them to mind. i hope that everyone has someone in her life who loves her as fully and unconditionally as my mom loved me.

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