Reach out and touch…

I spend a bit of time commuting so that’s often when spontaneous rumination occurs. Yesterday on the way to work the topic of my last post started banging around in my head and I think I’ve identified at least part of my problem.

Like kids, I just want contact, to connect. I think it’s why I’m good with teaching kids of that spongy adolescent age, because I completely understand and empathize with that need for personal recognition and acceptance, or to put it succinctly, touch. Whether it’s mental touch or physical touch matters not, there just must be touch. I think we forget that feeling as we grow older. It’s why we reflexively gasp when we hear about boys being allegedly molested and sexually assaulted and wonder how in the hell did it happen, why couldn’t the kid just run? It’s because you don’t remember what it was like to have someone-anyone-see you, really see you and touch you. And by the time the kid realizes that it’s the wrong kind of touch, it’s too late. But that’s a tangent, please excuse me.

I want friends like I had in college. I want to be able to spend hours with someone alternately shooting the shit and puzzling over the latest mind twist no matter the topic (I call for a resurrection of the salon, please. I’ll happily host the inaugural event). I want access to friends the way I am willing to give access. The same kind of access that one usually only grants family or personal assistants: 24/7, you just call out my name and I’ll be there. Damn if James and Carole didn’t have it right. Why am I considered weird or strange for wanting this? Why does this make others want to say to me ‘oh, grow the hell up, you’re not in college anymore’? Why does being a grown up mean you have to stop reaching out and learning?

Perception is everything

I am in an intensely introspective period at present. There is a great deal rattling around in my head these days and it would most likely help a bit to get some of it out.

As I was explaining to a good friend earlier today, I find myself mulling over perception, that is, specifically how I am perceived. Some may ask “why do you care what people think of you?” but from my vantage point, perception is a bit of a different beast and it is especially important in my professional world where in any case it actually does matter what people think of you. I explained to my friend that I am often perceived as intimidating, which he disavowed vehemently even as he admitted that we’d never actually worked in a professional setting together. I explained further.

You know how we are together, especially as fellow musicians? Rapid fire, always on, so much to say our mouths can barely keep up? Laughing, loud and randomly libertine? No holds barred, put everything on the table? Boundless energy trumped only by equally insatiable curiosity? “Ohhhh,” he says. “Right.” At my workplace, I’m an effusive talking thinker surrounded by introverted policy wonks and similarly situated academics. I am the person who will stop a room by simply asking “Well, why?” When asked the classic interview question “are you a big picture person or task oriented” I will respond that I can’t be task-oriented unless I know what the big picture is. I can’t satisfactorily put together a piece of a project unless I have the big picture inspiration for it. And that desire to know can apparently often manifest itself in such a way as to be intimidating. My friend agreed, saying that he could recall my fact finding mode as tinged with annoyance.

I pounced on this. Yes! That’s exactly what I’m talking about! The Man Unit even went so far as to describe it as “dripping with disdain for those less intelligent than you.” But when I’m in that moment, there is no disdain, there is no annoyance unless it is with myself for being in a place of ignorance. There is not one iota of my being when I’m learning that should be putting out that sort of negative feeling, so what is it? Is it an absence of self? Because I have the switch set to ‘off’, does that mean I am the Inquisition when I have stripped me of what makes me myself? This is where I struggle.

But my friend brought up another point of view that I had yet to consider or introduce to the matter: the point of race. Consider how black women function in the workplace, he posited. Consider how they are treated and…perceived. Consider what they have been forced to give up. I sat back and considered this. I don’t have any immediate role models of black women in business from my youth. My mother was mostly a SAHM, save for a few stints volunteering on military bases where we lived and time with the local United Way info hotline until they moved from the Rolodex to computers and she refused to learn to type. We didn’t live close enough to anyone else in the family who might have set useful examples, nor was I that familiar with the women at my parents’ church to learn. Funny, if I’d known how shark infested the uncharted waters I was about to navigate actually were, I’d probably have been terrified. Ah, the confidence of youth and ignorance.

I’m still no closer to figuring this out, how to serve myself to the world, but this adds a dimension that I need to mull at length. I do have a mentor at work, a black woman who happens to be the deputy of my division and I’m considering having this discussion with her. That will be somewhat difficult as her schedule is a nightmare and I also have been pulling back on the time I spend in other people’s faces running my mouth either about project development or the latest injustice visited upon my branch mates by our brilliant micromanaging supervisor with the marked lack of emotional intelligence. Mainly because I abhor being that person that people try to hide from when they see you coming because all you do is bitch. I try not to, I really try to see all sides of things, but when I pop my head into the deputy’s office only to say hello and she opens with an intense “How are things over there?’, it’s hard to hold back. I managed to keep my yap shut in an emergency meeting last month that I truncated an annual leave day to attend and by the end of the topic discussion, the division director stared at me and said “What are your thoughts? You’ve been unusually quiet.” Which I saw as something of a personal victory, even as it was somewhat bewildering to the tiny me inside that’s still 12 as in “someone smarter and more experienced than me actually wants to hear what I think about something?”

What does this all boil down to? In short, I want to develop a reputation where colleagues are delighted to work with me, not frightened or annoyed. How can get what I need and be productive/successful in collaborative professional non-music settings without sacrificing who I am? I suppose that I’ve gotten some of the hard work out of the way because I know who I am and what I want.

Ahead lies the path. Read more. Write more. Speak less.

I talk to myself

I was nominated to take part in leadership development training at my latest gig.  Apparently it’s the kind of class that you can only be nominated for, you can’t just sign up on your own.  I guess I should be proud or pleased, but I was nominated by my supervisor and my relationship and perception of her is an entirely separate post which may never happen.

So, it’s a three week course, spread out over three months. At the very beginning and then again at the end, we were treated to sessions led by the former dean of the program, a lifelong learner and leadership expert; basically a first-class professional thinker.  The man reference Latin roots of words so often that it was absolutely no surprise when he revealed that his bachelor’s was in Latin (which I actually said out loud). The good doctor took self-examination to a level heretofore unexplored by pretty much everyone in the class.  I think the responses to the in-class exercises he required of us ranged from my “no judgement ’til I’m sure” approach to “I did NOT come here for therapy” responses, and that was just in my group of five alone.

One of the writing assignment exercises he asked of us for the final week was to read a particular leadership book and then write a response according to the questions he put forth.  The book, which I shall not name here, was in my opinion mostly middle-aged white guy drivel.  I was not alone in my assessment of such and because I recognized the good doctor as the receptive thinker he was, I had no problem saying as much in class when he asked for our thoughts on the book.  Part of this story involves me sharing the essay, so here it is, in its entirety.

I admit that for much of my life, I have been something of a navel-gazer.  I have kept journals in which I apparently talk to myself since I was twelve years old.  When the author wrote about retreat attendees taking copious notes and entreating them to speak to themselves, I realized that I have been doing this for years.  I took a class required during my freshman or sophomore year in college called “Western Tradition”, basically a western civilization survey.  At this small, rural school, instead of the usual block of core courses, everyone in the entire year was required to take the same class divided into sections taught by nearly every professor with meetings of the entire class happening monthly.  I was assigned to one of the literature professors the first semester and he asked that we keep a journal in which to jot down thoughts, comments or questions that we might have as we plowed through our daily reading assignments.  He would then collect them weekly, peruse them, assess their content via written comments, then return them to us.  Other students agonized over this activity.  What to say?  How to say it?  How much to say?  Am I just taking notes on content or…?  But for me, as soon as I heard the words “keep a journal”, I was immediately drawn to it.    I kept those notebooks, and every time I rediscover them, I am thoroughly entertained and eternally grateful to my professor Dr. P for giving us the opportunity to tell him who we were and to show us ourselves.

As we progressed through each week, we began a dialogue.  I would ask questions about what I had read and then answer my own questions as I forged ahead in the text.  I would question the writing style of the text’s authors.  My entries were short and contained snippets of wit, sarcasm and curiosity, all delivered with an extraordinary amount of chutzpah for teenager.  And he encouraged me in his notes.  From the very first page: “Okay, you’ve the general idea-speculate on your own a little.  You are perceptive and read critically.”  I think I may have been the only student losing my mind laughing as I read his comments upon the return of our journals each week, especially this entry:

Thursday 10-27 pp455-62: How’d the scientists of the time obtain corpses to study?  Without getting busted? Dr. P: nefariously. Sometimes they did them in the hospital where the deceased (w/out kin) had just passed away.  Otherwise, it was just anything they could dig up.

It was as if someone had invaded my mind and was happy with what he found there.

So I’ve never stopped.  Ceaselessly, I converse with myself and as I’ve aged, I try to listen with a more attuned ear than ever.  Even now, I only know a few things to be true about myself and what my purpose might be.  I strive to learn.  I can never know enough.  As long as I’m alive, I remain open to finding new balance in my life, beliefs and values.  In turn, I can’t deny that I have a strong affinity for sharing what I have learned with those around me if they believe that they might benefit from it.  A certain percentage of the time, I share in a traditional sense, answering questions, giving my opinion, etc.  But the rest of the time, I simply tell my stories by living.  There have been times when I have discovered that I shared a lesson with someone long after the actual contact we might have had, and that knowledge becomes a lesson to me as well.  Someone is always watching and usually, that someone is me.

So what season am I in currently?  I honestly didn’t know until I arrived at this point in the essay, but now?  I’d say early spring, definitely.  I’m fairly certain there are riots of renewal breathing faintly under the muck and wreck of the melting ice and snow.  I know from wrecking muck, having spent 6 years braving Michigan’s wilds.  But oh, when the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it delicate color arrived, it made the wait seem worth it.

Now, when I finished this in the wee hours, I knew exactly what I’d done.  I’d responded to the assignment to the letter, but I hadn’t really told him anything about myself, nothing truly personal.  And I’ll be damned if he didn’t call me on it.  To wit:

Thank you for your essay.  Self reflection is something you do on a regular basis through journaling.  I was intrigued by your last paragraph and wondered what are some of things you have learned from the experiences and questions you have asked yourself in your journal. You don’t share with the reader any part of your “story,”  except for your freshman college experience and the influence Professor P had on you.  Your “story” and how you frame and re-frame it is “who you are.”  To me, at least, leadership emerges out of people’s life stories.  That is where the purpose of our leadership and the passion with which we pursue that purpose comes from.  Is that true for you?

He engaged me in conversation about in class the next day and I confirmed that I had indeed attempted to evade capture, which he found mirthful.  I’ve been thinking on it for the past while since the class ended, ruminating that I don’t journal with anywhere near the frequency I once did, either privately or publicly and what I came up with was this: I don’t talk to myself anymore.  I’ve been journaling since I was 12; I still have my tiny diary from when I was 15. I transitioned from longhand to word processor in the mid- to late 90′s.  I have a box of class notebooks from undergrad and grad school that I can’t toss because almost without fail there will be pages with me talking to myself in them.

I think I need to start the conversation again.

Black unlike me

I don’t know quite how to explain this.  But I have to write something about it in my own stumbling way.

When I interviewed at my new place of employment, I noticed that every staff person I met save for two was of a brown persuasion.  The person I was being interviewed to replace was, too.  This factored into my decision of deciding to work here, and not in the way you might think.  It was actually a con versus a pro.  I’ve mentioned many times here how I’m way more comfortable in a diverse mix of folk or even a group of mostly pink people than I am an all brown crowd.  This is because when you have a crowd of garden variety black folk working together without pink folk around, they will let go and pretty much act the fool while running around and getting things done.

There’s a flat screen TV in the lobby that’s tuned to things like Divorce Court and other voyeur type programming in the afternoon.  There’s a bookshelf stereo system in a team’s common area that’s always playing an urban station and sometimes it’s BLARING, seriously.  I can hear conversations in other departments for miles.  But really, all of this is minor, really.  The thing that troubled me as I was deciding to come work here is the thing that I think is happening.

They’re starting to realize that I’m not really black.  Not black like them.  Today a director had an entire conversation with me that was nearly over before I even realized he was talking to me…because he never looked at me or even turned towards me.  Conversation volume in a room where folks are already gathered will drop noticeably upon my entrance.  I even asked the IT guy if I’d committed some sort of faux pas because I’d started to think so due to the lack of response to my getting-settled-in-as-a-n00b IT requests.  He assured me I had not.  Someone’s unanswered phone calls have been rolling over to my extension since I got here.  I asked twice, once to his face, another time via email.  No response whatsoever.  My computer is a flashback to 1998.  Remember how you could only have Outlook and one other program open otherwise you were courting a crash?  I’m running an Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz…currently I have 248 megs of RAM available.  IT guy knew this as he was getting me up and running and couldn’t understand why my predecessor hadn’t complained.  So I’m on the very long waiting list for a better system.  Not a new one.  A better one.  Because I was afraid to ask for a new one.  I saw a coordinator with a brand spanking new laptop on her desk yesterday.

Like I said, I don’t really have the words to explain it properly.  I just know I feel that familiar tightness in the back of my throat.  I don’t know if they sense my feelings about working here.  Without giving away too much, suffice to say that I have my reservations about how this organization on the whole is run and how that will eventually look on my resume.  Is that hesitancy/worry/concern coming off as…uppity?  Me thinking I’m better than they are?  That’s how I’ve been read in the past when that couldn’t have been further from the truth.  I don’t know.  And mind you, it doesn’t seem that everyone to a person is behaving this way, but when it starts all I want to do is go all pill bug, which in turn makes it a vicious catch-22.  The more I wall off, the worse relations get.

However, in this case it may not matter much longer.  Remember when I said in the last entry “I took the first and best offer I was given, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still shop.”?  I might have a purchase in my basket of the very best kind.

ramping down on the hunting and gathering

My many moons of unemployment has finally come to an end.  I figured that in the event it happens again (because you never know; a friend of mine was just laid off after a little over a year just like I was at my last Snake Pit gig), I should write a bit about what I did, what worked, what didn’t, etc., etc.

1. Never stop.  I mean, really, do you have a choice?  Because I had job search reporting requirements during the first quarters of my unemployment insurance, it was easier to stay focused and on track.  The state’s suggested minimum was something like “fill up a couple of these sheets with 15 fields a week” but really, I’m not the sort that just goes around throwing everything I’ve got against the wall to see what will stick, so my reports were closer to one sheet each time I had to show up for the required workshops.  I guess I’m in the clear as I haven’t been audited.  Which leads me to my next point…

2. Be selective.  With rejection after rejection, I did start to feel that perhaps I was being too picky.  I even thought about swallowing my pride and shooting for administrative assistant positions (obligatory “I do not diss AAs, after all I was one and damned good one, too, I just don’t think I could go back to it” statement goes here).  But after working for the Corporate Man for the past three years or so, I really didn’t want to go back to that if I could at all help it, especially salary-wise.  Once I did that, I came to the cheesy realization that doing work that mattered on some scale really did make a difference to me.  I was willing to take a pay cut to do it, just not for one that I couldn’t survive on.  Also be selective in the fact that you really need to pay attention to the base qualifications in a posting.  Do not waste yours or the mark’s time if you don’t meet MOST if not ALL of the minimum qualifications.  It’s icing on the cake and a nod in your favor if you can meet at least some of the preferred, but I am here to tell you that’s no guarantee either that you’ll make it past the screening for a preliminary interview.  We all know it’s tough out there and the waters are thick with perfect candidates.  We live in a world now where it makes my eyeballs pop and my jaw drop to see a search that’s been extended due to the employer being unable to find a candidate in the first go ’round.  Truth is from what I heard in one interview process I was a part of, it’s generally because for some reason, the original winner didn’t work out.  In brief: if you’re not qualified or insanely over-qualified, don’t do it.

3. This one is for the employers.  Do you remember that part in MIB where the cohort of interviewees are testing to get in?  The scene where they’re given pencils and paper applications and told to sit in egg-round chairs to fill them out?  And Will Smith’s character drags a table over?  STOP FORKING MAKING US DO THAT FOR GOD’S SAKE.  I think this needles me most because I had to do it like twice in as many weeks very recently.  I showed up on time for my interviews and then I spent the first 20-30 minutes filling out a damned application whilst stuck in a chair with a clipboard (maybe) in my lap.  Better prepared outfits will generally do the interview and then hand you the application packet to go home, complete in a neat, orderly and in-depth fashion then send it back to them ASAP.  The first time I had to do a bit of guessing because I didn’t have the complete specifics in front of me for my 10 year job history (i.e., starting salary, titles for old supervisors who weren’t on my reference list, etc.), but I had all that with me the second time.  And for heaven’s sake, if you have the form in an electronic format, DO NOT PRINT IT OUT AND MAKE ME FILL IT OUT BY HAND.  I have pretty much the world’s worst handwriting and it’s gotten progressively worse over the years since I actually write less and less.   Another one that took the cake?  A Wonderlic test during a cattle call interview after we’d all sat around scribbling madly on our application forms.  So it was a good 45 minutes at least before we even got anywhere near the hiring manager.  If you insist on making us do this up front, I beg of you to give us a proper place to do it.  Other than our laps.  Please.

4.  In these electronic days, there is no time to prepare your resume and cover letter a piacere.  Oftentimes job announcements will come down within hours of being posted because they’ve been bombarded with apps just that quickly.  So the time you used to take to have friends/colleagues peruse and proof your materials or to let it get cold for a couple of days to come back and look at it with fresher eyes is *poof* all gone.  Alas, every tiny detail still matters.  First thing I do is work from well-tailored cover letters that I’d written previously and re-tailor them for the posting at hand.  Second thing: the best proofreading tactic that’s worked for me is to read the letter aloud as if I’m presenting it a couple of times.  I have found all sorts of stupidity in my letters that I would have missed otherwise.  I just today found a mistake in an email I was preparing to send where I had substituted the word “Sciences” in the job title for “Services” in three different places.  But because I caught it in the email before I sent it by reading my body text aloud, I was able to fix it everywhere else.

5. Look good, although sometimes this can backfire.  I think it might have been one of the things that weeded me out of the process I talked about here because I just didn’t look the part.  Having been freshly sprung from the corporate world, I may have frightened the public services people off.  I put away Anne Kleins and went with tamer oxford mid-heel pumps because yes, even that level of detail matters because for me, shoes make the swagger and I might have been swaggering overmuch just a tad.  One time when I remembered to check the suit the night before I caught one of those stains that happens in the laundry room from dust or what have you on what was supposed to be my clean shirt.  People, there are reasons that job hunting pundits crank out those hundreds of articles of advice…there are actually pearls of wisdom in there.  That group interview I went to?  To a person, if I had been the hiring manager, I’d have rejected most of them out of hand.  This is what I saw: too-tight slacks, open toe pumps showing off a candy stripe pedicure, a tight sweater layered over an untucked novelty print tee and a sloppy weave.  A nice 3/4 black suit jacket over slouchy leggings and crocs.  An outfit and hairdo that would have been great for a country church deaconess but no good in the interview room.  A gray suit that was so oversize and with pants so long I wondered how they didn’t trip over it on the way in coupled with shoes that looked like they’d been run over several times and left outside in the elements for a week or six.  But you know what the funny thing is?  The hiring manager immediately picked me out as someone she couldn’t make an offer to because the salary was just that low.  And she was right.  It was.

5.  Even if they said no, I still made an impression.  I just hope it was a positive one, because I’m not stopping.  I’ve been doing this for over a year now and of course, just like when you start dating someone for real and all of a sudden formerly invisible hot prospects start coming out of the woodwork, my feed just lit up over the last couple of days with very viable opportunities.  Like one career site I read says: “…because EVERY job is temporary!”  I took the first and best offer I was given, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still shop.

::pushes cart down the aisle::

A story about pets

I lost my first pet at the age of 6. Buttons was our perky cockapoo, a mix of a standard poodle and a cocker spaniel.  I felt kin to her because she was like me, a bright, brown-eyed girl with soft curly black hair that grew so fast that you couldn’t see her eyes half the time.  My parents decided that it was too much trouble to move with her when my father retired from the military and moved South, so she was given away to a neighboring family, never to be seen or heard from again.  The next dog departed around the age of nine or 10, a rogue hound mix named Duffy who attacked me when I got too close to his water dish (I have the scars still).  Then there was Frisky, a beagle with a wanderlust so bad that he’d scale the fence in search of hot women.  The week after a neighbor reported seeing his corpse on the side of the road, his engraved name tag arrived in the mail and I broke down all over again.  Last while still in my parents’ home was Caesar, a blond cocker who was apparently one of those from a spate of bad breeding in the 70′s and because of that, the antithesis of the usual sweet-natured cocker personality.  He tried to take my face off once as I was restraining him from eating the air conditioner repairman who had chuckled when we warned him that there was a killer cocker in the backyard, so give us a minute to put him in the patio.  He hung around the longest, eventually succumbing to heartworm disease.  All were rescues either from the shelter or from people we knew.

The problem was that my folks were old school and didn’t view pets as family.  They were pets.  Outdoor animals, never allowed in the house.  Cats were out of the question as mom thought they were the nastiest and most dangerous animals ever.  Plus pets didn’t live indoors.  They’d usually get their shots, and we’d board them in the summer when we went on vacation, but this was back in the day and spaying/neutering didn’t get the press it does now, and that was Frisky’s main problem: he still had his nuts, in part, I think because my father couldn’t bear to have them snipped.  Plus my mother had an awful experience with a chihuahua named Tiny that she’d adored early on in their marriage who she swore was stolen by a garbage man who had admired her.  So after that, she would never get close to another pet.

So one of the first things I did when I got settled in my own place after college in the mid-90′s was procure a feline.  I’d been mulling it over and after cat-sitting for my good buddy Julie, I was pretty sure I wanted one of my own.  One day as she was doing business at her vet’s, she spied their shop cat who was up for adoption.  At 6 months, he’d been surrendered by someone who was moving and couldn’t take him with her.  Languid and with attitude, she knew he was My Cat and ordered me to fetch him straightaway.

Which I did.  He had some stupid name which I no longer remember.  I renamed him Sir Pursalot, Pursy for short, a name which didn’t last very long, either.  A girlfriend moved in with me shortly after he did, and he didn’t really take a liking to her.  In the middle of the night when she would exit the bedroom to smoke, he’d lay in wait for her in the dark.  As she’d emerge, he would softly zip in from nowhere, lay his teeth just so on (not in) the back of her beefy calf, then disappear back into the dark.  All I would hear was “Fucking CRACKHEAD, godDAMMIT!”  And so it stuck.  He even began to answer to it (as much as a cat will answer to anything).  Crackhead it remained.

A couple of years later, I adopted another kitten, this time younger, barely six weeks.  Tiny, black (Bombay), copper eyes that later turned green and huge ears which he later grew into.  His name eventually mutated to Puppy, due to his canine characteristics and lapslut qualities.  His claim to fame?  He’s a velcro kitty.  I didn’t know that cats could suffer from separation anxiety until I met this little kid.  You’d put him down and walk away to screams so hard that they’d rock him back on his little butt.  Seems he forgot he had legs and could follow you until he hit puberty.  Somewhere I have a picture of him perched like a parrot on my shoulder.  He was the main reason I couldn’t keep houseplants.  Lost him in an apartment I shared with one of my best friends once; we turned the place upside down looking for him.  He was eventually found in my room curled up tight in the cool soil of a plant I had, shoving the greenery out of the way.

But today, this is about Crackhead, my firstborn and friend to men.  He was a man’s cat.  He loved me, but adored men.  You know how when cats bathe each other they’ll alternate between tongue baths and nabbing with their teeth?  I’d get the occasional rough lick in appreciation for pets, but the spousal unit got absolutely laved in addition to the nabbing.  When people would meet them both, most folk would want to scoop up Puppy and steal him, but guys were like “I want that cat.”  What I am trying to tell you is that he was a Gentleman.  A Stud without balls who didn’t need them to be a stud.  Big Punisher.  He didn’t stop growing until he was about 6 or so, topping out at 22lbs of mostly muscle.  He had a mean left hook, as our big chocolate lab Freak learned pretty quick, no claws needed.  POW.

What I am trying to tell you is that I love that cat like no other.

What I am trying to tell you is that he left us this morning in the wee hours.  As his breathing labored on, I told him that it was alright.  We’d all be alright, even Puppy who had already said goodbye.  Just go.  He went easy, stretched out on a pile of Himself’s clothes in the corner of his office behind the bentwood rocker.  I came to Himself upstairs and whispered “He’s gone.”  He was still a little warm when I picked him up, wrapped him in a towel and put him gently in a box.  The bottom of the box was still warm on my lap by the time we were able to take him to the vet’s office around 8AM.  I wanted to open it and see if he was still there even though I knew he wasn’t.  Because if he was, he’d have busted out like Sean Connery out of Alcatraz in “The Rock.”  No shame in the tears we shed at the counter when they took him away.  They gave us hugs and bunches of tissues.  They’ll miss him, too.  There’s nothing like the rise you get out of a waiting room full of pet parents when you intone over the PA system to the techs in the back “Crackhead Sherman, pick up for Crackhead Sherman”.

Our vet called us this afternoon to express his condolences.  He told us that yes, this was indeed a sad time, but Crackhead couldn’t have gotten better care from us.  He wanted us to know that.

What I am trying to tell you is that this is going to take a very long time for me to get over.  If ever.

Screw the that stupid rainbow bridge bullshit.  I don’t want to hear that sappy ass crap.  Crackhead is hanging out in the garden of the Playboy Mansion.

Flashback: girly girls

So a few months ago, I finally decided to get my fat ass in gear and go work out.  Some years ago, I was taken by The Firm system and it worked out pretty well as I found their claim of seeing results in 10 workouts to be true.  So after letting my steps & weights get dusty for a few years, I dug out the DVD and went at it again.  But this time, not so much success.  The body is older and a little more worn and my squat technique was sucking so badly that my poor knees couldn’t take it plus I was bored out of my mind doing the same workouts over and over.  I knew it was time for a professional’s help and guided by an ad I saw on TV for a personal training center not five minutes my house, I dug in.

It’s actually been pretty cool.  My workouts consist of a cardio warm up on a treadmill, usually 5-10 minutes, then 30-45 minutes of circuit training focusing on my upper body, lower body or core training, then I end with another 20 minutes of cardio on the treadmill, elliptical machine or a recumbent bike machine.  On off days, I walk a few miles.  I’ve always been physically strong and had no issues with showing it.  I think it all started with the wrestling sessions we’d have as children with my father on the den floor; lots of fun tussling, grappling, giggling and hollering, especially when it would all come to a screeching halt because someone sat on top of someone else and called the match.

But the thing was, I started to learn fairly early on that physical prowess in girls was not necessarily seen as a good thing.  I remember showing off by twisting myself around the monkey bars and being the solo push person in the middle of the merry-go-round in elementary school.  Running like the wind and winning scores of colorful ribbons on field day (I was particularly skilled at the cracker whistle, but that just meant I could chew fast).  But somewhere in there, probably around the same time I was beating boys at arm-wrestling in middle school that I began to realize that exhibiting my strength was suddenly mock-worthy.  Apparently nice Southern girls were supposed to stand around giggling and blushing when boys flexed their developing muscles.  Each quarter during the school year were supposed to choose different activities to participate in during gym class.  One quarter the choices were definitely for typical gender roles: weightlifting and dance.  I always chose the former and miraculously after some discussion by administration, I was allowed in with one other girl who was already grooming for lesbianhood.  I loved it, total showoff that I was, I ended up out-bench pressing more than half the boys poor slow bloomers that they were.  Yes, it worked against me.  I don’t think any boy ever asked me to “go with” him in middle school.

But what annoyed me the most was that I knew good and damned well that the girls could do more than they were letting on and I couldn’t figure out what the problem was.  I’d sneer when I’d see some boy grab a girl’s arm in the hallway and she’d just squeal and crumble OWWWWWWW STOPPIT OWWWWW.  WTF?  If anyone had the audacity to even consider grabbing my ass they’d find themselves getting punched.  No one ever popped my bra straps, thank you very much.  By the time I realized it was some elaborate mating dance, it was too late for me to go back, plus I really didn’t want to.  But I still couldn’t manage to hold back my scorn for such shenanigans.  And still can’t.

Mostly women work out at the studio I got to, everything from personal training sessions to boot camps. Usually when I go, the place is mostly empty, except for Saturday mornings and when I have to do a make up session in the late morning.  I hate those times.  This last Saturday there were two boot camps going and I haven’t heard that much bitching since…well, since I don’t know when, actually.  If I was there doing donkey kicks with a bunch of people and the trainer told me I was doing them wrong and needed to correct my form, I’d say “sure thing, hoss, come and show me how”, but the woman in question that day spent a good long minute complaining how of course she was doing them correctly because the PT she usually worked out with never said anything and blah blah skippy blahdey blah fucking blah.  Wednesday of this week which was a later in the day make up session for me, I spied a woman who had extensions to her ass complaining-nay WHINING-about how she much she hated working out and couldn’t stand lifting weights and couldn’t let go of her fucking Crackberry to save her goddamn life.  THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU HERE???  I mentioned these incidents to my PT yesterday and she rolled her eyes and said she didn’t put up with that shit in her boot camp and that she didn’t know how the male PTs put up with it.  She told me how some football player she’d dated in college had found her on FBook and revealed that he had been uncomfortable with her weightlifting (she ran track and is now a fitness model/competitor) back in the day.  *blink*

It’s that stupid mating dance all over again.  If a girl looks like she needs help from a big, strong man, then of course she’ll be able to win his heart.  Of course.  Duh.  What the hell was I thinking?  When I heard extension girl whinging I was immediately snapped back to sixth grade.  Good thing I was pointed away from her because you could see my sneer from Canada.

In happier news, I stopped by the grocery store on my way back from my off day walk to pick up a couple of things for Himself.  Didn’t realize until I was standing in front of the deli counter that I had sweat marks on my pants that looked suspiciously like I’d wet myself.  *cringehide*  While I was discovering this, another brown woman came up to me, struggled a bit with whatever she was gong to say and…

Um, excuse me?

[cautiously] Yes?

Um…coming from another woman…um…

[arched brow, waiting]

You look AMAZING.

[relieved grins all the way 'round] OMG, THANK YOU!

Turned out she’d been dieting and was about to have some kind of surgery and was dying to….wait for it…LOOK LIKE ME.

Whee!

this day

Children of the heavenly father
Safely in his bosom gather
Nestling bird nor star in heaven
Such a refuge e’er was given

It is Father’s Day.  I miss him still.  That is all.

It just didn’t take

As part of my profession, I spend a great deal of time (for me) in church.  Many folks don’t know that choirs in music ministries everywhere often are augmented with professional singers or ringers, if you will.  I can’t begin to tell of how often this part of my professional life is met with varying degrees of shock and/or disbelief as in “they pay people for that??”  Yes, and if you like what you’re hearing, then keep up with your tithing, thank you very much.  So while I do spend all my church time flung up in the choir loft or rehearsal room, I make no secret of the fact that I am pretty much agnostic regarding the state of things sacred.

I had a conversation recently with the Man Unit who is a lapsed Catholic (for the record, I am Catholic by trade currently, not by birth) and he was talking about how his mother’s respect for the bible as a volume of sacred literature still marked him.  He swore that he wouldn’t be able to drop a bible on the floor even if someone had shot him in the head; he’d just grip it in his death rigor.  When I was singing for the Catholics in the Frozen North some years ago, the Archbishop gave the midnight Christmas Mass and as he began the homily, he carried the bible down with him to the floor in front of the altar.  He commented that the darned thing was just so heavy that he was going to put it down.  On the floor.  Right there, with an audible thump.  You could tell the difference between those in the congregation who’d been raised Vatican I and those who’d come up Vatican II because the former recoiled in shock much like my Vatican I husband did when I related the story and he’s still not over it.

What I wonder is this: when does this sort of religious respect or devotion take?  And how?  Both of my parents were devout Christians; my earliest memories of singing were in the mostly non-denominational chapel on a military base.  I was sent to Sunday school, learning everything possible about the bible, its stories and lessons.  When my father retired, we moved back to the state of their birth and actually ended up attending the United Methodist Church where my father attended regular school during the week in addition to services on Sunday with other members of his extended family who remained there.  Sunday after Sunday, we were regular fixtures as a family in a front pew.  Vacation Bible School?  Every summer.  Revival week?  Every night in the hot August summers.  If Christmas fell on a Sunday, services went on and we were part of the sparse group in attendance.  We stopped trick-or-treating early on as my mother felt it unholy and spent the night at the church Hallowe’en carnival instead.

So what happened to me?  How did I come to where I am when I come from such a rich tradition of the sacred?  I mean, I started out destined to be one of the devout. You know that scripture that talks about putting on the armor of God?  When I was a kidlet, my folks thought we should take it kind of literally and we’d mimic putting on our armor every morning to be further protected from evil.  We would have “Family Night” ever Sunday night as a way of checking in with each other, talking about things that had happened to us during the week or what was to come and it always ended with a prayer circle.  Each week, a different family member would lead the prayer and apparently I developed a rather eloquent tongue for prayer.  I know now it was because I was a damned fine mimic, not necessarily a true believer.  But at some point I became tongue-tied because it wasn’t enough that I had a good ear; I no longer believed what I was saying and just couldn’t manage it unless severely pressed.  I had and still have too much respect for those who do believe to mock them by pretending that I do.

I remember sitting in the front pew as an acolyte in my early teens.  The minister was doing his round up at the end of the sermon where he’d call to the congregation for those who wanted to “accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior” (a phrase that still makes little sense to me today) to come down to the altar as we fervently sang the final hymn.  But music has always moved me.  And it moved me and my fellow acolyte that day to tears and action as we found ourselves hugging each other and standing at the altar.  But even then, the sermon right before had made no sense to me, really, because it was centered in guilt.  I was constantly being told that my sins were the reason that this great teacher had died and that I would never be good or holy enough to receive his grace.  That I could only try, but because only he was perfect, I was destined to fail.  And that I was sinful if I didn’t tithe 10% of my income to the church.  What??? But then the music started and I no longer cared.

There were some songs I sang in that church that I couldn’t get through without tears.  I dogged the accompanist for the youth choir until she finally gave up and learned to play Donna Summer’s “Forgive Me” from her Cats Without Claws album.  We rehearsed for weeks and when I finally got a spot one Sunday to sing it, I found myself crumbling by the second verse.  What was it that I could only feel anything remotely like a religious experience in song?

It was a question I struggled with for years.  During my last summer at home as a college student my father had ascended to the position of superintendent of Sunday school/education, so my mother felt it imperative that we always attend as a family.  By that time, I was spending my Saturday nights in the bars and had no interest in cranking my ass out of bed at 7AM the next morning, but I knew I couldn’t get out of going to church altogether so I would follow along after in the other car.  My mother exclaimed one Saturday night “What will people think when the daughter of the superintendent isn’t in class?!” to which I replied “They’ll think that maybe she’s her own person who can decide what she wants to do on her own.”  I didn’t want to go.  I hated lying.

As a graduate student, I spent a lot of time in the music library researching my music in a very thorough fashion.  I was working on a sacred music cycle by the Pulitzer Prize winning composer Ned Rorem called, appropriately “Cycle of Holy Songs” or simply “Three Psalms” and my attention fell on the fact that he’d written several volumes of memoirs that the library happened to have.  I burned my way through them and finally found my answer to my lifelong question therein.  Mr. Rorem happens to be a rather intense atheist and at some point after he won the Prize, someone asked him how on earth he could manage to compose such lovely sacred music while being an atheist and he replied “I have faith in the faith of others.”  Bingo.  That was it.  When I put myself in any type of music be it sacred or secular, I simply became the mouthpiece for the composer and lyricist.  I am there to tell you a story that’s already been written and somehow it’s moved me and I want to share that.  It’s why during the choir’s Lenten concert for the Stations of the Cross this year I had worked myself into such a state that when it was time for me to solo during “Were You There” that I could barely squeak out the notes.  I don’t care if it really happened or not, I just look at the story and think “how can one not be wrenched by that?”

Today, I am more secure in my middle-of-the road belief or lack thereof than ever.  I know that while I do not necessarily believe, I am a creature who delights in ritual and what we called “high church” back in the day, which is how I can ignore the dogma and love the pomp and circumstance of the Catholic church.

I’m okay with that.

Heirloom Recipes – Strawberry Cake

After reading my good friend Julie’s post on this topic, I felt compelled to release one of my own.

For most of my mother’s life in which I was involved, she was a consummate Southern cook.  She was a devout believer in the school of Three Meals a Day No Matter What to the point that when I left for college, I lost the Freshman 10/15 instead of gaining it.    She was without equal among her peers, specifically when it came to baked goods.  Church functions could not go on without at least a couple dozen of her amazing yeast rolls.  Church bake sale organizers would beg shamelessly for the same rolls, loaves of bread, cookies or a cake.  Ah.  The cakes.  This is where we get down to it.

It used to be that back in the day if you wanted to see the best a brown woman could turn out from her kitchen, all you had to do was wait until the family reunion picnic.  Women who had married into that family had the worst of it, as they were under serious pressure to prove that they could hold their own against the matriarchs.  And it was touchy work, because you had to find out exactly what their claims to fame were.  And if they were the same as yours, you had to decide if you wanted to compete with the same item, a decision again fraught with pressure.  If you tried and beat her out, you might be considered rude and never recover from the perceived slight against her.  If you failed, you might never be able to shake the reputation of an unworthy cook who thought herself better than the matriarch.

Hopefully your mother taught you this chess game of Southern women and you were able to tread carefully.  I know my mother’s mother must have.  An example for you.  My father loved, loved, loved his mother’s lemon meringue pie made with sweetened condensed milk.  My mother made a lemon meringue pie sans said milk and instead made the lemon curd from scratch (Paula Deen wishes she could make a pie like this).  Once my father tried hers, there was no going back, but everyone involved knew the rules.  So when my folks would visit my dad’s mom, she would inevitably make his “favorite” pie, which he would consume like it was his last meal.  His mother died shortly after I was born, secure in the knowledge that her son loved her pie above all others.

On to the family reunion picnic test.  I don’t know how it started, but as long as I can remember, year after year, my mother turned out a strawberry Bundt cake that made people cry and clamor for more year round, but she would a) never make it except for the reunion or by special request at home from one of us and b) never make more than one for the reunion picnic.  Never.  No amount of begging, groveling or implied threats could move her.  People wouldn’t even wait until they’d finished loading their plates before they were queuing up at our section of a picnic table to obtain a nearly paper thin slice of strawberry goodness, always made with berries fresh from the pick ‘em yourself farm we’d been to right before.   And so it went, even up until her very last year.

So not only did she pass the test with this cake, it vaulted her instantly into matriarch status.  How do I know this?  At her memorial service, at least 2, maybe 3 different people mentioned it from the pulpit accompanied with sidelong glances at me that communicated clearly that it was up to me to FIND THAT RECIPE, DO NOT LET THAT STRAWBERRY CAKE DIE.  The Man Unit, having also experienced said cake, was in agreement.  At this point, I didn’t even know if there was a recipe, as I couldn’t remember in enough detail if I’d ever seen her use one.

I had to lie in wait.  My mother’s house wasn’t vacated until nearly a year after her death, so I couldn’t get in there to dig around unfettered until that time.  And dig, I did. I loaded up everything I found in her cookbook drawers in the kitchen, brought them to my own home and prepared to do the archeological dig through stacks of books, cards, clipped newspaper articles and recipes cut/ripped from boxes.

First, I went at mom’s tried and true Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, 7th ed., 1965.  Look at this thing.  It came apart at the seams years ago and mom taped it up.  Which of course makes the archivist in me want to pass out, but hey, it worked; the damned thing’s still all together.  It has gems like Wiener Doubles in the Sandwiches category: Slit frankfurters lengthwise, not quite through. Spread cut surfaces with prepared mustard, and insert a strip of sharp process American cheese in each. For each serving, place 2 franks side by side. Wrap 2 strips of bacon around each bundle in spiral fashion; fasten ends with toothpicks. Place franks cheese-side down on broiler rack, 3-4 inches from the heat. Broil about 5 minutes or till bacon top side is done. Turn and broil 3-5 minutes longer. Serve in halved coney buns, toasted and buttered. Pass catsup and mustard.

Don’t you just love it?  But alas, no strawberry cake recipe that looked like what I remembered.

Next I tried the Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, 1st ed., 9th printing 1950.  I’m guessing this may have been her first cookbook, but it’s in better condition than the BH&G book.  It describes their in-house Kitchen of Tomorrow as “Two kitchens in one. Light walls with amusing Swedish figures and mottos give gay (yes. yes, it does.) atmosphere. One is for important experimental baking, to develop new methods and new products for the future. The other is for daily products test.”  The Polka Dot Kitchen is their “Gayest, most colorful of all…with stainless steel counters and a laundry unit for experimental work with appliances.”  And last, they even have handy tips delivered in couplets.   Who knew Betty Crocker could spit rhymes?

Do keep a ruler handy,
To measure pans it’s dandy,
Place the rule across the top,
Right size pan prevents a flop!

Struck out.  No strawberry cake.

Southern Living’s Our Best Recipes, by Lena E. Sturges, 1970, 9th printing 1980. I got all excited when I saw this recipe from the Nancy Welch Show tucked in, but alas, it wasn’t, nor did I ever recall my mother actually ever making it.

Still, nothing.

Finally, I turned with dread to the large box of effluvia: small books and piles of clippings and such.  But look.  A book in well used condition from Southern Living simply called Cakes Cookbook.  I flipped slowly through it and my god.  There it was, not even a part of the book, but on a sheet of paper written in my mother’s hand.

Now, if you look very closely, you can see the 1st ingredient.  Go ahead, squint, I’ll wait.  It’s a box of white cake mix.  MIX. I am peeing my pants laughing that my mother pulled this one off.  Even I had no idea, it is that damned good.  And it turns out that it takes just over an hour including baking time to prepare.  The most time consuming thing to do is the grease and flour of the pan.  Turns out all it takes is the right ingredients-even prepared ones-thrown together the right way to make a truly memorable dish.

The first time I tried it, I followed mom’s recipe to the letter, including the instruction to spray the pan with cooking spray instead of greasing and flouring.  She was very specific about this and I even used her extremely heavy Bundt pan to boot.  It came out like this:

But tasted exactly the same.  Eureka!  I’d done it.  I made it again this weekend for friends of ours, a couple who’d come down from Michigan to celebrate her 30th birthday.  It wasn’t on the table long enough to get a picture of, but I used not only my non-stick Bundt pan but greased and floured it to boot.  The thing slid out of the pan with nary a whisper.

Damn fine cake, ma.