Smug

I got paid yesterday - the end of the two-week period of utter brokeness (is that a word? The spellchecker doesn't think so. Of course, the spellchecker doesn't like to be called a "spellchecker", either, so can I go by that?) that follows my mortgage payment. So last night I went out and bought four books. Today I bought yarn to crochet an afghan for my daughter for Christmas, and had a delightful shopping spree at Trader Joe's.

And there's another celebration, and the realization of a minor goal: I used my new credit card to fix my old car. I got a new bumper and replacement horn - which turns out to be a high-pitched little squeaker. I liked the sound of my old horn better. Anyway, the bumper on my car, a 1999 Saturn composed largely of plastic, has been dangling for years. Some of it had broken away and it couldn't be rebolted, at least not easily. Last winter I snagged it on a snowdrift and pulled away the right side. The piece of plastic over the tire broke off, too. I had the bumper and plastic piece tied onto my car with a length of clothesline for about seven months. I knew it was going to be expensive to fix, so I kept putting it off. So it feels really good to get it fixed.

When I started this blog, I was trying to decide whether to trade in my car. I chose to keep it, and I'm glad I did. It's nice not to have car-loan payments.

I've also been dealing with my desire to move closer to Boston. I live in a poor city just to the north of Boston - Lynn, Lynn, City of Sin, etc. There is nothing in Lynn. It's not a bad place, but it's not home, either. I've lived here for four years now, and from the beginning I've wished I could pick up my house and yard and drop them in my old neighborhood in Somerville.

I started looking at condos online, and drove by a couple of them not far from my son in Arlington (MA, in case somebody's reading this and wondering which one. He lives in Arlington Heights - I think there's another one near Chicago.). Anyway, last night my car wasn't ready yet, so I took the bus out to my son's apartment. Total commute took me a good half-hour longer than my current commute to Lynn, the one that tires me out and was a strong contributor to my desire to move. So I won't be moving to Arlington. The 77 bus down Mass. Ave. is enough to thwart any lingering desires to live there.

But I still want to move. For the time being, I'm postponing any active pursuit of this goal until next spring.

Random thoughts

It was 40°F. when I got up this morning. Less than two weeks ago, we had a day when the temperature was near 100°F. No wonder I have a sore throat and a runny nose! When I was driving to the subway station this morning, I saw several kids walking to school with no coats. I was thinking, where were their mothers when they left the house this morning? But then I thought about my sons (my daughter's always cold) and what they'd say if I told them to wear a jacket - "Awww, Mom..." And then they'd go off without one. Two of the four coatless kids I saw this morning were girls, so it's not just the little boys any more, if it ever was.

The major headline in the Globe this morning concerned Governor Deval Patrick's proposal to bring casinos to Massachusetts. I'm not thrilled with the idea, but it probably won't affect my life one way or the other. I don't buy lottery tickets (I just pick up the ones that blow into my yard from the nearby convenience store, all losers, and throw them out since you can't turn them in any more). I've never been to Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, although I'm not against the idea - if I had friends to go with and enough money to spend, I'd love to do it once in awhile. Actually, I dream of a trip to Las Vegas, just once, if I had a like-minded boyfriend... we could see the Elvis impersonators and other Vegas fixtures, visit the casinos, revel in the overdone glamour...

I've had Season 1 of Medium out from Netflix over the past week. I always wanted to be psychic. I think I have the potential. Or maybe I'm just good at picking up little details, like the guy on Psych. That's how the TV "psychics" do it. I used to love to watch John Edward (the medium, not the presidential candidate - he's John Edwards) manipulate a crowd. He just fascinated me. I can read Tarot cards, and a lot of that is watching how the person you're reading for responds to what you're saying. I would love to meet a real psychic. And how would I tell they were real? I don't know.

Thoughts on 9/11

This is the Pearl Harbor of my generation, the day that we lost our innocence. We felt removed from all the violence, separate and above it all. Terrorism was something that happened somewhere else in the world, across the ocean, well beyond our view. Until September 11, 2001, when it happened here.

When I walked into the lobby of the medical school this morning, there was a poster for the lecture they give every year in honor of the young woman, a PhD candidate in immunology, who was lost on 9/11 along with her husband and three-year-old daughter. They are the faces of 9/11 to me. I can't say that I lost my faith, because I never really found it in the first place, but whenever I think that there might just possibly be a caring God within my reach, I think of them. I don't want to have any kind of faith in a God who allows young families to be killed in his name. If God didn't intervene on 9/11, why would God ever care about my petty and insignificant pain?

In July of 2001 I brought my two younger children to Washington, DC. (Older son had a job and couldn't join us; besides, he'd gone on a school trip in the eighth grade, one that was no longer given by the time my daughter reached eighth grade. Younger son was going into eighth grade that fall.) We visited the Capitol, the Treasury, the Smithsonian - all the high points. We had a wonderful and memorable time. And in the days after 9/11, my daughter said to me that she was so glad we'd gone then, because it'd all be different now. She was thinking of the added security, I think. She now attends graduate school in the DC area; we visited DC last summer, and it really wasn't any different from the way we remembered it. (We didn't go to the Capitol or White House.)

And maybe that's a good thing. The world changed, but we can still lead normal lives with bright spots in them. I still can't watch any of the 9/11 movies or TV specials; it's much too soon for me. I'm a depressive (gee, have I ever mentioned that here?), and it's all too easy to send me into one of the dark places in my mind. But a couple of years ago, I put my daughter onto a plane bound from Logan Airport to Los Angeles - the same trip the planes that hit the World Trade Center were making - and nothing unusual happened. The world changed, yes, but it didn't end. Planes still fly. People still laugh. Gardens bloom, and trees turn bright colors in the fall. Children grow up, and more are born every day. We don't forget what happened, but we learn from it, and we try to assure it will never happen again.

Little update

Why am I so sleepy today? I keep dozing off on the couch, where I've been sitting with my bad knee elevated. It's ninety-something outside, and my little cat Zoe is stretched out in the sunny patch on the carpet - what is it about cats and sunshine, even on the hottest days? I have the air conditioning on, and I'm very comfortable. Apparently, so is Zoe. I'm just trying to forgive myself for falling asleep and dozing away the afternoon. Cats never worry about sleeping too much.

All week long I get up at 5:30 a.m. and go off to work. I go to bed at about 10 p.m., often later, and this past four-day week I had trouble falling asleep most nights. I had at least one four-hour night. That'd be part of the problem, I guess. I'm the coordinator for two medical-school courses (three during spring term), and since classes are starting, it's required a lot of coordinating. No wonder I'm tired. There was a picture of three of our first-year medical students in the Boston Globe today! The White Coat Ceremony, in which incoming medical students receive their short white lab coats, was yesterday.

Thursday night our handbell choir season kicked off. During the rest of the year, we'll meet on Wednesdays, but this one time we met on the same night as the singing choir so that we could practice a piece together to perform on Sunday. That's why I didn't have a spare minute to write on Thursday. And Friday? No excuses; I just didn't write.

Songs I'm embarrassed to admit I like

Songs I secretly like, but don't want to admit to:

- "I'll be", by Edwin McCain. Soppy and overdone, but hell, I would love to have somebody that much in love with me...
- "Collide", by Howie Day. How many movie/TV ads used this song? It got ridiculous after awhile. I'm not even sure what the lyrics mean. But it's pretty and romantic, and I have a pretty, romantic side.
- "Malibu", by Hole. Courtney Love can't really carry a tune, but (through whatever electronic manipulations it required) she managed to get through this one fairly well. This song just reaches a place inside of me. The first time I heard it, I thought, I could have written that. I have a tendency to fall for the crazies, I guess.
- "Unwritten", by Natasha Bedingfield. My daughter will tease me when she finds it on my playlist... What can I say? It makes me feel more positive about myself, and I need that.
- "In the house of stone and light", by Martin Page. I guess he's a one-hit wonder. This song came out during the time in my life when I thought new-agey stuff might be the cure for what ailed me. Yeah, I've still got a few crystals, too.

I'm sure I'll think of more at a later date.

September

So far I'm writing for an audience of one - myself. Not that that's a bad thing, exactly... I keep hoping I'll be discovered, but hey, if I'm writing at all, that's good. It doesn't have to be witnessed.

Last night after I came home from work I watched the entire second season of Weeds. I was up past midnight. It's a long weekend, and I can sleep late (i.e. past 5:30 a.m., my usual rising time) for three mornings in a row. I don't subscribe to the premium cable channels, so I can't watch the third season of Weeds yet. It's only up to the fourth episode according to their website, so it'll be a while before it's out on DVD.

And today begins a new month. In some ways, at my age, it's depressing to turn another page on the calendar, because I recognize that there won't be as many more pages to turn, and I'm still not the person I want to be. My time is running out, and I still haven't found the love of my life. I still haven't written the great American novel - I haven't written any publishable novels. In fact, when I participated in NaNoWriMo last November and finished my novel, it was the first one I'd ever completed. It's fluff. It's cute. (My kids know that if I call something like a book or a movie "cute", I don't like it.)

But it's September, and that's a time of beginnings. I could try to sing this year. I used to sing very well. I started singing in choirs when I was nine, and have usually participated in at least one choir my entire life since then. I'm a soprano, and while I'll never win any prizes, I've done a lot of solo work and received many compliments on my singing. It had always been my experience when I attended a new church that members would suggest that I join the choir. People who knew me liked to stand near me in church because of my singing. Until now. At the church where I'm currently ringing handbells, nobody has ever suggested that I join the choir. Nobody has complimented me on my singing. Nobody has noticed my voice at all. Have I deteriorated that much in just a couple of years? It's shaken my confidence.

So I wouldn't go to a choir where I'd have to audition. But I could go to a community chorus and just get singing again. Sometimes that seems like a good idea. But I'm afraid. In the most recent community chorus where I sang, my depression led me to drop out of the group before a concert one year. (I blamed it on my gall bladder surgery, so nobody held it against me.) I just couldn't make myself go to rehearsals any more. I disliked the music, but I feel that if I were a good person I'd have sung it anyway. I don't trust myself to make commitments any more.

But I'm doing better. I've stayed with this handbell choir for four years now. I've played music I don't especially like, because we're usually also be performing other pieces that I love. It was hard to force myself to go to rehearsals sometimes, but last year, when my younger son moved in with me, he joined the handbell choir, too, and after Christmas we pulled my older son into it, too. Now it's a weekly family outing. We go out to dinner at Panera, usually, and then over to rehearsal. We also went to the area conference in June, where we had a wonderful time.

Rehearsals start this week, and we're performing next Sunday. Yep, September is a time of beginnings.