Springtime

Once again, it's been a long time since I've written anything. Mostly that's because I've been lazy and have had nothing to write about. About the time I started feeling guilty and getting serious about writing something, I got sick. It started last week when I was getting headaches everyday. It's been years since I've gotten headaches on anything like a regular basis and I attributed it to the horrifying green wind that we get down here this time of year. I think it's the pine that irradiates everything with its pollen stuff. About this time of year everything is green, and not the good "everything is so GREEN!"-green like you might get in the Pacific Northwest. The worst is the cars, everyone's car is coated with a thick powder that looks like pale moss. It's awful. I feel safe in saying that that is why I was getting headaches. Then the headaches turned into a persistent cough and congestion, which I called "really bad allergies." I never had allergies until I moved down here, but Arkansas will test even the most healthy. And that got worse and worse and worse, quickly. My whole body ached, I was going to sleep at 8:00 every night, my eyes felt swollen shut, on and on.

I have a thing about going to the doctor. I don't like doing it. I'm not totally against doctors in general, it's just a major inconvenience and I never seem to get out of the office without a prescription for antibiotics. I do have a thing against antibiotics. I think their over-prescription is contributing to the very real possibility of some sort of virulent superbug that will wipe out most of the world population. Plus I feel like they throw my whole body out of balance and it takes a month of eating yogurt to get all the internal flora back in order. The major inconvenience is mainly because I don't have a "regular" doctor. I only get sick once a year and it's about this time of year and it's always bronchitis and I have no need for an annual physical, so when I get sick I call the local clinic and they squeeze me in to see whatever doctor is on call. Which means I spend two hours sitting in the waiting room.

So yesterday every breath felt like it was ripping my lungs in half. I could hardly swallow anymore and would have liked to cough, but couldn't for fear that my whole head might explode. I called the doctor. As usual it was a doctor I had never seen before. I think I waited about a day too long because I couldn't do anything but calculate my odds of being the next person called the whole hour-and-a-half I was in the waiting room. I watched people and figured the probability of them being a regularly scheduled patient (who will go in before me) or someone who, like me had called in to take their chances (who will only go in before me if they got there before me). I counted the number of people who went in versus the number of people who came out. "Why aren't they calling someone, I know there's an empty room back there!" It was all I could do. I was desperate to get through those doors.

The doctor on call yesterday was a woman. Most women down here seem to be either gynecologists or pediatricians, so it was nice to actually have a woman doctor treating me, looking in my mouth. She didn't take any x-rays or anything, which they usually do on my annual bronchitis visits, but I guess she pretty much had the case closed when she opened my chart and saw my history. All she had to do was listen to my lungs and ask me how I was feeling. I left with an inhaler and some antibiotics.

I'm feeling a little bit better today. I've got to go to the store and buy some yogurt, but at least I'm starting to feel up to it. I'll try to write more regularly. Thanks for sticking with me.

Small things that make me feel like everything might be okay

I can't remember a time in my life when I thought "I can't believe I'm getting paid to do this!" Any time I've ever been paid to do anything it's been something horrifying that you'd have to pay me to do, like calling people and asking them to give me money for handicapped people whom I've never met, or driving out past the civilized world of cell phone reception and down into a canyon in order to get out of the safety of my car, hike up an un-passable drive, to a trailer home with the door open just wide enough for me to see someone shove something out of my line of sight, and say "Hi! I'm here on behalf of the US Government!" Those are things that you have to pay me to do, and no matter what you're paying me, I feel like I'm getting cheated.

So it was new and exciting the other day when I was driving out to Dover, Ark. on a delivery when I caught myself thinking "I'm getting paid for this!" The weather had just turned nice so I had the windows rolled down, the radio was playing something like Steve Miller Band, and I was on a long stretch of road, going somewhere, doing something - and getting paid. Usually I'm getting paid to sit in an office and look at columns of numbers, which I certainly don't complain about. I like the people I work with, I have my own desk, and the freedom to do pretty much whatever I want as long as I get my work done as well. And the actual work isn't that bad. It's not studying lost manuscripts in a language only I understand or impressing the world with my creative spirit - but it's close. And it's the best thing I can hope for right now. And it offers me the opportunity to sometimes, if one of the delivery people calls in, deliver parts and listen to the radio in a car I don't own, whose gas I don't buy.

Most of the time my life makes me feel like I'm trying to run through deep sand, choking on my lack of self-confidence and inability to communicate along the way. I worry a lot about how I'm going to get through all the days that are left, which at my age could be very many. And driving to McAlister's Station, I wasn't worrying about all of that. I wasn't worrying about anything. I was just driving, moving fast and easy, cheerful and calm. I was relieved to find that, at that particular moment, despite the many things that stress me out, all it took for me to be happy was a beat-up Chevy with no air or floorboards and a person in need of some shop towels and a blower motor switch. And surely the world will never run out of those two things.

Spark!

When I was sitting in my office today I thought I had a great idea. Something fun, interesting. At the time I couldn't wait to get home and share my idea with everyone and now that I am home I'm feeling a little self-conscious. But I'm going to share my idea anyway.

Stanley Milgram was a social psychologist. He went to Harvard and was a professor at Yale. And he conducted two of the two experiments that I remember studying in my psychology classes. One was, simply, "The Milgram Experiment." That's the one about obedience and authority, morals and personal responsibility, in which participants willingly administered 450 volt shocks to another person, who in these experiments was an actor pretending to be electrocuted by the fake shocks - but the actual participant didn't know that as he was steadily turning that dial higher and higher. It's memorable, and worth reading about. I tried to attach a link, but I can't figure out how to do it. Just look up "Milgram Experiment" on Wikipedia. I know there's an extra step there because I'm computer illiterate, but it really is very interesting.

The other one is his "Small World Experiment." That's the one that taught us all about the six degrees of separation. He sent packages to 160 random people living in Omaha, Nebraska with instructions to forward them on to someone who they thought would get the package closer to this one particular person, unknown to them, a stockbroker in Boston, Massachusetts. In the experiment it took an average of six people to get the package to him. Thus, we live in a small world where we're only six people away from anyone.

Here's the idea: Since I'm financially, emotionally, and in most other ways stuck in Arkansas, let's play. Six degrees of separation, that is. I'll write the name of someone who I want to contact me and every one of you reading this (all 10 of you) think of someone you know who could get my message one degree closer. Let's see how long it takes. I mean, if you're interested. I'll start easy. Someone not famous. Someone who is probably local to most of you. The person who actually started this whole thought process for me was Dr. Fred Durer. He is the doctor who delivered my seven-year-old, Adam. I liked him a lot and I was thinking that, if I delivered babies for a living, I would be desperately curious about what these babies were like as children and adults. I wanted to tell him that Adam is an artist, and that he's really good at building things with Legos, very focused and serious, and that his hair still isn't dark like mine.

I could Google him, or give his office a call, but I don't need to actually have a phone conversation with him, and I could write a letter, but I'm not a savage, if I don't have your email address I can't write to you. I don't even think I own any paper. So what I need is the email address for Dr. Fred Durer. Or better yet, slip my email address, somehow, into his pocket with a note about how it got there. Maybe that's too creepy, I just thought that rather than getting information back to me through the chain it would be easier to just have the information going one way. That would be a bit too much like telephone and we all know how that ends up. I'm usually too embarrassed to even say what I think I heard. Okay, information going one way. Get him my email address, surely he'll be curious enough about this crazy experiment to contact me. He'll really have no idea who I am, so we better clarify that I was a patient and he delivered my son. Also, I'm married and an entire state away, so there's no funny stuff going on. That's your task. I send you out into the world, each by your own paths, in search of this one man. And how much more special will he feel knowing that a whole army of bored people who waste work hours reading their friend's blogs have been mobilized on his behalf, instead of a nice card? I'm excited. I am the spark that becomes the flame, the stone that causes the ripple that becomes the crashing wave! We can do this!

If this works, we'll try someone else. It's doesn't have to be all about me either, give me ideas. Who do you want to draw near in six degrees? How about Kevin Bacon?

My Family

It was only once I had kids that I started thinking about family in terms other than "people who share the same last name as me." As a kid you don't realize that not every family is like yours. Then once you get older you start experiencing holidays with other people and one day someone passes you stuffing that isn't from a box, and you understand that every family is different. At least that's how it happened for me.

I just got back from a trip to Houston to visit my sister, aunt, uncle, grandmother and grandfather. Dad and Adam also flew down from Chicago. This was the first time I'd seen some of them in about five years. It was interesting, in my late-blooming adulthood, to try to make sense of my family in the context of "people who contributed to the person I am today."

Grandmother reads. Their house is filled with books. She recently quit reading a book because the first line was not a complete sentence. She looks pretty much the same to me as she always has, she's gotten cuter. I think because she's gotten so thin her eyes look really big and blue and she's got this little button nose that I wish I had inherited. Grandfather is full of purpose, always has been. I remember watching him open the shades in the kitchen as a kid. I have no idea why this struck me or why I remember it to this day, but he did it so slowly and carefully. The whole wall is windows, so there were a lot of shades and he opened each one so seriously and perfectly. Most people would kind of rush through opening that many shades, and not really pay attention as they were doing it. Not my Grandfather.

My Uncle Mike and Aunt Moira live in my great grandmother's old house. We called her Muddie. I still don't know why, I'm one of the youngest of the great grandkids, so the name was there long before I came along. She lived until she was 106. She was a school teacher and had long hair that she always wore in a bun, sometimes with braids. We went to see the house and get cold Cokes and ice cream sandwiches. Muddie always had cold cokes and ice cream sandwiches and it's a requirement now that anyone living in that house offer them to family members stopping by. There is a doorframe where she used to mark our heights. It's mostly faded, but the best I could tell was that someone was about three feet tall on March 18, 1981. Uncle Mike told the story of my great grandfather who woke up one morning and exclaimed "someone cut down a corner tree!" He was looking at his ceiling made of wooden planks. One of them had three notches cut into it and being a land surveyor he knew that the corner of a property was marked by three notches in a tree. And sure enough, there it was, the plank with three notches.

Looking at that plank, I kind of realized that this was not a story about a person very different and far away from me, like most of the stories I hear or tell. This was a story about a person who is part of me, who might like to know me, who might find it interesting that I get cold in 75-degree weather or that I have dark brown eyes. It made me proud that I've got the blood of a man who can look at a piece of notched wood and tell you that someone is now wondering where the edge of their property is. Furthermore, a small bit of a woman who lived in three centuries lives on in me. There's a part of me that, if cultivated a little bit, has that certainty and confidence of a man who opens shades in a way that makes it memorable to a 13-year-old. And, if not the cute button nose, there's a perfectionism in me of a woman who closes a book after finding that a sentence is not complete. I am my father, in a diluted form, who is a writer like his mother reads and like his father closes blinds, thoughtfully and with certainty, and I am my mother who, when asked what he writes and she loses the words, does something that totally sums up who he is AND who she is. She holds her hand to his chest and says, "he writes this."

Family is not just a shotgun blast of people who share the same last name after all, then. I'm not sure yet in what ratios all these little elements come together in me, but they're all there and that makes me proud. Not that my family is better than yours, but it is mine and it's comforting. Thank you, family.

Umami

I know that it's been a very long time since I've last written anything. That's partially because I missed so much work from the snow that when I went back, I worked long hours (from approximately 9-5) to catch up and partially because another of our delivery drivers had to leave for a family emergency and that left me to do both my job and her job for an incredible eight hours a day. I hit the ground running every morning and hit the bed with equal enthusiasm each night. I have delivery stories to tell, and a very funny idea about what Lil Jon, Ludacris, and Usher would have to say about me delivering auto parts in rural Arkansas listening to their music ("WHAAAT?" says Lil Jon), but what I want to write about tonight is the Academy Awards, and more specifically, the rowing scene in "The Social Network."

I'll start with the definition for "Umami." It is one of the five tastes, together with sweet, sour, bitter and salty. It is popularly referred to as "savoriness." Honey is sweet, lemons are sour, coffee is bitter, and pretzels are salty. Umami is a little different, it simply adds body to food, gives them heft. It is the difference between Sam's Choice Cola and Coca Cola. I buy Sam's Choice because it's cheaper, but I prefer Coke. I thought it was the packaging or the advertising, or the desire to pass up the cheaper product for the name brand, but it turns out it's umami. Coke has it, Sam's Choice doesn't. There are people who study this, who make a living tasting food and determining this quality. For me it's more vague, it's just this imperceptible balance that you can't quite define, but you know you crave. It's a kind of perfection, this thing you seek without knowing exactly what you're looking for. And when you find it, you know it.

Since I learned the definition of umami, or rather, since I learned of the concept of umami, I've found myself applying it to everything. I'm fascinated by it. My favorite pair of jeans has umami. That song "If I Had a Boat," by Lyle Lovett has umami. John Hannah reading W.H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" has umami. The rowing scene in "The Social Network" has umami. I saw the movie a few weeks ago. I saw it because I like Jesse Eisenberg and I was excited to see what Trent Reznor would do with a movie score. I liked it because it turns out that Mark Zuckerburg is one of those people who are such geniuses at what they do that they are totally mystified by human behavior and because of the rowing scene. I'm going to do my technologically-disinclined best to upload a link to this scene here so you can see what I'm talking about.



The whole movie is pretty good, but this scene stands alone. It's a very simple scene. They're just racing boats. The song is very simple. We've all heard the tune so many times I can't remember where it originally came from. It's recognizable, but somehow sinister - which I like. I've watched it several times trying to figure out why it gives me chills. I'm not sure, but I think it's this: If you'll watch, the entire scene has a rhythm. It follows a beat. Everything works together, the images, the acting, the editing, the sound, like in those few minutes everyone put forth their very best effort at the thing they're best at, purely, and it all came together like a dance.

Even after writing this I'm not sure what to make of umami, or if I'm describing it right. Maybe, in the larger, Annie's-over-thinking-things sense, it's different things to different people. Certain things just resonate with some people. For me it's my Gap jeans, it's a songwriter singing a simple song about riding a pony on his boat, it's "He was my North, my South, my East, and West, My working week and Sunday rest" in a Scottish accent. It's people rowing boats to a song we already know, and finishing a sentence, taking a hot bath and going to sleep.

Thanks for sticking with me, those of you still reading. I'll try to be better about posting more regularly.

Snow Day

This time I planned ahead. For three days I'd been hearing about "a storm of historic proportions" headed straight for my house. Of course, I'd heard that before only to get a dusting of snow and a bunch of uppity superintendents calling off school all over the place. So, while I had my doubts, I knew how the schools would react, and thus the daycares. I made arrangements for Daddy to watch Story so I could still go to work today.

I kept checking throughout the night, peeking through my blinds, only to see... not much. I had my alarm set for 8:00 AM. Many things get stopped by addiction and then started back up in sobriety, right where you left off. It's not just your emotional growth, as they say. There is absolutely no need for me to set my alarm for 8:00 AM. I wake up angry at the world every morning at 7:30 on the dot. I'm angry at the world because my mind does not understand that, while 7:30 AM was not a reasonable time to wake up when I was 18 and had gone to bed at 6:30 AM, it is a reasonable time to wake up when you habitually go to bed at 10:00 PM, no matter how hard you try to stay awake. Will I always be 18 in my head? Will I ever quit complaining about having to be places at 9:00 AM?

So, when Trish called at 8:00 AM I was already awake and coming out of my morning angst. I cracked the blinds and saw a pretty good blanket of snow, and more coming down. "Don't worry about coming in. The roads are too bad, we'll be closing early anyway," she reported.

"Great, I'll just roll over and go back to sleep!" I said. I rolled over, closed my eyes, then went ahead and got up and took a shower. It's been a very long time since I've had an entire day to fill with my own thoughts. First, I watched the news instead of Spongebob. I ate cereal with milk for breakfast. I made some cookies and didn't have to hide the butter from Story, who has been known to sneak an entire stick and eat it like a candy bar. I cleaned out the refrigerator. I started to take out the trash but stopped when I couldn't figure out what kind of shoes to wear through the snow. I watched the History Channel all day and learned that the Statue of Liberty and Rockefeller Center are both symbols for Lucifer. Then some Templar stuff, which I really enjoy. That's pretty much been my day.

All the while it was snowing, it didn't stop until about 6:00 PM. All told, there's probably about a foot of snow out there, a staggering amount that baffles the both the highway department and police officers. Luckily criminals are similarly dissuaded, otherwise Russellville would be Dead Wood until it warms up a little bit. Roads don't seem to be grated, I've never known them to put down salt, and I suspect that the sand I sometimes see on the roads has been purchased by the city from backyard sandbox-owners and shoveled out of the back of someones pickup truck. This is the South, we shouldn't have to prepare for feet of snow.

I know that the entire country is dealing with terrible storms of "historic" proportions. I know that Chicago had their "Storm of the Century" just a week ago. I'm not sure that this snow could be considered historic, I guess time will tell, but it has certainly paralyzed the town at least for today. It's supposed to get down to six degrees tonight, and that will definitely freeze the snow that's been packed on the roads by the brave souls who ventured out today, making it a solid sheet of ice by morning. To those of you who are reading this tonight and plan to go out tomorrow, be careful and good luck. I'm still not driving, even with my four-wheel drive and my monster truck tires because a woman disappearing off the face of the Earth only to be found months later frozen to death and buried in her car in a muddy creek somewhere might be historic. I hate driving in snow, it scares me to death.

How News Travels - Get Well, Richard

Last week one of the guys I work with was in a terrible car accident while coming back from his lunch break. The newspaper the next day had a horrifying picture of the wreckage, a caption about one person - whose name wasn't released - going to the hospital, and a headline that read "The Perils of Drunk Driving." What we learned that very afternoon, within hours, was this:

First the daughter of the owner of Cross Auto Supply called and said "Tell the delivery drivers not to take Finley Curve, there's been a really bad wreck." At this point we didn't know that the wreck involved one of our own, just that we didn't want our drivers to burn up all their gas sitting around in some traffic jam.

Then Gary came in to count out his drawer and tell us that Richard had gotten in an accident, the one on Finley Curve. It wasn't until later that we learned how the news got to the shop. Brad is a part time delivery driver, Brad's dad is a police officer in Pottsville, a town a couple miles down the road. Brad's dad was called to Russellville to help direct traffic. When he arrived he realized that Richard was wearing a Cross Auto Supply shirt and called Mike, the manager, who then went to the hospital.

Mike kept checking in. He said that they would not talk to him since he was not family, but that the doctor kept coming out asking for a family member, which we took as a bad sign and as a call to arms. We would find a family member. Richard's file listed his wife as his emergency contact. She, however, died some years ago. Trish turned to me. "Who do we know?" I don't know anybody, so I left it up to her to play six degrees of Richard Armstrong. She contacted the owner of the shop, and his daughter, both of whom searched the memory of their cell phones for anyone who might be related to Richard. We knew he had a daughter in Little Rock, and a brother here in Russellville. Get the brother and you've got the family.

Richard is a war hero. He was in Vietnam and once, after a particularly bad battle, he was the only man left standing out of his whole platoon. He lives his life like a soldier. He's the one who empties the trash at work, at the same time every day, commenting on the candy wrappers so often that I've started to kind of bury them under other trash to avoid the humiliation of being called out on my boredom snacking. When you have a phone call he'll come stand over you, get the extension number off of your phone, and with great ceremony, transfer the call, with a staccato "hmm," and leave the office. I'm the one who counts the money from everyones drawer in the morning. Everyone else just kind of throws their money in their bag. Richard has his paper clipped together with the adding machine tape using only gold paper clips, and it balances to the penny every day. He takes care of his aging father. He's always having to take off work to go make sure he's eaten and check his medication and all of that. And he's always upset that his brother never helps him.

I'm not sure how it happened. I think Richard started coming around in the hospital and gave up the brother's number. Mike called us and one of the guys up front called the brother, who said he would get dressed (it was about 2 PM at this time), feed his cats, and get to the hospital.

Throughout the day news trickled in from various tow truck operators, body shops, and mechanics. In the automotive industry, a bad wreck is big news, everybody knows everybody else, and most people have a police scanner. By the next morning, before the picture and caption in the paper even ran, this is what we learned through word-of-mouth, networking, and eavesdropping: Richard was on his was to the shop after his lunch break. He was coming around the inside lane of a particularly dangerous curve ("Finley Curve") in his Camry when a drunk illegal immigrant from Mexico cut into his lane in his Tahoe and hit him head on. According to who you hear it from the impact could have been equivalent to 120 MPH or 60 MPH. The Tahoe pretty much just drove completely over the Camry. Both cars were totaled. The Camry was reduced to tiny pieces of crumpled metal. The immigrant walked away from the wreck, or rather, ran away and tried to hide in a nearby house. The police caught him and he's in jail now after a sobriety test. Richard was rushed to the hospital, then med-flighted to Little Rock due to concerns about "this area," Mike had said gesturing to his chest. He had a broken pelvis, hip, and ankle. Mike also said that his entire right arm was black and swollen.

This all happened last week. Richard is doing much better, still has a long way to go, but the latest is that the internal bleeding has stopped, he's had ankle surgery, and he was sitting in a chair talking to his daughter today. His brother came by the shop to pick up Richard's cell phone charger. Today was the first time most of us had seen the wayward brother. He looked exactly like Richard. His hair was a little longer, a little shaggier. He was a little scruffier, unshaven. I can't remember what he was really wearing, but in my memory it was one of those hippie-looking knit jackets. But when he talked, it was Richard. After he left I kind of turned to Trish and shook my head. "I don't know what to say. It's like they both started out like this," I said, holding my hands in front of me, palm to palm, to indicate two identical roads leading in the same direction, "and then Richard joined the army and his brother dodged the draft," and the hands go out to either side. At lunch we were all talking about Richard and worrying about how his Dad was getting along without him there to take care of him. Mike said that Richard's brother had told him that he and his dad were going out to eat every day. "He said 'Dad just says he want to go out!'" So they go out. We all kind of looked at each other and laughed. We're missing Richard. Everyone has worked there so long that when one person is gone everyone else gets kind of tripped up. Today I had to clean the bathroom. Trish had to mop. These were things that Richard just did. We didn't think about them. I know that he'll be gone for a while, he might even choose to go ahead and retire. It's pretty different around the shop and while I do enjoy reckless, guilt-free snacking, I also miss having Richard around and so does everyone else. And we all got emergency information forms to fill out with our last paychecks.