On Singledom, from the NYT (9/19/11)

September 19, 2011, 5:10 PM

In a Married World, Singles Struggle for Attention

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Stuart Bradford

Here’s a September celebration you probably didn’t know about: It’s National Single and Unmarried Americans Week.

But maybe celebration isn’t the right word. Social scientists and researchers say the plight of the American single person is cause for growing concern.

About 100 million Americans, nearly half of all adults, are unmarried, according to the Census Bureau — yet they tend to be overlooked by policies that favor married couples, from family-leave laws to lower insurance rates.

That national bias is one reason gay people fight for the right to marry, but now some researchers are concerned that the marriage equality movement is leaving single people behind.

“There is this push for marriage in the straight community and in the gay community, essentially assuming that if you don’t get married there is something wrong with you,” says Naomi Gerstel, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst who has published a number of papers comparing the married and unmarried.

“But a huge proportion of the population is unmarried, and the single population is only going to grow. At the same time, all the movement nationally is to offer benefits to those who are married, and that leaves single people dry.”

Yet as she and other experts note, single people often contribute more to the community — because once people marry, they tend to put their energy and focus into their partners and their own families at the expense of friendships, community ties and extended families.

In a report released this week by the Council on Contemporary Families, Dr. Gerstel notes that while 68 percent of married women offer practical or routine help to their parents, 84 percent of the never-married do. Just 38 percent of married men help their parents, compared with 67 percent of never-married men. Even singles who have children are more likely than married people to contribute outside their immediate family.

“It’s the unmarried, with or without kids, who are more likely to take care of other people,” Dr. Gerstel said. “It’s not having children that isolates people. It’s marriage.”

The unmarried also tend to be more connected with siblings, nieces and nephews. And while married people have high rates of volunteerism when it comes to taking part in their children’s activities, unmarried people often are more connected to the community as a whole. About 1 in 5 unmarried people take part in volunteer work like teaching, coaching other people’s children, raising money for charities and distributing or serving food.

Unmarried people are more likely to visit with neighbors. And never-married women are more likely than married women to sign petitions and go to political gatherings, according to Dr. Gerstel.

The demographics of unmarried people are constantly changing, and more Americans are spending a greater percentage of their lives unmarried than married. While some people never marry, other adults now counted as single are simply delaying marriage longer than people of their parents’ generation did. And many people are single because of divorce or the death of a spouse. About one-sixth of all unmarried adults are 65 and older; nearly one-eighth of unmarried people are parents.

The pressure to marry is particularly strong for women. A 2009 study by researchers at the University of Missouri and Texas Tech University carried the title “I’m a Loser, I’m Not Married, Let’s Just All Look at Me.” The researchers conducted 32 interviews with middle-class women in their 30s who felt stigmatized by the fact that they had never married.

“These were very successful women in their careers and their lives, yet almost all of them felt bad about not being married, like they were letting someone down,” said Lawrence Ganong, a chairman of human development and family studies at the University of Missouri.

“If a person is happy being single,” he said, “then we should support that as well.”

Bella DePaulo, a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has a term for discrimination against single people, which she calls one of the last accepted prejudices. It is the title of her new book, “Singlism: What It Is, Why It Matters and How to Stop It.”

As an example, Dr. DePaulo cites the Family and Medical Leave Act. Because she is single and has no children, nobody in her life can take time off under the law to care for her if she becomes ill. Nor does it require that she be given time off to care for a sibling, nephew or close friend.

Stephanie Coontz, director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families, says policy makers often neglect the needs of single people because their view is outdated — based on the way they themselves grew up.

In researching her latest book, “A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique in American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s,” Ms. Coontz found that in the past single people were often called “deviant,” “neurotic” and “selfish.”

“We do have the tendency to think that there is something special about married people, and that they are the ones who keep community and family going,” she said. “I thought it was important to point out that single people keep our community going, too.”

On Monday

Spinster, by Sylvia Plath


Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious April walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.
By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.
How she longed for winter then!--
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock, each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.
But here--a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley--
A treason not to be borne. Let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.
And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.












Flights to and from Chicago have been cancelled. 
The future of that adventure is no longer certain.
I finally did what I've known I needed to do for a long time. 
And with a heavy heart, it's been ended.
Of course there are loose ends, the tired scraps that guilt leaves behind. 
Now there will be great stretches of silence. Of misplaced habits. Of euphoria. 
Eventually there will be memories. A city destroyed. 


But on the plus side, I have $200 in plane fares to anywhere Southwest flies. I want to get away. 

On Suburban Segregation

Not necessary reading material (because it's just an infograph), but something worth looking at to prove that I'm not entirely insane: Suburbanization of Poverty

Wet and cold (at least I was), we headed home from last Monday night's Bronco game via public transportation. Mike and I found ourselves at Colfax and Broadway at half past midnight, seated on a wet and cold park bench.

That bus stop is always busy, and half past midnight on an early Tuesday morning is no different. As we sat, people surrounded us, all talking about the game. But what caught my attention was the fact that they hadn't gone to the game as spectators, they had gone as employees. Kettle corn, beer, other food-service.
The commonality was football statistics; the man behind me knows more about football than I ever will; the crazy man pacing knows much less.

I felt guilty, shamed by my spectator-status as they discussed what had gone on behind the scenes and counted out their tips. One guy had a fistful of one-dollar bills. I was tempted to tell him to shove them back in his pocket, lest someone steal them. (Cape Town really got that in my brain. Last Saturday when I was out, I found that I had stashed $42 in my bra, just in case.)

The bus was not coming. I was grumpy.

I listened to the girl a few seats down start talking about where she was staying (Mississippi and Sable) and how long it was going to take her to get home (forever) - but then I got the impression that she was still in high school. And possibly homeless.
The guy next to her was also headed out to Aurora.

To my great relief, the bus finally came and we squished on. (For the record, people in Denver have no idea what a crowded bus is - they were balking at the prospect of having to move back and squeeze in, claiming that the bus was "full." Not full at all, but I wasn't in the mood to get stern.)

As the bus lumbered up Colfax, it stopped at nearly every stop to add more people. You'd think, perhaps, that as the bus left the city center, it would slowly empty rather than filling. No. It seemed that everyone was headed east. What's east? First of all, the Colorado Blvd connection (and the #40 bus), but second, and more importantly, Aurora.

Whenever I bemoan my situation (as I so love to do), I'm absolutely overlooking the fact that I have a support system. That I have transportation, that I have Simon.

I'm overlooking the fact that, like the girl seated a few seats away, there are varying degrees of homelessness in our city. Not everyone who's technically homeless has a cardboard sign and wants your money. They're sleeping on people's couches; they're crashing at a friend's place; they're staying awake all night; they're riding the bus around until they get somewhere. That's how people manage not to freeze during winters in Chicago - they ride the train until the end of the line and then turn around and do it all over again.

I'm overlooking the fact that I don't have an hour-long commute each way. I don't have to be dependent on the bus, something that can add hours to any commute, anywhere. I don't have to get on the bus with my arms loaded with groceries.

Unlike the woman with at least three, possibly four, kids and two strollers, I don't have to rely on the kindness of others to get my family safely off the bus. The kids reminded us of the township creches. They were cute, polite, but desperately needed clean clothes and baths. And a decent bedtime.

In Cape Town, the suburbs hold populations that fall into varying classifications of income levels, from the rich (Camps Bay) to the poor (Steenberg) to the poorer (Lavender Hill) to the townships (Vrygrond) to the informal settlements (Village Heights). As you go further down the income ladder, you find that the population density increases exponentially, as does the crime rate. But what falls at an equal rate is access to transportation.

Poorer neighborhoods are further from access to trains. Instead, they have to take a minibus from their neighborhood, probably to another minibus, then eventually to the train. This adds to their commute and can be a determining factor in their employment status.

Vrygrond was strategically placed away from train lines. The white Cape Townians didn't want the colored and black populations to have access to the transportation, but instead, wanted them to remain in their designated neighborhoods.

Minibuses, the other transportation alternative to trains, are dangerous. I've never been so harassed as I was on the trains and minibuses in Cape Town. It's the touching that really gets you. You're either about to be groped or robbed, and neither are pleasant. But people have to do that every day. Sitting on top of strangers, next to strangers, pushed up against them.

It's funny because just as the transportation effectively cuts off the poorest, it also secludes the richest. You can't take public transportation to Camps Bay, the wealthy, white side of Table Mountain. You have to take a cab.

In Cape Town, when I was finding jobs for the unemployed, many of the ads stipulated that people be from certain areas only. For a country that has come so far from Apartheid, it's disheartening to see such blatant discrimination.

Is that what we want here? A segregated workforce? But more importantly than that, is that what we're eventually going to have? Are we becoming a more diverse population or a more segregated one as time passes?

As someone who usually has access to transportation, it's a wake-up call to realize how much your life can be affected by the inability to commute. Mobility is a key to success. By continuing to eliminate entire populations of workers by simply making it difficult for them to access transportation, we're effectively ensuring that only a select portion of people will be able to apply for, and eventually obtain, those jobs.

We need to focus on building effective transportation systems that are easily accessible, by everyone. We need more trains. We need more bus-only lanes. We need a swifter boarding process. We need to be able to get to the Denver airport via train. We need to be quick about it.

On Impatience

No one would ever call me a patient person. It's just not in my nature, I guess. Once I want something, I want it right then and there. I'm not good at playing waiting games.

But lately, I've been wondering if we're not more impatient as a result of our media consumption.
I watch tv with Mike - usually one of our shows. They're an hour long (with commercials, average of 41 minutes without). In that hour, we see a situation unfold, explode, and be resolved neatly by the end.

So how much of that are we carrying over to real life?
In simulating real-life situations via television, broadcasting them, creating fantastic realities in which ordinary people do extraordinary things, are we limiting our ability to actually process like humans? Have we redefined reality to be a mirror of these simulations?

Television shows and movies have necessitated the cutting of extraneous things - such as waiting - from their plot lines. It won't do to have the entire courtship shown in an under 2-hour romantic comedy. Instead, we are treated to a montage, often accompanied by music. Or some sort of situation that represents the relationship.

So the time between things is often understated and underrepresented.

Arguably, our society has started to do the same things. Gone are the days of snail mail, instead, love happens via one-night stands and text messages. War, something sensationalized by television and movies, glorified by the 24-hour news channels, is left forgotten once there is no quick conclusion. We triumphantly marked the fall of Saddam Hussein but have neglected to mark the minutes since.

Everything looks easy. Conflict is solved with a single conversation, brooding becomes a beautiful expression of anguish, and all love affairs are solved with a passionate expression of love at just the right time. People wait for other people, their schedules always magically line up.

Are we becoming jaded? Bombs? Cars blowing up strategically?

Would any of us even know what to do in case of an actual emergency? "I saw this on tv once" certainly isn't going to help. Those bombs and magic fires that burn exactly where they're supposed to are movie magic rather than the stuff that real life is made of. Mike and I were talking about being a spy. And I reminded him that being a spy in the real world is hardly as sexy as it seems on screen. Lots of dead drops and waiting.

Even criminal behavior. It's not that easy to hack into just any old bank system. Or any government computer. Of course, magically, the screens you need are up just in time for you to enter your data. I spend a good percentage of my work day digging through our drives, looking for a single file. And I know the layout. Imagine walking in cold to steal data. Yes, it can be done. But it's just not that simple.


I often wonder if I am a victim of this kind of conditioned thinking. How have my expectations been molded by the media I take in?
How have certain things become normalized?

Women, swearing and the workplace

By Emanuella Grinberg, CNN

updated 1:46 PM EST, Mon September 12, 2011

Ousted Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz vented her displeasure with being fired via phone to Fortune magazine.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Profanity, candor were trademarks of Carol Bartz's management style as Yahoo CEO
• "It stands out because it's not expected," professor says of her tendency to swear
• Attention devoted to language reflects "double-bind" women face in corporate America
• E-mail to colleagues announcing she was "fired" via phone "brilliantly refreshing," author says

(CNN) -- It's not every day you read about one top-level executive asking another where his balls are. But in the end, former Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz lived up to her reputation for "salty language" and candid management style.

Since Bartz's very public departure from Yahoo last week, her penchant for blunt, profane language have become recurring themes in discussions of her career, driving conversation about what women can and can't be in the workplace.

"It stands out because it's not expected," said Deborah Tannen, a linguistics professor at Georgetown University and author of "You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation."

"We always take notice of what's unexpected and women are still not expected to curse, so when they do, its noticed more."

Bartz got the ball rolling when she called the board members that fired her a bunch of "doofuses" who "f----- me over" in her first public comments after the now infamous firing-by-phone. Those statements came two days after Yahoo chairman Roy Bostock called her on her cell phone last Tuesday to deliver the news. In response, she sent an e-mail to Yahoo's 14,000 colleagues telling them "I've just been fired over the phone by Yahoo's chairman of the board," and wishing them the best.

Since then, tales of her "characteristically salty language" and perceived abrasiveness have peppered the post-mortems on her two-year tenure, which many seem to agree ended due to her failure to boost revenue and lack of long-term vision. Even The Wall Street Journal published an amusing compilation of "Carol Bartz's Best Quotes," a testament to how her "crude honesty" and "blue language" became part of her brand.

"What do I look for when hiring? Well, let's get past the assumption that they can do the job. There has to be a no-a------ rule," she said in a 2010 interview with Esquire titled, "Hi, I'm Carol Bartz... Are You an A------?"

The attention devoted to Bartz's candor, profane or otherwise, reflects the double-bind faced by women in the business world, especially those in high positions, Tannen said.

"If women talk in ways expected of them or project a feminine demeanor, its seen as weak. But if they talk in ways associated with men or bosses, then they're seen as too aggressive," she said. "Whatever they do violates one or the other expectation, either you're not talking as you should as a women or as boss."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, if you believe women are treated differently than men, Tannen and others think that a dirty-mouthed man would not receive as much attention for his blue language as Bartz has.

"For people to call it 'salty language' shows how we're uncomfortable talking about women who swear. I don't think anyone would describe a rapper's language as being salty," said former Nickelodeon executive Anne Kreamer, whose book, "It's Always Personal: Emotions in the New Workplace," came out this year.

The fact that Bartz was known for swearing, crying and confrontations also reflects the tight-lipped, button-upped culture pervading corporate America, Kreamer said. In researching her book, "Emotions in the Workplace," Kreamer said she found that 60% of employees reported never seeing their bosses get angry or display any kind of unpleasant emotion.

"People are barely keeping it together and that's why this becomes a conversation point because everyone wants to be able to publicly flip off the boss one way or another. But you swallow it because you don't want to lose your job," she said.

Not everyone considers swearing in the workplace appropriate, said Charles Conine, who runs Consilium, an employee and labor relations consulting service. But standards vary depending on whether the workplace is a corporate office in Silicon Valley or a battlefield in Afghanistan.

Yahoo isn't known for its culture of confrontation, which could be why Bartz's actions -- while at Yahoo and in her public flipping-off of its board -- still has power to shock the public, Kreamer said.

"We go through these Kabuki-like dances of ways to save face in corporate America," Kreamer said.

"The way she simply said, 'I've been fired' was brilliantly refreshing. She said it as blunt as she did because she was pissed off, and we rarely see that."

Are Jobs Obsolete? By Douglas Rushkoff

Are jobs obsolete?

By Douglas Rushkoff, Special to CNN

September 7, 2011 9:33 a.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Douglas Rushkoff: U.S. Postal Service new example of human work replaced by technology
• He says technology affecting jobs market; not enough workers needed to run the technology
• He says we have to alter our ideas: It's not about jobs, it's about productivity
• Rushkoff: Technology lets us bypass corporations, make our own work -- a new model

Editor's note: Douglas Rushkoff is a media theorist and the author of "Program or Be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age" and "Life Inc: How Corporatism Conquered the World and How We Can Take it Back."

(CNN) -- The U.S. Postal Service appears to be the latest casualty in digital technology's slow but steady replacement of working humans. Unless an external source of funding comes in, the post office will have to scale back its operations drastically, or simply shut down altogether. That's 600,000 people who would be out of work, and another 480,000 pensioners facing an adjustment in terms.

We can blame a right wing attempting to undermine labor, or a left wing trying to preserve unions in the face of government and corporate cutbacks. But the real culprit -- at least in this case -- is e-mail. People are sending 22% fewer pieces of mail than they did four years ago, opting for electronic bill payment and other net-enabled means of communication over envelopes and stamps.

New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs.

We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace.

And so the president goes on television telling us that the big issue of our time is jobs, jobs, jobs -- as if the reason to build high-speed rails and fix bridges is to put people back to work. But it seems to me there's something backwards in that logic. I find myself wondering if we may be accepting a premise that deserves to be questioned.companies unpatriot not to hire

According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, there is enough food produced to provide everyone in the world with 2,720 kilocalories per person per day. And that's even after America disposes of thousands of tons of crop and dairy just to keep market prices high. Meanwhile, American banks overloaded with foreclosed properties are demolishing vacant dwellings  to get the empty houses off their books.We're living in an economy where productivity is no longer the goal, employment is. That's because, on a very fundamental level, we have pretty much everything we need. America is productive enough that it could probably shelter, feed, educate, and even provide health care for its entire population with just a fraction of us actually working.I am afraid to even ask this, but since when is unemployment really a problem? I understand we all want paychecks -- or at least money. We want food, shelter, clothing, and all the things that money buys us. But do we all really want jobs?

Our problem is not that we don't have enough stuff -- it's that we don't have enough ways for people to work and prove that they deserve this stuff.

Jobs, as such, are a relatively new concept. People may have always worked, but until the advent of the corporation in the early Renaissance, most people just worked for themselves. They made shoes, plucked chickens, or created value in some way for other people, who then traded or paid for those goods and services. By the late Middle Ages, most of Europe was thriving under this arrangement.

The only ones losing wealth were the aristocracy, who depended on their titles to extract money from those who worked. And so they invented the chartered monopoly. By law, small businesses in most major industries were shut down and people had to work for officially sanctioned corporations instead. From then on, for most of us, working came to mean getting a "job."

The Industrial Age was largely about making those jobs as menial and unskilled as possible. Technologies such as the assembly line were less important for making production faster than for making it cheaper, and laborers more replaceable. Now that we're in the digital age, we're using technology the same way: to increase efficiency, lay off more people, and increase corporate profits.

While this is certainly bad for workers and unions, I have to wonder just how truly bad is it for people. Isn't this what all this technology was for in the first place? The question we have to begin to ask ourselves is not how do we employ all the people who are rendered obsolete by technology, but how can we organize a society around something other than employment? Might the spirit of enterprise we currently associate with "career" be shifted to something entirely more collaborative, purposeful, and even meaningful?

Instead, we are attempting to use the logic of a scarce marketplace to negotiate things that are actually in abundance. What we lack is not employment, but a way of fairly distributing the bounty we have generated through our technologies, and a way of creating meaning in a world that has already produced far too much stuff.

The communist answer to this question was just to distribute everything evenly. But that sapped motivation and never quite worked as advertised. The opposite, libertarian answer (and the way we seem to be going right now) would be to let those who can't capitalize on the bounty simply suffer. Cut social services along with their jobs, and hope they fade into the distance.

But there might still be another possibility -- something we couldn't really imagine for ourselves until the digital era. As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products.

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do -- the value we create -- is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This sort of work isn't so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another -- all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

For the time being, as we contend with what appears to be a global economic slowdown by destroying food and demolishing homes, we might want to stop thinking about jobs as the main aspect of our lives that we want to save. They may be a means, but they are not the ends.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Douglas Rushkoff.

On 9/11

I really hate talking about tragedies. I think that often they serve as an opportunity to capitalize, rather than an opportunity for reflection.

September 11, 2001. I'm in 7th grade. I'm at Dad's house that week. I'm in the bathtub in the apartment at Deerfield. I'm doing the usual procrastination routine (for some reason, it took 12-year old me like an hour and a half to get ready for school), when Dad knocks on my door and tells me to turn on the tv.
I get out. I'm wrapped in that striped blue and yellow towel with the red ends.
I turn on the tv sitting on my dresser (the one exciting part about divorce was cable!) and stare.
I started watching before the second plane hit.
I saw that little speck fly across the screen, hit the building, and burst into flames. The smoke rippled out and up, away.

That's what I remember about 9/11.
We went to school. They wouldn't tell us anything. At our lockers, we whispered that the White House had been blown up, that everything was destroyed. There was talk of letting us watch the coverage, but that never happened.

My cousins were born that day. Little premature babies coming into the world. They were life in the middle of all the hopelessness. Everyone was worried that they wouldn't make it. That they were too early. They would. They had to.

On the tenth anniversary, I hope that all of America stops and reflects about the past decade. About how that day really did change us all; it changed our outlook; it took our trust.

But I am very critical of how we treated Muslims after that. The way we're still treating Muslims. The way we look at the Arab world and make blanket statements. It's not healthy for us to live these two-faced lives: the one of freedom and strength and the other of cowardly fear and oppression.

It is true that Osama bin Laden wanted us to get into a war we could never escape from. And we've managed to do it twice. So, honestly, he gets a point or two for that. We didn't think through our actions - we acted instead. You all know I'm the first person to advocate acting first and thinking later, but not when it comes to peoples' lives. To tax dollars. To innocent civilians.
We acted incorrectly. We went into Iraq, not because of 9/11 (but yeah, sort of), but to find WMDs that didn't exist. We should have left. Instead, we just blew more stuff up.

No one won 9/11.
Bin Laden lost his freedom, his power, and eventually his life.
We lost much more than that.
Not only did we lose so many of our own unsuspecting civilians, fathers and mothers, and families, we lost our future. Arguably, we lost our superpower status.

Not everything that has happened in the last decade happened because of 9/11.
We're not the same, we've lost a lot.
But we are stronger than that day.

America is more than that day.

So hug your family and be grateful for them. Even though our country is mired in a hot mess of hell right now, we are a wonderful place to be.
I personally am grateful for all of my freedom as a woman. My freedom of expression. My independence.  My education. My life, even though it super shitty sometimes, is full of endless possibilities.

And so is yours.

On weather, ew.

It seems like I blinked and suddenly it was fall.

In all of my praise for how awesome radiator heat is, I must have neglected to remind myself that they are only wonderful when they're on. And since the days will still heat up to a reasonable temperature for at least another month, we're not likely to see radiator heat until mid-October, which is for the best as we'd be sweating and miserable in our apartment otherwise.

However, rather than sweating and miserable, I am shivering and miserable. The cat climbs on top of me in the middle of night (I'm not sure if this is so he can get warm or so he can act like a small airplane blanket), and so I wake up with yellow eyes in my face. The first time it happens to you, it's terrifying. After that, you sort of just roll over and shove him off. I'm going to have to get out the quilts and go digging around for extra blankets for myself - he's already got his airplane blanket situation sorted. He has a beautiful dark blue fleece and satin blanket that he has laid claim to.

Brrr....

And of course, the broken window isn't helping things at all.

But, I am looking forward to the winter because of snowboarding. This is the year I am going to learn it, get really awesome at it, and then get better. Now that E and I have snowboards, we're ready to attack the mountains and become real 20-something Coloradans, emphasis on the rad.

Apres Awkward

Since there's nothing terribly traumatic happening this week, you might just be treated to something relatively light-hearted and hopeful today!

But maybe not. We'll see how it goes.

Last night, I was supposed to get drinks with the Biochemist (for those of you who aren't familiar with him, he's the guy I met online - oh dear - and then proceeded to have a very awkward three month non-relationship with). The last time I saw him, I was wine-drunk and sobbing. Ooh, rough. Jacob was there. I smeared mascara all over his white t-shirt. I woke up puffy. In general, not one of my better moments.

So naturally, I think he assumed that I was heartbroken by the demise of our relationship. Heartbroken, yes. About him, no. You see, technically - we can play this game all day - technically, I've never been really dumped. Like told, "This isn't working out. We should see other people." And even though I get mad points for telling him hours before he did it that he was going to do it, I was still upset. How often do you get dumped by a person you were going to dump?

We just didn't click. At all. We both should have known better after the first date that nothing romantic was going to evolve out of it.
But still, we persevered.

I like to drink and dance and get naked in public (kidding, mostly). He likes to run triathalons and give anti-meat lectures (only once. But once is one time too many for this bacon lover).

Anyway, I was excited to get a drink and hang out, although a bit worried that we wouldn't have much to talk about. Not that I should have worried, I am known for my ability to babble on endlessly at any time about anything. I am excited by the fact that we might be able to be friends.

So when he called, cancelled - I was exhausted, so that was actual a very welcome cancellation, chatted with me for awhile (good conversation - I forgot that he can be really funny. and so can I) and told me he was glad to hear my life was going well, I was annoyed. Maybe I was more annoyed by the fact that I told him (jokingly!) that my feelings were hurt and I was going to cry before realizing that his last memory of me is of me doing exactly that.

Am I that patronizing to my exes when we hang out? If so, I swear to never again tell them "I'm glad you're doing well," as though I'm alluding to the fact that I thought they'd be a schizophrenic mess without me.

I said goodbye, and hung up, cheered by the fact that I am a completely normal twenty-something sort of single woman. Bridget Jones would be so proud.

This time for Africa

It's been a year since the epic adventure that was Cape Town began...

I've not got the words at the moment, so here's the music video for the song that I most closely associate with our time there.

When I got there, that very first night, my German roommate Svenja and my host mom Priscilla (Mama P, affectionately) played this song and we danced to it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRpeEdMmmQ0

For fall, even though you're not here yet

This summer was my first not-real-summer. I didn't get to lay out in the sun or dip my toes in the pool without having to worry if one of the kids I was watching was going to go face first in and shriek out in terror. I didn't get tan. (Preemptively, I purchased face powder a shade darker than normal. Turns out, I've just been a shade darker in the face for about a month. Attractive, I know.) I didn't see anything wonderful except brake lights and Colorado Blvd by morning and evening commute.

That's an exaggeration, but for someone who loves summer afternoons of freedom, the idea of sitting on the sixth floor of an office building has been one of grief. Youth is gone, mostly.

I've been smelling fall in the air.
Autumn is coming, it's right around the corner.

The mornings bite crisply even as the days reach nearly ninety degrees. The nights are scented with nature, sort of unnatural in the middle of the city.

To me, autumn means driving through crunchy leaves and dark afternoons. It means fresh notebooks (it must be left over from my school days). It means tights and my favorite tweed skirt. It means pumpkins and squash and witch decorations.

My freshman year of high school, I rode to school with a girl who lived down the street. For all of October, she had a CD of horror film soundtrack songs. And so every time I hear one of those songs, I'm thrust back into the fall of 2002, the red cloth in the Ford sedan, the CD player (she took the face of it with her every time we parked, just in case her car got broken into), that CD, and the leaves. Always the leaves - the music added such an eerie aura to them.

I love fall. I love the cool mornings and the warmth of the days. I hate how the sun slips away faster and faster until it's gone and the winter has set in.

But the promise of fall is a glorious one.

And Halloween is right around the corner. Yay!

Sublimation. Or the Gray Area I Call Home.

When you're younger, the answer is always easy.

Second grade math problems are just like all others: there is only one answer.

You're either right.

Or you're wrong.

You learn the opposites. Hot. Cold. High. Low. But you never really learn about the states in between.

Adulthood is a great languishing.

Of course, there are highs and lows and hots and colds. But mostly, there's a lot of nothingness. It's the kind of nothingness that stems from the fact that you thought it would be all hots or colds. Or highs or lows. It's not always a bad nothingness, not at all. It just is. There's certainly room for debate, for argument, for decision making (steak or chicken? reply today or tomorrow?), for progressive thought. All of these are followed by fits and starts of manic activity (sometimes solely contained within the still hopeful mind).

The melancholic side of the nothingness brings about the inevitable introspection, which leads to planning, which leads....back. And sometimes, a little change is enacted and you've suddenly reverted from melancholic nothingness to that blissful nothingness, where everything is calm and smooth and beautiful.

For a time.

Alas, we've arrived back in the gray area.

There are no answers.

There exists no right, no wrong. We're all waging war against opinions.

After pining and creating this odd little relationship (that isn't one, he'll be quick to add), everything has fallen into place.

Or out of place, perfectly.

Whichever is a more apt statement.

He came this weekend.

He met Mom and Dad and Mike and G and AJ.

I met his friends.

He stayed at my house five nights (all except for Friday) - which was something I definitely did not expect and something that wildly pleased me.

He told me he wasn't going to be with any other girls.

I smiled.

We began to think ahead (a bit), based on the thought that he may end up back in Denver as soon as January. Would I be his girlfriend then?

The cracks appeared, began to show and spread.

With my detective hat on, I began putting clues together.

It's a minor incident, but it may very well be the deal breaker that ends it all.

It's seriously little better than an episode of the children's show Blue's Clues.

Clue #1 was a chance glance, a peek. Too bad I'm an incredibly quick reader.

Intrigued but not irate, I put it aside.

Clues #2 and #3 were more tangible. A story of a meeting, an incorrect name. There it was again, my brain flagged it. And three pushed me over the edge.

What's wrong? he asked me as I sat slumped, nauseous from the ill-advised blood donation without any food. I guess he gets points for discerning anger through nausea.

We talked. He told me she was a girl he knew in college.

I'm no moron.

Our night continued with his promise of some modern form of long-distance fidelity.

After he left, I spoke to one of my co-workers, a woman I have mad respect for, who told me, "Honey, let me tell you something. They never grow up. Trust me." Great.

I spoke to one of my dear friends in Chicago. "You need someone who impresses you. Who gets you. Who respects every single inch of you." I asked her why it is that I have such terrible taste in men. She laughed. "Daddy issues. You can totally blame it all on him. I certainly do." We commiserated over the fact that there are so few intelligent, mature, responsible, fun, adventurous, adorable, assertive-yet-not-an-asshole men.

I called him on it last night. I told him that it wasn't the other woman (but it is, and we all know that) but it was the lie (that's a serious violation for me. I don't lie, cheat, or steal, and I expect the people I associate with to do the same). The words "trust" "respect" and "honesty" dominated my appeal. I remained calm, collected and clear (odd, right?). I laid out the situation. I laid out why I was angry. I listened to his responses, called him on his bullshit, and told him I didn't know how I wanted him to fix it. I told him I was too angry with him to cry. I pushed him. I'm glad I did.

Frustrated and tired, I told him I had to sleep. Of course I didn't. I stared at the dim screen of my laptop while it played reruns of 30 Rock.

Today, I woke up numb and even more exhausted, if that's at all possible.

Dragging through the morning, doing my very first support bit - eek! I'm going to have to start handling technical issues with our product, and as exciting as it is, it's really scary, too! - and then it came. The buzzing of my phone. I didn't look. Three more buzzes lead me to believe something catastrophic may have happened or that I'd just received a novella.

It was in fact that latter.

A novella of contrition. Of admission. Of (his) understanding (of the situation). A little bit of my anger melted away when he admitted that he's been taking me for granted, and that last night made him realize how much he stands to lose if I bail. (duh, I'm Katie Barry)

I'm still hurt, still annoyed, still frustrated. But it's salvageable, I think. We spoke again at lunch today, a soft, quiet conversation. But positive. Communication is not a bad thing. But my bullshit meter is on high alert (threat level orange).

And while I am well aware that this may be one of my more fantastic mistakes, I also think it's a fantastic adventure. Sorry, Mom, I know you've tried tactfully to hide your disapproval, but it's going to be awhile before this is over.

Welcome to life in the Gray Area (I'm imagining that it must be something like the Twilight Zone, although I'm not entirely certain).

I promise, I'm still alive.

But I am exhausted.

I've been staring at this screen, desperate to relay my (as usual) turbulent emotions and thoughts on the past week, but after some brief stalling and deleting and reflecting, I think it would be best to put (at least) 8 hours of sleep between myself and this blog.

That way, instead of reading crazy talk, you'll be reading about the Gray Area post I was originally going to write.

It goes a little something like this:

"Let me tell you something," she said to me. "Men never grow up."

It's a romantic tale, full of need and loss and anger and pain. And it was my weekend. You'll enjoy it.

I'll highlight the best and worst parts and we'll all leave exactly where we were: confused.

Or maybe that'll just be me.

The Weekend Wrap Up: Nightmares and Expectations

The twins that I babysit for always use "sleeps" as a way to countdown to things, like the next time you'll see someone.

Two sleeps until S comes! I've been out of sorts (and in my head) about this whole ordeal for the past few days, and it will be nice to reset all of that.

Ready for last night's real live nightmare?

I was at G and G's house - but it was all dark, just like you'd imagine a dungeon. And M, Dad, and I were all sitting stiffly at the table. I had my hands clenched in my lap.

We were talking to G and G and there were Christmas decorations everywhere.

Then, she told us the reason she'd invited us. She spread her arm out, bent at the elbow, sweeping toward the living room.

Our heads turned in unison.

There, in the living room, were the scattered remains of their Christmas celebration. Papers, boxes, plates of food, all glinting under the eerily twinkling lights of the Christmas tree. She'd invited us over to clean it up.

I woke up breathing heavily, convincing myself it wasn't real.

It's not real.

It's oddly telling, though.

I wish my brain could stop chewing on it, though, and just swallow it so I don't have to taste my own bitterness every day.

*breathes deeply, thinks inner peace*

On a positive note, I went to IKEA this weekend! Emily and I woke up early on Sunday and headed out there before they opened (good call - no lines, parking, etc.). We went into the cafe to have $1.99 breakfast and .50c coffee, then somehow ended up going through IKEA backwards. But it was lovely. I got a new duvet - white with gray flowers on it - and new gray sheets. I also picked up wineglasses so I won't have to serve guests in my everyday drinking glasses anymore.

It was fun and busy.

I really enjoy all of their odds and ends and kitchen things more than I enjoy anything else.

$5 for 6 wineglasses will get me every time.

I was at Mom's house yesterday doing my 1800 loads of laundry for the week, and we were chatting. It's nice to have someone so wizened to bounce ideas off of. I came away from our conversation reminding myself that I'm 23. I think I forget that sometimes. It's not so much that I'd like to be older, it's that I measure myself against people who have five or ten years on me and wonder why I don't match up. So for today, I am trying to embrace 23, however one embraces something intangible like that.

I also came away from our conversation very curious about what other G has to say about S.

But let's save that for after his visit - I can only imagine how this going to go. He's meeting Dad and J on Wednesday, and I haven't told him that yet. And then he's meeting Mom on Thursday. Ah, well, surprise surprise!