For several years, Nike used this command as a tagline for their commercials. Ideally, it meant to stop coming up with excuses and do what needs to be done. Lovely sentiment, really, and not a bad axiom to follow. Unless…
What if you’re one of those who’s raised self-defeat to an art form? What if, like myself, you believe that whatever you try, whatever you do, you will fail? Forget your dreams, they’re nothing but dreams. Come to reality and just be like everyone else. Stop complaining, others have it worse off than you. No one wants to hear what you have to say. Lots of people are told similar things by family, and even friends, and they come out just fine. Others don’t. The same words and treatment do different things to different people.
I’m a master of self-defeat. I’m the flaky, useless one who talks a lot but doesn’t actually say anything. Success on the horizon? Don’t worry, I’ll find a way to destroy it. Opportunity of a lifetime? Never fear, I’ll be able to irrevocably ruin my chances. Life falling apart? Hah, you haven’t seen anything, yet! I am the master of self-defeat!
Nor am I the only one. People who have siblings who seem to be doing just fine are themselves falling apart. We compare ourselves to others, unfavorably, and often come up wanting. Not everyone, there are those who compare themselves to others and see an opportunity, and have the tools to take advantage of that opportunity. I envy those people. I wish I could find a way to make myself think like that, to see the opportunities and take advantage of them, instead of just letting them go because I know I’ll screw it up somehow. Given half a chance, I’ll destroy everything I’ve built. Or so it seems.
What to do? Well, apparently, I haven’t given up just yet. I’ve managed to find a way around some of those hurdles. There are others that I see looming above me, ones that seem almost insurmountable, that I can’t find a way to overcome. All the more frustrating when I see others who seem completely unfazed by the same hurdles. It’s as nothing to them, why can’t you see how easy it is to go across?
I have things I could be doing now to improve my situation. I know what they are. Some, I’ve accomplished. I’ve found a way around those hurdles. Others, I cannot. There’s no good reason, really, just one more thing I’ve failed at. I have an amazing ability to see just how whatever I attempt will fail miserably. I can find a way to make it fail, to screw it up, to make it worse than it already is. All the self-help tools in the world seem almost useless in the face of my abilities as destroyer of self. This is my reality.
Just Do It. There’s a lot of pressure in that one little sentence.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Yes We Can
I wasn't going to go to Pueblo today, I had decided I'd rather stay in bed. Emblematic of my life of late, doing all I can just to function, forget about doing anything else. But, I made myself go anyway.
I got directions from the internet - how did I ever get anywhere without it? - and hit the highway. Fortunately, I had plenty of gas and some cash, so I could stop and grab some breakfast. Pueblo, Colorado, here I come!
Colorado is a battleground state for the upcoming election. Barack Obama and his surrogates have made many stops here in the past few months. Many. This is his fourth or fifth himself, second to Pueblo. Michelle Obama and Joe Biden have also made the trip alone, both to Colorado Springs. Hah, Denver ISN'T the only city in the state!
The event itself was almost unremarkable. There were the expected vendors and crowd, a line that stretched a mile at least, and the volunteers recruiting other volunteers. I felt a little guilty for not signing up, but I just can't do that right now.
My camera had suffered an injury. After leaving Michelle Obama's speech, I ran to the grocery store. I brought all my groceries home, using the bags to transport other stuff, and the bag holding my camera crashed to the floor. Unfortunately, the fall damaged the door over the batteries in my camera, so they don't stay in. I had to physically hold it shut. Duct tape, sadly, did not work. So I had a lot of pictures that I missed, because my camera turned itself off.
After passing through security, we found ourselves a spot on the street to await the big moment. Two hours. It's a miracle I can even feel my legs right now. But it was worth the wait. First, General Wesley Clark spoke. Then, when they arrived from the airport, Michelle Obama spoke. The crowd went wild when she was introduced. I was able to catch the occasional glimpse between the two giants that stood in front of me. When she introduced Barack, though, she couldn't even get out the full introduction before the crowd erupted into cheers and, yes, a bit of a frenzy. Unreal.
He spoke of the things he often speaks of, but they sounded so much better when he was just a few hundred yards in front of me. I was fortunate, I was able to keep the batteries in my camera for long enough to get several shots. Unlike my photos from Michelle's appearance on Tuesday, most of these came out. Yay!
I'd already voted last week, but I can tell you, if I hadn't, I'd have been raring to go for Tuesday.
Naturally, my depression is never far from my mind. How could it be? I'm just hoping to ride this positive wave for long enough to fill out my assistance forms and complete some homework for Monday. I still don't know what I'm going to do about my home, I guess I'll just wait until I lose it. But for now, I'm excited. I'm hopeful. For our country if not for me.
I got directions from the internet - how did I ever get anywhere without it? - and hit the highway. Fortunately, I had plenty of gas and some cash, so I could stop and grab some breakfast. Pueblo, Colorado, here I come!
Colorado is a battleground state for the upcoming election. Barack Obama and his surrogates have made many stops here in the past few months. Many. This is his fourth or fifth himself, second to Pueblo. Michelle Obama and Joe Biden have also made the trip alone, both to Colorado Springs. Hah, Denver ISN'T the only city in the state!
The event itself was almost unremarkable. There were the expected vendors and crowd, a line that stretched a mile at least, and the volunteers recruiting other volunteers. I felt a little guilty for not signing up, but I just can't do that right now.
My camera had suffered an injury. After leaving Michelle Obama's speech, I ran to the grocery store. I brought all my groceries home, using the bags to transport other stuff, and the bag holding my camera crashed to the floor. Unfortunately, the fall damaged the door over the batteries in my camera, so they don't stay in. I had to physically hold it shut. Duct tape, sadly, did not work. So I had a lot of pictures that I missed, because my camera turned itself off.
After passing through security, we found ourselves a spot on the street to await the big moment. Two hours. It's a miracle I can even feel my legs right now. But it was worth the wait. First, General Wesley Clark spoke. Then, when they arrived from the airport, Michelle Obama spoke. The crowd went wild when she was introduced. I was able to catch the occasional glimpse between the two giants that stood in front of me. When she introduced Barack, though, she couldn't even get out the full introduction before the crowd erupted into cheers and, yes, a bit of a frenzy. Unreal.
He spoke of the things he often speaks of, but they sounded so much better when he was just a few hundred yards in front of me. I was fortunate, I was able to keep the batteries in my camera for long enough to get several shots. Unlike my photos from Michelle's appearance on Tuesday, most of these came out. Yay!
I'd already voted last week, but I can tell you, if I hadn't, I'd have been raring to go for Tuesday.
Naturally, my depression is never far from my mind. How could it be? I'm just hoping to ride this positive wave for long enough to fill out my assistance forms and complete some homework for Monday. I still don't know what I'm going to do about my home, I guess I'll just wait until I lose it. But for now, I'm excited. I'm hopeful. For our country if not for me.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Ups and Downs
Today, I was an active participant in the world. The hardest part of my day was getting out of bed. And it was hard. I’ve not been in the best place, lately, and was generally happier just staying in bed. Still, I had plans for the day. I had to get up.
Finally out of bed and out of the house, I drove out to recycle my aluminum cans and find an early polling place. I wound up at Chapel Hills Mall, north of the city, and waited for an hour to cast my ballot. Yes, the line was long, and the people were cynical, but they were also in pretty good moods. Most were perfectly fine with waiting to vote. Everyone was anxious to avoid the possible crowds next Tuesday. I figure either it’ll be chaos or deserted, because there’s been an incredible turnout.
After, I grabbed a bite to eat, and headed downtown. Michelle Obama was going to be in town and she was speaking at City Auditorium. I missed Barack when he was in Pueblo, just 40 miles to the south, and I missed Joe Biden when he was here last week because I wasn’t feeling well (side note: wind chill was about -10 when Biden was here, and it was in the upper 60s for Michelle. Ah, fall…). I wasn’t about to miss this chance.
I hit downtown about 3:10 or so, concerned that I wouldn’t have gotten there early enough. I drove around the block once trying to find a parking spot, and decided to stop at a parking garage across the street from the venue. Only $1 after 2:00. Lucky, since I didn’t really have anything more than that. In the ten minutes it took me to circle the block, the line grew about 20 feet. I took my place with the crowd, already tired from having stood for over an hour earlier, and waited. By the time I was nearly at the door, I saw the end of the line. It had gone around the block and then some. I met some great people, and basically soaked up all the incredible energy from the crowd. It was unreal.
Finally, we were in the building, seated and waiting for the main event. The hall was crowded and hot, the crowd tired, but still very excited. Colorado leaders spoke up, including a Colorado Springs city council member, a Republican, who is voting for Obama. Then came the main event. I knew I’d be excited, I had no idea how much.
Michelle represented her husband well. She talked about her past, she talked about his. She talked about supporting the military, a very important topic in a city that is home to the Air Force Academy, Schriever and Peterson Air Force Bases and Ft. Carson Army Base. She talked about getting out early to vote. She was elegant, she was graceful, she was everything I wish I could be in front of a crowd. At one point, someone near the front passed out. She stopped her speech and asked if the person was okay, came off the stage and went to that person. She STOPPED HER SPEECH for this. How cool is that?
I had my camera with me, and I learned something…if I’d left the flash on, I might have better pictures. Still, I have shots of the line outside, and some of the photos from inside are clear enough, so it’s okay.
Michelle mentioned her father, who had Multiple Sclerosis. I thought of my mother with MS. She spoke of Barack’s upbringing with a single mother. I grew up with a single mother, although I was fortunate enough to have my father very present in my life. She talked about student loans and paying for college. Just before I started my current degree, I had finished paying off my undergrad student loan.
And I thought about other things. I thought about my father and his generation, being denied jobs and opportunities because of their race. I thought of being followed in the mall by security, or ignored by salespeople. I thought about being pulled over for a DWB – Driving While Black. I thought about growing up with my blue-eyed blonde mother, about people asking her if we were adopted, about waitresses automatically assuming we wanted separate checks at a meal, about being shunned by whites for being black, and shunned by blacks for being too white. I even thought about my older sisters who seem to think of me as some white girl they’re related to. And I thought about July 20, 1996, and the Multi-racial Solidarity March. It was a demonstration to change the 2000 census, to allow people to check all races that apply. If we have to categorize, we should be allowed to categorize accurately.
Barack Obama’s genetics is not a deciding factor for me. It just gives me another area of relationship with him. I’m well aware of the fact that to the world at large, pale as I am, I’m a black woman. And make no mistake, I’m heartily proud of my black and African heritages. I consider myself biracial, though, both black and white, member of both, accepted by neither. So be it. The world is changing, and I’m lucky enough to be here for it.
Today was an up day. I know the down day is coming again, it hasn’t left my side for months, now. I have about $900 to my name, and my mortgage and HOA dues are due Monday. I will apply for assistance (I promised, Jen), but I don’t know what I’m going to do until it kicks in. I apply for jobs, but I’m not holding my breath on getting one.
For now, though, I’m reveling in the world as it is right now, a world where a man who would be followed by mall security even today can aspire to be president.
Finally out of bed and out of the house, I drove out to recycle my aluminum cans and find an early polling place. I wound up at Chapel Hills Mall, north of the city, and waited for an hour to cast my ballot. Yes, the line was long, and the people were cynical, but they were also in pretty good moods. Most were perfectly fine with waiting to vote. Everyone was anxious to avoid the possible crowds next Tuesday. I figure either it’ll be chaos or deserted, because there’s been an incredible turnout.
After, I grabbed a bite to eat, and headed downtown. Michelle Obama was going to be in town and she was speaking at City Auditorium. I missed Barack when he was in Pueblo, just 40 miles to the south, and I missed Joe Biden when he was here last week because I wasn’t feeling well (side note: wind chill was about -10 when Biden was here, and it was in the upper 60s for Michelle. Ah, fall…). I wasn’t about to miss this chance.
I hit downtown about 3:10 or so, concerned that I wouldn’t have gotten there early enough. I drove around the block once trying to find a parking spot, and decided to stop at a parking garage across the street from the venue. Only $1 after 2:00. Lucky, since I didn’t really have anything more than that. In the ten minutes it took me to circle the block, the line grew about 20 feet. I took my place with the crowd, already tired from having stood for over an hour earlier, and waited. By the time I was nearly at the door, I saw the end of the line. It had gone around the block and then some. I met some great people, and basically soaked up all the incredible energy from the crowd. It was unreal.
Finally, we were in the building, seated and waiting for the main event. The hall was crowded and hot, the crowd tired, but still very excited. Colorado leaders spoke up, including a Colorado Springs city council member, a Republican, who is voting for Obama. Then came the main event. I knew I’d be excited, I had no idea how much.
Michelle represented her husband well. She talked about her past, she talked about his. She talked about supporting the military, a very important topic in a city that is home to the Air Force Academy, Schriever and Peterson Air Force Bases and Ft. Carson Army Base. She talked about getting out early to vote. She was elegant, she was graceful, she was everything I wish I could be in front of a crowd. At one point, someone near the front passed out. She stopped her speech and asked if the person was okay, came off the stage and went to that person. She STOPPED HER SPEECH for this. How cool is that?
I had my camera with me, and I learned something…if I’d left the flash on, I might have better pictures. Still, I have shots of the line outside, and some of the photos from inside are clear enough, so it’s okay.
Michelle mentioned her father, who had Multiple Sclerosis. I thought of my mother with MS. She spoke of Barack’s upbringing with a single mother. I grew up with a single mother, although I was fortunate enough to have my father very present in my life. She talked about student loans and paying for college. Just before I started my current degree, I had finished paying off my undergrad student loan.
And I thought about other things. I thought about my father and his generation, being denied jobs and opportunities because of their race. I thought of being followed in the mall by security, or ignored by salespeople. I thought about being pulled over for a DWB – Driving While Black. I thought about growing up with my blue-eyed blonde mother, about people asking her if we were adopted, about waitresses automatically assuming we wanted separate checks at a meal, about being shunned by whites for being black, and shunned by blacks for being too white. I even thought about my older sisters who seem to think of me as some white girl they’re related to. And I thought about July 20, 1996, and the Multi-racial Solidarity March. It was a demonstration to change the 2000 census, to allow people to check all races that apply. If we have to categorize, we should be allowed to categorize accurately.
Barack Obama’s genetics is not a deciding factor for me. It just gives me another area of relationship with him. I’m well aware of the fact that to the world at large, pale as I am, I’m a black woman. And make no mistake, I’m heartily proud of my black and African heritages. I consider myself biracial, though, both black and white, member of both, accepted by neither. So be it. The world is changing, and I’m lucky enough to be here for it.
Today was an up day. I know the down day is coming again, it hasn’t left my side for months, now. I have about $900 to my name, and my mortgage and HOA dues are due Monday. I will apply for assistance (I promised, Jen), but I don’t know what I’m going to do until it kicks in. I apply for jobs, but I’m not holding my breath on getting one.
For now, though, I’m reveling in the world as it is right now, a world where a man who would be followed by mall security even today can aspire to be president.
Monday, September 8, 2008
Never Forget
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, 6:40 AM MDT. I left my house. I had to be at work at 7:00. There were mortgages to process and loan officers to placate. People wanted to move into their homes, or have the money to fix up the one they had. Around 6:45, I was at the crest of Austin Bluffs, just at the intersection of Austin Bluffs and Cragmor. I don’t know why I remember that. I did have the radio on, and I imagine there was a news story, but there wasn’t anything really that stood out. It was early, and I’m not a morning person.
6:55 AM MDT (est). I parked my car and went into the office. Said hello to the receptionist and walked to my desk. I got my computer turned on, logged in and sat down. I had just gotten comfortable, my chair just barely warmed up. Outside, the sun was getting brighter. I had a fantastic view of Pike’s Peak that was distracting some days. Sometimes, you could see bears or coyotes out there. Some even saw bighorn sheep, although I never did. In the cube in front of me, my co-worker stood up. The World Trade Center has been hit. Both of them. I stood up. She was talking to the person in the cube beside her, but I heard her just fine. It was hard not to. My first word to her that morning was “Wha…?” I don’t know, I might have grunted “morning” to her when I walked in, but that’s the first thing I remember saying.
After that, time stops meaning anything.
The phones stop ringing. We’re in early for the Eastern and Central time zones. They’ve been up, they know what’s happening. They’re not calling. Especially our people from New York, Maryland, Virginia, DC and Pennsylvania. They’re a little preoccupied. Others come in to work. Not everyone watches the news or listens to the radio, so not everyone knows what happened. The atmosphere in the building is somber, to say the least. It’s almost impossible to get an update. The internet is barraged with requests. I had three different windows open, checking on CNN, MSNBC and Google, hoping any one of them might update. It took better than a minute to refresh the windows. Later in the morning, one of my co-workers brought out a hand-held television she keeps for lunch. At one point, there were probably 12 of us crowded around a 3-inch screen, trying to find out what was going on.
California woke up. Okay, the Pacific time zone woke up. The Mountain Time zone is pretty sparsely populated. At the best of times we never got that many calls, comparatively speaking. Most of our Pacific calls seemed to come from California, though, so that’s what I think of first when I think of the West. Some had no idea anything had happened. As far as they were concerned, it was just a normal Tuesday morning. Others, the ones that really upset me, did know, and didn’t care. I know they didn’t care. They actually said they didn’t care. All they wanted was their loan documents. California, generally speaking, doesn’t accept faxed copies of mortgage documents. Not even with original signatures. Faxing closing documents wasn’t an option. Later in the day, we were able to come up with an alternative, using a scanner and email. The biggest issue with that was security, but these loan officers weren’t letting go. If their clients’ information was stolen, on their head be it.
Colorado Springs has several military installations, and some people had to leave for various reasons related to that fact. Most, though, stayed. I had no one at home to talk to, so I was glad the site didn’t close. That was, in fact, part of the rationale. Of course, back then, we had a different person in charge. It was about the people, not the job. But that’s another, bitter, blog. The site remained open for the rest of the normal business day. I seem to recall being told that, after my shift ended and I went home, the site closed. Nothing was getting accomplished.
Our site manager found a television, and was able to access broadcast channels. He had the television set up in the cafeteria, available for anyone, at any time. Ideally, we were to get work done, but there was no pressure. The cafeteria was full for the rest of the day. I watched President Bush address the nation from the cafeteria, surrounded by several dozen co-workers. I went to lunch with a friend of mine, struck by the absence of air traffic. It was silent. There were cars on the road, but it was silent. As we were leaving the building, though, a group of F-15s flew overhead, all the louder for the lack of competition. The only thing we could assume, judging by the angle, is it was an escort for Air Force One. Looked like it was coming from the Cheyenne Mountain area, and we had just seen the President talking in an undisclosed location. Before it moved, NORAD was based in Cheyenne Mountain, and was a known undisclosed location. Two and two…
The rest of the day remains a blur as well. There was time spent on the telephone talking to some clients in California, explaining to them that what they were demanding simply wasn’t possible. There was time spent in the cafeteria, watching the coverage. There was time spent on the floor, talking with co-workers, trying to wrap our heads around the events of the day. I watched the coverage for the next several days, and took the advice of newscasters who said to take a break, step away, watch something else, something happy. Still, I was alone. I didn’t have anyone to help me process this. I should be used to that by now, I suppose, but again, that’s another, bitter, blog.
Some days after the attacks, I went through my client files. I needed to update my portfolio, and remove the files that were no longer valid. One call, I can’t forget. I’ve tried. Just like the rest of the day that spawned it, I tried, but I can’t. I called the loan officer and asked about this client. There hadn’t been any activity for several weeks, would we continue? Hold the file. He worked at the World Trade Center, and his wife is waiting to hear from him. He was a Vice President for a major financial company. His office was on the 103rd floor of Two World Trade Center.
Seven years later, I still haven’t completely processed it. I don’t know if I ever will, frankly, but I would have hoped I’d be farther along than I am. Still, some things have changed. I’m not having trouble sleeping because of the attacks anymore. Not even on the anniversary. Took 30 years for the Super Tornado Outbreak of 1974 dreams to stop, and the nearest tornado was miles away. And one thing, I must say, I’m proud that I never once thought the space should be kept sacred and open. The terrorists hit it to make us grovel and cry, to leave ups feeling hopeless and helpless. And frankly, if we build there, we win. I’m not thrilled that Bush managed to sneak the US Patriot Act through in a time of grieving, but he wouldn’t be the first politician – of either party – to use tragedy to further his own desires.
Honestly, I don’t want to forget. Ever. It reminded us that we were vulnerable, even across an ocean from our enemies, perceived and real. More importantly, though, it reminded us that even though we have different beliefs, religions, races and creeds, one thing we have that’s the same is our home. We’re all American.
6:55 AM MDT (est). I parked my car and went into the office. Said hello to the receptionist and walked to my desk. I got my computer turned on, logged in and sat down. I had just gotten comfortable, my chair just barely warmed up. Outside, the sun was getting brighter. I had a fantastic view of Pike’s Peak that was distracting some days. Sometimes, you could see bears or coyotes out there. Some even saw bighorn sheep, although I never did. In the cube in front of me, my co-worker stood up. The World Trade Center has been hit. Both of them. I stood up. She was talking to the person in the cube beside her, but I heard her just fine. It was hard not to. My first word to her that morning was “Wha…?” I don’t know, I might have grunted “morning” to her when I walked in, but that’s the first thing I remember saying.
After that, time stops meaning anything.
The phones stop ringing. We’re in early for the Eastern and Central time zones. They’ve been up, they know what’s happening. They’re not calling. Especially our people from New York, Maryland, Virginia, DC and Pennsylvania. They’re a little preoccupied. Others come in to work. Not everyone watches the news or listens to the radio, so not everyone knows what happened. The atmosphere in the building is somber, to say the least. It’s almost impossible to get an update. The internet is barraged with requests. I had three different windows open, checking on CNN, MSNBC and Google, hoping any one of them might update. It took better than a minute to refresh the windows. Later in the morning, one of my co-workers brought out a hand-held television she keeps for lunch. At one point, there were probably 12 of us crowded around a 3-inch screen, trying to find out what was going on.
California woke up. Okay, the Pacific time zone woke up. The Mountain Time zone is pretty sparsely populated. At the best of times we never got that many calls, comparatively speaking. Most of our Pacific calls seemed to come from California, though, so that’s what I think of first when I think of the West. Some had no idea anything had happened. As far as they were concerned, it was just a normal Tuesday morning. Others, the ones that really upset me, did know, and didn’t care. I know they didn’t care. They actually said they didn’t care. All they wanted was their loan documents. California, generally speaking, doesn’t accept faxed copies of mortgage documents. Not even with original signatures. Faxing closing documents wasn’t an option. Later in the day, we were able to come up with an alternative, using a scanner and email. The biggest issue with that was security, but these loan officers weren’t letting go. If their clients’ information was stolen, on their head be it.
Colorado Springs has several military installations, and some people had to leave for various reasons related to that fact. Most, though, stayed. I had no one at home to talk to, so I was glad the site didn’t close. That was, in fact, part of the rationale. Of course, back then, we had a different person in charge. It was about the people, not the job. But that’s another, bitter, blog. The site remained open for the rest of the normal business day. I seem to recall being told that, after my shift ended and I went home, the site closed. Nothing was getting accomplished.
Our site manager found a television, and was able to access broadcast channels. He had the television set up in the cafeteria, available for anyone, at any time. Ideally, we were to get work done, but there was no pressure. The cafeteria was full for the rest of the day. I watched President Bush address the nation from the cafeteria, surrounded by several dozen co-workers. I went to lunch with a friend of mine, struck by the absence of air traffic. It was silent. There were cars on the road, but it was silent. As we were leaving the building, though, a group of F-15s flew overhead, all the louder for the lack of competition. The only thing we could assume, judging by the angle, is it was an escort for Air Force One. Looked like it was coming from the Cheyenne Mountain area, and we had just seen the President talking in an undisclosed location. Before it moved, NORAD was based in Cheyenne Mountain, and was a known undisclosed location. Two and two…
The rest of the day remains a blur as well. There was time spent on the telephone talking to some clients in California, explaining to them that what they were demanding simply wasn’t possible. There was time spent in the cafeteria, watching the coverage. There was time spent on the floor, talking with co-workers, trying to wrap our heads around the events of the day. I watched the coverage for the next several days, and took the advice of newscasters who said to take a break, step away, watch something else, something happy. Still, I was alone. I didn’t have anyone to help me process this. I should be used to that by now, I suppose, but again, that’s another, bitter, blog.
Some days after the attacks, I went through my client files. I needed to update my portfolio, and remove the files that were no longer valid. One call, I can’t forget. I’ve tried. Just like the rest of the day that spawned it, I tried, but I can’t. I called the loan officer and asked about this client. There hadn’t been any activity for several weeks, would we continue? Hold the file. He worked at the World Trade Center, and his wife is waiting to hear from him. He was a Vice President for a major financial company. His office was on the 103rd floor of Two World Trade Center.
Seven years later, I still haven’t completely processed it. I don’t know if I ever will, frankly, but I would have hoped I’d be farther along than I am. Still, some things have changed. I’m not having trouble sleeping because of the attacks anymore. Not even on the anniversary. Took 30 years for the Super Tornado Outbreak of 1974 dreams to stop, and the nearest tornado was miles away. And one thing, I must say, I’m proud that I never once thought the space should be kept sacred and open. The terrorists hit it to make us grovel and cry, to leave ups feeling hopeless and helpless. And frankly, if we build there, we win. I’m not thrilled that Bush managed to sneak the US Patriot Act through in a time of grieving, but he wouldn’t be the first politician – of either party – to use tragedy to further his own desires.
Honestly, I don’t want to forget. Ever. It reminded us that we were vulnerable, even across an ocean from our enemies, perceived and real. More importantly, though, it reminded us that even though we have different beliefs, religions, races and creeds, one thing we have that’s the same is our home. We’re all American.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Yes We Can!
Wow. Just wow. My tax accounting class let out early...very early...following a presentation about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. Trust me, it's important to future accountants/auditors. NEway, we left early. Our instructor was apparently as anxious to get home to watch Obama's acceptance speech as many of us were. Apparently, I'm not going to be the only Democratic accountant in this state.
I still wish I was there. I really do. It would have been unreal. But I did get to watch it live, so there's that. And even though I haven't forgotten, he did remind me why he caught my attention in the first place. He's American first, last and always. He has the respect of Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, and he's earned it. He believes in a government that works together, regardless of party.
My closest friend here in Colorado is an undeclared voter who is, for all intents and purposes, a Republican. We do talk about politics when it comes up, and we have differing views on many things. And it's okay. It's okay to have a different opinion. As long as that opinion doesn't get in the way of the brain. Sometimes, we agree to disagree. But we would defend each others' rights TO THE DEATH to disagree. Barack Obama said the same thing.
I couldn't help but rise to my feet and clap while watching in the comfort of my living room. The room that one day, may not be mine because I still haven't found a job. But I realized that even though I might lose my house, even though I might have to move back home, I still have more opportunities than my father had. And in order to maintain that opportunity, I need a leader I can count on to help preserve the gains I've made.
There was no time that I ever thought I wouldn't vote for Barack Obama. Tonight just reminded me how committed I am to seeing this through.
And if you wish to go to the polls for the express purpose of canceling out my vote, be my guest. It's your right as an American.
I still wish I was there. I really do. It would have been unreal. But I did get to watch it live, so there's that. And even though I haven't forgotten, he did remind me why he caught my attention in the first place. He's American first, last and always. He has the respect of Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike, and he's earned it. He believes in a government that works together, regardless of party.
My closest friend here in Colorado is an undeclared voter who is, for all intents and purposes, a Republican. We do talk about politics when it comes up, and we have differing views on many things. And it's okay. It's okay to have a different opinion. As long as that opinion doesn't get in the way of the brain. Sometimes, we agree to disagree. But we would defend each others' rights TO THE DEATH to disagree. Barack Obama said the same thing.
I couldn't help but rise to my feet and clap while watching in the comfort of my living room. The room that one day, may not be mine because I still haven't found a job. But I realized that even though I might lose my house, even though I might have to move back home, I still have more opportunities than my father had. And in order to maintain that opportunity, I need a leader I can count on to help preserve the gains I've made.
There was no time that I ever thought I wouldn't vote for Barack Obama. Tonight just reminded me how committed I am to seeing this through.
And if you wish to go to the polls for the express purpose of canceling out my vote, be my guest. It's your right as an American.
Monday, August 25, 2008
70 Miles to the North
Right now, Michelle Obama is leaving the stage. The Democratic National Convention is taking place in Denver, Colorado, at the Pepsi Center, about 70 miles to the north of me. And I really want to be there. Really. But I can't. I wasn't chosen as a delegate at the Colorado State Convention. There was some form I was supposed to fill out, and I didn't. So I don't get to go.
But I thought about it. Right now, I'm also in one of the most difficult quarters in school. I have an Intermediate Accounting class that professional accountants would have trouble with. I have a Tax Accounting class focusing on tax law. Read tax law. Do not apply logic. It will not make sense if you apply logic. I also have a Managerial Economics class, a half quarter class completely online. I'm learning that I need the classroom to succeed, but I'll do what I can.
I'm very behind in all these classes. Had I been selected as a delegate to the DNC, I'd have gotten even further behind. Yes, I want to be at the DNC. But more importantly, I want to get into something that's not blue collar, something that allows me to use the brain God gave me, the brain that is both blessing and curse. I want out of this cycle of underemployment.
Listening to Michelle Obama's speech, that's when I realized that it was a good thing I wasn't a delegate. It's my future at stake, both here and there. But here, I can do a lot more about it.
Yes, I want to be up in Denver at the DNC. But I want to have a future I can control. I'll be at the polls in November. Too many people have fought and died for my right to vote, as a woman, as a minority, as an American, for me to spit in their faces. I would hope that everyone else realizes the sacrifices made for our freedoms. I'd like you to vote for my candidate. But more than that, I'd like you to be informed. If you want to vote for McCain, it's your right. We are allowed to disagree.
How cool is this country?
But I thought about it. Right now, I'm also in one of the most difficult quarters in school. I have an Intermediate Accounting class that professional accountants would have trouble with. I have a Tax Accounting class focusing on tax law. Read tax law. Do not apply logic. It will not make sense if you apply logic. I also have a Managerial Economics class, a half quarter class completely online. I'm learning that I need the classroom to succeed, but I'll do what I can.
I'm very behind in all these classes. Had I been selected as a delegate to the DNC, I'd have gotten even further behind. Yes, I want to be at the DNC. But more importantly, I want to get into something that's not blue collar, something that allows me to use the brain God gave me, the brain that is both blessing and curse. I want out of this cycle of underemployment.
Listening to Michelle Obama's speech, that's when I realized that it was a good thing I wasn't a delegate. It's my future at stake, both here and there. But here, I can do a lot more about it.
Yes, I want to be up in Denver at the DNC. But I want to have a future I can control. I'll be at the polls in November. Too many people have fought and died for my right to vote, as a woman, as a minority, as an American, for me to spit in their faces. I would hope that everyone else realizes the sacrifices made for our freedoms. I'd like you to vote for my candidate. But more than that, I'd like you to be informed. If you want to vote for McCain, it's your right. We are allowed to disagree.
How cool is this country?
Sunday, August 17, 2008
The Weather
Well now, here’s something I never thought I’d say. Not here in Colorado. It’s been raining for days! Not the normal 20 minutes of rain then sun, not even periodic episodes of rain then sun, but almost constant rain, varying from a light drizzle to downpour, and even a little hail. Hail out here, of course, isn’t particularly serious, I think it has more to do with the altitude. Whereas hail back home in Cincinnati usually meant something severe was on the horizon, and you’d best get yourself to some sturdy building, just in case. Just the same, it’s been raining all weekend. I haven’t seen the sun since Friday. Maybe Thursday. Easy to lose track of time when you’re not working. In the seven years I’ve been here, I’ve never seen it do this. Based on what I’ve seen in the news, this isn’t particularly common. Sure, it’s monsoon season out here, but we’re talking about a place where half an inch of rain for the month isn’t all that odd. Part of me wishes it would stop. I know I’ve gone native, because part of me can’t help but say “We need the moisture.”
Surprisingly, my ceiling hasn’t really leaked all that much. I did have roofers come out last month after a particularly heavy deluge. I had my own private waterfall in my living room. The roofers did what they could, but they also mentioned the windows need to be replaced. There’s one in particular, my skylight over my bathroom and upstairs hallway. That one I can see is in bad shape even from 10 feet below. That’s the biggest culprit. Nonetheless, they did what they could and told me they’d come back if needed. Fortunately, the roof falls under the province of the HOA. Unfortunately, the windows do not. One more thing. They must have accomplished something, though, because I’ve yet to experience the same level of drippage as I did before they came. One in the same spot I’ve seen it for years, and one very small leak in the new area. Based on where the leaks are, it’s probably my window. The one in desperate need of being replaced.
Rain does have one fairly universal effect, it tends to bring on a malaise. And for someone who’s already down naturally, it can get pretty severe. But, you do what you can. Soldier on, try to accomplish what needs to be done. Yeah, so far, that hasn’t worked out so good. My third class for the quarter has begun. I have an assignment due tomorrow, and I haven’t even cracked the book, yet. I’m behind in my other two classes, also fairly work-intensive, and I don’t know how easy it will be for me to catch up. I’m going to have to go with “Not.”
This really concerns me, because I do need to find a job. A source of income other than the student loans I’ve been living on since my unemployment ran out and my pension was cashed in. So far, I’m okay, but that won’t last long. My student loan payments are quarterly, and not enough to cover all my expenses. Even if I eliminate all luxuries and semi-luxuries, it’s not enough to pay my mortgage, phone and groceries. I’m constantly amazed, though, at the fact I’ve managed to go almost an entire year without an earned income. Sure, there was some left-handed luck involved, particularly the settlement from my accident in November, but mostly, it was unemployment, student loans, and being cheap. Most of the time.
Despite the fact that I get extremely tense when I feel like I’m going broke, I have had episodes of spendthrift behavior. Not lately, but it’s happened. And to be perfectly honest, one of those episodes was actually necessary, although I still have trouble reconciling that. I went shopping. I realized some time ago that if I wanted to get into accounting, I’d need to add a few things to my wardrobe, things that made me look a little more professional and white collar. Yes, I’ve worked in offices, for major companies. I’ve worked in a corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 company (Fortune 100, I think). And for that job, I did have to have more appropriate clothing than I do now. Of course, those clothes are long gone. I was in the middle of losing weight, swearing to never see size 26 again. Well, I’ve managed to keep to that one. Unfortunately, I’ll also never see size 10 again. Or 12 for that matter. Hell, I’d be happy with 16 right now. All the business clothes I had back then, had I not given them away, wouldn’t fit anyway. I had to replace them. I didn’t even buy that much. Really, I have about six pieces appropriate for white collar work now, including a pair of slacks that have been waiting to be hemmed for, oh, six months, now. Nothing I can really do about it now.
I need to get to work. I have several assignments to complete this week, as soon as possible. And I have to find some way to ignore the ominous noise I hear over my head, a noise that sounds an awful lot like a huge leak overhead. I’ve never heard that noise before, although that could be due to other noises I usually have, like the television or radio. I know I’ve heard the random thunk here and there, but I attributed those mostly to the house settling. It’s over 30 years old and not built on the most stable of surfaces. I figure in another 30 years, it will have split in half. I’ll be long gone by then. I think, yes, I think I need to find a way to further distract myself from that noise. Nothing I can do about it right now anyway. Besides, it stopped raining. I can see Pike’s Peak for the first time since Friday morning. Or was that Thursday?
Surprisingly, my ceiling hasn’t really leaked all that much. I did have roofers come out last month after a particularly heavy deluge. I had my own private waterfall in my living room. The roofers did what they could, but they also mentioned the windows need to be replaced. There’s one in particular, my skylight over my bathroom and upstairs hallway. That one I can see is in bad shape even from 10 feet below. That’s the biggest culprit. Nonetheless, they did what they could and told me they’d come back if needed. Fortunately, the roof falls under the province of the HOA. Unfortunately, the windows do not. One more thing. They must have accomplished something, though, because I’ve yet to experience the same level of drippage as I did before they came. One in the same spot I’ve seen it for years, and one very small leak in the new area. Based on where the leaks are, it’s probably my window. The one in desperate need of being replaced.
Rain does have one fairly universal effect, it tends to bring on a malaise. And for someone who’s already down naturally, it can get pretty severe. But, you do what you can. Soldier on, try to accomplish what needs to be done. Yeah, so far, that hasn’t worked out so good. My third class for the quarter has begun. I have an assignment due tomorrow, and I haven’t even cracked the book, yet. I’m behind in my other two classes, also fairly work-intensive, and I don’t know how easy it will be for me to catch up. I’m going to have to go with “Not.”
This really concerns me, because I do need to find a job. A source of income other than the student loans I’ve been living on since my unemployment ran out and my pension was cashed in. So far, I’m okay, but that won’t last long. My student loan payments are quarterly, and not enough to cover all my expenses. Even if I eliminate all luxuries and semi-luxuries, it’s not enough to pay my mortgage, phone and groceries. I’m constantly amazed, though, at the fact I’ve managed to go almost an entire year without an earned income. Sure, there was some left-handed luck involved, particularly the settlement from my accident in November, but mostly, it was unemployment, student loans, and being cheap. Most of the time.
Despite the fact that I get extremely tense when I feel like I’m going broke, I have had episodes of spendthrift behavior. Not lately, but it’s happened. And to be perfectly honest, one of those episodes was actually necessary, although I still have trouble reconciling that. I went shopping. I realized some time ago that if I wanted to get into accounting, I’d need to add a few things to my wardrobe, things that made me look a little more professional and white collar. Yes, I’ve worked in offices, for major companies. I’ve worked in a corporate headquarters of a Fortune 500 company (Fortune 100, I think). And for that job, I did have to have more appropriate clothing than I do now. Of course, those clothes are long gone. I was in the middle of losing weight, swearing to never see size 26 again. Well, I’ve managed to keep to that one. Unfortunately, I’ll also never see size 10 again. Or 12 for that matter. Hell, I’d be happy with 16 right now. All the business clothes I had back then, had I not given them away, wouldn’t fit anyway. I had to replace them. I didn’t even buy that much. Really, I have about six pieces appropriate for white collar work now, including a pair of slacks that have been waiting to be hemmed for, oh, six months, now. Nothing I can really do about it now.
I need to get to work. I have several assignments to complete this week, as soon as possible. And I have to find some way to ignore the ominous noise I hear over my head, a noise that sounds an awful lot like a huge leak overhead. I’ve never heard that noise before, although that could be due to other noises I usually have, like the television or radio. I know I’ve heard the random thunk here and there, but I attributed those mostly to the house settling. It’s over 30 years old and not built on the most stable of surfaces. I figure in another 30 years, it will have split in half. I’ll be long gone by then. I think, yes, I think I need to find a way to further distract myself from that noise. Nothing I can do about it right now anyway. Besides, it stopped raining. I can see Pike’s Peak for the first time since Friday morning. Or was that Thursday?
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Stream of Consciousness 08/12
It might seem to the casual reader that these “Stream of Consciousness” blogs have a therapeutic tone. Well, I have neither job nor insurance, so until that situation is remedied, I suppose they do. Gotta get this stuff off my chest, right or wrong, in order to function. Even though most of my friends on this page know me IRL, it’s a safe place. It’s hard for me to put the words together face-to-face. One of the reasons I doubt the efficacy of therapy for myself. I forget things. Hugely traumatic things, no less. Then there’s the fact that face-to-face, I tend to say the wrong thing. My facial expressions, my words and my tone don’t tend to jibe. People misconstrue what I say all the time. I swear, sometimes I think I’m slightly autistic. I know I’m not. I don’t even have Aspergers’. But ADD and Autism are in the same class, just different ends of the spectrum. And I know I have ADD. And it sucks.
Last week, I had my midterms. My first midterm, intermediate accounting, was horrible. I’d be willing to bet I got no better than a C. I’m sure I didn’t fail. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. The next midterm was tax accounting. Open book, which was helpful, but as anyone will tell you, a decent test still requires study. I’m glad I reviewed my chapters before that test. That was a lot easier. I still doubt I aced it, but I think I didn’t do too badly. Before that class, there was a conversation about success in the classroom. Everyone, particularly the instructor, was shocked to find I’d failed classes in college. I’d let him know the previous week that I was stressed out because I was looking for a job. I still am, and I’m still stressed out about it. He asked if I had other things going on at the time, just out of curiosity and conversation, and I mentioned a learning difficultly. I didn’t specify anything. I also didn’t mention that I was working two jobs at times while in college, and that I failed two classes, one of them twice. In one, I had a professor notoriously opposed to music students, where music professors actually recommended dropping the class. In the other, the one I failed twice, I had two obstacles: one was a professor who hadn’t left Vietnam, but he was tenured, so the school had to wait for him to retire. The other was a class where the book was a work in progress. The professor was still writing it, adding chapters throughout the semester. The third time I took it, I got a C. It was a different class each time.
See, I leave things out. Things that would change the picture a bit. But these same things would make people go “Well, you’re just putting the blame on someone else.” And you know, maybe I am. And I don’t actually care as much any more. I know what I’m dealing with, I know what I’m fighting against, and I know when I have done something to myself. Lots of self-talk. Destructive self-talk. Learned it at my mother’s knee.
Yes, she was horrible to my brother. She was bitter and angry with men, and she took it out on him. I didn’t escape unscathed. Me, she told I was never good enough. Didn’t matter what it was, I wasn’t good enough. Don’t go into theater, you’re not good enough. It’s hard, and so very few people make it. It’s not worth the pain. Don’t go into music, you’re not good enough. You sing flat all the time, you can’t keep a decent rhythm, your voice is shrill and unpleasant. Don’t go into broadcasting. You don’t have the body or face for television, and there’re just not enough jobs in radio. Your grades could be better. You could be thinner. You could be less bitchy. You could be happier. You could be more serious. You could have a bit more backbone. Whatever I did, it was wrong.
But wait, there’s more! She would tell me not to go into acting or theater, then set up an appointment with a talent agent. One specific incident. She had the appointment, and I had strep throat. She kept the appointment. I couldn’t speak. I literally could not speak. She wouldn’t reschedule. And I couldn’t.
So here I sit, knowing I have to get a job, stressing because, frankly, I don’t know how. I have access to several hiring managers in accounting fields, and I haven’t been able to broach the subject with them once. I don’t feel competent to do anything. Why should I? I was told I was incompetent from a very young age. I really don’t like talking about myself. Feels like bragging, and bragging is bad. That one, I got from my father and the overall environment. Girls don’t brag. Girls sit quietly in the back and hope someone notices them, but not for the wrong things, whatever those may be. For someone who’s barely got a grasp on interpersonal relations to begin with, this is NOT helpful. I’m a very literal-minded person, I tend to take things at face value. I can pick out obvious sarcasm and humor, I’m not completely oblivious, but if I’m not paying attention for whatever reason, I will take you at your word. I don’t notice when someone’s flirting, I can’t always tell when they’re trying to get my attention or just happen to be looking in my direction. Gotta be obvious. I don’t always notice when everyone stops talking about something because it’s no longer comfortable. And I really don’t notice when I don’t stop talking about something that should have been dropped long ago. Once I do, I can’t stop, not immediately. I have to consciously force myself to stop. Experienced that in my last family trip, when I got so geeked out about seeing so many Ohio plates in South Carolina. I heard myself saying it so often, I was getting tired of it. It took another few hours to stop.
See, I appear perfectly normal. I give off an air of competence, normalcy, astuteness and intelligence, according to multiple reports from others. I know I’m intelligent. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have if I wasn’t. But competent? Astute? Normal? No. It’s taken me a lot of years to realize that, much less accept it. Doesn’t mean I don’t try. I know I say the wrong thing often. I’m good at it. Just ask my mom. I have an amazing ability to say or do the exact wrong thing. And I’m on my own dealing with that. No one else is interested, they only care that I’ve said or done something wrong. It’s a huge fear. So huge that I get worried when a friend doesn’t talk to me for a while. Unless I hear otherwise, like they’re out of town or out of the loop, I assume I did something wrong. Pretty self-absorbed, admittedly, but when you’re used to saying or doing something that makes your friends walk away, that makes your family stop talking to you, it’s hard not to.
Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this. I get tired of struggling to strike just the right note. People don’t like me. I know this. This is not news. And I don’t always know why. In fact, I usually don’t know why. Sometimes it’s something I said, sometimes it’s something I did, and sometimes, it’s just because they don’t like me. That happens to everyone. That one, I can deal with. It’s when I’ve said or done something, and no one tells me what. They just stop talking to me. How in the world can I avoid it again if no one will tell me what I said or did? My only real choice is to keep to safe topics. I tend not to express my opinion any more, or share anything really important that’s going on in my life. The longer I do that, the farther that avoidance extends. Now, I barely speak about myself. No one’s interested, so I’ve learned. I have things in my past, dark things, that I haven’t told anyone. Not really. An occasional oblique comment here and there, but no one ever wants to hear the rest. Can’t blame them for that. Problem is I can’t see the line. So I have nothing really to say to anyone.
No wonder I feel so completely alone.
Last week, I had my midterms. My first midterm, intermediate accounting, was horrible. I’d be willing to bet I got no better than a C. I’m sure I didn’t fail. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. The next midterm was tax accounting. Open book, which was helpful, but as anyone will tell you, a decent test still requires study. I’m glad I reviewed my chapters before that test. That was a lot easier. I still doubt I aced it, but I think I didn’t do too badly. Before that class, there was a conversation about success in the classroom. Everyone, particularly the instructor, was shocked to find I’d failed classes in college. I’d let him know the previous week that I was stressed out because I was looking for a job. I still am, and I’m still stressed out about it. He asked if I had other things going on at the time, just out of curiosity and conversation, and I mentioned a learning difficultly. I didn’t specify anything. I also didn’t mention that I was working two jobs at times while in college, and that I failed two classes, one of them twice. In one, I had a professor notoriously opposed to music students, where music professors actually recommended dropping the class. In the other, the one I failed twice, I had two obstacles: one was a professor who hadn’t left Vietnam, but he was tenured, so the school had to wait for him to retire. The other was a class where the book was a work in progress. The professor was still writing it, adding chapters throughout the semester. The third time I took it, I got a C. It was a different class each time.
See, I leave things out. Things that would change the picture a bit. But these same things would make people go “Well, you’re just putting the blame on someone else.” And you know, maybe I am. And I don’t actually care as much any more. I know what I’m dealing with, I know what I’m fighting against, and I know when I have done something to myself. Lots of self-talk. Destructive self-talk. Learned it at my mother’s knee.
Yes, she was horrible to my brother. She was bitter and angry with men, and she took it out on him. I didn’t escape unscathed. Me, she told I was never good enough. Didn’t matter what it was, I wasn’t good enough. Don’t go into theater, you’re not good enough. It’s hard, and so very few people make it. It’s not worth the pain. Don’t go into music, you’re not good enough. You sing flat all the time, you can’t keep a decent rhythm, your voice is shrill and unpleasant. Don’t go into broadcasting. You don’t have the body or face for television, and there’re just not enough jobs in radio. Your grades could be better. You could be thinner. You could be less bitchy. You could be happier. You could be more serious. You could have a bit more backbone. Whatever I did, it was wrong.
But wait, there’s more! She would tell me not to go into acting or theater, then set up an appointment with a talent agent. One specific incident. She had the appointment, and I had strep throat. She kept the appointment. I couldn’t speak. I literally could not speak. She wouldn’t reschedule. And I couldn’t.
So here I sit, knowing I have to get a job, stressing because, frankly, I don’t know how. I have access to several hiring managers in accounting fields, and I haven’t been able to broach the subject with them once. I don’t feel competent to do anything. Why should I? I was told I was incompetent from a very young age. I really don’t like talking about myself. Feels like bragging, and bragging is bad. That one, I got from my father and the overall environment. Girls don’t brag. Girls sit quietly in the back and hope someone notices them, but not for the wrong things, whatever those may be. For someone who’s barely got a grasp on interpersonal relations to begin with, this is NOT helpful. I’m a very literal-minded person, I tend to take things at face value. I can pick out obvious sarcasm and humor, I’m not completely oblivious, but if I’m not paying attention for whatever reason, I will take you at your word. I don’t notice when someone’s flirting, I can’t always tell when they’re trying to get my attention or just happen to be looking in my direction. Gotta be obvious. I don’t always notice when everyone stops talking about something because it’s no longer comfortable. And I really don’t notice when I don’t stop talking about something that should have been dropped long ago. Once I do, I can’t stop, not immediately. I have to consciously force myself to stop. Experienced that in my last family trip, when I got so geeked out about seeing so many Ohio plates in South Carolina. I heard myself saying it so often, I was getting tired of it. It took another few hours to stop.
See, I appear perfectly normal. I give off an air of competence, normalcy, astuteness and intelligence, according to multiple reports from others. I know I’m intelligent. I wouldn’t have gotten as far as I have if I wasn’t. But competent? Astute? Normal? No. It’s taken me a lot of years to realize that, much less accept it. Doesn’t mean I don’t try. I know I say the wrong thing often. I’m good at it. Just ask my mom. I have an amazing ability to say or do the exact wrong thing. And I’m on my own dealing with that. No one else is interested, they only care that I’ve said or done something wrong. It’s a huge fear. So huge that I get worried when a friend doesn’t talk to me for a while. Unless I hear otherwise, like they’re out of town or out of the loop, I assume I did something wrong. Pretty self-absorbed, admittedly, but when you’re used to saying or doing something that makes your friends walk away, that makes your family stop talking to you, it’s hard not to.
Honestly, I don’t know how much longer I can deal with this. I get tired of struggling to strike just the right note. People don’t like me. I know this. This is not news. And I don’t always know why. In fact, I usually don’t know why. Sometimes it’s something I said, sometimes it’s something I did, and sometimes, it’s just because they don’t like me. That happens to everyone. That one, I can deal with. It’s when I’ve said or done something, and no one tells me what. They just stop talking to me. How in the world can I avoid it again if no one will tell me what I said or did? My only real choice is to keep to safe topics. I tend not to express my opinion any more, or share anything really important that’s going on in my life. The longer I do that, the farther that avoidance extends. Now, I barely speak about myself. No one’s interested, so I’ve learned. I have things in my past, dark things, that I haven’t told anyone. Not really. An occasional oblique comment here and there, but no one ever wants to hear the rest. Can’t blame them for that. Problem is I can’t see the line. So I have nothing really to say to anyone.
No wonder I feel so completely alone.
Friday, August 8, 2008
2008 Olympics Opening Ceremonies
China. A country that makes Germany seem open and accepting, even gregarious. I grew up in Cincinnati, and while it’s a very American city, some of the German attitudes continue to prevail. Not only in the quirky use of “please” instead of what, but in the xenophobic attitude of her citizens. Before Anheuser-Busch spread their beers all over the country, the best beers were found in Cincinnati. No, I’m not just saying that. It’s been documented. But there was no point in spreading out. First there was plenty of business within the Greater Cincinnati area, and second, nothing but scary monsters outside of the borders. Cincinnatians know what is available in the city, but it’s not really advertised outside of the limits. Very insular. China, as far as most of us know, is far worse.
Tibet. Communism. Darfur. Tiananmen Square. Cultural Revolution. The Great Wall. These are the things we think about when we think about China. We’re accustomed to the right of assembly, the right to speak our minds, to disagree with even our leaders, loudly, publically. We’re accustomed to people sneaking in over our walls, literal and figurative, just for a chance to be a part of our country, even if for only a little while. China, like the USSR during the cold war, seems to be the antithesis of that very ideal, of everything we represent. And yet…
The Chinese people are proud to be Chinese. Not all, it would be preposterous to assume everyone is happy. Not everyone is happy here, and we’re probably the most politically permissive society in the world. Can’t make everyone happy. But what about the ones who are? What about the Americans who are proud to be American, who ignore the very real racial discrimination still prevalent in our neighborhoods, cities and states, or who believe the religious right/radical left have taken over the ruling of our country, that our president is wrong and stole the election in 2000, that he’s right and wish there could be a third term. All of these people are proud to be Americans. The Chinese people haven’t enjoyed the same freedom of the press we have. Even the most diehard conspiracy theorist, when rational, would have to admit that we have more access to information than the Chinese have. Because of events during the torch relay, Chinese people are getting an idea of what the rest of the world thinks of them, of their country. They just didn’t know. A lot of Americans are ignorant of our presentation on the world stage, but that’s mostly ignorance. This information was literally withheld from the Chinese people.
The Olympic Games are intended to bring the world together. To remind us that regardless of language, beliefs, skin or gender, we’re all one people. We’re all human. The Olympics have been used to further political positions. The US boycott in 1980 from the Moscow Olympics, and their response to boycotting the 1984 LA Olympics. The 1972 murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian athletes. The 1936 Berlin Olympics, intended by Hitler to promote the superiority of the Aryan race. The 1968 Black Power podium salute. It’s a world stage, and it’s tempting to use it to further your own ends. This, the 29th Olympiad, is no different. Regular citizens spoke up about what they see as China’s faults. And governments made their own statements. Heads of state made a point of boycotting the opening ceremonies. Our own leader was pressured to do the same. He chose instead to attend, to show willing to bury the hatchet, to move on, to grow and expand the relationship, from this point forward. And as much as it pains me to say it, I agree with his decision, and his reasoning. I have to go take a hot shower, now, maybe rinse off with bleach.
I love the Olympics. I was thrilled when the timing was changed from every four years to every two. Sure, there are still four years between each summer games, and each winter games, but it doesn’t seem as long. What I love is the sportsmanship, and the display of nationalism. I love the pride each person takes in their home country, and the heart they show when they perform. I was thrilled to see Cathy Freeman of Australia win a gold medal. I still get excited when I see the Jamaican bobsled team, and other countries, not known for having a winter, much less a winter sport, turn up on the slopes. And I swell with pride every time I see Old Glory rise up, hear the Star Spangled Banner played for one of our own. I wish the games could be about sportsmanship and not about politics, but let’s face it, not gonna happen.
China has thousands of years of history, accomplishments during a time when Europe was still living in caves and wearing raw furs, and a pride that would make anyone, well, proud. Their country isn’t perfect. They’ve committed atrocities against their own people and others. They’ve spent centuries trying to keep barbarians out, and everyone was a barbarian. They’ve suppressed the right for people to have thoughts contrary to the government line. They’ve created a people who are expected to follow what their leaders demand, be it having only one child or giving up a car to reduce pollution. Preposterous to think we haven’t done anything similar. For atrocities, look up the Tuskegee Experiments, or even slavery. Yes, slavery existed for millennia, but not the way we practiced it. How about all the treaties made and broken with various native tribes, now forced to live on the least tenable land in an otherwise fertile country? Then there’s the fact that our government can help rebuild entire countries (Japan, Germany after WWII), but can’t lift a finger to rebuild a single city (New Orleans). We’re not perfect. But most of us are proud to call ourselves Americans, native or naturalized. Let the Chinese be proud, too. They have a lot to be proud of. They deserve it.
Tibet. Communism. Darfur. Tiananmen Square. Cultural Revolution. The Great Wall. These are the things we think about when we think about China. We’re accustomed to the right of assembly, the right to speak our minds, to disagree with even our leaders, loudly, publically. We’re accustomed to people sneaking in over our walls, literal and figurative, just for a chance to be a part of our country, even if for only a little while. China, like the USSR during the cold war, seems to be the antithesis of that very ideal, of everything we represent. And yet…
The Chinese people are proud to be Chinese. Not all, it would be preposterous to assume everyone is happy. Not everyone is happy here, and we’re probably the most politically permissive society in the world. Can’t make everyone happy. But what about the ones who are? What about the Americans who are proud to be American, who ignore the very real racial discrimination still prevalent in our neighborhoods, cities and states, or who believe the religious right/radical left have taken over the ruling of our country, that our president is wrong and stole the election in 2000, that he’s right and wish there could be a third term. All of these people are proud to be Americans. The Chinese people haven’t enjoyed the same freedom of the press we have. Even the most diehard conspiracy theorist, when rational, would have to admit that we have more access to information than the Chinese have. Because of events during the torch relay, Chinese people are getting an idea of what the rest of the world thinks of them, of their country. They just didn’t know. A lot of Americans are ignorant of our presentation on the world stage, but that’s mostly ignorance. This information was literally withheld from the Chinese people.
The Olympic Games are intended to bring the world together. To remind us that regardless of language, beliefs, skin or gender, we’re all one people. We’re all human. The Olympics have been used to further political positions. The US boycott in 1980 from the Moscow Olympics, and their response to boycotting the 1984 LA Olympics. The 1972 murder of Israeli athletes by Palestinian athletes. The 1936 Berlin Olympics, intended by Hitler to promote the superiority of the Aryan race. The 1968 Black Power podium salute. It’s a world stage, and it’s tempting to use it to further your own ends. This, the 29th Olympiad, is no different. Regular citizens spoke up about what they see as China’s faults. And governments made their own statements. Heads of state made a point of boycotting the opening ceremonies. Our own leader was pressured to do the same. He chose instead to attend, to show willing to bury the hatchet, to move on, to grow and expand the relationship, from this point forward. And as much as it pains me to say it, I agree with his decision, and his reasoning. I have to go take a hot shower, now, maybe rinse off with bleach.
I love the Olympics. I was thrilled when the timing was changed from every four years to every two. Sure, there are still four years between each summer games, and each winter games, but it doesn’t seem as long. What I love is the sportsmanship, and the display of nationalism. I love the pride each person takes in their home country, and the heart they show when they perform. I was thrilled to see Cathy Freeman of Australia win a gold medal. I still get excited when I see the Jamaican bobsled team, and other countries, not known for having a winter, much less a winter sport, turn up on the slopes. And I swell with pride every time I see Old Glory rise up, hear the Star Spangled Banner played for one of our own. I wish the games could be about sportsmanship and not about politics, but let’s face it, not gonna happen.
China has thousands of years of history, accomplishments during a time when Europe was still living in caves and wearing raw furs, and a pride that would make anyone, well, proud. Their country isn’t perfect. They’ve committed atrocities against their own people and others. They’ve spent centuries trying to keep barbarians out, and everyone was a barbarian. They’ve suppressed the right for people to have thoughts contrary to the government line. They’ve created a people who are expected to follow what their leaders demand, be it having only one child or giving up a car to reduce pollution. Preposterous to think we haven’t done anything similar. For atrocities, look up the Tuskegee Experiments, or even slavery. Yes, slavery existed for millennia, but not the way we practiced it. How about all the treaties made and broken with various native tribes, now forced to live on the least tenable land in an otherwise fertile country? Then there’s the fact that our government can help rebuild entire countries (Japan, Germany after WWII), but can’t lift a finger to rebuild a single city (New Orleans). We’re not perfect. But most of us are proud to call ourselves Americans, native or naturalized. Let the Chinese be proud, too. They have a lot to be proud of. They deserve it.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Death and Taxes
This isn’t some doom and gloom foretelling of the future, nor is it a missive from the mind of a depressive. It is merely an observation, and some desires of mine. And it may not be pleasant.
Death
It’s gonna happen. It happens to everyone. As I saw on a television show the other night, everyone has temporary immortality, it’s called life. It was funnier when the cast said it. But I think about these things. Yes, partly because I am an untreated depressive. How much that colors the rest of my thoughts, I honestly don’t know. I’ve only ever tried one anti-depressant, and I wound up getting almost no sleep, even though I took it first thing in the morning. It helped my mood, but I was exhausted. Ah the joys of ADD and the paradoxical reactions. One of the other reasons, what I think is the primary reason, I think of death a lot is the fact that I’m sick. I have Polycystic Kidney Disease. I have kidneys the size of toddlers, that each weigh the same as a small bowling ball. They’re supposed to be about the size of a fist and weigh a quarter pound. And it hurts. Always. To some degree, I’m in pain. Some days it’s worse than others. Some days, I am merely uncomfortable, others I need to take something just to sit up. There are nights I can’t sleep because of the pain and discomfort. And clothes…that’s a tough one to handle. I always had an hourglass figure. Even when I was over 240 lbs, I had an hourglass figure. I had muscle tone. Clothes looked good on me. Not any more. As my kidneys grow, I think more and more that I’ll be shopping in the maternity aisles for my pants. I’ll have to.
After watching my mother, and her mother before her, suffer from diseases that took their lives long before they died, I wondered. My grandmother died from things she’d done to herself. She was a smoker. Of course, at the time she started, doctors were saying it’s good for you, so I honestly don’t believe it’s her fault. If I had gotten emphysema, it would have been. By the time I started smoking, we knew the hazards. I would have no excuse. Anyway, I watched them both waste away. And the reality is, that could happen to me. It’s more likely to happen to me than to anyone else in my immediate family. I don’t know what my current kidney function is, I haven’t had health insurance since November of last year. I haven’t taken my blood pressure pills since about April. And even then, I was only taking them occasionally. Can’t afford them. As of February 2007, my function was estimated at about 65%, but that was before my annual pee-in-a-cup day. I have to collect my urine for 24 hours and let them take about 3 quarts of blood. Might be only half a pint, I usually don’t pay attention once they put the needle in. That’s the test that tells my function. I’m exhausted all the time, and as mentioned, always in some degree of pain. I could live like this for another 30 years, or I could go south in just 5. No real way to know. So I think about it. That’s the background out of the way.
What do I want? I have no children, no boyfriend or husband to mourn me, I have very few assets, no foundations are relying on my presence to make them run, and there are a lot of times I feel like a part of my immediate family wouldn’t really miss me for long. Basically, I feel completely expendable. So I don’t want a grave. No point, really. Who would visit? I wouldn’t , I’d be dead. My friends wouldn’t, they’d be too far away. If I were buried anywhere, I’d want to be buried in Cincinnati. But I don’t want to be buried. Besides, I am an organ donor. Not many organs anyone would be able to use, unfortunately, but maybe a medical school could have a field day with my kidneys and other cyst-covered organs. There’s plenty of them. After that, I want to be cremated. Have a funeral if you want. I’d prefer a Presbyterian funeral, but I won’t be there, so it’s up to whoever’s stuck planning it. Again, I have very few assets, so it won’t exactly be elaborate. Enjoy. Try to remember the happy times. If you can’t, then just sit around with the uncomfortable silence of everyone going “Wow, we really did hate her.”
Taxes
I have no earned income this year. There are still five months left in the year, and if I don’t want to go into foreclosure, there will have to be a job somewhere in there, but until that happens, I have no earned income. The bulk of my money comes from a student loan, an insurance settlement and a pension plan, on which I HAVE paid taxes, and unemployment, on which I paid partial taxes. I suppose I’m lucky I decided to take a tax accounting class this quarter. The whole issue of insurance settlements is actually covered. But I’m not looking forward to doing my taxes for this year. Might be a bit of a challenge, that. I’m up to it.
Aside from that, taking my tax accounting class has reinforced even more that I don’t want to be a CPA. I want to be a Fraud Examiner, an auditor, a Forensic Accountant, something not dealing directly with doing someone’s taxes. It’s boring to me. The research is interesting, but I’ve found so far that I can get lost in the research, a particularly valuable trait in the other three paths I mentioned. The other three closely-related paths.
Really, that’s all I have to say on taxes. I just put it in there because the title worked so well, I had to write something. It’s a little lighter, anyway. And yet…I wonder about my own future. Will I be healthy enough to realize my goal? I don’t know. But, even though I’m depressed, I’m also an optimist. That’s why I’m going to school. I could die tomorrow, I could get bedridden, or I could have another 30 years of being a fully-functioning part of society. I’m planning for the last.
Death
It’s gonna happen. It happens to everyone. As I saw on a television show the other night, everyone has temporary immortality, it’s called life. It was funnier when the cast said it. But I think about these things. Yes, partly because I am an untreated depressive. How much that colors the rest of my thoughts, I honestly don’t know. I’ve only ever tried one anti-depressant, and I wound up getting almost no sleep, even though I took it first thing in the morning. It helped my mood, but I was exhausted. Ah the joys of ADD and the paradoxical reactions. One of the other reasons, what I think is the primary reason, I think of death a lot is the fact that I’m sick. I have Polycystic Kidney Disease. I have kidneys the size of toddlers, that each weigh the same as a small bowling ball. They’re supposed to be about the size of a fist and weigh a quarter pound. And it hurts. Always. To some degree, I’m in pain. Some days it’s worse than others. Some days, I am merely uncomfortable, others I need to take something just to sit up. There are nights I can’t sleep because of the pain and discomfort. And clothes…that’s a tough one to handle. I always had an hourglass figure. Even when I was over 240 lbs, I had an hourglass figure. I had muscle tone. Clothes looked good on me. Not any more. As my kidneys grow, I think more and more that I’ll be shopping in the maternity aisles for my pants. I’ll have to.
After watching my mother, and her mother before her, suffer from diseases that took their lives long before they died, I wondered. My grandmother died from things she’d done to herself. She was a smoker. Of course, at the time she started, doctors were saying it’s good for you, so I honestly don’t believe it’s her fault. If I had gotten emphysema, it would have been. By the time I started smoking, we knew the hazards. I would have no excuse. Anyway, I watched them both waste away. And the reality is, that could happen to me. It’s more likely to happen to me than to anyone else in my immediate family. I don’t know what my current kidney function is, I haven’t had health insurance since November of last year. I haven’t taken my blood pressure pills since about April. And even then, I was only taking them occasionally. Can’t afford them. As of February 2007, my function was estimated at about 65%, but that was before my annual pee-in-a-cup day. I have to collect my urine for 24 hours and let them take about 3 quarts of blood. Might be only half a pint, I usually don’t pay attention once they put the needle in. That’s the test that tells my function. I’m exhausted all the time, and as mentioned, always in some degree of pain. I could live like this for another 30 years, or I could go south in just 5. No real way to know. So I think about it. That’s the background out of the way.
What do I want? I have no children, no boyfriend or husband to mourn me, I have very few assets, no foundations are relying on my presence to make them run, and there are a lot of times I feel like a part of my immediate family wouldn’t really miss me for long. Basically, I feel completely expendable. So I don’t want a grave. No point, really. Who would visit? I wouldn’t , I’d be dead. My friends wouldn’t, they’d be too far away. If I were buried anywhere, I’d want to be buried in Cincinnati. But I don’t want to be buried. Besides, I am an organ donor. Not many organs anyone would be able to use, unfortunately, but maybe a medical school could have a field day with my kidneys and other cyst-covered organs. There’s plenty of them. After that, I want to be cremated. Have a funeral if you want. I’d prefer a Presbyterian funeral, but I won’t be there, so it’s up to whoever’s stuck planning it. Again, I have very few assets, so it won’t exactly be elaborate. Enjoy. Try to remember the happy times. If you can’t, then just sit around with the uncomfortable silence of everyone going “Wow, we really did hate her.”
Taxes
I have no earned income this year. There are still five months left in the year, and if I don’t want to go into foreclosure, there will have to be a job somewhere in there, but until that happens, I have no earned income. The bulk of my money comes from a student loan, an insurance settlement and a pension plan, on which I HAVE paid taxes, and unemployment, on which I paid partial taxes. I suppose I’m lucky I decided to take a tax accounting class this quarter. The whole issue of insurance settlements is actually covered. But I’m not looking forward to doing my taxes for this year. Might be a bit of a challenge, that. I’m up to it.
Aside from that, taking my tax accounting class has reinforced even more that I don’t want to be a CPA. I want to be a Fraud Examiner, an auditor, a Forensic Accountant, something not dealing directly with doing someone’s taxes. It’s boring to me. The research is interesting, but I’ve found so far that I can get lost in the research, a particularly valuable trait in the other three paths I mentioned. The other three closely-related paths.
Really, that’s all I have to say on taxes. I just put it in there because the title worked so well, I had to write something. It’s a little lighter, anyway. And yet…I wonder about my own future. Will I be healthy enough to realize my goal? I don’t know. But, even though I’m depressed, I’m also an optimist. That’s why I’m going to school. I could die tomorrow, I could get bedridden, or I could have another 30 years of being a fully-functioning part of society. I’m planning for the last.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Accounting...it's kinda fun
No, now, wait, stick with me on this. I'm in school to get an MBA in accounting. There are days when I wonder if I really made the right choice in 1) going back to school and 2) going back to school to become an accountant. I mean, let's face it, I wasn't the best student.
I graduated college with a 2.7. That's after 7 years and several classes like choir where you got an A for showing up. I nearly failed out my first year. I was on academic probation for three semesters. My first semester, I got a 1.3. In order to avoid suspension or expulsion, I had to bring my grades up. In order to get off of probation, I had to bring my GPA up over 1.7. Cumulative. In most of my academic classes - that includes Music History - I got a C or worse. I had two classes that I had to retake, one of them three times. The thought of providing my transcript to anyone makes me anxious. I mean really, how would you feel about someone if they handed you a transcript with all those Fs and Cs? That includes classes where I was deeply interested in the subject matter, or worked my tail off trying to learn and complete the assignments, study for tests, et cetera. High school wasn't much better.
Honestly, one of the reasons I chose my school is because they didn't require a standardized testing score, and they weren't fussed about my transcript. They wanted to see it, but it wasn't a deciding factor. Another reason is it's regionally accredited, so I can still get financial aid.
There were so many arguments against my going back to school. I have difficulty with reading and auditory comprehension. If I don't write something down, it didn't happen. Even when I'm interested in something, I have a hard time remembering it. It's just the way I'm wired. I'd love to be able to eliminate that, but I can't. I never learned how to study, so my study habits are, at best, abysmal. I'm nearly 40, so it's not like I have a whole lot of time left to earn money for my *ahem* retirement. Disability, more like. I need to spend my time finding a new job, not getting an education. There's no guarantee that I will find another job, particularly with our economic downturn. Okay, you can say it, economic depression. It's been going on for several years. It's a depression. So why in the world would I want to go deeper into debt, when I just finished paying off my undergrad student loans, for something that's not assured to pay off?
In September of last year, I was laid off from yet another dead-end job. It sounds elitist and snobbish to say so, but it was beneath me. Most of my jobs are. I know that. I've been underemployed most of my life. But I never had the confidence to sell myself to an employer with a better job. Anyone who's paid any attention would know that I'm seriously lacking in the self-confidence department, and just dripping with insecurity. When dating, the worst guys possible sense that, and the sharks begin to circle. It's a big reason why I'm not dating now.
In November, I decided to take a trip. I visited my aunt in Tulsa. Long drive down, long drive back, good, restful visit while I was there. I got to hang out with one of my cousins and my aunt, and had a great time. I can't wait to go back. The only black mark on my trip was the accident the day before I was planning on leaving. Fortunately, my car is mechanically fine, and the door still opens and closes securely. While I was at my aunt's house, I decided that I would, in fact, go back to school. By the end of December, I was enrolled as a student. An MBA student. MBA-Accounting.
The graduate-level accounting courses assume you have some accounting background, either in practice or degree. Because I had neither, the dean required me to take undergraduate accounting courses. I checked with financial aid, and found that as long as I took at least the half-time equivalent of graduate-level classes, I could also take undergrad classes. I wasn't thrilled about it at first, I figured it would lengthen my time at school, and cost me even more money. In order to save time, I was taking the first two introductory courses simultaneously. It got confusing, but I managed to pull it off.
And it was fun.
Yeah, it was fun. It wasn't easy, but it was fun. There was the challenge of understanding the concepts, of putting them into textbook practice, and of completing a project, and taking a graduate-level statistics course at the same time. Also fun. The next quarter, I had a graduate finance course and intermediate undergrad accounting. I had to take an incomplete in my accounting course, I had a couple weeks where I felt really miserable. It happens, sometimes. Just another concern of mine.
This quarter, I'm taking the second part of intermediate accounting, the first part of tax accounting, and a graduate economics course. The graduate course doesn't start until August, and it's completely online. I'm a little worried about that, but I want to get as much done as possible, and I have to take a grad class to keep my financial aid.
Tax accounting doesn't really appeal to me. I want to get into fraud and forensic accounting. I wasn't particularly looking forward to taking this tax accounting course, but the dean required it for me, so I had little choice. Tonight was our second class, and for the second time, the class was over long before we were ready for it to end. As with most of the classes at CTU, the instructor is actively working in his field of instruction. Because of that, his information is current. And he's a dynamic speaker. Very knowledgeable, and has a wicked sense of humor. He enjoys his job. A lot. And it comes across.
Nights like this are when I realize that yes, I did choose the right major, yes, I did make the right decision to go back to school. Now all I have to do is find a job that I can do until I graduate, 'cuz the money's running out. It doesn't even have to pay well. It just has to pay something. I'm a little worried about working while going to school. I tire easily these days, and I'm still figuring out how to work with my learning difficulties. Last time I was in school, I was also working. Grunt work, but working. Granted, I was also going out all the time, but I didn't do that until I found that working my tail off wasn't getting me anywhere. My grades improved when I spent less time on my homework. Irritating. Currently, I have a 3.94 out of 4.00. At no time in my academic life after 6th grade did I ever have anything approaching that. I don't want to jeopardize that. It's the first time I have a tangible display of success. But, since I can't find someone else to pay my bills, I don't have much of a choice. I have to find a source of income.
Still, I will continue with my schooling. I'm enjoying it immensely. I may have to try and sell my house before I finish, and I may have to give up my satellite and even the high-speed internet, although I need that for my classes. But I'm going to finish. And I'm going to do well. Because this is fun. It really is.
I graduated college with a 2.7. That's after 7 years and several classes like choir where you got an A for showing up. I nearly failed out my first year. I was on academic probation for three semesters. My first semester, I got a 1.3. In order to avoid suspension or expulsion, I had to bring my grades up. In order to get off of probation, I had to bring my GPA up over 1.7. Cumulative. In most of my academic classes - that includes Music History - I got a C or worse. I had two classes that I had to retake, one of them three times. The thought of providing my transcript to anyone makes me anxious. I mean really, how would you feel about someone if they handed you a transcript with all those Fs and Cs? That includes classes where I was deeply interested in the subject matter, or worked my tail off trying to learn and complete the assignments, study for tests, et cetera. High school wasn't much better.
Honestly, one of the reasons I chose my school is because they didn't require a standardized testing score, and they weren't fussed about my transcript. They wanted to see it, but it wasn't a deciding factor. Another reason is it's regionally accredited, so I can still get financial aid.
There were so many arguments against my going back to school. I have difficulty with reading and auditory comprehension. If I don't write something down, it didn't happen. Even when I'm interested in something, I have a hard time remembering it. It's just the way I'm wired. I'd love to be able to eliminate that, but I can't. I never learned how to study, so my study habits are, at best, abysmal. I'm nearly 40, so it's not like I have a whole lot of time left to earn money for my *ahem* retirement. Disability, more like. I need to spend my time finding a new job, not getting an education. There's no guarantee that I will find another job, particularly with our economic downturn. Okay, you can say it, economic depression. It's been going on for several years. It's a depression. So why in the world would I want to go deeper into debt, when I just finished paying off my undergrad student loans, for something that's not assured to pay off?
In September of last year, I was laid off from yet another dead-end job. It sounds elitist and snobbish to say so, but it was beneath me. Most of my jobs are. I know that. I've been underemployed most of my life. But I never had the confidence to sell myself to an employer with a better job. Anyone who's paid any attention would know that I'm seriously lacking in the self-confidence department, and just dripping with insecurity. When dating, the worst guys possible sense that, and the sharks begin to circle. It's a big reason why I'm not dating now.
In November, I decided to take a trip. I visited my aunt in Tulsa. Long drive down, long drive back, good, restful visit while I was there. I got to hang out with one of my cousins and my aunt, and had a great time. I can't wait to go back. The only black mark on my trip was the accident the day before I was planning on leaving. Fortunately, my car is mechanically fine, and the door still opens and closes securely. While I was at my aunt's house, I decided that I would, in fact, go back to school. By the end of December, I was enrolled as a student. An MBA student. MBA-Accounting.
The graduate-level accounting courses assume you have some accounting background, either in practice or degree. Because I had neither, the dean required me to take undergraduate accounting courses. I checked with financial aid, and found that as long as I took at least the half-time equivalent of graduate-level classes, I could also take undergrad classes. I wasn't thrilled about it at first, I figured it would lengthen my time at school, and cost me even more money. In order to save time, I was taking the first two introductory courses simultaneously. It got confusing, but I managed to pull it off.
And it was fun.
Yeah, it was fun. It wasn't easy, but it was fun. There was the challenge of understanding the concepts, of putting them into textbook practice, and of completing a project, and taking a graduate-level statistics course at the same time. Also fun. The next quarter, I had a graduate finance course and intermediate undergrad accounting. I had to take an incomplete in my accounting course, I had a couple weeks where I felt really miserable. It happens, sometimes. Just another concern of mine.
This quarter, I'm taking the second part of intermediate accounting, the first part of tax accounting, and a graduate economics course. The graduate course doesn't start until August, and it's completely online. I'm a little worried about that, but I want to get as much done as possible, and I have to take a grad class to keep my financial aid.
Tax accounting doesn't really appeal to me. I want to get into fraud and forensic accounting. I wasn't particularly looking forward to taking this tax accounting course, but the dean required it for me, so I had little choice. Tonight was our second class, and for the second time, the class was over long before we were ready for it to end. As with most of the classes at CTU, the instructor is actively working in his field of instruction. Because of that, his information is current. And he's a dynamic speaker. Very knowledgeable, and has a wicked sense of humor. He enjoys his job. A lot. And it comes across.
Nights like this are when I realize that yes, I did choose the right major, yes, I did make the right decision to go back to school. Now all I have to do is find a job that I can do until I graduate, 'cuz the money's running out. It doesn't even have to pay well. It just has to pay something. I'm a little worried about working while going to school. I tire easily these days, and I'm still figuring out how to work with my learning difficulties. Last time I was in school, I was also working. Grunt work, but working. Granted, I was also going out all the time, but I didn't do that until I found that working my tail off wasn't getting me anywhere. My grades improved when I spent less time on my homework. Irritating. Currently, I have a 3.94 out of 4.00. At no time in my academic life after 6th grade did I ever have anything approaching that. I don't want to jeopardize that. It's the first time I have a tangible display of success. But, since I can't find someone else to pay my bills, I don't have much of a choice. I have to find a source of income.
Still, I will continue with my schooling. I'm enjoying it immensely. I may have to try and sell my house before I finish, and I may have to give up my satellite and even the high-speed internet, although I need that for my classes. But I'm going to finish. And I'm going to do well. Because this is fun. It really is.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Going Home
My fourth of July weekend was spent in Cincinnati, my home town. I was a little apprehensive about going home, considering some of the things I’ve been feeling and thinking lately, but I still was happy to be going. No matter what, it’s home. Before I’d even checked into my hotel, I had to go to White Castle and have a couple double cheeseburgers and fries. Nice, late-night snack. The next day, I met with a friend of mine and her boyfriend, a nice guy who’s worlds apart from her ex-husband. Thank God for that. Anyway, off we went to enjoy other foods I can’t get here, like Skyline Chili and Graeter’s Ice Cream. I was surprised to find that no one in Colorado knows how to make a soda, or even what one is. It’s not a soft drink, it’s an ice cream treat. The closest equivalent would be a root beer float. Trust me, though, it’s not the same. My time was short, though, so I didn’t get to visit all the places I wanted. It’s okay, I got to hang out with friends.
Later on the 4th, I went to my father’s house. There’s something I finally realized this weekend. Even though there are times I feel that my family is demanding too much of my time or energy, it’s just not true. It finally occurred to me that the time I was spending with my family was by my choice. How liberating that revelation was. I could enjoy the time I spent with them instead of thinking I’d later resent it, something else I never did. Really a ridiculous thing to think, but hey, when you’re in the throes of denial, anything seems logical. Nevermind denial about what, that’s for another post. Or maybe not. Mostly, it’s unimportant right now. Anyway, Friday I went to see Hancock with my father, stepmother and the twins. I’d recommend it. It’s not Citizen Kane, but it’s worth watching. I’d go again. Even full price. And I’m cheap. It was raining all day, so there were no fireworks displays. That wasn’t a huge problem, I got to see one on my way down from the airport. From I-75. While driving. Yeah, sure, giant fireworks directly in front wasn’t at all distracting…NOT. At least everyone else on the highway was watching, too.
Saturday was a picnic I didn’t really think I wanted to attend. I’m not much of a people person, and going to parties, even with people I know, isn’t always fun for me. Mostly, I wanted to go because my stepmother’s sisters would be there, and I enjoy visiting with them. As is usually the case with me, I was glad I went. It’s probably the main reason I force myself to go to these things, even if I don’t think I really want to go. I invariably enjoy myself and am glad I went. I did wind up leaving earlier than most everyone else because I wasn’t feeling all that well, but lately, that’s nothing new for me.
I took a slight detour and I found myself driving to my old neighborhood, stopping by the house where I spent 29 years of my life. I’ve always contended they were, on balance, good years, but as time goes by, it seems less and less so. Again, for another time. Mostly, I just wanted to see the place, see if the new owners made any other changes. The tree we brought back from Colorado all those years ago was pulled out almost immediately. They kept her irises, although this time, they were in a different place. Still, it was the same color, mostly. And the tree I used to climb, one of them anyway, was still there, too. It was the first time I’d been back there with a camera, so I was even able to immortalize the occasion. One of the few pictures that came out well was my first church. The first one I joined, that is. I’d been to other churches while trying to decide what I wanted to be, spiritually. It was such a good experience that I maintain the same religious preference today, some 26 years after my confirmation. After, I continued through the area where I learned to drive, on through Norwood, and finally, back to my hotel.
My last day, I spent time shooting Eden Park, something I haven’t done for over 20 years. I’d spent a lot of time driving through or just finding a quiet spot and relaxing there, a bit of heaven in the middle of the city. Or maybe, a bit of Eden. Later that morning, I met a friend and hung out downtown for a few hours. We visited the Contemporary Arts Center and spent a good amount of time atop Carew Tower, currently the tallest building in the city, before finally winding up at Devou Park in Covington, Kentucky, where most of the pictures of the Cincinnati skyline are taken. After I dropped him off, I went to spend the third day with my family. Originally, we were going to have a family reunion this weekend. I put off making my flight and hotel reservations for as long as possible, partly because I really wanted to drive, partly because I was trying to decide if I really could afford the trip. Well, I couldn’t afford the trip, but I set it up anyway. Less than a week later, I was told the reunion was cancelled due to lack of interest. I suspect it had to do with the costs more than anything. The hotel we were able to reserve cost $129/night. I don’t know anyone who can afford that. No, that’s not quite true, I just don’t know anyone who can afford it who’d be willing to pay that. Not for the hotel they’d reserved, anyway. Unimportant. My father had a picnic on Sunday, for any who were in town for the reunion. I was the only one from out of town, and mostly, it was my immediate family. Still, it was, as always, a good time. There were some things that were discussed that could have put a damper on things, but again, not important now.
All in all, my weekend was good. In spite of the oppressive humidity – which wasn’t as bad as usual according to those who still live there – I thought I’d be moving back to Cincinnati before too long. But when I saw my mountains from the plane, I realized I wouldn’t be moving back too soon. I suppose that means I have two places I can call home.
*If you’d like to see the photos I took of Eden Park, visit my Photobucket account.
Later on the 4th, I went to my father’s house. There’s something I finally realized this weekend. Even though there are times I feel that my family is demanding too much of my time or energy, it’s just not true. It finally occurred to me that the time I was spending with my family was by my choice. How liberating that revelation was. I could enjoy the time I spent with them instead of thinking I’d later resent it, something else I never did. Really a ridiculous thing to think, but hey, when you’re in the throes of denial, anything seems logical. Nevermind denial about what, that’s for another post. Or maybe not. Mostly, it’s unimportant right now. Anyway, Friday I went to see Hancock with my father, stepmother and the twins. I’d recommend it. It’s not Citizen Kane, but it’s worth watching. I’d go again. Even full price. And I’m cheap. It was raining all day, so there were no fireworks displays. That wasn’t a huge problem, I got to see one on my way down from the airport. From I-75. While driving. Yeah, sure, giant fireworks directly in front wasn’t at all distracting…NOT. At least everyone else on the highway was watching, too.
Saturday was a picnic I didn’t really think I wanted to attend. I’m not much of a people person, and going to parties, even with people I know, isn’t always fun for me. Mostly, I wanted to go because my stepmother’s sisters would be there, and I enjoy visiting with them. As is usually the case with me, I was glad I went. It’s probably the main reason I force myself to go to these things, even if I don’t think I really want to go. I invariably enjoy myself and am glad I went. I did wind up leaving earlier than most everyone else because I wasn’t feeling all that well, but lately, that’s nothing new for me.
I took a slight detour and I found myself driving to my old neighborhood, stopping by the house where I spent 29 years of my life. I’ve always contended they were, on balance, good years, but as time goes by, it seems less and less so. Again, for another time. Mostly, I just wanted to see the place, see if the new owners made any other changes. The tree we brought back from Colorado all those years ago was pulled out almost immediately. They kept her irises, although this time, they were in a different place. Still, it was the same color, mostly. And the tree I used to climb, one of them anyway, was still there, too. It was the first time I’d been back there with a camera, so I was even able to immortalize the occasion. One of the few pictures that came out well was my first church. The first one I joined, that is. I’d been to other churches while trying to decide what I wanted to be, spiritually. It was such a good experience that I maintain the same religious preference today, some 26 years after my confirmation. After, I continued through the area where I learned to drive, on through Norwood, and finally, back to my hotel.
My last day, I spent time shooting Eden Park, something I haven’t done for over 20 years. I’d spent a lot of time driving through or just finding a quiet spot and relaxing there, a bit of heaven in the middle of the city. Or maybe, a bit of Eden. Later that morning, I met a friend and hung out downtown for a few hours. We visited the Contemporary Arts Center and spent a good amount of time atop Carew Tower, currently the tallest building in the city, before finally winding up at Devou Park in Covington, Kentucky, where most of the pictures of the Cincinnati skyline are taken. After I dropped him off, I went to spend the third day with my family. Originally, we were going to have a family reunion this weekend. I put off making my flight and hotel reservations for as long as possible, partly because I really wanted to drive, partly because I was trying to decide if I really could afford the trip. Well, I couldn’t afford the trip, but I set it up anyway. Less than a week later, I was told the reunion was cancelled due to lack of interest. I suspect it had to do with the costs more than anything. The hotel we were able to reserve cost $129/night. I don’t know anyone who can afford that. No, that’s not quite true, I just don’t know anyone who can afford it who’d be willing to pay that. Not for the hotel they’d reserved, anyway. Unimportant. My father had a picnic on Sunday, for any who were in town for the reunion. I was the only one from out of town, and mostly, it was my immediate family. Still, it was, as always, a good time. There were some things that were discussed that could have put a damper on things, but again, not important now.
All in all, my weekend was good. In spite of the oppressive humidity – which wasn’t as bad as usual according to those who still live there – I thought I’d be moving back to Cincinnati before too long. But when I saw my mountains from the plane, I realized I wouldn’t be moving back too soon. I suppose that means I have two places I can call home.
*If you’d like to see the photos I took of Eden Park, visit my Photobucket account.
Cornhole?!?
Okay, so on my way home this past weekend, I was faced with an interesting discovery. On the longest leg of my flight, Colorado Springs to Atlanta, I sat beside a woman going home to Richmond, Indiana. I’ve been to Richmond, it was close enough to my college that my choir actually had performances there. Really interesting during Daylight Savings, since Richmond didn’t change their clocks and we did. One weekend, we were going to Richmond on Saturday and Sunday, the weekend of Daylight Savings. On Saturday, we had to arrive by 7:00 AM eastern. On Sunday, 8:00 AM. It was kinda nice, considering I’d been out partying the night before. I can’t remember if that’s the infamous drunken singing incident, but that’s not important right now. Actually, none of that had a thing to do with the topic.
The woman beside me was going home to Richmond. Somewhere in the conversation, she brought up Cornhole. Huh? She explained that Cornhole was a game involving a board and corn bags – that’s bean bags filled with corn instead of beans – tossed at a board with a hole. The ultimate goal, somewhat obviously, is to get the bag through the hole.
I didn’t really give it a second thought. Just figured it was some rural Indiana thing. Lots of corn grown out there, and not much else to do unless you’re near Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville or Chicago (a lot of places aren’t), gotta do something to pass the time. I landed in Dayton, drove through the 4th of July fireworks – on the third – to Sharonville, suburb of Cincinnati, got my White Castle (nummy) and went to my hotel. Friday, I went to my father’s house and hung out with them for a bit. There was a white board on their deck that I didn’t pay much attention to. Their house has always been the Kool-Aid house for our family, so they tend to have all sorts of random stuff. For those who aren’t old enough, or too senile to remember, there were commercials back in the 70s and 80s for Kool-Aid, showing a house where all the neighborhood congregated.
Saturday, I went to a picnic at my stepmother’s niece’s house, where there was food and family and games. Off to one side of the yard, there were four boards with holes set up, and the men were pitching beanbags at them. Well, not quite, I now know they were corn bags. Yes. There was a lively game of Cornhole going on. My naturally-keen sense of observation let that pass me by. For some reason, my brain just thought of that as horseshoes. I didn’t connect it to the conversation I’d had on the flight in two days prior.
Sunday, back to my father’s house for another picnic, this to take the place of the cancelled family reunion. Pretty local, and most of the people there shared at least one parent with me, so really it wasn’t that much different from other large gatherings at my father’s house. Off to the side of the house, by the driveway, my nephew had taken the white board I had previously ignored, along with another and some bags and set them up. At last, I made the connection. Cornhole? Here?!? Can’t be! My nephew called for players. This wasn’t even new! This had been going on for some time. Both my nephew and my youngest brother knew how to score, had strategies and even tips for novices! So I hear about this game from a woman who lives in Indiana, originally from California, and see it at my father’s house. He had a “pocket” version, too, with teeny little bags and teeny little boards.
But wait, there’s more!
Cornhole is apparently an old game. From the American Cornhole Association website:
What is Cornhole?
I must admit, its provenance of being from Germany has me a little concerned. I don’t seem to recall a proliferation of corn in Europe until after the US was invaded by the British. It’s a new world grain. Still, I suppose they could have used something else.
Just the same, there’s yet more. From the American Cornhole Organization website:
That’s right, there are two Cornhole groups, and they both have tournaments. They do, however, also have different throwing distances. The ACA requires 33 feet between platforms, while the ACO only requires 27 feet, 24 for amateurs. Both groups are official, both have rules and regulations, and the aforementioned tournaments.
From the ACA homepage:
The American Cornhole Association was established by a small group of dedicated Cornholers from the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. It has grown over the years and, to the best of our knowledge, now represents the largest organized Cornhole / Corn Toss association in the United States.
Nothing on the ACO page about their founding. I’m a little disappointed about that. But there is this:
Cornhole the Movie Is Coming Soon!
In case you missed it, the movie trailer is on You Tube – Cornhole: The Movie. Or you could go to the official website – Cornhole: The Movie. All I can think of is Simply Ballroom.
This is really disturbing. I’ve watched the trailer a few times, and I recognized some of the sponsors they show in the tournament section. Cincinnati brands. And the quick shot of the city skyline? Cincinnati. Yep. I can name those buildings. I’ve been in some of them. I have pictures on my Photobucket account from the top of one of them. I went on to the rest of the site. It confirmed my worst fears. The movie has the Cornhole Championship in my hometown, Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, at least we’re good at some sport.
I’m not. I played with my nephew, youngest brother and his fiancée. I’ve found yet another sport I suck at. Once, I thought I might be able to master a sport, of any type. No. Extreme right field in softball, a team happy to see me rotated out in volleyball, good only as a distraction in basketball, and now, unable to hit the broadside of a…Cornhole board.
I’m so embarrassed.
The woman beside me was going home to Richmond. Somewhere in the conversation, she brought up Cornhole. Huh? She explained that Cornhole was a game involving a board and corn bags – that’s bean bags filled with corn instead of beans – tossed at a board with a hole. The ultimate goal, somewhat obviously, is to get the bag through the hole.
I didn’t really give it a second thought. Just figured it was some rural Indiana thing. Lots of corn grown out there, and not much else to do unless you’re near Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Louisville or Chicago (a lot of places aren’t), gotta do something to pass the time. I landed in Dayton, drove through the 4th of July fireworks – on the third – to Sharonville, suburb of Cincinnati, got my White Castle (nummy) and went to my hotel. Friday, I went to my father’s house and hung out with them for a bit. There was a white board on their deck that I didn’t pay much attention to. Their house has always been the Kool-Aid house for our family, so they tend to have all sorts of random stuff. For those who aren’t old enough, or too senile to remember, there were commercials back in the 70s and 80s for Kool-Aid, showing a house where all the neighborhood congregated.
Saturday, I went to a picnic at my stepmother’s niece’s house, where there was food and family and games. Off to one side of the yard, there were four boards with holes set up, and the men were pitching beanbags at them. Well, not quite, I now know they were corn bags. Yes. There was a lively game of Cornhole going on. My naturally-keen sense of observation let that pass me by. For some reason, my brain just thought of that as horseshoes. I didn’t connect it to the conversation I’d had on the flight in two days prior.
Sunday, back to my father’s house for another picnic, this to take the place of the cancelled family reunion. Pretty local, and most of the people there shared at least one parent with me, so really it wasn’t that much different from other large gatherings at my father’s house. Off to the side of the house, by the driveway, my nephew had taken the white board I had previously ignored, along with another and some bags and set them up. At last, I made the connection. Cornhole? Here?!? Can’t be! My nephew called for players. This wasn’t even new! This had been going on for some time. Both my nephew and my youngest brother knew how to score, had strategies and even tips for novices! So I hear about this game from a woman who lives in Indiana, originally from California, and see it at my father’s house. He had a “pocket” version, too, with teeny little bags and teeny little boards.
But wait, there’s more!
Cornhole is apparently an old game. From the American Cornhole Association website:
What is Cornhole?
It has been called many things, Corn Toss, Bean Bag, Bean Toss, Soft Horseshoes, Indiana Horseshoes, but to many of us born and raised in Kentucky and the southern part of Ohio, the game is passionately referred to as Cornhole.
It has been said that the game originated in Germany in the 14th century, and then was rediscovered in the hills of Kentucky over 100 years ago.
I must admit, its provenance of being from Germany has me a little concerned. I don’t seem to recall a proliferation of corn in Europe until after the US was invaded by the British. It’s a new world grain. Still, I suppose they could have used something else.
Just the same, there’s yet more. From the American Cornhole Organization website:
But Wait! Is it corn hole or cornhole. Official Corn Hole Rules or Official Cornhole Rules. The Official Word for this Game of Fun and Sport of Challenge is Cornhole one word not Corn Hole two words. So get with the Program and let's move on.
That’s right, there are two Cornhole groups, and they both have tournaments. They do, however, also have different throwing distances. The ACA requires 33 feet between platforms, while the ACO only requires 27 feet, 24 for amateurs. Both groups are official, both have rules and regulations, and the aforementioned tournaments.
From the ACA homepage:
The American Cornhole Association was established by a small group of dedicated Cornholers from the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. It has grown over the years and, to the best of our knowledge, now represents the largest organized Cornhole / Corn Toss association in the United States.
Nothing on the ACO page about their founding. I’m a little disappointed about that. But there is this:
Cornhole the Movie Is Coming Soon!
— A Message from Director, Tim Clarke —
Tim Clarke, Director of Cornhole The Movie, tells us they are just days away from finishing up post production!...Check out the cornhole movie trailer at YouTube and pass it along to friends, family, and any other cornhole fans you know!
In case you missed it, the movie trailer is on You Tube – Cornhole: The Movie. Or you could go to the official website – Cornhole: The Movie. All I can think of is Simply Ballroom.
This is really disturbing. I’ve watched the trailer a few times, and I recognized some of the sponsors they show in the tournament section. Cincinnati brands. And the quick shot of the city skyline? Cincinnati. Yep. I can name those buildings. I’ve been in some of them. I have pictures on my Photobucket account from the top of one of them. I went on to the rest of the site. It confirmed my worst fears. The movie has the Cornhole Championship in my hometown, Cincinnati, Ohio. Well, at least we’re good at some sport.
I’m not. I played with my nephew, youngest brother and his fiancée. I’ve found yet another sport I suck at. Once, I thought I might be able to master a sport, of any type. No. Extreme right field in softball, a team happy to see me rotated out in volleyball, good only as a distraction in basketball, and now, unable to hit the broadside of a…Cornhole board.
I’m so embarrassed.
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Observations
I spent the holiday (Independence Day) at home, in Cincinnati, and I made a few observations, about the differences between Cincinnati and Colorado. These observations are, of course, my personal opinion and experiences. YMMV (um, that’s Your Mileage May Vary for those who haven’t chatted or hung out on message boards).
The main difference I noticed was a feeling of gentility that is missing here in Colorado. People here are nice, polite, and incredibly generous as witnessed by the various donation opportunities (9/11, 2004 Tsunami, Katrina, etc), but that gentility is missing. I suppose it’s best described as a southern politeness, different from others. Mostly evident in interactions between men and women. I really never paid much attention to it, but I knew something was missing out here. Let’s say a man and a woman approach a door at the same time. Unless his hands are otherwise occupied, the man will automatically open and hold said door, waiting for the woman to pass through. It’s expected. I’ve even caught myself waiting for it. Now, I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door, and I’ve made a point of saying as much. But I will admit, having a door held is nice. That’s the most common example. I’ve also had men rush to pick up something I’ve dropped. While I’m no troll, no one’s going to mistake me for a super model, either, so it’s not a flirting thing. It just is.
Then there’s the greetings. Whenever you encounter someone, whether walking down the street or wandering through a building, there must always be an acknowledgment of their presence, if not an outright greeting. It might be as simple as a nod, or as elaborate as asking how you are doing that day, even evolving into a brief conversation about the weather or some other inanity, but it must happen. People get offended if it doesn’t. I think that’s another southern thing. It carries over into other interactions, too, like phone calls and sales at a cash register.
Okay, I suppose it’s really only one observation, not multiple ones. Cincinnati is part of Ohio, technically a northern state. And it’s above the Mason/Dixon Line at latitude 39 N. Southwestern Ohio is on the edge of Appalachia. Southeastern Ohio is actually IN Appalachia, complete with people that look like that inbred kid with no eyebrows in Deliverance. To be fair, I’ve seen those in Cincinnati, too. And while I appreciate the Southern and Appalachian influence – the very strong influence – I never really thought it was so prevalent. Not until this trip, when the differences between here and there became so clear to me. That behavior, by the way, crosses class, race, social and economic lines. While not everyone acts that way, those that do don’t seem to fit in one group moreso than any other. Not in my experience, anyway.
Really, that’s all there is about this. There are the other differences, like humidity, lack of infiltrators (out-of-towners), abundance of free city festivals and large concerts and so forth, but the biggest one I noticed was the way people treat others.
The main difference I noticed was a feeling of gentility that is missing here in Colorado. People here are nice, polite, and incredibly generous as witnessed by the various donation opportunities (9/11, 2004 Tsunami, Katrina, etc), but that gentility is missing. I suppose it’s best described as a southern politeness, different from others. Mostly evident in interactions between men and women. I really never paid much attention to it, but I knew something was missing out here. Let’s say a man and a woman approach a door at the same time. Unless his hands are otherwise occupied, the man will automatically open and hold said door, waiting for the woman to pass through. It’s expected. I’ve even caught myself waiting for it. Now, I’m perfectly capable of opening my own door, and I’ve made a point of saying as much. But I will admit, having a door held is nice. That’s the most common example. I’ve also had men rush to pick up something I’ve dropped. While I’m no troll, no one’s going to mistake me for a super model, either, so it’s not a flirting thing. It just is.
Then there’s the greetings. Whenever you encounter someone, whether walking down the street or wandering through a building, there must always be an acknowledgment of their presence, if not an outright greeting. It might be as simple as a nod, or as elaborate as asking how you are doing that day, even evolving into a brief conversation about the weather or some other inanity, but it must happen. People get offended if it doesn’t. I think that’s another southern thing. It carries over into other interactions, too, like phone calls and sales at a cash register.
Okay, I suppose it’s really only one observation, not multiple ones. Cincinnati is part of Ohio, technically a northern state. And it’s above the Mason/Dixon Line at latitude 39 N. Southwestern Ohio is on the edge of Appalachia. Southeastern Ohio is actually IN Appalachia, complete with people that look like that inbred kid with no eyebrows in Deliverance. To be fair, I’ve seen those in Cincinnati, too. And while I appreciate the Southern and Appalachian influence – the very strong influence – I never really thought it was so prevalent. Not until this trip, when the differences between here and there became so clear to me. That behavior, by the way, crosses class, race, social and economic lines. While not everyone acts that way, those that do don’t seem to fit in one group moreso than any other. Not in my experience, anyway.
Really, that’s all there is about this. There are the other differences, like humidity, lack of infiltrators (out-of-towners), abundance of free city festivals and large concerts and so forth, but the biggest one I noticed was the way people treat others.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Stream of Consciousness 06/30
Was it just a week ago that I found out George Carlin died? I found out about Cyd Charisse at the same time. And just a week prior to that, Tim Russert passed. I haven’t been able to watch Meet The Press since the tribute episode. I’m not ready, I guess. George Carlin. What a hoot. I was introduced to Carlin when I was in high school. My mother decided I was old enough to watch without having my mind completely blown, I guess. Well, it was. I laughed. Hysterically at times. It didn’t help that it was about the same time I was allowed to watch some of Richard Pryor’s routines.
See, my mom did something really wacky and radical. She parented. Single, working, two jobs sometimes, and she set rules. And expected us to follow them. Instead of complaining about pornography and graphic language, she did her job and kept it away from us until she felt we were ready for it. I saw my first R-rated movie at 10. Granted, it was the Blues Brothers and it got an R rating basically for one word. It would just barely make PG-13, now. But she took us to see it. First, though, she saw it by herself. She did that with Beverly Hills Cop, too, even though I was older. My brother was still 11 or 12 when that one came out. She screened things before letting us see it, to decide if it was something she wanted us exposed to. Gosh. What an incredible idea. She was hardly lenient, but she wasn’t strict, either. And let’s face it, my brother and I were basically good kids to begin with. We and the kids on my street got into what I refer to as “Dennis the Menace” trouble. The worst thing was two of the guys nearly burning down a house, playing in the garage with fire and oily rags. And most of us went on to college. Considering the neighborhood where I grew up, that was no mean feat.
Mostly I’m just stressed about, well, everything. I want to finish school, I really do. And my confidence is flagging in a big way with this accounting course. It’s tough. Really tough. Not impossible, but tough. And I’ve got one more semester of it. If I can take my reference material with me, I can probably walk into an entry-level accounting job and do just fine. But with an MBA, I think they’ll expect a bit more of me. Confidence has never been a strength for me. Cover it up with other behavior, that’s my policy. I pretty much work with the assumption that people are just tolerating me, looking for any excuse to walk away. Including those related to me. So when I find someone who’s willing to hang around me, even when I’m feeling my most annoying (yeah, sometimes I do it on purpose. Some people actually find it endearing. No accounting for tastes), I tend to hold on to them forever. Even if I go months without actually speaking to them, I consider them part of my life unless I am told otherwise.
I’ve written a cheat sheet for my accounting exam. We’re permitted a single sheet of 8.5 x 11, with whatever we want on it, both sides if we wish. It’s amazing how much you can fit on a piece of paper if you use a small enough font. I’ve found that in portrait orientation, an 8pt font and three columns seems most useful, four columns if you use a landscape orientation. I’ll be taking my exam tomorrow afternoon, 1:00PM. I’m a little nervous about it. Kinda like Phoenix is a little hot in the summer. I’ve done all I can do, now I just have to trust that I’ve learned something. I know I have, I just don’t know if I can translate that to a decent exam grade. It’ll be okay, I guess.
I miss writing. Whoa, warning, sudden shifts in topic ahead! Anyway, I miss writing. Not this stuff, this journalizing. I mean stories. I used to write all the time. I can’t do it any more, and I’m not sure why. My mind is a complete blank when it comes to ideas, and I can’t complete even a short story any more. I used to write tons of poetry, published articles online, was actually well-known in certain circles for my short stories. Maybe it’s practice. Like my body.
Yeah, another shift. I used to be heavier than I am now, but I’ve never been so squishy. I always had some level of muscle tone. But then, I also didn’t get ill after a few days of exercising, or so exhausted it was all I could do to get out of bed, like I do now. I always had an hourglass figure. At some points, it was a 24-hour glass, granted, but it was still the right general shape. Now I’m all squishy. I’m not happy about that.
Lastly, I’m trying not to panic about my health in general. Heaven knows I could use a therapist of some sort, but there’s also the physical health. I was concerned a few days ago, I felt like everything had gradually been getting dimmer. So, out of curiosity, particularly since I could feel pressure, not behind my eyes as with sinus problems, but actually in my eyes, I looked to see if there was a connection between hypertension and sight loss. Lo and behold, there is. Serious, uncontrolled hypertension can lead to blindness. Yay. Of course, I had a light burn out, a compact fluorescent, which apparently gets more and more dim as it nears the end of its life. I changed the light bulb yesterday and suddenly, I could see better. Hmm.
It’s still a very real concern, I do feel pressure in my eyes and occasionally feel like I’ve got a blind spot forming in my right eye. But without health insurance, there’s not a thing I can do about it. Instead, I can sit here and make a game of figuring out what irreversible condition I’ll get first. Will my kidneys completely fail before I can get insurance? Or will I have a stroke, damaging only part of my body? Or maybe I’ll just go blind. Or my ceiling could collapse and drop a bathtub on my head. Or, really, I could be walking out to my car and be hit by a rouge antelope. That last is part of a trick I learned. As my mother observed, I’m a worrywart. It can get seriously out of hand. Like, so out of hand, it’s crippling. So, to cope, I learned to interject something absolutely ridiculous, to help get me off the train of thought. It actually works. I’m trying to teach it to my bestest friend. She’s a bit of a worrier, too. Part and parcel of the whole ADD/OCD/Depression spectrum.
At least my class is taking my mind off the fact that it’s been nearly a year and I still have no real source of income, save student loans, and very little prospect of finding one. And that the only reason I can devote the time I need to my studies is because I’m not working. The employment agency I’m signed up with keeps saying they’ll be contacting me soon, then they don’t. And I don’t know if I’m glad or not. Right now, not that big a deal, I have enough money to get through the next couple of months, as long as I remember I don’t have any more money coming in. It’s gonna get real interesting, soon.
See, my mom did something really wacky and radical. She parented. Single, working, two jobs sometimes, and she set rules. And expected us to follow them. Instead of complaining about pornography and graphic language, she did her job and kept it away from us until she felt we were ready for it. I saw my first R-rated movie at 10. Granted, it was the Blues Brothers and it got an R rating basically for one word. It would just barely make PG-13, now. But she took us to see it. First, though, she saw it by herself. She did that with Beverly Hills Cop, too, even though I was older. My brother was still 11 or 12 when that one came out. She screened things before letting us see it, to decide if it was something she wanted us exposed to. Gosh. What an incredible idea. She was hardly lenient, but she wasn’t strict, either. And let’s face it, my brother and I were basically good kids to begin with. We and the kids on my street got into what I refer to as “Dennis the Menace” trouble. The worst thing was two of the guys nearly burning down a house, playing in the garage with fire and oily rags. And most of us went on to college. Considering the neighborhood where I grew up, that was no mean feat.
Mostly I’m just stressed about, well, everything. I want to finish school, I really do. And my confidence is flagging in a big way with this accounting course. It’s tough. Really tough. Not impossible, but tough. And I’ve got one more semester of it. If I can take my reference material with me, I can probably walk into an entry-level accounting job and do just fine. But with an MBA, I think they’ll expect a bit more of me. Confidence has never been a strength for me. Cover it up with other behavior, that’s my policy. I pretty much work with the assumption that people are just tolerating me, looking for any excuse to walk away. Including those related to me. So when I find someone who’s willing to hang around me, even when I’m feeling my most annoying (yeah, sometimes I do it on purpose. Some people actually find it endearing. No accounting for tastes), I tend to hold on to them forever. Even if I go months without actually speaking to them, I consider them part of my life unless I am told otherwise.
I’ve written a cheat sheet for my accounting exam. We’re permitted a single sheet of 8.5 x 11, with whatever we want on it, both sides if we wish. It’s amazing how much you can fit on a piece of paper if you use a small enough font. I’ve found that in portrait orientation, an 8pt font and three columns seems most useful, four columns if you use a landscape orientation. I’ll be taking my exam tomorrow afternoon, 1:00PM. I’m a little nervous about it. Kinda like Phoenix is a little hot in the summer. I’ve done all I can do, now I just have to trust that I’ve learned something. I know I have, I just don’t know if I can translate that to a decent exam grade. It’ll be okay, I guess.
I miss writing. Whoa, warning, sudden shifts in topic ahead! Anyway, I miss writing. Not this stuff, this journalizing. I mean stories. I used to write all the time. I can’t do it any more, and I’m not sure why. My mind is a complete blank when it comes to ideas, and I can’t complete even a short story any more. I used to write tons of poetry, published articles online, was actually well-known in certain circles for my short stories. Maybe it’s practice. Like my body.
Yeah, another shift. I used to be heavier than I am now, but I’ve never been so squishy. I always had some level of muscle tone. But then, I also didn’t get ill after a few days of exercising, or so exhausted it was all I could do to get out of bed, like I do now. I always had an hourglass figure. At some points, it was a 24-hour glass, granted, but it was still the right general shape. Now I’m all squishy. I’m not happy about that.
Lastly, I’m trying not to panic about my health in general. Heaven knows I could use a therapist of some sort, but there’s also the physical health. I was concerned a few days ago, I felt like everything had gradually been getting dimmer. So, out of curiosity, particularly since I could feel pressure, not behind my eyes as with sinus problems, but actually in my eyes, I looked to see if there was a connection between hypertension and sight loss. Lo and behold, there is. Serious, uncontrolled hypertension can lead to blindness. Yay. Of course, I had a light burn out, a compact fluorescent, which apparently gets more and more dim as it nears the end of its life. I changed the light bulb yesterday and suddenly, I could see better. Hmm.
It’s still a very real concern, I do feel pressure in my eyes and occasionally feel like I’ve got a blind spot forming in my right eye. But without health insurance, there’s not a thing I can do about it. Instead, I can sit here and make a game of figuring out what irreversible condition I’ll get first. Will my kidneys completely fail before I can get insurance? Or will I have a stroke, damaging only part of my body? Or maybe I’ll just go blind. Or my ceiling could collapse and drop a bathtub on my head. Or, really, I could be walking out to my car and be hit by a rouge antelope. That last is part of a trick I learned. As my mother observed, I’m a worrywart. It can get seriously out of hand. Like, so out of hand, it’s crippling. So, to cope, I learned to interject something absolutely ridiculous, to help get me off the train of thought. It actually works. I’m trying to teach it to my bestest friend. She’s a bit of a worrier, too. Part and parcel of the whole ADD/OCD/Depression spectrum.
At least my class is taking my mind off the fact that it’s been nearly a year and I still have no real source of income, save student loans, and very little prospect of finding one. And that the only reason I can devote the time I need to my studies is because I’m not working. The employment agency I’m signed up with keeps saying they’ll be contacting me soon, then they don’t. And I don’t know if I’m glad or not. Right now, not that big a deal, I have enough money to get through the next couple of months, as long as I remember I don’t have any more money coming in. It’s gonna get real interesting, soon.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Stream Of Consciousness 06/26
So really all I’m thinking about is the fact that I have to finish my Accounting degree to stand a chance at getting a job that pays any amount of money. Living here in Colorado Springs, named 6th best city to live in by Kiplingers, it’s interesting. Apparently, you can only get a job if you’re fresh out of high school or have a PhD. Well, MBA is also acceptable for entry-level stuff. So great, I’m back in school. And I’m in the middle of wrapping up an incomplete from one of the undergrad accounting courses I took. Because in the last few weeks of class, including the last week of my grad-level finance class, I was ill. Specifically, dunno. Mental, physical, emotional, just ill, okay? So what does that mean? Does it mean I should just chuck it all and apply for disability, because I have no hope of actually holding down a job, what with me getting ill all the time? When I started at my last job, my PKD hadn’t advanced all that much. Really, aside from some cysts on my kidneys and hypertension, I was in great shape. I could work 50 hour weeks. Now I get exhausted going to the store. I walked around Home Depot today, trying to make some sense of the place, picking up a few things to make my house more secure, and I felt like I needed a nap when I got home!
But I’m not even 40 yet, and I’ve got some time left. Even taking into account the history on my mother’s side, I’ve got some time. Both my mother and her mother were ill, both were dead before they were 65. Both were basically incapacitated by their mid-50s. So, based on that, I have about 12-15 productive years left, and probably 25 years total. But disability doesn’t pay much. I’ll be eating tuna sandwiches twice a day, every day, because that’s all I’d be able to afford. And I’ll become a hermit! I don’t talk to people unless I have to, or they call me. Except Sheila, and even she usually does the calling. Unless it’s been a couple days, then I get concerned and call her. Or could I work part-time doing bookkeeping or accounting stuff, to pay my bills? I suppose I get that from my father. Our longest phone conversation in the past 2 years was probably 3 minutes. Actually, that’s probably about the longest our face-to-face conversations have been. Just not interested, I guess.
See, and that’s something else. I’m going home for the weekend soon, and I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. The only person who’s actually asked anything about me is my stepmother. No one else seems particularly interested. Well, there was a great conversation over my birthday with a couple of my sisters, that was cool, but really, that was nearly a year since our last conversation. I suppose one of the reasons I don’t want to move back is because I feel like here, I can pretend someone actually misses me. Whether or not it’s an accurate assessment, that’s how it feels to me. Doesn’t really matter, though, it is what it is. Feels like they consider me nothing but a fat, lazy failure barely able to take care of herself and not really worth the effort. Yeah, I know, I’m projecting. I’m trying to put it in perspective, although I’m sure I’m way off and they’ll probably take offense at anything I say. Whatever. The fact remains that they really don’t know much about me and don’t seem particularly interested in trying. My father remains the only one to come visit me, and then it was only because I was going to have major surgery. He didn’t stay long, and we only had one day where I could actually spend time with him doing more than just lying there, but oh well. He came, and I was glad. As for the rest, it’s an expensive trip, and I don’t exactly have the space to put someone up for an extended period of time. My mother would have visited, but that just wasn’t really possible in her condition. My stepmother isn’t a huge fan of traveling. Not everyone is. So I don’t expect to see her out here any time soon. I really don’t expect to see anyone out here any time soon. My fault for leaving, so my responsibility to travel, I guess.
I shouldn’t be surprised I never had that many friends to begin with. People I knew, sure, but not friends. I have more close friends here, now, than I ever did at any one time back home. I can count four people that I’d trust with my life. Four people who know something about me, who I’ve learned something about. I never had that before. Of course, I didn’t really think much of myself until I moved here, so I’m sure that’s a factor. Best thing I could do for myself, really, moving out here. I got to know my mother’s side of the family. Totally messed up. But, I fit there. And they have visited. Sure, it’s easier for one of them, she lives in Denver, so it’s really not a fair comparison, but we’ve hung out. Actually, and I never thought I’d say things, I’m looking forward to my next trip to Tulsa. Seriously. Yikes.
So anyway, having a hard time finding the motivation. What’s the point? No matter what I do, it won’t change what they think of me, or even if they think of me. I expect to have one guest at my graduation, my friend Sheila. No, that’s not fair, I can think of several. None related by blood, though. That’s only slightly less than was at my college graduation. Yeah, that hurt. No point complaining, though, won’t change anything and everyone will just add “whiner” to my description. Assuming they even gave it a thought. Which I doubt.
Yeah, I’m probably the only one who thinks all this. There’s probably something I should have done differently, changed my personality somehow to be more like the rest of them, so I could fit in, so they’d actually talk to me. Actually, I tried that for a lot of years, and it just backfired in a big way. So instead, I move away and think about my family, and wish I could have a better relationship with them.
Gee, wonder what’s been on my mind for the past couple of weeks…
But I’m not even 40 yet, and I’ve got some time left. Even taking into account the history on my mother’s side, I’ve got some time. Both my mother and her mother were ill, both were dead before they were 65. Both were basically incapacitated by their mid-50s. So, based on that, I have about 12-15 productive years left, and probably 25 years total. But disability doesn’t pay much. I’ll be eating tuna sandwiches twice a day, every day, because that’s all I’d be able to afford. And I’ll become a hermit! I don’t talk to people unless I have to, or they call me. Except Sheila, and even she usually does the calling. Unless it’s been a couple days, then I get concerned and call her. Or could I work part-time doing bookkeeping or accounting stuff, to pay my bills? I suppose I get that from my father. Our longest phone conversation in the past 2 years was probably 3 minutes. Actually, that’s probably about the longest our face-to-face conversations have been. Just not interested, I guess.
See, and that’s something else. I’m going home for the weekend soon, and I’m looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time. The only person who’s actually asked anything about me is my stepmother. No one else seems particularly interested. Well, there was a great conversation over my birthday with a couple of my sisters, that was cool, but really, that was nearly a year since our last conversation. I suppose one of the reasons I don’t want to move back is because I feel like here, I can pretend someone actually misses me. Whether or not it’s an accurate assessment, that’s how it feels to me. Doesn’t really matter, though, it is what it is. Feels like they consider me nothing but a fat, lazy failure barely able to take care of herself and not really worth the effort. Yeah, I know, I’m projecting. I’m trying to put it in perspective, although I’m sure I’m way off and they’ll probably take offense at anything I say. Whatever. The fact remains that they really don’t know much about me and don’t seem particularly interested in trying. My father remains the only one to come visit me, and then it was only because I was going to have major surgery. He didn’t stay long, and we only had one day where I could actually spend time with him doing more than just lying there, but oh well. He came, and I was glad. As for the rest, it’s an expensive trip, and I don’t exactly have the space to put someone up for an extended period of time. My mother would have visited, but that just wasn’t really possible in her condition. My stepmother isn’t a huge fan of traveling. Not everyone is. So I don’t expect to see her out here any time soon. I really don’t expect to see anyone out here any time soon. My fault for leaving, so my responsibility to travel, I guess.
I shouldn’t be surprised I never had that many friends to begin with. People I knew, sure, but not friends. I have more close friends here, now, than I ever did at any one time back home. I can count four people that I’d trust with my life. Four people who know something about me, who I’ve learned something about. I never had that before. Of course, I didn’t really think much of myself until I moved here, so I’m sure that’s a factor. Best thing I could do for myself, really, moving out here. I got to know my mother’s side of the family. Totally messed up. But, I fit there. And they have visited. Sure, it’s easier for one of them, she lives in Denver, so it’s really not a fair comparison, but we’ve hung out. Actually, and I never thought I’d say things, I’m looking forward to my next trip to Tulsa. Seriously. Yikes.
So anyway, having a hard time finding the motivation. What’s the point? No matter what I do, it won’t change what they think of me, or even if they think of me. I expect to have one guest at my graduation, my friend Sheila. No, that’s not fair, I can think of several. None related by blood, though. That’s only slightly less than was at my college graduation. Yeah, that hurt. No point complaining, though, won’t change anything and everyone will just add “whiner” to my description. Assuming they even gave it a thought. Which I doubt.
Yeah, I’m probably the only one who thinks all this. There’s probably something I should have done differently, changed my personality somehow to be more like the rest of them, so I could fit in, so they’d actually talk to me. Actually, I tried that for a lot of years, and it just backfired in a big way. So instead, I move away and think about my family, and wish I could have a better relationship with them.
Gee, wonder what’s been on my mind for the past couple of weeks…
Friday, June 13, 2008
A Day Out
Wednesday and yesterday, I was pretty much house bound. I won’t get into details, I’ll only say that on Wednesday at least, leaving home for an extended period of time, say, 10 minutes, was about impossible. Today, my bestest friend called just to chat and check up on me. We don’t talk every day any more, since neither one of us has a whole lot going on, there isn’t as much to say as there used to be. And frankly, I’m not the best at holding up a conversation (Making and Keeping Friends with Adult ADD), so when there isn’t anything to say, I’m usually content with silences. They don’t usually feel that awkward to me. Sadly, this is of little use on the telephone, so conversations are fairly short. I realized, though, after talking to my bestest friend, that I’d been cooped up in the house since Wednesday, and I really hadn’t left since Monday, and I needed to get out. I called her back and suggested an outing.
She’s been trying to get out of the house more, something we depressives have a lot of trouble doing. Yes, she’s a depressive. Frankly, the only people who can really understand the difference between depression and the blues is someone who’s experienced the difference. So, many of my friends happen to be depressives. No different than having all artist friends or accounting friends, really. You find a common ground. Anyway, off we went to Manitou Springs.
I’ve been there many times, although I seem to forget to go for the various events that make Manitou special, like the Great Fruitcake Toss or the Emma Crawford Coffin Race and Festival (not to be confused with the Frozen Dead Guys Days in Nederland – how could you not love it?). The town itself is very much a pedestrian zone, with fair parking and excellent walkways. The shops are unique and, yes, some are very touristy. But they’re unique. You’d be hard-pressed to find a chain store in downtown Manitou Springs. There are some that are specific to Colorado, but not much beyond that. Even though it’s only 5 miles west of downtown Colorado Springs, it’s a mountain town. Reminds me of Mt. Adams in Cincinnati, actually.
I really can’t decide if I like Manitou itself more than I like the drive. There are a few different routes to take to Manitou. My personal favorite takes me through Garden of the Gods, a fabulous geologic display given to the city of Colorado Springs by a wealthy landowner. It’s a slow drive, granted, and at times the other drivers can be irritating, but really, it’s hard to stay angry if you just look out the windows. Next time, we’ll be hiking through instead of driving through. So many easy trails to take, as long as you’ve got good shoes and plenty of water, you’ll be just fine. The last time I was there, I saw the ever-present swallows, magpies and rock pigeons, and was treated to a pair of cranes just hanging out at my favorite overlook. No, not telling, it’s usually pretty empty of patrons and I’d like to keep it that way. Usually I see a red-tailed hawk or two, but not that trip. I did on the way back from Manitou, though.
Wandering around Manitou itself was fun, sure, but more fun for me was finally being able to share it with someone. My bestest friend and I got to talking about all sorts of things, and we came to one very important realization. Well, not just one, but this is one that was important. We realized that neither of us has been actively dating because we’re not anxious to have to answer to anyone. And for me personally, I think Kate Hepburn’s quote sums it up best: "Only when a woman decides not to have children, can a woman live like a man. That's what I've done." I love kids. I really do. That’s why I didn’t have any. They deserve a better mother than I ever would have been.
I got to play with my new, cheap digital camera. Not bad for $20. Plus, my bestest friend’s mother tends to buy cameras a lot and discards the old ones, so she now has some fairly decent cameras and is going to give me one. Yay! Served my purposes well enough. I wasn’t expecting Ansel Adams, but I was hoping for better than a cell phone. And that’s what I got.
Today’s journey was about getting out of the house and reconnecting. We did think about the third part of our trio, The Saint, but she has little ones and it’s a bit harder for her to walk out at the drop of a hat. A pity, it would have been fabulous. As it is, The Dame and I wandered around the city, ate things we didn’t need to eat but ate anyway because they were good, and took pictures of things we can’t identify later. Mostly, though, we hung out, something friends do.
The whole future lack of funds thing preys on my mind on a fairly regular basis. I can’t not think about it, even on a wonderful day like today. I do get very homesick. I know there are people who care about me back in Cincinnati, who want me to be happy and healthy-ish and safe. And if I must, I can go back there. Cost of living is lower, it’s a larger city so I could actually find a job, and the lower altitude would do wonders for my blood pressure. But I also know that I never had friends like I have now, here in Colorado, that I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not with them, and I’m loathe to leave them.
Rather than think of such an unpleasant thought, one that has actually kept me up nights, I will instead reflect on the glorious day, the celebration of life that was my walk through Manitou Springs.
She’s been trying to get out of the house more, something we depressives have a lot of trouble doing. Yes, she’s a depressive. Frankly, the only people who can really understand the difference between depression and the blues is someone who’s experienced the difference. So, many of my friends happen to be depressives. No different than having all artist friends or accounting friends, really. You find a common ground. Anyway, off we went to Manitou Springs.
I’ve been there many times, although I seem to forget to go for the various events that make Manitou special, like the Great Fruitcake Toss or the Emma Crawford Coffin Race and Festival (not to be confused with the Frozen Dead Guys Days in Nederland – how could you not love it?). The town itself is very much a pedestrian zone, with fair parking and excellent walkways. The shops are unique and, yes, some are very touristy. But they’re unique. You’d be hard-pressed to find a chain store in downtown Manitou Springs. There are some that are specific to Colorado, but not much beyond that. Even though it’s only 5 miles west of downtown Colorado Springs, it’s a mountain town. Reminds me of Mt. Adams in Cincinnati, actually.
I really can’t decide if I like Manitou itself more than I like the drive. There are a few different routes to take to Manitou. My personal favorite takes me through Garden of the Gods, a fabulous geologic display given to the city of Colorado Springs by a wealthy landowner. It’s a slow drive, granted, and at times the other drivers can be irritating, but really, it’s hard to stay angry if you just look out the windows. Next time, we’ll be hiking through instead of driving through. So many easy trails to take, as long as you’ve got good shoes and plenty of water, you’ll be just fine. The last time I was there, I saw the ever-present swallows, magpies and rock pigeons, and was treated to a pair of cranes just hanging out at my favorite overlook. No, not telling, it’s usually pretty empty of patrons and I’d like to keep it that way. Usually I see a red-tailed hawk or two, but not that trip. I did on the way back from Manitou, though.
Wandering around Manitou itself was fun, sure, but more fun for me was finally being able to share it with someone. My bestest friend and I got to talking about all sorts of things, and we came to one very important realization. Well, not just one, but this is one that was important. We realized that neither of us has been actively dating because we’re not anxious to have to answer to anyone. And for me personally, I think Kate Hepburn’s quote sums it up best: "Only when a woman decides not to have children, can a woman live like a man. That's what I've done." I love kids. I really do. That’s why I didn’t have any. They deserve a better mother than I ever would have been.
I got to play with my new, cheap digital camera. Not bad for $20. Plus, my bestest friend’s mother tends to buy cameras a lot and discards the old ones, so she now has some fairly decent cameras and is going to give me one. Yay! Served my purposes well enough. I wasn’t expecting Ansel Adams, but I was hoping for better than a cell phone. And that’s what I got.
Today’s journey was about getting out of the house and reconnecting. We did think about the third part of our trio, The Saint, but she has little ones and it’s a bit harder for her to walk out at the drop of a hat. A pity, it would have been fabulous. As it is, The Dame and I wandered around the city, ate things we didn’t need to eat but ate anyway because they were good, and took pictures of things we can’t identify later. Mostly, though, we hung out, something friends do.
The whole future lack of funds thing preys on my mind on a fairly regular basis. I can’t not think about it, even on a wonderful day like today. I do get very homesick. I know there are people who care about me back in Cincinnati, who want me to be happy and healthy-ish and safe. And if I must, I can go back there. Cost of living is lower, it’s a larger city so I could actually find a job, and the lower altitude would do wonders for my blood pressure. But I also know that I never had friends like I have now, here in Colorado, that I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not with them, and I’m loathe to leave them.
Rather than think of such an unpleasant thought, one that has actually kept me up nights, I will instead reflect on the glorious day, the celebration of life that was my walk through Manitou Springs.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Stream of Consciousness 06/08
The television is showing the potential Olympians in track and field, now, earlier they were showing gymnastics, and tennis before that. I also have a feed from 181fm playing. It’s less distracting than you might think. I tried a little earlier to work on my accounting homework, but apparently I left my attention span somewhere. I missed class last week because both my kidney disease and twisted spine conspired to keep me housebound. I still think my mom may have had kidney disease, just based on completely observational evidence. Too many similarities between her and myself, and I know that PKD can go undiagnosed. Mine would have eventually come to the fore, due to the severity of the cysts, but plenty others don’t. I wonder sometimes how large my kidneys are now. It’s been over a year since my nephrologist (renal specialist) told me my kidneys were an estimated 10 lbs each. Both are also pushing a foot in length, 3-4 times as much volume as they should have. Considering I’m stuck carrying mammaries of Dolly Parton proportions (no, you DON’T want them), it makes life even more uncomfortable, since in order to walk upright, I must immobilize them with steel-reinforced lycra. The wires and elastic add pressure to my kidneys. Like it wasn’t bad enough I couldn’t find a button-down shirt that fit.
By the way, bra measurements are in inches and cups. The inches measure the width of the rib cage, nothing more. Well, for the properly-fitted and manufactured bras it is, anyway. The cup is the size of the actual breast. A 40D is not that large, really, just a wide ribcage. Same with a 44D, although this is likely to include a significant layer of subcutaneous fat. Sorry, pet peeve of mine. My rib cage is 34 inches. VERY narrow, especially for a build where 140 lbs is too thin. I know, I’ve been there. So it’s all up front. I have to special-order bras to get ones that fit. As an added bonus, it’s the first place I gain and the last place I lose weight. And since the first dose of lisinopril (lye-SIN-o-pril) made me barely functional in February of 2003, I haven’t actually been able to consistently work out, so now I’m more squishy than ever I was, even though I still weigh probably 30 lbs less than my highest weight, 50 if the kidney weight is discounted. I discontinued the lisinopril, a favorite bp med for kidney patients, because at the extremely low dose of 10 mg, I saw spots walking up to my third-floor apartment. Of course, I’d also just gained 50 lbs on the even lower dose of 5 mg. And the constant coughing, another side effect, pretty much ruined my voice. I was able to recover from that for a while, until my kidneys grew to the point where they put more pressure on my stomach and dramatically increased my acid reflux. My voice is now pretty much gone. That hurts more than anything, really. I try not to think about it. If you could have heard me before…
I’m also trying not to think about the fact that if I don’t get a job by September, I’m going to be in real trouble. Unemployment in Colorado is estimated at 7.1%, slightly higher than the national average. And the jobs that are available do in fact pay less than the jobs that have been lost. Plus, having a bachelor’s degree, I’m having a hard time finding another job. Overqualified. Not just the degree, but the work experience. I’m not looking that hard right now, though, my resume does include the fact I’m actively pursuing an MBA-Accounting, and if I thought I was having a hard time finding a job before, that little blurb makes it even harder. Why train someone who’s just going to leave for another job? I’m very stressed about it, really, and unfortunately, my stress plays out in all sorts of destructive ways. Mostly by spending money I shouldn’t on things I don’t need, while neglecting essentials.
One major essential, though, is a plumber. The ceiling in my living room has leaked almost since I moved in. Best I can figure, it was a DIY home improvement gone wrong. Anyway, it’s calmed down a little in the past few days, but that doesn’t mean anything. I probably have a huge colony of toxic mold just under the tiles in my bathroom, and I know there’s significant water damage. My insurance would cover the repairs for that, but it wouldn’t cover the initial visit from a plumber to fix the leak in the first place. Not really sure where it is, either. The unit next door had some flooding last year, some pipe had broken between our units. The owner (not the resident) didn’t bother to have insurance on the place, so he scrambled around trying to find someone to pay for the repairs. I agreed to pay for half of the repairs to the plumbing, not the contractor, but got the statement about two weeks after my layoff was announced. I paid half of the statement I was presented, but there was no way I was going to pay the rest. He later petitioned our HOA to pay for it. Shortly after that, our HOA required everyone to provide proof of insurance. It’s required by the HOA anyway, they just hadn’t enforced it. I’ve had too many friends who were robbed or in fires or other disasters to not have at least renters’ insurance. Since I own the place, I also have condo insurance to cover what the HOA won’t. And it’s pretty clear what they won’t cover, it’s not like it’s any sort of mystery or anything.
And I’m homesick. It gets worse every year. I keep thinking I’ll be here for 10 or 20 years at least, then the homesickness hits. And it hits hard. I have a family reunion over the 4th of July weekend, and I’m going home for that. And I’ll hate leaving. I tear up, if not downright cry, when I leave Cincinnati. Every time. And really, there isn’t that much there for me. Sure, my family is there, but most of them keep forgetting my name’s not Rosie (my mother), and treat me accordingly. It’s really annoying and frustrating.
My vocabulary is devolving, time to walk away. Maybe I’ll be able to get back to my accounting tonight. I hope so. There’s so much to do.
By the way, bra measurements are in inches and cups. The inches measure the width of the rib cage, nothing more. Well, for the properly-fitted and manufactured bras it is, anyway. The cup is the size of the actual breast. A 40D is not that large, really, just a wide ribcage. Same with a 44D, although this is likely to include a significant layer of subcutaneous fat. Sorry, pet peeve of mine. My rib cage is 34 inches. VERY narrow, especially for a build where 140 lbs is too thin. I know, I’ve been there. So it’s all up front. I have to special-order bras to get ones that fit. As an added bonus, it’s the first place I gain and the last place I lose weight. And since the first dose of lisinopril (lye-SIN-o-pril) made me barely functional in February of 2003, I haven’t actually been able to consistently work out, so now I’m more squishy than ever I was, even though I still weigh probably 30 lbs less than my highest weight, 50 if the kidney weight is discounted. I discontinued the lisinopril, a favorite bp med for kidney patients, because at the extremely low dose of 10 mg, I saw spots walking up to my third-floor apartment. Of course, I’d also just gained 50 lbs on the even lower dose of 5 mg. And the constant coughing, another side effect, pretty much ruined my voice. I was able to recover from that for a while, until my kidneys grew to the point where they put more pressure on my stomach and dramatically increased my acid reflux. My voice is now pretty much gone. That hurts more than anything, really. I try not to think about it. If you could have heard me before…
I’m also trying not to think about the fact that if I don’t get a job by September, I’m going to be in real trouble. Unemployment in Colorado is estimated at 7.1%, slightly higher than the national average. And the jobs that are available do in fact pay less than the jobs that have been lost. Plus, having a bachelor’s degree, I’m having a hard time finding another job. Overqualified. Not just the degree, but the work experience. I’m not looking that hard right now, though, my resume does include the fact I’m actively pursuing an MBA-Accounting, and if I thought I was having a hard time finding a job before, that little blurb makes it even harder. Why train someone who’s just going to leave for another job? I’m very stressed about it, really, and unfortunately, my stress plays out in all sorts of destructive ways. Mostly by spending money I shouldn’t on things I don’t need, while neglecting essentials.
One major essential, though, is a plumber. The ceiling in my living room has leaked almost since I moved in. Best I can figure, it was a DIY home improvement gone wrong. Anyway, it’s calmed down a little in the past few days, but that doesn’t mean anything. I probably have a huge colony of toxic mold just under the tiles in my bathroom, and I know there’s significant water damage. My insurance would cover the repairs for that, but it wouldn’t cover the initial visit from a plumber to fix the leak in the first place. Not really sure where it is, either. The unit next door had some flooding last year, some pipe had broken between our units. The owner (not the resident) didn’t bother to have insurance on the place, so he scrambled around trying to find someone to pay for the repairs. I agreed to pay for half of the repairs to the plumbing, not the contractor, but got the statement about two weeks after my layoff was announced. I paid half of the statement I was presented, but there was no way I was going to pay the rest. He later petitioned our HOA to pay for it. Shortly after that, our HOA required everyone to provide proof of insurance. It’s required by the HOA anyway, they just hadn’t enforced it. I’ve had too many friends who were robbed or in fires or other disasters to not have at least renters’ insurance. Since I own the place, I also have condo insurance to cover what the HOA won’t. And it’s pretty clear what they won’t cover, it’s not like it’s any sort of mystery or anything.
And I’m homesick. It gets worse every year. I keep thinking I’ll be here for 10 or 20 years at least, then the homesickness hits. And it hits hard. I have a family reunion over the 4th of July weekend, and I’m going home for that. And I’ll hate leaving. I tear up, if not downright cry, when I leave Cincinnati. Every time. And really, there isn’t that much there for me. Sure, my family is there, but most of them keep forgetting my name’s not Rosie (my mother), and treat me accordingly. It’s really annoying and frustrating.
My vocabulary is devolving, time to walk away. Maybe I’ll be able to get back to my accounting tonight. I hope so. There’s so much to do.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Rolling on the (Ohio) River
I love my adopted home. I really do. I know there are people who could take it or leave it, and it’s been my experience that they didn’t choose to move here. Not across the board, there are those who chose this city and still don’t like it, but they’re in the minority. No, I love living in Colorado Springs. Still, I get homesick.
I didn’t grow up in the suburbs of Cincinnati; I didn’t live in the suburbs. I always lived within the city limits. Granted, my last house was within the city limits by about two blocks, but still in the city of Cincinnati. I went to school downtown, I used to shop down there, I even had a few jobs in the city. And the festivals…
Along the Ohio River (don’t breathe too deeply, you might gag), there are many structures built in an effort to revitalize the downtown area. In the 70s, both Riverfront Stadium and Riverfront Coliseum (now US Bank Arena) were built. Riverfront Stadium was designed by the same people who did Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburg. I can tell you, watching the Reds/Phillies or Bengals/Squealers…er, Steelers, on TV, I always had to double-check who was the home team. Both were situated on the river, and both had similar skylines as a background. Both have also since been replaced. Riverfront Coliseum has the unfortunate luck to be remembered for the 1979 The Who stampede, where 11 people were killed. Festival seating was made illegal in Cincinnati venues for several years. Fifteen, to be precise.
The serpentine wall is the site of many a festival and event, including Riverfest, a festival celebrating the end of summer. Started by a local radio station in 1977, this has become one of the defining events of the festival year in Cincinnati. Rumor has it the city would only agree to a permit if the station held the event on a Sunday. The station chose Labor Day Weekend, and the rest is history. Viewing the spectacular fireworks is such a huge deal in the city, hundreds of thousands crowd both sides of the river for hours at a time. Basically, unless you have friends in (literally) high places, you have to get there by noon to get a spot on the river. And be willing to sit there and hold that spot against all comers. The summer season is kicked off by Taste of Cincinnati, once the largest such festival in the country, until Chicago had to get all grabby and made theirs bigger. Always stealing our ideas.
Behind the Serpentine Wall, there’s Yeatman’s Cove and Sawyer Point (as in Tom Sawyer…well, maybe not). A shallow fountain-pool was built there, originally for looking. I can still see, in my mind, the signs saying “No Swimming.” However, being built in downtown Cincinnati, with a dearth of public pools and an abundance of warm children, it became a place to play in the water. Within a year, the city had installed lifeguards at the previously decorative fountain. Right beside that is P&G Pavilion, dedicated about the same time. As a P&G brat, I had to attend. There were some nice gifts, and they did feed us, so it wasn’t all bad. The area houses other festivals like Party-in-the-Park and free concerts. It was tradition for kids at my high school, the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, to go to Yeatman’s Cove after the last day of school. The school actually went from 4th – 12th grade, but it was only the high school kids that would have been allowed by their parents. Also the most likely to be able to find a way home.
Travel east from the wall and Sawyer Point, and you reach Bicentennial Commons, another spot for a concert. Most of the free concerts I saw in Cincinnati, I saw at Bicentennial Commons. Honestly, I can’t think of all the groups, but I did see UB40 and C&C Music Factory at their height. There were others more popular at the time, but some of the most fun concerts included Three Dog Night and the Village People. I don’t care if they’re gay, they’re still fun to look at.
Bicentennial Commons, dedicated in 1988, includes the controversial Gateway sculpture, a canal lock with a scale model of the Ohio river on top, from the beginning in Pennsylvania to its end in the Mississippi, complete with steamboat smokestacks, celebrating Cincinnati’s riverboating history. Oh, and the four smokestacks are topped by a winged piggy, each, celebrating Cincinnati’s pork processing history. Another title Chicago stole. We still have the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich. Held in September, of course, starting with a week of festivities including real beer at lunch on Fountain Square (although I haven’t been for several years, this may have changed) and the World’s Largest Chicken Dance. But, that’s not along the river, so it’s not important.
The flying piggies atop the Gateway sculpture was a huge deal. It was discussed for months, with people dead set against it, worried we wouldn’t be taken seriously, and others thinking it was about time we got that giant stick out of our butts. One of Cincinnati’s nicknames is The Blue Chip city, for the high number of Blue Chip companies based there (Chicago hasn’t taken that one, yet), and Blue Chip companies aren’t known for being liberal. Totally shows.
Anyway, on the river-side of the Gateway is a pole topped with a model of Noah’s Ark, and a stick, marking the high point of the Ohio in the January 1937 flood. Some of the older buildings in town still show the watermarks. Ivorydale, Procter & Gamble’s first site in Cincinnati, has water marks about halfway up the first floor. It’s at least 5 miles from the river. And yes, they made soap there. Tell ya what, my mom used to work there, and so did I, and I can tell you that when you wanted to wash your car, you just needed to add water. Soap was already on it. But, that’s on the Mill Creek, not the Ohio River, so again, not important.
Bicentennial Commons is another spot for festivals, like the BBQ festival and the Midwest Black Family Reunion. The pathways are covered with paving stones telling the history of the area. Really, without a map, it’s hard to tell where everything is. Bicentennial Commons and Sawyer Point include Yeatman’s Cove, Public Landing and the Serpentine Wall, as well as the P&G Pavilion and an incredible view of the river. At the farthest eastern end is Montgomery Inn, famous for its ribs, although I think it’s overrated. Take away the sauce and they’ve got nothing. I prefer Burbanks.
It’s not a perfect city. In April 2001, a month before I left, we had what we considered riots, and what LA would probably consider a block party. There was a curfew in select neighborhoods, including my own. People downplayed the tension constantly, and ignored a few key facts. They’d question why the black community didn’t trust the police, and we’d point out their track record – 15 black men under 40 died at the hands of the police from 1995 to 2001. They’d ask how many white men, and we’d reply “None. That’s the problem.” I’ve actually seen an email stating that if 100% of the people committing crimes are black, then that’s how many would be arrested. The black population within the city limits is 30%, not 100%. And I can promise you, I did not grow up trusting the police. Pale as I am, I’ve been pulled over for a DWB (Driving While Black). I’ve been pulled over for legitimate tickets, too. You CAN tell the difference.
So it’s flawed, it’s confused, and in many ways, it’s still stuck in the 1950s. But it’s trying. And when it works, it’s a beautiful thing.
I didn’t grow up in the suburbs of Cincinnati; I didn’t live in the suburbs. I always lived within the city limits. Granted, my last house was within the city limits by about two blocks, but still in the city of Cincinnati. I went to school downtown, I used to shop down there, I even had a few jobs in the city. And the festivals…
Along the Ohio River (don’t breathe too deeply, you might gag), there are many structures built in an effort to revitalize the downtown area. In the 70s, both Riverfront Stadium and Riverfront Coliseum (now US Bank Arena) were built. Riverfront Stadium was designed by the same people who did Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburg. I can tell you, watching the Reds/Phillies or Bengals/Squealers…er, Steelers, on TV, I always had to double-check who was the home team. Both were situated on the river, and both had similar skylines as a background. Both have also since been replaced. Riverfront Coliseum has the unfortunate luck to be remembered for the 1979 The Who stampede, where 11 people were killed. Festival seating was made illegal in Cincinnati venues for several years. Fifteen, to be precise.
The serpentine wall is the site of many a festival and event, including Riverfest, a festival celebrating the end of summer. Started by a local radio station in 1977, this has become one of the defining events of the festival year in Cincinnati. Rumor has it the city would only agree to a permit if the station held the event on a Sunday. The station chose Labor Day Weekend, and the rest is history. Viewing the spectacular fireworks is such a huge deal in the city, hundreds of thousands crowd both sides of the river for hours at a time. Basically, unless you have friends in (literally) high places, you have to get there by noon to get a spot on the river. And be willing to sit there and hold that spot against all comers. The summer season is kicked off by Taste of Cincinnati, once the largest such festival in the country, until Chicago had to get all grabby and made theirs bigger. Always stealing our ideas.
Behind the Serpentine Wall, there’s Yeatman’s Cove and Sawyer Point (as in Tom Sawyer…well, maybe not). A shallow fountain-pool was built there, originally for looking. I can still see, in my mind, the signs saying “No Swimming.” However, being built in downtown Cincinnati, with a dearth of public pools and an abundance of warm children, it became a place to play in the water. Within a year, the city had installed lifeguards at the previously decorative fountain. Right beside that is P&G Pavilion, dedicated about the same time. As a P&G brat, I had to attend. There were some nice gifts, and they did feed us, so it wasn’t all bad. The area houses other festivals like Party-in-the-Park and free concerts. It was tradition for kids at my high school, the School for the Creative and Performing Arts, to go to Yeatman’s Cove after the last day of school. The school actually went from 4th – 12th grade, but it was only the high school kids that would have been allowed by their parents. Also the most likely to be able to find a way home.
Travel east from the wall and Sawyer Point, and you reach Bicentennial Commons, another spot for a concert. Most of the free concerts I saw in Cincinnati, I saw at Bicentennial Commons. Honestly, I can’t think of all the groups, but I did see UB40 and C&C Music Factory at their height. There were others more popular at the time, but some of the most fun concerts included Three Dog Night and the Village People. I don’t care if they’re gay, they’re still fun to look at.
Bicentennial Commons, dedicated in 1988, includes the controversial Gateway sculpture, a canal lock with a scale model of the Ohio river on top, from the beginning in Pennsylvania to its end in the Mississippi, complete with steamboat smokestacks, celebrating Cincinnati’s riverboating history. Oh, and the four smokestacks are topped by a winged piggy, each, celebrating Cincinnati’s pork processing history. Another title Chicago stole. We still have the largest Oktoberfest outside of Munich. Held in September, of course, starting with a week of festivities including real beer at lunch on Fountain Square (although I haven’t been for several years, this may have changed) and the World’s Largest Chicken Dance. But, that’s not along the river, so it’s not important.
The flying piggies atop the Gateway sculpture was a huge deal. It was discussed for months, with people dead set against it, worried we wouldn’t be taken seriously, and others thinking it was about time we got that giant stick out of our butts. One of Cincinnati’s nicknames is The Blue Chip city, for the high number of Blue Chip companies based there (Chicago hasn’t taken that one, yet), and Blue Chip companies aren’t known for being liberal. Totally shows.
Anyway, on the river-side of the Gateway is a pole topped with a model of Noah’s Ark, and a stick, marking the high point of the Ohio in the January 1937 flood. Some of the older buildings in town still show the watermarks. Ivorydale, Procter & Gamble’s first site in Cincinnati, has water marks about halfway up the first floor. It’s at least 5 miles from the river. And yes, they made soap there. Tell ya what, my mom used to work there, and so did I, and I can tell you that when you wanted to wash your car, you just needed to add water. Soap was already on it. But, that’s on the Mill Creek, not the Ohio River, so again, not important.
Bicentennial Commons is another spot for festivals, like the BBQ festival and the Midwest Black Family Reunion. The pathways are covered with paving stones telling the history of the area. Really, without a map, it’s hard to tell where everything is. Bicentennial Commons and Sawyer Point include Yeatman’s Cove, Public Landing and the Serpentine Wall, as well as the P&G Pavilion and an incredible view of the river. At the farthest eastern end is Montgomery Inn, famous for its ribs, although I think it’s overrated. Take away the sauce and they’ve got nothing. I prefer Burbanks.
It’s not a perfect city. In April 2001, a month before I left, we had what we considered riots, and what LA would probably consider a block party. There was a curfew in select neighborhoods, including my own. People downplayed the tension constantly, and ignored a few key facts. They’d question why the black community didn’t trust the police, and we’d point out their track record – 15 black men under 40 died at the hands of the police from 1995 to 2001. They’d ask how many white men, and we’d reply “None. That’s the problem.” I’ve actually seen an email stating that if 100% of the people committing crimes are black, then that’s how many would be arrested. The black population within the city limits is 30%, not 100%. And I can promise you, I did not grow up trusting the police. Pale as I am, I’ve been pulled over for a DWB (Driving While Black). I’ve been pulled over for legitimate tickets, too. You CAN tell the difference.
So it’s flawed, it’s confused, and in many ways, it’s still stuck in the 1950s. But it’s trying. And when it works, it’s a beautiful thing.
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