the beginning

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Note: I have been advised that this might make more sense to readers with a tiny bit of background. First, hopefully it will be obvious but this is fiction. My real sister was not actually punished by Hera, as far as we know. It may help readers to be reminded of the Greek myth of Echo, the mountain nymph who had her voice taken away by Hera, as a punishment for her long-winded stories (and, more specifically, for not exposing the whereabouts of Zeus), and afterwards could only repeat what she heard others say. Echo fell in love with Narcissus, who fell in love with his reflection in a pond and then turned into a flower, and afterwards Echo faded to nothing but a sound. So, without further ado…

 

My sister was a shadow. Her skin no longer felt the brush of wind. She had become the breeze.

I never met her. But my first stories held her transgression. Conveyed her punishment. Her suffering.

Zeus, King of the Gods, sought my cousins. He loved their strong, laughing bodies. Their husky, smooth songs. Their sharp, glittering eyes. He followed them, hungry, into the mountains, into the rivers, blue-green, teeming with life. His sister-wife, Hera, came looking for him – Hera, older than Zeus, tricked into being Queen of the Gods. Trapped into a life she had not asked for, Hera asked my sister for an answer my sister had been forbidden to give.

Where is Zeus? she asked.

I was told that Hera was jealous, vengeful and my sister verbose. Both of these – crimes. My sister, with her long, rambling stories and beautiful voice, keeping secrets from the Queen of the Gods. Hera, in her rage with her brother-husband, the one who had hung her from the stars, stole my sister’s voice. Cursed my sister so that she could no longer share her own words but only repeat those of another. My sister who fell in love with a flower, her beautiful body withered, her bones become rock.

I listened carefully to my mother, to my cousins. I was a quick study. I had my sister’s way with words, her lovely voice. And I knew these things were a danger to me. I knew to speak these words, to use this voice, could lead to losing everything: My very body, the feeling of waves washing over me, the taste of a ripe peach. I learned to give Hera what she demanded: A dutiful echo.

But I was plagued by dreams. I woke up, sweating, in the night. Hera beside me, I cowered. I have done what you wish. I have said nothing but what I have heard from others. Please, spare me. Too afraid to look in her eyes, I looked away. From the Queen of the Gods I heard the sound of ancient tears. I turned and saw deep grooves, canyons, where sorrow had carved a centuries-long path.

With a weary tenderness she spoke. I am blamed, but he had already robbed her when he forbade her to speak the truth. I only made obvious what was already so.
I don’t want to become a shadow.
An echo is already a shadow.
But I can feel the wind. I can taste a peach.
Can you?
I’m afraid, I said. I don’t want to lose everything. They said I would lose everything.
And Artemis the hunter and Athena the wise warrior were there. Aphrodite. We are with you. I slept fitfully.

Sunlight. I am breathing, alone in my room. I whisper the truth. I am awake. It is morning. Nothing happens. Birdsong.

I pull back the covers, my feet touch the ground. I look in the mirror, speaking slowly. I am strong. Dust dances in a beam of light. Nothing happens.

I walk outside, the symphony of limbs, light and dark, warm, cool. She was forbidden to speak the truth. I speak this to the trees, to the sky. I say it clearly. Repeat it. Nothing happens. The branches do not seem to mind.

My legs start to move, before I know where I am going. I am walking, running. My lungs are filling with air, reaching for more air, not enough air. I am afraid I will run out of air before I get where I am going. But there is Theia, the shining light, mother of the sun, the moon, the dawn — my lungs are renewed. And the Muses, dancing with Apollo — more breath. And then I see Alice Walker up ahead with a bag of air. And E.B. White? There is so much air, I am full, to the brim, of all the air I need and I’m running, flying until I reach the cave.

I stand outside, looking into its depths. I gather my strength and with all of the breath left to me I call, sending my words as far into the recesses as they will go: He is here. I hear my sister’s voice calling back: He is here – here – ere. I feel the sun on my arms, a swirl of wind. Birdsong. And my sister, blinking, steps out of the cave.

My sister became a shadow. But I am not. I have hands and a tongue and a still-beating heart. I am afraid. I am alive.

the end

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I feel like I’m letting you down. Like you’ve read this far, waiting to see how it turns out, what words of wisdom, big statements about LIFE, I might be able to elucidate in exchange for the time you’ve invested. But I have been thinking and writing and writing and thinking and talking and reading and re-reading and wanting to make proclamations and they are just not there.

Something has changed. It feels like a good change. But I can’t exactly tell you what it is. As far as I can make out, there isn’t a replicable secret formula. And anyway, if you took the same path as me, or changed the same things as I did, it wouldn’t turn out the same way for you. Even if I did the exact same things over again, but started today, it would turn out differently. That’s the magic and mystery of being alive I guess.

I’m drinking coffee again. For breakfast and again at noon. Four ounces of coffee, with about an ounce of heavy cream and three ounces of foamed milk. I whisper, wickedly and with longing, to the coffee grinder each night before bed See you in the morning my friend. I look forward to noon when the volume of coffee decreases and the volume of cream makes the difference to fill the cup. For the past few weeks coffee has been the majority of my breakfast. Then I’ll have the second cup at noon. Then I will grab a snack-sized bag of Trader Joe’s Kettle Cooked Potato Chips (sea salt) and eat them in the car on my way to pick up the kids at 2:30 or so. The bag is always empty too soon and then I am hungry and grumpy when the kids get in the car, exhausted from a day at camp and grumpy about their own things. We muddle through the afternoon. If Dave is in town we eat something healthy for dinner. If he is not we have fried chicken or pizza or some combination of wheat and dairy, heavy on the dairy. As I write this I am eating a pack of Lance Toast Chee Sandwich Crackers (peanut butter flavor).

I have not meditated since May 15. I specifically remember thinking about meditating, probably on May 16, and deciding that I did not have a lot of available time and that I wanted to get some writing done so I chose to write instead of meditate and here it is two months later.

I have been on my computer after 9 pm almost every night this week, almost every night since I lost my 50,000 words. Usually until about 11 pm, then I sleep (not especially deeply) and then I wake up, tired, my skin a bit less dewy than usual, maybe a random break-out on my neck or some extra lines particularly around my top lip that I think are due to dehydration more than anything else.

I have not danced (except for drunkenly once at 4 am to four songs, including Toto’s “Africa” twice, during my 20-year college reunion), I have not attended an exercise class, I have not spent ten minutes playing an instrument, I have not taken my supplements, I have not eaten any cultured food, I have not been out of bed by 6:30 once. I have been working in my garden at least, to water the grass since we have had no rain for three weeks, so there’s that.

And I played the iPad game last week. Only very briefly. I also ate about half a bag of cheese curls past 7 pm.

Jenny Goodguts went on sabbatical and – poof! – everything she taught me seems to have disappeared.

This is not a momentary blip as I mourn my lost words. The change started before then. Here’s what happened: the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Adventures with Jenny Goodguts blog was fast approaching and I was writing a post to celebrate the year, to reflect, as I am wont to do.

I sat down one morning to finish the one-year piece — it was nearly done but something didn’t feel quite right. I opened a new, blank document and this swarm of words that had been bumping around in my brain for a few weeks flowed, erupted, out onto the page. I looked at what I had written, about my time in India, in Africa, my struggle to live life in America after that, and saw that I had written something true: My words, the ones I keep to myself, the ones I don’t share at the block party or the playground, the things I really feel.

I felt like laugh-crying, and then I started thinking about the Greek story of Echo, who could only repeat the words of others (more on that to come), and I was nervous to share, as always, but I did share, as I do frequently, but not always, and I felt… I felt powerful. I felt that I had said something that was important for me and that I had said it in a way that was authentic, that got at the heart of something that hadn’t been clear in my own mind, hadn’t been acknowledged, until I read my own words.

I still wanted to do the anniversary piece, mostly to say thanks to my readers, because I don’t think I would have grown in the same way without your encouragement. But, as I was writing what was meant to be a thank-you letter, I realized that Jenny Goodguts needed to go. It wasn’t really a planned thing. It sort of wrote itself.

After writing those two pieces, I knew something had changed for me. I felt I had come to a new jumping-off place. I wasn’t exactly sure where it was that I was jumping, but I felt energized, strong, focused, ready (mostly, or significantly more than I had felt before — who ever really feels ready?).

And then I lost my words. Fifty thousand words of my 80,000-word novel – poof! I have consulted with former and current CIA and NSA staffers and unfortunately there is nothing more to be done.

While waiting to see if the novel was recoverable, I decided to more seriously consider compiling my past four years of blogging into a book, adding a few bits that were not published on the blog for one reason or another. I’ve re-read all of my written thoughts from the day I wrote about my pants before deciding to start the Jenaissance blog in November 2014, to when I left my job and stumbled through building a life structure as someone whose structure had been defined by externals for almost forty years and suddenly is not. Reviewing and remembering has been a frequently enjoyable and seriously sobering journey. Oh, there I am confused about life again. And there I am making another checklist! Oh, look, there I am promising to deliver something else that I never finished. And of course now there is the novel, the one project I felt I was undertaking with a reasonable amount of focus and discipline, and two-thirds is now bytes in the wind.

This walk down memory lane, in combination with recent adjustments to my daily habits, has led to some further introspection about sending Jenny away. What could I have been thinking?

Early on in the life of the Jenaissance blog I wrote down a quote from Walden: “Most men live lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” I think when I started to blog I thought: My song, still undetermined in nature, is unsung because I’ve been doing something wrong. There are examples, success stories, there are tricks and tips and systems and habits and routines and practices and, if I can figure out the right combination, if I can identify my own little light, work out the most unique, the very specialist contribution I can make – the gift to the world that only I can give – if I can hold myself accountable and keep my eyes on the prize, I will not go to the grave with the song still inside me.

If I can learn to meditate, eat only foods plucked directly from the bosom of the green earth, if I learn patience, develop a healthy daily routine, if I get enough sleep, if people like me, if I have a healthy local network of friends, if I am a supportive wife, if my children play well with others, if I don’t offend anyone but am still honest, if I curate all of my possessions so that each item I encounter fills me with a gratitude and joy in being alive, if I seek out a supportive network of peers who uplift me daily, if I can identify a stepwise path from point a to point z, where each step is individually fulfilling and, taken together, they lead me to my life’s opus, a perfect match of my skills and passion, I will have earned the privilege of not going to the grave with the song still inside me.

So I set out to build my extraordinary life. I read books and blogs, I thought about mentors, I evaluated relationships, I analyzed myself, I cleared clutter, I bought magnets.

But of course life is not a road trip where you have a clear and correct map to your chosen destination, hand-select appropriate fellow travelers, purchase the perfect gear, exactly what you need and nothing else.

It’s a random tour bus, rammed full of people, that you are dropped into in the dead of night, heading somewhere but a lot of the signs are written in a language that you can’t understand. You hope there’s a benevolent driver, or at least a thoughtful algorithm — rather than a madman behind the wheel. Everyone has different interpretations of what is happening and what should be done. Some people are dropped in the bus with a bulging wallet, and some people are dropped in the bus addicted to crack. You don’t get to choose which you’ll be. You were assigned a seat next to someone, you didn’t choose that either but you’re stuck together, though later, you do get to change seats and pick a new partner. But you don’t know what’s coming next and you’ve never sat beside them during a hailstorm, so you just pray you made a reasonable choice. On sunny days, when you can open the windows, the breeze feels great. On rainy days the toilet reeks and you wish you were sitting closer to the front. You aren’t all heading to the same place and you don’t all see things the same way. But there’s just one bus.

You are unique. But your uniqueness isn’t something inside you that is precious and hidden. Your uniqueness is how you treat others on the bus, and whether you share the song or keep it to yourself.

I have been hung up in wondering for a lifetime now, what is “my” song? How can I sing it? But there is no “my” song. I don’t have a song without the rest of the world. The song is being part of the world-song, seeing the world, the imperfect, beautiful world and sharing what you can do, what is possible for you – today – not in your mind’s eye when you finally have the skills or the network or the whatever. You see the world that is, know you are part of the flow of life, of life and a world that is not in your control, you look for where you can shine a light, today, and you shine it. As brightly as you can.

You can’t sing the song by humming silently in your own head day after day. Making sure you have mastered every note combination so that, no matter what happens, you’ll be ready. You can’t wait until you are so well prepared that there’s guaranteed success. A guarantee that you won’t feel embarrassed. A guarantee that you won’t feel scared. The tour bus doesn’t offer guarantees. Not for anyone. And it is never predictable. No matter how thick the walls of your bubble, you’re on the bus with everyone else and it can bump over a pothole at any point. No checklist, no routine can prevent that.

You don’t need to change your life, fix your life, evaluate your life in order to sing the song. You don’t need a perfect set of habits or a bulletproof routine. I love my checklists, and I’m sure when it feels like life allows it, I will get back to many of my habits. But I’ve been writing for nine hours each day for two weeks straight on coffee and potato chips. I don’t have to wait until everything feels right, and ready, and safe.

What I have to do is to acknowledge the uncertainty, the fear (I don’t know where this bus is going) — to feel the love — and then to sing. Out loud.

To close your eyes, to feel your heart beating, to breathe in and to sing — out loud — and listen to hear the world sing back.

365 days

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Adventures with Jenny Goodguts is my fourth blog. My first, Cheapa$$ Jen, begun in 2001, now exists as a few printed sheets in a file in my basement. My second foray, 75 Small Steps for Change, circa 2008, now mysteriously lives on Causes.com — I stopped writing after only 20 small steps, not able to keep up the pace of the one post a day that I had planned. My third attempt, Jenaissance, begun in November 2014, lasted for 2.5 years with periods of intense activity and months of silence. The Jenaissance blog had no organizing principle, other than the survival of my soul — it was a matter of writing something somewhere for someone. Jenaissance still lives on the Internet, but no new posts have been added since the beginning of Jenny G. And here we are, one year into blog number four.

It is strange to think that it has only been a year. 365 days. I think back over the year, what has happened, what has been accomplished, what is different. We have a new sofa. I meditate now, sometimes. I’ve written just about 80,000 words of what was originally planned as an 80,000-word novel. And I think, sometimes, that I’ve learned how to hear my own voice.

Please remember, when we first met Jenny Goodguts, I (Jennifer, an aspiring super-ish hero) had been struggling for some months with a debilitating addiction to farm-building games on the iPad. I had been told that my guts were hosting no flora save for a vast colony of E. coli. My body was in pain from the repetitive strain of the iPad. Donald Trump had recently concluded his first hundred days as President of our once illustrious nation. I was watching too much news. I was scared, I felt lost, and I was way down depressed.

For the sake of clarification, as this has never been made clear, Jenny Goodguts is not the authoress of this blog. I, Jennifer, am the author. Jenny Goodguts is the super hero — the alter ego who lives in my imagination. She’s the one who knows what to do, who is full of plans and ideas for how I should act — for good. If I’m not taking my vitamins, she helps me make a checklist. If meditation would be good for me, she helps me make a checklist (It turns out Jenny is a big fan of the checklist.) Jenny is that voice in my head that whispers that there’s always something I can do to make things better. Who reminds me that I have the strength to do what needs to be done. Who helps me make a plan when the chips are down.

Jenny is the one who told me to tape the lucky quarter from the Trader Joe’s parking lot onto my kitchen wall and reminded me that I would lose 25 days of good luck if I played that damn game one single time. And she was right. I stopped playing the game. I ate some sauerkraut. And life changed.

I once wrote that Jenny Goodguts saved my life. Saved was/is too strong a word. I wrote that to get your attention I guess. Now I feel like it sounds a bit overly dramatic. I would have gone on living, and things would have happened, good and bad. But starting this blog I feel has changed the trajectory of my life. Why do I say that? What do I mean?

What started out as an idea of sharing games, quests, adventures has, yet again, turned into an outlet for me to say whatever I want about whatever I want to whoever is reading. Except.

Except with this blog I figured out how to send each post as an email, automatically. There’s no choice, no planning involved. I write. I hit publish. My words magically appear in inboxes around the world.

And people subscribed. Not a lot of people. Some people I thought would subscribe, just to be nice, did not. And other people, who I would not have expected to subscribe, did. You did.

And not only did you subscribe, but you read and you kept reading and you said things like: that post really spoke to me or that post helped me or even have you thought about stand-up comedy?. One note, seven words, from one person on one day. It makes a difference.

There have been artists throughout history who have been so certain, so clear in their vision, that against all odds, against all criticism, they have gone on to make their thing and we celebrate them today. I’m not that type though. I am brave. I have done things, and tried things, that some others would not have done or tried. But I needed you. To read, to react, to nudge, to support, to appreciate, to notice. And your eight words here, your comment there, were enough. I felt brave enough to try new things. I felt safe enough to be real, to not hide behind cutesy attitudes and tired figures of speech.

And here I am on the other side. With this year behind me and however many more to come. My voice feels clearer to me and more authentic and I look back on the words I’ve written here — to you — and I feel like I’ve made something that I want to make. I’ve said something that I want to say. I’ve found something that I wanted to find.

***

I think it is correct to say that when I started this blog I imagined that I had it in me to write. I thought, I have had some interesting experiences, or more that I have had an unusual constellation of experiences. And I also thought that I had the ability to share the perspective derived from those experiences through writing. And that doing so would bring me some pleasure.

If I’m being totally, completely honest, I also thought that the world was/is full of huge daunting problems and that maybe I could do something, some small thing, to change minds, or to propose solutions, or to make personal change fun. I think I thought I was going to make games and challenges that in their way, small or large, would help people “do the right thing”. Help us all be a little more super.

Did I want my writing to save the world? I think I could only give myself permission to write if there was some small chance that it might. I felt that my obligation was to exchange my life energy to help stop the damage, or to compensate for my share of damage, my accumulated share going back generations, that was the only arithmetic that seemed defensible. If I get to be alive, here, in these circumstances, there is a debt to be paid.  I think that was the deep down truth.

After 365 days, I have a different view.

After 365 days, today, I will sit down with my friend, Jenny Goodguts, who set me on a path that changed my life. And I will tell her this:

My dear, beloved, Jenny Goodguts, thank you for always being there, for your dedication, your persistence, your frightening ability to organize, your compulsive lists. Thank you for not giving up and for helping me when I needed you. That idea, about taping the lucky quarter to the kitchen wall, was invaluable to me and it turned out to be the oar I needed to get back to shore.

But Jenny, I’m not so sure anymore about this theme song business, all this aspiring, or the obligation of my one life to make everything right.

You, Jenny, have so many ideas about how to fix things, ideas about what is right or wrong, good or bad. Ideas about how the world could be different. But an alternative world, just like you Jenny Goodguts, is not real. And I am determined – determined – to love this real world. And its real people, every single one a wabi-sabi bowl, broken, chipped, glued together. Every single one.

Do you know what I’d like to do Jenny? I’d like to be awake in this real world, be myself, and I’d like to tell some stories. I think we could all use some new stories and I think I have some inside me. But, to do that, it turns out I don’t need to be a superhero. And it turns out I don’t think what people need is fixing. My own Jenny, I love you, but I’m not on the path to super-ish anymore.

And Jenny, who is not real of course, will scrunch up her face and look at me oddly. She’ll blink a few times and kind of curve her eyebrows like she’s really disappointed in me. I’ll look down because I’m a little embarrassed, but I won’t change my mind. After a minute, she’ll say back to me:

Jennifer (she won’t say darling Jennifer, because she’s a superhero), you are real. And, try as I might, you still have not developed the rigid discipline, the focus at all costs, the regular exercise habit needed to save the world. I know sometimes you feel confused. Sometimes you feel — inadequate.

She’ll pause for a minute, considering something, then continue: You know, I have a lot of systems. A lot of information. You have a lot of empathy, compassion. Maybe it’s not inadequacy, maybe its love that allows you to show people what’s behind the curtain, just in case it helps. Just in case that’s what they needed.

She’ll pause again, and she’ll say, a bit more quietly this time: Maybe what people need most isn’t another list. I guess… (and then she’ll start to slightly nod her head, up and down) you should keep being… real. (Now she looks me straight in the eye) And try not to be scared. To be honest, I’m a little tired myself always devising these checklists and spreadsheets. If you’re sure about this stories thing, maybe it is time that I put away my mask and my cape and learn to live with some clutter and eat chocolate soufflé and sit outside, just my own two arms, my own two legs, my face, sit them outside feeling the wind and not try to fix anything for a little while. Just be.

Maybe, Jennifer, eventually, we can both learn to sing that lovesong to the world.

***

There is still work to be done. There are good guys to help, banks to stop banking with, parabens to outwit. I’ve been around for what is scootching closer and closer to half a century and I am darned sure that even if Jenny takes a break she isn’t going to let me forget about all of this. I can’t unlearn and I don’t guess I would want to.

But on the one year anniversary of the launch of this blog I am announcing, I am proclaiming, that while Jenny Goodguts might have had some great checklists to share, while she could put together a kick-ass resource list, while she really knew how to organize activities, she’s on a sabbatical of undetermined length.

I don’t feel like being super, I feel like being real. And I feel brave enough to be real thanks to you.

Eating and other problems

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

When I was 22, I lived for a short time with a family of four above a butcher shop in the middle of Delhi. I remember that you couldn’t see the stars there, the sky was too thick with exhaust. Just after arriving on the plane, and before meeting this family, I had used a pair of scissors in a hostel bathroom to cut off all of my hair. Most people shave their head with an electric razor, giving it a somewhat even appearance, assuming one has a somewhat evenly shaped head. But I didn’t have access to such a device. I had, the month before, cut my hair boy-short, but now it needed to come off, all off, urgently I guess.

I wonder what that family thought about an American girl with the privilege of traveling across the world who had apparently had her hair forcibly removed, gashes of scalp showing here and there. They certainly were not particularly warm towards me.

The butcher shops in Delhi did not have a refrigerated meat counter with carefully arranged steaks and chops, pink, just-ground chuck, little packets of breasts and wings wrapped tightly in plastic. They had animal carcasses, skinned and hanging from hooks, in the air, bloody, right there in the street as you walked by. No window, separating meat from passer-by. I remember the overly rich smell, and the strong scent of iron. I remember the flies. I would walk past the shops on my way to hail a rickshaw to take me to class where a holy man dressed in all orange taught me that every grain of rice is sacred. That he is always careful never to step on an ant. This was not a hallucination. Though, all these years later, it seems like it could be.

In my class, we visited a village. I use the word village so that you will understand it was an organization of people in a centralized place. The children had those puffy bellies that you used to see on commercials asking you for just the price of a cup of coffee a day. I remember someone pulled down a child’s lower eyelid so we could see evidence of some parasite or disease, like the kid was a mannequin. These people had been living somewhere else but that place had been flooded to make a hydropower dam to generate electricity, so they had been sent here instead but apparently here was worse than there. That was the story anyway. I didn’t ask if they would have had parasites and swollen bellies had they stayed where they were. I just took away the intended lesson: The path of progress is deadly and its victims are innocent babes. Or maybe: hydropower electricity is used by bad guys to make money and here we see the victims of their greed.

A few years later, I went to Africa for the first time. My assignment was to coordinate a group of scientists to survey a few of the remaining forest patches left in the southeastern corner of Guinea, a tiny country on the coast of West Africa. A mining company was very interested in the iron ore found in the Simandou range of mountains and we were to document any particularly interesting or important ecological information to make sure they didn’t do too much damage, kill chimps or wipe out the whole population of a group of toads that live nowhere else on earth.

Driving across Guinea for two days—there had been a recent coup in the Ivory Coast so we could not approach from that direction as intended—there didn’t seem to be very much ‘pristine’ nature left. We arrived at the Pic de Fon, the peak of the mountain we were to survey, in the dark, in the rain, in four Guinean 4x4s laden with our equipment and we tried to drive up steep mining tracks, red with iron dust. That same iron I had smelled in Delhi, veins of it running thick and deep under my feet.

That was my first month in a tent in West Africa. I held an olive sunbird in my hand, hiked 17 kilometers to see chimpanzee nests and find evidence (some cracked nuts) of their feeding. I learned how to look for tree frogs and shrews, I pet bats, looked for pygmy hippos, unwittingly stepped in piles of driver ants, bathed in a river, woke up each morning to birdsong, fell asleep each night to frogsong and sometimes to the sound of rain on a tent.

Today, a mother of two, I live in a suburb outside of Washington, DC, pretty close to the Pentagon. My street is full of lawyers, Hill-workers, secret service agents, and folks who are in/closely related to the US military. And us, some tree-hugging hippies with a dirty compost pile in the front yard. People are nice enough to us though I’m never sure what they really think about my random vegetable garden in the one sunny-enough spot right next to the street, my let-it-live approach to clover and dandelions.

Tuesday morning is trash day in my neighborhood. Everyone has one large bin for trash and one large bin for recycling. I drive down the street in the morning before the trucks arrive to cart it all “away” and it seems that every trash can at every house is overflowing. This is one street. I don’t dare do the math.

I came back from India with a lot of information. A lot of pictures in my head and a lot of words, explanations. I knew that families were being displaced, towns being flooded, I knew that children were filtering green-revolution chemicals out of their drinking water using their t-shirts, I knew that invisible gases were changing the climate, I knew that Coca-Cola was everywhere.

To provide one example of the messages I internalized via my global education, let’s consider food: To make the food, you start with some cleared land (so first you have deforestation or maybe just land degradation). This land is intensely irrigated (taking water from someone) and heavily fertilized (contributing to climate change and requiring mining for petrochemicals). Next the requisite herbicides/insecticides are applied (poisoning the water supply, killing pollinators, decreasing biodiversity). In the case of plants (or animal feed), multinational corporations sell seeds that can only be grown with patented chemicals to a poor farmer who has no choice but to buy the seeds and chemicals, his family gets poisoned by the chemicals and still has to borrow money the next year to buy more seeds and chemicals (incidentally, if you meet this farmer he is a very nice guy and his kids have beautiful hearts that burst right out through their eyes, they just have to drink chemical backwash is all). Once he sells his meager crop for nothing to a crop distributor, they store it (invisible gases into the air, refrigerant chemicals, pesticides killing more pollinators and infusing food supply), package it (solid waste) and ship it (more invisible gases into the air). It then goes to trucks or trains (more invisible gases), gets sent to a factory to be turned into something (water pollution, invisible gases) that no longer looks like a plant or animal (poor health outcomes, obesity), packaged further (plastics, solid waste), shipped again to a store (more gases, asphalt damage, car accidents), stored there (energy from cooling, energy from lighting, energy from people driving to store, deforestation for making bags, energy for shopkeepers to drive to store, petrochemicals for cashier’s lipstick), some proportion of that goes straight to landfill because of sell-by dates (methane, waste of life energy) and some goes to someone’s house to be refused by her five-year-old because he had cupcakes six times at school that week (future me editorializing).

I think the lesson was supposed to be that I needed to plant an apple tree and barter with my neighbor who had chickens.

Coming back from this experience, this “education,” my most immediate problem was what to eat. With every bite, I was hurting something. Every spoonful a ladle of misery. Animals were suffering in appalling conditions, people were losing homes, the shroud around the planet was thickening, the rivers were silting, the fish were growing extra eyeballs. All because I wanted some breakfast.

I just wanted some breakfast.

I remember a trip with my mom and my younger sister. We were taking her to summer camp. I think she needed some batteries so we stopped at a Walmart on the way. I remember studying the carts there. I had been taught that Walmart was destroying the earth, killing communities. But in the store I saw people with lives and wishes, just people, buying the things they felt they needed. And I looked in the carts. Diet Coke by the cartload. In my memory, the bulk of what was in those carts was soft drinks. I walked back to the car, stony faced, silent. Crying turned laughing turned sobbing—I could not reconcile what I had seen, what I had felt—over there— with what I was seeing and feeling now.

I imagined an international tribunal, some kind of court of inalienable human rights, weighing the right of a child to not grow up in a dried out riverbed filled with literal trash versus my right to have six diet Cokes a day. I know it is a totally ridiculous thought experiment. Candy apples to rotten, worm-infested oranges shipped from Mars. Not real. But these were the kinds of calculations my mind was making. Every day. About every thing.

And then I went to Africa where I met a mountain covered with tree frogs and sunbirds. Again, I returned home to the land of warm showers and dishwashers and cheese anytime you want it. Water from a tap. A land where my car, my pots, the train, my office, my spoon were made from iron cut out of mountains just like the one I loved.

When I see a Halloween-themed tablecloth, I feel sadness. I feel that something sacred has been rended from deep in the earth and transformed into a macabre festival of disconnected, unintended, destruction. You’re just trying to make something nice and festive, I understand.

If a lion does not eat, he will die. If a lion does eat, something else will die. To remain alive, you have to fill your body with energy from the sun, and you can’t photosynthesize. You have to protect yourself from the elements, and you can only grow so much hair in so many places. And you have to be able to breathe.

I don’t know if I can ever make peace with that Halloween tablecloth. I live here—but I don’t exactly know how to be alive here. I feel so many feelings, a lot of guilt, a lot of anger, a lot of fear. And when I watch the news, or read emails from well-meaning organizations, or look in my mailbox, I find plenty of information, words, images to feed all of these feelings.

I had to leave home to be shown the damage that my life was causing to other lives. To take on the burden of knowing. The internet was brand new, my camera had film, you couldn’t make a video with your phone (plus your phone was attached to the wall of your house in America). But my children, my little ones, five and seven, have not had to leave home to learn these lessons. These lessons are around them every day. In books they read, at school, from my lips. My seven-year-old, who had a lesson in climate change at school last month, asked me why people are hurting the earth, why people do bad things to damage, to injure, Mother Nature.

It is important to have information. It is important to understand unintended consequences and how things are connected. But, at 22, I did not make this world. For 20 years, instead of singing a lovesong to my home, instead of embracing, and celebrating, and shining a light on beauty and connection, I have fretted about tablecloths. I have seen life as damage.

There are problems to solve, shifts to be made. But I know this from experience—you don’t teach a child by calling her bad. You teach a child by wrapping her in your arms. You tell her that people love the Earth and people work hard to take care of it. That people are a force for good. That her life is not a burden, but a gift. That there are things we have not understood but that we are learning all the time, and once we learn then we can figure out how to take better care of our home and of each other.

You hold her close, you feel her warmth, her questioning, her aliveness, her care. You close your eyes. You hope, you pray, that what you are telling her is the truth.

When Bono saved Easter

When Bono saved Easter

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

I’m cold. Our house is under-insulated and old and it gets damp and I’m frugal/conscious of invisible gases in the sky. I sit with my hoodie hood up or a winter hat on and April starts on Sunday. I look out the window and the world is brown. There are a few blossoms hanging around but with the grey sky, the bare trees, and the mud, the blossoms look like lipstick on a corpse.

A devoted reader who, for the sake of anonymity, I will hereafter refer to as “Granny Goodguts” remarked that it has been a while since my last post. That my readers, given the arrival of spring (somehow this was especially relevant), might appreciate some further thoughts. Granny Goodguts suggested the topic of rebirth: An Easter reflection.

Usually (you may be shocked to learn), I quickly dash off whatever I’m thinking about and publish the post before I lose my nerve. But this request, this assignment, has required a bit more thought, more emotional labor. I have a lot of words, but no clear way to arrange them in my mind. I have cultural norms and childhood teachings all jumbled together and I guess I haven’t been able to hear, or to listen, clearly.

Enter Bono.

After some pondering, and writing words that sounded ok in combination but that didn’t sit right in my guts, my epiphany came only moments after the children requested music during our morning commute. My phone randomly selected U2’s California, Ghostbusters (I ain’t afraid of no ghosts), Second Hand News, King of Pain, Endless Love, and Renegades on the way to school and back. Waiting at the exceptionally long red light, Maggie requested that no one sing so she could listen.

So there we were sitting quietly at the exceptionally long red light and Bono sang:

At the dawn you thought would never come
But it did
Like it always does
Whoa-o-o-o-o
All I know
And all I need to know
Is there is no, yeah there is no end to love

That was the moment when it all felt clear to me. I knew what I would come home and write. I might have even gotten a little bit teary, or even just a bit out of my body, unreal for a moment.

But to explain all that, I have to go back, way back, to January 1, 2018.

***

I am awake, eyes closed in a California king-size bed with one of those super comfortable memory foam mattresses at my friends’ house. I can hear my children running up and down stairs, playing ninja or something else that is satisfyingly gender-inspecific. My husband is up and probably about to enjoy his first cup of coffee in the New Year. We have stayed up late eating fondue with our friends, an annual tradition. We have had more wine than I am used to (these days). We have watched our yearly fill of Ylvis and searched for something else on YouTube that would make us laugh as much but come up empty-handed again and still Ylvis has made nothing new.

I lie in the bed. I hear the sounds. The heater has been on all night so the room is overwarm and the air is dry. I stretch and feel the coolness of the sheets. I wonder if I will have a headache later. I am definitely thirsty. I consider that maybe this is not the best way to begin, this slight dullness, the heaviness from overindulging in bread and cheese, maybe it is not auspicious. But my optimism, or maybe just a survival instinct, kicks in and 2018 again feels precious, like a crisp, empty notebook in September. I think to myself: In 2018, I am kind to others and to myself. In 2018 I tell the truth, or rather, I don’t tell untruths. In 2018, so far, I am patient, I don’t shout or scowl to get my way. I don’t say things I don’t mean. I keep my commitments.

If I’m being honest, that is more of an idealized script. That is what I might think if I hadn’t over-cheesed and drunk wine without counting the number of glasses. What I actually think is more like: It’s a new year and so far you haven’t made any mistakes. You haven’t lost your temper. You haven’t been unsupportive or said anything rude. You haven’t said things you don’t mean. And so far you haven’t gone a single day without washing your face (or insert habit that I’ve struggled with for previous 40 years and still haven’t managed to instill). Then I think something along the lines of: Let’s just try to keep this streak for as long as we can. And I go on to have a few really good days. This little talk I give myself works, if only for a short while.

When asked about rebirth, this scene was what first came to mind. New beginnings. Starting fresh. A second (or fortieth) chance.

January’s possibility infuses me with a pleasant energy, like a small cup of good coffee without sugar, a healthy buzz. I can grow. I can choose. I can set some intentions and make plans. I love to get out empty sheets of paper and write down some things to accomplish (in 2018 I will finish drafting a novel), some practices to make habitual (in 2018 I will meditate 5 days each week), some themes for the year (in 2018 I will “ship my art” or “live like a pro”). I have a whole year ahead of me. A whole unknown year to be lived, a blank notebook to be filled with bold strokes and delight.

February is a bit more ho-hum. Still cold. Someone is probably sick. But the hopefulness, the momentum of January remain. Eleven more months to make this a great year.

Then March hits. Still cold. Someone is probably sick. The end of the school year looms. It is time to plan for summer. Summer? How could it already be time to plan for summer? Once summer comes the year is half gone. How could the year already be half gone? I’m still not living like a pro. I’ve missed a lot of days of meditation. The novel? It’s going to take a bit longer than expected. Probably not THIS year anyway.

Now we get back to where we started. It is the end of March. My hoodie hood covers my ears but my feet and hands are still cold. I have made my plans. I have worked and I have tried. This year will come to an end, like all of the years before, and some things will change and some things won’t change and I might never write that novel.

I look out the window at the grey sludge. Life is hard. Bad things happen. Scary, sad things. What can I do? I don’t feel like I can work any harder. I don’t think I can change any faster. I want to do my best but I’m tired. I want the world to be different, kinder, safer. And I’m still cold, my shins, inside my bones (maybe if you could finally stick to that exercise goal, warm you from the inside out i gently chide myself…)

***

The easter parade begins, very subdued. Tiny snowdrops are first to emerge from drifts of collected leaf debris, little white faces peeking over the decay of last summer’s growth. Then the crocuses, purple, gold, white. Thin green spikes barely supporting a few slovenly arranged petals that last only days. The trees are bare, their branches like arthritic hands reaching for the light. The daffodils open, cheerful yellow in the midst of the still, brown deserts. Weeping willow, apple blossoms, cherry blossoms emerge, and those dark red blooms, unexpected, appear on the maples. Then one day you walk outside and it isn’t dead, cold winter anymore. The birds are the first to tell you, but you can also feel it in the wind, a damp coolness that whispers to your skin. Your body, which you had been sheltering from the cold for five long months, feels something different. A yearning to stay out, to be gently caressed by this misty breeze for a few minutes more.

There may be nothing (excepting my children, my spouse, my parents, my siblings, my good friends, chocolate souffle, tree frogs, my piano, and my magenta sweatshirt) that I love in this world more than perennials. They are like magic. The ground is flat dirt. Cold. Hard. And underneath there is this surprise waiting. There is no hint except sometimes some dried old stubs left from last year. I start watching at the beginning of March. My eyes hungry, methodically scanning for even one small green tip. And one day, something is there. A tiny green shoot. A small red bump. A hint of life. And as it slowly emerges, day by day, I worry that it will get too cold again and it will die, but it doesn’t. It is prepared for the cold. It has a little jacket or it waits just long enough, till just the right moment on just the right day. And it turns into a whole plant. Maybe a coneflower, maybe a black-eyed susan, maybe a poppy (I always hope its a poppy), or milkweed or sneezeweed or salvia or foxgloves or bee balm. The point is, they are all there, waiting under the flat, brown mud. All that cold winter they were under there and one day you look and you see them popping up that first tiny shoot, that first small green leaf pushing through the remnants of last year.

That tiny shoot of green, that hopeful sprout — It’s the same plant. It isn’t a new plant. It isn’t re-born, it was alive — living — all the time. Sometimes it was drinking water, sometimes it was drenched in sun, sometimes it was sweetly singing to the honeybees and the butterflies, sometimes it was blown by a harsh wind, sometimes a kid picked all of its flowers or stepped on it, sometimes it was spreading roots under ground, sometimes it was protecting itself under a blanket of mud. And here it is, the same plant, in a new season.

***

We humans, mortals, we plan, we work, we strive. We tell ourselves that we are not enough – that we need to be reborn, start again. We hack ourselves to be more productive, more intentional, more beautiful, more (fill in the blank).

Night comes. Darkness. We can’t see clearly. Not because we didn’t work hard enough, not because we are flawed.

Because the sun has moved.

And we can’t bring it back.

Easter is named for Ēostre or Ostara, a Germanic goddess of dawn, the dawn which arrives at the end of each night. Always. No matter how poorly you slept, if you stayed awake all night, crazed, disconnected thoughts holding you hostage, forbidding rest and peace, eventually, the color of the sky will start to shift. The sun returns bringing light, warmth, life.

The concept of a new year, a new you, a do over is so seductive. I can be better. I can do better. I need to be different from yesterday’s me. But what we need, what I need, is not rebirth, but endurance. Acceptance. Faith. Humility.

Faith that even when I can’t see it, life is welling up underground, fed by what it was before, fed by all the life that was before, the leaves of last year, the same water that has trickled through every pore of this earth for billions of years.

Acceptance of what has been. Of what is. That the power to bring back the sun is not mine. Nor is the responsibility.

And Love.

My second moment of insight during this morning’s commute came towards the end of Endless Love (ironic?) when Lionel and Diana are keying up for the power punch and he sings (and I with him, while simultaneously wondering what it is that makes this particular part of the song so irresistible, so potent):

CAUSE NO (no) ONE CAN DENY
THIS LOVE I HAVE INSIDE
I’LL GIVE IT ALL TO YOU
MY LOVE (my love, my love) MY ENDLESS LOVE

Acceptance, surrender, not being able to bring back the sun on command. These are difficult things. So what do we do? We know the dawn will come, we know life is beautiful. We know we are a part of the whole. But there’s still the waiting, the uncertainty, the dark, the cold. We have to do something, we can’t just sit there and wait for the world to sort out all of the problems on its own, humming fancy mantras. Jesus taught two basic rules for living: Love God. Love your neighbor. Not wipe your own slate clean. Not secure for yourself a fancy reward at the end. Not check all the boxes or make your-self into something you think others will admire.

All i know and all i need to know is there is no, yeah there is no end to love.

Maybe the power to endure comes from the endlessness of love.

And maybe that Endless Love is found in connection. Merging with another. Recognizing one’s relationship to the whole. Not smoldering, not wanting, but a bond strong enough to enable releasing, giving away.

We are alive and we are reaching for light, just like everything else that lives, and the path is not clear. The cells in me right now, made of sun, water, and stardust, different to the cells from last year but part of the same organization, would like to write a novel. Want to practice patience. Feel good when I meditate. So that is how I will organize my time in this season. Not because what I am needs to change. But because when the dawn came today, I woke up, alive, myself.

My dear Granny Goodguts, you have asked me about rebirth. Your question raises so many others and, even with Bono’s assistance, I still can’t quite work it all out. But to honor the importance of your question and in summary:

Spring, Ēostre, Easter, Ostara reminds me that the dawn always comes no matter how long and dark the night. That I don’t bring the dawn of my own accord, through my hard work. Instead, I acknowledge the night, I surrender to what is, I accept what has been. I share my light with others when I can, I appreciate the light that others shine for me. I wait. And when the dawn, Ēostre, comes I see the signs of life that were there underground all the time. I don’t need to start from scratch. I don’t need an empty notebook. I’m not an empty notebook. I’m an annotated, dog-eared notebook, loved, one tiny, rich volume in an unfathomable library.

Still writing that novel?

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Hi friends,

I wanted to send an update since it has been over a month since my last report. Yes, I am still wearing the sweatshirt (though it is warm today so I just opened the windows to let in some fresh air). The rest of the ham is in the freezer awaiting combination with red beans (mom, can you bring me some red beans when you come to visit?). Yes, we have been visited by another dread virus but this one was significantly less laundry-intensive. In other news:

The novel: Total word count is 52,291 words at present. The goal was to reach 70,000 by the end of Feb but that’s a pretty tall order on the 21st. I’m aiming for 8,000 additional words this week and think that is achievable (as a stretch goal) because I don’t have another contract to work on and both kids are just getting over the most recent sickness so they will probably not be home from school again this week. The novel (and a recently concluded contract) is the reason you have not heard from me on the blog lately; I’m learning to prioritize and also to live in a bit of an artistic bubble. Apparently this is somewhat necessary to actually produce something.

I am really enjoying writing the novel and the exercise is completely different to what I would have guessed it would be like. You learn a lot about yourself. You pay attention to the world in a different way. It is not always comfortable because you have to BE in a particular feeling to write about it well. Or pretend at least for that time that you are feeling that feeling. And maybe it is your subconscious or what I’m calling “infinite intelligence” but you are typing away and stuff is happening in the story and then you go back and read it and think — who wrote that? — where did that come from? And it doesn’t feel like it came from your mind, but you like it (or maybe you don’t).

My original expected word count for the first draft was somewhere around 80-90,000 but it is looking like the first draft will be over 100K. I think about sharing excerpts sometimes, but I’m not quite ready for that.

Clean eating: Every year (for three years running), Dave and I spend three weeks in January/February eating “clean” — that means we don’t eat gluten, dairy, sugar and a number of other foods (coffee, corn, soy, alcohol, it’s a long list) during that time. We did this as an experiment three years ago and it fundamentally changed the way we eat. What happened was that we found it to be sort of tough the first year (though much easier when you do it together) but after about a week we stopped craving sugar (and stopped craving much of anything really) and we figured out a few standard meals that we love that meet the criteria and now we eat this way 85% of the time until life gets too stressful or we are visiting friends/traveling.

We have finished our three weeks this year and as usual it was eye-opening and beneficial. This year, we followed the protocol in the book Clean Gut (with our own modifications) but for the two prior years we followed the protocol in Clean (again, modified). There are recipes in both books but we’ve also learned a lot about clean cooking in the book Clean Eats. Here’s what I noticed: My mood and energy are SIGNIFICANTLY better while eating this way. You don’t necessarily notice the improvement until you go out for breakfast and get a sausage, egg, and cheese bagel with a vanilla chai after the program is completed. You swim through that day totally exhausted and realize that you would rather spend your life feeling optimistic and energized.

At some point I would like to share recipes for the six “clean” dinners that our kids are now very happy to eat and that I would choose over just about any other dinner (other than dinner at a friend’s house — I would always rather go to a friend’s house and have dinner, no matter what is on the menu). I would also like to share our meal planning system because it is super simple and a game changer (for us anyway).

French food challenge: We have started playing a sort of game with our kids to encourage them to approach new foods with curiosity and also to be more interested in the different ingredients that go into different meals. I call it the French food challenge because, as we’ve all heard, “French kids eat everything” – my kids are really enjoying it and soon I will share it with you. It’s been a great thing.

Reading List: I’ve read a few books so far this year that have really shifted my habits and behavior in a positive way. In order, I’ve read: You Are a Badass, Think and Grow Rich,  The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life.

I’m still slogging through Don Quixote but not because it is not amazing, it’s just dense and these other books have been from the library. I’m also currently reading 1491 (about the pre-Columbian Americas) and I haven’t quite finished my Dickens biography or my E.B. White. And I’m listening to Mark Twain’s autobiography (20 disks) in my car when I’m on my own — I’m on disk 4.

The largest changes I’ve made so far in 2018 have to do with prioritizing fewer things instead of spreading myself too thin, being more decisive, and what I’m calling “living like a pro” — based on the concept of a pro in another great book, The War of Art. It has always been easy for me to act when someone else is holding me accountable but difficult when I am only accountable to myself. But the things that I want to accomplish require me to hold myself accountable, so that’s what I’ve been doing so far in 2018 and it is working pretty well.

That’s a thousand words which is taking up enough of your time for one day. My bulbs are starting to come up and a few perennials are barely peeking through. I’m definitely ready for spring!

How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days

How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Reader, have I got great news for you!

A proven weight-loss formula. Guaranteed results.

Step One: Send your spouse out of town for a week. Make sure to have your identity stolen the day before he/she leaves and to have an Apple laptop ordered by a criminal using your credit card to be delivered to your home address. Make sure the criminal subscribes you to thousands of websites in Germany and Japan. When you go to sleep each night, think about this criminal, the information they have access to, and whether they are watching your house to pick up the computer, or if they’re stupid enough to have figured out how to hack into all of your personal information but were kind of in a hurry when it came to the address, maybe they were watching a show on Netflix at the time or something.

Step Two: If your child’s school hasn’t already planned to give your children extra time off for a teacher workday right before a three-day weekend (presumably in case you want to fit in a ski vacation less than two weeks after school has resumed after Christmas break), go ahead and take your kids out of school for that extra day. Heaven knows, with all of the snow days and delayed starts and early closings you certainly don’t want to miss a chance for more together time.

Step Three: Maybe you want to get out of the house for a few hours over the course of the four-day weekend. Go for it! Make sure to visit someone who recently had an extra virulent strain of a stomach bug that took down every member of her family. Eat a meal there. Bonus points if someone in the family still wears diapers. Viruses live in poop for extra long and luckily diapers are nothing like Vegas, what goes on in a diaper…

Step Four: Wait 24 hours.

Step Five: Voila! Your children will start to vomit. It must be in your car, all over the seats that you could not imagine why you would ever have scotchguarded at the time of purchase (what could happen?). Let this be at night, and make sure the vomit smells strongly of parmesan, even though no parmesan was consumed. Drive home for 15 minutes while you breathe in the aroma/airborne vomit particles. You may roll the windows down, even if it is 10 degrees outside, as this will have no impact on either the smell or the eventual health outcomes.

Step Six: After your daughter vomits all over her sheets, and you’ve changed her bed, and then your son vomits all over his sheets, and you’ve changed his, after they’ve both vomited in buckets and toilets at the exact, precise, same instant, after your son has dry heaved all night and your bathtub is literally filled with dirty sheets, duvets, pillows that you will wash in the morning but are just a little too scared to take down into the basement, what with the criminals out there and all, slip into at least 3 hours of blissful sleep.

Step Seven: While you are doing thirteen loads of laundry, given both the rank odor and the fact that you will definitely be touching some upchuck, you will not feel hungry. Luckily your kids can’t keep anything down except water, so you won’t need to cook for at least a day. If hungry, feed them applesauce.

Step Eight: Wait four hours.

Step Nine: Change your daughter’s sheets again as the vomiting is ongoing!

Step Ten: It seems like so many steps, doesn’t it! But you will get quick results—guaranteed. You’re just about to hit pay dirt.

Step Eleven: I know that Step Ten wasn’t a step, but if you stick with it, you’re about to seriously lose some weight. It will be totally worth it.

Step Twelve: Your energy and resolve to complete the program may start to flag at this point. Make sure to have your credit card company send you notifications every time there is a foreign transaction. This way, even when you are using the lid of an old cashew nut can to scrape dried vomit off of a pillowcase, you can vicariously enjoy lovely meals out together with your beloved spouse, who you know is working really hard (and that is not sarcastic, it is hard work to have meals out with smart people who are interested in the same things you are). Did I mention that the vomit smelled so strongly of parmesan?

Step Thirteen: Make sure to keep your kids home from school for that fifth day since they still don’t have the energy to sit up.

Step Fourteen: Clean like the dickens. Do the laundry. Wash the dishes. Put everything away. Make sure that you finally clean the vomit out of the car. If you don’t do this today, it’s going to get ugly. You won’t know what to do because vomit will have totally soaked in to your non-leather seats. Just rub it with a cloth, rub and rub and rub, first with water. Drench it with peroxide (more of the rubbing) and then coat whatever is left with baking soda. This will inoculate you against ever smelling the odor in your car again, though you will be told in the future that it still smells, terribly. Look, when you’ve spent that long with your face that close to three-day-old vomit in a car, you really can’t smell it anymore, it’s just some white, chunky blueberries and other stuff that’s very hard to identify that you’re just rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing into your car for what seems like a long, long time.

Step Fifteen: Definitely don’t figure out how to order groceries to be delivered to your house. You’ll just go to the store tomorrow, right? After all, you still have a gallon of milk, two cheese sticks, some wilted kale, a bag of carrots, and an old chicken carcass that you were going to make into broth, an excellent thing to have on hand in the present circumstance. Sure, having some groceries delivered would provide nourishment for you and your children, and there is snow forecast, you live at the top of a treacherous hill and don’t have four-wheel drive. Better idea is to text your neighbors to see if anyone can drop off a pack of dry pasta. You’re going to need it.

Step Sixteen: Dine—Feast!—on a scrumptious and decadent half-full bowl of plain Essential Everyday Thin Spaghetti. It is the only thing your kids seem to be interested in and, since none of you have been eating for days, even if you can still smell the vomit from cleaning the car out earlier, you haven’t had a meal in 48 hours. Eat the noodles as—who knows—this may be your last meal for a while.

Step Seventeen: Get one night of blissful, uninterrupted sleep. In your exhaustion, you’ve forgotten about the nefarious criminals so you won’t jump and wake up each time an old board in your house shifts due the bitter cold, and unless there’s snow tomorrow the kids will be back in school. Your spouse will be home in just two more days. Hooray!

Step Eighteen: Now you’re going to have to arrange for a snow day. Or at least a delayed start to the day. It is imperative that your kids not go to school for that sixth day in a row and that they be home with you.

Step Nineteen: Get out of bed. Start some more laundry. Make sure to wash your hands at least fifteen more times. Notice how raw and chafed your knuckles are from your newly compulsive behavior. Now, drink some tea. Isn’t that nice? Warm, soothing. Hmm—that’s funny, you don’t usually feel so queasy drinking tea. Maybe you should sit down on the sofa for the first time in three days, just rest for a couple of minutes.

Step Twenty: Don’t get up from the sofa, for any reason, for the next twelve hours. Curl up into a ball. Teach your daughter how to adjust the thermostat (from the sofa) because you can’t get warm, even covered in the sleeping bag that was luckily shoved under a door to keep the draft from coming in.

Step Twenty-one: Remove the sleeping bag because you’re too hot. And so on, back and forth. Teach your daughter how to make an emergency phone call from the cell phone, just in case. Notice she seems quite eager for you to lose consciousness, so she can try it out. Try to keep your son from giving himself a concussion, all day long. Recognize that he was definitely ready to go back to school. Google “flu symptoms” and “norovirus”. Note that you don’t have a fever, so you’re probably fine. Teach your children how to make their own lunch (again, from the couch). Shout (with all the strength you can muster—this is the exercise component of the plan) to/at your son that under no circumstance should he, as he proposed to his sister, get the big knife out of the drawer. They will eat bagels and apples.

(Step Twenty-one.five:) Resist any urge you might have to punch your children in the face. You might feel this. It can happen. Look, we all feel like punching our kids in the face once in a while, right? But punching your child directly in the face will not keep them from doing things that might lead to their doom. Plus, you can’t get to them. They won’t listen to what you are saying and you can’t stand up to reach their faces. You can’t even grab at their batman costumes. Instead, try watching more of the brilliant and compelling drama, P.J. Masks. Hope that your children quickly learn its delightfully melodic theme song.

Step Twenty-two: Let your children make dinner for themselves. Suggested menu: a granola bar, baby carrots, and a cheese stick. No knives!

Step Twenty-three: Take your temperature. Aha a fever! Perfect. This plus the aches all over your body will give you enough cause for alarm that you will probably not sleep all night. Not to worry, your son also will not let you sleep all night.

Step Twenty-four: Have your children put you to sleep. Talk them through their nightly routine from your bed. Don’t remember what happens next.

Step Twenty-five: Wake up an hour later, sweaty. Lie there sweating all night. It will give your skin a rosy glow. Have your son call for you throughout the night. He’s little and he’s nervous that you’re not okay. You aren’t, but stumble dizzily through the dark, repeatedly, to reassure him anyway (Note: Coming into contact with his now runny nose is recommended for the 20-day program only).

Step Twenty-six: Wonder how in the world you are going to get your beloved children out of your house/to school in the morning. Think about this all night while you are trying to find the cool spots on the sheets that your fevered body hasn’t already turned grossly warm.

Step Twenty-seven: Wake up very slightly improved. Pack two lunches, get breakfast for children, make sure they have underwear, hats, gloves, snow pants, backpacks, library books, favorite toy car. Whatever you do, make sure to get to school before carpool is over because if you had to actually leave the car to take them in to get a tardy slip you might fall down (but it is clearly safe for you to drive, no worries).

Step Twenty-eight: Get in the car, don’t notice any smell of puke. Do notice the low fuel light is on.

Step Twenty-nine: Last car in line before carpool ends. Success! Lean against car with eyes closed while filling gas tank, count over and over to ten both to make it go quickly and also so that you look slightly insane so no one bothers you. Make it home while listening to the same song on repeat for 20 minutes because you can’t be asked to hit any extra buttons or figure it out. Binge watch When Calls the Heart on Netflix all day long. Eat nothing.

Step Thirty: Get in the car to pick kids up. Drive down the street. Wave to a neighbor, like everything is fine. Poop in your pants. No, like really do it. Just poop in your pants. Wonder if that really just happened. It did. Turn around and drive home. Change your pants. Even though you are really dizzy, and it takes a while, walk downstairs to put the soiled pants on top of the washing machine. It just would not be okay for your spouse to arrive home first and find your poopy pants in the sink first thing. Gotta keep the romance alive. Drive back to school. Pick up your children. Drive home. Lie down on the sofa, wrapped in your sleeping bag. Wait.

Step Thirty-one: Your spouse should now arrive home. He/she may notice that there is a jar of empty applesauce on the kitchen counter along with all of the breakfast/dinner/lunch dishes from the past 24 hours. He/she may or may not notice the blue bucket and handheld vac next to front door (one used for vacuuming baking soda before driving to school, other in case you vomited during the drive), or that every surface in the den is covered, overrun with stuffed animals, an exploded Life game, pieces of a marble run, calico critters, art supplies, pillows, blankets, matchbox cars, random mail everywhere (literally like mail confetti). He/she may make a comment— out loud—about the state of the household. This comment alone could burn off up to one of the ten pounds. But you are still too weak to care. And he/she is not wrong. It is a fricking war zone around here.

Step Thirty-two: Allow the spouse to take the children to the grocery store. Bingewatch more When Calls the Heart for as long as possible (it is about a handsome mountie and an heiress turned schoolteacher in a small mining town in Canada in the 1910s—super highbrow).

Step Thirty-three: Take sips of things that make you feel sick to remind yourself that you truly still are really, really not hungry. Get on the scale, because you have an idea for a blog post.

Step Thirty-four: Be grateful that it was not the flu. That your children did a great job making their own lunch and did leave the sharp knives in the drawer. That you had someone, albeit with a terrible, disgusting virus lurking in a diaper in her home, who loved you enough to endure a morning with your two plus her two kids so that you could have some relief (also that you had another friend to whom you gifted this special program on Sunday night, the 10-day-program pilot group?). That your spouse is back and that he does good work that you are proud of, and sometimes he gets to have dinner out while you are scooping vomit with a nut lid. That he has done his fair share of scooping vomit too. That you have neighbors that brought you pasta, and would have helped more if you had asked. That you didn’t punch anyone in the face and were too weak to yell (very much). That all that was stolen was some electronic information and the time it is going to take you to unsubscribe from thousands of random newsletters. That you successfully intercepted the laptop, cancelled your credit card, changed your gmail password and apple id, and returned the laptop to the Apple store. That there is no snow forecast for at least two weeks. And that your jeans are going to fit really well for at least a couple more weeks.

MAGIC!

On Resolutions

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

For Christmas, my husband bought me a magenta-ish Patagonia hooded sweatshirt (aka, a hoody). I unwrapped it around 8 am on December 25, directly removed it from it’s plastic bag, and put it on. At the time of the ham incident (see below), I had removed the sweatshirt to sleep and, briefly, for three other occasions. I did not wear it to Christmas Dinner. I did not wear it for one afternoon when some relatives came to visit. I did not wear it for about an hour on New Years Eve (but then I got a little bit chilly so I put it on). As of January 5th, I had worn it for all but about eight waking hours over the course of 12 days. For the record, I changed shirts daily, or nearly that, in case you are wondering.

Now, about the ham. In my family, it was/is traditional on New Year’s Day to eat ham and black-eyed peas (for luck) and greens (for money). Not sure about the meaning of the ham. I think our tradition was always turnip greens (the kind that comes frozen in a rectangular solid) when I was living with my parents though I think, technically, that consuming any kind of greens on January 1st ensures a steady flow of money raining down from heaven over the course of the year. Feeling compelled to instill a bit of tradition in my offspring (while quite aware that they would not approve of the menu), on the 2nd of January I went to the store and bought a ham (and black-eyes and collards). (We were on the road on the 1st and I’m hoping there is not some other tradition the says if you eat greens and peas the day AFTER the first you will have terrible luck and lose everything — I’ll keep you posted). Who knew that you can get a whole ten-pound ham — organic — for $19 on the day after New Year’s. I’m used to paying $10 for a pound of ground beef so ten pounds of almost all meat for $19 seems pretty crazy protein to price ratio.

We got the ham. It is the spiralized kind. We baked it. We ate it on Tuesday night. And Wednesday night. I ate it for lunch on Wednesday. School for the kids was cancelled on the 4th because of “weather conditions” (not exactly sure why but they were home nonetheless) so I think I ate whatever they didn’t eat but much of the day goes by in a snow day haze so I could have mostly missed lunch.

So there I was, Friday January 5th, wearing my hoody and standing in the kitchen. It’s lunchtime and I see the huge ham. There are about 8 pounds remaining. I will freeze it and use it to make red beans and rice, I tell myself. My husband will like that. It is healthy. Inexpensive. Delicious. Part of my heritage. Good plan. But in the meantime, I will eat some ham for lunch. So I unwrap it, setting the two sheets of glaze-splattered foil on the counter, pulling off part of a slice and shoving it into my mouth. Not EXACTLY like an animal, I did use my hands and didn’t just put my face directly on the ham, but possibly like a monkey I guess. Like an ape. Except that apes don’t eat ham and if you’ve seen the gorilla at the zoo regurgitate food, it wasn’t like that. I put it in, quickly, chewed, sort of, and then ripped off another slice.

At some point during this luncheon, I recognized that I’m wearing my sweatshirt (certain members of my household may or may not have mentioned that the sweatshirt may have become a sort of uniform, and maybe they mentioned this in a way that suggested such a uniform might not be considered a positive development). I’m wearing my sweatshirt for the 12th day in a row and standing in my kitchen ripping slices off a spiral ham and shoving them in my mouth as my form of lunch and I start giggling. People would think there is something wrong with me. This is the part of the movie where I’m deep down in a funk, depressed, not quite right. I should cut off some slices, put them on a plate, sit at a table. There should be a salad, or some veggies, a glass of water. Maybe even another person. I should go to a cafe, in my stylish clothing, with my hair and makeup done. My friends would laugh at some story about what we did over the holidays, I would listen intently, then I would go back to my desk to finish up an important memo about something that was going to make the world just a little bit better, or at least make my boss happy, and then I would get my paycheck.

Now, fast forward to today, January 12th, a week later. I have had some real serious talks with myself since the ham incident. Here’s the thing: I’m not in a funk. This is not the part in the movie where I make an appointment to get a haircut (I did make an appointment to get a haircut though), start going to the gym (we’ll talk about that another day but it is definitely time that I start at least stretching regularly. Ok, we’ll talk about it now. I think i’ve been thinking i’m super sneaky and I’m going to be that person who makes it through life without exercising regularly. And the thing is — I can be! I’ll just make it through life a little bit more quickly, and less comfortably, than i would otherwise. So that suddenly doesn’t feel like such a sneaky, or good, plan.) But back to the not funk.

My mom, over the holidays, suggested a couple of ideas for things that I might be really good at doing professionally. She meant well. She loves me. She has a lot of confidence in me. She said these things in front of other people which made me feel embarrassed. Like what I am and what I’m trying to do isn’t enough. As if selling safer cosmetics and blogging when I feel like it isn’t my destiny.

Here’s what I’m saying back to her, to you, to myself. THIS is what I’m doing. I’m eating ham, with my fingers, wearing a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt is soft, it is clean, it keeps me warm. I don’t need five sweatshirts. This one is great. It fits, is rip-free, is a beautiful color. It serves my needs. I’m eating a little bit of ham for lunch. I don’t need to spend a ton of time eating lunch some days. Sometimes a little ham is enough and then I can get back to all of the things I’m working on: writing, reading, editing, seeing friends, selling cosmetics.

I think I’ve been feeling like I don’t have a full-time job because I can’t have a full-time job. I think that’s what I’ve been telling people. We have no family nearby that can help with kids, my husband travels for long periods of time, we’ve both worked full-time before and it felt unsustainable. But here’s the truth: I don’t want to work full-time in an office. I don’t want to spend any more of my life that way. I have worked as a receptionist, as a data-entry intern, in accounts payable for Budweiser, in a greenhouse, as a waitress, as a nanny, cleaning hotel rooms, at two magazines doing research and writing, planning scientific expeditions to Africa, organizing teams to negotiate at UN meetings, on organizational design and strategy for a large 30-country conservation NGO.

Now I am searching. I am living a human life, awake. It is not always comfortable. It is not always clear. I do not have defined deliverables and I don’t have anyone holding me accountable other than myself (and maybe an accountability partner or two but I COULD blow them off without serious consequence). My ego fights me. Financially it is not the easiest path, for now. And THIS is what I choose to be doing. Could I improve in terms of how to structure my days? I feel confident saying yes, I could. Might I develop some deliverables for myself? Well, maybe. Eventually, for sure. Right now I am searching. I am giving myself time to look around. To wonder. To feel the feelings in my body. That little pain that pops up around my heart sometimes — is that muscular, or from my soul?

So I just wanted you to know that. I’m not in a funk. When I look at myself in the mirror, while there are certainly lines that I’m not excited about and spots that I wish weren’t there and also consider a professional liability, when I see my red sweatshirt I feel happiness. When I look at my eyes I recognize myself.

In 2017, I started this blog, started writing three novels (and one has just passed the 25,000 word mark and is going strong), wrote two essays I think are very good but I need to finish, started another 15 or so essays that have some potential, I started taking songwriting lessons and shared one song on this blog, I started meditating, started playing the piano regularly, planted a butterfly garden, took a trip to the ocean with my kids, I started a Beautycounter business, found a bunch of four-leaf clovers in a biography of Charles Dickens, received notes of encouragement from unexpected sources, I learned that my gut flora is depauperate and took steps to address matters, learned I CAN eat cultured foods, I broke a debilitating addiction to iPad games, I saw a democrat elected to an Alabama senate seat, I spent more time with some of my favorite authors (E.B., Cervantes, Austen), I wrote a couple of paid articles, edited some cool stuff, got paid to learn about some things I’m interested in. I spent time with some friends. I listened to them. They listened to me. I cooked and ate a lot of healthy food. I cleaned some toilets. I stressed about money. I tried to stop stressing and be thankful. I will try harder this year.

As far as resolutions go, here is what I’m thinking:

I will make more choices instead of letting things go undecided for so long. My husband found some cotton plants while he was in Alabama, he picked some cotton, he was very interested. I put the cotton, stems, and seeds in a ziplock bag. Maggie brought it to school to show her class. Then it sat in the bag, in my dining room, for two weeks. I looked at it every day. What will I do with that cotton? I composted it yesterday. Decision made. (There are a lot more to go.)

I will acknowledge the choices I am making. I won’t sink into feeling done-to.

I will try to meditate every day. This is really good for me. I like the Headspace app and you can start with 3 minutes a day. You can do it.

There is more to share about Swedish Death Cleaning and Napolean Hill and You are a Badass, but I have to post this before 11 am which means I have 8 minutes to reread.

P.S. I’m going to start saying the New Year’s ham is for persistence. Luck and money are very well and good, but I want to persevere.

Happy New Year!

Nothing fancy, just some updates

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

So, let’s see, when last we left our heroine, she had initiated work on her novel, reaching a total of just over 17,000 words in a bit over two weeks. Unfortunately, she had also reverted to playing addictive iPad games (only twice, or for two days, before deleting FOREVER, she hopes), had developed a debilitating addiction to coffee, had said some pretty strong things about glow sticks (the people are just trying to have some fun, can you relax?), judged, possibly unfairly, modern children’s literature based on a cupcake-pooping cat,  was, in the opinion of many, justified in her anger with the Sackler dynasty, and had just about pulled herself out of the annual mid-Autumn slump, yearly heightened by overconsumption of Kit Kats or their close relatives.

And there we left her. On the edge of our seats. Will she write more? Will she keep going with the blog? The posts seem to be coming less frequently, with less regularity. Perhaps another creative project that’s run out of steam? We wondered about her Beautycounter business — is network marketing really the best use of her time? We wondered if she had any thoughts about the crush of patriarchy, the potential election of Roy Moore in Alabama. We were curious as to why she didn’t replace that uncomfortable sofa.

Well, trusted readers. Wonder no more.

Sofa: WE GOT A NEW SOFA!! Call me up if you’re ever in the neighborhood. There’s somewhere to sit. Your feet don’t even have to leave the ground.

Roy Moore: Shoot. This blog isn’t close to long enough to say it all. I have been trying, with some effort, to understand the position of the people I know and love in Alabama who might consider voting for this man. They are not dumb people. They are not bad people. They are persuadable people who, like all of us at times, allow one particular issue to matter more than character. I think we all need to shake hands — all of us pretty good people, hard working, loving people who try to live as decently as we know how — and we need to agree that we’re going to vote based on character. Because I promise you there are a bunch of a-holes without character who are super duper happy to take lots of money from people who don’t give a crap about you, about your kids (in utero, one-month old, in elementary school, or at 14) and use that money to print fliers making you feel outraged about something and then laugh with their rich buddies all the way to the bank as they turn our beautiful country into a sh*t show.

That’s probably not as eloquent as I would like to be.

THE PATRIARCHY: Shoot. This blog isn’t close to long enough to say it all. But, perhaps just one short note. SO,  over the weekend I read an article by a woman who was seething, raging, about the patriarchy in which we all live. You see, she had hosted Thanksgiving dinner and had had about 20 people into her home. Men and women, all decent folk. Now, what I am about to tell you may shock you, but she walked into her own bathroom, in her own home, and there was a toilet seat raised. Yes, you read that right. The seat was UP. This woman, this abused and tortured soul, had to TOUCH THE SEAT to lower it. Well, I can tell you she was livid. Beyond belief. She furiously sought her husband, rending her garments, tearing her hair, who would dare to treat her thus! In case you are not familiar with the term, patriarchy is when a culture is designed around the needs of men. So her hypothesis was that a man, by not lowering the seat for her after his use of the commode, is assuming that the way men use the toilet is the way everyone uses the toilet, or he just can’t be bothered to think about who comes next. My husband was quick to point out that every single time he uses the toilet he touches the seat not once, but twice. He must lift the seat before he uses the toilet and then replace it back again afterwards. So, to me, that sounds more like a matriarchy? I always assume the seat will be down. That works for me but not for the men in my house. So they, very courteously, both lift and lower, and then wash their hands.

I thought about women who still walk 10 miles a day to cart water back to their home on their heads so that the men can eat first and best, so that men can bathe themselves, so that men can sit and talk with their buddies, where women are forced at a young age to marry some gross old guy based on their father’s wishes — and don’t have a sink right next to the toilet (and probably some froufrou Beautycounter liquid hand soap) where they can wash their hands if there’s a seat lid up once in a blue moon.

I’m not saying we don’t have long roads to walk in this country. But I think things are pretty rough for most women AND men. And I feel this kind of indignation, over a raised toilet seat, confuses things (confuses what, well, that’s what I need to spend time writing more clearly! I have thoughts, lots of thoughts). [Significant text cut. Not ready to get all into this. Forgive me.]

Beautycounter: Promoted to Manager in November. Yes, it does take time away from my promising career as a best-selling novelist. But, truth be told, when I sat down and did a vision board to figure out my life purpose, I realized that helping more people to have dewy skin was my true calling. Everything I’ve ever done in my life, from living in tents in Africa to organizing international teams to negotiate at UN Conventions, it was all leading to this.

(I really do like it. It feels a bit like playing store and playing dress up at the same time and it gets me out of the house and meeting new people I like and washing my face. Conflicted about the industry? Perhaps. Mad as heck that companies are knowingly putting carcinogens in children’s body care products. Yep. Yes I am.)

THIS BLOG WILL NOT RUN OUT OF STEAM: But it may cut back to a twice-monthly schedule to keep up with the demands of my novel writing and cosmetics pushing. Stay tuned. Maybe I will figure something out around the New Year.

Novel: Current word count is 17,090 words. And if you’re paying very close attention and are even just adequate at math you will recognize that this marks an advancement of zero words since my last post. Yes, I do have a good excuse. It’s that I stopped writing when my mom came to town before Thanksgiving and now I just don’t exactly know how to get started again. That’s not fair to you because it isn’t the whole story (mom came, dad came, Dave got home, Thanksgiving, mom left, I don’t remember a few days, Sam got sick, I stopped drinking coffee, I don’t remember more days. I sold cosmetics. I listed coins on Ebay. I wanted to write. I volunteered in Sam’s class. I saw a friend. I helped a neighbor. I cleaned some dishes.)

I have committed to get to 25,000 words on the novel by the end of this month. A reachable goal. Also to write two blog posts (one almost done) and to finish reading Don Quixote. I’m only about a hundred pages in but I can see why people make such a fuss about this book. I mean, if you are a huge book nerd probably. You might not like it otherwise. I laugh out loud every night and profess my unending love for Cervantes. I MIGHT be more in love with him than with E.B. White. Let me get to the end first. I’m sorry E.B., I still love you. Forever. But… we’ll see.

Parting words: I really like writing to you. Thanks for reading. I hope I haven’t written anything too stupid or offensive. I’m trying to work some things out.

On glow sticks, and getting out of a funk

Posted on by Jennifer Hole

Hello my friends!

I’ve missed you : )

So, you might be wondering (or not), what’s up? Why no new posts in the last three weeks? How is the novel? Any chance I’ve reverted to certain addictive behaviors over the past few weeks? Am I blaming Halloween for any minor life or habit setbacks? How’s Basic Training? Still meditating? Still eating fermented foods? Have I been wearing the same shirt for a week? Do I have a not unwarranted but probably disproportionate rage against glow sticks? How is my cosmetics business?

You know, it’s funny you asked!

Here are the updates, in brief:

Novel: I am up to 17,090 words on the novel. To get to 50,000 by November 30th (the National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo goal), I am about 7,000 words behind where I should be. But if I write an average of 2,194 words each day until the 30th, I’ll get there. My biggest day so far has been 4,390 but we have to keep in mind that I will have family in town, Thanksgiving to host, children out of school, Black Friday and Cyber Monday (shudder), birthday parties to attend (etc, etc). So maybe I’ll just get to 40,000. I’m pretty happy about that. Right now the main character is a mother of two who lives in Alexandria and takes issue with the status quo (I don’t know how I think of these things either!). Maybe I will include a bit of the text on the blog some day. It is fun and challenging and sometimes it makes my heart feel like it is hurting but I think that is just muscular inflammation from sitting in one position for too long at a time. It takes a lot of emotional energy to think about what you really mean, what really motivates someone. I think I like writing novels. But I’m not totally sure what is going to happen yet. We build to that. So far though, so good. There are some parts I love, that I read and feel like I don’t know who exactly wrote them. That’s fun.

Confession: I played THE GAME. About five days ago I played the cursed iPad game. The one I was addicted to that I used to play before starting the blog. I can’t remember exactly what happened. But i did it. And then i kept doing it. For hours. Hours. And the next day, maybe for just one or two hours. And then I knew I would have to tell you about it. So yesterday I deleted the game (ok, the two games) from the iPad forever. I had not touched the games since starting the blog last spring, a huge achievement. More about this below.

Coffee: In the past two weeks I have unintentionally switched from being a tea-drinker who dabbles in an occasional weekend coffee to a full-blown coffee addict. I did not have coffee on Tuesday and I woke up on Wednesday morning in excruciating pain that could only be taken away by sweet, sweet caffeine. So this will have to be addressed but for now I’m a coffee drinker. Again, don’t know what happened. I just felt like being reckless so I started drinking a big mug of coffee every morning and – bam. I think i thought I was being kind of naughty because I know I’m super sensitive to caffeine. Well, what’s done is done. I will have to figure a way out of this.

Halloween: Used to be my favorite custom/tradition. Now I kind of hate it (for so many reasons, many of which are discussed in my upcoming novel). Also, I cannot resist a Kit Kat. So I get hooked on Kit Kats and then I become a coffee addict and play farming games until my arms hurt. I’m weak I guess. But I fight this battle every year and it is never pretty. The Kit Kats are gone now (and not in the trash) so it will be back to smoothies soon. Oh, I should mention that I haven’t had a smoothie all week. Or any fermented food. Nor have I played the piano, meditated, spent time outside, danced. I have done a lot of singing in the past two days. And I’ve spent time with two friends, which was probably the only antidote I needed.

Glow sticks: Can we talk about glow sticks, just for a minute. Please, if you care about me, please vow to yourself – right now – that you will never buy another glow product again. Please, just do it. Or rather, don’t do it. Glow sticks are one great example of something that it is possible to make. Yes, human beings, ingenious creators, have figured out how to make a little plastic stick glow in the dark for a few hours before it becomes trash. Yay! Kids love these things for at least 5 minutes before they throw them on the ground and forget about them forever and then they are just garbage. YET, I do not rail against the glow stick because they are just dumb trash. I rail against them because the chemical inside a glow stick that makes the glow is a phthalate, in most cases dibutyl phthalate, and these little chemicals are pretty horrid for human beings. True, most children do not eat glow sticks. But when you throw them away, they don’t magically disappear! They go SOMEWHERE. And that somewhere is the water we drink. Pthalates are linked to asthma, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, breast cancer, obesity and type II diabetes, low IQ, neurodevelopmental issues, behavioral issues, autism spectrum disorders, altered reproductive development and male fertility issues. People, it just isn’t worth it. Twenty seconds of sheer glee (for a kid who, most likely, is way overstimulated already whether it is Halloween or not) versus a population exposed to chemicals that we know are making us all sicker. If I see you buying glow sticks (I’m so sorry, I’m working on this, truly, but) I will judge you. Maybe you’re judging me right now. I know, all this judging is the worst, maybe I should just work on being at peace with the glow stick. I’m just being honest. It will make me feel sad. So keep that in mind.

Moving on…

Roadrage: PEOPLE — we are all in agreement that watching a show on your phone while you are driving a moving car is not an ok thing, right????? I was so happy this morning, singing a song after dropping my kids off. Driving back home. And this lady was driving very erratically and I needed to get over so I looked at her to see if she saw me signaling and she was watching a show on her phone — not at a stoplight (I do not condone this either) — she was driving on a road that has a 45 mph speed limit. She was driving and watching a show!?! I got upset. I tried to feel lighthearted again and sing my song, but it just wasn’t in me. Then some other people drove like selfish jerks (I, meanwhile, drove perfectly, faultlessly). Then I saw a friend and felt much better.

Cosmetics: My Beautycounter business is going pretty well, thanks for asking. If you are curious about the line that I have chosen to represent, I encourage you to take a look at my Beautycounter page. I like that they are trying to change the industry and to make products for people that don’t contain known harmful ingredients. I have a thing about businesses that know – full-well – that certain ingredients/behaviors/substances are seriously damaging to the population as a whole and they just don’t give a crap. Please see my note below about the Sacklers.

The Sacklers: I have been very upset this week. I do believe the iPad game relapse was due to an article I read in The New Yorker about the Sackler family. These guys are well known as generous philanthropists who give tons of money to art museums all over the world (think the Met, Louvre, Smithsonian) and have their names on all this stuff and are knighted (etc), but their names are strangely absent from the webpage of the pharmaceutical company they privately own, a little company called Purdue Pharma that developed OxyContin and, it turns out, knew pretty well from the start that it was extremely addictive but had a very targeted campaign to convince doctors across America that it was safe to prescribe, even though the doctors had very legitimate hesitations. This drug is the primary driver of America’s opiod crisis and the family now has $13 billion dollars (that number growing every day, along with the number of Americans dying from overdoses, the number of babies born addicts, the number of families destroyed, etc). And now they are expanding to foreign markets (oh, also there’s a new pill for kids over 11) — even with all that is known. SO, read the article. You are probably not as soft as me so you won’t fall into a virtual agrarian, Kit Kat fueled, despair. It’s important stuff.

What Next? Well, by the very fact that I am writing this post you can rest assured that I am now on an upward, rather than downward, trajectory. There are many possible explanations for why we get into “funks.” Could be related to the time of year, could be you get a huge credit card bill, could be how you are eating, or not eating, could be that you are lonely and feel isolated, could be that you are reading too much news, or not reading or thinking or doing enough to remember all that you do have, could be you are super tired, could be someone you know is sick, could be you are sick.

I also don’t know what it is that gets you out of a funk. Could be talking to a friend. Or just getting to the end of the candy and making a decision not to get more. Or making a decision to help someone else. I think usually (always?) there is a point where you make a decision and then you follow through with that decision. Maybe you have help or maybe you do it on your own. Well, once again I’ve made a decision to crawl out and, luckily, this funk was short lived. (sigh of relief.)

Children’s literature: My kids have been discussing a book they are enthralled with, one I have never read. Apparently the main character is a cat who poops out cupcakes. Look, there may be a great lesson in this book. It might be Shakespeare, or Beatrix Potter, say. I cannot help but wonder. Kids used to be told stories that helped them understand their place in the universe. To learn values. To learn how humans behave, how we interact with other people, creatures, the Earth. Now people make money figuring out how to make characters that kids will think are funny. Give the four-year-olds what the four-year-olds want! I like that we value childhood more now than in, say, Victorian times. I love to laugh with my kids. I’m all about creativity and imagination. But I guess I feel like there is maybe a middle ground that we’ve missed. A cupcake-pooping cat? I guess I’m old fashioned but it feels like somewhere we went a bit off the rails.

Messages from Everywhere 
light up our backyard.
A bird that flew five thousand miles
is trilling six bright notes.
This bird flew over mountains and valleys
and tiny dolls and pencils
of children I will never see.
Because this bird is singing to me,
I belong to the wide wind,
the people far away who share
the air and the clouds.
Together we are looking up
into all we do not own
and we are listening.

— Naomi Shihab Nye

One thing that helps me get out of a funk is this blog. So thanks very much for being here.

Now back to that novel…