Rocks, Barns, Beds and Corners. Or, the Top 10 Places to Read on Three Link Ranch

We spent our Christmas Holidays in Oregon on the cattle ranch where I grew up, about 35 miles from Crater Lake outside of Butte Falls (pop. 450).  It is stunning in all seasons, simply one of my favorite places in the world.  Miles from anyone else and surrounded by forest, it is compellingly quiet, enough so that your senses reach out on their own, engaging in the little world that exists in the small circle around you--the sounds, smell and sights, all of which change with the seasons.

Once we were old enough, us five kids all had chores and work to do--ranging from clearing the garden of rocks each spring, to haying to feeding said hay to the cows in winter, to digging irrigation ditches, so on and so forth.  Between that, school, sports and friends, there wasn't a lot of time for ourselves, but what time I had I spent reading.  And that was another thing that changed with the seasons, my secret reading places, of which I will now share my top 10--knowing that every reader probably has their own list to rival my own.  I would love to hear some of them.

10. Below the big field, across the fence, along the creek, under a big oak there would be these groves of low, white flowers among dense grass.  It was soft and soothing--and in the summer, a perfect place to read yourself to sleep, lulled by the dappled light on the pages.  I read Sounder there, as well as my first reading of My Antonia, from which my all-time favorite quote comes from..."Happiness is being dissolved into something complete and great".

9.  The barn.  There is practically nothing more comfortable then a chaise lounge made from hay, especially as it comes with it's own lovely perfume--an earthier, heavier dried grass aroma.  I read Animal Farm there for a reason, although in hindsight, probably not the best idea I've ever had.

8.  The corner behind the wood stove.  Whether it was winter or not, it was strategically important, keeping me literally under the view of my Mom.  If quiet, I could read there for hours without being bothered--which was perfect when I went through my Michner phase.

7.  The Bouncy Tree.  In another field, an old tree bent low enough to scrabble on to it, with one perfect branch as a back rest.  You could read and bounce-away the afternoon and it's where I would read about Satchel Paige, Amelia Earhart and other amazing people.

6.  The hay fields.  When the hay was about yay-high, ready to be cut, you could lay in the middle of it all, nothing but gold and blue around and above you.  No one could ever find me there--except mice and snakes..but they never told.  Perfect for the Little House on the Prairie books.

5.  In bed under the covers (after the generator was off for the night with a flashlight):  Quiet perfection-- for Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. 

4.  The hammock.  duh! This is where I would read anything resembling romance novels--which were few and far between in our library.  But the few Joan Collins books I snuck outside were illuminating to say the least.

3.  Behind the ranch, up a logging road, off a little side road, there is a small, almost octagonal meadow of moss, surrounded by downed trees, all covered with moss. When I was much younger it was my secret emerald forest, and it was perfect for reading Lord of the Rings.

2. My parents room.  For some reason, their bed was always more comfortable and the room was always cooler or warmer, depending on the season. 

1.The Rock.  Way up the logging road behind and above our ranch, there was an outcropping of rocks from which you could see the entire property and then some.  With a pbj, cookies and a jug of water, I spent probably hundreds of afternoons up there, reading everything from Hotel New Hampshire to all five volumes in the Hitchhikers Guide (I especially liked the third book, 'Life, the Universe and Everything'), dreaming of what was out beyond the horizon of trees.

So, there is the list...if I close my eyes on a late January afternoon in Austin, I can smell the hay or the pine--or the woodsmoke.  I can feel the moss or the breeze and I can remember what I felt as I read and dreamed in my own perfect corner of the world in Oregon, each of these a building block, some big, some little, to who I am today. 

Thanks Mom and Dad.  It was amazing.

Would You Rather? or Reading your way through the Health Care debate

Last night at dinner (at the great new diner in Austin, "24"), me and the fam were playing one of our usual dinner time games, "Would You Rather?"--the game where either choice is rarely a good one.  Besides being a great peek into where your kids heads are at, for us anyway this game is a fun and effective conversation starter--which, as most parents know, is a toughy.

While the son and I typically go for the "would you rather eat 100 raw oysters or 100 snails"-type questions, my husband and daughter always go for the odd/existential/serious questions, like last night's kicker, "Would you rather be a doctor that has to tell someone their Grandfather died, or be a manager that has to fire 100 people on the same day?"

My daughter picked the doctor and when we asked why, she said in her typical "I'm channeling a very cynical 40-year old" voice, "Doctor.  They say it, they fake cry and they walk away..it's easy."  Maybe I should have said the voice she was channeling was a "very, very, VERY cynical person", or maybe she listens more than we give her credit for because outside of my doctor and my brother-in-law, I'm not a big fan of doctors or the system they work for.  We've been in a lot of offices and hospitals in the last five years and I can easily say that I hate them and the system.  At their/it's best they made me hopelessly hopeful.  At worst?  A quivering mass of sobbing doubt.

Anyway, the question and subsequent conversation reminded me that over the past 7 years or so I've had to do a lot of reading about health care for my job.  And, given the current debate/debacle I went through my books and found what I considered to be the best of the best in terms of giving you a fully rounded picture of the issues we face as our elected leadership try to solve the problem that is our health care system.

First, let's get in the right frame of mind...regardless of how you want it fixed, most Americans want something different--especially the 40 million or so uninsured.  So, I'd recommend, "Sick" by Jonathan Cohn.  I found it a compellingly devastating, yet judicious look at decline of our health care system--each patient story highlighting yet another reason that we all need to take this seriously.

Then we should ground ourselves in the history of what is a very unique system of care here in America..."The Health Care Mess:  How We Got Into It and What It Will Take To Get Out" by Julius Richmond and Rashi Fein.    Taking us from the post-WW II start of health insurance to the 'quest for profits' business it is today, they show the sink holes of a decentralized system and lay out their proposed fix.  For what is admittedly a dry subject, they do a good job of cutting through the fat to the key issues below.

Then, a look at hard reality with "Can We Say No?  The Challenge of Rationing Health Care" by Aaron, Schwartz and Cox.  Using the British system--and their choices--as a foil, this book points out the nature of the choices we as Americans face if we want to keep it from being a financial drain to either business or ourselves.  They don't offer their version of a solution, but I didn't mind knowing that this issue truly will take a combined, collaborative effort to solve (which does not give me hope for this round of health care reform either come to think of it).

Then would come the hardest read for me (I tend to shy away from anything written by economists--it's a personal failing I grapple with)--"Healthy, Wealthy and Wise:  Five Steps to A Better Health Care System" by Coogan, Hubbard and Kessler.  Examining the problem a market perspective, they come to identify root causes of the overall mess that I ultimately understood--it was, for lack of a better term, my 'aha!' moment.  From tax code issues that force price distortion to the fact that there is no one measure of quality of either care or care information, they break it down and offer a solution for each.  Whether their solutions are plausible or even smart I can't say, but the issues they identify are definately part of the problem and should be understood and solved for in the long run if we are truly to create positive change for all.

Finally, I'd wrap it all up on a high note with T.J. Reid's fantastic book, "The Healing of America:  The Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care".  Clear, insightful and often humorous, it shows that we can have a system that puts people, not profits, first without losing sight that this is a business. 

And, if you only have time for one book...Reid's is the one to read:  It gives fact-based and hopeful direction for a better system of care and we should all be armed with that because as Congress plays it's own game of  "Would You Rather" with the future of American health care, you want to be ready with a good answer.

Sorry, Life Got In The Way

I've been meaning to write for the past week, but life happens.  Nothing major, just the little things--an errand here, a craft there.  Dinner, the dog, laundry.  It wouldn't be a problem, but I've been noticing lately (okay, pretty much for the past 9 years) that I don't let life get in the way, I seem to PUT life in the way. 

What I mean is this--before I can sit and cuddle or read or draw with my daughter, I've got to vacuum up the dog hair.  Before I can build the next great Star Wars gun ship with my son, I've got laundry or the bills.  It's not that I don't want to do these things (I do!, I do!), its that I want everything else 'perfect' before I do them.  For some reason I seem to think that "it" will all be better if I sit down to do these things in a clean house, glowing with soft candle light and smelling of lavender and Beef Bourguignon.

I think part of it comes from this self-induced perception that I don't pull my share of load at home.  I work outside the house, my husband inside the house.  And I get worried that I'm putting it all on his shoulders--the house, the kids, the dog, etc.   The reality is that we've got a pretty equitable split of the load that is life:  he does the dishes, I do the bills.  Everything else gets done as we do it--sometimes its me, sometimes it's him.

I think part of it comes from another thing that is self-induced--the dream of perfect motherhood.  I know, I know...I can hear the cackles  and guffaws already.  There is no such thing--and if there were, would we know it when we saw it?  I don' t think so.  Perfection, much like beauty, is totally in the eye of the beholder. 

And let's face it, on this subject, my eye is totally skewed because no matter how much I may want it to happen, there is no way my kids would sit up after a marathon game of Monopoly and say, "This was perfect because the floors were so clean they reflected the candlelight, and the Chopin during my drive to build on Park Ave was instrumental in my success--and finally mother, the repast of French chocolate and Ladyfingers really helped me deal with being sent directly to jail, without passing Go and collecting $200."

It's just not going to happen. Ever.  Unless they read this and then mock me about it over the Thanksgiving break.  Now that would be perfection in their eyes.  Good enough.

According to my phone, I may be pregnant

I'm not sure how it came off to the other people in the meeting, but looking back I'm prety sure it was, without a doubt, a rediculous sight. Yes, the moment I nonchalantly powered up my iPhone during a meeting, as we all are wont to do when things get slow, only to have it flash a message to "see my ob" as I was probably pregnant. The eek!, the dropped phone, the scrabbling under the table to pick it up, the hitting of my head on the underside of the table, the stand up, the sit down (fight, fight, fight! say the cheerleaders).

Eventually I got out of the meeting, into the ladies room and, with a couple of deep breaths, assessed my reality. "I", I announce to the bathroom, "am not pregnant!"  "There is no possibility I am with child!" I say again (dramatic language supplied by Regency Romances).  "No friggin chance," I say, looking at myself sideways in the mirror--which was, quite frankly, not helpful at all.

Back to the phone, the message is still there.  I do some sliding and tapping and voila!  My phone now confirms for me that I am not pregnant.  Duh!

But to be fair, it wasn't the fault of my iPhone.  All blame, without a doubt, should be placed entirely on my husband's shoulders.  Oh, not the pregnancy, because there isn't one, believe me.  (He was getting snipped before our youngest was barely cleaned up.)  But everything else?  Absolutely!  You see, now that he's got his iPhone, he is the King of Apps.  He's always showing me this cool one or that helpful one and today at lunch, it was the one that "helps you with your period."  Frankly, I should have thought this statement through a bit, mostly because on this subject, I define "help" vastly different than he does. 

Anyway, this app, which I admit I promptly downloaded, tracks your cycle for you, complete with happy and sad faces for good and bad days---and lightning bolts for crampy days--just in case you don't notice them yourself.  I tried it out by entering some data and then, realizing what time it was, scampered off to my meetings for the afternoon.  Two hours later, because of this hurried, incomplete data, I scared myself--and probably a few others--silly.

Look, I love my iPhone, don't get me wrong, but haven't we gone a little ape with the apps?  According to 148apps.biz, "the" reputable site on all things Apple, there are currently 98,401 ACTIVE apps, with another 10,156 inactive ones--created by over 23,000 unique app publishers.  We spend, believe it or not, $2.4 billion per year on apps according to AdMob.  I have to ask:  Were we, as a human race, that needful of help or entertainment?  Were we missing opportunities, experiences, or dare I say it, pregnancies because we did not have the right app?  Or were we not maximizing, enhancing, tracking, journaling or mashing our lives up enough? 

And how much more inefficient or stressed are we with all of this now in our lives?  If I download enough apps, it makes sense that I'll eventually have to download an app organizing app, right?  If I don't, I'll likely get stressed because I won't be able to find anything. But luckily for me, there are a number of highly rated stress-busting apps...which once I download, I'll not be able to find as I did not purchase the app organizing app.

aarrrgh.

Luckily for me, in my real life there is always the yummilicious husband at home who, when the time is right, the kids are asleep, the dog isn't barking and the shower isn't leaking, is my own free "de stresser app". And, if he needs a little kick-start, there is always the highly rated, fully customizeable foreplay game "Sexytime Fun Pro" that we can download onto my iPhone.

Which is, I believe, right where this all started.

Oh Body, My Body

There are moments when I catch sight of myself in a mirror or a window and I do not realize who the person is staring back at me.  It catches me off-guard rather stunningly each time.  That's because in my mind I am thinner...much, much thinner.  Or taller, much, much taller.  It's not as if I'm actively fooling myself, but the physicality of "me" that I believe I am is vastly different that the "me" I actually am.  I read a science journal once that described this situation and apparently I'm in good company--if I remember correctly, about 90% of people interviewed held a very different perception about themselves than what the reality was (whether this perception was about weight, wrinkles or the size of their nose).

As well, doing research for a client, I stumbled upon something called the "Teachable Moment", which is a moment when something happens that alters your thinking about a very important behavior.  When it comes to women and their weight, these teachable moments supposedly happen up to 3 times a day.  Which is good in that it provides us a lot of moments to learn from.  But on the other hand, it's like our mothers got together and passed on their nagging capabilities to the inanimate objects in our lives...It's on the days that I find myself telling the store window, car window or dressing room mirror to fuck off that I've know I've reached my limit of teachable moments (on that subject and on that day anyway).

Here's the thing--most of the time I can laugh and learn from those moments and I'm happy to say that I'm actively engaged in creating a 'me' that won't be caught in front of a Nordstroms window cursing it with a string of profanity likely to cause the writers on Family Guy to curl up shaking in fetal positions.  But there are moments that just fucking kill me--I mean grit my teeth, burst into tears, eat chocolate and KFC mashed potatoes with gravy kill me.  Two examples to follow.

First, not too long ago my daughter asked me to come read to her class.  I said I would and she went on talking about what I needed to know, do and not to do. I was nodding along until she mentioned  that it would be her job to tell her friends not laugh and hurt my feelings. I asked her to re-wind and she explained that she didn't want her friends to laugh at me because I'm fat.  Damn.  I went from 'fluffy mama' to embarrasing in one single instant.  These are the moments that remind me for all of the right reasons...health, family, responsibility. 

There there are those like in example number two.  This weekend, opening night of the Opera season, our 14th wedding anniversary outing to La Boheme and the (supposedly) extra special "Montemarte Experience".  Strolling outside at intermission with a glass of champagne, looking at the skylights and the mini-Eiffle Tower they had put up, surrounded by caricaturists there to capture us in all of our black-tie glory-with a hint of humor.  Well, he might of thought it was funny, but there was a reason my husband moved us away from the 'artiste' rather quickly.  I went from feeling seriously curvaciously, Rubenesquely hot to Carol Channing drag-queen in two seconds flat.  I mean, the guy took extra time to put in the four double chins and tiny beady eyes.  These are the teachable moments that remind me for all of the wrong--or vain--reasons why I want to lose some poundage--how other people see me.

(Luckily, with a few well placed gropes and solid kisses from my tattooed hotty of a husband I was quickly back on track and we had a really lovely, funny, loving night despite said artist and some surprisingly bad food.)

But back to the issue at hand.  Here's where I net out:  These teachable moments, whether right or wrong, positive or negative, meant or not meant--they are a tool in my ongoing fight with myself and my body.  I just have to learn which ones are more effective tools for me. Secondly, my weight is about more than me--it's about time I faced up to that.  And finally and in some ways, most importantly, I need to get over it.  For too long it has been too much a part in how I define myself and how I've let, even demanded, others define me.  Seriously, I can imagine that for those of my friends and family who don't see the weight first, that it's downright boring.

So I guess the next time I catch a glance of myself in the window and wonder who that person is, the answer is simply, me.

Cry Love or Parenting through John Hiatt

John Hiatt said it best, even though he was coming at it from a different context...tears of an angel, spilling all over your heart.  That's how I feel when my kids cry 'that cry'.  The one the comes from the deep, scary hurt of not understanding. When a friend, a parent or even a stranger does something (purposefully or not)that is so antithetical to how they view the world this pain pours out from them, sad and melodious, soft and old, fearful and yet searching for new, solid ground.

This cry, THIS cry, this cry!  It slays me. I ache inside knowing that another bubble has burst for them, another lesson learned, a new understanding of the perfect imperfect.  I want to fix it.  I want to rail at the universe even though I know that in time--whether it's 10 minutes or 10 days--they will have forgotten or assimilated or whatever little ones do when they face such an experience.

In the face of this cry I push down my eternal need to fix, to help them run from the feelings by logically talking them through it--because those are my issues, damn it!  Instead I curl silently around them, soft and squishy, surrounding them with the feels and smells of the familiar and safe. (I don't smell, according to my daughter, as good as the burnt toast smell as my husband, but I come in a close second with a 'donut powder' smell.)

Sometimes we just sit there quietly until they get up silently and run away to play.  Sometimes they fall asleep, the wet, sobby hiccups making them feel smaller in my arms then they actually are.  Sometimes, depending on the act that precipitated this, I'll feel my way into the subject, trying to put the pieces together for them, and me, and the other person (typically the other sibling). 

But what I love the most is when they start talking--sometimes about the incident, most of the time not.  Just quiet chatter, about nothing and everything.  Eventually a few giggles, a more certain tone, a straighter back.  It's not a 'teaching' moment, but at the same time it isn't not one.  It's organic and self-directed and it--calming, and soft and lovely--grows, pushing the ache aside, leaving a bright, clean energy like what exists after a good, cleansing rain.  And best of all, we both feel better for it, and life moves on with a different, better perspective.

John Hiatt says it best: have a little faith me...when the tears you cry are all that you believe, give these lovin arms a try...from a whisper start, have a little faith in me.

While obviously not written as one, this is a parenting mantra I can get behind--no matter what form or face it takes, families having a little faith in each other is a pretty good place to be, especially during times when a lot answers, time and certainty feel scarce.

Building a Generation with a Voice

My son and I were looking at a recent picture in the New York Times showing a man spraying a policeman with milk from the teat of a cow. It definitely grabbed your attention--the physics of the act alone made the picture astounding, not to mention the skill of the man doing the spraying. It garnered a good laugh and the subsequent conversation about all of the different animal/policeman combinations was (disturbingly) illuminating to say the least.

Unfortunately the story itself wasn't as engaging to either myself or my 9-year old son--and that's the problem. The article--about dairy farmers taking to the streets in support of their livelihood--should have been interesting to us both in terms of the issue and the action the farmers took to try and create the change they wanted. But, as my son said as he ran out the door "...it sooooo isn't cool Mom".

But why not? We are a country started with the ultimate of all protests. Our founding 'bad boys' thumbed their noses but good at the powers that be. Rosa Parks, the march on Selma, the march on the Pentagon in '67 and Stonewall in 1969, Kent State, the Million Man March, the road blockades in January, 1991 against the first Gulf War--all of these were powerful, effective movements driven by a collective desire for an idea or ideal.

Today these ideals have been corrupted. We feel righteously cool just by 'opting in' to the Darfur group on Facebook or 'signing' the latest Move-On letter to our Congressman. We show up to a Tea Party organized and staged by others, stand where they tell us to and say that it is a genuine movement.

I'm not advocating for violence, but rather against President Lincolns 'sin of silence'. We should teach our children how to be heard, to feel confident in standing up for what they believe, to follow their heart--and feet--to a crowd of other believers. And they should know they can change the world that way.

I know--I better watch out what I ask for. I'll have little Parks and Kings and Ghandi's bringing my household to a standstill. But what they do to me today, is what they do for me tomorrow. I'm thinking it's a decent trade-off.