An Update

I haven't posted here in a while, and I know that's not the most clever title I could have given this post. To be quite honest about it, I'm at a loss for a topic on this post. But, I'm going to plunge ahead and do some writing, just to see what shakes out.

The holidays treated us fairly well this past year. We didn't travel to see family during the holiday season, but we did meet friends for dinner and a movie on Christmas Eve. That was a lot of fun, and it's becoming a Christmas tradition.

Right after that, Jen caught the flu, which turned into bronchitis. So, our New Year's was quiet and spent at home while she followed the doctor's orders to rest and recuperate. Where the time between then and now went is completely beyond me.

Ten days ago, we lost our cat, Geoffrey. He was about 15 and had a lot of health problems that finally got the best of the veterinarians. We'd been treating his diabetes with insulin, but other conditions like pancreatitis and heart disease made controlling his insulin levels a challenge. It's been tough because our cats are the closest we'll get to having kids. We lost our younger cat in November 2011, and now we're cat-less for a while.

We've lived in our current apartment since moving to NYC, and our lease has a clause saying we can't get more cats if anything happens to the two we had. Once we've given ourselves time to mourn losing our boy, we'll talk with the landlord about changing that clause. If he doesn't agree, we'll need to start apartment hunting. I'm sure some people would think that's a crazy reason to move, but it makes perfect sense to us.

We're in a duplex and he lives downstairs, so he'd know if we got more cats. Plus, he's talking about retiring in a year, and he mentioned he might sell when he does. So, we might need a new place to live anyway, even if he does allow us to get more cats.

On a more pleasant note, our 20th anniversary is rapidly approaching. After the whopping big vet bill we just had, we're not sure what we'll do for our 20th. Whatever we choose, I know it will be a great day. Every day with Jen is a great one, no matter what else is happening.

I'm terrible at imagining the future and what it will bring, so I never do well with that quiz about "Where do you see yourself in five years?" I simply can't envision where I'll live or what I'll do for work five years from now. However, I do know that Jen and I will be together then. That's the one thing I'm certain of.

Looking Back at Untrod Paths

One of my passions is hats. Not just any old cap, though. And, not those frilly, frou-frou ladies hats that make such a spectacle on Kentucky Derby Day.

I mean classic hats, the kind of felt or straw hats that graced heads during the golden days of cinema. My personal favorite is a nice felt fedora or Trilby like Bogart, Bergman, or Bacall would have worn. Of course, I’m also partial to a nice straw Panama like Paul Henreid, Edward G. Robinson, or Gregory Peck sported in their films.

What does that have to do with paths not taken? Sadly, quite a bit. A few years back, I bought a gorgeous Montecristi Panama hat from Brent Black, and it’s still the pride of my hat collection. It has surpassed the two Trilbies I own from Lock & Co of London, but I digress.

Anyway, during the process of selecting and ordering my hat, I chatted a fair bit with Brent Black, hatter extraordinaire. Knowing me, the conversation probably included me making a comment like, “I envy you your job. What a great business!” Mr. Black promptly replied with, “Well, why don’t you consider getting into the business?”

From there, we chatted about hatters in New York that I might apprentice with so I could learn to block hats. We even briefly touched on the possibility that I’d relocate and work with him a bit to really polish my skills. The idea petered out, probably because I lacked confidence in myself at the time. This was shortly after the academic world had gleefully pummeled my work and self-confidence.

Now, wounds licked and (mostly) healed, I wonder if I let a golden opportunity pass me by.

Winter Wonderings

'Twas the day after Christmas,
And the couple surveyed
The pieces of puzzle,
The joint gift they obtained.

The past few years, Jen and I have used Christmas as a time to purchase a gift for ourselves, something we can do together. This year, we bought a couple of new board games since we enjoy playing games like Yahtzee, Risk, and Word Thief. We also bought a Lego set to assemble.

As kids, we both had the Lego building sets, but we never had the specially designed kits to assemble that are so popular now. So, we decided to try building one of the kits together. We chose the space shuttle because we both had fond memories of the shuttle program as kids, and it looked like a set that would challenge us but not be impossible to build.

We started working on it Christmas Day, and we got the shuttle assembled before going to bed. I'm not sure how many hours it took because we really weren't keeping track. We worked on it for a bit, and then we watched a Christmas movie or talked to relatives. Then, we built a bit more.

On Wednesday, we worked on assembling the external fuel tank and booster rockets. Assembling a kit like that was a lot of fun, and it gave us a chance to work together on a project while laughing and joking around. Truly, enjoying an activity together is the best way to spend time with the person you love.

It was also a great way to spend Christmas since Jen caught a Christmas cold. I had a cold two weeks ago, and I was afraid she'd catch it. Either it took a bit or she found some other bug via her colleagues or the train. Either way, she's definitely fighting something. I'm hoping she'll feel better soon.

I also hope she didn't pass it to the friends we saw on Christmas Eve. We had dinner at their house before attending a late showing of "The Hobbit." I'd really feel terrible if they caught her cold since they have friends coming in for New Year's. It's the time of year when lots of stuff goes around, I know. I just hope our flu shots do some good this winter.

Musings on the Holidays

Recently, I haven't written as regularly in my blog as regularly as I intended. That's partly due to work keeping me busy and partly due to pure laziness. Writing a blog with consistency takes discipline, which I don't always have. Writing an interesting blog takes either an incredible amount of conceit (in other words, being in love with the sound of one's own voice) or a "damn the torpedoes" mentality to compel the writer to write regardless of what others think about it. While I admit to both "flaws" from time to time, I don't have either attitude as often as I need it to succeed as a writer. Hence, the frequent breaks in my blogging, which usually coincide with a sense of "all my writing is pure crap." Ah, the vagaries of the creative personality.

Enough navel-gazing. We're currently in the midst of the holiday season and all its joys and stresses. I like the holidays because they're full of good memories from the past, as well as good food and extra time with the love of my life. Some of my favorite memories from the past are school holiday concerts when I was in my high school's chorus, as well as earlier Christmases when I was still little and in love with the spirit of the season. And, each year is a chance to build new memories with Jen.

Holidays in recent years have been good, although I think a number of family and friends might doubt that. Both Jen and I come from families that tend toward what I term as "big productions" at the holidays. That is, both our families do lots of decorating for the holidays, with big trees, fancy little touches throughout the house, large meals, parties, and so forth. In contrast, we don't put up any decorations, really. The one exception is an "Old World Santa" my mother made for us. He looks like the Dutch Sinterklaas and comes with a Zwarte Piet, which Mom crafted in honor of Jen's Dutch ancestry. That duo comes out each year.

As for fancy meals with lots of people, Jen and I tend to shy away from those kinds of holiday parties. That's partly because neither of us is really the "party" type. We don't enjoy being in crowded, noisy rooms full of people. We prefer smaller, quieter gatherings, and we often shun even those to spend time at home. Frankly, my favorite place to be is wherever she is.

One reason we tend to avoid big gatherings is that we can't really relax around other people and be ourselves. Instead, we both feel a need to behave differently when we're around other people, especially if the people around us are mostly straight. When we're around other people, neither of us exhibits those little intimacies that most other couples (whether gay or straight) seem able to display. We don't casually touch one another on the arm or shoulder, not even if we're trying to get one another's attention. You certainly won't see any hugs or quick pecks, even if we're around some of our closest friends. That's probably why so many people assume we're sisters, rather than a couple. We just don't display the kind of connection people expect from a couple, and we don't have many gay or lesbian couples in our lives to socialize with.

If we're around our relatives, It's even harder to tell that we're a couple.The old joke about acting straight is a part of our lives when we visit family. Ironically, we've been out to all of our immediate families for nearly twenty years (ever since coming out together), and yet we still "straighten up" when we're around our parents or siblings. That's probably a holdover from the early years when we were trying to get our families to accept us, and now it's just an old habit we can't change. It does, however, make us hesitant to spend long periods of time around our families since we can't really relax and be ourselves with them. That inability to relax, especially during the already-stressful holiday season, keeps us from braving the travel nightmare that a holiday trip would require.

In reading back over this post, I'm a bit surprised at the direction it took. I certainly don't want anyone to feel bad or to make it sound like we don't enjoy the holidays or our families. We absolutely do enjoy the holiday season and being around family. It's just that our holiday celebrations are usually much quieter and more private than the ones we grew up experiencing. Since moving to New York, we've added a few new traditions, like dinner and a movie on or near Christmas with a friend of mine from graduate school and her husband. We also like checking out the big tree displayed at Rockefeller Center, along with the holiday windows at places like Macy's. And, we've added our own tradition of ordering Boudin's sourdough bread from San Francisco for our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

As a couple who chose not to have children, it took us time to figure out what the holidays mean to us and to design celebrations of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's that are meaningful and satisfying. Much of the holiday "spirit" and expectations for holiday activities revolve around young children and family gatherings or big parties of couples, and none of those activities really resonated with us. I think it took us both reaching a sense of being "comfortable in our own skins" (which seemed to coincide with our early thirties) before we really felt like our holiday celebrations gave us what we wanted from them. At least, I know it worked that way for me.

Some of my old friends from childhood are starting to face "empty nests" with their kids in high school and college. I have a feeling they'll soon find a need to change their holiday plans, and I'm interested to see the kinds of celebrations they'll design after their children are grown.

A Shift in Focus

Thus far, November has been an interesting month. I heaved a sigh of relief last week that the 2012 Presidential campaign finally came to an end, which also meant an end to the flood of campaign commercials. Living in New York City, the local networks play ads for New York candidates, New Jersey candidates, and Connecticut candidates. I’m so glad I won’t see those people’s names or faces for a little while. And, I’m certain I speak for a lot of political junkies when I say I’m quickly reaching the point where I hate all politicians and all political parties equally. The Citizens United decision was a fiasco, and it’s time for a Constitutional change that outlaws the SuperPACs and corporations buying elections.

But, I digress. Politics is absolutely the last thing I wish to discuss this week. Instead, I’m looking at a shift in focus as a writer in my creative work. This shift was prompted by my attempt to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year. I’ve tried this in the past, typically with dismal results. This year, sadly, was no different. I quickly found myself behind in the word count by the first weekend. A 2-day migraine this past week ensured that I won’t be catching up this month.

Between NaNoWriMo and a mystery writing class I took about a decade ago, I have a few different novels in various stages knocking around in a drawer. Slowly, the idea is dawning that writing a novel may not be the right move for me as a writer at this stage of my career. I recently saw a suggestion for poets to try writing a poem a day for a poetic version of NaNoWriMo, and somehow that project seems more attainable than cranking out 50,000 words in 30 days does. Therefore, I’m going to shift focus starting tomorrow morning and work on writing a poem a day until mid-December.

What challenges have you attempted recently? How did they turn out? If you weren’t successful, how can you reshape the challenge so that it’s more attainable?

An Update from Brooklyn, Post-Sandy

I’ll start my post-Hurricane Sandy blog post by assuring my readers that we weathered the storm safely at home. Our neighborhood in Brooklyn is in “Zone C,” which the city designates as an area that would only be evacuated if a category 3 or 4 storm rolled through. Our apartment is located near the geographic center of Brooklyn, nearly equidistant from all the borough’s waterfronts. So, we’re well away from the areas that were hit by flooding and the storm surge.

During the worst of the storm, our power flickered a bit, and it actually went totally black for a few seconds, only to come back on again. We also lost our Internet connection briefly, but it also came back up within a few minutes. That was rather amazing, since we’ve had longer power and Internet outages caused by much milder thunderstorms. We were extremely lucky, and we know it.

Now that the storm has passed, our biggest obstacle is our location in Brooklyn’s geographic center. Many of the subway lines near us haven’t been restored yet or are only running piecemeal. So, if we wanted to get into Manhattan (where Jen’s employer is located), we’d either need to take the subway to a bus transfer point and catch the shuttle into Manhattan or take the subway to a bridge and walk into Manhattan. Plenty of people are doing exactly that, and I admire them for it. Fortunately, Jen can work from home and is spared that process. (The New York Times has a great blog rolling here with stories about the lines for buses, the impromptu carpooling, and the gas shortages.)

 As that blog shows, this storm has brought out the best in many New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. Some examples include folks randomly starting carpools to cross the bridges, a house in Hoboken that ran extension cords and surge protectors outside so neighbors without power could recharge cell phones, and the residents of the East Side who helped carry patients out of NYU’s Langone Medical Center during the storm when its power and backup power sources failed. Truly, disasters can bring out the best in people.

Sadly, though, storms can also bring out the worst. We’ve learned that the death toll from the city continues to rise, with 38 people killed in NYC’s five boroughs (as of 5:00 pm on 11/01/12). Most of those deaths were on Staten Island, where children and the elderly make up a large number of those killed. Many of the storm’s victims were in the areas that should have been evacuated. We haven’t heard why the elderly victims weren’t evacuated, but I surmise they may not have had assistance to leave.

When I hear about the youngest victims of the storm, I’m filled with both rage and sorrow. In one case, a 13-year-old girl was found only a short distance from her home. Her parents ignored the evacuation order because their home didn’t suffer any effects from Irene in August 2011. In addition, one of their neighbors said the family came home from the Irene evacuation to find that the house had been burglarized. So, the girl’s parents decided to ride out the storm at home. Her mother is in the hospital, while her father is still missing.

Another woman lost her two sons, both under the age of four, when their SUV stalled in the floodwaters. She tried carrying them to safety, but they were pulled away from her in the storm. They had tried to stay home until water started coming in, and then attempted to flee during the brunt of the storm.

While I know it’s probably not fair to second-guess the decisions of these parents now, I find it hard to resist doing exactly that. I just can’t fathom placing a child in jeopardy. It’s one thing if an adult wants to make a foolish decision and suffers the consequences of that choice. But children shouldn’t be placed in harm’s way because an adult is too stubborn or foolish to evacuate when a storm is approaching.

Back to the good from the storm, since that’s where I want to keep my focus. The storm also brought out some neighborly feeling, even among those of us who were minimally affected by the storm. The area where Jen and I live has a very large Hasidic Jewish population, along with a lot of Pakistani and Russian immigrants. Usually, our Jewish neighbors won’t talk to us since we’re clearly Gentiles. The other groups also don’t talk to us much for similar reasons. But following the storm, we were walking around the neighborhood to see how bad the damage in the area might be. During our walk, the neighbors we encountered asked how we were. I’m sure we’ll all go back to our usual distance when life returns to normal, but the storm briefly broke down the barriers between us. I’m grateful for that.  

I’m sure the coming days and weeks will bring out more stories of both heroism and heartache from the storm. I don’t want this blog to become nothing but a recounting of Sandy’s affects on the city; however, I’m sure I’ll discuss it again when a particularly compelling story catches my eye.

To all those who weathered the storm and are now in the rebuilding process, my thoughts and prayers are with you.

Coming Storms (Both Literal and Figurative)

This autumn has turned out to be full of surprises. I mentioned in a post earlier this month that several people close to me were facing some challenges in personal and work relationships. This past week brought new updates on two of the three situations.

Our friends here in New York are coming ever closer to needing new employment, which could mean they need to leave the U.S. permanently. That really bothers me, since the couple has been in the U.S. for over a decade. They’re the kind of hard working, well-educated people we want to stay in this country. My friend is an accomplished scholar with a Ph.D. in English, and her husband is a gifted graphic designer, yet the expense of sponsoring someone for a green card means neither can find an employer willing to support their efforts to stay in the U.S. permanently.

A relative who is facing some relationship challenges has let me know that some additional factors are involved in that situation. Some of the things I’ve learned about that situation don’t surprise me, although it makes me wish I were in a position to travel and visit that relative right now. I think being there could help, but it’s just not an option. In that earlier post, I mentioned how frustrated I feel when I can’t fix things, and this is definitely a situation where life is telling me to “sit and stay!” I just don’t happen to appreciate the message.

As if those personal storms weren’t enough, the weather forecast for the next few days suggests that the Northeast may be hit with an actual storm, in the form of Hurricane Sandy. Current predictions (as of Friday a.m.) suggest the storm could hit New York City early Tuesday morning. The forecast suggests the winds and rain from that storm will collide with a winter storm from the west and cold air from Canada, which could lead to heavier rains and/or snowfall. Plus, Monday will be a full moon, meaning higher tides and increased likelihood of flooding. Oh, and all of this could occur right after Jen’s birthday, which is Sunday.

With luck, none of those things will happen, but Jen and I are stocking up on supplies just in case. It’s a bit ironic. We left Arizona (where the worst weather-related issues were heat stroke, lightning-sparked wildfires, and flooding from monsoon rains) to move to Seattle, with its earthquakes, snow-capped volcanoes, and occasional winter snow or ice storms. Then, we moved from Seattle to Brooklyn.

In our six years in Brooklyn, we’ve had an earthquake, a tropical storm/hurricane, blizzards, flooding, tornadoes, and heat waves. For people who like to plan ahead and have control over situations, we sure picked an odd place to live. There’s not much we can do about the weather, other than prepare and hope for the best. Come to think of it, that’s all we can do about any of these situations. And, letting things take their course isn't really our strong suit.