I’m wearing green today, homage to St. Patrick’s Day in America.
I don’t celebrate holidays much, and celebrate them less as I age. I don’t look forward to them much. Putting out decorations rarely occurs to me.
After thinking about it, I’ve realized that I little associate with the external world. Events are remote. I live by and enjoy the internal worlds created as I imagine and write. It’s a problem, and it’s a benefit. The problem is that my wife is exasperated because I’m not all up about holidays like other people. The benefit is that I feel like I’m successfully writing, and that makes me happy. Like most things in life, the value is on a sliding spectrum, and changes often.
I suppose I could change it, or try, since I’m now aware, but I’m not inclined to do that – for now.
Well, maybe not dead. The motor runs, it makes all the expected noises, the lights come on, it runs around, and air comes out, but the brushes aren’t turning, and it’s not picking up. Roomba support is urging me to call them, which I’ll do. I want to get to the bottom of this.
The Roomba has lasted only a few years. It’s our third Roomba. The first two died mysterious deaths. I eventually learned that my cat was pissing on it.
That surprised us. Lady was a sweet rescue. Never put a paw wrong. All she wanted was some food, a quiet place in sunshine, and a warm lap. We were happy to oblige.
It was a surprise to discover she was pissing on the Roomba in her final months. She didn’t like the Roomba; it disturbed her rest. I figured she said to herself, “I’m dying and I’m going to piss on that machine before I go. What are they going to do? Kill me?”
The Roomba folks were good about it. A refurbished machine was provided at a discount price. We kept Lady away from it.
The Roomba’s decline and possible death is parcel to a larger pattern. We bought our house in 2006. They’d just finished building it. Brand spanking new to use a cliche that I know but don’t really understand (how does spanking fit in?), my wife and I were the house’s first occupants.
All the appliances were new. Everything. Yet, in the eleven years we’ve lived here, we’ve had issues.
The central vac system developed a control board problem at five years. We had to replace the unit.
The water heater’s thermal coupler went out after seven years. When it happened again a year later, we replaced the water heater.
Also at seven years, the gas furnace’s control module died and was replaced.
At nine years, the central air’s capacitor died. It happened again the next year, but the repair tech had taught me about it, so I saved labor and replaced the part myself.
At seven years, we became suspicious of the range’s oven. It’s a gas unit. Gas isn’t something we like to mess with, so a repair tech was summoned. Parts were tested but nothing resolved. We bought an internal thermometer to hang in the oven. It confirmed that the oven is erratic and unpredictable, rarely at the temperature that it’s set.
Our solar panel’s inverter’s control board died earlier this year, one month short of its tenth anniversary. We received a new board free of charge but paid for labor. We’ve been keeping an eye on the system.
Meanwhile, plastic panels that house the buttons on the range, dishwasher, and washer have all cracked and splintered, which we first noticed in 2013, when these appliances were but seven years old.
The microwave began collecting condensation inside the door, and then rust appeared inside the door, and grew.
Naturally, these things angered my wife and me. These are Maytag, Kenmore, Rheem, etc. Supposed to be quality stuff, maybe not the apex of quality, but high enough up the pyramid that you wouldn’t expect these issues.
So, I did what I always do when encountering problems: I researched. I looked for how common these issues are, and how difficult and pricey they are to fix. I did this each time things happened.
I learned that water heaters will usually last seven years in modern America. Most other appliances die at ten years. That’s our new standard.
We learned that most dishwashers are manufactured in one giant factory. So are ranges and microwaves.
I learned that the control panel’s broken plastic can only be repaired by replacing the entire control panel assembly, and it’s not cheap. Replacing that still leaves us vulnerable to other parts and assemblies breaking because, hey, they’re ten years old. That’s their expected life.
Appliances are being replaced. We’re not happy about it, but we’re fortunate that we’re financially secure and can do this without significant strain. Let me tell you, it’s not a cheap process.
We’re beginning with the microwave and range. New ones have been purchased. We’re awaiting their delivery and installation.
We’re not certain what we’re going to do about the rest. Only our refrigerator, a Jenn-Air, is still running as expected and hoped for when we purchased it. We’ve looked at washers and dryers, and dishwashers. They’re not cheap, America. More, it annoys us on a fundamental economic and social level, even philosophical, you might say, that these appliances require replacements. Our parents had appliances that lasted them a lifetime. So do our older friends. It’s irritating that America has succumbed to this new and wasteful approach.
I wasn’t satisfied with how things were going last month. I was in a tunnel, that tunnel shaped my life and attitude. There were no lights in my tunnel. Changes were needed to provide me a light to look to at the end of the tunnel. So, on a whim in August, unmentioned to anyone, I sought to make five changes.
I quit drinking mochas every day.
Priorities were re-evaluated and shifted.
I re-balanced myself.
Alcohol intake was reduced.
I began drinking apple cider vinegar every morning.
My decision to stop drinking quad-shot mochas during my writing routine at the coffee shop freaked my barista buddies. I had to assure them, it wasn’t them, it was me. I didn’t explain why, though, just ordering black coffee. I’ve had two mochas since August 27, when I stopped, but they were of the weak Starbucks variety, which is more like mild hot chocolate than anything else, and were accepted when another bought them for me.
To re-evaluated priorities, I had to change how I approached blogging and my Fitbit activities. I’d become almost obsessive compulsive about establishing goals for them and following through. I had to remind myself, they’re not as important as other life matters. I blog far less. My daily Fitbit goals are met, but they’re the last item of focus.
Re-balancing myself required the biggest effort. I posted about it in The Resentful Writer.
I’m not and wasn’t a ‘big’ drinker. I liked having a glass of red wine in the evening. I stopped it. I haven’t had wine, except at one dinner, in three weeks. I reduced my beer intake. I enjoyed a beer when my wife and I went out to eat, so I took a pass a few times, and I forsook my Wednesday evenings spent having a beer with friends.
The apple cider vinegar was last. I think it’s the most drastic step. I’m frustrated with my digestive system. I’d recently read about the Kansas City Chiefs, an American pro football team. They like pickle juice as an electrolyte. A few days later, a friend told me that her late husband loved pickles, so she had a huge stash of pickles of different varieties, and she doesn’t like pickles. I told her about the Chiefs and pickle juice, and she reciprocated by remarking that people often come up with interesting remedies, such as apple cider vinegar. She couldn’t remember what people drink it for. I made a note to look it up later. The results I found enticed me to try it.
She has decided she will have her breasts removed.
Not easily decided, she’d been moving along this river since she first discovered that she and the gender binary structure of the modern western world didn’t match up well. She didn’t feel female, and when she acted upon her urges, she was a lesbian. But she had no desire to be a man, with a penis hanging between her legs. That didn’t appeal to her at all. Just because she wasn’t a woman, it didn’t mean she wanted to be man.
It’s a shocking decision to most, to cut off her breasts, because it’s outside of their realm of normal expectations to cut off healthy tissue. She accepts it as healthy tissue, but not as a part of her. She’s never liked them, perhaps, he speculates, because others tried to define her by this outward trait. Breasts, after all, seem to be the defining trait for American women. Heterosexual males in America love to see breasts displayed, as long as they’re refined into shapes thrust upon Victoria’s Secret models, and aren’t being used to breastfeed a child in public. Egads, has she no shame?
That’s unfair, he cries, for he is a man, and he doesn’t think like that, except he secretly does, due to the vein of social sexual commercialization in which he was raised. He recognizes the absurdity and hypocrisy, and fights it as he can.
He thinks about the thirty-year-old woman having her breasts removed. He was fortunate to be born a sex and sexual preference with which his society is comfortable. He fits neatly into the gender binary slots. He’s never had to think through having his penis removed, for example, for any reason. He thought, what if I was her? What if I was a female, and hated my breasts, and wanted them removed? He thought about the strength and clarity such a decision needed. He thought about the woman and her intelligence, creativity, and personality. None of that would change.
Strong people come in all shapes and genders, even if it defies our categorization. But Jesus, why do we need these categories, anyway?
I caught myself in a neat trap. I set it, and walked myself into it. I’d been trapped in it for a few weeks before I realized what had happened.
To step back, I bought a Fitbit last January. I like it. I enjoy walking. Walking, like writing, helps me think. The Fitbit tracked my walking and gave me quantified results. That was beautiful. I had goals, and could stretch myself against those goals. Great.
Similar to playing video games, walking and measuring my progress and activities sucked me in. I play video games every day. They’re small, online games; I don’t let myself buy or enroll in more, because I know I’ll get sucked into them. It happened a long time ago with a computer game called “Empire.” The game with its attendant strategies and tactics sucked me in. Huge swaths of time and energy were lost to playing that game. It was an ugly lesson learned.
It was also an insight into myself. Like many people, I hunt validation about who I am, and my relative merits. They’re hard to come by in the modern world, especially when you’re in the military or working for a corporation. They like to give you “Atta-boys.” That’s a reward where they beam at you, and say, “Thanks. Well done!” Yes, it worked for a while, but as I realized the emptiness of those rewards, and the challenges became easier and easier, the rewards became meaningless for me. Winning video games became more rewarding in my schema, thus validating me.
Coping with myself and my tendencies, I began seeking things that can be tangibly measured to reward me. In turning to writing, I discovered, hey, I can achieve the same sort of satisfaction by writing one to two thousand words a day. That made me feel good about myself. Finishing a story made me feel better. Selling one made me feel great.
In the cascading process, I then went after another prize: writing a novel. Each step in the process was again a tangible reward, an objective achieved. From finishing a chapter to finishing a novel was a wonderful experience.
Selling it, however, was not easy. Dejected with the publishing process, I went the Amazon publishing route. The rewards fall miles short of my hopes and dreams. So….
Writing became less rewarding. Well, writing remains rewarding. I find writing novels to be akin to solving logic problems. They hold an inherent challenge and reward. But writing doesn’t provide me the validation from outside myself that I know I need. Being thin-skinned and insecure, I need huge quantities of validation.
Enter the Fitbit.
Just like that, I started increasing my goals and exceeding them. I stretched goals from ten thousand steps to fourteen thousand steps, from five miles to six, to seven, to eight.
Naturally, these goals absorbed time and energy, especially in these summer months when it’s ninety degrees or more. Reluctantly, I realized, I needed to draw back from the Fitbit and the walking goals, because they were distracting me from my writing goals and activities. Why, of course, was obvious: the Fitbit goals were tangible and reachable. Writing goals of writing novels, publishing them, and selling novels were tangible, but not easy reached. Not reaching them despite the efforts made became a depressing effort. Mad sequences of Peggy Lee singing, “Is that all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing,” kept streaming into my head. “Let’s break out the booze, and have a ball. If that’s all. There is.”
So, seizing myself by my metaphysical scruff, I drag myself away from Fitbit goals and re-prioritized. Whereas I had been targeting six to ten thousand steps before writing, I now write first, and then hunt the steps and miles.
Someday, I believe, or hope, that I’ll find something more, something that will finally quiet the desperation and disillusionment in me. Meanwhile, I’m going to avoid boozing, except for a few beers and wine, reduce my Fitbit goals, and keep on writing.
Her car is a large Mercedes luxury sports utility vehicle. She is petite, white and blonde.
It had been raining. Now it was sprinkling, but it remained cloudy. Rain could re-commence in a heartbeat.
So she parked in the no-parking zone in front of the coffee shop. The car is big and she is small, so she left it four feet from the red curb. Pedestrians and cars struggled to go around her in the narrow lane.
It didn’t matter. As long as number one was taken care of, everything else would work out.
Mucking through the morass of memories, moods, and meditation, I sought other directions. I wondered about my surfeit of wild dreams, trying to gauge, do others dream so much? It was like the Dream Network – Dreams, 24/7. (Your dreams on the eights.) Or is it that I’m just remembering more dreams? Maybe others remember but don’t talk about their dreams, citing their upbringing: “Mom always told me it’s not polite to talk about your dreams.” That needs modernizing: “Mom texted me it’s not PC to blog about yr dreams.”
Out of the meditations and meanderings, I remembered Florence Scovel Shinn. Following a whim, I duckduckgo’d her and found a website devoted to her. (What we can google but not duckduckgo? Yeah, it’s not as clean, is it? I predict it won’t catch on.)
On FSS’s page is an opportunity to do a random affirmation. I clicked the button, and this came up:
“The four winds of success now blow to me my own. From North, South, East and Wet comes my endless good.”
A pleasant sentiment, and apropos for a windy day. At the least, I read it and smiled before urging myself, “Come on, believe.”
I’m wearing a green shirt because autumn is slinking in. Jeans have replaced shorts. I’ve added a sweatshirt as an outer garment but other than that, little has changed. I’m still drinking my quad shot non-fat, no-whip mocha. No pumpkin spice lattes for me, thanks. Lattes always remind me of a “what’s the use?” A WTU is non-fat, no-whip and decaf, without much coffee in it. Tastes like steamed milk to me. Really, WTF, WTU? Yes, I know, drinks are personal matters for humans, and how a person drinks their coffee is between them and their barista. I know many are appalled by my QSM, or abhorred that, ye gods, I have coffee and chocolate mixed together. My preference is a twelve ounce cup of this, so there’s little milk in it. It’s mostly chocolate flavored espresso.
Some people read that and shuddered. I felt it all the way over here.
Yes, autumn arrived a few weeks ago in the world’s northern half, in theory. Although leaves began changing while summer was indulging us with heat and sunshine, green is now saying, “Let’s make like a bird and get the flock out of here.” So I’m wearing green, as a small compensation for nature’s attitude.
October, while not my favorite month, is an important month for me. I can’t say I have a favorite month. I’m too hunkered down to properly celebrate holidays and seasons. I’m working on it but the celebratory gene seems to have skipped me.
October gained its status for me because of choices. I went on military active duty in October, left in October, returned in October, received several promotions in October and put in my military retirement papers in October. Two out of two houses were purchased in October. First airplane flight was in October, etc.
I feel something about October. Regardless of what else transpires globally, October re-invigorates my personal mojo. October may not be my favorite, but I love October.
Here we are, then, in October again. This is it. Time to plunge back onto the CSC Narwhal and the battle between the Narwhal, Intrepid and Missouri. It’s an exciting, intense place for me to be as the writer. The characters, scenes and development haunted and shadowed all other activities yesterday, impatiently tearing at the borders maintained between the writing life and ‘the rest’. I’d take a bite of food, nod at another’s comment, and realize a sentence to add or a detail to include. Those of you who write will understand.
Time to drink coffee and write like crazy, at least one more time.
It’s a quiet Labor Day Monday. Labor Day has always been on Monday in my lifetime. My adopted state, Oregon, was the first state to establish Labor Day by law. I’m not always so proud of Oregon and its history, especially up in Portland, which was yugely racist.
The Atlantic points to Utah as a powerful swing state for this US presidential election, emblematic of the larger problems voters face, that their candidates aren’t popular and most are voting the lessor of evils in their minds. I felt the Bern, myself.
Poor Brock Turner, right? People are pretty pissed at the convicted rapist who spent only three months in jail. Poor guy, who would think that his fifteen minutes of fame would ruin his life after an act of violence his father blamed on a culture of alcohol and partying. Consider me one of those pissed at him.
Only one Howard Johnson restaurant remain open in the United States. They were once as ubiquitous as GC Murphy, Woolworths, Sears and Montgomery Ward. I think I ate at one once. I know I ate more often at GC Murphy, where $1.00 bought three subs. I also ate at Woolworths, as my local town had one with a daily blue plate special.
Of course, computer games were once the province of children.
What were once treats are now normal. We rarely ate pizzas when I was growing up. Pizza places were small, family owned businesses with a few tables, never anything fancy. Now, wow.
And I never had a taco or burrito while growing up. Mom made spaghetti with meatballs for dinner regularly and lasagna once in a while, but it wasn’t normal to go out to dinner for pasta.
The food thoughts are triggered by dark chocolate salted caramels a house guest presented us. Wow, are they delicious. I’ve heard of salted caramel for a few years now but when did they become a thing? Speaking of chocolate, I didn’t discover dark chocolate until I was older. I’d always preferred Mounds bars but never quite realized it was dark chocolate that so attracted me. Now, fortunately, dark chocolate is as available as, say, lattes, mochas and beer. Once upon a time, growing up in Pittsburgh, PA, I thought Stroh’s, Miller, Hamm’s, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Rolling Rock and Old Milwaukee were the only beers available, and that Rolling Rock was the best! I haven’t had any of those beers in yonks, at least since visiting family in America in 1988. Fortunately, I returned to the US from overseas when the micro-brew craze was striking in 1991.
Michael Seidel, writer 