Looking Back

Piglet and Steven head south

 Le cerveau est contrariant. Il oublie bien trop vite ce qu'on a besoin de se souvenir et ne se souvient que trop bien ce qu'on a besoin d'oublier.

The brain is a contrarian. It forgets all too quickly what we need to remember and remembers all too well what we need to forget.

I began blogging 5 years ago to work my way through my midlife crisis and attempt to find myself. I can now honestly say I am still lost! But I learned a little about myself.

Nasturtium in my garden
September 2010

My midlife crisis has been backward. Just as everyone in my peer group is becoming unsettled and breaking from obligations, I long for something or someone to call home. Many of my peers, recently divorced and/or with children old enough to spread their own wings, are reasserting their independence. I, who have been fiercely independent my whole life, never married, no kids, now yearn for a solid anchor point. Unfortunately, I still make the same mistakes: I fall hardest for the unattainable, and I think that will always be the case. The heart wants what it wants and mine always seems to want the impossible.

I've always been an oddball, though, so it should be no surprise that my midlife crisis is also atypical. Not that I didn't have fun. Even I did Burning Man in the late 1980s. But it was different then, smaller, full of creative flow, special. Now it's a professionally managed event, a spectacle for the masses that throng to it now. Too many people for me.

Japanese Iris in my garden

September 2010

So now I seek stability, but it eludes, even with regard to simple things. I will soon lose my faithful, ever-vigilant companion. My housemate is moving to Southern California, so of course, Piglet will join him sometime in the coming months. I will miss them both, but mostly I'll miss my quadripedal companion who accompanies me everywhere within walking distance.

I dread finding a new housemate. My previous housemate told me after he moved in that he couldn't pay rent, then stayed 3 years on the vague promise that he would pay his debt in full when he found work. I also worked my last job for free for a year on the vague promise my pay would be backfilled if/when the company received funding. As my financial situation descends into desperation, I hope to break free of being a sucker. But even more, I don't want to take advantage of others' kindness and fail to pay obligations I may accrue. I fear becoming my ex roommate more than I fear remaining a pushover.

As I type this in the wee hours of a sleepless night, the first winds of autumn are rattling my windows and shaking my trees and they sound fairly strong. They remind me that my neighbor's walnut tree, which is slowly dying, is leaning precariously over my garage. Maybe this is a good week to prune it back...

Blogging Awards

Assorted vegetables from my garden

(the water was "dyed" by the bougainvillea)

July 2010

In January, Gelisa gave me a Blogger Appreciation Award, an award  that bloggers pass on to other bloggers. The process allows people to connect to new people, and to find out a little more about their current contacts through their reading interests and a stipulation that the bloggers granting the award tell a few (actually seven) facts about themselves.

By coincidence, I expressed appreciation last week for several blogs I read, and then, Linda also passed on two blogging awards to me.

And with that, I figured I should at the very least make an effort to thank them. You met Linda in my last entry, but not Gelisa.  Gelisa is an accountant, musician, mother, wife whose break with her mother's family sometimes haunts her. While her primary blog is in French, she also keeps a blog in English, which she updates a bit less frequently. Many thanks to both Linda and Gelisa, who not only thought of me, but also took the time to continue the chain.

As for the award, I'm going to take the lazy way out and confer it upon those I mentioned last week, and leave it up to them as to whether they choose to pass it on to others. And seven facts about me...

1. I am my mother's daughter and at my best somewhere between 5 in the evening and 4 in the morning. Needless to say, I hate mornings. I keep a notepad next to my bed, because I will invariably wake up in the middle of the night with a possible solution to some problem or some item I need to add to my list of tasks.

2. I work too much. Maybe it comes from my parents, who practically lived at their pharmacy, maybe it's because I began working for them as soon as I was old enough to wield a dust cloth without breaking anything too precious. I have been known to put in more hours on the job (in the office and at home) than most people and still be focused enough to be highly productive. The downside is that my identity is tied to my job, and now that I'm unemployed, I feel like a non-entity. I am nothing.

3. I'm a loner, and yet constantly lonely, even when with people. Try to figure that one out!

4. I lack self esteem and most of the time, I don't like myself. In spite of having been a high achiever, I have never been happy with what I've done or who I am. I'm incredibly insecure and have been known to push away those I care about the most in fear of being hurt.

5. I am one of the few middle-aged people on this earth who has never been married, never had children and never planned for either. I would love to be able to share my life with someone, but I'm not an easy person to live with, probably due to that self esteem thing, so I will probably spend the rest of my days alone, as well.

6. I dream about improving educational systems in underserved areas, which is a monumental task that I don't think I'm up to. People like to scapegoat the teachers in those schools, but the problem is way beyond a few bad teachers. It is a system set up so that more resources are diverted to compliance issues and administration than to direct student services, and home situations that often discourage scholarship and discipline. How do we combat that?

7. One of my big worries is the constant, gradual stripping away of citizens' rights and increasing  dominance by an elite few. The powers that be use crises, our own prejudices and partisanship, and even our need to be entertained to accomplish that, and we are falling for it hook, line and sinker. In a visually oriented world, we are most fascinated by those who speak passionately, using catch phrases and sound bites that don't add up to a logical conclusion but stir up strong emotional reactions. Somewhere in there, we forgot how to think for ourselves. And "they" are using this to their advantage, as well.

That's me. And that's seven. Please do take a look at my last entry and visit the blogs there.  Actually, take a little time to peruse my reading list. Everyone there is there for a reason.

On a Lighter Note...

After the last bummer of an entry, I'm moving to something lighter. With 4+ years of blogging under my belt, I'm always disappointed to discover my writing skills haven't improved! Granted, blogging for me was never an exercise in writing so much as self-discovery to help me through my midlife crisis, which, oddly enough, is still going strong. But since these sites allow picture uploads, I can make up for my lack of writing skill with bad photography! And so, I've decided to make this entry a pictorial dedication to a few fellow bloggers I've connected with here...

I admit it, a giant photo of her Stuart Weitzman pumps first attracted me to Middle Aged Woman Blogging. [EDIT: I also like her Kickin' Ass and Taking Names... tagline!] Although our lives have been nothing alike, I feel as though we share some of those growing pains brought on by midlife. In honor of MAWB, not the highest or most expensive pair of heels I own, but the red patent...

Red pumps, 2008 (please excuse my worn out floor)

I found Wander to the Wayside while searching gardening enthusiasts... and discovered a person of substance. If you read nothing else on her blog, check out the series she wrote about discovering her biological mother through the records from the orphanage where she lived several months as an infant. In honor of Linda, I snapped this courgette blossom from my garden. The seedling appeared in my compost one day, and is from a light green zucchini I bought at the farmer's market. Funny, I usually cook zucchini seeds and all...

Squash blossom, July 2010

Confession: Elizabeth is a friend of one of my exes, so I didn't meet her through blogging. But she is a talented designer and free spirit, who has been known to drop everything, move to a new place AND not just survive, but thrive. I always enjoy her photos of her travels, even the ones of familiar sites, because she always has an interesting perspective. My regret with this photo is that it isn't very creative. On the few occasions I leave my house to have a drink, I go to the Uptown. It's low-key and I like the details in the bar, the egg(?) strip along the top, the Corinthian columns, the pipe cleaner men lined up along the top and the old-time pharmacy drawer pulls.

The Uptown, June 2009

An Englishman in Southern Germany will always hold a special place in my heart. When I wanted to "see" what life is like where he lives, he introduced me to photoblogs and Phonecam 365, the photoblog of an Englishman in Saarland, and the first blog I "followed" on Blogger. AB likes rusty metal and shows the mundane in unique perspectives. My housemate welded together this now rusty stove from scrap metal while he lived in a shipping container in a welding yard. It was his lifeline in the winter, and now it enjoys its retirement as conversation piece and occasional s'mores heater. I dedicate this photo to both AB and my Lobo, wherever he is now.

Woodstove pieced together from scrap metal, July 2010

(yes, my house really is THAT yellow)

Blackandwhiteandcolours is another photo blog from Southern Germany, with a twist. Martina combines her photos, usually black and white, although she throws in a colour shot here and there, with a quote from a book or story she is currently reading. I've seen snails in a few of her photos, these two (and the bug with them) are from my garden. Alas, I don't have a matching quote, so I'll pick something from my current read...  "Merriweather was the King of the Game, the Liar's Poker champion of the Salomon Brothers trading floor." Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis.

Garden snails, July 2010

Tim visited my blog first, so I visited his blog, Catnip, an amalgam of fiction, poetry and commentary, quid pro quo. He's a Renaissance man and hard to define in one photo, but he recently posted photos of his cats and dog. I thought about posting yet another Piglet photo, but instead, I'm going to toot my own horn and post stellar sea lions recently used on the Schmapp tourism guide (one of hundreds, uncompensated, so not much of an honor). It should be the first photo to appear in the upper right box and if you click on the photo, it takes you to my Flickr account, where they found the photo.

 Stellar Sea Lions, Pier 39 San Francisco, August 2009

 This post is not exhaustive of my reading list, and I had more blogs in mind, but the length of this post is becoming a bit unwieldy, I'm running out of photos, it's 1:30 at night, AND I have to remember to visit everyone I mentioned to let them know I have something for them. Perhaps I'll find the energy to continue on another post...

[EDIT: another confession... I've been trending toward crazy lately with wild mood swings, and in the process, even though I've been trying to keep away from everyone, have managed to alienate a few people who are dear to me. If any of those people happen by this blog, I'm sorry. Life in general is so uncertain right now. Not an excuse, but an attempt at an explanation.]