in-de-pen-dent

So. The last two weeks have been a flurry of interactions with men. Older ones. And I've come out of it still single, and glad.

The most recent episode was with a guy I know through the grad school at Notre Dame. I met him at a party in January, and enjoyed his (slightly inebriated) stories. He didn't particularly notice me until a few weeks ago, at a concluding-the-semester party at another student's apartment. Then he asked me out for coffee.

So we went for coffee and had a great time. A few days later we met to walk around on Notre Dame's campus, got caught without shelter in a downpour, hid under the overhang of a monastic building until it let up, went to the grocery store, and hung out at my apartment making smoothies.

But there's always a fly in the ointment. He told me that night, "There's a few things you should know." (That statement is always a red flag.) "I'm a lot older than you, I'm still in love with a woman with whom it will probably never work out, and I've recently started seeing someone. But I find your company delightful."

Okay, I thought; I can always use another friend. And everything seemed more or less okay, except that he was flirtatiously touchy all night, blotting my rain-smeared mascara with his fingertips and such. And then when he went to say goodbye, he gave me a hug...and it was WAY too much of a hug. And I'm very sure (although he denies this) that he kissed my neck.

And after that I was extremely uncomfortable. It felt completely wrong. And he continued to invite me to do lots of one-on-one, datelike stuff with him -- watching movies, going for walks, heading to the Farmer's Market, etc.

I don't like messy relationships with blurry lines of friendship and more-than-friendship. So I e-mailed him and told him that I didn't think we should be spending so much time together, particularly if he's seeing someone. And that I prefer relationships characterized by clarity, and this one wasn't clear.

I got a voicemail from him the next day informing me that he was hurt that I didn't call him or tell him face to face, and asking me to meet him over coffee to talk about it. So I did, last Sunday after church. I explained to him my problems with the too-much-hugging and the neck kiss (although, like I said, he denied it. The only other thing it could have been was boogers from a running nose, and I really don't think it was that). He told me that he cares about me, finds me attractive, knows that I've been suffering and has wanted to help, and that the relationship he's just gotten into with someone else is more like a blurring of the lines of friendship and not an actual relationship.

But I stuck to my guns. "I've never had anyone take care of me," I said. "I've always been the one to take care of everyone else, and take care of myself. When I break down, I do it alone. I fix it alone. I don't know what to do with someone's help."

"I don't date people that I haven't known for awhile," he said. "And I really want to get to know you. I regret that it's working out like this."

"Me too," I said. "And I enjoy your company. But this is what's best for me. And I'll be okay. I always am."

So I said a cordial goodbye and walked away.

It was rough -- for about an hour I wondered if I'd done the right thing. But I know I did. I don't know on what kind of terms he wanted me, but sorry, I don't actually believe that men and women can be intimate friends and stay friends only. I told him this. And for myself I know that I do not want to be some guy's possible back-up plan in case whatever he's doing now doesn't work out. Been there. Hated it. And dude, my friendship is not there for the taking. You have to earn trust, and his body contact with me made all his words of only wanting to be friends into lies. And I don't trust that.

And I don't need some guy to come into my life and fix me. I've had a hard time the past three or four months, but I'm not broken. Just struggling. I don't need fixing. All I want is kindness and support and company. In short, a friend. I can take care of the rest. I've done that all my life. Someone who has an express purpose of helping me or making me better inspires resentment in me, because I become less a friend and autonomous being than some sort of project, some sort of dependent. And I have never been that, or sought to make other people that for me.

So I made a good choice. And right after that coffee meeting I went to spend the day with Meg and Phillip, who have become my family.

It makes me feel so much better about being single. I have chosen this. I have decided what is best for me, and I have acted on it. That's more like me than anything else, and I've been missing that about me lately.

So I'm no longer desperate. And the medication is helping tremendously.

Cue the Mormons

When I got home from work yesterday, two men in suits were standing in front of my porch.

Suits? I thought. Is something federal going down in the hood?

So I approached them and said, "Can I help you?"

And they said, "Yes...we're looking for Sarah."

"That's me," I said. "What can I do for you?"

"Well, we're missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints," they said. "Your doctor told us you were interested in speaking with us."

"He didn't tell me," I said.

So yeah. Apparently the nice old Jewish doctor that I went to see for my antidepressant prescription last Friday is a nice old Mormon doctor...who took it upon himself to give my UNPUBLISHED ADDRESS to these guys to come solicit me for their religion.

Now, it's not like I don't appreciate the thought. But he didn't say anything at all to me about the church, or tell me, "You should talk to these people," or ask me if he could give out my private information to anyone.

And yes, as I was describing my depression to my doctor, I in fact did say that I live far from family and have had trouble finding a church. But I certainly wasn't wanting him to do anything about it beyond signing my precription.

The situation itself was funny. I was very polite and disengaged, and sent them on their way. ("So you're doing the mission thing," I said at one point. "...how's that going for you?") But the circumstances of the situation are frankly a little creepy.

I think that his action was highly unethical for a number of reasons. I mean, you can't even call Information to find me. I'm not only unlisted, I'm unpublished. For the sole reason that I want my privacy, rooted in a desire for the safety of anonymity. And now these missions-oriented men know where I live.

Yargh. Life is weird.

the eternal child

Caught in a downpour yesterday. Puddle-stomping never gets old.

my own private spa

So yes, I feel fairly certain it's sun poisoning. My skin is all clear-blistered and disgusting, and hurts like hot pokers. The color now resembles the center of a very rare steak. A living steak, in fact. And I've been feeling sick to my stomach and intestines all day. I almost threw up from the pain this morning when I eased into my shirt.

So I did a few things at work, looked totally pathetic and garnered lots of sympathy (I really do look like a slab of fried salt pork) and came home early to soothe my terrible pains in a rare luxury that I remember from a bout with the chicken pox when I was five years old:

The oatmeal bath.

I've told a few people about this amazing ritual, and they've looked at me as though I were from a far-off planet or had suddenly sprouted an extra, babbling head. But I tell you, it's the most soothing experience you'll ever have in your bathtub, and it's so incredibly cheap.

Steps to Oatmealed Bliss:

1. Find an old sock, preferably on the large/long side. You know, one of the ones that keep getting divorced from their mates in the dryer. They deserve a sticky fate anyway, the jerks.

2. Fill the sock halfway to three-quarters of the way with dry plain oatmeal. (Soooo cheap.) Knot the sock at the top (a very simple knot will do).

3. Place the sock in the tub and start the water. For best results, keep the sock under the running water.

4. Adjust the water temperature as necessary. (For a cold winter's day, a hot bath; or for a hot summer's day, or a terrible sunburn, something nice and lukewarm.)

5. Soak in the lovely smooth glutinous oatmeal water. Squeeze the oatmeal sock over the worst burns for an almost instantaneous soothing.

I'm still experimenting with whether it's best to rinse off, or just towel dry. But do make sure to at least pat the burns dry; letting them air-dry without being rinsed just causes the oatmeal glue to dry and crack, which is (hello!) painful -- as I've just discovered.

And when you're done, just squeeze the oatmeal down to the bottom of the sock, unknot it and turn it inside out, discard the oatmeal, and rinse the sock. Voile!

And anyway, an oatmeal bath is such fun ("'amusing' or 'diverting' darling, never 'such fun'") and it's the only 20 minutes I spent pain and nausea free today.

Vive l'oatmeal!

a burnt offering to Ra

Yesterday I headed up a car wash that a former Center resident hosted at her place of employment. And spent four and a half hours on asphalt during the most sun-intensive hours of a day that was within one degree of being the hottest for its date in sixty years of South Bend history.

Without sunscreen.

You idiot! you say. Yup. I don't currently even own sunscreen; ordinarily I spend so little time in the sun preserving my ivory pallor that I don't need it. And yesterday I paid for it. And last night. And this morning. And right now.

My shoulders are on FIRE. Yesterday when I left the parking lot I smelled faintly of bacon, from my own skin cooking in the UV rays. I had trouble sleeping last night; the pain kept waking me up. I've felt faintly nauseous.

Now, if I don't die of sun poisoning (which I strongly doubt I will), in a few days I'll have a gorgeous base tan. Currently, however, my ponytailed hair where it touches the back of my neck feels as warm as though it spent time in the microwave.

I'm like a space heater of strawberry-ice-cream-colored skin.

at last

God bless the clinics who serve the low-income and badly insured of our nation. And God bless no-nonsense doctors who don't treat you like an idiot.

So the doctor who saw me this morning was first of all really old, second of all very complimentary as to my personhood -- intellect, appearance, and clean-cut lifestyle (can you believe it?) -- and thirdly supportive of my request for antidepressants. I even got samples!

So now begins my medicated quest for a mentally stable existence.

And the nurse who saw me to the exam room was extremely friendly and gave me her phone number and wants to be my friend.

This week has been totally bizarre.

And, despite 10.5 hours of sleep yesterday, today still finds me groggy and exhausted. But hopefully that will all be over soon.

Hallelu Yah.

soon (hopefully)

So I've been falling apart. The teller is that nothing should really be that wrong, aside from the usual loneliness. My life is great.

It's just this chemical imbalance in my brain and body that's causing me to absorb too much seratonin, making it impossible for me to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I need medication.

Laura has this great analogy that she told me on Sunday: Taking antidepressants is like wearing glasses. It's correcting an imbalance that you were born with, that you cannot do anything about.

Anyway, I'm all about antidepressants (I was on them three years ago), and after trying multiple avenues today -- calling different doctors and organizations -- and running up against a wall each time, I finally fell back on my family practice (that I've only been to once...another thing that sucks about relocating to a totally new area is having no idea where to go for medical needs) and told the receptionist that while it's more common for a family physician to refer a patient to psychiatric care, no one can take me until the end of the summer and I really need help now.

So I have an appointment on Friday morning.

Here's hoping.

too much

I finally got ahold of the psychiatrist's office recommended to me. And they are taking new patients...but they can't get me in until August. And they had no referrals for anyone taking patients any earlier.

So, on the one hand, yay, I'll get help. On the other hand, crap, August is a long way away. (Explain to me how this makes sense. Crazy person calls doctor and says, I need help. Doctor says, Great! We'll see you in three months. I mean, Crazy Person needs help NOW. What is Crazy Person supposed to do in the meantime?)

Getting through the day is hard. I have a depleted will, drive, and capability to do anything taxing. It's hard enough dragging myself through the routines of my day. And I'm terrified that I'm going to start sucking at my job. And I hate, I hate that my joy in what I do and believe in just isn't there.

So. There's that. There's the fact that I'm exhausted and my eyes hurt from the one-day trip to PA and back this week. There's the fact that I'm driving back to PA this weekend (which I'm happy to do; it's my sister's graduation, hooray for her!!).

And there's the fact that I can only do so much for myself. I'm trying to cope. It's difficult.

My favorite ways of dealing with depression:

1. Spend as much time with people as possible, or as little, depending on my need and mood.

2. Watch a lot of soothing movies that just make me happy when I have to be alone. For example: Monsters, Inc.; Spirited Away; Lilo & Stitch; 10 Things I Hate about You; My Neighbor Totoro. Yes, heavy on the Disney and Miyazaki. Miyazaki in particular is pure joy.

3. Take it easy on myself when possible. I haven't cleaned my apartment thoroughly in a couple of weeks. I just can't. I'll have to make myself eventually; but for now, I'm just letting it be. (I cleaned the bathroom last night, and swept the floors. That's a good start.)

4. Do something radically out of character that is also good for me. This time around I'm training for a triathlon in July. The exercise is amazingly good for my mood, and it's toning muscles and making me feel better about my health and appearance. Plus it's something I've never done before, which makes me feel like I'm being proactive in doing something new and beneficial, and it has no negative triggers for me.

5. Take ruthless advantage of the "self check-out" lines in the grocery stores, when I have to go foraging for food and don't want to interact with strangers.

6. Oh yes, this is my favorite: Buy and read a lot of trashy romance novels. I did this all through college (and in a fit of guilt kept throwing them away), but they're all so ridiculous and predictable and end happily, and it's good escapism.

7. Write. I've been picking through old stories on my GCC laptop, and thinking about taking up an old writing project. It channels me somewhere else for awhile, where all my experiences have artistic meaning, which makes up for the fact that without the completed picture which I can't know, my experiences lack existential meaning.

Sigh. I need a vacation.

pupdate

Huzzah, Duke is spending MUCH less time outside...so much less that I feared for half the morning yesterday that he'd been confiscated. But then I heard his energetic barking as he spent a pleasant, sunny hour out of doors around noon.

Better yet, I talked about it with Slightly Psycho Kevin yesterday, and he said that last week he spoke with the neighbors and in his nice-on-the-outside-but-watch-out way told them that if they didn't look after their dog better, someone was going to have to make the call to Animal Control. So unless he rats me out (you never know with SPK), they probably think he did it.

Now of course if they were to ask me if I made the phone call, I'd own up to it. I did it for a reason. But in the meantime it's nice to think I can still probably take him for walks without them hating me.

The saga of the dog a door down

Sometime in December or January my next-door neighbors got a dog.

Allow me to say that this is possibly the cutest dog I have ever seen. Thanks to a self-absorbed horror of a Doberman who followed hard and badly on the heels of my childhood's Perfect Dog, I thought I hated the species. This adorable youngster made me realize otherwise. We fell completely in love, through the fence -- like Pyramus and Thisbe.

His name, I learned from the neighbors, is Duke -- a dumb name, but you can't have everything. (I'd have named him Brutus.) Duke is a Chow-German shepherd mix, with a shepherd's build and short coarse coat, a chow's head and black tongue, a shepherd's patterning on the head, and a chow's reddish coloring. His large triangular ears stand perkily alert and his head, usually cocked to the side, and intelligent fun-filled eyes give him a rascally look.

At first I was cautious about him -- he barks ferociously at every passerby through the chain-link fence that holds him in his dirt yard -- but one day as I shut the door of my car in the driveway (which I share with Duke's owners) I noticed his tail waving. So I approached him, and he jumped eagerly to brace his front paws on the fence, and we introduced ourselves.

After that we established a routine -- I go over to pet him and say hi every time I come home. Then I started taking him for an occasional walk, which brought him massive amounts of joy, and brought me massive amounts of muscle aches the next day because he's so young and eager and pulls so hard on the leash. (He's only ten months old. Just a puppy.) And eventually he was happier to see me than he was to see his owners. We arrived home from work at the same time one day, and both approached the fence...and Duke came dashing over to me. I was a little embarrassed, a little happy.

But all these months I've been troubled by the way he's kept. Obviously he's not ill-treated in any emotional way -- he's the happiest, most outgoing, loving dog on the planet. But through the harsh days of South Bend's winter, snow, ice, and wind; and through the hot days of early spring; and through the past two weeks of frigid rain, he's always outside. And he has no shelter. The neighbors put him outside and leave all day for work, while Duke sits huddled miserably as close to the house as he can get. He has no doghouse, no access to the garage. And when the weather got legitimately hot a few weeks ago, he had no water. His food is usually dumped on the ground. His only toys are sections of a chewed-up garden hose.

I've been struggling internally with the right course of action for a long time. When I began taking an active interest in the dog, such as walking him, I noticed that he stopped being left outside all night, like he used to. But even so, he's outside from 8-12 hours every day, with no way of getting out of the weather. I asked around and learned that it's the law to provide your dog with a shelter raised off the ground if it spends the majority of its time outside. I bought a bucket and filled it with water to put inside the yard for him (and all the while he drank -- thirstily -- he watched me and waved his tail), hoping the neighbors would take the hint, but instead they took away the bucket.

This week was the last straw. The weather has been in the upper thirties and lower forties, and pouring down rain for the past four days. And through it all this poor dog has been sitting outside. It made me mad. So I called Animal Control to report it.

I didn't term the case anything at all; I just said to the woman who answered the phone that I needed to talk to someone about my neighbors' dog, who spent most of his time outdoors in all weather without shelter or water. She said, "You need to give us the address, ma'am: That's a neglect case, and a priority call." So I complied and requested to be kept informed: "If he winds up being taken away, I'd like to help find a good home for him. I'm really attached to this dog." She took my number and said she'd do what she could; it wasn't standard procedure. She also said they'd send someone out right away.

And they did. About an hour later I saw the Animal Control van parked outside the house. No one was home, but Duke was in the yard as described, and as I left to go grocery shopping (yes, I finally did that, too), I saw an official-looking paper stuck in their door.

So they've got their warning informing them of what legally they're required to do. I assume they'll have an eye kept on them.

I don't want them to take the dog away. I want him to be treated well, and I want to keep taking him for walks. If I could take this dog myself, I certainly would. But if it takes him getting a new and better home, that's fine.

I don't particularly like the sensation of ratting on my neighbors -- that's why I've been silent so long -- but I can't stand seeing him cold and miserable and huddled in a little ball when it's cold and wet, or collapsed in the shade panting without a drink when it's hot. So I did something about it. And maybe now things will change a bit for him. I notice that he's not outside at all this cold wet afternoon.

you gotta open up your heart

Yeah, I'm not all that okay.

Hence the lack of blogging -- everything seems lackluster. I have no motivation to do anything that I usually enjoy doing -- reading, writing, blogging, cleaning, watering my plants. I lagged behind in my bills this month (something I've gotten meticulously out of the habit of doing). I haven't done laundry in forever. I hate being alone in my apartment. I'm grumpy with my cat. I'm not sleeping well. I'm gaining weight. I feel a general sense of tired, hollow sadness. I long to spend a lot of time with people I know, but I'm ashamed to talk about what's going on in me, this relentless feeling of ill-being and an inability to function at the higher levels. And I'm terrified of being with people I don't know. Last night I was supposed to go to a dinner for work, but at the last minute I had to go by myself, and I freaked out and started crying. (My boss kindly excused me from going. I felt like a heel.) I haven't gone grocery shopping in two weeks because I can't face the thought of being in company with so many strangers at the store.

This is not like me in the least. Some of my coworkers are a little surprised -- "But you're so outgoing," said Jess. I know. This isn't me. This is horrible. And I don't know what triggered this tailspin, so I need to talk to someone who can a.) figure me out and b.) give me medicine to mitigate the effects of depression.

So it's going to get fixed. I will not live like this any longer. I need help. My boss gave me the number of a reputable psychiatrist, and I'm waiting for a call from them today to set up a new patient interview.

This sucks. But something's gotta give -- and I've been here before, and I know it gets better. With help, it gets better.

The good thing about my morning was that I got to share a little excitement about the Psalms with a resident (we call them guests) at the Center who is just starting to read the Bible. And it was fantastic to remember that the Word of God does not return to him empty, and that other people are touched by it, too.

what I'm looking for

I know the posting has been spotty...this great, heavy, soggy apathy has been smothering my desire to communicate, even as it enhances my sense of isolation. Lovely, yes? Oh -- no.

So, in a comment on the Fab Females blog, I one day, off the cuff, spelled out what I'm looking for in a man. It struck me today as a pretty incredible description, all the more so because I know someone who fits that bill. Despite the fact that he is somewhat unavailable (for the time being, anyway), the fact that this man actually exists bodily in the world I live in gives me tremendous amounts of encouragement and hope.

Here he is in a nutshell:

The man I'm looking for is a man of God, dedicated to truth and justice, who treats others the way Christ treated others, who hates hypocrisy, and who knows the clear, hard, just, and merciful nature of love. Who knows his purpose and strives to live toward it. Who loves equally the successful businessperson and the homeless derelict. Who treats all human beings, including his family, with dignity and respect. Who pursues his goals with unshaken focus and seeks to live an effective life in our broken world.

Yup. I have met a person like this. He's not too good to be true. (And this is in no way intended to slam any of the guys I know. I love almost all of you.) He also has a hot temper and the (at least as far as I've observed) unheard-of ability to live in a bad day without somehow involving you in its badness. Add innate confidence, a well-rounded sense of humor, a love of literature, aesthetic taste, and a feel for good irony, and you've got him.

In short, I think he's great. Available or unavailable, for now or ever, notwithstanding. He fuels my hope for a good future.

Wild.

making waves

Radio waves!

Yesterday saw the annual Homeward Bound 5K walk to end homelessness in South Bend, IN. Several of my coworkers and I were present to walk, and partway through a gentleman just ahead of us turned and asked us if we'd like to go on the air for the radio station he was representing when he did his twenty-minute check-in.

Of course we said, YES! So he handed the phone off to me, and I got to explain the point of the walk, saying something like, "We're walking through some neighborhoods right now, and looking at the lovely houses really drives home the point of what we're doing. Hundreds and hundreds of people in our own community don't have a roof over their heads or a place to call home on any given day in the year. The average age of a homeless person in America right now is nine years old, and we're walking to raise money to make sure people have a safe place to raise their families."

The dude's general manager called a few minutes later to say how clear I sounded. Anyway, the guy works for a Christian radio station that reaches around 30 counties, and I was terribly excited to make the contact. The Center for the Homeless, not itself a faith-based organization, is working more this year to establish connections with faith-based organizations, which basically exist to help such places as ours.

So hopefully we have a new business relationship -- and I got to hand out, for the first time, my very own card!

So the summer finds me getting more excited about my job, and loving what I do here and why I do it. Which is good, because I just signed a two-year lease for my apartment this weekend.

bryter now

At least for the time being.

As I said in my comment to the last post (in response to the great input I received), I realized that one of the things that was crushing me the most was the sense of helplessness. And I'm NOT helpless.

So the new strategy is to spend as much time with people as possible. Wednesday night I hung out with the inestimable ThisWomanAlphabetical, yesterday I invited my two favorite coworkers over for lunch, and last night I watched Bon Voyage with MP's French class and then drove over (the reopened!!!) Douglas Road to eat colorful, cold roast vegetable loaf and exchange stories about how tired we were.

It's essentially a matter of being proactive and collaring the people I want to befriend, without hanging back from fear of rejection or looking pathetic. I NEED people. Therefore I will hunt them down. If they hate me, fine; I'll find people who don't. But most people don't hate me.

Plus I have been suddenly blessed with peace over a complicated situation with a guy I know (sorry for the vaguery; perhaps I'll spill more beans layter), and am reminded that I am very capable of bouncing back and recovering from the things that make me sad.

And I'm going to a cookout this weekend! Wheeeee!

Not again...

I've been slipping back into depression.

I've been trying hard to deny it -- I went through two summers of pretty intense therapy toward the end of college to work my way out of it, and I have never wanted to be back here again. But there are certain signs I can't ignore anymore. Pervasive listlessness. Constant exhaustion. Emotional numbness. Indifference toward things that usually make me very happy (hanging out with people, going for walks, reading, even cooking). Lack of energy. A feeling of purposelessness or pointlessness. Poor sleeping. Failed appetite.

I don't know exactly what triggered this slide. Spring is usually a bad time for me -- it's when my sister was at her worst state of health, and when relationships with my family members were tense at best. And depression runs in my family. But I thought I had more or less conquered it. I guess the most consistent thing that has been eating at me since November is my aloneness. I'm far from family. After living here for almost two years, I've only made a scattered handful of friends. My daily existence doesn't matter much to anyone -- I'm not essential, not in the sense that I'm constantly needed, but in the sense that my presence can be assumed by someone. So I'm young, I'm single, I don't have a strong support system in the place where I'm living, and it's really, really hard to meet people here.

And it's getting me down. I spend almost every day on the verge of random, senseless tears. I've been getting hot flashes again. Nothing I do seems to have a whole lot of meaning. And I really, really don't want to live in this state of blankness again. I want to be the old, happy, strong me.

My health insurance isn't that great, so I can't afford therapy. Though -- if it doesn't start to improve soon, I'm going to take steps to get a therapist anyway. I'd rather be emotionally healthy with an even slimmer budget than try to plod alone through a life that for no good reason looks completely gray.

Prayers are much appreciated. In college I had so many friends to come around and support me and be a web of loving presence while I put myself back together. Here I have only a few, and I hate being a downer and a burden.

What to do? It's especially annoying because my life is great. I have a great job, a great apartment, a decent church, and some really great friends. And I still feel so horrifyingly, chokingly alone. I can't stand it.

Poop.

Passage of Time

The new kitchen clock with its
circle of red shocks the walls
into purpose and order.

The hazy apartment sharpens
around the iambic tick
that whispers in each room

measuring the sleepy silence of
a faded house in a neighborhood
where the grass spikes
through the cracked concrete in the street.

Last night brushing my teeth
I stiffened and shut off the water
thinking the cat was rustling plastic
or someone was creeping inside

but the regularity of sound
was only the clock
telling me it was nearly eleven

and I had wanted to be in bed
at ten. I turned on the kitchen light
to see it:

red rim with an analog face
that showed the white walls
to be a little yellow.

The cat came to rub against my ankles.
His purr rattled under the clock voice
singsong, surgent like waves.

the fifth season

Every morning when I open my eyes to a sunny spring day in South Bend, I ask myself two questions:

1. Will it be warm out today?
2. Which roads will be closed?

See, there's this fifth season squeezed into the year, sometime between spring and summer (and often stretching through all calendar seasons, refusing to die). Construction season.

I've never lived in a place as haywire for tearing roads apart as South Bend. There's never any announcement. You get in your car and drive along a main thoroughfare, in the happy yet stupid assumption that all will be today as it was yesterday, and suddenly there are orange signs, detours, road blocks, heavy vehicles, and men in green and yellow vests milling around appearing important but really doing nothing.

You curse. You follow the detour. Sometimes even the detours have detours. And the repairs -- or whatever it is they're doing (looking for gold?) -- take weeks.

Suddenly your five-minute commute to work takes fifteen. Or your fifteen-minute drive to a friend's house takes twenty-five. Traffic is always terrible. The word "detour" seems to inspire mass confusion among the majority of fellow drivers. They inch along the detour roads, as if afraid of missing the next prominent orange detour-with-an-arrow sign, or as if afraid to trust that the sign really will get them where it promises. You ride people's bumpers. You catch a lot of red lights. You scream.

It does familiarize you quickly with alternate routes to anywhere. You look up and see that familiar orange-and-white barrel and make an instant turn to Plan B. Anything to avoid the detour.

I feel that every citizen of this community deserves a flyer in his or her mailbox. With a calendar detailing each road and intersection that will be closed, and for how long. That way we don't walk out of our homes and blunder into an urban jungle of broken concrete and cranes.

cookbook queen

Lately I've been bored and restless. Things at work have mostly calmed down from the auction (although I'm still recovering from the stress -- shown mostly by an increased irritability, joy for my coworkers), building community is still taking its time, and with summer coming up, my grad student friends will jettison themselves from South Bend as quickly as they can. So a thinned out social scene awaits me in the next few months, and singleness is, at the least, a further source of boredom. (There's no one to call and say, "Let's go for a walk!" who has to come and walk with me.)

So I did the only thing a girl with a penchant for most things culinary can do.

I bought five new cookbooks.

This is a very logical act. While working on "fitting in" and building a life here, over which I only have so much control, I don't have many new interesting things to do, and often very few people with whom to spend my daily life; and lacking the money to dine out on the exquisite food I enjoy eating, I have to fall back on making it myself. So cooking good food is an easy (or challenging!), enjoyable to way give my life a little flavor, relatively cheaply.

One of the most important aspects of cooking, for me, is not falling into a rut or getting bored. For the past three weeks just before grocery shopping day, I've been thinking, What do I want to eat?...and coming up blank. I flip through all my recipes and they're all so...blah. I'm not in the mood for any of them.

Time for something new. And something new showed up at Borders in the form of: Juices and Smoothies, Mediterranean, Mexian, Spanish, and Jewish cookbooks. I've done nothing for the past two days but read all the recipes and bookmark the ones I want to try.

I'm insanely excited to restock my cupboards and buy (a little at a time; I'm still on a poverty income) new accesories to expand my abilities to make such things as tortillas and flan. It's a little taste of something fresh, and a way to broaden my horizons while I lack the capacity to travel the world, or even the area restaurants.

Plus the pictures are pretty. My mouth watered all day paging through them.

forehead pressed against the glass

I'm taking a week's vacation from work, composed almost entirely of flex time from the long weeks I worked before the auction. The first two days I spent lying in bed wrapped in afghans, overcome with some mildly disgusting bout of the flu (mildly disgusting mostly because of the degeneration of my clean apartment -- you just can't wash things when you're sick), but on the whole it's been wonderful to relax and know that they're even listening to my voicemails and checking my email at work, so I don't have an endless string of backlogged communication to pick through when I get back.

I've been thinking about community. At church, and in one of the few decent albums by a Christian artist that I own, I've been hearing things like "my journey is my own" and "It doesn't matter if nobody loves me but Jesus." And in some respects, of course, that's true: We are fully responsible for our own lives, and if we find ourselves utterly friendless, we can count on the love of Christ. But statements like these disregard what I think is an essential principle in the Christian faith, and in human life across the board: community.

We weren't meant to live alone. The human being is a social creature, in constant need of contact with his/her own kind. And for each metaphor of individual race-running and watching oneself that appears in the New Testament, there are two metaphors for community, of coming alongside one another and of being a body (one unit, many parts). When Christ left his legacy to the apostles at his ascension, he founded, not a scattered group of individual mystics who went off by themselves into the wilderness to ponder great things, but a church.

When you look at the "secular" world (if you believe in a secular world; I don't, actually), it's the same: People need other people. Most have some kind of family to fall back on, which they often take for granted. (I've met a lot of people who go back home after college, or never left their hometown, so that they are continually surrounded by family; I think they fail to realize what a hole not having nearby family leaves in the lives of complete transplants like me.) Even some of my coworkers, who don't live close to their families, graduated from Notre Dame and so keep to their old, preformulated communities from college while they live in South Bend.

A dash of the closedness to strangers for which I have criticized the church at large (because the church should be the first place where barriers break down -- it was when it first began, or was challenged to be by recognizing the radical truth that "in Christ there is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Jew nor Gentile"), is present everywhere. People who already have fulfilled their need for a place among others generally aren't looking to include newcomers -- not, perhaps, out of an overt desire to ostracize or exclude, but out of a kind of tunnel vision that results from personal satisfaction: All of my needs are met, so why look further?

I hope that didn't sound at all nasty; it was only an observation. One of my saving graces while I try to settle in and work my way into the already-established communities of the worthwhile and interesting people I've met is the grad school. These are worthwhile and interesting people who are used to a flux in their community as new students enroll and old students leave, so they tend to have a mindset open to incorporating outsiders, newcomers, and loose affiliates.

My other, more permanent saving grace is Meg and Phillip. While rooted among family and longtime friends in their own community, they accepted me with a casual, firm familiarity that reminds me oftentimes of home. I invite myself over; they put me to work, feed me, and take me fun places around the area that I'm still getting to know. They helped me pick out, cut down, transport, and set up my Christmas tree. For several months, although I never actually used it, I had my own toothbrush at their house. We all call me "the second wife." We laugh and horse around and work and bicker like good friends and family do. And the beauty of it is, they're not going anywhere (at least anytime soon, that they've told me). They don't leave for the summer. They're not moving out of town. So they're a kind of above-ground root that I get to lean against.

Not to be all mushy or anything; but a single girl with no family in the area certainly appreciates the niches of belonging that she lands in. Building, or shouldering your way into, a community takes time, and I've only been here twenty months. But it's nice, while I try to put down some roots (this is scary, this roots thing -- I have no particular plans to settle permanently in South Bend, but I also don't have plans to go anywhere else for awhile -- and this weekend I'm signing a two-year lease, which is weird), to have two open places to go where I'm not standing on the outside looking in like a little lost soul.

And I'm off to try to forge some cleanliness out of the disorganized mess that has become my apartment.

Cat Feet

The fog comes
on little cat feet.
(Carl Sandberg)

Clearly Carl Sandberg never lay
prostrate in bed staving off daylight
until a hungry cat cannonballed
his unprotected stomach like a sudden avalanche.

Obviously Carl Sandberg never dragged
the covers over his head, only to suffer
forty careful, cubic pounds per square paw
flattening every cyst and sore chest muscle
creaking each rib and collapsing each lung
to crush him slowly, grindingly awake.