Still here...

Watch this spot for my return to blogging soon.

Happy winter to all.

More about summer

Today I officially crossed the line.

White wine, not red wine.

Iced coffee, not hot brewed coffee.

Summer is A'Comin' In

Oh, lordy, it's hot today.

I've been driving around all day, getting stuff together for Young Girl's birthday party this weekend. Since it's been a year since last summer, I'd conveniently forgotten how friggin' hot parking lots can be. And no matter how brief your stay in a store, the car completely heats up while you're gone.

Saturday night was cool and breezy, and I sat outside at a lovely party and enjoyed the evening weather. Today it's 90 and muggy. There's nothing gradual about the coming of summer in Texas. And it's only going to get worse.

So I've dropped in to my favorite wine bar for $5 Monday. Here's to cool and dark. And pinot grigio.

Don't Come Looking for the Profound Here Today

I have no grand metaphors or analogies today, just some updating and a little ranting, perhaps. Please feel free to leave comments of agreement, opposition, or support

* Is there no end to "blame the victim" mentality or authorities looking the other way in the case of rape? This post from The Curvature is horrifying. I can't for the life of me imagine how the police could not investigate or how the medical board could not kick this guy's ass six ways from Sunday.

* What to think about offshore drilling? With 35,000 rigs in the Gulf, something was bound to happen sometime. Considering that there hasn't been a rig accident this big since the 1969 Santa Barbara spill, maybe these things are safer than some are leading us to believe. On the other hand, I heard on NPR last week that the most we could hope for in drilling off the Virginia coast is enough oil to supply the country for six days. Is that worth the risk to the delicate portions of the Atlantic coastline? Not to me. I know we're all supposed to be looking for alternative sources of energy but, realistically, we need oil and gas and we need them domestically. Some of you may not know that The Man develops oil and gas leases and always does so with an eye toward environmental responsibility; some of our wells are on grassland that has never been plowed and is flourishing despite drilling thanks to his care in constructing leases. Safe drilling can happen. We just need to make sure it does.

* One of the side effects of my sister's condition is her loss of independent mobility. Her loss of balance means that she can't drive and must depend on others for rides to doctors' visits, the grocery store, and her church. She's fortunate to have a group of church friends who work together to coordinate rides when I'm not available (which is more often than I'd like due to my commute to Young Girl's school), but it drastically impacts her independence. She can't just go to the store when she feels like it or run out to the movies on impulse. A major drawback of small cities like ours is a lack of public transportation; in Our Town you can call for a van, but you're often stuck with long waiting times on one end or the other. Reliable, consistent bus service would be so much better. Public transportation allows people to participate in their communities when they either do not own a car or are unable to drive one, yet it is far down the list for many municipalities. It shouldn't be.

* My workout plans are on hold because I've done something wonky to my left knee. It's sore and swollen and I can't really connect the problem to any trauma (other than the first day of wearing flip flops all day long). I'm missing the stress release and other benefits. GRUMBLE.

Van Attachment

I have a complicated relationship with my eight-year-old minivan. Every time I see her I see myself.

She's silver-grey, like an overcast sky or a rock road. Perfect camouflage, her color renders her invisible. Her body's not what it used to be, either, missing a big piece of trim and sporting hail stone pockmarks. There's that scrape from the misjudged turn, another from the Starbucks drive-through, yet another from a tree. I won't catalogue the dents, but they're noticeable and plural. One sliding door is broken and the other is recalcitrant and the repair costs are way too high for such luxuries.

For a long time I took pride in my van. She was very fancy when brand new, and among the cars of Oregon she gleamed. When we moved to Texas and I found myself invisible in the carpool line between a Hummer and a Porsche, I felt superior to the materialists who somehow needed a fancy carapace. I wasn't like that, you see. I was perfectly happy with my utilitarian, reliable transportation (and my Birkenstocks and jeans, but that's another story....or is it?). My van rendered me anonymous in a new community, free to observe the landscape, able to move stealthily through the new environment.

Her inside began to resemble her outside. Old French fries, kid meal toys, multiple water bottles in various stages of consumption, a gaggle of empty coffee cups, school papers, books, receipts....they all piled up between my ever less frequent trips to the car wash. I took a perverse pride in this, too. She was lived-in. I could always find something to drink. And why bother cleaning her out only to have her fill up again in a week?

But slowly I began to resent her. She was certainly not the car I'd planned to be driving when I was 50. And when four of five women in my core group of friends bought lovely new vehicles in an 18 month period I found myself with a raging case of new car fever. I had grand thoughts. I researched comfort, foreign and domestic. The van was an embarrassment, an old aunt who'd "let herself go." But a new car wasn't in the budget. As The Man reminded me, she was paid for, ran well, and had a long shelf life. I began to think of her as The Van that Would Never Die. And now that I've just paid for a major service and a new timing belt, I know she's - unfortunately - perfectly healthy.

Some of you know about my stumbling attempts at meditation and Buddhism. I understand that attachment leads to suffering. And this is certainly true when it comes to my van. The perverse pride I took in her ordinariness and invisibility was merely a cover for insecurity in a new environment and led me into disorder. The resentment I feel toward her serves no purpose other than to make me feel bad and desire something for which I have no need.

So I'm trying to break my attachment to my van and to treat her mindfully. I cleaned everything out and visited the car wash. I'm making sure that both Young Girl and I take out everything we put in and leave only minimal supplies (soccer ball, lap desk, notebook paper) inside. I would not say that I'm taking pride in my clean van or feeling particularly noble about my efforts. I'm simply trying to make my van part of my practice.

So far, so good.

For a wonderful look at practice in everyday life, whatever your faith tradition, pick up a copy of Karen Maezen Miller's new book "hand wash cold: care instructions for an ordinary life."

Posting to Post

I'm sitting in the coffee shop, fingers paralyzed over the keys.

For some reason I have a blog block. A big, nasty, stinking, hairy one. As a Wise Young Woman pointed out to me this week, I have plenty of opinion and a number of things I feel passionately about.

I just don't have the umpf to get any of it into words.

So, instead, I'll give you an update on the quotidian.

* We've decided to bring Young Girl back to public school next year. This will be a change of epic proportions, going from a class of eight students to our city's single intermediate school (grades 5-6) with class-changing and lockers and halls full of raging pre-adolescence. She has to test this summer for readmission to the Gifted and Talented program, and I'll be interested to see how that goes, given that she hasn't bubbled in a Scantron for two years. Why the change? It's become harder to maintain friendships here where we live and we feel she needs a wider circle of acquaintances. I'm confident we'll be able to keep up with the girls from the Montessori, with whom she has really bonded as she'll probably stay in her current girl scout troop (making the commute once a week will be nothing after making if five days a week).

* My sister's breast cancer metastasized to her brain, but after a series of whole brain radiation and a groovy-cool Gamma Knife procedure her scans are now clear. However, the tumors were in her cerebellum which affects balance, and she can no longer walk without the aid of a walker. She falls several times a week, too. Obviously she can't drive, either. On the good news side, she has a wonderful network of helping friends from her church to help with rides and such and has employed an aide for tasks around the house she can no longer undertake.

* I've gone back to the gym after a long absence, and my body is grumpy about it. Let's just say I "wintered well" as they say in ranching, and I want to avoid being sent to the feed lot for further fattening. I've been making hour-long playlists for my iPod and just gutting through on the treadmill. I'm thinking very tentatively of setting a goal of the Arts Fest 5K in September. I know I could walk it right now but it would be nice to be able to run a bit.

And that's about all I have to tell you. If you have ideas for posts, please leave a comment and inspire me!

A Touchy Subject

I've been away for a bit, but I thought I'd come back with controversy.

While my blogs during last year's election made plain my liberal views, I've stayed away from potentially touchy subjects like religion and reproductive rights.

No More.

I've become convinced, through reading and conversing with friends, that individual access to reproductive rights - everything from contraception to abortion - is in grave danger.

From the Stupak amendment and its expansion of the Hyde language through possibilities that it could be interpreted to exclude contraception from any insurance plan purchased with federal subsidies, we need to wake up. Many women still have trouble getting insurance to cover their birth control pills, while many men have prescription coverage for Viagra because erectile dysfunction is characterized as a medical condition.

And about the big one: abortion.

No one wants abortions. No one, trust me, wants to have one. But it is a MEDICAL procedure not a legislative one. Access to this procedure should be through the gateway of individuals and their doctors rather than individuals and the U.S. Senate and House.

I'm of an age that makes complacency on this issue impossible. But for who have always known abortion as a legal procedure post-Roe - including our President - the issue has less urgency.

Whatever your position on this issue, I urge you to check out this piece from the New York Times. It might just wake you up.