Quo Vado?

Sometime during my mother’s visit last week, I realized a simple truth about my mother and her sisters. They found/find themselves in marriages feeling unappreciated and unprotected. When the thought originally appeared, I found myself thrown. This being older thing makes tongues looser about where their experiences of being married didn’t live up to the books.

A couple of things struck me as I thought about this new-to-me reality. First, I find it odd that when I look at my friends in relationships, I evaluate the pair together by examining how they take care of one another. Given that, in looking back at my parents relationship, I see the lack of care that colored their time together and I wonder where my sensitivity to this element came from. Did it spring from missing it, or mistakenly believing it existed? Does the origin ideal matter, so much as the second thought? Did these men I look up to give up trying to serve the women they loved, because it was always a fight? I’m second generation independent. Grandma B grew up feeling like an unwanted duty, married the more pragmatically situated man after the war, and found herself bound more out of duty than love, I think. A deep desire for her daughter’s to never have to feel like an obligation helped her to prod them to embrace the idea of total independence. My mother learned the lesson well, and I wonder if Dad stopped taking care of her because she could do it herself. This apple, having not fallen far from the tree, warms the chair in the early hours of a Sunday morning wondering how much she’s missed and shoved away by being independent and more importantly if this shell will ever be lowered enough to actually share my life.

They’re at it again:

1. What five things should you never buy used? Underwear, shoes, mattresses, gum and hats.

2. Sony BMG just ended a payola investigation by settling with New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer. So let’s engage in some reverse payola: What song or artist would you pay to never have to hear again, and how much would it be worth to you? I know I’m going to go to hell for this one, but if I never had to hear Hotel California again, it would be worth hundreds.

3. In honor of the new Bad News Bears: Did you ever play little league, or other organized youth sports? No, my parents wanted me to live to see twenty.

4. What was your biggest fashion faux pas? My continued insistence on wearing Birkenstocks. I don’t care if they look stupid, they feel great and I’m going to keep wearing them.

5. In honor of all our readers who took the Bar Exam this week: What was the hardest test you ever took? Honors Physics II - Electricity and Magnetism for People Who Were Dumb Enough to Think They Were Smart Enough To Take This Class

… and was so patient while waiting for an answer. Here’s the question Andrew asked last Friday as an addendum to the Spies questions of the week.

6. How do you discover other blogs? What goes into your decision to link to them? Well, I find blogs by following links in posts by bloggers I routinely read or through one of my Technorati watchlists (I have one for Sorkin and Whitford). Many of my earliest links were the result of following Julie’s links at No Fancy Name, I know PJM and Mel came along for the ride then. The rest were added slowly over time, most for having great stories, an interesting perspective on the world, or somehow connected with my life that is/was. Granted, some provide features like Eye Candy Friday to keep me linked, but it really is the stories/thoughts that count. As for when and why I choose to link, that’s easy. I follow a suggestion and decide if the blog might be something I’m interested in in the long run. If the blog intrigues me in some way it’s added on a trial basis (the current category name is Pleasant Hill Road), and I’ll decide after reading it for a while to keep it and move it to another category or to drop it.

Oh, crud I’ve felt crummy this whole work week. I’m glad I didn’t have to take the bar exam like so many of you - I defiantly would have flunked. I’m going to bed. I know it’s early yet but I can’t shake the lethargy that’s overcome me as of late.

After blogging under the title Quo Vado? for nearly a year, I finally have an appropriate tag line.

If I knew where I was going, I would not be asking.

On Friday, Scheherazade asked men why they refused to dance. The answers were many and amusing, with Outer Life’s causing a near office catastrophe when he asks,

By “dance,” do you mean the practice of standing separate and apart on a dance floor whilst gyrating wildly in a solitary simulation of sex with oneself all the while hoping against hope that someone else looks even more ridiculous than you, thereby diverting attention away from your sorry-ass display of arhythmic spasmodia?

Milbarge even chimes in with commentary on the social side of dancing and the difficulty of learning without a partner. I just wanted to make clear, that while I’ve posted a couple of times about wanting to learn how to dance with my future crazy enough to marry me husband, spasmodia is not what I have in mind. I’d like to learn something more elegant, requiring a count of four that offers the faint hope of moments of elegance prior to a promised bout of laughter as one of us manages to scuff up our shoes.

ETA: Please remember, if you ever see catch me dancing that I hear a completely different set of music in my head than my ears do.

For Cas and Mom’s last full day in town we headed downtown. After stopping at Le Madeline’s for breakfast, we took Marta downtown to CNN Center. Like most of my trips on the city’s transit system, I forgot something major. The CNN Center stop was on the East-West line and not the North-South line we took into the city. So, after traveling two extra stops, missing trains because of having to use the bathroom, and a smoke break, we arrived at CNN just in time to catch the start of one of their studio tours. The tour effectively showed the behind the scenes of the air portion of CNN from a distance. The tour began with a disjointed combination of an edited for language recording of the control room from the first Gulf War and an active view of the current on-air show with associated cameras, feed and cued up stories. The balance of the tour was of the look through the glass at this studio variety with little chance to examine the actual workings. After checking out Centennial Olympic Park and Atlanta Underground we headed back to the car.

While waiting for the Northbound train at the station, I suggested that we go to Ted’s Montana Grill to have ‘dinner.’ I’d been meaning to try it and it seamed like a good time to give it a go. We retrieved the car and headed toward the Forum, stopping on the way at a Red Circle Boutique to attempt to buy Mom’s early birthday present. While the RCB didn’t have what I wanted for Mom, it did turn out to be a highlight of her trip as she found the exercise wear for which she’d been looking. Dinner at Ted’s was excellent. My leftover buffalo burger sits in the refrigerator daring me to revisit the scrumptiousness of our meal. We walked off dinner as we shopped, stopping in Pottery Barn, New Balance (were two women bought five pairs of shoes), Barnes and Noble (where I bought another book it’ll take me weeks to read) and Harry and David. Our evening concluded with a trip to the Apple Store at Lenox so I could purchase Mom’s iPod Shuffle. We arrived back  at the house, began packing and learning more Mac stuff. Heading off to bed around eleven.

Tuesday morning came way too soon.

It seems like forever since I’ve written anything, and even now finding the voice for this entry is proving problematic.

Cas and Mom arrived on Thursday afternoon, and after dinner crashed pretty early. Friday the real adventure began. The day started with a typical multi-people party issue - finding the energy to overcome the innate inertia of that many people with different traveling styles. Over the years, Mom and I have developed a traveling pattern that involves her getting up at her usual time, taking care of most of her morning routine and then prodding me out of  bed. Usually, this process has us on the road, with full stomachs, around ten. When we added the third person, and car coordination issues, it was eleven-thirty before we escaped Atlanta, barely missing the snafu caused by a Presidential Motorcade. Because of our later than expected start, we arrived in Charleston, after an uneventful drive, too late to complete our usual ‘visiting city’ grounding routine. We enjoyed an excellent dinner at California Dreaming and Mom and I took a stroll around the hotel and surrounding area.

Our walk had an element of what would become the most challenging part of their stay. In the past, Mom and I would use our times during these trips to catch up on news in each others lives and grow closer through more in depth knowledge of each other. During this trip, most of the one-on-one time we had with each other and much of the three person conversation revolved around Cas’ divorce from UUJohn. We talked about crazy monetary issues, chores that now did/didn’t have to be done, and what was holding up the process. I had a good time while they were here, but missed the chance to reconnect with my mother.

On Saturday, we took a bus tour of Charleston and a boat tour of the harbor. They both provided a great overview of the historic elements of the city. I took my only pictures of the trip on the boat, as we approached their new cable stay bridge. Hearing the Southern perspective regarding the start of the Civil War was interesting especially  the idea that succession resulted from a feeling of inadequate/ineffective representation within the federal government. The volume South Carolina pride startled me, even outside of the tourist area the natives had marked cars and carried objects that clearly marked them as natives. It was weird. I am a Hoosier born and bread and if you ask I’ll tell you - heck, I’ll tell you if you imply I’m from somewhere other than Indiana, but I don’t overtly shout it from the rooftops. In addition to the Southern Civil War perspective and overt state pride, the other thing I found particularly interesting about the public face of the city was it’s complete failure to mention the earthquake of 1886, how the city dealt with the event, and it’s long term repercussions.

After our tours we walked around the city for awhile, melting as we looked into windows and inspected the exterior of churches, eventually stopping at A.W. Shucks for dinner. While my crab cake was too much cake and too little crab, the bacon wrapped shrimp and hush puppies were excellent. After dinner we caught the tail end of the open-air market. I bought a great tacky crab magnet for Bertha and each of us picked up a beautiful piece of sea-grass basketry. There was some baulking over the price, until we did the math and realized that the price/hour requested represented such a nominal price for the amazing work we purchased given that none of us had the skill much less the willingness to sit down that long and do it ourselves. We arrived back at the hotel, talked for a little while and fell into a great sleep. In the morning, we headed back to Market Street, finished walked the open air market and returned ‘home.’

In the last several weeks, I’ve learned an important thing about how I read and write - that is I cannot successfully complete either activity while listening to the [English] written word. Everything from audiobooks, television, podcasts and new music interfere with my ability to connect words together in a coherent fashion.  I feel kind of dim that I’m just now seeing this new ‘thing’ about how I work as I’ve found in looking back on how I worked in school when words were involved. I listened to more Mozart and Handel while composing history papers than anything else. What’s throwing me for a loop, however, is having to remove the sound input while writing letters/memos at work or even while reading soils reports.

How You Live Your Life

You are honest and direct. You tell it like it is. You’re laid back and chill, but sometimes you care too much about what others think. You tend to have one best friend you hang with, as opposed to many aquaintences. You tend to dream big, but you worry that your dreams aren’t attainable.

For some odd reason I find myself humming part of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.” Just like a dozen notes or so; but, really, it’s to late for Christmas humming.

Other than the strange music floating around it, my brain feels much better today. Last night I fell into the trundel around ten, and didn’t lift my head until the alarm rang at six this morning. I reset the alarm and my total sleep time exceeded nine hours.

Bossman found himself mad at me from three counties away today. Apparently, at his meeting, all anyone wanted to know was where I was at - good for me, bad for him.

Mom and Cas headed home early this morning. My brain is very tired, four and half straight days of going and doing with two other people sapped my energy. I’ll write more tomorrow when my brain returns to working order.

From the folks at Begging the Question:

1. Why did you start blogging? Two reasons really, the first was the need to express some of the randomness in my head and the second was to get attention from people for whom the act was voluntarily.

2. Are the reasons you blog now the same as when you started?  If not, what’s changed? Yep, though now I try to write with more intent and work on occasionally painting a picture.

3. What would make blogging better for you? Actually, just not struggling so hard to remember the little things I thought to blog about in the car/shower four hours ago.

4. Do you have comments on your blog?  Why or why not?  Do you comment on other blogs?  What motivates you to post a comment? I do have comments, mainly because it’s nice to know that others actually read this. I comment on others blogs, but only when I have something that I think adds/concurs with a conversation.

5. What is your philosophy of the blogroll? If I read it, it’s there. I reorganized last night because one big group would have more new posts in the aggregator than I’d like or could handle at once.