Parakeets, 1990-2003

Wintertime
Morning Glory
Beaker
Petri
Oscar
Emmy
Norman
Sunny
Penney
Stewart
Larry
Hailey
Petie
Perry
Buttercup
Emmy and Larry's first clutch:
Corey
Emmy and Larry's second clutch:
Emma
Elliot
Esther
Punkin'
Corey and Norman's first clutch:
two birds given away
Rigel
Hannah

Local Trivia: They cancel each other out?

Somebody in a house down the street from me owns a Smart Car.

Today, out in front of that house, there is parked the largest RV I have ever seen.

They probably won't use REAL swords, though...

"My fiance and I are looking forward to a duel wedding in June."

--Received in an email from a friend overseas, whose brother and fiancee will be married on the same day as my friend and her fiance.

Can't blog, town'll eat me...

I've failed you, my faithful blog readers. I have failed to include the juiciest local trivia available to me, on my blog. My only excuse is cowardice.

I dread the day that anyone (else) I know stumbles across this blog -- or people I don't know who might connect the blog to my real-life identity and activities, and possibly try to take some kind of revenge, like coming up to me on the street and "demanding answers" while I'm trying to buy an ice cream cone at the local Tastee-Freez.

I dread this as much as I dread running into old high school friends at the local Piggly-Wiggly, or in line at the town Cinemaplex. I would have to talk to them, you see, and "catch up." I would have to lie about having them over sometime, or doing lunch, or how much I've missed them since I last blew this Popsicle stand. And I'm not a good liar -- not good at all.

So I have failed to tell you about my undercovering at the local bookstore near Local City Hall, and I have failed to tell you about how yesterday's local paper ran engagement pictures of two of my friends (from seventh and tenth grade). I've made no mention of having lived above a prominent politician (who never made it to Congress) for three years, nor of the Poland Spring truck that crashed into a schoolbus outside that house several months ago.

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but you've been getting second-rate gossip this entire time.

For that, I apologize.

L.A. Confirmation

"Yeah, you're about as 'L.A.' as Woody Allen."

--Friend Jenny, agreeing that I should not go to CGU or any other grad school near Los Angeles

Vacuum-sealed by God

Yesterday, I went to church, feeling relatively unconflicted about my presence there, and an amazing thing happened: I continued to feel unconflicted about my presence there through the entire service.

I know. I could hardly believe it myself.

Sometime in these months, especially these past few months when I've been mentally arguing with myself against needing to go to church -- "Do not give up meeting together as some have done..." versus "But the restrictions they're always talking about don't make sense to me anymore, or right now; am I not supposed to follow my own soul?" only gives up when I have other plans (like going out of state, which I've done four of the last five weeks, and will do again this coming weekend) -- my church, or perhaps my pastor, seems to have changed.

I don't think it was me. I mean, I know I've changed, but I don't think I changed to be more like church.

The sermon was on Romans 8:1-2, and a few other verses farther on, which good Bible students will know is the "no condemnation in Christ" set of verses. I listened to the part about stunning and complete lack of condemnation, lack of guilt, lack of shame, and waited for the other shoe to drop -- ONLY if you do such-and-such, ONLY if you're a so-and-so kind of person, ONLY ONLY ONLY...but it never did. All we got was the removal of condemnation, not the putting-back-on. To evangelical Christians, this is like taking a shower and forgetting to get dressed before heading out again: What is there to keep us in line but guilt?

But no, we weren't told to tow the line. We were told the line didn't really exist anymore, so we might as well all stop faking it.

Well, I thought to myself, now I remember why I liked this church stuff so much.

My pastor even pointed out that external requirements don't change the internal reality of our souls, and that this is what's wrong with "the Law." Well, yeah. That's what I've been saying. This perfectly summarizes my current working theology.

It was so astonishingly relevant.

Not that it was a huge revelation, or that what I've described is really the only, or the primary, reason that I've been a more-or-less lifelong church attender, but it was such a fitting sermon that it made me wonder. Am I not-attending church in vain?

When I can walk into church after months away and hear a sermon that sticks to every relevant part of me and no others, as though tailored -- as though vaccuum-sealed -- to me, does that mean that all my efforts to be apostate are meaningless to God? Maybe this is predestination.

Maybe the anchoress of Julian of Norwich had it right when she said "all shall be welle and all shall be welle...Thou shalt see thyselfe that all manner of things shall be welle." She was accused of heresy for the implication in this statement -- that everyone would end up in heaven -- and she avoided excommunication by declaring that she did not believe that everyone would reach eternal bliss.

I'd like to think she did, anyway.

Movie Review: Spring Subway (Chinese)

It is with trepidation that I write this review of my favorite movie.

Which is probably fitting, because so much of it is taken up by questions of fear, the impulse to speak (versus the impulse to be well-thought-of, to hide what seems like a shameful truth) and the results of people's reactions to speaking about or from fear.

It's a Chinese film, which viewers should bear in mind; the cultural differences don't overshadow the "universal" concerns of the characters, and anyone should be able to understand the basic plot of the movie without extensive knowledge of Chinese culture -- but I'm not sure a viewer can really empathize with Jianbin's (the husband's) dilemma without at least a cursory understanding of what it means to speak directly in Chinese culture. It's harder than all but the most painfully shy Americans can understand.

Amid flashbacks to the happy couple arriving in Beijing young and carefree seven years earlier, we learn that Jianbin and his wife, Xiaohui, seem to be drifting apart. They each speak directly to the camera -- Jianbin shyly, Xiaohui candidly -- about how they feel about their marriage, their fears that the other is about to throw in the towel, their desires to start other relationships.

The main tension in their relationship, and in the movie, results from Jianbin's having been laid off three months before the events of the movie, but not telling Xiaohiu about it. He imagines scenarios in which he tells her and she accepts and embraces him -- and ones in which she berates him for being defective. He brings himself to the point of almost telling her half a dozen times, but cannot; instead, he dresses as if for work every day and rides the subway around the city, killing time and listening in on others' conversations.

From Jianbin's peregrinations, we learn about two other couples at the beginnings of their relationships. The other four people are well-developed enough to catch our attention, but not enough to satisfy us. At the end of the movie, I find myself wondering what happened to them, but I consider this a strength rather than a weakness, and a sign of being true-to-life. (How many of us get total closure on conversations we overhear on a subway?)

The soundtrack carries the subway scenes, knitting together the forced intimacy of the interior of a subway car with the flash-and-dash exterior of Beijing's new subway. It moves us through the city and through time, refreshing instead of irritating (which is rare for moving-along-montage music).

Xiaohui and Jianbin both consider affairs: Xiaohui with a client of hers named "Tiger," Jianbin with an injured kindergarten teacher he learned about from one of the four subway characters. They each find respite in their flirtations with infidelity, but only because their own relationship is so intensely fraught with conflict -- mostly internal, and mostly Jianbin's.

The fact that they experience this conflict as fading love, as a "seven year itch" or feeling neutral toward each other, strikes me as truth. They each wonder whether the relationship, so apparently devoid of love and hope, is worth it, but neither can address the question directly. Jianbin comes home from riding the subway one night to find Tiger's shoes outside his door -- Chinese often remove their shoes when they enter a home -- and moves one; Xiaohiu, letting Tiger out after a friendly get-together, sees that it has been moved and knows that Jianbin has been by. Still, they do not discuss it.

In one scene, Xiaohui tries to discuss the relationship casually, attempting to make light of what weighs on them both, at dinner. She laughs half-heartedly, making an effort; she begins to talk more directly, but falters as Jianbin, sitting across from her, stuffs vegetables into his mouth, barely chewing and not swallowing at all. They sit in silence as he chews. The scene is painful to watch; as viewers, we know what Xiaohui wants to say, and that Jianbin does not need to fear it -- but we also know that he expects her to admit to an affair, and that he does not feel he could handle this knowledge.

In a flashback, Jianbin and Xiaohui lay in their bathtub, relaxing and talking, and Xiaohui asks a riddle: If a stick of bamboo has a bitter end and a sweet end, which one do you eat first? The bitter, Jianbin answers, and Xiaohui says he is a pessimist. She splashes him, laughing, and the solemnity vanishes -- but it sticks with the viewer, and Jianbin's answer seems to give us a window into how he thinks.

It may tell us more about Xiaohui, though. I thought about this riddle for a long time after my second or third viewing of the movie: Why would someone who ate the bitter before the sweet be a pessimist? That's what I would do; I'd use the sweet as a reward for having endured the bitter. It eventually occurred to me that perhaps the bitter would not need to be endured -- an optimist may eat the sweet first in the belief that the bitter would never have to be eaten. Perhaps more sweet was to come.

The gestures toward affairs -- neither of which is consummated -- become a way for both Jianbin and Xiaohui to express themselves without fear. Xiaohui realizes, talking to Tiger, that she does still love Jianbin; Jianbin is able to tell the injured kindergarten teacher, who has been temporarily blinded, secrets that he had long kept hidden. Having said these things, they are able to approach each other more honestly in the end, despite the still-intense conflict in their relationship.

The resolution of their relationship is metaphorical, though I believe it's clear what happens in the end. (One of my Chinese students, though, said it was "a sad movie" because she thought they broke up in the end; I had to rethink my interpretation after this, but I still think it's clear that they stay together.)

There is no happily-ever-after for Spring Subway, whose title would be better translated as "Heading toward Spring Subway," but there is a renewed sense of hope, and that also strikes me as true. Jianbin and Xiaohui, like people in real-life relationships, do not need to be perfect, or even "perfectly committed" like the couples conveniently left at the meeting point at the end of most romantic comedies. They need to be willing to work past each other's -- and, more importantly, their own -- issues to reconnect with each other and make the relationship work. They are, and they do, and the result is affecting and inspiring.

That's my kind of happy ending.

Confessions, IX

I have no fewer than 45 cups/glasses/mugs in my house.

I own two pairs of suspenders, but no appropriate pants or shirts to wear them with.

Until this past week, I had candy in a basket in my living room, some of which was at least a year and a half old and most of which was gross.

Local trivia: What woke me up this morning

A tag sale.

No lie.

"We're doing AMAZING things with flaming tapestries these days..." (Blue and yellow hell)

In college, I realized as though all-of-a-sudden one night that some choices are false.

There may appear to be a choice, in any given difficult situation, between one impossible thing and another impossible thing, and it may cause you to scratch your head in your struggle to choose between them. You may ask yourself which one would be less worse. It may begin to seem to you like a game of "Would You Rather."

Would you rather, for instance, have an arm or a leg chopped off?

What if you didn't get to decide between the right and the left? What if the one you would choose to have removed wouldn't be anaesthetized, but the one you didn't choose, would? Would you change your mind? What if most people chose the leg, but then had a particularly difficult life as a result, so that you lived in a society of single-legged people who complained all the time?

You may find yourself pondering these questions, and others, in an effort to make a decision. There's only one problem with this.

These are stupid questions, and you shouldn't be asking them. What you should be doing is taking your two good legs and two good arms (assuming you have all four limbs, currently) and running the hell away.

Metaphorically, this applies to any situation in which you find yourself struggling to choose between the proverbial rock and the hard place. The need to choose something impossible is a mirage. There are always other options, and most of the time all you have to do is wait for them to appear.

When I realized this in college, I described it to friend Debbie as being asked to choose between hell with a blue interior decorating scheme versus hell with a yellow-based scheme. The point is not whether you'd like blue or yellow better. The point is that they're both Hell.

So wait for something better. Don't choose until it comes.

(It always does.)

Internal Debate: Slut vs. Whore

Though it had been my previous opinion that the word "slut" was slightly less vulgar than its half-synonym, "whore," I have now reversed that position.

Whore refers to someone who sells the use of his or her body -- or, metaphorically, skills or intelligence, etc. -- for money. Slut refers to a freely promiscuous woman.

Although a slut seems to have more personal power -- making it less a term of condescention or paternalism than whore -- since, in theory, she has made decisions leading to the labeling, I see no reason for a judgment of these decisions, and thus no reason for the word.

Furthermore, it is often if not almost always misapplied, stripping it of its implied freedom of choice.

Let them eat rape!

When I was in China, I ate a lot of the vegetable the Chinese call "you cai" [yo tsai], which translates as "oil vegetable." It's the plant that produces the seeds from which we extract what we Westerners call canola oil. We don't eat it here, though it's delicious fried in its own oil, and it's very, very green and thus very, very good for you.

Besides our general aversion to leafy green things, and our unwillingness to try said things cooked in a way that helps us to like them -- i.e., fried in oil -- the name of the plant is probably what's keeping us from adopting it as a viable snap pea-broccoli-cabbage alternative. The plant is called rape.

Imagine a campaign by rape farmers to turn this vegetable into a national sensation. "Try rape! You'll like it!" or "Rape: it goes with everything!" come to mind as possible horrifying (and tasteless) slogans.

I propose, then, that we all agree to do what I did in China, which is to call rape "canola," which is what we call its cooking oil, anyway. One of my precision-is-close-to-godliness teammates didn't like this, but I'm a woman of the people. Give them what they want! After all, "a rape leaf by any other name would still taste as sweet..." etc.

Anyway, think about it.

Fighting Firefighters with Fire

Last night, I went to a Local City Common Council meeting, where two hot topics finished off a night of an unexpected level of public participation (more citizens than usual came to speak, mostly to support the first controversial issue, a nonbinding resolution against the Iraq war, blaming President Bush and Congress for starting it, which passed in a partisan vote, 13-2 -- but I'm writing about the second "hot topic," here), council debate and a longer-than-usual consent agenda.

Personal highlights of this council meeting, which was the first full Common Council meeting I've attended, included learning what a consent agenda is; realizing that the security guard was definitely hitting on me, no question; being identified as "a member of the press" by a citizen wanting to comment on the ratio of cops to firefighters in the city; being promised $50 by one reporter if I broke the shins of a reporter from a competing paper; and being approached by one of the Republican aldermen with whom I had exchanged emails on our opposing views on bilingual education. But these highlights paled in comparison to listening to the rhetoric of the first, and then the second, hot topics.

Part of what makes the Local City Common Council so interesting is how closely its makeup resembles the cast of a summer action blockbuster.

The Democrats, though the majority, are obviously the good guys:
They're diverse -- women and men, young and old, black, white, Hispanic, Polish, etc.
Three of them are young, white and attractive. (Two men, one woman, and the woman is blond.)
They're both polite and passionate.
The majority leader's last name is "Tru-worthy." (Letter e removed to prevent Googling.) No lie.

The Republicans are the bad guys:
There are only two of them -- enough for one mastermind and one henchman.
They are older white men.
The mastermind tends to harangue the council in terms that misframe the original issue, in order to "win."
They always vote against the "good guys."

Add to this that last night, the Republican mastermind berated those from the public who had come to speak against the war -- and in favor of the resolution against it -- saying that their opinions they "spewed" were "an abomination," among other things.

You can't make this stuff up.

So the second topic taken off the table was regarding firefighters' overtime pay, which had gone beyond the budgeted amount for the fiscal year. The council was being asked to approve a $1million appropriation for this line item to cover the overage on what had originally been a $1.17m budget.

One alderwoman pointed out before the council comments began that the OT line also included retirement pay and other overage pay, and later said that even the fire chief could not predict who would retire in any given year, and so could not have predicted precisely what the line item should have been budgeted at -- but also that last year's line was at $2.1m, and a few year's ago's, $2.9m. We had shortchanged the line, she said, misrepresenting reality when the budget had gone through with its original appropriation.

Republican comments were limited mainly to denigration of the contract that had been put in place "ten years ago" after the city and the fire department went into arbitration to settle issues of contention, like how to staff firehouses. The fire department is, of course, unionized. The mayor got in on the union-busting action, despite being a former firefighter with Local City Fire Department before running for office, and cited sick leave "abuse" as one reason for the over-budget expenditures.

But majority leader Tru-worthy stole the show when he questioned the man charged with presenting the request for funds to the council.

The money being requested was not being requested for future use. It had already been paid out. This made Tru-worthy mad.

It's not that we shouldn't pay firefighters, he said, but that the Finance Committee needed to ask for additional funding before using money that hadn't been approved.

In fact, the amount spent was, as of last night's meeting, in excess of the amount being requested, by about $50g.

Eventually, the Republican mastermind proposed an amendment to the original request, adding the $50g that would square the city up until last night.

So as of last night, the city has retroactively approved the payment of firefighters' OT, which reaches time-and-a-half pay after 182 hours put in during a 22-day period.

There are new recruits in the wings, waiting to begin work at Local City Fire Department, but as the fire chief explained, they won't be fully trained for another four months -- though they will be paid for the training time.

It's hard to know whose fault all of this is, though I tend to blame the ones who under-budgeted to begin with, and the ones who didn't seek approval of expenditures before making them.

This is all insanely interesting to me. And the plot, though provincial, has real potential, I think.

Imagine: If we could get this cast of characters out of Chambers and into some ridiculous action-movie plot -- something involving a real fire, perhaps, or seeking the lost city Atlantis, or a car-race, or being charged with stealing the unstealable or assassinating the unassassinatable -- we could have ourselves a real government for the people.

Having dispatched the red-herring Republicans (who ultimately voted, with no choice, to allocate the necessary funds to the OT line) and protected the hard-working firefighters of Local City, the last scene would have to feature our hero, Majority Leader ("Major" for short) Tru-worthy standing over a cowering Finance Committee Nerd -- the brains behind the operation -- overturned firetrucks and flames shooting up behind him (camera angled hard from the ground to frame Tru-worthy against the night sky), evidence of the hard-won battle (against what would be unclear, but who cares! There would be fire! Overturned trucks! Angled cameras framing our hero!).

"Go," Tru-worthy would say, disgusted by the sniveler's sniveling. "Take the money. But I never want to see your face here, again."

As Tru-worthy turned his back on his enemy, the Nerd would pull out an adding-machine-turned-semiautomatic and take aim just as Tru-worthy's sidekick shouted a slow-motion "Nooooooooo!" -- a hand on either cheek -- in time for our hero to turn, and in one swift motion, blast the Nerd back to wherever Finance Committee Nerds come from.

It's not epic, certainly. It's B-quality at best. But when I work out the screenplay, I think I may send it to that guy who handles Vin Diesel's movies. Surely that guy needs some more work.

Safety Recall: "Fun 'n Safe Magnetic Dartboard"

That's what you get for trusting a product that replaces the word and with 'n.

Accusations II

I accuse:

Jeans manufacturers, who insist on making jeans only in sizes that don't fit me, resulting in my tightening belts in ridiculous ways. Try a little harder, please, so I don't have to pleat my casualwear in order to leave the house in the morning.

The two women who left the ladies' room at the paper today without washing their hands. (I know it was two different women by shoes.) I know that urine is sterile from watching Waterworld, but still.

The movie Waterworld, for existing.

10 a.m.

The time after which I begin to feel glad to be alive.

I'm going on a bender.

Tonight, I find myself hungry. Not just "my stomach is knotting up and I need a snack to calm it," actual hunger, but that "I feel a great need to consume the Earth on which I stand"-type hunger. I am not surprised. This is what follows the anorexia.

Many of you may breathe a sigh of relief at this news. I hear the Marge-Simpson-like tone in your voices when I report my eating habits; I know you've been worried.

Worry no more. Tonight, when I get off work -- in mere minutes! -- I plan to eat at least four varieties of not-so-good-for-you foods, including but possibly not limited to an egg salad sandwich cooked in olive oil; garlic-and-herb cheese similar to what was served at my brother's rehearsal dinner; black bean dip; Doritos. I may finish it off with a glass of skim milk.

Now the vegans can begin worrying.

Lamentation Road

Off backroads between Berlin and Middletown, CT, a subdivision consisting of large, vinyl-sided, single family homes.

Possible explanations:

The road was named after "Lamentation Smith," a famous evangelist and/or historical figure from Puritan days.

The road name was changed after the subprime crisis.

The road was named by a city planner/authority who hates McDonaldization in all its forms, especially cookie-cutter subdivisions.

The road was named by the subdivision house owners, who hoped to keep out riffraff -- like the sorts of people who know what "lamentation" means.

The road was built on a Native American burial ground, resulting in mass hauntings and mysterious wailing sounds in the night.

The road was named by stupid people.

Other possible explanations welcomed.

New word: Sarcast

(n.) A person who employs sarcasm to make a satirical point about life, but without the truly disillusioned attitude of the cynic; one who is sarcastic.

Local trivia: Popcorn, peanuts, Cracker Jacks and licenses!

The Connecticut DMV office in New Britain has a concession stand in the waiting area. It has been designed to look like something between a hot dog stand and a faux circus cart.

The implications of this are staggering in variety and scope.

I will en-Abel you.

Jennifer Abel, whose columns once ran in the Hartford Advocate -- the Hartford Courant's alt weekly paper, which features everything the Courant wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole (snarky commentary on local politics, blatantly opinionated reporting, sex advice, personal ad sections advertising themselves with taglines like "Because you can't spank yourself," the weekly "Free Will Horoscope" -- all the good stuff) -- has been laid off.

Luckily, she has a blog. She also has another, slightly more professional blog featuring clips of her published work, where those who had come to look forward to her columns each week can get deep into the archives and find themselves satisfied.

Still. There's no excuse for this.

To the paper that claims to advocate for the people of Greater Hartford, I say this: Damn you, Hartford Advocate. Damn you to becoming an increasingly less-good paper.

Scars

Between my eyebrows; origin mysterious

On the right side of my nose; from crawling into a coffee table leg at four; requiring stitches

Right knee; from bike-racing alongside a friend who pulled too close; no treatment

Just under my sternum; from bathing one of our family cats who hated water; no treatment

Right wrist; from helping pick up pieces of a door window after a friend's parent slammed and shattered it; no treatment

Left forearm; from a medieval-style bleeding time test (for von Willebrand's disease) at New Britain General Hospital; no treatment

Left foot, inside; from stepping next to a concealed broken bottle in the woods; requiring stitches

Unsolicited Advice II

You need to stop telling other people what to do. Seriously.

Recipe: Black Bean Dip

Black beans, dry (1 lb. bag)
Onion, chopped
Southwest-style salsa (black bean and corn)
Cumin
Cayenne pepper
Coriander
Onion powder (optional)
Salt
Pepper Jack cheese, grated (eliminate for veganized recipe)

1. Prepare the beans as instructed on bag. (Usually soak overnight in large pot with 6-8 c. water, rinse, boil for two minutes in 6 c. water, then simmer for an hour and a half to two hours.) Rinse beans in colander and return to pot with 1-2 c. water.

2. Over med-high heat, mash beans as much as you feel like it. Add chopped onion. Continue to stir and mash as desired.

3. After however long you feel like waiting, add cumin, cayenne pepper and coriander. Taste. Add salt. Taste. Add some more of whatever you want more of. Taste. Cook for awhile at a simmer.

4. Add some Southwest-style salsa -- approximately 1 c., or however much you think you'd want.

5. Stir for awhile.

6. Taste again.

7. Add pepper jack cheese, stirring constantly until melted. Taste. Remove from heat when satisfied, and serve hot -- or ladle into old glass jars (salsa jars are particularly good), close, and set aside until cool. Then refrigerate until ready to eat.

Serve with chips. Serves approximately six mediumly-hungry people.

True patriot love

Sharon, Carl and I went to Canada on Sunday.

It was the first time for me, and as typically happens, I found myself in subculture rather than Culture: Quebec, in this case.

It was the first time I've driven in a foreign country. (From this, you may also derive that it was also the first time I've paid any attention to the km markings on my speedometer -- and a loose attention, even so.) I was surprised by how different it felt to see alternative street signs and line markings on the highway and Montreal roads; I was perhaps more surprised by my feeling of being a boorish American (with CT plates) as I realized -- with Sharon's constant help -- that I was two lanes right of the exit I wanted, or that 63 mph is a mentally difficult speed to maintain, resulting in stutter-passing cars to both sides.

Once we got into the city, though, we parked Betty and said good-bye, preferring to walk from our (lovely) hotel toward all that downtown Montreal had to offer us.

It turns out that on a Sunday afternoon, Montreal has approximately the same amount of stuff to offer as any other place that shuts down on Sunday afternoons.

To be fair, we were not demanding folk -- our focus was mainly to find good food, which we did(!) -- and the day was lovely. We just didn't happen across any poetry slams in Quebec-accented French, or improv comedy or jazz, or anything that was happening one time only! on April 13. Which was fine. We were there to see Montreal in all its quotidian glory.

We headed first down to the harbor, where the Montrealese keep a giant defunct factory consisting of silos that are now (apparently used) as a silo-phone (get it?). People can talk into their phones or whatever newfangled internet technology transmits sound, and hear the echo across one of the giant silos making up this enormous rusting hulk on the Montreal harbor. (Needless to say, I was totally enamored with this factory. I love looking at large and rusty things.)

Across the river were two interesting remnants of Montreal's shot at the World's Fair in 1967: a biosphere (looking like a fragile and halved Epcot ball), and one of the most interesting buildings I've ever seen, Habitat '67.

Go ahead and take a look at Habitat '67. Apparently, units can be rented or purchased; with the current condition of American real estate investment, you might want to consider buying abroad...and inviting me to visit.

Or live with you.

I'm just sayin'.

By this time, it was mid-afternoon, and we hadn't eaten since breakfast, so we began searching for a tea room we had seen on the way to the harbor.

The tea room was lovely. We each ordered a different tea and were presented -- really: a presentation was involved -- with separate pots, steeping cups and teacups, and extra water for refills. We also each ordered a vegetarian option from their minimal menu. My tofu wraps were just enough to dull my hunger until dinner.

We wandered the streets, noting Notre Dame, the town hall, the courts of Justice (including a monolithic structure that I described as "totally 2001-ing me"), and the various places we might stop for dinner. In the end, we went back to the Crepe Cafe, which had only been opened two weeks, but where clearly the staff knew what they were doing. I had a dinner crepe with eggplant and chicken, and a dessert crepe with bananas, strawberries, nuttella and whipped cream.

We returned to the hotel via bitterly cold and windy streets, foregoing the night lights of the city for the warmth of our hotel room and conversation.

I said, at one point in the conversation, "we'll have to think of something fun to do next time."

Sharon looked at me in horror. "What do you mean?"

"We'll have to think of something else to do, for next time."

"What sort of things are you talking about?"

"This, but again, and somewhere else, probably -- to have something else to look forward to."

Sharon, who had thought I was saying we should do something "exciting" -- like bar-hop, or enter ourselves in The Amazing Race, or try a new kind of bungee jumping or something -- was reassured by my insistence that I only wanted more of what we had already been doing. (Or, by some definitions, not doing.)

If this is what all of Canada is like -- the thrills limited to great food, friends, walks and talks -- then count me in. Or, rather, out: I'm expatriating.

New word: Antichrist Complex

(n.) The feeling that you could ruin the whole world, usually just by being your real self.

Canadians bring home the bacon

Going to Canada over the weekend -- about which there will be more to come, certainly -- after the Canadian dollar surpassed the U.S. dollar in value seemed a bit like visiting NYC for the first time, after the towers had fallen.

Jokes about Canadian dollars being the equivalent of Monopoly money, for instance, were out, or else became ironic.

How we were held over the Styx

I can feel this weekend settling into me like a fine dust, covering and permeating every surface.

I've never cared for weddings -- never planned them as a little girl, never desired one as a straight-faced adult -- and I haven't felt connected to Tyler for years, now. When people said "Oh, that will be fun!" about my trip to see his Vermont wedding, I faked a smile and nodded, then changed the subject. It would be a fun weekend, I thought, but only because I had planned a side-trip with friends, to Canada.

It caught me off-guard, then, which is the only way I can be (truly) caught.

At the rehearsal dinner, at a tasteful and spacious house in the country, I saw Tyler as he is with friends instead of family. I watched him transform into an adult version of the tender, quick-to-laugh, open and vulnerable child I knew before (before hospitals and ambulances and screaming and police and sharp, consuming bitterness). I glimpsed in his speech of thanks to his best man and the maid of honor what sort of person he had secretly become -- secret to his family, because we would have crushed it. Even I would have.

He is a good man, my brother, and I am unspeakably relieved.

Spencer and I sat and laughed the entire dinner, on a corner of the wraparound couch, balancing plates on our knees and making jokes told by mothers, bearable. I asked what he had gotten them as a gift, and he shook his head. I shook mine in response; I hadn't gotten them anything, either. Raising his eyebrows in mock desperation, he reached into his back pocket, pulled out a pen and his wallet, then a twenty dollar bill. I burst out laughing.

"Are you going to put my name on it, too?" I asked Spencer, his pen poised above the old bill.

"Yes," he said, and laughed.

I pushed him away, palm flat on his shoulder, and he pretended to fall over on the couch and protested: "Hey! That's my Achilles...armpit..." I laughed so hard that I had to lean back on the couch to breathe.

I felt the connection like a tangible cord. He is so often distracted, with video games or girlfriend or movies or Mom, and I am so often guarded and only-sarcastic -- but laughter fed on itself until I had no choice: "You know, I don't know how our family ended up related," I said to him, "but this...this makes sense."

Spencer grinned and seemed sorry to leave me at the end of the night. I was sorry to leave him.

During the ceremony the next day, when I knew I would not cry though others would, I peered down the aisle as Sarah approached, then looked back at Tyler. His face, red and teary and terrifyingly grateful, moved something in me to understanding: Sarah is my sister.

At the reception, I remembered how Mom had fretted over the mother-son dance she and Tyler had spent only ten minutes discussing. He had joked that they should dance to The Spinners' "Rubber Band Man" -- a disco tune Tyler loves -- and she had been talking about it since, wondering if she should practice, wondering if he had been serious. She had asked me to drive her to the mall that morning to buy props: giant rubber bands like the ones the band used in concerts.

When Tyler and Mom got onto the dance floor, soft instrumental music began playing, and they clung to each other in the middle, swaying awkwardly. About a minute in, the DJ played a scratching sound, switching songs, and Mom and Tyler pulled out large elastic bands and began to dance. In sync, they stretched the bands up, down, over their necks, walked in circles, stepped through them -- Spencer and I gaped at each other in disbelief. This mother was different than the one we knew; this mother was young and ready for the discotech and happy. This mother was pliable and eager. I jumped up in my heels. I felt like an evangelist: Did you see? Did you see what they did? I was absurdly proud, absurdly ready to cry.

I have fought for years for these pieces of them -- some safe, small parts of us, vulnerable and good -- to see even the heels of my family members pass by still soft and untouched by the trauma and darkness of our pasts. These were answers.

Yes, let's.

I think I've already warned friend Debbie that I was going to do this: After viewing her dirge version of Pink's "Let's Get This Party Started," I've decided its slowly building insanity (or yours, as you watch it) needs to be seen and heard by all.

The Only Thing High Heels Are Good For

Mopping in.

"We were on a break!"

(I feel sorry for anyone who can identify that reference, as I feel sorry for myself for using it.)

This weekend, friend Sharon and friend Carl and I are going on a road trip which, if all goes as planned, will remediate my never-having-been-to-Canada. I won't be blogging.

Try to carry on without me, brave readers!

(I'll be back next week.)

Why I don't #@%$ing swear

Those of you who knew me before or in college might be wondering what's become of me: Why am I such a potty-mouth on my blog, for instance?

Those who met me or knew me best after college might also be wondering: Why don't I curse more in person?

The answer is simple.

I don't see much wrong with using expletives in front of other people who don't care -- nor in front of certain people who do -- but as you know, if you've been reading, my life up to this point hasn't exactly been sunshine and cherry pie.

If I didn't swear then, it seems cheap to start now. Better to save it until everything sucks again and it has real impact.

Because "Isn't it exactly what you expected?" would have been too long.

I propose that Alanis was being ironic in her choice of the word "ironic" to describe the events of so-named song, possibly to see if we were paying attention.

Don't worry, 'Lani. We were.

Confessions, VIII

Due to lack of counter space, I often use the top of my washing machine for cooking prep.

I once ran my bike into a woman standing on a corner because I misjudged my speed and the sharp angle of the fenced corner; I lied as I sped away from her, saying I was going to get the brakes fixed "right now."

I am completely and utterly helpless when confronted with the words "adjusted gross income."

Local trivia: Three valves times five valves equals how much profit?

My elementary school had, as a "corporate partner," a local business: Skinner Valve.

Our school colors, green and white, were often combined with Skinner Valve's red and blue to represent our school.

I can remember changing the words to the (most-hated) song "Skinna-ma-rinki-dinki-dink" to "Skinner-ma...etc." in honor of Skinner Valve visitors. The lyrics go on to say "I love you."

Looking back, I have no idea why any of this was allowed, or even legal, or whether -- or how much -- money was involved.

It seems strange to me, but let me know, oh readers: did your elementary schools have corporate sponsors?

I Kissed Dating Good-bye, and then gave it a bj

According to the NYTimes magazine article "Students of Virginity":

"In a follow-up study to a 1995 national survey of close to 12,000 students in grades 7 through 12, two sociologists, Peter Bearman at Columbia University and Hannah Brückner at Yale, found that while those who took virginity pledges preserved their technical virginity about 18 months longer than teenagers who didn’t pledge, they were six times more likely to engage in oral sex than virgins who hadn’t taken a pledge."

Uh, wow. It's possible that President Clinton's Oval Office hijinks led to this misunderstanding of what constitutes sexual activity, but I'm willing to bet that it's the result of abstinence-only education -- about which the article states that "11 of 13 abstinence curriculums that [Representative Henry Waxman's] government-reform committee examined were rife with scientific errors and false and misleading information about the risks of sexual activity."

You can, for instance, get a sexually transmitted disease by engaging in oral sex. Even my condom-distributing public high school "life skills" class missed that one; what's the likelihood abstinence-only education deals with the topic of oral sex at all?

Six times less likely, I would guess.

"Six times more likely to engage in oral sex" is not as descriptive as one might like, statistics-wise; do pledging teens engage in it six times more often, for instance, or is the it the number of teens participating at all that's six times higher? Either way, it seems like a lot of blow jobs. (I would guess.)

Joshua Harris -- the author of I Kissed Dating Good-bye and its follow-up, Boy Meets Girl -- would be spinning in his grave, if he were dead.

These are, after all, Rev. Josh's audience: middle and high-schoolers who agree with each other and before God to wait until they're married...to date.

The Times article does not mention whether efforts to keep teens from dating at all has had an effect on abstinence rates. I suspect that research would find that teens who are "not dating" would be just as likely to engage in high-risk behavior as those who threw out the Harris with the pacifier. I'm not convinced that Harris-ophiles would be as likely to engage in regular-risk behavior, however.

Repression seems to tend toward explosive rather than gradual release, after all.

Groups such as Harris acolytes don't seem willing to acknowledge the danger in demanding the level of self-control involved in attempting to live a "lust-free" life while also educating poorly on the consequences of failure. The all-or-nothing approach seems to be all-guilt and to cede nothing to human nature. It's admirable, perhaps, to want people to treat each other decently -- as ends in themselves, rather than means to selfish ends -- but lust is a fact of life. Denying it means giving up all ability to actually deal with it, to the point of higher teen pregnancy rates and cases of STDs among abstinence-only-educated teens.

The fact that abstinence-only education is the result of religious influence, rather than science, is evident when groups advocating premarital abstinence also speak out -- in an awe-inspiring contradiction of what they say about the benefits and necessity of marriage, unless viewed from an Old-Testament literalist perspective -- against gay marriage. The Times points this out as well:

"Perceiving a sexualized culture, members of True Love Revolution went to war. The group did not require an abstinence pledge, nor concern itself with drawing specific boundaries. Its one stated purpose was to discourage premarital intercourse, but by declining to endorse gay marriage, the group left gays, just as Princeton did, with no option but to abstain forever."

Since most of the members of True Love Revolution at Harvard -- most of the dozen or so active members, anyway -- seem to be Catholic, this isn't very suprising. Abstaining forever is what priests do, anyway. (Or what they're supposed to do.)

But don't worry, my gay friends.

Apparently, oral sex doesn't count.

"Your money's no good here." --IRS

I didn't know it was possible, but my federal tax return has been rejected.

I'm poor, relatively speaking, but I have to pay taxes on the (federally-funded) Americorps disbursement I applied to my (federal consolidated) student loans last year, which doubled my 2007 income.

Except that my e-file has been marked "rejected" by the IRS.

I suspect they're holding out for the penalties and fees. Before I incur any, I'm going to have to find a way to force them to take my money...talk about adding insult to injury.

That Uncle Sam can be a real jerkface.

Hostages

The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) have been holding Colombia's former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, for six years. A captive recently released by FARC reported that Betancourt has hepatitis B and a tropical skin ailment, and the Colombian news is reporting that she's close to death. French diplomats and doctors flew to Colombia to try to save her life, but Rodrigo Granda, a senior leader of FARC, said that prisoner exchange was the only option for freeing Betancourt.

The Colombian military says it's ready to help facilitate the French doctors' finding and treating Ingrid Betancourt, who in the AP photo looks emaciated and frail, sitting on a chair made of roughly-cut, small logs tied together in front of a practically empty plank table -- a glass of something sits on the far end, but its contents are unidentifiable. Her hands are clasped on her lap, and her clothes don't fit now, if they ever did. Her hair falls thick to her lap, emphasizing the anorexically thin look of her arms. Her eyes are cast to the floor. It is impossible to tell if she has any spirit left; if she looked up, we may see it, but this is no evidence either way.

I wondered, as I read the article and looked at the picture -- one of the most striking images I've seen in a newspaper -- whether she would want this, all of this struggle on her behalf. I wondered whether she would want to be saved. Would it be enough to have doctors lay kind hands on her for moments, or hours, and then to leave again? Would it give her strength and hope to see them, or would it finish her off? To be so close to freedom and then closed off from it again, what would that do to her?

Would she prefer to die, now, the unmoving, unsmiling martyr, or to have to fight her way back to life and health and hope and happiness -- and who knows when?

It's been six years.

But I guess it was longer for me. When I think about it, my captivity lasted at least seven.

It's true what they say about just not having another option, those heroes who jump into riptides or run into burning houses to save people. I never ran toward her, toward home, but I can see the mentality in my past -- the waiting and watching and the barely suppressed hope of escape were, themselves, inescapable. I could not have shaken them, even for easier things like drugs or boyfriends or whatever people use to make their lives seem easier.

I had books. I had school. I had church, and God. I had a few friends. I had an entrenched and inexplicable desire to be better. I still have this. I did not try to find other answers because for me there was no question. Life was simply not easy.

I asked my mom the other day, under the guise of applying for health insurance, what her biological mother had died of. (It was complications from a stroke.) I remember getting the call at college, Mom saying she was at the hospital with Uncle John and that they were about to pull the plug, but it never occurred to me to ask what they were pulling it for. Her mother was never enough of a person to me to warrant a cause of death, I suppose. Her body, when they did unplug the machines keeping it alive, was donated to science. My mom watched the monitor flatline -- I imagine a green screen suddenly sounding its one long, high tone as the hill-and-valley spikes indicating a heartbeat are driven off the screen by a plain, straight line -- from outside the hospital room. She was never good at facing death.

This, her mother's death, though, I think might have seemed a relief to her.

Grandma -- my grandma, who agreed at my birth to be a surrogate, and has always been my only and true grandmother -- has told me stories over the years, things she heard about my mom's growing up, before Mom ended up with Grandma and Grandpa at fifteen, for a year.

The stories are all the same: Mom wanders to her older siblings' school at three, naked, to find someone to care for her and to find food, and my aunt's teacher puts a smock on her and returns her at the end of the day, to her home; Mom sits on the kitchen table, stealing stale bread from the cats; Mom is abused by male relatives.

Mom tells stories every now and then, when she's caught off guard, and only ones she thinks are funny -- like the time her special birthday hat fell off into the toilet when she was sick on her birthday, at a group home, one year. She laughed and laughed when she told us this story, but it made me feel that strange sort of shuddering sickness I always feel when I hear about good being wasted. It made me want to gather up my child-Mom in my arms and hold her, hard, against me. It made me angrier than almost anything that had been done to me, the loss of her hat; it became all that I hated and raged against -- for her and for myself.

If I did not love my mother (my captor), it may have been easy to turn away from hope, but I do love her -- I have always loved her -- and I cannot forget the connection.

Mom was held hostage by her mother, her father, her abusive and reprehensible relatives, and then by foster homes and group homes and orphanages, and I was held hostage by her. She was held by their hatred and selfishness and vindictiveness, and I was held by hers. She became what they wanted her to be -- emotions turned on and off like water from the tap, manipulation like second nature, dissociated from the reality of her self -- and I became what she wanted: her good parent.

If my two brothers -- the youngest more than the middle -- were my charges as much as my mom's, she was mine, too. They three were like my children.

One of my team leaders my second year in China said once, explaining why she hadn't started having kids until her late thirties, that she had already raised one family: her siblings, growing up. I nodded slowly as she talked, not realizing I was doing it until she had stopped.

Maybe this is why I never thought about whether I wanted children or not, I thought. It wasn't that I had decided that I didn't want them, or did want them, or wanted them but not right now; wanting was beside the point, it seemed. The question was nonsensical and I dismissed it out of hand.

Maybe it's because I already had them.

Maybe this is the difference between my mom's captivity and my own. Maybe being held by these people, my family, the way a parent is held by her children, is what has saved me. Wanting the best for them, despite them, has saved me.

I am hoping, then, that my mother is less relieved than sad that her mother is dead, despite her mother's vindictive and flagrant abuse.

I am hoping that in the incomparably more extreme hostage-life of Ingrid Betancourt, in the photo with her eyes turned down, she is thinking kindly of the people she knew and knows, and wishing goodness on them, and I hope this is giving her strength.

Um...No...thanks.

Heard from adjacent changing room, one middle-aged woman to another waiting outside:

"You wouldn't believe what just came out of my you-know-what. Take a wild guess!"

Local Trivia: DEAR ABBY

"Abigail Van Buren," aka Pauline Phillips, was replaced a few years ago by her daughter Jeanne Phillips (who has now taken the Abby name for her own). IMO, her standards are generally more lax than her mothers' were; for instance, she seems to select more sensational letters than her mother did -- including one discovered yesterday from a woman whose fiance still sleeps in the same bed as his 13-year-old daughter, and refuses to stop -- and she seems to allow readers to do her work for her more often. ("DEAR ABBY, regarding that time you told the man to stop sleeping with his daughter, there was this one time in my life when..." becomes an entire day's column.)

Today, however, the new Abby seemed to be feeling her oats, and the reader can almost detect a fresher, hipper vibe coming from this younger "Abigail."

She also printed two letters from Connecticut today, provided here for your enlightenment. The first letter does not include Abby's advice, but the second, I have left exactly as printed, and included Abby's response.

DEAR ABBY: My husband and I have a 20-year-old nephew I'll call "Adam," who sometimes lacks good judgment. We have told him that when he visits he should ask before drinking our milk. The price of milk has gone sky-high, and we have a 7-year-old who drinks a lot of it. We have had to tighten our purse strings and try to make a gallon last a week. When Adam comes over, he will drink two or three big glasses of it. Now, instead of asking, he sneaks it when we're not looking.
His mother, "Faye," is also my best friend. While she was visiting, Adam waited until we went into the family room, then consumed more than half of the gallon of milk we had just purchased. When we discovered what had happened, we called Adam on his cell phone and told him we weren't happy about it. Faye overheard the conversation.
When we saw her the next day, she didn't seem too upset about it. But now that she's back home in Florida, she hasn't returned any of my calls or e-mails. Could scolding Adam about the milk have anything to do with Faye's silence? -- SOURED IN CONNECTICUT"

[Ed. note: Abby's response, not included here, rightly dealt with the question asked by the woman who wrote in. The fact that the response was uninteresting is the woman's fault, as the obviously more interesting question in this scenario is "What the #@%$ is wrong with Adam?" Could it be a calcium deficiency or is it evidence of a real mental disorder that he sneaks milk, of all things? Now we'll never know. Thanks, lady.]

"DEAR ABBY: I have a very strict father. I respect what he has to say, but I don't like the fact that he won't let me have a boyfriend. He thinks all dudez are alike -- well, most dudez at least. I need that li'l bit of advice, pleeeezzz. Love always, BABI IN MILFORD, CONN.

DEAR BABI: Dadz can be that way sometimez. Perhaps yours is trying to prevent you from making an "S" of yourself."

Confessions, VII

I like to wear things with sparkles in them.

I like to watch oxen pulls.

I don't know how to play chess.

Cobain in pain

If, like me, you've spent a lifetime total of thirty seconds considering the premise that Kurt Cobain's death may have been a conspiracy, prepare yourself to spend at least twice that time mulling over this one: Kurt may have been lactose intolerant.

I encountered this theory -- that Kurt was driven to heroin by "unexplained stomach pains," which were, statistically speaking, likely caused by adult-onset lactose intolerance, and thereby developed the addiction that ultimately resulted in his early demise -- in an independent 'zine written by Kelli Williams.

According to at least one source, the 'zine is well-presented enough to merit some serious thought.

I didn't get a chance to read the 'zine in its entirety as I leafed through it at the Papercut Zine Library in Cambridge, MA, but it did seem to present a pretty solid case. In addition to citing statistics on adult-onset lactose intolerance, Williams shows on one page how Kurt's name (also spelled Kurdt) in just two single-letter substitutions, becomes "curds."

She also applied scansion to the problem, pointing out that "Kurt Cobain" scans exactly the same as "curds and whey," the syllables falling in a stressed-unstressed-stressed pattern:

KURT co-BAIN = CURDS and WHEY

This was the point at which I was convinced, and let it hereby be known: Any conspiracy theorist willing to apply scansion to prove their madcap theories' viability can rely on my credulous recounting of said theory to all.

This post will serve as my proof of sincerity.

Mmm...Wings.

If you've ever seen entire pigeon wings lying slightly bloodied on the sidewalk -- or tufts of feathers comprising partial wings -- and wondered how they got there, wonder no more: Rats eat pigeons.

And have the sort of table manners one would expect from rats, apparently.

Objects I have made out of Dr Pepper cans

Wastebaskets

Lampshades

Purses

Increase Your Will Power

The Times has an article in the op-ed section today -- one that, by all accounts, actually belongs in the science section -- about people's capacity for self-control. Apparently, in the short term, people have only limited willpower available to them. The amount of willpower available at any given moment may be, at least in part, a function of blood-sugar levels; the brain needs blood sugar to function, and it takes quite a bit of energy to resist something tempting (or not resist something repellant). People asked to do two self-control-intensive activities in a row had more difficulty with the second task when given diet lemonade (no sugar) between tasks, but did equally well on the two tasks when given regular lemonade (lots of sugar). In the short term, sugar seems to actually increase self-control.

The article does not discuss the implication that this will revolutionize modern parenting methods. ("Pixie stix before homework, kids! You know the rule!")

Despite the quick pick-me-up available in glucose-rich foods, the authors caution readers to save their willpower for things that really need doing; let the housework go, they say, if you've got a test to study for.

I don't doubt the results of the studies cited by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, but my approach is usually the opposite: If I've got a test to study for, the first thing I do is start cleaning. Procrastination is as good a study method as last-minute panic is a reliable motivator. But maybe they're right; maybe I should have been spending my time eating Oreos and watching Simpsons reruns instead of stacking papers and vacuuming. My test scores may have suffered as a result of my diligence.

Aamodt and Wang also say that over time, people can build up their overall capacity for self-control, and practicing self-control in one area of life seems to help other areas, too. The article notes that people committing to a two-month exercise regimen also experience a reduction in "impulsive spending, junk food intake, alcohol use and smoking. They also study more, watch less television and do more housework." Willpower is like a muscle that can be strengthened, they say.

In addition to the tasks given to study participants, who were asked to eat radishes or stare at an unchanging video of a table and chair, "other activities that deplete willpower include resisting food or drink, suppressing emotional responses, restraining aggressive or sexual impulses, taking exams and trying to impress someone."

"Trying to impress someone" seems like a strange addition to this list, until you take a moment to consider what it really means: suppressing the impulse to act like an idiot. (For some reason, this impulse is highly correlated with being around someone you want to impress.)

Aamodt and Wang conclude that any activity that requires self-control will increase willpower -- "and the ability to resist impulses and delay gratification is highly associated with success in life."

Well in that case, bring it on, life.

I'm ready to resist all you have to offer.

I'm a mad, mad, mad, mad girl.

Since I started working as a job coach six months ago, the job has changed an infinite number of times. I got the call about my application two weeks after I put it in -- when, as I left, they said "You'll hear from us tomorrow" -- but was slow to pick up hours. I had been hired to work with a girl in her home, four or five days a week. Three weeks into the job, I had shadowed with just about every possible client, but the girl I was meant to work with was still sick, and no one knew when she was likely to get better.

I was assigned, in the meantime, to a male client two days a week, whose three-days-a-week job coach did an excellent job preparing me.

"He will suck out your soul," Josh, the job coach, said to me. "He will take whatever you give and take more. If you tell him anything about yourself or your family or anything, he will use it to manipulate you. Don't give him anything."

I believed Josh. He spoke so seriously and emphatically that I couldn't do otherwise.

I worked well with this client for three months, until the day we went with my supervisor and the girl I work with now, to Pizza Hut.

We should have known things were going to go wrong. This client has social anxiety, so it was difficult for him to spend time with others; having an outing with my supervisor and another client was probably enough stress for one day. But both clients said they wanted Pizza Hut for lunch, and my supervisor said she would drive, so we piled into the car and went.

It might still have turned out alright if Pizza Hut hadn't been hosting a four-year-old's birthday party that day.

As I talked with my supervisor about work-related issues, I watched as my client grew increasingly strange -- muttering to himself, gesturing, seeming to speak in tongues -- and when it was time to leave, I tried to get us out the door quickly while he pretended to confront Pizza Hut staff, thrusting his chest forward and putting his hands out as though to say "you want a piece of me?" I was the only one watching.

On the ride back, he refused to put on his seatbelt. He had admitted to me two days before that he sometimes didn't wear it when he wanted to get attention; I told him this was completely unacceptable, that it was unsafe, and that he knew he could get attention by asking for it instead of engaging in these behaviors. He had agreed and indicated that he wouldn't pull that again.

I spoke to him on that ride back, in my supervisor's car, as sternly as I ever had -- as sternly as I ever will, in fact.

When I got him home, he was silent and restrained. I left.

After I left, he had a meltdown and was restrained -- physically, by staff at his group home.

Later, another one of the guys from the home saw me in the library and began talking about my former client.

"He was sayin all this stuff about you," the boy said. "He said he would rape you."

I got myself out of the conversation, I think able to conceal the instant, all-consuming rage I felt at hearing this.

This client had no history of violence or physical confrontation, and I had spent hundreds of hours with him over the three months I was working with him. I don't believe that his statement was anything more than an empty threat. That didn't make me less angry; it made me more angry.

I went to work with the girl I had been hired for, having been told that after having her gall bladder removed, she should no longer be getting sick every hour.

In the hour and a half that I was there, she threw up five times, announcing with an evil-looking grin each time that she was "going to puke" -- teasing, or threatening, I couldn't tell which, but following through every time. I left for the day feeling nauseous and never went back.

My supervisor assigned me to the girl I work with now right after Christmas. It's been a tough couple of months, at times, as my girl is challenging and doesn't always cooperate. But I've come to appreciate her sense of humor and ability to stand up for herself and her sporadic affability. I like her and we generally work well together.

So when my supervisor told me that due to staff losses, she'd like me to double-up this Wednesday -- that is, take two clients at once, though I'll only be paid for one -- I accepted it without complaint. My girl and the male client who will be with us get along well, and she and I were already excited about our plans for the day: a community movie at the library.

If my girl does well at work each week and spends part of Mondays looking for jobs, she is rewarded by movie Wednesdays. When there aren't community movies, we watch a movie on my laptop, which is less impressive and does not have the advantage of getting her out into the community. (It also has the disadvantage of requiring movie selection; while she would love to sit and watch Chucky movies all day, she's not allowed to -- for good reason. As an alternative, she often picks such family-friendly drivel as Zeus and Roxanne -- a movie about an unlikely friendship between a mongrel dog and a dolphin, starring Steve Gutenberg.)

We prefer community movie days and look forward to them all month.

Today, though, my supervisor calls and tells me that the second client I'll be taking tomorrow -- who I don't normally work with at all -- has a job interview in a place twenty minutes' drive from the community movie library, in the middle of the day. Which wrecks the movie plan.

It's probably stupid that I'm as angry about this wrecking of my girl's Wednesday plans as I was about being threatened with rape, but I am.

It's not my fault that the organization hasn't hired anyone to handle the amount of work they've taken on. It's not my fault that the guy's other job coach didn't tell anyone until today that this job interview existed. It's not my fault there's no one else to take him. More importantly, it's not my girl's fault, and she's the one who would be most put out by the alteration. I had carefully prepared her on Monday for the likelihood that we would be taking along the male client, knowing that the unpredictable can derail even the most wonderful plans. These clients thrive on routine and are wrecked by the unexpected.

"She's been doing well lately," I told my supervisor. "It bothers me that her plans should be changed like this. What is she supposed to do during the interview?"

My supervisor, who often refers to me as one of her best job coaches -- "like an assistant to me," she says -- seemed to sense my barely concealed hostility, and she didn't have many answers to mitigate it. She didn't know the name of the contact person, or even of the company at which the client was to interview. She didn't know what I was supposed to do with two line-of-sight clients (job coaches should always be able to see them) if one was interviewing while the other waited outside. She didn't know of any other job coaches who could take him.

By the end of the conversation, she said I should just go ahead with my original plans. She said she would have dealt with this issue earlier in the day if another client -- the one I worked with as a sub last week -- had not needed to be removed from Walmart for getting into a confrontation. She would see what she could do, she said.

I guess now I know what I can do: slightly less than this.

APRIL FOOL

Rob Brezany, of the oxymoronically named "Free Will Astrology" in the Hartford Advocate, showed a sense of humor -- an inane, annoying one -- by writing the opposite of his weekly predictions, then inserting "APRIL FOOL!" into the middle of each horoscope. He finished them up by contradicting his previously stated predictions.

Good one, Rob. You're a real winner.

NOW we know: We're in this forever.

According to the AP, the Army has begun letting husbands and wives live and sleep together in Iraq. Instead of returning to single-sex barracks at night, married couples are allowed to live in small trailers with "two pushed-together single beds," according to Staff Sgt. Marvin Frazier as quoted in the article.

This isn't exactly a report of canopy beds with his-and-hers monogrammed towels, but it does seem to be a concession to the probable continuation of the war; setting up house in a foreign country usually means you're going to be there for awhile. And it's been going on since May 2006, meaning that the Army has known for awhile that victory was not one or two skirmishes away.

The reason for the change is morale. Tours of duty running 12 and 15 months, and soldiers being re-enlisted and redeployed without signing on any "I'm happy to extend" dotted lines, mean that marriages are suffering, even marriages between two people in the military who have been assigned to the same location. The concession is unprecedented, partly (as the article points out) because the Gulf War was too short to necessitate major policy changes such as this one, and partly (I would guess) because women have only recently been sent into war zones as active military personnel.

This represents, I think, a further shift in Army mentality -- marked by their ads, in recent years, celebrating the individual as "an Army of One" and emphasizing the personal (often financial) benefits of joining up -- which used to be a "break 'em down and build 'em up again as good, unquestioning, loyal soldiers" sort of organization. This seems to be a philosophical break with their past -- with their entire raison d'etre, in fact.

The other major question this raises, at least in my mind, is "Trailers? Where'd they get those?" (Hurricane Katrina aftermath?)

And where are they keeping them? I understand that much of Iraq is desert, which seems like free space just waiting to be trailered, but aren't the troops stationed mainly near populated areas? Doesn't the profusion of trailers present some sort of tactical liability? Wouldn't the trailers increase the area requiring guard? There are probably more places to hide around and under small trailers than barracks, right? At what point do they become indefensible?

But these issues are only relevant in the case of a glut of trailers; if we're talking two or three per base, they're hardly worth mentioning.

So how many soldiers are taking advantage of the policy?

The Army, bizarrely, claims not to know how many married couples are living together; it says it "doesn't keep track."

Doesn't keep track at all of how many trailers it's required to defend? The Army doesn't have statistics on this? Seriously?

This indicates either that the Army is lying and expects us not to notice -- taking its cues from the president, one can only imagine -- or else that the situation within the military is much, much worse than even the most pessimistic of us thought.

At least some of the soldiers, who I imagine hanging curtains in trailer windows and adopting pets over the next few years, will likely be able to translate between the second generation of American military and the people of the land we occupy. That's something.