I went ice skating this weekend. It is part of a girl’s night my fabulous socially organizing-type friend is doing.

There are a lot of girls that could be part of the girls’ night. But this is the second girls night, and we are capping out at four. They are not all the same girls. It’s a rotating cast of people that can manage to come.

At our dinner afterwards, Kim (the organizer) brought something up. She has a roommate, a mostly employed actor, and he asked her what she was doing.

“Girls night”

“Oh, I’m having a dinner party, I was gonna tell you to come.”

This dinner party was organized about 2 days prior. They expected about 40 people to show.

OUR girls night had been organized MONTHS ago, but only four people (and only two for the whole time) came.

I suggested that maybe roommate’s JOB is to draw an audience, and that is why all these people come. He pulls a crowd, and that is what makes him employed as an actor.

Someone else suggested that maybe it’s because all his unemployed actor buddies are quite up for anything at the drop of a hat. He KNOWS a bunch of people with free time.

We girls were not full of free time.

So, It makes me think. How do people end up being friends with people these days? Myspace and Facebook are not really full of friends. Not the sort of friends you see and hang out with.

It’s tough, once you get successful and responsible, to maintain the friends. That’s why I admire Kim greatly for helping. I know it takes time for her to organize our girls nights.

Somehow I think we forget to give ourselves and fun times a priority. It gets pushed back, lower down on the list. FIRST we have to get to work and FIRST we have to go take the class and FIRST we have to…

but we can’t seem to find a second.

I know that once people have kids, they seem to grow a social life again. I’ve seen elaborate birthday parties for three year olds that have more adults than kids.

I guess if you hang out with poeple who are full of free time, then you can have friends. Like the employed actor. but those of us who are more than mostly employed…well…we like hanging out with other ambitious people. And people like that take 2..3…4…10 tries before you can actually spend the time.

What with celebrating Grandma Ruth’s 90th birthday

and with facing my own weakness and frailty last week…

I’ve been thinking about the Iliad, and most specifically Achilles

I confess, I have not completed read the Iliad. I want to…I’ve read part of it. I did get an excellent grade in my college class on the classics.

So, what I remember of this story is how Achilles was human. He was the son of an immortal goddess and a human king. And Achilles was going to die.

In fact, that was pretty much the dividing line between what was a god and what was human. Humans die.

Achilles railed against that dark night of death. He did not want to die, and he was resentful about it. The struggle that he had with this problem, as put forth in the poem the Iliad, pretty much set the tone for almost everyone that heard it.

What does it mean to be finite?

You can easily imagine that Achilles’ friend told him that as a mortal, he would have to see that glorious actions were the mortals path to immortality…the STORIES of his life would live forever, even if he did not.

So. Achilles struggled with his impending death and what he would be remembered for.

I know that Grandma Ruth has been considering her death and what will be left behind ever since her husband died. He died quite a long time ago.

And me…well…I’m not 90, but death has come up in my mind. As a child, we were taught to be ready to die for Jesus and a moment’s notice. You’d better be ready!

But this is grim. Who wants to think about it? It’s not a matter to discuss in polite conversation.

Except that Homer blew the subject wide open, with Achilles and his poem. Thank you Homer! and it wasn’t even a hand-wringing wussy sort of poem either. It’s full of brave men and the spurting blood of battle.

I don’t want to be grim, but this is part of humanity. It’s as mundane as doing the dishes.

Speaking of mundane, for the first time in my life, I have been called for jury duty. How have I managed to achieve this level of adulthood without experiencing this american civic call to duty?

I’ve never lived in one place that long. I am now more than two years at a single address. This is the longest I have lived in one place since I was a teenager.

And the job that I have, which seems to be the job I will keep into the far-distant future…is almost the longest I have ever worked in one place.

My life is narrowing. I can’t help but feel slightly nervous about it.

It’s a good thing. I tell myself that the narrowing is but a honing, a sharpening of a tool to a purpose.

Which is true. To accomplish, one must buckle down and focus on something. To have a thing, you must give up the possibility of other things.

These are the thoughts running through my head. and I really should start and finish the Iliad. I would probably be glad I did, once I finished.

Well, I’m getting ready to go back to work. It was a hellish week, with the head being taken over by very mean demons.

I couldn’t lift my head. Which means I was very debilitated. I spent a portion of the week contemplating that debilitation could be forever, and what would it be like if I were in pain and incapacitated for the rest of my life.

There are some sorts of sickness that do that to you. Not a cold…I think most people feel confident that a cold will pass. Vomiting, flu symptoms–I usually feel like I can hunker down and just wait and it will be gone.

But this time, I kinda wondered. What kind of person I would have to be to live with this kind of disability? What kind of people would I have to rely on if it were more permanent?

Scary.

But it passed and I was eventually able to get up and do the dishes.

Chris’s grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday this weekend.

She is perfectly healthy, with the exception of her hearing. But she drives her Nissan maxima to bingo and watches the interest rates carefully.

But when you are 90, a lot of your friends might not be so lucky. She told me a lot of stories about friends who had trouble with their health and had died. Betty, one of her oldest friends, is losing her sight and is moving North to be near her daughter.

“Her granddaughter comes every day and cooks for her, so she can just microwave what she needs. But her granddaughter had several kids of her own, and it’s not good to rely on a granddaughter. It’s better to be near her daughter. That’s closer.”

Grandmother Ruth has a keen eye for merits and potential weaknesses for the caretakers of her friends. It is precarious to be so dependent. But this granddaughter comes every day to take care of Betty.

“She must be a very nice lady, for her granddaughter to come every day.”

Ruth’s face softened. “She is. She’s a very nice lady. I’ve known her since 72…or maybe 73…”

When I told Chris about this later, he said, “I would go every day to take care of my grandmother.” He was defending the honor of grandchildren everywhere.

And I know he would. Grandmother Ruth is also a very nice lady. She shuffles a mean deck of cards.

But as Grandmother had finished her story of how all the people she used to know in the trailer park were mostly dead, and was on about one of them in particular who had cared for her blind husband for 25 or 35 years…

“She did everything for him. Toward the end she had to get a man to come in and help him in the bath and things like that…But he died…a long time ago…and then she died too”

I was caught on the idea of a wife caring for her husband, doing everything for him for that long. I would not want to be like that husband, to be so dependent. The story was so stark, dramatic and tragic.

But then I thought, many their love was strong and sweet. Maybe they were peaceful and happy, even with that trouble. And maybe she was bereft without him, even though he was a burden.

Grandma Ruth is 90. She has a lot to think about, with all her friends and her own life. Heavy stuff. Everyone else was gone in the kitchen–I don’t think they would want her to go on about these sad things. Maybe that’s why she talks to me about it.

I interrupted her. . “You know, life–even though it can be hard, with health problems and losing sight and loved ones–life is good. It is sweet. People hang on and make it through all those hard times, and life is good.”

She answered very quickly, “Yes, life is good.”

In the summer between 5th and 6th grades, I had no clothes.

We’d just moved from Humboldt county California back to Alaska. I wasn’t naked, but I had one box for all my things. ALL my things, including clothes. You can imagine how that worked out.

But school had to start. I had niether enough clothes to last a week at school, nor any means to purchase them. So I hit up the give-n-take at church. That glorious closet of hand-me-downs served me well.

My goal was to own 5 pairs of pants. The clothing that I had been wearing during the summer was simply done as far as I was concerned. I never wanted to see them again, and anyway, they were past being wearable. To my delight and relief, I found four pairs of what appeared to be BRAND NEW pants in the give-n-take.

They were identical cotton polyester pants with an elastic waist band, the right size, but in four different colors:
pink
yellow
purple
green

“Look mom! I can wear a dress on chapel day, and have enough pants so I can wear different ones for each day.” They did sort of remind me of the kind of clothes a grandmother would wear, the kind that are advertised in the pages of Parade magazine in the sunday paper. But what I feared most, being teased for not owning enough pants, would certainly be averted by these glaringly different slacks.

I guess neither of us really anticipated that the kids in the Alaskan Christian School would be bigger clothes snobs than the kids from Humboldt county. It took until about the 3rd day of school for me to figure it out.

I found ways to earn money for pants as fast as I could. Three months went by before I had the 20 bucks to buy a non-shaming pair of pants. In the meantime, I found that skirts were my friend.

The pink pants were the most onerous. Kids from lower grades teased me about them, even after I had stopped wearing them (for good, believe me. I felt like burning those hated pants).

“Pink pants Pink pants!!”

I didn’t wear pink even once the rest of the year.

My class was made up of three grades, fifth, sixth, and seventh. I remember once, talking with a likable fifth grader about boys. Beginning with my strategy of avoiding the color pink, I had formed a theory about attracted boys which I shared with her:

“You have to be a tomboy. If you act like a boy, they will feel comfortable around you and then..maybe…even like you.”

Such sage advice from a 12 year old–I don’t know what made me think I had something to say about attracting boys. Certainly none of the boys in our class were interested in me. Maybe I was just hoping that my natural exuberance–which wasn’t ladylike–would get me what I was hoping for.

I do consider myself feminine. I have reclaimed my beloved color pink. But I am not ladylike. I don’t wait to be asked, because I simply don’t believe that will ever happen. It’s up to me to get things started.

Ask the question if you don’t know. Ask for what you need, or even what you want.

What makes that unladylike, I’d like to know? why not?

And yet, I can’t help but notice the reaction.

I was in a training class recently, and sat in the middle. When I had a question I raised my hand and asked it. But on the break, I walked up to the front to take a look at some technology there.

The teacher (male) said “Uh Oh, I’m in trouble now.”

I wanted to smack him. How insecure is this guy to be scared of me asking a question? Or was it just me? unladylike me?

Man, it’s hard enough with all the other things that can detract and derail. I believe that women must be assertive..yes pushy..to take care of the things that are most important.

When it comes to the people we women care about, we women have to push to get them what the need. From the local school principal to the President of the United states, we have to be willing to push.

And that includes pushing for ourselves.

But you know, if people think I’m pushy, it really reflect back on themselves. I wouldn’t have to push if I could just get the answer/resources/materials that I need when I ask nicely the first time

I heard that kids these days want to be famous.

It’s hard to miss, this celebrity culture. What are the famous people doing? Everyone wants to know!

If you are famous, people notice you. People want to know how you are and what you are doing. They think you are special.

All of which could actually be accomplished more effectively by an attentive grandmother, don’t you think?

There is a lot of distance between people now. Separate vehicles carry us, pod-like, to where we need to go. Don’t get too excited

But if americans are so happy to keep our distance, keep our fences tall, why are so many people ready to invade the privacy of celebrities? And why are kids wanted to be famous like that?

It’s just another way of getting love. Why can’t we all take turns being famous? Let’s all stop and appreciate one another frequently. Let’ s take any opportunity we find to notice and applaud each other.

So the Wall Street Journal did a fashion article about the spike heel.

Flats are this year’s much-hyped shoe trend, with sales of comfy shoes shooting skyward, according to retailers such as Nordstrom and Zappos.com. But those friendly flats tend to disappear at key moments — the biggest meetings, confrontations and transactions.

Yes…I noticed that. Flats are the new trend precisely because the Stiletto heel is really the new trend. Women who try to wear the spike heels are required the next day–maybe the next week– to take it easy with the flats. Sprained ankles and swollen fore-feet require a recovery period.

I won’t say I don’t love the stiletto. I admire the women who can wear them. I would…I would stomp around in 5 1/2 inch heels that could draw blood samples.

I just can’t. I don’t know if it is the lack of self-hatred or the lack of self-esteem that keeps me from working the righteous leather pumps until my feet can carry them effortlessly.

I will admire–out loud–the women I encounter with the heel mojo. “I love your shoes..I’m not enough of a women to dare wear things like that.”

They will give advice. Find the right fit, the right designer…

It’s quite possible that my problem is that I can’t seem to spend more than 25 bucks on shoes. I shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t feel like Nikes.

But the WSJ is talking about how high-powered women keep a pair of high-powered shoes around for when they need them:

“High heels indicate power,” says Stuart Weitzman, designer of many a power heel. “For some reason, it’s a natural instinct for human beings.”

This is partly a factor of height. At 5’9½ in bare feet, a pair of heels leaves Kristin Bentz, who runs a fashion-investment blog, towering over many men in a room. “I totally use the shoes for the intimidation factor — for women and for men,” she says.

Yet, as much as I’d like to argue that this is all about the added height, I’m afraid it’s not. High heels are sexy. They offer an inherent contradiction: They make us more fragile, but conquering them to stride alongside men in their sensible flats creates mystique.

MMm….all the things I would like to be. Sexy, Powerful, Intimidating…Don’t mess with me!

But it hurts to wear those shoes.

maybe that’s part of it. When a tall women walks into a room in her dangerous stilettos, maybe that’s what she’s saying:

“I eat you for breakfast. You think you scare me? I can take what you’ve got and feed the leftovers to my dog. You think you can hurt me?
Look at these shoes. You talking to me? There’s nobody else here but me.
You don’t know the meaning of pain.”

Yeah, that would be pretty intimidating.

They’ve figured out how to do botox to numb the face into smoothness.

When are they going to let us inject novocaine into our feet?

THAT’S when I’ll wear the heels.

I live in a desert.

Asphalt and chapparal cover the earth that is my chosen homeland.

The chapparal will always win, but the asphalt is gaining territory.

It is getting vertical, too.

Layered like a cake, or like strata in archeology.

Or stacked like firewood.

VERY stacked:

I’m counting six layers of lanes in that intersection. Six seems to be the limit. I’ve never seen seven.

I live in a desert, so these overpasses are over earth.

But it shook me pretty badly when a bridge collapsed yesterday.

I couldn’t stop watching the news. My first thought was whether one of my favorite writers, James Lileks, was okay.

Lileks blogs the way I wish I did. He talks about his wife and a LOT about his daughter. I was very worried for him, and for his family. I imagined what sort of sadness it would be if one of them had been killed in this horrible tragedy.

For me, he was the personal face of Minnesota during this time. I couldn’t turn off the TV until he posted online and I knew he was okay.

The sad part is, there are other families that are not okay.

Trying to whistle in the dark, I said to Chris, “At least I don’t have to cross any bridges when I am driving around.”

‘Yes you do!” he said.

“Well, not over water.”

right. But if I fell through onto asphalt or chaparral, it would be even less forgiving than the Mississippi river.

I’ve admired the beautiful freeways and overpasses I travel for a long time now. But what are they hiding beneath their swooping exteriors?

I can look down, when I am traveling on the higher of the six layers, and think about what holds me up.

Or what keeps me safe as I travel under:

How safe am I?

My heart is with the Minnesota people. I hope the best for them.