Pashtunwali vs Sharia

I find that I get annoyed when people say things about the Koran,  Islam, or Muslims, that lump all the people of this faith into the "stoning women" category.  Therefore, I thought I would post this so that we could all be better educated.....

From the book Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban, by Jere Van Dyke

"In brief, the main tenet of Pashtunwali is honor. All other tenets -- hospitality, revenge, right of refuge, inheritance, marriage, divorce, and all forms of punishment --- stems from honor. It goes to the heart of what it means to be a Pashtun. A man has no tolerance for anyone who attacks his personal, family, or tribal honor.

Pashtunwali demands blood vengeance, contradicting the Koran, which states that a man must not kill another Muslim. A man must never let an insult go unpunished.  Sharia, or Islamic law, on the other hand, is interested in arbitration, settling a dispute, paying blood money for murder."

This is the really interesting part......

"All men are equal under Pashtunwali, and noble, but if a man looks at a women with the slightest slant, demeaning her honor, it is grounds for murder.  Courtship and romantic love are forbidden. A man and a woman who elope lose respect. The family can retrieve its honor and status only if they kill the elopers. The woman must die first. Nowhere in the world are they safe. Male and female are stoned or buried alive.  Under Sharia, adultery must be witness by four people. Under Pashtunwali, a rumor can end a woman's life."

Pashtunwali is obviously the more fundamentalist brand......the brand that the Tailban practices......

Food for thought....

Happy Birthday, Harry

I have loved Science Friday from the very first moment I stumbled upon it via the Internet almost six years ago....and firmly believe that had I found it years earlier, perhaps my life would have gone in a very different direction.

Because of Science Friday, I got an H1N1 flu shot (and learned to stop calling it "swine flu.)

Because of Science Friday I have become considerably more aware of how my actions may be contributing to climate change and have actively done things to change my behavior in the hope that I might make a small difference.

Because of Science Friday I know more about the Higgs boson, black holes, nanotubes, graphene, and carbon sequestration than I would ever have thought possible.

Because of Science Friday I have bought books like The Zookeeper's Wife, About a Mountain and In Search of Memory.

Because of Science Friday, I have been educated by watching entertaining videos, like how to de-skunk my dog (if I had one), and what kind of car I might want to drive (if I didn't use the subway ever day). I've seen permafrost defrosting, understand the physics of basketball, know what it's like to see through the eyes of an armadillo and how water balloons behave in space. I have been able to not only hear some of the scientists that are interviewed, but also see their desks! How else would that have ever been possible, if not for Science Friday?

Because of Science Friday, I have been able to hear the words of people like Jane Goodall, Eric Kandel, Carl Sagan, and Sylvia Earl, just to name a few of the many, many guests who have been interviewed. I’d like to think that if Einstein were alive, I would have also gotten to hear him too.

Because of Science Friday I know the origins of words like antibiotic, physician and comet.

It’s impossible for me to detail all that I’ve learned over the past five years of being a Science Friday listener. I have been horrified by what is happening to our planet, (and the people who don’t believe it), yet still feel encouraged that there are so many smart people out there, diligently working on ways to effect change.

Science Friday feeds my curiosity on so many different levels.

And, certainly, last, but not least, there’s Ira Flatow……without whom Science Friday would never have existed. With his unlikely sounding radio voice he has helped me and all his other listeners, to better understand the scientific world around us by bringing science into our lives for two hours every week, and on a level that we can understand.

If it were not for Ira, I would not be using the phrase “Scientific evidence is NOT a matter of opinion!”

Yes, I am proud to be one of the many fans of Science Friday……..

Slacking once again

Four Christmas’s ago I didn’t send out Christmas cards and then wrote about the guilt I was feeling about not doing so. (Christmas card slackers - December 21, 2006) Never mind the fact that I was finishing my last semester of a Bachelors Degree, working full time, trying to figure out what was going to happen for Christmas, and getting a new life. Those darn cards were important!

What ended up happening?

Absolutely nothing. The world didn’t end because Susan missed a year of Christmas card sending. My friends and family members who have probably never missed sending theirs (except my mother, who will sometimes send them in January), didn’t shun me the following year and life went along as if my major transgression never happened. By the following year, I had a new job, I was living in Queens, and you can be sure I didn’t miss a second year in a row. That year and every year after I’ve sent New York City Christmas cards, given how much I love living here and wanting to share that joy with everyone else.

By now you must suspect that there’s a reason for this new missive about Christmas cards, right?

Yup, not gonna do it this year either. This will have to suffice as my Christmas greeting to all, along with my begging your forgiveness for being a slacker yet again. I have yet to purchase one present, let alone think about cards and sitting down to write them. It still makes me crazy that we start to see Christmas decorations go up in October and that by December 1st, retailers are making us feel that we’re running drastically behind in our shopping, when there are 24 days left in order to do so!

With the exception of my desk, I’m a relatively organized person. I like having the shopping done, the gifts wrapped and the cards written in a timely manner, yet I know for sure that will not happen this year. I don’t even think the shopping will commence for at least another two weeks. You see........my daughter is getting married and she chose the Christmas holiday season in which to do so. It will be a beautiful wedding and one that we are all looking forward too. However, it has made even thinking about buying the cards and stamps, unthinkable, let alone trying to play shopping catch-up, as well as perhaps baking a few goodies. Therefore, I’m not going to do it. We all survived the last time I didn’t send them, so there’s nothing that would lead me to believe we won’t do so again.

Of course I don’t really feel all that guilty about not sending out the cards. Over the past four years I’ve been learning how not to sweat all this small stuff. There’s no doubt that I still sweat from time to time, but that aspect of my personality has greatly improved. The only real sweating I should be doing, is in the gym, not while sitting in my living room mulling over the ramifications of not writing out Christmas cards.

Many, many years ago, when I was in 4th grade, my mother bought me a book that I saw at a school book fair and that still lingers in my memory to this day. It was Sleigh Bells for Windyfoot and I just loved it. I loved the simplicity of the Christmas depicted in that book. Cutting down the Christmas tree, a sleigh ride (with Windyfoot of course), the smell of burning wood in fireplaces and snow in the air, visiting family members, homemade gifts, and who could forget shooting the bear in the backyard. It was a book that reminded me of Christmas’ spent in Pennsylvania with my maternal grandparents and relatives. Tobogganing down big hills on the golf course across the street, skating on the pond at the bottom of the hill, Christmas cookies, the buck with five point antlers and a doe, standing in the snow in the backyard early one morning, and thankfully, never a bear. (Those have only appeared in recent years. Probably because they’re being squeezed out of their habitat by ever expanding development.) That’s the way I want Christmas to be. I love the feeling and the spirit. I hate the shopping and the guilt about not sending out the Christmas cards!

As in that previous year, things will just have to work themselves out. I’m trying to take the commercialism out of Christmas. This is will be the year when the gifts might be knitted, the goodies homemade and the cards, once again, not written.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Being driven

A few months ago I was at a work “retreat day” that involved some interactive group activities. One of those was to take five post-it notes and write on each one a word that described yourself and a sixth post-it had your name on it. There were four people in each group, so that totaled 24 post-it’s. Each group scattered their post-it’s across an area of the wall and then as a group, you worked together to try and figure out which descriptive words matched which person, and you moved those post-it’s under their name. Not all the words made it under the right names though. After that, each of the five groups took turns cruising by the areas where all the other post-it’s were, and rearranged the words based upon what they believe described each individual in the group whose post-it’s were on that section of the wall. Once each group had a turn to rearrange the words, each person went up and put their words under their name and you got to see how people described themselves and how you saw them. It was an interesting exercise and we all got to learn things about our coworkers that we might never have known.

I can’t remember all of my words; however, one of them was “driven.”

Monday and Tuesday nights I went out after work to do what I consider very interesting things. Monday it was “Monday Night Magic” in the West Village with my good friend Mike. Mike and I have been Internet friends for years, first having met on My Space and then moving over to Facebook. We share the same birthday and decided it was time to finally meet. I had a great time....the magic show was wonderful and Mike’s company was as well. Tuesday night I was at the Hayden Planetarium for a show on the Autumn sky. Last week I went to see a documentary at the Museum of Jewish History about Dr. Eric Kandel, where he signed my copy of his book. Now that fall is here, I’m back to looking for things that I really enjoy doing and I’m doing them.

So, back to the word “driven.” I was rushing out the door from work tonight to go to another one of my geek events when my boss happened by. As I was explaining I was having a busy week “after work wise,” she commented that when she originally saw that I had described myself as driven, she didn’t really see me that way....but given my interests and my focus on pursuing them, maybe I was......driven.

I've been thinking about describing myself as "driven." I think when people hear that word, they think more along the lines of "career driven." In my case that is not the kind of driven I am. What I am, is driven to have the kind of life I want. Career wise, I ended up where I am by accident. I wasn't aiming to ever be an administrator and loved being a case manager.....but, being a case manager was not going to allow me to have the sort of life I feel compelled to have...so, here I am. I'm happy not being a case manager anymore and love what I'm doing, but most importantly, because it allows me to be able to afford to live in the greatest city in the world and to do all those things that interest me. Maybe "driven" isn't exactly the word I should use now that I think about it....perhaps it's more like "single-minded" (or according to Harry, “laser focused”) in regard to what I want for myself.

Living the new life.....

I've cried through many a birthday on this weblog. Thankfully that has not happened in a few years and it's not going to happen tomorrow! I'm really good with where I am right now.

I love where I live.

I like my job and the people I work with and for.

And, I'm happy and usually content with this new life.

Perhaps it's time to change the name of this blog, since I do believe I'm living the new life.

How very cool!

The Universe vs 3 Minutes

Last Friday night I went to see BLAST! (Balloon-Borne, Large-Aperture, Submillimeter Telescope), a documentary about the launch of a balloon carrying a telescope into space in order to collect data about the origins of the universe. I originally learned about the film after hearing Paul Devlin, the film's creator, and his brother Mark Devlin, a Ph.D cosmologist, interviewed about it on Science Friday. Although having missed the first screenings of it here in New York City, I was able to put myself on an email list for future dates, and Friday, one finally came my way.

My email said that the film was going to be shown at Revolution Books, in Manhattan. I went to their website to see where they were located, and did a quick "scroll around," never having heard of them before. With $10 and their address in hand, I eagerly set out to finally see BLAST! the Movie. Who knew it was being shown in a Communist bookstore? Not me, although in hindsight, perhaps I should have suspected.

Revolution Books is a very small, lovely bookstore on West 26th Street. The movie was starting at 7, and I was a few minutes early giving me time to browse around, and of course buy a book, (When Abortion Was a Crime; Women, Medicine, and Law in the United States, 1867-1973, by Leslie J. Reagan.) The light was slowly dawning as I read the posters, tee shirts, pins and bumper stickers throughout the store, some of which I very much agreed with, that this was not some quaint little bookshop. Who isn't for equal rights for all? Who isn't against the suppression of women, or doesn't want our environment saved? These were all concepts that I am not only familiar with, but that I support. However, there was also a bit of literature with the word "atheist" on it, which I thought was a bit unusual.....but I was still not getting it. It wasn't until the sales woman put my book in a red bag, that I was pretty sure about the political leanings of this particular establishment.

The sales woman was much more talkative then I'm used too.... a bit overeager.....asking what I did for a living, commenting on my choice of the book I was buying and asking if I wanted to be on their email list. I almost felt as if I were being recruited.....which made me decidedly uncomfortable. However, I was there to be entertained, with the added bonus of being able to hear Paul Devlin speak about the movie and take questions afterward. Therefore, I wasn't taking seriously any attempt to convert me to Communism or enlist my help in starting a revolution.

Having heard the Sci Fri interview, I was familiar with the movie and after finally seeing it, loved it. It's a wonderful portrayal of science and how absolutely cool it is, as well as the scientists who are involved in it. Not only were you seeing how this telescope was developed and put together (and yes, there was duct tape!), but you were also afforded a personal view of the sacrifices that were made by family members of some of those scientists, who if not in Antarctica launching telescopes, might be circling the earth in the Space Station, or perhaps trying to create black holes to suck all of humankind into at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN (I'm kidding about the black holes. I think they only want to see a small one.)

For the first time I can honestly say that I understand what a light year is, and I also finally get how looking out into the distant universe, can help us to understand how it came to be. There were a few, very brief discussions about the religious views of Barth Netterfield, BLAST Canadian Investigator, who is a Christian and one of the films principal scientists, and more specifically his belief that what they discovered, reinforced his belief in God. Mark Devlin on the other hand, was not a believer, and I would venture to guess that the majority of science people out there in the world today are not believers in a God.

This was not a science movie that debated religion....the debate was in the room afterward. I was annoyed that the atheists in the room were completely intolerant of Netterfield's views. Devlin admitted that when he found out that Netterfield, was a Christian, his first thought was "ah...controversy...good for my movie!" Yet in many ways, maybe not so good.

According to Devlin, there is a total of 3 minutes of "religion" in this entire movie, and that 3 minutes has caused great controversy here in the states and also in Revolution Books. After having watched the movie in a communist bookstore, it was interesting to see first hand the opposite of religious fundamentalism....which I guess could be called atheistic fundamentalism.

Those who respect science here in the US, are very annoyed by "the creationists" or the Christian Right.....and therefore go all the way in the other direction when running into a scientist who believe in god. Of course George Bush made the whole issue worse during his eight-year-too-long reign as king and basher of all things scientific. Just the fact that we teach children in some states "Intelligent Design" along side EVOLUTION astounds me. Let's just ignore all the SCIENTIFIC PROOF about how the earth evolved and teach something that has no basis in fact whatsoever!

I was not stuck on the 3 minutes of religion like some of the others....I just enjoyed the story and thought that it was a great example of cool science and even cooler scientists. We need people in this country to become more science literate....there is an alarming segment of the population who really do believe that the universe is only 6 thousand years old. Carl Sagan believed in a higher power, yet he was a scientist who believed in evolution. I just don't think that any of us has the right to impose our views on others, no matter what those views are.

(Yes, I was very anti-Sara Palin and was proclaiming that quite loudly from my soapbox at the time, but I was not trying to recruit people to my anti-Palin cause. I was just expressing my opinion about what a poor choice she was on McCain's part.)

Because I'm a social worker of sorts, I have difficulty with people who are intolerant of the views of others, no matter the direction, Christian, Muslim, or atheist......so, there were two stories going on last night...........the BLAST! story......and the story about the intolerance in the room of those who were watching it. It also filters over into intolerance in the science community too though. Because of those 3 minutes, there are many educational and scientific arenas where this great, great film will never be shown.......yet, when you consider the bashing that science has taken in this country in recent years, I can honestly not blame them for being overly sensitive to those 3 short minutes.

Religion not withstanding........if you have the least little interest in cosmology, find a way to check this film out. I promise it will be well worth your time.

http://blastthemovie.com/index.html

Pictured: Paul Devlin, speaking at Revolution Books in NYC

The Shark Lady

I realized last Monday night while sitting in the audience at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), that I probably would not have made a very good marine biologist......and to think that for years, it was what I told everyone I wanted to be.

The presentation was by Sylvia Earl, aka "The Shark Lady," and she's been around a long while. The NYAS has been running a series of lectures given by women scientists, to encourage young women scientists, and those of us chicks who just have a general interest in science. Of course there are men at these lectures too, but the focus is on women who have become scientist and how their interest was nurtured to allow them to become successful in their chosen career.

Sylvia Earl is the Jacque Cousteau of women a friend recently informed me. I had no idea. My interest in marine biology was so long ago, that I can't say I've kept up with the times at all. Although I was there having bought the series of tickets, there were women in the audience who were obviously thrilled to be there, and upon approaching the microphone at the end of the lecture to ask questions, positively gushed, while telling Sylvia what a huge influence she was in their lives. (Many of these women were very knowledgeable about sharks too.)

Perhaps if it had been Jacque Cousteau I would have been hugely impressed, and I feel awful and disloyal saying that I knew so little about one of my own gender who is so obviously well known and respected in the field of marine biology. Heck, the woman has done all kinds of stuff for National Geographic and the American Museum of Natural History, and holds the record for the deepest dive by a women (I believe).............I should be more impressed!

However, whether or not I was impressed isn't the point, what is, was my realization that my long ago dream would probably not have ended up being a career path I would have wanted to stay on. Sylvia was quite excited to describe in detail what it was like to, oh..... dissect a shark to see if it gave birth to live young, or released eggs. It was at that moment it dawned on me that I would not have liked doing that. I hated dissecting frogs in middle school and fetal pigs in college! Sylvia talked about peering into the murky water at a NYC aquarium while growing up, and wanting to be in that dark green water for real. Probably not something I would have enjoyed either. In retrospect, I think I might have made a kick-ass marine ecologist or environmentalist. But, we'll never know. I'm a helper...it's what I do and will probably always be what I do. Perhaps in my next life some new career path will unfold....it could happen.......

Laundry Room Library

One of the perks of my new apartment building is the laundry room, which has a few shelves of books in it that I've christened "the laundry room library." While waiting for my clothes to spin for the last five minutes of the cycle, I perused the books on the shelves and in that five minutes, became engrossed in Passing For Thin, Loosing Half My Weight and Finding My Self, by Frances Kuffel. A woman who by the way, I wish I could be friends with. I feel as if I've gone on this fascinating journey with her and become one of her cheerleader's along the way, even though the book is now five years old. She makes some interesting observations about what it was like for her to loose 150 lbs and how she struggled to become "a girl," yet that's not the point I'm making today.

(I also liked that she lives in Brooklyn Heights, very near where I work.)

One of Frances' interesting observations was her take on Internet dating. Those of you who read this blog know that I do it........sometimes reluctantly because I'm afraid to give up trying altogether. That, and I'm hoping to find someone to have hot sex with again one day, prior to being too old to want hot sex. I can hear that biological clock ticking down the seconds.

"So, it wasn't that he didn't like me," she writes. "He did. But the Third Law About Men is that they don't know if they're There or not. They think they are. They will pay money to list themselves at Match-dot or the Right Stuff or in the back of New York Magazine, but it's a twinge of loneliness that fools them into thinking they are ready for the possibilities of a companion. Like a headache, it passes but you keep aspirin on hand. Just in case. "

Case in point. My recent six week email exchange with an anesthesiologist who lives in Westchester. He wrote a great Craig's List post that I was really taken with. Our email exchange initially went well, and yet the man has no time to schedule a chat on the phone.

One of his last emails to me was "Coffee? When?"

My response was "Perhaps we can have a phone conversation about that."

Things deteriorated from there to the point where I surrendered. If you can't find the time to pick up a telephone in this day and age when our phones are practically attached to us, what hope is there that you'll actually have the time to meet for coffee? And yet his post was all about finding that special person, the one so many of us Internet-daters are looking for.

"They think they're There," has been my experience time and time again. You go on a few really nice, and potentially hot dates. You like them. They seem to like you. The kissing is great. The sex is even better. They have job and are responsible. And yet when a potential relationship with you appears, they stammer away with some lame excuse because the reality is they're afraid, or not ready or really just looking for some casual sex without the relationship.

For a while I thought I was just choosing the wrong men to date. Men who thought they wanted to be in a relationship, but when one presented itself found they didn't have the time for one. Men with big work lives.

But........maybe it's not me after all.

RED email

I've gotten tired of receiving politically conservative email forwards, you know the ones I mean....they hit your in-box labeled "RED." I get them from one of my brothers and from a few acquaintances I have who must not have been paying attention when I was sending out my "Sarah Palin sucks" emails last year. In the past I would normally just hit the delete key, which is something I do regularly when my brother sends me forwards. I'm not sure what his motivation is, since I think it should be pretty clear to him by now where my loyalties lie. Maybe he thinks he can convert me?

Today I got a forward from a guy I went to high school with that sent me over the edge. It was a "What's wrong with this picture" email. When opened, there was a picture of a dollar coin with George Washington's picture on it and nowhere on it were the words "In God We Trust." I knew what he was getting at, but decided I needed to yank his chain just a bit. That, and he calls me "Sue," which is a huge no-no in my world.

My response started out with an innocent question (even though I already knew the answer), and a bit of humor.

Susan:
"I'm not sure why this is a problem? Not to mention it would be a bit difficult when buying a train ticket from the vending machine, since all they use to give you change are dollar coins."

A few hours later, this was his response.

Tony:
"Sue what will they take next"

(Maybe I'm being catty, but the again, the man refers to me a "Sue," and does not use punctuation.)

Susan:
"I'm not really sure who you mean by "they?" The English pound note has a picture of Charles Darwin on it.......and if not Darwin, I'd like to see Einstein on a dollar bill...instead of a pyramid with an eye on top of it, which I'm sure is some sort of mystical, religious symbolism. I absolutely believe in the separation of church and state.

I think we're at very different ends of the political spectrum, Tony. I'm very much a political liberal. I believe in evolution, stem cell research, global warming, a woman's right to choose what happens with her body and that homosexuality is not a life style choice, but driven by biology. I have an intense dislike for Sarah Palin and after the first year of his first term, could not listen to one thing that came out of W's mouth.

I believe that everyone has the right to decent, affordable health care and don't think people should loose their homes or go broke due to the cost of medical care. I do believe that more restrictions are needed in regard to immigration and that we should do whatever is necessary to protect people from terrorists though. I'm not exactly sure where that falls in regard to my political leanings, but I do want my government to protected me and those I love from zealots to whatever extent possible.

It's interesting how political ideology evolves. I am a political liberal........and one of my brothers is an NRA card carrying conservative Republican....with a McCain bumper sticker on the back of his truck.... and we grew up in the same household. My bumper sticker (when I had a car), read "Well behaved women seldom make history." My mission is to never be well behaved. My refrigerator magnets read 'Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. -Thomas Jefferson' and 'Run Hillary, Run!'"

I have yet to receive a response to my reply, but it should be interesting. I'm normally non-confrontational and quietly use my delete key as opposed to making waves with someone who does not share my political ideology. I don't send the die-hard RED people the political emails I find inspiring, quite frankly considering it a waste of my time. My brother is never going to become a Democrat, or a liberal, and neither is Tony. I do however, cherish the inspiring emails that come my way from friends with whom I share more common political interests. I try to hold my tongue when discussing anything even remotely political with people like my brother, since it's not really worth boiling my blood over. Yet, for some weird reason, today I decided to take a stand over something as small as a dollar coin. Perhaps I was just feeling like misbehaving.........

Movin' on up, the the upper-upper West Side

Having been very busy packing, and packing and packing over the past six weeks or so, I've neglected to write anything about my most recent move. I moved to Jackson Heights two years ago to live "in the city," which in my heart really meant living in Manhattan.....and last Thursday I made it here! How cool is that?

And, here it is, 5 o'clockish in the AM, and I'm up reading my email. It sounds as if there's a party going on outside on Broadway.....not something I took into consideration when I signed the lease. Who are these people and why aren't they home sleeping?? I'm thinking "white noise machine."

The move went well, and yes, I'm still unpacking and hope to at least have to bulk of it done prior to going back to work on Tuesday. It was really a lot of work though and I've decided that my kids are going to have to help the next time I do this...but....I made it. A bit tired and sore, but here nonetheless. I'm getting too old to do this sort of stuff by myself though.

Other than the fact that I've rented an apartment on Broadway, which apparently is just a tad sketchy up this far, it's going fine. I had the very expensive second "top lock" installed on my door yesterday, which considering all the activity on Broadway, I'm now feeling happy to have gotten. I've come to the conclusion though that my personality is really more suited for "the other side of the cliff," the side that the Cloisters is located on. I suspect that's where I'll probably spend most of my time. It's quiet and so, so beautiful.

I was loving the apartment until around 10 last night, when I opened the refrigerator door and a roach crawled out of the rubber gasket around the inside of the door. I was so shocked to see it there that it crawled back in before I could kill it. I just stood there with the refrigerator open for about 10 minutes, not knowing what to do, until I just closed the damn door and hoped it would die of the cold. I had such a problem with them in the other place that it was one of the reasons I couldn't wait to move. I had actually stopped cooking because I hated being surprised by them. I know that they're a part of city living that you just can't get away from; however, not in a million years will I ever get used to them.

So, for now I will resume unpacking boxes, but first I think I'll get dressed and go for a walk up to the top of the cliff, where it's quiet and peaceful. It's nice to have quiet and peaceful so close by. I intend to take full advantage of it. It's the best of both worlds....having the excitement of city life, and tranquility within easy reach...both in spite of critters like roaches.

Moving.....again

Well, here it is, almost two years from when I last looked for an apartment here in the city (yes, I know Queens is not the city, but to non-city folk, it might as well be) and I'm almost ready to start doing it again. I really, really, want to move into Manhattan.....it's where I intuitively feel I belong. I might end up in Washington Heights, which is Manhattan, although in the upper reaches, but at least it's closer to where I want to be. Maybe one day I'll actually make it to where I want to be, who knows.

Right now I'm thinking about packing. I went out and bought packing tape and could conceivable start with books....but, I'm still thinking about it at the moment. Once the spirit moves me, I'll get going on it, but right now I'm practicing procrastination, which is something that I don't actually need to practice. I have that skill down pat.

Will keep you posted.............

Senator Ted Kennedy

Just finished crying my way through Ted Kennedy's funeral. In spite of the drama surrounding his life and the demons he overcame, he became one of the most influential political figures of our time. His life was as tragic as it was inspiring and our world is all the better for having had him in it.

I doubt I will ever see someone of his caliber again in my lifetime.

Prepping for a movie

I'm writing this little piece from the bathroom, where I'm sitting, and waiting for "something" to happen. I just finished drinking THE MOST VILE STUFF EVER, or at least the first portion of THE MOST VILE STUFF EVER. I was already thinking "fuck" after the very first swallow. There's another round coming up and I'm not sure how I'm going to do it. I only got through drinking 3/4 of the first quart before I started throwing it back up. Now, I'm sitting here, waiting. So far, not much happening.

I managed to get to age 51 and avoid a colonoscopy, the "once you turn 50" test that many people dread. I think I'd rather have a baby. I have a lovely new doctor here in the city who while taking my blood pressure, also regaled me with tales of other patients who neglected to have their colonoscopy and the consequences of that inaction, and then she wondered aloud why my blood pressure was elevated? The turning point for me was a couple of months ago when I had a bladder infection. Never having had one before, I was sure I had some dread disease of the colon because I hadn't had the damn test done yet. I was thankful and felt stupid upon finding out what I did have (refer back to Cranberry Juice Cocktail), however, I called that week to schedule an appointment to have the colonoscopy done. Who would have thought two month would go by so fast, and here I am sitting in the bathroom the night before.

One wouldn't think that drinking an 8 oz. glass of vile liquid every 15 minutes for an hour would be so God awful, but it is! This is 2009, isn't there a pill someone can prescribe to make this happen? I'm beginning to believe those who have said that the actual procedure is nowhere near as bad as the prep.

One of my greater fears in regard to medical stuff has always been anesthesia and possibly not waking up from it. Yeah, I know....I do tend to be dramatic. At this point though, put me to sleep and pour this thick lemonaidy stuff down my throat so I won't taste it, please. Really, in 30 minutes I'm going to have to start the drinking again and I'm not sure I can do it. Just the thought of it makes we want to vomit. And, can you believe they have the nerve to call the stuff MoviePrep?

It doesn't appear that I'm going to be the poster-person for this particular screening procedure, even though intellectually I know that it's an important thing to do for myself, and that I shouldn't be trying to scare other people off. Perhaps by tomorrow I'll be singing a different tune.

I'm going to try and look forward to having breakfast with Ron, who has graciously agreed to escort me out of the hospital tomorrow when this is all over.........ahhh, tomorrow....when this is all over.

Ten minutes and counting.......really, I want to vomit just thinking about the next container sitting in the refrigerator......

OMG....two more minutes!

Opened the box.....closed the box

Tonight I though perhaps I would open the box my Airport Express came in and see if I wanted to make an attempt at getting it up and running. The first thing I took out was a CD, which immediately did not bode well for my going any further.

I’m technologically phobic……a gadget geek who can’t get the gadgets going. It’s probably not that I can’t, I just become intimidated by terms I don’t understand (nor do I have any real desire to understand them), and CD’s that I have no idea where to put. I can hammer a nail, chop fire wood, check the oil in a car (when I had one), however….I cannot bring myself to manage the technology in my life without the help of others. I want to use the gadgets, not have to take them out of the box and set them up. I want them to arrive in my possession completely functional, which in my world never happens.

According to all the Mac users I’ve talked too….they practically run themselves, unless you’re me. I didn’t even make it past the third step in the set up of the laptop, before I thought something was wrong and needed to be rescued. (There was nothing wrong, it was me.)

I surrender. I am not intuitive when it comes to technology, even Mac technology. I closed the box…..I’m just going to sit out here, quietly, and wait for the magic man to rescue me once again.

Too old?

I believe I am now officially "old." Although in this particular sense, I've always been so.

Last week my office neighbor sent out an email inviting those who he thought would be interested, to a gig his band had coming up this weekend. Initially I was quite excited about the prospect of going out to hear live music, until I found out they weren't going on until 10:30 PM. I never started my evenings when I was considerably younger at that hour, so what made me think that at 51 that might have changed? 

Perhaps delusion, wishful thinking, or temporary insanity was the cause. Really, I never stayed up past 10 PM if I could help it, at least until I was 25 and my first child was born. She was not the happiest of infants, so sitting up late into the night became the norm, which is when I discovered TV after 10, the 11 O'clock News, David Letterman and Saturday Night Live.

Don't get me wrong, there were times when I was out late, the difference was that I wasn't leaving the house at that time. At my age, I'm ready to be home by the time the White Throated Sparrow on my bird clock tweets and twitters, "It's ten o'clock. Shouldn't you be in bed by now??"

In reality I'm a wanna be night person who can't be, because she has a day job. Over the past two months I've had a self imposed bed time of 10 PM because I get up at 6 AM. That should equal 8 hours of sleep, which rarely happens. If I aim to get to bed by 10 I'm usually in bed by 10:30, and hopefully asleep by 11. I would have to start getting psyched for bed at 9:00 if I wanted to truly be asleep by 10:00. When I don't get enough sleep I both look, and feel like hell. It's one of the primary reasons I'm contemplating getting DVR from my cable company. The only TV shows I'm remotely interested in watching, are on after 10 PM. DVR would solve what I consider to be my late night TV viewing dilemma.

So, here it is, now 8:35 and I'm justifying in writing, why I'm not going out at 10 to see Dominick's band play. It probably would have been a good idea to have planned just a little bit better. I think that perhaps if I had gone to a movie and then to the bar, that would possibly have worked. Right now I'm sitting very comfortably in my rocking chair, barefoot and in my sweats, in the quiet (well, this is Jackson Heights and on a Saturday night it's never exactly quiet) with a cup of decaff. Over the course of today I traveled to Downtown Brooklyn, had my hair cut, walked around, came home, went out to the grocery store and shopped, came home, went out to run some other errands, came home, heated leftovers for dinner, and now I think I'm done for the day. I did not get in a car to do any of those activities, all of which required walking and carrying stuff. 

I'm tired......and when it comes to leaving the house at 10 PM to socialize, I'm as old as I've always been.
I do hope that Dominick will forgive me.

Whine, whine, whine

In reading back over my past few posts, I've realized I've become quite a whiner.

Wow.

Really, I need to stop.

My mantra at the gym recently has been "walk....breathe....relax.....walk....breathe.....relax."

It works, I just need to figure out how to do it more often.

The little old lady table

I've been relegated to the little old lady section of my local diner and I don't like it one little bit! It's liking having to sit at the kiddie table, only worse.

It's like "Sit here Susan. This way you can see what your life will be like in a very concrete way years from now." Of course I'm overreacting; however, I'm not sitting in that part of the diner ever again. It's just way too discouraging.

I know full well that I've chosen to be single at this point in my life, but there's something very discouraging about the prospect of maybe never coming to terms with the fact that perhaps I'll just remain......single. It's discouraging to think about. I've completely removed myself from the world of Internet dating because although it's been fun, making a connection is such a difficult thing to do. Maybe it's my personality type. Maybe it's my desire to not settle for, as Dean would put it, BTN....better than nothing.

Jeez....I went to the gym today, which usually makes me feel pretty good mentally, but wow...the little old lady section of the diner just really did me in.........

Cranberry Juice Cocktail

I spent the past two days thinking I was dying of some dreaded disease. Over the past few years every time some health dilemma rears its ugly head, I’ve given myself permission to overreact. Perhaps it’s because I don’t have a significant other in my life to keep me in check, to say to me “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not dying.” Or, who in his best Arnold Schwarzenegger accent might say, “It’s not a tumor!” Sometimes I just need someone to reel me back in when I’ve fallen into the deep end of the pity pool.

It’s not a tumor……it’s a bladder infection. I feel pretty stupid, but then again, I am the person who has bid my friends goodbye, mostly in jest (but not really), when having to undergo general anesthesia, convinced that I probably wouldn’t wake up again. My family usually remains blissfully ignorant of my hypochondriac moments since they know me and would be saying “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s not a tumor.”

Part of this is that there’s still so much left that I want to do, that something stupid like a weird hospital infection, or “death due to not waking up from anesthesia” would put a serious crimp in my future plans.

And, for now…..I’m relieved to know “it’s not a tumor!”

The cost of sweat

Two weeks ago I joined my third gym in a little over a year. Finding one that fits in with my lifestyle has been a huge challenge since moving to the city. There are gyms all over…. you wouldn’t think it would be so hard to do.

By far my favorite gym was Ultimate Fitness in Patchogue. It was the first place I ever encountered TV monitors on treadmills, which I initially found annoying since they blocked my view of what was going on in front of me. It became a moot point when I began climbing random hills on the treadmill with my eyes closed though. There were however, times when someone would catch my attention requiring me to peek around the TV monitor in order to watch what they were doing. I have to admit that there was one guy I used to run into and surreptitiously watch as he made his way from one piece of gym equipment to another. One day he walked into the grocery store just as I did and I couldn’t help discreetly following him from aisle to aisle…..just to see what he was buying. ….and really, I wasn’t stalking.

After moving to Jackson Heights, I joined Evolution in Astoria. My daughter found them and I had this insane notion that maybe we would work out together. Unfortunately we had very different schedules during the week and that plan never materialized more than once or twice. During that gym membership year I made it there on average about twice a week, which was a far cry from the five or six times per week I went when I lived in Patchogue, yet better than “not at all” when I was a commuter.

When the Evolution, $54 dollar per month membership was up in December, I started hunting around for where to go next. My boss has a membership to the YMCA, which she raves about. So, off to the YMCA I went. I joined, even got a few weeks of free personal training which was considerably more helpful then I ever imagined it would be, and my boss got “free gear” for referring me. My strategy that time was to join something in downtown Brooklyn so that I could go there directly after work, only most of the time I never finished early enough to actually do that, or I had other, much more interesting “after work plans.” I also found it annoying to always have to wait for a treadmill and then be limited to 30 minutes on it, and then having to wait to use every piece of weight equipment too. And then of course there was the whole issue of my just not getting there at all. The only upside to that membership was that there was no contract, all you had to do was give 30 days notice and you were done having your account debited $64 dollars per month.

As of two weeks ago I ended up back in Astoria, this time at Planet Fitness, which I joined on line, sight unseen. Pretty ballsy for someone who likes to try out whatever they’re buying. At this point I just need somewhere to go that is not going to cost me a whole bunch of money if I don’t actually get there on a regular basis. I always have good intentions, but reality often intrudes upon them.

Today was the first time I went in search of my new gym. Up until now I knew the address and that was about it. I must say, I wasn’t hugely disappointed. So they don’t give you two towels per visit, there are no TV monitors on the treadmills, (which I struggled to figure out how to use), and the weight machines are really very basic and no where near as “smooth” as those at the more expensive gyms. I found that I worked just as hard for $19.99 per month as I did for $64…..after all; sweat is sweat, no matter how much you pay to do it.

Bandit

I had to put Bandit to sleep tonight and it was just so sad. She was never the easiest pet to have, but I loved her anyway. She truly belonged to me and wouldn't let anyone else hold her, or most of the time even get near her. I couldn't trim her claws, couldn't get her to the vet without tremendous difficulty, and she took off running whenever anyone came into the house, whether she knew them or not. Yet, she was completely devoted to me.......she adored me and I loved her in return.

Bandit and her two brother's appeared in our back yard on Long Island as little kittens. They would show up and sit at a distance, watching the kids play in the yard. You could tell right away that they were interested and curious. They were feral cats, born to a mother who I used to see skulking around, and who would take off the minute she saw anyone. I think that along with her looks Bandit inherited that trait from her too.

For a long time we had no idea what sex Bandit was and didn't find out for sure until we got them into a cat carrier and took them to the local animal shelter to have them neutered, which was when we found out that Bandit was a girl. Even though the three of them were still living outside we put them in our garage at night and made sure they had a warm place to sleep and food. Little by little we socialized them until they got over their fear and just wanted us to pet them and love them. We found a home for one of her brothers, and in the end, took her and her one remaining brother, Frankie in. Once they stepped through the back door they never went near it again. They were so happy to have a home.

Now the three of them are gone. It consoles me to think that we gave them much longer lives then they would ever have had if they had to remain outdoors, as so many feral cats do. We took care of them and loved them and they loved us back. Even Bandit, who could not help being a "fradie" cat.

I'm going to miss her dearly and already my home feels empty without her.