Perchance to Dream

Sleeping is one of those activities where my body and my brain are at odds.

If my body had its way, I'd get seven hours of shuteye every night. I have no trouble falling asleep...I often comment that I could fall asleep on a bag of rocks. Not the behavior of a night owl. But then, somewhere around 5am, I usually have to hurl myself out of the rack to make a bathroom stop. When I return to the comfort of my bed, there's a click -- my brain begins to kick in. Joining in are an assortment of fears, concerns, to-dos for the day, and other noise that build into a crescendo until I'm unable to tumble back into the Land of Nod.

So, there I am, an hour or so from waking for the day, and my brain will not let me rest. Sometimes I can fool it by trying to retrieve from my memory banks what it was I was dreaming about before I was so rudely interrupted by my bladder. By engaging in this exercise, my brain is tricked back into slumber. The trouble is, this tactic doesn't always work, and I give up and arise for good at my usual time, feeling cheated of much-needed rest.

My husband is my opposite. He is a night owl. Although he will say how tired he is in the evening, by the time my bedtime rolls around, he is wide awake, often not conking out until the sun has nearly made its reappearance. He has done some of his best research at 2 a.m. This is frustrating for him, especially on the weekends, when he sleeps through a good chunk of the morning and our time together.

Then there are the dreams. No one can really escape what's going on inside their head. On nights when I am so exhausted it is an effort to breathe, I will often begin to dream about work, and proceed to labor through a series of tedious exercises all night long. There are a lot of theories about why we dream and what our dreams mean. I figure dreams are a personal thing, tailored to our experiences. Sometimes they are just a series of meaningless episodes, strung together like a bad movie, replayed in our heads before being discarded.

I seldom remember my jaunts through other-consciousness. I know there are techniques for remembering them. Perhaps there's some benefit in this, but quite frankly, the dreams I do remember are pretty lame. And they don't help me sort out my awake self at all.

There are times when I wonder if our sleeping lives are just as real as our awake lives. Maybe it's a parallel universe kind of thing.

Maybe I just need a little more sleep.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

You can pick your seat, you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your family. Or your neighbors.

Like every other aspect of your life, neighbors can be a true blessing or a real pain. This week I attended the funeral of one of the former.

My sister and brother in the old neighborhood.

I grew up in 1960's style, in a middle class neighborhood, constructed post-World War II, where most of the homes were identical, single-story structures with three bedrooms, one bath and no basement. Only the paint job and the landscaping gave each house its personality. And there were the trees. Our neighborhood was shaded by old maple trees, planted when the lots were first plotted out in 1929 (I'm assuming right before the market crashed and the owner could no longer afford to construct the homes.)

Through the years, the houses became associated with their long-term tenants. Among those who have lived there for any length of time, my childhood home is still referred to as "Tony and Mary's house." Throughout my childhood, into adulthood and even today, this is the case, although my parents have not lived in our neighborhood home for several years.

Then, last week, we lost one of our old neighbors.

Mr. and Mrs. K lived two doors down from us. I have known them for the majority of my life, along with their three children. Their oldest daughter, Linda, I count among my dearest friends. I attended Mr. K's funeral this past week. It brought back many memories and felt as though I was losing a part of my childhood. Like many of the folks in our lives, we take our neighbors for granted. Although we may move on and get older, somehow the neighbors we knew growing up are frozen in time, waiting for us to go back and give them a hug.

It occurred to me, looking at the photos the family arranged, that I'd really only scratched the surface of who Mr. K was, in the way kids know an adult in their neighborhood. I remembered the polka music, of course -- his family made sure it was playing in the background during the wake. I remembered that he worked at the Chevy plant, that he was full of life, and like many of the men in his generation, he didn't take shit from anyone. He loved his family fiercely and worked his ass off to provide a good home for them. One of my favorite stories was of Mr. K. reluctantly taking his daughter to see Elvis Presley, her hero. He didn't want to go, but he wasn't going to let her go alone. As it turned out, the event transformed him. He talked and talked about how much he'd enjoyed the concert and wanted to go back and see Elvis the next year.

I look at my neighbors today. We have been lucky to date. We say "hi" and wave and chat every now and again. Then go on our way. I wonder if our house will be known as "Ginleys place" when we move on. People don't stay in one home as long as they used to. There are only a handful of people on our street who are still here since we moved in 20 years ago. We are a far more transient society.

I guess all you can do is foster that neighborly feeling while it lasts. Be considerate of your next door neighbors. And remember them when you can no longer shout a greeting over the fence.  Remembering people keeps them alive, even when they move to better neighborhoods than this world can support.

So long, Mr. K. I look forward to sharing a polka with you someday. In the meantime, have a beer for me, will you?

The Pain, The Wonder of Modern Technology

I think it's telling that when describing technology I chose the word "pain" before "wonder." I have a love/hate relationship with modern devices.

There was a show we watched a year or so ago that underscored the fast pace with which technology has taken over our world. The producers took a family in England and rigged their house with only the contraptions that would have been available for a specific time period. I think they started in the 1940's and worked their way up to modern day. Each "era" lasted one week. The family included a teenage daughter and a couple of younger sons. They found creative ways to entertain themselves in the early years. The kids grew bored by the time they got to the 1970's and they were able to play Space Invaders and Pac Man. By the time they completed their journey, they were ready to hook up to the google and jump back into the 21st Century.

This started me thinking about my own experiences. I've aged during a time in history when technology has advanced at breakneck speed. I learned to type on a manual typewriter. Then mastered the electric typewriter and 10-key calculator. I worked in a print shop in high school on a then-state-of-the-art CompuGraphic typesetting machine. You had to change the font by replacing a strip of film. You saw your copy in a window that was about 6 inches wide. Once you hit the return button, the words printed on the light-sensitive paper, which had to be developed in a chemical bath. Then you could take the type and cut and paste it onto your board, which was shot by a huge camera. You developed the film and used it to make a plate, which you put on a press to print. Piece of cake.

In 1983, my place of employment purchased a Wang Word Processing System, which was quite the thing. The Wang was a mainframe system. A clunky box with a green screen lived on my desk. I was in accounting at the time and was required (after half a day's training) to create elaborate spreadsheets. Mastering the beast was no easy feat. I had to code in each column manually. If I miscalculated, I had to go back into the system and rejigger the formula until the columns lined up the way I wanted them to. It was cool back in the day. Really.

Fast forward to 1990 and my first Mac.It was small, but all I was doing was typing words, so it sufficed. Today at work I have a Mac with a 25-inch screen, a trim keyboard, a small orange box and a CD player. Pretty amazing.

On the home front, we have an old laptop that gets the job done.I don't have all of the latest electronic doodads, but I keep up fairly well. My husband uses my cell phone more than I do (he has a dumb phone). He takes panoramic photos and makes movies and checks the score of whatever game is playing. I admit that texting is a cool thing. And we get a fair amount of entertainment value from seeing how our phone translates our voice-activated messages.

There are times I wonder, now that I've experienced these modern contraptions, would I be able to go back and live in the past?

I would miss the ease of looking up information on the internet, of finding out what happened to old friends and doing genealogical research with a world full of information at my fingertips. I would miss the ease of keeping in touch via Facebook and email. And it's nice to be able to communicate with my son via texting.

I would not miss the frantic pace that modern technology has helped to create. Because everything is instant, people think results should be instant. There's no time to ponder anything. We joke at work because every job that comes through our department is labeled "HOT!" This is just one of the symptoms of a larger problem. It's not that more is being accomplished -- the work actually takes longer to accomplish because changes can be made right up to the last minute.

Of course, it would be a whole lot harder for my son to exist in a world without computers and such because he's never known any other way. I'm glad to have come of age when I did. It's nice to have been able to see how our tools have changed over the years.

I almost said "how we've evolved" but I'm not sure that's true.

I see couples sitting across the table from each other texting and ignoring one another. I'm not convinced that's progress.

I Know, I Know, It's a Virtue

"I guess that's why they call us 'patients,'" my husband observed. We'd been sitting in the doctor's office half an hour past his appointment. We watched a parade of other patients file in and out until, at last, it was his turn. We wondered how "patient" doctors are when they have to wait to see a doctor themselves.

Why is patience such a difficult thing to master?

I am a Type A personality, and patience has always been a challenge. I get frustrated waiting behind the elderly person in the bank who chatters away with the teller about her family, her garden, her aches and pains. It is torture for me to sit in traffic that is creeping along at 15 miles an hour. And I begin to hyperventilate when I have to explain to the third nimrod at my cell phone company that they are not entitled to a late charge because I have a cancelled check that proves they received my payment on time.

I don't know why I'm wired this way, but I've observed I'm not in the minority. Last night, we were trying to cross the street after dinner. We were in the crosswalk, the signal indicated it was okay for us to go, but cars turning left didn't want to wait and, in the game of chicken that's played every day a million times around the world, they zoomed past us. The worst offender was an elderly lady who braked at the last minute. My husband waved her on and yelled, "Go on, you're in a big ass hurry." She looked straight ahead and plowed on. And turned into the gas station. Apparently, her getting gas at that exact moment was the most important thing in the world.

Then there was the guy behind me in our local discount drug store. I hate shopping there because the people who frequent the place behave abominably. (What is it about cheap prices that brings out the worst in folks?) Anyhow, we were in line, and there was a woman in one of those carts for people with disabilities. She had a small child on her lap and was maneuvering her way to the checkout. It took her maybe an extra five seconds to work it out. The guy behind me was muttering under his breath the whole time. The woman completed her purchases and asked the cashier if she could get assistance to her car. At that point, the guy behind me became apoplectic. I turned to him and said softly, "Would you just chill out?!" Did no good. In all, the extra time the cashier had to spend helping the woman was less than a minute. But even if it had been five minutes, what was this man missing out on that was so important?

And that's where it comes back to me. Considering his bad behavior, I had to think about my own. Even though I was not vocal, was I just as bad for getting worked up over having to wait? Where was I going in such a hurry? Was I on my way to cure cancer or save the world from global disaster?

Of course not. I was just on my way back to work or home or to another errand. I could have spent the extra few minutes planning dinner or counting my blessings or just taking the time to breathe and relax. Time is a luxury. We take it for granted, but we don't know how much of it we have left on this earth. Pretty much everything in my world can wait an extra few minutes without dire consequences.

So this has become my mission. To work on slowing down just a little. To remember that the elderly lady in the bank is probably going home to an empty house, and the teller may be the only one she talks to today. That the slow traffic could be because of an accident, and how fortunate I am not to have been involved. As for the idiots at the cell phone company, I held my tongue, and the lady I ultimately spoke with was able to resolve my problem and was pleasant and professional. She did good.

I'll continue to work on being patient. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to smile placidly and say, "No, that's okay, you jumped the line but I'm good with it."

I guess I'm not going to inherit the earth anytime soon. But maybe I can enjoy a smiling baby or a colorful sunset while I'm waiting.

Heavy Petting

Petting is therapeutic. Not the kind that's done in the back seat of the car in the park (although that kind may be considered "therapeutic" for completely different reasons). I'm talking about our furry or feathered friends. The family members who cannot speak our language but who communicate with us just fine.

They wag and beguile their way into our hearts, they share our joys and our sadness. They become members of our family. And they leave a space that cannot be filled when they are gone.

When I was growing up, my parents told us we could not have dogs or cats. My mom didn't want larger animals because she didn't want to have to be the one to take care of them (she already had six kids). My dad had a menagerie when he was growing up, but his heart was broken when his beloved dog "Teddy" died, and he didn't want to become attached to another animal. We were allowed to have small animals...gerbils, birds, turtles and once, even a snake. (I had a guinea pig, but she only lived six months.)

Marge, in her natural habitat

When I moved into my first apartment by myself, I decided to get a cat. My boyfriend at the time told me about a cat shelter where they let the animals live until a home was found -- they didn't put them to sleep. Off we went. There were rooms of roaming felines. Some of them yelled for attention. It was a little overwhelming. Then, one grey tabby came up quietly and rubbed against my legs. My boyfriend said, "that looks like a fine animal." I agreed, picked her up, completed the necessary paperwork, and home we went. After a short adjustment period, during which she hid under the day bed, we became fast friends. I called her "Muskrat," and the two of us grew very close. We played hockey on the wooden floors in my apartment. And she was a great lap cat. One of my favorite things to do was sit in the rocking chair in front of the window, sipping tea with a bundle of cat on my lap. The only thing she did not like about the apartment was my water bed. She'd tiptoe along the edge (the part that didn't move) and meow at me in the morning when it was time to eat.

I disrupted the apple cart when I rescued "Chessie," a very wily, soft grey cat who did not play well with others. The two of them fought all the time. Chessie eventually went to live with my boyfriend. And it was back to just Muskrat and me.

Fast forward to mid-1986 when my now-husband and I began to date. I made it clear that my cat had seniority. He was leery at first, but in short order, he warmed up to her...and changed her name to "Marge." (He didn't like "Muskrat," and after several months of tussling over her name, I gave in.) We moved Marge to Alexandria with us. And back to Cleveland. She was mostly my cat, but my husband was the object of her affection when I was out of town. For awhile I did quite a bit of traveling for work, and those nights when it was just my husband and the cat, the two of them were very cozy.

Then our son was born. I remember my grandmother cautioning me about cats, repeating the old wives' tale about them suffocating babies. I watched Marge to make sure she was cool with the new baby, but there was never any real concern. Marge was very protective of him. Her mom instincts were strong, and she watched him like a hawk. She didn't like it when people came over and tried to hold him. She was a good cat. She had a good run. Then, in January of 1999, her time ran out. The three of us were heartbroken. My husband said he did not want to get another cat.

Miss Mabel

It was a little over a year later, at Easter time in 2000, when my son and I wore down my husband, and the three of us went back to the cat shelter.We walked through the rooms until my husband spied one cat in a perch high above the floor. She was the spitting image of Marge, and my husband melted. He looked at me with "that look" and said, "Can we get this one? Please?"

Like I was going to say "no"...

This particular cat hated all of the other cats, which is why she was up high. Every time another cat walked by, she hissed at them. The folks at the shelter told us the cat was two or three years old (they really weren't certain) and she needed to be spayed. So I made arrangements to pick her up on Good Friday. I left work early that day and drove straight to the shelter.

When I walked in, she was pacing back and forth and yelling her head off. They told me she had been waiting for me. She continued her caterwauling throughout the 30-minute ride home. I had warned my son that it would take awhile for her to get adjusted to her new environment and not to worry if we didn't see her for the first few days. I needn't have bothered. I opened her carrier and released her. Yelling all the way, she went down in the basement and throughout the house, checking things out, then settled herself on the couch with a nod of the head and an attitude of "this will do."

We called her "Mabel."

Now, aged approximately 16 years, Mabel is coming to the end of the road. Her kidneys are like sieves and she sleeps most of the time. She hangs out in the basement a lot, and sometimes I don't think she recognizes us. About once a day, she wants to be petted and told she's a good kitty, then she goes back to sleep. I know it won't be long. And it will be a sad day. Mabel was supposed to be my cat, but she formed a deep attachment to our son. When he went away to college, her heart broke. We didn't think she'd live long after that, but she has surprised us by hanging in this long. She is a sweet little cat. And much loved.

Much like the humans we love, our pets can exasperate us at times. But the love and joy and comfort they give make us wealthy beyond measure. And life without them would be poorer indeed.

It's Vast, Ye Maties

Every morning I make it a point to go outside and look up. Some mornings it's dark, and I can enjoy the broad vista of the constellations. I've never been able to work out much beyond the Dippers and Orion's Belt, but I appreciate them nonetheless. Most mornings I'm admiring a cloud-streaked sky, blue or grey. Watching the clouds in their lazy journey over the earth or the stars in their courses reminds me of the vastness of the universe.

And this is blog-worthy...why? (You ask.)

I believe it's all about perspective. Every day I go to work and get sucked into the minor miseries and contrived catastrophes that define my life in that building. It's easy to get caught up and stressed out. To forget about the bigness of the universe, and how my life and the things that happen at work are just a minuscule part of it. Sometimes when I'm in a meeting and starting to get frustrated, I look out the window and think, "Yep, it's still there, a whole world full of billions of people who don't give a shit on shingle about what happens in this room." It's very comforting. It puts my work in its place. Of course, the work is important to me, it needs to be done and done well, but it does not define me as a person. Nothing I'm doing there will change the course of the universe. It is a job that needs to be done. Nothing more, nothing less. And when I am no longer roaming its corridors, there will be other employees to carry on.

Some might find this observation depressing. Not me. I find it liberating. When I walk out the door at the end of a long day and look up at the sky, I know it's okay to let go. And go home to the things that matter most to me.

That's what it's all about.

Bundle of Joy

"I don't want to have kids," I told my husband when we were dating. He was crestfallen. He loved kids. He was very good with his nieces and nephews. But he loved me and decided he still wanted to marry me, even though it meant he would not have children.

Flash forward to 1991. We're on a long-distance drive to somewhere, when I tell him, "I've changed my mind. I want to have a child."

He was  furious. I don't blame him. Asking him to shift gears after several years during which time he had gotten used to the idea that life was just the two of us. Not three. Not four. It took him awhile to adjust to the notion. Then we talked practicalities.

At that time, we were living in the house of his birth with his mother. We'd moved back from Virginia to take care of her after my father-in-law passed away. The house was very small, and even though his parents had raised five children there, when you factored in three adults, not two, it was not big enough for us. So, while he agreed that we would have a child, I agreed it would have to wait a little while.

The next year we bought a home and began trying. It didn't take very long. By Christmas, I was pregnant, and our son was born the following September, on the day of my baby shower at work. Two of my coworkers brought a photo of the cake. It was lovely.

As I had predicted, the baby was a boy, his head was too large, and the doctor had to go in and get him. During the procedure, I was very nervous, and the doctor asked my husband to calm me down. He had just been watching Jeopardy, so he asked a Jeopardy question -- What was Wilma Flintstone's maiden name? The doctor and nurses debated among themselves, and it was all very jolly -- for them. I was shivering and anxious. In short order, my son made his entrance, I cooed a bit, then asked them to please put Humpty back together again. (Kudos to my husband, who is icked out pretty easily, but who was able to keep his composure in spite of viewing all of my innards lying about.)

Having a c-section meant I could stay in the hospital a couple of extra days. I was thrilled. The hospital had new birthing suites, and there was only one other mother there. So the nurses were all over me and my son. Going home was culture shock. The first week was a blur. The odd thing was walking into the house, and nothing feeling the same. Everything in our lives changed. It was a wonderful, challenging time. I had six weeks before I had to go back to work. My husband had agreed to stay home and raise our son.

Looking back, there were times when I wish I could have been the one. I remember talking to them on the phone after they'd taken a walk in the park together or gone to the library or visited my mom and dad. And I would get teary and sad. Then there were days when two of them would come visit me for lunch. They'd bring sandwiches, and we'd sit in the park. Or we'd go to Wendy's and eat. Sometimes they would stop at the florist's and present me with a rose. Good times.

It was the right thing for my husband to be the stay-at-home dad. He took a lot of crap for it, but seeing how well my son has turned out is his vindication. Perhaps for him, the second-most important validation came from his mother, who said, "Don't pay attention to what anyone tells you. You are doing the right thing."

My time with our son was limited, but I made the most of it. Evenings were my time. We would eat dinner, I'd play with my son, give him a bath, read him a story, sing to him, put him to bed. Weekends were family time.

Then came pre-school. I didn't sign him up soon enough, so he went on a waiting list. One month into the school year, he got in because another kid was a biter and lost his spot. We have a photo of my son on his first day, so brave, smiling from ear to ear.

The school years whizzed by. Grammar then high school, now college. He's a young man with a life of his own. Our son has turned into a fine human being, and we are proud of him. Together, the three of have laughed, fought, and loved each other. I like to remember the laughing most, it's the best part.

We are proud of our son. Our wish for him is a wonderful life. One that is long, happy, healthy and full of laughter. Mazel tov, my son.

P.S. Wilma's maiden name was "Slaghoople."