the day

let's take inventory. . .

--screaming baby who woke up too early from nap and is still tired but does not want to go back to sleep
--toddler throwing up
--homeschooler not focusing and finding all kinds of reasons to not do her work and instead come in and out of the living room to catch glimpses of "Blues Clues" which she has said she is too old for
--being a little sick myself, headachy and body sore
--facing Mt. Washmore in the shower room where the hampers are
--everywhere i look things desperately needing attention. mud stuck to the floor. smeary windows. kitchen counter cluttered with dirty dishes.

but, then again. . .
--sunshine streaming through (brown) windows
--toddler smiling between episodes of hurling
--gentle strains of lisa loeb "catch the moon" playing for sick toddler (thanks, Susan)
--despite having touch of sickness, having energy today and already one load of laundry in the works
--homeschooler being slow and unfocused but sitting with willing attitude practicing times table
--tummy warm and good from leftover Chipotle D brought home last night as a treat for me
--the luxury of sitting and blogging at home with my children when i could be stuck at a 9-5 job
--and wait--did baby go back to sleep as i sat typing?

the redemption of the minute

Take the Quiz here!

crafting with a sense of humor

one of those random things i find on the web while doing otherwise legitimate (i.e. defensible) web searches:

you gotta love it!

http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=267338.0

more about love, fallen

Probably almost none of you know I really enjoy collecting good quotations and selections from literature. The last poem I posted reminded me of some thought-worthy ones:

"God is love, they once said, but we reversed that, and love, like heaven, was always just around the corner. . . ."

"Falling in love, we said: I fell for him. We were falling women. We believed in it, this downward motion; so lovely, like flying, and yet at the same time so dire, so extreme, so unlikely. . . ."

"The more difficult it was to love the particular man beside us, the more we believed in Love, abstract and total. We were waiting, always, for the incarnation. That word, made flesh."

Selections from "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

From the Poetry Archives: Sharon Olds

Sex Without Love


How do they do it, the ones who make love
without love? Beautiful as dancers,
gliding over each other like ice skaters
over the ice, fingers hooked
inside each other’s bodies, faces
red as steak, wine, wet as the
children at birth whose mothers are going to
give them away. How do they come to the
come to the come to the God come to the
still waters, and not love
the one who came there with them, light
rising slowly as steam off their joined
skin? These are the true religious,
the purists, the pros, the ones who will not
accept a false Messiah, love the
priest instead of the God. They do not
mistake the lover for their own pleasure,
they are like great runners, they know they are alone
with the road surface, the cold, the wind,
the fit of their shoes, their over-all cardio-
vascular health—just factors, like the partner
in the bed and not the truth, which is the
single body alone in the universe
against its own best time.

Sharon Olds (1984)

From the Poetry Archives: Just a Disagreement

(Hope you don't mind me borrowing your poetry blog entry title, Rosa--I like your wording)

Tonight as I sat nursing, for some reason fragments of old poems started to shift awake in my mind--I could not grasp anything in its entirety, but just lines, words, images. So I thought I would post a few that I can find copies of, just for fun. Why this one was the first to surface, I don't know, since I am not feeling anything remotely similar to the feelings it portrays. But I did write it after D and I had a big fight while we were dating in college. We have had a few big fights over the years, and no one can infuriate me like he can. Luckily, maturity and wisdom (what there is of it!) have slowly worked into our maritial consciousness, and big blow-ups are rare. But I can still recall how it feels to be in the middle of a big one--awful. Gnashing is a good word for it.

Just a Disagreement

ruby shards
flying
we are drenched
in our own blood
flesh simply melts
under such pressure
everything vital is
pierced
all that is left
suffocates
drowns
implodes
and still pride
reloads

Happy

Most of you have never heard of Happy Rhodes. She has one of the best female voices that I have ever heard--with a five octave range!--and her songwriting is so creative and thoughtful; this image is the cover art of my favorite CD of hers, "The Keep," and the clip shows her performing one of my favorite songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XVVkbUwprc

What she does best are ballads, and she has some amazing ones: "Warpaint" and "If so" are unbelievable, for range of voice and depth of lyrics.

Never, Ever (Or, Why I Love American Girl Dolls Regardless of My Previous Rant)

Finally, in the last entry of my All Things Dollish Thursday:

The KRMG Morning News Blog
FL Mom Says Doll Has 'Sexually Suggestive' Message
By
Joe Kelley, Host of the KRMG Morning News @ January 12, 2009 4:10 AM

ORLANDO, Fla. -- A local mother who got a Bratz doll for her daughter said on Friday that she noticed something inappropriate on her child's new toy.
"She's my favorite doll," said 7-year-old Breana Staley.
Breana said she loves her Bratz doll Cloe's soft hair and outfits, but her mother says part of the rocker doll's outfit is out of line.
Victoria Staley said her daughter's doll's belt buckle reads "Enter."
"The belt buckle," Staley said. "She's like, 'Why does it say 'Enter?' What am I supposed to do?"
Staley said the word on the buckle is just too "sexually suggestive" for a 7-year-old's toy.
"She doesn't need to know about that," Staley said. "I don't think it's the right message for children at all."
She said if she had known the belt buckle said that, she wouldn't have bought the doll.
She said she took off the belt and let Breana keep her new Christmas present.
"She's in a band," Breana said. "She plays with her friends in a band."
Staley said that when she called the company, MGA Entertainment, a representative told her that the belt is supposed to be that way.
"The way he was explaining, it's supposed to be like a seat belt," Staley said. "Like how a seat belt in a car has enter, you enter the seat belt. I'm like, well, you're still entering."
Staley said the Bratz maker offered her a couple of free toys, but she said that's not enough.
"I just wasn't going to let it go," she said. "I don't want them making that doll anymore."

file this under too cute!

I wish I had the talent to do this!

http://www.art2believe.com/doll_gallery

the American Girl rant

Some of you know how I wrangled with the decision of whether or not to get American Girl dolls for the girls. I love the whole concept--well made dolls that represent different periods in American history, so girls are having fun while learning. I would have really loved these when I was a girl. But there are three things I loathe about the whole American girl thing:

First, how can you have "American Girl" dolls made in CHINA? For crying out loud, is NOTHING sacred? But after searching for a doll of the same size made in the US and finding nothing, not even a cute fabric doll on eBay who might look remotely like one of the story characters and would fit the period clothing, I decided to give up on that point.

Second, when I was starting to waver and Googled "American Girl" to find the company website so I could browse the doll options, their website description revolted me: "American Girl is a premiere lifestyle brand that offers a variety of age-appropriate, high-quality dolls, books, clothing, and accessories." A premiere lifestyle brand? I thought I was getting dolls for my little girls! Homeschool moms sneaking in learning while their daughters are innocently playing with dolls is one thing; a corporation trying to indoctrinate my family into its values of consumption and coveting is something else entirely. I am not buying these dolls as reflectors of my own desire for wealth or prestige--I make no pretense of having a "premiere lifestyle."

At least I cannot argue that the company has a hidden agenda--no, they are completely up front about their values.

But I think this might explain why, as far as I know, American Girl dolls are a phenomenon of the middle-upper class.

Anyway, that leads to the third offensive quality about the American Girl franchise: they are not really offering these dolls and books and stuff for the enjoyment of our children, but in the hopes of enslaving our children to their premiere lifestyle brand and greater consumption of it! My thoughts on this topic were validated when I read the following article, which I strongly recommend to any of you moms who are making American Girl dolls part of your children's "education": "Marketing American Girlhood" from the "Rethinking Schools Online" magazine.

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_02/amer232.shtml

Still, idealist as I am, I figure we can purchase the dolls and enjoy them for what they are--dolls with history-based stories--and keep them at that. We won't be browsing the catalogs, we won't be buying the overpriced clothing and accessories from American Girl, we will be content with the three dolls we have and not worry about keeping up their looks for resale value on eBay.

I have no problem with other moms chosing to do things differently, by the way! I can think of several of my mom friends who have more than one doll per child, or who enjoy looking at the catalogs with their girls, etc. I am not commenting on anyone else's family--only speaking about my ideals for my own family.

So, this last Christmas, Grandma and Aunt Becca (and Uncle Chris and Sarah and Emily) got our three girls Nellie, Samantha, and Addy. I picked them out. They girls enjoy them, and we have been having American Girl history parties with friends and their own AG dolls and watching the AG movies. But it has all been in the context of history, and very modest consumption. For example, in their Christmas stockings the girls each got a cute colonial American outfit for her doll, since we have been studying that period of American history. Next we will get pioneer outfits, if I can find good ones. This way all the dolls can live in each time period and be part of the girls' learning--and we avoid any pressure to get THE official doll that the AG company has chosen to represent each era.

I found a terrific site on eBay for clothes at a fraction of the cost of the official AG ones:

http://stores.ebay.com/wulang55-Doll-Clothes-Store

Sure, the clothes are still made in China. But at least they are way cheaper, and very nicely made (supposedly handmade). Be prepared for the shipping to take up to a month, though! But look at these cute Colonial dress designs, for about $8 - $12, plus $4 shipping!

Again, for all the things that bother me about the whole American girl product, I would have loved these as a girl. Maybe that is the real reason I asked my mom to get them for the girls--maybe some part of me was remembering the pleasure of a loved doll who harbors and fosters all kinds of imaginative play.

So perhaps it is appropriate to end this entry with a photo that represents my own imagination carried away by our new dolls:

Addy Come to Grief

this past weekend

This past weekend one of my oldest, dearest friends came to visit. We have been friends since freshmen year of high school, when love of the 80's pop band a-ha brought us together. I could not have asked for a better weekend with her. We hung out at the Abbey, treated ourselves to munchies, crunchies and yummies, she cuddled my baby and showed me how to cook meat, we sang hymns while we were cooking and lounged on the "sofa" in the afternoon sunshine and laughed. We talked a lot. D was a dear and gave us lots of quality time sans children. She slept on a pile of bedding on the kitchen floor and was good natured, even when E woke up screaming at least five times Sat night because he could not breathe from his cold. She was gracious about the cold in the morning before D made the fire, and the lack of interior doors. She reminded me of why I love her so much and why we will always be friends, no matter how many states separate us, through births and deaths and human fallenness and growing up.

So this is my ode to her, to friendship.

Who wants to come visit next? ; )

these are a few of my favorite things

tiny world pincushion

Some things just make me happy. The Art and Craft of Mimi Kirchner on Etsy makes me happy.

Tattoo Man magnets

Fairy Tale girl doll

teatime with you--thank you for joining me

A few of you faithful readers have told me that sometimes Blogger does not let you post comments to this blog, even when you are logged in. That has happened to me a few times at other people's blogs, but so far not when I am trying to post to my own. But I notice that sometimes when I am writing a post, a message comes up that says that blogger is unavailable and to try saving/posting in a few minutes. So I wonder if that is the same system hiccup that might affect the comments posting. I am sorry that you ever experience any difficulty posting, since I have discovered I love comments! : ) When I started the experiment of blogging, I had not thought about comments, and never expected that getting them would be such a treat. But I have found that without them, it starts to feel less like tea with my girlfriends (which is my goal) and more like a constant monologue. And while it is true that I am by nature quite talkative, I really hate feeling like I am dominating the conversation, and try to be wary of that when I am with you in person or on the phone. Oh, I know it happens still! But I am chagrined when I realize I have been doing it.

So, all this to say that whenever you mention in passing your thoughts about something I wrote, or when you email, or when you leave comments, I really enjoy and appreciate it. On the flip side, please never feel pressure to keep up with this blog--I assume you have plenty of other more important things to do with your time, and will not think anything the least bit negative if you are not a regular. But I do hope that if you are sitting down with a cup of something warm and soothing that you will consider sharing a few minutes of your pleasure with me! : )

wishful thinking

i am SO going to fire the maid.

am i?

After our first Musical Monday Morning today (thank you, Willow, for coming to hang out and play : ), I stopped by Starbucks to get a chai, since the Abbey is not yet open on Mondays. I hate ordering my chai at Starbucks, because when I use their lingo I sound SO high maintenance:
"Yes, I'd like a grande, two-pump, no-water, non-fat chai please."
I always imagine the baristas are rolling their eyes at me, even if just in their minds.

At the Abbey, where the same lovely young people are working every time I stop in while G is in martial arts, they know what I want and I don't even have to say it. In fact, on Sunday mornings when I send D in to get it for me--he gets a quad espresso, which sure sounds like it would say a lot about him, although I am not sure what--he just has to ask for a "Lisa chai" and they whip it up with a smile.

Basically, it is a large chai with about half of the usual chai syrup/mix so it is less sweet, and with all milk, instead of milk and water, so it has more protein, and skim milk so it has less fat. See, it is logical and better for me, and so tasty!

But I think I know another reason why I squirm internally when I order my chai. C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, says is so much better than I could, as the demon Screwtape instructs his nephew Wormwood on how to get the human to whom he is assigned enslaved to himself through gluttony:

Chapter XVII

MY DEAR WORMWOOD,

The contemptuous way in which you spoke of gluttony as a means of catching souls, in your last letter, only shows your ignorance. One of the great, achievements of the last hundred years has been to deaden the human conscience on that subject, so that by now you will hardly find a sermon preached or a conscience troubled about it in the whole length and breadth of Europe. This has largely been effected by concentrating all our efforts on gluttony of Delicacy, not gluttony of Excess. Your patient's mother, as I learn from the dossier and you might have learned from Glubose, is a good example. She would be astonished—one day, I hope, will be—to learn that her whole life is enslaved to this kind of sensuality, which is quite concealed from her by the fact that the quantities involved are small. But what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness, and self-concern? Glubose has this old woman well in hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sign and a smile "Oh please, please...all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak, and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast". You see? Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before her, she never recognises as gluttony her determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others. At the very moment of indulging her appetite she believes that she is practising temperance. In a crowded restaurant she gives a little scream at the plate which some overworked waitress has set before her and says, "Oh, that's far, far too much! Take it away and bring me about a quarter of it". If challenged, she would say she was doing this to avoid waste; in reality she does it because the particular shade of delicacy to which we have enslaved her is offended by the sight of more food than she happens to want.

The real value of the quiet, unobtrusive work which Glubose has been doing for years on this old woman can be gauged by the way in which her belly now dominates her whole life. The woman is in what may be called the "All-I-want" state of mind. All she wants is a cup of tea properly made, or an egg properly boiled, or a slice of bread properly toasted. But she never finds any servant or any friend who can do these simple things "properly"—because her "properly" conceals an insatiable demand for the exact, and almost impossible, palatal pleasures which she imagines she remembers from the past; a past described by her as "the days when you could get good servants" but known to us as the days when her senses were more easily pleased and she had pleasures of other kinds which made her less dependent on those of the table. Meanwhile, the daily disappointment produces daily ill temper: cooks give notice and friendships are cooled. If ever the Enemy introduces into her mind a faint suspicion that she is too interested in food, Glubose counters it by suggesting to her that she doesn't mind what she eats herself but "does like to have things nice for her boy". In fact, of course, her greed has been one of the chief sources of his domestic discomfort for many years.

Now your patient is his mother's son. While working your hardest, quite rightly, on other fronts, you must not neglect a little quiet infiltration in respect of gluttony. Being a male, he is not so likely to be caught by the "All I want" camouflage. Males are best turned into gluttons with the help of their vanity. They ought to be made to think themselves very knowing about food, to pique themselves on having found the only restaurant in the town where steaks are really "properly" cooked. What begins as vanity can then be gradually turned into habit. But, however you approach it, the great thing is to bring him into the state in which the denial of any one indulgence—it matters not which, champagne or tea, sole colbert or cigarettes—"puts him out", for then his charity, justice, and obedience are all at your mercy.

Mere excess in food is much less valuable than delicacy. Its chief use is as a kind of artillery preparation for attacks on chastity. On that, as on every other subject, keep your man in a condition of false spirituality. Never let him notice the medical aspect. Keep him wondering what pride or lack of faith has delivered him into your hands when a simple enquiry into what he has been eating or drinking for the last twenty-four hours would show him whence your ammunition comes and thus enable him by a very little abstinence to imperil your lines of communication. If he must think of the medical side of chastity, feed him the grand lie which we have made the English humans believe, that physical exercise in excess and consequent fatigue are specially favourable to this virtue. How they can believe this, in face of the notorious lustfulness of sailors and soldiers, may well be asked. But we used the schoolmasters to put the story about—men who were really interested in chastity as an excuse for games and therefore recommended games as an aid to chastity. But this whole business is too large to deal with at the tail-end of a letter,

Your affectionate uncle

SCREWTAPE

High maintenance. . . or enslaved to my tastes?

ouch.

Something to think about next time I am sipping my Lisa chai.

A sign you take your business a little too seriously

While looking for vanities online, I came across this site. You MUST go visit, with your sound turned up, then keep reading.

http://jamescraigfurnishings.com/index.htm

The girls ran over to see what all the commotion was about. We started singing, in tune to the music, "See the sofa!" "See the dresser!" "See the cabinet right there!" "SEE THE SIDE CHAIR!" "SEE THE TABLE!" "SEE ALL THE THINGS WE WANT YOU TO BUY!"

you get the idea.

I don't think this particular marketing ploy is effective--after all that, I no longer wanted to shop, I just wanted to go take a nap.

cool plumbing

In all my hours of research for new bathroom fixtures, I have found some really beautiful, unusual, or outrageous ones. This one is my all-time favorite, alas for a tub, which we do not have, or I would probably get it. It looks like a fixture from "The City of Lost Children" (La Cite des Enfants Perdus, 1995).

the installation will be the easy part

I mentioned in a previous post that our bathroom desperately needs a new sink--the mottled, peeling faucet, the rim-to-rim bowl cracks from a dropped (full) beer bottle, and the occassional kamikaze diving off the wall (once onto a toddler's toe) were not enough to get D to replace it, but the re-occurring drip that finally became an unstoppable stream finally forced him to concede that something must be done.

But fixing all that ails the bathroom is not as easy as just getting a new sink--the sink is just the starting point. At least we did make a decision on that, so we have a starting point. The sink is hand-carved soapstone, to match that in our kitchen and our fireplace hearth. See the gorgeous pic. Ahhhhhhhhhhhh. When it arrives (the San Francisco location did not carry the kind we wanted, so we had to get it from the New Jersey store--at least I wheedled them into knocking off additional shipping fees) we will drive up to SF to pick out a soapstone slab to complement it, which D can cut to our needs. But we still have not decided whether to undermount the sink, or make it a partial-height vessel, or to make it a drop in. Undermount would be ideal, for looks, easy clean up, and maximizing counter space, but while D and his dad did an excellent job on our kitchen counter slabs, those were mainly straight lines. Cutting a radial in stone, where you cannot nicely hide any mistakes, and you have to get it right the first time? The odds are not in his favor. Drop in would be the easiest--same hole needed, but the lip of the sink would hopefully cover flaws in the cutting. Half-raised vessel is my least favorite option, but the one D likes best.

Then there is the issue of what to put the sink on. My idea was to get nice 1" x 6" boards, cut them into a half round shape, and then lay the half-round slab counter over them with an inch lip. The whole thing would be supported by a lovely pair of brackets I found on eBay--see pic. I would probably paint them white, to give them more of a cottagey look, and with the supporting boards white and the walls white behind it, the effect would be fairly understated but unusual and hopefully a little shabby chic. D is not sure we can make that look good, and so we are also looking at vanities--but there is almost nothing out there that will fit into our teeny, tiny water closet, so I think we will end up building something ourselves.

Then there is the issue of the wall. Currently, our entire house is single-walled construction; this means on the other side of that one inch bathroom wall behind the sink is the backyard. Nowhere to hide plumbing. And the structural 2"x 4" that runs the length of the wall supporting the window gives very little clearance for fixtures. Do we build out the wall and insulate it but then lose precious inches of body-getting-around space and counter depth? The depth of the space between the walls will still not probably be deep enough to house all the plumbing (old houses are not built to the modern standards, of course) but the room would look better and be warmer to boot. And we could put in a wall outlet, which is always nice in a bathroom.

Obviously the related issue is the faucet. Do we go for wall-mounted fixtures and run the plumbing outside? Do we go for a deck mounted faucet--but have to go for a one hole fixture mounted to the side of the sink, to maximize counter space and not worry about the wall issues? Then of course we want the best fixture, one that will last and look good a long time. Some things are worth the extra money, and we think plumbing fixtures are in that category. We know we want brushed nickel finish in PVD--but to get this finish in an old-fashioned looking, one-hole counter mounted solid brass, ceramic disc faucet? There are only, like, three such faucets on the market, and they are all fairly ugly.

Oh, the trials and tribulations of being particular, I mean, having good taste! ; )

Susan, I know you are rolling your eyes at this point. And for good reason! Oh, but it gets worse.

Being us and all, it is not possible to just go out and buy a sink and hang it on the wall. It has to be the right sink, the right faucet, etc. This in itself is not bad. The bathroom is the most pathetic room in the house, and desperately needs an entire overhaul, and I am estatic that there is finally enough reason for D to let me start work on it. But of all the problems we are facing in the whole decision making process, the worst one by far is my husband. Who is clearly schizophrenic and crazy to boot. (And who will be reading this, in case you are wondering! ; ) See, he has not wanted to make any improvements to the bathroom because, in his mind, it would all be money thrown down the toilet, so to speak, since if we ever add on to the house, as we intended when we bought it, that part of the house will probably be torn off and the new built in its place. Key words there being "if" and "probably." Realistically, we will not be adding on to the house for a long, long time. We will most likely have to move before we ever add on, so I say we should do the remodel now and be able to enjoy it, and have the house in better condition to sell in case the need should arise. But D is loathe to "throw away" time, effort and money on a remodel that may be torn down again someday. I agree completely with his stance, just not his perspective of time frame.

So he is coming to this remodel with part eagerness (he has been visiting bath and kitchen showrooms on his lunch break) and part reluctance. Hence the schizophrenia comment--he is clearly torn and that makes decision making all the harder. And now comes the crazy. So yesterday he took us all to a couple of kitchen/bath showrooms in Santa Cruz and it was productive, and I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing until in the car on the way home he starts talking about how in most countries people may not even have a bathroom sink, they just have one sink to do everything in. He wonders why we really need a bathroom sink at all. Especially, he notes, when the kitchen and bath are really only about 20 steps apart from one another. Having a bathroom sink in addition to a kitchen sink, in his words, "Is a little extravagant, don't you think?"

Good thing I am not a drinker.

Mexi-Melt Beans and Rice

A quick and easy variation on beans and rice, which I made up last night. I asked the girls today if they had liked it, and they said "We did not like it, we loved it!"

Alrighty then!

In big pot, saute pressed garlic (about 3 cloves) and chopped onion (optional) in oil
Add 2 cans chopped canned tomatoes and 1 can tomato sauce
(I would also add one small can of chopped green chilis, but I did not have any last night, so is optional)
Rinse and drain 2 cans kidney beans and 1 can black beans (use any combination of kidney, black, or pinto you desire) and mix in
Add dried cumin and oregano and black pepper, to taste
Simmer until bubbly, then add about 3 cups of cooked rice, any kind (perfect for using up leftover rice, which is what I was doing) and mix well
When hot, serve into bowls and top with shredded cheese

So yum, so easy!

great quotation from a great man

From a documentary about his life work, called I Have Never Forgotten You. From an interview with Dan Rather way back in the 70's, about Wiesenthal's efforts to put pressure on the Russian government to give information about a Swedish (I think) man they had been holding since the end of WWII who had saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust by arranging Swedish passports for them. Rather said to Wiesenthal, essentially, "C'mon, now, Simon, we have known each other a long time--you are a realist. Do you think you are being realistic to hold out hope that the Russian government will give in?"

And Wiesenthal replied, "A Jew must believe in miracles. If a Jew [does] not believe in miracles, he is not a realist."

the psychology of facebook

Facebook is a fun tool for resurrecting ghosts from the past--sometimes a past you had completely forgotten about, sometimes a past you did not mind forgetting about! And it is fascinating to me the myriad feelings that surface when someone out of the past asks to be my "friend" on facebook. If it is someone who was my friend, whom I had not thought about in years but would occassionally wonder about, then I am estatic. If it is someone who was not really my friend--even sometimes a person who may not have spoken to me voluntarily in high school!--then I am magnanimous. If it is someone who I don't recognize at all, but suspect might have met me once, or might not know me at all but plucked me out of the collective friends consciousness (of Vintage Faith church network, for example), then I am judgemental (why on earth would you want to claim "friend"ship with someone you don't even know, just because you happen to go to the same church?) But for the most part I accept the terms of "friend"ship, because, why not? (Except for those in the last category--they give me the willies, and I feel bad for people like Dan Kimball, one of the guys who started Vintage Faith, and who has written several books, because of the thousands of "friends" he has who just want to be connected in any way with someone "famous.")

Just to assuage any worries, if you are reading this blog, you are truly a friend, no quotation marks needed. ; )

But I have had two occurrences lately that have said way more about me than about the other person on facebook:

#1: A few weekends back when D's parents were in town, my mother-in-law commented that she had joined facebook at the request of old friends from high school who were planning the next reunion. My first impulse was to say, enthusiastically, "Hey, I'll be your friend on facebook." I am pretty sure my mouth even opened to speak, before my brain stepped in and seized control of the situation. Because my brain said in response, "ummmmm, no, I think I'll let her ask me if she can be my friend on facebook."

Perhaps a more complete understanding of the inner dialogue would be helped if the reader knew my relationship with my MIL has never been exactly friendly, though not for lack of my own fumbling, fallen efforts. And if the reader substituted "gleefully wicked me" for "my brain" in the above paragraph.

But He who redeems all things in the end showed me something a few years back: that this woman, at the end of her long, bitter life, will look back and realize that I have been her closest friend. Don't get me wrong--this promise does not exactly thrill me. I would much rather keep her at arm's end and stay fairly safe and sane. But if I manage to be her friend, it will not be by any great good I have in me--it will all be through the purpose and power of God. And really, it is a compliment of sorts, that God knows I will honor the vision and be faithful in trying to love her as a friend until that eventual someday.

But in the meantime, I'm holding back facebook friendship with a mischevious gleam in my eye. It would mean a lot to be asked.

#2: My older sister joined fb the other day, and is adding friends from everywhere, and as I visited her page to say hello, I saw the name of one of my old boyfriends, who was also my friend for about 10 years, from childhood until after college. Again, first impulse: "Hey, C, long time no hear from! Can I be your friend so I can see what you have been up to all these years?" Then, once again, brain steps in: "um, remember how he very nicely but officially ended your friendship the week before his wedding to once and for all show his new bride--who hated your guts--that he was chosing her over you?" Very wise move on his part, by the way, which I have always respected. But being in contact with his parents until just a few years ago, I know just enough of his adult life to want to know more. He had three kids--any more? He once worked for Big Ideas (Veggie Tales--think "Cheeseburger Song"), but left to make his own animated children's videos--how did that go?

But even though I have completely understandable and innocuous reasons for wanting to be friends with him on fb, I realized that I have more complex reasons for why I will never ask him. For one, I don't want to step over that line he so clearly drew all those years back, shielding his marriage from any perceived threat. Does she still feel the threat after all these years (and all these children!)? Are they even still together? Would the extending of the virtual hand of friendship be construed in any negative or desperate or conniving or the least bit psycho way by either old boyfriend or wife?

You have to admit, the old flames popping up on fb to see your family photos and marvel at the changes time hath wrought is a wee little bit on the psycho side--almost in the same uncomfortable ranking as the strangers as "friends" by association thing. And since there are actually several old boyfriends who are fb friends of mine (by their request, of course), I know already that if I did get to see C's profile and pics, I would in some way be superficially evaluating what could have been if. . . .

And, finally, there is the fear of rejection.

Facebook has made me confront some deep insecurities, which I forget I have. I rarely ask anyone to be my friend on facebook, even people I know fairly well and like--because what if they don't return the same affection and will say yes because of lack of polite way to say no? I did not even ask Dan Kimball, because I did not want to be another one of the thousand famous friend seekers--and was thus charmed when he asked me. ; ) (I cannot take credit--it was just logical for him to claim as a friend a person who spends a lot of time with his wife and children.)

Another reason why I almost always say yes to friend requests--maybe they went through the same insecurity before contacting me?

So I guess I will just have to ask my sister to tell me the gist of his profile so I don't have to go there myself. Wait a minute, what was I just saying about psycho behavior?

And here is the final thought: why do I even care what he thinks of me? I will not even attempt to deconstruct that one!

So, another lengthly posting about nothing much of importance but the releasing of thoughts that have been circling in my head. If any of you share these feelings about virtual friendship, make a comment! Someday someone will be writing books about how the virtual friend changed the psychological landscape of our national consciousness--have your say here and be ahead of the times.

in case we ever need a reason

UCLA STUDY ON FRIENDSHIP AMONG WOMEN

By Gale Berkowitz

A landmark UCLA study suggests friendships between women are special. They shape who we are and who we are yet to be. They soothe our tumultuous inner world, fill the emotional gaps in our marriage, and help us remember who we really are. By the way, they may do even more.

Scientists now suspect that hanging out with our friends can actually counteract the kind of stomach-quivering stress most of us experience on a daily basis. A landmark UCLA study suggests that women respond to stress with a cascade of brain chemicals that cause us to make and maintain friendships with other women. It's a stunning find that has turned five decades of stress research, most of it on men, upside down.

"Until this study was published, scientists generally believed that when people experience stress, they trigger a hormonal cascade that revs the body to either stand and fight or flee as fast as possible," explains Laura Cousino Klein, Ph.D., now an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University and one of the study's authors. "It's an ancient survival mechanism left over from the time we were chased across the planet by saber-toothed tigers.
Now the researchers suspect that women have a larger behavioral repertoire than just "fight or flight."

"In fact," says Dr. Klein, "it seems that when the hormone oxytocin is released as part of the stress responses in a woman, it buffers the "fight or flight" response and encourages her to tend children and gather with other women instead. When she actually engages in this tending or befriending, studies suggest that more oxytocin is released, which further counters stress and produces a calming effect.

This calming response does not occur in men", says Dr. Klein, "because testosterone,which men produce in high levels when they're under stress,seems to reduce the effects of oxytocin. Estrogen", she adds, "seems to enhance it."

The discovery that women respond to stress differently than men was made in a classic "aha!" moment shared by two women scientists who were talking one day in a lab at UCLA. "There was this joke that when the women who worked in the lab were stressed, they came in, cleaned the lab, had coffee, and bonded", says Dr. Klein." When the men were stressed, they holed up somewhere on their own.

I commented one day to fellow researcher Shelley Taylor that nearly 90% of the stress research is on males. I showed her the data from my lab, and the two of us knew instantly that we were onto something." The women cleared their schedules and started meeting with one scientist after another from various research specialties. Very quickly, Drs. Klein and Taylor discovered that by not including women in stress research, scientists had made a huge mistake: The fact that women respond to stress differently than men has significant implications for our health.

It may take some time for new studies to reveal all the ways that oxytocin encourages us to care for children and hang out with other women, but the "tend and befriend" notion developed by Drs. Klein and Taylor may explain why women consistently outlive men.

Study after study has found that social ties reduce our risk of disease by lowering blood pressure, heart rate, and cholesterol. "There's no doubt," says Dr. Klein, "that friends are helping us live." In one study, for example, researchers found that people who had no friends increased their risk of death over a 6-month period. In another study, those who had the most friends over a 9-year period cut their risk of death by more than 60%.

Friends are also helping us live better. The famed Nurses' Health Study from Harvard Medical School found that the more friends women had, the less likely they were to develop physical impairments as they aged, and the more likely they were to be leading a joyful life. In fact, the results were so significant, the researchers concluded, that not having close friends or confidantes was as detrimental to your health as smoking or carrying extra weight!

And that's not all! When the researchers looked at how well the women functioned after the death of their spouse, they found that even in the face of this biggest stressor of all, those women who had a close friend confidante were more likely to survive the experience without any new physical impairments or permanent loss of vitality. Those without friends were not always so fortunate.

Yet if friends counter the stress that seems to swallow up so much of our life these days, if they keep us healthy and even add years to our life, why is it so hard to find time to be with them? That's a question that also troubles researcher Ruthellen Josselson, Ph.D., co-author of Best Friends: The Pleasures and Perils of Girls and Women's Friendships (Three Rivers Press, 1998). "Every time we get overly busy with work and family, the first thing we do is let go of friendships with other women," explains Dr. Josselson. "We push them right to the back burner. That's really a mistake because women are such a source of strength to each other. We nurture one another. And we need to have unpressured space in which we can do the special kind of talk that women do when they're with other women.

It's a very healing experience."

Taylor, S. E., Klein, L.C., Lewis, B. P., Gruenewald, T.L., Gurung, R. A. R., & Updegraff, J. A. Female Responses to Stress: Tend and Befriend, Not Fight or Flight

shoes

Thank you, my friends, who gave me invaluable feedback on the shoes, either in the poll or via email or in person! The shoes stay, and here is a pic: