Friday, July 7, 2017

Working 9 to 5, Tryna Make a Good Impression


Today I entered my first conference call, which of course meant I was bathed in nervous sweat for a good 15 minutes previous because phone calls with strangers catapult me into a state of near paralysis. I blame this on my older siblings, who used a combination of their superior strength and a perverse interpretation of in loco parentis to force me to call West Coast Video or Italian Delight every time they wanted to rent a movie or order a pizza. I don’t think today’s youngest children fully appreciate the amount of trauma that Netflix and Domino’s Pizza Tracker saves them on a daily basis. Added to this Pavlovian fear is my natural awkward nature – I am the kind of person who chooses a seat in church based upon how many people will be within handshaking distance during the Sign of Peace (the greater the distance the better).


Take the terror of talking to one stranger, multiply it by ten people, and you have a conference call. The one thing that saved me from full breakdown was the belief that I would not have to talk.

Bee-da-leep.

“Sounds like a couple people have entered the conversation. Please introduce yourself.”

My heart froze. How had I not anticipated this? I spend at least five minutes every morning practicing my greeting to the security guard, and yet I was fully unprepared to say hello on a phone call. I panicked.

“I am Emily.”

I am Emily?? Ye gods. Was I going for Thomas Wolfe? Why didn’t I just say “Me Jane” or “Call me Ishmael” and have it over?

No one had felt the need to walk me through the protocol for conference calls, probably because they assumed, considering my years, that I had worked in an office before.

This assumption is false. Up to this point in my life I have specialized in education, child care, janitorial maintenance, sandwich making, and alcohol. So I am essentially qualified to be a housewife.

This is my first office job and it is just about as bad as I had always imagined it would be, plus it doesn’t provide nearly the same amount of entertaining stories as cocktail waitressing. Since I have been here, not one person has asked me if they can substitute french-fries for parsley, and I have had a distinct lack of mid-western men sending back craft beers for something that comes in a “Man’s” glass (ie, Miller High Life).

I never see the sun and thanks to the patriarchy it’s as cold as Antarctica in my cubicle, and the atmosphere is slowly eating away at the core of my soul. There’s also unlimited coffee in the break room, which is more quickly eating away at the lining of my stomach.

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I do get to do a lot of writing. And listen to rock and roll and classical music all day, occasionally speculating on how “Mozart’s Greatest Hits” came to accumulate 29,923 dislikes on Youtube. You’d kind of expect that someone listening to Mozart knows what they’re getting into. It’s not like he’s some underground Indie artist. My personal opinion is that Philip Glass is staging a coup.

Occasionally I have to attend an intern development meeting and lunch, during which we learn about the company and provide a free focus group for the internship program:

“We’ve actually been reinventing our internship program to embrace a more diverse range of ages. Like in The Intern. YOU know,” Ms. HR looked pointedly at me.

I looked behind and confirmed that this look was directed at me. Really, lady? Robert DeNiro is seventy in that movie. I’m hardly on the same level. This is a perfectly normal age to be breaking into the business world.

During lunch afterward, Alice turned to me, “Did you hear? That intern Rachel is turning 21 next week! Perfect excuse for a company happy hour.” She chewed thoughtfully for a few seconds and swallowed. “When do you turn 21?”

…...

Ok, maybe I'm a little old.





Tuesday, July 4, 2017

No More Kings, or Why We Need to Bring Back Schoolhouse Rock.

“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

I read the words behind the glass case in the National Archives and felt a surge of pride. I tried to imagine the founders conceiving the document (which is the maximum amount of political engagement I've indulged in the past 4 or 5 years), but a voice broke through my daydream. Apparently the gentleman to my left was doing his own imagining.

“I can just picture Jefferson in that hot room in Philadelphia, writing this out. Excellent hand writing,” he added in an aside to his companion.

His imagination must have been pretty active, because every time I tried to picture that, I only saw James Madison.

To be fair, in the pictures it is hard to distinguish between one powdered wig and the next. And when you pound out a blockbuster like the Declaration of Independence, it is likely that some unmerited credit may find its way to you.

It had likewise been a long time since this gentleman saw middle age, let alone middle school, which is when most students learn Revolutionary history.

Presumably.


.............

I sat in the teacher lounge grading student work. It was generally a pleasant place to be during the first half of the year, but was unfortunately located directly across from the boys' cloakroom, making it a toxic wasteland mid-year during that interminable period between puberty hitting 7th grade boys, and some concerned citizen introducing them to deodorant.

Maribeth was flipping through the pages of Johnny Tremain, a historical fiction novel set in revolutionary Boston.

“This book is so boring. I cannot believe seventh graders are required to read this. I can hardly get through it myself.”

“Hmmm…” I heard her with half an ear as I puzzled over a student’s heavily interpretive Latin translation, mentally noting that I had read the same book in fourth grade. I sighed at the lowered standards of our present day as if I was decades older than my twenty-some years. Back when I was in school…

“I'm trying to get them interested so I told the students we could have a tea party to discuss the novel.”

“That's one way to do it,” still with divided attention. “What are you going to serve?”

“Um, tea. It’s a tea party.”

I put the translation down in defeat and gave my full attention to her.

“Is that supposed to be ironic?”

“No. It’s supposed to be historic. Haven’t you heard of the Boston Tea Party?”

“Yes. Haven’t you heard of the Boston Tea Party? You do know that they didn’t actually drink tea, right? Have you not gotten to that part yet?

I tried to impress upon her the offense to the memory of the Sons of Liberty that she was about to commit. This was almost as bad as the student who thought that the Gettysburg address was written by Steven Spielberg for the movie Lincoln, except she was a teacher with a masters in education and he thought that Quakers were people who grew oatmeal.

“You can’t serve tea at your party. Stick to apple juice. Also, spoiler alert for future lessons, the Civil War was decidedly uncivil, and the Battle of the Bulge was not a reality weight loss show.

Eventually she yielded, but with regret.

“The kids will be so disappointed.”

Not as disappointed as Paul Revere would be.

..................

Come to think of it, maybe this gentleman can't be blamed for thinking that Jefferson wrote the Constitution.

**If you or someone you know is suffering from Insufficient Patriotism Syndrome (IPS), I recommend a summer road trip with my father (bring a parka because the man has ice in his veins and does not understand temperature control). Failing that, try learning the good old fashioned way:




PS: If you weren't aware that Pavement covered this song, you are now. Do the right thing with this information. 

Friday, June 30, 2017

"Nice marmot!": Mounting Rainier

“Bah-loop.”

My head jerked up from the keyboard and I looked nervously behind me, stilling my paranoid urge to grab my phone and throw it in the trashcan before anyone noticed the new hire who not only brought her personal cell phone to work, but also forgot to silence it. This is my first job in an office and I am just trying to keep my head down and not do anything to get me noticed, like a student in a middle school classroom. Or cafeteria. Or anywhere.

Instead I forced myself to casually reach out and silence it, then opened a file drawer to put it out of the reach of temptation, taking one quick sidelong glance at the screen.

The text was from my boyfriend, and simply said “So...”

Now, I challenge anyone who gets that text to put their phone in a locked drawer for the duration of the workday. I wavered. Then, underneath, another ellipsis popped up, this one moving in the “I’m typing something really important that can’t possibly wait until 5 o’clock” way. Game over.

I shut the drawer, took another look behind me, and sat staring at the waving ellipsis. It went away, popped up, went away again. I took a long drink of water, tensed and held my breath. The bubble popped up and stayed.

“Were you serious about wanting to climb Rainier?”  

Six months before, my boyfriend and two close friends made plans to climb this peak. And six months before, I simultaneously dedicated myself to learning all of the most horrific stories about the mountain, because if I was going to be widowed, I at least wanted to be informed. I am a prepare for the worst kind of person. The glass is definitely half-empty, and the liquid is vinegar. But I might have let it slip that I was also slightly jealous of the trip.

And now I was being offered a spot to conquer the monster I had created in my head.

I responded with the first objection I could think of.

“I don’t have any warm socks.”

Really? That was the best I could do? Nothing about the fact that Mt. Rainier is a volcano covered in ice?

With those kind of objections I was obviously quickly talked down, and I found myself with six days to prepare myself mentally and physically to climb 14,410’ up that volcano covered in ice.

  

Over the next few days, between realizing that I don’t actually own ANY warm clothing and the highest peak I’ve ever reached is probably the observation tower of the Empire State Building,  I found myself responding to my mother’s objections with all the arguments from my friends that I had scoffed at previously. Fortunately my mother didn’t discover what had been my trump card: the volcano bit.

This was still more than slightly worrisome to me, even though positions had changed. The argument that the experts know far in advance when volcanos are going to erupt was not comforting for two reasons: Highlights Magazine and Pompeii. In the latter I had read a story (circa second grade) about the eruption of Mt. St. Helen, and my main takeaway from the article was that lots of people died. Granted, I was always more interested in the compelling life of the Timbertoes, or the antics of Goofus and Gallant, than I was about the science articles, which is probably why I missed the fact that the people who died in that eruption were people that refused to leave their homes, notwithstanding the best efforts of the National Guard. But Pompeii! All those people enveloped in ash! That example proved to be misleading as well. Those people were not too bright, actually, since apparently Vesuvius had been having tiny eruptions for days previously. I guess that’s what happens when you think there’s just a divine blacksmith inside the mountain making magical armor.
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DAY ONE:

We will skip the part about my boyfriend having to buy me two plane tickets to Seattle because it still makes me a little ill in the stomach and go directly to DAY ONE, starting with breakfast at the Highlander, which appeared to be the only food establishment within 20 miles of where we were staying. It also functioned as a saloon, poolroom, ice cream parlor, discotheque, karaoke bar, lending library, possibly a daycare and definitely a laundromat. I would not be surprised if they also hold church services there on Sunday.

From the best greasy spoon breakfast, we headed to the rental company, where I rented everything because, as I can’t emphasize enough, I have never done anything even remotely resembling mountain climbing (I don’t think hiking to a spot in the woods to drink away from your dry-campus in any way counts). These few hours consisted in a continuous series of tiny mental explosions on my part  (“Walk up this 60* angle to test your boots.” “Is this about as steep as it gets on the mountain?” “Yea, no...you probably won’t find an angle this slight.” …. “So this ice axe, it’s basically for stability?” “Sure, or stopping yourself if you slip into a crevasse.” …. “Do I really need to rent the headlamp?” “Yea, you’ll definitely need it when you start the summit climb at midnight.” “!!!”), and a stream of comments about shoe size on the boys’ part.
After renting our gear, we settled into some comfortable chairs and met our team: fellow climbers and guides. Good thing those chairs were so deep, because my body was almost completely inside it by the end of the introductions. Tyler, our lead guide, asked us to start off by telling our names and something about our climbing experience. Ian and Bill had each climbed the mountain twice already, Zach and Anna were highschool athletes and had that awful elasticky glow of youth that says “I can stay up all night watching Netflix, climb a mountain, and still love myself,” Darren looked like he might actually be the IronMan. In my mind I heard the sharp voice of that British lady with the pointy cheekbones speaking directly to me, “You ARE theweakestlink. Goodbye.”
I came away from the orientation with my head swimming but with two thoughts impressed on my brain: I would not, under any circumstances, be constrained to heed the call of nature on the climb, and I could eat whatever I wanted over the next 4 days.

“There are three food groups on the mountain: fat, sugar, and salt,” Tyler told us. “Eat what you like. You may wonder, does a Cliffbar still taste like sawdust when it is frozen at 14,411 feet? 100%. I go for M&Ms, myself.”  What was this magical place we had stumbled upon, and why was I still living in a world where ice cream was considered “inappropriate” for breakfast?

Tyler also gave us some tips for places to eat before we took on the mountain. “If you’re looking for a watering hole,” staring directly at us, possibly because my friend had inadvisably mentioned that his training had consisted in walking back and forth from the bars, “there’s the lodge here on campus, or if you’re trying to class it up, the Elbe Tavern.”
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As I came to find out, Tyler’s conversation was always an equal mix of sincere truths and blatant absurdities, all delivered in the same pleasant monotone and indistinguishable from each other. Unfortunately we hadn’t figured this out yet, and rolled up to the Elbe Tavern for dinner in good faith. We did not stay. Although we did consider buying some lottery tickets from the massive display behind the bar.



Instead we ate dinner in an old train car. I mean, one that had been converted into a restaurant - we didn’t just find an old train car and shack up there (although even that might have been an improvement on the Elbe tavern). Our waitress told us sotto voce that the best place to eat in Elbe was at Scaly Burger, but somehow those two words together did not conjure up an appetizing image,
so we stuck with the train.


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My smoked, fried chicken was pretty good, despite its identity crisis, and “Grandma’s Lasagna” was also decent, although I really couldn’t say if it lived up to the name as I have no grandmother’s lasagna to compare it to. My Dad’s mom was too tired of raising 9 kids to make lasagna, and my Mom’s mom is Irish. So.

(*Dede, if you’re reading this, forgive me. You are a fantastic cook and your stuffed shells are a dream.)

But what I was most excited about were the special “housemade” garlic fries. I had basically just been given carte blanche by Tyler to indulge my every epicurean desire, and in the Emily McBryan alternative food pyramid, french fries occupy the foundational part.

Have you ever gotten a Philly cheesesteak at Subway? You get a microwaved steak sandwich with a two slices of white American cheese rubberly rested on top. This is your fault, because you ordered a Philly cheesesteak, at a Subway.

I don’t see how I could have been even a little bit at fault in the garlic fries situation, and yet I had a similar reaction. There was garlic on them to be sure - but minced and dumped on top. And while I have always maintained that aioli is just a fancy name for mayonnaise, I now realize that there is a HUGE difference.

Dear reader. I still ate every one of those fries.

We stopped at the Highlander again for ice cream on the way back. 24 flavors of homemade soft serve! People came from miles around to get it (this did not seem to be a big selling point to me, seeing as people have to come from miles around if they want to go anywhere in this place)! I was scarred by my experience with the garlic fries. Somehow ordering “homemade tiramisu soft serve” seemed to be asking for it, like getting lobster at a diner. I stuck to vanilla, and eavesdropped as a local told his life story to my boyfriend. We stayed until the man started talking about the calls his wife made to 911 about the “pushing”. He turned reassuringly to me and winked, “It happened all the time.”  I wasn’t sure if this referred to the calls or the pushing, and either way the wink was disturbing, but we didn’t stay to find out.

DAY 2:
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Snow school, or the One where I am instilled with false confidence.

After the first few marches through the snow on our training day I felt pretty good about my chances for getting up the mountain. I don’t know what I was so worried about. I do walk my dog up a positively steep hill every day (well, every day that I don’t take alternate routes to avoid the hill – which is probably one out of every…five). And since I found out I was going on this climb six days previously, I had been taking the stairs at work. Although I would usually forget to take them up, so generally it was downhill practice. And I actually only worked three of those six days.

On this day we learned how to arrest ourselves with our ice axes. This became the substance of my nightmares for the next three nights. Self-arrest begins with hurling yourself uphill, on TOP of your ice axe.  With my gracefulness I was equally likely to die by impalement as by falling down the face of the mountain, so it was more a matter of choosing the least worst end. At least in the first instance, I wouldn’t take out the three other people clipped onto me too. So I determined on death by impalement.

Tyler was our captain and mountain guru, and I would trust my poorly prepared life to him any time. He talked in a continuous stream of folklore, jokes, personal anecdotes, and gentle criticisms, every once in a while inserting an expletive for emphasis with an almost apologetic tone. His personality was easy and friendly, and most of the time he seemed more than half asleep - his climbing up the mountain would more accurately be described as a “stroll.”

But under the sleepy exterior the man was sharper than an ice pick, and if any fool disrespected the mountain he went into full on transformer mode. In our practice with the avalanche transceivers, one climber was not paying attention, and suddenly sparks flashed from under Tyler’s sleepy lids. “Your friend is now dead under the snow,” he snapped, reaching out angrily for the transceiver and flipping it on. Thrusting it back, he turned to me lazily and smiled, “See that marmot? You know it’s just a baby grizzly.” I laughed, but nervously, and silently resolved to never provoke the man. It was also at this point that I felt like I could entrust my life and the lives of all of my dearest ones to his care.
 
“Check out the wildlife, gang!” He drew our attention to a string of tourists laboring up the hill and softly chuckled. “Sheep. They see one person going one way and they just follow them! Those skiers…” he shook his head. “Where did they come from?” asked Bill. Tyler looked at him gravely. “The sky. But the elk come from down here. They used to be deer. Change into elk at higher elevations.”

Of course, I wasn’t fooled by this, mostly because I had been burned before. In college, some Californian classmate took advantage of my Philadelphian’s limited experience with citrus to convince me that limes are just unripe lemons. The argument becomes much more convincing when you’ve only ever seem them in a grocery store, just saying.  

When we got to the bottom of the mountain I was feeling so good that even though I hadn’t been there, done that, I went ahead and bought the tee shirt.

DAYS 3&4 (This was basically a continuous day in my mind)

I started the climb with all the confidence of the previous day. That is, until someone put a 35lb pack on my back, started steadily taking all my oxygen away, and seemingly filled my legs with lead. It also turns out that an exclusively candy diet is not all it’s cracked up to be. By the end of the first climb, I found myself unconsciously salivating watching one of the guides eat a slice of turkey deli meat, fortunately closing my mouth before he noticed my glassy, predatory stare.

I realized it was going to take a lot more than M&Ms to get me to the top of the mountain. I recited rosary after rosary to the beat of my steps, interrupted by U2’s “Elevation” on repeat in the background of my thoughts, or Jim Carrey’s voice saying “You’re getting to the top of this mountain, Mister, broken legs and all.” Occasionally I would also encourage myself to “remember your training” and then immediately try to put that out of my mind, because when you haven’t done any, that’s more of a death knell than a cheering thought. If I remembered my training, I’d be in a fetal position at the bottom of the mountain. So Bono, Truman Burbank and the Blessed Virgin Mary are more or less equally responsible for my success in reaching base camp.IMG_3568.JPG

Steve (another guide) broke through my concentration to talk to me about life. It felt exactly like when the dentist has your mouth propped open with a piece of metal scraping against your teeth and chooses that moment to ask you what you’re learning in math class. That is primarily why I haven’t been to the dentist in 15 years. It’s embarrassing. I don’t know anything about math.

I felt like yelling at him, “Dude! do I look like I have oxygen to spare for a casual chat?” But then he got me talking about literature and of course I can always find oxygen to spare to talk about that. Too much, depending on who you ask. Sneaky move, Steve, sneaky move

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When we reached base camp at around 3:30 in the afternoon, Tyler sat down with us to talk us through the next part of the climb. At the end of the conversation, I knew that not even the entire U2 catalogue could get me to the summit of the mountain, but I was game to see how far I could gut it out, despite the fact the altitude had just recently placed a vise around my head and seemed also to be slowly pressing a steel poker against the back of my neck.

The summit climb was to begin at 11:30 pm (thus the headlamp), so now it was time to try to recharge and sleep.
First you are forced to stuff yourself with more calories than a McDonald’s Big Breakfast with Hotcakes (1090, in case you wondered), and then you have to fit yourself into a sleeping bag designed for Twiggy.

In response to my complaints about this situation, my boyfriend informed me that this style of sleeping bag is called a “mummy.” Awesome. As if I was not already hyper-aware of the proximity of death. Perched in a shack constructed of the most amount of plywood that new employees in the ‘70s could be constrained to lug halfway up the mountain (to help your imagination, not a lot), held up by cables against the tremendous weight of snow moving down the mountain that had permanently deformed PINE TREES, I did not need to be reminded of my mortality by sleeping in the position of eternal sleep.

We woke up in the dark to get dressed; put on harnesses, helmets, and crampons; and drink terrible instant coffee.

I used to think that nothing was worse than a morning without coffee. This is no longer a thought that I have.

The next part of the climb was the hardest, and definitely the most I have ever pushed myself physically. It was simultaneously terrifying because you couldn’t see past the person in front of you, and comforting for the same reason. At one point, I turned my head and my headlamp illuminated an enormous crevasse not 20 feet from our path - I kept my eyes down after that.
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Just when I felt like I couldn’t push myself anymore, “20 minutes!” said Steve.

I could do that. I could do 20 minutes. It’s just mental. Pole pole (meaning, one foot after the other)!

20 minutes later, I heard Steve again, “15 minutes! We’re close.” My mental game collapsed. And fifteen minutes later, my body followed, M&Ms notwithstanding.

I thought I could gut it out until the next break, but my boyfriend’s advice was in my head. “Don’t swim out further than you can swim back.” I never really learned to swim, so this particularly resonated with me. Also there was the ice axe paranoia.

We sat for a few minutes after the others continued up the mountain, headlamps off to see the stars better, and then started back down the climb to basecamp.

The drama queen in me wants to say “treacherous climb,” but I’ll spare you the purple prose. Also, my mother is going to read this, and I want to go back some day.
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*I did step into a crevasse on the way back. It was an eerie feeling - my foot shot through the snow and then seemed to dangle in air while my child-bearing hips backpack held me up on the surface. So maybe “treacherous” isn’t too far off.

Back at basecamp we watched the sun rise and I thought **insert something cheesy here about success not being measured by whether you get to the top.** Then I went back into the shack to sleep the sleep of the pretty much just.

Coming down was one long, slow, slide. Literally. Sledding down on waterproof pants was the most fun part of the trip - and scaring the marmots, of course.

**On that note, if I had a dollar for every time one of the boys quoted “Nice marmot” from the Big Lebowski, I could stand at least 6 rounds of White Russians to the entire team.

As it was, we just drank a few pitchers of beer and made many resolutions to return, which I plan on keeping (after some more frequent stair climbing).


For dinner that night, I had an Oreo milkshake and fries from Jack in the Box. The turkey could wait til tomorrow.

Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Don't Start A Blog, Or Things To Know Before You Do, Or This One's For Samantha

Just today, while eating breakfast from my emergency glove-compartment peanut butter jar* (I’ve tried to prefer almond butter, I really have, but after several attempts the consistency doesn’t appear to be compatible with an all-terrain vehicle that occasionally gets rained in because I’m [too lazy to put the top up] too much of a badass to care), and informing all of the commuters within 50 yards on George Washington Parkway that I've been looking so long at these pictures of you, that I almost believe that they're real (which was actually no one because nobody drives with their windows down in [a swamp] DC in the middle of June, but just barrels along in their air-conditioned space capsules not benefitting from my excellent taste in music), I mused on the fact that I have not been able to write a blog post in the same amount of time that it takes my mother to make a person.
These musings developed into a list of admonitions to future bright young things that might be considering embarking on a blogging career, because that was of course easier than finding fault with myself. 

The list is as follows:

1)      If your enormously witty title and general hilarious theme is centered around the place where you live, do not move away. No matter how hard you try, no one will ever be convinced that Washington DC is the South, and those canned boiled peanuts that try to pass for the real thing at the Giant are a SCAM. DO NOT BE TEMPTED BY THEIR SIREN SONG.

2)      If your most popular posts involve bad dates, don’t let yourself be sucked into a good relationship. Nobody wants to read about how your boyfriend brought you a dozen roses and a latte at six o’clock on the morning of your birthday. And in fact it could be dangerous to divulge too many details at the risk of spreading jealousy and discontent. Although maybe you could tell them that he doesn’t eat mushrooms and jealousy would be replaced with disbelief and solicitude.

3)      If you write under your real name – well, just don’t. Pretend you are simply an extreme fan who feels the need to share every post through social media. Or better yet, hire yourself as your promoter. This does the triple service of giving you a job, making you (the author you are pretending not to be) seem more legitimate, and preventing people whom you’d forgotten are still friends of yours on Facebook from reading your blog and recognizing themselves (update: we are no longer friends on Facebook). My mother always told me I could keep a diary if I only wrote nice things about people, so of course I never did, because I got too bored simply thinking nice things about people, let alone writing them down. Now, as with all things, I am recognizing my mother’s infinite wisdom in this regard.

4)      DO NOT LEARN TO COOK (see 2). Although, “learn to cook” may be generous, considering that I don’t think I will ever get the smell of burnt curry out of my denim shirt. Or my flowered scarf. Or my hair.

5)      Do extreme things that could be productive of writing material. For example, in the interest of rehydrating my own well, I decided to climb Mt. Rainier this Friday. Yesterday. **Disclaimer: If you decide to follow this advice, do NOT read other people’s blog posts about climbing Mt. Rainier. Upon further consideration, I fear that I might have taken “extreme” a little too seriously.

6)      Do not start watching Tears for Fears music videos when trying to write. You will come out of that rabbit hole weeks later smelling like stale garlic and cigarettes with leaves in your hair.

7)      Broaden your scope of topics in the event of numbers 2 and 4. For example, literature. What is your favorite book? Have you ever cried in a book? I cried in Little Women. Not because Beth dies, but because Jo doesn’t marry Laurie. That’s the kind of person I am. Although I may not have felt the same way if I hadn’t been exposed to the Christian Bale’s Laurie at a very impressionable age.

8)      Do not use Facebook as your main method of promotion, because then when you get it into your head to revive your blog that will also necessitate slipping back into the suffocating grasp of that post-modern Hydra.

a.       That analogy is really not great because I don’t know if the Hydra is so much known for suffocation as it is for all those heads, but I’m out of practice and I have to go to see the Lumineers open for U2 in concert and lament the slow painful death of rock and roll.


*I’m not sure about the syntax of this sentence. I don’t mean to imply that it is an emergency glove-compartment. It is a perfectly normal glove-compartment, not one of those tricky ones like they have in The Wire to hide drugs and guns. Nor is it a compartment for emergency gloves, because I don’t own any gloves, for emergency or otherwise. Emergency is meant to modify the peanut butter jar, or rather the peanut butter in it, as in “open in case of emergency.” Emergency, in this case, is “when you don’t have time to eat breakfast,” which is, in fact, every morning. So. I guess “emergency” in this instance is slightly misleading. 

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Thursday, September 8, 2016

All that I am and hope to be, I blame on my Mother.


A Biblical Exegesis Honoring My Mother on Her Birthday

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.

I have one, and I inherited her. Thank goodness, because I can't even afford a ring pop these days.

The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil.

I’m not sure that “spoil” is a thing that has a modern day parallel, but if it refers to anything that doesn’t start and end with my mother, my dad couldn’t care less about it.

She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

My mom has made my father spaghetti for dinner every Thursday night for 35 years. In my dad’s opinion, this is all the good he needs. One year, when my father was working out of state on a regular basis, my mother served tried to serve soy spaghetti (My grandmother's maiden name is Origlio - "evil" is too weak an adjective for soy pasta). I suspected something was up when she suggested we eat by candlelight, and I knew something was wrong when I saw the amount of sauce covering the pasta (the only area of her life where my mother could be accused of stinginess). Still, the passage doesn’t say anything about doing good to your children all the days of your life, so the argument stands.





She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands.

My mother is a genius with a needle and any type of material; I’ve seen her turn a ball of yarn into an elephant in less time than it takes me to do my hair in the morning. And I don’t even blow dry it.

Her endeavors with flax have been slightly less successful, as I recall from a very dark period of my childhood - maybe because in biblical days they wore this material, and my mother seemed to think we should eat it.

She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar.

If we’re talking about “afar from what most people would think passes for food” then, yes.

Once in a rare burst of motivation to eat healthy, I called my mom for some recipe ideas. Her response: “Blend a half of a ripe avocado with organic pumpkin puree and cocoa powder. It tastes just like chocolate mousse.” I don’t know when the last time my mom ate chocolate mousse was, but I think it may have been never.

Also infamous is her “Kermit the Frog” soup, some green vegetable concoction that she named thus to encourage us to eat it - because of course every child dreams about having a beloved character pureed and heated for dinner.

She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens.

I was afraid of kidnappers as a child, but only at 3 in the morning. In my mind, up to that time people were awake, and after that time, people woke up for the day. Because my mom did. Woke up for the day. At 3 in the morning. She never brought me any meat, though. I think they must have had different eating schedules in biblical times.

She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard.

There may have been a time when the Vine Street Expressway was named after the rolling vineyards surrounding it, but I’m inclined to think that West Philadelphia has never been prime real estate for that type of cultivation. So. No planting of vineyards. My mother did have a garden, and one year we harvested some sunflower seeds.

Come to think of it, I planted those sunflowers.

My mother has lots of other talents.

She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms.

I think running a half marathon every morning might pass as the modern day equivalent of girding loins with strength.

She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night.

My mother will stay up until 1am writing lesson plans for her students (teacher of the year, every year). Unless she's up until 1am making "Mimi" dolls for her granddaughters.

She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff.

My mother unfortunately did not pass these tools onto her daughters. Forewarning to any future suitors - the distaff and spindle stops there.

She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy.

One particularly hot summer in Philadelphia, my mother dragged my sister and me to center city to hand out frozen water bottles to the homeless. But heaven forbid any non-poor or needy try to reach or stretch out their hands to quench their thirst.

"Excuse me, sir. SIR?" she tapped her hand and the construction worker turned to face her, towering over her petiteness, face streaked with black sweat. "Excuse me, sir, but are you homeless?! I'm only giving these out to homeless people."

I couldn't say how this episode ended because I had melted away in mortification.

She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.

If anyone knows the benefits of red clothing for warding off winter precipitation, please include in the comments below and I'm sure my mom incorporated it at some point.

She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple.

My mother made her own prom dress, among other things. No tapestry involved though. Pretty sure that Maria Von Trapp was the last one to make that sartorial choice. Also I think that tapestries involve weaving. Granted, Urban Outfitters sells tapestries, and I assume they are not handwoven, unless they have a bunch of hipsters chained to a loom in the supply closet that they aren’t revealing to the public, which would explain a lot.

Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land.

Because this is a birthday post for my mom, please refer to previous years for further information about my dad. Also, I’m not sure what “being known in the gates” means. He was on the borough council.

She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant.

Belt making is high on the list of things that my mom is successful at, on the list right behind knitted elephants and "Mimi" dolls.

Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come.

If future rejoicing occurs inversely to present suffering inflicted by strong-willed daughters, that party is going to be off the hook!

She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness.

I have never made a decision without first talking to my mom. Except when I drove across the country to live out my hippie dreams in the West. That time, I went with the “better to ask forgiveness than permission” approach.

She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.

To a fault. I don’t think my mother realizes the sheer pointlessness of wiping the fingerprints off of the door every time the grandkids put their sticky hands all over it, but she pushes on bravely. There is general agreement that the last time she sat down through an entire meal was in 1982.

Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her.
Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all.
Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

And here I am, arising up (is it possible to arise in any other direction?) to call her blessed. Due to the geographical ambiguity of these previously referenced “gates,” I’m taking her praise to the blogosphere.


Love you Mom.

Your own work (and what a load of work I was, and am),
Emily Ann