Monday, October 6, 2008

Aspen or Bust

I'm still tinkering with it, but here's what I've been doing instead of updating my blog - a little picture diary of our trip to Colorado. A bit o' mountain scenery to roll us into fall:

http://web.me.com/nikifun

Peace,

Niki

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

The Boogey Man

I've been traveling a lot lately, and inevitably one of the first questions people ask when first meeting me, or friends ask when they haven’t seen me in a while is, “so are you performing in anything?”

I’m always a little embarrassed. Well, not really. Not right now. I’m on a break, I say, And everyone nods as though they understand. Truly, most artists do. But while how I explain it for mass consumption is one thing, how I explain it to myself is another. Is “taking a break” tantamount to failure? If I’m not actively pursuing work in my craft, why am I even in New york?

First of all, lots of actors take "breaks" throughout their careers. Sanity breaks, financial health breaks, breather from the “biz” burnout breaks, physical health breaks. I'm currently on all four kinds.

But also, I'm looking at it this way: I have come to NY and opened a door. If that door had remained shut, I always , always would have wondered what was behind it. It was like the door the kids at church told me the Boogey Man lived behind in the basement. But I opened it, I walked around inside the New York theater scene, and now it should never close. It's like going to college - no one can ever take an education away from you.

I can return whenever and if ever I choose. Maybe I won't. Or maybe I do some things here and there. Or maybe I even want a full time career in 20 years. Whatever it is, I now have fleshed out my resume with NY and regional credits, and I've gotten my equity card, so auditioning in the future should not be the huge hassle it was when I first made my move, and in general, I just know my way around the room.

For many actors, during a “break,” maybe that room becomes the one in the house you never use. Maybe it becomes the rec room ("I perform just for fun and exercise"), or the storage room ("ah, I remember it well..."), the guest room ("I sing just for friends' weddings"). In many cases it becomes the kids' room ("my children fill up that need for creativity I once had for the arts..."). In any case, at least it's not a vacuous cavern in your house you were afraid to enter because, well, the Bogey Man lived in there.

I did, I thought the Boogy Man lived in New York. And I was right, the boogy man DOES live in New York! New York is big, smelly, dirty, loud, smelly, dusty and intensely competitive, just like they told me. But also warm, and colorful, smart, discerning, freakish and creative and pulsing and human. Oh, so human. I can't think of a more human place to live. And that's what the Boogey Man is; fear of our own humanity.

So let’s talk about you.

Friday, August 8, 2008

Play that funky music white boy..

Colin's recent article about a Green event has been picked up with some funny tag lines... http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/08/white-boy-goes-hip-hop-with-rosa/

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Are conservatives more likely to forward false emails?

I'm going to start keeping a tally of all the things I get forwarded to me which are based on, or contain, absolutely false information.

For instance, the essay below was not written by Jay Leno. It's going around the internet as penned by him, (or by David Letterman, depending on which version you get) in order to make us like it better, having been written by a well liked and well known comedian.

It doesn't need the "teaser" line ("Jay Leno wrote this; it's the Jay Leno we don't often see....") - which is pure hogwash - because it's a good essay, and it makes a good point. But the premise is false. Untruth. Wrong. Misleading. Factually inaccurate. Lies.

Nowadays, pretty much anybody in the U.S. can go to snopes.com or any number of internet sources to double check on stories they get on the internet. But what I'm really interested in is the sociological question - why a certain swath of the population is willing to forward on emails without checking them for facts?

I only get these from my Dad, his girlfriend, my mom, my aunt, and a couple of friends. What do all these people in my life have in common? All conservative.

I'd be loathe to make the connection, (I like to think of myself as a political "independent,") except that several of my friends have pointed out the same pattern in their own families.

Maybe it's a generational thing. Older people are more likely to be conservative. And perhaps older people are, by nature, less - jaded - than those of us who have grown up learning about politics from the controversy of Vietnam and lies and intrigues of Nixon. They believe things. While we believe in - nothing.

Are people who are politically or religiously conservative, by nature, naive? Do they believe anything they see in writing?

I can't believe that of my dad, the ever-present cynic, always rattling around in my own head. Are they lazy? Don't see that quality in anyone on my "conservative" list. Unintelligent? Undiscerning? Conniving? Nada, nada, nada. They're all smart, informed, driven, well intentioned people.

So why don't they check out their information?

I'm puzzled. I get forwards from my more liberal friends and relatives all the time, and while they can certainly be biased, they never make fear-mongering, false blanket statements like this: (in gigantic lettering) "Windfall Tax on Retirement Income! Hold on to your pocketbooks!! Nancy Pelosi wants a Windfall Tax on Retirement Income. This woman is a nut case! You aren't going to believe this!"

(Incidentally my more liberal friends also seem more familiar with the use of the "bcc:" button, which prevents every single person you send the email to from receiving a full list of everyone-you've-sent-it-to's email address. We who use the bcc: tend to get annoyed with those who don't because all it takes is for one person 100 "forwards" later to get your address, and suddenly your inbox is inundated with SPAM for months.)

Spreading gossip and lies is something we all grew up aiming to avoid, and if that's all that was wrong here I guess I could put a lid on it. What worries me is the larger implications of how people make decisions. People act and speak - and vote- based on the false information they get - by word of mouth, on TV, in magazines, and yes, by email.

There's a human tendency to believe something even more when we see it in writing than when we hear about it some other way. "It is written" is written on the backs of our brains for all eternity as something tantamount to fact.

I spend a good deal of my political focus teetering on a wire between two of the best current-events informed people I know - my conservative father and my liberal boyfriend. One day I started looking at their sources - websites, magazines newspapers - and was shocked to see that not only were their sources biased, they were often getting fed, by their sources, absolutely conflicting FACTUAL information. Numbers, quotes, details of incidents which shape the history of the future. Factually different.

I assigned them both a week of looking at one another's sources. Neither of them took me up on it.

We keep getting these emails. And sending them. And watching the TV news, and listening to the radio talk shows and reading the magazines which say things we agree with.

What's going on? ???


Enjoy this essay - mostly by author Craig R. Smith - below.




As most of you know I am not a President Bush fan, nor have I ever been, but this is not about Bush, it is about us, as Americans, and it seems to hit the mark.
The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some Poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?
The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the President.
In essence 2/3 of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change. So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, 'What are we so unhappy about?''

A.. Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 Days a week?

B.. Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter?

C.. Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job?

D. Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfurhas seen in the last year?

E.. Maybe it is the ability to drive our cars and trucks from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state?

F.. Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter?

G.. I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough either.

H. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

I.. Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home.

J.. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames, thus saving you, your family, and your belongings.

K.. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.

L.. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90% of teenagers own cell phones and computers.

M.. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world?

Maybe that is what has 67% of you folks unhappy.
< /b>
Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. , yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have, and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.

I know, I know What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession?
Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defendi ng you and me?

Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad? Think about it......are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the 'Media' told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.
Make no mistake about it.

The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an 'other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a ''dishonorable'' discharge after a few=2 0days in the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans?

Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by 'justifying' them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way......Insane!

Turn off the TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as country. There is exponentially more good than bad. We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.' 'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, 'Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'
Jay Leno

Please keep this in circulation. There are so many people who need to read this and grasp the truth of it.





=
Attached Message
From: Susan Waters To: Colleen ; Dale White Subject: Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:30:09 -0500

Jay Leno wrote this; it's the Jay Leno we don't often see....

As most of you know I am not a President Bush fan, nor have I ever been, but this is not about Bush, it is about us, as Americans, and it seems to hit the mark.
The other day I was reading Newsweek magazine and came across some Poll data I found rather hard to believe. It must be true given the source, right?
The Newsweek poll alleges that 67 percent of Americans are unhappy with the direction the country is headed and 69 percent of the country is unhappy with the performance of the President.
In essence 2/3 of the citizenry just ain't happy and want a change. So being the knuckle dragger I am, I started thinking, 'What are we so unhappy about?''

A.. Is it that we have electricity and running water 24 hours a day, 7 Days a week?

B.. Is our unhappiness the result of having air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter?

C.. Could it be that 95.4 percent of these unhappy folks have a job?

D. Maybe it is the ability to walk into a grocery store at any time and see more food in moments than Darfurhas seen in the last year?

E.. Maybe it is the ability to drive our cars and trucks from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean without having to present identification papers as we move through each state?

F.. Or possibly the hundreds of clean and safe motels we would find along the way that can provide temporary shelter?

G.. I guess having thousands of restaurants with varying cuisine from around the world is just not good enough either.

H. Or could it be that when we wreck our car, emergency workers show up and provide services to help all and even send a helicopter to take you to the hospital.

I.. Perhaps you are one of the 70 percent of Americans who own a home.

J.. You may be upset with knowing that in the unfortunate case of a fire, a group of trained firefighters will appear in moments and use top notch equipment to extinguish the flames, thus saving you, your family, and your belongings.

K.. Or if, while at home watching one of your many flat screen TVs, a burglar or prowler intrudes, an officer equipped with a gun and a bullet-proof vest will come to defend you and your family against attack or loss.

L.. This all in the backdrop of a neighborhood free of bombs or militias raping and pillaging the residents. Neighborhoods where 90% of teenagers own cell phones and computers.

M.. How about the complete religious, social and political freedoms we enjoy that are the envy of everyone in the world?

Maybe that is what has 67% of you folks unhappy.

Fact is, we are the largest group of ungrateful, spoiled brats the world has ever seen. No wonder the world loves the U.S. , yet has a great disdain for its citizens. They see us for what we are. The most blessed people in the world who do nothing but complain about what we don't have, and what we hate about the country instead of thanking the good Lord we live here.

I know, I know What about the president who took us into war and has no plan to get us out? The president who has a measly 31 percent approval rating? Is this the same president who guided the nation in the dark days after 9/11? The president that cut taxes to bring an economy out of recession?
Could this be the same guy who has been called every name in the book for succeeding in keeping all the spoiled ungrateful brats safe from terrorist attacks? The commander in chief of an all-volunteer army that is out there defending you and me?

Did you hear how bad the President is on the news or talk show? Did this news affect you so much, make you so unhappy you couldn't take a look around for yourself and see all the good things and be glad? Think about it......are you upset at the President because he actually caused you personal pain OR is it because the 'Media' told you he was failing to kiss your sorry ungrateful behind every day.
Make no mistake about it.

The troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have volunteered to serve, and in many cases may have died for your freedom. There is currently no draft in this country. They didn't have to go. They are able to refuse to go and end up with either a ''general'' discharge, an 'other than honorable'' discharge or, worst case scenario, a ''dishonorable'' discharge after a few days in the brig.

So why then the flat-out discontentment in the minds of 69 percent of Americans?

Say what you want but I blame it on the media. If it bleeds it leads and they specialize in bad news. Everybody will watch a car crash with blood and guts. How many will watch kids selling lemonade at the corner? The media knows this and media outlets are for-profit corporations. They offer what sells, and when criticized, try to defend their actions by 'justifying' them in one way or another. Just ask why they tried to allow a murderer like O.J. Simpson to write a book about how he didn't kill his wife, but if he did he would have done it this way......Insane!

Turn off the20TV, burn Newsweek, and use the New York Times for the bottom of your bird cage. Then start being grateful for all we have as country. There is exponentially more good than bad. We are among the most blessed people on Earth and should thank God several times a day, or at least be thankful and appreciative.' 'With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, 'Are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?'
Jay Leno

Please keep this in circulation. There are so many people who need to read this and grasp the truth of it.






The Famous, the Infamous, the Lame - in your browser. Get the TMZ Toolbar Now!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

dating with Fibro/CFIDS

There was a post this week on a fibro/CFIDS meetup discussion board I frequent about how does one date with a chronic illness? The discussion itself if private, but I can tell you some of it - at least what I said.

The question was: How supportive have people been? When do you tell them? What do you tell them...at first, and when you're tired and in too much pain to go out yet again? Maybe others have had better luck explaining this to people, so any advice would help!

And I chimed in: When I was dating, in retrospect, my illness was a much bigger deal to me than it was to the person sitting across the table. I felt like I was wearing something on my forehead, announcing to the world that i was damaged goods (or should be.)

Around that time I heard a friend of mine, a handsome, charming man who is in more then perfect health, jokingly refer to himself as "damaged goods" with his fiance. "Yeah, she knows all about it," he laughed, "I'm not gonna lie to anyone, I've been married, I've been divorced, I've been used and abused; I'm damaged goods."

And it was so clear to me that EVERYONE comes to dating with their own boat load of insecurities. And how we deal with them is something we have to do within the context of our own personalities. Sense of humor can be an indispensible part of that.

I've been dating Colin for 6 years now, and I can't remember when I brought up being sick. I think that's because i didn't lay it all on him in one big heap. I mentioned I'd had heart surgery in the past year, (and kept that all pretty upbeat) and it was necessary pretty early to mention that I have a bladder disease, and the rest just sort of unfolded au natural.

Months later, when I asked him what exactly he does feel about my illness, he said - and still says - "it's part of you, and I love you," and honest to god he says that as if I asked him if he wants butter or jam on his english muffin.

Know that for many good people, giving you that extra support you need feeds, in turn, their need to be loved and needed and wanted, as well, so it's not all on you that you're some sort of taker. My partner says he fell for me because I'm so easy to talk to. Who knew I had that to offer?

I think it's important to be steady and clear that this is part of who you are, and that you're just as entitled as everybody else to have the relationship you want.

Incidentally, I think being sick made me finally stop dating those self-centered shitheads I liked to think I could "tame" or stop being shitheads because wasn't I so - cool? Embarrassing, but true, I was a sucker for a guy who loved himself a bit to death, and I had something to prove. I finally started dating again with this new theme: Ask not what you can do for your boyfriend, but what your boyfriend can do for you.

As for meeting someone, I heard an interview on Oprah (yes, I know, Oprah) with a woman who wrote a book which claims if you do what she says you will meet a partner within 12 months. A little blown up, I'm sure, but she suggests starting conversations with people in situations you normally would not. Not to be obnoxious about it, but, you know, standing in line (or on line, I know!)at the post office, waiting for a bus, whatever. Put out that one sentence and see if you get a positive response.

She says you'd be surprised, and I think she's right. She contends that it's not that you haven't crossed paths with the right person, it's just that you have SPOKEN to them.

As for the rest..m meeting peopel and creating energy for dates...

I would suggest a couple things...feel free to chime in, anyone.

Know what you love to do , what energizes you, and pick one or two things which can get you face to face with other people. I joined a songwriters circle and even though I didn't meet anybody there, (well, there was not mutual interest on my part) it turned out to be an invaluable source of creative and emotional support!

Remain open minded. If a friend wants to set you up, try it. (That was the route to my current relationship.)

Look at whether there is any wiggle room in your professional life - can any of it move over to make some hours for social time?

I think it's really tricky when you're like me - generally people drain me and I need alone time to regenerate. But sometimes I also find when I just suck it up and go out anyway i feel better, I'm proud of myself that I went out and did something productive toward my goal of meeting more people, and I end up having some intersting discussions and laughing despite myself!

But the balance is to do it when you can plan some recovery time - Friday night when you don't have to work the next morning, or Sunday afternoon.

I did do internet dating for a while and had some mixed results. A lot of my friends have tried it, and most have had some pretty darned good results, though the going can be rough on those first few dates. There's a "figuring it out" period where you have to discern how to match your profile with whatever attracts the good ones, how to screen for toads, etc.

Though there's not always a wait. One of my neighbors met her "one" on the first date! (not because I helped her with her profile, I'm sure! ;-). So, you never know.

Monday, July 7, 2008

Rent strike proving effective!

Well, it's all done by halves, isn't it? Or it can be.

The buzzer has been half fixed - that is, we can buzz people up, but we can't talk to them or listen to them, and it's so quiet downstairs that the uninitiated sometimes they don't know they're being "buzzed" in. So they stand there, agog, waiting. But thanks to cell phone technology my knees have been spared the extra trips to fetch my clients - much appreciated!

We have hot water (just in time for 100+ degree summer days!), but we think it was achieved by the one remaining less-than-qualified fix-it guy now-with-missing-finger cranking up the heat on the water heater. Colin was scalded by water over 138 degrees warm yesterday while doing dishes. Apparently this is a cheaper solution than fixing the boiler as needed.

There are lids on the garbage cans! Alas, not enough cans, and the folks living here haven't entirely caught up with the idea yet, either. not to mention youc an't tell the recycle ones from the others. So trash is piling up on TOP of them. Sigh.

The one thing done whole - we got a WHOLE new knob on our apartment door! And it hasn't fallen off since! We still look at it, feel its brassy-steeliness in our sweaty hands and say, "Wow."

..aaaand one step back. As compensation, mark that last one "half" again. We haven't gotten mail in a week. Rumor has it the mail carrier doesn't have a key to the building any more.

But we (caved) gave the landlord half our rent due. As a gesture of "good will."

That's a gesture, not a sincere feeling, note.

Know anyone with fibro who feels well?

Well, guys, I'm writing a book. I've never done this before, but every day someone does something for the first time and at least some of them go well.

For it to have a subject, (or something to say, at least,) I need people who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, who now feel well and are willing to share their stories.

I'm looking for variety - people who've tried various things, of differing ages, who've ultimately had varying contributing pathologies, differing racial background...basically anyone who's willing to talk with me. They can choose to remain anonymous if they wish.

I'll be doing preliminary interviews over the phone - maybe 30 minutes - and may call again or even visit some in person, where possible.

That's the basic idea.

Anyway please comment (include an email address) if you're one of those people or can guide me to one!

Thanks!

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Elephant On My foot



“It doesn’t look pretty , but it doesn’t have any sugar, any alcohol, any chocolate, or any gluten in it, so fuckin’ Eat it!”

Such was the little Pep Talk I was giving myself while cooking an innocent omelette this morning. I used to like omelettes. But today is the first day of what may be a very long lifetime of omelettes - living without sugar, wheat, gluten, oats, alcohol, dairy, and a whole bunch of other things I really liked. Amazing how much the sexy omelette loses its appeal when you think you may see nothing but for breakfast for the rest of your life.

I tossed Colin’s plate to him in bed. “It’s not pretty…” I started.

Noted: Maybe I shouldn’t have started a major change in diet simultaneously with PMSing. I’ve always thought dieting is like monogamy. It’s like, now you can see that chocolate cake and the sweet, juicy mango and the candy corn on the other side of the kitchen, but you can’t have any. Some days it’s easier than others.

“…so fuckin’ eat it!” Colin is a smart lad. He shows no outward sign of having any problem with the omelette. In fact,the sausage on the side is a bonus as far as he is concerned.

A few hours later, I visit a friend who’s recently done a juice cleanse. She has some left over. It doesn’t have any sugar, alcohol, wheat, etc… in it, so I figure what the hell. By three o-clock my stomach is doing flip flops.

Despite the fact I feel I’ve over-stayed anybody’s welcome in her office, I email my Nutripath. For the last 45 minutes of our 2 and a half hour appointment this week, there was another patient waiting. It just takes that long to get through my health history.

That, and she has personal questions, like what was my role in my family? Does anyone have a 10 second answer for that? Maybe they should be my guru. Then she starts asking about goals, and personal and professional success, and fear of failure and fear of success. I found myself babbling, at something of a loss.

And it wasn’t until after I left the office that I thought, well, of course. Asking me, or anybody else with chronic pain about visions for their future is like asking somebody who has an elephant standing on their foot what they want for breakfast.

I don’t care what I have for breakfast. Right now I just want this elephant to stop standing my foot.

Thus I might have answered. But I have a writer’s mind; I think of these things when it is time to write, not when it is time to speak, and so my Nutripath still thinks I have a fear of success. Or failure. Or something.

We’re hitting it hard. I’m a little sore because I’ve hit it hard before – the anti- yeast diet, the gluten free diet, the separate-your-carbs-from-your-proteins diet… But I’ve never done it like this. I’ve never put in stuff while I’m taking stuff out. As advised by a professional. This time, at the same time I cut out the wheat, gluten, yeast, etc….I’m adding in a really good probiotic, colloidal silver, some herbal tea from the amazon, and possibly some antioxidants, if I tolerate them.

I have equal belief that is will harm me as that it may help, because, well , that’s been my experience. But as long as there’s one iota of chance that it could relieve me of the dizzying array of wild and crazy illnesses which migrate like gypsies through my body on no particularly organized rotation, I’m willing to give it a try.

I thought one of the hardest parts to staying on this regime would be Colin. Raised only three hours from New Orleans, Colin likes sugar. And dairy, and fat, and everything tasty and nice. He likes his ice cream before bed routine, his cookies after meals routine, and wheat crackers and cheese in between.

But Colin has been demonstrating his skills as an empath. When he needs a snack that’s vorboten to me, he’s been kindly shoveling it into his mouth in the kitchen while I’m in the living room. And to my surprise, he’s actually been eating – and liking- the food I prepare for myself. He had to keep himself form eating all the nutty rice crackers so there would be some left for me. He has no issues with switching to goat cheese, and the shepherd’s pie was a big hit.

I’m left with the daunting task of continual food activity. I spend most of my day preparing what I eat, shopping for what I eat, thinking about what I’m going to eat, writing down what I eat, cleaning up what i've prepared to eat and eating what I eat. In some respects a detail oriented closeted anal retentive individual, I do not enjoy being anal retentive about food. The Dali Lama said we should eat and love with abandon, and that’s always been my motto, too.

But I want the elephant to stop standing on my foot. I’ve tried hitting it, coaxing it, and ignoring it. I’ve called in specialists and trainers of all shapes and sizes. I’ve X-rayed, MRI’ed, yoga-ed, P.T.- ed, scoped and shocked it. So far nothing has worked.

I don’t have any more time to write. Gotta drink my Spirutein.

P.S. Playing the role of an OB-gyne in a reading tonight. Always wanted to be able to examine myself to save the trips.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Super Delegates for Hillary!



The folks who create these videos call them selves Brooklyn Vs. Bush and I met them at a green party event a couple months ago.

They talked me into showing up for one of their weekly filming parties, asking only that I try not to wear green.

I learned gradually throughout the evening: The videos are filmed in an extra bedroom on a third floor apartment on Court Street. Actors (or whoever shows up) are filmed in front of a green screen (thus, the "green" rule) on a carpet about 3 feet deep and 5 feet wide. You get a script, and while you look at it maybe some costume pieces and a stiff drink. And, at some point, dinner.

The folks who showed up made me feel squeaky brand new and naive. Salty actors from the days in New York when here were tons of strip joints on 42nd Street, they chain smoked and puzzled over their lines while downing a whiskey on ice. They prefer to do tis kind of work, they say, to working for Disney, which has pretty much taken over Broadway.

I was part of one video which hasn't been edited yet. You'll be the first to know. Unless I'm royally embarrassed!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Social Reasons

Spring has replaced fall as my favorite season since moving to New York. My neighborhood is resplendent with blooming dogwoods, pink and white, tulip bulbs in a rainbow of colors and the more subtle hues of wine-colored leaves against red brick homes and iron railings.

Really, it’s the only time this place looks good. By the time summer arrives I’m too hot to appreciate anything. No, this is the best time. Hundreds of people in Prospect Park, sauntering through the farmers' market, buying newly dead fish, organic meats, green herbs and fresh loaves of bread and stuffing them in the now-popular canvas “green bag.” A group of younglings plays Ultimate frisbee on the green, mothers follow toddlers around on the grass, birds set up a discordant chorus in the trees, squirrels beg and lovers sit on the bench and neck.

I love this time of year especially because the days are long, but one isn’t longing for the sun to go down to dispel the heat. I love that when I leave for an 8pm show, it’s still light out. I did that last night. My friend Brenda (who, oddly, I discovered was in my high school home room in Wisconsin and we have absolutely no memory of one another) choreographed and performed in a dance piece on 14th street.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen real live dancers on stage. It may have been Brenda’s last show, in fact. It was fun to watch how her style has matured. While many of the works expressed clear stories of individual love, rage or outrage, Brenda’s was a fluid ensemble piece, expressing nuances of the music and the dancer’s bodies.

And I think, that’s just it, isn’t it? Almost everyone I know in town is entertaining some sort of major career crisis, thinking of getting out of the arts, wondering if the sacrifice is worth it, asking themselves, “why do I do this?” And coming up with a variety of answers.

In my second year at DePaul, my teacher had all her students in her office for a little chat. She asked each of us to answer this very question: “Why do I sing?” I’d actually been giving that some hard thought already. When it came my turn I hesitated. “I think…I think I do it for social reasons,” I said.

I could tell my answer displeased her. Something crossed over her face which was dark and uninterpretable. I think she wanted – or expected- something more insightful from me. Perhaps the difficulty lies in the choice of words. I might have elaborated.

Last night in one of the dance pieces, (which I think was about the Salem witch trials, but I'm not entirely sure) there was a chair. A metal folding chair, which always sends chills up my spine when I see on stage. Too many accidents waiting to happen.

Well, I needn’t have worried. First of all, the smart dancers always used the edge of the chair, keeping it from folding on itself. But also – and this is the Thing – there were always a dancer or two placed cleverly at the back edge of the chair, doing their choreography while subtly holding on to it.

This is what I mean by “social reasons.” It’s the little things you do, when performing, to take care of one another. The clear knowledge that we fly or sink together, all one interdependent unit which can easily break down without the cooperation of even one member. Or one body part of one member.

I remember one show I did where a guy in the cast was experiencing a major medical mental meltdown. He wasn’t sure he could go on stage. I promised him I would stay behind the set in a certain place when I could, and when his blocking allowed him to, he would come back and hold his hand out, just enough so I could grasp it. He clung to my hands like a drowning man. He got through the night.

There’s the way theater people move around one another in cramped quarters backstage. There’s an internal dance behind every production, moving bodies out of the way of moving sets and curtains and rigging and one another exiting and entering, an automatic turning aside of bodies, a light step for quiet, words whispered, or said without saying. Polite. Professional. Caring.

And quite frankly, it annoys me that other people don’t move with the same swiftness and dexterity on the sidewalk in the city, in the home or in the restaurant or in the store.

I was once in an opera where I was in a dozen consecutive scenes, each with a different, late 19th century costume. They were gorgeous. But the costumer felt the stage in that theater was too close to the audience to allow for anything unauthentic in the dresses, like oh, zippers or Velcro instead of fifty teensy buttons up the back.

The first dress rehearsal was a complete disaster. The costumer’s assistant had no idea what she was doing. The domino effect was of epic proportions – there was absolutely no room in the music for more than 30 seconds of changing time. I didn’t come on stage, the lights came up, my musical cue came up, no one sang, so no one sang after that, the conductor kept waving her arms in desperation, trying to coordinate the people left on stage, her job made more impossible by 20th Century scoring. Everyone just had to stop.

What it came down to? The entire show had absolute reliance on the costumer’s assistant.

Performing creates an intense sense of belonging, one which helps me understand completely why when people serve together in the military, all they want to do is sit around and share war stories. Because it recalls that sense of being an important part of a unit.

Of course your life isn’t technically on the line when you’re performing – usually, though of course there are exceptions – but try convincing your brain of that! We are all hard-wired to respond intensely to being observed, to peer pressure, to a tribal mentality of cooperation and trust. Try purposely screwing up in front of an audience of 600 – I can’t physically make myself do it. Could you?

And that’s what I think I miss about performing, as I haven’t been doing much of it at all lately. It’s “social reasons.” I’ve discovered into my thirties that I’m not really very interested in performing alone – I’m an ensemble player, be that in a band, a choir, an opera or a musical. And of course the question which follows is: Can one find that in another line of work which demands less sacrifice?

Sure, it’s possible. I think what’s important is recognizing what it is about what you do which enriches you and feeds your will to live. I like to be a functioning part of a unit, with something to contribute which is unique. My situation is, of course, complicated by the need for regular breaks and ten hours of sleep, a heart condition and such, but surely a choice is there if I should decide to grab it.

I went to Fibromyalgia support meeting last week (perhaps a mistake, as, in just being around all of them my pain levels spiked…) and I told them I was a massage therapist. There was a puzzled pause. “Wait – which do you have, fibro or CFIDs? “ one asked. I told them for what it was worth, I’d been diagnosed with both. There was a collective gasp. “And you do this kind of work????”

Although I argue with the characterization of people with these diseases being incapable of physical labor, and allow for differences in individuals, I’d still do well to perform a reality check and think that both my performing and massage days may be numbered. I am considered extraordinarily functional for someone in my place physically, and I thank many a wonderful hands-on therapist for that, but that work does not come free, and the budget for it would come much more easily on a better salary.

My friends and acquaintances are leaving show business in droves….leaving non-profits for capitalist ventures, leaving directing to have babies, leaving electrician work to go back to school, leaving stage managing to make it in real estate, to explore another life. Leaving for L.A. where there’s the possibility of residuals in film and television. Leaving for careers which are not as hard on their bodies. I see many making successful and rewarding transitions into worlds more stable and less competitive than the performing arts.

Who will take their place?


Well, more 22 year olds come every year.

Monday, April 7, 2008

2002

It's been exactly six years since I left my first sublet in NYC, figuring I was going back to Chicago for good. Or until I had the next better idea.

I had just had my first date with Colin. Though i didn't know it, I was soon to embark on my first real regional theater gig. I was driving the same car I have now. I was taking five prescription medications a day.

Some of you traveled with me via the old "email" method of blogging (I didn't really know that's what it was and still kinda prefer it that way, but alas we must all evolve...) and I thank you from the bottom of my gut for being someones to laugh with me at the ridiculousness of it all.

Yesterday I got word that my new MacBook Pro, which I got for Christmas from my Dad, needs to go bye-bye, to the rehab spa for computers. "I'm actually surprised it boots up at all," said the mac genius who was helping me. "I'd advise you to back everything up as soon as you can, and get it back in for repairs." He wrote down a number for me and sent me on my way.

I picture my computer forgetting everything at the spa - maybe it's in Arizona, under a hot, dry sun - and among those things are all those tasty memories of my first days in NYC. I backed everything up as best I can today. And came across those old Word Perfect files which barely even function on my new operating system.

I decided it's time to start the process I've been meaning to get to - slowly bringing all those stories to a new birth in the land of Blog.

I don't know if those signed up with Feedblitz will necessarily get a new feed every time I make a new entry dated way back to 2002. If so, I hope it's not too annoying. They'll probably come in small clumps.

If you want to look for them, they'll be appearing here. Look for them by date on the right hand side of the blogger page. Starting with "2002."

Please let me know if you know something I don't to make the whole process funner and easier.

And thanks for reading.

Niki

Monday, March 3, 2008

The sitch on Sackett today

Well, a little update on the housing sitch...

To sum up, I pretty much lost my sense of humor about the boiler when I got the the front door today, hands full of laundry, and could not get out.

I don't know what the rest of you talked about with your parents when you were young, but I grew up with dinnertime stories about people who'd burned up in fires, people who'd passed out and died from carbon Monoxide poison, some who maybe never knew, some maimed and killed for no good reason. My good old dad described the bodies in detail, dead and alive, blisters over 90% of their bodies, searing on the insides of lungs, the children, the parents desperate to save them and the idiotic actions responsible for their deaths.

With a father who's a fire investigator, such talk is to be expected. And it sewed the seeds of my extreme malcontent today.

The boiler did its thing two more times over the next 24 hours last week, so the Tuesday was pretty much a re-run of Monday, with oily smoke and opening of windows and shivering in the resultant cold, sadly without the handsome fire fighters but happily without the pets in immediate danger, because by then Kristina had the sense to take the precautionary step of taking her dog to work with her and Jessica was home with hers.

Then there was the front door.. Oh, we've been telling the Management company about it for years - the knob falls off, sometimes you can't get in, sometimes it's like the Hotel California and you can't get out....and it's not like a house, where there might be other safe ways to exit the front of the building. It's the door or nothin', baby, unless you can get to the fire escape in the back.

Last week, certainly because it was 25 degrees out, we were locked out. The story goes that while the dubiously skilled fix-it guy was waiting outside in the cold for the (potentially actually skilled) boiler guy, he understandably got bored and tried to fix the door. And made it worse.

So for several days, we lived with it taped open, and watched the news for stories of killers in masks who come into unlocked buildings and half hoped the next person in would accidentally mess up the tape, which would increase the sense of security if we were on the inside, but eliminate our ability to get in if we were on the outside of the building.

Of course someone did eventually mess up the tape system, and I called my landlord from the stoop one day last week, shivering in the cold and unable to make the lock work.

"Buzz 1R," his response. "She's home and been letting people in." Yeah. That's a good permanent solution. Of course the lady in 1R, though extraordinarily nice, doesn't speak a lick of English. Jessica, Kristina and I set up a little phone tree and called each other to make sure someone was here who can let the others in before leaving to go anywhere.

Meanwhile, I programmed the numbers of two 24 hour locksmiths in my phone, just in case.

Why didn't I call?

THAT is exactly the question. At the heart of this very question, I believe, is the brilliant psychology that our landlord, Orazzio, has played upon us all. Whether he has strategized it, or come by it by accident or out of desperation, I don't know, but somehow all of us have clearly been played. Somehow no one in this building, to my knowledge, is currently seeking legal action against Peto Management.

How is that possible? After years of monthly letters stating the exact problems and no permanent fixes, how is it we are all still participants in this group notion that somehow, someday in the future, the water damage will be fixed, the buzzer will work, the doorknobs will stop falling off, the mailboxes will work, the stoop will be repaired, the windows will go up and down like they're supposed to (and we'll be able to see through them), we'll have safe heat, access to the back yard for the cable guy, and enough hot water for showers?

Have we all drunk the Cool Aid?

I think the landlord's secret is in giving us just enough action to keep our ears off the phones and feet out of the courtroom. He has an amazing intuition as to my tipping point. My feet will be on the pavement when he'll finally authorize a fix - at least a temporary one.

Or, like two weeks ago, he sent the dubiously skilled fix-it guy to my door after I'd called, in order to explain why things were not getting fixed. (Never mind this guy spent an hour talking to me when he could have been fixing something.) There aren't enough employees to manage the eight buildings he owns (because they haven't been paid and then they quit, even the illegal immigrants). People have fallen behind paying rent and there aren't enough funds. Orazzio owes the places where they get supplies and therefore they can't get new anything. On and on and on.

Soon it becomes a counseling session in which I deliver career advice to the guy who's telling me he can't pay his rent (to Orazzio) because he's not getting paid regularly (by Orazzio) and who dreams, positively dreams of becoming a sanitation worker for the City of New York. There's a wait list, he says, but he knows some guys who know some guys who're soon gonna retire early, so he maybe has an "in."

And I'm thinking, doesn't it sound like Peto Management needs to sell a building? Maybe I'm nuts. I know being a landlord is tough. Managing a rent-stabilized building has to be tougher.

But look, he could have saved himself that expensive ticket from the city by putting lids on the garbage cans years ago! What a concept! He could have saved himself that expensive repair to our bathroom if we could have reached him when it started to drip. (As usual, his answering machine was full, apparently with other people calling with complaints and employees and supply houses looking for money, so nobody came for days and by that time the ceiling had caved in.)

Yet somehow he manages to engage our sense of pity, our sense of well, that's good enough, our sense of hope. Through the voices of his pitiful employees, who appear sometimes and invoke our sense of sympathy that they are not the cause of the problem, only victims of it, as we are, we get stuck in a downward spiral of no-I-don't-have-time-to-deal-with-this and -well-it's -really-not-that-bad and people-in-third-world-countries-have-it-worse-so-what-am-I-
complaining-about mentality.

We take a little action, like calling the city, and someone comes out and inspects, or not, and then nothing happens (are they getting paid off?) So we're quiet.

But I think the law is on our side. Today I called the Department of Buildings and actually talked to real person - an inspector who says he's coming out tomorrow to look at the boiler.

Good luck getting in, I tell him, with the buzzers not working and- isn't it ironic- he needs to call the landlord to get access to the thing.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

More adventures in rent-stabilized living

Sirens are always blaring in Brooklyn. I've learned, to my amazement, to sleep through them, or at least not remember them when I wake. Sometimes they're even accompanied with the low hum of large truck engines in the street which shake the floor and mirror and the windows. And I ignore them, because it's just another neighbor who had a heat attack.

This morning was no different. Until I heard Colin, next to me: "Do you smell smoke?"

Why yes, I did. I noticed the acrid smell of burning oil greeting my one unstuffed nostril in the late morning air. And - coincidentally? Three fire trucks parked outside the building, lights flashing. And the sound of large boots coming up the stairs.

Clothes first, then bathroom. I pulled a shirt over my head while on the toilet, and listening to the boots get closer - surely fire fighters coming to evacuate me and all the neighbors - made a mental list of the things I should insist on grabbing before being cast onto the cold, wet street for hours.

Coat, cell phone, a bottle of water. Wallet. Last, shoes. The trucks were a good sign, I theorized, that little would be destroyed in a blaze. Fire is something we often consider as a distinct possibility in our building. There are a lot of people living in close proximity, in an old building, not to mention adjoining buildings, and any one of us could make a mistake. That's why we have insurance.

We skip the whole feel the door thing and open it to several voices echoing in the hallway. Three firefighters, donning thick jackets with glow-in-the dark yellow stripes and wielding axes, are gathering information as best they can from our disabled neighbor across the hall. There is a loud beeping noise coming from downstairs.

One man steps forward, carrying in his right hand a small object that looks like a weapon from Start Trek. As he comes through our doorway, it's making alarming squacking noises. A CO2 detector.

Now, lest you should judge us, I want to say right here that we do keep a CO2 detector like any good citizens. But last week it started babbling at us that the batteries were dead. And I'm on this new kick to replace all batteries in the house with rechargeable ones, right? And do you think they carry them at the hardware store down the street? Nope. So it went "on the list" And the CO2 detector, unused for several years, has sat open, waiting for batteries, on the kitchen table, since exactly last Tuesday.

And here the writer began to smell smoke again. At first she was sure it was just sensory recall from writing the story of this morning, but...no...open the hallway door. CHUCK full of smoke again.

So if I should die and my laptop be recovered, let this be a lesson to all - when there's smoke, leave the building.

Where was I? Star trek device, squacking, beeping...strapping, dripping men with big boots tromping into the bedroom. Not such a bad thing, that part.

"Set phasers to stun!" he said as he crossed the threshold. No, he didn't.

"It's registering at 90 parts per million," states the strapping, dripping man authoritatively. He never takes his eyes off the machine. "We turned off the boiler. You should be OK if you air out." He brings the Star Trek device into the kitchen. "Open the windows," he commands. We do it.

Now our windows aren't all graceful to get at. I wasn't sure what happened until later when Colin, who witnessed from behind, described it, but I remember turning on the big white fan, leaning over the bed toward a window and disturbing the big green ball which lives rather precariously, perched between the bed and the wall. The big green ball, in turn, disturbed the big white fan, which went face down on the floor and stated making a sound like, "Thump! Thump! Thump! Thump!"

Thinking one of the blades was broken, I turned it off, quick-like. Then I started thinking about Jessica's dogs, upstairs. And then about Kristina's dog, downstairs. I don't wait or the blades to stop moving.

"What was in the fan?" I ask Colin, who has gone to investigate.

"You don't wanna know," he says.

We have recently begun a campaign of Shock and Awe in an attempt to control the mouse population recently on the rise, quite possibly because there are several walls open in several apartments due to leaks which are as yet still leaking into walls which are as yet cracked and broken open.

I asked Colin to bring home traps one night last week, and I meant snap traps. He brought glue traps.

"This is all they had at the grocery store," he explained, and started placing them about the kitchen in corners.

"I don't like glue traps," I said. "I thought you would got to the hardware store."

"I'll deal with them," he said.

"Okay..." I said.

And so when, a few hours later, I heard this teensy, horrid little SCREAMING coming from the corner in the kitchen, I naturally turned straight on my heel and called in the resident Man. The screaming intensified as The Man did whatever he did to that mouse and I shuddered, and then cried in the next room.

These creatures have relatively developed nervous systems. There's a reason why a mouse -why any creature - screams like that. He knows he's in trouble, he knows he's trapped. I've seen studies on what happens to animals when they're rendered helpless - cortisol levels, heart rates, dilated pupils, and so on; Dude. They KNOW.

And there's reason why mice are used as surrogate humans in experiments. They are similar to us.

"No more glue traps." I said to Colin in a measured voice as we left the apartment that night.

And so it is we've since gone at them with snap traps, and poison, and yes there's still a -torture- trap sitting on the counter which hasn't caught anyone, yet, thank god.

But we never expected that THE FAN was also a weapon in our arsenal.

"I can't figure out how to get it out," calls The Man as I search for shoes and grab my phone and the spare keys to Jessica's apartment. "Here, you can wear my slippers..." he offers. I hear him THUNKing at the fan as I make my way into the smoky hallway, up one flight of stairs to my neighbor's.

There are more fire fighters in the hallway up there. "You have access to the basement now," they laugh, responding to Colin's earlier comment that last week we couldn't let the cable guy into the back yard because Orazzio (the landlord) keeps a stiff padlock on the basement door - the basement being the only way to the back yard.

So far I've accounted for two doors and a window which have fallen under one of those wicked looking axes. They say they're relieved I have keys, because they could hear the little dogs barking, but maybe were also looking forward to busting down something else, I can't really tell behind the masks.

I can already hear the newly broken door to the roof upstairs, swinging in the rain against the building. THUUUUNk. THUUUNk. Thunk - beeeep - someone's CO2 detector is still going off. BAm - BAM- BAm go the dripping hot men's boots on the hollow wooden stairs. Voices ring in the hallway. Acrid, oily smoke. Jessica's chijuajuas must be freaking out.

But they merely seem happy to see me, as I run around opening windows with one hand and calling Kristina, owner of the dog downstairs, with the other. These tiny dogs seem puzzled, but they're all right. Stuart is far more frail than the last time I saw him, but I know it is because he has conjestive heart failure and nothing to do with the current crisis. His ribs shift too easily and his heart is beating fast and a little irregularly when I pick him up for a closer inspection, but I hold him and talk in what I hope are soothing tones between cell phone calls, and ultimately he seems like his old self.

I don't have a key to Kristina's apartment, so she grabs a car and speeds home from work. Her dog, although younger, is considerably less delicate than the chijuajuas, so we're not too worried about him, but it seems advisable to get him some Carbon with two Oxygens instead of one, somehow. Hank, all spring and cluelessness, jumps eagerly at my face as Kristina hands me a set of spare keys. In case of next time.

Which we didn't expect tonight.

Post-script: The boiler man arrived, (landlord called me to let him in - why? because none of the buzzers are working...) he broke the lock to the basement, (second time today) says the boiler is badly maintained and we should call the department of Buildings. Whatever that is.

Then he told me where the emergency shut-off switch is.

"See ya," he says. "Good luck!"

Sunday, February 24, 2008

It Takes a Village

February has come to Brooklyn with a flurry of teensy hard, penetrating, freezing objects and a hungry wind. From my window I watch a teenager wearing a leather jacket and no scarf bursts out of his apartment across the street, squinting hard and shouting "whoooooooo!" and he and his rebel yell disappear up toward 5th Avenue. I hope he doesn't have far to go.

The first line of defense against the cold - I learned this growing up in Wisconsin, though maybe not as well as you'd think - is to not go out.

This can be a dubious tactic in our apartment. The one radiator which operates "normally" is in the far corner of the place, in the kitchen. The one in the living room has never worked at all, and the one in the bedroom is turned either all ON or all OFF with a wrench, and only a wrench. (I cursed Colin out load when he borrowed that wrench for a the load-in of a show last week and didn't bring it back for a whole day and a half.)

Then sometimes, to get your core temperature up above 75 or so, you just have to take a bath. You know what I mean. You get that kind of cold at the cellular level, the same cold you feel in that shank of pork when you grab it out of the freezer, and the only way to get it warm enough to cook is to defrost it slowly in hot water. My arm feels like that today.

So I need a soak, but it takes planning. A bath in our apartment begins with boiling water on the stove - as many pots as you can find clean. Then you open the tap in the bathroom about half way, let it run until it's warm. Then you start with the tub. Fill it until the water turns cold, or about 1/4 way. Then you wait.

In about ten minutes, if you're lucky, there will be another spot of hot water. Sometimes we sit around with our neighbors and argue about whether the best way to get at this next "layer" of hot water is to continue running water into the bathroom sink, or turn it off completely for ten minutes and turn it on again. But in the period of about ten minutes, by some miracle, out comes warm water again. Usually.

The trouble is you have to be there when it hits, or you may miss it, so I sit on the toilet with my finger under the tap and protect the bathroom like it's a cave and I'm a mother grizzly looking after her young. I fill the bath until it runs cold again, wait.

Now the trick is to get the third fill in before the first two are cold. Again, the dilemma of whether to run the water, or turn it off.? Either way it must be checked every few minutes. After all, now I'm really invested and I'll cry if I don't get my bath. Have cried.

On the third fill one can usually get the tub almost brimming with warm water. But to get it truly hot enough for a real bath? Well, that's where your boiling water comes in. I learned about that after crying the first couple times, about the third time Colin said, "why don't you jsut boil some water?" I guess it was some primal need to feel too sophisticated, at arms length from the elements.

This time of year you can almost feel Mother Earth waddling with the weight of spring not yet ready to come. Even in New York City, the city of lights, everything is laden with cold and dark.

I wonder if it's my mission teach these people something. Why are they wearing jeans in 20 degree weather? Is it because they are a mostly indoor- dwelling people? Where are their Turtle Furs? (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/index=apparel-index&field-keywords=turtle%20fur%20neck&results-process=bin&dispatch=search/ref=pd_sl_aw_tops-1_apparel-index_29143143_2&results-process=default)

If my personal heating and cooling systems were powered by oil, we'd have outgrown our foreign dependence long ago. My systems can hardly be bothered to hicchough out a little heat in a snowstorm, or break out a few beads of sweat to cool me down in the citified heat of August. So, as they say in Colorado ...It's all about the "pro" (a.k.a. "protection," as climbers call weather gear.)

I got hypothermic in a pool once. It was the last class of my diver's certification training, the last time I'd be in the "comfort" of a pool before being led into the murky depths of the 45 degree Racine quarry with no one but my instructor. John sent me to the showers when he swears he saw my lips turn blue. I remember standing in the showers of the high school gym when the warm water hit by chest, trying desperately not to pee before I managed to peel off my gear with numb fingers and run to the toilet . But as it's said in the diver world, there are two kinds of divers: Those who pee in their wetsuits and those who say they don't pee in their wetsuits.

So I don't go out in this kind of weather without "the works": My winter coat weighs maybe 5 pounds by itself. Add boots, a Wind Stopper hat (http://www.rei.com/product/703274) and - my neck gaiter, and honestly? I am toasty-comfy. I feel like I'm pregnant, too - in tandem with the entire Northern Hemisphere.

Our friend Tania, who with her partner, Dave, really is pregnant, had her big baby shower last night. I was a little apprehensive about going. It wasn't the cold, exactly, more like it was largely a family affair and Colin was too wrapped up in tech for yet another show to come. But in the end I thought, here is an unhealthy element in my relationship with Colin which I can address by taking action tonight: I rely on him for social back-up, (which is a bad idea because he's never home) and he relies on me for financial back- up (an equally bad idea since I have no money.) I should just go on -and out- without him.

So I was pleased to discover it was really a solidly welcoming affair. For the first hour or so I stood in the corner like a ravenous wallflower, eating marvelous Thai food and admiring the masks and paintings on the wall.

Then a couple people I know showed up, and atmosphere began to warm up for me. The love in the room was palpable and without pretense. Tania's mom and step mom got up and sang an original song called Two Grandma's from Jersey City, using a tune I can only say resembled the children's tune, Four Chartruse Buzzards and singularly brought the house down, some in tears..

Tanias mom and her wife, (neither a professional singer, but making up for anything lacking in artfulness with sheer gusto,) alternated singing about a litany of things the two of them would contribute to the life of little Henry/Max/Olan/whatever. And they played on their respective racial stereotypes, which made it even more of a hoot. "I'll take him hiking," "I'll teach him bargaining," "I'll take him biking," "I'll teach him B-ball," and they invited the third Grandma to join them in the final chorus.

"Three Grandmas from Jersey City" still rings in my head as I, leaving my car with them to help transport a motherload of presents, board the train and come home with a tummyful of warm food and a headful of little reflections.

Like, standing there, for a moment I thought I could almost feel Pat Robertson breathing between my shoulder blades. The notion of anyone having children out of wedlock...and oh! my goodness T has two mommies! It seems so normal to me now I almost forgot to look over my shoulder for the Rush Limbaughs and the Ann Coulters and the - oh, this whole gathering could stand a lot of people's hair on end, I suppose.

But wouldn't it be cool to invite a few of them in here, out of the cold, to throw one back with forty whole-hearted attitudes of welcome, filling a spectrum of shades, all waiting and eager to catch this baby gently with open arms, and become little aunties and Tee-tees and mentors and friends?

But never say "It Takes a Village," even if you think a whole community should behave in a nurturing way to a child. Because then they'll call you a communist, for sure.

Oh, you haven't heard that one? Hillary Clinton is a communist because she spoke about -using different words, albeit - what conservatives have been talking about all along - family values. Never mind that people throw around the word C'ommunist and Socialist as if they knew what they mean.

What Christian Church wouldn't say it takes the whole community of the church to raise a child? (Isn't that what baptism is all about?) Don't most people - liberal and conservative - generally agree that each community, town, county, state, city, and nation must form concentric rings of support for the next generation?

They disagree upon the details, but that's the jist of it. I mean, call it family, village, circle of friends, church, school, extended family, city street, community center, space ship full of aliens, I may not be a parent, but it's clear to me that SOMEbody has to come together to raise a child; it can't be done alone (well, it can, but we've all seen how grumpy bears can be.)

My head is full of thoughts, like whether vegetarianism is the new morality, and whether T is comfortable standing there or whether she'd rather be sitting, and like whether it's like your family or not, this is family in America today.

I think we may disagree as to who and how, and how much to help a teen in trouble or kids who don't have health insurance, but I don't see anyone proposing we make a parent bake their kid from start to finish on their own. And I don't see that this is a problem faced by only one kind of family.

For my part, since I don't have kids, I make sure Colin doesn't go out on cold days without a hat.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Down and Out in the Caribbean

February 2, 2008

Dear American Airlines,

On January 19, 2008, I set out to travel on Flight # 637 from La Guardia, ultimately destined for a relaxing beach vacation in the Cayman Islands.

My flight was delayed several hours. I spent a half hour on the phone with an agent figuring out how to get me to Cayman that day, was put on hold and eventually hung up on.

I figured that was just an understandable mistake.

Eventually I got on a flight with the same number, leaving LGA at 5pm. It was also delayed.

I figured I'd rather be on a late plane than a broken one.

In Miami I rushed to catch my connection on the last Cayman Airways flight of the day, which I had a seat on, but because no one had ever given me a boarding pass I was turned away by security at the entrance to the gates. There was no one left at the Cayman Airways desk and I missed my flight.

I figured AA had no control over this situation and there was nothing to be done.

I was given hotel, shuttle and meal vouchers by an American Airlines agent, which was nice. I noticed others who were not so lucky.

Due to the party atmosphere in the shuttle I didn't notice at first, but was puzzled when I realized the "fifteen minute ride to the hotel" found me out somewhere in the middle of the Everglades. I was actually lucky on several accounts. I told a fellow traveler I had a toothbrush but no toothpaste and he reached back into his back and said, "Here, I insist..I work for a cosmetics company," and handed me a small tube of toothpaste.

Forty Minutes later I saw circling spotlights in the sky, and found myself at a casino! (With a hotel.)

Which was a problem only because the shuttle was booked for the entire day for the return trip, (I mean thank goodness I don't have a gambling addiction! Really, I am quite flush with luck!) so I paid over $50 out of pocket for a cab. The cab driver was quite an interesting guy. Yet I've enclosed the receipt for the cab (minus tip), along with my unused voucher for travel on the shuttle.

Miami airport, which I'd tried my hardest to avoid on a Sunday (aka Cruise Day), was a virtual zoo, with security lines out the door and wait times over an hour and a half for the privilege of being screened.

Again, my flight #561 from Miami to Cayman, was delayed.

I figured this was all part of the "spirit" of travel.

Not surprisingly, my luggage wasn't at the airport when I arrived. No one knew if it had gotten on the Cayman Airways flight which I missed, or was on an American flight somewhere.

My luggage didn't appear the next day, so an agent released $50 for me to spend on clothing. With the dollar as weak as it was in Cayman, it bought me a pair of sunglasses and a clean tank top. I figured this was a life lesson in doing without. Receipt enclosed.

On the evening of Tuesday, Jan 22 (after my third night without luggage), I was excited to hear my suitcase arrived at the front desk of my hotel!

I noticed right away my bag was damaged. The handle was bent right in the middle, so I couldn't retract it without a lot of difficulty.

It had all my stuff in it, though, so I was happy. Now I could finally go snorkeling, which was the whole purpose of my trip. I'd already missed 4 days of potential 6 days of snorkeling, so I got right to it.

I figured of course American would take responsibility for the damage and fix or replace my suitcase, so all would be well. The next day (after snorkeling) I called American Airlines. I was advised to call my arrival airport, Grand Cayman.

A few (expensive) phone calls there revealed a troubling conundrum: I had to return my luggage to the airport between the hours of 6 and 9pm the next day in order for them to even consider taking responsibility for the damage. A cab ride to the airport would cost me $75 each way, making it a $150 round trip. Which I'm sure is more than the luggage cost in the first place. And the offer didn't come with any promise of a fix.

So on Friday, Jan 25 I went to the airport for my return flight, and presented my luggage problem for help. I waited a half hour to talk to someone, who has surprising news for me. Apparently because the damage was to the handle, it isn't covered my American Airlines. The agent handed me a piece of paper explaining that they aren't responsible for any part of the luggage which is protruding.

But the handle should never have been "protruding." When I checked my suitcase, the handle was completely retracted. On its journey from New York to the Grand Cayman Islands, the handle of my little red suitcase should never have been extracted. It should have remained tucked in, where it was safe and sound.

Instead, it looks like someone took it out, stomped on it, took a hack saw to it, and then tried to bend it back in.

I was told I could accept the damage or leave it. As I had no other place to put my stuff, I chose the former.

At security I discovered I was supposed to have put my Flax seed oil pills in a zip-lock bag, and didn't have one big enough, so I had to do some last minute re-arranging. I understand the federal government is in charge of this but somehow that doesn't make me any more chipper about it.

My flight #1018 on Friday, Jan 25, back to Miami was, of course, delayed. There was somebody with a broken plane in our gate, so we had to sit on the runway while it was fixed. The line for customs was really long. The line for security was longer. So, despite a layover time of 2 hours and 20 minutes, I had to run to the gate - this is beginning to feel familiar to me now - and almost missed my flight (#1076) to New York.

Of course there were delays at our arrival airport, La Guardia (when is there not?), and we ended up circling over Phili on the way in. My back was killing me - I have a bulging disk, and an autoimmune connective tissue disease and sitting is just no fun for me (why do you think I like snorkeling so much?) so I was pretty strung out by this point.

When I got home I noticed my luggage was damaged further - the metal edge reinforcement was broken in half. I don't know if that part of the damage was there when I arrived in Cayman, but I do know I can't use it anymore.

But the damage apparently isn't covered my American's luggage damaged policy.

I'm really disappointed by that. I took all the other hassles in stride, but not taking responsibility for what was certainly a gross mishandling of my luggage is not in the character of the airline I use most.

I do appreciate the 4K miles added to my FF account in response to the overnight delay. But I'd like my bag fixed or replaced, and reimbursement for the cab I had to take and the clothes bought while I waited three days for my luggage.

I think I'll post this letter to my blog (http://nikinaeve.blogspot.com/) and see if others find it entertaining.


Thanks,



Nicole Naeve
Record Locator #GUVVHZ

Enclosed:
Clothes receipt
Taxi receipt
Unused travel voucher (unusable because service was booked)
Damaged luggage report
Pics of damaged luggage

Monday, January 14, 2008

Stress = Inflammation. Period.

Stress causes inflammation, which causes pain.

I don't think I'm any more stressed out than anybody else in the Western World. But maybe it should be more than just me who's paying attention.

Every teenager knows when they get stressed out, they get a breakout. Duh. But how about diabetes? Arthritis? Asthma? Obesity? Chron's disease? Allergies? Thyroid disease? Cancer?

I've been doing a little reading and here's the quick run-down of my understanding of this process:

Anxiety ---> triggers hypothalmus ---> triggers pituitary gland ---> triggers adrenal gland ---produces cortisol -----> whole body inflammation ---> BAD.

I mean, sounds like inflammation is OK for that quickie fix for a scratch or a twisted ankle, or a cold. It protects us. But long-standing inflammation is bad. Very, very bad.

Pondering my own circumstances, I'm thinking, I've cut back on like 75% of my activities from when I was in my 20's. I don't have stress, right?

But lack of activities doesn't necessarily mean lack of stress. It can help, but I suspect ther'es more going on here than meets the eye.

So last week I spent some time meditating - or as close to it as I ever get to meditation - and observed my body's reactions to various input as I went my merry way over the next week. I worked to notice that "crawling" sensation, that feeling in your gut that you're not quite settled, the leaning forward, shoulders rising, breath quickening, the wrinkling at the front of my brain, the pursed lips.

I noticed a surprising amount of - well, stress.

Where did this come from? Well, surely that will be an interesting study as I continue to observe. It's probably different for everybody. I've noticed I can connect a good deal of it to thoughts of planning the immediate future in detail: OK, I'm going to the subway, then I'll go down the stairs, then I'm getting on the train...I could take the N or the D at Atlantic. Do I have everything I need for work?

Of course the irritating irony is that having chronic illness begets stress. I know I never used to be such an obsessive planner. But now I'm totally stressed about where I'm going to find a bathroom, have I packed too much weight for my finicky back (but do I carry sufficient supplies in case something goes wrong, like my inhaler in case of asthma attack, an extra tank top for the sweats and ginger candy for nausea?) Will I have enough energy to complete my tasks for the day? Have I made satisfactory progress on my personal goals this week?

It's been a great exercise to observe these thoughts and my body's reaction, then gently remind myself to fall back into "totally OK" mode.

FYI I've noticed that Telling myself to relax doesn't work. My body flips a virtual finger right back at me.

I seek a vehicle for manipulation against my more basic self.

So I'll tell a telling tale, which I've been telling myself this week. I met a circus performer once who had spent much of his life making a living as a clown in a children's hospital. He told me how he used to get kids to take their medicine. He'd snatch the abhorred medicine up and prance around the room, saying things like, "Mmmmm, I wish I could have this...looks yummy! I am feeling a little peckish, right now. In fact I think I WILL take it. After all nobody will miss it. I..."

And pretty soon the child would ask for it back, grab it, and take it with satisfaction. What a thing, to be a clown.

Like a child , I believe the body will leap at the chance to save itself once showed its options. "You can continue to feel like this, and it will get worse, or you can have...oh, lookie that! Yum! The OK , cool place! Ahhhh!"

I think most of us don't see the choice, most of the time.