Founding fathers and Post-it notes

Days: 9 & 10

Countdown: 32…31...

Suggestions: Enroll in writing course; reread the Constitution

I refuse to accept that having alcohol and sundaes for dinner two days in a row had anything to do with my getting the flu a few days later.

However, as result of said flu, I haven’t left my apartment for four days. During this time, I’ve texted nearly everyone I know, with the tacit plea of ‘Please amuse me, I’m so bored!’ Yea, I’m sure everyone has appreciated that. Sorry?

In between naps, feverish dreams, and mindless spacing out, I’ve actually been trying to do things. Important, adult things, like my taxes and responding to work emails. And not so serious things like watching the worst movie ever made starring David Tennant. (Note: David Tennant’s sex appeal = time well spent, regardless of how bad a movie is.)

Yes, it's as bad as it looks.

I have even (barely) managed to do a couple more of the suggestions on my 40-Before-40 List: 1) sign up for an online writing class and 2) reread the Constitution.

I won’t bore you with the simple details of signing up for the writing course at UCLA. And at the moment, since my head still feels like it’s a giant lead ball, I won’t attempt to write anything cogent about the Constitution.

So I'm going to write about Post-it notes, in relation to the Amendments. Sort of.

When I think of the Amendments made to the Constitution over time, I think of how fortunate I am to live in a country where such changes can be made and where -- as  cliché as this sounds -- one person really can make a difference. And now, I also think of Post-it notes.

Last week, one or more students secretively posted positive affirmations, on Post-it notes, all over the school’s walls. Although this furtive undertaking was a surprise for the rest of the school the next morning, it was not surprising. These young women are changing and are going to change the world for the better. 

What these young women already know is that changes don't just happen, they are created. Whether it's a community river cleanup, a refusal to change seats on a bus, or a march on Washington, changes are made. We just have to choose to help make them. Even if it's one Post-it at a time.

Photoshop, Moby-Dick, and the word 'vagina'

(Day 7 has been lost in the Flu. May be found later.)

Day: 8

Countdown: 33

Suggestion: Learn the basics of Photoshop

I used the word ‘vagina' in a scholarly essay I wrote about Moby-Dick in graduate school. 

Yes, yes, I did. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t just float the word around for no reason; it wasn’t as if I were referring to my vagina. But what I wrote still took a risk.

So after handing in the essay, I called my professor and left an urgent message begging him not to read it. An hour later, I left a breezy “hey-ya-know-that-first-message-I-left-sounding-panicked-and-crazy?-Just-ignore-it” message for my professor.

Well done, I thought to myself, now you don’t seem like complete nutter at all.

However, a week later when my professor handed the paper back to me, I learned a huge lesson in risk-taking: he called my paper 'brilliant.'

The real brilliance, obviously, is Moby-Dick, and the real risk-taker, Melville. This is why I decided to combine my desire to learn the basics of Photoshop (yes, I've gone this long without learning) with showing people just how incredibly brilliant Moby-Dick and Melville are.

Challenge: to choose five completely random pages in the book and find a quote on each page that – even out of context – shows Melville’s skill as a writer and depth as a thinker. In short, it would be good, thought-provoking stuff.

Second challenge: create a multi-page collage in Photoshop using those quotes.

(Yea, I know it ain't pretty, but I learned as I did. Such are beginnings, sometimes.)

                    

"Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!...'Well, well; I heard Ahab mutter, 'Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of mine; swears that I must play them, and no others.' And damn me, Ahab, but thou actest right; live in the game, and die it!"

"...that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only begins a second; and a second ended only begins a third and so on, for ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness of all earthly effort."

"I was told there were still smaller ones [whale vertebrae], but they had been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest's children, who had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the spine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into simple child's play."   

                        

"Now and then he stooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of the tarred twine, which otherwise might have been wasted."

----------------

“At the end of everything, good or bad, is you, so dance.” 

                                                                                           – Al Hagger

Ten Little-Known

Day: 6

Countdown: 35

Suggestion: Be “a grown-ass woman!”

My colleague would like me to share more of myself with others.  So be it. Thus, I bring you Ten Fun Facts of Heidi:

10) Even though I’ve flown a lot, I still close my eyes and clutch the armrests during landings.

9) When I use the upstairs bathroom in my apartment, I never close the door.

8) I’ve never done any drugs. However, in order not to be seen as prim and priggish, I have told some people a fabricated story about trying pot.

7) On runs, I sometimes listen to the song “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz on repeat. After the run, I might even sing the song in the shower.

I'm Yours

6) When I moved abroad for the first time, I cried saying good-bye to my parents in the airport. I didn’t fully stop crying until after the plane had taken off.

5) When I’m playing games with little kids and they cheat, I don’t know what to do.

4) My first kiss was not very special or momentous. Luckily, I’ve had a lot of great kisses since then.

3) I have illegally entered two different countries. Each time, I was traveling with the same person.

A boat illegally deposited us onto a beach. No immigration office for miles.

2) I once ran out of a store after a thief, chased him to the running car that he then jumped into, and tried to hang on to the door handle as the car pulled away.

1) When I was a kid, my older brothers caught me dancing and lip-synching to Van Halen’s “Jump.” The ‘dance moves’ consisted of me repeatedly jumping from the floor, doing a split over the footboard of my bed, and landing on my mattress.

The move I was trying to emulate.

I am so lucky I grew up in Kent where, at 11, you were kind of cool no matter what.

Sleep

February 28, 2013

Day: 5

Countdown: 36

Suggestion: Sleep

“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” my friend Arnold says. Visiting him in Nairobi a couple of years ago, I understood why he would forgo sleep on a regular basis; his life is pretty sweet. Even on my first night there, we had a night of excitement.

Or, to be more specific, we were nearly arrested.

I’d just flown in from London and was pretty tired and a bit jet-lagged. “Let’s just head out for one beer and then you can get some sleep,” Arnold suggested around 9 p.m. We nearly didn’t make it back at all that night.

At the bar, shortly after 11 p.m., with a hundred other people, we were locked inside and told we were under arrest. Policemen blocked the only exit. When asked why we were being arrested, we were told that drinking after 11 p.m. on a weekday was illegal. Apparently this was a new law. And we were to be an example for the rest of the city.

Arnold and I watched as people were herded into a police van and taken, we assumed, to the police station. There was only one van, so people were being taken in groups. We had to think quickly.

Tactic #1: Demand to see identification. One of the cops laughed, pointed to his gun, and said, “This is all the identification I need.” Seriously, that happened. Watching too many American movies, perhaps?

Tactic #2: Use reason. Arnold, an incredible orator with whom I have probably never won an argument, tried his best to talk with the policemen. He went from one to the next, finding the weakest link, a.k.a. the one most receptive to those sometimes fleeting notions known as common sense and reason. Still, there was no talking our way out of the situation. Big Gun #1 of the cop brigade kept a firm watch on the others.

Tactic #3: Be an American. Standing up with an entitled air, I shouted, “I’m an American. You can’t arrest me!” Yup, I actually said that. I then tried the “I work with the U.S. Embassy in Malawi. You can’t arrest me.” Policeman response: “This isn’t Malawi.” I sat back down.

Tactic #4: Retreat to the portion of the bar farthest from the exit and bide time. We sat at a table in the upstairs portion of the bar, farthest from the staircase, in a corner, and huddled. Should we surrender? No way. Should be bribe them? No. Should we try to isolate the identified nicest policeman and try tactic #2 with him? Yup.

Result: Nice cop hid us in the tiny caged garbage area in the back of the bar. We squeezed in between bags of trash and waited. The last sweep of the bar, we weren’t found, and the cops left. Stand off won!

We walked out at 4 a.m.

So when I am pressed for sleep, I think of Arnold. Except, sometimes, a person just has to sleep. And that is exactly what I needed yesterday for nearly nine uninterrupted hours. Day Five’s activity: sleep.

Vanilla ice cream is not boring

Day: 4

Countdown: 37

Suggestion: Dessert for dinner

 Yesterday, my dinner was a martini. Today's is dessert. Please don't judge me.

Life in the U.S. can easily be devoid of challenge. It’s easy to get dulled into a daily routine, and it takes a lot of effort to resist that. For me, the easier and cushier my daily life is, the more I struggle to push myself out of my comfort zone and challenge myself. I also have noticed that the longer I live here, the more I tend not to take advantage of all that surrounds me. That is why today when my co-worker chose for me the item on my list “eat dessert for dinner” (thanks, Sarah, for this suggestion), I got excited about all that I have available to me: endless options of desserts to make, buy, decorate, bake.

Not only can I eat dessert for dinner, I can decide which of thousands of options to make. I have a cupboard filled with baking ingredients. I have an oven, pans, a cake decorating kit. And if I don’t have something I need, I can go out and buy it at the store which is a quick 5-minute drive away. How spoiled am I? I can have whatever dessert I want. And for dinner.

And after all that excitement of having so many dessert choices, I went with a classic favorite:

Classic #1: Blondie

Classic #2: Vanilla ice cream

Classic #3: Chocolate sauce

  

   

Classic finish: Whipped cream and sprinkles

                    And there's more... 

...for fun.

I compare the time it took me to do this with how long it would have taken me to make the same dessert in Malawi, dependent upon: no sugar shortage, no electricity cuts, no forex shortage that prevented importing nearly everything needed to make this!

So even when I'm not too challenged by life here -- clearly eating dessert for dinner is not difficult! -- I want to make certain that I appreciate all the choices available to me. 

Daniel Craig Tuesdays

Day: 3

Countdown: 38
Suggestion: Learn how to make a martini

I get home from work, slip out of my heels, and put on some bossa nova. With a sigh, I collapse onto the couch and am immediately handed a martini, which I sip casually, as my stress slips away.

Okay, so this is how it really happened today:

4 pm: While still at work, decide to eschew all of my friends’ suggestions for a daily 40-Before-40 event and try to think of something else instead.

5 pm: Drive to the local liquor store and walk around for 15 minutes wondering where the vermouth is kept while wiry, middle-aged clerk occasionally looks up.

5:15: Find vermouth on a dusty bottom shelf, grouped with other seldom-bought bottles.

5:20: Look at gin options. Choose Hendrick’s while wishing I were back in Malawi where I could buy awesome, smooth Malawian gin for the price of bottled water.

5:25: While leaving the store, I start to read a text from a friend and nearly run into a guy on a motorized wheelchair cruising down the sidewalk. “So sorry,” I say, “I wasn’t looking where I was going at all!” He continues cruising and only responds with, “YOU’RE GORGEOUS!”

5:28: Contemplate apologizing more often to random guys on the street. 

6:30: Buy martini glasses, shaker set, and olives.

10 pm: Arrive home from Tae Kwon Do class and proceed to not make martini but to eat an embarrassing number of olives from jar.

10:05: Realize that although I know what a martini consists of and what props to buy to make it, I actually have no idea how to proceed.

10:06: Stare at ingredients and think about just drinking a huge shot of gin while eating the entire bottle of olives.

10:07: Forego previous desire and Google ‘how to make a martini.’ Proceed, realizing how utterly simple it is to make a martini and wonder why I have never done this before. Thank myself for turning 40 soon.

10:09: Continue to be classy and eat olives out of jar. Realize I never ate dinner today. Shrug and pick up martini.

10:10:  Drink slowly while mentally planning ‘50s-theme parties and Bond marathons, then just start thinking about Daniel Craig.

11 pm: Write this and contemplate making another martini. It is Tuesday, after all, and Tuesdays should be special just like any other day.

Letter to the Editor

Day: 1

Count: 40 days

Suggestion: Write a letter to the editor

Dear Heidi,

Congratulations on your near-40-year prologue. How about beginning Chapter One now? To do that, I will give you some advice on how to make your book more streamlined and how to move the storyline along more efficiently. Here are some excellent pointers: get rid of all parenthetical phrases; never write off-tangent stories within the main storyline; and for God’s sake, stop using so many exclamation points. No character should ever be that excited. Perhaps re-familiarize yourself with The Stranger. Grey indifference can never be overused.

I am confident that with these changes and your renewed interest in the possibility of mass production, your book will exceed my expectations.

Sincerely,

Your Editor

 ----------------------------------------------

Dear Editor,

While I appreciate your continued interest in my work, please let it be noted yet again that I have neither hired you nor asked for your opinion regarding any aspect of my book. I am pretty content with the way my story is progressing, albeit in a less than typical structure. I like the added thoughts within stories and the meandering paths that may lead to unexpected places and that are completely unrelated to the start. I especially love the little handstands of joy made by my exclamation points!

I am confident that one day you’ll find something better to do than try to change someone else’s book. You may even realize that by busying yourself with trying to edit other’s books, your own book remains woefully neglected and unwritten. That’s a shame because, like everyone, I’m sure you have the possibility of being a really good read.

Sincerely,

Heidi

FAIR Miles

What do you do when two women who can kick your butt in Tae Kwon Do threaten you?  RUN!

First, I should be clear what I mean by ‘threaten.’  Forcing me to exercise outdoors in below-freezing weather before noon, for example, is definitely threatening behavior.  And, to clarify again, where I use the term ‘force,’ some people might choose the word ‘encourage.’

Which is why, on Friday morning at 6:30, as I was tying my running shoes and putting on my gloves and windbreaker, I received a text that said, “Happy running” from two women from Tae Kwon Do class. Although I wasn’t able to join them at the same location for their weekly Friday morning run, I’d decided I would at least get up and run at the same time.  It’s interesting how even the idea of accountability can motivate people.

Also motivating me is St. Patrick’s Day. In three weeks, I’ll be running a St. Patrick’s Day 10K race – my first 10K race since my senior year of college. Thus, the cram session has begun.

But I want to make it more fun. And more meaningful.

One suggestion given to me for my 40 before 40 List: raise $1,000 USD for a charity to which I have no connection. I chose FAIR Girls. The U.S.-based organization FAIR Girls (Free Aware Inspired Restored) helps to prevent the (often sexual) exploitation of girls in the U.S. and abroad. (You can read about FAIR Girls in the news here.)

My prepping for the 10K + YOU = $1,000 for a great cause. Here’s how:

1. Please consider donating to FAIR Girls. Read about this organization. Find out what they do and why. If you want to donate, go to Step #2.
2. Think of an amount to donate per mile that I run in the next 3 weeks while training for the race.
3. Consider that I am no longer a 22-year-old competitive long-distance runner but am nearing 40 with a bad knee and a more-than-full-time job. Oh, and I hate running in winter.
4. I will track my mileage for the next three weeks and announce my total three-week mileage after the race on March 16^th.
5. Multiply the amount you decided to donate per mile by my total mileage.
6. Donate that total amount to FAIR Girls here and tell me the total you donated.
7. My goal is to raise $1,000 for FAIR Girls!
8. Everyone wins! (Perhaps with the exception of my right knee.)

"Think of the small [moments] as large"

It was unseasonably warm the day I made a surprise visit to my former college advisor at Smith. I hadn't seen him in many years, although I'd taped two notes -- written on completely professional, cartoon-laden Japanese notepaper the size of Monopoly money -- to his door in the past six months. (Not weird and creepy at all.) By the time I got to his office on this warm winter day, I'd walked up four flights of stairs in a wool sweater and winter coat and was sort of sweating under my clothes. Not a good look when seeing someone for the first time in six or seven years.

His door was slightly open, and I could see him in his chair, talking to a student. I paced around the hallway in front of his office for a few minutes, waiting for the student to leave. For some reason, I forgot to take my coat off and continued to drink the hot coffee in my hand, so I was getting increasingly warmer as I paced. I could see Dave through the open door; many Smith girls who took a class with Dave were smitten for life, (again, not weird and creepy at all), so I was actually getting slightly nervous about going in and saying hi. Eventually I interrupted with a knock and stepped into his office.

It took him a moment and a couple of hellos before he realized who I was. My notes left a few months ago were actually on his messy desk, as if a reminder that I still existed and would one day do as promised in the last note – stop by to see him again. After talking with him for a few minutes, he mentioned my blog, and I stopped breathing for a few seconds.

He’d read my blog? I mentally scanned through what I’d written, but my memory sucks, and I couldn’t remember if there was anything I should be embarrassed about. I determined, solely based on the past experiences of me being me, that there had indubitably been something at least slightly embarrassing that he had read. But instead of fumbling with this realization, something else happened.

You know those moments when you feel a sudden alteration take place inside you, and emotionally you are back at a different age of your life? For a few seconds, I was 20 again, and I was internally jumping up and down, shouting, “Dave read my blog! Dave read my blog!” He was that kind of professor, where his interest in your work or his tacit acknowledgement of your intelligence was enough to make you think you could become the person you’d dreamed about being. So his acknowledgement of my writing on this unseasonably warm February day as I stood in his office slightly sweaty and mostly overjoyed, was reason enough to start writing regularly again.

40 Before 40

 

“Start a bar fight,” two friends separately suggested to me the day before I was to break a board with my bare fist as part of my first Tae Kwon Do belt test.

Although I’ve been asking for suggestions for my 40-Before-40 List, I think people have been misunderstanding the purpose. I’m not creating a Bucket List; the 40-Before-40 List is different. It is not a list of things to do before I die; rather, it’s a way to commemorate the entrance into a new decade, doing something challenging, entertaining, or celebratory each day.

“Think me but less violent,” I said, not knowing that the next day I’d be icing a swollen and bruised knuckle from punching a board in half on my first try. Mostly, I should have added, the thing I do each day should have some positive result, whether it’s one of simple childhood joy via, for example, roller-skating (spoiler alert) or one of making other people happy. Starting a fight with a bunch of drunk people doesn’t exactly fit into the positive-result schema.

Besides, in what seems like another lifetime, I once started a bar fight.