You ever have one of those months?

The kind where it feels like you have a year of stress packed into one month? And these buzzards hanging out in the big dead tree behind my house seemed to know it.  Some people, when they are under stress, eat for comfort. Not me. I'm one of those strange people who loses interest in food. It's not that I don't get hungry. It's just that it doesn't often occur to me to eat. And when it does, unless I'm out to eat or cooking for someone else, it hardly feels worth the trouble. I will even feel myself getting hypoglycemic and think, "Whatever." I don't generally realize it's a problem until I step on a scale. When I weigh less than my temperature, I need to start paying attention.

I imagine my resident vultures watching through the window in back of my house saying to each other, "It won't be long now." Fortunately, I know what to do.  I started cooking big breakfasts and dinners for my younger son when he is at my house, so I'll eat, too. I stop for milkshakes. Pick up good beer. Keep cheese and crackers around. Make sure I have bagels and lox available. But more importantly, I make a decision that what is weighing on me will just work out as it will. No amount of worrying changes that. The people involved will or won't be helpful, will or won't be true friends, will or won't stay in my life long-term. But one way or another, I will be fine. And the buzzards?  I decided they are just visiting because they like me.

On of those projects I seem to constantly be involved in.

Let me take care of this up front: A) Yes, there's already a sump pump. And B) Unless you are offering to pay for it, please don't recommend costly fixes like French drains that I cannot afford. I have two children to send to college. Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

During the last flood a few weeks ago, I discovered that repeat episodes of water under the rubber matting on the garage had left a disgusting-smelling mess. I mean the sort of smell that had my usually hardy son recoiling when we pulled the matting up and dragged it out to the curb. Under it was the only part of the basement I'd not already painted. In this photo, I've cleaned up the tool bench area, patched the big holes in the floor with cement, and put down a layer of clear cement primer.

The home store no longer carried the rust-colored cement paint I'd used on the rest of the basement, so I bought "battleship gray." It seemed fitting since I've felt a little embattled lately. I haven't had a chance to wear these lovely painting pants in quite some time.

I also vacuumed up roughly seventeen thousand spiders webs and egg sacks. An arachnophobe would NOT do well in my basement. As I was painting, I looked up to see this stinkbug making his way painstakingly across the floor, pausing periodically to try to wipe the paint from his legs. I vacuumed him up, too.

The finished garage floor, ready to park on. This old house has a bizarre basement that runs the length of it, with a narrow garage, a larger basement area, and two separate rooms beyond it, including a bomb shelter. When I was first looking at buying it, I called it the Cold War House.

I felt pretty good when I'd finished the second coat of paint. Until I turned around.

This past weekend my younger son and I spent a few hours cleaning up the remainder of the basement. More spider eggs to vacuum. They are absolutely everywhere. I'd pick up something, like this bird feeder, to put it away, and be confronted with several. But finally we had everything picked up and reasonably organized.

I'm glad I've become fairly handy. But on occasion, I dream of living in a small apartment with minimal possessions.

Sunday musings.

A little background and disclaimer: When I was a young kid, my family belonged to a historic Unitarian-Universalist church in Lexington, MA, where Ralph Waldo Emerson once preached. Later, I was baptized and confirmed in the Episcopal church, continued my role as an acolyte in college and also became a lay reader and (as an adult) a lay Eucharistic minister. In the midst of all that, I returned to the UU church for a few years. I loved the ritual and pageantry of the Episcopal church and the intellectualism and free-thinking nature of the UU church. Neither were a perfect fit, and I reached a point where I only believed on a metaphorical level. Then I began reading about Buddhism, took up meditation and attended silent retreats with monks of various Buddhist disciplines. After a week-long retreat lead by Thich Nhat Hahn, I took the five precepts, which are mindfulness vows. He stressed that he taught a practice rather than a religion, and that it could easily be incorporated into any religious tradition. Indeed, there was an Episcopal priest in my discussion group, and I saw a Catholic nun attending in her habit. Although I don't meditate regularly any longer, I still find value and peace in attempting to live mindfully. Finally, I found a liberal Quaker Meeting, a tradition that had interested me for years. My family and I attended and eventually I met with a Clearness Committee and became a member. I like the lack of hierarchy, the absence of a minister, the silence, and the focus on a set of shared values of simplicity, pacifism, social justice and equality. There are a substantial number of nontheists like myself within the Meeting, as well as a number of people who practice mindfulness.

In spite of what people often think of me, then, I am not anti-religion. I am only opposed to people attempting to impose their religious beliefs on me, or to force them into policy-making. I expect to be left alone to search my own conscience about matters such as the governing of my own body, which adult I choose to share a bed with, and so on.   do not want to be asked to pray as part of a school or governmental function. I cried during the last inaugural speech when Obama specifically included nontheists when he said, "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus and non-believers." It makes me a little crazy when people suggest that the lack of a belief in a supernatural being implies a lack of values. In fact, the last time I was at a family gathering, my mother said of her priest's boyfriend, "He's an atheist, but a good guy." As if that was a surprise. I could not let that go unchallenged. In fact, the man I've spent the last year or so with attends church regularly, and he has said several times that he thinks I'm a better Christian than he is, in spite of the fact that I don't consider myself a Christian at all. But I do think the very Zen-like teachings of Jesus are valuable and I do believe in Love.

That said, I also have a darkly twisted sense of humor. And one source of amusement for me is imagining making a documentary where I travel around with a film crew to various tent revivals and churches and get saved at each one. None of the religious traditions I've been involved with include this concept, but I am endlessly fascinated by it. From the pressured pre-teens in the movie "Jesus Camp" to the snake handlers here in Appalachia, it's a phenomenon loaded with emotion. And if I ever do make that film, these three Georgia churches are at the top of my list. Especially the last one.

Aaaaand the crazy train just keeps on rolling.

There was a waning gibbous moon tonight, so you can't even blame it on a full moon. I don't know what to blame it on, actually. But something aligned in the cosmos today to bring out the crazy in my family. In waves.

First, it was an email from my father's evil wife. And let me say that I am not opposed in principle to my father's wives. There's my mother, of course, and then my stepmother who I'm still connected to. But this third one I do not like. She's done everything within her power to cause division between my father and his children, a task that has become increasingly easy for her as his Alzheimer's has progressed. He's always been politically conservative, but that is something that has never particularly concerned me. Even when he made the shift into Fox "News" far right lunacy, I overlooked it. But the email was a forwarded poem (and I use that term loosely) about Obama and "his boys" taking money from the writer to give to people who hadn't worked a day in their lives while the writer "gagged from the stink." It was ugly, sophomoric stuff ending with telling us we had to vote if we didn't want to be socialists. The evil one claimed that my father wanted her to send it to all of us, and btw thanks for the birthday cards we sent. Well. I hit "reply all" and thanked her for sending it and reminding me how vital it was that I get out and vote for Obama. I was going to leave it at that. But in the meantime, I was hearing from my other appalled sibs , and then the one conservative in the bunch who said she loved that they'd send that to all us liberals. I felt a throbbing pain behind my eyeball and a queasiness in my stomach and I thought, "Oh hell no." This woman had just spewed her last bit of poison on me. So I hit "reply all" once more and sent this:

I'm not sure if this really came from Dad, but it doesn't matter. On reflection, I've decided this was meant to be hateful because you know full well that all but one of us are Democrats. I would never in a million years consider sending such a venomous anti-Republican message to you. Rather than allow you to continue to subject me to this sort of nastiness, I am now blocking your email address. But I hope you will ponder the hypocrisy of calling yourself a Christian while denouncing the "socialist" values espoused by Jesus.

I set my email filter to send anything further from her directly to the trash file, shook the dust off my sandals and walked away. The man I knew was already disappearing when I saw him more than a year ago and his wife was openly vicious to me after I'd driven the 7 hour round trip to take him out to lunch on Father's Day. He and I made our peace years ago, and I sincerely doubt he has the wherewithal or the animosity to direct her to send that email.

So that ought to be enough for one day, right? Wrong. There was a message on my work machine from my former stepfather saying he was now coaching a college track team and would be in a nearby town Saturday morning and would love to see me. I have deliberately had no contact with him since my brother's funeral in 2001. I hope to never have occasion to see him again. I won't go into it, but let's just say I have ample reason to wish this man dead. And not necessarily a quick, painless death. So why in the world would he think I'd drive to a town 50 miles away to see him? I wouldn't speak to him if he were staying next door! And not just because he's too dumb to leave a phone number in the message. I told my friend about this and he asked if I wanted to borrow a gun. I suggested he protect me instead and he texted back, "A phone call away!" Which was comforting, but I'm not really worried. Just creeped out that he'd tried to contact me. Thankfully, my mother has deflected all his attempts to get my email address or cell phone number from her.

So, Universe, I have a request: I didn't pick the people my parents chose to inflict on me. How about you send them crawling on back to the depths from which they emerged?

And while I'm on the subject...

I also did some non-family celebrating. I have a friend with a birthday just two days before mine and we met downtown for dinner before I left town. At this place, I ordered the same thing I always order - a sandwich made with a wheat roll, fresh spinach, baked tofu, Monterey Jack cheese, herbed tomato, pineapple, roasted onion, walnuts, pesto and mustard. I don't know what it is about this combination of ingredients, but it is irresistible to me. And of course, as with every time we go out to dinner, red wine and lots of laughter. My friend asked the waiter if there were any birthday specials. She is much more assertive than I am about things like that. And I'm glad, because we each got a cookie. I took my chocolate cookie and half my sandwich home for lunch the next day.

After I got back from the Savannah weekend, I had another friend over for dinner. Tomato-basil frittata, asiago bread with garlic butter, and a salad with greens, peppers, cucumber, dried apricots and pistachios. We had this conversation about the salad:
Him: "What is this?"
Me: "A pistachio."
Him: (eating it)"They're good." (holds up another on his fork) "And what is this?"
Me: "A pistachio."
Him: "I like those. You make the best salads."
Me: "If you find any more, they're all pistachios."

As I was leaving work to get groceries for that meal, I saw this rainbow. I don't know what the next year is going to bring but I know it will just unfold as it will. Being patient with ambiguity is just not my strong suit, but I'm trying.

Hitting the half-century mark.

Getting out of town for my birthday seemed like the thing to do, so I got in the car before dawn on Friday and headed for the Georgia coast. My first stop was the beach on Tybee Island, for one last view of the ocean in my forties.

After I got to my sister and brother-in-law's place in Savannah, we went out for lunch - I got the salmon on greens with green beans, fritters and pickled onions.

Then we walked around a bizarre antique store housed in a three-story mansion. You can see in the mirror that some furniture is just stacked on top of other pieces.

Dinner that night on the porch overlooking the park - a Mediterranean shrimp dish, salads and wine. My niece joined us for both lunch and dinner that day, and showed me how to set up an emoticon app on my iPhone.

The Savannah jazz festival was going on so we walked over to the park after dinner to listen for a bit.

My sister and I went the next morning to see an exhibit at the art gallery - "Dan Winters' America: Icons and Ingenuity." His photos range from interesting takes on celebrities to grittier scenes, as well as photos of aircraft and some mixed media work.

Afterwards, we walked downtown and ate crispy trout salad with mango at a Thai restaurant. I was caught off-guard by the presence of cilantro and spent some time pulling every bit I could find out of my salad. Who invented that noxious stuff, anyway?

The good food was unending. My birthday dinner that night was at a cool restaurant that uses all local and organic ingredients. I had seared Carolina scallops with ravioli stuffed with ricotta, truffles and porcini mushrooms in a masala sauce.

We sat up late drinking champagne and talking. And laughing a lot. My older son called to wish me a happy birthday and said, "So how much champagne have you had?"

Breakfast on the porch again and another morning walk around the park under Spanish moss-draped live oaks. Late September may be the perfect time to visit that city - it's still warm enough for summer clothes, but not sweltering.

And too soon it was time to cross back over the Savannah River and head home to the mountains. It was a lovely weekend all the way around. And now that I have the actual day of turning 50 behind me, I'm feeling okay about it.

How does the time fly by so quickly?