Life's Plot

May you live in interesting times. 
    -- Chinese curse

Grandfather dies, father dies, son dies.
    -- Chinese blessing

I was reading Margaret Drabble's "The Pure Gold Baby," which is told from the perspective of a friend of the hero.  The friend watches Jess raise her intellectually disabled but otherwise pleasant and happy daughter.  Anna was the pure gold baby because of her easy temperament.  But this was the child that never grew.

This novel got me thinking about the plot of our lives.  Do lives come with a plot, an even story line with ups and downs, and then tidy conclusions?  I suppose the basic plot of an American life would be

• Go to school, 
• Go to college, 
• Get a job,
• Get married,
• Have kids,
• Buy a house,
• Raise kids,
• Take vacation,
• Maybe get a dog or cat
• Kids repeat cycle, and then
• Retire and die.

Depending how things go, some lives are mostly comedies and others are mostly tragic.  Some people have the good fortune to sweep along at an easy pace with nothing unsettling happening along the way to disrupt the pattern.  Some lives predictably follow this storyline to the point of boredom, with nothing interesting--good or bad--happening along the way.

In the "The Pure Gold Baby," a friend watches someone else life that didn't follow the script.  I am thinking of my friends whose lives have varied from the pattern, for better or worse.  On the better side, some might skip the step of getting married or going to college, and manage just fine.  And then there are those of us who hope to follow the plan, but get waylaid such as the parents of children with disabilities or mental illness, who will tend to their children throughout adulthood.  Some lives are cut short.  Parents might bury a child, or a child might lose a parent.  Some get divorced and then don't have a companion.  Some might live in poverty or be unemployed, where making ends meet or finding the next meal is their challenge.  Some lives have a blip or two of tragedy, where others might be mired in chaos.

On Thanksgiving, I am thinking of all of my friends and family whose lives have varied from the script, for better or worse.  I am most thankful for the empathy, support and love I received from my friends and family when my own life deviated from the plan.

This is a picture of Fox sleeping on the couch in my office.  Notice the couch and pillow match the background of my blog.  Rarely am I this coordinated.

Random Thoughts

• I try to use my powers for good, not evil.  Once in a while, a little evil pops out by accident.  Sorry.

• Some people are so toxic, you need to wear a hazmat suit to talk to them.  

• If you are thinking, "My gosh, I hope I am not toxic," you very likely aren't.  If you are thinking "The only toxic people I know are the ones who don't agree with me..."  then you might need to take another look in the mirror.

Morning, Mourning, and Let it Be

Last night, there was a School Board meeting here in Seattle where the Board voted on boundary changes.  Part of my volunteer work means following this and in some ways, being a part of it.  I am not going to talk about the whos and whats and whys.  I am going to talk about the morning and mourning after the vote.

The morning after brings change.  I was thinking about this as I was walking Fox after I dropped the boy off at the bus.  It was a cold yet bright, sunny morning, fallen leaves covered in mist and frozen to to the ground.  With any change, there is a loss.  It might a good loss -- meeting a new friend might mean the loss of loneliness.  In those cases, we look at the upside of gaining a new friend in terms of what has been found -- companionship, camaraderie, fellowship.

But other times, when we look a change, we look at the loss of what we had.  It is hard, and unpleasant.  It can make us mad, sad and want to tear our hair out, especially for those who are most impacted or who worked hard to make sure the changes were in the best interest of the greater good.

When a change impacts a larger number of people -- say the families of 51,000 students -- emotions are all over the map, coming in every color of the rainbow.  One group's win could be another group's loss.  And of the mourners, people might be sad for very different reasons.  What is for the greater good might place extra hardship on certain individuals.  I was reading some comments last night and saw pictures of families at the meeting carrying signs.  Each of those signs had different words, but they all meant "Please don't hurt my child."

I've been through several major tragedies.  Epic ones.  I am not saying that moving one kid to another school does not cause angst and anguish.  Rather, losses have similarities whether they are big losses, little losses and medium ones.  First is mourning the change.  The second is coming together.  The third is rebuilding in the new world, until we come back to ordinary time.  But first today, let us be.

After my daughter Ada died, I was in a restaurant with my husband when the Beatles' song "Let it Be" came on.  I had heard it hundreds of times but never fully grasped the meaning.  I had tried so hard to do everything right.  Everything.  And the outcome was not what I had planned or expected.  I had no control.  I didn't die, so I still had to get up every morning and carry on.  I had to rebuild, create a new life that was far different from the one I wanted.  It was horrible.  "Let it Be" does not mean give up or give in.  It means sometimes things hurt, and is okay to feel the pain.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

Anti-Depressant Hot Chocolate

I found the recipe in the New York Times years and years ago.  It cures the blues in a big way.

1 tbsp cocoa powder (I use Hershey's Special Dark)
1 tbsp sugar (I have a special supply of Demerara for this purpose)
1 oz. dark chocolate (54% or higher cacao)
8 - 12 oz. milk (I used skim, or non-fat as they say here in Seattle)

Whisk the cocoa powder, sugar and a little bit of milk in the pan until it is like a paste.  Add in the rest of the milk and chocolate.  Cook until it lightly boils.

The New York Times recipe also calls for chocolate whip cream.   I generally don't have time to make whip cream on a Tuesday afternoon, so I skip it.

Mood

I am reading "The Pure Gold Baby" by Margaret Dribble.  Here are a few fabulously depressing quotations from this book.  By fabulous I mean when you read then they make you smile a little like a Baudelaire poem because life really cannot be that bleak.

"He has resigned himself to a life of unproductive daily anguish."

"Steve's manta, which he once repeated to Jess, goes:
The day is agony
The night brings no reprieve."

"I feel anguish, and it is not of the body, so it must be of the spirit."

Here is a Baudelaire poem I love from college.  It is not that bleak and fatalistic as some of his others.  At times, don't we all feel like the albatross, where we soar in some environments and flail in others?  And what about those jerks on the boat who drag the bird down?  Don't you kind of wish they get washed overboard?

The Albatross

Often, to amuse themselves, the men of a crew
Catch albatrosses, those vast sea birds
That indolently follow a ship
As it glides over the deep, briny sea.

Scarcely have they placed them on the deck
Than these kings of the sky, clumsy, ashamed,
Pathetically let their great white wings
Drag beside them like oars.

That winged voyager, how weak and gauche he is,
So beautiful before, now comic and ugly!
One man worries his beak with a stubby clay pipe;
Another limps, mimics the cripple who once flew!

The poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky
Who frequents the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
When exiled on the earth, the butt of hoots and jeers,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

http://fleursdumal.org/poem/200

I love this fabulously depressing poem from Harry Potter Puppet Pals video "Snape's Diary."

Button, oh button, oh where hath thou fled?
Did thou tarry too long between fabric and thread?
Did thee roll off my bosom and cease to exist?
How I wish I could follow thee into the mist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-a8USS84F4

What He Doesn't Say to Me

I love you.

I've missed you so much.

I am so, so sorry.

It is okay.  I really do love you.

-- Things the boy says to the dog, that he doesn't say to me.

Pearls

Forgive me while I indulge in a First World Problem.  I have a small handful of other problems that could be a topics in a Shakespeare tragedy, but today I will focus on the light and fluffy.  Or the bright and iridescent.

Within the last year, my husband has offered to get me a string of pearls.  I can't remember if it was for my birthday or Christmas or in honor of us having our first date twenty five years ago.  He is not a big gift giver, and I am in charge of the money in the house.  With the exception of buying a new bike, it is natural that he would check with me first before making a large purchase.  He was thinking of getting an heirloom quality strand -- something I could wear to the ballet and important meetings and then pass on my daughter.

I hemmed and hawed.  I am painfully practical and mildly frugal.  I don't wear much jewelry other than my wedding ring, a pair of pearl earrings, and the watch I got as an engagement present.  I wear the pearl earrings because I am not creative enough to decide which earring to wear on any given day or with a specific outfit.  My teenage daughter has dozens of costume jewelry earrings, mixing them up every day.  Either I lack her flair, or she lacks my staidness.  Pearls match everything, at least that is what I tell myself.

The practical side me didn't want to spend all of that money on something that I would rarely wear.  That money could be earning interest or dividends or could be saved to send the kids to college.  Better that than sitting on the top of dresser.

Thoughts of pearls also brought back not-so-fond memories of the 1980's where at my preppy high school I wore a fake strand of pearls on a regular basis with my white turtlenecks, crew neck sweaters and permed hair.  The pearl earrings somehow aren't part of that faded picture in my mind, though that was the era when I got them.  Maybe because I wear them every day, they transcend fashion and time.  I don't know.

I brought the question up with three middle-of-the-road friends.  By middle-of-the-road, I mean not my most admirably frugal friend who makes her own hamburger buns and invests the savings in the stock market.  She is a master of minimalism and simplicity.  Nor did I ask one of my good friends from college who on any given day elegantly wears the price of small car in bling.  In terms of jewelry, these three friends were neither too much or too little.

Each of them said, "Get the pearls."  I was surprised they did not fully empathize with my quandary and questions this arose in me.  They were of the mind "Your husband wants to get you a nice piece of jewelry.  Let him."

One of my friends blamed Seattle.  "It is this town," she moaned.  "People don't wear jewelry here."  She is originally from California and had lived in Brooklyn.  "In New York, some women had diamond rings so big they could barely lift their hand.  They needed slings to hold their arms.  This," she pointed to her multi-diamond and sapphire rings that stretched to her knuckle, "was nothing in New York."  In Seattle, her rings catch the eye.

My friend the artist grew up in the South where a woman would get a strand of pearls to mark various milestones in her life:  getting married, having a baby, etc.  The strands started out short and would increase in length as the woman aged.

"Women wear several strands at a time," she said, "with the older women wearing ropes and ropes of pearls."  I imagined them looking like flappers, or flappers looking like them.  

For some cultures, jewelry is an important part of life.  My great-aunt, who was Italian, made a hobby of collecting gold.  I asked my college friend, who is Taiwanese, why jewelry is so important.  "It is portable wealth."  Over the ages and around the world, there have been periods political unrest and upheaval.  Gold, gems and pearls often kept their value in times of uncertainty.  Unlike a house or piece of furniture, jewelry is easily transported.

My teacher friend believes jewelry is wearable art.  On the Ave there is a jewelry shop called Danaca, where women hone their craft in silversmithing and experiment with new techniques in jewelry making.  I love this place.  I got a periwinkle beaded necklace with a clasp moulded out of silver clay there.  It is one of a kind and makes me feel like a princess.  Seriously.  The necklace looks like something Cinderella would wear.  My teacher friend was with me when it caught my eye. 

After a thoughtful conversation about pearls over lunch, my teacher friend wrote me an email.  I am thinking she has the final word.

Remember, jewelry not only makes a woman look beautiful, more importantly, it makes her feel beautiful.  I may be headed into the leggings-and-tunic stage of my life (also known as “middle age”), but that is no reason to relinquish the pursuit of feeling beautiful!

Pearls:  yes!

We Haven’t Killed the Dog Yet, or What Makes him Stronger

For thousands of years, man and dog have lived together.  We have had a dog for six weeks.  During this time, I have made multiple calls to vet to make sure we hadn’t done something inadvertently wrong that could cause him to die.  We have had better luck with children, one who has lived to be ten and the other thirteen.  Unlike the dog, neither of our children have been on the cusp of death. 

One could argue that I am neurotic and have an abnormal fear that my dog might die from our poor custodianship.  Here is proof. (Clarification: I mean proof that I am neurotic, not a poor custodian. But you be the judge.)

Things to fear that could kill our dog:

• Bloat, 
• Running away and getting hit by a car or bus,
• Chewing an electrical cord,
• Choking on a lego,
• Death by onion, garlic or currant,
• Biting someone and then need to be put to sleep for being a maniac because we did not sufficiently train him, and
• Eating some random thing found outside, like a berry, leftover food such as a Kidd Valley hamburger or birthday cake from QFC, or cat poop.

Last night while we were eating dinner, Fox was nipping at my big toe.  I was going to put him in the bathroom for the meal, but my justice-seeking son thought that would be cruel.  The dog training book said give him something else to chew, like a toy or bone.  As fate would have it, we were having BBQ pork ribs I made in the pressure cooker.  John finished them on the grill.  Fox loves meat.  Any kind of meat.  Raw, grilled, beef, pork.  He loves to stand by the grill and see if anything will fall his way.  My DH, who never had a dog before, gave Fox a bite of pork chop while he was grilling.  Fox turned into Cujo for the rest of the evening.  Porkchoporkchoporkchoporkchop must have been his only thought for two hours.

So Fox was nipping at my toes, and someone thought we could give Fox a bone from the dinner table to chew.  This brought along a chorus of “This Old Man” and thoughts of weren’t we so lucky to have an animal to partake in the bones from our table.  We knew chicken bones were unsafe as they splinter, so we figured we were fine.  He seemed happy with the first bone, so we gave him another.

After dinner, P.J. saw Fox chewing on shards of bone.  When we looked for the rest of the bones, we couldn’t find them.  Fox ate them.  All of them except for a few mini scraps.  I tried to pull him out from under the couch, but Cujo wouldn’t have it.  I grabbed his collar and dragged, risking my fingers to get the last bits out of his mouth.

We figured Fox was done eating the bones and hadn't choked on them, so we passed that near disaster.  John took a bone in his teeth, and crushed it himself.   Now we had to hope the Fox’s little digestive system could handle the load of broken bone.  I called the emergency vet, and she said to feed Fox soft food to help the bones pass through his colon without causing damage.  Oy.  DH went to the store and bought Fox some soft food, his third meal of the evening after his regular dinner and the two bones.

The vet asked if Fox was acting normal.  Fox was better than normal.  He was Super Dog after eating more than a weeks worth of protein in bone marrow.  He was sprightly, strong and focused.  Focused on getting more bones.  His coat seemed to shine and he was happy.  So now we have Super Dog on steroids, and had to wonder if he would die tomorrow when this passes through his system.  We weren’t worried about our weak dog who couldn’t lift his head, nor a tired dog who only wants to sleep.  We were worried about our pomchi who had enough energy to run the Iditarod.

I began to wonder about all of these rules from the dog books about things that could kill them.  If Fox were in the wild and caught a rabbit or rat, he would likely eat a bone or two along the way and it wouldn’t kill him.  Likely, the bones would be a source of calcium for a week.  But Fox isn't a wild dog.  He is a lap dog, bred to be small and civilized.  He is a far cry from the wolves living in the wild.  Likewise, the rest of his body is used to small and soft food, not whatever rodent he can kill.

I am happy to say Fox lives.  Really.  I am afraid I’ll get one of these check-up calls from the Humane Society and I’ll have to tell them he died from eating something he shouldn’t have, and they will regret ever letting us have one of their animals.  I am glad he is sturdier than we are smart.

Swearing

I love to swear.  I don't drink excessively, smoke or use drugs, even caffeine.  Cussing is my vice.  I was at a meeting yesterday morning with three women from my volunteer day job.  We sat in a corner in a coffee shop and an elderly couple sat next to our table.  I am sure we looked innocent enough, like a couple of stay-at-home moms enjoying a cup of tea after dropping the kids off at school.  We were having a lively debate, and more than a few expletives were dropped.  The best when was when one of my more articulate friends said, "We need to kill this motherf--er."  (Note: This "motherf--er" was an idea, not a person or animal.)  I was shocked.  I don't think I had ever heard her swear.  It was epic.  In the 1970's, we would have been smoking.  Today, we drop f-bombs.  I felt bad for the couple next to us.  I am sure their ears hurt by time we left.  I bet they wished there was a swearing ordinance in Seattle that where people can only swear outside and more than 30 feet from the front door of businesses.

Last night, swearing continued, though this time as the topic  of conversation.  I went to an event at the children's theater where we met the playwright for the upcoming production of James and the Giant Peach.  After dinner, the playwright was sitting with the director.  I sat down at an empty seat at their table and asked the writer, "Is there swearing in this play?"  I was kind of hoping there would be.  My son P.J. has read the book several times, and he exploded with laughter when the centipede yells, "Ass!" to the other characters that are annoying him.  He laughed so hard that he stopped making sound, and then made a whoop as he came back up for air.   It was his favorite part of the book.

The writer looked delighted that I had asked him this meaty question.  He must have pondered this while writing.  In his talk, the writer said Roald Dahl broke several barriers with his children's books -- dead parents in the first page, being one.  (Dickens killed off all of Pip's relatives in Great Expectations, but that wasn't aimed at young children.  I digress.)  I wondered if the Children's Theater would break this barrier.

"We have to consider the audience and where the show is playing when we decide what kind of language to use," the writer said.

The director seemed a bit more alarmed at my question.  The playwright lives in New York.  This play is not opening in his hometown.  The director, on the other hand, is an icon in Seattle.  This theater is considered the best of its kind in the U.S., and much of the organization's success is due to her work over the years.  She has way more to lose.

"What do you mean by swearing?" she asked, eying me skeptically.

"You know," I said, "the centipede is rude and calls the other characters 'ass' and 'nincompoop.'"

"Nincompoop isn't swearing," she replied, annoyed at my inability to tell profane words from gibberish.

"Yeah," I said stalling.  "What about 'ass'?"

"There is no swearing," she said in the same tone of voice as if I asked if there were live animal sacrifices on the stage.  "We have two 'idiots' and three 'stupids,' but in the audience discussion we will talk about how inappropriate those words are.  The aunts use them and we had a hard time not using those words considering the aunts are horrible people."

"Dahl used colorful language and I was wondering if the show would have it," I said, trying to explain myself.

"We are going to have florid language more than profanity," writer said.  "Plus, British swear words have different meanings than American swear words.  'Bloody' is a serious word in England, but over here it doesn't mean anything.  'Ass' in England means donkey or jackass whereas 'asshole'..." He continued on for a few more minutes on the meaning of certain words to the British and Americans.

I was loving this conversation.  The director was not.

"So how do you decide which word to keep and which ones go?" I asked.  The director must think I am demented for wanting to introduce swearing to children.  I imagine her going back to the development office and asking them not to hit us up for a donation next year.

"We didn't want to risk losing the audience with swearing," the writer says.  I can accept that.  You don't want families losing interest in the plot and songs and dance, pulled out of the reverie by one bad word.  Writers have more luxury than actors.  Readers can put the book down for a minute to ponder or laugh.  Actors have a different task to keep people's attention.  Swearing might break that.  Half of the audience might burst into a laughter so deep and profound it stops the show.  The other half might get up a leave the theater.

The director likely has the ability to forecast the disaster that swearing could create that I previously did not.  I imagine she does not want all of the Puget Sound area school districts writing the theater off their field trip docket over a few poorly chosen words.  She also probably does not want angry letters from parents when Billy calls his pal at preschool an ass.  Having been on the receiving end of hate mail from my volunteer job, I know that would be bad.  What may be fine for 80% of the folks is not worth the wrath of the other 20%.

Which brings me to my final point, swearing around children.  I usually reserve my swearing vent my frustration about the absurdities in my day job when I am in a confidential and safe setting with friends.  I also swear when I drive.  I swear when I stub my toe or lose something or burn dinner.  Let's say I swear a lot, just less when my kids are around.  My daughter never swears and says things like "poopersons" when something doesn't work.  My son, on the other hand, picked up my bad habit.   When he was two, we were reading Richard Scary's "Cars and Trucks and Things that Go" for the 14,000th time.  We came to the page near the end with the big crash and he proudly pointed at the picture, smiled and said, "F---!  F---!"  Oh dear, I thought.  I didn't remember using the word in front of him.  Did he remember it from the womb?  Nevertheless, I cut back my swearing.  For me, it was like a two pack a day smoker going down to one cigarette in the morning and one before bed.  (My grandmother had told everyone she had quit smoking, but every night after dinner, she would "take the garbage out" for five minutes.  Everyone knew.)

There was withdrawl.  I know there are more creative ways to express oneself, but sometimes "bullsh-" beats "I disagree with that idea." "Crazy" doesn't have the same emotional punch as the f-word.  I also understand the difference between swearing about a situation and swearing at someone, and I avoid the latter.  (People driving cars don't count.)  I know there is a time and place for swearing, and there are numerous people who are unaware of my foul mouth.  I suppose that is part of the appeal of swearing -- only a select few are privy to my rants.  I tried switching to "poopersons," but I sounded ridiculous when I caught myself saying it in front of a friend while driving.  And I don't want my kids to grow up in a bubble.  And how much is swearing part of our grown-up culture?  I love Macklemore (see previous post) and the Violent Femmes.  Is listening to songs with swear words a rite of passage?

After I got back from the preview at the children's theater, the kids asked me to read aloud from Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh.  Her book is a illustrated memoir with everything from hilarious stories about her dog and childhood to serious discussions about her battle with depression.  As a child, she had a toy parrot that would record her voice.  She made it say "poop" about 400 times.  Poop is the favorite swear word for the under eight crowd.  At what point does "poop" turn to "shit"?  Would we wonder about the 15 year old who says "poop" in an non-ironic way?  When Allie talks of her adult life, she isn't afraid to sprinkle in the f-bombs.  As I was reading aloud, I came across a few of them.  The conversation with the playwright and the children's theater director came back to me.  I thought of the director and just because the writer put those words there didn't mean I had to read them.  I skipped the f-bombs, and my kids noticed.

"Read them," my daughter said.  "You have to read the whole thing."  And I didn't.  Was I afraid of the hate mail I'd get from school if my kids started casually dropping f-bombs?  Does my daughter really swear, but not in front of me?  Or, god forbid, am I growing up?  Am I trying to teach my kids civility? The greater truth lies in the power of control.  I can swear when I want to, and I can choose when I don't.

Footnote:  After I wrote this, I asked my daughter why she doesn't swear.  "It isn't polite," she replied.  I think she doesn't swear as an act of rebellion against me.

Fox Dog's Internal Clock

As you know, we have a new dog, Fox.  We sometimes call him Fox Dog so he is not confused with a regular fox.  My husband thinks it would be funny to have a flock of pets named Fox, followed by their species:  Fox Gerbil, Fox Fish, Fox Hedgehog, etc.

Fox Dog has adapted well to our family, so far.  The first night we had him, we had no idea if he would sleep through the night or wander around the house for hours.  We turned out the lights, and he crawled under our bed to rest.  He made a few scratching noises in the night, but other than that, he woke up when we did.  All was good.

My husband wakes up at 5:40 a.m. or so a few days a week.  He goes into the kitchen, makes coffee and takes care of email.  When my DH woke, so did the dog.  This was fine until it somehow got hardwired into our dog that we wake up at 5:40, including weekends and days when DH doesn't get up at 5:40.  I do not wake up at 5:40.  I sleep as long as I can and set my alarm clock to 7:45.  That is two hours of precious sleep.  And I can't drink coffee.  Sleep is my caffeine.  I need real sleep in order to function during the day.

Why do people and animals have internal clocks?  Why is my dog now an alarm clock?  Should his name be Fox Dog Rooster?  How did this happen evolutionarily?  Does it remind us to milk the cows, feed the chickens, catch the fish?  Seriously, why?  Did something industrialization mess us up when we moved away from the farms with cows and roosters, when we didn't need to rise at dawn?  We set our own schedules, and hence the machines with bells and buzzers to wake us up when we demand.

No one told Fox about industrialization.  He thinks it is his job to wake us at 5:40 with his happy little bounce, jangling tags, and if we our lucky, his little body bounding on our bed.

If I don't reset Fox's clock, I'll be too tired to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.

What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up? Or, Leading a Circuitous Life

"We weren't changing the world when we were doing this thing," Stone recalls.  "We were in an office that had rats in the basement, our team was fighting with each other, and everyone thought it was stupid."  

-- on the starting of Twitter from "Two-Hit Wonder," by D. T. Max in the Oct. 21 2013 New Yorker

Some people know when they are twelve what they want to be when they grow up.  My husband was one of those people.  He knew at an early age he wanted to be a doctor, "a profession that demands excellence," as he told the medical school faculty when he was applying.

And he married me, someone with a vague notion that I wanted to do something important.  What that was, I had no idea.  I studied what I thought was interesting and followed my curiosity down a winding stream from math to history to communication.

I have just left a multi-year stint as a full-time volunteer where I learned more than I imagined.  "Pony League Politics," is what a another fellow volunteer called our work. While I am happy to move on, I am now left with figuring out what the next step is.  I am in that uncomfortable place with the rats in the basement, except without the prospect of hitting it big.  It is just me and the rats and a new dog to keep me company.

I also wonder about what I want to "be" when I grow up.  I've "been" for a awhile, perhaps I should reframe the question to "do."  But doctors don't "do" medicine.  They "are" doctors.  When I was a child, I wanted to be a ballerina, a psychologist, a lawyer, and President of the United States.  All of those things people "are."  Clearly, the ship has sailed on three of those four career choices, and I have maybe a decade or two before I officially rule out President, even if it is a quantum leap from being on the sidelines in the local political scene to becoming leader of the free world.

Just as the world needs people who have an internal beacon guiding them along a career path starting in their early years, the world needs flexible people like me, who wander around looking for problems to solve, or letting their creativity or curiosity lead them down a circuitous path.

I wish I had a snappy, tidy little ending to this, but I don't.  Tune in tomorrow.