Crying in the Morning, Maryland, and The Broken Bowl

This blog post is slightly disjointed, as that is how I am feeling right now.

Thursday morning before work, I cried about the Boy. I was listening to Spotify and the song Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel came on and I lost it when I heard the lyrics which I never heard before even though I've heard the song dozens of times:

"Son," he said, "Grab your things I've come to take you home."

Hopefully, there will be a day when the Boy comes home. He writes us a letter once a week and we have gotten pictures. It will be interesting to see how he progresses, and how we here in Seattle progress, too.

When I was feeling blue, I put on my Maryland t-shirt and baseball hat I got last year when I dropped Claire-Adele off at college. I need to remember that she is a good place, thriving.

For my birthday, I got a broken bowl in the Japanese style of kintsugi. (This one isn't really broken, just made to look that way.) The idea of kintsugi is to take the cracks and repairs as part of the object's history. The cracks are filled with gold or brass and lacquer, making what could render the bowl useless and instead make it beautiful. And it is true. This would have been a boring, dark gray bowl, but now it is unique.

My life right now feels like one of these broken bowls, still waiting for the brass and gold to fix it up. I could give each of the cracks a name. While I appreciate the beauty, at times I wish my life had a few less blemishes.

London -- Fashion, Or Momma Suits Up

Before Claire-Adele and I went to London, we went shopping.

"Why do you need to go shopping before the trip?" I asked.

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

"So?" I said. "We can shop there. That is the cool part about London. Shopping."

"I need clothes to wear," she said.

Fine. We went shopping two days before the trip. We hit Nordstrom Rack downtown one day after work for both of us. If she wants to go shopping at the Rack, that is fine with me. What she doesn't realized that this opportunity of shopping in one of the leading fashion cities in the world mixed with her mother's generosity and credit card will only come but once, maybe twice, in her lifetime.

So we went to the Rack downtown. While she was shopping, I was poking around. I wasn't planning on buying anything because I was going to shop in London.

Until. I. Saw. The. Designer. Racks. I felt like Bilbo Baggins when he enters Lonely Mountain and sees all of the elves gold. Is all of this for me?

I thought I'd looked through the racks when I saw It. It was destiny. We were meant to be together. Me and a black St. John black wool Chanel style jacket. When I tried on this jacket, I didn't feel like a million bucks. I felt like five to ten million. The jacket was one third of the original price, but still astronomical.

I brought it home, I showed it to Jack and the Boy. The Boy, who is a big fan of Neil Patrick Harris's Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. The gay married family man with two kids plays a very well dressed scoundrel and a womanizer. Barney's tag line is "Suit up."

Even the Boy was impressed at the cut and fit of this jacket.

"Momma suits up," said Jack.

I packed my bags, including in two dresses I bought of the bargain rack at The Rack and one dress I had in my closet for eight years and never wore. I am not one of those people who buys clothes they never wear, mainly because I am not that adventurous to buy anything that I might possibly feel the least bit uncomfortable wearing.

And then we left for London.

When we were there, Claire-Adele suggested we get off at a random Underground stop and explore. I picked Notting Hill. On our way to the restaurant, we walked by a thrift shop with a window full of fancy shoes. We had to go in. Turns out this "thrift shop" only sells designer stuff.

Not in my size otherwise I'd own them.

Yeah, those are Prada.

Claire-Adele started looking at the clothes. She found a dove gray sweater with ruffles along the front button area. It would be a perfect sweater to wear in the fall on the eastern seaboard. It was 70 pounds, so I checked the label.

Armani.

This was my kind of thrift shop.

A few days later, we were in line to see the Harry Potter play and we talked to some women from Florida.

"You have to go to Kensington Palace. They have an exhibit of Princess Diana's dresses," she said.

So we did. This is something Jack and the Boy would not want to see.

The dress she wore to dance with John Travolta.

Could you see me in this suit? I could! Love it.

She wore this to a fundraiser in Chicago for Northwestern. Go U NU!

There more more clothes in the rest of the exhibit. I don't Jack and the Boy would have had much fun here, either.

This is a replica outfit made out of what appeared to be Tyvek or some other industrial paper.

I love this outfit. 

These dresses were designed to show off the fabric. Like a billboard.

Emeralds

Diamonds. This was valued at 1.4M pounds and was used to pay the estate tax for someone's estate.

So my clothes aren't as awesome as Princess Diana's. No one's clothes are, which is why these clothes are in a museum. Nevertheless, Claire-Adele and I were at the Tower of London, and this woman stopped me and told me she loved my dress.

"This is the first time I've worn it," I told her. "It was in my closet for eight years."

"Sometimes those things are the best finds," she said.

Even in the Tower of London, we saw some cool fashions that Jack and the Boy might have foud interesting.

This one is cool.

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The Third Wheel

Monday morning this week I woke up and I was in a bad mood. When I am grouchy, I try to do this exercise where I ask myself:

1. What am I feeling?
2. Why am I feeling this way? Is there a cause?
3. What am I going to do about it? How will I react?

I’ve had to adopt this strategy since I started working again as it is not acceptable or sufficient to haul off and tell people they are pissing me off. But don’t think I’m all zen or whatever. I’m not.

So Monday I am grouchy.  Did I watch too much Ali “being a stay-at-home mom is like being in solitary confinement” Wong and now I am hostile at the three people who put me there?

Yeah, possibly.

This past weekend was my daughter’s prom and Mother’s Day.

First, the boutonniere debacle. Claire-Adele ordered flowers to be delivered for the prom. For Winter Ball, her boyfriend wanted to get her a corsage and she did not see the point of spending an hour of money she earned on something that she’d wear for a night then it would shrivel and die. For prom, she got the point and ordered flowers without fuss. She failed to check her voicemail until Saturday afternoon when she heard a message from earlier in the week from the florist saying they couldn’t deliver her flowers because they were slammed with Mother’s Day orders. She learned Saturday around 1:00. She was leaving for dinner at 7:00.

She was stressed. Jack drilled her with questions: Did you get a confirmation? Did you call them? Did you get your money back? The Boy said he was going to call the florist and yell at them until they brought her a flower. She became more stressed.

I looked at the Boy and Jack and said, "You guys need to go buy some bike parts" as I shooed them out the door. Claire-Adele went to her room and cried.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked. "The roses are in bloom in front of the house. We can make something."

"Leave me alone for five minutes," she said through sobs.

I thought for three minutes. I yelled up the stairs, "I can call Met Market and see if they can get you a flower."

"I am texting Robby," she said. "Okay, call Met Market."

I did. The woman at the other end of the line was as cheerful as a florist could possibly be before Mother's Day. "I can get you something by six. Does that work?"

"Sure." I told Claire-Adele.

"Robby got flowers from the Safeway where he used to work," she said. "Can you cancel yours?"

After the crisis was narrowly averted, neither Robby or I were going to cancel our flowers. Better to have two boutonnieres than none. "Robby can wear two," I said.

When he arrived and flower time came, Eleanor pinned on Robby's lapel the flower Robby brought. Of course she should. He's the boyfriend. I'm just the mom. It is my job to stand back and let her stand on her own. She should take his flower.

But still. I decided to not let a good rose go to waste, so I unwrapped the flower and put it in a vase by my kitchen sink.

Then next day was Mother's Day. Jack and I decided to go for a bike ride, and I was delighted the Boy decided to join us. It was a warm, sunny day, prefect for a ride across the 520 bridge. When we got to the park on the Eastside, we admired the view for a bit and then I was ready to go back home.

"I'm hungry," said the Boy. Which means his hunger has slowly been building for a while and now he was ravenous. 

"Why don't we go back and got to lunch in Ballard?" Ballard is full of fun places to go for lunch on a Saturday. That suggestion was met with ridicule from Jack and the Boy.

"It is only three more miles to Bellevue," Jack said, not looking at the elevation gain. As we left, we rode down a giant hill. Which meant on the way back I'd have to ride up a giant hill. Fuck. And then there was the mile uphill climb. The ride to Ballard is along the water and is as flat as a any ride you can find in Seattle.

Jack and the Boy were consistently twenty yards ahead of me. Once in a while, Jack would turn around and yell "You can do it!" Just because I could do it, doesn't mean I wanted to. And this was Mother's Day. It was supposed to be my ride and it was turning into theirs. I was getting pissed and I was the weak link, holding them back. Plus, I was carrying the Boy's water.

Literally.

We were the sweatiest people Bellevue Square has ever seen. Truckloads of people were dressed up and at the mall on the nicest weekend day of spring so far this year. It was weird. I didn't bring my saddle bags, so I couldn't shop--for much! I did manage to get a little "treat yourself" Mother's Day goodies in my fanny pack from Lego and Lush. The boy got Jamba Juice.

I was in need of some powerful feminine energy after riding with the Boys. And lip gloss.

The ride from Bellevue Square back to the 520 bridge wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. When I got to the bottom of the steep part, I found a mantra--In two months, I'll be in London. London is flat. There are no hills in London. Magically, the hill I was terrified about wasn't nearly as killer as I thought it would be. Evan, my physical therapist, would have been proud.

At the end of the day, I had fun slogging to Bellevue Square, even though I was swearing under my breath for the second half of the ride. I had 16 miles to add to my "Bike Everywhere" log for May.

So why was I so grumpy on Monday? Did I watch too much Ali Wong over the weekend and I was deeply pondering the inequity women face in the world?

Perhaps it is the realization that for so long, my world revolved around them, and that there never will be a day where their world revolves around me--not that it should. Still--I'd like a weekend where I am not the third wheel in my family events.

The Quilt I Would Have Made for Myself

In my days as a stay-at-home mom, I started quilting. I quilted when I ran for School Board. Cutting fabric and running a sewing machine allowed me to zone out from the hectic and unpredictable campaign.

Since I've started working, I haven't found much time to quilt. In the past few days off of work, I finished a project I had been working on for about a year. I often work on more than one quilting project at a time. The different phases of quilting -- picking fabrics, creating a design, cutting fabric into shapes, assembling the top, quilting and binding-- each have their different appeal and it can be dull to have to do all of those steps them all in the same order every time. Unfortunately, a quilt has to be done in order; therefore, I have more than one project going. Plus, it can be daunting to finish a project without something else to work on.

This week, I finished a quilt. I finished the quilt I would have wanted on my own bed when I was ten. It is full of bright colors and birds and bicycles and flowers and tree houses. It has a green and blue binding. Some people out here might call them Seahawks colors.

Yesterday, I shipped it to my cousin's daughter in Chicago. She is eight. I hope she likes it.

I was sad to ship this quilt off, sadder than when I've shipped off other stuff. I make more stuff than I can use, so I have to get rid of what I make somehow. Claire-Adele didn't want this quilt, and I can't blame her. It is a little too whimsical for someone her age.

The funny thing about quilting is that started the hobby so I could make a quilt from the dresses Claire-Adele wore as a toddler. My mother-in-law lives in Atlanta and would buy Claire-Adele dozens of fancy dresses, so many that I sent her every day to preschool wearing one.

"Please don't worry about the dresses," I said. "Don't let her attire keep her from doing art projects of getting dirty. My mother-in-law buys them and she lives in the south where the clothes are more..."

"Flamboyant?" the teacher replied. I wasn't sure what word I was looking for, but "flamboyant" worked. I gave dozens of Claire-Adele's dresses to friends, family and Goodwill. Some had paint stains, others food. The fabric was too beautiful for me to part with, so I loaded them extra dresses in plastic tubs in the basement so someday they would become a quilt. But I needed to learn to quilt first.

Somewhere in this process, quilting became my hobby and I had almost forgotten about Claire-Adele's dresses in the basement. My goal was to create something for her before she left for college. I fear she won't like what I make, or won't bring it to school. I want to talk to her about patterns, but I fear there will be nothing she likes, and she'll kill the project before it starts. Which begs the question: who am I making this for, me or her?

Perhaps this is the quilt I need to make for myself. And if Claire-Adele wants it someday, I'll let her have it.

Brag and Drag Letter -- Senior in High School Edition

This week was part of ten days off of work. This will be the longest break I’ve had since I started my job last summer. Before the break, I was kind of dreading spending a week with my family.

The weekend before my break was total shit. Claire-Adele was in a rare form of bitchiness, so much so I was counting the months until she is 18 (six months) and leaves  for college (nine months). At one point last week, I was rooting that she’s choose a nearby state school. Now and rooting for her going to school on Mars. The following Monday I was giddy to return to work. The source of this general moodiness (I am guessing) is her applying to college.

Normal Mood of Daughter during Senior Year of High School

Mood of Daughter During College Application Process

I was complaining to my friend Jen about Claire-Adele's noxious behavior.

“Work is easier than home,” she said. How come no one told me that years ago? Why does the world keep this a secret from stay-at-home moms?

I could be simple and say Claire-Adele is horrible and awful all of the time, but no. With this experience comes exceptionable bouts of helpfulness and kindness.

"I'll make the Christmas cards this year," she said.

"I wrote the family Christmas letter," she texted me, including a copy of the note.

"Where is the address list? I'll address the envelopes," she said.

"Oooh, can I make the chicken parmesan for dinner tonight?" she asked. Uh, yeah. No permission needed to make dinner for the family.

I have three days left of vacation, and I've survived so far. Here's hoping I can make it until Tuesday. At the very least, I have my fancy red shoes to welcome me back to work.

Testing, Testing -- 1, 2, 3

My family and I got back from Whistler last night. This morning, I flipped the calendar to May and was reminded that my daughter has an AP exam Friday, the SAT Saturday, and two AP exams next week.

What was I thinking by letting her go to Whistler this weekend? Jack had planned this trip early last week. This was not something that had been on our calendar for weeks or months, as our Spring Break trip to New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. If it had been, perhaps I would have looked at the calendar more closely then kiboshed it.

When I ran for School Board, high stakes tests were a major topic, but tests like the SAT and the AP exams are out of bounds for local jurisdictions. One school board can't ban these tests because practically every college looks at them for incoming freshman. I was in favor of moderate testing of students to help close the opportunity gap. Years ago, I was at a fundraiser for educational causes. The sponsoring organization gave the principal of Garfield High School an award for his work. They showed a video of the principal walking around the school, talking about his accomplishments. One of the highlights was a program that taught sophomores to read. I was appalled, not at the program, but at the idea that these kids could so easily have slipped through the cracks by making it to tenth grade unable read. If we need tests for elementary students to make sure they can read so a district can provide the right services to kids to get them up to speed, then I am for it.

Should I have kept my daughter home so she could cram for these tests? She knows how to read and is reasonably accomplished academically. She is a diligent student and has been studying hard in all of her classes. If anything, Jack and I think at times she studies too much. When I asked her last week if she wanted to go on the trip, she didn't vex. She said yes immediately. The Boy said Claire Adele had a major case of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). Maybe she did.

Did we do the right thing by letting her take a break? When the Boy was in second grade, he qualified for the district's gifted program. A parent asked me what we did to prepare him for the test. I was a little naive about the question and said "I took him to the Varsity for breakfast before the test. He had pancakes and bacon." Taking it easy before the exam served the Boy well.

While I firmly believe in the power of cramming for tests, maybe bringing my daughter along for a ski weekend might have been a good idea. Maybe she needed space to relax after working so hard this year. In twenty years, she'll remember this weekend, not how well she did on the AP exams, unless she bombs the tests so badly she doesn't get into any of her dream colleges. I don't want her life filled with regret. Or, maybe she'll realize she can have a happy, productive life without getting into a competitive college. Jack and I rode the ski lift this weekend with a guy who was about my age who is a helicopter ski guide in the winter and an EMT in the summer. He seemed happy with his lifestyle.

"I see all of my friends who have been working hard at jobs for twenty years," the helicopter ski guide said. "What does it get them?"

Maybe I am being selfish. If we don't take family trips like these now, we may never have the chance again. In sixteen months, Claire Adele will be off at college. There are less than seventy more weekends before she leaves, and many of those are already booked with camp, sports and other events. 

In the end, it isn't my life--it's Claire Adele's. She often puts school work before friends and activities.  Maybe a trip to Canada was the only way to make her not spend the entire weekend cramming. For the rest of her life, she will have choices to make between work and play. I hope for her own sake, she chooses wisely.

Reveal Year

Before our vacation last week, I was walking my dog, and I ran into a neighbor. We chatted about our Spring Break plans. I told her we were going to the East Coast to look at colleges for Clair Adele.

"I have friends with college freshmen," she said. "Two are doing well, and one isn't. It is the reveal year."

I had never heard that expression, but it makes perfect sense. Freshman year of college can be a time where things that were previously hidden become apparent. I suppose the "reveal" could be positive or negative. My freshman year I learned that I actually could do laundry, much to my mother's surprise, even though one batch of clothes turned light purple. I was at Claire Adele's track meet, and I met a friend whose son started college last fall at a major state school, but not the major state school, which I just heard now had a 15% acceptance rate. (Egads.) This young man started working hard in college, and his revelation was "If I worked this hard in high school, I would have had a 4.0." The dad--a Princeton grad--grimaced as he told me this. While it was a pleasant surprise to both him and his son that the young man possessed serious motivation, the dad was clearly disappointed this didn't reveal itself when his kid was a high school freshman.

Most of the fail stories are kept well hidden to protect the privacy of the kid. A friend of mine's kid flunked out of very competitive school spring quarter his freshman year due to excessive video game playing and lack of attending classes. The university sent him home for a year where he attended a local college. The university took him back a year later, and he did fine.

When I was in college, I knew a genius who pissed his potential away on drugs, who in the end, did not do fine. I had a friend from high school who became so obsessed with doing well in school she stopped sleeping and showering. Knowing what I know now about mental illness, I wonder if she had mania.

I wonder the reveal year will show for my kids. I think about about how in college kids are more open to focus on what they love, not what they need to study. We visited colleges where kids are studying politics, economics, finance, the classics, world languages, international affairs, math and nanosciences. I went to a presentation where one of the tour guides was a math and drama major. When my kids find their interests, will they show more enthusiasm for their studies? The Boy is not a big fan of studying French, but he loves Rocket Club and could do that all day--and has. On rocket launch weekends, he is the last to leave except for the coach, even when his rocket has been out of commission. When will my kids find get their groove, or will they be the type of kids who get lost? I suspect they will find something they love, but we won't know until the time comes.

I can't decide if I am terrified about this or feeling free. This is like the final test for parenting: do the kids launch, or do they flail? Will they find growth and freedom from being unconstrained, or will they crash and burn? And if they do crash and burn, will they be able to pull themselves together again, and give it another shot?

Parents' Voices v. Kids' Voices

I am taking a novel writing class at the Hugo House taught by Sonora Jha. She has an older son, and she says his comments haunt her now instead of her parents' words. As my kids would say, #relatable. When I was younger, I would hang on the words of my mom. Now, I hang on to the words of my daughter. When my mother would harangue me, I would often bite my tongue and not respond to her. Instead, I would go off and complain to my father, friends, and brother about how I was wronged.

Last week, Claire-Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures. As much I as I enjoyed taking the time to see the movie with her, there were times that I was annoyed at her rudeness towards me. We were running a little bit late as I was talking to my father right before we left. There was a power outage, and Claire-Adele ran to Starbucks to get lunch, only to find their power was out, too, and were not serving food.

We got to the theater after that drama, and I am jogging up the steps, a major accomplishment for me considering that last year at the same time I was learning to walk without a brace or crutch. Jogging and going upstairs were out of the question, let alone trying them together.

"You are the most embarrassing person in the world!" Claire-Adele scolded me as I moved quickly up the stairs. She didn't consider yelling at me in the middle of a crowded movie theater embarrassing, but whatever. I am sure she didn't want to be seen with me at all, but none of her friends wanted to see this movie.

After we had found our seats, Claire-Adele wanted some popcorn because she missed lunch.

"Can you get it for me? I want to see the previews," she said. After being told I was the most embarrassing person in the world two minutes earlier, I told her to get her own popcorn. I gave her money, but I had no desire to stand in line and miss the previews for someone who had been rude to me.

This Christmas, she told the family that she had no plans of coming back to visit after she graduates from college during the holidays. Of course, she wants to be invited on vacations, but God forbid she has to spend a holiday with us.

If another friend talked to me like this, I'd probably drop them--unfriend them on Facebook, block their phone number, etc. Instead, she is my daughter. I don't have the luxury of writing her off. This weekend, I went to visit my dad and my mom in Ohio. I got home around 11:00 p.m. last night, and the kids were in bed. This morning, Claire Adele was sniffling, and I asked how she was doing.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she yelled. "Why do you think there is something wrong with me?"

Good morning to you, too, I should have said. Later, I went to wake up the Boy. As I passed her room, she asked me for the fabric scissors.

"Why do you need them?" I asked.

"To cut my head off," she said as she rolled her eyes. "I need them to cut fabric. Can you get them for me?" She had blue fleece spread out over her floor. She is part of a group that is making blankets for homeless men and women.

"I need to get your brother up, and then I can get them," I replied.

When I went to get the Boy, he was excited to see me. "How was your trip?" he asked. I told him, and we talked about how his friend got his remote control airplane out of a tree. This was big news, as the plane had been stuck forty feet up in a Port Orford cedar since the end of winter break.

"Are you going to get me the scissors?" Claire-Adele barked. "I need the scissors."

"Shut up," I said frustrated with this person who has said nothing nice to me in weeks. "I am talking to your brother." I was so tired of the world revolving around her. "You are interrupting my conversation. Just wait."

"You know," she said. "You say I am rude to you but spoiler alert -- you are ruder to me."

I could let those words haunt me, like the words of my mother stuck with me as a kid. Instead, I look at the millions of micro-aggressions and insults she has hurled at me for the past few years. I know I am the grown-up here and she is the kid. I should be the example of the right way to behave.

Yet, it is so hurtful to be constantly told how wrong and awful and embarrassing I am, and I need to respond. How is it that I am rude when I call my daughter on her rudeness to me? Why? I wish I had Michelle Obama's grace of "When they go low, we go high." This is different. I am living with this lowness, and it is in my face when I wake up, when she comes home from school and before she goes to bed. She directs her sass at not just me, but to her brother as well. I shouldn't defend him because that makes him look defenseless. She has no awareness of the link between yelling at her brother and then his yelling back at her.

"Dad didn't yell at us all weekend," she said after I told her to shut-up. Argh. Jack was probably in "Distracted Parent Mode" all weekend, squeezing in work, looking at his phone, and generally ignoring the kids. He probably didn't notice them enough to yell at them.

"Where is my water bottle? I've been looking for it for two days!" Claire Adele continued to rant.

"I put it in the drawer with the other water bottles. It was in the dishwasher. You should yell at your dad about that. I wasn't home this weekend," I said. She glared at me and stomped away.

Claire Adele will be leaving for college in a year and a half. I've talked to other parents about life as an empty nester. I've always imagined it being so hard and lonely. I always wondered how moms coped with the person they raised for eighteen years leaves to go off on their own. Why aren't all of these women crying and crying? Why aren't there support groups for moms when their kids go to college and leave home? When Claire-Adele was six, I talked to one mom who had what I thought was a nice and lovely daughter say she was sad for about a day when her daughter left for school, and then she was fine. I tried to push out of my mind how I'd feel when Claire Adele leaves the house, my firstborn, my baby. I couldn't imagine.

Now I get it. Claire Adele needs to leave me as much as I need her to leave. We need a separation, time apart. Hopefully, someday, we can be friendly to each other. She might need to push me away to make her own departure easier for all of us. She is succeeding, I have to say. She is succeeding.

Hidden Figures & Hidden Happiness

Claire Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures this weekend. This is the movie about three African American women who worked at NASA in the 1960's. She wanted to see it. She wasn't sure if any of her friends wanted to see it as they are mostly interested in "chick-flicks," so she asked me to go with her. Jack was working and the Boy was off skiing with friends. He wants to see this movie but plans on going with a group of kids from his Rocket Club.

The movie was pretty good. I talked to a friend who saw it and thought it was inspirational. I saw it and was kind of pissed off. Not only did these women have to deal with the prejudices and biases of being a black in segregated Virginia, they also dealt with the prejudices and biases of being women. Argh.

Argh. Argh. Argh.

My friend Julia published an article on LinkedIn about how the working world is "designed by men for men." There are scenes of rooms full of white men all wearing white dress shirts. Of the two women in the room, one was a secretary and the other was beyond brilliant. What about plain old regular competent women? Where were they? While things better for women and people of color than they were in 1960, we still have a long way to go.

I digress. My movie was a success because it made me think and feel, even though my thoughts and feelings were not happy or cheerful. Claire Adele liked it, too.

I was talking to a friend who saw it this weekend with a group of her friends. Another friend posted on FB that she was going with a group of work colleagues to see the movie. After I saw those comments, I was kind of bummed that I didn't go with a group of women friends. Most of my friends are busy on the weekends with their families, so I often don't reach out.

Then I thought about it. Eighteen years ago today, I would have given anything for my Sunday afternoon, taking my teenage daughter to a movie. Eighteen years ago, I was grieving the loss of my daughter, Ada, a full-term stillbirth. I was terrified that I might not ever become a mother. As much as I lament my career situation, I would never have traded it for my kids. The women who went with their friends have sons. I am lucky to have both a son and a daughter.

Sometimes we don't recognize our happiness, hiding in plain sight.

Painting

I spent part of this morning painting the Boy's room with our college student-helper, Anita. We are going to be painting the second floor, which includes the kids' bedrooms plus the Lego Room. Anita just graduated, and I wanted her help before she finds a real job instead of her part-time job of doing odds and ends around my house, like folding laundry, emptying and loading the dishwasher, and organizing my basement. She is very efficient and organized, and she helped me purge the first floor of our house before we got new floors. She has no attachment to our stuff, so she can ask hard questions like, "Will you ever wear this again? Really?"  Last year, she helped me paint my stairwell, bedroom and office. Having a second set of hands makes time fly and the job get done twice as fast. Everyone needs an Anita.

I had booked Anita to help me with this a few weeks ago to fit in after her graduation activities. Sunday, Claire-Adele and I went and bought paint. Normally, I like to paint, but this weekend I wasn't looking too forward to it, and I couldn't figure out why. I started to get excited once I bought the paint and had it in the house. Anita is like a tornado--there is no procrastinating. When she arrives, we start to work. This is good. I might never have gotten around to painting the kids' rooms if I had to do it alone.*

Yesterday, Anita came over and we started organizing the Boy's room. Rather, she organized while I sat and got lost in reverie about three crib blankets we found in his closet, one from my dear friend Maggie who I used to work with years ago. Another blanket was from my former boss, and another was from our old neighbors in St. Louis, also called the McGuire's. See how hard it is? The time it took me to write those sentences was the time it took Anita to move half of the crap out of the Boy's room into the Lego room. See how much I need help? I'd still be up there crying over baby blankets.

We (I mean Anita) moved everything out of the Boy's room except his bed and dresser.

"Damn," said the Boy when he saw his Lego room filled with the contents of his bedroom. "I didn't know I had this much stuff. We have a 'Where's Waldo?' puzzle? We should do that sometime."

This morning, I was in a jolly mood about painting the upstairs. I had a physical therapy appointment at 8:00, and Anita and I would start painting when I got home. This was the first physical labor I've done since my skiing accident back in December, and I was looking forward to it. After I lost the School Board election last November, I had a list of home improvement projects I wanted to tackle, like getting new linoleum for the kitchen and bathrooms. Painting was on the list, but was shuttled to the back of the line when I tore my ACL. I finally felt good enough that I could handle the work.

I love painting because it a) makes the house looks so much better without back breaking work and b) I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I am done. It makes me wonder why I didn't paint these rooms sooner.

Why was I so grumpy today painting later in the morning? Anita is pleasant--that wasn't it. Now that I am getting back to normal, it makes me realize how limited I previously was. In many ways, I should be happy I am better, but in other ways this was a little bittersweet, heavy on the bitter. This is a measure of what I lost for six months. I could be zen about the past and be thankful for the time I spent incapacitated where I was forced to slow down and relax. I did a lot of sewing, a lot of reading and a lot of riding the stationary bike. I am fortunate my situation was temporary and not permanent.

But really, I am not one of those people who is happy when forced to sit still for a long time. I was reading the endnotes in The Sun, and there was a list of quotations about finding strength in adversity.    I am so cynical, I think about how better off Holocaust, Hurricane Katrina, and tsunami victims would be without that level of major adversity touching their lives. Can they survive after losing their homes and possibly families? Perhaps, but it will be hard, and to tell them bad things builds character is kind of bullshit. Maybe those platitudes were meant for first world people who don't have major problems, like scurvy, starvation and lack of accessible clean water.

Still, we survive traumas large and small. There is a young man at the YMCA who had a non-malignant tumor removed from his brain last week. He had to undergo two hours of neurosurgery. He is very athletic, and will only be out of a commission for a few weeks before he can return to normal activity. He looked at me and said, "It's not like my knee went out," nodding at my leg.

What? I thought. The dude has a brain tumor and he thinks he is better shape than me. That's nuts.

But maybe it wasn't. Maybe for a guy who has a job a the YMCA and lifts weights and does cardio everyday, losing and having reduced mobility for six months (before and after surgery) would be worse than a benign tumor. Maybe half of life is saying things aren't so bad.

So Anita and I painted the Boy's room, and it looked so fresh and new. All of the finger smudges and pencil marks and crayon marks and shoe scuffs were gone. I accomplished something I hadn't been able to do in a while. Sometimes you don't realize how bad something was that you were living with until you get the new and improved version. For the Boy, his room is now a blank canvas, empty, ready to be refilled.

"Damn," said the Boy impressed when he saw his clean, white walls. "Damn."


* "You have kids and a husband, right Lauren? Can't they help?" you are asking yourself. Yes, but Anita is way better. There is no yelling, complaining or insisting there is a better way to work when I work with Anita. (Well, you might have to ask her about that.)

"Hamilton" Addiction and Seeing it First

My son has gotten me a new addiction--worse than Lego!--and I have it worse than him, I think. I have found a new minor obsession: Hamilton.

I am big fan of live theater and musical theater. When I was a kid, I was in the children's choir for a local production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Weber. We did the show back in 1980 before he wrote Cats and Phantom of the Opera. I saw Chorus Line when I was a tween. I loved the dancing and music, but most of the plot was above my head. Jack and I saw Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables when we were college students living in Chicago. Jack got me tickets as a Christmas present when we started dating.

For those three shows, I didn't know much of the music before I saw the show. It was all fresh, new and surprising. Sometimes it goes the other way with a musical. I took my daughter to see Les Miserables one summer when it was touring in Seattle, and she was unimpressed. After listening to the soundtrack on my iPod when we took on car trips, both kids loved it. When we saw it live last year, they were fairly familiar with the music and enjoyed the show. Now she is a diehard fan, playing and studying the music on the piano. We just saw Billy Elliot cold a few weeks ago. Aside from the family drama on our end, the show was good.

I am worried about Hamilton. My son is memorizing the lyrics to his favorite songs "My Shot" and "You'll Be Back." I am listening to the music, reading about it, and watching every interview of Lin-Manuel Miranda ever recorded. (Damn you, YouTube!) I watched videos of him performing at the White House in 2009 and then this year. I've seen the little selfies videos behind the stage. I saw the CBS Sunday Morning video before the show made it to Broadway. I ordered a copy of the book by Ron Chernow that Miranda based the musical on. I am addicted. This is a problem. (I'll spare you the links. If you get addicted to Hamilton, you can blame yourself, not me.)

I am jealous of Stephen Colbert. He saw Hamilton in previews. He said the first fifteen minutes were interesting, and he wondered if they could keep it up for a whole show. In the middle, he was thinking, yes, this works. At the end, he was crying.

I want that. I wish I could have that fresh, unexpected experience of seeing Hamilton unknown like Steven Colbert did. What if I scrape together to get tickets and fly to New York and by then I've heard it all a thousand times and then I am bored or unimpressed or disappointed, thinking the whole thing is overhyped? That would be hell. That is one of the beautiful things about seeing plays when you don't know much about them: they are a surprise, and surprises can be wonderful.

I remember the first time I saw Mamma Mia. Jack and I were in St. Louis and we went with his boss. I was a massive ABBA fan growing up in the 1970s, and I own almost everything they recored on vinyl, plus the CD ABBA Gold, which had a primary slot in the CD player in my car a few years ago. I thought the plot of "Guess who the dad is?" was stupid and a little absurd. And then as it the story unfolded, I loved it. I took my daughter, Claire Adele, to see the movie with Meryl Streep when it came out, and she loved it too. She had a Mamma Mia birthday party when she was ten, and the girls got the karaoke version of the DVD and sang along. One of my favorite memories of her childhood would be Jack and I talking in the front yard, hearing the ten girls singing at the top of their lungs. (In my childhood, we would sing and dance to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana.") Later that summer, Claire Adele and I went to London where we got first row seats to Mamma Mia in the West End. Claire Adele sat mesmerized, glued to her seat, unable to move, she was so in awe. I was so jealous of the performers who got to go on stage every day and sing and dance and party. What a life!

While Claire Adele had the magical feeling of seeing her beloved show live, I still dream of the fresh experience. Jack, the Boy and I saw Come From Away when it was playing in Seattle last winter. Come From Away is a musical about the town of Gander in Newfoundland, Canada when seventy transatlantic flights were diverted there after 9/11. A few friends highly recommended it, so we got tickets, and it was amazing. The show is scheduled to go to Broadway this fall, and I feel personally invested in seeing it do well. I hope Hamilton's star may cast a light on Come From Away, not overpower it and block it out. Hamilton is different with hiphop, while Come From Away has more of a folk music feel, the music that would be played in small towns in faraway places, not in the center of New York. Come From Away isn't about oppression and gaining freedom, it is about how a small town in the middle of nowhere helped thousands of people in the largest crisis in recent times.

The scary thing about seeing something first and loving it is that I hope other people love it as much as I do. The people who saw Hamilton first were lucky.

Garden Therapy vs. Physical Therapy, and Quad Awakening

This weekend was miserable weather-wise, and otherwise. Claire Adele was out of town for half the weekend on a band trip to Canada, and Jack was working Friday night and Saturday on pager call. The Boy was around, which was a mixed bag. At times, he is fun and pleasant. At other times, he is a major grumpus. We saw a bio-pic of Pele, which got panned by reviewers as a boring bio-pic, but we liked it. We also ran some errands, like going to the library to pick up some books and stopping at City People's Mercantile.

There is nothing worse than a long weekend with no plans and mediocre weather. Boredom and her brother, the Black Dog of Depression, started to visit me. It is easy to get a little despondent with feeling trapped by a mediocre knee. It doesn't help that I just started reading Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett, a novel about suicide and depression.

It was rainy and gray Saturday and Sunday--not good for getting outside, not that I could do a whole lot. I guess I can, but as one of Jack's colleagues said about recovering from an ACL repair -- first comes the range of motion, then strength, then confidence. I am stuck between the second and third. I still am working on my strength. Suppose I could go kayaking, canoeing, hiking and biking, but I have to think about my knee so much that I am not sure if I would have fun or spend more time thinking about how to move my knee. Canoeing would be fine--once I got in and out of the canoe. Golf, tennis and standup paddle boarding would be out of the question.

The Boy, as much as he hates his sister, actually missed her. If nothing else, they give each other something to do, even if it is argue and bicker. He'd rather argue with her than talk to us. I helped him download music from my computer to his phone. He plugged his earbuds and was tuned out for half of the weekend. I am not sure what will happen when Claire Adele is gone for four weeks this summer.

I needed to push the Black Dog aside, give it a kick in the ribs. The weather was finally beautiful on Monday, so I got out to do my favorite kind of therapy: working in my garden. Like the cleaning the Boy's lego room, I needed to bend and squat to garden. I didn't plan to work on the whole yard for half the afternoon. It started out small. I saw a weed that needed to be pulled. It is just one weed, I thought, and then two hours later I'm covered in scratches and bug bites and have a large tub of yard waste filled, raspberry bushes pruned of dead branches and all forms of non-invited plant species gone. And that was just the backyard. I thought about starting the front yard, but that would require far more bending and squatting. My neighbor across the street knows I haven't been able to work on the yard. She offered to have some of her friends who do charity gardening come and take a whack at my parking strip. Like sorting Legos, gardening is one of my favorite mindful/mindless activities. It makes me feel productive and like I have accomplished something. Unlike sorting Legos, there is a visible reward for my efforts and I get Vitamin D.

Like many of my physical therapy activities, I feel fine while I am doing them--it is the aftermath that kills me. This morning I woke up and instead of my knee not wanting me to get out of bed, it was my lower back. I slept just fine--thankfully no problems there. I had an 8:00 a.m. physical therapy appointment, and I couldn't move much. I continued to sleep, then got up and took a fifteen minute epsom salt bath for my back as well as two ibuprofens. It seemed to work.

I needed the garden therapy, though, even it messed up my physical therapy. A day in the sun succeeded in chasing away the Black Dog for now.

I went to physical therapy and complained to Evan about my back. I also told him Jack isn't thrilled that I can't walk down stairs properly yet. He booked a place on Mt. Saint Michel in France that has seventy steps to get to the hotel. I have more than two months before we go, but he is very interested that I can easily navigate the steps. I asked Evan about it.

"You are a little behind in that since you don't have enough quad strength yet," he said. " Your knee cap isn't moving fluidly enough to manage the stairs."

Evan seemed to take it easy on me at first, but was still concerned about my left quadricep not firing properly. I practiced going down stairs with their double handrail steps. Each week, we run through new exercises to see what will work on my thigh. Thanks to many years of dance and yoga, I can easily recruit other muscles to do the work of my thigh. The problem with that is then my quad doesn't build the strength it needs to be do things like walk downstairs or run. Today, we hit the jackpot--I hope. He had me hang on a ballet barre, take a deep squat and stand.

"Use your quads, not your hips," he said.

Voila, I felt my quads working! I felt like Hellen Keller when she first understood Ann Sullivan making the "water" sign in her hand. Evan seemed happy. This was what I was supposed to be feeling for all of those other exercises. Now I am supposed to do a million of these exercises everyday. The only other time I have felt my thigh so fully engaged was, ironically, when I ski, which is what got me here in the first place. I thought about telling Evan, Hey, I can ski to get my quad back! Then I imagined his smile, common to those raised in the Midwest when they hear something ridiculous, the smile that is a combination of "Oh you are so cute so say something so absurd" and "WFT -- You are crazy."

And the double bonus: the same exercise that helps my quad also helps my back. The moral of this story is I need both mental health and physical therapy to get where I need to go, even if one kind of therapy temporarily sets me back in the other.

Afraid

My daughter had a track meet today at high school in southeast Seattle. She finished her events early in the meet, and was ready to go home. Instead of waiting to take the school bus back to northeast Seattle, she took the light rail to the university station. She would have to walk about five or six blocks from the high school where the track meet was held to the light rail station. It is spring, so the sun was still up at 5:30 or so when she called. I told her to text me when she got on the train, and then when she arrived at the university station so we could pick her up. A half hour later, I was making tortilla soup, and I started to get a little pit in my stomach wondering where she was. I thought about calling or texting to see if she was okay, but I didn't want her to get mugged for her smart phone. Just then, my phone pinged and I got her text. She was on the train.

Claire Adele rides the bus downtown every other week for a youth group event, so I know she has some street smarts about riding public transportation. In Seattle, middle school kids who live between one and two miles from school are given an Orca card (aka city bus pass) instead of a yellow bus. My sophomore is not the youngest kid in town on public transportation.

That being said, I was at a student run event at the same high school of the track meet last fall. The students were asking the school district and city to give all students bus passes, regardless of where they live. The students, especially girls, were concerned about their safety. Several students had been mugged walking to and from school. In their own words, the kids did not always feel safe in their own neighborhood.

And here I am letting my daughter walk through this unfamiliar of town. She accused me of being racist a few months ago when I would not let her attend a presidential campaign rally by herself in that part of town. In that case, she would have get down there by herself, hang out, and then get home by herself when the rally ended around eleven o'clock at night. (Did I mention she wanted to do this alone?) I told her I not making assumptions about the neighborhood, but rather the information I got was from the students themselves and I got at their school. If students tell me they are afraid, I believe them. Plus, while Seattle Public Schools thinks it is fine for kids to ride the bus to and from school, school hours aren't until 11:00 p.m.

I studied statistics in college. There are 400 kids at that high school and 180 days in the school year, which means there are 144,000 trips to and from school each year by the students. If ten kids a year are mugged, that means there is a 0.0069% chance of being mugged on any day walking to or from school. If ten students are mugged, that means 2.5% of the students would have been victims of a crime. If each of these kids has twenty unique friends, it means that 50% of the kids in the school know someone who got mugged.

The odds of my daughter getting mugged during rush hour in daylight were incredibly small, as she was only taking one trip. I suppose I could get all Nate Silver and fivethirtyeight.com on this and apply a distance from school factor to this (i.e., the longer the walk home, the greater the likelihood of getting mugged, or studying where the mugging occur and figure out how many students walk past that point, etc.), but I won't. The question is when and where to be afraid, and how much it should run your life.

There is a difference between specifically afraid and theoretically afraid. I lived in Chicago in my twenties. I didn't own a car and relied on public transit. I've lived in the big city where bad shit happened all of the time, but the odds of anything specifically happening to me were slim. Was I still theoretically afraid? Yes. All of the time? No. Could I afford a cab late at night when I didn't want to take a bus which decreased my need to be afraid? Yep. Did I pay attention and look under parked cars as I walked past to make sure a lunatic wasn't hiding underneath, ready to grab my ankles and pull me to my death? Yes.

I recently read an article (I wish I could remember where--damn middle age) about women being afraid for their personal safety in general. A counselor (or therapist or social worker) had a group of married couples. She asked everyone when they were last afraid. One man said twenty years earlier when he was in a war. Another said something like when he was in a car accident. The women all had events within the last week, if not that day. "I was afraid walking through a dark parking lot" was a common refrain.

I used to be unafraid when I was in high school, but I lived in a suburb. When I got to college, fear kicked in, not because I got a sixth sense, but because I was followed twice by men who should not have been following me. In both cases, I was with at least one other person, so my "safety in numbers" theory went out the window.

I think my daughter isn't afraid like I was in college, and she wants to go to college in New York City. Her high school has 1,800 kids, and one kid (male) got mugged last year and no kids got mugged this year. In two years, that is about 1.3 million trips to and from school in two years. The odds of getting mugged at her school are 1.3 million to one over two years.

I am not sure if I am glad my daughter isn't afraid, or if I wish she were. There is a big gap between being intrepid and being chicken shit. She says strange people have approached her on the street when she goes downtown for her youth groups meetings. She tosses them a scowl, and they back off. She has a great scowl, and I can see it being effective. Where is the line, though, where women can feel just as safe as men going about and about in strange places, or even in their own neighborhood?

Jury Duty

A few weeks ago, I got a phone call from a random cell phone number with a (206) area code. I typically answer these calls in case they are my kids calling from a friend's cell phone or something like that. I was less than a month out from my surgery, when the man called and said he was a deputy marshall and there were two changes against me for missing jury duty. One of the charges was for missing jury duty, and the other was for contempt of court. I asked the man how I was notified that I was on jury duty, and he said I should have gotten a letter in the mail. I was kind of freaked out because before my surgery I was super busy and might have missed the letter. After my surgery, I was completely out of it and might have missed it.

"It is possible I missed this," I said. "I just had surgery and might not have seen the letter. What do I need to do about this?"

"You can come down to the eighth floor of the courthouse and..." the man said.

I was beginning to think this was crazy.

"What?" I said. "Hold on. I just had surgery and you want me to come downtown?"

"Well ma'am..."

"I am going to call the courthouse and find out what the real plan is," I said.

"You will not be able to contact the right people if you call the courthouse," he said. By now I was guessing this was scam. He kept giving me his cell phone as the number to call to find out the plan.

"If this is legitimate, then I will be talking to you in ten minutes," I said and hung up.

I contacted the U.S. District Court, and they had no record that I was scheduled for jury duty.

Yesterday, I got a letter in the mail for jury duty. My daughter brought in the mail and had read the outside of the envelope which had in big, bold print "JURY DUTY SUMMONS" written on the outside.

"Fuck," I said. (My daughter later reported that I said the f-word about fifty times. I think it was closer to three.) "Maybe I can get out of it because of my knee."

"Jury duty is an important responsibility," Claire Adele said. "You should do it. I had to write an essay for my social studies class on why this is so important."

I think I dropped another f-bomb. I've never done jury duty before. I was called when I lived in Chicago, but got out of it because we moved to St. Louis. My mom has been a juror, and was on some large and long cases, including a murder trial. She was on a federal grand jury for a financial scandal that lasted months. I used to joke that she was a professional juror.

"If you can't get out of it, you should get into it!" Claire Adele said in a super perky voice. When did my daughter become such a Pollyanna? "I learned this at the YMCA. This is what the counselors say to kids who don't want to participate in activity. I am going to be using this a lot this summer." She is going to be a CIT, Counselor in Training, this year and now she is using the techniques she would use on an obstinate ten year olds on me. Hopefully, my daughter won't apply this cheerful aphorism to situations like date rape and whatnot.

I am going to talk to Evan, my physical therapist, to see if I can use my temporary disability to get out of jury duty. While I could do the work of a juror, it would be a big problem if I got on a case where I had to be sequestered and didn't have access to exercise equipment to do my physical therapy.

Could this be the only silver lining to my accident? Getting out of jury duty? Or might this not be enough to get me out of it? Oy.

29 and the Plum

Bike Time: 13 minutes

Distance: meh

I have a plum inside my knee cap. If my knee were a jelly doughnut, instead of having jelly inside, mine has a plum. (I am assuming this plum is some form of swelling and excess fluid. Plum sounds better to me.) When I bend my knee/jelly doughnut, it feels like the plum is going to explode. I really don't want it to explode. It doesn't hurt, as plums can't feel pain. It does cause the rest of my knee/jelly doughnut some discomfort. The plum has been there for about five days. I am kind of starting to hate it. It hangs out at the flexion point of about 30 degrees* which means it pops up when I bend my leg to walk. Evan, my physical therapist, is trying to get me to correct my gait so I walk like a normal person and not like a peg-legged pirate. The plum is blocking my knee from bending which in turn prevents me from having a normal gait. I am afraid if I bend my knee too much, plum sauce will explode all over the gym. I imagine taking a kitchen towel and cleaning it up, as if it were a sweet sauce instead of the inside of my knee.

Yesterday when I was riding the stationary bike (not to be confused with "biking" which means ride a bike on a real road outside), my knee popped and I thought the plum had defeated my jelly doughnut, and broke free from its oppression. I kind of freaked out and thought "This can't be good." I feared the plum might have taken out the screws that were holding my new ACL in place.

I texted Jack who was out skiing with the kids. He replied if I pulled out the screws, I'd be in pain. He said if I did tear something, I'd like be unstable. So far, none of that has happened. Riding a stationary bike is supposed to be safe and beneficial. Moving my knee is theoretically supposed to shrink the plum to perhaps the size of a grape or get rid of it all together. But I am always aware of the freak accident and the things that happen outside of the norm.

Looking at the bleak side, it would be incredibly depressing to mess up my knee four weeks after the surgery. Recovering from an ACL repair is a long slog. Do I want to be left home alone every weekend in the winter for the next five years while Jack and the kids ski? I want my knee fixed not so much because I want to ski; rather, I don't want to be left home alone because I am an invalid. I'd like to have the chance to join them. I have one friend who has had two ACL repairs that were almost two decades apart. She was glad enough she had the first one fixed to go through it again to have the second one fixed. She completely knew what she was getting into with the second one. Not many people (thank god!) would have that experience. Nevertheless, I just want to move forward in all of this, not backwards.

* I am making a wild guess here.

+ + + + 

Twenty-nine is now my least favorite number. I used to not think much of twenty-nine before, it was just sort of there--nothing special, noting bad. Charlie, my kindergarten friend, used to ask our teacher, Mrs. Newkirk, how old she was.

"Twenty-nine and holding," she'd say. That was my first experience with twenty-nine. It is a good age, perhaps the perfect age.

Now I hate it. I have to do three reps of thirty legs lifts several times a day as part of my physical therapy. I can do an infinite number of leg lifts when I don't count. "But how do you know how many you can do if you don't count?" you ask. Trust me--I know. I was once doing leg lifts while watching The Bletchley Circle and I did legs lifts for ten minutes. If it takes three seconds per leg lift, that is about two hundred leg lifts. Even if I were to slack off and take five seconds a leg lift, that would be 120 leg lifts.

The problem is when I get to twenty-nine. There is something psychologically awful about it, and my leg gets tired thinking about it. It knows it is close to the end of the line, but not quite. Please stop, my leg says. I do one more, and rest for about ten seconds and start on my second rep. When I start with "one," my leg is perfectly happy when twelve seconds prior it was having a cow. Seriously leg? Are you a toddler or a dog that can so easily be tricked? What's up?

I remember when the Boy was just over a year old. He was complaining he wanted two cookies when he already had one. Jack and I were trying to explain to him that he could only have one when Claire Adele came up, took the cookie out of his hand, broke it in two, and gave it back to him. Problem solved. He toddled happily away. Jack and I were dumbfounded.

"He wanted one for each hand," Claire Adele, then four years old, said.

My leg is like the Boy when he was one. The same cookie broken in half made him happier than when it was whole. Using the same bad logic, the twenty-ninth leg lift doesn't bother my left leg when she don't know it is the twenty-ninth leg lift. Logic fails when emotions are involved.

I told Claire Adele about my problem and how I dislike twenty-nine.

"Trying counting backwards," she said. "Or in French. When I have to keep track something I don't like, I count in Japanese."

Of course. I should have asked her first.

Staying Home, PNB and Member of the Club, Part 2

Since my injury and the subsequent surgery, I haven't been getting out much. Here are things I've missed recently due to my injury:

• The Washington State Democratic Caucus. Glad I missed this one. Jack stood in line for two hours before he got in the middle school where the caucus was held. My left knee would have been furious. She might have gotten up and left after putting up with that abuse.
• Political Rally with Claire Adele. My daughter wanted to attend a political rally this week with one of the Presidential candidates. I didn't want to go (see "Annoying Knee") and Jack was on call. The rally was on the other side of town on a school night. She could have taken the light rail down there, but I didn't want her trying to take the train back home at 10:00 at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The trade off was listening to her mope half the night. She was asleep before the main speaker took the stage. Clare Adele would not have made it inside the venue anyway. I had a friend who got there four hours ahead of time and didn't get in.
• The Cool Jazz Hot Java concert at the Paramount Theatre. Jack and the Boy went. I didn't want to sit still that long.
• Rocket Launches. The Boy is in Rocketry Club, and I've missed all of the launches so far. One of the members of my PT team recommended not hanging out in a muddy field for hours. 

I did make it to my son's band concert this week. Yay! I ran into a bunch of friends. It was good to get out and be social. One friend asked she could come over. Seriously. Asking a borderline shut-in if she'd like company is a no-brainer. Right now, my best friend is my dog, bless his little heart. (No offense to my human friends.) I wonder if I'd get out more if I didn't have a dog. Would I just be so fed up with hanging out alone that I'd get out? Maybe.

Jack and I got out again last night. We went to the Pacific Northwest Ballet. We had been to the dress rehearsal last week. I am not that much of a shut-in, but thank god for ballet otherwise I might not have an excuse to leave the house ever. I wore my brace and crutch as my insurance policy against the crowds. Crowds actually have a dance and rhythm all of their own. You don't notice it until you can't play along with everyone else, and you stand out. My daughter's high school newspaper had an article about this phenomena. They did an experiment where girls walked down the hall and did not change their trajectory. Usually, girls move out of the way of boys passing in the halls. Boys barrel down the halls like they own the place. No one sees the dance until they tried to change it. Wearing a brace and crutch changes the dance. Not being able to move about freely also changes the dance.

Jack and I got there early so we got a glass of wine and sat down. Three women and a guy were sitting next to us, and we could hear their conversation. The three women were friends from a dance class. They looked at me with my brace and crutch. It was hard not to notice. They sort of looked at my like I was some scary thing they wanted to ward away, as if knee injuries were contagious. I heard them talk about their knees aching, arthritis, and not wanting surgery. One of the women said her daughter had surgery, but we never found out what kind. The other women wouldn't let her finish her story. I am sure they didn't want to hear about torn ACLs, bad ankles, or other maladies.

I settled into the show. Before it started, I took off my brace so I could stretch my leg more. I loved "Little mortal jump" by Alejandro Cerrudo. He is a choreographer from Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. My friend Cork used to work at Hubbard Street, and we used to get tickets to their shows. Seeing this reminded me of my old life back in Chicago.

As I was watching last night, I began to take an inventory of steps I could or could not do, based on my current condition, not based on how well I could do them normally.

• Stand on my right leg with my left leg in the air: Sure.
• Walk across the stage: More or less, as long they didn't want me there by any specific time
• Jog: Nope
• Turn: Nope
• Leap: Nope
• Walk in slow motion: Sure.
• Jump off the stage into the orchestra pit: Hell no.

Soon enough, I started watching James Moore and forgot about my inventory. Moore is the best contemporary dancer at PNB. He makes it look so effortless, as if he doesn't have to concentrate or strain as he moves. He is like Baryshnikov where I was too busy watching him and not anyone else on the stage. Other dancers look as if they are trying to remember an upcoming sequence or recall an instruction from the director. Dancing looks as if it just flows out of James, no effort required. You can tell he is working hard, though, because he sweats like a pig, bless his heart. To be clear, James does not resemble a pig in any other way. PNB went to New York in 2013 and The New York Times called Moore "hunky." The official paper of record for the U.S. said James Moore is hot. I cannot argue.

At the intermission, Jack and I headed to the lobby, me without my brace. I was going to brave the crowd with just a crutch. People looked at me and whisper "surgery," "arthritis," and "knee pain," trying to avoid my glance. I was mildly paranoid, thinking I was freaking everyone here out.

When we got to the lobby, I saw I woman with two crutches, a leg brace and a bandage around her knee. She was standing by herself. I went up and said hi.

"You only have one crutch!" she said.

"I tore my ACL," I said.

"Me too!" she said. Another member of the club.

"I am four weeks out of my surgery," I said. I wasn't sure I wanted to tell her. What if she were six weeks out? Would I make her feel bad? There is nothing worse than competitive recovery.

"I had my surgery Tuesday," she said. "I am not supposed to be here."

Wow. She was getting out and about, far more than I was. I was impressed.

"Heal well!" she said. "Heal well!" She tried to give me a fist bump, but I had to hobble close enough to her. She was looking a little bleary and wobbled a bit when I realized she was probably still on the oxycodone. But at least she was out. On second thought, maybe the oxycodone is what helped her get out. Not that I want to go back on the oxy, but maybe I would if it improved my social life.