Two posts in a week, also titled, "I'm on a roll!"

I'm pretty sure that every reader of this blog, or at least most readers of this blog, are now "in real life" friends, too. Which is pretty amazing, if you think about it. Some of you I have actually met and spent time with in person; others, so far, I've just had the pleasure of meeting by phone and/or email. It shouldn't be any different than meeting people in life, I guess--you randomly stumble upon many, many people, and the ones who are kindred spirits tend to stick around so you can get to know each other better and help each other through life. But it seems just a little more miraculous for it to happen here, on a humble little blog.

Anyway, I'm feeling appreciative and wanted to say thank you for your friendship!

(The photo is one I took through a window at the Adachi Museum in Yasugi, Japan.)

Gosh, does this mean my blog is abandoned?

I mean, I don't think I have ever gone a full two months without posting. This has been partly caused by my time spent on Facebook, and mainly caused by my scrambling to work, work, work, in the weeks before and after a two-week vacation that is one of the best I have ever experienced.

I have been thinking about what to do with the blog, and haven't decided yet. I miss the discipline of writing here, and the introspection that doesn't fit in a Facebook status update. Just writing this little non-post of a post feels good to me, so perhaps I am not finished. I think I am a little embarrassed and a lot frustrated that, despite several years of writing about this "new life" I had in view, I have made so little progress toward making it happen. Sure, I reached out for a change this summer, but as soon as those efforts faltered, I crept back into my protective shell. The phrase "all talk, no action" comes readily to mind.

I don't want to be writing here three years from now about my yearning for change--I want to be living that new life! While the first step is identifying the problem, I think the only way to work through this is to draw up concrete steps to be taken to move forward. Funny that I would use the word "concrete"--maybe the better word is "definite" or "measurable."

Anyway, I'm jumping back on this change horse and will be back in just a bit to jot down my roadmap.

Tears on a Plane

Written yesterday evening:

This is probably not the time to make a serious life decision.

I am on my way home from Atlanta, having spent another few intense hours in conversation with a man, now my friend, whom I briefly dated twenty-one years ago and with whom I became reacquainted at a college event last fall. Among other things, we spoke of life dreams, and my uncertainty about whether I will or should have a child of my own. This still-strikingly handsome man from my past asked the kinds of questions that got me talking about that, but I couldn’t tell what he thought about my answers.

We are not romantically involved, he and I, nor do I expect we will be. He is the kind of man who deserves a wife of the "genuine trophy" (inside and out) variety. But I care about what he thinks.

I am now sitting on the aisle on this American Airlines flight. Across the aisle, one row up, sits a middle-school aged girl with very blonde long hair. On my side of the aisle, one row up from her, sits a little boy, probably around two years old (I am not good at judging these things). A few minutes ago, the boy extended his arm toward the girl, with his small white sock with blue stripes covering his hand like a sock puppet. She reached out and grasped his outstretched, sock-covered fingers, and they gently see-sawed back and forth for a few moments. They appear to be strangers.

Watching this, I realized with as much certainty as I have ever had regarding anything, that I really want to have a son of my own. That is when I started to cry.

Back to the drawing board . . .

I would hate to leave you with the impression that I have life sewn up in every area other than professionally, as that certainly is not the case! I have spent a lot of time this weekend thinking about what would bring me peace, if not total fulfillment, and two prime areas for work are my physical health and the health of my home. I'm curious about how much happier I could be at work if I was satisfied with other areas of my life.

Thoughts about my physicality came to the forefront in the last week, when I had a chance virtual encounter with a gorgeous 23-year old man. (Purely fun, not sexual, you must believe me--we traded photos of our environments on Photoswap, an iPhone app, and then found ourselves exchanging pics of handwritten notes, then texts, then phone calls). It supremely enjoyable and innocent and sleep-depriving all at once, given that he is a bartender working a schedule that is the precise opposite of what mine is (or should be). My feelings were mixed, however. I was pleasantly surprised at my ability to reach back to youthful playfulness while keeping him engaged as well. At the same time, I was brutally honest with myself regarding the fact that my physique simply is not that that a beautifully fit 23-year old man will find attractive. Anyway . . . apart from the delusion that a 23-year-old could be mine (ha ha), I know that I will be able to live more healthfully and happily and energetically if I shed these excess pounds and resume life as a fit person. I was inspired by my discovery of this woman's blog--check out these photos of her progress! Besides feeling inspired, I actually attended a yoga class today for the first time in forever, which was a great kick-off to making daily physical activity a habit.

The other area I will be working on is my physical environment at home. It is no secret that my house has needed a number of repairs for a while--porch leak repair, kitchen leak repair, etc. But during a recent spate of real estate browsing, I realized that while I love the potential in the spaciousness, porch and yard of my house, I want a simpler, more modern look. And today I realized that I can get that look with relatively simple changes--updated windows, dark stain on the light hardwood floors, replacing all the multi-paned French doors with more simple, modern doors, etc. I'm excited about these changes and can't wait for the upcoming meeting with my architect.

Here are some of my ideas:

Maybe this for the front door and something like this for the French doors out to the porch and (see below) patio off the dining room.

The hardwoods downstairs need refinishing in some places and I fear they are too worn down to refinish yet again. I have been admiring ebony-polished hardwoods and am thinking of changing this:



to darker floors, like this (yes, I see the comments about maintenance difficulties) or this.

Instead of these windows to the back yard from my dining room, I would like to install glass doors that open up to a newly designed stone patio with a pergola above it:



Just some beginning thoughts . . . I like the idea of clean lines that maintain the current charm of the house while updating it a bit, too.

Disappointment and Resolve

This week, I experienced a profound disappointment. I won't go into the details here, but suffice it to say that I reached for a professional brass ring and missed. Given my lack of religious belief, it is tough to convince myself that this was "meant to be" or is part of some "greater plan." If there is a bright side, it is that I decided I wanted something and took a risk to try to obtain it, giving it my all. You can't expect to win them all, and at least now I won't have to ask myself "what if."

But I am left at a crossroads, trying to decide whether to go after what I wanted in a different way. What I do know is that I am unhappy with the status quo and need to continue to think seriously about what it will take to find contentment.

What if . . .

I was just thinking today about the fact that less than a year ago, it was possible that Sarah Palin could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. I shivered, then felt grateful and realized perhaps there is a God.

I can't sleep, so I may as well post.

As you can imagine, it is a special event in the career of a lawyer when that lawyer brings in her first client. I remember mine: It was 1996, and I was flying from Dallas home to Houston after having attended a seminar, and I was exhausted. Someone on the Southwest flight bought drinks for everyone with his drink coupons, and I wondered aloud if he had just won a big case. Before my seatmate could guess otherwise, I started laughing aloud at myself for assuming he was a lawyer and that his celebration was law-related . . . he could have just become a father, or just won a lottery or just have been having a good day. My seatmate laughed and we began talking in the way that people do on a short Southwest flight home on a Friday evening. As it turned out, she was the president of her own company and had just flown to Dallas to get advice on an employment law issue, but didn't really click with the lawyer she had traveled to see.

I represented her in that matter and a number of others. When the day ultimately came that her business took a turn for the worse, I was the person she called at midnight at my home in Dallas, where I had moved, to talk through the hard decisions together.

She was a role model for me, my first client. She was in her 40's and was smart and brave and determined to follow her vision to do the work she enjoyed and make a living at it. I learned as much, if not more, from her as she learned from me.

We ultimately lost touch with each other, my client and I. Her business shut down and she did not need my advice, and then my father died and I basically checked out of the world for a few years. I have thought of her from time to time and wondered how she was doing, but no longer had a good phone number or email for her and wasn't able to find good contact information for her. I regretted having fallen out of touch.

So you can imagine my delight when I came home one night this week to find I had a voice mail from my client. The next day, we had a wonderful time catching up on our personal and professional lives for the last 10+ years, and I'm helping her with a new matter. Besides being happy to catch up with an old friend, it was immensely flattering to me that my client was determined to find me because it is my advice that she trusts.

Anyway, a cool thing.

Letting Go of the Papers

I have embarked upon a major simplification effort, one in which the first step is tackling and purging the physical clutter that surrounds me at work and at home. To assist in my efforts, I have been reading organization books for tips. I was struck by the fact that nearly every source I have read advises one to throw out any object that carries negative emotions or memories.

This has been really hard for me. There are a number of documents I have held onto that I thought I needed for my own protection. They serve as documentation of certain things from the past. Every time I run across them, they make me feel angry and hurt and victimized all over again, but I hold onto them out of fear regarding what might happen if I need them one day and don't have them. Today I spent a few hours de-cluttering my office, and I threw away a garbage-can full of papers. Among the papers were some notes of mine that were very emotionally charged, and I let them go without regret. I do worry a little that I will need them one day. But I was able to throw them away today because in the calculus of my mental health, I now believe the price of hanging onto those documents exceeds the price I may pay for letting them go.

Short Sightedness and Hind Sightedness

The other day, I stopped in a Subway sandwich shop to buy dinner. I rarely go to Subway, but was following a whim and trying to eat healthfully. Apparently, a man had been hanging around outside the shop that day, asking people to buy him a sandwich. He was tall and extremely thin, so much so that it seemed obvious he was in need of a meal. I noticed the man when I walked up to the store, but did not know he had been requesting sandwiches, as he did not ask me for one or approach anyone while I was nearby.

While I was at the counter ordering, the man came in with a 20-something guy who waited near the register for the man to order a meal. The man wasn't bothering anyone, just standing in line to place his order. But the girls behind the counter apparently believed I was buying a meal for him and started to warn me. Then the manager walked up to the man and, in front of everyone else in the store, loudly warned him not to demand sandwiches from his customers. The man tried to explain that the guy near the register was buying him a sandwich, but the manager was intent on berating him.

I was so upset with how the manager had publicly embarrassed the man that I explained I did not wish to patronize the place if that is how people are treated there and walked out. Having had the chance now to think about this more, I really wish I had done something more significant to help the man, who as I drive away was tucking into his meal outside. In retrospect, I should have purchased a gift card to another restaurant that he could have used whenever he liked without being publicly humiliated.

Starting Over, Yet Again

I have been thinking a lot about the effect of geography on one's life. Mostly, whether it is possible to get a "do over" in life by changing location. It seems as if nearly everyone I know has lived in the same general geographic area his/her entire life, so I have few examples.

There actually is only one that I can really bring to mind. A friend of mine from college moved from Austin to a random Midwestern city years ago, and many of us, her included, wondered what she was thinking, especially given that she had lived in the South her entire life. But that city was like a chrysalis for my friend. She spent a long winter doing a lot of work fixing up an old house and in her new environment was able to change old habits, with the result being major weight loss she has maintained to this day. My friend came into her own in that city, with the weight change being merely a physical manifestation of other changes.

But she was younger than I am when she made that move; it has probably been 10 years now, and she is just a year older than me. Is 39 and counting too old for a dog who wants to learn new tricks?

Patterns

I'm back from the dead, or at least the holding pattern. I have been thinking a lot about patterns lately. Two patterns in particular stand out for me: First, I tend to work for the same boss over and over and over again, not in a good way. Second, when thinking about making significant decisions in my life (schools, jobs, relationships), I have acted timidly, leaning toward what is most accomplished most easily or with the least risk, rather than what I want the most.

Both of these things are about to change imminently.

Oh, how time flies!

For those of you who have been so kind as to take a few moments to read my blog from time to time, I apologize for being absent without explanation. There are a variety of reasons for my not posting, one of which is the amount of time spent in my new romance with Facebook. I have really, really loved finding out what happened to so many people I haven't seen for a really long time. With me moving away from home after high school it has been particularly nice getting back in touch with childhood friends I had completely lost touch with so many years ago. Facebook doesn't replace this blog for me, though, as it is almost exactly the flip side of the blog--while Facebook is totally public and encompasses a wide array of friends, this blog is totally anonymous and allows me to dig a little deeper without fear of offending.

The other thing is that I have been thinking a lot about the "life issues" I have ruminated about here for years, but had nothing new to write about that and was worried you might poke your eyes out with sticks if I wrote about my career angst yet again. The only new twist in my mental wrestling match is that I was considering whether I want to have a child, but I realized that I simply have no business taking charge of a child's life when I am so clueless about my own. That doesn't mean that it won't happen--just that it can't happen right now.

So, I thought I would share with you some of the things I've been up to while I've been gone. I'm trying to figure out a more efficient way to post photos here now that I've switched to a Mac and Aperture, so stay tuned! And please catch me up on what you've been doing--I've missed you!

Today, it finally sunk in

that I am in love with someone who does not love me. I have known this for a while, but did not acknowledge it until now. I need to change the way I think about things and reach out for new experiences, on my own. Things happen for a reason, and I'm not going to permit myself to feel sad about this for very long. I needed to write it here to make it real and remind myself of this promise.

Long time no post . . .

Hello, all,

Happy New Year! As you know, I have been wishing for change for a while, but not doing a lot about it. I realized that little daily things are what bring about change, not some lightning bolt from above. So this will be the year of doing things differently, and doing new things.

Here are some of the new things I've done so far:

(1) Visited a new country--Guatemala, from 12/31 to 1/8
(2) Visited Jimmy's Food Store, a wonderful neighborhood treasure with delicious Italian sandwiches--1/10

I will continue to update the list.

What will you do this year?

Lisa

Yesterday

Yesterday was December 15th, and I realized this morning that this marked the tenth anniversary of my father's death. This is the first time in ten years that I did not remember the anniversary on the anniversary. I teared up while thinking about that, and thinking about my Dad.

Certain moments in life are burned precisely into my memory, and this is one of them. I was puttering around the little bungalow house I rented when I first moved to Dallas, finishing up my Christmas cards and chatting on the phone with a friend of mine from law school. My call waiting beeped and after clicking over, I learned it was my brother. I told my friend he sounded upset and that I needed to go, then curled up on my dark green-cushioned pappasan chair to talk with him. And then my brother told me that my Dad had not been heard from in a few days, and had missed an appointment with a friend, and that they had found him dead in his house. I cried, out of shock and grief and regret and horror, at what my little brother had just encountered.

I was 29 years old and ill-equipped to deal with such a loss, though I realize more mature people than me have done so, and far more gracefully. That night, my friend who was my assistant at the firm spent the night on my couch so I would not be alone. The next six months are literally a fog in my memory, a time in which I couldn't see more than a few inches into the future and had a hard time even identifying the faces around me. I remember feeling like I was walking around with my tender inner self exposed for all the world to see.

The ten years since that day have included some of the other lowest times of my life. There was the fire at that house that nearly took Kip's life and destroyed many of the items I had just brought back after emptying my father's home. There were difficult work situations that remain undiscussed even with the closest of my friends. My little brother will not speak to me, for reasons I do not understand. I have ended certain friendships abruptly when they caused the least bit of angst. And, easiest to see, is the sixty pounds of weight gain which I wear today like a billboard, a billboard that announces that I don't think much of myself, and that you shouldn't think much of me, either.

I am my father's daughter. After his death, I found tucked in a book, written in his distinctive handwriting, a list of what he called "Points - negative - need to work on." Every item on the list is one I could have written about myself. At the top of that list is "temper", which is appropriate because I have spent the last ten years flashing at anyone unlucky enough to cross my path the anger and resentment of a little girl who lost her daddy and is determined to make someone pay for that loss.

Today, I choose to put that anger and resentment aside. Our time here is finite--my friend F's recent unexpected death served as yet another vivid reminder of that fact. While some who know me might say that I am already a person who seizes life because I freely indulge my interest in travel, photography, baseball and the like, I know I haven't been brave when it comes to the important things. I know I have permitted myself to wallow in grief and anger and that it has held me back, from small things like the infectious laughter for which I was once known to big things like the mark I want to leave in the world, and whether I want to be a parent. That changes today, and I'm writing about it here to hold myself accountable for living the kind of life my father wanted for me, and that I want for me.

A favorite photo of my Dad:

I give thanks.

I am thankful to be alive, with the mental, physical and other means to make choices for myself.

I am thankful for loved ones.



I am thankful for the opportunity to travel and see beautiful sights and interesting people.



I am thankful for all of you, my internet friends.

Wishing you a Thanksgiving filled with joy, gratitude and, of course, hope.

The effect we have on those we meet . . .

I was reminded today, yet again, of how powerful an effect we can have on those we meet, no matter how briefly. On Friday night, I ran through the Oklahoma City "International" Airport, desperate to catch the last flight back to Dallas. Arriving at my gate just in time for the scheduled flight, but early for the now-delayed flight, I paused to catch my breath. A full-blown asthma attack ensued and a young woman kindly offered me a cough drop, which did help me feel better, as well as less noisy.

The young woman's kindness reminded me of someone I met at that very gate a few years back, also on a busy Friday night at the airport. My flight was seriously delayed that night, and I found myself seated in the gate area near a guy about my age, with yellow hair, a twinkle in his eye and some of the most noticeable Southwestern jewelry I have ever seen on a man. His name was "F" and he was a motivational speaker from rural New Mexico. Before our plane took off, I learned about his family ranch and the gnomes he used to torment his mother and how excited he was about the house he was buying in the big city of Albuquerque. We exchanged contact information and I made a note to myself to look F up the next time I was in New Mexico, because his enthusiasm for life was so contagious that I wanted to be exposed to it again. (This was the same trip to Oklahoma City in which I had the epiphany in which I realized how unhappy I was with my life and in which I vowed to work toward changes that would bring the peace and satisfaction I sought.)

F and I exchanged a few emails afterward, and from time to time I would think of him and wonder what new project he was tackling, drawing upon what I remembered of his passion for life to try to ignite my own. When a friend convinced me to join Facebook this year, I was pleased to find not only that Frank was on Facebook, but that he had moved to Dallas. We became Facebook "friends" and I meant to ask him to coffee one day, but had not yet taken the time to do that.

Tonight, I logged onto Facebook and was shocked to see a link to a photo captioned, "R.I.P., F", apparently posted by one of his friends. I have now pieced together that F and his dear friend M, a married mother of two young children, had gone back to Albuquerque to finish moving the last of Frank's things to Dallas. They both died on Friday from carbon monoxide poisoning due to a malfunctioning heater in the house where they stayed. The number and nature of the posts left this weekend on F's Facebook page by the many loved ones and friends he leaves behind attest to the accuracy of my assessment that he was an incredibly special person.

Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while may know or have guessed that I am not a very religious person. Writing through these unexpected tears tonight, I have to say it is just this type of completely senseless event that makes me ever more sure that there certainly cannot be any sort of divine intervention in the world, because a world without that fine person in it is not nearly the world it was before. I don't understand this, not one bit. I did not know F well at all, but knowing that he was out there, knowing that his kind of spirit was swirling around not very far away, meant something to me. I'm not doing a good job of explaining it here, but trying to explain it helps just a little.

What I wanted to say when I began writing is that the effect F had on me reminded me of how powerful an effect we can have on the people we meet. I do not fool myself into thinking I will have a lasting effect on any of the great institutions that change people's lives, as it does not appear that a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court or anything like it is in the cards for me. But I want to live my life in such a way as to have a positive, rather than negative, effect on the days of those I meet.

Here is a younger F, with his friend M:

The kindness of strangers . . .

Last weekend, I went to my college homecoming. As so often happens, a trip I wasn't sure I wanted to make turned out to be really wonderful. Here's one thing that happened:

A friend and I stopped by the campus bookstore, where I found a backpack I really loved. I wasn't sure it would fit my laptop, and inquired about the return policy. The shopkeeper said if he rung up the purchase, I would only be able to get store credit if I returned the backpack. So he suggested an alternative: that I take the pack without paying for it, and either return it or pay for it the next day. Mind you, this man had never met me before. I insisted that he take my business card so he would have a record of who took the pack. It actually fit my laptop and camera perfectly and returned the next day to pay for it.

I was really touched by the level of trust displayed by this storekeeper. My college is in a fairly small town, but not that small. The faith the storekeeper showed was simple and sweet and beautiful.

Tonight.

As a little girl, I loved the night before Christmas almost more than Christmas Day. I would sneak out to the living room, curl up under the glow of the twinkling lights on our tree, inhale the piney scent and dream of what the next day would bring. On Christmas Eve, if felt as if all was right in the world, or was about to be.

Tonight feels like the best Christmas Eve I have experienced in my life. I have supported Barack Obama for more than a year now, and he has shared with me the privilege of being a part of his historic campaign for the Presidency. Because of Senator Obama, I saw the glint in the eye of a New Hampshire primary voter who loved talking with a Texan about the issues that matter to him. Because of Senator Obama, I experienced the satisfaction of recruiting more than a hundred precinct captains in Dallas, Texas--that (former) bastion of Republicanism. Because of Senator Obama, I have met some of the most talented and dedicated and passionate volunteers I have seen, or may ever see, in my lifetime.

Because of Senator Obama, I had tears in my eyes last summer while watching little African-American boys splash in a pool on a hot Virginia day. Why the tears? I was dreaming of the day soon to come when they will see a man in the White House who looks just like them, and know that they, too, could be there one day.

Our work is not yet finished. But please pause tonight to savor this. This work has been valuable. We are about to taste the fruits of it. But hasn't the journey been splendid as well?

To tomorrow . . . and hope . . . and change . . . and to us all.



And now, on November 4, 2008, here's to President-Elect Obama: nicely done, sir.

Hertz has the biggest cojones ever!

I reserved a mid-size car to pick up in Wisconsin and return tomorrow to Minneapolis. So I was surprised when they told me at the rental counter that I would instead be driving a gas-guzzling jeep SUV for hundreds of miles. When I asked why, the very honest counter guy said, "Because we need to get this Jeep to Minneapolis." I asked if Hertz would be buying the additional gas I would burn in exchange for me doing this favor for the company, and he looked at me as if I was crazy and changed his story to this being the only car they had. Seeing ten sets of keys hung up on the wall behind him, I asked for a manager and with head-spinning speed, found myself with a different car to drive without even having to speak to the manager.

The nerve!

UPDATE: Welcome to the 10 Hertz Corporation visitors from Oklahoma City who have reviewed this blog posting without comment or apology (yes, I have a Site Meter and am capable of reading it)! If you are wondering how the rental was, please see above. Also, the car I was provided was filthy, with mud stains and dirt all over the driver's side carpet and the inside of the driver's side door. Because I was already late after having to haggle to get the car I had reserved, and because I only discovered this after lugging all my stuff out to the parking lot, I just took the car as it was. But given the premium a person pays to rent from Hertz, I believe the cars should be pristine and the service impeccable. I got neither.