Sugar Cubes

When I lived in Gabon, the only way to get refined, white sugar was in the form of cubes. Let me restate that: the only practical way to get refined, white sugar was in cubes. I'm sure some of the swanky expat stores in the capital sold granulated sugar by the bag, but I shudder to think what it would have cost. I preferred to spend my luxury money on cheese and just crush up sugar cubes when I needed them for occasional baking. Besides, the sugar cubes were made locally, so it was a boost to the Gabonese economy to buy them. I'm a giver.

The kids and I hosted some friends for dinner tonight.* The friends brought the fixings for a before-dinner cocktail of a sugar cube soaked in bitters topped with champagne and a twist of lemon. (This must have a name, I just don't know it.) Seeing the box of sugar cubes made me think of Gabon, and how I would get these cravings for American dessert—American food of all kinds, but specifically dessert as at the time I had a raging sweet tooth—and how one of the many toils of baking there was crushing up those sugar cubes. I knew exactly how many made a cup, was it 48? Seems like to many. Maybe it was 36? I can't remember and it doesn't matter now. The cubes came in a cheap blue box, gritty and grainy. The sugar was coarsely ground and the cubes were fairly loosely held together; the Gabonese would cram an impossible amount of them into a single cup of Nescafé, often topped with an equally impossible amount of sweetened condensed milk. Forget the caffeine: the Gabonese were on a sugar high in the morning.

It was sunny today, and warm. Summer is ever so slowly on its way. I can't wait for the heat. I complained bitterly about the heat in Gabon, but ever since I've been back, I can't shut up about the cold and how it bothers me. This damp, dreary, chilly and totally typical Oregon spring has taken the wind out of my sails. When I lived in Gabon, I'd reach for a sweatshirt when the temps dropped to 80°F or below. I'm not quite that cold-adverse now, but I'm ready to feel the sun on my face, to sleep in something other than fleece, to not always need a scarf of some kind around my neck.

I'm just as happy, though, not to have to crush the sugar cubes anymore.

*As an aside, I'm quite proud of my Memorial Day non-BBQ: we had three kinds of homemade cheese + crackers and bread for an appetizer (cubed white cheese with basil and red pepper flakes paired with plain water crackers, soft herb cheese paired with roasted garlic baguette, and cubed white cheese with honey and cinnamon paired with sweet wheat biscuits); salmon teriyaki; sweet potato salad w/chili-lime dressing; sauteed asparagus; white rice; and for dessert, strawberry shortcake with homemade shortcakes and freshly whipped cream. YUMMERS.

Relationships

Note: This is a long, rambling post. Here's a summary in case you want to skip it: I've been going out on some dates. I don't think I want a real relationship right now, but it's fun to get out. Then again, when one is getting out, who knows where things might lead? The end.

Someone commented on my Loneliness, Aloneness post that it sounds like I'm ready to be dating. Agreed, and I have been dating, just not writing about it. The dates read the blog, and that's causes a certain amount of censorship in my writing that I'd rather just totally avoid. So I go out and I mull it over and I don't write about it.

But yeah, I'm dating. Well, I'm going on dates. Let's put it that way. Seems more accurate. I'm certainly not dating anyone. That implies a level of commitment that is completely absent from any outings I've been on of late.

Going out on dates has made me think about what I want in a relationship, and it's made me think about my relationship history. The longest relationship I've ever had was with John. From our first date to his death was four years, almost to the day. That's not an incredibly long relationship to begin with, and nothing about it was typical given that we moved in together four months after our first date and then he was sick for 2.5 years at the end. In a way, it's like we had a much longer relationship than the four calendar years would belie, given all that we went through. But by the numbers, it was four years, the blink of an eye, a brief—if incredibly meaningful—interlude.

Outside of my relationship with John, I have dated a handful of people for around a year each, a handful more for a few months. I really have no significant long-term relationships in my past, at least not long in terms of the ticking of the clock.

I loved being married to John, and I love the idea of a long-term relationship or another marriage. The security and comfort of that kind of close tie to another person is very appealing to me. I'm inherently social. I like having someone around.

Relationships are, however, a lot of work, at least the good and meaningful ones. I think that's why my relationship history is filled with what I'd call medium-term liasons. Often, you can be with someone a few months, up to a year or so if my experience is to be believed, before you have to deal with really tough stuff, before you have to start putting in the work to make things continue to be meaningful. I look back on past relationships and I can see times that I stayed with someone even though I knew the relationship had fatal flaws, riding it out until the flaws became too much to ignore. I can also see times that as the problems emerged, I decided to cut my losses and leave rather than figure out how to make things work. Oh, yeah, and sometimes I got dumped.

I like to think of myself as cool-headed and rational. I'm an editor, for crying out loud. I follow rules and impose consistency for a living. Frankly, though, I think this is more a symbol of my need to control something—anything!—than it is a sign of a disciplined temperment. At the end of the day, I make a huge proportion of my decisions based on gut reactions. That's how I decided where to go to college: Lewis and Clark just felt right as soon as I set foot on campus. And it's pretty much how I decided that John and I were a good match: he, too, just felt right. There was some underlying compatability, some kind of click. I wouldn't call it love at first sight, or fate, or destiny. I was just immediately comfortable with him and he with me and the work seemed worth it from the get-go.

When I go out with people now, I'm not looking for someone like or dislike John. I don't understand how or why I'd do that. Oh, sure, I want some of the same general characterisitics in a partner: honesty, intelligence, the ability to make me laugh, to name a few. But looking for those kinds of things do not mean that I'm looking for John. I am, however, looking for someone who just feels right, and I'm very open to the idea that this person could be quite similar to John or in fact entirely different. How am I to know? It's not like this is done via mail-order catalog.

Except it kind of is, or at least that's how Internet dating feels to me. I did the Internet dating thing back in Boston, ending up going out with Mr. Coffee for a few months and going out on a bunch of Total Date Fails otherwise. Eh, it was a worthwhile experience, got my feet wet and all, but I wouldn't say I loved it. In a fit of relatinship-related pique, I recently put up another online profile, and I would hardly say that interesting, attractive guys are beating down my door. In fairness, I basically never log on to the site and have waited for people to come to me rather than making any effort to reach out to others. You have to give something to get something in return, I suppose, and I find that I'm just not terribly motivated.

Which circles back to how relationships are work. I have a career and two small kids. I have a large circle of friends and a family who lives nearby and a lot of personal interests. I'm just like everyone else: I don't have a lot of free time, and I don't want to waste one minute of the free time I have. But there is no way to avoid wasted time when dating. I'm inherently going to enjoy some dates and not others. Some dates will lead to something more, some will not. I have been stood up—talk about the ultimate waste of time!—and I've dispensed hours of what feels like wasted emotional energy fretting about all manner of things date-related.

Yeah, sure, I'd like to believe that all of these experiences are leading me somewhere. And sometimes inauspicious beginnings are just that: beginnings that don't feel that way. But what I feel is myself pulling away from the idea of wanting a meaningful, committed relationship right now. I want the relationship fun, but not the relationship work. And I want smart, funny—cute!—guys to just magically appear in my life without my having to make any effort to find them, and I want to go out for drinks and dinner and kiss and maybe more. But I don't want to have to figure out how to integrate that person into my life or introduce that person to Maddie and Riley or any of the tough stuff.

Not that anyone is asking me to do the tough stuff right now. I just can't figure out how it all works. Maybe I'm overthinking it. I do know that it's complicated by the experience I had with John, in that having had that one time where I knew almost immediately that things were different with him, that's my barometer for how a long-term relationship begins. That's probably not fair. Add that to the fact that I don't even think I want a real relationship right now and, well, it makes all this dating stuff kind of hard.

I guess I just want to get out, have fun, feel like a grown-up, try on a life that's not really mine. Easy enough. It's figuring out what to do if I like the way it fits that's tricky.

I shall now stop counting chickens, putting carts before horses, etc.

Things Oregonians Like: #3–4

3a. Anything local. Locally raised food. Local business. Local legend. Locally sourced. Local = good.

3b. House made. When you're at a restaurant here, you can get all kinds of things that are house made, house cured, house smoked, house butchered, house roasted, house blended, house crafted. Some of these things are surprising (house made tonic water, which is pinkish-orange!), and almost all of them are good. House made from local ingredients is the ultimate.

4. Food carts. Brilliant!

Nature

Riley

When Riley holds my hand, he rubs my cuticles with his fingers. I can't stand it. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. But I never tell him to stop because John did the same thing. Mindlessly, abstractly, he'd rub his fingers over that tough meeting point between nail and skin, despite the fact that I'd told him a million times how it made me feel. Such an odd habit, odder still that Riley would share it with his father.

Maddie

At the risk of sounding like a total nutter, when I was a child, I told my life as a story in my head as it was happening. I was some kind of omniscient narrator, observing myself and making commentary, as though I were a character in a book. In fact, I was a character. I gave myself a completely different name—Ginny—and as I'd move through life, I'd keep up the interior narration, in the form of mental comments such as, "Ginny felt nervous about moving into the room," or "Ginny would have preferred to have something else for dinner." In my mind's eye, I was a contemporary of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

To add to this oddness, I find that on occasion, I still do this now, and have done so all my life, although never, ever aloud. Maddie's been doing the same thing for a few months now, only she vocalizes her narration. Her name is Lizzie, and she's given Riley an alter-ego, too: Barry. Those of you familiar with the Barenstain Bears* might recognize that those are the names of Brother and Sister Bear's cousins (best friends? I dunno.) "'Hop on my trike, Barry!' Lizzie exclaimed," Maddie will holler as she tears down the hall. Or I'll hear her over the monitor in the morning, "'I'll wear a dress today,' said Lizzie."

These are not the ways I thought I would see myself, or John, in our children.

*I hate those god-damn bears.

Loneliness, Aloneness

I'm not lonely very much. I'm rarely ever alone, for starters (although being in the presence of others is certainly no guarantee that one will not feel lonely). Even when I am alone, or quasi-alone, after the kids go to sleep and it's just me rattling around in the house, I'm usually quite content with my own company. I have an endless litany of projects to attend to or avoid. I can read or watch TV. I can stare blankly at Facebook, write blog posts, go to bed early, listen to music, cook, eat, drink. I can send text messages! Love the text messages. What I can't do is go out on a whim, or go for a run, or leave the house for much other than to sit on the patio or take out the trash. But that's OK; I find life pretty tiring, and most nights being home in my pajamas doing something or nothing or a mix of the two is truly totally fine by me.

There are two things that do have a tendency to make me feel lonely, though. One is dealing with a sick child in the middle of the night. Riley was sick—albeit during the day—this week, just some kind of flash in the pan stomach bug that hit on the way out the door to school on Thursday. I kept both him and Maddie home, and we ended up having a lovely day of videos and playtime. It was clear by about 10 a.m. that Riley was actually fine, but the time between 8 and 10 a.m.—cleaning up the barf, doing the attendant laundry, doling out crackers with fingers crossed that no repeat event occurred—during that time, my mind raced. "Will he still be sick tonight? Will Maddie get sick tonight? Will I?" During the day, I can handle it, but at night? I think waking up to the sound of a sick kid fills any parent with a sense of worry and dread, but I find for me it's more than that. It fills me with a sense of profound isolation during which I acutely feel the burden of my parenting responsibility. It reminds me of when I'd get sick in the Peace Corps. Nothing made me more homesick then. Now nothing makes me more lonely than consoling and caring for Maddie or Riley during nighttime illness; in those moments, the physical and moral support of another adult is sharply absent for me.

The other time I tend to feel lonely is on Friday and Saturday nights. I think this is true of many single people. It's easy to imagine the married folks hunkering down into their comfortable married lives, and the folks on dates filled with adrenaline and anticipation and lust. These are romanticized notions, to be sure, but when faced with the exciting thought of getting caught up on paying bills or folding laundry or even climbing into bed to watch a movie, it's hard not to feel like the rest of the world is having more fun.

Woe is me, I know, boo hoo and all that, but for better or for worse, there you have my little pity party of the day. I've gotten to the point where on these evenings, I no longer miss John as much as I miss having a companion with whom to share the chores and watch the film. It's more about longing now than grief. To be fair, many weekend nights come and go just like other nights for me, without a sense that in their Friday or Saturday-ness my not having a partner is more significant. But it is on those nights that I'm most prone to a tinge of being lonely, a sense that my own company is not always quite enough.

Tonight I think I will climb into bed with a glass of wine and a movie, Atonement. I've had it from Netflix for months now, never feeling in the mood for it when I have a free evening to devote to movie-watching. I think tonight's the night. Not such a bad evening for sure, I know, not such a bad evening for sure. But yeah, just a little lonely.

Ice Cold

It was muggy this afternoon when I went out for my run, muggy for Oregon anyway. I headed into the locker room overheated, sweaty, and pressed for time.

[This is starting off like some kind of bad erotic short story, but I promise that's not where it's headed.]

I really, really, REALLY dislike cold water. When I was in middle school, there was a polar bear swim at my summer camp, and on that cool, summer morning, the icy water took my breath away when I jumped in. I thought I was going to drown. Ever since then, I have not been able to stand cold water: showers, pools, the ocean. Even when I lived in a tropical rain forest, I heated up my water for bucket baths.

My dislike of cold water comes from a place of fear borne out of that summer camp experience. As I stood with my hand under the water in the locker room shower stall today, waiting for it to heat up, I thought about that summer day, and I thought about fear. I thought about how I ask Maddie and Riley to do new things and take new risks every day, to embrace that fear of the unknown or to push beyond a known fear to see if it can be overcome.

I turned the dial back, as cold as it would go, and I got in.

It took my breath away for a moment, but then it felt refreshing. I talk often about not wanting to live in a place of fear, and although this is such a small thing, I realized that I don't always put my money where my mouth is when it comes to testing my own limits. I'm often presented with opportunities to face my emotional fears, but have fewer chances to do so on a physical level. I want to be alert for more instances like this, habits and behaviors that are not damaging, but that are fear-based, and be open to change, to new experience. To fearlessness.

Things Oregonians Like, #1-2

1. Punch cards to get free stuff. Coffee, frozen yogurt, bread . . . my wallet is filled with punch cards here. I didn't have any such punch cards in Boston.

2. Ordering their coffee by the size in ounces. It was small, medium, and large back east. Here it's 8 oz., 12 oz., 16 oz., etc. I love being able to get a little tiny cappuccino. And I also love that the default milk in an espresso drink here is whole.

Guest Book

Mother's Day is one of my hardest widow-grief days, or it has been traditionally. I don't like holidays that try to force you to care about someone, force you to buy a gift, force you to express sentiments that are often complex and that certainly can't be captured by a card. And let's not get started about how Mother's Day for many is just a reminder of what they don't or can't have, what they've lost, what is missing. Ugh. No, thanks.

This year, though, was easier for me. I had just the average amount of Scrooge-like sentiment about the day; the grief-related vitriol was kept at by by the passage of time, more contentment with my life as it is overall, and the fact that the kids and I spent the weekend at the beach with my mom. The weather was glorious, the kids were well behaved and delightful (for the most part), my mom and I got a lot of good time together, and I even got to run on the beach! It was a welcome break.

Things started off a bit ominously when we got in our room and my mom and I realized in the same instant that it was the room where John and I spent our "honeymooon." After our wedding, we went over to the beach for a few days with my entire extended family and some friends; we took a vacation for just the two of us later, but wanted to get away immediately after the wedding to enjoy time with people who had done so much for us during the planning and who had traveled far to be there for us on our day. To be back in that exact room, on an emotionally charged weekend, could have been hard but at this point just felt . . . fine. Nothing. Maybe even a little comforting, oddly.

After the kids went to bed, my mom and I were leafing through the room's guest book. Most of it was the usual drivel: love this place, love the room, love the beach, we had fun, we ate good food, we relaxed blah blah blah thanks. Then we hit upon the funniest guest book entry of all time:

Warning: staying at this hotel greatly exposes you to excessive amounts of love making and wild times. Those with weak hearts, don't read on!

My boo [beau?] and I stayed the night here and absolutely had a good time. We walked on the beach, smoked some pot, almost got swallowed be mighty powerful Pacific in all it's beautiful splendor. Watched the waves endlessly crashing to shore and sat in wonderment. We ended the night with some more pot and lots of sweet love making. Breakfast in the morning and were off to the races, this woman is amazing and she blows my mind literally.

Ha ha ha! TMI! Why would anyone write that in a guestbook?! I'm glad they did, though, because it was hilarious.

The rest of our weekend was standard guest book fare: we relaxed, we ate, we played on the beach, we had good weather, it was great and all that jazz. Now I have to go deal with the aftermath of a weekend away: laundry! Nothing in the fridge for lunches! Chores to do! Totally worth it though, totally worth it.

Yes, more about the shoes.

It turns out that if you're me, once you acquire one pair of really cute shoes, you realize the power of the Cute Shoe, and you just want more. You realize that since the first cute shoes were wintery and black, with a heel, you need a pair of sandals and some flats to balance the equation. Suddenly, you find that these have taken up residence in your closet:



Petrella by Söfft, in mocha

Peony by Born, in green

The sandals have a story. SÖFFT SHOES ROCK. That's the moral, now here's the story, the long version. When I first decided that perhaps it was time for me to get some new shoes and stop putting my feet in orthopedic grandmother footwear, I went to Nordstrom Rack and looked around. I got overwhelmed, and found only one pair that I really liked, but they had been mistakenly placed in with my size and actually didn't fit. They were a pair of Söfft mary janes. Then I wrote my blog post asking for shoe advice. Lo and behold, a reader commented that she works for Söfft and that I should check them out and that she could "hook me up."

Well, that intrigued me. A few Facebook messages later, I had myself a new pair of shoes. For free! The lovely people at Söfft let me choose a pair of shoes for my very own. They are amazing. They are super comfortable and so cute. Oregon weather has not been conducive to the sandals this spring, so I've just been wearing them around the house for fun. So has Maddie. We are in love. What's not to love, really, about high-quality shoes and a generous company that understands the power of free marketing?!

The other shoes were recommneded by a commenter as well; she suggested the radish color which is lovely but less complimentary to the clothing in my wardrobe. I'm still waiting for this particular pair to arrive. Hopefully by the time they do, spring will have sprung here in Portland.

Getting new shoes has had the aftershock of making it apparent that I could use some new clothes, too. The lovely Julia asked for suggestions as to where us women in our (late) 30s could go to find clothes that were stylish but not too young looking, and at least one of her readers suggested Boden, and I've become a little obsessed. Might just have to get a few things. To, you know, make those shoes look as good as possible.