Will Wonders Never Cease

About two weeks ago, my state agency received an email through our website inquiring when the best time to see Texas wildflowers is.

Emails from the public are a mixed bag, of course. Human nature being what it is, people don't usually write to a faceless bureaucratic entity unless they're het up about something. A not-insignificant portion of my job involves answering hate mail.

I love it. Not the hate mail itself, but the whole process of coming to understand the other person's point of view; of moving through commingled frustration, annoyance, and compassion; of trying to figure out what can be done either to help the person, or at least to help him or her understand. Forging connections is amazing. The best thing in the world is when you write back to someone who's very angry - with or without good cause - and feel that you've made sense, that you've cleared things up, that the person received at least some sort of satisfaction from your answer. You've made a change in the world, and in someone else, and in yourself - just the littlest tiniest bit, but it's such a good thing.

Usually that's the end of it, but every so often someone writes back to me. Often they thank me. Many times they're surprised to have received a thoughtful response from a faceless, monolithic government entity at which they were, after all, only venting a little spleen. Sometimes they want to continue the discussion further. Obviously I can't answer everything - I mean, I personally sure as heck don't agree 100% with everything my employer does - but on balance, I love the process, and the contact and the interaction with these strangers seeking any acknowledgement whatsoever of their point of view, and get it. It's tremendously rewarding, really.

But this wildflower question just made me completely happy. Of course the inquirer wasn't upset; she wanted to know when the peak of wildflower season is, and where the best part of the state to visit is, and whether we're going to have a good wildflower season this year.

Well, on the last one, who knows. It's looking a heck of a lot better than last year. We had some good rain in the fall, and only one hard freeze so far this winter (till tomorrow and Saturday night, anyway), and it looks like we'll get some nice fields of bluebonnets, come late March to mid-April. Somewhere. You can generally count on east Texas, anyway.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote back to this nice British nature photographer and said that, while it's too early to determine how colorful the show of wildflowers will be this year, there is a fair prospect of a good season; I sent a few links, and had a shipment of Texas travel literature sent off to her, along with last year's wildflower driving tour issue of the travel magazine, whose editor is a friend of mine. She wrote back and thanked me right away.

And today she wrote the friendliest note to say that she'd received all the literature in the mail, thanked me again for being helpful, and promised to send me photographs after her trip.

Do you remember before there was an internet? Can you imagine life without it? I do, and I can't. At this point I'm kind of wishing she'd look me up when she's in town. People are quite lovely, you know. Aren't I lucky to have a job where I get to be friends with so many of them?

Airsick Bags

If you feel that your life consists largely of a string of disappointing men in unfulfilling relationships, I strongly recommend Fear of Flying. It's insightful, witty, and extremely well-written, and will remind you that (1) you're not alone, and (2) nobody else has figured it out either.

Actually, I've just finished reading the book for the third time, and was discussing it on the phone today with my soon-to-be-ex-almost-boyfriend, who will not quite have outlasted my soon-to-be-ex-husband, from whom my divorce will be final a week from today. I'm thinking the newer relationship doesn't have quite that long. In fact, I'm kind of preparing for the formal end tonight. Rereading Fear of Flying has made me feel a lot better about this, though.

The first time I read the book, I was in college, and about to break up with a longer-term guy who really just didn't get me. I read the book and was blown away. I felt like I could have written it, except I don't write that well, and am not quite as guilt-ridden - or at least not about sex.

I lent my copy to the guy. It spoke to me so deeply, I reasoned, surely he'd read it and finally understand what I was going through. But then we broke up, he still didn't understand me, and I never got my book back.

"So I'm not going to lend it to you," I explained to my friend on the phone this afternoon, "but it really is an extremely good book."

"Okay," he said. He's not into reading anyway.

Which is a lot of what Erica Jong's book is about: why does this extremely intelligent, independent-minded, literary, artistic, beautiful, witty, funny, sexy woman keep setting herself up to be rejected by one inferior man after another? I don't know, and neither does she. She's clearly a lot smarter than most of them. Yet she becomes infatuated, pursues someone who isn't nearly good enough for her, gets psychologically messed with, abused, and rejected in turn, and crawls away feeling like something that feeds off Pat Robertson's toe fungus. It's like looking in a mirror, I tell you what.

Eleven years later she wrote a sequel, Parachutes and Kisses, which I read not long after the first book. I was profoundly distressed to discover she didn't seem to have learned very much in the interim. How do you learn to stop defining yourself in terms of your relationships? How do you break these patterns? How do you be happy?

Hopefully I'll be able to get some practice in.

Jehovah's Witlesses

'Tis the season to be accosted. Greenpeace can get fairly aggressive on the hike-and-bike trail, which is tiresome as I really have to be sure not to go over my hour for lunch, and I'm not going to give anybody any money, but when someone calls wheedlingly out to me, "Come on, you like trees, don't you?" it's hard to walk stonily past without feeling like a Republican.

I do indeed like trees. In fact, I might never get a live Christmas tree again, now that Jim's not making that call. Fresh flowers I don't mind, but I've always been troubled by the concept of sacrificing a tree's life just for a few weeks' holiday decor. Never mind the mess, the needles that will carpet the back of my car for as long as I own it, the cats' unfortunate tendency to attempt to mask the piney smell with more pungent aromas of their own. No, the worst part is taking all the lights and ornaments down on January 6th and hauling the poor forlorn husk to the curb. I can't even look it in the eye, and wouldn't be able to even if trees HAD eyes, which (unless you're a big Lillian Vernon shopper) they generally don't.

But the City of Austin has a nice program where they at least recycle your discarded trees by grinding them into mulch. You can leave your tree at the curb and they'll pick it up on your regular garbage day, but if it's over six feet tall, you're supposed to saw it in half. Do I look like a lumberjack to you?! So instead, I shoved it into the back of the Isuzu Behemoth which my amazing friend Diane is selling to me on ridiculously easy terms, to help me out through the divorce - Diane is a GOOD FRIEND - and took it to the temporary Christmas tree recycling drop-off at Zilker Park.

Have I mentioned that I love Austin, love it, love it, love it, love it? This morning's experience reminded me that I haven't said so for a while. The dropoff point at Zilker Park presumably had at least a few city employees, but was largely staffed by volunteers. It was extremely well-organized and efficient, with staffers directing traffic into separate lanes and hurrying to unload and haul away trees. And it was bitter cold out, for Austin - just under 20 degrees at the time I went - and, my gosh, they were so nice. Bundled up in coats, hats, and gloves, they bustled competently through their work, smiling and thanking me for bringing the tree in. And as I drove away, the person directing traffic out of the lot gave me a big, bright smile and a cheery wave. I felt as if I'd had a booster shot of holiday cheer to last me through the rest of this cold winter. The scent of pine needles in my car probably helped, too.

Worse yet than Greenpeace, on the hike-and-bike trail, is the short-shorts guy. I write this hesitantly, afraid that perhaps I know him from somewhere and am being inexcusably rude for not responding to his repeated salutations; but if (as I suspect) we've never met, he's kind of a creep. I avoid eye contact with him now, and I have my iPod and earbuds as a legitimate enough excuse for not hearing anything anyone happens to say to me, but he gives it a good try anyway, addressing me two or three times whenever he sees me, and sometimes turning after we pass and calling after me. I've changed my walking route, and may change my lunch hour as well.

And worse yet than the short-shorts guy are Jehovah's Witnesses. Jim came by today to use the Behemoth to move another large installment of his stuff out of my house. Staggering under a heavy armload of his belongings, I found myself face-to-face with a woman and her small daughter. She seemed taken aback. "Is this your mother?" she asked Katie, who explained later that the woman had stopped by and talked to her once before while I was at work.

Katie responded that yes, I was, and the woman asked her, surprised, "Are you moving?"

"My husband is moving out," I told her shortly.

Now, here's where Jehovah's Witnesses are different from you and me. Solicitors of any other product, however noxious, would probably gather from my reply and the fact that my arms were uncomfortably full that, perhaps, now was not an ideal time.

She, however, introduced herself, and attempted to hand me some literature.

But she had a little girl with her, so I smiled, and said pleasantly, "Thank you, but we're not interested," and got back to the business of loading up the Behemoth. And I guess I have to give her credit for not pressing the matter further.

Beth's rating for the week:
Diane: 8 million bajillion stars
Greenpeace: 2 stars
Guy in short-shorts: 1 star, with an option for a possible future restraining order
Jehovah's Witnesses: 0 stars, and a $50 gift certificate to Specs

The Writing on the Wall

Under the South First bridge by the hike-and-bike today, I noticed a painted scrawl: "Houses are graves for the living."

It's supposed to get down below 20 degrees later this week.

I did wonder, bemused, at the hand and mind behind that sentiment. I thought of my own house, which I've been so enjoying decorating and claiming as my own space. It's a haven from the world, certainly; you leave for work, or visiting, or errands - or to stroll along the Town Lake hike-and-bike trail - and there is your very own warm house to come back to. You can also welcome friends, a delicious luxury I've been missing for many years. So I can't agree with the sentiment at all, though I suppose matters might be different if you hired Morticia Addams as your interior decorator.

Or Martha Stewart, for that matter.

There was another interesting series of graffiti along the South First bridge pedestrian walkway, on the high wall that separates joggers, hikers, strollers, and bicyclists from automobile traffic. "Fuck the laws," read one message; and fifteen or twenty feet further along, the next one read "Fuck rent," then "Fuck the system," "Fuck the police," and then, rather to my alarm, "Fuck this wall."

I was with the author up till that point - at least in a spirit of gentle sympathy for his possibly somewhat naive ideals. But as a trail regular, I'm a big fan of the wall between Austin traffic and my head. It's a lot easier to fight for your principles when you're not pinned underneath a Smart Car. (The irony factor alone would be fairly overwhelming.)

People have believed, pretty much as long as they've been around, that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. Well, maybe it is - though you'd need a fairly large handbasket, really, and who would even carry the darn thing? Heck if I know. Well, activism, and attempting to raise the awareness of others about causes that concern you, are noble enough. But the last two entries in the Bryl-Cream series on the South First bridge wall were "Think!" and "People wake up! Shit is NOT OK!"

And here's where specificity would come in fairly handy.

Not to argue, not by any means, that there aren't a lot of things in the world that aren't okay. I think it works well when people single out a particular cause (or two or three) to support, espouse it, possibly recruit others, but allow other people to follow their own paths as well. I donate a little money to Planned Parenthood through work; I give blood; I get a little long-winded (given the opportunity) on the importance of allowing nature and human instinct to take their course as much as possible in childbirth and parenting. This is a fairly tiny sliver of the myriad issues that need addressing, but it is a Thing, and it's mine. I think it's important to find your own cause and support it, whatever that may be, unless you're into defacing public property, in which case I feel the police are fully justified in arresting you and providing you some rent-free digs in the city jail; or unless you're trying to get Sarah Palin elected in 2012, in which case I hope you get run over by a Smart Car.

A Day at the Park

Bastrop State Park has gone all high-tech. Is nothing sacred?!?

Okay, so it's not actually high-tech, but they've reorganized the trail system since I was last there several years ago. The trails are all color-coded now, with signposts at each intersection indicating that, to stay on the red trail, you keep to the left. The blue trail is off to your right. The signposts have park maps with each trail indicated by a colored line. It's just like the Metro, only less expensive, and with slightly better odds of reaching your final destination, assuming you're trying to get back to your car.

They also have a cabin camping area. Cabins? We checked them out after our walk, driving among them slowly, scoping out our picks for some future weekend visit. Let me tell you what, those are some nice cabins. They are bigger than my house. They have fireplaces, too, and curtains. I haven't gone camping in several years now, but my dad used to take me all the time, so I know there are certain things that are a part of camping and certain things that are not a part of camping. Camping involves things like canned vegetables, Tang, collapsible 5-gallon water jugs, and (God help us all) pit toilets. It emphatically does not include curtains.

I've always hated pit toilets. I'm intrigued.

"Where would you recommend," asked my companion in the park office as he bought a year pass, "a good barbecue place in Bastrop?"

There was such a long silence that I wasn't sure the staffer had heard him. Finally her coworker piped up. "It's not a hard choice," she said, "there's only two."

"Billy's and Cartwright's," added the woman helping us at last.

"I saw Cartwright's as we were driving in," I said helpfully to my friend.

"Yeah," said the woman who had first spoken, "Cartwright's has a really big sign."

This didn't really strike either of us as a ringing endorsement. "So where would you go for barbecue?" pressed my friend.

There was another long pause. "Lockhart. I'd drive to Lockhart," they chorused.

Or Elgin, they went on to add, so we had dinner at Meyer's Barbecue there. I'd been to Southside Market once before, a year ago, on my work group's fam tour of Central Texas; and I thought it was really quite good, although a coworker of my friend's and mine, who lives in Elgin, was outraged that the tour took us there instead of Meyer's, which she insists is much better. So we checked out Meyer's, and I have to say, their sausage (for which Elgin is so well-known) really is tasty. At least I liked it, and I don't like sausage. But you can't go wrong with Southside Market either. I had a side of creamed corn and discovered that my companion thinks creamed corn is an abomination, which is something of a pity, as creamed corn, from a can, falls rather firmly into the things-that-go-with-camping camp.

But that's okay - so do marshmallows, a fact I don't have a problem with as long as the marshmallows are slowly immolated in flames until they drip, sizzling in sugary agony, into the glowing embers. Then you eat the chocolate and give the graham crackers to your kids: that's my recipe for S'Mores.

Happy New Year! 2010 is off to a good start. I'm looking forward to doing some camping.

Do You Still Believe in Fairy Tales?

A coworker my age asked me that last week, via email, in an uncharacteristically serious exchange (usually he fires spitwads across my cubicle wall). "I figure I need to seal the deal before I'm 50," he wrote me, "because I look around at my friends, and that's about when the wheels start falling off. I don't care if the woman I marry wins our eventual sag-and-wrinkle race," he went on. "I just don't want to hook up with a gal who's already out of the gate and pulling ahead, because I need at least a few wild adventures to look back on."

My assumption was that he was considering whether to propose to his girlfriend over Christmas. All I know about her is that she has a bad back. But I've been known to leap to wrong conclusions before.

So what do you do when you're 40 years old, divorced (come February 1st, but at least now officially "separated" and living in your own place) and feeling lonely? The issue, touched on by my coworker, is that - while I really would rather not be a cougar, thanks - guys my age are old. They don't want adventure and excitement and really wild things. They want to settle down. They want to move in, and possibly even get married. It's fun shopping for home decor items with them - shopping with straight guys, OMG!!! - but then you point out the bed you've been wanting in your room for a few years, and, first thing, they remark that their feet would stick out through the bars of the footboard. So...? you say. It's MY bed! It'll look awesome in my room! And my feet will fit just fine!

Of course, I've unfortunately also developed a fairly major crush on a guy with a host of health problems: bad back, puny immune system, recovering alcoholic, etc. We can't go clubbing or hiking or dancing. I can barely keep him out past 9. I wrote to my coworker in our email exchange last week about how I'm very much like my mom, but always fall for guys with characteristics of my dad's (domestication, quiet habits) that played a role in their relationship not working out - Mom was a sweet, good person, but she was definitely a bit on the wild side. I find that I'm generally attracted to men who aren't crazy enough for me.

Actually I'm blowing the dust off the old blog tonight, precisely because the guy in question is not boring me today; he's actually doing the worst thing you can do in a relationship, which is making me play the waiting game. He called me last night and said he'd like to take me out tonight - or we could just hang out, whatever. And then today and tonight he hasn't called. I can't call him, because at this point I'm all fretful and shrewish and naggy. But I waited. I made a little soup for dinner, late, in case he was going to take me out. I was on edge all evening. And now that it's probably past his bedtime and I'm almost 100% certain he isn't calling, I'm really bummed out.

I don't want to be old before my time, but how the hell do I quit being fifteen?

Helpful Holiday Tips

Don't give cutlery as a gift - holiday or otherwise, tradition says. To do so foreshadows (or actually brings on) a severance of the relationship.

But what if you're in a relationship you want to get out of? Is it appropriate to give someone you'd like to be an ex a set of steak knives for Christmas?

This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Gift-giving is a fascinating tradition in any case, fraught with symbolism both intentional and unintentional. What present is appropriate to give a family member, child, parent, sibling, spouse, lover, friend? When is it proper to give an item intended to complement (and therefore make suggestions towards the development of) the taste of someone you care about, and when is it overbearing?

In any case, edible underwear at an office party are generally a bad idea.

It's funny, now that I look back as an adult, how uncomplicated childhood Christmases all seemed to be. No one has any particular expectations from children other than not chewing with their mouths open and not awakening the whole extended family more than two hours before first light on Christmas morning. Gifts have meaning, but they don't have Meaning (until you hit adolescence, at which point God help everyone involved). Times were simpler. Also, it snowed.

Tomorrow after lunch, my boss and I are driving down to Corpus Christi for a site visit for our upcoming annual conference in April. I always love traveling, no matter where to, because it's very introspective, or philosophical, or something. I'm hoping to see a friend or two while I'm down there, but if not, it's no big deal; we'll be back soon. My boss was my secret Santa at our office Christmas party. She gave me a small travel bag stocked with miniature bottles of wine. What does this mean?!?

Maybe my helpful holiday tip for this year is that, if you're too overwhelmed to send out Christmas cards, everyone else will either not notice, or be so overwhelmed with their own holiday guilt that they assume there's a good reason they got cut from your list and will therefore accept unquestioningly your silence on this occasion. I for one would like to make it clear that an absence of Christmas cards on my part only signifies that I am disorganized and frazzled, and does not in any way reflect a lack on anyone else's part.

If I send you some knives, though, that's a whole different story.