Happy Solstice from the High Priestess of Snickerdoodles

I helped bake even more cookies for the third time with my family yesterday. It was more fun than I thought it would be, primarily because nobody followed me into my bedroom when I needed to take a break. It is mostly a curse that I get overstimulated rather quickly. If there is a blessing it is that everyone I am friends or family with knows this and accepts it at least half the time. I hit the cookie-making wall when the Russian Tea Cakes burned. My sister was browsing the cable music selections between batches of date pinwheels, yelling into the kitchen, "Hey, can you do this?" She wanted me to do the Running Man dance to what sounded like an Eminem Christmas rap. The smell of mint chips and white chocolate suddenly got to me. I didn't want to put sprinkles on anything else. I wanted to take a bath and read my library books.

Let me be clear about the fact that this was not a small baking adventure. We had two mixers going. My mother and my sister occupied two work stations in the kitchen where they formed dough and melted things in the double boiler. My sister's foster daughter and I manned the dining room table, dipping pretzel rods into pans of chocolate and then rolling them in sprinkles and sliced almonds. My sister's girlfriend hunched over the sewing table where she was making Christmas gifts for relatives. There was a lot going on is the point.

I've written about my lack of interest in Christmas before. (See Ho Ho Hold It and Oh Holy Night.) But this year I am living in the same town as my family, my family that celebrates Christmas and is happy that I am here to celebrate with them for the first time in perhaps twenty years. I started worrying about this in October, hoping I could find a way to avoid the whole thing like I usually do. But then I woke up enough to realize that this opportunity might not present itself again. I realized that the moment to enjoy my family has never been more possible than right now. We annoy the crap out of each other, so it makes sense that I flee into the safety of library books (and online gossip columns), my mother stalks the Home Shopping Network and my sister busies herself with the never-ending to-do list that most married people devote themselves to when the actual dating phase of the relationship has mostly ended. (Shoot me if I ever replace sex with rearranging the spice rack.) In my family, we are all "the crazy one," depending on who's doing the talking. So, I chopped pecans and carried water -- just enough to feel the bond without feeling bound.

It seems fitting that I am in Portland for the shortest day of the year. It was nearly dark by 4 pm today. I ventured out only because four of my holds at the library came in. Years ago I attended a Solstice ritual in Berkeley. The woman who led it told us that the darkest day of the year calls us inward to reflect. But it also asks us to light candles, she said, to illuminate the darkness within ourselves and in those we encounter. I think this is one reason why Christmas freaks me out. I am pulled to go inward with a library book or my own thoughts just as everyone else is peaking on their sugar rushes and forcefully cheerful, rigid holiday itinerary. My solution is to pull a Runaway Bride and hide until it's over, no matter who really wanted to see me or who I might have wanted to see.

So, for Solstice I am lighting a candle. My illuminating foundation makeup will wish to be as sparkly as I will be in about five minutes. I might shine so bright that I will accept the things I cannot change. Like the fact that there is unbaked cookie dough in the refrigerator with my name on it. Like the fact that my sister saw my new hairstyle and said, "You kind of look like a hobbit. But in a good way."

I'm having a darkly, sparkly holiday. May you also be so lucky.

But She Blogged Anyway

Random possibly connected thoughts:

It is the season of gross in Portland. The dark gray skies blacken around 3 p.m. It's wet and cold. While I was walking today I passed a lake with fountains. Clear, solid-looking patches covered much of the surface. I thought: Eww, what is all that crap on top of the water? Upon closer inspection, my ex-East Coaster voice piped up and chastised me: It's ice, you nitwit. Seriously, I failed to recognize ice in nature. I stared at it like it was a metaphysical phenomenon. Perhaps I left my brain and not just my heart in the San Francisco Bay area.

I've fully recovered from applying to eight grad schools. Yoga helped. So did watching every available episode of What Not to Wear, Hoarders and Intervention. I'm also reading a book by What Not to Wear co-host Clinton Kelly called Freakin' Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate and Generally Be Better Than Everyone Else. A couple of my friends suspect I've thrown myself into superficiality with this What Not to Wear phase I'm in, but if you have seen the show, then you know that these friends are mistaken. Besides, I think there is a balance. I meditate, do yoga and strive to be a better person while reserving the right to use high end hair conditioner.

I baked a couple pieces of salmon last week. It was the best salmon I ever made. It was perfectly cooked. The word is exquisite. Kind of made me wish I'd done it for a date and not my family. We also had a spinach salad and baked sweet potatoes. And we watched The Jersey Shore. That is a truly horrible, annoying and boring show. And if I really cared about my image I wouldn't admit that I watched it. I usually only watch reality TV shows if they offer redemption stories like getting off the sauce and going to rehab or finding out that goats eating the corner of your house is not ideal. (Hoarders!) I won't watch the drunk, Guido-libido-based train wreck again (unless my sister makes me, which she will.)

I wish I could get more excited about Christmas. It would mean a lot to my mom. She asked me about Solstice, thinking that maybe I would be more proactively festive if we did something more earth-based. The truth is that I tend to hermit away no matter what the holiday is. But I thought about doing some kind of ritual that involves the lighting of candles and acknowledging how freaking dark the darkest day of the year really is in Portland.

I had coffee today at Stumptown. This is what's true about that place: no public bathroom outside of a Port-a-Potty is that cold. Plus, it smelled in there. Frozen bathroom stank. I don't have a point. I just haven't stopped typing. I'm removing myself before I become as mindless and annoying as an episode of Jersey Shore. Too late! (Do not call me Snooki.)

Dog Afraid, Cookies and Cats

My Surprised Kitty clip got taken down because, well, it wasn't actually mine. Oh well, you can find it on YouTube if you want to see this cat. And really, you should. It will make you smile against your will, and rainbows will burst out of your chest. I don't understand why someone would fight the power of Surprised Kitty and refuse to let it turn all our frowns upside down, but such is life. But now I am going to have to find a way to be all chipper on my own to make up for it. For you guys (my readers), that's like winning a can of Turtle Wax instead of the brand new Corvette on The Price is Right. However, I had a rare 3:30 p.m. cup of coffee, so who knows? I might have some Joy to the World in me after all.

So, my mom wants me to make Christmas cookies with her tomorrow. I'm trying to whip myself into a cheerful frenzy, imagining the hours we'll spend trying to not get so irritated with each other that one of us has to leave the room and play Morrissey for a few minutes really loud to calm down. (I hate it when my mother does that.)It's like pretending to be a dog person when you are really a cat person. Saying "Hi puppy! Hi puppy!" repeatedly in a shrill voice while stifling the urge to scream as you throw out tentative, fearful pats in the general direction of the dog's head is something that people (and the dog) sort of notice. "You're not really a dog person, are you?" they say.

I usually try to play it down, especially if I'm trying to date the person who loves the slobbering stinker in question. "Ohhh, I'm just kind of used to cats, you know..." I say. And then they usher the beast from the room to my relief. They say, "You should have told me you're afraid of dogs."

It always surprises me when they bust me. Always. I say, "How could you tell?" They always laugh. Always. "You were sort of screaming," they say.

So, without trying, I've equated making cookies with my mother with my fear of dogs. I'm sure somewhere in my subconscious this all fits into some hodgepodge of puzzle pieces that could reveal further clues as to who I really am and what's blocking me from realizing my full potential. But we're not going there. I have to leave the house shortly and my mother's at the store right now shopping for even more sugar, so it's too late. I'm going to just do it because it will mean a lot to her. I don't like to cook, and I have a fairly low tolerance for sugar and chocolate. I also usually avoid Christmas if possible. However, sometimes saying "I love you" to another means saying "Suck it up" to yourself. At least that's that's my understanding of family dynamics. So, like a not-so-jolly Old Saint Nick I am prepared to sift flour and possibly wear an apron for a few hours. Hopefully, we can skip the Christmas music and turn the TV to MSNBC. I know my mom won't let me defile Christmas by watching any true crime or cult documentaries while baking, so that's my plan for a compromise.

Everything would probably go more smoothly if I had a cat. I want a Surprised Kitty of my own who will snuggle up with me in between batches of fudge and Snickerdoodles and purr hard enough to hurt my ear. I believe I am a better person when I am with-cat, and it's been a year and three months since my last kitty died. I still miss her crossed eye and her weird fondness for white things, including powdered doughnuts and plastic bags. She also liked me to smack her butt while she ate, which, I admit, was weird and vaguely sexual. But I loved her unconditionally. It's significantly more difficult to do that with people, especially when they want me to bond with them in ways that stretch me in ways I don't want to stretch. And unlike my cat, they won't forgive me in five minutes if I spritz them with a squirt gun for messing with my stuff. Still, I'll do the best I can because it's important to at least try. At least that's what my cat would tell me.

In Lieu of Tiger -- Kitty

I was going to throw out my opinion on the Tiger Woods side dish drama, but I just ate a cauldron of soup, which has made me too sleepy to do anything but stare at the cover of my library book Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple by Rebecca Moore.(I will probably go into that book on my other ghost town of a blog Kerry's Library Books.) Also, I recently took the five minutes it required to learn how to embed video clips from YouTube, so now all I really want to do is post clips of cute kitties and puppies. I am jonesing for a new feline companion bad, but I am waiting until I relocate to re-cat myself. So, in the interim, I sometimes watch other people's cats on YouTube. A good friend of mine gave me the idea when she confessed her need to procure "dog porn" from the Internet when she's feeling bereft and without someone to stick a wet nose up her butt. I don't do it often, but I did hijack somebody's kitten for an hour on Thanksgiving, and I have been literally dreaming of cats every night since. So, I watched a little kitty porn today instead of working on my rough draft. And I thought about Tiger Woods and Jonestown.

I'm too inarticulate to post anything witty or consciousness-expanding. And it's not just the soup. I'm premenstrual too. The combination means that I need to just get off the laptop before I either break down in tears or post some inflammatory anti-marriage manifesto that results in me being eviscerated by Puritan zombies. We can't have that. I have to get to grad school after all. So, for tonight I leave you with one of the cutest kitties in the world. This cat will lighten your heart -- like an ad for Country Time lemonade. Like all you need tonight is cuteness. It's working for me, and I'm a miserable little bitch right now, so that's saying something. Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving: Strangers Make Good Camouflage

In the dining room sits a Styrofoam cube containing a frozen chocolate mousse that tomorrow I will deliver like a cover charge to the people I barely know who have agreed to let me be a part of their Thanksgiving festivities. If my sister was allowed to marry her domestic partner then these people would be some form of in-laws to her, which means, I guess, that I, in turn, would be sort of loosely related to these people. I don't know. My sister isn't really looking to get legally married right now. And I don't care very much about holidays. This event is the easiest way to show up as a group and get daughter points for doing something sort of in public with people who are, to varying degrees, members of my family. I remember from Easter that these people can cook. There will be wine is one of the more important points.

Easter with these folks was really nice. I ate and drank to the point of discomfort, which allowed me to mostly fit in. And the unexpected bonus was the hour long conversation I had with an actual ex-resident of Antelope, OR -- the town next to the infamous cult city of Rajneeshpuram, which, for a short time in the 80s, was the home and wannabe Jonestown of charismatic leader Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I know! It was an Easter gift straight from the sacred heart of Jesus. If only I had known in advance. I would have brought a tape recorder. If this guy is there tomorrow I might have to pepper him with follow-up questions. If not, I will head straight for the cat.

I won't be in this town next Thanksgiving (unless I am rejected completely by all eight MFA programs I applied to.) So, I'm trying to do the family thing as much I can stand. And I can't stand much. I tend to feel claustrophobic and stretched too thin when forced into all-day cooking marathons that require a lot of prudent planning and well-thought out and discussed trips to the grocery store. I don't actually enjoy cooking very much unless it's to impress a man I want to be my boyfriend (who will later resent me for being a cooktease when I tell him months into our relationship that peanut butter crackers are too a totally legitimate breakfast.) And even then, it's more about presentation than anything: A dish of pistachios, a plate of olive oil, torn crusty bread, wine, stuffed grape leaves and me in something flammable. On Thanksgiving, I prefer to arrive late, after the majority of the real work is done and that monster bird carcass has been transformed into something that no longer resembles a *censored*. I don't usually eat much, and I always offer to help clean up, so I think that's fair.

I am hoping that we can all enjoy each others' company in a safe and fairly superficial way in which nobody probes too deeply to uncover anybody's political affiliations or religious leanings. If anybody tries, I think I am deciding right now that I will bring up something from TV as a distraction. Since I've been in Portland I've seen more television than I have for most of my adult life. I've managed to avoid American Idol and Desperate Housewives, but I am up on my Hoarders. I'm thinking we might find common ground around the idea that 75 cats (35 of them dead) are too many. If not, I can just pretend I am ten and dissociate on the edge of the couch until someone nudges me in the ribs and tells me it's my turn to say what I am thankful for. This year I am thankful that my mother knows that QVC sells frozen deserts. I'm also thankful that I am here to be with my family in the best way I know how -- skittish, but still willing to be pleasantly surprised. Like marshmallows and sweet potatoes might not be so bad once or twice a year.

Here's a clip from Hoarders in case you want to play the I-feel-comparatively-healthy game -- a classic Thanksgiving pastime. Enjoy!

Sanctified

I'm listening to the Simple Minds right now. It's a double CD I placed on hold at the local library. I really just wanted to hear two songs: "Promised You a Miracle" and another one whose name I can't remember. That one isn't on either of these CDs. But I'm sort of digging "Sanctify Yourself" in this moment, mostly because I like the word sanctified. Years ago I used to listen to a gospel singer whose name I also cannot remember. (You thought you knew me, I know. No, I am not just an aging high priestess of the 80s, friends. And by the way, I still consider Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet" one of the best albums of my young adulthood.) Anyway, this gospel singer used to sing like he had nothing left to lose and, therefore, knew levels of freedom that, back then, I didn't even know existed.

I'm not a religious person, but I know what it is to be sanctified. Dictionary.com defines the word sanctify as follows:
1. to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate
2. to purify or free from sin: Sanctify your hearts.

I'm thinking about purification these days. As in separating the wheat from the chaff. (Dictionary.com defines chaff as "the husks of grains and grasses that are separated during threshing.") I think I've spent the majority of my thirties threshing, figuring out that men who refuse to use the word "boyfriend" in regard to me in public are chaff. So are all jobs that require me to be customer service-ready before ten a.m. It's not easy to figure this stuff out. I mean, who doesn't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater when the baby is screaming and pooping and ruining your social life?

So, I've made some mistakes. I worked as a massage therapist for at least three years too long. It was the best money I knew how to make without having to take off my clothes or shove heroin balloons up my ass. Still, it drained my spirit of the creativity I needed to apply to my writing. And when I injured my arm so badly I had no choice but to quit altogether, things were even worse than I thought they would be. That one psychotic and misogynist housemate I had nearly drove me to fashion a shank from a busted wine glass and drive it through his horrible little heart. In short, I always feared that loosening the reins with which I held my illusions of safety would lead me to Hell. Turns out I was right. But what I didn't know is that I would also learn endurance. I would also learn how to be alone. Like really alone. Not in the I'm-taking-some-me-time vein. No, we're talking I'm-walking-in-the-shadow-of-the-Valley-of-Death. I actually forgot who I was for a while.

So this friend of mine called me and told me about the most wonderful plans she has for her life. Then my best friend from high school looked me up after she found my blog. And then there was the ex-boyfriend who showed up and confused things for a while because we never really ended things. Each reminds me of who I used to be and who I still am. I was a writer back then. I was a writer with an unfortunate wing of hair covering one eye in the 80s. Then I was a writer with dreadlocks (!) who thought the way to godhead was paved with self-denial. Then I was a bitter former massage therapist spitting nails at anyone who tried to tell me to do positive affirmations. Sometimes I threw out too much in my attempt to get clear and to get clean. In my attempt to sanctify myself. The important thing is that I am still here -- irreverent in my devotion, but still here. Sometimes threshing looks a lot like thrashing, which looks a lot like failure. Turns out I was simply setting apart as sacred the things that matter.

Skilled at Avoidance -- My Other Transferable Skill

I'm supposed to go to this literary event tonight. It's another one of my attempts to get to know the smart, funny and literate side of Portland that supposedly exists just everywhere, but remains fairly elusive to me. Of course, I haven't left the house in a while. I'm easily discouraged, it's true. But at a certain point Greenpeace decided to line both sides of the streets in parts of town where aging slackers like me once could have browsed books, ordered au laits and sorted through the bargain bins at thrifts stores in peace. These young, aggressive activists just don't take no for an answer. They smile and wave at passersby from half a block away, as if greeting friends who happened to wind up in front of Powell's at the same time. The faux joy of young hippies who will pretend we are friends in order to get something from me always makes me want to carry a concealed taser. Not being able to afford to donate to save the polar bears bothers me. But the truth is that if I had extra money (instead of not enough of it) I would probably donate it to a literacy organization or a library. Literacy is my chosen path of service. As such, I volunteer as a tutor. And on principle, I don't give money to manipulative groovy people -- ever.

What's the point of this post? None that I can see. I was supposed to be writing, figuring out if my latest project has legs or merely unrealistic short term goals. Does anyone really want to hear about all the horrible dates I've gone on? Should I just turn the whole thing into fiction so I can make things turn out the way I want them to without being bothered by pesky things like the truth? I fear that the whole thing reads like a low rent Sex and the City. You know, the much cooler one in which Carrie (Kerry) lives with her sister because she can't find a job and has had her condoms so long they have expired. I think I'm just having a why-didn't-I-major-in-marketing moment that I simply need to endure. I'm going to go out tonight and hopefully come away with some inspiration. Writing has been a lot of work lately. I'm going to watch someone else do it. I hope that it will save me -- like a well-placed donation to Greenpeace or a pocket-sized pepper spray affixed to my key chain.

UPDATE: Consider me redeemed by the power of art and one citrus-infused beer. I had a great night watching writer/comedians respond to the theme "Get Me Outta Here!" I also stopped by the library and picked up Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer on CD. I turned my frown upside down is the point. I'm off to bed...