Enough. Please.

My childhood friend Marge sent me a letter today that she has submitted to her local paper in Washington State as well as to her congressmen, senators and governor.

It a strange and terrible thing when something so horrifying becomes so commonplace as to fall into some crazy "6 degrees of separation" thing. In my life, I have known women who have been abused by husbands or boyfriends. A couple have been frightened for their lives. This story came full circle. I felt Margie's letter deserved to be read by as many people as possible so I am posting it here:

A young woman was murdered on Friday. On her way into work, she was shot twice by a man who was laying in wait for her. A man who, not three days before, had been arrested for violating a protection order she had taken out against him. Released on bail, he waited for her to arrive at work – and then he took her life.

Sound familiar? You’ve heard this story before- not just on the news these past days, but countless times before. A young woman is being stalked, harassed, or abused—and then one day she is murdered by the one who has terrorized her for so long. Usually, there has been a long history of the stalking, harassment, abuse—yet, still, the perpetrator is released on bail. The cycle sometimes repeats itself until the day finally arrives when it stops-- with her death.

We read the stories in the paper or hear them on the news, and cluck our tongues in disapproval. How could this happen, we ask? Why was he released on bail? How sad it is. Then we forget until it happens again, and we ask the same questions one more time.

But this time, I won’t forget. This time it came so close to home that the predictable, violent end to the story walked into my heart and shook me to the core. This time, it was personal.

The young woman was the

little girl who I went to see in the hospital on the day she was born. She was the daughter of our good friends; my son’s best buddy who loved purple, her Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase, and “My Little Ponies”- and she wouldn’t touch a graham cracker with a ten foot pole. She had a beautiful smile- even when she was missing her front teeth at age 6—and an infectious giggle. She was Jennifer Ann Paulson, and she was loved.

Nothing can bring Jenny back to us. Nothing can take away the pain etched on the faces and hearts of her parents, her brothers, or any of the people who loved her. Nothing can bring back the countless others who died before her in the same way. Nothing can take away the shock and sorrow that squeezes my own heart today. But surely we can find the way to stop the cycle. How many more times do we have to see this in the news before we finally say “No More!”

Its way too easy to be angry at the judge who released this man who murdered Jenny, but he was merely following the law. If the law keeps freeing these men, maybe we need to change the law. I’m not a psychologist, but even I can see a pattern in this kind of thing. Why should a stalker- a person who CLEARLY has an obsession- be released with what amounts to just a “stay away” order that is obviously so easily broken. If that man had been kept in jail until a trial, Jenny would alive today. How many other young women would still be with us, too?

Jenny didn’t deserve this- none of them did. Please don’t let this go on any longer. Don’t wait until it’s your daughter, or sister or friend. Contact your representative, your congressman, anyone who will listen-- and tell them Jenny’s story. Tell them that this has to stop!

This is one article I never want to read again.

Margaret Lundberg

February 28, 2010

There really isn't anything to add.

Wish

If I had all the money in the world I would have Martha Stewart design and maintain a tulip garden for me and I would have unlimited treatments at Burke Williams Spa every single damned day.

Just saying.

In Love With Joni

I watched the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Canada. They were pretty impressive. But its been a really long time since

I was moved as I was when I watched the aerialist dancing to Joni Mitchell's 2000 re-recording of her hit Both Sides Now. The dance and productions values of the the performance itself were amazing but for me it was more about the virtual flood of memories that were born of my first great musical love (not, of course, counting the Beatles): Joni Mitchell.

My direction and life have taken me places that have all but left Joni in the dust. I have cds of hers that haven't been listened to in years. But hearing that song shot me back to 1972 and into a pursuit of every chord she spilled into my soul during my teen and early adult life.

I must have gotten my love of folk music from my mom. But while she loved the sounds of Peter, Paul and Mary and Pete Seeger (...where have all the flowers gone...) those simple lyrics and melodies left me flat. Enter Joni with complex poetic stories, harmonies, chording, and melodies that kept surprising you. First lofty and pretty melodies which grew over the years to be more bluesy, more jazz - a hole that you could happily fall into. You didn't know where she was going - it was new and deeeeeeep. And I mean more than generally profound. I mean it reached me as something that was true to my own wiring. Whether or not I could relate to the cautious optimism or the flat out disillusion that was the common thread to her songs, the poetry and the music itself resonated with me in a very personal way. And so, it "took me places". Places that I cannot articulate other than to say I soar and I "realize myself". (Very un-Valri things to say. In fact, if I were reading your blog and I read this, I'd stop. Because it all sounds very studied and mechanically deep and falsely "precious". And I hate "precious".)

But lyrics of missing your spouse (...the bed's too big; the frying pan too wide...) or helpless, hopeless, unhappy love (...I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet...) or loss (...I wish I had a river I could skate away on...) or the idiotic joy of new love (...won't you stay? we'll put on the day and we'll wear it till the night comes...) or the realization that with the passage of time, you still can't grasp what you really wish you could (... its life illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all...) - all of these words, I do get. And the music gives it color and life. More than if they were put in another way. Because, I guess, I must think in pictures.

It is the same "musical picture painting" that has always drawn me to Stephen Sondheim. His work does the same thing for me.

So I have been boring the pants off my daughters - trying to introduce them to Joni - and they are polite about it but they do not get it. And while I wish they could soar there with me, in a way it is good that they don't because it will continue to be uniquely, intrinsically, special to me. And I can go it solo - I don't mind.

In "Case of You", she sings "I remember that you once told me: 'love is touching souls'; surely you've touched mine. I love Joni Mitchell.

Sorry for the preciousness of this.

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Thought I'd try to turn the table.

A Message. Perhaps.

My friend's mother just died. I know what that feels like. It is a sadness so deep that it is impossible to articulate it.

I wrote a letter to my friend, telling her that I know her grief and that I was available to talk to if she needed. When my mom died, 24 years ago, I needed. I told her that I was praying for her and that her mother was healed and in the loving and merciful arms of God. I believe in God. I more than believe. I know. And I hope that what I told her is true. I hope that her mother had a relationship with God.

But I also felt compelled to tell her that my mother "came to me" in dreams. Because that it

also true. And if it wasn't her, it sure felt like it. The idea of this is not biblical per se, but the bible does say that we shall "dream dreams". It probably doesn't mean what my experience was, but my mom talked to me from the perspective of having passed. Maybe God lets us dream creatively of our loved ones so that we can find comfort. I don't know.

A couple of years ago, I attended a convention in Vegas with one of the editors of the magazine I worked for. We were having dinner at TAO at the Venetian and as noisy as it was, we started talking of personal and spiritual experiences. Her sister in law had died a few years prior in terrible car accident. She was very young when she died. This was still an extremely painful experience for her and her husband. But she told me that her sister in law had come to her in a dream. It was a very vivid dream and their conversation was a happy one. Towad the end of the dream, her sister in law told her that this was a "real" visit. She replied: "But you are dead and this is a dream". Her sister in law said "Yes, we can come in dreams". I don't know if it is real but this was my editor's experience and I liked this story.

The first dream I had of my mom was only 2 or 3 nights after she died. (My mother had died of a heart attack and it was completely unexpected.) In the dream, I found her in a tiny outdoor cafe, surrounded by trees, completely shaded and we sat at a little wrought iron cafe table. I told her how relieved and thankful I was to see her. She seemed a bit disoriented but generally in good spirits. I asked her how heaven was. She listed off a number of very notable historical figures including Disraeli, FDR and Picasso and said how excited she was to meet them but that she was disappointed because all they wanted to do was watch TV. She said she was a little bored. (Hey, its a dream.) Then I told her that her mother was inconsolable and I asked her if she could tell me anything that would convince my grandmother that there was a heaven and that she was okay - something only my grandmother would know. My mother thought for a minute and said: "Tell her "doodlebug" and "doodleberry".

When I woke up I remembered the dream vividly and thought it was very odd. "Doodlebug" and "doodleberry" were bizarre words to have come up. They had no meaning at all. But I decided to ask my grandmother.

About a month later, Barry and I visited my grandmother in Tucson and I told her about the dream and asked her if the words meant anything to her at all. They did not. So much for the "message". Dreams are crazy.

After a year of serious grieving, my mother "came to me" for the last time. I was in Las Vegas,

of all places and I was napping in the hotel room at Caesar's Palace. In the dream, I was in an empty high rise and I was chasing the image of my mother, but she kept getting away from me - she'd close a door behind her or get into an elevator or just round a corner. Finally I caught her and we sat together on a bench in front of a window and I cried and cried and told her that I couldn't stand it and that I needed her and that I didn't know what I was going to do. She was very emotionally detached in this dream. She wouldn't engage with me in it. She just sat next to me and patted my hand and told me I would be fine and that she could not come back and that I had to go on. And that is the only thing that happened for the remainder of the dream. When I woke up I was very sad. And I never dreamed of her like that again.

Then, about 10 years later, when my grandmother was in an assisted living home and had alzheimers, my auntie Barbara sent me a number of letters my grandmother had saved. They were written by my mother and sent to her when she was pregnant with me and living in a little apartment with my dad and sister in Downey. Reading them was a joyful experience. I saw my mother in a new and different light - as a very young mother - a girl really - prattling on about her husband and her baby and the electric bill and the neighbors - and me. These letters continued after my birth and she told her mother all about me. I was very smart. I was very fat. I was very demanding.

And here's the surprise. I was a "little doodlebug".

I don't know what to make of it. But this is a true story.

We Don't Do Valentine's Day in This House

Last night we had to stop at the grocery store to pick up some sparkling water for a barbecue we were going to. I waited in the car while Bob and Grace went in. When the came out, they were carrying one of those recycled plastic grocery bags (double bagged) with the following contents: two large bottles of sparkling water, one bottle of 100% cranberry juice (no sugar added), a can of dog food and a red, heart shaped, medium sized, red box of nasty Russell Stover chocolates - which I consumed despite their inferior quality.

Bob took the candy out of the bag right way and threw it at me through the car window saying: "Here. I didn't do anything for Valentine's day so this is it."

In truth, I couldn't have cared less. I long ago stopped expecting anything romantic from him on this or any other day. He's not that kind of guy. He used to try to do stuff but it was so utterly offensive to romance that I put an end to it. Not that it was obscene, just stupid. A couple of years ago was sort of the last straw. He came home with a gigantic card (about 3' tall) that he got at the car wash. Yes. The car wash. I am not kidding. It was one of those lame cartoon cards that has some incredibly insipid "joke" sentiment - the ones that are no doubt written and printed by a bunch of guys who drink a lot of beer and go to monster truck rallies every weekend. "Honey, you're one of a kind..." (open card) "...who else could put up with all my farts?" Yeah, those kind of cards.

On our very first "formal" date, we went to a very lovely bistro restaurant with lots of ambiance in the valley. We had a lovely table with candles and a bottle of very good wine. We "dressed" - it was a big deal. I loved everything about it - until Bob decided to put a small amount of his meal in his spoon and launch it at me like a catapult. Just so I wouldn't forget that his real name was Peter Pan.

Since then, Peter and I have had a number of mind numbing romantic dates. Not the least of which was our honeymoon. It was the only thing he had to plan and his plan turned out to be "Let's get there and find out what there is to do." We drove around Napa aimlessly and didn't really do anything. And we really only had a day to do it because we had to get home and back to the girls (we got married over a 3-day-weekend and tied it to a business trip of mine so we could write some of it off.)

Flowers have always been from the Albertson's supermarket - usually with the price tag still on the cellophane. And I have gotten an extraordinary number of balloons over the years. I really don't like balloons. And on more than one occasion, he has allowed our girls (as children) to choose my gifts. I have received stuffed animals, dolls, cheap jewelry - all of which soon found permanent residence in their rooms (as planned).

When he does get me something serious - he gets very upset when I am invariably disappointed. Like the Christmas I told him I wanted a very small television for the bedroom and he got me a 40" set - one that still takes up a full 1/3 of the closet space. Or the other time when I asked for a very small, light weight, thin, but good quality camera that I could carry with me easily in my purse and instead he bought me a $500 camera that is an excellent camera and does absolutely everything but is bulky and needs its own purse and must be worn around my neck and requires 3 hours of reading to know how it works. And guess who winds up carrying it? Because Bob doesn't really care about photographs. He likes having them (and he's a good photographer) but taking them on vacation and stuff is not worth the hassle to him.

This is not to say that there aren't a couple of really incredibly beautiful gifts he has given me - but they are so few and far between that I practically display them under glass.

So romantic? Not so much. Unless you want to count the fact that at least once a week he rubs

my hands and feet or brushes my hair or gives me a back massage while I nod off to sleep. Or that he makes me coffee every morning. Or that if I happen to mention I'd like, say, a grilled cheese sandwich, he'll get up and make it. Or that even though we agreed to trade off weeks to drive Grace to school in the morning, he has taken over the responsibility altogether - and without a word - because he knows I'm not a morning person. Or that he learned to play some of my favorite songs on the guitar.

I decided to count all that. And I think of it today, Valentine's day, while he planning nothing special at all to commemorate it.

Christine

Christine is my surprise.

When I wrote about Jenny I wrote that Jennifer is the same person now as she was the day she was born. The same can be said of Christine. And while they are twins and very close, they are completely different.

Anne named Christine after herself, simply transposing her first and middle name. Christine Anne was born gentle. She has enormous eyes and from the time she was born she looked at you with a sweet "is it my turn?" expression, as though she would just wait until everyone else was taken care of before her need was met.

Christine was born a couple of minutes before Jennifer but she was the weaker one. As a preemie, she weighed only a little over 3 pounds and her lungs were not fully developed. There was a fairly strong chance that she wouldn't make it and I remember Anne asking me if I thought she and Bob should risk the steroids or whatever it was the doctors suggested giving her for maybe a better chance. I didn't want any part of the responsibility of that decision, but they chose the somewhat risky treatment and it turned out well. She survived.

She has always seen the world differently than others. She stood a little outside the group and watched, as through a window, and it caused me concern as she grew older because I worried that she was lonely. And she was, to some degree. But her gentleness wouldn't allow for much self pity. One of my favorite stories about her was when she was in kindergarten and all the children in her class no longer liked Barney the Purple Dinosaur but Christine professed to still be a fan. One day I asked her why, when she didn't even watch him on TV anymore, did she still tell everyone she liked him, opening herself to playground ridicule. She answered "If I don't like him, he'll have nobody." That is Christine. To this day, that is Christine.

She found great pleasure in simple things, she saw things easily. And when she was young, everything she loved carried equal weight. Her perspective was sort of "yes" or "no". It was often funny. In an attempt to deal preemptively with what I feared would be trouble manifested later in life for having lost their mother as babies, I had the girls see a childrens' counselor when they were of school age. In the course of them seeing her, the counselor asked each of them to draw a picture of what they loved the most. Amanda and Jennifer drew pictures of Bob and me, the dog, their teachers. Christine drew candy.

Christine lost everything as a child. But especially shoes. I remember once I bought her a pair of expensive running shoes she wanted. She ran outside wearing them to show her friend next door. About an hour later, she came home barefoot and we never saw the shoes again. Once when she was in the 2nd grade, Bob was out of town and I had to get them out the door on time for school so that I could make a plane for a sales meeting in Florida. Trying to get them dressed, I went into her closet and she had ZERO pair of shoes in it. She had lost them all. Of course, I lost my mind. I don't remember what she finally had on her feet when she left, but I missed my plane and dropped in on my pastor for counseling to calm down. She has grown out of that.

She also kept the messiest room of any kid I know. She has not grown out of that.

Christine's most marked physical characteristic is her smile. There is joy in it. Her friends made her a button that said: "I can't see when I smile". Once I was in a show with the actress Betty Garrett. Christine was about 3. One afternoon Bob brought her to my rehearsal and when Christine saw me, she broke into her famous smile. Betty said "Oh my goodness! Her smile lights up the whole room!" (It still does!)

She has always been very quiet. She doesn't say much - to the point where it was cause for some concern when she was young. When she was seven, I had her tested to determine if there was a problem. I prepared for bad news. What came back though was that she was completely off the charts, testing "post high school" in some areas of comprehension but her verbal skills were a year behind grade level. And this made school challenging for her. But she eventually overcame it. Still, it made her difficult to know in many ways. She didn't articulate feelings or observations and a direct question would often yield the eternally frustrating answer "I don't know." Yet you always knew somehow that something was brewing.

So now, and I mean within the last year, she has selectively shared her thoughts, feelings and opinions and I am always completely caught off guard. My lack of understanding of her over the years has led me to make some clearly erroneous assumptions about her. Namely, that she wasn't terribly interested in anything other than social networks and her music (most of which I am not a fan of).

Last year, she received an "A" on a paper she wrote for an English class and I was furious because it was clear that she had plagiarized the entire thing. I had read her high school papers and getting her to write a coherent paper was like pulling teeth. I knew that she wasn't capable of this kind of scholarly composition. She was offended. Then just a couple of months ago, she was sitting next to me, typing on her computer (while watching TV), when I looked over and read what she was writing. I reminded her that she could not copy from the text book sitting next to her. "I'm not" she replied. I looked at the book. Indeed, she was not copying. These were her well founded, well organized, well articulated thoughts on paper. This realization made me feel completely lost for a moment. Who was this girl I was sitting next to?

Recently, in a conversation about a family issue, she offered an insightful, thoughtful point of view. In the midst of her sharing her feelings, I was taken for a while from the stress of the issue itself and was absorbed by the woman she had become. It had all happened without me noticing. It was as though she had spent a very long time in a cocoon or something and I had just believed over time that that was where she lived. But she emerged sometime when I didn't notice into this very special person. And while once her mind seemed to jump from random thing to random thing, she seems to me now to be the most rational of all of us.

And still, she she stands sometimes and watches the world, as through a window, with a look in her beautiful eyes as if to humbly say "is it my turn?" But there is gentleness in it And joy.

Lovely, lovely girl. She warms my heart.

Laundry + Prescription Drugs = A Better Experience. I'll Bet.

I need Cymbalta to walk into my bedroom. The thought of having to do the three loads of laundry piled on the floor is sending me into a downward spiral.

Its not that laundry is hard. I used to have to get in the car and drive to the laundromat to sit in a damp, hot, dirty room of washer and dryers to do my laundry. There I'd sit, with a group of other unknown 20-somethings, reading a really bad paperback novel that I had no interest in while I sat in an orange plastic chair and waited for the spin cycle to finish or for an available dryer - all while praying that the place wouldn't get robbed while I was there. That was pretty bad.

Moving up, I thought I would never stop being grateful for an apartment building with washer/dryer units in the basement. But correct change was an issue. And then there was waiting for the neighbors to finish theirs. True Story: I was living with my first husband Barry in a small complex in Studio City where we were one of 20 units that shared 2 washers and two dryers in the basement. You had to have some kind of magical timing to get your laundry done. It seemed like every time Barry or I would go down there, we would have just missed getting one of the machines and it was crazy making! So one night, I waited. Now my wash was done and the dryers had finished but both dryers were filled with other people's clothes. I waited for 15 minutes - no lie - and then I took the clothes out of one of the dryers and put them into the empty basket that had been sitting on top. In the midst of doing this, the owner of the clothes came down, threw me a look that scared the crap out of me, took my wet clothes out of the washing machine and threw them on the dirty, concrete floor! I was terrified. I actually apologized to her. She just brushed past me and left. I was too scared to respond. Thinking of it now, I could have killed her - I think it would have been justifiable homicide - but I should have at least stuffed her into the machine and turned it on high.

Now I have my own washer and dryer. They need no coins. I don't have to wait for anyone. Nor do I have to fear anyone. I don't mind the folding and putting away of clean clothes and towels and sheets. Like I said earlier, laundry is not hard. Its just never, ever done. And I am longing to feel finished with something. So I am thinking of putting an emergency call in to my doctor. I can say I need something to "face 'the mountains' in my life". She doesn't need to know that they are mountains of dirty clothes.

This woman is doing the laundry and smiling. She is lying.

Brain Dead on Saturday

It is Saturday. Which means an endless stream of children's programming.

I remember one Saturday morning when I was about 10 I was sitting on the floor watching "Archie" cartoons when my dad walked in very agitated.

"Haven't you outgrown this nonsense yet?", he asked in exasperation.

I turned off the TV and never engaged in Saturday morning nonsense again.

No such luck here.

New on the Menu: Roadkill

Oh. My. GOSH!! I cannot believe what I have just spent the past several hours looking at.

Three weeks ago, I started a financial planning course being offered at my church. It's Dave Ramsey's course, if you've heard of him. He is the supreme advocate of complete debt free living which is definitely in contrast to my 52 years of "debt management" living. Such as it was.

In honesty, I love "kits". Love boxes filled with books and forms and gadgets to create a "system". I'm not much good at keeping the system but I love the toys. The kit I received for signing up for this class appealed to me. It has all sorts of fun looking cool stuff inside. I go once a week and watch a one hour video of a well rehearsed Dave Ramsey lecturing on how to get out of debt and build wealth. It is littered with "good ol' boy" humor which was very entertaining at first but is now wearing thin. Still, he has some very good and interesting things to say and when he's finished, we gather in small groups for 30 minutes to discuss our thoughts, challenges, and progress and then we all go home to do the homework. Well this week was the week we got to go home and play with the kit. I rolled my sleeves up and filled in all the boxes on all the forms with numbers from our checking account, our savings, 401K, and investments using the pen they gave me (and in my best handwriting). Bob called all our creditors and got our balances and double checked our interest rates. I created a budget from the forms in the book they gave me and labeled envelopes and got neat and organized and it was really fun. Then I put all of it in the Quicken program they provide and when I was done, I saw what our net worth really is and what we are really spending (including the one stop at Coffee Bean and a trip to Taco Bell and a cheap movie and a can of paint and...), what our debt really is and how long it would take to pay it off at minimum payments until debt free. So currently I am on suicide watch.

First of all, this started long ago with the "well a paycheck is coming next week so I can afford this" way of thinking. Bob and I have never had a budget on paper. Ever. EVER. And while unemployment has shown me that we were living too large, we felt we were okay. I mean we had a good, six figure income for many, many years. We paid our bills and went on vacations. And saved! (What was left.) Certainly we were not out of control.

I stand corrected.

We had no idea that we had created a financial monster that has been eating our future alive. And it isn't all about the crash (although that certainly played an unfortunately large role).

The upshot is that if we don't get it together, I could be 170 before everything is paid off and if I want the kind of money I dream of having in retirement, I need $432,000 to invest. TODAY! I believe I am in the market for a dream adjustment.

It is what it is. And thank God I'm in this class now. I am depressed but we can get it together. We do have some time to do that. Its just that right at this moment it feels very much as though I can't afford to be alive. Were I to die, my life insurance would pay out and I could instantly turn all those debt amounts into zeros and fully fund the savings to the point I want it to be. But then I'd be dead, and where's the fun in that?

However, as I sit here in a wash of disbelief I am empowered. Why. Because now I know. Because I can affect change on the situation and repair it. Because now I can get control. But this will mean living like a college student for the next couple of years. (Note to self: I say "I" instead of "we" - I have a horrible habit of doing that... but this is my blog).

So I have still more adjusting to do in this period of transformation and reinvention. Not only

must I bottle what I'm good at and lose 50 lbs, I must muzzle the spending, increase the savings, pay off what feels like the national debt and do it all with a smile and a strand of pearls. I will S-T-R-E-E-E-T-C-H every dollar to the max and try to make leftovers from the frozen peas no one ate in the first place (actually, that will be Bob's job). Perhaps I could save on groceries by recycling the critter roadkill in the neighborhood. Lots of bunnies and possum. Just like Granny from the "Beverly Hillbillies" After all, she was a millionaire.