When worlds collide: monks, therapists, and other untouchables

I have been married for forty years — which means that for forty years any man over the age where cheek-pinching is permitted has been off limits. (Forgive me, those of you men in your early fifties who have smarting cheeks!) I have been able to manage this limitation by a) having a handsome husband, b) keeping a boyfriend in the attic, and c) associating only with men who are either by vocation unavailable or who are gay. Every once in awhile, however, worlds collide and I am put in the path of a damn attractive and potentially available man.

“Now, Linshaolin,” you are sputtering . . . “you are nearly sixty and your youthful approach to life has somewhat outlived your less than youthful body . . . and this sort of fancy is just foolishness!” And I say in return . . . Balderdash! I have very few wrinkles (and it is not because, as some unkind people say, my skin is stretched so tight over my fat) and my hair remains that dark ash brown so often referred to in romantic literature as Preference by L’Oreal #434. My mind remains as intact as it ever was. I can still bat my eyelashes and smile coyly. The years have done nothing but given me experience, sophistication, and a fine patina. And really, if this were a man’s blog, you would expect some ramblings about gun racks and milking the herd. But this is a woman’s blog and I would never mix metaphors like that.

So put away your misconceptions about older women – we are now referred to as “cougars” if you please. The only reason those damn attractive men remain unmolested is that we have developed inner resources, the ability to translate our desires into forces of good for the world. As evidence, I point you to the decorative, crocheted tissue box cover. Indeed, the entire collective of crocheted and needlepointed home decor items would not exist to enhance the majesty of our planet were it not for this inner strength. When you see a king-sized hand appliqued quilt you must appreciate that monumental work of art for what it truly is — it is a physical manifestation of a . . . well, I am sure I have provided sufficient evidence.

Not wanting to be fully dependent on only my inner strength, I choose to work from home. This limits Exposure. My field trips are few and consist of my tai chi lessons (taught by a monk), my psychotherapy (where I would be bitch slapped for even thinking about erotic transference), and my Sunday mixed doubles match (where it is more likely that I would want to take out my partner’s shins than take him out on the town). All my other activities are female oriented. I have polled my girlfriends and without exception their approaches are at least similar.

Having a stroke or other major illness is one way we cougars handle Temptation. Being IVed to a chemo drip leaves the hands free for knitting while ensuring that there is no wandering. The “girls week” vacation plan is another solid winner — even if the girls go to Vegas, the sight of five to seven postmenopausal ladies entering the casino like O-Ren-Ishii arriving at the House of Blue Leaves with her posee is enough to scare the hell out of every guy in the place. Frees up the tables nicely. What happens in Vegas . . .

So, I have no issues with attractive men. (I will refrain from saying that I have the matter well in hand.) My husband can sleep secure in the knowledge that Michael’s Crafts has an unlimited supply of yarns and flosses. My girlfriends have unlimited ideas for many happy girls’ nights out. The only other male with whom I will be cuddling is Nero Wolf (kitty).

Vermont outcrop

There is a field somewhere near Weston, Vermont — unremarkable in its Queen Ann’s Lace and Heather except for the fact that deep within its acreage lies a massive rock pushed up out of the earth without reason, without neighboring rocks, without any geological raison d’etre. Nor did it fall from space in one of those freak, isolated showers of debris. No impact crater has left its depression, no bits of stone are strewn about. This is a single rock, an outcrop, a bed for the gods.

It has been worn smooth by time and exposure to harsh winters and hot summers. It has eroded into an egg shape lying on its side but with the side shorn flat and riddled with a million pock marks, each just deep enough to hold the morning dew, giving the illusion of a tranquil pond suspended three or four feet above the flowers. It is home to all manner of insects which hover around it — darting in and out of the deep shadow it casts. The sound of summer insects is cacaphony against the hot stone.

I came across this field, this rock, this place that divides Vermont from Heaven, while trying to find a shortcut between the tiny room I was renting for the summer and the town. It was a summer in which I was intentionally seeking isolation but even I could not stand the aloneness of a rural hot summer. I became obsessed with the idea of cold root beer — I would sit on the steps of the country store and drink it. I would see people, mostly tourists in town for a theatrical. I would wander over to the mill and watch the water wheel spill a perpetual gush of water into the gorge stream behind the theatre. I might end the day at the monastery watching the monks turn pots. If I was lucky I would witness the moment when new wares were brought out of the kilns and see the look of joy in the eyes of the brothers.

But I saw the rock instead. I lay down on its dewy pitted alter like a sacrifice and turned my face to the sun. I bathed in warmth and allowed the insects to settle on my dusty legs. I stretched out my arms and let my fingers explore all the crags and pits of the surface, unafraid of what lay beneath the water or in the shadows. The sky was sharp blue interrupted by only a single cloud that seemed to have lost its way — or perhpas it was there for me — an entertainment. I closed my eyes and listened to the high vibration hum that seemed so loud I thought it might drive me crazy. Once or twice I sat up to check the landscape, to make sure no one was about to stumble upon me at this precise moment of my great divide. I told God that it was quite ok if He wanted to take me then and there. But the doorway to Heaven did not open. The rock did not swallow me up. The insects did not consume me.

The cloud briefly obscured the sun and then drifted off finding nothing sufficiently interesting to keep it above the field. I began to think about the root beer. My clothes were damp and I hoped that the sun would evaporate the dank before I got to the village. I sat up and swung my legs to the ground. I thought that I must be one of those human sacrifies saved by the eclipse — one who gets to live but who never gets to experience that awful moment of glory when the blood is shed and the gods retrieve the soul. My soul would have to be content with Queen Ann’s Lace baked so dry by the sun that it shattered as I walked the field, covering my shins with flower dust.

Will khaki cure what ailes me?

My adult daughter, who shares my home office with me, is soon to move out and get an apartment of her own. This will break the impass that has kept us from painting the office — she wanted turquoise and I wanted yellow.  The office will be mine alone and the decision will be mine alone.  But now that I’m on the brink of yellow freedom I am thinking about khaki.  Yellow had been my color of choice because it is happy, alert and energetic.  I held the firm belief that if my walls were happy, alert and energetic then so would be my office work.

But now I am thinking that my life would really be improved by a cool crisp linen khaki color — sophisticated and somewhat spartan.  Khaki walls would require an orderly desk.  Khaki would inspire self-discipline.  Khaki would remind me that less is more.  Khaki would not tolerate an ill kept pedicure or a collection of plastic containers of yesterday’s ice coffee adorning my desk.  Khaki would expect nothing less than precise thinking and crisp decision-making.

My new office will be a refuge from life’s chaos.  I will remove the sign that is now on my door that says “Be Happy” with one that says “Be Productive” — work will pour forth in crisp black-and-white out of my printer, onto my screen, into my hard drive.  I must’ve known all along that it would be khaki since I have been slowly buying contemporary black office accessories.  Had I gone with yellow my office would have looked like a bumblebee, but with khaki my office will look sharp like a guy in well-ironed chinos and an oxford-cloth shirt — how hot is that! (Whoa, Lin, remember you are going for tranquil and orderly here…)

I have not shared the khaki idea with Nero Kitty yet but I have a feeling he will agree since his cat bed is khaki and he likes that a lot. Even the husband thought khaki would be a good choice. So it is off to the hardware store for painting supplies. I prepped the room about two years ago so all it will need is a good vacuuming before I can prime. I’ll need to order new blinds too but there is no discussion there — no matter what color I chose for the walls the blinds would have been white wide wood slats. And and it is off to Pottery Barn to get some of those wall-mounted shelves to hold my photos and objects de Buddha.

Spring, khaki, fresh paint. . .yep, that will cure just about anything.

 

I am sorry but not all of us can be bipolar

At therapy today we were talking about how the language of mental illness changes with the times — Bipolar Disorder used to be called Manic Depressive illness but that became politically incorrect. Too many of us who are patients, er. . .clients, oh make that consumers of mental health care objected to the tone set by the term Manic Depressive. We are not Tasmanian Devils after all. So the Bureau of Medical Terminology sent out an email to all its agents requesting submission of ideas for a new term — one that had cache and perhaps a bit of intrigue.

A brilliant chap, who had recently moved to Wilkes Land to pursue his dream of ice fishing, came up with the winning entry. He devised a system of unipolar and bipolar disorders. Unipolar was to be the term to describe what was formerly known as Depressed as Hell. And Bipolar was to be the new term for Manic Depressive. As we patients, ah, forgive me, old habits die hard . . . as we Individuals know, no one wants to hang out with someone who is Depressed as Hell — but Unipolar sounds like a skill (“my friend is so accomplished — she is even Unipolar”) and everyone likes a buddy with prowess. Unipolar pales, however, in comparison with Bipolar — “Yeah, well my friend is Bipolar! So there!”

Bipolar Disorder (aka Mood Swings Gone Wild) is terminology already heading out the door to be replaced with the balletic Mood Fluctuation Arrhythmia or the manly Mood Regulatory Disturbance. Despite the trend to soften the language and be more warm and inclusive in our nomenclature there is a conservative reaction that is beginning to swell in opposition to making mental illness Nice. Even some therapists have joined the backlash. Do not be surprised if your psychiatrist soon opens the office door and says “Well, look who is here — another whackorama! Hold the calls Marge.”

Perhaps your therapist is a closet conservative, longing for the good old days when their patients (yes damn it, patients) were so afraid of discovery that they had panic attacks. Jolly good for business. Such an individual will bring about the return of stigmatizing terminology slowly, starting with referring to you as “mildly hypomanic”, then several weeks later calling your condition “a train wreck waiting to happen” and then, just before leaving for the summer, they will say “your insurance is no longer covering bipolar disorder, so I have to submit a new claim using code 447.” “What is code 447?”  you ask. “Sorry, our time is up. See you in September.”

You go to the front desk. “Marge, what is diagnostic code 447?” you politely inquire. Marge consults her computer screen. “Way Fucked Up.”

 

Are you a Buddhist?

Someone asked me the other day whether I was a Buddhist. The question did not come out of the blue – I always wear a jade Buddha pendent, take moments out of my day to meditate and chant using prayer beads, and I am reading Buddhist sutras. I even have Buddha on my speed dial. So you would think that this was a fair question. But it is not. It is like asking someone if they are a  Mills Utilitarian or an Aristotelian or a Kantian. The answer is yes and no.

I try to live mindfully. I try to follow the spirit of the philosophy of Buddhism.  I believe in almost all of the tenets of  Buddhism. But I strongly disagree with some — I am far more liberal with regard to gender issues, for instance. I have failed at being a vegetarian. I do not believe in reincarnation — it would suck to keep coming back until I got it right. So where does that leave me?

I love that fact that Buddhism is without reference to God and has no gods nor goddesses. And yet it has those oh so comforting deities like Kwan Yin, Medicine Buddha, White Tara…one can practice Buddhism, one can pray, one can strive toward enlightenment and yet one is never bound by someone else’s conception of a Greater Being. I can visualize and personalize whatever higher order I need or don’t need. But most of all I love that Buddhism is peace loving. There is no long history of suffering following in its path.

No, I can’t say that I am a Buddhist. I am still on my spiritual journey. I am still learning about Buddhism and will not sign on the dotted line until I am more thoroughly educated. I am still a secular humanist. For me there is a God and God resides in every one and everything. No one has written a text for me or drawn a picture. As a secular humanist I am floating in space, which at times is a lovely feeling of freedom and at other times is a distressing sensation of isolation. Perhaps Buddhism will someday give me grounding when I need it. It is too early to say.

Sorry Boss, you’ve been blogged

I have a great boss — he takes good care of me, he is dedicated to his work, he creates an environment which leads to success, but best of all he is totally 100% gullible. Ok, I’ll be generous and admit that when I played my annual April Fool’s joke on him this year it hit him when he was working on a massive sleep deficit following a difficult quarter-end in which all  hands were working 30 or 40 hours straight to get orders out the door. Ok, I’ll be extra honest and admit that my joke so closely paralleled his expectations of me that only the sharpest tack would have punctured my balloon.

If you follow my blog you already know that I have Parkinson’s. And you know that I have strengths and weaknesses and one of my weaknesses is that I am incompetent at using “online tools”  — online banking means financial ruin; online shopping means financial ruin; online travel arrangements means a botched trip and financial ruin. So, I was preparing for a business trip to Denver where my boss works. My company requires us to  use an online trip planning/ticket purchasing tool. I have never used it without something going awry and worse is the online expense reimbursement tool which I always mess up terribly. My boss has come to expect that every trip will have some unpleasant drama associated with it planning or reimbursement. So when he received my email he let out a small sigh of anguished resignation and said “Damn that woman.”

Hey, it was April Fool’s Day and I am Linshaolin. No way was I going to let my long history of boss abuse lapse at such an occassion. I sent him an email:

Hi Mike.  I was booking my trip to Denver using the online travel tool when because of my Parkinson’s tremor I accidentally purchased eight nonrefundable tickets. I am really sorry — I can’t think of anything to do to fix it. I will use the tickets eventually but we will have to pay a $200 change fee each time. I really apologize.

Regards,

Linshaolin

I pressed the send button and waited. About a half hour later I received an instant message from Mike: “How much were the tickets?” No “Hi Lin” or “Hahahaha” just a very defeated “How much were the tickets?” I laughed out loud — this was going to be good. I replied $4.01 (as in 4 = April and 01 = April 1st). Instant message back “You mean $401 x 8 as in $3208?” I began to feel sorry for the guy. I replied: “Ah, Mike? Hello. Should I stop torturing you?” No response. Now I was feeling guilty. I instant messaged “April Fool’s!” Mike replied “Lin, I have not slept in 33 hours. Are you telling me this is a joke.” Now I am feeling really guilty. “Yes, Mike, it is a joke. I am an evil person. I am sorry.”

Some long seconds elapsed before Mike IMed back: “I remained calm.” Being a sweetheart I did not tell anyone about his reaction. But the next day during the steering committee meeting (which I attend by phone) the moderator said: “Hey Lin, you have got to book my next trip — how did you get a ticket to Colorado for $4.01 (followed by loud guffaws). So Mike had outed himself.

I must start planning now for next April 1st — he will be on the alert, so it will have to be a masterpiece.

Super Massive Black Holes, Gamma Bursts, and Lint Filters

For those of us with chronic insomnia and who watch a lot of wee hours of the morning TV, we see a lot of documentaries about space. I have become somewhat of an expert about black holes as a result. Last night, or should I say this morning, I had a bit of an epiphany while watching “Alien Galaxies”. It came to me in a flash — the Universe is a physical manifestation of the psyche — the id, the ego, and the super-ego. “What? you say. Linshaolin, you are running short on marbles.”

Well, let’s take a look at this hypothesis and measure its worth. We can start with a short recap of Psych 101. The id, the fully unconscious part of the psyche, is where our most basic drives reside. The ego is the part that deals with the world — the face to meet the faces that you meet. The super-ego judges — it is our moral center. The id is manifested by the galactic black hole, the remnants of an exploding star whose matter collapsed in on itself creating a mass so large that not even light can escape its pull. The ego is the gamma burst — the burst of light so bright that it can be seen by the naked eye despite the fact that it is on the other side of our galaxy. And the super-ego is that dark corridor of no matter inside the black hole — endless, bottomless — a grease slick of what were once stars, space dust, and dark matter.

OK, Lin, you say, just how is a grease slick like a moral core? Listen, all of us know right from wrong — it is only a matter of how creative we are in rationalizing the wrong that makes judgment a slippery business. (Oh, Lin, you are outstandingly good…) And now you are wondering, I am sure, how does a lint filter fit in with either the psychology or the physics of the universe? As you know, a lint filter is a device to trap the debris of washing laundry – metaphorically speaking we can view a lint filter as something that saves what would otherwise go down the drain. In psychology this is called a conscience and in space we call it gravitational pull.

So now we are faced with a question so awesome in its implications that it staggers the mind: Which came first the Psyche or the Universe? Clearly, from my opening paragraph, you can see that I believe the Psyche came first and was the architectural plan for the Universe and all its subsystems (for example, tennis and international finance are also modeled after the id, ego and super-ego (and don’t forget the lint filter). I base my belief on empirical evidence. Let’s take the big daddy, the Universe.

If it was created by God then there is no need for further discussion. God created man in his image and man has id, ego and super-ego (and lint filters) therefore so does God. And it follows that since God created the Universe then He preceded it. If the Universe was created spontaneously, without Divine intervention, we call that Science. Science is both the method of gaining knowledge and also the knowledge itself. How could there be a method of gaining knowledge or knowledge itself without the ego and super-ego? I rest my case… But wait, Lin, you say. What about the lint filter?

The lint filter (aka the Conscience) arose after the id, ego, and super-ego and acts kind of like a handicap in golf. It reins in the other parts of the Psyche ensuring accord and stability. In space we can see this played out in gravitational pull — the pull that keeps the entire Universe from being swallowed up by a super massive black hole (aka the Id).

Now that I have demonstrated the proof of my hypothesis a difficult question remains. From whence comes the Psyche?

Shopping & Cosmos with Kathy

The best thing about trekking out to Boulder for business is the opportunity to reconnect with my Colorado buddies — high on the list is my friend Kathy (see my post on Boulder trivia night) who I have known for at least 10 years.  Kathy is a geo CFO, drives a white Mercedes, and is downright gorgeous - so what she is doing hanging out with me is a big question.  And the answer is shopping and drinking blood orange cosmopolitans. On my friend-o-meter scale, just after loyalty and a sense of humor come shopping and recognizing a good cocktail when one is drinking it.  Kathy has all four qualities and then some.

It took extensive instant messaging for us to arrange our rendezvous. Decisiveness is not one of Kathy’s qualities — our exchange went something like this (over a four hour elapsed time): Me ”what time do you want to meet?” Kathy ”I know of a great Italian restaurant we can try.” “What time do want to meet?” “Do you have my cell number?” “What time do want to meet?” “What hotel you staying at?” “Kathy, I need you to answer this question — what time do you want to meet…” let’s meet at 4:30.” Kathy arrived at five.

So, I arrived first at our designated meeting spot, revving the engine of my pristine white Pontiac G5 with spoiler.  Kathy pulls up beside me in her white Mercedes — Thelma and Louise out for the night.  We exchanged kisses and “Hey Babes” and headed out for the 29th St Mall.  My goal was to buy a black jacket; Kathy was looking for stuff for her upcoming Hawaii vacation.  Our finely honed shopping radar took us directly to Coldwatercreek which was having a 70% off sale.  There is nothing more satisfying than shopping with a girlfriend who has the same shopping habits — fondle everything in a quick first pass then return to those areas of interest; make sure the dressing room is reserved and has room for at least 16 outfits.  Try on 16 outfits, keep two on the possible list and then go out and sweep the store one more time. 

The ladies fitting room is one of those mystery places for men — for those fellows unfortunate enough to accompany their females on a shopping trip, it is a place of dread. Good stores have seating areas for men just outside the fitting room. Wife (or girlfriend or whatever) goes into fitting room at 10:13 A.M. with a white blouse and emerges at 11:27 A.M. with a white blouse, a pair of bronze shoes, a pair of navy and white sports pants and matching zip front hoodie. Luckily Kathy and I were sans men so did not have anyone tapping their feet impatiently. We entered our reserved dressing rooms where our attentive sales associates had hung all the items we had selected to try on. “Wow, these sizes are all over the map” said I trying to squeeze into an 2X jacket. I tried a different 2X jacket which was too big. I tried on a pair of shoes that were half a size to small for me but at only $9.99 a woman will put up with some pain. Kathy modeled a blue shirt — a keeper which drove further purchases of necklace and earrings to match. An hour later we emerged from store #1’s fitting room. It was getting dark.

Once the outfits had been selected it was time to roam the store looking at shoes and accessories.  I ended up with a beige twin set, a cream colored longsleeved T-shirt with flowers, a beaded necklace and earrings (no black jacket).  Kathy fared even better (white blouse, blue blouse, pants and jacket — oh, and the necklace and earrings.  At the cash register, as I handed over my credit card, I asked the cashier if I could use the phone to call a divorce lawyer since I was sure I would need one. We headed off to Macy’s. Black sweater for me, jeans for Kathy.

Both of us were famished from all our hard work. Kathy knew of a nice Italian restaurant where we found a quiet table and the last two blood orange martinis (a today’s special). We ate seared romaine salad and gnocchi bolognese and talked and talked and talked. Kathy and I overlap in interests about 96% (HGTV and the practical application to our own homes, work, food, travel) and diverge enough to still have “discoveries” (Dancing with the Stars [Kathy] versus In Treatment [me]).

I exchanged instant messages with Kathy this morning: “Whatcha wearing?” “Blue blouse, jeans, and the necklace. You?” “Beige twin set and the necklace.” Looking good Thelma — Styl’n Louise!

2 AM…Boulder…Hotel…Gurudev

Linshaolin is on the road again, back to Boulder for another business trip.  I forked over the extra $44 bucks to upgrade to Economy Plus thus assuring myself of as much comfort as is possible in the air.  Actually it was a great flight — the seat next to me was empty, I had leg room, the flight was on time, and I had four lovely hours uninterrupted to read and doze.  I had even remembered to bring an apple so I did not have to resort to spending five dollars for a box of cheese and crackers.

I had to be at the airport by 6 a.m., so at 3:30 a.m. I was in the shower mentally reviewing my packing list.  I had not slept at all so I was eager to get to the airport and through all the ordeal of check-in and security.  As usual my prosthetic knee set off the security alarm and I was cordoned off to await a female assist.  The lady assigned to wand me called me sweetie eight times, as in “sweetie, if you are uncomfortable being put on public display then we can use the next six hours escorting you to a private area where we will say ‘I’ll be right back’ and then I will go off for my coffee break and you will miss your plane.  So what do you say sweetie?”

Once through security I had a short wait at the gate during which I engaged in my favorite activity — people watching.  There was a grandmother, mother, and baby all of whom had shocking red hair and prominent chins — I marveled at the miracle of genetics.  Then I observed a group of Native American women who were returning from a conference for educators of the deaf. They too were strikingly similar looking.  I turned my attention to a family of long lean people and then decided to try to find a couple or a group who have nothing in common with each other at all. This was not so easy, but at last I spotted a husband and wife: she was carrying all the carry-ons and he was carrying a coffee.  She was no more than 5′2″ and he was at least 6′1″.  Despite the fact that it was 39° she was wearing flip-flops.  He was wearing an elaborately tooled western style boots. I wondered at the couple’s dynamics.  I saw them at the luggage carousel in Denver — he was minding the carry-ons and she was schlepping the luggage off the conveyor belt.  I can only assume, being a generous spirit, that he had a bad back.

At the Hertz car pickup I was delighted to find that I had been assigned a very sporty Pontiac G5 complete with a spoiler.  My posse would be proud!  I usually get a Ford Escort so this was validation that all my positive thinking is paying off.  I stowed my stuff, reviewed my driving directions to the hotel, made sure I knew where all the radio buttons were and headed off.  The tollway around Denver must have cost a couple of billion to build and has zero traffic — if I broke down I would be nothing but bleached bones before my body was discovered.  The speed limit is 75 — I love it!  Feeling sassy in my sporty car I accelerated slowing only enough to periodically pass two dollars to the toll keeper.  I made it to Longmont in record time. My luck held — I was given a room in the Executive Wing which means free wine and cheese from 5:00 P.M. on weeknights. But it was Sunday.

I did not unpack — I crashed and slept on and off until 2 A.M. Having thus totally screwed up my body clock, I got up, channel surfed a bit, then read some in my book Transformation & Healing by Hanh (who was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr.). Inspired, I practiced some of the exercises, counting off my repetitions on my prayer beads. My string of beads has about 111 stations. The most repetitions I have done is seven. I searched my book for a meditation exercise on being alert and awake in a high altitude but that one must be in volume two.

All this meditation stuff at 2:00 in the morning made me remember my first day at my new meditation class. The guru explained some Buddhist philosophy and told us she was going to chant while we sat in the Lotus position and meditated. I was expecting a quiet “OM”. Suddenly she yelled, filling the room with a volume that made my ears ring. I was so startled that I think I levitated. The second week of class corresponded to the beginning of my Spring allergies. My nose was clogged and my eyes constantly burned and teared. The guru began “class, today we are going to meditate on something dark and sad. Find your painful memory or feeling, bring it to the light, make it transparent.” We sat and meditated. Tears slowly rolled down my cheeks as my allergies chose that moment to peak. I prayed that everyone was meditating with their eyes closed. After the class the guru took me aside: “Linshaolin, you are such a good meditator!” Not wanting to disillusion her, I snuffled a thank you.

So, at 2 A.M. I chanted Gurudev (gu = darkness, ru = light, dev = transparency), blew my nose, and started to write in my blog. Tonight at 2 A.M. I will be sound asleep — I brought sleeping pills.

 

OK, I’m just pissed

Even Linshaolin gets into a crappy mood sometimes. This has not been the greatest week. I have really been making an effort to pull myself together, dieting, exercising, meditating, thinking positive thoughts. And what is the result? Despite a total of four hours on the Exercycle, two tai chi classes and an hour and a half of doubles tennis, I lost zero, zip, nada. Meditating is going well, this week only the left side of my body became paralyzed after the thirteen minute practice — the meditation class teacher thinks I am a devoted student, staying for the second class. What she does not realize is that I have lost all sensation in my feet and can not get up.

Thinking positive thoughts has done a world of nothing. My eighteen dollars worth of lottery scratch tickets yielded only a six dollar return. That audio tape that told me that if I woke up each morning and said “Thank you for the $20,000 I will win today!” one hundred times is bogus trash. And despite my projecting positive energy and intense vibrations of charisma, my team meeting met with the usual fossilized response from my team mates. “OK, I’ll open up the meeting for general discussion. Are there any questions or comments?” “Yeah, say, listen Lin, are these meetings optional?”

I spent forty-five minutes trying to schedule a call with participants from different times zones separated by ten hours. The only time I could find in which all the team members were available was on May 16th, 2009. I did find one day in which all but one person could attend. I phoned the outlier to see if I could convince him to rearrange his schedule. “No. I willl be at the gym.” “Can you go to the gym at a different time just this once?” “No.” “Are you really going to make me escalate this?” “Suit yourself.” I tried to appeal to his heartstrings: “Wally, listen to your old friend Lin. I am getting older, you know, and I have not been too well. It would be a real favor to me.” “Maybe you should think about retiring.”

As I say at home, “carp!” I have not done my taxes yet. I have mail that has not been opened yet — postmarked November 2007. I was researching restless leg syndrome and inadvertently went to a porn site — now I have an oggle toolbar that has breasts. How does one uninstall tassel-flapping boob jpegs? My voice recognition software spontaneously types “yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah” whenever my cat sits in his cat-bed next to the computer. And I finally found that jelly donut that I swore I had not eaten.

If truth be told, I am angry with everyone. My mood is so foul that I am not fit to be with anyone. Reminds me of what my dear old dad used to say to me: “Lin, I defend you all the time. Why just the other day someone said that you were not fit to eat with pigs, but I said oh no, that is just not true!” And my husband had the audacity to complain to me “Lin, when we were young and lived in a coldwater flat and slept on an old air mattress at least you were young and hot. Now you are a middle-aged matron.” I told him that he should feel free to go find a young, hot girl and I would make sure he got to live in a coldwater flat on an old air mattress once again too.

An argument in favor of beige

I looked hot (as in awesomely good, not as in sweaty) adorned as I was in my new bright orange jacket with the mod purple and orange print lining on the cuffs and collar. I was waiting for the Amtrak to New York, standing amidst the never-ending construction of the Boston Terminal. I was only half paying attention to my surroundings but I overheard one of the construction workers yell over to his foreman “Where d’ya want the cones put Eddie? Oh, never mind, I see.” He then approached me an began placing the orange construction cones in a nice line starting at my feet.  I moved to step out of the way and startled him. “Jeeze, lady!”

Not being one to suffer from paranoia, the idea that he had mistaken me for one of those cones used to mark off construction sites barely lingered in my brain. A train was pulling in so I went out to stand in line. Immediately a young lady handed me her suitcase and a quarter. “I am in Premier Class,” she informed me. “And I am in Coach Class,” I informed her. I handed her back her bag. She snorted as she said “excuse me, I thought….”and then turned away abruptly. I began to feel hot and quietly slid my jacket off my shoulders, folding it into a nice orange bundle and shoving it into my tote bag.

As soon as we reached New York City I purchased a green jacket. A bright green jacket — I am drawn to bright green jackets and already had three in my closet, two of which I had never worn. But this one was stunning — a safari style jacket with pockets and a half-belt at the back — Marlin Perkins does Manhattan. I slipped into my new jacket and headed over to a taxi stand near the Plaza. After the third person asked me for directions and a map of Central Park I began to have a slightly sick feeling. Perhaps my jacket was too authentic looking — Park Ranger Linshaolin reporting for duty!

I decided to see if distance between me and any national monuments would change the situation, so I cabbed it over to Greenwich Village for a sangria and lunch. Disembarking, I noticed that I was at the doorway of a local Enterprise car rental outlet. Inside, a crew of customer service reps, all donned in green blazers, were helping customers. I quickly crossed the street where my attention was immediately taken by a row of quaint shops, including Grafton Street Arts and Crafts. Now, I love arts and crafts and remember Grafton Street fondly from my many trips to Dublin, so I was drawn inside.

I had only been poking through the hand-knit sweaters for about a minute when a young woman came up to me. “Do you have this in an extra-large?” she said pointing to a particularly fine cardigan. I removed the green safari jacket and was about to put on my bright orange one when I thought better of it. It was a nice day — no need for an additional layer.