rrs: life in stumptown

the 25th of May…

will always be:

sun, warmth, fresh-cut grass

lawn chairs, 

dad at the barbecue, sauce in hand

and me.

the radio, bill king

nights at the game

all of oakland singing on the train

the sky: all colors and flame.

long holiday weekend, 

celebrations and memories

hot sidewalks tickled in chalk

new bicycle with a snoopy basket

and one more lap around the big block.

That would be me, on this fine Thursday. I have been wanting to update my blog but have found myself staring at five drafts; they are taunting me.

I guess I could start by saying the last two weeks have been intensely busy, full of possibilities. In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would have to put off my studies for a couple years.  The spouse is continuing his commitments to the Fire Fighting program and I simply cannot afford (monetarily and time-wise) to be engrossed in studies for two years unpaid.  As frustrating as it was to realize I would have to put my studies on hold again, I came to peace with the decision. I soon found other opportunities presenting themselves, something to insert in the gap that has been left for me.

The first, being somewhat vague here, was an offer to run an “arts program” by a friend of mine. Someone I dearly respect as a business person. She is incredibly smart and successful. However, after agonizing over the decision (which I thought would be an easy one), I couldn’t get past several red-flags. I knew no amount of passion and excitement for this program would cure those warning signs. I can often be a risk-taker, but I did not see a greater potential to justify the risk. I turned the offer down. It was a hard decision to make, but I think ultimately the best one. 

The second and third opportunities revolve around communications work. Again. Something I thought, perhaps, I wouldn’t be doing. Luckily these opportunities are in the arts and nonprofit world so they tug at my heartstrings. Slightly less risky than my friends’ offer, and come with the promise of balance. I could continue teaching in the evenings, which I am not looking to give up anytime soon. 

That said, my students are nearing the end of their season. Recital is around the corner. It is a fun time in the world of performing arts for them. I can see their excitement and pride each week and it gives me great joy. 

Back in February, I was tempted to “mute” my FB account. I managed to shove everyone into my restricted list, and not post content for about three weeks. I told my friends if they wanted to keep in touch, to call or message me. I got a few messages in my FB inbox, a few new Twitter followers, a few text messages and a handful of phone chats during that time. 

Each day I logged in once in the morning and once in the evening (from the laptop) to check for any new messages or contact info. I completely deleted the FB app from my iPhone.  

The main reason was —I felt— that I wanted more personal communication. Not mass communication with 247 of my “closest friends.”  What I craved were those one-on-one conversations with friends I hadn’t seen in person for a while.  Now, I am just as guilty as everyone else for posting the mundane observational one-liners (or paragraphs).  I was hoping to get away from that, maybe focus all of those observations into a bigger something. A blog post, a better conversation with a real person, even.

During those three weeks, it was interesting to see who I wondered about during the day, who was top of mind for me. Who I wanted to check in on.  I found myself allowing a few minutes to check on those in my friend list. Again, without commenting or adding anything new. Just to see what they were up to, that all was well in their world. 

So why only three weeks? Well, right around the beginning of March, my Grandmother suffered a stroke and then what we believe was a massive heart attack while hospitalized. Ultimately, she passed away. During that time I left Portland and flew to Nevada to be with my mom. I wanted to keep her distracted a little until the funeral and just do what I could to be supportive. Whether that be running errands, doing grunt work around the house, or cooking food for the reception.  During that time, I found comfort in reading the mundane posts on FB. I started checking in a few more times throughout the day. 

Finally, after returning back to Portland and returning to my little dancers, I received a sympathy card from one of my youngest ballet students. She wanted to tell me she was sorry to hear my Grandmother “passed away” —only you can see here how she interpreted that phrase. 

That was enough to make me jump back into FB full throttle and post some updates. 

I realized that while I may often post some of the mundane, mostly, I just want to post the things that may bring a smile to someone else’s face.  As for one of my original hopes—that muting the FB may bring about better blog posts… well, that definitely did occur. I managed to jot down several things I wanted to write about and I hope I can follow through on posting more content more often here. 

-B

A little inspired, perhaps, by friends who have dumped FB for Lent in years past, I too have put the FB on “mute” as I call it.  Not necessarily for Lent, as I’m not much of a religious-go-getter, but the timing seemed good. Seeing a few friends hit pause for Lent this week reminded me that I’ve tried a few times in the last year to do the same. 

I use FB as my most primary form of communication. It is fairly seamless when communicating with such a large group of family and friends— the majority of those being 600 miles away (or greater). It allows me to keep in touch, share pics of the family without having to personalize anything, and for the most part my friends and family can pick and choose how often they want to see or hear from me (unless FB changes its settings again this week).

In the past I’ve been blasted by “friends” about always being on, but I’m not sure those blasting me 1. Have a family they’ve left behind -or-  2. Are even really appropriately titled as “friend” on my friend list. Perhaps they would be better suited on my list titled “assholes.”  If they don’t care about my lunch and what it looked like, why did they friend me anyway? (yes, sarcasm)

So what exactly does mute mean for me and FB? First and foremost, I’ve deleted the FB App from my iPhone.  Muting FB means I haven’t deleted my account, yet I’ve dumped everyone in my restricted list, so no activity is visible on my FB page at all, except for one last public post- for friends to message me if they want to communicate in a more personal way. As I mentioned above, FB is great at letting me blast out an update without any personalization. I think now, I am craving the one-on-one communication.  The last time I checked, I had unlimited data, text and minutes on my phone. And do you know how many phone calls I average a month? Four.

That said, I’m hoping to have some real interaction on the phone, and feeling as “Jetson’s” as possible, really take advantage of Skype and FaceTime. What better way is there to feel close to those 600 miles away? After today, I will only log in once from my laptop each day to see if any new messages have come through for those that want to communicate offline. I will not be posting new content or responding to any updates from friends. 

In the three hours since posting that last update, two people messaged me their emails, phone numbers and Skype names. I’m assuming those closest to me already know how to get a hold of me, so it will be interesting to see which of my FB “friends” actually wants to keep in touch.  

What do I hope to accomplish from this? Well first of all, a basic reassessment of the way I communicate.  I am also curious to see who I think of throughout the day. Who crosses my mind?  What are they up to today? As my nephew said, “I hate FB because when I see my friends, there’s nothing left to say. You already know what they’ve been up to.”

Which brings me to my blog. I began blogging back in 2006 before getting turned on to FB. I blogged as a means of creative expression. I would write short stories, poetry or musings about very personal things. It was wonderful “therapy” when I had a lot on my mind and no outlet. I also blogged about my then-recent move to Portland. Then surprisingly, people I actually knew started reading it and I found myself scaling back the personal nature of what I was posting and opting for the more generic two-line observational post.

The second and third revivals of my blog consistent on posting about living in Portland, and working in the marketing and design world. While I could pour my heart into writing about my experiences here in Portland, I found myself staggering about design and MarCom topics. In short, it was an industry I couldn’t care less about and just happened to have found myself working in for nearly a decade.  My blog became something to do for the sake of doing it, everyone else was doing it as a means of self promotion.

As I finally found myself untethered once and for all from the marketing and design industries I also found myself staring at a stale blog. Unsure what to post, or if I should post anything at all. I had very little to offer creatively at that point, and as a career change was coming about, I didn’t feel I had the time or drive. I also found myself burnt out talking about how great Portland is.  The blog has since been relegated to occasional posts about family life, a quirky encounter or vague posts about the new education and career I’m pursuing in Women’s Health. 

I’m looking forward to this break from FB, sure that it will force more personal communication with those I love and miss from home. Hopefully the break from posting fragments throughout the day will allow me time to drum up something interesting to say on my blog. After all, as I said before it is wonderful, cheap therapy.

I’ve been fighting with Tumblr for a while. Not able to get what I want out of it, but not exactly wanting to use wordpress again, I have sort of hacked my blog and restarted here. I have a few blogs tied into one account, and somehow, TheRRS got a little messy and I’m not able to post the way I’d like now that TheRRS is not a default blog on my tumblr account.

Not that you can tell whats going on behind the scenes…it’s still the same URL, but my old posts are still on my old Tumblr. 

Here’s a link 

http://therrs.tumblr.com/archive

This has been an oddly cool Holiday season for us. This is the first time in fifteen years as a family, that we have spent the holidays virtually alone. As in, no extended family. Both the mister and I have a huge extended family and its not uncommon for us to be among thirty-odd guests during holiday dinners. 

With the departure of my sister back to California, that leaves just us up here. The rest of our families are scattered across Northern and Southern California, Nevada, the East Coast, Honduras and across the ocean in Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia. So, when I say alone, the six of us plus our furry kids really means “alone.”

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday “back home” in San Francisco and the East Bay with the misters family. 

As soon as we came back home to Portland, we didn’t waste any time getting into the Holiday spirit. We chopped down a few trees to decorate…

…Only, the mini had a few other ideas about decorating- and since then we’ve had a tree 3/4 bare. Not to worry. We had two other trees out of reach that we stashed the presents under. 

Moving along to things the mini couldn’t wreck, we decided that holiday baking would be something fun to do. Only, the mister had his wisdom teeth out a couple weeks ago and he’s still suffering. Through two rounds of baking over the last two weeks, and one last-ditch baking effort during Christmas afternoon, he really hasn’t enjoyed much of the tasty treats.

We started off making a batch of Russian tea cakes, peppermint bark with both Ghiradelli white and milk chocolates, and candy cane cookies. For round two we did another tray of peppermint bark and a batch of lemon-vanilla meringues and peppermint meringues. Finally, sick of peppermint… Christmas afternoon we made some wonderful sugar cookies. I have to admit, it was really fun to make such a basic cookie and then paint on a glaze like frosting and sprinkles. They were delicious!

And the mister, being the awesome guy he is… made an amazing Apricot glazed ham for Christmas dinner. Seeing as it was “just us” and the mister wouldn’t be able to eat much, I figured I’d only make from scratch the few things that I cared to enjoy. Not like the boys would notice the difference anyway.

So, I settled on splurging on stuffing. I started out with a Marsee bakery loaf of sourdough and diced it into cubes. I tossed the cubes in a drizzle of olive oil and Herbs de Provence and then baked them until they were crisp and slightly browned. I let them sit out over night —even with crouton capers loose in my house (son #2)! Christmas afternoon, when the ham was just about done, I sautéed two shallots, about eight cloves of garlic and sliced celery. I tossed in the croutons and doused with broth until it was nice and mushy. The mister definitely enjoyed. 

The skimp items were yams (I had just made these from scratch for Thanksgiving) and the cranberry (oddly, the boys like the jiggly crap that comes from the can).  The green beans I made in a skillet atop the BBQ when the mister was done with our pig ham. But those were not touched by anyone but myself. No surprises there. I like to avoid tears on Christmas, so I didn’t say anything about the avoidance of the greens and let the kids eat cookies.  Just because, it was our “first” Christmas as a family. And, because I am a bad mom :)

I hope you all celebrated (or not) with loved ones and friends. I hope you enjoyed each others company and cheered for the small and often overlooked enjoyments in life. Here’s to 2012, friends!