Just for me
I found a bunch of my writing the other day and that reminded me that I was supposed to be writing again on this blog. I got the blog up and running again at the start of the pandemic as I wanted to document what I was seeing and feeling. And because I rediscovered in the weirdest way that I like writing.
The pandemic is still going on. I think maybe it’s beginning to subside in certain parts of the country. I think we are in for a long haul but right now it kind of feels like it is ending. Haha. Probably, the worst is yet to come.
Tomorrow, I will be in the office for the second time since March 13th. I remember being at the office that day and saying goodbye to so many people. I wondered for a split second when I would see them again. I felt a little like Princess Leia as she gives her pilots instructions in Empire as they are evacuating Hoth. She didn’t know how that would turn out. On that day in March, I didn’t know and I still don’t know what is on the other side of this.
I am going to the office tomorrow to meet with an intern. I know people have had it a lot worse than me during this chaos but tomorrow is the official start of summer and that usually means festivals, Prides, interns. and traveling around the state. I am sad that this year there is no Prides, no festivals and the poor interns will be doing the entire internship virtually. It just sucks for them. I miss traveling. I miss meeting people. I miss my commute, My office, my two monitors. I miss my coworkers. I even miss the parking garage that I was guaranteed to run into at least twice a year.
Anyway, I wrote this just for me. So I can remember. Not that we will probably forget this time.
Someone told me to do this
I always thought if I was living in truly historic times, I would keep a journal. So here we are.
We heard in late December, early January of a novel virus. We watched as people in China died and tourists were affected. And before long it was here. At the end of February it was sweeping its way around Washington state. The stores were crazy that weekend as we all tried to stock up. Things were bad when some lady told me to “Fuck off” when I said excuse me in the grocery store. By the middle of the next week the first cases had hit Colorado and by the weekend we were terrified to hold caucus. The following week, we made the painful decision to cancel our lobby day. My trip to New Orleans was cancelled. We started to plan and figure out how to do our assembly virtually. We closed the office and transitioned to working at home, thankful for the the technology. We began to rethink our jobs and our interactions with others and I bought a ton of food. Spring break is over on Monday and E will be engaging in distance learning.
No one knows what will happen next but I am going to try to chronicle it on here.
Top Ten Lists
Two things have happened recently. One, I started watching Letterman again and two, I am gonna write more.
So about Letterman. I watched that show religiously until we had kids and then I was always too tired to stay up and watch. So now that he is retiring, I decided I best get my fill. Thanks goodness for the DVR. Anyway, I watched last night and I have to say that he still makes me laugh out loud. Good job, Dave! PS: I think your replacement might be someone with which I can spend my late, insomnia fueled nights.
About my absence from writing. I have not been much in the mood to share. It started because I realized that my Facebook postings about politics really never accomplish much. Facebook and other social media are echo chambers where those who agree, like our postings and those who don’t, ignore them. So very rarely do I post political stuff (but still more than the average person). This reluctance to share my political musings has even stretched to my Examiner blog which is the one place I need to actually write about politics. Maybe after November everything still feels so hopeless and I still feel so powerless. What is the point? “But I’m trying, Ringo. I’m trying real hard“. So maybe you will see an Examiner Blog in the near future.
As for this more personal blog, I suddenly felt the need not to share every part of my personal life. Again, I wasn’t sure if my writing was helping and if anyone but me was being served by my venting. I think it was my friend Nancy Cronk who said “Promote what you love”. So I have been trying to do that and trying not to vent. I don’t know how all this is working and if anyone has even noticed. I will just keep trying to be the shepherd of my own life.
So after some very disjointed thoughts about writing and its value (and random Pulp Fiction references), here is an equally random Top Ten List in which I vent and complain.
Top Ten Reason why Delana never sleeps:
10. The wind. The wind makes me crazy. Luckily, I live in the windiest place on earth.
9. Snoring. Since I don’t snore, this needs no further explanation.
8. “The bed is too big without you” I think that might be a Police song but it fits my life a few weeks a month. Taken in conjunction with #9, maybe U2’s “With or Without You” is a better choice.
7. Dogs. See a blog post from last summer.
6. Running. Sometimes my legs cramp up at night. Sometimes they just feel weird. I should probably run more.
5. Reading. The bulk of my reading is done between 10pm and 1am. This includes my “reading” of Pinterest.
4. Lena. Apparently, I can solve her insomnia problems which aren’t in sync with mine. Apparently, I can solve all problems but she only wants to talk about them at midnight on the very few nights that I am actually sleeping at that time.
3. Evan. Imagine that one kid was up until 1am expecting you to solve all the problems of the world and the other gets up when the sun starts streaming into his room. For those of you doing the math, that is about 4 hours of sleep.
2. Worry. What’s to worry about? My kids, your kids, your parents, money, Gaza, Ukraine, Putin. Because, despite what Lena thinks, I cannot solve all the problems but I try. Every. Single. Night.
1. Insomnia. Look it up. I am pretty damn sure that my picture is there next to the definition.
Crying
About a week after my dad died, I finally stopped crying everyday. I went back to work and life returned to a new normal without him. One thing that never got back to normal was my crying. Now, I have always been a crier. If I am happy, sad, mad or even bored, I am easily brought to tears and I am not one of these people who look cute crying. I usually end up looking like a hot mess that should be sitting somewhere very quiet with padded walls. My mom was the same way and often said just once she wanted to have the impulse to hit someone instead of cry. For most of my adult life, I have hated this personality trait and wished I could change it but since my dad died the crying seems to be so out of control. I mean when a Lego ad in a magazine makes you cry, it is time make a change.
Five weeks ago, things did not go as planned and I found myself a sobbing mess out in public. It was a complete and total embarrassment. I decided that if I was ever going to get this crying thing under control, now was the time. So for the last five weeks, I have tortured myself watching every video on Facebook that anyone has commented on with “Have the Kleenex ready!” and for five weeks I have been able to control my tears. Now I will admit to a few dignified tears here and there but no crying jags, no breaking down. Until I watched some video about a Canadian airlines that gave out Christmas wishes to all its passengers. (Side note: To the guy who asked for underwear and socks, dream bigger, dude!) . Nevertheless, even this small lapse in the anti-crying campaign can’t deter me. I am determined to keep my emotions in check.
Not crying has opened me up to emotions that I rarely feel outside of dealing with insurance companies. I am not sure what emotion this is but I have a compulsion to smack the crap out of people (mom would be so proud!). I used to just cry when something upset me. Now I have a whole range of emotions that I feel. It is nice to know that I can feel negative emotions without ending up a crying mess.
Don’t get me wrong. There are times to cry. Today, I cried when reading about a Newtown family. The victims of that tragedy are deserving of my tears. There will be days around Christmas and my birthday, that I will never feel embarrassed to cry. December and January will always be marked by days that were the “last day”. For example, yesterday was the five year anniversary of the last time my children ever saw my mom. The last Friday afternoon visit, which was our tradition when the kids were small. Every Friday, I would bring lunch to my parents and we would hang out at their house with the kids. Sometimes I would sneak away for an hour or two knowing they were in capable, loving hands. Today, I wonder how much of those visits my kids remember.
This has been a rough year and honestly, I am just checking the days off the calendar until 2013 is over. I have had enough of Murphy’s Law in my life and I am ready to put this year “in the record books”. 2013 will go down as a year we endured and persevered but it will not be one for the highlight reels. So as December marches on, I will keep trying not to cry. I know that the tears will come but to able to have some control, well, that would be nice.
Never forget
I took this picture on Thanksgiving Day in 1987. It was my first look at a place that would capture my attention for many years.
I bought a picture of the towers that still hangs in our office. I got it in Times Square in 1999 when my crazy boss made me visit our offices in the World Trade Center. I was supposed to impress the staff of various departments so that when we asked for special favors they would do them. I remember being on the OTC trading floor and thinking why are these guys always so curt? They had windows that looked out on the Statue of Liberty. I remember meeting all those people that had just been voices on the phone and they all, six years later, loved to tell the story of the first World Trade Center bombing. I remember vividly that it took some folks up to three hours to get out that day.
I went back later that year with a co-worker who had been there in 1993 graduating from training at Windows on the World and having to walk down all those stairs. She was a little scared and I tried to calm her by saying nothing will ever happen to this building again.
The building was a marvel to me. The elevators that went up so fast, the mall in the basement, the subway that ran under it but mostly it was the people that worked there. They were all so smart and so quick. I could barely keep up with what they were saying but even with their New Yorker attitudes they all loved that we came from Denver just to see them.
Two years later, I am nine months pregnant and very upset with my compliance officer. I decide to lie down and make sure my stomach ache is result of the previous day’s fight with the compliance officer and not contractions. At 7:00am, I think it is time to call work and tell them I will be late. The phone rings and rings and rings. Big no-no at an investment bank, so I call back and chastise the person who should have answered the phone the first time I called. She very calmly says, you need to turn on your TV and I do. I never go to work because our building in Denver is evacuated. I never leave the TV. When the towers collapse all I can think is three hours. They did not have enough time to get out. All those voices on the phone that became friends could not have made it out in time.
The next day I go to work, one of the guys I work with asks me to fax a document. It needs to be done right away. When I say I can’t, he starts to argue. When he finally stops, I say again, I can’t, that fax machine no longer exists. He shakes his head and walks away. It was stunning to us that a place we called, faxed and emailed dozens of times a day was gone. It would be weeks before we found out what happened to our co-workers and in the meantime, I developed high blood pressure and was put on bed rest. For three weeks I sat on the couch watching the coverage, sure the world was ending as I was about to bring a new life into it.
Turns out we were lucky because Morgan Stanley employees were taught to leave the buildings at the first sign of trouble and they did that day. Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center complex on September 11, 2001 and only 13 employees died because of a little luck and a lot of planning and a man named Rick Rescorla. If you would like to honor those who were lost on that terrible day, google Rick Rescorla. Even though I never had the pleasure to meet him, I am proud to say that I once worked for the same company as Rick Rescorla.
Morgan Stanley and the World Trade Center will always have a special place in my heart. So if you see me cringe when people put down Wall Street it is because those people in that building were Wall Street to me and on many days, in many ways, they were my heroes. They cancelled trades and pushed through transfers and found certificates. They saved me more times than I wish to admit.
Someday I hope to go back to New York, see the new building and the World Trade Center memorial and honor all the heroes of that terrible day.
Happy Father’s Day
Today is the first Father’s Day that I won’t be able to celebrate with my dad. It will be five months on the 28th but in some ways it seems so much longer since I talked to him. Today, I am trying really hard to stop dwelling on his last few months and remember him when he wasn’t sick. I am trying hard to honor his spirit and his life.
Lately, I have been so preoccupied with other problems in life that my grief has taken a backseat to a lot of other concerns. Yesterday, I walked past the duck tape at Home Depot and all of a sudden it came back to me, that horrible pit in your stomach that takes away your breath. It had not happened in so long that I was unprepared. I was lucky to have the cart to hold onto and quickly put on my sunglasses so no one could see the tears fill my eyes. Duck tape will always remind me of my Dad. He thought it was some kind of wonder product and we always had tons of it. I think he may have stolen it from work! Once when I was in college he accidentally stapled his hand with his electric staple gun and pulled the staple out with a pair of pliers, wrapped his hand in duck tape and just kept on working. A staple in his hand couldn’t stop him.
Dad never gave up. Not even after Mom died. His body gave out way before his will ever did. Dad was the one who told us we could be or do anything. His gruff exterior, piercing stare and southern accent covered the most optimistic person I have ever met. Even in the darkest times, he knew the future could be bright. He never thought my mom would not beat cancer. He thought anything was possible if you worked hard. He was never one to dwell on the past. The future was a place where dreams came true and the sadness and disappointment of the past were faint memories.
Although I wish desperately I could talk to Dad because he would have understood how I feel right now better than anyone, in a way these new concerns that have taken over my life feel like I am honoring him. Life has moved on and I am plowing through a new difficulty with the same optimism and forward thinking that got Dad through his entire life. I am moving forward to recreate my life and overcome these new obstacles because the greatest dad in the world taught me that anything is possible.
Barking Dogs (a rant)
Most people know that I am not a dog person. I don’t dislike dogs and I “get” how people feel about their dogs. Their dogs are a part of their family as important and loved as any other member of their family. As some of my friends and family dog’s get older, I worry about the grief they will experience when their dog dies.
Heck, I was even a dog owner for a while.
When I was a kid we had a beautiful Irish Setter. His name was Ranger and he came to us from an abusive owner. This poor dog was scared and never barked. My brother, finding something amiss with a dog that never barked, got down on all fours and taught the dog to bark. An endeavor he most surely regretted later when the dog barked every time he came home late. The dog barked at every car that went by and every rabbit within a half mile radius.
Ranger loved to run. The only person capable of taking the dog for walks was my brother who mostly connected the dog leash to his bike and took the dog for a run. I still have a scar on my elbow from my one attempt at taking the dog for a walk. As soon as Dad handed me the leash, Ranger took off, knocking me from my feet and dragging me through the neighborhood as Dad screamed “Don’t let go of the leash”. I let go of the leash leading to one of Ranger’s many escapes. Ranger loved to run so much that he often escaped his dog run by scaling the fence. Normally he would be found by a neighbor, who would call and ask us to retrieve our crazy dog. One time though he was even held hostage prompting a call to the police to get our dog back from some crazy lady who thought she could make a few bucks off our dog. He was hit by a car once when he ran away, got stuck on ice of the Fox River and more than a few times brought home by the local police, head sticking out of the back window. Dad kept building the fence around the dog run higher until finally the dog could no longer climb it and jump over. Eventually, he went to live on a farm (or so they said) and we were promised a new dog once we settled in Colorado. Mom and Dad reneged on that promise and we remained dog-less. Evan is deathly afraid of dogs so we are one of the few families in Highlands Ranch without a dog despite my fantasies of a Portuguese Water dog to protect me on my runs.
So I don’t hate dogs, but lately I am beginning to hate some dog owners, especially the ones who live next door. Last February, my next door neighbors got a puppy. A very beautiful Golden Retriever that they decided to chain train. This means they leave the dog chained in the back yard for most of the day. This poor dog was barking for hours on end. One day Brian worked from home and after 10 hours of barking went next door and asked (very nicely) if they could please bring the dog in for a while. They complied but then the father came over to complain that we had asked that the dog be brought in. He said chaining the dog in back yard was the only way to train it and once it was trained it would stop barking. He said that Animal Control had even confirmed after a barking complaint that he was doing nothing wrong. So we put up with the dog barking. Luckily, the weather was so awful in April that the dog was rarely outside. Now as we approach warmer months, we are again treated to the dog’s barking. The barking begins at 4:30am lasting until we a no longer able to take it and get up. Again someone called Animal Control and again the neighbors have taken no action to keep the dog from barking. I do not even set an alarm clock anymore. I just depend on Rover next door to wake me up.
So Sunday night, I had a bit of Black and White Cookie experience (remember that Seinfeld?) after dinner downtown. So after feeling sick for two hours and then being sick for an hour, I finally crawled into bed at 1:00am exhausted. It took me quite awhile to fall asleep and once I did Rover began barking and continued to bark off and on until 7:00 am when Evan came in to tell me he was hungry.
Now we don’t want to be evil neighbors and file a complaint and we did address the situation personally with the neighbor. So what do we do? I sleep with ear plugs and I am contemplating a white noise machine. I have even looked into a myriad of devices that are said to keep a dog from barking.
Are we being crazy to think that we should be able to sleep at night? Is this Karma for my crazy dog from childhood? What would you do?
Guest Post
A Mother’s Day Poem by Evan Maynes:
I love you the greenest
I love you the color of beautiful green grass in the summer
I love you the color of leaves on a tree
I love you tall like a stem of a rose.
I love you like an emerald because you are valuable
I love you like a leprechaun because you are tricky
I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you
Closing
There is a story I love to tell about my mom. One Sunday morning during my senior year of high school we were driving in the neighborhood and Howard Jones “Thing can only get better” was playing on the radio. She turned down the radio and said “I hate that song, things can always get worse”. My mom also hated it when people said “Everything happens for a reason”. She could give you lists of things that happened that had no reason and finish her little lecture with “Sometimes shit happens”.
This rather fatalistic philosophy of life allowed my mother to be happy because in some way it freed her. She never spent too much time railing on the injustices of life and lived in gratitude because “be thankful for what you have” always proceeded “things can always get worse”. Her world view allowed her to ride out a personal economic disaster in which she lost everything. Through all the turmoil and uncertainty she was able to enjoy her life, without spending too much time being bitter. Some of the more joyous and beautiful things happened during this time and she never lost the ability to feel true delight in those moments.
I try to focus on the positive and try to not be bitter. I cannot imagine how she made it through without wanting to kick someone repeatedly and scream at the gods but she did and I wish I had her grace.
My parents came through their economic turmoil and the triumphant symbol that they had finally made it back was their town home. For almost twenty years it was the center of our family. It was where we celebrated Christmas Eve (which was also her birthday) and had summer parties in the garage. It is the first place I went, with a mile wide smile, when Brian proposed. It was the only place I would take my precious newborn babies sometimes just so I could get a nap or a few hours of adult conversation. It was where we met before our epic shopping days. If a relative from Ohio came to visit and we would all end up there, gossiping about the latest family news. It was the place we gathered when we found out she had cancer and the place we ended up the morning she died. It was a shrine to her as Dad did not change one thing. It was where we went to be with Dad, where he and I had a million conversations about politics, hockey and baseball. Just 4 months ago I sat on the couch at two in the morning trying to convince him to go the hospital not realizing it was the last time I would ever sit on that couch with him.
Today, their town home sits empty, devoid of the life that made it beautiful. I signed the papers this morning and now it is the center of another family’s life. I am thankful that we were able to sell it so quickly and smoothly but it is still bittersweet. It was a closing in more way than one.