Every streetlight a reminder...

After working for almost 5 straight weeks to train our student leaders and to open the College in the midst of the worst tropical storm Vermont has seen in almost one hundred years, I was ready for a break. After a little more than 48 hours with the most energetic child I have ever known...scratch that...she is one of the most energetic human beings I have ever known, my body didn't feel like I'd actually had a break, but my head and heart did.

As I was driving back home late on Sunday night, I threw on an old mixed CD I had made seven or eight years ago, and hadn't listened to in a long time. One of my favorite things about mixed tapes or CDs is that they often capture a time and place in my life better than any journal or blog could do. Like so many things in my life, if I like it, I will listen, watch, read, eat, or do it over and over and over until I'm bored with it. So each CD is a commentary on who I was, what I was doing, how I felt, etc about that moment in time. I have one mix of Sting, Matchbox 20, Third Eye Blind, Frank Sinatra, and the Rolling Stones that I listened to over and over during my road trip to Montana to visit my sister in the summer of 2000. Whenever I hear Desert Rose or Motorcycle Drive By I can smell the smoke of the forest fires, see the Tetons, and recall rolling around on the floor laughing with my sister. (If you know my sister, you can feel free to ask her about the time I tripped on the stairs up to her apartment....and well, I'll let her tell you the rest. It was so embarrassing, but so funny-and just one of the many reasons we were rolling on the floor laughing.) And don't even get me started on the Destinationless tapes...White Rabbit by Jefferson Starship, Diet Cokes, Marlboro Lights and one of the best friendships you could ask for...but I digress.

The CD I was listening to during this drive home had some BoDeans, Coldplay, Radiohead, Billy Bragg and The Killers on it and I had titled it "Making Dinner" which brought me back to the time I first met Voldemort and I was still a bit smitten. More than that, it reminded me of time when I was feeling strong and directed-life had resumed a sense of normalcy after the death of BL. And then came track 14. I knew it was there and yet wasn't expecting it. One of my favorite songs ever-one of the songs I have never become bored with-Nightswimming by REM. You were hoping for something more profound? Well, I put this song on almost every mix I ever made.

It takes me to so many different places in my life I feel like I must have been singing it since childhood. It really started with late nights in Wilder at J's apartment in the early 1990's, where I escaped some of my teen angst and quietly rebelled against my goody-two-shoes image by smoking cigarettes and staying up late. (I know, right? I was sooo out of control.) That whole album, Automatic for the People, represents the beginning of my journey down the road less traveled-off the path everyone thought I would take. Perhaps that is why it is so profound for me.

The road less traveled took me to Silver City, New Mexico. While most people in their late teens and early twenty's re-evaluate their world with alcohol, weed or some other recreational drug. I decided to become a flower child. If you know me now, you just choked back your laughter. Its ok, I understand. But I was a flower child who didn't drink or smoke pot. I just bought a lot of second hand clothes and stopped shaving my legs. And I spent a considerable amount of time at the Mimbres Hot Springs Ranch, a modern day commune tucked away in the mountains of southwest New Mexico. The families that owned the land built their own houses, grew their own food and had some of the most incredible and luxurious outhouses I have ever seen. They also had natural hot springs that they had tapped into and built small pools around so you could soak all of your cares away in the dry southwest air. When the spring water was too hot, you could hop out and jump into the cool, refreshing waters of the small swimming pond adjacent to the upper springs. And because we were flower children, we swam naked.

It always felt liberating and scandalous at the same time. Like I was completely comfortable in my own skin (indeed, I was only wearing my own skin) and yet I knew that this person would be unrecognizable to my friends and family back home. When and if I spoke of it with them, they rolled their eyes, smirked as though they thought I was trying to be subversive, or shook their heads...sometimes all three in the same moment. I couldn't explain it then, but for me, this song illuminates everything that swimming in the pond at the Ranch, under a clear night sky full of stars was to me.

Nightswimming deserves a quiet night.
I'm not sure all these people understand.
It's not like years ago
The fear of getting caught
Of recklessness and water.
They cannot see me naked.
These things, they go away
replaced by everyday.

You, I thought I knew you.
You I cannot judge.
You I thought you knew me
This one laughing quietly underneath my breath.
Nightswimming.

It occurred to me as I was driving home, listening to this song, how in those days and nights at the Ranch I was the most pure and authentic person I could be. I wasn't less full of doubt, I just embraced all of the possibilities with less calculation.

I gave up my flower child status a long time ago. I routinely shave my legs and can't imagine swimming naked with people I barely know. But I love that for a brief time I was that girl because she taught me so much about how to live my life. And I am grateful for a song that helps me capture that moment when I need a little reminding. I hope you all have that song.

Jumping out of planes...let 'er rip!

I love learning new things. Today's lesson was about ripping dvds to my computer so I can post them to this blog. By most standards, my computer is ancient. I like to call her Granny Mac. The OS is old enough that I can't download much in the way of new programs, but I'm not ready to drop the $$$$$ for a new one.

I know two people who use Macs and who rank high on the technical competencies scale. If I were a wealthy woman I would keep them both on retainer as my personal MacBook Pros. One of them is a friend of Jess and AJ's. Our interactions are mostly through Facebook and he usually answers my questions before I finish typing them. I'm telling you, it's handy. The other is someone I have known for over 9 years-someone who made me laugh at a time in my life when I thought I might never find anything funny again. When I first met him, he was rarely serious. He knew how to work hard, but when he wasn't working he was always playing. Enough so, that I didn't always take him seriously. When he came to help me connect my personal computer to the network of the college I'd just started working at, I was nervous about something going wrong. I remember saying something like "I want to trust that you know what you are doing, but please don't break it". He looked at with annoyance and in a voice that made me feel like 4 year old said "I don't break computers." I knew then that I had met an IT guru.

Between the two of them I finally figured out how to pull...err..excuse me rip... my skydiving videos off of the dvds and load them here.

Coincidentally, this one is of my very first tandem skydive. Guru #2 worked on VSA's website and traded his hours for my jump. Told you he's pretty great.

Conversational Drought

Being an ardent Vermonter who loves her home state, you might expect this post to be about the destruction and losses we've sustained this past week. I've seen the pictures, watched the videos, heard first hand accounts from friends who lost a little and those who lost a lot. I've ruminated on the fact that a few days ago it would have only taken me 2 hours to get to my parents in the event of an emergency. The fastest route to them now is about 5 hours and I have to go further south before I can go north. But a whole post ? I can't do it-i just don't have the words.

Instead I'm writing about something only slightly less tragic-my social life.

I'm beginning my 4th year at Little Tiny Vermont College-and for the better part of the first 3 years I did four things-ate, slept, worked and completed grad school classes. To be honest, until recently I've been fine with my limited activities. When I moved back to Vermont in August of 2008 I had just left Philadelphia-a place that was too loud, dirty and crowded for me. I had also ended my relationship with a man I'll call Voldemort. ( Trust me, it fits.) Peace, quiet, the green mountains, my family and a chance to shake off a bad relationship were just what I needed.

Now I am starting to feel the effects of a life spent in my office, and mostly talking to 18-25 year-olds. I love my job, love working with young adults as they figure out who they are, and what they want to be when they grow up. But the other day one of my staff members read the Beloit College Mindset list for the Class of 2015 and one of the items referenced the fact that River Phoenix had been dead for 20 years. One of our students said "who is River Phoenix?" and I almost cried. And not because I am missing River Phoenix...but because it made me officially old. Old in the eyes of people I spend 90% of my time with...including my staff. We are such a tiny school with less than 65 full-time employees- most of who are married, with families and who don't actually live in Bennington. Even my professional staff members are under 25. They are smart, dynamic, talented and funny women, and we have great conversation but my efforts to connect with them have become more and more challenging. Case in point-last year we were sitting at the table in the caf and one woman jokingly made a reference to the line "Dingo ate my baby". I asked her if she had seen the movie. She looked at me somewhat perplexed and said "What movie?" I said that they line she just used was from A Cry in the Dark. She laughed and said she heard it on Saturday Night Live and thought it was a joke made up by the show. Not her fault-she was only 2 years old when the movie came out.

And just because it's funny-here's Elaine doing it on Seinfeld: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghCTZF61ey0

Anyway...

Having been insular for awhile now, I am faced with the daunting prospect of crawling out of this cocoon and finding people who understand my cultural references. I'm not even talking about dating-which is a whole other blog post I have no desire to write. I could just do with some adult conversation over a real bottle of red wine. The kind that costs more than $7.99.

I said to a friend that what I really need is an intellectual prostitute. I would pay good money for someone who listened to NPR, read the Journal or the Times, was responsible for their own bills, and knew that "dingo ate my baby" was funny because of Meryl Streep. Someone who didn't make me feel like being 38 was truly ancient. (This was going to be hard enough to accomplish in Bennington as it was-but now that every major road in VT that went 'somewhere' is impassable, I will likely have to airlift in my scholastic escort.)

It doesn't help that I'm not exactly a social barfly. Butterfly...barfly-whatever. Either way-I know I gotta use my wings if I'm going to find what I'm looking for.

So if the next time you see me, I corner you to discuss some seemingly random, slightly esoteric topic, just humor me and say "Can you believe River Phoenix has been dead for 20 years?"


And if you quote Stand By Me, I will probably buy you a nice bottle of red wine.

Murphy O'Meyer is a nice way of saying...

for fuck's sake! (It's funnier when my sister, Jessica, says it.)

Anyway...the expletive will make sense in a minute.

A few weeks ago we had the most amazing reunion for the families that grew up on Perkins Place in the '70's and '80's. Almost 50 people gathered at one family's lake house for an afternoon of good food, swimming, laughing and remembering. There were 7 of the original families, with each family bringing at least 3 generations. These people were my "it takes a village to raise a child" family and seeing them brought back so many memories.

It's not often these days that at age 38 I can have a conversation with someone who has known me for 35 years, but my lovely friend Janice (Burns) Lawrence was the first friend I had on Perkins Place. She and I can go months without talking and pick right up where we left off. In fact, when I arrived at the lake house (her mom and dad's house!) she came right over and couldn't wait for me to get out of the car to give me a hug-there is such love and history between us.

After we hugged one another, another friend snapped a photo of us side by side. That photo is what prompted this post because it has left me a little bit speechless. I knew I wasn't taking good care of myself this summer. I haven't been running as much as I planned and I haven't been cooking at home very often, but still...I had no idea that this was how things had "shaped" up. And so I say...Murphy O'Meyer!

I will never be a thin woman. It's not in my genetics nor my body structure. I spent my formative teenage years full of angst and insecurity over this fact, but as an adult I have much more love and respect for myself. So I am not going start blogging about weight loss and how I am waiting to become the skinny 'me' who is stuck inside of the chubby 'me', because the truth is I know I am beautiful right now. But I can't run marathons like this. And while I could skydive, I'm pretty sure my instructors would have to bend in half to adjust to my fall rate. But what bothers me about this image isn't the fact that I am overweight, it's that I am unhealthy. And that's not something I can live with-literally and 'figure'atively. (Sorry-I like corny puns. Deal with it.)

So it's game on.

More mental carbs...less actual carbs.

Independence Day 2011

I finally did it. AFF level 1? Done.



I give much credit to my sister and brother-in-law for finally getting me off of the ground. In the morning, before we went to the drop zone AJ was imitating Nella by jumping up and down, screaming "Blast off". I don't remember why she was doing it, or why he thought it was a good idea to imitate her, but it left Jessica and I in fits of giggles-which only encouraged him to keep doing it. In the video, over the roar of the wind, you can hear him say it to me when I turn to 'check-in'. It is just one of the many ways, they made this more fun for me (as if having more fun jumping out of a plane were possible!).

With one small hiccup-AJ gave me the pull sign and I thought he was telling me to straighten my legs-the jump was ideal. Of course we landed in a field about a mile and a half from the drop zone which meant I owed beer. (See HERE for skydiving-beer-owing-rules) But Julia drove AJ's big-ass turbo diesel truck out to pick us up so we didn't have to trudge back in the heat, lugging our parachutes.

It was such a great experience I almost wished that I hadn't invested all of my skydiving money in Jumptown.

One of my favorite moments after the skydive was watching Nella Gale do her very special salute to the plane. I wish I had this on video because it's so fantastic. Every time the plane takes off she kicks her leg up in the air and claps. One of the other skydivers taught her this maneuver and the best part is that she does it whether anyone is watching or not. In this way, she is truly one of them.

I hope, someday, I am too.

A Very Bold Move

Today I did something very bold and mental carb-ish.

I canceled my Netflix subscription.

Wait, you're not impressed? Okay, let me explain.

When I finally moved off campus last summer I had to cut costs and one of the first things to go was cable. I like TV and goodness knows I'll watch it if it's there-it was free on campus but I couldn't justify $60-$100 a month for Comcast or Direct TV for the few hours I might squeeze in each week in between work, grad school and the small slice of a personal life I try to maintain. My concession was my Netflix subscription. I have a Wii so I can stream movies and old TV shows through it-and it was enough. (Well, mostly enough-I still miss my guilty pleasure of NCIS, but in the scheme of things, it was ok.)

Then we had this long, cold, snowy winter and I...ahem...becameabitofanaddict.

What? Oh, you didn't quite understand me. Let me try again.

Ibecameabitofanaddict.

Ok, fine.

I said- I. became. a. bit. of. an. addict. (You should know my head is hung,slightly, in shame and I am not making any eye contact as I type this.)

It's true-it was awful! I watched so much junk. I OD'd on Glee, Veronica Mars, Monty Python's Flying Circus, Battlestar Gallactica, Ken Burns' Civil War and Baseball and a lot of PBS' Masterpiece Theater. (Downton Abbey and Sherlock were actually quite excellent. You should check them out. Really good acting and good storylines...c'mon just try it. What-are you scared of little PBS? Everyone is doing it...oh wait, sorry about that-I'm only a couple of days into recovery.)

It started to become very apparent that TV had taken over my life, or at the very least, had become a huge obstacle to getting a lot of other important things done. Too much telly meant I didn't get enough exercise, I stopped being as creative, and I became more insular than I had before.

So I made the commitment to watch less and honestly, it was great. I tried Zumba for the first time, I started running again, and I spent more time with the people I love. In the end I discovered that with so many distractions in my life, perhaps Netflix is one I don't need-even a little bit. This feels like a bold choice, in part because I live in the sticks-I don't get cell phone service at my little farmhouse. I have internet but it isn't fast enough to allow me to watch movies or TV online. My DVD player died last year and I never replaced it. If it weren't for my beloved Mac I'd barely be living in the 21st century out here. Okay, that's a bit of a pretentious exaggeration. (My sister Jessica is saying out loud "A bit? I find it moderately ludicrous that you would whine about your Mac.")

And you might want to counter with the fact that I have a Wii, but the funny part is that my house is so old and small, I can't play most of my games without wreaking a bit of havoc.

Anyway, my point is-not a lot of ultra modern technology left here...but I'm finding it liberating. It was a cozy cocoon that served it's purpose for the long cold winter, and I just don't need it anymore.

Especially since this year I am actually learning to fly.

You can't always get what you want...

Today I am reminded, once again, why attitude matters.

My dad used to share this little gem with me and my sisters. It's by Charles Swindoll.

My younger self often scoffed at it. Charles Swindoll is an evangelical minister which is already at odds with my personal philosophies and he is a white male so I tend to think it's easy to give attitude so much credit when you don't have a lot of barriers put in your way by society.

But my older self, the one who is not as much of a rebel as she used to be, who is sometimes too tired to pull out her soapbox-she has learned to appreciate the sentiment behind his words. "We cannot change the inevitable." It's just another way of saying "It is what it is" and I say that ALL the time.

Today I should be running the 20th Annual Covered Bridges Half Marathon but for the past five days I've been sick- fever, sore throat and complete and utter exhaustion.

It would have been a tough one as I didn't train well-but I could have finished it. It's a hard race to get into and this is the second year in a row I have had to bail at the last minute. So it is through gritted teeth and with a bit of sarcasm that I say, it is what it is.

But deep down I am pissed off. I'm not as flexible as I would like to be. Not this kind of flexible. The kind that allows to me to roll with the punches a little bit easier. I loathe not accomplishing that which I set my intention to do. In the past this has made me stubborn and way too loyal to only one outcome. Years ago I probably would have tried running anyway and then been sick for another three weeks.

Between the lack of jump-able weather (I have yet to make my A jump!), being sick and now not being able to run, I'm struggling to be nimble.

So to counter my rigid tendencies I'm working very hard at reminding myself how much attititude matters-it is my mental yoga. If I keep practicing, the pose is easier to maintain for longer periods of time.

Still, instead of Swindoll, I am much more likely to break out in song ala Sheryl Crow's beach-y, pop tune: "It's not having what you want, it's wanting what you got."

Or better yet: The Stones. Because if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need.

Time to happy-up and focus on what's next.