doubting thom

Happy happy joy joy! Jeff gets back to DC today from his holiday visit with his family in the Bay Area. While I jokingly told him last night that it had been a relaxing change to be able to sleep sans earplugs for a few days (for a little guy, he sure generates an awful lot of decibels in his sleep), the truth is that I’ve really missed him and will be very glad to have him home again, home again.

Boy, do I wish these kinds of “toys” had been around when I was a kid; I may end up asking for them for Christmas anyway. The Discovery Channel store is selling:

1. The Discovery DNA Explorer Kit. The kit, which retails for about $80, includes a centrifuge, an electophoresis chamber, and coupons for two free DNA samples.

Explore one of the newest frontiers in science – DNA mapping. From science labs to courtrooms, few discoveries are as exciting as the world of DNA. With this deluxe, first-of-its-kind kit, you can extract, view and map real DNA yourself. Ideal for budding forensic-scientists or secret agents, the working lab and tools are just like the real thing. Plus, you’ll have all the supplies needed for six fascinating DNA experiments. Extract DNA from vegetables, find out what actually makes ink colors and even grow crystal stalagmites!

2. The Discovery Whodunit? Forensics Lab, also retailing for about $80. Among other items, this kit includes a 200x microscope, a light table and a blood analysis tray.

Learn how to use science to fight crime! With advances in forensic science, more and more crime work is being solved in the lab. Now you can introduce your child to a fun and fascinating side of science, with this complete at-home forensic lab. You’ll face six tough cases – each harder than the last. Use the state-of-the-art lab instruments to analyze handwriting, decipher blood type and examine mysterious fibers in your search for answers.

Wicked!

Despite my family’s extreme closeness, over the past ten years Thanksgiving has tended to become a less celebrated holiday as my grandfather, brother-in-law and one of my nephews have tended to remain at their hunting camp rather than coming in to spend the day with the rest of us. Even so, this year’s holiday felt strange.

Typically, my mother’s side of the family would get together on Thanksgiving proper, through my childhood and early adult years at my grandmother’s house but later, once my grandmother developed Alzheimer’s–in fact, we now recognize some early signs of the disease from a Thanksgiving dinner some years back in which she forgot to turn on the oven to heat some food and then lost some dishes which never were found–at my sister’s.

Before my father’s kidney disease he would go hunting with most of the other men in the family, but he would always come in from the woods for Thanksgiving, at least. So my father had always been there at the table with us, even when my grandfather, brother-in-law and nephew were not. Even so, his absence–at least to me–felt less permanent and more just like he was away in the woods and would be back by the weekend. My mother and I remarked on Sunday, as we visited his gravesite, that it most often feels just like a dream; there still is something unreal about his death and our continued lives without him.

In the past, our Thanksgiving tradition would continue on Friday, as we would get together with Dad’s side of the family. Dad’s nephew and his wife would host both sides of their family and some family friends–as many as 20-25 people. This year, however, his niece had family visiting from the other side of the state for the entire previous week, and obviously wasn’t able to pull together a family dinner of that magnitude in addition. So Mom and I spent most of Friday over at my sister’s again, decorating her house for Christmas.

Thursday evening, after our Thanksgiving dinner, the conversation turned again to family obligations–the same conversation as those I referenced in an earlier post, and in which my lack of filial duty and care–because I don’t call every day, nor visit every weekend–again was noted. I pointed out that I do, at least, provide details of my comings and goings to a degree that I suspect not many 40-somethings do; if I’m going to be out of town, even for an evening, my family expect me to let them know where I’ll be and how to reach me. I’ve explained that I always have my cell phone with me and turned on when I’m traveling, and therefore am often more readily reachable at those times than when I’m around DC, but it’s an important ritual for them and I’ve continued to honor it.

My sister continued to insist, however, and with support from my aunt–and a silence from my mother that seemed to exude pain and implicit support for my sister and aunt (boy, do I have deep-seated issues with this, or what?)–that while I might not feel the need to check in with them on a daily basis, “as I should,” and that I don’t visit often enough (and just what constitutes “often enough,” anyway?), I nonetheless continue to have a responsibility to spend holidays with them, period. She said that in the future I certainly would be welcome to invite not only Jeff but his parents as well, but that my attendance is non-negotiable.

The issue about the frequency of my visits home is an interesting one. Granted, I’d like to see my family more often, and it’s not like a four-hour drive is a terrible burden. Historically, I would tend to get home about once every two to three months, plus most Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. A few years ago when my work schedule increased dramatically, however, I only made it home three to four times a year, including the holidays. Over the past few years, though, I was spending a great deal of time with my parents. I spent a number of weeks with my mother while my father was in the hospital; just before his death this year I again spent a number of days with my mother. Since his death, I was there a full week in September and every weekend that month, three weekends in October, and two weekends in November.

So when my sister pointed out that I also should be joining the family on its vacation every year, and that I should have gone this year–which turned out to have been my father’s last–I lost my cool and curtly pointed out that I hadn’t actually had any leave because I’d used it all visiting Dad in the hospital and being tested as his organ donor. In fact, I haven’t had a week-long vacation of my own in three years, because most of my leave since then had gone to spending time with Dad–time I didn’t begrudge, but that nonetheless hadn’t left me with an opportunity to take a vacation, with or without them. Even now the days I’m taking to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with them depletes my leave as quickly as I earn it.

And even in just the six years that I’ve owned my own condo my parents had been to Arlington to visit me maybe four times (though given Dad’s health, it’s understandable that they couldn’t visit more often); my sister has come up once (in fact, only the one time in the entire 16 years I’ve lived here in the DC area), and my aunt also once. It’s the same four-hour drive, yet the responsibility to make it seems solely mine. When I’ve tried to broach this, and to suggest that there’s an element of inequity, my point is brushed aside as unreasonable: after all, if I make the trip, I can see all of them, but they can’t all make the trip to see me, and besides, they have responsibilities at church, to keep my grandmother, etc. To them, apparently, my life and responsibilities end at 5:00 on Friday (actually, with the exception of my mother, who seems to understand more than the rest that I have a career and life of my own, I’m not even sure that my family fundamentally accept that I have work and other real world responsibilities; every time I’m home they suggest that I should easily be able to stay an extra few days and not go back to work, for example).

Whew! That’s enough whining and self-pity for now. It’s amazing how my family, like nothing else in my life, and even given subjectively my amazingly caring, loving and supportive childhood and my relative success as an adult, can reduce me to feeling so inadequate, uncaring and selfish, and seemingly so frequently disappointing to them.

Well, I haven’t done one of these in a while, but today’s seemed particularly apropos.

1. Do you like to shop? Why or why not?
Yes, I have the shopping gene, though I do find that I tire much more readily now than I used to. And my sister puts me to shame. She’s never forgiven me for the time two years ago that she and some other family members came up to the DC area to shop at Value City. I didn’t realize when they came with a map to all seven (relatively) local locations that they truly intended to visit all seven; after spending several hours just getting to and shopping at the first two, I pleaded hunger and cut the buying short for the day. She brings this up every time we’re together.

She and my mom also are QVC junkies; I don’t ever expect to go that far, though my one-time eBay addiction came close.

I generally really enjoy shopping with Jeff. Our tastes in most things as well as our preferred stores are so similar that it’s rarely a burden to shop with him, though I have to admit that I’ve never known anyone who could spend that much time at the Gap; there have been times that I’ve gotten rather bored and tired waiting for him to try on every piece of outerwear in the store.

2. What was the last thing you purchased?
Earlier today Mom and I went to Wal-Mart to pick up some things for decorating my sister’s house for Christmas (the trees–yes, plural; in addition to the 10-foot one in the great room, she has six others in her house and on her porch–already were up and waiting for me to arrive to help decorate them); I bought some soda, which like most food products is significantly less expensive here than back in DC; the Finding Nemo, Matrix: Revolution, and Bend It Like Beckham DVDs on sale; and three computer games, also on sale.

While that would have been my most recent purchase, I then came home tonight and took advantage of Apple’s one-day only 10% sale on iPods and accessories, and finally bought myself an iPod (thanks, Gene).

3. Do you prefer shopping online or at an actual store? Why?
Unlike Jeff, I do a great deal of online purchasing. As much as I love going to brick and mortar stores, I tend mostly to window shop in person. But I’ve bought just about everything online: from the usual books, airplane tickets, music and tickets even to such items as widescreen TV, my computer and even my refrigerator. As I noted above, I just ordered an iPod online. And I’ve bought a fair amount of stuff, particularly collectibles but even shoes and other clothing, from eBay over the years.

I tend to believe that I can find better deals online, and especially in terms of comparison shopping, which is just so easy to do on the web.

4. Did you get an allowance as a child? How much was it?
I did, but I don’t remember how much.

5. What was the last thing you regret purchasing?
While I’m sure there are things since then that I’ve regretted purchasing, nothing really comes to mind, or at least nothing that can compare to the regret I sometimes feel about my Saab, for reasons detailed again and again throughout this journal. And even that is not unmitigated regret, as I really loved the car for the first several years I owned it, and part of me still does; I don’t regret any of the enjoyment I had with that gorgeous convertible, but I do hate the trouble and expense of the past two years.

I took a 30-minute break from work this morning to pick Jeff up at my condo and drive him to the airport, where half an hour from now he’ll be flying out to the Bay Area for the Thanksgiving holiday, returning next Monday. In comparison, I’ll be at work today–though it’s likely that we’ll be released at least a little early. I have a 6:00 reservation to pick up a rental car, and then I’ll get up very early tomorrow morning to drive down to the mountains to be with my family through Sunday.

This is the first major “family” holiday since Jeff and I started dating, and we both already had planned to spend it, as well as Christmas, with our birth families. While I’m definitely going to miss him, I’m okay with spending the holidays apart this year. Holidays aren’t particularly important to me, in any event, but they’re very meaningful to my mother, and I think it’s especially critical for me to be with her this year, our first Thanksgiving and Christmas without my father.

My freshman year of college I missed my first Thanksgiving with my family, spending it instead in Brooklyn with a friend from my dorm; my sophomore year my sister came up and spent Thanksgiving with me, at Harvard (though that’s a story for another day’s blogging). At that point my mother told me that while I might miss other holidays, my attendance at home for Christmas was non-negotiable. And in 41 years I’ve yet to miss one. It’s also been the case in my past relationships that my partners, for various reasons, were willing to spend Christmas with me and my family, so it’s never yet been an issue.

I was discussing this with my sister just a few weeks ago, though, and pointed out that in future years Jeff and I would probably want to spend the holidays together, and that as he also has a close relationship with his family, we might have to miss an occasional Christmas, perhaps alternating Thanksgiving and Christmas from year to year. She was adamant that it was unthinkable, that my first duty would always be to my birth family and not to my partner. My sister’s husband has long been estranged from his own family, and my sister and her family live practically next door to my mother, so there’s never been a conflict for her, but she said that she’d leave her husband behind alone and come home–insisting that the kids would also have to come with her–at Christmas if there were such a conflict.

Jeff and I have decided to see in the new year together, though. While New Year’s has never been a really special holiday to me (though I did particularly enjoy First Night back when I was living in Boston), and spiritually I tend to recognize November 1 as my own New Year’s Day, there’s still something symbolically appealing and romantic about being together for this first calendar new year since we’ve become a couple.

By now, Gene should be ensconced in his new Prius; I’ve got my fingers crossed for him. And on that front, I made the call today to my salesman to let him know that I’d decided to wait for the options I want, even if that means I won’t see my own new Prius until February, rather than settling for something less desirable sooner.

I’ll admit that a part of me was hoping that enough other people who’d been contacted had decided to go with the reduced option package, leaving me with a better shot of getting a fully loaded model sooner after all. But the salesman reported that nearly everything has said much the same as me.

My boss’s reaction, though, has been different. She hasn’t yet heard anything one way or the other from her dealer, but she said that if she’s told she’ll have to wait until February, she’ll tell them to cancel the order and she’ll get a Honda Civic hybrid instead. She wants a hybrid primarily for the ease of travel it will provide to and from work, because of the Virginia policy that treats these cars as “special clean fuel vehicles” not subject to HOV restrictions, and for her it’s a more critical, immediate need than for me; my car has problems, but given that my driving consists mainly of very short in-town hops, I can continue to use it for that–and rent for longer trips–while waiting for the Prius.

In fact, given the possibility that the new energy bill will include significant tax credits for hybrid purchasers rather than just the current tax deductions, a part of me would just as soon wait until the new year–and the new policy–to take possession. (Yes, I feel like a hypocrite, considering how little I like the overall energy policy, and truly I’d prefer it not pass, even if it were to mean I’d lose any deduction or credit; but if it’s going to pass anyway, then I wouldn’t mind some personal benefit.)

After a quiet two days at home recovering from some sort of mild bug–affecting stomach, gut and sinuses–I was really feeling stir crazy, so yesterday Jeff and I went out for a very late lunch and some shopping at Bailey’s Crossroads. We strolled through Storehouse Furniture, where Jeff remarked–and I agreed–how nice it is that we seem to share a decorating aesthetic and tend to appreciate the same styles and colors.

We then hit Staples, where the technology displays whetted our appetites such that we decided to go to Circuit City, where we drooled over the televisions, LCD monitors, PocketPCs and iPods, among other gadgetry, as I continued to try to decide upon a replacement for the ailing Toshiba projection TV.

Afterwards, we made it to Marshalls just as they were coming to close the doors, but still managed to squeeze out 15 minutes inside, where Jeff eventually left with a great deal on a beautiful Kenneth Cole briefcase/shoulder bag.

The only store still open by then was Borders, for which I had a 10% coupon, on the basis of which we went on quite a spending spree. I bought two DVD collections–the extended version of The Two Towers and the four-disc set of the Indiana Jones films and bonus material–as well as five books and three boxes of greeting cards, while Jeff bought Madeleine Albright’s autobiography and a couple of nice calendars. We also spent some time browsing the children’s and young adult section, and reminiscing; I still think some of the most innovative and intelligent fiction unfortunately is classified as “juvenile,” tending to make it less desirable and/or accessible to adults.

According to the free no-obligation quote at WWYS®, the current value of my soul is £19,488 (about $33K), and 49% of the population has a purer soul.

Bart Simpson definitely sold his to Milhouse too cheaply.

Friday, Gene reported that he’d been notified that his Prius was on a ship that had docked that day in New York. Yesterday, while home sick from work, my phone rang and when I saw that the caller ID said “Alexandria Toyota” I became a little nervously excited, thinking that maybe I was going to get the same news about my own car; the salesman had told me last month that while I’d almost certainly get my new car before the end of the year, it was possible that it could come in the large shipment they were expecting in November.

No such luck, of course, given my track record. Rather than the good news I was hoping to hear, I was told that the dealers are receiving far fewer of the fully loaded model Prius than they were expecting, and that I have two options: 1) downgrade my choice, in which case they can “probably get me one sooner” (notice, though, there’s no commitment to a specific time frame even if I choose to take this path), or 2) expect to wait until at least February for the car I originally ordered. The salesman told me I didn’t have to make a decision right away, but to think about it a couple of days and call him back early next week to let him know.

I was pretty disappointed for most of the rest of the day, though by this morning a part of me is bemused–after my run of bad luck over the past few years, I almost have to laugh whenever yet another thing goes wrong, and while I wouldn’t call myself pessimistic about life, I do find that these days there is a part of me that suspects things will go wrong more often than right. And while it’s a disappointment, it’s not like it’s life-shattering. It’s just a car.

And really there are only two downsides, besides just the disappointment of the dashed expectations. First, if I wait until next year to take delivery, then the federal tax deduction of $2,000 drops to $1,500; but, as Gene points out, I have the significant tax benefits this year from the refinance, so why not move this one to next year, even if it’s a little less than it would have been (and it’s not like a $500 change in deductibles means more than a few dollars in actual tax savings, after all). Second, it also means that I’ll have to rent a car at Thanksgiving and Christmas and for any other trips out of town, and that I’ll probably need to garage the Saab again–I had begun using it for short in-town hops and to and from work again, since I thought I’d be trading it in very soon–and go back to walking and using public transportation over the winter.

So I guess I’ll call the dealer today and tell them that I’ve decided to wait; I’d rather get just what I want, and wait for it, then to settle for less–and what’s more, I’d still have no real guarantee, only vague assurances, that the other trim level would be here any sooner.

So maybe there’s even some kind of lesson in here for me. Or maybe I should stop looking for meaning in this completely random series of events we call life. Shit happens.

Last night, Jeff and I went to the grand re-opening of the Kennedy Center Opera House, featuring simultaneously sung and signed excerpts from DeafWest Theatre’s Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; a solo dance performance by Homer Avila, who has only a single leg, having lost the other to cancer; and excerpts from Mass, the Leonard Bernstein theatre piece originally commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy for the opening of the Kennedy Center, and which premiered in the Opera House in 1971.

I first was exposed to Mass in the late 70s by two high school teachers and good friends–the Bartleys, a married couple who also introduced me to the comedy of Peter Schikele and his alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach. I was blown away. The piece had a profound impact on me and was, I believe, at least partially responsible for my conversion to Episcopalianism my freshman year of college and my eventual decision–though never followed-through upon–to enter seminary and become a priest. Later, my repeated listenings to this piece depicting a crisis of faith was helpful in recognizing my own such, my realization that I was a spiritual but not a religious person, and my resultant exploration of non-Western and non-Christian belief systems, culminating eventually in my self-identification as some combination of humanist, pagan and Unitarian-Universalist.

Over the last couple of months, I’ve found myself thinking of Mass again for the first time in several years, and eventually found the CDs buried in a box in my closet. I got them out and listened to the work again, and found it every bit as powerful and evocative as I’d remembered.

So it was a nice synchronicity to discover, when Jeff got us tickets to the performance last night, that excerpts from Mass were to be included in that event. And I found myself emotionally swept up all over again, having to wipe my glasses several times to clear the mist and salty deposits left by my tears. I really want to listen to the full piece again sometime in the next few days.