Just when I thought it was over . . . . . .

NO! The mighty and powerful hand of GOD (or another high-level manager) has reached down and pointed his bony finger at me and said:

"I have plans for you, my emotionally spent and fragile son. You will receive three offers of employment in one day, the last day possible to consider these offers before you start the job you already accepted two days ago.

"The first offer will be for that job you liked so much in Santa Fe, but at a lower salary than you expected.

"The second offer will be from the language school that so unceremoniously dumped you and now regret their short-sightedness.

"But the third offer . . . the third offer! It will glow like the sun in the sky, it will shimmer like the stars at night, it will fill you like a bottomless urn of nectar, it will caress you like a Babylonian whore. And you, my son, will know that the decision is clear - although three doors have been opened and sentinels beckon you, only one door is bathed in the glowing golden light of probable satisfaction, genuine fulfillment, and all that is great and good in this world.

"So choose, damnit! Choose!"

Yes, yes, I had an interview yesterday with the Children's Hospital Development Department. They've had over 200 applicants over the last three months (holy shit). They conducted something like 40 telephone interviews (I had one last Friday). They had only one in-person interview. That was me. It lasted two hours. The entire staff was present. Here's what I learned: the job is phenomenal (helping to raise money to purchase diagnostic and treatment equipment for the leading public children's hospital in a three-state area). The pay is above-satisfactory. The people are some of the most genuinely kind and intelligent I've ever met. The bennies are so damned fine that I'll be playing catch-up with my physician, endodontist, acupuncturist, psychologist, surgeon and pharmacist for at least a year. The location is very pleasant, in a new building next to a shady park adjacent to the hospital. The opportunity for advancement is tremendous. The office decor is soothing (plum and eggplant with touches of nectarine and a plethora of art created by kids). The boss is dynamic and smart and athletic (she's an ex-basketball coach) and very very sweet.

I left the interview thinking, "Crap! Another great job that I won't get." I slept fitfully.

This morning I received calls and emails from about seven ex-supervisors, some going back to 1980, if you can stand that! Evidently, the prospective boss called each of them and asked for a candid, off-the-record appraisal of me. They all claim to have raved about me, which I find quite surreal, but it must be so, because . . . . . .

Just a half hour ago, the fickle finger of fate pointed at me and I was offered the position!

I have to go pee in a cup, get a couple of shots (because I'll be working in a hospital), and swear my allegience to helping sick kids get the best treatment possible. Think I can do that.

Woo hoo! Hooray for me!

P.S. A great big THANK YOU to all the people who wrote supportive comments to me on this blog - I couldn't have made it through without you! Sheila and Alex and Beth and Tracey and Jackie and Sybil - you're in my thoughts and in my heart. Mwah!

Well, that's it - I'm a paralegal again, I guess

I start on Monday as a paralegal in the District Attorney's Office. The only thing that could possibly change that is if someone from another office or agency made me a firm offer today or tomorrow. Otherwise, 8:00 a.m., coffee in hand, I'm there.

I think I understand now how abused wives get corralled into bad marriages.

Okay, I'm not saying it'll suck. Maybe it won't. The work itself is interesting (much more so than the impression I originally had of it being a glorified copy clerk). I'll be pulling together charging documents on meth lab prosecutions. Kinda fun, in a legal/governmental way. The pay is more than I was expecting, and the benefits are phenomenal. Although it means staying in Albuquerque and not doing the big move to Santa Fe, I'm pretty damned happy in my situation here - cool housemate, low expenses, supportive environment, dogs and cats. I just was thinking how fun it would be to live in Santa Fe and have the aesthetic and pleasure portion of my life racheted up a few notches. But I could do more to make life more fun for myself here in Abq. I mean, hello, pottery class, fer Gawd's sake! And there's leather night at the Manhole.
Oh well. Oh well.

"Our revels now are ended." What's that from? Shakespeare?

I spent the last ten years flying by the seat of my pants, and it was fun and scary and challenging and fulfilling and VARIED. It was radically different from my previous government career, and in many ways I got what I wanted: to find out what it's like NOT to be nestled in the secure - and stifling - world of government service. Now I willingly return to that nest, grayer and more frayed around the edges, but ready for the peace of mind that comes with security. It ain't too exciting, and it's not much of a story to tell, and yes, I'm settling.

Am I doing the right thing? I honestly don't know.

There is a huge irony in this, though: my successful vacation rental business, the business I devoted five years of my government "break" to growing, the business that was going to bring me all the things I thought a government job couldn't bring me - excitement, creativity and riches - collapsed because my beloved business partner got addicted to meth and destroyed it all, including himself. Now I'll be helping to put meth manufacturers in jail.

Strange world.

Firm offer of employment - #1 (hopefully there will be more)

I got my first firm offer today - - - remember this interview? More than two months ago, I met with these people. One of the interviewers was so hostile that I figured there wasn't a chance in hell it would work out. I've seen cross-examination scenes on hit TV shows where the witness received more courteous treatment. But I suppose it was actually just good old-fashioned passive-aggressive attorney intellectual conceit (the sting of the question is ever so much more important than the answer because it shows how brilliant the questioner is), also known in lawyer circles as "strong interviewing technique." The fact that I was able to withstand bursting into tears until after I was out of the building is testament to my strength of character/fear of public embarrassment.

Anyway, I predicted that if I were offered the position, I'd die of an embolism after squatting in front of a copier for two minutes trying to clear a jam.

They want me to start ASAP (like, in a couple of weeks). Can I string them along while I hope for another offer? Should I turn it down flat? Or should I just take the damned job and be done with this agony?

Ironically, I interviewed for a GREAT government job this morning, in Santa Fe, for more money, and in a much more laid back atmosphere. The interviewer, a great Erin Brockovich type, said they would make a decision by Friday. She's the one who said my resume was fascinating (no, I didn't list my stint as a Lullabiologist). I also looked at an apartment in Santa Fe that is being offered to me by one of my ex-language instructor underlings, and it's just fantastic, prime location (I could walk the half mile to work in the park along the river between work and home) and it's being offered to me at half the going rent. This is what I really want. Santa Fe. Healthful living. My own apartment (small, but my own). A good job that's not a stressful nightmare.

Should I call Erin B. and say, "The position with your department is definitely my first choice, but I just received a serious offer here in Albuquerque and I need to give them my answer by Friday." Oh I can't do this sort of thing. In the circus of life, I'm just not a juggler.

What to do, what to do.

Advice? Ideas? Give it to me, ladies.

My last day as an English instructor and supervisor

So ends another career for Stevie-poo. Sigh.

I was thinking I'd list all the job titles I've had in my life. Here goes, starting with me at 14.

Lawn Mower Boy
Theater Geek (set builder, sound and light tech, and later set and lighting designer)
Music Director (that's what it said on the program - I composed a song or two for some local productions)
Treasurer/Vice-President of an arts association (I was 16 and thought I was hot shit to be elected by all these adults - didn't realize they thought it was quaint someone actually wanted to do it)
Bicentennial project chairman (see above)
Flunkie in a doctor's office. My first real job. I was in charge of getting the doctor's car washed, wiping down all surfaces with isopropyl alcohol and sharpening the 12 pencils in each of six examining rooms - daily - I kid you not. I also typed forms all day on an IBM Selectric: "Clear, cooperative, ambulant, cheerful, not in apparent distress." This applied to everyone. Then I added: "Inquinal Hernia the size of a grapefruit" (if the doctor was hungry) or "Inguinal Hernia the size of a softball" (if he wasn't).
Telephone answering service operator (a la "Bells are Ringing;" my first job to become obsolete)
Paint store clerk (yes, like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, but I didn't wear mylar shirts)
Cook at the Shrimp Pot (we called it the Shit Pit)
Clerk-Typist (thus begins my federal career)
Secretary
Courtroom graphics maker
Paralegal Specialist
Programs Manager
Advisory Board Member
Board of Directors Member
Grant Writer
Special Events Coordinator
Victim-Witness Assistant
Executive Assistant (oh, the dreaded EA - Sheila can relate - and so ends my federal career)
Psychic Reader (done while floating in a pool in Palm Springs - ahh, the perfect job)
Music Therapist (get this - I called myself a Lullabiologist - I sang tones to sick people - no, really - just sat there in front of them and went, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh" - I have quite the basso profundo type voice - I even was on the alternative radio station every Sunday afternoon doing it by request: "Um, Mr. Steve, could you sing to my kidney?" "Of course, dear!" Maybe I need to lump all these Palm Springs jobs under "Flim Flammologist")
National Anthem Singer (to try to drum up business as a Lullabiologist, but the minor league baseball set in Palm Springs was not really my primary market)
Superclerk (the next self-employment gambit)
Strident, in your face, Act-Up militant Queer (briefly)
Landlord (I stank at this - much too lenient)
Vacation property developer
Interior designer
Bossman (I stank at this - much too lenient)
Business partner (I stank at this - blinded by besotted unrequited love, I didn't see my business partner's meth addiction rising up to destroy five years of exhausting labor to build a somewhat successful company)
Free-loader (I hid in the basement of a rich friend for nine months while I looked for work)
Association manager
Website developer
Proofreader and editor
and now Language Instructor, Service Rep and Supervisor

Oh - and back to Psychic Reader/Job Seeker/Binge Eater (today only)

That's it.

Who else wants to list their occupations? Come on, I did - go for it!

Back on the roller coaster

There's been a flurry of interest in me suddenly from various government agencies in Santa Fe - two interviews lined up for next week. I'll put on my suit, plaster a smile on my face, and spend twenty bucks per interview on various breath neutralizers and skin softeners and teeth whiteners and eye drops and shoe polishes and overstarched dress shirts and 25% cotton rag resume paper and gasoline and parking, all so that some preselected candidate for the job can be said to have competed with me and the other benighted dolts who think we have a chance.

Whatever.

I also had a great interview yesterday for a university job with oodles of bennies, including paid winter break and free tuition. The person interviewing me was a kindred spirit, a professional seen-it-all done-it-all administrative type who totally "got" me. We liked each other immediately. She said I would fit in perfectly with the university culture and declared, "You rock!" at the conclusion of the interview.

Probably won't get it.

I heard from the national corporate sales director for the language school empire I work for, that is, until the end of the week. He said that it was a total joke that they didn't snap me up and hustle me off to Princeton, NJ, to run some big-ass component of the company. He said that my background, not to mention my recent experience here, would've been invaluable, and that he planned to kick the ass of the people who didn't jump at the chance to keep me.

Whatever.

I've been told that the Santa Fe museum I was very interested in working for had to give the position I wanted to someone "recommended" by the governor's office. They say those sorts of appointments usually don't work and that the position will probably be vacant again in a couple of months.

As if.

Maybe you just have to be pounded into submission by the process of looking for work before you exude the whatever vibe that says to prospective employers, "I have no expectations that I'll get this job, none at all, so don't worry about disappointing me, just make your damned decision and get on with it. I accept it. I don't agree or disagree with your decision, I don't think you and the available position are wonderful or horrible. I'm just a nameless, faceless rider on this roller coaster, and eventually I'll either puke, be thrown to the ground, or ride it out to the end and be standing, slightly disoriented, on the exit platform. No worries, dude. Just point me to the pretzel cart."

Where the hell's my turban?

Four more days of teaching English, then it's reading tarot full time. Jesus.

I've gotten a jump start on my fabulous new career by doing a few hours of reading every evening, just to get in the swing of it. The good news is it pays well - about twice what I've been making. The bad news is, I get all these people who ask me impossible-to-answer questions like, "When is he going to call me?" I'm always tempted to say, "Thursday at 7:14 pm." But what I usually say is something along the lines of, "Time is a human conceit and the universe does not obey strict time and space grids placed by man upon existence." How's that, Carl Sagan? Another good one is, "I cannot say, because the thoughts and feelings and experiences the two of you have between now and then may change the outcome, not to mention the impact of the thoughts and feelings and experiences of everyone else on the planet." I supose that's better than, "How the hell should I know, lady? Who do you think I am, Jennifer Love Hewitt? If I knew detaily crap like that I wouldn't be wasting my time sending out a hundred resumes and cover letters for jobs that have already been pre-selected, now would I? I'd just lift up the phone and tell my soon-to-be employer that I'll be able to start on Monday and require a kick-ass 401-K."

Actually, I'm a hoot during a tarot reading. Chatty, uplifting and insightful as hell. Need to know what numbers to play in next week's Lotto? I'll tell ya. (11-19-31-43-52-60. These are the numbers to play, they may not be the winning numbers, but . . . ) Need to hear soothing words from the grandma who died last year? No prob. (She sends her love, she's smiling, there's a little tear in her eye, and she says everything is really nice where she is now - lots of flowers.) Wanna know what the future holds? Easy - there's gonna be a few bumps and bruises along the way, but eventually the sun is shining for you, little darlin. Keep your chins up, sweetie. It's all gonna be all right - your luck is changing and the angels are smiling down on you. You are a special special person, the Universe recognizes that, and there's every reason to be optimistic about the future.

Well, I'm right, aren't I?

Bummer Trails

What a day I had yesterday.

First I get a phone call from the head of my company saying that I was doing a helluva job for them, but the two management trainee positions in Manhattan and Beverly Hills, which they had told me were "pretty sure" going to be offered to me, instead have been put on hold until Mid-March. He then said that the position I hold here in Albuquerque is dissolved effective September 5th. He would, of course, keep me in mind for the Manhattan and Bev Hills positions when they reopen in March, because I was a helluva piece of manpower, etc.

Then I got home and found a thin envelope from the museum. Seems the director is "truly sorry" and that I was almost selected for the position, my experience certainly was impressive, and everybody liked me, but . . . .

I saw the weather report yesterday morning but I didn't see anything about a shit storm.

I watched Good Night and Good Luck with my housemate last night but honestly, I don't remember a thing - just kept thinking self-pitying thoughts and taking mental inventory of the refrigerator, pantry and kitchen cabinets. Since I figured I wouldn't be sleeping much, I got onto the psychic hotline and did about four hours of tarot readings. The ironic thing is that I'll make twice as much money doing readings over the phone as I woud if I were a management trainee or a museum development associate. Go figure.

So now the plan is to go back into hibernation, drop another 100 pounds, exercise a helluva lot, read tarot while on the Gazelle, go for walks along the river with the dogs, cook lovely little low-cal meals, read uplifting books, and lick my wounds.

Damn.

Good news about the museum job

Well, I'm just delighted to learn that I have a call-back interview for the museum job in Santa Fe! When it rains, it pours, etc.

So I spent last night making various lists, charts, and statements comparing and contrasting the New York/Bev Hills Language career (see post below) with the Santa Fe Museum career. This, of course, was in lieu of sleeping. And although there are innumerable ways to look at it, it all boils down to EXCITEMENT and ADVENTURE versus PEACE and TRANQUILITY.

I cannot set aside the scintillating possibility of meeting Sheila and Alexandra and Beth and Tracey and Mitchell and Chrisanne and Jackie and others the thought of which, admittedly, has a WOW factor of 10. I cannot set aside the tendency I have to turn these career and location decisions into, "What would my friends think of this choice/how good a story would this make?" I cannot set aside that, as a single, not-so-very-old-yet, chubby/healthy, relatively ambulant, childless and mortgageless American, I have the freedom (and the tacit duty) to pursue Excitement and Adventure for the sheer fun of it.

But if I REALLY REALLY REALLY look at which choice is most conducive to my health and happiness, which choice supports the efforts I've made in the last year or so to change my core beliefs, I have to say that Santa Fe is the right one. If I were a species of crustacean and an aquarium curator had to choose which display to put me in, she would choose the sunshine-filled, peaceful, tranquil tank with the pueblo-style diarama. The potential to thrive in that environment is simply greater. Besides, the curator can put me in the Dance Fever disco-ball tank for a week or two each year so I can experience a dose of excitement and adventure.

I suppose we'll see . . . . . .

Scary delicious news!

Drumroll please . . . . . .

The language company has said that

THEY WANT ME

- sorta for sure -

for the management trainee position

(woo hoo!)

and I will

MOST PROBABLY

be sent to either

Beverly Hills or New York

for my six-month training!

I will know for certain in two weeks.

Or three.

Can you dig it, blogpals?

I'm either going to:

O'Malley Valley

--- or ---

Billings Hills!

Talk about HIGH ALERT!

I can feel the synapses clickety-clacking in my brain

and my heart's a-pounding!!

Okay, that's it for now.

Ready or not, ladies, here comes Stevie!

(maybe)

Worry Wart

I'm a worrier.

My Grandma, who lived next door to me from the time I was eight, was this upbeat, hilarious woman with a piercing voice, a razor-quick mind, and not a mean bone in her body. She sang at the drop of a hat, funny tongue-twisting big band ditties from the 30's with crazy lyrics guaranteed to make you laugh. She cooked like a fine chef, kept an immaculate house, ironed my Grandpa's briefs, for Gawd's sake, and watched an inordinate amount of Mike Douglas and Merv Griffin, but no soaps. She was constantly entertaining, and I don't mean she was always throwing parties, although when she did there was nobody who could make a stranger feel more at home - loved, even - but I mean that she had something bright and funny and interesting to say about everything, and kept the chatter going from the moment you walked in the door to the moment you left. She was entertaining, like Selma Diamond on Merv, or like Moms Mabley on Mike Douglas. She had stories - - - ahhh, did she ever have stories! Great big hilarious stories about growing up in New Yawk and the roaring 20's and the boarding houses she ran and the time Gertrude Stein spoke at her Ladies of Haddasah meeting.

And she was a worrier.

First and foremost, she worried about my mother - about her weight problem, about her unhappiness (clinical depression is what we'd label it nowadays). She worried about Nixon. She worried about my cousins Katy, Carol and Patty - there was always one of them in the throes of some sort of crisis that Grandma could gnaw on. And there was me to worry about, of couse. "Poor Steve." So smart, so talented, and so fat. So effeminate. So destined for some sort of humongous unspecified disaster.

It was like the worrying was the default position. Channel One. She could be completely distracted by telling me some big story about the diving horse at Coney Island, and I had a knack for prodding her for more details, more stories, but in the end her brain jumped back to fretting. It never seemed to get her anywhere. I saw that. I saw how the worrying never lead to some sort of conclusion or resolution. It just existed, a way to fill the time.

Of course, I was a worrier way before I lived next door to Grandma. My mother's sometimes erratic and withdrawn behavior had me in a constant state of anxiety - "Why doesn't she love me? What did I do? What can I do to change this?" I was also worried about my limp wrists and my high-pitched giggle and my fat face and my next piano recital and a foreboding sense that I could never be the normal kid everybody expected me to be.

But once Grandma appeared as a worrying kindred spirit, things really took off. Whatever incipient proclivity I had for worrying was well entrenched after ten years of hashing it out with Grandma. We worried about everything. We talked, debated, analyzed, assessed, predicted, and proposed solutions for a million and one issues, yet they never went anywhere. They were about things that were out of our hands. Katy's boyishness. Carolyn's crossed eyes. Patty's freckles. Cookie's weight.

I think we both used worrying about others to avoid getting down to business and doing for ourselves. It was like I was in co-dependent grad school, going after my doctorate in fretting.

I operate under the false delusion that spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about something will lead to a revelation or a resolution, that suddenly a light will go on and the worrying will pay off because it produced a brilliant idea that solves everything. So I take whatever's uppermost in my mind and chew on it. Sometimes the plate's so damned full that I have a hard time choosing the worry of the day.

Right now, of course, I'm worrying about my job, about the future. About the Middle East.

The thing is, I do the footwork. Man, do I ever, as far as the job search is concerned. I send out two or three applications every day. The resume is honed to perfection. There are six basic cover letters allowing for infinite customization. I've trimmed the nose hairs and fought back an incipient cold sore with copious amounts of Lysine. Honey, I'm ready for anything.

So why not stop worrying? Why do I love it so much? What is it about worry that (apparently) gives me comfort while giving me angst? Is it just because it's familiar, as habit-based as a dog chewing on an old slipper? Am I using uncertainty to distract me? Or is it just the conceit of the brain run amock? Why not drop it, you know?

I do the footwork in my life. But I also do the fretwork. I think it's time to let go of it.

Living in Santa Fe?

I'm interviewing for a great job in a wonderful museum in Santa Fe next week!

I applied about a month ago and figured the position was filled by now, but the director of this museum sent me a charming hand-written letter last week apologizing for the delay in contacting me, explaining they were all so busy preparing for the huge, world-famous public event they sponsor every year in the Plaza. I immediately send a hand-written note thanking him for his refreshing courtesy, the high point so far in what has been a demoralizing and depressing job hunt.

When I mentioned the possibility of working in Santa Fe to a friend of mine, one of the people I supervise teaching English, he told me that he owns a quaint little adobe five-plex in a prime area just a short walk to the plaza in downtown Santa Fe, and that he would be delighted to rent to me - at a bargain rate! - whenever an apartment becomes available. Like me, my friend is an English instructor by default, having burned out on a great big guv'mt career, but unlike me, he picked up and retained some prime real estate along the way. He told me the location, and it's fabulous, along a road that runs by a river park, all shady and babbling brookish. And only a half-mile to the Plaza!

Now, folks, talk about having a gorgeous hand-painted Acoma pot dropped in your lap!

This is a scenario I can live with: a delightfully spare but sweet little adobe apartment on the river park, a brisk half-mile walk to the plaza each morning along the river, a cafe americano and a biscotti in a charming plaza hole-in-the-wall while I peruse the paper, a short scenic ride to Museum Hill (three miles away) on the open-air tourist shuttle, a productive day helping with member development for an important cultural organization where I would work with all sorts of artsy and creative people, and at the end of the day, the reverse (substituting a decaf iced tea for the cafe americano). Weekends could be devoted to practicing intricate pottery painting in the tradition of the indigenous peoples of the area, at which I expect to become brilliant, or for that matter, donning a turban and doing tarot readings in the plaza for gullible tourists. Ahhhhh. This is nice, eh? I can smell the roasting peppers now . . . .

Funny, but when I imagine this scenario I look just like Ann Sothern in A Letter to Three Wives - peppy and vivacious in a navy cashmere fitted jacket over a tailored grey wool skirt, wide patent leather belt and white blouse, a pair of kicky pumps and sparkling white gloves, my curls bouncing with every jaunty step.

"Good morning, Manuelita!" I cry as I enter the colorful plaza cafe.

"Buenos Dias, Senorita!" says Manuelita, obviously pleased to see me. "I make fresh sopapillas today, chiquita, just the way you like!"

"Oh, Manuelita, you darling angel, but my tiny waist won't hear of it!" And a shimmering cascade of laughter fills the air, like iridescent bubbles bouncing along to a steel band polka.

A distinguished man in shades, dressed in creamy linen slacks and a comically touristy embroidered hermanito shirt, sits alone at a tiny table, an exhorbitantly expensive camera around his neck, and a straw Panama hat on a wall peg nearby. He looks astonishingly like Cary Grant, because, well, he's being played by Cary Grant.

The man fleetingly sees just a glimpse of well-toned calf [close-up of well-toned calf] as I turn from Manuelita's tile-covered counter with drink in hand and comically slip on a coffee spill. The handsome stranger deftly jumps up and gracefully catches me around my tiny waist, then effortlessly sets me right (I'm such a petite thing) but in the tussle I've drenched the front of his shirt with my cafe americano.

"Oh dear!" I cry, "Look what I've done!"

"Don't worry about a thing, Miss," he says, finally releasing his grip around my tiny, tiny waist (did I mention it was tiny?) and removing his shades to reveal piercing blue eyes. "I don't mind a bit. This touristy get-up is all wrong for me, anyway. Permit me to introduce myself - I'm Buck Wheaton, roving reporter just blown in from the windy city."

"How do you do, Mr. Wheaton!" I say as I put my demure little white-gloved hand in his big manly paw. We shake hands vigorously and stare into each other's eyes just a little too long.
"My name is Jacqueline Brisk. Miss . . . Jacqueline Brisk, Curator of the Pancho Villa Museum of Art."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Brisk, a real pleasure! Say, I was wondering if you might be able to recommend a guide, you know, someone who could show me the sights around here, someone who knows all about art, someone . . . refreshingly charming . . . I mean, oh, I don't know, someone . . . [deep blush showing through his tan cheeks] . . . a little like . . . like yourself?"

My nipples harden.

"Well, no one knows Santa Fe better than Manuelita here, Mr. Wheaton!"

"Oh, Chiquita!" Manuelita says, giggling and holding her colorful apron in front of her face. "I couldn't leave my sopapillas - they are in the kiva right now!"

"I'm afraid you're out of luck, Mr. Wheaton . . . . unless . . . . "

"Yes?" says the dashing stranger. Towering a foot taller than me, he looks down as I look up, the angle so flattering to my chinline. He smiles, revealing a dazzling set of choppers, his jaw quivvering with manly strength, his chin dimple provocatively deep and dark.

"I suppose I . . . ." Why is my heart beating so? "Well, what I mean to say is . . . . "

Sensing my hesitation, Buck quickly hatches a plan.

"If you wouldn't mind accompanying me to my hotel across the plaza, Miss Brisk, so that I may change into some dry clothes? It would take just a second, and there's a rare hand-carved bunterero in the window of a dusty little tourist shop in the lobby that I'd like your opinion about. You see, I'm conducting an investigation into counterfeit goods, and . . . "

"As it happens, Mr. Wheaton, I'm somewhat of an authority on buntereros!" We laugh, just a little too heartily and too long, then stroll smartly together through the dappled shade of the plaza.

The music swells.

Cut.

Job Search Update

Hey, everybody! I've got an interview at this leather book binding co-op in Santa Fe, turning out things like this:

Actually, I'll be in charge of burning pentagrams onto leather bookmarks to start. Following an extensive apprentice program, I will graduate to intermediate gothic weavery.

I suppose it's unlikely I'll get the job; according to the job ad, they're looking for someone more hirsute and possibly cloven hooved.

Anyway, it's official: I got the gig reading tarot cards over the phone, so I can limp along financially until I get a "real" job. That's good, because it's starting to feel like the language center is gonna close down by September 1st, at which point I'm out on my multilingual ass.

As far as real jobs are concerned, I've got a call-back interview later this week for the language center management trainee position, the one where they'd send me to an exhorbitantly expensive city for six months, then transfer me to Cumquat, Kentucky. Fingers crossed.

Fed jobs? Nada. What's wrong with those people? I tell them I'm willing to single-handedly mop up the administrative mess FEMA caused in the wake of Katrina, live in Mont-fawkin-gomery, Alabama, fer Gawd's sake, and they don't even send me a postcard saying screw you?

State jobs? Two interviews, both for positions involving lots of copying - didn't get either one.
Guess they're saving me for the custodial job in the nuclear experiments lab.

I had a nice turndown from the Georgia O'Keeffe museum - they sent me a no-thanks vagina that looked an awful lot like a lily.

Reading tarot for lonely ladies is starting to sound like a good career move, but I tend to be a touch nihilistic - "No, ma'am, according to this seven of wands, he's not gonna leave his wife for you, but the spirits and guides are telling me that the bitch has impetigo - yes, just like Michael Jackson! Oh, and you're pregnant. Or is it your goldfish? Not sure. Wait a minute . . . it IS you, according to this card. See, the five of disks mean five months pregnant, and everyone knows goldfish don't gestate that long. Looks like a Christmas baby for you! Definitely! No, the tubal ligation didn't take. Happens all the time. Yeah. So anyway, in about six weeks you're gonna have a BIG surprise! Yes you are! Really! The guides are telling me I can't tell you what it is, but when you get it, BOY, will you think, "Gawd, that's what my psychic friend predicted!" Let's put it this way - you totally deserve it. Totally. Oops, our time is up."

Bernardo

As you know, I teach ESL, at least for now. The classes are mostly one-on-one, in the students' homes, and the two-hour lessons usually occur once or twice a week. It's an intimate thing: faces about a foot apart, working together to discover something, trying to unlock a mystery and gain understanding.

On Monday evenings I have a class with Bernardo, a very sweet young guy from Costa Rica. We've been meeting for more than four months. He and his wife Cynthia have been here since last winter, working on a big project for a huge computer chip manufacturer. Since our classes emphasize conversational skills, I've asked him lots of questions and heard all about his family, his job, his favorite foods, his ideas about complicated modifications he wants to make to his bike, his dreams about running a big beach resort in Guanacaste, and plans for road trips to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and Disneyland (the three top destinations on most of my students' wish lists).

He is more than my student - he is my friend. To the extent that two people who don't have a common language can learn to like each other while discussing hypothetical travel plans and kitchen utensils, we have done so.

Last night, when Bernardo answered the door, he didn't give me his usual big grin and firm handshake, his usual, "Hallo, Mister Steve!" Instead he was completely silent and looked at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen.

"Bernardo - what's wrong?"
"My wife . . . my wife . . . she die on Saturday."

Cynthia was 23.

Everything was fine Saturday morning. Bernardo went to work for a few hours. When he returned, Cynthia was asleep on the living room sofa. Bernardo gently called to her, "wake up," but she didn't move. He went over to shake her a little, and touched her face, and it was cold. She had lain down for a nap.

When the police responded to his 911 call, he was handcuffed and taken to police headquarters for questioning. The apartment was marked off like a crime scene.

By the time Bernardo was released and returned home, his wife's body had been removed and the apartment swept for evidence. In a daze, he called Cynthia's mother in Costa Rica to tell her what happened.

The coroner has ruled out heart or lung problems, and suspects a brain embolism. When the body is released, which may take weeks, Bernardo will accompany it back to Costa Rica for the funeral and burial.

How do you comfort a guy whose culture frowns on hugs and tears between men, unless it's related to a soccer match? Bernardo stood there in his living room with the Southwest-style rental furniture all around him, and demonstrated for me how he gently shook her pillow to wake her before he touched her face. I stared at the sofa. I stared at the immaculate apartment, as stripped of personal objects as a furniture showroom.

I stared at the pile of English language materials that once promised a new and wonderful life in a foreign country for an ambitious and light-hearted couple in love.

But mostly I stared into those sad, sad eyes.

I feel like a pot of day-old oatmeal

Waiting to hear on jobs . . . . . . I'm starting to crust up around the edges and form a slight puddle, like leftover oatmeal in a pan left by mistake overnight on the top of the stove. Maybe if I were reheated and stirred vigorously, I could be delicious again (with lots of sugar, milk, raisins and a pat of butter) but if left to sit like this much longer I'll start growing into some experimental chemical warfare. I can feel the mold trying to form internally, like the gentle tickle of an incipient herpes ready to burst forth in interview-killing magnificence.

Song cue: Oliver!

Who will buy this crappy old fart face?
Such a guy you never did see!
Who will tie him up with some red tape
And put him at an old PC?

Who will buy a chubby with herpes?
He can type and make copies, too
Me oh my, he'll even do filing
And maybe kiss an ass or two

He used to work for Uncle Sam once
Now he's a piece of used TP
If ever you would hire this man once
He'd spend his mornings on his knees

Who will buy a dandy old dandy?
Take what's left of his self-respect?
It would end his humilation
If just one boss from hell
Would answer his e-mail
There must be someone
Who will buy!

Gimme somma DAT!

Oooooh, finally had an interview that left me wanting the job. No cross-examination; no extremely disconcerting drawbacks. Just three very lovely ladies who obviously enjoy their work and who have been recogized for their efforts with promotions, raises, and really good secure careers! The job is interesting and pays well and it's in a low-stress but high-responsibility state agency in beautiful Santa Fe, New Mexico. They hope to make a decision for the job tomorrow. PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME

I think they liked me, they really liked me!

Deep breath. Like I said in a recent blog, no matter what happens I'll end up dead - if I get this job, maybe I'll die wrapped in a serape, sitting in front of a kiva stove in my own cute little adobe ranchito. Or is that ranchero? Well I don't mean covered in salsa and nacho cheese, folks!

One down, two to go

I had my telephone interview for the language school management position today. It went all right, I guess.

If selected, I would spend six months in San Francisco or Los Angeles (probably living in some sort of shared-housing situation, considering the salary), then be sent somewhere OVER WHICH I WOULD HAVE NO CONTROL to be a director or assistant director of one of their schools. Could be Santa Barbara, could be Detroit, could be Beverly Hills, could be Boise . . . . you get the picture.

Sigh.

I've been in charge of where I live since I moved away from home the day after high school graduation. MY choice, always. That's 30 years of picking the town I lived in, even when I picked Lawndale, California (inside joke for all you kids familiar with the "South Bay").

Yes, I could make the best out of any place they sent me. Good ol' Steve, the jolly big guy who plasters a smile on his moist face and bellows out a hearty baritone chuckle at even the direst situation. And like I said, I could be sent somewhere great. Hartford, Charleston, New York, Portland, Maryland, Phoenix - they all have their charm. Who knows, I might even get to like CASper, Wy-O-O-O-ming, right? I mean, so long as I got all cowpokey and learned to spit tobacky juice in a manly way, thereby preventing a trip to a deserted wheat field and some cranium kicking by locals who don't cotton to no goddam fags from San Fran Sissie, yuck yuck. Actually I'm less concerned about gay bashing as about limited access to good Thai food.

But we shall see, won't we? That's the wonderful thing about a job search - eventually, it's over, and there you are, at a desk somewhere, pondering the warped changes you've been through.

Bring on the post-search mind-numbing what-have-I-done period, and make it snappy, sailor!

TWO interviews tomorrow.

"Who will buy my sweet red roses?"

I have three job interviews this week.

Job number one is the management trainee position for the language school company I work for, which would involve spending six months in a very cool big city somewhere (like San Francisco or New York), followed by a couple of years someplace else over which I would have no say. Caspar, Wyoming, for example. This is starting to feel like a shoe-in, and I think it might be a hoot, but don't count your chickens before they're hatched/there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip/a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush/more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones/if at first you don't succeed, try try again/if you can keep your head about you when all else are losing theirs, you may have failed to completely grasp the situation.

Job number two is a state job in Santa Fe, so vague in description and duties that I have no comment (a rare situation for me). The administrative person who called me about the interview mumbled so badly that I'm not completely sure which agency I'm interviewing with. I hope there's a plaque on the office door to give me a hint.

Job number three is a gig reading Tarot on the phone from home for a Psychic Readers-esque company "Not affiliated with Dionne Warwick."

This will give you an idea just how wide I'm throwing the net.

Other jobs stand just over the horizon - a member development position for a prestigious museum in Sante Fe; a federal job coordinating litigation in environmental cases; and something that has rather piqued my Mickey Rooney Can-Do spirit - a FEMA job helping to clean up the administrative mess left by Hurricane Toady down in Nawlins. That I am even contemplating living somewhere humid is a testament to my bravery/desperation/weight loss. I mean, Stevie in the deep south? I'll be changing my name to Sweatface Piggly Wiggly.

I did two brave things today.

(1) I withdrew my application for the make-copies-till-you-croak job. Just don't want to do that for a living (and, honestly, just don't want the humiliation of being turned down for such a sad little job).

(2) I bought a bright green Izod polo shirt with - gasp - horizontal stripes. As any chubby will tell you, this is a catastrophic adipose no-no on a par with eating a big, dripping triple scoop ice cream cone in the street in front of strangers on a hot August day without access to napkins.

Tomorrow I will do another brave thing: keep trying to believe in myself.

[inhale]
It. will. work. out. I. know. it. will.
[exhale]

A job interview story - part 2

They're calling my references. Can it be that they want me? Or are they just going through the paces of "being fair?" Still, it may be that I will get an offer in the next couple of days. What am I gonna do?

So now comes the math.

Current job - definitely over by October; probably over by September; possibly over by August (the boss is scheduled to come flying in here, like Idina Mensel, in early August for "a visit.")

Possible future jobs that I want - will take months because of the lengthy procedures feds follow in hiring.

This job - pros - sort of in the field I'm looking to get back into. Will last through the end of the year at least, and probably longer than that. Would put me back in the public sector, which possibly makes me more appealing for the federal jobs I really want. The clerical people I'd work with are sweet.

This job - cons - low pay, low skilled labor, lots of making copies, a non-permanent position, probably won't be there very long (unless they offer me something different at a higher pay rate).

Possible future outcomes:

(1) I turn down the job; my current job runs out; I try to find a job as an unemployed person; I never get work; I'm turned out into the streets by an uncaring housemate; I die in a gutter.

(2) I turn down the job; my current job keeps going until December; I get offered a fabulous federal job in November; I die in a three-bedroom split level.

(3) I take the job; I get a strange skin disease caused by contact with toner; I have health insurance so I can get treatment; I bravely carry on with my copying duties, even though great chunks of skin slough off me constantly; I'm offered a non-copying job after the custodian complains about the flake problem; I die in a studio apartment.

(4) I take the job; they recognize my superior skills and appreciate my cheerful demeanor so much that they promote me to a more interesting and higher paying job; I get offered a fabulous federal job in November; I die in a loft condominium.

(5) I take the job; I resent every moment I spend in front of the copier, remembering all the "truly important" work I used to do; I develop angina; one day the copier jams and after remaining in a squatting position for over a minute trying to clear the jam, I fall to the floor, dead.

Melancholy Aftermath - a job interview story

My cyberfriends Alexandra and Sheila are actors and they bravely go on audition after audition, putting themselves on the line in the brutal world of show biz. I find it bitterly ironic that we demand actors, who by nature and training are some of the most sensitive artists we have, to undergo this harsh, sometimes agonizing process just to find work. Auditioning must be like having to get an emotional delousing - or a decontamination scrub-down a la Silkwood.

I was thinking of Sheila and Alex yesterday when I went on a job interview.

The job as advertized was an interesting-sounding litigation support paralegal and the pay range was low but tolerable. Within five minutes in the interview I learned that the job was really the "make-ten-copies-and-deliver-them-to-the-attorney" type, it was a temporary position, and the salary would be the exact bottom of the range stated. So there I was, a middle-aged, middle-careered, gray-haired fat man with years of experience doing complex paralegal work, auditioning for a job requiring no experience, no skill, and much better suited to a young, energetic, just-starting-out person still living at home.

It was a nightmare.

Four people interviewed me: two attorneys and two assistants. We sat in a tiny, crowded meeting room. I kept the smile plastered to my face and tried to come up with articulate answers to their simple questions.

"What experience have you had that makes you believe you could do this job?" Oh, umm, I've made copies before, dude, and I even know about the 'collate' button. Did you read my resume prior to the interview? Maybe one of the three federal judges I have listed as references might elucidate you to that, my friend.

"Do you understand that the salary is $10.28 per hour and that the position runs out in November and that you won't have a desk or anything?" Gee, sounds grrrrrrrreat!! Is there a stinking little employee lounge that smells like mildew and has big signs all over like DON'T STEAL OTHER PEOPLE'S FOOD FROM THE FRIDGE and CLEAN YOUR OWN COFFEE CUPS? Because that would be the piece de resistance!!

"What do you think is your greatest strength and your worst weakness?" Well, my greatest strength is being able to smile at you at this moment when my brain is shrieking like a banshee, and my worst weakness is my inability to announce out loud that the job is a crock and the advertizing was false and I wouldn't take this job if I was addicted to toner.

"Are you willing to use one-tenth of your abilities and one-tenth of your brain to make one-tenth what you're worth and accomplish one-tenth of what you could?" Okay, they didn't ask that question.

I left the interview and fell into the mightiest funk.

If they offered me the job (and frankly, they shouldn't), am I desperate enough to say yes? What if nothing else comes along? Is this what it comes to, begging for scraps?

I managed to avoid hitting a fast-food joint on the way home by purposefully taking a circuitous route through prairies and barrios, and I was prepared for the post-interview emotional tumult (I had poached some chicken the night before), so the fallout was minimal physically, but I'm a little bit shot to shit this morning, feeling terribly insecure and uncertain. And I know, there's other jobs out there, there's other interviews, there's something GREAT just waiting for me, and I'll be fine, and God will provide, yadda yadda yadda, but right now, at this moment, it's hard to feel great about myself. How do you do it, Alex and Sheila? How do you swallow the rejection without taking it personally? And how do you keep hope alive?

If I were a trained actor with strong experience and memories of thunderous applause, rave reviews, triumphant performances and the respect of my peers, I'd have a damned hard time auditioning for a one-line part in a potato chip commerial - "Gee, they're crispy!" - and not getting it. I'd need to spend the evening in bed, wearing a tattered kimono, nipping at a bottle of burbon, chain-smoking, popping Milk Duds, dolefully turning the pages of my old scrapbooks of clippings and reviews, and woozily singing along with Peggy Lee. "Is that all there is?" Maybe, Peggy, maybe so.

"God, I hope I get, I hope I get it . . . . . I really need this job, please God I need this job, I've got to get this job . . . "

"There's gotta be something better than this, there's gotta be something better to do . . . "

All right, now that I got that out of my system I think I'll go wash the car.

And try not to eat a burger.

Looking for a fix

I think I first heard the word "fix" to mean a shot of heroin when I saw the movie "Panic in Needle Park" when I was maybe 7 or 8. Those were the days when movies were rated M for mature and there was no real age limit. The movie was an eye opener for little Stevie from the suburbs, I can tell you that. But I never put together that these people were fixing their problems with heroin, that the fix was really a "fix." I just thought it was a slang expression, and I never really thought about it.

But now I get the idea.

As a food addicted person, I'm constantly on the prowl for a fix. Fix my mood, fix my energy, fix how I feel, fix my boredom. Enhance, change, cure, modify, alter, soothe, placate, energize, mellow out, reward, punish, distract . . . fix.

I've been a doctor with an ever-complaining, ever-ill patient: myself, writing prescription after prescription for medicine I know won't work.

So yes, I'm definitely a food addict. I have been "using" since I was five years old. I first "OD'd" when I was 7 and stole a $20 out of my dad's wallet to go buy snacks at the 7-11. I bought a sack of goodies, went around to the back of the 7-11, sat down with my back to the wall and proceeded to gorge. I was pretty much in a sugar coma when my dad found me an hour later.

Most of my life I've had a $30/day habit. Another way to look at it is that I had a 5000 calorie/day habit.

When I was very poor and had only a dollar to last an entire weekend, I would go to the market and get 8 boxes of off-brand macaroni and cheese - they were 2 for $.25 - and eat one box per meal. You're supposed to make them with milk and butter, but I would make them with water and the cheapest margarine available. A box for Friday dinner; three boxes on Saturday; three boxes on Sunday; and if I didn't get paid on Monday, a box Monday night when I got home from work. I could've used the dollar to buy something healthy, but I was panicked at the thought that I wouldn't have enough food, enough bulk, enough calories to get through the weekend, so I ate this flavorless, nutritionless crap because it was cheap and filling.

Sometimes the special was frozen pot pies - 6 for a dollar. Inside the dough would be this MSG-riddled mucilagenous glop (gravy!) with one pea, one piece of carrot, and one cube of chicken suspended in it. Good times!

I don't think my addiction is a disease. I've tried since I was in my 20's to accept this idea. I know lots of people in recovery, people I admire and love, who have achieved sustained sobriety by believing in and accepting this premise, and I'm truly glad it works for them. The ability to place the "reason" for addictive behavior outside of the realm of "choice" is invaluable for many people - to get away from self-blame and self-loathing is one of the most important first steps to turning around addictive behavior, and labeling it a disease is one very good way of leaving guilt behind.

But it just isn't true for me.

There, I said it.

I don't have Voracious Ravenicitis, like Samantha Stephens did. I have a five-year-old's insecurities and fears about not being loved and being fat and being gay, and a 40-year history of treating these fears with a readily-available, gooey, greasy, crunchy, delectible, ineffective fix that even a five-year-old can score.

You don't need analyzing
It is not so surprising
That you feel very strange but nice
Your heart goes pitter patter
I know just what's the matter
Because I've been there once or twice
Put your head on my shoulder
You need someone who's older
A rubdown with a velvet glove
There is nothing you can take
To relieve that pleasant ache
You're not sick
You're just in love

The wall is red.

Okay.

Back when it was just me and my ideas about self-esteem and doing work from home on the computer and having brief face-to-face interactions with loving pets and a sanguine housemate, it was easy for me to stay focused on the theories I've delineated here - that loving, accepting and forgiving oneself was the platform from which a person could turn around a lifetime of self-destructive behavior - in my case, overeating.

I still think the theory holds, but my ability to live it changed drastically when I got a job in the real world and was faced with the bombardment of "eat me" messages that exist out here in Consumerville, USA. Just yesterday, as I sat stopped at an intersection, a bus pulled up next to me and there, in gigantic close-up detail, was an image of a cheeseburger so plump, so glistening with salty/greasy pleasure, so lip-smackingly delicious, that the bus fumes smelled like broiling meat to me. Even the sesame seeds which studded the bun, each of them about the size of a mango, were somehow infused with shiny, nutty eat-me-ness. And as for the melted cheddar and globules of mayo oozing between the crisp lettuce and dewy tomato slices, I could sense their texture, temperature and flavor on my tongue. Ten seconds later, the light changed and I pulled away from the bus. But those ten seconds were a dreamy, creamy oasis, a slow-motion reverie, the fast food equivalent of Bo Derek running down the beach with her beaded corn rows whipping about her head. For those ten loooong seconds, I was not loving, approving and forgiving myself, m'kay? I was a cockroach, crawling between a hot, greasy broiled pattie and the crispy folds of an iceberg lettuce leaf, searching for the warmest, greasiest, saltiest, cheesiest, most perfect place on earth.

What is it I think I'll find there? What is there that isn't here, where I am, right now? Why does my head and heart and body and soul long to be there?

These three months out in the real world have brought with them greater exposure to visual food cues and the opportunities to go to fast-food places that promise instant gratification; greater opportunities to doubt my self-worth as I press against limitations in my experience and abilities at work; greater insecurities about the future as I realize that the company I work for will be closing shop in this area a few months from now; fear about applying, interviewing for and getting another job; a slackening of my commitment to see, feel and hear the truth of myself; greater desire to reward, punish and medicate myself with food; and a consequent erosion of feeling good about myself, even at a time when I'm accomplishing more, making more money, receiving accolades from students, and enjoying more independence and freedom.

Oh, and I've gained 20 pounds in these last three months. I had lost 120 pounds in the six months prior. Now I hover at the century mark, back on the tightrope, precariously wondering which way I'll go.

I've talked about how I'm used to using food as medication, to cure dis-eases that might even have been caused by the tasty, creamy, crispy medicine. There have been times when I was feeling so stuffed from a food binge that I thought, "I feel so uncomfortably full - I'll just eat something to feel better." Huh? What? Put MORE food into my overextended cavernous gullet in order to "cure" feeling so full? How can I even think this? Why are the lizard-brain impulses so strong as to make rational thought completely irrelevant? How can the desire for food vault obliviously over the stinking corpse of the obvious? It's like I'm staring at a wall, and it's painted fire engine red, and there's a sign that says, "Red Wall," and there's a report in my pocket from the doctor that says I'm not color-blind, and everybody around me staring at the wall is saying, "Wow, what a great red wall," and I SEE that the wall is red, and I THINK that the wall is red, and I BELIEVE that the wall is red, but I say, "Turquoise. Turquoise. Turquoise. That wall is turquoise. Yep. Turquoise."

I was in Beverly Hills last week for a training conference, all expenses paid. I walked from my hotel down Beverly Boulevard on Sunday morning, past the familiar-looking nameless Hollywood types eating at outdoor cafes and bistros, enjoying their lattes and croissants and cobb salads, dressed in their impeccably studied casual outfits (and serious bling), and I saw them surreptitiously assessing the other diners and stroll-bys, carefully calculating their fame, wealth, beauty and self-absorption relative to themselves.

It was a Vanity Fair magazine come to life.

An older man with an improbably buff body found a hundred excuses each hour to rub, touch or rake his hair, thereby displaying his veiny biceps for all to admire. A hot babe in a convertible Hummer required six loud, gas-guzzling drive-bys to find a parking space suitable enough for her. A tall, sexy stud dressed in skin-tight white jeans and a red and white striped French navy shirt managed to saunter provocatively up and down the sidewalk for more than twenty minutes and unconsciously show off his clearly defined genitals while talking the whole time on his black Razr (or whatever is the hottest, most expensive cell phone these days). I suddenly realized that these peacocks, these personifications of self-absorbed consumer excess, these bejeweled exponents of the human being as product, these walking, talking advertisements for happiness-through-stuff, these moisturized, modified creatures with their wrinkle-free faces and gigantic Visa bills - well, they're just as blind to their own reality, just as desperate to cure themselves with doses of ineffective medicine as I am.

But here's the difference: the visible signs of their dysfunction are applauded, encouraged and admired. Maybe not by everyone (I'm rather disdainful myself, as you can tell), but by many. In fact, there are entire enclaves - like Beverly Hills and a host of others - where the signs of self-destructive excess are a requirement for acceptance.

In case you didn't know, the side-effects of my dysfunction are not quite as admired by society.

Maybe I'm glad. What if my excess poundage was admired and encouraged by the world instead of hated? Wouldn't it be like adding premium fuel to the rationalization engine that runs so effectively already? Or would public admiration help obliterate some of the self-doubt and self-loathing that led to the excessive use of "medicine" in the first place? No, I don't think so. My Beverly Hills stroll showed me that. So long as the fix is external, it won't really take. That's why the hot babe with the convertible Hummer will be turning it in for a Lamborghini in a few months.

First comes the internal fix. Always.

My time in Beverly Hills reminded me that it's time for a recommitment to the internal changes I'm determined to make, not because I seek external approval or admiration (a delicious frothy beverage, certainly, but low in vitamins and nutrients), and not because I need to withstand the siren song of lip-smackingly bodacious fast food advertizing, but because I want to live in truth. I don't want to fool myself. I'm tired of being blind. I don't want to ignore reality.

The wall is red. And I say, "It's red." I have integrity with myself.

Thirty years ago today . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . my mother died in my arms.

As it happens, yesterday Sheila O'Malley, MB (magnificent blogger), posted about hearts, how they skip a beat when you're in love, and how sometimes they break and leave you feeling empty inside. I commented that the emptiness I felt inside me after my mother died was so much like hunger that I was stuffing my face with a vending machine sandwich 45 minutes after her death.

I was supposed to make a presentation that night to the local arts group about a proposed Bicentennial project I was spearheading - a sculpture garden for the artless little town square in our artless little suburban community. I was 17. I had secured permission from the city council to appropriate a 50' x 50' square of land next to City Hall, got some bricks donated by a local builder, commissioned a steel sculpture of an eagle in flight, and the local cemetary was prepared to carve the names of everyone who donated more than $25 into slabs of richly striated pink marble cladding the podium upon which the sculpture would perch.

At the last minute, I thought, "I'm not going to the meeting." I would have been in my car, driving to the community center, rehearsing my pitch about the damned sculpture garden. Instead I was at home when the phone rang.

"Son, you better get to the hospital." Dad made that choked-up sound he made when he was fighting back emotion. He had never called me Son before.

I jumped in my powder blue Dodge Dart and rushed to the hospital.

Mom had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer about three months before, and although I would later learn that there was absolutely no point to it, her physician put her on chemotherapy, thereby making the last three months of her life as miserable as possible. Now it was almost over, and she was in and out of consciousness, according to Dad and my grandparents, who had been by her side all day.

As I rushed into the room, I could see she was not focusing, laboring for a breath every 30 seconds or so. I put my arms around her, my face close to hers, and said, "Mother!" With the very last remaining energy she had, she turned her head slightly and a glimmer of recognition came into her eyes. I sobbed, "It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, Mom - I love you - you can go, it's okay . . . . you can go . . . . I love you . . . . it's okay . . . . "

She was beyond words but she communicated to me somehow that she understood what I was saying. Tears welled in her eyes and one solemn teardrop made it about halfway down her cheek.

And then she was dead.

I had the sensation almost immediately that her spirit lifted up and out of her body and was gone; what remained was not her. It was, most definitely, not her lying in the hospital bed. It was, most definitely, an empty vessel.

Like brief glimpses into the illuminated windows of a passing train at night, I remember vague washes of color and light and brief, sharp flashes of intensity in the hours and days afterward:

- Grandma wailing her daughter's name - "Cookie - Cookie - Cookie" - never had the embarrassing nickname sounded so agonizingly like fingers on a chalkboard.

- Grandpa fainting from a blood pressure rush, then sitting with a white, wet facecloth on his cherry-red head.

- My father dutifully scrawling onto the last page of the stenographer's notepad where he meticulously kept track of the various milestones of Mom's illness, "6:55 pm Steve arrived and went to her bedside; 7:00 pm Carol responded to Steve's voice; 7:10 pm my darling Carol is no more." Then closing the notepad and clipping the mechanical pencil to the cover.

- The kind nurse who had taken loving, compassionate care of Mom for two days, coming in to shoo us out for a few moments so she could remove the medical paraphernalia and put Mom in her favorite blue velvet robe.

- The mortician and his trainee who came for the body, and the trainee, in a misguided attempt to comfort us, said, "Don't worry, we'll wire her mouth shut."

- Finding myself alone, sitting in front of a black and white TV in a visitor lounge someplace down the hall, 45 minutes after Mom's death, shoving that vending machine sandwich into my mouth as tears streamed down my face.

- Grandpa warning us about the perils awaiting Mom's body at the morgue, saying, "You know there's all sorts of c - h- i - c - k - a - n - e - r - y," spelling it out, and me trying to figure out what the hell he was spelling. I thought, "What is he talking about - chickens?" It took me a minute to get it, then this sense of disbelieving revulsion flooded over me as I realized he was warning us about gold tooth thieves and necrophiliacs.

- Hugging my father later that night for maybe the first time in our lives completely unreserved, just two people hanging on to each other, afraid of sinking, afraid of the present, afraid of the past, afraid of the future.

- Receiving a scolding call from the arts group leader, wanting to know why I didn't show for the big meeting, and experiencing a sense of deep satisfaction at the embarrassed silence on the other end of the phone when I quietly told her I was too busy watching my mother die to come to the meeting.

- A few days later, on Memorial Day, Dad and I in a three-seat biplane, taking off in a Seattle downpour to sprinkle Mom's ashes over Puget Sound, and being so buffeted by gale-force winds that we had to turn back, but not before I had opened the box of ashes as instructed by the pilot in anticipation of the scattering and discovered large, identifiable chunks of tibia and femur (pulverizing costs extra, you see).

- Wondering, briefly, if I should keep a piece of tibia as a memento, then deciding against it.

- Sitting in a reknowned waterfront restaurant afterward, Dad and I, exhausted from our near-death ash dissemination attempt, bowls of "The Captain's World-Famous Chowder" steaming before us and hundreds of those little oyster crackers spread out in a random pattern on the snowy linen tablecloth, the two of us alternately staring at each other and the sweeping view of a stormy Puget Sound.

- Writing a song to play on the piano at my mom's small memorial service.

- Not knowing how to tell my high school friends about it, so I didn't, and therefore had to "act" normal as, all around me, kids were getting excited about the plans they had for summer vacation just ahead.

- Cancelling plans to be a foreign exchange student in Spain later in the summer because I didn't think I could be away from Dad for three weeks.

- Suddenly not giving a shit about the trigonometry final.

- Ditching school for a week and living in my car, mostly parked in a Jewish delicatessen's parking lot, gorging on rye bread and corned beef and almond crescents and chopped liver and borscht out of the bottle, completely blowing the $300 I was going to use when I was in Spain.

- Finding everything my grandparents said intensely irritating, especially the way they kept repeating "Cookie this" and "Cookie that" and "When Cookie said to the . . ." and on and on, in a futile attempt to keep her close that had the unintended consequence of driving me from their side.

- Getting into huge blow-out arguments with my Dad over nothing, absolutely nothing.

- Standing on a stage in a huge hotel ballroom in D.C. six weeks later, on the Fourth of July, 1976, winning second place in an international speech contest, applause and smiles all around me, and having the sudden realization that I would never again share moments like that with my mother.

And so I sit here and type this, and yes, a tear or two coursed down my face, and my cat licked them off, and I don't feel too terribly sad, but I became a different person thirty years ago today, and I wish I could tell you something inspirational, like "It gets better" (which is true) or "I'm a better person for the experience" (which is not true), but mostly I just want to say that, once upon a time, there was this woman named Carol Henrietta Brisk Carlisle, and her parents called her Cookie, and she was my mother, and I don't remember anymore the sound of her voice.

My Meteoric Rise

It all started with, "Can I help?"

The company I'm teaching for is struggling with the demands of a huge corporate contract they recently obtained. In a nutshell, three months ago there was no program at all here in Albuquerque - no office, no employees - zilch. Now, there are hundreds of people eligible to receive ESL instruction, with hundreds more expected over the next two years; about 20 newly trained instructors, many of whom work only part time; one very overwhelmed staffer stuggling to keep up with scheduling, payroll, sales, and all the other administrative tasks; a director trying to run the dang thing from another city; an antiquated computer system; mass confusion and chaos; not enough instructional materials to go around; lots of room for error and disaster; and a platoon of stressed out, desperate, frustrated students and instructors.

This is the type of situation I excell at: just call me Superclerk. I'm ridiculously efficient, organized, and capable in an office environment, especially if there's a looming crisis. I get an adrenaline rush when I'm solving problems and handling touchy moments.

As one of the newly-trained and -hired teachers who experienced all sorts of stumbles (wrong student addresses, wrong class times, wrong phone numbers) in my first three weeks of classes, I was well aware of the growing buzz of frustration/desperation. So I said, "Can I help?"

What I figured was that I would put in a few hours each week in the office, cleaning up messes and getting some organization into it. That's what I thought. What happened was that within a week, I was "hired," put on a full-time admin schedule, whisked to Phoenix for training, given responsibility for scheduling and payroll, and whisked back to Albuquerque.

Now, while I was in Phoenix, the local instructor supervisor in Albuquerque had a meltdown and quit. I commiserated with the director and wondered which of my colleagues would be chosen.

Well, I was chosen. My second promotion in less than a month.

I'm now the instructional supervisor 3 days a week, and the service rep 2 days a week. I handle the instructor hiring and training, evaluate new students, evaluate the instructors, conduct "enrichment" classes, and every once in a while, do some fill-in teaching when an instructor is sick.

Someone is flying out here next week to train me on the new position, and then I'll be training 10 new instructors the following week. Sheesh! It amazes me that only two months ago I hadn't even considered a career in ESL, and by the end of the week I'll be supervising 30 instructors. Can I really be capable of this? All the mucky-mucks seem to think so, but I have my doubts.

I've been working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, trying to clean up the horrendous mess here, and I'm exhilarated/exhausted in that Olympian Apollo Ohno way: I'm ready to tackle the next race, but I'll need to collapse once it's done. I've had sleepless nights, which lead to cramping legs and feet, incipient cold sore outbreaks, caffeine overuse, more sleepless nights, etc. Today was the first day I could just loll around, read Vanity Fair, and eat a big salad.

Truthfully, my diet has tanked for three weeks. I was unprepared for the rush of work and fell back on fast food grabbed at odd hours of the day and night. Yes, mostly I ordered salads, but there have been a few burgers thrown down the gullet along the way, and that's not so good.

I haven't gained any weight this month; I haven't lost any, either. It's a wash. But I feel badly that I got off-track. I need to cook me a pot of brown rice and start bringing lunch with me. So that's what I'm gonna do tonight.

There's a chapter in one of the ESL advanced levels regarding management styles. The examples are Milt and Wilt. Milt is a can-do type who delegates all his work and looks terrifically calm. Wilt is frazzled, his desk is piled high with crap, and he's got dark circles under his eyes.

I'll be Milt one day soon. For now, I'm Wilt - with a cold sore.

Ah well.

The Runner Stumbles

First of all, I LOVE LOVE LOVE teaching! The students are just delightful, full of enthusiasm and charm. I think it's mostly because we tend to communicate at a childlike level that the conversations are clean - free of politics, sarcasm, cynicism, humorless humor, bullshit - it's all just pure desire on both our parts to understand each other. Quite beautiful, really.

It reminds me of when I was in Amsterdam years ago. I'd sit on a barstool in this gay "coffee" house all day, talking with Amsterdammers who were glad for the opportunity to practice their rudimentary English, the study of which is mandatory for fifth and sixth graders there. Conversations went something like this:

Ridiculously Sexy Man from Amsterdam - "America has much treasures."
Me - "You mean like the Grand Canyon?"
SM - "No, no, Disneyvorlt."
Me - "Ahhhh, I liked Disneyworld."
SM (huge smile) - "You go there?"
Me - "Yes! It was a happy place and FUN!"
SM (thoughtful) - "Yes, I want go to Pirates of Caribbean sometimes."
Me - "Oh, you would love it. There are pirates and a big fire at night."
SM (another huge smile) - "And Goofy is all the time there, eh?"
Me - "Yes! Goofy and Mickey and Donald Duck."
SM - "It being great day when I be there."
Me - "I know you will go there someday and feel happy."
SM (sigh) - "Yes."

Okay, it may not seem like the most scintillating conversation. I have brilliant, interesting, eccentric friends for that. But the simplicity of it and the emotions shared (joy, yearning, wonder) are a far cry from the usual conversation between strangers.

It makes my heart glad.

My ESL classes are sort of like that. The students are from Costa Rica, Malaysia, China, and the Philippines, and most are very well educated - engineers, technicians, and managers. Some classes are one-on-one, and I also have groups of up to four students at a time for the two-hour sessions. The classes are held in the students' apartments, so I'm on the road, darting from complex to complex, from eight in the morning until as late as nine at night. I usually have a half hour between classes.

Now, this is the difficult part - the apartment complexes are all located in an area of town that's been turned from barren high desert to suburban sprawl in just the last five years or so. About 50,000 people now call this part of the city home. And so do about a thousand fast-food joints.

I've given up fast food. It doesn't work for me. But the sheer visibility of the places coupled with my new on-the-road schedule has started to pull at me. "Why not get a salad or something?" the brain says. "It won't hurt you." "Go ahead - just a diet beverage." "You know you're thirsty." "Use their bathroom and buy the cheapest thing on the menu." And so on.

Yesterday, I had a class that went pretty well but that I felt I could've done a better job. The student seemed a little bored, and I wasn't too good at engaging her in a conversation that interested her. Instead of the two-hour lesson flying by as they usually do, it became just a tad tedious. By the end, I felt tired and a little blah. On my way to the next lesson, almost unconsciously, I pulled into a McDonald's drive-through and got two McChicken sandwiches. They weren't very good.

Afterward, during my last class of the day, I felt bloated, uncomfortable, a little light-headed, unfocused, and (most tellingly) quite shitty about myself. I couldn't enjoy the lesson or my delightful students. I was depressed when I got home and, although I tried not to be, was pretty cranky with my housemate. I also was hungry - starving, in fact.

Here's where the light dawns.

I realized that making the decision to eat the McChickens was not so much about going off the food plan, but about how my insecurities as a new teacher triggered the "not good enough/inevitability of failure" core beliefs which had laid dormant for the last few months. It's interesting that when I'm in this time of success, when I'm embarking on a new career and having lots of pleasure, that the old negative core beliefs make an appearance. Why? Because they're threatened by MOST of the evidence. How can I keep believing I'm not good enough if, clearly, I am? How can I keep believing that I will inevitably fail if there are no indications of that? So when the insecurities open the door, the false core beliefs assert themselves and, in an innocuous way, take me by the hand to a very simple, cheap, and readily available way to prove they're right. "See? You went off your plan. You ARE a failure. See? It's inevitable. Just face it. You're not good enough and that's that. The bread crumbs on your face are uncontrovertable proof. I rest my case. Verdict: guilty. Take him away!"

Well, I'm not buying into it.

I KNOW I'm good enough.
I KNOW that failure is NOT inevitable.
I KNOW that these negative core beliefs are false.

And . . . . . . . . I forgive myself completely for eating the McChickens.
I'm grateful for the opportunity to see that some false core beliefs still remain.
I love and approve of myself.

Yes, I will arm myself with tupperware containers full of brown rice and veggies, and have a huge water jug in the car from now on. But that's not really the point.

I will remind myself that a little insecurity when starting a whole spanking new career is par for the course. There's room for improvement (as with any neophyte) and with time and effort, I'll be a better teacher. In the meantime, I'll do my best, keep believing in myself, and ac-cent-u-ate the pos-i-tive.

Suddenly I have a need to see a DVD double feature: "Up the Down Staircase" and "To Sir, With Love."

Fresh Face

Today I shaved off my full beard and moustache.

I am facial hair-free for the first time in 17 years. My beard could have graduated from high school by now.

I first grew a beard when I was 30. I wanted to grow one years before, but I waited because the hair on my upper lip didn't fill out enough to "support" a mustache until then, and I didn't want an Amish look (sorry, Sheila!). At first it accomplished the two things I was looking to do: swathe my pronounced double chin in darkness, and put an end to those embarrassing "Are you a boy or a girl?" questions I used to get from kids in supermarkets.

It was a rather handsome beard, soft from handsful of conditioner and more rusty red (and more luxuriant) than the hair up top. Although I would've preferred a scruffy counterculture look a la Jeff Bridges in King Kong (1970's version), admittedly the effect was more like Mr. French. But I got into it. I never wore an ascot, though.

I wasn't very good at beard maintenance. There would be times when the left side was nicely proportioned and the right side looked like I used pruning shears in a darkroom. I found that trimming it at work - at my desk - under fluorescent light - at the Justice Department - was the easiest, but occasionally I'd be caught red-handed and red-faced, a dusting of whiskers over the entire desk top. That wasn't so good. Unprofessional, doncha know.

When I graduated to using an electric clipper - at home - the results were more uniform, but there were a few disasters. One that comes to mind: I had forgotten to replace the guard over the blade and accidentally mowed an inch-wide strip from my neck to my bottom lip before I realized what I was doing. The exposed white flesh fairly glowed compared to the dark beard on either side. It looked like I was drooling milk. I wore a bandage over it for three weeks and had the whole office wondering what had happened to my face.

Over time, as my hair turned silver, its camouflaging properties waned. But the spectre of all that jiggly white chin flapping for all the world to see kept me from shaving it off.

This morning, I thought, "Hmmmmmm - I've lost enough weight that I could maybe go hairless!" So without a second thought I did it. Three razor blades and about half a can of shaving cream later, the deed was done. I debated keeping the moustache, and pondered the various configurations possible for the sideburns, but in the end I opted for a Kennedyesque look (all right, Ted Kennedyesque).

For the first few minutes, I stared into the mirror, wondering who this baby-faced guy was. The skin is surprisingly smooth, protected all these years from the sun and razor burn, but when did the lines get so damned deep? I contemplated taking a quick trip to Mexico for a round of botox injections or a little surgical freshening up. But then a funny thing happened: I started seeing some of my parents' facial features reflected there, and it was strangely comforting to have Mom and Dad with me again.

So here I am, unmasked, revealed, naked to the world.

It's definitely okay.

But I'm going to start doing those turkeyneck exercises first thing in the morning.

Happy worker

Can I just tell you how fun it is to teach? I don't think I've enjoyed work this much since, well, never. I've had great volunteer jobs, like building sets for the community theater when I was 15 or planning an auction for a non-profit organization, and I've certainly had great moments or days or even weeks at every job I've ever had, but the sheer joy of this is a thrilling new experience for me.

It just fits me like a glove.

Woo hoo!

Enough

This is from the I, Anonymous column from thestranger.com, one of my favorite weekly reads. Every week, someone writes an unsigned letter. It's a classic venting experience. This one hit home, though, because I don't think it was directed at another person - what do you think?

That's it. Enough. I've had enough of your fucking insults and your constant demands for loyalty. It's been 11 years since I stupidly let your miserable, controlling, worthless bullshit into my life, and I won't let you ruin my life anymore. You abuse me with your language of fear and control, you force me on the scale every morning, every night. You deride me for every piece of food I put in my mouth, and you guilt me into throwing it up. You force me to run run run off every fucking calorie and more. You couldn't even leave me alone on my wedding day, screaming at me to purge the piece of wedding cake that I ate. I'm addicted to your hate, to your abuse, to your promises of safety and happiness, but you lie. My life with you is nothing but sickness and sunken cheeks. So I'm leaving you, you fucking festering blight. I am worth more than anything you've ever given me, and I won't hang my head over your shiny white pit of broken promises anymore. FUCK YOU.

—Anonymous

Career Development

About a month ago, I was scrolling through the job listings on Craig's List. I do that about once a week to see "what's out there," not really because I'm looking, exactly, but because I'm curious. I have an internet business and three part-time online jobs to keep me busy, but I've been thinking it would be fun (and supportive of the changes I've made in my life lately) to get out into the world again and have some face time with people.

I browsed through the usual ads for sales reps, telemarketers and graveyard shift custodians and spotted a small ad looking for people to teach English as a second language (ESL). The kicker? No teaching experience required. Something inside me clicked.

I'm what you might call a born teacher. I love to explain things to people, love the puzzle of finding the words to get across a concept. I'm a communication nut. I especially love the moment when somebody "gets" what I'm talking about - the look of recognition in the eyes. When somebody says, "I understand," it just feels great.

I had never seriously considered teaching ESL because I don't speak any other languages fluently, which I figured was a prerequisite, but according to the well-known language instruction company looking for instructors, fluency in other languages wasn't required because instruction is conducted completely in the target language. I was immediately intrigued: unless you're Marcel Marceau, how do you teach a language without resorting to translation?

I went to the orientation meeting and liked what I heard. The company's world-famous total immersion technique is a lively combination of charades, Scrabble, Password, Pictionary, Sesame Street, Jeopardy, and every fun activity you remember from grade school. Thinking, "I can do this," I committed to the idea and got myself hired.

Just like that.

Training began immediately. It was intense but a total blast and the instructors and other students were all amazing people, full of the spark of curiosity and creativity I love. The days were very long and there were many moments of self-doubt, but I started to get the hang of it and by the end of the training I realized teaching ESL was just right for me.

Before I could catch my breath, I was given my first class to teach: a private student from Costa Rica who's here for 18 months while her husband works on a big project for a huge international corporation. I was feeling apprehensive, but with a whole lot of "You can do it, Steve," self-talk and fortified with a Venti iced Americano, I mustered the courage to knock on my student's front door.

Our class together was this morning. I couldn't have had a nicer, more charming first student. Yessenia is a darling person, so eager to learn English and have good pronunciation, and she's just thrilled to be here in the US with her husband and two small kids. We chatted (simply and slowly) for a little while, then I dove in, trying to remember all the techniques I learned during training.

The lesson was all about making appointments on the phone, so it was a fortuitous moment when Yessenia received a call from a friend to schedule a lasagna-making date. From then on, I could use that call as the example for all the things I was teaching - will make/will not make, will be making/will not be making, can/can't/cannot, etc., along with a long list of vocabulary words like appointment, available, reservation, prior commitment, and so on. We giggled as we role-played making calls to each other, and we went off-book to talk about Yessenia's real-world experiences making appointments and keeping a calendar. The two-hour session was over in a flash. Not only had we both learned a lot, but we had become friends.

I've been scheduled to teach eight classes a week, private and group lessons, at all levels of ability, from beginners to upper-intermediate students. It's daunting to think of the responsibility I have to my students, but it's exhilarating, too.

So begins a new chapter. Bring it on!

[PS: I am delighted to say that, through the weeks of stressful training and the launching of my new career, I didn't rely on food to relieve anxiety, quell fear, comfort or reward. In fact, I lost 12 pounds in the last three weeks! Amazing, amazing . . . . ]

Changing Gears

For more than six months now I've stuck to the same simple food plan because it's easy, cheap, nutritious and works perfectly for me. This was my daily diet, broken up into 4 meals:

4 skinless chicken thighs
2 cups brown rice
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 or 3 cups of fresh veggies
2 oranges or 1 grapefruit
1 can of pineapple chunks without juice - the perfect bedtime treat

In a matter of three minutes, I could throw my daily portion of chicken into the oven. We'd buy the huge bags of frozen skinless boneless thighs from Costco and they're ridiculously convenient - frozen separately, I'd just reach into the bag in the freezer and pull out four pieces, throw them onto a cookie sheet and sprinkle with spice. A $10 bag lasted a week. The only culinary decision each day was which spice to sprinkle on the chicken - almost always Mrs. Dash (truly a salt-eliminator's best friend) with the addition of a little chile powder or tarragon, depending on my mood of the day. I'd make a pot of rice every other day, so at mealtimes I'd put rice in the bottom of a bowl, cover with freshly washed and chopped veggies, a cut-up chicken thigh on top, and after three minutes in the microwave, voila, a super-good, very filling meal. Like I said, totally a cinch, and quite delicious, too. I loved it from the start and felt satisfied every day. It was calming, to just step away from all the "What will I eat today" ruminations, and it closed the door to a million opportunities to get off track. It also got me in the habit of eating four small meals a day. Low fat, very low salt, no refined flour or sugar, good nutrition - it's been a pleasure, it really has.

And, frankly, it was incredibly successful - I lost 120 pounds on it.

But it's been six months. Anything pales in six months. Even (especially?) something good for you.

Besides, I'm a different person now. I'm much more active and can be on my feet for hours at a time instead of just a few minutes. I've always loved to cook, and I need a new challenge to engage my interest. And I've discovered the most amazing international food market here in Albuquerque which not only sells the freshest, cheapest veggies but has aisles crammed with imported spices and foods from twenty or more countries, China and Japan and Thailand and Korea, India and Pakistan and Morrocco, Mexico, Argentina, Costa Rica, and more. It's a heavenly resource and has me itching to experiment.

When I mentioned to my housemate that I was thinking of going vegetarian (vegan really - eggs and dairy are booby traps for both of us) , she said she'd love to join me, so I made the decision - and commitment - to go green!

With the help of a nutrition analysis tool I found online (I highly recommend it) I've set the parameters for my new program:

Eight ounces tofu
1 cup beans or legumes
1 ounce of nuts
2 cups brown rice, rice noodles, grains, corn or potatoes
4 or more cups veggies (all kinds)
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons soy sauce (or salt equivalent)
2 oranges or one grapefruit
1 can pineapple chunks without juice (still the perfect bedtime treat)

The nutritional analysis is really phenomenal: About 1800 calories, more than enough protein, a 40% reduction from the RDA (recommended daily amount) of fat and salt, and ALL the vitamins I need without taking supplements. It was incredibly gratifying to work this out and feel fantastic about the nutritional quality of the food I plan to eat. It's all about healthy and delicious for me now.

The new program looks simple, and it is, but there's plenty of room for variety - curry, dal, lentil chili, hummus, bean soup, phad thai, kung pao tofu, stir-fried everything, salsa, enchiladas, rutabega stew . . . a world of cuisines to choose from!

So last week I did some preparation.

I raided the library for cookbooks on Indian, Chinese, Thai and African cuisine, tofu, greens, beans and general vegan cooking and compiled a list of ingredients I don't already have in the house.

I went to Whole Foods, where I raided the bulk food aisle, getting all sorts of beans and spices.

I completely reorganized the pantry shelves and washed about fifty jars and tupperwares for my gorgeous new collection of ingredients.

I pulled out my housemate's pressure cooker and taught myself how to make beans and grains.
I bought myself a really good quality wok pan.

I did about an hour's worth of prep time with the food processor which resulted in at least two week's worth of tasty additions: I now have jars of minced garlic, ginger, tahini and basil in the fridge, along with freshly chopped and roasted peanuts, toasted sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds. Believe me, it's a real time-saver to be able to dive into ready-to-go things like this.

Finally, I returned to my international market and stocked up on tofu (about 65 cents for a day's portion!), my favorite soy sauce, roasted chile peppers, and a veritable cornucopia of amazing veggies (including things I hardly ever get, like kohlrabi and asian eggplant).

I started last week with an Indian banquet, filling the house with the aromas of toasting spices like coriander, cumin, fennel, cinnamon, clove, turmeric, garam masala, and cardamom (I could've just bought a pre-mixed curry powder but I wanted to do it "from scratch"). What a meal! Tofu curry with Chinese broccoli, bamboo shoots, red bell pepper and scallions, a creamy fat-free dal of split chickpeas flavored with ginger and bay leaf, and chewy brown rice. We sprinkled chopped roasted peanuts on the curry and dug in.

Since then I've made a delicious lentil stew in the pressure cooker (it only took ten minutes!) with onions, carrots, a squeeze of lime and Morroccan spices; I slow-roasted some marinated tofu slices until they were chewy and golden brown; and tonight we're having phad thai with rice noodles and lots of fresh spinach. I make enough at dinner for my housemate and I to have another portion (in my case, two portions) for lunch the next day. How simple can you get!

I'm having a ball and am thoroughly enjoying this change. So far it's been easy to make the switch, and I'm delighted to start this new chapter in my nutritional evolution.

Food is my friend.

And I nurture myself by preparing and eating healthy foods with loving care.