blind insight

Grief.

As the death toll in the Indian Ocean region continues to rise, my brain can no longer absorb the magnitude of the horror and devastation and suffering. I have given, and then given some more, but my paltry contributions seem meaningless and pathetic. Yet I don't know what else to do.

And now it seems that everywhere is death and sadness, to varying degrees but all of it merging together to overwhelm and paralyze me. More terror attacks in Iraq, more people - American, Iraqi, others - lost to the insanity that is the U.S. occupation. Dear, sarcastic, good-hearted Detective Briscoe, dead. Brilliant, passionate Susan Sontag, dead. And the death toll from the waves begins to threaten the six-figure mark.

I can make no sense of it all. My immediate reaction to the so-called tsunami crisis was to think terrorism. Absurd, of course, yet it seemed inconceivable that so much death and destruction could escape human blame. Perhaps if I believed in a deity, I would find solace, or at least explanation, in attributing it all to divine will. But I cannot imagine believing in a god who would use its will to wreak such terrible, terrible havoc.

Wedding Update: The First Third.

We are just about 33.333333333 percent of the way through our engagement period. For the most part, wedding planning has been a surprisingly enjoyable process.  We experienced an early stretch of frustration and stress in our quest for the perfect spot in which to wed, but once we found a suitable (if rather less mountainy than we'd have liked) location, the rest of it started falling into place nicely. With eight months to go, the status report is: Site - check; date - check; dress - check (my mom's!); officiant - check (my dad!); caterer - check; bridesmaid dresses - check; tuxes - check; florist - check; cake - check (oh. my. g-d. The Cake!); band - narrowed down to two; invitations - almost; ceremony - in progress.

Much remains to do, but we have oodles of time left to do it all, and it's still too early to tackle many of the little details. I am exceptionally fortunate to have a mother who lives 12 minutes away from me, has the time and inclination to take on most of the planning grunt work, and not only shares most of my taste and style leanings but also gives me veto power. I think I tell her pretty regularly just how much I appreciate all she is doing for us. In case I've forgotten: mom, you're amazing.

Planning a wedding at 34 feels different than I think it would have five or ten years ago. Mostly in ways I can't quite articulate, but that feel tangible and disconcerting to me. A couple of months ago, I invested in a back-breaking stack of wedding magazines, only to discover that they made me feel terribly inadequate about myself and my wedding. Plus, wedding porn seems to be all about the big white strapless ballgown and the 3-carat diamond ring, with barely a nod towards the institution of marriage and the realities of married life. I'm really excited about having a wedding. But I'm even more excited about being married to the love of my life, long after the party's over.

The glossies seem oblivious to the fact that weddings are (or should be) about marriage, not just tulle and jordan almonds. And every bride they feature seems to be blonde, 25, able-bodied, and Christian, marrying her male alt(a)r-ego and walking down the aisle to Pachelbel's Canon.  Which I am not. Happily, I've found a safe haven where brides like me can come together in independent-minded unity. Where ideas such as using wild-colored invitations and writing my own ceremony and playing unexpected processional music are met with approval and insight, and no one dismisses the decision to keep my last name as in any way "weakening my commitment" to my future husband.

We continue to search for ways to make the wedding ours, not always an easy task when the event will be so large, and there are so many people's needs and wants and interests to take into account. But we're getting there, and we're getting excited. Particularly after meeting one another's extended families this fall, we're pretty sure our wedding will be a hell of a good party.

Clue No. 8*

Who are we?

If you still don't know, click here.

____________

*If your initials are not SJC and it is not your 60th birthday today, ignore this post and pour yourself another glass of eggnog. We will soon resume our regularly scheduled programming.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

If your plans for the next few days involve celebrating Christmas, I hope your celebration is filled with joy, good cheer, strong drink, delicious food, a powerful sugar high, and the company of those you love. For my part, I intend to spend the weekend eating Chinese food, watching movies, playing in the snow, working (only 5,000 pages of transcript to go), doing a bit of baking in preparation for our small New Year's Eve party (wanna come?), and celebrating my mother's milestone birthday. For all my whining about the holiday season, I really can't complain about a three-day weekend.

Two little spoiler-free reviews.

1. One-and-a-half (oversized) thumbs up for Villa Incognito.

The best part about my new, longer commute is the dedicated reading time. I have cruised through more books since we moved than in the previous several months combined. Last night, I finished Tom Robbins's latest offering, Villa Incognito. If you are a Robbins devotee, as I am, it is nearly impossible not to enjoy his work, and V.I. offers a characteristically salacious, surprisingly twisty, and deliciously literate romp.

Villa Incognito will not rank among my favorite Robbins books; it is hardly Cowgirl-esque, for example. But when I placed the next book from my ever-growing stack by my purse to take to work today, I felt a whisper of sadness that I would no longer spend 40 minutes each evening with Robbins's crazy-quilt of quirky, sexy, and impossibly endearing characters. Robbins's books always seem to incite this type of withdrawal syndrome in me, and I often don't realize just how much I enjoyed one of his novels until after I've finished it. In any case, for a rollicking good time, click here.

2. Two thumbs down (because they're still scratching my head) for Ocean's Twelve.

I loved Ocean's Eleven and its motley (but, in several cases, smoking hot) band of thieves. But I walked out of the sequel alternating between muttering in confusion over the impenetrable plot and fuming in anger that we'd paid full price for such a lazy-ass bit of acting and film-making. I couldn't offer you a plot spoiler if I wanted to, because I have No Idea what happened in this movie.

When I wasn't closing my eyes to escape the excruciatingly bad camera work (dark! shaky! unfocused! weird angles!), I managed to absorb the following: Brad Pitt is oh-so-pretty (almost as pretty as David Carr. Have you been watching the Houston Texans play mediocre football this season? Who cares if they're from Texas. Who cares if they kind of suck. The quarterback. He's so pretty!!). George Clooney clearly phoned in his cameo-like performance. Matt Damon deserves higher billing for showing a wee bit of effort. Julia Roberts (whom I can't stand as a general rule) reveals her inner comedienne while rendering a deliberately terrible imitation of herself. Catherine Zeta-Jones was far sexier - and more recognizable - before she went all South-Beach-waify on us.

And none of this is worth your ten bucks. If you must see it, wait until it lands in constant rotation on TNT, because you'll need the commercial breaks to try to figure out what the hell is happening.

Grinch 2004

Christmas tree in my living room notwithstanding, this holiday season is assing me off even more than it usually does (which is saying something). I'm tired of people wishing me a Merry Christmas; I'm tired of the Christmas tree in the lobby of my office and the lobby of my office building and the lobby of my gym; I'm tired of the Christmas decorations every place else I turn. I'm glad Hanukkah is over, because now I don't have to see quite so many menorahs stuck like punctuation marks in the middle of the overabundant holiday decorations. (To be clear, I would prefer that there be no holiday-specific decorations in public places. Hanukkah is a minor holiday that has been blown ridiculously out of proportion because of its proximity to Christmas, and putting Hanukkah elements in public displays makes them no less offensive to my church-state-separating and religion-in-the-home-keeping sensibilities. Just like adding "I had a little dreydel" to the program made the 15 Christmas carols I had to sing in school concerts no more appropriate.)

But now, in addition to being fatigued of the holiday season and feeling increasingly reclusive, I'm angry. Because apparently, there is a growing segment of the American population that is outraged - OUTRAGED - that Christmas is being "stolen," "canceled," or "destroyed." How so? By commercialism, perhaps? Or by being watered-down to the lowest common denominator? Oh, no. Not that. That's all fine and dandy and the American way. Christmas, it seems, is being threatened with annihilation by those rare few public officials, school administrators, and bosses who have had the gall to suggest that the holiday be celebrated in homes and churches, instead of in schools and offices and government buildings.

Because apparently, if you can't SHOVE YOUR HOLIDAY DOWN MY THROAT, it's just not a celebration.

Dude!

To my incredibly generous blog-reading friend, who knows who he is: you totally rock. I now understand to what you were alluding on Friday, when I, in my cold-stricken delirium, stared at you uncomprehendingly. A proper thank-you note is forthcoming. But, just, WOW! And also, thanks!!

Anyone want a cup of coffee?

And next year, we're celebrating Festivus.

Tonight (if, in our lousy state of ill-health, we feel up to it), Steve and I will light Hanukkah candles, then open a bottle of wine and put up our Christmas tree. This will be a first for me - a Christmas tree in my very own home, twinkling gaily while the Hanukkah candles flicker. I have run through a huge range of emotions over this prospect, but finally I'm content with it, and I'm truly excited about the fun of decorating our first tree in our new house.

Steve has been respectful of, even enthusiastic about my celebrations. He has asked to hold the shammes and light the candles in our menorah every night this week, and last night he was humming along perfectly while I chanted the Hebrew blessings. He's participated unflinchingly in the mandatory song-before-present requirement, and I believe he ate seconds of my mother's latkes on Tuesday.

So it seems only fair that I show similar ardor towards his traditions. I'm there now, I know, because the sight of our fuzzy St. Nick's Day stockings on the mantel made me smile last night. But because I've spent so many years fighting against the ubiquity of Christmas and battling to keep it out of my schools and workplaces, something about allowing a tree in my very own home felt like capitulation. After considerable soul-searching, I finally concluded that my ambivalence about having a tree and celebrating Christmas with Steve stems from the barrage of Christmasness that assaults me at every turn (as Bart Simpson puts it: "Christmas is the time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ"). But celebrating the holidays our way, within the privacy of our own home, is exactly what I believe people should be doing. And so we will.

Because neither of us is particularly religious, we each view the holiday season as a time for joy, celebration, quality family time, and good food. But despite the non-religious nature of our respective celebrations, I have no desire to "blend" our holidays. I prefer, instead, that we keep Hanukkah and Christmas as distinct celebrations, different in purpose, observance, importance, and commercialism. I hope that in doing so, we can revel in and build on the best that each holiday has to offer, and perpetuate many of our families' traditions while creating new ones of our own. With the old rituals, like giving socks for one night of Hanukkah and filling stockings with goodies on St. Nick's Day, we pass on to each other our family lore, and preserve our heritage for (theoretical) future generations. And with the new ones, we begin writing the story of the family we are becoming together.

I am already growing attached to these traditions-in-the-making, like "sexy gift night" during Hanukkah (no, mom, I'm not telling you what we exchanged for this), and our new red, wooden, heart-shaped picture-frame ornament, which will be the first we place on the tree tonight. Whatever their roots or symbolism, they all have the effect of filling our home with love and happiness and providing us with opportunities to pamper one another. There's really no downside to that. Even if Santa Claus doesn't bring me a KitchenAid mixer.

A not-exactly life-threatening dilemma.

This weekend, I discovered a sizeable hole in my coffee pot. I have no idea as to its cause, or when it appeared. I don't make coffee at home during the week, because I leave the house early and get my coffee hot and fresh from the Evil Coffee Empire outlet in my office building. And we've been away so many recent weekends that I don't think I've brewed a pot at home since the beginning of November.

It was an unusual hole. Not a crack, and not the type of damage that might come from hitting the pot against the counter or sink in the course of normal use or cleaning. Rather, it was a relatively neat oval-shaped hole the size of two quarters, located in the side of the pot about two inches above the bottom. Its genesis will remain an eternal mystery.

All the way to the neighborhood coffee spot, I mourned the loss of my trusty Black & Decker, provider of caffeinated goodness for nearly a decade. Later, after my grief subsided a little, I realized that its demise creates a minor dilemma: do we buy a new coffee maker, or do we cross our fingers and hope that someone buys the really nice one for which we've registered?

As I mentioned above, I only make coffee at home once or twice a week. I also own a small French press. Plus, there's that coffee place a mere 5 minutes walk from home. But on a wintry Sunday morning, it's lovely to come downstairs to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, and to sit at the table in our sunny dining room reading the paper. And I have a freezer full of high-quality beans, just waiting to be ground and brewed. The press is fine and makes a nice, smooth brew. But it's too small to serve both of us at once, and with the lower temperature at which water boils at altitude, my coffee is nearly cold by the time it finishes percolating.

But we can't really afford the pot we want right now. And I'd counted on getting another 9 months or so out of the B&D, in the hopes that some generous friend or relative would select the one on our registry list. Buying a cheap model seems a waste of money, particularly when we're trying to eliminate clutter and have a large pile of rarely-used or duplicate appliances, clothes, and other items we hope to sell or donate.

What to do? What to do? And aren't we fortunate to have the luxury of worrying about such an inconsequential problem?

Clarification.

After talking with Steve about the subject of my last post, I wanted to clarify a little. I think I've written before that I'm not shy or secretive about my disabilities, and that I know it's easier for people to interact and communicate with me if they know what I can and can't hear or see. I have no problem telling people that I'm hard of hearing or visually impaired, and I don't mind when people express interest in or curiousity about the causes and effects of my hearing or vision problems.

What bothers me is the unsolicited, out-of-the-blue query about the state of my vision loss (or hearing) from someone who knows about my disabilities but isn't an intimate friend. Perhaps I'm overreacting to think this is chutzpadek, and to allow it to bother me. But it feels something like the difference between asking a new acquaintance, "what do you do for a living," and asking a casual friend, whom you haven't seen for a couple of years, "are you still unemployed?"