I made the accountant's day today

So I called the accountant to ask some questions about our business return. I've never had an accountant before, nor filed a business tax return other than run-of-the-mill self-employment. Zena and I had run through the forms he prepared for us, and we had a couple of questions.

"What is this box that's checked in Box J, 'Domestic Partner'? I mean, you understand that Zena and I aren't married, right? That we're just business partners?"

There was a long silence, and then he howled with laughter. Seriously, it took him like two whole minutes to catch his breath.

Then he pointed out that the choices for Box J were either "Domestic Partner" or "Foreign Partner." As in - Is this business partner in the US, or overseas? Did I seriously think that the IRS, under the enlightened management of the Bush administration, had created a tax category for civil unions?

Only on the Left Coast could such a misunderstanding occur, I'm sure. But I'm glad I gave the accountant a good belly-laugh in the midst of tax season.

Do we have more leisure, or less?

Let me start by noting that I have not blogged since March 1. Which I will simply explain by saying I have not had a day off work since February 24. Now that I work part time in the secular world and part time in the religious world, every single day can be a work day. Evenings, weekends - it's all a blur. Not that I have put in full days every day since February 24, but that was the last time I had a complete day without paid employment.

I am confident that I will get the hang of it, and my consultant jobs will ease up. But I hear this all the time, from people who feel they have no free time, running their kids around, unable to make a dinner date before May because they're so booked up. In my particular case, I have combined a part-time job requiring significant evening and weekend hours, with self-employment. I am slowly realizing that this could turn out to be a deadly combination, if handled carelessly. Already work is here all the time, glowing in the spare bedroom. My business phone is my cell phone, so the client in Texas calls at 6 am. But that seems to be my particular variant on a very common reality. At least I haven't succumbed to the Blackberry - I do not need my email to follow me absolutely everywhere, thank you very much.

The list of things I'm not attending to builds in my head. Nelly was supposed to have some lab work re-done. I just realized the accountant had my social security number wrong on the business return, does that matter? My favorite pants have a ripped hem, which I curse every time I fling them on during a hurried morning rush, and then promptly forget about until the next time. If these sorts of things catch me up short, what possible hope do I have of hiring a contractor to replace the carport, or of ripping out the nasty moldy caulk in the bathroom, or writing the new book with my sister? And don't even get me started about my dead watch battery, it's just too much, too much!

I am genuinely unsure whether we have more or less leisure time these days. Back in the day - and still, in many places in the world - people worked from sunup to sundown just to survive. Hauling water, sewing their own clothes, growing their own food. Surely that is more grueling? But when the sun goes down, there isn't much more you can do. And maybe the grueling pace of each day's survival used to keep the tradition of Sabbath, in all its many forms, the sacred rest that we now skip.

I'm certain that our lives are less physically strenuous. But did women in the 17th century go to bed thinking of all the things they didn't get done? Dividing their to-do list into A-priorities and B-priorities for the next day? Did the intensity of the labor guarantee them at least a good night's sleep, something fewer and fewer Americans seem to enjoy, if researchers are correct?

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I just wrote up a little blurb about the fact that women in Africa haul an average of 20 liters of water each day, for an average of 6 kilometers each day. I understand my life is easier. But somehow, we didn't learn the lesson, or we didn't do the work of fundamentally recrafting our society so that we could enjoy our ease. Those of us who made it off the survival treadmill have ended up on a new kind of treadmill. Did we create it ourselves? Or are the same forces as ever pulling the invisible strings?

Tongue-tied

I previously mentioned that I might have to reconsider my blogging approach due to a new job, which I can't really talk about in generic terms that would hide the identity of myself and my employer. But I can't really go without blogging about work either, because it drives much of my thinking lately. So, I might sift through two years of entries and cull some out, so that I can, if called to account, stand behind everything I've written, without qualm. That might not be a bad thing regardless. The internet doesn't need my snideness, really.

I've started the new social justice organizing job, and it is both one of the most enjoyable and most humbling things I've ever done. I work for a community of people. Not an organization, not a staff, or a board - a community. That means that if somebody shows up who is mentally ill, or brain damanged, or senile, or just profoundly traumatized by their life experience, they have no less right than any other member of the community who wants to participate in changing the world. I have to find a way to honor and include them, while also acknowledging and dealing with implications like the basic functioning of meetings, and the discomfort of others, and the privileges of confidentiality.

It means that I work with people who are driven to try to change the world out of a set of spiritual beliefs, and expect that perspective to be incorporated into what we do. What the hell do I have to offer on that score? Having left a perfectly lovely church upbringing and wandered in the proverbial wilderness for fully half my life, my hold on spiritual belief is tenuous at best. If people want me to put humanity's greatest challenges and obligations into some kind of cosmological or spiritual framework, they are barking up the wrong damn tree.

And at the same time, communities can be obsessed with details, threatened by change, wildly unpredictable in what they care about at the most mundane level. "I sure am glad we have two masters degrees between us to apply to such an earthshattering decision,"quipped my boss today as I cornered her to confirm my right to reconfigure a prominantly displayed bulletin board. From that standpoint, there is much potential snideness that I could generate in talking about this job. But it would diminish the rest of it - diminish the people, in all their messy and beautiful human-ness - in a way that I just can't bring myself to do.

Sad Mad Dog

"Nelly seems sad. Do dogs get sad?"

This was the note that I left the dog-walker yesterday. He has been walking our guys on and off for about seven years, and he's a licensed vet technician, so I occasionally ask him questions about the dogs' health or well-being.

Instead of jotting an answer on the notepad as he usually does, he left a long and very sweet voice mail message. Yes, dogs get sad, or at least some canine equivalent. And yes, he had noticed it too - She seemed sad last week, and today she was just plain cranky and stubborn - "We had words," he said.

I've been working mostly at home since October, and the dog-walker was on a hiaitus until last month when I picked up a regular work commitment out in the world. He said the older dogs get, the less they like change, and she is probably upset that I'm away from home more. So she's going through a range of emotions, from sad to mad, but eventually she will be her old self again.

I certainly know that she doesn't like me gone. Enrico leaves for work five days a week and gets no more than a glance from Nelly, but I head into the shower and she has a fit. She clearly doesn't want me to leave her side, ever. Which is weird, because she's such an independent soul, not like Toby who loses all sense of his own identity if he's not in the presence of another being to absorb his boundless LOVE.

To make matters worse, I changed her favorite piece of furniture. She's napped up on the new daybed once or twice, but is clearly still displeased. I have heaped change upon change on her. And so she's sad.

And mad. Saturday we bathed the dogs, and she was pissed. She never likes baths, but usually practices nonviolent noncooperation - a dramatic woe-is-me act, sitting when we want her to stand, refusing to shake at the right time, etc. But this time, we could feel the anger coming off her like a physical force. She clearly would have bolted without a firm grip to the neck (and believe me, you do NOT want a sudsy, 60-pound dog to escape the tub). Afterwards as we were drying her off, she was huffing and sputtering, as if speechless with rage. It was a strange kind of anger, very human, because dogs have canine ways of communicating regular dog anger - a warning growl, a snap, a fight - and this was none of that. Just a sense of overwhelming, frustrating emotion roiling through her soggy little body.

So it appears that I brought this on her by changing jobs and couches. I am sorry, little one. It had to happen. We'll all ride out the change together. Stick close to Toby - his boundless love is a balm for all ills.

It's all so tragically familiar

First, we were attacked by terrorists and the administration decided to bomb Afghanistan and oust the Taliban as its government, and hopefully find Ossama Bin Laden in the process. While not everyone thought this was a good idea, it was hard to argue with the ouster of the Taliban, which had basically turned half the population (the female half) into slaves imprisoned in their own homes. And Bin Laden had pretty much declared war on the US. Other countries joined in, so it seemed like a collective effort could be mounted to bring peace and stability to this terribly traumatized country.

But then it proved HARD, darnit. We didn't catch Bin Laden. But instead of buckling down and investing the resources necessary for the job, we decided to shift the blame elsewhere - it's Iraq's fault! Yeah, that's it. The terrorists are still winning because Iraq is helping them. So instead of focusing on the people who had declared their intention to harm us, and on helping the people of Afghanistan, we're going to distract everyone and move onto something new. Because starting things is always easier and more exhilarating than finishing them. Anyone who has ever taken on a home improvement project knows that. Demolishing the wall is fun! Putting up new sheetrock and mitering trim is tedious and slow.

So we trashed Iraq. But dammit, again, it turned out to be HARD. Who coulda guessed? Faced again with something hard, instead of buckling down to our responsibilities, let's deflect attention and blame again. It worked so well the last time we tried that! It's all Iran's fault. Iran is the cause of Iraq's instability, not the grossly incompetently planned and prosecuted US military action and occupation. So once again, let's just bounce on to the next thing, and leave the last one in tatters.

This is not good. This isn't a home improvement project we're talking about. It's the world. How many more countries are we going to go through before somebody finds a way to stop the madness? It's like some kind of sick ponzi scheme, borrowing blame from one country to pay off the blame-debt left on the last one.

Here goes

I find that my reluctance to blog about my new job puts a damper on blogging in general, because these are the things in my head these days. So I'm going to try to tiptoe respectfully into the fray, with some boundaries, and see what happens.

Basically, in my new job I work for a bunch of people who want to make the world a better and more just place, and have decided they need a part-time staff person to help them do that. They have time and money to put behind this, but they need organizing help. The actual portfolio is quite open. That's one of the first parts of the job - Of all the many ways the world could be made better, which ones do you want to tackle?

It's daunting, because there are a LOT of ways the world could be better. It could run the gamut from environmental stewardship, to feeding and housing people here in our community, to tax policy, to world peace. And everything in between. I don't have an office or a phone or a computer yet, but I've already gotten enthusiastic suggestions regarding fair trade coffee, Native American burial grounds, encircling Green Lake with a ring of peaceful people on the upcoming anniversary of the war, pesticide-free zones, and fundraising for a microfinance program in Central America.

I have been re-reading Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Moyer and - for the first time, oddly enough - the writings of Gandhi. How do a group of committed but busy people change the world? What are the necessary conditions? The nuts and bolts? How do you assess the conditions, to know whether it's the time for boycotts or lobbying? How do you nurture ideas and passion to arise from people, yet still harness them with some method and strategy? How do these things take root?

How did it come to pass that middle-class French people began sleeping in tents in the streets of Paris, alongside their homelessness compatriots? How did this swell to such a movement that it brought about a legally enforceable right to housing for the whole country? What tipped the issue, the people, to the point of such momentum? These are the things I think about.

It's going to be an interesting ride.

The perfect daybed, snubbed

Well it sure has been busy down here. The perfect daybed did in fact arrive, and I spent much of the weekend reconfiguring the office/guest room, making it ready for my sister's visit and also just more pleasant and functional as an office. I'm getting curtains altered for an impossibly small sum of money at one of the many Asian-run tailor shops nearby, and then the space will be pretty well done.

We gave the old loveseat - seen in so many pictures of the dogs, e.g. below - to friends for their kids' playroom. The kids were very excited to have their "own" couch, and fell upon it with love as if it were a new member of the family.

I knew the dogs would miss it, because it is soft and very low to the ground and has been their little nest for many years. I figured the new one would be a fair trade, because while it's not quite so soft, and it's a little higher off the ground, it's bigger. It offers more room to spread out, and it's still not as high as a real bed. Toby has embraced this perspective, after he and Enrico gave it a vigorous field test during a long nap on Saturday.


Nelly, on the other hand, is having none of it. We've coaxed her up there a few times, and she just circles, pawing gingerly with her feet, like the Princess searching for any signs of a Pea. And then - finding a pea, or perhaps many of them, she hops right off. Last night Enrico and I both curled up there to read, with Toby, thinking perhaps we might encourage her up. Like when you encourage a recalcitrant child to eat by trying the strained yams yourself, saying "Mmmm, yummy!" But Nelly wouldn't even come in the room. She sat out in the darkened hallway, silently watching our warmly lit tableau from afar, her eyes glowing accusingly like some specter from an Edgar Allen Poe story.

Crazy damn dog.

All a-flutter with the impending sister-visit

My sister is coming to visit for the first time in over a decade. Yes, isn't that PATHETIC? I have no clue why she never felt compelled to leave the steaming discomfort of a Chicago summer for the mild, glittery beauty of the Pacific Northwest, but there you have it.

I am impossibly excited about this visit, even though it's just for a few days. Among other things, it has motivated me to redo our tiny little den/ music room/ guest room/ drying rack room/ dog room for her to sleep in. We have an itsy bitsy house, and have never had a private place for guests to stay. But that's going to change. My sister has put me up in gracious comfort many, many times, and I intend to return the hospitality.

So I researched, and researched, for a daybed. This room will only be used by guests, oh, maybe never again. So whatever I put in here has to be functional as a reading sofa and, more importantly, the place where my dogs lounge all day while I work - thusly:

So I found the PERFECT daybed. It's unusual. It's compact. It's low to the ground, so my geriatric dogs can continue to haul their butts up onto it. It has storage space, which is pretty much a requirement for every piece of furniture that enters this house. I bought accessories, and got all happy.

And then it all started to unravel. I started getting apologetic back-order alerts via email. It's going to be a nail-biter, whether this thing gets here or whether I am out the week my sister gets here, buying something else, something boring and storage-deficient and terribly disappointing. And then we got a lump removed from Toby's head, and I realized that we may not be able to bathe him before my (highly allergic) sister gets here because now he has stitches. Doh! Suddenly, the calm, happy state of nesting anticiption that I've been in for weeks is wavering.

But I will rally. I have contacted the importer of the world's perfect daybed, and told them my tale of woe, and Claudia assures me that they think it'll be here. I think she was deeply moved by my profound and slightly unhinged adoration for this item of furniture. We can always fiture out how to put a shower cap on Toby. It'll all be just fine. It always is!

To be anonymous, or not...

Well, it's been a while since I blogged, obviously! Partly this is because I recently accepted a very exciting part-time job. In theh past I have been able to talk about my consulting work without explicitly revealing the identify of myself or my clients, but my new job is too specific to really be genericized - if I blog about it in any detail whatsoever, anyone who lives in Seattle could figure out where I work, and thus who I am.

Now, I'm not fixated on anonymity. As if anyone out there on the Web really cares about me and my little life! Obviously I've posted pictures here, and it's mainly a few friends and family who read this anyway. It's been a matter of laziness, really. I want to be able to write about my life, and I'd prefer not to risk people who don't know me figuring out who my clients are, JUST IN CASE. Plus I link to my sister's blog, and she really wants to keep her blogging and professional identities separate. Since we have the same last name...how many people with that name could really be working for a small animal clinic in Nevada? I wouldn't want to expose her. My business partner, my friends, my family and our dead crazy Rutabega relatives - they deserve the option of privacy. But without them - what do I have to blog about, really? My dogs, I guess. And there's already probably too much of that.

So it seems I have to make a choice. I either make a practice of not blogging about work, or convert to a public identify and make a practice of not talking about family and friends whose business is their own. In general, the correct answer to that dilemma is: Never, ever blog about work, you fathead! But ironically, this is the kind of job where it would actually be good for people to stumble on information about what I do, and to know how to find me. It's a community organizing job, basically. A blog could be a great tool. Or, maybe my time for blogging has come to a close, or at least a pause.

So, some decisions to muse upon. Meanwhile, if there are fewer entries here - it's basically because I'm a terribly lazy self-censor. That, and I have to finish up four ginormous consulting gigs in order to start the new job properly.

Vehicular Ice Skating

For nearly two days I've been watching cars wipe out on the block next to our house. They make it up the first two blocks of the hill, and just when they think they've got it made, the third block takes them down. Even cars that look like they should have pretty good traction spin and slide, their wheels whining with the strain. It is the Block of Doom.

So today when I went out, I took a circuitious route that provides a gentler descent from the hill. On the way home? I got distracted by the bright sun and the dry streets gracing other parts of town. I forgot my plan and took a turn I shouldn't have, and found myself heading down the Block of Doom.

I could hear the Blue Danube Waltz playing in my head as my trusty, All-Wheel-Drive Subaru slowly, gracefully rotated itself 180 degrees, landing my car neatly and uneventfully at the bottom of the block, ass-first. I made a tidy little three-point turn and drove up my driveway.

The ice is supposed to stick around a couple more days.

The bitch-slapping continues, but it's PURTY

Yesterday's slapfest began with hail. Possibly the most intense hailstorm I've ever experienced, which is something coming from a Midwestern gal. It completely covered the ground in white like snow. Here is our front walkway, with mug inserted for scale:


The pounding on the house grew so loud that Nelly resigned herself to the end of the world and took refuge under my desk, basking in the grim satisfaction of being proven right that the world is headed for hell in a handbasket so long as she isn't in charge of it.

But she was mistaken, because then the hail turned immediately into snow. Enrico took the dogs out for a long walk, because they LOVE snow, especially Nelly. It's probably the only thing that turns her curmudgeonly soul back into a playful puppy. She rolls, she flings snow up into the air gleefully with her snout, she digs, she hounds Toby to chase me, chase me, CHASE ME NOW! Then Enrico attempted to shovel our sidewalk with a garden shovel since we don't own a snowshovel. Why? BECAUSE WE LIVE IN SEATTLE, that's why.

The end result this morning is a layer of crushed icy hail covered with four inches of snow. The radio keeps insisting that Seattle "only got about an inch of snow," proving once again that the entire south end of the city apparently forgot to turn off its cloaking device, rendering us invisible to our fellow citizens downtown and northwards.

It would be no big deal in the midwest, but of course we have these big hills here and sometimes nothing short of tire chains will get you where you want to go. Enrico reported a slew of cars abandoned at the bottom of our hill last night. I had one appointment scheduled today, clear across town, and while I could probably make it in our trusty Subaru, it can wait. It's only my accountant.

Meanwhile, it's pretty. It's so very, very pretty. Here is the view out our bedroom window, just after sunup:

We are so Mother Nature's bitch

Seriously, how many poundings do the great states of Washington and Colorado have to take this year while the rest of the country is having unseasonably warm weather? Why did we rise to the top of Mother Nature's Smackdown List? Is it global warming? An excessive love of fleece clothing? WHAT?

We've had wave upon wave of lashing windstorms, just as Colorado has had wave upon wave of snowstorms. Our roof is leaking. The roof was put on a mere three years ago. YES, it is probably under warrantee. But our roofer, like all roofers, is no doubt booked for the next six months fixing all the roofs that failed or flew away or collapsed under a tree in the past few weeks. The general protocol is: If you can cover it with a tarp, do so. Then call us in May. If you call a roofer pleading anything less than catastrophic roof failure, prepare to be laughed at.

Enrico thinks he may have patched the roof. We'll have an opportunity to test that tonight during the high winds, sleet and snow.

Dude. Seriously. If I wanted to be slapped around by the weather, I would've stayed in Chicago. Where I believe my sister is currently rollerblading in a tank top.