This morning this guy got on the airport shuttle and sat across from me. I'm one of the few people who gets to ride the free airport shuttle to work every day from the train station. The shuttle is a bus that runs from the CalTrain station in Santa Clara to the Light Rail which goes to downtown San Jose and all over the South Bay. Anyway, it's free and it stops at the street where I work so I am a fan of it.
This guy who got on this morning wasn't going to the airport either. Initially, I thought he was because he was carrying a duffle bag but when we'd stopped at both airport terminals and he was still sitting there across from me in his expensive sunglasses, I knew that wasn't the case.
I rang the bell at the first stop outside of the airport and the driver eventually stopped there -- after he spaced that he was supposed to stop, passed the actual stop and then realized, "D'oh! I forgot to let people off at that stop!" He slammed on the brakes and let us out. I was mildly annoyed but since he hadn't oversot the stop by much, it was more funny than anything else. So the guy got off at the same stop as me. And he was behind me and I was just in my own little world -- I'm so not a morning person -- when I hear this huge crash! I turn around and the guy is on the ground and he's under a bicycle. And I'm thinking, "Huh. Where'd the bike come from?" But then I realized that it must be one of those collapsed bikes and he must have been carrying it in his duffle bag. And now it's tried to kill him. I mean he must have got on that bike and pedalled, like, three times before he smashed into a retaining wall and took a spill. How humiliating!
So I said nothing. I didn't know what to say, really. He was trying so hard to be cool in his two hundred dollar shades and I didn't want to be the one to shine the light on his obvious defeat by a two wheeler. So I just walked quickly to the intersection and made busy with pressing the pedestrian button on the light post. And he picked himself up and rode away in the other direction.
But you know how people are always saying, "It's like riding a bike..."? Well, I mean... sometimes riding a bike sucks!

In September, I was working at Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco -- not in a store, but in the corporate office in the IT department. Anyway, my poor old Volvo was having issues and I was riding the train to and from the city so my friend Debbie loaned me her bicycle so I could park it at the train station and ride it to and from the house. Except she brought the bike to me in the city and I had to ride it from the office to the train station in San Francisco. I thought it would be a piece of cake. Ha! Who was I kidding? I hadn't been on a bicycle in YEARS -- decades, even! And I was all wobbly and uncertain and the bike's seat was too low and it hurt and cars were honking at me and whizzing by and it was dangerous and scary and I used to ride to bike all the time when I was a kid and even in college and yet here I was at forty riding up a slight grade and barely able to keep the bike moving forward. Whew!
I ended up walking the bike a block or two and then riding it a block or two and then walking it again and then riding. It was NOT fun. It was not, "Just like riding a bike!" It was torturous and painful. And you know what? I walked that thing home from the train station and I left it in the garage until Debbie came and got it a couple of months later.
So I hope my fellow commuter, mister cool shades, mister porta-bike, mister self-contained -- I hope he masters that damned bike and teaches it a thing or two. I hope he doesn't spend the day reliving his crash and feeling the chafed skin on his knee. I hope he conquers that two wheeled beast and lives to ride another day.

The Christmas That Wasn't

SO my Christmas was quite remarkable if only for the fact that it was, sadly, very unremarkable.

I have always loved Christmas. As a kid, my dad had to make a rule that I was not allowed to listen to Christmas music until AFTER Thanksgiving. Because until he inacted that rule, I would be in my room on, like, July 10th, listening to O' Little Town of Bethlehem or something and it annoyed him to no end.
But I couldn't help yearning for Christmas.
Growing up, ours was a tumultous household and we had many tense moments, angry moments and even sad moments. My mom was an alcoholic. Which is not to say that she couldn't handle her cocktails. But rather, she hid gin or vodka in baby food jars filled to the brim (so that they looked clear and empty to the naked eye); that she drank herself into a stupor during the day while I was at school and I would come home from school and pause at the front door wondering what I would discover on the other side. Is she awake? Passed out? Dead?
Which is to say that I am familiar with most of the rehab facilities in Northern California and even Central California. And which is to say that by the age of nine, I was familiar with such things as detoxification, Alcoholics Anonymous,
and the inside of the Santa Clara Police Department (because my mom once got pulled over after she drank a bottle of perscription cough medicine and she was arrested for driving under the influence -- probably the most innocent she ever was of that particular crime -- no one busted her the time she drove into the metal stair railing at Freddy's Liquors and bent it over with the front end of the Ford Country Squire station wagon she was driving). I was frequently the lone witness to my dad's sick reactions to finding my mom passed out at five in the evening when he got home from work:
Find the BOOZE! was a game we played a lot -- wherein we searched throughout the house for the offending libation which had got my mother to her desired state of intoxication and of course there was also the always thrilling Water Torture wherein my dad dripped water droplets onto my mom's forehead while he yelled at her incoherent form on the couch, "Where's the booze, Jane?"

Christmas Eve was my mom's birthday. And I really only remember one Christmas where everything went horribly wrong. Otherwise, we were pretty lucky to have a sober Jane at the wheel driving the Christmas festivities. We'd have sugar cookies and Russian teacakes and we'd decorate the house and send out Christmas cards with cute family pictures in them. We'd go up to the Santa Cruz mountains and cut down a tree and make a day of it, picnicking at the beach before heading home with our Scotch Pine to decorate. The carols would play all day and all night and it truly was the kind of Christmas you are SUPPOSED to have: warm, happy, cheerful. There'd be parties with Santa Claus as the guest of honor and everyone would sit on his knee and tell him their Christmas wish.
Christmas morning, the tree would be almost obscured by the pile of gifts beneath it and around it and near it. My mom would supervise the present opening while my dad took pictures. It was magical.

And then it wasn't.

After their divorce, my dad's remarriage, my mom's remarriage and later, her death, my dad became Scrooge-like and eventually refused to even participate in Christmas.

As adults, my brothers and I put together our own tradition and for years, we had happy Christmases and almost managed to erase the memories of the bad ones we were trying so hard to outrun.

And then this year. The year that sucked in every possible way. The year my dad died. The year my brother went crazy. The year I lost two jobs and so much more...
We were planning on Dim Sum and a movie. But the crazy brother had other plans. His plans seemed mostly to be not to communicate with my youngest brother and I and so we were stuck in a sort of limbo of -- do we keep calling him? Do we go to his house? Has he killed himself? Is he passed out from drinking? Is he doing drugs? Is he just sitting there taking apart his computer for the nine hundredth time? What do we do? How do we pretend this is no big deal and try to have a holiday?

You know, when I am faced with the possibility that my once closest friend in the world may have committed suicide or might just be in a funk over his divorce or whatever but is not interested in being a part of life as I know it, I just don't feel particularly festive. And when my youngest brother tries to make things better by suggesting we go eat at Denny's (!!!!) instead of going to Dim Sum, when the movie's already out of the question because of time constraints
(time we wasted calling and calling and calling the crazy brother -- filling up his voice mail box completely), I just want to go back to bed and forget that this is supposed to be Christmas.

And I'm thinking, "I worked so hard yesterday to put myself in a good place in my head. Worked so hard to square away my feelings of loss and longing that I always feel for my mom on Christmas Eve -- always her day in my mind, my heart). Sat quietly with my feelings and had my traditional in-my-head conversation with the Mommy who would have been here, should
be here, isn't here. Told her about my year because I don't know if she's aware of what goes on here or not, I have no ideaabout that whole afterlife thing -- after I put that all away,
emotionally speaking, got myself ready to spend Christmas, a downsized version, and just appreciate the small moments of happiness we can still carve out -- after all that -- you
want to put us on a waiting list to eat at Denny's? You want to just got through the motions, open presents from our stepmom and act like it was all such a happy holiday, just so you can mark it off your to-do list: had Christmas with sister. Check."

The anger was sitting in my stomach all day in a ball of spite. I wanted to scream that my year has been bad enough and I don't need this mockery of my favorite holiday to finish things off. I wanted redemption. I wanted to have a quirky but fun Christmas and be able to say, "Yeah, the year sucked. It was the worst ever. But look, we had a great little Christmas and we're sitting pretty now having turned it around just in time for the new year." I wanted that as my armour, my shield as I go into battle and face off against the unknown that is 2006.

I want to have hope. I want to be my usual optimistic self and think that of course 2006 will be so much better than 2005. I want to plan and dream again. But after the year I've had, I feel unsure and I feel like it's tempting fate too much to dare to be my old self. I can no
longer face the future with my pollyana-ish sunny outlook because I have been sorely beaten this year and to pick myself up and stick out my chin and dare the new year to defeat me is a bit too much for me right now. So I go into battle unarmed and with the barest protection of the smallest of dreams, glimmering somewhere deep inside my heart.

Don't hurt me, 2006. Let me gather myself together and scoop up my strength and find my way back home. Let me regain my optimism and hope and my vitality. Let me survive 2005 with grace and a little bit of dignity and let me meet you back here this time next year. And then you can meet the real me and we'll have a laugh and shake our heads wryly over
2005 and the lessons learned.

And there will be a Christmas. Make no mistake about that.

Dim Sum Christmas

My brothers and I used to have a really great Christmas tradition. On Christmas morning, we'd all do our own thing and then we'd all meet at one of our houses for brunch at one o'clock. We'd have fresh squeezed orange juice -- Dee's contribution; cinnamon French toast, turkey bacon, chicken and apple sausage, hash browns and scrambled eggs prepared by me. Coffee, of course.
We'd all eat a huge wonderful breakfast and then clean up and around three we'd finally make it to the tree and open our gifts.
I loved this tradition. I loved that we didn't tear into the gifts and dispense with the holiday in a matter of minutes, like we had as kids. I loved that doing things this way made Christmas day last all day. I loved that after we opened presents, whomever was not obliged to go to in-laws' homes for dinner would stay and we'd have a non-traditional dinner of pink beans, Spanish rice and tortillas or spaghetti and meatballs. A couple of years, we even went to a movie on Christmas night. I was so happy to make Christmas last.
I love the magic of Christmas. I love giving gifts and entertaining and hanging out with my brothers and their kids and wives and girlfriends. I love that everyone is charitable and loving and affectionate with each other; that it's cozy inside and cold outside and we're playing Pictionary or Scrabble.
This year, my big brother and his girlfriend are going to Florida to spend Christmas with my niece, Jennifer. And I'm happy that my brother gets to spend the holiday with his daughter -- even as I wish that she could be here with all of us instead, but since he won't be here and since my brother Greg is in the middle of a nasty divorce and will likely not be too festive-feeling, Dee and I have planned a different Christmas plan.
This year, Greg and Dee and I are going to go out for dim sum and then to a movie. We'll open our presents at the restaurant and then go see Syriana before Dee has to go off to dinner. Maybe Greg and I will go for a second movie and then get dinner -- we haven't fleshed the plan out that much.
It's a weird Christmas. We're all still sort of recovering from my Dad's death and I am renting a room so don't have a place where we could gather for brunch so we're improvising. And I'm fine with this. I am just so happy to be home with my family, in California, employed and healthy. After last year, I know it could be worse. And next year, it will be better. So for now, it's a dim sum Christmas. Pass the dumplings and save me a fortune cookie.

You wouldn't believe the year I've had, and trust me: I wouldn't wish a year like this on my worst enemy (not that I have any, but if I did...). First, let's start with my "relocation" from the glorious, beautiful City of Lights, Paris, to "The Space Capital" of Huntsville, Alabama (NOT by any stretch of the imagination the Paris of the South). My "relocation" was really just my lameass boss's way of finagling a visit to Europe on the company's dime by floating the idea that while I was in the U.S. on an "extended business trip" (now would be a good time to cough and say bullshit at the same time), he would stay in my apartment, thereby saving the company a whopping 50% on hotel costs.
The only problem(s) arose from these fun facts: 1) if you are moving out of your apartment in France, you have to give the landlord(lady) notice at the time when your lease comes up for renewal, not, say, three months before you intend to vacate, 2) you have to give 3 months notice to leave a job, 3) when I told my landlady that I was moving out in January but leaving for a business trip in October and that my boss was going to stay in my apartment in the meantime, she assumed that mine was a corporate apartment and declared that my boss couldn't stay there until she'd completed a redecorating scheme which I had to pay for.
Yep.
She decided that any surface in my apartment which had cat hair on it needed to be replaced. Not vacuumed.
Replaced.
As in, hey, I know: I'll rip out this nasty industrial grade green carpeting and replace it with a lovely hardwood floor.
As in: this pillow case has a cat hair on it, I must buy a new bed and new bedding. We're talking about a huge, major fiasco here.
So what this boiled down to is that I had to pay the crazy bitch 9300 dollars in order to return to Paris in January and collect my belongings and bring them back to the U.S.
Meanwhile, the company I'd worked for for seven years told me that even though they HAD negotiated my lease for me and paid my first three months rent, this was NOT a corporate apartment and I'd have to find a lawyer on my own and work this out with the landlady. Further, my boss (heretofore to be referred to by his true name: EVIL INCARNATE) told me that I would be advised to pay the landlady post haste or kiss my job good-bye (I'm sorry, I'm confused, if the company has nothing to do with the apartment, how is my legal dispute with the landlady any of their concern? How would my decision not to pay her result in the loss of my job? Hmmm.). Did I mention that all of this happened while I was 1) on a "business trip" and my cats and I were living in a Candlewood Suites hotel 2) my job was being phased out and 3) Evil Incarnate was calling my employees from his extended European tour (during which he did not stay in my apartment, of course) and telling them that they should accept other job offers if they should receive them because their jobs will be eliminated and 4) when I asked Evil Incarnate if I had a job (hello! You are telling my team that they're being laid off -- where does that leave me?), he threatened to fire me simply for asking.
Yeah.
And this was at CHRISTMAS time.
So I spent last Christmas alone in a Candlewood Suites hotel room. It sucked. In fact, it's really hard to describe the level of suckage in adequate terms. I think I'd rate it on a par with having invasive surgery without the benefit of anesthesia.

I went to Paris in January, on my own dime, to retrieve my belongings from my apartment -- which was in the process of undergoing its transformation from hovel to palace, courtesy of my parents' bank account. I said goodbye to my friends Wendy and Michael and it was sad. This wonderful experience I'd had came to such a bitter end.
I came back to the States, to Alabama, and the horror continued as the company made me wait months to pay out the 7500 dollars in vacation time they owed me as they moved me from the French to the American payroll. They gave me a new job which was so mindnumbingly boring that I actually designed a line of stationery while sitting at my desk and they made me take a seven thousand dollar pay cut to do said painfully tedious job.

Then I got chicken pox. Mind you, I'd had them before. In junior high, I almost died from them and ended up with chicken pox pneumonia. So I never thought I'd get them again. But I did. It was so embarrassing. They really affected my eyesight and I was like Mr. Magoo there for a few days. The good news is that now days when you get the pox, you can take a drug to help get rid of the itching. The bad news is that the drug is Valtrex -- the herpes drug. My little brother and I were talking on the phone the night I picked up my perscription and he was like, "Dude, when you finish those, throw the bottle away -- don't leave that one in the medicine cabinet!"

And then, in June, the company laid me off. I lost my deposit because I had to break my lease, but you know what? By then, I was so ready to get the hell out of there, I didn't even care. I loaded up my fifteen year old Volvo (the Little Champion) and drove nine states to California.

I stopped in Arizona to see my folks and while I was there, my dad had a seizure and had to be hospitalized. I knew when I said good-bye to him at the hospital, leaving for California the next morning, that it was the last time I'd see him alive. Somehow, I just felt it.
He died on August 25 from after effects of a stroke he suffered two years previous.

In all honesty, this year has been the worst of my life. There have been times when I truly wondered what my limit might be. Like, how much stress can I actually handle? How much crap can I endure?

I went to a memorial service for my dad that we had in Tucson in October. I spoke on the family's behalf. It was one of the harder things I've done. (That and helping my stepmom write my dad's obituary are two of those things I'll file under: stuff I never even considered having to do some day).
The whole experience of my dad's death had a surreality about it. I was calm and accepting of his passing because he had been suffering for a long time after having a stroke and I was relieved for it to be over for him. It wasn't like I wanted him to go, but to want him to stay here with us when every day was painful and filled with struggle would just be the height of selfishness on my part; on the family's part. And so we tried to let him go with grace.

A part of me, in the back of my mind somewhere kept thinking, "I'm an orphan now."
Thank god for my stepmom. She has been a rock. She's been a friend and she's allowed us all to be strong for her and in turn to depend on her in ways she never did when we were kids. Growing up, there were many times when I thought that if my dad died before her, I would sever ties with her. But now, after thirty years as a family, I treasure the relationship she and I have built.

Now, thankfully, things are beginning to look up. I have a new job at a cool company. I live in California again.
I've definitely learned who my friends are this year. Some of my friends dropped out of touch -- as though my bad year was contageous or something. As if without a job I am not worthy of their friendship. Whatever. I hope they never have a year like I have had and if they do, I hope the friends surrounding them are better to them than they have been to me. Mostly, I've shaken those fair weather friends off and moved on. Fuck 'em. I'm an even better friend now because of all I've been through -- and it's their loss all the way.

New beginnings are exciting and I'm not looking back.
I've learned a lot about myself. About how much stronger I am than I ever suspected.

So here I am in California. In the City by the Bay.
And it's Christmas time and I have a glad heart. I'm filled with gratitude and good feelings.
Looking forward to a new year and hoping to god that it will only get better.
Really. It can only get better, right?