RED

So I have this two year old ipod nano,
one of the RED ones. 8 gigs. Works fine, though I broke the little carrying case for it. I use it on planes, while knitting, in the car, while walking.

Yesterday I had it on the table in a coffee shop at a meeting I was having in one of my hospitals. A woman I don't know well from my client group came up and started chatting with us. She's in her early 50s, great red hair, dresses memorably. She noticed the ipod, and started to tell a story, almost against her will. Her husband died last year. She had a red ipod, just like this one, that her team had given her. She loves red, it was special, but she's not a music person. She didn't even load it. When john got sick, she loaded it with his music. It was how he coped. Music was important to him, the red ipod carried him through the last months.

At the end, he was doing palliative care at home. There was a problem with the bed company. One night, they did a delivery at 1 a.m. The bed didn't fit together. She had John up in the middle of the night. She loves red, she doesn't mean to be telling this story like this, it's just that the ipod reminded her.

The next day, there were three bed companies there all at once, trying to sort out the problem. The ipod was on the dressing table. One of the men stole it. A palliative bed delivery guy stole a dying man's ipod.

After John died, she used his aeromiles to buy a new ipod. It was like his final gift to her. But the RED line was done. The new one is turquoise, and she's never even loaded it.

She hadn't even seen a red ipod since then. Mine just reminded her. She's sorry.

So I hand her my ipod. "I think you should have this."

"No, no no." She's embarrassed. "I really didn't mean to tell that story."

"Seriously, I'll bring it to you on Wed, at the meeting. you bring me the turquoise one. We'll switch."

She nods, changes the subject. We talk business.

I go home, fall asleep wondering if I want her turquoise one or if I should buy the new one with the video window. Will it work with my car adaptor? I let the sadness simmer at my edges. I sleep fitfully.

This morning, I'm rushing around. I notice out of the corner of my brain that I've left my ipod in the bathroom, for some reason. I grab my brush, which tangles in the earbud wires... and drop the RED ipod in the (not yet flushed) toilet.

Polysemy and Fatness

One of the basic premises of the kind of communication theory I study is that because of the polysemous nature of language (i.e., words not only have different dictionary meanings, they have different meanings in different contexts), the "transmission" model of communications (you think a thought and use language to transmit it to me) is not actually what happens at all. We coordinate meaning together, in interaction.

I have never had such a good example of this as in the email I got from our Ugandan director today:

I hope you are fine and you have grown fat these days. Here everything is OK. The place is carm and Edward is sick he no longer makes noise.

Way to underline the sense of waddle that accompanies January in Toronto, completely with long johns under jeans that are already a mite too tight.

Ah, Freeman. (The other day he reassured me that the children remain Big and Gay).



At least things are carm there.

Knitblog

I have this new knitblog I'm supposed to be doing in two voices with Ali. (Cate and Ali knit? Geddit?) But she's pretty quiet so far.

ANyway, I like having the knitting specific place. I blogged about this infernal shawl.

http://cateandaliknit.blogspot.com/

It has come to my attention

that, contrary to what I claimed in my previous post, I in fact turned 43 on my last birthday, not 44.

Thank you. That is all.

Reflective Meme -- Thanks to Liz

The original one of these in Liz's blog had like 500 points... but I'll peg away until I have to boot the computer out of bed...

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?

(Why is my first impulse sexual? Must be the moon).

Went to Africa. Most profound thing I've ever done.

Oh, and stood on a stage as a full-fledged phd.

Acquired a road bike.

Worked in the US under a TN visa.


2. Did you keep your New Year’s resolutions?

I don't think I had any resolutions last year. And yet the year popped with achievements. I think there's a lesson there.


3. Did someone close to you give birth? Did anyone close to you die?
No. and No.

So that's a wash for population change....

5. What countries did you visit?

US (umpteen times), Scotland, England, Denmark, Germany, Uganda. (Am I missing any?) Landed in Schiphol but stayed sky-side, so I don't think it counts.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?

More impetus to exercise.

7. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Learning to be less tied up in knots. A concatenation of many good things.

8. What was your biggest failure?

I don't really think in terms of failure. There were a few WTF client moments.


9. Did you suffer illness or injury?

Nothing serious.

10. What was the best thing you bought?


My bike, hands down. Makes me alive. Followed up by my plane ticket to Uganda.


11. Whose behavior merited celebration?

The people of America. The amazing people who swept me with emotional curling brooms to finishing my dissertation, and then who surrounded me when I presented it. So many people.

12. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

The people who cheered on Sarah Palin.

13. Where did most of your money go?

Airlines.

14. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Now I'm thinking about sex again.

My bike.

Finding out we got a grant I was the lead writer on.

Meeting the kids in Kasese.

Climbing mountains in Scotland.

The AMAZING AND DELIGHTFUL capsule hotel in schiphol I slept in on the way back from Uganda.

Hanging out with my nieces.

15. What song will always remind you of 2008?

I guess that annoying Coldplay song. (Hi Liz!)

Also, the theme song from Dr. Who.

16. Compared to this time last year, are you:

i. happier or sadder? Happier.
ii. thinner or fatter? Marginally fatter
iii. richer or poorer? About the same, financially. Lifewise, richer.

17. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Again with the naughty thoughts.

I did a lot this year. Worked out more.

18. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Weeping. (First half of the year, mostly)

19. How did you spend Christmas?

On an airplane, mostly, next to a woman with a wee sweet baby named Gianna. Bracketed by xmas morning with my nieces and late night cheese and wine with F, his daughter and her mom.

20. Any one-night stands?


Not unless you count the deep lust I have for that capsule hotel in Schiphol.

21. What was your favorite TV program?

Torchwood. (I think this was the only thing I watched on broadcast tv, but I did like discovering Dexter on dvd).

22. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

The woman who wrote this book: My miserable lonely lesbian pregnancy. I wanted to punch her in the mouth the whole time I was reading it.


23. What was the best book you read?

Hm, surely there was something. I think the fact that this is question #23 means that I want to just grab what's on my bedside. Which happens to be A short walk in the hindu kush, which is actually really good.

Actually, I think the best book was A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali. Read it under the mosquito net by headlamp in Kasese, and I could smell the sweat. Harrowing and brilliant.

Last year I would have said Fun Home, hands down. But I don't think there was anything that actually came out this year that had the same impact on me.

I read a fair bit, but it was very in-one-eye-and-out-the-other.

24. What was your greatest musical discovery?

It was a very music-less year. Maybe learning a teensy bit about blues.

25. What did you want and get?

Road bike. Trip to germany. Trip to Uganda. Less inner turmoil. Lots of joy with F. Affirmation with many many important friends. Yarn.


26. What did you want and not get?

An i-phone. And it turns out I'm pretty happy about the decision not to carry email around with me. Though I think it drives Danny nuts.


27. Favorite film of this year?

For the life of me I can't remember seeing any films. I think we went to see In Bruges, because it happened to be on when we had time to go to a film. But it wasn't a film-going year. I saw Rachel Getting Married and liked it, but then I like those overly navel-gazey things. I have a list, but I don't know when I'll make them happen.


28. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

Turned 44. Went for bbq and blues. Wondered why my mother didn't call me.


29. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

Hm. My year was pretty satisfying. There are a couple of people I wish had more peace in their lives. I wish I had a bit more resolution on this long-distance-relationship thing.


30. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?


Fleece.


31. What kept you sane?

Anafranil. Zinfandel. A steadying touch in the morning. My bicycle. Listening to people. My online friends. My real-life friends. My real-life friends I see online a lot. Knitting. Sleeping. Conversations with good people on airplanes.


32. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Well, is there any answer other than Obama?


33. What political issue stirred you the most?

I think slowly starting to understand a little bit more about post-colonialism and what makes Africa the complex, complicated, breathtaking place it is.

34. Who do you miss?

I miss working on my dissertation. And Jeff from the Pittsford Pub.

35. Who was the best new person you met?

That man on the plane between Amsterdam and Entebbe who told me the story of taking his 6 year old daughter with him to vote on Nov 4 and then flying to DC so she could be there that night.


36. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.

Hanky Panky underpants are as good as thongs.

Some random bob

I think I blew my blog wad on the kasese blog... and I'm also feeling like this space was good for diverting the demons while I was divorcing, disserting, dissecting every damn emotion I had. But it never had much of a personality, and the voice is so... intra-me. So I've been thinking I need another voice to stretch and another space, one that pushes me to keep the scholar part in the scholar practitioner fantasy as well as pushes me to explore a bit.

While I'm pondering that, some random.

1. A resolution for 2009: wean the computer out of my bed. I don't know when I picked up the habit of co-sleeping with my computer (well, I know when -- as soon as I was no longer sleeping with a woman who forbade it as strictly as she forbade the wet destruction of library books when I dragged them into the shower), but it's supplanted books too much of the time as I topple to sleep. And sure, nothing really wrong with reading a year's worth of Ask the Pilot columns before sleeping (it really just makes my shiny macbook a Big Kindle, I guess), but it seems wrong to fall asleep with $2000 worth of metal on my chest, a hum of anxiety about ElectroMagneticWaves or some such nonsense. I seem to have succeeded, more or less, in prying the need for continual email out of my psyche, in letting my treo self-destruct and not replacing it -- I should be able to shift this too.

2. I knit a dalek. For a xmas gift for F. I was stupidly delighted by it. I'm so weird sometimes.



I got it from this pattern:

Extermiknit!. Which was not too bad, though a bit hard to follow because no charts, and a few errors here or there. But the MAIN issue was the SCALE. Doesn't the picture on that site look like it's a wee cuddly thing, like maybe the size of one of those giant microbes??. Nope. That sucker is the size of a human baby. Stuffed with old tights, some of my sister's old jammies, and black beans. F likes it.

3. For NY's, we were in seattle. The next day we drove north a bit, to a park near Anacortes, and walked out on the beach and looked at birds. I took my camera out of my case to capture a wintry loon (the camera, I note, that I bought after I lost my other camera TWICE in Scotland), handed the case to F and promptly dropped it in the water.

I was kind of content to let it join the sea, but I couldn't quite be certain that there was nothing in the little pocket. So after peering under the dock for a while to try to gauge the tide, we went back to F's truck and ate some sandwiches, then went back. By now, it was following a little course that hugged the (very high) dock, and much closer to shore.

We had the idea to lasso it, but of course had no rope. (For some reason F had removed what looked like a serial killer kit out of the back of his truck -- he was driving around ropes and crampons and an ice axe for a while, for no apparent reason). But there WAS bullwhip kelp, so I roped me up about 15 feet of it, and F took the position of a careful curler on the dock (HURRRRRRY, I yelled, but he didn't get it, not being a canadian) and tried to sweeeeeeeep the case to shore.

He was making steady progress when we caught the attention of a little family on the beach. A harley riding couple, their daughter, her friend. Mr. Harley couldn't resist jumping into the action, and he began hurling rocks at it. Under the theory that if he could hit the spot right behind it, he'd create a little ripple that moved it cloooooser to shore.

So this went on for a while, F sweeping with the bullwhip kelp from the dock, Mr. Harley hurling rocks, us womenfolk encouraging the men in their Hunt. The wee camera case ($15 at Staples, I'll point out) bobbed closer and closer. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. Sweep, SPLASH, bob. "You go bob," yelled out Mrs. Harley, in fact, though when I said, "thank you Bob!" he said, "my name's Ken -- she calls everyone Bob."Bob," he said.

So it came really close, teasing the footing posts or whatever they're called, and I reached in... and stepped in... and the tide kept scooting it just out of reach... and then suddenly, it was 10 feet away again.

"I'm goin' in," said Bob. And he did. Rolled up his pants and rolled into the icy water, impervious. Rescued it with casual aplomb.



Then his daughter took our picture, and they told us about a neat little B&B they had stayed at nearby, and we wished each other a happy new year.

And F went home and washed the seagull shit off his goretex.

Happy 2009!