Green cinderblock walls with morter oozing between the joints, seven foot ceilings, no windows; that's my dream house.   It's in a marginal neighborhood and it has a public tennis court in the back yard.  The expansive front yard faces on a four lane highway with a Wal-Mart across the street.  The landscaping consists of one small tree in the yard.  Thank goodness I woke up in my bed in my actual house.

 

I remember being somewhat happy that we sold the old house...money in the bank, a chance for a new beginning...that sort of stuff.  And we could raise the ceiling in the living room and put in a big bay window.  But as I stared out the front door at the landscape of highways and Wal-Mart and Taquerias and Currency Exchanges I realized that this may have been a mistake.  I remember thinking, God I hope this is a dream.  I was so happy to wake up in my actual sun-lit bedroom.

 

Anxiety dream?  Money Dream?  I certainly have enough anxiety with Christmas just around the corner and pies to be baked and presents to be wrapped.  In fact I'm so anxious I need to take time to blog about just how anxious I am. 

 

Anxious because daughter is back from college?  Check.  Anxious because other daughter just got driver's license?  Check.  Anxious because college girl is smoking pot in the basement?  Check.  Anxious because my period is almost here?  Double check.  Christmas Eve and PMS are an ugly combination.

 

It could have been a money dream.  Green room, currency exchange, $100000 from the sale of the old house.  That's all good.  But the trade offs...claustrophobia, ugly walls...weren't worth it.

 

Now I'm (presumably) awake.  And really in a pretty good mood, considering that it's Christmas.  My Christmas tree is glowing, my girls are sleeping upstairs, my husband is talking on the phone to his sister.  I had a good Mexican meal of extra picante "steak diablo" last night.  So what if I have a little X-Mas PMS?  It happens to everybody.  But Santa better not cross me tonight.   

I had the strangest dream last night...and it just kept going on and on.  The president of the United States was incapacitated and they needed a look-alike to stand in for her.  (That's right I said her--a Hillary premonition?)  So unbeknownst to me I was auditioned for the role of president.  Some people had me put on a power suit and pumps and stride to a podium.  I remember thinking it was strange that they had me walking to a podium with the presidential seal.  I then had to stand there and read a speech.  It felt very right and natural.

 

I guess I passed the audition because after that I kept doing presidential things.  Meeting ambassadors, making speeches, attending cabinet meetings.  I wondered how long this would go on.  It seemed that my advisers wanted me to be the President...not her.  I felt uneasy at this situation, but soon I became comfortable with being the President.  I liked the secret service, and the limo, and all the trappings of power and I came to think that I was a much better president than the real one.  I kept waking up and dozing off, but I kept having the same dream, just a new episode.  It was very strange.

 

Maybe I should ask for a raise? 

 

 

I made my annual Christmas trip to the courthouse this morning.  The hallway was crowded with men and women eager to argue over Holiday visitation.  They were so eager to argue they didn't even wait until they were inside the courtroom to go after each other.  There was even a sheriff standing in the hallway to keep peace.  It was the Courthouse equivalent of the day after thanksgiving sale.  People crowded cheek to jowl in the corridor with very little good will to be found.

 

I joked with a friend that I had just come up from eviction court looking for my boss.  I commented on the irony of Christmas in eviction and divorse courts...anywhere in the courthouse for that matter.   No ornaments or holly or mistletoe to be found anywhere in that building.  My friend said that divorce court was like this every Christmas.  He said that's why they call it the Nutcracker.  Ouch!!

 

I left the courthouse with the "Waltz of the Flowers" and the "Dance of the Sugar Plumb Fairy" in my head.  Inside the toy soldiers and the army of rats continued to fight it out while good judge Drosselmeyer assiduously tried to work some holiday magic.  I doubt that he had much success in even achieving a truce. 

 

The courthouse will be closed this Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday the soldiers and mice will be back at it.  This production of the Nutcracker will never go dark.     

 

 

 

 

It's Christmastime and all things legal slow down for a few weeks.  People are too busy with shopping and visiting to fight.  The attorneys are too busy with taking clients out to lunch to work.  This leaves the paralegal and the assistants with very little to do but blog.  Not that I'm complaining.

 

My daughter Ashley and I went skiing on Sunday.  We drove three hours north to Cascade "Mountain" in Wisconsin, skiied for three and a half hours, shopped and had a delightful dinner in Madison, and returned home by nine.  During the drive we listened to most of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" by Ken Kesey. 

 

I don't understand those book clubs that would exclude people who listened to, rather than read, the book.  True, they are very different ways of getting the information.  When reading you can go at your own pace, stopping and backtracking if need be.  When listening you get the flow of the novel.  And if you listen for five hours you hear all the foreshadowing, the connections, and the characters come to life vividly, as they actually speak out loud.

 

In "Cuckoo's Nest," Nurse Ratched is controlling and manipulative and in the end, evil.  Her voice alternately hammers, scrapes, and oozes.  McMurphy is a man, a mensch.  I love this character so.  Although he starts out as a blustering con man we soon learn how much he really cares for his fellow patients and, by extention, all humanity.  The Chief, who narrates the book, literally grows before your ears and the section where he finds his voice had me weepy.  The other inmates; Martini, Cheswick, Harding, Billy, have become as real to me as my office mates.  And in some ways they remind me of my office mates.  This micricosm of society thing again.

 

I don't have a boss like the Big Nurse, but he can be overbearing and controlling.  He's a lawyer, after all.  His edict that we all wear skirts and stockings unless it's unbearably cold or monstrously hot is authoritarian and quite arbitrary.  For he's the one who defines "unbearably cold" although he doesn't wear a skirt and heels.  When I walked out of the house into the ten degree air and the wind whipped up my skirt...I thought that was "unbearably cold."  When I got to the office I had to change out of my boots...office rules.  Right now I sit shivering in my short black skirt and black slingback pumps.  The heavy sweater I'm wearing over my white blouse doesn't seem to help with the chill.

 

Maybe the inmates need to have a greater voice in how our asylum is run.  The "Cuckoo's Nest" was a matriarchy run by an emasculating nurse.  My office is a true patriarchy, run by a passel of male attorneys with one "bull goose loony"  at the  top.  We girls are so used to being taken care of by the men that we accept a dress edict that defines us as women and quite physically pushes us into that role.  Do they have us wear skirts because it's professional or do they feel more comfortable with their "girls" looking like "girls" and not like men.  Or do they just want to look at our legs?  I would love to complain, but I'm no McMurphy.  I'm more like Chief Broom before he found his voice.  Except my version is to be a good girl and try to make the work environment work for everyone.  In other words...do what I'm told...do what the Combine raised and trained me to do.           

"Matter cannot be created or destroyed...Energy cannot be created or destroyed."  So sings the chorus at the opening of John Adam's opera, "Dr. Atomic."  I'm listening to the Lyric Opera's opening night live broadcast while blogging and loading my I-pod (still).  Nothing like a little multi-tasking.

 

Ironically enough, I just loaded Neil Young's "Living with War."  For "Dr. A" is about Robert Oppenheinmer and the creation of the first A-Bomb.  Morals, Necessity, God-Playing, Hubris, Politics--it's all there.  Perfect stuff for an opera. 

 

My daughter Ashley and I have a series suscription with the Lyric.  This year we'll be seeing eight operas.  Dr. A is next month...I can't wait.  On the drive home from Chicago ashley and I sometimes talk about the operas we'd like to see produced.  She would like to see an opera based on the tragic life of Nikola Tesla, the pioneer of Alternating Current and foe of Thomas Edison.  I'd like to see one on Mother Theresa, who apparently struggled with whether she even believed in God while she did her saintly work for the church.  Hey, if they could produce "Jerry Springer...the Opera," they could do one of ours.

 

I just loaded "Beautiful Garbage" and Joni Mitchell's new CD, "Shine" into the I pod.  I love my public library.  I would gladly double the taxes I pay to that place.  Now that I've loaded 50 Gigs of music and still have 24 Gigs left, I'm left searching out sounds that push my musical limits.  Indian music is great...I can listen to a Raga drone on for hours.  Ornette Coleman and the Art ensemble of Chicago push my jazz boundaries.  Bluegrass is awesome, as is African Juju.  The musicians are as virtuosic an any classical players.  I've even discovered minimalism.  My husband and I spent an hour the other night laying on the couch watching the Christmas tree and listening to Phillip Glass' "Einstein on the Beach."  

 

My "to load" stack is dwindling.  I have the White Stripes "Icky Thump," Sufjan Stevens "Michigan" and "Illinois," a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald by various artists and Bruce's tribute to Pete Seeger.  I also have "Siegfried" and Gotterdammerung" by Wagner, John Adam's "The Dharma at Big Sur," Handel's "Xerxes," Ives and Rachmaaninov's Symphonies#2 and Mendelssohn's "Elijah."  So much music so little time.  At least it keeps me out of trouble on a Friday night.

 

 

How many of the gifts that I give do I really wish to give?  How many of the gifts are obligations?  Why do I spend two weeks every December running around so that I can get gifts for people I don't like who couldn't care less about those gifts?

 

Each year my girlfriend and I exchange gifts in what is becoming a more and more joyless chore.  I buy her and her husband gifts because I'm afraid she'll be offended if I suggest that we stop.  In the meantime my husband doesn't care whether he gets any more gifts and the gift exchange between our kids is such that I give her daughter an envelope with money and she gives my girls envelopes with money.  Maybe we should just cut out the middlewomen and make our lives a little less hectic.  But I'm afraid to discuss even this little change with my alleged best friend.  It's worrying about relationship-busters like this that sucks the joy out of Christmas for me.

 

I start the Christmas season right after Halloween bright and cheery.  The stores are festooned with decorations and the old songs ring new after a ten month absence.  By Thanksgiving I've finished my Christmas list and at least thought about starting shopping.  Around mid December I'm deep into my Christmas list and wondering why do I even have to think about buying gifts for my husband's aunts and when will my husband cut off his 25 year old nephew who won't even talk to me.  Just when Christmas should start becoming all holly-jolly and ho-ho-ho I start turning into Mrs. Carol Grinch-Scrooge.  No amount of playing "Up on the Housetop" on the piano can cure my Christmas funk.  Maybe Etta James or Billie Holliday wrote some Christmas Blues. 

 

So now I'm noticing the low slant of the sun and eagerly anticipating the Earth's rebirth.  Longer days are just a week away and I'm dreaming of a White Solstice.  The depression I feel from Christmas lifts only when I go for a walk outside and feel the snow crunch beneath my boots.  The rumble of the mall is replaced by the twitter of the birds and the woosh of the wind in the trees.  My surroundings are quiet and so am I.  I'm reborn.  This season isn't about family or Jesus or presents or angels or glitter or carols or ho-ho-ho.  No no no. It's never been.  This season is about the yearning of our hearts.  It's about new starts and fresh horizons.  It's about the virgin white canvas eager for our art.  It's about hope.

 

I can't give anyone hope if they don't have it already so I compromise on a sweater or a CD.  No wonder I feel like I'm wrapping a box full of landfill fodder.  No wonder Christmas gifts depress me.  What I want, what we all really want, cannot be bought or sold or even touched.  For it is impossible to bottle Promise.     

 

I understand that politics is all about power and that whoever wins gets the power.  I also understand that organized religion is all about power:  whover can dictate to another what is right and wrong has power over that person.  But I am appalled by the overlapping of religion and politics where two candidates are trying to "out-Christian" each other to appeal to a very narrow base. 

 

In one corner, the affable bass playing regular guy Mike Huckabee, who was a Baptist Minister and who would have interred the HIV infected in concentration camps during the early years of the AIDS epidemic.  In the other corner, Mitt Romney, who used to support gay rights and gun control and all sorts of liberal policies when he was governor of Massachusetts.   Now that he's a candidate for the Republican Nomination for Presidential Candidate he's corrected his leftward leaning and is swaying well to the right.  I would love to see his new shoe splints.

 

Huckabee runs an ad saying that he is the "Christian Candidate."  WHAM!  Romney gives a speech declaring that although he's a Mormon, he's just as Christian as the next guy.  WHAM BACK ATCHA!!  What about health care?  What about the war?  What about the environment, or immigration, or the economy?  What about bringing together our increasingly fragmented and uncivil society?  Let's leave that to Oprah and Obama.  The wimps.  Romney and Huckabee's messages are clear:  onward Christian soldiers, vote for me and God and Christ and I will save this republic.  What an Unholy Trinity!

 

Let the Democrats prattle on about universal health care.  Let them debate the morality of the war and the immorality of our current torture-abetting video destroying government.  For Romney and Huckabee have found that power, not morality, drives us to salvation.  Once the Church has the Power to enact laws and to drive policy decisions everything will be better.  God will forgive us the underhanded and despicable things we do to get the power, as long as we are doing His work.  And let's just forget that old saw about power corrupting Mike or Mitt.  It's too late to do anything about that. 

 

 

So much for my strong work ethic.  I worked really hard this morning and ran out of gas around one.  I took a late lunch and tried to focus on something for the rest of the day.  Nothing was working, I even re-read my positive-attitude-pep-talk from yesterday's blog.  Finally at three-thirty I came home for my piano lesson.

 

So here I sit, having graduated from Schubert and moved on to Bartok.  I'm also polishing "Up on the Housetop" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem."  I'm trying to talk my girls into joining me in a trio this Christmas, but they doubt my ability to keep up with them.  Maybe with a lot of practice and perseverence I can surprise them.

 

Now that my girls are older I'm trying to put in more hours at the office.  My boss has told me that I can work as many hours as I want.  My problem is I'm so used to being a part time paralegal and a mostly stay-at-home mom that I'm having trouble adjusting to being in the office for long hours.  My workaholic girlfriend tells me it's just a matter of habit and that once I'm used to it I'll be able to put in 50 hour weeks just like her.  But the problem is I'm not just like her.  I like being at home.  I like doing the laundry and cleaning my house and cooking a meal for when my husband gets home from work.  I like doing the "woman's work" of taking care of the home and I'm finding that I don't so much like the "man's work" of going off to the office every day.

 

So I'm being sexist and stereotypical.  So I'm betraying the feminist idea by saying that I feel more comfortable inside the home than out.  I have a feeling that I'm like a lot of women out there who like to work, but who don't find a career as fulfilling as children, or family, or writing, or art and music, or volunteer work.  To each her own.   I respect my girlfriend and may sister and the zillions of other women who find themselves in and define themselves by thier jobs.  Men have been doing that forever.  It's just not for me.  I think I'm looking for more balance in my life and I'm finding that too many hours in the office knocks things askew.   

 

I will be the first to acknowledge my fortunate circumstances.  I have a supportive husband who earns a good living and we can afford for me to work part time.  That may change once Ashley enters college, but for now there is very little pressure for me to work 40 hours or more per week.  My "girlfriend" tells me I owe it to myself and to my family and to all women to work as much as possible and to earn as much as possible.  Forget her.  I think she's trying to use me to justify her own choices.  My choice, for right now, is to be the best person I can be and to contribute the most I can to my family, my friends, and my community.  If I can contribute more by working less, so be it.

 

That's how I feel today.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.

 

Amazing...I did not want to come to work today.  I just wanted to stay curled up in bed and not have to face the snow.  But I pulled on my skirt and hitched up my boots and brushed off my car and drove in only 20 minutes late.  And I ended up having a really productive day--go figure.

 

Work is all about attitude.  We can fret about the pressures of the job or we can relish the challenges and the joy in our encounters with our clients.  If I have a bad attitude my bosses pick up on it, the other girls pick up on it, and the clients certainly pick up on it.   I'm trying to work on having a more positive outlook towards work.  One day down...so far so good.

Yesterday I was reminded how much I love winter.  An ice storm blew into Chicagoland early in the day.  In quick succession we were treated to blinding snow, ice pellets, and freezing rain.  By nightfall everything outside was coated in a lovely layer of ice.

 

Daughter Ashley had taken the train to Chicago to visit her sister and stay overnight at her dorm.  This left Mike and me the run of the house.  Ever the wild couple, Mike made a large pot of spaghetti sauce while I mixed our gin and tonics.  Outside, the rain drops drummed against the windows and the icy tree branches clattered in the wind.  But inside we were warm and dry and tantalized by whiffs of garlic and onion wafting from the simmering sauce.  The only ice inside was floating in our drinks.  In the winter you can feel close in a way that evaporates in summer warmth.

 

We played two games of Scrabble (open dictionary) after dinner.  "Yowe" should not be a word!  Only today, while driving back from church, did I notice that we played our game in an entirely silent house.  No kids, no music, no TV.  Just our conversation, the tinkle of the ice cubes in our glasses, and the sound of the storm outside.  In summertime this beautiful isolation just couldn't happen.  The windows would be open and the house would be alive with the sounds of the outdoors. 

 

I took a brisk bone chilling walk before bed.  Every tree, every bush, was coated with ice.  Their bejeweled branches clattered against each other.  They crackled as they swayed in the wind.  What a delicious, and all too rarely heard, sound.  It was elemental, like waves breaking on the beach.  The cold wind played against my face and raindrops matted my hair.  I could have stood there for hours, experiencing all the sensations nature had to offer.  The only problem--I soon became too damp and frozen to enjoy standing in the freezing rain. 

 

I ran upstairs, knowing that my husband was waiting for me in our toasty bed.  I tossed off my clothes and jumped under the down comforter.  "Yowe" said Mike as I pressed my frozen feet against his legs.  It felt so good.  As I cuddled against him and felt his warm chest with my chilly hand I realized again just how much I love winter.