slow down, st louis

(note: I started this blog a month ago.  I just got around to finishing and posting it, but the sentiment is still alive.)

I can't fool myself all of the time.  I can't make myself believe, no matter how optimistic, that I am as good of a person as I would want myself to be.

I forget to say 'please' and 'thank you'.

I am so on-time that I'm late.

I drive like an idiot, usually because of the aforementioned lateness.

I swear more than a person with my vocabulary should.

I degree-drop (think name-drop, but regarding my education instead of people) at every chance.

I wear flip-flops constantly.

okay, so the last one's just a personal choice.  but I have come so close to frostbite (among other debilitating toe injuries circa 2002) so many times that I should really think about putting on a pair of real shoes more often.  and while I'm sure others out there would be mildly offended by my lack of pedicure, that's not up for discussion at the moment.

no, tonight's blog is about a cold sunday night in october.  a night when I was lazily meandering home in my monster truck, took a route I haven't taken in a while, and ended up forgetting to be the inconsiderate me of normal circumstance. instead, I was only standing out in south city with cold toes.

walking bubba through my old neighborhood was one of my favorite things to do when I first moved here.  he had a ton of energy, I needed to be out of the house.  the neighborhood was quiet, residential, and interesting.  I had three or so regular routes that could take as long as two hours, if we so chose.  the only time I felt even a bit unsafe was in my necessary crossing of jamieson avenue at lindenwood park.

jamieson is a wide, four-lane stretch that goes from being functional and busy (it helps people exit and enter a major interstate at its beginning) to immediately residential (which is where it runs along the west side of the small neighborhood park).  there are stoplights at random intervals, but along the park there are only stop signs; the stop signs are treated as yields when traffic is light, the street itself is treated as an off-shoot of the interstate.

my lazy drive through this part of town was partially out of nostalgia for my old neighborhood and partially out of a need to go to the nearest branch of my bank.  while on this part of jamieson, I was at the front of a pack of oddly heavy traffic for 930p on a sunday, when I noticed a dog walking in the middle of the road.

the picture in my mind is still and clear: the dog didn't dart.  it  just shuffled across the street, staring at the road but not avoiding the headlights or sounds of cars.  it was visibly old, per the matted fur and wobbly gait, but it was also visibly dazed.  afterall, bubba and any other life-loving canine would have looked up and probably sprinted away terrified.  I registered all of this in an instant; I also registered that the people alongside and behind me didn't seem to care.  they needed to be somewhere.  they swerved, they honked, they sped up as they passed.

the rest of the story is sort of classic do-gooder: I pulled over.  so did a few others.  the dog wouldn't let us near it, but it would shelter itself under my car until the police and the humane society arrived.  it didn't have a collar on, it probably had a broken hip.  I signed it over to the humane society, and prayed a humanist prayer that someone would miss it, someone would go looking for it, someone would pick it up...

standing there for about 45 minutes, in 40-degree weather, in a thin sweater and flip-flops, I remember one thing vividly: oncoming headlights... the anger expressed by my fellow do-gooders as those headlights whipped past.

here we were - trying to protect an animal that couldn't survive on its own, and here was the rest of the driving population of the metro area - trying to get wherever they were going as quickly as possible.  an obviously ironic situation, considering that an all-too-quick and careless driver is probably how this poor dog was injured in the first place.  aside from that, it was disheartening, if not mildly alarming, to know that drivers on jamieson had so little regard for life happening outside of their little plastic-and-metal bubble that some didn't even see our little troupe gathered on the road, and that those who did treated momentarily curving into the next lane like a large (honk and yell worthy) inconvenience. 

I find that my inconsiderate behaviors around being late and driving like an idiot have increased in my two years in st louis.  I can blame "fast-paced city-living" and "bad st louis drivers" for it, or I can own up to the fact that I let it happen.  that I have again become a chronically late person, with an ill-temper around driving and sour outlook on my fellow travelers.

I am proud of myself for stopping to help that dog (no matter what became of it, though that hope for a good outcome is blindingly alive in me).  I am not proud of myself for usually being in such a hurry that my behavior on any given trip through the city is more likely to resemble that of those behind the fast-approaching headlights.  

the resolution coming out of this must be to slow myself down, and hope that I take small pieces of st louis with me.

activism for bubba's sake

below is an email I just wrote to the editor of the online edition of mother jones magazine (MOJO), regarding the opening header of today's "MOJO Headlines" email I received. in the header, MOJO compared finding fault in palin, as, well... read the opening line:

"Easy as shooting pit bulls in a barrel"? Really, MOJO? The pun is there, but the visual - to this owner of a silly and loving pit bull - is just disgusting and wrong.

I dislike Palin's stances on issues and her use of colloquialisms as much as the next liberal. Basic political policies and speech-reading aside, I will forever detest the fact that she used a stigma that pit bull owners across America have been trying to overcome for years to make herself look better. To me, it served an underlying purpose of flippantly waving "well-known" stereotypes in our faces, akin to making racist remarks about Obama's character per "well-known" stereotypes of African-Americans. Good dogs are good dogs, good people are good people - no matter what their breed, color, or relations - and I think you're doing your mission of "seek[ing] to inform and inspire a more just and democratic world" a major disservice by keeping any kind of stereotype alive.

Please find another way to poke fun at her blunders and sound bites - or, in my mind, this magazine's attempt to inspire informed voting and open discussion of social justice issues is becoming as closed-minded as its opposing media and campaigns.

I mean, really - isn't my bubba cute?

so, I won't stand for it. even if I weren't already voting for obama for every other reason on the planet, this one's a definite deal-breaker.

conservatives: keep your laws off my body, your words off my rights, and your prejudices off my dog.

in-formality

I spent $48 dollars on a flower arrangement last week. that amount is, at this somewhat fortunate point in my fair city, about as much as it will cost me to purchase a full tank of gas this week.

I would like to tell you that the flower arrangement was for my only living grandparent in michigan. I got a letter from her last week, and though I will see her in two weeks, I haven't talked to her in twelve. but memaw will get flowers soon enough.

I would like to tell you that it was for a friend. doesn't matter which friend, just someone I enjoy would have sufficed. I once sent something just as pricey to a friend who lost his bid for the vice presidency at mizzou. and while I didn't own a car at the time, the purchase hurt my wallet just as much. but I found satisfaction in knowing that I made such a gesture because I knew I would have appreciated it. he still talks about it.

come to think of it, I used to bring flowers to my teachers when I was a kid! straight out of the yard, tulips and lilies and hyacinths, wrapped in wet paper towels and ziplocs, and carefully guarded on the bus. so I would like to tell you that I brought the flowers to someone whom I admired as much as I admired those teachers.

but I didn't.

I gave the flowers to my boss.

for those of you not in the working world, last thursday was boss's day. had I not been reminded by the other ladies in my office who are on my staffing level, I wouldn't have given the holiday one thought. I might have gotten a card or something small and cute... but never would I have independently thought to buy her such a thing. I don't dislike her, but I also don't think I regard her as highly as the people I mentioned above. so I suppose it was peer pressure, as the ladies who reminded me also reminded me that they were going to the flower shop across the street to chip in for an arrangement for their boss. and our two bosses share an admin... who was super-excited at the thought of both bosses getting flowers.

you get the idea.

so there I was, recovering from the mildly awkward ceremony of presenting the flowers, when I thought: at what point do we drop formalities? at what point are we comfortable enough that we do something, like giving someone flowers, out of a positive connection, instead of an expected association?

I'm sure it has something to do with love, or at least fondness. and I'm pretty sure that the scale slides... if you're one for formality to begin with... depending on the social hierarchy of the situation. but what I really wonder is, what makes us treat people on the secondary levels of our lives like first-class citizens, while those on the primary level can alternately be venerated and walked-on as we see fit?

I'm still asking myself almost a week later, and have yet to come up with a solid answer.

part of that inability to answer stems from the fact that I had a rough weekend. a rough weekend of my own doing; a rough weekend that relates back to part of my personality that I don't flaunt; a rough weekend that had been coming, but could have been handled differently. I treated a primary person in my life like a secondary character, like I didn't care how my actions affected our relationship... partly because I felt like I'd reached a level of informality with him that allowed me to act without consequence.

but I am old enough to know that there is never a case for such a thing. I know that acting without regard or respect for another person, no matter how well I know them, is inexcusable.

I wonder if I could learn to treat more people like I was about to give them something rich, cheerful, and fun - like a karmic flower arrangement - each time I saw them. I wonder how to integrate a sincere level of formality back into my life.

taking baking lightly

the nice thing about baking with crank is that she generally makes me stick to the recipe on the side of the box. it's not necessarily intentional on her part - I generally worry that if I'm asking her to make something with me and it turns out gross, I've wasted our time and money on a culinary disaster. but sometimes it's more about making a mess and a memory than it is about making something to munch on.

I still laugh over the flourless cookie mess I made with my fifth-grade best friend katie, the details of which included borrowing two other main ingredients from various neighbors, and then discovering that her family was out of enough flour, too. after deciding that the peanut butter globs looked like pre-baked cookies, we shoved the pan in the oven... only to return to the kitchen ten minutes later to find that all of the globs had spread out and formed one big burning cookie.

her mom came home at that very moment, and was quite mad about the whole thing. we, of course, thought it was hilarious.

this past weekend, I found myself in a situation straight from my past: staring at a giant, shapeless pan full of cookie goo. I'd decided, in my self-pitying mode of baking gluten-free cookies - the dough of which is almost nothing like your day-to-day tollhouse recipe dough - that the addition of a little chocolate milk would make my crumbly dough feel more like the stuff I ate off the spoon for so many years. the dough was delicious, but as I spooned it onto my smooth gray pan, I wondered if I was repeating a childhood mistake.

it went into the oven anyway! hope - and a desire for warm, melty chocolate! - had over taken me.

five minutes later, seeing that mocking pan of goo was less hilarious. this time, however, I decided to salvage it by pouring it into the next best container, a bread pan, and baking it that way. my hope was that it would turn out as a kind of bar consistency... or something like that.

I returned to check on my little pan of wonder, the very pan in which my mom used to make me banana and zucchini bread, and after about forty minutes in my tilted oven, I had a somewhat crumbly yet deliciously dense cookie loaf. my experiment had worked!

my karmic lesson, I guess, is something along the line of where following directions will get me. following all of the directions will more than likely lead to predicatble results, the likes of which are safe, comforting, and usually not disappointing. but sometimes, taking a chance will produce tasty little surprises if they are willing to be tried. and really, chances like this one, even if unsuccessful, at least make for good stories later in life.

in case you'd like to try the cookie loaf for yourself:
--purchase 1 box whole foods gluten free chocolate chip cookie mix
--purchase/ensure that you have vanilla, eggs, and butter
--make to specified directions
--add about half a cup of chocolate milk
--eat a bit of the dough, if you're into that sort of thing
--dump in a lightly oiled loaf pan
--bake at specified temperature for 40 minutes
--enjoy!