Tag: truth

Big Night -or- Low and Slow

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I got to the pub around 4:30, because even though I wasn’t officially on the schedule until 5:00, I had stuff to do. I got some t-shirts, I took my time getting ready, and I just watched for a few minutes before I took Rachel out of her sheath. Then, it was business time.618uwbCFL3L._SL1500_ However, I did not get to use her as much as I wanted, because there was too much to do in other stations. I used her more with prep for the next day than I did during my actual shift, where I watched with trepidation as my kitchen partner used her for tomatoes. She made short work of them, but as I’ve said before, skins are death to a blade, but being only hours old, I reasoned it was okay and went to my happy place.

As I predicted, it was literally walking into a hurricane, as you are wont to do in a pub kitchen at Happy Hour on a Friday. I introduced myself to my kitchen partner. It was his third day. Luckily, we had an experienced cook coming to join us, because my kitchen partner only knew two days more than I did. There were orders coming through that no one had shown either of us how to make, but having been cooks before, we pulled it out of the fire, as it were. Once she got there, relief was palpable. We were “in the weeds,” and when it’s that busy, it took us hours to pull ourselves back out…. and I’m not sure that we actually did. Eventually, it just slowed down. At one point, we were up to an hour wait, not for the food, but the number of people waiting for tables. As I’ve said before, this particular pub is quite popular.

At one point, I was moved to the back kitchen for the sole purpose of making one batch of fries after another, which I deemed the most important job of all of us, because pubs get judged on their fries more than any other thing…. especially at Happy Hour, when they become an entrée.

We serve ours tossed in salt and Parmesan. It was awe-inspiring watching the lead cook toss the very largest bowl in the kitchen, because she’s maybe five feet tall, and about my body build.WW-SantaCruzGarlicFries-Up Once I’ve been there long enough to make suggestions, I want to add garlic fries to the menu if its welcome, because the fries at The Laurelwood are some of the best I’ve ever put in my mouth. But my job is not to do anything but watch right now…. and some kitchen managers are open to menu suggestions, and some aren’t. For reasons I will not disclose, Jorgé does not work there anymore, so it remains to be seen what the new kitchen manager will allow. We’re hoping to get the position filled by next week.

As the fry cook, I was also in charge of salads and Brussels sprouts, which we deep fry until they’re crispy and toss in Ponzu sauce. Because the prep cooks had taken care of most everything, I didn’t get to use Rachel much at all, but my kitchen partner freaked out because my knife was also his favorite brand, and he has a Global. Here’s the thing about Globals, Wusthofs, Henkels, etc. They’re all amazing, and you can pass them on to your grandchildren’s grandchildren if you take care of them. But Chicago Cutlery is the absolute best for the price point, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could be passed down with the proper care and feeding, as well. The handle is just so comfortable, and truth be told, seems to need less babying to achieve awesome. All our lettuce for burgers has to be shaved so thinly you can read a newspaper through it, and for Rachel, it was the easiest task ever. Before I had her, I was using a dull knife that just couldn’t achieve perfection. She also took down some spring onions like they were butter.

Also, a true achievement for me, I did not cut or burn myself during the entire evening, even though I was working with very, very hot oil. I just tried to work as clean as I could, as fast as I could, and it worked. I tried not to leave a mess by cleaning as I went so that the end of the night was easier to shut down…. although there were times when it just wasn’t possible due to the speed with which everything had to be done. With that amount of people, I would get a little messy, wait for the inevitable break, and do it to it.

It was a godsend to have three people in the kitchen, because there are two complete sets of fryers and ranges. That way, I could keep fries going at an alarming rate, the color and crispiness perfect.stainless-steel-bain-marie-pot-42-litre Towards the end of the night, the ticket machine became calm enough that two people could handle it, so I got out a medium-sized bain marie (the bottom pan for a double boiler), and filled it with a few drops of dish soap and lots of water, just like Kinkaid taught me, and went after every surface that still had oil on it. The dish soap wasn’t Dawn brand, but it was serviceable. While every blue dish soap contains a degreaser, there really isn’t a substitute for the real thing. You just need it in proportions that won’t leave bubbles on whatever you’re wiping down so that you don’t have to go over it again with more water.

Because I was cut before the heavy cleaning began (disappointed, truly), I didn’t get to clean the griddle. It’s my favorite chore, because few people can do it better. If you’re not in the know, you need to pour a little lemon juice or white vinegar and club soda on it while the griddle is very, very hot to basically deglaze before you start scraping and scrubbing. You don’t need much- otherwise all the liquid will fill up the grease traps and possibly overflow them so that everything runs onto the floor…. always a good day, and I’ve done it many times (dumbass attack). But the basic point is that you should let the heat do most of the work. By the time I’m done, it will look brand new. It was John Fot who taught me the soda water trick- the carbonation is invaluable, as is the acid. If the pub ever starts a brunch program, it is an even better method, because bacon and beef grease stuck on is les worst.

We do our burgers on an open flame, but when I’m making my own, I prefer a griddle to let the meat confit (cook in its own fat). An open flame makes all the fat drip off- probably healthier, but to my palate, doesn’t taste quite as good. However, it is a matter of personal taste. Some like grilled better, some don’t. With both methods, you have to respect first contact. If you put something on a grill or griddle, leave it alone. Keeping the meat flipping will rip it to shreds, because you are essentially removing the meat’s ability to sear on the outside so that it will lift on its own, also taking off the outside layer of crispy goodness. a63bc3e1-52f9-46e1-9451-d4e6e8c4091e_1.82a983e49d612bf851d8e35c2a88d911In a kitchen, you just don’t have time to do this, but the best way to cook any meat is low and slow. My favorite is  turkey Spam (bet you’re singing the Monty Python song right now), sliced thinly so that it’s brown and crispy like thick-cut bacon, with a tiny, tiny bit of mealiness in the middle. It takes 15-20 minutes to achieve that kind of perfection, but it’s worth it. For those who say, Spam…. ew…. you’ve never tried it the way I make it, so get the fuck out of here with your judgment. There’s a reason it’s insanely popular in Hawai’i. Just trust me on this one. If you hate the taste of Spam, it’s probably because you’ve just warmed it up, perhaps in the microwave, or taken it out of the pan before it’s honestly and truly finished. Again, respect first contact. Low and slow, completely browned on the outside, strips thin enough that you won’t even recognize it as Spam in the first place. If you really want to fool someone, cut off the rounded edges and feed them to the dog….. 😛

Now I’m getting hungry. I think it’s time for breakfast. I go back to the pub at 5:00, so I need some sustenance and a nap to restore at least a bit of lactic acid in my muscles and myelin on my nerves. I need it, because I am again, walking into a hurricane.

With Rachel.

1320

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

The title of this post is the time I’m starting it. It’s amazing to me that I have until 1630 to leave the house, and I’m already chomping at the bit. COME ON! GET HERE FASTER! I’m not so good with the waiting. There’s a thousand things I could do in the meantime, but I’m also not good at keeping track of time. If I start a Project,™ like cleaning my room or organizing the directory system on my computer so that my photos from the last eight years aren’t all in the same folder, I run a great risk of forgetting…. “oh, hey. There’s work today.” I tend to underestimate how long things are going to take, and I don’t have a clock running in my head. Therefore, I have no idea when four hours have passed. When I’m writing, I have a fighting chance because I glance at the clock on my computer or tablet frequently.

I can hear you saying, “why don’t you just set alarms on your phone?” Because when I’m in the middle of something, the alarm goes off and I think, “I’m only five minutes from being done,” which is always a wild stretch of the imagination. It took me a long time to realize this about myself, which I mostly learned from being married to “the late Mrs. Lanagan.” I swear to Christ she would still be eating Cheerios in the bathtub 20 minutes before we had to be somewhere and I would just be sitting white-knuckled in the living room thinking, we should have left already. God almighty….

It was a true A-ha! moment when I realized I actually am good at showing up on time to things, but I have to pay attention. As someone with ADHD, I have to make allowances for the way my brain works, and do my best not to get distracted.

Especially as a people-pleaser, it embarrasses me beyond belief to be late, because even though I don’t take it personally when other people are late to meet me, or even a few minutes late to begin a shift, I’m worried that the other person will. My lateness is not a reflection of how important they are to me, but who I am as a person. So many people take lack of punctuality personally, as if I don’t know I’m wasting their time and am sick over it, because my respect for them wasn’t the issue here, Dude. I was on my way and “oh look, a chicken.” So, I go out of my way to try and ignore all distractions.

As a result, a lot in my life goes by the wayside, but I’m always on top of the things that really matter…. and by that I mean at some point I should hire a housekeeper. My living expenses are low and my hourly rate is high (for a cook, anyway), so perhaps if I truly get 40 hours a week it’s not inconceivable. Here’s the problem with that, though. If I get 40 hours in a week, my income will be too high for state-run insurance, and I’m not sure whether my employer provides it or not. So what I could have spent on paying someone to get my shit together, literally, will be going to the healthcare marketplace. I am not one of those people that can go without insurance and hope for the best…. most of the time, anyway. For a while, I didn’t have insurance in Portland, and it worked out okay because I was taking all generic medications on the $4 formulary at Wal-Mart, and everything else was covered by worker’s compensation. As a cook, it was 95% more likely that I’d get injured rather than sick…. and in the odd case when I was sick, it was cheaper to go to “Doc in the Box” (called ZoomCare in PDX) than it was to pay for insurance every month.

It’s been nice not to have to worry about any of that stuff since. It will be a load off my mind when the US finally goes to universal health care, because I think in my lifetime, it will. Otherwise, it will be time to formulate a plan to expatriate. There’s a reason there’s 17,000 gringos in Ensenada, Mexico…. although I think I’d have more fun eating in Oaxaca, and if my knees aren’t shot by then, taking a whirl in a Mexican kitchen just long enough to steal all the recipes for home use.

It’s 1408 now. Time for a coffee nap. This means loading up on caffeine so that when I wake up, I am ready to take on the world, one order of chicken tenders at a time.

First Blood

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

My knives came yesterday, and the rite of cutting yourself with your own knife almost came too soon. You want it to be a story worthy of telling, not “I was getting it out of the package…” I have tentatively named her “Rachel,” because she’s as sharp as a Maddow takedown. That may change, because as your relationship with your knife grows, it tells you who it is. It’s not about anthropomorphizing an inanimate object. It’s about shorthand- one word to represent everything it is.

A chef’s knife isn’t just a knife, but an extension of their own hand… the only real tool we get to establish dominance over the ticket machine. Calling such a tool by a name everyone else calls it diminishes its importance in our lives.

Not only that, use a knife long enough, and you’ll see that they all develop their own personalities. It doesn’t happen in a week, or even a year, but as you begin to sharpen and hone the shape is different than when you bought it. It sits in your hand slightly differently, an adjustment you don’t notice because you’ve held it day in and day out…. even when you have a knife that cost $17.49, as opposed to the $300-1,000 range. I have used both, and I have seen no appreciable difference in function, just beauty.

This is because I am not excellent at sharpening knives. I would probably feel much differently if I was expert at restoring an edge. I would rather buy a cheap one, not to keep replacing it, but in order not to feel miserable that I just spent an hour honing in the wrong direction. There’s also no electric sharpener on the market that’s worth a dollar. Its only value is in not having to take responsibility for destroying your knife…. you didn’t do it, the machine did. Using an electric sharpener is like putting a Fabergé egg next to a troll doll collection.

Because I’m not so good at sharpening manually, I’ll gladly pay someone else to do it, because yes, I could go out and buy another knife, but then I lose all the history I have with this one. The good news is that I won’t have to worry about it for at least a year. Chicago Cutlery is solid, though I can’t say I’ve used anything but their chef’s knives. In fact, even though my coworkers at Biddy’s (now the O’Neill Pub in Portland, Oregon) often had more expensive knives than me, mine became the favorite. Dana got a thousand-fold from Sur la Table (Lenore) that everyone liked, but seemed to lose an edge more quickly than mine… and the one axiom in the kitchen is that if your knife isn’t just sharp as fuck, you’re going to cut yourself ten times more often. It’s counter-intuitive, but dull knives tear rather than cut, and rarely go in the direction you want…. mostly right over your finger, no matter how good your fingertips are tucked under.

The other knives that came in the set are tucked safely away in a drawer, because I’m not putting those into our community kitchen. It’s fine with me for my roommates to use them, it’s just that I want to be in charge of what happens to them afterward- soap and water, never a dishwasher. To someone who treats a knife as “just a knife,” this won’t seem important. They don’t know they’re dulling the edge in a way you can’t get back, and don’t see why it’s a big deal.

It’s a big deal.

Also, I’m not so impressed with using a different knife for every application. Pretty much the only concession I’ll make is an oyster knife. Everything else can be done with a chef’s knife or a bread knife. For instance, tomato and pepper skins will dull a chef’s knife quite easily, so it’s much better to use a serrated edge. If you must use a chef’s knife for a pepper, cut once on the outside, and put the skin against the cutting board, because you’ll have an easier time slicing the “meat” itself.

Cutting tomatoes reminds me of having to cut five or ten pounds at once for sandwiches, because I’ve never had worse acid burns. It’s worse if you’re wearing rubber gloves, because the acid gets trapped on your wrist and drips down into your palm and fingers. I have a love-hate relationship with safety regulations, because I agree that customers need to be cared for, but it often comes at the expense of keeping cooks safe in the process. I’ve mentioned this before, but wearing gloves while over a griddle or an open flame causes the latex to fuse to your hand, creating so much worse an injury because then it’s hard to get the glove back off to treat the wound… taking a layer of skin with it.

With the exception of making cold sandwiches, any heat applied to food is going to kill bacteria. There’s no need to add latex to the equation. I sometimes think that these rules are made by people who either haven’t been in the kitchen for a long time, or were never cooks to begin with. Otherwise, they would see that gloves take an injury and make it much, much worse. Hot plastic and rubber is a recipe for a trip to the ER…. which no cook will ever forgive you for because you got hurt to the point where you had to leave the line.

There’s no excuse for it, ever. Burned? Stick some Silver Sulfadiazine on it and get back to work. Cut? Super Glue. Ill? WHO THE FUCK CARES? Managers who send sick people home put targets on your back, as if it’s your fault. Even if it’s a bad injury, you’re expected to suck it up and deal, including the invariable nicknames that will arise. Dana had a coworker who cut himself breaking down a fish (salmon, I think) and they called him Filet o’Finger for years.

And as the story of your injury gets further away, the story gets bigger, jeweling the elephant. In three years, a one cm cut becomes a three inch gash that was spurting blood all over the kitchen.

In the time between now and my first shift, I need to work on my snappiest comebacks, mostly about my coworkers mothers, in Spanish.

That’s the other thing. In a kitchen, don’t count on there ever being an HR department. The best defense is a good offense. Words definitely come easier to me than cooking, and I’m pretty damn good at it…. well, in terms of palate. Technique could use a little work. I’m always striving for excellence, because I’ll never achieve perfection.

I suspect that no one ever does in the eternal war with the ticket machine. It is relentless, even with Rachel at my side.

An Open Letter

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Dear Dana,

I couldn’t have done it without you.

kcstrI got the job at Denizen’s, seriously one of the most popular brewpubs in the DC Metro. Believe it or don’t, I haven’t tried any of their beers, which seems like a prerequisite for working there, but I’ve got time. I’m not so much on the alcohol these days, because living with a Middle Eastern family, it’s not that there’s any prohibition against drinking, we just don’t. My tolerance is so low that the other night I had a cocktail and I felt like I was losing my mind, and as we all know, I don’t have much to spare. 😛

It’s a different atmosphere than we’re used to. Front of house and back of house barely have any interaction, because the pub is built on three levels, and the kitchen is at the bottom. I feel damn lucky I got a job in BOH, because I cannot imagine with all my movement wonkiness that I’d be good at carrying food up stairs. It’s funny to picture, though.

But the thing that makes me the most happy to picture is learning to cook from you, and I remember everything in bits. When a ticket comes across, your voice in my head tells me what to do, and we debrief endlessly in my dreams about what I could have done better or faster.

The most important thing was ordering my own knife, because just like everywhere else we’ve worked, the community knives are not up to our standards. I got the same Chicago Cutlery we loved at Biddy’s before you got Lenore, and if anyone borrows it before I get first blood, I will have a hard time not coming unglued, as I have every right to do. This time, it’s personal.

They’re on sale if you happen to need extras, because the original price was $27.99 for 7-1/2-inch Chef, 4-3/4-inch utility and 3-1/2-inch parer, and I got them for $17.49, the cost of the Chef on its own. They should be here before I start on Friday, God willing and the creek don’t rise…. but I don’t think I’m going to carry them all. Just the Chef…. it’s all I need. The bread knives seem to be solid, so I’ll skip that, at least for now. Maybe a santoku later on….. I thought about buying a second set for home use, but I am terrified that someone will put them in the dishwasher while I’m not home to be vigilant.

I still have a shot at the job at University of Maryland, which is customer service for a new GPS app in the Engineering College, and I’m excited to say that the pub is flexible enough I can still work on the weekends if I succeed, because I can’t think of a better cure for customer service than continuing to follow what, thanks to you, has become and incredible obsession/passion. I knew that I needed to do something when I realized that I was cutting all my water bottle mix-in packs on the bias. They look very professional.

I wanted to write just to say that you’ve given me an incredible gift, because since my mom died, this is the first thing that has really “cut through” the fog of grief. For the first time in what seems like eons, I am excited about something, as if life is starting to bubble up from the spring in my soul. It is such a kick in the ass, one that will knock you down with incredible force, when you realize that your parents are not immortal. I feel like I have been crawling on my belly, and am just now starting to crawl on my knees. Maybe in a few months, I will even be able to walk. Let’s not talk about running just yet. I still feel like hiding under the blankets when I think about Mother’s Day.

But right at this very moment, it helps that your spirit is inside me, because I can do more and be more in the kitchen with it than I ever will be without. I’ll never be half the line cook you are, but it’s my goal to try…. and to never, ever give up. I am no stranger to working hard and with pure excitement, because few people would understand better than you what it’s like to feel that much adrenaline at once.

Even though we don’t talk in words, I hope you realize that every time I pick up a knife, we are in communion with each other. You’ve never given me a better gift than your knowledge, and I won’t forget it.

Best,

Leslie

 

Hot.

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 3 Comments

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

-Dolly Parton

I think getting the stage at the brewpub has given me a new lease on life. Whether I take the job or not, it is a huge ego boost. I feel something unfamiliar as of late. To quote Miss Hannigan from Annie, “do I hear….. happiness… in here?” Though I’ve had a few laughs, this mood lift has lasted, when normally, as soon as the laugh is over, I retreat back into my head.kcstr I went downtown and bought some chef pants and some white t-shirts that I can wear with pretty much anything, because I don’t know if there’s something special I have to wear once I get there. These clothes are pretty standard. If I get there and find out I can wear crazy pants, there are some mirepoix prints waiting for me at Fenton’s Uniforms. Yes, wearing pants (and maybe a coat, depending) will be hot AF in the kitchen… but you’d always rather be protected from all the food that inevitably splashes all over you than bare any skin. Also, touching the stove, griddle, or oven hurts less when there’s fabric in between you and them. Mario Batali always wears shorts, by which I am mystified. It would only take one pot of boiling soup spilling down my front before I decided that was a bad idea. I take that back. It’s a bad idea just thinking about it.

I also need to check out their knives, because if I don’t find one that fits my hand perfectly, I’m going to need my own. For the longest time, I preferred German, because they are heavy in my hand, and the heft feels good. Then, I tried using a heavy knife for eight hours at a clip and I wasn’t so impressed anymore. I’ve been to Sur la Table and tried just about every knife on the market, and I swear to God, I didn’t find anything as good as the one I got from Chicago Cutlery on Amazon for $15. I didn’t even have to sharpen it for a year.

And speaking of knives, I’m feeling one right through my chest, because Dana’s not here. I know that there’s not a chance in hell I won’t hear her voice in my ear all damn night. It’s been a minute since we’ve cooked together, but I’ve never had a better partner. Being so intimate with your kitchen partner is a plus, because you know each other so well you can have entire conversations with one look each, and every second counts. I just took a Klonopin.

My best wish for myself is that I find someone I can dance with tonight. Drew and I literally danced to Aqua in the kitchen (as Doctor Who fans, it took less than a second for “Dr. Jones” to become “Martha Jones”), but what I mean is that the entire night is a series of movements, not unlike ballet. What’s running through my head is that I hope I remember the most important thing…. communication with the others.

  • Behind you (with a knife)
  • Coming down the line hot
  • Coming around the corner (or just “corner”)
  • Heard, Chef
  • Answering “what do I need all day?”
    • That means looking at every ticket and counting items across them for the uninitiated….
  • Work clean

The most important, therefore listed first, is “behind you with a knife.” The way you carry it is blade down, and if someone bumps into you, you are way more likely to cut yourself than them. The reason that this is more of a ballet than at other restaurants is that things are not divided up by station. Everyone picks up everything, from sauté to pantry to fry station.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to have my professional tools back. There’s nothing like having the right ones, especially a large griddle and scrapers. My favorite chore is cleaning the griddle at the end of the night. I can make it shine like the top of the Chrysler building! I am not kidding myself. Even if it is just a stage, if we get slammed, no one is getting cut, and it’s Thursday. It’s how I know that the kitchen manager wants to literally throw me into the fire. Easing me in would be a stage on a Monday.

Please send good thoughts, energy, prayers if you are a God person, black magic prayers if you are not. I need to be at the top of my game, because when I’m on, I’m ON. I want to walk into the kitchen like I own it, because I know I’m capable. But there’s a chance that everything will be overwhelming and go to shit within an hour. A small chance, but that doesn’t mean I won’t overthink about it.

I think I’m going to meditate and stretch now. It’s been a long time since I’ve put this much pressure on my knees, and I need to concentrate on everything within my control going right, knowing that not everything is. Now that the Klonopin has kicked in, I no longer feel the knife in my chest. Dana is my guardian angel, and I know I can call on her when I need her. She’ll sit on my shoulder until closing time if I ask.

Just like in Eat. Pray. Love., I’m creating a contract to do well and having people sign it. Eric Ripert and Anthony Bourdain signed it. Chef Dana signed it. Julia Child signed it. James Beard signed it. Pati Jinich signed it. Vivian Howard signed it. Andy Ricker signed it. Auguste Escoffier signed it. The Two Fat Ladies signed it. Gabriel Rucker and Naomi Pomeroy  signed it. Michael Cordúa signed it. José Andrés signed it. Now, not only do I have one angel on my shoulder, I have a lot of them.

All of the sudden, I am at peace. I got this.

Depending on what time I get home, let’s get together and post-mortem. I am sure I will have a ton to say, depending on whether all the energy in my body has leaked out of my ear. Alternatively, I may be a live wire, adrenaline coursing through my body. It’s anyone’s guess.

Stay tuned.

A Whirlwind of Activity

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Every time my sister comes to town, it’s a whirlwind of activity. I half-kid her that I see her more now that I live in DC, because when we both lived in Houston she worked for the city. It made her practically unavailable. In her last job, she was working on different states’ bills, and Maryland was one of many in her territory. I absolutely loved visiting her in Annapolis, but in her current job, she’s working on federal legislation.31793386_10156075683775272_8143610859139104768_n Today we met up in front of the Supreme Court and walked to Nooshi (Capitol Hill/8th St.). A friend of Lindsay’s joined us for dinner, and then Lindsay said that she wanted to go back to the same restaurant she went to on Tuesday night just for the dessert.

Since we were in the neighborhood, said friend and I convinced Lindsay that she should branch out and come with us to Ted’s Bulletin. We all got adult milkshakes- mine was Bananas Foster. Lindsay also ordered the homemade version of a Little Debbie™ Oatmeal Creme Pie (they also offer homemade Pop-Tarts™). She only ate a few bites of it, and I hadn’t eaten all day. I unashamedly ate the rest, after having an entire order of chicken wings, several pieces of sushi, and 7-Spice Tofu Fries… not to mention the milkshake bigger than my head. I’m currently on the “I Don’t Have a Car” diet, which basically means I eat anything I want, any time I want, because I have to walk it off whether I want to or not. I enjoy this plan so much that I may upgrade it to the “I Don’t Want a Car” diet, because I’d like to continue to eat like a frat boy at all times. Don’t get me wrong, a car would be nice to have when going to the grocery store, but I found that driving around DC made every single part of my day sedentary unless the parking garage closest to where I wanted to go was full.

Tomorrow, I’m going to work out even more. The reason I look so happy in the above photo is that I got a call from Jorgé, the kitchen manager at pub near downtown Silver Spring, wanting to know when I could do a stagé. I’m not nervous- it’s basic bar food- but I do feel weirdly self-conscious that I don’t have chef’s pants. I found a shop on Fenton that might have them, so I’ll check mid-morning. I just can’t picture being able to move well in Dockers or jeans. I do, however, still own my Bistro Crocs…. however, mine are basic brown and I flipped out at the new designs, so I may have to upgrade my kitchen shoes if I get the job. I really like the skulls and crossbones made out of eggs and bacon, and the black with chili peppers are just classic. You can knock on Crocs all you want, but there is no substitute in the kitchen. “Bistro” is a different designation. You won’t even slip if there’s frying oil all over the floor…. it’s a completely different tread, and no holes for ventilation lest you “drop it while it’s hot.”

Speaking of “hot,” Lindsay warned me not to burn myself, and I said, “oh my God… I have so many burn stories….” She then got super worried about me and told me to be careful. Since the last time I cooked, I lived in Portland, she didn’t see me when I looked like a Hell’s Angel…. just cuts, bruises, and burns EVERYWHERE. It was the best time of my life.

I was, as Anthony Bourdain said, a member of a tribe that would have me. Because I spend so much time in my head, working with my hands was such a blessing. I didn’t have time to worry about anything else but slicing onions correctly…. which is why a pub is the perfect fit for me and not fine dining. With monocular vision, I am not fast and accurate at the same time. When my field of vision changes, so does the direction of my knife. In that vein, the best part ever is that they want me as a line cook because all the prep positions are full. So basically, someone else has to worry that the batonets are perfect.

I am still going to interview with UMD if they ask, and will probably take the job if it is offered because I can’t think of a better way to pay for school. But I can’t worry about next week or the week after that. I am living in the moment, and what this moment is telling me is to enjoy the hell out of myself tomorrow. During the phone interview, it was like I’d never stopped being a cook. This was the funniest part of the conversation:

Me: How many covers a night?
Jorgé: I don’t want to scare you.

He also laughed until he choked when he said that most customers order the same thing and I said, “french fries with ranch?” If you’ve never worked in a bar, that joke is ridiculously funny.

When I got home, I sent an instant message to Pati Jinich and told her that I had an important stage coming up and could I have a blessing? She wished me luck and told me to wear good shoes. I was walking to the Metro when I got it, and just had this big, dumb grin on my face the entire way there…. actually, I think I’m still smiling.

For those of you just joining us, I met Pati when she did a cooking demonstration at the Mexican Embassy in 2017.22550261_10155565072125272_809704913041301676_o My dad had actually bought the ticket, but gave it to me when he didn’t end up making the trip. He and my stepmom have had this running joke that Pati is “his girlfriend,” so I told my dad that if he didn’t come to the cooking demonstration, I was going to steal his girlfriend away from him.

I told Pati this story at the beginning of the night, and we took a picture together at the end. The reason I am doubled over with laughter is that I thought she had forgotten all about our conversation…………. She reached over and kissed me, saying, “well, you asked for it.” It was just one of those jokes that was completely unexpected. I walked right into it, one of the funniest things that’s happened to me in DC.

I am so glad that the photographer (whomever he was) got just the right moment, because it is refrigerator-worthy. I think I’ll print out a copy for my Kindle case, which carries all my “important documents.”

I cannot close this entry without thanking my ex-wife, Dana, who got me interested in cooking in the first place (and helped me get my first cooking job).

I’d also like to thank Drew, Knives, John, JMSK, and all the other people who helped me along the way. I think I have a pretty good shot at turning an audition into a job, but no matter how badly it goes, they’ll still feed me (and possibly give me a beer). Seriously, what have I got to lose? I get to spend an evening doing what I love, with a tribe who would have me.

Every time Lindsay comes to town, it’s just a whirlwind of activity.

Donate! Donate!

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Thanks to all you wonderful people, Stories is allowed to continue for another year without annoying ads. You can keep reading me at work, in those moments when there’s nothing but cleaning products in the bathroom. I paid the fee up front, and have now been reimbursed…. and let me tell you, it saved my ass.

I thought it was a good idea to get my groceries delivered because I don’t have a car. I usually take public transportation to the store, and Uber back so that I at least have access to a trunk. FreshDirect offered me $50 off a purchase of $100 or more. The coupon code did not go through, and I was charged the full amount plus delivery fee. I canceled the order, but there’s still a hold on my funds. They told me it would take 24-48 hours for the hold to be released, and if that doesn’t work, I need an extensive set of documents… and, of course, the vendor says it’s the bank’s fault and the bank says it’s the vendor’s fault. I have been around and around with them on the phone. PayPal was able to transfer funds within two minutes.

I am so glad I have a bit of breathing room, because I went into full-on panic mode. I can’t say I won’t use FreshDirect again, but I can say that we are not off to a good start. This is because they’re the only ones that deliver in my area. It’s probably for the best. I’m not sure I have enough room to store $100 worth of groceries, anyway, but the smallest amount they’ll deliver is $30, and only $7.00 delivery fee…. Less than an Uber, for sure. Perfect when I am out of coffee and creamer…. maybe a box of cereal.

It seems to be feast or famine around here. I got a call back on a position at University of Maryland, and a full-time cook’s job at Denizen’s Brewing Company. They have a brewpub, and they asked whether I’d prefer front of house or back of house. I told them to put me where they needed me. Servers make more money, but cooks don’t have to deal with the public. Pluses in all directions. Besides, my cost of living here is so incredibly low that I don’t need a fancy pants job. You’d think that DC would be so much more expensive, but the room I rent is all bills paid and I don’t have monthly bills like car payments and insurance. It’s just too much when you add in maintenance and parking fees. Plus, one of the reasons I wanted to move to DC so badly is that I have monocular vision, which means that driving is harder for me than most people. With the exception of running into a guardrail because a 25 mph curve was not marked, I haven’t had an accident in years… mostly due to my complete dependence on Waze… although that has bitten me in the ass, as well, because I was lost and trying to find where I was going and got caught on a red light camera while looking at my phone- in the middle of my windshield so I couldn’t exactly see the light. For the most part, as long as I drive slowly, I’m fine. For this very reason, I am in love with cruise control. I try as hard as I can not to be a stereotypical woman driver. Now, I’m pretty good at it. When I was younger, not so much.

I prefer to drive SUVs because I sit a little higher and have more visibility, but unless I was able to afford a hybrid, that’s just not happening. And, of course, as a Texan I love pickup trucks as well. Same idea with the sitting a little higher, much better on gas mileage…. and I hear that the price of gas is going up. The plus is also not having a back seat (people in groups are a “no thanks”). It’s nice to have someone in the passenger seat with stereo vision. Four or five people are just too much of a distraction…. plus, they don’t tend to like how slow I drive, a #biteme situation. Plus, it’s DC. During the day, the traffic is awful. During the night, construction blocks everything. I’ve been caught in traffic jams at both 1100 AND 2300. You just can’t win. Plus, in most areas of Washington proper, the speed limit is only 25mph to begin with. It helps because it keeps you from hitting tourists too hard with your car, as much as you might want to. Did I say that out loud?

I am also dedicated to not talking on the phone in the car on most days, because even with Bluetooth, it’s just distracting enough. Podcasts are my favorite, because music doesn’t keep my brain as engaged. Here’s my list:

  • ID10T (formerly The Nerdist)
  • WTF with Marc Maron
  • Risk!
  • Two Dope Queens
  • Fresh Air
  • On Being, with Krista Tippett
  • You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes
  • House for All Sinners and Saints
  • Radiolab
  • This American Life
  • Reveal
  • Criminal
  • Invisibilia
  • Wait, Wait…. Don’t Tell Me
  • Car Talk
  • The Robcast
  • Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard
  • Hidden Brain
  • The TED Radio Hour
  • The Moth
  • Casefile True Crime
  • Reply All
  • Ask Me Another
  • Snap Judgment
  • Pop Culture Happy Hour
  • Modern Love
  • Meet the Press
  • The Tim Ferris Show

There’s no way that I can listen to them all every week, so I generally download a few at a time over wi-fi so that a) I’m not using my data plan and 2) most of the Metro is underground and the sound doesn’t cut out when I’m in a no service zone. If I had to pick a true favorite, it’s a toss-up between The Moth and Modern Love. I will download those the moment they come out. Third is probably The Robcast, because Rob Bell always has incredible discussions on progressive Christian theology. The four part series with Pete Rollins absolutely blew my mind. One of the most interesting things he said was that theism and atheism are one of life’s great love stories, because in theism/atheism, the truth lives somewhere in the slash. I think I’ve listened to that series four times now. I should edit it so that all four parts are one file.

And now, a finely crafted theological joke, which means I didn’t write it. Attribution is unknown:

Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, and James Cone find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, “Who do you say that I am?”

Karl Barth stands up and says: “You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.”

Not prepared for Barth’s brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: “You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.”

Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: “You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.”

Finally James Cone gets up, and raises his voice: “You are my Oppressed One, my soul’s shalom, the One who was, who is, and who shall be, who has never left us alone in the struggle, the event of liberation in the lives of the oppressed struggling for freedom, and whose blackness is both literal and symbolic.”

And Jesus turns around and says, “What?”

There is nothing greater than studying theology and being able to laugh at yourself. In my own life, I rely on both Henri Nouwen and Paul Tillich. The Wounded Healer and Dynamics of Faith are my go-to in pretty much any situation. Although I will never forget hearing Marcus Borg preach at Trinity Cathedral in Portland, Oregon. Before he got up to speak, Bill Lupfer, the dean, said that any time you had a theological question, you should go and drink beer with a Lutheran. This is especially funny because the first time I ever met Dean Lupfer, we were in a pub.

Speaking of which, if I decide to start cooking again, it’s time to buy a set of bandanas. I am sure Amazon will deliver without incident.

Dogs

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I woke up at 0500, as I am wont to do. I generally fall asleep to movies or podcasts, and last night it was Battle Royale II- Requiem. I made it through Battle Royale earlier in the day, because it just cracks me up. Yes, there is so much violence and not very much humor in the movie as a whole, but the instructional video makes me laugh until my sides hurt. I’m going to have to go back and watch the ending of II, because I should know by now that I cannot start a movie between 2030-2100. It reminds me of my dad coming home from a Covey seminar on time management, where the instructor told a funny story:

Instructor: I get my kids to wake up at 4:00 AM for a planning session every morning.
Guy in Class: How do you do that?
I: I put them in bed at 8:30 PM.
GIC: How do you manage THAT?
I: I get them up at FOUR IN THE MORNING!

I’ve puttered around the house for a little bit… went through the trash looking for recycling because my roommate is not so good about it. Made myself both a Hawaiian Punch and strong black coffee. Took all my psych meds so that I can ignore the “Meeting with Bob” reminder later (I call all my medication reminders “meeting with Bob,” and it really caught on when I was in the psych ward at Methodist. By the time I left three days later, I had my entire cohort saying “I have a meeting with Bob later.”

Yes, children. I checked myself in at Methodist thanks to an ass kicking by my precious Argo, who put everything succinctly: why do you expect everyone else to fix you? Can’t you see the common denominator is you? I didn’t realize that asking my friends to safety net me was in fact keeping me from moving under my own power, failure to take responsibility for my own actions. When you’re that far down into depression, anxiety, and PTSD, it’s hard to see. The kicker was suicidal ideation that I knew would go away with a trip to a psychiatrist who could adjust my meds, but I called and I could not get a new patient appointment for another three weeks. Anyone who’s been in that situation knows three weeks is way too long- halfway to SpongeBob Squarepants headstone (don’t think I won’t do it- not the suicide part, the hilarity of an actual SpongeBob headstone for all eternity).

Teenage trauma was compounded by my relationship with Dana ending in a fight to end all fights. Dana pushed me over and I just went off like a chihuahua with a God complex. All the fight was taken out of me when Dana punched me in the face so hard that for a moment, I thought my eye socket was broken. It wasn’t, but I had a pretty nice bruise under my eye that my glasses didn’t cover. I forgive, but I don’t forget. I concentrate on my hilarious memories with Dana now, because I cannot live my life in the smallest place possible. I take responsibility for not running away at the first sign that the fight was turning physical.

I, however, have stopped feeling that I deserved to be hit, because the fight absolutely made me come emotionally unglued. It took a while. The mobile assessment team that evaluated me at Methodist reassured me that I had a natural reaction to being pushed over, but that it was probably a bad idea to try and fight back with someone whose fist was three times bigger than mine. In the moment, my thought process was that it was a bad idea not to stand up to a bully. To Dana’s credit, she was immediately sorry and didn’t just give lip service to it. She really put herself through an enormous amount of self-help, which is why I can forgive her so easily. I wouldn’t be so laid back about it if I thought that there was a possibility it could happen again.

The one mistake I made was going home after hospitalization. I didn’t count on the emotional swings between us getting much worse. I made due by sleeping at friends’ houses and going to the house to pick up my stuff when I knew she wouldn’t be there. It wasn’t that I carried anger around. It was that I was trying to cut any and all fights off at the pass. It is a very, very difficult thing to go through that with someone you love so desperately, so my choice is not to be bitter and to remember all the things that happened between us that were overwhelmingly positive. It is enough that we are not in contact anymore, reducing the possibility of hurting each other again to zero, whether that means emotionally, physically, or both.

But that was a little over three years ago, and I cannot emphasize enough how much different my world has become. I’ve had an enormous swath of time to think things through and work on my own issues so that I’m less quick to anger, and trying to love my friends through their own problems, because so many people did it for me. I’ll never be able to pay it all forward, but it helps to try.

I am very open and honest about what it took to get past all this, but the stigma is there. People don’t always realize what it took to get you to the place of hospitalization, and only concentrate on how crazy you must be if you had to get that kind of help. It’s a black mark, whether it is deserved or not. I’d had severe psychological issues since I was a teenager, and I can’t help but think how much better my life would have gone had I been hospitalized in the moment rather than stuffing everything down into my socks. It made me feel like I was fine, thank you very much [Morgan Freeman: Leslie was, in fact, not fine].

I was able to lay everything out in front of Argo because she was a stranger on a train, not part of my physical life so she saw everything differently. She asked pointed questions that made vomiting up old trauma unavoidable, and I cracked into pieces. And then, with two sentences, I make no qualms about the fact that they probably saved my life…. yet another thing that I’ll probably never be able to repay.

I do, however, offer up prayers into the universe for her a lot. It gives me something to pray for her happiness, healthiness, and the joy of being alive with possibility. Her sunshine is bright, and it was a gift to stand in it. I simply would not be the person I am today had I not been able to see every place I went wrong in black and white.

It was an incredible motivator to keep going with psychiatry, talk therapy, and instituting behavioral patterns that keep me from going back to the dark emotional place that doesn’t allow for my own sunshine. I truly have a lot of it to give. It’s hard to notice when I’m spilling my guts on this web site, because most of my entries deal with problems I’m trying to process, but I am incredibly funny. My love is gigantic, from the personal to the international. I don’t just care about my friends and family, but the problems that arise with just being a human.

All of it shows more easily in person than it does while writing, something I am trying to change as both my marriage and the death of my mother fade further into the back of my mind. There are always going to be times when I’m incredibly sad over each, but especially my mother would be horrified to know that losing her caused me to lose my knack for both cracking jokes and laughing easily when others do it.

I am looking forward to a lot of laughter starting on Tuesday, when my little sister arrives for a work trip. What cracks me up the most about her is that when I say something sweet, her response is usually, “thanks, Boo.” It works on two levels; the first is that it is a loving term of endearment. The second is that my mood often bears a striking resemblance to Boo Radley.

Harper Lee is my spirit animal, and I will speak more as to why.

It is my unverified opinion that Scout and Boo are the same person, Harper Lee at different points in her life. Think about just how much she isolated after To Kill a Mockingbird was published, and I think you’ll see it, too…. keeping in mind that I’m wrong a lot. 😛 It seems to me, though, that there’s probably at least a grain of truth in my ramblings about somebody I don’t even know. The now unanswered question in my mind is whether Lee was reclusive before or after creating Boo…. did she base Boo on herself, or did writing about him put her into that place? Chicken, egg, etc. Either way, I’m not sure it renders my opinion invalid.

When I am able to support having a pet, I’d really like to get a dog. This seems unrelated, but it’s not. I often need forced interaction because it’s hard for me to do it on my own, and taking my dog for a walk provides just that. I know this because I used to live in an apartment complex, so letting my dog relieve herself in the backyard was not an option. Therefore, I met lots of other people who also had dogs, which not only gave me opportunities to socialize, but something about which to discuss that didn’t dig too deep. It was just fun. And, of course, if it’s a boy, his name will be Arthur. If it’s a girl, her name will be Louise.

Perhaps I should get a chihuahua with a God complex. Apparently, we’d have a lot in common.

Alexandria

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

-Nelson Mandela

In May of 2001, my then-girlfriend, Kathleen, graduated from University of Houston. She interviewed with several companies, and chose the Global Information Systems department at ExxonMobil. They gave her the choice of starting in Houston or in Fairfax, Virginia. To this day I’m not sure how much Kathleen wanted to leave Texas and how much I did. I don’t know if she was excited or if I convinced her, but off we went to the suburbs of the nation’s capital. We chose to live in the city of Alexandria (as opposed to Fairfax County) because it was roughly halfway between downtown and Kathleen’s office. I didn’t know where I’d end up in terms of school, so I wanted easy access in both directions. We found a great little townhouse between the Blue and Yellow Metro lines, not too far from The Pentagon……..

The plan was solid in theory. I’d had a full-time job for the last two years, making enough to support both of us. Because I’d done that, Kat said that she’d work and I could go to school. What we didn’t factor in was the cost of living increase. Even with both of us making more than I had in Houston, we still couldn’t seem to get ahead. In retrospect, I think we just aimed too high, too fast. We wanted to live a middle-class existence, not thinking ahead that a savings account might be a nice thing. The conversation in my head runs thusly:

Me: What the hell did you and Kat do with all that money?
Me to me: We ate it.

It takes money to be around people with money and we were too stupid to realize we didn’t have any. Most of the memories I have of that time in my life involve going out with various coworkers to restaurants where the food was forgettable and the tab was expensive. If you are looking for advice on how to spend over fifty grand a year on absolutely nothing, I am an expert. It starts with caring way too much about what other people think if you turn down an invitation. There. The first lesson’s free.

My dreams of finishing school and going on to my Master’s started drying slowly and then the last bit evaporated overnight. Kathleen wanted out of the relationship, exiting in the ugliest way possible. She slept with mutual coworkers so that coming to work was excruciatingly awkward, and then I lost my job and went back to Texas as broken as I’d ever been up to that point.

I attended a grief support group, where I mourned the past and the future I thought I would have. Eight weeks later, I went to visit my friends in Oregon. Two weeks after I got back, I packed up my car and called Portland home. It wasn’t enough to put 1800 miles of distance between Kat and me. I needed the full 3,000 for good measure.

I ran as far from Alexandria as I could get without dropping into the Pacific.

I didn’t remember the good things about Virginia until the day I moved to Oregon. Because I already had friends and a church there, I ditched my stuff at my house and went to the church to socialize as we were stuffing envelopes for some campaign or another. This annoying blonde woman was wearing a George Mason University sweatshirt, the college down the street from Kathleen’s office…. because of course she was.

Eventually, the blonde wasn’t so annoying. I married her…. and had to make my peace with Virginia because her parents’ house was about 30 miles from my old one… because of course it was.

Dana and I talked about moving to Virginia sporadically over the years, Dana worrying that her parents were older than mine and would therefore, need more help. So, moving back to the DC area has been a faint spot on my radar for over a decade. By 2012, it was in the three to five year plan.

Three years, almost to the day, I arrived in Maryland alone. In the beginning, it was a severe emotional handicap. I had imagined everything about DC from our viewpoint, not mine. I couldn’t even cross the Potomac without wincing in pain, so I just didn’t. Dana didn’t have many stories about DC, because she lived far enough out that she didn’t come downtown much. So, I reasoned that DC and Maryland were my area. Anything across the river belonged to Dana and Kat. It was neat and tidy until I went and made a friend…. in Alexandria.

Walking around Old Town brought it all back. I felt joy, but it was quickly drowned in tears. Everything was familiar and, in turn, scary because of the reason it was familiar. I saw the tapas restaurant where Kathleen took me for my birthday on September 10th, 2001, where I ate bad mussels and projectile vomited so much that I had to call in sick to work the next morning, the only reason I heard the plane hit. In fact, I saw all our old hangouts… or the buildings where they used to be, anyway.

What I realized is that looking for the familiar was bringing up emotions for which I was not prepared. Up until reality hit, I’d been genuinely excited. “Alex” had felt like home when I was dreaming about it. I didn’t recognize myself in its reflection anymore. I just saw shards of a twenty-something yuppie douchebag.

Luckily, my cousin Nathan also lives in Alexandria, so after about a year, the desensitization process was complete. The only reason it took that long is that I didn’t have a reason to cross the river very often. It was easier to meet both Dan and Nathan halfway.

Over the years, though, I’ve been coming to Alexandria more and more, because context and I have both changed. It’s not where I used to live. It’s where Dan lives now…. and get this… she lives on Leslie Avenue.

The real plot twist, though, is in fact just character development. I walk everywhere I go unless it’s what I consider “too far” and take the bus or train. I spend less in a week than I used to spend on some days. I am just not impressed with clothes, cars, fancy restaurants, any of it. The Washington of my twenties was a pretty soulless place, because I was not tapped into activism on social justice issues. I was driven to be upwardly mobile without any other purpose but serving myself.

The me of 2001 would have laughed and called me a hippy. The me of now wouldn’t spend time on a retort.

The Sunshine Blogger Award

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Today I was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award by Julie. Thank you, Julie, for knowing I could use a little sunshine. I hope I’ve done “write” by you……the-sunshine-blogger-award-2018

Here are the award’s rules:

  1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link back to their blog. (Really? There are people who wouldn’t say, “Thanks!” if it weren’t a rule?)
  2. Answer the 11 questions your nominator asked you.
  3. Nominate 8 to 11 blogs, and ask them 11 new questions.
  4. List the rules and display the Sunshine Blogger Award logo in your post and/or on your blog.

1.) To-MAY-to or To-MAH-to?

I’m from Texas, so it generally comes out as “tuhmayda.”

2.) What fictional character would you like to meet in real life, and why?

I have several, but it’s all the same theme. I want to meet Harry Potter the day after he first talked to a snake. I want to meet Peter Parker the day after he was bitten by a radioactive spider. I want to meet Carrie Mathison the day after she was approached by The Agency.

I want to meet these people before they became larger than life- would like to know how they’re coping in the midst of enormous change. Harry Potter didn’t know he had magical powers. He thought the whole world had taken crazy pills. Peter Parker wasn’t handspringing off the Empire State Building on day one- he barely knew how to use his new body. Carrie Mathison wasn’t station chief in Kabul/The Drone Queen the first time she drove up to Langley. I’d like to know how those huge personalities incubated…. like meeting the non-fictional Oprah as a high school freshman.

3.) What music do you listen to while writing, or do you prefer silence?

I go back and forth. It’s the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time, I listen to the rhythm of my fingers on the keys. 20% of the time, I’m listening to jazz, classical, or film scores…. nothing with words, and nothing unfamiliar. If it’s new to me, I’m not really paying attention to my writing.

4.) Sunrise or sunset, and why?

I prefer the wee hours of the morning, starting between 4:00-5:00. I used to stay up all night just to get that kind of quiet, and then I learned about this new thing called “going to bed earlier.”

5.) What aspect(s) of blogging do you find most rewarding?

The single most rewarding thing about blogging is being able to go back and read my thoughts… the ones from the people I used to be. They should have been on the list of fictional people I’d like to meet now. On the other hand, what I could say to them without spoilers is it’s going to get so, so very much worse before it gets better, and I’m not sure that the “it gets better” would be the take home message. I would also advise myself to buy a lot of Finnish flags, because I couldn’t tell me why, but I could tell me they’d come in handy.

6.) What food is your guilty pleasure?

Rice Krispies. I swear to Christ I could eat an entire box in one sitting, preferably with whole milk.

7.) What advice would you give to younger you?

I think I’ve sort of covered this already, but I was such an introverted kid who made people laugh to cover up huge flaws and insecurities… so I would say that I couldn’t give myself any advice because I wouldn’t have listened. The younger me was lost in my own little world, and even an older version of me wouldn’t have known how to interrupt it. Other people were frightened by what an intense kid I was- why wouldn’t I looking back? I wouldn’t have any advice, just comforting knowledge. Teenage me couldn’t have conceived of federal gay marriage, or even the majority of the country not thinking I was mentally ill (well, I am, but not because of THAT).

8.) What is something other people seem to find important that you just don’t see the point of?

This is going to sound completely judgmental, but it is a personal choice. I don’t see the point in the emphasis on how much people need alcohol to get through their day. It’s not the drinking itself that bothers me, it’s the craze around Facebook/Twitter/Insta/etc. memes that make alcoholism look adorable.

I don’t know if it’s that I’ve had friends in AA who made me look at the issue differently, or whether culture itself has shifted. What I do know is that people look at me weird when I order a cherry Diet Coke in a bar, and I used to say I was driving or that I was taking medication or whatever. And then it occurred to me that there haven’t been very many times in my life where people haven’t looked at me like I was weird for some reason or another and to just stop caring what other people thought. Now people look at me weird when I do want a beer. I’ll never win, and that’s ok.

9.) Do you have any famous (or infamous) people in your family tree?

I seem to remember my mother’s father tracing our genealogy back to Zachary Taylor and James Madison… but my grandfather died when I was in middle school and I am WAY too lazy to redo all that research. I wouldn’t be if I was actually interested in genealogy, but it’s just not my bag.

10.) Which of your blog posts has had the most surprising response? (Comments you didn’t see coming, traffic that was unusually heavy/light compared to your averages, etc.)

My article on marriage had the most surprising response, because it was shared literally all over the world, and landed in both Martina Navratilova and Margaret Cho’s Twitter feeds. It wasn’t like I sat down that day and thought I MUST WRITE SOMETHING POPULAR. I’d gotten my nose out of joint by straight people thinking that gay marriage was this alien concept, so I was typing like a madman and hit “Post” fifteen minutes later. It astounded me that something I spent so little time on was a “hit,” and other things have taken hours and hours with no response at all… which is honestly how I prefer it. I write better when I don’t realize there’s an audience. I kind of picture my blog as an open dress rehearsal.

11.) What do you do when you get writers’ block?

I write about nothing. Literally, I just narrate the smallest things until an idea catches and I think, “well, there’s something.” Writer’s block comes from thinking you have to wait for an inspiration to write when it’s the other way around. In the process of writing, you find inspiration. It’s like waiting for a good mood. It rarely happens on its own- you usually have to put on loud music, go for a walk, etc. Your mood didn’t just lift on its own accord- you lifted it.

Here are my list of nominees:

Last, but not least, are the things I want to know about you……

  1. What is the smallest situation in which you’re embarrassed? For instance, even when I am wearing high tops and long pants, I am embarrassed when my socks don’t match.
  2. What do you do really well besides write?
  3. What do you do badly, but participate anyway?
  4. What is your favorite creative swear?
  5. How long can you go off the grid without twitching?
  6. What do you do professionally if writing is not your day job?
  7. What’s the best picture you’ve ever taken? Describe the landscape.
  8. Are you from a big city or a small town?
  9. What is your idea of home?
  10. Do you like your current haircut?
  11. What is the absolute funniest thing that has ever happened to you?

Now That Some Time Has Passed…

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I’m trying to take stock of the ways my life has changed since my mother died, because now that it’s been a little over two years, things look different than they did when it first happened. I have found a new version of normal, although I am emotionally bleeding out for my cousins because their father just died unexpectedly. Additionally, this is the second sibling my aunt and uncle have lost in a very short time (the uncle that died was the second of four children on my mother’s side). So, we are all trying to find a new version of normal, trying to wrap our brains around two people in our family that have died very young. My mother was only 65, and my uncle died the day before his 64th birthday.

This is crushing because as people in grief know, birthdays and anniversaries are the hardest to get through. I cannot imagine having those two days so close together, yet another thing that makes grief as individual as a fingerprint, because even though my cousins and I share the pain of losing a parent, no situation is the same. I would not presume that they’re feeling the same thing I am (or even did), particularly because I am further along in my process of finding Option B.

I do remember how terrible those first few days were, because I saw everything through a deep and penetrating fog. People would say things to me and I would forget one second later what they said, or not even reply because I would go deaf and dumb to the world around me. I completely fell apart. For months, I would forget where I was going, or even the way out of my own neighborhood. For even longer, I wouldn’t interact. For instance, one day I’d think getting together with friends or going to church would make me feel better, then not only regret that decision, but drop off the face of the earth and people would wonder where the hell I went. Ummm, I went home. And not only did I go home, I didn’t even take up space in the house. I confined myself to my room for far longer than anyone thought I could or should.

I would (and still do) bounce between zero and what seems like 50,000 calories in a day. Grief took away hunger and thirst until I couldn’t ignore it anymore. It also occurred to me that drinking alcohol is often a trap when someone close to you dies, so being completely sober was a good and bad thing. There was no social lubricant for anxiety at being around people, and when I felt my feelings, I really, really felt them.

I am normally a little bit socially anxious, for which I take medication. But social anxiety is different in deep grief. People notice when you look like crap, and will tell you, not knowing the bomb you’re about to drop on them. See, the reason I look like a hot mess is that my mother just died…. and that’s when you can literally hear the whistle with Doppler effect. You desperately don’t want it to, but the conversation goes from zero to weird in 2.5 seconds and you regret you said anything. The hardest part about telling people someone close to you died is that the air in the room changes, and people start treating you differently.

Some people know exactly what to do, which is either say they’re sorry and leave it at that, or say nothing and just give you a hug. With others, it is a litany of I know just how you feel, and then tell a story that legit has nothing to do with what you’re going through.

30704001_1986837498021611_1417297838002122399_nThis is the Facebook meme I found today that made me laugh and cringe, because for the grieving, it describes our experience perfectly. I really don’t fucking care how sad you were when your cat died and how it relates to my grief that I’ll never see my mother again. I also don’t care how you’ll feel when your mother dies, because first of all, you have no idea how you’ll feel when your mother/father/spouse dies, because thinking about it ahead of time is so much different than when reality punches you in the face. Secondly, my smart ass response is always going to be, well, it’s a good thing I’m going through it instead of you. However, that part generally seethes inside me because I know no one is trying to elicit that response. They just have no idea what to say, so what they think they’re saying is good and what they’re really saying hurts.

The other thing that happens is that your mother/father/spouse’s death becomes a subject no one wants to touch, so they stop bringing up the person altogether, as if remembrance is the worst thing ever. Say her name. Tell me funny stories about what you remember, especially if you knew her at a time when I didn’t.

I learned this lesson initially through divorce, that people thought bringing up Dana was somehow verboten, when it would have meant the world to me to laugh about the funny things that happened to us…. and at first, it really hurt that Dana and my mom have the same birthday, but now it feeds me because I think about celebrating Dana instead of being mired in grief…. mostly the old joke about how since she’s two years older than me, she’s just that much closer to death than I am. 😛

Yes, divorces are terrible. Yes, deaths are terrible. But it doesn’t render my great memories invalid. Just because it’s over doesn’t mean I don’t want to remember.

Speaking of “over,” I don’t view my relationship with my mother as such. I have a long history of writing letters to people or entities who are unlikely to respond. It doesn’t seem weird to me at all that we still “talk.” Maybe other people have trouble bringing up the topic of my mom, but I don’t. During the day, I basically narrate to her in my head, and in my dreams, she responds.

She thinks Dan and Pri Diddy are good for me. We agree on so much.

Staying Awake

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 8 Comments

I thought seriously about boycotting Starbucks until I realized that I still had money on my gift cards. I reasoned that my coffee had already been purchased, and if the boycott persisted beyond that, I wouldn’t spend my own money there.philadelphia_sbux Thanks to social media wisdom, though, I realized something important. There are thousands of black baristas, and this one shop in Philly was the problem, not Starbucks as a whole. If that sounds callous and racist, I am very sorry. But the truth is that I live in a neighborhood with lots of black people. Some are African-American. Others are immigrants, mostly from Cameroon, Nigeria, and Eritrea. Boycotting my local store might lead to cutting down on employees as they get less busy, and I am not about to contribute to it.

The plain truth is that this is not a Starbucks problem. It is the top-down system of oppression that has been in power for hundreds of years. For instance, why didn’t the police officers just laugh in the barista’s face? Why, after explaining the situation, were the men still cuffed?

There is blame to be had all the way around, and when the police were called, they had absolutely no reason to follow through. What about the barista’s story made any damn sense except the police being as racist as the barista? I don’t even have a jacket as nice as the one the man on the left is wearing, and I guarantee you I’ve looked worse in a hoodie and jeans stumbling into a coffee shop than the man on the right. This is not to say that every black person who walks into a Starbucks must be dressed a certain way. I am only making the observation that if the barista and the police were looking for people making trouble, these men weren’t it.

Memorize their faces. Memorize the man on the left looking down with his hands in his pockets. Memorize the man on the right making a pained face as if this is not the first time this bullshit has happened to him. I can’t think of any situation that makes me feel more helpless and angry…. but I have to think it through. I have to think about all the ways I, as a white woman, can use the platform I’ve been given, both here and out in the world. I am generally not assertive when things happen to me personally (like truly repulsive comments regarding watching lesbians by men, for instance), but it’s a whole other thing when my mother lion gets engaged.

I am one of those hopeful people who’s been crushed by the amount of racism in my area, because DC is overwhelmingly black (a little under 50% of the population). I mistakenly thought things like that couldn’t happen here, or at least, more rarely than they actually do. I’ve cut way down on the optimism lately, anxiety rising like bile in the back of my throat.

I am no expert on race relations in DC, but it seems as if racially mixed neighborhoods have existed forever, even before gentrification…. keeping in mind that this is not every neighborhood’s case, but more often than in, say, the rest of the South. Technically, DC and Maryland are still the South because they’re under the Mason-Dixon line, but God help you if you mention it. No one around here wants to be compared with Alabama. We’d like to think we’re more progressive than that. Racial makeup of the neighborhood ceases to matter when you’re just trying to find a place you can afford.

In some ways, we are that progressive. In others, we’re not any better; we’d like to think of ourselves as liberal and inclusive, sweeping the incidents where we’re not way, way, way under the rug. If it doesn’t fit with the image we have of ourselves, it didn’t happen, definitely not a two-way street. White people just can’t be afraid of black people in the same way. I will never be afraid that a black person is going to call the police on me for anything…. ever.

Moreover, people of color absolutely cannot be racist, because racism, again, is a top-down entrenched system of oppression. They can, however, be prejudiced, stereotyping white people because they have to. They don’t know ahead of time if a friend or foe is approaching. Prejudice exists for a reason, and for people of color, it is self-preservation…. a fear that, as white people, we are absolutely responsible for creating.

For the most part, though, when we’re all on the Metro together, the racism and prejudice is left at the station. For instance, once I was waiting for the Orange Line back to Metro Center from Landover, and one of the WMATA employees came up to me and asked me if he could give me a hug, because I had a Black Lives Matter button pinned to my jacket. We just stood there and held each other, healing energy running between both of us.

While I have trouble believing that racism will be solved in my lifetime, I definitely hope.  Interestingly enough, I think Marvel has taken it upon itself to help. Movies like Black Panther and Captain America: Civil War, and television shows like Luke Cage are challenging the status quo, because they portray black people in a way that few pieces of media do. Marvel can’t be responsible for solving every racial issue, but movies and TV shows that are popular can’t hurt. For instance, nothing did more to help the queer community be seen as regular people than Will & Grace, with Six Feet Under a close second. Progress is still slow, but it’s faster than it used to be with the help of visibility.

The difference is that I only have to be afraid for my life when I’m walking hand in hand with another woman. Alone, people can only guess that I’m a minority. There is no covering up every inch of your skin. However, I do empathize because I, too, look over my shoulder for unenlightened white people. We are definitely not in the same boat, but I often believe we’re in the same part of the ocean.

As I sip my coffee, I wonder if this entire essay is going to make me look like a basic bitch. I want my thoughts to go toward some good…. perhaps make some people think. I know it reaches me. I could spend an entire afternoon brainstorming about all the ways society needs to change and what I might be able to do in bringing it forward. The most concrete way I know for myself is challenging all the microaggressions I think I don’t have. Being white is just a series of privileges that run so far under your skin you don’t even realize you’re broadcasting it.

The one good thing I can say for myself right this moment is that I can say I have black friends without lip service. I have people to teach me when I’m being a jackass without any awareness. I am lucky that my friends are willing to attribute my flaws to idiocy and not malice, because I guarantee that in terms of staying woke, I need to pay more attention when I become “sleepy.” I am lucky to have friends that have no problem calling me out on the carpet about it, even when it’s hard…. because sometimes you want to fix the whole world, and are at a complete loss as to what would help.

Although I know that at least my infinitely small part of the world will change, as long as I’m paying attention.

Coffee helps in keeping my mind busy and my eyes open. However, I cannot stay awake forever. That’s where you come in, batting relief.

[_])

Refill?

Crazy on a Cracker

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 2 Comments

Tonight I am going to meet a new friend who I hope will one day become my old friend… a great pen pal becoming real. Religion major in college, writes, and reads more in a day than I do in a week… which is very hard.

Speaking of which, I am engrossed in a new novel for review called The 11:05 Murders, by Brian O’Hare. It’s another one I thought was deserving of more than a few words written about it, and again e-mailed it to my editor… and not even selfishly because reviews might be easier when she’s also read it. Just because the book was so great I wanted to share. It is a very, very cheap way to show someone you care- and are genuinely excited to be able to provide great entertainment through e-books even when the person lives thousands of miles away.

It’s also nice to get a book that I’m genuinely jazzed to review by a polished author. That doesn’t happen very often. I’m also glad that when I’m finished with this novel, there are two others.

It’s also a nice thing that when I shop at Amazon, a small percentage of my purchase goes to Doctors Without Borders, my charity through Smile. I try to donate to them personally when I have a chance, but it’s not always possible. It makes me feel good that I can get my needs met and contribute to theirs. So much is going on in the world today that’s negative… cheering on their efforts is just one way I hope to combat it.

Not only am I thinking globally about negativity, but personally. I am still messed up over the last four years, and in some ways, I think that loss will never get better. It will become a shallower well of injury, or something that hurts more and more sporadically, but nothing will ever be the same. This is because dealing with grief over the alive and well is different than grieving the dead. Each hurts in its own special way. I am struck by the fact that other people’s lives will go on without me, and brought to my knees that I will never see my mother again.

If in saying that Barbara Bush’s death wasn’t that sad, I didn’t mean to be callous. It’s just a whole other thing when someone dies naturally after living an incredible amount of time vs. the shock of losing someone in the blink of an eye when their lives were cut short by at least 15-20 years. Some days I actually forget time has passed and am just struck dumb with the immediacy of it all. A parent dying suddenly and younger than you thought is like being in a car accident repeatedly, with the same amount of haze-inducing shock. The worst part is that I didn’t agree to this (as if one would, but stay with me, Jimbo). It just happens unexpectedly, a truly unwanted side effect. I am just blindsided all the time. I go into a space where I can’t remember anything, I can’t move, I can’t think clearly. I am just walking through life trying to nail Jell-o to a tree.

What is truly heartbreaking is knowing that my mother would never have wanted this for me. She was always so self-sacrificing that she would have done anything not to die if she could help it, and not out of self-preservation. What keeps my heart from stitching is that for most of my adult life, I lived out of state… so there are days when I regret that fact and others where I completely forget she’s dead because I’m not used to talking to her every day, anyway. I’ll reach for the phone to call her and absolutely freak. Grief then becomes extremely loud and incredibly close. What helps is not thinking about my own situation, but the thousands of other people that have also had this experience and that even when I feel like it, I am never alone. Someone on earth has felt what I’m feeling at any given moment.

There’s also the two-sided coin of losing someone suddenly. It is the combined feeling of joy that they felt no pain and the anger that comes with not being able to say goodbye. Let me be clear, though. I am not angry at her. I am angry at the situation.

It is the same with divorce… more angry at the situation and myself than I ever will be at Dana. In fact, I would go so far as to say I’m not angry with Dana at all. Everything is forgiven on that end. It’s me that needs work. I got started praying for her health and happiness early and often. It gives me something to give to her, even when it’s just sending energy into the universe. Because we’re not in contact, the chord between us (as I’ve said before) becomes a loopback, feeding me. It gives me the feeling of peace and calm that I’m somehow contributing, I guess. At this point, guessing regarding the nature of karma and the universe is about as much control as I’m allowed to have. Surprisingly, it is more than enough.

I feel like I should get into that space quickly, the one of sending good thoughts into the universe, because I am more downcast today than usual. It’s grey and awful outside, which only contributes to the storm within. Everything is making me sad, and I just feel like a disappointing excuse for a human being. Now, logically I know this is not true. I just can’t seem to make it happen emotionally. I am sure that things will look different 30 minutes after I take my anxiety medication, for which I need to make a pharmacy run. I don’t want to show up to a first impression feeling like crazy on a cracker.

Because unfortunately, that’s what grief does. It causes anxiety about just damn everything, even the things you never thought about before said loved one died. There’s so many new depths to plumb. Even the fact that people die young is something you used to know and now smacks you in the face. It’s one thing to know it, quite another to feel.

As far as I know, besides Dan, I am the first of my friends to lose their mothers. It is a comfort you would not believe that although I am incredibly sad for her, I have a person who understands implicitly the hand that I’ve been dealt. I have someone who can tell with one look that I need a hug or an arm around my shoulder. Not only am I perpetually bereft in some respects, single people do not get nearly enough contact comfort. It is such a blessing to have someone in my life who gives really great hugs without a hint of romance, because it’s not about that and never will be. I just give friendship its full due, that chosen family is everything.

The reason I believe in chosen family so wholeheartedly is that I don’t think it’s fair to the person I would date to drag them into the sideshow that is my current life. I would much rather wait until things calm down, when I am much less angry at me for the way I treated Dana and much less overwhelmed at the state of my world. The one good thing I remember about being divorced is that not only did I behave badly then and am grateful I don’t now hurt her repeatedly, I never would have wanted to subject Dana to the person I’ve become in the aftermath of grief…. and not because I think she couldn’t have handled it. I just think that it’s a pain for which she would have no frame of reference, and therefore, would not have been impressed with my need to isolate, to the point that I would have isolated myself from her, too. I can’t imagine how short I would have become with her, snippy not because she did anything wrong but because her mother is still alive. It’s a helpless place when someone is mad at you for seemingly no reason, unable to take it in that you shouldn’t take it personally- that person is mad at the whole damn world. For me, it was a lucky thing to be on my own, so that when I was literally unable to function, no one had to deal with me. I’m so much better now, but it was a long row to hoe. My entire garden just died.

And though most of the plants are still dead, at least I see shoots of green.

Thanks, Y’all

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Lately I’ve noticed that my stats and followers are going way, way up. The Board of Directors (donors that set me up years ago) is going to be pleased. Not that I’m counting on you to give them stock dividends or anything, but it’s good to be able to say to them that their contributions didn’t go to waste. No one has been more surprised than me to learn that my writing is actually worth something, that people are willing to pay when they come to a site they can read in the bathroom at work with no ads (don’t think I don’t know that last part is fo’real). I’m starting to feel more comfortable with telling you how I feel about issues as opposed to just running commentary on my life, going from personal to global. Not every entry will be about politics and the weather, but it’s nice to know it’s possible. You’ve just made a lot of my friends more comfortable, that’s for damn sure…. well, except the ones that are genuinely excited when they appear and search for their names.  ::squinting at James::

Hopefully in the running commentary department, you’ll get to hear more about “my babies,” the three new characters I’ll be adding to Stories in the coming year. The twins (boys) were born a few days ago, and the little girl whose face I already love will be born in the next few months. Rooting for her to be a not-too-early preemie so one of my best friends doesn’t have to be gigantic pregnant in the South in the dead of summer. I’ll never give up writing about my life, because this site will first and foremost be the repository where my memories go so that a hundred years from now, genealogy on me won’t be hard. Here’s everything you never wanted to know about me, kids. Sometimes it’s comforting that writing on the Internet is as permanent as a tattoo on the face, because even if WordPress doesn’t exist, Wayback Machines that archive everything on the net certainly will. I know because I can still access Clever Title Goes Here, the popular blog I impulsively tanked because I had a much thinner skin then.

It was a #dumbass attack, because I was in on the ground floor, when Heather Armstrong, Anil Dash, Wil Wheaton, Jason Kottke, Eden Kennedy, Ernie Hsuing, et al were also coming up. It felt amazing to be part of such rareified air, especially w/ Wil, because I met him at a reading at Powell’s and he knew exactly who I was, signing a copy of Just a Geek with:

Dear Leslie,

Clever Inscription Goes Here…

Love,
Wil

Writing has never been about money, but respect. I’ve never gotten rich off it, but it was nice to walk in those circles. The difference now is that my entries are generally much longer, with more to chew on. Hopefully you’ve picked up nuggets of wisdom along the way by me laying out all that I’ve done wrong AND right, rather than thinking I pimp out my friends.

Believe me when I say that they notice, all alert to the fact that they never know when an entry will pop up about them, and within limits, I will not give them the luxury of taking things down, because it’s not about them. It’s about my reaction to them, however untrue they think my statements are… there’s a reason for this. I am aware that I have huge flaws and get things wrong a lot. I change my mind on a weekly, if not daily basis. I am not waffling, it’s that every entry is full of my revelations to myself and what I think about what happens. I can only hope that when I write about my life, it is the good and the bad, so that you see a full picture instead of only amazing and horrible with no grey area. Something that was true for me on Monday is not true by Thursday. Evolution of thought happens, as does cognitive dissonance with relationships. Sometimes, disparate ends of the spectrum are both true.

For instance, I will never give up loving my friends and myself, even in those moments where I’m not altogether pleased with them/me. Just like you, I love them even when I can’t like their actions whole lot. But fortunately, not being happy about what they do in reaction to me is extremely infrequent, and I have no problem with not excusing how I behave, because I don’t often come away from a situation looking like a hero…. more often than not, I’m the antagonist and the protagonist in my own story. Through this web site, I have learned not to always be the one that throws the first match. I see up close in black and white how I could have done something differently, and I do. I look back and say to myself, well, that could have gone better.

Stories is basically a chronicle of learning to get out of my own way. I try to gather intel on how not to sabotage the good things that come my way. Also, I am a person in 3D. You don’t get to know everything, and often when people meet me in real life that have only known my writing, they comment on how different I seem (I thought you’d be taller. #dead).

The weirdest and most fulfilling is hearing people quote me to me, because it just feeds my self-esteem that there are indeed lines that stick with people.

On the flip side, it’s excruciating to meet readers who try and prove to me that they know me better than me because of the silly thoughts I write down, not allowing for the fact that my thoughts evolve. This has happened on several occasions because I put my URL in my OKCupid profile. I don’t use it for much except finding local friends, but I will never be friends with a fan who’s impressed and/or throws things I’ve written back in my face because it holds me to my past instead of allowing for the future. If they knew me well, throwing things I’ve written back in my face wouldn’t matter, because I know that they’re not trying to hurt me, just showing me old patterns of behavior and wondering if I might be repeating them. A first meeting is not that emotional place.

I will not take my URL off my profile, though, because it’s a separating the women from the girls sort of thing. If someone can’t deal with the fact that I write so publicly, the relationship won’t last for more than about five minutes.

I feel like I should buy five or 10 t-shirts with the words I’m blogging this and just wear them daily. This is because I’ve had several non-romantic relationships end over not knowing and caring a little too much when the mirror I hold up to the world points toward them. Often these are the same people that say I have great insights regarding everyone else, and those insights don’t translate to them. I can write about everyone in the world amazingly well except for them.

I get it. It’s not a big deal until it’s personal.

My heart is heavy thinking about the lives I’ve interrupted out of idiocy and not malice, often presenting as headaches or stomachaches. It’s the entire reason CTGH doesn’t exist. I got tired of this whole idea, forsaking the thousands of people who genuinely loved my writing and my excoriation of myself in the quest to make me a better person. No one should ever think that being a personal blogger is easy, because it comes with…….. consequences.

With Stories, I constantly adjust the limits to which my writing matters more than my friends, because in some ways, my on the ground relationships take precedence. In others, I have to look at what matters more, my ideas or theirs. It’s an inner landscape, and I should be allowed to have it. I often choose between being self and other-aware.

….because a lot of my inner landscape is me emotionally bleeding out to find others who’ve had similar experiences and say, I know how that feels. I have worn that scar on my skin…. because maybe someone in my real life has never had my experience, but someone in China has… and can look at my situation more objectively than I can because they’re not in it or of it.

I need people that disagree with me, call me on my bullshit… to gently argue with me to get me to see something they do.

Personal blogging is a mixed bag, just like me.

Splitting Up (But Not Together)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Last night I watched Ellen Degeneres’ new show, Splitting Up Together. She’s not in it, she’s the producer. So, I expected a comedy about a family struggling to keep it together despite divorcing and trading off kid care. Every week, mom and dad switch places. One lives in the house, one lives in the garage. I laughed a lot, and I will definitely keep watching. What I didn’t count on, however, is crying so hard I wanted to curl up into the fetal position and eat an entire package of Oreos™ while mainlining Diet Coke.™ For the record, I did not. It was This is Us-level stabbing into emotional wounds, but perhaps it’s for the best. It does feel amazingly cathartic.

As most of you know, I am estranged from my wife, and have been for years now, but we still have a domestic partnership in Oregon that says we aren’t. The recording of our entire relationship plays in my head constantly, and not because I ever want to reconcile. That part of my life is over, and I am looking forward to the chapters that are coming and excited I got a fresh start in a new city. That part is solid, and I don’t feel like I’m still in love with her, or pining, or any of those things. But I do feel empathy for her and all that went wrong, all the things I should have taken responsibility for and didn’t, and all the things I thought at the time were her fault and absolutely weren’t. I can’t live in regret, and most of the time, I don’t. What is true for me is that I am absolutely split myself. I don’t regret the actions I took to completely get away from her, because I know myself. I would have kept trying to make things work whether they were wanted or not for years upon years. I’m an empath. I feel my own and others’ pain so deeply that it’s like walking around with an open wound. But at least it’s clean. So, therefore, the split comes from wishing things could have been different and being utterly amazed at how they really are. Both of those things are true, and I can live with cognitive dissonance for the rest of my life if the past is any indication.

I can’t speak for Dana, but what I believe happened is that both of us took our eyes off the ball, because we had been taking care of each other for so long that it never occurred to either of us that something could happen that would make us not. That fact does not make us special. I think it’s universal for half the population. The television show just reminded me of it by playing Ben Folds’ The Luckiest while the husband reexamined something he’d done to wound his wife, realizing that he’d lost her even though she was right there. I’ve had that feeling since, oh, about fifteen seconds after we broke up. I know for certain that I might find someone else, or I might stay ridiculously happy as a single person, because either way, life is what I make it. That being said, there will never be another relationship like Dana’s and mine. It will be quite different, hopefully for the better, because I won’t settle for less. I think it’s okay to realize how incredible something was and love it without wishing time would go backward. I think it’s okay to think, wow. I really messed things up without wishing to make the amends necessary to put a relationship right. Sometimes, you just have to let relationships rest in peace, but rumination is necessary to keep from making the same mistake twice. I also treasure just about every memory I have with Dana, but don’t wish to make new ones.

Originally, I really hoped that our separation would be so good for us because it would ultimately lead us back to each other. Now, I think that what was meant to happen did. After some time had passed, I realized that there were fundamental issues we’d never solve, especially if I continued to write, and absolutely no amount of threatening me would have ever (EVER, not in my five dollar life. Die mad about it.) made me give up the relationship with Argo. I could redirect a lot of energy, but my boundary was don’t make me stop talking to her altogether. I am still continually proud that I stood up for myself, not an easy task for someone so Type B I’m the poster child.

I hardly have hard lines at all, but that was one of them. Just an absolute deal breaker. I wouldn’t let her isolate me from a life line, because at that time in my life, she was. Especially because she wasn’t geographically close to me, she could listen more objectively than anyone else in my life. Two things about that…. the first is that I loved her because she had no horse in the race. The second is that she was my safe place, not ours, but I am absolutely certain that she would have been had Dana put in the effort. She either didn’t or wouldn’t, a mystery that I can’t and won’t solve. I am sure it is my fault in a lot of ways, but in others, it’s a choice she made and I had nothing to do with it.

For me, it was like Stedman saying to Oprah, I will lose my shit perpetually if you don’t stop talking to Gayle…. maybe not a fair comparison because it’s not like Argo and I had ever taken a road trip, or even shaken hands, but letters go a long way (literally and figuratively). It’s not exactly logical, but it’s how I felt and I take nothing away from it. Logic is not emotion and vice versa. Trying to make it so (see what I did there?) has never worked in the history of the world.

I needed them both in different ways, as is how it should be. I never should have had to think about giving up one for the other, but Dana lost. You don’t get to say truly shitty things to me and then not give me a place to vent about it to get perspective, perhaps even realizing that it wasn’t that shitty, just a piece of reality that I needed to check. Argo was no stranger to calling me out on my bullshit, which is exactly why you need THAT friend in the first place. Who else would I have let get away with calling me a judgmental dickhead and laugh my ass off about it rather than sulking in a corner?

I know me. We’ve met.

Of course there were other issues that led to our demise, but I don’t want to talk about them, because they were problems that stemmed from what I believe was on Dana, and that isn’t mine to dissect.

What is mine is what I own, what I did to make things fall apart.

I can’t heal the split between us, I can only heal the split in me. But that won’t ever mean forgetting how much I absolutely adore Dana’s spirit, because my love for every one of my relationships is written in marble, and my anger is written in sand.

It has done me well to remember that……………..

I don’t get many things right the first time,
In fact, I am told that a lot.

I was The Luckiest.