Okay, you get it.

January went by in an oxymoron of creeping speed.  Now trying to balance back out.  Seeing my favorite band, Wilco, at The Fox in Oakland on Tuesday night really helped.  Live music always helps.

Here is Wilco doing a cover of The Band‘s “The Weight” in their dressing room with Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe from last December.  It takes that load right off of me.  I hope it does for you too.

You were perfect. Here’s why:

Went to The Commonwealth Club which is across the street from my office to hear my boyfriend Dylan Ratigan speak. I was well supported by smart and fun colleague.

Ran into tech and SF fashion blogger extraordinaire, Kristin Philipkoski who I met last summer at a Go Fug Yourself event! We chatted, I admitted my crush on DR and fingers crossed she passes on my sentiments to him post book signing. They’re friends you see…

Set off for the ferry, snapped Niner Red and Gold pics on the way, got wine from Jeff at The Wine Merchant and settled in on the 8:10. Wrote this entire post on my iPhone with WordPress mobile app, uploading pics and all.  I am such an SF girl.

However, I have had a recurring thought that I need to get out, even if not my best description, about two phrases I am banishing from my vocabulary.  Banishment is serious business, as the lovelorn Juliet knows.  Follow along:

It will be too soon if I ever hear someone say TO me again, “I’m just going to be brutally honest…”  This was a favorite phrase of my ex-husband, who by all accounts was and is a bully and used the guise of honesty as a cover for merely being brutal.  Consider how many times someone has said this very phrase to you and then, without missing a beat proceeded to hurt your feelings with an opinion they have about how you are acting or reacting to something that is causing you pain, frustration or worry.  Go ahead.  Think about it.  I guarantee that 99.9% of the time, it hurt you more to be brutalized by a lack of compassion than to hear the editorial about your feelings from a person who thinks they know what is best for you.  People who use the phrase “brutally honest” will hide behind their “good intentions” when in all likelihood they have not even examined the full scope of what being intentional actually means.  Honesty is not truth.  The truth simply exists and honesty is the courage to perceive truth without bias.  No brutality is ever needed.

The next one I have decided to do away with is slightly more controversial since it is so embedded in our culture, and for me has probably been assigned a bullet point when describing my big personality.  Here goes:

Tough love.  I am breaking up with tough love.   Similar to its cousin “brutal honesty” it connotes pain and confusion.  From its oxymoronical phrasing to its overuse in popular culture by the likes of Dr. “How’s That Working For Ya”  Phil, it simply must be banished from my lexicon.  ”Tough love” has become a cover for sass and uninvited judgment.  It’s often followed with the meaningless and condescending, “I’m just saying…”  Having an opinion, and a strong one at that, is very different from “tough love” so I hope this doesn’t cause too much confusion for my family and friends who do value my intense perspectives.

I don’t need to love to be tough.  I don’t need someone using the cover of love to deliver their opinion of my pain.  How about people attempt to be courageous enough to sit in the aura of their loved one’s struggle?  If someone is repeating a destructive pattern that has them unable to move forward and is causing you frustration, try being compassionate instead of “tough.”  Believe me, the stuck person is being hard enough on themselves.  Let me also apologize to anyone I have ever practiced this ill-advised strategy upon.  I know for sure I have blurted things out about how someone “should” or “could” fix their situations.  I have been working hard the last few years to be compassionate first and a problem-solving supporter later.

Whew… that felt good.  Almost as good as a five-mile run.  Back to the foam roller to fix this knee.

I’ll go into how I am trying to cool my start to 2012 later, but here is what I am using as the basis for my emotional resolutions this year.

I have also decided that I need a few more days to get my reflections done and my 2012 action plan into place.  Slowing down to MY pace instead of trying to match the hyperspeed of the 24-hour news cycle is my first order of business.  I want my attention to be focused on the important details, not the din of everyone talking at once.  One of my favorite documentaries of 2011 was “Bill Cunningham New York” which follows New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham over a year’s time as he pedals his Schwinn all over New York City snapping photos (on film no less!) of Gotham’s citizens and socialites and what they wear as they go about their days and nights.  No other movie brought me as much joy as this one, even in the distinct irony that Bill is an ascetic who could not be more delighted by people and what they wear.  The moment that stuck with me the most and will forever is when he says, “He who seeks beauty will find it.”  He focuses on the details.

Here is a slice of beauty in my wild tangle of a yard right now, the Meyer lemon tree.  These lemons are so fragrant and delicious I am ruined for other lemons for the rest of time.  People who used to live here actually stop by to pick lemons from the tree and other former residents won a lemonade contest with these gems.  I snapped this on New Year’s Day morning: life giving me some luscious lemons.  I accept.

I don’t watch that many internet videos, mostly because they all suck, but somehow stumbled upon the Shit Girls Say videos this past week and pretty much have not laughed that hard at a short film since Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s, “The Landlord” that launched Funny or Die.  (Pre-FB I might add!)  I emailed it to my three best girl friends and we dissolved into txt giggles and our own versions of shit we say.  Then I found myself with a friend at a Christmas party and while gathering  our coats in the back bedroom, she responded, “Right?” to one of my comments and I knew she had to see these. We spent the next four minutes doubled over in laughter at the string of bon mots.

I had to know more, so I found this fantastic interview with Graydon Sheppard, the co-creator of the videos and Twitter feed of the same name.  Please please please watch them below and read the article and LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF!  Don’t watch Episode 3 though… it’s so not good.

A wonderfully awful idea

Made it home (!) after a night of one hour of sleep due to my inability to do every task I suddenly deem critical before leaving town.  Oh and a little procrastination in the form of watching “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” on Cartoon Network right smack in the middle of the packing extravaganza.

My absolute favorite part of “The Grinch” is his description of the joyful noise the Who kids make upon opening their toys.  Now that I have had eight and a half hours of sleep, I cannot wait to play a little Zoo-Zivver-Car-Zay with my old and dear friends.  NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!!!!

“And then…all the noise!  All the noise, noise, noise, noise!
If there’s one thing I hate…all the noise, noise, noise, noise!
And they’ll shriek, squeak, and squeal racing round on their wheels,
Then dance with jin-tinglers tied onto their heels!”

“They’ll blow their flu-flubers, they’ll bang their tar-tinkers,
They’ll blow their hoo-hoovers, they’ll bang their gar-dinkers!
They’ll beat their trum-tookers, they’ll slam their sloo-slunkers!
They’ll beat their blum-blookers, they’ll wham their hoo-whunkers!”

“And they’ll play noisy games, like Zoo-Zivver-Car-Zay,
A rollerskate-type of LaCrosse and croquet!
Then they’ll make earsplitting noises deluxe
On their great big Electro-Who-Cardio-Floox!”

Minute 3:36…

This summer I ran a half in San Diego in August and then did the NorCal Tough Mudder in September.  The TM had a much longer course than the year before, so it’s likely I was a little ill-prepared for that too but adrenaline, insanity and Team Mudtallica got me through it.  I signed up for the North Face Half anyway, intending to train right and strong, until I realized my left knee and right hamstring were just not ever feeling okay, more like electric cattle prods were being shot into my joints and muscles with every stride, or if I wore high heels.  Yes, that was the validation of the injuries: the inability to wear already ill-advised footwear thereby ruining a great outfit.

With a lack of running, my writing jams up too, which as I have lamented before, I don’t like one bit.  It being the end of the year and an obvious time for reflection, I have added this conundrum to my list of what to work on in 2012.  (I must make a big happy note though, that 2011 was the first year in about the last seven or so where more seem to go well than not, so hey, progress!)  In that herky jerky six weeks of to train or not to train I did write several drafts and had one MASSIVE epiphany about a project I want to undertake in 2012.  My intention is to beat Resistance back for the next two weeks of 2011, finish the good ones of the drafts and begin to outline the bigger project.  This is my way of applying some discipline that I want to be spending on running, and hopefully building a new muscle that can lift my writer’s brain up when my knees need some rest.

Fingers crossed!

An easy way to get myself back on the writing wagon is to refer to my Life List, and see if there are any progress reports I can share on these projects and wishes.  Sure enough, #20, Get Back In The Christmas Spirit is timely and has hit some benchmarks!  After many years of less than enjoyable Christmases, I knew I would have to make a conscious choice to participate in the festivities of the season, even though I do get a wicked giggle out of the contrary grinchiness that is so close to the surface for so many.  More seriously however, is a deep sadness that many of us do experience and for reasons only those who have felt it will understand, I am unwilling to dismiss entirely.  I wrote about that sadness with particular clarity two years ago and when I re-read it on Friday it made me both smile and tear up.

So, it makes me happy to report the following heart-size growing merriments the past two weeks (with accompanying slideshow!):

I got a tiny tree that fit in the back seat of my car, and holds about one-third the ornaments I own.

I went to several Christmas parties and instead of ducking out early without saying goodbye, I ate, drank, danced, laughed, hugged, danced, smooched, recovered from hangovers, sore feet and lack of sleep and then did it all again.

I exchanged gifts and still will not ever understand the nuanced strategies of gift stealing.

I ate Christmas cookies for breakfast.

I put jingle bell collars on the dogs whenever we go for walks.

I got my nails painted bright red and my toes greenie-gold.

But, the biggest Return to Christmas Spirit has to be that I am going home to New Mexico for the first time in I think close to 15 years.  And although I am a little nervous about any unforeseen emotional land mines, I am so excited to be in my hometown, with my mom and many wonderful old friends who love me just the way I am because I often forget, they see me the way I need to remember to see myself: happy and capable and fun and deserving of all their love, attention and affection.  Welcome Christmas, bring your light!

As I am going through this creative process, I am paying even closer attention than I normally do to the way writers use analogy and metaphor to express concepts and ideas, a skill I have retapped from when I was teaching. And I guess because I am so tuned in, I was profoundly affected by the way writer and blogger John Scalzi used an Ursula Le Guin story to frame his very concise description of the way adults failed to protect children in the Penn State child molestation scandal. The story describes a utopia where everyone is perfectly happy and well cared for, with the exception of one child that is kept in a miserable and disgusting solitary confinement. Each citizen is ultimately told of the child and then must make the decision whether or not to accept that their seemingly perfect existence requires the constant suffering of an innocent child. Obviously, this means that everyone who has been living there knows and has done nothing to protect the child.

This powerful and simple metaphor should give every single person who reads about the adults’ lack of action in protecting the children that were sexually abused by Jerry Sandusky the clarity to understand that all of these adults willfully chose to let a child suffer to protect their utopia that was Penn State. And yes, that includes the man at the top himself, Joe Paterno. Few things in life are black and white, almost none. The one exception: there is nothing defensible about doing the least to protect a child from being raped by an adult. Not. One. Thing.

Please read John Scalzi’s excellent piece here.

And stay tuned for my breakthrough analogy on government and it’s elected officials.