A while back in the glorious 1950s, when America was perfect, women wore aprons and life was just a goddamn pleasure every turn, Akira Kurosawa did up a little masterpiece about truth and how subjective it can be. And, right about in the middle of the murder or the rape, you’d be thinking what the fuck does my life have to do with 12th century Japan?

Everybody’s living has a little bit of the subjective truth in it.

Which brings me to my week. Amid some serious work of the kind for which I get paid (and which is being as buffeted by the fuckedupness of Wall Street and markets as any for-profit gig), running around making plans for the new place and hanging curtains and blinds (Damn you all to hell, Ikea!), I slipped in a dinner with someone I literally see at weddings and funerals.

We are spawn of the same family tree, matriarchally speaking, but with me as one of the younger branches of our generation’s section of tree, and her as an elder, our twigs never intersected must. It was one of those long, rambling My Dinner with Andre dinners, where you talk about everything and nothing. (As a note from the internet, apparently there’s a My Dinner with Andre the Giant. Note to self, must see.)

As a known blogger and a known comedian and a known person with a tendency to say shit publicly and unrepentantly, I was cajoled (actually threatened) into not writing about or referring to specifics of the conversation lest there is collateral damage and hurt to others. As nothing I was told actually was factual or had a notion on which you could hang your hat, it’s easy enough to honor and I ain’t going to go there.

But, and you bloody well knew there would be a but, nothing can stop me from writing out what I know. Or what I feel.

Here’s what I know. I probably loved my mother, meaning I had all of the normal, appropriate synaptic flashes and associates with the woman from whose womb I bounced. Love, like truth is subjective, and I hate talking in Hallmark cliched absolutes.

So, I loved Pat. So the fuck what? The key thing is I LIKED PAT. As an adult, when I became one, I saw ways in which she and I could talk, relate “as a person,” a phrase she would use. She taught me to bake and a lot about simple meal cooking. I can roast a turkey thanks to her. We both like(d) crafts and crossword puzzles, seldom keeping our hands free from some kind of busywork.

Her sharp mind and sharper tongue made it interesting to hear her interpretations of the news of the day, politics, religion and occasional forays into sex (of the “what’s on the TV” kind, certainly not mine or hers). I remember so many odd little conversations that were just straight out funny or interesting.

Like the phone call, where not introducing herself beyond hello, and not needing an introduction, she launched directly into “Explain to me, how if you’re a man trapped in a woman’s body and you get a sex change, you would now want to be a lesbian.”

“Um, ah, Hi, Ma. How are you?”

I also respect Pat and all of the ways in which her sacrifices, some crazy and some necessary, made me and my siblings all what we are today, and we are all pretty stable and successful, thanks for asking. We never fucking knew what it was like to think you were poor or that you couldn’t afford more than mac and cheese to go with a stretched pound of hamburger for a family of six. We were clean, well-dressed and fed enough, and we fancied ourselves just as good as the other kids with intact families. Because we were.

Being a school teacher meant she was around more than not. Being a school teacher meant that she could push us in ways that matched our aptitudes and brought us to teachers who she knew and respected. Being a teacher meant not only could she and did she help her five children, but she helped a WHOLE fucking damn lot of kids in our town, some of whom showed up at her wake in quiet, posthumous thanks.

And, being a teacher, meant she gave up some of her dreams and the reasons that she had originally, as a young woman, gone to college. Personally, I’m not sure that if she ever went back into business, management or accounting or some one of the things she clearly could have handled, she ever would have gotten some of the spikes of happiness she had getting a learning disabled kid on a path to being able or making friends with some other great teachers.

I know she wouldn’t have gone on stupid adventures in the late afternoon with those teachers or my teacherly uncle. And, as a kid, I wouldn’t have been witness to some fun hi jinks and goofiness and learn that adulthood wasn’t all somber.

I can know these things, because I was there. I can feel them, because I was there. And, even if my truth is as flawed as anyone else’s truth, I’m comfortable in my reality.

So, when someone from the past comes into my present to teach me about the truths I don’t know, they should realize that it is they who may best be needing to step back. I’ve reviewed, tested, thunk about and wrestled many of my demons, thanks, so the light you’re shedding is 10 volt at best.

Why tell me about my family and how my life could have been or was? It ain’t like I wasn’t there in the thick of things.

I have to wrap this particular incoherent muse up quickly, because my present is knocking. Today our one goal is an appropriate dining room table for my new house in my new state (of the Union and of mind), and your ghosts do nothing in my present.

All I can say is, I fucking know now what my uncle the judge means about begrudgery. I also know now that my destiny always was and always will be a forward-thinking one. It will be one in which I make decisions and find my own truths.

Also, if my dad was in fact a social climber who over-insured himself and chased money and success, THANK FUCKING GOD. I owe him my imagination to see beyond Boston or any four walls.

And, goddamnit if I don’t love wearing myself, my heart and my politics on my sleeve. Vote Obama, even if you’re a redneck Republican deep down.

Folks who know me, know that I teeter on the edge of messianic Apple fandom. I just likes me a computer that does whats I want, when I want and looks all style-y while doing it.

Anyway, courtesy of Apple.com’s first page (built into the Safari browser as your home page and I’ve been too fucking lazy to ever change) is this paragraph:

No on Prop 8
Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Rock on Steve Jobs and Apple. And fuck you homophobic motherfuckers looking for the gay marriage band and sending the worst fucking lying propaganda to me and the rest of the state.

Anyone in the wild west, remember, that’s a big, fat NO to Prop 8.

I’m sure I spelled the title of this post wrong. But, what do I know from Italy.

What a long, freaking day of many transitions. Work, meeting in city, detour through the new homestead, more work and then an improbable, far from the land of my roots dinner with those self-same roots.

Basically, in the nutshell, in our home town there were two houses of cousins. Of those two houses, I was the youngest, and she was the oldest. In Palo Alto, we just were. Cousins and all with different (entirely) paths in life leading to the same diner. I think our moms, the sisters, would have bee happy to see us breaking California bread.

Technorati Tags: feminists, family

As hard as it was to swing after a week looooooonnnnnnnngggggggg series of meetings and doings at work, I managed to punch off the clock at about 12 noon on Friday or so. Plans, I had plans to AT LONG FUCKING LAST USE THE KEYS THAT WERE VERITABLY BURNING A HOLE IN MY POCKET.

On Wednesday, all possible pieces of paper had been signed, the loan paperwork created some kind of Monopoly game shuffle where the rest of the theoretical worth of our newly purchased spread was passed along a chain, and our real estate agent handed off some keys. Our keys. Keys to the new house.

I headed out on Friday with the aim of some settling in and cleaning. M. showed up after his work day and prowled the house like we had broken and entered. B and E in our own shangri la.

Truth is we were both like the Clampetts, getting used to newfangled finery. Sure, we’re both accustomed to indoor plumbing, but with all new appliances, new surfaces, floors, it sure is like nothing and no where we’ve ever lived.

I was like an ancient ancestor playing with the newly invented fire for the first time when I was cleaning the kitchen sink. I thought I broke the faucet entirely or knocked something seriously loose, until I glommed onto the fact that there’s now such an invention as a pull-out spray faucet.

I honestly did not know such a fucker existed. I gotta take a shot of my own and put up on Flicker.com. Who would a thunk, though, we’d end up with plumbing technology we never knew was out there?

We rented this bad boy to get us around town and pick up an antique tea cart (of all things), which M. decided he would love on our new hardwood floors, and my new Singer sew machine built into a desk.

The best part of a weekend with a behemoth of a plain, white, unmarked paneled van was imagining all the children and whatnot we could have abducted.

Can’t you see the reenactment on Unsolved Mysteries?

By tonight, we used the van to load up a chair, love seat and coffee table for what’s amounting to M.’s rise of British-style colonialism room. (He figures a hookah and a woodcut of an old man smoking an opium pipe he saw at the consignment shop will complete the look. His tea cart looks pretty good next to my Brimfield Fair kilim from roughly a million years or a lifetime ago when I bought it for my Cambridge condo.

After signing our names repeatedly, M. and I headed down the street from our current digs to a French restaurant. He thought it was shameless scamming on my part, but smiling as the manager led us to an unreserved table in the lounge and telling him about our home buying scored us a couple of glasses of champagne. I’ll never be too proud to beg quality drinking. I was raised to enjoy a bargain and a glass of wine.

Technorati Tags: home_buying, real_estate

A long while back now, I signed a mortgage document for $63,000. I was one of those apparently now blameworthy lower middle-class folks who benefited from special programs for first time home buyers. I put about 7 percent down. A whole fucking $5K.

Hell, I bought my place from Freddie Mac, dealing with lawyers not people, because the title had a while before been repo’ed

I faced the same huge fucking ream of pieces of paper and wrist-twisting signing. Page after page of signing your name and promising and promising an promising you’ll pay for the four walls in which you’ve chosen to live. If all goes well, including my getting the cashiers check with many zeroes in the morning and getting it to the title company with the help of our agent, we’ll get the keys next week.

Fucking yikes. It’s still a cute little house, though.

I liked the old one, too. Even if I only owned the downstairs, and it was well over a hundred years old.

I’m sure it will work out just fine and dandy. M. and I will have a swell life.

And, I’ll have lemon trees to make lemonade and sell it in a little stand out front if we need some extra income. However, if I were prone to anxiety attacks, I would have been flat out shivering on the floor trying to reach for a fistful of whatever the cool kids are taking pharmacologically these days. All of my twitching, though, is rooted in theory.

When I sold the place that cost me five figures of dough in ‘95, I made a good chunk of 6-digit cake in the currency of 2006. I took almost all of that money, slapped it into accounts and put it out of sight as some-day-house money. (Oh, and I went on some fun trips, like to Europe just for the hell of it, bought a friend some chips and curry in the old country, and spent the last couple of years shopping or doing whatever struck my fancy. I mean, shit, who wouldn’t with cash in pocket?)

Before the prior house sale, I had some money in the bank but not tons. I could move across the country and find the right job, but no doubt a job was a must have to live and eat.

Generally speaking I don’t have much loot just lying around. With almost a 20-year career in not-for-profit labor, a gigantic fallback portfolio of greenbacks simply ain’t in the cards. There really isn’t much difference in the way I live between your basic pink and blue bills…

…or your standard issue green with pink and other tinges.

Even though they were a windfall. Even though I didn’t use them. Even though I saved the bills for EXPRESSLY THIS PURPOSE. It’s kind of nerve racking to say goodbye. I think I need a board game to remind me that paper has no intrinsic value (apart from maybe to the originating tree).

Not to mention, this time, M.’s sharing the bills, and the news is reporting only darkness that makes a mortgage almost on par with Red-Sea parting.

Technorati Tags: California, economy, fruit_trees, home_buying, luck, mortgage, real_estate, relationship

Here’s my new routine, debate style. Fire up my computer, fire up the TV, Twitter, watch, watch CurrentTV, read political weblogs, watch videos on people’s weblogs and twitters, watch CNN, watch MSNBC, slip in Lehrer if M. leaves the room and remote, watch more, read more.

I’m on information overload. I even read Maureen Dowd today. I normally don’t dig her schtick much, but I think we all need to remember her closer, “True mavericks don’t brand themselves.”

Although, that might presuppose those guys using a dictionary. Amusingly, my latest read in the weblogosphere, because it’s going to be my hometown news, threw out this post and link. Apparently the actual Mavericks, the descendants, are going for Obama and hating on the misuse of the family legacy.

And, while the rhetorical overkill is bringing me down, reliable Donna Brazile provides a reminder of what’s important. Watch her closing at the New Yorker Festival.

Apart from the presidential thang, I’ll be keeping the uplift in mind while striking down California’s proposed gay marriage ban.

I’ve been snookered into buying ladies’ yogurt. M. mocked me thoroughly for the prolonged yogurt-choosing process. Amusingly, I couldn’t really wedge myself in to get a good look until two other women about my age got the fuck out of the way.

I went for Jamie Lee Curtis yogurt.

I want to shit like the star of Halloween. Actually, better yet, the upcoming actress in The Fog, since we’re moving to the evocative mists of the Pacific Coast.

(Yes, it does look like we will be Pacific Ocean bound. The signing of a thousand pieces of paper and the oath of blood (signed in blood, natch) that is now a requirement in the post-bailout, credit crisis dark world is looking like it might happen on Friday. Like 4-5 days from now. Holy fucking sweet mortgage jesus.)

Back to the point of my posting. I have succumbed to marketing to yet another feminine product meant to fix up the perceived health problems of us women. Rather than a laboratory of hormones, microfibers, strings and good, old-fashioned cotton, I’ll be slurping on natural fruit flavors and a naturally occurring, “good” bacteria that a mega-international conglomerate corporation decided to rename and then say they are the only yogurt with that ingredient. Can they do that?

Maybe it’s my white woman, middle-class demographic. Or, maybe it’s the true, real and horrible fact, that my inside workings ain’t never felt quite like the olden days, since I journeyed hither and non in Uganda. You know, deep down my guts are those of a parochial girl who never left Braintree.

Technorati Tags: age, CurrentTV, current.com, Target: Women, California, mortgage, Pacifica, Jamie_Lee_Curtis, real_estate, social_networking, Uganda, women, travel

Let me get this straight, when Obama uses a little Deval Patrick he’s a plagiarizing weasel, but when Palin spends the night spinning Reagan’s corpse in the grave she’s orating? Did I get that right?

In case there is any question about her using someone else’s word, go ahead and read the transcript and search a few of the phrases that seemed a bit too smooth. Even the scripted “there you go again,” came from someone else’s improv. The flagrant bit was in her closing statements. I’ll let the New Republic weblog spell that one out. “Sunset years,” my ass.

Actually, it’s really interesting to read the transcripts. The YouBetchas and darns and doggones seem highly cheesy but authentic (like the mom’s of my childhood who would say “god love ya,” and “Jesus, Mary and Joseph”). Authentic seemingly are the strange outpouring of words in different directions. But, all in all, I think it’s safe to say she had a whole lot of fucking help to even get this far.

I mean, come on is there actually a verb predicate kind of thingy here?

PALIN: A two-state solution is the solution. And Secretary Rice, having recently met with leaders on one side or the other there, also, still in these waning days of the Bush administration, trying to forge that peace, and that needs to be done, and that will be top of an agenda item, also, under a McCain-Palin administration.

Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, Biden, campaign, Campaign 2008, debate, Democrats, economy, elections, GOP, Palin

What could I add when the only thought I have is what the fuck? What the serious, god on fucking high (if you believe in that and apparently she does, more than book learning), what sweet mystery of jesus is going on?

This answer is not a fucking answer. Or, really, it’s the kind of answer you give when you have no books in your house. No books (well, maybe the Bible and her kids school books). No newspapers. No periodicals. No information of a factual nature.

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

I have to call the editor of Foreign Policy tomorrow (for reals). Maybe I should ask him to send a free subscription to old Sarah.

Technorati Tags: 2008_Campaign, Politics, Sarah_Palin, Palin, television