How the Grateful Dead Ruined (and saved) My Life

The Grateful Dead, God bless 'em, enjoyed a career that spanned 30 plus years. I enjoyed them for perhaps 25 of those, although not as devotedly as others who built a lifestyle around the band and their pantheon of counterculture icons. I was too young to be part of that San Francisco scene, and too far east, but I caught the bus when it went by and I stayed on the bus in various ways for a long time.

I can safely say that I got to enjoy an extended young adulthood. Long after I saw age 35 and even after Jerry Garcia's death in 1995, when I turned 40, I made my place in this world with other Deadheads, enjoying a sort of idyllic life and yet trying not to fall into the "hipper than thou" trap. It made for interesting times, sometimes incredible fun, and a social safety net that could catch me, with all my eccentricities, when I fell. In retrospect, and I say this because I now find myself on the margins of this hippie caste, it was indeed a long, strange, trip that has culminated in a clearer understanding of what went wrong with the counter culture.

My own story is nothing special. I grew up in a nice suburb in a nice "medium sized manufacturing city" as an old friend used to call it. I knew that I heard that different drummer early in my life when I got wind of rock and roll and The Beatles. When the Summer of Love happened I was barely out of grade school. When Woodstock happened I was fourteen years old. I wanted to be a part of rock and roll and the music scene and was rabid about reading everything I could get my hands on. I had the first issue of Rolling Stone. In later years, when Cameron Crowe wrote his screenplay for "Almost Famous," he was writing what I dreamed of. What would eventually be diagnosed as a crippling case of clinical depression and imposter syndrome as well as social anxiety would keep me from realizing those dreams. For the most part I dropped out. I was never in danger of addiction, however, since I had a low tolerance for alcohol and most drugs. I wasn't a drinker. I did inhale.

The difference between then, or life up until May, 2000 and now, is that I have been away. The past decade has been a crash course in focus and determination. More to the point, coming home made things stand out in much sharper focus. There is the old song from the world wars that goes, "how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris?" (pronounced in true American hick: pair - EE). Well, I have been to the academic Paris. I did what most every red-blooded American single mother does when faced with a child starting Kindergarten: I went back to college. It was the best of both worlds decision in that it kept my child from being a latchkey kid.

Going back to college was my first clue. My friends were incredulous, my family dubious. I had a checkered employment past (I feel that I was doing "research" for "life skills"). I had started college once, but wandered off, never really quitting, just "putting it off for a year or twenty."



... continued

Oh and by the way ...

I did end up taking that job after all. I actually like my job and the people with whom I work. I still refuse to dangle prepositions.

Bad Blogger

I'm a bad blogger. Not only have I not posted in here in a year, but I have multiple blogs, none of which get any attention. For me to consider myself a writer, this does not bode well. I was just playing a fascinating game of Bejeweled Blitz which is mildly meditative and thinking about how I blow off my writing all the time, as if it were a red-headed stepchild and then I admonished myself for having more than one blogging spot. It is foolhardy to try to keep them all fed with blistering social insight and so it is easier to simply do nothing.

I also keep two blogs for one main reason and that is because I have a few readers who are on the same site. I consider one of those readers to be a dear friend, a kindred-spirited, menopausal reinvention of her former self, who braved the tempestuous ride through graduate school along with me but we will manage to keep communication.

I have been toying with the idea of going completely Google-based on my home computer. I already use most of their plugins, my opening brower page is my iGoogle page, my resume is online courtesy of Google, and I have all my photos uploaded with Picasa and hosted online by Google. It's really one-click fun despite all the people who bitch about Google. I have been assimilated by Googleness. That and Facebook. And Twitter. But those are other stories.

So I'm paring down to two blogs now, both on Blogger. My Motime account, Yankee in a Red State, will languish but really, that was my Florida blog. I'm still a Yankee but I no longer live in a red state and not because Florida went blue this past presidential election. I've changed latitudes and attitudes (apologies to Jimmy Buffett). You can catch me here most days, and sometimes on Where's Chindo?

Things are looking up?

This is the way the world works. I filed the last blog entry. The phone rang. My sister said her company was interested in hiring me for a contract job. We'll see how that works out.

Beating the Pavement

So, here's how our little slice of America goes at the moment. A snapshot, if you will, of an average American family trying to get by. Keep in mind that the price of gasoline is up to $3.97 a gallon in some places (cheapest gas is $3.87).

Both Frank and I get up early. He usually beats me to the computer. We feverishly check emails for notifications from CareerBuilder. I wait, and have my coffee and start to craft some beaded earrings to sell at the local markets because they're quick, I have the materials (generously donated by my friend) and I can sell them for egg money. It's odd that the term "egg money" comes into play here because that's the depression-era generation's term, not mine. I'm from the generation that was supposed to benefit from all the postwar prosperity we kept getting promised in film strips while sitting in a darkened classroom somewhere in the 1960s.

Once Frank is done at the computer I check my CareerBuilder and Monster.com accounts. We both apply for everything we feel we are qualified or skilled at and we wait.

I make the mistake of watching the news. The news is not good. Unemployment is up. My ancestors wail from their graves, reminding me how they survived the lean years. I'm glad I listened to their stories when they were alive. I'm glad I paid attention to my great-grandfather when he showed me how to grow things and how to milk a cow. It might come to that.

I'm frightened and fairly sick with worry because we're in our 50s and beginning to feel like no one values us as employees. We begin to learn that perhaps we are experienced in the wrong areas for this global economy. I begin to second-guess every decision I have made in my life.

Friends assure me that this is tough for everyone and I remind myself that things would not have been much better had we stayed in Florida. But I am still fraught with fairly self-reducing if not destructive thoughts about how we may be living IN boxes soon instead of out of them.

On the more cheerful side, I have started a book for people who suffer from depression. Let's call it "darkly hilarious" because we depressed folk need as much humor as possible to stave off the dark days. This is oddly juxtaposed with my obsessive worry, of course, but it's my safety net.

I did consider not writing this post but if a blog is not for venting sometimes, then what is it for? Yes, yes, I know: I have seen the openings for professional bloggers. I have yet to be able to separate professional from personal. My profession and my personal life are fairly intertwined and while I can separate the two, I think this blog would be incredibly dry if I didn't stop for a moment to voice fears that perhaps all of us are having and that saves me from total despair: I am not alone.

Home is where the stomach is.

*Burp*

Home food. Diner food. Good old grill in the back, hot turkey or meatloaf sandwich food.

Hot dogs that split open when they're on a charcoal grill or in a frying pan. White hot dogs! Two hots with everything and a side of fries from Gitsis Texas Hots. Garbage plates. Country Sweet chicken and ribs.

Amish pancakes. Chicken soup with a matzoh ball as big as a child's fist. High Falls Brewery - a fancy name for Genesee "Jenny" Cream Ale.

Buffalo wings from Buffalo. Italian sausage with peppers and onions. Cheeseburgers with hot sauce, Abbott's chocolate almond soft-serve ice cream, Pontillos Pizza.

Friday fish fries: haddock dipped in beer batter and deep fried. Served up with coleslaw and a baked potato (French fries if you don't like the baked spud.)

The Public Market on a Saturday morning: steaming hot coffee in one hand, canvas bags in the other, nose and toes freezing equally while buying bulk cheese, home grown vegetables, donuts from the Greek guy, bunches of fresh basil to make pesto with and bargain Monk's Bread made at the Abbey of the Genesee by real monks.

Tom Wahl's root beer. Charlie Reidel's loganberry drink. Pop. Not whiney "soda" or snooty "tonic." Just pop.

Bless me. I need an Alka Seltzer.

Lost Things

I am not sure how someone "loses" a mattress. (We have the box spring.)

Perhaps it was delivered to someone with no sense of ethics and who saw a pretty nice pillow top by Simmons and said "oh yes, this goes in the master bedroom," thinking "this will never be missed."

They claim it isn't in storage where it sat with my other things for a month.

I know for certain they did not leave it at my former abode because the buyer's agent was being a snot about every particle of anything that belonged to us being out of the house before they would do their walk-through.

So I leave it up to them. They are a national carrier with a big reputation and I am sure they will do the right thing. They say they have 45 days to work it out. If they don't I shall publish their name on this blog and then they'll be sorry. Muahahaha!!