Good Saturday

Today was going to be a pretty uneventful, even boring, Saturday. Sure, I'd meet up with some friends at the Sunnyvale Farmers' Market, in the morning, but other than that and a few errands (dry cleaning, rest of the grocery shopping) I had little else to do. Usually, on such a free day, Mark and I would come up with a crazy scheme to go to the city (SF) or even Napa, on a whim. At least we would play catch and watch a movie. But not today, since Mark has work to do. In fact, when Mark first announced he had to work quite a bit this weekend, I was disappointed, because he knew I was going to be out of town during the week leaving him free to stay late at the office and/or work late at home without feeling as if he was neglecting me. But his deadlines are not always within his control, and Chicago wanted to launch on Monday, so he's working over the weekend.

Still wondering what to do with my afternoon, I recalled my weekends when I was at Fenwick, and the awful feeling of spending all of a beautiful Saturday cooped up in my office with only the free Starbucks coffee to help me block out the sound of carefree sun-filled fun outside. I recalled the feeling of returning to the office at 9am on a Saturday after having left the office only eight hours earlier, and spending the entire Saturday pulling together exhibits, making sure boxes and boxes of 3-inch binders contained the appropriate documents in the appropriate order for someone else's deposition or depo prep. And suddenly I was relieved and happy that I had spent a morning outside sampling fresh, local produce, enjoying my friends, and was now home with Mark, even if he's going to be at his computer most of the afternoon.

Old Song New

Ever hear an old song as if you're hearing it for the first time? It just happened to me with John Mayer's "Why Georgia." I had my iPod going on random, and it came up. The music was just for background, as I was doing other things, but all of a sudden, the lyrics came to the forefront of my consciousness and it hit me clearer than ever what the song was about. I always understood the lyrics before, but now I understand the people for and about whom those lyrics were written.

For the past six months, I've been playing at figuring out what to do with the rest of my life. I had fooled myself into thinking I had figured out my options, and just had to choose. I rationalized the time off as some much-needed, possibly even deserved, time to reconnect with friends, spend precious time with family and help out those close to me in need of help. I also pretended to know what I wanted to do next - I would either go in-house or "start over" in patent prosecution, with my pipe dreams of teaching or getting my Ph.D. in English Lit in tact as pipe dreams. God forbid I have no idea of what to do next!

I realized this week that it has taken me six months just to get ready to really think about the question. In that time, I applied to four job openings, only because they were the best of what was available in the legal field, but not really because I wanted any of them. Only one of those companies called me, and in talking to them, I realized I only knew what I didn't want, and not what I did want. Also in that time, I picked up Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life" three times without getting past the introduction.

I've been waiting for an epiphany, or for fate to intervene and push me in one direction or another. Nothing so far. As I've learned from Bronson's book, this is common. I suppose it is appropriate that traumatic events leave you only with shell shock, recoil, an instinctive knowledge of what you don't want. They don't inform on what you do want. I always thought if you could figure out what you didn't want, by process of elimination you could figure out what you did want. I'll admit the latter question is much more difficult and real than I've previously given it credit for.

For someone who has always known what the next ten steps were, I've been surprisingly adrift. I wouldn't say I'm lost. I know where I am in life, what my priorities are, and I've figured out the important part of my life - the personal/social, family/friends part. I'm happy. In fact, having a stable and full personal life delays my need to find my next (true?) professional purpose, because it's almost enough. In fact, I thought for a brief while that I could do nothing (professionally) for the rest of my life. But all my friends and family know, and now I do, too, that I can't go on doing nothing, even if it is financially possible, for the same reason(s) that I stuck out two years of bioengineering even though I had no desire to be an engineer; that even after figuring out I wasn't cut out for engineering, I wouldn't graduate college without a science degree; and that I wouldn't go into any ordinary field of law - it had to be one where you had the added technical layer. I don't consciously know what all those reasons are, but I know one is that I am haunted by my potential. It nags me to make the most of it.

Figuring out how best to make the most of my potential was easier in high school. It's harder now that I've gone through what seems an entire cycle of "What Should I Do With My Life," and am trying to figure out the next volume, "What Should I Do Next With My Life." Last weekend, I found I was finally ready to read Bronson's book, a collection of stories about people, including himself, that have asked themselves the same question. If his book has shown me anything, it's that everyone finds their way differently. Although he tries valiantly to categorize the stories somehow (he says he's always been good at math, so I imagine his left brain just wouldn't let him put these stories down in random order), his organization seems a little forced to me. As he admits, most of the stories fit in many, if not all, of the chapters.

And then I hear, "Am I living it right? ... It might be a quarter life crisis or just the stirring in my soul ... Either way, I wonder sometimes about the outcome of a still verdictless life ... Don't believe me when I say I've got it down," and I get it, I get the song. I used to dismiss such musings as belonging to lazy, unmotivated, spoiled people wanting an excuse to delay work or thinking they deserved better than what is out there for them. Now I'm one of them. It's uncomfortable, hence the rationalizations and false plans described above. But now that I know, I can get down to trying things out and seeing if they stick.

Vacation Alice

I always seem to possess superhuman strength starting the day before a vacation until a day or two before the end of the vacation. On Monday night, I stayed up until 5am packing, tightening up my itinerary for our trip to England, printing maps to match my itinerary, printing our boarding passes, etc. It didn't help that our desktop computer is really slow.

The maid arrived at 8:30am, and while I could have slept in a little more since our bedroom is always the last room she cleans, I needed to finish our packing before she got to our room so that she wouldn't have to navigate suitcases splayed open on the floor and piles of things that still need to go in the suitcase. So I got up.

I was completely finished packing by 10:30am, more than 8 hours before the flight, and I'm sure a record time for me. I'm usually a last minute girl. I could have taken a nap after the maid left, but I didn't. Instead, I proceeded to tidy up the clothes and knick-knacks that didn't make it into the suitcases, clear and charge the camera, clean up my TiVo line-up (this included watching some of my TiVo'd programming while I ate lunch so that I could delete it), toss food that wasn't going to make it through the week, pick up dry cleaning so that Mark would have pants to wear when we returned, turn off alarms, and otherwise get the house ready for our return.

Next thing I knew, I was off to the airport, we were on the plane, and I had gone 36 hours with only 3 hours of sleep. The flight wasn't the most comfortable (see Travel with Alice blog), and I only slept a few hours of the 11-hour flight. Luckily, the rest of the way to Bath was smooth. When we got to our B&B, it was 9am Wednesday morning in California, and I had slept less than 7 hours in 2 days. It seems hunger is more powerful than sleep, though, so after unpacking a bit, we ate, and I finally crashed a few hours later. It was 10pm Bath time (2pm back home).

You would think I would then sleep for at least 8 hours before waking up bright-eyed, but I found myself fully awake at 4am. I tried unsuccessfully for half an hour to go back to sleep, so I got online and wrote this blog. It's now 6:50am, and I've updated FB and both my blogs.

I can't wait for breakfast at 8am!

A good breakfast

I was naturally awake before 8am today, for the first time in weeks. I've been staying up late with Mark - him working, me reading and watching TV shows he'd rather not watch (i.e., Castle, Jamie At Home, Poker After Dark, etc.), and waking up late as a consequence (the luxury of not having kids or jobs to force me awake unnaturally, and generally living life a la Hodgkinson's "How to Be Idle"). I'm hoping it's due to a few days of exercise and good eating. So I was feeling good this morning just about that alone.

While I watched the morning news, though, I heard my stomach rumble and started to fret about what I had left in the house that was gluten-free for breakfast. Yes, I've survived two gluten-free days, including a couple of meals at Sandy's house (thanks, Sand, for supporting my hippy whims). In my hunger-induced irrational panic, I Googled "gluten free breakfast" for ideas, and was happy to find a list of gluten free breakfast suggestions. I'm not interested in buying artificially gluten-free foods to sustain this diet, so I dismissed all the suggestions that involved gluten-free bread, flour or cereal. The list did remind me, however, that I have eggs, fruit, and veggies already in my fridge.

I started with the idea of scrambled eggs and grapefruit, which then turned into something much more luxurious upon opening the fridge. Next thing I knew, I had put together a beautiful breakfast comprising a fluffy egg and asparagus scramble, grapefruit segments and raspberries tossed with brown sugar, and coffee to wash it all down. Needless to say I am very happy with my impromptu gluten-free, organic and local breakfast (except the brown sugar, not sure where it came from or if it's organic), and looking forward to a good day.

Gluten free?

I watched The View this morning, where Elisabeth Hasselbeck was promoting her new book "The G-Free Diet," and talking about Celiac Disease, and it reminded me of my brief and unpleasant encounter with gluten-free pasta. I remember vaguely a flash of media fervor about the health benefits of a gluten-free diet, or more accurately, how awful gluten was for your health. I didn't have lots of time then to explore the facts, and so I impulsively bought some gluten-free pasta to try and see if I could even stand eating it. It was inedible, so I tossed the rest of the package, and the idea of going gluten-free along with it.

Well, this morning's discussion on The View peaked my interest again, and this time, I spent some time looking at what a gluten-free diet actually might include (rather than exclude). Surprisingly, maybe because my eating habits have improved in the past couple of years, at least 70% of what I eat is gluten-free already. Since I'm already incorporating more fresh, organic/pesticide-free, local produce and free-range, cage-free, organic-feed meat into my diet, I figure going gluten-free can't be that much of a stretch. So I'll try it out for a week, and see what happens. It will help a great deal that rice, fruit, meat, vegetables, vegetable/olive oil, and nuts (even honey-roasted!) are all gluten-free.

Balance despite my disorganized living

I don't know if my friends and family can tell, but I lead a very disorganized life. I value organization, and when it's important to be, I can be organized (people have seen my travel itineraries, and as an attorney in a law firm, needless to say it was necessary and always my greatest compliment from my colleagues). But I'm just not cut out to operate on a daily schedule (waking up, sleeping, working out, blogging, etc. at the same time or order everyday), everything in my house in place, bed made, laundry folded and dishes washed and dried. I figure every day out as I go along, sometimes not washing and putting away dishes and clothes, even when I have the time and energy (poor Mark). It both suits me and bothers me at the same time.

Today is a perfect case in point. I spent all morning in bed with the laptop in front of me and the TV on, trying to remember my dream from last night, learning about how Tyra Banks became the big star she is today, updating my Netflix queue, and thinking about all the things I need to do today. I've been up since mid-morning, it's nearly mid-afternoon, and I still haven't eaten or done anything else productive.

But to make up for this egregiously lazy first half of the day, I have a jam-packed afternoon. After I eat some food, I'll put together my clothes drying rack so that I can finally try out my Laundress cashmere and wool shampoo, which will be one more environment-friendly habit I'm attempting to adopt (no more dry cleaning my sweaters, and more drying clothes in the sun in general). Exercise and tidying up (dishes and more laundry) are also goals for today, and with Mark attending a work happy hour today, I might just get it all done.

I always thought I was doomed to never find balance, because I associated balance with organization (having an hour a day to exercise, an hour a day to read, eating 3 square meals a day at times that make sense, taking a vacation or two every year, getting 7-8 hours of sleep every night), but I guess this is my own version of balance. It's not for everyone, but I suppose it suits me.

This Side of Skepticism

For those who haven't read it yet, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a semi-autobiographical novel about the coming of age and loss of innocence of a wealthy boy named Amory Blaine. It was the first novel that Fitzgerald published. He was fresh out of Princeton.

I started reading This Side of Paradise as a skeptic. Fitzgerald is generally known for his "lyrical" prose, which I thought from reading his more famous novel, The Great Gatsby, was more pretentious and weightless than lyrical - weightless as in lacking the seriousness and depth of someone that has truly struggled or suffered, just as you would expect from an author that grew up with Fitzgerald's privileged background. I recall with The Great Gatsby that I found it difficult to get past his "style" to find any substance in it, such that even after finishing the novel, I was hard pressed to find a good topic for a paper. Yes, I know, commentary/exploration of the American aristocracy, American dream, new money and old money, blah blah - to me it was just a rich person writing about what he knew, which was other rich people.

Not having been entirely impressed with The Great Gatsby, I hadn't read anything by Fitzgerald in over a decade, so I had very few expectations for This Side of Paradise other than some light reading in pretty prose about a wealthy young boy growing up. My impressions from Gatsby of pretentiousness and weightlessness came flooding back as I started to read This Side of Paradise, where I found the same flowery prose (this time sans the sinister undertones of adultery and murder) and worried I'd get annoyed and never finish; but unlike with The Great Gatsby, by the end of This Side of Paradise, I understood and felt its gravitas.

I started out enjoying it as a story about a carefree, young boy growing up with the leisure of an excellent private education, the luxury of being consumed by young love, and the indulgence of reading, writing and reciting poetry to his heart's content. With so much leisure, luxury and indulgence in the foreground, Fitzgerald barely had room to squeeze in a few nods to the idyllic background settings, such as Princeton and Lake Geneva.

Then the usual tragedies befall the hero - love lost, school boys part ways, death in the family, a slight implication that his family's fortune, which had never been the greatest among his peers, has begun to dwindle - and you start to feel sorry for him, but not too much. The beginnings of his disillusionment are still somehow shallow, immature and overly dramatic. You can still see him finding his way to success, marrying his second or third love, and regaining the sheen and confidence he had in his youth.

Suddenly, there's war, which comes and goes quickly in the book, but signals a dramatic shift in Amory's development. There is also the loss of a job, a deeper love, good friends to both death and circumstance, and even more money, until finally his misfortunes have stripped him of all of his ego, the youthful, unsubstantiated confidence of his youth. I was impressed with Fitzgerald's willingness to break down his hero (presumably a version of himself) to that extent.

I also found Fitzgerald's emphasis on the loss of love, both romantic and platonic, rather than the tragedy of war, to be refreshing and brave. He allows that the war changes Amory and contributes to his loss of innocence, but it is Amory's relationships that define him more than his circumstances, a notion that I agree with.

Don't get me wrong, Fitzgerald's writing is still flowery and overly dramatic all the way through to the end, and I'm still put off by his devotion to poetry, but I found plenty to love about the choices Fitzgerald made in the story, and wish I had read it first as a teenager so that I could compare my impressions then and now.

Live in a bubble or die

Today is one of those days that brings into sharp relief the simple fact that I do not get along with nature. My body has been trying to tell me to live in a bubble as long as I can remember. All the way back to elementary school, I remember having sneezing contests with myself - would I break a new record with the number of sneezes I'd have in a row? My record was well into the twenties. If I hadn't made it a game, I don't know how I would have coped, because my allergies have always been just plain miserable.

People suggested exercise, but I'd have a sneezing and coughing fit after every run. Swimming was supposed to be particularly helpful, but I had to be careful to not sit around in cold water too long or get cold while laying wet in the shade, since that would trigger sneezing fits. On the other hand, so would stepping into direct sunlight from the shade. Hot or cold, sun or shade, I couldn't win.

I came to describe them (to the myriad of doctors and others that were interested) as "like hay fever, except everyday and all year long, worst in the morning and late at night." I loved cats, but they triggered particularly awful symptoms. Who knew the clear liquid protecting the whites of your eyes could grow thick, puffy, and gooey. Ahhh, allergic reactions are awesome in their own special way. I didn't learn until much later that these were called "anaphylactic" allergies that would one day threaten my life.

In college, I moved to Berkeley, where the air was better (than in LA) and the moisture in the air from the more frequent rain was helpful, but I faced new enemies - most of the buildings were old and difficult to rid of mold and dust. But by then, I had learned to deal with it pretty well, for the most part (i.e., kept tissue with me at all times, drank lots of water, exercised in the early mornings when after dust and pollen had settled in the night and the air was dewy and cool). And to a certain extent, I thought, I had outgrown at least the really awful everyday allergies, and really was left with just seasonal allergies. By then, I had developed a great appreciation for breathing easy, literally. Boy did I enjoy breathing easy through my nose - still do.

Then in the summer of 2003, while still living in my Berkeley studio apartment and just a few weeks before taking the California bar exam, my allergies took an ugly turn. I had my first severe anaphylactic allergy attack, with ALL the symptoms (I won't go into the gory details). Suffice it to say, it was ugly. I was ugly, for days ... and, I'm told by the ER docs and everyone else, I could have died, although, despite the throat constriction, I never thought at any point in the entire event that I would get to a point where I couldn't breathe altogether, as is the fear with anaphylactic allergies. In fact, I've had a number of episodes since then, some just as bad with even quicker reactions, but I'm always surprisingly calm, considering the circumstances.

In any case, I finally got one of those pinprick tests after that first full-blown anaphylactic allergy attack, to see what could have caused it. Well, it turns out, I'm allergic to nearly everything they test for, in varying degrees. I'm allergic to various nuts, fruits, seafood, and numerous environmental allergens, although not enough where I would break out or die from exposure to just one thing, except maybe elm trees. Out of the more than 30 common allergens that they tested for, I am at least somewhat allergic to more than 90%. They give each reaction a rating - a combination of numbers between 0 and 4, and anywhere from one to three +'s. For instance, my reaction to elm trees was a 4+++. The reaction spread so far it melded into the other nearby bumps, making it difficult to rate a few of my other reactions. Even the control prick, the mere act of pricking my skin, caused a 1+ reaction. I could tell from the nurse's reaction that this was not normal, not even at the allergy clinic. I was special. Again, the message was that I should maybe consider living in a bubble.

Confusingly, most of it I ate or was exposed to regularly. So I didn't stop eating all of it, but I have cut out a few things that seem to have directly caused my most severe reactions (yogurt, peanut butter, old chocolates, particularly fruit-filled, anything that might have any chance of having developed mold, or turned, at all), and to be careful not to mix too many of those foods or allergens together (i.e., not eat lots of peanuts and clean a dusty closet right afterward). As for living in a bubble, that's just not an option.