scales...of justice?

when i started my professional career three years ago particular emphasis was placed on my professional obligation to maintain a work and life balance. they (they being the corporate types) contended that time i spent at work should be countered with complete personal maintenance on the other end. oh, to dream. i managed, but i never really took vacations. i felt guilty when i got sick. i felt accountable to someone, i guess, or at least some idea that was bigger than my self.

failed balance was met with the ultimate counter-weight-- a layoff. unemployment is nice, but it is one nasty mother when it comes to brain atrophy and capacity for thought, multi-tasking or simply tasking, for that matter.

now that i am a grad student, i realize the true necessity of balance. in my opinion, this idea of balance, i have realized, may be the most essential element of my life, besides water and air. i guess, though, i'd forget to consume those things, too, if i didn't institute some policy of self-maintenance. i kid you not, my life would be all $5 wine from plaid pantry and the foods i made in september and froze for the days when time to cook would be redistributed to time to book (is it healthy to eat chili and lentil soup five nights a week?).

i'm having a hard time getting the hang of grad school. honestly, i don't remember how i did it during undergrad. four courses a quarter and three jobs? if i even attempted something so daring today i'm not sure i'd survive.

i guess, i write this mostly because i realize the profound need for balance in my life. i need an equal distribution of social time and school time and work time and homework time. i need to fulfill my deep-seeded need for human connection and interaction while maintaining my school work in the face of unrelenting academic rigor. right now, i simply don't have the answer. all i have is a stack of articles that need summarized, and a plan that needs analyzed. school, how i love to hate you while i love you.

and, oh, how i long for you, corporate america, with your vain insistence upon work life balance; you poor thing, you don't know the half of it.

there are a 100 reasons this week is perfect

here is a list:

when the blinds are open in my bedroom, i feel like i'm in the tree outside my window.

painting and crafting

wonderful neighbors

i have time on my hands

i'm sleeping!

distance makes the heart grow much fonder

rosebud salve makes everything right

the quilt my grandmother made for me

coffee and bagels and hillary

new friends with challah baking skills

a desire to paint my kitchen table teal

it is fall

i'm photographing again

we see, we are

blogging here for the time being: weseeweare.wordpress.com.

i'll fight

in recent days it has begun to supremely irk me that the insurance industry in this country has the power it does to reduce human life to simple cost/benefit ratio that determines whether life is worth it or not. insurance companies are not god and they should not get to decide the fate of people like my friend. here is her situation:

I write to you because I know you are a passionate advocate for health care reform. I write to you as a 24-year-old newlywed who has been fighting for her life since childhood. I write to you as a victim of our broken health care system.

I suffer from Type I diabetes, Crohn’s Disease, problems with my thyroid and a severe immune disease. It is this immune disease that will, without further treatment, end my life in only a few years. Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID) has left me with a severely depleted and dysfunctional immune system, unable to fight disease and with organs that are rapidly deteriorating as they are under constant attack.

I was diagnosed with CVID in 1999, but my doctors believe I was born with the genetic defect that caused its appearance. Since 2006, I have been battling the most severe complication that has resulted from my CVID – pulmonary dysfunction. Pulmonary dysfunction has left my lung capacity at half of what is normal. Since 2006 I have coughed 1,230 days straight. I have learned to function with a fever. I have mapped out the quickest routes in and out of buildings that don’t require stairs because a single flight of stairs leaves me short of breath and afraid that I may pass out. I have given up on my dream of carrying a child. I have lived my life as a 24-year-old in a 90 year-old body.

But now my immune system has stopped working, and I am left with no other choice but to pursue a stem cell transplant to rebuild my immune system.

Without this transplant the common cold could leave me dead. This transplant would give me an entirely new immune system – the expectation is that it would cure me of CVID and Crohn’s Disease. When my doctor informed me that a transplant would be my only option, my husband and I began planning for the invasive treatment. While we knew it would change our lives dramatically, we thought the tests, the quarantine, the surgery, and the long recovery would eventually allow us to rediscover our lives as normal 20-somethings with our whole lives ahead of us.

But just a month after we started our preparations, I was informed by Regence that they will not cover my transplant. According to Regence, Those who suffer from CVID do not usually see such rapid or progressive decline in health, so transplants are rarely necessary for those with my diagnosis. Regence claims there simply is not enough proof that a transplant will help my adult body. However, the common and most successful treatments for patients with CVID have been tried on me — they have failed.It is the opinion of my immunologist and his world-renowned team of colleagues that transplant is the only option left to save my life.

I have appealed Regence’s decision three times. Now I have few options left. My husband is a police officer and I work for the American Diabetes Association, the $250,000 operation cost is not within our reach. My doctor has been a tireless advocate for me, but our appeals to Regence have fallen on deaf ears. These deaf ears have written my death certificate at the age of 24, a death certificate that could be avoided if it weren’t for corporate greed.

I write because I want my story told. I write to bring attention to this problem. My death certificate may have been written, but it is not signed yet.

essential ingredients

the bad thing about entering a professional graduate program is that there are a whole set of professional skills that are somehow required.  so instead of talking about how that makes me nervous i'll just point blank state that i don't know how to use auto cad (nor do i know what that is), google sketch-up, or the adobe creative suite.  i don't know how to draw exceptionally well or visually render perspective drawings of space.  but these people let me in, so they get what they get. 

however, on the upside, i do know how to make mac-and-cheese from scratch, a recipe that never fails to make me feel good about myself and my capacity to do anything.  i can make a roux, a béchamel, and delight the senses.  i also know how to politely sever my relationship with an organization where i suffered the angry meanderings of an employee to on a daily basis.  oh, and i get to hang out with some awfully wonderful people this entire weekend in what will soon be my new home.  

life, though more complex, is still very good.

Also, you should try making this: CRACK  If all else fails, this will make you feel like a genius.

the feeling of space

I knelt over the vacant cinder-block border into vacancy, the dirt was iron rich , dark yet empty.  I thought about the day I spent an entire afternoon in her lavender and blush colored button-down gingham.  That was when the grass was potato-greens and the beds were all gladiolas and daisy.  I thought, "he loves me, he loves me not," and she chanted alongside me on the front stairs.  The slam of the gate as he returned from his work just up the hill, that black-iron structure looming in the background.  How's my girl?  Today, who does he mean?  

There is loneliness.  A loneliness much larger and grand than empty flower beds or the loss of a loved one.  There is the ever present reminder of their life, their love, their smell in the foreground and background of everything you see.   It is her sliver-white hairs in bristles of an old silver-plate brush, her finger-print on a measuring cup.  It is the way he sits there waiting to see her thinking nothing about her old grey hairs, but the affirmative daisy petals that flew away in the wind.  And he sits there in his seat, waiting to be carried away with them.

 he loves me.

we made a deal

I applied to graduate school because I have a romantic relationship with industrially desolate places.  They're just the environment to rust the edges of your own humanity and enable you to gather up the muster to do things that are really difficult.  Like attempt to learn from them in an effort to preserve and revitalize despite their failings.

I took the above photo of the gold medal flour mill on the bank of the Mississippi river from the Guthrie theater's citizen overlook in Minneapolis, Minn.   I'm sad to report, that despite everything I loved about this place, in particular the incredible architecture that proliferates throughout the city, the intersection of working-class culture and industry, the city's successful endeavor to preserve its history through the adaptive re-use of industrial space, and their successful reinvigoration of a challenging environment, Minneapolis' gross failure in keeping its city vibrant and alive makes it practically impossible for me to join the University of Minnesota's urban planning program with good conscience.  

With so many of their graduates working with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, I have a hard time understanding how they can argue that street-level commercial space is unnecessary, that infrastructure investment for wider sidewalks is inappropriate, or that suburban separation of businesses districts is acceptable.  I mean, if the goal is a world class city isn't the first step getting people to actually want to spend time in the city?!  It was enraging.  People don't walk in Minneapolis.  They drive.  Every where.  And more disappointing is that not one neighborhood managed to capture my imagination.  With the exception of the recently revitalized wearhouse district, there was absolutely nothing visually interesting about the urban environment and that was more depressing than the allegedly depressing and desolate industrial surroundings.

After a brief return to Seattle, I spent two days in Portland.  Immediately after stepping into the central business district I witnessed people using public transit and walking.  God forbid!!  

Portland is not as visually interesting as even Seattle, and has much to be desired in the way of architecture, but they have green space, public space, public transit, navigable neighborhoods and a planning department that is obviously focused on putting the public in space.  For these reasons Portland is the kind of city I want to live in, and the place where I want to learn.

Portland State's planning program offers specializations in sustainability, community and economic development, and transportation.  I will spend 50% of my time practically applying the theories of urban planning in the field.  I will work directly with the community in bettering the urban environment. 

Sure, leaving Seattle is a hard decision, but I'm already well suited for things of this nature, I've got that rusty grit of industry under my nails, and I've made changes like this before.  Sometimes parting is for the best, it allows a girl to test her mettle.  I mean, Seattle is the type of city that spoils a person.  I spend so much time here that when I'm away for a little while I truly come to realize how wonderful it is here.  Sure, it has it's faults (transportation among the most significant), but it is also cleaner, brighter, easier to navigate, visually interesting, and more beautiful than most places.  Living in Portland and learning in a city that succeeds where Seattle fails will only enhance the fervor with which I will return.  

At that point I'll re-assess my love affair and romanticism with industrial cities, and maybe Seattle will have finished it's light rail.