Breaking News! Breaking News!

Breaking News!

We have the mailbox key! We have the mailbox key!

I knew you'd want to know. :)

Where's My Underwear, Dude?

Beautiful sunrise today here in Minneapolis MN. There’s a blanket of clouds low in the sky and the sun painted its rise across it. Blue and pink and gold and red and yellow and finally a pale gray.

It was good to just sit and watch it while doing a little blogging. It’s good to be moving slowly. Because, frankly, today is about the first day I haven’t felt lost.

The last 10 days have been rough on me and my sense of time and place. I have slept in 6 different beds in 10 days. I’ve spent two nights in the same bed twice -- the last two nights here at the Hilton and the previous two nights on a camp cot at my friend’s place in a nearby suburb. Before that, I spent each night in a different bed. Hell, I didn’t spend two nights in a row in the same town.

And there’s been tons of travel. Trains, planes, and automobiles (wait, was there actually a train? No. Just planes and automobiles.). But until I arrived in Minnesota I’d spent some part of every single day traveling to a new place.

• Wednesday, September 15: fly a bazillion miles from Australia to DC; sleep in my bed at home.
  
• Thursday, September 16: drive 40 miles to Manassas; sleep at my sisters‘.
  
• Friday, September 17: drive 135 miles to West Virginia; sleep in an old family bed (with a decent mattress, blessedly)
  
• Saturday, September 18: drive (quickly!) 110 miles to Charlottesville; sleep in a motel.
  
• Sunday, September 19: drive 80 miles to Haymarket; sleep at my sisters’.
  
• Monday, September 20: drive 40 miles to DC; sleep in my own bed.
  
• Tuesday, September 21: fly 1200 (?) miles to Minneapolis via Milwaukee; sleep on camp cot at friends’ house.
  
• Wednesday, September 22: don’t go anywhere! Sleep on same camp cot!
  
• Thursday, September 23: catch a ride to downtown; sleep in hotel.
  
• Friday, September 24: walk anywhere I need to go; sleep in the same hotel bed.

Got one more night in the hotel then it’s back to the ‘burbs (and the camp cot, which works far better than you are probably imagining) for 2 more nights then….well, more of the same.

And that doesn’t include the emotional “travels” of the last 10 days:

• A disturbing visit with my mom who was having a Very Bad Day (the next visit was much better)
  
• A fight with one sister while we were both having Very Bad Days that involved me hanging up on her. (She forgave me, fortunately.)
  
• Nephew’s dirt bike accident that necessitated a medevac and the fast drive to Charlottesville to a pediatric ICU. He’s fine now but I never did get the good cry I wanted to have for him.
  
• A dear friend lost her mother and her best friend on the same day, within 4 hours of each other. And I couldn’t attend her mother’s funeral as I have always intended to do because I’m in Minneapolis.
  
• The general disorientation of being here in the US but knowing that some part of me is still in Australia with Jeff.
  
• The general disorientation of being at a massage therapy conference even though I am not a practicing massage therapist right now.

Oh, yeah, and I’ve got clothing, suitcases, and belongings scattered across two continents/hemispheres, two states, and four different addresses, just in the US.

I’m pretty sure I’ve still got possession of all the underwear I brought with me. I think. Maybe I’ll go check…..

Free To Be As Crazy As We Want To Be

I recently mentioned to an Australian friend that I'd only seen two homeless people since I've been here. He was quite surprised. He didn't think Australia had any homeless people!

A sizable portion of the homeless population in the US are people living with some form of mental illness. In the US, you have to be a danger to someone else or in imminent danger of hurting yourself (and I'm not entirely sure about that second point) before you can be institionalized against your will.

And we define "a threat to yourself" pretty tightly I think. Effectively, you have to be right at the edge of killing yourself -- not through something passive like "exposure" but through something more aggressive and overt.

In Australia, apparently, they would define a refusal to seek shelter, not bathing or eating regularly, not taking meds as being a "threat to yourself". Hence, virtually no mental-illness-based homelessness.

Australia also has a much broader social services net. It seems like it's pretty darned tough to be truly down and out here. The government just isn't going to let that happen, whether you like it or not.

A few years ago I was talking to a group of English travellers (this was during the Brittney Spears shaved-head-meltdown phase) and they were appalled that someone didn't "do something". Since it was so apparent that she was having a mental health crisis, they expected official-dom to intervene.

I tried to explain that in America we are, basically, free to be as stupid as we want to be. They just couldn't believe it.

It's a fundamental difference in our relationship to our governments, our definition of "personal freedom", even our understanding of mental health.

I've known families that would prefer the Australian way. When you're dealing with an adult child with mental health issues who refuses to be consistent with necessary meds, it's a nightmare. You, as the parent, can do very very little to protect your child from themselves if they are adult. There are families that would be able to sleep a whole lot better at night if their adult child with a mental illness could be institionalized. Then, at least, their kids would be safe.

But not in America.

So Americans are free, in theory, to make as many foolish decisions as we want to right up to the point of death. Yet we also have one of the most lawsuit-intensive cultures around.

So law enforcement may consider you free but the legal profession may have a different take on that. :)

Ah. America.

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have A Government

So, Australia has finally actually decided who will run the country based on the elections that were complete two weeks ago: the Labour Party (the "liberals" in American parlance) with Julia Gillard continuing as prime minister.

It took two weeks because no party had a majority of seats on their own. They both had to woo the independents and the Green party. It literally came down to 3 Independent members of parliament.

It was interesting to listen to the announcements yesterday. One independent kept saying he was supporting the "coalition" but I'd lost track of who the heck that was! And no one on the TV was explaining it.

I think I'm spoiled. I'm used to my TV announcers making it abundantly clear what each statement means!

He meant he was going with the Liberal coalition ("conservative" in American-speak). I wasn't too suprised. He just looked like someone who would align himself more conservatively.

About an hour later, the other two independents announced their alliance with Labour. That put Labour.....just barely....over the top.

The talk was all about the "20 points" and the "5 considerations" and possibly the "3 amigos" (though I may have heard that last one incorrectly). It was all about policy and getting agreement. There was a little talk of whether there were jobs traded for votes but only just a little.

Frankly, I thought the press backed down too quickly on some of their questions about how the Independents made their decision and what they've been doing for two weeks! I do find the Australians more....reserved (believe it or not) in these kind of interactions. The whole "wild and woolly" thing is not what I'm finding here.

While I find the American press can be so aggressive sometimes, I'm appreciating what that gets me, the viewer/listener/reader. It gets me answers. Or at least information. Or maybe just a response. But it definitely keeps public officials a little off-balance, which is sometimes a good thing.

Power has a way of going to even the best person's head and someone needs to be reminding them that they have to answer.

Spunky Librarians, Flamboyant Canadians, Cranky Americans

Last Friday, I achieved a Milestone of Happiness here in Brisbane: I finally got my library card.

I'm sooooo happy about my library card too. Book are expensive here. Expensive enough to give me pause and that is expensive (because I am a book-buying junkie). Paperbacks are $15 - $25. Hardbacks are $35 - $50. For someone with my kind of book habit, that's a rude shock. I brought a bunch of books with me but most of them are non-fiction and/or reference.

Fiction withdrawl -- it's not be a pretty thing.

So while my closest branch here has a pretty small fiction collection, there are 20 or 30 libraries in their system and between them they have a decent selection. I checked out 2 books within an hour of owning that much-coveted library card and put a hold on 8 more for when they're available.

(I went back today and checked out two more but they're cookbooks so that's reference so that isn't really the same, is it?)

OH, and joy of joys, I discovered today that they carry the Washington Post! It's a photocopy in B&W but it's 7 days a week and it's only one day behind and it includes the comics, even on Sunday!

Yes, Justin, I am a nerd. Full-blown and unrepentent.

What I need to do is troll bookstores for titles, write them down, and then run to the library. Imagine the way a gaggle of kids run when they hear the ice cream truck and someone has just put a dollar in their sweaty little hands....the mental image you have is the working definition of "higgledy piggledy" and it's how I would run from the bookstore to the library.

The library also seems to have some very interesting people working in it. The young lady, Lucy, who helped me sign up for the library card (and if she's not a young hip lesbian, I've lost my gaydar) also helped me figure out what's happening with a book club that meets there this Wednesday. She even helped me find the book they're reading, which wasn't even back on the shelves yet, it was in the to-be-shelved racks (a long-ish book but it's about a murder mystery in a polygamous Mormon sect in Utah; I'm already 1/2 of the way through it and I only got it on Friday. Pretty good read.).

("The 19th Wife", David Ebershoff)

And THEN she told me there were actually a couple of book clubs but she didn't know enough about them herself, made a phone call, and suggested I talk to Via down on the first floor, and Via was expecting me.

Well. My goodness! She was the very model of not just customer service but interested customer service who seemed to be happy that she could help me so much.

When I asked what Via looked like, she said "she's kinda short with short hair and she's Canadian". And I thought "oh, yeah, 'cause you can always spot a Canadian in a crowd...".

So I found Via downstairs and chatted with her and she was extremely helpful and even told me about a sort of "avid readers" party they're hosting after hours this week. I told her about the whole "....and she's Canadian" thing (because I'm evil) and she said "Oh, who said that!?" and I told her and she laughed and said "I'm so gonna get her for that".

I think I'm gonna like this place. Spunky librarians. You gotta love 'em.

The reason it took me so long to get my library card is that I needed something with my name and my address on it. The lease, since it comes with Jeff's contract, has his name on it. So I've been waiting for mail. Several friends -- Tina, Judi, and Kitty in particular -- told me they had sent things.

However, I don't have a mailbox key. And therein lies the biggest aggravation I've faced since coming here. I've been asking (politely and now not so politely) several times a week for more than 2 weeks for this key and still don't have it.

We know that the property management company we're working with owns multiple properties downtown. We've come to suspect that our particular property management agent has gotten into the habit of using our apartment as his own pied-a-terre here in the city (he lives about an hour away). Why? I've gotten more than one business call for him on the apartment phone here.

We also checked out the mailbox, rattled the door a bit, and determined that it was pretty full of mail, though we didn't think most of it was ours. And our agent has been most reluctant to give us the key.

He has come up with plan after plan, scheme after scheme, delaying tactic after delaying tactic. All intent upon not giving us the mailbox key.

He said he'd check the mail for us -- once a week, mind you -- and slip it under our door.

No.

He said he'd prefer we have our mail forwarded to another mailbox here in the building, which (again) he would check for us (once a week).

Not only "no" but "huh"?

He suggested we rent a mailbox at the local post office, which we could check every day if we wanted to.

Oh hell no!

He suggested it would be...well, he didn't say "illegal" but implied it would be illegal since the mailbox contains mail from previous tenants who haven't properly forwarded their mail.

No. (Also, I don't care about other people's mail. I'm happy to leave it there and if they aren't tenants here anymore, how much legal claim can they possibly have on the mailbox?)

Today he informed me that it's against corporate policy to give us a mailbox key because we didn't pay the deposit, etc., Jeff's employer did.

Huh? OK.....so give them the key????

But he also said he has only one master key and he put in the order almost a week ago to have a copy made, theoretically for us. Takes 7 - 14 days, sometimes longer!, but should be ready next week or maybe the week after that....in the meantime, how about he checks our mail twice a week?

Seriously, dude? You're starting to sound more than a little desperate.

If I wasn't so pissed off, it would be funny.

But I'm pissed off and I'm about to go all in-your-face-American on him. What I actually suspect is that the mail in the mailbox is not, as he suggested, for former tenants but for him and he doesn't want us seeing his mail. Also, maybe he wasn't supposed to be using the apartment as his own.

Either that or the mailbox is a drug drop. Which I normally actually wouldn't care too much about, except I am so not willing to risk my Australian visa for this.

The saga continues.

Missing My Pack

The adrenaline rush of moving here, getting unpacked, finding an apartment, long lists of to-do's, exploring my surroundings....it's starting to wear off and I'm faced with.....me, just me.

Every week my pastor at Augustana Lutheran (DC) sends out a mid-week reflection. Today's...well, you read and then I'll comment.

In years past, the Saturday preceding Labor Day weekend found me in Waitsfield Vermont for an annual high - the 105 mile Mad River Bicycle Ride. This Saturday before Labor Day weekend, my high came instead from a French Canadian movie – “Two Seconds”.

After flying down a mountainside in the opening scene, a champion woman mountain biker is pushed into retirement and becomes a bicycle courier. From that point on, great urban cycling scenes, wonderful bicycle shop culture, and attentiveness to technical detail, enthralled me. I rank “Two Seconds” in my all time top three cycling movies with “Breaking Away” and “American Fliers”. (It bumps out “The Man with One Red Shoe”, a DC staged film that features young performances by Tom Hanks and Jim Belushi).

Through it all, Charlotte Laurier humbly stays focused, emotes total pleasure in cycling, and stays positive despite pressure to crumble into bitterness. I found her so inspiring in this role, that I went out and did my fastest ride of the year – 26 miles averaging 17 miles per hour.

This was not my fastest ever ride. There have been years when I did the first twenty-mile leg of the Mad River Ride at over 20 mph. But this may be an apples-to-oranges comparison. The Vermont ride has more hills but the route has only one stop sign while my flatter 26 miler had five stop signs and a dozen traffic lights. Mad River attracts hundreds of riders and I easily joined tag lines to draft on but here I road alone. The aerodynamic advantages of riding in a group are enormous. In the middle of a pack, a rider uses 30% less energy to maintain speed than when riding alone. To really fly high, I need a good route to follow and partners on whom I can draft.

Flying high in worship also requires a good route and partners to pull you along. In the low seasons of life I lack the word and spirit for worship. I need the words fed to me but even then I can only follow. Others have to do the heavy work that pulls me along. In more flamboyant moments, liturgy’s familiar path rushes me along with exuberant confidence that all the notes and words are in easy reach and that kindred spirits will blend into harmony sublime and divine. And I too take turns spinning at the front of the pack.

Week in and week out, in good times and foul seasons, our liturgy offers a proven route that blends voices, words and notes in human aspiration that calls out to God -

“Hear our prayer.”
“Show us the way, Lord.”
“Inspire us to fly.”


What John talked about -- the feel of riding with a group, being pulled along by the group, even in liturgy -- I'm feeling this myself. After 3 weeks in Australia, I'm starting to flag. The initial exuberance (not to mention the ton of to-do's) is starting to settle down. And what I'm feeling is the lack of my pack -- the people I ride with, figuratively.

I ride with a pack every day, even when I don't physically see them. Sometimes I'm out front, sometimes I'm in the back, I'm often in the middle. Augustanans. The local massage therapy community. My housemate and neighbors. The sailing club. Co-workers. Former co-workers. Friends. Family.

My pack.

Australia is so far away, so incredibly far away. And I'm starting to miss my pack something fierce. I miss the feel of your wind around me, I miss the pull of your wheels humming along with mine, the sound of our breathing creating its own music.

So, slowly, I'm working on finding a new pack here, some people I can "ride" with. Other bodyworkers. Friends of friends. Neighbors who use the pool at the same time I do. The receptionist at the gym I might join just so I can meet some new people.

I'm surrounded by hordes of people every day because we're in the heart of the CBD but they aren't "riding" with me and I'm not riding with them. But, maybe, with time and the Spirit, I'll soon start seeing faces in those crowds who are part of my pack.

Soon, I hope.

Missing y'all at least as much as I expected to and maybe even some more.