My brother Sean is a great actor. It’s an empirical fact. It is a simple, undeniable truth. The Phates stood around his crib and plagued him with horrible teenage acne and a penchant for Taco Bell, but at some point their wands crossed a la Ghostbusters and created a unique storyteller, gifted, perfect.

Any two-bit reviewer from an online rag who says otherwise is clearly… delusional.

You’ll notice I chose to be kind. And not use any F-words.

F_cking idiot.

I’ve heard it said that when we are happy, we gain weight. If that is true, then I have proof positive that I am happy right now. Christ, I am pudgy! It’s ridiculous! Why do I have to love cookies so much?

It’s Sunday night, and it’s almost back-to-school time, and I’m feeling nostalgic and strange. I feel the need to go buy a pencil box and school clothes and to go back to 6th grade at Arthur Elementary to prove something to my classmates. I wasn’t a TOTAL loser in grade school; more than that, I was disliked because I knew how smart I was and I was unafraid to show it. I also didn’t take much time with my appearance and was famous for wearing the same pair of jeans for weeks. (I actually had two pairs that were exactly the same, but it was still only two pairs.) I supposed I was the wrong combination of snotty and not very attractive, and also elitist because I was the conductor’s daughter, the composer’s daughter, and I simply knew that I was something more than my classmates who weren’t musicians. And really, even if they played an instrument, they weren’t really musicians. I really believed myself to be something entirely other.

I don’t know when I stopped believing I was smart. I remember specifically dumbing down to talk to a particular friend in high school, but the decline started long before that. Maybe it was when I hit the 7th grade and became a hottie nightmare. I don’t really know. God, the phases I’ve been through. And now I’m this nebulous thirty-something caught between attractive and pudgy, smarts and idiocy, shame and elitism.

But I had a great weekend.

Saturday morning I got to do something I do with great frequency these days: work with my dad. But rather than on the phone talking business, we picked his Pinot Noir:

Clearly I’m working hard.

So’s my dad. And it’s 7 AM so we haven’t started drinking wine yet.

So pretty at 7 AM…

I then had the good fortune to meet up with my mom and my brother Steve in San Francisco, and Jon (the absolute bestest guy friend this girl has ever had) drove us all over the city, including into the Presidio where I’d never been. Steve directed us to, uh, this Point, that has a name and lots of historical significance and I’m sure he’ll (hopefully) email me the name and some story on it…

And then today I cleaned my baseboards. God, it’s sexy, isn’t it. This next week is so huge, again, and although I love sleep, I also can’t wait to get to work tomorrow. I’ve had nightmares about tomorrow’s first meeting, and it’s not even a big one. My job is infiltrating my life.

This weekend I missed a wedding that meant the world to me. I missed it because I didn’t have the cash to fly to New York. Next week I miss a huge weekend at Ian’s farmhouse. These things pain me so much that if I didn’t feel wholly committed to my job, I’d be thinking long and hard about my life right now. So to Deb and Steve, much love, many happy wishes. To all of you who get to be in the presence of my brothers and sisters in New York next weekend, I’m excessively jealous. But my organization has a huge kick-off party this Friday night, and I pretty much have to be there. So have a drink for me, dunk a ball in the barn, star-gaze, swim in the swimming hole, ride the hills. I’ll be here missing all of you.

I have to give a presentation tomorrow in front of people who could change my job. Change it in a “make it so I can keep my job” kind of way. My organization runs out of money in, oh, less than a month unless we make major things happen. We have a line of credit, but we can’t dip into our line of credit if we don’t have the means to pay it back. As my mom said today, it’s amazing that we are in this crazy information age, an ease-of-travel age, when the arts have never been more accessible, but somehow that has been paired with the worst funding crisis in recent history. Why have people forgotten the arts? When did “art” become associalted with blue-hairs with tons of cash?

Anyway, I have to go to bed because I have to fuel up for tomorrow. I’ve worked extremely hard on tomorrow’s presentation, and I know the main thing I have to do is remain focused because sometimes I get excited and yabber on and on. I want tomorrow to go well. I could be brilliant, and nothing could come of it, but I know I can at least get these people thinking and get them to believe, even if just a little bit. It feels a little like an audition, I suppose because in a way it is. More than that, though, it’s an opportunity to change minds. I just have to breathe and remember the faith I have in what I’m doing. And try really hard not to trip or use the “F” word.

I’m losing hours and hours of sleep because I can’t stop watching the Olympics. Those athletes are just incredible. I bawled through the preliminary show of the women’s marathon- how is it possible that that event has only been a part of the Olympics for twenty years? It’s outrageous. It means that I was twelve years old the first time women got to run an Olympic marathon. Yeesh.

I couldn’t move from the television while the women were running. The pace they keep for 26 plus miles is one I couldn’t keep around the block. It made me think about the Olympic life- what the athletes have to give up even to get close to these games. And what of the hopefuls that have to work full-time jobs when they need all that time to train? Or the people born to excel in a particular sport who somehow never discover their talent? This is the idea that haunts me, particularly when I think about my generation. So many thirtysomethings have no idea what they want to do with their lives, and I fear it’s just that they haven’t picked up the bat or sat down to the computer or put pen to paper at the right time and so they have yet to find their calling. I don’t think the Phates ignored even one crib when they were handing out blessings; but what if Lance Armstrong had never gotten on a bike? Or Michael Hamm never jumped on the parallel bars? Or worse yet, what if Michael Chabon or Toni Morrison had to work too many shifts at Wendy’s and never had time to write?

Maybe if you are truly meant to do something, you make it happen no matter what, but that seems reductive and simplistic and maybe even silly. When I was in college, my boyfriend Rob and I went to the park to play catch and for the first time in probably 15 years I lifted a bat and hit Rob’s pitch. Hit it much further than I expected. By the end of the day, Rob was actively angry that I had never played softball before because clearly I was gifted. But, really, I probably wasn’t as good as he thought, and I do not feel like I’ve missed out on a life of softball. The question is… how often does this happen? How often does someone wait until it’s almost too late to realize a talent?

I do believe that if we do not use our gifts, they are taken from us, so I best get singing.

Never in my life have I had a more accomplished day at work.

I’m going to try to remain focused here, as I’ve just now gotten around to reading some of Sean’s writing this last week, and I’ve had a couple glasses of wine… actually, probably only two glasses, or three, of about twenty different kinds of wine, and I’m a little distracted. But I’m also rather celebratory, elated, in fact, and I’m hanging on to it again. Today I had an amazing meeting with one of the other twelve people in this country with a degree in Musical Theatre. But this woman never used that degree (and I use that usage loosely) but has done a whole host of other incredible things, including becoming one of the most influential and connected people in this valley… and she is considering joining my board. Then, I finished the final draft of that goddamn grant proposal and sent it off. I then created a proposal for a meeting next week and THEN I went to my first-ever PTA meeting. It was held in the library of a grade school, and I saw books I haven’t seen in decades. The library was small, but so sweet, with hardcover copies of “Holes” on one side of the room and “MacMillan Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs” and “Poems for the Very Young” inexplicably side by side on the other. I was invited to sit before I was done coveting “The Solar System”, and I wondered how long it had been since I’d spent any serious time in a library.

To my disappointment, there were adult-sized chairs, but there were also more board members on the PTA then there are in my organization. And no cookies. But I was the first order of business, and my first words were, “I am here to propose an after-school arts program for the blahdey-blah school district. Here is what we have to offer”. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what it is like to sit down and offer to facilitate a program that 1) brings arts educations to little chickens and 2) enables the hiring of up to 24 arts professionals? I mean, seriously, ya’ll, this is my job. Five minutes later a motion was seconded to pursue the program I’d detailed, and I walked out of there ready to take off and fly.

My whole week has been building to this. I loved my job today, loved it and felt capable, which separates it from everything else meaningful I’ve ever done. Only on rare occasions, when I was singing, did I feel like I was not only showing my best but showing better than anyone else I knew. Even when I was working for the Red Cross, or as an EMT, or in hospitality, wine, theatre, ANYTHING I always felt like I wasn’t quite pulling it off, and that the person I was supposed to be affecting could sense my ruse of competency. Today, I knew, I KNEW I was the only one, in the moment, in the situation, who could accomplish what was laid before me. Only I could provide the language for the proposal, only I could connect with the potential new board member, only I could excite the principal of a lower social-economic school district about the prospect of teaching her kids how to mummify an apple. Clearly there is someone out there more qualified than me for all of these things; that person, that doubt, was deep beneath my heels as I stepped up to the plate. And it feels fucking glorious to hit a homer.

I know how hard next week might be. Hell, I know what tomorrow might be. But I am starting to GET this. I am starting to believe.

Week before last was sucky and hard. This week was good and productive and hard. I prefer weeks like this one.

I got the best possible response, I think, regarding the grant proposal I wrote last week. My boss said that everything was in the wrong order, and some of the information was too specific, but there was a lot of good stuff in there. Excellent! I say. I hope to rewrite it tomorrow since the rest of next week will be utterly ridiculous- days with four, five, six meetings, several days double-booked, presentations to the people in this valley who could make or break my organization… seriously, major stuff. So what am I doing today? I’m gonna sit in my garden and watch my tomatoes ripen. Then I’m gonna go on a long bike ride. Then I’m gonna sit in my garden on my swing and read a book until it gets dark. Or maybe I’ll just stare into space.

I had a great day with my mom yesterday. We went to the Town and Country Fair in Napa. I swear to you, there was a livestock auction. We saw the llama that won first prize. Better yet, we rode the roller coaster and ate funnel cake.

My mom on the ferris wheel. Not pictured: the worst “Hauted House Ride” I’ve ever experienced

We also went to the petting zoo. Earlier in the day, we got massages at a little day spa, and both of us had the grossest hair ever because of the lavender oil covering us from head to toe. In fact, my mom’s haircut seemed awfully similar to that of the alpaca…

I was busy communing with this strange animal. Anyone know what it is?

After the fair, we went to the movies and then out for fabulous tapas and a bottle of 2000 Flor de Pingus. Truly amazing juice, and a perfect day.

The night before, my crew had a wine dinner at good ol’ Jonny boy’s place, where us ladies found a good use for our napkins.

Clearly, we are shameless. But it has been a much-needed, wonderful weekend. Back to my rants soon enough.

It’s finally starting to cool down, now that it’s past 9 PM and full dark. We are in a particularly hot spell and it breeds napping and staring out the window. Instead, I sequestered myself at one of my two offices, the one with air conditioning and high-speed internet, and forced myself to write my first grant. Parts of it are good, parts of it are drippy, and maybe some of the numbers don’t make sense, but at least I have a first draft. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I skipped lunch and a yoga class and made myself sit there and hit keys. Only once did I get up to stare out the window, befuddled by a sentence, and less than a minute later I’d worked out the wording and was back to my desk.

I sent it to my boss to see if, well, really, to ask him if it was ridiculous or sucky or good, and I haven’t heard back. Really, I mean, what the fork, I’ve never written a grant before so if it sucks, there is a darn good reason.

I’m a little concerned that I’ll get to the office tomorrow and he’ll dissolve all of my feelings of productiveness and self-worth by telling me it’s no good, so I’m hanging on to what feels like one of my most productive days. Other things are crashing and burning, invitations not answered, fundraising not going well, and a certain Mr. Crappy Poopy Pants trying to take away some of the funding we’ve already earned, but at least I got the first draft of this damn grant done.

I can’t believe that I was in New York just last week. It seems like a zillion years ago, and I wish I had the whole week to do over. It was a good lesson in expectations, and in carpeing some diem whenever possible.

This is a bunch of kids in summer camp playing “Red Rover”. I spent all of about ten minutes in Central Park this visit, but at least I got to watch this. I totally miss summer camp, even though I only went a couple of random times. I want to go somewhere for a few weeks where we ride horses and paddle canoes and make friendship bracelets and drink sweet instant tea every morning after bunking with a host of spiders. I so totally want to do that right now.

If you told me I could have either 1) a burly fireman to love or 2) high-speed internet at my home, I’d have to think long and hard. And then ask nicely for both.

I recently found a piece I wrote six years ago about being single. I was 26 at the time, still treading water with my long-term boyfriend but essentially I’d already been on my own for over a year. Six years ago. I know all the rhetoric; god knows I’ve spouted it myself: if I’d had a boyfriend, I wouldn’t have done all the things I’ve done, I wasn’t ready, it wasn’t time, had I been dating someone it wouldn’t have been healthy, blah blah blah fucking blah. And you could say that I’ve been unlucky, or foolish, or both, falling for my manager at work or married men or other such unavailables. But I really wish I could really know WHY. I do not understand. I do not understand why I have been entirely unable to find a partner for so many years but have still managed to feel heartache with some degree of regularity. I’ve had multiple half-relationships, some more like almost-relationships that have, without fail, ended with me feeling like shit. Even with my baker, even though I’m the one who realized we didn’t have a future. It still feels like shit, and conflicted, and sad.

I wish I could just accept it. I wish I could forget that partnership is pretty high up on the hierarchy of needs. I mean, not forgetting it is not changing the situation, so I wish I could just say to myself, “Okay, so, I am going to be single forever, and there is nothing to be done about it, so can it stop being an issue now? Can I stop being reminded of it at every turn? Can I just accept it and get to work on everything else?” And I feel like I am working on everything else but I look back on years of doing all the hard stuff on my own and why do I have to keep being reminded that I was doing these things on my own? Couldn’t I have just being doing hard stuff, and that’s the end of it?

I have so little in common with so many people. I’m with my friends and I want to steal away to write to someone who doesn’t exist, or to write just to me. I want to be in the other room during a party where I’m only hearing the dull roar of what’s going on. I feel annoying and ridiculous, and not like myself at all. These last few weeks I’ve felt like a bad person. I’ve felt inauthentic. I’ve felt like all I could remember is the shitty things I’ve done. I’ve felt I’ve had nothing to offer.

And sometimes I’m still mad. Sometimes I’m still totally fucking furious at the shit he’d pull. And the shit I put up with. And I wonder why this is still floating around my head, and then I realize it’s because it hasn’t been replaced with anything. It’s still there because it hasn’t been driven out. There has been no reprogramming, no new software installed in the hard-wiring of my brain. Just the same old shit, same old bad information.

I just keep feeling like I’m not living the life I’m supposed to be living. It’s so much more complicated that that, but it’s the simplest way to say it. I’m not doing whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. There is something else out there, that perhaps doesn’t involve a garden and long, quiet, deeply sleepy nights. And I’m not sure I’ll ever be allowed to find it.

I would have left for Mauritania six weeks ago if I had joined Peace Corps. I would only be in my second month of training for the agro-forestry program I was supposed to head in rural Mauritania. I would still be in Nouakchott, the capitol, at the Peace Corps headquaters. This picture is from that city.

The truly ridiculous element of this plague is that it was caused by plentiful rain- desperately needed plentiful rain- that ended a drought and promised a healthy growing season, the first in years. Unfortunately, the rains blessed the locusts as well. I can only wonder what the agro-forestry Peace Corps folks are going to teach now, now that there won’t be any crops. The farmers would be planting right now, but they are afraid they’d just be feeding the offspring of the current plague. Mauritania is one of the least, if not THE least developed countries in Africa, lacking any kind of development outside the capital city. It is infamous as being the hardest country in which to serve. Christ, I wonder what all those kids in the training camp are thinking right now.

I don’t feel lucky to have missed it; I just feel more of the same wonderment as to what I would be doing over there right now, what my life would be like. Apparently right now I’d be buring tires and banging pots to keep the locusts away. Instead, I’m watching my cat attempt to wash himself even though he’s wearing a lamp shade on his head.

I’m feeling like there is so much to do that I am unable to figure out where to begin. I feel like I’m trying to punch through marshmallow. I have so much to do at my job that sometimes it’s all I can do to make a list, that only in the making of the list do I feel satisfied because actually getting to the things on the list seems impossible. I don’t know how to do most of the stuff I’m supposed to do. I don’t know how to write grants. I don’t know how to create messaging. I don’t know how to effectively run an organization that is dying on the vine.

When I try, when I really try, when I draw upon what I DO know, I’m sometimes successful, but it is exhausting. And then I procrastinate because I don’t even know where to begin.

I have so many miles to run, literally, before I feel good about my body again, and I have no time nor money for a trainer who is wonderful but with whom I have yet to be successful, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t have any time or money.

And my poor, sweet cat had surgery today for a hematoma on his ear. Turns out that he’s had ear mites for over a decade, but he scratches them so furiously and shakes his head with such violence that he’s killed the mites off before they’ve been detected, but not before they’ve laid eggs. These mites have a very short life cycle in this turbulent atmosphere, but they’ve managed to adapt and procreate. Only because Fezzik was sedated were the vets able to go deep enough to find the eggs. Fezzik scratched hard enough to break a blood vessel, and then shook all the blood out into his ear tissue, which was so swollen today his ear was closed from within. They drained it, and stapled it, and now he has to wear an Elizabethan collar. Clearly, he’s thrilled.

And now I’m listening to him crash around the apartment. My lithe, stealthy, fluid cat is now running into walls. He just discovered that if he shoves his face into a wine bottle he can scratch his ears. Which is exactly what he’s not supposed to do.

Maybe it’s just that I had meetings until 6 PM today, or that I spent hours at the vet, or that it’s always hard come back after being in New York. Maybe it’s that I have conflicted feelings about a number of people in my life. Maybe it’s because my apartment is a mess and I’m broke and my cat just head-butted my wine fridge. Maybe it’s because I don’t feel like I’m fooling anybody. Maybe it’s because the caliber of professional people within this valley is so utterly disappointing. Maybe it’s because there is not one man in this state that I want to kiss. Or maybe it’s just that I’m still jet-lagged and I should shut the fuck up and go to bed.