"!"

I just noticed that my little Mama Bird did take a bunch of the cotton!

And here I thought she'd snubbed me :)

-- H

What I Did For My Summer Vacation

My birthday was last Thursday, and each year I take a block of time off to celebrate it. This year I had half of last Wednesday, Thursday, a vacation day Friday for the Fourth, then both Monday and Tuesday. It's been nice.

I did a lot of stuff for myself, and one thing was to fix up my terrace even more. I'd planted a bunch of plants back in May when it got nicely warm, but then Mom Nature thought she'd have the last laugh, and we had one more hurrah of cold, damp weather that killed off most of what I planted -- all except for the geraniums.

I'd planned to do just geraniums as they forgive you for dry soil, wet soil, colder weather, hot weather and so on...they're quite hearty. My terrace gets sun in the morning, but not too much, so I have to be careful with what I choose. Geraniums seem to also like it out there, as much as they like direct sunlight.

Plus they weather through the winter nicely if I remember to cluster everyone against a corner of my terrace and then wrap them with clear plastic. I usually do that in October -- and then step out once a month or so and give them a good watering.

I have a lovely view, too, of a wonderful garden a downstairs neighbor keeps up, and has done so for nearly fifteen years. It stretches down to the end of the building to the left (about two aparments in length), and then about three times that (or more!) to the right. Linda had cancer last year, and so I helped her by watering her plants a few times during the summer months; it took a total of about 3 hours over two nights each time! She also recruited the help of a local garden club, who came in and put it "to bed" when Fall began rolling into winter.

She's doing much better (all in the clear), and I've been glad to see her poking around out there in the afternoons and evenings.

The jasmine I put out on my terrace smells beautiful, and the sound of my new kapiz windchimes is lovely as well. I actually finally did something I've been meaning to do for the last 3-4 years, and that's to hang all my windchimes from hooks along the edge of the ceiling (the bottom of the upstairs terrace), as they never seemed to chime much from the hooks along the walls, even though they stuck out. They've been much more active as well.

I also got a new hummingbird feeder, as the red glass globe one I had seemed to frustrate the humming birds that would stop by -- my father said he'd noticed that the holes for their tongues weren't as large as the ones in the cheaper / classic-style ones that look like a jar with yellow flowers on it. So that's what I got.

I'd also been starving my local birdies; my suet feeder was empty and I kept forgetting to buy more. Did that as well.

Speaking of birdies...a little hapai mama bird decided to make her nest in my hanging basket of geraniums. I'm pleased she felt safe there (I had fun reaching into my inner 6-year-old a few days ago when I discovered she was doing that by finding things to leave for her to use for her nest. Some she took -- like the pieces of twine -- others she didn't. She snubbed the bits of cotton).

And so -- watering that plant is a bit dicey now. I try to carefully do it from the opposite side from where her nest is, but it inevitably startles her and she flies out, cluck-chirping at me. I just hope Lady Perigrine Falcon who graced my terrace last year stays away until Mama Mia and her little family have flown the coop.

Speaking of that falcon, there's a pair of ospreys that have taken up residence by the duck pond near my house, and it's been really cool to go walking there and watch them gliding around, and to hear them calling to each other.

Their cry seems throatier than a red-tailed hawk, and osprey seem to be chattier than hawks, too. I'm not sure I've ever seen more than one hawk at a time, either.

Anyway. Below are pictures of my terrace for you all. It's been nice out there, and I've been listening to / watching planes flying overhead, heading to what's likely the Hillsboro Airshow next weekend. I've heard some oldtimey-sounding prop planes, jets (F-16 and a few F-18s) and I did get to watch a big Coast Guard helcopter whop-whistling by overhead. That was really cool!

Not much more to report. I'm sad today's my last day before I go back, but I feel nicely rested, too. Plus I only have 3 days this week, so it'll be a short week.




Above: I look down into this; my neighbor downstairs and over one apartment takes care of this. It stretches out to the right and left as well. It's even more gorgeous when all the flowers start blooming.



Above: This is to the right of the first picture.




Above: To the right as you face out. You can see one of my two chairs -- I have room for them, matching footstools, a little table in-between the chairs, all the plants AND a big gas grill!



Above: To the left as you face out. New hummingbird feeder and newly-refilled suet feeder in view!



Above: Close-up of the Zen Spot.



Above: To the left of the Zen Spot. The bamboo and palm tree (it seems to really like the weather here!) I've had for a few years; the jasmine plants (one on each side) I just added today.



Above: Another angle of the Zen Spot. Slightly longer view.



Above: A wider shot, taken from my balcony door, showing my new kapiz windchimes, and the other ones I hung along the edge.

-- H

Write On

She sat in front of the monitor, staring at the white space. After a time, the spaces and breaks around the words she had already written began to form patterns as her eyes blurred and became unfocused. If she tried, she could make them change and morph, like looking for shapes in a popcorn ceiling. She reached out and rubbed a smudge on the screen. It didn't change. Getting up to retrieve a paper towel and some Windex seemed like too much effort...just as it had all the many other times she had noticed it.

In her mind, she pictured other writers in just such a moment. Not quite stuck in writer's block, but not really out of it either, either. Like being in some kind of slushy mud that allowed for movement, albeit stickly and slowly.

In some ways it helped -- and didn't -- to think of this moment as shared with someone such as Faulkner or Clarke or Seuss or Snoopy atop his doghouse, clattering away his latest saga unfolding on a dark and stormy night. Or even a student trying to pen a book report into an A-winning formula.

She closed her eyes and pictured herself in front of an old-fashioned typewriter, the smell of fresh paper, ribbon ink and rubbed eraser wafting up to her. Or perhaps a later version where, instead of the smell of disintegrated rubber it was the bright scent of Wite-Out.

She opened her eyes, and watched the cursor blink, gently encouraging her to push on.

She tapped out a few more words, adding to the fluxing pattern of shapes and spaces...and then backspaced over them. She typed them again, wondering if they had perhaps fit and she had judged them too quickly, and then highlighted and obliterated them. She stared at the cursor blinking patiently, waiting for her to spill her letters, words, sentences and paragraphs she felt were clamoring around in her head – but were unable to find the proper exit. And when they did, they fell out dull and convoluted and wordy.

A few more words tapped out of her fingers -- and again she deleted them, then typed and deleted again, the conversation rewinding and playing again in her head. She smiled, wondering if somewhere there were avatars of her characters sitting at a table trying to hold the conversation she wanted them to have – but unable to because she kept pausing and rewinding them, leaving them to hang in mid-conversation and thought.

Sometimes the words did flow, like a stream swollen with winter melt and s creativity. Other times, it was like trying to eke out a few sips of sludgy water-like stuff from an old East Texas creek bed in waning August heat. She wasn't quite there now, but she could feel the possibility of it looming over her shoulder, like an oppressive editor.

Sometimes she thought she could feel her characters' frustration at having to start and stop and start and stop again. Her actors in her mind-movie, trying to come to life in bits and bytes – and maybe, just maybe, in paper.

Did they get hungry as they waited to speak the words she wanted to give them? Did they tire and wish for a nap? Did they sit looking out the window of the restaurant where she'd left them, admiring the pretty day wishing she would just hurry up and pen the damn scene so they could go out and enjoy it?

Maybe, she thought, that's what deja-vu was – rewrites in her life as rendered by some author spilling out the words of her story. Maybe that's all I am – bits and bytes of existence in someone's laptop somewhere. Maybe...when I go to sleep that's the computer's shutting down. Maybe my characters dream, too.

Okay, she thought, that's just a bit too Rod Serling! Even for you.

She stared again at the blinking cursor, its rhythm and timing as precise as a digital metronome.

A bird sang outside her window, the refrigerator geared on as a humming back-sound to the clock on her wall, a neighbor closed their door and passed hers, whistling. The cursor blinked.

She felt her characters shift uncomfortably in the seats where she'd left them; again, sort of behind and to the right of them, there was the sense of growing irritation with her. The man began to tap his food idly and impatiently; the woman pulled out her compact and checked her lipstick. Beyond them , a car passed on the street, sunlight glinting off the windshield.

She looked away from the blinking cursor to stare out her summer window; she heard a car start and its radio blare on. Leaves fluttered and shushed in the growing breeze, and a siren from the fire station a few blocks away wailed into the afternoon, efficient and stalwart.

She thought perhaps a walk around the duck pond a few miles away would do her some good. Shake out the words that lay in messy piles in her head into something tidier and more accessible. Maybe read someone else's neatly-sorted and bound words out on her terrace, the moment accompanied by a cold beer and bare feet and thoughts of what to have for dinner. Maybe she would grill some chicken and have a salad...slice up a fresh peach for dessert. But she'd had the last one at breakfast, so that would mean she would need to go to the store and she didn't want to because it was hot out and she was low on gas anyway and she didn't feel like doing a bunch of errands and besides she hadn't shaved her legs that morning because she planned to do that tonight but she did have the chicken and fresh organic greens and that would also go well with a beer maybe one her brother had brewed the last batch he'd made was really good and --

She shook her head and reeled in her spill-jumbled, unfettered thoughts with another sigh.

She got up from her desk and walked to her office window. Years of dust had settled between the storm panes, creating a pattern of lacy settlement. The blue sky and air had the polished and new look of early summer, and the clouds almost like moist puffs of bleached cotton candy. Floating clichés. A cool breeze slipped through the screen and sighed over her skin, making the stubble on her legs rise a bit -- like strange sentries becoming alert.

And though she couldn't see it, she knew the cursor still continued to blink.

Her apartment sounded and felt oddly quiet for a late Saturday summer afternoon. By now, in the warmth of the day, there should be splashing and laughtery shrieks from children in the swimming pool, but there were none. She peered through the leaves and hedge and carport to the pool; she could see no one at first -- and then she noticed a lone, bikini-clad female figure stretched in the sun. The woman had on a straw hat and sunglasses, and, propped on her belly, she held a thick book in her hands. A testimony that it was possible to neatly tie together those elusive things called letters into words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters and...thus...a story.

She again thought of her terrace and a cool beer, but instead padded back to her desk and sat down in front of her monitor again – stiffly greeted by the blinking cursor..

Shut up, she thought at it. I'm trying.

She felt her characters sigh. Not hard enough, she felt-heard them say.

Oh...you shut up too. It's not like you're birthed fully formed in me like some mythical God, and all I need to do is slap some clothes on you and send you off to the publisher. I have to create you as I go.

Well, that may be, the woman said, but how about more creating and less thinking about the whole thing? That's what's damming up the process.

She didn't reply.

Look, the man said, pushing back his water glass. He leaned forward over his crossed legs to face her better. What if I just told her what I was really thinking at the moment? That's what you've been hovering over for the past hour. What you keep writing and erasing. Then just...have her respond to that. That's what a conversation is. Even...I don't know. Have her call me a total and complete jerk-off for telling her what I'm thinking. I don't care. It'll probably sound dumb and stupid the first time through, but you can change that later, you know. We don't care what you write -- what we mind is not doing anything.

I know that, she thought. I just – I'm stuck.

No you're not, the woman said. You just think you are. You're stuck on the details. Just get us doing something. My butt's going numb from sitting here.

It's like your mom always said, the man said. Get it down and then go back and change all the verbs and adjectives.

Well, she thought...true. I guess you're right.

Of course I am.

And so she did -- she typed out the very words she'd typed and erased several times before and then typed out the next parceled set of words that came...and the next set. The tapping went from staccato and hesitant to a flurry of clicking.

Like a burst pipe, out flew the words. The cursor barely had a chance to blink. Letters fell onto the screen, shaping words, sentences, thoughts, feelings, actions, reactions. Paragraphs flourished and snapped into place. A page was filled, as was another -- and another. She fell into the coursing and flow, into the rhythm of her fingers on the keyboard. Unnoticed, the summer day wound into twilight and into darkness, the sun on its way into a new day elsewhere, as forgotten as her stuckdom.

She stopped only when the scent of someone's barbecuing dinner gently wafted in through the window and tapped her back to awareness. The room was lit only by the fading dusk and her monitor; at some point, her hall lamp had been clicked on by the timer, but she hadn't noticed.

Her fingers paused above the keys. Her characters were no longer dangling in some action, over some cliff of a conversation. She felt a mutual satisfaction of the trail of events through which she had pushed them over the last few hours. Yes, they said. Go and eat. We're fine where we are. We'll sit here and wait for you to return tomorrow.

Pleased, she pushed back from her desk and barefooted her way into the kitchen to revive her own characterhood with a chilled beer and some leftover cold lasagna, and wondered, mildly in the back of her mind, if her own author was doing the same thing somewhere.

Hear Ye! Hear Ye! I Had a Thought....

…And it’s, “I wonder what the longest hair on my head is?”

Ha. No…although I’ll admit in times of random Space Cadetness I have wondered it off-hand.

Contrary to what some people think, I don’t post a blog when I have a thought…it’s when I have a thought I want to share. I’ll just keep those who accused me of that anonymous, okay, Dad?

I’ve been meaning to write the last few weeks, but it’s been busy-busy-busy. We’re having our Fall Sale at work, and so the usual fax-copy-email-phone work has been ratcheted up to a higher level. But it’s worth it; I got a nice bonus this month, and so my savings account is now happily fed. Plus I’ve been out and about with friends; I got invited to a cocktail party a few weeks ago, which was a lot of fun. I have to admit I felt rather mature and adult (yeah, I can hear the brotherly remarks coming in from that comment…) and it made me realize that sometime in the last year and a half I up and got myself a life.

Or at least one that involved being more social.

I’m kind of a hermit by nature, which is fine with me, but I began realizing that my truer preference is to be a “social hermit” – as in a hermit that goes out and does things with a set of select friends. When I was in the Air Force, I had a friend who called me a “social butterfly” because no matter where we went, we’d run into at least one or two people I knew. Different times, different me. But I began to realize that I missed that aspect of me a couple of years ago.

And so at the urging of my best friend Jane, I created a page on MySpace; say what you will about it, I’ve made some really good friends in the Portland area through it. Plus I’ve been getting a lot closer to coworkers as well; so I guess that new level of maturity – and even finally being in a place where I’m comfortable with myself in a way that allows others to be comfortable around me – has been creeping in for awhile. The cocktail party was just something that opened my eyes to it.

Also a few weeks ago, I went to traffic court to defend a parking ticket I was given 21 minutes before my paid receipt expired. I’d never been in the Multnomah County court building before – a big stately thing in downtown Portland – and when I walked in, I felt like I was in television deja-vu – some episode of Law and Order. (Boots sound awesome on marble floors. It was almost worth it to walk in circles while I waited for the court session to begin!)

But the courtroom I had to go to was rather shabby and basementish; the Law and Order glamour stopped at the threshold of the doors in. One door had a piece of hand-torn carpet padding propping it open, and the copy machine sitting dilapedatedly in a corner had its base held together by concrete gray duct tape. I have seen recessed fluorescent lighting like that since The Rockford Files was at its peak of popularity. It looked like someone had cut the ceiling open with giant pinking shears and then slipped the fluorescent bulbs into the upward-pointing triangle.

Dangling from one downward-pointing triangle was a piece of masking tape that looked years old; fuzzy strands and balls of dust fluttered plaintively from it, making it look like a piece of fly paper that had been stored under someone’s bed for a few years, then put on display. It matched the musty-dusty smell that permeated the air in a ghostlike way; you’d catch a whiff of it…and then just as you became aware of it, the scent dissipated, only to come back when you stopped paying attention to it.

The smell reminded me of…something. A doctor’s office? School? The Oregon State Library? It had that strange smell of dust and old-but-now-dry damp…a combination of cool air, dust and paper. It was a familiar scent that evoked muddy memories of…nothing in particular, but also specific places that had the same smell.

And I think I’ve seen nicer curtains in motels.

Even for the scruffy, almost claustrophobic feeling of the room, it did have a quiet calm to it. I think it was the recessed fluorescent lighting and the knotty pine paneling on the walls that saved it from being too closed-in. Though I must say I was confused by the scallop-shaped burn marks on the acoustic tiling above me. They were too round and perfectly- and evenly-formed to be water stains, but I couldn’t figure out what would have caused such a mark.

Overall, it seemed to simply be happy to boast the best of 1970s legal décor – but now boring and shabbily professional. Drearily official, even. And you can’t forget the popcorn finish to the ceiling, the pinnacle of 1970s décor!

There was a nice view of downtown, however, that you looked up into from the little basement-like room. As I sat there, waiting for the session to begin, I watched the creamy fall light playing off the buildings. It was a beautiful, clean, clear day that had the light and feel of Spring – the only giveaway were the crimson and ocher and fading green leaves of the trees out side of the window.

I was amused, though, by the fact that Centerpointe isn’t the only place that deals with people who can’t read (see previous post It's Been a Long Time Since I Rock and Rolled) – there were three very large signs telling people how to check in; I had to chuckle as I wondered how many times the clerk had to field the question in a single day for how to do so. I even wondered what my customer from that earlier post would say, since it wasn’t printed on “official letterhead.”

Then the court session began. I sat, amazed at how many people were no shows, and were then, by default given a “guilty” conviction – which meant they were then out $40, $60, $100 – or more! Even the $40 would be worth defending for me – that’s a damn decent trip to the grocery store. It made my little $16 ticket seem paltry.

Since the docket was in alphabetical order, I sat there listening to the excuses of the people before me for why they shouldn’t be found guilty, even though in one breath they’d say, “I saw the sign that said ‘No Parking’, but here’s why I did it!” and would then come up with something that was more of a whining excuse than a reasonable reason…so to speak. It began to sound like the legal version of the adults in the Peanuts movies: “Wohn wonh wanh wanh wanh wonhn…”

What I gathered from the excuses that there should be equal rights for passenger cars – they, too, should be allowed to park in a truck-only zone! Other people were there and didn’t get tickets so I shouldn’t either! I was handicapped! I had to keep bringing down armfuls of presents from my son’s birthday party! I don’t have eyes on the back of my head, so how could I see the sign that was behind my car! And so on…

At one point I could barely contain my laughter as a young lawyer in an ill-fitting suit got up and grilled the poor parking attendant, trying to get her to admit that the computer in her little handheld device was faulty, despite the fact its time and settings were set automatically by a satellite, and so his client should not have gotten the ticket, given to him for parking – without a receipt – in a zone ten minutes before that area stopped requiring payments. A minute or two I can get – but ten?! Even my old wind-up alarm clock I had as a child kept better time than he claimed a GPS-programmed device did.

As I whispered to the girl next to me – Shakespeare had it right: Kill all the lawyers.

He was so embarrassing, that even the judge had to work to keep a straight face, and those of us watching were squirming with embarrassment. I love finding clichés in action.

Finally it was my time. I got up and explained that I first had to run across the street to the other machine because the one I was trying to use wasn’t printing anything out. I saw the posture of traffic official next to me soften a bit. “Oh,” he said.

I held up my receipt. “I did have this on my dashboard,” I said and laughed, “But it was wholly my fault. I wasn’t aware of the requirement for having it curbside; I’ve never parked downtown on the street that I can remember – I usually take the train – or I park in a lot and I’m used to just putting it on the dash. So after I purchased my ticket, I opened the passenger side, chucked it in, and hurried off to my appointment.”

I turned to the parking official and said with a smile, “And with the way your job is, you can’t be expected to search each place of my car where a ticket might be displayed. So I can understand why I got the ticket. Now I know what to do!” He looked at me, amazed, then smiled -- clearly surprised by being treated with that level of respect...and my admission of guilt.

So did the judge – she then completely dismissed the charge, which is like getting an annulment: as far as the legal system is concerned, the ticket never happened. It’s an eradication that even a “not-guilty” ruling gives you. Life is so much easier when you just take responsibility for your actions, I’ve found.

I thanked the judge, and then I turned to the parking official and thanked him for coming. He seemed quite surprised by that as well. “You’re…welcome!” he said, and even seemed a bit pleased to simply be acknowledged as I’d acknowledged him. He’s likely got one of the most thankless jobs out there.

Afterwards, I met up with Andrew at the Rock Bottom Brewery and we had a few beers and shared some nachos and got caught up. It was a pleasant way to wind up a boring afternoon. Granted, I lost more paycheck-wise than I did in return for the $16 ticket, but it was the principle of the matter.

And that’s sort of the biggest thing that’s happened in the last few weeks. Now I’m about to head out and schlep Andrew out to Gresham so that he can get a new TV; the trunk of his car is kind of tiny, and doesn’t make TV-schlepping very easy. Mine’s a bit larger.

So I must now wrap this up to go get dressed and wash my face. More to come…when I have another thought.

One I want to air out, at least.

It's Been a Long Time Since I Rock and Rolled

….To borrow from Led Zeppelin. I was reading Andrew’s latest blog, and I realized I hadn’t done one in a long time. It’s not that I haven’t had anything going on – it’s more that, well, when you can do upwards of 130 emails in a day sometimes, blogging is the last thing you want to do! I've spent most of the summer trying to do outdoor exercise -- hikes and walks with hand weights as I zip around a duck pond near my house. But it looks like yesterday was the last of our good, warm Fall weather, and I'll be relegated to the gym from here on out for the most part!

Some of you may remember a post I did last Winter / Early spring about my favorite questions (“How much is your free demo?”)

There’s one I’ve been wanting to mention, but now, for the life of me, I can’t remember what it was…I have it written down at my desk at work, but as I’m home – well, ‘twon’t do me much good.

But I did have one conversation the other day that drove me home to a double martini (a rare thing, mind you; usually it’s just a single once or twice a week…if that. But I’ll admit: I make a damn good dirty martini!) I was fried on doing emails, and so I decided to spend the rest of my afternoon taking calls. I’d answered one earlier from a woman asking how long she needed to listen to her first level, and said that it was nowhere in our literature.

I wrote back that it was approximately 4-6 months, and that we do state it in several places in our literature.

So the first call I take is from her. “Oh, am I glad I got you!” she says. “I got your email, and I’ve just spent the last two or three hours going through all my literature, and I can’t find it anywhere!”

“Well,” I say, “it’s in the liner notes of the CD case, it’s in the introductory materials, it’s in the support letters we send, and it’s in the email my colleague sent you.” (I had learned by then that she had emailed us earlier in the day and had gotten a response from someone else there.)

“But where?!?!”

After speaking with her for a few minutes, I come to realize she’s a bit, well, not fully in a place where she can think clearly. She first tells me that her husband threw out most of the stuff we sent them, then she tells me that she has everything we sent to them….She then went on to say she’d gone over our entire website many, many times and it wasn’t there; nor was it in any of the support letters. And then she said, “And my husband threw away the CD case and information after putting everything on our iPod to listen as an MP3. Nobody keeps those CD cases anyway! So why are you punishing me for throwing away something nobody keeps?”

“I'm certainly not 'punishing' you Cindy, I'm giving you the information you need, but, for whatever reason, you aren't accepting it," I said. "And I need to note something here. Our program isn’t designed to go on an iPod in MP3 or any compressed format.”

“Well,” she said, in a very morally superior tone, “It is if you know what you’re doing!” (Meaning, “You don’t know what you’re talking about, even though you’ve been working with this technology for more four and a half years!”)

I’ll admit, by then my blood was boiling, and it was taking everything in me to keep my tone polite and respectful.

“Perhaps,” I said, “But MP3 formats harm the low carrier tones and keep you from getting full benefit. We don’t recommend listening on anything other than the CDs. I just want to make sure you get the full benefit from them.”

“NOBODY listens to CDs anymore!” she said, tone still superior. “And you can transfer them if you know what you’re doing, MP3 or otherwise. You’re just trying to move away from the real issue here!”

I sat, flummoxed. “Ma’am”, I said politely (when you hear me using “Sir” or “Ma’am” it means they’re on thin ice with me, “I have to admit I’m rather confused on a few points. You’re the first person in the four and a half years and many thousands of emails I’ve done this job that someone has claimed that we do not have this information anywhere; my confusion comes from the fact that we have hundreds of people calling and stating that they’ve been on the program for about four months, asking should they move on? They’ve read the information – and have gotten it from there. My intention is not to single you out, but, again, you’re the first and only person to claim it’s not anywhere. If it’s not anywhere in our literature…then where are the other Participants getting the information?”

She paused, and then said, “It’s not in any of the literature! Where is it? Why are you punishing me for not keeping something nobody keeps?!” (She said this about five times). “Why aren’t you taking responsibility for this? I keep calling and emailing you for this information and I keep forgetting. If you had it in the literature, I wouldn’t have to keep doing this!”

“Cindy,” I said, doing my best to keep my exasperation out of my voice, “Our responsibility is to send you the information, your responsibility is to keep the information we send. We sent it. The timeframes are listed in numerous places. You chose to throw away some important information. How is it our irresponsibility that you decided not to keep it? We’ve also sent it to you in two separate emails, and I’ve told you verbally several times – four to six months.”

“No!” She screamed. By then she was in tears. I hadn’t even raised my voice at that point (nor would I at all.) “You aren’t telling me what I need to know! You’re skirting the issue and you’re refusing to provide me with what I’m asking for! I want to see where you wrote it out! But you’re refusing to tell me! What kind of customer service is this?”

“Ma’am,” I said, “How am I not providing you with customer service? We’ve emailed you the information twice, it’s in the support information, it’s on our website. If you decided to throw out key pieces of information, then there’s not much I can do. I’ve provided you with what you needed – the timeframe for listening – so even if you had nothing we sent you, you now have the information.”

“But I keep forgetting and I keep having to call! If you’d put it in your literature I wouldn't have to keep calling – and I’m telling you I’ve gone over it many, many times, and – ” she took a deep breath and shouted, “…IT…ISN’T…ANYWHERE!!!”

So write it in a Sharpee pen on bathroom mirror! I wanted to say…but didn’t. Tattoo it to your forehead! Put it on a sticky note taped to your iPod! If you keep forgetting the damn information - write it down! How hard is that?!

After enduring this for longer than likely necessary I said, politely, “Cindy, I’m afraid I can’t continue with this conversation. We’re not getting any further. You have the information now.”

“No! I don’t!” she screamed. And then, here’s the part that was the cherry on top: “I’ve seen it in an email, but I need to see it in print!!!”

Me: ....

“Well, you’re welcome to print out the emails we sent and use that for reference.”

“NO! I want to see it in OFFICIAL INFORMATION!”

Exasperated, I said, “This is ‘official’ information because you’re getting it from an ‘official’ Centerpointe employee. I’ve been doing my job for a long time, ma’am, and the information is there. I can’t tell you to go to page 9, paragraph 3 subsection ii, but it’s there. Because we’ve had thousands and thousands of customers get it from the numerous places where we put it. Or they seem satisfied with the information we give over the phone or in a n email. You’re the only person I’ve ever heard state this, Cindy. And so what does that tell you?”

Okay, so maybe I shouldn’t have said that – but I was tired, frustrated and I was stumped as to what was really going on with her, because I know from my job that when someone’s caught on something like that, it’s not about something not being in the literature. It’s something else. But at that point, I couldn’t have cared less. Had she gotten me earlier in the day, I might have tried to coach her.

“But why can’t you?! You just don’t want to help me!!!”

“Because I don’t have all the information right in front of me at the moment. But I can assure you it’s there in several places.” I then told her again I wasn’t going to continue the conversation; she was sobbing at that point and was in such hysterics (she actually said at one point she thought I was lying to her) I could barely understand her. I hadn’t raised my voice, I’d been as nice as I could be (my colleagues who overheard this told me I’d been too nice).

And she hung up.

So I went home, went for a brisk walk around my favorite duck pond, fixed myself dinner and a double martini, growling and grousing and muttering about her.

The next morning, I gathered all the information we send and discovered this:

· It’s in the liner notes that come with the CD (you know, the thing that nobody keeps anymore)
· It’s in the nice pamphlet that discusses how the program works; the pamphlet comes with the level she has
· It’s in the Frequently Asked Questions on our website. In two different places.
· It’s in two places in the email we sent her (a repeat of The Awakening Prologue Instructions)
· It’s in the leaflet we send entitled “The Awakening Prologue Instructions”
· It’s in Support Letter #9

I found it in about a dozen places, all of which she said didn't contain the information. So I sent her two pieces of information (the liner notes and a pamphlet), with the places marked with a pink sticky arrow, and included a very polite letter that pointed out a few other places where she could find it. (I also reiterated why we don’t recommend putting our soundtracks in MP3 format on iPods or other such devices.) I also – politely – mentioned that she needed to keep the information in a safe place.

Why am I still hung up on this and writing about it, two days later? Honestly, I don’t know. Partly because she’s clearly an idiot…but also because I do feel bad for her. She’s clearly not in a healthy mental state, and she’s the kind of person that dearly needs our help.

It reminds me of the email question I got yesterday, “Do you have a CD just for happiness?”

Marc, my boss, said to just let it go, but I did feel kind of bad about how I’d handled it; I honestly didn’t feel like I’d really made much of an effort on my end to help someone who needed help. She was desperate for something, and I could hear it in her voice, but I didn’t have the wherewithal at that point to try to dig into it. She was a person who was hurting and was frustrated, and so I felt it was my duty to follow up with her and provide her with “official” information. I still feel like I could have done more…and I guess that’s what’s eating at me.

There was more going on with her, and I didn’t follow up on that, even though my intuition was telling me to do so. So I came away feeling irritated to no end by her…but upset with myself for not listening to my intuition that she needed something more and different, and that I was blaming her for how angry I was.

We all miss things that are right under our noses. It happens all the time. I guess I was just caught at a fragile time as I was tired and I (thought I) didn’t care. Granted, I work with the loopier end of human consciousness and it takes its toll sometimes, but I was feeling challenged and dismissed…just as she likely was. I know I’m human, and I know I can only do my best, but the odd thing is – at the time I knew I wasn’t. One of my pet peeves is when people call us for help or information, and then argue with me or shoot it down time and time again. I let that get in the way of helping someone who needed to be heard or helped on a level beyond what they thought they needed. It's my job to hear beyond the words and the question, but I completely ignored that.

Writing this just now, I realize now that’s why she went away frustrated, as did I: she was (unconsciously) asking for help for something else beneath the surface of the information she wanted, and I didn’t even try to give it to her. I knew that at the time, and that “little voice” as Magnum P.I. always called it, was nearly screaming in my head to push beyond it and find out what was really going on…and I ignored it.

For that I’m truly sorry. She was in emotional overwhelm and was blaming the literature (and me) for it. And she wasn’t getting the information she needed…which was why my simply telling her “four to six” months wasn’t satisfying her. I turned it into a pissing match of sorts, and took it personally. It's bound to happen sometimes, yes, but when I have that "little voice" screaming in my head...I really need to learn to fully listen to it. I usually do, but on Thursday it was just too hard for whatever reason.

She was asking for a glass of water, thinking she was thirsty, but really, she needed a hug. She was thirsty, yes, but not for what she thought she needed. And I knew it…but I ignored it.

Kind of a sappy metaphor, but it’s the best I can come up with.

I guess that’s why I’m writing about this today…I just needed to air it out and sort through what was going on. I’ll use it as a lesson to listen to my “little voice” better next time…that voice is never wrong I’ve found, and yet – I still think I know better. And when I do, I realize…I don’t.

Hopefully Cindy will call back and not let that one call overshadow what we can give her. If she never speaks to me again, I’m fine with that; but we have 8 other really terrific coaches that she can certainly work with.

So thank you, readers, for letting me bounce all of that off of you and for lending me your “cyberears”.

Hopefully it won’t be so long before I “rock and roll” again.

I've added new photos to my photo link, so check that out.