Breasts and Testes Day

Alright kids, time to get educated.

Breast cancer is scary stuff. I am completely appalled and saddened by the number of women I know who have been diagnosed with breast cancer this year alone. I think of my Mom, my aunts, my grandmothers, my cousins, my friends, my co-workers, myself, and I feel almost helpless. It seems that in order to be educated about breast cancer , you really have to seek it out. I wish that resources and information were more readily available. I wish that ads on television and the radio were about mammograms and early detection instead of flashy cars and fast food restaurants. I wish that I knew more so I could tell every woman I meet where and how to get tested and educated.

I don't know enough, but I know some things and I want to share them.

According to studies, 182,000 U.S. women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, and 43,300 will die. One woman in eight has or will develop breast cancer in her lifetime.

One in eight. Think of eight women you know.

Men can get breast cancer, too. 1,600 American men will be diagnosed and nearly 500 will die of breast cancer this year.

Mammograms are among the best methods for early detection, but more than 13 million American women over the age of 40 have never had one. That is nearly 10 percent of all the women living in this country.

Breast cancer is one of the leading causes of death among women, second only to lung cancer.


So what can we do? Well, for starters, get educated and get mammograms regularly. If you can't afford it, check out this site to find out how to get one for free. Alternatively, go to Google and search for "free womens clinic" with the name of your town or city.

Second, celebrate Breasts and Testes Day! This is a holiday Ed and I created to designate a day each month when we conduct testicular and breast self-exams, respectively (minds out of gutter, please). I ordered a free shower hanger that shows how and when to perform my exam. Get yours here. Ed signed up for a monthly testicular self-exam reminder e-mail which arrives on the first of every month. Sign up here.
Celebrate Breasts and Testes Day as your own holiday, share it with your friends and loved ones, and just go ahead and try to stop yourself from dancing around your house singing, "Breasts and Testes Day! Breasts and Testes Day!"
(A note on this: I was disappointed to find myself shying away from breast self-exams and making excuses about not having enough time or doing it tomorrow. I slapped myself around a little and said: Elli, don't be a complete moron. You have five minutes to save your own life today. If you find yourself making excuses, call me. I'll slap you around too.)

Third, visit The Breast Cancer Site every day. Click on the pink button that reads, "Fund Free Mammograms." Your click is free, and it adds to the clicks of others and through the magic of adverstising, helps fund mammograms for women in need. I received an e-mail from my dear Jenny Pie today that said The Breast Cancer Site hasn't been getting enough clicks to fund mammograms recently. Let's turn that around. I have linked to The Breast Cancer Site from Allo Lune, so if you visit my site, make it a habit to head there next. It is SO EASY. One simple click. Do it.
(You'll also see that there are a number of tabs for other causes at the Breast Cancer Site which have their own buttons. Click these too, because, you know, rainforests are good.)

Fourth, talk to the women (and men!) you know about breast cancer, mammograms, early detection, and education. Talk openly and honestly. Encourage them to make this a priority. Know that you are giving other women the courage to ask questions, get answers, and find the resources they need to protect themselves.

We have to do this. For ourselves, our Moms, our best friends, for the cashier at the grocery store, for the traffic cop or the librarian. For the eight women in our lives who deserve to know.

Socks

I'm wearing socks and long sleeves and pants and have spent most of the day lazing around my happy, warm apartment under the glow of Christmas tree lights, reading and writing and thinking, drinking tea and watching the gray sky send down the rain. It bounces across the asphalt and glimmers in the stoplight near the ice cream stand on the corner.

I ventured out once, to the coop and the bank and in search of stationery, and it smelled and felt like late October. Really, it didn't smell like anything. But the coolness and dampness of the air, the sound of car tires splashing water across parking lots, the shiver in my step and the shade of the sky all suggested a smell and indicated a time of year that I'm sure my nose could decipher if I was blindfolded and deafened.

The flashing time-temperature sign on the bank read 58 degrees. August the twenty-seventh. This is New England, for sure. These are the days, the ones at summer's end that leapt seasons and skipped stages and vaulted into the darkness of winter, that always gave me an anxious feeling growing up. It was like waking and feeling like I'd slept for months, had missed entire moons, had forgotten how to wake. These days suggested other times and places: school holidays, soccer season, snowfall. They sent me into a winter funk before winter could even do the deed. Today though, I liked it. I stayed in and enjoyed the rain. I dozed under wool blankets and turned on the lights. I shut the shades and turned down the music. I lived in my head, in the silence, while Ed studied in the next room.

I'm looking forward to winter.

Partners

On Thursday night after work I drove north and met Ed at his school, his brand new law school in the green woods of Vermont. He'd been attending orientation all week and learning how to brief cases and avoid plagiarism, and getting ready to start classes on Monday. Thursday was the diversity cocktail party, and I went and shook hands with people who look far too young to be law students (does this just mean I'm getting old? People in positions I used to think of as professional and intimidating now seem younger than me, less prepared to exist in the world, less credible somehow. What is this?) and shouted back and forth over some spicy local band playing La Bamba and other vaguely "diverse" hits. It was fun to be enmeshed in the excitement of a new semester, and especially so because I'm not the one with loads of homework about to plow me in.

On Friday, rather than going to work in the morning I followed Ed to school again and went to the Dean's breakfast where I actually met and talked with the Dean, followed by a "Partners Meeting." I, you see, am a partner. I skipped right over law school and the bar, didn't waste my time working my way up in a big firm somewhere, just cut to the chase. Bam! Partner.

Really though, it's a cool thing Vermont Law does for the husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, and domestic spouses of their students. They've formed a coalition of sorts, or maybe more like a club. Either way, it's headed by the Dean's wife, a rotund jolly woman with more hair than a whooly mammoth sprouting from the top-side of her head in one giant plumed ponytail, and two women (with normal amounts of hair) who work for the school and whose husbands are starting their second years. This club for partners meets monthly for dinner at the Dean's house and to discuss cool stuff like "How On Earth to Live Through Exams with Your Law Student," and "How to Drive In, Dress For, and Survive Winter in The Snowy North Since You Just Moved Here From Georgia." (Seriously, everyone is from Georgia. All of us Northeasterners barked back, "Layers!" and thought that would cover it, but apparently not.) Also, because someone close to us has signed their life and financial well-being over to the institution, we get some pretty sweet benefits as their loving, supportive partners. We can join the campus gym for $20 per year. We can access their computer network with our own passwords. We can use the library, consult with financial aid, and coerce the Dean (via some trickery and charm on his wife's part) to grant us a plot of land on campus in which to plant a partners' garden. Yes. It's great, actually. I am now part of this support group of people in the very same somewhat terrifying situation I am in. I am one of two out of roughly fifteen who attended the meeting who actually has a job. I've got a new community with a ton to offer, and boy do I love communities. I've got a place at Vermont Law where I can go and feel welcome and feel a part of the magic that is education.

Nifty, eh?

Ack.

Hello. I just found a very small red ant. In my mouth.

You know how they say you swallow an average of eight spiders in your lifetime? I never believed that statistic, but now I think I do.

In this case it was an ant, and I think it came from my water bottle. But still. Dude, ant in my mouth. That was gross.

Ch-ch-ch changes

Refresh your browsers, boys and girls, because AlloLune's got a new banner!

(For the non-technically savvy, go to the top of this webpage and look for the button that has two arrows chasing each other in circles. Click it. Congrats! You have now refreshed your browser and should be able to see my new banner: my kite sailing through the sky. If you have troubles, leave me a comment and I'll help you figure it out.)

Seems the old lay-out is stored in cookies and temp files and will only display as such until you refresh that piece.

I've also changed my list format on the sidebar to include more fun categories like "Happening" and "In the works." Hopefully the list will give a good snapshot of my life at any given moment so you don't have to wade through all these words to get the details.

I registered AlloLune for a site feed, and if you don't know what this is, don't ask me. I have a very vague idea: it is something which operates something like a news reel, delivering my blog updates directly to your desktop when they are posted here. Anyway, if you've got a reader (more on this as I figure it out) you can subscribe to my page. I think my boyfriend is my only subscriber. I find this charming and humiliating.

I had to enlist word verification for commenting because I was getting all kinds of spam! It sucked. Robots were visiting my site more than real humans, and leaving little robot droppings all over the place: "Great site! Clcik here for more monies!" or "Nice werk! More fotos maybe? Click here for bigger manhood!" As you can see, this was not the type of community I'd like to be running here. This is a family show, you know? So now, before you can post a comment you have to verify that you are human and NOT a robot by typing in a given word. It's very simple, and sometimes fun if the word is all wavy gravy and you have to squint to see it.
Very. Exciting.

Sing with me now...

-Turn and face the strange, ch-ch-changes...

Rain

This morning started terribly gray to accompany my waking thought: I lost my wallet. I realized this last night and have retraced my steps, returned to work, rummaged through my car and apartment, called my friends and panicked, briefly, and finally called my bank, cancelled my debit card, and pouted. Mostly, I'm sad because I really liked my wallet, and it had some neat things in it that can't be replaced. It was a black canvass wallet with a black elastic closure. It was sleek and functional with no change purse to weigh me down. It fit in my back pocket.

Inside, I had the normal wallet things: driver's license, money cards, a few bucks, a calling card, a CVS card. But I also had my college ID, the one with the picture of the tower on it and my eagle number along the bottom. The one that replaced the gold one I broke while sledding down the Newton hill with it in my back pocket. The one which still gets me into movies and museums at the students' discounted rate, despite the fact that I haven't been a student for over two years (but still have the outstanding loans which make me feel as if this slight fraud is justified. Sorry, AMC. Sorry, MOCA.).

Also inside was an ancient relic from the early days of me and Ed. Sometime during our senior year, Ed was showing me the contents of his wallet and pulled out his expired New Jersey license, the one with him at sixteen with his head cocked to one side, smirking slightly; the one that was peeling at the edges, bent into a curve that followed the curve of his back pocket. He handed it to me and it made me smile. We were new and I was charmed by most things related to him, and this was a piece of his history. It was also a token of New Jersey's mystique. It was edgy, I guess, with its laminated paperboard form mocking all the newly hologrammed, tough-as-steel models being produced to thwart the designers of fakes across the country. I liked it so much that he let me keep it, and I put it into my wallet where it has lived ever since. I mostly forget that it's there, but on the rare occasion that I look through my wallet or that a conversation about drivers' lisences comes up among friends, I take it out. I am proud of it, in a way. It's like a photograph you might find at a thrift store, yellowing and cracked, reminding you of a different time and place, of people you might have known. I liked it, too, because it connected me to him. It was like seeing his name on my dance card, or wearing an ID bracelet with his initials on it around my wrist. I imagine it was like these things, anyway, never having done or experienced either.

When I lost my wallet I lost Ed's old license with it.

-Elli is rowing her boat gently down the stream

UPDATE: My wallet has been FOUND! Turns out it was in my friend's car all along but she didn't see it at first. Black wallet, black car interior, black night. It was hiding. But now it's back and I am happy.

Dance Dance Revolution

For the first time since Full House was on TGIF, I find myself completely and ridiculously obsessed with a television show. I don't know how it happened; this is so not like me. I hardly watch television at all, and when I do I can only scoff at the insane number of reality shows smothering every channel. Sometime near the beginning of the summer, though, I watched "So You Think You Can Dance" for the first time. From then on, I was hooked.

It started out casually. I just so happened to be flipping through the channels around 8pm every Wedneday and lo! "Dance" was on. I would squeal and Ed would roll his eyes, and we would spend the next hour watching talented people shake their thangs all over the stage. Soon I was rooting for my favorites (Benji obvs, and Ivan) and was checking the website to make sure I didn't miss the results show. Checking the website?! Yes. Of a television show, of a weekly dramatic reality show with real live voting and a giant Australian commentator. What the hell?

There was just something about it. It was the costumes and the music, the rawness of the talent and the personalities. I fell for these kids. They pulled my heartstrings with every Annie Lennox song they contemporaried and every Busta move they popped. I stared in awe as they stood before the judges and took the hits and the praise with nothing but grace and modesty. I envied their confidence, their willingness to get up and do what they love to do in front of everyone, and to smile about it even when it didn't go as planned. I never voted, but by the end of every show my little heart was chanting along with everyone else: "Benji! Heidi! Travis!"

Tonight was the season finale, and 7:30 found me jetting from volleyball early to make it home in time. I laughed with my friend at how silly I am, but nothing was keeping me away tonight, even if I felt like a dork. Watching the show, it was worth it to see the finale, to see the top twenty dancers return to rock one last powerhouse performance. It was worth it to see Ivan and Allison creating palpable romance through their best piece, and Heidi and Travis flowing seamlessly again. It was worth it to hear Donyelle, my least favorite finalist, tell her story about purpose and motivation, and to have that resonate with me. She asked for direction, and man, she got it.

I love this show. I love that a show about dance was the summer's biggest hit. I love the way these kids are every kid out there, with a dream and a drive and a chance to actually do something with it. I love the way watching people dance makes me feel: like dreaming's not so foolish, like anything might be possible, like maybe I want to shake my thang and make some things come true.

-Elli's got canned heat in her heels tonight

Change is coming

It feels like Autumn sneaking in. The trees are still summer green, but the air at night cools down, sends a shiver through the branches, condenses into dew on the windows by morning. Last night, the sun was shining over the Connecticut but as I drove North, the clouds hustled in laying a thick gray covering over the water, closing in on the highway and seeping into the valley. By the time I got home it was raining in solid splashes and the drops were bouncing in my headlights' reflection on the road. The storm cleared quickly but the clouds lingered, mixing with beams of sun and leftover mist and producing, to my delight, a double rainbow bridging the state line.

We walked to the ice cream stand after dark more for our sweet tooths than any homage to summer, but in the night I smelled New Mexico in fall, a distinct combination of fabric softener and pinon pine. It made me think of days and nights of canvassing in Taos and Las Vegas, of pourring rain and still moons. In New Mexico, summer became fall in a startling way. For weeks, the summer heat lingered and the sun glared and the sweat beaded at my brow as I hustled between campuses, into and out of classrooms and meetings. A month passed, and sometime between a conference in Denver and the airport in Albuquerque, the autumn closed in. When I returned, the leaves had started falling and the sky had mellowed to the color of slate. The heat of the desert had vanished and it was then only dryness, which hid beneath cool mornings and showed only in cracked skin and static electricity.

It's happening here, too, but starting earlier and showing itself more clearly. Fall is coming. The river can feel it. The sky is slimming, pulling closer, readying for winter. The trees are nodding off, blinking the sleep from their eyes until the night is cold enough and the season finally goes.

-Elli's got diamonds on the soles of her shoes

Commencement

The week took a turn for the better on Wesnesday, when I joined a bunch of friends from work in a volleyball game at a local state park. We played for two hours and I walked away with aching muscles and a beating heart. Doing things with people is good. Group sports are good, and made better when everyone is only there for fun, and not for competition. (I was chagrined to find that club sports in Chicago were cut-throat, and players criticized each other for lack of skill or mishaps on the field. Not fun.) My old friend Tony was there, unexpectedly, and promised ultimate frisbee and free kayak rentals from his summer job on the river. I came home glowing and barely able to lift my arms above my waist. I've been recovering ever since, but my muscles are a good reminder that I want to keep doing this.

Yesterday at work we had our second annual commencement, a gathering of members, alumni, parents, staff, friends and noteworthy speakers, to celebrate a successful year of conservation service and the hard work of everyone involved. Rebecca sent an email yesterday morning reminding us that the day was for us too, though our service ended almost three months ago and now feels like a distant memory, another life. She reminded us of what we accomplished, of how far we came, and how proud we should be. It was good to hear from her, and good to remember.

The day was perfect--sunny and warm, clear skies. Over 200 people showed up. Ed came too, and we spent the day talking and laughing with strangers who had volunteered like we did, who spent the better part of a year giving something to the land. It was affirming to hear their stories, to commiserate, to look back, to get excited again about what we did, and to share it with other people. With all the craziness lately, with the move and the settling in, with the job uncertainty and the newness of it all, it's been easy to forget. I'd lost touch, I think, with the reason I'm so intent upon sticking around. I'd forgotten the magic that happens in the field, somewhere between the sweaty t-shirts and group dynamics. I'd forgotten that there's more to my work than the desk and the laptop where I spend all my time. The conversations I had and the connections I made yesterday urged me to think harder, to look more closely, to really ask myself where I'm going and why. It encouraged me to be content with where I am, and to keep shooting for where I want to be.

After a great speech by Bill McKibben (a Vermont writer of several books and contributor to the New Yorker and Outdoor magazine), we were loosed to games of frisbee and canoeing down the Connecticut. Ed and I jumped at the chance for some ultimate, and despite the un-mowed field, a group of us tromped around in grass to our knees to toss the disc. It was bound to happen to someone, and after 20 minutes it did: Ed stumbled into a pothole buried beneath the deep vegetation and sprained an ankle. Bugger. He was iced and wrapped and filled full of ibuprofen, and has been hobbling around ever since. He insisted on going to the swimming hole anyway, so down the banks we went and into the rushing water, higher than it's been for a month.

Today, it's sunny and 75 degrees. After a morning of bank visits and cleaning the apartment, I am off, out into the day to enjoy it before it's over.

--Elli is not home right now, she's walking in the spiderwebs but leave a message and she'll call you back

Marriage Equals Love

We were on our way to New Jersey, and had stopped for coffee. We pulled into a parking lot and got out of the car and as we walked to the door of the shop, I noticed a bumper sticker I'd seen once before. I'd seen it in El Centro, on the back of a beat up minivan in the parking lot of the local fairgrounds where the rodeo was taking place. I remember laughing, scoffing, really, and chalking it up to the old southwest, to cowboy country and Southern California, to conservative fear and sheltered communities. When I saw it on the back of a station wagon in a parking lot in Connecticut and watched a young mother get out of that station wagon with her three-year old kid, I couldn't laugh. I could barely breathe.

The bumper sticker shows a a stick figure man and a stick figure woman and an equals sign and reads: "Marriage."

Man plus woman equals marriage.


I just don't get it. To me, discrimination based on sexual orientation is the same as making racial slurs or sexist jokes. It's not okay that it happens at all. What is this fight over marriage, anyway? What are we so afraid of? Is it that if gay people start marrying, we think our straight marriages will mean something less? How can we worry about the deterioration of values when we're the ones standing in the street, chanting rhymes of hatred and carrying placards beating down our brother?

In Southern California, discrimination against anyone and anything not male, macho or born of the patriarch was something I learned to live with, to ignore and brush aside. It was bearable because I could craft a fairy tale around the backwards west, of old times and antique values. I could shake my head and know that it wasn't that way, back East where things were right.

In Connecticut, it was different. It was a young mother with her little kid. It was a friendly face in the coffee shop, a hello on the sidewalk. It was a progressive's station wagon with a flare of hatred emblazoned across the back. What gives? It shakes me to realize that discrimination of all kinds shows up everywhere in life, not just in the backwards corners of one-horse towns. It worries me that kids like hers will grow up thinking it's okay to separate them from us and to declare one better than the other. It infuriates me that we're here, arguing over someone else's right to marry, to legal equality, to a personal commitment recognized as real by our governing body.

Marriage doesn't equal man plus woman, or man plus man, or woman plus woman. Marriage doesn't equal right or wrong, good or evil. Marriage equals love.

--Elli is a brick house, this lady's stacked and that's a fact, ain't holdin' nothin' back

Well

The long and the short of it is that I didn't get the job. After a second interview (for technicality's sake), a few anxious hours and a phone call from the lady who makes the decisions, it was given to another woman in my office.

So, she has a billion years of experience. So, she's like 40 years old. So, she already works with the people she will be working with, only in a different capacity. So, she has a family to support.

So, they didn't pick me.


And I'm all the things I'm supposed to be: angry, sad, confused, self-loathing, indignant, hopeless, overly-dramatic, resigned.

This is life, you know? I'm twenty-three, and this is the catch-22. People with experience get hired. I don't have experience, and I can't get any if I don't get hired. This is life. Life goes on.

I warp in and out of panic and total, lackluster lackadaisy. I nearly can't believe how many times I can get my hopes up only to have them crash down again. But then, I can. I can believe it, because as much as I squeeze my eyes shut and try to obliterate the reality of each rejection, it's still there when I open my eyes. I'm still temporary. I still don't have health insurance. I still get paid hourly. I am still at the whim of someone else's direction. I still have no career to speak of, or anything beginning to resemble the start of one. I still don't know what I want to do, or what I'll be good at. I still need someone to give me a chance, and a job.

Ho-Hum.


-Elli thinks that teachers should leave those kids alone...