It’s a beautiful morning

Now I’m being Greg-like and using song titles for my subject line… But it is a beautiful morning in Houston. Yesterday was beautiful, too, and my errands took me through three of my favorite Houston neighborhoods. My own, of course, as well as River Oaks and West U. River Oaks has the stateliest mansions, but I like West U better. Many of the roads in West U are canopied by live oaks, which are just amazing trees.

I should take out the camera sometime and shoot some of my favorite places in Houston. The other day, I was in line at the grocery store and began talking to the guy ahead of me about how great the weather was. When I wished it could always be this way, he objected that year-round good weather would make people want to move here. Since we already have over four million people clogging the roads, I guess it’s good that the heat keeps everyone else away.

Another high point of yesterday was a run by the post office. Thanks, Todd, for the St. Patrick’s Day card (I was a little late picking it up, huh?). And I got the VERY FIRST official dogrl greeting card with a lovely photo of Sophie! Thanks, Lisa. =)

The Yearn Factor

Last night, Tim and I were talking about a short story we’d both read, and although it had a feature which the two of us usually find annoying, we forgave it. I know why I forgave it: because the story was well-written and provided that lovely feeling of possibility that a happy ending delivers. I like happy endings, even if they’re implausible.

Then today, thanks to a link from Josh and Josh, I saw some videos people had made to various songs using clips from (forgive me for once again referring to the most overused two words on the Internet) Brokeback Mountain. By now, no one in the world except maybe some political prisoners and children in potential venues for Survivor doesn’t know that this movie doesn’t give us a happy ending, so I’m not spoiling anything by saying so. But as I was watching the videos, I thought again of the bittersweet satisfaction that all of my favorite fiction and movies deliver summed up in one word: yearning.

We are born wanting. We want food and sleep and a clean diaper. Later, we want Bratz dolls and PlayStations. We want people to like us and be nice to us. We want to win at Candyland and go to Disneyworld and make the team and get our driver’s license and graduate and go to London. I think even Buddhist monks want something. Tibet. World peace. Harmony. Wanting just seems to be an innate feature of human existence.

But yearning… I think that we don’t understand or experience true yearning until we fall in love. I’ve never been one to dismiss young love, either, with a smug, Oh, you have no idea what love is yet. When we fall in love for the first time, even if we are fourteen, we are loving to the capacity that a fourteen-year-old can love, and it’s just as real as falling in love at forty. And if yearning is part of that love–the sense that it can never be, no matter how we long for it–we get to marvel at how something can be so wonderful and awful at once.

Happy endings make me–well, happy. But yearning makes me miserably happy. Crazy, isn’t it?

Addition

I felt a little bad, because when I reread my last entry, I realized that I called my brother brilliant and said nothing about my sister, Debby–other than that she’s a big loser at progressive rummy. (heh heh)

She denies that she tried to kill me several times during my first few years on this planet, but other than that, she’s a great OLDER sister. She’s bolder, livelier, and more outgoing than I am. We had all the usual arguments as teenagers (mostly over phone and TV privileges, because those were the days when there was only one phone and one TV–with no remote!–in the house, and neither was in our room).

We sustained each other during our turbulent twenties, even when each of us thought the other might have lost her mind. She got married and had kids. I went to college. Later, she became a nurse. I continued to try to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Sometimes she’s the stable one. Other times, I am. We can go several months without talking, and even a year or so without seeing each other, but both of us know that should one of us need the other, that need will be met. (She just proved this to me again.)

I know that I’m very fortunate to get along with my brother and my sister, because that’s not always the case. Our relationships are not without their low points, but the great thing about getting older is that a lot of the things that annoyed us when we were growing up just aren’t important anymore.

For many years, I was awed by my sister’s work as a pediatric nurse. Very often, she dealt with terminally ill children, but she never stopped being strong and compassionate–and she never loses her sense of humor. Those qualities serve her well in her present work as a hospice nurse.

She’s pretty special, that sister of mine.

March at The Compound (so far)

As I mentioned before, March 4 was my mother’s eightieth birthday. My brother and sister came for that, but also because we had a lot of family business to take care of. Oddly, both of them ended up seeing doctors or dentists and taking painkillers and antibiotics. I had no idea spending a couple of weeks at The Compound could be so hazardous to anyone’s health.

I wish I had pictures of the night when a minute in a people-free house allowed Guinness to flip a ham from the table to the floor. Sadly, none of the photos quite capture the more dramatic moments of the last three weeks.
see images

Confidential to Tim

From my online Rolling Stone this morning:

POISON’s C.C. DEVILLE and SMASH MOUTH’s STEVE HARWELL are among those casted in the sixth season of VH1’s “The Surreal Life,” which premieres on March 19th. Playmate ANDREA LOWELL, actors SHERMAN HEMSLEY and ALEXIS ARQUETTE and model TAWNY KITAEN also made the cut.

Break out the whipped cream!

And in other entertainment news, happy 59th birthday, Ry Cooder.