I missed the memo about contraception, conversion, and consternation.

As of this writing, I hope that the whole brouhaha regarding insurance coverage for prescription contraception is dying down.  Rush Limbaugh got his name in the news a lot for doing what he does best (and that’s being a professional asshole), but hopefully Sandra Fluke will soon return to a normal life not too traumatized or discouraged by all the slut shaming.

When insurance coverage for prescription contraception was recently raised as a political issue, I think my first reaction was, “Seriously?”

It just seems like there are so many other issues which affect so many more people that I couldn’t imagine that Santorum or anybody else had picked that hill to die on.  I don’t fancy myself a constitutional scholar, but I did spend a gazillion dollars on a law degree and dabbled in employment law, so I thought I might have been taking crazy pills because this seemed like such a non-issue to me.  I mean the Church, (and that’s with a big “C”) is a church, but the Church also operates all sorts of businesses, like schools and hospitals.  And these businesses employ people.  When you’re an employer, you have to abide by the laws that govern all employers.  Employers don’t get to pick and choose the laws they want to obey based on religious affiliation.  (Check out this video where someone who actually is a constitutional scholar explains it a lot better than I can.)

What makes this whole thing especially weird for me is that I’m a convert to Catholicism.  On a very momentous Easter-Eve back in 1999, I was baptized, had first communion, and was confirmed all in the same night.  It was beautiful and trippy.  Having long abandoned the half-hearted Southern Baptist tradition of my youth, I chose to convert to Catholicism after marrying a cradle Catholic.  This is going to sound a little (or a lot) flip, but conversion was not that big of a deal for me.  I had already been raised in a christian tradition, so the core beliefs were the same, it was just a matter of learning all the secret handshakes and whatnot.   The big night of Easter Vigil seemed very much like getting initiated into a club, and I mean that in a nice way.

Becoming a Catholic has been a meaningful and valuable experience for me, but there are parts of the Church’s teachings that I will probably never fully understand or accept.  If that makes me a “cafeteria Catholic” or even a  bad Catholic, then I suppose I have to be OK with that.

Like a lot of Catholics (but not all like Lawrence O’Donnell erroneously suggests in the above-linked video), I don’t think that artificial birth control is wrong. What simultaneously cracks me up and makes my head hurt, is that the Church accepts Natural Family Planning (NFP) as a way of preventing pregnancy, and to be effective, NFP requires women to take daily temperature readings, monitor cervical mucus, etc.  By keeping track of fertility signs, couples can avoid conceiving by limiting their business meetings to days when it’s unlikely they’ll be fruitful.

NFP requires some fairly sophisticated scientific knowledge, but God forbid (really, God forbid?) that we use our scientific understanding to develop a tiny pill that achieves the same result as NFP, but without the charts and without the unfortunate references to egg whites.  I suppose you can outsmart God with a basal thermometer, but outsmarting God with a tiny dose of synthetic hormones, or even a bit of latex,  is just going too far. I’m an even worse theologian than I am constitutional scholar, but I don’t see how this makes any sense.

To my fellow Catholics who do avoid artificial birth control, I say this:  So do I.  But that’s ’cause I’m pushing 40 and “Russian Roulette” is pretty effective for women my age.  The window where this will be an issue of real personal significance for me will be closed in a few years.  At least when I enter the phase of my life where I’m having purely non-procreative sex, I can be assured that the Viagra will be covered by insurance.   Memo received.

I missed the memo about attention deficit and Downton Abbey.

As I begin writing this post, it’s about T-minus one hour until the finale of season 2 of Downton Abbey and I am all a-flutter as I anticipate the resolutions and cliffhangers that might be a part of this delicious bit of television.

I do love TV, but I’ve found in recent years that I’ve become a pathetic multi-slacker.  I typically can’t watch TV without my laptop and phone nearby.  I think my inability to focus is pretty symptomatic of the mixed blessing that is modern living.  The gizmology which permits such wondrous access to information and interconnection does have the side effect of taking us out of the present moment.  Often if I’m watching TV, I’m also looking up the actors on the IMDB website, or reading and posting comments about what I’m watching.  I suppose this does kinda enrich my TV watching experience, since I learn a few tidbits about the careers of the actors I’m watching and sometimes comparing reviews in real-time can be fun.  But mostly, I think, it distracts my attention to the point that I miss out on whatever really good bits there might be in whatever it is I’m watching.

I’ve been reflecting on my scatter-brained approach to my viewing habits since I’ve begun watching Downton Abbey.  In case you missed the Downton Abbey memo too, I won’t give anything away, but it really is the most fantastic TV show.  It’s on PBS, but don’t let that dissuade you.  At its core, it’s a soap opera, with all the wacky twists and machinations that make that genre so delectable.  But its setting in Edwardian England, on an unbelievably beautiful estate, elevates the upstairs-downstairs drama to new heights.

While my love of NPR is unparalleled, I’ll cop to the fact that I haven’t been a huge fan PBS, until now.  I think I’d avoided PBS programming because it doesn’t lend itself to my distracted way of watching TV.  To enjoy a show like Downton Abbey, which has a gazillion characters and lots of textures, you have to pay attention.  No tweeting, no Facebooking, no working on your blog.  Just watch.  And for watching, one is richly rewarded with zingers as delivered by the incomparable Dame Maggie Smith.

So…15 minutes to go now, and we’ll see if Cousin Matthew and Lady Mary uncross their stars and find a way to be together, and if so what might Sir Richard do to seek his revenge? And what about the beautifully stoic and recently newlywed Mr. and Mrs. Bates? Will they find their happiness destroyed by a wrongful(?) conviction? And what about Lady Sybil and Mr. Branson, and the unwed mother Ethel, and the conniving footman Thomas, and oh poor, plain Lady Edith, will she ever find a beau? These questions and more may be answered tonight…so time to put away the laptop and really tune in.   Memo received.

p.s.  The first season of Downton Abbey is available on Netflix and Hulu, and the current season can be streamed from the PBS website.  Be warned, it’s addictive!

I missed the memo about kid lit, kindles and Katniss Everdeen.

I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t love to read.  As a child, I enjoyed wandering around libraries and losing myself in the words and the pictures of books, glorious books.  Still,  I suppose I was just dabbling  until I was introduced to A Wrinkle in Time and The Arm of the Starfish in elementary school.   Madeleine L’Engle was my gateway drug.  Once I figured out that novels were this marvelous form of transportation, I was totally hooked.  Then I started pretty much inhaling all the Judy Blume books in the school library, then graduated to the dark, incestuous world of V.C. Andrews, and then I was swiping my Dad’s Stephen King and Robert Heinlein novels.   Yeah, I was a book junkie.

As a grown up, I’ve continued to be a pretty voracious reader.  But in recent years, it’s been mostly code books and Sandra Boynton.  I always read a bit for fun, but the leisurely trips to libraries and bookstores were an infrequent treat.

But now…. I got one of those schnazzy kindle fire thingys for Christmas and I’ve discovered a whole new world of multi-slacking.  In addition to using it for Facebook-stalking old boyfriends and watching cute cat videos on YouTube, I can use my kindle to read actual books!  I’ll admit I’d initially been kind of resistant to the whole e-reader thing.  The brave new world of publishing had vaporized my husband’s old job at a magazine, so I admit I held a grudge.  But the kindle fire was seductively cheap for its capabilities, so I reluctantly started coveting it.  And now there’s no turning back. All the books I could read in multiple lifetimes, lots of them free or really cheap,  at a mere flick of a touchscreen.  I’ve seriously died and gone to nerdy girl heaven.

One of my first acquisitions on my new gizmo was The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  I’d been hearing about these books for the last year or so, but dismissed the thought of reading them since they were technically “young adult” novels.  I don’t have my AARP card or anything, but I somehow thought anything with the YA label was somehow beneath my undeniable  sophistication.  Boy, I am I ever glad I got over myself and read these books.  I can’t remember when I’ve been more engrossed in a story or more neglectful of the laundry.

If you haven’t read any of The Hunger Games books yet, I won’t give anything away.  Just suffice it to say, I want to be Katniss Everdeen when I grow up.  She’s a complicated, tough little bird and I’ll be thinking about her a lot, for a long time, I think.

It seems kind of fitting that my love affair with books has been rekindled (sorry, couldn’t resist) by the very sort of books that got me hooked in the first place.  There’s usually something pure in adventure stories for and about the young, and there’s extra magic when a book bridges generations, as The Hunger Games seems to be doing.  When the first of the movies comes out in a couple of months, I predict I’ll be queuing up giddily for my ticket along with lots of people both older and younger than myself.  With so many fans out there, the line might be kind of long.  But I’ll bring my kindle so I’ll have something to read.

Memo received.

I missed the memo about smiling.

I’m technically a native Californian, but I spent most of my formative years in The South.  Say what you will about Southerners, they’re friendly folks.  When you walk or drive down the street in a small southern town, it’s pretty much expected that you will smile and wave at just about everyone you encounter along your path, whether or not you know them.  That’s just what you do.

So imagine my confusion and discomfort when I moved from a small town in Virgina to the big city of Los Angeles.  I persisted in my smiling (though I dispensed with the waving) and people in the City of Angels responded strangely.  If passersby made eye contact at all, it was usually with a blank or slightly angry expression.  More concerning was when my smiling resulted in guys turning around and following me down the street.  It wasn’t my intention to look flirty, but I suppose when all the other women were walking briskly and averting their eyes, my smiling seemed pretty alluring in comparison.

So quickly I learned, don’t smile so much.  And when I stopped smiling so much, I think I got a little less happy.  Maybe it’s one of those weird connections between the mind and the body that Ph.ds are still trying to sort out.  All I know is that much like Buddy the Elf, I just like smiling.  I smile when I’m happy, but I’m finding more and more that smiling makes me happy.

As part of my recent job change, I’m now one of those urban clichés in opaque black tights and Steve Madden walking shoes, hoofing it from the train station to my office.  Now that I’m out of my car, I’m actually seeing people, and I’m trying to get back into the habit of smiling at them.  Maybe it still makes me look flirty or crazy, but I don’t care.  Not to get all Mother Teresa on you, but…

Smiling is kind of like an open door…it is inviting.  It might sometimes invites people to follow you home, but I think it more often invites good things, like friendship and warm and fuzzy feelings.  In this way, smiling is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  I could explain, but Deano sings it better than I could say it..

Merry Christmas and memo received.

I missed the memo about regrets, regrouping, and student loan debt.

After being a practicing attorney for nearly seven years, I recently resigned from the private law firm at which I had been working for nearly six years and took a job with the city.  My new job did not require a law degree, though my legal education and experience will probably come in very handy.

With my new job, comes a bit of a pay cut, but it’s a small price to pay for my mental health.  In recent years, I was getting pretty miserable in private practice.  As a defense attorney, the business model required me to keep track of my work day in six-minute increments, with lots of pressure to maximize the total amount of time I billed.  The elephant in the room with this business model is that what’s good for business isn’t always good for the client…this inherent conflict of interest weighed on me increasingly in recent years. 

I was also finding that so much of civil litigation was just posturing;  I would spend months and months going through the literal and figurative motions only to reach a conclusion that was pretty much foregone from the outset.  I started feeling that I was wasting a lot of life force in this process, and so many factors in litigation seem to unfortunately militate against people doing the right thing sooner rather than later. 

So, I’ve made this big transition, and so far so good with my new gig.  Now I’m left with trying to make sense of the last decade and I’ll admit it’s been a bit trippy.  As I was beginning to struggle in private practice, I would find myself cursing the day I ever decided to go to law school.  But then, as an eternal optimist, I tried to talk myself out of the conclusion that law school had been a mistake.  And because I’ve gotten some transferable skills out of the deal, my legal career hasn’t been a total loss. 

But…and it’s a big but…I’m left with the collateral damage of tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.  How I kick myself as I contemplate what other less expensive routes I could have taken towards a meaningful career.  In recent weeks, some of us within the 99% have been calling for student loan debt forgiveness, and for me, that is a delightful daydream.  I will honor my student loan debt, but the thing that kinda bugs me about it is that it’s one of the only forms of debt that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.  If you max out your Visa on Jimmy Choo’s or buy a dream house that turns into a nightmare, you can waltz into Federal Court and say “oops!” but if you mortgage your future on an educational endeavor that turns out to be completely misguided, too bad. 

Forgive my crude artwork…

Ever read the Guy de Maupassant story, “The Necklace”? Here’s the short version…a vain social climber is married to a petty bureaucrat. He wrangles an invitation to a glamorous ball at which she can rub shoulders with all the beautiful and important people. She’s delighted only momentarily, until she recalls that she has no gown befitting such an occassion. Her husband scrounges together the money she needs for a beautiful new dress, and still she is not satisfied, as now she recognizes she has no jewelry to go with her dress. Her husband suggests she borrow something from a well-to-do friend, so she goes to her friend and selects the most elaborate diamond necklace in her collection. They go the ball and have a glorious evening, but as they enter the car to go home, she realizes the necklace is gone. Rather than admit to her friend that the necklace has been lost, they borrow every penny they can, burdening themselves with an unthinkable amount of debt, and they buy a replacement, which is returned to the friend.

For decades, they work tirelessly to repay their debt. Then one day, the social climber, who is now old and weary from over-work, meets her old friend in the street. Her friend is shocked by how changed she is and feels pity. But the social climber feels pride and tells her friend the truth of how she lost the necklace but has worked all these years to repay the cost of the replacement. The friend is horrified and tells her, “But my dear, the necklace was a fake!”

So yeah, that’s kinda how I feel about my law degree.  I’m paying dearly for something that turns out to be fake.  Well, not fake exactly, but you know what I mean.   Some memos are really, really expensive, but memo received.

I missed the memo about Oktoberfest.

My first name is Jamie, the feminine of James, as in King James, the old dead white guy.  My maiden name is Walker, like the shortbread. Short, white bread, that is.  So yeah, I’m ridiculously caucasian and I’ve always been a little embarrassed about that.  I once dated a very inappropriate Italian guy, whose shortcomings in character I forgave because I had always daydreamed about marrying someone with a last name that ended with a vowel.  I thought it would make me a more interesting person.

But turns out that the love of my life is named Ryan Ball.  Aw, c’mon!  Not only did I trade one boring Anglo name for another, I get one full of crazy pun potential.  Fine.  Fantastic.  “Jamie Benevento” would have been a little more colorful, but after all these years, I find that “Jamieball” suits me pretty well.  (And that’s no typo…people tend call me “Jamieball” like it’s all one word, but that’s another memo.)

So yeah, I’m white. And even with all of the benefits society affords me as a consequence, I’ve always felt like a woman without a color, and thus without much culture.  Just plain vanilla.  That was, until,  I attended my first Oktoberfest celebration. 

I polka’d . I yodelled.  I drank beer and downed shots of Jagermeister. There were seriously joyous people in laderhosen and drindl who were unapologetically corny and unironic in their enjoyment of all the festivities.  I loved it.  It was the first time I’d ever gone to a party and not felt tragically unhip.  I feel I have reasonably good social graces, but I am not and never have been particularly cool.   So it was so awesome to be around a whole gaggle of people who were likewise cool-challenged, but nonetheless, having ridiculous amounts of fun. 

I’m not sure I can parlay Oktoberfest into a cultural identity (at least not without starting to sound like a skinhead), but at least I’ve got an inkling of what it feels like to have a distinct heritage, and I suppose it kinda feels like a good buzz. 

So far I’ve only been to Oktoberfest events here in the States, and it’s on my Bucket List to get to Munich one year.  I think it’s a testament to the fact that Oktoberfest people really are my people that when watching the following video, I was laughing with them rather than at them (mostly). 

Roll out the barrel and memo received.