I’m so lame. It seems that I too commit the very transgressions that I so disdain in others. I’m a snob. How two-faced of me. To the end that I might explain myself, I offer these thoughts…

These past few years I’ve made a concerted effort to try living in a more humane and loving way. I try to see things from alternate perspectives when it comes to daily life events – events that otherwise I might interpret as offensive. I try to live with forgiveness and not take life too personally. I try to just let things be. While I have achieved some small success in these areas, somehow I find it incredibly difficult to apply the same level of forgiveness when it comes to the simple, grammatical mistakes people make. The omission of an ‘o’ when the writing requires a ‘too’ (as in also) rather than a ‘to’ (as in towards). I see ‘by’ instead of ‘buy’ and I think ‘Pfft. Can you imagine they missed that?’ And yet, the permanence of the blogosphere will never let me forget my own mistake; my misuse of the word ‘by’ at the top of yesterday’s post will forever remain thus in some far-off servers, unreachable by my post-post correction. Ultimately, it’s not that important. But it does teach me a little lesson. Humility, Elizabeth, humility. See? It’s very easy to make such a mistake yourself. You must overlook the small mistakes of others as you would have them do for you. Or must I?

There is one error that gets me absolutely riled up every time I see it. It’s when folks say that they’ve ‘graduated high school’. I can almost hear my seventh grade LA teacher Mrs. GaNun explaining to us in her rich, deep voice while striding slowly, dramatically across the room in her long skirts and topknot bun, that ‘you cannot graduate a high school because graduate is an intransitive verb…’ In other words, you can no more graduate a school than you can sleep a bed. You can sleep in a bed, you can graduate from a school. Yet the best-educated among us continue to tell us that they ‘graduated college’…

Another one that gets me is the improper use of personal pronouns. This one is everywhere. Simply everywhere. People who really should know better make these mistakes. I shudder, I bite my tounge. There was a time when I’d correct gently; ‘did me and Bob go to the store or did Bob and I go to the store?’ Just removed ‘Bob’ and say it again. Me went to the store or I went to the store? Duh! How easy is that? And btw – the ‘other guy’ goes first (I always think of it as simple manners) – ‘Bob and I went…’ It aint just the Latinas from the hood making this mistake either. All across the country ‘me and him went’ or ‘me and Bob took the car’….

And the offense that most easily gets under my skin – one I’ve even seen more than a few times in the past twenty four hours – is the addition of an ‘apostrophe s’ in order to make something plural. Yeeks. (Or should I say ‘yeek’s..?). I’ll not say anything more on this one. !

I’ve wrestled with this whole subject for years. On one hand, these are basic mistakes, and they should be corrected.The ones who made the errors should be educated, enlightened, corrected. Or should they? I am very aware that language evolves. Mr. Shakespeare’s English was practically another language altogether. And when’s the last time you heard a construction like this: ‘the laundry having been folded, she washed the dishes’..? Yet I remember well that first sentence of my junior high Latin class; ‘the Gauls having been conquered, they returned home’. Correct, but would you speak like this? Not so much.

There’s what was once correct, what is technically correct, and then there is plain old what works. What gets the point across. What expresses. Granted, we need to share some of the same rules in order to communicate effectively, but man, the liberties we’re able to get away with now really do add to the complexity and nuance with which we can communicate. ‘WTF?’ is just what you need sometimes, right? The limitation of characters we’re allowed to use has forced some new craft into writing, and I think that’s exciting. And sometimes a colon with a right parenthesis just does what no words can (and yes, its overuse can also spoil the effect). I get a kick out of the changes I’ve seen in our language in the past few decades. I think it’s amazing, beautiful, artful and organic. I also feel lucky to have been born now. In my lifetime I have witnessed probably the largest leap the English language has ever taken in such a short amount of time. I fully appreciate the freedom the new world provides – I misuse quotation marks all the time. I actually choose to do so because I feel it imparts a different tone. (I realize a real-life editor might well feel differently about this.) I make considered mistakes as a means to further shape my writing. Yeah, I dig the changes and maybe I just gotta get with the mistakes that are now becoming accepted parts of our language.

Then again, there’s that little voice that tells me there is still a set of rules which we should all honor. The rules that we all learned in school. You know, the schools we graduated from. Wait, we’re not supposed to end sentences with a preposition, right? Sigh…

Tonight, as we stood in line at the brightly lit local convenient store, Elihu asked me if it was ‘technically still summer’. I guess I’d been thinking this recent coldish air was just a passing thing; somewhere on board I still had last-minute summer-ish plans for us. There must be another spell of heat coming again…right? His question had me take immediate stock; just what was the date today? The 19th? ‘I guess fall officially starts tomorrow’ I answered. No one corrected me. Later, at home, when I googled for accuracy, I learned that it actually starts on the 23rd – a number that puzzles me as I don’t ever remember anything but the 20th heralding a new season. (Just me? Who knows. Like my son, I feel like I miss half of what every other earth citizen seems to have an inbred knowledge of.) Aah well. No matter, in a few days it will indeed be fall.

The morning temps in our small house are dipping into the 50s now, and I find myself wondering when exactly do ‘most’ folks turn on their furnaces? Until this present country life all I knew was that I adjusted the thermostat and the house became more comfortable. Now, knowing that the oil in our tank is an emergency delivery from the state delivered last spring, and one which will not allow us another fill-up for months, I am not close to engaging the furnace. Rather, we use the small electric heaters to take the edge off of certain spots in the early morning; Elihu’s bedroom (mine dips down to the mid 50s – but I’m back to long underwear so it’s bearable) then the kitchen, if we eat there at all. Sometimes it’s just easier to eat in his bedroom, huddled around the heater at his little desk. Not so bleak as it sounds – it’s actually kinda cozy. I’m apprehensive however as to how it will look on our bill. It’s been awhile since we’ve used these little juice suckers.

Elihu played his first ever game of soccer today – his first ever day of a shared sport of any kind except for at gym (this warrants an entire post of its own) and I felt the chill closing in as soon as the sun sank below the tree line. All the other kids were wearing only T shirts, but my kid, I’d put him in three layers in anticipation of just such a drop in temperature. At first I’d felt guilty as so many kids had sweat-plastered hair on their brows, but by the end of the game I felt better about my choice. He too felt the cold and was glad for the extra layers.

When I step outside I can now smell the scent of firewood in the air – a sure sign my neighbors have begun the long winter’s burn of those carefully stacked cords of wood. The blue plastic tarps have been peeled back, the plywood lean-tos no longer filled quite to the top… Summer has a few days left, yet already the burn has begun.

It’s been a week. I got a cold. Got myself an IUD, got a temporary crown on a broken molar. The crown broke off after I got home, so a few days later I got another one put on. Got my materials for my fall piano class together and met my son’s third grade teacher. Been woken up by the crazy pain of this silly tooth nearly every night now and the cold lingers, juicy. Elihu spills into the car after school yesterday all in tears over the chaotic, energetic maelstrom that is the first week of school. He can hardly understand all the procedures, all the rules, the subtleties of it all. I understand. I don’t try to fix it, I just get in the back seat with him and let him cry, his head in my lap. His tummy’s been off too. Today’s income is gone as my student calls this morning to cancel; she’s heard I’ve been sick. Oh, and I stepped on my glasses and Elihu lost a tooth. It’s been a week.

Today the sun is shining, the air is crisp and I have come home from the store with a gallon of semi-transparent stain in barn red. After hoping to give the new chicken coop a demure coat of dark gray, in hopes of achieving the look of elegantly weathered cedar, I have finally given in to my color blind son’s request that we please paint it barn red instead.

Tomorrow is Saturday, and the weather promises to be just fine for painting.

I’ve been getting my period for 36 years. I remember the exact day when it first came because it was April 17th, my friend Kathy S’s birthday, and I was twelve. It was after school, when shafts of late afternoon sunlight streamed across the 6th green of the Evanston golf course and into our front hall.  I’d just come home from school and had run upstairs to use the bathroom. I remember noticing just a few dots of blood, not much, but it didn’t seem like it could have been anything else. I checked as best I could, because I was really hoping it might not be what I suspected. I sat there, stunned, unable to move for a minute as a profound reality descended on my my bright, girl world. Perhaps I felt some excitement, that I don’t remember, but I do remember disappointment. It was over. My childhood, my innocence. Technically, I was old enough to have a baby. Culturally, I was on the hook now. Still not one hundred percent sure, I dabbed some blood onto a piece of toilet paper and ran downstairs to show my mom.

The kitchen, on the east side of the house, was in shadow that time of day. I remember pausing as I entered the room. I remember showing her the spot, I remember her smiling, then laughing in excitement for us both. I however, at her confirmation, began to weep. There we were, in the dark kitchen, she laughing, me crying. It was over, I told her. Everything was going to change now. I would have to make plans around my period, cancel plans because of my period, begin to live a new, furtive existence all because of this unwelcome change. I thought of the exotic-seeming college girls who used to babysit us when we were young. They’d seemed so grown-up, so womanly. It occurred to me that I was somehow entering their mysterious world. Tears wouldn’t stop my period from coming. I couldn’t fight it. I would simply have to buck up and figure out how to lessen its restrictive claim on me.

Skip ahead nearly four decades – past the eighth grade trip to Washington, D.C. where the class went swimming and girls tried to instruct me how to use a tampon from the other side of the bathroom door (with no success) so that I could join them in the pool – past the rainy nights boyfriends made tampon runs to the 24 hour grocery on my behalf – past all the near misses and the accidents and the timely assistance from anonymous and helpful women everywhere who dug around the bottoms of their purses, saying they ‘thought they might have something’ when I found myself stranded – past that merciless period caring not a whit that the toilet paper dispenser was empty – skip ahead to September, 2011. To the day before last, when it occurred to me, that based on the plans I’d hoped would come to pass these next few days, this would be my last period, ever.

After my initially tearful reception of my menstruation (btw – I cannot fathom how people still insist on pronouncing that silly ‘u’ after the ‘r’ – reminds me of vintage health videos and stuffy health professionals who seem completely clueless, especially in matters of sexual relations) I had come to actually welcome it each month. For me, perhaps because of a tilted uterus, perhaps for other unknown and unimportant reasons, I would begin to feel it coming on in my lower back. The other night I lay in bed and tried to concentrate on that feeling, to memorize it. It had been with me for most of my life, and in the not too distant future it would be just a memory. I have only found one or two women who feel as I do about their periods. Most just complain and enjoy the camaraderie of their shared pains. When I began to feel that low-grade, dull ache, something of a mix of intestinal distress but not, muscle pain but not, I actually welcomed it. Before the back ache though, I’d know my period was coming because something would set me off. Something – which in the moment really seemed to matter – would send me into an explosion of tears; a good, physical, sobbing jag. Fareed, my near ex, might ask me if I expected my period soon (as my cycle was a steady 28 days for decades) and when he was right, it would cause me to start laughing hysterically before the tears were dry on my face. Sheesh. It never ceased to entertain me. When you’re in it, you’re in it – you can’t see that the tears don’t match the offense – but thankfully, when pulled out of it, I was able to marvel at this crazy hormonal reaction, and I always found it amusing. I even enjoyed the dull, burning ache in my lower back. There were times it required some pain relief, but never much. I’m well aware that for many women this is a really painful and dreaded time of the month – a real waste of precious time – but thankfully it wasn’t that for me. I was free to enjoy it to some degree. Each month I enjoyed the feeling of connectedness it gave me; I saw it as proof that I was linked to the earth, nature, the women I shared my world with. I saw it as evidence that I too was equipped for the job of becoming a mother one day. And when I actually got pregnant in July of 2002 – precisely when I’d planned – once again I was in awe of how it all worked. Amazing. How lucky was I to be a woman, to experience this myself? Lucky.

A couple of years ago my periods began to appear every 24 days, instead of every 28. Again, they were like clockwork, but something had begun to change in my body. Each month, when I’d feel the tug of one ovary or the other – I’d secretly think to myself , ‘Wow, I could still have a baby. I could still get pregnant’. But the gap is too wide for Elihu to enjoy a playmate in any baby born now, my financial situation couldn’t handle it, and besides, insane as it sounds, if I were to ever have had another child, I would have wanted it to be with my son’s father, my husband. On principal, that is. In some crazy, twisted way. I would never consider it, but the irrational thought lingers. Therein I am conflicted about this upcoming change of menopause. I’ve had my child – my body works – what’s the problem? I can’t answer this. I’m just a little sentimental. I guess it’s because a familiar part of my life is coming to an end. There are women who will leap for joy when they no longer have to buy tampons and pads, for whom the new freedom won’t have them looking back for a second. Maybe I’ll join them one day, but for the moment I have a little letting go to do.

At the same time my cycle shortened, my period changed. (For those of you who may find any of this post on the verge of poor taste, I bid you look away now.) I began to have what I have called ‘mini-miscarriages’. I would lose so much blood that I wondered if I shouldn’t worry. Might I become anemic? And if I were, how would I know, anyway? I find myself canceling students, moving appointments, staying home. I can’t leave for more than fifteen minutes at a time as the flow is non-stop. Clots come too, it just doesn’t stop. And after a few inconvenient years of this, just a few months ago, another change. My period comes every two weeks. Seriously? It’s as if mother nature herself is slapping me in the face to snap me out of it: don’t be such an emotional pansy – your body is changing, get over it! Unable to continue the loss of income – the huge expense of pads and tampons and just the overall annoyance of the situation – I began to search for a solution. Then it came, in the form of a casual comment made to me by a gradeschool classmate who is now herself an OB/GYN doc. “Get a Mirena” she said. “Your period will probably stop.” Just like that. “Just make sure that whoever puts it in has done hundreds of em.” I must not have looked convinced. “I’ll take it out if you don’t like it”. Well then. My next move, as a still-married, still-insured woman, was to look into coverage, and damned if that piece of over-priced, hormone-infused plastic wasn’t covered. Green light.

One of my friends here in town, and the mother of a former piano student, is herself a doc who does just such IUD ‘installations’ by the hundreds. And so, as if decreed by the speedy hand of destiny, she is inserting mine today. I pay $100 after the insurance. Heck, I’ll make up that loss soon enough. As with any endeavor in life one seems to pick up so much more information on the subject when it’s spinning around in your consciousness – I’ve heard lots of anecdotal advice in the few weeks that have passed since I made the decision to do this. I may spot for months. Many months. I may cramp. It might seem I’ve made a mistake – but no, wait it out. And I will. This IUD will remain inside me for the next five years. By the time I have it taken out, I should be on ‘the other side’ of this transition. Today I have my natural period, tomorrow I spot on account of medical manipulation. When I am fifty-three (seriously, I’ll be fifty-three??) and the device is removed, I will be a woman in her menopausal years.

I’ve never been a fan of change, and adjusting is tricky for me. Thankfully, I’ll have five years to make the transition. See you on the other side…

Been up an hour or more. Elihu awoke feeling a little sick, but I cajoled him into going to school. I reassured him that I was just a phone call away if he felt it was too much. I offered a little Mr. Creosote on You Tube to get him chuckling. His mood was light and his brow didn’t feel hot, so I saw him off on the bus.

I myself have had a summer cold the past few days and today am tired even after a good night’s sleep. I had a very welcome dream this morning, and in my sort of sick, lowered state of energy I buzz through the light of day still very much in the mood of my dream. I dreamt of a boy that I had pined for as an adolescent girl. He, as an adult, along with a boy whom I took to be his son, joined Elihu and me at Christmastime inside a fine home with lovely mill work, darkly lit and with a large, stately Christmas tree in the living room The feeling was gentle, it was one of long-lost friends meeting for the first time as adults, as people. It was surprising; I hadn’t thought but a handful of times of this man in the decades since he exited my life, yet from this darkly lit dream, his quiet and smiling presence carried into my waking day. I am compelled to look him up once more on Facebook and see his face, so that I might confirm the image in my mind. I notice that his children are grown. Are we so old? Ahh, it’s just that I started so late….

I’m a little whistful. I miss having a crush. I miss that feeling of hope, of longing. In my very routine day – a day that will see me doing laundry, paying bills and catching up on the dishes – I will float through these everyday tasks my spirit lifted ever so softly by the happy, hopeful feeling that still lingers from my dream.