Juice Considers Virtues of Putting One Foot In Front of Other

I often chide myself for being esoteric and lame (a.k.a. having a blog) but one of the benefits of the blog that every now and then I can look at the archives, see what was going on in my life one year prior, and consider my progress as a human being. Never has that difference been more stark. One year ago, I published this post, in which I go shopping for bacon with my sister Greta, on a chilly Saturday afternoon, with a water bottle filled with wine in purse.

Yikes.

I generally try not to reveal my major life dramas on the blog--I live a charmed life, really, and the dramas are few and small--but I will admit now that I was going through probably the most difficult period in my life one year ago. In addition to the normal worries (law school, finances, blah blah blah), Shad was very sick, and I felt incredibly helpless and lonely, unable to make him better. I was in the dumpiest of doldrums, which seemed horrible and unfair, since he was the sick one, after all, so then I felt selfish and mean, and this made me feel even worse. Eventually it seemed best to send him to Montana to recuperate in the fresh mountain air. My sweet sister Greta came to stay with me, and I began to write a story/screenplay that I abandoned in October after realizing that it was completely autobiographical, down to the description of the narrator's cats. The story is basically about a woman who is generally happy and well-adjusted, but the people around her are falling apart, and she is unable to help them. She develops an obsession with bacon because it is so damn good and reliable (and by God, BLTs are the perfect food), and she can learn to cook it just right and it is the only area in her life in which she is able to exercise any actual control. (Sad.)

So, as I mentioned, never has one year wrought such a difference in my life. I have never felt more at peace and happy than I do right now. The next month is going to be wonderful. Shad and I leave for Los Angeles tonight--he will be attending meetings during the days, but I will be hanging out with my dear Summ and sister Greta, who is now teaching in the San Marino Valley (1 hr. east of LA). I can't wait. I will return to Minneapolis for a few days and then joLynn and I are going to China for 11 days. I am sooooo excited for the trip. I have received vaccinations for typhoid, hepatitus A, tetanus, and malaria, and I went to Walgreens yesterday and loaded up on drugs. I am generally pretty happy-go-lucky about traveling, but I must admit that I am terrified of dying on some form of Chinese transportation, returning with a terrible disease and/or, worse, unable to start work on October 1 because I'm dying of tuburculosis.

I have been reading a lot about China. One in five people is infected with hepatitis. During the Ming Dynasty, many criminals were sentenced to work on the Great Wall. (This is the period in which the whole thing was connected.) Sometimes a prisoner would be sentenced in perpetuity, which means that when he died, his child would have to serve in his place. Or a relative. Beijing is roughly the size of Belgium. Mao Zedong suffered terrible constipation and during the great march he sometimes forced his lackeys to dig the poop out of his anus with their hands.

Here is the crux my rambling message: It pays to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Things get better. (And I don't mean that to be as Hobbesian as it sounds.)