Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth/Liars prosper*

The truth: we say we want it, but we hate it when it's there. The truth hurts, you know. People who are brutally honest are also, well, brutal. Honesty is supposed to be the best policy. But no one wants to be friends with a liar. So what makes a good friend? A policy of appeasement or a friend who can and does tell you the truth?

Look, I've been on both sides of both sides of this -- I've been mad when someone told me a truth I wasn't ready to hear. I've also been grateful to those who told me the truth. I’ve been the truth-teller, and also the appeaser. But let’s face it, both are dangerous positions to take. Europe’s policy of appeasement really didn’t work with Hitler; and being honest didn’t work so well for Galileo and Darwin and, depending on your world view, Jesus.

Maybe we should rewrite the platitudes about truth above.

I've been both a bringer of Truth and a teller of the lies people want to hear, too. But lately, I grow tired of being wishy-washy, which is what it all boils down to when you take my amazing capacity to be a human band-aid and mix it in with my tendency to be a people-pleaser and my ability to read individuals and situations fast and quickly. My childhood was rough, but at least I learned to be a human gauge.

But events of the past week have taught me that my policy of being pleasing and trying to be what a person needs at the moment that they need it is exhausting and stressful for me, and really not the best way to keep relationships going. It’s also probably not me being a good friend, since sycophants are rarely respected people of integrity.

This all came to a head last night, when I was talking to my friend, whom I'll call Jane. She's been having some problems with her baby-daddy, whom I'll call Dick. Dick Head.

Dick's been a real jerk for a while, but lately has threatened to (a) abdicate all parental rights, (b) sue for sole custody, and (c) kill himself.

I thought about it, and then I decided to tell her the truth, as I saw it: (a) this man is unstable and quite possibly has a personality disorder, (b) he's not good for her or the baby, and (c) she is enabling his behavior by allowing him to emotionally batter and manipulate her.

For the most part, she deflected and tried to excuse his behavior. When she ran out of excuses, she yelled at me for not understanding, because I'm "rich.**"

During the course of our conversation, Jane expressed anger and resentment at Dick, at me, and at her other friends, who give her conflicting advice (like she should marry him.) I feel for my friend. But I wonder if I'm good for her, or she for me. I feel like I'm often there to listen, or to rescue, or both -- and I'm growing uncomfortable in that role.

So, back to friendships in general. What makes a good friend? I started a list, but it ends up reading like a list of things that make a good marriage, which in the end makes a ton of sense. Except that most good marriages start with some discussions about these things, and then you take a vow to love and honor (respect) and cherish (appreciate) each other, so it’s formal. Maybe we ought to have friendship ceremonies.

To Be a Friend, You Must First Be One***
1. Good friends respect each other, intellectually, emotionally, and physically.
2. Good friends, for the most part, offer support for each other in crisis or hard times.
3. Good friends make it possible to enjoy time with them.
4. Good friends tell you the truth, whether it is that you have spinach in your teeth or are wearing the wrong color lipstick or have managed to entangle you in a relationship with a toxic human being.
5. Good friends accept the counsel of the friends they have chosen, and if they disagree, can calmly discuss the situation, because they understand that the advice comes from a place of great love.
6. Good friends understand that emotional crises may dictate that number 5 be temporarily suspended due to extreme duress.

Honesty seems to be the most important underlying concept here.

It’s also the hardest. It’s easy to love someone, but hard to be honest about the relationship, especially to yourself. But as marriages take hard work, so do friendships. Because in order for me to have a friend, I have to be one, right? So I’ve got to be the sort of pal I would want – a person with integrity and wisdom who will tell the truth. The whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that hurts more deeply than a manipulative and evil-intentioned lie. Brutal enough to make you bleed. Honesty, after all, is the best policy, although it is also the hardest and more painful.

So, folks, be prepared. I’m going to have to tell you the truth from here on out.

And, Jane? Dick is bad for you. Very, very bad. Take Spot and run.

*These are quotes from the frontispiece of a Stephen King novel. I can't remember who originally wrote them, nor can I remember what King novel. I may remember to look it up later. I may forget. Either way, I am trying to give credit where it's due.
**Gentle readers, I can assure you that I am not rich. I am a woman who graduated with a degree in English who is married to a man with a degree in English. You do the math.

***My mom embroidered this on a pillow for me when I was a kid. I’ve always tried to be the friend I wanted to have.

Lonely nerd seeks same.

I'm having a hard time making friends in Wisconsin. Now, I'm not necessarily the most gregarious person, but I'm nice and fun and a good listener and a weirdly obnoxious know-it-all who can tell you which direction your ceiling fans should go, and why the "white only between Memorial Day and Labor Day" rule came about. Also, I will tell you if you have spinach in your teeth, and as my friend Kim once said, "She's the kind of girl you want to go out and party with. She'll be fun while you're out and she can still put it together to get you back to your place safe."

Here's my problem: Midwesterners are friendly. They will talk to you as long as you want to talk. I like friendly people and I think it's cool that the folks in the Midwest, largely, are friendly. But I come from the South, where people are polite. They will only be friendly to you when they want to be friends.

So while I've been learning the language and am becoming proficient (eh?) I'm still learning the unspoken language. I guess it's why I now find myself in a mysterious limbo between "insider" and "outsider."

Except that I'm not colonizing the Midwest. I'm just trying to find some like-minded chicks.

In which I change the way I blog.

Folks, if you love it, you love it, but the truth is that I’m going to change the focus of this blog. I started it as an experiment to see if I liked travel writing. While I like it, I’m not a fan of so severely limiting what I write; so while I’ll post my ruminations on being a Midwestern Magnolia, I’m going to have to open this up to more than it is. Mostly, this is happening because stuff I want to write about is bigger than this blog’s boundaries – and since I made those boundaries, I’m re-drawing them.

This blog has now been rezoned.

I love my civil rights.

I particularly love that I can be tried in a court where the language used is one I know. I'm glad that I can't be convicted because a majority of judges "knows in his heart" that I am guilty.

Let's all be glad of these things. And let's publicize Sakineh Ashtiani's terrible sentence. Apparently, the only hope she has left is for the world to stand and say "no."

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/07/01/iran.stoning/index.html

The Reticent Blogger Returns!

I have been the worst slacker recently. The. Worst. All's I can say is, well, sometimes things just get busy. And it's easy to let your blog fall by the wayside. Apologies, etc.

That said, it is now time to tell you about my hands-down favorite place in Wisconsin -- Door County.

If I had been to Door earlier in my sojourn here, I might have held off on wanting to leave so badly for another six months to a year. For a vacation destination, it's surprisingly uncommercial. Most of the hotels/inns/b&bs/
restaurants/shops/things to do were locally owned independent businesses, which is so awesome.

There was so much to do. There are used bookshops, which I love and cannot resist. There's shopping which is not your usual tourist-trap shopping (you know, 15 stores which all stock the same shot glasses and t-shirts and hats -- there was some of that merch, but it wasn't all there was.) There was totally awesome food (which, notably, had a lot of healthy and vegetarian options, which really isn't easy to do where we live -- if you don't want Indian food or pasta, you're eating at home.)

This is my Chubby Bunny Sundae.
While not healthy, it is vegetarian. And adorable.
They made use of local ingredients -- lots of cherries and apples and delicious whole grains. Sidenote: I am in love with a new food our innkeeper called "fruit soup." Right now typing about it it's all I want for breakfast. He served it with homemade granola and I am not kidding when I say that if it's not served in heaven I may not go.
Everything was about the area without what you normally see -- emblazoning the name on stuff you can find everywhere. So much of what we looked at and ate had a lot of personality, was a little (or a lot) quirky, and was homemade.

Like my homemade Door County candy bar that I wolfed down like a starving orphan while watching Chelsea Lately in our room while my husband slept off the 6-mile bike ride.

Oh, yeah -- there's an awesome state park on the lake, which we rode through. And the next day, drove through, because it's pretty big and much of it's uphill and we wanted to see more water and less trees.

Bob Ross painted this photo.
At a scenic overlook, my husband and I watched a couple get engaged. I may have forgotten to tell you in this stream-of-conscious early morning rambling that we were celebrating our anniversary this weekend. So it was both beautiful and humbling to see love continue to grow in the world -- and to be reminded of that first excitement of engagement.

Yes, it is that serene. And pretty.

Biker Chick

I know. I stink. I abandoned the blog. In my defense, it's been abnormally pretty here -- sunny during the day, warm-ish. Temps hover around 70 for a high, which locals call "summer" and "hot." It's not hot until it's over 85 for me, so while the rest of the world runs around in tank tops and shorts, I'm the one in the long-sleeved t-shirt, capris, and sweater.

That said, I've been enjoying my time outdoors. T and I bought bikes, and I now enjoy biking on the trail near our house (which has rabbits! and turtles! and jumping fish! oh my!) and in the cemetery off the trail. The cemetery is quiet and serene and a good place for thinking. The trail goes places and makes me feel like a badass bicyclist. Go me.

Now, the cemetery is interesting for a few reasons. It's home to folks with names such as "Lust," and "Anger," and "Faust," leading me to call it "The Seven Deadly Sins" cemetery, which I find hilarious because it's a Roman Catholic cemetery.

It also contains a very unusual headstone:

Do you see what I see, or do I just have a dirty mind?

Spring giveth, Spring taketh away

This is uncool.

It is also much melted from this morning, when it covered everything and was about 2 inches or so.

That's right. Snow in April.

And I might add, we had been enjoying wonderful temperatures and sunshine, unseasonable for this time of year. So now we are balanced.

On another note, we are still recovering from what my dad calls "The Crud." I'm 11 days into it and slowly mending.

My husband is 4 days into it and is already almost well. I am jealous, even though I am Patient A. Or X, depending on how you like to label the Infectors.