The Winter Solstice was yesterday.

I’m often in a bit of a funk during this Midwinter time of year. It’s usually cold, cloudy, and rainy outside. Yet, for some strange reason, everyone’s running around projecting this feeling called “holiday cheer.” I always imagine that a lot of the time it actually may be sincere.

Most years, of course, I’m left out of all the activity. Hence my tendency toward the blues. I’ve never been able, much, to insert myself into the holiday season when I’m single and alone. All of that family togetherness stuff is missing for me. And it almost always has been.

But, this year, there’s a bright side.

The winter, so far here in northern California, has been pretty mild. While we had one day last week that subjected us to nearly three inches of rain, and while I’ve been shivering many a morning recently, for the most part, weather-wise, here in my new land, it’s been mostly dry and manageable. Today was not particularly warm, but it was very sunny. And it was in the fifties when I went for a walk along my usual walking path. I had a wonderfully invigorating 39-minute trek, me and my iPod.

I don’t have the sunshine of my life. But I do have some sunshine in my life. And the days: from now on, they do get longer.

This is a good thing.

Soundtrack Suggestion

Time, time, time, see what’s become of me
While I looked around
For my possibilities
I was so hard to please
But look around, leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.

(“Hazy Shade of Winter” – Simon & Garfunkel)

This week’s, perhaps this year’s, winner for the “head-up-your-butt” award is (drum roll, please): the State of Oregon. The evidence to support this distinction is, simply put, overwhelming.

To wit, I received a check in the mail last Wednesday. My dubiously-named “kicker” (tax-refund) arrived because, as you may or may not know, Oregon’s state constitution requires that when there is at least a two percent difference between the final revenue forecast for the biennium and the actual end of the biennium revenue, the surplus must be returned to the taxpayers.

Yes, that’s right, when there’s a difference between the forecast (the amount of revenue that is predicted; calculated in an entirely suspect and error-prone process) and actual revenue, taxpayers get rewarded. They call the refund a “kicker.”

Like a kick in the head, I guess.

This stupid, stupid, insanely-stupid law (!), the only one of its kind in the nation, was created in 1979 and added to the constitution in 2000. And 2007 is now the eighth time Oregonians have received their precious “kicker.” This year, on August 31, when the final revenue forecast was released, there was determined to be a $1.071 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) budget surplus. So, back it all goes to the citizens: to each of us who paid Oregon income tax for 2006, we receive 18.62% of it back.

This means 1.6 million Oregonians will receive checks just as the holidays arrive, with refunds averaging $600. My check, which appeared entirely unexpectedly (since I’ve not been following the news up there), came to $1,066.34.

Huge. Sigh.

Now, don’t get me wrong…really, I’m not totally nuts. I reluctantly admit that I’m going to be cashing it. The deal is, I didn’t want this friggin’ thing in the first place!

Consider this. Oregon’s budget has been in disarray for years. Perhaps forever. The tax structure in the state is a joke with no punchline. (Oregon, along with Alaska, Delaware, Montana, and New Hampshire are the five states with no sales tax.) I believe the anti-tax sentiment in the state to be a contagious, progressive, and ultimately-fatal disease. (Nine sales-tax initiatives have appeared on state ballots; all have been turned down. The most recent one, in 1993, was defeated by a 78 percent majority.) Although much of Bill Clinton’s (“It’s the economy, stupid”) Nineties were relatively stable and prosperous for Oregon (thereby masking the true and inevitable impact of 1990’s Measure 5), certainly since the turn of this century, there have been desperately-difficult financial times. State agencies have been in a state of constant crisis. To issue refund checks instead of creating a robust rainy-day fund (which does not exist), or, say, re-investing some of those dollars in the Oregon University System (or the Community Colleges, or the State Police, or the Oregon Health Plan, or the State Parks, the list goes on and on...), is complete and total folly.

I’m embarrassed for you, Oregon. For your lack of foresight and practicality. For your fiscally-irresponsible and tax-averse ways. For the selfishness and self-centeredness of your citizens.

This law, and this behavior, are a disgrace. You can do better.

I’ve added two elements to my repertoire of health-improvement strategies. The first is a therapy. Sort of. The second is a (totally legal) substance.

First off: I had an appointment yesterday with a Certified Feldenkrais (fell′ – den - krice) Practitioner in yet another attempt to find a way through my chronic-muscular-pain issues. I have a bit of a difficult time describing the whole experience, however. As one website puts it:

The Feldenkrais Method is a little hard to define, because it really isn't quite like anything else. Most simply, Feldenkrais is a sophisticated method of communicating with the unconscious through movement.

And, as the official Feldenkrais website reports:

The Feldenkrais Method is a form of somatic education that uses gentle movement and directed attention to improve movement and enhance human functioning. Through this Method, you can increase your ease and range of motion, improve your flexibility and coordination, and rediscover your innate capacity for graceful, efficient movement. These improvements will often generalize to enhance functioning in other aspects of your life.

The Feldenkrais Method is based on principles of physics, biomechanics and an empirical understanding of learning and human development. By expanding the self-image through movement sequences that bring attention to the parts of the self that are out of awareness, the Method enables you to include more of yourself in your functioning movements. Students become more aware of their habitual neuromuscular patterns and rigidities and expand options for new ways of moving. By increasing sensitivity the Feldenkrais Method assists you to live your life more fully, efficiently and comfortably.

The Method offers two different approaches. I went to an individual session, called a “Functional Integration Lesson.” Group work is done in “Awareness Through Movement Classes.”

Individual work is a hands-on process, with the practitioner providing feedback to the client’s body through gentle touch and verbal instruction. It’s not massage, and it’s not a chiropractic session, though there are superficial similarities. The website compares the Method to massage and chiropractic thusly:

The similarity is that both practices touch people, but beyond that [the Feldenkrais] Method is very different. In massage, the practitioner is working directly with the muscles, in chiropractic, with the bones. These are structural approaches that seek to affect change through changes in structure (muscles and spine). The Feldenkrais Method works with your ability to regulate and coordinate your movement; which means working with the nervous system. We refer to this as a functional approach wherein you can improve your use of self inclusive of whatever structural considerations are present.

I really liked the practitioner I saw. She is an energetic and enthusiastic young woman with an incredibly positive attitude. She has a gentle touch and great communication skills. I experienced her as an educator. Most importantly, she expressed a strong belief that she can help me with my chronic-pain woes (and she has a long list of testimonials to her credit, which tends to support her optimism).

I’m crossing my fingers right now, of course, as I do every time I try something new.

The second strategy I’ve come up with is, of all things, cherry juice!

I can’t remember where I first heard of this substance having possibilities for helping individuals like me, but when I went to the web to research this, information wasn’t hard to find. Here’s a site that claims “Cherry Juice Reduces Muscle Pain.”

So, right now, I’m drinking a little bit in the morning, a little in the evening. What can it hurt?

Mostly, I believe I’m perceived as a patient person. Actually, it’s more than mere perception: I am a patient person.

I know things don’t happen right away. I believe that “all things in their own time” is a good motto to live by. I realize that others have skill levels arranged on a continuum – and that they have various, competing priorities in their lives that don’t coincide with mine. And I know that having low expectations is probably a good strategy to maintain one’s own mental and emotional health.

Yes, being patient is a good thing.

Still, there are some behaviors out there in the world that I have very little use for. For example, it wasn’t long ago that I went on a rant about cell-phone users. I have absolutely zero tolerance for people who believe that shouting out the trivia of their lives to the world is more important than respecting others’ rights (to a little peace and quiet). I was at lunch in a Chinese restaurant two days ago, with a couple of work colleagues, when one of those walkie-talkie-type cell phones sounded off (right next to us). I turned to the (totally-oblivious) guy who was speaking into his mobile device while, at the same time, shoveling fried rice into his pie-hole. I mouthed, in his direction, much to the surprise of my lunch companions, “will you shut the f#*k up?!?!” (This asshole neither saw me nor heard me. Unfortunately.)

Then, yesterday, I was at Kinko’s doing some photocopying, while all the time listening to an embarrassingly-personal conversation between a woman and (apparently) one of her girlfriends. Their discussion of a relationship gone bad was something that really should have been carried out in private. Really.

Ok, enough about cell-phone etiquette (for now). The topic of today’s rant is about punctuality. Or, more specifically, the lack of consideration some people show to other people when they arrive late.

Isn’t this, though, the same kind of thing as the cell-phone issue: lack of sensitivity to, and respect for, others?

Last Wednesday, I had interviews scheduled to start in the early afternoon. I was the leader of a small, three-person hiring committee. We had a few, back-to-back, forty-five-minute interviews on the calendar. Still, one of the other two on the committee didn’t show up until fifteen minutes past the anticipated start time, thereby throwing everyone’s schedule off for the rest of the day. Candidates who had been instructed to arrive fifteen minutes early to review the questions, instead ended up with a thirty-minute wait before I went to fetch them.

The next day I was scheduled into a committee meeting that was to begin at 11:00 a.m. I arrived on time and there were only two others present (of a twelve-member group). The remainder continued to dribble in, until finally at fifteen minutes past the hour, the chairperson arrived and the meeting was called to order.

These are only two examples of the kind of chronic, non-punctual behavior I encounter on a daily basis. And I find it maddening!

Here’s what I think you’re saying when you show up late: you’re the center of the universe. That no one, or nothing, is as important as you and your agenda. That the time of others doesn’t count. That others don’t count.

For the record, let me declare to all you loud cell-phone users and “running-late” people (and I know this will be news): IT’S NOT ALL ABOUT YOU!

(Really, honest-to-god, it isn’t.)

Dan Burns (played by Steve Carell) writes a daily newspaper advice column entitled “Dan in Real Life.” He’s a widower and the anxious, overprotective father of three daughters. The wisdom about love and life he offers up to his readers apparently comes from a voice within that he is able to transmit but cannot really hear himself. The morning after he and the kids show up at his parents’ (Dianne Wiest and John Mahoney) beach house for a holiday, family-reunion-type weekend, his mother immediately orders him to go out and “buy the papers” — and take some time away from his daughters who are obviously exasperated with their totally-not-so-cool dad.

It’s in a used-book store, where Dan decides to buy the morning newspaper, that he meets Marie (Juliette Binoche). Marie is obviously in the midst of some kind of minor personal crisis and she “needs a book” to get her through. She asks Dan for some help thinking that he’s an employee there. Although amusing and obliging, he eventually gets busted as just another customer. After asking Marie if he can make it up to her, Dan, in the initial stages of infatuation, spends a good portion of the rest of the morning telling her his life story.

It’s only when she eventually gets called away, and he returns back to the beach house, that he learns this “hottie” he’s found is the new girlfriend of his brother Mitch (Dane Cook). And that this weekend is to be her induction into the family.

The rest of the movie, Dan in Real Life, is spent illustrating the myriad awkward (some hilarious, some touching) moments that arise when, in the middle of this intimate family gathering, Dan and Marie work through their mutual-attraction issues.

This is a romantic comedy, of course, so it’s a happy ending. And while the outcome is entirely predictable, I recommend that you, too, see this movie. Treat yourself: escape for awhile and vicariously experience some of those giddy, beginning-of-a-relationship feelings.

So here’s why I mention any of this…

I believe this film reinforces one of life’s basic truisms. Namely: you just never know. For there you are, completely minding your own business and, wham (!), for better or worse, you turn a corner (or enter a bookstore) and your entire life changes. Further, while you can make plans for your time here on earth, the advice remains: expect the unexpected.

“…the only thing you can truly plan on…is to be surprised.”