1:15:4 is the ratio for CPR on an adult. In other words, you give one breath of life for every fifteen shocks to the heart, repeat four times before checking pulse.

Good thing God doesn't work like that, eh?

The ratio of my relationship with mr. zippy is 1:1:1. One him, one me, one us. On another plane of existence 1:1:1 = My Holy Trinity, but that's 3's and how can that be??? oi, my head hurts.

Then there is the ratio of children we have. 2:0:!. There are two of us producing no offspring and having a good time doing it. And yet, anyone who knows us is prone to describe us as being 2:2:!. There are the two of us giving life and leisure to one persnickity cat and one magnificent dog, hairy though she may be.

Speaking of Bill Gates, we now have grade schoolers who cannot read but who can put together Power Point presentations. This is becoming the norm in our public school system. That puts the ratio at something like 1:-10,000,000. Or, one school system turning out in one generation ten million stupid people onto the rest of society.

Now, I can blame Bill Gates because he put all those crappy computers in the desperately underfunded schools and loaded them up with all the software he could burn. Rather, I wish he'd burn, but I digress... Nice tax deduction for the conglomerate, yes?

He's rather like a drug dealer. He gives them the good stuff for their first taste (made it free, even!) and when they came back totally hooked, begging for more, he sold them all crap to sustain their systems.

Cockroaches can't be killed. Neither can Microsoft.

1:4 is the ratio of classes I'm taking this semester, although I may make that 1:5 in the next few weeks.

1:9 is the ratio of voices I hear in my head. Actually, that's my brother and really it's more like 1:20.

I keep looking for the variables, those tiny little 'x' and 'y' symbols that make up the greater difference between my crazy brother and myself. The voices are one thing, I think. I mean, I make up all the voices in my head. I have to. Who else would I talk to? But, my crazy brother... his voices came with his DNA.... which, sadly, floats about in the same gene pool as my own.

4:4 is the ratio of phone calls I will receive from said crazy brother this year in which he only calls out of want for something. "I'm almost out of minutes on my phone card, can you send me another one?" That would be $30:600mins:1. I'm the 1 in that equation as I get only one phone call for my thirty bucks and that's so he can ask for something more. Got that?

10:1 are the odds that he'll fall hopelessly in love AGAIN with a lesbian who has no inclination of ever going straight. Ever. Did I mention... ever?

20:1 are the odds he'll continue to fall for girls who look like boys without ever admitting that his true inclination is for the penis.

5:1 are the odds that his penis will get some skanky mess because, you know, "it's hard to hide the rubber when you're only wearing a towel."

But how did this become about my brother? That's another page. *BOOF!*

There are signs and wonders everywhere; you just have to know how to read them. But I highly recommend reading in your native language and not relying on someone else's translation because you just never know when you might end up drinking a bad batch of kool aid to wash it all down.

For instance, my ratio of mr. zippy and me? 1:1:1 took something like 1:5:2 for him to get it right. One him, five girls, two marriages. Five heartbreaks, one divorce, one me. As for me? 1:X:1. I feel like I've gotten it right on the first commitment to ink. I mean, that X variable there? That represents a lot of boys, but they were all penciled in. I kept smudging over the rough spots trying to make them just right, but there is no such thing as Perfection. It's the null set, see? Until 'Y' entered the equation, making it an infinite set of possibilities.

conversation in zippy's world....

me: "I'm about to take a shower, did you leave me any hot water?"

him: "I think so. If not, you'll find out."

By request, the Uncle Jesus story...



He calls me in the middle of the night several months ago, breathless, stammering. He has had a vision and it so moved him he leaped out of bed, wrote it down and called me with the news. AT LAST he figured out what it all means. What IT ALL MEANS. He, my Uncle Dennis has concluded, is Jesus Christ for the New Millenium.

He's not a vessel of Christ, not a disciple, not a beacon to behold, but JESUS CHRIST FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM.

"Well, that's good Dennis, I'm glad you've come to a conclusion. Now what are you going to do with it?"

"I'm going to spread the word." THE WORD.

"Okay, just don't scare the natives."

Of course he scared the natives. His wife finally told him to cut it out before they got arrested, sued, or worse - mentioned in the Houston Chronicle. He's tamed it down as a result, but I suspect he's still a believer.

The thing is, I thought I understood what he was actually trying to convey. I thought he was trying to say we each have *God* in us, and it's our responsibility to be as "God-like" in our daily lives as we possibly can be. I understand that. But that's not what he was telling people. He was literally telling people "I AM JESUS CHRIST FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM."

"We have a lot of connections."

"Oh?"

"For instance, Mary was a teenager when she had Christ... My mother was a teenager when she had me."

"Wow, Jesus really is a co-pilot!"

"What?"

"Wasn't your dad a ninety-day wonder during World War Two?"

"Yeah..."

"I'm just saying, God must be a good-looking airman, especially in that leather bomber jacket - WOOF!"

Mr. zippy started calling him "Jesus" and I took to calling him "Uncle Jesus." Shortly thereafter, Dennis started his career as a cross-country truck driver. I told him I was going to make him a bumper sticker, "I'M A JEWISH CARPENTER - ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?"

I wonder if he now sings "Happy Birthday to me..." on Christmas day? Or if he finds those little wafer sacraments distasteful anymore?

His daughter thinks it's hysterical, but she hasn't yet made her connection to being The Savior's Only Child. Let's hope she can high-tail it and run when he starts talking martyrdom.

"This is an example of what I call "pure" writing, which occurs when there is no possibility of its becoming a screenplay. Pure writing is the most rewarding of all, because it is constantly accompanied by a voice that repeats, "Why am I writing this?"

-- Steve Martin, June 24, 1996, The New Yorker --

As a lifelong writer, I find Steve Martin's quip (actually one small part of a much greater comedic piece titled "Writing is Easy!") resoundingly true. I am a person who has had what I would call a "full" life, although I have not always made the best use of it. Whether it's been skydiving, swimming in the Mississippi or working with at-risk youth, I have always had a scribe toiling away in the back of my mind, someone there quietly insisting "write it down... write it down..." It is my mother's voice, and interestingly I chose to ignore that voice for many years. I was driven by fear far away from my start as a playwright to the conservative bosom of the US Navy and, without warning, the insatiable appetite of diabetes.

Psychology is... like life itself, ever-changing. I initially became interested in psychology twenty years ago when I was introduced to the work of Carl Jung in a freshman course on archetypes and human relationships. As a novice writer, Carl Jung was a heavy influence, particularly with regard to writing for the stage. Aristotle may have given us "Poetics," but Jung gave us the 'anima' and the 'animus'. In the first play I wrote, I split the protagonist into four separate roles - each role a different part of the protagonist's psyche.

It is through psychology that I come conceptually closer to understanding my family - past, present, all probable future. As I became estranged from my father's family almost immediately upon his death, I have lived much of my life burdened by fears - of being revealed, of being found - and haunted in turns by fierce memory and gaping holes - where do I come from? where do I belong? are you sure we're from the same gene pool???

My mother's family history is only slightly better. At least she was in touch with and quite loved by her father's family, but she too was haunted by her father's death when she was quite young. In her case, though, she had quarreled with him and left his home. The next day he was found dead by overdose. His father had killed himself as well. He had a viral infection but thought the doctor was lying to him, as he'd helped him lie to his wife about having cancer. "No," they told her. "You just have a bad case of pneumonia. You'll be fine."

The great British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once commented that all philosophy is but a footnote to Plato. What that has to do with this I have no idea, but it's a stream of consciousness thing so I'll go with it. All ideas of truth are just that - mental images - temporary holdings in an ever-changing perceptual world. I think my point is that nothing is really new, and that everything is constantly in flux.

Change is challenging. Philosophically, I suppose, if we don't believe in Evolution then we wouldn't believe in change. But, then, we'd all live in tiny little boxes and leave the lights on. Or in caves. With great big fires. And Heavy sticks. Some might argue that I do live in a tiny little box (cottage), with lights (fire), and ask if this is really so different? I think that's a matter of perception, and as I believe in Evolution I cannot help but think my cottage is better than some cold smelly cave.

What psychology helps me see is that if we don't change right along with ... time, space, society... then the whole world is apt to swallow us up rather than take us with it. That's what psychology helps make clear - how to adapt without losing ourselves in mental anguish; how to simply be ourselves while still bending with the tide. It's frightening, learning how to swim; but it's better than merely treading water.

Hello. It's me. I've been gone awhile, I know. At the moment I'm sipping on breakfast tea (English) with a bit of milk and SPLENDAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! watching my dog watch the cat lick her bottom.

This is my segue to reintroduce all of you to Revealing Rebecca S.... all the way from Wales. It seems boredom really is a universal endemic, as I've never set foot in Wales but recognize the details of her lament as though they were mine from my youth toiled away in one filing job too many. In her defense, her column was not so late as my lack of response to it. It is my fault her readers are only now getting their weekly dose of Becka. A thousand pardons and pass the beer.

Mr. Zippy and I spent a week in the Napa Valley, tasting local wines and examining the folds of our marriage. There's nothing like a hotel room mirror with a concave to spread your girth from one side of the room to the other to force you to look at what you've spent the rest of the year hiding beneath linens and low lighting.

"We're fat."

"But we're happy."

"We're fat."

"But we have control top panty hose."

"We're fat."

"But honey, we're on vaCAAAAAAAAAAAAAshuuuuuuuuuun."

So we had really good hotel sex on a really hard hotel mattress that scrunched beneath us, the rubber padding obviously in place longer than we'd been there. I could not sleep the first two nights for every time I rolled I scrunched. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunch. scrunchscrunchscrunchscrunchchscrunchscrunchscrunch.

We had a road stripe yellow Mustang convertible that we insisted on using every day but the wedding day (the reason for the season). If it was 7am with fog hanging and cold still nuzzling the earth, we had the top down and our sweaters on and the heat blasting like a furnace. It reminded me of crossing Vail Summit with friends Heather and Keith on the 4th of July in the Chrysler LeBaron convertible with the top down, the heater blasting and our parkas on. WEEEEEE!brrrrrrrWEEEEEE!brrrrrrrWEEEEEEE!brrrrrrWEEEEE!

BTW - Bullfrog makes a pleasant sun block SPRAY that is not sticky, dries instantly and smells lovely. Worked better than the various Bullfrog products we've tried in the past. So, lest you want to be sun spot baby...

At the rehearsal dinner we sat at a table with three other couples, only one of which we knew. Of the other two couples, one was a forensic pathologist and his wife who were somehow related to the groom (lovely older couple). The other was an aunt of the bride and her husband, a nice couple until the conversation turned to the differences between the US and the USA sects of the Presbyterian Church. ruh roh. Suddenly those in the LIBERAL branch are being spat upon by those in the LITERAL branch who condemn any deviation from the Biblical text, particularly in regard to homosexuality.

"Marriage is for procreation, so same sex unions are against the law of God."

"That's interesting," said me, member of the individual thinkers branch of my own creation (HA!). "There's a tribe in New Guinea that has no Western influence, that come together heterosexually for one small time frame during the year specifically for procreation. Otherwise, they strictly identify themselves as homosexual."

And fire spewed down from the mountain top..... oi vey.

"Are these people CHRISTIANS???"

"Is that a trick question?"

"Well, there are TRIBES IN NEW GUINEA that eat each others brains! and there are TRIBES IN NEW GUINEA that ..."

"Well, look," hello it's me again. "I gave you a example of homosexuality being a completely natural occurence, with no Western influence whatsoever. If the best you can do is mock me then I dare say you don't know the teachings of Christ as well as you think you do."

With that, I shut up and the conversation died. Not the didactic rhetoric, but the conversation. Fortunately, the LIBERAL heathens either left the table or stopped talking as the LITERAL zealots had a field day with my tribe in New Guinea. But what can you say to such vitriolic hatred? I could have inquired how he enjoyed sex with his daughter, or how often he had his wife stoned for showing her face in public, or if prefered sliced or spiraled ham... but somehow, I felt better than that, and would have been truly horrified had this grown to ruin the bride's dinner. Silence is golden, and everything I know about life I learned in kindergarten.

That night, along the way back to the hotel through the many vineyards between St. Helena and Rutherford, mr. zippy pulled off the side of the road and shut the headlights off. With the top down and our seats reclined, we laid quietly in awe at the universe above us. It was humbling, at the very least.

The following day we breakfasted on the BEST BREAD EVER and eggs, coffee, potatoes, the works, at Gillwood's Cafe in St. Helena before heading up the road to Calistoga. Calistoga is an old, quaint, tourist town in which one has to get out of the car and walk around in order to find the local flavor. For us, that was a farmer's market that had the best produce and floral on offer, as well as a massage therapist that took me on for fifteen minutes after which I wanted to stuff her in my suitcase and bring her back home with me. She had the most pervasive calm about her, which settled my hungover energy and relieved the tension in my neck brought on by the hard mattress and one wine too many.

From there we took a walk through a working 1800s wheat/corn water mill that was a fascinating trip in time. Had we been locals, we'd been hauling off the free corn meal for our chickens (presuming, of course, that we'd *have* chickens). A lovely walk for $2. Highly recommended, especially with kids.

The top of the day, though, was the drive up Diamond Mountain Road, which lead only to a dead end about three miles from the highway. But those three miles were deeply wooded, one laned, with a steep drop off one side and a mountain on the other. In the sunny spots, there were vineyards. Of course.

That evening we attended the only wedding that has made me sorry we didn't do a big affair with our own nuptials. The ceremony itself was small and intimate, with a string quartet and an aisle of rose petals on the lawn of the bride's parents home. The bride and groom were so content, as though this was not the biggest day of their lives, but the one that made a simple segue to the rest of their days together.

The reception was held at the Auberge du Soleil in St. Helena, CA, where the bride had always said she would have her reception, long before she ever met the man she would marry. Over the dinner, the father of the bride spoke too much, but gushed with love and respect for all his guests and particularly his daughter and the man of her choice. He'd hoped we (mr. z and me) had been able to take in the local area and not just the wineries.

"That's what we've done mostly," mr. zippy said. "You've got a lot of stuff going on in this area besides the wineries."

The father of the bride beamed with pride, but one day, he hoped, we would come back to taste his own vintage. What else was he to do but heave a healthy wish for the future of his own retirement in his own vineyard?

There were people at our table who'd flown in from Ireland and the North of England. Another couple from San Francisco who'd known the bride since she was five. They were Heinrich, who sat next to me with Bruce, his companion of fourteen years, a terribly pretty young man with the freakish good looks of a model, on the other side of him. Heinrich remembered when Jennifer first entered his salon as that gangly child and how he fell in love with her entire family and they with him. Heinrich is from Denmark and he tells me the problem with America is that it is not the melting pot we think it is. "When I moved to San Francisco everyone told me I was going to love the Castro district because that's where all the gays are. Why do I want to live amongst gay people? I know what gay people are like. What are other people like? But I don't know that because other people live amongst their own, too."

The flight back was just as pleasant as the flight out, being the only two people in first class not taking advantage of free booze but thoroughly enjoying the seats wide enough to hold our big asses.

Since we've returned, we have not been able to get enough sleep. mr. zippy went right to work and I went right back to class. We both have difficulty making the trip from West to East, and we've felt the lag all week long, through this morning even, as we slept until 10am in spite of our alarm waking us at 8. We could have gone right back to sleep had we not had the better sense to force ourselves up.

There is much reading to be done - 11th c., 16th c. and 19th c. texts. Math to be studied (endless). Psychology to be studied, although I'm hoping to be able to somehow make use of the same 19th c. text for this class as I am for my World Lit class. etcetera etcetera etcetera. And poor mr. zippy has been working over the weekend at home, trying to get on top of his game again before the new week starts and he finds himself yet behind.

"Do I need to get you some cheap beer and a trailer?" he says to me just now as it's nearing 1pm and I'm writing this in a t-shirt and undies.

"You knew what you got when you married me," I remind him with a laugh.

And life goes on. Mars in the sky above us, vineyards all around, my husband holding my hand in the cold air, warming my heart with his own, a happy couple on the eve of the rest of their lives together. These are the things I brought back from the Napa Valley with me. These are the things I hold true.

last week's conversation in zippy's world...

me: Eric Foreman has to retake the SAT because he scored an 800, less than everyone in his gang - including the foreign kid.

him: Don't they just average the two scores?

me: I don't know. I never took the AST -- I mean the LCS, wait -- the SAT.

himl: Gee, I wonder why.