When I was actively bulimic there was little information available and most of what I read didn't seem to fit what I was experiencing, which only heightened the feeling of isolation. Bulimics were assumed to have strong, dominant mothers, and a resistance to growing up. It was also believed that media images reinforced feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem, and that a history of sexual abuse was likely.

While I did have a strong mother, a perfectionist with exacting standards, she also had a zest for living I could only admire or resent. As an introvert with limited social tendencies, my life path felt very different from that role model. And I couldn't grow up fast enough, I craved independence, autonomy. Media images were just that, a false standard that was unrealistic for most of the people I knew.

I was very aware that there was a bio-chemical component, a pattern of anxiety, depression and shame, and that my behaviors stemmed in part from my efforts to find some balance.

Thirty pages from the end of Aimee Liu's Gaining: the truth about life after eating disorders, my attention is waning, but the content has been both informative and reassuring.

Liu wrote a memoir thirty years ago titled Solitaire, which chronicled her life and recovery from anorexia. Her new book was prompted by a self-described mid-life crisis when her marriage hit a rough patch and she found herself decreasing her intake and losing weight as part of her coping mechanism.

The author reconnects with former high school and college classmates, women she pegged as others experiencing eating disorders, though few of them had been friends at the time. She also talks to various therapists and eating disorder specialists, addressing issues of genetic predisposition and personality traits.

Reading Liu's book has been therapeutic, sparking memories of times that I'd just as soon forget but are a key part of who I have become. It has also increased my sensitivity to others who may be struggling with similar, potentially dangerous behaviors.

The grocery store had fresh rhubarb on sale and the sight of it reminded me of something my husband had said about liking rhubarb.

Yeah, I got quite the memory for detail.

I purchased some rhubarb and searched through my cookbooks for recipes. Both of our mothers had made sauce but I couldn’t find a recipe for sauce and wasn’t in the mood for doing a web search, so I decided to make a rhubarb pie with the fixed attention of someone in need of adventure or distraction.

Not only have I never cooked rhubarb, I’ve never made a pie.

I’m not a big pie enthusiast. I like a good piece of pie once in awhile, pumpkin or maybe blueberry, preferably none of that gloppy, syrupy canned fruit stuff.

My mother never made pie, her friends made fabulous pies and she felt like her crusts never turned out. I skipped that step by using a, gasp, store-bought frozen crust. While I was there, I picked up a couple bags of frozen rhubarb to supplement my limited stash, good thing, too, as I soon discovered the fresh stuff looked beautiful but was woody.

I let the rhubarb thaw while I prepared the brown sugar topping, cutting the butter into the brown sugar and flour. The directions were easy and clear. Next I mixed the sugar, flour and cinnamon with the rhubarb, filled the pie shell and protected the edges of the crust with foil.

The topping got a wee bit burnt, just enough to add character. If the rhubarb had been completely thawed the pie wouldn’t have had to cook so long and could’ve emerged in a more pristine, Pie by Patrice, fashion (Better Homes and Gardens thought it best that the fuit still be icy).

Overall, the pie was a hit accompanied with a lovely dose of nostalgia.

A review had warned me not to expect titillating stories of backstage escapades or earth-shaking revelations, but I wasn’t disappointed with Julie Andrews’ autobiography, Home: A Memoir of My Early Years.

Part of her goal in writing this book had been to shine a light on the popular British vaudeville performers from those early years. Readers gain a sense of what theater was like in England and on Broadway during the 1950s and 60s. She also shares her struggles with the demands placed on her voice, her step-father's disturbing and destructive behavior and her mother's inability to break free from him.

The opening chapters are bogged down with too much exploration of the family tree, but once the focus shifts to the little girl with the big voice things pick up. She learns that the father she cherished, the one stable force in her topsy-turvy childhood, was not her biological father. Her step-father and mother were talented performers who increasingly drank, relying on young Julie to support the family.

There was an oddly charming story of Richard 'windy boy' Harrison’s artillery-worthy gas attack during a Broadway performance of My Fair Lady and ensuing giggles from cast and orchestra as the lyrics echoed the incident, but overall, what emerges is the story of talent and perseverance, as well as a love for one's art.

"Most of all, it is the music--when a great sweep of sound makes you attempt things that earlier in the day you might never have thought possible. When the orchestra swells to support your voice, when the melody is perfect and the words so right there could not possibly be any others, when a modulation occurs and lifts you to an even higher plateau . . . it is bliss. And that is the moment to share it."

'Don't complain and don't explain.'

My Aunt Ann acquired this key tenet while attending Mount Mary College in Milwaukee in the 1940s.

The very thought of it used to make me cringe. I pictured generations of women taught to be second class citizens, considered of lesser value in a patriarchal culture, perpetual angels in the doorway tending to the needs of others, their own needs deemed less worthy in a life marked for self-sacrifice.

When my sister attended Mount Mary in the fall of 1969, the sage advice had shifted to instructing young women to avoid patent leather shoes (due to their potential for reflection beneath a dress) and white tablecloths (because they might remind a gentleman of bedsheets).

I'm thinking the 'don't explain and don't complain' suggestion may have been more helpful. Afterall, nobody likes a whiner and why get in the habit of trying to justify things when it could be interpreted as making excuses? Besides, it's a lot classier than saying 'suck it up.'

People are going to think what they are going to think, be it based on an impression, a misunderstanding, a fact or a lie. Maybe it's placing the emphasis on action instead of reaction?

I have a tendency to provide too much information, a habit that drives my husband nuts when I'm giving him context that he neither wants nor asked for, which may explain why I chopped so much narrative from an earlier draft of Alumni Affairs.

Or maybe I'm just justifying the revision without end.

We won’t be receiving a tax stimulus rebate this year.

I'm grateful that after twenty minutes of listening to the same four static-riddled classical pieces and nearly losing all will to live, I spoke with an empathetic and competent representative at the Internal Revenue Service.

And I'm concerned. Gum-snapping, nail-biting, short-tempered, pacing concerned.

The Social Security Administration annually sends me information with my name correctly listed, yet never updated my name change with the IRS listing when I married in 2001.

As far as the IRS is concerned, despite sharing the same social security number, Patrice J. Coleman and Mrs. P are separate people and I am therefore an ID error: No rebate. We supposedly can claim the rebate as a credit next year, nine months from now.

This experience reinforces my belief that without a viable career or wage-earning status, a woman loses her identity in the eyes of society and the government when she marries, relegated to the role of attachment to the breadwinning male.

I added my husband’s surname to mine when I married to mark the union. No hyphen. A friend of mine had done this when she married an attorney and I was repeatedly reassured that it clarified things legally plus allowed me to keep my own identity which I was rather attached to after forty years.

Other than the occasional confusion with filing at the doctor’s office and comments about my long name, I’ve encountered no problems. Now I’m worried about my insurance plan, the bank, my own inconsistency -- I go by a number of names, compartmentalizing my life, and leading to my husband’s comment that the mail carrier must wonder just how many people are living at our address.

I thought my purse was the dog and other errors in judgment.

I’m having one of those days where the day just gets away from me, resulting in little progress on the revision but further thoughts for the seminar session I’m developing titled Lost in Revision.

One minute I’m popping into the kitchen to make a white bean stew with a list of ingredients I wouldn’t have gone near back in my vegetarian days (due to the haunting memory of a wicked tomato/bean goulash-y encounter in a grade school cafeteria), the next I’m picking up a few things we need at the grocery store, making dinner rolls, doing some yoga to loosen a kink in my neck.

When I glance at the clock I realize it’s late afternoon and I’ve got sweaters on my teeth either because I forgot to brush them this morning or I’ve been indulging in mindless eating while engrossed in other things.

When I finally pulled myself away from the computer I was careful not to step on the dog, except that wasn’t the dog on my left, it was my purse, the dog was on the right, nervously eying me as he blended into the dark carpeting in true chameleon fashion.

Which reminds me, I need to order more Heartgard chewables and flea and tick treatments.

Where is my purse?

Oops, who’s a good boy!

Over the past few months I have been rereading the novels of two of my favorite novelists: Elinor Lipman and Jennifer Weiner.

There is a spareness to Lipman's novels, a restraint, wry wit, the tug of a slight smile over a shared joke, engaging characters and situations. I don't want her books to end, I want to continue observing what happens to them.

Weiner, oh my. There's a reason I've got a link to her blog on my blog, and, quite frankly, it's for my own ease of access. Yeah, I probably should set up a separate Resources page with links, but mainly, I just want to get my hit of Weiner and Crusie, who blog semi-frequently and always make it worth the visit, be it entertaining or thought provoking, maybe even milk will come out your nose, which I would find both entertaining and thought provoking.

Weiner's most recent novel is her best, or maybe it's just that her characters are getting closer to my stage of life. She is a gifted story-teller, and while I may not always relate to her characters, I always appreciate her warmth, humor and intelligence. In Certain Girls (a follow up to her first novel, Good in Bed) she broke my heart then swooped in for a fitting conclusion--life has pain and life has joy, people suffer and somehow find a way to pick up the pieces and move on.

I look forward to future works by both of these writers, and those who penned the stack of books on my nightstand. I'm currently reading Susan Isaacs' Brave Dames and Wimpettes: What Women are Really Doing on Page and Screen, which is like a refresher course in feminism. The book was published in 1999 and some of the examples are dated while others are classics, but her thesis still has merit.

The Return of the Traveling Pants

(No, not those pants, not the sisterhood pants of novel and movie fame.)

Summers are long and unrelentingly hot in the desert. Last year I bought a great pair of lightweight capri pants—Modal fabric, very breathable, dries quickly, doesn’t need ironing. I wore them for the better part of five months.

I vowed to buy them in every available color (well, except aqua, because it is just so not my color) if/when they went on sale at the end of the season.

The first sale price didn’t seem like much of a discount, only 15% off the regular price. Besides, I wasn’t sure which colors I wanted – taupe, vivid periwinkle, deep rust? I delayed my decision.

It turned out there was only one sale price, month after month, while I comfortably wore jeans. And then, poof, they were gone, completely sold out.

Oh no! What had I been thinking?

Confucius was right, she who hesitates is lost.

What would I do, spend another summer wearing the same pants (a somewhat less than versatile muted sage/olive check pattern that I creatively, desperately, paired with cream, pink, and lavender tops).

I searched through the new spring catalogs and found nothing remotely similar. I checked with various, related types of online vendors, finding a store in California that still had last year’s capris in stock. Once again, I hesitated.

The temperatures began creeping upward. In a moment of near panic, I placed the order. They were only available in one color, a sedate taupe.

Within a few days the big brown truck screeched to a halt in front of my neighbor’s house. The dog and I stood by the door, figuring the odds were pretty good we might be next in line. Receiving a redirect at the neighbor’s door, the carrier trotted across their driveway and our yard, verified my name and handed me a slightly crumpled box which was almost impossible to open. I hacked my way into one end of the box, narrowly missing the unprotected pants--no bag, no paper.

The color was unimpressive, but the fit and fabric fine until I noticed a spot on the leg, right where I’d cross my legs, right there – ‘hello, and have you seen my spot?’

I dabbed some spot remover on it, encouraged when it faded, but as the area dried, there it was, SPOT!

I called the company and they advised me to return the pants, assuring me that I would be reimbursed for my shipping expense and they would send me a different pair.

A few days after I shipped the package I received an email apology, the item had been discontinued and was no longer available. Would I be interested in purchasing the pants at a discounted 40% off? (This was on top of the original 10% off. )

I was tempted, still I knew that every time I wore them I’d be aware of the SPOT, which was perhaps less of a spot and more of a flaw right in the fabric.

My husband thought it was a no-brainer, pants you like and know you will wear available for half of the original price? (Pants other than those olive ones you lived in last summer?!)

I ordered them. They’ll probably be arriving at my neighbor’s house some time this afternoon. Spot on.