A Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens

Things Go Right Slowly

2011-06-19T08:24:00.000-05:00

...and wrong very quickly.

Nothing out of the ordinary is wrong. No need for extra worry. I'm just thinking out loud here.

One mistake I make is thinking that I have to do a project all the way to the end in one sitting. That's possible with tasks that aren't complicated. I can unload the dishwasher all at one time, after all. But "write a book," "garden," "knit" -even "read a book" -these are not things that can be done in one fell swoop generally.

But here's the thing. Sometimes that thinking keeps me from starting. If I can't get the whole thing finished, I hear myself decide to wait until there's a big enough block of time to get it done. Which of course never happens.

Reframing this, however, I know that sometimes NOT finishing a book is part of the joy. (I do sometimes stay up all night to finish a book, I admit.) It's like a little treat waiting for me at the end of the day. I need to think of more tasks like that.

Get Fit Slowly
Get Financially Secure Slowly
Create the Home You Envision Slowly
Write Slowly (but slightly more steadily)
Create (knit, sew) Slowly
Garden Slowly

It doesn't all have to be frantic. Just intentional.

Living Gently On Purpose

2011-06-08T11:48:00.001-05:00

Several threads of truth are relevant here. First, I want things to be gentle for the people around me. I even used the word "gentle" in my mission statement, as it applies to social change and its effects on the very poorest people on the planet. I work hard to create gentle pathways toward success for the people I work with. I want to be gentle to animals and toward the planet.

But I am seriously tough on (mean to?) myself, and more than -or different from- the "negative self-talk" thing we all know about -although I am a master at that, too. I mean that I won't accept gentle change. I feel like I have to lean in and do everything HARD -and if I can't or won't, that's a failure.

And... somehow I have this idea that a high-adventure life is more valuable than a quiet, gentle life. To complicate matters, though, I would never agree that Emily Dickinson, with her quiet life, was less valuable than Sir Edmund Hillary trekking around on mountains. Kind of the contrary, actually. It's just that the rules are different for me, you see ;) I ought to want to be rappelling down a mountain in Belize or canoeing whitewater somewhere. So, in my twisted little mind, it's this:

Or this:

and there's not much in between.

But I have to do something different; I'm wearing myself out, thrashing around. I get it. My life was forced into a new place. There was (and is) a lot to do to get to safety, much less to a place where I could thrive. Besides, I had postponed a lot in the interest of other things -saving an unsalvageable marriage not least among them. There was some resentment there, and by God , it was my turn. So, urgency and entitlement were all mixed up. I needed some things urgently, and felt like it was my bloody turn for a little adventure on the other.

Now that I think about it, perhaps I'm mixing up indolence and calm -gentleness and sloth. I know what the words mean; we don't have to go there! It's just assigning the words to my own behavior that I'm not doing with very much sophistication or tolerance. If I sit for a minute, it's not necessarily laziness -even if there are several visibly undone tasks in my immediate vicinity.

So, given that the list of things I want to do has not gotten any shorter, how might I live gently on purpose? We're talking Gentleness 101, here. What does gentle homemaking look like? What does gentle scholarship look like? What does gently physical fitness look like (especially challenging, since it requires exertion, by definition).

Sigh.... I just don't know.

Step Away from the Ziploc!

2011-05-14T11:42:00.000-05:00

I have a bit of a thing about Ziplocs and tupperware and other plastic storage devices. I love having them around. Differently-organized people do this. We think that containers are the solution to being organized. (Note to self -It doesn't work if the containers remain empty!!) To make matters worse, in this busy life I've chosen, the temptation to choose convenience over economy or environmentalism or... pretty much anything else, has been darn near irresistible.

However... just now I used the last gallon-sized Ziploc. I had the empty box in my hand on the way to recycling, and made a mental note to add Ziplocs to the grocery list. Then I thought.... here's your chance to make one more right decision.

I do want to make green choices -and one of the ways to make that real in a small way, I admit, is to reduce the amount of plastics that come into my life. I don't have to buy more of these things; I just have to figure out an alternative.

A quick google search reveals that plenty of people charge quite a bit for making and delivering to your home reusable sandwich bags. I'm not out of those yet, so I'll just use up what I have first. However, when the time comes, with a yard of rip-stop nylon and some Velcro, I could make enough sandwich bags to last a lifetime, probably. The idea would be to make enough for a week's worth of lunches, and to have a few cycling through the laundry.

But as I said, I don't need those yet. And I'm not sure that I want opaque bags of fresh vegetables in my fridge. I waste too many fruits and vegetables as it is Hence the vegetable stock that's simmering in the crockpot right this minute. Vegetables invisible to me in the fridge -that way lies disaster. But, for heaven's sakes, my grandmother didn't have Ziplocs. I'm not even sure that my mother did. So, what did THEY do?

Here's some guidance. It turns out that the Berkeley (of course it was Berkeley, the home of my soul!)Farmer's Market has gone entirely plastic-free. They have published a guide to keeping your produce fresh without plastic: Guide.

When you add this list to my new gentle return to vegetarianism (another casualty of the convenient life), I will be saving a lot of vegetables from a slow miserable death in my crisper!

Are the Kleshas Keeping me Fat?

2011-04-26T06:22:00.000-05:00

They sound like little gremlins who come in the night and inject saturated fat into my arteries. But no....they're Buddha-identified causes of suffering. Many wisdom traditions identify similar ways we get ourselves into trouble, and common sense will take us pretty far down this path as well.

As you know, my yoga practice has been important to me for a good long while now. And because of that, I knew vaguely about the kleshas when disaster struck my life in the form of a wandering and insulting husband. And I've been staggered by how simply and elegantly true this formulation of human suffering is. I've watched myself move through the kleshas one by one in my healing from that wound -not meaning to imply that I'm finished with this project, by any means. However, I've learned a tiny bit about sitting intentionally with myself in order to let go of these pain-causing troublemakers.

But lately (well, since yesterday) I've been wondering how the kleshas play out in other ways. Specifically, am I making myself fat (seriously... who else could be making me fat?) by a lack of awareness of the kleshas? The pattern certainly seems familiar.

Let's start at the beginning. Avidya (ignorance) is the misconception of our true reality, the belief that the temporary is eternal, the impure is the pure, and that pleasure is painful. This false representation of reality is the root klesha and produces the four others. This ignorance is not a failure of the intellect; it's a failure of the intellectual apparatus. We just can't know everything through the intellect.

Avidya happens when we forget the spiritual (or divine, if you want to go here) side of our nature and focus on the material. In my quest to become fit again, I have made many material-world changes. I have not one, but two, gym memberships, to accommodate my schedule and to eliminate excuses for not working out. I'm reclaiming a yoga practice. I've been saying that for years now, I know; it's just that it's a process. I drink more water. I have completely eliminated fast food. You know the drill.

These things are important, and I need to continue to do them. One can't eliminate suffering simply by switching to the other pole of this bi-polar problem. Fatness isn't solely a spiritual problem any more than it's solely a material one. A yoga practice is all about reclaiming balance, about eliminating needless dualities.

On some level this is nothing more than old habit -trying to wrestle my world into submission through the force of my intellect. (How's that working out, Andrea???) But flipping the question around, what is this fat doing FOR me -spiritually, metaphysically, even psychologically? I must believe on some level that this situation is less painful than its solution. I must believe that it works for me, in spite of evidence to the contrary.

So, what's going on? My marriage was all about shame. Perhaps this is one of those clearly self-defeating strategies to shame myself before someone else does. Or perhaps I am saying physically what I say vocally all the time. I am NOT interested in another intimate relationship EVER. Well, in this culture at this time, fat will pretty much guarantee that. Perhaps my spectacular (seriously... the stuff of legend)inability to say no is just manifesting itself on my hips and thighs. Maybe it's all these things, or something else altogether.

But I'm going to sit with this for a while and see where it takes me.

Darn These Life Lessons, Anyway

2011-04-11T13:33:00.000-05:00

I've hurt my back. I would love to spin you a tale about rescuing a puppy off a rock face while climbing, and....

Not so much. I was rearranging the furniture in my bedroom. Oh, the glamour.

This kind of muscle strain happens when the abs aren't strong enough. Abs aren't strong enough because they aren't being challenged. They aren't being challenged because I don't work out enough. I don't work out enough because I almost always put someone else's needs ahead of mine. And I do THAT because my metaphorical core isn't strong enough.

It only looks like circular reasoning. My workout PLANS are good. My workout "actual" is ho-hum. Time after time, I put my plans on hold because someone needs me to do something else. Sometimes that needs to happen, granted. But my guess is that it doesn't need to happen quite as often as I let it happen.

One moment while I explain the back story. Psychology-types talk about organizing one's self-concept around a core identity. Bearing in mind that we all live with a lot of inconsistency in these matters, the core story can give meaning and purpose to that role and to all the others we adopt and live, or adopt and discard, across a lifetime.

Most of the time we hold incongruent identities in a workable tension. However, when two mutually exclusive stories each strive to be the core story, the tension can become unbearable. That's cognitive dissonance (in spite of how the term is used in popular parlance, that's what it actually means). People can put up with this situation for a really long time, but when it does become unbearable, it must be resolved or madness will surely ensue.

So, clearly, the idea is to get this taken care of early. Cognitive dissonance can, then, be a motivator for change. My self-concept as the helper is pretty darn important to me. My self-concept as an independent and physically strong person is, so far, mostly words. It doesn't approach the level of a core story, but it could get there. The thing is, the helper identity is actually truncating the independent strong person. If I don't become fully who I am because I stayed at work late to help you, then my failures are your fault. I have "an out" for not succeeding. Of COURSE, that's not true; my frontal brain knows that. My subconscious? I don't think so.

So, my sad stiff back is telling me that I am setting myself up for failure. I need to haul my sorry self to the gym and do some ab work -and all the other things I authentically like to do there. I need to stop pretending to be too busy.

I need to do this for myself, but I also need to do it in order to be in authentic relationships with my friends and colleagues. Because why would healthy strong people want to be in a relationship where this kind of scapegoating -however subconscious- is a possibility?

So, either I've reconciled the dissonance between two of my life stories and now really have to work on getting stronger, or this medicine is making me crazy. Besides, Faith the Vampire Slayer was a helper-girl, too. I just need to change what I'm aiming for in the helping department ;)

The Joys of the Handmade life

2011-04-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

I'm reading Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of the Handmade Life by Jenna Woginrich. For me, it goes in the guilty pleasure reading category. It's like reading cookbooks as though they were novels. I know I will never make...pheasant under glass, or some such recipe, but I love to read about it and look at the pretty pictures. Similarly, I know that I will never be a "live off the land" sort of person. To be fully me, I need to be near libraries and universities and knitters and ...people, I suppose.

Moreover, I don't even WANT to do what she does. She has chickens in her yard. She keeps bees. She wants a farm in Idaho. More accurately, though, my handmade life would not look like her handmade life. She and I do want the same thing; it's just that the particulars differ. Bearing in mind that I do not need to complicate my life further, I nonetheless need to live MY life. We've covered this... I want to make my house a space where people are welcomed, where comfort and conversation are the norm. I want to honor myself and my guests with good food. I want to have an outdoor space that invites people in. I want to make warm and cozy things for myself, for my home, and for people I love. I want my environment to be full of old things, things with a history.

So, my house was emptied and is being refilled with new (to me)furniture, art, knick-knacks. I'm repurposing and repainting rooms. I'm cooking and baking again -witness the Sunday "Susie Homemaker" posts on facebook. I iron the cloth napkins and endure the gentle teasing from my friends about that. I have my garden plans, at least for the backyard. I've relocated my knitting urge, and have socks on the needles as we speak. I go thrifting and hunting in antique stores, and have fun even when I don't buy anything.

And all of this is consistent with my other need to live a more environmentally gentle life. It does matter how my food is grown and delivered to me; making at least some of it myself reclaims some power and artistry. Re-using old things discovered in junk stores supports the local economy and is an elegant form of recycling. Gardening makes a mark, creates another welcoming space, and creates a safe and gentle space on the planet -a place where scary chemicals are not used, thank you very much.

But that's the airy-fairy version. While true, as an ideal, the reality is that for these (and the 40 bajillion other) tasks to be done with anything like the grace they deserve, there has to be a calm order. One can't live gracefully -or even intentionally- in a mess. Rather, it's always an equilibrium-disturbing lurch from one emergency to another. So, the question becomes... how do we get from here to there?

I don't have the slightest idea. Yet.

la gratitude est la mémoire du coeur

2011-03-30T08:45:00.000-05:00

I realized -again- the other day that I love my life. I am grateful for the whole divorce debacle. I will stop well short of saying that Math-Rat was right to do what he did, because he was wrong in every particular. What's true is that I've managed to thrive, in large part because of my friends but to some extent because of strength I didn't know I had. So, yay for us!

I'm grateful that it's going well with Ohoud, the exchange student. She's just a 23-year-old girl, for heaven's sake. She's very afraid of my animals. We haven't gotten into a rhythm yet. She got lost in town yesterday, which scared me (and her) to death, because she doesn't know enough English to tell me where she was. But I showed her that the cats don't have claws, that they're soft, and that if you walk toward them assertively enough they will get up and move. I'll wake her up earlier tomorrow so that I can drive her to school and she doesn't have to walk God-knows-where. It's a start.

I'm grateful that I am healthy and getting stronger. That's a huge thing, and I know now to never take it for granted. I think I'm not doing the AIDS Ride this year, which is sad. However, I'm getting stronger, I'm swimming, I'm training for a 5K, and I'm ready to take my bikes to the shop for a tune-up. All is well.

I have a really cool job, and really astounding colleagues. Most days, I wake up and smile because I get to go do something fun.

And -sadly for the rest of you parents everywhere- I have the best, most astounding children on the planet. I am grateful for that, as well.

Drowning in Paper

2011-03-26T06:00:00.001-05:00

I'm drowning in paper, here, and I'm bloody done with it. I'm not good with paper, apparently, and I'm at least decently good with electronic documents. So, since I'm clearly impaired once it enters my house, my goal has become to get rid of the paper that comes into the house in the first place.

Minor rant..... WHY can't I pay the water bill electronically? Seriously, I can make my church donation electronically (should I be so inclined, which I am not). If they can figure it out, I'm thinking the city Public Works department can figure something out. There is a rickety system, for which they charge you almost $4 to pay on-time, and then they only accept Mastercard, which I don't have and won't get for the sole purpose of paying more for the water bill. Whew. That's off my chest ;)

I have now canceled receipt of 10 catalogs. (Yikes.) All my bills have been coming electronically for a long time -although some of them still send paper copies of the bill, too. I have to get that sorted out. I have tried to cancel the free newspaper, but since 12-year-olds deliver it, success seems improbable. I've canceled most magazines, more out of embarrassment that I don't have time to read them rather than from any sense of environmentalism or organization.

Now, let's think about electronic document storage. Once I electronically pay a bill, I would like to retain electronic evidence that I DID pay it. So I want to save the e-mail that confirms payment. Obviously, I can create a google document from the email. But that stores a hideous copy -one of those 5 pages to save a one page e-mail message deals. So, I've been printing the email, immediately scanning it, and then recycling the piece of paper I used for literally 30 seconds. That's sick and wrong. What am I missing here? How do you do this?

Greening of Sixth Street

2011-03-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

The weather WILL improve, right? It must. I insist. And given my certainty, I am working on plans for the yard. Here's the current situation in graphic form. Nothing is drawn to scale, but it's about 60 feet wide and 120 feet deep.

The Current Reality

It's aggressively rectilinear. That sidewalk down the middle leads from nowhere to nowhere, although soon I hope that there will be a kitchen door roughly where the sidewalk ends. I like nothing about this set up. It invites no one in. There are spectacular views of the neighbors' trash cans in all directions. It's gross.

So, I came up with this:

Draft 1

The garage, which is a "someday project" will be a one-car garage, but on the side it will have a shallow room, protected by sliding doors. This will be a seating area/potting shed sort of thing. In the meantime, though, I can plant the raspberry canes to form part of a fence, to stop the walk-through traffic, block the view of neighboring trash cans, and ... give me raspberries! The walkways will either be brick or that mulch stuff. The firepit will be brick. The tulip magnolia tree is sited to be visible from the family room and to further block icky views. But I was still not quite satisfied.

Here's draft 2:

Draft 2

It seems like the walkways make a little more sense. The space is divided into "rooms," but they all sort of flow into one another. I'm not sure about that space in the back, now, though. What is it?

Anyway.... Comments? Thoughts? Improvements?

Come, Let's Change the World

2011-03-24T12:25:00.000-05:00

So, here's a thing -and I'm nervous about it.

The back story:

Andrea wants to work for social justice... blah, blah, blah. You've heard about this before.

Also, Andrea has a house that's shamefully big for one person. And wants company, to boot.

The logical thing is for me to share my home with an exchange student, right? I've got nothing BUT spare beds at this point, after all. And honestly, I think that having someone around, while it will be a little bit of extra trouble, will also ground me in some important ways. Therefore, I've signed on. My exchange student will be a slightly older student (by which I mean early 20s at most), who is already a bachelor's-prepared social worker at home. So, we'll have a lot to talk about.

Eventually, that is. Right now, she has almost no English. She's here preparing for the TOEFL, and is in the first of 12 class sessions one can take prior to the exam. So, communication consists of a lot of nouns, where she picks something up and looks quizzical -clearly asking for the English word for that thing. (Although, when she saw tofu, her expression was more like "what the bloody hell???")

The more interesting twist on this, though, is that she is from Saudi Arabia, and is very religiously conservative. She is completely veiled, with only her eyes showing. If my son or male friends come over, she needs advance warning so that she can re-veil. She traveled here with her uncle, who had to meet me and pronounce me fit to serve.

Well, now. I suppose I have conservative little corners of my psyche, but pretty much my politics and theology and moral decisions all land me on the left side of the aisle. I am, or claim to be, tolerant of a wide range of viewpoints, though -although I get persnickety when those viewpoints don't make any rational sense. I exempt religiosity from the "must make intellectual sense" requirement because faith is about something else.

But.... THIS religion, to my way of thinking, stigmatizes and truncates half the population. Not that Catholic Christianity doesn't do that, too -but there is a huge leap between that and this. My tolerance does not extend this far. And if I could find the MEN in charge of enforcing this situation, they would get a piece of my unveiled mind, let me just tell you.

But she's a faithful believer, and my problems are not with her. Moreover, I believe that, when people don't understand each other's beliefs, the right thing to do is to put a real human face to "the other." Get to know them.

That's how we change the world.

But first, I have to clean the house.

A Whole Lot of Dailiness

2011-03-01T15:22:00.000-06:00

Yeah. That's a picture of me.

And if you believe that....

But I was in the pool this morning, for my 1/2 mile swim. While it turns out that 1/2 mile is not long at all, it is long enough that your mind turns to other things. And I was musing about my return to physical fitness -which is a long-term project if ever there was one.

I haven't had the easiest two months ever. But they're over, and it's time to get back to work. And, what's more, I've been here ("Here" being in terrible shape) before and managed to get back into pretty decent condition. All it is -and I know you know this- is a whole lot of doing the right thing today. Today just pick up this weight and put it back down a few times. Or swim this lap. Or...whatever it is that you do. Having done that, you've done enough.

It's not as though you could put "get fit" on your calendar and just take care of it today and be done with it, right? I think a lot more things go in that category than I had imagined.

Just eat like a civilized person tonight.
Just put that book away where it belongs.
Just contribute to your savings account for that trip you want to take.
Just say the right, kind, compassionate thing.

Just do it.

Financial Peace and Thriving

2011-02-26T16:43:00.000-06:00

When I was married -as fraught as that was- I didn't see how absolutely relentless this being a grownup thing is. There was always someone to pick up at least a little of the slack. I don't miss him. That's over. I don't even miss that life. I wouldn't take it even if it were offered. But sometimes I'm tired. I have to (or get to, depending on my frame of mind) think about all the pieces that make up the big picture all the time, and it gets wearing sometimes. Figuring out a way out of that muddle is part of the reason I have reactivated my blog. Is there a way to work more efficiently or even gracefully to get where I want to go?

One of the questions on the table is what does financial security mean now. I'm fine. Don't worry. I'm just musing. In this new world -mine and the fragile economy in which we all must now live- what should I even dare to hope for? What CAN a person such as myself hope for?

This is ME. You know that I have short-term goals, medium-term goals, and long-term goals (although those long-term goals look a little improbable sometimes). Once again I'm seeking balance, I suppose. If my calculations are correct, I might even be BETTER off than I was while I was married -in about 6 years. But there are a lot of days between here and there, and a lot of keeping it together. And what divorce will teach you if it teaches you nothing else is that life is more precarious than you think. Always.

So, where's the line between ensuring my security and just being craven? What is realistic -even responsible- extravagance, and what's just stupid? What's enough wealth to hope for and what's just greedy (not that I'm in danger of having so much that it turns my head.) I know there is no official line. I'm just figuring out where I want to draw it for myself.

And here's a thing. Why is it so hard to say out loud that I want enough money to enjoy modest comforts? What is that about?

"As Good as Store Bought"

2011-02-23T17:52:00.000-06:00

As with so much in my life, I'm learning again from my knitting. Well-meaning people sometimes say, in admiration of a hand-knit garment, "It looks as good as store-bought." Certainly, all knitters appreciate the intention of the compliment. And we all know to what they are referring -the hand-knit garment we all fear. Check this out: You Knit WHAT?

However, accomplished knitters aim for so much more than "as good as store bought," and our sly little secret is that it's not all that hard to achieve. The techniques aren't difficult, and we're assisted by the sad truth that most ready to wear garments are very poorly made. However, no one knits all his or her clothes. There has to be a limit, right?

I'm aiming for some unknown balance between hand-crafted and wonderful, on the one hand, and store-bought and convenient, on the other hand. A corresponding balance between frugal (a word I hate) and extravagance would be nice, too. In the (to me) clearly out-of-the-question department, we have people who only flush the toilet when, ummm, it's essential. Seriously? No. And there are people who want to use those disposable cleaning wipes, but find them to be too expensive for comfort. So there are websites offering recipes for making your own -recipes that require an electric knife and chemicals and heaven knows what else. Ummm???? A mop and a few cleaning rags?

I tried to make my own dishwasher soap. The story is, equal parts of Borax and baking soda will do it. But no, even though the formula is quite green, it didn't get the dishes clean. That's a no, in my world. On the other hand, I tried the comparatively expensive, convenient, and green laundry soap made by Ecover. When the laundry didn't get clean, I tried a simple stain test; plain water worked better. Another no.

When we clean our homes, of course we want effective. I also want green, not needlessly expensive, and I'm prepared to make my own if it makes sense. In the end, we're going for at least as good as store bought. How do you clean your house with these constraints? Thoughts?

How, then, shall we live?

2011-02-22T18:18:00.000-06:00

I have work to do, and I need help. The small group of thoughtful committed citizens has helped me to figure out social justice issues and later helped me understand how to rebuild a life when my brain would not -could not-wrap itself around that question. But now it's time to figure out how those two go together.

I have learned SO much -and simultaneously been exhausted by the "stunt bloggers" who have become so popular. From the Julie-Julia project, to a year of living without plastic, to a new hand made dress every day, to using your crockpot every day... it's a wonder I get anything done, just from reading blogs ;) And ket's be clear, there is a lot of merit to trying something really hard for a year. We learn more about what's possible, if nothing else.

It occurred to me the other night, though, with some annoyance actually, that it's comparatively easy to focus on one thing at a time. It's HARD to live a life that is integrated and authentic. The picture is a (simplified, truth be told) image of my google calendar. I make lists of how I want my life to go. I make lists of hopes and dreams, which I know may never come to fruition, but somehow they merit a page in my journal. I think about living a more green life, about working with refugees, about how to fix my house, and how to inhabit my kitchen and actually use it, and more... And it all adds up to too much to do, and a not-so-vague worry that my planning and dreaming is all an exercise in over-control.

Moreover, it's easy to get lost in that tangle of trying to balance confusing and conflicting principles. If I buy fair trade coffee but forget to ensure that it's organic, am I going to hell? If I purchase the tennis shoes I need to go running, have I doomed small children to abusive employment? On and on...

It is becoming clear that no one has the answer I'm seeking. I have to become the expert on how to do this for my own life. Perhaps in the course of figuring that out, the principles of how to do it will become clear.

Come, let us reason together.

Thirty-One Days to Make a Difference

2010-07-24T10:44:00.003-05:00

I had written "thirty-one days to change the world," but let's not get grandiose, little missy. The thing is, I'm not fully who I am unless working for justice is part of my picture, and I've lost touch with that piece of me. On a purely personal level, this is no good. And besides, people, the planet, and the whole freakin' universe depend on each of us caring enough to make a difference.

None of which changes the certain truth that there are a lot of things going on in my life, and a girl could get scattered unless ~~there was a miracle~~ she paid attention. So, it's time to pay attention. For the month of August, I will do one small thing each day. We're talking small, here. Really small. My only rule is that the action has to be more than writing a check. That's too easy, and it's too easy for the local agencies as well. Rather, together, we have to do something, connect with something, make a hands-on difference. Then, the world gets better.

Here's the August plan, which I reserve the right to change:
1: start composting (which is to say, assemble the composter, which involves confronting my fear of household tools.)
2: figure out how to help with local bike paths project
3: say thank you every minute for my wonderful children
4: learn more about refugees and forced migration
5: ride my bike to work -car-free day
6: take those two unused bicycles to Hesed House
7: work on Human Rights lecture series
8: work on social worker exchange project
9: be a better neighbor -clean out the darn garden
10: destroy your BP credit card -they get no more of my money
11: make it easier to recycle in the upstairs rooms
12: car-free day
13: work on Human Rights lecture series
14: bring flowers to work
15: work on social worker exchange project
16: be a better neighbor -bake something for somebody
17: organize a "Knit Unto Others" (knitzvah??) project -mittens and socks for homeless people
18: work on Sweater for Rachel book
19: car-free day
20: work on Human Rights lecture series
21: deliver an insane number of Mom-baked goodies to dear son who turns 26 tomorrow
22: traveling -offset airmiles :(
23: work on social worker exchange project
24: work on Sweater for Rachel book
25 -be a better neighbor -flowers in the front!
26: car-free day
27: work on Human Rights lecture series
28: work on Sweater for Rachel book
29: work on social worker exchange project
30: talk to sister #2 about Black Tie and Tails charity event
31: bring baked goods to work

Pending Projects in the "Think Great Thoughts" Category

2010-07-20T08:06:00.002-05:00

getting blogger to treat static pages like dynamic pages, so that my primary blog will have clickable tabs, sorted by the "categories" of my life. I'm quite sure no one cares except me, but I want this to work. Then I have to figure out how to embed the feed of one blog into another -and get the whole thing to be transparent to my readers. Andrea shakes her fist at the sky a la Scarlett O'Hara.... as God as my witness....
act on my resolution to include more pictures in my blog. I love it when other people do that. Step one: find camera. Charge it.
prepare a talk for Cypriot visitors who want to learn about social justice project development -and develop an actual project. How cool is that?
become the world's expert on refugees and forced migration. Way to bury the lead, huh? But that's the goal.
prepare my portion of a talk on grant writing for DeKalb County service providers.
breathe..... breathe.... into this paper bag, if need-be.

I would not let students get away with such loose-y goose-y goals. Ummmm, could we have something measurable here? A timeline? What are the component tasks? I'll take care of that. But at least now I'm "out there" with my goals.

Group Theory

2010-07-19T06:19:00.000-05:00

Here are some groups I wish existed -or if they exist locally, I wish I knew where they were.

An eco-group to provide gentle challenge, support, and creative energy around personal and local green initiatives. I'm talking about everything from helping me get started with composting all the way to enhancing the bike paths and ideas I can' even come up with.
A non-fiction writer's group for people writing everything from dissertations to articles for journals to, say, knitting books.
a social action group. There's the DeKalb Interfaith Network for Peace and Justice, for which I am grateful. However, their issues and "style," if you will, have never been mine. I want a group that will cook for Hope Haven, knit for the children in Mongolia (or wherever), adopt a family at Christmas time, collectively be a Big Brother/Sister for a local child, figure out some sane response that individuals might take toward correcting the damage done by the oil spill in the Gulf.... maybe it would also be a social action book club.
a meditation group -could also be a yoga group. But I'm thinking here of a "don't just do something -sit there" sort of long meditation session once a week or once a month or on the summer solstice.... or something.

Clearly, I can't start all these groups right now, or I would have done it already. I couldn't even promise to attend the meetings all the time. I just think that this town would be enriched if they existed. I think my life would be improved, as would other people's. And I think I've reached the limit, for now, of the support that on-line communities can provide. I don't see myself turning away from the computer in some sort of Luddite revolt. I just want a little more in-real-life activity; not enough is getting done on the ground.

Lycra Bike Shorts, Swimsuits, and Other Horrors

2010-07-18T07:08:00.005-05:00

If you're a large woman in America, your whole life is an opportunity to feel self-conscious, embarrassed, resentful and way too big. You can hide in the corner or on the couch, you can go to therapy, or you can put on your lycra bike shorts and get out there and move.
—Jayne Williams, Slow Fat Triathlete

Jayne knows, she really does, how hard it is to put on those Lycra shorts or that swimsuit when you don't like the way your body looks. I love it that she understands; it means that she gives credit where credit is due. Bless the hearts -and backsides- of the people who need to exercise and DO IT and don't worry if said backside looks bad on that bike seat. Or they do worry, and they do it anyway.

The thing I need to do is move past the revulsion I feel when I look at my own body. The body I see has nothing -NOTHING- to do with the body that's in my head. This body is a new post-divorce artifact (artifat?), and it makes me sad and grossed out. Moreover, I'm tired all the time. Deeply, in my bones, exhausted. People will suggest that this is because I am doing too much. But seriously, I've felt this bone-deep thing before, and it's not physical. Fundamentally, it's emotional and spiritual. It's about whether or not I am lovable. Am I good enough? Do I deserve to be healthy and trim and vibrant?

But there's a time and a place when I do love my body. It loves to move and do things and exercise. I love to climb rocks, and do yoga, and ride my bike, and swim. I tolerate strength training, but do not love it. I loathe running, but could walk or hike, I suppose, since something in my fitness life ought to be weight-bearing.

So, where to go with this? I will start from that place of love. Actually, I will stay in that place of love. "I love my body when it does.... x (where x is a life-enhancing and health-improving activity)," suggests that I should do x. If an activity makes me feel less-than or not good enough, out it goes. For now, that means I will bike slowly, do modified yoga, lift baby weights, and swim as slowly as I need to. I will enjoy the activity for its own sake.

And if you don't like the way my backside looks, you shouldn't have any trouble passing me up and moving on to more congenial sights. Move along!

Sunday: bike ride, and gentle yoga
Monday: gym (which means weights and the treadmill) and yoga
Tuesday: swimming and yoga
Wednesday: gym and yoga
Thursday: swimming and yoga -and I'll ride my bike to work today (it's about a mile to work, so it's no real fitness work -just the principle of the thing)
Friday: bike ride and yoga
Saturday: yoga only

But, I deserve it!

2010-07-18T05:45:00.002-05:00

This thinking gets me in trouble, on so many fronts. And yet, it's not wholly false.

This thought has been rattling around in my head for a while. Where is the balance between a healthy sense of entitlement and narcissism? Of course, when you ask a practitioner that question (as I must, when questions bounce around in my own head, right?), then the immediate answer is that no one knows. And beware of practitioners who claim to know the line between sane and crazy, healthy and unhealthy, but that's another story.

Moreover, today is roughly the 3-year-anniversary of arriving home from a trip and discovering that my "partner" had taken all the family money and hidden it, so that I could not have access. I was "unentitled" in an instant. Even my own paychecks had been re-routed to this mystery new account. His clearly distorted sense of entitlement.... my distorted willingness to give up all sense of entitlement... it's all enough to give a person pause.

Now, though, I have the pedestrian delight of being in charge of my own finances. Both of them ;) There is a strange (really, I think it's strange) sense of awe and power when I get to choose a new dress or a new piece of furniture or which brand of milk I want. But one must quickly find a sense of balance here. Equating self- worth with purchasing power isn't a safe or wildly ethical path to enlightenment.

This struggle with entitlement shows up in other places as well. "I'll just have one bite of ice cream; I've worked hard today." Uh huh.... when was the last time you ate one bite of ice cream -or anything, for that matter? The consequence of that thinking has been 40 pounds. Or, I'll try to squeeze too many activities into a single bit of time, because I want to do them all. And therefore, the universe should allow that by expanding time, just for me? What am I saying here?

I am starting to define the way Dave treated me as domestic abuse. I don't want to slip back into a "woe is me" rant, though. Many, MANY people on this planet experience much worse, every single day, with no hope of the luxury of choosing their own milk or having a bite of ice cream -or freeing themselves from abusive men. That acknowledged, however, surely I'm entitled to something.

So I need to locate the healthy expression of the sentiment "I am here. I am powerful. I deserve to be seen for who I am." I suppose defining the question is a good start. The corollary of this question is "Do I dare speak my dreams out loud?" Stay tuned.

Metal Mouth

2010-07-17T00:04:00.003-05:00

Brace yourself for a sort of puke-y TMI post.

It's been a year with a mouth full of metal.

I said, thinking that I meant it, that I would get braces right after college, when I had a job. That didn't happen. I got married and had babies, which I don't regret for a single second. With those babies came about a zillion other ways to spend money, but it's not as though my teeth were miraculously straightening themselves.

Well, a year ago it happened. I somehow sensed that I had a moment to get this done. Otherwise, it would be another 20 years, and I just don't have that kind of time!

Here's where we started:

Gruesome, huh? There were teeth perpendicular to each other.

One year later, we have this:

DUH, that didn't work. You can't see my teeth there, can you? For heaven's sake! Allow me to distract you with the pretty girl in green... I'm still waiting on the orthodontist's official one-year photos. My teeth are mostly straight now. My bite is still all catty-wumpus, but we're just now starting to work on that.

Even I can't turn this process into a metaphor. Filling your mouth with metal??? No, that doesn't take us anywhere interesting. Encasing one's troubles in metal? Spending staggering amounts of money when my parents had been willing to pay for this? Sadly, no. Those are not inspirations for creative thinking, either. It just feels good to be doing one of those "I always said I would" tasks. That's part of being a grown-up too, isn't it?

An Upside-Down Grownup

2010-07-16T04:02:00.001-05:00

So the story is this. When I was a little girl (and I must have been very little, based on my memory of the house where this happened), I remember standing on my head on the couch, kicking my feet up against the wall behind the couch. Mysteriously, my mother was not charmed by this behavior. Admonished to get down and go do that in the yard if I needed to do it, I asked my mom if she thought the world looked better upside down or right-side-up. Our mom would definitely reply "right-side-up" which, of course she did.

She further said that mostly, grownups like right-side-up better. Even now I'm not quite sure that's true, but then I just felt sad for the grownups. I wondered why, then, anyone bothered to become a grownup.

"Mostly, they just have to."

I don't think she meant anything metaphorical, but even then, that's where my brain went. And revolted. "I want to be an upside down grown up".

And so it will be ;) I just have to figure out what that means.

The Grown-Up in My Own Story

2010-07-15T10:18:00.003-05:00

Somewhere around day 2 after driving away from my marriage (He left me, just to be absolutely clear. It's just that he made me do all the work associated with that leaving. Great system.), I wrote the phrase "becoming the grown-up in my own story." I didn't realize, of course, that I had identified an important theme for myself, or that it would take so long.

But here we are. It's hard. I've recently realized something mind-altering. I was an abused wife. Without being libelous (he never hit me -or would ever hit anyone, I imagine), I was definitely abused. There's not a legal definition of emotional abuse; it's not criminal in the way that assault is criminal. Nonetheless, there are working definitions:

* name-calling or putdowns
* keeping a partner from contacting family or friends
* withholding money
* stopping a partner from getting or keeping a job
* actual or threatened physical harm
* sexual assault
* stalking
* intimidation

There are more examples; you can see them on the Violence Wheel. Suffice it to say that I was looking at the wheel (an old social work standby) for another purpose, and was flat-out gobsmacked at how many examples applied to me.

ME! How can this be?

Actually I am less interested in that question than in how to move forward to make things different. Sure, patriarchy had a role in this. Grandiose narcissism (not mine) probably had a role in this. My personality absolutely played a part -which isn't the same thing as saying that I caused it. My upbringing had, perhaps, a little role. Catholicism, perhaps a little more. There's a complex story to be told there, but it's already been done.

What's more important to me right now is to acknowledge that abuse infantalizes its victims. This becoming a grownup thing is profoundly NOT metaphorical. Rather, it is exactly the task in front of me.

I remember asking my mom once why people became grownups. (I'll tell you more about that story tomorrow.) Her reply was "they just have to." At that time she was in a complicated relationship herself, so a little fatalism was to be expected. But my toddler self wants to go back and say, "Nu-UNHHH, you GET to."

So now I get to become a grownup. I'm a work in progress, way back at the starting line. All this crashing around I've been doing -well, it will doubtless continue for a while. But the house, the physical fitness, the friends, the family, the job, school, the cats, the travel.... I've been crashing around experimenting with things the way a toddler does. "You mean, the world holds all this STUFF, and I get to try it ALL?"

Well, yes dear, it does and you do. Now you just have to be big enough and brave enough and graceful enough to figure out how to do the things you want, give back to the world, and say thank you all the time.

So, that's the project, for now.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2010-07-03T10:18:00.002-05:00

Everyone has seen the revived poster from World War II by now, and doubtless smiled at the British restraint of it all. I certainly have. Moreover, I have used the phrase to myself and other people repeatedly. It's easier said than done, that's for sure.

In some areas, it is perfectly easy for me to break goals down into teensy-tinsy pieces, and just do the next right thing. I step back and congratulate myself that I have done what I need to do today. I'm following the plan, on the path.... gosh, I'm good. When the exact same process needs to be undertaken in other areas, I freak out and think that I'll never finish and that I might as well not start and that I'm not smart enough or disciplined enough ...or whatever enough... to get this done. The small step seems too small to be meaningful.

Is this fear? Embarrassment at being afraid? Embarrassment about being/feeling powerless? I can't tell. It shows up in the weirdest places. The garden. The front porch. And of course, it shows up in more predictable places. Will I ever understand my retirement funds? Honestly, I'm beginning to doubt it. But I'm done with feeling stupid. Consider this the start of the embarrassment alleviation project ;) Forward motion -no matter how small- is still forward motion.

I will just keep breaking down the tasks into smaller and smaller bits, until the step is too small to avoid taking! I will be calm, and I will carry on!

A Sweater for Rachel

2010-06-30T03:11:00.004-05:00

Yesterday was the third anniversary of my niece, Rachel Grace's, death. She was born many weeks early and lived for about 48 hours. Just doing my thing -knitting, writing, trying to make meaning from the circumstances- I seem to have come up with the draft of a book. This is a DRAFT of the introduction, but in honor of Rachel it seemed appropriate to post it today.

Let’s stipulate from the outset that the birth of any baby can be a gift to the world. It does not matter to me if the child has physical and/or cognitive challenges. It doesn’t matter if the child will only live a few days. The child is perfect. Nonetheless, the circumstances around his or her birth can be staggeringly imperfect. Of course, we want easy lives rather than hard ones for the babies in our lives, and so we prepare. We give up coffee (!). We take more naps. We listen to Mozart. In that same spirit, we acknowledge that full-term pregnancies are better for babies than shorter-term ones. In the case of a premature infant, something is very wrong, even if just for a short time.

It may seem silly to knit for such a non-standard situation. How many babies can this affect, after all? The answer is “a lot,” but that is not the point. We knit for many reasons. We soothe ourselves with knitting. We knit to show love when words fail us. We knit when we don’t know what else to do. There’s a vague sense of disquiet, that “something’s wrong” feeling, when a knitter finds herself without her knitting. We knit because it’s our art, quibbling about the distinction between art and craft aside. In short, we knit because doing so is part of who we are.

Moreover, it must be said that knitters flourish in bad times; it’s where we are at our best. Whatever the problem, we try to cushion its impact with soft, warm yarn, knitted up with all the love we can muster. I know for a certain, lived truth that the stories of premature babies do not always end happily. Rachel Grace, my niece, lived among us for about 48 hours. She was our perfect Rachel, just as the world and our family needed her to be; nothing about her life was a mistake or a failure. And yet, she died. Knitting has a role here, too. I knew that she would probably be born premature, and I knit anyway. She never wore the things I made for her, and that matters not at all. Knitting those things was no sillier, for sure, than the fact that I was knitting receiving blankets for a baby born at the end of June in Alabama. That was probably way stupider, actually.

I will argue that knitting for premature babies is no more futile than any other knitting. If you only judge its immediate utility, knitting is always futile. Babies outgrow garments as quickly as we can knit them, sometimes after only one wearing. I have been known to misjudge entirely, and a knitted garment NEVER fit its intended recipient. Knitted garments cost more to make than their mass-produced counterparts. Certainly, my time could be more productively spent in other ways. (Dusting comes immediately to mind.) And yet, I will argue to my last gasp that knitting still has merit.

Knitted baby garments warm and protect. They organize rituals, as we see with, say, knitted baptismal gowns. Knitted toys are fun and harmless when thrown. Knitted blankets welcome babies into families, as in “Auntie Andrea always makes the receiving blankets. Here’s yours.” And they even mark life transitions. Auntie Andrea also makes (has great intentions of making, anyway) the afghan that accompanies a college freshman off to his new adult life. Premature babies need many of these same life markers; we just have to provide them faster.

Sometimes, though, even knitting is not enough. In the case of the howling grief that accompanies the death of a child, it was not. My next line of defense is to write. It’s what I do. It’s who I am. And when even that fails, I teach. Healing from Rachel’s death required all three. This book is the result.

I have designed patterns specifically for preemies and micro-preemies. You will find the standard baby wardrobe of hats, booties, and blankets made tiny. But more than that, you will find garments that accommodate the machinery and wizardry that attempt to mimic the simple elegance of a mother’s body. You will also find patterns that allow for the interesting social bonding that occurs between a tiny preemie and his or her parents. And finally, we have to acknowledge that on some level reducing the number of pre-term babies requires not better technology but better care of their mothers. In that spirit, I have included a pattern for mom. It’s not exactly a public health intervention, but it’s a symbol that at least part of our focus needs to be on her.

Alongside each pattern, you will find an essay based on my reflections as I designed and knit each item. I claim no great wisdom. I don’t even claim small wisdom, come to that. But I have walked this road, and if my experience helps anyone then so much the better. And finally, on the off chance that the sale of the book results in any actual money, it will be donated entirely to the March of Dimes in Rachel’s name, to help ease the lives of all babies.

Fantasies

2010-06-29T03:18:00.002-05:00

Not those fantasies. Calm yourselves.

When the kids were little -and from time to time, driving me right 'round the bend- I would toss off fantasies of my alternate life. You know, the life where all is peachy, no one's diaper needs changing, no plumbing breaks, and one meets up with only interesting challenges. Yeah. That life ;)

Leaving to go live on the beach and sell margaritas to the tourists was a favorite. Or, I would threaten to join a communal household where my only tasks were making bread and knitting for the community. This would be a LARGE communal household, apparently, since there are quite a few other tasks involved in managing a home. The details are a little vague, obviously, but it goes without saying that this household too is near a beach.

Of course, the fantasy life would be every bit as much trouble as real life; we all know this. However, humans also still occasionally fantasize about starting over, taking the path not chosen this time.

I was given that opportunity to start over (tragically, minus the beach part)-although it felt like a cataclysm at the time. My life today has very little to do with my life a few years ago. All my fretting about this life's new challenges is just the admission that being the grown-up in my own story is occasionally hard. However, it is way better than NOT being the grown-up, that's for darn sure.

Thou Shalt Not Freak Out

2010-06-28T05:40:00.001-05:00

Michael teases me about my goals and my goals having goals and possibly being a little obsessive about this process. When I tell you that my current goals list (scheduled for completion two years from now) is 39 PAGES long, it's possible that you will agree with him. I think I agree with him, come to that. But, it's what I do, and it harms no one.

Much of those 39 long pages is just a rephrasing (operationalizing, in annoying social science lingo) of the amazing discovery that I get to make the rules now. So I blather on about ontological frameworks and questions like "what is health?" and try to figure out what that means for me and how I might get there. Then I move on to "what do shelter and haven mean for me?" and then I muse about how I want my house to be THAT, whatever that is. On and on through "scholarship" and "community" and "creativity".....

Seriously, you ask????? Yeah. Seriously. It's a wonder I get by with 39 pages ;)

"Thou shalt not freak out" is one of my new rules -a rule I have a great deal of trouble following, I might add. It's easy to focus on the not-yet-done(kitchen ceiling still an embarrassment) and the impending disasters waiting around the corner (I refuse to even speculate here.) Would it be easier to stay centered in the moment, not borrowing trouble (as Jill so frequently has to caution me against), if I had some kind of spiritual practice?

Probably. Sundays without church still feel a little ungrounded to me. On the one hand, I certainly don't have time to sit somewhere and be annoyed (occasionally even enraged) for an hour. They ought to at least pay me, if that's going to happen. On the other hand, I miss the liturgical punctuation to the week. I miss the days when there was a community that I loved there. I miss the good and wonderful things that Catholicism can offer and seems to so intentionally have turned its back on. (Thou shalt not end sentences with a preposition is apparently not one of my rules.)

So, granting that I can't "do" Catholicism in its current form, is a fledgling/returning yoga and meditation practice enough? I think it could be, but it isn't quite yet. I do think, though, that the lack of a spiritual dimension to my life (What is spirituality? That will be good for another few pages of musing!!) is part of why the weekends are so formless -not that that's the biggest problem of a lack of spirituality.

Maybe it's time to go on a retreat somewhere -even if just with a tent,a book, and my journal. And possibly a bottle of wine ;)

A Middle-Aged Bridget Jones

2010-06-26T21:19:00.003-05:00

"At times like this, continuing with one's life seems impossible... and eating the entire contents of one's fridge seems inevitable. I have two choices: to give up and accept permanent state of spinsterhood and eventually be eaten by Alsatians... or not, and this time I choose not. I will not be defeated by a bad man and an American stick insect! Instead, I choose vodka. And Chaka Khan."

I had a very strange day yesterday. Mostly sleeping, as it happens. And beating myself up, for the entertainment value of it all, I suppose. I mean, seriously, most people ENJOY the weekends. What's wrong with me that they make me feel pathetic? What's wrong with me that...... blah, blah, blah....

Then, the little iPod shuffled to Chaka Khan belting out "All By Myself" and I realized that I was having a Bridget Jones day. For crying out loud. As darling as she is, she is 30 and I'm, well, not. (Although, one shouldn't prematurely rule out the possibility of chasing Colin Firth down the street wearing only one's underwear.)

OK. It's over. Seriously, that kind of self-pity is just boring. There are plenty of things to do, plenty of things to feel powerful about, proud of... There are plenty of interesting things to work on. Today will be better.

Carved Anew by the Details of your Devotions

2010-06-26T20:58:00.002-05:00

It’s Mary Oliver’s thought. “You too can be carved anew by the details of your devotions.” And in fact, this is the plan. I have concerns about not getting everything done. But they aren’t the concerns of a flibbertygibbit who wanders from one thing to another, starting them all and finishing none. Not quite. Or not every day, anyway.

Many things languished during my ill-fated marriage. Love, certainly. But also attention to the house, attention to my professional goals, …well, you get the idea. To address this situation, you know by now that my goals have goals and that I have charts and mind maps and vision boards to prove it. I hope you know –I hope I know, come to that- that I am working on most of these neglected areas and that I have the rest waiting patiently in the queue. I’m relying on a hope that there is a psychic difference between “ignored” and “planned,” even though the reality feels the same at this particular moment.

I do wonder (worry is too strong a word) if my concerns are not sufficiently weighty. Can I be a scholarly expert on refugees and global homelessness if I spend all my public blogging time reporting about my house, or yoga, or the cats? Is that really where my attention is? Where’s the gravitas?

Well, first off, is it not possible to be simultaneously a serious scholar and light-hearted? Few are. I get it that I’m walking a weird path here. But I just don’t think I can maintain grave and serious across the lifespan of a career. Well, I know I can’t. But I also know that I have something to contribute. So, stipulating that I know how to behave in public places, can’t it be true that I am fundamentally unimpressed with much of the academic posturing I see and still be serious? Light-hearted is not the same thing as air-headed. I want to carve that path, and have that path carve me.

More importantly, though, I don’t think it’s an indication of flightiness that I am spending so much time thinking about my house and gardens and yoga and cats. These are also things that anchor a life. They are things that root a life in a place and a time. And they shelter me. I lost safety –not the way the people I study have, heaven knows- but that loss jerked my life into a new path. Feathering my own nest, tending to its structure and stability, remind me that I am creating my own safety. (As much as anyone can, that is.)

When I get frazzled and a little unhinged (and it happens, and not just to me, I remind myself), well-meaning people advise me to slow down. Do less. Well, first of all, I’ll obsess about however much work is in front of me -no matter how slight-, so slowing down won’t really help the stated problem. Moreover, if I do less, then I won’t get everything done. A lifetime is not enough.

So, I really am looking at this mission expansion idea.

Kitty Snuggles and Mission Expansion

2010-06-10T17:24:00.007-05:00

I was quasi-thinking while still mostly sleeping this morning. Cillian and Claddagh come to wake me up at about 4:00 in the morning. They pat my cheek with their paws. They nibble on my fingers, if I have carelessly left them available outside the covers. I am NOT open to these gentle suggestions. I have to get up at 5 anyway, but the difference between 4 and 5 is really important to me. Claddagh politely gives in and goes back to sleep at my feet. Cillian is younger,feistier, and holds out for play-time somewhat longer. Eventually, though, I fall back asleep, while still in the middle of petting him. He concedes more or less gracefully, and with my hand on his back, we all sleep for another 45 minutes or so. It's cozy and sweet, and the only consequence is that I have to change the sheets slightly more often than I would otherwise.

This having pets thing began so innocuously. Claddagh adopted us. Then he needed a buddy. I looked around, and it was done. And now my life is bigger and richer. Not simpler.

Hang on for an impossibly tortured segue. I just this week wrote a draft of a paper suggesting that, in spite of hideous fiscal pressures, this is not the time for universities to be risk-averse. The answer to our troubles is not, I think, retrenchment and mission truncation; it's large-scale collaboration and expansion. Assume I made my case, just for the sake of argument ;) I wonder if I was talking to myself. ("As usual", mutter my children.)

Maybe it's like the cats. Perhaps my flailing around, trying to organize and simplify and eliminate is the wrong approach. Perhaps a richer life is LESS simple. Where do the ideas of expansion and collaboration take me, I wonder?

Yoga and Writing

2010-06-10T16:24:00.002-05:00

I am late to the dance, as usual, but I'm in. School's out for the summer, and I don't want to lose my writing mojo. And I really don't want to lose my yoga mojo. So, this is perfect: New Project.

In 21 days, I can get a boat-load of writing done @ 800 words a day! In 21 days, research shows, a new habit forms. My yoga is pretty much at five days a week already, assuming you count a restorative hanging-around-on-the-yoga-mat enough of a practice for one of those days. Nonetheless, yoga will be that much closer to fully reintegrated into my life. It will be mine again, and my heart (the metaphorical one) and my body crave that.

So, what should I write about for 21 days?

The Math-Rat Report

2010-06-01T15:09:00.003-05:00

He's gone -moved away -to New Jersey (I think) for the summer, and then presumably off to UT-Austin to be with one of his lady-loves. Why she would sign on for this is beyond me, but she is not my problem.

Here's the thing. I've been in a mostly-silent dither with myself for a few weeks now. I knew this day was coming; I just didn't know the actual date with any precision. All my pals would say things like "Won't that be SUCH a relief for you??!!" Clearly, the right answer was embedded in the question, so having been a good student once upon a time, I would dutifully provide that answer. But it wasn't quite what I was feeling.

And of course I can't actually describe that feeling with any accuracy. There was some sadness. Some irritation, certainly. Some glee -now I get the kids all to myself. (Picture me rubbing my hands together in anticipation...) Some astonishment (and a smidge of shame) as I see the distorted and abusive patterns than evolved over the days and years. I knew I was wanting unreasonable -even mutually exclusive- things. Within seconds of each other, I would think "he's not even going to say goodbye??" followed by "you would just smack him if he showed up." There's this never-ending dialogue between what I'm apparently "supposed" to feel and what I do feel.

So, quite by accident, I learned last night that he is gone. It's weirdly serendipitous that I'm using my new home office for the first time this week. I'm still getting used to it, but I'm totally loving it. So, I was sitting there, working on a paper in my yummy yellow office. (Remind me to post pictures.) And the this way-that way dithering on the subject of Math-Rat was ....gone.

Huh... I thought. This must be what peace feels like. And I went back to writing.

House Blessing

2010-05-30T16:33:00.001-05:00

My new office is not all the way finished. I'm looking at a ladder as I type. I'm looking at outlets that need covers. The trim isn't installed. Nonetheless, I took advantage of a visit from the boy-child to move furniture into this room. So my desk and my computer and a lamp are installed in this new space, and I'm using it.

I had thought when I moved into this house that I would live expansively in it. The habits I have developed are a little different, and I'm not sure that I'm thrilled about that. The old pattern is this. The office was a shared office, and it's the room you walk into from the driveway. I always ALWAYS have work to do, which involves the computer. So I tend to put my stuff down, feed the cats, and head back to the office -where I sit until I either go exercise or go to bed. Frequently, that's where I eat, for heaven's sakes. So I spend entire evenings, sometimes, within 5 steps of the door.

Ummm.... I get it. This is something just shy of stepping confidently into my new life, huh?

So, something must be done. I have commandeered the boy-child's old bedroom, installed a new wooden floor, a new ceiling fan/light fixture, and painted it a butternut squash yellow. And I've figured out the wireless internet, so now I can work upstairs -as can guests. (The boy child saved the password for us, in a sensible place!) I need crown molding yet, and baseboard trim, and to finish painting the doors and windows. I need to buy light bulbs that actually fit in the light fixture (sigh...), and to install the outlet covers (a pretty copper). I have most of the pictures and things I want on the walls. I need to knit something for this room -my personal trick for making spaces mine. It will probably be pillow covers in this case.

There is also furniture to be purchased. I want to have a futon in here, so that with a little sleight of hand, this room can become another guest room. I'll need a side table and a lamp for the futon/couch. I want one of those barrister bookcases. I want an antique globe, although I can't quite figure out where to put it. I need curtains.

So, clearly, there is much to be done. And this is just one room. (Pardon me while I breathe into this paper bag for a moment.) However, I hope that turning it to its intended, new, purpose will move me into my house -literally. I'll be further than 5 steps in.

So, give me until August, perhaps. Just before school starts again, and we all get crazy busy. I'll be a little further along, I promise. Probably a very little, but that's ok. We'll have a house blessing. A little smudging to get rid of lingering sadness. Some new houseplants to clear the air. Wine, definitely wine. Stay tuned.

God bless the corners of this house and be the lintel blessed;
and bless the hearth and bless the board and bless each place of rest.
Bless each door that opens wide to strangers and to kin;
and bless each crystal windowpane that lets the sunshine in.
And bless the rooftree overhead and every sturdy wall.
Gentle peace, the peace of God, the peace of love to all.

The Grandma Expectation

2010-05-30T08:53:00.003-05:00

Let me just preface this post by saying that no one I know is doing anything wrong. First of all, how would I know? Secondly, why would anyone care what I thought? Moreover, neither of my children is expecting a baby, as far as I know. We don't want rumors to get started.

But here's what I have noticed. Many women my age have already become grandmothers. The weird thing about this life-transition is that you have no control over it at all. It happens when your kid says it will happen.

Well, never mind. Now that I think about it, children always raise their parents -moving into new stages and requiring different things from their parents, who struggle to keep up. My general rule of thumb in parenting was that by the time you got used to a developmental stage, it was almost over. Time to batten down the hatches ;)

So, grandmothering. I'm looking around watching my peers learn to do it. I see models and I don't like any of them, for me, I mean. MUCH older women (say, the age of my grandmother, may perpetual light shine upon her) still subscribe to the notion that what a woman does after 50 doesn't matter very much. Productive life is almost over, but by golly she can spoil those grandchildren. I profited mightily from this version of grand-parenting. So have my children, really -at least the spoiling rotten part.

But then I start to wonder.... are my only-slightly-older friends much different? I have friends who drop their commitments at a moment's notice, happy to do so, and run half-way across the country to babysit. Some of my friends are parenting their grandchildren. Yikes! I'm wondering if helicopter parents haven't turned into helicopter grandparents. Has childhood become so complicated that it requires this many adults in supporting roles?

Or, is it a phase of life thing? Are we supposed to be slowing down, entering a more graceful and calm phase? And child-care, particularly of someone else's child, becomes an attractive option?

I understand the love one would feel for the child of one's child. I understand the rapture that ought to greet any baby. But what about those of us who can't (or won't) do what we're supposed to be doing? I don't have time -or the inclination- to slow down right now. For all kinds of reasons -some good, some not- I am only just now able to fully focus on a career and my goals. ME. There is some urgency to this, since the security that comes with a long marriage is now gone. But there is also a large measure of delight.

The urgency thing, though, means that I feel like I must deflect the advice of well-meaning friends who say "do less," "want less", "lower your standards." No one is going to support me in some idyllic retirement. I need to craft a life from which I don't particularly want to retire.

Does the old model, where I become the "crone" -the family "wise woman"- make any sense any more? There is the obvious truth that I don't have much in the wisdom department. But what I mean is, does the model work? Can't we be a little more inclusive?

What would a feminist role of grandmothering look like? How has grandmothering changed because of the opportunities we now have? How is grandmothering continuing to change because of the inequities that still plague us, and the reality that many of us are coming to careers late? Is grandmothering changing because of a general feeling that we are very far from done at 50 or 60?

It needs to. Yes, I will knit for babies that come into my life. Yes, I will make cookies. Yes, I will go to Baby Gap and buy foolish things. But I don't think I can be the grandmother who thinks that her grandchildren are the most interesting thing about her. I don't think I will carry around cartloads of pictures. I don't think all my stories will start with them -as perfect as they will, without a doubt, be.

But EXACTLY how this looks????? I have no idea. Once again, women my age are carving out new territory, with very few role models ahead of us.

Push Through? Pull Back?

2010-05-26T08:38:00.003-05:00

I signed up for a yoga class, to support my home practice. We are on week two, and I'm on week two of hurting myself. OK, universe, I get it. Or, I'm trying to get it, in any case. Nothing is seriously wrong. And, in any case, I did it to myself. (This morning my back froze up during the dangerous and daring activity of unloading the dishwasher. I must have made something vulnerable last night at yoga, is my thinking.)

I'm on this gentle path toward elite fitness, which, for already-elite athletes, sounds really silly. They are all about working through pain and muscling forward. They talk with glee about workouts that are so hard you have to "throw up in a bucket" afterward. I can be that way, right enough, but I have too many things on my plate to be serious about that path toward fitness. So, I'm carving out a new niche.... the couch-to-kick-butt-fitness training plan, which involves lots of riding my bike, yoga, a smidge of rock climbing and weight training, and even less swimming. Athletes would call it "base-building," I suppose. I call it getting off the couch and having fun. Categorically, though, I am rejecting the rhetoric of the athletes that says that just because I can't train 20 hours a week, I can't play in their playpen. I bet they're wrong ;) But I'm also rejecting the notion that just because I'm five minutes younger than God and 40 pounds heavier than I should be, that I should settle for less than my real goals.

And my body is waking up, no question. A year ago, there were yoga postures that I thought were forever lost to me. I modified everything. It took so long to get into a posture that what ought to have been a 1/2 hour practice took an hour and a half. I feel better, now. I can DO things. But clearly, something is amiss, and naturally I think the question is bigger than just yoga.

The universe is offering an existential question. What do you do when the wrong thing feels right? How do you even figure out that it's wrong, before it's too late? These days I always feel a little bit of pain. Apparently this is what happens when you let your health deteriorate. I'm astounded that people consider living like this, but that's another blog post. Yoga feels so good. It's hard work sometimes, but there's this delicious feeling of re-inhabiting my body. Moreover, I thought I was accommodating my limitations. I try to distinguish between the "ouch" of stiffness, which can be gently challenged, and the sterner, sharper "ouch" that means "stop right now; this is not a conversation."

But there's a whole lot of gray area in the middle, and apparently I'm choosing "push through" when I ought to be choosing "pull back." This is an affront to my nature. Let's just posit that if I KNOW something is wrong, I stop. (Ignore the fact that there is very little historical evidence to support this claim. Clearly this is a learning point for me.) But how do you distinguish between the two? There must be signals that I am missing.

Either that, or unloading the dishwasher really is dangerous and I should cease and desist with all housework. Oh wait.... I already did :)

You Grow, Girl

2010-05-25T05:40:00.002-05:00

This garden thing.... what am I up to, here???

I have been encouraging anyone and everyone to come dig flowers and take them home. It feels both wasteful and destructive and exhilarating, in that way that throwing a cheating lover's belongings out the window must. The gardens too, it seems, are fraught with unspoken power struggles, attempts to put on a brave face. It's not that I've turned a corner and have chosen to gracefully and intentionally change things. Not quite. I just can't stand them anymore.

See, I had this vegetable garden. I liked my vegetable garden. One year (when I was in graduate school), I didn't get out there to plant quite quickly enough, and my vegetable garden had been turned in to a flower garden. No discussion. Just Dave taking over something I enjoyed, making me feel not good enough....

I pretended that it was all for the best. It turned out, possibly, that Dave liked gardening. Or maybe he just didn't want to be with me on the weekends, who can say? Whatever. More gardens appeared. The yard was improved, certainly.

Truth? I never liked it. I said that Dave had beautiful gardens. But what I THOUGHT was that Dave had beautiful flowers and hum-drum gardens.

I know that all these flowers represent time and money. That chatter runs through my head, certainly. What is it with me that I can't make something about them work? Am I such a brat that they have to go just because they were his?

Ummm.... yes, apparently. But I don't think (quite) that I'm being a brat. The mental lightbulb illuminated yesterday. Another little garden is on the chopping block. More flowers sent off to live somewhere else. Bring your spades. I'm serious.

However, I have decided this.... I need to clear the slate.... make the canvas clean.... choose your metaphor. I can't see what needs to happen out there until it's emptier. By the time I figure it out, the perennials that I'm giving away will need to be separated and thinned at their new homes. Perhaps they can come back here again, and settle in new places. Wouldn't that be interesting?

Oh, Now I Remember

2010-05-19T08:06:00.003-05:00

Subtitle: Knitting with Cats

I cast on for the Spindle Socks last night. (Unsurprisingly, I found some sock yarn in my stash.) Then I remembered part of why I fell away from knitting. Knitting with cats is like shoveling snow in a snowstorm, scheduling a picnic in northern Illinois in April... Idealism inevitably collides with reality -pretty much the story of my life.

I've been sharing my life and space with cats for about a year now, and my knitting has been floundering for longer than that. So, I really have no experience in sharing a knitting space with these little dears. And one (Cillian) is just a kitten, to make matters slightly more challenging.

So, I tried knitting with the little one in my lap and the bigger one sitting on my desk chewing on the yarn. Oh, that was fun. I tried closing the door to my office, and working in peace. Except they cried on the other side of the door. I had no heart for that.

But today, I stuffed the "sock" (all 52 stitches of it!) and its pattern into my briefcase. Perhaps I can knit before class tonight... or if I take a lunch....

Other ideas, oh wise ones?

String Theory

2010-05-18T05:16:00.003-05:00

I can't knit. I mean... I know HOW to knit. I love knitting. But the process of getting it done is all discombobulated. I need to recombobulate ;) Absent combobulation (???), I can't find the inspiration to even start. Last week I got together with some dedicated and inspiring knitters -and didn't have a knitting project. I sat there like a bump on a log. I couldn't make it all come together with yarn and needles and a project. Heaven knows, I have enough of each of those; I just couldn't get them to match up into a cohesive single project.

It's not simply a time management problem. Everything is a time management problem these days; that's just the water I swim in. But it's also perfectly obvious that for the things that matter to me, I find the time and I find the money. I've found the time to cook, at least a little bit. I've found the time to exercise and do yoga. I'm writing again. So, what are we going to do about this knitting thing?

In the old days, I had hours on end to knit, because sitting around helping people learn to knit was part of my schtick. I loved it, but it had to go. I needed my Saturdays in a huge way, so, I can't do that anymore. Mourn it; move on. What else did I do that worked? There was always a sock project in my purse. There was always a "mindless knitting" project that I could work on while watching a movie. There were projects by the chairs where I was likely to plop at the end of a day. I had knitting in my office, in case I wanted to take a lunch break and knit during that time. Sometimes I would commandeer one of the comfy chairs at the coffee shop and knit there for a bit. (Clearly, I've never been a linear knitter, dutifully finishing one project before starting another. Rather, certain projects met certain kinds of life-demands. Or capitalized on certain kinds of opportunities, I suppose.)

I'm pondering that insight. What kind of knitting can I do, that matches my life now? How can I capitalize on the little snippets of time I do have? Would it make sense to dive into knitting baby things and socks -small projects where I have a chance of completing them? There are no babies I'm particularly waiting for these days, but they do have a way of showing up ; And socks are always good, and are quite entertaining to knit.

And above all, can I start again without confronting my stash and my patterns? They are a huge mess. HUGE. A big scary jumble in corners of the house where I rarely go. Yes, it needs to be done. Yes, it's a source of embarrassment. Yet somehow it feels like starting something (anything) is more important than tidying, at this point.

First up: Spindle Socks by Anna Bell, with Cashmerino. I'll order the yarn today. I promise.

Me, Being Me

2010-05-14T06:39:00.004-05:00

So, we're back to the "so, what?" question. On some level, I want all the pieces of my life -my work, my research, my home life, my yoga, my biking, and whatever else there is- to be all of a piece. The activities that are in my new life need to be the ones that make me, well, me. It's a high standard; I get that.

I had a disturbing academic encounter the other evening. Certainly there are un-intellectual academics. There are even anti-intellectual academics. Put a bunch of both types in a room with me, and I end up sitting there wondering if I've accidentally taken a train to Crazy-Town.

I don't question their right to be that way -not at all. I'm not suggesting that they're not smart and I am -not at all. I'm just questioning the good sense of me being in a room with them. I have a completely different orientation to how intellectual work gets done. It's hard to imagine that we have very much to offer each other.

So, rather than alienate myself from people (people I actually like, by the way), I started doodling and quasi-journaling. (Did it look like I was taking notes? I hope so.) Is this an essential activity? Who am I in this context? Can I be me in this context? Is this the path to get me where I want to go? Can I turn this into something productive, in spite of the barriers? Nothing like a little existential crisis in the middle of an unproductive meeting!

I didn't get far, because I did, in fact, have to listen a little bit -if only to be sure that I didn't get "volunteered" for anything. I did get this far, though. If I am going to do the "so, what" work, I'm in charge of that. Certainly there are mentors and guiding lights, but I have to find them. They weren't the people in that room, and that's the truth.

I'm not on my own, exactly. It's a big world, and there are plenty of connections to be made, yet. But I don't exactly know where I'm going from here.

Science Proves What We Already Know....

2010-05-13T08:44:00.004-05:00

The Importance of Hating Your Ex.

To be clear, however, for him to hate me is completely unjustified and is inconsistent with the just ordering of the cosmos. I find this to be a perfectly rational position to take ;) Any questions?

I'll Just Not Hear That

2010-05-12T07:20:00.000-05:00

It's a particularly dysfunctional thing I do. Information that I don't want or can not absorb, I just find a way to not let into my consciousness. We have plenty of evidence that I do this. I hear you. "Really? You BELIEVED that your husband was working late all those nights? Seriously?????" It's a fair question. I did. And I believed that his public shaming of me was accidental. He just didn't know any better, I hypothesized. And, I do this in a thousand other ways that have nothing to do with Math-Rat.

On some level, the psyche is hard-wired to do this. Massive trauma can be buried entirely, until -or unless- the person is ready to deal with it. Even with sudden horrible news, such as news of an unexpected death, we can step outside ourselves and watch the information sink in, one tiny step at a time. It's healthy and protective that we have this skill. But like anything else, it can be over-done.

I have to un-learn this pattern, just a bit. For months now, the message from my friends has been "slow down.... you're doing too much." Picture me, with my fingers in my ears, singing "la, la, la" at the top of my voice. Andrea pouts.... donwanna hear it... won't hear it... you can't make me. I've even postulated that people advising me to slow down are engaging in a strange hegemony, asking me to want less, settle for less, to BE less.

But I think this is information that I need to let in. I'm not at all sure what I'm going to do with it once it's all the way in, but I think I may have been conflating slowing down with settling. But what the heck does it look like to simultaneously slow down and yet claim that you want to play in a bigger game? Seriously, on the ground, what does that look like? Or is full-speed-ahead, leaning into your life the only path that is going to work? Trying to break my thought habits may melt my brain. Stand by.

A little levity

2010-05-11T07:00:00.001-05:00

The tattoos aren't real. I can't quite see a real one in my future, but these were fun! It's just part of how I spent Mother's Day 2010.

More than Breakfast in Bed!

2010-05-09T08:50:00.004-05:00

That's my Mom -camping with her wine glass and her hat! She deserves a whole day just to herself.

Originally, though, Mother's Day had a social justice purpose. It was a Mothers' Day for Peace, and Julia Ward Howe wrote its Proclamation. Oddly, she also wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, so I'm struggling to understand her politics. Nonetheless, the proclamation bears remembering today.

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
-Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Off-loading

2010-05-08T14:41:00.002-05:00

I've been engaged in a quiet project of getting rid of stuff. And then I realized it's more than stuff that's getting the big heave-ho. Sit down and get comfortable ;)

It started like this. I have not tended the gardens as they deserve -because they are not the gardens I want. So, I started with the most jungle-y of them and invited friends to come get its perennials. I'm clearing that garden out and putting something new there. A patio, a new back fence and some other stuff, thanks for asking. And then I realized that for about a month I have been taking 2-3 bags of stuff weekly to The Salvation Army, and there is plenty more where that came from. This isn't stuff that was Dave's; he took all of that. This is stuff that was ours.

And let's back up. I've blogged before about the house with no furniture. He took pretty much everything. I kept only the few things that I had brought into the marriage or purchased after the separation. I have some furnishings now, that's not a problem. But interestingly, the absence of furniture led to the backyard bonfire parties, which turned out to be really wonderful. I couldn't entertain any other way; I didn't have a couch for people to sit on. But I could cook hamburgers on the grill, buy a bunch of beer, and hang out with my friends in the yard. And now people are asking me when I'm going to start having those parties again, so I guess that worked out well. But the point is that the lack of stuff opened space for a new thing to emerge.

So, leaving aside the obvious and disturbing question of how a house that was allegedly empty still has so much stuff that's available to be donated, what IS going on?

I used my marriage -and its attendant stuff- to give me weight. I thought Dave's substance made me more interesting. I thought having matching crystal wine glasses connected me to other women who entertained in a certain way. I thought that having family antiques rooted me to families and their narratives. And I think that collectively, societally, we believe that, as well. Isn't that what registering for wedding gifts is about, on some level? Of course, none of those beliefs turned out to be true. It was all gone in the blink of an eye (ok... 2 years) and then I had this big blank space -literal and metaphorical- where our life together used to be.

I have rushed to fill that space -not so much with stuff, because that takes times and lots of money- but with activities. I must, I frantically thought, hurry and create my own substance, hurry and find my own ways of interacting with people, and rejoice in the new and more authentic connections I have with family. Consequently, my life has become a study in zero-sum time management.

I think my Discardia project is about off-loading thought patterns as well as stuff. You probably don't remember, but my word of the year was "architecture." I was going to spend this year creating the framework for the new life I want. I had not realized that an old framework had to be dismantled first. But I'm starting to see (with a certain lack of clarity, just yet) that this emptiness, too, creates space for something new to emerge.

Could this be calm that's ensuing? How would I recognize THAT???

And if you want perennials, come get them. I'll show you where to dig.

Public Health Principles

2010-05-07T07:09:00.002-05:00

We have long known that good health is more than the absence of disease. In fact, good health is more than good physical health. Now, this ideological perspective about health feels like a big snooze, but once upon a time -and not so long ago- it was a huge paradigm shift. And it led, necessarily, to the next question. So, what is good health, smarty pants? Possibly it wasn't phrased quite like that, but you get the idea.

There are many, sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, answers to that question. For whatever it's worth, I find the United Nations definition as useful as any other. It has five components, and when I introduce it to students, I'm fond of drawing it in a five-pointed star. (I'm easy to entertain.) Good health, they suggest, consists of: physical health, mental health, intellectual health, spiritual health, and social health. This is a useful tool in part because it's possible to examine the health of a community as easily as the health of an individual using these categories.

Before this devolves into the well-rehearsed public health talk I sometimes am called upon to deliver, let's move along. As we have established, I feel a little stuck and muddled. It dawned on me that I am emphatically not healthy. Physically I am still pretty much not doing the things I need to be doing. Mental health-wise, I am confronting the consequences of some bitterness and anger. The consequences surprise me, as does the fact that I felt/feel bitterness and anger at all. Intellectually, I am a little frustrated because I don't have a compelling sense of the next-available question in the discipline. Spiritually, I don't even know where I want to go with that. And socially.... I have made messes that need to be fixed. It CAN NOT be true. I will not allow it to be true, that I have made myself too busy for my friends. Of course, it IS true, and must be rectified.

Other than that, though, I'm doing great ;)

So, that's the baseline. It matches up against the also-true thing that I am busy doing things I said I wanted to do. I am marching forward with some goals of mine. I am not only creating disasters. I get that. And yet.... there is existential angst, to put it stupidly.

I can not imagine that anyone wants to walk this walk with me. Nonetheless, my task, I think, is to fix this situation.

The So-What Question

2010-05-06T15:53:00.004-05:00

As an undergraduate, I had a professor who, when the conversation became sticky, would make us take out paper and pen and write down our thoughts. He was Jacob Getzels and he would say, "Writing makes for clear thinking" in a really sanctimonious tone of voice. We would roll our eyes and get out the paper, and I thought he was a huge pain in my backside.

And yet, I hear his voice even now. And I still write when things are muddled. And I'm muddled. I need to pull out some mental weeds and let the right things grow.

My current boss has another way of getting at the same thing. He is fond of saying "so, what?" in an interested tone of voice, when faculty present their research ideas. He might occasionally mean, "Who in her right mind would spend time on this?" but most of the time he means some combination of, "Do you care enough about this to reflect on it and write about it in the early mornings and on weekends?" and "what impact (by whatever measure you like) will this have on the world?" If you can't answer the first one, you won't do the research. And if you can't answer the second one, you won't get paid to do it.

I think if I can answer the "so what" question (to say nothing of figuring out how to punctuate it), I will unstick myself. What are the things I'm willing to get up at the crack of dawn and do? Why would the world care (by whatever measure) if I do those things or not? And, being me, I won't be able to answer the question if I don't write.

So, I'm back, if only to dislodge myself from this icky place.

A Girl and her House

2010-04-07T16:32:00.004-05:00

Today is the one year anniversary of me owning my very own house -all by myself. I almost didn't notice the date, but I was casting around for evidence that I had accomplished something...anything... in the last year. So I started making a list of the things in the house that I had accomplished. In a house this size and of this age, changing things is a bit like spitting in the ocean. There's always so much more to do, that it's easy to focus on (and see only) that part of the equation. So, just off the top of my head, here's the list.

Outdoors

Grill
Adirondack chairs
Garage torn down
Yard managed

I now have a picture in my head of where the yards and gardens are going. That's huge. Next up, this summer:

Back garden perennials relocated
Brick patio installed
Brick fire pit installed
2 new Adirondack chairs built
Back fence and gate rearranged/extended
Composter assembled and located –somewhere
One small front yard garden re-arranged and made pretty

Front Porch

Rug
Wicker rocker
Table, tablecloth, clock
Curtains removed
planters

Next-up Project:

New storm door installed
Get it cleared off. It's become a winter-time mess.

Morning Room

New lamp

Ummm... I think that's it. This room is still in the emptying out, re-visioning phase.
Living Room

Rug
Couch
Chair
Bookshelf
Wine rack
Lamp

Second bookcase

Dining Room

Dining room table
8 chairs
New “china”
Removed doors from the dining room corner, where there was just a jumble. I hope the doors will replace uglier ones upstairs, but I haven’t checked yet.

Table linens

Kitchen

New silverware
Building a collection of new cookware
New kitchen table
new glassware

Copper ceiling installed; ceiling fan removed
Hideous, (seriously) light over the kitchen sink replaced with something nice.

Family Room
This uses to be the office, so it’s a paradigm shift

walls painted
Bought trim; it will be installed as well

Next-up project

Move pine cupboard upstairs to sewing room
Move my desk upstairs to new office
Install trim

Downstairs Bathroom

Toilet repaired, but really it needs to be replaced

hot water leak repaired

Sewing Room

Two new (custom) windows installed

Get it cleared out!
Look for a chest of drawers that can serve as a cutting table

Guest Room

Removed scoungy old bookcase
New clock

Next-up:

I have tentative arrangements to get a full-size wrought iron bed in there.

Workout Room
ahem.... nothing. At all.

Next-up project:

Clear out the yarn piles that have developed
Bring down the weights and the weight bench

New Office

Horrible carpet removed
Hardwood floor installed
painting finished
Have a full-on plan for the room
Have purchased the wall hangings

Prime and paint the trim. Touch up the ceiling where I got over-excited.
move the desk etc... upstairs
Order the futon

My bedroom

New bed
New curtains

Next-up Innovations

Remove carpet; have Pergo installed

Upstairs bathroom

Shower door removed
Recaulked the tub
Dry wall repaired; room is ready for re-painting
New curtains, towels, rugs, etc…
Two new pieces of furniture –armoires
New ceiling light installed
New low-flo “rain” shower head installed
Orchid for top of one armoire
New doorknob
New bathroom clock -which I seriously love

Next-up projects

Ceiling exhaust fan replaced
Painting

Infrastructure

New sump pump
New furnace and central air
Programmable thermostat

Next up:

a new hot water heater, probably

If you've gotten this far in the list, you must be a dear friend. Which probably means that you've noticed that I had a LOT of help getting all of this done, for which I thank you. You might also have noticed that the "next up" projects are somewhat smaller and discrete. "Change a light fixture" is a lot different from "Oh my heaven's, I'm rattling around in an empty house." This is a respectable list for a year's worth of work and I certainly don't want to lose momentum or stop this project. But I need a little respite, and some free brain cells to work on other things -such as, my career, for instance.

The Training Report

2010-04-02T06:33:00.002-05:00

I can safely say that this exercise (at formerly familiar levels, but new if you look more recently)has been fun. I'm still not getting everything done that I want to get done. Why am I skipping yoga so frequently? I love yoga. But probably I will meet my maker saying, "Wait.... I'm not finished....", so I'm trying to find my peace with that state of affairs.

In the last seven days, I have done the following:

rock climbing: 1
strength training: 3 (since I've started biking outside, I've had to drop my weights. My legs are TIRED.)
swimming -1/2 mile
biking: 3 hours
and on my rest day, I took a walk
yoga: 3

Compared to the baseline, it's good. Nonetheless, it's discouraging to think how far I have to go, yet.

The coming week's plan is:

Friday: strength training and cycling (in or out, depends on what time of day I can get to it.)
Saturday: outdoor cycling (cross your fingers) and yoga
Sunday: no climbing -kids unavailable :(, so.... yoga and cycling
Monday: 1/2 hour bike ride in the early a.m.; strength
Tuesday: swimming, , 1/2 hour bike ride in the early a.m., yoga
Wednesday:1/2 hour bike ride in the early a.m.; strength
Thursday: swimming, 1/2 hour bike ride in the early a.m., yoga
Friday:1/2 hour bike ride in the early a.m.;strength

Please, please, go Here to make a donation to the Chicago AIDS Ride. I'm all in. I hope you are, too!

The Cillian and Claddagh Report

2010-03-27T07:50:00.003-05:00

This story ends well, in case you're one of those people who reads the last page of a book first ;)

A few days ago, Cillian started this weird thing. He was skittish, and crying constantly, and would run away from me when I walked toward him. It was just awful to see, and I couldn't imagine what had happened. It didn't seem as though there was an injury, and the obvious indicators of illness weren't there. But clearly, he was sick. I called the vet, nervous first-time cat mom that I am. And they sounded worried, too.

The first night after I noticed this sadness, neither cat tried to sleep up on my bed. This is unusual. Weirdly, missing that annoying behavior made me more worried. When the clock went off, I had to go look for them.

I didn't have to look far; their beds are in my room. They were cuddled up in Claddagh's much bigger bed. Usually if they sleep together, they're jumbled up, like puppies in a pile. This time, they were spooning. I'm not kidding. They were nestled in, and Claddagh had his paw around Cillian's little tummy. I wish I had taken a picture, but I didn't want to disturb them.

Did Claddagh know that Cillian was sick? Probably. Did he surmise a stomach ache? OK, probably not. Probably they just wiggled around in the bed until they were both comfortable. And yet, it's hard not to anthropomorphize when it comes to Claddagh. He knows stuff, I swear.

And this morning, Cillian jumped on my bed for his morning snuggle, and now they're fighting over the toy mice. We're back to normal, apparently.

Training Indignities

2010-03-17T15:56:00.002-05:00

So I hired a personal trainer. That was the source of the self-doubt the other day, by the way. I could hear Math-Rat's voice, suggesting that doing so was less-than his "just get on the bike and ride until your nether parts are blue" strategy.

But see... he knows not of personal trainers, and now I do. Young Aaron the Trainer is the reincarnation of Attila the Hun, and he's going to make a warrior out of me. No, that's not quite right. God love him, I walked in and subjected myself to being weighed and having my fat measured with calipers and my waistline measured, and thought I would expire from the shame. Aaron knows all these numbers. He is practiced at not saying "OH MY GOD" when he sees the results. Moreover, he just grabbed my crafted-during-my-lunch-hour training plan and reviewed it as though it were the Rosetta Stone. He takes me seriously. He is on board to get me through this, but I have to do the work.

He does, however, recognize a lost cause when he sees one. He has these cards that he carries around; each card has an exercise. I'm supposed to do each exercise for a minute; he shuffles the cards again while I'm doing my one-minute. The theory is -it's only a minute. He had me doing those pushups where you push off the ground and clap. Yeah... about that.

For the last one, there was no clapping. None. Just a sad little push-off. And as sometimes happens with random shuffling, that card came up again. Young-Aaron-the Tactful suggested that I just do pushups "seeing as you're likely to break your nose, otherwise." So, he's not beyond some gentle teasing, which I like very much.

I may become strong yet. We shall see.

The Financial Report

2010-03-16T06:15:00.003-05:00

Three people have donated to support the beneficiaries of the Chicago AIDS Ride. Thanks, dears! I appreciate the support. It makes me think you think I can do it -even though, I get it, you probably donated to, oh I don't know, the CAUSE!!!

If someone else wants to contribute, that would be great. Here's the link: Donate.

href="http://www.fundraiserinsight.org/thermometer/">Thermometers to
track fund raisers
- even href="http://www.fundraiserinsight.org/ideas/">simple fundraisers

Self-Doubt Sucks -the post in which she lectures herself

2010-03-15T06:18:00.003-05:00

For this insight, I went to graduate school?????

The insidious thing about self-doubt is that, when you're in the midst of it, it feels so justified. You know that other people occasionally feel doubt, but that they're just being humble or experiencing a momentary lapse. You, on the other hand, really are incapable, and everyone is about to know.

Sigh.

The truth? EVERYONE experiences authentic self-doubt sometimes. Presidents, philosophers, activists, writers, parents.... everyone. Some of us do live there a little more than others, this is true. The top ten reasons why I am inadequate can spring to my mind with very little prompting, and this training I'm undertaking is activating that process quite nicely.

This is a strange twisted path for me. The link between being told repeatedly (however subtly) that you're inadequate and then coming to believe that to be your own thought, is well documented. People participate in their own oppression all the time. But honestly, I thought it was more likely to apply to children and, well, people less gifted in the intellect department.

Really, you want to make this argument?? I'm smart enough that I ought to be impervious to insidious emotional abuse. Therefore, I must be authentically incapable. Isn't this kind of the opposite of self-doubt? Well, no, on two fronts. First, arrogance and self-doubt are quite frequently the same thing. And secondly, the more fundamental (primitive, as in "first in time") parts of our brain -which have nothing to do with intellect- understand repetition and rehearsal. And the "Andrea's not as good as Math-Rat at just about anything" message (everything from higher-order reasoning to washing dishes and grocery shopping were covered, believe me) has been widely repeated -frequently by me. Rather, repetition over decades will penetrate even the toughest of shields; very few people are that resilient in the face of abuse.

So, now what? It's not so much about re-erecting the shield, these days. There's no one -other than me- trying to bash it in. It's about changing the messages. Dave's strategy, conscious or subconscious, I really can't say, was to take a strong person, and set it up so that everything he did was better than what that person did. Therefore, he must be a strong person. When that person (me) was fully broken, I could no longer fulfill my assigned role. Being discarded was inevitable.

The flip side to that same thing is that the game only works if it starts with a strong person. Ergo... I'm a strong person. Or at least, I was, once. But who cares if a person now known to be shallow and sad himself recognized me to be strong? I don't, actually. But it's time to acknowledge that many many of the negative messages in my own head are actually his. His game. His narrative. His needs.

I'm not quite up to replacing those thoughts with happy, uplifting self-talk, but I can acknowledge that many of the negative thoughts are NOT MINE. And, I do at least know that I'm smart enough to have thoughts of my very own.

Training Geekery

2010-03-14T06:36:00.002-05:00

For one thing, I apologize. Apparently, all I have to do is announce to the the universe that I intend to start training outside. We are now scheduled for 16 days straight of rain. Perhaps I should take up ark-building?

Let's do the numbers -my weight is n-1.4. This is a trend I can live with.

My training went pretty well, but not perfectly last week. I would feel great about it if I could revert to my "you have a lifetime of getting and being fit; relax" attitude. So, I'm trying for that attitude again, even though there is this looming deadline in my head. And there was a certain amount of moping and sadness, which I expected, since I had hoped that biking would be a "together sport" for my ex-husband and me. Now I get to turn it into a solo-sport, which is just a different kind of fine. But I get to mope sometimes, too; even expected grief is grief. At least it wasn't debilitating.

This week's training plan:

Sunday: rock-climbing (which I'm thinking of as fun as well as lower-body strength work) at the 5.easy, 5.6 or maybe5.7 level- and abs yoga
Monday: 30 minutes of steady-state stationary cycling (or outdoors, if possible); Yoga for Strength
Tuesday: swimming (I hate to admit this, but I'm starting out with 9 laps, which is just 1/4 mile), abs yoga, and lower-body strength work
Wednesday: 1/2 hour walk on the treadmill and yummy yoga
Thursday: 9 laps swimming, abs yoga, and lower body strength training
Friday: 45 minutes of cycling, including intervals, and yoga
Saturday: long ride -just to see how long is comfortable. Surely I can do 15 miles.

There is no rest day, which worries me. But a) one will probably just happen, and b) Wednesday is pretty easy. There is also no upper-body weight work. I'm getting around that by claiming that swimming is gentle cardio as well as upper body strength work. I've always been an upper-body swimmer. And when you add in my generally woeful fitness level, my arms will be sore from swimming, I'm quite sure.

So, there you go. Physical health, emotional health (to use the word "health" somewhat loosely!), and marching orders for this week. It's coming together.

She Considers her Equipment Needs

2010-03-12T07:00:00.001-06:00

When confronted with a big new project, my first (unhealthy) thought is, "ooh, I get to buy things." This strategy is weak because it hurts the pocketbook and does not, in and of itself, move the project forward. It's the same as the tendency I have to buy more books than I can read. Or more yarn than I can knit. Or.... well, you get the idea. If I am not going to use the piece of equipment right away, then perhaps I should consider more carefully.

That said... CAN I go shopping?

Bike shorts: Given the Montana-sized person that must be stuffed into them, I think I need new ones. These shorts are horrifying enough, without having them be too small. And I need enough of them that they don't have to be laundered every day, because what are the chances of that happening??

Long-sleeved bike shirts: These have such a short shelf-life that I have avoided buying them. Similarly, I don't have lycra sleeves. Why would a person buy just the sleeves of a garment?? Well, because they want to ride outdoors when it's really too cold yet to be doing that.

Clipless pedal shoes. Mine are just plain worn out. I would like to have the sandals, but I can't have everything all at once!

A trainer? Math-Rat ended up with the trainer, which at the time I thought was fine. Well, it was fine, but now I might need one of my own. This is a maybe; I do have a spin bike.

Cool sunglasses. Sunglasses aren't optional. But I don't WANT to just go to Target and get sunglasses. I either need to get prescription sunglasses, or get cool biker's glasses and wear my contacts for riding. Thoughts?

Tunes: I need some more biking playlists for indoor training. Ideas?

Yoga media: DVDs... podcasts....I don't care. But I need something new. I received Rodney Yee's new (to me) Yoga: Core Cross-train from netflix and tried it last evening. Ahem. About that. As I've been saying rather a lot, "at least I know the baseline now." I'll keep the DVD for a couple of weeks and see if I can make some progress.

I went to Wrench Night last night, met up again with some wonderful people, and learned a bit more about my bicycle. And, I heard the good news that the green bike is ready. I'll pick it up today and, if there is still enough daylight enough after work, I'll ride tonight. Otherwise, tomorrow for sure!

Today's training plan: either cycling outdoors or a golden-oldie step workout and a yoga podcast. Probably I should stick with the actual plan and do the step workout. There was a method to my madness in putting that workout there in the rotation. We'll see if I have that much self-control!

The Post in which She Reveals the Baseline

2010-03-11T07:58:00.002-06:00

Serious cyclists sometimes fret, trying to shave an ounce or two off the weight of their bicycles. I have a heavy bike and a light bike, and I absolutely agree that those ounces matter. But believe me when I tell you that the weight of the bicycle is not the problem, here. I find myself unwilling to reveal the precise number that showed up on my bathroom scale this morning, but at this weight I should at least be imminently delivering twins. Got the picture? For our purposes, we will call this number n. By race date, I would like to be discussing n-16, or even n-20 wouldn't go amiss.

Fitness-wise, I haven't been on the real bikes since last season, so it's hard to judge. Thirty minutes on the spin bike at a steady-state is pretty easy. Add some fictional hills and it feels like my heart is going to jump out of my chest. My uber-flexibility of days gone by is gone, but it's returning slowly. I've never been strong. Rock-climbing has made me somewhat stronger, but it's time to take that little problem in hand. Without strong abs, you can't ride 190 miles, and that's the truth.

Here's the training plan for this week. Questions, comments, suggestions are totally welcome.

Wednesday: 30 minutes of rapid, but steady-state (which makes it easier), cycling; here and there I did some Isolated Leg Drills. But holy mackerel with that. I didn't do many. And I did a shoulder-opening yoga sequence, for about 20 minutes. I was arguing with the cats about whose yoga mat this really is, so the practice was a little wonky. The upside? You have to do jump-throughs when there's a big fat cat sitting where you want to step ;)
Thursday: yoga only -This is my rest day, so I'll do some dreamy, flexibility-focused yoga.
Friday: yoga, a short step workout, and upper body strength training -The step workout seems counter-intuitive, but at my age I am reluctant to give up impact work entirely. My mom's already got mild osteoporosis. I need to do what I can to prevent it.)
Saturday: cycling and yoga. If the bikes are ready, I'll go for the first outside ride of the year!!! If not, I'll stick with the spin bike. Whichever, it's going to be 45 minutes.

It'll be easier to see where strength training and cross-training fit in when you can see an entire week. They are there, I promise.

The books I'm reading to focus my thinking: Shape Up with the The Slow Fat Triathlete by Jayne Williams. She is so wry and insightful, and at the same time so motivating. Like Ms. Williams, I will be an imperfect athlete, but an athlete nonetheless. I am also reading Total Body Transformation: A 3-Month Personal Fitness Prescription For a Strong, Lean Body and a Calmer Mind. Ummm... yeah... I'll take some of that. But the jury is still out on that book. We'll see. It might lean too much toward drinking some weird mystical Kool-Aid; it's a little cult-ish.

And Wrench Night at North Central Cylery is tonight. Hopefully I will get some ride sponsors and re-learn about caring for my bike. Anything mechanical is a source of existential angst for me. But, as with so much of this "brave new life" process, I need to tend to my own safety. Doing so carries some pride with it.

My New Focus

2010-03-10T19:25:00.002-06:00

Well, the universe provided. And as usual, I'm quite nervous about the opportunities it seems to be...ummmm.... offering. It does have a rather heavy hand, the universe does. But perhaps light touches go unnoticed when it's me.

Here's the story.

As you probably don't remember -but I do- I stepped back from some commitments this semester in order to focus more attention on "life architecture" tasks. And that has been successful. My name is finally all-the-way changed (except today I detected a last little glitch in that process, but I will rectify it tomorrow). I've made some important progress toward furnishing and tending my home. Some other things are coming along as well.

I've even gently and slowly started to reclaim a fitness regimen. And then.... I was offered the opportunity to ride in the Chicago AIDS Ride. It's a 190-mile, 2-day ride from Chicago to Milwaukee and vice-versa. "Oh sure," I said.

And then I plotzed. What did I just say????? THe evil twin who lives in my head started talking, and the procrastination began. I won't be ready that early. I'm not good enough. I can hardly change a flat tire on the green bike of wonderment. (It really is hard, just to be clear.) Dave's the bike rider, not me.

Oh for crying out loud. Is there EVER going to be a point where he's not taking up space in my head?

Having noticed that this is -again-the problem, I plunked down my money to ride. I am not signing up any more to have him define what I do and don't do. I committed myself to raising $1000. (Please don't make me ride 190 miles AND donate $1000. Seriously.) I have readied the bikes to go to the bike shop for a tune-up. I must choose between Wrench Night at the bike shop and the ride orientation tomorrow night. I think I'd best go to Wrench Night, to get re-oriented to bike mechanics but also to find potential sponsors. There will be other ride orientations. I have signed up for a one-on-one tutorial about dealing with my particular bike issues. I have a training plan.

And.... we're off. The baseline sucks. Seriously, I have only once before been in this poor physical shape, and then I was coming off a serious illness. But I have committed myself -not to finishing elegantly, but to finishing.

Think about what this ride is for, for crying out loud. If people can confront the terror of an AIDS diagnosis, this fear of mine is put nicely into perspective. Get on the bike. How bad could it be, particularly when I love to ride my bike??? (Yes, I've ridden enough to know the answer to that question, but let's let the glow spread for a little while.)

So, I will be part of Team Youth Outlook, because a colleague and friend is on their Board. Go here to learn more about Youth Outlook and its work in the community. And go here to learn more about the Chicago AIDS Ride. And PLEASE go here to make a donation.

And I will report here how the training and the progress move along -even if it's backward from time to time.

Dogs Change Lives

2010-02-16T17:26:00.003-06:00

I have thoughts about where -and why- this blog is going. And I considered "the final resting place of defunct blogs" as one of the options. However I decided that there is still too much to do and too many things upon which to reflect. But that's tomorrow's story.

Today's story is this. Pets can change lives. And, as crazy as I am about Claddagh and Cillian the Cats, dogs can change lives in stupendous ways. Susquehannah Service Dogs, a favorite charity of mine, is having an on-line contest for the best story of how a dog has changed a person's life. There are prizes and fame for the author of the story, and lots of good hugs for the canine star of the show (assuming he's still with us). But the important thing to me is that we ponder the joy that animals can bring to our lives and that we think about what it means to be appropriately responsible-yet-humble caretakers of these awesome animals who trust us to care for them.

Want my story?

It's about Wyatt the yellow lab, my sister's dog. He's getting old, bless his heart. He's famous in the service dog industry for an amazing insightful discovery that protected some girls from further abuse from sexual predation. Somehow, he saw their pain before anyone else did. So, we know he's amazing already. But that was a long time ago, and Wyatt is retired now.

But then my life took a turn for the surreal. My husband discarded me, in a hailstorm of gratuitous cruelty and disorienting pain. Psychologically bloodied, I showed up on my sister's doorstep in a state of near-total disarray. I know that she and her family cared for me very tenderly. I know that because I wrote it in my journal, but I really don't remember much about those first few days of my new life.

But I do remember Wyatt. He came out of retirement for me, rarely leaving my side. I think he's not supposed to sleep in the guest room. But because he's a service dog, he knows how to open doors, and he made a judgment call. He opened that door in the night and slept by my side. He sat at my feet while we ate, with his head resting in my lap. Sometimes it almost seemed like he was trying to crawl into my lap. He's too big and my lap is too small, but I appreciated the thought.

And when nothing else worked, and I had to just sit on the floor and cry, Wyatt would come up behind me. He's quite a big dog, so when he settled right behind me, I could lean up against him with no worries that I was hurting him. He would snuffle in that dog way, and then settle in and breathe. He would wait until my breath steadied to his, and then -apparently- decide that I had it together for the next little while, and would wander off.

There were no words that could comfort me in those first few days. The righteous indignation and anger my friends expressed helped later. It helped immeasurably. But in those first few days, those sentiments just jangled me further. Wyatt saw what needed to be done, and offered his huge gentle heart, and just breathed with me.

Man, I love that dog.

So... tell your story. The online entry form is here: Dogs Change Lives. You can submit a story until February 28.

You Know What I Hate?

2010-01-23T22:01:00.002-06:00

Aww...come on.... you're not the least bit curious???

I hate it when people say "one step at a time" -that's what I hate. You know how when you're already a little irritated and someone sanctimoniously says "temper, temper" that what had been a little angst has now become much (and needlessly) bigger? That's what I feel when people tell me to slow down. I don't have time for once step at a time. I'm not completely naive or grabby (or the emotional equivalent of a 2-year-old); I don't want everything right this second. But I do want to take several steps at one time.

And, I might point out, I am not alone in this. Dear friends have pointed out that I'm a bit obsessive with my lists, and my lists about my lists. But, I would contend that, however people keep track of it all, healthy people have goals on several fronts. Having no goals at all (and I've been there, done that) is frequently a sign of a depressed person. One might (and I do)have goals about health and fitness, even goals about appearance (The braces aren't just for the cross-bite, after all). There are goals about education and career. I have goals about my home and my free time. I have a general sense of what I'm knitting next and reading next.

How can a person newly engaging with life NOT have goals on multiple fronts?

And yet, wise readers and friends will remind me that I also spend quite a bit of time feeling frantic and frightened. There's too much to do and too little time to do it in. In spite of my lists and my plans, I don't want the only possible solution to be an absolutely rigid daily plan, allowing, say, for reading from 5:42 until 6:00 a.m., at which point I make my breakfast, read the news, and then take my shower at precisely 7. I've made those lists too, but I subvert them immediately. I need more room for spontaneity than that, apparently. Anything less and I get fidgety and worried -and there's a sub-grade fear that I carry around. That's not a good way to live, either.

Gentle friends respond to that feeling of angst with concern; the right answer seems to be "slow down." That translates, though, as an inadvertent hegemony -women perpetuating the cultural requirement that we should dream less, hope for less, accomplish less. It feels like the message is "it's unseemly to want so much." I know that no one intends that message. I appreciate that it's my own little head translating concern into a justice issue -and the wrong side of a justice issue, at that. I'm accusing no one. Of anything.

But I do need some velocity. And need is the right word. I have a LOT of things to do before I meet my maker, and I'm just getting started. Maybe the answer isn't slowing down. And it's pretty clearly not frenetic forward motion. Can one make great strides, with great intention? I have deliberately stepped back from many obligations this semester, in order to think about questions like this. I need to lay the groundwork for the changes to come, and I need lots of energy for that work.

Might there be a difference between "one step at a time" and "all in good time"? (That assumes, of course, that you can cancel out the voice of the Wicked Witch of the West saying, "all in good time, my pretty. All in good time.") I want it ALL, I'm a little embarrassed to admit. I know, from hard, hard experience, though, that rushing things doesn't work. When the time is right, the next step feels easy -or at least possible. I don't mind (much) being gentle with myself and letting things unfold. But I want to start a lot of things right now. I want full days and lots of forward motion and a kind of focused frenzy.

You know what it is, actually? I just realized. It's Csíkszentmihályi's concept of flow that I'm looking for -that feeling of complete absorption that arises when you're working right at your edge of competence and comfort. And mindfulness, meditation, and yoga have all been reported to increase a person's aptitude for flow. As I feel frantic and fidgety, doing more of the right thing (as in a yoga class) might be the ticket. Must muse.....

But for now, I'm going to post, since this has been in the "draft" stage for three days.

The Envelope Please.....

2010-01-22T11:07:00.003-06:00

The competition was ferocious, but this year's Math Rat Award for Gratuitous Cruelty in the Divorce Process goes to.....

the husband of a friend of a friend. My friend in this saga has a child with an unusual childhood cancer (who is doing well at the moment, thank you for asking). While in the hospital hovering over and tending to her daughter, she met another mom with a similarly-aged child with the same cancer. They became fast friends in their time of terror.

So, okay.... the children are in the hospital because of low or no-count white blood cells. The parents of the children are hovering and waiting and worrying. Except for the husband of my friend's friend. At this point, he is sneaking off to be with his mistress.

Seriously? Dude? Everybody's terrified here. Zip up your pants and go be a dad and a partner. Keep your promises at least until your child gets better. Then, if you have to leave your wife, be a grownup about it.

The award? A wheel of karma. These wheels may be slow but they grind exceedingly fine. And yes, I aw aware that I may have cooked my own karmic goose for posting this, in this way. Yet, I continue to be amazed (appalled) at the sense of entitlement that seems to be available to men as they try to justify untoward behavior.

The Pleasure is All Mine

2010-01-21T20:56:00.003-06:00

I say that. I wonder if I mean it.

When I say it, I mean that I'm celebrating the good things about living alone. And there are many. If I want pink ruffly dishes I can have them. If I want to leave lights on in rooms where I am not, no one sighs that sigh. You know the one. I can cook and eat what and when I like. I can have kittens. I can go for adult beverages on Thursday nights and try to drink shots in one drink. (I did it for the first time last week. And it's one shot per week, so don't go getting worried.)

I have many people around. Even though the house is far from ready -whatever that would even mean- there are frequent guests here. I am not lonely. In fact, I find myself craving the quiet times, too -which is a new thing for me.

But I can be such a disappointment, as my ex-husband will surely agree. Have I taken on too much? Was there always this much to do and I just didn't notice because there were two people working at it? I'm supposed to be feeling joy and success and pride, aren't I?

The pleasure isn't all someone else's, but lately I'm not sure it's all mine, either. Just do the next right thing. Never give up; never surrender. All that stuff we say when we know we don't mean it. That's where I am tonight.

It'll pass. Knowing that -if I've learned nothing else in the lsat two years- is a kind of bliss.

Our Little Sock Summit

2010-01-10T08:06:00.007-06:00

I have to be the worst photographer anywhere. Ever.

But we had a good little time last night, in my still messy, still not enough furniture home. But I just decided I was happy to share what IS here, and these knitter-friends are good sports of the highest order.

Gary learned to knit and has quite a respectable little red square to show for himself. And, he left a beer in my refrigerator. What's not to love about a guy like that? That's Joan, teaching him.
Note to self: those curtains are worse than you thought. It's time to let them go.

The Earlville kniters (and crocheters) came out in style. And they were totally brave about moving furniture around and working in my quirky-to-say-the-least kitchen.

I took a terrible picture of the DeKalb knitters, and there was mass rebellion when I posted it ;) Imagine them, if you will....

And if Cillian doesn't get off my knitting, I won't be able to finish, much less felt, his bed. Although, apparently, it's already a bed.

Worry Much?

2010-01-05T18:36:00.003-06:00

There was panic a few years ago, but you guys talked me off the entirely metaphorical ledge. On the other end of the drama there's the fretting and stewing I do about choosing the right dress or the right word of the year. Even I know that's silly and that it's not really worrying me. Then there's worry, and that's been occupying rather a lot of my psychic space these days.

Reasonable? Unreasonable? I really couldn't say. Things might, in fact, go badly, and my worrying will be proven true. Those of us who are worriers think that, on some level, our worry holds the universe together. What, I ask you, will happen if I stop worrying about my children???? It's not the only thing I do with (or for, depending on your perspective) them, but it's one of the services I provide.

Yet, as I stared at the ceiling for most of last night worrying -and most emphatically NOT sleeping- I realized two things. First, while I worry about anything and everything, I worry most uselessly and repetitively when I feel powerless -frequently about a particular thing. So the thrashing around about many little things is to hide the really big thing I can't/won't/don't deal with.

OK. There's probably a solution for that.

Then... worry is sort of the antithesis of the word of the year. I don't want to get all The Secret-y about this, because there is so much absolutely dangerous crap in those ideas I'd scandalize myself by allying with them. But, let's try this line of thought. With our words of the year, we say to the universe and our subconscious, "here's the dream." I'm working toward.... this. It might be balance or zest or courage or architecture, in my case. We know -really, we do- that the universe might provide something quite different. But we're saying that we are opening up space for this new perspective or focus in our lives. To borrow from my latent Catholicism, we are co-creators of our reality.

Now -and bear with me, here- couldn't worry do the same thing, only backwards? With all the time that I spend fretting about the jillions of things that could go wrong, am I not a little bit guilty of using that power of co-creation thoughtlessly? I throw these thoughts out into the universe, my subconscious hears them, and sets about creating exactly that scenario? Establishing a word of the year is a mindful process. Worry is mind-less, in a big, big way.

So... what to do? I need to acknowledge the things I'm feeling powerless about and claim the power that is authentically mine in those situations. There are things I can do to change the powerlessness (to some extent) and there are things I can do to create an entirely new situation. These are long-term plans. Right now, I have to ride out the storm and live toward my word of the year, actually. Build the infrastructure of this new life not so that you have perfect control (what is that, anyway?) but so that fewer things terrify you.

And I need to be mindful. I need to pay attention to where I put my thoughts. I need to do more than that, of course, but that would be a good start. When I was most panicked about my life, you all encouraged me to think of one small thing I could do to move forward. Tiny was entirely acceptable. (You're a great crowd!) The second one of those repetitive thoughts happens, I can replace it with "What is this trying to teach me? I am powerful. What can I do about it?"

If nothing else happens, maybe I'll get some sleep.

Getting a Little Trashy

2010-01-03T12:31:00.006-06:00

Literally. The trash.

One of my many New Year's Goals is to get re-organized in the "green" department. I have too much trash, plain and simple. For one day, I am going to embarrass myself and admit what goes into my kitchen trashcan. I'm quite sure that there are other possibilities for much of it. (I just threw coffee grounds into the trash, for instance. I know better. I really do.) And then I'm going to figure out a plan for reducing the pile.

Today's list includes:

coffee grounds and filter
kitty litter
the kitty litter box -whoops
a pillar candle that had finished its useful life
the remains of a loaf of bread that I had made before leaving town for Christmas
the wrapper from a stick of butter
the plastic bag the bread had been in
a piece of wicker that broke off the laundry basket
the box that my bath pillow came in (clearly recyclable)
a dryer sheet
the plastic bag that the brown rice came in

Ok, the sad truth is that the kitty litter, the wicker scrap, and the candle are probably the only things that needed to be in there -and even there, there are changes that could be made. But, now we know the baseline. There's nothing to do but start from here.

One change. One little change. That's all I have to do today.

Careful in Choosing your Word of the Year

2010-01-03T07:32:00.008-06:00

As I have mentioned, my word is "architecture." I want to build the foundations and the systems that will support and fortify this beautiful new life I imagine. To that end, I have intentionally chosen to have a slightly slower semester in order to have time to tend to the infrastructure. Somehow, I assumed that meant that I would start the year in a clean, beautifully decorated home, either wearing an apron and wafting cinnamon about as I baked in my newly re-organized kitchen or sitting in my new (orange!) home office, wearing my school-girl glasses, and thinking great thoughts. The cats would no longer shred my curtains or shed on me or my furniture. I would never run out of milk, and the laundry would all be folded. I would be calm and welcoming at the center of the home, moving gently from one task to the next right task, certain that all would be accomplished in its appointed time.

I've always been a fan of mythology, because truth be told, this is more like the reality.

Seriously, this is not how I planned to start the new year. Start as you mean to go on, and all that. It all began with 13" of water in the basement. Apparently, while I was away, there was a sump pump failure. I do acknowledge that it had been making odd noises before I left, but in the horrors of finals week I forgot about it. Alas, mechanical problems rarely heal themselves, and in the midst of a midwestern blizzard, when no one was home to tend to its consequences, the sump pump failed and the deep part of the basement filled with water. Fortunately, my new furnace is not in the deep part of the basement.

But it's not just the sump pump, of course. I have set aside this time precisely because the systems are not in place for me to do many of the things I need to do. For two years I have been fixing some problems and working around others. Yet mostly, I have been working toward other goals -a slightly new career path, finding out who I am in the midst of a life debacle.... These were essential (and in the end, delightful) tasks, and they could not wait while I figured out where, in the best of all possible worlds, the baking bowls should be stored or while I cleaned and primed walls that had seen 15 years of growing-up-boy with only cursory attention.

So, the systems of life, the underpinnings (and quite literally, the stuff in the basement of my home) received little attention. I somehow assumed, though, that assigning this time to tend to these questions would immediately result in calm. Moreover, I assumed that the answers would be quickly discoverable. Neither turns out to be true. I have to think about why a particular task is not working in order to understand what might fix it. Which in turn means confronting the consequences of, in some cases, decades of working around the problem.

It goes like this.... WHY are you not writing when you say you will? It could be that you are, indeed, a lazy good-for-nothing, or that you have no ideas. But let's consider other possibilities. Do you have a place to do it? Do you have the tools you need? Are there too many tempting distractions in the place where you write? What would fix THOSE problems??? I have to acknowledge the emotions, and wonder why I ALWAYS go to "you're a lazy failure" as the most likely explanation. Then I shut that voice up and consider the possibility that there may be other explanations. Then I have to figure out what those solutions might be, understanding that if I fix the problems and STILL don't write that it's either not really a goal or I really am a lazy good-for-nothing who would rather watch hulu than think. So, the risks are kind of high. But they're high either way, I suppose.

So, in truth, while this semester is lighter in one category of my life, it will be a while before the pace slows down and my environment becomes more filled with grace and ease. I am almost sure that I can make that happen, but the situation is a little out of hand here at the moment.

Word of the Year

2009-12-30T17:11:00.002-06:00

It's a tradition, celebrated here and there around the internet. I joined the yoginis over at YogaLila in this undertaking. Last year my word was "emerge," which turned out to be fairly prescient. The word, of course, signifies an intention and a point of view for the coming year. Which means that it is important to choose a good word, whatever that might mean. Yet whatever it means, assigning the process such importance guarantees that I will fret and fuss until I am satisfied with my choice. Things are right on schedule here.

My dear friend Lianne suggested "architecture." I mused for alarmingly long about the relative merits of verbs vs. nouns for the word of the year. (Seriously, is there no end to my geekery??) While still, I must tell you, slightly preferring verbs in these matters, I am going with "architecture."

This word works on several levels. First and foremost, I am dedicating much of this year to building the underpinnings, the foundations, of this new life that I want. I have a tendency to go for the visible over the structural. I will buy the pictures to hang on a wall that I have yet to paint.... that sort of thing. To me, this backwards sort of process actually works. By doing the little, easy thing, I've moved the project forward, making it real and visible. So then it becomes more likely that I actually will paint the wall -or whatever the task of the day is.

Well, now I have both real and metaphorical walls to paint. I want to continue emerging as a scholar, as a friend, as a sibling, generally as a grown-up in my own story. I want to do the work that will allow me to be an athlete again. (Building muscle... get it?) And I have real, architectural work to do on my house, in order to make it more fully mine. On some level, this work isn't sexy. How much can really be said about sending manuscripts in, getting a new furnace, or ripping up and rearranging you-know-who's gardens?

Being me, I will find something to say, I suppose ;) But really, to me, these projects are exciting. And there will be enough froufy details to keep me enchanted with the process, I'm sure.

Sleeping Around

2009-12-30T12:30:00.002-06:00

*giggle*

OK, I'm over it. What this is really about is where I traveled this year. Here's 2008's summary: sleeping. It was good given the circumstances, but things are looking up in the adventure department.

This year included:

Washington, D.C.
Hummesltown, PA
Birmingham, AL
Greenwood, MS
San Gimignano, Italy
Beloit, WI
Oranjestad, Aruba
Chicago, IL

And that doesn't count miscellaneous on-the-road stops in hotels on the way to somewhere else. And actually, it seems like there were more trips, but that's all I can account for.

Trips I know about in 2010: Washington, DC, New York City, San Diego.... It's possible that my sisters and I will get together for a beach trip. And I have Cape Cod on my mind as another beach trip. We'll see what shows up this time next year.

You'll See It When You Believe It

2009-12-28T20:32:00.003-06:00

OK, for many MANY reasons I don't actually believe the title of this post. If it were, strictly speaking, true, no child would ever be sick, no perfect prayer would go unanswered, no selfless cause would remain unacknowledged by the universe's powers. I certainly do not want to be involved in an insidious The Secret-like process of blaming people for not believing fervently enough.

And yet, there is an element of truth to the statement for more mundane beliefs and hopes. When we believe we can do something, we do it. And sometimes, if we don't know we can't, we just do that thing anyway. Belief and manifestation are not entirely unrelated, I think.

And it's that time of year for me. I know that it's chic to forgo New Year's Resolutions. Mostly they are broken and forgotten. Worse, they sometimes become whips for people to beat themselves with. And seriously, who needs more of that? Not I, said the cat. (That's a quote from the Little Red Hen -a quote my mother and sister and I each use quite a lot.) But we have in this blog already established that I LOVE New Year's resolutions.

I like to think of possibility and hope and moving forward and claiming power that is authentically mine (as opposed to power taken at someone else's expense.) With Anne of Green Gables, I like to think that "tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet" And with Anne, I admit, I stand in wide-eyed wonder, looking at a world that leaves so much scope for the imagination.

So, in that spirit, I am picking up my colored pencils, my glue stick, my journal and pen, as well as my thoughts and hopes, and turning my thoughts to the coming year. How will I be different this time next year? How will I be closer to my goals? (And have I mentioned what a delight it is to actually have goals again, for the first time in forever?) How will the world be a tiny smidge better because I spent those 365 days on the planet? How will I be more grounded and more willing to fly, all at the same time?

My goals are a mixture of the mundane and the important -tending slightly toward the mundane, truth be told. I want to become a 5.8 climber. This is the definition of mediocrity in the rock climbing world. Tragically, it would be an improvement for me. Enough said ;) I want to paint my walls and buy furniture. I want to play with my children and my kitties. And yet, I have the chutzpah (I almost wrote "balls" but I have just spent several days in the American South where we do not speak like that. Possibly it will rub off on me, this gentility thing. Hush there, in the cheap seats. It could happen.) to hope that I can make an important contribution. Can homeless people and refugees be better off because I turned my thoughts to their situation? Can I figure out this forgiveness thing that eludes me -because I really do want to be that person? Can I become other things that I still hold close to my heart and only speak in a whisper?

So... pick up your pencils and open your blue books ;) It's time to get to work. What are you hoping for? Write it down. Dare to dream it, first. Then, if you dare, speak it. (This part is harder.) Then, with Anne and the cherry tree outside her bedroom window, bloom as if you mean it.

What's on your list? I'll post mine as it develops.

Dottiness Abounds

2009-12-18T11:40:00.004-06:00

I'm getting ready to leave town for Christmas. I'm leaving the house and its resident kittens well supervised, but I'm still feeling worried. And of course, there are two essential decisions to be made prior to any trip: the playlist and the knitting.

I have the Christmas music queued up on the iPod and the knitting project has revealed itself. Dottiness for the dotty:

It's called the Dotty Cat Bed, designed by Kelly Porpiglia from Kelp!. It's a free download, and I bought yarn to make two. I'm thinking if the girl-child's cat wants one, though, she can have one, too.

So, with those two things taken care of, I'm now freed up to deal with trivialities such as an oil change, and a new sticker for the car, and clean clothes. Details! Pish-posh. The important stuff is done.

2008's 18-month List

2009-12-16T07:17:00.000-06:00

It all should have been done 6 months ago:

(Bold equals done)

Weigh 110 by August (N's graduation)
Train for a triathlon –whether or not you do one!
GITAP (long-distance bike ride)
Daily yoga practice
Have people over for brunch regularly
Build a wine collection
Keep a bottle of good champagne in the fridge
Find a neighborhood bar
Exercise 6 days a week
Maintain relationship with Sarah the wonder-hair-dresser
Rock climbing –the goal is weekly climbing, but I’d settle for twice a month –in March, become a member
Get better work clothes
resume daily riding as soon as the weather allows
go the gym at least three days a week
set up workout room and yoga space

Romantical/Platonical/Familial
Figure out a way to do this relationship demise thing gracefully and how to survive it.
Send birthday cards
Get an address book
Update it
Write to out of the area friends
Update emergency contact information
Get a will and advanced health care directives
Update funeral arrangements

Habitational
Buy the house
Get a new furnace and central air
Re-create the gardens
Buy some new furniture -new couch and some outdoor furniture
Focus on safety, security, and grace

Professional; Financial; Educational
Re-learn to do a cartwheel
Take a few yoga workshops
Think about the next job –craft the plan
Write the preemie knits book
Get the preemie pattern book published
Work for the 18 months I promised at Hesed House.
At 12-month anniversary, start looking for the next thing. Keep working until you find it.
Keep planning interesting things at the yarn shop.
Attend an international conference.
Keep the idea of a social justice institute alive in your heart and mind -what can you do to make it a reality?
Retirement planning, in this brave new single world :(

Spiritual; Communal
Find a volunteer opportunity that nurtures you and does some good.
Buy flowers once a month
Join a book club
Donate blood
Become an NPR member
Get back to buying organic and fair trade whenever possible
Advocate for bicycling in town and elsewhere
See if Newman can still be your spiritual community -haul your sorry self back to church!
Reconnect with almost-lost friends
Nurture connections with all friends
Daily meditation as part of yoga practice

Expeditional; Recreational
Go to the movies once a month
Travel outside of the US
See live music and dance
Stay up dancing until the wee hours of the morning
Sib trip
GITAP
Start planning for a volunteer vacation –internationally
Figure out a way to go to an international conference.
Save for Tuscany trip

I'm pretty okay with this, especially given that some of this undone stuff is well under way. I've started the preemie knits book. I'm exercising and doing yoga again. Moreover, I did huge stuff that wasn't even on the list. So the fact that I haven't yet joined a book club... well. I can live with that.

Being me, my mind is turning to the next guideline for my time. So, I thought that revisiting the current one would be the intellectually honest thing to do. Now to decide if those undone things are all still really goals.

The Christmas Letter

2009-12-15T04:36:00.000-06:00

Dear Ones,

I hope all is well in your world. I look forward to hearing from you this Christmas –and any other time, of course.

This year, like last, had a little heartbreak for me. My divorce was final in February. We all know dozens of people who survive that, and of course I have survived it, as well. Christmas letters are, by tradition, recitations of success and glory, so I won't burden you with a recounting of that appalling process. The real story is that this year has not, in the end, been about heartbreak at all -a truth which leads me straight to you. I have learned a small measure of confidence and a large measure of love because you held them for me when I could not and offered them to me when I needed them. Thank you for that. You are the bright spot in this year, and that’s the truth!

So, now I get to meet the challenge of thriving rather than merely surviving. That process is a delight. I have purposely kept the pace a little wild, figuring that it would be healthier in the short-term to stay busy. I’m working on some research that is important -to me, anyway. It has to do with social justice and transformational learning applied to the population of refugees and to the questions of forced migration. I am still rock climbing. I am absolutely unexceptional at that, but I get a kick out of it anyway. I also love my job –which was new last Christmas. I am still learning it, which makes me a little crazy. I am repairing, decorating, and generally tending to my wonderful old house. The garage has been torn down and will be re-built –well, eventually. I have a new super-efficient furnace and central air, which is altogether new for this old barn. I am turning the rooms to new uses, entertaining in new ways, and generally claiming the house as mine. Well, I share it with the two new kittens, Claddagh and Cillian, who keep me nicely humble. I have done some traveling for work and pleasure: New York City, Washington, D.C. and a tiny little village in Italy.

So now I know that I can do all those things. This coming year will be about slowing down a little and steadily building the infrastructure that will hold this new life and its dreams up. I am ready now to meet quietness and calm with delight rather than fear.

Send me e-mail. Call me. Come by for a visit. I really do want to know how it is all going for you! You are in my thoughts and prayers, always.

Have a wonderful, joyous Christmas!

Andrea

The Star in the Midwest -The Stellated Dodecahedron

2009-12-13T18:47:00.004-06:00

We've covered that I'm reclaiming Christmas and deciding what it's going to be for me in this new life. I'm still discovering what's what, in that department. But as you know, I have a tree.
That tree has ornaments and there's a tree skirt, and there are three stocking hung in the stairwell. We are moving along.

Yet, the tree has no star on top. A long, LONG time ago, a young mathematician, who was still widely believed to be a nice guy, made me a star for my tree. I had a tree-decorating party at my college-apartment, and he found aluminum foil, poster board, and a compass, calculated the angles, and made me a star for the tree. It was of course The Star, for the rest of our life together. I simply could not bear to look in the box where it lives. In fact, the girl-child came and took all the old ornaments from my house and she has the star now. But my tree-top is naked.

But today I think I found the right star. Nora Gaughon designed a knitted stellated dodecahedron. Seriously, is this perfect, or what? It's knitted. It's geeky. It's me ;) I haven't started it yet, because I'm still working on presents. But it can be made after Christmas and stored away to be next year's progress. It's a free pattern on Knitting Daily.

That, and solar powered outdoor lights, and I will be in business!

My Crystal Ball is Broken

2009-12-10T07:00:00.002-06:00

I used to say that to the children, meaning... "I don't know where you left your Germany report, or your shoes. I don't know if he will call. I don't know if you'll get that job." And of course it led right into an annoying momily, about putting your shoes where they belong in the first place or how you deserve the job, or the boyfriend doesn't deserve you.... whatever the situation called for.

But this morning I had a terrifying realization. I really can't see into the future. Did I think I was being falsely modest when I claimed to have a broken crystal ball??? For heaven's sake, I, who thought I had a life plan for the next 50 years, two years ago had to make a new one, and I'm just now understanding that my crystal ball is out for repair????? Seriously, did I need more evidence?

It started stupidly. I was writing Christmas card addresses, and I wondered if I should put everyone's address into my phone as I go along. It's very little trouble, and it would help the GPS navigation get me where I am going. And then I started to wonder if I would have this phone this time next year (who cares?)... and then I started to wonder where I would be next year for Christmas(marginally more important).... and my brain just froze. I can't see next year.

At all.

I make no claims to being organized in a traditional sense. (You should SEE the desk where this is being written. No, I suppose you shouldn't.) But I do like to chart my course. I make New Year's Resolutions, and 101 Goals in 1001 days. I have plans for my writing and plans for my knitting. I have plans for this house and plans for books I want to read. And I have fledgling, spoken-only-in-a-whisper career/vocation plans. And here it gets a little untoward, perhaps. I have more than a little bit invested in being seen as a high performer.

Or... I don't know, perhaps that's not a bad thing as long as there is substance behind the image. But there won't BE substance behind the image if I don't know where I'm headed.

Darn that crystal ball, anyway. Is anyone else's in working order??? I'm freaking out over here.

A Hundred Wishes

2009-12-07T07:18:00.003-06:00

The little neighbor boy had an eyelash on his cheek yesterday. I scooped it up and said "make a wish!" Being a small person, he said "I want a HUNDRED wishes!!" If you knew this child, you would know that it wasn't greed that motivated him; I'm quite sure it is just that he is still alive with the sense of the possible. A hundred wishes would not be at all out of line.

We learn differently as we get older. I'm not sure that it's "knowing better" though. Could I come up with a hundred wishes? Could I feel like those things were possible?

I'll have to muse on this. Please feel free to add yours.

Tending a Different Infrastructure

2009-12-04T06:50:00.005-06:00

Because isn't THIS the picture you want in the almost-winter? It's my old furnace, in the back yard. That's not where you store yours??? Huh. Perhaps I have to rethink my strategy.

Sigh.

It was, apparently, 35 years old. Possibly older. So, there's no pretending I didn't get my money's worth (not that I chose it or bought it.) But it is now replaced with a state of the art 95% efficient furnace with central air. And many thousands of dollars have been removed from my wallet. Oh well. In my Great Life Plan of Aught-Nine (and no, I don't really call it that), this was on the schedule for 2012. The best laid plans, and all that....

Next summer I'll stay in my comfortably-cool house and pretend like I'm in Paris ;) I'll look lovingly at my air conditioning unit and pretend that it's a different kind of Arc de Triomphe.

And since this is what I woke up to this morning, I suppose it's a good thing I got this done.

Tending the Infrastructure

2009-11-25T05:43:00.003-06:00

I've made a decision. Apparently, I find this so stunning that I thought I should share that fact with you ;)

I am taking a step WAY back next semester -or so it will appear, anyway. I am not (NOT, I tell you!!!) abandoning my dreams. I am just considering the possibility that those dreams need a different kind of attention from me. The truth is that meaningful dreams need strong foundations, and I have let that part slip -favoring the super-structure, I suppose.

I am not saying it's wrong to focus on the "pie in the sky." I'll always be an idealist and a dreamer; the world needs us. Yet, for really the first time in my life, I mean it when I say that I am following my bliss. I don't have time to kid around about that. So, in order to make that happen, there is a metaphorical frame to be built and concrete to be poured. It's not glamorous, but I can't afford to skip this part.

Silly stuff has been left languishing. I haven't finished changing my name -all the way down to the last magazine and credit card. That makes me crazy, but there has been no time. My passport needs to be renewed. I haven't made a five-or-so year plan as to what I need to do; I have been hopping sort of willy-nilly from one -very useful- thing to another. I have a boat-load of foundational reading that needs to be done. Heaven knows that I don't have a body that will take me healthfully into old age -much less one that will allow me to trek around in rural India figuring things out. I have to engage with the work I am doing now -for its own sake, because it's interesting and important, AND because it is the foundation for what comes next.

So, a few more days of this semester, with what remains of my grace and general oomph, and then it's on to a different kind of work. It will look slower, but it's just as important as the flashier stuff.

I'm terrified. I know I can live on fast-forward; it's my favorite mode. Can I really methodically build something? We shall see.

Claddagh and Cillian are Cilling Me ;)

2009-11-23T17:10:00.004-06:00

We've had some cat dramas around here. My daughter and I aren't very good at this. We inherited Claddagh -a maybe 6-month old cat when he found us. Seriously, he is the best kitty in all the land. He gives hugs. How many cats do that?

At the time that we got him, Victoria lived with me. Very shortly thereafter, though, she found a sweet little house just perfect for her. She moved out, but no worries. We figured Claddagh would have two mommies; he would stay with me for a while and then with her for a while. Claddagh is quite a large cat. I am assured that he's not fat, but he's big. His brain, however, is the size of a walnut. This having two mommies thing was just too hard for him. He needed to have one home.

At the time that Victoria and I confronted this, Claddagh was with her. Along came a second kitty. Simone. Simone is 12 weeks old, and TINY. Perfect. Now Victoria can have one, and I can have another. We separated them.

Claddagh pined. We should have separated them immediately, apparently. And, we now know, loyalty can fit inside a walnut-sized brain. That, or it resides in the heart. So, here comes Cillian, an 8-week-old little warrior. He fits easily into my palm, and my hands aren't what you would call large. He bounces everywhere, rides on the Roomba, hides under tiny little spaces, and terrorizes me and Claddagh both. I'm exhausted. I have this nice, large house, and yet we are all three, at this moment, in one chair. Claddagh is grooming Cillian. Cillian is snoring, exhausted for the time being. And I'm trying not to get scooched off onto the floor.

But my life is that much bigger. (I'm done now, though. Two cats are entirely enough for me.)

Living my Best Life

2009-11-19T06:20:00.004-06:00

I don't know how to live my best life. You know that, right? No experts here! If that's what you're looking for, move along; there is nothing to see. Just like everyone else, I'm struggling with this idea. Practicing self-care without spinning off into hedonism. Learning discipline without trailing off into asceticism. Observing one's own process without becoming a narcissist. This is work.

Right now, I have some not-huge-but-definitely-there questions I need to answer, in the fairly near future. As in, a few days ago would have been good. They have to do with work load and my ability to manage my time -and my apparent inability to create more time out of thin air, in spite of my clear need and worthiness ;) And, we might as well be honest, my own need to do a good job at everything is also involved.

For the past year, I have kept myself wildly busy. I did this on purpose. On the one hand, I put off my own dreams for too long. I don't have time to delay them any longer; being tired isn't a good enough excuse. And, I was very afraid that if I allowed myself very much (any) unstructured time, I would sit home and brood. Bitterness isn't really in my nature, but self-pity can be. So, keep moving-no brooding. That was my thinking.

That strategy worked, in a sense. I have made important strides. I feel better. Most of the time, I am grateful to be living alone and having this opportunity to be self-determining. Gradually, though, it has become easier (less difficult, anyway)to let some things go. I am no longer working at the yarn shop on Saturdays. I don't need the money (although I will sorely miss the discount on yarn!) and I do need the Saturdays. My thinking was that I had let some things go in the service of others. Yet, I see now that I was still leading with fear. Little wonder, I suppose, given my recent experiences. Yet, I think it's time to do something else.

I have this picture of my perfect life. It involves work for social justice (from which I am almost completely separate these days); thinking, writing, and teaching; a varied and festive social life with my friends and family; a welcoming, calm home; rock-climbing, biking, and yoga; creativity (which mostly means knitting and writing); cooking, baking, reading for fun, travel... It's a picture I acknowledge to be unattainable. It's a world where the clothes are never wrinkled, my haircut isn't two weeks overdue, and all work is accomplished easily in its appointed time. Yes, I see the problem. I am simultaneously unable to live up to this fantasy and unwilling to let it go.

People advise me to do less -lower my standards. It's perfectly valid, but I don't think it's the answer for me. Until I find the right balance, I'm going to entertain the possibility that I am also living my best life when I doubt, when I am exhausted, when I just flat-out don't feel like working this hard anymore. I can't will those feelings away. But I can try to hold the dream as a gentle thing in front of me, and try to love myself into it.

The pace may not change, but its frantic nature might. Or, love will have a gentler pace than fear. We'll see.

We can not dedicate...we can not consecrate....

2009-11-19T05:46:00.003-06:00

It's the anniversary of the Gettysburg address. If you go here: Gettysburg drafts, you can see drafts of the address.

I have nothing terribly insightful to add to the conversation about the Gettysburg address. I can tell you that I went to Gettysburg for the first time as an adult, with my sister who lives near there. Two Southern girls walking around in Gettysburg -if there are ghosts anywhere, there are ghosts there. I'm quite sure of it. It is a place of powerful sadness, and Lincoln tried -I think- to rhetorically ease the pain. I can't imagine that he succeeded, but the appeal to our better nature can't be a waste of time.

Lift a glass with me this evening and, perhaps, reflect on visionary leadership, your best self, and Lincoln's damn fine writing.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Boys Have Cooties

2009-11-18T07:08:00.002-06:00

Oh, relax. I'm not casting aspersions on almost 50% of the population. I'm referring to the stage in life when boys and girls each think that the other one has cooties. It's a silly game -not at all new or rare, in a cultural sense. Children learn it from each other, and it serves the cultural and developmental purpose of fostering same-sex communities among children when sexuality (whatever its adult orientation) ought to be delightfully latent. Those cooties clear right up when the time is right ;)

So, here I am at my age, and boys apparently have cooties again. I have had precisely three "dates" in the last two years. Each was a hurdle of monumental proportions for me -and two of the men I know well and really love, in a different sort of way. I thought of a million excuses why I shouldn't go. I considered pretending to be sick. Then I practically WAS sick.

This is not going well, dear ones. I never struggled with trust before, and now my distrust of grown-up, intimate relationships is like a wall of bricks around me. Actually, that's not quite the right metaphor, because this brick wall has a weight that I must carry around. In some ways it makes me angry. Math-Rat just handed me these bricks and said, metaphorically, "Here, carry these for a while. I'm going to go play." And he did, and I've still got the darn bricks.

Here's my thinking. I only see three possibilities here. There may be more, but I only see three. One is that I work out my trust issues myself, but within the community of women where I usually find myself. It would be sort of a "red tent" approach to this healing thing. Men are out there, certainly. A few extraordinary men are even my friends -and brothers are always exempt from the cootie thing, so there's that, too. Maybe if I think that boys have cooties again and work on my own developmental issues, however long it takes, I (we) can resolve this.

The second possibility is that there's a guy out there who is willing to help me dismantle this brick wall, piece by piece. That is a LOT to ask of a person who can not be certain that it will even be worth the trouble (which is the definition of commitment, I suppose. One can't know how it will turn out and yet ponies up anyway.) It will be a long process. And I know me -I will run that person a not-so-merry chase. Seriously, what are the odds such a person even exists?

Third, I just sit tight. Choosing not to work on these trust issues hurts no one else, and I'm not sure it even hurts me. I have learned that lonely alone is way better than lonely together, which is what I was for years in my marriage. I'm doing fine right here. Perhaps there is no need to push myself to dismantle this brick wall, which might well be protecting me. Maybe it will just fall down when the time is right. It could even fall down from natural causes and still there would be no intimate relationship, right? That would be a kind of decision from a more powerful place.

I'm me. I would like to be a better me. So I push myself to confront things, fix things, move forward...blah, blah, blah. I make charts and lists and plans. You've heard me blather on in that vein forever. I want to chuck these bricks. (Hurling them vaguely toward the Math Department comes to mind, but that's only funny for a second.) But for now, I'm pretending like boys have cooties. I just think it's going to work better that way.

The Big Red Book

2009-11-17T06:47:00.003-06:00

I don't know why I am so intent on seeing this book, but I am.

Maybe it's that old University of Chicago great books thing. Maybe I'm just a nosy old biddy. For whatever reason, though, I am considering a trip to New York to see Carl Jung's "secret" book, which he unimaginatively called Liber Novus. (If he had written one after this, would it have been the New New Book -or the Really I mean it this time New Book?) But when I first came across Jung's work in college, I felt like I had come home. Archetypes, the collective unconscious, individuation, integration....I became an 18-year-old groupie of a slightly mystical, spectacularly imperfect, psychiatrist from Switzerland. Leave the Back Street Boys to someone else; I was waiting at a different kind of stage door.

OK, I get it. Not everyone gets this excited about ideas -particularly someone else's ideas. And I've mellowed, anyway, to say nothing of having discovered the thinking of other scholars of the mind. I've even had an idea or two of my own, thank you very much.

But this book.... seriously, I want to see it. In it, Jung chronicled and created illuminated illustrations about his dreams, hallucinations, and encounters with the collective unconscious. He worried that he might be having psychotic episodes. His heirs apparently concurred; they have kept this book unavailable since Jung's death in the early 60s. Yet, through these dreams, he came to the theories of the collective unconscious and archetypes as tools for working toward a healthy emotional life. He famously was unwilling to let anything or anyone go from his life until he had figured out why they were there in the first place. What had they come to teach him?

So, he purposely confronted (and occasionally induced) his own hallucinations in order to learn from them. I can't quite imagine having a rich enough interior life that visions would come to me. I think they would spot infertile soil and go bother someone else ;) And yet, what they teach me is that we're not meant to simply explore the depths of our own psyches. That's necessary but insufficient, as the logicians would say. Rather, there is something "out there" that's bigger than we are, and we are meant to explore that, too. Vocatus atque non vocatus, Deus aderit.

Of course, reading about someone else's journey is not quite the same thing as having undertaken it oneself. Everyone has her own work to do in this regard, and insofar as I've even started it, I can report that it's not always fun. (It might have been easier if I had fallen for the Back Street Boys, now that I think about it.) But I'm going to New York anyway, to indulge my hero-worship just a tad but also to acknowledge the intellectual and spiritual curiosity as well as the courage of a mind that shaped mine.

A Bruised Ego

2009-11-15T06:40:00.003-06:00

Settle in, boys and girls, for a story.

Once upon a time, I was physically fit and strong and thin. I never thought I was thin, but that's another story for another day. I also practiced yoga for years and years -starting before some of you were even a twinkle in your Mama's eye. I learned some silly things and some unimaginably important things while spending time on my mat. I learned how to put my foot behind my head (that goes in the "silly thing" category, in case you were wondering) and how to be a more loving person. I learned how to twist myself up into a pretzel and how to confront some of the pretzel-y knots in my own psyche.

And I thought I learned about ego. Bearing in mind that none of these important life lessons is learned and then is over and done-with, I thought I had confronted this one. (Who's that snorting in derision? I hear you!) Seriously, I kind of thought that my ego issues went the other way -that I had been with a man I thought to be strong, but really just needed constant ego massage. His strategy for getting that reinforcement was to make other people feel small. Even more clever, he was good at getting the people around him to admit they were small before he even asked. So I thought my task was to find ego-strength where I had assumed there was none.

Alas, it is more complicated than that. Yesterday I went to a 3-hour yoga workshop. I have started to re-claim my yoga practice, but it is nowhere nearly as consistent or disciplined as it has been in years gone by. So I knew I was walking into this workshop under-prepared. In my home practice, I am learning to be gentle with myself when I can't (yet) do poses that, a long time ago, were easy. In class yesterday, I realized that there was still quite a bit of ego attached to being good at yoga.

Sigh. Just when you think you're making progress, the universe points out a spectacular area of blindness. And now that you're no longer blind to it, you're obliged to work on it. Damn it. (Oh sorry, young ones.... I mean.... gosh, universe, thanks for this opportunity to become a better person.)

I looked around at all the strong, lean yoga bodies and was unhappy with the size, shape, and fitness of my own body. I couldn't really see other people's postures to compare, but I felt worried and unhappy that I had to so intensely modify my own postures. I could compare my today-postures with my years-ago postures, and I didn't like the trajectory. My self-talk was screaming "I used to be good at this. I want you all to know that I used to be good at this. I know the Sanskrit names for postures. I know alignment principles. I have mat-cred (the yoga equivalent of street-cred, I suppose)".

Wow, who is that arrogant/desperate pain in the ass and would she please shut up?

So, today is all about ibuprofen for the muscles and the spirit. On some level, I'm hobbling around a little bruised. On the other hand, being worked just a smidge beyond your comfort level is how you make progress. As long as I extend compassion to myself as well as other people, this will probably work. I can only start where I am, right? So, I'm reframing all of this to put it into the "hurts so good" category. I'm almost convinced.

And the Winner Is....

2009-11-14T21:31:00.000-06:00

Seriously.... my favorite Sesame Street clip of all times....

Check out the girl with the pony tail!

Yip Yip Martians Meet the Telephone

2009-11-13T07:22:00.000-06:00

I still say "get the earth book" when people or events perplex me. Alas, it works about as well for me as it did for the Yip Yip Martians.

I am getting such a kick out of revisiting these memories.

Me, Claudius

2009-11-12T07:08:00.000-06:00

More Sesame Street memories. I remember laughing until I cried when this came on, and my then-small children (who of course had not yet encountered I, Claudius) wondering quite explicitly if Mom had really, finally, this time lost her mind. But they would obligingly call me into the living room to see this clip when it was repeated.

They later took out the line "Monsterpiece Theater, home of classy drama." I thought it was hilarious, but I suppose it really did have to go. There's no sense teaching kids intellectual classism. And later Alistair Cookie stopped eating his pipe at the end of clips. Again, it probably needed to go, but Cookie Monster would have eaten his pipe, don't you think? There's only so much class Cookie could provide ;)

Sesame Street and Sign Language

2009-11-11T18:12:00.001-06:00

Just another reason to love Sesame Street. It normalized the use of sign language. This is a beautiful poem, in so many ways.

Chariots of Fur

2009-11-11T06:53:00.003-06:00

In honor of Sesame Street's 40th birthday, I spent an absurd amount of time last night looking for my favorite Sesame Street clips. Here's one from the Monsterpiece Theater series:

Alistair Cookie is too perfect.

I admit to running like Grover -minimum speed, maximum melodrama.

And we get by with a little help from our friends. Morality tales from Sesame Street -a part of my childhood and my children's.

ET Phone Home

2009-11-03T00:01:00.000-06:00

I make no claims that my life is more complicated than other grownups in the modern world. It's probably not even all that much more complicated than some children's lives in this modern world. Nonetheless, it's more complicated than I'm used to, so there's a sense of frantic-ness as I try to get everything done. (Sorry for pointing out the obvious. You've probably noticed my mild hysteria on this point.)

So, the question becomes -in part- how to be the most productive in the time I have available. There are other fruitful questions. I do know that. Are there things that can be cut from the schedule? How might I live gracefully, given the constraints of time and money that we all face? How can I live a balanced life? But today, I want to talk about being productive. If I'm more efficient with my task-time, then some pieces of those other questions answer themselves.

So, to make the question even more precise, how do you use your phone as a productivity tool? I have this fancy phone, and I do use it. But I have a feeling that I'm under-using it just a bit. As with everything else, it needs to earn its keep. What can it do for me?

I'm figuring out how to do mobile blogging. That's going to be rocky for a bit. I've figured out how to upload photos from my phone directly to facebook -which is hardly a productivity tool, but at least I don't waste time looking for the camera cord quite so often. I have my grocery, and hardware store, and Target lists stored in there. I do have the navigation tool, which I recommend. The stand-along GPS would be cheaper, but since I want to get back into long-distance cycling and I would take my phone with me anyway on those trips, the phone navigation tool is useful.

My brother uses it to calculate (or store... or view.... or something) his blood pressure records. My techno-whiz sister doesn't use it for an mp3 player, so I don't either. What do you know that I should know?

I'm This Kind of Athlete

2009-11-02T00:11:00.000-06:00

Ages ago, my long-suffering life coach suggested that my weight and my fitness level would improve when I truly loved myself. Yeah, well, I thought. If I wait for that to happen, I'll die a fat, miserable, unhealthy old wreck of a human. Must.... muscle...through.

Clearly, that didn't happen. Perhaps too many other things in my life were requiring my muscle. Perhaps in subtle and un-subtle ways I had been told I wasn't good enough -and to own my complicity in that game, I am quite willing to go there with the slightest suggestion that it might be true. No one needs to work very hard to convince me of my unworthiness.

In spite of what I took to be my self-evident unworthiness, I set myself the gentle tasks of getting back to yoga and rock climbing in this fall semester. All I had to do was climb once a week and do yoga twice a week -and not beat myself up for not doing more. These are fitness (and wellness) activities that I love. They're not "working out," somehow. They aren't play, exactly, and sometimes these activities can be very hard indeed. But nor are they tedious, and for some reason I can get past the thought that people are looking at me as though I don't deserve to be there.

The visible results have not been stellar. True is true, and I still look like a fat person. And yet... my body is responding. I've talked before about how my hands are waking up, and no longer need to be iced after climbing. I can knit for hours -assuming I had hours in the schedule, which almost never happens. My flexibility isn't what it used to be, but it's way better than it was three months ago. And it's teaching me something important to have to work for it. Even my knees are better. They are still fragile and cause me tears. Yet, the other day, I forgot that I "couldn't" get into hero's pose and just did it. Of course, getting out of the posture made me cry, literally. But forgetting that there is an impairment is a huge change in self-concept.

So where do I go from here?

I don't want to climb Mt. Everest. It's probably cold, and I would have to carry my own luggage. (Or get a sherpa to do it, which is equally repugnant to me.) I don't want to be a body builder. In fact, I would prefer not to do strength training at all, but I don't think I'll get that wish. I don't want to play any sport that involves a ball. Ever. Ice climbing is a big fat "no".

"Maybes" include running. I've tried before, and failed, but something in me won't let it go. Kayaking is a maybe. There is much there that makes me feel inadequate, but I think it can be overcome.

Definites are long- and short-distance cycling, climbing, and yoga. I would love to be able to participate in a three-day walk for a good cause. Swimming is a yes, because scuba and snorkeling are definitely on my "someday" list.

I have no interest in being competitive or best or strongest or fastest. Feh. I'm not that kind of athlete. But now that I've watched my body begin to awaken from its long sleep, I know what kind of athlete I am.

I can do amazing things, on my terms. I can make progress as slowly as I want to, or not at all if I don't want to. I'm 51 years old and I climb rocks and bike and swim and do yoga. Today I'm going to the pool, wearing my appallingly-sized Speedo. It'll be psychologically hard, but I deserve to be there just as much as anyone else. Besides, once I'm in the water, no one can really see how big I am.

I'm that kind of athlete -the kind with low standards and big dreams.

2009-11-01T11:07:00.001-06:00

Oh my lands. I am trying to blog from my phone. Unsupervised. This is unlikely to work, but once I master it, I hope it helps me claim lost bits of time.

Sit Down and Pay Attention

2009-10-29T07:18:00.003-05:00

Yesterday, I didn't go to work. In the morning, I just felt tired. Not like "too bad you got a bad night's sleep" tired. It was more like "I can't move" tired. It felt different and bad. I slept the whole day. I worked from home for a little bit, feeling very virtuous -and then that was it. Bed. I think all I did was take out the trash and answer a few e-mails.

Possibly this was a message from the universe.

Then later that day, I heard that my brother had had a cardiac scare. He's fine. In the way of 40-something year old men, he is going to have to monitor his blood pressure and stress, and get some exercise even though, I fully agree, there is no time.

Possibly this was a message from the universe.

Early this morning, still sick (and now diagnosed with the flu), I heard that a friend has cancer. It's a "good" kind of cancer -highly treatable, and very slow growing. But it's scary for her, scary for her friends, and re-arranges life's priorities in the way that these worrisome diagnoses do.

Possibly this was a message from the universe. I think I have been told to sit down and pay attention.

Eliminate activities that serve neither your goals nor other people.

Add exercise.

Add meditation and reflection.

And do these things, not because I'm scared, or the universe is threatening me. Rather, I think the universe is telling me that I have important work to do, and that I need to be here to do it. To be here -to be fully present- in the things I am doing, that's my task. To do that, I have to be healthy.

So, I'm looking again at my calendar. How can the time budget be tweaked so that the important things are tended??

Dream Interpretation

2009-10-28T08:33:00.002-05:00

Anyone up for figuring this out?

This morning, as I struggled to come to the surface from sleep, I realized that I was having an automotive dream -sort of. I know possibly less about cars than I do about fixing bathrooms (see below). Why dream about it??

And... Dave was driving. This is wrong on so many levels. The man is a terrible driver. If anyone else with a driver's license is in the car, that person should be driving. It's that simple. Moreover, I was in the back seat. Ummm.... symbolism, ya'll???? And, we were apparently on the way to the car hospital because I had poured the wrong fluid into the wrong receptacle. Oil in the radiator, or some such thing. The fluid and receptacle were not identified in the dream, because even my subconscious doesn't know them.

Does this mean:
1) I'm not meant to be traveling in the same direction as Dave? (Really? What was my first clue?)
2) I'm getting sick and it's messing with my dreams?
3) I should learn more about cars, because mine is getting ready to blow up?
4) I just need more sleep?

Call the Men in White Coats...

2009-10-26T21:34:00.003-05:00

... and just tell them to wait outside my house. It shouldn't be long now before their services are required.

Everyone knows about NaNoWriMo, right? It's National Novel Writing Month, and the idea is to write a novel in November. There is no obligation to write a good novel in that time. Rather, just sit down -you, the computer, and your thoughts- every single day in November and get a novel-length bit of prose. You say you want to be a writer? This is what it takes. Show up and write.

Now, I have no interest in writing a novel. I am quite possibly the least creative person on the planet. There are, however, things I want to write -things that have gotten no attention from me at all. So, really, in what sense do I want to write them, if I never sit down to, you know, write them? Fair question.

Thing the second - I have this list of 101 goals in 1001 days. I started the list in July, and I have made astounding strides on it -by my standards. Yet, some of the goals are goals I've only spoken quietly, lest the gods hear and laugh so loud I can hear them from Olympus. Those are, by and large, the ones I am afraid of. What if I'm not good enough? Smart enough? Organized enough? Writing is just such a goal. I keep track of the goals I've achieved by changing the typeface on my little list to bold; there is very little bold-ing in the writing section of my goals list.

And thing C -only apparently unrelated to the other two things: My friend Jill and her friends at other blogs have crafted a variation on a theme - NoNaShoStoWriMo. The Not-national Short Story Writing Month.

I think possibly the gods aren't laughing. I think they're saying, "Would you get a bloody clue, already??? Shut up and write."

"Yes," she said, quietly and humbly and with quite a bit of trepidation. I will write. By the end of November, I will have one knitting essay completed. If other people can get a novel, surely I can get an essay.

In addition to working what amounts to three jobs, taking care of classes, taking care of my house, working out, and loving my children to death (which happens in the background of all activities, so it sort of doesn't count as a time-consumer), I will write for a few minutes every single day. One essay. One stinkin' essay. I can do that.

The men in white coats just asked for a cup of tea and have set up camp on my front porch. Should I be worried?

Pulling the Goalie

2009-10-22T20:56:00.002-05:00

It's a hockey thing. There's no law that says you have to have a player defending the net. You can pull the goalie, and play with an extra skater. It's a high risk maneuver, but when there's not a lot of time left it might pay off.

And it's pretty much my only option. I have a crapload of work to do, school is out of control, my house looks like a tornado went through, there's a conference this weekend, and on the same day a dear family friend is getting married. I'll be changing clothes in the bathroom of the conference, and breaking a few speed limits to get to the wedding.

So... yeah... we're pulling the goalie.

Just for fun

2009-10-19T21:10:00.007-05:00

I gave the child of my brother and his wife my camera. The poor little dear was bored, and Auntie Andrea and Cousin Victoria decided to take this person on a photographic adventure. Guess the gender of this child. I'll give you two guesses, but you're only going to need one.

I don't know what to tell you. There are literally dozens of these photos. Lug nuts. Hood ornaments. Dirty tires. Wheels, wheels, and more wheels. He didn't get it from me, that's for sure.

Meet the photographer-artist -my esteemed nephew Carter Lee Buford. You knew him when -just remember that.

Home Rescue

2009-10-18T09:50:00.005-05:00

I do love this old barn of a house. I also worry that it is too much for me to manage. And I daily confront evidence that Dave had checked out long before I knew it. Everywhere, there are unfixed and unfinished things he just ignored; there are still other things fixed in a completely uncharacteristic (or so I would have thought) half-assed way. And now she who can knit anything but is not entirely clear on which is the business end of a hammer gets to tackle some of this stuff.

I'm thinking this view of the trim in my bathroom is a problem. That's mildew or mold or some other black ooze of death. My friend Terri (who helped me clean my gardens last year) apparently thought so too, because she showed up with tools and expertise and patience. She gently pointed out that this was probably not great news, either.

Four trips to Menard's later, we had, well, this. It's a bit of a mess, but we're calling it progress. Because it IS progress. The tub is re-caulked and the drywall is patched. My tasks, as I understand them, are to get some replacement trim, sand down the drywall mud a smidge, get some paint, possibly paint the trim, and get a new exhaust fan. We didn't talk about this, but a new shower-organizer-thingie and a new ceiling light would be good too. If I go back to Menard's today will the entire staff suddenly and mysteriously be on break?

But here's the thing. When you add this weekend to the weekend when my sister helped me to take down the shower doors (and why can't I find that blog post?), the bathroom hardly looks like it used to. With help, I'm making my mark.

All right, all right, all right....

2009-10-17T07:59:00.003-05:00

I'm still alive and still floundering around trying to make a life. It has been two years -almost exactly- since I drove into the sunrise. OK, technically, I drove west as I left my marriage, but that's a lousy metaphor. I drove into a dawning new day, thanks to family and friends.

I think I will always have to acknowledge that day -perhaps someday with some gratitude that I found the courage (or desperation) to actually do it. But today is not that day. Yet, on the other hand, it is time and past time to change that song.

I stopped blogging, though, because I didn't yet know what the next song might be. I still don't, quite. But weirdly, I think THAT might be the song -making a new life in mid-life. Acknowledging -and humbled by- the fact that I have friends and family struggling with HUGE issues, I get to think about .... what do I want? How hard am I willing to work for it? Is this house too much for me to manage? Will I ever be in a relationship (THAT kind of relationship) again? Do I want to?

And those big questions have a thousand attendant little questions that support them? How do I schedule my time to make those things happen? What kind of environment supports the life I'm trying to build? For crying out loud, should I get pink sheets or white? You KNOW I can obsess about anything.

So that's the new plan.... thinking about life at mid-life. A new life. The one I get to make -not all by myself. In concert with a small group of thoughtful, SMART, LOVING citizens. Maybe there's something that other people might learn from watching the process. If not... I'll obsess quietly, over here in the corner, where I won't bother anyone.

While I Was Away...

2009-09-21T07:10:00.002-05:00

Sigh....

I'm just crazy-busy. Over the top, now-you've-crossed-the-line insane busy. And in part it's because things are going so well.

But there are things that the "small group" could really think about and places where we could make a difference. But of course, I overslept this morning -because I stayed up too late last night- and now I have to run.

Here's question 1. I was chatting with a friend yesterday. (not chat, really. We have important conversations.) And I "confessed" that I had done one of those 101 goals in 1001 days lists. I am enjoying watching the goals get checked off. And wondering why whole sections have seen no movement. Are they, perhaps, not really goals? Or are they gestating somewhere in the back of my psyche, and their time will come?

And, as this friend points out, wondering if making the list public is just another way of inviting the universe to mess with you. Do you speak your goals out loud, to make them more real? Or do you hold them close to your heart and breathe gently on them until they are big and strong?

Is this all there is????

2009-08-25T12:22:00.003-05:00

I moved out of my parents' home when I was 18 to go to college. I did go home for a few summers after that, but really, after that point I haven't lived "at home". I just did some disturbing arithmetic centered around that little factoid.

It's been 32 years since that date -almost exactly, since my leaving home would have been tied to the start of the academic year. That's 11,680 days. Here's the thing. There are 8760 hours in a year -a few more, actually. It might be 8766, because of the leap year thing. But really, let's think of the work-week type hours. That's 2000 hours.

If I've done even one hour of housework every one of those 11,680 days -and between making your bed, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, fixing and cleaning up from a meal, wiping out the bathroom sink, and sweeping a floor somewhere- you've probably got an hour in on days when you think you've done nothing. So, VERY conservatively, I've done 11,680 hours of housework in that time. That's 6 years of housework, if doing housework were my full-time job.

Shouldn't I have something to show for it???? I need a house elf.

The "Taking Care Of" Business

2009-08-19T19:51:00.002-05:00

I've always been a bit of a nurturer. My parenting style was pretty clearly hierarchical. "I'm the mommy; you are the babies." I believe that sentence may have fallen out of my mouth more than once ;) But also there was deep, crazy go-to-the-wall care for the little ~~beasties~~ sweeties. But they don't need day-to-day nurturing any more.

I took care of homeless people. And students. And a husband. Then I had to be the one taken care of. Gradually, I walked out of Crazytown, and could care about the world around me. But still, I didn't think I wanted anyone or anything to need me. I didn't want to care for anything that could leave me ever again -ever, I tell you.

Remember? I even said that I thought my garden was probably taunting me with my inability to nurture things -even nonsentient things.

And then, there were animals. I never even wanted pets. I'm allergic to animals, for heaven's sake -and my stuffy, drippy nose (how can it be BOTH??) attests to that. Silly little Claddagh has a cold, and had to go to the vet yesterday. He was so upset about the car ride, he had a little accident. Sigh. And now he's on three medications that he HATES to get. And he was mad, MAD, MAD at me yesterday, for allowing these injustices to be perpetrated upon him. Seriously...the look he was giving me clearly said, "And I trusted you....."

But now this poor vulnerable little kitten doesn't feel good and is depending on me to fix it. Apparently I can nurture again. I'm back in the "taking care of" business.

Darn cat! ;)

We Need a Little Christmas...

2009-08-17T00:01:00.001-05:00

....right this very minute..... need a little Christmas NOW!!!

(Auntie Mame. You got that, right?)

Here's the thing. Saturday, at knitting, people were planning their Christmas knitting. And of course, it's not too early for that, but I choked. I'm pretty much ready to start thinking about planning to research the possibility of shopping the "back to school" sales ;) (I don't want to over-commit, there!) Christmas is out of the question.

Or I thought it was. On the way to rock climbing this morning, the girl-child and I were chatting. If we're going to invite ourselves to someone's house for Christmas, it's actually not too early to start ~~plotting~~ planning. Yet, as so often happens in my life, she encouraged me to step up a little. It's time, apparently, to host my own Christmas.

I'm petrified. I'm excited.

Christmas 1 - I fled, plain and simple. I went to Montgomery and stayed with my brother and his family and was pretty much a fixture that people worked around.

Christmas 2 -I traveled. That's different. I went to a sister's house. I also had a tree and decorations in my own house -the beginnings of pulling it together on the holiday front.

But this year, apparently, I'm staying put and doing Christmas here. I would love to invite the sibs here, but the no-furniture thing will not be entirely rectified by then. But I've claimed a future Christmas for that.

I'm sad. I'm thrilled. Sheesh.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

2009-08-16T07:23:00.010-05:00

I don't pretend to understand baseball, so really the game was an anthropological experience for me. How, for example, can it be true that this many people don't have anything else to do on a Friday afternoon?

Batting practice was mildly interesting, but mostly I was reading grant narratives. (One great, one will be great, and one... well, let's draw a merciful veil. The PI doesn't really want to do that one, is what I think.) Minor amounts of mustard on the pages will have to be explained, but I can do that. .

Then the army precision parachuting team arrived. It was hard to get pictures, but pretty astonishing. I'll climb rocks, but my hat is off to anyone who will, short of his children's lives being in immediate jeopardy, jump out of a moving airplane.

Then, the game started and the Cubbies got to work. By the end of the second inning, they had scored 14 runs. This, I am told, is unusual.

Good friends. Good fun. Warm beer and Chicago hotdogs. There are certainly worse ways to spend a day!