On-Board Navigation

NO!!! She's not going there! I will NOT use my new Tom-Tom navigation system as a metaphor.

Life is a journey. Show me the way. Chart a course. Plot your path.

Oh, just gag me with a spoon.

Stop bossing me the #($* around, that's what I think. But... the truth is, along with one of my sisters, I have a SPECTACULAR ability to get lost. Huge. Knows no limits. Truly a thing of astounding power. That's my ability to get lost. I ended up in Battle Creek, Michigan once when I was supposed to be in Milwaukee. Wrong state. Yeah, I know. In a tragic marital moment, I took us across the same bridge in Montreal THREE times, because I was reading the map rather than driving. That wasn't a good day. And then there was the day when the similarly-impaired sister and I were wandering around Philadelphia, looking for each other. We found each other because her son was with her and my phone had a fairly primitive navigation service. And even then, we almost missed each other because we were on opposite sides of the street. Viewed from the sky, it was probably hilarious. Not so much, when viewed at street level!

When one has an impairment, it is not weakness to ask for help. It's just plain sensible to use assisting devices and assistants when, otherwise, life would be smaller and more limited.

I use mapquest a lot. It has saved my backside more than once. There are several things that mapquest won't do for me, however. If, you know, just for the sake of argument, I turn left when it says right -and then completely screw up the correction and become hopelessly turned around- mapquest doesn't know what to do. It knows how to get me from where I started to where I said I wanted to go, assuming I do what I'm told to do. Ask my mother how likely that last bit is.

Tom-Tom will at least figure out where I am and allow for mid-point corrections. So far, she hasn't said "For the love of God, I SAID turn LEFT." I work in a town I don't live in -a town there's really no point in being in, except for work or living. It's not as though one seeks out Aurora, Illinois as a destination. People live there because it's close to Chicago. People work there, because....well, in my case, because poor people live there and someone was willing to pay me to help them.

I've worked there eight months and I've figured out a few different ways to get to work and back, how to get to the Panera for coffee, and how to get to the gym. That's it. But I could, hypothetically, go from work to the city (meaning Chicago) and THEN go home. Except my brain starts to melt at the navigational challenge. Or I could go rock climbing with my son and boy buddies and then go to Panera and then go to work. After I breathe into this paper bag because I'm sure I'll end up in Indianapolis by accident.

Tom-Tom was on sale. It's a bargain, even if the navigator is a little snotty. My life will get a little bigger -and all for under $200. I'm good with that.

And life actually is a journey.

Rigor Vita

That's probably the wrong declension of vita, and I'm too tired to go look it up. A thousand apologies.

But the point is there.... I've hit a spot in my life where I'm feeling rigid, literally and metaphorically. I've watched other women in the middle of a divorce go through this. There have been unspeakable, shaming boundary violations. Then, as part of healing there's a time when, truly, compromise is possible. But instead she draws a line in the sand and defends it for all she's worth. The line is not important, possibly even to her. It's the defense that's important. I WILL stand my ground. I will NOT permit boundary violations. There will be NO compromise.

Subtext: Because I'm afraid that if I give you even an inch, and you hurt me again, I will die.

That's the part I didn't know before. It's interesting.

Yes, I drew a line. I defended it. Possibly, modest defense was appropriate; rigidity was unnecessary. I'm not apologizing, exactly. He deserves all I can dish out and more. But I am saying that rigidity is uncomfortable for me. I don't care whether he likes it or not. I don't like it. I just don't know how to be both flexible and protected -or strong and open -or fierce, but not snarling.

This kind of rigidity really is rigor mortis, or rigor vita, I suppose, since I'm not dead. Life unyielding. That's not what I want. I want my life to soar, but something is weighing me down again. How can it be a person's presence in a community? Well, it can't be. It's the power I assign to that person's presence.

And wandering down the curvy pathways of my mind.... we get to yoga. Again. (I know... just hang on. There may be a point here, somewhere.) There's a "reclaiming my body" post rattling around in my brain, but it's not finished. But I do know that yoga -literally and metaphorically- knows something about strength and flexibility, and fierce concentration with an open heart. If I have lost my mental and emotional agility, I have also lost my (formerly considerable) physical flexibility. Both can come back, but it takes work.

From psychology, we know that sometimes people store unexamined (not-yet-examinable, frequently) pain in a physical body part. There's a reason that people get chronic stomach aches or neck pain or headaches or... whatever. A single individual typically gets a certain kind of stress pain, not all of the kinds. Without going overboard, the pain tells us a little something about what the unexamined issue is.

We usually think that therapy or time will heal the issue, and the body pain will ameliorate. But it can go the other way. Sometimes there's a physical release first; yoga and dance are frequently the agents here. The pain gives way, and the emotional issue...well, it doesn't go away, but it becomes available to examination.
Its power to frighten is reduced.

Good lord, is anyone still with me????

Here's the point. (and the crowd breathes a sigh of relief) I can confront these issues from both sides. I think. I muse/brood/reflect. I write. I talk. I post here. I have a long-suffering life coach. I'm doing what can be done on that side of the equation for my own healing and thriving. Yet, for so many reasons, I could try to reclaim some flexibility from the physical side. Even if the emotional breakthrough isn't sudden and momentous (and for most people it isn't), there's power in following my goals and dreams in the physical arena. That power could inform all the other dream-building that I'm doing.

And, my back might hurt a little less ;)

Mamma Mia!

Go see Mamma Mia! Really.

Well, go see it if you're a woman of a certain age. It's hilarious and campy and charming. It's got Colin Firth AND Pierce Brosnan. I mean, for heaven's sake, it's a bargain at $8 and some popcorn ;) You'll be embarrassed to notice that you know all the words to all the ABBA songs, but so does everyone else in the theater.

Meryl Streep can just plain do anything. She makes being the mother of a too-young bride and working as a struggling hotelier glorious. She wears her scroungy overalls and fixes shutters and dances and is crazy-sexy.

The characters are under-drawn,I admit. The girlfriends are kind of caricatured, and we never really figure out the boyfriends at all. But it's a movie based on ABBA songs; stop looking for art!!!

Compare it to Sex and the City-which I've seen all of once, but that doesn't stop me from making proclamations. There we have 20-something gorgeous girls in their uncomfortable shoes that cost as much as my car. They sit around in coffee shops and agonize about how miserable they are. The women in Mamma Mia have suffered, right enough, but they dance through it.

Except for the personal quibble that it mometarily gave me hope that love thought to be long-dead can come back -which is not where I need to place my hope- the movie was a non-stop delight. I'd see it again, if anyone is up for it.

A Rocky Patch

I'm ok. I really am. I know that. But this is a bit of a rocky patch, and I might as well acknowledge that too.

Dave is back in town, and I realized that once again I am living my life as though he were watching. I know he isn't, and I had let go of doing that months ago. But it's back; I'm doing it again. For example, a good person would be out on her bike now; it's a beautiful day. But I'm tired. I worked a full day today and it's bloody Saturday. What I wanted to do was read my mail while sitting outside in my pretty yard. That's what I did. But the voices in my head weren't quite still, as you can see. A good person... a worthy person... would be....

Oh, shut the #)(* up. I'll do some other exercise tonight, and it will be fine.

And last night I went to Barnes and Noble for some R&R, and saw Dave's picture on the cover of a book. I had NO idea that was forthcoming. I think I visibly recoiled and audibly gasped. He looks good. He looks happy. He's not wearing his wedding ring. (Well, duh, neither am I.) He's doing fine without me. Plotz, went my self esteem.

And I have to, absolutely have to, confront the legal details of the end of my marriage. I have to decide what I want and need to get as part of the settlement. Child of the South that I am (channeling Scarlett O'Hara as I write) I've been avoiding it. "I'll think about it tomorrow," in good Southern tradition. Scarlett needs to vanish for a little while, and competent Andrea needs to show up.

There's some good forward motion here. I'm making progress in some really good ways that have absolutely nothing to do with Dave. I'm following my dreams and my strengths toward something wonderful. I knew this evening-I absolutely knew- that having Dave sitting in the other Adirondack chair reading his own mail or chatting idly with me would never happen again. I knew I was okay with that. I know that I did good work today. I knew that I had made some good professional strides.

It just doesn't matter that I'm tired being brave. I have to keep on being brave.

Damn it.

I know. I'm the last to know about wordles. Jill has one on her blog and I thought they were charming. Then I did one, and Dave had the biggest word cloud that day.

There are going to be some changes around here, thought I! You can be all kinds of things, buster, but you can't be my biggest word cloud. Of course, no one put him there but me.

Then I did one yesterday, and toilets figured fairly prominently. Nope... that's not right or representative, either.

This is better. Sisters. Brothers. Thought. Words. Fix. That's more like it!

But the only way I could figure out how to get it here on my blog was to save it as a screenshot. There must be a better way. I defer to finer minds.

Cover Me! I'm Going In!

There are two toilets in my home. Alas, neither of them is working perfectly.

Thought 1) Perhaps a husband does have a use.

Thought 2) Nah...toilets don't break often enough.

Thought 3) I can't do this. My home-fixing skills extend to changing lightbulbs, IF I can find the ladder, a light bulb, and the time. Otherwise, I wait until hanging out in the dark gets ridiculous.

Thought 4) Oh for heaven's sake. I can learn this. (Because no folly was ever preceded by those words!)

So far, I've done what I would do -asked people, downloaded information, and bought a book. St. Paul, the maintenance director at work, knows my skills. I described the problem of toilet #1 and asked if I could fix it. He paused. He grimaced a little. He said that this isn't the easiest fix to start with, but that if I put his number into my phone's directory, he would authorize it. Trixie, the hardware goddess, was more empowering. She just handed me the parts I need, said "don't forget to turn off the water and stay calm," and sent me on my way.

Did you know that there's a "fix my toilet" blog? I certainly didn't. It hasn't been updated in a while, but it's a ...ummmm..... font of information. (sorry) Fix My Toilet.

Here's the thing. I don't particularly crave knowing how to fix my toilet. There are people who need to earn a living who are willing to do these gross things. I could call one of them -and I have one on speed-dial, just in case. But I DO crave not being craven, if you will. I want to conquer one more thing that I would casually have handed off to someone else, in my old life.

I'll keep you posted! I'm going in.



I think this is where I need to be working:











Oh my LORD.... there are no WORDS on these directions. Just pictures. And TELL me that thing is not called a ball cock. Really. Little wonder I can't do this!!!


Much later... I DID IT. You'll just have to picture me having a celebratory glass of...something... in the bathroom ;)

The Towering Inferno...

APJ_bday
Originally uploaded by The Bread And The Knife

...that was my birthday cake!

This video is my sister's. That's Jeanine's voice you hear. She's using Patrice's camera. And I was oblivious until the cake was at my elbow.

Casting a Circle

It's been a roller-coaster sort of week. My birthday weekend was unspeakably lovely. A weekend to remember forever. It was marred only by the information that Dave has returned to town. He had the grace and good sense to stay away during that weekend. Starting Monday night, though, we've had a few efforts at communication. They were spectacularly unsuccessful.

An interesting (to me) thing to notice is that he doesn't have the power to fundamentally de-rail me anymore. He can't hurt me. I'm pretty sure he can't hurt me legally, and I'm certain that he can't hurt me emotionally. Directed hatefulness (or maybe it's just disdain. Who can say?) can slow a person down for a bit, right enough. But when you realize that it only says anything about the initiator of it, it loses its power.

But I want to keep it that way. Our Wiccan sisters and brothers cast a circle when there's a need for safety. Positive energy and power are kept in and negative energy is kept out. I don't have any interest in casting a spell (unless someone knows how to turn a mathematician into a water slug. No....No... I'm trying to rise above!) But I want to borrow their metaphor, creating a circle of joy that he can't penetrate.

Maybe everyone has a little magic ;) How would I do this?

Oh, the Mystery

We were transported. Three sisters' purses lined up, revealing all kinds of things about each of us.

The one sister... What we said: tidy, contained, professional, classic, doesn't need a lot of stuff because a) she has a staff, and b) she freakin' gets things done.

What she thought: wound up a little tight, too reserved... "Oh my God, do my accessories not reflect my true inner self? Or worse... do they???

The next sister... What we said: hip, professional, arty, cool but not at all over the edge

What she thought: desperate to find the next hip thing, I have the same bag as every other person trying to accomplish the same thing.

The next sister... What we said: creative, no one else has this bag, cute (did we say cute?)

What she thought: It's $10 of fabric from the cupboard and a D-Ring from Jo-anne Fabrics. I'm so lame.

So... now that some of you have met my sisters, whose bag is whose? And why in the bloody blue blazes are we so hard on ourselves??

Can I Have an Extension???

It's the end of the semester and that's the song in the air, so I might as well sing it too ;)

Here's what's going on. I promise. I have eloquent posts floating around in my head. But yesterday I had three papers and a presentation due. Dave's back in town and was quite convinced that I was going to let him come get his stuff yesterday, in spite of my clear indication that Tuesday was the ONLY day this week that didn't work for me. Standing my ground led to some contretemps that were unpleasant and probably unproductive.

I tried to explain that things are different now. I will not cower when he blusters. (I didn't phrase it like that.) Almost without a doubt, he thinks I was being bitchy. If that's his only language for a strong woman who takes up space on the planet, well, so be it. His vocabulary limitations are not my problem.

And then tonight, I got called in to work unexpectedly.

I will download pictures and write about my birthday. I promise. One of my sisters has some interesting video I will try to embed.

In the meantime, I offer you this -the first draft of my new intention statement for my life. It's about where I want to go, but phrased in the present tense. Hopefully, that will help me live the dream. Questions? Comments?

I am a scholar-practitioner, working to create a gentler world for the poorest and a more vibrant world of ideas for the community of scholars. I am a playful athlete and a confident creator of beautiful things. I cherish my family and friends and let them know it. I go to bed at night certain that I have done my best to create the conditions of my own life.

I Won't Be Gone Long

I had a birthday to make my heart sing. I have pictures. I want to tell you about it,

BUT

I have SO MUCH TO DO. I'm sick-to-my-stomach busy for the next 48 hours. I'm hoping to make it through with some grace and skill, but the grace and skill part might be eluding me.

I'll post on Thursday, complete with pictures and fawning over my amazing friends and family and ... all the things I want to do. Just hang on, please.

Neglected Books

I got this meme from Elizabeth over at Lonely Wombat. Apparently, these are the books most frequently marked as "unread" by Library Thing's users. One wonders why people keep them around, I suppose. I mean, certainly, I've read every book on my bookshelves! (cough...sputter...nose growing!) Here's the game. Bold the ones you've read, underline the ones you read for school, and italicize the ones you started but didn't finish. Here's the twist: add (*) beside the ones you liked and would (or did) read again or recommend to other people.

The Aeneid
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
American Gods
Anansi Boys
Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir
Angels & Demons
*Anna Karenina
Atlas Shrugged
Beloved
The Blind Assassin
Brave New World
*The Brothers Karamazov
The Canterbury Tales
The Catcher in the Rye
Catch-22
A Clockwork Orange
Cloud Atlas
Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed
A Confederacy of Dunces
The Confusion
The Corrections
The Count of Monte Cristo
*Crime and Punishment
Cryptonomicon
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
David Copperfield
Don Quixote
Dracula
Dubliners
Dune
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
*Emma
Foucault’s Pendulum
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
The God of Small Things
The Grapes of Wrath
Gravity’s Rainbow
Great Expectations
Gulliver’s Travels
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The Historian : a novel
*The Hobbit
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
*The Iliad
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
The Inferno
*Jane Eyre
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
The Kite Runner
Les Misérables
Life of Pi : a novel
Lolita
Love in the Time of Cholera
Madame Bovary
*Mansfield Park
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlemarch
Middlesex
Mrs. Dalloway
*The Mists of Avalon
Moby Dick
Neverwhere
1984
Northanger Abbey
*The Odyssey
Oliver Twist
*The Once and Future King
One Hundred Years of Solitude
On the Road
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Oryx and Crake : a novel
*A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
*Persuasion
The Picture of Dorian Gray
*The Poisonwood Bible
*A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
*Pride and Prejudice
The Prince
Quicksilver
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
The Satanic Verses
The Scarlet Letter
*Sense and Sensibility
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Silmarillion
Slaughterhouse-five
The Sound and the Fury
*A Tale of Two Cities
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
The Time Traveler’s Wife
To the Lighthouse
Treasure Island
The Three Musketeers
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Vanity Fair
*War and Peace
Watership Down
White Teeth
*Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
*Wuthering Heights
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values


So, there are benefits to going to a Great Books college -and most of them show up in these all-important-to-living-a-full-life memes ;) But I haven't even heard of some of these books. Apparently their authors aren't dead enough, so we didn't study them!

Bereft, Darlings, Simply Bereft ;)

Right this minute, I love my life.

It's too hot here. We're having our annual few days where having an air conditioner (or six) would be really nice. And in the interest of hospitality, I'll do my best to get them into the windows before my sisters get here. I ought to hate these days where sweat runs down your back even when you're holding still, but I love them. The sky is blue. The grass is still green (that won't last much longer).


The lilies are beautiful. The whole things just hurts your eyes it's so lovely.

And I'm on vacation. As a person who has always worked too hard, even at meaningless jobs, it's interesting to love NOT working sometimes. I never understood that before now. The silence...the not needing to go anywhere I don't want to go... the absence of people needing things NOW (whether or not they really do)...I ought to feel bereft, but I don't.

I'm loving my school-work. It ought to be tedious to be back in a classroom. It SO VERY isn't. It can be over-freaking-whelming to try to get everything done. But the joy of having ideas banging around in my head again, that's almost too much to bear, it's so wonderful.



I ought to be lonely, not having a man around, and all. I am SO VERY NOT. I wish I could do more with my friends and family, true enough. Sometimes I have to say no to opportunities because I just can't schedule something in. But another way of saying the same thing is that there is an embarrassment of riches in the social department. I have all I can do and then some.

I know you must have noticed that most of the time I focus on the things I'm not getting done, on the opportunities I miss or never even noticed until they were gone. I concede, possibly, that I'm a little hard on myself :) And maybe in light of those days, these good days seem a little mercurial. Perhaps.

But today, all is right in my world. Right this minute I'm not lacking a thing that I need or want. And tomorrow my sisters arrive. Could it GET any better?

Escape Velocity

Escape velocity is the speed at which the kinetic energy of an object is equal to the magnitude of its gravitational potential energy. It is the speed needed to "break free" from a gravitational field without any additional impulse. (So, it's a speed rather than a velocity? Which explains why it's called a velocity. Oh my brain.)

But what it is today is a metaphor. It takes some energy to launch a life. It takes, apparently, quite a lot of energy. And the hardest part is launching the damn rocket the first inch off the launch pad. You guys mostly get the credit for that in my life.

Never fear. I'll take credit where credit is due ;) I'm getting better at that. I'm getting better at defending my turf, at standing my ground, AND at flying. But the getting me off my launch pad -that's you.

So, it's time to have another party. A thank-you party. A celebration. And a birthday party.

Last year, my birthday party was a cold sterile affair. I didn't know why yet, but of course now I do. This year it's going to be a thing of joy -in spite of the rather tragic number attached to this birthday. You're all invited and I hope you come.

It's Friday at 7 at my house. Be there! I've escaped the black hole where I was a year ago. I really have. It turns out that Dave is the kind of guy women get over ;) It turns out that I can have a life that is exciting and shiny and new. Please let me thank you for that. Come on over!

I didn't have a perfect day

I had the most amazing realization today. Here's the background.

I've had the stomach flu for a few days. It's going around the shelter. We've had four people in the hospital, for heaven's sakes. But I was just .... discomfited for 36 hours, and I'm feeling fine now.

So I had three days off from a job I don't particularly like anyway. And then, Thursdays are always hard, and today was true to form. And then there was a 2 hour meeting at the end of the bloody day. And then, I heard from my lawyer as to the tactics that are likely to be on display at the settlement hearing. And....

Six months ago I would have been sobbing into my soup.

But tonight, I sat at my new kitchen table and drank my single glass of wine and ate my baked potato and salad and read my book and thought..."this is lovely. Nothing about this would be improved if Dave were here. I'm sort of glad he's not."

I didn't have a perfect day. But I confronted some hard things. I heard some good things. I had a pleasant evening with my book and my dinner. I had a lovely little bike ride before it got dark.

It wasn't a perfect day, but it was a powerful day.

Leaning Forward into my Life

I'm not a risk taker. I think we've established that. But I'm learning.

Somehow today it sunk in. I need to do still more. Accept still more responsibility -and live up to it. Accept more opportunities. Stop seeing so many things as insurmountable challenges.

My house, for example. Getting it appraised for the divorce settlement has just been a ridiculous ordeal. I'm on my third appraiser -fourth if you count the one Dave chose. This guy, my third choice, will finally give me something I can use, I hope. The first one came up with numbers that were indefensibly low. Those numbers benefited me, but honestly, they were crap. The second one wouldn't share how he arrived at his probably-reasonable numbers. So, his position was really also indefensible, in a legal sense. Yesterday I finally met with someone who will give me what I need. But it was hard to hear his blunt assessment of my house. There is a LOT that needs to be addressed before I could consider selling it. And if I'm going to fix all that, I might as well live here, for heaven's sakes. It was good to have the benefit of fresh eyes and to hear his candid advice, but it wasn't exactly easy.

Step up to the plate. It is at least possible that I will get a paid-for house from the divorce settlement. If I put aside what would be even a modest house payment and use it for repairs, I'll be making progress.

Career stuff. I still don't know what I'm going to do about my current job. But it became clearer to me tonight that I need to do something other than coast through this class I'm teaching. Not that I would coast, really. But I'm not grabbing it with both hands and shaking it, you know? There are opportunities I need to grab. A conference on women and leadership in Sri Lanka. A conference in Denver. A long study-opportunity in Ireland. These are things I need to take advantage of. I need to work the rest of my life out so that I can take advantage of these opportunities. I need to figure out a way to pay for them.

Step up to the plate. Stop thinking "wouldn't that be nice?" and just make it happen.

I had lunch with the girl-child today and I was venting that I felt overwhelmed and couldn't do everything that needed to be done. I'm going to need to buy a new car soon. I have a house to fix. I have relationships with friends and family that I am woefully neglecting. I have responsibilities to my career. I can't do it.

She just calmly said, "you ARE doing it." Oh yeah. I guess I am. Now to do a little bit more. Maybe I lived such a small life for so long that comparatively little forward motion feels like it's a whirlwind. Maybe there's room for a little more oomph.

I'll sleep when I'm dead ;)

"Meeting" my Needs

A post in which Andrea rants. Don't faint ;)

I actually don't mind meetings. In my world, they are a good way of getting things done. Social work is..ummm... social. We're supposed to solve problems in circles. Academics occasionally lack social skills strictly speaking, but the "come let us reason together" idea is very available to them. So between one thing and another I spend a lot of time sitting around a table, trying to work things out.

But some meetings send me right over the edge into a snark fest. I hate meetings that could be replaced by e-mail, memo, text message, or even podcast. Meetings are for discussion points, not announcements. I have decreed ;) But really, doesn't that seem right, for most situations? If you want to be sure we saw it, ask us to respond to the message. If at that point there seem to be misunderstandings, then we do need a discussion.

Every meeting has a cost. Six people were in the snark-fest-resulting meeting yesterday. Multiply their salaries by an hour and a half, and then ask if there were that much benefit to the agency, the people we serve, or us. NO NO NO. It took half an hour for the announcement that the new director wants us to have house meetings for the residents. Got it. Move on. No wait... it needs to be said again. Could that dollar amount have been put to better use? Going way out on a limb here.... OH YEAH!

I hate meetings that feel like 8th grade student council. If I never sit in a circle and tell my life story again, I will be fine with that. Don't make me do activities. I do not want to play with trust walks, hula hoops, or oranges. Don't let people have (too many) side conversations. Facilitate the damn thing and let us go home. Again, it's a question of respect. Please at least pretend that you respect our time. Don't nag us to turn off the lights, and then be so flagrantly wasteful of your human resources.


I hate meetings with no agenda. I hate meetings where my presence is required but not important. If I'm really just warming a chair, you should at least be subtle about it. That's just good manners.


Now... I need to think of a polite way to bring this up where it matters.

Trowel and Error

I've blogged about Dave's gardens before. Their rectilinear nature... their colors... their beauty, certainly, but also their rigidity.

Well, I'd sort of taken care of the rigidity part by not taking care of them at all. It had become a jungle out there. I had to walk the long way around the garage to take the trash out because I could no longer navigate the path through the gardens. The peonies and the cone flowers and heaven-only-knows-what had decided that the path belonged to them.

I had good intentions. But I would look at the gardens and not know what was what, feel stupid, and then go in the house. This, as it happens, isn't much of a gardening strategy. My dear friend Terri took pity on me. Or she felt vaguely unsettled by what I was allowing to happen back there. I think she might have thought the jungle would encroach into the house, strangle me in the night, and then creep back into its bed, apparently docile but really just waiting for its next victim. Clearly, she had to take action.

We just got started, but there are 7 giant yard waste bags waiting at the curb, along with several piles of dead branches. We lopped, we yanked, we pruned, we weeded, we heaved, we hauled. Tomorrow, I'm going to be hoping that aspirin is a food group ;) Sometimes Terri would say "that's a weed. Let's get rid of it." More often, though, she would say "what do you want? It's up to you."

IT'S UP TO ME???

Oh yeah. Right. It IS. I don't like hollyhocks, especially. She does. Some of them have gone to her house. I don't have to have them, just because they're planted here!! I do dearly love my lilac tree. So we tried to save it, even though disastrous things happened to it this winter. See all the stuff we had to cut off it?

There's still a lot to do. But today I remembered that I like to garden. I learned that if I accidentally pull up a poppy while I'm aiming for the weeds, the police do not come. I learned that I like to play in the dirt. I learned that these are my gardens now. And I can learn to tend them, nurture them, and help them evolve into welcoming, nurturing spaces.

Thanks, Terri!

And I love to garden with someone else who thinks that gardening involves sitting!

The Masks We Wear

I tell myself that all day long each of us reveals exactly who we are to the careful observer. And some of us are so right out there in front with our stuff that there's just no pretending. It's not exactly a secret that, say, I can get tangled up in my own head with questions about things, or that I can be a tidge hard on myself or... You get the idea.

But apparently I believe -really believe- mutually exclusive things. And I think we all do this, too. I think we both reveal who we are and mask who we are.

I believe -absolutely believe- that you, dear readers, are all beautiful, brilliant, skinny, talented, capable, successful, and you deserve every wonderful thing that has happened to you. You may think otherwise, that it's just a mask you wear. But (in my assessment of this), I'm right, because I'm a careful observer. You are telling your story with your actions, and I can read the story. I, on the other hand, am nutty as a fruitcake, smart enough, I suppose, fat, lazy, and disorganized. I sometimes make people believe otherwise, but the true story is my inner uncertainty. Somehow I think that any good or strong thing I do is either an accident or in spite of really fundamental fucked-up-ness.

It doesn't occur to me that you might be masking uncertainties or frailties, too. Nor does it occur to me that other people could be careful observers of me, and read the true story of my actions as brave or powerful or ...anything much of interest.

But here's what happened last night, you guys. And you're going to laugh. At quarter to midnight, I was still at work. A much younger woman who works at the same place called and wanted to pick my brain. I've only recently told the people at work about the ending of my marriage. At first it didn't seem like their business. Then I liked the fact that there were some people who didn't know; there was a place of respite. Then, gradually, it started to feel like I was lying by not telling people and it had to be done. They have all been a model of support and caring. She too is in the process of ditching a big-time Mr. Wrong, and having a hard time of it.

She said.... she ACTUALLY said... "I need your advice. I can't get over SCUM BAG LOSER-GUY (I believe she might have used his name here) no matter what I do, and you (meaning ME!) seem to be doing so well". I wrote it down in my journal, I was so excited. And then I remembered that she sort of wanted the conversation to be about her ;) I managed to pull myself together and talk to her, I promise.

I have made it a point not to bring my troubles to work. (I just dump them all over the internet instead.) There are of course professional reasons why doing anything else would be a bad idea. But I also just need there to be a place where that's not the main story about me. But my friends and family know how close to the edge I got. And she actually thought I had it together!!!

Do you suppose I might????

An Ode to Thalia

Thalia is the green bike. She is a work of art.

I did two things when I got back to town in the fall: I joined a different gym and I bought a fabulous bike -a more-expensive-than-my-car bike. The thing is, both those things match my old fitness level, but are WAY more than I need now. A year of emotional upheaval and 6 months now of ever-increasing scheduling madness have pretty much destroyed my fitness levels.

It's almost embarrassing to ride this bike these days. Here's this fabulous work-of-art bike that Lance Armstrong would be proud to ride -and it's being ridden by a fat, middle-aged woman who would do fine with a bike from Wal-mart. But today is my late-day at work and the weather is gorgeous, so I braved the existing-only-in-my-head ridicule and went out for a 1/2 hour bike ride. And, as frequently happens, the cobwebs cleared and ....


I HAD A THOUGHT.

Oh...my...God.... an actual thought ;)

I was right to join the gym and buy the bike. I don't have to be already-fit to deserve them. Those two actions signaled my new life, done my way. It's just taking me a little while to figure out how I want that to look.

I could, for example, use the lovely Thalia as a way to get some fun vacationing in. Next year, I could drive the two of us to, say, Pennsylvania, visit with my sister, and ride the Covered Bridge Metric Century. I checked bikeride.com, and there are interesting rides where each of my siblings and my mother live. This could be fun, and a project well worth training for. I can and will bike the beautiful paths and roads around here. I can reclaim fitness starting where I am, a little bit at a time. I don't have to do it all today.

My Babies Left the Nest

Not those babies! They did, of course, and they're flying spectacularly, bless their dear hearts. And of course, I couldn't resist the urge to put a picture of my pretty babies where everyone could see it ;)

Different babies. I woke up this morning to...nothing. It took me a minute to figure out why that was strange. Every year for decades now a pair of birds (I assume not literally the same birds.) has made a nest on the roof by my bedroom. I can tell when the babies are born, and I listen for their chattering and fluttering around. Then after a few weeks of racket, I remember how much trouble babies are, and I think "for goodness sakes, settle down or fly away!". And then they do, and I miss them. Sound familiar?

I guess yesterday their mother must have decided that the time had come, and she sent them off to try their wings.

The metaphor is so obvious it's a little sloppy. But here's the thing. How does the mom or the baby know it's time to fly? The stakes are a tad high; if she's wrong, it's not going to go well at all. Does the newly-independent baby ever come back to visit the old homestead, looking backward rather than forward?

I guess the birds grow. At first they shift and wiggle and make room for each other, eat more, and generally make it work. And then one day, there is no "making it work." They don't fit in the nest anymore, and off they go. Einstein said that problems cannot be solved at the level of thinking that created them in the first place. So, the baby birds have a paradigm shift? I suppose they must. They fly away, and as far as I know, don't come back.

And if they can do it, I can do it. I think about the broken-me of last fall, and realize it's important to claim the progress I've made and the successes I've had. And even some of the failures were successes of a sort, because I found the courage to try. Thinking small -being small- was my part in the marital debacle. I was unfaithful to me. So,continuing to be small, assuming Einstein is right, is not going to get me out of this jam.

Thinking I need to challenge:
I'll never get a better job.
I can't return to academia.
I will always be pudgy.
I can't be financially independent.
I won't succeed alone.
I'm physically weak.
My body is betraying me.

Wouldn't it be nice if I could get that chatter to silence, just like the baby birds flew away and left silence behind??? I'll work on it. I have to.

An Afghan for Sam

OK, Sam. I seem destined to take bad pictures of your afghan. The thing is... it's actually not ugly. Which works out nicely, because who wants an ugly afghan? The colors aren't this muddy, really. But you should know that I have officially abandoned hope for giving this afghan to your mom to bring back to you at the end of this month. It's just not happening. Sorry, dude.

Do Not Go Gentle

Well, damn it anyway.

Most of you know that I like to climb around on rocks with my children. I stink at it, but I love it. I also have this medical theory that one's body is beautifully made, designed to heal itself most of the time. Yeah. About that. I've had some chronic, worsening pain for a while. I figured I was bashing myself around with the rock climbing. (And I do have some interesting owies, if you'd like to see them.) But I finally had to concede that my body was not healing and go to the doctor.

I told him that the pain in my knee was from a rock climbing accident -which I believed to be true. Unfortunately, it was not. I have arthritis and not just in my knee. It's in my hands and feet as well -which at least explains the chronic pain I have there, for whatever that's worth. It's not, apparently, a mild case and the doctor concedes that I am too young for this situation to be quite as serious as it is. It makes knitting hard. On bad days, it even makes typing difficult. Yoga and biking and rock climbing can all hurt.

This seems like a situation that I should be able to reason away. Don't you get it? I am too young. I am not obese. As far as I know, I have none of the genetic risk factors. Shoo. Go bother someone else. Alas, arthritis seems to be immune to reason -and completely uninterested in the fact that it is an unwelcome guest in my life. Ghastly, rude thing!

So, this gets to be (yet another) area of my life where I have to take charge because of information I didn't want. I take medicine when I remember. Losing a bit of weight is now urgent and about much more than aesthetics. Reclaiming an exercise regimen is non-optional behavior. Finding new activities, adjusting old ones, figuring out what soothes, trying to be bigger and tougher than the obstacles -those are my tasks. Every once in a while, my brain dances around the questions of an old age fraught with limitations and indignities. Southern belle that I am, I channel Scarlet O'Hara and vow to think about it tomorrow. I just don't want to go there right now.

I know plenty of people who have it worse than I do, and I'm ashamed to be whining. But today I feel like I'm about 900 years old, and I'm raging.

Work it, Dylan, work it

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Stormy Weather

Here's what we have going on:



and this:



The clouds are going one way and the rain is going another?? Actually, now it's settling down a bit, but there for a while it was exciting. I love thunderstorms. I have a child who really REALLY didn't, until she was about 10. (Sorry, kid... English pronouns are gender-specific. It's kind of obvious which one was in my bed at the first sound of thunder!) Actually, that's a lovely, cozy memory. Not the scared child part, exactly. But we'd be in bed, hear thunder... and then, like clockwork, the scuff of little pajama feet on the wood floors as said-incognito-child scampered to "safety".

She's become a grown-up and so have I. After I enjoyed the view and took some pictures, I ran around to see if the gutters were all working. That would be a no. I wonder what I do about that?

Planning for Healing

I gave up on regular planners a long time ago. I tried -and gave up on- web-based planners as well. I had a Palm Pilot and some other hand-held gizmos of the early days. They didn't work either. It is possibly not a surprise to you that my brain is quirky ;) But if there is to be any glimmer of hope that I will get to my appointments on time AND finish my projects AND take care of myself and other people, then I have to have something.

The Andrea-planner is born. Actually it's born and born again every month when it's time to print new pages. I admit to being a brat. If I don't like my tools, I won't use them. And then I'll forget to pick you up at the airport, or something. So it behooves all of us for me to have a planner that matches the whole bag of crazy that is my brain. I need a pen-and-paper tool for scheduling. I want two pages per day. I want them to be a certain size. I like it if the paper is pretty. One thing I particularly want is for the planning categories to make sense to me, and they have to be clever. God forbid I should be bored! This month they are:

Stage Your Comeback (this is physical health/fitness/weight stuff)
Be a Domestic Goddess (see yesterday)
Create a Life that Matters (this title still isn't quite right -it's learning/writing/blogging...that stuff)
Make Yourself Indispensable (work tasks)
Be Your Own Bodyguard (healing my heart, confronting my fears, positioning myself for the next job, financial security stuff)
Grow Your Roots (friends and family stuff)
Let Yourself Fly (making room for adventure and gratuitous self-care)

These categories have sub-tasks, and I get a little kick out of making sure that all the pieces of my life are getting attention and resources. And sometimes I learn something about my own growth and evolution by watching how that process goes.

I have almost nothing this month in "healing my heart". That meant, of course, taking steps to be less broken and defeated from this divorce process. I STILL haven't gotten around to anger at Dave, but I have managed boredom. I just don't care what he does anymore. Sometimes his narcissism surprises and appalls me, but it doesn't wound me. I think my heart isn't broken anymore. And I learned that from my planner!

I'm thinking that next month that category will be renamed Thriving After the Pain. Thriving as Revenge? (just kidding about that one) Surviving Becomes Thriving? Anyway... I'll think of the right witty category-name. But the point it, my heart is whole again. At least for now.

Home Economics

Nigella Lawson says it wryly in her first cookbook. It's roughly, "You don't want to be a domestic goddess. You want people to think you're a domestic goddess." I actually do want to be a domestic goddess, in some ways. My long-suffering life coach keeps encouraging me to explore why I'm embarrassed about that. (And I keep deflecting the question. I've got mad skills in the deflecting department!)

I mean, really. You guys know I knit. I'm certainly not embarrassed about that. You know I love playing around with my house and trying to make it pretty. You know I like to have parties and cook for my friends. You know I'm more than a little dotty about babies, especially ones I'm related to. I like "girl things," although I quibble with calling them girl things. I like the tasks that have historically been women's work. Is that better? Of course knitting was originally a guy thing -maybe- depends on who you ask. You see the problem.

Anyway... stop dithering, Andrea. Here's the point.

It only takes about 5 minutes of cruising around the blogosphere looking for other people who actually like making a home, before you want to flee, shrieking. Who are these people? "I want to honor my husband's greater needs." That kind of thing. Or the women who completely define themselves through their children; it's the only role they can imagine having ever. Or the horror that is FlyLady's website -someday I'll blog about why I think her stuff is so destructive. Whoever these people are, I certainly don't have much in common with them. There are a few sites where the young, hip women who made knitting trendy again are looking at other crafts, and making a home is part of their concern. But I'm not 20, and insouciance and coolness are no longer available to me. (Andrea whistles innocently.... can I make them believe that coolness was EVER available to me???)

This post was going to be about Mary's new pantry project, which I think is way more inspired than she's giving herself credit for. Stockpiling a pantry isn't just about saving money. It's about eating gracefully and intentionally. It's about being prepared for unexpected company and having a home that's ready to welcome people in. And saving money, too. I am going to play the pantry game. But I discovered -oh, stop the presses- that doing so was connected to other issues I need to think about.

I think I need a mission statement for my home. Even if it's not this house, my home will be somewhere. If I know how I want it to look and feel and "be", then I can craft a plan for getting there. My home won't be -has never been- the primary way that I live out my mission in the world. But it could be part of that, couldn't it?

Welcome and hospitality are justice issues, after all. Fun has to show up in the mission, too. Comfort. Warmth. Creativity. Gentleness.

OK, so it needs work. I'll think on it. And in the meantime, I'll stock up on canned tomato products and play the pantry game with other domestic goddesses.

Get Out of my Space!!!!

Not YOU, for goodness sakes!

This is another one of those posts that will convince you that it's a whole mess o' crazy inside my head. Here's what I'm thinking -two completely unrelated things that have linked themselves as possibly being about the same underlying thing.

I've thought for a while that my pretty bed might look better with two pillows on it instead of one. I had an extra pillow -with no pillowcase on it- on the floor next to the bed for at least a week. (Because we all know how hard it is to put a pillowcase on a pillow -insert eyeroll here!) Yesterday morning I finished the project and instantly felt uneasy. Last night, I went to bed with the other pillow on the bed and felt downright crowded. I threw the pillow back on the floor and this morning put it away in the linen closet.

Apparently, that bed is MY space. I don't want it to even look like I'm waiting for someone else to be there -not just in my bed, obviously. In my life, I mean. The second thing is weirder. Don't laugh.

I think I might have had a date. Now, wouldn't you think I would KNOW???? I went out with this guy I've known for a while. This one definitely wasn't a date. It was one of those "let's meet at the restaurant after work" deals addressed to anyone and everyone; we were just the only two who showed up. We had a lovely time and decided to meet up again a few weeks later. Now is that a date or not? Who the hell knows.

It turns out that it was remarkably date-like. And I felt EXACTLY as I had felt with the other pillow on my bed. This guy is a lovely friend. I told him I wanted to stop the other thing because I didn't want to not be friends. I know this guy -and think he's great. He wants a simple dating arrangement with absolutely no strings attached anywhere. God knows I don't want permanent attachment right now. But apparently I don't want ANY of that kind of attachment. He was about to walk into a whole pile of "complicated". And I was about to have to share my psychic space, and I'm absolutely not ready.

I'm me, after all. If I ever date again, I'm going to have thought about it, decided I'm ready, fretted about it for a while, freaked out... and then we'll see what happens. Over-analysis-R-us. It's all kind of the opposite of simple, in my head.

Now I get a little stuck. Thriving and sharing can't be opposites. In fact, thinking they are is pretty much the definition of narcissism, and I don't want to go there. Connection and loss of autonomy can't be the same thing. And the fact that I worry about those things teaches me more than a little about my marriage. Maybe until I figure out how to thrive and share, connect and fly, I really do need to keep that extra pillow off the bed.

An Afghan for Sam

Yikes, Sam. How do you feel about being nice and cozy in graduate school? Grad school is good. Grad school is fun. MUCH better than college!

Oh, okay.... I'll work harder.

And I'll upload a better picture. But first I have to replace the batteries in my camera. And I have to acknowledge that I can't fit 4 AAA batteries (which is what I bought a big pack of) into the space that wants 2 AAs. In a just world, that would work. Alas. So, it's back to the store I go.

Finding My Spot

Last night I had dinner with a friend from graduate school -so we've known each other a LONG time. At one point, we reflected that both of us came to this little burg following a guy. We'd never even heard of this town before. And both of those guys -poor benighted fools that they are- left us and this town. So here we are. This is our spot.

At least for now. My house is here, and as you know I'm having great fun making it really mine. Many of my friends are here. And for now at least, my children are here. I'm sure they won't be here forever; in fact I want them to think of the world as their playpen. But they're here now, and you wouldn't believe me if I told you I didn't love that.

I've stopped pretending, though, that I can see very far into my own future. I'm taking steps now that could lead me anywhere -and I don't mean that metaphorically. Seriously.... anywhere. I know it's several years down the pike before those (or any such) opportunities present themselves, but one can't help wondering about it!

I found this website that lets you take a quiz and find 24 cities in the United States that match your preferences: Find Your Spot. Every single one of my spots was in the south, and number 2 on the list was the city I grew up in. How weird is THAT?

My spots:

Hattiesburg, Mississippi (Honestly, I don't think I could live in Mississippi. Maybe in Oxford.)
Little Rock, Arkansas
Alexandria, Louisiana
Gainesville, Florida
Tallahassee, Florida
Tulsa, Oklahoma (doubt it)
Clarksville, Tennessee
Athens, Georgia
Biloxi, Mississippi
Shreveport, Louisiana
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Jackson, Mississippi (actually, this could be another Mississippi contender)
Mobile, Alabama
Houston, Texas (Texas is probably a non-starter for me.)
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Chattanooga, Tennessee
Corpus Christi, Texas
Pensacola, Florida
Galveston, Texas
College Station, Texas
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Nashville, Tennessee
Ocala, FLorida
Memphis, Tennessee


Seriously, these are NOT the places I thought would show up. San Francisco, I expected. Portland, Oregon I expected. I even expected Chicago. I expected ocean. Lots of ocean. What I got was mid-size cities in the South, close to big cities and mostly with colleges or universities. I got DeKalb, moved south ;)

Kicking Butt and Taking Names

So... I had one of those days that took a boatload of energy, but at the end of it I could say that I accomplished everything I said I would. Possibly not everything I ought to have done, but everything anyone was expecting me to do. Seriously... that's not an everyday thing in my world.

And then, because I was on an "I'm too sexy for my shoes" roll, I started....*gasp* not just cleaning my desk, but rearranging my files. See, I had this teensy little problem. My filing system didn't match much of anything -including the laws of physics and how my brain works. So I was afraid to file anything, figuring I'd never see it again. So, when my lawyer would say, "could you give me some data about... something or other?", I'd confidently reply "sure!", as though I knew exactly where those 400 pieces of paper were. Then I'd stay up all night finding them. Seriously, even I know that there has to be a better way.

But, all the systems you read about are for people who only pretend to be disorganized. Those of us who are have to think long and hard about how we can arrange things so that we will be able to locate them again. I need it to be true that the papers on my desk aren't singing the "Andrea can't succeed alone. She's too stupid to take care of herself." song. So, in the interest of shutting those pieces of paper up (WHAT???? You papers don't talk to you?), I poured myself a glass of wine and got to work.

This picture was already well into the process. Note the episode of West Wing playing on the computer, the almost empty wine glass, and the phone -in case I needed to call 911.

To give you the full effect, this came from off the desk and out of the file cabinet. Not good. But I hung in there.

I was beningly ruthless. I told myself that I didn't have to throw anything away. I had files on everything under the sun: ideas for research projects, ideas for community service, cards from people who love me, ideas for parties and decorating, half-hearted efforts at organizing my retirement information and my bank accounts. I went through them all.

I decided it was all about color. Blue files are personal. Yellow files are financial. Red files are for big pieces of property: the house, the car, my bike (worth more than my car, so this makes sense.) Plain boring files are for divorce documentation; that project doesn't merit the cool colored file folders. Green is for employment records, applying for new jobs, school stuff...that piece of life. I need one more color for insurance of all types -which I suppose could be financial, but in my brain it's its own category. Purple, perhaps? Check me out!


This is the inside of the file drawer. Am I the most organized thing, or WHAT????

Those of you who easily create order and grace wherever you go won't understand what a triumph this is. I know that; I am the child -and the despair- of such a person. There are things I'm good at that you aren't, I imagine. But this is a huge thing for me. I created a system that I can work with. It's not cumbersome, nor will it chide me when I get it wrong. I invented it; I can un-invent it. It won't mess with me ;)

Is this amazing or what?

I'm sounding flippant, but here's the thing. I got rid of stuff that has nothing to do with the new me. I revisited old dreams that really could happen now. I took charge of knowing what's going to happen in my financial future. (Nothing amazing, that's for sure, but I won't be eating cat food, which is what I had feared.) This was just another piece of making my life MINE. I'm beginning to suspect that is just, well, the beginning. I've already eliminated most of the clothes from the old me. I have a new hair style and new glasses. I'm starting to have new furniture here and there. And every time that I claim the new thing and eliminate the old truncated me, I feel stronger and better. And it was all because I had a good day at school ;)

Push-Button Living

Well, well. That last post is a study in why I shouldn't write and post late at night. That point could have been made in about 1/3 as many words. Sorry. And THAT is exactly my point this morning. Do everything you have to but don't do more than you have to.

I realized a while ago that my house cleaning during the week has devolved to "if it can get done by pushing a button, then I do it. Other than that, it waits until my days off." And of course now that school has started, I don't have days off. This could become a problem!!

I push the button on the dishwasher and my dishes get clean.
I push the button on Red October, the vacuuming robot. (He's red. When he's finished vacuuming or runs out of charge, he just stops wherever he is, which means I have to go looking for him. Hence, the Hunt for Red October.)
I push the button on my automatic shower cleaner. (He doesn't have a name, you'll be glad to know.)
I push the buttons on the washer and dryer. Sadly there is no button to push that folds the clothes. This is a terrible design flaw.
Obviously, I have stuff in the toilet tank which means I don't have to clean that.
My coffee makes itself in the morning and serves as my alarm clock.

There is a floor mopping robot, but I haven't talked myself into spending the money for it yet. I undoubtedly will at some point, since I seem to be shameless about these matters. There's even a gutter cleaning robot. There is a lawn mowing robot, too. I don't have those, either. Moving away from the robot idea, there are dishwashers that are cabinets, so your dishes are put away when they're finished washing -although I can't really see how that works exactly, unless every single cabinet is also a dishwasher.

Here are some more things a busy person could really use:
Closets ought to be, in some magic engineering way that I don't understand, washers and dryers. You hang your clothes up, and once a week they get washed and dried where they hang.

There ought to be a dusting robot that will crawl around over the floors and baseboards and furniture.

And what, for heaven's sake, are we going to do about windows? SOMEONE has to do them, and it's apparently not me. Someone please design a button I can push for that -and don't tell me that the Windex bottle comes with a button to push. I've heard that it does, but buying the bottle seems to be insufficient. Necessary but insufficient, as the logicians say.

So, what accommodations do you use that allow you to live in something other than squalor? I've considered hiring a person to deep-clean my house, but my "hiring people" budget has been used up with the lawn-mowing crew. Can I really work full time, have a big house, return to the university, see my friends, work out periodically, knit and do the occasional creative thing.... and live to tell the tale? (The thought does occur to me that once I'm finished with the thousand crappy details of getting divorced, that should free up some time.)

I concede that I can't do absolutely everything. I'm saying that I don't want to do everything. The things I'm willing (oh so very willing) to let go of are the homemaking tasks I never liked anyway. I'm not (yet) willing to let go of the idea of living with some sort of grace and intention, though. So what are the tricks you know?

An Afghan for Sam

Finally, I'm finished fixing the (latest round of) mistakes and I'm back to making progress. That right-most edge where there's been some ripping? Yeah, I see it. I'm just hoping that blocking works its magic once again. Time will tell.

Epiphany

This post works the way the rest of my mind works; there's a long list of experiences and resources that I learned about from people who don't know each other. These things rumble around in (the vast open space that is) my brain. Eventually things become connected that probably aren't. But making those connections is powerful for me, and if nothing else the process keeps me off the streets.

So, here's the deal. A long time ago, I learned from Green LA Girl about TED talks. I think she wanted people to go look at Al Gore's talk, which was wonderful. While poking around on the TED site, I came across Sir Ken Robinson's talk on creativity, which was so wonderful that I have watched it again and again. I've purchased his books and actually read them -the connection between buying books and actually knowing what's inside them seems to require reading them. But hope springs eternal, and I don't always actually read the books I purchase.

He is writing a book called Epiphany where he interviews people to learn about how they discovered their talent. His point is probably going to be that we educate people out of creativity, which is going to have disastrous consequences in the future. While arguably true, that's not my point today. So, I started to think about how I discovered my talent.

This is going to sound improbable, but it's true. I discovered my talent by knitting, hanging out with a community of women who knit, and teaching beginners to knit. A lot of my life started to come together, with knitting as a catalyst for that process. It's not that I need to get a job that allows me to knit all day, although that would be terrific. What I need to do, I learned anew, is have a life that allows me to teach, think, empower people to take charge of their own circumstances, and maybe write a little to help other teachers do the same. (I need more than that, but this is a powerful start.)

More importantly, though, I've learned about creativity and how essential it is to my life. I've knitted and sewn and embroidered and crocheted for almost as long as I can remember, but I've never thought of myself as particularly creative. Here's the sequence of how that's gone -and my knitting group experience seems to suggest that this is typical. At first you can't read a pattern at all. So, for most of us, that means we can't make complicated things. A desire to make those more complicated things leads us to learn about patterns. Then for a while we MUST follow patterns -or so we think. But eventually, we've made enough sweaters or baby booties or whatever that we can start tweaking patterns. "I want this sweater to have that pattern's neckline and that other pattern's stitch and ...." You're essentially writing patterns now, but you think of it as pattern-tweaking, probably. You're using the template in your head of THE SWEATER to create your sweater. Pretty soon, you don't bother even with the template. Some knitters, sometimes, can rethink the template and come up with something completely new. I offer you the disturbingly creative mind of Cat Bordhi as an example of what I'm talking about. That woman doesn't let ingrained templates frame her thinking, not for a New York minute.

The remarkable women and men who come to the yarn shop looking for knitting help have taught me something life changing. There are no bad knitters. There are inexperienced knitters, certainly. No one's born knowing how to do this; there is a day when you start. And that day will involved dropped stitches, random increases, and a few tangles. To start down the path that might lead you to become a creative knitter, you have to be willing to be wrong. And being wrong occasionally won't end once you're an experienced knitter. (Did you read my last Sam's Afghan post?) Creativity is not the same thing as being wrong. But if you're aren't willing to be wrong, you'll never be creative.

And some beginners are courageous enough to begin exploring that tension. From them, I am learning about nothing less important than the gift of human imagination. In the process of teaching people to knit well, I worry the most about two groups of people: the ones who think mistakes are failures, which leads them to believe fairly quickly that they are failures, and the ones who pride themselves on perfectly implementing someone else's ideas. These people will say things like "I rip whenever I see the slightest mistake." First, ripping isn't always the best way of fixing a mistake. And secondly, look again at your work. Have you made a mistake, or have you created something uniquely yours? Again, creativity and being wrong aren't the same thing. You might have made a mistake that must be corrected, for reasons of fabric structure or a deep psychological need to have your creation match the picture in your head. Those are both valid reasons, but please be willing to consider the possibility that the thing you've done isn't so much a mistake as a design feature.

OK, I've wandered even further afield than I meant to -and that's saying something. But here's the point. (Did I hear you say "Oh thank God"??) I know I'm good at some things. I'm beginning to suspect that, in fact, I was put on this planet to accomplish something that is uniquely mine to accomplish. And I learned that from many people -some of whom I may never actually meet. But I've learned the most from my knitting friends, many of whom think I've taught THEM something. These remarkable women should stand up and take a bow for having accomplished the marvelous. They've taught me what my role in life might be.

And that the police won't come if you make a mistake in your knitting. It's just sticks and some yarn. Pick it up and try something. Which is a life lesson too.

Take This Job and....

OK... you know what's next and I didn't say that. And I won't say it precipitously, never fear. But there have been new heart breaks at work that just tear me up. The job I didn't get? They offered it to a 25 year old who can't spell. Who...ummm... used to work with me. And today I got a snippy little e-mail about completing some task that had been hers to do. Oh yeah, this is going to go well. How much disappointment, affront, and rejection can I endure? That's apparently not a rhetorical question. Sigh....

But there's this "Andrea returns to the academy" project -to make it sound more lofty than it really is ;) My heart lightens when I start to think about tiny research projects that I could begin. I'm interested in disaster response in fragile states. I'm interested in community change. I'm interested in social justice. I could sit down with someone from Doctors Without Borders, compare them to the Red Cross. (Don't get me started. Just believe me when I tell you that there are important differences.) Maybe I could learn something about establishing an effective response, particularly about disseminating credible information to people in crisis. (Don't get me started. Just believe me when I tell you that believed-information doesn't come from authority figures most of the time.) Maybe I could present at the Bangkok conference next year. Why NOT???? Maybe while I'm that far from home, I could use leftover international connections to see if I could meet Aung San Suu Kyi. (Yes, I know she doesn't live in Bangkok. Work with me here.) Another little project of mine is that I've always wanted to understand how (or if) communities heal from mass shooting kinds of experiences. Unfortunately, I don't have to travel to work on that one.

Seriously, my heart sings. I could get to do this.

Not soon, though. Not full-time, anyway. But I'm on the path. So maybe this job -even with its insults- is the job I need in the short term. I absolutely don't take it home. I don't care enough, truth be told. It pays the bills. It offers me a lot of flexibility in terms of scheduling. Most people, I'm guessing, don't love their jobs. It's a means to an end. I've been blessed up until now; I know that. But there's no harm, necessarily, in sharing the lot of the common man ;) Suck it up. Go to work. Get a paycheck. And let it take you somewhere you want to go.

Maybe I didn't get this new job because it wasn't the job I was meant to have. (Thanks, Lianne, for that insight.) I'm not sure why this message from the universe had to come with SUCH a heavy hand, but for now it's the assumption I'm going to operate from. And in the extra time that not caring all that much creates, I'll work on the stuff that makes me feel light -and powerful at the same time.

Remind me I said this when there are days that make me want to spew disdain, correct spelling, and use my intellect as a weapon.

My Wise Sister

I've blogged before about the lawn mowers in my life. (I'll get to the wise sister part of this story. It's just going to take a few minutes. ) Basically the idea is that there are things in my life that I need to use, but that I can't use for some reason or another. The lawn mower is one of those things; I'm too bloody short to start it. Alas, my grass grows just like everyone else's. I want to be a good neighbor and not have that house from which people politely avert their eyes. But not being able to use my mower makes it less than perfectly useful.

Being me, of course, I have to over-analyze everything and start using the lawn mower as a metaphor for all the stumbling blocks in my life. Do I buy a lawn mower I can start and learn to mow the grass? Will that be the empowering, good-neighbor choice? Do I hire some neighbor child to mow? Do I stand on a chair and start the lawn mower I do have? (And don't you just know how that story is going to end??)

So, last October I showed up at my sister's doorstep, bloody and broken from relationship drama. (Not literally bloody. Don't worry.) I'm sure she remembers those days, but I really don't. Can't. Won't. Whatever. But I do remember sitting out on her deck, drinking...something.... wine, probably. And her lawn was being mowed (mown? that sounds wrong, somehow)-and not by her. What a fabulous idea. She'd worked some deal with the service that mows the grass for the common areas in the subdivision.

Somewhere in my shattered mind, the idea took root. The house just south of me is a rental and they have a service mow the grass. What if I call them and ask them to mow mine at the same time? It is not the most cost-efficient strategy for a girl on a budget. But I can't tell you how wonderful it is not to have to wince and worry and promise myself that I really will -I mean it this time- get to the grass this weekend. It's such a treat to come home and see that my grass has been mowed and the edges trimmed. And they even put the lawn chairs back where they belong.

It's almost like having a pool boy, without the pool ;)

And, by the way, that sister is wise about other things as well. My other sibling are brilliant as well, but this one has recently started a blog. Go see: Nina.

An Afghan for Sam

OK, Sam-o, Auntie Andrea hasn't been at her knitting best this week. We've had a bit of a setback. I have this knitting attitude that others might call hubris. Patterns??? Pish-posh. That's for the little people. And you know how hubris usually works out in the Greek myths?

Yeah, pretty much, that's the story. I didn't kill my father and marry my mother, or anything. But the reminder from the universe that I, too, am one of the little people has not been subtle. As Franklin says, " the knitting gods have chosen this moment to knock back a few beers and have a giggle at my expense." That light blue rectangle with the needles in it? I knit that one in dark green. And the little dark blue square? Oh yeah, that was the wrong color, too. So, I've done some ripping and re-knitting.

I'll pull myself together this week, I promise.

Falling Away

I'm giving up for now. I can't go to church. It's part decision and part fait accompli. But somehow it's good to admit it for now.

I work on Sundays. My schedule prevents me from going to the Mass I've always gone to. OK, that's not so bad. But my schedule actually prevents me from attending any of the services in the summer. I could -I really could- go to church in Aurora or Naperville, close to where I work. I kept saying I was going to try that, but somehow it never happened.

I tried all sorts or arguments with myself. I miss liturgy, I said to myself. Maybe I do. That's certainly something that Catholics say, and I'm sure they mean it. I'm not so sure it's the driving force for me, although I vastly prefer the Catholic liturgy over the Protestant version. I told myself that I needed the community -except I feel very little sense of community when I'm there. I even tried telling myself that Dave will be back soon, and I need to stake the Newman Center out as my turf. Oh for heaven's sakes. Fortunately for my self-esteem, that wasn't motivating either.

Here's the thing. There are people from church I don't want to lose. (Mike, are you paying attention?) But the parish itself is in a bit of a quagmire. There are times in a church's life-history and a parish's life-history when parishioners have to suck it up and wait for the good times to return. Catholics are used to taking the long view on this; things change at a fairly glacial pace and we're used to that.

When you're at your personal best - or even at equilibrium- you can wait. But I am so very far from that. Church -not the people, but the experience of being church together- is so much less than I need it to be. It's so much less than it's capable of being. It's just another disappointing relationship.

Of course, the negative self-talk starts immediately. A good person would value the relationship enough to stick it out through the bad times, I maintain. Of course, I could just be projecting from one relationship to another. Or, on the other hand, maybe I'm learning from one bad relationship and applying it to another! And, if you remove yourself from the pews and the collection basket, then you lose your ability to facilitate change. I've said that often enough, and it's true. But I just don't have enough energy to tend to being a change agent for the entire bloody church!

Here's my argument -for now. In a real community, people cycle in and out of being the needy one and being the supportive one. Everyone, no matter how needy, has gifts to offer. Everyone, no matter how gifted and energetic, has places of brokenness and abject neediness. A true community lets that be fairly fluid; people give and take as they need. If someone takes too much or gives too much (the more common mistake, as it happens) eventually someone notices and there is a gentle challenge to bring the system back to balance.

That process has been subverted. Somehow, we lost our sense of living community. I have been, historically speaking, one of the community nurturers. And recently, I haven't had the energy to hide my brokenness. But when I thought I literally couldn't survive, I didn't feel like the community was there for me. A few individuals were splendidly, blessedly there, but that's not quite what I mean.

So, in some ways, I don't mind skipping church on Sundays. Yet, I need to admit that that's what I'm doing. It's not a scheduling thing- or not solely a scheduling thing, anyway. I can't do it right now. It needs too much from me, and I jsut plain don't have the energy to spare. This relationship, at least, needs to have an honest breakup.