Grass Oil by Molly Field

LAST POST ON THIS SITE: i'm leaving for wordpress

2012-05-27T15:15:00.002-04:00

hi team grass oil - please adjust your sets. i've moved to wordpress. you can find me even easier at www.mollyfield.com

thank you for your support.

molly

Baaaah. Baaaah. Karma is Not a Bitch; it's a Sheep.

2012-05-25T11:07:00.000-04:00

Oh my gawd!

I mean, I just! RRRarrrarRarrrrgh! Ugh! Someone give me a ... a ... a STICK to break! And then throw at ... at ... something!

I hate it when the life lesson fairy whacks me with her wand.

she looks so innocent and all "who, me?"-stupid, but
she's bloody brilliant.

http://cdn.freecoloringsheets.net/samples/Fantasy_People/Wizard_With_Magic_Wand.png

Thanks to her (really, me) I have a throbby, rheumy lump the size of a Starbucks Venti Cinnamon Dolce Latte (no whip) on the back of my head.

I deserved it. I deserved to get the life lesson fairy smackdown.

I deserved to have her open her can of "what you said?!" on my smug neediness.

Uhhhhgh. I think I'm gonna barf. I used "smug" and "neediness" and "my" in the same sentence when referring to myself. (Uhhh... upon reading that on review, I activated my gag reflex; I could go into a huge introspection about why I clearly have issues with vulnerability but I'm not in the mood -- one flaw at a time, please.)

Can't say I didn't see it coming.

Can't say I didn't make it happen.

Nope, definitely not Little Bo Peep or Little Miss Muffet on this one.

I know who I am: I'm the wolf who ate the granny and now I'm wearing her lace bonnet and reading glasses, waiting in her bed under the covers for Little Red Riding Hood. But Red is very smart. And patient. And she won, because the wolf was an ass.

Ok, I'll get to the point: I have a thing about boundaries. Boundaries have literally saved my sanity; I construct them (almost typed "constrict" - no Freudian comeuppance there, huh?) for myself. I like doors. I like fences. I like knocking. I like appointments. I like zones. I like phones. I like boundaries of behavior; I like understandings between people. As for social visits, I don't always do well "Hey, we were in the 'hood and thought we'd swing by!" Mostly because my house is a combo newsstand, cafeteria, study hall, music conservatory, library in the midst of a Dewey Decimal inventory, toy emporium, snack bar, art studio, petting zoo, laundry station and soccer gear depot. And apparently, I only like boundaries for myself because other people aren't allowed to have them.

Well, that's not entirely true. I mean, I do allow for them and I actually prefer them for other people, regardless of the relationship. In fact, even in this particular situation, I encourage them. It's just that, well, in this particular situation, I apparently like to pretend they are biodegradable; that the ravages of time and emotional bonds will render them null.

They aren't biodegradable. I don't have a backstage pass. They are real. I see them. I have near-sightedness (clearly!) and I can see the boundaries; I have intuition and I even feel them too.

HOWEVER ... In this particular situation, I did a mental, "Hey look! There's Elvis!" on myself and I turned into a sheep. I knocked over the fence, lightly stepped over its remains (which is in reality already a violation and clearly not a "light" step) and I start nibbling on the nice green ivy and grass humming "mares eat oat and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy..." in my friend's yard.

Baaaah.

Mmmunch.... >tasty! get a little closer< mmmmmunchmmmbaaaah.... >sweet! move in a little closer< mmmmunchmmm baaaaahh >there's some excellent clover over there, right under her feet...< mmmmmmbaaaaah.... and ruh-roh. I bit her toe; right through her butt-kicking boots.

Don't look up. Don't look up. Avert your eyes and definitely keep chewing. Oh look! A four-leaf clover! I'm gonna need that.

I titled this post "Baaaah. Baaaah. Karma is not a bitch; it's a sheep." Because Karma is not a bitch (in fact, I try not to swear in what I write because while imprecations -look it up!- are colorful, they don't always work in my posts... I digress). Karma is an adult 44-y.o. sheep with #4A natural brown wool wearing a white t-shirt, a flowered skort, and running shoes. I am the bully sheep today. (I am biting on my upper lip as I type this. Man.... Irony stinks.)

baaaah. don't i look innocent? baaaah.

http://canadianfamilyrobinson.com/wp-content/gallery/black-sheep/1-1210230480-the-black-sheep-of-the-family.jpg

Bully sheep are insidious. They are real pains in the backside. They are immature. They are what Freud called the "Id" - that child part of us; the one who Wants What I Want and I Want It Right Now and If You Don't Give Me What I Want I'm Going To Make Your Life Uncomfortable and Push You to Be Assertive and Send Me To My Room And Then I'll Be Real Mad At You! I Will! . . . .

Unnnntil the superego comes in and I Figure Out What I Did Wrong.

The Id. It's insIDious. That was clever! You like that, eh? Come back any time, I'm full of 'em.

The Ids want their own way. They don't want to hear anything you have to say unless it's: "You're right, I'm wrong. Here's $500."

Fat chance.

I have often referred to "bully sheep" as manipulators who act weak and sound weak and use phrases like "you're hurting my feelings" and "but I just wanna..." and "please don't tell me how I hurt you; I can't bear to hear it..." to get their way and crowd out the other person's needs with their bleating so that not only is the other person unheard, but the other person can't BE heard. It's all Charlie Brown adultspeak to the bully sheep.

Hear me! Baaaah! Baaaaah!

I mawkishly bleated and bleated and bleated the other day. Baaaah! BAAAAAAAH! CLOVER! BAAAAAAH! So much so, that I genetically transmogrified from sheep to another farm animal: Ass. I'm taller so the view is better, but The Work is hard. Heehaw. "Eye-ore" of Winnie-the-Pooh lore is an ass. He annoys the bejeesus out of me. I used to work with an Eye-ore. He would walk around with his bow on his tail that was pinned on to his fanny and mope around and "Wull, I gu-ess... I mean ... we cooo-ullld do thaaayut..."and I'd want to put on my harlequin glasses for better aim, pull a hairpin out of my chignon, poke it through the fingers of my leather gloves that I would whisk out of my basket purse and slap him across the back of his head.

not me, but well, it fits the mood.

http://www.luxfashionstyle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Gunglasses-Elegant-by-Prada.jpg

It's only fair. Karma bleats. I was in the other position (I will *not* say "victim"; that word's not in my vocabulary, truly) a while ago with another person who was the bully sheep and I opened the can of kick-butt. It's the correct order of things. I get what I deserve. Heehaw. But I'm moving on. I've accepted my position in this and I've learned. Boundaries need to be respected; sheep are not allowed in conversations between human beings and that is that.

The greatest part of this post, for me, is that I've been wanting to write about bully sheep for a while, but the karmic energy (yeah, I believe in that stuff) was all wrong. I was all finger-pointy at the other people, the other bully sheep, and well, that serves no purpose other than being well, annoying and sorta hypocritical.

But the life lesson fairy took care of that tout de suite!

Thank you. (Have a wonnnnnderful Memorial Day weekend!)

raffle basket and beans

2012-05-23T10:54:00.002-04:00

This just happened about a half hour ago.

I am going to make this brief because if I write too much, I'll spoil the story's natural simplicity.

About a month ago, our elementary school had a fun fair to raise money for the PTA.

I bought roughly, oh, 60,000 euros' worth of raffle tickets.

I put most of them in the spa basket and the others in the "Let's Garden!" basket hoppers.

They say life gives you what you need, not what you want.

I won the gardening basket. Thing 3 (8), loves to garden.

This is good.

I do too, although I prefer mostly the flowery kind of gardening.

I have a small herb garden on our deck in a faux whiskey barrel and we have a small vegetable garden in our backyard; it's about 6 feet by 3 feet in size. While it's modest and quaint, symbolic of a fraction of our interest in doing our thing to grow our own food, the breadwinner and I recently overhauled its soil bed. I were a plant, I'd be thrilled to be in there.

Once our wooden playground, that ubiquitous suburban "family lives here" trophy, goes in a few years, we'll make the garden bigger. But then the kids will be grown and closer then to moving on. It's a decision we've waffled on each spring over the past few years: to speed up their youth and take away their play set which they still use or to let them stay kids for as long as we can. . . we have determined we are in denial, let life ravage us with time, but we're in no rush. The playground stays.

The Monday following the raffle, I untied the tulle netting nestling the basket to examined my loot. The basket was stuffed to the brim with tools, gloves, starter kits, a lovely glazed outdoor planter, tiny terra cotta pots, stakes, spikes and a sole packet of seeds. I was pretty psyched with my win.

The seeds were for green beans.

Didn't Jack get some magic beans? I looked around, but I didn't see a cow in the basket. No goose either.

The packet of bean seeds (which are just beans, let's be clear about this) had already been opened, I'm guessing by nubby hands, curious about how these things go down or maybe even curiouser about whether they were magic beans.

I looked at the packet, which was dated for germination in 2009, considered it for an instant and cast it aside. I have a green thumb with plants that are already living; the ones that come to me as seed ultimately die.

It has been rainy a lot here. I love the rain, it's more than rain to me, it's like a fantastic experience that washes away all the blahs; and when the sun comes back out, as it has today, it's a brilliant and welcome reprise.

Because I'm the only one on staff, I went out to the garden to check on things: the tomatoes have their telltale yellow blossoms, the peas are doing what they do; I have no idea if the eggplant is on schedule, nor do I know anything about zucchini, but everything is still green and larger than it was last week. I nodded at the plants, told them "good show" and turned around.

On my way out, I looked at our collection of raffle basket tools now resting in a decommissioned window planter near the foot of our bright yellow slide. One of the trowels has a massive belly on it; it's more like a bulb planter / trowel combo. It collected about 2 inches of rain. I lifted the handle to discharge the rain water and beneath the handle, I discovered this:

I smiled and actually said, "Hello, beans. You are destined to grow as plants, aren't you?" (My children and good friends will tell you that I often speak to plants and bees and birds. I'm not nuts, I'm excited to be in communion with them.) So I knelt down, picked them up still cradled by their little and futile envelope and put them in the last remaining spot in the garden along the fence-line.

I backed up and regarded the scene, and smiled for many reasons. I smiled most of all because of the reminder that we all can grow, even I can, anywhere, even when I'm feeling lost and confused. We can even grow in our envelopes we've constructed for ourselves; which will try to contain us, but which clearly can't because we're bigger than our envelopes. We just have to relax and let nature take its course.

Thank you.

twelve ironies for better living

2012-05-22T21:21:00.000-04:00

Life throws many ironies at us.

If we are paying attention, we can learn from the ironies. They are sneaky and subtle though, so it requires getting out of our own way to be the best student.

Here are a few of my ~~favorites~~ ~~challenges~~ experiences:

1) It takes great strength to admit a weakness. Once we do this, simply admitting we're weak at something allows us the grace to become stronger at whatever we're facing. It's almost like the admission neutralizes the weakness or the overcompensation and replaces it with awareness. All of a sudden, there are new ways to dealing with something. All tickets on the awareness train are one-way, no transfers.

2) Faster is easier; slower is harder. Tell anyone who's lifting weights or doing push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, etc., to maintain proper form and slow down the motion by a factor of 10 and you will see their bodies shake due to the resistance. Don't believe me? Try it. How about this: try talking slower, taking a moment to choose your words before you speak.

3) Whispers garner more attention than shouting. When someone shouts, we listen but only because we physically have no choice. When someone shouts we just want to run away. When someone whispers, we listen and close in because we want to hear what's being said.

4) Naivete begets wisdom: the more "falls" we supposedly take are actually progressions to achieving success. There are no more stumbling blocks; just stepping stones. Don't despair at a supposed set-back or lapse of judgment: you are meant to learn a lesson. Look for it, it's there.

5) It is hard to be soft. When we are soft, we let people / sensations in. Doing this requires we let down a guard. Letting down our guard means we accept we could be wrong about something (usually about being so hard) and it lets us out as well as letting others in. It allows us to admit we hurt too. Getting hurt means we are taking chances; I always say, "you can't win if you don't play."

6) It's easier to be angry than to be happy. Happiness requires gratitude and humility; that we accept the way life is and the blessings that have been given to us. For some people, being angry is a strong addiction that fosters judgment, closed-thinking, complaints, increased isolation & disconnection from the larger society. Chronic anger is also reeeaaally bad for our hearts and arteries.

7) We can't appreciate light without darkness. Being in the light requires acceptance of our realities, that dark moments got us here to appreciate the light. Sometimes things just suck, endurance makes us smarter. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "When it is darkest, you can see the stars." That darkness allows us to use our other senses to work through problems. Feel your way out; don't think your way out.

8) Without silence, we can not appreciate sound. Without sound, we can not understand silence. We might say we want silence, but that would mean no birds chirping, no sound of rain gently falling, no music, no laughter. I think that rather silence, we just want peace, and that's a totally different experience. You can have peace with sound. Peace comes from within.

9) Being alone can make you easier to be around. Sometimes we are hard to be around: bristly and snappish. This usually means that we might benefit from being alone a bit, to sort ourselves out. Being a mother, I can attest to the benefits of my own personal "time outs."

10) You can not know hate without knowing love first. Indifference is the easiest thing in the world to commit to. Take a stand on something, one way or another, and you're also bringing awareness to the opposition. Taking a side without knowing its opposition breeds bigotry not indifference and certainly not tolerance.

11) A good cry makes you happier. While the immediate effect usually feels as though we've been drained, and we probably have (all that woe weighs a lot!), a good cry ultimately makes us feel better, and lighter; ready to take on the world.

12) Fats can help you lose weight. The body needs fat to generate hormones and the good cholesterol that helps regulate them. If you remove all fat from your diet, you will definitely not lose fat because your body will hang on to it to stay healthy, but you will lose lean body mass (muscle) because it's the body's most efficient fuel. The right dietary fats: olive oil, raw (unroasted, unsalted) nuts, avocado and other vegetable-based fats will help you stave off headaches, get proper rest and keep your hormones in check.

Try out one or two of these ironies. See what happens.

Thank you.

Some of you are new to Grass Oil, check out some earlier posts . . .

Humor in the toothpaste aisle
Mindfulness in apologies
Parenting and the flight of time

Snark: Revenge and Mary Janes

2012-05-20T15:11:00.002-04:00

Usually I try to be calm and conscientious and conscious.

I try not to react.

Sometimes it's just not worth it.

Sometimes, you just wanna say to the guy who drives too close to you while you're minding your own business, "PUT DOWN YOUR FREAKING PHONE, A$$HOLE."

Or, say when you're heading to a soccer game, "MOVE YOUR PIECE OF CRAP OUT OF MY WHEEL WELL."

Sometimes you want to kick a cat. Flick a beetle. Squash a bug. Slap something. Flip the bird.

Sometimes you want to hurl a bag of steaming dog poo at grown men who wear their pants too low, WITH a belt, and show the world their "pretty" underwear and scream, "YOU KNOW, IF YOU WERE IN PRISON, YOU'D BE VERY POPULAR WITH YOUR PANTS LIKE THAT!" (I only just recently learned that fashion statement was a sign of availability for dating in the penitentiary system.)

Sometimes, if you're like me, because you know you can't legally hurl a bag of steaming dog poo, you pretend to do it. You imagine it happening.

The monks on the mountains in Tibet would tell you that's your false self living out a fantasy because There Is No Such Thing As Revenge.

Well, my inner snark disagrees.

Sometimes, I feel like I just have to let an epithet stream unfurl. That doesn't mean I do it; it just means I'd like to do it.

I was a mobile executive.

Tell my five-year-old self that there's no such thing as revenge. My father tells this story best, but I'm going to do it instead:

When I was very young, my older brother was asleep on the couch.

He was lying there, I can remember it, on our parents' avocado-green, wool-upholstered davenport. It smelled of the long-lost manhattans, old fashioneds and cherry tobacco pipes enjoyed by relatives I would never know because they were probably dead at the time. It was about eight feet long and its armrests were paltry and mostly wooden; you could feel the ribs and spine of the structure beneath the armrests that must've been padded with band-aids (maybe that's where they all went, for we didn't have any in the house when I was a kid unless my brother bought them).

While this isn't it, it is in spirit. Ours had flat itchy cushions and only five or six "buttons" along its backside to add dimension to an otherwise hideously flat and hairshirt-ish experience.

http://oldwoodmarket.com/zencart/images/ea1515a.JPG

I will always heartily reject my mother's opinion that the sofa was comfortable because it was covered in freakin' wool boasting texture so irritating and painful that only burlap could exceed it. I remember seeing the outlines of its springs testing the tensile strength of the fabric that shrouded them. Its belly would yawn beneath the frame directly below the two main, ill-sized main seat cushions. That couch was not fluffy or endearing. That couch was a piece my parents inherited from someone with incredibly bad sense of the aesthetic. That couch inspired my very costly love affair with down cushions. You endured that couch, but it was the only one on the main level of the house, so that's where my brother decided to plop himself down. He was brave.

Apparently my "revenge is best served cold" self had a message to deliver to him.

To conduct recon, I walked up to him and examined his vulnerabilities, his bodily position: face in toward the back of the couch. Good, he was inhaling old furniture smell, known amongst children everywhere to be amongst the most caustic in the world. His backside was exposed to the world. Better. Definitely asleep because his eyes were twitching. Excellent.

I crouched down, looked around the room and considered my options. I bent over, and grabbed the heel of my right foot's mary jane with my vengeful, sweaty and dextrous hands (my mother was convinced I'd be a surgeon). I imagine that I reached back with one hand, held down the back of the heel, lost my balance and landed on my fanny on the outside left armrest of the couch, where his head was nearest. (I never heard her say I'd be a gymnast.)

From my sitting position, which was clearly better so I couldn't be seen even if he did wake up, I imagine that I pulled in my right heel, closer to my fanny and forced off the shoe. I grabbed the armrest of the couch with my left hand and pulled myself back up to make sure he was still asleep.

With the side of the couch about six inches below my chin, I turned to my left, bent over at the hips and picked up my shoe. I turned toward my brother, zeroed in, arched over with my left arm and smacked him on the head with the heel.

They're not as innocent as they look.

http://www.ebuyg.net/uploadfiles/goods/2010/06/29/m_2010062901470041.jpg

I stood there. Shoe in hand. Apparently I didn't know enough to discard the weapon. Or to run away.

He woke up and rubbed his nine-year-old head. His hair was short and straight and he was a long child (as is he quite tall now). Running his hands through his sweaty and still sleepy hair, he said, "Owwuh. Wh-? Wh'dja do? I . . . "

This is what I do know, no more imagining:

He didn't smack me back, he was good to me that way. I mean, he was (and is) a really decent guy, (even though he is part of the 1%). Instead, my brother walked up to our dad who was probably screaming at a football game on TV (we were Buffalo Bills fans), and moaned, "Owwwh. Molly just hit me in the head. She just woke me up while I was sleeping and hit me on the head. With her shooooe."

Our dad apparently eyed me, still holding my weapon. I was looking fierce, so he said.

"Well, why do you think she did that? Did you do anything to her? Upset her?" Dad asked.

"No! I was just sleeping. I couldna done anything, I was lying down," answered my brother.

"Nothing?" my dad asked. "Are you sure?"

I was standing about 10' away, all squinchy-faced, arms crossed against my chest in my smocked butterfly dress and supposedly fuming. A size-three black and shiny mary jane dangling from my hand was cocked and ready for more.

My brother looked at me and insisted he'd done nothing.

My dad said to him, "Not before your nap? Maybe yesterday or last night? . . . . . . . Think. She wouldn't have done that for no reason. Maybe you,"

After a moment, my brother righted himself and then shrunk again, rubbing his head, "Oh. . . yeah."

And that was that.

Sometimes snark wins. These days, even though I aspire for more centered behavior, I'm not above being snarky when people go below it and I am sure to have a size three mary jane around just in case.

Thank you.

"Ahimsa": how do you brush your teeth?

2012-05-17T21:12:00.000-04:00

It's been 24 hours of ahimsa awareness for me at the Grass Oil compound.

In yoga today, we talked about "ahimsa" which means "The principle of nonviolence toward all living things."

Not so faaaaast... the first lesson of ahimsa, is that it must begin within.

I'm savvy to ahimsa. In a spiritual and practical sense it means doing everything you can with love and kindness -- BUT FIRST: with yourself. I love the concept. I'm crappy at it. (see?)

A kicker of ahimsa is that if you can't practice loving self-acceptance first, then everything you do will be considered violent. That stinks. And it doesn't seem very ahimsa-y at all.

Before yoga this morning, I continued thinking about ahimsa after the breadwinner chuckled to himself last night as I scrubbed the day's "oils and pollutants" from my face.

I looked at him with suspicious wonder, "what?" I said. What is "suspicious wonder"? you ask: it's a facial expression, also known as a sneer and raised eyebrow, which usually accompanies, "What's that smell?" in most houses.

"It's just interesting is all. How you wash your face. It's like you're trying to wash off your face," he said.

>labrador retriever head tilt<: "Huh?"

"You scrub so thoroughly. So diligently. So . . . furiously."

>labrador retriever sneer<: "Grr."

He was right. As usual, he was right. The breadwinner has the most gentle of souls and mannerisms; he is truly the yin to my yang. He's like a soft breeze to my hurricane. I considered his comments and thought about ahimsa. Apparently not thoroughly enough because . . .

I snapped open the top to my moisturizer and kneaded it as fast as I could into what was left of my face and thus began, my pre-sleep consideration of ahimsa. I plopped myself into bed, grabbed the covers and stuffed myself into my beaten and propped goose-down pillow. "It must begin from within..." I kept repeating in my mind.

"It must begin from within..." relax the eyebrows. Flatten my "eleven" line between my eyes.

"It must begin from within..." release the lower jaw; move it side to side.

"It must begin from within..." suspend the tongue. Let go.

Holy crap. This ahimsa is serious stuff. Self-love is serious stuff. I drifted off to sleep, probably with my face loosened (and nearly hanging off my skull if the breadwinner is right about how I washed it) but my mind was racing and I'll bet my fists were tight.

Aaahh.. himmm.... saaaahhh....

Zzzznnzznng.

I woke up today perky and rested. I was sorta thinking about ahimsa. My lower back was tight (in yoga, this is the sacral / second chakra: cravings, pleasures, addictions, body image: ching! after my facial scrubfest, I concluded it was body image). I decide to do a couple floor stretches and side twists to release my hamstrings.

"It must begin from within..." don't go so deep; don't worry about touching the toes just yet; and bend the knees. Breathe.

After about two more minutes of consciously releasing, breathing and letting go (which I did, but which is insanely and ridiculously hard to do) it was time to wake the boys.

I think I wake the boys gently for 99.8% of the time. Sometimes we're in more of a rush than others, so I'm less ashimsa-esque than I'd like. Today was a gentle day. But upon further examination, I realized it wasn't: I jumped quickly out of my stretches and stepped harshly on to the floor, I moved brusquely into the bedroom and I firmly plopped myself down on my Thing 3 (8)'s bed and didn't whisper to him.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_y8zbmmkTPXc/SvV_7Z7W_FI/AAAAAAAABK4/aXyKAEXMMnA/s400/lisashamsa.jpg

Now, if I were a levitating buddhist monk on a mountaintop in Tibet, I'm sure I would do all of this more mindfully, but I'm not. I'm a tight-backed American mother in a house. So I do give myself some slack there. However, once I realized I wasn't being gentler, I dialed back and re-engaged more softly and consciously. I have really horrid memories of being hideously woken up as a child, so the fact that I am aware of that and that I enjoy operating differently is pretty awesome. Ahimsa.

What occurred to me as the day has progressed, is that we are really shitty at practicing ahimsa. That means you too. Sorry. Go, leave the page. Unlike. Deny the truth, be sure to mindfully not judge and gently click that "X" button on your way out just to confirm your mastery of ahimsa.

Still with me? OK: How do you brush your teeth?

Do you do so gently with a patient circular motion, taking care to massage the gums and tenderly clean the enamel or do you spaz out like Tasmanian devil and scrub the crap out of them up and down and back and forth and circle this way and circle that way and don't forget to beat the daylights out of your tongue... to the point where you have lather?

Me too. Don't forget to spit like a sailor. (I love sailors, I love all members of the military. I support our troops.) Bang your toothbrush on the sink three times to get the water out of it and energetically wipe your mouth.

How about when you use the steps? Do you step gently and mindfully, placing your foot before you take on the next step (which, by the way, does a great job for your core and back) or do you thud your feet down, as though every step is a frigging nightmare and just getting to the top means you've defeated the beast? I've been trying to be more mindful lately, and usually when I'm 2/3 of the way, I remember to step more softly which automatically pulls in my core.

What's the rush? Where's the fire?

In our yoga place, when you arrive on time, you get to set up where you like. I like to grab the back corner because I'm so ahimsa-esque to myself. Not. I like to grab the back corner so no one else follows my lead as my practice can be intense.

Today in yoga, I set up where I could, still in the back row. We have a wonderful group in that class. One person "C," arrived later and didn't set up where she normally does. A lively and funny banter ensued between C and person "B" who ended up taking C's traditional spot. Person "A" noticed and the conversation went thus:

A: "C! You're over here today! Hello!"

C: "Yes, Hello! Everyone's moved around today. B (pointing at B) told me I was in the wrong spot over here."

B: "No, I said 'different spot,' not 'wrong spot.' "

Me and D, E & F: "No, B said 'different' spot."

Me again: "C, you might've heard 'wrong spot.'"

And that was that. Normally, I would have let it go between B and C, but because this became a pentagonal discussion, it was important to end it.

Sidebar: That "C" heard "wrong spot" was an inner dialogue she had with herself and it flew completely in the face of ahimsa. That she had judged her repositioning as "wrong" and then falsely projected that judgment on to "B," when everyone else witnessed the contrary, was representative of a VERY OLD emotional wound of C's and I gotta give props to "B" for not taking the bait.

I like C enough, but I keep my distance because C is what I consider a bully sheep: someone who has and projects self-hate issues and unconsciously manipulates situations to make herself the victim of people who happen to be breathing around her. Compliments from bully sheep are usually dipped in a healthy dose of self-deprecation so you'll be lulled into complimenting them back. Here's an example:

"I could never wear an outfit like that; she looks so good in it, with her cute little body... I'm an albatross." (With her 5' 10" frame, wavy auburn hair, alabaster skin and lovely weight.) A victim/sucker would say, "Oh! Of course you would!" and the bully sheep would hope the sucker would say she couldn't wear an outfit like that either. Don't fall for it. Just say, "Oh" and move on. (Staying neutral leaves them with their stuff that they tried to put on you.)

http://blog.abhayamedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/ahimsa_non_violence.jpg

The Good News Is: No One's Thinking About
You As Much as You Fear They Are.

The Bad News Is: No One Is Thinking About
You As Much As You Wish They Were.

Another non-ahimsa practice I'm noticing is that we tend to wallow in sadness or we subject ourselves to experiences that we know will disturb us. Facebook is like that for some people (me). I have read and personally experienced jealousies erupting because of Facebook: I view other peoples' fabulous lives, vacations, and private jokes; I become offended that I wasn't invited to an event (that I probably couldn't have gone to or might've not enjoyed anyway). I realize that many people put only their best picture of themselves up or post the better information of their lives online. I read recently where this phenomenon was referred to as "best-face facebook" statuses. (The fact that the post I linked to just above bums me out because it's less than a year old; clearly there is something familiar about feeling rejected.)

As for the better-than-thou portrayals, I can feel sorry for myself or "hide" their content, but that doesn't take away the feeling of inadequacy or the fact that they're having fun. That I feel less-than because I haven't bought a new BMW galactic star cruiser or gone to Jupiter again or can boast that my 8-year-old daughter aced her medical boards IS TOTALLY UP TO ME. The fact is, there will always be someone richer, more popular, taller, smarter, prettier, funnier, smarter, healthier, fancier, Zen-ier, nicer, softer, more graceful and eloquent if We Make Them That Way. COUNT ON IT.

What we do with that information determines our success with ahimsa. Do we beat ourselves up because of the fact that someone's always gonna seem cooler than we are? Or do we move on, be grateful for what we have and practice ahimsa and let it go? How much of this is ego and vanity? We are giving away our value when we do this because trust me: no one else thinks about you as critically as you think about you.

Facebook, texting and e-mail presents another quandary for me: sometimes I say things that are interpreted a different (I could have said "wrong" but chose neutral "different") way as e-communication is quirky. Or sometimes I interpret things differently than they are intended. I also need to remember that I'm not responsible for someone else's filter. Nonetheless, I hate the feeling I have in my stomach, wondering if I've screwed up and chewing my nails. Is this what we want from social media? Waiting for the "like", hoping for the friend request acceptance, constantly checking the phone, the e-mail, the wall?

I DON'T THINK SO.

Is this what social media wants from us?

YOU BET YOUR BIPPY.

Such self-doubt keeps us checking in, staying online and wrapped up in our false selves (see below) and totally dependent on approval from many people we don't even know (especially if you have a Facebook fan page). This dependence started to get pretty hairy for me about 2 months ago.

As such, I've purposefully elected to interact more face-to-face or on my landline phone with my actual voice. I've also removed my Facebook app from my phone's pages and I have made it so that I have to login and logout each time I go on Facebook on my computer.

Might this strategy affect my lifelong dreams of being a fantastic writer? No. Because I can be a fantastic writer no matter where I am. I can also be a shitty writer no matter where I am. Having to have people know about me / my writing (the obssession with fame, extrinsic acceptance) is what feeds the ego and the ego is what ruins ahimsa. (Because if your ego is involved at all, you're gonna compete and you're gonna push yourself harder than you might ordinarily.)

Why do I share this stuff then? Because I think it's important; people get too wrapped up these days in things that don't matter and miss the things that do matter. I also think it entertains and people can relate to it. The point is I can write it, as in have the freedom and ability to write it. So I do. Why do you read it? Because you can. :) And I'm grateful.

What about wallowing in sadness? That's not ahimsa. Even if you do it with softness. I know there are legitimate mental disorders that clearly present challenges to shaking off the blues and the people with those disorders are in my prayers. We have depression and anxiety in my own family of origin, so I'm no stranger to it. At times, I get the blues. The thing is, after a while, I realize it's self-perpetuating for me and it's hardly ahimsa-esque. If I think sad thoughts, I will stay sad. If I remember and dredge up sad memories, I will become sad and eventually angry: angry at myself for stirring it up or wasting energy on things that can't be helped or for other reasons.

If I think happy thoughts, I will become happy.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyw03yint7XPS-M_UdXzx_Ak9pdPTRTFtCV2Angh6ff6J3o7xexi7DoB6PA6toRwGdADQjePDolf66Yr4-zPi4D1uPaekim_HlFIi7nlPG3c-xr5AIP14bhrCclHfNSp9B6ye09auwSnE_/s400/think-happy-be-happy-poster.jpg

Here's a FASCINATING related opinion on the web about why some of us choose negative states (non-ahimsa) without realizing we choose them that I couldn't say any better. I found it at the "Life of Learning Foundation":

"We value negative states because of the strong sense of self we get from them. This may be very difficult for us to see, but the light of Truth will show us the freeing facts. No one wants to believe that he or she values things like self-pity, anger, and depression. We would insist we don't, and as evidence we point to the fact that we fight against them, but the struggle gives us a false sense of life and importance. It focuses attention on us and makes us feel like the center of a great deal of activity. The more we struggle, the more valuable these states become, because the more interesting and exciting they make us feel. We never feel ourselves so strongly as when we are furious, or hurt, or depressed. Of course, this self is a created self, a false self. But it feels real, and that's why we cling to it. The power in the state is that by giving it our life, it feeds back to us a false sense of life and power. And as a result, we miss out on the Real Life we could experience if we were not filling ourselves with the false."

Sometimes for me, music or thinking of my silly dog or a scene in a movie or simply taking a walk can subdue the blues. A change of scenery does wonders: it gets you moving, makes you look around (so you don't get hit by cars or attacked by geese) and snaps you out of it.

I am actively avoiding reading sad stuff; I'm a news junkie, so that's hard to do. I also try to avoid stirring up my own or another person's sad again and again. Instead of being sad, we can take walks in our minds or around our blocks. But again: I'm not insensitive to the needs of others. People with medical depression or other disorders have a different experience and that matters. But walking always helps. :)

What about how and what we eat? Do we sit or stand? Do we give ourselves a napkin and drink without a straw? Do we chew and taste our food? Is the food nourishing or wasted calories? It's not easy. I'm not a vegan. I'm a steak-loving American mother. I avoid fast-food like the plague, but there's clearly a conflict with practicing ahimsa when I eat meat. I remain aware of that and I privately thank the animal for the life it gave. I am human, flawed and selfish.

One more thing: The irony is not lost on me that we are killing ourselves to live longer. That's painfully true. I am all for health preservation, but there is a point where we can do damage. We drive ourselves harder athletically than we should; we run longer than our bones can take; we don't rest; we push push push and then get disappointed (but probably not surprised) that we've blown a ligament or torn a tendon. Our desire to live longer must not be fulfilled at the risk of ahimsa; there is no point to living longer if you bust up your body.

If ahimsa is new to you, try it when you brush your teeth. See what happens, watch it reach other parts of your life.

Thank you.

Good blogs: Sharing the "Liebster" love

2012-05-16T09:19:00.000-04:00

I was recently considered by a super nice person, a fellow blogger: the incompetent hausfrau, as deserving of some recognition; she awarded me the "Liebster Blog Award"- my first blog award ever! Thank you, thank you. I'll take your questions after the presentation.

I usually dilly-dally on things like these, but I wanted to get this out the door, stat!

When I started writing publicly, back on January 2, 2011 (the hell with new year's resolutions, I'm usually fashionably late anyhow) I did so the suggestion and with the support of some pretty awesome people. Thank you, Peggie, Terri, Cheryl and Tracy.

I feel lost if I don't have a reason to do something, so I decided I would base my blog on things and stories of having a family, being from one and my thoughts on how to go about life in spite of it all.
I have a couple loyal commenters whose feedback I always appreciate, besides them: I don't really ever know if anyone actually reads it; but when I'd heard from the incompetent hausfrau that she did, it lit my heart.

I believe the objective of this award, like any award is to share a good thing when you see it*. I love good writing and up-and-comers. So, without further ado (this my be my Shortest Post Ever), it is my pleasure to award The Liebster Blog Award to:

kat hurley - this survivor has an amazing personal story and she continues to inspire others daily. she is an advocate for all human beings who actively breathe. her passion is to serve humans, but she is only human. check her out!

the loneliness of the stay-at-home-mother - she's got a nice rhythm and i dig what she's done with her Monday letters of the day. i've also seen her write about other blog posts in ways that can transform, check out: have I told you lately?

mommetime - i love her layout, her thoughts are pure and she's a fantastic photographer; she presents an amazing blend of imagery and words.

MSRP - a funny guy with a great sense of humor, no matter how skewed his political views. WOAH! did i just say that?! check him out.

The Winy Child - this guy deserves some traction! he's a 6-year-old comic book genius and he tells tales about his characters. Heck, I can't explain it any better than he, so here's his shtick: "This is a really funny comic. Here are the names of the characters and some facts about them. Pepper is really funny. He's the dog in The Winy Child. Soks is the cat. The Winy Child is in The Winy Child. Dexy and Gorel are the parents."

*How the Liebster Blog Award works:

1. Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog.

2. Link back to the blogger who presented the award to you.

3. Copy and paste the blog award on your blog.

4. Present the Liebster Blog Award to 5 lesser-known blogs who you feel deserve to be noticed and give a little blurb about why you chose each blog.

5. Let them know they have been chosen by leaving a comment at their blog.

. . .

Thank you.

ISO: my missing $7.50 sock.

2012-05-15T09:21:00.000-04:00

so i bought a pair of socks about two months ago with my son, Thing 2 (11).

he needed new sneakers because the leather ones he insisted on wearing had a smell all their own. we bought the socks when we bought the sneakers.

the old sneakers (not the new ones) smelled like garlic and cat piss.

I. Kid. You. Not.

we used to think that there were dying muskrats in the house or musk anything in the house when he would remove them.

so we went to a local running store to get new ones.

"what about your quest for equanimity? to just let things be?" you ask?

"what about my quest to exist in my home without searching for SCUBA tanks?" i retort.

the guys at the running store Have Great Legs. it is very coincidental that they're all about 24 years old too.

T2 tried on a pair of nice running shoes. i wanted to get him mesh ones so that they could breathe too. after all, if he was going to kill another pair of sneakers with his foot's death stench, they should at least be able to breathe.

he liked them, they had to order them in his size.

"come back wednesday, they'll be in then from our blahdeblah store" said a blonde guy who looks like this:

photo from http://static.tvguide.com/MediaBin/Galleries/Shows/S_Z/Wa_Wh/Weeds/season6/weeds-116.jpg

So we go back a few days later.

When we return, we were met by an employee who looked like this:

http://eliteoneinternational.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/brad-pitt-27072_getty_20080730182131.jpg

"how about some socks to try them on?" i squeak-ask, twirling my hair and twisting my toe into the carpet.

so the guy and his dimples who looks like the man in the second picture above floats to the rack and summons a pair socks, "any favorite color, buddy?" he says to my son.

"green. i like green," says T2. "look mom, they have your favorite, periwinkle!" he adds.

the green socks waft magically to my son as the man who looks like the man in the second picture above gestures his hand in T2's direction.

i'm doing my best to keep it together, man.

the man who looks like the man in the second picture above looks at me and says, "oh? periwinkle? that's a great color. it's >DO NOT SAY "MY MOTHER'S" ... DO NOT SAY "MY MOTHER'S"< my grandmother's favorite color."

a part of me died inside.

"oh, your grandmother's? is she 44?"

no, i didn't say that. rewind the tape >deedlweedletweedlweeetloodledeedle<:

"oh, your grandmother's? it's a classic color, very serene and comfort-- oh, you have a pair in my size in periwinkle? great...."

"you're what, a small?" and he commands the socks that are his grandmother's favorite color to land on the new sneaker's box.

T2 is racing around the store, "i loooove these shoes, mommy! they make me so faaaast! these socks are so comfy!"

"i love it when kids say that the shoes make them faster..." the man who looks like the man in the second picture above said. "i used to say that when i was little ..."

"yeah. me too. what?" i said. i mean, i did NOT want to imagine the man who looks like the man in the second picture above as younger.

"so, that'll do it for you both? would you like to try on any shoes?" said the man who looks like the man in the second picture above.

"no. i uh, i'm wearing these because, um, i was gardening. these are my scuzzy gardening sneakers. my running shoes don't garden. they're at home... i take fitness very seriously."

WAKE UP man who looks like the man in the second picture above!

i think i put him to sleep.

"c'mon mom! let's go home! i wanna show these to brothers and dad!"

so we walk to the register. $65 shoes becomes $99.

what the what?!

"debit. oh, here, i'll sign. all the machines are so different, i never know where..."

i don't care. the man who looks like the man in the second picture above is smiling; yellow feathers are popping out of his mouth. i am the canary.

i was in the cage, like this:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEih2iqdLmkQtHF2bUP1snJFNHIqabtohhaazBNm_3t1_tmjKV5YBtYtFjybdHEs-2nCc7KKyKEI0W360fDE5Totakf6gDLAxKjIK18lLUwh5Eit8m-8EIBdRP4JOGsfnOra7XQQwwQ2_LE/s1600/Room+and+Bird+%252811%2529.jpg

when i wanted to be out of the cage, like this:

http://netoonime.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Tweetie-mutated-e1313125660621.jpg

we get home. T2 shows off his sneaks and everyone's excited.

the breadwinner (that's my husband's new blog identity) asks about their cost because he wanted a pair just like them a few months ago but they were out of them and i tell him,

"$65, but the socks added $30. >wince< pleasedon'tfaint."

the breadwinner? oh, he went out to get bread and never came back.

i tried on my socks the next day. they were awesome. in fact, they are guaranteed for life ... they better be at $7.50 a pop.

after that, i lost one. i never actually ran in them.

i'm a little bummed about that. so if anyone sees the right one to this one:

please let me know. we can go tell the man who looks like the man in the second picture above all about it.

thank you.

When the Bough Breaks: Forcing

2012-05-13T13:49:00.005-04:00

Today is Hallmark cards' biggest day ever. It's mother's day.

I am glad to be a mother. I do not think, however, that my being a mother makes me better than other women who are not either by choice, circumstance or biology (or quite honestly, at times I believe: sheer brilliance). Happy women day.

Let's move on. You're welcome.

Well, no, back up but just for a second or two. OK, a minute. My husband Dan and I have three boys: Thing 1 (14), Thing 2 (11), and Thing 3 (8). The timing is exquisite for their birth spacing, wouldn't you say? Well, it's all about pharmaceuticals. For me, being a mother is about knowing my limitations and having three kids under 5 in four years would have landed me in the looney bin. Being a mom is exhaustingly enriching. It's all the stuff you would imagine and more.

I was lamenting Friday to my husband that I don't have a paying job: when you have one of those, you have performance reviews and feedback and assessments and teamwork. When you're a mother, a sign of success (or luck) is going months without a call from school, or the fact that your kids don't really beat the crap out of each other and that screaming is occasional rather than a symptom of existence.

It's the little surprises however that make it even more exciting than say, sitting on your own with a ball of yarn and knitting it. Or maybe, it's the coming out of the shower to a screaming child holding his head and scrying (omigawd, that's a word -- "scrying" is a word, I was just blending "screaming" and "crying" -- it means "foretell the future using a crystal ball or other reflective object or surface." - who knew? gypsies, that's who... I digress, completely), "hedidthistomehehit meintheFACE witha witha witha aa BLAD OOIH BFS and then he AATAWAGATROW. . . . mama mama mama mmmm maaaa aaaaMMomm mmyyyy. Fix it...Kiss the boo-boo..."

Get back to the title. Back to the title. "When the Bough Breaks" - "bough" is a branch, a main branch of a tree.

Ok. So, we have a weeping cherry tree. I am like the Lorax, I do speak for the trees. I'm not a tree-hugger, I don't camp out in them, but I completely admire those who do. I appreciate their love and respect for our planet. I don't let burly men in spike boots climb my majestic oak tree to take off a few limbs here and there. We throw the big money at the Big Tree because she deserves it. She's probably as old as my own mom, who's 78.

This weeping cherry is lovely. In the spring, oh, it blooms just beautifully.

Thing 2 is a human spider monkey. He loves to climb and run and leap and pretend he is any number of Marvel Comics-inspired superheroes. I love that about him.

This is Thing 2; he is a font of funny, the master of mirth. Note that he's sitting under the umbrella and the sprinkler is spraying into it. That's how he is. Just a nut.

He has tried to climb this cherry tree a number of times. This morning, he and I estimated that at least 60 times out of my view and maybe a dozen within my view that I would consistently say, "GET OFF THAT TREE. It is a tree, not a playset. The playset is in the yard. Swing off that. Do not climb that branch, ANYmore. Get Out Of The Tree."

"Yes, mom."

I told him many times that the tree is innocent. That when we force things to become something they're not, something gives, something suffers, something breaks, something dies.

You don't need a scrying session (nice, see how I worked that in? I'm not a gypsy, yet) to figure out where this is going.

Last night, after I did some quiet yoga and centering in my room to prepare for guests (who are lovely, but I'm just not in the guest mood right now) Thing 2 invited over (and he is SO lucky he did invite them over), I went downstairs, all in my Zen state to see the sitting Thing 2 waiting for me at the bottom of the steps looking out our storm door. As a team, we had enjoyed a beautiful day, the sky was cloudless and perfectly blue. Temps in the upper 70s no humidity, we had gone to soccer games and I lost my voice cheering for my boys.

He looked so wee; he's fairly compact to begin with, so when he is low, it's obvious. He was sitting "criss-cross applesauce" on the bare wood floor, his chin in his right hand whose elbow was resting on the fold of his right knee. Quiet. Just sort of being and feeling.

"Hi, Mom."

"Hey bud, what's up? Why are you sitting all little like that? Whatsa matta?"

"I have something to tell you."

>shit!quick, do a millisecond instinctual mental inventory, scan outside for ambulances or police cruisers. are there any tools on the floor? any broken glass? listen for crying. where's the dog?<

"Oh, ok. I can tell it's probably not good news. What happened?"

"Um. You know how you . . . >sigh< . . . I didn't mean to. OK, everyone is fine. But I um . . . I broke the tree."

"What? Come again?"

"I uh . . . I Broke the Tree. I broke a branch off the tree. The tree near the cars. The . . . your . . . our, >sigh< Our Cherry Tree. I did that."

"Oh. You broke The Branch that I told you to stop climbing? >suppress anger this is not about me< The One, The Branch that I said all of those times when you were on to get off of? That Branch?"

"yeah. I'm sorry. I am really sorry."

">bristle; what have I tried to teach about constant apologies< Thank you for apologizing. What have I been saying to you About Apologies for the past month?"

"Stop apologizing. Change my behavior. I get it now."

">Oh! Well, good.< Show me. Show me >suppress returning feelings of invisibility and primitive feelings of being unheard and unimportant< what You grabitzfragin frackdigrabin Did, show me The Branch."

"Ok. >sniffle<"

So we go out the front door and walk the 30' to the driveway, slowly and I'm keeping it together, man. This tree is the first thing we planted when we moved to this home in almost 12 years ago. It is our Symbolic Tree. I get it. It's only a tree. And to a kid, it is eminently alluring as a climbing tree. It's just that anything over 50 pounds is too much. Thing 2 weighs about 75 and it's mostly incredibly flexible and active muscle. When he was born, a dear friend called him, "Fling" as a nickname.

I don't have a picture of the damage. I just went to check if it were still there, the carnage. But it's not. And that's a good thing; living in the past, or constantly re-examining things that hurt us doesn't help us. It only wells up those feelings again and well, who needs that shit? Move on.

Part of our discipline strategy for this situation has been for Thing 2 to make reparations and clean up his mess. So he sawed off the 12" jagged branch remains this morning with his dad. The Branch and its abrupt ending will all be a memory after the Waste Management company comes by next week at its appointed time to remove our "yard clippings." Now the tree boasts a clean cut, almost as if a storm took down the branch, and she's ready to sap herself.

This morning, when I was woken out of a great dream by three young minstrels and their fantastic dad for my annual "You're The Best Mom" ritual, I had a chat with Thing 2 about the tree.

Life has this completely WONDERFUL way of showing us how to make lemonade out of lemons. We just have to be willing to do some squeezing because the juice is what makes it tasty; sugar can sweeten tobacco, but that doesn't mean I want to drink it. And lemons are good for our liver!

As we spoke about the tree, it dawned on me that it presented a great parable about forcing and breaking rules, what happens to the innocent when we do, and how our seemingly small or self-important choices (good or bad) can affect the world, or in this case, an ecosystem.

1) Thing 2 forced that tree to be something it's not: he forced it to be a playground. A perch for his "Wolverine" character development. It's not supposed to be his Wolverine perch, it's a tree. Forcing it to be something else broke it. Forcing anything will break it. This is a law of physics.

2) Breaking the rules a few times and getting away with it will falsely empower us to think it's OK to continue to break the rules; it emboldens us. That because it we get away with it once, say drinking and driving, then we think we can do it again. We can't because . . .

3) Innocent people or objects get broken in the process. Our vanity, our drive to be something more, different than others, better or something other than What We Are hurts innocents. I'm all about play and imagination and Wolverine, as long as we play by the rules and don't break them. Because when we break them, we break a part of us too.

4) The ecosystem has been changed because of his actions. The bird family who used that tree to live in, now have less cover from predators. Our pleasure at witnessing about 500-1,000 of its blossoms on That Branch every spring has been altered. The CO2 provided by that 20' branch has been eliminated. I'm not dwelling on it, I'm just mentioning it.

The things we do, the forcing, affect everyone.

It was a good talk. He seemed to really get it and he wept for a moment, heaving big to him, wee to me, 75# sighs and flubbers of remorse and squeaky words expressing regret.

It was a good talk for me too. It helped me to be a better mother. Because we had company last night, I had to dial back my reaction and my sadness over the incident. I realized that my ego was playing a bigger part than it (ever) should. Instead of feeling bad about the tree, I felt selfish about my son not listening to me, about his flagrant disobedience. This is not about me, this is not about him. This is about us. We are a team.

Looking back with 18-hour vision I appreciate it. Honestly, if this is the worst thing he does, we are very fortunate.

I have the bestest dude: he just returned from an errand with a bouquet of tulips and a no-whip green tea frappucino. My Drink of Glee.

Thank you.

Dear Boys: If I Were Dying, Here's What I'd Want You To Know

2012-05-11T12:49:00.001-04:00

Dear Boys,

I didn't want to do this, to write a post about mothering before mother's day because I felt it was self-indulgent, that I would be promoting myself through your existence or making you my "muse." Vaunting myself through your experiences. Trust me, it happens. I'm also not gonna lie, this is a long one. It's really three posts in one.

That said (Ha!), I had the most remarkable morning because I consciously changed my intention last night. I hope you'll understand by the end. (And remember: my ring size is 6 and my birthstone is sapphire.)

It's clear I love to write; it liberates me, enables me to say things better than I would with my mouth. I have a tremendous fear that I'm not good at it. People tell me I am, but maybe one day I'll believe it. That doesn't matter.

Here's what matters: Your uncle Alb has a friend whose wife died of cancer quite suddenly. About six years ago, she was diagnosed one day at stage four (it had spread through her body, it was inoperable and terminal) and six weeks later she was in heaven. That story broke my heart. It still does.

When she knew she was dying, she gathered her four children by her bedside and told them what was happening. She left them video messages and they filmed their lives together as they always had, but obviously, these newer moments had a different tone to them. She wrote them numerous handwritten letters and notes and they all savored every moment. The youngest was so wee, maybe two because she is around our youngest's age now, she had little comprehension. They were a family and of course they bickered, I'm sure. They laughed, I'm sure. They loved and they lost each other in one another's embraces. They stuck together.

Their mother had tremendous, I mean awe-inspiring and humbling, faith in God and her love of God helped her be strong and a mother. I'm not here to preach in what you should believe in; that's a private journey, but I will say that if you don't believe in something, you only believe in you and while that's cool and all that, it's pretty bloody selfish too (sorry, had to go all Mom on you there). I also know in my own heart that her maternal love and her commitment to her children spurred her on. There is no greater love.

So during her final half of a spring (essentially) she even more actively mothered them as best she could. She was a homeschooler so she was with them all the time anyway. (I love you very much, but I can't home school. Can you imagine?!)

She inspired me to create this blog. I think of her almost every time I strike a key to write my blog posts.

It's hard to talk about death. We talk so much about life and so much about what we haven't done with it that I wonder why we don't talk about death more often, in terms of what we would do if we knew we were dying in order to live richer, smarter lives.

So almost 18 months ago, I started this blog with the complete intention of leaving you slices of me: what I thought, what I saw, advice on how I messed up and how to learn from it, and how I expressed these things. I love you all so much, it's really hard to quantify, so I won't bother. After all, "It's the quality, not the quantity" right?

About five months ago, my intention with writing got confused; it was affected by outside influences. It's not the outside influence that gets "blame" rather than myself (if there is any blame to go around, which there isn't) for straying and not adhering to my main intention. I lost myself in flights of fancy, thinking beyond the moment, thinking of fame, which is ironic because I'm pretty private. Trust me: peer pressure exists when you're 44. And when people tell you the world can be a cold place, brush it off. But when they tell you that only you can make your own happiness, believe them.

It was all messed up, guys. Those vainglorious thoughts stole from my spirit to simply write, create and enjoy: God did not give me talent to write to simply achieve status or fame. God gave me talent to write to communicate. But I lost my way and I started some fiction and started doing things to "keep up" with someone else's ambitions; I have no doubt that experience inspired me and stretched my wings, but in the process, nothing became good enough, everything had to have an angle, I couldn't simply just write for the sake of writing anymore. This went on for about three months.

This has been a hard transition. A difficult lesson to learn. But an important one because it brought me back in.

About three weeks ago, when I was in the tail end of this transition, and when I'd sort of passively decided that while what I was writing was actually OK to do, I was still wrapped around the thoughts of it still being "not enough, do more, do better, do all the time..." I woke at 1:18 am on 4/18/12 to a phrase in my head and it wouldn't stop repeating until I recorded it.

I don't want you to think I'm having psychotic breaks, I'm not. But I know that phrase came to me because I'd been thinking a lot about how to get back to center; I'd been waiting for a sign of how to get back to you. How to get back to me. How to just . . . y'know, get back. Y'know? Do you ever get lost like that? Like that you love what you're doing and that's great, but then you start to lose focus of why you're doing it either because someone suggests you could do it differently or promote it (more)? If you love what you're doing, does there have to be a reason? I don't think so. I think love is reason enough. (I have to go all Mom on you again: the things I'm talking about when I talk about what you love to do must be legal, good and harmless to yourself or others.)

Ok, I'll stop. Do you want to know what the phrase is? Well I'm gonna tell you anyway. I've never written it publicly. I feel though, that based on how my morning has gone, that maybe it's time and that maybe it will help you and anyone else who could be feeling lost and who reads this post (maybe they're lost because they read my stuff!).

"Do not stray from your initial motivation and essence of what you excel at doing what you DO do. Keep the flow to a trickle until you know that the world is ready for what you have to offer. You will know when it is time."

That "DO do" was pretty emphatic like that; ALL CAPS and whatnot. It was purposeful. After all, how do you argue with a thought like that? Especially at 1:18 in the morning? It wasn't meant to say the things that you do that are someone else's idea or as a reaction, like your homework or picking on your brother(s). It meant the things, the essences that you EXCEL at DOing, like for Thing 1: play and love your guitar or write your wonderful stories and how you have a keen sense of how things go as you laugh at irony; or for Thing 2: how you can make people think about themselves and feel good inside and share how you actually feel and be real, so real with others or how you love small things and love to create and aren't afraid to stand on a stage and sing, act and create; or for Thing 3: to be dreamy and soft and cozy and be OK with being alone and who you are and not make excuses for who that is and how you are always so honest, sometimes painfully so, but it's up to the grown ups to deal with it because you're still so young.

Lots of people talk about how much they might have learned what to be from their parents . . . but once you become a parent, it's what you've taught me: HOW to be that is more important. How to live with integrity and honesty and honor, how to be present, and how to be careful with my words and your beloved tender hearts.

Bahhh. I'm crying right now because I feel so humble for how you've taught me already and you're only so young still! You mean I have more to learn?!

. . .

Wayne Dyer, a wonderful present-day philosopher talks a lot about spirit, intention and living with intention. It sounds sort of lofty and highfalutin I suppose, but actually it's quite simple. My midnight message reminds of what he says.

What he says and what my message means is: get back to basics, to our essence of what it means to live honestly and purely for ourselves today, now -- not in a selfish way, but to live for ourselves so that we don't live for others and the past or future. Ok, I could be doing a better job of explaining this. Here goes: the life we have is abundant and robust on its own. To live with other people's troubles, or joys (in our minds) detracts from the power that is in our own lives; we simply don't have the bandwidth. Let mother nature be the ultimate multi-tasker.

Need an example? Ok: yesterday was a hard day for me. I'm not going to parentalize you and tell you what went down. Parentalize means to make you my parent and tell you my adult stuff: you're my kids and I really should never tell you adult stuff because well, it's inappropriate and it steals your right to be a child, a dependent, not a supposed adult; my troubles are not yours to "hold." (I'm going there again, all Mom on you: "infantalize" means the opposite: to treat you as infants and be all cutesy talk and coo-coo to you because that also robs you of your achievements and growth and puts you in a box where I'm most comfortable.)

It was a hard day because I lived outside myself and I let my reactions spool up my EGO (not my spirit, which was probably hiding in a corner) to a point where I was literally shaking with anger and I could feel the adrenaline (which is so unbelievably powerful a chemical, holy crap, I can't believe we make this inside our bodies) literally flood and heat my body and amp up my heart rate which geared up every muscle I have to fight a tremendous physical battle. All I can say is your dog is a wonderful buddy and speed-walking while talking to our friend behind the fence on the phone was essential for stage 1 of my recovery.

The thing is, guys, you're gonna get like that. You're gonna let ego-driven reactions and stuff that other people do get to you and you might feel so incredibly offended, violated even, that you'll want to hunt down and hurl an Army tank 50 yards in no direction at all ("HULK SMASH!") just to make you feel better. But you know what, it only helps a little. What helps a lot is just letting it go. Letting it all just blow away...

It was a hard day. But then you all came home, and well, my distraction didn't really stop. I was still pretty miffed. I banged on my keyboard and wrote and wrote and wrote. Even though I called that wonderful friend and she helped me so much, I was still miffed. Still in that moment. Then a cousin called, and she helped me a lot too to get back to me. That was the beginning of stage 2 of my recovery.

So I did. I came back to me, but that wasn't enough. I had to cut the cords that connected me to that negativity (real or imagined) so I put down the smartphone. I logged off the mac and I came back to you all. I lived with intention to excel at the things I DO do. Thing 3 and I inadvertently made three batches of brownies (I know, nice problem to have, huh?) because he said to add 3 eggs and a cup each of water and oil to one packet. The result of that was fudge drink (I'm gagging at the thought) so we had to add two more packets; I know, we're champions because we took one for the team there (I'm just glad we HAD two more packets...). Then Thing 2 and I played Appleletters on the floor beside the barstools and had a laughingly good time because neither of us had any vowels for a while and then finally in the end we did, but not enough consonants (life is like that) to do anything. Thing 1, you were jamming "Stairway to Heaven" in your room and making progress. It was all very good to be alive.

As I put my head down on my pillow last night, I resolved to not pick up the smartphone or log on until after I come back from walking you to school.

Remember this Rockwellian walk to school; we did it rain or shine, almost every day.

I thank God, T3, that you needed to go in late today to write your reader's response and for my pledge to not take my phone because if I had, I would have surely missed the following: the talk we had about playing Bananagrams later today and the mommy fox we saw in the woods as we walked up the hill behind the Sullivan's. Do you remember seeing the breakfast in her mouth for her kits? I think it was a chipmunk (maybe our cats caught it for her and left it somewhere). If I hadn't stayed with you to unpack your stuff and walk you to Spanish, I would've messed up the timing of: seeing the deer eating new weeds near the ravine. I would have missed the fox again, as she left her kits to look for more to eat. I wouldn't have gotten the chance to stand on the new wooden bridge to watch her silently trot with her fluffy white-tipped and rust-colored tail bouncing as she scanned her beautiful amber eyes to follow the sound of squirrels until they met me. Her head was perched just so, revealing her lovely white chest and black outline of her mouth and whiskers. She came closer and when she was about 20 feet away, I cleared my throat. (I love nature and all, but well... c'mon, she's a wild animal.) Our eyes met. She stopped and she lifted her left paw to just hover above the path. We stared, regarding one another and I was grateful I was alone without Murphy or your dad because our talking would have surely scared her off. I wish I had a camera: The fox right in front of me, the deer still nibbling in the sun about 40 feet behind the fox, oblivious to the din of traffic above and I heard only the birds and squirrels leaping from tree to tree. The fox stood totally still, for what seemed an eternity, but was only 20 seconds. I never looked away. She did, I won. :) She turned right and trotted. Stopped, looked at me again, looked ahead again and continued on her way.

. . .

I'm almost done here...

A great (and excellent published author - I try not to give names here) and longtime friend of our family's, said to me about three months ago when I was feeling quite down about myself and my own family of origin, that it doesn't matter anymore if the family that made me loves me or honors or aids me. What matters is that I have the family I made with your father, us, to do that -- that we are here to do that for each other. Her loving words were forcefully delivered, to wake me up I think, and they slammed me like a fierce wind. I can still feel it now. What's done is done. What's now is ours.

So it's about balance: stay on task at what you love to DO. Don't compare yourself with others, compare yourself with you. Don't live for someone else's dream (even if it's for you), live for yours.

There are wonderful mothers who grow their own food and mill their own wheat. They are good people and I am not one of them. So it doesn't matter that I cook home-made anything, what matters is that we eat it together.

It doesn't matter that I write a book or a blog or a movie; I'm not in this gig to get rich. Sorry, but you'll have to buy your own Lamborginis. What matters is that I do so purely and with love of the craft and intention to stay grounded. While ambition is good and can keep us on the job, active authentic intention keeps us focused which ultimately helps us get the job done.

Always, always come back to center. Figure out what why you're doing what you do (but it must be legal) and stay there.

Oh, and if I can't complete whatever I'm doing online while you're at school, it's not meant to be. I gotta get off the grid when you walk through the door.

Thank you boys.

The Places I Go and Then Have to Leave - By Murphy

2012-05-10T14:04:00.000-04:00

Today we have a guest blogger at the behest of Thing 3 who's toddler nickname in the playroom used to be called "Osama bin Dumper, Toyorist." So, he's in charge for the moment. Please indulge...

=-=-=-=-=

I am the family god. I mean, dog. I am the family dog. I am having the 8-year-old, the smallest boy, write this for me.

I am four. I have four feet. They are webbed. They help me swim. When the lady says I can. She takes me to small lakes when the weather is good. My tail helps me steer.

I am a golden retriever. I do not retrieve gold. If they threw gold for me to get, I could not pick it up in my mouth. It would be too heavy. I would not give it to them. I would give it to the smallest boy, for helping me tell my story.

The lady calls me a "crotch torpedo." What does that mean?

This is a story about the places I try to go to. I am often told to go away from them.

Here are some pictures of me:

This is me when I was a baby. Aren't I cute?

This is me when I was first brought home to be with these people. That boy is the smallest one. We stick together. He is 8 now.

This is me when I was running for President of the United States. I withdrew my name from consideration for personal reasons. Again, I ask: what is a "crotch torpedo"?

This is me and my favorite toy. The lady who owns my best friend gave it to me.

Today when I was walking around the dressers, the side of the bed, the side of the refrigerator, the side of the couch, the side of the wall, the seats of the chairs, the third step, I was tasting the the toilet water with my tongue. It's right at my nose. The lady shouted, "LEAVE IT." So I left it. I have a bowl but I like the toilet.

The boys left their morning dishes on the table. I like toast. My tongue is long enough to reach it and I can leave my feet on the ground. That way I am not table surfing. What does that mean? I reached for the toast and the man saw me and he said, "Ah-Ah-Ah, Murphy. DROP IT."

And I dropped it. It tasted good. I wish I ate it. I stared at it a long time. Looking at the toast. It was right there. I wish I had it. I wanted to say "Ah-Ah-Ah, Man. GO AWAY."

I love to go on walks with the lady and the boys. I love to chase geese. They are fat and stupid, but they swim fast. The lady says I can chase geese but no ducks. I am not allowed to chase squirrels when I am on the leash.

This is me when I found a bag of flour in the basement. I was not a year old then. The people kept on calling me "scar face." I do not have scars.

"i can'g geg my thongue ov fa roove ov my mouv. pleath hep me."

This is a close-up of me when I got into the flour. I packed some in my cheeks so I could have it later. I was very sorry.

I wanted to go inside the shed today when it started to rain. But I had to get out because the lady shouted, "OUT, MURPHY." So I backed out. Have you ever seen a big dog try to turn around in a small shed door on a ramp in the rain? It is hard to do. I do not care if I have the prettiest feathers (do dogs have feathers? I can not fly) in the whole wide world as the lady says, it is hard to back out of a shed in the rain.

The rain drops get in my face and my eyebrows do not help me. Sometimes the lady makes me do a trick to come in. She taught me how to whisper a "password" to get in. When it is cold or rainy, I have a password: "MOVE." But I do not know how to whisper "MOVE." So I give the password and go in.

Yesterday, I was sniffing plants with my feet and I also sniffed the plant food (bone powder) with my mouth that the man put on the ground around some bushes. Again, the lady yelled at me, this time saying "OFF MURPHY. OFF." So I stopped.

I like to sleep between the bed and a wall when the lady works on her desk. I sleep in the bedroom closet at night. I like small spaces. They make me feel safe. I do not like fireworks or thunder.

I have a ball in the grass. I like it when the people throw the ball. I go get it and run around the grass and trees and make them follow me. They do that for a little time until they stop and yell, "DROP IT, MURPHY" to me. So I drop it. We do it again.

On Sunday, the man and the lady stood and used sticks in a small area that they later put wire fence around. It was like a pool of dirt. It looked perfect for me. I saw them bring in more and more dirt they dumped in the area. It smelled good. The boys said it smelled like a farm. I like a farm if a farm smells like that! The bags said M-A-N-U-R-E on them. I don't know who he is, Man Ure, but I like his smell. And that fence! The fence was to keep the people out.

Then they put in plants the lady bought. Something with small shiny leaves that smelled like chicken wings, another plant with heart-shaped grayish leaves (everything is gray to me) that smelled like rotten plants and another one with hairy leaves and tiny flowers on it; when I pushed my face into that hairy one, I smelled sour plants. I did not care about plants. I wanted to get into the pool.

They left the fence open when they went to eat.

I went in and made paw prints all over the dirt that smelled good. I was about to make water on the plants and dive into the dirt pool, but the lady shouted to the tallest boy, "Hey, get Murphy out of there! He'll ruin everything!"

The tallest boy said, "C'mon, Murph. No. OUT!" and I stopped what I was doing and I had to get out. Maybe the dirt pool wasn't ready.

Then they closed the fence. I can not go in the dirt pool anymore.

Today, a day early, the tutor came over to sit with the tallest boy. He "blew it royally" on a math test. Is it not good to blow it royally? I love the tutor. She pets my ears the whole time I am in the room with her when she is sitting with the tallest boy.

The lady said "COME, MURPHY." And I left the tutor. The lady gave me a treat for that. It was good. It is time for me to go now. They are looking for the smallest boy. We are buddies.

Good bye.

Dear Things 3: A Wild Thing Sailed Off Today.

2012-05-08T13:21:00.002-04:00

Dear boys,

Today is a sad day for me. Maurice Sendak, one of my favorite writers, has died.

He died from complications of a stroke he suffered recently.

A stroke is an injury to the brain, which can result in immobility in certain parts of your brain that connects to and/or controls certain parts of your body. When those parts of the brain are injured, those connected parts of the body suffer.

He never recovered. Today he sailed off in his private boat.

Mr. Sendak was a hero of mine. Of ours, actually. He wrote our all-time favorite-est, bestest book ever: Where the Wild Things Are.

Mr. Sendak created a world for an entire generation or, possibly three, where children were celebrated and portrayed as children: wild, free, heard and seldom seen. He taught us that it was and IS ok to be Who We Are. He taught parents who were willing to listen, that all children are and should be Wild Things.

I call you my Things 3.

This was your private boat last summer.

In Dr. Suess's Cat in the Hat two wild-haired, red-jumper wearing creatures, Thing 1 and Thing 2, were called to aid in the clean-up one afternoon the Cat visited Robert and Sally on a rainy day when their mother was out. Thing 1 and Thing 2 didn't really help clean up at all. That's a fun story too.

That's one reason I call you my Things 3. But it's not the real reason.

The real reason is because of Max, in Where the Wild Things Are. Max was his own mother's wild thing. Max had his own identity and in that identity he had vulnerabilities, fears, loves, triumphs, insecurities and grace.

Mr. Sendak told parents it was OK to let their kids be wild; to count on it, actually. And for children everywhere, it helped them understand that parents will still be there when they come down.

Max loved to dress up. He went after the family dog with a fork and wore a wolf suit. He was so rambunctious that he got sent to bed without any supper after telling his mother that he'd eat her up. To his mom, bed without supper was punishment. To Max, bed without supper was an opportunity. Although his mother loved him, Max didn't see it that way; he saw it as rejection and as a thought that his mother didn't approve of him. So Max sailed off, through night and day, and eventually, he ended up in the place where the Wild Things were.

Do you remember that story? There are only 48 pages, all have art. There are only 339 words in the story. It's a story that repeats a lot of words and phrases but they mean something different each time.

When he arrived, he saw that the native Wild Things were huge, I mean, like ginormous: imagine two smart cars (you pick the color) stacked bumper-to-bumper and standing up. Some Wild Things had scales and feathers, some had tails and horns, but they all had claws and big teeth and yellow eyes, so Max, who was luckily still in that wolf suit he wore when he chased the dog with a fork, had to convince them all that he was the Wildest Thing of all. So he sorta hypnotized them and they were afraid and agreed that he was the King of all Wild Things.

So far no one has gone to bed without supper here. But that doesn't mean it didn't cross our minds.

Our well loved, bent, tattered copy.

I have read that story so many times, I have it memorized and I will never tire of it. I can still recite it to you now.

You are my Things. My Wild Things. You make me proud that you are mine; but you're not really mine, are you? You're given to me and your dad by the Heavens to raise as best we can. To see you as the Heavens see you: as raw, smart, real, flawed, chemical and energetic masses with beautiful eyes, occasional sniffles, freckles, smiles, grimaces, grace and jealousies. It's our job to let you be Wild Things and to honor that part of you which deserves celebration: your realness.

It is also my job to protect you as best I can. To explain to you that you are not the only Wild Things out there; and to trust me that there are bigger, angrier and scarier Wild Things than you might understand. There are more Wild Things than I know.

But life is not about being afraid of the Wild Things; life is about being your best Wild Thing and knowing when you need and don't need your wolf suit and your boat. Sometimes, our suits and our boats don't help. They only show the world a hurt stranger and take us away to a strange place and like the supper, the pains and fears we try to fight or escape will still be here, and will still be hot when we get back. Sometimes, it's best to keep the suit on a hanger and the boat in the port and experience and deal with what's happening here. To not sail away through night and day.

Your dad and I will be here to help you.

When Max had had enough of the snarling and gnashing Wild Things at the place where they were, he decided to give up being King and go (it didn't say 'home') where someone loved him best of all. When he did this, he smelled good things to eat. So he got in his boat and sailed away. Where he ended up was home. Because that's where he was loved best of all.

Now that Mr. Sendak has died, it's up to you, my 3 Things, to carry on his legacy, with all the other children and Wild Things everywhere. To wear your wolf suits and chase the dog (but with a spoon instead so you don't hurt him or yourself) and to howl at the moon, snarl, stare with your yellow eyes without blinking once and remind me that life is all about letting the Wild Rumpus Start. Can I have a Wild Rumpus too sometimes?

But you will sail away. So when you do sail away, over a year, I'll be here with your supper and it will still be hot. Just be sure you come back, k? I could eat you all up, I love you so.

Thank you.

rant: The Fight for Individualism: It's Very Popular

2012-05-07T10:47:00.000-04:00

I have to say this.

There seems to be an overwhelming trend for people to think that just they are the spawning salmon; that they are going against the grain. The Independents. The I am MySelf People. The Just Be You People.

I get this. I accept this. I so accept this that it's one of the greatest paradoxes of all time!

As Lily Tomlin said, "We're all alone in this together."

Occupy Wall Street: 50k people crowding a park in NYC think they're independent.

Everyone comes into this planet the same way.

Have you ever had a great day? So have I. I guess that means you're not alone anymore.
Have you ever had a regret? So have I. I guess that means you're not alone anymore.

Have you ever gotten sick? So have I. I guess that means you're not alone anymore.

Have you ever had a good idea? So have I. I guess that means you're not alone anymore.

There are really only a few truly independent thinkers, truly independent avatars in all of humanity's Universal experience.

Jesus. No, I'm not saying "Jesus" as if I'm exasperated. Jesus is one.

Who else... Einstein. No, I'm not saying "Einstein" ironically as though you're not smart enough. He's another.

Moses, God, Newton, Galileo... Mitch Snyder (the hunger strike activist). Mother Theresa (but not really because she followed the teachings of Jesus...).

They were independents. For awhile, and then they amassed followers. So then what? Are they truly independents anymore? Truly revolutionaries?

If you want to be truly Your Own Guy, truly Independent: get off the internet. Lose the cell phone. Stop taking pictures of yourself and posting them online. Stop logging your time anywhere and uploading it to Facebook. Stop leaving a trail for people to follow you! You're so alone on Facebook that there are 800+ million of you.

Stop Trying To Connect with people and then say you're your Own Guy!

Gimme a break.

Because if you did this, then people wouldn't follow you and you'd be all alone. Eureka! There it is! Go ahead. Disagree with me... you wouldn't be the only one.

HA!

And everyone leaves this planet the same way.

I loved this: one day I was running with my dog. Some kids (who clearly can't spell) spray painted this on the asphalt under the trees: "We are the Lone Woves" -- first, Woves, you missed your L. Secondly, "we" and "lone" contradict. But they're kids. The point is, there are no truly lone wolves. We know this because if they were alone, they wouldn't survive. No one, no one is alone; we might feel that way, but honestly: you wouldn't like it. Try it. Go ahead: go off the grid, drink water from a stream, kill for your meals, rub two sticks together and live in a cave.

I bet you'll find someone else there too.

We are all connected. Gah! I didn't want to go all existential today. I didn't want to Be That Person again who preaches and then goes back to my hole of quiet where it's just me and my thoughts. But it's so funny to me that people think, I mean, actually beLIEVE they are alone, loners, rogue, independent. They're not!

I know I'm not alone in my thinking.

The thing is: if you stick out constantly like a sore thumb rather than just a thumb, maybe you're just sore. And you're the one who's resisting.

Resist urge to preach. Resist urge to preach. Resist urge to preach.

Ok, here are some Other Independents:

The ugly ones: Hilter. Stalin. The Unabomber. Osama bin Laden.

Sheesh. Talk about sore thumbs. Ouch.

Um. I'm repeating myself: they were independents. For awhile, and then they amassed followers. So then what? Are they truly independents anymore? Truly revolutionaries?

If you want to be really Independent: go off the grid. Live off the land. Don't work for money. Do good anonymously. Be one of Those People: the ones who do great things expecting NOTHING in return.

I have to say, it's all bullshit. All this "I am my own guy!" stuff because at the core of humanity, we want to be heard, we want to get along, we want to have friendships and relationships. We want SO DESPERATELY to connect. If we didn't we wouldn't have sex and procreate. We wouldn't live where other people are. We wouldn't say "Hi!" It's simply not just a matter of evolution. It's a matter of relation.

But then those "we our own guy" people are exclusionists: "you can be with us but you have to agree with us. If you disagree, you're not one of us; you're alone."

Ok. But then aren't you...? My head hurts.

To me, all those people who want to Be Their Own Person are cool, until what they say about YOUR independent thought is somehow offensive. Once you challenge their "gone against (really with) the grain" mentality, it's no longer cool. Good luck trying to connect with those guys; the ones you oppose because guess what?: your mentality is against Their (collective) mentality.

I hate to break it to all the so-called independent thinkers out there: There are no "I" people; sooner or later, you're gonna find another who agrees with you. And then what happens... don't look, but you've become a "we."

Just quit lying to yourselves and accept the fact that you're part of a bigger connection. It's your ego that thinks it's so revolutionary, but your id that wants to belong. Sometimes. Go with the flow... we all do eventually.

It's OK. Really.

Bluto was right. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?

The greatest irony of all of this is that some of the greatest individuals: Jesus, Moses, Galileo, Einstein were all about teaching people that we are together. Divided we fall.

Who's with me?

Thank you.

Elusive Equanimity

2012-05-06T21:13:00.000-04:00

Equanimity means being OK with What Is. For me, it's pretty elusive. Not an hour goes by where I don't have some opinion on something.

Being OK with What Is, is a tenet of yoga.

I have a yoga class twice a week from one of the best yoga people I know. I met her when she subbed for one of the other best teachers I've ever had. I know, I hit the lottery. Guess what? I still manage to feel guilty for not going back to the first teacher. My reasons are excellent reasons and if I were my own best friend, I'd tell me to just let the guilt go. . .

When I don't go to class for yoga, I'm practicing a little at home in the morning or at the end of the day to wind up or wind down for the day.

Practicing yoga. Practicing ... that sort of implies imperfection and acceptance with the process. That we are constantly evolving.

The irony is not lost on me that I practice something that actively reminds me to be OK with What Is.

Things that take time do well with equanimous spirits, people who are Zen. Thus, I do not deign to own an equanimous spirit, so I fake it. I can feel my back molars grind into each other actually as I type this. I hate denial.

Release. Breathe. Let it go.

OK. So, while I said that Equanimity means being OK with What Is; that's sorta the tip of the iceberg. It's not just being OK with What Is, but being OK with What Is at all times, the easy times and the hard times.

How many of you are OK with What Is at all times?

Webster's says this:

equanimity |ˌēkwəˈnimitē; ˌekwə-|

noun

mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, esp. in a difficult situation : she accepted both the good and the bad with equanimity.

DERIVATIVES

equanimous |iˈkwänəməs| adjective

ORIGIN early 17th cent. (also in the sense ‘fairness, impartiality’ ): from Latin aequanimitas, from aequus ‘equal’ + animus ‘mind.’

I realize, as I've matured (clearly I'm not equanimous about age) that I've selected pastimes that are far from immediately satisfying.

I've given birth to three boys. BREATHE.

I've recently taken up knitting. Again. Breathe.

I have a fish tank, two cats and one beloved dog who truly, is my bestest bud on four feet.

I have decided to write a book. Several actually, they're all in different stages of maturity. One's about motherhood; another is about a woman named Miriam and her transformation through illusion with the aide of therapy and a patient husband (sound familiar?); and another is about a pretty lost dude, its inspiration came after a long afternoon with my beloved cousins last summer. Which one do you want to hear about most? Really! Tell me and I'll get cracking.

I garden. Anyone who gardens must be the equanimous type, right? 'Cause gardening takes time, patience and totally being OK with What Is.

I think my parents and brothers and anyone who knew me in a professional capacity would never describe me as being equanimous at my essence and I agree with them. I like results. I am detail oriented. I have an extremely driven personality. If you ever hired me to get your whatever done, you know it's gotten done. My work reviews were mostly "Consistently Exceeded Expectations" because I was like a dog on a hunt: motivated and insanely focused. I often remember my MCI corporate communications days when I'd relish hearing executives saying, "Don't tell me about BCDEFandG and all the rest; it doesn't matter... I want to hear about XYZ. Now." I'd be the one in the background "woof-woof"-ing (a lá Arsenio Hall) "That's right! She wants the reSULTS! y'all! Get going!" In short, I don't let people down.

Back to equanimity. Back to What Is.

As I said, another pastime is my garden. OMIGAWD I love my garden. Don't ask me any of the latin names, or the botanical breakdowns. I couldn't care less about phyla or kingdoms or whatever. Just show me what's annual, what works in shade, in acidic soil and I'm there. I like their street names: hosta "blue elephant's ear" (LOVE IT!), stripey, variegated this and that, daylily and the rest.

Similar to just about everyone but the dead-for-a-long-time Dorothy Parker, I come alive in springtime. I love the leaves, with their translucent newness. The smell of dirt that wafts from under the leaves broken by fern and forest perennials is better than any fresh-brewed coffee. I come alive with gardening in the spring. This particular hobby, fancy, interest, obsession, is one that takes practice, timing and being OK with the fact that you might not know what the heck you're doing. I've killed a ton of plants by placing them in the wrong places or overwatering. It is a hobby that completely demands equanimity.

"Demands equanimity." There's an irony.

It demands equanimity because as a farmer, a true farmer, knows: mother nature is the ultimate decider. She says when it's gonna rain, when it's gonna shine, or frost; when it's gonna be dry or cloudy. She says so. As farmers, they know: there is no guarantee and there are no promises. So we must be OK with What Is.

Even if What Is means no crops. Even if What Is means too much rain.

Even if What Is means everything's OK, because if you're anything like me: even when everything's OK, you wonder when it won't be anymore. That's a painful reminder of life: even though everything's OK, we humans have a tendency to screw it all up by considering that somewhere, something's not OK and then therefore, we should do something about it.

*pause*

Therein lies the equanimity. We must **MUST** be OK with What Is. Even if it's hideous or awful (as I hear sirens joined by other sirens in the distance, quick, say a prayer). Because you know why? It will be OK. One way or another: peace will come. Possibly in a way we might not prefer, but peace will come.

Here's another way of looking at it: if whatever is happening is happening and you aren't OK with it... is being not OK with it going to change it? Chances are: no. If it's something like a tablecloth off center or a song being just not right, pause and think. If you're doing that all the time? It's you. It's not the circumstances. So let it go. Be equanimous.

. . .

It's Sunday night and I've blissfully spent almost every possible free moment in my gardens this weekend. Friday I went with my neighbor/bff/buddy to the local nursery and dropped little over a hundy on some annuals and vegetable (eggplant, beans, burpless cukes, and beans) plants for our actual vegetable garden that my husband Dan tends with Thing 3 who is 8. The rest was flowers in those little 4-packs. About 78 of those single guys.

I planted them all that afternoon. I couldn't stop myself. It rained. I dug. It poured. I planted. It thundered. I counted. It lightening-ed. I went inside.

Waiting.... Waiting... checking the sky.

Is it clear? Clouds.

Did it stop? No coronas pinging off the pavement.

Can I go? It's quiet.

Ok. Let's try...

I have tennis elbow again. This time in my left (dominant) arm. Equanimity raises her head. It's hard to be a gardener with this condition. Tennis elbow afflicts the motion for dishwasher unloading (tragic, I know) but more importantly, it affects weed plucking and dirt combing and plant moving. Equanimity has sort of lost her fashionability right now. I have decided that because I love gardening more than I love unloading the dishwasher, that I will save the pain for the appliance and wince through the gardening. I am OK with What Is and I'm defiant.

Gardening for me is a passion, a vice that I find hard to resist. I love splitting hostas, dividing peonies, liriope, ferns, bugloss (are you still with me?), lilies, irises, forget-me-nots, astilbe, lily-of-the-valley, bleeding hearts, nandina and wild violets. Yes, if you're still with me, you can probably figure out by now that I have a shade garden for the most part.

the fiddlerhead of an unfurling fern

As I've said, "I love plants that make their own babies!"

bleeding hearts, aren't they wonderful?

we are not in this gig, life, alone: even this peony needs an ant to help him / her along. and it takes TIME... about 3 weeks from first ant sighting to bloom: there's a lot of trust required.

When we moved into this house almost 12 years ago, the back yard was nothing like it is now. It had 18 tree stumps, almost no grass, a white, plastic, scalloped border around every tree and in the corners. That was awful: I wanted the trees to be like a parkland: in the grass, part of the experience. Setting them off? That was just weird. The yard also had very compacted soil and a single bed of shade-loving annuals along the back fence and a ton of random planters placed upside-down to cover the tree stumps.

Since 2000, we have upgraded the backyard to be a very nice, lush and cozy place. Of the last two years, the Field Family botanical campaign of has been: Operation Decorum, Screen Shirtless Mike. We have endeavored through non-deciduous means to build an evergreen screen along the fence-line that separates us from our neighbor, "Shirtless Mike."

The neighbor, "Shirtless Mike" has been our backyard guy for the whole time. We call him "SM" because well, he doesn't wear a shirt. Ever. He's in pretty good shape, but c'mon, it's sorta ridiculous. He just had a bypass last December. My Australian neighbor who moved away, used to call him "Mr. Big'n'Chesty." While he's a pretty decent guy and he's nice to my kids, I'll never forget what he said to me the first time we met when I was seven months pregnant with Thing 2. Thing 1 was doing his best drunken sailor / toddler routine through the new yard. We were taking a break from unpacking and our dog, Maggie, was relieving herself, trotting and sniffing. Shirtless Mike said as he gestured his arm to shake over the fence and into our domain, "Hello. Nice to meet you. She [the former owner] kept it real clean."

I felt like saying, "What clean? This backyard? This wasteland? This dustbowl of dead grass and holes, her rusting swing set (that we replaced with a wooden one), the 70-year-old double-leader red oak in the driveway that's got a hole the size of my husband's jelly cupboard in it, or that decomposing red wagon she left behind that's covering three tree stumps? Or could it be that you're referring to her complete lack of the botanic aesthetic? No problem. I'll just let my golden retriever shit all over the dirt and maybe something will come up." What I said instead was, "Oh, yes. Well, I'm pregnant, we've just moved in and we have a boy and a dog. We will do what we can cough*asshole*cough."

our well-loved swingset

I've been known to appropriately cough*asshole*cough at just about any asshole deserving of it. Just ask my friends.

I should have considered the source. This guy has all of his gardens, excuse me, hosta of one variety only behind retaining walls. Which of course makes sense if you're on a slope, but we're not. In fact, everything is behind a retaining wall. Even his shirts, I'm guessing. He clearly likes things Just So. Especially that stack of mulch bags that he keeps in his yard for six months and the dying crabapple tree in his front yard. His retaining walls have retaining walls. I've heard he works for the CIA. So if I'm silent for a really long time, I'm either finally committing to my book(s) or I'm in one of his gardens, behind a retaining wall, likely the one nearest the mulch bags under the brick landing he has beneath his bird feeder to keep seeds from germinating.

So much for equanimity. It is elusive.

Who was it? Frost who said "Good fencing makes for good neighbors."? He was brilliant. My natural screen fencing will take years to grow, but that is part of its charm; it is teaching me to be equanimous.

So here I am (actually truly on my deck) overlooking over my .23 acre domain with my buddy neighbor at 1 o'clock and I know that when I have her and my other friend, that Crazy Broad from Queens around, I'm equanimous because they force me to be so. They remind me to my face: This Is What It Is. Deal.

And when I have my garden around, I have no choice. When I have my kids around, I must be OK with what is or if I'm not, take a pulse from the Team and friends to see what we need to do to bring any one of them back. I'm learning, from my garden to be equanimous because I have no choice.

Equanimity eventually wins. Right?!

Which begs the question then: who's elusive? Is it equanimity? Or is it me? Cough*shutup*cough. I know. It's me.

I can hear a neighbor mowing their lawn in the dark. It's 8:50 now. The sun set an hour ago.

The garden beds will turn out OK or they won't. They tomatoes, basil, cukes, eggplant (I know! Come over and we'll nosh!) will grow or they won't. I think they might. I've never grown eggplant before; I'll let you know. As for the kids, we've got plenty of >fleeting!< time. They will behave or they won't. The bottom line is that I have to be OK with it and work when it doesn't.

The thing is: it's spring! It's time for renewal so everyone gets a pass, a mulligan. It's what we do with this renewal, this mulligan, that matters. Do we squander and repeat? Or do we truly grow, with the luscious breaths of equanimity, and move on?

But I've figured part of this out: I'm elusive; equanimity is right here like she always has been.

Thank you.

words & stats: love is 11, hate is 1 and water

2012-04-28T15:01:00.002-04:00

I love statistics. They tell a story, paint a picture, give a glimpse.

They can also be manipulated, I know this. So can people, but that's beside the point. Let's move on.

The point is that if I keep the search simple, then I get simple results. Clean and unfiltered results, like Colorado spring water running off a mountainside or dripping into a rocky gorge into a pool below. Nice, huh?

http://coloradoblogging.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/colorado%20waterfall%20spots.jpg

I have found, through my own little blog statistics here that my most-read content is about neutral-to-positive, life-relatable experiences: parental observations, stories from my youth, moments of learning and glances at my world, the day of toothpaste shopping and that shopping cart from hell. The posts about politics, local stuff here in my 'hood, sadness and troubles don't get as much traffic. I understand that: it's hard to read about sadness when you've got your own stuff going on. It's important and nice though, to know you're not alone. But of everything, it's the most-human aspects that I write about that seem to generate the most interest amongst my readers. While I experience sadness and write about it, I always endeavor to have you laugh a little, to show you that a smile is more than a crack in the sadness: it's an anchor in the storm.

Equally nice and beautifully telling, are the results I got on a very simple search of positive words versus negative words and how often they appear on the Internet.

Now, remember: earth's population just hit 7 billion strong. Sometimes we feel crowded and squeezed out. Sometimes we let our sadder, heavier emotions get the better of us. Sometimes we feel we can't keep up. That's hard. What's good about this though, is that we can learn through every supposed mistake, that we can go on, that we can get smarter? No. Stronger? No. I don't think life is about getting smarter or stronger. It's about getting better. Treating ourselves better which in turn, means we treat others better.

When there are 7b people on this rock, I'm guessing not all of them have Internet access. Even in the U.S. we have only broadband 60% connectivity. Click on this link to go to a site that tells the latest story.

So, what I'm about to show is pretty freakin' awesome if you ask me. (Even though you didn't.) I am happy to say that Love does conquer (at least on "The Google" as a dear friend and I like to call it) and it makes me happy (which also conquers).

I searched the following words and here are their "hits" results:

Love: 9,240,000,000 (9.2b)
Hate: 871,000,000 (870m)

Happy: 3,790,000,000 (3.79b)
Sad: 1,010,000,000 (1.01b)

Joy: 769,000,000 (769m)
Fear: 627,000,000 (627m)

Gentle: 45,600,000 (45.6m)
Harsh: 130,000,000 (130m)

Soft: 1,500,000,000 (1.5b)
Tough: 2,350,000,000 (2.35b)

Open: 6,500,000,000 (6.5b)
Close: 5,940,000,000 (5.9b)

Heart: 3,050,000,000 (3.05b)
Brain: 630,000,000 (630m)

Soul: 1,120,000,000 (1.12b)
Mind: 2,100,000,000 (2.1b)

Peace: 931,000,000 (931m)
Dread: 61,700,000 (61.7m)

Now here's the deal: you can massage these stats any way you wish. We can simply state that this data reflects the usage of these words on the Internet and leave it at that. We can do that. If so, thank you for reading.

But I'm me. A little out-of-the-boxish. Sure, the counts reflect the usage. But to me, they also reflect the sentiment. They tell me that people prefer love and that if love wins on an Internet statistic where only the people / institutions who use the Internet are sharing their words and intentions, then there is enough of it to go around for everyone on this planet.

Confession (I'm always honest if nothing else): when I wrote down my columns of the words to search (see the picture below), I had a + and a - to differentiate. Lo and behold! Facepalm!: despite all my years of therapy and all my attempts to be more "soft & vulnerable" as my most awesome therapist ever challenged me (the day before he left for a month-long vacation) to consider being (the memory of that challenge still makes me barf a little in my mouth, no joke), I put "tough" in the positive column and "soft" in the negative column today. A few key friends and people I used to know are savvy to that story.

I guess I still have some work to do. But you know what? So does the Internet because "tough" outnumbers "soft" by ... a lot (Thing 1's at soccer, so my instant math stats genius is gone). What those stats show *me* is that while usage of "vulnerable" is higher than "invulnerable" the lower comparisons tell me that usage of strength over weakness is higher.

So apparently I still value my toughness. My parents used to call me "Toughy Turner" and while to them it was a term of endearment, it shaped me and I began to understand that "toughness" was valued over softness. And to a kid growing up with a fair amount of chaos, from which I am constantly recovering, I suppose it only bears the truth that the Tough not only survive but they thrive. Softness connotes vulnerability to me (notice I didn't search that on my card above) and well, I don't know anyone who admits to be OK with feeling vulnerable. Now, that doesn't mean we don't try to go there, it just means a lot of yuck. But it's important.

Ok, fine... here's the comparison of (it's hilarious to me when I imagine you all raising and eyebrow and saying, "C'mon... you have to go there now..."):

Vulnerable: 117,000,000 (117m)
Invulnerable: 3,980,000 (3.9m)

Strong: 2,050,000,000 (2.05b)
Weak: 286,000,000 (286m)

Neediness: 1,510,000 (1.5m)
Autonomous: 59,700,000 (59.7m)

If you still don't think words matter, check out the work of Masaru Emoto who conducted FASCINATING experiments about the weight of words and their effects on water (I knew I'd get back to that Colorado mountain spring somehow...).

Masaru Emoto conducted hundreds, if not thousands of experiments on the power of words on water; which make up 70% of our planet and our human bodies. So, pay attention to what you say and what words you use on yourself and others.

But y'know what's the best part of this whole thing? That "Love" had the most hits of all the words I searched. That's awesome. So share the love, spread the love and be the Love.

So yeah! Words matter, and feelings matter.

One more thought:

thank you.

River Bend Park: Hunting like the Algonquians

2012-04-25T22:01:00.001-04:00

Today, on a sparkling clear low-70s fantastic spring day, I went on a school field trip with Thing 3 who is eight to River Bend Park with his class to learn about long-ago Native Americans in our region. He is an inquisitive little guy, articulate and sweetly awkward. He's on an accelerated intellectual path and he gets dreamy and cozy with his big ideas, speaking to me tenderly about his designs and thoughts about how the world works. While he's dreaming big, emotionally he's still tender about being asked to "come back to us," and he struggles to articulate the feelings he experiences and why he has them. I like to equate this stage as similar to when little kids fall down: because they're short, they don't have far to go; but to them, it's still a distance and it can be hard on them, a surprise. Optimistically speaking, the younger we catch these snags, the softer the reaction, the more "in the moment" we can inspire them to be.

He absolutely loves field trips. He loves nature and being outside as much as he loves legos and his DS and video games. When it comes to being in the moment, he loves it; loves to live there and for the most part that's OK. And he's quite flexible about social experiences. When we were at lunch at the picnic tables, he was delighted to sit and gaze softly at the river, calmly focusing, sort of taking it all in, his hair gently lifting in the soft breezes that licked our forms. It was still a little crisp, but undeniably lovely outside. We all were happy there.

I observed his classmates in all their different flavors and styles, races and mannerisms. I was delighted that it seemed to me that Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of a colorblind society is growing closer every generation. Girls were not considered weaker or slower or smaller or softer than the boys. As a mom of only three boys, I was over the moon to see that a boy's tenderness or perceived slowness or clumsiness or were not the subject of criticism. Competition existed on a skills basis only. One girl shot a bow and arrow more than 30 feet and it cleared the tarp that was supposed to catch it. No one said, "great job for a girl!" They all said, "Wow! That was amazing! Way to go, Sally!"

At River Bend Park, Thing 3 enjoys the view from the deck my tax dollars built.

I strolled with the other parents and children under the dappled sunlight streaming through the breaks between bright, translucent leaves that popped three weeks early. My feet landed silently on the powder-sand soft, multimillennia-old pathway of this amazing park today along the Potomac River. I listened to the sing-song conversations of the kids; grateful for the moment to "record" in my memory as one when the children are still untainted by social anxiety and inadequacy worries. They were all about the environment. All about each other, about what they saw, ladybugs and butterflies; remembering the snakes sunning on the banks of the river, and what they heard, crows ca-cawing and bees buzzing. Every once in a while I'd hear "fart" talk or "poopy" but that was about it. The kids were in the moment, happy to be away from their desks on a wonderful day with parents all around them. If the parents weren't their own, they were parents of a good friend, familiar loving people were all around.

Our guide, who had an unusual British accent; sort of Swiss and British in one, took our group to a clearing just before the path forked. I was showing my friend who is moving soon what poison ivy looks like as the guide talked about the botany and native animals of the area. Walking forward a bit slowly now, she talked about the ancient Algonquian people who lived in this area 15,000 years ago and about the tribal children in a comparative sense of the children whose attention was now rapt, hanging on her every word about the very enthralling topic of hunting and gathering. Even more exciting for them all was when she talked about what "animals leave behind them..." and the kids said, "food!" and "farts!" and one little girl said, "I know the answer, but I don't think it's polite to talk about."

Our guide kindly laughed and said, "Yes, it's OK to talk about. Poop. The animals leave behind what we call 'scat' or what you know as 'poop'." The kids laughed in an uproar, easily frightening all the fauna to beyond a mile's distance.

Once the laughter subsided, our guide explained how the Algonquian used their senses to hunt. Slowly and more quietly with every sentence, she explained that total silence was essential to be a good hunter. The best hunters listened to everything with all their might. Did we want to be good hunters like the Algonquian? She whisper-spoke to the group. Heads nodded in assent and children hushed, "yesssss" in reply.

She had us. We were ready to hunt.

In order to get us into the zone, she asked us all to put our own feet very close to each other and stand still, like a pole. The ground was so soft and quiet, like a pair of fantastic and well-loved mocassins, that standing there, in this idyllic place, with all this breathtaking scenery and its gentle, nearly silent breeze was an indulgence for we oft-harried Fairfax County people. Next, she said, I want you to breathe slowly through your nose if you can, and then close your eyes and listen to everything you hear. Keep your eyes closed for one minute to take in all sounds, and breathe deeply and slowly because as an Algonquian, you would be able to smell your prey as every creature has its distinct odor. Listen for the breezes and the snaps of twigs; and of the wind rustling through a hawk's feathers kiting overhead. And so we were ready, especially the parents, waiting, desperately for that command . . .

Close your eyes and listen.

We heard everything: woodpeckers di-li-gen-t-ly lo-ok-ing for b-u-gs, cardinals and sparrows singing out, "wittow-woo! wittow-woo!" and "tweet-woo! tweet-woo!" for their mates; ducks on the water to the east dipping their necks and ruffling their wings as the chilly rivulets ran off, squirrels leaping from "swoosh!" branch to "swoosh!" branch, the wind rustling the leaves just so. . . on and on went the wonderful melody that is nature. And then an airliner. And then she told us to open our eyes.

In unison, we parents looked at each other, our eyes if not our words, expressing: "Wow . . . that's it? Can't we go back? That was wonderful! Must we stop now? It was so good. That wasn't a minute...."

We were tricked! We didn't care about the airliner. We were totally fine with that foreign sound, we could cancel it out, disregard it, not mind it... can't we go back? C'mon, let's try . . . even the kids seemed a little disappointed; their little Walter Mitty moments as hunters broken. A collective consent and compliance took over the group.

No. Keep the line moving.

Bummer.

So bummed. You could see an entire class of 20 parents just deflated. I wanted to kick a rock or flick a beetle. We were in a momentary nirvana -- I mean, all of us were there, man. Timothy Leary or not, we were there.

We continued on the path, blah blah blah.

Who cares what happened next. The kids shot a bow and arrow at a tarp, then they used some other device to throw a spear. Whatever. We were interrupted.

What I realize now, as I type this, that while we were all slightly disappointed that we were brought back to reality before our 60 seconds were up, we could take ourselves back there any time. Even though there's something special, something seemingly better about going there, under the trees, along the river, on the path, near the bugs and the birds, where the Algonquian did it, we all can "go hunting like the Algonquians" anywhere, anytime. We just have to remember to let ourselves go.

thank you.

Go With Your Gut or What Happens When You Don't

2012-04-22T23:29:00.000-04:00

Go with your gut. Your first reaction. Your first instinct. Your first impression. Go with it with everything: a car, a ride with a friend, a woo-woo person you saw, a job interview, a job you want, a book you started, a song you heard, something you tasted, something someone said, a first date. Go with it. Don't second-guess your reaction and for goodness' sake, don't make exceptions (this is really for me).

What does this mean? For starters: everyone's gut reaction is their own. Yours doesn't have to agree with mine, but if it does, then that's more reason to heed. To me (probably because I haven't learned enough yet), it doesn't mean you must act on it; it just means you retain it, keep it in the hip pocket, or like a tip sheet for future use, for those moments when you will inevitably (due to human nature) go against it.

We all do this -- we all go against it. They wouldn't be called "first impressions" if there were no second ones and third ones... Maya Angelou has a famous phrase, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them." Lots of people think this phrase can be meant as a warning system, and I'm sure that's its main intention.

On the opposite side of the same coin though, is that it's also an "it's OK" system too. If your first candid impression of someone is as lovely and tender and sweet, then go with that -- even if they show you something different later -- because you know it is there. I wouldn't be married to the man I am if I ignored his tenderness the first time I ever met him (that said, he has never shown me another side). So if your nice person is snarly, it's probably because something's wrong. Then, listen to your gut to help root out the problem.

Going against the gut instinct is not a sin or a character flaw or a symptom of stupidity (even though it feels like it sometimes); it is that instead we rationalize, we go with our hearts or sense a familiarity / redolence from a previous and precious pattern that we used to know; we used to exist under. Sometimes these familiarities manifest themselves like a hangover. "Hair of the dog" might take away the symptoms but it sure doesn't stop your drinking problem.

Spock never had to really rationalize.

Going against our gut, and going for the familiar can create problems and waste so much time: I would have never dated as much as I had and I would have never learned the lessons I learned if I had always gone with my gut (I would have saved myself a lot of heartache and woe, but hey, I'm not Spock). This is part of life. We buy the wrong car; we talk to the crazed person we saw scream at traffic; we take the job and it doesn't work out; we gloss over the tone when we heard someone say something ... we overcompensate, we rationalize.

Wouldn't it be nice if life or people came with red flags?:

This is so funny and true.

Maybe they do. Maybe they do come with red flags and we just y'know, ignore them. But y'know, when you do go against your gut, you will learn through trial and error and trial and error and trial and error until you don't anymore. You will experience so many "face palm" moments that you might create an impression in your forehead.

That's OK. Don't judge yourself, but DO know that it won't stop -- these face palms, the "not again" moments until you stop. Until you see the light at the moment you're really meant to. That when all the data is lined up, and you've learned all you need to know -- about the book, or the song, or the person you saw screaming at traffic or the job interview you had -- that your Gut Instinct will be there, waiting and saying, "Welcome back, normal-thinking self, that person we spent so much time in therapy trying to find, we missed you."

But even though we've learned that last "not this time"-time, sometimes we repeat behaviors, actions, relationships again in different iterations. We Rationalize Again: one person's drama is just slightly different until it really isn't anymore and then, it's your fault. You fell asleep at the wheel and the fork in the road takes you closer to hell or back to clarity and you're about to crash. You need to wake up, rub your eyes, slap yourself in the face, turn up the music, open the window, ANYTHING!, course correct and Don't Repeat. And it's until those "don't repeat" moments manifest that we will repeat.

I experienced yet another rationalizing relationship. I went against my gut. I saw all the flags. I saw all the body language, all the inconsistencies, heard all the weird stories both community-based and this-person-based. I ignored. I compartmentalized and rationalized myself into oblivion. I set boundaries I thought this person could respect. I was clear. But in the end, it went wrong. The boundaries were eventually a mockery because this person has no boundaries; everything is everyone else's right? If it's on the Internet then it's all up for grabs, out in the open. The relationship was never sane because you can't have a unsane myopic, self-absorbed person with a sane, open-minded and continually-seeking self-awareness person. The see-saw isn't balanced and the see-saw always sways toward the unsane (I know it's "insane") person because that person is flailing its arms and throwing molotov cocktails and putting rocks in pockets and distracting and flagrantly violating recently agreed-upon boundaries, victimizing and overcompensating and needing and crying or not crying, and calling and drawing you away from what you know is Real. And this was an ADULT. Ohmygawsh, are you tired yet? (I know, most people would be like: "Dude. Seriously? You put up with that shit?")

But it took me a third time (that IS the charm, they say) to finally see the light. And it was so bright and clear and clean; and the biggest irony of all?:

This person was actually the beacon. The light of this person's self-created convenient truth was so bright you could land planes by it. This person was all "check out how freakin' nuts I can be and watch me warp truths and like, invoke other people and not own any of my responsibility in any of this because I'm like, all like going rogue and like WILD and FREE, baby and it feels gooooood..."

I have to be honest: I saw that light, but I wore the same dark shades I wear on the water when I row. I put on hats... the same racing hats I wear when I row that have a black liner under the bill to absorb the light and reflection off the water. I did all I could to look Joe Cool and totally together when my insides were screaming, "OMIGAWD! Leave! Get out of here! Do NOT do this AGAIN! Are you NUTS?! Boundaries Shmoundaries! There's poop all over them! Again! Someone, call her husband!" I over-performed and did anything I could to keep everything stable and keep the light under cover because I knew that when I saw that light again, it meant I won the "schmuck" award. My kids even said so. Ouch. That bright, flickering light (no matter how creepy) showed me everything that was always there and so much more and this time: I was ready to see it. And that's growth and that's OK. Sometimes we have to take two steps forward and one step back a few times before we can ever go at our pace. But I should stop here 'lest I risk narcissistic bathos.

I'm not trying to sound glib or like Stuart Smalley (all self-help is OK until it enables the continued practice of errors that are so rooted in our subconscious that staying asleep to them is simply selfish: at one time or another people, we have to grow up, definitely including me); because positive self-affirmations can have real and lasting benefits when they are actually believed. Because if we believe, as Stuart says, that we are "good enough and of value and people like" us then we don't act needy and do reckless things trying to curry favor with people who work reeeeally hard to keep their acts together. Trying to be mellow and kind, and running damage control when the molotov cocktails are flying is hard. People start to look at you like you've gone bye-bye too. And that's when ya gotta pull the chute cord. If you don't Get It by yourself, you'll Get It by peer pressure.

So then the trick is after we finally Get It, to not beat ourselves up too much for not Getting It in the first place. It's OK if you stumble and ignore your Gut. There's a phrase "against our better nature" that comes to mind. I personally dislike the use of "better" because it is judgmental; it implies that we should know "better." Sometimes, as in matters of the heart, we simply Don't Know Better. Until we do.

Just don't beat yourself up while you're learning -- and more importantly: don't let whatever you're learning about beat you up either; don't ignore the flags, apparently they are always waving.

And then when we do figure it out... Hot diggity, Woo-hoo and Allelujia, it's a good thing and Lesson is Learned. You have FINALLY Gone With Your Gut. Now it's time to Repeat! The wisdom from the lesson ... NOT the lesson.

thank you.

About Last Night - Building a Relationship with Local Government

2012-04-19T10:54:00.000-04:00

I am going to try to channel my father's time-tested and proven ability to be efficient in writing this post. Usually I go on with descriptions because I love to describe. My dad, however, is a writer, with at least four decades under his belt of being paid to write. He's got a solid following. He's a known person within his circles. He's interviewed and investigated sitting presidents, senators, congressmen, governors, mayors, union bosses, criminals, felons, sometimes convenience has combined a few of those into one person (we're from NY). Me? I'm hoping to raise senators and not felons. Me? cue harp music: Oh, I write without payment, except for the glowing satisfaction that I leave a legacy for my children and anyone who dares to continue reading my stuff ever. cut harp music.

Still here? Good. Grab a chair. I'm going to tell you about last night. Last night, I became an official televised activist for a cause to slow down drivers on behalf of our world's greatest asset: Kids who still can't tie their own shoes. Kids who need help opening their chocolate milk. Kids who show you the toothless gaps in their smiles.

Kids.

Thing 2 was home sick so I had to stay home and miss out on lunch with a friend. While I was home, I decided to prepare for this event. I toiled all day putting together a PowerPoint presentation as part our address to the forum. The presentation was cohesive, it flowed, it had pictures. It was brief. It ultimately didn't matter. It didn't matter because the conversation we ended up having with the forum in response to the first speaker, whose comments were so ~~woo-woo out there~~ abstract "how does one define 'satisfaction'?" he asked, I dunno, by smoking a cigarette afterward? By holding up a "10" sign?, that we tried to refer to the presentation, but halfway through, we gave up and spoke off the cuff.

We live in Fairfax County, Va. We pay a LOT of money to live here. We're something like the 3rd most affluent county in the country. And that makes us probably third in the free world (notice that I excluded Dubai).

I took this picture at 8:00pm, eventide. We didn't leave until 12:02.

My co-pro-anti-death-on-the-parkway activist neighbor and I drove together to the relatively new county government center to stake our claim on Rational Thinking. We pull up, park and walk in. This place is lovely. (Although it's much bigger than that picture.) Oodles of free parking, mahogany, marble, brushed steel, milano glass, leather comfy chairs for all the peeps behind the mahogany and marble, super-quiet vacuums for people listening to the peeps in the chairs, HD jumbotrons, HD cameras, cable access, etc. It looked like Mission Control.

Our mission was to speak on behalf a task force we're on to request that the county do something to slow down drivers who careen past our children's barely visible, above-grade, underground 30-year-old school at waaaay over the posted speed. In a six-month period in 2010, the Five-0 wrote some of Fairfax's coolest soccer moms 408 tickets for speeds averaging 57.8 mph on this road (that's just below reckless driving) at all times of day and I'm certain, during the AM and PM traffic shifts at our school. So for me, this is very simple: slow down. That's the bottom line. My oldest who went to the "EduCave" as my brother calls it, is now in 8th grade, so I've been energized about this cause for nine years. So as parents of these students, the speed reduction is our claim on Rational Thinking.

Believe it or not: there are people who oppose this "speed reduction" action. No one in the room last night opposed it; but the persons who were sent as minions of The Grand Opposer from FCPS were carefully thrown under the school bus because I bet even they couldn't really believe some of the words that were flying out of their mouths. I've met The Grand Opposer; I'm no longer vexed by his antics because Rational Thinking will prevail.

Background: This task force is a great group. It was created about 16 months ago. For seven straight months we met for for 90 minutes every three weeks in a tiny room next to one of the neighborhood pools where we enviously craned out the window to vicariously enjoy the pool goers' mirth. While they were squirting and splashing we were talking about how to improve pedestrian and motorist safety around our school and greater neighborhood. After those initial months, we met monthly or so.

The task force was spurred on the heels of a piece of activism prepared from photos a friend shot in the fall of 2010, accompanied by music we didn't create (lawyers tell me to say this). The pictures showed all sorts of pedestrian risks and driver disregard at the pick-up and dismissal times. The video, a letter, and copies of signed petitions were distributed amongst local and state-level legislators. Momentum continued. We didn't really know where to start or whose door to knock on but we had to start somewhere. An online petition for the same cause had more than 200 signatures in the fall of 2010 (when I was PTA president at the school). This tidy package of activism was so compelling that people literally could not ignore it anymore.

After that content went around, John Cook, our newly elected Board of Supervisors rep for our district, who also received the activism video package, held a community meeting about five months later because what this community endures on a daily basis is PLAIN WRONG. Cook has been on the job a short time, but he reminds me of one of those classic 1940s "this is your government" people in that he truly empowers the local citizenry to work together with appointed public service people to collaborate and create solutions. So far, it's working on the road outside the school: we've got some improved signage, we've won a federal grant to expand a median strip to 8' wide, they put in a sidewalk infront of the school and other things are on the docket. We all know we're no where near finished. Regarding the school though, we could be once we get the signs we're after.

At this first long-ago meeting, we went round and round with the rhetoric ripe and juicy on both sides. At one point, a very dear friend of mine, a US Marine daughter, a USN wife, mother of 4, a totally efficient person with mad laser-like executive skills and an extremely fair head on her shoulders stood up during that meeting to say to Cook, "You agree with us? Then do something about it! Create a task force!" and so, here we are. This friend? She's not on the task force. She's no fool. But she's busier than a bee and has been instrumental in so many other ways for this community that she's allowed a pass on this one. Me? I'm in. I jumped on it and I've become That Person. I'm the bee that won't stop buzzing. The bee that hummmmmmmms and hummmmmmms around you and your paper plate at the picnic and wants to land in your can of soda, Mr. The Grand Opposer and sting you into accepting Rational Thinking.

The task force has about eight regular citizens and about eight civil servants, including police officers and The Grand Opposer.

So much for the best of intentions in being efficient and brief. But it just occurred to me: my father has copy editors.

I'll cut closer to the chase. In the midst of these 16 months, we've had a changing of the guard at the school board which includes more tolerant, open-minded members, including members who actually have children enrolled in the school system (that's always a plus for me). The task force also had a major victory: vehicle and pedestrian traffic conditions outside the school at the intersection of its entrance and that of the shopping center across the street warranted a four-way red-yellow-green stoplight! An actual stoplight! We couldn't believe our luck and we thought: OK, well this is great. I was personally opposed to it, but it was a start or perhaps it would be the finish.

We were told that Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) would convene with FCPS (uh-oh, yup) to determine next steps for installation and implementation (these lights costs about $350,000 each to install) and that we would hear results of yet another "feasibility study" by July. On September 14 we heard over e-mail: FCPS killed the stoplight. It was The Grand Opposer. The rationale: a new and improved kiss & ride design.

It's at this point that I determine that The Grand Opposer is treating us (the task force and now the community) like how a "drive thru" treats Leo Getz because just when you think you're done, or you have what you need, you realize later or when you get home (if you're Leo) that things are not as you'd been led to believe:

Thanks to The Grand Opposer, I can think of another phrase than "kiss & ride" that I'd use to describe what happened behind the scenes.

The new kiss & ride design is part of a $16.6 million renovation process that recently began at the school. The kiss & ride lane design is so ambitious and downright kamikaze-inspired, that most people can't imagine it ever working or being safe. Because of this design, we found an opportunity to include the costs to install the reduced speed school zone signage as part of the renovation.

The first concept drawing for the new kiss & ride.

This is a more recent concept drawing for the kiss & ride.

Today, about 16 months later, we're getting somewhere. Nothing has happened with the renovation yet. No ground has been broken. We're still in the design and implementation stage.

Two months ago, Cook held a required "County Land Use Meeting" to discuss the renovation with the community. This meeting was also an opportunity for us to make our request for the school zone reduced-speed light because at these County Land Use Meetings, no relevant proposal is absurd. The meeting was held and the request was taken into consideration and included in a staff report.

About a week ago, the task force received the aforementioned staff report which details various concerns raised by residents at that land use meeting (and for a few weeks after during a comment period). These concerns are known as "conditions" and they must be discussed before the Fairfax County Planning Commission (PC) at a public hearing to authorize the work to begin. One of those conditions is "Condition 11" which speaks directly to our school zone reduced-speed light request.

Fred Flintstone-feet your car to last night. We're in the room at the big mahogany and marble building before the 14-member all-white mostly male PC on the public hearing for the school's upcoming renovation.

It turns out that "Condition 11" is so vague, so ambiguous that it's basically untenable. I personally have decided that any proposal made by anyone I know that doesn't make sense will be heretofore known as a "Condition 11."

Here's an example: "Hey Mom, I was wondering if you could give me money so I can buy a laptop that I won't give you access to so I can watch Harry Potter Puppet Pals videos on YouTube all the time and when you want to take it away or use it for something, I'll run up to my room, slam my door, demand money and then give you a computer I made out of Legos." That's a Condition 11.

"Condition 11" was so What the What and "we are at war with Eurasia / we are no longer at war with Eurasia" that The Grand Opposer's poor minion could not speak from his heart. Suddenly, he was like a woebegone Looney Toons character. You pick... I'm out of gas. If he were able to speak from his heart (because he has one), he woulda said this, "Your Excellencies, Fine People of The Mahogany Desk and Marble Fixtures, give these people what they deserve, what is right and what is Rational. Give them the reduced speed zone and flashing lights. Save me from being heckled and pelted as I leave This Place."

But that's not what happened. Instead, he was trying to say the words The Grand Opposer taught him; but his Cyerano was nowhere to be found. The devil on his shoulder was asleep because it was five minutes to tomorrow (today) when we wrapped up. The minion could not get it together. His tie was a mess; his shirt was rumpled; his hair was frenzied; his verbal pace was inconsistent and his mannerisms were random and jagged. If there were an open bar in that auditorium, I'd swear he had hit it while no one was looking. He could not answer common sense inquiries and he could not articulately explain his motivations his opposition BECAUSE THEY WEREN'T HIS OPPOSITIONS. No one knows why The Grand Opposer opposes...

We were all yawning and I think the chairman of the PC said, "Let's get going on this, I want to go to bed." So a great thing happened: our area representative from the planning commission said, "I propose a resolution to adjourn and resolve at the May 3 meeting..." HOORAY!

But I feel confident we will win. The May 3 meeting is not public so we're off the hook there. But we're preparing documentation and doing what we can to rally the team and I know Just What to Say on my documents now. . . stay tuned.

thank you.

Dear Things 1, 2 & 3: Don't Tell the Neighbors, but Your Father Lives

2012-04-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

Today, we hit a new low in our family and it's only Tuesday. The children (all three boys) have systematically and in their birth order elected to replace their father's incidental existence with their own respective surrogates.

Last Sunday, Thing 1 who will turn 14 shortly, asked a neighbor if he could join the neighbor at work next week for "Take a (Your - emphasis my husband) Child to Work" day. He didn't ask his own Dad if he could go to his work because a) he already did that last year, and b) he knows he doesn't want to do what his Dad does.

this is Thing 1 tinkering on his birthday wish last Sunday.

These seem like reasonable responses to a reasonable query. So I was satisfied. Dad was not satisfied. He was a little disappointed that his son didn't ask him about it and that he had to learn about the shift in fatherhood from the neighbor (who also has a freakin' awesome super-black Corvette G6) in a "hiya neighbor buddy, how's it goin?" sort of way. T1 and our neighbor will be ~~flying~~ driving the Corvette on the "Take Your Neighbor's Son To Work" day next week. The neighbor is actually a super-decent fella; married, a dad of his own two sons, and a recently retired marine who honorably served our country overseas in more than a couple conflicts. Now he works at an engineering firm where they ride around on moon rovers and get paid to blow up stuff, so T1 should have a good time. Frankly, I think my husband wants to go instead of T1.

I've known the man for almost 22 years, and have been married to him almost 18 years and I gotta tell ya: I don't know what the what he does. But if I have a kid who knows he doesn't want to do that, and I do have that kid, it's hard to argue.

Next ...
Also on Sunday, Thing 2 (11) and his father canvassed the county in what we call Dad's "Old Man Car" (OMC) -- the chameleon of all large import vanilla-seeming sedans in that it's got a crazy responsive 287hp engine with tiptronic and comfortably seats five plus a year's supply of Geritol -- in search of a Lego Avengers Superhero set to no avail. They must've hit all the big box stores, except apparently the one where it was.

this is Thing 2, last Saturday (day before the quest) under an umbrella
with a sprinkler spraying inside it.

The build-up --- from the set's retail debut (last Tuesday), to the pandering and scheming and relentless verbal waterboarding to acquire the set: "whatcanidomomtogettheset?canidosomechorestogettheset? momdidyouknowthesetcameouttoday? canicalldadatworktotalkabouttheset? isawthesetonlineit'savailableattargettoysRuswalmart..." to the frenzied moment he was ready to catapult himself like a fighter pilot ejecting from a fiery cockpit into the cavernous back seat of the OMC, to the utterly sad lower-lip sucking in and blowing out tear-streaming grief upon return from the unsuccessful quest to the three huge stores to purchase the set --- has taken a toll on my ability to form sentences and know my own name. Dribble cup please.

Resolution to the sadness came in the form of another neighbor who witnessed T2's weepy return from his traumatic travails to acquire the set. She text messaged me this morning about her intent to purchase a set for her own son. After various exchanges on the matter, I came home from coffee with a fabulous friend I haven't seen in months to a bag on the front stoop. It wasn't for me. It was for T2. It was the Lego set that our neighbor bought for him because she picked it up today in 10 minutes flat. Upon T2's discovery of the set in a bright yellow plastic bag emblazoned with the Red Lego Logo (say that three times fast), Thing 1 looked at me with an accusatorial glare and shouted above T2's glee-fueled shriek-squeals and said, "What the what, Mom? Why does he get a gift when my birthday is coming up?!"

I am officially a jerk.

And not five minutes ago, Thing 3 (8) asked me to call our neighbor's son, 16, whom he considers a professional skateboarder for lessons to skateboard. When I optimistically and, clearly naïvely, suggested that he call to ask his father who was quite the mop-topped skate rat in his day for said instructions, he said, "OK."

This is how that conversation went down:

T3: Hi Dad, uh, I want skateboard lessons. Do you think I could have Malachai teach me?

Dad: Skateboard, huh? Cool! I could teach you.

T3: Yeah. Uh, you could teach me on the days Malachai can't.

Dad: I could teach you too, tonight even. I mean I know how to skateboard...

T3: Well, I was thinking on the days that Malachai is at crew, you could teach me.

Dad: Uh, oh. OK. I guess, sure. But you know, we want to take the training wheels off your bike. So before you do the skateboard you --

T3: Yeah. Dad: uh, that's not a skateboard.

Dad: (laughing) You're right bud. It's not. It's a bike. Can I talk to mom?

I pick up the phone, take it off speaker and we start laughing about the irony of the week, which of course inspired me to write this post.

Kids say the darnedest things...

Dad just stepped in, while I was composing this post and he asked me to mention to you all that he scored a goal last night during his "Old Man" soccer team's game that started at 9:30. They play on turf. The lights are on when they play. This way, they can see the ball. Many men (my husband has the best legs) run around in shorts under the lights on a turf field to kick a ball into a net. Yay! Actually, he loooooves soccer. He's coached our kids' soccer teams (stops when they hit teenagerdom) and he's so glad he still gets to play with some top-notch men. Even if they are mostly neighbors.

I think in some ways, Dad feels a little bummed he's not able to spend more time with the team; he does have to go to his job to do whatever he does and make the bucks that pay for the very computer I'm tapping on and we value his awesomeness. He's a terrific father, the most mellow man my mercurial spirit could ever hope to nab, and an absolute peach of a guy. He knows how to play piano but doesn't play as much as I'd like (naow I saound layhke my mather), he sings lullabies to the children at bedtime, he wakes Thing 1 and fixes breakfast for him before the sun is up, he leaves work to meet at the hospital at the drop of a hat, he loves his parents, he's got a bunch of sibs, he buys the boys trash cereals because they crave them, he loves and supports me . . . he cooks when it's his night to make according to the menu (like tonight: chicken pot pie! yum!) and we are so so so SO lucky to have him. So what if his job is boring to the kids, he can't find a Lego set to save his life and he isn't considered a first consult for skateboard lessons? He's our dude.

Of all the team, T3 hears him the most tonight, because before I post, this most serendipitous and providential event was happening just outside my office window:

God, thank you for that moment. I love it when you scheme with life to remind me of what it's all about. Blogging is great an' all, but well, life is what happens when you're away from the keyboard huh?

And after uploading: the rear tire just flattened! That bike's been through three Things and now the skateboard lessons commence just as his work BlackBerry chimes in its tone we collectively call "Coldplay!" We love you, Dad of Things 3.

thank you.

"let's talk like worms" / the silent treat(ment)

2012-04-12T18:09:00.001-04:00

as i write this, i'm listening to a mix on iTunes i made for my mom one year for her birthday that i named, "mimiTunes." the current song, "Old Man River" from Gershwin's "Porgy & Bess" inspires me to tell this story...

before i do, consider this quote from Sai Baba,

"Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true? Does it improve on the silence?"

. . . . . . . . . . .

when i was little, my mom used to play a game with us. we didn't always like the game but we bought into it being a game and because games are supposed to be fun, we were in. we are super competitive if nothing else and thus raised to win. that doesn't mean we do actually win...

one summer day (of many) on our way home from a jaunt (also of many) up to Niagara-on-The-Lake in Ontario, Canada, my brothers and i were existing too loudly in the car while my mom was trying to drive.

my mother was what i could only describe as a "deliberate driver." she had this habit of slowing down, almost to a stop, and veering hard right when oncoming traffic approached, even under the best of circumstances, so how we didn't end up in the Niagara River upon any of our visits is a mystery.

Niagara-on-The-Lake is a super-cutesy tourist trap, comprising ice cream shoppes, federal-period architecture, restaurants, apothecaries, and a healthy influx of American greenbacks (back when our money had value). it also had one of the best Irish stores in a 70-mile radius, so because it was summer, and my brothers and i could not be trusted to not burn down the house without her there, mom had to take us in tow as she purchased Irish fishermen sweaters to amplify her already robust stock that she'd amassed during the school year. she didn't fish and she wasn't a man. but that didn't matter.

we hated to go there because the trips were always about the sweaters, Coach handbags, first-edition books, or designer scarves. seldom was Niagara-on-The-Lake about ice cream or playing in the Queen's Royal Park that looked over the mouth of the glorious Lake Ontario as it feeds into the Niagara River (that flows northern to reach Niagara Falls).

"i know!" mom effused from behind her tortoise-shell 1/4"-thick framed, andy warhol-inspired prescription sunglasses. her grip on the steering wheel of our swede supposed-car also known as "bil som spelar ingen fungerar tillförlitligt" (which is "car that doesn't work reliably" in swedish) resembled that of the white-knuckled variety so often seen on grandmothers about to ride in the car with their newly minted teenage grandson drivers on the way home from mah jong from the community center across town. mom was about 41 at the time. "let's play a game!" she continued.

"yay! a game!" my brothers and i sang in unison a capella, unless bounce-slapping the red, sweat-sticky faux leather seats, >shhh-smak! shhh-smak!< counts as percussion. this was our first time learning of this game.

"let's! let's! what's-let's-called?-it-let's!-called-play-how-it-do-you-play-it-game-this-game?" we sang again, this time not so melodiously, clearly already elbowing and angling for best position to win. we didn't know anything about the game but we were NOT going to lose it.

suddenly, only inorganic sounds were heard. the car's engine and the scratchy classical music barely streaming from the AM station a good 60 miles away were it. the paper speakers installed in the doors (we had broken off the antenna) made anything sound like a band of dying crickets.

my mom had us. we were SILENT. she was already in the lead.

"the game," she said.

"yeah... what's-how-it-do-called-get off me-start-rules-play-it-put-that-DOWN!-play?" we asked, this time overtaking the engine's drone.

"it's called ... 'let's talk like worms!' doesn't that sound great?!" she begged, eyebrows arched, seeming eagerly hopeful.

note: worm with closed mouth.

i scanned her smoky hazel eyes in the rearview mirror, now unsheathed from the glasses. she was engaged in transition mode and this was a critical operation at the moment: as she stopped at the light, she deftly swooped her artist's hands to grasp her thick, mid-shoulder-length ash-blond hair as she slid one of the two-dozen size 64 putty-colored rubber bands from amongst the 14 silver bangles on her wrist to make a tight bun. she was clearly executing Leadership Mode and the efficient up-do was evidence of her determination. then she slid her Mondrian print silk scarf from around her neck to adorn her turbo coiffure. she was nothing if not well dressed; the woman has seriously good taste in classic fashion. something i apparently never really inherited...

she donned this new scarf as a helment. my brothers and i were four-years apart (eight years between my younger and older brothers). despite her refined demeanor and breeding, we were maniacs. we grew up with very little rules and oversight, so when she put down the hammer, which was seldom, we didn't know what to do with it: do we respect this or do we laugh at it? we did a little of both, truthfully. we were loved, in the best way our parents knew how, but we were pretty much considered full-fledged adults with no restrictions as soon as we could put on our own socks. hey man, it was the 70s and from the cheap seats i inhabit as i watch "Mad Men" what my parents did was nooooOOoooOooo different from any of my peers' parents at the time. (doesn't mean it was riiiiight...)

"ok! sounds-ok-fun-like-yeah!fun! we-like-play-WORMS?!-good-idea-not-understand-worms-how-do-you-worms-play-game?"

my older brother, who is a very successful banker now, elbowed one of us and hissed, "SHHH, i'll TALK" to me and our younger brother.

the light turned to green and the car started up again. TH-TH-UNK-UNK-UNK. we all slammed back into the back of the benchseats. i think she loved doing that. lurching and slamming as she pretended to drive along the Niagara Parkway.

"how do you play it, mom?" the would-be banker asked. the way he'd demonstrated his finesse and interest in rules and regulations, it seemed as though a signing bonus and performance commission were riding on the outcome.

so there we were: the three of us in the back seat area; my little brother and i rapt with attention, our very beings trembling with anticipation on the edges of our sweaty seats. i'm sure i slapped and pinched my baby brother at least a couple times due to my own inability to contain my excitement.

"well, it's simple, and there's only one loser." she said, with a native lilt.

"huh?" asked my older brother.

"how can there be only one loser? there are three of us. there has to be one WINNER. you mean, ONE WINNER, mom. not ONE LOSER." he was about 11.

"no. i'm not wrong. one loser, sweetie. that's what's so FUN about this game," she said, now fake giggle-speaking, no doubt to incite enthusiasm which had quickly evaporated from the kids in the back seat of the car and who had been replaced by her new three children Apathy, Grunting and Agita. "what's FUN [smiling voice] is that the first person to DO something LOSES."

good feeling's gone.

"the first person to do anything?" my brother asked.

"well, no. the first person to break the only rule loses," she clarified.

"Only One Rule! i LIKE this!" i said, refusing any longer to be kept silent by eventual 1%.

"the one rule," mom said, "is that you talk like worms. and how do worms talk?"

"they. don't. say. any. thing." growled my big brother.

"RIGHT! so ready, we're gonna start. . . . NOW."

"but..." said the baby brother.

"haha! YOU LOSE! LOOOser"my older brother shouted and pointed at my younger brother, who was possibly all of 3 years old and henceforth destined to be part of the 99%.

however, being the third of three, he was quite intellectually mobile due to his witnessing of his older siblings' shenanigans. these days, he sings for his church and has become an ordained reverend professionally, so he's got pipes. and if he's part of the 99%, he's got God on his side, so i'm good with that.

so my little brother lost all the time. it went on for years, his losing at Let's Talk Like Worms. his losing was met with such hearty worm shrieking due to the loss of the game, that i wonder if my mom ever thought she won the game. . .

note: hysterical worm.

mom probably thought she was gonna get the silent treat(ment) that she sought. that if we were serially quiet enough, she'd get a decent ride home.

as i look back on her instituting the "Let's Talk Like Worms" game, i laugh at its cunning design. last night, my Things and i were preparing for the cleaning ladies Thing 2 (11) proposed that we play the "let's CLEAN like worms" game. Thing 3 (8), who'd never played the game was schooled by his brothers, but he held silent. they were silent for several minutes and i was beginning to think, "this is pretty cool..." however, it was so quiet that i wasn't aware of the fisticuffs going on behind me as they all (even Thing 1 who is almost 14) wrestled each other to the ground over a Lego piece. ironically, the Thing 2, the one who proposed it lost consistently three times in a row. then the Lego fight and then screaming. sometimes silence ain't what it's cracked up to be.

today during yoga my teacher read the quote at the top of this post by Sai Baba that struck me as profound given what i'd experienced last night with the kids and the Lego piece.

sometimes the silent treat(ment) is a LOVELY experience. there are those of us who are silenced by fears, by memories, by oppressors or worst of all, by ourselves. the thing is, sometimes the best thing to say is nothing at all; when we choose silence, we take back our power. y'know, like in Ghostbusters, don't think about the Stay-Puft marshmallow man and he won't appear. but that doesn't always work out; sometimes, we must speak up, we must stand up. and then there are time when we must speak up for those who can not speak for themselves; they do not know the harms in their path and while there ain't never anything wrong with standing up and speaking up and being true to you,

i propose again: "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind? Is it necessary? Is it true? Does it improve on the silence?"

but if you're ever not sure: just talk like worms.

thank you.

familiarity doesn't equal healthy

2012-04-06T12:46:00.001-04:00

as we grow older and hopefully wiser, we become aware of ourselves. we sense our tendencies and personalities. our weaknesses and our strengths become actual weaknesses and strengths, not just these "things" we'd heard of when filling out personality profiles or talking about in job interviews.

the things we don't like (and are aware of) we hope to not repeat. the things that we do like (and are aware of) we hope to repeat. it's simple. what's not so simple is recognizing what is and what isn't good. often what comes in familiar clothing is not good for us. it's the sneaky stuff, the old habits that come in different boxes or wrappings that fool us into repeating behaviors. it's that simple adage that i repeat to myself: "just because it's familiar doesn't mean it's good for you" which breaks the trance. not recognizing the familiarity of a toxic element, a behavior pattern, a weakness, is where it begins for me: that slow-seeming descent into an emotional tempest set at mach IV that feels like a hangover from a frat party when the haze clears. these hangovers can last for days. for me, it's what i do to myself that can be so much more profound and debilitating than any outside drug or element.

i learned about my familiar weakness shrouded in a familiar strength one morning about seven years ago after i awoke from a near-paralyzing dream that changed the course of my life. the content of the dream is on the docket to be detailed in the next Great American Novel that i aspire to write, but that doesn't matter here. the dream set in motion a journey into surgical self-awareness and psychotherapy that saved me, very likely my marriage and my children from living with Joan Crawford.

it was in those first sessions where my therapist revealed to me that i was on a mission to destroy myself one thread at a time, due to a habit; a way of living that was so entrenched in my being, so very much a part of my daily operations that i had no awareness of its insidious nature.

everyone has their predilections, their habits and the things that exploit their weaknesses and destroy their strengths. i used to be like the tasmanian devil. i was aware of this. i used to cry-laugh about how i would come into a situation and leave everything upside down and tables strewn about the room with papers flying everywhere. inside, i desperately wanted to be like a daisy in time-lapse photography. i wanted to be slower, to reveal myself slower, to engage instead of bulldoze, to listen instead of always insist i was right, to speak instead of shout, to Adagio instead of march.

being Taz came from a primitive place: i wanted so desperately to be seen, heard, appreciated and understood as a child that as i "grew up," i never noticed others noticing me. i had to turn it up to eleven. always. i realize now, that when i enter a room and no one looks up, it's working; i'm beating my addiction.

i come from a lineage of people with very strong habits. we are mostly irish. my great grandpeople were sledgehammer slamming, hard-driving brogue-slingers who helped build the New York railway. i dig that. my genetic family's stores of physical energy and mental prowess are a thing of beauty in theory. in practical life however it means we have enough energy to think and over think and think some more and stir up stuff, most of it irrational, because of our thinking and remembering. sometimes that thinking is good, sometimes it's not good.

i don't believe the eldest of my line were heavy drinkers. their work ethic was insane and coming to America during the industrial age only inspired them for further ambition. the drinking might have occurred with the later litters as perhaps being born in America softened the genetic drive and allowed for more idle time which of course gave us more time to y'know: think.

in keeping with my irish tradition of having too much of a good thing, i learned through my psychotherapy after that dream that i have an addiction. of course i thought that was total bullshit. i saw brilliant members of my family succumb to alcoholism, gambling, smoking, drugs and over-thinking. because my days of collegial over-drinking were behind me, drugs didn't hold much appeal for me nor did cigarettes and gambling required my giving away money on a hunch (my friends and family know never to bet against me because when i'm willing to put money down on anything it's because i KNOW i am correct) so my diagnosis of having an addiction was complete crap because i was on a mission to be sober, fit, hard-working, active and engaging. y'know: eleven.

my so-called (whatever) addiction (right) could be only one thing, that i was a "thinker." the problem with only my brand of thinking is that eventually, the blood supply to feeling atrophies and it creates a whole other level of thinking, where the tasmanian devil reacts and reigns. the bloodline to feeling (self-awareness, emotions and physical awareness) needed to be open for me to heal.

my drug of choice is a by-product of the thinking (i'll tell ya in a minute). it's free. it's available anywhere at all hours. you don't need to be a certain age to get some and you don't gain weight from it or lose brain cells from abusing it. you don't need a prescription. if you don't see any around, you just make it yourself. it's real easy: just lose your shit over the tiniest things. in fact, if you grew up with it, like i did, it's even easier to re-create it because you have some of its dust in your pocket or in some of the things you took from your parent's house to your house without awareness. objects have their own energy and they carry your memories and relationships with them, so if you have something around that came from a sad time, get rid of it or attach happy memories to it. i know this sounds crazy, but it's true.

my object of desire is Chaos. my therapist told me at the end of my first. session. ever. that i have a Chaos addiction. i have it right here in my notebook titled "Be The Daisy": "3.16.05: little surprise that i thrive in Chaos. love drama; need to step out of it. see how i create drama. 90% of actions are subconscious formed by patterns we endured / experienced as kids -- trick: to become AWARE and learn to avoid it."

apparently since i moved out of my parent's place, i've had a bottle of Chaos on a shelf in every room of my house, including closets, bathrooms, the kitchen, workout areas and the shed. i have one in my car and i have a tiny one hanging from my key chain. i think there's an app for it on my cell phone (facebook). there's a little bottle in my purse. and i have a travel flask of Chaos for when i fly. it's FAA-approved.

most of the bottles are coated with a tell-tale layer of dust. the dust is a reminder to let the bottle, no matter where it is, gather more dust because that dust means i haven't picked it up, looked at it and wrenched off its cap or bitten off its cork to sip from it. i used to drink a case of Chaos a day for years before i started therapy. these bottles of Chaos are The One Thing in My World the cleaning ladies aren't allowed to make perfect. like a bottle of 100-yr-old scotch, you want dust on these bottles.

i just passed a bottle of Chaos on the way to get my therapy notebook. the bottle was sitting next to a crumb-covered dish my son left beside the computer keyboard. instantly i became irritated by the dish, felt my muscles prepare for battle, took in a deep breath to unleash my dragon and proclaim the broken rule (food near computer -- which wasn't really the problem, it was deeper than that: it was my feeling of insult from being unseen and disregarded) and demand correction. but i stopped myself, laughing inside at the irony of my near-collision with Chaos while in the process of writing about my addiction to it. i decided to let it go. i picked up the dish, nudged my son on the shoulder, gave the raised eyebrow, gestured the dish and he took it from me for prompt delivery to the kitchen.

Chaos averted.

i'm not kidding: this shit's insidious. if it weren't for my awareness of my ability to lose my temper over little-seeming things (aka scars from my past), i'd never know about the Addiction to Chaos. it's because i grew up with it, was surrounded by it and trained by some of the world's finest Chaos fomenters that i became one myself.

the opportunities for Chaos and (depending on the circumstances) its wingman, Ensuing Shame or Guilt or Personal Offense (which create their own Chaos in a family system) are everywhere:

be late for an appointment;
delay cooking dinner;
don't walk the dog;
put on a couple pounds;
sign up for too much / don't say no / don't delegate;
ignore the kids;
be offended when others are late;
have secret expectations;
distract yourself beyond ability to do anything predictable;
expect your friends to treat you the way you treat them;
fall behind on a project that no one knows about;
unleash venom disproportionate to the offense;
hold yourself up to unrealistic standards;
never allow personal mistakes;
give more in a relationship than you get;
have secret needs and expect people to understand your rage;
repeate old patterns of behavior with toxic people and expect them to change simply because you have. . .

omigawd, it goes on and on.

once the Chaos was outed, The Work began: i had to see patterns where it manifested and more importantly, where i created it if it were missing:

Ooh, i like that chair where it is, and the table works just fine. the way the light hits the color on the walls in wonderful. what i think the room needs to feel more like home to me is my rage and Chaos: why didn't anyone ask me to help?!? you're all jerks.

my relationship with Chaos had become so much a part of my fabric of being that if i didn't sense it, i would make it. imagine: a quiet library. it's peaceful, calm and the energy is silent industry. that made me insane; everyone was so content ... NOTICE ME! i loved the idea of reading. . . but the chairs were uncomfortable. the lighting was wrong. why won't that kid shut up? why is that person looking at me? eww. this book smells like filth. what's that stain from? gross, there's a hair in this book. these people can't do anything right so i'm leaving. NOW. in my 2-ton SUV in a self-righteous rage over the hair in a book and i'm going to scour the county to buy my own copy of the book instead of borrow it for no cost and then get pissed at myself later for spending the money when i know finances are tight; but then i'll blame that on my husband for not keeping me more on my toes...

see? i'm a pro.

or this old one: everyone is sitting on the couch watching a movie. it's a nice moment. but i'm begging for a phone call from my toxic friend who needed me to tell her how screwed up she was and how often she repeated her patterns so we can have a fight and i can preach and vaunt all my anger at her. i recognize right now at this instant as i type that somewhere in me, i subconsciously wanted out of the Chaos, not the relationships. i knew the relationships were sickening for me because i would freak in order to create divide. i miss the people. but people are their habits and when people don't change, you're stuck until you're not anymore.

i have another note: "I need to abandon before things become "pattern-istic" and they repeat and I get sucked in and I explode. Are the explosions what do me in? No. They are what feeds me and this food is toxic." imagine getting energy from an explosion... that's some bad shit. talk about Schadenfreude.

so you see, Chaos also showed up as a repeating pattern in my relationships with Certain Types of Women based on my nearly constant tempestuous relationship with my own mother: i was constantly giving more than getting which of course allowed me to get pissed. i would actually seek out women whose energy was similar to my mother's: deeply smart, invisible, unavailable, distracted (unaware) and angry women. i became friendly with women who were not healthy emotionally and in more than one, our relationships became competitions where i had to get out because i was acutely aware of my addiction: Everything About Them Allowed Me To Ignore Myself. if i stayed with them in their states of distraction and huge self-unawareness i was dead; i wouldn't work on me and i would allow the rage at them (me) to foment. but i had only an on/off switch; no dimmer. i didn't want to be dead. The Work was showing me there was so much more to life, so i created drama that let us hate each other and end it.

AA has its mottoes:

One Day at a Time
Live and Let Live
Let Go and Let God
Easy Does It

my own subgroup, CA, has sentiments very similar to those that are required for awareness of my addiction. my mottoes are:

Continue To Do What You Always Do and You Will Absolutely Always Get What You Have Always Gotten
You Get What You Give
You Do, And It Is Done
Change And You Will Change; and two personal favorites of mine based on the brilliance of two men my parents knew:
"You're Not Mad at What You're Mad At" -Father John J. O'Connor; and
"You Don't Have to Get Out of The Trouble You Don't Get Into." -Howard Clother (my dad's boss)

the recipe for success requires daily, no: hourly, no: constant awareness which will eventually lead to new neural pathways in your mind (that's another blog post altogether) of feeling your body assess, notice and react to something. if it's quiet: ENJOY it. really enjoy it. just one small opening of self-awareness coupled with turning left instead of right; or calling later away instead of right away; or saying yes instead of no... leaving 10 minutes early instead of later... repeat. these small things can create a whole new way of living.

"there is nothing like the relief of changing your course on something because you've admitted you've bitten off more than you can chew. you can always change course: delay, think on it, let it settle and come to you when it's ready. forcing anything never works: you end up exhausted and what you've forced is distorted."

that was a status on my facebook GrassOil page a couple weeks ago. i wrote it because i was stuck on something that just wasn't happening. it wouldn't materialize in the way i intended. so, true to form: i thought about it in other ways. i massaged it into another shape altogether. i took a deep breath, told my quads and shoulders to gear up, took a running start and slammed myself into it. i was trying to convince myself to do it anyway simply because i said i would. it simply wouldn't be. i became frustrated and angry and almost took down the bottle for a sip. i stared at it; i heard it mocking me. calling me... "wouldn't a little sip fix everything? just one. then you can forget about what you're trying to do and create a whole new problem somewhere else to fix or obsess over... c'mon..."

i still haven't done it. i'm ok with it because the dust is still on the bottle. if i did it, if i'd made myself do it or something else just as pointless, the bottle would be clean as a whistle and the cork would be missing.

the simplest of adages is this regarding my Chaos Addiction: "change begins with me."

thank you.

perfect mother? no. not even close.

2012-03-28T20:40:00.000-04:00

Yesterday in yoga, I got a gift. I didn't ask for it; it came to me. The preceding evening, I posted on my facebook walls (GrassOil and my personal wall) that day's events:

"So it has been a long day. Thing 3 bumped his head hard enough today in P.E. to warrant an ambulance ride to Inova Peds Unit, which I will happily leave all my money when I die, for multiple tests, including CT scan, xray and EKG. He was released around 1pm with a favorable & cautious prognosis: no sign of concussion, but no stunts either. An hour ago, I was hugging him, gratefully, and he said, in his dry way, "Mom, it's late. You need to go now. Turn out my light and close my door." I guess he's better already."

The gift in yoga came from my teacher, who is also a fb friend and a physical, touchable friend offline, on the actual planet we share (I can't go there: "IRL / in real life" - to me, this is all real life). She openly asked me how I was doing because she had read my status about Thing 3. Her knowing eyes bore through my façade of panache and I said, "OK, now." She explained to the other yoginis (this class is awesome, populated with all manner of women in all walks of life) my status and then paused, with a knowing and loving glance at me to close with, "Molly is the mother of three boys. It's a busy job."

The women collectively, "ohhhh"d at my experience. Lovingly and without the fruitlessly competitive and dismissive, "been there done that" patronizing tone. They all visually hugged me and graced me with gentle smiles. With a small smile, I hugged them back and said, "Yes, I am a mom of three boys. I'm a lucky girl" and I meant every freaking syllable of it.

RANT: Being a word freak, I hate that "been there done that" and "it's all good" response that people make automatically toward other peoples' circumstances. It's so dismissive and isolating. I want to say and believe that people mean no harm, but I have also say, that most people mean absolutely nothing when they say it. In fact, they're saying, "I don't care. Don't tell me your freaking problems because they're not my problem." In my personally invested mind I say, "No, actually, you haven't 'been there or done that' because you're not me. Your child is not my child. You are not in my shoes and it's not 'all good.' The fear or sadness I felt then, even though things are OK now, have stripped a layer from my confidence; have stolen minutes from the restful sleep I will have in years to come. That my son had to experience a CT-scan which apparently can create conditions where 1:1,200 children can develop some form of cancer is not really... 'been there done that' for you unless you're me and he's yours. Granted the sun can TV can do the same thing, but that's part of a regular existence. And that 'it's all good' because he didn't have a concussion is really not 'all good.' The kid was terrified of this gigantic machine, so don't go dismissing me with your been there done that it's all good bullshit. RANT OVER.

The gift was that my yoga teacher Saw Me. She gets me. She Knows What It's Like.

That same day, I met with my therapist and she heard me recount this yoga experience and what happened with Thing 3. She wrote down something. I hate it when she does that. This post is the closest I'm likely going to come to a public indictment of my mother for her parenting style (which was very unique): she was a mix of Augusten Burrough's mother in "Running with Scissors"; "All in the Family's" Edith Bunker and "Roseanne"'s Roseanne. My mother (who is still with us) suffered from some pretty heavy mental disorders (which were unknown about in the 1960s and 1970s) and her own screwed-up mom. While those disorders and her history do not absolve her of her special brand of caregiving because many of her flaws were avoidable, they help me recognize that her particular style of childrearing was not because of anything I did (this is something that I've only recently begun to accept). As a result, my style of mothering has been to sorta wing it in reverse from what she did. While I made it and am here, there are parts of my person that are woefully undernurtured and as such, I am tuned to feel exquisitely inadequate, perfectionistic, insecure, snarky and defensive about any error, real or imaginary, I manifest. To fight those urges requires vigilance. What's even more ironic is that I am both at times gullible and distrustful, go figure.

So, when someone Gets Me or Gets You, regardless of your maternal status, it's no small gift. They Get Us because they Too Have Lived Like We Have. They know how hard we've worked to Just. Get. By.

What my therapist ended up writing down was this: "She fears turning into her mother." And that's why she earns the big bucks. That concept is nothing new: I'm sure many women reading this very word right now are guilty of desperately hoping they are not like their mothers. I feel I've cornered the market on that sentiment, but I know in some ways I am very very similar to my mother. It's the anger; anger from neglect as a child.

this is my mom and me in 2008

Then, what my therapist said to me was this: "You Are Not Your Mother." I've suspected that but it doesn't mean I've quit trying. Reversing the "be your mother" trend has been tantamount to a crusade for me; an all-out war against myself and my femininity. I am the only daughter in my family, and thus I am the most similar to my mother in my family. For me to win this war, I became my anti-mother: tough, hard, self-neglectful, realistic, honest and true, stable, openly self-critical and vigilant. Y'know what? It has been exhausting!

We're all overcompensating for something...

My war meant that I'm totally interested in health, exercise, laundry, cooking, playing with my kids and sorta neglecting mySelf. I don't do the aforementioned with the intention that it pleases me, I do so in the spirit of service to my family because it was so lacking in the world where I grew up. It doesn't mean I don't enjoy the efforts, it's just that the motivation is skewed. When I exercise, it's to stay fit for my family because my mother never did. When I run myself ragged running errands it's because my mother didn't. When I show up somewhere 15 minutes early to pick-up my kids, it's because my mother didn't and sometimes she didn't even show. Or when she did, she was altered. When I am self-reliant it's because my mother wasn't. The good news is that I'm finally am OK with what I've become despite it all. And since beginning therapy, I've learned to loosen up a bit on myself and allow myself to be OK with just being OK. I'm reading a book, The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed by Jasmin Lee Cori, which has been very helpful.

In keeping with the inadequacy theme, I posted someone else's blog on my fb wall last night, "9 Quick Tips for Keeping Your Home Feeling Serene and Organized." It wasn't fiction. A friend from high school, a great gal whose two younger children are close in age to mine commented, "I need to work on #9" (making your bed). She and I went back and forth for a couple rounds because I sense we both share the same space of trying to figure this stuff out: that a mess in the house means the kids are having fun (really? that's ok?); that dishes on the table mean the family has been fed (doesn't it also mean lazy?); that an unmade bed means someone had somewhere safe to sleep (not that they're getting back in it real soon?); that a dining room table covered with homework means minds are being challenged (not irresponsible from not cleaning up?)... OK whatever you say. (My inner anti-my-mother mother is cringing.) I've got to prepare for the cleaning ladies ...

I grew up with a fair amount of chaos -- our house was forever disheveled but for entirely different reasons than those cited above. My mother seldom cleaned the house, our cleaning lady, Betty Sortino, did. She was awesome. She had tobaccoffee breath, jiggled her leg to rock me to sleep on my bed, shared her Hershey's bars with me, read me bedtime stories and taught me lyrics to "I Shot the Sheriff." So, the optimistic proposal of a messy home being a happy home leaves me twisting my neck like a confused labrador retriever unless Hershey bar wrappers and Clapton are part of the picture.

Like me, my friend is a Stay At Home Mother (SAHM), which is a misnomer if I ever heard one. I am not a stay at home mother. We are a collective runerrandskeeptheenginerunningdashinforasecondtodropsomethingoffgoingtothemarketthekidsforgottheirhomeworkcanicallyoubackinanhourgottatakethekidstochesstennissoccerbasketballguitarorthodontistfillthetankdogneedsshotssodothecatsgethimtotutoringgottagotothedoctor --oh yeah, what about lunch and a potty break for me?-- mother.

On the FB thread, my friend said someone she knows suggested that we SAHMs treat our SAHM-ness as a job: that we shower, dress as though for work, do our hair and apply make-up and all the rest, so that we will see our domestic experiences as ... Oh God, what is this the frigging 1950s?! Someone finish this sentence! I am stumped! Can this be true - a female recommended this?! I guess we're supposed to do even more to somehow bring more vapid value in what we're doing to look good when we're doing it even though we may be miserable or lost or battling the feeling that what we're doing is not good enough. Hey, ladies, if you're gonna go to war with yourself, don'tcha wanna look great?! So the take-away is to lie: to look like we've been at the office all day even though we're not bringing in any extra money because clearly staying in our yoga pants with crazy hair in a ponytail is unacceptable. People can get fired for that. My friend, like me, also tries to get her exercise in so any attempt at that means the hair and make-up has to wait and exercise for me happens when I make it because I'm not totally organized (in that way, I'm a carbon copy of my mom).

I said to my friend, "I don't garden, clean, fold laundry, drive all over and workout in pleated khakis and pearls and a double-breasted jacket or workout in Anne Taylor" so, um, her friend's well-intentioned (and completely unrealistic) advice made me feel even more inadequate. I can't imagine a bigger waste of emotional energy, time and effort than to dress for success when you're just gonna go to the grocery store (although living in Fairfax County, I must admit I've seen it). Maybe I'm wrong.

I added that there are those of us who like to be with kids and are super domestic and eagerly play "tea party" or "army men" under the dining room table with the kiddos. As much as I love those -moments- I'll be honest: I never aspired to engage in them. Does that make me a bad mother? I don't know. I'm a big believer in a child's need to develop "independent play" as well as group play and by golly, if I'm gonna be playing, it better involve dice, cards and tokens and cash not tea cups, teddy bears or army men and sandboxes.

A couple years ago I clipped a Daily OM meditation for the day called "Tending the Hearth." It quells my nerves and helps me remember that what I'm doing --even if the house is a mess and the clothes are clean but not always put away-- is of value. It puts the brakes on my inner argument that I'm inadequate for the five minutes after I read it until something breaks or crashes and snaps me back to first-responder reality.

A joke my friend once told me: "I was a great parent before I had children."

Motherhood, parenthood, whateverhood is tough, regardless of your circumstances. Granted, I'm not a mother in Africa suffering from famine or disease, but stress is stress is stress. I'm not diminishing my stress if I honor the stress of my sisters in Africa. Even though I like my first-world existence, I'm not so sure an African mother would want my problems. Wayne Dyer once said, "you can never make anyone richer by making yourself poorer." I dig that; that's why I haven't given everything away.

When you are a parent, your unrivaled unbridled love for your brood can only be equalled by the same degree of protection of your sanity and your precious wisftul recollections of the life you had Before Children. Nothing makes a mother or father crave the life they had Before Children than the screaming fights and unrelenting repetitive verbal waterboarding of an insistent 11-year-old child feigning illness and fever who wants to stay home from school because a test is on that day's docket. Nothing will make you second guess your decision to not put whiskey in your morning coffee sooner.

So am I a perfect mother? Hell no. But I'm trying to be less-than perfect. I'm figuring out that I'm doing OK and that book I mentioned above is telling me where I'm screwing up because I see where I'm repeating patterns I learned and observed. I've also learned to appreciate the parts of my mom that are good because if I don't figure out some good things about her, I'm sorta screwing myself because I am 50% her.... I've become better about liking pink but I'm not a girly-girl and that's totally OK.

No one's asking for advice, so I'll tell you what works for me: tend the sadness and sorrow from your childhood, allow it because it can't get better unless you honor it; don't dwell, but don't bury it. But if you're a parent, stay aware. Read books, blogs (here's a blog, sorta sad, but it's clinical about unattentive parents) and learn. Your kids will forgive you if you ask and honor on your commitment to them to make it up to them. They won't however, ever trust you if you lie to them about it. Remember: their big brains have a ton of bandwidth and they've got memories like little elephants. Do the best you can and be the best you can be. Put aside your fears of your inadequacies and remember you can learn a lot from your kids if you let yourself hear them.

Kids didn't ask to be born into our baggage, our inner wrestlings and inner battles. They didn't say to God (or whatever you believe in), "Hey, gimme that really awesome person down there. Yeah, the one in the Porsche. She looks like she's had no troubles or sadness. Oh, a person without disappointment, sadness or troubles doesn't exist? Oh. Well, how about that one? She looks soft." So by virtue of that, we must do our utter best by our children. We must put down the phone, step away from the computer, be patient, be clear, be honest, express our needs, put down the drink, slow down the car, get out of bed, smile when we speak to them and be that person they know we can be. Be that person they need us to be.

this is my mom, me and my gramma in 1969.

If your person wasn't there for you to begin with, become the person You've Been Waiting For.

Thank you.

when you're five years old

2012-03-25T20:01:00.002-04:00

when you're five years old, you don't know about tomorrow. you know that bump down in the sidewalk when you're in the wagon goes like this: ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum-DUM.

when you're five years old, you know the path to the park like the back of your own hand. if you cared to learn about the back of your own hand, if you could see the skin beneath the dark gray, dried sparkly dirt.

when you're five years old, you don't worry about an hour ago. you worry about whether Wyle E. Coyote will catch the Road Runner, big brother says so.

when you're five years old, anyone over 4 feet tall, with clean hands and brushed hair is met with suspicion until they pick a better hiding spot than you.

when you're five years old, you don't care about the president. you care about what's your dessert in your TV-dinner. will it be the apple turnover or the cherry pie? you also plan to eat that first because you know they'll make you eat your veggies first if they catch you.

when you're five years old, you don't care about china. you care about what you'll be for halloween. and if old mrs. neill will give out pennies again instead of candy. you hate it when she does that, even though your parents say it's better than candy.

when you're five years old, you see everyone's bellies before you see their faces. some bellies are big and you bump into them and others have belts, sashes, purses in front of them.

when you're five years old, your hands are dirty, sticky sweaty, nimble and strong. they can make mud cakes with your eyes closed and top them with the poisonous red berries your mom told you not to eat.

when you're five years old, you know which tree branches are the strong ones and which branches are not as strong. you know which branch to stand on for launching paper airplanes to get the best loft.

when you're five years old, you don't go to school, you go to kindergarten and that's better than school.

when you're five years old, snow is just like dirt except that it's cold, wet and clean. snow-cold is never really cold and wet, red hands from soppy mittens don't feel bad until they come off.

when you're five years old, a glass of milk and a peanut butter and bacon sandwich tastes better than candy and you don't care for anything else for weeks. no, really, you don't. even if little brother makes a barfy face.

when you're five years old, cleaning your room is stupid and under the bed is a secret hiding spot. oh! that's where your bear went!

when you're five years old, brushing your teeth is boring so swishing your mouth with toothpaste works just as good.

when you're five years old, ski wax is great for putting up posters.

when you're five years old, any blank wall space is a canvas and people look like eggs and don't have bodies; their heads are their bodies and their arms come from where the ears are on other peoples' drawings.

when you're five years old, a spoon is a shovel and a fork has too many points, so you push part of the fork against a wall to bend a point. now it works.

when you're five years old, a tennis ball is big. throwing a tennis ball very far is hard.

when you're five years old, a cat's back is as high as your knees and picking them up takes all your muscles.

when you're five years old, the wind outside sounds like a monster.

when you're five years old, crayons melt on the furnace vent.

when you're five years old, your Big Bird record player makes fun noises when you rub the needle against a washcloth.

when you're five years old, you can't reach the faucet, so you put your stomach on the counter and hold your breath to reach to turn on the water.

when you're five years old, the attic is haunted and you don't like to pass by its door on your way to your bedroom.

when you're five years old, a dress over pajamas is suitable for trips to the bank with dad.

when you're five years old, you hold everything with two hands and you stare at it if you're walking with it and it has water in it.

when you're five years old, banisters are the quickest way downstairs for teddy bears in blankies.

when you're five years old, the inside curve in the back staircase where you can't be seen from the top or the bottom is the best place to hide when you're gonna get in trouble.

when you're five years old, bedtime is for tearing your favorite pages out of your Babar books and sleeping with them.

when you're five years old, doing your own hair is mandatory. if you don't like your bangs, you just cut them and they are gone. and bangs can never be too short. even if mom disagrees.

when you're five years old, you have your front teeth, unless you lose them during a game of cops and robbers with your big brother when you slip and fall and have to rush to children's hospital to have them taken out.

when you're five years old, tricycles are for babies. big wheels are for winners. health-tex vested pant-suits are The Best for meetings, mary janes are better than sneakers and speed rules.

this is me when i was five.

if you're not five years old, remember these things for your friends who are five years old. maybe they can remind you to loosen up, cut your own bangs and feel how cool it is to be a kid.

the cost of expectations

2012-03-23T11:22:00.001-04:00

"Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise."
- Alice Walker

I have a modest proposal for all parents or parents of incoming babies: lovingly tell your child(ren) to have no expectations.

My therapist (yes, I went there already, perhaps a new record at just 21 words) once told me a phrase that was new to me back in 2005: “having expectations creates built-in resentments.”

Ooh, built-ins.

I’m not down on people or the world, but I have noticed lately that if I come to expect kindness, professionalism, decorum out of people in the manner with which I endeavor to conduct myself, I’m a dolt, a bozo and essentially screwed for the rest of the day emotionally because I stew in disbelief at the callousness of people.

This is sort of a rant. Gentility is dead or at least on a DNR.

Case in point just yesterday with global coffee powerhouse Starbucks. I bought the VIA “ready-brew” packs for a trip. When I opened the packages to prepare for the trip, four of the “sticks” as Starbucks calls them, were pilfered from the packaging. I paid full price, $7 for two packages of 7 sticks and I got 3 in each package. The packaging is clearly the problem. In Starbucks’s mission to impart a Green (right, whatever) sentiment, they use austere packaging: a cutesy clear spot of tape here, a special fold/cut to the paper there, soy-based ink on recyclable paper, job-enhancing sustainable agriculture and a perfect cup of joe.

I contacted their customer relations department via the web (the fact that I had to contact them via the web was annoying; no customer service phone number on any packaging) and detailed my situation. I gently suggested they use a more resilient type of packing, like a cereal box, that clearly indicates tampering and even went so far as to suggest using maybe those paper “zipper” inspired types of packaging like on frozen fish sticks. Beyond my frustration level, this was also a matter of food safety.

Starbucks replied within 24 hours, which was great, but the response was woefully inadequate given its impressive financials and global branding imprint. I could envision the employee sipping from his? (the name was Jasyn, so …?) fair-trade Balinese coffee mug made by indigent children to pay for the goat they were going to share in their village and typing on his ergonomically exquisite keyboard made of recycled aluminum while sitting in his bamboo office chair wearing hemp clothing and listening to Sufjan Stevens (whom I happen to like very much) as he typed his expression of gratitude for detailing my experiences and sharing my frustration and letting me know he was going to pass on my comments to the marketing team. But I feel confident saying Jasyn wasn’t sitting in a bamboo chair and sipping from a fair-trade mug. He was likely an overworked denizen of an overcrowded, poorly lit, poorly circulated, cubical farm in India. He was however, probably listening to Sufjan Stevens or Julian Casablancas because, hey it is Starbucks.

Starbucks made no offer to reimburse my expenses (I wasn’t looking for a handout, just hopefully expectant for a compensation coupon for my trouble) but Jasyn didn’t care. I figure Starbucks figures they got me by the short hairs because I’m a coffee addict (not) and can’t go a day without their elixir keeping me alive. Well I’m not and once I finish the two other 7-stick packages I have of their VIA, I’m not buying any more. In 2 weeks, I am DONE with VIA. And they can suck it, to quote my friend affectionately known as “C3.”

I’ll go through all my beans they roasted that I have in my house and then I’ll switch to Maxwell House or some other openly dishonest pre-fair-trade, pre-Seattle / consciousness conglomerate like Procter & Gamble who knows how to treat its customers:

Almost 14 years ago, when Thing 1 was very wee (about six months) and I was a new mother, we were out running errands. He had a diaper on for a longer-than expected (see, there’s that word again) time. When we returned from our jaunt and I prepared him for a nap, his diaper was massive. I opened it to change him and I discovered a clear, gel-like substance all over his little pelvic area. I thought his kidneys had exploded all over himself and that he was in dire need of dialysis. I thought his pee had crystallized and he was on death’s door with his bright eyes, funny toothless grin, chubby cheeks, dimples, pre-nap chortles and sticky hands grabbing at my necklace that dangled about his face.

Quickly I called my mom who had no clue because when we were children she had a diaper service so, she couldn’t help, but she did add to my level of panic and primal fear, “Oh, Gad, Mally. It saounds ahwfal. I think yooo shud caal the haspital.” (She was a Buffalo, NY, resident until her 48^th year, so I have to do that Great Lakes accent for you.)

I didn’t know if we were at that critical “caal the haspital” stage yet so I called the 800 number on the box of Pampers. Within two rings a very mellow woman (I could tell by the sound of her voice) named Maureen answered the phone and asked me what I was calling about.

With no shortage of pithy anxiety I told her that my son had a clear, springy, crazy goo all over himself and that I didn’t know what was happening. He seemed fine, he seemed alert, he seemed like himself (YES HE DII-ID, HE MOST CERTAINWY DII-IID, SWEETUMMMS…) but what the heck?

Maureen calmly cleared her throat and said everything was fine. She asked me if I was a new mom, (D’Oh!) and assured me that everything was just fine, hon. She didn’t make me fear she was pantomiming “GOT A LIVE ONE!” waving the LUNATIC! flag from her cubicle to her co-workers. She didn’t make me defensive for wanting to ask for help or feel angry for voicing a concern. She told me the crazy goo was some form or absorbent property that enables the diaper to take on bodily fluid. She explained that the release (explosion was more like it) of the material indicated that it had reached its maximum capacity. So in my best anxiety-induced Star Trek’s “Scotty” impression, I suggested to her that the diapurr had geeven ahll it cooold, cap’n. shey coooldn’t geeeve nue morrrre and she laughed.

Utterly relieved and grateful for her calm and her stories about her first crack at motherhood, “Oh hon, that was yeeeears ago. My kids are alllll grown up now…” I released a lot of fear and sorta whimpered on the phone, breathing deeply and slowly. She asked me if I was ok and I said that I was but that I was terrified earlier. She got real quiet on her end and it was like I could feel her reaching out to tightly grasp my hand, a hand hug. After a few moments, she said, “Hon, can I get your name and address? I want to do something for you.”

I gathered my composure and finished up Thing 1’s new, clean diaper, smooched his forehead and put him into bed and closed the door.

I gave her my information. She listened to me carefully put my infant son in his crib with love. She sighed and told me the worst of that moment was over. She told me my son was fine and suggested that I might want to take a nap and relax while he did, that the laundry will always be there, that it could wait.

One day later via FedEx a coupon for a free case of diapers arrived with some coupons for laundry detergent and other affiliated products and a hand-written note from Maureen thanking me for trusting her and wishing me and my family health and peace. I don’t care that this massive company wasn't especially earth-friendly, Maureen was Molly-friendly.

These are expectations that I didn’t have: that Maureen would be so loving, so human; that an employee of a huge, HUGE multinational conglomerate would be so kind. Maureen set the bar that day and yesterday Jasyn ran into it, “clotheslined” it.

So this is what we get when we have expectations. Expectations that people will hold the door for us, help us out of a car, help us with our groceries. Expectations that check-out clerks will say “hello” (fellow human being trying to make your way) and “thank you” (for keeping me employed). And to Alice Walker’s point above, if we have no expectations, we get to live frugally on surprise, because we’ll starve if we think the nice random moments from random other people are coming to feed our souls and help us remember what coexistence means.

Am I in the wrong here? Am I so self-absorbed that expecting someone to treat me with courtesy or kindness or manners or decency is asking too much? Has FaceBook and YouTube and Twitter and camera-phones and text-messaging and instant gratification and webcams and reality-TV made people SO self-absorbed that they actually believe they will be “discovered” or instantly famous? Is Justin Bieber our benchmark for talent and fame? That kid’s a train wreck. Is "American Idol" an example of what the world really needs? Is anyone entitled to being rude and unkind and all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips –eqsue? In one of the scariest films I've ever seen -- "Mommie Dearest" about Joan Crawford and her adopted daughter Christina, I was amazed to see that Joan hand-wrote a personal reply to every fan she ever had. She might've been insane, but she was polite insane.

What happened to not shouting in a restaurant? Or turning down your cell phone ringer? What happened to formality? What happened to hand-written notes? Is real reality so boring that we have to escape to one-dimensional virtual reality?

Uh oh, I can tell I’m getting tangential. Stay on track, Mol.

So, in my sage 44 years, I have come to understand that we could all do ourselves and our incoming human beings (aka babies) a favor by simply telling them this: “Have no expectations. Don’t expect things out of life. You are not entitled to anything. Work hard, do your best and be good to society because it is right to do. But, have no expectations. Don’t expect kindness, don’t expect eye contact (certainly not in a full-grown adult or teenager) or full sentences or for someone to possibly relate to you on any level because they’re too busy thinking about themselves, what's happening on FaceBook, if he's lost at Words with Friends or how to be rich, famous or the next big thing.”

Repeat "have no expectations" throughout their lives reinforced with the beauty of occasional bouts of spontaneous kindness and the fact that being nice just feels right. The point is not to beat the sweet innocent into submission, but rather to forge and hone a smart person, a self-assured person and someone who doesn’t make insanely poor choices or use poor judgment. As we mature, I would hope it would inspire equanimity and a quiet repose with the phrase of the century, “It is what it is” bolstered with the karma-hopeful reasoning that it's simply right to be a nice person. Have you ever heard, "Steve's such a weirdo ... he's so NICE to people..." (sullen teenagers don't count)? I haven't. But I do have excellent radar for saccharine kindness. That's just as bad as rudeness because it implies you're stupid or gullible too.

I suppose I sound like Andy Rooney or my great aunt Alshee when I talk like this, but I think they had the Right Idea. But in my house: Kindness begets kindness and rudeness gets the hairy eyeball. So if you catch my Things being rude, let me know. I’ll put them in contact with Jasyn.

Thank you.

International Women's Day: I'm Late to the Party, but My Roots are Done

2012-03-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was International Women's Day. I wanted to post something yesterday but am late to this party. I was busy driving my children around to either soccer, tennis, guitar, chess, or basketball. Or I was walking the dog, chatting with and supporting or being supported by friends, remembering to take my vitamins, going to yoga, having lunch with another friend, wishing I could drink coffee after 4pm, cleaning the house, watching the kids play out front so they don't get killed by car drivers, folding laundry, starting a new load of wash, ovulating, unloading the dishwasher, loading it from the dishes left on the table after breakfast and making dinner. After that, I fell asleep reading a book.

International Women's Day started in the 1900s which was a time of great cultural change. Anyone who's watched "Downton Abbey" knows this. The first organized march of 15,000 women was held in New York City in 1908 to demand shorter working hours, better pay and voting rights. I look back at what I comprehend of Women's History and I stagger at the tremendous changes that have occurred in the last 104 years since that first march. I am grateful for the changes those 15,000 women effected: Title IX and ERA are the least political and so I'll stop there.

Just so you know, it was first called "International Working Women's Day."

This is fascinating (from Wikipedia): "In many regions, the day lost its political flavour, and became simply an occasion for men to express their love for women in a way somewhat similar to a mixture of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day."

So it turns out someone thought they could just mush it into another day of loving us. Not so fast, we might have a headache.

Turns out there is an International Men's Day. It's not the Superbowl.

~ ~ ~

I have many women friends who are writers, activists, nurses, veterinarians, teachers, yoginis, politicians, therapists, personal trainers, advocates, film makers, maintenance workers, educators, athletes, healers, chefs, actors, lawyers, wives, ex-wives, step-mothers, musicians, artists, poets, doctors, daughters, aunts, grandmothers, sisters and mothers. In my current occupation, mother-woman, I am all these things . . . except the grandmother, ex-wife and step-mother.

So given that I'm a wife-daughter-aunt-sister-mother-woman, it's perfectly acceptable then that I'd be a little behind celebrating International Women's Day. What with being celebrated so gloriously yesterday. I'm just getting around to returning all the phone calls and cataloguing the gifts I received. Really.

One of my favorite songs of all time, "Mary" by Patty Griffin is about Jesus' mother, Mary (perhaps you've heard of her), and in it Patty paints a wonderful scene and sums up how it is for a mother-woman (divine or not):

Jesus says 'Mother I couldn't stay another day longer'
Flys right by and leaves a kiss upon her face
While the angels are singin' His praises in a blaze of glory
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place

As testament to my mother-womanhood, Thing 2 (11) made a comment yesterday that was innocently oblivious to the International Women's Day phenomenon. He looked at my hair and said in a tone that could not belie the shock on his face and behind his copper eyes, "Mom! WHAT'S THAT WHITE LINE IN YOUR HAIR?!"

I wasn't wearing a baseball cap. This is the same child who tells me daily how beautiful I am. He's a charmer (albeit sincere) and anyone with a 9-12 year-old daughter within a mile until he starts driving better prepare themselves because he's a sweetie too. I had to explain to him that my hair isn't #4N:, intensely natural dark brown, all over.

Today, I write to you from the cold office that rests upon the front of my home. It's 49˚ outside so that means it's close to 60˚ in here. Along with shivering in my office, I write to you prompted by Thing 2 and his shock as #4N soaks into the strands atop my head. I have been going gray since high school.

Hmm . . . apparently only English-speaking and Spanish-speaking women color their own hair because the instructions are only in their respective languages.

I'm glad I still have the gloves on my hands because every once in a while I have an itch from the chemicals on my head and I have to scratch it. I'm a pro though and the color won't get on my keyboard because I've strategically put on a brown sweater that should nicely match the dye that I'll rub on it after scratching my scalp. In the warmer months, I color my hair wearing a formerly white beat-up Ralph Lauren Polo button-down shirt which looks like a bird that ate only chocolate followed me around one day outside and compulsively 'shat' all over me. With the brown sweater, it just looks like I've been pelted with something browner than the sweater. I love saying "shat"; it's past tense for "shit" right?

This is how I celebrate my womanhood.

When this process is over, in about 10 minutes, I'll go rinse and then change into clothes for the day. Along with ability and choice to color my hair, another great thing about being a first-world woman is that I often wonder if what I'm wearing is suitable for my "age." I'm 44 and although I'm exercise regularly I have become distracted of late by a yet another phrase to designate that I don't know what I'm doing: "age appropriate clothing." So along with wondering if my roots need coloring, I'm concerned if what I'm wearing would make children cry or offend the Blue-Haired Ladies of the Order of Sweater and Pearls.

"Screw 'em," says my inner Eve.

But then I argue, "Oh Eve, don't be such a rebel. They're women too. They might have marched in 1908. We should honor and celebrate them also by dressing appropriately. Even if they judge me by my hem or my waistline. They wouldn't do that, would they? They're pro-women!"

Eve retorts, "Whatev. Hey. Do men wonder if they're not dressing for their age? Bahhahahah! Never heard of it. A t-shirt and jeans on a guy is the same as a t-shirt and jeans on a boy kid or a t-shirt and jeans on an 80-year-old. That wardrobe (mal)function happens all the time. Go for it. I cleared the way. Adam still wears his grape leaf. "

So after putting on a hoodie and sweatpants, I'll put in my contact lenes and use a rotating electric exfoliator brush on my face To Get It 6x Cleaner Than Washing By Hand. Then I'll give 2 pumps worth of "Intense Wrinkle Repair" moisturizer that I will cover with "Healthy Skin SPF 15" moisturizer with alpha-hydroxy and vitamins. If I give a damn, which I usually don't, I'll put on some tinted sunscreen that will help me not Deny My Age, but Defy My Age!

~ ~ ~

I'm back. I just rinsed out the color and it looks about as natural as that of the alien female crew member on "Galaxy Quest." My son definitely won't view me with confusion and horror today when he comes home.

I only just discovered that yesterday was The Day yesterday in the late morning, I didn't get any head's up. I guess my Woman card has been revoked.

Wait a minute. If my card has been revoked, what about all the so-called scandalous females?

A couple years ago, I read Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy, and I hoped it would be a searing examination of the state of feminism and its progress and challenges. I also hoped it would sear and indict females who have managed to reduce the entire gender by indulging in the fantasies of the male-dominated media establishment. Sadly, I was underwhelmed; it was a lot like a blind date. In fact the book exposed me to greater confusion and overall sense of "waah" than I had when I started it; it told me about stuff I'd never considered. It made me wish I never opened it. To me it blamed the state of our collective anti-female woes on all of us. Why, for not killing the errant females? And I really resented it. Levy did talk about how men entice/pay/intoxicate young women to do things like expose themselves and smash face with each other for "Girls Gone Wild" and the like, but in the final analysis, when it comes to sex (as a verb -- not to be confused with "gender"): we are all acting on instinct. Under the influence or not -- if someone wants to release or meet the pheromones, it's gonna happen without any permission at all.

If we're gonna go for blaming it on the guys, what better chance of seeing how they really are when women aren't around than by insinuating ourselves into their scene? To this end, I read Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent which was utterly fascinating. It's a first-person memoir of Vincent's commitment for an entire year to conduct herself outside her apartment in drag, disguised as a man as she engaged in male-only activities with at least three separate sets of male groups. One group was a bowling team, another was a professional arena where she joined her male colleagues as they went to strip clubs. The third scenario was her most trying experience: she joined in men's group therapy. The book was compassionate toward men and put a lot of my assumptions about men on their heads as well as confirmed things that the supposed sixth sense of motherhood (we all have it, actually, we just need to listen to it) already told me: all children, regardless of gender need to feel safe to express themselves emotionally. And, at the risk of repeating myself (but I will): in the final analysis, when it comes to sex (as a verb -- not to be confused with "gender"): we are all acting on instinct. Under the influence or not -- if someone wants to release or meet the pheromones, it's gonna happen without any permission at all. Vincent subsequently had herself committed to a mental hospital after writing the book for the emotional toll the experience had on her. She chronicled her time in recovery in Voluntary Madness.

What yesterday made me think about was my commitment to the opinion that if we're going to honor women, we can't pick and choose. We don't get to say, "this woman is worth celebrating, but this one isn't."

So when we celebrate Women next March 8, you need to ask yourself: do we celebrate all women, not just Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller, Anne Frank, Jackie Kennedy, Condoleeza Rice, the Virgin Mary, Annie Sullivan and Eve? Because if we are to be fair, we have to celebrate all the others: Anna Nicole Smith, Lindsay Lohan, Mary Magdelen, Lot's Wife (who apparently didn't get a name), Bathsheba, Casey Anthony, Condoleeza Rice (2), Vanna White, Marilyn Monroe, Andrea Yates, The Real Housewives of Wherever, and the evil step mothers in all the Grimms Fairy Tales. Of course, to make it easier and politically correct, we can be obtuse and just celebrate their "Essence," their inherent goodness, and not necessarily what they've done, committed, achieved because or in spite of their gender. That's really safest, right?

If you watch "30 Rock", you should get where I'm going: If we Celebrate International Women's Day, we must celebrate smart and cheese-puff snarfing Liz Lemon and scheming, insecure hussy-actress Jenna Maroney:

the captions: Jenna (upper): "Admit it, I look 10 years younger."

Liz (lower): "No. Younger even. You look like a fetus."

What about the transgendered woman/man who had a baby? What do we celebrate there?

Celebrate all you want, but I still think we've got a long way to go, and I'm not talking about equal pay. I'm talking about fair treatment of women by women. Women can be awfully picky and competitive and unsupportive of each other. Ever hear of conflict between mothers-in-law and their daughters-in-law? How about sisters who fight? The Devil Wears Prada? Or Death Becomes Her? Where does enmity this come from? Why are we snarky to each other behind each others' backs? Or recall The Jerry Springer Show -- why are we snarky to each others' faces? Did men do this to us? Is it the media that shapes our opinions of each other? I wonder if aboriginal women in primitive cultures refer to one another in their vernacular as a "slut" or "bitch" or "stupid" or "fat" or "ugly" or "gold digger" or "useless." Maybe they do. Maybe it's not just a first-world problem.

That's why these days of commemoration confuse the hell out of me. I choose to abstain. I celebrate me and I celebrate you, whatever you are. Unless you're that transgendered man-woman-man that had a baby. I just can't get my arms around it. Sorry.

The bottom line is that it's complicated. I hate labels. And yes, I both celebrate and blame Eve, that minx. It's all her fault. That snake or legged reptile that was subsequently rendered legless for his betrayal had nothing to do with it. Right? Oy.

But hey, my hair looks great.

Thank you.