Stingy with the L word

When I was a kid, I threw around the word "love" like confetti. I loved Duran Duran. I loved dancing. I loved my best friend.

Even as I got older and into college, I threw it around with various guys I dated. I was in love with all of them. 

But at some point, I closed it in and determined that I didn't feel comfortable throwing that word around. And the older I get, the more cringey I feel when other people use it. 

At one point, one of my biggest pet peeves was when people would say or write "Love ya." 

Gawd. 

Just seeing that gives me the willies, so maybe it remains a pet peeve. 

On occasion people still write or say this to me, and my insides shrivel up a little.

Sure, there are different ways to experience love.

There is the general love of mankind, but I don't share in that feeling. I'm not sure when I heard the word misanthropy, but I identified with it then, and I identify with it now. I identify with it even more strongly after these last 18 months of watching people do things completely against their own best interests on the daily. 

I may aspire to a Christ-like love of others, but I don't think it is in the cards. People make it very hard to love them (including me; I am a hard person to love).

There are people I like, people I find fun to be around. There are people I admire. 

But to love someone, at least in my book, there has to be a history and a long one. There has to be honesty above all else. There has to be mutual respect. 

I cannot even begin to love someone I cannot trust. And I cannot trust someone I barely know. I'm not sure I can trust some people I've known for several years or even most of my life. 

So I am truly stingy when it comes to the people I say "I love you" to. 

And there are circles of it. Sort of like Dante's Inferno but with my own weird love designations. 

I tell my children every single day that I love them. Sometimes even more than once a day. 

I tell my husband and my parents a little less often. 

I tell my brother and his family and my mother-in-law less often than that. 

I tell my oldest friend usually once a year in a letter. 

And that is it. 

Because of this, I have an automatic revulsion-type feeling when I hear people throw the L word around. 

It is similar to the feeling I would get if I saw someone put mayonnaise on their waffle instead of butter and then smother it with syrup. 

Ewwww. 

COVID questions I ask myself

COVID-think is a thing now.

Here are some of the questions I ask myself:

1. Is whatever it is I'm thinking of doing worth getting sick to do?

Like if I run to Target for underwear and get sick from it, I will be really ticked off. And there is very, very little that I'm so anxious to do that I would be willing to chance getting sick to do it.

2. Is whomever I'm thinking about seeing someone that is worth me getting sick to see?

In my head, there are now tiers of people importance. You probably don't want to know which tier you're on.

3. If I do whatever it is I think I want to do, will I actually have fun doing it if I have to wear a mask and feel anxious around people?

Like flying. While I would love to go to France, I would hate to be in an airplane even if everyone is in masks. I don't like flying anyway and require extensive amounts of Xanax. With COVID, this would be entirely too much anxiety, therefore not worth it.

Also, France, Denmark, Amsterdam, Spain, Hungary, and Japan won't let me (or any of us COVID-y Americans in).

4. How long will Kroger keep their curbside pickup free of charge, and if they decide to once again charge $4.95 per pickup, is it worth $4.95 to avoid humans in the store?

There was a time when I was cheap and would have said my time is worth the $4.95 to schlep around for my own groceries, but it is worth my peace of mind to pay the $4.95 to avoid people.

5. How bad must things be when the gal working at the state park last week (which was very un-peoply on a Tuesday) thanked me for complying with mask-wearing and being nice about it?

I mean, this particular visitor center was about the size of the main floor of my house, so not huge. There weren't nooks and crannies where one could go to "get away." I don't understand why people are being such complete assholes, especially to people at places of business who have ZERO power to change anything even if they wanted to.

6. How many days can I go between showers without feeling completely funky?

My body can go at least 3 days, but my hair says no more than that. I have tested this.

7. Do my kids' brains still work?

My 16-year-old told me the other morning when it looked very overcast that she hoped it didn't "thunder rain."

At this point, I looked at her and said, "You mean "storm?"

And she replied, "Yes."

The answer to Question #7 is no.

The ambush: "The rest of the story"

Sister girl texted me the afternoon of the first day of school and said her husband is just gonna drive their daughter to school.

I suspect they didn't actually do the math prior to the first day and determine that by the time they get to my house, they are nearly halfway to the high school.

If they are gonna drive that far, they might as well go the distance.

I'm off the hook.

Reincarnation

I recently read The Forgetting Time by Sharon Guskin and loved it. It is a fictional story of reincarnation, but it is grounded in the work of Jim Tucker and Ian Stephenson. Because I found the novel so compelling, I decided to read Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives.

While I wouldn't say I'm a firm believer in reincarnation, I am a firm believer in possibilities that I cannot understand nor explain. 

Whenever I think about what happens after death, I think about the first law of thermodynamics, that energy is neither created nor destroyed. But I am not a physicist, so my understanding of the laws of physics are preschool-level (and I'm being generous). If you actually look up the first law and reincarnation, you then get sucked into a great mind-numbing debate on discussion boards that makes me wish Neil deGrasse Tyson would apparate and explain it to me in dumb-person language that I can wrap my head around.

As much as I value science and evidence, I also value that there is much that we don't yet know or understand. This is to say that at some point, we may have definitive evidence, but right now we do not. 

I don't need proof, really, because I think it is pretty fun to just ask the questions and wonder.

What is consciousness? 

What is the soul?

Are they the same?

Is there an underlying consciousness that all of our disconnected consciousnesses feed into or come from? And does that mean that there is only one consciousness and we are all just little feeder shoots off of it?

Is that what we call God?

Is memory real and trustable? (I think not)

If reincarnation does happen, what does that mean that the "me" I think of as "me" actually is? 

What does it mean if my consciousness isn't really mine? (And is that "possession" a stupid way to think of it anyway?)

One of the reasons I wonder about reincarnation is because of M and his ear-twiddling, which he continues to do now and has done since he was an infant nursing at my breast.

Is there a gene for ear-twiddling? Is that an actual trait that gets passed along from parent to child?

Because my deceased father-in-law was an ear twiddler. He didn't do it to everyone, but I was one of those people.

And it may be entirely possible that ear-twiddling is actually encoded in DNA, so it makes perfect "logical" sense that M does it.

But if it isn't, then how and why does M do this, especially since his siblings do not and his father does not?

I don't think M is his reincarnated grandfather, but I do wonder if consciousness of some kind is a plane of existence we cannot sense except in weird ways. 

My father-in-law died unexpectedly, and M was an unexpected birth control pill-conception. 

I like to think that his ear-twiddling is my FIL's consciousness reaching out to us, but I have no proof that it is. And if I did have proof that it isn't, that is ok, too. 

I also have what I have always thought is a dream, but maybe it isn't a dream. In this dream or whatever it was, I am conciousness but not corporeal, and I'm not even entirely sure that I am Carrie-consciousness. I have consciousness of being in existence but there is nothing else. Everything is black. 

If it was a dream, I don't know what the point was. 

And if it wasn't a dream, I don't know what the point was.

But I'm ok with either one. 

Update: the app is in / auto correct and voice / The Mamas and Papas / John Green / immigration

The app is in

I took N's high school application to the school on Monday.

On Tuesday morning, when I was trying to get her out the door early so I could get to my subbing job, I threatened to go back over to the high school and ask for it back because I am tired as hell of driving her butt to school, and the idea of doing this for another four years makes me want to cry.

So now we wait.

Autocorrect and voice

I both love and hate autocorrect.
I hate typing on my phone, so anything that reduces fingers pressing on buttons is great.
Except when the phone thinks it knows more than me, which it doesn't.
At least not in the way of spelling most words.
And don't even get me started on voice dictation.
Yesterday I ran into an accident on Finchley (a street near the school), so I dictated a text to send to N. Instead of Finchley, it said something about "sensually."
I cannot send my teenager a text about anything sensually.
I hate technology, especially in my car.

The Mamas and the Papas

Sometimes I remember things that I've forgotten.
But I don't mean the important stuff, like where I put the safe deposit box key which I hid somewhere in the house.
I remember stuff like how I read Michelle Phillips' autobiography about 60 times when I was a kid, which then led me to listen to The Mamas and the Papas music.
Sometimes I think that seems like a pretty weird thing for a kid to do. Read a book like 60 times, but I did. I read Judy Blume books like that too. Over and over and over.
Everytime I ate a snack, I'd sit down with one of my most read books and just open it anywhere, picking up wherever, because I'd read it so many times it didn't matter where I started. I knew everything by heart.

John Green

Speaking of books, I'm both liking and disliking Green's latest book, Turtles All the Way Down. It resonates with me because the main character has OCD, and the way her thoughts spiral is completely accurate. I like her confusion as to who is the captain of her ship, which is language I've heard Green himself use in interviews. We all like to think we're the captains, but the brain is a wacky thing, and we really aren't.

I've been looking at school and church and different places where people congregate as versions of pods of bacteria. Humans do the same things as bacteria---live, eat, produce waste, reproduce and try to survive. This book has made me consider just how much we are not the higher/greater species. We aren't nearly as adaptable as bacteria.

Immigration

I listened to this interview today, and I realized, once again, that even though I think of myself as being pretty left-leaning, I don't disagree with this senator's proposal about not giving DACA residents automatic citizenship. I'm a person who tends to be a rule-follower, who tends to go about things the "right" way. I'm the type of person who pays attention to the flight attendant every time I get on a plane when they go over the safety rules. Yes, I'm that person on the plane who rolls my eyes at the people who don't pay attention and will be the first ones to f*ck everything up when a crisis ensues because they don't know what to do because they didn't pay attention.

I mean, I work in middle schools. I see how this goes down every.day.

And if I was going to think about this scenario in a grocery store, then I would have to admit that I get pissed off at the people who don't read and follow the 15 Items or Less sign. The people who drop 35 items on the conveyor belt. The people who don't do things the "right" way, the way that everyone else who has groceries is supposed to follow. And maybe it is a teenager, who watched his or her parents drop 35 items on the conveyor belt and so that is all he or she knows. I can understand it, but I would still get pissed off if I (and when I), in the grocery store, followed the instructions to the letter.

I can understand why someone who follows the "right" process for citizenship would be miffed by the prospect of people who came illegally just getting a pass.

And I know that this doesn't account for the fact that it takes so long to get citizenship (which maybe is too long), and maybe costs a ton of money (I don't know because I've never actually researched it, and maybe those people came because they were desperate and in dire straight (which makes me think of Jesus and do unto others and then things get super complicated in my heart), and maybe those things need to be addressed.

What I'm saying is that I can see both sides of the coin.

The story I've already told my children about risking alcohol

I am not a teetotaler. I enjoy an occasional glass of wine or a beer, but I know my absolute limit is two drinks (and that is two little drinks....not two full glasses of anything like what I might be served at a restaurant).

It takes many months for me and D to go through our alcohol stash. We often just split a beer when we do drink. 

For us, it is a very short drive between relaxed and ready to fall asleep.

At the ripe old age of 21, I stopped drinking more than two drinks and also stopped drinking hard liquor when I got tossed out of a stadium for public intoxication and had a 5-day hangover. How I didn't die of alcohol poisoning remains a mystery to me. 

I have yet to tell my children that story but I will as a warning to them. 

The story I do tell them is the one from when I was 16. 

I got remarkably dumb between 16 and 21, which will be more clear momentarily.

When I was 16, a friend and some of her friends were going to pick me up to go dancing at a local club for teens.  

They arrived, and I got into the car.

I noticed the empty alcohol bottles on the floor.  

I don't recall now whether they were cans or bottles, but I seem to remember glass.

It doesn't matter. What mattered is that I knew the driver, who was my friend's friend, had been drinking.

From the moment I sat down and noticed the booze, I was terrified. 

And angry.

I was scared that we would have an accident, and more importantly, I was fucking pissed off that my "friend" would put my life in potential jeopardy. 

Initially, I was more scared than angry but as we drove away from my house, my fear lessened as my anger increased. 

These were the days long before cell phones.

I kept thinking to myself, "How can I get out of this?"

And that is when I saw a convenience store near my dad's work, which was on the way to the teen club.

I asked them to stop at the convenience store so I could run in and get something.

I ran in, got on the phone, and called my mom.

I told her the driver had been drinking, and I was scared.

I asked her to come pick me up and take me to the teen club (I was meeting my boyfriend at the time). 

Honestly, I don't remember much after that point.
My mom came to me and drove me to the club. 

I seem to recall my friend talking to me both at the convenience store and at the teen club. I'm sure she apologized, but I don't think I accepted.

It took me a long, long time to forgive her for that. 

That event basically destroyed what had been a close friendship. It was never the same between us again.

I could forgive her for putting me in that situation, but I could no longer trust her.
We could be friendly but we could never be friends again. 

Now clearly, this event didn't sour me from alcohol overuse because of the stadium event at age 21. What soured me from alcohol overuse was the 5-day hangover. 

Who wants to feel like shit after drinking?

Plus, I knew of my dad's 2-drink limit. His own father was an alcoholic who drank away the family's income and beat the shit out of my grandmother.

My dad's youngest brother died of liver disease in his 40s due to alcohol abuse. 

Dad learned all too well that he had to be very strict about his own alcohol use to ensure he didn't go down that path. 

A couple years ago, I interviewed two addiction specialists for an article I was writing because many people....myself included at times....make light of drinking alcohol.  You see things about "Mommy's sippy cup" and other funny memes about drinking, and it makes alcohol use seem not as dangerous as it can be. 

I try to reserve judgment about alcohol use, and drug use for that matter. Addiction is a tricky thing.  People don't try to become addicted to anything. There are an awful lot of people who have untreated mental health issues (anxiety, ADD, depression, bipolar, etc) who self-medicate as a way to cool down those parts of their brains they just can't quiet without alcohol or drugs. There is usually an awful lot of pain and general dissatisfaction in life behind the booze or the drugs. 

And, honestly, what people do in their own homes with their own money is none of my business. 

But should it potentially threaten me or my kids.....then it becomes my business.
It was hard to remove myself from the aforementioned sticky situation when I was 16, but at nearly 44 and with three children I need to protect, I have no qualms about making my feelings known now. 

I subbed again and nearly tendered my resignation

My second time subbing was terrible, horrible, no good, very bad.

I knew from the second I walked in the 4th grade classroom that things were not cool.  It didn't look like what I expect a 4th grade classroom to look like.  It is elementary school, for pete's sake. There should be bulletin boards made up and some remnant of sweetness.

Like this:

Ok, it is April, so it wouldn't be that neat, but there should be an indication that there is order and routine and procedure.

The classroom I walked into looked like this.  Maybe not quite this bad, but almost.

I had to hunt for sub plans.  They were not easily found....as in laid out in plain site on the desk, as they should be.  About two hours into the day, another teacher came in and said, "Here.  I forgot to bring these to you."  They were the actual sub plans for the day.  Another clue that this school sucks.

What I learned from subbing here is the following:

1. When the other teachers tell you the person you're subbing for has "checked out" and "has never had control of this class," you can pretty much hang up any notion of doing anything productive with that group of students.

2. When the other teachers tell you that when the school brings a sub in, they get "thrown to the wolves," you can pretty much count on having a really shitty day.

3. When two boys are this close to fighting and you call the office and NO ONE EVER COMES TO THE CLASSROOM to help, you know administration is useless.

The sad part is that if a handful of the kids in that class could have been removed, the rest of them would have been willing to learn, if not eager.

The sad part is that many of these kids' parents don't know what is going on or if they do, they are too ignorant or timid to demand that things change (because they are non-native speakers or don't know how to navigate the system).  Or they are too busy working two jobs to try to make ends meet.  Or they are too strung out on drugs to care.  Or they are in jail (per one of the kids in the class).  

If I ever walked into my child's school and saw that garbage, I'd be on the news protesting.

As I walked out, one of the teachers asked if I'd ever come back, and I said, "Probably not."

Assessment results

This week I met with the psychologist to go over G's psychological test results.  I went in hoping for some answers, some definitive answers, but as is the case in parenting, there are very rarely clear-cut answers to anything related to one's child.

But really, how often are there clear-cut answers in life?

What we know with relative certainty is that G doesn't appear to have any learning disabilities or difficulties.  He rated average to above average in everything, with an IQ of 109.  His spatial skills were in the superior category.  Although his language skills were fine, they were well below his spatial abilities causing an imbalance of sorts in what his left-brain and right-brain can do or will do.

The psychologist said G is an enigma, to which I had to laugh.

He scores as likely having Asperger's, but he has virtually none of the communicative issues associated with it (blank facial expressions, not making eye-contact).  What we think is that his other sensory issues are strong enough to skew the test.  If it wasn't for his sensory issues, he wouldn't appear Asperger-ish at all.

Some of his intelligence scores and other behaviors the psychologist noted while testing him make him appear to have attention issues (ADD/ADHD), but in-school reports show no attention issues at all.

He doesn't appear to have issues with depression.  He does appear to have some issues with aggression and anxiety, but not severe enough to put him in the "danger" area, where the psychologist would see there is a clinical diagnosis needing to be made.

The psychologist said all this should make me feel better, and it does in that there is nothing glaringly amiss.  But at the same time, having a diagnosis of something would give me a better guide for managing G instead of feeling like I'm flailing and trying a little bit of everything to help him.  It would, if nothing else, give me a place to hang my hat (which is selfish, I know).

Basically everything I started to do with G in December/early January (periodically seeing a psychologist and starting OT) when I didn't know what was "wrong" or "not-wrong" with him is what I should be doing and what we should continue to do.

Some of G's issues may really and truly be maturity.  His brain appears to be ahead of his emotions.

Meeting with the psychologist was especially weird since on Monday I had had a conference with G's teacher.  According to her, G's reading skills have him "this close" to being recommended for the talent pool for kindergarteners.  I actually said, "No shit?" when she told me he is reading at an end of 1st grade/beginning of 2nd grade level.  Twice this year she has sent home notes about how he helped a classmate, offering kindness to them or looking out for them, a clear sign that he is very able and willing to be empathetic to others.  On Monday, she said because of this compassion, others in the class look to him as a leader.

An enigma to be sure.

In all honesty, I expected his IQ score to be higher, given the questions he asks and the things he thinks about.

Two Fridays ago, having just come from OT, he asked me in the car, "Mahee (how he says mommy), who will be our new mom when you die?"  The next day, we watched the Disney movie Brother Bear.  After it was over, I said, "Wasn't that a great movie about brothers?" to which he replied, "Yes, and truth and death too."

He is such a existential thinker, and though I don't hang with other 6-year-olds, it is hard for me to think that they ponder evolution and watch BBC shows on geological time with such interest as he does.

Of course, I also don't believe that an IQ score is truly indicative of what a person is or is not.  I know it is more than a little ridiculous to give even a minute's thought to his score, but I would not be a mother if there wasn't some snippet of parental pride affecting my thoughts.

So what to make of all this????

Keeping carrying on as we are....seeing the psychologist, attending OT, reading him child-appropriate books on anxiety to help him manage his worries, reading every parenting book known to man on "sensitive" children, and blogging here as a means of working through the challenges of raising my especially challenging (for me) but especially special boy.

Sorta like "Shit my dad says"

Except this is called, "Shit I do for my kid that is COMPLETELY absurd."

I will not let the kids use our camera, so when N told me she wanted to have a fall photo shoot for her 18" doll, I agreed.  Very reluctantly.

But I did it anyway.
(Isn't this the chant of parents everywhere?)

And do you know what is even more absurd than doing a fall photo shoot for a doll when one is not an executive for Journey Girls or American Girl or American Doll or Our Generation?

It is taking a photo of the doll in the tree......

Not being happy with the way the light creates a shadow on the doll's face, and moving the doll around to take a better picture without shadow.

Work it, girl!!!  The camera loves you!

The significance of turtles

When I die, if dying means discovering answers to everything we've ever wished to know, I would like to know if there is any deeper meaning to me finding turtles in the road.

It happened again today.  M and I were on our way to run errands when I passed a turtle on the main street of our neighborhood.  I never pass up an opportunity to save a turtle (and wanted to give G and N a gander at it when they got home from school).

Franklin #3 is on the deck as I type this.  I had him in a low clear plastic container but he escaped and nearly fell off the 2-story deck so now he is ensconced in a taller blue plastic bin.  Once N returns home we will return him to the woods behind our neighborhood from whence he came.

 M, Franklin #3 in clear bin

G, Franklin #3 in blue bin

We're all capable of the unthinkable

In 2004, when my brain decided to start acting out on its own without consulting me, I was gripped by fear.  I had been under the false belief that I control myself, but there is nothing like having a nervous breakdown to show a person what's really real.  I could no longer control the thoughts that ran through my mind, and within short order I couldn't control many of my body's physical components---tears, sleep, the ability to eat.

When I would see a plastic bag and envision N with it around her neck suffocating, I thought it meant I wanted this to happen to her.  When I held a knife to cut an apple and envisioned stabbing N with it, fear paralyzed me.  I knew without a doubt I was going crazy.  I had other even more unsavory visions that I do not discuss publicly because they are so upsetting (for anyone who thinks I truly do express every single thought I ever have, I do have some restraint).

The adage is somewhat true that if you think you're crazy, you probably aren't.  These horrible visions were my worst possible fears running amuck within my mind, and I wasn't able to shut them down.  I wasn't able to recognize them as worst fears and realize that a thought is just a thought, however horrible and disgusting.  I can have whatever awful terrible thoughts I want (or my brain wants), but acting on them is the problem.

The ultimate effect of all this, which was terrible as I was going through it, was a profound sense of freedom and compassion.  It was freeing to know that my mind can sorta do what it wants, regardless of what I think it should do.  I also developed a greater sense of compassion for people who are mentally ill, whether they are fortunate enough to recognize their mental illness and seek treatment or whether they do not even realize the full extent of their illness and disability.

People do the unthinkable, like the Boston bombing suspect or women who kill their babies or  men who sexually abuse children.  We fear for our safety or the safety of our families, but we also fear for ourselves because we are all capable of such acts.  We defend ourselves against the unthinkable by believing if people are neighborly or live in certain neighborhoods or look a certain way or whatever they are not the kind of people who could do such things.  But they are, and we are.

All of us likely fall somewhere on the DSM, but as my therapist told me, "A disorder isn't a disorder until it disorders your life."  Or in many cases until it disorders someone else's life when a person acts on a thought or belief that to them seems normal but to others is "sick."

As a mother, I have many fears for my children but perhaps the two worst are that 1.) they will take their own lives and 2.) that they will have take the lives of others.  I look at my G, who is very much like me in terms of personality (obsessive and highly sensitive) and I worry that he will end up like me, only worse; that he will have a mental disorder that cannot be easily managed with some antidepressants and therapy.  But the truth is that any of my kids could go off the deep end. My husband could.  I could.

I do not believe that people who go off the deep end do not give warning signs.  I think people around them either don't recognize the signs or cannot believe that their loved one is capable of the unthinkable.  When I was diagnosed with OCD and GAD, it made so many feelings and behaviors from my childhood clear to me.  I don't know if my mother ever had the thought that something was "mentally wrong" with her daughter, but I do know she chalked it up to "that's just Carrie" and thought it was odd or excessive or not the norm.  Had I done something unthinkable, I don't think my mother, in her heart, could have ignored all the signs that something was amiss, even if she wouldn't ever publicly admit it.

Love is blinding.  Love makes us want to see the beauty and purity in our loved ones.  And maybe there is simply something wrong (or more wrong) with me because I seem to have a knack for seeing the unpleasant and wondering where it might go off-the-chain wrong.  Or maybe I just dislike hiding behind pleasantries.  I think it is important to talk about the things that others find taboo or unpleasant or embarrassing.  Maybe we could understand more if we were more willing to speak the truth than to hide behind "I don't understand how or why it happened?"  We think that if we saw it coming, if we saw signs, we could have stopped it, and I just don't know if that is really possible.  But our fear of seeming culpable makes us gloss things over.

There is danger in knowing everyone is capable of the unthinkable.  Capable does not mean everyone will act on that capability.  I remember one student I had my first year of teaching who was, without a doubt, royally messed up.  He was, in my mind, a walking time bomb, and he scared me.  My relief was palpable when he was sent to a different school.  As far as I know, this kid has never done anything that made the papers.  He wasn't the former student of mine who killed himself in a local McDonald's after threatening his girlfriend with the gun he then used on himself.  He was disturbed, but not disturbed enough?

As sad as I feel for the people who are killed by unthinkable acts and their families, I can't help but feel a sense of compassion for those who commit the acts and their families who try desperately to make sense of it all.  The innocent are mourned and glorified, even though in life they were as imperfect as the rest of us.  The guilty are condemned and demonized, even though in life they were probably less horrible than their horrible actions would suggest.

There is no peace and tranquility regardless of which side of the unthinkable you are.

You're still allowed to wallow even after tragedy strikes others

There are times when it takes everything in me not to fall apart.

The tragedies are not mine, but between the Boston Marathon bombing and the suicide of a 13-year-old girl who attended a nearby school, I feel tremendous sadness.

I momentarily think I should not complain about being woken up 4 times between 5:20 a.m. and 5:37 a.m. today.

But I decide that while I am grieving for others inside, I am not going to discount my feelings about my own life.  It is possible to feel gratitude for my life and still want to scream at my temporary dissatisfaction with my life at the same time.  If there is anything I've learned since having children, it is that feeling two diametrically opposed emotions concurrently is not only possible, it is par for the parenting course.  Maybe I always understood this, but being a mother makes me understand it to a degree I didn't comprehend in my childless days.

I think that if any of us could speak to our ancestors they would probably smack our cheeks and call us pussies.  Even those among us who have suffered terrible things would likely be put in our places by our ancestors.  Parents who have lost a child might feel their grief pales in comparison to parents of old who lost 4 and 5 children to measles or diptheria.  People who work two jobs to maintain their health insurance might feel their fatigue pales in comparison to people of old who began working at age 6 in the mines.

Shoot, we don't even have to look as far as our own history.  We can look at millions of people who live in the world in this day and age and find plenty of opportunities to discredit any feeling we might have that isn't constant gratitude.

But I refuse to disavow my own experience because I don't suffer as deeply or as long or in the same way as others.

I hope there is wisdom in being able to hold all these oppositional emotions and recognize that each of them, in their own way, has value.  

Mommy the heroine

At least this is what N is calling me today.

I am not the kind of person who generally stops to help people or dogs or do anything that would be considered good samaritan-like.  Ok, there was that one time when I was pregnant and saved a snapping turtle, but surely that was just crazy hormones having their way with me.  

But today, after taking N to the orthodontist, I saw an older woman (late 60s or early 70s) walking along the expressway away from her car.  Maybe she reminded me too much of my own mother, but I pulled over and walked to meet her, to see if she needed help.  She had run out of gas.  

She used my phone to call her son.  She said he didn't say anything out of shock when she explained what had happened which I suspect might be the normal response when children come to that stage of life when they end up parenting their parents.  I told her son I would drop her off at the nearest Starbucks so that she wouldn't be alone with her car until he could leave work and come help her (since I couldn't stay with her indefinitely because I had to pick up G from preschool and return N to school).  

Once we dropped her off, N kept saying, "That was such a nice thing to do, Momma."  

And it was.  But I then had to explain my rationale for helping.  That I helped because she was an older woman, and I felt like it was safe for me to give her a ride.  That if she had been a young man I wouldn't have done so (and likely wouldn't have stopped at all).  I would have offered my phone and then been on my way.  That I only would have given a ride to an old, old man, like Papaw Chester's age.  That it is nice to help people but you have to protect yourself.  I had to take into consideration her and M's safety too.  

All that explaining seemed, at least to me, to take some of the shine off having my children see me do a nice deed and learn how to treat people, but there is no way around it.  Such is life in the modern world.  

Drowning in a sea of Girl Scout cookies

Even though I had a rough start getting going as N's troop leader due to this, it seems that we are now in a nice little routine and enjoying ourselves (except when this happens).  The girls are earning as many patches as they can legitimately earn in order to make up for the dearth of patches they earned the past 2 years.  I am planning for them to have a little "Art Gallery" of their paintings (for their painting patch work) and do a small ceremony whereby my co-leader and I bestow on them their great abundance of patches since they have never had any kind of ceremonial anything before.  I thought it would be nice for moms/dads/siblings/grandparents to come.

The only downside to this troop leader business is......

the 200-odd Girl Scout cookie boxes sitting in my dining room.  

Now some people might look at this "problem" as a godsend.  How is it possible, Carrie, that you are totally PMSing and not eating a box an hour?  Having just eaten 2 highly unsatisfying bowls of Rice Krispies in an attempt to not eat anything chocolate should give a clear indication of just how amazing my willpower is.  

We originally thought the former troop leader's daughter was going to remain involved in the troop, but she never came back so that messed with our numbers a bit.  And then last weekend there was a basketball game going on when we were selling at a cookie booth, and basketball trumps everything, evidently.  (I need to find a country that doesn't go bananas over sports and move there.)

So N and I went out and about into the neighborhood tonight, with Girl Scout cookies in the wagon for pete's sake.  Because who can resist Girl Scout cookies when they are sitting right there at your feet, begging to be taken inside your home and devoured?

I'm with Garfield

70 degrees and tornadoes on Friday.
Snow on Monday.
60 degrees on Tuesday.
Which is why I'm with Garfield.

Our snowman was doing the limbo today.  Or he is just one laid.back.dude.

Ripples

I'm a pretty thoughtful person.  Not thoughtful as in doing nice things for others.  I mean I am full of thoughts.  "Isn't everyone?," you may ask.  I think not.  Most people appear to me to be a lot about bread and circuses.  

Sometimes I want to write more about the random thoughts that go through my head.  I begin a blog about them but it goes nowhere.  And so it needs to stew.

So here are some thoughts that may or may not actually go anywhere:

1. My friend G wrote a blog post about how eating organic seems like a new religion.  Another friend of mine provided me a link to the "100 Days of Real Food" site.  I have been striving to make small changes to improve what my family eats, and for me, this is enough.  I like meat, and I like to eat junk sometimes.  If living until I'm 203 means I have to eat spinach and turnips all the time, I'd just prefer to die at 80, thank you. I think there is a lot of one-upsmanship and proselytizing in healthy eating, as well as boatloads of anxiety from the media.  

2. Religion and therapy can both do a lot of beneficial things in a person's life.  They can help a person feel stronger, feel connected, make positive changes.  But it seems that if a person finds peace through therapy, he/she is looked at as being weak or a nutcase since they needed the help of a psychiatrist or therapist.  But if a person finds peace through a radical Jew who was nailed to a slab of wood by the Roman government, then that person isn't considered weak or quite as nutty.  For me, religion was just never a good fit.  Ever.  From the time I was a child.  But therapy worked for me.  People who need to find peace should explore a lot of options and find whatever works best for them.  

3. I do, however, wonder when someone says therapy didn't work for them.  I can see if someone is in joint counseling and the other person doesn't do his/her share of the cognitive/emotional workload, then this phrase would make sense.  But in CBT, my impression is that the more open and reflective a person is, the more he/she gets out of it.  So if therapy didn't work for someone, I have to wonder how hard did that person try.  

4. Of course, then I guess someone could say they don't understand how religion didn't work for me.  Is it because in religion one has to believe and in therapy one has to reflect?  

5. I began watching a documentary about the White family of West Virginia.  Let's just say this movie makes me doubt my belief that everyone should be allowed to vote.  

6. I am such a strong believer in public education.  There are numerous reasons for this belief, but now that N is in 2nd grade I have a great one.  One day a week, her class works with the special needs class; they sing songs together and do signing.   She said some kids have Down Syndrome, some are in wheelchairs, some yell out unintelligibly.  In my experience of 12 years in Catholic education, I never went to school with someone in a wheel chair, someone with Down Syndrome, someone with Tourette's or any other unusual learning disability.  I never went to school with any Latinos.  I went 8 years without going to school with Blacks.  I want my children to know and interact with and understand all sorts of people from a young age.  

7. Oh god, does the carpool line ever piss me off.  I want to scream my head off about the following:

* the grandmother who picks up the kids like every single solitary day but waits until she is in carpool line and the kids are getting into the car to install the carseat.  Seriously?

* the guy who thinks it is perfectly acceptable for him to turn left into the carpool line while the rest of us have waited our frickin' turn in the long ass line that turns right.  I think he thinks because he's good looking he gets a pass.  Fucker.

* the people who will hold up the car pool because they want to get in the right lane.  The left lane is perfectly acceptable.  It's not like the right lane stops, but the left lane only allows parents to slow down and the kids have to jump in as the cars are rolling by.  

Brain dump complete.

May return to fluff these notions out a little more.

Or not.  

Jots

I keep a small notebook in my car where I jot down ideas.  I also keep a notebook and pencil back where N sits in the minivan so that I can dictate things to her.  If I am alone or N is not with me, I usually wait until I am at a full stop before jotting.  But there are times when I can't wait around for a red light or stop sign to get my idea down on paper.  I wish my need to write these ideas down immediately was because they are effin' brilliant.  Rather it is because if I don't get them somewhere other than my gray matter, it will be gone forever, lost in the confusion of my life outside my mind.  

For posterity's sake, here is what remains in my notebook that hasn't already been blogged or journaled about.....

* The kids and I are branching beyond Maynard Moose now, although we still get great pleasure from hearing "Socklops."  It occurred to me, though, that indulging so heavily in fractured fairy tales might not be such a good thing for the boys.  With N, I first immersed her in the original tales and once she knew those stories well then I moved along to the revisionist tales.  I will not be at all surprised if G and M get in trouble or fail tests for their Maynard Moose-inspired interpretations of The Three Little Pigs, whereby the mother pig kicks her piglets over the hedge like tiny footballs and then the Third Piggy moves back in with his mom because he was too scared to seek his fortune.  

*While I don't think about the future with the kids much, I do have to say that one of the things I do look forward to when they are little older is berry picking.  The last time I went berry picking was LONG before N was even a twinkle in D's eye.  I seem to recall contracting a weird fungal infection on my hand as a result of picking, but despite this, I do think it will be fun to do such things when the kids are older.  My enthusiasm for picking my own produce is unmatched; I wish my enthusiasm for growing my own produce was significantly greater.  

*I believe I lamented at some point on this here blog about D's GPS iPhone app that is so helpful as to give us directions on how to get out of our driveway.  Equally annoying is Mint.com, which I use to help track our spending.  I set budgets on Mint for things like haircuts and auto fuel and D's lunches, but occasionally it will send me a message about an unusually high expense.  I received some of these in June when I was planning and paying expenses for my 20th high school reunion.  The message always say something like this:

"In the past 7 days, you have been $870 on reunion expenses.  Normally you spend $4.56." 

Messages like this are truly helpful for things like fuel expenses and diapers that I purchase over and over again.  But the thing is, there is no "normal" spending for a 20-year reunion.  Normally I spend NOTHING for a 20-year high school reunion.  And I won’t normally spend anything on a 20-year high school reunion ever again.

Just a second ago, I got an email saying I went over budget on clothing.  When I checked Mint.com, it said something was purchased at Macy's for $54 on August 10.  When I clicked on the transaction, it was really ABC Mail PharMACY'S (for D's nose spray).  

Technology reminds me of myself.  Smart enough only to be highly annoying.  

I think this qualifies me as heartless (at least in some circles)

I spoke with the vet this morning (not the vet with whom I normally interact).

Despite having been told yesterday by the office staff that Gonzo's blood work was fine, he apparently had an elevated glucose level.  The vet said this may be due to stress (and what animal isn't stressed going to the vet, particularly when the vet was called away during the blood draw and the cat had to sit back there far longer than he otherwise would have).  Or he could have diabetes.

She said to bring him back in two weeks to do another glucose test.  When I asked her what would happen if he does have diabetes, she said I would have to give him insulin shots twice daily.

It was at this point I called D at work and told him that I was not going to give Gonzo diabetes shots.  If the kids had diabetes, I would certainly do whatever I had to do to keep them healthy.  Because they are my flesh & blood.  Because they may live to be, perhaps 75 or 80 years old, and maybe make a wonderful contribution to life on this planet.

Gonzo is almost 80 years old in cat years, and no matter how long he lives he will stay in the basement, sleeping and watching birds at the feeder.  My cat will not find a cure for cancer or heal sick children or keep polar bears from becoming extinct.

That does not mean his life is worthless; it just means that I have to put most of my care and concern (physical, financial and otherwise) into the human lives that have been entrusted to me.

Keep him and Shanks fed, safe, and out of pain.  That is what I'm willing to do.  I try to remind myself that there are many, many humans in this world who would be thrilled with half as much.  

Back in the day, I used to love my cats

Before I had my kids, I loved my cats.  They were my babies.

And now, they are relegated to the basement.  A very cushy basement it is, but the basement nonetheless.

I spend more time than I'd like cleaning up cat puke from the floor and cat poop from the couch.  Why the hell the cats can't stand in one spot and throw everything up in same spot, I don't know.  They insist on puking, walking 8 steps, puking again, walking 6 steps, puking again, and so on.  Meaning that at any given time I have like 18 damp rags covering the floor trying to soak up the stains associated with cat vomit.

We replaced the carpet on the main floor of the house because there were so many nasty cat vomit stains.  Fortunately, the basement carpet is berber so it hides stains better than the solid beige carpet that was on our main floor.

After M was born, the cats started pooping in my closet and occasionally on our bed.  My medication helps tremendously, but my OCD and poop are not a good combination.  I can barely tolerate cleaning up my kids' poop, especially when it escapes the confines of the diaper/pull-up, so I wasn't having any part of the cat poop, especially with a 5-year-old, a 2-year-old and a newborn in my care.

The truth is the cats are a right royal pain in my ass.  Right now, as I type this, one of them is banging the shit out of the basement door and hollering.  As soon as my human needy, loud children go to bed, my feline needy, loud children start knocking.  I'd be lying if I said I hadn't thought that maybe they would only live to about the 15-year mark rather than the 20-year mark (they are 13 years old).

I took them for their annual physical and shots and ended up paying $300 for the doctor visit, shots and geriatric blood work.  Gonzo has a level 2-3 heart murmur, and I was told they could do a cardiac ultrasound for close to $400.

There was a time when I would have spent that sum for my cats, but that time was before I had 3 young kids.  Lord knows, I don't want my cats to be in pain or suffer (which is part of the reason behind the basement living; cats can only tolerate so many toddlers/preschoolers chasing them....and my boys are relentless in their pursuit of the cats).  But $400 will buy a LOT of diapers or pay for part of N's tonsillectomy bills.

Suffice it to say, Gonzo will not be undergoing a cardiac ultrasound.

The vet had told me to call the Monday after their appointment to see what the blood work indicated.  It has been almost 3 weeks since their vet visit and today I remembered to call.  Everything looks fine but the vet is supposed to call me tomorrow to go over the results.

I expect I will be expected to act like I care.

The absurdity of suburbia

I have lived in suburbs my entire life.  It is what I know.

However, my childhood neighborhood was of the sort that didn't have a name and didn't have a homeowners' association.  We didn't have a neighborhood pool and matching mailboxes at the curb and no one paid dues.  It was basically all the houses behind St. Rita's.  It had once been farmland that was sold and the streets named for the farmer's children.

My dad spent goo-gobs of time on his lawn, not because someone in the HOA told him to but because he liked puttering in the yard and having a pretty landscape.  We had two dark pink azalea bushes on either side of our front steps, and in a good year, they were luscious and overflowing.  He took pride in keeping an attractive yard.

Yesterday a friend's dad emailed sent me a joke (see below) about lawn care and then last night I attended my HOA board meeting where we talked about neighbors whose yards are less than stellar-looking.  (My own particular peeve that I discussed being people who allow the suckers that grow at the bottom of their trees to grow as tall as the branches.  Cut the damn things back for crying out loud.)

I know it is completely persnickety and stupid to give much of any consideration to yards and landscaping when there is so much else in the world to be fixed.  It seems more than a little wasteful of one's time and energy to discuss it or think about it.  I mean, all of the properties in my neighborhood have seen their values decline in the last two years and it's not because Joe Blow hasn't immaculately weeded his front flower beds.   No one named Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan lives on my street but they are some of the numskulls that caused housing prices to plummet.  

I am guilty of allowing it to ruffle my feathers, and it bothers me that it bothers me.  Perhaps the reason HOAs of all kinds get hung up on stuff like this is because it is "controllable."  I can't control developers plowing down trees all over the place and building a zillion concrete boxes to sell stuff.  I can't control new roads and construction and increased traffic.  I don't get a say in how many parking lots are poured with only 1 or 2 trees planted every 3 rows.

But dammit if the deed restrictions say yards must be well-maintained then if a weed is as tall as my preschooler it needs to be cut down.  I can harangue my HOA president to death and feel like I am getting some results a hell of a lot faster than when I email my senators and state representatives and mayor and US president.  It is easier to be a squeaky wheel in a suburb than in the world at large.

Still, I know it is absurd.

GOD: 

Frank, you know all about gardens and nature.   What in the world is going on down there on the planet? What happened to  the dandelions, violets, milkweeds and stuff I started eons ago? I had a   perfect no-maintenance garden plan. Those plants grow in any type of soil,   withstand drought and multiply with abandon. The nectar from the long-lasting   blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of songbirds. I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I see are these green   rectangles. 
St. FRANCIS: 
It's the tribes that settled there, Lord   The Suburbanites . They started calling your flowers 'weeds' and went to great lengths to kill them and replace them with  grass. 
GOD:   
Grass? But, it's so boring. It's not colorful. It doesn't attract   butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and sod worms. It's sensitive to temperatures. Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing   there? 
ST. FRANCIS: 
Apparently so, Lord. They go to great pains to   grow it and keep it green. They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and   poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn. 
GOD: 
The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast. That must   make the Suburbanites happy. 
ST. FRANCIS: 
Apparently not, Lord. As   soon as it grows a little, they cut it -sometimes twice a week.   
GOD:  They cut it? Do they then bale it like hay? 
ST.   FRANCIS: 
Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.   
GOD: 
They bag it? Why? Is it a cash crop? Do they sell it?   
ST. FRANCIS: 
No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it   away. 
GOD: 
Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow. And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away? 
ST. FRANCIS: 
Yes, Sir. 
GOD: 
These   Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and   turn up the heat. That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of   work. 
ST. FRANCIS: 
You aren't going to believe this, Lord. When   the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to   water it, so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of 
it.   
GOD: 
What nonsense. At least they kept some of the trees. That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer. In the autumn, they fall   to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes. It's a natural cycle of life. 
ST.   FRANCIS: 
You better sit down, Lord. The Suburbanites have drawn a new   circle. As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and  pay to have them hauled away. 
GOD: 
No!? What do they do to protect  the shrub and tree roots in the winter to keep the soil moist and loose?   
ST. FRANCIS: 
After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch. They haul it home and spread it   around in place of the leaves. 
GOD: 
And where do they get this   mulch? 
ST. FRANCIS: 
They cut down trees and grind them up to make   the mulch. 
GOD: 
Enough! I don't want to think about this anymore.  St. Catherine, you're in charge of the arts. What movie have you  scheduled for us tonight? 
ST. CATHERINE: 
'Dumb and Dumber', Lord.   It's a story about.... 
GOD: 

Never mind, I think I just heard the   whole story from St. Francis.