Barnmaven

Knowing what to say

If you can explain to me why I am having such trouble writing lately I will give you a prize.  It would be an ephemeral prize in the form of gratitude, but it would be a really great big mess of gratitude.

I keep starting drafts of posts and abandoning them.  I have all these thoughts rolling around in my head.  I write great long pieces in my head in the car on the way to work and then forget them by the time I get home at night.  There's so much going on right now - a big project at work that came to fruition last week, SG starting work, new therapy and challenges with the boy, dealing with an 11 year old who by all known measures has begun her teen years early, integrating a new dog and a new kitten into the mess of insane that is our household...we really are gluttons for punishment and there's no way I know how to be any different.

I have been feeling ambivalent lately about writing about ...anything.

Autism.  I feel often that I am completely out of my league when it comes to autism in general.  My son, I know him.  When I look at him and listen to him I don't really think about autism, I just think about him.  I find myself caught up in avoiding thinking about autism entirely.  I never wanted to be part of a movement of parents advocating for their kids -- I just wanted to be  a parent.  Some of my online network of parents blow me away on a regular basis with the articulate and passionate way they write about their children and autism.  When one asks for advice on any particular matter the responses are wise and thoughtful and show just how much these moms and dads have immersed themselves in the pool of autism knowledge.   I feel like I know absolute shit about autism.  And even worse, there are times I just wish it would go away.  I want to just enjoy my son and let him teach me the ways he needs me to help him navigate the world.  On a daily basis, though, I get snapped back to reality by a phone call, a meltdown, a sensory struggle or a particular behavior.   I'm ashamed of my desire to just pretend that our daily life is normal, but I'm also keenly aware that I don't want to sound like a person who is seeking attention or sympathy because of my son's autism.  My son is special, not because of his nontypical brain, but because of who he is.  His autism is not a terrible thing or a burden.  All parents have things they do for their children, taking him to therapy or helping him when he's having a struggle is no different than any other parent taking their kid to a doctor's appointment or soothing them when they aren't coping well.  Except that it is different, but I don't want to feel all special snowflake about it.

As you can see, I am conflicted about this issue.  I am conflicted about a lot of things.

I'm conflicted about this project we just finished at work, the end of which is the start of something new and very wonderful but also means a lot of change and I like my life the way it is.  We have spent months on this deal, weekly team meetings and conference calls and integration sessions and loads and loads of homework and writing processes and SOP's.  When the doors on the box opened for the first time I felt like we - my coworkers and our business partners - had given birth, except the kind of birth where it doesn't actually hurt and there's no blood and no poop.  It was a difficult pregnancy in that we had to plan for things we still couldn't yet visualize -- sort of like how you wonder which one of you your baby is going to look like.  There were and still are some unknowns and some things we just have to plan around when we get there.  I've gone through the gamut of fear, resentment, acceptance and finally a place of peace where I know that of all the options my company had for growth and change this was the absolute best choice.  The planning part is done and now the doing part happens, and it means just as much work - if not more - but different than what we've been doing so far.  Change for me is simultaneously hard and easy.  I like the walls of my little box quite well, thank you.  But I don't always mind if the view out of the window I cut into the side of it changes from time to time.  Eventually we all must come to grips with the fact that the old box is the wrong box and we have to move into a new and improved box. 

This post is a good representation of one of the main issues I have with writing.  There is the voice I think I have and there is the voice that I actually have, and there is the fact that I don't want to write about any one thing all the time but there are times when the obvious thing to write doesn't want to come out of my fingers or is something I can't put out on the internet.  Its not a blog about horses or parenting or relationships or autism or politics or feminism or living in the sandwich generation.  Its a blog about ALL of those things.  If I was actually writing to make a living the kids and I would be living in a cardboard box under the freeway, because everything I have ever heard about making a living on the internet is all about "creating your brand."  I don't have a "brand," I just have stuff I feel like writing about, you know?  I don't have a fancy house and I can't do crafts to save my life.  

 There are times when there isn't anything in my mind when I sit down to write, despite having driven home with a perfectly visualized finished piece in my mind.  When it comes time to commit the words to the screen, they don't sound right or look right or I can't find the right way to start or end them. 

Maybe I should get a catchy phrase to use at the end of every post.  Be like Tom and Ray on Car Talk.  You've wasted another perfectly good ten minutes reading my blog.  Then I thank my producers and turn off the feed. 

 

 

 

 

Then

We were gods when we were young. 

We were bulletproof, invincible.  We rode our horses like fearless warriors, going over, around or through everything in our path.  We weren't afraid to fall. 

When we drove at night, moonlit and headlamps off, we didn't believe in the laws of momentum and motion.  We just believed that we could fly.

We believed that love conquers all, that if we wanted something bad enough all we had to do was keep trying and we could make it happen. We believed in the American Dream, in the power of prayer, that friendships would last and love was forever.  We chalked up every failure to experience and plowed forward, knowing that success was just around the bend.

It is a subtle erosion, to wake up one day and find the superhero's cloak has drifted from our shoulders, trampled in the muck by the onslaught.

Somehow we find ourselves in a place where gravity and dissipation are more true than faith or hope or love.  The downhill slope has turned into a tiresome trudge up a hill covered in loose shale.  Without our noticing, it seems, we changed.  One day the scales fall from our sunken eyes and we find that nothing we knew about ourselves, about our world, about our lives was true.

Then was an illusion.  This is the reality.  Now it is time to grow up.

Domesticity

One thing I don't do very often is cook, especially when I'm flying solo.  Right now my mom is picking the kids up off the bus after school.  She has them do their homework and feeds them dinner, making my evenings a considerable bit easier than they would otherwise be.  Even on weekends, time seems sort of jacked anymore and I just don't feel the urge to putter around in the kitchen.  After catching up on chores and housework and with any luck at all getting to ride, I just don't feel like making anything.  Stuff we can heat up is awesome, and if it weren't for Costco bags of frozen raviolis and jars of pasta sauce, the local pizza delivery and our favorite Asian fast food, the kids would be living on cereal and frozen waffles. When I don't have the kids I tend to keep it simple -- cereal, soup, eggs, or even better, going to my parents and eating Mom's cooking.  If you are what you eat, I'm usually a can of Black Bean soup.

It might come as a surprise to most people, but I really do love to cook.  I pretend to be rebellious and the not-domestic type, but actually crave a clean house, I love cooking and while I suck quite a lot at it, I like to fiddle around with home improvement projects and home decor.    But like most things in my life, it boils down to priorities.  I love all these things, but I love riding my horse more.  I love spending time with my husband and my kids.  My chosen lifestyle with its heavy load of upkeep on top of my full time job doesn't help one bit.

The last week or so, however, I got bitten by the cooking bug.

Its Deb Perelman's fault.

Listening to Deb describe her love for good, simple food and her mission to make recipes that contained ingredients that most people had in their cupboards to begin with and didn't cost a fortune to make, I was overcome with the compulsion to mend my lazy, rotten ways. 

I pored through the recipes on her website for the  Buttermilk Roast Chicken which she had talked about on the radio and do you know, it is just as easy and good as she says it is?  All I needed to buy was a jug of buttermilk and some garlic bulbs.  Everything else was stuff I already had.  I wouldn't have need to buy garlic except its been so long since I actually cooked that the bulb I had was...let's just say it wasn't resurrectable.  Or identifiable as garlic. 

The final result, after brining my chicken thighs for a good 24 hours, was a double thumbs up. 

I definitely felt encouraged and motivated to cook some more.  Sunday I hit the Costco and my head was turned by a large bag of sweet potatoes.  I bought it on a whim, brought it home and then hit up Google for some recipes.  I found a really simple recipe on Food.com that simply called for baking them and then smooshing up butter, chili powder, cinnamon, cayenne pepper and salt.  So easy, and because you can microwave them, I was actually able to make them for lunch at work with fairly little fuss.

The funny thing about cooking a meal (as opposed to heating it up) is how healthy and good about myself I feel when I do it.  Its ridiculous...I could probably bake a great big cheesy lasagna from scratch and I'd somehow feel super-healthy, even more so than if I'd just had a nice, low-impact can of soup.  But there you go.  I think we're built to have a sense of accomplishment when we create something with our own hands as opposed to just enjoying the fruits of someone else's creativity and effort.

While I know this period of domesticity can't possibly last, I'm sort of enjoying it.  I'm sure I'll get over it just in time for my husband to come home.  No one has ever accused me of having my compulsions when they would be convenient.

Passages

Over the years I've fallen in love with so many blogs.  Every so often I'll see someone I really look forward to reading stop posting with any regularity, and I wonder if they're OK, if this is the beginning of the long decline to the end of blogging altogether or just the silence while they weather a crisis or a dry spell.  When I first started blogging I was so enthralled with the form and the media I couldn't imagine ever wanting to stop.  I'd see someone I really like put their blog on haitus or take it offline entirely and I'd be so perplexed...why would anyone want to go silent like that? 

I also remember being a woman without children and I'd watch people who were parents say and do certain things and I'd be absolutely flummoxed why parents were so crazy.  I, after all, would never say or do such things.  I'd never buy my kid a happy meal just to make him stop crying for one goddam second.  I'd never fill my kids rooms with plastic crappy toys or ignore them just so I could have one minute of sanity in the bathroom or let them wear clothes made in third world countries by indentured servants to the smiley face or...and so on.

I gather this is the standard process for most people.  When something is new or not yet experienced, we bury ourselves under the weight of uninformed opinions and find ourselves surprised when we one day find out just how little we actually know about anything.

The good news (depending, I suppose, on your point of view) is that I'm not planning on falling off the web into that large graveyard of discontinued blogs.  The bad news, if there is such a thing, is that I have no current urge to write much at the moment and no idea how to solve that problem.  Or even know if that's actually a "problem."   My health has been a bit difficult of late, work has been very challenging and stressful, and the things that need doing far outnumber the hours of time available.  In truth, my attitude about blogging and bloggers has changed dramatically over the last year or so, and my reasons for writing, such as they were, are no longer the same.  My goals for blogging have changed significantly, and my self-knowledge of my place in the world of blogging has clarified.  I'm ok with where I am and who I am, and I'm less worried than ever about accidentally offending anyone or even whether or not anyone "important" is reading, because I DO get, frankly, that everyone who takes the time to come here and read my continuing attempts at writing has given me a great gift of time and attention, and I'm grateful for every single one of you. 

Lately I'm in a state of wonderment at the ability life has to be simultaneously amazing and awful.  Or joyous and depressing.  Or stressful and flatlined.  Pick your metaphors, they all fit. 

My friend Debbie, who has taken the reins over organizing my barn, my pastures, my horses and trying to convince me to implement ten thousand fabulous ideas all at the same time, says constantly "Its amazing how you're just so normal!"  I think she has it ass-backwards.  I think we get along really well because on a certain level we have brains that work the same (wrong, not-normal) way and we don't get frustrated by the tangential nature of practically every conversation we've ever had.  Over the course of the summer we've repaired stall doors and expanded so that I now have three working stalls.  When there was only one stall functional and three to four horses being fed with different requirements for supplements and each with the right to be able to eat without someone else chasing them away from breakfast, things were a little crazy out there.    She's also picked my dry pen clean of weeds and rocks.  She's found someone to haul away the manure pile.  She's found someone to put up wall racks for tack and someone to paint.  She's cleared the area behind the barn where all the scrap lumber and fencing materials used to get tossed (don't look at ME, the old owners started it, I just kept the tradition alive) and put down pallets and tarps and quadrupled our ability to store hay.

She also drives my husband a little batty because he is used to being along much of the time and she is by nature a very chatty person.  I can tell he likes her though. 

The kids this summer...what an amazing change in both of them.  My daughter is getting taller and more beautiful by the nanosecond.  She's taken two sessions of swimming lessons, gotten to level three and only needs to perfect two things to get to level four.  She's at that stage of transformation between little girl and startling long-legged tween and she's just stunning.  That's not even subjective mother-pride.  Its just God's honest truth.  What I find fascinating is her ability to verbalize her understanding that she knows she's growing up but she's not in any hurry to do so.  "I just want to be a kid, mom.  I don't want to grow up yet," she'll say, and my heart melts with love and pride and bittersweetness all at the same time.  She will grow up whether I will it or no.  I know that little girls can change dramatically as they age, and I hold onto the firm hope that the person she is, the things about her that make her so awesomely her will stay intact.   She gets more out of my reach every day, and as I let go with a heart that strains under the hope and fear, I simply pray that God lets life be gentle with her for as long as possible.  In les than two weeks she will be a fifth grader. 

My son is learning to negotiate.  His anxiety and ODD issues make certain things difficult.  He hates taking showers because he doesn't want to get any water in his eyes, but baths take too long and his anxiety informs him that soaking in your own dirty water is just YUCK.  So showers were always a struggle, until he came home from his dad's one weekend and announced that he and his dad worked out a deal:  Daddy bought him swim goggles and now he doesn't get upset in the shower.  I'm not sure who thought up the idea, but hot damn if it hasn't made getting the little dude clean a much less stressful event.  Hallelujah and pass the cornbread!  He's gotten tons more compliant about taking his meds, and he's learned to negotiate that as well.  We've also had to learn to listen when he starts to refuse things - sometimes we have a hard time remembering that his anxiety makes certain things far harder for him to tolerate than we can understand.  

SG has been a stay-at-home stepdad all summer and has had both kids pretty much every day of the week since their dad and I are both working, and I really believe his even-tempered nature has had a positive impact on both of them.   Their dad and I both tend to moodiness, and I sense that our unpredictability has been stressful for them.   They have evened out much, both of them, they fight with one another a lot less, and its clear that they both adore their stepdad.  School starts soon, so my husband will be joining the ranks of the employed unless I either get a highly unexpected and very large pay raise or I actually buy a lottery ticket and it turns out to be a winnah.  He's been my rock the last month or so while I've struggled physically and mentally.  That's love for you.  I am not afraid to admit that my patience is thin and my attitude bad, and he has endured it with a great deal more grace than I would likely exhibit were I in his shoes.

We lost Mojo kitty this summer.   He disappeared in the spring for a few weeks and when we finally found him he was so skinny and deteriorated we weren't sure he would make it.  He recovered for a while with special food and supplements and monitoring, but then he went suddenly downhill and we had to make the tough choice to say goodbye.  I suspect it was cancer.    He's joined Hercules, Lady and our little old banty hen Cin-Cin under the tree out in the back pasture.  I think I've learned pretty well the last few years that people and animals too often leave our lives far sooner than we are prepared for them to do, and it reminds me to make a point of taking time each day for each animal to have some attention, for me to be more vigilant about picking up the phone, and to treasure every opportunity to play with my children and create memories to sustain me when they have grown up and begun lives of their own.  It will happen sooner than I think.

How's your summer been so far?

 

Your greatest teacher

How is it that so many people make a living convincing us that we're not living the best lives we can possibly live?  We'd be happier/more fulfilled if only we invested our money and time in their sure-fire program to improve our selves/homes/yards/clothes/bodies/faces/attitudes.   And if we question any of the steps of their particular program or mention that our life experience doesn't jive with the brand they're trying to sell us, we either didn't understand the book, there's another set of DVD's we should purchase that addresses that VERY thing, or we're just DOING IT ALL WRONG. 

Hint:  Most people who make a living telling you how to live your life don't make money if you don't buy the line that they know better than you how to become happier - more popular, more successful - more authentic/creative/better-looking/ thinner/ curvier/taller/hairier/less hairy.

I've noticed too that many Important People who make a living selling you their ideas don't like having their ideas questioned or hear about the ways in which your life experience doesn't match up to their "program."  If you got in a car accident and you were depressed, you must have manifested it or you just didn't work the program right.   If you didn't make a fortune after the first three months of following their Internet Miracle Marketing scheme,you just need to invest more time (and money) in their product in order to achieve the promised success. 

Its not that these writers, geniuses or gurus don't have something to offer -- they do.  They all do.  But not a single one of them is the end-all, be-all of life.   No book or DVD or system is going to solve all of your problems or turn you into somebody else.  And you need to know that the people who write these books and sell these programs don't have all the answers.  Maybe they have the answers for themselves and their own successes, but they don't have all the answers for YOU. They each carry with them the assorted baggage of their internal belief systems, their life experiences, their particular biases.  They all prefera certain way of doing things and would like you to believe that they offer you this wisdom only as a way to "help" other people.  That's easy to believe so long as you don't look at the man behind the curtain - or the price tag on the next set of DVD's.

And maybe some of the things they espouse will work for you.  But likely as not there will be parts that aren't a good fit.   That's where you have a choice.  You can accept what works for you and not worry about the rest, you can reject the entire philosophy because it has to be 100% perfect for you to accept it, or you commit to it anyway and try not to worry too hard about pretending to agree with the parts of it you aren't convinced about.

You get to live with whichever choice you make, but please know that you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater and you don't have to walk around in clothes that don't fit.

I relate it to the way I go about learning with my horse.  There are a LOT of famous trainers and clinicians out there.  In the same way as some people feel compelled to convert you to their new religion after a deeply moving spiritual experience, people who've had a breakthrough with their horse after learning from a certain trainer want to introduce you to the Next Best Thing to happen to horse people.

Since I'm open to learning new things and new and better ways of getting where I want my horse to  be, I'll glady invest in lessons or a clinic with that trainer, or audit a clinic if its out of my price range for me and my horse to participate.  If I'm open minded enough to try that trainer's suggestions, I might find something that works a lot better for me and my horse.    But if I find that the thing I was already doingt that I learned from someone else works better, I'll keep doing that instead. 

A good trainer won't insist you do things his or her way.  In fact, a really good trainer will watch what his students are doing and be willing to ask about something if they see it and they think its working as well or better than their own techniques. But you don't have to believe any trainer that insists if you're not doing it HIS way you're doing it WRONG.  The proof is in the results you get with your horse, no matter what the trainer says.  You don't have to keep doing something that just doesn't feel right to you. 

You don't have to stay in a relationship that doesn't feel right or where you don't feel safe.  You don't have to stay in a job that doesn't fulfill you. You also don't have to engage in a personal/spiritual/self-help program that's not working for you just because the person who happens to gain from your participation tries to make it sound like you're just not doing it right and you need to try harder.

Just because someone is successful and an "expert" doesn't mean they're going to be any better at living my life than I am.  They just get paid to convince me that they are.    Just because they wear a certain kind of clothing or use a certain kind of household product doesn't mean that my jeans don't fit me just fine or my countertops are any less sanitized.  Just because I don't agree with their dogma doesn't mean my own faith is wrong for me.

Look, I KNOW when I'm doing the right thing and I know when I'm not.  I know what fulfills me, what charges my battery.  I know who I'm supposed to be.  There's an inner voice and a feeling of well-being that comes when things are as they should be.  I think that's God talking to me, other people may consider it their conscience or the manifestation of spirit within them.  Whatever works for you.

I know that spending time with my family and my friends feels good.  I know that helping other people feels good.  I know that riding my horse feels good.  I know this about digging in the dirt, playing with my dogs, petting my cats, working in the barn, swimming in the river, making music and writing words. Being thankful to God and trying to develop as a person who is loving and compassionate feels good and right.  But you know what, these things are authentic for me.  No conference, retreat, keynote, book or CD  is going to change these things about me.  And I don't need the approval of a life coach or a guru or anyone on the internet to know that I'm OK.  

The list of the people whose opinion I actively seek on whether I should do this or that is short.  You're probably not on it unless you're my husband, my mother, my close friend or my horse trainer.  It doesn't mean I don't love you and it doesn't mean I don't value your opinion.  I do.  It feels good to be liked, to be agreed with, to receive support and cheers and have like-minded people share with you.  But it also means that if do something or write something that you don't agree with, I won't be crushed or feel rejected or bad about myself.   It means that if some famous "authentic living" guru insists that I couldn't possibly be happy because I'm not doing things their way, I'm going to somehow feel that I must change my beliefs to suit their agenda.

Maybe you don't feel confident, maybe you don't feel like you're "ok."  Well, that's fine.  That's your own voice letting discomfort drive you into doing things differently because what you're doing now doesn't seem to be working.  When you seek new wisdom and new approaches, keep in mind that there is no program in this world that will make you or your life perfect.  Remember that everyone has a different perspective on the words "best," "ideal," "correct" and "true."  Seek answers everywhere you go.  Take what works for you.  Leave the rest.  Seek the approval of your own conscience and those who matter most.  Don't believe everything you read on the internet, in the newspapers or in the pages of a self-help book.  And remember always that we are never, ever "finished" learning or growing. 

The journey, the moment, the now, they REALLY ARE the point.

 

Waiting on the snow to fall

If the weather.com forecast says "no significant accumulations expected," but the National Weather Station advisory reads "accumulations of 4 to 8 inches likely," which one am I supposed to believe?

I had a coworker once whose fiance' was attending college for a degree in meteorology.  He wanted to become a TV weather announcer.  My only thought was, "really?  You have to go to college to learn how to lie to people?" 

For days the news has been prepping us for snow.  Lots of other places around the state got snow, anywhere from a dusting to a few inches.  Not us.  We got lots of clouds that looked like they might drop snow on us, and the temperature plummeted at a satisfying rate all afternoon on Sunday, but when push came to shove, the snow did not fall.  It was very disappointing, let me tell you.  This entire WINTER has been disappointing.    

Its not that I want to spend months shoveling my car, shoveling my walk, picking snow lumps out of the feet of horses and dealing with children who want their hats, gloves and boots put on so they can go out in the snow for five minutes and then come in because its "too cold."  Its not that I want to make my daily commute on a block of snow and ice. 

Its rather that I believe every winter should have at least one or two decent snowfalls, for the same reason I believe that every summer needs at least two or three consecutive days of weather over 100F.  You can't appreciate summer without snow, and you can't appreciate winter without a heat wave. 

Growing up in the Seattle area meant that we would have winters where there was no snow at all, but every couple of years we would get at least one good snowstorm and two to six inches of accumulation.  About every decade or so we would get a huge dump of snow that left the schools closed and gave us enough material to build some really excellent snow forts.  I remember my first really big snowfall.  I must have been four years old.  The snow fell and fell and fell, and when I went outside I could barely walk because it was up to the top part of my short little legs.  My brother made a snow tunnel.  I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Another year we got a really great snowstorm that dropped five or six inches of snow over the course of a couple of hours.  It didn't start falling until late in the day, though, and it was close to bedtime.  My brother and I stared out the window at the huge flakes illuminated by the streetlights and begged our mother to let us play outside.  Dad was on shift at the fire station that night, and even though we had school the next day, Mom let us put on our snow clothes and go throw snowballs and make snow angels even though it was quite late.  Seattleites do not tend to drive when there is any accumulation of snow on the ground, so our street was completely deserted.  We made snow angels and stood under the streetlamp, catching snowflakes on our tongues. 

New Jersey winters were a little sporadic as well.  There was always some snow, but every third year brought a memorable storm.  It was a revelation to me that life didn't have to come to a complete standstill becuse of snow.  My first snowstorm came on a night my ex and I had plans.  I watched the flakes coming down and figured we were going to be staying in.  By the time we would have needed to leave for our reservation there were at least three inches on the ground and the streets had a good inch of compact snow.  When my ex asked me why I wasn't ready to go, I was totally confused.  Out we went, and there were just about as many cars on the road as there would have been on a clear evening.  Amazing!

 The first year we bought our house on Serpentine Drive, we had a huge storm.  The snow in the driveway was up past the wheel wells on our cars.  Our street didn't get cleared for a couple of days, so we kept the heat turned up and wished we had snowshoes.  That was before my daughter was conceived.  The winter she turned two, another big storm brought us several feet of snow.  It drifted up shoulder-high agains the slider door in the back yard, and we had to dig a path out so the dog could go to the bathroom.  It was piled so high that our dog could stand on the snow and put his paws and head easily over the top of our six-foot fence.  The township "officially" closed all the roads and were weren't supposed to drive, but my work wanted at least a couple of bodies to staff the phones, so I snuck out the back roads in my Jeep.  When I finally made it to the office, there was a huge snow berm all the way around the strip mall parking lot.  I couldn't see any way to easily get in, so I got a running start and just plowed straight through it.  Didn't get stuck, either. 

The first winter after I came to Tri-Cities we had a doozy of a year.  Lots of snow and cold that year, including a week of single-digit temperatures that froze the frost-free pump in my barn and left me lugging five-gallon buckets of hot water from my bathtub to the barn to fill the stock tank.  

I've been waiting for the snow to start falling here since Sunday afternoon and I am started to get a little unhappy with the weather gods and the meteorologists;  the former for failing to give us even one school delay or closure for snow this year, and the latter for making sweet white promises they cannot keep.

 

Making a list and checking it twice

I slogged through work Thursday and Friday with this nasty cold that's going around thinking that the weekend would magically make it go away, except that it didn't, and so I stayed home yesterday and I did my very best imitation of a log.  I didn't do anything.  Almost anything.  Well, okay, maybe I ran the dishwasher.  And fed my animals and my kids, because letting them starve would be very wrong.  And I drove my kids to school and I picked them up from school and I wrapped presents that the kids picked out for their dad's birthday.  And other than that, I made like a very quiet, very motionless log.

I don't sound much better today, but I feel lots better.  And lots better is still marginal, but it beats hell out of how I felt all weekend and yesterday.  Onward and upward!

My husband got laid off this weekend.  Its a long story having to do with industry stuff and basically a whole bunch of guys on this job had to be laid off for technical & budget reasons outside of their control.  We don't know what it means yet in terms of whether he'll go to a different plant between now and March.  There are some other possible options for contracts - some now, some next month, some in February.  He found out today that the soonest possible option won't be until January, so guess what?  HE'S COMING HOME!  I'm probably a lot more excited about it than he is, but he's making tracks west tomorrow, and that's more than enough of a Christmas present in my stocking than I could have dreamed of.

I'm trying to schedule more evaluations for the little guy.  We have one kind of evaluation set up for next week, and I'm trying to work with my insurance company and an out-of-network provider for some other testing.  Unless my insurer can work something out with the doctor, I'm going to have to find $1300 lying around in a drawer somewhere so I can make sure we've covered all bases.  Does anyone have any good connections with the Money Fairy?  Just keep all things crossed.  This doctor does not like to do single-case agreements with the insurers and so typically he would require payment from me and let me wrangle out the final settlement with my insurance.  That's not quite workable for me, so we need some stars and planets to align in our favor.

Now that Christmas is drawing near, we sing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" pretty much all the time.   The little guy was acting up in the car the other day and I said to him, "Shhhhh....Santa's watching. "  He turned to me, wide-eyed and concerned.  "But HOW does Santa know what I'm doing?"  Santa's a stalker, buddy.  I didn't even have to try and answer, Amazon Girl took over.  "I think Santa's just like God.  Except smaller than God.  Just like God is all around us, Santa's kind of like that too.  He's like God's little brother."  She's almost at that age where she should stop believing in Santa.  Every few days she comes home from school bent out of shape because some kids just won't stop talking about how they don't believe in Santa Claus anymore.  I sense that she thinks they're probably right, but that she's not ready yet to give up the fairy tale.  Fine with me - I want her to be a little girl for as long as she can.  The teenage years will be here soon enough, and then she'll know everything and I'll know nothing and my makeup bag will be fair game.  Stay little, baby.

 Tomorrow is Pearl Harbor day.  My Grandpa Smith was a WWII vet.  He retired from the Coast Guard as a Lieutenant Commander, and he was stationed at Annette Island in Ketchikan, AK.  My mother recalls being evacuated from their home in the dead of night to a ship out in the harbor.  I can imagine that to a little girl it was probably pretty exciting, but maybe not so much for my Grandma.  I visited the Pearl Harbor memorial when I was a senior in high school and my mom took me on a trip to Hawaii.  I watched the bubbles of fuel and oil from the sunken ships breaking the surface, and it sobered me to realize that the harbor floor was littered with the skeletons of ships and men, this same harbor where tourists were flocking and enjoying the sunshine and the warm hospitality of the Hawaiian people.  Every year I add "World Peace" to my Christmas list, and every year Santa fails to come through.  Maybe I just wasn't good enough this year.  Next year I'll try harder.

On understanding why life is sometimes a mountain of crap

I just posted a comment over on a blog I read fairly regularly.  If you want to read some exceptionally beautiful writing, go read Finding Your Voice.  Jennifer Lawler is a gifted writer, and everytime I read one of her posts there are three thoughts that go through my head.

1.  She has an amazing talent and prose that gives shapes to words, makes sentences into concrete things and describes feelings that punch you right in the stomach.

2.  My writing, in comparison, is crap

and 3., most of all 3., the petty things that I tend to complain about are hangnails taken in the context of what she and her daughter live with and go through.

Go read her blog, really. 

I was commenting on her most recent post and as I was considering what she had written, I thought of that old saying "you always get what you deserve," and I thought to myself, no, that's not really true.  And typed instead, Nobody ever really gets what they deserve, do they.

But then I wonder, what is it we really DO deserve?

Do we deserve anything?

And where do we cross the line, either way, into accepting what it is we've got or not got, or into being either smugly entitled or sadly feeling as if we earned some kind of terrible karma?  When is it OK to say "I earned this, I worked hard for it, and I'm proud of myself," and when is it better to just shut up and be thankful that you've had opportunities maybe other people didn't get? 

There's no universal great equalizer that I can determine.  There is always the potential of equalization, either via natural disaster, coincidence, or consequence, but the fact of the matter is that in this life, at least so far as I can see, there are always people who have more and people who have less.  And perhaps its a simple twist of fate that one person who has a great idea finds the right set of circumstances to turn that idea into wealth and fame, and another person who is also full of good ideas never finds exactly the right opportunity to make it big.  That one couple has lots of healthy babies and another couple can't have any, or they have a baby who is desperately ill or who dies.  That someone who is less capable gets into the college of someone else's dreams.  That one baby out of six other babies gets to go live with parents who were for the most part gentle and loving and the other five got a brutal existence at the hands of a pedophile and their abusive mother.  That one guy steals other people blind and lives the high life and doesn't get caught, and another guy can't steal a gallon of gas to get to work on time without getting nailed and jailed.   That a faithful spouse gets cheated on.  That some folks are unbelievably wealthy through no real effort of their own while others live in brutal poverty simply, each because they just happened to be born to a particular set of parents.

And what is it, exactly, that we are supposed to learn from this?  What's the takeaway, kids?

Damned if I know.

Or maybe, I'm not sure yet, but I'm trying as hard as I can to understand.

I am then reminded of David Richo's Five Things:

Everything changes and ends.  Things do not always go according to plan.  Life is not always fair.  Pain is part of life.  Poeple are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo presents a philosophy that says "I can either be crushed, possessed, devastated by the circumstances in my life or I can become a witness to them."  This doesn't mean being a beaming ray of sunshine "Oh, hey, everything's great! Yep!  Never mind that my marriage ended or I lost my job or I have a terminal illness, don't worry -- I'm just FINE!"  No, what he means is that we neither stifle nor give in to the emotions that are an inevitable part of being alive and human, but that we feel them so fully that they move through us and move on. 

Neither stoic nor overwhelmed.  And accepting that there is a big pile of awful, unfair things that happen in this world that we have no control over.  Living with compassion for others and being moved by their circumstances, listening to their pain and caring what happens to them.  Caring about what happens to us. 

I don't know sometimes how I'll find that balance.  Richo and other writers like him often recommend meditation as a path to mindfulness.  Which sort of makes me feel left out of the game, because meditation and I are not close acquaintances, not now and not likely ever to be.  But I find myself more often turning the radio off in the car and using the silence to ponder life's great mysteries (and try to decide what I'm making for dinner).  I'm trying to be less of a "fixer" of other people's lives and more of a witness and a companion to their suffering.   I'm working on being willing to let my feelings be what they are and to let go of the need to assuage them somehow. 

Maybe I'll never get there, maybe I'll spend the rest of my life looking for pocket gurus to answer my questions and tell me how I'm supposed to live.  

I do believe that I'm never going to actually become a truly enlightened being, not on this earth, anyways, but I hope I at least grow and learn enough to find the beginnings of understanding.  Because I would very much like to understand. 

 

The desert at night

It was a long, dark drive home this morning after dropping SG off at the airport for his outbound flight.  I gave myself about five minutes to cry, then wiped my tears and headed West.  The middle part of Washington State is amazingly stark.  The trees thin out and disappear about 20 miles out of Spokane and then its rolling hills, scorched cheat grass and sagebrush interspersed with a few cows, a way station or two, and approximately three gas stations all the way home.  Oh, and the state corrections center, let's not forget that.  (Note to self:  No picking up hitchhikers in Connell)

Its started to freeze at night here, and after I took the south exit from I-90, the first gray light of dawn started to appear over my left shoulder.  Not too many cars out at this time of the morning, and there were long stretches to enjoy watching the light slowly creep up the sky.  On the right side the sky was still velvety and dark, and out where there is no city glare, the stars are breathtaking. 

After the whirlwind of the last ten days, the peace of this slow and graceful sunrise was so welcome.  My brain has been going full tilt and dragging my emotions right along with it.  The long drive and the quiet landscape rolling by provided just the respite my tired eyes and ears needed.   The chaos has been so joyful, but I can't sustain the energy without some sort of respite. 

At some point I've got to pick up the threads of being an adult with responsibilities again and attend to work issues and school conferences and dental appointments.  Today, though, I'm just taking it slow and letting myself relax.  The roller coaster will beckon soon enough.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, whatever you are doing.

Characters

When I was really young, we lived in the city, but my parents had a Big Plan to eventually live in a more rural setting.  Dad is ten years older than Mom, and so by the time I arrived, he already had a good 15 years or so in the Fire Department.  As he got closer to his 25, my folks bought a two and a half acre patch right smack in the middle of a small island in Puget Sound.  The Island, as residents call it, is about seven miles long and maybe a mile and a half wide at the widest point.  We lived on the belt of the island, and if you stood in the middle of our road you could see water on both sides.  We could watch all the ships going into Seattle from the Strait of Juan de Fuca from our living room window.  When she still sailed, you could set your watch by the Princess Marguerite on her way to Victoria.  7:10 AM sharp she would appear between the trees.  I never got to sail on that ship, and I always wondered what she was like. 

Our small island was a wonderful place to be a kid.  It was safe.  Everyone knew everyone else.  People always waved at one another when they passed by in their cars. 

Mr. and Mrs. Kidd lived in a small white house off the main road.  They had several acres and Mr. Kidd mowed the grass between the big clumps of blackberry bushes, so it was a favorite place to ride horses.  Before I had horses of my own they had a shetland pony that someone kept at their place and they would let me ride her.  She was a nasty little pony, as Shetlands are wont to be, but it didn't stop my friends and I from pretending she was an enormous brown steed.   Mrs. Kidd would always call us into the house for a treat - usually cookies or a coffee cake she had made, served with a big glass of milk fresh from the neighbor's cow.  Mr. Kidd was a slow driver.  When he was alone on the road he would drive exactly five miles under the speed limit, but if someone got behind him, he would drop to ten under.  The island is full of a lot of curvy roads and few good places to pass.  No one liked getting behind Mr. Kidd.

When I had my own horse I spent a lot of time riding on the beach.  If the tide was out my friends and I would race along at full tilt on the tide flats.  When the tide was up, we would go up the beach as far as we could before turning around and heading home.  I would usually see Bob, the local drunk, when I was on the beach.  He was a harmless guy, probably in his mid- to late- 40's, though it was hard to tell sometimes.  He lived with his parents on the island.  I don't remember his whole story, though Dad may remember it, but I know that he was always nice to me.  He'd be sitting in the sand, using a big log as a chair back, with his big jug of Gallo.  My folks taught me to be pleasant to people, always, and because he was so very unthreatening, I would always stop and say hello when I saw him.  Later on when I went away to college, I would sometimes get cards and letters from Bob.  He even sent me a Valentine's Day card once, which I guess in retrospect was kind of weird, but at the time just seemed really sweet.   His kidneys eventually failed on him and he went on dialysis.  He died a few years after I grew up and left home. 

Rod and Willie's house was a favorite destination to ride my horse.  Rod was an independent home builder, and he helped Dad build both of the houses we had on The Island.   His wife, Willie, was a real character and always fun to talk to.  My first horse was named Willie Wonka and I think she got a perverse kick out of having me ride Willie to visit Willie.  I'd ride up the beach to the trail to their house, tie my horse to a tree in the yard and go in for a pop and a snack.  Willie got throat cancer and died, sadly.  Before she got real sick she had to have her voice box taken out.  She had one of those electronic voice boxes and she would talk by holding a microphone to her throat.  She never did seem to lose her sense of humor and she was always nice to me even after things got bad. 

Sometimes I would ride up the main road to and meet my friend Glenda and her horse and sometimes Lori and her appy gelding and we would go across past the Seventh Day Adventist school to the big open field behind Shold's house.  You could go over the hill and through a path in the woods to the Island's other main road (there were really only two).  The trail led you to a small group of houses everyone called "SDA Village" because that's where most of the SDA families lived.  The trail was what the kids used to walk to school.  There was one family there I babysat for.  They had a beautiful golden retriever and their kids were easy to babysit. 

A few miles up the back road was Finis Steven's place.  Mr. Stevens was an immensely interesting and erudite man.  He's gone now, but he had lived on the island most of his life.  As late as the 1970's he still heated his house with a wood stove, grew his own hay, ate from his own vegetable garden, and fixed all of his own equipment.   He had a large block of acreage on the back side of the island, and there were wide grass trails through the trees that he maintained.   He spent years establishing relationships with the squirrels that lived in the trees there.  Every day he would go walk the trails and feed nuts to his squirrels, and he had taught them to do all kinds of tricks.  I don't think he every took money to give demonstrations with his squirrels, but most of the kids and families in the area at one point or another had walked those trails and watched him run those squirrels through their paces.  I wonder what happened to his squirrels after he died.