what if…
What if my lunch hour were devoted solely to feeding myself, emotionally as well as nutritionally? What if, when I walk out of my office, I go home– or wherever– not to run errands, putting off lunch and smoking instead of eating? What if I go home and have wonderful leftovers from last night, a slice of vegan chocolate cake that is just sitting there because I’m the only one with the really bad sweet tooth… what if I read the wonderful book my mother sent me by a fellow who taught English in China for two years…
Wow. What a concept.
I always run errands. I always have ’something to do’. Myself, my comfort, my needs never enter into it. Having a happier day? Taking a break to enjoy myself between the miserable hours of my job? These are non questions.
But today, not on purpose… I had vegan spaghetti and vegan chocolate cake for lunch, and read. I have to go back now… but I am really interested in how I feel as a result of just setting it all down and having me time. Maybe I’ve got it all backward. Me time first… errands later. Maybe I’d be a lot less miserable.
Does this freako energy shit really work?
it is cold as the proverbial
Or as I usually say, cold as shit, but that’s not very nice. But then, I’m not all that nice. It’s time people understood that. I have been compared to Dharma on Dharma and Greg. Folks. I’m just not that nice. Or cute. And, it’s not that cold. I’m in deepest Dixie. So it just feels cold.
I wish for several changes of workout clothes. And I don’t just mean workout clothes.
I mean silk long johns or other, say, climber’s longies, to wear under my either plush velour wine pink or deep midnight blue running suit, or my, say, polypropylene running suit, or my climber’s or runner’s wind pants, preferably pop off pants (I actually have some of those but I’ve long since gotten too big for them) and windbreaker (or “shell”) in lovely colors. I want running/walking clothes that are so comfortable that I want to put them on, and I want them to keep me warm on days like today. Because I want to be one of those indefatigable people who runs or walks, every day. And then, like all the other dumbasses I see in Wal Mart who do this, I will wear them all day, all around town, as if at any minute I might suddenly go for a power walk or a run.
Is this me? Me who usually wants to tell people, when I encounter them out and about, that exercise clothes are NOT acceptable for wearing anywhere except to exercise?
But if they’re expensive and come from one of those fancy outfitters catalogs they are acceptable, right?
This ties back to a column I read today in the local parenting magazine, as well as to worries I have pretty much most of the time.
The fellow was saying that with kids being so video oriented these days, they are going to grow up not touching, tasting, feeling, doing. I already worry about that. When my husband and step son, or even my husband, stepson, and self, are questing across Mal’Ganis or Greymane, killing prowlers and young bears, well… what about actually walking in the woods? What about actually walking across country and fording rivers? I’m not too hot on killing things (except in World of Warcraft, where I f—ing love it) . But the walking, seeing the sights… how sad to only ever do that in virtual reality.
Now, I know my little subdivision isn’t exactly Greymane. But this isn’t just about exotic locales. It’s about being present in one’s own body… actually doing, feeling, sensing. We, our society, are so much in our heads. If you ask me how my body felt at the time of some crisis or issue, it’s a non question. My body? What? Yet big things go on in our body especially at times of crisis, things that (at one time anyway) save our lives, wear us out, poison us, and make us stronger, all at the same time. I’m such a sedentary person. But that is not who I am.
I’d like to at least run or walk in my neighborhood every day (that is, when it’s chilly to mild), and get the ooh rah rush of being able to do it and enjoy it in almost any weather, warmed by my layers and my own exertion.
I grew up cross country skiing and downhill skiing, which I loved, and hiking and canoeing, which I — well, not so much. I’m a cold weather person… the bugs are dead, the snakes and other marauders are in deep hiding or hibernation… Summer, ew. Sweaty. Bugs. Smells. The clean of winter is something I love ever so much.
The hot sun and green river water, or the sensation of ski tips shusshing through the snow in a forest as yet untrodden since the storm… freezing one’s butt off and making tomato soup or hot chocolate on an optimus stove in a little hollow in the snow… waking up in the (kind of, anyway) mountains and stumbling out of the tent in one’s flannel shirt and breathing in the new day, or sitting by the fire that night, knowing that it is damn cold outside the toasty circle of the fire… even skipping up the dirt road home from the bus stop. Those physical realities are so precious, but in my life, we go from house, to car, to office or school, to car, to house. We mayn’t have non-canned air on us or see the sun other than through a window for days and days. My stay at home girlfriends take their kids to outdoor play dates, and some of them walk, as I do when the days get longer, if I can. That’s a help. But I don’t think I’m going to get my ten year old boy to go to the park or for a brisk walk behind the jogging stroller.
It’s a bit different for the preschool set. They can do clay or play in water. Even a bath is an occasion for play. And if they go to a good ’school’ as my child does, their whole day is filled with opportunities for them to physically experience their world, from water play to ‘tonging’ to running their little butts off for hours on the playground.
Anyhoo.
Give me the elements. But first give me some designer so-called outdoor outfitter gear.
biaxin? have a pail ready, or, a spoonful of sugar
My poor kid. I thought it was just a matter of swallowing the unpleasant stuff and having done with it. She tried. She really did.
I was quite impressed with her ability to keep the vomit from coming out by use of her sleeve. I thought that was right sweet of her, even as I felt guilty that she put keeping vomit off the floor above her own comfort. We ran to the garbage can and then stripped down and then…
Sadly we had to do it again. This time she had a hershey’s kiss in one hand and two gummy vitamins in the other, ready to go. Poor kid. It even made her breath bad. Yech.
See? No matter what a health freak you become, when the pin hits the shell (A drive by trucker-ism) you still need to keep some chocolate in the house for soothing boo boos, bribery, and banishing the taste of those shitty antibiotics.
I think we’ve come full circle to chronic very lowgrade allergies, sometimes giving rise to ear and sinus infections. Strep… asthma… I am going to have to cave and start giving her singulair every day for several months and see how that goes, and make sure I have plenty of it if we do any language-enriching travel overseas. The doctor came right out and said, I have reservations too, about giving a child medicine daily, but for kids with allergies it can really make a difference to their quality of life.
So once I get past the ’stuff and nonsense’ sense that my children do not get sick, I figure, I’ll do it. I can find other good reasons to stay home from work, without her having to be ill.
thank heaven for patricia evans and adderall.
dude! I got me some ADD meds!
I told the doc I was still depressed and I was willing to try anything. He was about to give me the same medicine I took before on top of my horse dose that made me feel so bad, and I was willing to try it again anyway because I’ve been feeling so emotionally poorly, when I said as an afterthought, can you test me for ADD? He said, there is no test. I said, well then how would you know? He said, you would have a history of irritability, distractability… I said if you ask my mother I believe she’d say that was true. When you invoke the mother, after all, it’s gospel. He looked like a light bulb went off in his brain. He said that in many cases if you treat the ADD the depression goes away, and that in women the distractability is often much worse than the traditional hyperactivity. Amphetamine for all! What a freaking relief. Now if we can try out an OCD med I’ll be in business [I've been having to drive back home check the stove lately].
Why am I so happy about getting ADD meds, when I was so unhappy about my stepson taking them? Because he is TEN. His liver and other bodily systems have got to last him a lot longer than mine have to last me. And because to me and I hope this isn’t wishful thinking his acting out is a result of needing his father, unresolved grief from his parents’ divorce, and the fact that his issues and his mom’s issues work on each other (and that new fiancee don’t help either). And because I want to observe him myself for a good long while, and get him evaluated if needed, and get his diet healthy if not completely free of sugar, dyes, dairy and white flour, before I allow him to pickle his brain with drugs.
I pray he’s not as miserable as I am, though… because if he is I am denying him something he really needs.
I on the other hand have to work, all day every day, in a regimented and toxic environment, parent, clean the house, try to have a life… I had to have drugs to maintain my rock n roll lifestyle. I don’t feel much different but it’s only been a few days. If anything I feel just marginally better.
What if, what if what if… what if this was the magic bullet that suddenly made me normal? Even as I was thinking that, the other day, I realized how diseased it is to think that a pill would make me normal. But what if… what if I’m not as miserable as I think I am and the ADD med (and/or an OCD med) helped me clear my head and just be where I am, instead of in about fifteen different exhausting states and scenarios at any given time?
Honestly, I’m a bit nervous taking so many meds. I am going to peel back on the anti-d this spring, and see how that goes.
I am reading (and LOVING) Skinny Bitch. I guess if I love that book I must be a bit sick, because it’s very mean. It really rakes the American diet over the coals, and it is just sickening. But it is just giving me a ‘girlfriend can we talk’ about things I really want to examine at this point in my life. I have now given up caffeine, and I put orange juice in my decaf constant comment instead of milk and sugar. I haven’t been able to completely quit smoking, but I don’t smoke in the morning until after I drop my children off at school, and the smoking window in my day is getting smaller and smaller.
As I incorporate lifestyle changes such as that, I will, I hope, also be improving my mental state. But I have my other foot in the camp that says that if you have it you have it, and saying that you can manage it with lifestyle is like saying you can manage a broken arm with lifestyle. It’s some of each I realize, and wellness is rooted in being willing to own it and take charge of it and take care of oneself. Meds, exercise, diet, family and social support, hobbies, job situation… they all contribute for better and for worse. It’s a continuum, with chaotic weather events at random places, and I just have to own it and go on. It’s a f*cking miracle I get as much done as I do.
In other news, we just got home from watching Night at the Museum. It was much more fun than I’d expected.
I wish someone would pay me to teach a course in which I explicate ‘books everyone should read because then the world would be a better place’. A Room of One’s Own is a key book on that list. Hell I’m a librarian. With a literature degree. And a vehement defender of marginalized groups. And I have years in the mental health field, both working in it and as a client. I have the credentials. I should just go ahead and offer it, and charge for it and see what kind of income I could pull down by starting my own secular humanism university. Okay I copyright that idea. It’s mine. I need that career. Nobody steal it. I’ll work it up.
But I welcome suggestions to add to the list.
Another is The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans. The sorts of thought patterns she describes– well, duh, we don’t call people names. We don’t interrupt them. We don’t scream at our children on any sort of a regular basis, preferably we don’t anyway. We don’t– xyz behaviors our parents tried to teach us. But when I read that book I am just stunned. So many things that pass for normal, at least in my house, my family of origin house as well as my current house, and in many of my friends’ homes (not you M!!!), are totally within the abusive pattern, so diseased, so damaging. It is unbelievable. I’ve become hyper sensitive to it, and I hear it EVERYWHERE, especially at my job. I hear it in the way some of my friends describe interactions with their husbands. It’s awful. I have been kind of depressed about it, that I’ve let this go on for so many years… that I’ve been on the receiving end and have just about bought into it, and that I’ve been on the giving end, and haven’t known it.
As devastating as that sounds, though… and it is… I am grateful that I know now so I can call it what it is and eliminate it. Luckily the book I’m reading, another one by Evans, gives some tools to replace those verbally abusive communication methods with. Cause if it didn’t… if we eliminated verbally abusive communication methods, we wouldn’t have a damn thing left to say. Even when we’re getting along we talk that way. No wonder our arguments are so horrible! Augh!
Also as devastating as that sounds, I am actually managing to have a bit of joy these days as well.
I am in the grip of Eloise Mania. I LOVE those books. I don’t know why. I LOVE them. They aren’t on the list of books everyone should read, but man I love to read them to my little girl. I have the Eloise movie too. I can’t wait to watch it with my girl. My stepson and husband might even like it. I’ve caught my husband listening and snickering when I’ve been reading the books out loud.
As I (hope I) become more focused, maybe some of this negative chatter in my head will die down and I can actually concentrate on just enjoying.
All right… that’s all for now. Thank heaven for Patricia Evans and Adderall.
Hoooooo boy
Terrible PMS? If it’s seasonal depression, it must be really bad to be squeezing through the barrier of the highest dose of my particular anti depressant that you can take before risking seizures.
My new schedule is that I (plan to) get up at five each morning, have some me time, get my shower by six, get my kids up and out by seven, then drive for an hour dropping everyone off, then work until five. That’s ten hours a day– I know, lunch, but that’s just an hour in the middle of regimented nine more.
I was so depressed about this last night I just couldn’t even think about it.
I need some serious books and cd’s on tape.
I considered just going on strike, not going to work. But that ain’t going to fly. We need to pay down our credit card bills first. I do remember the penury we suffered the last time I stayed home for a while… although truthfully… our income gradually grew and our debts gradually decreased, until it was doable.
First line of sanity defence:
This is only for another year or less. Next year around Christmas or Thanksgiving I hope to be quitting, having a wonderful Christmas season, and going to China. If China doesn’t work out I’ll still quit, and start building my business.
Second line: My work pays for my healing school. And that’s over in May, and I can reassess where I want to go with that.
Third line: I’m going to start charging for my student work. Not much, but enough to start filtering in a little bit of income, slowly transitioning into letting that be my career. I hope to have a little bit of money in the bank when I quit my job, for setup in that work and refreshers when I come back from China.
Fourth line: Just generally remembering that I truly am an adult, and I truly am driving this bus.
Fifth line: This work pays for plane tickets so that I can go see my family and fly my mom down here.
Sixth line: I am going to try to align my life with the skinny bitch wisdom. If I am not drinking coffee and smoking in the morning I can sleep later. If I am putting less garbage into my body, I will feel better. [And it is not possible to maintain my level of luxury/garbage eating in China, no way, so I better start sucking it up now. ] Etc.
It’s only for a year… it’s only for a year…
last day off
I had the best day yesterday. It was one of those rare days when I can simply resolve to enjoy it and let everything else go. We went to the park, played World of Warcraft, ate a stunningly delicious soul food supper (as soul as a white girl can make it anyway) of black eyed peas, cabbage, corn muffins with butter and Alaga syrup, smashed potatoes, sweet potato pie and sugar glazed ham for the meat eaters.
The day was cold, but it was, uh, bracing, and made us happier to get inside. One of my close circle of friends had been out of town for what felt like weeks, so we got out and walked.
And oh, was that food delicious. I surprised even myself. I really am a frustrated B&B with optional family style suppers owner operator. Except my B and B wouldn’t be precious and persnickety, not like the ones I’ve been to, with lace doilies and priceless knicknacks (though I must admit I was darned impressed by the scottie-dog shaped silver knife rests, where on earth could I get some of those?)… mine will be full of heavy, substantial, comfortable furniture, with natural or low warm electric light and not a doily to be seen. It will be the kind of place where you can put your feet right up on the expensive, sturdy antique (or Pottery Barn) furniture in the common rooms and have a stiff whiskey highball from my well stocked bar and read the paper. Though I hope that I will have well quit smoking by then, I hope it will also be the sort of place that is reminiscent of the era when smoking was customary, and welcoming to however few smokers there are left. But heck, there are always pipes, and cigars, right?
Anyhoo.
Today was a little bit more nervous as I go back to work tomorrow, but I’ve tried to keep my eyes on the prize– doing what I want to rather than what I think I’m supposed to. I ended up writing a three page public relations manifesto in service of the good works organization that has my husband, who volunteers for them, knocking his brains against the wall at least every other month. That was satisfying work, though. I met another friend at the park, managed to walk a while, made a healthy vegetarian dinner (I figured my husband and stepson would sneak out to McDonalds afterward, but as it happened that’s what they had for lunch, so too bad) and concentrated on enjoying today rather than on my almost pathological dread of going to work tomorrow. Good attitude zen work will set you free blah blah and so on. Shudder. Tomorrow.
Tonight husband and kids are at Target getting my stepson the clothes required for school. I’m reading Freddy and Fredericka, which is a ruthless and compassionate satire. How can it be both? This author is really something. The amazing details of this work, so many layers, whew. I’m not truly hooked yet, but I’m well into it, a hundred pages or so? One of the critical blurbs said ‘the fastest 800 page novel you will ever read. Okay.
