fling o’ rama
Having accepted congratulations for putting flylady to the side for a time, I just spent probably two hours throwing away crap in my attick hideaway.
It’s a big lovely room. That also means it’s got room for a LOT of crap.
It has been a horror since Christmas. Which was FOUR MONTHS AGO.
I can’t remember what the argument right around Christmas time was about, probably division of housekeeping labor (the fact that there is none, but we’ve settled that reasonably happily now), but I remember crying and telling my husband- – I think I’m going to start abbreviating his name CKK (Curt Kirkwood Kinda)– anyway I remember crying and saying ‘That room is ME!’
Sure, it was theatrical. But it was also true. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. Good old mommy, just throw it in her room, she’ll sort it out. Or, I am the only person in this house who can POSSIBLY take care of this. I’d better put it up in my study, on top of all the other crap nobody can possibly take care of but me. I’ll get to it some day.
Since Christmas this room has been at its absolute height of representing me, I’ll tell ya. It was full of globs of wrapping paper, shipping boxes, packing materials, gifts yet unwrapped, and just shit that the entire family figured I could somehow find a good place for. My healing table (like a massage table) had turned into a work surface/catchall/hidey hole for more shit. You could not see the floor in here.
Then, obscured behind Christmas, was all of my hoarded craft stuff. I have gotten so much better over the years, but… when it comes to crafts and paper products, I am a hoarder. I cannot, cannot cannot organize or let go of fabrics, old diaries/notebooks, items that need mending that I should really just THROW AWAY, unfinished craft projects, scrapbooking stuff… It’s a horror.
Everything I keep, you see, I have to organize.
This room represents me because it takes on everything, and everything never gets finished or processed. I just say, sure! And I take on another task, or pick up another item or commitment whether emotional or physical and figure I’ll get it sorted out somehow and then stow it in my room or in my consciousness until I can’t even think. It’s very sad.
I think of this when I’m in my office, too. I am a stickler about keeping public areas of my workplace clean– tables, dusting, bathrooms– but my office is a piled up mess. My file me pile takes up a table that is, I promise you, a square yard. I’m so busy taking care of my staff and my patrons that my office never gets clean.
I threw away and put away so much. I could just about vacuum up here now.
I have two attic storage areas. My back aches from stooping to come in and out of the mini doors to those dark, miserable little rooms. When I go in there I see all the crap I have still managed to hoard, for years and years and years through over a dozen moves.
I have thrown away so much at every stop, and still here I am. I have boxes and boxes of books, diaries, photos, fancy and expensive clothes that will never, ever, ever fit me again even if they were to be in style ever ever again, holiday decorations… to me that unwillingness to throw away symbolizes fear and denial.
If I could just throw (most of it) away, that would be the energy of a person who is ready to accept and embrace abundance. The more we accept or retain crap, the more we attract it. I believe that with all my heart.
When I shut the sweetly painted doors of my attic storage, I can try to pretend all that stuff isn’t there. But I know it is, and there is going to have to be a reckoning.
What book did I just read that in? “There will be a reckoning.” That echoes in my mind– I think it was kind of comic, but WHAT BOOK WAS IT?
Ah!! Wee Free Men. One of my girlfriends put me onto Terry Pratchett for my stepdaughter and I really liked that book meself. I need to go dig up the next one.
What do you think… is taking care of me first, even when it means that something for others will not get done, still best? We said at healing school that when we show up authentically– which includes setting boundaries and caring for ourselves first– it frees others to show up authentically. But what if I don’t get my goals met at work, or what if something doesn’t get done at home? What if?
This is at the very core of one of my greatest lifetasks, I believe. We just finished Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed in my women’s book group, and it’s such a witty, insightful book. The insight comes from the main character’s sense that she doesn’t deserve– anything. It traces back to her relationship with her dad, and impacts her dating choices as well as how she takes care of herself and creates incredible self blame and psychotic post partum depression when her baby experiences problems at birth. It is just ingrained in her that she doesn’t deserve these blessings. I think that’s the spiritual root of my miscarriage a few years ago. Somehow I didn’t deserve that blessing. I’m not saying it’s my ‘fault’– I’m saying I need somehow to get in touch with that essential worthiness that is in every single human being except, it seems, me. Somehow I’ve got to part that veil.
It’s actually a species of insane egomania… it brings everything back to oneself. If you’re religious, this conviction is a sinful denial of the nature of your loving higher power and it’s holding you back from your higher power’s ultimate plan of joy for you. If you’re not religious, well, this conviction is just– a species of insane egomania that’s holding you back from joy and growth.
But it is so easy to know intellectually that one has a problem with thinking they aren’t deserving, and another thing completely to say, oh, yes I am, and in fact if I care for myself I’ll be there for my family and friends and coworkers more than ever.
What if?
There’s no answer. It’s just something to think about.
And… I can reckon, I can shift my energy to the kind that accepts abundance, some other day. I’m just glad to be able to see the floor, and I’m hungry.
superconnected
My other mania was making brightly colored tissue roses. I couldn’t stop for days after shaky baby’s party. I was working out the trauma of all the crafts we didn’t do at her party because I was so disorganized. But somehow shutup or I’ll stack you, accordion pleat you, wrap you with a chenille pipe cleaner, and fluff you doesn’t sound as funny as shutup or I’ll frost you.
“when you’re finished with the mop then you can stop
and look at what you’ve done the plateau’s clean,
no dirt to be seen and the work it took was fun
well the many hands began to scan around for the next
plateau some said it was greenland some said
mexico others decided it was nowhere except for
where they stood but those were all just guesses,
wouldn’t help you if they could”
Meat Puppets Plateau
I rediscovered the Meat Puppets because I was trying to explain to my husband that he looks like Curt Kirkwood when he just lets his hair get all long and raggy and goes unshaved. He really does, too. Kinda.
Staring at photos of longhaired, five o’clock shadowed Curt Kirkwood, preferably in a pink gingham dress, was my greatest comfort during a particularly uhappy moment in my romantic life twelve or so years ago. And at almost fifty he’s still pretty damn delicious. And he’s in Austin, where all good rockers go when they die (oh or Nashville, not sure which is better, Austin by a hair, though Steely Dan had been working out of Nashville for a while, and Bon Jovi’s there now right???). And lo and behold! They just put out a new album! And Curt is spewing his abrasive, probably aspbergers, nobody’s going to impose their agenda on me language– yum.
Anyway.
Top down is just not me.
For a long time I’ve been trying to get on top of my life by doing the Flylady thing– flylady.net, you know. I have tried so hard to impose easy, one-size-fits-all, brief, doable routines on my life that could be accomplished in a small amount of work each day, as opposed to either major disgusting house or major housework misery all day on a weekend day, which I just refuse to do, routines which would make it all come together with a minimum of misery, angst and resentment.
Don’t get me wrong– it has helped. A lot. I throw away a lot of crap, and then I no longer have to organize, put away, or dust it. I try to go by the handle everything once rule- go ahead and decide if it’s junk mail or important and file it, whether in the circular file or the important file, right away instead of having to touch it once when I get it out of the mail box and again weeks later when I finally get around to organizing the mail pile. I keep certain surfaces clear or easy to clear so that they can be easily and quickly disinfected often so I don’t have to get out the flamethrower because I haven’t cleaned them since last year. My house is in much better shape (at least I think it is???) than it was before Flylady.
But as a general rule, no matter how well it works, no matter how much sense it makes, top down is just not me.
There was a study in the late 70’s-early 80’s about programming styles of boys and girls using logo. In a nutshell, probably the nutshell of warped memory because I haven’t looked at the thing in twelve years, the study differentiated boys and girls like so. The boys decided what they wanted to do and then attempted to cram the reality of the programming language into the desired result– top down. The girls looked at the reality of the programming language and used that as a jumping off point to create from there– bottom up.
I see this in my life every day. Husbands relax after work (imposing desired result, regardless of reality all around them) while wives bust their asses, becoming resentful and too tired for sex, parenting, housecleaning, working full time (embracing external reality and starting at the bottom). As my brother says, men just don’t have that take on too much gene.
Managers strive to bring together reality and top down desired result, attempting to encapsulate and convey the desired outcome to staff, who relax and don’t concern themselves with the desired outcome because they aren’t paid to and they just want to deal with their own little fiefdom. My best friend’s husband keeps putting glass in the city recycle bin because it makes no sense to him that they don’t recycle glass. I don’t guess I’ll ever be a process engineer or computer programmer, but my husband can’t build a fire for shit or string a kite that will actually fly. I can, as I demonstrated beautifully on cold, clear, windy Easter night after his kite kept diving earthward and his knots popped off.
When I load the dishwasher the dishes almost always come out sparkling. My husband loads the dishwasher chock full, even though when he does that half the dishes come out dirty. He says, I refuse to be held hostage by my dishwasher.
Held hostage by your dishwasher?
How about tuned in to reality so that you can be effective, so that your kite will fly and your fire will burn?
Is my friend’s husband’s stubborn refusal to embrace the recycling reality a stupid refusal to see reality, or a thoughtful protest? I mean, it is truly wrong that our city does not recycle glass. I get that.
Some see at what is and ask why. Others see what isn’t and ask why not?
Or something.
This is a very, very basic difference. It would be unproductive to say one approach is better than the other. Even if bottom up is better (and I believe, know, that it is), never, ever the twain shall meet. I can knock my head against my husband’s reality all day long but it will only piss us both off– me because he isn’t doing it ’right’ and him because I am helping him and that pisses dudes off.
Sometimes top down is even useful. I find that at work, dealing with the folks I supervise, top down is sometimes needed or else anarchy will prevail. Anarchy isn’t such a bad thing… unless it is accompanied by people forgetting why we’re there and failing/just not bothering to serve the folks whose tax dollars pay our salaries. So, sometimes I do have to go all top down on ’em.
But at home…
It just came over me Monday when I was off and home alone.
This constant attempt to impose routine, and the consequent unhappiness because I can’t/don’t want to do it and so my life is still in disorder because I failed to tick off the items on my to do list, isn’t helping. It just isn’t.
I’m knocking my head against some basic realities.
I’m struggling to find the right simile or metaphor for this. I haven’t yet, sorry.
These realities are just not going anywhere. We have so much time and so much money. We have certain needs– food, sleep, shelter, transportation, paycheck, emotional and physical and social comforts. My husband sees things a certain way. All of these are realities I can knock my forehead against until it bleeds. I stretch and stretch, trying to manage both ends. At the front end I impose a top down strategy involving lots of proactive things like buying in bulk and routine– and still find myself stuck on the other end, out of money and out of energy, with needs unmet.
I can make running up the slide a way of life if I want to. And I have.
The endless to do list, the daily and weekly attempts to finally game the system, hit the sweet spot, make routine work for me, just wear me out and make me feel like a failure.
So it came to me Monday to try something different.
How about just being where I am and paying tender attention to that particular thing? How about setting down all the balls I am just barely managing to juggle — work, home, my own mental and physical health, parenting, marriage– and giving whatever single thing I am doing my full attention.
Instead of doing fifteen minutes in each room in the house, changing rooms each time the timer goes off, how about cleaning the kitchen for a while, as long as I want, and then going into my room and cleaning there as long as I want?
How about going to bed when I’m tired?
How about being off ADD meds which help me be supermom and just being scattered me for a while?
I gave this a shot Monday. I felt like I was in some kind of superconnected state. I say this because healing school work is the only thing I can compare it to. I was flowing through my day, and it was sweet. It made me nervous, like the first time without training wheels or water wings… but I am convinced of the essential rightness of it.
Those realities were still there… I could stop any time I wanted and try to claw my way up the flinty perpendicular bank of that flow– not enough time, not enough money, day slipping by, have to go back to work tomorrow, must be proactive, must impose routine, must go work on my budget and short and long range forecasts and plans, must accomplish this and this and this in order to create this outcome, must convince husband to save time and aggravation by finally succumbing to the reality of our dishwasher, or our dogs or child or… but why?
I might even make some progress scrambling up the bank. But all those loose ends would still be waving sweetly at me in the breeze– my failure at top down, my reality at bottom up… scrambling up the bank would probably just make my fingers bleed.
I thought, you know, this shit is all going to be there. Why don’t I just do what I want to do right now, and later I’ll probably want to do something else, and it will all get done, or it will still be there.
I didn’t check email. I didn’t budget. I didn’t create a list or calendar of things that must be done on or by certain days in order for my life to work out. I was just … there. I did some dishes. I folded some laundry. I did some writing. I printed some photos. I did some reading. I ate. I just was.
I’m not describing it very well. It really was a moment of zen, though. I haven’t had one this big since I read Haruki Murakami’s Windup Bird Chronicle. Not that I can remember anyway. It’s so funny how a truly useful paradigm shift just sneaks up on you slowly and silently.
One more listen to Plateau… who needs action when you’ve got words?
Good night!
do you know how old I am?
Thirteen, right?
I’m blogging from my training. This is very bad… I should be in the final presentations of this week, paying attention… but I have to be out of here at elevenish… It’s a wash at this point anyway, isn’t it?
Do you remember that middle aged senator from somewhere out west (I think) whose diaries were released to the public or press in conjunction with some impropriety? He had written details about how he fixed his (doubtless thinning, oh the indignity!) hair and dressed for particular functions or meetings– and the impression he just knew he would make because he looked so darn hot.
I remember feeling so sorry for the old lech, because, as odious and womanly as he was, I, too, am that self absorbed.
Don’t you think that most of us have that Walter Mitty dialog running in our head most of the time? (Yes I am in fact a HUGE Thurber fan. He gave us some of the finest and funniest insight into a certain subset of the human condition and culture EVER.)
I think perhaps that the senator’s (or whatever he was) personality was such that he didn’t have the self awareness to be embarassed… but I would have been so mortified I would have absolutely died.
I was at healing school a weekend or so ago and one of my colleagues volunteered to go first for a grueling emotional class exercise involving exposing one’s own subtle and pathetic lies to oneself. She jumped right up, admitting that she loved attention. I could have kissed her! It’s not loving attention… it’s loving it and pretending — or not even being aware — that you do. Her humility is a beautiful thing, because underneath it is discernment, honesty, and compassion, three of the key– in fact perhaps *the three key* components for growth and healing.
It’s attention… but it’s also, for me, a sense of being tied in, or part of something. D’you see the subtle difference? Both are related to my neediness and self absorption I think.
Like, when I wake up in a big city hotel, and the big city day is getting started, and the feel of rush hour traffic is all around, and news is blasting from televisions throughout the facility, and people just seem to have places to go… I love it. I am essentially a country mouse. But when I’m in a congested urban area of a major city, I feel tiny and insignificant, yet I feel like I’m really part of something. I think it would just exhaust me to be part of something all the time… but for a while, as in DC this week or as in Boston last spring… it feels really, really cool.
To get back to my own particular Walter Mitty script, there’s a young librarian in this training who, every time he sees me, calls me by the name of the state where I work. You know… Georgia, or Virginia, or Alabama like the name of the wife in Zelda Fitzgerald’s semi autobiographical novel.
This boy is at least ten, if not fifteen, years younger than I am. He’s a cutie, one of those young men who seem eminently secure in themselves, mature, responsible and thoughtful and serious, yet have a great sense of irony and humor.
What I wonder, because of my self absorption, is would he be relating to me in this manner if he knew how old I am? What is it about me– the way I look or relate, or what is it about him– a general desire to relate to me personally, or a general desire to relate to everyone — both of which I think are kinda cool– that makes him heckle me so? [He also complimented my footwear... does he have a shoe fetish, or is he just gay?]
I like it, because it makes me feel like somebody. Does he think I’m a matron who needs some attention, or does he think I’m hot, or is he just a really friendly fellow… almost doesn’t matter because I like the attention. Although it would reflect wonderfully on this boy if he made it a habit to try to make people feel like somebody, wouldn’t it.
It’s really important to take interactions, and people, as they come, with a healthy combination of friendly interest and healthy lack of expectation. But I’m so needy that I have to think about all this stuff, spin out my Walter Mitty.
I’m just sayin. This is me. The internet is the new vehicle for all our narcissism. At least it’s out in the open now, eh? That’s got to be a healthier state of affairs.
Right?
ocd has its good points
I came home for lunch to pick up the chicken chili I’m taking to a friend who just (well last week, but she had a hard time) had a baby. Both our oven (canned cinnamon rolls, husband) and the right front stove eye of our flat top range (chicken chili, self) were on.
I left first. He left last. Neither of us caught it.
The house didn’t burn down. This time. Because you know I’m not going to give up my habitual checking of items in our home.
But shouldn’t that factual result of this unwitting experiment comfort me?
I hate the flat top range BTW. Give me natural gas any day.
I don’t want to take the name in vain but
I am completely sincere in my praise when I say ‘Praise Jesus it’s FRIDAY!’
I am in a workshop today, and this is lunch time, so I can post.
It’s pissing down rain, as they say, a nice day to be *out* of my office and inside a cozy academic library, in the computer training lab specifically, learning how to use RSS/Feeds.
I’m ashamed to admit that I had no idea, before.
During hands on time I even put a feed button on this here blog. How cool is that! I’m syndicated! Or, am I? I’m still new at this.
I’d also like to create a news feed that would automatically bring up headlines relevant to shaky’s concerns. Because the subjects of my thoughts are so freakishly intertwined or eclectic, this requires some very careful choices of keywords.
Any suggestions? Words so unique that they can’t fail to bring up something truly interesting to me/us/you my readers?
I know it sounds like torture, sitting around trying to find just the right key words to bring up truly interesting and relevant news stories in a little aggregator on this blog. But have you forgotten? I am a librarian and that, if anything at all, is truly my thing. Or, it’s one of my many things. It’s one of those things that maybe most people don’t think about that I do. Or that librarians do.
The Big Question– what search terms to use, or what words to use to identify content quickly and briefly for retrieval later– has been around a lot longer than the internet… but I think it is simultaneously less and more of an issue now that we do so much through keyword, social indexing, and random surfing and so much less through print.
I am old enough to remember that these questions simply have absolutely no bearing on real life, and just how much of a *dork* thinking about this makes me. Or would once have made me–not sure. Probably dork then, dork now.
Well class is starting back, and the teacher is great so I don’t want to be disrespectful by continuing to post, so I’ll go now.
flushable wipes
Y’all, they ain’t. Flushable.
That’s what the roto rooter man says.
He really lectured me. Then when my husband came home he held one up on the end of that thing he uses to clear clogs and told my husband, NO MORE.
But he’s not the hiney hygiene freak I am.
The nice man took care of the initial clog, but we wonder if we have a broken pipe between the house and the street. But for now, out of sight is out of mind.
I am sickened by the thought of not being able to use my flushable wipes, or by not flushing them if I do use them.
Eww! What do I do?
Go to cloth like one of my other friends? She says if you can do a diaper you can do toilet paper and feminine hygiene products. Her husband refuses, though. Heh. She always has one roll of TP just for him.
I don’t think I’ll report back.
obsessively picking up
Is mental illness simply the lot of the working mother? The working woman? The woman?
I reckon maybe other working mothers would be glad to have this problem. And I guess I am glad that I have it. Sorta.
I mentioned that few weeks ago my husband and step kids stayed out on vacation several days longer than the baby and I did. I had this house so tidy– horizontal surfaces empty and wiped, bed made, floors swept, laundry and dishes caught up. Even on work days, I was able to easily complete the minimum routine items that kept it looking nice.
What happened the minute they got back? We, really I, began to stagger under the growing load of items we couldn’t keep up with. I’m trying not to be a martyr. It’s just the truth. When I ask for equal division of labor he says I’m the messy one, and that he’s disgusted because when he cleans something once a year it never stays clean… it was just to cover up the fact that he doesn’t pick up after himself or at least leave the surfaces I’ve cleaned clean, dammit.
It’s especially discouraging when I work all day and then come home to an untidy, unhygienic, uncomfortable home that, it seems, I just cleaned a day or two ago. I can either do the second shift that my husband doesn’t see the need for and clean it, or go to bed miserable in this hell hole.
Now that the stepkids are (sadly) gone back to their mother, I wonder if it will degenerate as badly and as quickly this time. We’ll do a scientific experiment– husband only vs. husband and two preteens.
The thing is… I am spending my Saturday cleaning. I made a little flylady chart of items that are only allotted 15 minutes and items that are only allotted 5 minutes. It should have only taken me two hours.
But I can’t stop!
I’ve been relentlessly throwing things away or throwing them into the rooms where they belong almost all day. I’ve stopped briefly to feed or snuggle my three year old or have coffe, but for the last four hours… it’s sad. But I guess it’s better than having ocd-hoarding. Well… I don’t have it too bad anyway. Perhaps you wouldn’t believe me if you saw my den upstairs which is covered in old clothes I’ve been too skinny to wear for years, self help books, hundreds of diaries from the time I was ten… but at least down here, in our living space, I am ruthless, and within the limitations of our somewhat, er, bargain eclectic decorating scheme, it looks sooo nice. It does to me, anyway.
I guess strictly speaking compulsive behavior is something you do over and over even though it doesn’t give you any satisfaction. And truly, I have to admit I’m actually enjoying this. I can see my bedroom floor and my laundry room floor. I even got out the vacuum! I threw away candy we’ve had since last halloween– why in hell did we even move it into this house? I dismantled all those piles and piles of papers and books that seem to grow organically from every surface. Every item I toss in the garbage is like, I dunno, like taking off a nasty old bandage and letting the sun shine on a wound so it can heal.
But it would also feel sooooo good to accomplish some creative writing, and/or some healing school study. But I’m sooooo tired. And we’re out of pullups (she’s potty trained but it’s a lot to ask a little one, not to wet the bed during a nap or all night) so I have to go out at some point. Maybe it won’t be so damn hot and we can go to the park for a bit to get some exercise and bond.
