Why the hell am I here?

I'm always asking myself 'why the hell am I here?'  Was it to be the mediocre student that I was and not even attempt to get into medical school? (Which you'll be glad I didn't as you continue reading). Obviously rhetorical. Is it to write this blog? Again. Res ipsa loquitur.  If I had one mission,  I would have to say it's probably my kids.  But I created that mission--or helped to anyway. So does that mean that I handed the job of giving meaning to my life to two tiny little babies?  That seems beyond lame.  It seems an unfair burden for a couple 8lb. infants.

When I arrive at that conclusion I invariably think, that's too much pressure for those guys.

I gotta get a life.

So I applied to grad school like my big important and accomplished husband.  He applied to U of M eMBA program.  He got in.  I shot lower than that, or so I thought. I applied to the EMU Graduate School of Social Work.  I didn't get in.   I humored myself by saying that I'm smart enough and good enough and gol darnit people like me.  The other excuse I liked to employ was that they had filled their quota of middle-aged suburban label whores early in the admissions process.  Either way.  A no is a no.  And the "insufficient credentials" that they listed as a reason rang throughout the hollows of my skull and heart for months.

I think it was the biggest blow that my ego has endured in years.  I couldn't sleep or feel my feet for a week after that news came in.   It came at the same time as a particularly nasty email from a chronically disgruntled extended family member.  And on the heels of 3 back-to-back trips with the kids.  On the health front, I was dealing with all the loveliness that accompanies being 47 as well as no sleep.  I was spent.  It was winter.

Those aforementioned blows just about finished me off.  But on top of that,  we got the news that the boys would need to repeat Kindergarten.  They had spent 2 and a half years at the most well-respected (read: expensive) preschool in town - maybe for nothing more than the prestige of saying it.  Not a big deal except it was a grueling commute twice a day--300 extra miles a week--in that hog I drive.  It was clear in March that neither would be even close to ready for First Grade at the end of it.   Also at this time, my husband shushed me. In public. At a business event.   Nothing like getting your ass handed to you at a table full of dignitaries to make you feel like a piece of shit.  I ain't sugar coating that one.  No way to.  Shush is shush in any language. And in any language it has the same effect.

To top that off, the next night I was forced to go out with some more dignitaries--and I use that term loosely.  I was talking to one of them who was rather drunk.  He also shushed me but not by saying shush.  He came out with his steep NC accent and said "You should stop talking NOW!"  We were joking and laughing and he was explaining to me how to correctly pronounce some southern colloquialism that my brother shared with me--nothing off color--so his comment seemed to come out of left field.  Like my first reaction was, 'are you talking to somebody standing behind me or what?' Anyway, apparently, I didn't get the slang quite southern enough.  He's a bit sexist and he was pretty hammered. Not only did he never apologize (I'm sure he didn't remember) but I don't even think he realized I was gone. Because after that brief and humiliating exchange, I got up from the table (under the guise of going to the bathroom), hailed a cab and went back to the hotel -- all before the appetizers appeared.

I have nice stuff.  I'm healthy. My family is healthy. The important boxes are checked.  But are they? Isn't it also important to be somebody so your kids have something to emulate? I'm not that good at making being a homemaker seem fulfilling enough. At least it's not for me.  I'm just not that great at it.  I want to set my kitchen on fire. I hate folding laundry. There ain't no end to washing floors, windows, butts.  Sisyphus got nothing on housewives.  Nothing.  That shit, absent anything more mentally stimulating, will suck the light right out of your soul.

So I endeavored to create another chapter.  I endeavored and failed.  And I ceased up like an old flywheel in a hail storm.  I felt like crap on every front.  So I started writing to ease the sting of it all and poke some fun at myself.  And figure it out so that I can, in spite of my many shortcomings, be the author of the next chapter.  With any luck, it will be written with more clarity and less shushing than the last chapter. It will be worthy of emulation.  It will be filled with the wisdom that comes with getting your ass handed to you a few times and surviving it. 

And I hope it'll have a happy ending.  Not the dirty kind of happy ending either. 

Because, if for nothing else, I'm here for the happy ending.

Drama, Drama, Drama

Henry and Elliot have their own little desks in their rooms now. They're cute little kid-sized deals with a cork tack board background and a little shelf and chair.  Elliot looks like he belongs in his. When Henry is seated at his desk, he looks like Elf on Bob Newhart's lap.   It seems hard to believe that the boys need desks for homework because they both still have mouths full of baby teeth.  It works fine on Elliot -- it even works fine on Henry's sweet little baby face. But on his 4'5" frame and tipping the scales at 68lbs., it's a little incongruous.

Henry works hard. He likes to sweep, mop, vacuum, dig holes in the yard, break or take apart everything he can get his hands on and eat a lot of weird food while hiding behind the couch.  I'm trying to break him of the shame that surrounds these frequent trips behind my back to the fridge or cupboard.

I'd rather have him as big as a house than hiding behind the couch eating Z Bars and Doritos (Dad's purchase--not mine).

We have to do homework with the boys now.  School is so much more rigorous than it was when I was young.  They expect to get the kids imputing content into their little forming brains probably 2 and half years earlier than we had to worry about it. We had a cakewalk comparatively. 

We question the wisdom of this but we also don't want to leave the kids without the necessary skills and stamina to manage the requisite workload.  We don't have Ivy League designs but we would like to avoid incarceration if at all possible.   Sort of the old motto of "keeping it between the ditches."

Elliot is a typically developing academic. That might be an understatement.  He definitely inherited his Dad's love of school.  Henry's natural skill set is somewhere slightly outside of the average classroom.  But he's a genius swimmer--2 years ahead of his age.  He's strong as an ox and he possesses a nearly photographic visual memory.   He just struggles with sitting still and giving much of a crap about math or reading.  And attending to one thing at a time.  Hard to believe he's NOT my biological child. Right?  Oh look, a chicken!

Anyway, Elliot does his homework easily and quickly--most of the time.  Henry, well, not so much.

So on Friday, I announced that it was time for some homework.  And let me say, I mean 15 minutes of homework.  Not hours.  Almost immediately, the gnashing of teeth began.  It ushered in a tantrum complete with slamming doors, weeping and throwing toys.  I just sat quietly until the whole thing played out. And it did. Eventually.  For the third time in a week.

This is what happens when things are not nipped in the bud.  My kids' unacceptable behavior will escalate until they get the desired response which to them is my giving up on a course of action. Instead, I held steady and only backed off when Henry did some of his work.

Then I made a mac-n-cheese picnic for the living room in front of Pirates of the Caribbean (or Carob Beans as the boys call it).  They happily ate their dinner at the ottoman while I plotted.  As soon as the opening credits were done and the mac-n-cheese consumed, I pressed Pause.  It was amazing to see the little minds engage in simple addition and subtraction, phonetics and writing. Maybe those little desks are too little. Maybe more carrot, less stick, maybe I just have to be stronger and calmer than a 6-yr-old.  

When it was all done, Henry showed me his work beaming. He was so proud of himself.  And when I whispered in each of their ears that I believed in them--even when they freak out, they both hugged me so hard and smiled in a way that told me it was exactly what they wanted to hear.  I think it's all about overcoming our own resistance to growth--mine especially.  It's time to grow up. A little bit every day.   Tantrums reflect the little pieces of myself and my kids that we are too ashamed to claim let alone integrate.   I know this from my own experience not just from sitting with my son in conflict with himself. If I can remain calm and present, it's the most profound transformation to witness. It's like being present at a birth.  There's a lot if pain and screaming, but in the end there's a whole new person. 

But man does it ever kick your ass as a parent sometimes.  Whew.  Hope today's is easier. If not, it'll just be another lesson for me in being calm and lovingly detached and for Henry in overcoming his own resistance.

Either way, it's a win.

 

Cabin fever, 102.9* fever, Ernie Harwell and Spongy Sword Fights.  Ah summer time.

All four of us have strep throat.  Isn't that special?

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The above 4 lines have been preserved for your enjoyment. This is Henry's blog entry.   Anyway, because of the nasty bug, we're not able to do anything outside the house, at least anything in good conscience.

I'm sure there are desperate moms who have to go to the store, kids in tow, while dealing with the same situation.  We don't.  At least not for the classical reasons like milk, eggs, bread, ham, cheese. But if you throw 'sanity' onto the list it becomes a lot more salient to the argument for infecting the balance of humanity.

Ah sanity. A funny little word with Latin roots connected to 'insanity' or the chronic, habitual and prolonged exposure to small children.  Oops, I think that was my definition.

The key to not going crazy with kids is to not get sucked into their drama.  My kids are uniquely gifted at creating the kind of drama that requires attention, often of the medical variety.  Case in point: We were leaving T Ball practice Sunday.  I was speaking with some of the other parents about our game which is tonight.  Their older son was seated on his soccer ball on the grass next to my truck.  Henry came darting across the street, ran up to the kid and hauled off kicked the ball from underneath his tush.  Peaceful conversation turns into near loss of testicles.  I watched the whole thing.  And it was damn close.

I screech out at Henry in horror.  'Dude, what was THAT?'  He just looks at me with a quizzical look like "whaaaaat?" What happened after that is a kind of shame spiral--usually. But that time, I sort of unhooked from the spaz.   I unhooked from Henry's behavior. On the way home, I quietly asked Henry why what he did was a bad idea.  He explained in a measured way.   Then we moved on.  Perhaps he'll try it again tonight. Who knows?  But something in me has clicked the past couple of days.  Fueling situations like that with more drama and upset only makes the impression indelible rather than forgettable.  Some things you want them to remember but words never help.  Experience is the best teacher.  More precisely, the physics of experience.  Blah blah blah at any volume just impedes that.

If a situation seems really emotional, melancholic, tragic, super heated, super angry, I just get my internal dial and turn the whole thing down.

Anyway,  lots of exercise, lots of unhooking from the kids lately.  Great stuff. The other thing I've noticed is something I kind of learned from my dad when Ernie Harwell got fired.  I got as indignant as the rest of the world.  He went on a smear campaign and most of the world bought it hook, line and sinker. But my Dad just made the 'I ain't buyin' it' face.  He said, there's more to this story than meets the eye.  I cocked my head sideways and said, 'Hmm?' From that day forward, every time somebody had a 'thou doth protest too much' moment, I took a deep breath and my Dad's stance.  The space between stimulus and response is something we have control over.  The longer the space, the better the reaction in emotional situations, at least.  Even working under pressure, doctors, EMTs, cops, fireman all have to make split second decisions for sure. But they have to be able to think under pressure not just react.

The kids just got the spongy swords out. I hate the damn things--so does Jeff.
It's all over but the cryin.' Thank God it's just them today and not me. 

Rewire Your Brain

I'm reading the coolest book.  It's called "Rewire Your Brain."  A couple of years ago I read a similar book entitled "The Anxious Brain." But because it had anxious in the title, I would fidget and fuss every single time I got any where near reading it.  So there it sat, full of all sorts of great information.

Along came the new book and I just loved the utility and directness of the title so much that I just dove right in.  I'm actually listening to it on my iPod.

Dr. Arden goes into detail about what parts of the brain are firing during things like addictive episodes, depression, anxiety, fear or what I like to call "Monday."  He states emphatically that basically anybody who sits around feeling like crap should get up, do 15 push ups, put on some up tempo club music, grab a glow stick, some tennis shoes, their favorite cologne and run down the street screaming to themselves that they're crazy to think like that.  He also favors desensitizing oneself to offending stimuli or what I like to call "my house."

Anyway, all kidding aside, if you have thought patterns that are getting in your way, I recommend this book. It's a bit heavy on acronyms and brain anatomy but nothing you can't handle.

I always have a rubber band around my bicep for my hair--it's actually a head band.  Now, whenever I have a ridiculous and anxiety provoking thought,  I'll snap it.  It doesn't hurt just sort of stings.  Dr. Arden didn't really mention that in his book--not yet anyway.  That's just my personal little add-on.   With horses and dogs it's an e-collar---who'm I kidding?! It's a shock collar.  Anyway, for ridiculous equine behavior such as striking, it can be really helpful.  I know this because in 2005, I had a really horse-aggressive little gelding.  We all believed he had a Napoleonic complex brought on by having been bullied as a yearling.  But that was probably anthropomorphizing.  Anyway, he was a total ass to this 22 year old rope horse out in the pasture--his only pasture mate, in fact.  He'd been the same with every other horse he'd been around as well. So the behavior was exceedingly antisocial and needed to be dealt with because I was not going to be able to take him to any other farm to live.  The boarding facility was for sale.   My trainer at the time, Peggy, borrowed an e-collar from a friend.  We put it on him and turned him out in the pen with the other guy.

He started immediately in on poor old Rusty.  I felt so bad.  But the minute he went up on his hind legs to strike (with some ferocity, I might add) Peggy hit the switch.  What happened next was simultaneously hilarious, disturbing and incredibly effective.  Now there's only enough juice to shock them the way we get shocked by static electricity in the winter when we shuffle around in our socks.

So mid-air Marty the Paint gelding had the meanest look on his face and was poised to exact his pound of flesh from Rusty when, all of a sudden, his neck kinked a bit to the side and he got very wide-eyed and screeched out.  It was the look of a school yard bully when the older brother of his pray shows up with a gang.  And down on his hooves he plopped.   He shook his head somewhat bewildered and thought a second. You could almost hear "Hmm, what the hell just happened?"  When he came back to his senses, he looked at old Rusty and thought longer this time.  He started to move in Rusty's general direction again with the ears pinned back and bam! Peggy hit the switch on a lighter setting. Squeal, ears went forward, head shook,  hmm... The third time he went to look at Rusty, his ears went back for a second and then snapped forward.   It took only those two small zaps and he never touched that horse again.

So, I thought I'd try to employ the technique.   The problem is that I leaned over to Peggy the first time she hit that button as I laughed and asked her "Is it wrong that I sort of enjoyed that? Wait. Don't answer that."

As I wrote that and laughed, I also snapped the rubber band and started singing Pink's "Raise Your Glass."

Now I'm sure I'll be cured in no time.
Where's my glow stick?

The A/C is out.  The coils are frozen solid according to Walt from Hutzel.  Frozen solid because they're low on freon.  They're low on freon because there's a leak somewhere.  There's a leak somewhere because of a either a bad part in the (only 5-year-old) unit or maybe in one of the welded joints.  Anyway, he has to run the heat for a half hour in order to thaw it out.   He has to run the heat to thaw the ice. It's 10:27am and it's already 84* with about the same percentage of humidity.

There is a lesson in here somewhere. I'm sure of it. If even just to teach me that God is hysterically ironic.

Walt just announced that he was going outside to have a smoke while the heat runs.  Isn't that something? He gets to run outside to enjoy a smoke.  Again with the joking around, God.  I hate to see what jocularity awaits in the next 45 minutes.

By the way, 63 days without a cigarette as of today.  I don't know why I mention this on the random and usually odd numbered days.  It's just when something triggers a memory. Which brings me to the point in the story where I'm a flake.

I am a flake.  I don't manage a bunch of interruptions, jostling, jockeying, fighting, dirt, mountains of laundry, broken air conditioners and mislaid keys very well.  I forget stuff, invariably important things.  Like yesterday.  No I didn't forget that there WAS a yesterday. I just forgot something important yesterday.

I was supposed to meet a friend with my truck to pick up a piece of furniture.  But a bunch of activity happened and I forgot.  Henry fell asleep  There was a flurry of other things but they're just normal things.  But flurry is my middle name.  In fact, I should go to McDonalds and order them to name one of those things after me.  And then just order one.  They're delish. 

Oh look, chicken!

That is actually on a magnet that I bought my sister a couple years ago.  It actually says "I think I have ADD. Oh Look, a chicken!"

Focusing on one thing for more than 30 seconds causes me great pain because it's impossible for me.  This leads me to believe that I may have a touch (read: metric ton) of ADD.  I'm going to get professionally tested.  It seems to have a genetic component.  We'll see what turns up.  I scored over 100 on an online metric that goes up to 80 as the highest part of the range.  Where are my keys?

I figure it's better to get tested than to beat myself with a stick for being flaky.  There's flaky and then there's clinically flaky.   I'm clinically flaky because I know I'm not stupid.  At least not in the classical sense, anyway.

Anyway, it would explain a lot.

Except where my keys are.  And what the hell that chicken is doing over there.

Where's Walt?

From Blueberry Pie to Brain Surgery

http://www.myspace.com/supergroovemachine/music/songs/forgive-those-44809458


So I read today's post like 100 times.  It flowed out onto the keyboard pretty easily last night. I accepted its imperfect origins---until I started picking it apart.   Then I corrected a bunch of stuff--tenses, person, etc. Then I uncorrected it. Then I erased a bunch of paragraphs and then put them back. Exhausted and sick of the damn thing, I hit the publish button.  It made me nauseous.  I wanted to punch the computer.

My brother Michael told me of similar struggles with songs that he's written.  He'd write it and really feel it and love it.  Then he'd record it.  Then he'd go into the studio and tweak it until he wanted to smash the mixing board with a ball-peen hammer.

I like to call this acute second-guessing "The Annihilation of Analysis."  Songs, like love, are not digital. They're analog--at least the kind that Michael writes.  My writing is not Shakespeare or even readable half the time.  But it's something.  It's mine.   It would be like me making a beautiful lattice crusted blueberry peach pie and then taking after it with a chainsaw because some of the juice bubbled over the side.  That ain't right.  It's a pie, for God's sake.  It's not a precision instrument for excising brain tumors measured in the nanometers: It's a pie.  We make songs, pies and blogposts here at the Feeney/Mason house.  We don't make precision medical instruments.  I mean how would you serve that? Ice cream or whipped cream? Yeah, not tasty.  Helpful if you happen to have a brain tumor, yes.  Delicious after some barbecue? No.

Maybe somebody relates. Maybe not.  Maybe somebody's pissed.  Maybe somebody sings along.  Maybe you're singing to yourself in the Royal Albert Hall.  Maybe I'm writing for the emptiness of cyberspace and the only reverb I get is the echo of my own ill-executed unread sentences.  But who doesn't love a damn blueberry peach pie in the middle of the summer?   We may not be removing brain tumors with our work.

But I would venture to say that we have solved a few heart problems.

Ps. Apologies to my wonderful brother for hitching my wagon to his beautiful song.  I'd be a dumbass if I didn't. 

Christy Turlington is 5'10" and Rufus Wainwright is 5'11"

I'm going to say something radical today.  I'm going to say something I've known for 30 years but have resisted knowing just as long because it really got in the way of my psychoses of perfectionist OCD:  I don't change until I feel worthy of it and until I let go of unrealistic goals.  I won't feel sufficient to change something until I feel, well, sufficient.  I won't feel sufficient until I craft realistic expectations for myself based on my God-given strengths and talents.  E.g., calling myself an old, fat, middle-aged pig is not going to result in my becoming Christy Turlington. Ever. And Christy Turlington is a Super Model.  She's 5'10".  She's a genetic anomaly. Not a realistic goal.  I bet she doesn't even poop. 

I think that's why the contestants on the show the Biggest Loser never keep the weight off.  Shoot, they've been trying to gain the prestige of the moniker "Biggest Loser."  Uh, yeah, no thanks.

I won't lose weight, tighten my abs, stop drinking 2 drinks instead of 1, start doing more yoga, learn German or start treating the kids and Jeff with more love and gentle, understanding kindness until I do the same for myself.   I'll just keep treating them the same way I treat me: with a mixture of scorn and contempt,  pity and shame for being such an insufficient insert noun here.

This concept of sufficiency has recently come to light for me. Sufficiency and perfectionism cannot coexist.  Additionally sufficiency and shame cannot either.  The idea that I can carry sufficiency to the shittiest possible outfit, hair-day, plight, misbehaving child, etc. and stick a feather in it and call it "good enough" has just opened up my heart and my brain to a whole 'nother way of living.

I'm still digesting it.

Good enough.  Hm.  Who knew?

The reason that this has come to my attention has to do with Henry's grace prayer.  Elliot's, too.  If they get interrupted while reciting them, they start over from the beginning.  As you can imagine, this can make for some cold food by the time we get around to finishing grace as well as settling the various spatial violation disputes that arise and then, finally, on to the actual business of dinner.

I remember doing something similar when I practiced violin.  I would start from the beginning of a piece.  So I'd be great at the first 8 measures where it would invariably get more complicated and I'd start to make mistakes.  So I'd go back to the beginning and start over, get to the same place and again flub up. Of course I would lose heart after playing the same shit for 20 minutes and invariably give up the entire endeavor.  I'd go to school and make just enough mistakes to end up in the back of the first violin section-where I stayed.   I arrived at the somewhat erroneous conclusion that I just wasn't very good.  Not at violin or any other thing I ventured.  After all, 8 measures in,  I always tanked.  When really what it was was basically a flawed method of practice.  I didn't need to practice the 8 measures I knew.  I needed to painstakingly and slowly go through note by note what I didn't know.  Instead of wasting precious time going back to the beginning, I could have just learned to stink at stuff more gracefully.  Pick up where I left off and just keep going. Preferably in the basement away from the other 7 members of my household.

The interesting thing about this is the following:  I came away from this and all other academic situations with the understanding that I just didn't have the X factor.  When in reality, I didn't because the X factor was not something that is assigned at birth.  It's not JUST God-given.  The X factor is the mixture of talent plus a belief in oneself that one could practice and get better at something.   Then, of course, there is the business of the thousands of hours of practice that follow.  Being awesome at something is predicated on being okay with not being good at it in the beginning but instead just plain old good enough to learn it.  Good enough. Sufficient to withstand the burden of making countless mistakes while slogging through it.

But fragile egos are fragile because they're not resilient not because they're not big.  Resilience means you can take it if you suck because you're already enough.  Worthiness is off the table.  You were sufficient before you woke up in the morning.  Sufficient with a zit on your forehead. Sufficient with bad breath. Sufficient.  Sufficiency breeds resilience. Resilience breeds feelings of sufficiency. You see where I'm going with this.   It's not self esteem either.  It's much bigger than that.

Therein lies the rub. The belief that one is sufficient regardless of accomplishment becomes foundational for learning. More specifically, it's foundational for surviving the rigors of practice. And being okay when you suck. And being okay with starting from measure 8 if that's where you made a mistake.  Just cover the ground of the entire piece.  Focus on the difficult areas.  Take it from the top and string it all together, sure.  But do it only when the challenging bits are untangled, messily and kinked as they may have ended up.

We went to see Rufus Wainwright Saturday night. Yes he is uniquely imbued with monstrous talent.  He went to Interlochen so I am quite sure that he also learned to practice his ass off---for years.  He screwed up the first song about 10 measures in.  He restarted it from the top and made a similar misstep at the same place.  But he kept going the second time.

You could almost hear him say it as he shrugged his shoulders "eh, good enough." Then he joyfully completed his song. The rest of the set was not entirely mistake free, either. But it was masterful, beautiful and real. 

Like he said, "eh...good enough."