Semi-Circular Ramblings of an Over-Anxious Mind

I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time.  I’ve done it before but it’s been years.  At this exact moment as I type this, I am in the middle of an anxiety attack.  For the first time in a while, I am going to describe exactly how I am feeling in this moment.  As I said, I have done this before and found it to be particularly helpful in the moment because it gives my racing mind something steady to focus on.  I’m focusing on descriptive words, sentence structure and punctuation – all things that have established rules to guide me as my heart races and my thoughts reel.

 If I can give all you lucky people who have never had the displeasure of a panic attack a visual of what the inside of my mind looks and sounds like to me, just imagine a video tape on fast-forward with sound.  Normal orderly thoughts become a confused, speedy jumble of nonsense.  I’d always imagined smoking crack would produce a similar feeling but those who’ve done it once or twice tell me it feels much better than that, which is why peeps get hooked on it - and quick!  There’s no danger here of that.  Being high for the first time at the age of seventeen introduced me to a heightened sensation of anxiety that I wish I had never felt to begin with because now it’s stuck in my repertoire of feelings, forever staining my nervous system like a herpes of the mind.  And as Eddie Murphy once said about herpes, “You keep that shit forever, like luggage.”

Despite my current temporary break from the outside physical world, actually more due to my irrational fear of having a panic attack while out and about alone, I actually haven’t had a full blown attack in a while.  I have mini-attacks, fleeting moments of panic that come out of the blue and usually leave just as suddenly as they come.  The one I’m having right now has a direct cause: too much caffeine.

A long time ago, I figured out that I do much better when I don’t consume excessive amounts of caffeine.  I didn’t actually think I had been up until that point.  But then it hit me – my system changed and the two cups of regular coffee in the morning had become an excessive amount for my nervous system to handle.  So I switched to one cup in the morning and one cup in the late afternoon.  That worked….until it didn’t.

I could never consider a daily life that did not begin with coffee.  Perish the thought!  I switched to reduced-caffeine coffee and for a very long time that worked – actually, it still does for the most part – at least while I’m in seclusion, anyway.  Well, last week the supermarket had my brand of choice on sale – only it didn’t include the reduced-caffeine kind, only the regular blend.  I hesitated.  Coffee is expensive.  Ultimately, I couldn’t pass up the great bargain that it was.  I rationalized that I still had some half-caff at home and could change up once in a while and it would be okay.  And it was…over the weekend when I was not alone and could easily drown out the thoughts that can sometimes spin out of control when no one else is around to keep me grounded firmly in the reality of the present moment.

Yesterday, I didn’t take any chances and had my usual half-caff.  This morning, feeling extra groggy and knowing that half-caff wouldn’t provide me enough boost for all the cleaning I had planned to do today, I had a cup of regular blend.  I am over-caffeinated!  And now, my heart is racing, I’m shaking, and if I wasn’t typing this right now, my head would still feel like it was spinning.  This process is helping me tremendously!  I’m wondering how I can somehow incorporate this exercise into something I can do when I leave the house to take a walk.  If I start to feel panicky, what can I do to calm my mind and refocus it to something constructive?  I know for me, simply doing this in my head does not work.  My thoughts race beyond my control without some literal outlet for them.  If I am with my husband, I can describe to him the feelings and sensations as they run through me along with the thoughts that I’m thinking and it helps so much.  I know I can do deep breathing – and I do!  Without those deep breaths, I am apt to hyperventilate and pass out (it’s happened before).  That’s a scary thing when you’re home alone with no one nearby to come over and help (been there, done that). The thought of this happening when I’m out somewhere alone, well – that’s a chance I am not ready to take just yet.

Maybe I should get tape recorder (or its modern digital equivalent) to walk around with.  If I wear the hands-free ear piece for my cell phone, maybe people won’t think I’m muttering to myself as I walk down the street talking myself out of a panic attack.  Maybe I’ll talk about myself in the third person…just in case….or is that even crazier?

While I’ve had problems with anxiety since the age of seventeen, it hasn’t always ruled my life.  I have had lots and lots of years when I didn’t have a single attack and never even thought about the possibility that I could have one.  Those were some really fun years, too.  Some day, I’ll blog about all the times I’ve reinvented myself and the Goya beanery of crazy characters I’ve met along the way.  I refer to those as my “Years of Optimal Confidence” and I sincerely hope those weren’t the last of them because I still have things to accomplish in this life.  It cannot be over now.  Although I have accomplished some things, I have heard myself say things like, “I haven’t done ANYTHING yet!”  Of course, that’s simply not true.  I’ve set out to do things that I had no knowledge of beforehand and researched as best I could to find out how.  I sought out the people who did and asked them how they did it.  These complete strangers became short term mentors and in some cases, colleagues.  And this was all before the internet age!!  Imagine that!

The year I spent as a makeup artist is one example of many in my life as an independent thinker and doer and refuser of all things conventional and normal.  Conformity never worked for me – even when I was a little kid.  I never wanted to be a fairy princess.  I wanted to be Joan of Arc.  I wanted to be the Bionic Woman.  And I sure as shit in the morning didn’t want to be Barbie!

What was the point of all this rambling?  Oh yeah, I was having an anxiety attack and I wanted to write about what that feels like and how my irrational fears have temporarily taken over my life and how that wasn’t always the case.  And oh my, I really do feel much better now!  Semi-circles always do that for me….

Cutting Down the Kudzu

A funny thing started happening to one of our dogs a couple of months after moving into our current home.  Maple began to have episodes of what we could only describe as convulsions, though it was obvious – even to our untrained eyes – that they were not true seizures, as she never lost consciousness or control of her bodily functions.  But just because she didn’t pee on herself, did not mean something terrible and out of our control was not going on.

We noticed these episodes only seemed to happen on the weekends – well, at first anyway.  We’d all be in the backyard and after a little while, Maple appeared to be walking funny, kind of like she was drunk.  Her back side would sort of tip over and her eyes looked all weird and faraway.  Her expression (her face is very expressive for a dog) became one of fear.  She would amble over to me and lean in for support.  She could not lie down on her own without falling over, so we would help her onto a blanket and hold her while her body jerked and twitched.  We tried to soothe her with our words and gentle stroking while she would look up at us as if to say, “What the hell is happening to me?”  It was a sad and terrifying thing to witness….still is.

Since these attacks began in the summer time, coinciding with the onslaught of cicada bugs and their customary shedding of their entire bodies, littering our backyard with heinous looking sheathes, we assumed Maple had been snacking on them and this *had* to be the cause of her bizarre episodes.  This was the only thing that was new, as both of our dogs had roamed freely in this very backyard for the entire six months it took us to get the house into livable condition.  Of course, we took her to the vet after the second attack happened.  Blood work and exam revealed nothing out of the ordinary, except that for a dog of 11 years, her body was in fantastic shape!  Our vet referred us to a vet-neurologist for further (and much more expensive) testing.  My husband and I discussed this at great length and ultimately decided that *if* these tests, which would include CT scans and MRI’s of her brain, both of which would have to be done under general anesthesia, were to tell us that our poor old gal had a (God forbid!) brain tumor or something equally life threatening, then what the hell would we do with that info?  She’s eleven!  Why make her golden years miserable with tests and treatments that may just cut her life that much shorter?  Especially since she seems fine, like her old puppy self, in between these episodes….so, we just watch for any other signs of illness while we try to solve the mystery of “why”.

Once the cool fall weather moved in, if our cicada theory held, there should not have been any more attacks and for several weeks there weren’t any.  Then she had one on a weekday; it was her fifth attack.  The only thing these attacks had in common was the backyard.  Now, I do try to watch them in the backyard, but sometimes I have other things to do and I was not watching to see if Maple was eating anything in the backyard that particular day.  After the episode, I went out to the backyard to look around.  What I was looking for, I couldn’t say exactly – just *something*.  I did see that one of the dogs had thrown up and there were some green leaves in it.  For those of you who have dogs, you know it is not unusual for your dog to once in a while eat “salad greens” and make themselves hurl.  It’s just part of a dog’s life to clear out their system once in a while.  “A-ha!” I thought, spying a whole leaf still in tact in the pile of vomit.  (Sorry for the graphic visuals).  It occurred to me that perhaps one of the many vines and shrubs that grow like weeds in our backyard may be the culprit.  There was a berry bush, which, as we are all told in childhood not to eat decorative berries because they are poison, that I zoomed in on.  It also had all kinds of nasty, spiky thorns on it.  Who would plant such a thing?  I donned my gardening gloves, along with a pair of puncture resistant (ha!) latex gloves beneath, and cut that sucker down with my handy dandy gardening saw.  Perhaps with proper care, this thing would have looked more like the bush it was meant to be but I tell you the thing was well over seven feet tall by the time I got to thinking it could possibly be the poison behind poor Maple’s convulsive episodes.  Down it went.  That was almost two weeks ago.  I thought we were safe until this past Sunday.

We were out walking in the early afternoon sunshine when all of a sudden, Maple started to list sideways.  “Uh-oh, here we go again.”  My husband had to carry her the rest of the way home.  This is why I don’t walk my dogs solo.  Maple is almost as big as me and at a gangly sixty pounds, really hard for me to lift without causing us both extreme discomfort.  “Dammit!” I said angrily.  It hadn’t been the spiky berry bush thingy after all.

I decided everything growing in the backyard must go.  Now, those of you who know what kudzu   is, know that it is a rampantly growing ground covering weed which can quite easily get out of control and suffocate pretty much anything else that has the misfortune of being anywhere near it.  I read a horror story about kudzu just this past summer in which the kudzu actually murdered people and pets.  Kudzu is not known to grow in the Northeastern United States, so I’m pretty sure it is not growing in my backyard.  But there are all kinds of unidentifiable (to me) things growing back there and any one of them could be causing my dog to periodically convulse and generally scare the crap out of us.  It’s all kudzu to me.

As I do my solitary back breaking work of cutting down all the kudzu, I ponder all the other ‘kudzu’ in my life – all those thoughts and feelings that seem to grow rampant inside of me, suffocating the ‘real’ me; the kudzu that prevents my own growth and I know that just as it is time to cut down the kudzu in my yard, it is also a good time to cut out all of the kudzu in my life.  May the coming New Year be kudzu-free for us all…

Help! It's Stuck in My Craw and I Can't Get it Out!!!

Okay, I’ve got something stuck in my craw and I need your help to unstuck it because it’s becoming a real pain in the ass, which makes it hard to sit down and work on my NaNoNovel.  So, here goes…

I had this on and off a zillion times boyfriend type dude in my life during high school and then again in my very early twenties – let’s call him Douche Nozzle, or DN for short. We were more like friends with benefits, I suppose, but really, really good friends.  Problem was, he was always a jerk to me and treated me in a not-so-nice way.  He was kind of smarmy and cheap as the day is long.  He never took me anywhere or bought me anything, which would have been fine except that he reserved those things for his “official” girlfriend who, by all accounts, was also not exclusive to DN.  Got that?  The worst thing he did to me was betray my trust and completely humiliate me, which was why the friendship ended for good.  Kaput! Finis!  That was around 1993.

Now, all these years later, that stuff is so far behind me, I almost had a hard time remembering exactly what the situation was. Really, it’s so unimportant now that I don’t care.  The only thing that still resonates in me is that feeling of betrayal and hurt that I automatically associate with DN.  He’s been fairly easy to avoid all these years but now, thanks to the way-post-high school love fest going down on Facebook, everyone’s friending everyone.  I have so far chosen to ignore his friend requests and not responded to messages he has sent me – save for one, in which he wished me a happy birthday last month.  I was feeling the love of all the good wishes sent by other friends so I decided to simply thank him for remembering and reiterated my wish to not be friends with him again.  I didn’t go into details about why because he should know, he was there and knew what he was doing when he was doing it.  I don’t harbor anything ill or otherwise, I simply am not interested in his friendship at all – no matter who among my friends is now his FB friend.

You’d think that would be the end of it.  But then he messaged me back, wanting to know why I didn’t want to be his friend.  I contemplated a response, ran the idea by my trusted friend, confidant and keeper of my secrets – my husband.  He said, “Nah, why bother?  Just leave it alone and maybe he’ll just go away.”

Today I received a loooooong rambling letter on FB from DN.  He’s basically scratching his head wondering why I can’t forgive him for the past and just go back to being friends again like nothing ever happened.  Boy, as I write all this out, I’m starting to wake up and smell the crazy!  Sounds a little nuts, but he’s really not.  He’s just a DN who’s forever stuck in the past. 

So I ask you, my people, should I explain it to him in kindergarten language why I do not want him in my life anymore?  Or should I continue to ignore him?  Of course, the third option is that I can just block him, which I could swear I did months ago when he first sent a friend request.  What a stupid thing to occupy my brain space during NaNoWriMo!!!

My 9/11

Just when I think enough time has passed since the tragedy of September 11^th, 2001 the date comes around again and I, as I have on every anniversary since then, have the TV on.  I always watch the reading of the names. I didn’t know any of them personally, but I don’t think that matters so much as knowing the people who did know them and loved them still miss them terribly each day and always will.

I’ve never written about my experiences of that day, mostly because I, not having been down in lower Manhattan on that particular day, simply didn’t feel right about expressing my own sorrow over the events, because I was safe and so were my loved ones.  But I was deeply affected as I’m sure every American – no, every human being – was.  So here’s what my 9/11 was like.

It was a beautiful, sunny day in early September.  I remember that I had to meet up with my mother in the morning so she could pick up her car which had been repaired at the dealership where my now husband worked at the time.  J and I were not speaking to each other on that morning because we had a major blow-out the night before.  I don’t even remember what it was about.  I remember that I was blow-drying my hair straight that morning because the humidity was low that day and perfect for smoothing out my normally frizzy mane.  I had the radio tuned to my favorite station, Q-104.3, the local classic rock station here in NYC.  They were playing a song by Boston called Foreplay, an instrumental piece which normally flows right into their song Long Time.  I noticed at the end of Foreplay, the music stopped altogether. It was 8:45am.  There was a long pause before the DJ broke in.  I was expecting him to say something about “technical difficulties” but no.  What he said just didn’t make sense.  “A plane just hit the World Trade Center.”

What?  I put down the brush and blow-dryer and went to the TV.  I managed to get some news program, I don’t remember what channel.  But there it was: a giant smoking hole in one tower of the Trade Center. 

“Oh dear God!  Oh dear God!” was all I could say over and over again.  I hurried to get ready and headed over to my mom’s house.   In the car, we listened intensely to 1010 WINS news radio for the latest updates.  We couldn’t believe what kind of freak accident would cause such a thing to happen.  By then, the second plane had already hit.  Freak accidents just don’t happen twice!

After a brief exchange with J at the dealership (naturally by this point, all things were forgiven as we had much bigger worries to deal with), Mom and I headed over to the toy store, which I had opened not quite two years before that day.  I met up with my friend, Gary, who worked across the street from my shop for a local newspaper. I didn’t have any radio reception in the store, which is maddening in a crisis.  We, along with other merchants and neighbors, stood outside in disbelief and exchanged updates, getting whatever info we could from those who still had TV reception.  That’s how we learned the Pentagon was hit and America was under attack.

To say it was the single most frightening day of our lives would be to understate the panic that enveloped us all here in New York that morning.  I thought about all my customers and people I knew who worked down there.  I thought of the few times in my life when I worked in lower Manhattan.  Was I ever grateful that I didn’t work there anymore! 

My mother and I decided that we should gather the family together and just be close and watch and see.  We didn’t know what the rest of the day would bring, only that we needed to be together.  Gary and I hugged and said we would see each other tomorrow.  Being the dark humorist that he his, Gary added, “If there is a tomorrow!”  I slugged him in the arm and called him a jackass.  “Of course I’ll see you tomorrow!”  No one knew what the rest of the day would bring and tomorrow was a very long way off.

By the time we got into the car, the south tower of the World Trade Center had already collapsed.  The streets of Brooklyn were chaotic and difficult to navigate, as parents scrambled to collect their children from schools, people darted everywhere and the air was filled with brown smoke while papers danced crazily overhead.  A trip that should have normally taken only 20 minutes turned into a two hour adventure. 

When we finally made it to my brother’s house in Marine Park, my sister-in-law was doing a fairly good job of hiding her panic from my nephew, who was just three month’s shy of his second birthday and a keen observer of everything.  He took my hand and showed me the picture on the TV, explaining to me how “there was a really, really big fire!”  I just managed to turn his face away in time for him to miss the second tower collapsing.  I couldn’t look away but wanted so badly to run backwards through time, back to when I was a child and my grandmother worked for the NY State Liquor Authority in tower one of the World Trade Center. 

Grandma sometimes took my brother and me to work with her when we had a day off from school. She had seniority and no one in her office ever complained about us being there.  Besides, there were plenty of ways for us kids to be out of the way.  One of our favorite activities was to draw silly pictures and drop them down the mail chute in the hallway next to the elevator bank.  Ah, such carefree days, roaming the halls of the World Trade Center.  Who knew an office building could be so full of wonder!  I don’t remember too much about the observation deck, as the one time Grandma took us up there, my brother got a terrible nosebleed. We turned right around and went back down immediately.  I do remember watching a ticker-tape parade or two from the giant window in Grandma’s boss’s office, including the parade for the 53 hostages who were released from Iran in 1981. Luckily, Grandma’s boss was such a nice old man and didn’t mind sharing his view with us. 

Meanwhile, in Queens, NY on the afternoon of September 11^th, 2001, our cousin lost her long battle with breast cancer.  Somehow word had gotten out to the whole family, despite the fact that no one’s cell phone was working that day. It was very, very sad news.  My mother was very close to her, one of her very few true close friends.  I was so sad for my mom and sad for our cousin’s children who were just growing into adulthood and would miss their mom in so many ways.  Still, the day would be so much worse for so many others.

My sister-in-law was quick to shove a Veggie Tales tape into the VCR, so our sweet little boy wouldn’t have any nightmares that night.  Content in front of the TV, I left my nephew and stepped out onto the stoop for a cry and a cigarette.  It was the first of many solemn reflections I would have that day.  By late afternoon, I began to see bits of paper with burned edges flying overhead and I remember thinking that those papers had once been on someone’s desk in the World Trade Center.  I prayed for the occupants of those desks where those papers had once been.  Prayed that they made it out in time.  I remember seeing Air Force jets flying overhead. That really chilled me to the core, as I couldn’t imagine what sort of mission they were flying into.  I prayed for them, too.

In the early evening, we decided it was okay enough for us to part company.  My mom went home to my dad, who had worked a full day in spite of all the events, and I went home to my apartment.  I had left the windows open that morning.  As I stared in disbelief at the footage on CNN, I began to smell the acrid smoke of burning metal, wood, paper and electrical stuff.  I turned on the light and looked out my bedroom window to realize the wind was blowing the remnants of carnage right into my apartment.  The smoke was brown and I didn’t want to think about what else it contained.  The morbidity of it all was far too great for me grasp with any sanity.  And I cried and cried and cried. 

In the days that followed, we could see the smoking wreckage from the walking path in Bay Ridge, down by Shore Road.  And you could smell it, too.  I’ll never forget that smell.  But what haunted me so for months and months after was the thought of those poor people who were stranded above the where the planes had struck, making their final decisions to either jump or burn alive.  What choice is that to have to make?  The footage of them jumping singly or in pairs holding hands is so deeply etched in my memory that even now as I sit here and write it all out, I cry for them with fresh tears all over again, while in the other room their names are being read aloud by their loved ones.  It would be another year before I could even look at a firefighter without tearing up.

Some time has passed, but these wounds will never heal.   Not for the families of the victims and not for the rest of us who now live in such a drastically different world than the one that existed on September 10^th, 2001.  I will mourn for that world every day for the rest of my life.

Everything’s Coming Up Roses!

Yes, I am singing the song ala Ethyl Merman (I’ve been told I do a pretty good Ethyl). There is a rosebush in my back yard.  I don’t know anything about roses, other than I like ‘em. I’ve never had an actual garden of my own.  Being an apartment dweller up until this past June when my husband and I moved into this old house, the closest I’ve ever had to a garden was a few potted herbs that I managed to keep alive until the inevitable NY heat wave came while we were out of town.  I didn’t know I needed a babysitter for my plants!

The week we moved in here, my newly adopted rosebush was in full glorious bloom and I had roses in every vase I could locate among the stacks of boxes all over the house.  We hadn’t even unpacked our clothes and yet I had beautiful pink roses adorning my dining room table, kitchen windowsills, in the bathroom and the bedroom.  I took this abundance of roses as confirmation that we had indeed made the right move.

Not knowing any better, I thought my lovely rosebush would just keep producing like mad all summer long.  Then July came and the buds died before their bloom along with the few blooms I had left on the bush to keep the garden pretty.  I thought maybe that would be it for the season.  Each day I would sit outside and silently mourn their absence.

Then suddenly the other day what did my eyes see but one tiny bloom right in the middle of my half-dead looking rosebush.  Two days later, the perfectly bloomed beauty has a friend: another tiny bud forming all the way on top of the bush!  Like I said, I don’t know anything about caring for a rosebush.  All I know is that this bush had not been tended to in a very, very long time before I came here and I wasn’t doing too much with it, either.  I know I could research this stuff online and find all the info I would need to learn how not to kill a rosebush.  But today, I simply choose to view my roses as a gift from the great beyond.

Of course, this could just be a coincidence, but my husband received a call yesterday about a job we had always thought he’d be perfect for: teaching automotive skills to young adults.  After thirty years of being a mechanic full time and a front-stoop counselor of sorts to neighborhood teens teetering on the brink of seriously messing up the rest of their lives part time, I think this will be a great match for all of his skills and his big heart.  His interview is next week and we’ve got our fingers crossed that he’ll get the job.

So this week, everything really is coming up roses!

Hapless Days Are Here Again

I really hesitated to post this because of the bad week I’m having.  But being the glutton for punishment that I am, I felt I must.

So this is the week I’m having so far: I finally overcame my ‘comment shyness’ on another blog site and posted a comment un-anonymously without really reading what I wrote before I hit the post button.  Had I done so, I would have realized the way I wrote my comment was totally inappropriate to the discussion at hand and then had the humiliating experience of having my first ‘known’ comment deleted by the administrator.  The explanation being, “Not sure if your intention was political or honest, either way it would end badly.”  Okay, I’ll eat that one, it was stupid of me to just write a comment off the cuff like that (and so unlike me, as well). Great, I’ll eat my crow with a fork, please!

Then this whole health care reform debacle that I’m trying in earnest to understand because I cannot stand all the bickering, either on TV or within my own family.  As I struggle to figure out what exactly I should be reading, I can’t help but feel like a complete nincompoop! For all my talk about how we should all be good informed citizens, I feel I can’t even walk my own talk.  Doh!

 I tried to tune out the world around me and get back to work on one of my stories in progress and only managed to spit out 300 words for the whole week.  This is a great failure to me, after having been on a good roll, letting at least 1200 – 3000 words flow out effortlessly a day for last several weeks. Ay carumba!

One of the more recent changes I’ve made in my life has been to bake my own bread, both for economical and taste reasons.  The other day I attempted a French bread that ran through the whole French bread cycle, according to my Breadman Ultimate and had to put it back on the ‘bake only’ cycle for another 90 minutes after which it was still under baked. What went wrong?  Only the Goddess of the Kitchen knows and she’s not talking to me lately. Oy vey!

So this morning I tried a different recipe.  I was going rogue and planned on using my oven, this time.  Damn that Mark Bittman and his How to Cook Everything book!  There must have been a typo, because I mixed all ingredients according to his “Easy French Bread” recipe and made a big bowl of glue instead.  Was my yeast still good?  I took some from the very same packet I used in the recipe, added some warm water and within mere minutes it was creamy and very much alive.  Okay, not the yeast.  What then?  Ah, must be me!  I once read in the Baking with Julia Child book that sometimes dough just comes out bad no matter what and it could very well be the mood the baker is in.  A-ha!  So it IS me, after all!

Okay, so I decided to vacuum, thinking at least I couldn’t screw that up.  But the joke’s on me since my dogs are both shedding so much that when I brush them I wind up with a ball of fur about the size of another two whole dogs.  I simply can’t keep up with the constant carpet of hair on our hardwoods. I give up!

While vacuuming, I was thinking about my blog space here on PNN; that I should have some kind of theme to my posts other then “Jen Whines about Her Life Ad Nauseam”, and again I am at a loss. And to put the cherry on top of it all, I quite possibly (and unintentionally) may have pissed off HannahBanana with a comment I made on another thread.  EEK!   I am just having a bad week where everything I touch seems to turn to shit and I know it will pass.  Now I think I’ll go soak my head until next week. Calgon take me away!!!!

Summer Fun

It’s been weeks since I’ve posted anything here and I’m starting to get The Guilties.  In order to make amends, I must fill you in what’s been going down in Jen’s World.  Nothing terribly dramatic - no one’s lost a limb or anything, thank goodness.  But I have been keeping myself busy.  I feel like these summer days are flying by in fast forward.  I’m all juiced up on creativity, having really sunk my teeth into a good (I hope) summer novel – my own, which I’ve been steadily working on in earnest.  First draft should be finished by end of August. 

That said, today was a day filled with side-tracks and distractions.  An unexpected visit from a friend this afternoon turned into a full blown barbeque. That was pretty much the whole day of me first serving coffee and cake (he showed up at 2:30 with cake) and then me cooking up side dishes, making salads, etc.  And since he decided to wait for the rush hour traffic to die down, he had my husband take him to the butcher for something to throw on the grill.  It’s now 9 pm and friends are gone, husband is out, dogs are pooped from all the action, the dishes are finally washed, kitchen is clean and I’m totally bummed that I never did get my writing time in.  But hey, he bought the steaks, who was I to argue?

So here I am catching on up on the Big Momma of all distractions for me: the internet.  I haven’t even so much as checked my email more than once a day or posted a status comment on Facebook in days. The TV doesn’t go on until much later in the evening than it usually does.  I didn’t even realize I missed the president speak the other night until the 11 ‘o clock news!  I have been on a serious productive roll these days and I’m actually afraid to come up for air and check my email, as I just know I could spend hours answering posts, checking out Youtube, etc.  Lovely distractions though they are, they do take me away from actual work.

So that’s what’s been new here.  I hope you’re all having a great summer so far.  I’m going to grab another piece of that cake and a cup of tea and launch myself into deep cyberspace.  Tomorrow is another day!

Conversation with my Ego

   I heard the voice of “I can’t” today.  I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away.  It kept whispering in my ear, “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t and even if I did, it would be no good.”  On and on it went. So, finally, I said to the voice, “Look, I realize you are only saying these things to me because you love me and want to protect me from harm.  You want to shelter me so I will not be hurt or embarrassed.  But if I don’t try, I will never know if I can.”

   The voice persisted, “But what if no one likes what I’ve done?”  I told the voice that it would be okay, even if EVERYONE hated it.  The opinions of others are none of my business.  The opinion that matters is mine and I am of the opinion that if I do not act, I will not be happy. "So we, that is, you and I, must make a pact to support each other, no matter what.  There is not much I can do to protect you and still express myself freely.  Therefore, I must let you go." 

“What?!” the voice said in a panic.  "Yes, you heard correctly, you must go to sleep now so that I can get some work done no matter if it is seen as good or bad.  You can support me by going to sleep and I will support you by ignoring your existence.  Fair enough?"

A Rant about Peer Pressure

 My husband and I recently moved to a lovely new neighborhood – a lot nicer than we’re used to.  This is a place where people look out for each other’s well-being.  They do nice things for each other, like knock on your door bearing fresh fruit when they’ve bought one pound of cherries and eight kiwi  too many for their own families to consume.  They go fishing and bring you five pounds of bluefish.  They share, they care, and they ask an awful lot of questions.   Now, I understand the importance of knowing thy neighbor, but can’t we just let the relationship flow at its own pace?  Do I really need to give you a rundown of our families’ nations of origin, our work histories, last place of residence, on and on until I’m waiting for them to ask for a urine sample?  But the one question that EVERYONE asks me all the time, be it neighbor, friend or family, is one that has the potential to erupt from deep inside me a face-melting torrent of obscenities that would have made George Carlin blush, “Why don’t you have a baby?”  As if it’s this season’s can’t miss accessory, get yours today! 

Is this some type of life requirement these people think I’m blowing off like that 10^th grade Urban Mythology class that I believed would be utterly useless in the real world?  This is not a light topic for me or my husband.  The door is not entirely closed on the issue, we’re just comfortable leaving it in the ‘maybe someday’ pile.  Though there was a brief period of time during my late twenties when I did actually feel a physical urge to carry a child in my womb, the timing was off.  I had just opened a business and while I knew I would someday marry the man I was with, we just weren’t ready for all that.  Eventually, the urge passed.  But for what seems like the rest of the planet, that urge isn’t supposed to go away; you’re supposed to nurture it like the child every woman is supposed to want.

I honestly don’t understand the obsession with having a baby at all costs.  Of course, it doesn’t help to have a chorus of people following you around constantly affirming, “You should have a baby!”   Nor does it help that we watch these movies on Lifetime with characters who utter lines such as, “You’re just not a woman until you have a baby.”   I must have an invisible sign on my forehead that reads “Please ask me if I have a baby and then ask me why not”!  I’m talking about random strangers, from the guy in the convenience store to the old lady with lipstick all over her teeth in the produce section at the supermarket.   Enough already!

A note to the baby obsessed out there: calm the hell down already!  I’ve seen the toll this obsession takes on a marriage and the outcome is not always a favorable one even if you do get your wish.  And, please, don’t even get me started on those women who engage in contraception deception.  Lying to your man about birth control because you two are not on the same baby making page is just wrong and completely selfish on your part.

I believe motherhood is a calling that far fewer women organically hear compared to the number of women actually giving birth.  Most people just think it’s just the next thing to do in life.  Well, that’s just unacceptable to me.  Have a better reason than that!  Think carefully about what you honestly feel you have to offer a child throughout their entire life.  If it’s a ‘good’ life filled of stuff that would leave the Joneses wanting, think harder about this decision.  If you want to have a kid because your parents are begging for grandkids, urge them to foster a child or get them a puppy.  And, for the love of God, if you’re out there somewhere wanting to have a kid because you’re ‘just dying’ to see what it would look like, please go have your tubes tied – immediately, if not sooner!

Personal Observation of the Day

I just realized something about myself today that may help to explain why I feel like an alien.  (Note: it’s not the antennae – that’s just genetic).  No, it’s something deep inside that I’m not sure anyone else is afflicted with.

I’m an ‘every-other-day’ kind of person – meaning I like to work myself to the point of exhaustion one day and laze around the next.  I guess you could compare it to those ‘weekend warriors’ who sit at a desk seven days a week and then rebuild their houses room by room on weekends.  My ‘off’ days used to plague me with guilt, constantly berating my lack of productivity.  But why should I feel guilty when everything that needs getting done actually does get done, albeit on my own personal time clock and in my own unique way?

The fact is I’m just not a linear person.  I tend to think and act in circular patterns, often in concentric circles when various unrelated tasks are laid before me.  It’s becoming clear to me that this may have caused a serious blockage in my creative pipes.  I love to think and I love to write.  However, when I must think up a story from beginning to end, I find the task unbearably overwhelming.  And then I write nothing for days, weeks, months.

My most ambitious work to date is a novel, which I started about a third of the way into the story, went back and wrote the beginning, then the end.  Somehow I’m not bothered by the fact that I now find myself stuck at three significant plot points simultaneously.

Perhaps now that I’ve relieved myself of the burden of guilt for not being a ‘linear type’, I can relax and just let my creative juices flow, no matter how circuitous.

I’m curious if anyone else feels this way, or am I really an alien being after all?

Two Lines for Santa

           I think it might have been the last time my brother and I were to pose for a picture with Santa Claus.  Or it could just be the only such memorable occasion.  The overcast sky of early December cast its usual gloom over downtown Brooklyn as we – that is, my mother, my big brother and me – rushed up the escalator at the A & S department store.  I remember the distinct squeak of my black patent leather shoes and the weight of my dressy winter coat over my velvet dress, the color of which eludes me as I write this so many decades later.

            A few twists and turns through the infant/layout department, then children’s wear and finally Santa’s workshop, which was nothing more than a paltry space containing one big chair, one large man in a red fat suit and the kind of camera where the flash was held up on a long stick when a picture was to be taken.   Not that I could see any of that.  What I did see was one awfully long line to see Santa.  Even at such a young age, Santa’s cover had already been blown.  I knew he wasn’t real and I knew it didn’t matter what I asked him for.  Christmas morning would bring with it whatever toy my mother could afford: one for me, one for big brother.  I could even find out which toy it would be, as my brother was quite adept at finding hidden treasure.  At the time I thought he was pretty crafty.   Looking back I realize my mother’s choice of hiding places in our small apartment were limited to her bedroom closet, top shelf.

            Five minutes after joining the line we were bored silly and just wanted the whole thing to be over and done with.  It was hot and we were not allowed to sit on the floor because of the dress-up clothes.  So we stood there and waited, periodically shuffling forward a few inches. 

After some time, it became clear to me that there was another line for Santa which was parallel to ours and appeared to end miles ahead of where we stood in our line.  I enquired of my mother, who ignored me and then to my big brother, who knew pretty much everything else and he promptly told me to shut up.  I was terribly confused as to why my question would not be answered, so I asked again.  Nothing. I protested, “But the other line is so much shorter!  Why can’t we go on that line?  Look how fast it’s moving!”  No reply. And again, louder.  Finally, my mother scowled down and shushed me angrily.  Incredible!  How could they not see the logic?  What could I do?  I shut up and resumed the dreadful wait, purposely squeaking my shoes together - scuffs be damned!

Suddenly we were next in line and Santa’s whole stage was finally visible in my low line of sight.  It wasn’t what I saw that fazed me, but it did answer my earlier question.  There before my very eyes were two Santa’s identical in every way except for the color of their skin.  I was angry, “That’s it?  That’s the big deal?  We could have gotten out of here hours ago!”  I huffed and pouted on the white Santa’s lap, the one with the longer line, and wished I were the sort of child who could pee on a stranger’s lap at will.   Fortunately for Santa petulance wasn’t in my personal repertoire of childhood behaviors.

On our subway ride home, curiosity persisted in me.  I needed to know why.  “Why Mommy?  Why couldn’t we take a picture with the other Santa?”   She sighed heavily and said plainly, “Because Grandpa wouldn’t understand.”  Something in the weary look on her face told me to just leave it at that.  And thirty some-odd years later, I am still no closer to answering the question of “why”.