RESPONSIBILITIES

Do you know how long it has been since I have spent my morning like this?

Saturday morning, I sat at a cafe table outside with a mug of coffee and my Fortune Cookie journal. It is the first time I have cracked open that journal in months and months. It is the first time I have sat with myself, enjoying the solitude of one at a cafe table, in months and months. I will not say this is a return to normal. There is no normal, only habit. My habitual routines of before the pandemic got placed into a cocktail shaker where it was shaken and then strained over ice. I thought maybe the Saturday morning routine had gotten lost in the straining part. It still might be; this felt like a test run. I went to a new place with ample outdoor seating, but cringed and shrunk up into a ball every time someone walked by my table. Which was often because it was one of those areas where people are out walking or running in the mornings.

The prompt was something about integrity and bravery being displayed on a billboard and I wrote about the pandemic and masks. I might be a bit rusty.

I am for sure a bit of crank pot.

Public interactions turn me into an unstable nuclear core, vibrating from the strain of keeping myself from violently shaking some people while yelling “WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?!?!” But that would require getting close enough to touch them. I honestly thought that my current rageyness was, in part, due to a lack of sleep. I am not sleeping well. There’s tossing and turning, throwing blankets off and pulling them back up. I wake up with some sort of numb digit, sometimes it is one whole leg that has disappeared or disconnected itself from my body. I would wake up in pain. So I finally broke down and bought myself a new mattress. I used some of my rage for fuel to haul my old mattress off of my bed and drag the new one onto my bed frame. Maneuvering bulky items in a small space without wrecking that space takes just as much finesse as it does brute force and I did it. All by myself. Because Michael only has one good arm. The new mattress is nice and I am no longer waking up with missing limbs or pain, but I am still tossing and turning and throwing blankets off only to pull them back on the bed. The anger inside my body is persistent.

The angry eyes I have been looking out at the world with are my eyes. My responsibility. -Sarah Blondin

My anger is formed from loss and grief. It is fueled by a sense of helplessness to effect good changes. It festers in the knowing that we could do so much better than this and it blazes with the idea that at least one person on that lost and grief list would help me find a way to channel all of it into something useful. And that makes me even more angry. These angry eyes are my eyes, my responsibility. I can meet my anger head on with understanding, patience and kindness. I can tell those who attempt to egg-on that anger that they are unwelcome here. I can not control the behavior of others, but I can control my reaction to their behavior. I can flip the tone from positive to negative. I can rotate my view from disparaging to hopeful.

I’m healthy and strong.

I have a job.

My family is healthy.

We all have safe sound roofs over our heads.

We are fortunate.

MANAGMENT

Danger stickers

5 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Danger stickers"

I have mostly stopped posting news articles about the daily atrocious behavior of this administration to my Facebook timeline. Some of you who agree with my views may have the impression that I have given up or I'm not angry. Oh...I'm angry. I'm angry a whole lot of things: gun laws (as in we do not have any and the human population has shown that they're too stupid to own a gun), tax reform that's going to make it even harder for young adults to pay for college and graduate school, the constant threat of so many people losing their health care, outrage at the men accused of sexual harassment and the lack of outrage over a president that sexually harasses and is generally horrible to women, the Russians, the science denial and now...the elephants. All of it makes my belly burn with rage. I think it's the hypocrisy of everything that frustrates me the most, particularly with the sexual harassment cases. One of the worst men notorious for sexual harassment and the general awfulness in how he treats women is currently sitting in the white house as acting president. 

Women voted for that man. I can't see the logic in it and it hurts my brain to try to figure it out.

This country is pretty ugly right now. We were watching Sarah Silverman's I love you America on Hulu recently. She was talking about all the sexual harassment cases to come out and how we need this to happen even though it is painful and ugly. She said it was like excising a tumor. I felt that her words applied to everything happening in America right now. We are in the process of excising so many different kinds of tumors and it is ugly and it is messy. I know from personal experience because one of my research jobs involved removing tumors from mice so we could study them. It was the worst part of that job and that job, in itself, was awful. America has some pretty ugly awful tumors that have been festering for some time like sexual harassment and racism and just general hate for the sake of hate. These tumors are not easy to remove because they have become twisted into the infrastructure of America with filopodia reaching deep. We have to be prepared that excising these kinds of tumors is going to be difficult and painful and we might not even get all of it in this go around.

Through all of it, I have been wondering what roll I play in the ugliness of today's America. The Cabbage loves watching that show called Brain Games and we watch episodes while eating dinner some times. On one episode, a man dressed up in a suit and tie and hung out at a mall with camera man and mic. He told people he was with the National Geographic News and then he would ask a question like "The congress just passed a bill that would limit people in the poverty level to one child. What do you think about this?" None of the people he talked to questioned the source of information or whether or not this was even true information. They went right on in to outrage mode. I looked over at Michael and said "the first thing I would have asked for before answering any of his questions was for sources." This is how rumors and hearsay become 'news', but because the man is wearing a suit and tie and says he's from the National Geographic News, people felt they could trust what he was saying. Then it dawned on me what it was that I could possibly do to help with removing America's tumors.

My job is to question everything and encourage others to question everything. I can post factual news stories, but it doesn't do any good if the people who needs to read them are not reading them. And those people do not trust my news source. So I need to encourage them to question everything they hear or read. Look it up! Do your research! Don't rely on Facebook feeds for your news. Don't take my word for it or your BFF's word for it. YOU do the research. My second job is to be compassionate to others even if that other person makes it so hard to be compassionate to. I think that's the hardest job, but the one that will pay off the most. It is my hope that compassion and kindness becomes more contagious than hating people because of their skin color, religion, or sexual orientation. It is my hope that this compassion and kindness leads to empathy and respect.

Most of all, I want this country to heal.   

LOVE THURSDAY

I wanted to punch Tuesday in the face. I'm not going to sugar coat or pretend like I didn't get ragey. I got ragey. It started with getting my windshield replaced. A rock hit my windshield back in December. I've been watching a crack slowly creep it's way from one side of the windshield to the other, right at eye level. Every time I'd get in my car for the last two months, I've had a nice little knot settle in the pit of my stomach and I could swear that I could hear the glass cracking. Finally tax money came in and I scheduled the glass repair company to come to my workplace to replace the windshield. I received a call just a few minutes before that scheduled time from the glass place asking me if I could bring my car into the shop. Like right now. So I drove twenty minutes, waited for about forty five minutes for them to replace the windshield, argued over the price because they had tried to charge me the fee for coming to me, and drove twenty minutes back to work.

Once back at my desk, I was greeted with an email from the realty company that I was going through to rent a condo for our vacation in June. The realtor, Kylee, said that the unit I had already put a down payment on was no longer available, but they had this other unit for $66.60 more. The more I thought about this, the angrier I got. I could take that other unit and pay a little bit more. I mean $66.60 isn't a huge price jump, but now I was distrustful of this company. I could clearly see an email coming to me next month saying "hey...that unit you booked for $66.60 more than the unit you first booked is no longer available. But here's another unit for $200 more!" So I immediately went into must-fix-vacation mode and started looking into other options. I made some inquiries and I'm still waiting to hear back, but by golly! I am not paying more money for that condo! 

Then things at work got irritating and I spent an hour waiting for tech support to call me back, which they never did. And because I'd left work in the middle of the day to get my windshield replaced, I had to stay a little later at work. I sat at my desk and stewed in silence. Tuesday had just made me the angriest of angries. Finally, I made my way home. I walked in the front door and Michael and Josephine where on the couch. Josephine's head popped up and Michael looked at her and asked "who's that, Josephine?". Her little nub of a tail started wagging and my heart lifted a little. I told Michael about all the things of the day with Josephine tucked under my arm. Then I kissed Michael and we made jambalaya and spent the evening on the couch with the dog. At one point I looked at Michael, Josephine chewing on her stuffed turtle between us, and I said "this makes everything better." And it did. 

I am not a person that comes home raging about the little inconveniences of my day. When I do, it's nice to come home to someone who can listen with empathy. And when I apologized for being gripey, Michael said "It's OK. Not every day can be rainbows and lollipops." Playing a round of fetch with Josephine didn't hurt either. No. Not every day can be rainbows and lollipops, but it certainly can end with rainbows and lollipops. The next morning I got in my car and looked clearly through the front windshield without a knot in my gut. I also had plan for how to fix our vacation and have emailed Kylee to request a refund on my deposit. I erased Tuesday with a better Wednesday. 

Happy Love Thursday. May this day be better than yesterday and yesterday better than the day before.

ANGER MANAGEMENT

I've been lugging around this bucket full of anger for a while now. Occasionally I'll plop it down hard enough for it slosh out all over everything, but despite all the sloshing, it still remains pretty full. I thought if I distanced myself from the source of the anger that the bucket of anger would eventually evaporate. I think this theory is working, but the bucket is still pretty heavy and I'm getting really tired of lugging it around. It's a pointless emotion particularly when there's nothing I can do or say to make that person understand that their words are hurtful. It's complicated to write about and easier to just remove myself from direct line of sight. 

The other night Michael was putting me to bed and he was asking me questions. "Are you tired?" "Yes." "Are you sad?" I hesitated wondering if I should speak the truth and thinking that it was good that these were all yes or no type questions. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I have never been able to talk and cry at the same time. That physical act closes up my throat so that nothing larger than a squeak can escape. I worried about this after I volunteered to give Dad's eulogy. I can still hear the break of my voice as I neared the end, no longer able to contain the bubble of a sob that had been resting just under the surface. I finally replied "yes". Yes, I am sad. 

There's that scene in the original Cheaper By the Dozen where one of the younger boys is sitting on the front porch crying. The two oldest girls come home and they ask him what's wrong and he just wails "Oh Andy, our Daddy's dead!". It get's me every time and it's just playing in a loop in my head. "Oh Andy, our Daddy's dead." And I am sad. My Dad's never going to call me up in the middle of a day and say "hey! I'm in the lobby. Let's go get something to eat". I'm never going to hear him tell me about driving a fancy new Cadillac across Texas or where ever.  I'm never going to be cleaning out my car and come across a bag of roasted peanuts that he'd stashed in there for me to find later.  

My sadness is a valid emotion. It's OK to be sad, but it's not OK for me to carry around this bucket of anger. It serves no purpose. It's heavy and those times it sloshes out, it makes a mess. Also, it's starting to smell bad. I'm ready to just leave the bucket in that corner of my basement I never go into because the spiders have taken over and well...the basement's just gross. Then I remember that the basements on my list of things to take care of this year. Eventually I will have to go into that corner of the basement. But I will go in prepared. Rubber gloves and pants tucked into my shoes prepared. 

I'll clean it up then.

THANKFUL FRIDAY

The voices of negativity, complaint and anger have been swirling around me all week. Some of those voices are from others, but some of those are also coming from inside my own head. Honestly those voices have been buzzing around for longer than a week. I've been hearing them for quite a while now. I just think that with Dad's passing I've realized that I've had enough. The second stage of grief is anger and I've tumbled right on past denial straight to it. I am not angry at Dad or even at the disease that took him. I understand all of that. It's not like he was driving while intoxicated, playing chicken with a train or performing careless gun cleaning acts. I'm angry at other things. Circumstances. Reactions. People not behaving the way I would behave in this or that situation. What's worse is that when I hear some complaint or piece of negativity, I glom onto it and feel the need to respond in kind. I'm falling into old yucky habits. 

Yesterday, as I sat stewing over something I suddenly realized what I was missing. Compassion and patience. I'd tossed those two things aside and into the Goodwill pile ready for donation. I need to have compassion to those who have their own way of reacting and behaving. Even if it's not my way. Isn't this something we all learned in preschool? So, I told myself to have some compassion and some patience. Suddenly I wasn't stewing any more and I felt a little lighter. Such a simple epiphany, but one to be thankful for certainly. It made me feel inspired enough to pull out a complaint free bracelet. I also see a salt bath in my future this weekend. 

I have many things to be thankful for this week. We ate green beans fresh from the garden. The weather has dropped from what people around here call sweltering (90) to an easy 85. I have ridden the scooter every day. But the thing I am most thankful for this week is you. The kindness and words that you've sent to me and my family do not go unnoticed. Thank you. Here's to a restorative weekend and a truly Thankful Friday.