THE PARABLE OF THE WREATH MAKER

Last year, my favorite store was selling a Christmas wreath for almost $500 and I got so mad that I yelled out some expletives. First of all I immediately fell in love the wreath. Of course I fell in love the wreath. It was adorable and whimsical and sophisticated. It represented everything I want to be in life. But that price tag made me furious. Now, to be fair, my favorite store is known for ridiculous price tags. I only shop there when they’re having 50% of already sale item sales. Even then, I am meticulous about my purchase choices. This Christmas wreath sold out before it even had chance to go on sale and once again I was outraged that someone was wiling to fork over that much money for a holiday wreath.

The second thing that made me mad about this wreath was that I knew I could make it. I could make it for way less than their selling price. Knowing that I could make the wreath was annoying because while I can do crafty, I don’t go out of my way to be or do crafty. If someone dumps a bunch of craft supplies out in front of me and tells to create, I will do so, but I don’t want to purchase the supplies, store the supplies or deal with any kind of mess. Crafts are messy. This is why my holiday wreath remains the same for two or three years before I decide it is time for something new.

By the time I saw the store wreath, it was already too close to the holiday to bother. So instead, I started doing the thing that I usually avoid. I started hoarding holiday craft supplies so I could make this wreath for this year. I told Nurse Jenn about the wreath while we were out at the zoo and she mentioned that she wanted to make Yule wreaths with dried orange slices and greenery. Then she suggested we gather at her place on Sunday to make wreaths. Sunday afternoon, I sat at Jenn’s table with a group of lovely people and we chatted about all kinds of things while we built wreaths. It was lovely and I left so much glitter at Jenn’s house. I wanted to build a live wreath, but I’m allergic to all of the things. I did make a small live wreath when I had finished assembling my own, but gave it to Jenn because I can’t hang it in my house. My eyes and hands were itching by the time I left.

It was all worth it and I am so proud of my wreath. It is not identical to the store one. I accidentally bought two church like houses, but went with them anyway. And I think mine turned out better than the store version. I bought a wreath off the sales rack for $5. I found multicolored bottle brush trees 6 for a dollar. I went a little overboard with those trees. I did not ten boxes (I left a whole bunch at Jenn’s).Two. I needed two boxes, but whatever. The most money I spent was on the little houses and I purchased all three for $15. Maybe $2 for snow. The lights I already had. So for $32, I made a wreath that some hoity toity store wanted to sell me for $500. It would have cost me $24 if I hadn’t gone overboard with the bottle brush trees.

I love a good deal and I love my current distractions from reality.

MORE THINGS THE INTERNET THINKS I SHOULD BUY

In this episode of Things the Internet Thinks I should Buy, I bring you food mills, underwear, boots, and cat sweaters.

Let’s start with the underwear. That’s the most fun because those ads contain women in underwear and there you’ll be, harmlessly scrolling along in social media land, when suddenly there’s just a big lace clad butt picture or some woman adjusting her boobs in her bra. Sometimes there’s music playing in the ad. It has definitely made harmless scrolling a not safe for work activity. I do though appreciate the reminder that I could do better for myself in the underwear department. My underwear is not functional or sexy. It is a layer of fabric between my naked body bits and my pants and that’s about it. Maybe ‘buying nicer underwear’ should go on my New Year’s resolution. Right now and off and on since August, I’ve been just randomly bleeding and ruining underwear like in the days of my distant youth when the menstrual cycle was a new thing to me. So, I don’t really feel like buying anything nice until I’ve got this all figured out. I did see my gynecologist this week and we’ve made a plan to figure it out and with fingers crossed, I might be normalish by the new year. Until then, I don’t deserve nice things.

That’s not true. I am deserving of nice things.

The next ad I keep getting is for a certain brand of boots. I love this brand and love the boots. I mean I desperately want these boots, but ever time I click on the ad, I see that they are sold out of my size plus they’re not cheap. I’m almost willing to overlook the price because I know this brand and I know they’ll be comfortable, well-made boots. But I can’t overlook the size. If I’m going to spend that kind of money on boots, I should buy the right size. So now when I see this ad, it makes me sad. The same is true whenever I get the ad for a spectacular space cat sweater. First of all, the sweater is not my usual fashion choice. It’s brightly colored with a giant cat in a spacesuit gazing into the distance on the front. I don’t know why I love it so much, but I do. I want an oversized version of this sweater to wear with my leggings and the boots that they don’t have in my size. The sweater is not expensive, but the website is scammy. Like super scammy. I am guaranteed to loose all of my money and identities if I attempt to purchase this sweater. So I need some legitimate company to sell this sweater and I need those boots in my size please.

I believe those are reasonable requests.

Finally (not really…I get a lot of ads), I keep getting ads for food mill/composters. They’re like trashcans but only for food waste and they break up the food for compost. And I want one. Yes, I know that I could just throw my food waste into a compost bin in the backyard somewhere. Except I’ve done this, but you can’t just throw food waste into a bin. You have to stir it up and adjust pH and do things with the compost. I am lazy when it comes to gardening. Also, are you aware that compost bins can spontaneously combust? Especially if you do nothing but put stuff in the bin. The food mill/composters do all of the work for you. Then all you have to do is figure out what to do with the milled up food waste. I think I could manage that. Nope. I know I could manage this. I just have this vision that this product will reduce our amount of weekly garbage by half. Maybe more. I mean…we set out one to two bags of garbage plus a full recycling bin every week. It’s not like we’re big trash producers, but I can see where we can do better. The food mill/composters are expensive. Like really expensive. It’s like when the Roomba was a new thing expensive. I am a patient person. I waited long enough for the Roomba prices to go down and now I have a robot vacuum cleaner. I have no doubt the same thing will happen with the food mill/composters.

Sure, I do get a bunch of other ads every day trying to sell me some really useless crap. Those ads are easy breeze bys. I am not annoyed by, in fact I probably enjoy, the ads for the underwear, boots, sweater and composters and I’ll tell you why. Those ads are helping me dream of a better future for myself. A future of nice underwear and comfortable boots. A future of crazy cat sweaters and even a better environment. I like this dream. I like the idea that I can be that whimsical type of person that would wear bright colored space cat sweaters. I honestly don’t care much about the underwear, but I wouldn’t mind a nicer bit of fabric on my naked body bits. I am a practical person, so of course my dreams have a practical nature and if I have learned anything from my mother it is the importance of a good quality practical boot. And that composter thing would just make me a better citizen of the planet. Do I understand that this is capitalism at it’s finest and “they” have figured out my financial weaknesses?

Yes. And I do not care.

THE STRETCH

She looked at the blinking cursor, interlaced her fingers and stretched them as if preparing to play an intricate piano piece. Then, placing her fingers onto the keyboard, she stared at the blank screen in front of her.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

She gently tapped her fingers on the keys without pressing hard enough to even leave behind a gibberish row of letters. What to write? What to right? Whatto right? Whattoryete? The question of what to write was now a semantic satiation. Then she mentally applauded herself for the use of ‘semantic satiation’. Sighing heavily and shaking her head, she mumbled “there is no story here.”

Still, she sat there, scrolling her fingers lightly across the keys waiting for a bit of inspiration, some sign or cue to strike. She marveled at how easy it was to distract herself from the art of actually writing. It was all too easy to open up the New York Times and play a round of spelling bee. She justified the game as a way of helping her brain. The puzzle of finding words may just help her find words for writing. Then, during breaks in her game, she could easily go check in on what other people were doing in social media. An hour could easily pass by while scrolling through some celebrity’s instagram feed, looking for real life images versus the carefully crafted social media image.

The question of what is keeping her from her goals was asked during her Self Care Meeting with her self care therapist and she easily answered “Me. I am the one standing in the way.” She knows that she is the one criticizing her abilities to write anything at all. She is the one saying “Well, you can’t write that. What will people think?!?” She is the one who has mastered the whole deer in the headlights action. When shit gets difficult, she freezes. All ability to make any sort of decision comes to a halt. Do not ask her what she wants for dinner today, tomorrow or next week. Do not expect her to make any phone calls. Oh, there’s water backing up in the basement you say? She is just going to ignore that and pretend that it will fix itself. Her low tire pressure light has been on in her car for weeks. Inaction during a time when action is needed or required is her superpower.

She looks at the blinking cursor and knows the thing she avoiding is not the actual writing but the actual writing down of a truth that exists inside her that she doesn’t really want to tell. If she tells it then people will know that this thing, this truth, is something that she believes. This thing she believes is more than stupid and ridiculous, but she can’t be talked out of believing that this stupid, ridiculous thing is true. So not only is she about to admit to believing this stupid ridiculous thing, she’s going to admit that she is so stubborn that you will not be able to persuade her otherwise.

She sighs and then allows herself to become distracted by the paper’s daily crossword puzzle.

FOR THE ART

Rain drops on tulips

4 Likes, 0 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Rain drops on tulips"

I stepped out the front door this morning to head to work and noticed that the tulips I had planted were looking particularly lovely all covered in raindrops. I set my yoga mat and my lunch bag down on the porch and swung my backpack around to fish out my phone. Then I walked around to be in front of the house and I started taking pictures. I was in full on photoshoot mode when I noticed that someone’s car alarm was going off. Then I realized that the annoying alarm sound was not a car alarm. It was my house. I had set the house alarm as I was leaving but then I never actually shut the front door. I hadn’t even attempted to shut that door. It was just standing there, wide open. I jumped up and ran inside the house and disarmed the system before someone could call me or the cops or both.

You have a minute after setting the alarm to get out of the house and shut the door. This is usually not a problem for me. In fact, there have been times when I have shut the door and realized I had forgotten something. I have unlocked the door, gotten back inside, grabbed forgotten thing and gotten back out again before my minute was up. This morning, I didn’t even think about it. I just dropped everything and went into photography mode. I guess it was a good thing I wasn’t also carrying a baby or a Faberge egg. I let myself become distracted. The key word is ‘let’. We hear so much about how the average person is always distracted, mostly by their phone. There’s checking emails, catching up on Facebook, reading the latest tweet and scrolling through Instagram. Rinse and repeat to see if anyone’s noticed your post or added something new. One minute, you’re writing up some report for work and then next minute you’re watching kitten videos. These distractions not only keep us from doing the things we are supposed to be doing, but also from the things we are meant to be doing.

Here is what I hear when I think about this story: I was distracted by the beauty of tulips and I had to photograph them. The reality is I was distracted from the beauty of these tulips by the alarm ringing away inside my house. The process of making sure the front door was closed was the distraction that pulled me away from the thing I was meant to be doing. Rewiring the brain to think this way is hard. There are times when I am pausing to take a picture or editing a photo when I have to pull my focus away from someone who demands attention. I try to be polite about it and try to be sneaky while I am doing those things so that it looks like I’m working at paying attention to the person who is talking at me (because usually that’s how it goes). So often I feel bad about this and the result is that I end up not taking the picture I wanted or editing the photo the way I wanted. This is so stupid because this photography thing (and this is really not easy for me to admit) is who I am. Taking photos and all the stuff that goes along with this art is the thing I meant to be doing.

Everything else is the distraction.

IN THE KEY OF D

Traffic

6 Likes, 1 Comments - Cindy Maddera (@elephant_soap) on Instagram: "Traffic"

Saturday morning, I got up and headed out for my usual Saturday morning routine. Michael and I have agreed that on the weekends we have the Cabbage with us that I should do the grocery shopping on my own. It's just easier and I get it all done before the two of them make any kind of peep of getting out of bed. On this particularly cold Saturday morning, I walk into Trader Joe's and I'm half way through the produce when they start playing China Girl. I can't help singing along as I marked things off the grocery list. 

"And when I get excited, my little China girl says 'Oh Baby, just you shut your mouth."

I get home and put all of the groceries away. The house is still quiet with the exception of Josephine who follows me around while dragging the toy Mom bought her for Christmas. There's a squeaker on the end and Josephine holds that end in her mouth, repeatedly biting down making a clacking squeak sound. "Play with me." So I do. We play tug of war for a bit until I look at the clock and wonder if I should nudge the sleeping bears. We have to drop the Cabbage off at birthday party across town at noon. 

Before I can make a decision about waking the others, Michael comes into the kitchen and drinks a full glass of water. He nudges the Cabbage and then gets in the shower. At some point Michael asks me how my mental health is doing today. I shrug and say that I think I'm doing okay and I believe it when the words come out of my mouth. Really. Then we're in the car, teeth chattering from the cold, backing out of the driveway and heading out. Ask Me Another is playing on the radio and Michael turns up the volume so we can hear the interview of Chris Hadfield. The host asks Chris to play Ground Control to Major Tom, the song he sang in a YouTube video while on the space station. Chris starts singing and there is something so perfect about his performance. I don't know what happens or why, but suddenly tears are streaming down my face. It's the second time today that I am hearing David Bowie and I start to wonder if Chris (my Chris) is trying to send me a message. 

We drop the Cabbage off at the ice-skating rink for the birthday party and then head over to a Chinese place for lunch. Michael and I are the youngest people in the place and no one is Asian. We should have turned around and left but we stay and eat the blandest Chinese food. My vegetables are basically raw, which I don't mind. I'm not a fan of over cooked, soggy veggies, but all the chewing was exhausting. Maybe Chris had been trying to warn me about our lunch choice and I totally missed it. Disappointed with lunch and with an hour left to kill before we pick the Cabbage up, we head over to the Duluth Trading Company so I can get a pair of fleece lined leggings. I grab the last pair of XS from the shelf and try them on. The last time I bought leggings from there, I bought the mediums and they were too big. I exchanged them for a small and even those constantly need to be tugged back up onto my hips through out the day. I but the XS small and was shook my head at sizing. I've never been an XS small anything. Ever. I'm still not, but I'll let Duluth think that I am. 

We go back to the skate rink to collect the Cabbage and watch her walk around on ice skates on the ice. It's too late for me to get skates because the free skate time is about to end. So we help the Cabbage get her skates off and then head home. Michael wants to make a stop at Vintage Stock. The Cabbage has recently discovered Minecraft and he wants to get a copy for her to play on the X-Box in the basement. I wander around the toy and collectible section and try not to think about which toys Chris would have bought here today. I pick up a Princess Leia from the Force Awakens and for a moment consider buying it. I put it back because I know that money would be better spent elsewhere. Game purchased, we finally head home. I distract myself with laundry and reading a book while the Olympics play in the background. I'm going to make it through this day without shattering into a million pieces. Which I do. No thanks to David Bowie. 

I leave for New York early Wednesday morning. Michael will join me Friday night. We have not traveled together before to a vacation destination where we have to fly. We have not done this kind of sightseeing together where we try to cram as much as possible into two days. New York City is a lot. I'm glad I'm leaving before him so that I have two days to acclimate to the city. Maybe I'll just hermit it up in our apartment, only leaving to walk a dog and get food. My bag is packed. I'm mostly ready to go. It seems odd to imagine being still in a city like New York, but I'm looking forward to being still.

I believe with my whole heart (or what's left of my heart) that I will come back with better stories, the kind of story that I'd want to read.