I Said, “NO!” And I Felt Guilty.

I said “no.” I finally said, “No.” No, actually, I finally said, “NO!”

And in the aftermath of my firm refusal to take on tasks at work that were patently unreasonable, and clearly not my responsibility to do, I felt guilty.

I felt guilty for saying, “NO”!

Ridiculous, eh? Thank you, Catholic upbringing for that.

I won’t go into the details. I will say, however, that before I said, “NO!” I offered some reasonable, practical, equitable and rational solutions to the issue at hand. None of these were accepted. I suspect that had much to do with the prevailing power structure, which exists in many workplaces; it’s the hegemony of one department over another, effectively crushing the non-dominant ones.

I imagine many of my readers have been in the same situation themselves at work. You’re the kind of person who wants to be helpful. You give freely of your time, without compensation, to do more than what is asked of you. And, often, that can mean a lot of extra work. But you willingly agree to be an extra hand, a resource, a helper, the go-to person.

And then, it seems, your workplace notices this deep well and THEY continue to dip the ladle into it. “It’s a bottomless well!” they think.

Worse than that, they believe that they own you. They own every bit of your 8 plus hours while you’re under their roof. They tap dance around and on top of your job description and land on the line that says, “Other duties as assigned.”

But this post is not about the expectation managers have that their sweaty little elves will continue to do more than required. It’s not about the endless requests that fall under, “Other duties as assigned.” Instead, it’s about saying and meaning, “NO!” and then feeling comfortable with that.

The first feelings I had when I found out that the powers above had accepted my refusal were ones of guilt. For crying out loud! But I didn’t cry out loud. I whimpered a little inside. And immediately after the guilt, came doubt and angst.

“Oh, dear,” I thought. “They won’t think highly of me anymore.”

“I’ve made them angry.”

“They won’t like me.”

“I’ll be punished.”

It sounds awfully parental, doesn’t it? And it makes me mad at myself. I can’t refuse to take on a role at work that’s entirely unreasonable, which actually constitutes doing someone else’s job, which reached far beyond my job description, without feeling guilty about it.

I’m mad at myself for feeling guilty. I’ll combine that with being mad at them for making this unreasonable request and for assuming that just because they give you a paycheck, they can keep demanding more and more without compensation.

Power

Yes, I should be grateful that I have a job. Well, I am. But along with that gratitude ought to come the right to set limits and boundaries without fear of recrimination. And along with that right ought to come the ability to feel okay about saying, “NO!”

It seems to me that in this time of shaky, sparse employment, we workers are running scared. People my age who want to work have been out of work for years and are being passed over by younger people who’ll accept a smaller paycheck. Employers and managers have the upper hand. The rest of us are required to be grateful and stand ready to do more than ever before, even if the “more” is downright unreasonable, inequitable and inefficient.

And now I have to find a way to be comfortable with my “NO!” I have to keep reminding myself that I have the right to set boundaries, that just because someone hands me a paycheck doesn’t mean I’m enslaved to their every demand.

I’m more than willing to let my workplace take its pound of flesh. I’m no longer willing to let them have my soul, too.

My Technologies Are Children Who Fight For My Attention

I broke down. I caved in. I succumbed to its allure. I am weak. I have no backbone.

I bought a TV.

And there it sits, in my living room, a hulking black rectangle screaming for attention, competing with the wild floral sofa I recently purchased. The sofa sits against the wall; the TV imposes itself opposite her, in a corner of my living room. The two of them seem to be staring each other down. 

The sofa scorns the TV. It says, “I was here first. She’s been comfortably my friend for the last month, watching her shows on her iPad right here, I might remind you.”

The TV stares back. “Yes, but I have WIFI. She can access the Internet on me, too.”

“Plus, I’m 32 inches of viewing pleasure.”

I intervene. “No, I can’t access the Internet on you, too. I can’t figure out how to do that yet. So don’t be so smug.”

I almost can’t bring myself to look at my iPad. I feel so guilty. She’s been my source of quality sofa time for at least a year. I’ve watched so many great shows on her! She fits so nicely in my lap. She’s helped me look up crossword answers. (Yes, I cheat.) Earbuds in, after a long day of work, I relax on the sofa and tune out the world with my unassuming, cozy 10-inch screen.

Now I have to figure out how I’m going to divide up my time between my TV and my iPad. When I nestled into my sofa last evening to watch some shows on my iPad, I could see the TV out of the corner of my eye. Glaring. Reproachful. Telling me that in order to get my money’s worth out of it, I had better grab the remote and turn it on. I was unnerved and uneasy. I found that I couldn’t bring myself to watch my show on my iPad. Instead, I checked my e-mail.

Perhaps there’s a division of duties I’ll have to assign to my technology roommates. TV gets the news broadcasting. IPad gets email and the streamed Amazon Prime shows. TV provides the occasional downloaded movie from NetFlicks. IPad will share Facebook, WordPress and Pinterest.

Woops. My iMac heard me. No, it read that last paragraph. Yikes. It’s a triumvirate of technology. A trifecta of trouble, more likely. I’m not sure I can divide the labor three ways.

Shut up, iPhone. You don’t count. You’re bought and paid for by the place I work for. You don’t get a say.

Life has become far too complicated. I think I’ll go out and pull some weeds. 

Everyone Wants A Piece of Me

Coulter, Big Brother and Other Random Stuff

It’s a gorgeous, chilly morning here in Boise. I’m up at the computer and both of my Boston Terriers are sleeping on my mom’s bed. Her sofa barricade is working but they can still find a nice place to nap. All is well.

Strange days, crazy people. That’s a lead in to the recent Ann Coulter idiocy. You know, the one where she suggests murdering Meghan McCain? Coulter can’t figure out why most of us rational folks find her comment so disgusting and vile. After all, as Coulter reported, when she said it, people at the studio laughed!

Of course, an appreciative audience always makes whatever horrific thing we say acceptable. That’s how polite, sane society works, doesn’t it? Because we all know, that if a bunch of people laughed when Hitler proposed the Final Solution, it would have made the annihilation of Jews a laughing matter.

But the vile creature that is Fox News loves their girl. She can say whatever she wants because it brings eyes and ears to that most foul of faux news outlets. Now I’m wishing Ann Coulter would meet John McCain in a dark alley. Let’s all laugh now.

Big Brother has finally shown its face at work. IT tells us he was always there, lurking just above the ceiling tiles. The other day they moved it into clear view so that we’d all be reminded that none of what we do at work belongs to us.

Where’s the bug spray?!

Oh, yes, “they” are calling it a “wireless access point” and assuring us that the creature is “helping us do our jobs in another manner more securely.” WE know that it is monitoring our every move and has just found out about my new “bistro” and have added it to the list of THINGS NOT ALLOWED AT WORK.

My office bistro

Speaking of work, I recently got a new desk. For want of a better name, we call it the Up and Down Desk. Push a button and it goes up. Push another button and it goes down.

Up and down with the touch of a button

The latest medical research tells us that getting our behinds up out of our chairs during the day is better for our health. I’m all for that. Unfortunately, I’ve discovered that I’ve not yet been able to figure out how to sleep standing up. That remains a problem to be solved. Napping is also supposed to be good for one’s health.

I’ve got a huge shipment of plants coming this week to be planted throughout the yard. My mom is particularly thrilled given that she has found my practice of xeric landscaping, which involves rocks, to be an eyesore. She developed an aversion to rocks soon after moving here. This is a woman who used to collect rocks. Now, she’s had her fill of them. She’s been given a long portion of the front yard to landscape. But first we both had to get the area ready, and that meant 4-5 hours pulling up the weed mat, a product that only helped the weeds thrive. On top of the weed mat sat hundreds of little rocks. They all had to be carried away. If my mom could sneak them into the trash can, she would, but they’re going into the back yard mostly to mingle with their relatives residing on a path throughout my yard.

Spring is almost here. And I head into it with a dozen or more projects to do. But that’s all good. My mom is going to be busy.

P.S.: I had intended to post this on Sunday, but my mom and I were too busy in the yard!

Fraught with Peril: Fear and Loathing of Extreme Sports

My aversion to extreme sports has everything to do with fear of damaging my expensive dental work and only a little bit to do with my lack of physical strength and skill.

I don’t like competitions, either, and believe me, everywhere, in almost every situation, people are competing. It seems our experiences have no meaning unless we’re not beating someone else at something.

I’ve been walking up the stairs at work for a week now in hopes of gaining some cardio fitness. I wheeze and gasp all the way to the 6^th floor. I’d be fine undertaking this task every weekday morning were it not for the woman, wearing a heavy backpack, who charges up behind me. Stomp, stomp, stomp, she comes. Quickly. No heavy breathing, either. Nothing could irritate me more—nothing other than her shoving me aside and launching an insult at my pitiful attempt to get some exercise.

So it baffles me why I would, along with my sister, sign up for the Boise Muddy Mama 5k Obstacle Course in June this year. I’m so unnerved by the entire concept, I can’t even bring myself to read more about the event. All I can do is focus on the website’s photo of the spry, fit, muddy young woman launching her muscular legs over a very tall fence. There are no stairs in the photo. Where are the stairs?

And, so, the words, “fraught with peril,” come to mind—as does a past event my sister and I entered decades ago in Wisconsin. The “something or other” Creek Canoe Race. And then there’s the inline skating marathon I did in Duluth one year. And an attempt to try out the Black Diamond trail soon after I began cross-country skiing.

The canoe race was an adventure in going backwards and sideways down quite a few miles of a creek. Not a babbling brook, either, and not a gentle stream. After an exhausting few hours, my sister and I made it to the finish line one minute under the required time. I staggered out of the canoe vowing never again to place my bottom in a wooden, tippy, saucer of a thing.

The inline skating marathon ended with a spectacular airborne finish onto hard pavement. I cracked my helmet but somehow managed not to crack ribs or damage teeth. But I ached for weeks afterwards.

The skiing incident left a mark. At the bottom of one of the steepest hills, I crashed and drove the ski pole into my lip. My teeth survived. My lip was the size of a Cinnabon for weeks.

I have tempted fate, believing that I was only competing with myself and doing all that silly “self mastery” stuff. But the fact is, other people are competing with me. And they’re ahead of me. And they’re not suffering and they’re not hurting themselves. How annoying they all are.

If I could just do these events by myself, with no one else around, I think I’d enjoy myself so much more. If I could just accept that my body is better suited to a hard day’s work in my garden instead of testing its meager limits in public events, I’d be a much happier person. I wouldn’t lie awake at night worrying about the inevitable outcome, which involves pain, bruising, a wrenched back and strained muscles. And a near miss to my expensive dental work.

“Fraught with Peril.” This 5k Muddy Obstacle Course will ride my back for the next couple of months now, along with anxiety and images of pain and chipped teeth. What was I thinking?

Please don’t let this be me

Extreme Sports of Yore

Just Say No to Extreme Sports

(Photo courtesy of Brandy Bostons at http://www.usagility.org/brandybostons/photopages/janie.html)

Where is My New Normal?

I rarely talk about blogging and my presence or absence from my blog. I wonder if my readers notice my absence. I wonder if their wondering might lead them to think that something must be going on.

My elderly mom moved in with me about a month ago. I had the space, family support, and I was more than willing. I still am. My mom has brought tremendous joy to my life. I’ve discovered her delightful personality, a generous sweetness, her love for fun, and her marvelous sense of humor and insight.

My mom has mild dementia. I’ve heard the word, “Alzheimer’s” used to characterize it. I still can’t say the word aloud. Her short-term memory is affected, and when she’s tired, it’s seriously affected.

Life has changed dramatically—that should go without saying. But it needs to be repeated. Life has changed dramatically for me.

Before my mom moved in, I had lived alone for a good deal of my adult life and I preferred that to anything else. It was my space to do with what I wished. Depending on how I felt, I passed through an unstructured or a structured day, because the only person I had to answer to was me. It was a relatively selfish life. 

I’ve typically been a person who handles changes satisfactorily. Having moved around a lot and experienced quite a few job changes in my youth should have been preparation for whatever would come in adulthood.

I think that no one can be completely comfortable with or aware of all the changes that take place when a big change occurs. How many parents are truly ready for the shrieking newborn that suddenly enters their lives? How many people facing a big change can sit down and make a list of all the ways their lives will be affected—one column for the change, the other for how to deal with it.

I didn’t make a list. But I quickly made some alterations to my home. I adjusted. I adapted. A bit. Not completely.

I stopped blogging regularly. I haven’t picked up a paintbrush in almost 6 months.

But with the help of my sister, I raised my paved walkway in the backyard. I built a new patio back there, too. I planted some new plants. I spruced up the front of my home. I fixed my pantry to make it more functional. I rearranged cabinets, installed sliding inserts, and organized my new studio. I took up learning bridge. This, all in a month.

I have to remind myself about all the things I have accomplished and stop thinking that I’m standing still waiting for things to happen to me. Or waiting to respond to the next crisis.

What is my new normal? I don’t know. I don’t know that I should try to find one. I do know that I have to remember that I am still the person I was before my mom moved in with me. But I’m also different—I’d say “enhanced.” 

Giving up portions of your life to care for another human being is the ultimate sacrifice and challenge. Whether it’s an infant or an adult with diminished capacity, you’re often going to have to dig down deep for emotional strength.

I wouldn’t change the decision I’ve made for any money in the world. I’ve been allowed a glimpse into the kind of person I can be. I’ve seen that I actually do have a compassionate nature and the ability to share, which extends well beyond the attention I’ve always given to my dogs. I’ve discovered that being isolated and alone isn’t a good way to go through life even if it does provide tons of “me time.”

This is a year of struggle and insight and joy and sorrow. More than ever, I am going to take it each day at a time and not expect to be Super Caregiver. I’m going to pick up a paintbrush in the next few days, or maybe today. I’m going to keep up with my blog even though some days feels like a trudge through quicksand.

Life is change. There is no new normal to be found. It is what it is. 

Mom tilling the soil in the backyard.

Make Like a Baked Potato and …

Split? Fluff? Mash?

Whatever the verb is, I’m counting down the days till our legislators leave town and go back to doing whatever it is they do when they’re not introducing and voting on inane bills here in Idaho. I look forward to the day when they’re no longer a big part of the news and I don’t have to read about some pejorative statement or ill-chosen word one of them has used.

One of the hottest topics here has been the healthcare exchange. Our legislators waited until the 11^th hour to think about what this meant for Idaho and then were caught unprepared. They spent most of the time grousing about Obamacare and very little time coming up with ideas of their own that would appeal to the citizens here.

They grandstanded. A particularly nutty legislator here in Idaho, Senator Nuxoll, likened the healthcare exchange to “the holocaust.” It’s not too far a stretch to get from there to: “Obama is Hitler.” Some of us cringed when we heard that. But the Republicans let it go. The majority leader excused it. “Passions run high,” he said, as though that justification can always wipe the mud off slander.

It’s this unwillingness of our elected officials to condemn the hyperbole and vile comparisons that irk me the most when it comes to politics. I could almost stomach the stupid decisions being made were it not for the way the body politic fail to admonish those who make racist and derogatory references about people they don’t agree with or whom they look down upon.

Recently, Representative Don Young from Alaska praised the “50-60 wetbacks” who picked tomatoes on his daddy’s ranch. After 40 years in the legislature and 50 plus years living on this planet, he never learned that the term is a pejorative. Oh, but this time, several Republicans criticized his comment, of course because the Republican party has decided they can no longer afford to demean voting Hispanics. Too little, too late.

For far too many people, sadly including our elected officials, the news never reaches them. Somehow they remain closed off to learning that certain words are loaded with negative connotations—certain words are just downright ugly. Certain words have a hideous past and when they’re used they say so much about the person who utters them. And when they’re not condemned, guilt by association follows.

During this year’s Idaho session, Rep. Lynn Luker used the word “tar baby” to refer to the healthcare exchange. Unable to reach into his dictionary for a better, less inflammatory phrase, he chose a term that made him sound like a racist. He didn’t mean for that to happen; he’s simply too ignorant to realize what he’s done.

Another legislator, Rep. Lenore Barrett, borrowed from the civil rights movement to evoke the mood of our state’s repression and subjugation by the federal government.

“We seem to be the only body politic on the planet that will kill a horse in order to have a horse to beat,” said Barrett. “Let my people go.”

Why can’t we just let Barrett go? She’s a vicious, virulent and utterly ignorant representative who continues to get re-elected because her constituents are too ignorant and too lazy to think about voting for someone else.

I don’t see any need to go into the myriad of ways our elected officials continue to insult and degrade diverse communities among us. We heard plenty of it when Barack Obama got elected the first time. We heard it again when he got elected the second time. We heard it during the discussions about rape and the ghastly ways this evil was redefined. We’ve heard it during discussions about immigration.

It disgusts me that we still hear this stuff from people who should know better, who should use their elected office to set a good example.

After Rep. Luker made his “tar baby” comment, I’d be willing to bet that hundreds of his supporters began to use the same words in their conversations and posts on social media sites. People love new ways to characterize the things they hate. The “pundits” on Fox News, the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannity’s love to collect new words they can sprinkle, like seasoned salt, on their rants.

We have thousands of other ways to say the things we want to say. Our elected officials only need a few other words to demonstrate how they feel about an issue. “It sucks,” is a far better way, even, to denounce a bill or law than creating a derogatory and insulting tone about the topic. Why perpetuate stereotypes and gender bias? What’s the point of that?

 Go home, Idaho legislators. You’ve worn out your welcome again. And, because we state employees are required to “show our respect,” I can’t wear jeans on Fridays until you leave. Get a load of that. Show our respect.

Baked, fried. Not in town.

My Mom Survived My Meatballs. For Now.

Now that my mother is living with me, I’m cooking (burning) food more often. Fortunately, I own a kitchen chisel, useful for digging out burnt spatter on the sides of the oven and microwave.

Cooking for two is so much more pleasant than schlepping a can out of the pantry, throwing the can-shaped contents into a pot and stirring. Stirring isn’t cooking, after all. And I love sitting down to dine with my mom. It’s a wonderful part of my day. She doesn’t even admonish me when I put my elbows on the table.

Cooking for two is all about respecting each other’s food issues. Mom’s not crazy about garlic—at least in mega doses. But she’s not picky. She’s discerning. That women can detect rancid overtones at subatomic levels. (No stale nuts in my house. ) One of the great things about her is that she’ll willingly try my different concoctions and mixtures. She wasn’t crazy about the sausage and apples I made one evening, but she ate it and then washed it down with a bowl of ice cream. I haven’t gotten up the courage to serve her tofu. I hid the 25 packages of it somewhere deep in the bottom of my freezer. They’ll be there until the next ice age.

My mom grew up in an era when ground beef wasn’t a menace, the ticking time bomb that it is today. I’m still determined to avoid ground beef, believing it to be one of the riskiest meats to consume. In the last year, more ground beef packages were being yanked out of the stores than were ending up in greasy McD burgers.

My mom and I love spaghetti and meatballs. Hers are what every meatball should be: juicy, tasty, “I want to eat a bathtub full of them.” Her meatballs are more than a conveyance for the sauce. They are the epitome of good eating. (Rumor has it that Julia Childs tried to wangle Mom’s meatball recipe out of her, and despite my Mom’s diminutive size, she put the chef into a headlock and that was the end of that.)

I attempted making my own meatballs the other evening, but I decided to substitute ground turkey for ground beef. I also decided to fool my mom into not being able to tell the difference. While my mom was in the shower, I quickly made the mixture, formed the balls and popped them in the microwave to cook a bit before browning them under the broiler. Sneakiness doesn’t pay off.

I was partly successful in my ruse. I avoided having to mention that I replaced the ground beef with ground turkey. I didn’t have to fess up to that switch. No, instead, I had to convince my mom that I hadn’t substituted golf balls for meatballs.

Golfballs

Meatballs

I can’t recall whether it was her pained expression or her sawing at the meatball on her plate that alerted me to my abysmal failure. Perhaps it was the clink of the hard surface of the meatball against her plate. A well-made meatball shouldn’t make noise. It shouldn’t crack the tile floor if it rolls off one’s plate. It shouldn’t ricochet off a knife. If you have to use a knife with a meatball, you’ve already lost the game.

I discovered this: You can’t hide a granite meatball in spaghetti sauce, believing that the sauce will somehow magically transform the object into something succulent and tasty. You can’t get blood from a turnip and you can’t turn a large marble into a juicy meatball. The glass-like surface of my meatballs resisted moisture.

My failure was more than embarrassing—more so, because I tried to deceive her. During the after meal debrief, my mom and I discovered that I had left out a critical ingredient: Moisture. Oh, that. Plus, there was the burning of the meatballs under the broiler. Whatever moisture had been in the meatballs is now burnt onto the inside of my oven.

I’m not going to give up, however. I’ll try the meatballs again, but not expect them to hang onto their juice without some added help. I’ll forgo the broiling. I’m not yet courageous or crazy enough to try out tofu meatballs on her. Later, perhaps, after I perfect the turkey meatball. Or, we’ll use the 25 packages of tofu for repairing the cracks in my driveway.

Here’s a recipe that just might convince my mom that using ground turkey instead of ground beef is a perfectly acceptable, and tasty, thing to do.

Ground Turkey Meatballs

2lbs ground turkey
1 medium onion chopped
1tsp garlic (or to taste)
1 cup cracker or bread crumbs
1/2 cup milk
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt (or to taste)
1/4 tsp pepper (or to taste)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix all of the meatball ingredients together in a large bowl. 

It’s Greek to me. No, it’s Bridge!

For years, my mom has extolled the virtues of playing bridge. For years I resisted her call to become a regular devotee. I thought I had compromised by agreeing to play dominoes instead. Dominoes—a game of matching dots to other dots.

Yes, I admit that some minor strategy is required in the game of Dominoes in order to win. Some memory, too. But I don’t believe it takes a lifetime to learn the game. After all, it’s only dots. There are no kings, queens or things called suits.

I’ve never enjoyed playing cards. I don’t like the competitive aspect of card games. I don’t like competing, either. But, once you enter the years when you’re no longer distracted by TV, video games and going to bars, you start to obsess over losing your cognitive abilities.

Enter Bridge. Next to chess, which I never learned and never will, Bridge ranks at the top in requiring the most of one’s cognitive skills: attention, memory, logic and reasoning, problem solving and processing speed.

When my 88-year old mother moved up to Idaho to live here, I promised her I’d learn bridge—anything to avoid playing Dominoes. So, I’ve been taking lessons for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been speaking “Bridge-ese” with my mom.

Learning to play Bridge requires the ability to sit for a long time at a square table among people who deal out cards at glacial speed. At my Bridge class, one woman handed out the cards so slowly, I swear I could see the card molecules colliding. Well, that’s been my experience so far. There’s also Bridge humor. You have to be a regular Bridge player to get it. Apparently, it’s quite a rich vein of jollity.

I’m determined to learn and play Bridge. I’ve made the commitment. I know too much now to go back to mindless activities like Facebooking. One day, when I get up the courage, I will join other Bridge players who are also concerned about losing their cognitive abilities. We will exercise our brains. We will also leave the younger generations to text each other, to spend wasted hours on social media sites, to occupy their minds with vapid entertainment news, and forget where they left their car keys. Because if you don’t use it, you lose it.

My limited experience learning Bridge has left me with a deep appreciation for the crazy person who invented it and its hundreds of rules. Well, crazy or demonized, because in 1432, Saint Bernardo warned the “Faithful” that cards were invented by the Devil. Then, sometime in the 1950s Chex Mix was invented and helped distract Bridge players from feeling the breath of Satan at their heels.

Bridge was derived from Russian Whist, which early on was called Biritch. In 1893, Bridge came to the U.S. and thousands of people with a lot of time on their hands became addicted to bridge, bridge parties, bridge clubs, and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.

Call it what you will, but no doubt Bridge changed a generation and continues to have considerable allure. Bridge will outlive every other card game invented, I’m sure.

My brain feels better already. And I might be starting to get some of that Bridge humor, too.

Some sample Bridge humor:

Learn from the mistake of others. You won’t live long enough to make them all yourself. 
-Alfred Sheinwold. 

I favor light opening bids. When you’re my age, you can never be sure that the bidding will get back around to you again. Oswald Jacoby at 77.  

Years ago there were only two acceptable reasons for not leading partner’s suit: (1) having no cards in the suit; (2) a death wish.

I think we’re all a little masochistic. Otherwise, why would we continue to play bridge? 

We had a partnership misunderstanding. I assumed my partner knew what he was doing. 

Your play was much better tonight and so were your excuses.  

I busted a gut!

Stop hounding me, Facebook. I’m busy.

Life gets in the way. It gets in the way of life, of picking up the remaining fall leaves, of dusting the cobwebs out of the corners, and of doing the laundry. And it gets in the way of posting on Facebook.

But kicking someone when they’re down or nagging them about their absence on Facebook isn’t helpful.

Is anyone else aware of any posting frequency rules that Facebook has implemented? I’m not. Obviously, though, there must be an unwritten rule about how long one can stay silent on this social media site, because I’ve been getting constant reminders from Facebook that I’ve been silent for too long.

What does my silence and absence mean to the Facebook folks? How do they interpret that? Are they afraid that I’m off dilly dallying on some other social media site sharing copious details about my day-to-day activities? If so, that’s quite an assumption. I’m not being given the benefit of the doubt here. Even if I am somewhere else on the web frittering away hours on other social media sites, I don’t recall signing an exclusivity contract with Facebook.

So what if I have 185 new notifications waiting for me on Facebook? Is the world going to stop if I don’t comment on someone’s delectable meal at a local eatery? Will I prevent an asteroid from blasting the earth to smithereens if I don’t click “Like” on someone’s inspirational quote, daily affirmation or cute Boston Terrier photo?

Give me a break, Facebook. It’s not all about you and your schedule of needs. Besides, how can you possibly notice the absence of this one utterly non-influential subscriber? I am NOT the butterfly that flaps its wings clear across the globe, creating significant, noticeable changes on the other side. Ninety-nine percent of the time I’ve got nuthin’. NUTHIN’.

Hey, I completed our local weekly paper’s extremely difficult crossword puzzle the other day! How about that, Facebook? Is that newsworthy enough for you? Oh, yeah, I also added mulch to my vegetable garden. And I made a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Alert the media! Star that post on Facebook!

This ongoing pressure to get a life is getting irritating. Even more irritating and stressful is the demand to share these events and incidents that constitute getting a life. From Pinterest to Twitter to Facebook, everyone seems to want a piece of us. And social media experts think they’re being so very helpful when they offer up their “15 Things to Post or Tweet About.” Well, people, I notice that “posting what you ate for breakfast” isn’t on those lists, yet people far more interesting than I continue to leave those fascinating bits of detritus all over the web.

All of these social media sites demand that we be much more than we are: a sofa-squatting, idle, inconsequential passenger on a train to Dullsville. What’s wrong with Dullsville, anyway? My people in Dullsville are perfectly content. They don’t feel pressured to get a life. Life happens all around us here in Dullsville. I can see large pieces of it passing by my giant living room window. My dogs bark at these pieces to let me know that all is safe in Dullsville, yet so very threatening outside.

Dullsville is a fine place to live. We have running water and indoor plumbing here, too. We might not have that ski trip to Aspen or the overseas vacation in Paris, but we’ve got a nice backyard that needs tending to. We’ve got crossword puzzles to work, muffins to bake, and trips to the thrift shop. It’s fine here, perfectly fine.

Busy, so very busy

Don’t pester me. I’m busy.

I refuse to get a life just to satisfy the Facebook bean counters.  I don’t have time to get a life, anyway. I’m busy here, not getting a life. So there.

Meditating My Way to Health. (I Hope So.)

Decades beyond childhood, I’ve finally come to realize that all this internal churning, roiling and upheaval can’t be good for one’s health.

And when the blood pressure monitor confirmed this, I decided to make some changes. Meditation seemed to be part of the answer after I finally realized that remaining in a drunken stupor proved to be counterproductive. The stomachache, the stumbling, the sloppy, loud laughing—it’s all so unseemly and unattractive. And when you sober up, the issues that drove the blood pressure up in the first place are still there clawing at your innards.

It’s a new year, a fresh start and time to learn how to cope. Meditation seemed to be the answer. A while back, I believed that one didn’t have to learn how to master this skill. Isn’t it just about sitting comfortably and quietly, eyes closed, in a silent room? Apparently not. Apparently, that’s called napping at work.

A local community center catalog listed a meditation class to be held three evenings in a nearby office. I signed up. I was ready to learn how to meditate.

This new endeavor was heartily encouraged by my sister and my mother. I knew that they had long harbored opinions about my state of anxiety when I reported one evening, “I think I’m an anxious person. I think I carry around a lot of anxiety and worry all the time.”

The look on my sister’s face said it all. Apparently, she had known this fact for years. She had noticed the giant scarlet A for ANXIOUS long before I did. Calling it “full of energy and passion” was a euphemism I had used for living in a constant state of fright and flight. Telling myself that I was just very, very busy was a way to hide and disguise a fretful and wrought up nature.

All right, then. I’m a worrier and a ruminator. I chew on issues well past their expiration date, far beyond their immediacy, until they turn to finely mashed pulp.

On the day of my first meditation class, I was concerned. I was already stressed out about taking a meditation class. That’s not an auspicious start, I agree. And then, by the end of the day, I was both physically and mentally exhausted from work. What good was meditating going to do? I needed a nap!

I trudged off to the class anyway and arrived a little behind schedule to a room filled with other anxious, disquieted adults. I found a chair in the back. I didn’t want to be called upon to answer questions about my anxiety level. I also wanted to nap a little.

The instructor had the perfect voice for teaching us about meditation. Unfortunately, she used it a lot—for almost 50 of the 60 minutes assigned to the class. She tried to help me understand the basic tenets of the meditative mood and practice. She talked about the philosophy behind meditating. It was interesting up to the point that the room began to warm up and the tension from trying to find a parking spot had worn off. Then I just wanted to sleep.

Of course that would have been unlikely and impossible—not because I’m too proud to fall asleep in public, however. No, it was the dude outside of the classroom who decided that 7 pm was the perfect time to roll a flatbed cart up and down the hall. And he continued to do so for the entire class.

But mindful meditation teaches us to not mind these things. The instructor acknowledged the noise but didn’t close the door. Instead, she urged us, in her soft, soothing tones, to “accept the noise, accept the moment, and understand that everything is as it should be right now.” 

I tried. I did. I focused on my breathing. I relaxed my limbs. I shut my eyes. But inside, where no one could see, I was out in the hallway, grabbing the inconsiderate little fellow by the collar, thrashing him soundly and throwing his damn cart down the stairwell.

Everything is as it should be right now. I’m going to have trouble with that one. For me, rarely is everything as it should be right now. And after a good deal of time spent ruminating on those “everythings,” I’m likely to get up and ask the offender to delay the cart rolling, stop the loud laughing in the office, cease the whispering in the cubicle next to mine, shut off the cellphone ringing, quit the pencil tapping, and so on.

The second class is next week. I’m bringing ear plugs and a nice pillow.

Sleeping

Sleeping

Almost Sleeping

Drunk