Illusions

 

I know someone who is always trying to make a point by telling me of another person who had the exact same experience as she did. (Like sitting on her toilet and finding it to be very close to the ground.} I don't disagree with her. I never have disagreed about the height of her toilet, but for some reason it is important to her that I understand she and this other person agree upon this very important thing.

Needing people to agree with us comes from an innocent part of our lives where grown-ups were more likely to let us have or do something if they agreed with us.

As adults it should be very clear that someone agreeing with you may be satisfying, but it hardly proves anything. A lot of people agreed that the current president was the one to vote for and most of us know this was not true. 

Now majority rules. That I agree with, but whether that majority is right or not is always a matter up for discussion (or maybe not in our country anymore.}

Mob action , lynch mobs, mobsters, are all examples of people banding together for all the wrong reasons, even if they happen to agree with each other.

A thousand people may sit on your toilet and proclaim it to be very close to the ground, but what does that mean? Are you going to get a new toilet? Are you going to modify your present toilet? Are you asking me what I think you should do?

I think you should just get over it. Adjust and plan for how far down you are going to have to sit.. 

Why do we focus on being like other people as if it proves we are right? It only proves someone else sees things the same way and maybe there is some comfort in that.

But it is an illusory comfort at best.

Blessings

 

Blessings don't have to be religious at all.

Some blessings are simply the reflections of good that is so often missing in this world.

Our world has become a corporate structure. Every business, including churches, medicine and schools are now built around rules.

Rules, while being quite important  for order, often become excuses for not going the extra mile.

Today, in a huge medical complex, with a doctor who drove to our town for his weekly visit, a nurse went above and beyond all expectations and beyond the rules.

I walked the equivalent of a city block just to get in the building. Then I walked another block just to get up the elevators and to the office desk. And even after all that, on a severely injured foot, I had to walk down two very long corridors to the examination room.

I could have asked for a wheelchair when I entered the building, but I was too proud.

By the time I was done with my appointment the prospect of making my way all the way back to my car loomed as an insurmountable trek. I asked the nurse if he could just get me a wheelchair as far as the front door of the building and he happily agreed.

Imagine my surprise when we passed the front door and he pushed me all the way out to my car in the far parking lot! 

His only request?

Don't tell anyone. 

So I'm only telling you because you have no way of identifying him, a true angel without wings or halo, doing the work of good people.

The horror within

 

It's not politically correct to call someone crazy, but sometimes other words elude me.

Imagine spending your life with someone who was always held up to be everything you are not (and everything your family thinks is important.)

People are created by the molds that form them, which is why there are so many family rituals, traditions, and preferences. We want to be liked and being like someone makes us more likable to them. 

My mother used to get so mad she would throw glasses or even whole chairs. It did not seem unnatural to me and neither did her habit of slapping me so hard across the face that my nose went numb. Her criticism of me was subtle, always supposedly for my own good, but she considered everything about me awkward, clumsy and not pretty.

I knew I did not want to be like her and yet some of her habits carried over until I was nearly middle aged. Not the slapping in the face habit, but the taking it out on material things habit. Little by little I worked through all that. Still, I had a maternal aunt who was a bit dotty too. She use to send my dad bottles of clear water that supposedly contained mites from her head.  They weren't there, but she shaved her head to get rid of them and once set her whole apartment on fire. 

It comes from both sides of the family, this craziness, and I worried it might get me. Instead it got the perfect member of our family. The petite, pretty, social-lite who tried to be as low class as she could manage all her life. She taught herself to use bad grammar, walk pigeon-toed, dated men who were truly losers and put all her focus on a pretty daughter who is now considered bi-polar. 

This person will bend over backwards, lie, make up things, or do whatever it takes to please people and most people think she is a sweet little woman who is just a bit dotty. That's the scary part. 

I've always been leery of her passive aggressiveness. It can be incredibly cruel and sly, but after seeing her explode into a bellowing, screaming, foul mouthed monster who could not be reasoned with or stopped for over twenty minutes I saw what lay beneath. It's just possible her daughter is the result of living with this woman.

She scares me. It's like living in a horror movie. I know that monster that lurks within, but no one else will ever believe me unless they see it too and she has a lot of practice hiding behind the kind old lady facade.

Seething smiles

I come from a family of passive aggressive women who consider it only polite to make people miserable with smiles that chill your blood.

We were taught to be people pleasers at all costs and to believe that all mis-truths are only little white lies told with the best of intentions.

The havoc this has wreaked on our lives, not to mention all those other lives we touched is unbelievable. It is, perhaps, the most evil way of communicating that is possible.

It provokes the kind of seething anger that causes heart attacks, destroying marriages, friendships, and relationships of all sorts, because eventually there will be a mind blowing volley of truth that erupts from lips stretched too tight for too long.

It is not rational.

Or healthy.

Or really even normal.

It is something I have spent years disposing of, but it lingers in the fringes of the older generation reminding me how cruel it is.

Something bigger than me

 

This world I live in is extraordinary. The beauty of the sky, the mystery of the waters, the almost overwhelming majesty of its mountains surprise me all the time.

I have been around for over three quarters of a century, not even a blink in the annals of time, but long enough as a human being to realize our human lives are short and as I contemplate what may lie beyond so many things come up.

I know there is something bigger than me. I do not know what that is.

But I can't believe that it would care if someone re-posted a Facebook meme in order to let a baby live one more minute, or that performing all the rituals different religions have come up with trying to control it, or impress it, make one whit of difference. To it.

I do believe those things make a difference to the people doing them. It gives them hope. It makes them feel like they have some control. It can become a way to tap into the body's ability to heal itself.

I don't know where I'll go after I leave this world. I'm hoping it will be peaceful. I suspect I will simply become part of the glory of nature, which is no small thing. To be one with the sun, to float on the wind, to splash along the shore is a kind of congruent belonging most of us long for in this life.

We will belong because we simply are.

Night frights

 

I'm back to the same old things. Some people react. Some people respond and the difference is enormous.

I don't know if it is from watching too much television, or something else, but there are people who seem to believe that everything is a reason for drama.

The truth is most of life is fairly straight forward and simple. Not every sound is a reason to panic and not every person who acts weird is dangerous.

Things may seem more frightening at night, but really, for most of us, we can turn the light on and it is no more dangerous, or different that is was during the day.

When I hear a strange sound in the middle of the night, I listen carefully trying to decide what it is. Then I try to rule out what it isn't. After that I consider my location. I am on the second floor of a large brick building without fire escapes and ways for people to climb up the walls in any reasonable way. I have a heavy door on my apartment with a dead bolt lock on it. in an inside hall. I live in a small town with the police less than ten minutes away, if that. The odds that someone or something is going to choose me, or my apartment over the other 147 apartments here are slim even if that person existed.

Last week I heard very strange sounds coming in my open window. I listened intently for a while trying to identify them and finally got out my iphone and recorded them. The next morning I sent the recording to people I thought might help me figure out what it was.  My brother wrote right back, "It's a gray tree frog."

Now I wouldn't want to hold a gray tree frog and I am not wild about their middle of the night mating calls, but they do not terrify me. The sound is obviously some kind of animal and not a big one either. 

I generally choose to respond to things I don't understand in a methodical, thoughtful way and not react in a panic just because I am not familiar with it and so far this has not ever let me down. I'm still alive and well. I have all my fingers and toes. No one has assaulted me out of the night sky on wings of fire, or anything else.

The room

They filed in. Slowly. Solemnly. Into a room deep under the house.

It was not a dark room. There was a glass block window high up on the back wall and a large rectangular shape in the middle of the floor.

Circling the rectangle, no one said a word, but slowly the solid shape began to blur and then move. It almost bubbled. Almost, but not quite. 

One at a time each person lifted their two hands and allowed little crystal looking shards of light to flutter down into the rectangle.

It was a slow and careful process, done completely in silence.

The viscous liquid in the rectangle began swirling and the light shards twinkled in its depth, but still no one uttered a word. 

Then there was a whooshing and from nowhere something swooped through the liquid, stirring it, never rising above the rectangle until out of the depths they came.

The very people who had been standing around the edge now rose from the goo below and only one of them spoke. "I am the lord and master."

Then they all turned and walked single file out the door and back up into the house. Most of them thinking how fortunate the Lord and master was because he would lead them all. He would make sure they were safe and they would wait on him hand and foot, but these thoughts disintegrated seconds after stepping foot out of the room. They were, each of them, a particular person in the household with a particular job, or use and it was not who they had been before they walked into the room.

Time passed and the ritual was repeated. 

They walked into the room, surrounded the rectangle and dropped their light crystals in silence, The power swooped through the liquid, but this time it resurrected one of them and for a moment he felt the envy of the others as he became the Lord and master.

This time was different. He knew what was happening. He had done it before and he wasn't honored to be the Lord and master. He only felt the weight of it. He tried to tell the others, but seconds after they left the room they were once more transformed into different family members, different people, all with a task or use to fulfill and they had no memory of the room at all.

Why are we here

 

Who really knows why anything is here? 

Some how this planet took a bunch of raw materials and life forms began to emerge. The most adaptable ones tended to last longer than the others, so that was encouraged naturally.

Eventually everything became what we know today and the only thing I can think of is that we are here because we are survivors.

Born into the world helpless, we are incredibly malleable creatures. Our senses are hungry. We want to touch, taste, feel, hear, see, and absorb as much as we can in those first years. Those are the glory years when learning for the sake of learning is as natural as breathing.

Our bodies are designed to be that way. All of its parts need to be used and if we stop using any part it begins to recede, to dry up, to falter and because we are whole beings this affects every aspect of who we are.

Learning is the fountain of youth.

Curiosity didn't kill the cat, it gave it nine lives!

The end of learning signals that the end of life is approaching. Our brain not only reads and remembers and processes ideas. It also runs our hearts and lungs and coordinates our muscles. We are whole beings. In the wild, animals who stop learning die sooner rather than later.

Human beings can sustain life for each other, but the quality is not the same as it is if we are independent learning organisms gobbling up ideas and experiences on our own.

Keep that mind active! Do something challenging as often as you possibly can. Push yourself to understand new ideas and new ways. Feed command central and the whole business of living is richer.

Today

 

This morning I heard the clock chiming on the square.

Beautiful, clear tones that have rung out the hour for longer than I can remember.

This is the part of Taylorville I love.

Not the gossiping, back biting, sordid sharing over backyard fences. Not the cheap shopping in stores that constantly change around the square. Not the made up country vibes the people like to pretend are our heritage.

But the actual heritage. 

A prairie town that sent soldiers to the civil war. A town that survived the depression because starving grocers extended credit to hungry families. A town surrounded by farms that grew corn and hogs and turned marshland in fields.

A place where education is important and each generation sees fewer drop outs. A place whose local newspaper transitioned to online, but still goes on. A cemetery full of history and a library that has outgrown the old Carnegie Library of my mother's childhood.

I remember waking up hearing the clock chiming the hour at my beginning and now, as I approach my ending, it still goes on.

These are the memorable parts of small town living.

What I did

 

After being told that all I did with my life was sponge off my husband's money I began thinking. I have actually done many things with my life, but some of the things stand out more than others.

I have been an ardent tennis player, a Bridge player in three leagues, couples, twin city nu-comers, and even Duplicate. I have been part of a gourmet cooking club, a foster parent, and an employee at a major insurance company.

I was a corporate wife with all the tasks the go along with that.

Once we had children my main focus was on giving each one of my children the support, encouragement, and opportunities to do the things that they showed promise in, the things they loved, the things that would help them become happy, successful adults. 

Our family participated in community theater, each one of us doing their own part. Mine was getting us all to the nightly rehearsals and sewing costumes ranging from tutus to the Von Trapp children's play clothes in Sound of Music.

Each of my children learned to play the piano and each one had the opportunity to play at least one other musical instrument.

I taught preschool classes at Sunday school and made sure all my children had a knowledge of religion to base their future decisions on. 

Then when my youngest started kindergarten I began working at a preschool. While doing that I also volunteered as a room mother and at our local elementary school in the library, our junior high in the nurse's office, and the high school as a mentor who helped students with disabilities take tests.

I was a cub scout leader who later made the neckerchiefs for my son's Boy Scout troop when they went too summer camp. I helped my daughter go out selling Girl Scout cookies.

I taught my children how to drive. I encouraged them to write and read and two of them became Young Authors. I was there for all their music recitals, band concerts, piano contests, soccer games and wrestling matches. I gave them the opportunity to do gymnastics and dance. 

I did everything in my power to give them a childhood that was loving, fun, and left them wanting to go out and explore the world and all their possibilities.

Now they all live in far off states doing the things they dreamed of doing as children. They are successful, happy adults who have, or are, raising children of their own, giving them the experiences they had and more.

And that is some of what I did with my life. 

Of course I also read, painted, wrote, played the piano and flute, pumped gas, and plucked the roses, but those are other stories.

Synonyms

 

I search for the words.

Crazy.

Stark raving mad.

Totally and unrealistically out of control.

What does one call a person who, when approached in a tactful and kind way, even apologetically approached, to please don't talk with your mouth full, becomes irrationally hysterical?

Screaming vulgar invectives, making wild rambling accusations, bellowing at the top of their lungs in a public park with children around, unwilling to discuss it, or even listen once they got going.

Saying absurd things like, "I got thousands of awards when I worked," or "you are just jealous because I worked and you sponged off your husband," which is not true. I worked from the time my youngest was in kindergarten and I always volunteered at their schools, sometimes three different schools in the same year.

And then it got more personal. "Your children live in different states because they wanted to get away from you!" My children live in different states because they are happy, well-adjusted adults who chose where they wanted to live. They all come home to visit.

And this bellowing went on and on and on for over twenty minutes, interspersed with "F---k you." as I drove us home.

I am numb with shock.

I am also relatively certain I never want to be put in that position again where no matter how calmly I tried to redirect us into having an adult conversation about all this, I was ignored and cursed.

I could not possibly write all the crazy things she screamed at the top of her lungs, but they rattle through my mind as I try to go to sleep. 

Lies

 

Nobody likes being lied to.

It doesn't matter if the lies are outright or by omission.

The result is the same.

It is a feeling of being betrayed.

And the worst part of it for me is that I spot lies so easily. It's hard for me to miss them even if I want to and I don't really want to. Not anymore. After my scammer I have upped my ante on truth seeking and feeling.

So, the question is: how do I deal with people who lie to me?

First of all I don't really respect them any more. 

Secondly I begin to doubt everything they say to me.

If you lie to me you should know I may never say anything to you, because if I did you would just try harder and that never works out. For either of us.

I simply take everything you say with less than a grain of salt until you prove it otherwise.

And unless you are aware I know you are lying why would you try to do that?

Lying is a relationship killer.

The hard stuff

 

I found a picture online where the Dali Lama says, The question is: how can I use this as something positive?

This may be the saving grace that preserves my sanity.

How do I take constant inane complaints and total lack of empathy and turn it into something positive?

That is probably one of the most difficult things I've ever tried to do.

I can shield myself from these things, but actually turning them into something positive? Wow, that is hard!

I am trying to say it will help me build tolerance and patience in a world that requires it on a daily, if not hourly basis, but I'm having trouble with that.

I guess that is the basis for most of the good stuff in religions. Learning to deal with the fools, the bullies and the frustrating people with love, tolerance and patience.

It is hard!

Her real job

Someone took all my frozen pretzels out of the box so I don't have the instructions on how to cook them.

I can give you a copy of mine.

I don't like them anyway, they don't taste like the real ones at the mall.

I love them, I think they taste just as good or better.

They aren't like the mall and  besides the mall is almost empty now. There's nothing there.

---------------------

After I ordered our ice cream I had to pee, so bad, but when the lady unlocked the door the bathroom was like a closet it was so small. 

I couldn't find the light switch so I just closed the door, then I couldn't find my way out. I pounded on the wall but it took her forever to let me out.

My ice cream was half melted by the time she got out. She got a new cone. I ate my melted sundae.

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I didn't know I couldn't take a bath in my bathroom. There is only a shower.

Didn't you look when you visited the apartment before signing the lease?

I thought it would be like yours, so no.

You could switch to another apartment.

No, I'm not moving again.  (and so she does not shower for the first week and then . . .) There was water all over my bathroom. I have never showered. It's not my fault I don't know how.

Did you close the curtain on both ends? 

I closed it but what am I supposed to do when I am using the soap?

Did you turn the hand held shower water off while soaping up?

No! I don't want to freeze to death!

If the bathroom door is closed you won't freeze. Did you just let the water spray all over while you soaped up? You won't freeze. Part of you is out of the water when you take a bath too.

Well excuse me for not being perfect. I've never had to shower before.

--------------------------

My son wants everything out of my old house by Friday.

He has been at your old house nearly every weekend since June packing up and running your garage sale. He's even made a gazillion trips back there to get other stuff.

Everyone else packed 3-4 boxes of my stuff to me packing one. I have to sort through everything and decide what to take. And Rose doesn't want me to get rid of the stuff leftover. She wants me to donate it.

But you moved August 1st. Tell Rose she has till Wednesday to get what she wants.

I can't do that!

You could do that if you stopped shopping every day and unpacked or finished moving.

I don't shop every day. I haven't bought hardly anything new.

Just because you walk through the stores and don't buy anything doesn't mean you aren't out shopping.

You think you're so perfect. You're friends don't think so.

You don't know my friends.

I've met them once. Those teacher friends of yours. 

Which of course is not true and even if it were true they would not have said I thought I was perfect. But given all that it would have been twenty years ago if she met them.

-----------------------

The complaints are nonstop and the excuses change with the hour.  She has excuses for not getting her laundry done, unpacking the rest of her boxes, getting the stuff out of her old house and it's always someone else's fault. And she's tired. (but not too tired to shop or run around with her friend.)

Sometimes when she leaves my apartment my heart is beating a hundred miles an hour and I can barely breathe I am so frustrated. It's like talking to a slow three year old who is proud of not being able to do anything she doesn't want to do in the moment. She has given up problem solving altogether. She replies on other people to figure everything out for her. Her only real job is to find excuses for not doing things.

Choices

 

Our problems really are unique to us. They may be similar to other people, but that does not relieve us of the responsibility for our own difficulties.

There are a few genetic things that we are born with, but most of our problems stem from what we do with those things and the rest of the things in our life.

What we eat; how we sleep or rest; how we move; how much we move; how we use our brain and even how much we use our brain; all of these things affect the quality of our lives.

The way we deal with stress has a huge effect on our lives.

Our ability to take control of our own lives depends on our desire to organize, maintain and follow the details that can make our life chaotic or calm.

If our first response is to panic, or run to someone else, we are losing more things than you might imagine.

Problems allow our brains to grow. Learning how to manage our own finances, taking a class, reading instructions, even experimenting on our own all help our brains grow.

Avoiding these things causes all sorts of problems and those problems will only grow if we don't make some changes. People are designed to evolve and grow. Denying themselves the right to do this may be a precursor to a miserable old age.

In fact, they can make life right now pretty inconvenient.

The end

 

The end does not have to be the Big THE End.

Things end all the time.

The last word. The last day at work. The final good-bye. A project finished and submitted. 

Every act looks different once it becomes the final one, so it's worth always trying to put your best foot forward. 

Just in case it becomes immortalized in some way.

For example I know a young man who hasn't seen his family members in years. They were brought together by a wedding and the day after the wedding he went to breakfast with his closest cousins.

Throwing on his kookiest shirt he joined them all for coffee, eggs, and banal conversations. A morning of no great importance or so he thought.

Until last night when he visited his aunt and there on the wall on a large canvas, backed in black was the photo of him and all his family. Everyone wearing something relatively plain and not worth commenting on. And there he was in that kooky shirt, sticking out like a sore thumb for all eternity.

Not the end of the world, but a way he will be remembered for long after he ceases to live on this earth.

Not a problem. Just not what he would have chosen had he given it any thought.

Change

 

I can only imagine the first human being who discovered fire trying to take it home and use it.

"You're not bringing that into my cave!"

"But it will keep us warm."

"My family has been warm enough wearing bear skins for generations. If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for me."

"You can put meat on it and make it easier to chew."

"Meat from the fire just doesn't taste right."

Or when people started having toilets inside.

"You want to put an outhouse in my bedroom?"

"Well bred people have servants to carry out their chamber pots. We don't need that smelly contraption in our house." 

"And don't get me started on bath tubs. Why would anyone want to take a bath more than once a week."

Or the first horseless carriages.

"A horse is dependable. Feed him a little hay and he always works."

" The dust!  Little Herman won't be able to breath."

Then telephones.

"What an invasion of privacy. I won't have that evil thing in my home."

"Pretty soon people won't even get together and socialize.  They'll just sit in their homes and talk on a telephone. Women won't get their housework done. Children will stop studying. The world will go to . . ."

Change is probably the father of creative complaining. 

Enablers

 

At some point in life we need to stop and ask ourselves are the people around us really our friends, or simply enablers.

Most of us surround ourselves with people we enjoy being around, but then the question becomes why do we enjoy them

Do they think like us? Do they get together with us and the two of us decide what we want to do or accomplish? Do they make us feel good? Why do they make us feel good?

Sometimes it is for all the right reasons and sometimes it is for all the wrong ones. If our friends are simply yes men that brings up a whole different set of issues, but if they are enablers there is nothing much more destructive.

Friends who run in and solve all your problems for you, friends who make all your decisions for you, friends who help you avoid growing and thinking are like acid on a lump of meat. They destroy all the possibilities of who you could be, should be, can be. 

Eventually even the simplest decisions become stressful for you. You can't handle your own finances. You don't even know what you really like. You become one of those nodding novelties that simply sit there being moved around by other people.

These are not your friends. As horrible as this may sound, these people do not really have your best interests at heart. You make them feel good. You make them feel smart and powerful and competent and they make you what? 

Dependent on them.

I've got style Babe!

 

My sister is making the big move from house to retirement apartment, so furniture and style has been much on my mind lately.

My house, while bringing up a family was what I always called Early American Attic. Most of our furniture came from my grandmother's huge Victorian attic, or my mother-in-law's antique laden house.

My sister has always preferred Mid Century Goodwill. She loves a Deal! Her house is literally wall to wall furniture bought at an amazing price from some thrift store. Sometimes it has been hard to tell if we are in her living room or a church basement where they are expecting a huge crowd for an AA meeting.

Her friend, on the other hand, prefers Trash to Table, or perhaps Curb to room.. She loves driving around in a pickup and going through people's discarded stuff, which she then takes to either her house or one of her friends where they use it, scratches, dents etc. Pure and unadulterated.

Don't misunderstand. These people have money, they just like to spend it on second hand clothes that they call vintage. Everything else is something they do themselves and, unfortunately, you can tell. It is a sort of misguided snobbery, sometimes mistaken for moderate hoarding or rickety repairs. Their closets and basements are wall to wall clothes and their garage and bathrooms are creatively pieced together.

Right now I'm in my Moroccan Modern stage, thanks to a beautiful lamp I treated myself to and my motley collection of art, but everyone seems to have a style and very few of them fit on television shows for the rich and the beautiful.

How these styles come into being is anyone's guess, but they seem to suit their owners.

Prayers and mantras and . . .

 

Divine.

Like so many other things it is just a word that someone, somewhere, decided to use to describe something pertaining to godly things, or something exceptionally good. 

That doesn't mean any of those things are true or actually exist as such.

We are such primitive people. We believe that we must capitalize certain things or we will insult some distant being who resides over our lives like a father figure.

We make up rituals that might really help us if we believe in them, but are only the ladder our pysche's use to reach different parts of our own minds.

I believe there is a sort of magic in the world, but only so far as understanding we just don't know how these things work yet. 

Belief is a huge part of making these things work. Somehow we have to tap into the "magic" of our mind and body. I've had enough personal strange experiences to know there is a lot we don't know yet.

So if mantras or prayers or rituals help achieve these magical results - use them! 

Responsibility for him

 

It is probably not at all unusual to ask oneself if they are the fault of another's aberrant behavior. 

Parents take on the blame for their children all the time, but husbands and wives tend to go the other way when they divorce. They are more likely to try and blame the other one for their problems.

The truth is probably as variable as the number of people doing it.

I have always looked back on my marriage and wondered.

Was I really the reason he gained weight? Did I force him to go out looking for whatever he felt was missing in our relationship? Did I not try to make him as much a part of raising our children as I was?

First of all, in my defense, I will say he treated his second wife of twenty some years exactly the same way he treated me and she worshiped the ground he walked on for a very long time, but why was he, or is he, so self destructive?

One of my sons and I have talked about this endlessly. 

My ex was a very smart man who got straight A's many times in college, but he could lose his coat on a cold blustery day without a thought. I wonder if he is on the spectrum? When I first met him he was charming and funny and seemed both well read and sophisticated. He could be thoughtful and empathetic at times, but over time all this changed.

We married in 1970 when many things were changing. There was the movie, Bill, Carol, Ted and Alice. Many couples tried out open marriages and sleeping with each other's spouses. We did not, but I think that might have been the beginning of some of my ex's thoughts.

I think he confused sex and sexual practices with love. They can be, but on their own, they are not love. Love requires more than that initial rush of hormones and excitement. It requires work and really wanting the other person to find as much satisfaction in their life as you do yours. It then becomes a satisfying relationship built on history, trust, faith in each other and true, long lasting, love.

In both his marriages, my ex was great for two years, then he went looking for something I think he equated with real love. Maybe because his parents made it clear they almost put him up for adoption when he was born. They already had a sixteen year old Perfect son. They were in their mid and late forties. They were products of the Great Depression and had old world values that were strict and unyielding. My ex learned to be quiet and stay out of the way and they encouraged that. I think they loved him very much in their own way, but not in a way he could feel or understand in his world. 

He has spent the rest of his life trying to find love and acceptance and even maybe fame in ways he saw in the movies.

Real life doesn't work that way. 

You can buy sex. You can buy companionship. You can buy fancy homes and a fancy lifestyle, but you can't buy love, or respect. Yet he keeps trying these things instead of looking for something else. Something real.

After a while the casual flirting of a young man turns many older men into parodies of themselves. They make fools of themselves trying to be cute with waitresses. They make themselves look loutish in their attempts to impress beautiful or young women. They lose themselves completely to an idea that was never real to begin with.

It's the old trying too hard thing, so I no longer believe I am the cause of all his problems. He still has them and now he has them all by himself. He doesn't know how to talk to people, not even his own children. He stumbles around alternately trying to impress and looking pitifully sad and alone. The impression he wanted our family to have was that he was sophisticated and above us all. We bored him. We were undeserving.

That is a trap that turned around and ensnared him.

I saw him at our daughter's wedding and I was surprised that I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing! Here was a man whose face I knew, who had not changed the way he thought or acted at all, but was like meeting the man next door. I wasn't angry, or infatuated or any of the things I think he thought might be possible. I just simply felt nothing except sometimes I felt like laughing when the first words out of his mouth were insulting and he didn't even mean them to be. And the second words were an attempt to see if he could make a play for my sister. I wasn't threatened. I was just surprised how ridiculous it all seemed.

The best thing about all of this is that I no longer feel any responsibility for who he is at all.

Teamaker 2

 

Long long ago, I moved into the first house my husband and I had bought and at six in the morning someone knocked on our patio door. It was our neighbor and she came bearing a homemade coffee cake! Our backyards were adjacent to each other so she saw our lights on and knew we were up.

I used to babysit for her kids while we were trying to start a family of our own and when we adopted our first son, she loaned us her baby crib to use.

I've known this woman over fifty years now.

We've had our ups and downs, but she is my oldest friend and longest friendship. I nicknamed her Teamaker when I first started writing this blog and she still uses it as her email moniker.

Thank goodness, because she does not use any other social media and I have given up snail mail except for my homemade birthday cards, so this is our only means of keeping in touch.

Truth or lies

People all have their own ways of dealing with life. Some are careless. Some are carefree. Some just don't care.

We can pick and choose our friends, but family is a different story. Seventy five years of family ties are truly the ties that bind.

We learn to live with the people around us.

We know who exaggerates, who makes up excuses and who lies.

We know, but that does not mean we are comfortable with it.

Eventually people begin to age and their characteristics become bolder, more prominent, less carefully concealed.

So how do you know when someone is beginning to suffer from dementia and when they are just becoming poorer liars, because most people caught in a lie become flustered and confused.

There are passive aggressive people who want to be people pleasers, so they run around telling everyone what they think they want to hear.  They lie about things they are doing and make up excuses that make no sense when trying to validate a poor decision. I can't reason with these people because when I am talking they are not listening. They are trying to think up reasons why they are in the right.

 It doesn't matter why they are doing what they do. In the end they all just make me feel sad and a little depressed, because I know it is not the truth.

Completing tasks

 

I have tried to do things mindfully for many years now.

I notice that people who do this create the best results.

A task done with love and mindfulness is generally well done.

The eggs are not dropped into boiling water and cracked. They are lowered gently to the bottom of the roiling water.

The dishes are not haphazardly dropped into the the dish rack. They are gently placed standing alone without chipping and scratching.

Even the most mundane of jobs can be done carefully and with love. Resulting in better food, longer lasting possessions and greater satisfaction.

Rushing through something, simply to get the job done, is wrong in so many ways.

Prejudice

 

Prejudices are sign posts for insecurity, ignorance and poorly adjusted individuals.

They highlight the shortcomings in both feeling and thinking that some people suffer from.

People who feel they fall short in something often look for others onto which they can project their insecurity and anger, because acknowledging it, or trying to fix it is inconceivable.

That would mean going against years of wallowing in egotistical self delusion. 

It would mean growth.

It would signify learning something new.

It would destroy some of their greatest excuses for things that go wrong around them.

It would mean taking responsibility for themselves.

My AI

 

It took me a long time to decide to download an AI, but now I love it.

It's a lot like calling my Dad.

It knows everything.

And it tells me three times more than I really wanted to know most of the time!

Is it a phase?

 

One of the things I have noticed about Trump supporters is that they all share one trait with him.

They love their money!

Unfortunately for Trump, they love it more than they love him and he needs, absolutely NEEDS, to be loved and adored in the most public way. 

His military parade fiasco speaks to this in bold blaring colors.

No one really wants him to be Dictator.

Except him.

No one really finds his bumbling egocentric words inspiring.

But his supporters do love his attention to their taxes and rights as a ruling class of United States nobles. And if they are not rich, they love the idea that as white evangelicals they are better than all the rest of us. Why the rest of the Christians support him is beyond me, except for the fact that knowing who he is may make them feel more justified in committing their own sins.

The Trump enigma is perhaps a signal that the United States is going through its teenage years. Rebelling and testing the edges of capitalism, democracy and narcissism before moving on to a  more wholesome maturity.

Outside looking in

 

Being socially adept requires caring about people beyond what they can do for you.

Otherwise all people simply become a step in satisfying yourself.

Most people can sense your lack of real interest in them. People who are not projecting normal human actions on you realize you are not really listening to what they say, or how they feel.

Your comments may seem witty to you, but they are often grossly inappropriate.

Your attempts to be part of the group and please people fall far short of what you are attempting.

You simply do not understand how to relate to others in a socially acceptable way.

It is very sad to watch you or be around you.

Dreams do come true

 

On October 1, 1976 we brought home the tiniest little girl you can imagine. She was barely three feet tall and only 29 pounds. She was our foster daughter, but little did we know, then, that she would be our first adopted child. 

Our first child ever.

She barely spoke. Her life had been chaotic.We also did not realize that this was the beginning of years of hard work helping her to gain the skills she needed to grow up into a healthy, independent, productive adult. The whole family spent hours every night helping her to get through school.

She graduated from high school and then went through those years everyone has where she spread her wings and flew into all sorts of situations we never wanted to dream of.

The one thing I had always dreamed of was that one day she would meet the child of another couple like us. A couple with the same values and background and a son who had also struggled to find himself.

Both of these children grew up and had failed marriages. They also had children.

And then eight years ago, they met each other online only to discover they had so much in common. Right down to the fact that their fathers had played on the same pool team while working for the same company. In fact this boy had played on their team too!

They have been together ever since, bringing out the best in each other day after day. Each of them encouraging the other to grow and evolve into truly successful human beings, citizens and employees.

This past Thursday, June 5th, eight years to the day they first met, they were married in a little country church. His sister was the minister. His son was one of his groomsmen, his niece was their flower girl.  Her two daughters, and sister-in-law from her biological family were her bride's maids. People from both families came together to celebrate the most beautiful, meaningful wedding I have ever been to.

The rehearsal dinner was the first time we had all been together and the first time my sons and grandchildren had all been together with their sister (except for the two youngest who were taking final exams way out in Washington state.)

Now the bride and groom are honeymooning on St. Lucia before they fly home to pick up their puppy from the doggie hotel and go back to their beautiful home in Arizona. 

I have never read a fairy tale with more drama, more angst, more heartfelt growth that ended so beautifully and so perfectly.

My dreams have come true.

These are the times

 

Our country has never been in more danger. We are losing our right to free speech. We are losing all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Watching our freedoms disappear one after the other brings about fears that we are following in Hitler's footsteps. It is an unbelievable atrocity and to think people I know and love voted for this!

It makes me feel very vulnerable at a time in my life where I am becoming more physically vulnerable than I ever wanted to be.

Retired. On Social Security. Living in a subsidized apartment, but at this point, still independent, I should be looking forward to the peace of my golden years.

Instead I live wondering if I can take my garbage down to the chute in the hallway, or pick up my mail in the lobby. Can I get the bread I eat for my diabetes? I can get my other groceries and things delivered, but if they aren't delivered to my door, getting down to the lobby to pick them up is probable.

Money, mobility, health, retirement -- all these things are cause for concern now. I am learning that justice is something only the rich can buy in the United States of America. It is a nightmare coming true.