Please please me

Because I guess it makes sense to talk about the whole People Pleaser thing.

Many years ago, when I was thinking about my desire to help other people get married, I was researching love. I was actually trying to find information on some studies I had read about previously, and was unsuccessful in that, but I ended up purchasing three books that I liked a lot, two of which seemed to have a lot of insight for me.

One was The Five Love Languages (Chapman), and I have referenced that before, and will probably reference it again. One was A General Theory of Love (Lewis, Amini, and Lannon), which focuses on the limbic system, and the things in our brain that allow us to feel love at all, not necessarily romantic. I thought it was really excellent, but it did not necessarily change my way of thinking, except for maybe explaining why the pet lizard never had the affection for me that the cats and dogs do.

The other one was The 9 Types of Lovers by Daphne Rose Kingma. Really it is about nine personality types, and I guess the intended focus was how that affects your relationships, but really, it was more about how you get that way. Yes, your personality issues affect your romantic relationships, but they affect everything else too. Her specialty seems to be relationships though, so I guess that’s just her filter.

The deal with a People Pleaser is they feel a sense of shame, and they do things for other people because they are trying to become worthy. In light of this, my thinking that I would have to lose weight before anyone could love me makes sense, but also my thinking that I needed to get everyone else matched up first would make sense. I was trying to earn magic.

I don’t hate that I came out this way. Nurturing others and serving others are great, and I would rather have accommodation be my coping mechanism than some of the other options out there, like hysteria or narcissism. That being said, it is easy to get out of balance with that, and it is better to serve others out of a pure love for them, as opposed to out of an effort to compensate for all-consuming shame. It’s more fun that way. Also, it’s better not to have all-encompassing shame.

This is actually one other key area where I know I have made improvement. I used to sometimes be overcome at times with this sense of there being something disgusting, and I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, or if I had done something wrong. When I read Sartre’s Nausea in my French Novel class, it resonated (though I believe his root causes were more existential in nature). Those spells don’t happen to me anymore.

It also goes into part of why I do the blogging, and the person I try to be. Shame isn’t really super-productive. If you are doing something that you shouldn’t do, and it makes you stop, that’s useful, and that’s about the full extent of its practical purposes. If you are embarrassed about things that are actually okay, that’s useless. And if you know something is wrong and then you keep doing it, well, you’ll probably get over feeling like it’s wrong eventually, but it won’t be progress.

So I analyze everything endlessly partly because it’s my nature, but also because I really do want to be better and do better, and I post these ramblings to the blogosphere because it de-stigmatizes them for me. Maybe only six people will read it, but I put it out there for everyone, with all of the risk that entails. And, I try to only worry about things based on their merits, and not on the opinions of others.

There is one area where I worry about giving the wrong impression a lot, perhaps because there seem to be multiple wrong impressions available, so I guess that’s what we cover next.

It does get better

One thing that tells me that I am not thrilled about this next emotional journey is that I keep kind of putting it off. So yesterday I wrote about what is coming up, and today I am hedging by pointing out progress I have made from my past self. I justify it because, hey, I am thinking about it, which clearly makes it reasonable to blog about, and also maybe it makes it less depressing if I see that there is progress.

One of the things I don’t like about this is that I’ve been here before. I have blogged about how my self-image grew to be defined by my being fat, then how it changed into boys not being able to like me because I was fat. I have blogged about when repressing it stopped working, and I started having to feel things again. It’s old news now.

Well, apparently it’s not, since I don’t seem to be done with it yet, but going over the improvements that I can see at least helps me to feel better about that. Previous efforts weren’t useless, so still pathetic, but less egregiously so, for the win!

The first improvement that comes to mind is that compliments no longer cause me physical pain. I’m not saying that it doesn’t get a little awkward if people keep going on, but with a simple, direct compliment, I can say “thank you” and feel fine. Remembering how it used to make me squirm, that is a definite step up.

Also, I have stopped gaining weight. Sure, I haven’t really mastered losing it yet, but for a while I was going up pretty consistently, and that is no longer the case. I’m sure that is partly due to emotional eating being pretty rare now, but also I do pay more attention to myself, and take better care of myself, and that matters. Most of the increase happened without me really knowing, because I just knew it was bad and I did not want to know details, so I did not weigh and I did not really look at myself if I could avoid. That was not a good strategy, and I don’t do that anymore.

I have mixed feelings about this one, but I now ignore the needs of Attention Seekers. I am pretty much a classic People Pleaser, which I will probably get into later, but the kryptonite of a People Pleaser is an Attention Seeker. This is because they will take everything you have to give, and it will still not be enough (yes, they want attention, but it is not really what they need so satiation is impossible). I have gone from trying to help them to trying to avoid them and ignore them. They hate this. (Seriously, the main one I deal with would rather be abused than ignored.) So it is not my nicest trait, perhaps, but I am looking out for my own interests, and it’s only enabling them anyway.

In addition, I have never had as low a period as that one time, when I lost my ability to repress. That was weeks of alternating between barely holding it together and not holding it together at all, and that has not happened again. A really bad spell now is probably about four days, and that is rare, and even then I am better are being realistic about the situation.

I have a funny story about Julie now where she had been working on her temper, and one morning when things were crazy with everyone trying to get ready, I think Maria stepped on her foot. She had the normal pain and frustration, but there was this pause as the explosion was building and finally she shouted, “Well it still hurts.” And that was an improvement because she was not yelling at anyone, for what was totally an accident, even though the feelings were still there.

So, when I was going through that stage of extreme sleep deprivation and stress, I was down, but I was not blaming my family for it. I wanted to, but finally when I did snap I just said “I’m having a hard time right now.” Some of that is maturity, but the ability to remember things like that may also indicate that the low is not as low, or maybe it keeps the low from being as low.

Also, and this one is big, during the most recent low point I was able to successfully ask for what I needed, which was for people to get out of my face. I didn’t say it exactly that way, but I said something, and it worked. Being able to advocate for yourself is very important.

Exciting Summer Preview!

Recently there was a blog post that was getting forwarded around a lot on Facebook. It was about a man coming out, and he is happily married, to a woman, but he is also gay. I thought it was really well-written, and an interesting perspective, and it does not really relate to what I am writing about except for one thing. In his preface he says that this is normally a humorous blog, but this post isn’t, and if anyone wants to take off a day from it, he understands and it’s fine.

I think it might be hard to characterize exactly what my blog is about, other than whatever happens to be going through my head, so it is often serious with humorous elements, but I feel like it is heading down a fairly depressing road right now, and I feel a little bad about that.

I’m doing it anyway, obviously, but I will try and outline a schedule of how I think things will go. The next few posts will be about that gaping hole of emptiness and pain inside me, including how it got there and how it has affected me, and this will relate mainly to how I am romantically handicapped. Some of it may be funny, but in kind of a sad, dark way. I’m not sure how many posts it will be, but it will be interesting if the post on my father ends up going up for Father’s Day. Would that be disrespectful to fathers in general? I could probably move some things around.

The other writing I am doing now is the graphic novel. I am currently at 155 pages, and there’s still a lot of ground to cover. I would like to finish it this week. It is not just that I want to move on to things that I might actually be able to sell, though that is a part of it. Also, though, while I am working on it I am pretty much only listening to My Chemical Romance and Pencey Prep. (I could totally make a case for listening to Mindless Self-Indulgence as well.) The point is, I am trying to stay in the zone.

I have tried brining in some other things, like to get Natalia’s voice I thought I would listen to some Alturas (a Spanish guitar group) and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam (featuring Full Force), but that did not work out great. It turns out that with LL & CJ (ft FF), I really only like “Lost in Emotion”, and think “Head to Toe” is okay. The rest is kind of annoying, especially “I Wonder If I Take You Home”. Natalia is not annoying; she is awesome! So it doesn’t work for her, and listening just diminishes my affection for the songs I do like.

(Also, I tried listening to some Jersey Shore clips to get Trey’s voice, and that was also annoying. Trey’s just not going to talk very much. However, the emotional resonance of his death is not so much that we care about him, but that we were not expecting a familiar face there, so I hope it will still work. I mean, he was always a tool.)

So, there’s that going on, and it puts my guitar listening on hold, but I decided that I really wanted to be done with the comments before Blues Fest, because then I will appreciate it more, going in better informed, and that can start off another bout of music writing. My first volunteer shift is July 5^th, so that’s the target date.

For other things that will be coming up, remember when I had all those tasks on my checklist and I would blog about things as I completed them? I really want to start getting some of those done again, so that should be happening. I have three books left for my Black History month reading (I just finished The Other Wes Moore, and am starting King Leopold’s Ghost), so that will be another post, or more.

Also, as I am writing a graphic novel (kind of) I am reading more graphic novels, so there will be a few posts about that (there are some more that I want to read before I weigh in), both on what’s out there, and my superhero history, and also my reasons for writing what I am writing now (which will tie in to the depressing stuff), and also some things that have factored in to the writing process, because there are things that have been interesting there. Oh, and on July 1^st I will have been telecommuting for a month, and I want to write about how that has been going.

Actually, that’s another reason to get the graphic novel done. Many aspects of telecommuting are proving to be rewarding, but my step counts are quite low. Next week the Summer Games start, which is a Regence thing where we are on teams and counting our steps for four weeks, so starting Monday I want to really make an effort to get walking in, and by the time it’s over maybe I have worked out some good patterns. Having one project done will leave me feeling more free to take off walking, though I should probably start writing something else right away. Well, it’s not a perfect system.

Also we’re getting another dog, so I may write about that.

So I realize that’s not an exact schedule, and if you want to avoid the gory, this is not a sure guideline. However, it may give you an idea of what the different post titles mean when those pop up. Otherwise, I am expecting the depressing stuff to last about a week, give or take.

Leaving the singles ward

There was one other thing that was happening during the time period I mentioned yesterday, and it definitely did contribute, though even without it, I’m sure I would still have had the same issue, because that’s just my issue. It was time for my sisters and I to leave the singles ward.

Now before I go any further, I need to reference a blog post from a while back where I had talked about our desires to leave and be done with the singles ward:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2010/09/feeling-trunky.html

I just want to make the point that the news was not completely unwelcome. Despite the sense of responsibility, we were feeling pretty done, and so there was a sense of relief. The issue was that they were going to become more firm on the age rules, which was fine, and it was all happening at about the same time that the Duncombe’s were being released, which covered the other thing keeping us there, so really it seemed to be working out fairly perfectly.

There are two ways in which it contributed to the overall meltdown. One is that I had been getting pretty exhausted, and there was a flurry of activity as we were getting ready to leave. I was doing a series in the newsletter that I wanted to finish up, and I had time to do so, but it felt like more pressure. Also, I wanted to write up some notes for the next emergency preparedness person.

The thing with emergency preparedness is that they don’t give you a lot of instructions—there’s no manual. On the one hand, it can be nice to have the freedom to follow your own inspiration, but it can feel overwhelming, or it can also be taken as an excuse to just be really lazy. I wrote out an explanation of what I had been doing, what the different things in the notebook were for, and gave examples of what other people had been doing. It was not overly lengthy, I thought, but they ended up just not calling a new preparedness person, and leaving all of that to the welfare committee (or something like that). Julie was writing up notes for what she was doing too, and we were putting together gifts for people, and yes, it was a little stressful.

Our last Sunday there was December 14^th, 2010. We initially thought the Duncombe’s might be there another week, but that was their release date too, so really it all worked out perfectly. I had gone in there so busy that I was not sure what I would feel—like maybe there would be a sense of loss—but really I just felt a huge weight being lifted off. These problems were not mine anymore. It doesn’t mean that we stopped caring about people, or that we stopped praying for anyone. Actually, the number we have been praying for has almost doubled from that point (but four of them are engaged, and another has gotten married, so we are going to shift that around soon).

Anyway, that day right there felt pretty good. The next Sunday we went to church with Mom, starting our new ward, and then her knee got operated on and we missed at least three weeks where we did not feel right going without her or leaving her home alone. She had a much better recovery on the second surgery, but the first one was a long hard slog, and with other things going on including the lack of sleep, my normal baggage started eating at me, yes, this did play a part.

In singles ward parlance, it is common to refer to getting married as graduating. Going with that metaphor, I guess we had flunked out. It’s not really that the purpose of the wards is matchmaking. Mainly, you need somewhere to learn and serve and feel the Spirit, and it can be helpful being with others who are in situations similar to yours, especially in a church that is so family-oriented. However, you still know, and in our case it isn’t even so much that we are not married, but that we haven’t even come close.

Obviously, there is more on the issue, and on the singlehood, but I’m going to save that for other posts, and just finish up with the transition.

Initially as Mom got healthier it went very well. We knew a lot of people already, and liked many of them, and our callings were pretty good. I think the main thing we noticed was that we felt engaged, but not overworked. One issue with the young singles we were dealing with is that a lot of them just seemed really needy. Generally they were not even thinking about serving others because they were so focused on their own needs (which is counterproductive, by the way). Our feeling was that regular adults were just more functional. Maybe some of it is the affirmation that comes with getting married, or maybe their functionality was something that helped them get married, but people seemed to do what they needed to do and move on.

I’ll be honest. Some of that rosy glow has faded, so I guess the honeymoon period is over. Yes, some people are very efficient, but then things change around, and maybe the next set will not be as efficient, and we have had to set some boundaries which we do not feel great about. (No, I am not staying here till midnight pasting together cute bookmarks. I get up at 5 tomorrow.) But, you know, that’s okay. Church is always going to consist of people, much like life, and that has good parts and bad parts. We don’t want to go back to the singles ward.

However, I have just been called as a single adult rep, meaning that I will be dealing more with activities for the singles over 30.

Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

Overtired

I try and avoid gender stereotypes, but I think it is pretty common for women to put up with a lot. We have things that bother us that we carry around, and responsibilities that weigh us down, but we keep going and put a cheerful face on it most of the time. Sometimes something will shift though, and then we get weepy, and the man who blames it on PMS deserves a good punch in the face. Yes, the hormones may be the straw the broke the camel’s back, but the ton that was already there was you.

To be fair, maybe not every woman does it, and a man is not always the trigger. I drive my family nuts when I go over the edge. Maybe they have less baggage.

I guess I am trying to explain these low periods that I go through. There are two sides to them. One is the falling out of balance, but then there is the fact that the balance was so precarious all along.

The last one that was really bad happened about a year and a half ago. I have written a little about that time period, but I don’t know that I really captured how awful it became. After being fairly well-depleted from a year of unemployment followed by a year of underemployment, including one really stressful job that made me physically ill for not nearly enough money, things were looking better. I had a new job, and if it was at a lower rate of pay that what I was used to, it was still an improvement, and I was working on a writing project that really had a chance of going somewhere.

Well, adjusting to a new job was hard, and it wasn’t even that the writing project did not end up going anywhere that was a problem, it was the way in which it took over my life, in that the phone kept ringing and requiring an hour on the phone before I could get to anything I needed to do, and the project kept becoming stupider and uglier based on the person who knew what he was doing (not enough to actually get it sold, but okay). That kind of squeezed the joy in writing out of me for a while, and then I started trying to get the house refinanced, which in retrospect I should have put off until after the new year, based on the nightmare that it was. And of course there was Mom’s surgery, and Aaron ending up back in jail, and so there was a lot going on. Really, I don’t think any of that would have broken me, except for one other thing: the dog kept waking me up.

Jack is pretty old, and his bladder can’t make it through the entire night any more. That’s okay. We love him, and we can deal with this. Normally, if we make sure he goes before bed time and we limit his water intake in the later evening, he may need to be let out once or twice. During that time period, he was waking me up four or five times.

I think it was somewhat emotional. In many ways he took the surgery better than we thought. Jack is just devoted to Mom, and follows her around the house, and we were really worried that he would be whining and anxious non-stop while she was in the hospital. He was okay. However, afterwards, when she was back, but feeling weak and depressed and recovering slowly, suddenly he became much more restless at night. I have to feel like it was related, because he got back to normal. Regardless, right then I was getting disturbed a lot.

You might think this would make me really nervous and tired, but what it did was make me depressed. Everything that I always carry around but am not really thinking about, I could not stop thinking about. I mean, it would make sense to think about how tired I was, or how awful the people at the credit union were compared to when I took out the mortgage in the first place, and that sounds logical, but it was really just about not feeling loved or like I would ever be loved. I mean, there may have been some element of the lack of writing success, which would have been perfectly logical, but no, the big wound that never goes away is the loneliness, whether it’s fair or not. So, that’s what the next few posts will be about.

I need to say though, that no matter how frustrated my family gets with me when I melt down over a life that is exactly the same as it was the previous week, and for whatever differences there are between us in our ideas of what constitutes a satisfying relationship, one of the kindest things that anyone has done for me is that one night when this was going on, Julie slept with her door open, and I blocked my door, so that the dog had to go to her.

There are two parts to it. I’m working on taking better care of myself so that I don’t get pushed over the edge, but also, if I can change the position of the edge, or the depth of the ravine, that would probably be a good thing too.

Slow learner

So tying together the dreams and the fat and the diabetes (seriously, it all relates—I am a very integrated person), I may have written before about a dream I had a long time ago where I saw whom I would be if I was not fat. I have to talk about her as a separate person, because she was so different. She was beautiful, and a dancer, and she had pretty much no heart. Everything had just been so easy for her that she had never learned any empathy or patience or compassion. It was not that she was intentionally mean, but with no sensitivity whatsoever she did tend to stomp on feelings. Thinking about her, and what it would take for her to develop some sympathy (a devastating injury) was where the storyline for Out of Step came from.

It seems like an oversimplification now, because I thought of myself as fat before I was fat, and other people who have had similar issues have turned out quite differently, but I do still believe that I have learned a lot from this weakness, and dealing with my own issues has led me to be more sympathetic to the things that other people struggle with, even when their issues are very different. That is valuable to me. It doesn’t exactly make me grateful to be fat (or at least to still be fat, because I’ve been compassionate for a while now), but I am grateful that there have been good things from it. Some people just end up bitter.

Diabetes has been its own course of study. Seriously, it started out very literally with a four-week class, and I have learned things about physiology and nutrition and psychology.

I mentioned shame in the previous post, and that has been my defining trait for most of my life. I would blame my failings on being lazy or being a coward, but they didn’t track. I was hardworking and brave for lots of things, but I was consistently putting my efforts into everything but me. I could not value myself enough to do things for me. Some of it was that everyone else had higher priority, and some of it was probably punishing myself for not being good enough, but the results ended up being pretty much the same. There is probably more to write about that, at some other time, but today’s topic is how that trait has been affected by diabetes.

I mentioned yesterday how dangerous it was to just assume everything bad that happened was my fault, from something I was doing wrong. One thing that is incredibly dangerous for a diabetic is self-neglect. My body might not process sugars well on its own, but with the added insulin sometimes it gets a little too efficient. If I let myself get too low, I start feeling sick, and I’m lucky that I do tend to notice, because if I kept getting lower I could end up in a coma, or at some stage in between requiring emergency medical care.

This means I need to be careful about meals. I need to be eating regularly, and planning them so there is a good mix of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, You know how some people don’t feel like eating in the morning? I am one of those people, and not really being a morning person, and having a tendency to be running late, I used to charge out of the house without breakfast more often than not. I can’t really do that anymore. Well, I can—it’s just dangerous.

I need to be careful about sleep. During sleep your body carries on many important biological processes, including processing sugars in the blood. Based on my morning blood sugar scores, it appears that every hour of sleep I miss adds about twenty points. Granted, I am a happier person when I have a full night of sleep anyway, and probably more productive, but that can be hard to remember the night before when I have not accomplished everything that I wanted or needed to accomplish. However, since lack of sleep leads to extra sugar in my blood, and that does bad things to my organs and long-term health, I need to deal with that.

Being diabetic adds a ritual before every meal, where I need to measure and inject (and take at least one pill, except for lunch), and the timing is important, because the injection is the fast-acting insulin, and if I take it and then eating is delayed for some reason, it can send me back into low-blood sugar territory. This does not even mention the work of making sure that I always have the correct supplies, not only keeping track of my various prescriptions, but also the syringes for the slow-acting insulin, the pen needles for the fast acting insulin, and the lancets and test strips for measuring. I’m like a senior citizen, years ahead of schedule.

It also changes my mental view of myself. I remember someone who did muscle testing looking at me years ago and saying something about me having the constitution of a horse. It was true. I was never the fastest or the most coordinated, but I was strong and could go on forever, and that’s gone. I liked that about myself, and sometimes when my body is not equal to my goals I feel so fragile, which is exactly the opposite of what I want to be. I was supposed to be the strong and capable one! And I am, kind of, but not completely.

Also, the most common way that my family expresses concern for me is to ask how my blood sugar is, which is pretty annoying, since I would rather not think about it or share it with other people.

Wasn’t this going to be about the positive aspects, and what I have gained from diabetes? Well, it is. I mean, having to downgrade my self-image isn’t necessarily fun, but if part of my weakness is an unwillingness to rely on and trust others, and I find that I am not, in fact, made of steel, well, there is probably some value in that. It is not the only issue that needs fixing with my self-image, but it is still an important part.

In addition, I have to take care of myself. It is not just a good thing to do, or a nice idea; it has become absolutely vital. If I want to have any ability to do anything, including serving others, it has to start with tending to me, like it or not. I am slowly getting better at that.

My D-word

In addition to the usual profanity (which I do not use), there are other words that I have a really hard time using. For a long time “fat” was my other f-word. It was just so much something I could not bear to vocalize. It was always there, certainly, but it hurt too much, and I would call myself “ugly” instead, even though it was less accurate. Maybe that’s why I preferred “ugly”—because it was not really true. “Fat” was true, and it felt like it made anything else that might be positive about me not matter.

Eventually I passed this point where I realized that the word had way too much power over me, and it wasn’t fooling anyone. It’s not like anyone was thinking of me as skinny until someone said the word. “Oh, now I see it! How did I miss that?”

However, there are things that people can’t tell just by looking, and so you can still keep secret, though doing so may not be in your best interests. For me, one of those things has been being diabetic.

I’m not saying nobody knows, but it’s amazing how many conversations I have had with other people on the topic without identifying. I remember once being in a meeting and one person was mentioned, and someone was referring to one girl, kind of impressed, with how hard she had it because she had to inject herself four times a day. I thought to myself, “Lightweight. I inject six times”, but I didn’t say anything.

(I’m sure in her case she was taking long-acting insulin once a day, and fast-acting insulin with meals. I do that, but I am also injecting Byetta twice a day, which helps counter the weight gain associated with taking insulin, to the amount of about 15-20 pounds in my case, if I am taking insulin without Byetta.)

I have had diabetes for about twelve years now, and certainly part of my not wanting to talk about it is because it is nobody’s business but my own, and I didn’t want anyone telling me what to do or judging everything I eat. There is an old-school belief that you cannot have table sugar with diabetes, when in reality, it is more about the carbs. A lot of the sugar-free stuff is not good for you, though the white sugar isn’t exactly good for you. I do a reasonably good job of controlling and measuring, with occasional lapses, but I do not need other people looking and judging. Of course, since one of my convictions is that I should not be worrying about what other people think, only what is right, that could be one argument against this reason for concealment.

The other thing though, and this was bigger, is that I was really ashamed of being diabetic. It was just more thing that I associated with being fat, which was everything bad about me, and now I had ruined my health in one other way, and I was bad. That was so ground into me, but I have had to reexamine it lately.

For one thing, everything else with my health is really good. My cholesterol’s great, as is my blood pressure and pulse and all of that. I was relieved by these things, but not particularly impressed by them, until recently when I was visiting with my endocrinologist and she asked if I had ever considered surgery. Well, of course, but I was reluctant about it, if for no other reason than that it felt like cheating. What she said though, was that I was in really good health, except for that, and that in a lot of cases the surgery changed the body chemistry, so that even before the weight loss happened the patients were able to stop taking insulin.

It was a perspective shift in two ways. First of all, I had never really thought about it being different that my other scores were good, but apparently having the obesity and diabetes thing going on tends to bring a lot of other side effects. Also, is my body chemistry messed up in some weird way that I don’t even understand? After all, I am the only person in my family with diabetes, but I am not the only obese one, or even the most obese one.

So because I like the routine that I am in now, and I believe it is getting some results, and because I still think it is better not to get surgery than to get surgery, I am not doing anything now, but I am giving myself a year, and if being consistent with sleep and exercise and nutrition really is not enough for me, then I’m going to do it.

Also, I at some point I need to get over this concept that I am bad, and that everything goes wrong for me is my fault. I should know better. I did write about this once, but they tried a medication on me once, Actos, that I had a really bad reaction to, in that it gave me lymph edema. I put on forty pounds in water, and I saw that my weight was going up quickly, and could not figure out what I was doing wrong, but obviously I was doing something wrong. The only reason I figured it out was that I got a scratch on my leg and I was bleeding clear, and that’s when I started to realize something was up. In that case, my attitude was dangerous, and I am really lucky that I got the scratch.

The problem is, even when you realize false thinking, it doesn’t automatically lead to having the right mindset and understanding of how it works. Getting there takes something else. I’m not giving up though, and even the bad stuff has its benefits. More on that tomorrow.

These Dreams

I have had a few conversations lately about recurring dreams, and some of the non-recurring ones.

Now, I don’t buy a lot of the common symbolism of dreams, where different animals and colors mean specific things, because I think they tend to be more individualized than that, and there isn’t always deep meaning. I have had dreams that told me things I needed to know, but sometimes it is very clear that my brain is just sorting data out as all of the images of the day blend in weird ways.

That being said, there definitely are times when they provide a window into your mental or emotional or even physical state, and there are some common themes that tend to mean the same things for most people, and dreams that we have all had.

I actually got a new interpretation for the one where your teeth are falling out of your mouth, which is that you’re feeling not in control. That makes sense. I hate that dream, incidentally.

Actually, most of the recurring dreams aren’t really that great. Like that one where you’re back in school, and you don’t know where you’re class is, or you’re supposed to take a test and you are not prepared? The funny thing is, that tended not to happen in school—it’s adult life that leaves you feeling unprepared all the time.

You know what dream I used to have when I was younger that I never seem to get now? Flying. I could physically feel the sensation of soaring, but apparently it’s been a long time since I have been feeling free and unfettered.

One common motif for me, but I have not had it for a while, is that I will need to get somewhere and my way is blocked. Usually it is that the staircase is either blocked or upside down, but sometimes it’s both.

Another one has changed. McDonald’s was my first regular job, and working so many hours while going to school full-time and participating in a lot of activities led to me being sleep-deprived a lot, and I started having this dream where I knew on one level that I needed to wake up, but I had a line of customers and I had to help them first, and the line kept getting longer. Where the line was changed as my job changed, so I know that I have had it with both the McDonald’s drive-through, and the regular K-Mart checkout, and probably I have had it at Burlington Coat Factory too, but any time that my body was fighting to get me to sleep longer, there would be some set of tasks that I would need to complete. (This is smart strategy on my body’s part, because I hate leaving anything undone.)

Anyway, something interesting happened with that recently. I was pretty sleep-deprived, and I actually did wake up on time, but I fell asleep praying, so got out of that about half an hour later with sore knees. That was not cool (if you have to sleep late, stay in bed).

Anyway, the first task was that I was babysitting, and I needed to change a diaper, but the baby kept shrinking. Yes, I realize that sounds like I am having some issues with my biological clock ticking, which is odd, because I thought I had given up on that, but okay, it was not a completely blithe decision, so fine, we have some residual emotion. What was interesting though was that I was able, through sheer force of will, to get that baby diapered, and all it did was change the task, where I was also trying to complete a shower, and get things straightened up, and chase a toddler. So apparently getting things done is difficult with kids around. I have heard this. I can live with the ever-expanding task list, because I do, but it’s bad enough during the day—I don’t want to have to deal with that at night too. I guess I better avoid the sleep deprivation.

During one of these conversations, I complained because the annoying dreams are fine, but I used to also have interesting dreams with plots, and it had been a while. Actually, the last one I remembered had occurred in Mexico. I blame the Bimbi snack cake. We picked some up, mainly going by the cuteness of the pictures, and my sisters commented on the cute duckling, but no, it was a Gansino, which meant it was a gosling. I believe it was that which caused me to dream of Ryan Gosling that night. He saved me from going over a waterfall in a raft, and I since I had been kind of dismissive of him as a thoughtless womanizer earlier in the dream, I felt really guilty. I’m not even sure my comments were completely wrong, but still, he saved my life.

Anyway, oddly, the night after I made that complaint, I had a dream with a plot. It was clearly heavily inspired by Once Upon a Time, as I had gotten on the wrong side of the Evil Queen, apparently by helping Snow White get away. Because of this, I was going to have to eat the apple, but it was going to be worse because I did not have a true love to come save me, but she was gloating so much I was ready to just eat the apple anyway. Yes, clearly I do have some issues. And, it may be time for a little more delving. It can’t be rock and roll all the time.

So, there is one more recurring dream bit that makes me a bit optimistic. You know that other dream everyone hates, where you are naked pretty much anywhere you should not be naked? The common interpretation of this is that you are feeling vulnerable, which works for me, and I am getting better with that one. When it has come up lately, I have either been able to find some clothes and pull them on, or just be casual about it and keep functioning.

Technically I believe the ones where I function naked is healthier, because pulling clothes back on would seem to indicate covering the insecurities back up, rather than simply accepting one’s vulnerability, but I’ve got to tell you, being clothed is just always going to be more comfortable. However, it is nice to be okay with being open. It’s not always comfortable, but it’s not nearly the torture chamber that I once feared.

Sidewalk Bob Terwilliger

Having now dealt with the Grand Floral Walk, there was one other walk that I had planned on taking, and did, and that is the walk along Terwilliger up to the Lilac Garden. (Actually, I did recently get to go along the Eastbank Esplanade, but I still haven’t done the full river loop.)

The desire to walk Terwilliger came from many trips along it relating to Mom’s two knee surgeries. There were visits with the doctor beforehand, and follow-up visits, and actually taking her to and picking her up from the hospital, and to some extent visiting her, though often in that case I ended up going via the tram.

Regardless, there is a sidewalk and park and woods all along Terwilliger, and I can’t see a path without wanting to walk it. Usually we were coming from Capitol Highway and turning in at the Casey Eye Institute, so I was mainly seeing that half, but also at least a few times I did get to see the other side, and one thing I noticed is that when you get down towards the end of Sam Jackson, there is Duniway Park with a lilac garden. The thought occurred to me that it would be really nice to walk it when the lilacs were in bloom, because I love lilacs.

Well, timing didn’t work out for that, and it wasn’t even an option this year, because the lilac season seemed to fade away really quickly. Regardless, I did take an afternoon where I had some time, get off the bus at Capitol Highway and Terwilliger, and take the walk.

The first thing I have to say is that things go by a lot more slowly on foot than in car, and it is longer than it looks. That’s not all bad—I wanted a long walk—but I probably could have planned the timing better. As near as I can tell, the initial route that I planned is about 2.2 miles. It ended up being more than that for a couple of reasons, which we will get into.

I do like the path a lot. It is not convenient at all, based on where I live and work, but if I was in that area I would use it all the time. If I was located in DC, I would go around the Tidal Basin all the time, because I really love it there.

Once you’re going by slowly, there is more to it than meets the eye. There are all of these side trails and offshoots. Some of them are part of an old health trail, with workout stations where you would stop and do pushups or rings or something. This has not been maintained, so some of the signs and pieces are missing, but it is kind of a fun idea. There are other side paths that are not related to this, and remember, I have this impulse where I am automatically drawn to all of them, but it just was not practical. I was walking on the right, heading towards Sam Jackson, so I went down most of the side paths on that side, but I would see things on the left that I was really curious about, but crossing back and forth would have kept me out there forever.

Sticking with one side of the road seemed like a good system, but even so, there was another snag with my instinct to explore. This one path I believe started with the health trail, because there was something that looked like a station for it there, but the trail just kept going past it. I kept thinking, well, it’s only a little bit farther down, but it kept going and going, till it looked like it might head all the way down to Barbur. The area is heavily wooded and I am a lone woman with a not particularly good cell phone. Part of me wanted to keep going, but my brain was saying, Gina, you are going to stumble onto a camp of crazy vagrants, or the dumping ground of a serial killer, or both. Get back up that hill! So, I still have some unanswered curiosity there. However, I am also still alive, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

There are some things that made me feel like I might want a do-over or three. First of all, there is the left side, which might again involve making some choices where you can’t get everything in on one trip, but also there is that one path, which I’m sure it would be fine to do as long as I had a buddy, or maybe just a knife. I can throw down if I need to. Also, as you got to the park, the main path wound around, which is what I chose, but there was also a shortcut which went straight downhill, and I kind of would have liked to take that also. Oh, and maybe, you know, actually be in the lilac garden when there are lilacs blooming.

The other reason things went longer is that there just wasn’t a convenient bus stop when I was done, so I started walking into down, and ended up going to the first stop on the green line before I really found anything that fit my needs. Anyway, there was something I wanted to do, and I did it. Cue the sense of accomplishment.

Ray Bradbury and D-Day

This is not what I was planning to post today, but there are a couple of things that ended up on my mind. One is that Ray Bradbury died.

Actually he died yesterday, but I found out today. I am not a huge Bradbury reader, though I think everything of his that I have read has had an impact on me, and that he has things that I plan to read and simply haven’t gotten to yet. However, one thing that has been clear to me, from interviews, is how much he loved writing, and that has struck a chord with me. There are actually a lot of things we disagree about. I love the internet, and technology, even if a lot of people use them badly. I loved college. However, we are in synch on that love of writing, and so I have old newspaper clippings from years ago because of things he has said that just resonated. So I am just going to throw out a few quotes and wish him well:

“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

“The best scientist is open to experience and begins with romance - the idea that anything is possible.”

[on writing 'Fahrenheit 451'] - "I wasn't trying to predict the future. I was trying to prevent it."

“I am one of those fortunate people who were born to be joyful writers discovered the fact early on.”

“Sense of humor is everything. You can do anything in this world if you have a sense of humor.

Many directors, producers, people haven't learned that -- that if you just salt people down a little and put a bit of butter on them and make them happy, then we can all work together.”

It’s a fairly meager collection from someone who has said so much and so well, but there is food for thought in there. The one that has struck me the most is the second. I am open to experience, lots of it, but I have sort of stopped believing in some things being possible. Frankly, doing so had seemed necessary, but it looks like I might be wrong again. I will get more into that later.

All of that being said, I suspect the best way to remember Bradbury, ever, is to read a book. The libraries are full of them.

Speaking of remembrance, the other thing I had not thought about at all is that today is June 6th, anniversary of the Normandy landings. Of course we just passed Memorial Day, when people fight between honoring veterans, remembering that war is bad, or trying to do both, and I had been thinking about it then. That’s a big topic, and seriously, I’m still trying to hold off on big rants, but I have some random thoughts that I will put out there.

First of all, and maybe this is just me taking any opportunity to talk about My Chemical Romance, but I thought one good thing to do would be to re-watch their video, the Ghost of You, which has them as soldiers playing at a dance, and then storming the beach.

I think it’s pretty well done, but one thing that I always realize when I am reading about World War II is how much more there is to know, so I am no expert, at all, and I haven’t even seen Saving Private Ryan for what would be the obvious comparison. However, I will say the video is shorter and less intense, based on my understanding, so I think that makes it more accessible in some ways.

So the part that really kills is that Mikey dies, and it’s not enough that he dies. First you need to see this shot of them all leaving the dance, and he turns and looks back and gives this shy smile, so endearing, and then he is on the beach breathing hard, getting ready to rush out from behind shelter, and then he is back on the stage, giving another shy smile (and from that time period, actually, maybe any time he was smiling was shy— he seemed to get a lot more confident later—but it totally works for breaking your heart here), and then he rushes out, you see his brother yelling for him knowing he is way too exposed, Mikey goes down, Gerard keeps screaming Mikey’s name and his buddies are holding him back (I assume it is Frank and Bob, but you can’t really see their faces in this part), medic Ray tries to patch Mikey up, but can’t, Mikey’s eyes go dead, Gerard stops screaming with a look of horror as his eyes get really big (like they are turning black), and the music cuts out and all you have is muted gunfire.

The other part that gets a lot of people is another kid that they show, not in the band, hiding behind a barricade, and he looks so young and scared. Mikey is of course the youngest in the band, and he was 25 when the video came out, but he looks younger.

I bring that up, because one of the primary criticisms that I have heard of Saving Private Ryan is that the people are all too old. The Tom Hanks (42 at the time) role would really be Matt Damon (28), and the others would be 18-21. I’m sure the casting was done because you want experienced actors who bring certain traits, and I get that, but there’s something valuable in remembering how young and raw the boys who get sent out are, and maybe the actual D-Day scene in the movie reflects that.

I don’t know if the average ages have changed, but I know that now they are targeting the poor, and that has largely translated to targeting the non-white, and there are several things about it that make me uncomfortable. It’s not just the inherent racism, or the unequal distribution of the nation’s responsibilities (the middle class will give the money, and the poor will give their lives, and the really rich will contribute the legal and financial expertise so we can have a super productive economy), but I also hate that these commercials that are targeted towards poor kids and their families and they are lies. It will help you pay for college! Well college is getting more expensive, and it may not be all covered, and there are certainly no jobs for you, even with a college education, and that’s assuming you come back alive.

There is another aspect to it also, which is going to be complicated to explain. It comes from Susan Brownmiller’s work, Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape. Obviously, the book is about rape, but one of the parts that surprised me the most was on rape in wars, which I can only explain badly, but if you want it explained well, read the book. It is more common in demoralizing wars. It didn’t happen much in World War II, where there was a sense of heroism and fighting evil, which made perfect sense. There were evil things happening on the Communist side in Vietnam, but it was a different situation, with different feelings and morale, and rape happened a lot.

Obviously, not every soldier gets corrupted, even in the worst situations, and there is absolutely an individual responsibility. At the same time, we need to think about what we ask soldiers to do. The suicide rate is very disturbing. Not all of that is necessarily an emotional consequence, as we start to learn more about some of the long-term effects of head trauma, but why were we giving them such inadequate equipment? Why were we giving huge no-bid contracts to companies that didn’t fulfill their responsibilities? Why did we give private security firms immunity when the low-paid troops still had to take the danger and the responsibility?

I know there’s a lot of Cheney in those questions, and I don’t blame Obama for getting us into Iraq or Afghanistan, and I give him credit for trying to get us out. We still need to take better care of those who have already served. That will require taxation. That’s fine. It is a moral imperative. And it’s time to get away from the idea that private contractors save money. Even companies that hire them all the time don’t do it to save short-term money—they do it to avoid a long-term investment. What we did was a lie about saving money for the purpose of damaging government and enriching cronies, and you were unpatriotic if you questioned any of that. That would be sickening even if it didn’t get people killed.

The Grand Floral Walk

I actually meant to write about this a long time ago. I walked in it last year, and the one for this year is Saturday, so yeah, I’m due.

It almost belongs on the travel blog, because it is kind of a story about participating in a local attraction, and I do intend to revive the travel blog soon. For right now, I’ll just tell you how it went down.

If you are not familiar with it, the Grand Floral Walk occurs right before the Grand Floral Parade. Regence sponsors it, so Regence employees can walk for free, though it is also a fundraiser for the Dougy Center, so a lot of the people who register still pay the money for a donation, otherwise you feel like you are a bad person.
They also set it up so that you could sign up with individual teams with Regence. The overall theme was Portland’s Sister Cities, and each team represented a different one. I signed up early, before I knew about the teams, so I was not affiliated with any of them. I ended up being okay with that for a couple of reasons, all of which have to do with my extreme lameness, but my signing up early was because that was during the same time period when I was signing up for the Shamrock Stride and the Fanconi Anemia Walk—I could do stuff! (Even if it was moderately athletic.)

The stated purpose of the walk is to promote health. It’s a four mile walk, but you can also duck out at the two mile point. I suspect that there is an unstated purpose of killing some boredom for the people who are waiting for the real parade to start.

I admit to having some concerns about the distance. I had done the 5K, but this was longer, and sometimes I feel like I am really a wuss. There was the 2 mile possibility, though, and also. It wasn’t that much longer. Actually, it is longer than 4 miles, because the check in area is on one side of the river, in Oldtown, and then you walk to the starting point, in the Rose Quarter, and then you walk four miles after that. Oh well.

I got to the starting area and checked in, and found some coworkers. I also made one foolish mistake, in that people were giving out these tote bags with swag in them, and I thought the pin might be in there, which I did want, but I did not want a whole bag full of junk, so I asked if I could just get the pin. You get that at the finish line. I think she thought I was trying to cheat. Nope, just a little dim.

We started walking over to the starting point. The literature said that there would be water available at the start and the finish. There was expensive bottled water for sale at the start, is what I saw there. (At the finish they did hand us a free water bottle and a granola bar, so it was half true.) Lisa S bought me a water because she is kind and generous, and although the day was overcast, it was a bit too humid to be cool. That was helpful.

My biggest concern about the distance was not so much that I would not be able to complete it, but that I would not be able to complete it before the parade got there, which would be kind of humiliating. I was not the last person to finish the Shamrock Stride, but I had been right near the front and a lot of people passed me. I made sure to get near the front again.

These are the reasons why I was glad not to be on a team. One was that then you would feel like you need to stick with them, and they would see me falling further and further back, and whether they would let me fall behind or try and slow down for me, no, I don’t want that. Also, one thing that was going on at the registration area was that the team captains were handing out things that related to the theme, like maracas or graduation caps (sister city Bologna is the site of the oldest university in the world), and I don’t want any extra things on me. I get hot and sweaty enough just wearing clothes; I do not need any cheap synthetic materials in the mix. (It amazes me that there are people who run in elaborate costumes.)

So we started out walking through the Colisseum. Our grand marshal was Subway’s Jared, but I did not see him, and my understanding was that he did not even walk it, but he was driven or something. That seems wrong somehow. I haven’t seen anything about a grand marshal for this year.

Starting at the front worked well, as I did end up seeing pretty much everyone as they passed me. Most people were walking in family units. Lisa H passed me with her husband, daughter, sister, niece, and brother in law. Jamie passed me with her daughter and her friend (which was good, because the daughter was really trying to get out of it, early Saturday morning feeling different than it sounds once you get there). Mary passed me with sisters and children.

My sisters considered it, but the crowd aspects were not appealing, and Mom was in between knee surgeries. Near the start I did hear one woman saying “Careful Mom! Don’t forget about your knees!” It kind of struck a chord, and yet I also could not imagine needing to remind my mother to remember her knees.

Eventually I was passed by all seven sister cities. Sometimes I was in the middle of a throng, sometimes we were pretty spaced out. The most memorable was that there was a group of Hare Krishna (Chant and be happy) walking and chanting. When they were alongside me one of them grabbed my hand. I was fine with this, though I did not chant along. By pure coincidence, and old friend was watching with his family, and this is when I passed him.

“Are you having a good time?”
“Not as good as they are.”

Actually, I recognized quite a few of the spectators and support staff, though possibly one less than I thought. I thought I got one enthusiastic “Hi”, and she looked familiar, so I said, “Hey! How’s it going?” and then was ignored. I’m not sure if it was someone else talking to someone else (thought there were not a lot of other people around), or if it was whom I thought, and that this demonstrates why we have never gotten closer.

Obviously, I went past the 2 mile mark, and did not really entertain the thought of stopping there that much. What was killer, though, was that in the last leg you keep winding back and forth, so for half of it you keep facing the train tracks, and watching trains go by that you could hop on so easily, but no, you’re not done yet.

I finished, got my water, granola bar, and pin, and part of the literature is that you can watch the parade from the finish. I don’t know why I thought that meant there would be bleachers, instead of a parking lot in full sunlight—but hey, only walkers and support staff are allowed on that patch of asphalt. There’s some prestige there! I left before the parade got there, but on the plus side I was not overtaken by the parade, and trampled by a marching band, so I guess it’s a win.

I have not attempted to join a team for this year. This year it is music, and the teams represent different decades, so with luck we will be seeing legwarmers, ducktails, and who knows what. I will be wearing a shirt and pants. There is one variation I am considering.

One thing the literature told us was to not hand out candy or things to the spectators. A lot of people violated this rule, and I wasn’t really tempted to do that, but there were a lot of dogs around, both with spectators and with walkers (also not supposed to happen), and I started thinking, what if I carried dog biscuits. And then I started thinking, well what if I had dog ears and a tail, which is crazy because those would get really annoying not very far into the walk. However, I might still feed the dogs.

The Other Side of Telecommuting

No, this isn’t an evaluation of how it is going (too soon). If there ends up being interesting material, I will probably write about that too. Today, though, is about bigger things.

I am interested in environmental issues, and I remember attending a lecture once where all of the focus was on telecommuting and video conferencing—everything you could do to keep people from traveling by car. Some people asked about other things, like alternative fuels, but he kept coming back to avoiding trips.

I remember being surprised at his single-mindedness, but it made more sense later when I read James Howard Kuntsler’s The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century.

I can only give a qualified recommendation of this book. Reading it was a chore, and I think his hatred of people makes him more pessimistic he needs to be, but there was still some good information, and part of it was that while we have perhaps discovered good alternatives for producing electricity for home use and other things, nothing is as effective for the internal combustion engine as fossil fuels, and those are running out.

Now, this is not my area of expertise, and the Leaf seems to be doing pretty well, but what is really interesting to me is how much technology makes possible. How many jobs can be done remotely, and how does the world look if we do it that way?

I  have expressed concern about how easy it would be to become isolated now that I am working at home, but at the same time, there are social things that I have not done in the past because the work day, which ends up being much longer than the hours worked, wears me out. Some people find they go out more when telecommuting, because not only do they want to, but they can.

People will criticize Facebook and things like it because it gives people an illusion of connection when they are really only vegetating in front of the computer, and I am sure that is true for some, but what Facebook has done for me, in addition to allowing me to keep tabs on more people, is that it has led to more face to face interaction. Not only do we schedule events through Facebook, but post-Facebook there are many times when I have recognized people in stores or on the street, where I have never seen them before. Are we actually just starting to cross paths now, or did we not notice before?

It does not matter how good virtual technology gets, I will always want to go travel to see other places in person, and I will want to visit museums live, and see concerts live, though it is nice to have the virtual options. My point is that we have choices that we did not have before, and it leads me to think about all of the other choices we make about what is important to us.

It would be so easy to go off on a socio-political rant here, and I’m going to hold off right now. For one thing, I am in the middle of my Black History month reading. (Yes, I know it’s late. It’s also seven books and it’s going to take more than a month.) Anyway, I am building up a good head of steam, and what with the other half of that and getting deeper into an election year, I suspect I will have a lot to say. No point in getting ahead of myself.

That’s one thing about me, though, which would probably keep me from working well in journalism, is that I don’t like reacting right away. I like taking some time to think and ponder, and so usually by the time I write about something the story is old. Maybe that makes my commentary less useful in some ways, but then I tend to be more interested in root causes and the big picture, where the inspiring story is maybe just a symptom of what is already embedded, so maybe the delay doesn’t matter.

As I move forward with the reading and the writing (and possibly some arithmetic), that will focus more on society’s priorities, but for now a reasonable question for anyone to consider is “What are my priorities, and does my life reflect that?”

You’re right. That’s two questions. So much for the arithmetic.

Transition – the personal and emotional

As I was on my way down Thursday, I remembered that I had some food in the fridge that I had brought Tuesday morning, before I knew. I went to get that, and I saw a girl that I have talked to at various times there.

There are always people that you see all the time, and some you actually connect with, and I was starting to think about saying goodbyes, but I would actually not know where to find her, because we have not exchanged name—we only see each other in the break room. However, when I went in she was there, and I told her I was switching to home, and we talked for a while, and I am glad we got to do that. We still haven’t exchanged names, which is kind of weird, but there are relationships like that, and it’s okay.

On the way home, I was finishing up my book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Remember how I wrote that I like seeing what other people are reading, and engaging with people over books? A guy passed me on the way to his seat and he said “That is a great book! We read it for class.” Awesome.

Friday I was running a few minutes late, and I missed my driver, which was sad. I can’t promise that I will never get up early on a Thursday to go see him and tell him how much I like the sound of his voice. However, no one tried to sell a house or find a lawyer, and I did get off at Goose Hollow and walk one more time.

There were three other goodbyes that would take going out of my way. One was the cashier in the Atrium. I have been getting breakfast there about once a week, which is not really that often, so we have talked, but I didn’t think about it that much. I got my usual biscuits and gravy (it’s something I like, but don’t make for myself), and I checked out and told him it was the last time, and explained why, and his eyes got all big, and he said “Well you are lovely, and I treasure our mornings together, and I will miss you.”

I was dangerously close to crying here. I wasn’t expecting that, and it was going to be kind of an emotional day anyway. I talked about it upstairs though (no one was concentrating quite as well as they could have perhaps), and both Lisa and Laura told me that I have no idea how snippy people get down there, and so they remember the nice ones.

I have to say, that kind of makes me sadder. Okay, I have worked customer service for several years, and I know that happens when you are dealing with the general public, but this is a professional environment, and there is just no call to be rude to the people who are helping you. And he’s a really nice kid. If you are going to be mean to anyone, it should be the grill cook—he’s kind of a jerk. Yes, he has more opportunity to sabotage your food, so maybe you should just be nice to everyone.

Anyway, I got upstairs, and found there were doughnuts and cookies. I knew the cookies were brought by Lisa from Bridge City Café, because I know the signs. I thought the doughnuts were because the last four of us were making the transition, but it was also National Doughnut Day, so I’m not sure. Anyway, there was a lot of sugar around (I only had one doughnut), and Lisa had $8.00 on a Starbucks card which she wanted to use up, because she will no longer be frequenting them, so she had them put $8.00 of coffee in one cup and was pretty caffeinated. We would have been loopy anyway, but it’s kind of amazing that no one’s heart exploded. If at one point we started singing Barry White, and I possibly gave her a little bit of Misfits on her way out, it was done in the most professional manner.

When Jonah and I were going out, I said goodbye to all my coworkers, with some hugs, and I headed down the stairs, and Jonah was faster, but that was okay, because then I thought about my other two goodbyes. The both work on the first floor, one in the walk-in, who is almost always there but it is often busy, and one at the security desk, but they rotate a lot and you never know. As it was, I left the staircase, and there he was at the desk and she rounded the corner from the ladies room, so it was perfect.

Actually, Sue already knew. She has an alternative source of information on me, which does not thrill me, but she doesn’t abuse it at least. He did not know, but I explained, and you know, since he saw me on Jeopardy! we have always talked, and he tells other people and he has always remembered my name since then, and it’s nice. We shook hands, and Sue hugged me, and I was on my way out.

As I start my new work life, where I will be easily able to avoid human contact, I need to carry these memories with me. It’s not just remembering that I don’t really hate people, and that time spent with them can be good. That’s remembering backwards, which is important, but it is also carrying the memory forward.

It’s remembering to pay a compliment when you notice something (That’s a great outfit. You have beautiful eyes.). It’s remembering to ask someone about his weekend. It is remembering that someone was interested in your lunch purchase, and next time bringing back an extra for them. It is finding a good deal on flowers and buying extra and passing them out. It’s remembering that it is okay to ask someone for a ride or help with your network, and that people can and do come through for you, and then remembering that you own them dinner.

Here we go.

Transition – the technical and logistical

My original day to transfer to the home office was going to be May 31st, but there were delays, and I started thinking it would be another two weeks. When I got into the office Tuesday, after the long weekend, I found out it would be Friday, June 1st. I did not feel ready.

There were two main concerns. One was getting the home network running, so that not only could I have my home PC and work PC connected, but that Julie could connect with her laptop when she needed to work from home, an ability which I took away when I tried to set up the wifi so that I could set up my laptop, which still had not been done.

The other was getting everything home. They don’t let you roll your equipment to the train (which is not completely unreasonable), so if I could not find someone to pick me up I would need to hire a cab. I was not ruling that out.

I had two shopping bags at work, because I had been preparing, so I put all the claw machine animals in then, and carried them back with me that night. That was at least one thing done. I also messed around with the network that night, and still had no luck. I was worried, but trying not to panic.

Wednesday I didn’t really do much related to the move, except for have it weighing on the back of my mind.

Thursday I was feeling a little bit of panic, but also some determination. I went through every drawer and shelf, and cleaned everything out. Most of it was paper that could be recycled, and some office supplies that could be taken back to the supply room. I had about one bag of personal belongings, which I carried with me that night.

I left work about two hours early to deal with the network. After getting home, honestly, first I lay down for a bit, then I prayed, and got to work. I had been researching networking on the Comcast site, and I had gotten out the router manual, so I very carefully started from scratch, and restored the wired network. I still could not get the wireless working.

Julie brought her friend and coworker home (who is one of three people who I am not allowed to name on the internet, so my not naming him is not ingratitude—it is respect.) He had to mess with it a lot, but finally the wireless was up. I got out my laptop, and set it up. Julie tested her laptop, both wired and wireless, and it worked. We had traction. That was a huge relief.

One other thing I had done was called a friend, and she was going to be able to pick me up. Our time to go was scheduled for 10-11, so I thought being there at 10:30 would work. Another huge relief. (This was Jen—I don’t think she has any qualms about being named.)

There were a couple of other things that happened Thursday that relate to the personal and emotional, rather than the technical, and I just realized that this is going to be a two-parter, so I guess we will just get on to the technical of Friday.

First of all, having all of my personal items (except for one water bottle) already home was a big help. Nunzia and Lisa already had people waiting for them, so we let them go first, and then Jonah and I went down. I stepped onto the curb at 10:35. A minute later Jen pulled up, and a minute after that the guy with the cart with my PC rolled up, so the timing was pretty perfect.

We made good time getting back, and it was time for the home setup. Having the home network set up did not affect the setup, because what you do is use their hub. So instead of having the cable modem in my hub, and the work PC connected to that, the cable modem, the work PC, and the home router to which all other PCs connect go into the work hub.

I don’t love messing around with cables and things, but it went pretty well, and I had a home connection. Initially my home PC internet connection was down, and my work phone was not working, but it turns out that I had the home router and the work phone in each other’s jacks, and switching those worked really well. I logged in, sent out a message “Houston, we have liftoff” and did some auditing.

It will be an adjustment, and I still have a lot of organizing and rearranging to do, which will probably involve getting rid of many possessions, but it is also an exciting opportunity. We’ll see how it goes.

The time when not swearing may have kept me from getting arrested

My sisters and I had once planned a jam-packed day, involving the Oregon Historical Society, Pioneer Place, and the Portland Art Museum. I believe this happened when we were on our way to the museum.

Now, one of my downsides is that I just don’t walk fast. I can go for a long time, but slowly. The only person who has ever complained about me walking too fast is under five feet, which not only gives her a smaller stride than mine, but also leads to her always wearing high heels, which I never do. So unless you are tiny and trying to compensate, you will probably take an early lead.

This matters because even though my sisters will often stop and wait for me, they do end up ahead, and they were ahead as we were approaching one corner where there was a panhandler. I was close enough to hear him ask them for eighty cents, but not close enough to make the light, and they went ahead because they were embarrassed that they could not help, and did not want to be standing around awkwardly waiting for the light to change. I also heard him say, after their refusal, that maybe they could skip that doughnut. I had some things I wanted to say.

The first one would be that we are living in an increasingly cashless society, which may make things inconvenient for panhandlers but that’s the way of the world. My sisters never have cash.

Secondly, eighty cents is useless; you’re just naming such a low amount in the hopes that people will feel guilty that you are asking so little and give you something bigger.

Thirdly, you’re not even homeless. You are way too clean, with far too little sign of exposure, to truly be living on the street, and honestly based on your dress and your physical condition you don’t seem to be suffering too much, making me think that you’re just lazy, which leads to my fourthly, and this one is huge, IF YOU ARE GOING TO BE A LEECH ON SOCIETY YOU BETTER BE A LITTLE MORE DEFERENTIAL TO THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY MAKE IT WORK!

I did not say any of these things, and the primary reason was that I could not think of any other way to start than “Hey A**hole!” I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but I don’t talk that way, and the fact that I could not think of any way to say it that did mesh with my accustomed manner of speaking made me wonder if I might not be a little too ready to hit him. I am very protective of my sisters, and prejudice against the heavy, bad attitudes of bad people, and injustice in general are all kind of touch points for me, so it is not hard to imagine that there would have been some escalation. I should have threatened to sit on him. Yes, it’s playing into his stereotyping, but seriously, I know I could hurt him.

And no, he did not ask me for any money, even though he had an entire light change to do so. I have noticed that people often seem to instinctively know that certain things will not fly with me, and while this saves me a lot of aggravation, sometimes they really deserve the results that other people will not give them. (I have some other stories on that, but too many people who read this would know the principle characters.)

Anyway, the jerk’s spiteful sloth went unchallenged by me, and perhaps it was for the best. It does make one wonder what might happen if I ever start cursing. Maybe I shouldn’t be listening to so much rock music.