Eating That Elephant

I had an interesting 40th birthday.   I’ve gotten asked a lot, “Are you going to do [did you do] anything special for your birthday?”

Really, it started yesterday, when I got a fabulous new haircut, and we went out for sushi and a free dessert.  That was pretty special (especially given the price of each!)

But today is my actual birthday.  First, I went walking with a friend at 5:30 in the morning (5 am wake-up time).  We walked about 8 km (1 hour 40 minutes) in preparation for the Bolder Boulder in a few days.  Most people think I’m nuts to get up so early, much less on my birthday.  It felt great though – I had a sense of adventure, of pushing the limits, and a sense of focusing entirely on myself – the same reasons I’m walking the Bolder Boulder; mainly just because I’ve never done it before.  Special to me, perhaps, though masochistic to the rest of the world.

After getting home, I worked for a while on our radio show.  Again – this was work, but it felt great.  I was doing something purposeful.  Making a difference.

Then an odd thing happened; our area was hit by hurricanes.  Unusual, scary.  It didn’t come very close to us but friends had damage and some damage was severe….our local paper has a Photo Gallery.

Later, friends came over to plan for the Bolder Boulder.  It was chaos, but I tend to thrive in chaos.  It was fun.   A couple of them stayed for dinner and we pulled out leftover cake from the freezer (thank goodness that is no longer calling my name!)I did get to play the birthday card a couple times; hubby ran an errand for us, picked up dinner, and cleaned up the kitchen.

But no, I didn’t do anything “special” for my birthday.  It seems for some reason we view birthdays as either a day that we get to take care of ourselves (as if this should be different than other days), and/or a day that should be different, or unusual.  However, I loved my birthday for the opposite reasons – because it made me value that I do have it pretty darn good already.  Despite tornados.

I just had this realization that I suspect the entire world other than me has already figured out, or known from birth, but I’m hoping for me it will help reduce my stress level significantly.

If you have been following me so far, you know I’m pretty organized (otherwise, with my poor memory, my life would fall apart). And you know that I like to plan ahead. And yet, I always seem to run out of time and not get to the important things that I need to do by a certain time. I’m often changing my underwear and quickly running a brush through my hair when I should have already left (and when I had planned to have enough time to shower, blowdry, and put on a bit of makeup).

So here’s my big realization. Something as old as, well, at least as old as Stephen Covey and he must be getting old by now…”Begin with the end in mind”. I knew this once, but somehow my tired old brain lost it (no surprise there!)

So what if, instead of writing this blog post or checking my email while estimating that — “sure I can get everything ready to go later – I have a whole 80 minutes! Come on! “– I actually did the most important things that have to be done on a deadline, first? What if I was proactive, but proactive working backwards, instead of forwards? Hmmm….I think I’ll go play around with it…what would that look like?

• Deciding what I need to bring, and getting it ready
• Feeding the family
• Getting dressed, eating
• Thinking about stuff I might want to get started for the week also
• Actually looking at my todo list
• NOT reading email
• NOT blissfully following internet ratholes like updating my LinkedIn contacts…

Well, we’ll see.  Perhaps it is just another one of those fleeting strategies that gets me excited for a while and then falls by the wayside.  But at least I can try to get a few days out of it.

It’s a beautiful morning here on Mother’s Day. I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep; I was so excited to see the newly hatched, almost-invisible, Painted Lady caterpillars that my son and I are raising. My son has been relaxed and patient through the whole process; he knows how to trust, apparently, better than I do.  I have been anxious and impatient 🙂

Sometimes I get so conflicted about how to spend my time, always trying to manage everything and everyone. When I’m focused on tasks it feels like I’m missing the connection and fun of just being; but when I’m just present and in the moment, it feels as if a huge pile of things that need doing starts threatening to fall on top of me. I hate having to choose (being the control freak that I am) between everything running smoothly and having fun with my friends, my family, or just alone. So I tend to see-saw back and forth – resentment at not having fun; panic at not getting enough done.  And onto of all of this is a general unease about the reality that I’m not spending as much time as I would like on the “big” things I want to do in my life, such as writing, coaching, and speaking.

Lately, though, I’ve been finding a bit of a balance and I think I might be onto something.

My friend Amy and I have been starting a radio podcast show, and so many of the concepts seem to apply to other areas of my life. I expected them to apply to my own  parenting – that’s one of the reasons we do it! – but I’m finding more and more parallels with non parenting issues and that has surprised me.

We have been telling parents that if they are on the teeter-totter between permissive and punitive/authoritarian, they can step off – there is a whole new paradigm that is neither. I’m starting to believe that teetering between trying to control everything, and ignoring it while it piles up, cannot be the only way to find balance either.  How can I step off?

Instead, I think the key is trust, just like it is in parenting. I’ve also been telling parents for years that the time to try to solve your big parenting problems is not in the moment of conflict, and the same seems to be true of life in general.  And yet, when do I look at my todo list?  When do I try to make sure to get everything done? When I’m panicked – when it feels like nothing is getting done.  I.e., in the very moment I’m least able to do this, which undoubtedly is part of the feeling of panic. This is the shift I have been starting to make – letting go of the panic about the big picture in that moment, and instead focusing on short term needs. But how do we put this into practice in a way that also gets things done and does consider the big picture?

In parenting, my answer is being proactive: avoiding those situations by finding creative solutions in advance.  I’m getting good at doing this in parenting (the consequences are too high if I don’t, which a change-resistant, sensitive child).  But in life, I need more practice.  Do I look ahead at my todo list and my life challenges when I’m not in that panicked state?   Hmmm…not really.

In parenting, I realized the other day that without being proactive, it’s easy to become permissive and not parent from my values.  I think similarly, without being proactive, I’m not really living to my values.  The key to being able to spend time writing and coaching without my pile of todos falling on my head is to live more proactively.

I’d better go put that on my todo list 🙂

I’m trying to concentrate on writing and finding it very difficult to avoid distractions. I see my email program staring at me…and with resolve I close the program and tell myself I’m not allowed to look at it. I wonder what picture I’ve put on this blog…thankfully the “write” page doesn’t show it (because my mind is so distractable that I could go wander off for hours). I’m like a child stepping from rock to rock in a river, ignoring the current underneath and the lack of a path when the water gets deep. I don’t have the habits in place, and willpower doesn’t work very well at keeping me focused.

My dilemma with focus and distractions is true both at this moment, and in my life in general. I’m trying to focus on being a writer (as one of my roles, anyway), as I hope to someday be an author, and yet, I rarely actually make time in my life to write. In fact, this dilemma pervades my whole day-to-day life – as I jump from task to task, reacting to whatever falls into my path, I have this sense that it’s not where I want to be, and yet, at the time, it seems like I’m taking the only reasonable step I have available to take.

I often say (mostly to myself because no-one else wants to listen to this stuff) that I can never “find” the time to write. Although technically “find” might be the right word, I’m starting to think “make” is much more appropriate.

The writing I’m working on at the moment is my blog post for our Parenting For Humanity blog on “Being Proactive” (in parenting). Perhaps this is ironic, or perhaps it is universal intervention, but I just realized that being proactive is exactly what I am NOT doing with my writing and with my life. I’m applying it in my parenting, but not to myself.

I’m unfortunately doing a lot more waiting around for the right time, the right topic, and the right energy levels to somehow magically line up in the universe and fall in my lap as “the time and space to write”. I know this is not the answer. It only feels like the only choice when I look out and find myself in the middle of the river, and the choice seems to be the previous rock or the next one.

But what if I just sat down on the nearest large rock and took a few deep breaths? What if, before I actually start leaping from stone to stone, I sat on the banks for a while and enjoyed the view? Sometimes to see the path, not only do we have to be able to see the big picture, but we have to relax our vision and let go of any urgency. In doing so, our perspective widens and connections we were unable to see before become clear.

Now, just to find a nice comfy rock.

My son is raising butterflies. He got 6 caterpillars in a little cup and we have been watching them eat and grow.

I really think I might end up being an interfering grandmother one of these days, despite the best of intentions. I was watching those caterpillars and expecting them to be right on schedule and starting to harp when they weren’t. My son kept saying, “Mom, they will get there when they are ready. Stop worrying about it.” Of course, he was right. We now have 6 little chrysali 🙂

Earlier today I was congratulating myself on not bringing my laptop down to the hotel pool area (the entire hotel has internet access, for a small fee of course). Apparently, I spoke too soon.

I’m pondering the nature of vacation. Yes, there are the pretty views, the architecture, sounds, smells, and sights that tantalize our senses. But today, it seems to be more about being unable to do our routine, daily tasks; drinking and eating more and differently than we might usually allow ourselves (two words – merlot and amaretto); chairs that force us to recline; and mostly, imposed nothingness. (I should also note that having hubby entertain the child frequently is a welcome bonus).

Mostly, it seems that vacation is a planned-in-advance time to relax and renew. As my son was joking, today our agenda was to eat a snack, swim, relax, eat some more, play, and eat. But I have to ask myself – why did we have to fly 600 miles, over the course of several hours plus a couple days of packing and planning, to be able to do this?

Now, don’t get me wrong…I’m not regretful – I’m actually very grateful, and we intend to do lots of sightseeing and adventuring that we don’t have locally. I know from past experience that there is something special about vacations that imprint memories into our lives and bring us closer as a family. And we really needed that in our lives right now.

So, no, I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have come; rather, that I would like more of this in daily life. The thought crossed my mind that perhaps we should institute “family vacation day” each week – we could go to a local attraction for the day, or even go to our health club and sit by their pool; eat their (actually rather reasonably priced) poolside food; etc.

Unfortunately, I suspect it would go by the wayside in the same manner that family cleaning day and make-dinner-as-a-family night (which lasted a record low of 2 nonconsecutive weeks) did. Somehow, the tasks of daily life always intrude. Perhaps that is a clue as to why we go 600 miles.

I also can’t help but notice that even on vacation we fall into familiar – albeit it annual rather than daily – habits. For example, my wanting to save a buck here and there by cutting corners (while still enjoying an luxurious vacation), my husband getting exasperated at my inconsistent and sometimes (in his mind) immoral shortcuts; my desire to go out and do things when the boys would rather sit and do nothing; etc. On some level, routine is clearly comforting and craved. Perhaps, like going into the hot sun when our own will be hot soon enough, getting away from our lives helps us value it more. Maybe, as I often do, I will get home and be a bit happy to see my regular routine.

Somehow though a part of me always feels that there must be something wrong with me that I can’t just sit back and enjoy this. Maybe I should go work on that now.

Today I noticed that my refrigerator strongly resembles one of those old 15-square games where you have to repeatedly move pieces into the one empty slot in order to rearrange the other pieces. I was trying to find the leftover breakfast sausage, and there was no room to move things around; forget about actually spotting it from the front. This drives my husband crazy, and I actually hate it too though I don’t seem to be able to stop myself from creating it. I then started to plan dinner, and found that I have the same problem with my pantry cabinet. And my chest freezer. Hmmm, a pattern emerges?

I’m not sure why I do this. No-one who doesn’t eat that many carbs actually needs 5 large packages of different sizes of rice noodles in their cabinet. (Ironically, this is what I was going to purchase when a niggling thought reminded me that there might just be the right size, waaaay in the back, and hence started my 15-square battle with my cabinet). Nor several types of prepackaged asian noodles on top of that, plus 3 different brands of the Nori seaweed that goes around sushi (one is almost gone, I promise), or 4 different kinds of rice. Let’s not even focus on the bulk cous-cous that I never use because I’m not sure if it is too old, but still neglect to throw out.

I don’t know why I continually come home with more food than we can possibly eat and then cram it into every nook and cranny I can find. I wasn’t born during the depression, nor did my family starve me. But I’m beginning to have an idea of what to do about it.

A recently book club discussed, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver (an excellent book). The general idea was that their family of four decided to live as locavores – eating almost everything either home-grown or within a few miles of their home and while it was in season.

It’s a radical change in perspective for most Americans to eat what the land provides rather than what is imported at high cost from another country. In more than one sense, it is eating from the ground up rather than from the recipe book down. It involves designing meals around what is available.

Well, let’s just say that’s too ambitious for me. I like the idea, I’m just not ready or even close. But I got to thinking – I could almost feed my family of three for a year (ok, perhaps a month), just on what is in my fridge, cabinet, and freezer. That would assume of course that my child would actually eat any of the things in there, which may be unlikely and downright ludicrous in some cases….ok, well, Barbara Kingsolver’s family did pick a few things they purchased non-locally, so I could do the same – milk, orange juice, a few fresh vegetables (though I have quite the stash of frozen) – I’m sure my list will be much longer than hers. But, looking over my last grocery receipt (which is underneath the receipt for yet more kitchen organizing supplies). there are a lot of things I didn’t really need.

Some people think of April as the perfect month for resolutions as change is easier in the spring than the dead of winter. I am going to resolve to start cooking more from what I have, and bringing less into the house. Beware, family. It might get strange.

Today I was reading a blog written by a local woman that I remembered meeting a few months ago. At the time, I remember thinking she was interesting and that I would like to get to know her, but of course without an actual working memory, I never followed through. Reading her stories, I felt curiously drawn to her.

Similarities to myself that I saw within her words touched me in ways I can’t quite describe. Her wry sense of humor despite a painful situation, her mostly-philosophical approach made more realistic with a bit of anger and lots of grief, and her willingness to expose emotions to the world– I greatly admire someone whose words have the power to make me feel as if we are old friends sitting in her living room. I admired her ability to describe the details amongst a flood of heavy situations, to add bits of playfulness into the seriousness – in short, to make me feel.

My first reaction was a connectedness of emotion (combined with a bit of envy at the quality of her writing). Despite very different circumstances, a mother’s love, pain, and transformation is universal, and I wanted to reach out and connect.

Right on the heels of that though, was another reaction, though some might consider it odd: fear and self-doubt. I thought to myself, maybe it would be rather odd (or to be honest, what I mean is that she might think it rather odd) to try to be friends with someone that I’ve only met once. Perhaps contacting her with a renumeration of all the similarities between us would feel just a tad bit too stalking? I briefly considered listing some qualifications to be her friend – after all, I’m not entirely unconnected or unknown in the parenting community – but quickly decided that would sound desperate at best and self-important at worst.

Then I realized, if I – an extrovert who makes friends fairly easily – am having these doubts, how must it be for others? How selfish am I being, worrying about this?

My own feelings began to make me consider the nature of friendships and connection, of women and self-doubt. Why are we always questioning ourselves? Why do we always think we are not good enough? Recently I was watching a show where women unhappy with their bodies were asked to place themselves in a line-up, based on how big they thought they were compared to other women. They consistently put themselves at the large end of the line, instead of at the smaller end where they actually belonged. I see this again and again in real life – people that I’m sure are more fit than I tell me how wonderful I look, and then go on to berate themselves. On the flip side, I, instead of taking their compliments to heart, feel an inner dismissiveness and downplay their remarks, taking anything negative much more to heart.

This happens not just in relation to body image and looks, but across the board with women, and I find it sad at the same time I’m victim to it.

But, will this realization be enough to get me past my self-consciousness and brave enough to send a simple email? I’m still not sure.

I finally have a a system that is working to take all my vitamins at least for this week so far (several days). I’ve been refining it for a long time and this is the best I’ve found….of course it could just be that it’s on my mind which is why it is working.

First, everything is parceled out into labeled boxes. For me that is critical. Since I don’t have a memory I have a list of what to put in the boxes and what time of day. Then I have a task in my daily todo list to take them.

Still it wasn’t working – what was holding me up with AM vitamins was that I couldn’t take many of them without food, so I would wait untill breakfast, but then I would forget until after (sometimes way after) lunch – when I was checking my todo list, and then there were some that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take late in the day.

Now, I’ve separated out the ones in the morning that are best before food into their own box – any amino acids, herbs, and cod liver oil as I read that somewhere it should be taken first though I don’t know why. I take those first thing in the morning, and I try not to eat my main breakfast for 1/2 hour afterwards, which is what I’ve read, though taking them with juice is OK).

Then, I don’t allow myself any afternoon snack (ok, let’s be honest, it’s usually sweet) until I’ve taken my “morning” vitamins.

I’m still working out how to rmember to take the PM pills.  SometimesI can remember to take them, because I sleep so much better.  Moving them to dinnertime has helped sometimes too.

I tried adding extra B vitamins at night (which I already take in the “morning”) since they helped a friend sleep better and can’t handle them at night – I am agitated, anxious, and dream all night.

Here’s an interesting article I’ve found, and I probably take 2/3 of what is on it, though not all in those doses:

http://www.holisticonline.com/Remedies/weight/weight_multiminerals-therapy-for-obesity.htm

(Warning – their 5-HTP recommendation is too high IMO. I take 100 in the morning….but I’d recommend starting with 50. I know lots of people that react quite strongly to 5-HTP).

Last week I found on my desk a small scrap of paper that said, “3/7, 9:00”. I looked on my calendar and saw nothing at that time (am or pm), but I did vaguely remember a phone call where I had said, “I don’t have my calendar but I think that will work”, and specifically written down a time so I wouldn’t forget to add it to my calendar.

My memory is very odd. In talking with others, I get the impression that a memory is either there, or it is not. Mine reminds me of a statistics class I took in college (though I remember very little of that either) where there are no certainties, just possibilities of greater or lessor probability. I will take a clue – for example the scrap of paper, and compare it to various possibilities in my head, evaluating the probability…”It must be AM, because I never make appointments that late and I think it would have stuck in my memory if I did. It has to be current, because it’s a bit of paper from my scrapbooking (and being in the basement would be consistent with not having my calendar). Could it be meeting a friend for coffee? No, I would have known hubby would be at work. Could it be a client? Possibly – I ran through the ones I could recall offhand and none seemed to match. Etc.” Often, I will run various scenarios through my head, looking for a “deja-vu” type of feeling, and the situation I will pick as correct is just one that feels the most real. I had to assume that the scrap and the memory of the phone call were tied together (that clicked in as, ‘yup, that feels right’) but for the life of me, couldn’t figure out who was on the other end of the phone.

Perhaps the scrap meant something entirely different; maybe “3/7 9:00” has some other meaning (like a movie that has clues that seem obviously one thing but are really another). I guess I’ll never know….3/7 came and went and nothing happened….kind of disappointing actually!