Silly Things

I routinely ask people, “What should I write about in my blog?” Usually, I ask people on Wednesday night (which should surprise no one who knows my strict Thursday morning posting schedule). Last week, I asked a friend on Wednesday – and she got back to me on Friday. “Have you ever written a ‘Things You Don’t Know About Me’ post? That could be fun.”

Strictly speaking, many of my posts have been just that. However, most haven’t been SPECIFICALLY that. When I first got the suggestion, I wondered if I had any tidbits left to share. Then, as sometimes happens, life intervened and I found myself occupied with deep, heavy thoughts for days on end. When I finally sat down to write this week’s post, I could only think of deep, heavy topics. It made my head hurt, and my fingers felt too weighty for the keyboard. That’s when I remembered the suggestion, and had the idea of bringing some levity to it. Voila: Silly Things You Don’t Know About Me!

  • Occasionally, I binge…on smutty romance novels. I have at least one complete plot in my head for when I finally get around to writing my own. In the meantime, about once a year, I pick up a few at the local drug store – because I wouldn’t be caught dead purchasing them in an actual bookstore! People in line to pay for anti-itch cream or their monthly supply of Lipitor don’t care what I read.
  • I am proud of my feet…after years of regularly working out, they are the only part of my body that actually LOOKS buff. You can see the muscles, tendons and veins on top and, if you were to look, the callouses on the bottom. Other of my parts are toned, you just can’t tell because there is still subcutaneous fat there. Not so on my feet!
  • When I am alone, I sometimes dance sexy…not stripper pole sexy, but definitely not allowed on a high school prom dance floor. I’m actually pretty good (according to what I see in my full-length mirror) but don’t bother asking because you will never see it. Never.
  • More often than I care to admit, I carry a watermelon…and secretly blush about it for days. Yes, this IS a Dirty Dancing reference. (Watch the scene here.) You probably know this, if you’ve ever interacted with me. However, you may not know how many times I replay the scene in my head and obsess over it.
  • I have a karaoke list…songs I think I would rock if I ever have the courage to solo. Twice, at campus programs, I sang Air Supply’s “All Out of Love” – but I was with a small group of people I knew well. I’ve gotten up and shouted lyrics to “Summer Lovin” or “Love Shack” with groups. This bears no resemblance to singing. Once a friend put my name in and the whole room insisted I take the microphone to sing Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”. And yes, celebrating my 50th birthday in a nearly empty bar I did belt out some Flo Rida. But for someone who regularly attends “Karaoke Night”, I’ve actually performed very infrequently. I just don’t have the chutzpah to make other people listen to my caterwauling. But I keep a list. Just in case.
  • I am fascinated by dolls…that would be art dolls, created for artistic purposes not for children. I own several art dolls, and I buy every issue of Art Doll Quarterly I see. Once, my aunt Paula and I challenged each other to an Art Doll Competition: thirty minutes to find objects and create an art doll. Two rocks, some copper wire, and a tube of superglue later and I was a winner. (If you are interested in my idea of amazing art dolls, check out the work of Kelly Buntin Johnson, here).
  • I once memorized 10 sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay…because they were so depressing and I was heartbroken. I mean, they have lines like, “…This beast that rends me in the sight of all, this love, this longing, this insidious thing…” or “I shall go back again to the bleak shore, and build a little shanty on the sand…” . In order to get the full silliness of this revelation, please picture me walking alone in the woods, then sitting on a rock or stump and reciting the sonnets aloud, tears streaming down my cheeks. I live in Iowa. It might have been less silly on a rocky promontory above the sea. Less silly, more melodramatic?
  • A lot of people like Monty Python for the attack rabbit…or Lumberjack song style of humor. Don’t get me wrong, I laugh. But my favorite sketch involves two middle-class housewives, Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion, who have an argument at the laundry about the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, and take off for Paris to have Sartre settle the dispute himself. They call ahead and ask his wife when he will be free, and her response is, “He’s been trying to work that one out for the past 60 years!” It is quite a long sketch, something like 8 or 9 minutes, but it cracks me up every time.  (If you have time, watch it here)

I’m not certain this list is quite what my friend had in mind. I’m not certain it’s what I had in mind when I sat down to write.  But I do know that in the process of writing this list, I’ve been able to relax and disengage from all the heavy thinking that’s been weighing me down this week. Sometimes that is just what we need, a break for silliness – here’s hoping we all remember to take such a break now and then!

The Sunday Roast: A Conversation Between Friends

Note: Today is the inaugural edition of “The Sunday Roast: A Conversation Between Friends”, a semi-regular feature of guest posts. I am always happy to take submissions for “The Sunday Roast”. The only criteria is that the author write honestly about something that is important to them, or about which they are passionate. (Today’s post was inspired by an interaction between me and a friend – your guest post, however, need not have anything to do with me or with something I’ve written about on Jenion!)
 

Today’s Guest: Molly Altorfer

Molly’s self-description on Twitter says it all:  “Aspiring SuperMom. Communications & marketing freelance strategist. Wannabe professional golfer. News junkie. Mid-life grad student.”  You can find Molly on Twitter @m_altorfer or on her blog Molly Altorfer::Freelance
  

“I wouldn’t have been friends with you in college. You would have scared me.”

Jenifer uttered these two statements mere moments after I told her a less than flattering story about me from college. How less than flattering? Well, I rate it an 11 out of 10. The story involved me being furious with one of my college roommates because she refused to (ever) do the dishes – including her mountains of used, gelatinous-encrusted pots and pans. In a temper tantrum worthy of John McEnroe, I demolished a wall with a tennis racket in the rental house I shared with six other women. The look of pure disgust and fear on the face of my one roommate who witnessed this episode was enough of a gut check for me. Did my temper go away? No, not entirely, but I think I do a relatively good job of controlling it now. I consider it a process.

Over the past few weeks I’ve thought of Jen’s response to my story, which I had never shared with anyone else. Ever.

Jen was completely non-judgmental. And it wasn’t my behavior that she questioned – but her own. As I understood Jen’s evaluation of me at that time in my life, I would have been too competitive, too intimidating and too forceful for her to even consider having a friendship with. She’s chronicled in this blog about how she was often gripped with fear about her own insecurities, and I interpreted her comments to mean that I would have been “too much” of anything, and everything for her tender, fragile self.

What I didn’t say to Jen at the time – but have thought several times since is, “I wouldn’t have been friends with you, either.”

In case you’re just reading this blog for the first time, here’s a news flash for you: Jen was fat. At her highest weight, she clocked in at more than 350 pounds. The “college Molly” wouldn’t even have registered Jenifer as a person, let alone someone worthy of befriending.

That’s a pretty shocking statement: I would not have registered her as a person. Embarrassing, but true.

Here is the back story, but please note that this is not presented as an excuse for my behavior. I went to a private college in Minnesota. As I look back now, no one was overweight. Seriously. I cannot think of one person who I knew – either personally or in passing on campus – who was obese. Jen and I have had this conversation about the “skinniness” of my alma mater and she thinks (and I agree) that it likely has to do with the socio-economic makeup of that particular school, which includes a lot of middle- to upper-class students from the Twin Cities. Greater resources often provides greater or increased access to healthier foods and exercise, thus equaling a campus that is obsessed with health, fitness and size 2 J-Crew jeans and sundresses. (No one was fat, but I could talk a blue streak about classmates with serious eating disorders…but that’s another story).

So without coming into any sort of contact with an overweight person or anyone who was struggling with obesity issues, I had some alarmingly negative and entrenched stereotypes of people who were overweight. Lazy? Check. Lack of self-control? Check. Unclean? Check. Unintelligent? Check. You name them and I can almost guarantee I had them.

So how is it that I now count as one of my best friends a person who was formerly fat? I’m not sure how we connected when I was working at Mount Mercy, since Jen and I worked in markedly different areas. Of course, I am incredibly glad that we did find a common bond. Jen is the person to whom I know I can tell my secrets and that they will remain confidential and who is always ready for a good laugh or a snarky comment, and she is also the Godmother to my daughter. So it’s pretty apparent that I cherish her and our friendship.

What is astounding is that she alone has had the power to reverse all of my negative, hurtful and harmful stereotypes about people who are overweight or are dealing with significant weight issues. We were friends before she started this blog and her food challenge, but I would argue that our friendship has deepened during that time. What I’ve learned from Jenifer is that there is incredible power in disclosing and bringing to the light of day our fears, hopes, insecurities and desires. She proves that to me every week – and each Thursday I am more in awe of the cogently written and wryly described tidbits of “Jen-isms” that she offers to her readers.

I didn’t intend for this post to become a “Jenifer is the best” entry, and I know she wouldn’t want that anyway. But I do wish to convey that Jenifer has tapped into the power of the written word – and in a way that is eloquently yet simply conveyed to me and to others each week. Her struggle with weight issues is visible – but there are legions of us out there who struggle with issues that cannot be visibly critiqued by others.

Jen has taught me that there are restorative and healing powers in voicing what’s on your mind so that others may benefit from your experiences, mistakes and successes – and even the power in dredging up old college stories.

Tennis anyone?

What Defines Us

I didn’t post a weigh-in today because I didn’t want to share my current weight. The important thing about that weekly snapshot of my scale has always been, in my opinion, the concept of honestly sharing both the ups and downs of my path with others who might struggle with things in their lives, too. Today, I feel like copping out.

For a month now, my time and attention has been elsewhere than on my weight. In some ways, it has felt good to let my guard down a bit, to worry about other things, to enjoy other things, to just not let the central factor of my life be the scale. In other ways, I have felt stressed and out-of-sorts, with various life issues pulling at my focus.

I haven’t made horrendous choices in that time. I’ve continued to work out. I haven’t suddenly begun eating between every meal, or eating outrageous menus or triple helpings. I haven’t given in to temptations such as the Taco Bell drive through to try one of those Dorito-shelled tacos I’ve seen on TV.

But the scale has inched up anyway.

One of my favorite television moments ever was on the Roseanne show. The family is in debt, having trouble paying their bills, and at the end of the episode their electricity is shut off. From the dark screen, we hear Roseanne’s voice, “Well, middle class was fun.” I feel a little bit like that today, “Well, One-derland was fun.”

Except for this: I can choose differently.

Not every family has control over the financial vicissitudes in life. But each of us has control over where we place our attention, the choices we make on a daily basis, and the attitude we bring to each day.  These are the real lessons I’ve been learning via the process of losing weight. And while I can’t say the scale doesn’t have an impact on me, I can truthfully say my weight no longer defines me.

Because I am choosing to define myself.

One of the lessons I am still learning is to never underestimate the power of that. We live in a world that wants to define us externally (using standards set outside ourselves) – by our looks, our weight, our gender, our sexual identity, our politics, our socioeconomic status, our race…so many factors. But none of these is who we are, no matter how central that factor is to our lived experience. Who we are depends on us.

With that in mind, there’s one other thing I’d like to share with you this morning:

Drinking The Kool-Aid

The day of my Nana’s funeral was the first time I saw my father cry. It was a shock to me, which is probably why I remember it so vividly. That, and the incident with the kool-aid.

After the funeral, relatives and friends gathered at our house. For us kids, it was like the best party ever – my dad’s sister Rosie’s nine kids were there, five or six of us (can’t remember which siblings had been born by then) and other assorted cousins and kids. We were playing outside, running around sweaty and thirsty and begging for something to drink. So my dad made a pitcher of kool-aid. But as we stood in a line on the back porch ten or so kids realized at the same moment that something was terribly wrong. The kool-aid was beyond tart. Dad had forgotten to add sugar. I remember suggesting we should just go ahead and drink it, rather than bother my Dad with our complaint. That idea was vetoed by the other kids. But I couldn’t get the image of my father’s grief out of my head. It seemed like the most thoughtful thing I could do was drink that terrible, sugarless, beverage.

In November of 1978, when I was 17, Jim Jones and members of his People’s Church committed mass suicide in Guyana by drinking poisoned kool-aid. This is the origin of the phrase, “drinking the kool-aid”, generally meaning blind, uncritical faith in a leader. I am not using the phrase in this sense, though perhaps my use is a distant relative. Instead, I am talking about those times in life when what is before us is a decision to either do or not do a bitter, unsweetened thing. Sometimes, like on the day of my Nana’s funeral, we want to be kind and thoughtful, but there will be no true benefit for anyone if we drink (though there may be real cost involved). At other times, we do the hard or bitter task because the benefit to others outweighs the cost to us. Learning to differentiate between these two types of occasions is an art form.

How do you know, when circumstances are murky or clouded by emotion, whether or not to drink the cup set before you? How much effort do you put forth for others in your life? How many contortions do you make in your day to do what you think someone else wants or needs? These are difficult, sometimes gut-wrenching questions.

I’ve developed a few guidelines that are, I think, serving me pretty well.  They were developed after years in which I often found myself bitter because I was making the effort to drink the kool-aid, yet it was going unnoticed and/or unappreciated by the person for whom my effort was expended.

  • First, I have to ask myself: Do I have a hidden agenda? Do I want to do this as an expression of my care for the other, or is it an attempt to “make” another person love me, appreciate me, beholden to me? Believe me when I say this is one of the hardest questions I regularly ask myself. It is hard because I want to lie to myself. I want to say, every time, that I am only thinking of someone else’s happiness. I want bluebirds to fly out of my mouth because my soul is just that pure. However, if I am drinking from the bitter cup because of a hidden agenda, the bitterness becomes palpable in my reactions to the other person. Ever hear of a martry complex? I am susceptible to this failing, and I truly hate seeing it in myself – so much so that I’d rather be honest with myself about my agenda!
  • Another important question: Will my doing this be meaningful to the other person? I have been known to go to every store in town to get the exact gift I think will be perfect for someone. This is a process which gives me happiness, and whether the other person ever sees or knows the effort is incidental to my enjoyment. I am motivated by my love and the sheer joy of expressing it in this manner, and I can sense those lovely little bluebirds flitting around my altruistic head. There are times, however, when a desire to please becomes a crazed nightmare. One time a friend who rarely asks for help told me she was feeling overwhelmed and could use some help that would necessitate my availability for a Saturday. I was scheduled to work that Saturday, but didn’t want to say no in my friend’s hour of need. I rearranged my schedule, calling in favors and making deals with several other people in order to be free to help my friend. Saturday morning, just as I was donning my superhero cape, my friend called to say that she had changed her plans and didn’t need me after all. My ego was deflated, I was angry, and my feelings were hurt. Didn’t she realize the effort it took to come to her rescue?! But the failure was mine – I hadn’t been honest (“Oh, no, I’m free on Saturday”), I hadn’t been direct (“I am scheduled to work, but if this is really important to you, I’ll make some calls and switch things around”) and I hadn’t asked myself whether I had a hidden agenda (SuperJenion to the rescue!).
  • A final question that I’ve learned to ask is: Does this really matter to ME, or am I doing it because I think I SHOULD? If the answer is that it matters to me, great. I do it. If the answer is “because I should”, I need to dig a little deeper. So the next question needs to be: Why should I? I am not one of those people who advocate never doing things because we think we should. There are times we SHOULD suck it up and do things, whether or not we want to or they are meaningful to us, because they matter to others to whom we are committed. If this is one of those moments, knowing it goes a long way in adjusting my attitude toward the positive. But sometimes I say “I should” when the reality is it doesn’t matter. That “should” is coming from a place of insecurity – I am afraid that someone else will be angry or not love me if I don’t say yes. So, I drink the stanky kool-aid from a place of fear. I’m the only one who thinks drinking it is a sign of love. Often, no one else really even notices what I agonized over. And then, we’re right back to that icky martyr complex.

The story of the kool-aid that wasn’t “cool” has become a legend in our family. Told and re-told with mirth over the years. For me, it is a reminder that sometimes our kinder impulses can lead us to make empty gestures. All of the adults, including my Dad, found humor in the reactions of their children to the sugarless kool-aid. I needn’t have worried so much about further burdening him in his grief, nor did I need to be the lone child choking down a glass of foul liquid. In my adult life, being clear with myself about my motives and the actual needs of my loved ones, instead of acting from misplaced obligation, insecurity, or hidden agendas has saved me from a great deal of bitterness and martyr-ing. Besides, I’m sure we can agree, a nice cold glass of sweet kool-aid with loved ones after shared effort is truly good for the soul – and what it was all about in the first place!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Hanging on by a thread…remembering to take it one day, one meal, one opportunity to be active at a time! Happiness in the company of friends is awesome, but I can be happy AND remember my goals. At least, that is today’s mantra!

The Fall of A Sparrow

Three weekends ago, my friend Mike came into my house via the side door saying, “Did you know you have a bird’s nest above this door?” I said that it had been there and empty since I moved in. He said, “Well, it’s not empty now, I just scared a little bird out of it.” And sure enough, when I asked him to check, there were eggs in the nest. We were worried the smell of his fingers touching the eggs might keep the mother away, but soon she was happily sitting the nest, keeping her eggs warm. On Sunday, after Mike left to return to Minneapolis, I pulled out a step stool and snapped the shot, above, of the little speckled eggs.

That weekend, we were marvelling at the early spring that had arrived in the midwest. We made a point to start using the front door, in order to cause less disturbance to the little bird family nesting in the side awning. And we made friends with the neighbor’s cats, who do love to sun on my porch and rest in the shade beneath my front bushes. One beautiful tiger cat was especially friendly, lying at our feet and stretching to expose his belly to be scratched.

Every day I’ve watched the progress of life in the little nest. I haven’t wanted to get too close, since any movement at the side of the house sent the mama bird flying away to distract attention from the nest. I’ve exclusively used the front door, even when arriving home after dark, fumbling with my key and crossing the pitch black living room to find a light switch. Finally, last night, I noticed a change. Tiny movements in the nest, tiny chirps – the little chicklets had hatched. I plan to take the afternoon off work tomorrow, and thought it might be a good time to attempt a photo of the hatchlings to go with the one, above, of the eggs.

This morning, I woke and went to the gym for my TRX class. It was a hard class, and I returned home physically wrung out. I turned on the tea kettle to boil water for my morning coffee, and sat down at my computer to put the finishing touches on today’s blog entry. Suddenly, there was a loud noise at the side of the house, much like someone attempting to break down the side door. My heart leapt into action, hammering hard and fast in a fear response. I ran to the side door, thinking that whomever was trying to break into my house might go away if they realized I was still inside.

The sight that greeted me was not what I expected. The tiger cat looked up at me from a crouched position, obviously startled in the middle of something. And that’s when I thought of the nest. Opening the screen door, I was greeted by the sight of five little birdlings, gasping their final breaths on the cement at my feet, the nest that had sheltered them hanging like a straw beard from the awning above them.

Death took all but one within seconds of their fall. The last and largest of the hatchlings lived for maybe two minutes. There was absolutely nothing I could do, except witness the little thing’s passing.

For some reason, I really wanted those little birdlets to live. I’ve never watched a nest before, never been so engaged before in this process, not even as a child. I wondered how I would be able to bring myself to dispose of their little bodies. Luckily, I was spared that task by the arrival of Tom, the facilities groundskeeper who tends my lawn. He is such a kind-hearted man that though it saddened him, too, he agreed to do the grisly clean up.

But even in my sadness, I can’t hold it against the tiger cat. He was just being his cat self. Next time I see him, I’ll reach down and rub his belly the way he likes me to. And I’ll be reminded that sometimes our role in the day is to be a witness to this amazing world and to the life that inhabits it. We get so caught up in being actors in our lives, deciding and speaking and moving. Sometimes simply, silently, witnessing is necessary, too. Necessary for us and for our world.