Weekly Affirmations

September 3, 2011

On Friday, I invested the best ten dollars of my life. I had my palm read.

I am married to a man who is my greatest cheerleader, and coach. So while he’s cheering me on, he is also giving pointers about how I could up my game. Just recently I had to interrupt him, ” I was telling you a situation in my life, not asking about how to handle it.” To which he responded, “Yeah, but if you -” I did the most rational thing I could do after 26 years of marital bliss, stuck my fingers in my ears and began humming. He responded in kind by trying to pull my fingers from my ears and yelling, “I’m just saying…”

I seek out friends who refuse to let me off the hook. Recently when I bragged about giving a colleague a taste of her own medicine to one of my friends, she failed to see how justified I was in my actions and high five me. Instead, she shook her head and said, “You are such a brat.” Sort of takes the sparkle out of my revenge fireworks. But, encourages me to behave better next time.

And, I have a teenage son. Enough said.

So, as I was walking the streets of Provincetown and I saw a sign that read, “Special $10 palm reading,” I jumped at the chance.

I’ve never had my palm read, though those bright read neon signs of flashing palms have tempted me for years. The only thing holding me back was wondering how much it would cost. Now I knew and scampered down the stairs to a room filled with flute music, incense, and bubbling fountains, not to mention comfortable furniture, screens and beads hanging from a door frame.

A chubby teenager came from between the beads eating a yogurt using a plastic spoon and told me with a mouth full, “We’ll be right with you.”

I waited. Her father, I assume this because they had the same body type, emerged and invited me back to the room beyond the beads.

I don’t remember much of that room because I was so focused on the directions. “Hold your hand in a fist and make two wishes. One you will tell me, and one you will keep to yourself.” I made my wishes and wondered which I should reveal.

It didn’t matter. Immediately, my palm reader spoke in a sing song tone and spoke of great things to come, a good 2012, lavendar and turquiose being my colors for the new karma I was stepping into and I would find much success, and to stay away from people who are jealous (Duh!) and turn toward good.

Visions of the good witch Glenda danced in my head. The world was alright, or would be soon, if I could just hang on a few more hours, weeks, months.

I thanked him and handed over the ten dollars.

Climbing back up the stairs into the light of the morning, hubby leaned over and said, “That guy was so high. The whole place smelled of pot.”

I protested, “Incense, it was incense.”

“Yeah, marijuana incense.”

And I would do it all over again, just to have someone tell me that the world is going to be a better place in the future. There are few people selling that message today. And just ten dollars – what a deal!

This week I will hold tight to my palm’s message of hope for the future.

August 28, 2011

My need to be the center of attention is so great – wait, wait, I’m dizzy from the world revolving around me – that I literally left California to be in the center of Hurricane Irene.

Actually, we have had these plans for several months and refused to let a little rain and wind stop us.

We left Saturday morning before 7am. Our first layover was Las Vegas. The trip’s mantra up to that point was – worse case scenario, we are stuck in Vegas. Hubby, being a Vegas-lover, had his fingers crossed that we would get stuck. But, alas, we boarded our second plane, headed for Chicago.

We love Chicago, so now the trip’s mantra was – worse case scenario, we are stuck in Chicago. We immediately befriended the nearest flight attendant who told us her favorite Vegas story – 5 year old son asked to attend a titty show, to which Hubby high fived her, seriously, though she seemed quite confused about the high five. Hubby then asked if the next leg of the flight would be about forty minutes, to which she responded, “It will feel like forty minutes, but actually be three and a half hours.”  As the B and C seats boarded the plane, I kept encouraging Hubby to recruit a neighbor since he was sitting in the middle. He ignored me and the incredible hulk in angry mode sat next to him. He should have listened, but after 26 years of marriage, why start now????

We landed in Chicago with no fanfare, only a bit of trepidation. Our favorite flight attendant left the plane, being rerouted to Houston, which led us to believe we would not be continuing, Then our new flight attendant informed us we would be going to Boston where they would basically push us off the plane so they could get out like a bat out of hell.

Fine with us, as long as we got to Boston. Then the new passengers boarded and in between the A seaters and the B seaters came hoardes of families with children who all congregated around us. Did they all know each other, I wondered. This was quickly answered when holier than thou father who directed his wife to sit between their two toddlers while he took a seat by himself gave the evil eye to another mother when her child had the audacity to want to crawl over him to stand up in the aisle.

Again, Hubby refused to recruit but got lucky, a god-fearing skinny man sat next to him. Hubby shared his bounty of extra peanuts he sweet-talked the flight attendant out of with his neighbor who kept talking about Dumbo, in between praising the Lord.

As we were flying over the great lakes, I pointed out Cleveland, to which Hubby exclaimed from his seat 1,500 feet in the air above Cleveland, “Everyone hates Cleveland. It looks fine to me.”

We finally touched down in Boston, and the airport was so vacant I was sure we were in the plot of 28 days later and would be overrun by zombies at any second. Instead, our taxi driver explained that he was a civil engineer, degree earned in his home country of Guinea, and for only two hundred thousand dollars, he could practice his profession here. You got to love America, the land of opportunity for those with money.

We made it to our hotel, were upgraded to a top floor suite – again because, besides the zombies speaking a variety of languages we couldn’t understand, we were the only ones here.

Finally, we watched the news, and Irene, being more of a spotlight hog than myself, avoided me. All we had to contend with were rain and wind.

Depsite my best intentions, I was not the center of the storm, but I’m here for a week and I have not given up.

This week I will be thankful that Irene passed by quietly.

I’d like to think that I’m a better parent than my parents were, but it’s not like there’s a book that tells you how to parent or anything. Oh, there are books, lots of them, that tell you how to do it, this thing called parenting, but they weren’t around when my parents were parents.

We probably all reflect on the way we were raised and try to avoid what we thought were mistakes. Like the time my mom left me at a liquor store waiting to be picked up until she was done with her evening chores. Did I mention it was dark and at a liquor store, where men came to buy – liquor? Or the time… actually I’m having a difficult time thinking of any thing to complain about. And that’s the point.

My parents didn’t have books and classes they could attend to be better parents. They had the way they were raised.

Of course, by my memory, I was a great, easy kid. Sure there was that one time I informed my mom at 8:30 pm that I had volunteered to bring cupcakes for the entire class for tomorrow’s class. Or the time I drove to the beach when I told her I was just driving to the nearby lake. Oh, and that time she had to pick me up from the sheriff station because I’d been picked up on a truancy sweep.

My friend, another self-proclaimed mediocre mom, told me how her daughter went to a local fair and won a goldfish. Well, she didn’t want to carry around this goldfish all day and couldn’t her mom, my friend, come pick up the goldfish? The fair was 20 miles away. But, my friend got in her car and picked up the goldfish so her daughter could enjoy the rest of her day. Then the next day, they went out and spent $60 on supplies to take care of the free goldfish.

“Why did I let her go to that damn fair anyway?” We both laughed. Then we pondered. Do you make the kid carry the goldfish all day? Do you make her purchase all the supplies to keep the goldfish? Do you talk her into giving the goldfish away? Do you make her come home the first time you drive to the fair or let her stay then drive back that evening as planned to pick her up? In which parenting book do you find the answers to these dilemmas? 

Parents today do have books to read and classes we can attend. But I have yet to find in the glossary of a parenting book or on the syllabus of a parenting class the topic: child wins goldfish at fair twenty miles away and wants you to pick it up.

I always joke with my friends that my kid has two funds, a college fund and a therapy fund, because I know that no matter how hard I’m trying, he’s going to look back and think, wow, why would she do that?

I’ve learned that raising kids is not a science, it is an art and you work with what you’ve got and do the best you can.

Yes, I do want to be a better parent than my parents, but I realize that this is a bit of a delusion, the delusion of hope for the future, that it improves with each generation.

All I can hope is that someday he’ll have his own kids, like I did, and, God-willing, at some point he’ll understand.

This week I honor and appreciate the job my parents did with me.

August 13, 2011

I recently attended a workshop about the medicinal qualities of marijuana. The researching doctor explained that using marijuana in its present form, whether smoked or ingested (in, oh, I don’t know, say brownies) does has the potential for some form of toxicity, though they have been unable to prove marijuana is bad for you in any way.

He went on to explain that it was a lot like what happened with digitalis, or foxglove.

Foxglove is a beautiful flower which also has healing qualities for those with heart problems. Unfortunately,the side effects are anorexia, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. The researchers, in all their wisdom, chemically identified those parts of the plant which helped heart patients, extracted them from the plant, recreated them synthetically, then sold them as a pharmaceutical, for a hefty profit for them and an expensive prescription payment for you and me.

Oh, and there are still side effects such as skin irritations and male infertility as well as maybe kidney failure. But I think they have a medicine for that with some mostly mild side effects.

So we trade one set of “side effects” for another.

And I wondered if I preferred homeopathic medicines, foxglove in its natural state, or the pharmaceutical medicines, Advil PM comes to mind as preferable.

I did worry a bit, since at one time, cocaine was part of Coca-Cola as a natural additive, homeopathic. Opium is also derived from a plant, after all.

Then I remembered, I don’t have heart problems, so I don’t need digitalis or a drug derived from its molecular components.

And, marijuana is used to treat a lack of appetite which I do not suffer from. At all.

Though, it is also used to treat pain, and I do have a couple of pains … in the… neck. There are other legal homeopathic remedies for those, but I am afraid of the side effects.

Is it better to suffer through the original ailment or to suffer from the side effects?

I suppose it depends on what the original ailment is and what the side effects are.

My original ailment is a pain in the neck, but I think the side effect of the medicinal cure may be lonelinesss, so I think I’ll stick with the original ailment.

So, by the end of the presentation, I was rubbing my own neck and looking at several charts being projected on a screen the size of a badminton court hung vertically. The chart showed that patients were given nothing – with the worse results, given marijuana – with varying degrees of success, and given a placebo – with the same degree of success as the marijuana group. A pill that makes you think you are getting better.

Perhaps that is all any of our medicines are, a pill that makes us think we are getting better because our medicine woman or our doctor has told us it will work.

So I went home and took a sugar pill, in the form of a chocolate chip cookie, and immediately felt the pain in my neck going away. Unfortunately, the side effects are a tighter waist band. But I think the side effects are mild and mostly tolerable.

This week I will weigh my options, original pain or side effects.

August 7, 2011

My journey as a parent has not been an easy one.

I was sick for seven of the nine months of my pregnancy. I know several women who had it much worse than I. They were actually hospitalized. Still, throwing up for seven months is no easy path.

The cherub bit. He bit three children I know about. There were two near-misses and lots of disapproving stares, comments and behavior from others.

He told everyone his name was Mickey. I kept introducing him as Wesley and he kept introducing himself as Mickey. I spent months trying to tell strangers and friends his name before he had the chance. Occasionally, he would beat me to the punch and people would politely comment, “What an interesting name.” If it was a friend, I waited until the child I birthed – which gave me rights to his naming – was out of earshot and expounded on how his name was actually Wesley but I didn’t want to damage the cherub’s growing sense of self by correcting him in front of others. If it was a stranger I’d yell, “Stranger, danger!” and whisk Wesley away, hoping he’d learn to not introduce himself.

Finally, after much existential angst, I gave in and introduced him as Mickey, to which he replied, “My name isn’t Mickey, it’s Wes.”

It was becoming clear what I had in store for me.

Wes has always been alert to humor. Unfortunately his ability to discern between what was acceptable for adult humor and what was acceptable for children humor was a bit lacking, so the time he dumped a whole puzzle on the floor of his classroom after witnessing a neighboring teacher pull a similar trick, but with a box of pencils – at which both teachers laughed -  didn’t go over so well as I was informed at the lovely after-school tea I got to attend with the teacher, principal, counselor and other nameless support staff. Unfortunately, someone forgot to serve tea.

Recently, Wes figured out exactly how many credits he needs for graduation, how to calculate his grade point average and then decided he needn’t pass his elective after all.

So, when I get to hang out with my nephew who thinks it’s a good idea to break off the knobs on grandpa’s television because good televisions have a remote and no knobs, I’m delighted. His mom and dad keep checking on us, to be sure I’m not about to scalp their cherub, but this kid is easy.

Or when I visit a friend whose daughter insists on singing every song from High School Musical, I just have to smile and enjoy, and reassure my friend that I’m having a lovely time despite our inability to actually have a conversation.

And when I talk to my friend’s teenage son who has decided not only that he does NOT want to attend college, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t need a high school diploma, I patiently discuss it with him.

Just like when you get the sneezes, there will be an easier time. Wes is extremely responsible when it comes to those things important to him, he goes by his name and rather than making me nauseated, he brings the greatest joy I know into my life.

What a blessing he is. What a blessing all children, especially rambunctious ones, are.

This week I bless other parents who sneeze.

July 31, 2011

This will probably come as a surprise to many of you. Others of you – not so much!

I have been accused of being wound too tight. Hence, I love hanging out with people wound a bit tighter than me.

Like the woman at work who is the energizer bunny. This woman never stops! Not only is she awesome to work with since she gets so much time in so little time which means I have to do less, but she makes me feel like I am the serene one. Like I’m Buddha or something – all meditative and calm. Of course, there is the fact that when I do accomplish something at work, she comes right behind me, is amazed how easily she got the thing done, when in actuality I had already done it, but apparently not good enough for her to realize I’d already accomplished the task.

Or the friend who is louder than me. When we are together I am the quiet one, despite the fact that the only person who has ever told me I have a small mouth is my dental hygienist.

There are advantages to being wound too tight.

Did you know that baseballs that are wound too tight actually travel further when hit?

And clocks that are wound too tight… they actually make time go by faster. Then again, at my age, that could be a bad thing. And there is the potential for breaking the clock from winding too tight.

Usually, I just mostly feel like a telephone cord. Sure I’m wound but in a good way, like in the way that saves space but is flexible enough to unwind when needed. Unfortunately, there are those times when the telephone cord has been twisted and tightened so that when I try to answer the phone, the base lifts from the table and falls to the floor, threatening to take the handset with it. (Yes, I still have phone with telephone cords, but that is another blog!)

It’s important to take the time to relax the telephone cord so being wound is a good thing.

Otherwise, you end up like the woman who keep waving me forward the other day in traffic and when I explained to her through the open windows of our cars that it was safer for her to pull forward and let me follow her and she began yelling at me “GOD BLESS YOU! GOD BLESS YOU!” her use of the word god did not hide the fact that she was sprung.

Like a jack in the box. If you keep winding me up (or this lady in the car who wants God to bless people she’s pissed off at) I may just jump out at you at in unexpected way. Sure, there may be some entertaining music before and I may have an entertaining look on my face, what with my make-up slightly smeared from being wound so tight, but it will not be pretty, what with my small mouth but big voice and my propensity for cussing.

This week I will be sure to take the time to unwind the telephone cord as appropriate.

July 24, 2011

Where I live a person doesn’t worry too much about the neighbors. As a matter of fact, our neighbor to our west worries so little about us that we routinely ask each other, “Is Joe naked again?” Lucky for us, Joe lives so far away that he may just have a fondness for flesh colored tight underwear which may be stained a bit in front and we can’t really tell from a distance and are jumping to the wrong conclusion. That is why we ask each other. Reality check.

But I digress.

So, when it became obvious in the last few weeks that a new family had moved in, I was excited. Mostly because the family was a mother and three baby red-tailed hawks.

I met them first as they peered down at me from the telephone wire. They were sizing me up, so much so that all but mom swooped down for a closer look. Then I came home and one of the children had taken it upon himself to use my wall as his perch. I was delighted. He even left me a huge, gorgeous feather as a gift.

These are neighbors  I am happy to welcome to the zip code.

But, the skunks are another story. They need to stay out of the yard. Good fences make good neighbors, but only when the neighbors respect the fences and don’t come trouncing into the yard during the dead of night to entice the dogs into a stinky tango. I was born way past the use of smelling salts to arouse someone from being unconscious, but I defintely know the sensation.

I began to wonder if the new neighbors would keep the old neighbors in check.  I mean, the hawks have to eat, right?

Then I remembered the story about the woman in her yard with her small dog, which was snatched by a hawk. The woman beat the hawk until it released her slightly wounded pup, and was soon after cited for cruelty to animals.

I have only big dogs. Still, the next time I walked down the street, I puffed up a bit, and tried to make it very clear that my head was part of a larger animal, not a frizzy-haired offering from the neighborhood.

One of the hawks swooped near me, and I greeted him with a loud hello.

I read somewhere that seeing a great bird means that something great is going to happen.

Now, I’m just hoping that the great thing about to happen is great to me, not the hungry looking hawk.

That hawk may not be wondering about Joe’s clothing. He may be wondering if my frizzy hair has enough meat under it to make it worth his time and effort. I can hear him now. “Is that edible?”

Where I live, I don’t worry too much about the neighbors, at least not the human ones.

This week I will remember I am the ne kid on the block in my neighborhood

July 17, 2011

This week the President told his cohorts that they needed to “eat your peas.”

I knew a woman once who, when she decided her clothes were too tight because she had gained some weight, ate only peas until she had lost the weight.

I actually sat across from her at lunch for over a week watching her eat her bowl of peas, amazed.

I would rather – no, not starve - be fat. Let’s face it, I don’t have the fortitude to starve, but I can afford to buy bigger clothes.

I grew up in household relatively similar to that of the President and the First Lady in that we were forced to eat a little bit of everything on the table, and were not allowed seconds until we had cleared our plate.

I clearly remember the last time this rule applied to me. It was the time my parents forced me to eat my peas and I promptly threw up all over.

I clearly remember this, but I am not sure it actually happened. What I am sure of – forcing someone to eat something they don’t like might have dire consequences for all involved.

As a writer, I have been trained to be careful to use an appropriate metaphor for the situation. I worry that President Obama has not had this training in choosing one’s metaphor carefully. I worry that by encouraging everyone to eat their peas so we can get closer to a balanced budget to carry us through the next few years he may actually make someone gag then make someone have to clean up an unintended mess.

I would have suggested that everyone put some elbow grease behind the efforts to compromise. Or maybe that everyone should give an inch rather than take a mile.

Maybe I would have suggested that we “go big or go home.”

It amazes me - all the people in government suggesting that government be smaller, but none of these people resign from their jobs, or even do their jobs for free since many politicians are millionaires a few times over.

So, yes, I think they should go big – as in fix the big problems with big solutions – or go home. Showing your weiner shouldn’t be the only reason a person has to resign from government. Having your cake and eating it too should be reason enough.

I will not be eating peas anytime soon, thank you Mr. President. I will be ready and willing to make sacrifices – in my tax bracket that means paying more taxes – in order to help the greater good.

No good can come from forcing people to eat what they don’t like.

On the other hand, at the ripe old age of 26, I wondered what cottage cheese tasted like. A dear friend convinced me to try it, of my own free will, and lo and behold, I liked it. I really liked it, especially with pork and beans drizzled over the top or with barbeque potatoe chips .

We maybe should try something that looks disqusting, like curdled milk. Who knows, it just might be the ticket, the golden ticket.

This week I will pass the peas to my neighbor.

July 11. 2011

I believe that we are all connected on some level, uh, like the karma level.

But I also believe that we all have more in common than we think. For instance, I have never met anyone who doesn’t like music. Never.

I remember a child musician from Cuba on Sixty Minutes describing music as “the voice of God.”

Yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.

Although, I’m afraid there are a few of us who are tone deaf. You know who you are. Those of you who like “music” I don’t like.

Early in my teaching career I was invited to a Country music (oxymoron?) concert by my colleagues. I told them, “I would rather be home throwing up than listen to country music.” It got a good laugh. I was never invited again.

My husband didn’t like country music when we met and married. I have these strange rules about who I can be friends with, let alone be married to, and when I was younger, people who liked country music was a dis-qualifier. Well, over the years, hubby has acquired a taste for country, and keeps buying me country albums, convinced that if I just listen to the right band singing about their drunk escapades with their dead dog while they are lovin’ America, I will like it.

It’s sweet how hopeful he is after all these years. It’s good I’ve relaxed my rules about friendship and marriage over the years.

Sure, I do listen to some cross over bands. Train is very close to country, as is Counting Crows. But cross overs are not the same. It’s like they scraped off the chocolate frosting on a white cake and only ate that. Now that is a good idea.

So, I do think we are all connected in our need for music. I also believe music is the voice of God or beauty or whatever you want to call that pulsing energy which brings us all to moments of bliss. But, I do think that we are each tuned to a different frequency. And that is what makes the world a chaotic, beautiful, synergistic experience.

What is music to my ears may be cacophony to yours. I just try to remember that we are all connected and take pleasure in my free will, my ability to change the station, to smile politely when I open yet another CD of country music while my husband exclaims, “You’ll like this one, trust me,” and my choice to see how we are each alike rather than dwell on our differences.

 This week I will focus on what connects us rather than what separates us.

July 4, 2011

I am a professed feminist! Not the bra-burning kind because I need support in all the right places.

Which means, I suppose, that I am not a hardcore feminist.

One day at work, we were moving banquet tables. I folded them up and scooted them to along the wall and waited patiently for someone to help me load them in the truck. Someone showed up, my boss who was my age and, I believed, in worse shape than I. She walked past me, picked up a table by herself and put it in the truck by herself.

“Oh, I guess I didn’t need to wait for you…” I said as I gingerly attempted the same, successfully. Who knew after over 20 years of bossing my man around I could still move large and somewhat heavy objects.

I also rarely open doors for myself. I conveniently have my hands full or hover ever-so-slightly until the other person reaches the door before me then I glide right through. I know this about myself, and catch myself doing it even after swearing off such behavior, which leads me to rushing in front of the other person, pushing the door when I should be pulling, then bumping into the other person while I pull and stepping on their feet. The grand finale? I open the door and wave my hand in the doorway, pronouncing, “After you.”

I rarely get thanked for such behavior. Mostly I get baffled stares.

But I do enjoy my independence. I have been on vacation for two weeks and have cooked no meals. Not that cooking means a lack of independence, but it is a typical female behavior which I don’t enjoy and am independent from.

So, I suppose my independence is rather convenient. I am independent when it suits me, like when I’m deciding how to spend my money, and my husband’s. But I am rather dependent when the dog has thrown up in the middle of the living room.

I used to tell people that I have my strengths and I have surrounded myself with others who make up for my weaknesses. Except, I think I may have cultivated certain weaknesses to avoid doing things I don’t like.

At a potluck, a friend was exclaiming how great a dish was.

“Who made this?”

“I did,” I told her thinking she would tell me how much she liked it and then maybe even suggest to others they might want to try it. Instead I spent the rest of the evening hearing her tell everyone, “Diane made this and it’s so good.”

Finally I reminded her, “I can hear you. You don’t have to act so surprised.”

But, I guess I brought that on myself. When Susan Boyle sang, no one expected recluse-cat woman to have a voice.

Still, recently we had several parties and I watched politely as the big strong men moved the tables. I knew I was strong enough to move them. I was more afraid of breaking a nail.

This week I will relish my independence from those chores I find distasteful.