I Consume; Therefore, I am, and Eeyore

I have been shopping a lot lately because there isn't much else to do. Last year for Christmas, I was in Montana visiting Peter. Before the Boy was in treatment, Christmas was filled with activities more than stuff. Friends had parties. The Seattle Children's Theatre, the Fifth Avenue and the Paramount had plays. Restaurants had dinner. Mountains needed to be skied.

Welcome to 2020, the year of "None of the Above."

This year, I hit the Nordstrom Rack. I bought a weighted blanket, filled with little glass beads that is supposed to reduce anxiety and help me sleep. So far, so good.

What else can make me feel better about my life? Brighten my mood? My VP send me a "Remote Break Room" snack box filled with chocolate, tea and popcorn--my three favorites--which was very nice.

I needed something that would make me smile through all of the crap. This is the present I got for myself:

Hello 2021. If it is worse than 2020, I'll have my unicorn slippers to help me get through it.

Which then begs the thought -- what is 2021 is worse than 2020? Could it be? Yes! Think of all of the terrible things we might have missed or postponed because of the quarantine? What if we forget how to be friends and sociable and offend people left and right in 2021?

Yesterday I was in a bleak mood. Two weeks ago Sunday, I was in a bleak mood. Why? Like everyone else, I had reasons to be down: my job is in flux, my family still struggles. I was feeling like Eeyore, and I didn't like my own company. I talked to my dad for a few hours yesterday, and I felt better. 

Maybe Eeyore wouldn't have been such a downer if he had unicorn slippers. One thing Eeyore had that I don't right now are friends who I see regularly, who I hang out with, for walks, for coffee, for dinner. 

I miss my friends. Even if 2021 is worse than 2020, I hope I can be around people I like and love. And if that is the case, then it can't be worse, no matter what 2021 brings.

Karen, or How I Got My New Phone

Saturday morning, I was walking to the Biscuit Bitch to get my breakfast. I was listening to a podcast on my phone when the sound died. I took my phone out of my pocket to see if accidentally hit a button to lower the volume. As I was pulling my phone out of my pocket, it hit the ground. It was not a dramatic drop, just a few feet from my hip to the pavement. When I picked it up, the screen was smashed to bits. When I touched the screen, I got glass splinters in my fingers. When I got back to the condo, I made an appointment at the Apple store on Sunday morning to get my screen fixed. First things first. Make the appointment, then decide what to do.

I had more than 24 hours to ponder the fate of my phone. I could have fixed it for $150, but that is a lot of money to invest in an iPhone 7. A three year old phone in the world of creative/planned obsolescence is a dinosaur. I could have used the Boy's old iPhone 7 as he now has an Android, but then I would have to erase his phone with ten hours of skiing videos to load my phone's data with my 500 contacts. My hairdresser (bless his heart!) told me to get a new phone.

"Get an iPhone 12. They are 5G, 4G, and LTE, so wherever you go you can use it," he said. He has an iPhone 12 Pro, and he loves it. "My boyfriend fixed the screen on his old phone, and it wasn't the same. A month later, he got a new phone." My decision was made. I was going to get a new phone. Normally, I get a late model phone, never the newest. This time, I was going to get the 12.

The next morning, I put my sad damaged little phone in a ziplock baggie and brought it to the Apple Store. 

This is when, to my own horror, I turned into Karen.

I didn't cancel my repair appointment because I wanted to get a new phone immediately, and the appointment was my ticket into the store. I didn't want a new phone dropped shipped from wherever and delivered in three days. I wanted a shiny new beautiful light green state-of-the-art phone in my manicured, moisturized and sanitized hand.

Why did I turn into Karen? But first, who is Karen? Any white, middle aged woman of a certain socio-economic group who thinks rules were not meant for her is Karen. Any white, middle age woman of a certain socio-economic group who thinks she knows better than others not in her demographic is a Karen. For example, some Karen's might now wear a mask because it is her right not to. In other cases, Karen might walk into a grocery store and tell everyone to stand six feet away from her. She might tell someone they need to buy that avocado they touched.

Karen's are not always Karen's 24/7. Sometimes Karens act out only for an hour or two a month, maybe a year. It is not necessarily a permanent way to be. Rather, it can be a way women react when they feel they don't have control over anything.

My friend H had her Karen moments, even though she is Asian. I remember I was visiting H in San Francisco in the 1990's and we went to a coffee. H was working in an investment bank at the time and chewed out the barista because her coffee sucked. 

"Have you had Starbucks coffee? Starbucks is way better than this. This is terrible," H said.

H had lived in America since she was seven, and has no accent. She is tall, thin and gorgeous. She is the most beautiful of all of my friends by far. She has random guys on the street tell her how pretty she is. She gets free stuff and a free pass because of her beauty. Plus, she is wicked smart. In this case, H got a free pass from the barista even though H was obnoxious. The barista should have told H to stop at Starbucks on her way to Hell. I tell this story not because H is a jerk, but because this was the only time I've ever seen her act remotely like that. It was totally out of character for her to berate the staff.

H was being a pre-Karen, or maybe a proto-Karen.

When I passed the screening to get in the doors of the Apple store, I became a full on Karen. 

"My phone broke and I was going to get it fixed, but I decided to get a new one," I said, flipping the baggie with my pathetic and smashed phone on the counter.

"You can order a new phone online," the twenty-something blond chick said to me.

"Yeah, that isn't going to happen. I am not leaving this store without a new phone, bitch," I telepathed to Apple clerk. I am not a real Karen. I would never say that aloud. Seriously--what kind of store doesn't want to sell you something? I get the pandemic and all, but please, bitch, I need a phone.*

This was going to be tough. First, I was up against my own kind -- another female. Men are easier to bend. I couldn't flirt my way into getting a new phone. Second, I was wearing a mask. I didn't have the option to smile and pretend I was nice.

"How can I order something online when my phone is a piece of garbage?" I asked. 

Right, the Apple clerk must have been thinking. This bitch doesn't look like she works retail. She probably has four computers are home from her remote work. If she wanted to, she could order a phone while she is sitting on her couch and not risk giving me COVID.

"Do you know what of phone you want?"

"I'll take a 12," acting as if I knew what I wanted. 

"Which kind of 12?" she asked.

Oh shit. I had an idea, but I wanted to look at them, like real shopping. That is why I went to the store. I wanted to shop.

"What kind do you have? Can I look?"

"We can't let you look at the phones," she said. "We stopped that policy of letting people look at phone a few days ago."

Hmmm. I could sense I was in dangerous waters. She could kick me out and tell me to order online, but I really wanted to spend ten minutes picking a color. You really can't tell from the website. Did I want the blue or the green? If I am going to spend a few hundred bucks on a phone, I want to touch it first. Or, did I want to leave the store with a phone that didn't give me glass splinters? I wasn't a shopper here with the sole purpose of getting the latest and greatest tech gadget. I wanted a phone that didn't look like it was pounded by a hammer.

There was no way this clerk was going to let me get past the Great Wall of Apple Store Desks to see the merchandise. I was going to have to pick on the fly.

"I don't want the mini and I don't want a giant one," I said. 

"What color?"

"Can I see them?" I asked. The Apple clerk winced. I could see the cognitive dissonance in her eyes. She was deciding whether or not to make a sale or to follow the rules and tell people to order online. There was always the risk that I'd walk out and decide to say "Fuck Apple. I'm getting an Android." (Ha! That's not gonna happen.) She was leaning towards the sale and I was getting my phone! She showed me pictures of the 12 on her phone. Shit. I could have done this at home. I picked the green one because it triggered some nostalgia of something. It is a sweet color, like mint ice cream. 

The clerk handed me over to Bryce to complete my order.

"Anything else?" he asked.  A phone case, please, since my last phone shattered.

I walked out happy as I could be considering I had an unexpected expense due to my own clumsiness. It was a small victory in a world where I am not having many right now. My team at work was dissolved and now I am orphaned. My career lacks certainty, which sucks because my job was the most stable thing in my life. My kids are coming back for to Seattle for Christmas, which is good but stressful. Plus I don't have my usual stress release activities--walking with friends, going out to eat, seeing plays.

So what does Karen do? When she is lacking control in her personal life, she find other ways to find success, victories, not matter how small or how petty.

3 A's v 7 A's, and Range

I've been in a lot of therapy and recovery in the past year and a half. A lot. One of the most useful things I've read was about the three A's when facing a problem or crisis:

1. Awareness/Acknowledgement
2. Acceptance
3. Action

When the Boy was sent away to Wilderness and then boarding school, I had to dive deep into these three. I have been swimming along nicely, not needing to confront anything major until I was told by my manager to look for a new job.

Oy.

I knew I needed to look for a new job months ago, so I started baby-steps, like telling a few friends, updating my resume, searching for jobs online. Then, I would get upset at work about my new role and my manager would talk me off the ledge and I'd feel better.

For a while.

Then I'd get upset about the changes in my job again. Then my manager would tell me "this is how it is now..." I'd get some level of understanding, but then I'd get upset a few week later. 

One of the things I hadn't realized about my job as a tech analyst is that the role is very clearly defined and limited. In my previous analyst roles in consulting, the roles were expansive. We were expected to grow, be creative and take on more leadership. In tech, the analyst's role is "Load this data."  I was missing that point until one of my co-workers explained it to me. 

I digress.

Anyhow, I realized I've been living with a few other A's in addition to the other three which are far less productive:

1. Anxiety
2. Avoidance
3. Anger
4. Annoyance

Which then lead to me becoming

• Irritable
• Complaining
• Explaining
• Unreasonable

Anxiety: I am afraid to look for another job. I was talking to three friends recently about looking for a new job. All three were very unhelpful, until I realized that they were all specialists who have been in the exact same job for more than fifteen years. Jack--the workaholic Jack--told me "It is just a job." Wow. That sucked. He later apologized for his insensitivity, and explained that as a workaholic, he had to adopt this mentality.

Avoidance: When I first realized I needed a new job, I started updating my resume and whatnot. Then I got tired and frustrated because the first job did not magically appear before my eyes. 

Anger: "Oh my god! It is not my fault my job changed! I was in the sweet spot when x, y and z happened that screwed it up!" Yeah. All true, but knowing how and why it happened doesn't change that it happened.

Annoyance: "Man, now I need to look for another job or create a new one where I work. This sucks. I wish I didn't have to do this." I had dear friend, a specialist in the same job for more than fifteen years, who while we were on the phone she searched open jobs at her company and emailed me one. "Here you go. You can have this job. Problem solved." As if job postings online are like a menu at a restaurant or a shopping cart on Amazon. I can't just pick one and automatically get it. I applied for one job where another dear friend said "You'd be perfect for that strategy analyst role!" Yes, I would be. But tell that to the HR screener or the robot who is looking for algorithms.

Which brings me back to Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein, one of my favorite books because it so well describes me. According to Jack, Bill Gates made it one of his book recommendations for this year, so it is sold out on Amazon. It is hard to be a generalist in a world of specialist, especially when I am getting career advice from them and almost everyone I work with is a specialist.

Sweet Spot v Peach Pit, and Two Years Ago Today

Two years ago today, the Boy broke his foot in a soccer game, which led to him not going to school, getting behind in his work, which made him not want to go to school. His anxiety and depression were already in force. He was "hovering over the treetops," like Jack used to say. When I hear this metaphor, I think of the scene in The Spirit of St. Louis where Charles Lindberg (played by Jimmy Stewart) barely gets his plane off the ground, nearly clipping the trees. Instead of rising above the trees, the Boy crashed.

A friend of mine who is a trauma therapist says "the body remembers," and she's right. Today and for the past several days, I have been fairly emotional. I think part of this (not all, but part) is because I have been unconsciously thinking back to where I was two years ago. I was talking to a friend about horoscopes and I read this in https://freewillastrology.com for my horoscope for next week:

Author Virginia Woolf said that we don't wholly experience the unique feelings that arise in any particular moment. They take a while to completely settle in, unfold, and expand. From her perspective, then, we rarely "have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” 

I am settling in with my emotions from the past two years. At the time, I didn't know that my life would unfold as it did. I felt like I was sliding down an icy ski slope, gaining speed, unable to dig my edges slow down or turn. I didn't know that when the Boy limped off the soccer field at Roosevelt High School, that that would be the last soccer game I would see him play in two years. I didn't know that would be the last time I would be with those families, those parents who I spent five years talking to on the sidelines, watching our boys grow into young men. Some seasons they were close to undefeated. Other seasons held few victories.

With death, we don't know when our time will come. But in our lives, there are lots of mini-deaths along the way: deaths of the way things were, or the way they used to be. I didn't know that two years ago was the beginning of the end, the death of my son's typical high school career.

My life isn't always complete disaster. I have had many "sweet spots" in my life, where things were going along swimmingly. I think of a sweet spot like the part of a tennis racket that makes a beautiful thump noise when the ball hits it, the part with all of the power. Or, a sweet spot could be the best part of a peach, after you eat through the fuzzy skin and before you get to the pit. While the Boy was imploding, my job was going well, and it was a sweet spot. I liked what I was doing, I was learning a ton, I liked the people I was working with, and the type and nature of the work blended well with my personality and interests. My job had kept me sane and was a source of stability when my family was imploding.

Now, the sweet spot of my job has imploded. I have reached the peach pit, the ugly, inedible part. Like Virginia Woolf said, the emotions I felt at the time of the implosion didn't manifest until months later. In short, my little work group was dissolved, disbanded in June, and then my work partner was laid off in August. In September, I learned I was passed up for a promotion as I was an analyst and not a developer. 

Fine. I trudged along. I trudged and trudged and trudged. The more I trudged, the more irritable I became. I tried to claw and convince (argue with?) myself and my manager and my team that we needed to go back to the sweet spot, where my life was good. Why did my sweet spot turn into a peach pit?

Part of my problem is that I need to recognize that the sweet spot has gone, and something else is now in its place. 

I was talking to a friend tonight and she reminded me of Glennon Doyle's recent book Untamed. Doyle talks about burning it all down, and then rebuilding. We need to burn things down if we want to rebuild them. 

My life is burning down. The fire is already here, and uncertainty lies ahead. I could look at this with fear and trepidation.

Or I could say "Bring it on."

Sleigh Ride

When my daughter was in sixth grade, I learned of a Seattle holiday band concert tradition. The last song of the December concert was "Sleigh Ride." The kids would get dressed up in Santa hats and have blast. When Claire-Adele and the Boy went to high school, the tradition continued. All of the band would play together, with at least one hundred students on the stage. Mr. Brown, the band teacher, conducted. Roosevelt High School has a world renown jazz band, and as such, has a wonderful brass section. The trumpets were the stars of the show. The volume and energy of the song was kinetic. One of the most wonderful things about live music is feeling it in your chest.

"Sleigh Ride" was one of the most joyful parts of the holiday. I miss it with the Boy being gone and I am sure the other parents miss it because of COVID.

Introspection Overload & Possible Literary Antidotes

In less than twenty-four hours, I attended three recovery meetings. The day before, I met with my sponsor. Last week, I dealt with some pretty heavy revelations in therapy that knocked me down.

This afternoon, I had a case of introspection overload. I am starting to understand the intensity the Boy went through when he went to Wilderness therapy and then therapeutic boarding school. Looking inside is hard.

Today wasn't all bad. I heard some good stuff:

• Don't quit five minutes before the miracle.
• My higher power steers the boat. I row.
• Meaning: My inner knowing (as Glennon Doyle calls it) can tell me what to do, but I need to act on it. How much do I stall or wait, even on little shit? For example, I am kind of bored with my meditation podcast. Have I found another one? No. How hard is it to find mediation podcasts in the middle of a pandemic? Yeah. I have no excuse.

The hard part about the introspection overload is that I don't have my usual releases because of the quarantine. In a non-pandemic world (I would say normal, but who knows what that is anymore), I would go for a walk with a friend, go for coffee, go to dinner, go dancing, which would then balance out a day of heavy insights.

But I don't have that.

I do, however, have a dog I can walk, which is good. I live close to Pike Place Market, which is fun, even if my main purpose to shop there is to get groceries. I did stop by Metzger's Maps and bought a book about Alaska and a book about National Parks. (A woman can dream, right?)

I also found a book on inner peace, which resonated with me.

What else could I read? I found some books on my shelf that might cheer me up, some of my favorites:

These books are hilarious and make me laugh. I snorted the first time I read Bossypants by Tina Fey.

These books are in the category of "It could be worse..." I could be a nurse during World War II. I could be held hostage in a South American country in a palace. I could be living in a modern version of King Lear.

Or, it could be WAY worse. In Station Eleven, there is a pandemic that wipes out 99.99% of the human race and a few thousand people are left on the planet. Instead of being isolated in my condo, I could be stuck alone on Mars.

I am a Walrus

Thanks to the quarantine, I am turning into a walrus. I barely move and I am gaining weight. If this quarantine continues for a few more months, I will gain enough weight that the only way I will be able to get around will be to swim or float in water where buoyancy will help me to move.

How did walruses evolve to be so massive and lumpy? They don't look like they should be able to move, at least on land anyway. According to my internet search, walrus live in the Arctic and eat marine animals near the ocean. Perhaps their mass keeps them warm in that climate.

A few months ago, I started on the Keto diet not to lose weight, but to stop gaining it. I bought a bathroom scale. I wore my work clothes during the day just to make sure I could fit in them when the quarantine ends I go back to the office.

Then I thought, fuck it.

It started Wednesday, where I ate all day. I had a quaffle (a croissant cooked in waffle iron--pure carbohydrate heaven) for breakfast instead of eggs. I had leftover pizza (from the freezer) for lunch, popcorn in the mid-afternoon. I snacked on pistachios and crackers before dinner, which was salmon, salad, rice and beurre blanc.

Lauren, you might be thinking. That isn't so terrible.

You are right. Then I attacked a pint of cookies and cream with a spoon before I went to bed. I live alone. I don't need a bowl to eat ice cream. I can eat it straight out of the carton if I please.

This is my confession. I need to admit my weakness in order to reverse this trend. I've worn yoga pants to work every day this week. Yoga pants--a fancy way of saying "sweats." Now I know everyone is wearing sweats, but I thought I had enough willpower, that I felt better when I got dressed up. What happened?

Maybe it is December, the month most like the Arctic that is driving me to comfort? Maybe walruses are right. Maybe it is cool to be comfortable. Relaxed. Chill. Lazy.

Last week when one of my children was in town for Thanksgiving, we went shopping at Nordstrom. It was Thanksgiving weekend, and there were more workers in the store than shoppers. Will people go back to wearing regular clothes again, where we dress like humans for fun and decoration and not just for functional purposes? I think of these stores, what will happen to them. Will they go out of business? Will their stock tank? For now, retailers and clothing stores may suffer and struggle. 

Then I think of all of the new clothes I am going to need when this all ends. 

Wheat Field with Cypresses

I wish Claire-Adele were here

to finish up the sky.

AOC & Knocking Down the House

This weekend, I caught the Netflix documentary Knocking Down the House, the story of four women Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Congress and Senate in 2018. All of these women were first time candidates and outside of the establishment. Freshman Congresswoman Alexandra Osacio-Cortez was featured. If you have time to kill (and who doesn't. It's COVID quarantine time!), I recommended taking a peek.

I had never followed AOC before and I didn't know much about her before I saw the show. I knew she was super progressive and from New York, but that was about it.

Wow. She is a dynamo. Regardless of party, that woman has some amazingly strong campaigning chops. She is politically gifted. She knows how to inspire and rally people to her cause. From the right, a comparable person from might be Sarah Palin: someone who came out of nowhere (aka Alaska), made a big splash on the national scene and scared the hell out of those who didn't agree with her. AOC is the same. Her talent put a bullseye on her back, a sharp target for the right.

Having run for a local office in a big city, I have attended dozens of candidates where I not only had to campaign myself, I saw at least a hundred grassroots candidates. I've attended political fundraisers for incumbents.

I have never seen anyone fresh out of the gate with her skills. I've seen lots of people in their twenties run for office--City Council, the State Legislature--to get the experience. These "kids" are in a sense buying a lottery ticket: they don't know if they can win unless they try, right? AOC would mop the floor with these other newbies. She has incredible poise and is so articulate for the first time candidate. Granted, AOC is cute and spunky and had some very experienced campaign professionals working for her. But when you are on a stage and the moderator is firing questions, you are on the stage alone. Your campaign manager can smile adoringly at you from the back row in the arena, but that is all the help they can give. They can't put words in your mouth, or telepath you a witty and sharp answer. That had to come from inside.

The show is a little misleading -- the filmmakers show her working as a waitress (which wasn't untrue) but they omitted the shinier parts of her resume, like her bachelor's degree from Boston University and her experience as a campaign organizer for Bernie Sanders in 2016. She was a first time candidate, but as my dad would say, she didn't fall off the turnip truck.

Nevertheless, I was impressed. 

Plus her boyfriend is so adorable. He's a big lug who is both smitten and supportive.

Apologies and Alaska

Jack came over the other night for dinner as we were expecting the Boy to call. (He didn't.) When Jack arrived, he was a little chastened.

"I just heard an interview with Eve Ensler on NPR about apologies on the way over," he said. Finally, NPR is back to regular programming instead of constant chatter and dread about nightmare politics and the pandemic. Jack would often arrive for our phone calls with the Boy super anxious and/or pissed because he was listened to NPR on the drive to the condo. I recommended to Jack that he get his news from Trevor Noah. It is the same bad news but at least it is funny. 

I digress.

"She explained that since the #metoo movement, none of the men accused of bad behavior has offered a sincere, legitimate apology," he said. (I'm like "Duh.") "I finally see what you mean when you say that I've haven't truly apologized for my bad behavior."

Right. We then watched Eve's Ted talk on apologies. Ironically, this was presented at a Ted conference for women when her speech addresses men, but whatever. The point is that there are four parts to an apology.

1. Specifically say what you did. None of the "mistakes were made" bullshit.
2. Offer an explanation of why you behaved this way. This is not to be confused with making excuses.
3. Have empathy for how the other person felt about your behavior. Understand their pain.
4. Make amends. Change your behavior. Don't do it again.

Is it just Americans--specifically American men--that do not know how to apologize? I have a friend from India who once explained to me that apologies are not hard: Admit what you did, say you are sorry, don't do it again. Apologies are easy to explain, harder to do. Maybe this is a cultural blindspot Americans have. My friend Anderson is from India and he gave me the best apology I've ever gotten in my whole life. He cut me off in a meeting and the next day apologized because he wanted to clear the air. The best thing about this whole apology was that I didn't register that he had cut me off. I didn't bother me at the time, but it had bothered him. He explained what he did (cut me off) and why he did it (he feared I was going to go rogue in the meeting), and then we discussed why. It was great.

Why apologize? Several reasons. It clears the air. It keeps emotional space between two people clean and tidy. Apologies prevent piles of shit from building up. It makes apologizee feel safe and heard, and the apologizer gets a clear conscience, which is freeing.

I am going to limit my expectations on this apology as an apology that deep and profound won't be easy. Twelve Step program are big on making amends, but there is a lot of introspection done first. 

In other news, my blog post yesterday inspired me to think about my own future. I've decided when the pandemic is over, I am going to Alaska.

By myself.

This is a big deal. I've never been to Alaska and I am terrified of bears. Terrified. Alaska is full of bears. It probably has more bears than people. (I have no idea. I made that up.) I hate the bear exhibit at the Woodland Park Zoo because it looks like the bears could crawl over the wall. Jack and I went camping in the Smoky Mountains years ago and I freaked out because the campground doubled as a bear habitat. We ditched the tent and stayed in a motel because I couldn't sleep knowing bears were around, tramping around at night trying to steal my food.

Maybe I'll quit my job and move to Alaska and open a muffin and scone shop. Who knows? Maybe my life will turn into one of those crazy Netflix romance/melodrama like Virgin River (which I have not seen but saw the trailer) about bucolic life in a small mountain town. Here is what my life could be like: "Woman leaves her tech job and big city doctor husband behind as she seeks to find herself in the Last Frontier. The handsome bush pilot drops her in Alakanuk, a town of 677 people on the Yukon River. There she meets a kind and sensitive recovering Wall Street banker who is specializing in making artisanal moose jerky. When she discovers his stash of MAGA hats and his Sarah Palin fetish, she hightails is back to her progressive enclave in Seattle where she becomes a vegan."

Maybe I should focus on site-seeing and my inner journey instead of imagining my life as a Netflix series. I need to do some research. Maybe I can go in the spring and see the Northern Lights. Maybe I can go in the summer and see the Midnight Sun. Maybe I could go salmon fishing on a river with guide who can scare away the bears.

In the meantime, I can ask my friend Cara if I can borrow her cabin on the Olympic Peninsula for a weekend. That could work, too.

Puzzles & Pandemic Paralysis

As you know, I have a thing for jigsaw puzzles. I love them to the point that I am almost addicted. I don't know why always need a puzzle in progress on my coffee table. I find it troubling. This weekend, I started a puzzle on Wednesday afternoon when I wasn't feeling well. I finished it Friday. I crushed it. It was nuts that I could do a puzzle that hard in that short of time. I am spending way too much time doing puzzles to be that good at them. 

One of my new puzzles from Kickstarter came with a sticker:

This is the last thing I need--an equivalent to a gold star for doing puzzles.

Why I am so troubled by my fantastic puzzling abilities? I wonder what else could I be doing with my precious life/time besides re-arranging little pieces of cardboard or wood to make a picture? I could be reading or exercising or making something cool. I could be practicing piano. Running errands. 

I ask myself what else I would want to do instead of puzzles, not just what could I do. 

• I want to walk around Green Lake with friends.
• I want to bike to Ballard for lunch and then shop. 
• I want to visit my dad in Ohio. 
• I had wanted to spend the week in Montana hanging out with the Boy.
• I want to travel, far or near. I don't care.
• I would want to take a week off to help the Boy look at colleges. 
• I want to go to the gym and get some exercise. 
• I want to go dancing, then sleep in. 
• I want to go to brunch. 
• I want to have a party.
• I want to go to a party.

All of this is part of the pandemic, and I am so tired of it. The easiest thing to do is to slide into a jigsaw puzzle to pass the time when I am not working, cooking, balancing the checkbook or doing laundry.

Jack and I were talking this weekend about the uncertainty of the future. He is thinking about his future a lot and is anxious because he doesn't know what it holds. I, on the other hand, can't even imagine my future.

Why?

Is that normal? With the Boy in treatment, I have been learning about mindfulness and how to live in the moment. Does that mean I don't look to my future?

I wonder if I am having pandemic paralysis, where I am having a hard time imagining my true and beautiful future because I am stuck alone. Maybe I am having a hard time seeing my future because I don't know what the rest of the world will look like in the spring.

Instead, I can think about myself and my own inner growth, but this is challenging to do day in and day out. I need a break, and puzzles give me that time to rest. Maybe puzzles are giving me a chance to hibernate.

Nevertheless, I need something to look forward to. I am going to buy myself a poster of all of the National Parks. My goal to visit all of them in the next five years, pandemic pending.

Jigsaw Puzzles, Quarantine and Fire

I used to love jigsaw puzzles. I found them relaxing and enjoyable. Now, a majority of my spare time is spent doing jigsaw puzzles. Like, all of the time. I always have a jigsaw puzzle on my coffee table. I pick at it when I am talking on the phone or before I go to bed. I could call it mediative, but it doesn't full qualify for mediation. Mediation fully qualifies for mediation.

I love pizza, but if that was all I ever ate, I'd go crazy. Likewise, jigsaw puzzles. Yet, I can't stop doing jigsaw puzzles. As soon as I finish one, I dig up another box and I start working again. I have about a dozen Liberty jigsaw puzzles and I've done each of them twice since March.

Jigsaw puzzles are a fun way to pass time, but at the end of the day, all I've done is completed a jigsaw puzzle that goes back in the box. I haven't created anything new. I've solved a puzzle someone else created for me to solve, and that was it. Not that everything I do has to be productive, but damn I've spent at least a month of time since the pandemic doing jigsaw puzzles. At some point, it becomes hell.

Almost everyone I know is finding the quarantine for the pandemic tedious. Why are we finding it tedious? Who are these magical unicorns who are not finding it tedious? What is the secret to enjoying the quarantine, thriving in it?

It is embracing the boredom? Will the boredom and isolation push us to find new things to do, to test and experiment with our imaginations?

Who isn't bored?

Pandemic Response Teams

• Covid-testing firefighters who spend their days poking sticks up people's noses until they cry. (The people with the stick up their nose cry, not the firefighters.)
• Scientists working on vaccines
• Health care workers
• Logistical engineers who are figuring out how to deliver frozen vaccines across the county
• Amazon delivery people
• Undertakers

Creative People who Work Alone

• Jigsaw puzzle designers
• Novelists
• Composers

Feel free to add other jobs to the list. But what about the rest of us?

My former manager, Lance, made an awesome desk in his spare time. It is exceptionally cool. (I'd share his blog post about his creative process, but then you'd know who the real Lance is.)

So, did Lance get so bored that he built a desk to cure his boredom, or is he the type of person who never gets bored and always have an idea or forty floating around in his head that he wants to do? Both?

Boredom can inspire us to do something cool, create something fun, whether is a desk, a quilt, a novel, a video called How to be at Home (very cool, from Canada) or whatever.

I, on the other hand, have spent my spare time during the quarantine doing jigsaw puzzles, which feels like an epic waste of time. Perhaps I am looking at this wrong: if I enjoy jigsaw puzzles, it is a waste of time? Do I need to be productive all of the time? I know life is precious, blah, blah, blah, but maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself for...relaxing.

That is it. I shouldn't be so hard on myself for relaxing. If jigsaw puzzles are keeping me sane, then why not do them? Maybe I went a little overboard. I can pull back, but I need to be more patient and gentle with myself

Now, I have a new hobby: fire. I am starting to feel like Abraham Lincoln. He spent lots of time by the fire, as did most people who lived before 1925. Maybe I can read by the fire, knock down one of the many stacks of books I have around the apartment.

College, Ghost Variations and a Thousand Possibilities

The Boy got his first acceptance to college yesterday.

OMG what a miracle.

If you had asked me in the spring of 2019 where I saw myself in a year and a half, it would not have been getting a text from my son in Montana saying "Give me a call. Good news."

I knew what the text meant when I saw it. The first school he applied to has rolling admissions and he was waiting. We knew the envelope--thick or thin--would in the mail arrive this week. When I saw the message, I didn't respond for a minute or two. I was just grateful and happy--happy for him, happy for me. Some kids get into college easily. Some fret that their 3.98 GPA isn't good enough for whatever top school they want. Here is my son who laid in bed for six months, not doing anything, finally wanting to go to college. Not just wanting--actually doing the required work to qualify and apply.

And so it goes. My friend Anderson said it was due to all of the hard work, energy and money everyone had put in--me, the Boy, Jack--to get the Boy on a path to recovery. Still, I give the Boy a majority of the credit. To Anderson's point, Jack and I worked hard to give the Boy an environment in which to heal, but he needed to do the work to get better, to take ownership of his life. And he did.

Today, I am going to bask in gratitude. This is a major milestone, an epic accomplishment.

Last night before I went to bed, I re-watched the Pacific Northwest Ballet's Rep 2 online. When I woke up this morning (at 4:00 a.m. because I couldn't sleep), I thought about one of the dances, Ghost Variation. It is a new work, choreographed during the pandemic. The nineteen century composer wrote the piece of music before he died, believing that other deceased composers were speaking to him from their graves. This morning I thought about a few of my own ghosts who not nearly so charming or inspirational. Maybe they weren't exactly ghosts, but they haunted me nonetheless.

When I graduation from my masters program, I met one of my colleague's mom. Julie's father was a doctor and Julie's mom was nuts. At the ceremony, Julie's mom came up to me and said "I know you are married to a doctor. Good luck." She looked me in the eye, as if she could see my future, and that being married to a doctor is no slice of pie.

About ten years ago, I was sitting in the cafeteria one evening at my kids' elementary school for a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Family-to-Family meeting where people would discuss the challenges of having a loved one with a major mental illness. I was there to discuss my brother and his battle with schizophrenia. I mentioned I was a mom, and my husband was a doctor. A woman in her mid-sixties with blonde hair looked at me intensely and said, "I was married to a doctor. I am now divorced and living in Section 8 housing with my mentally ill son."

The words of both women haunted me. Haunted isn't strong enough. Their words scared the crap out of me. I feared what they said would come true for me, that I would end up in a difficult marriage, divorced with a crazy child, living in public housing. I fought this vision. There was no way I was going to let my kid end up mentally ill if I could help it. If they did, I'd fight like crazy to get them the help they needed, but they weren't going to drag me down in the dregs with them. I saw my parents deeply struggle with my brother, but they did not implode with him.

I feared those women I had never before met were telling me my future, that they could see things that I could not.

This morning I woke up with a different realization. When those women saw me, they did not see my future. Instead, when they saw me, they saw their past. I was who they used to be: innocent, hopeful, naive. They failed to see my strength, my inner power that I didn't know I had until I was tested.

About a month or two ago, I went to a sha(wo)man. I had been meditating a lot, and I had few "clarities" that would occur at random times when I was not doing much of anything: looking at a calendar, hopping in the shower. I would almost call these visions, where I would get a snapshot of my future in a sentence that uninvitedly would enter my mind. My little clarities came in quiet moments when I wasn't expecting them, and I took them in as dispassionately as if I were reading the mail. Was I seeing my future? I called the shaman to see if she could help me figure these out, see what they meant, and most importantly to find out: was I crazy?

"There are a thousand possibilities for your life, your future," she said. "You tapped into three." Her words brought me a lot of comfort, and made sense. There isn't just one, predetermined future for me, or for the Boy. 

There are a thousand possibilities, and this made me feel better. First, I am not crazy. These little epiphanies are showing me possible paths, possible choices, not a concrete road to a future that will happen. I can be open to these ideas, but not held hostage to them, either.

The difference between my own epiphanies and the evil eye from the other women is that these epiphanies are coming from my heart. The evil eye was coming from theirs.

How does this relate to the Boy going to college? His life, too, has a thousand possibilities. I need to honor his path and his possibilities. Sure, I am happy to put in him a place that knocks down some barriers and blockers to having choices, that lessens the fog, so he can see his future.

Untamed Again

"I am not sure I want to be in this relationship," Jack said earlier this week. He was mildly happy when he said this. He wasn't angry or bitter or pissed off.

My reaction? I was elated. Why? 

His comment was honest.

It wasn't some bullshit deep fried and covered in hot sauce trying to pass off as the truth. In the past year and a half, I'd ask him why he loved me and he said it was because I read the New York Times. 

For fuck sake. Really? After dating a bunch of guys who thought they were smarter than me because they were guys, I wanted to be loved and respected for my mind. I got what I wanted. (see "unamused" emoji: 😒)

Jack's uncertainty was honest because frankly our relationship sucks. To be fair, Jack and I have become more civil to each other over the past few months, but there was a time where we could not be in the same room alone for two hours without screaming at each other or me crying in frustration.

Two weeks ago, I had bought Jack a copy of Untamed by Glennon Doyle. The story is about Glennon's recovery from herself. She is an alcoholic who became sober when she was pregnant with her firstborn. Years later, she is recovering being a woman who fit society's expectations of her, not her expectations of herself. She found herself through her Knowing, as she calls it. It isn't her brain or thinking. This is what she finds deep inside herself when she becomes very quiet. I love this concept.

I didn't want to lend Jack my marked up copy of Untamed because I didn't want him to get pissed off when he read my notes in the margins. He needed a clean copy without my editorializing.

He started reading it this week.

"When I read it, I thought I was reading it to understand you," he said. "Instead, I am finding it applies to me. What do I want?"

Hallelujah praise the lord thank jesus.

This might be a massive sign of my recovery from being co-dependent. I want Jack to want what he wants, not to want what I want. In order to have a conversation about a relationship, both people need to know what they want, otherwise both people will end up being miserable. While it is possible to be in a relationship with someone who doesn't know what they want, it is often lonely.

In the meantime, I have learned a lot about myself this week. 

• I learned that everyone has their own Higher Power, and it isn't me. I grew up believing there was "One true God." Now I believe there are 7.8 billion gods. What might be right for Jack or the Boy or Claire Adele will be different than what is right for me.

• I learned that I am afraid of conflict and standing up for myself. I fear that if I stand-up for myself, that the person I stand up to won't like me anymore. I had this realization at work this week. I had to tell my manager that he needed a data analyst on the project he was working on, but he said "Nope, I'm good." Argh. I was pissed off not because I felt left out but because when he briefly looped me in, I could see mistakes in their process, mistakes that would not have been made had an analyst been involved from the start. I made my point and then let it be. Still, I fear pissing him off for telling him I thought he was making a mistake. I suppose I'll find out the rest of the story this week. Maybe he will be pissed out. Maybe it isn't about me. He has his Higher Power and I have mine. Of course, my craziness on fearing being abandoned has nothing to do with the situation at work. It has to do with my previous conditioning.

• I heard a great saying this week: "We need to engage in our emotions with out shutting down, lashing out or falling into addiction." Wow. I might not have fallen into addiction, but I very often shut down or when I feel really desperate, I lash out. Likewise, this person said they wanted to be in a relationship with someone who could do the same. Amen to that.

Boundaries & Nope

This past year, I realized that I have been miserable at keeping boundaries. Absolutely, completely miserable. I have always had a hard time saying no.

Today I set some boundaries with someone who is very hard on me, but I did it anyway and I didn't feel bad. I set some boundaries with myself. I said no.

Boundary #1: The Queen's Gambit

Last night, I was watching The Queen's Gambit on Netflix about a young woman who is a chess grandmaster and a drug addict. The show came recommended from a few friends so I thought I'd give it a try. Claire-Adele played competitive chess in elementary school and she was decent. She has a pennant in her room that said "Chess Club" from Archie McPhee's. I think the flag was intended to be ironic, but Claire-Adele took it literally, which is fine. She is a literal kind of girl. Anyhow, I thought the show would be interesting since I know a little bit about chess. 

The first episode was about the girl's childhood in an orphanage after her mentally ill mother committed suicide. 

Nope. I am done. The Boy goes to therapeutic boarding school and this hits a little too close to home. Sure, brilliant people can have drug addictions and can be functional, but that is the exception, not the rule. I am going to skip the rest of the episodes.

And why do they have to portray a genius woman as a nut? Can't we have a series about a sane genius woman?

Boundary #2: Gardenscapes

I succumbed to a pop up ad on my phone and downloaded this this game. It looked cute and I thought I'd try it. "Spend hours watching Austin live his life!" is an actual quote from the home-screen of this game. Instead, it should read "Watch a little animated butler live his life while you waste hours of yours." Instead of me playing the game, the game played me. I spent three days trying to defeat level 87 without giving the app company my credit card to buy a booster pack. I've had this game on my phone for a week. Today, I was mentally spinning and I couldn't figure out why. The game helped me avoid feeling my feelings and left me in a funk.

Do I need this in my life, a game that sucks away my time, attention and positive energy?

Nope.

I deleted the game from my phone this afternoon. After dinner, I vacuumed my apartment instead of trying to beat level 92. I placed my mental health hygiene above this game.

Boundary #3: Bad Soup

I made my favorite vegetable soup Sunday and it didn't turn out like it usually does. It smelled and tasted like turnips, which is odd because the other 23 times I made the soup I couldn't taste the turnips at all. I never knew turnips had a flavor. I thought they were just a bland root vegetable used to add heft soups and stews. My soup was gross, which is too bad because the advantage of making soup means I get lunch and dinner for a week. Do I need to finish this batch of soup which I hate?

Nope.

Boundary #4: The Puzzle

In June, I ordered three puzzles from Kickstarter. They came in the mail today. I already had another puzzle on the coffee table that was about 75% done. 

Do I need to finish the first puzzle before I start one of the new ones?

Nope.

I took the first puzzle and put it back in the box and opened one of the new ones.

_____

Where on earth did I get this crazy ideas in my head that I have to finish a puzzle, eat all of the soup, watch the whole series, play the whole game? I understand the principle of "start what you finish." That can be a satisfying thing to do and useful when it comes to my job, but does that mean I have to finish everything I start? 

Nope.

I am the leader of my life. I get to choose.

Anxiety & Hope

First, the good news. I was in a therapy session last week and I told my therapist Marcos that I was feeling dull at times, that my mind was blank. I wasn't complaining--it was more of an observation. My mind isn't racing all of the time like it used to.

"That is peace, Lauren," he said. "You just aren't feeling spun up or agitated." Another friend said I've changed. "You used to have a 'frenetic' energy." (To be fair, I am not like this all of the time. I am much more frenetic in my personal life than at work or when I am part of a group.)

This week, I was re-reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle. A French intellectual once said that you can't truly understand a book unless you've read it twice. (Someone* on Medium said the same thing. Here ya go.)

The first time I read Untamed, I was scanning the landscape. It was like I was going on a drive and didn't know where Glennon was taking me. I am thinking of the few times I drove between Seattle and Montana. The first time I drove between St. Regis and Kalispell was in the dark and snow. The second time, I was driving home in the morning and I was blown away by the beauty. The next times, I relished my favorite part of the trip.

Likewise, this book. The first time I read it, I was reading in the dark. The second time I am like "Oh yeah, I get it." The short version is Glennon didn't know who she was. As a daughter and a wife and a mother, she lived for everyone else except herself. When you live for everyone else, your life can become really distorted and messed up.

I can relate. For the past eighteen months since the Boy has been away, I am trying to come out of the rabbit hole and figure out how to live my life for myself and not other people. When I stop living my life for other people, I am hoping that I will become a more decent human and be better able to connect with others.

"Anxiety is feeling terrified about my lack of control over anything, and obsessing is my antidote," wrote Glennon. 

I underlined this line twice so when I flip through the book I can find it right away.

This was me in the spring, summer and fall of 2019. I spent a lot of time obsessing about things people I could not control. I was a mess and a wreck. When my friends would ask, "Why don't you do something about it?" I couldn't because I was paralyzed. I didn't know what to do. I was stuck. Really, really, really stuck.

I've been stuck before in my life, but this was different. I was so far in a rut that I knew I needed to get out of the living hell that was my own mind. Being stuck was good because it drove me to change instead of staying in the same old, same old. 

I realize this now, but I didn't realize it then.

My main problem was that my inner compass was broken. I didn't know what I wanted or where to go. I was lost inside my soul. Instead of asking myself for directions, I'd ask my friends. I was looking for other people for insight and explanation: What does this mean? What does that mean?

Even though some of my friends are exceptionally wise, they didn't know where I wanted to go because I didn't know. I wanted someone on the outside to tell me what to do on the inside, which does not work. Slowly, slowly, slowly, I am beginning to figure out what I need and want. More importantly, I am beginning to understand that everyone else also has this choice, too. They have their higher power, their own inner compass and I have mine. I cannot confuse the two. I wanted so many people in my life to want what I wanted, and world doesn't work that way.

I was talking with some friends yesterday when one of them defined hope. "Hope does not equal certainty. Hope is confidence in the possibility," she said. 

I used to want certainty, even if I didn't know it at the time. Now when I get anxious, agitated, amped up or whatever, I need to start reaching for hope instead of obsessing. Once I let go of wanting a certain outcome, I can let go of my worry and replace it with faith.

 

* I googled the person who wrote this post, mainly because I wanted to see if the writer was male or female. It turns out this guy was one of the suitors on Indian Matchmaker on Netflix.

Permanence & the Sweet Spot

More than two years ago, I was in London for a week for a mother-daughter bonding trip before Claire-Adele left for college. I had a wonderful time. Even though I was about to "lose" my daughter as she was going to dash off to the East Coast, it was otherwise a sweet spot in my life. Claire-Adele was successfully launched and thrilled about college, and the Boy would get his chance to be the only child.

After the trip to London, the Boy's anxiety and depression reached a crisis level and my marriage imploded.

How much did I cling to permanence, hoping to keep that sweet spot forever in my life? A good friend is going through a divorce. She used to live in a lovely home, and now she is in a less lovely apartment. Relationships, homes, jobs--they all change. 

I was poking around online and I came across a graph like this, probably from a Marketing 101 class.

It got me thinking about my life in general, and how when things are going well in a relationship or job, I long to stay in the sweet spot forever.

That doesn't happen. In fact, my life like looks more like this, lots of lines crossing each other all over the place:

I am learning how to navigate these waves, riding along like a surfer, taking in the ups and downs.

The Warmth of Other Suns & 2021

I am reading The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, a brutal and necessary book about how Black people in the southeastern United States who descended from slaves migrated to the northeast, midwest and west coasts. They left barbaric and heinous treatment (see pages 60-61) behind them for "the warmth of other suns." For thirty years from the late 1880's to the early 1900's, a Black person was lynched every four days. Some events described in this book are so horrific in terms of the violence inflicted by white people onto Black people it made me wonder who could come up with ideas so vile. I can't even repeat what was done to these people, it is that repulsive. Horror movie directors wouldn't add these types of scenes to movies. Speaking of entertainment: white people would come for miles to watch lynchings. Crowds of hundreds, thousands, would show up to watch as if they were going to the theater. Did they play music, like an opera? Or just chant?

"Oftentimes, just to go away," wrote John Dillard, a Yale scholar studying the South in the 1930s, "is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this case, it is one of the few ways in which pressure can be put."

And so it goes: "oftentimes, just to go away is one of the most aggressive things another person can do..."

Sometimes problems are seem insurmountable. Sometimes they are insurmountable. They can't be fixed or changed. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try and how much we want things to be different, they aren't and they can't be.

We need to know when it is time to leave. First, we need to believe that there is a better place, that there exists warmth of other suns.

This book has been haunting me for days. After reading it, it can't be unread. I'm about 20% done, and it has already made such and impact.

Speaking of warmth, I was at Office Depot the other day. I love office supply stores. You know how some men (and women, too) love hardware stores? I love office supply stores like that. In the pre-COVID days, Anderson my work friend teased me that I had a mini-Office Depot at my cube. Compare that to my old co-worker Jason who had one pad of paper and one pen.

Anyway, I was at Office Depot poking around planner section and I saw two things that caught my eye:

I love "Escape Plans," with the scooter and sunglasses. It reminds me of trips to New York which are now on hold indefinitely. The second one is a planner for 2021. I don't use paper planners anymore. Instead, I use electronic calendars to keep my schedule.

This bright, cheerful, pink one I could not resist. I bought it anyway. 

I didn't buy this calendar to avoid having Big Brother know all of my important life events, like when I get a haircut or have a PT appointment. I got it because I wanted some hope, some cheer, something to look forward to. Sometimes, the warmth of other suns doesn't come necessarily from a change of place, but from a change in time, like spring to summer, or winter to spring.

Let's hope 2021 brings better and brighter times.

Calls and $300K

Every now and then, Jack and I will get a call from a parent.

"A friend said I should talk to you. My teenage son/daughter (check all that apply)..."

• stopped going to school
• lies in bed all day
• doesn't come out of room
• watches videos and Netflix all day
• is defiant
• smokes pot
• can be violent 
• withdraws
• doesn't eat
• doesn't connect with friends
• is on meds that aren't working

"I heard your son had similar problems. What can I do?"

I wish my gut response wasn't: Do you have $300K laying around that you aren't using? Because that is what it is going to cost to get similar treatment for your kid that we got for the Boy.

Ballpark estimates:

• One day in the PBMU at Seattle Childrens Hospital (if you are lucky enough to get in): $5,000
• One day in Wilderness Therapy (11 weeks): $620
• One day at Therapeutic Boarding School (2 years): $300
• Individual and couple/family therapy: $1340 a month or $44 a day

Plus travel to remote locations whose airports have less than 5 gates.

• Airfare
• Lodging
• Food
• Car rental

That doesn't even include my second response, which is "Are you okay with becoming an early empty-nester? Letting someone else finish raising and launching your child?

Back to money. Health insurance only pays for acute care in the hospital and then a minimal amount for the clinically billed therapy for one-on-one appointments with their specific therapist at Wilderness and at a therapeutic boarding school. Nevermind that the therapists hang and eat lunch with these kids. Nevermind there is round-the-clock support so if these kids fall of the rails, there are resources available. Nevermind that these kids need to get out of their current home environment in order to survive.

I wish there was something I could tell these families to make their lives better without breaking the bank. I wish there was a societal collective place where these kids could rebuild their souls and spirits, like a monastery, kibbutz or an ashram where we could send these kids for affordable treatment. I am talking something like YMCA camps on steroids for a year or two, not just two weeks in the summer.

And I am lucky. I am can bitch about how much this costs, but Jack and I (mostly Jack, TBH) can afford it without draining our savings, our retirement, or the equity in our homes. We don't need to ask the Bank of Grandma and Grandpa to foot the bill. We didn't have a "Go Fund Me" campaign.

Nevertheless, if I had known what to do to have kept my kid at home, I would have. What would I have done differently that might have avoided this? I don't know what would have changed the Boy or Jack, but I wish I had gotten into Al-Anon sooner. I wish I would have recognized earlier how I was reacting to Jack's addiction, and that I needed to change. Would that have made a difference? I would have been more serene, but I don't know if it would have changed the Boy's path.

Agression v Assertion, and Enola Holmes

The Boy was in his therapy session and one of his therapists said "Aggression and assertion as the same thing. They come from the same place."

When I heard this, I was like "Hold the phone. That's not right. Or true."

Aggressive is mean and violent. Assertive is strong and confident. Hitler was aggressive when he invaded Poland. I am assertive when I told my manager I want a raise.

Right?

The more I think about it, the more I think the Boy's therapist might be on to something. Hitler wanted to claim Poland under Germany. I wanted more money. We both wanted something, and we turned that desire into action--Hitler with tanks, me with a polite request.

What is the difference? Am I being aggressive? Was Hitler being assertive?

If I were to call my manager and say "Hey $@%@#, give me a raise or else I'll quit," that might be considered aggressive. If Hitler called the President of Poland and politely said, "I think we will make a good team and our countries would be stronger together," that might be considered assertive.

So, are assertive and aggressive simply in the eye of the beholder, in the eye of the person who is being asked to provide what the other person wants? Perhaps, but in polite society, we have norms where we expect people to behave in a certain way. In some cultures, women aren't expected to ask for a raise or ask to be fairly compensated. In these cases, women asking for equal pay (or equal rights or the right to vote) might be considered "aggressive" by those in power who don't want to give them what they desire.

We ourselves might have a difficult time asking for what we want, and we might perceive ourselves as being aggressive, when we really are being assertive.

Interesting conversation, nevertheless.

In other news, I've been trying to read the newspapers lately instead of skimming the headlines. I've been trying to find other stories to read about other than politics, racism and wildfires.

There is no good news. 

None.

Last week, I read a story in the New York Times about some political donor in West Hollywood, California who would "slam" gay Black men with meth and watched them die. I'll skip giving you the link. I couldn't finish the article. This morning, I read about some nefarious, cult-like brainwashing of an eBay employees. So I called a friend to cheer myself up, when in fact I listened to her bitch and piss and moan about the state of the world. She is actually delightful, so I didn't mind listening to her bitch and piss and moan. I felt less alone.

Given the past week of rain (everyone was a little overzealous in their prayers for rain to clear the smoke as we had a week of down pouring), I needed some sun so I went to Kerry Park on Queen Anne. I had never been to Kerry Park in the sixteen years I've lived in Seattle. The view was breathtaking. I've seen lots of views of the Space Needle and Rainier, but this had it all in one shot. I sat on a bench and read for an hour in the sun, occasionally peeking up for a look at Mt. Rainier.

Later while I was making dinner, the Boy called, and we talked for an hour and a half, which was nice.

After the call, I watched the first half Enola Holmes, the story of Sherlock Holmes younger sister starring Millie Bobbie Brown from Stranger Things and Helena Bonham Carter whom I'd watch read the dictionary.

This show is the balm for all that is wrong with the world right now. Millie gets a role where she actually gets to talk! Helena Bonham Carter plays an awesome, creative, feisty, loving, badass mom, the mother I wish I was. There are cinematic statistics that measure the amount women talk about romantic relationships with men in movies, and other statistic that measures who gets the most dialogue--men or women. In the first twenty minutes, I thought the movie was odd and then I realized the dialogue was mostly from Enola and her mom talking. So refreshing. So, so, so refreshing. 

Enola and her mom were talking. Her mother says, "The future is up to us. There are two paths. You can choose to take yours, or the path others choose for you."

A beautiful thought to end a beautiful day.

When, or Past, Present and Future

This morning while I was making a prosciutto and spinach quiche for breakfast, I listened to a lecture/podcast by the addiction specialist at the Boy's school. Tim was directly talking to parents whose kids just wrapped up a year of in-patient treatment, and are now part of a transition program where they are going to regular school but living in a supportive environment. Some of these kids are going to be on their own in the next few months, and that is a tender time. A few of these kids are considering going back to using drugs and alcohol, which naturally scares the crap out of parents.

Tim talked about splitting ambivalences in these teens. Kids (and adults for that matter) may be ambivalent about bad habits, like drinking or smoking pot. Some inner part of these kids may want to smoke pot, and another part may want to be responsible. If parents get on the rabid "Pot is terrible--don't ever do it!" they are putting themselves on one side of an argument.  When parents are on one side, some kids naturally gravitate to the other side.

Tim told a story of a phone call he got from one of his patient's mom. Her nineteen year old son was tossed in jail for possession of drugs. The young man called his mom, hoping she would bail him out. She was kind and compassionate, and set a firm boundary.

"I know this is hard, and I am sorry you are in this spot," she said, "I am sure you will figure something out." Parents have to learn to let kids make their own choices and then also suffer the consequences, even if those consequences break the mom's heart.

The mom told Tim that she had to at that moment see her son for who he was: an autonomous nineteen year old man. Her son no longer was the adorable preschooler who she would take to the park.

That story really resonated with me, for better and for worse.

In some ways, it is good to look back and see the good in people. It can give us compassion. 

Yet, looking back at the past can not serve us well, even when we look back fondly. We might be ignoring or tolerating current unpleasant or unacceptable behavior. Perhaps this is why some women stay with abusive men -- they remember back when he was nice, even though that was a long time ago.

It is fair to remember someone fondly when their current behavior doesn't match the past? We might not be honest or true or hold appropriate boundaries if we are looking at someone's idealized past self instead of their present self. We aren't giving them a chance to make mistakes, to fail, to learn, to grow.

IRL

Last week one night as I was drifting to sleep, I had visions of Zoom meetings. Instead of thinking about some social event I attended, I pictured my computer screen. I was jolted back awake with a big dose of "WTF?" Why am viewing my life as a Zoom event? It was horrible. 

(Kind of. And I say kind of because now I am connecting with people across the country more frequently than I used to pre-COVID, especially my Dad. Okay, mainly my Dad.)

Like most people, I am spending significant time alone during COVID, so it is so nice to see people besides my building manager and baristas. So what is going to be like to get back to real life? Will we remember how to act? Will we know what to do? Will I remember how to socialize, or will I be total awkward?

Friday night, I went out with some friends. Two friends have birthdays a few days a part so I suggested a celebration. We had initially intended to go to a local brew pub, but it was full. It rained Friday afternoon and the smoky skies cleared and everyone was happier to be out and about. People showed up at five o'clock at the brew pub and then didn't leave. Who can blame them? I was planning to do the same thing.

The four of us decided to go to another nearby restaurant which is much fancier than the brew pub. Three of the four of had been to the fancier restaurant before, and one hadn't. At first, Lance looked a little disappointed that the rest of us chose someplace so staid, but that lasted about five minutes. Once we were seated, Lance told the group his dramatic story of a week long camping trip in the Rockies this summer. Having spent a good part of the summer in Montana this year, I could related to his adventures in the mountains. We were laughing so hard, we were the loudest, most raucous table in the restaurant, but in a good way. You know when you are out and see people having fun and think, "I wish I was having as much fun as them"?

We were that table.

It was awesome.

Which is interesting for many reasons. In my pre-COVID life, I'd go out all the time with different groups of friends. Now I rarely go out, so when I do go out, it is extra-super special.

Saturday I went to lunch with Ellen. She was ten minutes late so the owner came by to tell me about the specials. For ten minutes. Which was fine, because I was sitting there by myself and how often do I get to talk to people in real life? Plus, the restaurant was busy by for COVID season, but not by pre-pandemic standards. When Ellen showed up, and the owner was back and still chatty. The waitress brought the food and the owner came by. Again. When we finished, he asked if we wanted dessert.

"No thanks," I said. "I'm good."

"No," he said, looking me straight in the eye. "You are great!"

Uhhhhhh.....

When he left, Ellen said, "I think he was hitting on you." Yeah, I kind of got that vibe, and it made me uncomfortable. My goal was to have a nice lunch with Ellen, not to have this guy show up for half of our meal.

Later, I got to think about it. The restaurant industry as a whole is struggling, but I bet the individuals who work and run restaurants are struggling, too. This guy might not have been specifically hitting on me. Rather, he might have been so happy to be back in business and schmoozing with customers that he was a little overzealous. Instead of the usual sixty customers, there were sixteen. I imagine people who own restaurants love to entertain and make people happy, and they haven't been able to do that for several months.

Today, I talked to my Dad for an hour and forty minutes on the phone. He said he is reading Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen and recommended I read it. Instead of ordering it for my Kindle or via Amazon, I decided to see if I could get a local hardcopy. I called Elliott Bay Books and they put a copy on hold for me. I decided to take my life into my own hands and take the Light Rail to Capitol Hill to pick the book, like people used to before we ordered everything in. The Light Rail had construction, so I rode a bus to Capitol Hill.

A bus. 

This was the first time in more than six months that I haven't take public transportation. Everyone had their face masks on. Everyone sat appropriately apart. The bus was free. But it was still a bus.

When I got to Elliott Bay Books, they were limiting the number of people in the store and the length of visit. There was a line of at least thirty people deep to get in. It looked like people were waiting in line for tickets to a rock concert, not to get into a bookstore. It was nuts. These people could have ordered anything in that store from Amazon for thirty percent off in three minutes and never have to leave their couch. 

But they wanted to get out. They wanted to walk through Capitol Hill. They wanted to walk through a real bookstore, not a virtual one. 

And I was in their horde.

Decaf Mocha, Quaffle, or Breaking Alert -- Happiness Found in Food!

Quaffle? Isn't that something out of Harry Potter? Some quidditch thing?

Hmmm.

I am not sure but I had one for breakfast today. A new coffee shop Anchorhead opened across the street from the condo. There was a "Coffee" flag outside the door where a Tully's used to be. Since it is my personal mission to keep coffee shops alive during COVID (and sometimes baristas are the only people I see during the week), I have been bouncing around to all of the coffee shops in my neighborhood within a three block radius. Plus I had some insomnia last night and needed some caffeine to get through the day.

At one point, I had thought of creating a blog called "Decaf Mocha" where I would visit a different coffee shop, have a mocha, and post about it. That would have been much more exciting to share pictures of coffee in a ceramic mug at a nice table instead of a paper to-go cup, which is what I am stuck with now in COVID.

So what is a quaffle? I walked into this newly opened coffee shop at eight a.m. and my nose lead the way. I smelled a delicious baked good. I am trying the Keto diet where I am cutting down on carbs and sugar so I can hopefully avoid putting on more quarantine weight. At the same time, I am watching "The Great British Baking Show" which is a show dedicated to the many ways can people prepare flour, sugar, butter and salt with extra flavors.

The barista/owner said the aroma was a quaffle, a waffle made out of croissant dough with cinnamon.

After trying to avoid the smell smoke all weekend, the quaffle smelled lovely, but I had no intentions of getting food. I was at the coffee shop purely for caffeine. I was planning to go home and makes eggs for breakfast I swear to god. I got the quaffle, hoping it would be terrible and that I would never want another one ever again, that my quasi-Keto diet had cured me of carbs forever.

But no.

The quaffle was awesome. It was a slice of sunshine and bliss in the middle of this smoke and COVID shitshow.  It was truly amazing and why hadn't anyone thought to do this before? It was getting a little depressed this weekend as the only thing to do in COVID time is GO OUTSIDE AND NOW WE CAN'T EVEN DO THAT? C'MON!!!! WTF? AARRRGGHHH!!!!

And then a very good friend who is young and idealistic beautifully said, "You know I feel kind bad sitting in my apartment working while the world literally burns. I feel like I should be doing something."

Nothing like a healthy dose of perspective to get me out of my self-induced pity-party. It is really icky and gross in Seattle, but how are these people in Portland surviving? And then I flip through my weather app, checking the air quality of other cities and I am jealous. Until like two days ago, I didn't even know there was an air quality index on my weather app. London is 2. New York is 21. San Francisco is 13. "Air Quality" is below "Visibility" and "UV Index," which I didn't know where there either. In Seattle we are holding tight at 269: Very Unhealthy.

I don't know if I would have tried the quaffle today if I hadn't been so depressed this weekend. I don't know if I would have enjoyed it so much if I hadn't been locked inside and needed something to cheer me up. But I am grateful for how much joy it has brought me today.

Ferries and Hummingbirds

This morning I woke up and it was quiet. Very, very quiet. There were no sounds of birds or cars, airplanes overhead. I looked out my window and today looks worse than yesterday.

My phone told me today isn't worse than yesterday. Maybe the smoke picked up some humidity as it crossed the ocean to come back to shore.

Earlier this morning, I put my mask on to take Fox outside, not to protect myself from COVID, but to protect myself from smoke. When I came back in, I forgot to take my mask off. I felt better with it on. Fox, however, has been coughing.

If Fox is coughing, what will happen to the hummingbirds? Three or four live in my courtyard and I watch them from my window as I work.

Yesterday I went to the market. The most heartiest of souls were out, and a bunch of them were smoking. Are smokers immune to this wildfire smoke? How bad does it have to get that even smokers can't breathe? What about Portland? Last night, their air quality was around 516. 

Now, I hear the ferries continually blasting their horns and it is freaking me out a little bit (even though I am on land.) The visibility is so low. I feel sorry and I am afraid for these ferry drivers who are trying to shuttle people back and forth to safety when they can't see ahead of them. It reminds me of an episode of The Crown that depicted the London Smog in 1952 (not to be confused with Smaug, the dragon in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.)

Until this past year, most of the drama in my life was personal, not a shared public crisis. Even with COVID, I had to work from home but still kept my job. I didn't personally get sick, but my mom did. The wildfires, while not destroying my home or town, are impacting the entire Western part of the United States with unsafe air.

Air. 

Humans and animals need food and water to live, but first we need air.