Macro v Micro

A week ago, I was having a bad Friday. Something small triggered me and I fell into a funk. This dip took me by surprise because overall, I had been having a pretty good week. Both my piano teacher and therapist and even my hairdresser told me earlier in the week that I seemed more relaxed and easy going than usual.

And I was. Until this little thing set me off into a miserably sad spiral. Not, it wasn't hormonal. What caused my downward spiral of emotions was a legitimately confusing thing.

I called my friend Ellen to bemoan my existence. "Think macro, not micro," she said. "The rest of the week was fine and moving forward. I am not saying what happened didn't suck, but think of all of the other positive things that have happened this week."

"Think of the pictures of the poppies in you condo," she said. "You have a field of poppies on one side and then a diagram of the inside of a poppy on the other side. Macro/micro."

When she said that, I looked back at what I was upset about and saw that was a small detail in an otherwise positive picture. 

* "Pretty good" being relative for someone who is getting their kid into wilderness therapy for depression and anxiety and is also separated from her husband. In spite of the turmoil and confusion, there are also times of peace and clarity. 

Fox & the City

Jack, the Boy and I spent the our first night in the condo last night. Yay! At first, the Boy didn't want to go because he is a teenager and has to crap on any idea that isn't his own. Whatever. He got over it and was fine after he ate and saw the Warren Miller movie.

Last night, we were all ready to go to sleep around 11:00 or so. Except Fox. Once we were all tucked in, the dog started to fuss. He'd walk back and forth between the master bedroom and where the Boy was sleeping, his nails clicking along the floor. We put his dog bed upstairs, but that didn't help. He was lost like a toddler who needs to sleep in a new place but can't get settled. I don't even know where Fox ended up sleeping last night. I think he might have slept on the Boy's bed. Perhaps the Boy had empathy for Fox, thinking, "Yeah, they dragged me down here too against my will. You can sleep with me. We are a team." As if living in downtown Seattle is a prison.

The next morning, Fox came running to my side of the bed as soon as I stirred but wasn't awake. Fox wanted me to know he was there. Jack and I walked to the Biscuit Bitch for breakfast to get bacon and egg sandwiches, and we brought Fox along. I told Jack what I wanted to eat, and he went into order as I walked the dog around the block. As we walked, Fox pulled at the leash, in a big fat hurry to get I don't know where. He was skittish as he stopped, smelled, and peed on every lamppost, tree, garbage can, building corner, planter and patch of ivy. It was like Fox was Rube in from the country walking downtown, like he had never seen or smelled a garbage can before. For the first time in his life, he had to poop on concrete. Nor could he wait until no one was around because it is the city. Someone is always around, from the cute tourist couples getting breakfast to the crazy guy wondering if he is going to barf or not. Fox survived.

As I work in the same neighborhood as my condo, I have seen other dogs walking in the city before, who look and act like normal dogs, not like my hick dog. The other dogs act normal, blase to food scraps left on the street. Fox found something to eat this morning on the ground and he acted like he had never seen food before. You'd think he was some crazy mutt, not a Pomeranian-chihuahua for god's sake. If a lapdog can't be a city dog, what is wrong with the world?

And I was worried about the Boy being the blocker for the condo. Instead, it is the dog. Hopefully, one of these days Fox will turn into a civilized city dog.


Biscuit Bitch at Cafe Lieto, 1909 First Ave, Seattle WA

The Third Wheel

Monday morning this week I woke up and I was in a bad mood. When I am grouchy, I try to do this exercise where I ask myself:

1. What am I feeling?
2. Why am I feeling this way? Is there a cause?
3. What am I going to do about it? How will I react?

I’ve had to adopt this strategy since I started working again as it is not acceptable or sufficient to haul off and tell people they are pissing me off. But don’t think I’m all zen or whatever. I’m not.

So Monday I am grouchy.  Did I watch too much Ali “being a stay-at-home mom is like being in solitary confinement” Wong and now I am hostile at the three people who put me there?

Yeah, possibly.

This past weekend was my daughter’s prom and Mother’s Day.

First, the boutonniere debacle. Claire-Adele ordered flowers to be delivered for the prom. For Winter Ball, her boyfriend wanted to get her a corsage and she did not see the point of spending an hour of money she earned on something that she’d wear for a night then it would shrivel and die. For prom, she got the point and ordered flowers without fuss. She failed to check her voicemail until Saturday afternoon when she heard a message from earlier in the week from the florist saying they couldn’t deliver her flowers because they were slammed with Mother’s Day orders. She learned Saturday around 1:00. She was leaving for dinner at 7:00.

She was stressed. Jack drilled her with questions: Did you get a confirmation? Did you call them? Did you get your money back? The Boy said he was going to call the florist and yell at them until they brought her a flower. She became more stressed.

I looked at the Boy and Jack and said, "You guys need to go buy some bike parts" as I shooed them out the door. Claire-Adele went to her room and cried.

"What do you need me to do?" I asked. "The roses are in bloom in front of the house. We can make something."

"Leave me alone for five minutes," she said through sobs.

I thought for three minutes. I yelled up the stairs, "I can call Met Market and see if they can get you a flower."

"I am texting Robby," she said. "Okay, call Met Market."

I did. The woman at the other end of the line was as cheerful as a florist could possibly be before Mother's Day. "I can get you something by six. Does that work?"

"Sure." I told Claire-Adele.

"Robby got flowers from the Safeway where he used to work," she said. "Can you cancel yours?"

After the crisis was narrowly averted, neither Robby or I were going to cancel our flowers. Better to have two boutonnieres than none. "Robby can wear two," I said.

When he arrived and flower time came, Eleanor pinned on Robby's lapel the flower Robby brought. Of course she should. He's the boyfriend. I'm just the mom. It is my job to stand back and let her stand on her own. She should take his flower.

But still. I decided to not let a good rose go to waste, so I unwrapped the flower and put it in a vase by my kitchen sink.

Then next day was Mother's Day. Jack and I decided to go for a bike ride, and I was delighted the Boy decided to join us. It was a warm, sunny day, prefect for a ride across the 520 bridge. When we got to the park on the Eastside, we admired the view for a bit and then I was ready to go back home.

"I'm hungry," said the Boy. Which means his hunger has slowly been building for a while and now he was ravenous. 

"Why don't we go back and got to lunch in Ballard?" Ballard is full of fun places to go for lunch on a Saturday. That suggestion was met with ridicule from Jack and the Boy.

"It is only three more miles to Bellevue," Jack said, not looking at the elevation gain. As we left, we rode down a giant hill. Which meant on the way back I'd have to ride up a giant hill. Fuck. And then there was the mile uphill climb. The ride to Ballard is along the water and is as flat as a any ride you can find in Seattle.

Jack and the Boy were consistently twenty yards ahead of me. Once in a while, Jack would turn around and yell "You can do it!" Just because I could do it, doesn't mean I wanted to. And this was Mother's Day. It was supposed to be my ride and it was turning into theirs. I was getting pissed and I was the weak link, holding them back. Plus, I was carrying the Boy's water.

Literally.

We were the sweatiest people Bellevue Square has ever seen. Truckloads of people were dressed up and at the mall on the nicest weekend day of spring so far this year. It was weird. I didn't bring my saddle bags, so I couldn't shop--for much! I did manage to get a little "treat yourself" Mother's Day goodies in my fanny pack from Lego and Lush. The boy got Jamba Juice.

I was in need of some powerful feminine energy after riding with the Boys. And lip gloss.

The ride from Bellevue Square back to the 520 bridge wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. When I got to the bottom of the steep part, I found a mantra--In two months, I'll be in London. London is flat. There are no hills in London. Magically, the hill I was terrified about wasn't nearly as killer as I thought it would be. Evan, my physical therapist, would have been proud.

At the end of the day, I had fun slogging to Bellevue Square, even though I was swearing under my breath for the second half of the ride. I had 16 miles to add to my "Bike Everywhere" log for May.

So why was I so grumpy on Monday? Did I watch too much Ali Wong over the weekend and I was deeply pondering the inequity women face in the world?

Perhaps it is the realization that for so long, my world revolved around them, and that there never will be a day where their world revolves around me--not that it should. Still--I'd like a weekend where I am not the third wheel in my family events.

Parents' Voices v. Kids' Voices

I am taking a novel writing class at the Hugo House taught by Sonora Jha. She has an older son, and she says his comments haunt her now instead of her parents' words. As my kids would say, #relatable. When I was younger, I would hang on the words of my mom. Now, I hang on to the words of my daughter. When my mother would harangue me, I would often bite my tongue and not respond to her. Instead, I would go off and complain to my father, friends, and brother about how I was wronged.

Last week, Claire-Adele and I went to see Hidden Figures. As much I as I enjoyed taking the time to see the movie with her, there were times that I was annoyed at her rudeness towards me. We were running a little bit late as I was talking to my father right before we left. There was a power outage, and Claire-Adele ran to Starbucks to get lunch, only to find their power was out, too, and were not serving food.

We got to the theater after that drama, and I am jogging up the steps, a major accomplishment for me considering that last year at the same time I was learning to walk without a brace or crutch. Jogging and going upstairs were out of the question, let alone trying them together.

"You are the most embarrassing person in the world!" Claire-Adele scolded me as I moved quickly up the stairs. She didn't consider yelling at me in the middle of a crowded movie theater embarrassing, but whatever. I am sure she didn't want to be seen with me at all, but none of her friends wanted to see this movie.

After we had found our seats, Claire-Adele wanted some popcorn because she missed lunch.

"Can you get it for me? I want to see the previews," she said. After being told I was the most embarrassing person in the world two minutes earlier, I told her to get her own popcorn. I gave her money, but I had no desire to stand in line and miss the previews for someone who had been rude to me.

This Christmas, she told the family that she had no plans of coming back to visit after she graduates from college during the holidays. Of course, she wants to be invited on vacations, but God forbid she has to spend a holiday with us.

If another friend talked to me like this, I'd probably drop them--unfriend them on Facebook, block their phone number, etc. Instead, she is my daughter. I don't have the luxury of writing her off. This weekend, I went to visit my dad and my mom in Ohio. I got home around 11:00 p.m. last night, and the kids were in bed. This morning, Claire Adele was sniffling, and I asked how she was doing.

"There is nothing wrong with me," she yelled. "Why do you think there is something wrong with me?"

Good morning to you, too, I should have said. Later, I went to wake up the Boy. As I passed her room, she asked me for the fabric scissors.

"Why do you need them?" I asked.

"To cut my head off," she said as she rolled her eyes. "I need them to cut fabric. Can you get them for me?" She had blue fleece spread out over her floor. She is part of a group that is making blankets for homeless men and women.

"I need to get your brother up, and then I can get them," I replied.

When I went to get the Boy, he was excited to see me. "How was your trip?" he asked. I told him, and we talked about how his friend got his remote control airplane out of a tree. This was big news, as the plane had been stuck forty feet up in a Port Orford cedar since the end of winter break.

"Are you going to get me the scissors?" Claire-Adele barked. "I need the scissors."

"Shut up," I said frustrated with this person who has said nothing nice to me in weeks. "I am talking to your brother." I was so tired of the world revolving around her. "You are interrupting my conversation. Just wait."

"You know," she said. "You say I am rude to you but spoiler alert -- you are ruder to me."

I could let those words haunt me, like the words of my mother stuck with me as a kid. Instead, I look at the millions of micro-aggressions and insults she has hurled at me for the past few years. I know I am the grown-up here and she is the kid. I should be the example of the right way to behave.

Yet, it is so hurtful to be constantly told how wrong and awful and embarrassing I am, and I need to respond. How is it that I am rude when I call my daughter on her rudeness to me? Why? I wish I had Michelle Obama's grace of "When they go low, we go high." This is different. I am living with this lowness, and it is in my face when I wake up, when she comes home from school and before she goes to bed. She directs her sass at not just me, but to her brother as well. I shouldn't defend him because that makes him look defenseless. She has no awareness of the link between yelling at her brother and then his yelling back at her.

"Dad didn't yell at us all weekend," she said after I told her to shut-up. Argh. Jack was probably in "Distracted Parent Mode" all weekend, squeezing in work, looking at his phone, and generally ignoring the kids. He probably didn't notice them enough to yell at them.

"Where is my water bottle? I've been looking for it for two days!" Claire Adele continued to rant.

"I put it in the drawer with the other water bottles. It was in the dishwasher. You should yell at your dad about that. I wasn't home this weekend," I said. She glared at me and stomped away.

Claire Adele will be leaving for college in a year and a half. I've talked to other parents about life as an empty nester. I've always imagined it being so hard and lonely. I always wondered how moms coped with the person they raised for eighteen years leaves to go off on their own. Why aren't all of these women crying and crying? Why aren't there support groups for moms when their kids go to college and leave home? When Claire-Adele was six, I talked to one mom who had what I thought was a nice and lovely daughter say she was sad for about a day when her daughter left for school, and then she was fine. I tried to push out of my mind how I'd feel when Claire Adele leaves the house, my firstborn, my baby. I couldn't imagine.

Now I get it. Claire Adele needs to leave me as much as I need her to leave. We need a separation, time apart. Hopefully, someday, we can be friendly to each other. She might need to push me away to make her own departure easier for all of us. She is succeeding, I have to say. She is succeeding.

The Black Dog and the Bubble

I mentioned in a previous post that I have a friend who was recently diagnosed with depression. I have other friends who have depression but I met them after they were diagnosed and already into treatment. For a variety of reasons, this friend can't take medication for her depression. She has to rely on psychotherapy and maintaining a healthy lifestyle to minimize her symptoms. She is discovering the before and after of her diagnosis. What used to be perceived as tiredness and lethargy she now recognizes as depression.

I have another friend with type I diabetes. This friend can prick her finger and get a quantitive read on her blood sugar levels. She then has to figure out what to do next to adjust so her blood levels return to normal. People with depression don't have something that concrete to tell them something is off or amiss. Plus, your mind thinks what it thinks, and it often thinks it is find, even when it is not.

I remember when I was consulting, there was an expression "You can't manage what you can't measure." There was a strong emphasis on trying to quantify things that might not necessarily be quantifiable. How can we quantify a mood like depression? I wish it were easy to measure so then it more easily be managed.

My son's elementary and middle school used to use the Mood Meter created at Yale to help kids label their emotions, but I am not sure how it can capture fuzzier emotions, like "I want to sit on the coach and watch YouTube videos for hours instead of going outside" or "I don't really have any feelings right now. Everything is gray."

I wish there was a depression simulator, where you could go into it for fifteen minutes or so and experience depression. Not that I really want to go there, but I want to know what it is like inside her head so I can be a better friend and support her. Depression are migraine headaches are the two illnesses I fear the most. I don't want to take a drug to give me the feeling of depression; I would fear the drug might be permanent, and that would suck. J. K. Rowling gives a great description of depression with the Dementors in the Harry Potter series.

And then I wonder how much of the Black Dog has visited me, and perhaps I have been unaware of it. I wonder if Jack has a mild case of it, too. Maybe both of us live on the bubble, and have managed to keep it at bay with exercise, socialization and getting good sleep. Maybe the Black Dog would have a more permanent part in our lives, but so far we have managed it.

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike everyday after school except for days when I had extra-curricular activities, like Drill Team. I needed a full night's sleep to feel normal. Now I also need a fistful of vitamins to feel perky: cod liver oil, folic acid, and Vitamin D and B, plus magnesium to ward off Alzheimer's. Jack runs or rides his bike to work everyday. When he goes three or four days without exercise, he is grumpy and short-tempered.

"I need to go for a run," he said the other night after dinner. Yes you do, I thought. I no longer think of exercise as a luxury. My campaign manager for when I ran for School Board would occasionally ask for a few hours off to lift weighs.

"No problem," I told him. If he needed to exercise to feel normal, I needed him to exercise.

I was recently talking to a group of moms and it came up that almost all of them were on anti-depressants. I was one of the only ones in the group not to need them. (Yet.) After my ACL tear and surgery, I needed to exercise everyday for forty-five minutes to build strength in my legs. What should have been a perfect excuse to sit on my butt and feel sorry for myself ended up being not that bad. I was almost surprised that I wasn't more miserable that I was. Part of me I wanted to be miserable so I could figure out what to do next with my life. I couldn't possibly be happy or content when I was in such a sorry state.

But I kind of was content. I wasn't euphoric or ecstatic, but I wasn't as miserable or painfully bored as I thought I'd be. I somehow managed to keep off the bubble. I am a firm believer of listening to your body and mind "Pain is your body's way of staying 'Stop!'" is one of my favorite expressions as it applies to so much more that physical pain. Boredom serves a purpose: it forces me to find something new and meaningful to do. Misery tells me I need to change. I look at these feelings as a gift telling me to move, not something I need to dread.

I can say that but then I still have a healthy fear of the Black Dog approaching as I age. I don't want to live where I have to be so diligent to keep my sanity. My dad manages his type II diabetes with diet and exercise, and as long as that works for him, he isn't on medication. I plan to do the same to keep my mood in place.

What if I get injured again or become ill and can't exercise? My mom had a bad case of depression after my brother and I were both out of the house. This time also coincided with menopause. Is this something I have to look forward to? Will depression be an accessory that comes with the change of life? I pray not. I read somewhere the estrogen protects women's brains from mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Some women are sane until they hit menopause, and then they become certifiable. If this happens to me, I will hopefully gracefully submit to medication, therapy, and whatever else I might need to keep my mind.

Mental Illness, Movies and Bad Guys

[SPOILER ALERT in this post for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them]

I don't know if there is such a thing as Mental Illness Kindness Day, but there ought to be.

One of my favorite people and good friend was recently diagnosed with depression and anxiety. It is taking me a while to figure out what this means. My mother had depression and was on medication for years. Hers didn't kick in until after I was living on my own in a different state, so I didn't see to the day-to-day impacted on her. My father tells me stories of how she would cry for days.

Yesterday, I went to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them with this friend and our kids. After the movie, this friend said she didn't like it: "The bad guy was a psycho bent on destroying the world." This hit her close to the heart.

Having just been diagnosed with a mental illness and starting treatment, she struggles with the loneliness of the disease and understanding how her body impacts her mood in such a way that makes her unmotivated to leave the house. She is functional in some respects of her life because she has to be, but in others, she falls. She tells me of her dark thoughts and wishes them away. "When I get bored, I think. When I think, I get depressed." I can't imagine what it would be like not to want to be inside your own head, wanting to escape your own mind.

In some sense, the answer could be to be distracted to the point of not thinking, but then she introduced a new word to my vocabulary: maladaptive. Maladaptive means using a coping mechanism that doesn't improve mental health, like drinking or giving in to other addictions like video games. Adaptive strategies are exercise, being around friends, exploring nature and getting enough sleep.

Her issue is that bad guys in movies are often disturbed or crazy. I suppose a bad guy can't simply be sane because then perhaps he wouldn't be a bad guy because theoretically he or she would know better than to commit evil acts. That being said, many if not most people with mental illnesses know the difference between right and wrong, likely at the same rate sane people know right from wrong. Some folks with mental illness have a very heightened sense of right and wrong -- they might be more sensitive to injustice than a typical person. My daughter pointed out that Putin is sane and Lincoln was crazy. Does that make having a mental illness a good thing? If you only use those two as an example, I suppose so, but life isn't so simple.

I am asking Hollywood this: can we have more empathetic depictions of people with mental illnesses? Can we have some heroes who suffer from bipolar disorder, or OCD? I googled famous people with depression and it was twelve pages long. How about showing a biopic of Lincoln that includes his depression?

"Are you Limping?" and the Big D

I ran into a friend of mine who tore her ACL a few years ago. My favorite quote from her was "One day, my knee was fine and I forgot anything had ever happened to it." I am longing for that day.

Today, the two of us were meeting at a friend's house for coffee and we walked up the stairs together.

"Are you limping?" she asked me. I was mortified. In the past few weeks, other friends forgot I had had surgery and thought my gait was perfectly normal. Those friends didn't have ACL surgery themselves, nor did they see me walking upstairs. My gait isn't perfect on stairs yet. My post-surgical leg has less hop than my good leg.

"Yes," I said. "I have been lifting lots of weights and my legs are sore." That was true. The night before I was doing my three time a week routine of a dozen exercises. I am getting to the point where I sweat doing these exercises. I never sweat before when lifting weights or doing squats. Am I doing something right? Should I have been sweating before? Will I ever not be stiff and sore? Why can't I touch my toes anymore? I am now seven months post-surgery in a nine month recovery. Shouldn't I be coasting to the finish line? Instead, the exercises are getting harder.

My former project manager self thinks that if you plan things out and execute the plan, things should progress just fine. Often when I scheduled programs, I'd add in some slack in case a task took longer to complete or there was more work than expected. In those cases, work should finish sooner than expected.

This is not the case with my knee. I have been practicing standing on the BOSU disc, which is a large, round plastic disk with a squashy pillow on the other side. I put the squashy side on the ground and stand on the disk in a squat. My legs shake like I am having a seizure, but it didn't hurt. Evan explained that my nerves are trying to fire to help me keep my balance. This is part of the healing process that can't be rushed: I can't make my nerves grow faster, no matter how hard I try.

While I have stepped up my exercises these past few days, I have skipped biking to walk Green Lake with friends. I've also been gardening and doing other things around the house. Since I haven't been biking, the Black Dog has started to move in. I did and didn't realize how much forty-five minutes of cardio each day was keeping depression away. I made jokes about how mellow I was after exercising. I could feel myself relax, almost to the point of not wanting to be that relaxed. I've always had a little bit of an edge, and I was sad when it would get dissipated or blunted from too much exercise. The little voice that would tell me to make changes in my life would be a little too chill to tell me to do something different.

I need to get back on the bike. I need my exercise therapy.

Clean Anger

Jack and I have been talking a lot lately about the situation of our marriage since it fell into crisis two months ago.  In many of these conversations, I have been calm, thoughtful and articulate.  In others, I have not.  I have yelled, cried, screamed, and called him a fucking asshole.  I am angry that I was betrayed.  I am angry that I was neglected.  I am angry that I was ignored and not listened to.  I tried to tell him in a rational, calm voice many times that I was lonely, that I needed more from him.  When I told him, he turned away, making the insult even worse.  I was heartbroken and crushed to discover that I had been lied to for a year.  I was also really pissed off.

Jack has been reading Love Busters by Willard Harley, Jr. which was recommended to us by a friend.  There are several love busters, including dishonesty, being critical, and leading an independent life.  Another love buster is anger.  Anger can destroy love.  We had reached an impasse, where he wasn't listening to me, and I would get angry.   The more he wouldn't listen, the more angry I would get.  The more angry I got, the less he would listen.  It was a riptide we couldn't escape.

Jack and I talked to our therapist about my anger and how it made him feel.  He said he felt anxious and clammy when I got angry.  He wanted to curl up in a ball like a pill bug.  I said I got angry after being trampled by a rhino.  A rhino with very thick skin, ignoring me.

The therapist said my anger is clean anger, anger that is a result of protest or protecting boundaries, versus abusive anger.  Protest is saying I am hurt or this isn't working.  My anger is not abusive with intent to hurt or destroy him.  My anger is my heart trying to protect itself.

Small as it is, this is progress.

Maui and NZ

Here I am, back to the topic of my marriage.

Yesterday, Jack and I had a difficult conversation.  It wasn't capitally difficult, like the ones few weeks ago where I was calling him a fucking asshole every three sentences, screaming at the top of my lungs.  Instead, I informed him that I am still keeping the "nuclear option" on the table, meaning I am reserving the right to call the end to this marriage should I need feel sufficient changes are not made.  I was also questioning what I am getting out of the marriage.  How does this relationship benefit me? I know it benefits him and the kids, as I take care of so much.  But how I am supported?  How does he show care and concern for my well-being?  For the past several days, I had been asking him to write a list of ten nice things he did for me in the past year.  I gave him days to think about it, and each time I asked him he acted like I was asking him a trick question, or asking him about something that had not yet been covered in class.  All I was asking him to do was name ten nice things he had done for me in the past year.  That's less than one thing a month.  To my annoyance, he struggled.

He is not happy with me keeping the nuclear option on the table.  "If you want to call it quits, let me know," he said, rather stressed.  "I will leave if you want me to."  He was moderately defensive when he said versus being in a zen state of "If you love someone, set them free" mode.

"I need some faith that we have a chance,"  he said.  "If I don't have faith that this will get better, I am not sure I can stay."

Right.

Um, I was the one who was lied to and neglected.  I was the one who was trying and met up against the defensiveness of someone with addiction.  Someone who was in over his head and was suppressing those feelings at my expense and his.

"I have been the one who has been going on faith," I said.  "I am the one waiting to see if things get better."

"Oh," he said.  "Yes."  And he switched directions instantly.

Yes,  I want to let him know he has a chance.  I still enjoy his company, which makes this whole situation all the more infuriating.

Earlier yesterday morning, he rattled off about four very nice reasons why he liked me.

"You are the most intelligent, thoughtful, introspective person I know.  You are so in touch with your emotions.  You are empathetic and sympathetic," he said as we were standing outside of our marriage therapist's office.  "I need you."

"All of those reasons why you love me are exactly why all of this is so painful.  If I were less intelligent, less caring, less thoughtful, perhaps I could handle this better," I said. "But I am not.  I am all of those things."

He paused, and I left.  I went to a nearby shop for a picture frame.  The Big E painted a picture of the Boy, which I love.  Aside from the nostrils, it looks just like him.  My friend Abbie said it was good that I was taking care of things like painting the bathroom and dining room and other things that would make me happy.  I was putting what I wanted to take care of on the agenda, not just those that belonged to my family.

Later that night, the Boy had a band concert.  We continued our rather stressful conversation before the show began, ratting off and rehashing our therapy session from earlier that day.

"Why do you want to be here?" I asked him for the thirteenth thousandth time in the prior six weeks.  "Why are you back?"

"I wasn't happy then," he said.  "I was miserable.  I know I hurt you, but living that life was not making me happy."  Okay, fine I can buy that.  He continued.

"I really enjoy our conversations," he said.  "I've actually been happy these past few weeks now that we are talking again.  I feel relieved that things are out in the open and I am getting help."

Well, that's is nice.  Really.  Excuse me while I vomit.

Okay, I am back.  Sorry for the awful sarcasm.  I apologize.  That is not a reasonable way to solve problems.  Jack has a point, but this point was so sharp that it burst the tender membrane that was my heart.   Seriously, I could have skipped the year of lies and the previous three years of increasing neglect.  Couldn't you have just talked to me before all of this shit happened?  Where were you then?

+++++

So back to the title of this essay: Maui versus New Zealand.  I've wandered far afield.  (Okay, I think I've already told this story on my blog, but eh.  Here it is again.)  A few years ago (I think it was when the Boy was in second grade), that Jack and the kids got me a $20 iTunes gift card for Christmas.  Now I love iTunes.  I download music all of the time.  It was the kids idea to get me a gift card, which was sweet.  What was not sweet was that this was a shared gift between Jack and the kids for me.  The only gift the three of them got me was something that was purchased two days before Christmas in the checkout line at the grocery store.  I cried for two days at that lack of thought they put into getting something for me.  Me, the person who made Christmas in our household.  If that Christmas were a sports event, there would be a little tag at the end that said, "Brought to you by Mom!  Thank her for making this holiday AWESOME!"  I was pissed.

So, the following year we went to Maui.  "Now no one can be upset this Christmas because we are in Maui," Jack said.  And it was a great trip.

In the grand scheme of things, getting a $20 iTunes card for Christmas is not cool, but nor was it a felony.  It was one of the many small cases of neglect, and the trip to Maui was restitution.

Fast forward to May, June and July of 2014.  I was talking to my friend Jane the other day and she said there are two types of problems:  those that money can fix and those that money can't.  A trip to New Zealand and long-overdue upgrades to the house are now on the schedule.  The Boy, Jack and I went to lunch today near Jack's office downtown, and walked past a Tesla dealer.  "A new Tesla would really accelerate the forgiveness process," I told him and laughed.  He laughed, too.

The trip will be nice, no doubt.  It will be time spent away from work and the hubbub of life in Seattle.  Both kids will be transitioning to new schools, the Big E to high school and the Boy to middle.  Everyone will need a break.  Changes to the home will be nice, too, as we will be fixing up our nest together.  (Or if the nuclear option comes to pass, I will have a nice house to sell or keep in case I need to push the launch button.)

But I don't need a new car.  I am just hoping for a new and improved husband.  And that's a problem money can't fix.  And no matter how I try, I can't fix him either.  He has to change himself.

Sidelines or the Back of the Pack?

Over the past thirteen years, I've spend a fair amount of time watching my kids exercise while I am on the sidelines.  I often thought of the fabulous shape I'd be in if I exercised while they were, but sadly, I rarely did.

Given that I am often a spectator, when I get the chance to participate, I do.  While under no circumstances would I join the Boy on the soccer pitch, there are other activities where I don't want to sit and watch the rest of my family have fun.  And yet, my participation is becoming more challenging as everyone gets older.  The kids are becoming more capable and more courageous, and I worry if I am in good enough shape to keep up.  The kids are becoming exponentially more athletic, whereas my improvement curve is fairly flat.  I also worry about injury.

My mom told me once when I was young never to marry a man who likes to watch sports on television.  My dad will occasionally watch a game, but he is not the type to plug into whatever game is on, knowing nothing about squash or caring about Northwest Missouri State's basketball team.  So I took her advice, which seemed wise at the time.  My husband doesn't watch much television at all, which is fine with me.  The downside is that my anti-couch potato husband refuses to sit still.

My adrenaline junkie husband encourages the kids to try new things, mostly because he wants to try them, too.  Last summer, we went to Whistler.  We went zip lining, downhill mountain biking and white water rafting.  (When I suggested canoeing or trail biking, I got raised eyebrows for a reply, suggesting those activities were for wimps.)  I got a little nervous about all of these things, but sucked it up and was a good soldier.  Ironically, the worst part was the Grouse Grind, a hike up a mountain outside of Vancouver, B.C..  I thought it would be fine given it did not require a helmet, a harness, elbow pads, a pre-activity safety lecture, and/or an insurance waiver.  The night before our ill-fated hike, we went to a very nice restaurant.  The waiter was in his mid-thirties and looked relatively fit.  British Columbia is an outdoorsy kind of place, and it seems that many people ski, hike, bike or participate in some other kind of outdoor activity.  This waiter seemed to fit the profile, so I asked him about the Grouse Grind.

"There is no way I would do that again.  I did it once and I almost died."

Great.

So, we did the Grouse Grind the next day because my anti-couch potato, adrenaline junkie husband insisted.  I was feeling a mix of curious and nervous, but figured I would take it slow.  I was mostly worried that my knees would give out midway or I'd have a stroke, and then I'd be stuck.  The Grouse Grind is one-way uphill trip.  The path is narrow and heavily trafficked.  Once you are on, you can't go back down.  Once you make it to the top, you have to take a gondola down.

So we get to the Grouse Grind, and you can see from this picture who is excited to do this and who couldn't care less.

I stopped to take a picture at the beginning of the hike and they were gone.  I didn't see them until about halfway up.  I ran out of water, and I called Jack and asked him to wait for me.

I was left in the dust out of the gate on the Grouse Grind.

"But I don't know where you are.  How can I wait?"  Grrrr.  You aren't suppose to leave your hiking companions.

The next line was even better.  "I had to keep up with the Boy."  Nice.  Even though it was true, it was not cool that he blamed it on the Boy.

"Where is my daughter?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied.  Strike three.

I will have this conversation forever recorded in my mind and will use it in case I ever need to call a divorce attorney.  "Your husband left you in the dust on the Grouse Grind, lost your daughter and blamed it on your son?  Excellent.  Tell me what you want..."

I was pissed.  I asked him for the car keys and seriously considered leaving him in Canada and driving back to Seattle when I got to the bottom.  But I didn't.  I was just super mad.  For twenty four hours until Jack conceded he was wrong.  Why was I so mad?  This was supposed to be a family vacation, which means it was for everyone in the family, not just the super athletic.  It also became very apparent that I was now the weak link, the slow poke.  Me, the one who created this family, was now forgotten and shuffled to the back of the line.

Eight months later, we were back in Canada, this time skiing at Whistler.  I am a fairly mediocre skier, but I enjoy it and am content skiing blues and greens at a slow pace.  I am not a big fan of skiing too fast or out of control as I don't want to get hurt.  I've see five year olds crash and then bounce up like nothing happened.  I don't think I'll be that lucky.  We have twenty some odd steps to get up to my house from the street.  A broken leg, sprained ankle or twisted knee would mean spending a few weeks at the Silver Cloud Inn down the street while my family did all of their own cooking and laundry for a few weeks.  Plus, I was to ski another day.

That wee tiny green dot on the left side of the slope is Jack.  The kids are already probably already at the bottom waiting for us.

So I have to decide: would I rather be in the game, in the slow zone, and the worst player on team McGuire, or would I rather be on the bench?  While I am skiing the blues and greens, my family will ski the black runs on the same lift.  They will occasionally venture off to steeper runs, while I stay in my comfort zone.  They were off on the Whistler Bowl, some crazy steep run, while I was having a mocha at the lodge.  Which is fine with me.  I know my limitations, but that isn't going to keep me out of the game.

It also helps that Jack is joining me at the back of the pack, left in the dust by the kids when it comes to skiing.  Already, they are both better than us, and there is no way for us to reasonably catch up.  He knows this.  "There will soon come a day when they will have to do the steep stuff by themselves," he said, tired and a little scared after the Whistler Bowl.

I'll welcome him to join me for a mocha.

Me on the Dave Murray downhill run, skiing back to Creekside.  Jack documented me on a black run.  Yes, we both have the same color ski jackets.   For the record, I got mine first.

The "Send" Button

A few days ago, I was in a particularly foul mood.  I had talked to some friends about this person who was irritating me, and they all tried to talk me off the ledge.  For the most part, they succeeded and helped me to stay calm throughout the day.  Their points were logical and well-taken.

In the evening, after I put the kids to bed, I started to feel annoyed again.  The rational and reasonableness I had gained during the day was fading and my emotions took over.  I started to build up arguments of why I was completely justified in being outraged.

So I wrote an email to the person who was the root cause of my irritation.  Describing exactly how I felt.  With no emotion left unexpressed.  It was, as they say in Harry Potter, a howler.

I knew while I was writing that this note was mean spirited and might have deep repercussions.  I knew that sending a nasty email was not the best way to solve the problem.  Yet, I felt so much better after writing it all out.  Though it was not the kindest letter, it did help me to clarify my thoughts.

But writing it wasn't enough.  I had to hit the "send" button.  I wanted someone to read my diatribe.  I needed to hit the send button.  It was getting later, and I was getting more worked up.  Fortunately, there was some small sliver my rational mind still working that said "Do not send to intended recipient."  So I marked the email "Draft" and sent it to my friend, Diane.  I wrote an introduction telling her I was thinking of sending this to the irritant, and asked what she thought.  Hitting the send button worked.  I felt a huge release of tension after I sent it.

Why was the send button so magical?  Why did I need to hit it?  Why wasn't it enough to just leave the note in my draft box?  Writing how I felt helped clarify my thoughts.  When I hit the send button, the note became something more than my rantings.  It became a permanent record of how I felt, where my feelings could not be erased.  Hitting the send button gave me temporary closure.  Once the note was gone, I stopped stewing for the night.  It gave me power, even if I sent to someone else.  It also gave me a responsibility to figure out how to deal with this problem directly.  I couldn't just send it to Diane, and then not follow-up.  Diane would hold me accountable, both to be civilized and to figure out a reasonable next step.

Diane goes to sleep early and wakes up early.  I knew she wouldn't check her email until the morning when she is drinking her coffee.  When she saw it, she immediately replied and put up the roadblock:

Lauren, 

Holy shit!!! Have you already sent X_____ that draft!?

She recommended that I rewrite the note a dozen times.  When I get it right, I should hand the note to  the person instead of sending it via email.  One of my husband's colleagues recommends a similar strategy for writing difficult letters in professional situations:  write whatever it is you need to get off your chest, delete it, and then write a new letter you intend to send, minus the vitriol.  I did talk to the irritant about what was bothering me.  I left the bitterness on the page and did not bring it to the conversation.

I am very lucky to have a friend like Diane at the other end of the send button.  I will apologize to her, though, as she probably burned her throat and nasal passages while choking on her coffee while reading my email.  Shouldn't we all have a friend (or two or three or four) who can be our "send" button, the one who will safely listen to our rants and then bring us back to earth?

Rage, Discrepancies, and the Holly Jolly Cure

Rage: pure, unfiltered, unadulterated anger.  I have become too familiar with this feeling as of late, and I am not happy about it.  I am used to feeling annoyed, irritated, frustrated, mad, upset, disillusioned and displeased.  Rage is new.  I looked it up in the dictionary to see how it differs from regular anger: it is defined as "violent, uncontrollable anger."  The rage I have been feeling lately certainly is uncontrollable.  I don't want to be angry, but this anger has a mind of its own.  And violent.  The rage doesn't make me violent towards other people, but it feels like there is violence inside of me, wanting to get out and scream, kick and bite.  I mostly just scream.

(I could list all of the things I am angry about here, but I won't.  Privately, I can list out the people and things that are the victims of my unregulated emotions.)

I mostly wonder why this anger isn't just regular anger: why does this tip it over into rage?  I look at people like Nelson Mandela or Gandhi.  Surely, they saw unfairness in the world and sought to correct it.  How did they manage to keep their emotions in check while dealing with major social injustices and I can't keep it together over my son's Lego Club?  Do I have the misfortune of being at the whims of a middle aged woman's hormones?  Or, has my crap-meter hit the "maxed out" state and the next thing that came along pushed me over the line?  There have been cases (see the recent redrawing of the Seattle Public Schools boundaries) where I have kept my cool while the rest of the people I knew were in nuclear meltdown.  Is my current rage over these new issues stored up old rage, locked up inside of me, looking for a way out?

I wish I knew.  I've talked to friends about my recent bouts, but in the context of the specific irritating circumstance.  I want to know why I feel rage at all, why the topic of annoyance consumes my mind.  I become fixated, unable to think of little else.  And my fixation isn't productive.  I am not able to rationally find a solution.  Instead, I find more reasons to justify why I am so pissed off.  "And another thing..." The closest thing I can find it that the root cause is the discrepancies between the way I think the world runs (or Lego Club or Rec soccer) and the way other people thinks it should.  In the gap between the two resides my anger.  The anger also lies with my kids activities.  Maybe I am not as in touch with them as I used to be, and that gap causes me turmoil.  I need to rely on others to take care of my kids, just as I take care of other children.  This change and transition means loss of control.

Maybe Gandhi and Mandela felt lots of rage, but were effective at managing it.  Maybe they needed to defeat apartheid and English Rule to keep the demons away.  Likewise, maybe Gandhi's kids got on his nerves.  Maybe Mandela's friends didn't do what they said they said they were going to do.  Maybe apartheid and English Rule were small mountains to climb compared to managing a house and kids.

I have been somewhat lucky that my anger has fallen during the holidays, and a little "holly jolly" has helped me feel better.  At times when the rage ebbs, I have felt like George Bailey before he jumped off the bridge and Clarence saved him.*  Like George, I reached my nadir in the Christmas season.  One day when I was angry, we bought our Christmas tree, went to dinner, and we came home and put up the decorations.  It was hard to stay mad when I was digging through boxes finding ornaments I made when I was seven.  The other time I had three parties to attend.  I put on a happy face and told myself "No bitching allowed." By the end of the evening, I didn't need to fake it.

* Funny sidebar. My friend Heather and I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" in high school.  My parents were out and I turned it off when George was marching through the snow after all of the money in the bank was lost.  My mom came home and asked if I liked it.  I said it was the most depressing movie I had ever seen and couldn't watch it anymore.  I didn't understand why it was this great Christmas classic.  She recommended I watch the end.

Random Thoughts

• I try to use my powers for good, not evil.  Once in a while, a little evil pops out by accident.  Sorry.

• Some people are so toxic, you need to wear a hazmat suit to talk to them.  

• If you are thinking, "My gosh, I hope I am not toxic," you very likely aren't.  If you are thinking "The only toxic people I know are the ones who don't agree with me..."  then you might need to take another look in the mirror.