Who Needs a Shrink?

If it weren’t for your subconscious, you wouldn't have a CLUE about what your real issues are.  I dreamed that I woke one morning to find our house filled with many different families. I began tearing around to make sure we had enough provisions for all these strangers and only noticed after what seemed like days that I hadn’t seen the cats. “WHERE ARE THE CATS?” I cried in this dream, dashing about yet more frantically - until I found them at last in our dank unfinished basement, as skinnied-out with neglect a pair of empty gloves. Then, two nights later, I had a dream that was no dream at all but an actual memory, of something my hail and vital mother said halfway through a party we threw for her 80th birthday. At the celebration's start, just before the guests began arriving, she heard some of us squabbling about who was supposed to have laid the fire. “That was always the trouble in our family,” she sighed sadly about a time 60 years in the past: “No one was ever in charge.” Then, an hour later, still sitting there by the fire, she closed her eyes and died, her small plate of dessert pastries falling from her lap.Unearthing that memory sure explains why I’ve held myself responsible for the very wheeling of the stars ever since that fateful day. SOMEONE’S got to be in charge!...And more messages from my subconscious came just last night, when I dreamed I was trying to run a meeting of volunteers in my community but somehow could not speak commandingly enough to hold their attention.I started out in the classroom and so I know: this is every teacher’s worst fear.  In this dream that was more of a nightmare, one of the whisperers actually turned her chair around so that her back was to me. In this dream that was more of a nightmare I say again, I went over to her and in a pathetic begging tone said, “Don’t you care about the mission of this organization?” "Not since YOU took over as president!” she sneered.  Then, “When is this going to be over? somebody groaned. “Yeah,” whined someone else. “I want to watch the game!”I threw out the most intransigent talkers, something that in real life you can't actually DO in an all-volunteer organization, and finally gave up and gavel things to a close.On her way out, the sneering one shot me a sidelong look. "Nothing personal," she smirked. "It hurt, what you said before," I began, again with that pathetic wheedling tone, but "Hey!" she barked back. “It is what it is! Plus, you know you've really let yourself go lately."So there it is: a trifecta of Bulletins From My Subconscious, which would appear to be suggesting the things I am evidently worried about, which are:

• A. That I'm a poor caregiver and have done little to keep the home fires burning; 
• B. That I really am letting myself go. (Didn’t I just the other day wear a pair of pants I’ve had since the 1970s?)
• C. that I’m less than stellar at running the actual meeting I do actually have to run in my waking life.

I worry about these things, evidently, but maybe I shouldn't, overmuch. God didn't make me a manager anyway. He made me a teacher I’m pretty sure, and maybe I'm a teacher still, on the inside, because really I just want to affirm everybody and make it a good class. And clothes from the 70s are cool!  And as for the cats, well the cats died some time ago. Maybe they're sitting in Heaven right now, together with my mom, all three this very minute enjoying a nice little plate of pastries.

Your Friends All Think You're Crazy

Speaking of how others see you, the low point of your relationship with your significant other has to be when he or she tells you that your friends all think you’re crazy.  (And here's a pretty crazy person right here so thrilled at the idea of being away from her work station that she's blinded by smiling!)  My sister Nan's onetime spouse said this very thing to her once and it immediately shot to the top of the list we keep of the all-time worst things one person can say to another person.But now I look at yesterday’s post about all I carry onto a plane and am compelled to wonder about my own sanity as a person who will only travel with her own food. Who must personally concoct all her own beverages. Who would not in ten million years eat the fruit from the salad bar.Does this mean I have trust issue then?( "What in OUR house?!" as Lady Macbeth says when it's discovered that the poor old king has been murdered even though she was the one who goaded Mac into killing the guy.)Could be, could be. That would certainly explain why I'm so uneasy as a passenger that I keep my foot jammed down on an imaginary brake. I do trust Old Dave behind the wheel which is surprising since the guy tailgates like you wouldn’t believe. And yet t he’s never had a mishap on the road, never gotten so much as a speeding ticket, galling fact, but there it is. He says he thinks it’s safer to ride close to the people in front of you somebody else doesn’t cut in and themselves cause an accident.I guess you can rationalize just about anything if you try hard enough. Doesn’t the White Queen tell little Alice that she has sometimes believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast?Maybe the main impossible thing I myself believe before breakfast is that I'm sunnily normal.But come on. Is anyone normal really? I mean why else did God put Lady Gaga here on earth to spread her Born This Way message?I could treat you to a dozen examples of the odd things I do but hey. I bet we all have a list of oddball secret things we do. You know there are people out there who save their toenail parings in  ajar. You know there are people saving their bellybutton lint in case they want to spin it  into wool some day and knit up a bunch of tiny sweaters.What’s fun is noticing the oddball things in yourself.Tell you one thing: it sure helps you keep from judging others.See this grand lady below with her nose in the air?I can get behind the sitting with your drink and gazing around part but where’s the fun in judging what you hear people saying? I’m usually too busy smiling and shaking my head at the varieties we humans come in. That and guarding against any cut up fruit the bartender may try sticking in my drink.