Not The Best Day

When I lose my focus I overdo things, and spin off into all this activity around taking care of other people, forgetting every time that a person is  supposed to take care of her own self first.Today for example: I tried to go into the city to hear a speaker at the JFK library whose glass walls reflect back so beautifully our cold Boston Harbor.I never did get there, because I also wanted to:One, mark the birthday of a dear friend who is just turning 86. I had already mailed her a card and I knew she was out today but, I thought, I'll bring her a book. No, two books. But first I'll wrap them in this nice gift paper if I can find it. Oh and I know she doesn't cook much anymore so why don't I stop at Whole Foods and get her something she can enjoy for supper.Two, sand and paint an old bookcase I want to use to house the books another who is dear to me left in my basement a couple of years back because he had no room for them in his dorm room. "You can just throw them out, it's fine," he said when I wrote and asked what to do with them. But how could I do that when I know how much he loves these books? When I know that every book he reads, every sky he looks up at, every walk he takes feeds his poetry, for he is a poet born? So today I worked on the bookcase. Then I drove 20 miles north to get more of the paint which that the manufacturer isn't making anymore in my color, as my four phone calls to hardware stores all over revealed.Three, make two flower arrangements to say thanks for two people who have given unsparingly of themselves in service to others, one a medical man who for the last 30 years given free care to  those who need it, and the other a chef who has made our local ABC house a real home for the dozen people she has fed every weeknight for the past five years. She leaves tomorrow to work more intentionally on her Master's degree and will she ever be missed.The flowers took a long time because I'm choosy and because the hydrangea blooms outside my house were so heavy with moisture I had to stop and go put on a raincoat to harvest them. Both bouquets are done now but as I look at the clock I see that it's hours and hours too late to deliver them.I didn't get to deliver the two books or the hot food either. A two-hour medical appointment I had mid-day spoiled that whole idea.I didn't get on the treadmill, which my body fervently prays I will do every day, to pull it out of its stiffness.I didn't work on my weekly column, which is due Friday.I didn't connect with my sister by picking up the phone and how hard would that have been?So I guess I will close now, at almost 10 on this school night. I I don't feel great about how I operated today but maybe I'll be better tomorrow.  In the meantime I'll take pleasure in the pretty blossoms that came into my hand today.

Hamster on a Wheel

I tell myself I haven’t been posting here as often lately because I now spend three or four hours a day working for this great volunteer organization of which I am  currently the president.....But is that it really? I have to wonder.Because like a great many women especially, I have always crowded my calendar: I worked with a church youth group, served as a writing tutor, and looked after all our old people and used the kids’ naptimes to refinish large pieces of wooden furniture – all in addition to meeting the deadline for this column that I have been writing since Ronald Reagan first smiled his way onto the Presidential stage.I had the energy, all right!For a while there, I also spent my nights marketing the three column collections I had put together, sending out review copies to the radio and TV stations I had called during the day -  and never mind that I often fell dead asleep at my desk at midnight. Five hours later, I was good to go again, vaulting in practically one leap from my bed to my keyboard, before the children woke and life intervened.The year I decided to post on my blog every day was just the most recent chapter of my life as an overfunctioner.Back in ’99, a mere month after David's lovely mother died her timid and undemanding death, I decided there must be more I could to comfort people and so added massage school to my list of activities - once again without letting anything else go.For two years, I studied that art, undergoing countless hours of interning and then renting a room from this great chiropractor, where, two days a week, I kneaded out the knots in people’s necks and backs and helped opened the tissues of their poor tired feet.I worked that job for four whole years, not stopping until the day I had my first sudden awareness that there might be an ending to this thing called ‘Life’."What am I DOING?” I asked myself one day. “I'm in my 50s! What about that family history I was always going to write? Didn’t God make me a writer first?“I gave my notice to the chiropractor that same week – and the very next month started the blog, which, as the word suggests, is supposed to be a log, like a ship’s log, something you contribute to every daily.Maybe I only ever wanted to see if I could do it.And I could.For a while.Now, though, I can’t keep posting every day. I just can’t.And so I don’t.I still write the column each week. Thirty-four years and counting!I still work with young people in that great non-profit I mentioned, which is no burden at all because I love them. I spend time lying around with my husband as he peers into his i-Pad doing the New York Times crossword. I spend time with our kids and take such joy in them still.There's no more choir though, and the church youth group seems to be doing just fine without me.There are no new books I’m trying to write. Alas, there are no more old people to look after. And frankly right now I think I’d rather set fire to one of my beloved old wooden chests than to refinish it.A certain quiet has grown in me and I don't know what to call it. A return to the serenity I last knew in childhood maybe? If so, I say “Welcome back!” and “Where ya been so long?”

Read It and Weep

Read it and weep. That’s what my shrink would do if I had a shrink.Here’s why I almost lost my mind last week. (Click on the picture to see the ridiculous list of the things I did just from Wednesday through Friday.)I carried the heavy leaf of an old dining room table to the professional furniture refinisher because oops! We had forgotten all about it when we brought him the whole big table itself. He practically wept to see it; matching the other finish will be that big a challenge for him.Then I decided on the spur of the moment to refinish five little occasional tables, right in my kitchen, and then on the spur of the spur I threw in a sixth, the top of the built-in desk right there by the fridge which somebody must have spilled battery acid on at some point because one whole corner of it was all blistery and scrofulous.I did this because I thought I could. (It’s one of the most annoying things about us Baby Boomers, the way we think we can do anything.)The tables look pretty good though I have to say and really any job is doable if you break it down: One day, strip the piece, using the thick chemical gel that will remove your very skin if it comes in contact with it   The next day, sand it, wipe it with mineral spirits, go away until the air quiets then come back and stain it. (I used Minwax’s Dark Walnut this time.) Day after that, stain again. Day after that, time for the coat of Minwax's satin polyurethane. Apply it holding your breath, praying you don’t screw it up. Then leave the room immediately so as not to roil the air and get dust motes stuck in the finish. Next day, sand lightly, wipe down, wait, coat again, run from room.  It’s fun, almost, and it only takes about a week to get to the end.During this week though I also redecorated our late Uncle Ed’s apartment to make it more appealing to potential buyers (see yesterday’s post),  put the finishing touches on a newsletter that took me a solid month to gather then news for, then write and then format (see tomorrow's post) and finally buy a car (see this coming  Thursday’s post.)Somewhere during this same week just past I had an email from a faithful reader named Mary who has come to be very dear to me.   It is OK to simplify your life,” it said. “From your daily journal” – by which she means this blog – “it is obvious that you do way too much for everyone.   I also think sadness about losing Uncle Ed may have raised its ugly head.  Just keep taking deep breaths.   You do not have to prove anything to anyone.”Is that what’s going on with me? AM I trying to prove something to someone? Food for thought, food for thought …. Looks like Mary has given me my homework for this new week.

Marilyn and Caroline

For weeks now I’ve been thinking about our Marilyn, practically the founder of that group of people for whom no last name is necessary.  Today she will have been dead for 50 years. As everyone seems to know by now, she was just 36 when they found her sprawled across her bed, the phone under her hand..For weeks I have also been thinking about writer Caroline Knapp, who as of this summer has been dead for ten years. She was just 42 when she succumbed to a very aggressive form of lung cancer: diagnosed in April, gone in June.But I remember so vividly the day they found Marilyn’s body. I remember so clearly looking down at my own changing body and thinking, "How did all THIS get here?" It was a bewildering new world all right; having guys fake-sighing and then laughing when I passed in the corridors. I suddenly had a boyfriend too, young as I was. He was blond with perfect ears and just 5 foot 2, my same height at the time. I liked that we were small like that. It made the whole boyfriend girlfriend thing so much less scary. It made us seem to me like children still, which of course we were.Children.Innocents.This boy and I were together the day the news broke about Marilyn’s death and it chilled me to my core, I think because even at that young age I saw in her something familiar, naïve way of pleasing others that I sensed was becoming my way. It’s how young women were taught to be back then, ever pliant and agreeable.I was heading down that path, all right; and were it not for an ability to shine in school I can't think how I might have ended. Giving people my shirt as well as my cloak, to use the metaphor. Memorizing the birthdays of people I had only just met so I could send them a card in four or six or eleven months and to prove what? To purchase what?I gave away far too much time and attention to others, and kept far too little for myself.Marilyn did that too, and used alcohol to keep herself blind to the fact.In her brave book, Caroline Knapp writes with great insight about addiction's riptide pull. In it we learn what she finally learned about self-worth, and about alcohol's insidious way of acting like your closest friend - right up until it reveals itself as your deadliest foe. She talks about her father, high-achieving and remote, every night drinking his martinis-with-an-olive.And because, as she puts it, “alcohol travels through families like water over a landscape,” she drank as well, starting at age 14.Just by her description of a glass of chilled white wine filled to the brim and beading with moisture you can see how she loved it, in much the same way Marilyn loved her champagne, alternating its use with the pills she took at night to help her sleep and the ones she took in the morning to help her function again.Well I don’t know just where I’m going here except to note that while Marilyn lost her battle, Caroline won hers, thanks to the 12 Steps. She got sober and she wrote a wonderful book which I would recommend to anyone. It certainly helped me with my decades old habit of over functioning.Drinking: A Love Story, it is called.Now let’s watch this video of Marilyn and salute the oh-so-natural and the oh-so-perishable beauty that was hers.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJfBUKCnzNs&feature=related]

Little Miss Do-It-All

Tough getting up today, especially if you're like me and you overworked all weekend – if you can call it work bringing seven male teens to see some Shakespeare, then having supper with them before going to play laser tag until 10 at night. That was all fun, as was going to see the most amazing troupe of young actors perform an original version of The Pied Piper. It was also fun to write my 1000^th post; fun to take notes in a deli for this week’s column, fun to do it all –

If only I had stopped before I began refinishing the furniture.

I notice people kind of hate you if you seem to be organized and 'productive' and have it all together. I know I've drawn some fire in the past from people for being neat and having spices that were alphabetized and all but if they get even a little closer they see: You don’t live this way because you choose to. You live this way because even after all these years you are still pursued by these nameless Hounds of Hell who make you think that it’s not enough to just BE your own little self, you also have to also DO, and serve all the time. So they will love you I suppose. So they maybe won’t leave.

I knew I had crossed the line when I saw myself pulling those two dusty and wrecked old bedsteads out of the attic and starting in on the job of refinishing them, just because one of my kids spotted them in there a few weeks ago and indicated they were maybe pretty nice beds under all those scratchmarks.

Now, on this Monday March 12th, besides working a full day and taking a 91-year-old man to the cardiologist and buying the food and cooking, I also have to finish staining two foot boards, and getting the whole mess out of the kitchen where I was working on the project - which feels like a pretty tall order to me right now.

I bet all our Monday chores feel like pretty tall orders to all of us playing the Daylight Savings game, which is everyone in the U.S. anyway especially when we woke at 6:00 or 7:00 and already felt like we were an hour behind and low on sleep besides.

Ah well. I guess today I’ll just start in again with those mantras I learned in those 12-step Al-Anon meetings, like One Day at a Time, and Easy Does It, and Don’t Just Do Something Stand There.

But gosh the old wood sure looks great. Here's the "Before" with the old finish off but no stain:

And here's the wood with just one coat:

You liberate the living tree when you strip and refinish a piece of wood. If only it were as easy to liberate yourself.

Go to Bed!

I slept until 8:30 these last two days. 8:30! It scared me to death.I know John Updike preferred getting up later than everyone else – he liked to let others arrange the world before he stepped down into it he used to say - but you sure won’t catch us nervous types doing that. WE want to arrange the world, thanks very much. Aren’t we the ones responsible for making the sun rise every day? You know we are.I was only able to sleep so late because at 4am both days I got up and worked for an hour; just woke up at 4:00 on my own, wrote madly for a spell and fell back in the bed at 5:00, there to sleep like the dead.I’m doing too much, I know, but I’ve always done too much. Tonight I have to go to Parents Night at the high school, even though my own last kid graduated back in’ 02, but the second I get home I’m hitting the hay.Because tomorrow I'm taking 12 strangers to lunch.After bringing them on a walking tour of my town.In the pouring rain, poor lambs.Then I’m helping out at a dinner for 60 at 5:00, and after that, at around 9:00, I'm picking up a dining room table from a house in one town and delivering it to a house in another town.Being my kind of person really can wear you down, and I’ve noticed I look pretty wrecked along about now. Me and this poor guy, who looks so much older than he did in the year 2000, whew! Remind me never to become President.

Facing Facts

I felt such a soaring sense of gladness as I jotted all that down first thing yesterday, and then someone immediately wrote  “How on earth do you find time to WRITE?” and I realized how crazy I sounded. And – this is the embarrassing part – I didn’t even write down a lot of the stuff I did this past week. I didn’t say for example:That I also brought someone to the mall because his new red sneakers were too big. “It's Ok because I need new dinnerware!” I told myself and it’s true. Our plates and bowl are in terrible shape, so while he did his sneakers thing I literally sprinted to Housewares at the Sears store where I heard they had Corelle but alas, no such luck.That I went BACK to this Mall two days later when a flier came in the mail saying that Macy’s had all their dinnerware deeply discounted. I wasted 40 minutes of THAT day compiling bowls and plates from a Martha Stewart collection before I thought to read the writing on the bottom of each piece. “Dishwasher and microwave safe,” it said. “Will get hot in microwave.”  (You tell ME who wants a mug that practically brands your whole hand when you go to reach out your tea?)I didn’t say that I took the elderly relative to that little pond he loves, not once but twice between Monday and Thursday and on Thursday I bought him coffee at the coffee shop, and two subs at the sub shop and then, while I was running into the bank to deposit his checks, a burger at the McDonald’s next door which I quick ducked into on the spur of the moment, knowing how he loves a nice hot burger. (The subs he carefully cuts in sections and eat for his suppers. Born in 1920 to parents fleeing Armenia, he has trouble eating a thing all at once.)All this I did while he sat sweetly, patiently in the car waiting for me. All this I did before we then went to that same little pond he loves so much in spite of its stubborn snowbanks all covered with litter and its sulky seagulls. (They sulk because they’re seagulls I always figure and keep looking around and thinking  “This isn’t the beach!” which it sure enough isn’t.)There he ate his burger and I choked down the salmon salad I had hastily thrown in Tupperware so he would see that I was eating too.I see that I wrote “choked down.”  (Sigh.)  I believe I have some thinking to do on this sunny Sunday. More tomorrow I guess. Maybe some insight then,

Lessons for the Day

Yesterday was a good day for lessons. It was still just the beginning of the week yet I learned:+ That a dog will definitely smile at you if you wave to it in the back of its master’s car.+ That a baby will cry if you set a jug of cold milk beside it in the shopping cart.+ That you can’t fool a dental hygienist. She’s only asking if you flossed to see how big a liar you are.+ That “smh” means “shake my head.” People born after 1990 all know this.+ That it’s best not to use common language in front of poetic souls; it pains them to hear coarse pedestrian terms.+ That if you’re asked to read the lead in a Shakespearian play in front of 30  Shakespeare enthusiasts you should probably at least look the thing over first.+ That underlining your part might not be a bad idea either and that missing your cues won’t win you any friends any more than asleep while waiting for your next line will - even IF you end up cutting your forehead on your Complete Works.+ That if you think it’s normal to get up at 5, do an hour of hellish home cardio, foodshop, visit the sick, get tutored in the use of the Wave machine, then get yourself to appointments at noon, 2:30, 4:00 and 7:30, well, you will get what you  deserve for being an insane overfunctioner - especially if the 7:30 appointment involves sitting up very straight breathing from the diaphragm, and clearly enunciating Elizabethan verse until 11:30 at night.Welcome to my world. If you have time for a glute-y video here’s me on the Wave Machine now. :-)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mzL8Ev6UBM