Weed Reflections

I have spent a fair amount of time recently on my hands and knees.  Not praying, or begging.  Weeding.

Our backyard has been taken over by mustard garlic, burdock, deadly blooming nightshade, creeping charlie, thistles, nettles, dandelions, broadleaf, and other green and growing nuisances.  We are also plagued by upstart box elder seedlings--the devil to remove, due to the right-angled underground turn taken by their roots.

Working to reclaim this formerly habitable part of our property has sent my body into an almost permanent penitent position.  And then there are my dirt-caked nails, as soil has even penetrated my admittedly cheap gardening gloves. 

My mind, too, has assumed the position.  

To begin with, there is the guilt and confusion I feel as I wrestle with those unwanted fledglings.  How do I decide what stays, and what goes?  Do I let neighbors determine the composition of my landscape?  (Do I only imagine that they look askance at my dandelion spores wafting toward their perfect lawns?)  Do I adhere to the norms of the politically correct?  ("Mustard Garlic, invasive, bad.")  Do I consult the experts, with their lists of unwelcome species?

I have the easiest time with those varieties known to be dangerous to dogs and small grandchildren.  Nightshade and burdock, I pull with abandon.  But what about the creeping charlie, with its gingery smell and its sweet purple blossoms, which has volunteered to take over for my sketchy grass?  Why, again, do I want to preserve the stuff that requires constant mowing, and constant nagging about mowing?  

And on the other side of this yard maintenance divide are the pansies, begonias, roses, raspberries, mint, peonies, irises, forget-me-nots, mums, columbine, poppies, tulips, sedum, stella d'oro and other day lilies.  The plants I have introduced intentionally, and wish to keep.  Somehow, they thrive less happily than the so-called "weeds."  Perhaps this is how I should distinguish weeds from flowers, though that seems a bit pessimistic.

My mind is also occupied, as I yank and discard, with applying the metaphor to my life.  It comes to me that lots of what I do, and think about, grows like Topsy and threatens to take over my hours and my days.  And that much of it has crept in, uninvited by me.  And that many of the things I have chosen, and attempted to nurture, are not flourishing.

Like my novel, choked by the weeds of Wisconsin politics.  Losing its struggle for a dedicated patch of ground.

Tomorrow seems like a good day for more weeding. . . .

Procrastinating 101: What Am I, Nuts?

The penultimate chapter in Joseph Ferrari's book Still Procrastinating?  The No-Regrets Guide to Getting it Done is entitled "Procrastination and Personality Styles."  Given its content, a more apt title might have been "Procrastination and Comorbidity."

I was first exposed to this oh-so-charming term as the mother of a dyslexic learner, when I was made aware that individuals whose learning style is not text-friendly have a "high incidence" of comorbidity with other alphabetically named "dis"orders, such as ADD or ADHD, and with depression--especially if they, like my son, are "twice exceptional," meaning that they are "gifted" and "LD" ("learning disabled").  

In Chapter 12, Dr. Ferrari focuses on overlaps between procrastination and "some major yet common clinical disorders," such as impulsivity, self-handicapping, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and ADD/ADHD. He begins by informing us that

Many clinical psychologists and professionals in the helping occupations consider chronic, frequent procrastination to be a major symptom of many psychiatric disorders.

He goes on to report the findings of research conducted by himself and colleagues of his in an effort to tease out the relationships between procrastinating and these afflictions.  Among these findings:

• The more that people reported that they procrastinated, the more they also claimed to possess dysfunctional impulsivity.

  This seems to be partly an effect of poor planning--overestimating the time remaining to complete a task, referred to in the literature as the planning fallacy.  As the deadline approaches, the procrastinator behaves impulsively--at the last minute.

• [P]rocrastination is related to a number of self-defeating behaviors, namely, choosing disappointment in life, rejecting the help of others when it's needed, feeling guilty after unexpected positive events occur, rejecting participation in pleasurable situations, criticizing others and circumstances when failure occurs, rejecting others when positive events happen, and excessive self-sacrificing for others.

• Compulsions, but not obsessions, are related to procrastination.

• The link does exist between attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity and frequent, chronic procrastination.  . . . [but] only for people diagnosed with ADHD.  . . . [W]ith a larger sample of men and women drawn from individuals who were not formally diagnosed with ADHD, no relationship seems to exist between procrastination and attention deficit.

Ferrari sensibly concludes, however, that

Whether your procrastination is a coping mechanism that you learned, or you have been clinically diagnosed with a disorder and procrastinating accompanies this problem, sometimes a simple solution will work in both cases.

For example, his elucidation of helpful strategies for individuals with ADHD who experience difficulty with transitions from one situation to another is detailed and practical.

In general, I am not enamored of the approach that tends to pathologize procrastination, particularly when so many of us seem to "suffer" from this so-called malady.  It seems to me that any life condition that results in stress and overload might produce the troublesome behavior of putting off things that we are supposed to be doing.  Might those diagnosed with cancer be prone to procrastinating?  What about people with chronic fatigue syndrome?  Parents of multiples?  People living below the poverty level?

While postponement may be "dysfunctional," in terms of conforming to requirements, it may also help us to survive overwhelming circumstances.  Which is not to say that procrastination is to be encouraged, but more that its management may be supported by a compassionate understanding of its usefulness, at times.

Can Procrastination Recovery Trigger an Identity Crisis?

Responding to a post I wrote earlier this week, my husband challenged my procrastinator status.  Since he alone among my far-flung readers has the birds'-eye view that comes with living with me, I am forced to consider his opinion.

These were his words:

are you sure you have a problem with procrastination? I don't see much evidence of it anymore.

My initial response was that his observation stemmed from a less nuanced understanding of procrastination than the one I have developed from living with this affliction for many years, and from my more recent study of it.

I admit that I'm hardly a layabout.  People have always told me that I have more energy than a half dozen whirling dervishes.  And I have managed to accomplish many things, though not always the things I think I care most about.  

But I am constantly doing battle with myself, and losing the fight to get and stay focused on my most cherished goals.  And, as I have written about previously in this blog, I wear the ultimate badge of procrastination, the designation of A.B.D. reserved to those who began but did not finish a Ph.D. program.  (See Dealing with the Undead, and Any Better Designations?)  Doesn't that alone make me a card-carrying procrastinator?

What would it mean if I were to relinquish my membership in this undesirable club?  Would I have to wear instead the colors of some other negative group?  Adult Suffering from A.D.D.?  Disorganized Person of Artistic Temperament?  Plain Old Flibbertigibbet?

It has been a long day, and a longer week.  I'm not going to resolve this now.  But it's something to think about. . .  tomorrow.

The Politics of Housework

The men in my house don't look anything like the FDR types pictured here.  But despite my best efforts to cajole, bribe, instruct, and plead, they still exhibit this mentality.  Housework is something they "help out" with, at best.  And housework is something that gets in the way of the work I consider mine.


This week's focus goal is 

to make my home that of a happier woman.  So I can be.

This means that I am once again struggling with the politics of housework. 


I am dismayed, when I allow myself to think about it, that my life has taken a shape my younger feminist self would have found inconceivable. Its neo-traditionalist contours are not so very different from the domestic imprisonment that hobbled my highly intelligent, college-educated mother in the '60s and '70s. To be sure, the language and understandings of my marital partnership are more "evolved," reflecting an acceptance of the equality of rights of women and men. But the practice has never lived up to the words. 

The reasons for this are many, including an incredibly complex family structure of yours, mine, and ours kids; my exposure to radical feminist mothering philosophy and lifestyles through my study of midwives; the family-unfriendly environment of academia, in which I had planned to continue working; my husband's super-absorption in work and lack of basic skill (not to mention interest) in housekeeping tasks; my closely spaced last two children, who comprised my second family, and their particular needs; and, of course, the perfectionism that made it difficult for me to operate comfortably in two rival spheres.  But whatever the reasons for our present division of labor, I have never accepted its necessity or rightness.  It is not as it should be, not legitimate.  And I can at least claim to have married a man and raised young men who agree with me about that.


In raising boys, I had hoped to improve on the previous generation of men's behavior and competence with respect to the necessary work of making and keeping a home.  If words, and repetition, and various training methods were effective, I would have succeeded.  But I didn't count on the in-their-face example of a powerful male, and my own battle fatigue.  So having read and tried* several methods, employed various charts and systems of rewards and consequences, and lectured endlessly (according to my kids) on the subject of women's entitlements and men's responsibilities, I still find myself most days up to my knees in other people's stuff and left-behind messes.   

The responses I have tried to this ongoing household disaster have included:  1) nagging--not my favorite, or anyone else's, and anyway, not effective on any more than a momentary basis; 2) doing it all myself, with whatever voluntary help emerges--this approach leaves me smoldering with resentment, and also very tired; 3) giving up, and trying to work around the squalor--but then I am mired in chaos, and CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome, aptly named by Pam Young and Peggy Jones (the self-styled Slob Sisters) in their book Get Your Act Together:  A 7-Day Get-Organized Program For The Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed); and trying, Against Medical Advice, to reinstitute past systems that have worked for brief periods--this strategy flies in the face of previous experience, or seen another way, expresses eternally springing hope, not delusion.


One of these past systems was to disallow my children's guests from visiting until said offspring pitched in to make the house presentable.  As time has marched on, however, "presentable" got redefined to meet the standards of other teenagers, mostly males, and I became more concerned about my kids' needs for social contact with reasonable associates where I could have some oversight.  If I had counted on embarrassment to dissuade them from trashing the bathrooms guests would need to use, or the bedrooms they would close themselves into, or even the refrigerators they would raid, I had misplaced my trust.  My kids are either so secure (and so male) that they assume they will be seen as the cool people they actually are regardless of the wet towels and discarded clothing on the floor, the toothpaste in the sink, the unscoured toilets, etc.; or they are so supremely lazy that they can't be bothered.


I have also tried posting clever "reminders" where family members and guests alike can see them.  For example, over the counter that noone can apparently remember to wipe off, this sign:  

Dear Human and Porcine Occupants,

Thanks for leaving this area covered with food remnants, beverage spills and coffee grounds.   

Sincerely, Mortimer Mouse & friends, Abigal ("The Queen") Ant & Associates.  

 And this, over the toilet:

VITAL AUXILIARY INSTRUCTIONS

LIFE SEAT IF STANDING TO USE.  WHEN FINISHED, RETURN SEAT TO DEFAULT POSITION.

The Management Thanks You For Your Cooperation, As Our Maid Service Has Been Terminated!!!

And a far ruder version, when this one didn't work, specifying aim requirements and threatening exile to the neighboring gas station facilities for noncompliance.

But at this juncture, in response to my own mental health concerns, my priority is results.  I plan to do whatever works to return my home to a state I can live in, with or without help.  I am not above, though I might be beyond, nagging, charting, signage, bribes or embarrassment--which by the way, didn't work with me when I was a non-male teenager.  (My mother once brought a priest into my bedroom to dispel his notion that I was a mature and spiritual being.  I got up the next day, in the midst of a profusion of belongings and refuse, and began writing a short story about the scene!)  


I will do what it takes--though in the interests of the marriage I value, with all its imperfections, I will refrain from employing what my husband calls the Lysistrata tactic. 


If I, and most other women I know, have lost this battle, for this generation, I hold out hope for the next.  But I am breaking out of this stalag of untidiness, and reclaiming the ordered and aesthetic pleasing ground I've lost in the process.

---

* In searching the library catalog for the titles of books I remember reading, I find they seem to have been superseded by one I wish I’d read, called Chores without wars : turning dad and kids from reluctant stick-in-the muds to enthusiastic team play, by Lynn Lott, Riki Intner.  Their 2005 edition, Chores without wars; turning housework into teamwork, drops the name-calling and the culprit identification for a more cooperative approach.  I prefer the first subtitle.         

Done for the Week: Time to Clean Up My Act

Monday again.  Feels like about six minutes since last Monday.  A new week stretches before me, also about six minutes long, but with about six months worth of "have-tos" and "really oughtas."  I'm not sure how to reconcile this, but I know it will require meditating, culling, and further efforts to quiet my brain and my adrenal gland.  

Here's what I can remember of what got done in the six-minute whoosh of time that was last week.

Done List--Week of May 10-16

1. Continued 5K training, mostly on recumbent bike due to foot injury
2. Finished The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg; The Total De-stress Plan:  A Complete guide to Working with Positive and Negative Stress, by Beth MacEoin
3. Took my blood pressure daily
4. Attended monthly organization meeting
5. Published 5 blog posts
6. Meditated 5 times
7. Prepared adolescent for prom date; attended prom parent functions; waited up for late curfew
8. Made coffee for, attended and gave presentation at my congregation's annual meeting
9. Attended bill signing for transitional jobs legislation
10. Attended daughter's graduation (something of a miracle, because of schedule conflicts, an impoverished gas tank, stimulus-funded road construction and resulting traffic snarls, and downtown parking challenges) 
11. Helped son look for a car
12. Worked on new website for fledgling jobs group
13. Supported my mom by phone through week of feeling ill
14. Took my dog for several walks
15. Wrote Morning Page three times
16. Began gratitude journal
17. Survived spouse's acute depressive state
18. Practiced yoga once
19. Began household cleanup campaign
20. Tried, and mostly succeeded, not to stress over teenager's first solo driving trip out of state  

Last week's focus goal was to try to disentangle myself somewhat from the ups and downs in the lives of my two teenaged sons.  Three items on the above list, highlighted in green, are related to this goal.  The two car-related accomplishments, (#s 11 and 20) both pertain to my older, nearly adult son.  I did a better job distancing myself from the half-day road trip than from the car purchase process.  He is tending toward "cool" cars befitting his preferred self-image, while I would like him to buy something safe whose purchase and upkeep won't compete with impending student loans for his and our resources--what he calls a "Grandma car."  I'm trying to breathe deeply, and remember what kind of car I purchased at his age--and the fact that my parents had to live with my ill-considered marriage at that same age.  The younger teen had to listen to lots of mini-lectures prior to prom--somewhat earned by previous questionable choices--and to contend with a bit too much hovering.  In the end, I bent more than I was planning to on the matter of curfew.  Progress, probably.

My biggest upcoming challenge in this long passage to mother-of-only-adults is standing back while my elder son decides whether or not to enter school this summer, as planned, or to spend a little more time transitioning.  I confess to a whole range of physiological stress symptoms whenever I visit his future in my mind.  Again, deep breathing is in order, I suppose.  And probably less attention to the whole issue.  It is, after all, his life, and as much as I might wish to protect him from the failure I fear, or the difficulty of what feels to me like massive change, he will need his own failures and successes to grow.  And besides, if I know so much about how life should be lived, maybe I should be applying more of that wisdom to my own quandaries.

In red above is what seems, from the vantage point of this particular Monday morning, as I sit here surrounded by the dirt and dishevelment left by my household of four humans, one canine, and two frequently visiting preschoolers, to be last week's most important achievement.  So important, in fact, that I have decided to make its continuance this week's focus goal.  I have been doing a lot of things to try and address my need for peace of mind in ways that concern my own body and mind.  But the external disorder surrounding me is disrupting my internal state.  I recall an episode of the TV drama Family that I used to watch many years ago--when I probably should have been working on my dissertation.  The mother, played by Sada Thompson, with a semi-permanent wrinkle of concern perforating her forehead, said to her grown daughter, herself a single mother of a toddler, that hers (the daughter's) was "not the home of a happy woman."  Or something to that effect.  I have remembered that little snippet of manufactured conversation for so long because it spoke to me then.  As it speaks to me now.

I think it's time to make my home that of a happier woman.  So I can be.

Learning From Particle Physics

Included in Einstein's God:  Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit is the transcript of Krista Tippett's discourse with John Polkinghorne, former Cambridge University physicist and Anglican priest, on "Quarks and Creation."  Polkinghorne, himself a significant contributor in the field of particle physics, is a renowned writer and thinker on the topic of science and religion.  Much of what he had to say, though fascinating, was pretty hard to for this nonscientist to grasp.  But in addition to a hazy understanding of the physics he referenced, I did take away a thought that pertains to my personal project of change.  Polkinghorne said: 

There’s a very interesting scientific insight which says that regions where real novelty occurs, where really new things happen that you haven’t seen before, are always regions which are at the edge of chaos.  They are regions where cloudiness and clearness, order and disorder, interlace each other.  If you’re too much on the orderly side of that borderline, everything is so rigid that nothing really new happens.  You just get rearrangements.  If you’re too far on the haphazard side, nothing persists, everything just falls apart.  It’s in these ambiguous areas where order and disorder interlace, where really new things happen, where the action is, if you like.  And I think that reflects itself both in the development of life and in many, many human decisions.

Though certainly this eminent speaker had other things in mind than my struggle to find a new and more fruitful way of living my life, these words spoke to me.  If I take them down from their stratospheric context and apply them to the messy mud here on my little piece of earth, in my little point in the space-time continuum, I hear again a message that keeps coming to me in many ways, from disparate sources.  


I have spent so long living in what others see as chaos that the disordered state feels like home.  Not a happy home, I'll grant, but nevertheless a known and somewhat comfortable abode.  Even I can see, though, that I've spent most of my energy just woman-ing the dikes.


In seeking to reorient myself, to change course, I am tempted to over order things--to establish firm rules, and plenty of them; to set goals and objectives galore; to schedule insights and inspiration; even to mandate fun and relaxation.  Polkinghorne's description of the nexus of discovery reminds me of the need for balance.  


I recall that I flunked the balance beam routine in college P.E.  It's time, it seems, to get back on and try again.  To get it together--but not completely.  

Clutter's Little Blessings

Having family living in the New Orleans area for the past nineteen years has enriched my life in many ways.  (And yeah, there's all that other post-Katrina stuff, but we're not going there this morning.)  Not the least of my souvenirs from dozens of trips to the Big Easy are the exotic additions to my vocabulary--like beignet, and cafe au lait, and "Laissez le Bon temp rouler."   Like lagniape.  


Lagniappe is a regular Friday entertainment section in the Times Picayune, New Orleans' main daily newspaper.  It is also a word with a literary pedigree.  One online source reproduced a portion of a scholarly treatise from 1939 which quoted Mark Twain's discourse on the word in his 1883 publication, Life on the Mississippi, which I confess to having missed before today.  Twain's understanding is true to the first of the definitions above, deriving from the practice of shopkeepers demonstrating good will by throwing in something extra.  The proverbial thirteenth donut in a baker's dozen is the most frequently given example of this usage.  


As I have heard it used, its meaning has broadened to include any unexpected good thing.  Life's happy little surprises.  A sunny day in winter.  A chance meeting with an old friend.  The last free seat on the streetcar.  Things that bring a sudden smile, a lightness to our hearts.


Not something you would generally associate with clutter, particularly in this era of clean sweeps and downsizing, where clutter is a dirty word.  But something I have experienced, all the same, as a result of my less-than-orderly housekeeping.


I might also use the word "findings" to describe what I'm talking about.  Not the results of painstaking research efforts.  Not the gold and silver clasps and hooks and jump rings prized by beaders.  But literal locating of things misplaced, thought lost.  Things that surface serendipitously, and change the course of a day, a task, a relationship.  


Examples that come to mind would include letters from my dead father that occasionally drift into sight; a wedding ring from a previous marriage stirred from the bottom of a drawer while looking for something else; a picture of my boys as charming toddlers, left as a bookmark in a seldom-consulted volume.  The kind of things that take us back to old feelings, and remind us of things we meant to remember.  


The items I come across are not limited to the nostalgic.  Sometimes I find something truly useful, or needed, long after I have stopped searching.  Like one of a pair of earrings.  Or a missing screw, a long-overdue library book, or just the very tool to facilitate a repair I'm attempting.  Lagniappe.


It's a little like off-label prescribing, which results when we find therapeutic uses for treatments intended for other ailments.  A beneficial accident.  


I agree that sloppiness is probably not prescribed in any circumstance.  And maybe this is just my way of justifying bad habits, though I am not complacent about the chaos of my surroundings, and continue to intend to do better.  But in the meantime, I appreciate the gifts that come to me from an environment salted with memories and good fortune.

Musings of a Decluttering Agnostic

   I confess to having spent too much of the past couple of decades immersed in clutter--both actual clutter, and the emerging pop culture fixation on clutter.


From my quick and dirty online search this morning, I learned that, unlike the poor, we have only had "clutter" with us (as a term, anyway) since the 16th century.  In using the word as a noun, we are referring to "a disorderly heap or assemblage; litter."  "Declutter," a verb having to do with the removal of the aforementioned noun, has not yet made it into most dictionaries, despite being ubiquitous on bookshelves, in blogs, in magazines, and on business cards.  


The earliest mention of decluttering that I have come across was in this thirty-year-old book entitled Cleaning and the Meaning of Life : Simple Solutions to Declutter Your Home and Beautify Your Life by Paula Jhung (1980).  Ms. Jhung was way ahead of the pack, predating the voluntary simplicity movement, which a 2008 New York Times article traces to 1980s Seattle.  According to Wikipedia, that movement, with its admonitions of simple living, has roots in Iron Age India (1200-272 B.C.).  Recent years have produced what we might term "a disorderly heap or assemblage" of books and articles and TV programs and experts holding forth in all available forums on clutter and decluttering.  And I have read and watched and listened to more than my share.


I feel spiritually drawn to images of decluttered space.  You know the ones--warm diffuse light washing over clear shiny surfaces, unfurnished spaces, gleaming floors and windows.  And of course, the obligatory single floral stem in a clear vase of water.  But I feel sinful and unredeemed as I gaze at my own surroundings.  Two teenage boys, a work-obsessed spouse and a shedding Labrador/greyhound, along with having lived in the same house through two marriages and three kids, are not exactly conditions for maintaining an uncluttered look.  


I have not sunk to the status of the hoarders we have begun to identify among us, and on whom we have trained the fascination usually reserved for train wrecks.  These individuals are held up as negative examples on shows that document the horrors of their material imprisonment, counsel them to repent and reform, and take them through exorcisms ("purging") designed to cleanse their souls and their environs alike.  Properly shamed and penitent, they vow to do better in the wake of their broadcast interventions.


I suspect that many of us who do not qualify as "The Messiest Home in America" still fall short of the decluttered ideals to which we are so universally exhorted.  And though we are urged to take on massive makeovers of our lives and our habitats, how many of us have the time, or the emotional stamina in this stressful era, to mount this kind of effort?  What are we to do, in the face of this cultural obsession with order and economy, in the midst of a society which proliferates goods and entices us to buy them?


For myself, I have determined to keep decluttering in its place.  I still aspire to the aesthetic.  And I want to continue to give myself and my family the gift of order and spaciousness that results from focusing on straightening one room, one drawer, one corner.  But I don't want to sit in our home, as I eat and talk and play and work and relax with the people I love, and lash myself, or them, for our less-than-perfect state of affairs.  Decluttering as a religious scruple is mental clutter I cannot afford. 

Procrastinating 101: The Perfect Cure for Perfectionism

Last week, I wrote about the six types of procrastination posited by Dr. Linda Sapadin in her book, It's About Time:  The 6 Styles of Procrastination and How to Overcome Them.  (Who knew procrastination could be "stylish?")   I was hardly surprised when the book's self-assessments identified perfectionism as among the major pillars of my problem with procrastinating.  Although I sometimes have trouble recognizing this tendency of mine--what with all the imperfection so obviously in view in my life and environs--I have repeatedly had this trait pointed out to me by friends and loved ones, co-workers, casual acquaintances, door-to-door salespeople, and people standing in line behind me at the supermarket.


A quick trip through cyberspace reveals that perfectionism has become something of an industry.  Just "googling" the word brings up "about 926,000" results.  And none of them are exactly endorsements.  In browsing, we learn that perfectionism is akin to, or can lead to, or may result from the dreaded OCD, or eating disorders, or anxiety, or depression, or "other mental health problems."  It has a "pathological form," "10 telltale traits,"  and "pitfalls."  We are offered guidance in "escaping," "coping with," "overcoming," and "freeing our families" from this scourge.  One source warns us ominously about "perfecting ourselves to death."  Endless quizzes and inventories are available to "help" us determine our risk levels and severity of affliction.


But what does it have to do with procrastination--other than providing diversions such as the pursuit of the "perfectly documented" blog paragraph on the subject?


According to Dr. Sapadin, we perfectionists tend to respond to tasks and projects in one of two ways:  either we "overwork" in a futile attempt to achieve perfection in the finished product, completing something minutes before the deadline or actually late, despite having begun work early and given continuous and strenuous effort; or we are so intimidated by the impossible standards we have set that we can't get started at all.  The latter approach leads to shoddy last-minute efforts, or to outright failure to complete work.  (Hmmm. . . sounds familiar.)


In my own case, I have long been aware of the contribution of perfectionism to my failure to complete my dissertation.  My response was of the first type, with years spent in preparing perfectly to write the perfect questions which when put perfectly to my perfectly selected "subjects" would lead to perfect understanding which would then be communicated perfectly; years spent writing and rewriting, punctuated by years spent anxiously putting off writing.  A painful cycle that has colored subsequent work patterns and dented my self-esteem. 


Perfectionism lies behind the trepidation I feel in the face of to-do lists.  Fortunately, for me anyway, it does not seem to be hampering my production of this blog.  I have been churning out these imperfect essays regularly for over a month now, and am at peace with their warts.  I have come to the place where I want to finish things more than I want them to be perfect.  So having completed this morning's halfway-decent post, I will go into my less-than-pristine kitchen and enjoy the coffee made for me by the mutiply-flawed love of my life--and try not to mention the grounds.

Has Anyone Seen My Head?

It’s funny, the words and phrases that stick in our heads.  Like my grandmother’s depiction of her own Irish grandfather who spent much of his last years “sarchin’” for things in various rooms and realms of the house she grew up in.  I have often thought that his preoccupation with things missing or lost is in my bones, a hereditary affliction.

I have spent way too much of my life “sarchin’” for things.  And we’re not talking some lofty spiritual quest here, as in my adopted religion’s 4th principle, which "affirm[s] and promote[s]…[a] free and responsible search for truth and meaning.”  No, my concern is rooted firmly in the mundane and worldly hunt for misplaced possessions.  I don’t want to say I’m a loser, but I have to admit that waayyyy too many of the allotted hours of my life have been taken up in tossing my environs, desperately seeking stuff. 

Yesterday, I listed on a post-it all the things I was currently trying to find.  The list included my iPod, needed to distract myself from the discomfort of 5K training; the tax-relevant receipt for the piano we purchased last year from a school; my warm winter hat, which matches the scarf I found a couple of weeks ago at Goodwill; my son’s wallet (perhaps he, too, has inherited the loser gene); a meditation audiobook, now overdue at the library; my poetry notebook; and our favorite Charlie Brown Christmas CD.  And those were just the things I could remember. 

Before the day was out, I had located both my iPod and the overdue audiobook.  I’m not sure if that was coincidental to having written them down earlier.  I’m thinking maybe the act of making a discrete list was in some way akin to issuing an All Points Bulletin in my consciousness.  In both cases, the articles were found in likely locations that I had neglected to check in my earlier reconnaissance efforts.  It remains to be seen whether the other items on my list will turn up.

I don’t know that this problem of misplacing things is getting worse as I age.  I remember in fifth grade being made to write an essay about what would happen to the world if everyone lost and forgot things like I did.  Library books were, even then, my bugaboo.  I recall stretching to apply the lesson to firefighters—what if they misplaced their hose?  their axes?—and doctors, like my father—what if they couldn’t find their stethoscopes?  their tongue depressors?  or, God forbid, their hypodermic needles?  I remember, too, at around that time and earlier, struggling to locate disappearing homework that I really had completed—no dogs involved.  So apparently I started down this road at a fairly young age.

Now that I think about it, though, I was never entirely sure if my grandmother was describing a disorganized man, like so many others in my family, or one who was increasingly “lost” himself.  I cling to the reality that, at this stage anyway, I am missing actual objects--as though that is any kind of distinction.   Even if my constant rummaging is focused on physical items that truly exist, rather than the arguably worse situation of mental disorientation, it is taking time and energy that could probably be better spent.  But what to do about it? 

As a student of Buddhism, I could disavow the attachment to material items and their uses, and mute at least the emotion that accompanies these dislocations.  Less stressing would be good.  


As a not-so-stellar student of organization, I could go the “everything in its place” route--if I could just figure out the places for all these things that keep finding their way into my life.  Where exactly does one keep the mounds of receipts spawned by daily transactions, mostly not needed at all—unless they are suddenly, unexpectedly and desperately necessary?  Or the ill-fitting cover to the battery compartment of the temporarily AWOL remote?  Or the business cards for the business I sort of started last year and may want to revive?

It seems at least part of my difficulty is having too much stuff.  Here, I guess, is where Throw Out 50 Things should come in.  I did learn some things from reading the book a week or so ago, but not as much as I could learn by actually trying to apply its approach.  So the thing to do, clearly, is to get cracking and start discarding.  Now if I can just find the book and see where to start.

I think I’ll try offering a bounty.  It’s worked before.

Please Don’t Say the “B” Word

My (b-a-s-e-m-e-n-t) has been on my mind the past few weeks, as I’ve been trying to face my backlog and get my life in order.  My bedroom, if I loosely use that term to refer to the space where my bed lives, is in my (b-a-s-e-m-e-n-t), so it’s a place I visit regularly.  And not without dismay.

The subterranean level in question is partially finished.  The concrete block walls are painted in some areas.  There are rugs on the cement floor defining “rooms.”  Walls and doors separate spaces within one half.  We added a fairly well-appointed full bath when my sixteen-year-old was a baby, and an egress window about ten years ago, which makes it legal to sleep “down there.”  But this territory, containing almost as much square footage as our ranch’s first floor, remains a work in progress.  Or more accurately, a work in need of progress.

In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, roughly four-and-a-half years ago, I made matters worse.  Much worse.  My husband had been dispatched to Mississippi to meet my evacuated parents and bring them to stay with us; I spent that anxious period laboring to vacate our first-floor bedroom and create a makeshift assisted-living facility in its place.  This entailed moving in and assembling borrowed beds, making minor plumbing and other modifications in the adjacent bathroom, and making the public rooms friendly for my father’s newly acquired, and much despised walker.  It was a busy, crazy several days as our newest household members made their way north at the snail’s pace dictated by shock and malady.  I have described what I did to our dismantled sleeping quarters during that time as opening up the (basement) door and throwing our bedroom down the stairs. 

Of course, gratitude to my spouse, who would spend the first months of an overdue sabbatical surrounded by a grumpy teen, a grumpier preteen, two dislocated elders (in-laws, to boot) and an antique Bichon, did inspire me to make some efforts.  I managed to set up our bed and get the sheets on before he returned from his rescue mission.  Somewhat later, I put up pictures and bought new bedding we could barely afford to distract us from our new low rent location.  But the items that had previously been crammed into this “oasis” had been displaced to the rest of the now thoroughly disastrous space. 

Meantime, my husband was sitting in the middle of the kitchen most days, working on the book he had started on the road while waiting for my parents to get ready for each day’s travelling.  And my father was sitting at a nearby table, fretting.  He had absorbed the facts about the morass of stuff one floor down from where he sat.  And he wanted to help.  In the best of times, that would have been an impractical proposal.  In our post-Katrina state, it was flat-out impossible. 

We spent a good deal of the first several weeks after the storm looking at images of devastation, on TV and on the internet.  We were trying to gauge how my parents and my sister’s family had “made out”—a subject that would still begin most conversations in their community on Lake Poncetrain for many months after people began trickling back.  So we knew what real chaos and destruction looked like.  Our disarrangement was like a bad migraine in the face of a brain tumor.  But I did apply what I learned about the power of pictures to disabuse my father of the dangerous idea that he should brave the deep to offer assistance.  (In retrospect, I begin to understand that his desire to help was probably more global than I realized then.)

A few weeks into our adventure in extended family living, we celebrated my birthday, in the midst of emergency room trips, my mother’s growing, and frightening, illness and disorientation, my father’s accelerating physical deterioration, my teenager’s bumpy adjustment to a new school, my husband’s determined digital scribbling, my sister’s reports from their exile, and other relaxing occurrences and conditions too numerous to want to think about, ever again.  My family gave me a digital camera.  After snapping pictures of my cake and my gathered family members, I opened the instruction manual.  In three languages, it announced that I could display my pictures on our TV set. 

I decided I would use this new technological capability to show my dad why I was not going to accept his offer to help me straighten out the (you know what).  The pictures of things strewn and things piled and things sliding around down there were all he needed.  End of subject.

We are four-plus years on from that period of our lives, and still recovering.  Much effort has been expended, mostly by me, in the interim, to make our underground dwelling space habitable.  But we are not there yet.  I battle it back, but anarchy continues to creep back in, as if from the walls.  I begin to think an exorcism may be in order.

My sister recently shared this bit of dark post Katrina humor, which manages to congratulate Gulf Coast residents on their "good fortune."  In the conversations about household clutter that represent both a return to a facsimile of normal and a reference to their continuing special circumstances, standard tongue-in-cheek advice among the locals begins with "Don't have a basement."