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I'm This Charming

One of the benefits of becoming integrated is that most of the odd things that you used to do, routinely and/or compulsively, fade or become minimized. For example, if you were compelled to eat exactly 18 french fries with every meal (I really did know someone that did) then post-integration you may be able to eat a few meals sans fries or at least be able to change the ‘must ingest’ number to 8 or 23. You normalize on many fronts, possibly some you never thought possible.

One compulsion I’ve had ever since I can remember being alive is drawing with my fingers. I draw the shapes of everything. And when I say everything, I really mean it. When I’m watching TV, I’m also drawing the shape of the TV, the shapes on the screen, the shapes of the entertainment center, the shape of the wall, the plants, the window – everything. When I’m walking, it’s the sidewalk, the houses and whatever else I’m looking at. The only time it’s not happening is when I’m writing, painting or shooting photos, but some might argue that I’m still doing it even then, just in other ways. Also, when I drive a car, most of the time I’m not, but if I’m stuck in traffic or on an easy stretch of road, that is where my mind immediately goes.

The other morning, while being the passenger, I wondered if this was a problem. If it was anything I should worry about or try to change. Why didn’t it go away when I was integrated? Does it matter that almost all day, every day I’m drawing lines and shapes with my fingers? I spent the rest of the drive trying not to. I wondered what it would take to sufficiently trick my mind into just looking at what was in front of me, without drawing it. And I found I could not.

The drawings can become quite complicated. Most lines and edges have a left and right side that must be drawn. Large areas of color must be filled in. In my mind, my fingers can become very small drawing utensils or very large and wide swathes of color. There is an example of the double sided line in this very simple drawing.

11:11 is a theme that seems to run through my mind even when my eyes are closed. I tend to draw that one over and over and over when there is nothing else to draw.

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Current Smarts: Online Gambling

Have you heard of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act?
Facts
Pro
Con

I started paying attention to the goings-on because my husband’s new job is with a payment company. Most interesting thing to note: his days off do not coincide with the rest of the world because those days are high shopping days and he must be at work to monitor things etc.

In any case, the large majority of their business is with retail but they do have a solid amount of companies that do wallet transactions, meaning, they remove money from your account and ‘hold’ it until you use it and then deposit it, in this case, at the gaming site. One of the main reasons these wallet companies exist is for online gambling.

Should online gambling be regulated or outlawed? What is wrong with the way things are right now? I’m not sure I see the problem. But if there is a problem, it makes much more sense to me to regulate and tax the gaming than to prohibit it. Didn’t we learn anything in the 1920s?

I hate Vegas because I can smell the desperation 30 miles out. It is a law in my family that we DO NOT STOP in Vegas no matter if you have to pee like a racehorse or if you are starving. I am not a gambler. I can count on one hand the times I have inserted a quarter, pulled a level and kissed my money goodbye. I have never signed up on an online gambling site and I have no plans to. I do not enjoy it and I do not see that changing any time soon.

However, I do see the propensity for problems with gambling. I am aware that there is a large amount of senior citizens in Vegas that gamble their entire SS checks the minute they get them every month. I understand that it can be an addiction. But to argue your point saying that 1 in 4 college-aged boys gambles online weekly and that we need to save them from themselves and then move from there to making it illegal makes no sense to me.

I think my main issue with the idea of making online gambling illegal is that this bill doesn’t actually do that. It is set up to penalize the ‘wallet’ companies that hold your money. This bill makes it illegal to be that company and do that act. The gambler will not get in trouble. But, the gambler may lose the money deposited in his account when the company he uses to hold his money gets nailed. If he does get it back, it will be after a long time.

My second issue is the hypocrisy of having a Lotto here in California that supports our schools, that is advertised on television and radio, that our government COUNTS on to subsidize costs to educate our children and then on the same coin passing this bill. So, it’s ok to gamble, but only if you do it the way we want you to. Is that the message? And if so, then regulating and taxing still makes more sense than prohibiting it.

Do you agree or disagree? What am I missing?

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Why Do I Listen?

I can never get enough of public radio. I know where all the stations are in my area. I know when my favorite shows are on. I sometimes sit in the car for an extra 5-10 minutes after reaching my destination just to finish listening.

The end result of this is that I’m kind of sort of informed about a wide variety of subjects. A connoisseur of tiny tid-bits, if you will. I can carry one side of a conversation with someone that knows more than I do pretty well. It’s when I try to tell someone that has less knowledge than I do, about any certain subject that has caught my fancy, that we find ourselves in trouble, people, since I really don’t know what I’m talking about. I have, some people might say, just enough knowledge to be dangerous (and/or annoying).

What I notice, however, is that my feelings on the subject are not proportional to the amount of knowledge I have. For example, if I know 20% of all there is to know about immigration, shouldn’t I be 20% on the scale in how strong I feel about it? This is theorizing that there is a way to quantify the amount of knowledge on any subject that is to be had. But instead I find that I get passionate about some things right from the start and I want to ‘share’ my feelings and point of view with others. My small and puffy mind wonders if this is a problem for other people as well. Do the people in the public eye know more than I know? Do they spend the time to really know their subjects well, front and back, before formulating an opinion and going out on the path to support Pro-Choice or Pro-Life? There are times when I’m completely hot under the collar and spewing strong opinion and passion everywhere only to find out a few days later that I’m actually full of crap.

Since I am by nature an impatient person as well as slightly lazy, or at least drawn to comfort and ease as opposed to being driven, for the most part, to spend my days researching politics and current events, and because I have this public format that I am free to use any way I wish, I might as well spill my over-saturated, passionate feelings about subjects I don’t actually have all the facts for here. I need a name for these new recurring posts.

In this series, I will not even try to pretend that I know everything about the subject at hand. I will merely state my current opinion and hope that you, dear reader, will agree or not agree in my comments so that I can actually get a well-rounded and more full knowledge base on said subject. Look for the first installment this week.

I hope you are all having a wonderful Tuesday.

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Regarding Foley

More than anything else we do in our lifetime, it is what the youth of today learn from us that creates our legacy. Notice I didn’t say ‘what we teach’ because what we teach and what they learn can be universes apart.

You can’t escape hearing about the Foley Debacle these days. It is everywhere and for good reason. With all the finger-pointing going on, it’s easy to ascertain that not only did people know about it for years, but so many people knew about it as to create the classic abused/abuser environment.

As an abuse survivor, it took me years to unlearn some basic truths that I learned as a child. These truths were not true in the socially acceptable circles out in the open. But on the most very basic levels of my Self, they were rock hard truths.

In a classic familial abuse situation, it is the children that learn to read the parents. They learn to assess the feeling of the room before even walking in the door. They learn to read their parent’s feelings and attitudes and intents to gauge the danger level. The children become parentalized and must watch out for their own safety and welfare because no one else will do it for them. Parents/adults can’t be trusted.

Let’s say that at some point, those kids get to a place where they are brave enough to tell someone what is happening. They hone in on an adult that can be trusted. They somehow find the words to speak the agonizing truth of the situation. And here is where they learn their next lesson: will they be believed? And, if they are believed, will they be protected? A child learns many truths about life in the aftermath of telling their secret.

In this Foley situation, the things that bother me the most, and there are so many to pick from, are 1) the kid(s) that came forward years ago were not believed to the degree that they should have been and if they were believed, their feelings and the danger of the situation were minimized, 2) the adults in control ‘stuck together’ and most likely shuffled off those particular kids to new places to keep them quiet, 3) new interns and pages were told that ‘this is just the way Foley is’ and it then became THIER responsibility to monitor what happened in this completely power-lopsided relationship, creating the illusion that children can control the abuse that happens to them, 4) immediately after being found out in the mainstream media, Foley’s camp turned to ‘he’s an alcoholic’ and ‘he was abused as a teen’ and ‘he’s gay’ in order to divert responsibility and 5) these kids and young adults are treated with less respect and have less protection than working adults do with sexual harassment statutes in place.

I find it indescribably sad that our youth are going to what should be an exciting and knowledge-packed place and supposedly having this spectacular experience learning how our government works and the ins and outs of how things get done and instead are learning the very worst kind of lessons about dysfunction, which apparently, is how our government works.

We can teach our youth all kinds of things that we wish they would learn, but it’s what we do and what we allow to happen to them and to this country that they will internalize. That is our legacy.

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Every Day

I keep waking up in the morning and I keep having a day. And then I keep going to sleep at night. And then? The next morning I do it again. In this way I hope to eventually get to the morning when I want to wake up and I actually enjoy the day I’m having. But, by going the through motions, I know I’ll get there.

Friends, acquaintances, internet pals and complete strangers have written me lovely and kind notes. THANK YOU SO MUCH for your kindness. I keep thinking I’ll go back in my email and start replying to all of you but then I get stuck because I have no idea what to say except thanks for your caring nature. Please accept this virtual thanks from me to you.

For the past month, while on bed rest, I have been working on my book. I’m just about ready to hand it over to my agent. I’m thankful to have had the time to work on it because I don’t think I could have done it without being forced to. After I finished getting it up on Lulu last year, I swore I would never edit it again. For one thing, it is terribly hard to edit your own work. It’s hard to have perspective because to you, the writer, everything you’ve written is important. Add to that the fact that this book is actually my life. It has been so bizarre to have editors and my agent send me editing notes in emails about ‘the characters’ and ‘the story line.’ The format of the book being what it is has the potential to be confusing to some readers, so there has been careful attention spent on making sure that the transitions are smoother and easier to understand.

But the hardest part for me has been that my strengths in writing do not fall in the creating fictional dialog and characters categories. I’m strongest in retelling events that I have been a part of. And my book is basically just a retelling of my life. 9/10th of it was written by the personalities themselves and now that I’m integrated, those individual voices are gone. To have an editor tell me that ‘this scene isn’t working and needs more dialog between character A and character C’ or ‘let’s have a scene where you learn this information earlier through this particular therapist’ just makes no sense to me. I can’t go back and create dialog that didn’t happen. I can’t make up a therapist and then have events happen that didn’t happen. Maybe if this was a purely fictional book, I could. But I doubt it. I’ve never been that good at fictional writing. Even when I was publishing columns, they were slices of my life that actually happened.

This editing journey, if nothing else, has helped me understand my strengths in writing, which I’m thankful for. Also, I’ve learned how to be strong and assert myself when I’m not comfortable with changes being asked for and made. The end result is a final version of the book that I’m happy with and will have no problem speaking to people about.

And now that the bulk of that is done and I’m no longer required to be on bed rest, it’s time for two things: The gym and a new job. My first time going back to the gym was yesterday. All I did was walk the treadmill for 30 minutes at 4.5 MPH but from the way my body is screaming, you’d think I’d ran a marathon. It’s amazing how fast your body deteriorates.

It feels good to be active again. Another thing to be thankful for.

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Running Away

It was a flowered suitcase. More of a valise, actually. The elasticized sections on the zippered top measured into thirds and partially hidden inside the silky fabric, starting from the left, were three pairs of panties; rolled, a light blue flannel nightgown handed down from my sister: well worn around the seams, and my faded Mr. Bubble T-shirt which I owned because of meticulous cutting and saving labels and box tops for what seemed like eons but what in fact was probably more like an entire month the previous year.

The large area of the case, normally reserved for clothing for the savvy traveler who appreciates a fresh change of clothes while abroad, in this situation was full of notebooks and drawing pads, pens and pencils, reading books such as Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the H, B and I encyclopedias. H for the Human Form with clear plastic pages that with every turn inevitably created the back part of a man or woman, complete with bones, muscles, veins, organs and a flaccid penis or halved uterus, respectively. B and I for the wonderful illustrations of butterflies and insects. The final items rounding out the contents were a Holly Hobbie doll, practically new, and a pair of plastic pants to go over my panties, sewn by my own mother in my own size in an attempt to cut down on not only the laundry but the smell. Sadly, I don’t think it would have saved me from the humiliation of wearing them in front of friends. They crinkled.

The year was 1977. I was six and incredibly upset. As I lugged the suitcase up from the basement, the injustice of the situation did not escape me. Not only did I have to run away, I had to also carry my own luggage. And all of this because my mom did not think I was old enough to sleep over.

I was a bed wetter. Oh, the humiliation. With each bump-step, bump-step, I became increasing sure that I was in the right and that my mother was in the wrong. Should I be locked in a cage simply because I could not hold my urine? bump-step Should I be forced to stay home when every other girl in my class would be spending glorious evenings together playing Barbies and Smurf Family all over town? bump-step Was it fair to ask me to be the only girl that hadn’t played Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board late at night while giggling and secretly being completely freaked out? The mystique surrounding that game was luscious, sparkly and completely opaque to my eyes. I would never find out if the ghosts were real if my mom would not let me sleep over using my plastic pants.

bump-step.

And now on the landing, I looked for my olive green, corduroy jacket with the ripped right pocket from the time I tried to jam both gloves in at the same time. Those small, darling topstitched pockets were more ‘Pockets’ than pockets and unfortunately, were not made for a glove set. There was really only room for my chapstick and one tiny vial of perfume no bigger than a pen lid, scent: green apple, my favorite, which now resided only on the left, near my heart.

There was one dollar and sixty-three cents from my bank in my back pocket. Along with over ten dollars I had stolen from my sister’s room. This being an emergency, and since she would never see me again, I suspected it would be fine.

I gave the entry hall one last look, a tear rolling down my cheek as the seriousness of what I was about to do settled in my heart. Oh, my dear, dear parents. They would miss me, yes. And they would understand that they had wronged me. There I would be, living in a hovel, a gutter, dirt smeared on my face. The tears began falling in earnest now, my suitcase heavy in my hands. I would eat leaves and scraps from trashcans. The neighbors would refer to me as that sad, dirty girl that had no parents that loved her.

With a heavy sigh, I opened the front door and plunged into the early evening air. Tears on my face, snot dripping, but oh, so brave! I marched down the sidewalk just as my mom drove home from her errands. Well, fine! Good! I was glad she would see me. She’d soon be sorry for treating me like such a baby.

From the corner of my eye, I saw her form get out of the car, open the hatch and remove a brown bag of groceries just as I reached the street. The neighbor, also exiting his vehicle, asked me, ‘Where ya off to, now? With your bag? And it’s about to rain?’ which, apparently, was more questions than I knew what to do with. I stopped in my tracks, teetering on the edge of our property between Home and Out There. I looked at the neighbor. I looked back at my mom. She yelled, ‘Leah! Get the bag with the Rice Crispies cereal in it!’

My decision was swift and based mostly on hunger. I grabbed the cereal bag and dropped my suitcase at the door. But I kept my sister’s ten dollars.

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Two Things

1. Joe Schmidt is holding a charity blogathon for the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation on September 30th. Osteogenesis Imperfecta, more commonly known as OI, is a genetic disorder which affects approximately 20,000-50,000 Americans. OI is a disease that instructs the body to either make little collagen or poor quality collagen resulting in brittle bones. I love it when people actually do something to try and help make the world a better place. Good luck, Joe.

2. A quote from Marianne Williamson that can apparently make me weep for hours:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

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An Untitled Post. (Yet, That is a Title)

Football has started. The third game was on Saturday. They lost the first game, due mostly to confusion as the league fired their defensive coach the previous night, not leaving time for a replacement, and angering the head coach who happens to be my ex-husband.

By the second game, they had a new strategy and a replacement defensive coach. They won by just over a 100% lead. The third game, last Saturday, they won by a 300% lead. The boys had a slight swagger after the game and straighter, although exhausted, shoulders. (I have no photos to show you since my camera broke again. But, there are other things of a sadder nature that have taken center stage and although I do miss having a camera, the energy I have is going towards those other things at the moment.) We were all quite pleased. I was satisfied as well that the opposing team did get their one touchdown. We are not at a college or national level and I hate for any of the kids to go home feeling like failures. I sometimes even cheer when the opposing team does something really great. Don’t tell.

Tyler is running for student body president at his middle school. His slogan, ‘Stay Fly, Vote Ty!’ is catchy. We spent the better part of Sunday attaching small ribbons of paper to Smarties and Dum Dum lollipops with which to ply his fellow students into voting him into office. Actually, I did the cutting and Tony helped Ty do most of the attaching. I didn’t even ask them to work it out. I didn’t even ask Tony to help his brother. I just sat back and basked in the wonderfulness that is your children cooperating completely undirected.

Devon made a paper airplane. It flew quite nicely off the top balcony. So nice, in fact, that he did it quite a few times. I was wishing for my marshmallow gun to give it a few pops on the way down. Just for fun. Dev is learning about responsibility. It’s a hard and very long lesson. I wonder when I’ll get to the end of it so I can let him know how it turns out? But, between now and that place, his dad and I are both encouraging him to stop working so hard and to possibly be more social. Go to a dance. Date someone. For him, work IS fun and even more important than school since he will use his computer and entrepreneurial skills for the rest of his life and history will last only till the end of the semester. So it makes no sense to him yet. And I can see why.

I’m thinking of taking a dance class with him. I told him so and after he stared at me in uncomfortable silence, he asked if we could possibly take ceramics instead. I suspect it is the lesser amount of time holding hands and waists with your mother that makes that more attractive. If the point was to satisfy my craving for dance lessons, I could press it. But since it’s not, ceramics class it is.

Tony has started a new painting. He did a large yellow moon with a slice of dark around the right side. Then he made some drips, which he rather likes and does not want to cover up, and wonders how he can get the background on without doing just that. He appears stuck but I have faith that he is merely paused. He is smart. He may even decide it is finished as is.

Tony never quite gets enough of me. Not Quite Enough. He frequently asks to take things back to his dad’s with him. Reminders of me. And sometimes of Joe. I always oblige him, not even caring what the thing is he’s asking for. I hope he sees the tokens at his other home and is a little less confused by his life. And I wished I enjoyed playing fighting video games with him more, since that is always what he asks to do first. Perhaps there is a class for that.

Alex turns 16 in mere minutes. A tiny breath away. She saves her money and does much thinking before spending it. A $70 homecoming dress? Possibly. She buys it and brings it home. But, no. It goes back because not only is it too frivolous but also the boy she liked when she bought it has since gone the way of the wind and it would only serve as a reminder. A 90$ hair extravaganza? With long layers and long bangs and multi colors of blond throughout, so many blond facets that it positively sparkles in the sunlight? Yes. That is absolutely necessary every once in a while. And right now is that while. I tell her she looks lovely. Joe tells her she looks lovely. The boys say something along the lines of, ‘Oh. Cool.’ I hope that is satisfactory for the moment until she goes to school and gets the oohs and aaahs of her friends to seal the deal.

My kid’s dad has the idea that an old Volkswagen will last a lifetime. As each child comes of age, he purchases them a diamond in the rough, to love and care for. To get to know at a deep level so they can bond with it and know every cable. Every wire. Every switch as they lovingly bring it to prime health. This, to him, is meaningful and right. To the children, it is horror at the beginning. Pure horror. The car does not run right. It stalls. It’s not what I had in mind. My friends all have cars that just go, you know, mom? You know what I mean? I don’t want to freak out every time I have to drive that car. Can you just ask dad to get me something else? This is the story I’ve heard twice and know I will hear once more. Not twice more, because Tyler alone will love it just the way his dad will hand it over. Tyler will agree that it is meaningful and right. And it will be.

Alex’s car is the yellow convertible Volkswagen Bug. It has a modified transmission and although it is not completely manual, it is not automatic. In my opinion, it has muddied the waters and makes it harder to drive. I prefer the purer breeds.

I’ve driven cars with non-working clutches where we had to pop it into gear by pushing it down the hill. I’ve also driven cars which are automatics and they, you know, just drive. I would be lying if I said I preferred the first since it’s the latter I have vowed to own the remainder of my life. But, since I don’t have spare thousands of dollars around which I could use to replace the car for her, I feel the need to be supportive, if not overly cheerful, in helping her learn to drive the yellow car that scares her. Devon is now a pro at his Thing. She is as capable as he. She can be fierce and fearless. With time, I’m sure she can learn to win it over, but in the meantime I’ll have to be strong to bite my lip and only say nice things about the convertible beast with the darling flowers on the steering wheel cover and the shiny silver running boards along each side. And pray that she does not ever drive it on a road with an incline until she learns to use the parking break like a third foot pedal and with as much ease as she answers her cell phone without looking at it. It’s instinct. After all, once she conquers this, learns to change the oil and the tire, I won’t worry so much when she’s out driving and 15 minutes late.

Joe has started his new job. He likes it. It’s closer to home by half. He can make it home in a hurry if need be, and I have needed him be once already and possibly once more this week, but it is a luxury I am trying not to overuse since the occasions we have had to use it for are, so far, not fun. It would be different if he was playing hooky and we went to the pier and fed the seagulls. That might be a good use of this new treasure.

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Good Hotel/Spa Rate?

My daughter’s birthday is coming up in October and I’d like to take her and her friends to a nearby hotel with spa. Does anyone know where to find good rates?

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Two Things

1. Tom Coates at Plasticbag.org highlighted the new Flickr cards from MOO.com. I ordered the free set of 10 which you can get if you are Flickr Pro. I can’t wait to see the quality and $20 for a set of 100 doesn’t seem unreasonable if the quality is good. I think they are fun. The discussion here in the comments is funny to me since no one said the cards were meant to exude professionalism. They are fun and the application makes it easy to crop and zoom to get the look you want.

2. I use Rock, Paper, Scissors all the time with the kids to decide important matters such as who sits shotgun, what tv program we watch and even who gets the last bit of ice cream. Nice to know I’m in good company. Via Kottke