Pavlovate and Getting to Gratitude

* Pavlovate: From Pavlov and salivate. The anticipation response to a signal that precedes a physiological response, e.g. the sound of the grinder produces response of desire for coffee sans the drool.

Having alone time in the house can’t be beat, and I am glad the Ken has some when I work on the weekends. In spite of the fact that I enjoy the people I work with, lately, I notice myself complaining about working on Sundays. When I start complaining it is usually something else.

I know how to complain, why I complain, and how it works for me. I know I complain to avoid my real feelings, and how to work it through. When the question is it live or is it memory it is usually something in my head. I have to access my Memory Folder. Most people would simply refer to this as memory, but my ADD requires me to give this cognitive structure a more technical label. Whatever you call it, it’s a pain when stuff get piled up, misfiled or never filed. When I seem scattered I probably am.

Back to the memory Find the S Folder.Looking for Sunday.Schedule.School Shoulds.No Sunday folder -must be archived.Since I am here, I look at the “Shoulds”file. Wow. The “should” files used to require a whole cabinet, now it's down to only one drawer. On the next purge, I just may re-purpose some of them or just rename them. Maybe not. I don’t have to think about that now,I just know I can't rid of all of my “shoulds.”

Humans need ”shoulds” to keep the species going or to just keep them from running into traffic. Can you imagine an adult with the “shoulds” of an 18 month old?I am reminded of a contrary 21 year-old father of a three-year-old boy who told me: “I would rather have my son ‘stand up for ‘his self’ than give in, even to me.” Yikes! Babies having babies.

This is what happens to me I start to work on one thing and go off on an tangent;get distracted.Inconsistent routine and fatigue are big contributors.

Sundays and “shoulds” are not in the same location in my brain anymore. Years of Sundays are collapsed into abstracts. Caution. Always proceed with caution when reading abstracts. The smaller size can belie the power of the content. Add that to the fact that negative content tends to be much more concentrated; and reconstitution can be toxic.

I start to overuse metaphors when stuff is not pleasant.I must have gotten too close to toxic content going through abstracts.I randomly think, “ It’s easier to work with the stain of loneliness because you can see it and do something about it.”Man, stain sounds like a laundry problem – and I hate laundry problems.Why you complaining about laundry?“If loneliness somehow gets woven into the whole of your fabric, it takes much more time to unravel.”What!“It’s a lot of hard work that seems pointless because it’s the past.”Just keep writing through the muck, stop trying to sound smart and get out of that folder!

Is it true that you eventually learn who you are, what to keep and what to discard? Being balanced is an ongoing process.I don’t want to relive feelings of the past;I don’t need to that.I just don’t want to accidentally discard or misplace a good thought that I might need one day - when I am old.

I know it seems like I got distracted from looking for the Sunday folder.But I got to the root of the problem. There it was in a sub file in the Sunday folder, in the loneliness file,a shared sub file with the Fear Folder:Loneliness on Sunday

Update the system! My Sundays are not lonely anymore; they don't need to be avoided or complained about.Make gratitude the default folder.Thank you.

When I am an old woman:

In about 30 years, as an old lady, I will still talk to myself. This what I might say:

“You worked hard to be a licensed psychologist. You were just starting your career when your friends were starting to retire, some to their second homes. Even though you really liked living in that apartment in Edison, sometimes it made you sad that you didn't own any home. You got to be a newlywed with Ken and the two of you created a wonderful space. Remember your second anniversary and you asked Ken for a portable washing machine for the apartment? Wasn’t it funny that something you thought you hated turned into something you wanted? You had a thing about laundry ever since your mother folded the laundry in the living room in the house on Madie Avenue.

That was in the early 60’s, and a lot of people had televisions in their living rooms. Nice living rooms, with TV’s inside in a piece of furniture; and wives like Laura Petri wore lipstick and dresses. You knew this because you saw it on TV, on a colored TV. Yes, you watched black and white TV shows on a colored TV. And when you asked why your family’s TV was orange, not wood, they told you it’s NOT orange, Beth, it’s coral. Coral? Why does our cousin, Coral, have a TV? And why is her TV in our house?

It was that portable TV on a brass stand that started the laundry problem. Before that, the laundry stayed out of sight, where it belonged. When you were 6 years old, you knew you wore clothes, put them in the hamper, or took them out of the drawers. They weren’t supposed to be in piles on the back of the sofa. It looked too messy. You decided then to dislike laundry, or at least having to fold it.

And remember after Kim was born? Every morning, as soon as Neil went into the shower, you ran down two flights of stairs to the basement – to ping-pong table where you stored ALL of the clean laundry. Got a tee shirt, briefs, and a pair of socks, ran back up stairs, and laid them on the bed. You thought Neil never knew his drawers were empty; he was happy you were finally acting the way a wife should, and you were just happy because you weren’t folding.

Your second anniversary was a good lesson in dreams; dreams can come true, change or end. If they didn't, where would your new dreams go?

Web Running

When I first met my husband Ken, he told me about a woman he had once dated. She always remembered his birthday, wrote poetry about how she felt about him then and now. Sometimes, I think, she made him nervous. He didn’t know what to make of her or her behavior. He was her first love, you see. I identified with that. I told him not to worry; she was only working stuff out.

joanneclark.com

I did the same thing when I was so unhappy in my first marriage. I created a place in my mind that was built on the memories that were the result of feelings that were attached to a person who happened to be my first love. That place in my mind was a lifeline sometimes.

It hasn’t happened in so many years that I actually forgot about it. Then, a week or so ago, I had one of those vivid dreams—one of those dreams that seem so real. I got scared, but not scared enough to fend off the temptation that technology dangled in front of that dream’s devil. The dangerous undertow of the World Wide Web pulled and a hasty message was released to the hungry Internet.

Friending your first love on Face Book–not a good idea.
Thinking "If I forget it, it didn't happen" - kidding yourself.
The "I didn’t mean to ask for your friendship” e-mail - thoughtless.

The Taste of Lace...hard to describe

Queen Anne’s Lace is blooming on the roadsides now. To some it is just a tall scraggly weed and unwelcome in many gardens. To me as a young girl, it was a treasure.

I have always had a thing for picking flowers. Queen Anne’s Lace could be picked and no one would care. It wasn’t easy to pick though. That fragile looking lace top was supported by one of the toughest stems I ever had to bite off. Yes, I admit it. If bending or twisting didn’t work, I bit the stem and on more than one occasion. Even after all of that - the stem still had to be shredded off to take the prize home.

Queen Anne’s Lace reminds me of sticky summer days and the nights that followed. Bathed and powdered in “Ammens Medicated” my three siblings and I slept on the floor of the master bedroom, the only room in the house that was cool. I never liked the trade off of the windows closed to the sounds and smells of summer for the constant whirr of the air conditioner, though. I still don’t.

At the same time we were camping out on our parent’s bedroom floor, First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson was starting a campaign called “Wildflowers Across America”. Her project was to beautify the roadsides of America’s highways and interstates using wild flowers indigenous to each region. Queen Anne’s Lace is one of New Jersey’s beauties. Allowed and encouraged it to grow en mass, in medians and on roadsides, it is a lovely wildflower.

I have always thought so.

How I See Things...

I never read street signs when I first got my drivers license - I always knew where I was going. I didn't realize I couldn't see until after I got married and moved to Long Island. It wasn't just the challenge of unfamiliar streets, I couldn't read any street signs, either.

I got my first pair of glasses in 1977. I will always remember the night I found out that the Verranzano Bridge was not illuminated by one continuous light; but by hundreds, more likely thousands of individual lights. Sadly, there were other signs I wasn't seeing clearly but it wasn't anything a pair glasses could have corrected anyway.

I have had a number of pairs of glasses since then. Every once in a while I wonder where they are. Sometimes I open the top drawer of my dresser or desk and expect one of the many “misplaced” pairs to magically re-appear.

One pair never disappeared and probably won’t sin I don’t wear them out of the house. Anything closer then 10 feet is just blurry, but they're perfect for watching a late movie on TV. If I doze off with them on they never break and no one would ever steal them, either.

They are a pair frames from the 1980’s. Large, Ralph Lauren tortoiseshell frames that make me look like a cross between Sally Jesse Raphael or Elton John trying to look preppy. I got them after my third daughter was born, before I even thought about graduate school. I guess was in my “Do I want to be a middle aged talk show host or a rock star?” phase.

Details distract me. But if I can’t see it, it doesn't bother me, so I spend a good amount of time and energy managing and organizing the distracters. Sometimes it is hard for me to think clearly just because ignoring distractions in close proximity takes too much effort. Like the condensation between the panes of glass on the balcony door,for example. Trying to ignore that detail was harder - more painful even, than just creating a window treatment in the spur-of-the-moment.

“Just relax, my husband says.

“ That’s what I am doing” I say as I bring one empty coffee mug to the kitchen; straighten a lampshade; and catch a dust bunny under the server with my double duty dust magnet sock…

Anyway, wanting to be a rock star is not silly. It's basic. That simple need to want to be seen and heard is something we all we want, isn't it it?. The talk show host is equally satisfying. Friend of talk show works too. Oprah and Ellen. Frequent guests on their shows. Sitting comfortably- legs crossed, arm relaxed on the chair rest- chatting. Ha, ha ha, we chuckle knowingly with each other.

They share. They tweet. We follow. We are counted. We belong. We are the same!

Exactly the same, except for the personal assistant and those other people that arrange things and tidy up. Wait a minute, I have my Elton John glasses.

There. Everything looks perfect. Want to watch a movie, honey?

Favorites

Joseph Campbell

Carolyn Myss

In our own backyards...

An African American Harvard professor was arrested in his own home this week. President Obama responded that Boston Police Department may have acted stupidly. I work in a county jail and hear lots of stories about the police “acting stupidly.” Considering that my source are inmates in jail, most of these stories are usually taken with a grain of salt. I may cut down on the salt after this morning when I had a first hand experience of a police officer “acting stupidly.”

My husband was on his way out of the parking lot in front of our apartment when he saw a car turning into the lot heading right at him. He stopped and blew his horn, but he was not able to prevent being hit-- head-on into his left front bumper. The police were called, arrived and assessed the situation. Meanwhile, my husband had been leaning on the hood of his car, copying the other driver’s information into his notepad.

“Stop writing, you don’t need to write that down.”

"I was just writing the insurance information.” The officer stepped closer.

"You’re not getting it!"

"I wanted it to report this to my insurance company."”

"Well, you’re not getting it here!"

She forbade. Yes, my husband was forbidden from writing the other driver's information. Can police do that? What is going on? Why are police so antagonistic? The stories work, aside, here it is not an issue of race . This is about about uniform vs. civilian. Civilian, not citizens.

I am concerned because I have noticed other examples that support this. Remember when couples would fight and a neighbor would call the police? Well, arguments between family members aren't referred to or categorized as domestic violence that much any more--now they are called "terrorist threats." So rates of domestic violence has gone down but incidents of terroristic threats just keep going up. Police departments get statistical support join to battle the "war on terror". The cost is too high. We loose a sense community and, ironically, a feeling of safety. When our local law enforcers start to look and act more like soldiers and view us as the enemy-- it's scary.

We can't be fighting for freedom in other countries if it blinds us to what is going on in our own back yards.

Boot Camps for Bratty Teens in New Jersey

This report is incomplete and although the information following has not been confirmed I am posting it for your feedback...it is meant as a joke.....

There are several camps for teens in New Jersey, but currently there are no openings at the boot camps for bratty teens. Sources are not confirmed, those who supplied information did so with the agreement that they would remain anonymous. Boot camps became trendy when Paris Hilton started wearing Uggs with a bikini. This prompted a new development in summer camps. Teens wanted boot camps. Sleep away and day boot camps started to spring up. Some of the most popular were those who partnered with cell phone carriers. In an effort to reach the teen customer an un named cell phone carrier was said to have considered offering slouched minutes instead of rolled over, but that plan never progressed pass the planning stage.

The sources say that boot camps for bratty teens are having difficulty surviving in this current economic climate; and they are being phased out. Parents are just not able to afford camp tuition and to continue to supply their teens with the expensive boots the bratty teens were demanding. These sources suggest that females are more demanding and require multiple colors and styles of boots. They would rather stay home then go to camp without what they want. Male teens are reported to require fewer pairs of boots at a time; typically just one pair. However the expense is not significantly lower (1) because shoe size in male teens frequently changes; and according to legendary shoe expert, Buster Brown, their feet can grow one shoe size overnight. (2) In addition, male teens often loose their boots. When asked how and where they loose their boots, they unanimously answered, “I dun no” Males, at first glance, may seem less bratty, but it is only because they are nonverbal

.To be continued...

1. How much does a teenager cost these days? By Ida Modder. Article waiting to be published in the premier issue of What Were We Thinking magazine due out sometime before 2020.
2. Buster Brown. A boy with a dog and a foot in a shoe, circa 1965.

A Heroine is Born

Nick Kristof’s Op-Ed column in the NY Times this morning gripped me.
The totality of problems of Pakistani women make my head spin
The graphic description of Ashrafi Akbar’s ripped vaginal wall and the seepage of her bodily fluids was just sickening. The magnitude of problems is daunting: Ashrafi's horrible circumstances; Dr Shershah’s seemingly endless mission.
And yet, what grips me is hope.

I am reminded of Joseph Campbell:

“All of the great mythologies and much of the mythic story-telling of the world are from the male point of view. When I was writing The Hero with a Thousand Faces and wanted to bring female heroes in, I had to go to the fairy tales. These were told by children, you know, and you get a different perspective. It was the men who got involved in spinning most of the great myths. The women were too busy; they had too damn much to do to sit around thinking about stories."

Ashrafi is a true hero and this isn’t any fairy tale!

Ashrafi Akbar is a hero

Read my comment to Nicholas Kristof

No Reservations

I woke up this morning feeling so rested, and still sated from the wonderful meal Ken and I had last night. We went out for dinner last night. It was a brilliant way to start the week. We have been trying to eat more simply lately, prepare more food at home. We re-purposed our “take out” money-the money we usually spend on rushed weekday nights when neither of us wants to cook- and spent it in one night out at our favorite restaurant, Stage Left.

It was a perfect summer evening and we dined in the outdoor cafe. Mother Nature supplied the ingredients for the first course: an amuse les sens. Varieties of variegated coleus, potato vines, and petunias; reflections of the setting sun filled our sight and our spirits. Flower boxes chock full of summertime memories and expectation screened us from passers by who surely were also pleased.

A peppery nasturtium smiled up from the middle of the chowder, a temptress to the crisp corn and sweet crab in liquid velvet. Grass- feed, wood -grilled beef was like butta in my mouth. And a nicely chilled bottle of Gavi went surprisingly well with both of our meals. For dessert, we shared the sample of four sorbets and four ice creams. They were so yummy! Ken said the mint ice cream made him feel like he was walking through a mint garden--he loved that mint ice cream. I loved the elderberry, the chocolate, and the raspberry sorbets. I loved them all.

Yup. I sure did!

Ask Beth, again

My daughter Pam is an amazing young woman.

The other day, we were emailing back and forth and I got into one of my mother modes. Mother mode is when I brainstorm with myself to "solve" all of my daughters' problems. All solutions end up sounding the same and include: "are you drinking enough water?" and "you should think about having a small business, how about selling Longeberger baskets?”

Pam pointed out that when she wants to share something with me- something she is trying to figure out- I don't listen to her. Instead, I end up offering unsolicited advice. She's right. When I do that, I am not treating her like an adult. Offering solutions to choose from is “pre kindergarten”; like when she was 4 years old and I let her choose what clothes she would wear that for that day…from clothes I had selected for her pick from. I get it now, she can pick from her own choices.

Pam doesn't say my ideas are not good; she just needs to come to certain things on her own, in her own time and in her own way. In the meantime, she managed her mother's blather with, "Sometimes when you say stuff...I feel like you are telling these things to yourself too. Have you ever considered taking a side job as at a magazine, as like an ask Beth column? ... I think you would be good at it..."

She's brilliant isn’t she?

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.
Joseph Campbell

The Fattening Flattening...Dripping out of our Grasp...

It took lots of yesterdays to make the debt
that eats up today and too-morrow.

Engineered biology;
dependent on technology-

Americans
bank fat cells not cash.

Super-Sized ecology;
economic stimuli-

Hurry up and
Fix it in a flash!

Water, water, everywhere
with not a drop to spare.

Do bloated Americans
have to wait for water,
in order to learn to care?

Since you asked, I'll tell you about toxins....

A toxin is poisonous substance, especially one produced by a living organism. Toxins can be products or byproducts of ordinary metabolism…and they must be broken down or excreted before building up to dangerous levels.
(The American Heritage® Science Dictionary.)

Your brilliant, annihilation-fearing brain does exactly what it should do to keep you alive. It works with the body to neutralize the toxin or create antitoxins.
It takes a lot of energy for the metabolism to neutralize a toxin or to create an antitoxin. In the brain’s hierarchy of necessary functions, the creation of antitoxins competes with other higher functions of the brain; but the formation of antitoxins will always trump, hm mm… say a desire to exercise or even have fun.

Without enough fuel, your brain will automatically look for energy where ever it can, eventually slowing, or stopping as many functions in the body as is possible. When the mind competes with the body for fuel, an unfair cycle begins.

The toxic body becomes heavier in weight. Caloric restriction contributes to the brain drain, so the brain responds and reprograms your metabolism accordingly; antitoxin production diminishes. You feel awful physically. The body will not lose weight when you deprive your brain of energy; it might start to gain weight.

When you don’t fuel your brain: you live less; become self-deprecating; psychologically beat yourself up. You are not lazy. You're only exhausted.

toxin. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Science Dictionary. Retrieved July 08, 2009, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/toxin



Stay tuned for my prescription for DETOXIFICATION: a multifaceted process that ideally creates an environment where the proportion of toxin release over a specific period of time exceeds the absorption of toxins.

How I think, I think.

Sometimes when what I write sounds good, I think I am all that!

But mostly, I think to myself, “What exactly are you trying to say?”

I have a ubiquitous internal critic that gets in my way; it tries to anticipate external criticism and avoid it by scolding me first. A few sentences ago, I wrote ‘I think to myself’. My critic immediately chided me:

“You can only think to yourself; whom else would you think to?

Now delete that ‘to myself’ in the previous sentence!”

I am easily distracted. I know I often seem tangential because I think much faster than I than speak, much less type. I do recognize it though. I'll give you an example of how I can distract myself-- in the previous paragraph, my reaction to that internal critic which was, " Does anyone really say 'whom' anymore?"

Do they?

Do you?

Let me know.

Brilliant Blithers and Blathers by Beth Battinelli

Random bits of information that I accept as true; re-arranged to fit into my own schema. In other words, I make stuff up.

So this is blogging. My brilliant thoughts disappear now that I am typing.

Note to self: Invent a flash drive to insert into left ear for easier access to language center; configure it so that my thoughts will transformed into readable English through the auto type option.

I am a PC or a MAC?