So. Today, after seven years, the authorities involved finally said what I (and many others) could have told them from day one.
Brian David Mitchell can stand trial.
What Mitchell can't stand is: getting caught. Not being in control. Not being right. Not having a precious little girl to abuse. Not being worshiped. Being normal.
To which I say, too bad, who cares?
If Mitchell really believed he was a prophet sent by God to gather up sweet things as plural wives, he would have knocked on the front door and talked to Ms. Smart's father.
If Mitchell were really not responsible for his actions, he wouldn't have covered them.
If Mitchell were really unable to help with his own defense, he wouldn't be trying to help with it by disrupting court, which is his best idea for getting himself off the hook.
Mitchell is transparent to me. Without meaning to, while trying to pull the wool over people's eyes, he has left clues to his real self all along.
Don't ask me how I got experience reading social misfits, but trust me. The biggest expert on what he did and who he is, what he wants, what he's pulling--even what he really believes, already testified before leaving on her mission.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Sunday, February 28, 2010
I'll Take One of Those with a Side of Effort
I hate eating oranges.
I'm not saying that I hate oranges. Especially when the millions of tiny liquid balloons in each section are filled to nearly bursting with sweet-enough juice, and you feel your health soar just from getting some of that squirting into your mouth. But they are such a pain to eat that I rarely do. Even my Christmas orange--which should go into my stomach ahead of all the chocolate accompanying it in my stocking, if there is a mother's voice (Mom's or mine) anywhere in my head--sometimes gets overlooked until it rots.
I only have four things against oranges. You have to peel them. The skin is often so tough that a thumbnail gets pulled away from the skin enough to hurt for a couple of days and need to be band-aided back together tightly like a fresh tree grafting. They are surrounded by tough fiber, which, I know, is good for me. But still. And they are messy. I can never eat oranges without completely soaking my hands, and maybe my desk, because--let's face it--a paper towel is no protection from an orange. Often, they have seeds, which is a trial all its own.
Despite all of these very good, very true arguments, three days in a row this past week, I chose to eat an orange before eating anything else that day. (Did you note that, angels? That should make up for the past three Christmases.)
A health problem keeping me from working out in all ways but one (walking) for the past five months has made me lose a lot of ground, fitness-wise. (And made me gain a lot in another way that I really don't want to mention.) The past few weeks as I've worked to reclimb the fitness mountain I have been sliding down, I've made endurance and strength gains, but I haven't made progress in terms of the thing I don't want to mention.
I'm finally at the point where I can face the fact that I need to eat less, and smarter. And that food should be harder to eat than it is. Over the past eight weeks, I've busted my buttons to work up what I can burn off on an elliptical to 450 calories a day--still half of what I used to burn before I popped an artery. Yet, give me a frosted sweet roll, and I can easily down 450 calories in five minutes, with hardly any effort at all!
The easier something is to eat, the more likely we will reach for it. These days, an American can easily fill up every day without ever getting out a mixing bowl or turning on a stove.
A hundred years ago, you might eat a treat, but you would most likely first have to prepare it. Which didn't mean tearing open a box, adding water, and baking. It could have involved measuring out each single ingredient. Maybe even preparing the ingredients separately before adding them. Maybe even growing, grinding, shelling, churning, paring, chopping, hunting, gutting, plucking, picking, or kneading it. I finally realized more fully that nature intended us to burn a few calories before we can shovel any in.
This principle is not at all subtly illustrated by the movie WALL-E, where people spend their whole lives sitting down and shoveling in calories in the easiest way possible--drinking something that is all ready to drink. I know from experience that nothing flows down the throat more easily than a hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream. In this futuristic film, food has been processed to the point that it is completely unrecognizable and not dealt with by human hands, and humans have evolved to a huge water balloon shape and size and barely possess any bones anymore. Sad but true commentary, I find.
So, until we ran out of oranges at home, I peeled back my orange skins, dug through tough membranes with my fingernails to release seeds, soiled my fingers and desk, and chewed my way through more orange sections than I really wanted, to begin my feeding each day. Then stood up, walked to the sink, and washed off my hands, tasting orange juice in my mouth and feeling healthier already.
I'm not saying that I hate oranges. Especially when the millions of tiny liquid balloons in each section are filled to nearly bursting with sweet-enough juice, and you feel your health soar just from getting some of that squirting into your mouth. But they are such a pain to eat that I rarely do. Even my Christmas orange--which should go into my stomach ahead of all the chocolate accompanying it in my stocking, if there is a mother's voice (Mom's or mine) anywhere in my head--sometimes gets overlooked until it rots.
I only have four things against oranges. You have to peel them. The skin is often so tough that a thumbnail gets pulled away from the skin enough to hurt for a couple of days and need to be band-aided back together tightly like a fresh tree grafting. They are surrounded by tough fiber, which, I know, is good for me. But still. And they are messy. I can never eat oranges without completely soaking my hands, and maybe my desk, because--let's face it--a paper towel is no protection from an orange. Often, they have seeds, which is a trial all its own.
Despite all of these very good, very true arguments, three days in a row this past week, I chose to eat an orange before eating anything else that day. (Did you note that, angels? That should make up for the past three Christmases.)
A health problem keeping me from working out in all ways but one (walking) for the past five months has made me lose a lot of ground, fitness-wise. (And made me gain a lot in another way that I really don't want to mention.) The past few weeks as I've worked to reclimb the fitness mountain I have been sliding down, I've made endurance and strength gains, but I haven't made progress in terms of the thing I don't want to mention.
I'm finally at the point where I can face the fact that I need to eat less, and smarter. And that food should be harder to eat than it is. Over the past eight weeks, I've busted my buttons to work up what I can burn off on an elliptical to 450 calories a day--still half of what I used to burn before I popped an artery. Yet, give me a frosted sweet roll, and I can easily down 450 calories in five minutes, with hardly any effort at all!
The easier something is to eat, the more likely we will reach for it. These days, an American can easily fill up every day without ever getting out a mixing bowl or turning on a stove.
A hundred years ago, you might eat a treat, but you would most likely first have to prepare it. Which didn't mean tearing open a box, adding water, and baking. It could have involved measuring out each single ingredient. Maybe even preparing the ingredients separately before adding them. Maybe even growing, grinding, shelling, churning, paring, chopping, hunting, gutting, plucking, picking, or kneading it. I finally realized more fully that nature intended us to burn a few calories before we can shovel any in.
This principle is not at all subtly illustrated by the movie WALL-E, where people spend their whole lives sitting down and shoveling in calories in the easiest way possible--drinking something that is all ready to drink. I know from experience that nothing flows down the throat more easily than a hot chocolate loaded with whipped cream. In this futuristic film, food has been processed to the point that it is completely unrecognizable and not dealt with by human hands, and humans have evolved to a huge water balloon shape and size and barely possess any bones anymore. Sad but true commentary, I find.
So, until we ran out of oranges at home, I peeled back my orange skins, dug through tough membranes with my fingernails to release seeds, soiled my fingers and desk, and chewed my way through more orange sections than I really wanted, to begin my feeding each day. Then stood up, walked to the sink, and washed off my hands, tasting orange juice in my mouth and feeling healthier already.
Friday, February 19, 2010
The Picture Emerges
Recently, I rediscovered counted cross-stitching. My family stared in amazement as I began to bring a picture to life on a plain burlap canvas. It's not their fault they couldn't believe it--I haven't done counted cross-stitching for twenty years, and everything I did in the past, I gave away as presents. It's amazing how twenty years can go by like that.
Anyway, my artistic nine-year-old was most interested. Shyly, he sidled up to my bed as I drew my pattern and asked if I were going to sew right on the paper. I explained that it was just a pattern to follow when I actually sewed onto material.
He didn't get it.
When I did start stitching the words, he was back, interested in every step and encouraging me every fifteen minutes. "That's really starting to come together," he said thirty times over the course of the work.
Because of his curiosity, I showed him how I made the X's, how I always did the upper left to lower right stitch first, then the upper right to lower left stitch over it, to make it look uniform. He could see on his own that using slightly different shades deepened the realism of the flowers and how outlining them made them pop.
He stayed interested over the four weeks it took to complete the picture, asking what color I was doing next, and what color I was going to outline the yellow with. I modified what I'd heard is a carpenter's motto: measure twice, cut once, to count twice, stitch once.
Despite this, he got to watch me unpick my work several times.
"See?" I'd show him. "I was supposed to start this row here. But I got mixed up."
"That's a lot of counting," he commiserated.
As I worked over the hundreds of individual stitches, trying to do each one correctly, I found myself talking to my son about how each stitch is like each action in life. One stitch doesn't seem like much in the big picture, but for the end result to come out right, each needs to be done correctly. If I start doing some of it wrong, I could mess up a whole part of the picture.
I thought about how all the tiny actions of each day--washing the same kitchen counter over and over, folding the same clothes into the same drawers, reaching out a hand to take the sacrament each week, flossing your teeth--all contribute to a life well lived. When small things are taken care of, bigger things fall into place.
I talked to him about that being like repentance: you have to undo what you did wrong and try to do it right from then on. If you don't correct as you go along, bigger parts of your life could turn out wrong, or off, or not the same as they would have.
Then I thought about the pattern being like the scriptures and other gospel teachings. You are supposed to look at it in order to know what to do. If you don't look at it carefully and correctly, you find you're off on the wrong thing or in the wrong way. You could miss the boat, so to speak.
Often, when I am carefully following the pattern, the stitches I am making don't look right to me. Surely doing that curve way up there will make the "e" look funny, and I think I should be making stitches a row lower, or in some way different than the pattern. I just can't see how following the pattern is going to make things turn out right.
But when I'm done, it does look right, and I marvel at how fallible my own unaided eyes are, how silly my finished picture would look if I just used my own judgment and didn't trust the pattern.
That's how I know that doing things the scriptures teach us that seem counter-intuitive--like turning the other cheek, forgiving an enemy, keeping a commandment in a sticky situation--actually result in a better life picture than anything we could have done, simply looking at a blank canvas, on our own, and doing what seems best at the time.
Anyway, my artistic nine-year-old was most interested. Shyly, he sidled up to my bed as I drew my pattern and asked if I were going to sew right on the paper. I explained that it was just a pattern to follow when I actually sewed onto material.
He didn't get it.
When I did start stitching the words, he was back, interested in every step and encouraging me every fifteen minutes. "That's really starting to come together," he said thirty times over the course of the work.
Because of his curiosity, I showed him how I made the X's, how I always did the upper left to lower right stitch first, then the upper right to lower left stitch over it, to make it look uniform. He could see on his own that using slightly different shades deepened the realism of the flowers and how outlining them made them pop.
He stayed interested over the four weeks it took to complete the picture, asking what color I was doing next, and what color I was going to outline the yellow with. I modified what I'd heard is a carpenter's motto: measure twice, cut once, to count twice, stitch once.
Despite this, he got to watch me unpick my work several times.
"See?" I'd show him. "I was supposed to start this row here. But I got mixed up."
"That's a lot of counting," he commiserated.
As I worked over the hundreds of individual stitches, trying to do each one correctly, I found myself talking to my son about how each stitch is like each action in life. One stitch doesn't seem like much in the big picture, but for the end result to come out right, each needs to be done correctly. If I start doing some of it wrong, I could mess up a whole part of the picture.
I thought about how all the tiny actions of each day--washing the same kitchen counter over and over, folding the same clothes into the same drawers, reaching out a hand to take the sacrament each week, flossing your teeth--all contribute to a life well lived. When small things are taken care of, bigger things fall into place.
I talked to him about that being like repentance: you have to undo what you did wrong and try to do it right from then on. If you don't correct as you go along, bigger parts of your life could turn out wrong, or off, or not the same as they would have.
Then I thought about the pattern being like the scriptures and other gospel teachings. You are supposed to look at it in order to know what to do. If you don't look at it carefully and correctly, you find you're off on the wrong thing or in the wrong way. You could miss the boat, so to speak.
Often, when I am carefully following the pattern, the stitches I am making don't look right to me. Surely doing that curve way up there will make the "e" look funny, and I think I should be making stitches a row lower, or in some way different than the pattern. I just can't see how following the pattern is going to make things turn out right.
But when I'm done, it does look right, and I marvel at how fallible my own unaided eyes are, how silly my finished picture would look if I just used my own judgment and didn't trust the pattern.
That's how I know that doing things the scriptures teach us that seem counter-intuitive--like turning the other cheek, forgiving an enemy, keeping a commandment in a sticky situation--actually result in a better life picture than anything we could have done, simply looking at a blank canvas, on our own, and doing what seems best at the time.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Fun (or not) at the Gym
At the gym, I am the middle-aged woman wearing the frumpy maternity clothes that (thank goodness) don't fit me anymore.
I have some real workout clothes, but those don't fit me anymore, either. (Different reason.)
But I do stay within my own space.
I will never put my foot up practically on your machine in order to stretch, or show you my gym shoes, or whatever it is that those people who do that are doing.
I will never snort out into the air every 26 seconds whatever bits of moisture have accumulated in my left nostril. (I was impressed with her--she was running 8 miles per hour. But I was glad I was on the machine to her right.)
I do not unpack a suitcase and two carry-ons onto one of the too-few treadmills at peak time and then go off to do who knows what for a half hour. By the way, I am glad we are finally done with the first couple of weeks in January when the parking lot and machines are filled by 5:00 a.m. with pretenders.
I will not assault your eyes by wearing a muscle shirt that would only fit me if I were eight feet tall. And I will not wear the same green muscle shirt that there can only be one of in the whole world every day in a row.
I will not lift weights too heavy for me, causing me to grunt, scream, or yelp, then throw the weights onto the ground. I do not want attention this much. In fact, at the gym, I don't want any attention at all. I cannot tell you how tempted I am to give the guys who do this some of the attention they crave. Only, my version would be to say, "You know, they make those weights adjustable so that you can lift only what you can handle."
I will not wear so little that I reveal ugly tattoos. Mostly because I don't have any. My flesh is failing to be beautiful fast enough on its own, thank you.
And I will not talk your ear off, whether or not you have an iPod.
I will not sing.
I am far too busy doing fractions in my head, figuring percentages, calculating how many calories I will be burning that day, and/or noticing each one of my children's birthdates and birth times go by on the clock. I may be weird in my own special way, but I will not bother you.
I will also not throw open the shower curtain on you when it is already closed. Somebody actually did that to me one time, and then I had to spend ten minutes apologizing to her, because, while asking her what she was doing, I said a bad word. Not a really bad word, just a mildly bad word, but still one I never say. Outside my head. Unless I'm discussing the afterlife.
The worst moment I had at the gym, though, I brought on myself.
At my gym, the showers are in the innermost recesses of a labyrinth, about a mile from the front (and only) door. One day, I must have been feeling pretty invincible after completing my 900 calories in record time or something, because after peeling off my sopping wet shirt, sports bra, socks, and pants, I grabbed my razor by the blades.
Far from invincible, I was spurting blood from the twin blade cuts on my fingers.
The bleeding was bad. Really bad. I held my fingers tightly with my other hand, hoping and praying that the bleeding would slow down and stop so I could shower and dress. There was to be no solution ahead of that, because I was a) completely naked and b) stinking like an aviary, and I could not just walk back out to the front desk to ask for a Band-Aid.
No, I had not brought my own Band-Aids. Good idea, though.
Which brings me to my list of the worst things to be without at the gym, assuming you came dressed for the gym and have to be dressed for work when leaving, like me. Just over a year ago, the gym around the corner from my house closed down. This was the first direct effect of the faltering economy on my life. My husband and I had had our own private economic crisis a couple of years before. We're such trend-setters.
So, I started going to a gym halfway between home and work, requiring me to pack up enough to get ready for work afterward. From personal experience, these are the fourteen worst things to forget to take to the gym:
14. Scrubbie. Not really a problem--just use your hands.
13. Razor. Just skip a day.
12. Band-Aid. See above.
11. Soap or shampoo. You can use the soap at the gym. When they have it. If you want to smell like a man, that is. If they don't supply any soap and you didn't bring any either, this moves to, oh, I'd say, number one.
10. Socks. No problem. Stop at Smith's on the way to work and buy some more. I bought a three-pack and stashed two of the pairs at work, so I'm all set now for the next two times.
9. Makeup. This would depend on how addicted you are to wearing it and how bad your complexion is that day. It might be a go-home-and-get-it thing.
8. Mousse and/or gel. I have never forgotten mousse or gel. Interesting, that.
7. Comb or brush. Not having a comb makes for a creative hairstyle, or part, at least. I can use my round brush for combing, but not for parting. If I forget my round brush, I can sort of use my comb to style my hair while drying it. Actually, not so much.
6. Blow dryer. My daughter and I used to share a blow dryer during the week, and there were times when she forgot to put it back in my gym bag after using it on a week night. When it broke down (probably from the stress), my husband and I both accidentally bought a new one, so now I have my own, and it stays in my gym bag. But when I did find myself without one, I turned up the nozzle on the hand dryer and dried my hair that way. It gave it kind of a funny Pippy Longstocking type of curl, but it got my hair dry.
5. Bra. No problem--except that you have to go home and get it and be late. No question there. Except for the day that, with the outfit I had on, I honestly couldn't tell as I scrutinized myself in the mirror while drying my hair. And I knew no client would see me that day. I would be holed up in my office by myself, anyway. Don't think too much about what I just said.
4. Shoes. You have to go back home for these. Unless you brought boots or some other substitute. Which I never have.
3. Shirt. I used my jacket to get out of the gym with. Then I wore my work sweater, zipped up, during the day. Fortunately, it looked okay with the skirt I had on. How did I forget my shirt? I had grabbed the shorts that go with that shirt instead of the shirt itself. So, I had shorts and a skirt, but no shirt. I considered wearing the shorts on my top part, but that consideration was short-lived.
2. Underwear is a go-home-and-get-it-and-be-late thing. Although someone at the gym told me she made her husband bring it to her at the gym. My husband and I don't have that kind of time.
1. Based on my experience, the number one worst thing to not have at the gym is: a towel. At my gym, there are no paper towels, so you can't even improvise. There's only one of those hand blower things, and it's down the hall and around the corner--approximately a block--from the showers. So there's no way I'm going to run down there and try to dry off in front of that. Maybe if I didn't have a seven-baby belly, I wouldn't be so modest, but, nah. Standing in the shower dripping wet, you have to do some really creative thinking when you find you have no towel if you ever want to get from there to dressed and walking past the dozens of people between you and the door. Twice, I used my coat because my workout clothes were soaked with sweat. Last time, I had only walked, so my pants were not soaked. I used them. But, believe me, toweling off with workout clothing is far from satisfactory, and I don't recommend it.
I have some real workout clothes, but those don't fit me anymore, either. (Different reason.)
But I do stay within my own space.
I will never put my foot up practically on your machine in order to stretch, or show you my gym shoes, or whatever it is that those people who do that are doing.
I will never snort out into the air every 26 seconds whatever bits of moisture have accumulated in my left nostril. (I was impressed with her--she was running 8 miles per hour. But I was glad I was on the machine to her right.)
I do not unpack a suitcase and two carry-ons onto one of the too-few treadmills at peak time and then go off to do who knows what for a half hour. By the way, I am glad we are finally done with the first couple of weeks in January when the parking lot and machines are filled by 5:00 a.m. with pretenders.
I will not assault your eyes by wearing a muscle shirt that would only fit me if I were eight feet tall. And I will not wear the same green muscle shirt that there can only be one of in the whole world every day in a row.
I will not lift weights too heavy for me, causing me to grunt, scream, or yelp, then throw the weights onto the ground. I do not want attention this much. In fact, at the gym, I don't want any attention at all. I cannot tell you how tempted I am to give the guys who do this some of the attention they crave. Only, my version would be to say, "You know, they make those weights adjustable so that you can lift only what you can handle."
I will not wear so little that I reveal ugly tattoos. Mostly because I don't have any. My flesh is failing to be beautiful fast enough on its own, thank you.
And I will not talk your ear off, whether or not you have an iPod.
I will not sing.
I am far too busy doing fractions in my head, figuring percentages, calculating how many calories I will be burning that day, and/or noticing each one of my children's birthdates and birth times go by on the clock. I may be weird in my own special way, but I will not bother you.
I will also not throw open the shower curtain on you when it is already closed. Somebody actually did that to me one time, and then I had to spend ten minutes apologizing to her, because, while asking her what she was doing, I said a bad word. Not a really bad word, just a mildly bad word, but still one I never say. Outside my head. Unless I'm discussing the afterlife.
The worst moment I had at the gym, though, I brought on myself.
At my gym, the showers are in the innermost recesses of a labyrinth, about a mile from the front (and only) door. One day, I must have been feeling pretty invincible after completing my 900 calories in record time or something, because after peeling off my sopping wet shirt, sports bra, socks, and pants, I grabbed my razor by the blades.
Far from invincible, I was spurting blood from the twin blade cuts on my fingers.
The bleeding was bad. Really bad. I held my fingers tightly with my other hand, hoping and praying that the bleeding would slow down and stop so I could shower and dress. There was to be no solution ahead of that, because I was a) completely naked and b) stinking like an aviary, and I could not just walk back out to the front desk to ask for a Band-Aid.
No, I had not brought my own Band-Aids. Good idea, though.
Which brings me to my list of the worst things to be without at the gym, assuming you came dressed for the gym and have to be dressed for work when leaving, like me. Just over a year ago, the gym around the corner from my house closed down. This was the first direct effect of the faltering economy on my life. My husband and I had had our own private economic crisis a couple of years before. We're such trend-setters.
So, I started going to a gym halfway between home and work, requiring me to pack up enough to get ready for work afterward. From personal experience, these are the fourteen worst things to forget to take to the gym:
14. Scrubbie. Not really a problem--just use your hands.
13. Razor. Just skip a day.
12. Band-Aid. See above.
11. Soap or shampoo. You can use the soap at the gym. When they have it. If you want to smell like a man, that is. If they don't supply any soap and you didn't bring any either, this moves to, oh, I'd say, number one.
10. Socks. No problem. Stop at Smith's on the way to work and buy some more. I bought a three-pack and stashed two of the pairs at work, so I'm all set now for the next two times.
9. Makeup. This would depend on how addicted you are to wearing it and how bad your complexion is that day. It might be a go-home-and-get-it thing.
8. Mousse and/or gel. I have never forgotten mousse or gel. Interesting, that.
7. Comb or brush. Not having a comb makes for a creative hairstyle, or part, at least. I can use my round brush for combing, but not for parting. If I forget my round brush, I can sort of use my comb to style my hair while drying it. Actually, not so much.
6. Blow dryer. My daughter and I used to share a blow dryer during the week, and there were times when she forgot to put it back in my gym bag after using it on a week night. When it broke down (probably from the stress), my husband and I both accidentally bought a new one, so now I have my own, and it stays in my gym bag. But when I did find myself without one, I turned up the nozzle on the hand dryer and dried my hair that way. It gave it kind of a funny Pippy Longstocking type of curl, but it got my hair dry.
5. Bra. No problem--except that you have to go home and get it and be late. No question there. Except for the day that, with the outfit I had on, I honestly couldn't tell as I scrutinized myself in the mirror while drying my hair. And I knew no client would see me that day. I would be holed up in my office by myself, anyway. Don't think too much about what I just said.
4. Shoes. You have to go back home for these. Unless you brought boots or some other substitute. Which I never have.
3. Shirt. I used my jacket to get out of the gym with. Then I wore my work sweater, zipped up, during the day. Fortunately, it looked okay with the skirt I had on. How did I forget my shirt? I had grabbed the shorts that go with that shirt instead of the shirt itself. So, I had shorts and a skirt, but no shirt. I considered wearing the shorts on my top part, but that consideration was short-lived.
2. Underwear is a go-home-and-get-it-and-be-late thing. Although someone at the gym told me she made her husband bring it to her at the gym. My husband and I don't have that kind of time.
1. Based on my experience, the number one worst thing to not have at the gym is: a towel. At my gym, there are no paper towels, so you can't even improvise. There's only one of those hand blower things, and it's down the hall and around the corner--approximately a block--from the showers. So there's no way I'm going to run down there and try to dry off in front of that. Maybe if I didn't have a seven-baby belly, I wouldn't be so modest, but, nah. Standing in the shower dripping wet, you have to do some really creative thinking when you find you have no towel if you ever want to get from there to dressed and walking past the dozens of people between you and the door. Twice, I used my coat because my workout clothes were soaked with sweat. Last time, I had only walked, so my pants were not soaked. I used them. But, believe me, toweling off with workout clothing is far from satisfactory, and I don't recommend it.
Friday, January 15, 2010
I Hear a Song Coming On. . .
At my suggestion, my son gave us a set of new cordless phones for Christmas. Half of the number segments on our old phone's LCD screen had burned out, so you couldn't tell who was calling on the caller ID, and you certainly couldn't get people's numbers and call them back. Our area code looked like 571, which would be Virginia, where we know no one, so we couldn't even tell if it was a local number. There were a lot of static and interference on the old phone, too. I could somehow hear my toddler in his high chair echoing through the phone better than I could hear the caller.
I like the new phones. Really. Even though the sexy disembodied voice that came with the phone set to announce who is calling doesn't know how to pronounce anyone's name, and her guesses are not even close. The replacement was very much needed.
The thing i didn't know at first is that the new phones don't ring. They play a song. It's not a tune I recognize, so I can't sing along.
This seems to be the new way of the world. No longer do we have buzzers, bells, and beeps, we hear songs. My cell phone plays a song when it rings. My new home phone plays a song when it rings. Even my new dryer plays a song.
The problem is keeping all these songs straight. I don't know words to any of the tunes, or that might help.
The beeps, rings, and buzzes of yesteryear, I would recognize immediately. When you're simply minding your own business and a song starts playing in your vicinity, it can be slightly disorienting.
Imagine. Last night while I was in bed, my dryer was running and I was expecting a call on my home phone, when my cell phone started ringing.
I sat up, stupidly thinking, "I hear music." I jumped out of bed, trying through my sleepiness to analyze the tune I was hearing. It didn't sound like my dryer. It was a minute before I a) realized through the process of elimination that it must be my cell phone, and b) found my cell phone.
I suppose I should try to get used to the idea that inanimate objects all around me will randomly start singing at me. And pray that there's never a time in my future life when every gadget I own is programmed to play the same tune.
I like the new phones. Really. Even though the sexy disembodied voice that came with the phone set to announce who is calling doesn't know how to pronounce anyone's name, and her guesses are not even close. The replacement was very much needed.
The thing i didn't know at first is that the new phones don't ring. They play a song. It's not a tune I recognize, so I can't sing along.
This seems to be the new way of the world. No longer do we have buzzers, bells, and beeps, we hear songs. My cell phone plays a song when it rings. My new home phone plays a song when it rings. Even my new dryer plays a song.
The problem is keeping all these songs straight. I don't know words to any of the tunes, or that might help.
The beeps, rings, and buzzes of yesteryear, I would recognize immediately. When you're simply minding your own business and a song starts playing in your vicinity, it can be slightly disorienting.
Imagine. Last night while I was in bed, my dryer was running and I was expecting a call on my home phone, when my cell phone started ringing.
I sat up, stupidly thinking, "I hear music." I jumped out of bed, trying through my sleepiness to analyze the tune I was hearing. It didn't sound like my dryer. It was a minute before I a) realized through the process of elimination that it must be my cell phone, and b) found my cell phone.
I suppose I should try to get used to the idea that inanimate objects all around me will randomly start singing at me. And pray that there's never a time in my future life when every gadget I own is programmed to play the same tune.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Notes from the Worthless, Wide-Necked Naming Novice Drama Queen
"She has a wide neck." This statement was inserted in the middle of the write-up I got in the mail from my neurologist. I was reading along, with vague amusement, his version of the things I'd told him about my symptoms and family history and his assessment of my condition, when I came across that statement, which seemed to come out of nowhere.
Really? I wondered. I walked into the bathroom to check out my wide neck in the mirror. My neck didn't look wide. It looked the same as it always does. It's there to hold up my head, and, thankfully, I don't have to think about it much beyond that. I turned a little bit this way, then that way. I wouldn't call it a skinny neck, but I wouldn't call it a wide neck, either. When I was in really good shape from weight lifting, my neck might have been slightly wide, as it was as muscular as everything else. But, alas, that was years ago.
I checked the write-up for context. Maybe having a wide neck meant I did or didn't have some kind of syndrome, or was medically significant in some other way. If there was context, I missed it. The statement was just simply stuck between a discussion of how many of my relatives had similar medical issues and that I appeared to be my stated age (now that hurt).
For the most part, I forgot about it.
Then, I found a cool website that shows you how popular different given names have been over the past century. I amused myself with putting in names like Stephen and Douglas, then watching them get dwarfed on the graph by the mega-popular name David. This site was so much fun for me that I found myself exploring its other information and taking a quiz.
I've been interested in and studied names since I was a little girl. I'm pretty familiar with the history and popularity of various names. I kept a list of names I liked to which I added and subtracted as I grew up. I had my own children named long before they were born.
But, at the end of taking this 10-question quiz, I was informed that I was a "naming novice." Okay, there were a couple of things that I had not been sure about and had guessed on--and they had nothing to do with the history of given names in America, by the way, but naming novice? There could hardly be a more insulting allegation about me! After all, there are seven people walking around on this planet whom I named.
So, I did some research on the things I didn't know and took the quiz again. I may have gotten carried away and taken the quiz ten or twelve times. No matter what I changed the answers to, the result was the same. "You are a naming novice." I finally concluded that, not only had the person who created the quiz probably not named seven people, he also didn't know what the word "novice" means.
That experience also failed to affect my opinion of myself.
Then I found out someone's been waiting twenty-one years to call me a drama queen, based on a necessary flight I made from an ex that long ago. Because this person has been loved by me since I've known her, I gave more thought to this characterization. There's no question that things were dramatic back then, although that was not my idea, and I was so reluctant to tell anyone anything that no one knew of my plight until a sister gently dragged it out of me. Nevertheless, this person is entitled to her opinion.
We all have blind spots, and I could be missing things about myself, just like everyone sometimes does, but I do self-examine. Probably too much. I hardly ever have an interaction with anyone after which, unless I'm sure my behavior was Miss Manners perfect, I don't review it and wonder what I could have done better.
I harass my best friends and husband all the time with questions about my role in interactions. Ask them.
I do know a person or two who never self-evaluate. They are always the hero or victim in every story they tell, and even something like picking out the napkins for a party can be a huge, interesting (so they assume) ordeal. (Now, there's a drama queen.) People like this can never see their role in conflicts. Their polarization of their own roles leaves little room for them to be just humans, humbly doing their best and learning as they go.
So, I guess when I'm through sorting through the question of how much our self-image comes from within and how much it comes from other people's opinions of and behavior toward us, I'll slough this one off, also. If I can gather truth from it, maybe it will change me for the better.
If there is no truth in someone's evaluation of you and you spend too much time on it, though, it could do harm. There has to be a balance.
Someone anonymously texted me a while ago the words, "You know you're worthless. Why don't you just kill yourself?" No, that's not the kind of friend I cultivate. In fact, no one texts me. It was possibly something that got lost on its way through cyberspace. And it was definitely something that I didn't feel described me at all. After much thought and a little good advice, I responded, "It's sure good to know that you're alive." I mean, that sort of statement has to be about the sender's struggles. It sure wasn't reflective of anything in me.
And so, many of the messages we receive from others are about them, not us. We need to strengthen our inner judgment to where we can tell what to incorporate from feedback and what to ignore.
As we sift past and move around each other, we inescapably affect each other. I think this is the way it's supposed to be. We constantly have the opportunity to supply truth. Sometimes it's needed, and hard to do. Just as important, I think, is the opportunity to bring the grace and mercy of a needed kindness to a person. Which can be even harder to do. But it can make sensitive people reflect just as much, and less defensively, than a harsh truth can.
Really? I wondered. I walked into the bathroom to check out my wide neck in the mirror. My neck didn't look wide. It looked the same as it always does. It's there to hold up my head, and, thankfully, I don't have to think about it much beyond that. I turned a little bit this way, then that way. I wouldn't call it a skinny neck, but I wouldn't call it a wide neck, either. When I was in really good shape from weight lifting, my neck might have been slightly wide, as it was as muscular as everything else. But, alas, that was years ago.
I checked the write-up for context. Maybe having a wide neck meant I did or didn't have some kind of syndrome, or was medically significant in some other way. If there was context, I missed it. The statement was just simply stuck between a discussion of how many of my relatives had similar medical issues and that I appeared to be my stated age (now that hurt).
For the most part, I forgot about it.
Then, I found a cool website that shows you how popular different given names have been over the past century. I amused myself with putting in names like Stephen and Douglas, then watching them get dwarfed on the graph by the mega-popular name David. This site was so much fun for me that I found myself exploring its other information and taking a quiz.
I've been interested in and studied names since I was a little girl. I'm pretty familiar with the history and popularity of various names. I kept a list of names I liked to which I added and subtracted as I grew up. I had my own children named long before they were born.
But, at the end of taking this 10-question quiz, I was informed that I was a "naming novice." Okay, there were a couple of things that I had not been sure about and had guessed on--and they had nothing to do with the history of given names in America, by the way, but naming novice? There could hardly be a more insulting allegation about me! After all, there are seven people walking around on this planet whom I named.
So, I did some research on the things I didn't know and took the quiz again. I may have gotten carried away and taken the quiz ten or twelve times. No matter what I changed the answers to, the result was the same. "You are a naming novice." I finally concluded that, not only had the person who created the quiz probably not named seven people, he also didn't know what the word "novice" means.
That experience also failed to affect my opinion of myself.
Then I found out someone's been waiting twenty-one years to call me a drama queen, based on a necessary flight I made from an ex that long ago. Because this person has been loved by me since I've known her, I gave more thought to this characterization. There's no question that things were dramatic back then, although that was not my idea, and I was so reluctant to tell anyone anything that no one knew of my plight until a sister gently dragged it out of me. Nevertheless, this person is entitled to her opinion.
We all have blind spots, and I could be missing things about myself, just like everyone sometimes does, but I do self-examine. Probably too much. I hardly ever have an interaction with anyone after which, unless I'm sure my behavior was Miss Manners perfect, I don't review it and wonder what I could have done better.
I harass my best friends and husband all the time with questions about my role in interactions. Ask them.
I do know a person or two who never self-evaluate. They are always the hero or victim in every story they tell, and even something like picking out the napkins for a party can be a huge, interesting (so they assume) ordeal. (Now, there's a drama queen.) People like this can never see their role in conflicts. Their polarization of their own roles leaves little room for them to be just humans, humbly doing their best and learning as they go.
So, I guess when I'm through sorting through the question of how much our self-image comes from within and how much it comes from other people's opinions of and behavior toward us, I'll slough this one off, also. If I can gather truth from it, maybe it will change me for the better.
If there is no truth in someone's evaluation of you and you spend too much time on it, though, it could do harm. There has to be a balance.
Someone anonymously texted me a while ago the words, "You know you're worthless. Why don't you just kill yourself?" No, that's not the kind of friend I cultivate. In fact, no one texts me. It was possibly something that got lost on its way through cyberspace. And it was definitely something that I didn't feel described me at all. After much thought and a little good advice, I responded, "It's sure good to know that you're alive." I mean, that sort of statement has to be about the sender's struggles. It sure wasn't reflective of anything in me.
And so, many of the messages we receive from others are about them, not us. We need to strengthen our inner judgment to where we can tell what to incorporate from feedback and what to ignore.
As we sift past and move around each other, we inescapably affect each other. I think this is the way it's supposed to be. We constantly have the opportunity to supply truth. Sometimes it's needed, and hard to do. Just as important, I think, is the opportunity to bring the grace and mercy of a needed kindness to a person. Which can be even harder to do. But it can make sensitive people reflect just as much, and less defensively, than a harsh truth can.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Dragon Slayers
The last thing a damsel in distress needs is to be misunderstood by those she needs most.
The closest modern-day version of a woman locked in a tower and guarded by a dragon is a captive of domestic violence.
I never heard in any fairy tale that the prince or anyone else ever asked the poor girl how she got herself locked up in a tower or told her that she had made her bed and should therefore lie in it. No, in fairy tales, everyone seems to clearly understand that someone forced her into the tower against her will and that she is precious enough to balance the risk and peril required to save her.
But nowadays, in our enlightened times, it seems more common to blame the victim. Why doesn't she just leave? Why did she get involved in that situation?
I doubt very much that anyone would accept a proposal of, "Will you give me legal right and physical power over you so that I can play power trips, demean or even enslave you, isolate you from your friends and family, and threaten your very survival?" I think in these situations the words said are somewhat different from the scenes that play out afterward.
Getting into an abusive relationship is more like walking along, minding your own business when wham! You're hanging upside-down by your foot from a tree, Gilligan's Island style. Or going to the Fun House because all your friends are going and you think it will be fun. But, once you are inside, everything becomes confusing, you can't see where your friends are, none of the doors works, the mirrors distort everything, scary things jump out at you, and you become gradually and correctly alarmed that you may not make it out of there alive.
An abuser turns up the heat gradually, like the story of the frogs in the pot who don't know they're getting cooked until it's too late.
Abusers start out seeming nice. Maybe they are even charming, or hurt, or helpless, or needy. No one shows their monster face right off the bat. One small thing that's somewhat disturbing happens. It often gets explained away, maybe in a manner that makes the partner doubt herself. Soon, the abuser's partner is following a trail of bread crumbs that leads him or her farther into the woods, away from what's normal. The ensuing isolation increases the abuser's control and leaves the victim with fewer resources for help. She may not be able to see that she is being slowly moved from the palace into the tower.
A clever abuser uses what is important to the partner against him or her. The stakes are high. The costs are even higher.
No one wants to believe they have married a monster. No one wants to believe the one they love and trust would hurt them, and mean it. If the victim, who has the most evidence of what's going on, can hardly believe what's happening, it's no wonder that it's hard for others outside of the situation to believe it.
Almost every domestic violence story reported includes reactions of loved ones caught in the headlights as well. "They were a nice couple." "I never would have guessed something like this could happen." "The guy I know isn't capable of this." "They had ups and downs just like everyone else."
But it happens all the time. Every week, there is some kind of domestic violence story in the local newspaper.
These days, there aren't a lot of heroes on white horses going around slaying the dragons.
Many brave victims have escaped and metamorphosed into survivors. Many victims have tried to "work it out" until the horrifying moment when they realize they ran out of time to solve the problem. Many have come to the realization they needed to escape but have not had a way to. Or started but did not get to finish. Some have turned to friends or family members with their desperate pieces of information. Some have written clues in notebooks, or on their own flesh.
These chinks in the storybook facade of their lives can sound strange, even unbelievable. So unlike what we want to believe is happening. Some damsels in distress have been scoffed at, turned away, called drama queens. The trick is remembering that these true stories are very unlike what the victim wants to be reality, too.
The epidemic is rampant. In some way, it will touch us all--through a sister, a neighbor, a granddaughter, a friend. So the question to ask ourselves is, are we going to be dragon slayers and help rid our society of this evil? Or will we be among those who miss the signs, and accidentally feed the dragons? There is not much middle ground.
The closest modern-day version of a woman locked in a tower and guarded by a dragon is a captive of domestic violence.
I never heard in any fairy tale that the prince or anyone else ever asked the poor girl how she got herself locked up in a tower or told her that she had made her bed and should therefore lie in it. No, in fairy tales, everyone seems to clearly understand that someone forced her into the tower against her will and that she is precious enough to balance the risk and peril required to save her.
But nowadays, in our enlightened times, it seems more common to blame the victim. Why doesn't she just leave? Why did she get involved in that situation?
I doubt very much that anyone would accept a proposal of, "Will you give me legal right and physical power over you so that I can play power trips, demean or even enslave you, isolate you from your friends and family, and threaten your very survival?" I think in these situations the words said are somewhat different from the scenes that play out afterward.
Getting into an abusive relationship is more like walking along, minding your own business when wham! You're hanging upside-down by your foot from a tree, Gilligan's Island style. Or going to the Fun House because all your friends are going and you think it will be fun. But, once you are inside, everything becomes confusing, you can't see where your friends are, none of the doors works, the mirrors distort everything, scary things jump out at you, and you become gradually and correctly alarmed that you may not make it out of there alive.
An abuser turns up the heat gradually, like the story of the frogs in the pot who don't know they're getting cooked until it's too late.
Abusers start out seeming nice. Maybe they are even charming, or hurt, or helpless, or needy. No one shows their monster face right off the bat. One small thing that's somewhat disturbing happens. It often gets explained away, maybe in a manner that makes the partner doubt herself. Soon, the abuser's partner is following a trail of bread crumbs that leads him or her farther into the woods, away from what's normal. The ensuing isolation increases the abuser's control and leaves the victim with fewer resources for help. She may not be able to see that she is being slowly moved from the palace into the tower.
A clever abuser uses what is important to the partner against him or her. The stakes are high. The costs are even higher.
No one wants to believe they have married a monster. No one wants to believe the one they love and trust would hurt them, and mean it. If the victim, who has the most evidence of what's going on, can hardly believe what's happening, it's no wonder that it's hard for others outside of the situation to believe it.
Almost every domestic violence story reported includes reactions of loved ones caught in the headlights as well. "They were a nice couple." "I never would have guessed something like this could happen." "The guy I know isn't capable of this." "They had ups and downs just like everyone else."
But it happens all the time. Every week, there is some kind of domestic violence story in the local newspaper.
These days, there aren't a lot of heroes on white horses going around slaying the dragons.
Many brave victims have escaped and metamorphosed into survivors. Many victims have tried to "work it out" until the horrifying moment when they realize they ran out of time to solve the problem. Many have come to the realization they needed to escape but have not had a way to. Or started but did not get to finish. Some have turned to friends or family members with their desperate pieces of information. Some have written clues in notebooks, or on their own flesh.
These chinks in the storybook facade of their lives can sound strange, even unbelievable. So unlike what we want to believe is happening. Some damsels in distress have been scoffed at, turned away, called drama queens. The trick is remembering that these true stories are very unlike what the victim wants to be reality, too.
The epidemic is rampant. In some way, it will touch us all--through a sister, a neighbor, a granddaughter, a friend. So the question to ask ourselves is, are we going to be dragon slayers and help rid our society of this evil? Or will we be among those who miss the signs, and accidentally feed the dragons? There is not much middle ground.
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