NF

Jung came up with a typology for describing how we function at any given time. You are probably familiar with the Myers-Briggs spin-off of his typology. Nowadays, people tend to think of this typology as a way of labelling people and their personality types. Jung did not see this framework as fixed but as fluid.

You can take a self-test here.

I may function as an extrovert in the office but more as an introvert after 5:00. I am sure I was INFP as a child, but now I am INFJ, the J having emerged as a coping mechanism. It’s my OCD. My need to organize and put everything in order, order, order comes from fear of what might happen if I let go and just function the way I used to function as a child. Very P. I was the quintessential lost daydreamer. The other kids heard the bell signaling the end of recess. I was at times so lost in thought that I did not hear it. I would look around me and suddenly notice the empty playground, then go into a panic as I raced to my classroom. My face turned beet red as I excused myself and slipped into my little desk to pick up on the lesson in progress.

There were other events in my childhood that left me with a need to feel in control.  Your type can shift more than once in your lifetime. It can shift as you move through different contexts and environments.  It can shift through the day.  But at any given time, you are functioning in one mode or another.  Whichever function is active in your conscious self, its opposite is alive and well in your Shadow.

In any case, I have noticed something. A lot of bloggers identify themselves as intuitive feelers. It makes sense, really. NFs are the writers, dramatists and artists of the world. While other types are out living life, we feel a burning need to interpret life. We are forever searching for the meaning behind it all.

This all came to mind as I was reading Yann Martel’s novel Self. Now there is a narrator cursed with the need to figure it all out. He calls it the existential monkey on his back.

I remember when I was about 8 or 9 sitting in the bathtub, which I did most mornings before school. My hair was so oily that washing it the night before a schoolday wasn’t enough. I had to wash it every single morning or it was stringy and gross. My mother had left the bathroom, leaving behind a choking, nose-stinging cloud of Aquanet. I was looking down at my legs and thinking that one day fifty or sixty or seventy years hence, I would be in a bathtub just like this one, looking down on the same legs with the same eyes. I mean if God allowed me to live that long, I would. And because it WOULD one day happen, didn’t that mean that in some sense, it already had happened? Was time really linear?

Everywhere I went, if there was time for my mind to settle, it always settled on the meaning of life. Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? What does God want from me? Does it really matter if I live or die? Do I matter? What if I kill someone? Does that really matter? I’d go to prison and someone would be dead. But does it matter?

These questions came to me in every bathroom stall, every night before drifting off to sleep, every morning before the fog of dreamland lifted.

I don’t know which was the bigger shock: finding out there were others who are plagued day in and day out by the same existential monkey, or discovering there are people who are NOT haunted day and night by these burning questions.

There are times when I would like to be one of those other people…for just one day.

Second Sunday

Here are some images from our Sunday.

 

This was one of four or five deer moving together through the woods. Mama deer crossed the path; the rest of the family hung back, wanting to follow her but afraid of us. We moved on as a couple with 2 children approached. I put my finger over my lips to alert them, then mouthed “DEER” so they might quiet down and have a chance to see the family of white-tails. They did.

Twenty Minutes Smarter

“I’m twenty minutes smarter than you,” Sylvain gloated this morning as we lay in bed after listening to NPR’s Weekend Edition.  Finally, finally, I had remembered to turn on the radio and find the Detroit public radio station in time to catch puzzle master Will Shortz.  I love that segment so much, Sylvain even ordered me the NPR puzzle mug with Shortz’s name incorporated into the puzzle.

This Week’s Challenge: From Henry Hook. Name a well-known movie in five letters, two syllables. The vowel sound in the first syllable is a short “i.” Change that vowel to a long “i” and phonetically, you’ll name another famous movie, in six letters. What movies are these?

About fifteen minutes after I’d turned off the radio, Sylvain noticed my gears turning.

“Whatcha’ thinking?”

“I’m trying to solve the puzzle,” I said.

“What was the clue again?” he asked.

I told him as much of the clue as I could remember, then went back to trying to solve it.  I was working my way through the alphabet and had made it as far as N.

“Got it,” Sylvain said.

I glowered.

“I hate you,” I announced calmly.

Sylvain proceeded to gloat.  And rub it in.  And snicker.  And gloat some more.

Twenty minutes smarter, my ass.

Movie Review: Sicko

I should confess before giving my impression of this film that I have been a Michael Moore fan from day one. I loved Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911. I’ve not seen Moore’s earlier works yet and have not read any of his books, though just seeing the front covers of them when I’m in a bookstore makes me smile: Stupid White Men; Dude, Where’s My Country?

This time Moore has outdone himself. In Sicko, Moore leaves behind the ambushing of CEOs by him and camera crew, which always felt somewhat amateurish, like a high school prank. He tones down the soapboxing and grandstanding to let the facts on tape shine through. There is still some voice-over by Moore, his sarcasm intact, but it’s better woven into the film and balanced with the words of others.

I appreciated Moore’s digging up tapes from the early 70s that reveal just where, when and how the HMO system was conceived and empowered, and by whom. Fascinating.

The director takes us on a journey from the good ol’ U S of A to Canada, Britain, France and finally to Cuba, taking us into hospitals, emergency waiting rooms, doctors’ offices. We get to chat with consumers of those countries’ health systems and with the doctors who work within them. If you are not already familiar with the way nationalized healthcare works in Britain and France, some of this stuff is going to blow you away.

I’m sure Castro or his people were just thrilled to give Moore permission to bring a handful of American patients–victims of the worst aspects of the American health care system–to a Cuban hospital for treatment. Yeah, maybe that was a bit contrived. But hey! Maybe that is the spit-in-the-face insult Americans need in order to wake the hell up.

I can’t imagine a Canadian being able to see the film without coming away feeling blessed to live where we live. And I can’t imagine an American seeing it without coming away wondering how on earth they can begin to fix a system that got hijacked a while back by capitalism gone mad.

Kikipotamus Meets Feather Man

I met Feather Man yesterday.  His real name is Ron.  Ron is a walking sculpture.  He wears a hat everywhere he goes, and from the top of this hat protrude straight up into the air several long twigs to which large bird feathers have been attached with string.  The effect is that of a tall feather garden growing out of the top of his head.  Yes, yes, I must start taking my camera with me again.  Now that I’m somewhat settled in, I shall resume that habit.

Being out of the house all day yesterday seemed to help my mood.  I hung out downtown with my bike and came back with Sylvain after he finished work.

I can now see a pattern.  If I stay here around the house, I get very down.  The exception is the day I told Ma that I would like to make supper for everyone.  That day I was totally focused on a) finding the recipes I wanted to tackle, b) doing the grocery shopping and b) preparing the meal for that night.  That day I was in a giddy mood all day.  Happy, happy, cooking hippie.

Unless I have a specific project into which to pour my energy and focus, staying home is not good for me.  Mind you, there are zillions of chores for me to do…like continuing to unpack the few boxes of stuff I brought with me.  But where to start?  I get overwhelmed easily.

Before I could unpack my books, Sylvain and I had to decide where they would go.  Once that decision was made, I had to find new homes for the things that were to vacate the space he’s giving me.  Although Sylvain is being a real trooper about the changes to his lifestyle that come with shacking up with a WO-man, I still find the conversations and decision making process as anxiety-provoking as tiptoeing through a minefield.  Merging two households into one is not easy.  Merging two lifestyles is not easy.  One of us is in the habit of purging and does so with ease.  The other of us is a collector of souvenirs and memorabilia.  We each must compromise while trying not to hurt the other’s feelings.  What a delicate dance!

I’m geeked about tonight, though.  We couldn’t see Sicko as planned last Friday because the only showings were too early and too late.  But this week they have added more show times, so off we go.  A date! A date!  I love date nights.

When I Grow Up

I am only half-heartedly looking for a job right now.  This is because I have yet to fulfill the promise I made to myself and to my mother that I will visit her this year in Arkansas.  That trip can’t easily happen while little Owie is still in my care.  He is doing a bit better, by the way.  He took his medicine without any struggle this morning, licked it right from the tip of the syringe.  I guess he was hungry and the strawberry-flavoured antibiotic was better than nothing.  After that I filled his treat bowl with yam baby food and a slice of banana.

Oh, right. I was talking about jobs.

Every day I look at Job Bank Canada, Monster.ca and Workopolis.  Every Saturday Sylvain’s Ma gives me the classifieds section of the Windsor Star.  I keep my eyes open for Help Wanted signs in windows.  I inquired with a business that just opened around the corner to see if they were hiring.

From these daily searches, I’ve reached some conclusions.

If I were a MIG (metal inert gas) welder, I’d have a job already.   Millwrights are in demand here, as are truck drivers and mushroom pickers.  There are jobs for systems analysts and tech support people, but you need to know a bit about networks and hardware, not just software.  I only know software.  Many of those ads specify that you must have a car and be willing to travel.  Ugh.

Had I gotten my Masters of Library Science, I would be okay.  I didn’t.  There was not a Masters of Library Science program in Arkansas back when I needed one, perhaps there still isn’t.  My friend Scott was smart; he went to Austin to work on his degree.  I didn’t want to go to Texas or Oklahoma or Kansas.

When I was growing up, what did I want to be  when I got big?  Hmmmm.

I have always been an underachiever.  The earliest fantasy I can recall…I was seven or eight when I came up with this one…was of making a living as a beachcomber.  I would live in a shack the size of a tool shed and my most valuable possession would be my metal detector.  I would scan the sands each evening after the bathers and tourists went home.  I would take my finds to the local pawn shop and with the meager profit, I would buy a can of beans.

I would decorate my shanty with found objects and sea shells, colourful bits of beach glass.  I would not need locks or alarm systems, for I would own nothing worth stealing.  Perhaps before the age of 9, I still had memories of a former lifetime as a monk? I don’t know.  I just know that while many of my school chums were dreaming of big houses and shiny cars, I was dreaming of simplicity and proximity to nature and the sea.

Later I realized that this answer to the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question brought ridicule, I began to tell people that I wanted to be a veterinarian.  That wasn’t true.  I just said that to have something to respond—something that didn’t elicit derision.

In grade seven, I took typing.  If all else failed (I still didn’t know what the all else was to be), I could fall back on secretarial skills.

I went to university and got my B.A., but in Spanish of all things.  Unless you want to interpret, translate or teach, a degree in Spanish is about as useful as a degree in philosophy or history.  No, I didn’t get my degree in Spanish with job prospects in mind.  I got it because my mom wasn’t going to keep paying my tuition forever and my guidance counselor said I needed a degree plan.  “Our goal is to kick you out after four years,” he said.  I managed to stretch it into six years, what with dropping out after year two to hitchhike Europe and then live in Japan just shy of a year.

When I was in university, I had absolutely no interest in preparing for THE REAL WORLD.  Work schmerk.  I just wanted to learn.  I wanted to keep buying fresh, crisp spiral-bound notebooks of college-ruled paper and mechanical pencils.  There was no greater joy than coming into a lecture hall or classroom, pulling my binder out of my backpack, flipping my notepad open to a virgin page and dating the top of the sheet of paper in preparation for copious notetaking.  When the prof walked in, my heartbeat quickened.

I took German I, II, III, IV; Spanish all the way up to the lit classes where you write theses in the language.  I took Italian for Business and Travel, Demotic Greek, Latin I and II, algebra then trig, astronomy, history of the English language and as many linguistics courses as were offered.

Mom wanted me to train to be a speech and language pathologist.  I found that idea palatable, but did not pursue it.  For a while I worked on an associate degree in interpreting for the Deaf.  My profs would pull me aside and tell me I was a natural.  Oh, what an excellent interpreter I was going to be.  But then Cameron and I broke up and I had nobody to pay the rent while I went to school.  I had to get a job.

And so I spent the next ten years floating into the next better job than any smart person can do.  Oh, I loved being office manager at a little book store.  I was Queen of the Office.  From now on, I told my co-bosses, the publishers’ catalogs will go on THESE shelves, arranged alphabetically by publishing house.  We can keep last season’s catalog and this season’s, but that’s it! The antepenultimate season’s catalogs must be thrown out.  You can’t operate in a tiny, windowless basement office without being ruthless about clutter control.  Period.

I was in my element.

I handled accounts payable (“the check is in the mail, I promise!”) and accounts receivable, (“Mrs. Turner, what size payment on your overdue balance would you consider manageable?”), payroll and balance sheets.  I made sure supplies were kept stocked and set up the appointment with the gift wrap salesman every fall.  The owners and booksellers came together to vote on which five holiday wrap designs we’d go with that year.  What colour ribbon looks good on that paper?  Should we choose something more earth friendly this year?

Each day the UPS guy would ring the back doorbell.  While I signed the bill of lading using his magic pen and screen, he would wheel a stack of boxes in on his hand truck.  It was my job to make sure there was a clear space on the tiny receiving room floor for him to unload each morning.  Then I had 24 hours to get that day’s delivery scanned into the inventory and up onto the category shelves.  The booksellers took it from there, making room on the sales floor for the new arrivals.

Opening boxes of new releases and stock replenishment every day is like having 285 birthdays a year.  Ah, the smell of new books.  Oh, and don’t forget the promotional freebies! Buttons, stickers, pencils, pens, tee shirts and posters galore.  I raided the freebie box regularly and considered that to be one of the best perks of the job.  And let’s not forget advance reader’s copies!

Jobs like that one don’t come along every day.

This I am learning.

Search Terms

Here are some of the search terms that caused my blog to come up on the people’s lists of results today:

perimeter institute lecture torrent
sexual abuse, perfectionism
drinking english breakfast tea > pimples
estrogen dominance in mid twenties
applying castor oil on fibriod home remedy
pet rat trouble breathing milk
zereshk polo recipe
the pinky show + this american life
quadruple amputee devotee
smile in the air
dillard hardwicke Arkansas slave trader
red flags asperger’s
mustang Dench cars
fustrated creativity fibroids

I see the search term “Zereshk Polo” almost every day on my blog stats, if I bother to look at them. I also frequently see “tiny box template” and “devotee” paired with “paraplegic” or “quad.”

I have often thought it would be fun to turn the search terms into a poem. For some reason, Jinbon H. Wrong comes to mind when I toy with that idea.

And hey, who is Googling my ancestor Dillard Hardwicke?

44

Forty-four years ago today, my mother brought me into this world.

I celebrate today with gratefulness.

I am grateful for the warm and accepting way this family has welcomed me into their home.

I am grateful to be the newest member of a family who sits down together around the same table at least once a day. I did not grow up in a household where that was the norm. When I was a kid, we each took our supper wherever we wanted, many of us choosing to eat in front of the television. Don’t tell my mom, but I think I like this way better.

This is a loving family. They take care of one another in myriad small and big ways all through the day and all through the years. Sylvain drives his dad to medical appointments. M insisted on taking care of all the cleanup after I made French toast for everyone.

I am grateful for this day in all its lazy sweetness, beginning with a long shower together.

I am grateful for having met a man with more patience, compassion and understanding than I thought possible to find in a partner and lover. Since I moved here one week ago yesterday, it seems not a single day has passed that I have not been stricken either with cramps or weepy mood swings or SOMETHING to put a damper on an otherwise wonderful day. I see the way he looks at me and wonder–am I worth the trouble? Did he get the short end of some karmic stick? Then he reminds me that he knew I was a sensitive, easily moved person when he fell in love with me. “I love YOU,” he reminds me no matter how many times I need to hear it.

I am grateful to everyone who is there for me: from Melle who took the time out to send us a very sweet card, to my “Uncle” Sid who has been sending me birthday cheques since my father died in 1969, and everyone in between.

I am grateful to my mother for having given birth to me. At age 76, she continues to awe me with her energy and zeal for life. Today she told me she is thinking about turning her new cottage into a B & B. “I might be around another 20 years,” she says. You go, Mom.

A special thank you to my sweetie for honouring my wish that nobody make a big deal out of my birthday. Oh, and for the BOOK he secretly ordered from Amazon the day I couldn’t find it at Chapters,…and for this SWEET SwissCard in (hard-to-find) ruby.

OCD Day Pass

Sylvain wants us to get crackin’, start doing some of the things that are going to help me feel less anxious and more at home in my new environment.  So we made a weekend to do list and have spent the day tackling one after another chore.

The highlight of my day was getting into the cold storage room to clear a shelf for my many tins and jars of gluten-free flours and binders.  And my spices.

Oh, yes.  Oh, yes! I get to ORGANIZE!

Look, we can gather the canning jars from this shelf and from this shelf and put them with the canning  jars on THIS shelf.  All together, arranged by size.  Doesn’t that look nice?

We can put all the pop and bottled water together on THIS shelf.  Doesn’t that look nice?

Oh, hey, do you think we could throw out the potatoes that have been sprouting since May? We have two new bags of potatoes, after all. Yes?  Wheeee!  Now we have room for potatoes and onions on THIS shelf.  No more potatoes on the floor.  How special.

Angelica comes before anise.  Bay leaf, caraway seeds, cardamom pods, cayenne, cinnamon, coriander, cumin.  Fennel before fenugreek.  Aaah, joy.

Today was also our first laundry day since Ma agreed to my request that Sylvain and I be left to take care of our own laundry, leaving her with hers and Pa’s.  She said that’s a good idea because she doesn’t feel right anymore coming into our bedroom and our bathroom.  That’s our space now.  A couple’s space.  Private.

This is good.

Sylvain is an amazing partner when it comes to housework.  While I cleaned the tub, he scrubbed the the sink and toilet.  I loaded most of the laundry, but he changed it over to the dryer and washed one of his shirts by hand.  I made the bed, folded and put away clothes and towels while he started going through drawers in the den, the first step to assessing how storage space is being used. He posted some items on Ebay and Kijiji.

We work well together as a team.  Some chilling out time on the deck with burgers on the barbecue is a treat well-earned.

What Does It Mean?

Patti Digh recommends we notice the metaphors all around us. After reading this post, I thought more about the kind of day I had yesterday.

For starters, I abandoned my plan to bike into the city because the weather report forecast rain all day long. Instead I would take the bus. But it did not rain all day long. To the contrary, it was hot and muggy most of the day. A severe storm with very high winds passed through from 4:20 to 4:50, leaving us with a picture perfect afternoon.

If there is a symbolic lesson in there for my life, it is that I should go back to ignoring what others predict and listen to my inner voice.

Before I moved in with Sylvain, I had a media-free life. No television, no radio. I took my umbrella with me when I smelled rain on the air and did not take it when the sky was cloudless. Sometimes this method betrayed me, but not often.

The next two hours of my life were filled with dead-ends and frustration. There is construction at the intersection where I would normally catch the crosstown bus. I thought long and hard about which side of the street I should be on to catch the bus going downtown. I pictured the map which I’d inadvertently left in the den. It should be in my purse always, as I have no sense of direction. Well, I have SOME sense of direction, but it is a perverse, unconscious saboteur who will always tell me to go right when I should go left and vice versa. I am not dyslexic and I don’t transpose numbers, but in my brain east becomes west and west becomes east. Right is left and clockwise is counter-clockwise.

After thinking about it for over a minute, I chose a side of the street that I was confident would get me on a west-bound bus and then walked a few stops until I knew I was well beyond the detour around the construction. When the 2 was due, it didn’t come. Instead the 10 passed me.

I walked a few more blocks in case I wasn’t sufficiently beyond the detour area, and waited for the next number 2. Still no bus. Finally I walked far enough to realize that nothing looked familiar; I was walking in the wrong direction. I’d thought I was headed west, but I was going east and was therefore completely outside the route of the 2 bus.

Sigh. Such is life with a brain like mine.

I had dressed for a rainy day: long corduroys, long-sleeved black cotton top and clogs. Sweat was trickling down my back. I headed into the strip mall nearby to cool off before deciding whether to throw a toddler-like tantrum and give up my plans of going downtown or regroup and try again, this time walking in the right direction.

I passed an SUV parked outside the drugstore. A boy of about 9 was sitting alone in the car with all the windows down. Every 6 seconds, he let out an animal-like screech. Perhaps autism, I thought.

“I know just how you feel, darling. I know just how you feel,” I said as I passed him by.

If there is a metaphor for my life hidden in the dead-ends of yesterday, it is this. Maybe I am waiting for the crosstown bus on the wrong side of town. Mabye the bus I’m waiting for doesn’t even come to this stop.

All’s well that ends well, right? I made it downtown. The umbrella came in handy at 4:15 when the storm passed through. Sylvain took me out for a birthday dinner a few days early. Terra Cotta was exactly what I was dreaming of: a quiet place with no loud music, no glitz, no extra forks.

Seen Around Town

When I meet Sylvain for lunch, we sit in the park and look out over the water at the Detroit skyline. Sylvain ignores the begging gulls.

You know you’re in Canada when… Che Guevara’s picture in the window helps sell cigars. Because this is a border town, there are a lot of cigar shops that sell cubanos.

 

You know you’re in Canada when… a big rainbow-coloured banner goes up across the main boulevard announcing the upcoming pride parade and it’s no biggie.

I like our next door neighbour’s yard.  We get the spill over of birds from his jungle.

Like a Yo-Yo

It’s like being two people.  We share the same body, but only one of us is present at a given time.

Sometimes everything in my environment assaults me.

This will never work. This is not going to work.  I cannot live here.  I can’t breathe.  I have to get out.  I cannot do this. I cannot do this. I was wrong.  This was a mistake.  I am drowning.  I cannot breathe. 

Yet three hours later on the very same day, I can look at those same things that were overwhelming me about this environment and feel no anxiety at all.

Yeah, yeah. Whatever. It will all get done.  It’s manageable.  We’ll make a list.  We’ll do it all.  No problem.  Let’s go for a bike ride.  It’s all going to be fine.  No worries!

Not only can I then breathe, I can LAUGH and smile.

The human brain is fascinating.  If I can detach enough to observe it, it’s fascinating.

Down and Up Again

I tried telling the new vet I needed the Baytril in tablet form so I could crush it up into baby food. He didn’t listen. I have to syringe a liquid form into Owen’s mouth twice a day. Joy. Because Owie is not a cooperative patient, that means making a rat burrito. You lay a towel or binkie out on your lap and plop the rat on it. Then you swaddle that rattie as tightly as you can without asphixiating the poor devil. The goal is to render the rat unable to get away, head protruding from the wrap. Then you squirt the meds into the rats mouth and make nummy nummy noises in hopes this will inspire some swallowing.

This morning I had a meltdown. I missed my town. I missed my friends. I missed my quiet little house with my quiet little antique white Jenny Lind bed covered in my granny’s quilts. I missed my cool, cotton pillow cases. I just wanted to hide.

I fled the house and sat for a while at the corner coffee shop, tears streaming down my face. In the oppressive heat, I walked up to Pet Valu for a bag of Yesterday’s News and carried it back atop my head, stopping at Home Hardware to have the house keys copied, a task neither of us had gotten around to yet.

By the time I returned to the homestead, Ma was poking her head into the stairwell to the basement, calling my name. She and Pa were about to reheat last night’s dinner leftovers for lunch. Did I wish to join them, she asked. My dark mood began to lift.

Before long I was functional again, cleaning rat cage, unpacking a box, perusing the Job Bank postings for this city, reading blogs. By the time Sylvain got home, I didn’t even remember what it really felt like to be the person I was that morning. Everything had felt so hopeless for a few hours. And now that funk had lifted.

Small acts of self care. Yes. We aired up my bike tires and went for a spin. My friend A says a good cardio workout a few times a week really helps her with mood. Perhaps tomorrow I will bike into the city. Oh, and Violet suggested Bach Flowers Rescue Remedy. It just happens that I have a bottle of that! I got it for the rats. If I have a deep dark panicky funk tomorrow like I did today, I’ll try some to see if it helps.

Oh, met the neighbour nextdoor. He has a front yard so crowded with raised beds of flowers, there’s no room for lawn. He has birch trees and a mimosa whose feathery fronds tickle the screens of the second storey windows. Beautiful.

Sylvain is the most understanding, supportive mate. He tells me what I’m feeling is normal. Of course I miss my friends. Of course I miss my town. He says it softly while holding both my hands and looking into my eyes. When he holds me, I feel safe.

Rat Teeth

How many more times am I going to forget that my troubles could all just be PMS?  I’ve been going through the same cycle an average of every 27 days for what… thirty years?  It’s so simple.  I just have to mark the calendar with the little red dot so I’ll know when to expect my visitor next time.  Used to do that.  Did that for years.  Why did I stop?

Oh, yeah.  I remember now.  Midlife.  My period has become erratic.  Nowadays it comes about every 3 weeks instead of every four.  One month my body decided to double up, bleeding again on ovulation day.  Oh, the joys of peri-pre-almost-whatever-menopause.  Grrrrr.  Mind you if I would just remember to take my E and Evening Primrose AND use the progesterone cream every day, things would settle down again.  Now that I’m moved and live with people who have their own daily pill rituals, it should become easier.

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Sylvain’s mom, whom I’ll call Ma because that is the term used by most of the family when addressing her, offered to go with me to the veterinarian’s office today.  I happily accepted her offer, which instantly melted my apprehension around borrowing the car and finding my way across the city. As we were headed out, Pa asked Ma what was for dinner.  Ma didn’t know yet.  Great segue to my offer to cook tonight.

“If you want, we can stop at the store on the way back and I’ll get something to cook for dinner, ” I said.  She happily accepted, out of ideas for supper.

I really wish I’d taken Owen to see Dr. Gyorffy before I left Waterloo.  I could have avoided the “initial consultation” surcharge.  But whatever.  He was examined and weighed, nails clipped.  Dr. Feurth told me Owen’s bottom incisors are too long.  He would trim them for me. He pulled Owen’s mouth open to show me.  Oh, dear.  Sometimes a rodent’s teeth keep growing and pierce the roof of the mouth. That is really not good.

So off they went to another room, vet and vet tech.  Back they came 10 minutes later.  “Pedicure successful, tooth trimming not so successful.” Seems  Owen refused to have his teeth trimmed.  There is the option of making another appointment during which the good doctor can lightly sedate the old guy for the procedure.

I got a 14-day cycle of Baytril and Doxycycline, which should clear up the sinus infection.  Dr. Feurth and the tech gave him his first dose there.

Completely worn out from two car rides, being weighed in a vegetable steamer and being manhandled by well-meaning humans, Owie spent the rest of the day and evening snoozing away in his hammock.

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Dreams:

I was in a small flat like the ones in Valencia, Spain that have narrow stairs ascending onto rooftop gardens.  There were cages and little animals: hamsters, mice, rats.  My childhood best friend Mia was there.  I thought she had been feeding one cage of rats and she said no, if I hadn’t done it in ages, then it had not been done.  Panicking, I raced to where the cage was and found some consolation in the fact that the cage door was open and my pets were not inside.  At least Stella and Luna were free to roam and try to find food on their own.  Is it too late? Can I save them or have they starved? Can I ever redeem myself after committing this sin–the failure to nourish a being that is completely dependent on me for care? Or have I lost my right to continue taking up space on the planet?  Remorse gnawed into the pit of my soul. 

My coworker R came out of a house with her face bruised.  Then her twin sister came out with bruises, too.  It became clear to everyone around that someone was abusing them.  Whom do we tell?

I was with Sylvain, admiring his body as he lay back against me, my arms around him.  Only this last dream was pleasant.

God is More Stubborn than I

I just realized the perfect word for it: regression.

You know how children sometimes regress to an earlier stage in their development when faced with a stressful situation or trauma?  That’s how I feel.  My new situation is ripe with opportunities for growth and stretching, but I just want to retreat into a safe, dark shell.  Every act is an effort.  I talk myself into getting out of bed.  I persuade myself to shower.  The fear of hurting feelings brings me to the table for meals.  As does hunger.

What ugly, senseless circles these are:  failure to do the tasks to which I should be attending leaves me feeling guilty and worthless.  Feeling guilty and worthless saps my energy, leaving me even less able to tackle the next small task that falls to me.

Why can I not just enjoy a few weeks between jobs? Why can’t I enjoy reading my novel?

Because I feel guilty.  I feel as though I’m not contributing what I should.  So then why not just cook dinner for everyone a couple of nights this week?  Then I’d feel better about myself and the situation.  Yes, I would.  But first I have to get over the hump of anxiety and lethargy gluing me to this chair.

When did this happen?  When did I return to the state of social paralysis I haven’t known since I was 8 years old?  Back then I hid behind my hair, hoping nobody would address me.  It’s not quite that bad now.  But that is when I remember wanting this badly to be invisible, to be able to melt into the roots of the tree that cradled me every day at recess.

I don’t want to have to resume taking a selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor.  First I want to try better diet, more exercise, B12, lots of iron, CBT, … yoga?  Meditation?  I haven’t exhausted my natural arsenal yet.

Got an email from a friend who also battles anxiety.  None of the anti-depressants have ever worked for her, but wine does.  I wish it were that simple.  My mother has self-medicated with wine her whole life.  It changes her from shy to social.  She drinks it every night. It has never interfered with her ability to keep a good job. She has always been a reliable, outstanding contributor in any work setting.  She is a good and supportive single parent, has never let me or my brother down in any way.  Now retired, she churns out watercolours that make it into shows and galleries.  What do you call that, a high-functioning alcoholic?  I don’t know.  I just know that I–unlike my brother–realize it’s her choice and not for me to wish away.  How do I deal with the fact that if I get her on the phone into happy hour, the rational mum I know will be replaced by a hyper-sensitive, maudlin mess with no memory the next day of our inevitable fight that ended in hurt feelings all around? How do I deal with that?  I simply make sure all my calls to her happen before 4 p.m.  Simple as that.  My brother refuses to take my advice and do the same.  Perhaps it would be admitting defeat.  After all, he is right and she is wrong.  “She needs to stop drinking,” he insists.

Wine has betrayed me.  Now it gives me heartburn.  The one OTC med I could always count on to make the anxiety melt away has turned its back on me like a friend turned traitor.

Well, today I stretch in spite of myself.  Owen is wheezing again and needs a 20-day cycle of the broad-spectrum antibiotic that will quiet his breathing.  That requires a vet visit.  A vet visit requires me to borrow Sylvain’s parents’ car…the car they’ve told me more than once I’m ever so welcome to use when I need to.

So I can either be pig-headed and take Owen on the bus in the rain and barely make it back by supper time, or I can accept a gracious offer like a normal human being and drive the damn car.

God sometimes stands over me with her hands on her hips.

What Floats Your Boat?

It feels different. It’s Sunday, but I don’t have to pack my suitcase for the drive back to KW in the morning. Tomorrow there will be nobody sitting at “my” desk. The PC won’t get booted up. The overhead lamp won’t get turned on. I wonder if they’ll miss me. I wonder if my phone will ring or if that line has been rerouted already. I wonder if I’ll get emails, or if that email address has been deleted.

Today I said to Sylvain, “let’s go see Sicko soon.”

He wants to see it, too. We made a movie date for this Friday.

Sylvain said he never wanted to see a movie with me before because our time together was so precious, he didn’t want to spend two whole hours in a dark cinema where we couldn’t talk to one another. That was too large a chunk of our together time.

But now? Now there’s no pressure, no crunch. Now we can go to the movies.

I left my colleagues my phone number and email address in case a tech support call came in that they just couldn’t handle. I told them I wouldn’t mind bridging the transition until my replacement is hired and learns his or her way around. I have to admit I’ll be mighty disappointed if they never call or email. I like feeling needed.

Speaking of that…

Not long ago I was reading Anatomy of the Spirit. I did not finish it, of course. But one thing Myss said in the first 1/4 of the book stuck with me. She counseled me to monitor myself through the day and through the week for what gives me a boost of energy and what drains or saps my energy.

One day I was sitting at my desk feeling no motivation whatsoever. I didn’t want to be there. I was bored and tired and restless all at the same time, yet didn’t want to work on anything I should have been working on.

Should I have another Earl Grey tea? I wondered. Did I not get enough sleep last night? I think I did. Am I not eating properly? I think I am. I was just stuck in a general slump, a malaise.

Not three minutes later, I was FULL of energy, happy, alert and full of life.

Hey! What just happened? What caused that?

I’d gotten a call from a service rep asking for my help with an Excel spreadsheet.

Wow. You’d think at my age and having spent an average of 4 years at each of my past several jobs, I would know what gives me energy and what saps it. But until I read Myss’ words, I’d never thought of it in those terms.

This is a key. This is a clue to what I should be doing for a living.

I love helping people, and I especially love helping them with data. Parsing, collating, compiling this way and then that way. I love it when my director needs certain information off one report put together with certain information off another report. I use Excel’s VLOOKUP to get all that info onto the same report. For some people, doing this would be their personal version of hell. I love it.

I also love teaching and showing. In my new life in Windsor, I’ve been contemplating getting a certificate in Teaching English as a Second Language. Having lived and traveled around the world, having studied a dozen or so languages myself and having taught English in Japan… I think I could enjoy and be good at that.

Just for fun, why don’t you monitor yourself for a week and jot down in a journal: under what circumstances do you feel your energy sapped? What events or situations cause you to spring to life and feel completely happy, energized and fulfilled?

photo: Jurcut Constantin

PS Chapters did not have A Spot of Bother and it cannot be had at any Chapters or Indigo or Coles in town. This is because the paperback is coming out in August. I can wait. Instead I spied Yann Martel’s first book, Self. It passed the first sentence test:

I awoke and my mother was there.

Without a Hitch

My friend and former co-worker Helen says I have to blog every day. I’ll do my best.

You know those days when everything that can go wrong does go wrong? Today was the opposite of that. Everything happened exactly as planned.

First of all, had it been very hot and humid, Sylvain would not have been able to come because breathing would have been difficult. There would have been no place for him to get inside to air conditioning. But today was cool and overcast. Perfect.

Sylvain called me as he was leaving Windsor at 7:30 to get me out of bed. I had one box still unsealed so I could use my coffee pot and toaster one last time before packing them. After a quick shower and breakfast, I made it down to the U-Haul depot on the 7 bus, hopping off at Charles & Victoria.

The guys were very nice, there was no lineup. Sylvain had reserved a 10-footer, which wasn’t intimidating to drive. I went straight to Sobey’s for some bottles of water for my moving crew and to practice backing the truck into a tight spot. It took three practice runs before I knew exactly when to start turning in order to back the truck into a given space.

My dear friends Coffee and Violet came at 10:30 to help me move stuff into the van. Sylvain arrived soon after. Thanks to Coffee, who is strong AND a great Tetris player, we were able to fit bed, desk, lamp table, bicycle, large painting, large mirror, 5′ ladder and all my boxes into the cube van. We were done JUST in time for Ye’s all-you-can-eat buffet! I can’t think of a better way to spend my last hour in K Town.

After lunch we hit the road. I drove the U-Haul and Sylvain followed. He’d brought along a pair of 2-way radios so we could talk to each other along the way, tell each other when we had to pee or get coffee. That was very handy! Sometimes it’s good that your boyfriend has at least one of everything and two or three of some things.

Sylvain’s friend Bill met us here and helped us get everything unloaded and stashed downstairs. Now Bailey the cat is investigating the cage of Owen the rat. Owen let us know it’s cold in this house by hiding inside his igloo. I tore last week’s TV schedule into strips, which Owen promptly dragged inside the igloo for the making of a warm nest.

Tomorrow: buy baby food for Owen, clean his cage, get library card, go to CHAPTERS to spend the gift certificate from my (former) coworkers.

Unemployed Bum

I have been an unemployed bum for two hours.

The longest I’ve been without a good, steady job was after I first immigrated to Canada in late summer of ‘99.  It took about six months for me to get the work permit, so in the meantime I babysat and scrubbed floors.  Yes, I took a job cleaning someone’s house.   When I finally got my green card and jumped at the first full-time position that was anywhere near something I could do, I told my friend Katherine I wouldn’t be able to clean her house anymore.  She told everyone, “I don’t know what I’ll do without Kelly.  She is very… um…. thorough.”

OCD in action.

Ok, time to go pack up the rest of the stuff.  Tomorrow is the big day.

Penultimate

Today I get to use the word penultimate as many times as I want. That fills me with glee.

Hello, Mr. Bus Driver. This is my penultimate bus ride to work.

Ok, ok, you get the picture.

—

After much hemming and hawing and debating and chewing on it and sleeping on it… I’ve decided to take Owen with me. I had a very gracious offer from a rat-loving person who is very skilled at rat care, very knowledgeable even in the care of geriatric rats, someone I know would take even better care of Owen than I do. She and her husband offered to take Owen if I couldn’t bring him along for the move.

I thought about that a long time. Wow, that would make things so much simpler. I know Sylvain’s mom and dad are from rural Quebec where a rat means vermin that sneak into the barn and get into the sacks of grain. They probably have no concept of rats as domesticated pets who get medicine from a vet when they are sick and who cuddle on laps and even sleep under the covers with their humans sometimes.

But I can’t do it. I can’t leave Owie to live out his final weeks or months with someone else. I wish I could. I can’t. I don’t know how we’re going to make it work, but we’re going to find a way for Owen to be happy and comfortable with me in Windsor. I told my mom, too, that my trip back to Arkansas is going to have to wait until Owen is gone. Owen is 2.5 years old. That’s the longest any rat of mine has lived, and I have had 9 rats and 3 foster rats. None has lived past 26 months.

Owen just keeps going.

About 2 weeks ago, I though Owen was dying. He was listless and didn’t want to eat. His breathing got laboured. That is a sure sign the end is near. Then one night I decided it was just too hot and I was going to sleep on the futon in the basement. So I grabbed Owen’s cage and down we went to the basement.

Know what happened? Owen came back to life. Yep. In no time his breathing was normal and quiet, he’d perked up and was hopping about the room asking for treats.

Owen wasn’t dying, he was just bloody uncomfortable.

I hope the U-Haul cab has AC.

Antepenultimate

Today I get to use the word antepenultimate as many times as I want. All day long.

Good morning, bus driver! Did you know this is my antepenultimate bus ride to work?

It’s the antepenultimate time I will open the door with the key card on a Perimeter Institute lanyard around my neck. I got that smoke-grey translucent lanyard for volunteering at PI.

Hey there, antepenultimate cup of nasty coffee from the machine! How ya doin’?

Good morning, Andrea. Good morning, Noel. Good morning, Miranda. Did you know this is the antepenultimate time I will ever say that to you?

Well, off to bed.

Can you guess which word I’m going to use all day tomorrow?