How Bad Does It Have to Get?

In the 1700s, James Lind came up with the theory that adding a ration of fruit to sailors' diets could eradicate scurvy, a disease that had killed millions (it dates back to B.C.). Tens of thousands during this era were dying during sea battles and campaigns from this disease alone. Captain Cook's ship remained scurvy-free throughout its 3-year voyage (1768-71) in the South Seas with a ration of lemon juice and sauerkraut for his men. Still, the Admiralty didn’t believe such a fatal disease could be cured so easily. They wanted an elixir, preferably one with a complicated name and many ingredients. (Who doesn't?) Lind died on February 14, 1794--the year a naval squadron finally put his theory to test, thereby fully vindicating him. But another ten years passed before it became standard daily issue in the navy.

I have had these little red marks on my right hand--only my right hand--for a couple of months. And they haven't itched or even hurt necessarily unless I brush up against something, and then it feels like I have slivers stuck in my fingers. Not really pleasant and not horribly unpleasant, so I haven't done anything about them, figuring they'd just go away eventually.

But they've gotten worse the last couple of weeks, gotten painful, and since even annoyances are worth getting rid of, I finally looked into the problem last week. I finally decided, after reading a hundred or so posts on a chat page, that the marks were caused by either (a) cold weather (thus the reason they're only on my right hand; if it's a circulation issue, my right hand is farther from my heart than my left) or (b) too much sugar in my diet.

I love sugar. I'm worse than my kids, honestly. It goes beyond chocolate. I'll eat crap sugar: Airheads and Laffy Taffies and Nerds. At least dark chocolate can offer me a speck or two of anti-oxidants. Smarties? Not so smart. I know that.

But I cut it out. Not all the way out. I'm not that faithful. I've still been eating my cinnamon-toffee almonds from Nutty Guys. I had a few bites of cake Wednesday night. I stole a piece of my son's Valentine's candy last night (though he denies the candy was his, because then he'd have to tell me who gave it to him, all of which is a post for another time). But I cut way way down.

And my hand is SO much better after only five days of making this one little change in lifestyle. And it was easy--so easy that I wasn't sure it would be enough. But I was feeling desperate enough.

I didn't mean for this to be a medical post. I've just been thinking about how human nature so often holds us in place--in bad relationships, bad health, bad financial situations, bad jobs--all because we're unwilling to make a change until that place gets so bad we'll try anything. And why is this? Is it stubbornness? Laziness? Pride? Exhaustion? Fear? Anger? Denial?

Sure, making a change so I can have full use of my right hand again isn't the biggest accomplishment--or the most necessary--of my life. But I know I've stayed in situations for all of the above reasons more than once. I've known a little citrus might be the solution but I've still said, "Nope. Not big enough. Not important enough. Bring me the magic elixir, and then we'll talk."

Love Someone . . .

My friend Brigid Kemmerer is sponsoring a contest for stories of your worst Valentine's Day ever. So if you happen to be here on my blog before 5 a.m. tomorrow morning (the 15th), head over to hers and tell her aalllll about it.

I was going to tell her my story, but then I thought, "Hey, I'm happily married, and since my worst Valentine's Day involved my husband, who is wonderfully good and kind to me (not to mention patient), how much can I really capitalize on my so-called sob story? I have it good."

I will say, however, that my disappointment that particular Valentine's Day was over failed expectations. And, okay, so I know that's what the very definition of disappointment is: you expect something and things don't work out that way and--ta-dah--disappointment. Really, when you think about it (and it doesn't require heavy thinking by any means), all unhappiness in general derives from failed expectations.

And Valentine's Day is the perfect time for many to reflect on those failed expectations: "I thought I'd have someone to share today with."

Or "I have someone to share today with. I expected that to be enough."

My three sisters and I decided this past Christmas to make our gifts for or only spend a small amount of money on each other. We're all old enough (well old enough) now and with families of our own--old enough and independent enough, that is--that token gifts are "enough." We don't "need" and we don't "expect" the extraneous array of . . . stuff.

My oldest sister gave me a beautiful handmade scarf. She didn't make it, but someone did, and it's beautiful: lots of bright colors, and even when I don't wear it, I have it laying across a chair because just looking at it makes me happy. My older sister made me felt mittens and a felt hat with a felted daisy on it. She's ridiculously talented with her creations. I can't even call them "crafts" or what she does a "hobby," because she does so much and does it all so well that, cheesy as it sounds, she's an artist. My younger sister, who has the best sense of style of anyone I know (though AngryBaker kicks some serious fashion tush too), gave me a short-sleeved sweater and a long-sleeved t-shirt to wear underneath it. Any great outfits I wear were either hers originally or contain pieces she gave me as gifts. I have her to thank for getting me out of the 90s.

It was a nice Christmas.

Oh . . . what did I give them? I hand stitched felt ornaments and made them wooden bracelets, each with a quote that reminded me specifically of them. And then I made myself one:

"Love Someone Who Doesn't Deserve It."

It's easy to love someone who does deserve it--like my sisters . . . and my brothers and my parents and my husband and kids and other family members and friends. But to let go of the expectations you demand of others--sometimes those you thought it would be easy to love or think it should be easy to love--is, well, just a lot less fun. But it's also very liberating because it takes away the burden of failed expectations: unhappiness.

I'm wearing my bracelet as I type this. It's Valentine's Day after all. And I do a much better job of loving my husband on a daily basis than I do of loving that neighbor who yelled at my son the other day.

Besides, who of us really deserves the love we have in our lives?

Mindless Wonderings/Wanderings

I've felt like crap most of today. Not looking for sympathy here--just surprised at myself. I don't get sick often. In fact, I rather revel in my usual health and ability to repel even the most aggressive bugs. And what I'm feeling isn't "sick" so much as "in pain." But this isn't about my medical symptoms and my refusal to go to the doctor until I have to be carried there.

I was clicking around my toolbar--hopping from Dictionary to Chicago Manual of Style to Hulu--and I decided I'm curious: What's in your toolbar?

Here's my list (because I know you're dying to know, and if you're not, don't tell me you're not, because remember? I'm in pain already. So, okay, maybe I'm looking for a little sympathy, or at least enough for you to not openly mock me.):

Gmail--I'm on gmail almost always. I sometimes miss writing longhand and give it a shot, but then my hand cramps up and I remember why USPS is having troubles these days.
Yahoo!--My news page.
Facebook--I don't spend hours on this, but I do check in regularly just to see what old and distant friends are up to. I saw the movie, by the way. I thought it was really good but not Oscar worthy. Actually, I can't remember the last time I saw an Oscar-worthy movie.
Google--I'm there more than I'm on gmail or Facebook. Who isn't?
Thesaurus--It's an editor's friend.
Dictionary--See Thesaurus.
All Recipes--I've gotten rid of most of my cookbooks over the last few years. The ones I hold on to I hold on to for sentimental reasons. (Can someone be sentimental about a cookbook?)
My blog--I go here to check out my blog roll, which I think I need to add to, by the way, because I'm not wasting nearly enough time stalking strangers.
Twitter--I should really delete that one since it's been months since I've tweeted. Spending time there depressed me, made me anxious and uptight. It felt too TOO much like stalking, and I found that 140 characters is just enough for people to succinctly gripe and kvetch and mock (none of which I ever do, of course).
Amazon--Yes, I love independents. Two of my brothers own independents, one of which (the independent, not the brother) used to be my parents'. But I also have a little crush on Amazon.
Calculator--Hm. I guess it's just easier than looking for a physical one.
New York Times--I think my husband put this one on. I need to remove it since I never look at it.
Pandora--Love!
Wunderground--Because I need to know just how much snow Chicago is going to get before spring finally shows up. And then I need to know how much rain to expect. And then just how hot it's going to get before fall rolls around. And then how long I have until the whole snow and cold thing starts up again.
Chicago Manual of Style--Again, it's an editor thing.
Chicago Tribune--Ron, stop adding to my toolbar.
PowerSchool--This is how I gather the info necessary to nag my kids about their grades. Poor things. And I'm so glad my parents didn't have this when I was in school.
Hulu--I won't even mention his name again, as I know you're sick of hearing it.

Gee that was fun. ~sigh~ And really: what's your toolbar like? Because once I get rid of a few of these, I'll have some room for more time-wasting sites to entertain me (which kind of contradicts the "time-wasting" descriptor . . . kind of) while I tell myself I'm feeling better and better all the time.

Off to Hulu now.

Take It down a Notch

My kitchen is a mess and it's distracting me a little bit. I usually can't get anything done in the morning before it's clean, but I'm trying to get my bearings again here after a week of being more or less housebound "thanks" to the blizzard (seems a little silly to me to call what we had here a blizzard, but who am I to argue with meteorology?) and a sick five-year-old who's been housebound with me. He's back at school today, as are two of my other three kids. The oldest is upstairs with a stomach ache. Ah, germs... How I resent you.

Where was I? Distraction. 'Kay. So I can't stop thinking about last night's episode of "Glee." (It's better to think about that than the Super Bowl; I'll just say so I can get it said that the Packers earned the win. They did. They played a better game with a better quarterback and a better offense. My black and gold is put away, salt-free, no tears shed.)

"Glee." It means happy. Joyful. And, I realized after however many weeks of not watching it (I only watch reruns of "The Office," "Buffy," "Angel," and "Firefly"), it means yelling. Lots and lots of yelling.

I've worked really hard the last year or so at subduing the yeller in me. She isn't very attractive, and she sounds like a crazed banshee (as opposed to the sane ones). That's no one you want to introduce your children to. I don't like her very much, and she's completely ineffective. So we had a chat, and I told her she wasn't welcome around here anymore. She still tries to sneak her way in, but I'm a good fighter.

And with all of my kids in school all day now (except when germs sneak in through those same cracks the banshee tries to squeeze through, perhaps), I'm used to quiet days. I don't listen to a lot of music when I'm home alone because (1) I can't concentrate on my editing when I'm humming along with Jim Croce and (2) I'm prone to feeling really lonely when I listen to music, regardless of the song style. So I live a quiet little existence here from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Then chaos erupts when the kids pour in through the front door. And it's a nice little chaos. It's good to have them home, hear their happy voices, see their happy little faces.

For a few hours.

Come dinner time, I'm holding my head, my elbows propped on the table, begging them to please, just, shhhh, don't yell, I'm right here, yes, you can have more milk, here, just, shhhh, please keep your voice down, stop yelling, holy cow.

So it struck me pretty hard last night how LOUD everyone on "Glee" is. Sue's yelling (and I love Sue!). The football team is yelling. Rachel is yelling. Coach Beast, Will, Fin. They're loud and scowling and grumpy and . . . I didn't like it. It made me uncomfortable. Maybe 9:30 p.m. is just too late to watch the show. Maybe it was WAY past my noise-tolerance time.

But, darn, we're a yelling society aren't we? When did this start? Is each generation, as my husband suggested, used to raising its voices to be heard over the previous generation's voices? Is the debate culture getting to us? The need to interrupt each other in Bill O'Reilly fashion? With common politeness comes reasonable decibel levels. Throw out politeness and we all end up, sooner or later, with ruptured eardrums.

Go ahead. Pay attention to the TV shows you watch this week, whether it's reality TV or news programs or sitcoms or dramas. And then tell me people aren't yelling way way WAY more than they did in the good old days of "Three Is Company" and "Fantasy Island" and "The Love Boat."

Now I can clean my kitchen. In silence.

From Caveman to Vampire

I was watching CBS while getting ready this morning, and the show had a panel of experts on male behavior discussing the best way to communicate with a husband/boyfriend. The man talked about (of course) evolutionary behavior--how men traditionally only looked each other in the eye during confrontations and how women were used to looking someone in the eye when communicating with them, because their role was to raise the children and you have to look babies and children in the eye all the time. So, the expert went on to say, if you want to ask a man to do the dishes, you can't look him in the eye or he'll feel threatened.

Okay, I'm still laughing. True or not, it's ridiculous, isn't it? And I'm also feeling that maybe it's time to start getting past all of our cave-dwelling issues.

Another expert said we women need to talk in sound bites because men can't focus for the length of a "real" conversation. Sound bites, ladies. But I just can't . . . I can't give in to this piece of advice. It's time to move out of the cave no matter how comfy it's been all these millennia.

My talented friend Brigid Kemmerer posted this video yesterday. I'd seen it before, but I still laugh every time I watch it.

That's not my husband. My husband just made breakfast for me this morning, in fact, and didn't burn it. And, okay, so he may only listen in sound bites, but I can look him in the eye when we talk without worrying about him grabbing a club and challenging me to a duel when he gets back from hunting the stegosaurus that's been trampling our grass. Still, the video is hilarious because it's depiction, not truth.

Anyone who knows me knows I love Joss Whedon. I'm not a fanatic that's reached the join-his-cult stage quite yet. But I do enjoy the heck out of his shows (except for "Dollhouse," of course). I love "Buffy" (even if I'm not a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan) and love "Angel" even more because . . . well, because of Angel. I'm disappointed, of course, that David Boreanaz cheated on his wife, but not nearly as disappointed as she was. I imagine she was hoping for a little more Angel and a little less Throg the Philanderer.

I'm thinking that our fascination with vampires as leading men has a lot to do with the fact (disclaimer: I know vampires aren't real; I'm talking literary fact) that vampires can be hundreds of years old and therefore have had the chance to evolve individually much more than the average Joe. Once you know he's a vampire, nothing else is going to come as a surprise. He'll still bring you flowers. He'll still put the lid down on the toilet. He'll still put his bowl in the dishwasher. He'll still listen to your entire conversation and not just the one- and two-syllable words. And he'll smolder through it all.

Life of Leisure

I don't like having nothing to do. And that's a ridiculous phrase anyway, isn't it? Nothing to do? I've talked here before about one of my mother's mottoes: "Only boring people are bored." So I don't mean I'm bored. I can always find something to do; the issue is whether it's worth doing.

I never watch daytime TV. I'm just throwing that out there at the outset. Notice I said that in the present tense. In our old house, the kitchen opened onto the TV room, and while I cleaned the kitchen or cooked or baked or whatever else I might need to do around the stove, sink, and oven in the course of the day, I would often put on the TV for "company." I hated the arrangement. In our current house, the kitchen is separated from the TV room by a living room, and that's how I like it.

My point (I try to always get there eventually) is that I had the TV on for a few minutes yesterday and "Let's Make a Deal" was on. The studio audience was clothed in ridiculous costumes and wigs, all hoping for the chance to win a vacation or a shopping spree if Wayne Brady would just notice them. I got the same "ick" feeling I get when I see people waiting two hours in line for a 3-minute roller coaster ride. The "ick" feeling is this: Really? That's what we have time for today? Our lives are so easy and our need for a thrill so intense that we have to seek it out in a sweaty line with 200 other people in need of the same thrill? We're so desensitized to what used to pass for joy that we have to come up with new means of feeling that way?

I'm reading At Home by Bill Bryson. It's a short history of the house--how various rooms came to be--and it's fascinating. It's also a reminder of how little "real" work we need to do these days. Preparing a meal, doing the laundry, staying warm, staying cool, getting from point A to point B--these are all things we hardly think about anymore. Or at least those of us fortunate enough to live above the poverty line, which, face it, is most of us in the U.S.--don't have to think about them. So what do we think about instead? And how much do those things really matter?

I read a book a number of months back called Monique and the Mango Rains. The author, a member of the Peace Corps at the time, writes in the beginning about how women in Malawi don't have a favorite dress or a favorite food. They have a dress to wear--one--and they have food to eat . . . whatever might be available to them and not a cupboard full of choices. And, really, they're happier than we Americans are in many ways because (and this is me talking now) they don't have to manufacture happiness.

I love my warm house and clothes and food when it's snowing outside and the windchill is below zero and my "work" for the evening is loading the dishwasher and giving my kids a bath. That's a good life. I don't want to give away all but one dress or live on tomato soup. I just want to make sure that whatever I'm doing in place of struggling is worthwhile. And I want to be grateful. And I want to be happy and to teach my kids that happiness is available all around them--not just on game shows and roller coaster rides.

Red Boots

I had a pair of tall, red vinyl boots when I was a kid. They were probably called "patent leather," but leather doesn't squeak like those used to when they brushed up against each other. I wore them everywhere, all of the time, and with every outfit: shorts, jeans, skirts. It didn't matter. They're the one article of clothing I remember from childhood. They had little heels--maybe half an inch--and I walked on the sides of those heels until the shoes became deformed looking, twisted and stretched . . . but more comfortable. See, I was a tomboy up until I hit middle school and really, truly discovered boys. And the boys I liked didn't care so much for girls who could out-tree-climb them or who didn't like brushing their hair, even for school photos, or who spent hours in the woods, imagining they heard Bigfoot or saw the remains of fairy rings.

I'd outgrown my boots by then. I switched to "baby doll" shoes--the black, canvas, Mary Jane ones. More practical. But I never loved them. They didn't feel like "me." Middle school is like that: three awkward years of not feeling like "you" and wondering if it's your shoes . . . or your hair or your clothes or your weight or your family's awful orange VW van with Ziggy painted on the side. (Yes, seriously.)

High school isn't a whole lot better and in many ways it's worse. I'd gotten rid of my baby doll shoes by then and envied the other girls' Tretorns and K-Swiss and Reeboks but tried to find my own "style" so theirs wouldn't "fit" me. I wouldn't want what they had because it wouldn't "match."

College? I borrowed my roommates' shoes a lot. Also their clothes. I was kind of amazed--in a very sad, pathetic sort of way--to realize after college how few of the clothes in my wardrobe I liked. So I started over, putting myself in debt (not obscenely so, though my husband may disagree) in an effort to "find myself." It didn't work.

It took a long time, which it does for most of us, for me to find the shoes that fit me again rather than the me that fit the shoes. I'm comfortable with the skin I'm in. It's a good place to be.

Last night, I was taking my daughter to ballet and passed a children's shoe store that is going out of business. I sent her up to the studio and went back to the store. The first pair I found? Tall, red patent leather boots--in my size, not Emma's. I got her a couple of pairs of shoes, too, but the red boots are mine.