No More Flat Beer

Today was a Monday. In the dining room this morning, my dog had left me a present. I do have hardwoods, but it was still unexpected and unpleasant. She’s usually pretty good to alert me to her need for a quick exit, but this morning there was no warning.

Lesson learned: when I need to calm down my dog before bed, flat beer is not the remedy.

In the time it took to shower, she left me another present. Happy Monday to me! Understandably, I skipped breakfast. That’s what I’m going to blame the next part of the day on. I did one of the dumbest things I’ve ever done. Then when I was unable to solve my mistake, I involved two customer service representatives in my office, and two other designers in different locations. Two people in two states told me that what was happening made no sense. I agreed. I was stumped. It was a software glitch I’d never seen. I would make changes to the file, save it, and when I’d return the file, the changes were gone. The file was probably corrupt.

Hours later I realized what I was doing. I had two files. I was making changes to one and opening the other, and I couldn’t figure out where my changes had gone.

I need a vacation.

It took me most of the day to tell anyone what I’d done. I simply let them know the files were ready and went on with my business. When I stopped to explain, one of the reps explained to me that she did this all the time and not to feel bad.

Oddly enough, that made me think of my dog. She had lost it, twice, on my dining room floor, so why wasn’t I mad with her? Well, because she’s a dog and not perfect. She would have certainly avoided making the mess if it had been within her power.

So why was I so hard on myself?

If I’m being honest, part of it is pride. It was easier for me to imagine that I had a corrupt file on my system than to entertain the idea that I had duplicate files. The minute I deleted the “corrupt” file to start from scratch, I spotted the problem. I wasted a third of my day because I didn’t consider the simplest explanation first. It was a project I’d been pulled in to fix, and I added to the problem.

Okay, so back to the question. Why was I so hard on myself?

A friend made a suggestion recently. He said that I needed to give myself credit for being a good person with a desire to live according to my values. He pointed out that each day we are faced with the temptation to make bad choices which will spare us discomfort or give us a quick fix of something we want. Dieting is like that; there’s always the temptation to eat a candy bar over a healthy meal because it’s sweet and fast. No one avoids the candy bar all the time. But we want to, we try to, and most days we succeed.

This was his suggestion: review your behavior at the end of each day. First, remember what you were most proud of doing (or avoiding) that day. Second, remember your weakest moment of the day. Third, decide what you’ll do differently when you’re faced with the same situation again. In short, find your “Plan B”.

I like it. You start with the good thing you did. One bad thing, short of global annihilation, can’t ruin the whole day unless you let it and that’s important to remember. My day didn’t start off well, but I got home, had a nice meal and discovered that the signal on my wireless router is strong enough to allow me to work outside. At the moment, I’m in a lawn chair with my laptop. The sound of chirping birds is the most relaxing noise I’ve heard all day. It would be even better with lighted tiki torches. Yeah, I need to dig those out of the shed. That would be stellar.

I know. Welcome to the 90’s. Wireless is still a big accomplishment FOR ME.

But back to the exercise. What I also like about it is that it doesn’t require superhuman strength of will. It just asks that you’re honest with yourself for a few minutes at day’s end, which is harder than you might think. It’s tempting to say “I am weak, but through force of will, I will overcome it!” That’s just setting you up to repeat your behavior and get another opportunity to slam yourself for weakness. But this is more realistic. All you have to say is this: Okay, I shouldn’t have done that. Why did I? Well, I know I get into trouble whenever I… and insert your weakness here. This exercise gives you the chance to name your weakness.

Say you’ve been trying to quit smoking and today you lit up. When you think about it, you realize you’re more likely to smoke when you go out drinking with your friend who smokes. So maybe it’s honest to admit that your willpower isn’t where you want it. Decide that next time your friend wants to do something; you’ll suggest a movie instead of a smoky bar. Or if you really can’t avoid the temptation, decide not to hang out with that person for a few months until you’ve been off the cigarettes for a while. It’s up to you, but the point is, you’ve got Plan B rather than a big fat tongue lashing where you’re the bad guy and failure is death. More on this later. I'll let you know how it works out.

Beating my dog this morning wasn’t going to get the mess cleaned up. Beating myself up for not putting them out wasn’t going to get it cleaned up either. I’m going to be watching her pretty close tonight though.

And no more flat beer.

-Laura

Kids Change Things

I pasted these pictures together because they have to be viewed together to be fully appreciated.

When dad traveled across country, he was in drill sergeant mode. Up early, say 2-3 am. He'd do that to have several hours under the wheel before the sun came up. Then when the driving was the worst with rush hour, he'd stop for breakfast. When rush hour traffic died down, he'd be back on the road. There would be drinks and sandwiches in tupperware containers in the back, because he'd never stop for dinner, and past the lunch hour he'd never stop period unless he was filling up with gas. Dinner was never bought at a restaurant, because that was the most expensive meal to buy on the road.

In short, that is how he rolled.

Then I came along. And at first, the practice continued. I would be piled in the back with blankets, and mom would navigate. I was too young to really care.

This particular day I woke from a sound sleep and said, "I need to potty NOW," with the demanding voice only a three year old can muster. Mom said, "You'd better find that child a tree."

But just because I was sleepy didn't mean I wanted my butt photographed. Sometimes the papparazzi is just unsatiable, I swear.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend. His daughter is six, and he was sharing in excruciating detail all the things that went into getting his daughter through a dance rehearsal. Truly non-daddy activities, like finding the sign-in table located in some random room of a large highschool, dealing with hair ribbons, pouting adult dance instructors and the disorganization which comes with a room full of dozens of little darlings under the age of seven.

For some reason, I was reminded of my own dad. Like the time he was the only dad on my Kindergarten field trip. I wonder if he thought all those moms were disorganized too, and if he wished he could be somewhere - ANYWHERE - else during the "Find your buddy and make sure you are holding hands!" part of the instructions. I'm sure he felt pretty out of place too, now that I look back on it.

My friend is a single dad, so he doesn't have the luxury of leaving his daughter at rehearsal to get food while mom waits on her. He has to play the parent in tune with the disorganized adults and the very real demands of a tired and hungry little girl, who is truly too tired and hungry for a late evening dance rehearsal. So while the stories about the instructor are funny on one level, I can see how it would be difficult for a single parent to handle both at one time. It would be nice after all to deal with one thing at a time, rather than divide your energies between a child who needs dinner and an adult who wants your "full cooperation" if you're not paying attention to them.

Life. Exhausting sometimes.

At the end of the day though, kids seem to have the ability to remind you of one thing. We're all people, just trying to muddle through without leaving too much butt exposed. And if you're paying attention, kids can also teach you what's more important than arriving at your destination on time and under budget. They show you that it's important to stop for a while to get your tummy filled and your bladder emptied. Because truth be told, the plans we make really aren't the point of life at all. The time we take to stop and care for others... I think we all know that is really the point of it all. That's where our best memories are made. It's the present, and that's where healthy people live.

This picture is a perfect example. It doesn't portary my dad racing down the road at 2am. It's a picture taken during a break from all that. That's the time, be it a potty break or the moment at the end of the day when you're washing the goop and glitter of ballerina practice from your child's hair, where you rest, heal from the indignities you suffered that day, and find your purpose. And your joy.

My wish for everyone who reads this: Enjoy your day.

--Laura Burke

Baby Powder and Vaseline

This is a picture of me standing near a tree in the front of our house. At the time, we lived in a little town called LaMonte, Missouri. My dad was stationed at Whiteman AFB.

The expression on my face stems from the fact that I was unaccustomed to 1. that much clothing, and 2. shoes. My parents took all these photos of me because it was such an event getting me properly outfitted for the weather. They usually got me this wrapped up and then I'd tell them I needed to go the bathroom and they'd have to start all over again. Lamonte was the house we moved to after Guam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guam where if people told you that an event was formal, it meant you wore shoes. I hate shoes to this day.

Later, in the summer of that year, I would have a gleeful day of destruction with my best friend, Brenda. She lived across the street. We decided to pull pranks all day.

First we tampered with my dad's slop jug. This was a cold glass bottle he kept filled with water in the door of the fridge. While he was working outside, he'd come in the house and tilt back the slop jug for a drink. That day, we the jug, coated the bottom of it with vaseline, and refilled it.

Missing a sense of immediate prank gratification, we decided to play. So we poured a full container of baby powder out on the hardwood floors in my bedroom to make a skating rink. With bare feet, it was possible to skate if we kept "re-icing" the floor. After we'd had fun with this, we were covered in powder, so we went to the bathroom to wash off. Somehow we ended up taking off all our clothes while in the bathroom. Quickly we arrived at our next idea. We thought it would be fun to race outside and flash the neighbors. Naked, we ran outside, but quickly lost our nerve as cars began to ride by, so we hid behind this tree for what seemed like an eternity, until we could get back inside without being seen.

I think that was the same day we played gas station with my dad's car and filled his tank with the garden hose, but I can't remember. It seems like a lot of trouble for one day, but we might have done it all at once.

The gas station day, whether that day or another, did not end well for any of the children suspected of participating. But no adult knows for sure who actually pulled the prank. And I still won't name names.

Broken Shoes and Stolen Cars

Before summer kicks in, I hold a contest with myself to see how long I can go without running the air conditioner. I do this for two reasons. First, I fancy it brings out my resourceful side. Second, I am cheap. This evening for example, now that the sun has gone down and the outside air has cooled, I have the side door open, so heat from the stove and the oven can dissipate before bedtime.

This won't last. By July, the air's thickness will blanket the ground, making cooling impossible. The temperatures at night will be just as oppressive as the temperatures during the day. Moving around in it will be like wading through warm, damp cotton.

I digress. Back to my contest. It's May, and the air conditioning is still off. At night I open a few windows in the back of the house to let breezes in and I crank on the floor fan and set it near the foot of the bed. I do not sleep under the covers, but have a sheet at the foot of the bed in case I get cold before morning. In May, you can still get cold before morning. Then I sleep in as little clothing as possible.

This is a pretty good system except for one factor. Mollie is one of my dogs. I have two small dogs, one male and one female. While Petey supports my contest objectives, Mollie does not. He wisely finds a cool spot away from his heat-generating owner and sleeps alone. For Mollie, this just won't do. She insists not only in sleeping with me, but sleeping next to me - stretched out between my calves, pressed against the small of my back or possibly draped across my neck, whichever position seems to give her the most skin-to-skin contact that night. And Mollie gives off heat. Lots of heat. Like a hot bullet. I’m actually not certain that a bullet is hot, but after being blasted out of a narrow cylinder at a high rate of speed, propelled by a spark, I think it’s a solid bet.

In an already lukewarm house, this overheats me. And when I sleep while overheated, I have really odd and vivid dreams. Like the one I had Friday night. I dreamed I was dating the guy from that home improvement show where a crew of hundreds shows up to build a deserving family a house in one week. Anyway, for some reason I wanted to impress upon him that I was not high maintenance, so on our date I wore flip-flops. And as luck would have it, I did not impress him at all, because the strap on my flip-flop broke while we were crossing the street to visit our favorite coffee house. So instead of enjoying a nice evening next to the fire (this must have been my brain telling me how hot Mollie was) he drove me to a local home improvement store, because this apparently is the only kind of store he would know about. There, he wanted me to find replacement flip-flops.

The rest of the dream was a frantic search for new flip-flops. Strangely, this home improvement store DID have shoes. But none of them worked for one reason or another. None of them seemed to satisfy me, and though I can’t remember now why they didn’t suit me, I was left hunting for quite some time through a shelf of unsuitable shoes. And the strap on the shoe I was wearing was still broken, so I had to slide my foot across the store floor. He was clearly embarrassed because he LEFT me, his LOVELY date to look at saws. Before I woke up, I had purchased duct tape to reattach the entire shoe to my foot so he could take me home.

Saturday night, I dreamed that I opened my side door to discover that my car had been stolen. The rest of that dream consisted of me searching all my belongings outside to see if anything had been stolen from the laundry room or the shed.

Because I am an only child and a little self-absorbed, I have started to wonder why all my vivid dreams lately are about searching for something. I wonder what I’m most worried about, being lost myself, or losing something important to me.

I wonder when the dreams will stop.