Saying yes...

Do As I Say...

Grizzled and I had the pleasure of 4 hours alone in the car this past weekend. As I've said before, I love time in the car with Grizzled because there aren't the usual distractions and we talk. We went through the usual list of rants, observations, and silly anecdotes, but as usual, we usually end up someplace real. It still amazes me, and yet it doesn't, that you can know someone for 20+ years and not know everything. You think you've heard it all, but really, after having kids or settling into some kind of routine, how much of the daily chatter is really about anything containing depth? Most of it is discussing the division of labor, who did or didn't do what, who will do or won't do what...

At some point during the drive Grizzled said he really hoped he was giving the lamblets the advice they needed. He said he had tried his best, but also knew that generational differences, personality differences, might make that advice not only moot, but potentially damaging. He relayed instances where the advice he had been given had not only been off, but it had changed the course of his life and not always for the better. Some snippets... so seemingly innocuous and yet life-altering.

Sitting there, I could think of many snippets of advice that I had been given that were not based in truth, but on someone's skewed perception... snippets that had stopped me cold from heading here or there. I now know them to be erroneous, but the seeds were planted so long ago, the roots so long... even though I think I've pulled them out, they still pop back up from time to time which is why I try to stay away from absolutes... and which is also why I refuse to ever let my kids think anyone is omniscient. Yes, kids take comfort in knowing something all powerful is at the helm... Mom and Dad can take care of anything! But I think they'll take more comfort if they know those people at the helm are indeed capable, but are also capable of making mistakes and are just trying to do their best, their best often really lacking... Those people are human.

It helps to remember that when looking back as well...

The Joy of Being a Pot Roast

Before I head out the door... I thought I'd leave some food for thought... here's a repeat of a post from Feb/07. 

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This past summer, I had roughly a 40 hour period to myself. Since having children, solitary time has been an endangered species. I’ve gotten more of it as my lamblets have grown, but this past summer’s time was unique. I was lakeside in Wisconsin, was away from computers, to-do lists, any number of those normal distractions. I had approx. 40 hours alone with my thoughts. Grizzled and the girls were up with me, but were heading off to visit a friend’s place further north. Being the chicken-shit I turn into after dark, I insisted he leave the dog. As I’ve mentioned before, scary books and movies were a steady part of my entertainment diet while growing up. It takes me about 2 seconds to imagine that small noise I heard in the basement is really some scary creature come to life. Yes, I kept the dog and probably slept with strategic lights on. I want to see the creature that finally attacks me just so I have proof that all of this fear has been valid!!!

But… aside from goblins and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night, I had time to myself. I first plotted the best way to spend this time. Do I pull out the sketchbook? Do I do nothing and laze in the sun? I opted to finish the book and magazine I had brought with. I used to blaze through magazines and books. I never had enough around. That was another thing that went away after children. Losing myself in a book is now the exception and not the rule. I miss it, but somehow, part of my brain keeps telling me I needed to be present. It keeps telling me I have other things to do. I can now forget I even started a book. I have a stack of books beside my bed that have been started, but never finished. They are waiting, but if enough time goes by, I’ll probably forget I ever started them in the first place.

During the 40 hours, however, I was going to finish my book and I did. I forgot how much reading you can do when you have ABSOLUTELY NO OTHER DISTRACTIONS! I blew through the book, blew through the magazine and had at least 38 hours left… I needed another book. I looked around the house to see what other people had left. The selection was at an all-time low. I was reduced to choosing between some sappy romance thingie and Ruth Reichl’s, “Comfort Me With Apples”. I had read, “Tender to the Bone” and had enjoyed it so this seemed like a fine choice…. not too deep, not too sappy, not too, too. Ruth is funny and she intersperses her books with wonderful recipes so in I went. I surfaced about 5 hours later. Again, I had forgotten how fast you can read something when there are absolutely no other distractions. I had killed off the last piece of reading and was now left with my thoughts and instead of thinking about the raptors that live behind the furnace, this is where they took me.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had all been born with a recipe card for our life? If you were meant to make a pot roast, you would have been born with something that said, “Pot Roast” and a nice list of ingredients. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith, you are the proud parents of what is to be a splendid pot roast!” Just think of all of the struggles, questions, quandaries you would do away with if you knew you were supposed to be a pot roast. If you had by chance been born into a Chicken Marsala family and they were giving you grief for not fitting the Chicken Marsala mold, you could merely flash them your recipe card and say, “See! I’m a POT ROAST!” They might still want you to be a Chicken Marsala, but arguing would be pointless.

I was then thinking, would this take too much mystery out of life? Would this make life too mundane, too boring? What if someone is born with a recipe card that says, “Tuna Casserole”, but they decide they are going to be Sashimi? No one should be stopped from setting their sights high and if they feel like becoming Sashimi, then why should they be hindered by having Tuna Casserole on their card? And maybe after they’ve become the best Sashimi they can, then maybe in their golden years, they can use the leftovers for tuna casserole...

Okay, so then I was thinking, what if we were just born with our list of ingredients? That list of ingredients of course being our talents. Most people think talents are obvious, but what I have come to see during my brief time here on planet Earth is that most people aren’t sure of them. They think they know what they have. They think, they pray that they have all the makings of a grand chocolate cake, but what if they’re missing baking powder? What then??? Wouldn’t it just be nice to know for sure before strolling out your *chocolate cake* only to be told you made *brownies*? I’m thinking it would be nice to know. You could always alter your recipes, you could always choose not to make anything, but just enjoy others, we do have free will, but I’m still thinking, it would be nice to know. It would be nice to have a clue, to have a ingredient card sent along with you when you start this voyage called life.

But then maybe the best or most interesting or funniest recipes come from flying by the seat of your pants and making it work no matter what your ingredients. Look at Ritz Mock Apple Pie! It’s apple pie sans apples!  Maybe you just need to make whatever, to go for the gusto and to heck with what the Chicken Marsala’s of the world are saying. I’d hate to think I had gotten to the end of my life and had played it safe, and even though I had made wonderful brownies, had then looked in my grocery sack and saw a huge can of unopened baking powder. 

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So... what would your recipe card say? Did you stick to it or have you decided to throw caution to the wind?

Be back in about a week... I'm leaving a sunken souffle... I hope to return as something less deflated. :)

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming

The blinds will be down for awhile... there are things to do.. and then trips to go on... and rumors of a get-together with a certain zombie.

If you don't hear from me again... assume the zombie ate my brains.

What was waiting to greet me this wonderful Monday morning...

On the road again...

... back sometime later in the month. If you stop by for whatever reason, please play nice with the other kiddies and don't forget to turn the lights out when you leave.

On the road for awhile...

First figuratively, then literally. See you sometime in July.

My idea of hell...

... would have to be a traffic circle. I don't get them. I don't like them. Don't make me use them. That means YOU, Grizzled. Don't say, "I need to drop off the truck, just follow me..." and then take the TRAFFIC CIRCLE!

A traffic circle in my mind is the wild west of traffic conditions. There are rules, but is anyone following them? Hell no! And that includes myself, because, as I wait for the people on my right to enter traffic circle hell, the people on my left are waiting for me and eventually, we all dive in at once, zig-zagging in and out of the two lanes until we're shot out onto our exit street. It's like Spirograph done with cars, except instead of one pen point making the lovely pattern, it's lots of large cars being driven by overly-caffeinated, sleep-deprived people somewhat like myself. Give me the expressway, give me downtown Chicago traffic. I'll even take the school drop-off lane and that's a scary place, just don't ask me to do the traffic circle. We're not made for each other. I can admit that.

What is made for me is chocolate. Note to self, don't buy the lamblets' Valentine-function chocolate a week or more before the slated events. Just don't do it. Even better, just buy something you don't like. It would be easier that way. They should put all stores that sell chocolate on the other side of the traffic circle with no alternative routes for getting there. I'd still love chocolate, but I'd snap back to reality and would realize that it is not a breakfast food.

Other random observation: I no longer live in a suburb. I live in some new-fangled place called an iceburb. My burb has been taken over by petrified mountains of snow that are peppered with jagged outcroppings of ice. More snow is scheduled for this afternoon. The new, fluffy as a bunny snow will cover and disguise the evil jagged piles of ice. I will no doubt back into a few while trying to avoid garbage cans that are precariously perched on top of the various parkway ice mountains. It will still be preferable to attempting the hell that is the traffic circle.

Of course, I could just stay inside with the remaining chocolate...

Bossy Road Trip Mayhem!

It appears that Bossy is getting so many requests for visits on her potential road trip that Bossy may not even have to drive! I'm thinking she has enough people signed up that she won't have to worry about paying for gas, she won't need gas! She won't need a car... all of the people will merely line-up and form a Bossy Brigade. Yes, Bossy will be passed from person to person across the USA and possibly even into Canada. May Bossy's feet not touch the ground until she reaches the Pacific... and this is a good thing considering Bossy's feet are usually cloaked in slippers.

Round and round she goes! Where BOSSY stops, nobody knows!

Bossy's planning a road trip... an excellent road trip. You can become a stop on the trip! Yes, you could have Bossy come to your very own town... your very own home! You could have Bossy sleep on your very sofa! You could sell Bossy's sleep drool on Ebay! You just have to sign up! Sign up and pony up... pony up some gas money because with oil going for $100 a barrel, gas is not going to be cheap in the near future. Bossy's going to need fuel to make this dream happen. Bossy's going to need support. Even if she doesn't wind her way through your neck of the woods, chip in for gas and rest stop money. You'll be a part of history.

The road not meant to be traveled

I don’t have a very good sense of direction so I don’t know why that wouldn’t pertain to my life direction as well.

I wonder if a midlife crisis is merely becoming aware of the fact that you’re life is off course, or maybe not even off course, just off of the course you assumed it would be on.

I think there’s a part of us that always has a plan for how our lives are going to turn out and a few end up exactly where they thought they’d be. Maybe they’re connected to a LPPS (Life Path Positioning Satellite). The rest of us, well, we take turns, sometimes turns we’re told we should, and we get lost. We make little choices on our trips, choices that seem interesting or necessary, but they take us off of our path, the path we assume we’ll always be on, should be on. We end up somewhere else instead of our intended destination and its not even that the destination we arrived at is bad, it’s just our brain is still trying to make sense out of the fact that it’s not the destination we chose or were told to take some 10-20 years ago.

Maybe a midlife crisis is not so much about getting back on track with our original destination as it is learning to accept the fact that our destination, for one reason or another, changed and we’re no longer where we assumed we’d be and that’s ok.

Somewhere along the ride I stopped riding solo. I picked up a man, I added two children and all of the baggage that traveling with others entails. You don’t travel the same when you’re traveling with others, especially others who have their own internal maps, their own preconceived destinations.

I need to stop judging my trip and my destinations in terms of a solo traveler. I need to stop judging my trip in terms of the maps that were handed to me in my youth, maps made out by others. Maybe instead of being off track, I am more on track than I’ve ever been.  

But then again… I could be lost.