6 posts tagged “mopes”
Body shaken. Salad tossed. Pride bruised.
The last thing I said to Mr. rpennefe before I left for the first time this morning was “Be careful out there. I bet there’ll be some slick spots.” I said this because he has an interesting talent for locating said slick spots. If there is an icy surface any where, he will slip on it, causing him to agrivate his bad back.
I walk out the door, make it down the steps safely, but the minute I hit the actual sidewalk I go down. My plastic bag with my lunch goes skittering down the block. I am like a turtle on its back, struggling to get purchase to get back on my feet.
I am the epitome of grace.
Once I’m back on my feet, I grab my runaway bag (my salad has gone for an interesting ride. I figure I won’t have to mix it up that much when lunchtime rolls around), and I stomp back inside the house. I have to change my pants: my butt is wet and it probably looks pretty funny as well.
Once I’ve changed, I hit the streets again; this time I manage to remain on my feet. I walk down to the bus stop and wait for the bus.
It is while I’m waiting that I notice the suspicious brown goo on the front of my jacket.
Crap.
Literally: I have dog crap on my coat.
I fish around for my travel-sized pack of facial tissues and I wipe (very ineffectively, I might add) at the goo. It isn’t perfect, and I will have to wash my coat when I get home, but it’ll do for the moment.
The bus comes, I get on and I sit down.
That’s when I find that more of the suspicious brown goo has made its way onto my pants.
SH*T!
Again, literally.
I mop at the poop on my jeans – again, ineffectively and I think all kinds of curse words. I won’t share them with you, but leave it to your imagination.
Once I arrive at work, I hie myself away to the lavatory. Armed with wet paper towels and the hand soap from the dispenser at the sink, I slink into one of the bathroom stalls, strip off the offending article of clothing and scrub. And I scrub. And I scrub some more.
Have you ever heard the fairy tale called “East of the Sun and West of the Moon”? It involves an enchanted prince who is being held by a troll princess and will be forced to marry her unless his human love can come and rescue him (since his human love screwed up in the first place, and put him in the position of having to marry the troll, she kind of owes him that rescue). At the climax of the story, the prince makes a deal with the troll princess. He will only marry her if she can wash his favorite shirt and get rid of the candle wax stain that is marring it.
Of course, being a fairy tale with a happy ending, the troll princess fails. In fact in some versions, as she scrubs at the wax, the stain just spreads.
Although I am able to vanquish the dog poop (I refuse to contemplate the posibility that I have not defeated said poop), I still feel a bit like that troll princess, given how much of my pant leg is now wet.
I then pull on my pants again – decorated with an amusing pattern of dampness down the left leg – muster my wounded ego and stalk regally back to my desk.
As crises go, this could have been much worse. In fact, I don’t see even a glimmer of the world coming to an end.
Still, I’ve had better ways to start the day. I hope that the dog poop debacle isn’t a sign of how the day will continue.
I'm just rambling here. Don't feel the need to read or respond. I just needed to get my thoughts down somewhere.
I can only speak about my experience, but my experience tells me that my relationship with my husband has a very cyclical nature. I find that I am uncertain if this cycle comes from the patterns that our lives follow, and my feelings of being taken for granted stem from outside influences, or if something about his mood and something about my mood – always working on each other, I’m sure – have reached the point in the pattern that always makes me feel…well…off.
That is the best word I can think of to describe what I feel. I don’t feel happy, I don’t feel sad, I just feel off balance, not quite right, something that is on the cusp of being indescribable.
I cannot say for certain that this out-of-sorts feeling isn’t just an aberration in my mind and that my husband doesn’t feel it at all. I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to ask him. In fact, that would also be the healthiest thing to do, emotion- and relationship-wise.
I dread asking him, though. He already considers me to be emotionally fragile. I dread his response to my sharing these feelings with him.
What I’d really like to do is to determine what exactly feels wrong and come up with some ideas of how I’d like to handle these problems.
Above I wrote about feeling unappreciated. Although that was one of the first things that popped into my head as I contemplated writing this entry, I’m pretty sure it isn’t at all accurate. Perhaps from merely mentioning my dread of his response to my feelings has preoccupied my mind. However, I find that the thought that curdles my stomach right now is how he considers me to be emotionally fragile.
To be fair, I can appreciate how natural his concern for my mental state happens to be. I’ve known him for almost seven years now. For over half of that time it was very obvious that I was suffering from depression. Technically, I still am suffering, only I am taking medication to keep the serotonin in my brain moving the way that it ought to, keeping the depression at bay.
Imagine how difficult it must have been for him to hear, four years ago or so, how I had thoughts to hurting myself, taking a knife and carving into my skin. I didn’t want to die, exactly; there was simply a thought of how satisfying it would be to slice myself up.
I don’t think that kind of information is going to leave a person’s head very easily.
So, I am on medication, and I no longer think about going out to the kitchen to find the nearest knife so that I can engage in some self-mutilation. I have also been working with a therapist who has been very helpful guiding me through the mess that is my head.
She and I are both very proud of how far I’ve come since my first meeting with her. Actually, I think she’s more proud than I am, but then I still am trying to break a habit of down-playing my successes.
My husband will admit that I have changed for the better. Perhaps he is able to understanding intellectually. Unfortunately, he still gets worked up when I show any of what I call the “negative” emotions: anger, irritation, sadness, fear, ennui.
I need to digress a moment here. When we were first dating, and it became very obvious that we had completely different fighting styles (he confronts a problem head on, I run from it as long as I possibly can. Or, if that doesn’t work, I pretend it doesn’t exist for as long as I can), we had a discussion about certain emotions – mainly anger and sadness. I made some comment that indicated that I thought of these emotions as “bad” and certainly feelings to be ashamed of, especially if one lost control and either cried in public or showed anger in public. There are only certain places, according to my upbringing, that it is allowable to show either sadness or anger.
My husband was appalled at my thinking of any emotion as “bad,” and he tried to get me to come around to his way of thinking. As an actor, he things of emotions as either “hard” or “soft;” descriptions that refer to the amount of energy that gets poured out as someone is feeling them. Joy, for example, along with anger, desperation, and grief would be hard emotions (I’m making this up as I go along, trying to remember precisely what he said…I’m pretty sure I have it right, but here’s my disclaimer in case I don’t), and contentment, ennui, and happy would be softer emotions – much less “in your face” kind of emotions.
So, my husband clearly espouses the idea that there is no such thing as a bad emotion; there are only bad actions and reactions that stem from that emotion. (Take for example, someone who throws things in anger. That is not only scary for those who surround the angry person it is also destructive and can be dangerous.)
It seems, though, that as far as I am concerned, he discards this idea, and his thoughts fall more in line with what my thoughts about emotions used to be. That is to say, if I appear to be feeling sad or angry, he gets quite worked up about that fact. It appears to me that what he’d like most in life is to have me “let go” of my anger or sadness so that it is no longer an issue.
As I typed the above, I realized that I have been caught in a trap of feeling one thing (my husband sending me a message of “DON’T YOU DARE FEEL BAD!”) and actually having the intellectual understanding of the message he is really trying to give me. (I know what the message is because he has mentioned it a time or two, or ten.)
The message is something more like this: “Don’t make yourself feel bad.”
The semantics of it drive me wild, especially in the middle of the fight. When my gut is telling me, loudly, that Ted is trying to stifle my emotions, and my head isn’t even trying to whisper any reason and reality to me, all it makes me feel is angry, angry, angry. How dare he tell me what I should feel and when?
I have discovered that my gut is too loud and my head is too quiet during arguments with Ted.
I will now, however, attempt to explain the message “Don’t make yourself feel bad.” (Those of you who are swifter on the uptake than I am probably already see the difference.)
I will, whenever the opportunity arises (and it arises often), do a couple of different things. First, I will give everyone – except myself – the benefit of the doubt. Second, I use my powers of empathy too often.
What I mean to say is that I am truly skilled at “judging introspection.” I’m trying to give you a good example of what I mean.
I go to a party. It doesn’t matter how many friends I have there, I manage to make myself feel out of place. I open my mouth. I say something innocuous. I then take the next five or ten minutes thinking about what a stupid, inane thing came out of my mouth, and convincing myself that all my friends who heard me think I’m as idiotic as I feel and are planning to not only drop me as a friend, but will also be doing unkind impressions of me later.
That might be overstating the case, but not by much. Variations on this theme abound. You know that feeling you get when you remember a particularly embarrassing situation? That sick with dread sort of recollection? I relive horrible moments all the time and am embarrassed all over again at the memory. That embarrassment (over a memory for the the love of dog!) leads me to think about what a flawed human being I am and how people probably just put up with me because they’re too nice to mock me in person.
The truth is, I know I’m not a completely doofus. I also know that I am a great person to be around. Because I’m an introvert, I much prefer listening to other people talk. If you like to talk and to tell stories, come and find me. I will listen and be happier than if I had to share stories myself. I’m also insatiably curious about what is happening in my friends’ lives. Not just about what is happening, but what their responses are, how they’re feeling, what their doing, everything.
As for my powers of empathy…the only problems with using my powers of empathy is the fact that I would rather humble myself rather than hurt someone else.
Consider a friendly board game: if I happen to win, I will make comments about how “lucky” I was or how my success was a fluke. I point out good moves made by my opponents.
That’s not such a bad thing, but it certainly makes my belief in my lack of good qualities stronger.
I have had years of dismissing the good and encouraging belief in the bad when I judge myself. I will say that I’m getting over that, although it is slow going. Because of the results of my getting down on myself – feeling angry at me or feeling miserably sad – of course my husband is going to react to those emotions. For him, they are a sign that I’m abusing myself again. For me, it’s a sign that all I want him to do is to tell me something positive about me. The fact that he won’t (he doesn’t see how it will help, seeing as how I’m the one who needs to tell me something positive about me), makes me incredibly angry or makes me feel completely abandoned.
I’ve just reread my essay, and I find that I was right about feeling unappreciated. I crave compliments from my husband. When I’m upset, though, he is hesitant to give me the positive affirmations that I crave (see his reasoning above). So, I’m not getting what I want (attention, attention, attention), and he’s certainly not getting what he wants (for me to be gentle with myself). I was also right about disliking how he sees me as being emotionally frail. He tends to swing from being too coddling (grrr! Let me do it my own way…stop telling me what to do!) to being too angry that I would dare abuse myself like this. Anger and protection: neither one of them satisfies me.
Have a reached a conclusion about what I need to do next? Not entirely. I think I’m going to need to break some rules that I somehow set up in my brain. I need to indulge in something. What though? What?
Here are some of the choices I’ve come up with:
Find a movie *I* want to see, and go see it.
Find something *I* want, but is completely useless (a romance novel, for example) and buy it.
Pick out an activity *I* want to do, and do it (I’m thinking something like finding a way to go hiking or spending the entire day at the library, gorging myself on books)
Oddly, I feel that whatever I choose, it should be something that I do with my husband. I mean, I can offer him the opportunity to join in, but it has to be my thing, doing my way.
I guess I see it as an affirmation that my opinion matters, all I have to do is to speak up. I matter, and there are plenty of good things about me. To reward that, I choose to do…
…well, I’ll get back to you on that.
I gave blood today.
This is something I've done periodically since I was 18 years old. I'm one of the lucky ones (haha) who weighs over 110 pounds, is healthy as a horse, and has be-yoo-ti-ful veins in my arms. It's odd to be complimented for having great veins, but in this case I suppose that it's understandable.
The only thing that stops me from donating is when the level of iron in my blood drops down below 12.5
Twelve point five what? Well, that I couldn't tell you. I just know that when the nurse takes a bit of my blood to test for hemoglobin...or whatever it is that they're testing for...my blood always fails to sink to the bottom of the vial with the blue solution. Then, the nurse needs to take just a little bit more blood and actually use a high tech device that will either damn me as having too little iron, or pass me along to the main event in blood donation.
I'm not anemic, but I don't always meet their expectations. This time, I was lucky to come in at 12.6: one tenth of a point higher than I needed to be.
So, I gave blood. To be absolutely truthful, I gave blood today because I wanted to get the blood Nazis off my back. There is one company (and only one, that I know of) in town that collects blood for the Chicago area - LifeSource. Since I am aware of how important blood donation is to patients in the hospital for a variety of reason, I will first say that LifeSource does an excellent job of providing a service to those patients. The people that I have encountered working in the LifeSource centers have universally been personable, even upbeat. Add to that, I have rarely had a bad experience with donating blood (no bruising, nerve damage, fainting, nothing). That last fact is probably due to both the skill of the nurses at LifeSource and to my bee-yoo-ti-ful veins.
That being said, I can go on and rant about the blood Nazis.
Although you can certainly walk in if you fee a sudden desire to give blood (in a board meeting, for example, as the director of finance is droning on and on about first quarter earnings and the forecast for the rest of the year, an employee is suddenly struck with an epiphany "I should go and donate blood today." This kind of thing happens all the time, so I'm told.), LifeSource prefers to work on a set schedule. Blood donors are encouraged to make their next appointment after they finish giving blood. I never do, mainly because I don't know what my schedule is going to look like in two months.
Because I refuse to make an appointment two months in advance (and let's face facts here, folks. It wouldn't be that difficult for me to make that appointment. I make dentist appointments 6 months in advance and never bat an eye about that), the blood Nazis come after me.
I have absolutely no idea why I resist their requests and rules the way that I do. Hospitals depend on them to provide the blood that the patients need. They depend on people like me to keep to a set schedule to donate blood. I should be a lot more understanding than I am.
But I'm not.
I don't want to turn on my cell phone as I'm leaving work to discover that LifeSource has called four times today - but hasn't left a message for me.
The people who recruit the blood donors are aggressive - they remind me of cold calling salespeople - and I won't insult your intelligence by going on and on about how I hate those people!
Even worse, I was informed today that LifeSource would like me to consider donating platelets the next time I come in.
Blech!
If you've donated platelets before, you might be able to guess the reasons for my reluctance.
During whole blood donation, once I have the needle poked into me, I can fill a 500 ml bag with my blood in 5 minutes. I rock.
Platelet donation takes me 2 whole hours to complete. TWO HOURS! Dude, that is 115 more minutes than my whole blood donations.
Tell me, how many people can easily set aside 2 hours every two weeks to be hooked up to a machine that takes blood from your body, separates out the platlets, and pumps everything that is left over back into your body?
Even the time between donations is shorter - two weeks rather than eight weeks.
So, I should calmly say "LifeSource, I have considered donating platelets instead of whole blood, and I have decided against it. I prefer to continue to donate whole blood." Instead, I feel like throwing a temper tantrum and whining like a little baby.
The truth is, I feel a little guilty over the whole thing. Would it be so hard for me to do what I can to meet the needs of those sick patients - those people with luekemia and other blood diseases? Truly? Am I that selfish.
Darn those blood Nazis anyway.
I am SO BORED!
It is Friday afternoon, and I have two and a half hours left to go at work. Well, two and a half hours in theory. Because I have the good fortune (yes, I admit it. I'm lucky) to work for a really easy-going company that lets people choose their hours - so long as the work gets done, I could probably slip out the door in an hour or so.
Just because I have a parent voice in my head asking me if I have gotten all my work done, I have to look around my desk and say...well...yeah. I have. I mean, I could begin a completely INSANE project that involves scanning in invoices that go back to 1999, but I am avoiding that like the plague. I feel the liberty to ignore that project because I'm the one who came up with the idea in the first place. It isn't as if my boss has assigned that task to me and I'm ignoring it....
Hmmm, it doesn't seem like my parent voice is appeased by that logic.
Oh well, what are parent voices for but to be ignored?
Since I'm bored, maybe I should "steal" things from my "neighbors" and at least occupy myself until it's time to go home. For example:
Friday 5's First Five of 2007
- Did you kiss anyone at midnight on New Years? I did - my husband - does it count if he had to set the alarm to wake me up in time?
- Are your holiday decorations still up? NO! I haven't done anything else around the house, but the decorations are down!
- Did you gain weight over the holidays, and if so how do you plan on getting rid of it? Hmmm...over the holidays? Probably. However, after having gone to the doctor yesterday for my anual physical and etc (oh, why was I born a woman?), I learned that over the past three years, I have slowly gained 20 pounds. I am so proud! Yes, I'm going to get serious about exercising. I am also, it seems, going to have to get serious about strengthening my will power and changing my eating habits. Sigh. (yeah yeah, poor me. I've got a rough life. yadda yadda yadda)
- Do you play video games? Nope. I get my husband to do that for me. "Hey, babe. Go play some Halo 2 for me, will ya?"
- Do you have pets? Indeed I do. Please refer to my references on Mike, Megan, and O. They're my sweeties! Let's see them - I have got to down load some more pictures from my camera. These are getting old!
I am so completely obsessed! I need some serious help RIGHT NOW! I can only describe it as having two voices in my head...one has transformed into a new age flower child hippie, and the other one - the voice from my youth - is appalled. I am not a hippie! I'm not! If only I could stop thinking like one.
Breathe, just breathe.
Okay, it all started because of my housework. I am the female, and having a clean home means more to me than it does to the husband. That isn't to say that he doesn't help around the house. He does. It's just that he doesn't notice/isn't bothered by dustbunnies and soap scum as quickly as I am.
So, I clean the house. I find that some of the cleansers I use give my a fierce headache and make my hands dry up into hag-claws. I'm just vain enough not to like that.
Thinking back to my childhood, I remember my mom cleaning with simple, homemade solutions of white vinegar and water. I would love to go back to that, but the husband doesn't like the smell of vinegar. Using the old fashioned recipe would require me kicking him out of the house for the day so I can clean in peace and the vinegar smell can disappate at it dries.
I talked the husband into buying me a book called "Clean Home, Clean Planet". Now I'm completely obsessed with less harsh, harmful cleaning products. I can live with that.
What I'm having a more difficult time accepting is the fact that I am now looking at the personal care products I use. My favorite brand of lotion/body gel/lip balm *sob* is made by a company that tests their products on animals. Suddenly, I'm not okay with this. Suddenly, my mind has warped and I am a hippie! Why, oh why!
I am not a vegetarian, and I have no plans to become one. And I know that there are worse things in life to be other than someone who is acting on a concern for the environment and for the animals of this planet.
What I have a problem with - I guess - is the hypocracy of my life if I pursue the "I'm not going to use any products from companies that test on animals" thought that has popped into my head. I'm not going to stop eating meat. I'm not going to stop consuming other animal products - eggs, anyone?
What I have is a mish-mash of information, and I'm so overwhelmed that I don't know what I should do next. Should I research carefully the products I want to use to maintain my current level of hygiene? If I do that, should I then research the foods I'm purchasing to make sure that the animals are treated well before their slaughter, that the produce isn't treated with pesticides and fertilizers that are harmful to the earth? Then would I have to start finding new places to buy my clothing, so I know I'm getting a product that wasn't made in a sweatshop and/or with child labor?
Where does it end? I don't want to make a statement, I don't want to be political, I don't want to change the world or people's minds. I just want to make choices for me, personally, that I can live with. Right now, it feels like my entire career as a consumer is blighted with the choices I've made. Oh, woe is me!
Sigh. Maybe I should just start doing the stinkin' research. Maybe with more information I'll be able to find a balance between doing EVERYTHING I can to save the world and being able to allow myself to purchase luxury items (luxury in the sense that I might be paying a higher price in regret if I think about it too hard).
Man, have I been cranky lately! Seriously, if you showed me a glass partially filled with water, I'd definitely see it as half empty. Why is that?
Well *settles down into armchair psychologist mode* we haf here a sit-yoo-a-shun in which I - the subject - am bored with zee class I am teaching.
That is to say, I'm bored with the topic, not the students. I'm teaching cultural anthropology - and don't get me wrong: I am so very glad to have this job, adjunct professor though I may be.
My degrees are in archaeology and physical anthropology. For those of you who are familiar with the subfields of anthropology, you know that I have just covered two of the four. I never touched linguistics (it simply didn't exist for me). That leaves cultural anthropology - definitely a lesser favorite.
Don't get me wrong - cultural anthropology can be fascinating. It just doesn't hold my interest the way that physical anthropology does.
I luf the skeletal system - it is a beautiful thing both in form and function - in growth and development - pretty much in any way that you look at it.
I'm most fascinated with the human skeleton, but in a pinch, any skeletal system will do. It's that fascinating.
Hand to god, I am that much of a skeletal geek...nerd...whateva.
However, I am teaching cultural anthropology - part-time
Sigh.
I can really tell a difference in the way the course is going this semester - it's my third time teaching this wonderful course. I'm just not as enthusiastic about the material I need to pass along to my students.
In return, my students are bored (I think). At the very least, they don't discuss as well as I would like them to.
Whine, whine, whine, mope, complain, whine.
I need to get over this.
*****
Okay, I'm over it. I'm getting back to work.
