Begin Again Part 2

Begin Again: The Brave Practice of Releasing Hurt and Receiving Rest by Leeana Tankersley
Read: 4/7/18-4/24/18

Last week I started to tell how I found this book, and about my grief with my mother in the late stages of dementia.

I left off with listening to The Next Right Thing podcast, the episode Be a Beginner.

I'd just been told, by multiple people, that I didn't know how to do this, how to proceed, because I'd never done it before.

So this week, if you're in your own grief, anxiety, or transition, I invite you in with these words from the transcript:

"If you are newly engaged or newly pregnant or if you are a new step-parent or just moved into a new house, you are grateful for the new role that you have and maybe excited about the future. But there’s a lot you don’t yet know and there isn’t a handbook to teach you.

Begin Again Part 1

Begin Again: The Brave Practice of Releasing Hurt and Receiving Rest by Leeana Tankersley
Read: 4/7/18-4/24/18

This book is based on/inspired by the line in the Rule of St. Benedict, "Always we begin again." I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to everyone, but especially anyone who's in transition now, and especially especially anyone who's grieving anything.

Why? It's not a book on grief, right? I mean, "Hurt" is in the title, but "Releasing Hurt?" What if you just lost someone and the thing you're beginning is grief, and you're not ready to be done with that process yet?

This isn't a book that only applies to happy beginnings. Beginnings also involve endings, even the "my world is falling apart" sort.

I could give you a beautiful quote from the introduction to prove it, but first, let me tell you a story.

Here's how I found Begin Again. What I've written so far, anyway, and we'll finish the story and review next week. (Hopefully, that's the plan.)


My mom isn't doing very well. Nothing especially new there, but she's at a stage of not doing well that seems to be closer to the end, and I've been surprised at how hard it's been hitting me.

An Ordinary and Holy Tuesday

Someone, probably many someones, though I don't know who, have said not to compare others' outsides to your insides. And that's part of the trouble with social media -- it can make this more difficult. So, lest you see me at my best and think I have it all together... ( O_o )

This is Joy, if you can't tell. Ha.

Things I Learned This Spring

Cooper Mountain Nature Park

Linking up with Emily Freeman to share what I've learned this spring.

I'm learning, apparently, to ban perfectionism by keeping things short. (I mean, less than 2000 words is short, right?!) This is the furthest thing from an exhaustive list of what I've learned recently. I could probably write every day for a month on what I've been learning! And I'll tell myself that I will write that series, so I don't feel as bad about leaving things out. It's a useful and pretty lie, it is.

Here are two. Two things I've learned. Well, two categories. Two category iceberg tips.

1. The Enneagram. Mostly when I'd heard about the Enneagram, up until this spring, I'd kind of been like, meh, I like the personality systems I already have, thanks. Don't need another one. I'd heard that Myers-Briggs highlights strengths whereas the Enneagram focuses on motivations, but when you include cognitive steps in your Myers-Briggs you can start to get a bit deeper than just behavior and preferences, too. So meh.

Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part Three: A Narrative

Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part One
Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part Two: High Sensitivity

Okay, so Parts One and Two explained my main dilemma, with two especially resonant links. Musings on the line between excuses and reasons, what self-care looks like and how hard it can be, and what happens when you throw high sensitivity into the mix. Keep in mind that, as I mentioned in the beginning, when I feel like my life is spiraling out of control, I tend to numb myself out in various ways, to gain a sense of pseudo-control. So not helpful. But not something I want to be beating myself up for either, because it IS understandable, and beating myself up just makes me feel more out of control.

I've been thinking about that sense of control and the narrative I tell myself. Why I really, really want a good narrative, one that makes sense of me, one that tells me how to work with myself.

Beauty in Winter

2014 was a big year for learning things. Sad and tragic things, fun things, productive things, beautiful things, all kinds of things! As Gracie sometimes says, "Ah the wings!"

(All the things.)

I would love it if I'd already written blog posts for many of these, which I could just link to with a little summary, but 2014 has also been a hard year, and the words and stories are slow to come. They're coming, now, but I can't push them all out before this linkup. (Speaking of things learned.) So I'll write what I can and maybe add some links later, to future posts.

(Because what an epic long blog post with lots of links really really needs is even MOAR links, to other huge long blog posts. Yup.)

1. Reminders of grace are all around.

Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part Two: High Sensitivity

Part One was the beginning of my issues and my problem, with just a taste of solution.

Then there's this more recent link from Modern Mrs. Darcy, "Self-care for the highly sensitive parent."  Oh yes. Yes, yes.

Or how about I just live at Multnomah Falls?
That should work, right??

Add being highly sensitive into the stressful mix I described in the last post. That's great. Just what I needed. Tell me again why I'm supposed to be myself, with my own particular strengths and weaknesses, instead of being someone else? Someone else's strengths sound so much better... heh. Um.

Almost two months after I wrote most of these words, I sit at my computer editing, and remember words I highlighted earlier today in A Million Little Ways by Emily P. Freeman.

"A few weeks ago, I cried while reading a food blog. It wasn't because I was so hungry or

Practicalities of Living Life in a Hard Season, Part One

Note: I wrote most of the material in this post and series at the beginning of November. Comments on time frames reflect that, I didn't go to the trouble to update them all. "Last Wednesday" means the Wednesday before the day I wrote this in November, not actually last Wednesday. The "Merry Christmas" part is current, but not the rest.

Okay. That is all. Carry on.




Merry Christmas! This may not be the best time ever for a new six-part or however-many-parts series, but I've been working on this one for a while now (see above), and am feeling particularly inspired at the moment to finish it up and put it out there, so. *shrug* Eh, it's okay if you're busy with your family right now. I'll link back to it again later.

(And if you're not busy, or you're feeling particularly sad or lonely or let-down or frustrated or all of the above right now and that's why you're online, welcome! This is for you. Hugs. I wish I had easy answers for you, instead of my story. But I hope it helps a little.)

A Reply to a Reply to a Reply (Because. Heh.)

Trigger warning: Miscarriage and pregnancy loss, spoken about in very general terms. Possible postpartum depression. I'll go back and add similar warnings to the beginnings of earlier posts about my miscarriage. I hadn't read very many of other people's accounts yet when I posted them, and wasn't thinking yet of possible needs for warnings. If

An Open Response to A Little Bit of Personality's Call to Action

ETA: Trigger warning: Miscarriage, possible postpartum depression

I read aLBoP's "A Call to Action" yesterday evening. My toddler woke me up about a quarter 'til two, and now I write this, a little after three

November Lessons

Back at the beginning of July I participated in a linkup with "Fifteen Things I Learned in June." It is, of course, kind of a regular thing. A monthly linkup. And I'm participating again! Finally! Here's the linkup at Chatting at the Sky, "Let's Share What We Learned in November."

From the serious to the silly, here's a taste of my November:

1) I need to limit my choices, duh! Sorry, it might be more "duh" to me than to you... it's a personality thing. I'm easily overwhelmed by decisions and things. My reminder/flash of revelation came courtesy of Modern Mrs. Darcy (also a strong INFP, yay!), in this post, "Concrete changes I've made because of MBTI and enneagram insights."

The question, now, is just how to go about limiting my choices... I can get so exhausted by decisions and I have so many options I want to keep open, even deciding how to limit the choices is difficult! There are so many things I want to do! How do I build routines that take that into account? Routines to change up the routines? I feel like I need a template for a template for a template. Yes, I know I'm ridiculous.

Related, but not quite the same:

2) Better to progress than to not act because you're trying to make the perfect choice. I guess I already knew this, but I attempted to take it to heart this month. I think. If I'm remembering right. Hey, I'm including it in November, okay? It's my post and I'll include this if I want to. So there.

Um. I mean, I've heard in a few places recently, like the book Quiet, that our society values action over careful decision too highly, and those of us who sit around contemplating really have something unique to offer, and often make better decisions.

Sure, but I've got it bad, and I can take forever just on daily minutiae. This is to help me dial back. (Er, dial back on the pondering, not the acting.)

3) I have a tendency to either run from myself (With books! Facebook! Twitter! Blogs! TV!) or attempt to control every last thing about myself (Plans! Schedules! Goals! Rules!). I swing back and forth between the two.

(Yes, even though I'm an INFP I have a bit of J in me, too -- I do like schedules and rules and things. At least... in theory. I love the idea of them. Carrying them out not so much. But oh, how I can dream!)

When my desires turn to addictions turn to digging myself into scary holes, I become so terrified of myself I try to plan and box myself into perfection. (Spoiler: doesn't work.) Two different kinds of running, really, and two different types of lying to myself.

I don't want to do that anymore. I want to be present, here, now. I want to show up and face my life. All the clichés! They're cliché for a reason. There are some things I should try to plan for (see above, about limiting my choices), but I don't want to plan all the things because I'm afraid of any desire or emotion poking out.

Hot baths always seem to reside in the middle, at least. Even though baths are so wonderful that they turn into something I "should" do, which normally brings the danger of the controlling-myself-to-death type of running, I can't seem to lie to myself in a hot bath. Though, I'll admit, I can compose overly optimistic future plans while soaking, even if I'm not actively running away from myself yet...

Great birthday. Thanks, Beth!

4) The Hyperbole and a Half book is SO. Awesome. It's like, one million awesome. Seriously. I think it might be the funniest book I've ever read. Plus there are serious bits that are also awesome. "Depression Part One" and "Depression Part Two" of course, though I already knew about those from her blog. And "This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult." Classic. But also new ones (I think?) like "Motivation," and "Identity" Parts One and Two. I think. I can't double check right now because I've loaned the book out, but in some ways they struck me as sort of different takes on the issues surrounding "This Is Why I'll Never Be an Adult." As you might notice with #3, I can relate. Though again, different take. (And hers is better.) Similarities. They have them.

Also this song:



It came out in December, but that's okay, because I'm not counting it as something I learned. I'm just saying it relates to the other stuff. That's all. Don't judge.

5) I absolutely love Joss Whedon's version of Much Ado About Nothing. As it turns out, I had seen the play before, but it'd been quite a while. This was a magical way to be reintroduced to it. I've watched it just twice now, once with subtitles (because baby distractions); and it was even better the second time, with the subtitles (because Shakespeare). Oh, and watching it with the enthusiastic audience of a sister also helped. I DO love sharing things. Which makes the subtitles doubly helpful, as they probably helped Melanie's understanding too, thus the enthusiasm. Next I want to watch the commentary. I love the music, I pretty much love everything about it. Oh, and Amy Acker is brilliant. Many of the actors are, really, but Amy Acker, especially the "That I were a man" speech... *swoons*

Also great present. Thanks, John!

Technically, I watched this for the first time at the end of October, but I watched it a second time in November, so it counts. Because I didn't really learn how very much I loved it until the second time. Yeah.

Oh, and found this review of it later, while writing this post. Yup. In agreement.

6) I can actually publish blog posts on three days in a row! Woo! At least if I try to just make them short little posts. Of course, I might then only post up one more thing in the entire remaining month... Oops.

7) Taking a little partial break from the internet and such? Feels So. Good. Not checking one's phone, not reading blogs as much... I mean, I love blogs and such, I do. And I want to keep up with ALL THE BLOGS, which is impossible, and even when we talk about what I really mean, just keeping up with all the ones I like, it's still hard, because there's a LOT out there that I like. And I have a little girl, and etc. etc. But I am not quite exactly like some other textroverts I know -- unless I have some space away from the internet, it gets where I can't hear myself think anymore. There are too many voices in my head.

8) Baby (or maybe I should call her Toddler, now?) seems to like cats more than kittens. Huh. I guess it makes sense -- they're almost as big as she is. If I could see tigers up close, with no fear they'd hurt me, I guess I'd like that better, too.

9) Nirvana has an Android app now! "Enthusiastic cheer!"

10) Oh, how quickly a toddler can gain speed and comfort when she really starts to walk. Girl's getting fast. Also: Awwww! Kawaii desu yo!

Obligatory baby picture. Sorry it's not better. Did I mention she's fast?

11) We have a truly insane amount of onesies and rompers.

Board books for a sense of scale?

That isn't even all of them. There's a smaller stack of long-sleeved onesies behind that stack. There are more in the laundry hamper, and presumably more in the garage. Haven't finished going through all the boxes I'd packed away for when she'd be older, yet. She's older, now.

12) Stayed away from my baby for a whole entire night for the first time ever. It was... uncomfortable, still, as far as needing to pump a lot and it not being enough, but, ooh, it was worth it. Could have been better, as circumstances made it impossible for me to go to bed very early that night, but still. I woke up a few times, smiled, and went peacefully back to sleep. Bliss. Thanks for the birthday present, John!

Er, what I learned was that it's surprisingly uncomfortable still, but still awesome. I guess. I mean, I suspected as much, mostly. But hey, now I know!

13) WOW, is my girl introverted and sensitive. I mean, I knew that already, too, but it's rarely demonstrated with such high contrast as it was last Saturday.

My sister stayed the night, and Gracie hasn't seen her often, as she lives in Oregon. That morning as soon as Gracie woke up her emotions were all over the place, from joyful squeals to despairing cries. I thought at first she was on edge because of the stranger in the house, but no. In the middle of her crying we went out to the living room, she saw my sister on the couch, and... instant silence and calm neutrality while she observed the stranger. The edginess was just from being around the crowds of my extended family celebration for Thanksgiving on Friday. Recovery. She needs it.

14) Learned some things about intersectionality and what feminism looks like for people of color. I think I want to learn a lot more before I talk about it much here, though. Maybe I'll post a few links, soonish.

15) I'm better at Dutch Blitz (can also be played with regular playing cards under the name of Nertz, among many other names) than I used to be, many many Thanksgivings ago. Also, two-player is fun, provided game play is adjusted properly. If each person plays with two decks instead of one, you try to get rid of 20 cards instead of 10, with the assistance of five stacks instead of three.. yeah, it's fun. Also makes three-player seem pretty easy, as those five stacks make it feel like there's a ton of stuff to keep track of.

16) Not only is Toddler growing well now, as in the "Fifteen Things I Learned in June" post, but she even jumped up to the next growth curve, she's not on the very bottom line anymore! Woo!

"DST is eeeevil," or: Mixed Feelings

I'm finally going to participate in RambleRamble's weekly linkup. I've meant to, many times, but never quite made it before.

The prompt: "Need to get something off your chest? How about sharing a good rant with us?"

My snarky post would definitely qualify as ranty, but I'm not going to get that one ready by midnight tonight, so a different post and rant it is. I'm sorry if some of the sentences here don't make sense or don't scan easily. I wrote this kinda quickly (for me). I mean, I composed parts of it mentally in the wee hours of the night last night, and mostly wrote it down (and edited, and added the pics and links) during my daughter's naps today. I'm not sure if I caught and clarified all the confusing bits. I tried.


Unfortunately, this rant is going to be watered down a little bit by the mixed feelings. Not that I have mixed feelings about Daylight Saving Time itself, the concept of it. Far from it. Pure evil. But... Well, I'll explain later, after the rant.

Let's start out with a couple little quotes from Facebook. This is what I've already said about Daylight Saving Time ending. In comments on a status.

"As a fellow new (-ish) parent, I'm terrified of what this means for the time change this year. I mean, fall is supposed to be the good one! The magical extra hour of sleep! But I'm sure that as soon as 4:30 rolls around my girl's gonna be like, "Mama, Mama! I'm so happy, Mama! Aren't you? Isn't life great? Let's plaaay!!!" (Roughly. She doesn't actually talk yet.)

Somehow, I'd always heard from parents that Daylight's Saving Time especially sucks when you have kids, but it seems like I only heard about how hard it is to get them to go to bed when it's still light outside, not how hard it is to get them to SLEEP IN JUST ONCE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD.

Weekends are when I get more sleep deprived. Because even after almost a year, I can't seem to get it through my head that I can't stay up later on Friday night. Oh, and the tireder I am, the more I make stupid decisions... like staying up late. It's like an infinite loop of tired and dumb.

Phew. Apparently I had a few things I wanted to get off my chest on this topic. >_>"

Later I said,

"Seems I spoke too soon.

Best. Jinx. Ever."

And,

"She'll sometimes sleep longer if we let her cuddle in bed with us. And there's no light anywhere.

Of course, other times she just climbs all over us, scratches our faces..."

I saw one person on Facebook defend Daylight Saving Time on the grounds that children were walking to school in the dark. Please, think of the children!

Um? Wait, when were they walking in the dark? In the winter? Fall is when DST ends, sooo... yeah, no time change would not affect that a whit.

Even if it did, um... maybe we should start school later in the day? Just a thought? I mean, I know there can be some logistical issues, but if the alternative is Daylight Freakin' Saving Time, seems like a good idea to me.

That's the other thing. Why are we trying to save light in the summer? It's summer! There's plenty of light! What, because there's so much of it, so we're trying to stockpile it for the winter? Sorry, I don't think it works that way.

This is probably a good place to link to The Actual Pastor's very nicely ranty post on Daylight Saving Time: "The Real Reason We Observe Daylight Saving Time: to Kill Parents." It is bitter and lovely.

Yep, once upon a time, at least the evil of the time change in the spring was sort of kind of counterbalanced by the joy and magic of the extra hour of sleep in the fall.

But now? Now that I'm a parent? There is no magical extra hour of sleep, there is only pain and anger. I see Daylight Saving Time's true face now. There is nothing good in it, it is rotten to the core. It should die a terrible, painful death, be burned to ash, and have its ashes scattered to the four winds so that no one might ever reassemble the pieces and resurrect the practice.


And yet, for all that (and I do believe that), I can't end on that note. Last year my daughter was born on the day of the extra hour, and I can't think of it without being reminded of her.

It's kind of hard to maintain the rage of being woken up at 4:30 in the morning because of the most retarded, useless practice ever... when you remember that at that time last year you were also up, because you were in the middle of giving birth to your child.

To be mad about not getting that extra hour of sleep you expected (and maybe to actually lose sleep because you foolishly went to bed planning for it, even though you knew it was not to be), when last year you hadn't slept soundly, for... well, for weeks actually, to a certain extent... but especially not since you checked into the hospital approximately 36 hours earlier.

To be angry that the good chunks of sleep you did get were so short, when last year the epidural gave you some really nice good chunks of sleep too, at least when you weren't literally shivering uncontrollably from a reaction to it, just trying with all your might to keep your teeth from chattering. Or until you were woken by alarms at your baby's heart rate, and a lowering of the pitocin. Or woken by nurses giving you antibiotics for an infection. Still, you think back to the beginning of labor, and ah, that epidural gave some good sleep!

Daylight Saving Time last year. About an hour and a half before Gracie's birth.

It's hard to measure pain sometimes, it's so subjective. Even more so, memories of pain. But there are objective data points, here and there. At first I remember how I was handling it, how I thought I could've kept on going, if I hadn't learned I had to keep going for so long, that I was only dilated 1 cm.

Then I remember. I remember when the labor started, how I could laugh with people in the room, and check Facebook. How that quickly changed, how soon I could only watch a bit of very mild TV for distraction -- had to be a calm nature channel, nothing stressful or demanding to my brain, my attention.

The contractions. The pain always lingered, so to speak, after the needle on the graph stopped showing the contraction. It took a little while to come back down to normal.

Soon I could only watch the TV as a distraction between the contractions. But soon after that there wasn't really any "in between." Maybe there was officially, but the pain never went away. Between having had Braxton Hicks contractions that would last five minutes or more, sometimes, and as little as a minute apart (or less), possibly because of an irritable uterus that wouldn't completely relax for twenty mintues at a stretch at times, and then add in a low level of pitocin to start up actual labor? Things became not happy.


Not that, you know, labor is normally happy. But I've heard inductions can be worse than "regular" labor, and I'm pretty sure I've heard there are supposed to be breaks between contractions, at least until close to the end. Unlike some of the stories from women with an irritable uterus.

I used to get really bad menstrual cramps. Bad enough to throw up, once, and very close to that many, many other times, as I realized after the vomiting incident. Labor... was kind of, sort of, a little like that? You know, besides being a ton worse. But with cramps, moving around, tossing and turning from side to side, will help a little bit, for a moment. With contractions (real honest-to-God ones, not the Braxton Hicks), it's like if you move even a fraction of an inch, you'll be impaling yourself further on the metal pole that's rammed down your center. All you can do is breathe and count, and then you can't even do that, all you can do is exist until it's over.

That's my experience, anyway.

Sorry, I don't know when this became a rant about childbirth. This is not the next part of the pregnancy complications and birth story I've been meaning to tell. But, it's written, I guess I'll go ahead, out of order or not. And I'll remind you that expressing the difficulty of something does NOT mean the person talking thinks it was a mistake, or not worthwhile. Momastery's "2011 Lesson #2: Don't Carpe Diem" is relevant here. None of this diminishes my love for my baby, not even a tiny little bit. Similarly, talking about how hard parenting is, or how I miss long stretches of sleep? Yeah, the appropriate response is not, "Well you shouldn't have decided to have a kid, then." Just in case you were wondering.

Some people say you forget the pain when the child is born, to which I give a very mature and dignified, WTF??!

I mean, I know the Bible has a verse about how a woman forgets her pain for the joy that a child has entered the world (John 16:21), but I'm pretty sure it was being poetic, and speaking very generally. I've heard women talk about this as though they literally forgot. That that's why they would have another child, because they actually don't remember what it was like. And I'm not just talking, "Oh wow, I forgot it was this bad," but like, forgot. the. whole. thing. Seriously? I mean, I was skeptical before I had my daughter. My brain, as far as I know, just doesn't work like that. I didn't think childbirth would damage it in such a way that that would change. It didn't. Childbirth was... memorable.

So, anyway, since I DO remember all that, it's hard to be very mad about Daylight Saving Time, somehow. Well, other than Daylight Saving Time never being an important or necessary part of bringing a child into the world. That little detail.

I almost wish it was easier to stay mad. Like I'm the jerk invalidating my own emotions, saying, "You think that's bad? Wait 'til..." Bleh. Well, here's a compromise with myself. I can be mad about lost sleep the other 364 days of the year. I can sure as heck be frustrated that, with a few exceptions, I haven't had more than four or five hours of sleep at a time in over a year now, or even as much as four at a time in I don't know how long now, maybe weeks? That ohmyGOODNESS I really need to night wean this child.

But I love her, and a day that reminds me of her birth can't be all bad, despite itself. Even if the concept of DST is pure and unadulterated evil.

Around 8 hours after her birth.

Quettandil

This will be going on my About page soon, but I wanted to give it its own post, too. Not sure how soon I'll be adding it to About, as there are other changes I want to make, and I'm not sure yet how I'm going to integrate the pieces. But regardless, here it is!

I think about my feelings and feel about my thoughts. I don't believe thought and feeling are opposed. My sister Melanie appropriated a word for people like us: Geeks. Not all geeks are Geeks (and I'm more a nerd, myself); but it's about the closest term to hand. Hi, my name is Marcy, and I'm Quettandil, Word Lover.

I want to write holistically. I am a wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend; but I and my world encompass more than those roles, and I am also a bibliophile, writer, polyglot, singer, runner. I'm trying to tell some of the stories involved in becoming a new mother, but I think I would write a horrible mommy blog.

I believe in integration. I write for myself, because I have to. I try and I hope to write for you as well. These things don't have to be opposed, either. Though  I do it for myself, I hope my writing is not selfish. I tell my story to let you know you're not alone.

I am a story lover, storyteller, collector, creator. I hope.

I hope, I hope, I hope.

If I'm doing this wrong, Quettandil's focus is a lack of focus; if right, the focus is integration, especially in being Word Lover. (Books! Thoughts! Feelings!)

Please, will you tell me a story?

Some Musings on Different Takes on Successful Women (sort of)

So, I originally wrote this post very specifically to be a comment on a post by Laura Vanderkam on "Millennial women and ambition." But my "comment" ended up as almost 700 words long. Hmm. Well.... So I decided to put it over here. Um... go read that link first, this one would be a little odd standing on its own. Heck, I feel like it's a little odd even if you read only that one post, I wrote it in the context of many posts and a few books by Laura Vanderkam. There are things I didn't need to clarify as a "comment" that I probably should clarify here. Meh.



Speaking of different kinds of ambition... Though it might not be as inspiring to the women in Zeno's survey response group, I'm really curious how a study of successful creatives (and mothers with kids at home) would compare to your study of women earning over $100,000 a year. It would be harder to create objective measures of who to include, but perhaps those who have won specific awards, for example?

This post made me wonder about that because of recently reading a piece by Shannon Hale on her blog about how she manages to both write and mother. She's published twelve books since 2003, including a Newbery Honor, and is successful by most measures... at least for novelists. But I'm sure she doesn't come anywhere close to making $100,000 a year. She also has four children, including toddler twins.

I know you've interviewed individual successful creatives before, like LeUyen Pham, but I'm still curious how they would compare as a group.

I guess this kind of study wouldn't do as much to topple the cultural narratives, as people think of high executive positions as being far more demanding and inflexible than artistic positions are. On the other hand, I feel like I've read SO MANY men put something in their acknowledgments about "thank you to my wife and children for tolerating my disappearance while I worked on this," and given how many people are trying unsuccessfully to publish even one book, I think of those who publish critically-acclaimed book after book after book as wildly successful, on a level in some ways with those top executives. (And one I'm far more interested in emulating, personally.)

Shannon Hale's piece was interesting in the context of your posts, because she does seem to subscribe to the larger cultural narrative, for example saying both, "By the time I had 5 published books and two non-napping children, I realized this writing thing was technically a career and I didn't have to be a martyr and I could give myself permission to get help," but also going on to say, "Originally I had a sitter that came over 9 house/week [sic]. This past year, it's up to 17 hours/week. And it's not enough to do all I could/should do. But it has to be. Because I don't want to have a full-time nanny even if that was feasible. I want to be a stay-at-home mom." That made me wince just a little bit, even though she's very clear she's talking about what she herself needs, not what she thinks other mothers should do.

Another wince moment is along the lines of the assumption you mentioned, "that men don’t care about not seeing their families." She says, "And all of that is a lot a lot a lot harder as a mom. Writer dads I know who aren't the primary care giver have a different situation. They can go off when they have a deadline to a hotel for a few weeks and write, or they work from morning to night for weeks on end and their wife picks up the slack. But I'm the primary care giver, and I don't have that luxury. I don't want it." Well, maybe her description of how to both write and mother can help the writer dad who doesn't want "that luxury," either. Meh.

Anyway, she does seem to follow some of your "most successful" patterns. She "makes the minutes count," saying "And for the most part, I seem to be writing as much as my non-parent full-time-writer friends even though I have a part time schedule." She rests on the weekends. She talks a lot about all the things she can't do because she can only manage to write and to mother, but it seems like if you just changed the focus a little bit, she'd be another one of your stories of a very prolific and successful professional who spends lots of quality time with her kids. Fascinating.

Okay, sorry for this novel of a comment, but I was really interested by the combination of these posts.

Fifteen Things I Learned in June

I found out from Anne at Modern Mrs. Darcy (I love Modern Mrs. Darcy, I want to be just like her when I grow up! Heh.) about a "Things I Learned in June" linkup, hosted by Emily at Chatting at the Sky. Anne says,

"Every month, Emily Freeman writes a post about things she’s learned lately. Pretty much anything is up for grabs: mindless celebrity connections, introspective musings, favorite new products, iPhone tricks.

This month Emily is hosting a “Things I Learned in June” linkup."

So, I thought it would be fun to play along, even though I only just recently found out about it and don't have much time before the linkup closes. Like, the "I have to post it tonight before I go to bed" kind of not much time.

Oh, and the tenth thing Anne learned? Cracked me up. You should read hers.

At first I thought this would be easier if I'd been thinking about it ahead of time, and written down things I learned as I went through the month. Especially the small things. It can be tricky to remember the little things you've learned, and when.

But then I started sketching out notes for the draft, and decided that keeping track over the course of a month might be risky. This post is already looking to be on the long side, if I'd caught even more things...!

So. Here we are, in... well, let's just pretend it's no particular order.

1. I love checklists, and they're amazingly helpful to me. I mean, I already knew certain ones were really helpful, but in June I learned to apply it more. For example, I already had a morning checklist for getting Gracie and I out the door, whether I take her to work with me or I drop her off with her Nana. It's wonderful. There are so many little things to remember, even doing it every day and even when I successfully remember it all there's a nagging feeling that maybe I didn't, I better check back through my mental list, and oh, do I need to change her again?

A written checklist (I use Nirvana, just put "- " as you type up your notes, and it turns it into a checkbox) saves my sanity and makes the process quicker.

So, I knew, but I didn't really realize. As my love of checklists began to sink in in June, I created some more of them. One I created was for blogging. I'd begun to feel a little of that same fuzzy-headed feeling known from my mornings getting Gracie and I out the door, but I was feeling it when I thought about posts I wanted to write, and the little things I do after publishing a post. Once I sat down and brainstormed a checklist for blog posts, it became evident why! There are lots of steps involved, especially for book reviews. Everything from writing down the first idea for a post in Nirvana to asking Melanie whether or not she's read a book to scheduling it in my Blogging Planned calendar (see #14) to updating the books I've been reading in my sidebar to the things I work on in various drafts to linking to the finished post on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +. It's possible I should simplify my blogging a bit, but... well, the checklist DOES simplify it, in a way. I like. Helps me be a little more realistic, too, when I'm thinking I want to blog about that and that and that and that... (as does #14)

2. A blog called Raptitude exists, and I quite like it so far. Found about it (language warning) through my nephew's blog, Paradox Play, which linked to this article on procrastination, which had a link to its original appearance on Raptitude. I found his Experiment Log and decided to try a similar experiment towards a specific type of procrastination I struggle with, going to bed early.

As you might be able to tell from the time stamp on this post, I've had mixed results. I'm still working on it and learning, and I'm not sure of all the lessons yet. But one thing I think is pretty sure:

3. Specificity helps. As Switch says, "script the critical moves." My temptations are to try to script ALL the moves, or just give up and script none of them. Mmm, all the moves... did I mention I love checklists? Maybe #3 doesn't count as its own lesson. Meh.

4. Marian Call's voice is amazing. Okay, I already knew that, but hearing her in concert again, it was even better than I'd remembered. I love her stage presence too, everything that she puts into each song. Reminds me of what a high school drama teacher said to us (The choir, I wasn't in drama -- we were doing a musical. Well, I was in one play, but never mind.) when we had three days of performances and we were tempted to think we could get away with sloppy work the first night because we'd get better, and the last night because we were tired. No, for most of your audience, this is the first and only one of your shows they'll see. Marian Call goes on the road for months at a time, yet you'd think this was the first and only time she'd told these jokes about these songs. (Okay, not the first time she'd sung the songs, because she's better than that, but it all feels very personal, very tailor-made to her audience.)

5. That's right, I learned to be more careful about backing up my work, because Blogger can be evil. I know, I know. But it's normally been so good to me...

6. I learned that Feedly allows multiple tags on posts now, finally. And that there are apps like gReader that now work with Feedly, and allow tags when you're going mobile. Things still seem kind of buggy in certain annoying ways, but nothing that's a deal breaker, at least.

7. If I'm going to penalize myself for not completing one of 750 Words' monthly Challenges, and I'm going to use a "won't sit down to read until after I've written a book review" kind of penalty, I should really match the reading and writing amounts more closely to each other. Otherwise it's just... mean.

8. The 48-Hour Book Challenge lets you count all time spent on blogging updates, even if it isn't really quite book review blogging. Like the start and finish line posts. That's good to know.

9. The Thirteenth Tale is better than I remembered. More on that another day.

10. Writing a blog post about time logs is time consuming. And... makes for a long post. Can. But hey, it's good, because part of the time lies in analyzing the data, which is kind of needed for a big part of the point of doing a time log in the first place.

11. If you walk your tired, tired baby around Shoreline Village in a stroller, she won't go to sleep. The stroller might help normally, but the crowds are too much. And the sun. Bring baby sunglasses. And then when she gets away from the crowds she'll be all excited they're gone and get a second wind. Leave her with the grandparents to take her nap instead. Everyone will be happier. Except for maybe the aunts and uncles going with you to Shoreline Village who keep making faces at her to make her laugh, even though she needs to sleep.

You know, theoretically speaking.

I'd add pictures, but I'm trying to hurry here, and I don't think I took any, so I'd have to go find aunts' and uncles' pictures. Er, um, I would if I weren't speaking theoretically, of course. Theoretical pictures.

12. Even when someone says an event is going to be casual, remember to err on the less casual side. It's a less embarrassing way to stick out.

13. Baby is growing well and the doctor is happy. Finally!

14. Putting my blog posts on Google calendars works very well for me. I created the calendars at the end of May, but I learned in June that I like them. I have a "Blogging Planned" calendar and a "Blogging Actual" calendar. Helps to see it all laid out, and helps me plan out the installments in series that I've said I would do.

15. Also, with how much I'm loving 750 Words these days, it really helps me to have categories in Nirvana for my 750 Words inbox and outbox, so to speak. Ideas I want to draft, and things I've written about that I want to copy and paste elsewhere and edit.


Whew! That was link-heavy! And edited many times after originally posting... does that make it show up several times in your RSS readers? Sorry, if so.

I'm pretty sure I could go on and on, but I have to work tomorrow, and accomplish rather a lot in a very limited amount of time. So, good night, all!

What are some things you learned in June?

Control and God and Us

I have a tendency to do stupid things when I'm feeling out of control. My underlying unhelpful belief seems to be that I get my control from passive rebellion. That is, as long as it doesn't involve direct conflict, making the wrong choice makes me feel more powerful than the right one. At least temporarily. After all, if I do the thing I'm supposed to do, I'm just letting other people and factors push me into it, right? If I do the opposite, it's my choice. I think that's the emotional thought process operating below the surface.

Everything that I feel I should do is in danger, even if it's something I really want to do. Even small things like replying to an email (sorry, friends). Of course this leads to feeling even more out of control, for I'm not following through. I'm all over the place, and I can't trust my future self not to sabotage my present self's desires.

Now, what Christians like to tell anyone having control issues (or to just say in general, informing the public at regular intervals) is that God is in control.

This is very true. He is. I'm not, or, at least, I'm not in control of quite a lot of things.

This is an important distinction. Maybe if I were a better person the fact that God is in control would be sufficiently comforting and helpful. But then again, maybe there's another truth, not so frequently mentioned, that He wants me to grasp. Just maybe.

See, God is in control, but He's given us a certain measure of control as well. That's why we're held responsible for our actions -- He's given us choices! We have the power to decide how we will act! Isn't that... control? Yes, yes, I think it is.

So no, I don't have power over life and death. I can't make the sun shine or water fall from the sky. But I am not one hundred percent helpless, either. I have power, and I will be held accountable for that power. That's important. Really, really important.

I mean, even if you're a hardcore Calvinist, you still have to do something with all the passages in the Bible that hold us responsible for our actions. There's a tension there, and woe to him who destroys that tension in order to fit everything into his nice little box. I once heard it said, "Pray like a Calvinist, live like an Arminian." I can go with that.

You (O theoretical Calvinist) might say that God is still in control of our hearts, desires, and decisions, but that He will punish us for our wrong decisions nonetheless, and who are we to question God? I don't believe that's supported by the whole of Scripture, but even so, in practice, regardless of who you believe has ultimate control of your decisions, don't you try not to sin and to live a holy life? That's more or less what I'm talking about here. Living in accordance with God's will, how He's designed you to live. (If you don't know what Calvinists and Arminians are, don't worry about it. These paragraphs are written to those who have a hangup on this issue.)

So what does this mean? When I find myself doing stupid things because I feel out of control, what should I tell myself, if not "God is in control"?

Well, I've started reminding myself of the decisions I've made recently. This includes the decision to get out of bed, and at what time. It might not seem like much, but some days, it really is. I might think I don't have a choice, but I do. If I'm in that "let's do stupid things because I feel out of control" mode, I often get up way too late, and even make myself late for work. Sometimes very late. To just shut the world out and stay in bed all day, hiding under the covers? Yeah, I bet I could do that. Given sufficient depression, yeah. I could do it, and screw the consequences.

So I remind myself that I didn't, that I got out of bed. And so on. Good and bad, I look at the decisions I've made. Then I look at the decisions coming up that I'll be able to make.

Weird that reminding myself of my screwups can make me feel a little more safe, but it can. Because I had the power to make those screwups. They weren't inevitable, they were choices. I might make them again, but I really don't have to. I don't have to. Okay, it might seem obvious to you, but it means a lot to me.

It's no easy instant fix for all that ails me, but it does help a little. Thank God.

On the other hand, it is true that it's not a technique that seems to ever be portrayed in Scripture. I'm trying to think what was normally said to the people in the Bible who just wanted to curl up in a little ball because the world seemed like too much...

There was Elijah, running off into the desert. Hmm. God's answers in such cases seem... complicated. Individual. Unique.

Anyone else see a pattern here that I'm not getting? Am I wrong, does God tend to just tell people to trust Him?

Imagination

Now for the second of the two notes from facebook originally addressed to the Fantastical Lit class, seeing Mom's dementia through the lens of, well, fantastical lit.

"Imagination." It was written on 10-12-11, based on the class session from 10-5-11, "The Journey," which was based on The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as on the movie version of The Two Towers, and Greenwitch and The Grey King by Susan Cooper (books three and four of her five-book "The Dark Is Rising Sequence," respectively). Here it is:

I keep relating the Fantastical Lit discussions to Mom's dementia. This week I didn't think of anything particularly insightful -- pretty much just, "memory loss = bad," but the questions from last week are still haunting me.

I hate to keep bringing up an illustration so negative, but... obviously it's very important to me. And it feels a bit odd to talk about this very much with a group of people I don't know very well yet, but... I keep thinking about it. And it's tied in with our discussions.

So here's what I keep wondering: I can imagine a time when my mom won't recognize me anymore. But should I? Will it help me make peace with her illness? Would I stop mourning each new milestone, each major piece of memory she loses, and would that be good? Would I then be able to be more grateful for all the things she still remembers, right now? Or, imagining the degeneration, would I become more like Denethor?

How do I keep both "the world shouldn't be like this" and the preparation for the inevitable in my head? By focusing on the good in the midst of the evil?

May I never grow callous and bitter,
May I never cease to protest.
For the world ought to be beautiful
For the world, it shouldn't be so.

The world is beautiful. But not as it should be.

Thoughts, comments? I really would like input from others on this one.

Faerie and Dementia

I've taken pains to import all of my blog posts to facebook. I add them as notes, so that I can see them collected all together, and then I add them as updates so they show up in news feeds. But there are a couple notes from facebook that I haven't put on my blog, and I'd like to.

There are two that I can think of. They both went on facebook rather than here originally because they were related to a class I was sitting in on, and mostly the thoughts were addressed to people in the class. At first. Didn't get as many comments as I hoped there, though, and they have to do with Mom, so this seems like a good place, too. Feel free to skip over these if you've seen them before.

This first one, "Faerie and Dementia," was written on 9-7-11, and was based on a class session based on the movie "Spirited Away" and these books and stories: Phantastes by George MacDonald, "Smith of Wootton Major" by J.R.R. Tolkien, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees. However, when I wrote it I was primarily thinking of Phantastes. Here it is:

Preliminary thoughts on tonight's Fantastical Lit session, "That Bonny Path":
1) Faerie is a place of heightened reality and it compresses growth.
2) Many people discover who they are in Faerie.

Therefore, Mom's dementia is like something from Faerie. One of the EVIL things from Faerie, granted, but still Faerie. Fr. David told me dementia seems to compress relationships, and I know it's been a weird sort of mirror, showing me aspects of myself I hadn't seen before.

Mom's obscured, as by a Fey mist, but the pieces of her I can still see, the pieces that aren't actually deceptive, give me a heightened sense of who she is. My reactions are intensified as well, and I see pieces of myself reflected back from the mist.

Dementia is too complicated to represent in Faerie as only a single obstacle. It could be anything from a life-sucking ogre to a mere veil of illusion, masking some grand lady. But whatever it is, how would the hero most nobly respond? How would he or she meet the trial and come out, farther down the path, as a better person?

Current tactic? Mostly ignore it and concentrate on other aspects of life. Yeah, that doesn't seem like it would end well. It's true the pressure's off right now -- before, I was also dealing with the stresses of a new job, plus some other hormonal issues. Everything beat down. It's easy, when I'm not feeling so depressed, to say, "Let's not go there." Heck, I genuinely feel good right now!

But in Faerie, if my spirits have lifted, it is not so that I can ignore the obstacle still standing in my path.

On the other hand, it's not my responsibility to guide the bright path into a darker valley, if that isn't where the road is going. The answer is not to beat my spirits back down, or to retrace my steps or circle back to where I've been before. Hmm.

But the ogre's road and mine seem to lie together for some distance. How does one accompany an ogre without being eaten? And respect the lady in the ogre's clutches, when one can't save her?

I laughed. I cried. I yelled and shook with anger.

"I laughed. I cried. It moved me, Bob."

Um, to be accurate, I suppose the title should read more like, "I laughed. I cried. I yelled and shook with that feeling you get when you've just yelled at strangers, and whoa, did you really just do that, that is so very atypical, but man it was justified, that was ridiculous, how dare they make you yell at them..." Yeah. That emotion. Not exactly anger. Not exactly embarrassment, either.

As for the crying, that was a different occasion. And I didn't, much. Just felt like it.

This was an interesting day.

An anniversary, of sorts. The day of the Alzheimer's Mass, at work. The day, a year ago, when I started thinking and working on my first blog post about Mom's dementia. (The major thinking anyway -- most of my posts do some early percolating first, but as a step towards actually sharing what I was thinking about, it basically happened a year ago today.) The next day I finished and posted it. The Mass stays on the same day of the week, so the date is slightly off, but meh to that.

It's been... an interesting year. I think I might even mean that in the full Firefly sense. Well, the second half of the year wasn't so bad.

It was good to start a new year. Felt hopeful. Nice. Thank God all that stuff from last year is over...

Oh, wait. It isn't. One thing is just going to keep getting worse and worse. Still, without some of the other things going on, it's a LOT easier to handle. Or it would be, if it would just stay still, d*@& it.

Yeah. I was feeling fine. I sat in on a Fantastical Lit class over the fall semester, which was awesome. Processed a little bit more about Mom's dementia in the midst of the class. Occasionally worried that I was ignoring it too much, and this was going to be bad, but that was it. The worry didn't even turn me instantly depressed, like it would've if I hadn't been doing so great.

Until today. Stupid anniversary.

No, that's not true. There were some twinges before this.

She's been repeating herself more, but... well, I know that it's beyond normal, that it's obviously because of the dementia, but it doesn't seem so bad. Sometimes you repeat yourself even when you remember what you said, just because it's something that's important to you. This was beyond that, but... okay.

Recently, one of my sisters sent Christmas presents for everyone to my parents' house. Mom has them, and has been distributing them. Doesn't make complete sense, but it's one of those things she always would've done in the past, and she basically still can do it, so I guess it's good. I came over one day, she gave me mine. I think before I left she wondered for a moment if she had something for me, I reminded her she'd already given me the present, and that was that.

Then I came over again, last Thursday, to pick up something. She took me aside, pulled out the presents, was looking through the labels... "No, Mom, it's okay. You already gave it to me."

I mixed a shake for myself and was on my way out about ten minutes later. She stopped at her room, pulled out the presents... "You gave it to me already. It's okay."

Oh, and she was also pretty perplexed about how to butter her potato.

I know these are small things. I know she still has so much, so many memories that could be gone later... but today is an anniversary of sorts, and I am sad.

I ended up missing the Mass this morning, taking a friend to the hospital instead. (She's completely fine.) I'm kind of glad I missed it. The Mass itself is beautiful, but I think today seeing the Alzheimer's patients would've made me cry. I just... don't want to see that right now. I'm fine with seeing it in general. Just... not now. Please?

I mean, I would try to stop thinking about it, too, but that didn't work. I finished the novel I was reading, and killed my phone's battery browsing facebook before giving in. I could continue browsing on my computer (did, for a bit), but I think the time has come. Have to write to think. At least, in a productive, now-I-can-put-something-behind-me sense, and not the broken record kind of thinking.

The other thing I've been thinking about recently? Being young for this to happen. I was... very tentative, at first, to accept any condolences about my relative youth and her relative youth. Implying that because I'm 29 years old and was 27 that last October then this must be harder for me, well, that implies it's easier on my older siblings. And I don't want to say that, and I don't want to try to quantify or compare levels of pain. No good comes of this. Although I think I'm fine with saying it could very well be harder on Melanie. I... with the death of a parent, okay, it's obviously not good to lose a parent as a child, or in high school or college. It is Bad. With a spouse... tragic when a newlywed dies. I think the one part that made this harder for me to admit is that when someone dies after a long full life with them, you grew to know them that much better, there's even more there to miss and grieve the loss of. But... okay, you can be glad for the time you had. That's life, everyone dies eventually... But yeah, Melanie, you having to deal with this when you hadn't quite graduated from college yet? That's bad. No one should have to do that. I remember her heart attack while I was at Biola. That was bad.

29 years old, on the other hand, is not that young. That's the other bit. I was a morbid child and thought when I was a kid about my parents' age and my age and when they might die, and because I was only a child with a very limited grasp of life expectancy and it sometimes happens this way, I thought, okay, what if they die at 60? That hasn't happened. That would've been... 2001, for Mom, and end of 1998 for Dad. Thank God you're still here. Still here while I went through high school and college.

Heck, back in not-quite-as-modern times, I could die at 29, and it'd be young, but not unheard of. For my parents to die or suffer the diseases of old age when I'm 29, and they had me when they were older... Yeah, not the most tragic thing out there. I'm not a child anymore.

But all that to say, I think I'm fine with this particular condolence now. It's... lonely. I am... really, really, really tired of hearing about people's grandparents who have or had Alzheimer's. No offense to anyone who's told me that. Sincerely, I do not mind, I haven't minded any of these statements on their own. It's just as a group that it's grown taxing. It's like it's rubbing my nose in the fact that I'm young, and none of my peers are dealing with this yet. It's probably the exact thing I would say, in your place. And I'm sure having a grandparent with Alzheimer's can be very, very painful. I definitely grieved when my grandparents died, and I wasn't at all close to them.

But this... this is different. Except maybe for a few people who were raised by their grandparents instead of their parents, the relationship is different. And I'm young, and it's hard, and this kind of thing isn't supposed to happen to me yet, and it sucks. In fact, I would very much like to hit something.

There. I said it. I'm going to hold back from calling that a "pity party," and just be honest. It does suck.

I've also been thinking about identity. I'd rather identify myself by my strengths than my scars, I think, but because it's often much harder and takes much more vulnerability to show another your scars, sometimes they feel like the most real, deepest and truest things about yourself. At least to me.

I get depressed at times, and sometimes a thing like Mom's dementia can be handy when you're in pain -- you can point to it, and say, "Look, this. THIS."

But of course it isn't handy at all because it just adds to the pain.

And there were times last year when it felt like so overwhelmingly everything... of course it seemed like a part of my identity. It is. My mom has dementia. That's a part of who I am right now.

But... I had other pains, before this happened. Those were a part of my identity. They're harder to explain, and point to. Not as overwhelming right now, but if harder to share, in some ways they still feel truer, because of that? I don't know. Maybe not. But one thing I do know -- I am still the same person I was before this happened. At least in part. I've changed, but not completely, and I'm still me. So she can't be all of my identity... Not that I thought she was the whole thing but... Okay, I don't know where I'm going with this, anymore. Just thinking out loud. Sorry. Moral of the story: Identity is complicated? Guilt over how you see yourself is bad, even if you define large parts of yourself by the wounds and scars, rather than by the joys?

Now for something completely different! In honor of the other interesting part of my day! That I referenced way back at the beginning of this post, and even posted a teaser sketch for, on facebook and google+!

(I was going to do a better drawing for the post, take more time, but it's getting late, and I just want to finish this thing. I'd really like to post it tonight instead of tomorrow. That way I won't have to change my "today"s to "yesterday"s.)

It was a new experience, because I've never had people honk and yell at me for something I so obviously couldn't do anything about, before. At least, I don't think that's happened to me before. It was ludicrous.

Though I've drawn little tiny arrows, those are to show which directions the cars were pointing. We weren't going anywhere, save for a bit of impatient inching, now and then.

In retrospect, I think the guy next to me and the guy behind me didn't see or couldn't tell (respectively, probably) that there wasn't any room at all for me to move forward. I mean, it wasn't like it was one of those situations where it would be a little tight and you wonder, "Can I get through? Should I try?" No. There were two feet, maybe three between the van and the corner. But I didn't notice that the guy beside me wasn't blocked, that he could advance and fix the whole mess from the very beginning! So see? It's not always easy to be very observant about what's going on behind you! He didn't notice that I wasn't being an idiotic-let's-make-a-huge-traffic-jam-on-the-off-chance-that-if-I-wait-here-I-can-get-a-parking-spot person, and I didn't notice that he...was! Yeah.

Wait, I was trying to be nice, and give him the benefit of the doubt, and all that. Oh well. Oops.

At first I typed (and posted) that as "...I-can-get-a-parking-lot person." Yes. Just wait here, and we will give you a PARKING LOT! It's magic.

Um, so he yelled some, and the guy behind me honked, and I yelled back (complete with big arm gestures), "Where am I gonna go? I can't go back, he's there, you're beside me, they're in front of me, what do you want, I can't go anywhere!" Or something to that effect. I was ticked. And then, wonder of wonders, he moved! And the van could move, and the woman driving the van thanked me, and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Though, driving away, I was shaking with the emotion I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

See, who ever said yelling never fixes anything?

Ooh, do you think they're wrong about hitting stuff, too?  [evil grin]