Domestic Psychology

Speaking of quirky

“Why is mommy’s phone in the fridge?”
“So Amy can’t find it.”

“No fair! You got to bury the dead bird, so I should get to bury the mole.”

“Why aren’t you wearing underpants?”
“They take too long to put on.”

“What happened to your library book?”
“Somebody ate it.”

“Don’t make me sell you to the gypsies.”
“Yaaay! I love the gypsies.”

“After T and N remove the porch, Amy and Evan can take turns burying whatever corpses the cat was keeping under the porch.”
“Hooray!”

6:30 a.m. Monday – Friday “It’s too early to get up.”
5 a.m. Saturday “What’s for breakfast?”

I certainly am glad that I refused to even take Tylenol when I was pregnant with these guys. It really made a difference.

What you can have is what you should want

If you want to be a happy shopper, walk into the store or pull up the storefront and choose from the options before you. I want to be happy, but I don’t shop that way. I am a self destructive shopper. I get ideas about what would be a great gift for someone without considering what actually exists. I have a mental idea of the type of shirt I want before looking to see what my choices are for a new or new to me shirt.

Because I do it wrong, shopping is frustrating to me. It is a chore instead of the fun that the rest of the world seems to experience when shopping. I deliberately avoid professional shopping holidays like the day after Thanksgiving. It’s just not my thing.

Part of me feels like I am broken. My operating system is lacking the shopping app. Another part of me feels like advertising agencies are not doing their job to program my subconscious to want what they are selling. More than either of those feelings, I feel like, regardless of the mountains of petroleum based, made everywhere but America products in the marketplace, there are still limitless quantities of innovation and creativity that are waiting to be developed.

“planning” in public

I spent a LOT of time as a member or chair of various committees and coalitions. In between the serious conversations, number crunching and careful planning, there was the ‘other’ stuff. For the privacy of all involved in that stuff, I will give a completely ridiculous, partially reality based, fictional example of that stuff.

Let’s say we wanted to work during lunch. Something as meaningless as the pizza we were ordering would turn into a three ring circus. One person would request that the wheat for the crust be blessed by a shaman. Someone else in the group would feel the need to offer a long lecture about free range pepperoni. The vegan might burst into tears at the thought of someone eating cheese. After a long healing session and smudging the bad karma from the room, everyone would agree to a lunch of organic wheatgrass that was locally grown by homeschoolers.

All of that is a long and silly way of saying that regardless of your group’s mission or event, the ‘stuff’ is a distraction that doesn’t need to be included in your notes for the next committee. It is as relevant to the process as how many times someone in the group needed a potty break.

If you are going to do your planning on Facebook or any other public venue, you do not want the distractions making more noise than the actions that matter. Plan in a private group instead of on everyone and their cousin’s wall. There are detractors who would like your group’s audience and budget and they will happily tell the world that only communists don’t eat pizza. Don’t walk into a PR war about junk food. Order pizza in private.

staring us in the face

We spent so many years searching for information about my father’s adoption that we felt prepared for anything we might learn. Old records, news clippings and court documents were extremely descriptive of the modus operandi of Georgia Tann. Every single time the story was discussed, we talked about the multiple scenarios that could have described my father’s case. We knew.

Actually putting our hands on the case file took so long that it felt like the finish line. The documents, photographs and letters seemed like the end of our search. Everything was there. The tightly woven small town connections were reaffirming that everyone did what was right. Except… there was one thing that didn’t fit. One tiny blurb in a newspaper that we tried to justify with excuses.

Today, a small town pastor sat with my father and told him what we always knew, but never wanted to be true. My father’s birth mother published her child’s obituary in the newspaper, because she was told that her newborn son was dead.

Not our finest moment

Me: “What did I just say to you?”
Evan: “Stop running. Blah-blah. Quit throwing stuff. Blah-blah. Sit down.”
Me: “Thank you for listening. Now, sit down.”

Cathy shopping

1. Click. Click-click-clickity-click. Click.
2. Wait.
3. Beeeeep.
4. Riiiip.
5. Enjoy new item.

Doug shopping

How Doug shops for anything at the hardware-ish store:
1. Visually survey all possible options.
2. Pick up and touch each option.
3. Use app to read reviews of each option.
4. Interview two store employees about each option.
5. Use another app to price check each option.
6. Think of an alternative technique involving completely different materials.
7. Repeat steps 1 – 6 with alternative technique’s materials.
8. Decide original method is preferrable.
9. Return to studying original options.
10. Choose item.
11. Question your choice the entire ride home.
12. Use item and rejoice.

How Doug shops for clothing:
1. Walk to nearest store employee.
2. Point to a mannequin.
3. Say, “I’ll take that outfit.”
4. Pay for clothing.

Physics and me

When I was a child, I would hold my arms straight out from my sides and spin around and around until I fell down. I would sit on the floor and giggle until I could stand up. Then, I would spin myself dizzy again.

My grandparents lived in Natchez Trace Park. Their side yard was a hill so steep that a ball would have no choice but to roll and roll until it reached the bottom that waited like a tiny green pool of sweet, soft grass. I loved to stretch out in the grass at the top of that hill and roll like that ball until I splashed in the patch of flat grass. Before I paused long enough to be sitting, I would jump to my feet and run to the top of the hill to roll down it again.

Many, many calendars later, I sporadically sit down on a stool in my kitchen and scribble something down on a scrap of Internet here or there. Sometimes I settle in and read an interesting article or crop the edges off of a digital photograph. When I am done entertaining myself, I bounce to my feet to head toward the kitchen sink or washing machine. It is at the exact moment when I attempt a step that I feel myself crumbling, collapsing, falling toward the ground. The exhaustive task of sitting causes one or both of my legs to become giant sticks of pudding with tingles, or as Evan calls them, sparkles that cannot be used or controlled.

Depending on the angle of my fall, the entire weight of my body crushes down on my knees or my palms and wrists. The puddle of what was once me loiters on the floor, waiting for the numbness to become needles of ice, then functional legs. Even then, I sit on the floor and mentally abuse myself before I sheepishly get up and limp back into my routine.

Falling down used to be fun. Now, it’s just a broken bone roulette wheel.

Whatcha wearing?

Yesterday, there was very minor kerfluffle because coverage of an event by our local alt-media included color commentary of wardrobes. Shoes and gender discrimination seemed to be the focus of the discussion. Deep down, it was a misdirection by the main complainant, but everyone chimed in and it snowballed into pie recipes.

Anyone with a small town in their history knows all too well that the community papers which have almost disappeared, use clothing descriptions in articles about social gatherings as a writing art form. Small town columnists use carefully worded descriptions of attendee outfits to say everything or nothing about the event and the people there. The mention of a designer label could be used to praise the wearer’s taste or hint at illicitly gained money depending on the writer’s intent.

Good writing about the costumes that people choose for their public persona is neither sexist nor pointless. As for shoes, I notice footwear that other people wear and if you are in earshot you will hear me notice it. I love spiky, chunky, shiny and silly shoes that I see on other women. I do marvel at their ability to wear extremely fancy shoes when my feet hurt just thinking about wearing them. Shoes are art and it takes an athlete to wear some of them. The world just seems a little bit more beautiful because of those shoes.

Once upon a time, I sat in Market Square watching hordes of teens and preteen girls dressed in shirts worn as dresses and cowboy boots. Just before a migraine took over my ability to function, I commented on Facebook about the silliness of this fashion trend just as my mother would have mumbled complaints via soup cans on a string when I went through a phase of oversized t-shirts and slouch boots with leggings. I think the shirt and cowboy boots look is ridiculous outside of a bar or club. Someone used my comment as an excuse to tell me my backside is big (no duh) and then posted on their own wall that I was calling the slut walk participants sluts.

I was there for the slut walk and the cowboy boot/shirt teens and girls were not participating in it. I did not call them sluts and the entire point of the slut walk is that women don’t “ask” to be raped based on what they wear. That has absolutely zero to do with my feelings about a fashion trend. I will discuss issues with you, but I am too tired and time is too short to deal with misdirection.

I get that the next six weeks are going to be brutal for the people of Knoxville who feel strongly about our next Mayor. Since we can’t unfriend everyone, let’s try to focus on the issues instead of attacking each other.

Not just any beans

Me: “Have you eaten anything other than funnel cake today?”
Girl Teen: “I just finished eating some baked beans.”
Me: “Beans?”
Girl teen: “Bush’s beans. I didn’t think I could buy them in New York, so I hid a can in my luggage.”
Me: “The luggage we shipped so you could travel to school on the Megabus?”
Girl teen: “Yes. I couldn’t imagine a semester without the good kind of beans.”

A restaurant or food cart every few feet and the pink haired teen is worried about being homesick for… Bush’s baked beans.