May 29, 2013

Do Grown-Ups Get Bored?

Childhood was long ago but I clearly remember the pain and horror of boredom. Nothing to do, no one to play with, can’t go outside, and so forth.

I can’t remember the last time I was bored (except at certain work meetings or airports). Have I learned to embrace the moment and appreciate every day? Or have I dropped my expectations?

I no longer remember boredom but surely I must get bored. Tedious conversations and situations abound. I mean I drive in southern California, people. I must get bored but the boredom is no longer memorable.

Or maybe there’s a guilt component. I can’t be bored, I have too much to do.

Or maybe I remember childhood boredom because it was such a novelty. Maybe nowadays it is my status quo.

Maybe the boredom at work meetings is a key to understanding. Maybe what underlies boredom are issues of choice and control. Surely I still stream boring movies, start boring books. But – ha and aha – nowadays I don’t have to finish them. And if the opening act is no good I can always go play with my phone in the lobby.

I don’t seem to be coming to closure on this. How about for you? Are you more bored or less bored than you were 10 years ago? Than you were as a kid?

May 28, 2013

The Right Nickname: I Keep On Searchin’

My name, Suzanne, has never inspired me. As a kid, I hunted for great artists and thinkers with the same name so that I could pretend they were my namesake. I found the minor league actress Suzanne Pleshette. Throughout my life I’ve been called Susan by mistake.

Once I got sprung from high school I ditched Suzanne except on forms, and I’ve been Sue ever since. That isn’t more fulfilling, but it doesn’t remind me of childhood. My grandmother used to call me Susie and I bet it would be fun to be a Susie but I don’t think it’s me. Maybe on a long holiday I should try it out, somewhere among strangers who could say it with a straight face.

For a while in high school, somebody called me Sudsy. Glad that one didn’t stick.

I was sort of mistaken for a Susie for a while. Back before cell phones, when we had names in curious artifacts called phone books, for a while I got a lot of calls from guys looking for a Susie. Apparently she met guys pretty much everywhere – bars, restaurants, laundromat, in line at the bank – chatted them up and then when they asked for her number she told them she was in the book. Except she wasn’t in the book; I was. Thanks Susie. One time I got a terribly early morning call from a distraught woman.

“Is this Susie? Susie Sunshine?”

“No this is definitely not Susie Sunshine.”

“Susie, this is serious. Listen carefully. Your brother has got a gun and he – ” In retrospect I suppose I regret stopping her before she got to the punch line.

But I digress.

I would love to have a great nickname, and I keep searching. Well. Without lifting a verbal, mental, or physical finger, I keep searching. I remain open to the possibility.

The closest I’ve come so far was also back in the day, when credit card companies sent unrequested cards in the mail. One of them mistyped my name. Suzane. We assumed the correct pronunciation was [Sue-ZANE] and a friend called me that for years. But the usage never spread.

I do enjoy all the names my kids have for me. Madre, Mumsters, Short Stuff are a scant few examples. I heard somewhere that numerous nicknames are a sign of love, so the more the better.

This post topic comes from The Daily Prompt.

May 27, 2013

Steps to An Hilarious Video

Sorry to say you’ll have to make your own video, or picture it in your head. Whenever I grab the camera the moment is over.

Acquire a dog who likes cats.
Introduce kittens to the dog.
Repeat 2) until kittens cease to hiss at dog.
Make dog happy (praise, pats, treats – it’s all good).
Dog wags tail.
Kittens play with the wagging tail.
- One hangs off a table, batting alternate paws at the tail: left right left right.
- One moves its head in sympathetic rhythm: back forth back forth back forth.
- One grabs at the tail, which alerts dog to the tail play, which concludes the session. (Dog fears kitten claws.)

May 27, 2013

My Dad Behind the Wheel

I didn’t know my father well. He died last year (after several years of being mostly gone due to strokes). He wasn’t an easy person to understand. In the decades that I knew him, I could count on one hand the number of times that he went internal and talked about what was going on inside him. We are so different in that way – introspective is my favorite state.

Recently, something got me started remembering his driving.

When I was very young, I thought that freeways were an endless race. And considering the number of cars my dad passed, I thought we had a good shot at winning the race. If only we didn’t always have to exit to go to grandma’s house! He had an MG Midget which he adored and gave up because it had no room for kids. He knew everything about cars and spent much time tinkering with ours.

Conversely, coming back after any trip, when he got to our neighborhood, he would slow to a maddening crawl. Was he surveying his domain? Or reluctant to return home?

My stomach still clutches at the memory of drives back from family holiday get-togethers when he was dangerously drunk. One night he went on and on about how interesting it was to see double of everything: twice the lanes, twice the traffic signals. As soon as I got my driver’s license I became our designated driver. Thinking about this still infuriates me. It might be time to think about forgiveness. Now that I have learned about addiction (because Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict), I see that my father was probably a high functioning alcoholic. He drank every day. But it was the family gatherings that were most noticeably out of control.

Only after my father retired was I aware of him having much fun. (Did he change or did I grow up?) Golf was a big part of that retirement pleasure. My kids got their first driving lesson in his golf cart. They were 10, maybe, and for years afterwards gleefully informed me of all the stuff he let them try, as soon as they were out of my sight. He was a complete control freak but just as big a rebel when it came to other people’s rules. In this case mine.

May 25, 2013

It’s the Moments

During my recent visit to New York, during a sudden torrential downpour my rain parka pocket filled with water and drowned my phone. The Apple store rushed me in for urgent care but my phone could not be revived. I had to turn in my phone to get a new one. It was either that or go several days without my lifeline crutch thingy while traveling. Everything was Cloud backed up. Except for four months of photos. Except.

Most of my photos stink. That’s not the point. I don’t remember what all I lost. I guess that’s the point. I use my photos to capture all the days and moments of my life. Get-togethers with friends and family. Hikes. Concerts. (The concert photos are always especially bad, of course, and mostly photos of stage lights and the raised phone screens of other attendees.) Cats. The dog. Places I visit. I’ve been surprised at how big the hole feels to have lost this segment of my life. Fortunately it was only a few months. Only.

I never thought I would quote Reverend Jim, a well-despised character in my novel Scar Jewelry. But I now realize that at least one of his views is spot-on right. “Yeah that was sure a good scene, wasn’t it? What a moment. Nobody remembers the whole movie. Book. Concert. It’s the moments.”

[Insert bi-decadal, chagrinned, too-late reminder about regular backups here.]

May 19, 2013

A Movie I Wish I Could See

Just remembered the day my kids got a video camera, maybe a decade ago. (As our read-aloud bedtime book we had just finished Lord of the Rings.) They began to plan the filming of an epic, and stitched felt into a fetching, jerkin-style vest for our most easy-going cat. The movie was entitled “Fellowship of the Bug”.

Much planning ensued, although I believe an actors’ strike immediately terminated production. I’ve got the storyboards somewhere. I’ll post if I find them.

The star of “Fellowship of the Bug”.

May 18, 2013

Peace in Thoughtlessness

The last few weeks, I have struggled to put two thoughts together, and this turns out to be a good thing. At first I thought it was a new stage of PTSD, my unfolding reaction to the fact that Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict (today more than 2 months sober). Now I see this is part of my own process of healing and recovery.

My thoughts are very foggy and disconnected at the surface, but down below the thinking must continue. I can still hold a conversation – although if it is a work conversation that yields to do items, I had better jot them down when first discussed or they won’t leave the room with me. More importantly, I have written quite a bit on my new novel and it is really good stuff.

The fog disturbed me mightily at first, but more and more I see it as a protective cushion. My longstanding tendencies to brood and anticipate are not functioning well now – and I don’t miss them at all. I’ve got a lot of stress at work right now and when I start worrying I find myself trying to pull the fog closer and thicker.

Perhaps this is how I will back into mindfulness and an ability to be fully present – by thickening the fog. Not thinking is really peaceful. I recommend it.

April 25, 2013

They’re Getting So Big!

No more kittens. Now we’ve got teen cats who spend daytime causing trouble in the backyard.

This post shows the trio as kittens. And this post defines their personalities.

Glam shot of Arrow.

Related questions: a) How many bee stings will it take before Leo stops playing with bees? b) Do cats develop bee allergies?

Bo in the underbrush.

She got the camera out. Stop looking cute and scatter!

April 24, 2013

The Long Plateau

It’s kinda like living in The Lost World, a previously unknown universe on a long, high plateau that ends in steep cliffs.

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict, just about 60 days into recovery. SILD could relapse. SILD could be secretly using. These coulds will continue to haunt me. But right now SILD is looking healthy and – remarkably – happy, intensely working a 12-step recovery program that helps to limit the power of the addiction while dramatically boosting self-awareness.

I have been working on my own recovery as a codependent and thus recognize that it will be a sign of my own improved mental state when I cease to start blog entries by talking about SILD. What happens with SILD is up to SILD. I can’t alter SILD’s path and I can’t predict the future. Hence all the treatment program mantras about focussing on today.

For a purebred westerner like myself, that living in the moment stuff ain’t easy to achieve but I can already see that getting to that point is an effort worth making. Lately sometimes I’ve managed to find the Off switch, to silence all my dreading and what-ifing. The sense of peace and the upsurge in energy are simply incredible. I wish I could tell you how to activate that switch – then maybe we could all flip it more often. At this point all I can do is reassure that it exists.

The biggest test of a codependent’s recovery is the ability to maintain peace, contentment, and joy in life even when the addict is doing poorly. So often we codependents say “I’m doing well today – because my addict is ___” Fill in the blank: Still sober. Working her program. Getting job offers. That kind of thinking is still codependent. I’m okay because my addict is okay. The goal is: I’m okay even though my addict is in a tailspin.

Getting to that point is surely even harder than always living in the moment.

Thinking about a future where my addict could be in a tailspin is pushing against my Off switch. I’m knotting up inside and need to remind myself: nothing has changed as I type this blog. Today is still good. That is all I know for sure.

Today has been okay. Curiously, that simple realization restores my calm.

Folks, you have just witnessed mind control in action.

Perhaps two months ago I would have sheepishly deleted all of this.

April 23, 2013

Dirty Chips

Someone I Love Dearly (SILD) is a heroin addict — now just about 60 days sober. Like all addiction milestones, this one is important, reassuring, bittersweet, and just possibly a meaningless sham.

Without a treatment program, relapse is almost guaranteed – 97% of addicts who try to quit on their own will relapse. So I am deeply thankful that SILD had willingness and health insurance to go through treatment. With a treatment program, relapse is slightly less guaranteed: 90% of addicts who try to quit using a treatment program will relapse.

I get why the relapse rates are so high. Hell, it took me three tries to quit smoking. You have to learn how to live without your drug; the learning includes mistakes and some mistakes lead to relapse. One big difference is that I wasn’t at risk of overdose when I lit up one more Chesterfield. The chance of overdose goes up when an addict relapses: recovery messes up an addict’s tolerance for the drug.

SILD says “I am going to be in the 10%” and I mostly believe that SILD wants to accomplish this and will do so. Mostly believe, because I may never fully believe SILD again. In everything SILD says, I hear a whisper of an alternate reality: what might be true instead. That is a consequence of the years of lies while SILD was using. At the same time, I can no longer live in a state of perpetual mistrust. It left me debilitated and combustible. From what I can figure so far, with an addict, love and trust can have little overlap, at least for the first many years of recovery.

Two months ago, I knew nothing about this universe I now permanently inhabit. When I first learned the relapse statistics and heard all the relapse stories, I didn’t think I could face that future. Now it’s just another fact of life. So maybe someday I will shed my abhorrence of dirty chips.

There are three kinds of addicts in recovery – those who are not using, those who are using, and those who are secretly using. The addicts who are not using earn chips at meetings, chips that proclaim recovery milestones – for example, SILD has a 30-day chip and will soon earn a 60-day chip. The addicts who are using either stop attending meetings, or resume the effort to quit and reset their count of days sober, starting again at day 1. The addicts who are secretly using keep coming to meetings, keep collecting chips they have not really earned. These are called dirty chips.

I am outraged by the existence of dirty chips but I need to get over it. A dirty chip feels worse than just a relapse or just a lie but it is merely another fact of life in the addict universe. As SILD points out, “Addicts lie. It’s what we do.”

And those who want to feel love for an addict without letting that love destroy their lives had better find a way to love without trust and trust without fully trusting.

Required Writing

Just about anything by Sue Perry

musings