1) Someday this election, and the ads that go with it, will be over. Done. Fin.
2) February 2009 will come and go and the ads about digital over-the-air television will be gone. Over.
3) QOTD: The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.
- Lord Acton
Today, a second dear friend has lost her husband this spring. Our friend Eve’s dear Ed died this morning. Their’s was a true love story - a story that makes even a cynic like me believe.
So today, I’m sharing 3 thoughts about love. They’re good things, too.
“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That’s why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.”
- Erica Jong“The minute I heard my first love story I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
- Jalal ad-Din Rumi“If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.”
- C.S. Lewis
1) The Furminator. You should see the way the hair flies off Stasia! It takes out the loose hair and doesn’t even tug like a comb or slicker. Yay! Less hairballs - less hair all over the house. Plus she’s getting back in the habit of coming into the bathroom after I shower so she can be brushed. It’s way easier when it’s her idea.
2) Hulu.com, cbs.com, abc.com, etc. The various homes of streaming video so that I can watch some shows that no one else wants to see plus old episodes of MacGyver and Buffy. 
3) Silly jokes that make me laugh - cause Tom, just remember no matter how old you get, I’ll always be younger.
Corgimom mentioned her three good things emails a while ago - plus I read somewhere that I can’t remember about someone who was trying to focus on the good. I said to myself at the time, I should do that.
It’s hard. Do you know that in the home there are like 17 negative comments to every 1 good? Okay, I’m making up the numbers but they were something wild like that. One of the constant issues I have here is the “this is good BUT” I get from my father. At Christmas, I made 4 types of cookies - he loves my cookies, he says, BUT the pumpkin was too soft, the oatmeal was too hard, the shortbread should have had almond in it and he doesn’t like peppermint.
I know someone else that does that all the time, too. “Oh, that’s great BUT - ” It really doesn’t matter what it is. There is ALWAYS a but. And isn’t it true that nothing is ever perfect? In real life everything could be a little different, a little better. I don’t know if everyone reacts as painfully as I do. I find it constantly hurtful. It’s a constant reminder that I’m not good enough - at least to those internal voices. I know, however, as sensitive as I am to it - I do it too. I look at other people’s work and I see the buts, I see the things I would change. Sometimes I’m good at shutting the hell up about it - sometimes, not so good.
Back in the olden days (when dinosaurs roamed the earth) I had a pretty simple sounding client assignment. Write down 15 things you like about yourself. Ten is too easy, 15 is hard. Then, remove all the “buts.” My sample of people may tend to be those who don’t have the greatest self esteem - but I never met anyone who on the first try could get through the list without saying things like, “I like my eyes BUT no one can see them behind my glasses.”
So, when I approach the idea of three good things - I know already about the Buts. I also know that the naming good things can seem trivial or Pollyanna. It can seem fake because even when I don’t say them, the buts may be lurking.
BUT I’m going to try. Maybe even for a whole week.
1) In the wake of weather devastation all around us, we have been tremendously lucky. We are not flooded or blown away. Our flowers and trees are perfectly lovely.
2) Fig Newtons. The world’s most perfect boughten cookie. I’m certain that they must actually be healthy.
3) A nice hot shower with delightfully new smelly gel that does not make me sneeze.
And thank you Corgimom for the idea for a post.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Sometimes it’s easy to focus on the negative. I am not going to pretend that I haven’t had frustrations with my mom my whole life. At times I’ve bitterly resented her. There were years I struggled against even the idea of being anything like her. She sure wasn’t perfect.
She also helped make me who I am. I’m not perfect, either, but I think I’m a relatively good person. She helped me develop values and morals - even when I disagreed with her own, she helped me to understand them. While some of the things she said and did taught me to feel not good enough - she also taught me to believe I could do whatever I wanted. While she remained in something of a 50s housewife role - she taught me that I had a choice. I think she gave up a lot of her own dreams to become a wife and mother. She taught me about sacrificing some things you want for the benefit of those you love. She was strong in her own way. No matter what else was going on, I always knew that she loved me.
While I learn to fight the old internal voices - I think it’s important to stop now and then and acknowledge the good things. It’s easy to just see the negative. It takes a little more honesty to remember the positive.
Another round of storms blew through this evening. Once again, Shell Knob was protected by the invisible magical barrier. The storms broke north and south of us. I lost count after 5 confirmed tornadoes in the area. Three people have died so far and debris rained to the north of us from as far away as Oklahoma - at least people reported picking up mail addressed to Oklahoma in their yard. We did have a spot of wind and some heavy rain but we continue to be very lucky here. This has been the strangest spring. We always have spring storms but the sheer volume of them has been incredible.
On a lighter note, why did I wait so long to install Google Earth? My frogs this is a fun little program. The only thing is, my links aren’t working. Anyone use Google Earth? Have any ideas? They were working then I installed a bunch of fun little extras - like pictures and discovery channel and tourist information - and the links no work. I guess I could always reinstall.
Well, the wind is picking up again. I reckon I should post before I lose the connection once more.
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
- Philip K. Dick
That’s another thing we talked about this week. Not being able to remember certain things like why I chose to make certain decisions. When I’m down in the rabbit hole, that is reality. Even if I able to point out to myself that I don’t always see things the way I do down there - my reality is that the way I see things at the bottom of the rabbit hole is reality - not what I can remember about being topside. And some of the conclusions I come to in the dark stay with me. I don’t know how to stop believing. I don’t know if it would go away if I could.
These are based on my all purpose, soft sugar cookie recipe again - my what a versatile recipe that is.
Ingredients:
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
zest from 4-6 key limes (or one regular old lime), finely grated
Juice from 2-3 key limes (it’s not very much liquid but key lime is more intense)
2 tsp Boyajian pure lime oil (I’m telling you, no substitutions. You could maybe try more zest and lime juice and adjust the flour some but the Boyajian lime oil is fantastic)
3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp fine sea salt
Preheat oven to 350°F/177°C
Cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add lime zest, Boyajian oil, and eggs until well combined.
Sift flour and baking powder together and add to the butter mixture. Add lime juice. Mix until it forms a dough.
Form into walnut size balls using a small cookie scoop. For prettier cookies, roll lightly in the palms of your hand. Drop onto a cookie sheet with a silicon baking sheet liner or parchment paper. But be careful! My new silicon liner is so slick that the entire first pan of cookies slid off the pan and onto the floor coming out of the oven.
Bake 12-15 minutes or until edges are lightly golden (I seriously need to check my oven temperature). Let cool
While cooling, make glaze.
Glaze:
Zest from 2 key limes
Juice from 3-4 key limes
A couple drops of Boyajian lime oil
Enough powdered sugar to make glaze about the consistency of thick glue. In my case - about 1 cup. I have leftovers but I’m trying to come up with a good excuse to put it on…anything.
Spoon a small amount (say about 1/2 a teaspoon) on the center of a cooled cookie and swirl a bit with a spoon. The glaze will even itself out. Let set completely before packaging.
Optional: sprinkle with just a pinch of coarse sea salt before the glaze has set.
Makes about 4 dozen
Well, yesterday was shrink day. It was a good session, full of annoying insights. We started talking about the frustrations I have with some of the things mom does. I know it’s the Alzheimer’s but I react (at least internally) with so much anger sometimes. I don’t want to carry that anger around (in my VW van) or obsess and fret about the little things. Letting it go is hard, though.
She pushes buttons from long ago - buttons that it’s hard to even acknowledge since they feel like a betrayal of her. The Alzheimer’s exaggerates these old behaviors. I’ve said before that she’s simply a product of her generation - manipulative, passive-aggressive, and controlling (from the one down position). I don’t think she has ever asked for anything directly. She makes it known when she’s displeased, but indirectly. Like tonight, she saw some leaves in front of my door from where I put the plant out on the patio yesterday. “I’m going to have to get in here and clean this up!” she says. No, it’s my room, my leaves, and I’ll clean it up - which is what she wants but the message has always been that I’m too lazy or stupid or inconsiderate to clean up after myself. She would deny this absolutely, even if she were aware of it at this point. Really, it’s just a little thing and she is not intentionally hurtful - it just pushes all kinds of buttons for me.
Button: “Everything has to be done my way. If I want something done right I have to do it myself.”
Sounds tremendously like……..me. Damn, I accepted long ago that I had learned control and manipulation from mom. I work very hard to not be passive-aggressive. I pay attention to those traits in myself because I loathe them in others. But when I look at all the frustration I’ve had with her lately (like when she insists on doing the dishes after I cook) I see both the past and present. While I’m re-washing the dishes after she goes to bed - I can see her clear as day re-vacuuming the floor after I went out to play. I’m not as perfectionistic as she was - I just want it done my way. I have trouble accepting help since it’s easier to just do it myself….
I thought I’d already learned this lesson. When I supervised other counselors/case workers I had to learn that other people could do a task their own way and it’d be okay. Maybe it’s being here and feeling out of control? Maybe it’s the bizarrely flipped parent/child roles we share these days? I don’t know - but there I am, fretting that something is not being done my way.
The shrink says that these traits are more subtle in me. That’s probably being nice. Or perhaps it’s because I have been aware of at least some of them and I’ve tried to control them. I can see the same thing in the other buttons from childhood.
For example, dad could never be wrong. His was the only opinion that mattered and it’s pretty easy to talk over a child when you’re an adult. When others express opinion as though it’s fact - I react strongly and probably irrationally. I honestly don’t believe people have to agree with me but I want to feel listened to - I want my opinion to matter. I stopped going to forums and discussion groups online because I concluded that no one - not even me - cared about anyone else’s opinion. It wasn’t a conversation - it was a serial monologue.
I thought I was aware of this one. But here I am…still reacting as all my thoughts and opinions are being put down - whether they are or not. I thought I learned to control this and accept other’s opinions - and I have at least part of the time. There are just a few people who push this button really well. Shrug. Another thing to work on.
So - all these buttons and I need to take the time to reflect them back at myself. Damn. Why can’t it all be someone else’s fault?
This is the boat launch at Cape Fair - it’s hard to describe how much under water it is. The road dips down into the parking area about where the water is right now. The picture below was taken last fall past the trees you can see out in the lake.
On the other side of the bridge, the perspective might be a little more clear. The docks are out (I really am bad at estimating distance) 100-150 feet into the lake and I imagine they were pulled in as far as they could be like we do here.
The flood waters are going down. I still haven’t gotten a good shot of my island. The trees all down our road have grown so much it’s hard to get a clear view. I am surprised to see all the trees half under water or more with leaves!
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