Doing it wrong in inappropriate clothing

I don't watch daytime TV.  I don't watch a lot of TV at all; I don't have cable, so I'd have to watch stuff as it airs. I can't predict the likelihood of actually catching a program on time beyond the degree of "There-Might-Be-Oatmeal," as measured on my personal Probability Scale.  But on Wednesday I let Hannah entertain herself for an hour (not exactly a stretch for her) and watched Katie Couric's show at 3:00.  I'm not specifically a fan of Katie; I don't have any particular feelings about her, but Jenny Lawson had posted on The Bloggess that she would be on, in a red dress, no less, and I wanted to see her. THEN she posted that Brene Brown would also be on the show, and that moved it up to the Jennifer-Drinks-Coffee level on the scale, which means this eventuality is no longer in question.

I love Brene Brown.  She is the most sensible author on relationships and mental health I have read.  I love that her big rallying cry is "Be Brave,"and I love the title of her new book: Daring Greatly.  It's not a complicated prescription, but the implementation of it is Herculean.  I spend my days talking to clients about the value of courage and vulnerability in their relationships, and struggle with implementing it in my own just as much as they do.

And I love Jenny Lawson.  She is brave in ways I can only dream about, and has challenges I can not imagine.  I love her Red Dress phenomenon.  I cried when I read her original post, and I cry every time she has red dress update post.  I love the idea of women supporting other women and refusing to allow them to hide in shame without at least inviting them to come out and play dress up for a little while.

My red dress story is not quite as dramatic as some, and, in fact, I didn't recognize it as being a red dress story until this week.  When my Dad died 3 years ago I felt all the warmth and color drain out of the world in a very tangible way.  I was convinced that my heart was irrevocably broken, and I wasn't really even alive anymore.  I could barely participate in the funeral arrangements, other than to criticize the funeral director's grammar when we reviewed the obituary copy.  No.  Criticize doesn't really describe it right; maybe excoriate?  I think I may have tried to wrestle the keyboard out of his hands and do it myself.  Raise your hand if that surprises you.

It was all I could do not to say something hateful when the preacher came over to my Mom's house to plan the service.  I got into a fight with my Aunt over whether I had to help write thank-you cards to people who came to the funeral.  Instead, I spent the week going over my Dad's mysterious balancing act of bill payment; no one else wanted to be involved in that mess, and I was guaranteed to be left alone.  I was angry and hurt, and I didn't care what anyone else felt.

I don't remember who suggested it, but someone said we should all wear red to the funeral.  It was one of the few suggestions (along with playing the Rolling Stone's Brown Sugar during the viewing) that didn't make me want to punch someone in the face.  I figured Daddy would think it was funny if we all wore red dresses to his funeral.  Of course, being that we had travelled for a funeral, neither my sister nor I had packed anything red.  So the next day, the Aunties brought over armloads of red dresses and skirts for the most bizarre dress-up party I've ever been to.

My sister and Mom and I decided that wearing red to his funeral was the last joke we could tell my Dad.  I don't think it was courage so much as defiance and a fierce and blinding love for my Dad that carried us through those days and that funeral.  I still hold my breath through much of the month of August, hoping I can keep it together until my birthday, and then September, when I can try to remember how to breathe again.

So now I think I'll buy myself a red dress.  Probably not a sparkly gown, but one I can wear regularly.  One in which I can be defiant.  And fierce.  And whatever else it is I'm having trouble mustering up that day.

Let's put that in perspective

My last post referenced Hannah's waking up nicely as coming close-to-never on my probability scale.  I worked up the rest of the scale, just to give you some perspective on the relative likelihood of all things.  Hannah helped with suggestions for categories of probability.  And with the coloring-in.

I think this 5-point Likert-type scale is sufficient to describe the probability of most eventualities.  However, it is a work in progress; I mean the concepts, not the quality of the art work.  That's not going to get any better.  My apologies to people with actual skill...

And now I'm gonna crush a box.

Mornings are not Hannah's thing.  Typically there is a 20 minute period of whining and unarticulated mewling that prompts me to sing "Who Let the Goat In?" until Hannah either laughs or gets mad enough that I leave the room before she says something that might get her into trouble. 
Fair is fair: annoying songs are bad enough without entrapment for disrespectful behavior.

Today she awakened on her own around 6:45, and was dressed and ready to go before 7:15.  Incidentally, this falls on the far side of Unicorns in the Backyard on the Probability Scale.  My husband had gone to work early this morning, so he called to say good morning at 7:45.  The side of the conversation I could hear went something like this:

I'm dressed already...
Do you remember the pink dress with the flower?  That's what I'm wearing.
It is Friday...
(Mom, could you pull up the school lunch menu please?) If it's still Pizza-Friday, then that's what I'm having...
Well, since we don't have gifted today, I get to go to art class.
Yeah...
Yeah...
Yeah...
And now I'm gonna crush a box.

Hannah had been kicking around a cardboard box all morning that I told her she could break down, but not while eating breakfast.  She'd waited as long as she could, and just had to get back to work on that thing.  She did not put down the phone, or even ask her Dad to hold on. She assumed that the box crushing would become part of the conversation, just as it would have if Dave had been sitting there with her. Not surprisingly, Dave seemed to be asking for commentary on her progress.  She described the progression from box-shaped to flat-as-a-pancake, pausing only in her exertion to tackle a particularly resilient corner.

I've been feeling not awesome lately.  And when I feel not-awesome, I tend to ratchet up the level of acceptability on my Control Freak meter and do things like iron the sheets and insist that Hannah clean her room before she goes to bed.  Dave can sense the disturbance in the Force, and just helps Hannah clean stuff up so I don't have to get all frantic and Mommy-Dearest on the world.  I will tell you that I had to suppress the urge this morning to tell Hannah to just stop kicking that box around, please, despite the absolutely stress-free morning we were having.  I also don't mind telling you that my suppression behavior was reinforced by the unbearable cuteness of that box-crushing commentary.

Doin' it wrong with discipline and home remedies

My daughter has some unidentified seasonal allergies, and I've been trying to treat her without industrial quantities of Triaminic and Benadryl.  So I went with nasal irrigation.  For about a week we had a twice daily ritual of torturing Hannah with a squirt of commercially-produced saline solution in both nostrils and copious nose blowing.  Done.  Oh, except for the whining, occasional shouting, and half-hearted wrestling on her part.

It's worked pretty well.  She breathes easier at night and has much less sneezing and general congestion during the day.  So, naturally, I've slacked off.  Just one treatment at bedtime now, and sometimes I forget about it altogether.

Turns out that was her plan all along.  More about her evil-ness later.

This morning I got up and was so stuffy and dried out, I wanted the saline spray for myself.  I looked in the place where I left it out for convenience: nope. I looked in the place it belongs for storage: nope.  I looked in the bathroom drawer where sometimes everything gets shoved when I'm cleaning: not there.  I looked in the cabinet where everything gets shoved when the drawer is too stuffed with stuff that doesn't belong there: also not there.  I looked on the floor behind the wastebasket, behind the pedestal sink base and in the little hidey-hole in the step stool: no dice.  So I gave up and just suffered a little.

When Hannah got up later I asked her whether she knew where the nose spray is.
Eyes well up.  She looks around a little frantically, touches her nose, sniffs and says, "Why?  I don't need it."

Me: But I do.  Where is it.
Hannah: *deer-in-headlights look*
Me: Hannah?
Hannah: *opens hidey-hole in step stool and removes a rubber cleaning glove, under which is hidden the nose spray*
Me: *Hysterical laughter*
Hannah: *out right weeping*
Me: Why are you crying?
Hannah: Every day I hide it in a different place, but you keep finding it.  So yesterday I  hid it in the stool. (still crying)
Me: *still laughing*  Why are you crying?
Hannah: Well, usually when people yell at me or have a yelling voice, tears just come into my eyes.
Me: But I'm not yelling; I'm laughing.  I don't understand.
Hannah: It's not funny,
Me: But it is clever. You had a problem, and you solved it.  Not the way I might have wanted, but you solved it.  I think maybe you know it was a little naughty, and you feel guilty.  Could that be it?
Hannah: *blank stare*
Me: Never mind. *still laughing*

Partly, it was so funny because I'd looked in that hiding place, just not well enough.  I thought the little bottle had gotten knocked over somewhere and just carelessly lost.  I hadn't anticipated it having been conscientiously squirrelled away under multiple obstacles.  I'm still chuckling about it.

Maybe not my best parenting response, but the most genuine, I think.

Doin' it wrong with operant conditioning and pest control

Today I'm putting my curtains back up. I took them down at the beginning of June when my husband pointed out that they were serving as a nursery for tick larvae.  We spent a frantic and disgusted weekend washing curtains and bedding, vacuuming every milimeter of carpet and upholstery in the house, and spraying every crevice and surface with a combination of purportedly environmentally-neutral pesticides bought at a do-it-yourself joint. 

Yeah, yeah.  Chemicals shmemicals. 

Those of you who know me outside of Bloggerland know how I feel about bugs. I never liked them, and I really screwed myself up several years ago in a behavioral psychology workshop during a demonstration of virtual operant conditioning or some such thing.  The group was instructed to imagine a thing we fear, in the most vivid manner we could, while touching together the thumb and index finger of our left hands.  Then we were instructed to imagine, in an equally vivid manner, a peaceful and comfortable setting, while touching together the thumb and index finger of our right hands.  Being me, I screwed it up.  I got stuck on Thing-I-Fear, and did the whole Right Hand thing wrong.  This only exacerbated my fear of bugs.  Observe:

I once thought I saw a large bug scoot across the carpet in the doorway of my office, and began thinking immediately of the possibility of climbing out the window, and whether the screen popped out easily, or if I'd have to tear through it.  Turns out it was a pen cap that my client had been fiddling with, and shot across the room accidentally.  It was all very amusing for him, but I'm not kidding about thinking of climbing out that window.

Another time, I was out shopping with my friend Amee.  I discovered a palmetto bug crawling around on the floorboard of my car when we returned to the parking lot.  I got out, closed the door, and loudly declared I needed a new car.  I don't remember how we got home.  I'm sure Amee had to chase the bug out of the car.

When I saw a German cockroach in my office one day last year, I told my boss I might have to resign. He had the pest control guy in the same day. I'm not kidding. I really hate bugs.

So when, this spring, I began to fear I'd permanently lost the war with the creepy little parasites, I was considering how I might burn down my house, and get the two 75+ year old live oaks in the back yard to go up with it.  I had even silently and regretfully thought that I might have to give up my dog.  You remember my dog, right?

He's so sweet.  He didn't even murder me for this cone-head incident. He totally could have; I'm a very sound sleeper.

The weekend of the ferocious scouring I took the dog to the vet for a bath and tick treatment.  The vet called me to find out what wildernss I'd abandoned my dog in that caused him to be so virulently infested.  "My backyard," was my only reply.  After about 30 minutes' lecture, the vet suggested a new super-tick-and-flea-control product.  Seeing how my next idea was Napalm and the SPCA, I was game.  She only had one dose, but I happily bought it.  The dog was a sleepy lump for three days, but that could have been due to the overwhleming trauma of having been left at the vet for 8 hours.  He hates that place.

The good part of this story is that the magic product worked!  For a few weeks I found only dead ticks in the house, and, although I fear to say it aloud, I haven't seen any in 2 weeks.  Shh.  Don't repeat that.  I know those little bastards are still in the yard, and I don't want to jinx myself.  Those stupid curtains have been hanging in the laundry room for 2 months, and I'd like my pants hangers back now.

Doin' it wrong professionally: Now with more credentials!

I'm in a conference all week.

It's an annual event that happens in my state, and provides several choices for intensive trainings in addiction treatment that last anywhere from one to four full days.  The one I'm taking is for clinical supervision, and my attendance at this event has been graciously facilitated by a former employer, who happened to have an open seat already paid for, and I happened to be the first one to respond to the email.  It turns out that really fast typing is not just a cool parlor trick.

But that's not what I'm doing wrong.  I'm sitting in a room of seasoned professionals-- okay, some of them are seasoned, some of them are just motivated to be in charge of some stuff.  What I've noticed about this bunch of counselors is how much we love to hear ourselves talk.  And this is not a unique group, in my experience.  The funny thing is, as an introductory exercise, the class instructor asked us all to list what we believed were our strengths and our "challenges," and most of the people in this class identified being "a good listener" as one of their strengths.  Um.  Not even close.  Some of these folks are barely waiting for their turn to talk, let alone listening to what anyone else is saying.

I shouldn't imply that I'm not part of the yammering.  But I catch myself at it sometimes, and have to examine my motives for talking in the first place.  I've also been working lately on my own behavior of interrupting people, which seems like a pretty bad characteristic in a therapist.  I notice this behavior much less when talking with patients than with colleagues and with other people, but I can't tell you for sure that I NEVER interrupt patients...  What I do know is that in a room full of other counseling professionals, the only way to get a word in is to talk over someone else.  I have a hard-wired tendency to talk fast and loud, and 12 years of sitting in staff meetings with other therapists has only reinforced this.  I have to work against both my nature and my nurturing in order to not be a complete jerk.

Incidentally, when asked to identify my strengths, I never tell people I'm a good listener.  I'm not sure I am.  But I can be silent when I don't know what to say, and most people think this means I'm listening.  Maybe I am listening, and I just don't recognize it, given the behavior of people who say they're good at it, and then just jabber on and on.

Ethics and Elementary School Children

I was discussing ethics with my daughter the other day.  She was telling me about a girl she's known since she was 2, who routinely does things to hurt her feelings, as she did recently.  Hannah was then telling me that if someone else made that girl cry, well, she deserved it.

I tried to convey to Hannah that this is not a true statement.  No one "deserves" to be hurt.  And even if another person is mean to us, we can choose to be kind and loving, even if they don't deserve that.  It's the best definition of Christianity I know: treating others better than they have earned.

I wrote about this conversation on my Facebook status the day it happened, and got a variety of responses.  One, from a dear, dear friend suggested I introduce the concept of Karma.  There is one problem with that: I don't believe in Karma.  I don't believe that people get what they give.  I have seen many examples of people who are despicable, spiritually speaking, and have succeeded in life by all external measures: social, financial, professional.  People on whom I have wished a rash in hidden places have prospered in all visible manners.  I attribute this to the fact that the universe is NOT looking out for justice, because the universe is a collection of stars and planets that is not conscious of the behavior of its inhabitants. And I know that the conscious being I recognize is not in the business of making sure that my version of justice is done.  Therefore, I am left with trying to teach my child grace.  I don't believe I am equal to this task.  I mentioned the wish-rash, right?

I don't think life is fair.  I don't think everything happens for a reason.  I don't think everything is going to work out to my advantage, if I just wait and see it through.  What I do think is that I can make myself satisfied with what happens if I work hard enough, cognitively speaking.  But I'm not good at expressing these thoughts to a 7 year old.

I want it to be true that if you are good and kind, the world will be good and kind back to you.  I want it to be true that if you look out for the interests of others, other will look out for your interests as well.  I also want it to be true that if I think happy thoughts I can fly to the second star to the right, but I know that's not happening anytime soon. Still, I try to be the change I want to see in others as often as I can, and I try to teach my child to be the same.

However, I also teach my child to tell people to Buzz Off when they are overtly mean, because there are only so many cheeks that kid has, after all.