Y'guys

I know I am the worst blogger on The Planet.  I've been busy these days.  There are lots of little nuggets in my brain to talk about, such as:

1. Folks who refer to my male colleagues as "sir" and me as "honey" and only shake the hands of my male colleagues but think it's cool to put a hand on my shoulder.

2. Clothing that looks totally legit on some women, but indecent on me.  Girls: you know what I mean.  UNFAIR.

3. Punditry and the rash of ideological morons (or sellouts to sensationalism) who feel the urge to reduce every situation or issue down to a false cartoonish good people - bad people dichotomy and ignore the vast majority of responses and needs (which have the added characteristic of actually existing in real life) in between.

4. Coffee, you guys.  COFFEE.

5. Southern Social Exercises: What We Say and What We Mean.

6. Public personalities and the blurring line between what you produce being a commodity and your person/existence being a commodity.

7. Reclaiming My Face: Actively Trying To Leave The House Sans Makeup And Not Care

These may or may not be expanded in some way.  We'll see.  In the meantime, enjoy the new widget to the right of this here text that shows you what all I've shared on Google Buzz!

A Glimpse Into Me Time

When I'm at home alone, I mess around on the piano, playing and singing songs I like.  Here's an example of some such tomfoolery.  Perfect?  No.  Fun?  Yes.

My Thorn in My Side: LET ME SHOW YOU IT

I was musing about this in my personal journal, but then decided that it's probably either universal enough or funny enough to warrant a blog post.

Everyone has pet peeves.  They can reveal much about us, or in this particular case, underline something I already knew about myself and remind me how pervasive this problem is. 
I put a lot of my self-worth in my "intelligence."  I put it in skeptical quotes because mine is a very specific brand of intelligence: the memory-wordy-musical kind.  I remember things well, I use uncommon words and I got musics.  My math skills are tenuous; I understand the concepts, but I understand them from a verbal standpoint.  I remember that 5 - 3 = 2, not because I am mentally fleshing out the images of 5, 3, and 2, but because I remember the sentence "Five minus three equals two."  And in elementary school when I was learning basic addition, I added numbers up to eight not by counting on fingers or other visualizing methods, but by rhythmically counting up.  To reach a solution to 6 + 8, I would say "Six" to myself, and then say "SEVEN - eight - NINE - ten - ELEVEN - twelve - THIRTEEN - fourteen" with that specific syllabic emphasis (hint: I was counting out two full measures in 4/4, stressing beats one and three, unconsciously) because it just felt right.  That felt like eight.  And to stop in beat 3 of the second measure felt like seven.  To stop in beat 1 of the second measure felt like five.  Past eight, I would lose my place.  You can imagine how well this worked out as I got older.  But words and musics, I has them.

So, particularly because of my memory smarts, I'm pretty accustomed to being able to get the right answer, to learn the rules and routines quickly, and to do my tasks well and correctly.  And I put a lot of stock in being smart.  It's become more and more apparent to me how much I put that memory to work in every aspect of my life as of late, especially in relationships.  I had the usual push-pull as a teen, but now...if I did something that seemed to cause you to snap at me?  I'll probably go out of my way not to do it again.  I asked you for something and you said no, but your no was due to a temporary deterrent?  I *still* will probably not ask you again.  I needed something and you were in a bad mood and blew me off?  I will either conclude that I can't depend on you for what I need or that what I need is frivolous.  Something in me makes me think I can learn all the rules of people and if I just learn them all and follow them all, I won't get snapped at, won't be disliked, and (most importantly) won't be considered stupid.  Because people are totally static and never develop or change!  (That's facetiousness, in case you can't tell)

The pet peeve that brought on this deluge of navel-gazing introspection is: receiving unsolicited advice.  This drives me insane.  Now, of course, there are times when I am able to excuse it.  If I were to, say, draw the hem of my robe over a candle and set it afire, I would not only tolerate a "YOUR ROBE IS ON FIRE!" from you, I would likely welcome it.  An "AAAAAAAH!!" with much pointing would also suffice.  And I am not a complete idiot: I realize that advice is sometimes helpful and even occasionally needed.  I often times actually solicit advice from people.  But getting pointers I didn't ask for is so annoying to me as to be cringeworthy.  If the advice is something I didn't know that is relevant to the situation, it will bother me because by the time I embark on some task, I'm supposed to have learned enough about it to do it without help; if I still need help in the execution phase, it means I'm stupid.  If the advice is (1) something I already knew, (2) not necessarily relevant to the situation, as often happens when someone doesn't know enough about it to be giving advice, or (3) something I know to be inaccurate, it takes effort to conceal my anger.  Because in those cases, someone underestimated my knowledge or abilities, but my Rules of People dictate that I can't correct them because that's defensive/immature/unladylike/whatever.  So there I am, either actually being stupid or being perceived as stupid and without a dern thing to do about it except bottle the frustration and pop the top right here on this blog!

So that's one of my big flaws.  I try to get around it by not doing things I haven't extensively researched or studied, or by saving new tasks for when I am alone.  It's not that I believe I should never require help - I seek it pretty often - but that I should require help at a certain time.  I treat the whole world like school.  I learn about a potential task or project by Googling it and asking other people about it - this is the studying phase.  When I set out to do it, that's the test phase.  And at the test phase, you're supposed to know it and not need any further assistance.  If you haven't properly prepared, you fail the test.  So when I get unsolicited advice that I actually needed, I feel like I've failed a test.  And when I get some that I didn't need, I feel like I'm being accused of failing.

I hope that in this exercise in transparency I have made someone else feel a little bit better about one of his or her particular thorns.

Turning That Frown Upside Down

I had a sad dream last night.
As in, wake up and almost cry sad.
Feel like your psyche will be surely crushed under the sadness sad.
Dumbo's mommy singing to him sad.

So I got up (at 5:30 AM because my body has gotten used to getting up early again) and took some time to feel my feelings.  Listened to a song that described how I felt, wrote a journal entry with lots of psycho in it, just unleashed the full measure of my insanity onto paper.  It's funny how that process goes.  You blurt it all out and then you sit for a second, waiting to see if there's anything else floating around in there.  It's like getting sick.  You toss your cookies and then sit on the floor by the toilet for a few minutes, just in case it comes back.  Once it's all out, you feel your body begin to calm down.  Your muscles release and quit trembling and contracting, the sense of dread drains away.  In the case of physical sickness, you might drink a soda or eat some crackers to set matters to rights again.  For emotional sickness, you turn to things like Cute Overload or awesome notes you passed with good friends where you chatted about how people who get doctorates are not superhuman, as evidence by the fact that some of them tuck their ties into their pants and use poor grammar and can't play the piano. 

It took me a while to learn this.  Or perhaps it is normal to grasp this lesson in the early twenties.  I have this neurosis that dictates that I must learn everything sooner and faster than everybody else - it's yet another Right Answer that I must get.  Gifted Kid Syndrome, I guess.  Anyway, it has been helpful for me to view emotional health similarly to how I view physical health.  As a child and a teen I noticed how emotional outbursts earned me scorn and punishment and mistakenly extrapolated that those expressions, nay the feelings themselves, are universally inappropriate.  You can imagine how well this worked out.  Pushing my analogy to the limits of tastefulness, if you get sick and try to keep it all in all the time and never release, you will eventually explode in some fashion.  Something would happen, I would feel a feeling and then immediately be ashamed of that feeling, as if by just thinking it I was demonstrating how weak and immature I was.  Adults don't feel these sorts of things, right?  That must be true, because I get reprimanded when I talk about feeling this way (read: even an effort to get me to "look on the bright side" struck me as a reprimand...GKS again).  I remember hearing about journaling and about letting feelings out from preachers, teachers, counselors and such, but it didn't stick for a long time.  I think part of the reason was because I also love to write and whenever I sit down to write, my inclination is to write for an audience.  Which, of course, defeats the purpose of journaling - it causes you to stifle the most intimate and perhaps distasteful of your thoughts.  Now, I'm finally learning that balance.  It has helped me view my emotional nature as an asset that furthers my creativity and enriches my relationships, rather than as a Mark of Cain that made me Immature.  I do wish I had learned it sooner.  I hope I can model it for my students and my children and spare them some of the embarrassment, frustration and self-hatred I felt as a teen.

I feel like I keep returning to this over and over again, but I suppose we all have thorns in our side and lessons that we have to learn multiple times.  Takes 21 repetitions for something to become a habit, right?  This introspection has caused me to look at other facets of my life that have changed and have made me very thankful for all of my experiences.  My life thus far has taken me from trailors, Spam, Clorox-chlorinated pools and mix tapes to yoga, coffee, Perrier and Schoenberg.  I love this home that Andrew and I have fashioned, I love these friends that God has given me, and I love this life.  Even when I hate it, I love this life.

On Identity: The Unified Self vs. The Mosaic Self

"Identity" is a complicated word.  I can't speak for other cultures, but I know that 'round here, we like to categorize and label.  It gives us the illusion of control.  I've heard in more than one context about our tendency to respond to "Who am I?" with our occupation.  Even on the "About" page on this here blog, I list lots of characteristics, occupations, etc. that people associate with me.  I'm a Christian, a musician, so on.  But lately, I've been thinking about the nature of how we perceive people and how we, especially in the South, believe in this virtue of Personal Consistency.  Is not one of the political right's favorite insults "flip-flopper?"  If you choose to change your lifestyle or behavior for reasons deemed Insufficient by whomever is speaking, you are flaky.  Those choosing to be tactful ("bless your heart") might call you "free-spirited" or "open-minded."  But they mean the same thing: "You used to be one way and now you are a different way and I dislike change because it busts up my illusion of control and instead of examining my own hang-ups, I am going to label you Immature or Flighty or Shallow.  Away from me, Changeling!"  And then there's the virtue of Purism, which says that if you claim to be something, you'd better be in line with the ideals of that Something every moment.  Prime example: in college, a fellow musician once berated me for openly admitting that in my free time, I usually don't listen to classical music.  I hath violated the Sacred Guidelines for Real Dadgum Musicians...and yet, still knew my stuff, still got my degree.

I wonder how different things would be if we took a different view of people.  Rather than thinking of them as pillars, held up by the virtues of their jobs, hobbies, skills, etc...

we saw them as mosaics.  Each little job, each new book we read, each friend we make, all become pieces of our mosaics.  And sometimes, those pieces might seem like opposites, but I think the inclusion of opposed pieces makes us richer, more empathetic people.  Take a couple of my favorite authors: Lewis Grizzard and Garrison Keillor.  Different beliefs, very different political leanings, different experiences.  And when I sit down to ponder a slice of life, I can anticipate what either of them would say and I'm a better person for it.  Who wants a mosaic that's all one color?  Who wants to be so completely absorbed by one viewpoint, one type of experience, one understanding of the world?  None of the pieces completely defines you, because nothing we pursue on this earth can do that.  I have skills and pursuits, but I don't spend every minute of every day being A Musician, A Teacher, A Smart.

In re-reading that paragraph, I realize that I am inviting an argument about my specific religion, because Christianity and most spiritual pursuits cover and permeate the life of the adherent.  I think that God operates outside the mosaic and that He encourages it, and that the more we understand about humanity in all its colors and variety, the more we can do to improve it.  During any sermon regarding evangelism, my pastor always points out that it is possible to grow up in a Christian home, attend a Christian school, attend a Christian college or seminary, make a living in a Christian organization like a church or philanthropic nonprofit and never really impact someone else's life.  The monochromatic mosaic is not an edifying force for our faith, but rather a stifling one.

So yeah, I can name chords and list composer dates and principal works and analyze sonatas.  I also listen to Ke$ha.  I use words like "monochromatic" and "adherent."  I also use words like "dagnabbit" and "holla."  I watch documentaries about WWII and film history and classroom indoctrination.  I also watch Ren and Stimpy.  I hate spiders.  I considered binding a live spider to a headband and wearing it for Halloween.  I fear death.  I am fascinated by macabre subject matter and will spend hours on Wikipedia reading about the deadliest air disasters in history.  I want to dye my hair red and wear it flipped out with a plaid skirt.  I want to dye my hair black and get a nose ring.  I want to be a conductor.  I want to be a rock star.

All little pieces, all of them make me.  

The High School, The Sixteen, The Sophomore Year

The real genius behind blogging is that it gives you an opportunity to say to the world, "Does anyone else do this?" and there's a possibility that you'll meet scores of people who do exactly that.

Did you ever get an entire year of your life stuck in your head?   Because as of late, I have had frequent occasion to recall my sophomore year of high school.  I think this is due to several things:
1. The rediscovery and subsequent downloading-to-the-iPod of several tracks from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack.
2. The fact that two pieces from that year's All-State have resurfaced in my life, one in my class and the other in my student's All-State repertoire.
3. The singing of the old songs in worship, many of which I discovered during that year.

It has just occurred to me that those are all music-related points.  Hm.  I've heard that smell is the sense that links to memory the fastest and the most effectively because (paraphrasing from various sources I can't be bothered to cite right now), it goes to the memory part of your brain before going to the part of your brain that says, "What is this?"  But for me, music can put me back in a place as well, especially music that has lain dormant in my brain for a while.  When I snagged the MR soundtrack from Mom's house a few weeks ago and listened to their rendition of "Your Song," I was immediately back in my old bedroom, pacing around, imagining that the young gentleman I was dating at the time was making grand and elaborate romantic gestures.

When I think about tenth grade, it comes in quick little clips.  Standing on the back row in Chorus next to Sara and Ashlyn singing the Pitoni "Cantate Domino.)  Spending hours on AIM with the young gentleman I was dating, only to find him quiet and withdrawn in person (really???  A 16-yr-old boy wasn't just brimming with conversation?)  The pretty girls in Chorus giving me a makeover and Doc informing me that they made me look, erm, meretricious.  Writing up scripts for pretend television shows. 

Sitting in Physical Science making jokes with Jon, starting a friendship of epic proportions.  Listening to soundtracks over and over and over and imagining every dance move, outlining every voice part in my brain.  Writing parodies upon parodies.  Wondering why Coach B had such a great reputation.  Bethany, Rebecca, Ashlyn, Sara, Deanna, Elena, Jenny, Meggie, Jon, Andrew, Stephen, Ryan, Marc, Justin, Curtis.

I dated, got dumped rather spectacularly ("I would date you, but I'm afraid of what people would think of me..."), dated someone else, found him unenthusiastic about the whole thing, dumped him unspectacularly, re-dated him because I thought no one else would ever like me enough to date me, found him downright mean and re-dumped him with what Doc called a "cerebral hate letter."  (Lest I be accused of soiling these unnamed fellows' reputations, I would like to add here that both apologized and more than made up for their conduct and have since been pleasantly civil to me and great suitors to subsequent girlfriends.)

Mostly, I remember that year as being a year of extremes.  I decided to try to eschew sugar one day and found myself eating 6 bowls of HoneyComb the next day.  Boy du Jour would hold my hand for two seconds and I would be over the moon, dancing down the hallways, only to be despondent an hour later when he wouldn't even say hi to me because he was around his friends.  I was desperate for approval (in other news, water is wet) and any little speck, from a good grade on a test to a friend saying I was a good writer sent me skyward, whereas any hint of rejection or disapproval sent me into a self-hate spiral.

Now, what's funny is...I remember it as being one of the best years of my teenagerhood.  It wasn't the happiest year, but it feels like the year I lived the most as a kid, in a manner of speaking.  I ran unabashedly toward what I wanted, exulted to the heavens when I got it and crashed into sorrow when I didn't.  I used to think that songs like "Need You Now" with lines that said "I'd rather hurt than feel nothing at all" didn't make sense because, really, who wants pain?  But my 11th grade year, which was generally a more pleasant year, doesn't feel to me like a better year.  I think back on it and it feels beige.  It feels oatmeal.  Whereas 10th grade is (speaking strictly metaphorically) a series of emotional parties and hangovers.  10th grade is bright colors and big music, poison and panacea, trying to sort out what among my personality traits were to be embraced as me-isms and what were blemishes that needed immediate removal.  As you can imagine, anything that really could be called a personality trait made the latter list, whereas skill traits like verbal intelligence made the former. 

I think the last thing that really made 10th grade the best year was that the full self-control psychosis hadn't descended on me just yet.  Although I was getting close, it wasn't until just after that I extrapolated that having and expressing emotions was bad bad bad because it made me sensitive and sensitive means that I am weak and undeserving of respect or validation until I get that crap under control.  So often when we think back to fun childhood times, we wished we had savored the moment more, worried less, blah blah blah.  But I don't feel that way about 10th grade.  I was in it at full speed the whole time.  It was a great big year.

Our Hope Endures

It has been some kind of week over here at UFC HQ.  Jam-packed full of extra classes, extra hours at my day job, and a scare with The Big C.

See, The Man had some funny blood tests, so they sent him for a CT scan on Wednesday.  That turned up a spot that was described to him as either a cyst or cancer.  I spent Thursday and today wondering what we would do if it were the Big C.  Fortunately, today's MRI revealed it to be a cyst.

At times like this, when so many tasks and stresses seem to converge, I'm grateful that a dear friend introduced me to this here song...

"Our Hope Endures" by Natalie Grand

You would think
only so much can go wrong.
Calamity only strikes once.
And you assume
that this one has suffered her share,
so life will be kinder from here.

Oh, but sometimes the sun
stays hidden for years.
Sometimes the sky
rains night after night.
When will it clear?

But our hope endures
the worst of conditions.
It's more than our
optimism.
Let the earth quake,
our hope is unchanged.

How can we
comprehend peace within pain?
Or joy at a good man's wake?
So walk a mile
with a woman whose body is torn
with illness, but she marches on.

Emmanuel, God is with us.
El-Shaddai, All Sufficient.
Emmanuel, God is with us.
El-Shaddai, All Sufficient.
Emmanuel, God is with us.
El-Shaddai, All Sufficient.
We never walk alone,
and this is our hope.

A Post-All-State Monday and Guilt

Subtitle: In Which I Hope My Readers Forgive My Narcissistic Use of Self-Portrait

Friday Night -- Do not sleep.  Just can't.  Keep thinking, "What if I forgot to tell them something?  What if I didn't study the letters and rubrics closely enough?  What if they don't do well because of my inability to read or follow directions?"

Saturday -- Spend all day (as in 7:45 AM to 8:00 PM) judging All-State auditions and waiting on scores.  Also fail to sleep because of excitement.

Sunday -- help Chad lead at church, straighten up house, take short nap, go to birthday party.  Because of short nap, fail to sleep a third time.

Monday --

Such lovely deep valleys under my eyes. 

I think it's a side effect of living in this culture that I am never quite certain I am doing enough.  Even on days like this, I don't feel like my tiredness is really justified.  I think to myself, "Well, Mom held down a job, went to school and had two young 'uns and you didn't see her whining about how tired she was!"  I compare myself to other women with much larger stressors in their lives and feel like I'm weak or defective for not being able to handle my little plate of responsibilities any better than I do.  This afternoon, I came home with Tchaikovsky's piano solo setting of the Nutcracker suite with hopes of learning it so I'll have some fun pieces to play over Christmas.  I thought to myself, "The only thing left to do at home is dishes and they can wait until tomorrow."  Just to be sure, I went ahead and called Andrew and asked if he was cool with me waiting on the dishes.  He said, "Yeah, that's fine...I may go ahead and do them just to get them out of the way."

The voices in my head were started by the time I hung up the phone.  "What is wrong with you?  You can't take 20 little minutes out of your day to put some dishes in the dishwasher?  What sort of worthless wife are you?"  And so the guilt consumed me and I did them.  Now I feel a little more like a worthwhile person, except that there are still bits and pieces of clutter in our living room and I haven't really cleaned the hall bathroom mirror in a while and the kitchen floor could use sweeping and [insert a million other little things that anybody visiting my home wouldn't give a crap about].  The image of the coiffed and polished pearl-sporting homemaker of decades past hangs over my head beside the goal-oriented career woman of contemporary era.  Can I learn to buck up and satisfy both ideals like it seems so many of the women in my family do?

I sure hope so.  I hate feeling inadequate.

Bits and Pieces

Classical guitar music is great for unwinding.

God wants me to go to the library.  I know this because the humorists are right beside the poetry.

You always remember that you need an oil change when you're late to an appointment that will last all day.

Music theory grammar has ruined me.  I used to be able to call E-flat minor "E-flat minor" regardless of the context because that's how everybody really thinks of it.  Now, if I'm in F# major, I just can't.

On crime dramas, you'll meet the perpetrator in the first fifteen minutes.

I identify deeply with the relationship between J. D. and Dr. Cox on Scrubs.

Who's buying Fushigi?  And the Shake Weight?  Dear actors in the commercials: You look ridiculous.

(Personal crap alert) We want a young 'un and I just got confirmation that we have again been unsuccessful in this endeavor.  So perhaps all these Bits and Pieces are less an effort to give any people who sniff out this blog something to read and more an attempt to cheer myself up.  Two birds, one rock.