4092 Ramblings

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Every time we impose our will on another, it is an act of violence.

--Gandhi--

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What's with all the baseball caps?  It seems like every male I see in this area wears one, all the time!  Walking down the street.  Shopping in the hardware store.  Working in the yard.  Watching TV in their living rooms.  Sitting at a table in a decent restaurant!  Do they ever take them off?  Do they sleep in them?

There's a guy a few doors up who wears a suit to work.  He doesn't wear a baseball cap to work, although everyone else seems to.  Hercules wears nice shirts and slacks to work, and he doesn't wear a baseball cap either.  For yard work and ramming around he wears what looks like a floppy Australian campaign hat.  Otherwise, it's all baseball caps all the time around here.  I hate it!

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I told The Man I had eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant.  He asked if there was anything on the plate.

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Some senator wants to get really tough about mental health tracking, for strengthening gun control background checking.

Yeah, ok, I see where that's coming from, but I suspect it would only make things worse.  When I was young, men wouldn't even consider any kind of counseling for anything, not even if they were seeing little green men who were telling them to do stuff.  It was considered unmanly to admit that they might need some help handling issues.  Over the decades that attitude has relaxed a little, but not so much in the very population that wants guns.  A "permanent record" of seeking help that might prevent one's getting a gun will, among that population, absolutely shut down any possibility of help, any admission of weakness even to the people closest to them.  The "nuts with guns" will go further underground than they are already.

Bad idea, but I have nothing better to offer.

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Latest tooth-grinder:  the Rhinebeck town blog/newsletter (at the country house) sent out an alert that the Linden Avenue bridge failed inspection, and has been closed until it can be replaced.  Estimates as to how long that will take will depend on efforts to obtain the "right-a-way" for the replacement.  "Right-a-way" was used several times in the article, and my stomach clenched every time.  Another example of "of" being misused, and another example of someone saying something with no idea whatsoever as to what they are saying. 

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My hair has passed the bra strap and is now three fingers from my waist in the back.  It doesn't appear so long in the front, though, I guess because it's cut in a curve.  I'm still shedding a LOT - there are long hairs everywhere, in everything.  They compete with Jasper fur in the dust bunnies.  But I'm growing new hair at a good pace, too, so it's still thick (thickish - my hair is too fine to ever look thick) as it goes up toward the scalp.  In the least bit of humidity all the new hairs make a curly corona of fuzz around my head.  It makes me look frazzled.  I probably should start smoothing it with some kind of dressing --- but I really don't want to.  It seems happy frizzing.

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I own a bazillion pairs of earrings (clip, I'm not pierced), including some I've been wearing since the '70s.  I love wearing earrings; they draw attention away from my face.  However, I haven't been wearing any kind of makeup in several years now, and for some reason I had this idea that I couldn't wear earrings unless I was made-up.  Not that I'd thought about it at all, just that with no makeup I didn't think of earrings.

I recently realized I really miss them.  I'm wearing them again, makeup be damned.
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1329 Pleasing Piper

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

This evening I decided I can't procrastinate any longer. I've got to do the dreaded research for the odd lots. I gathered all the communications, account reports, and dividend check stubs for so far this year. Then I opened the "To Sell" folder - and right on top was a list of all stock to be sold, along with the phone numbers, account numbers, and notes as to whether they were certificate or book-entry.

Wow! I must have done all the research sometime last year, maybe when I sold the first batches, and forgot I'd done it.

So all I had to do was check the numbers against current stubs, and locate the few certificates (neatly filed in the cabinet, yay me!) Ready to make the calls tomorrow.

I'm getting a little worried about stuff like that - not remembering that it was already done. I seem to lose bits and pieces, like what I did last Wednesday evening, for example, or Friday. The calendar is blank for those days, so so is my mind. Or when was the last time I'd talked to so-and-so. Sometimes things seem farther away in time than they are.

Other things seem condensed. Something that happened a week ago feels like it happened yesterday.

I'm having trouble with time. It gets mixed up, and passes without my noticing sometimes. Sometimes I get wrapped up in other things, like conversations, and don't notice time passing. Maybe it's that I don't have any kind of regular schedule. I go to bed when I finish whatever has captured my interest, sometimes at 1 am, sometimes at 6 am. I get up when I finish sleeping, sometimes at 8 am, sometimes at 1 pm. Then having nothing regular during the day exacerbates the problem. Some days I never even get dressed.

No wonder time has no meaning....
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1255 Roman Holiday

Friday, May 18, 2007

Until last night, I hadn't seen Roman in a few weeks, and during those few weeks I'd been thinking about some things he'd said, and what they'd meant.

May of last year we were sitting on a bench on the grounds of the Roosevelt mansion, "talking deep", and he said that even if the other woman didn't exist, he and I probably wouldn't work long term, but he wouldn't or couldn't say why.

I sort of agreed with him, but I was thinking about trust issues, and trust problems can be overcome if you're willing to work on them, but I didn't see that happening, so I agreed.

Well, in recent phone conversations, he has said a few things, quite innocent things, that suddenly cast a bright light on the divide between us.

I told him about a house Daughter and Hercules liked, and how the layout wouldn't allow space between them, and how sometimes they need space apart. Roman said, "Well, the rooms have doors, don't they?"

Closing a door hadn't occurred to me, or to Daughter, or to Hercules, and I like that it didn't. Being in two different rooms, at different ends of the house even, is ok, but somehow going into a room and closing the door, shutting the other person out, is unacceptable to us. It's the difference between expecting your partner to respect your space, and shutting your partner out of that space.

I tried to explain it to Roman, and he didn't see a problem. That is a problem. It encapsulates one of the biggest communication problems he and I had -- that he shuts people out, and sees nothing wrong with that.

Last week we were having an ordinary phone conversation when he said something about how when someone he's close to repeatedly does something that annoys him, he just ignores it.

Pow! Realization. He doesn't just ignore it. Some few people can ignore, but not him.

I suddenly realized that he enjoys anger. He likes it. He likes to hold it, and look at it, and tuck it deep inside, so he can take it out again later and fondle it, and taste it, feel it again, and tuck it away again. If he were to address problems in his relationships when they occur, to attempt to understand them and reach some accomodation, he'd have to give up the anger, and he can't.

Knowing a little bit about his life, I sort of understand why it's necessary for him to hold on to anger. He never learned any other outlet, any other way, and that's one of the things he should be most angry about. Anger is his justification, his way to accept himself and his feelings. It's not something he can simply let go of.

And that's the showstopper.

There are so many nice, wonderful, sweet things about him. He's so easy to be with when he's happy. He does try hard to do the right thing. He is a good guy deep down. He is confused about a lot, doesn't know what he wants. Or why. I see that, and that's part of what I love about him.

When he's NOT around, I see the showstopper, and I know that although we can be lifelong friends, I simply cannot deal with or contribute to his anger stockpile, I can't allow him to ignore irritations between us when I know where they're going, what he's doing with them, I will push and prod him until he explodes, and that won't work at all, so friends is all we can be.

Unfortunately, every time I see him, I melt, and I want more.
This is a problem.
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1214 Life Begins at 37

Friday, April 20, 2007

Funny how lately things are becoming so clear. I've known for a long time, but never put it into words before, that I became me at age 37. Prior to 37, I was not the me I know now. I was whoever and whatever other people told me I was. My life can be divided neatly into "Before 37" and "After 37", and the two parts are so very different. I was/am so very different. This means I should stop dwelling on the things that happened to me and the things I did Before 37, because although those things went into the making of me, they weren't me.

It's not like "I am a different person today from the person I was yesterday." It's much bigger than that. It took four years of intensive psychotherapy, and then one day I found me, and I liked the me I found. From now on, when I speak of those difficult things, I'll end it with, "but that was back before I was me."

All the little epiphanies I'm having lately worry me. Like maybe they portend some big cataclysm in/to my life. I'm not ready for that. I'm having too much fun right now.

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Of minor significance, whenever anyone would ask, "What age do you feel inside?", "Or what age would you like to be?", I've always answered, "37." Back when Jay and I were looking into the donor egg program, I was 50, and their cutoff age was 49, so the clinic put me through just about every medical test known to man, and they approved me, because they decided that my physical age was ......... 37.
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1162 Validation

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

Dr. Phil said something on his show the other day that stopped me cold. He just threw it out as a casual comment, and it's one of those things that "everyone knows", but until you hear someone say it, make it "real", it's just passed off.

He was talking to a husband who had hurt his wife's feelings somehow. The husband wished she'd just "get over it". (I think - I wasn't watching, just caught it in passing.) Anyway, Dr. Phil said something like "She will never get over this until she knows you fully understand what this did to her."

My head went ka-boing.

I have often been accused (by men, mainly) of not "letting it go". I do tend to hang on to some hurts and chew them over and over. Other hurts I do let go of. What's the difference? Yes, it does come down to whether or not I believe the other person fully understands the impact of their actions. If they understand, I can let it go. They don't even have to apologize - just understand how it affected me. Until they do understand, I do keep coming back to it, and a lot of men will refuse to look at it. They'll say "It's in the past", or "Don't go there", but it's not in the past. The effect is still with me! I want you to understand how I felt!

Your not wanting to understand makes me feel like you don't care.

That's probably why my sister and I are both still hung up on what our parents did to us (Sister more than I, actually). They are both dead now, but neither our mother nor our father ever recognized how their emotional and physical battering destroyed us kids. Sister and I have managed to salvage our self-respect, but both brothers have serious problems, and youngest sister drank herself to death. Sister and I can't "let go", because our parents never understood that they hurt us. And now they never will.

It's also why I still carry so much resentment toward Ex#2. He never understood my feelings about the crap he did, and didn't want to. There's no point in talking with him about any of it, because he still won't care how I feel. It's too threatening to him. So I carry around the resentment.

Ok. Now is there any way to drop it? I was able to release a lot of anger toward my parents by thinking, "Ok, they were sick. They didn't refuse to see, they were completely incapable of seeing." That won't work with Ex#2 because I know that although he does have some emotional problems, he IS capable of seeing. There were occasional glimpses of understanding. He's going to be a bit harder to let go of.
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