The wild blue yonder...

So.  A few weeks ago, I overheard my children and my husband arguing.  I know it's hard to believe, but this actually happens fairly often in the Pierson household.

Little did I realize that when I was encouraging my kids to express themselves verbally that I would end up with people who have actual opinions inhabiting my home.  Opinions that they are not afraid to use.

We discuss everything around here from books to music, politics to comedy, and most topics in between.  We have lively debates that usually end peacefully and without tears.

Thus, recently overhearing heated discourse was not all that surprising.  What struck me as bothersome, however, was the fact that they were trying to decide who had to sit next to me on the flight that we will take to Florida for the holidays.  Not, I hasten to point out, who would have the privilege of sitting beside me, but who would have to sacrifice one for the sake of family unity and be within arms' reach of me while on a jetliner.

I am not ashamed to admit that I have long held a deeply rooted fear of flying.  I am not talking about a few jitters.  I am talking about bona fide panic attacks, blind groping in the dark for someone's hand to grasp as the plane careens down the runway and takes flight.  I am talking about a phobia that rears its head when I simply drive past an airport.

I am not generally a fearful person.  I'm not afraid of spiders, snakes or any other creepy crawlies.  Dark rooms and horror movies evoke no fear.  I can comfortably speak to a large group, and the sight of blood only causes me to review all of my first aid training.  I value bravery, and try to live it whenever possible.

Flying, though.  Ah, flying.  I hate flying with all my heart and soul.  I hate flying to the tune of "sure, that European vacation sounds great, but can't we drive?"

Listening to my family have this conversation, though, caused me to finally take some action.  I decided to consult a professional to get over my fears.

So I recently had a session with a zen-like therapist, who has a voice like liquid valium, and who is herself not afraid of flying.  She actually falls asleep as soon as the plane takes off.

"Imagine," she said at the beginning of our session, "you are walking down the ramp onto the plane.  You are taking your seat.  The plane begins to taxi down the runway.  How do you feel?"

"You mean apart from the fact that my throat is closing up and my heart rate is exceeding 250 beats per minute?"  I asked.

"Let's reframe this," she said quietly.  "Think about being in the air and enjoying how safe you are.  There are people whose job it is to watch JUST YOUR PLANE.  Think of how safe that is."

"You mean apart from the fact that only six inches of steel separate my flesh from plummeting to the earth below?"

"Let's try something different," she said, refusing to give up.  "Let's try some cleansing breaths.  Think of getting on the plane and how excited you'll be about your upcoming vacation.  Imagine looking out the window."

"Look out the window?  Are you crazy?"

My poor therapist.  I could see that her unflappable, zen-like style was becoming dangerously close be being flapped.

What finally got me over the hump, though, was my admission that I often dreamed about flying.  In my dreams,  I got on a plane and actually enjoyed it.

"That's exciting!" zen-like therapist exclaimed.  "Your subconscious is so ready to get over this fear."

This, more than anything else, suddenly made me feel more confident about my ability to conquer my terror.  So I have been practicing deep cleansing breaths, and re-framing my thoughts, and being the change I want to see.

I've also secretly gotten a prescription for Xanax.  Wish me luck!

I'm still here...

So.  I popped in to look at ye olde blogge and noticed that I have been very, very lazy.  Life has indeed been getting lived, and, in the process, I took off my writer's hat and donned several others.

I have not been abducted by aliens, unless you count spending 10 hours per day with 3, 4 and 5 year olds, which IS sometimes akin to an alien abduction. Without, of course, the internal prodding.

I hate reading blogs where people apologize for not writing more frequently, so I won't be doing that.

I do have several posts stewing around the sleep-deprived brain, begging to be written.   So, I'll be back soon.

In the meantime, consume large quantities of turkey, and don't skimp on the gravy.

Oh, and enjoy this picture of Toby in his Halloween costume.  Doesn't he look absolutely ashamed?  I would too if I had to wear a "Babe-raham Lincoln" hat, complete with a feather.  Poor dog.

The shower standoff...

I loathe cleaning the shower.  The grout is getting old and the glass shower doors are etched with water stains that refuse to come out.  I have tried all kinds of tricks - from vinegar and baking soda to highly lethal cleaning agents that cause dizziness when inhaled.  I've purchased every scrubbing tool known to man, each time thinking that I have finally hit upon the magic solution.  Nothing so far has worked.

This frustration is furthered by the fact that to clean the shower, I have to get in the shower and take a shower.  Taking showers is not necessarily a bad thing, but I hate sweating while I am doing so.  There is something inherently wrong with this.

In our previous house, a 100 year old Victorian that I still miss with a passion, we had only one bathroom with an old fashioned bathtub/shower combination.  It took all of 10 minutes to get that shower clean, and I could easily accomplish a sparkling bathroom at least once a week.

But then, seduced by modern conveniences like more than one electrical outlet per room, we gave up on our Victorian doll and acquired this house.  This house has 3 1/2 baths.  I only clean 1 1/2 of them.  The other two are the domain of my children, and they are responsible for their cleanliness.  In fact, I don't clean their rooms either, which explains why I never enter them, and make sure that the doors are closed at all times.

Anyway, in my frustration with my dirty shower, I have been looking around for someone or something to blame, and have stumbled upon the greatest idea of all time.

It's Steve's fault.

Now, before you find the holes in this thinking, please be aware of the fact that in almost 29 years of marriage, Steve has never cleaned a bathroom.  Sure, he cooks and does laundry.  He never shied away from giving the kids a bath or changing diapers.  He does all of the car maintenance, outdoor work and will fix just about any broken appliance, computer or sticky drawer in our domicile.  He is a wizard with the vacuum, and does the weekly grocery shopping despite the constant complaint of our offspring that "there's no FOOD in this house."

In short, Steve is a pretty damn good wife.  I am lucky to have him.  But, in casting around to assess blame for the moldy shower doors, he was an easy target.

So I made a decision.  I would stop cleaning the shower.  In the spirit of oppressed workers everywhere, I would stage a strike.  My goal?  To ensure that he would eventually get tired of the mold and water stains, and do it himself.  He would, hopefully, do a better job than me.  Thus, the problem would be solved.

I made this mature decision based upon the wisdom 51 years of life have given me.  I took into account my Catholic school upbringing, my Montessori training, years of therapy and my belief that conflicts are best solved through communication and collaboration.  I also took into account the fact that not cleaning the shower would give me an extra hour or so for napping on Saturday afternoons.  I felt I could not lose.

Three weeks in, it occurred to me that my strategy was flawed.  The shower was no closer to being clean, and Steve had not evidenced one iota of awareness that I was on strike.  Or perhaps he had, and had chosen to ignore it.

So yesterday, I decided to confront the elephant in the room head-on.

"You know, I have stopped cleaning the shower," I said to him as we were brushing our teeth.

"I've noticed," he replied.

"It's just that it's so hard to get it clean.  I have to scrub the stains and I get all sweaty when I'm doing it.  I hate cleaning the shower.  I was thinking that, after all this time, you have NEVER cleaned a bathroom."

I felt a rant coming on having to do with the unfairness of being the only partner who gives a shit about the cleanliness of the shower.  I could actually feel my blood pressure starting to rise and I was aching for a fight.

I looked at his face.  When I am in such a mood, Steve has a habit of remaining calm and dispassionate.  He wisely waits for the storm to pass.  This may be why we are such a good pair.

"Do you want me to clean the shower?"

As I was considering my reply, I suddenly thought of our years together - years of indulging me, listening to me, supporting me, cheering for me.  And, with that, I came to a decision.

"No, I'll take care of it."

A little bit cool...

I think I've mentioned before that conversations with 19 year old sons are often one sided, at least in this corner of the world.  Said sons will often reply in mono syllables to any given question:

"How are you today?" chirps ever-hopeful mother.

"Uh," replies son.

"How is school?  How is work?  How is your girlfriend/best friend/latest art project?" proceeds mother.

"Uh," replies son.

"OK.  Good.  Nice talking to you." concludes mother.  

I'm not complaining.  Really.  I know it is his job to separate from me at this point in his life.  I am OK with this.  Still, I find myself longing for more meaningful contact, if only once in a while.

Conversation with 24 year old daughters comes much more easily.  We have many common interests, and we both love to talk.  We share a love for reading, for movies, for music and for The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  We both appreciate the absurd and have little trouble laughing about it.  I love this part of our relationship, and am thankful that, through trial and error, kicking and screaming, we have reached this point in our lives.

But, back to said son.  A few weeks ago he asked me for a record player.  We owed him a birthday present - he's pretty tough to buy for.  His needs and wants are minimal, so instead of trying to shop for him, I usually let him pick out something that he wouldn't be able to afford himself.  This year, it was a record player.

I immediately connected with his choice.  I spent my teenage years a slave to music, and have a collection of records boxed up in the basement that were my life several years ago.  Truly.  My record collection is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.  Coupled with the albums that Steve brought to the marriage, our records kick ass, if you don't mind the expression.

As a 16 year old, I had the best part-time job in the entire world.  I worked as a clerk in a record store.  I kept this job through college, if only as a means to buy more records at wholesale prices.  And I did keep buying.

I remember the day that I fell prey to the allure of records.

I was in the seventh grade.  I convinced my mother to buy me The Allman Brothers' Brothers and Sisters album from Wiebolt's department store.  This was my first grown-up record.  I chose it mostly because I liked the way the cover looked.

I still remember the elation I felt as I watched the clerk place the record in the now extinct, perfectly-album-sized paper bag that I would use to transport this treasure back to my house.  I almost didn't want to open it, wanting so much to just savor the moment.

But, open it I did,  slicing the shrink wrap with my fingernail to release the new record smell.

(I don't know if anyone else remembers how new records smelled, but I sure do.  There was nothing else in the world like it.  The only things that have come close are the heads of my new babies.)

Over the years, I perfected the art of new record ownership.  I never lost the reverence for that simple action of slicing open the shrink wrap.  I liked not knowing what awaited me inside the album.  Pictures of the band or some conceptual art work?  I always preferred pictures of the band, but was OK with pretty much anything.  The biggest bonus was to have lyrics on the dust jacket.  Liner notes put me over the moon.

I still remember that the very best record of all to open was the Beatles' White Album.  It had all of the above, and was a sacred part of my collection.  I bought a second copy of it when mine got so scratched that every song skipped, and the 8 x 10 glossies of John, Paul, George and Ringo got frayed and faded from being rehung so often on the walls of my teenaged room.

Anyway, I spent my teens and early twenties building my record collection until it numbered in the hundreds.  I was able to do this through my record store job.  During college, I was able to feed myself with my record collection because there was a store that gave you cash for used records, something I would do when I ran out of spending money.  My record collection was partly responsible for me meeting Steve.

"You have really cool records for a girl," was one of the ways he proclaimed his affection in our early years.

But life, as it happens, began to take precedence over record-collection-building.  I got married.  I got a job.  I had kids.  All of these things got in the way until...they stopped making records.  This was a black day in my life.

CD's and iTunes just don't work the same magic, and even though I have pretty much replicated my music collection (and then some) via these two mediums, I remain nostalgic for the vinyl experience.

So I was tickled when Trent, upon receipt of his new record player, asked if he could use some of our old albums.  I was even more tickled when I saw that he had made himself a huge stack of the things.  We talked about the merits of Talking Heads, Jimi Hendrix and the Pretenders.

I had forgotten that I had acquired an original copy of the Rolling Stones' Some Girls, before the pictures of famous actresses were removed due to some copyright snafu.  I was delighted to see it in his pile.

"Do you know about this?" I asked, holding up the cover.

"Yeah. That's probably worth some money.  Do you have any other ones like that?"  he responded.  There was reverence in his tone. 

It took me a moment to shake off the shock I felt when I realized that he had spoken actual sentences to me.  I regaled him with stories of how I would always buy the first release of an album because I worked in a record store.  He showed me some of the records he'd just purchased, and provided mini-reviews.  It seems that for audiophiles, vinyl is making a comeback. I watched the record player needle revolve around that heavenly piece of black plastic, and I got a little choked up.

Maybe we have a few things in common after all.

The view from someday...

Steve and I just treated ourselves to a mini-vacation by spending a few days at a Lake Geneva resort, where self-indulgence is not only accepted, but encouraged.

For instance, the resort features a great pool deck where you can park yourself in a padded lounge chair and have cute tropical drinks and lunch brought directly to you.  In fact, we sampled enough of the bar menu to ring up an $80 tab in just a few hours.

I am not really practiced in the art of being served and pampered, but I always manage to rise to the occasion if necessary.  Thus, we whiled away hours and hours sipping, munching and napping.  The biggest decisions we encountered involved when to eat dinner (we weren't, after all, doing anything non-sedentary, so working up an appetite was a challenge), where to eat dinner and what to eat for dinner.

The contrast between these empty-nest vacations and the trips we took when the kids were younger was remarkable.  Anyone with small children will be able to relate to this.

A trip to the beach involved packing a huge canvas bag with every item one could imagine needing, including sunscreen, snacks, drinks, clothes, goggles, towels and enough sand and inflatable toys to open a beach side shop.  Appetites were easily developed from schlepping this bag, along with an umbrella and chairs, from the hot blacktop parking lot to a spot just close enough to the water to be able to see the kids, but just far away enough to prevent random acts of splashing.

The day would enfold like this:  unpack the bag, take off the shoes, get a snack because someone was surely hungry by now.  Apply sunscreen, set out chairs and umbrella and hike to the concession stand because the kids had noticed that there was ice cream.  Build a sandcastle, dip into the water and drag everyone to the bathroom, stopping for some popcorn on the way back. 

Sometimes, these exertions would tire the kids out enough that they would stay on one place for, I don't know, 20 or 30 minutes.  Steve and I would take turns, one parent "relaxing" while the other parent stood sentinel to make sure no one drowned or picked up dead fish.  I would devour whatever book I had hastily tossed into the beach bag, sometimes managing a grand total of 10 pages before it was my turn to be responsible.  I longed for the day when I could enjoy the beach uninterrupted by the pressing needs of others.

We'd leave the beach just when the kids were about to hit the melt-down stage.  The trip back to the car seemed to double or triple in length, and no one wanted to carry a thing.  If we were lucky, very, very lucky, they would fall asleep in the car and complaints about being hot, sandy and sticky would be mercifully silenced for a while.

I thought of these vacations often as we lounged by the pool.  I watched other families who had just begun the process of vacationing with small children as they went through a similar process. 

The funniest thing?  I found myself longing for a toddler to sit with in the shallow water.  I actually wanted to change a diaper on a beach towel, and attempt to tighten a six year old's goggles without resorting to cussing.  Indeed.

I hope that life brings us back around again to days at the pool with small children.  They'll be our grandchildren, of course, and I will find great joy in watching them while my own kids struggle to read 10 pages and drink their way through the bar menu.  Someday...

The broken thing...

I have come to believe that life keeps sending lessons my way until I have learned them.

Sometimes, the lessons are gentle, and easily mastered.  For instance, a few summers ago I learned that when making a right hand turn into traffic, it is best not to float into the left hand lane.  Other cars have a tendency to hit you when you do that.

That lesson earned me a brand new fender and a traffic ticket.  Oh, and an increase in our insurance premiums.  But it was gentle nonetheless - simple cause and effect - and I began to drive more carefully.

Other lessons fall upon us like the two ton anvil that never fails to brain Wile E. Coyote.

The recent wounding of Debbie provided just such a lesson for me.

 As I sat in the vet's office, waiting for them to finish stitching up Debbie,  I wondered how I would be able to care for a being made so fragile and helpless by circumstance.  Was I up to the task?  Would I be able to look at my pet and forgive myself for what I had inadvertently caused?

On a superficial level, I had loved Debbie partly because she was a handsome bird, partly because she was so easy to care for.  Was I ready to shower the same affection on the creature who would undoubtedly carry scars and might never fully recover?

When the vet carried a very groggy and obviously hurting pet out to me, my first thought was to ask them to keep her until she was better.  I was afraid, and I wanted nothing more than to run away.

But after a few minutes, I was amazed to discover that I was beginning to feel OK.  I could do this.  Something powerful washed over me when I was able to meet my uncertainties and know that they would not defeat me.

Out of this experience rose the conviction that it is possible to love broken things.  Furthermore, loving broken things could lead to embracing the broken things that are a part of all of us - the sum of our hurts and disappointments - the parts that send us running away in fear, and holing up inside ourselves.  If, instead, we hold those things close and promise to care for them, we might be able to accept those things in others, and love with strength and courage.  We are all flawed, yet all equally deserving.

So, Debbie continues to grow stronger each day, showing off her new feathers and acting like her sassy old self.  As do I.

For the love of bacon...

Life's been heavy the past few years.  There have been  low times for some family members and friends.  Stress has reared its ugly head on more than one occasion.

Like a trooper, I have coped with this by eating poorly and not exercising.

Well, that hen has come home to roost.

Seems my cholesterol level has crept into the "borderline" level.  My doctor's office gave me this happy news last week after my annual (well, maybe it was a tri-annual) check-up.

I'm nothing if not a worker bee, and I do well when I know exactly what task lies ahead.  Diet and exercise it is.  I can handle that.

But crap, does it have to involve cutting out bacon?

I will not lie.  I love bacon.

The ever-supportive Steve has greeted this news with wild and bubbling glee.  Over coffee yesterday, he began his litany.

"Let's make a list of all the things you can't eat anymore."  He held up a hand and began to tick off my favorite menu items, raising a finger each time.  "Cheese.  Ice cream.  Pepperoni.  Popcorn at the movies."

Each item drove a little dagger into my heart.  Instead of telling him to put his fingers AND his list someplace where they certainly wouldn't fit, I smiled and nodded.  I am, after all, a grown up.

"Oh," he continued, "and you have to eat oatmeal.  Not the instant kind.  REAL oatmeal."

Real oatmeal?  The kind that looks like something my kids used to leave in their diapers?  The kind that tastes like rocks?  (I know how rocks taste.  I used to put them in my mouth when I was a kid.)  The kind that always makes me GAG because it is like forcing a vat of paste down my throat?

Yep, that oatmeal. 

Shortly after this, Steve went grocery shopping, his weekly chore.

"Wanna come with me?" he asked, sounding like a 17 year old trying to procure a prom date.  "No thanks, honey," I said through gritted teeth.

He came home with delicacies to tempt my palate.  Delicacies like golden flax seed ("You can sprinkle this on your oatmeal," he chirped) and oat fiber cereal.  No ice cream was procured.

I am touched by Steve's concern for my health.  And by tomorrow, I'll stop hating him for his low cholesterol.  I want to live a long time.  I've got things to do and want to be around should either of my children ever decide to procreate.  

But really - no bacon?  Shit.