Writing Around

You haven't seem too much of me in this space, but I have been writing.  You may recall I've been participating in an on-line creative nonfiction writing class, led by Andi, (of Andilit) blogging fame. I've been posting the essays which result from that class here. Today, I am honored to be a guest blogger at Andilit.  My post is all about "The Great Commandment" -  and it's not the one you're thinking of. So check it out.

Taking this online course has reminded me how much I love the educational experience.  I've never done online courses before, but this has got me thinking about online degree courses in psychology, a subject that has always interested me. Psychology was my first major in college, and though I eventually changed to English, I've always been intriqued by the workings of the human psyche!  I'm just more apt to explore it in characters on the page than in real life.  There might even be federal student aid available.

http://www.fafsa.ed.gov/

Something else to think about during these lazy, hazy days of summer!

Independence Day(s)

This was my Facebook status on Saturday morning:

Declaring my independence from the internet this weekend, and planning to be largely "off line" for the duration. See you on Tuesday!

Well, it's Tuesday, and I'm back.

I periodically get overloaded on the internet - tired of being on it, tired of letting it suck away my time, tired of the technology buzz that makes my brain feel frazzled, tired of the mild ache I'm starting to get in my right wrist from "mousing."  I've written about it before, but my efforts to make  long-term changes in my habit have not been very successful.

I also get tired of watching other people on the internet, particularly someone who lives with me (and I don't mean Magic or Molly). My husband has become an internet addict, and now that he has an iPad and a spiffy new Android phone, his face is constantly buried in some electronic gadget or the other.

Constantly.

So occasionally I get fed up and throw my hands (and my mouse) into the air and scream "Enough!" It's like when we were kids and our mothers would turn off the television, stand in front of it with their hands on their hips and say, "No more of this! You go outside in the fresh air and play and don't come back until dinner!"

I went out and played over the weekend.  The air was indeed fresh, the grass was green, the birds were happy. We attended an outdoor concert at Greenfield Village, where we were treated to some great music by The Detroit Symphony (or what's left of it since the strike has sent half the players off hither and yon) plus a gorgeous fireworks display.  I bought some more flowers for my yard, and finally found a little stone garden bench for the back garden. I walked the dogs.

I made some phone calls I'd been putting off - arranged to have the trees trimmed, researched some places for Carpet Cleaning Marble Falls,  Carpet Cleaning Westlake, and

http://www.thesteamteam.com/austin-carpet-cleaning/

Everyday I hauled a lawn chair into the middle of the backyard, poured myself a tall glass of iced tea, plopped in a fresh lemon slice, and read/napped for about two hours.

Most of all, I felt less harried, less agitated, although my fingers did itch to check my Facebook, email, Twitter, blogs....I just shoved my hands in my pockets when I walked by the computer room, and I hid the iPad under my (very heavy) mattress. Really, I did. Oh, okay, I cheated a time or two, but only for a minute!

But I also realized that I'm  tied to the internet in an enormous and irrevocable amount of ways.  There's work, of course. There's business - banking and bill paying. There's communication (being off the internet meant I wasn't around for impromptu Skype chats with my friend in China). There's information -about family (seems I "communicate" more with my son and daughter in law via Facebook or Twitter than any other way), about the world, the weather, the TV and movie schedule, the restaurant menu....I use the internet pretty exclusively for ALL of those things.

Though I sometimes think about chucking it completely, I really don't think it's possible anymore - at least not for me.

So today, I'm back to the usual internet frenzy.  But I'm hoping that a little bit of the fortitude I demonstrated over the weekend will stick, at least through the summer, and I can tear myself away for significant periods of the day.

Because my lawn chair is still waiting patiently in the cool shade of the maple tree.

How about you? Is there anything in your life you'd like to declare your independence from?

The Power of Words

 

Just think - it all started with the Power of Words, these words to be specific:

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In a great post this morning, writer Jeff Goins reminds us that words have power - REVOLUTIONARY power.

If you have a way with words, declare yourself! Make the most of it, and make things happen.

Happy Independence Day, America.

Like A Duet

I went to a lovely wedding on Saturday, and it couldn't have been a better day for it. The weather gods were indeed smiling on this bride.  After a rainy, stormy week, Saturday was sunny and 70 degrees, which is my bullseye for absolutely perfect in the meterological department. Michelle (the bride)  is a third grade teacher, and on the back of the wedding program she had listed some of the marriage advice her students had given her. It was remarkably astute. For instance:

Always hear each other, never fight about silly things, tell the truth always.

LOVE each other. If you get in fights, remember the good times.

When you fight, don't yell or call names. On your anniversary, take him out to dinner. Spend time with him on the weekend and give him a kiss before you go to work. Eat dinner together at the table. Kiss him goodnight. And if he's sick, take care of him.

Wow.  I was pretty impressed with these words of wisdom from eight year olds!  But this is my favorite piece of advice, and it probably appealed to Michelle too, since she's a musician/performer:

Marriage is like a duet, when one sings the other claps.

That's a really nice analogy, I think, and anyone who has been married a long time knows the truth of it. One of the best things about having a good duet partner is that they support you all the way through the piece and applaud your efforts when you're done.  They aren't out to prove they're a better musician than you, they rejoice in your success and bolster you when the music gets tricky.

I think this couple really has it all together, and will make good duet partners for life.  Which is a good thing, because the last piece of advice was really more of a charge. It said:

You should be married FOREVER.

I hope they will be.

Situation Normal

It's amazing how quickly we've fallen back into the old routine around here. You know the one I mean.

The one where the male goes out to hunt and gather and the woman stays behind to keep the home fires burning.

Now I don't want to sound sexist, but these roles feel awfully comfortable. Of course, considering that we wore them for about 33 years, it's not surprising that the resumption of this routine has all the comfort of those old leather Keds I wear to weed the garden.  A little battered and worse for wear, maybe, but fully functional all the same.

Back in 2009, that horrible, awful, no-good, very bad year when my husband joined the burgeoning ranks of the unemployed, our lives did a complete flip-flop. About that time, I had an opportunity (more like a mandate, really) to work full time ay my office. This came with a wage increase too, so I would have been a fool not to accept. Thing was, I'd never worked full time outside the home before. You noticed I qualified that with "outside the home" because if anyone doesn't think that raising children and running a household from top to bottom isn't working full time, than I dare them to spend 24 hours with a couple of toddlers, a dog, and a 30 year old house on a half-acre lot.

Truthfully, I'd been out of the child rearing business for a while, but I'd tacked a couple of part time jobs onto the homemaking thing which all kept me pretty busy.  But I still had two days off most weeks, in addition to my weekends, so I didn't feel too overloaded.

But working 9-5 was nothing like that.  Just adding on those two extra hours during the work day was bad enough, then adding on two more full days - call me a weakling, but within a couple of weeks I was ready to sign myself into the nearest sanitarium. All I wanted at the end of the day was to be able to come home, settle into my favorite easy chair, turn on the wall mounted fireplace, and hunker down with a good book and a glass of wine.

That's when it dawned on me - there was another person in this equation who wasn't really doing anything. That's right - my now jobless husband, although depressed and listless,  was available for active duty.  Before long, he was enlisted to do my bidding.  Grocery shopping, playing chauffeur for my mom, housecleaning, dog tending, bill paying - he was doing the gamut of things I simply had no time or energy to do.  And he did an admirable job of it too.

It was weird, and not a little unnerving for me to go out into the cold winter mornings while he was still curled in the chair, sipping coffee and reading the internet, the ventless fireplace blazing away. Of course, I had waved him off to work like that every day for most all of our married life. I suddenly felt terribly guilty - how inconsiderate of me to flaunt my freedom in his face like that all those years.  Because let me tell you, it made me green with envy to see him sitting happily at home while I went off to shuffle papers.

I have to confess, I could not hold up under that pressure. About six months into that arrangement, when it became apparent that Jim would be getting enough contract work to at least keep us out of the homeless shelter, I went back to part time. We had the best of both worlds, really, with equally flexible schedules.

But then came the offer for him to return to work, and with it a sense of great relief on his part. He had been campaigning for his job back ever since he lost it, although the company has not had enough faith in the economic recovery to start rehiring until now. He wanted to go back to work all along, I think, and although part of me hated to see him give up the freedom and flexibility he had as a self-employed contractor, he needed the validation that has come from being rehired.

I think we also needed to return to our familiar roles within the family. Although we both were able to function in each other's element, it wasn't a good fit on a permanent basis. Something continually felt awry, and it was tiring emotionally and physically.

So the situation around here is back to normal. I'm the one getting up and making the coffee again, getting breakfast for him as he prepares to head out to one of the interminable meetings he's been attending all over town. I'm back to waiting dinner every night, not knowing for sure when he'll be home.  And I'm back to having the house all to myself again, not having to plan my practice schedule or my housecleaning activities around the Expert Engineer who was at work in the home office dining room.

And he's back to feeling useful, and important, and part of the "pack" of guys who go out to work every day, hunting and gathering for the family back home.  It's feels like this is the way it was meant to be, at least in our neck of the woods.