INTERESTING THOUGHT

I think there are some adults who have confused having high expectations for kids with simply being mean. Yesterday my daughters were home from school because they had a snow day and Erin's AP Biology teacher sent an email out to the kids to assign them a whole bunch of work to do on their surprise day off. At the end she made a sarcastic joke about how they should enjoy their day off. She more than likely would disguise her request as having high expectations for her AP students. None of the other AP teachers sent out emails. I have high expectations for my kids and they have been very successful so far...but I am not mean. I wonder if this teacher will ever mature enough to learn there is a difference?

WEARY

I feel weary. Weary of people. Lately I am left wondering why people have so much trouble interacting with each other. Why is it that simple things seem to become so difficult? Why is it that people seem to want to cause other people anguish? Sometimes I am just in a position to be observing people hurting each other and other times it seems that people want to hurt me. Even the nicest people sometimes hurt others in an attempt to make themselves feel better.

Often times I am able to understand why people say the things that they do but sometimes I am just dumbfounded. I question why, what benefit is there in putting others down. Some people have the trait of wanting to watch others squirm. I have sometimes been put into the situation where someone has made me squirm. Once I am over the uncomfortable situation I look back and wonder what kind of person finds satisfaction in that kind of torture. How does that make them feel better about themselves?

Whenever I am trying to understand these kinds of things I analyze myself to see if I have ever done something similar. I am pretty sure that I do not purposely try to make anyone squirm. Doing this would mean that the other person would act embarrassed. I find it very uncomfortable if I have made someone else embarrassed so I do not think that I purposely try to make people squirm.

I often call this mean teasing. I come from a family that has a tendency to tease others in a nasty kind of way. In the past when I have been around them I admit that I have been guilty of joining in on the torture. It's almost as if I was compelled to take a side and I knew I didn't want to be on the losing side! However, I can say that I have never gotten enjoyment out of it. I would always come away from the interaction with a shameful unhappy feeling. I wonder if the others feel this as well.

For me, I think one thing that is difficult is that I often times laugh at myself and then I assume that others will laugh at themselves as well. A simple example is that I am one of those people who loves to talk. I can joke about myself talking someone's ear off. I would assume that the other talkers out there could laugh at themselves as well, so I would assume that teasing them about it would not fall under the mean teasing category. But maybe it would. This is a gray area where I find that I need to watch others' reactions to make sure I haven't offended anyone. I can say for sure, I do not enjoy making people squirm!

MORE ON DRAMA

I would love to report that I have successfully avoided the drama I mentioned in the previous post but I haven't... However, I can report that I have learned some things. I have often heard that to stop a bad habit, replace it with a good one. I am learning to expand on this philosophy and have figured out that replacing drama with good interactions with other people may be my saving grace. I can't be sucked into drama if I am always talking to people who don't stress me out. Sometimes it is even enough to be engrossed in a fun activity instead of hanging around with the drama queens.

This is easier said than done but I think I am up to the challenge. It is easier to follow my own advice when the drama queen in question is not my friend. I am still figuring out what to do when the drama queens are my friends. Even further, what do I do when there is only one true drama queen in a group of friends? I don't want to avoid a group of friends because of one bad apple.

Another dilemma is being able to recognize when there is drama just for the sake of drama and when it falls under the category of supporting a friend through a difficult situation. I am starting to have to consider this with one particular friend. I don't mind listening to a friend's problems but then I need to be careful that "friend" does not monopolize every interaction. In this case I am thinking of a person who is part of a group of friends. I am noticing that approximately two thirds of our time together is spent listening to her problems and being supportive of her. Then once someone else starts talking, her eyes glaze over. This week when we all got together I sat back and observed this phenomenon. Hmmm. Now I realize that this has been bothering me for quite awhile. I guess last year I should have had a clue when I saw a couple of eye rolls when I tried to interject something into the conversation. At the time I tried to be careful that I was not interrupting her. It was obvious that she had no patience for what someone else had to say.

So, I am making progress in recognizing areas that have a high drama level and I am even figuring out ways of dealing with this but I still need to try and implement my ideas. Some ideas work and some don't...that seems to be part of the process.

FIGHTING MY OWN HUMAN NATURE

It seems to me that part of human nature is to be attracted to drama. I wonder why this seems to be the case. What purpose does it serve to allow ourselves to be sucked into problems? It certainly is not pleasant. Like almost all people, I am guilty of allowing myself to be put into situations that make me unhappy. This is true regardless of the fact that I don't need to be part of the drama. I'm not forced into these situations. If I allow myself to honestly analyze these moments, I am allowing myself to be in them. I would like to believe that I am not actively seeking out problems but I have no hesitation in admitting that I find it difficult to walk away once I am embroiled in stressful interactions.

One recent occurrence happened even after I told myself that I refused to allow this activity to cause me undo stress. I am involved in my kids cross country team. I have always taken pictures of the team and in the past couple of years I have helped organize the end of season, pot luck banquet. Both of these things do not cause me stress, truthfully, they cause me happiness. However, two years ago, one of the mothers decided that we needed to start a booster club. She enlisted the help of one other mother and they filled out the initial paperwork and opened a bank account. The original purpose of the club was to raise money for an enclosed canopy. I agreed whole heartily and had planned to support whatever fundraising activities that they organized without officially being an officer of the club. However the next year I decided it would be okay to be an officer... co president or something like that. It doesn't really matter what I was called. The point is, I was more "official" and with that came difficulties. This is where I became embroiled in stress. Gone was the happiness of picture taking and banquet planning....sigh.

The lesson I tried to learn was that I need to become better at recognizing situations that cause me stress and then walk away from them. I made a firm plan for this year and I am working hard at sticking with it. At the heart of the plan is my insistence that I refuse to allow my activities with the team to cause me stress. I really have no need to end my role officially but I do need to be thoughtful in what I enjoy and what makes me unhappy. I plan on taking pictures and planning the banquet. Period. Both of those things make me happy. Then the period becomes a comma....sigh. This is my difficulty.

Recently I found myself in an uncomfortable discussion. Not only did I feel tense from this discussion, it also put me behind in errands that I was planning to run that day. That put me behind as far as getting home and making supper...which screwed up my kids life as well. They wanted to eat and start homework.

Why, oh why, do I let this happen? Now THAT is the question! Hah! I do realize that the answer to this question is irrelevant because the real accomplishment would be to learn to recognize these situations quickly and simply walk away. No analyzing, just action. So there you have it, I am trying to fight my own human nature of getting sucked into drama....

HOW I GOT TO BE "RICH"

The biggest thing on my mind lately is how we will pay for our kids to go to college. We are in that category of parents that are told that we are "rich" enough to pay the full freight but in reality we really can't. When filling out the FAFSA (free financial aid form), I learned that we would be expected to pay up to $50K per year for our kids college education. I have three kids and if they knuckle down and graduate in the "normal" four years, I will have one or two kids in college for a period of eight years. Using simple math I calculate that I will be expected to come up with $400K! Hah! So, since Thomas just headed off to college I can't help but think quite a bit about all of this.

I spend some time complaining and more time facing the reality and thinking of ways to pay for college. I've learned that one of my "friends" has no sympathy at all for me. She is of the belief that I am just lucky that I have the money and other assets that are keeping our family from getting the need based aid. I can't seem to get this off my mind. For me, the bottom line is that Tom and I have really sacrificed more than others to get into the position we are in. After our kids are off to college, not only will all our savings be gone but we will also have a substantial amount of debt. It is true that others who do get free aid will have debt and they won't have any savings either. This bothers me because after years of working hard and sacrificing we won't be any better off than people who sacrificed less than us.

The fact that bothers me is that my friend thinks that it is some sort of luck that put us in our position. She totally disregards what I had to do to get to this point. I grew up in a poor family where my mother sewed all my clothes and we drank powdered milk because we couldn't afford regular milk. My parents were not supportive of my decision to go to college and in fact told me that they would do everything they could to stop me. Regardless, I went anyway and often times woke up to temperatures in my apartment that were barely above 50 degrees because I couldn't afford to turn on the heat. While I was struggling to graduate to be able to get a job, Tom was living with his parents, working and saving as much as he could so we would be able to buy a house. We could not afford a house in NJ so we moved an hour away from his job to Pennsylvania. We bought the cheapest house we could find and put so much "sweat equity" into our house we sometimes would come home after working an eight hour day and be working outside on building a garage by spotlight until 9:00 pm. We dug a foundation hole for our garage by hand and I overcame my fear of heights when I had to be working all the way at the peak of the roof. I wonder if my friend has made any similar sacrifices. Since our kids have been born (18 years) we have only been on three "big" vacations. I only mention this because I had to listen to my friend tell me she is planning a trip to Switzerland for her 25th anniversary. We will also be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary the same year as her. We could not afford to go to a foreign country on vacation. For our anniversary I probably will be making a special meal to be eaten on our 29 year old dinner plates.

GOAL UPDATE

Unfortunately I did not meet my goal of climbing Mt. Wittenberg this summer. It was a combination of the fact that my iron seemed to be low and Thomas didn't seem that interested in the training. He would have been able to hike it anyway but I would have had to train on my own. I did not have my iron checked but I was starting to huff and puff and get extra tired when hiking. I have made a special effort to increase my consumption of iron rich foods for at least a month now and I feel better. I will continue to work hard to eat the right stuff but it gets annoying because I do not love meat like some people do. It's not that I have an ethical dilemma but it's purely a matter of taste. Carbs taste better to me! Also, when my iron is low it is not a case of just eating more meat or vegetables like spinach and legumes, it's that I have to eat a lot of red meat and even liver. I am not a person that hates liver but I certainly don't love it. I don't spend a lot of time discussing this with people because in general I am experienced at raising my iron and the average person does not understand just how much I have to work at it. It's foolish for a person to suggest to me that I can raise my iron by eating such simple things as spinach. I do love and eat a lot of spinach to help but it's always in conjunction with a red meat. Meat makes the iron in vegetables absorb better. Enough about iron....

WOW WHEE! WHERE THE HECK HAVE I BEEN!

I have just been sort of preoccupied with life. This past year has been a lot of ups and downs through no fault of my own. Well, I guess I can blame myself in the sense that I had some rough times that I could have handled better. My father-in-law died in May and my mother died in September. My father-in-law had been in poor health for at least a couple years but my mother's only problem had been that she was starting to have more and more memory problems. Other than my annoyance at other people's behavior surrounding my father-in-law's death it didn't have any profound effect on me.

In contrast to my father-in-laws death, my mother's forgetfulness and subsequent death caused a lot of upheaval. Upheaval that I wish that I had handled differently because I feel as if it caused me to waste a lot of energy. Therefore causing six months of my life to be stressed. I really don't want to write about the details a whole lot mostly because it would mean reliving it and I'm done wasting my life on it....or at least I hope I am done. I will make a few brief points though.

The first thing that started all the stress was that because of her increasing forgetfulness there were people in the family that began discussing "what will we do if..." In a nutshell, my stress surrounded the fact that I felt that I would not and had no obligation to do anything. I felt my opinion put me on a very lonely island.

Although the family knew something was awry with my mother, her death was actually quite sudden. She died in her home without so much as one doctor visit. Hooray for her, what a way to go at 84 years old! I really didn't want to travel to NH to attend her funeral so I certainly didn't act appropriately when I was there. It's sort of ironic because I went only because I didn't want to look bad and cause stress in my family relationships. I would have done less damage by staying home.

The fallout from her funeral really stressed me out. Being judged for my uncaring attitude. Family scavenging through her belongings but then insinuating that I was scavenging as well. Me being quite surprised about the greed and wanting of others. Realizing certain relationships would change, one for the better but the rest for the worse.

Ultimately, it is now done. I've come full circle and feel that I am once again back to where I started. I am happy to be here and some might tell themselves that the journey helped them. I don't. As I said, only one relationship got better and I don't really think it was necessary to go through all that stress to get that relationship to that point. What I really learned from all this is that in order to protect myself emotionally, I need to be more cynical and less open with others. That part is going to continue to be hard for me.

SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO GO TO WORK EVERYDAY

I always get annoyed when a celebrity claims that if you find a job you love then you won't feel like you are going to "work" everyday. They make it sound like people can spend their lives in constant happiness and work will just be pure bliss. What they don't say is that no job will make you happy everyday. That sometimes it's hard to make yourself get up and go to work even when most times you enjoy your job. There will always be those days that you are going to work purely for the paycheck. If we teach our kids that work should always be fun, then we are doing them a disservice. I teach my children that although they should enjoy their job overall, they have to also accept that they may be sick of it sometimes. This is not to say that I am teaching them to settle for a career that they don't ever enjoy. When they complain that they are sick of school I listen but I also point out the alternative....not being able to go to school....and they agree that school is mostly a positive thing but they are just sick of it for that time period (like the end of the year).

I do think that there are people who are happy with their jobs everyday but I think that it's more about their personality. Some people are just pure optimists. I consider myself an optimist...most times but not always. I think that most people in the world have their bad days, some more than others. One of the celebrities that I hear talking about "finding your bliss" has a name that starts with "O". I find it annoying that she acts like she just loves every day of her job but at the same time says that she is overweight because she eats out of unhappiness. If her job is truly pure bliss and she spends so much time working, why is she overweight....does all her unhappiness come as soon as she get's home? Maybe she should work more to keep her mind off her problems. My real point is that even "O" must have bad days and by acting like she doesn't she will make others feel as if something is wrong with their jobs because they are not in pure bliss. It would just be nice if she would emphasize the point that a person can sometimes complain about their job and still be happy.

Where would the world be if people only worked at jobs that made them happy everyday? I dare say that society would collapse. How many people love being cashiers, garbage men, sewage treatment facility workers and field workers? I'm not saying that these workers go to work unhappy everyday but that it's possible they could be happier in a job that wasn't so demanding. I think it was on the Jon Stewart show that I saw an activist that had started a "Take our jobs" program for the migrant workers. The basic premise was they would automatically offer a job to any American that wants to work in the fields. Although Americans fear that migrant workers are stealing American jobs, Americans don't want to do the work of a migrant worker! I guess we are just looking for that "job that we love". Maybe some of those migrant workers would much rather be working in an air conditioned office but then what would we all eat? Would we be happy growing our own food? I love to garden but I'd probably go hungry since I get too lazy to water and weed sometimes!

PITY PARTY

Well, a couple days ago, I had myself a pity party. Definitely not because of my life now, my life is great. I instead had a few thoughts about my childhood. I rarely think of the past anymore and I'm not sure why I did at this time. I think it may be because recently I have been given copies of some letters my grandmother wrote at the time when I was young. She lived with my family the entire time I was growing up. My siblings read them as well and I found all of our reactions interesting. She seemed to make an attempt at holding herself back from her negative feelings but since I lived with her longer than my other siblings, I knew they were there. I feel that some of my siblings read the letters with rose colored glasses on. I would not consider myself a pessimist, but rather a realist. I actually consider myself an optimist but then again I bet most people think that. She was not a bad person but she also was not the wonderful person that some may see. When I gave this kind of response to my siblings, I sort of got the impression that a couple of them looked down on me. Mind you, I did not go on and on about negative things, I just felt as if I jokingly pointed out a couple of things. To be honest, I was a bit annoyed at one sibling in particular. This sibling said that my grandmother was a very positive and kind person and insinuated I was not because I was not being nice when I talked about my experience with her in my childhood. The fact is, she was not really positive and she was not really kind. I'm very big on the philosophy "actions speak louder than words." You may write words that make you appear nice but how do you actually live your life? What's funny about the entire thing? I think she actually sort of liked me better than some. You would think that if anyone saw her with rose colored glasses it would be me.

For myself, it made me look at how I live my life. I think maybe my situation is the opposite. If someone read letters/emails that I've written they would think that I am not such a good person but knowing me personally they would see me as a nice person. In reality, I try to live my life in a positive way. I am acutely aware that my actions speak louder than my words. I try to raise my children in such a way that they will look back fondly and think that I was a good mother. I think that I often times show my love with my actions. I can never be sure, but I can hope that my kids will remember these things.

On the other hand, no one is perfectly happy all the time and sometimes my writings, words and actions reflect this. I thought about whether I would change myself and decided that I can not pretend to be anything other than myself. I've decided that instead of pretending I will try to follow the advice my mother liked to give, "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all." I will apply this to my emails to my siblings in particular. I will not always be successful but that is okay with me. That's why I have a category on my blog called "complaints." I'm much safer writing it here than sending it out to relatives! I rarely look back on my childhood with fondness and when I do, it's never with a fondness for my relatives and I can't pretend things were different but I can keep my mouth shut.....like I most often do with a few occasional slips here and there! It's much better for my mental health to not dwell on the past. That is good advice to follow...

YES VIRGINIA, YOU CAN KILL RHUBARB

Rhubarb is one of those things that is supposed to be extremely easy to grow. I think this is why I find it so depressing to have so much trouble growing it. When I google information on growing rhubarb, I find tons of people who tell stories of their rampant rhubarb. They take years to kill it off in areas where they no longer want it to grow. They describe ways that they abuse it and it still refuses to die. Even my own mother told me that my nephew who owns a landscaping business had brought some rhubarb home that he had dug up from someone's yard. It was unwanted rhubarb so he threw it in a pile. My mother came along and "felt sorry for it" so she turned it over. It flourished in that spot. When I was visiting she helped me dig some up to bring home. That was two years ago. It's no longer doing so well. Last year I figured that I would have to give it a year to recover. This year I kept thinking, maybe it needs a little more time. Now, I am plotting ways to "help" it. The word "help" can be freely interchanged with "kill". This is the sort of story I can tell regardless of what plant I am talking about. I can seemingly do things exactly how other people do them with far different results. I'm thinking of one day writing a book titled "The Brown Thumb Guide to Gardening" with a subtitle of "How To Kill Off Most Any Plant". I'm not sure if I should include photographs or hire my daughter Sarah to draw pictures, or maybe a combination of both.

CONCRETE?

Not concrete. It's the clay laden garden soil I keep complaining about! This is soil from my garden that dried into clumps. It's worse outside the garden where I haven't added organic matter. At least I could break up these clumps!

UNSOLICITED ADVICE

Dear Friend,

I have a relationship that I've been thinking about a lot. This person continuously gives me unsolicited advice. She does have a lot of redeeming qualities. She can be very nice and caring. She can also be sort of mean. I use the words sort of because she is never blatant in her meanness. She's a know-it-all who loves to tell people what to do. She analyzes everything I tell her and tells me what I'm doing wrong. Nothing makes her happier than to tell someone "I told you so." She talks behind her friends backs. She considers me a friend and I know she talks behind my back as well.

I've tried to figure out why I've become friends with her. Am I somehow attracted to her because I need to be abused? Do I feel as if I deserve this? It's said that people treat us the way they do because we let them. Do I need to stop her from treating me this way? Do I need to end the friendship? Right now I feel as if I'm in a holding pattern. I have resorted to being careful with everything I tell her until I fiure this thing out. Its been a way to protect myself from hurtfulness.

Its on my mind because I feel that I am on the cusp of understanding something significant. I'm on the edge of figuring this out but I can't quite get a grip on it. There are many people like her. I don't think they really search out weak people. She's in discriminant in who she inflicts herself on. The only thing that changes is how people react to her. It has helped me to look at all people that have similar characteristics. I thought about all people who try to have power over others. They may all do it in different ways but the bottom line is still about power.

Before, I've always felt that her advice is her way of showing she cares. I'm now coming to see things a different way. If she truly cared, she would see that her words often hurt me and she would stop. Instead she seems to enjoys these interactions. I see her with one of those old fashioned ice hooks. She hooks me with her words. I fight and kick but she drags me along anyways. I've been wondering what she gets out of this. I've come to the conclusion that a person like this loves to see people squirm. It makes them feel powerful to control others with their words. And what is power all about? Ego. It boosts their ego. And why would someone need their ego boosted? Because they are insecure. Understanding this will serve me well when dealing with all people.

I'm still formulating my plan for how I will now handle our "friendship" but I'm glad I've gotten this far in my understanding. I need to picture myself being pinned down by one of these bullies and being able to handle it with grace. Unfortunately, I do see this person as a bully. It may seem like a harsh word but I think that is the part that I have been on the edge of understanding. It took me so long to figure this out because it is so harsh. This is a person I called a close friend but this person is indeed a bully.

KNOW IT ALLS

I've recently come to the conclusion that I may have a tendency to become friends with Know It Alls. I realized this after I was noting the similarities between a couple of my friends. I was thinking that they both love to tell me what to do. They both think they are more knowledgeable than they actually are. They both think they are more physically adept than they are. Then I started to see that many people in my life are this way. I was wondering if the world is populated with a bunch of Know It Alls or if they just seem to flock to me.

Mostly I just brush all of this advice and banter off but on some level I find it annoying. I try to tell myself that they are doing it because they care about me but another part of me feels that they think I'm some sort of loser who needs to be guided in the right direction. Its not that I think that I'm a loser but its annoying that they might think I'm a loser. It's quite possible that because I am a good listener who doesn't want to hurt people's feelings they feel comfortable letting loose on me.

I'm sure that this kind of talk makes them feel good. I dare say that just maybe they don't really feel good about themselves. They can reduce their insecurities by constantly letting others know just how smart, strong, wonderful they really are.

In reality, we all know that I'm much better than every one of them!

LEARNING WHO TO TRUST

Have you ever had a friend that spends a lot of time complaining about other people in their life? I do, I have a friend that is constantly putting down her other friends as well as her close relatives. She claims that she really likes/loves these people but I am surprised at how negative she can be. I often wonder why she is even friends with these people if she thinks such bad things about them. I realize that everyone can sometimes complain about their friends - like I am right now. However, this goes beyond the usual whining.

The funny thing is, that it has finally dawned on me that since she considers me a close friend, chances are she is complaining about me to these other people! I had never really thought about it until recently when I talked to her adult daughter. The conversation didn't go well. For no apparent reason the daughter was very annoyed with me - to the point that she raised her voice at me. It was a short conversation and I had not given her any reason to be so upset. We rarely have a chance to speak to each other so I can't imagine it was something I had previously said. It was quite strange until I realized that her negativity probably stemmed from some private discussions her and her mother had about me. She probably came into the conversation with some preconceived perceptions. The only other reason I can think is that she is such a stressed out individual that she is constantly on the verge of yelling at everyone.

The question that I ask myself is why would I be so stupid to think that her mother isn't trashing me like she does all her other "friends? One might say that I shouldn't assume that she is doing this. But how can I think otherwise? How could I believe that I could be the only person in her life that she doesn't talk so negatively about?

It bothers me that she does this because I do consider her a close friend. I am not one to open up to people who are not supportive to me. It's a bummer because now I have to censor our friendship. Some people would be able to accept that is the way she is and not worry about it. I am not like that, I do not want to think that she is taking what I confide to her and twisting it around into something negative. I will not end our friendship but unfortunately, our friendship has now become more shallow.