Barbara vs. The Machines (round 2)

This blog comes to you from my brand new MacBook laptop. If this were paper instead of electronics, and if I’d handwritten instead of typed, you would throw the paper down, horrified at the anxiety and torment reeking from the paper itself. You’d think, “Look at her handwriting; it’s so tortured.” The paper might even be hot.

Okay, I’m exaggerating. (Friends used to call it the Brown Correction Curve.) But this has not been an easy transition.

First there were the multiple visits to the Apple Store to make sure I was choosing the right laptop. Then there were the multiple visits to Costco and Best Buy to check out the cheaper alternatives for accessories (mouse, monitor). Then it was back to the Apple Store to see if the alternatives were the “right” ones.

Yes, I always shop like this. It’s why I remain minimum consumptive. This was a big shopping weekend. In addition to the laptop, I bought new hiking boots and a new mattress pad. Those were also demanding consumer expeditions; I could tell you a lot about mattress pads…. I think I’m happy with the hiking boots, but I have a long history of shoe regret. This is why almost everything I own is on its Third Third, too.

Meanwhile, the blog was becoming impossible on the old iMac. According to the Apple guys, my old computer had enough memory to turn the computer on … barely. Loading my blog was turning into a long slog every night. But my old computer had all the brains where I liked them, where I was used to seeing them.

So I paid the Apple guys to migrate old brains onto new laptop, which they did. And they promised me it would look exactly the same as my old computer. It does.

The problem? My scanner didn’t recognize the new kid in town. So I had to download more stuff. Except that the download site didn’t recognize my scanner, my new computer, or me. It told me my computer “was bought by a different user.” Different from me? Where’s their credit card? Where’s the “not OK” button?

[Pause for little attack of stress.]

I had a whole bunch of updates to download. The first said it would take 3 days! The scanner one said it would take 9 hours, then 4 hours. I started it, but it kept quitting at the halfway mark on the little bar and a message would say “Can’t install the software.” I did this over and over, thinking if I watched it, it wouldn’t fail. Ha!

Yesterday’s illustrations? They had to be scanned from Tim’s computer, which he then emailed to me. At this very moment, on my fifth try, the download has passed the halfway mark. We’ve been at it for four hours. There are six minutes left.  Four. Hooray, it made it!

Scanner doesn’t work. It needs the update, the one I just finished installing.

[Beyond pause. I am quitting for the night. I will see the Apple Geniuses in the morning.]

Can you solve it?

My friend Jinnie-the-artist (who has finally accepted that she can label herself that way) gathers a group of us every few months to show off our art projects. They’re always in answer to some sort of challenge; we’ve made artist trading cards, things of certain dimensions, challenges like that. Occasionally we get together to play with each other’s supplies and try out New Things.

This month, it was Inchies, things an inch square. But since we like to be easy on ourselves, we said we could do up to an inch-and-a-half. Everyone else knows a lot about various artistic techniques and media, and they turn out really beautiful projects. Pam (new to the group) showed a tiny fabric landscape – a miniature quilt – that was such a good idea I want to try something like it, too. Kathy did something with a new-to-me pigment powder, Betty carved up the Mona Lisa, and Jane helped me with what kind of glue I might try on a project. Once again, Jinnie did something fascinating with textures on paper and showed us a book she made of muslin cloth coated in dry wall mud. She tries things like that all the time, and the texture was incredible. I want to make a mud book!

I think back to why I created this blog. I needed the discipline of structure, something that would demand I face the Blank Page every day. It has been totally successful in that way. But it has limited my creativity in that the art I’m creating is pretty exclusively blog art, illustrations. I’m not doing much experimenting so the art challenges serve a purpose for me.

Usually, I dawdle around, sometimes not getting to them. This time, though, I had An Idea.

I wanted to do puzzles. On puzzle pieces.

So I went to the thrift store and bought a used jigsaw puzzle for little kids for 25¢. Then I painted and decorated some paper and glued the puzzle pieces on it. When I cut them out with a knife, I had brand new puzzle pieces.

I wrote a puzzle on each. It’s from a long list of similar brain teaser type things which I’ve had for about 30 years. Yes, another find from my adventures in de-cluttering. Now it lives again as a puzzle piece.

See if you can figure them out. Maybe this will be your New Thing for today. Enjoy!

The other side of de-cluttering

With all our Third Third talk of de-cluttering, we might lose sight of the occasional pleasure in coming across some bit of nostalgia. So there I was, sorting through a box to clear the area for the Great Carpet Tear Up, and I came across some glorious stuff: original newspaper stories about Woodstock (I was there!); letters I’d written home from college and from my first job; even notes left for me by a Secret Santa in college. I found a whole packet of photos of my sisters and me shoveling snow from the driveway on Long Island – just in time for me to take them back and show them.

But the thing that sent me right to the scanner to send it off to my sister, Allison, is the “test” I gave for members of our secret club. She and I were the only members. It was a “women only” club so it would exclude my brother, and our younger sister was still too young to join. The club was named the “Subconchental Club,” which is not how I remember pronouncing it, but that’s what it says on the test.

The test covered things like our “12-letter passage,” our secret signal, our secret names, and our “chief game.” But this is the thing that cracks me up: Not only was I the one who created the test, I was the one who scored it. I always gave myself points for good answers and marked “X” on Allison’s sheet so she didn’t get credit.

Oh, did I mention I was the older sister?

For example, the test says, “Make up an arts and crafts thing. Something to do with our hands. (worth 20 points).”
    Barbara’s answer: We can make pinwheels to give little children (little drawing of pinwheel)    GOOD IDEA, 20 points
    Allison’s answer: Origami like we did in summer school. Example: swan, house, fox and so on.    XXXXX, no points

“Name three projects we can work on in our club. Helpful ones.”

      Allison:

1. Learn how to plant flowers. XXXXX, no points
2. Make things to make the house look pretty. XXXXX, no points
3. Clean the house to help #2. XXXXX, no points

Now I probably wouldn’t have even noticed this except for the score sheets from Sark. Sark is a word game with a deck of letter cards. Letters are drawn and you try to make words for points. My parents played this game, and there are still score sheets with their names, my grandfather’s name, my aunt’s.

When we first played with Sophie, she loved going through the old score sheets. Except she noticed that I gave myself points for non-words and didn’t count my sister Allison’s words:

“NAMS is not a word, but you gave yourself five points! And FLA is not a word and you gave yourself three points! You cheated!”

And then I always wrote “I won!” on my sheet. Allison had “hee,” but I must have told her that wasn’t a “real” word because she got zero points.

There’s that old joke about Linus thinking he’d have to go to school twice as long to unlearn everything Lucy taught him. Our family used to say that about Allison.

So this is one of the virtues of de-cluttering: you go through the junk that otherwise is just sitting there in a box. And maybe you decide not to toss any of it just yet because this was just too funny to find and it makes you want to phone your sister because there’s no one else in the world who was a member of that secret club. And you think of when you went through stuff with your mother and now her memory is so gone she didn’t even see how funny it all was. And so for now, while you’re still remembering and laughing, this is not the time to toss it.

So the box goes into the closet and maybe you’ll save time when your sister visits to go through it together and hoot and laugh over it.

De-cluttering score: zero
Glorious trip down memory lane: I won!

What do you put on a burn? Whatever you have.

There we were in my Alaska Literacy Program class, going through the workbook, learning the English words for safety and accident prevention. We were also working on the difference between “should” (see a doctor) and “have to” (go to the hospital). We were describing what had happened in this illustration:

“She burned her hand.” “She should use a mitt.” And then, in those moments I love, the conversation took off.

Irma from Guatemala said she should put eggs on her burn. Rebecca from South Sudan agreed, but she would add sugar and milk to the mixture and make a paste to spread on the burn. I’m not exactly sure of the recipe; ingredients were coming fast and furiously, in a mixture of several languages, with energetic hand motions for emphasis. Irma was “stirring” her eggs for me while Rebecca was “applying” her paste.

But Fioly from the Dominican Republic was busy grating potatoes. Her mother had a terrible burn from a pot of boiling water, but applying grated potatoes meant no scar. So Irma showed me where she’d received a bad burn but the eggs had cured it.

Afele from Samoa got in on the action: “Butter,” he said. “No, no, no,” the women chorused, “Never butter.” I explained the little I knew, that butter continues to cook from the heat of the burn, making a burn worse.

Sandra is from Colombia and found the whole thing hilarious. She said she puts ham and cheese and bread on her arm and then mimed eating her arm. I didn’t think Sandra understood. I thought she wasn’t following the conversation, that she thought it was about eating. It took me a while, but then I got it: she was making a joke. It really seemed like we were putting meals on our burns.

So, of course, I had to get in on the action. I told them what everyone should do when they get a bad burn in Alaska: cover it with snow. I knew that the temperature had to be lowered quickly, and I’d heard stories of miraculous rescues by throwing fire victims in snow banks. But then the women all shouted, “No, not water. No water at all.” They were adamant.

So I came home and Googled “burn remedies.” Well, the first thing that pops up is “No ice.” Ice can damage tissue. Cool water is the top recommendation, but then there’s a whole batch of things: vanilla extract; cold, wet tea bags; milk; oats; raw potato; onion juice; vinegar; and honey (although there’s some debate as to whether it’s only special honey). Some say eggs, some say egg whites. And, after all this food, what else? Mint toothpaste.

Not to be outdone, the National Mustard Museum touts the yellow mustard burn remedy, and the People’s Pharmacy says, “Some people have wondered if brown mustard or fancy Dijon mustard will work as well. From what we hear from readers, cheap yellow mustard works best.”

I’d better tell Sandra her ham and cheese sandwich needs mustard, too.

If most burns in the home happen in the kitchen, I can guess why all these food remedies have emerged: everyone grabs whatever they can find. The mustard solution was only discovered after someone realized soy sauce didn’t work. Soy sauce?

And afterwards, wrap the burn in aluminum foil because the foil delivers “restorative minerals as foil contains aluminum and other regenerative minerals.”

I’d better tell Sandra to wrap her sandwich in aluminum foil.

Okay, after migrating through all these assorted food remedies and Google sites, I finally found something reputable (I think): cool water and aloe vera. So I keep an aloe vera plant in the kitchen. I might try a couple of tea bags because I’ve already been told to keep some of them in the freezer for mosquito bites.

But I still don’t know about snow. Was that just an urban legend I’d picked up? Burns happen all over the world and all over the world, people pick what’s handy in their attempts to treat it. My snow may just be Alaska’s answer to Irma’s eggs and Fioly’s potatoes.

Sick day = Bonus day = Play day

I woke up with a runny nose. This is very unlike me. I didn’t experience my first Common Cold till I was in my 50s. Oh, I had the usual childhood illnesses, and I had the usual mother illnesses (bronchitis and strep, when the child had bronchitis and strep); but other than that, sickness isn’t an occurrence for me. Injury, yes; mental illness, yes. But the thing where people lie in bed for days and complain of aches and pains and congestion? Nope.

So there I was with this runny nose, cough, and limp body. And a really good, really fat book.

So I stayed in bed. I didn’t get dressed, didn’t brush my teeth, didn’t comb my hair.

Ultimately, because I am my mother’s daughter and staying in bed is Not a Thing We Do, I got up, made the bed, and retired to the couch. With the big fat book.

And then I had a great old day! A really great day!

I see now that I am still the accomplish-aholic I thought I was maybe growing beyond. Back in November, I wrote about feeling like a time waster, and my friend Sharon asked, “Have you taken some days to just do nothing?”

Oh, I did spend a whole day doing nothing. Well, nothing except 13 hours of Blacklist, but that was a day of serious depression. No joy in Mudville. I could do without days like that.

But a “mildly sick day” is like a “snow day” – you have permission to do nothing. So why does an adult in her Third Third need permission to do nothing? Because she confuses her self-worth with accomplishments, because she is caught up in “doing” rather than “being,” and because unlearning those things is a tougher nut than we know. If it’s hard to go from zero to 60, it’s also really hard to go from 60 to … less.

I read somewhere that people under stress take a long time to get well when they get sick. They realize that illness had managed to pull them off the treadmill and they’re not willing to get back on.

Years ago, on one of Tim’s and my first ski dates, I damaged my knee and couldn’t walk for about six months. Two days after that initial injury, I lost my job. The next day, in a freak accident (not my fault!), my good foot was fractured. (None of this is made up.) I got the message: the universe was telling me to slow down. If one broken leg wasn’t enough, eliminate her job. Still not getting the message? Break the other leg. And guess what? I slowed down. It was one of the happiest times of my life. I was newly in love, and all I could ask of myself was that I keep my spirits up. That was it.

I know I need structure to keep from feeling aimless, but I also need free time to maintain creativity. That’s a delicate balance; what’s enough of one or the other? There’s also free time to get and stay fit, free time to have a social life, free time to prepare meals. Oh, no! How easily I’m back at the 27 hours’ worth of intentions for a 24-hour day.

But I really, really liked my day of doing nothing. I didn’t think of all the things I wasn’t doing. My brain stopped whirling and I just felt pleasure. Simple pleasure.

Maybe what I have to do is schedule periodic days of doing nothing. And it’s not really doing nothing because I did read that whole book. Maybe it’s a whole day of “wants” instead of “oughts.” It’s my Third Third; I get to sign my own permission slips.

Unglued and unstuck

I think my definition of “bold and new and adventurous” has gotten a little tame over the years, but my next New Thing is still giving me the shake-up I need. I’ve always wanted to experience a year in New York City or London – going to theater, exploring the streets and sounds, being “in it.” Since it’s so expensive, the plan got shelved unless I found a job there (which I tried). Thinking about it now, I realize when a fantasy lingers but remains unrealized, some low-level disgruntlement can move in. You can ditch the fantasy or get a new one, but if you still dream of it, you can start feeling … deprived (if you are kind of immature and glass-half-empty).

Eventually, a new idea occurred to me: “What about doing it for three months?” This was a pretty revolutionary idea (if you’re pretty black-or-white-no-grays as far as fantasies go). I checked my calendar, but it had commitments sprinkled into the future. I looked again and – amazingly – I found four weeks free. I got online, checked out VRBO, and I have now rented an apartment in Manhattan for a month. In a couple of weeks.

I have to get a laptop. Yikes, I even have to get a cell phone! I have to make plans and plane reservations, tell my mother. I have to sign a contract, pick up keys, set up Wi-Fi in a new place. I have lived – with Tim – in the same house for 25 years; stuff that I once did annually suddenly seems intimidating. Where will I get mail? Will I need to get mail? What if there are bed bugs? I need to renew my driver’s license before I go!

I imagine walking the streets of New York all day, finding little nooks and crannies that intrigue me. Yes, I was born in Brooklyn and raised on Long Island, but I can add up all my previous days in New York City on two hands; now I’ll triple that … and I won’t have to head home on the Long Island Rail Road. I get to visit my mother without having to sleep on her couch.

I have friends who have taken off to live in Poland or Malawi or the Peace Corps. I have been the person who takes off to live in Costa Rica. I have loaded my car and moved every year. I have spoken other languages and exchanged currencies. So what is all this ungluing that’s happening over visiting New York for a month? Isn’t this just another vacation? Have I become too set in my ways?

I think the ungluing is about the preparation for visiting New York. I am still congratulating myself over negotiating the VRBO (Vacation Rental by Owner). I’m sure they’re laughing in Manhattan over the security precautions that Alaska woman took, making sure she was renting a place that (1) really existed and (2) was really available for rent. (I’ve read stories.) My friend Mimi mentioned that she uses VRBO all the time. Who knows what will become possible after this first-timer hurdle?

I once noticed that when I went on vacation, I drove myself crazy doing nutty stuff like repotting all my house plants before I left. It goes beyond straightening up so it’s all clean for my return; it’s more like stopping time in a moment of supreme orderliness. For all the moments I am gone, order reins in my universe! I conquer entropy!

So, of course, we’re using this time for Tim to rip up the old carpet in my office and studio. That means I have to completely empty the room before I go, disconnect all the electronics, and deal with the clutter-that-can’t-be-tamed. Which means I will return to the utter chaos of an empty room and everything squished into the laundry room in boxes.

I was feeling unglued before we even came up with this idea.

I told Sophie about the apartment, and she said she’d visit and stay with me for two weeks.

Gulp.

Suddenly the fantasy was clearer: to be in New York City without adjusting my plans or bearing responsibility for someone else. It’s not just a regular vacation: it’s a Third Third gift of un-stuck freedom. Freedom means you have to get unglued from the familiar, even from the roles that give you great satisfaction. It might be unsettling, but mostly, I think I will rise to the occasion. I want to feel myself rise to the occasion. I want to see who I am on my own.

So I actually told my daughter, “Five days max.”

Hooray! I'm a mentor.

If you’re lucky, one of the things you get to do in your Third Third is to be a mentor. If you’re even luckier, someone picks you. They think you can be a help to them in their career, their lives, or their general development. There’s no better affirmation of the fact that you’ve acquired experience, expertise, and maybe even a little wisdom.

I got picked! For many years, I’d arranged mentorships for the participants in Leadership Anchorage. I did workshops on mentorships for the Society for Human Resource Management; I worked with organizations to set up mentoring programs. But be a mentor? Never.

And then Derrick picked me. (Why does that sound like a song?) He picked me at a time when I felt overloaded, not so high in self-esteem, a lot bothered. But I agreed to meet with him, still not sure why he’d picked me – where did he even get my name? – or what I could possibly offer him.

Derrick is a young, black, small businessman. He’s run for political office, is committed to his community, family, and profession. So we met. We talked. It was okay, but finally I asked him, “What do you want? What do you need a mentor for?” And Derrick said, “I feel stuck.”

“Aha! Stuck is good. Stuck is what I can help with. Unsticking is what I do.” So we talked about his Big Goals, what was holding him back, how he could free himself up so he could pursue them. We got pretty specific, talked about passing responsibilities to a partner, saying no to things. Along the way, we talked about thank you notes, about how I think sending thank you notes differentiates you from the crowd.

Within a week, someone called, mentioned that they’d met Derrick, spent some time with him, and then received a thank you note afterwards, wasn’t that nice? Whoa, this guy was quick.

The next time we met, Derrick had made plans to take the law school admission test, had researched law schools, was planning to sell his house and his business. Not just wildly scattershot either; he had made Plans. Once he un-stuck, he moved. He claims I’d helped, but Derrick is a guy with a lot on the ball. He’d even read a book I’d briefly mentioned, and we talked about it.

So then I thought, what else can I offer him from my Third Third to his Second? I know people. If he’s planning on law school, maybe I could arrange some interviews for him to meet folks: the U.S. Attorney, a successful defense attorney, another small businessperson who’d gone on to law school. He’s in the middle of those now, and I’m trying to figure out more ways I can tap into my accumulation of years and experience to help him along his way.

I remember reading somewhere that the real reason Alcoholics Anonymous works is not because people GET support but that, as sponsors, they GIVE support. Finding that they have something to offer is a source of strength for the sponsor and that keeps them sober.

So this was my big discovery: being Derrick’s mentor is also mentoring me. You can’t sit down with someone who has so gloriously un-stuck himself without thinking, “What’s your own Big Idea?” Oh, I have one or two, but too many commitments were already in the way, my calendar filled up. They kept getting back-burnered. Not to mention they just seemed … too much, too complicated, too difficult.

But Derrick was selling his business, looking at law schools!

So I had to do something bold and new and adventurous, too. I’ll tell you more about that next post. The thing is, Derrick is leaping off a big cliff. I am stumbling off a little cliff. But I feel a little persistent stuck-ness has given way.

Here I’d set up all these mentorships for others, telling everyone it would be mutually rewarding, and here I am realizing IT’S TRUE. I may offer Derrick the benefits of my experience, but he’s adding inspiration, gung-ho energy, and a whole different view of the world. My world is richer.

What can I say? Go find someone to mentor. Make it official. Enjoy.