1. Dance

This fall’s Dancevision concert at Culver Academies was on Amy’s birthday weekend. What a lovely treat for her last night.

The concert featured student dancers in various large and small ensembles, solos and duets, ballet and modern styles, recordings and the school’s jazz band and a few student vocalists, too.

One student — Asia — choreographed a stunning solo that actually choked me up. She has amazing technique, and expression as well.

I loved the first piece, ballet in several movements — ballet is just as beautiful, just as witty and clever, just as humorous, just as moving, as more modern styles, and it annoys me when people malign it. If you don’t care for it, fine — but it’s not because there’s anything wrong or outdated about it.

That said, I loved the more modern things, too.

I took modern dance in college all four years — I think I only had to miss one semester. Oh how I loved it! Not that I was particularly good at it, and I had no delusions of dancerly grandeur — but it was still wonderful to do. It’s great exercise, reaching every part of the body, in stretching, slow and quick movements, movement in a small space, movement across a large space, movement standing, movement on the floor. Unlike most exercise, to me anyway, it’s also beautiful and meaningful movement that nourishes the soul. Other forms of exercise nourish my soul a little bit, in that exercise does work on brain chemistry, and a body that feels good helps a soul feel good — but dance does it better.

Plus, we were blessed to have a pianist to accompany our classes, and he was very, very good. He always matched the music to the movement so deftly.

I don’t think there are any dance studios in Plymouth, and even if there are I don’t think we could afford for me to take classes “just” for the sake of having a form of exercise I enjoy, and yet — how lovely that would be.

2. Shopping with a conscience

One of my facebook friends posted the 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame, which I reposted, and another friend reposted after me.

I think I might have been in college before it even occurred to me to think about who was involved in making the things I had. One of my friends was in a production of the musical Working, based on Studs Terkel’s book of the same title. It’s a series of interviews with workers in various fields.

Starting to think about how one’s activities as a consumer affect other people can get overwhelming fast. It’s not obvious anymore — one store might have who knows how many suppliers in how many countries, shifting however often, and it’s not always easy to find out whether the suppliers are adequately paid, working in safe environments, and protected in various human rights. Some of the countries have good laws, some don’t, and not all supplier companies obey the laws. Some companies have inspections. Some suppliers lie and coach their workers to lie.

Looking at the labor rights organizations’ recommended shopping list is also a bit disheartening — there’s no well-known companies listed, and nothing local. Do you order something bland, boring, and expensive online that involves extensive transportation, for the sake of ethical treatment of workers, or do you buy at the local Wal-mart because it’s the only local supplier of what you need, and you want to avoid the transportation costs and keep at least some of your money in your own community?

Then there’s the issue of relationships — you don’t want to get so caught up in this or any other issue that your relationships suffer unduly. You still want your family to have a pleasant, joyful, peaceful home with things they can enjoy. You still want your friends to enjoy being with you. There’s more to life than any cause, and when every activity is tagged with conscience-raising, life gets exhausting and frustrating and dull quite quickly.

And yet — as soon as you see a face associated with that thing you’re coveting, it’s a lot harder to just buy it uncritically.

3. Sugar, sugar — and other abundances

Let me just say that it is interesting how an abundance of sugar — or any other food — can be distressing.

I don’t really think of myself as a Causie with a Vengeance — someone who’s out to sell the Simple Life to the universe — although I suspect some folks see me that way.

But, well, just four days of birthday cake has me stressed. Really, three days of it, with one day in between.

I love birthday cake. But I like it better when I have one really nice piece and then go back to regular life for a while.

I also like my refrigerator and pantry to be full of spaces — when they’re packed I get nervous. Will I eat the fresh stuff before it goes bad… I like to have enough things on hand to have choices, but I don’t like it when the sense of obligation rises above a certain threshold.

We’re on the holiday season now. Kick-started with little girl’s birthday, heading into Thanksgiving, with Christmas around the corner. Not to mention little girl still has Halloween candy she’s working on.

Again, I’m all for a splurge on tasty nothings once in a while — it’s just the overabundance of them, without much rest in between, that gets to me.

4. Thoughts on three

I forgot to make or buy a birthday card for Amy. And I haven’t written down any thoughts on her turning three. And I don’t have any right now.

Um…

Yeah. Maybe later.

5. Emotional peacekeeping

I think I’ve often taken on the role of emotional peacekeeper. I don’t like to see people being upset. I don’t like seeing conflict. I especially don’t like it when I’m involved, but it’s distressing even when I’m not. I often find myself trying to soothe all the wild beasts — either by the unproductive method of minimizing myself and my intrusion in the world, or by remaining calm and speaking calmly and offering calm advice, or by stepping in and separating people (like Amy and me).

I’ve made some progress on being able to tolerate my and other people’s distress — sometimes people just need to be distressed for a while and get through it on their own time. Sometimes I misjudge those cases, and don’t step in when Amy really needs me. Sometimes I think other people are surprised and disapprove even when I think I’m right to give her the space to cry and face her situation independently. Some people seem to get it.

11-19-09

The water laughs when people dive into it. The water splashes, and that’s how it laughs. When we leave and go somewhere else, like the dining hall, the swim meet is sad and misses us. And then we come back, and we wipe its eyes, and then it’s happy again.

(On the way home from a swim meet, following dinner at the dining hall.)

11-16?

(Amy asked something like “What is God,” and I was saying something about him being spirit, which means a person without a body. Another day, she said her happy face balloon was a spirit, because it had no body.)

(One of Amy’s favorite Bible stories is the feeding of the five thousand. The other day at lunch she broke her piece of bread into more pieces, “Just like Jesus!”)

11-13

Mama, can you open this purse? It’s for you — eat it!

(This was a day after I was feeling thoroughly sick of the ubiquitous pretending to eat game, playable with every conceivable item from sticks and leaves to puzzle pieces and dominoes.)

11-12

I don’t need butter on my butt!

Picking up a book and pretending to read: “Here is a Payday…”

(i.e., the candy; Mark had gotten some for Halloween. The story actually begins, “Here is a man.”)

This is a long Dorito — a long skinny one with a Reeseless end!

(The Doritos were from Halloween; so are the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups — many things are now Reeseless.)

The bowed psaltery dropped its blanket and picked it up again — that’s how you listen to the music.

(Listening to “Fallen” on my Christmas CD. I think she might have been referring to the fall and rise in pitch.)

11-10

I can’t do it, but I’m going to do it anyway.

(This was after many many days of difficulty with clean-up time, driving me to tears just a little while earlier that evening. So many times I would try to tell her that it’s okay to be sad and angry and frustrated about having to clean up, but that she still needs to do it when the time comes. I would tell her she could say, instead of “I can’t!”, “I don’t want to, but I’m going to do it anyway.” Obviously she remains a little confused about the difference between “can’t” and “don’t want to,” but that’s okay.)

11-9

Daddy, you said ‘boo’ tiredly!

You have two kinds of kitty food — one kind like a cake and one kind like allspice.

(The cake is the canned food, and the allspice is the dry food, in small round bits like the whole allspice Amy has seen me use in some recipes.)

11-6

(As I was waking up, I heard running water. And again. And again. I finally got up and found Amy in her bathroom, washing the hand towel. She was pretending it was a mama pad — like the cloth ones I use, the ones she’s seen me rinse in the sink.)

On Saturday I took my friend out to lunch for her birthday. We spent a good bit of the hour drive in prayer — among other things she prayed against my chronically recurring sense of being overlooked, marginal, left out. She clearly considered it one of Satan’s favorite tricks for me.

Later, I insulted my friend.

I then spent the next two days loathing myself for the things I say, trying to accept the already offered forgiveness of my friend as well as that promised by God, but not really believing in either.

Sunday morning — I woke up from a dream about spiritual oppression. I don’t even remember what happened in the dream or where I was, but that phrase was stamped on the dream in bold letters.

That night, a phone call from my friend helped settle me somewhat in the security of her forgiveness.

Yesterday, at a different friend’s house for a playdate, along with yet another friend, my child spent most of the morning all by herself. The other two kids were inseparable, giggly and running around and even talking to each other. I’m pretty sure I even remember mine going into the room where they were, and they immediately left. Meanwhile, I sat listening as my two friends talked — they had a lot to talk about, and I didn’t have any two cents to add.

I left feeling vaguely but sharply heartbroken — my little girl already the outcast I’ve always been, the one who walks into a room and sends the others fleeing.

Last night I wrote this in my journal:

Either A) I’m fine and within the range of acceptability — there will be things people don’t like about me but they can still love me anyway, and in a real and true way, and, the corollary, it’s okay for me to act like I think I’m normal and acceptable and lovable, and expect to be loved and appreciated and welcome for the most part.

Or B) I really AM one of the Undesirables, and many people really don’t care for me although they can politely tolerate me and tell me all the right self-esteemy things even though we all know those things aren’t really applicable to the Undesirables, and, the corollary, I had better acknowledge my place with due shame and stay out of the important people’s way, and acting like a normal person will only strain the tolerance and politeness limits of others and make them scorn me more deeply. And asking for reassurance? Expressing my insecurity? Definite faux-pas — that’ll force them to be more polite than they want to be, make me even more a burden than I already am.

And do I actually have any incontrovertible evidence for either position? Not really — what evidence there is is subject to interpretation based on presuppositions.

I need, desperately right now, to have my presuppositions corrected. A sane corner voice tells me B) is a damned lie, and that when I categorize other people as Undesirables that is a projection of my own insecurity and not evidence that such a category really exists.

About evidence and presuppositions — to a normal, happily secure person, the playdate description would present no problems. So one kid is somewhat solitary and the others play together more often. So two mamas had a conversation and the third just didn’t have anything to add. But start with a presupposition that I am an Undesirable and my kid is therefore doomed to be one, too, and the picture looks sinister.

———

Anyway, most of the time I adopt the idea that I really am within the realm of normal acceptable humanity and that people might actually like me sometimes. Today, for example, I’ve mostly been feeling fine.

When this other idea revisits, though, it’s brutal! And it always comes back, sooner or later, and it is really hard to challenge the presuppositions, because they circularly make the evidence look awfully persuasive of the presuppositions’ truth. Arguing in the other direction just doesn’t seem anywhere nearly so likely. And there’s no evidence that can change presuppositions, anyway — that change has to come from somewhere, something, Someone else.

And the consequences of being wrong about A), of thinking A) when B) is really true, seem devastatingly vulnerable and shameful. One must NOT be mistaken in assuming the truth of A).

———

I used my DBT skills pretty well, I think. I observed and named my feelings. I explored my thoughts about them, and challenged them as well as I could. I reminded myself that hormonal changes make my social paranoia worse once or twice a month. I reminded myself that night time is when I am most vulnerable to negative thoughts. I reminded myself that even if the entire human race DOES hate me, God delights in me, and that really is more than enough. I allowed myself to cry, and didn’t get too alarmed by my crying and intensity of feeling — didn’t get sucked into the future catastrophizing of “This is only going to get worse, this is a ball rolling down a steep hill, here comes the pit, and if I tell anyone I’ll just ruin everything AGAIN” — I let myself cry and write and pray, and then I put myself to bed and rested. (After doing my entire BSF lesson for the week, in one sitting.)

———

This whole episode reminds me so much of “The Rules”:

In Operating Instructions, Anne Lamott tells about the “five rules of the world as arrived at by this Catholic priest named Tom Weston.”

* The first rule, he says, is that you must not have anything wrong with you or anything different.
* The second one is that if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible.
* The third rule is that if you can’t get over it, you must pretend that you have.
* The fourth rule is that if you can’t even pretend that you have, you shouldn’t show up. You should stay home, because it’s hard for everyone else to have you around.
* And the fifth rule is that if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.

Then she says that she and her therapist “decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

Instead of completing this week’s BSF lesson, day by day, I put it off until tonight, and here I am past bedtime and I still don’t really want to do it. I just wrote a bunch of stuff on my facebook about it:

sort of wish I could go to BSF without going to BSF.

I’m not really enjoying the study. Amy loves her class and it’s the only spiritual teaching she’s getting in any regular way. What I like best is the hour’s ride there and another back, with two friends and our kids, and getting in some knitting.

Also, I miss Tuesdays.

I miss just reading and discussing the Bible with friends. And I sort of think I would really enjoy certain kinds of seminary classes. In between is a lot that just doesn’t appeal to me much these days.

The Presbyterian Church we’ve been visiting, I’m not sure if they have a Sunday School class that would be appropriate for Amy. She’s the only kid her age — there’s some teens and a two-year-old, and that’s it. The Reformed Baptist Church’s youngest Sunday School I think is trying to do too much material, and isn’t really age-appropriate. I sometimes question some of the emphases in the children’s BSF program, but I like the mix of free and organized play, prayer, Bible story, and quiet time. And, like I said, Amy adores her class, especially her teachers. She plays pretend BSF very frequently, pretends to be her teachers even more frequently.

I know we are the primary spiritual teachers for Amy, and the church and other believers are helpers to us and don’t relieve us of our responsibility. And yet I’m not quite sure how to go about giving Amy spiritual instruction that would be age-appropriate and that wouldn’t backfire.

Oh, and I still miss men. I am grateful for all the fellowship I have with women, but I miss being in a mixed small group or regularly getting together as couples. (The daytime BSF class is just for women.)

It is challenging to balance work and play; me time, Amy / family time, social time.

This weekend I spent a LOT of time knitting. Very relaxing, mostly, and lovely to have an extended time to myself. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between false guilt (it IS good to have time to myself, to rest and be replenished) and real guilt (when the balance is tipped too far in my direction).

I bet Super Nanny would give us some kind of schedule (on a large poster, for sure) that would make sure everyone gets what they need. I could give us one myself, I suppose, except I sort of hate schedules.

Now it’s nearly bedtime, and the hat is finished. Except I’m not sure I like it. Except my list is still long and weighty, and I’d really like to move on to the next thing. Except I also know that there’s no such thing as “When my work is done, THEN I’ll have time for X” — instead time for X must be accounted for when scheduling work; point being, I need to be careful about not pouring too much time and energy into the work in order to try to get it all done and out of the way.

Looooooooove the mittens! (Even though one thumb starts a row earlier than the other one.)

The hat, not so much. I love the ribbed cable cast on, and the corrugated ribbing, and the overall shape — covers the ears without falling into the eyes. But I think the shaping would be better done with diagonal lines of decreases and increases, so that the stripes would be more concentric and less stacked. This one I shaped with short rows in the back. Do I care enough to do it over? I don’t know yet…

Made with KnitPicks Swish in Wisteria, Dublin, and Lawn — Amy’s choices.

———

I have found the pattern I want to try. Ordinarily I would enjoy the challenge of designing exactly what I want, but this one is potentially exactly what I want, or can be tweaked. I love Ravelry for showing what people do with patterns — some of the examples of this pattern are way too pointy in front and on top, but some are just right.

A friend hired me to sew some things for her little boy’s room. She went with me to choose the fabric.

Mint stripe flannel curtains. The blackout lining fabric is dry clean only, so I hemmed the linings and buttoned them to the curtains.

Mint minkee (generic) pillow covers, using zippers recycled from bedding bags. These were surprisingly much easier and faster than the curtains. Partly because they are smaller, and partly because there was less figuring to do, and largely because there weren’t forty button holes and forty buttons.