John Gray’s 1992 best seller “Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus” gives suggestions for improving couple’s relationships by understanding each other’s communications styles and emotional needs.  I, of course, read it and was slightly horrified to find that I really identified in most cases with the male profile.  This is one of those deep dark secrets up until now I have not shared with anyone.  While I’m on a roll, I’ll also confess that I do not stop to ask for directions either.

The aspect I identified with the most was that of needing to enter “the cave” before talking.  But my contention is that there are a LOT of women out there that would LOVE to enter “the cave” and get a little quiet time before greeting one’s partner or family, but somehow it just doesn’t work out that way.  How many mothers of toddlers out there would love just to be able to go to the bathroom by themselves without being followed EVERYWHERE by curious tots?  Some days even my adoring dogs exuberant greeting at the door is just too much.  A little peace and quiet would be just the ticket.

In many ways I think men instinctively get the concept of “balance” better than women.  Or perhaps women get it instinctively, but allow their emotions and guilt to override it.  It use to drive me crazy how my ex-husband could lay around on Sundays, seemingly guilt-free, while I was running around taking care of this thing and that.  Learning to give myself permission to relax and unwind after a busy week like he did meant letting go of expectations and resentments that were pretty much all self-created.

I was talking today with a friend whose husband is on an extended work commitment that takes him away from home for many months.  Her comment to me when I asked how that will be for her was “I’m looking forward to reading a book!”  I totally related and wondered to myself why it is that we can’t carve out that time otherwise. We’ll make the time to do the household chores, to put someone else’s needs before ours, and to attend to the feelings of family and friends but somehow shuffle our own needs to the bottom of the to do list.

My kids are older now and pretty much live in their rooms when not hanging with their friends.  So getting some quiet time alone is not nearly as difficult as it used to be.  But every once and awhile I still need to announce to any interested parties in earshot that I am taking a timeout and close myself in my room for a little bit.  These few moments of rest give me such a renewed energy and ability to handle the daily inevitable stress.

Amazing what you can learn when you open to getting the message ….even from Martians.

A few months ago my son asked me a question I couldn’t answer.  “Mom,” he said, “You know how species evolve, changing out features that no longer serve them for those that do?  Well, what do you think will be our next feature change?”  This was from the same child who at age 3 drove even his uber-patient grandfather crazy with his non-stop asking “Why?”.  Gotta love it.

I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and think I have the answer:  the ability to process information in parallel, rather than serially.  I think it’s already begun.  Years ago I was teaching Sunday School and was totally frustrated with the high energy class that was bouncing off the walls, otherwise absorbed in their own conversations and never seeming to listen to me.  In a moment of frustration I threw my book on the table (finally capturing their attention!) and in exasperation said “Who can tell me what I just said?!”  Without blinking an eye, everyone’s hands shot up and everyone parroted back to me exactly what I had just said.  I was amazed.  This phenomenon continues today with my walking into my other son’s room to ask him something and he can actually talk to me while simultaneously playing a video game, checking facebook and listening to music.  Baffles the mind.

Unfortunately I am cut from the older cloth and have not quite evolved to that same extent.  While I have always been the consummate multi-tasker, I realize I am really very proficient not in doing many things at once, but at starting many things concurrently.  It’s a juggling act running back and forth between tasks and I’m only now realizing that I am merely adequate at accomplishing any to any degree of perfection.  Take this blog for instance.  Yesterday I was in full “task mode”: organized my desk, made the to do list and was fully engaged in stepping through each task , crossing it off, and moving on to the next.  When it came time to write my daily missive, I was blank.  Obviously the lights on the creative side of my brain were turned off to assure maximum efficiency on the logical task oriented side.

My curious son called last night to tell me he and his partners were officially launching their new business as we spoke.  This is in addition to going to college full-time, starting up and running a fraternity, and coaching and racing with a ski team.  I heard my mother’s words coming out of my mouth “Honey, just be careful you don’t overextend yourself”.  I quickly retracted them, realizing that just as my ability to handle multiple situations was foreign to my mother, my son’s ability to do the same but with a seemingly more evolved skill is foreign to me.  Hurts my head to think about what subsequent generations will be able to handle as well.

For me, its back to the to do list.  Next….

My fiance is a former personal trainer.  I used to think it would be really cool to have my own personal trainer.  Here is another case of “be careful what you ask for.”  I now belong to 2 gyms:  the YMCA that I like because, well, a lot of people I know and would like to know go there, and now the “real” gym that has a lot of machines and weights where you can get a real workout.

To me a real workout lasts until you break a sweat or get bored, which generally means about 30-45 minutes.  Now, with my “personal trainer”, I have 2 hours of agony.  Actually that is not true.  If I was to break it down it would be probably 10 minutes of agony, 10 minutes of feeling good, and 1 hour and 40 minutes of me whining.  He is always telling me to do something I don’t want to do, thinks I can handle more than I think I can, and is cracking jokes to distract me.  It’s so annoying.  Hmmm…it’s so my issues.  It’s so…well, I think the Rolling Stones said it best, “You can’t always get what you want but if you try sometime you just might get what you need.”

Note to self for new year:  Think twice before expressing desires!  Although that Mediterranean vacation still sounds like a nice idea…

I have been dessert free for almost a week now.  I’d say I was sugar-free but that would be stretching it.  Being dessert free is a rather large accomplishment for me as I have been shoveling handfuls of cookies into my mouth daily (hourly) for weeks.  I am now into the fat pants. Actually, they are even uncomfortable.  I was just feeling really good about sweatpants when a friend reminded me of a Seinfeld episode where George Costanza said that wearing sweatpants in public is like saying you’ve given up.  I’m not quite there, thank goodness.

Back in November I was writing about needing to get back into shape.  And I was doing REALLY well – for about a month until Thanksgiving came and I convinced myself that one, well, maybe two, slices of pie wouldn’t be that bad.  Then the annual Christmas cookies arrived from Mom (God Bless her!) and my daughter wanted to make our own – for tradition sake, of course.  There went the best of intentions.  As my friend Lisa Parry recently said, “Have you ever talked yourself into a bad habit that you know isn’t good for you? (Justified it)  Then when you’re ready to let it go you get someone else to talk you back out of it.  What funny creatures we are!”

I am not sure why I am the type that needs to let things get really out of hand before I’ll do something about it.  I’ve had people I’ve coached ask me how many times will it take before they learn their lesson and all I can reply is “as long as it takes”.  In any situation the choice is between what offers the greater reward or the least pain.  As long as my pants were comfortable, I could “justify” one more cookie.  Thank goodness I decided to stop before the sweats got too tight!

So this week the desserts.  Next week the breads.  I have to play these mind games with myself, taking out one thing a week, or I start to panic.  I could do the desserts just fine and don’t anticipate the bread being too bad.  And if I keep moving in this positive direction, in a few months I’ll be strutting the beach in my bikini again.  Hmmm…that in itself makes me grateful its winter!

The person in front of me at the drive-thru ATM was obviously having some operator difficulty as they had now partially opened their door and were hanging out, trying to complete their banking transaction.  The person behind me was also in some sort of distress, as they were beeping the horn impatiently. I was in the luxurious position of having time on my hands, having had a meeting cancel while I was en route to it.  Between thinking “What ARE they doing up there?” and “Could she be beeping at me?  What does she want me to do, ram her to get her to hurry up?”, I just sat back and let my mind wander, grateful that the heater in my car was fully operational.  Man, it has been COLD!

A movement to my right caught my eye and I noticed a little bird hopping under some bushes.  How sweet, I thought.  It took a moment more before the whole scene registered:  there was bright green grass, birds, sunlight….SPRING!  Honestly, my heart fluttered.  This little oasis had been carved out by the sunlight on the south side of the building, shielding it from the snow and other wintery effects.  It was nothing short of magical to me and infused me with a large helping of hope that in spite of the cold and dreariness enveloping us of late, this too shall pass!

When I got home, still buoyed by warm and happy thoughts, I looked up at a tree in my yard.  There on the branches were red leaf buds.  No way.  Didn’t this tree know that it was 17 degrees outside??  I kept looking around to see if either this was a joke or maybe I had really missed a couple of months along the way.  I didn’t find any others like it, but the fact of its existence stayed with me.  It stood there, almost defiantly optimistic that yes, Spring IS on its way.

I’d love to be more like that tree – able to stand strong through the adverse conditions and still present its promise of better days ahead.   Or like that bird who found that patch of sunshine in an otherwise gray world.  Perhaps if I could do that, it might make the path a little brighter for someone else as well.  Maybe even a harried ATM user.

I had just finished telling my friend Leanne the long and sorry tale of the life decisions I’ve had to make in the past year and sat back to get her feedback.  Her “Wow” comment played nicely with my expectations, making me feel ever so slightly the justified martyr.  Then she added “You sound so empowered.  I also am feeling joy.  Where is the joy?”  Within about one second the following thoughts flashed through my mind: “What is she on?”, “I think she’s been living in the mountains too long”, “Oh wow – her life is worse than mine.”  and “Has she even been listening to me?”

Every so often a conversation or a phrase will serve as virtual slap in the face to me.  Something that stops me in my tracks and wakes me to a different way of looking at the situation at hand.  Leanne’s comment did just that.  It made me see my life through her eyes, instead of the victim blinders I’ve become so comfortable wearing.

I had described a situation of having to let go of a lot of things that were important to me, a forced simplification of life.  Empowerment and Joy were not words I often (ever?) associated with it.  I was too stuck in my story to see that in making the decisions I’ve made, I have taken back my power.  I now have a lifestyle that works for me where I am right now.  And everything that is in it DOES bring me joy.  I am not overly encumbered with “stuff” and am able to utilize my available resources on that which has value and meaning to me.  Who knew?!

I once wrote “Gratitude and Fear cannot live in the same place.”  If the absence if fear is empowerment and gratitude = joy, I think Leanne is on to something!  And I, for one, am grateful that she is.

At the last minute my eldest son scored tickets to the Rose Bowl and within 48 hours was texting me “Greetings from 73 degree California”.  The boy knows how to push buttons…  He had no idea what he was doing New Year’s Eve, no clue where he was staying, and no real plan for how to get back to school in Oregon.  I wavered between parental horror and absolute admiration – and jealousy – at his ability to go with the flow and make it happen.

As we sat around the dinner table shaking our heads at his adventures, I realized that although at first glance you’d never know it, I am really a lot like him, only with a few more layers of responsibility.  This awareness came to me as I recounted the story of how I moved to Boston.  I had gotten a new job with IBM and was transferring away from my cow neighbors (literally) in Vermont to a hopefully more lively lifestyle befitting a single person in their 20s.  The only person I knew in Boston was an ex-boyfriend to whom I was not speaking.  I knew nothing about the town and had no idea where I was going to live.  All I had planned was that on Monday I was packing my car and driving to Boston.  On the Saturday before I left I decided to go skiing one more time, by myself, and while on a chairlift, met a guy from Marblehead, a town north of Boston.  He introduced me to his parents, who immediately invited me to stay with them and help me find a place to live.  I did, and within a day found a great apartment and a roommate I keep in touch with to this day.  I don’t remember ever worrying about the move or any of the details, in the same way my son did not worry about his trip to California.  I possessed a calm faith that it would all work out – and by golly, it did.

I need to remember this story because it shows me that 1)the answers appear when you have faith and ALLOW them, and 2)I’ve done it before and I can do it again.  My challenge is to learn to view the parameters of my life not as restrictive, but as reflections of the choices I’ve made.  Responsibility is a ballast that gives my life direction and focus, rather than floating adrift in a sea of possibilities.

I’d love to just take off on an adventure like my son but age does bring a certain amount of wisdom and ignoring reality has its own share of issues.  Perhaps instead I can choose to view my life these days as my adventure and be open to the possibilities.  Hey, you never know…

It was the third invitation request that got me…the one that started “All right all you ‘maybes’ out there…”  It’s one thing to be non-committal, but it’s quite another to be called on it.

I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook’s events invitations.  On the one hand, as an event provider, I love that it is a free service, and that I can invite everyone I know very easily.  On the other hand, as someone who gets countless invitations, I am not quite as enamored as I get invited to things that are of no interest or geographically impossible to attend.  I do, however, like that I can either answer “attending”, “ignore” or “maybe”.  If I definitely am not interested, I ignore it.  If I don’t want to hurt their feelings, I say “maybe.”  I figure I can hide out there, showing that I really did look at it and perhaps I may think about actually attending, that is, if I remember and if nothing else comes up.   It seems with today’s event I was found out and forced to take a stand.

I have been known to be a fence straddler from way back.  Never one to rock the boat or cause any controversy, I was pretty happy being middle of the road.  I’ve been pretty secure in this belief until this afternoon, after the above mentioned event (which I DID attend and did enjoy, I might add).  I was working on pulling together some old writing pieces for a friend and came across some poetry I had written when I was 15 years old.  I expected some lyrical ramblings about love and instead found pretty strong position statements on war/peace, poverty,  and pollution.  Was there a strong radical living inside this Mid-western milquetoast all along?  Perhaps all I needed was to be called out on it.

I still care what others think of me and probably still censor myself too often.  But if I can conjur up that teenage passion every now and again, who knows where it may lead me?

(and just for fun….here’s one of my poems:)