And Again She Dwells on the Happiness Project...

Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Project fascinates me. First of all, it proves that I'm not crazy...at least one other human on this planet thinks about happiness obsessively and feels compelled to share her thoughts with the world, and given the popularity of the Happiness Project, lots of other people obsess about it, too. Fortunately, Gretchen is even more obsessive than I am so she provides amazing research and resources in her book and on her blog to promote the idea of happiness as a worthy pursuit.

One theme in her book that resonated with me was her resolve to Be Gretchen. She decided to pursue interests that truly represented her...not the interests she felt she should have. A recent post on her blog explores this idea as she processes her new-found, extremely obsessive interest in smell.

At various times in my life, I've pursued knowledge because I thought I ought to, not because I truly was passionate about it. A perfect example of this was my desire to major in science. Despite the fact that I was reading at age three and never went anywhere without a book, I felt like I should be interested in science because a woman scientist told me that women were discouraged from pursuing the sciences. The surest way to get me to do something is to tell me I can't do it, and I felt outraged that women were under-represented in the sciences because men thought they couldn't do science. Hmmph. I could fix that.

Fortunately, my intellectual hubris encouraged me to take organic chemistry my first semester at Duke University...where half the freshman class declares pre-med as their major. Pride goeth before the fall. Courses like organic chemistry serve as "weeder" courses, designed to weed out those who are not really prepared for medical school, and thus are made to be extremely difficult. Most students wait until junior or senior year to take organic chemistry, but there I was, a 17-year-old freshman, in way over my head.

When I flunked an exam, I was forced to admit that my drive to be a chemist didn't play to my strengths. A very kind aunt pointed out that the world would not end if I quit running down a path destined to kick my ass.  In short, she gave me permission to be myself instead of someone I thought I wanted to be. Instead, I changed majors to a subject that welcomed me with poetry and metaphor and litotes and all things medieval.

I included litotes in the list because it's hopelessly obscure and highlights how weird and wonderful my interests are...at least to me. Litotes, the deliberate use of understatement, appears often and interestingly in Anglo-Saxon literature (think Beowulf), but one of my favorite examples comes from Samuel Johnson: "To write is, indeed, no unpleasing employment."

Indeed.

I've already written, not unpleasingly, about my passion for medieval literature, but my pursuit of that obscure branch of literary brilliance never dampened my love for all sorts of reading, from the highest levels of artistic merit (think Joyce's Ulysses) to the least (think People Magazine).

Grandma always had Reader's Digest in her house; I grew up reading it. So when I got a call from the Special Olympics last year to subscribe to Reader's Digest, I did. George is baffled by this. "I just can't imagine you enjoying Reader's Digest." He remembers only too well my years as an intellectual snob. I've gotten over that and am back enjoying a much broader range of reading, including Reader's Digest. So what if Reader's Digest is not PMLA or Medium Aevum or South Atlantic Quarterly. None of my readings in those peer-reviewed scholarly journals ever made me laugh or tugged at my heartstrings like jokes and stories in Reader's Digest do.

While immersed in the academic world, I didn't read Reader's Digest because I was too busy reading Medium Aevum and the works of Dante and Chaucer. There are, after all, only so many hours in the day. I was writing scholarly essays, participating in scholarly conferences, and teaching college classes. Life eventually took me out of university, and after a while, I realized that the artificial narrowing of interest I experienced in graduate school no longer applied.

Life moves on. My passion for medieval literature stays with me, but it's not all-consuming anymore. While part of me is a little sad about that, the majority of my synapses are quite thrilled to pursue new interests. Science still fascinates me, and that has come in handy while trying to deal with the whole autism thing. Children's literature delights me as much as Chaucer and Shakespeare ever could, and Mental Floss introduces me to subjects I didn't even know existed.

The world is no small place, and it's positively bursting with amazing, fascinating, miraculous stuff. Why would we ever think that any part of it would be unworthy of our attention? Why would we suppress our natural interests and inclinations because somehow they seem a little weird or not sophisticated/smart/popular/cool enough?

Why do we try to be who we think we want to be instead of who we are?

This wonderful quotation popped up recently on Pinterest, and it speaks directly to this theme.

Screw the critics--especially the ones that live in our own heads. Pursue what you love, what interests you, regardless of what others might think. Doing so can increase your happiness.

Be you, and see what happens.

Please share your thoughts in the comments. Is there any passion in your life that you pursue despite others thinking you're weird? Is there a passion you would spend more time on if you weren't afraid it would make you look odd to others?

Words, Words, Words about Rest

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass on a summer day listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is hardly a waste of time." John Lubbock


What sort of rest are you planning for this summer?

Metacognitive Funk

I am in a metacognitive funk, and oddly enough, I feel pretty good about it.

I've lived long enough to realize that life is about ebb and flow, ups and downs, answers and confusion, order and chaos, concentration and distraction, process and product, focus and funk. In other words, life is dynamic, and we have to take time to process, reflect, and think before we can feel good about moving forward to do what we need to do. Funks are, in fact, natural, normal, and necessary.

Our modern lifestyle forces us to move from one crisis to the next, one appointment to the next, one duty to the next without taking time to reflect about WHY we're doing this or IF we should be doing this at all.

Perhaps we should be doing that.

But how in the world do we figure that out? The study of how we think is called metacognition, and though I'm no expert in the subject, I do spend an inordinate amount of time wondering how people think, why they think the way they do, and what a difference that makes in their happiness.

In a recent conversation, a friend confessed that she didn't feel like a grown-up. She thought she would be something easily labeled by this time in her life, most likely a professor, that would signal to the world and to herself that she was a grown-up. Instead, she feels like a youngster pretending to be a mommy, wife, teacher, lay minister, volunteer, and so forth. She feels a push toward a particular path but a part of her doesn't want to go down that road. She feels like she's moving from one obligation to the next, putting out fires, doing only what is in front of her at any given moment. Where's the focus, the career, the grown-up?

Oh, how I relate to her feelings! She and I (and perhaps you, too) need to take a little time to contemplate the choices we make and move more deliberately. Living in a state of constant distraction isn't healthy, and it's certainly NOT a recipe for happiness.

We all have to do things we don't necessarily want to do. I didn't want to be a stay-at-home mom, partly because I always saw myself as a career-oriented intellectual who could never be satisfied with diapers and laundry, but mainly because I have several examples in my life of women who are stay-at-home moms and are much better at it than I will ever be. Oh how I hate being a loser! These other mommies' houses are always neat and tidy, their floors always clean, their laudry ironed and put away, their kitchens immaculate, their basements completely lacking in cobwebs and chaos. Their children never look shaggy or disheveled, never lack for meaningful activities, and never, ever spend all day in their pajamas.

I, on the other hand, sit here in my breakfast room sipping tea and watching the morning sun as it beautifully backlights the layer of dust (artfully rearranged by some small hand) on my 54" television screen. My boys needed haircuts three weeks ago and spent all day Sunday in their jammies for no better reason than their mother wasn't paying attention. 

My grandmother would be so disappointed.

A few months ago, I started noticing the symptoms of metacognitive funk and made the conscious decision to roll with it until some new project presented itself. This funk, I believe, began toward the end of Stephen Ministry training. I had no big project to start, no new class to take its place. Of course, my SM commitment involves regular continuing education and peer supervision, but the newness of it has worn off and left me looking for the next shiny object to chase.

At first, I considered going back to teaching college English. That impulse, appealing as it was, passed rather quickly, for a number of very good reasons. Employment outside the home holds pitfalls for me as a mom. I tend to obsess about doing a good job for anyone who is paying me real money to work, and teaching holds far too many opportunities for obsessive overdrive. Know thyself. I do. In a few years, when both boys can stay at home alone, this option will be more realistic.

No, clearly I need to stay at home and keep my primary focus on the kids. Mom is my job title, and it's a 24/7 gig with a wacky schedule and unpredictable periods of down time that scream for meaningful occupation outside these four walls of domestic bliss.

You're reading one of those occupations. Questioning my Intelligence was born of a desire to write my way out of an existential crisis, and here, almost three years later, I find myself still in that same existential crisis. Instead of seeing my lack of progress as a failure, I choose to see it as a life lesson. Perhaps, if you're the sort of person who tends toward metacognitive reflection, existential crisis is a normal state of being. By embracing the crisis, owning it, and using it in positive ways, I'll figure out what I'm supposed to do next.

And then after that.

And then after that.

Frankly, this metacognitive funk feels like the healthiest thing that has ever happened in my brain, but then, crazy people always think they are perfectly sane, so perhaps I ought not to feel so confident about it.

I doubt my funk will last much longer because, between you and me, I know exactly what I'm supposed to do next. George, God, and the yearning of my heart all tell me the same thing. I'm just scared. I might fail. I'll definitely have to face down that evil voice from my childhood that tells me I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not up to standard. My house will definitely get messier. I'll have to quit doing some of the things I am doing now that I enjoy, or at least scale back on them. It feels scary and huge and weird to start a new chapter. But the next shiny thing to grab my attention is already sparkling right in front of me.

I just need to work up the courage to pick it up and run with it.


Please share stories of your own metacognitive funks...or tell how the rat race keeps you from taking time to reflect and direct your life in ways that might make you happier. What shiny, sparkling worthwhile things are you running with right now? Is there something you should run with but are afraid or reluctant to start? 

Socrates, Jon Katz, and Jimmy Buffett in One Short Post

Socrates said, "The more I know, the more I know that I know nothing." He had this figured out thousands of years ago, but each person needs to learn it anew for him- or herself. Jimmy Buffett put it this way, "Answers are the easy part. Questions raise the doubt." Or, in another song, Don Chu Know:

We're just recycled history machines
Cavemen in faded blue jeans
It's the unanswered question in each one of us
Don chu know
Don chu know
Don chu know

The more we learn the less we know
What you keep is what you can't let go
Take it fast or take it slow
Just one way for you to go
Don chu know

No, we don't know know. This morning, I read a post on the Bedlham Farm blog that got me thinking about Socrates and Jimmy. You can find it here: Looking for God. People with Answers.

What don't you know?

Clean Windows

“Housework, if it is done right, can kill you.” John Skow

Around the time I decided to stay home and raise my children, I bought a book called Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House by Cheryl Mendelson. It’s an impressively weighty tome, with 884 pages of tiny, law-school textbook type with shockingly few illustrations. The author, a lawyer (why doesn’t this surprise me?), certainly sets a high standard of cleanliness and order.

In chapter two, Cheryl lists her idea of daily chores:

-Put soiled clothes in hamper and hang up other clothes
-Clean sinks and tubs after use (including drains and traps)
-Check soap, toilet paper, other supplies in bathroom; change towels if necessary
-Prepare meals and clean up afterward
-Put out fresh kitchen towels and cleaning utensils [My note: what exactly are cleaning utensils?]
-Clean floors in high-use areas (kitchen, entryway) by sweeping, damp-mopping, or vacuuming
-Refill vaporizers and humidifiers (and clean if necessary)
-Neaten; put away newspapers, magazines, and similar items
-Do interim marketing when necessary
-Empty trash and garbage containers (evening)

While some of Cheryl's advice seems, to my mildly AR/OC personality, quite good, I have never, even in my wildest flights of obsession, lived up to this list, much less to her list of weekly chores, which includes, among other things, dusting light bulbs, washing out and sanitizing garbage cans, vacuuming lamp shades, and washing “all” combs and brushes.

This reminds me of Heather Armstrong’s blog and all the pictures she posts of her dogs on pristine hardwood floors. According to Heather, “People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering from a Mental Illness.”

My own OCD isn’t clinically significant (thank Heaven!), and when I bought Home Comforts, I hoped it would help me streamline my housekeeping and make it more efficient so I wouldn’t have to spend so much time cleaning. Instead, just reading the first few chapters made me feel like a filthy, no-good, dirty rotten loser. I was already spending far too many hours in fruitless search for a clean house (baby, pack-rat husband, two dogs, four bathrooms…ohmygosh I was so incredibly doomed to fail!). So I quit reading Home Comforts to preserve my sanity. Honestly, if a person kept house at this level, he or she would spend most waking hours cleaning: who would want to do that?

Well, my grandmother, for one. She kept house at the level recommended by Home Comforts, so I know it’s possible. She had very few hobbies outside the domestic sphere, plus her house was maybe a smidge over one thousand square feet, with one bathroom…small enough to be manageable by one woman on a mission. When she finished all her ordinary household chores, she would invent things to do or carry ordinary tasks to extremes of obsession. For instance, I have vivid memories of her using a pair of tweezers to pick through the contents of her vacuum cleaner bags looking for anything useful that might accidentally have been sucked into it, like rubber bands or loose change.

Does anyone else do this routinely? I mean, I can see tweezering through the disgusting contents of a vacuum cleaner bag if, say, you suspect you sucked up your diamond engagement ring. But to do it in the off chance you’ll find a rubber band?

SERIOUSLY?

I could wax poetic about the Greatest Generation’s saving ways, their frugality, and their June Cleaver pearls-and-high-heels wardrobe for vacuuming. Those things are admirable (well, not the June Cleaver thing…that's just kinky), but these days, I’m happy if my toilets and kitchen are clean and I can still see my reflection in the bathroom mirror despite toothpaste spatter.

Is that too much information? Sorry about that.

Some household tasks inevitably fall to the bottom of the list, simply because they are so very easy to overlook or ignore. It’s hard to ignore dirty toilets (though I am quite capable of it) and positively dangerous to let your kitchen go. But it’s very easy to ignore the state of your windows. I simply don’t think about them very often, which means that, by the time I do notice, they are appallingly dirty.

Having Miss Daisy Doolittle in the house brought windows to my attention. You see, at puppy-nose height, our bay window and door window had become opaque with snot. Seeing that caused me to look higher and realize that all the windows were completely nasty. My grandmother is in heaven shaking her head in disgust at my lack of housekeeping finesse. She loved clean windows and kept hers sparkling.

Oh, relevant and funny tangent time! Jack asked if he could clean this sink the other night. I said sure because there was finely chopped mint and cilantro all over it that needed to be wiped out. After a few minutes, I checked on Jack’s work. “Jack, you need to clean the green stuff out of the sink, dude!” He replied, “Mommy, that’s gross! I’m cleaning the not gross parts. Aren’t I doing a good job?”


Back to windows. My children have washed the downstairs windows in the last few months, but their idea of washing has more to do with wasting as many paper towels and as much Windex as possible on the center of the glass. The fact that windows have sides and corners is completely lost on them. So last week, I cleaned every window in the house. Even the garage-door windows.

I LOVE IT!!!!! Oh how wonderful to see, really see, out the windows. I swear the house is brighter now. I break out in giggles of joy when I open the blinds in the morning. I vow never again to let my windows get so filmy and dirty!!!

But I will. You know I will. In the messy business of life, I will become distracted. I will choose to read novels, poke around on the Internet, blog, craft, help children with homework, scrub toilets and wipe kitchen counters, volunteer to shelve dusty books at the school library, take my mini-laptop to Barnes and Noble for the afternoon and sip mochas and eat scones and blog, and the windows will, once again, most certainly get nasty.

For now, however, I’ll revel in the sparkling clarity of my windows, and comfort myself with the following wisdom from Erma Bombeck: “My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?”

Indeed.

Craving White Space in a Carnival World

Over on my stamping blog, I talk a lot about something called white space. White space, which doesn’t have to be white at all, is simply the empty space in graphic designs and art. Think about GAP advertisements, the old ones where a single model, dressed in stylish clothing, was surrounded by white. Now, contrast that image with the latest flyer from Target, where white space is in short supply. It’s hard to focus on any particular deal in the Target ads because there are so many crammed on the page, and they all scream loudly at you and compete for your attention like game hawkers at a travelling carnival. “Step right up, folks!” You’re not quite sure what to look at first.

The GAP doesn’t make that mistake. Their ads are like a Zen garden with a single rock, surrounded by neat and tidy sand. You really notice the rock. Your eye can only really go to the rock. And the rock looks good.

Life needs more white space.

At least that is the argument of Leo Babauta, author of a blog called zenhabits. His post on white space hit home with me. Where is the white space in my life? Certainly I make plenty of room for white space on the cards and scrapbook pages I create. But what about the rest of my life? It seems messy and cluttered and crazy, with all sorts of pretty and colorful and (often) important things competing for my attention.

I crave white space. But since I have a brain that is hard to shut off, a broad range of interests and a hefty curiosity to explore those interests, two small children, one grown husband, a golden retriever puppy, and chronic insomnia, the metaphorical white space of my life gets quickly filled with stuff. Instead of being a nice, clean GAP advertisement, my life feels like a carnival of fast rides and relentless music and whirls of color and pattern and motion. It has LOTS of stuff in it, and I love most of that stuff.

And therein lies my conundrum.

After reading Babauta's article, I realized that a desire for white space motivates my desire to purge my home of junk. But the difficulty of such purging frustrates me at every turn. A lot of the junk in my house simply isn’t mine to purge. It’s George’s or the boys’ junk. While I can certainly exert some parental authority over the boys’ junk, George is unlikely to take kindly to my tossing his stuff, even if he’s not touched that stuff in twenty years. It’s his, and he’s very territorial. But then, so am I. If he ever entered my craft room with an eye to purge, I’d go nuclear on his butt.

So no matter how hard I work at it or how much time I spend organizing and cleaning, my house will NOT have enough white space. The only practical way to fix this incongruity between desire and reality is this: create pockets of white space in my house and life by making my own little Zen gardens of peace and simplicity.

Recently, I purged my clothes and wrote about it here. No longer are my drawers and closet full of mess. With more than enough storage space (I’m utilizing less than half the space in my drawers and less than a quarter of my hanging space), choosing clothes is an entirely pleasant experience now.

My make-up drawer needs another purge. I did this about two years ago, and what a pleasant way to start each morning! Since then, gradually, clutter has taken over again, and it’s time to re-instate a little white space. My car, my craft room, my silverware drawer, and my bedside table are all places where I can make room for white space.

This piecemeal approach to white space seems worthwhile to me: a happy compromise. If my whole life were a Zen garden, I would most definitely get bored and lonely and start craving the carnival. But with zones of white space where I can breathe and not feel crowded or confused, perhaps I’ll find a little balance throughout my day.

Babauta's article also talks about creating white space in schedules. We don’t have to schedule every minute of our lives. In fact, not leaving white space in our schedule is downright unhealthy. We all need time to relax and unwind, regroup and center ourselves. Even God took a break on the seventh day of creation. Yet so many people act like there’s something wrong with blanks in their schedule.

Adults have always engaged in the rat race of careers to varying degrees depending on the nature of their career, but when did parents start projecting their own rat-race schedule onto kids? Children run from activity to activity in a rush to gather “experiences” or “skills.” For some children, it’s a different activity each day of the week. Other children do one activity that requires all seven days of the week. When do they eat dinner or do their homework? How do they get the twelve hours of sleep kids need? When do they spend time with their immediate family? When do they have a chance to relax and simply be children?

I remember hours, days, weeks, months of my childhood spent mostly in the company of other children or by myself, being creative and using my imagination and laughing and playing and moving free of structure and close adult supervision. I also remember nightly sit-down meals with my family. These are memories I treasure. Somehow, I learned to play nicely on a team without ever being on a “team.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying kids shouldn’t do organized activities or sports, though I would like to see the organizers of sports for children recognize that they sometimes go overboard with training and schedules. I just think that kids deserve down time, some time daily to rest and to be creative in whatever way their spirit moves them, without grown-ups supervising and coaching and expecting a good performance from them.

They need some time to breathe.

Don’t we all need time to breathe?

White space doesn’t have to be alone space, either. Often, it’s just an opportunity to relax in good company, with no agenda or expectations. I sometimes try to make coffee dates with friends who cannot find an hour in their schedule for weeks or months on end. I know exactly how they feel. When I found myself last week thinking I’d beg off of a regular coffee group because I was just too busy, I slapped myself (metaphorically) and went anyway. I was glad I did. It was an hour of peace and laughter and fellowship that lightened my heart and, ironically, made me more productive the rest of the day.

Take an hour to sit and breathe, and get more done in less time the rest of the day. What a concept!

Ironically, we often need to schedule these times of white space in order to see them as important and valuable to our whole lives. We can’t wait to find white space in the busyness of the day. Schedule family meals, take five minutes to sit at your desk at work and breathe deeply, taste your food rather than gulping it down. White space is really just about focusing on something simple yet important in a relaxed and peaceful way.

If anything positive comes out of the recession, I hope it’s a renewed sense of balance between white space and the carnival of life. Many people can no longer afford to play all the carnival games and ride all the carnival rides, and even those who can still afford the full carnival experience seem to be re-evaluating what’s important in life. Perhaps slowing down and savoring the white space in our lives will help us regain some perspective.

How do you make white space in your life? Your children’s lives? Do you feel you get enough white space? Why or why not? What could you do (or not do) to claim a little white space?

Out of the Closet

In spring and fall every year, I enact a ritual older than Twiggy: the Seasonal Wardrobe Shift. In spring, I put all my warm, fleecy clothes into storage bins emptied of all my short, cottony cool clothes, which take their place in my drawers and closet.

Ah, the thrill of clothes! The joy of thinking about what pieces you need to refresh your wardrobe for a new season! The adventure of shopping!

Bah, humbug.

I used to love clothes and spent many hours thinking about them, perusing fashion magazines to see all the clothes that I couldn’t afford, and shopping for knock-off designer items that both fit and looked great on me.

Then I had kids. Kids killed the fashion buzz for me. First, breastfeeding left me wanting to wear oversized comfortable clothes, a preference that has stuck with me for the last six-and-a-half years since I cut Jack off from the boob. Second, stay-at-home life doesn’t motivate great clothing choices because whole weeks go by when the only adults you see are your spouse and the checkout folks at the grocery, who are generally wearing highly unattractive aprons themselves and hardly inspire you to break out a dress, heels, and panty hose. Third, clothes shopping—shopping of any kind, actually—with infants and toddlers and preschoolers and elementary-age kids is painful to the nth degree and must be avoided at all costs.

Lately, however, I’ve been reading Susan Wagner's Friday Playdate blog. Susan writes about fashion for several online magazines. She’s a real mom who likes to look great and likes to help other real moms look great, too. She doesn’t promote $500 skirts; she writes whole articles about finding great stuff at Old Navy.

She’s my kind of person.

Susan has written about how purging your closet of everything except what you can and will wear actually leads to greater wardrobe choices and more fun mixing and matching. Having less, according to Susan, gives you more choices. I decided to trust her advice and last week carried out the Great Closet Purge.

First, I took everything—absolutely every piece of clothing, belt, shoe, slip, sock, and nightgown—out of my closet and drawers and piled them on my bed. Then I politely asked them a few questions.

And yes, I do talk to my clothes. Don't you?

Question #1 Have I worn you in the last two years? If not, but you are wearable, you go into the donation bag. If a hobo would be ashamed to be seen wearing you, you’re going into the trash.

About 70 percent of my wardrobe disappeared with this question. So many of these pieces were clothes I wore before Nick was conceived almost 12 years ago. I will never again have a 21-inch waist. Heavens, I even had belts from that time in my life…eight of them. Why, oh why, have I clung to these clothes for so long?

Question #2 Do you fit me right now? If you don’t fit now but a 10-15 pound weight loss would let me wear you, then you go into a storage bin.

My goal this winter is to shed the weight I have gained in the last year. I’m exercising again, which is a step in the right direction, and fall is usually a very busy time that keeps me from munching between meals. Because this is a realistic goal, I have no problems holding onto these items…just not in my closet or drawers where they clutter things up and distract me from what I can wear right now.

Question #3 If you fit me right now, can I be seen in public wearing you? If yes, let me hang you in my closet or put you in my drawer. If no, you’re going in the trash.

I expected to have three articles of clothing left to wear but was surprised at how much I have for fall and winter that is wearable and in decent shape. Mainly, I could use a few new pairs of shoes and a couple of tops, but I don't even need those urgently.

In the spring, however, if I haven’t lost weight, I’m going to have to go shopping or go nekkid. That’s because the few—very few—summer clothes that survived the purge are just barely this side of acceptable, and then, only if you are a hobo. By the time cooler weather gets here, they will have to be tossed.

I do, however, have quite a few crop pants and shorts in the lose-weight-and-wear-these storage bin. No shirts, though. Not one. So shopping is definitely in my future.

Susan also reminded me that I can have clothes altered, and as I carried out the Great Wardrobe Purge, I found a nice cream blazer from the ‘80s that fits really well (it was too big back then), but the huge shoulder pads make it look dated. It’s fully lined, so it’ll take a professional to snip those suckers out. A fleece skirt needs to be hemmed, too. They are good pieces, and a tailor can take care of both for less money than it would cost to replace them.

For now, however, the Great Closet Purge of 2010 has served me well. I’ve actually worn dresses twice in the past week because there is now so little in my closet that it is easy to see that I do, indeed, have several dresses for hot weather.

It’s sort of embarrassing that it took me 43 years to figure this closet thing out. But I feel so liberated from worry about clothes. No anxiety, no stress. This must be the honeymoon period. I expect the golden glow of self-satisfaction will evaporate the first time I go to the shoe store in search of all-purpose, comfortable black winter shoes.

In the meantime, I’ll take whatever satisfaction I can from this and thank Susan Wagner for it. Thanks, Susan, for inspiring me to get out of the closet.

What lessons have you learned about clothes? How do you keep from being stressed over wardrobe choices? Is your closet overflowing with stuff you can’t wear? Care to share the content of your closet?

Stuff and Things

Have you ever felt like you were drowning in a sea of your own stuff? I read years ago that an archeologist tried to inventory the average American home, just as archeologists had meticulously inventoried the contents of the Great Pyramids and King Tut’s tomb. The intrepid archeologist of a modern homo sapiens habitation quickly gave up because the average American home has too much stuff.

If our house gets buried in a freak sandstorm and is excavated two thousand years from now by an intrepid archeologist, I hope he or she has lots of enthusiastic graduate students to help catalog all the stuff. It might take a while.

Two things lead me to believe that our house has more stuff than the average American home. First, I’ve always been an overachiever. Second, George has a gene for hoarding that came to him via both his maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother, both of whom saw collecting stuff as essential to life.

Since George and I married almost 24 years ago, I’ve been an unpaid Inventory Manager, reorganizing an ever-increasing quantity of stuff in a fruitless attempt to fight entropy. Entropy is the force of nature that moves matter from a state of high order and energy to a state of low order and energy. It takes a bunch of energy to fight entropy and restore order.

I’ve been pouring my energy into organizing our inventory for 24 years in a monotonous cycle of chaos-order-chaos that makes me feel like Sisyphus. No matter how much time I spend organizing, the contents of our house always slide back down the hill into the pit of chaos.

For the last six months or so, I’ve neglected to organize very much, and now the house is so chaotic I simply can’t stand it anymore. I am going crazy and cleaning out and organizing and throwing out and making multiple runs to Salvation Army to shed stuff. My muscles are sore, and I am crabby.

Much of my crabbiness comes from the realization that the rest of my life will be more of the same. It will never get any better.

How have I, a woman whose general attitude toward life positively reeks of optimism and sunshine, lost hope? It’s complicated. Last week at Barnes and Noble, as I stood in line for my mocha, I saw this:


It called to me. It said, “Susan, I am yours and you are mine and we should be together for all eternity.” I was helpless under its persuasive call, and given that my sister-in-law gave me a gift card for just such splurges, I don’t even have any guilt about spending money on it.

What makes this coffee cup particularly obnoxious, however, is that I have two shelves of coffee cups in my cupboard. I ask you, how many coffee cups does a family of four need?

Answer: fewer than we have.

Another component of my despair was realizing that the stuff in the following picture is precious to me:


Here are old shaving mugs and a razor used by my grandfather and great-grandfather. At least the coffee cup is useful, but the razor should only be used by someone who is suicidal. That blade is scary-looking, isn’t it? And no one uses shaving mugs anymore. George squirts his shaving foam into his hand like everyone else does these days.

I brought the mugs and razor to live with me after my grandmother’s funeral almost a year ago, along with a bunch of other knick-knacks I did not need such as a kitchen canister set, a green cut-glass candy dish, a Marjolein Bastin jar, and a small bust of my grandmother’s hero, Abraham Lincoln. We have lots of other stuff from my family and George’s family hanging around as well. Plus, George is currently campaigning to make space in our mess for the wall-mounted moose antlers from a moose his grandfather shot, oh, a hundred years ago. They will coordinate with the stuffed duck his grandfather shot, oh, a hundred years ago that currently resides on top of George's bookshelves in our library.

The past keeps jumping into our house, just like coffee mugs. And it’s not just small stuff (although the moose antlers aren’t small). Two weeks ago I retrieved a bedroom set and grandfather clock from the old homesteads in Charlotte. Here’s the clock, which was built by my grandfather.


Isn’t it beautiful? Its colonial styling doesn’t match a single blessed room in my house, but really, that’s perfectly in keeping with any blessed room in my house. Our décor is best described as Early Modern Attic. The word eclectic is a bit too high-brow for us. What we have is a mismatched jumble of stuff. Big stuff like furniture. Little stuff like memorabilia, statues, a baby gargoyle, photographs, pillows, baskets, toys, and books…lots and lots of books. Everywhere.

Really, no one would notice the moose antlers.

As I despair of ever finishing cleaning and organizing all this stuff, I’m reminded of the quotation I put on the sidebar of this blog: “What we see depends mainly on what we look for.” I’m looking for a mess, and by golly, I’m seeing one.

So what sort of logical, optimistic, puppies-farting-rainbows perspective can I pull out of my present situation? If you’ve been reading Questioning for a while, you know I’m all about finding the silver lining. Since this problem isn’t going away, how can I look at it differently so I don’t die of despair and frustration?

First, I must recognize that not all stuff is created equal. Some of the things in our house are just that: things. They don’t have any sentimental value or practical worth to anyone under our roof, and these things need to go away. Salvation Army is a good place for many of them, at least the ones that don’t belong at the dump.

Those things that do have meaning or are at least useful deserve to stay and be loved. Who cares if Nick has a Victorian bed and dresser, Colonial desk, and Mission bookshelf in his room? Each piece is useful and necessary, and three of the four have the weight of family history behind them. Who cares if my fireplace mantle contains a couple of Willow Tree figurines, an Inukshuk from British Columbia, four family portraits, and a piece of North Carolina pottery? Each item means something to us.

Second, instead of seeing all this meaningful and useful stuff as an albatross around my neck, perhaps I should look at it as the treasure it is. I don’t get annoyed when I have to organize my craft supplies (we can analyze the twisted psychology of that another time), so why get annoyed when organizing my kitchen cabinets or the knick-knacks on my bookshelves? Instead of an inventory specialist, I think I’ll call myself a curator of a lived-in museum. That certainly puts a pleasant spin on the situation, don't you think?

Finally, next time a pretty coffee cup calls seductively to me, I probably need to shut my eyes, put my fingers in my ears, and sing LA LA LA at the top of my voice. People might stare and move away from me, but if it keeps me from buying more stuff we don’t need, it’ll be worth it.

Choosing Books

“When I get a little money, I buy books. If there is any left, I buy food and clothes.” Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1535)

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you know I spend a substantial portion of my life at Barnes and Noble Booksellers breathing in the heady smell of paper and ink and glue. (And drinking mochas. With whip cream and caramel drizzle. But that’s a totally different essay.) I also volunteer a few hours a week at our sons' elementary school library. But I don’t have to go to Barnes and Noble or a library to be surrounded by books. Plenty of books live in almost every room of my house.

This is our Library. It’s supposed to be a sitting room/parlor/living room, but in our house, it’s the Library. The two book shelves on the left are mine, and the ones on the right belong to George. I’d love it if this room were decorated with real wood furniture rather than laminated particle board, but we spend too much money on books to afford nice bookshelves.

Wow, looking at this picture gives me so many ideas for other essays. I hadn’t noticed how many cool knick-knacks with interesting stories there are on these shelves. In more ways than one, these books are the backdrop of our lives.



These are the shelves to the right of the television in our family room. Most of these are George’s books, and the “grown-up” DVDs are shelved here, too.


These are to the left of the television. Obviously, the kids’ DVDs and some games are here, but the bottom three shelves are mostly my books.


Here’s the bookshelf beside my bed. It’s mostly novels and essays and a few devotionals. The stack of hard covers beside the bookshelf consists mostly of Anne Perry mysteries (a few signed by Perry herself), with some random stuff on top. The set of red books is a 1920s children’s series called Book Trails I read as a child. I love them.

George has a matching bookshelf full of military stuff, spy novels, and triathlon magazines as well as four shelves in the family room (not pictured) of cooking magazines and cook books. I don’t use those except under dire circumstances. We have more bookshelves in the basement, and of course the boys have their own bookshelves in their rooms.

Books make me happy. Their physical presence is a comfort I can carry with me anywhere…to the pool, into the tub, on a plane, to a waiting room. They keep me company, don't fuss when dog-eared, and wait patiently for me to pick them up when the spirit moves me.

So why the heck would I want a Kindle?

At the YMCA pool recently, a woman sat on a folding chair six feet from splashing children reading (if you can call it that) something on a Kindle. She kept putting the Kindle down, like she was embarrassed, or maybe bored. Then, a few minutes later she picked it up and read a bit more. Then, she put it down again. I started wondering what sort of book would cause a person to keep putting it down. Was she reading something boring, or uncomfortable, or naughty? I was hoping for naughty.

And then I realized the most important question in this situation was “What sort of person takes a $300 electronic gadget to read by a pool? Full of splashing children?” She’s a mom (her kids went to the same preschool as mine), so presumably she knows that children, water, and electronic gadgets should never, ever be within a quarter mile of each other.

And then I realized that I was spending way too much time paying attention to what this woman was doing. It really was none of my business.

Given my Luddite tendencies, I think Kindles and Nooks and other strangely-named electronic books are signs of the coming apocalypse. They, along with television screens in grocery store checkouts and medical waiting rooms and minivans, are reinforcing our screen culture. My son is buying into this and it scares me. He daily attempts to negotiate (or sneak) extra time on the Wii and wants a portable DS so he can look at a screen all the time no matter where he goes.

When I was his age, I looked at books all the time. I would eagerly open them, read, turn the page, read some more, and always regret the need for putting them down. My imagination sparked, my brain engaged, my heart soared and plummeted with the hero’s fortunes. I couldn’t wait to turn the page to see what happened next, but I wanted to make each page last as long as possible because it was so fun. That tension created a frisson of pleasure at the turn of each page that held me captive just as it has held curious and literate people captive since the first story was captured in ink.

More hip and tech-savvy people might ask how my walking around with my nose in a book was any different from Nick wanting to walk around with his nose buried in a DS. Clearly, these people need to read more books.

I already know all the arguments for electronic books and even admit that for certain situations (traveling, heavy college textbooks, people who don’t have space for large libraries like ours) they make sense.

I do, however, wonder how this will change people’s relationship with books. In particular, how will people choose books to read? In my experience, friends recommend books, favorite authors publish new books, reviewers on NPR praise books, and I stumble across books in books stores. These things prompt me to buy. I’ve never gone trolling online for books. I always looked at brick-and-mortar stores first, and then went online.

To illustrate this point, I pulled three random books off my bedside table and thought about what made me buy each. One thing all three purchases had in common is that I stumbled across them on shelves while browsing at Barnes and Noble with a mocha in my hand.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. This one grabbed me because I liked Kingsolver’s novel Pigs in Heaven and also her essay about the Rock Bottom Remainders (a charity band that included Kingsolver, Dave Barry, Stephen King, Amy Tan, and others). I’d also read around in The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a book about where our food comes from), so the subject matter seemed interesting.

Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph T. Hallinan. There’s a deliberate typographical error on the happy orange cover that immediately grabbed my attention. (Well, I was a professional proofreader.) Then there’s the subtitle: “How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average.” Could you resist exploring that one? But never, ever judge a book by its interesting cover. I’ve done that before and been wrong about the writing. (For instance, The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. It takes dull prose to a whole new level.) I’d never heard of Hallinan before, so I picked up the book and read the introduction. Not only was the quality of the writing good, but his ideas were fascinating.

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed by Alan Alda. I grew up watching M*A*S*H, and after checking to make sure Alda could, indeed, write readable prose, I bought this one for a laugh and got much more. I reread it recently (the reason it was on my bedside table). This second reading was sparked by seeing the spine of the book on the bookshelf near my bed: a bit of serendipity that gives me joy.

Perhaps the process of downloading books to Kindles and Nooks and such will be as pleasurable as roaming shelves of a bookstore or library, but I doubt it. I do hope that people read more with the electronic book’s combination of screen appeal, compactness, and ease of book purchase. If people like looking at screens so much, perhaps it would be better to read a book than to play a mindless game. But will people make that choice? The lady at the YMCA pool sure seemed to be having a hard time getting into her book.

Certainly iPods have made it easier for people to listen to music, buy music, and carry music around with them. But I worry that too many books will languish unread in the memory chips of Kindles, which will break, get dropped, get wet, get stolen, and eventually grow obsolete.

I think I’d have a depressive breakdown if I lost all of Jane Austin in a freak pool accident. As it is now, if Pride and Prejudice gets soaked in my bubble bath, I’ll just run to Barnes and Noble, get a mocha, and search for another copy.

Who says you can’t buy happiness?

Interruptions and Some Hairy Questions

A week ago, I volunteered in Jack's first grade inclusion class, but Jack wasn't there. He spent the hour in his TEACCH (autism) classroom, so I didn't get to work with him. His TEACCH teacher had told me to stop in anytime I was in the building.

If you know anything about autism, you know how unusual this invitation is. Many people with autism have difficulty coping with breaks in routine. Surprise visits to the classroom by strangers can throw off their routine and result in everything from simple loss of focus to screaming tantrums. Jack doesn't really have tantrums, but I don't know his classmates, several of whom are more severely affected than Jack and at least one of whom has violent meltdowns.

As I stood outside the TEACCH classroom door, I wondered if I should go in. I knew how disruptive my quick visit might be, but at the same time, how will children learn to cope with interruptions in routine if they never have any? As I stood, paralyzed with indecision, I watched the teacher, who was sitting at her table doing paperwork. A child I couldn't see hadn't washed his hands well, and she told him to do it again. He screamed something at her, and she calmly said, "I am turning your card for yelling." As she walked toward the door to turn his card, she saw me and smiled.

Jack had been working on the floor doing a puzzle (something he won't do at home), and as soon as he saw me, he yelled, "Mommy! You're here!" and ran into my arms. "I love you so much, Mommy!"

It was worth any disruption to hear that.

An older boy, perhaps ten or eleven, also ran up to me and stood just a little too close. "Is that your real hair color?" he blurted out.

His aide walked up to us and told him, "When you meet someone for the first time, put out our hand and say, 'I am Joe*. What is your name?'"

Joe put out his hand, and said, "I am Joe. What is your name?"

"My name is Mrs. Raihala. It's nice to meet you, Joe."

"Is that your real hair color?"

"Yes, Joe, it is. I don't think anyone would color her hair to look like this."

"Okay."

Joe walked away, having gotten the information he wanted. The aide, teacher, and I got a good laugh.

The teacher told me what a great day Jack had, how he had already finished all his work for the day, and how much fun he'd had that morning swimming at the YMCA special education program. Mommies love to hear stuff like this.

I gave Jack another hug and told him I would see him when he got off the bus. He said, "Okay, Mommy! I love you!" and went back to his puzzle without any fuss at all. His teacher and I made eye contact and smiled. What a great transition for him!

As I walked to my car, though, I thought about Joe's socially inappropriate (and refreshingly honest) question about my hair. Mine is grayer now than it was when my sister took my profile picture. I even wrote about my gray hair (Aging Gracefully) in February. My feelings haven't changed, but Joe's question reminded me what a rebel I am to leave my gray hair alone.

Our society tells women that aging is bad and that we must mask the effects of aging at all costs. We go under the knife or paralyze our faces to erase wrinkles, nip and tuck sagging flesh, and generally pretend that time isn't passing.

I've earned every gray hair on my head and every line of crow's feet around my eyes. I could pitch a violent tantrum at the inevitable effects of time, especially given my recent 43rd birthday. I could spend lots of money and time fighting the inevitable.

Instead, I'm opting out of society's expectations because it's cheaper and easier to have gray hair. Opting out is a theme in my life right now, something I plan on writing about in the next few months. How do we decide what to opt out of and what to embrace? How do our priorities get warped or shaped by society's expectations? When should we opt into society's expectations? After all, society tells us not to lie, cheat, steal, or kill, so it's not always wrong.

As with most good questions, I think there are lots of right answers. It all depends on your perspective, and everyone has a different perspective. I'd love to hear your comments about opting out. What societal expectations turn you into a rebel? When is it easier, more comfortable, and even more appropriate to accept what society tells you?


*Name changed for privacy