This morning there was a bird singing outside my window. It started its tuneless song at 5a.m. I tried to ignore it and then, knowing I was done sleeping, I tried to identify it. It didn’t quite have the car alarm song of a mockingbird, but it didn’t have the charming melody of any of a dozen less annoying birds. I finally decided it must be a gray catbird. At 7 a.m. it was still singing, and I abandoned my bed.

Around 4p.m. I noticed that same song endlessly repeating outside the kitchen window. It reminded me of a woman I knew when I was a kid. She was hopelessly tone deaf, but insisted on singing in the church choir. She enthusiastically overpowered the other choir members with her persistently off-key rendition of each song. There was no drowning her out. It was clear that she loved to sing, however, and no amount of teasing, mocking, or cajoling ever silenced her. As a kid I found her ridiculous. As an adult I kind of admire her commitment.

So the damn catbird is still singing. I am wishing it were a bit more tuneful, but you have to appreciate its persistence. That said, tonight I’ll be sleeping with the windows closed.

 

I am about to sound like a snob.  You’ve been warned.

I am taking a fiction writing class online as part of my Language & Literature degree.  Everyone in the class is pursuing a degree in English or Creative Writing or L&L like me.  Every week we have to write discussion posts about various topics like memorable literary characters, or qualities of an captivating setting.  Usually we are required to provide examples and support our position–basic college level work.

Here comes the snobbery…

I am disturbed by what my fellow classmates’ choose for reading material and horrified by what they haven’t bothered to read.  I have classmates who are touting the literary merits of the Twilight series.  I have classmates who thought reading The Great Gatsby was a chore.  The will read Dan Brown’s novels but the will not read Brave New World or Lord of the Flies or The Call of the Wild.  I praised Jane Eyre as one of my favorite novels and four–FOUR–of the eighteen people in the class had read it.  Now, I’m no academic, but I consider myself pretty well-read.  I am well-read because I love literature and I have an appreciation for the English language, and that’s why I’m pursuing a degree in those subjects.  How can these people who think Fifty Shades of Gray is good literature be majoring in English?!

And I haven’t even begun to tell you about their writing ability!  I make spelling mistakes.  I occasionally misuse words and I an certainly no grammar Nazi.  I can, however, string a series of words together in a sentence that makes sense.  I can then put those sentences together into cohesive paragraphs.  This is something I knew how to do by the time I completed third grade.  Not my current classmate, though.  Nope.  I find myself reading and re-reading their contributions to the class and still not understanding what they are trying to say.

Two things about this concern me greatly.  First, if this is indicative of the level of elementary and secondary education in this country then we are in some serious shit.  Secondly, if this is the level of ability that online education caters to and the type of person to which it will eventually award degrees, then there are a hell of a lot of poorly educated adults walking around the good old U.S. of A. with college degrees.  That’s scary.  Very scary.

Snobby rant completed.

The little girl is unsure of herself on skates.  She eases onto the ice, staying close to the rink wall. She glides, stumbles, pinwheeling her arms, and I am sure she is going to fall.  There is a boy skating backwards in front of her, though, who reaches out and steadies her.  He holds her hand, leaning in to speak to her.  A moment later he is showing her how to propel herself forward, arms out to the side for balance.  He skates along with her–backwards so he can catch her if need be–offering advice and encouragement.  I see him clowning for her, and the girl laughs.  She is still unsteady, but she seems less tentative.  They are the most adorable couple on the ice.

The boy, of course, is my Ben.  He has always been a good boy, but he is something altogether wonderful when he is with his friends.  He is particularly charming with Isabel.  They have been friends since infancy, and I love watching them together.  They are so comfortable in each other’s company, but what I enjoy the most is seeing who my son becomes with her.  He is kind and solicitous, funny and self-deprecating, and always a gentleman.  He is, in a word, awesome.

Megan goes through a similar transformation with her friends.  All her insecurities seem to vanish as she becomes talkative and outgoing and hilariously funny.  She draws out the shy kids and reigns in the rowdies.  She is the one who coordinates events and merges diverse personalities into interesting and dynamic groups.  At work she is responsible, dependable, creative, and mature.  I watch her and I am amazed by the well-rounded young lady she has become.

I wish I could take credit for these lovely personalities, but I am thinking they became who they are in spite of me.  I am thrilled that they are mine, though, and content to watch them continue to grow into themselves.

Before I begin my little story, let me just remind everyone of the first rule of customer service: The customer is always right.

Okay, so I am a person who hates confrontation. I hate it.  HATE. IT.  I will go to great lengths to avoid it.  Everyone once in awhile, however, something will tick me off just enough that I am willing to get in someone’s face.  Today it was the dummy at the local Dunkin Donuts.  Megan wanted to buy a couple of drinks for herself and a friend before heading into work.  We went through the drive-thru, gave them our order which they repeated back to us, and pulled up to the window to pay.  The girl at the window took our money and handed us the drinks.

The drinks were clearly not what we’d ordered.

“Are these caramel mocha lattes?” I asked.

“Yes,” the girl replied.  We pulled out, Megan took a sip, and declared that they were, in fact, caramel, but there was a definite lack of mocha.

I pulled a U-y, and sent Meg in to get the drinks fixed.  She returned a few minutes later, clearly agitated and informed me that the girl had been rude to her.  We headed towards work, and on the way Meg noticed that the drinks had been made incorrectly again.  It was too late, however, to go back a second time.

After I dropped the girl off at work, I headed back to Dunkin Donuts.  Now, I know this is a minor thing, and I probably should have just let it go, but I was mad.  Making a mistake is one thing.  Making two is annoying, but it’s still just a mistake.  Being rude to a customer, though, who simply asks you to correct  your error is not okay, and being needlessly rude to one of my kids is not now and never will be okay.  Ever.

I went in and calmly asked to speak with the girl working the window.  She came over and immediately declared, “This is about the lattes, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said.  ”You got it wrong again, and I don’t appreciate you being rude to my daughter.”

“I didn’t make the drinks,” she said.

“Um, I really don’t care who made the drinks.  I do care that you were rude.  I’d like to know what you’re going to do about this.”

“I was just working the window.  It’s not my problem,” she replied.

Really?! I took a moment to breathe.  ”Is there a manager here?”

There was no manager, but there was a senior employee who very appropriately diffused the situation quickly with an apology and an offer of another round of drinks, which I declined.  I got the manager’s number, thanked the senior employee and headed out feeling slightly better if not completely mollified.

Now, I totally understand that working fast food jobs is hard, and customer service can be trying.  I get having a bad day, being frustrated, feeling defensive.  I get it.  But giving somebody attitude when it’s your mistake is just something you cannot do if  you want to keep your job.  And giving someone attitude when they call you on giving someone attitude is just digging your own grave, don’t you think?  The good new is, you can’t drive two blocks around here without running into a Dunkin Donuts, so avoiding the Dunkin Dummy’s store will not be a problem for me.  Meg and I will not be without our donuts and lattes!

My therapist (yes, I have one) suggested to me that I should start journaling again.  Apparently he missed the part of our conversation where I told him I would love to sit down and write, but when I do I have nothing to say.  It’s a problem.  He–the therapist–says I shouldn’t worry about recording daily minutiae (my word, not his), but should focus on emotions instead.  Again, I don’t think he was paying attention when I told him my emotional state is the problem.  The pervading emotion is a flat hopelessness.  What can I say about that?

Do you ever get the feeling that people, especially “professionals” have these pat answers that they hand out to everyone?  They are just following a pattern that generally works for them or their clients, and so they don’t really bother addressing individual situations?  I’ve been to enough therapists over the years to know exactly what they are going to tell me to do about my “issues.”  Keeping a journal is one of the standard suggestions, along with getting some exercise, “shutting down” the negative thoughts, eating better, and finding a hobby to occupy my time.  I would like to tell him/them (and perhaps I will if I am feeling braver the next time we chat) that I am not stupid, and if the solution to my problem were that simple I wouldn’t be looking to pay someone like him exorbitant amounts of money to help me.  If I barely have enough motivation to get up out of bed in the morning, does he really think I’m going to find enough to go to the gym?  If I could squeeze a positive thought into my head more than once a week would I need him at all?  If I had a single literary inspiration does he think I would hesitate to write it down?

Okay, so that fact that I am sitting here “journaling” my frustration is something.  A small step, perhaps.  I will thank my therapist for pissing me off enough to get me to write these few lines.   Maybe anger is better than hopelessness, I don’t know.  What do you think?  I’ll try to hold on to it a little longer and maybe tomorrow I can write another tirade against… I dunno… the pointlessness of journaling, perhaps.

I’ve started postcrossing again after a hiatus of several years.  It’s such a simple thing, but so enjoyable on a number of levels.  I like the social aspect–getting to know a little bit about people that normally I wouldn’t meet.  I like that it is a global activity and that I am reaching out around the world and people are reaching back to me.  It is an academic pursuit; I am learning not only about people but about cultures, geography, politics, music, art, and language.  It is also a creative endeavor, especially when I find someone who enjoys handmade cards.  Then I get to pull out my craft supplies and make something new, something original–a one of a kind treat.  And there’s nothing I like better than receiving a similar treasure from someone else.

So… here is my first handmade card.  The pages are from a Steinbeck novel (don’t worry–the book binding was broken and it was destined for the dump, but I saved it and I’m happily repurposing), for other book lovers out there like me.  As soon as I start receiving postcards again, I’ll post pictures of them here as well.  You can see some that I received previously by visiting my profile.

I’m not exactly sure how you’d categorize this…

Graphic quote?

Fan art?

Dorkiness at its finest?

Yeah, I dunno, but I made it, I like it, and I’m posting it.  Game of Thrones lovers will get it.

…You do get it, don’t you?

Last night I dreamed I was drowning, a rare but not unheard of theme for my subconscious.  This happens to me every once in awhile; I wake up tangled in the sheets and gasping for breath, shaken by whatever fever-brained trial I have just endured.  In this most recent episode I was way down deep in the water, trying to surface but making agonizingly slow progress upwards.  My lungs were burning.  Panic was rapidly setting in.  I tried to swim faster, but already knew in the back of my mind that there was no way I’d make it in time.  The moment abruptly came when I knew I was going to take a breath despite the fact I was still underwater.  I fought the urge for a second longer and then, resigned, I breathed in deeply…  I expected to drown.  I expected the water drawn into my lungs to painfully suffocate me.  Instead all I felt was the astonishing relief of that “final” breath in, and a sudden and total elation.  I could breathe! Underwater!  How amazing, I thought giddily, as I continued my assent.

Several times today I caught myself with my breathing so shallow, my chest so tight with worry I might as well have not been breathing at all.  I had to stop, close my eyes, and force myself to breathe—draw a breath deep into my lungs and let it go.  Let it all go.  Underwater or not, I have to breathe.  And to breathe—just to breathe—can be such a pleasure, a balm, a release.  L. Frank Baum said, “Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.”  This is sage advice.  The world is full of worries.  There is not much in my control.  But I can take a breath and let it out again.  I can be calm and I can be content.  Something as simple as that can clear away the sadness.

Writing about it now it all sounds very Zen, doesn’t it?  Ha ha!  That isn’t me at all.  No, this is just today’s little epiphany; that a breath can equal freedom, a small respite from woe.

As Robert Louis Stevenson said (I am not above stealing other people’s wisdom in the absence of my own), “The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you.  Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”

He’s right, you know.

Now don’t forget to breathe.

That’s it!  I am banning my husband from saying, “Things will get better soon.”  It’s a trick.  It’s a lie.  It’s the one thing I have found I am superstitious about.  Every time he says it I cringe and duck and look anxiously around, waiting for the next great calamity to strike.  Nothing will bring on a panic attack quicker than someone, particularly my husband, promising me that things will get better soon.

Bankruptcies, foreclosures, hurricanes and heartache have all followed on the heels of this ridiculous prediction.  I swear, it’s the clearest indication of impending disaster that I know of.

When I was a kid my family took a road trip.  We drove from Colorado to Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah, then down through Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico before heading home.  As we zipped down long straight miles of highway my mother would often remark, “We’re making good time now,” shortly after which a siren would be heard behind us, and my father would receive a ticket for speeding.  It happened over and over.  And over.  A ticket in nearly every state.  A ticket after each utterance of, “We’re making good time now.”

As we crossed from New Mexico back into Colorado my mother said, “We’re making good…”

“DON’T!” my father interjected.  ”Don’t say it.”

I was surprised at the time at how angry he was at this seemingly harmless phrase.

I understand him now.

“Things will get better soon,” my husband whispers soothingly to me after each disaster, and I want to shake him and say, “Really?!  You still believe that?  Cuz I’m pretty sure you’ve just jinxed us again, and whatever you thought was about to go right is going to go horribly wrong now.”  It’s my terrible pessimistic nature that makes me think so, I know.  It has become, for me, a self-fulfilling prophecy of just the opposite.  Oh, I know, we’ve survived a lot over the last few years–’survived’ being the key word here–and what I should be is grateful, thankful, amazed at how well we’re doing, how fortunate we are to have loving family and friends, and how lucky we are to have so much and suffer so little.

I know that’s what I should think…

Well, it’s the last day of 2012, and I was hoping to start 2013 with a clean slate, but that, it seems is not in the cards for us.  Oh well.  We will survive, no doubt, regardless.  I am loathe to make any resolutions beyond a hope to make more progress this year than last.  I’m pretty sure that all that it will take to make that so is this one thing: please, please, please don’t tell me that things will get better soon!