Wii

“These things are fun and fun is good.” - Dr. Seuss

I am a serious person who tends to take herself way too seriously. Raised in a home of hardworking perfectionists, this acorn didn’t fall far from the tree. I’m a nose-to-the grind-stone, no nonsense type, who is quick to judge and hard to please. Add high personal standards and more than a dash of perfectionism, and you’ve got someone who has a hard time lightening up.

I don’t do well at telling jokes and I’m really bad at just hanging around. I’m not one for office water cooler chatter and any notion of how to play a practical joke completely escapes me. I’ve never been good at games - in fact, they annoy me. (Thankfully, my husband and children do not share these characteristics, so on family vacations and holidays, they are more than happy to wile away hours laughing and playing cards, while I sit in the corner reading – glad to be near their happy voices – but wondering, “How can they do that for so long?”)

These things said, it won’t surprise you to hear that I don’t like exercising. I like physical activity – gardening, biking, hiking, walking my dogs - goal oriented activities with a distinct beginning, middle and end. I don’t like exercising just for exercise sake. That doesn’t stop me from slogging it out at the Y on the stepping machine three or four times a week, getting that recommended 20 minutes in. I still do it - I just don’t enjoy it – at all.

One of my new year’s resolutions was to lighten up, find some joy and stop taking things so seriously. So, on my kids’ recommendation (and with Mr. Clark’s okay, times still being tight as they are…) I used some of my Christmas money to buy a Nintendo Wii and two games – Wii Fit Plus and Dance Dance Revolution, Hottest Party 3. And, oh my Lord, has that ever done the trick – at least where exercise and self-importance is concerned!

It is virtually impossible to take oneself seriously when one sees oneself - actually one’s Mii (a little character in the game you design to look just like yourself) flopping around on an iceberg in a penguin suit, jumping for fish and way too often, falling into the water. My Mii looks equally foolish flapping unevenly through the air, swooping and falling erratically, while dressed in a chicken suit. And, don’t even get me started on how silly me and my Mii look in our drum major outfit, leading the band, or in our ski jump gear, rolling head over heels down the ski slope after yet another unbalanced take-off.

The Wii fit thing comes with a board and some hand controllers. You stand on the board and hold the controllers while you flail about trying to play the games. One of the real highlights of the thing is that every time you get ready to play the games, it weighs you, gives you some balance, agility or focus tests, then tells you your Wii age for the day. My best age so far was 40 – not bad, given that I’m 52; my worst age is 67. I’m not sure what was going on that day…

In addition, your Mii gets fatter or thinner, depending on what the scale in the board reports, and a cute little voice either congratulates you for losing weight or says things like, “Ohhh, that’s overweight!” Talk about Weight Watchers with an edge. A room full of real humans weighing in has nothing on that little Wii voice and that ever fatter or thinner Mii!

As for Dance Dance – my, oh my! If you’ve got dancing skills like mine and nearly no sense of rhythm, you can really have some fun, burn off some calories and look ridiculous trying to keep up with the little arrows on the screen that tell your feet what they should be doing on the big pad you flail around on while watching video clips of the songs you’re “dancing” to.

You can pick anything from ‘80s hits like Duran Duran’s “Hungry Like a Wolf” and New Kids on the Block’s “The Right Stuff” to Rianna’s “Dilerious” and “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. All I can say, is if you’re as dance-move and rhythm-impaired as me, shut the drapes and close the door because no one wants to see how much fun you’re having looking so bad!

So far, my dance, balance and agility skills seem to be improving – slowly, but steadily – while my sense of self-importance is beginning to decrease. There are some days when I can’t wait to get home, don that penguin suit with my Mii, lighten up and have some fun. Even though I still go to the Y, the drudgery of it has lessened because now the little Mii voice in my head says encouraging things like (in the words of Dr. Seuss) “You’re in pretty good shape, for the shape you are in,” which will help melt seriousness, as well pounds (we hope), away.

Clutter

Twenty years is a long time. It’s an especially long time to go without cleaning out your drawers, closets and cubbies; and, that is exactly what I’ve done. Initially my excuse was that I was too busy - the kids were little, I was working, and there was a lot going on. The next excuse was that I was still too busy – the kids were in high school, I was working more, and there was still a lot going on. After that the kids went to college, I was still busy, so all those drawers, closets, nooks, crannies and cubbies stayed cluttered.

Most lately, my excuse for letting what was once clutter turn into chaos has been that I had to work all the time because Mr. Clark was down-sized and the job search wasn’t going well. Now that Mr. Clark is employed again, I am taking a break from overwork and my primary goal is to regain control of my life, one room at a time. It’s a daunting task, but it really is time!

I started with the kitchen, which was a good choice because it was evident there that I had crossed the line from chaos to crazy. The pantry had some items in it with expiration dates in the late ‘80’s. In one of the four junk drawers, I found my cork collection. Why I saved hundreds of wine and champagne corks is beyond me; I think it had to do with a picture of a bulletin board made from corks I saw in a magazine years ago…Good bye cork collection!

The contents of another junk drawer included five rolls of electric tape - all half used, four bales of thin wire – also half used, six boxes of emergency candles – I guess I was expecting quite an emergency, a bunch of new and half-used birthday candles – all out of the box, seven bottles of various types of glue – all too old and hard to use, and several toy Crash Test Dummy heads and bodies – broken and in need of some of that tape, wire and glue. My married, adult children haven’t played with Crash Test Dummies since they were in the third grade, so that tells you how long that drawer had been neglected.

In my desk, I found 10 rolls of scotch tape, some 32-cent stamps, a couple of my son’s school progress reports – from the eighth grade, several menus from restaurants that went out of business in the mid-‘90’s, about 500 loose paper clips and thumb tacks, and a fine collection of warrantee cards and instruction booklets for appliances and tools that have long since died and gone to household heaven…Good Lord! How nutty do I really need to be?

Five large trash bags, four bulging Goodwill bags, two big rolls of shelf paper, and eight drawer organizers later things are looking pretty good in the kitchen. I still have to give everything a thorough cleaning and I may even decide to repaint the walls…It’s just a start, but it feels good to begin to regain control.

During a break in my kitchen rampage, I read an article by a woman who calls herself “the most organized person on Earth.” Deniece Schofield is her name and she writes books and conducts seminars on getting organized. Not surprisingly, she has some pretty good tips:

- Working room by room, put things in four boxes – Trash, Donate, Goes to Another Room and Don’t Know Yet. Put the Don’t Know Yet box in the garage or attic, and if you’ve not opened it six months later, donate or trash the contents. (I’m eliminating the Goes to Another Room box and the Don’t Know Yet box to streamline my process…)

- Store infrequently used objects. The tendency is to leave them in easily accessible spots, which creates clutter. (This means the card table chairs that have been collecting dust in a kitchen corner for two years have to find a new home…)

- Use drawer dividers. (Amen!)

- Find an organizing buddy to help keep you motivated and on track. (“No! You don’t need to keep those beaters, in case the mixer they go to shows up,” says Mr. Clark…)

And last, but by no means least: Eliminate floating bits of paper. This is a big one for me, as I have newspaper clippings, magazine articles, recently and not-so-recently paid bills, notes to myself, letters to write, to-do lists, and who knows what else – in piles everywhere. I even have a closet full of Nordstrom and Macy’s bags – the big ones with the handles – that contain piles of “floating bits of paper” that I have scooped up in an attempt to create space (and look less crazy) before company arrives…Ms. Schofield would be appalled.

I don’t know why I keep all these things. I think it has to do with being a sentimental person who is often worried about impending disaster. It’s as if by keeping things in piles and rarely-opened drawers, I’m keeping memories alive or feeling more prepared. Of course, that’s not the case; it just creates clutter. So, from here on out it’s the Schofield plan for me. After all, it’s never to late to change!

Holly Trees

“My husband and I never considered divorce – murder perhaps, but not divorce.”

– Dr. Joyce Brothers

Our front yard looks like a tornado blew through – the signs of destruction are everywhere. Huge piles of holly limbs, branches and other shrubbery fill the area between the sidewalk and the street, forming a berm so high you can barely see over it. Where stately old holly trees and large mature shrubbery once stood, now there are only barren jagged stumps. The welcoming canopy that used to soften the height of our columns and muffle the size of our house is gone – replaced by a barren wasteland that screams, “This old house needs to be painted, and caulked, and patched up, and fixed - Now!”

It was not an act of God that did all this; it was Mr. Clark. In a matter of only a few hours, my husband and his tiny electric chain saw managed to ruin 20-plus years of carefully tended front yard neglect – a look I worked hard to achieve and was quite fond of.

I am from Colorado, where things don’t grow the way they do here. It is much drier there and the winters are harsh. In Colorado, unless you’re a farmer battling an invasive weed, you don’t pull it up or cut it back; you just let it be. This is a place where people actually plant privet - on purpose. Moving from a lean landscape like that to Georgia’s verdant green amazed me, and 22 years later, I am still not used to the lushness that surrounds me.

I can’t believe I cut gardenias anytime I want from the bushes that thrive in my yard and bring huge bouquets of hydrangeas inside all summer long. And, I’ve never gotten used to the sight of my camellia bushes covered with blooms - in February! Before moving to Georgia, I had no idea so many different kinds of birds could nest in one yard, and the only cardinals I’d seen in the winter were on Christmas cards.

For these and other reasons, I’m not a fan of the neatly trimmed landscape. Give me wild, overgrown and slightly un-kept. Let me see butterflies flitting from flower to flower - even if some of those flowers are weeds. And, let me hear the birds sing – even if some of them nest in holes they’ve pecked in our columns and eaves.

Don’t look for me with a rake as soon as the first fall colors appear; and don’t expect to hear my leaf blower, blowing hour after hour, as the battle with leaves goes on and on, until that final leaf falls. I am not a fan of the neatly kept lawn; and, to be brutally honest, the sight of a perfectly edged lawn creeps me out – like, that is SO not what Mother Nature intended when she created grass.

I’m not being judgmental; I’m just saying there are different styles of yard management and mine errs in the direction of “less is more.” Why spend all that time trying to rein in nature? Why not just enjoy her as she is?

Mr. Clark has been talking about taking down those holly trees and cutting back those unruly old shrubs for years. And, for years I’ve been putting him off, with things like, “Not this year, maybe next…” or “You don’t really have time for a project like that…”

This year his insistence became more and more firm, and so, in a rare move for me, I gave in. Part of me felt like, “If he really feels this strongly about it…..” and part of me felt like, “Is this really a marital fight worth taking on?” It turns out, it was. As soon as the first holly tree came down, I was devastated. By the time he hacked the first big old shrub nearly to the ground, I was in tears.

“Does this look like an improvement to you?” I cried. “Yes, it does!” was his reply. And, so he went on to take down the second holly tree and hack down the other old shrub, dragging their dead carcasses to the curb like a victorious hunter.

The birds who used to spend their days in those holly trees flitted from the phone line to the remaining bushes, calling frantically – their once well-sheltered feeders either gone or standing brazenly out in the open - as if to say, “Hey, Mr. Hawk! Come get me!”

My tears continued and when night fell it made me very sad to see so many of the birds I used to see at my holly tree feeders flitting for shelter in the pile of dead holly limbs by the street…Mr. Clark and I had a big fight that night and aren’t quite done being “too quiet” with each other yet.

Marriage is hard sometimes because (at least between Mr. Clark and me) it’s never the big stuff that matters – it’s the little things like holly trees and shrubbery. Judith Viorst said, “One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love…it keeps you together until you fall in again.” And, she’s right. Spring will come and in no time, those jagged stumps will start sprouting again…

Why

“Breathe, pray, be kind…In dark times, give off light.” - Anne Lamott

I never know how to react to a major disaster like the earthquake in Haiti. It feels like I should do something grand – more grand than write a $30 check to the Red Cross. In the face of the ongoing news coverage of devastation and death, it feels like the things I fill my days with shouldn’t matter – like I should be doing more. How can I spend a Sunday reorganizing my pantry when there is unimaginable pain and suffering going on in a place not so very far away?

These are the kinds of thoughts that fill my head anytime I read or hear about death, destruction or disaster. War, the wars all over the world…children, civilians and soldiers suffering pain and injury…a hurricane…a plane crash…a flood…a suicide bomber in a market…I have a strong faith and I believe God watches over us, but I have never been able to resolve the reason behind catastrophe.

One of my favorite authors is Anne Lamott. She writes with clarity, wisdom and humor about life’s big questions and small situations. In her book Plan B, Further Thoughts on Faith, she wrestles with the war in Iraq by saying: “We remember that God is present wherever people suffer. God’s here with us when we’re miserable, and God is there in Iraq. The suffering of innocent people draws God close to them. Kids hit by bombs are not abandoned by God.”

I like that thought and I call it to mind when my brain begins to spin about “bad things happening to good people”…Suffering draws God close to them. In the ER (where I work part-time as a social worker) we see plenty of bad things happen to good people, and it is easy to get caught up in asking, “Why?”

Why does that miserable, mean-spirited, angry 62-year-old drunk get to keep on living, while a young father of two is killed in a car wreck? Why does the abusive mother of six get to keep having kids, while one of the nicest, sweetest, kindest nurses in the ER pays for fertility treatment after failed fertility treatment?

Why is the single mother of two battling breast cancer for a second time, while a habitual over-dose patient survives yet another “suicide attempt” by taking a few too many ibuprofen? Why is the long-time wife batterer in perfect health, while the loving husband of a couple married for only 15 years passes suddenly, from a completely unexpected heart attack?

Why? Why? Why?

The answer is, we don’t get to ask questions like that and expect answers. Faith doesn’t work that way. We don’t get to see the big picture. We just have to trust that God has it handled.

In the same chapter, Lamott asks: “How do we help? How do we not lose our minds?” Her pastor answers, “You take care of the suffering.” “I can’t get to Iraq,” Anne laments. “There are folks who are miserable here,” is her pastor’s reply.

And, it’s true.

“Be a ladder, be a lamp, be a life boat,” was the slogan on my desk calendar yesterday. And, boy! Did I fail miserably. It was a busy day in the ER and I got stuck dealing with one of the meanest, angriest, most manipulative black holes of a human being I have ever met. He is a legend in the ER, because he is always so difficult to deal with. On a scale of 1 to 10, his pain is always a 10. He rides his call light like a rodeo champ. He makes demands and yells and waves and curses angrily at whoever comes in his room or even walks by, and, he’s passed every mental health evaluation he’s ever had. The guy is not crazy, he’s just horrible.

Within the first 10 minutes of dealing with him, I let his darkness overtake my light and began to respond in kind. Within a half hour, I was actively being mean, cold and angry right back at him, and that made it a very long, very tiring, very angry ER day.

Jesus said whatever you do to the least of his people, you do to him. And, I did a pretty good job of beating Jesus up in the ER yesterday…I can’t go to Haiti, and I’m not going to write any really big Red Cross checks. But, I can do a better job of simply breathing and being kind to those I encounter along my way.

Homeless

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.”

-- Mother Teresa

It has been so cold, for what seems like so long – at this point I’m not sure I’ll ever be warm again. Part of it is our old house is so old and drafty; part of it is we don’t have any super cold weather clothes because it is so rarely super cold here; and, part of it is I am cold natured. I have always had a hard time feeling warm when the wind kicks up or the temperature drops below freezing.

Perhaps that is why I feel so bad for the homeless when the winter rain turns to sleet or things begin to freeze. I simply can’t imagine being homeless on a bitterly cold or relentlessly rainy night.

We see a lot of homeless people in the emergency room (where I am a social worker part-time.) Some are homeless because of mental illness or drug or alcohol abuse. Some are homeless from war traumas. More recently, some are homeless because they’ve lost jobs and houses and ways to pay the rent. They tend to be luckier and more resourceful, as the homeless go, because some still have cars to sleep in and live out of, and those who don’t are better at keeping track of things like how to get into the Salvation Army shelter and stay there night after night without missing the check-in deadline or getting kicked out.

A common thread in most homeless people’s stories is that they have no one to turn to for help. Either they’re alone in this world or they think they are. Sometimes they’ve burned all their bridges with drug and alcohol abuse or by constantly going off their mental health meds. Sometimes they really are all alone because of death or divorce or years and years of failing to meet even the most basic of expectations.

Rarely, a homeless person actually has family or an ex-wife or an estranged adult child who still cares enough to offer help when a hospital social worker calls. It comes in form of a bus ticket, a new coat or pair of boots, a meal, a ride somewhere or maybe even a place to stay for a few nights. My observation - not judgment - is most of the time the homeless person manages to mess up (yet again somehow) and end up back in the tent or box or shelter or doorway where he or she started. What a cycle to be trapped in…

It is easy to judge the homeless harshly. After all, how does a person mess up so badly that he or she ends up completely alone in this world without even a roof over his or her head? All I can say is they seem to come by their state in life honestly, for all the reasons described above. My impression is that most of the homeless would do better - if only they could. They just don’t have the tools the rest of us take for granted.

One of my coworkers in the ER, another social worker, had an epiphany the other night, about how our tendency is to judge rather than simply see. She was working with a recently crippled man who had been hurt in a work accident on a job where the boss didn’t carry workman’s comp. His back was badly injured and he ended up in a wheel chair. He didn’t have insurance at the time of the accident nor did he have any way of getting it, once his list of pre-existing conditions became an arms-length long and he lost his job and his ability to work – all because of the accident. To make things even worse, the man had two little kids he was trying to raise alone, without any apparent help from family.

Due to his chief complaint of “back pain,” the wheelchair, and his anger level, the man was quickly labeled a “pain meds seeker, ” which meant he was on the fast track for discharge without having his true needs, whatever they might be (if, indeed, he had any…) addressed.

At some point during their interaction, the man broke down and started to cry, as he told my coworker what had happened to him and how it had made his life almost unbearably difficult and complex. He told her about his frustration about not being able to provide for - or even play with - his kids; and, he talked about the big unwieldy medical care system he seemed to be plummeting through the cracks of. Something about his sincerity touched my coworker’s heart and she began to actually hear what he was saying…

“It’s much easier,” she told me later, “ to picture yourself in someone else’s shoes than to see the person standing there in his own shoes…It’s easy for me to tell that man what I would do if I were him. It’s much harder and much more challenging for me to actually figure out a way to help him from right where he is.”

I liked what she said and I took it to heart. It’s not enough for me to feel bad for the homeless; I need to do more to tangibly ease their pain. I’m not sure what form that will take, but it needs to be more substantial than the extra blanket, hot meal or bus-pass-and-sandwich-to-go I’ve been offering…It’s a welcome challenge to face, as I wait for my world to thaw.