Red Flags, White Flags, Really all the Flags

So, deciding I didn't have enough on my plate, we recently decided to adopt a rescue dog. Not super recently, as she is almost a year and we have had her for half of her life. But in the grand scheme of things, we recently adopting Lucy. 

She's a hot mess of problems. She was abandoned by her mom by a lake in Texas, the people we adopted her from in Grand Rapids could barely be considered an organization where she lived in a cigarette-smoke-filled double-wide with 6 other dogs, some turtles and who knows what else, and three days before we adopted her she apparently had hernia surgery, which the rescue facility did not find warranted even a sentence in the email correspondence we had. Suffice it to say, the poor dog has had a rough go of it. She pooped all over me twice on the ride home from Grand Rapids, threw up, and decided she would take up residence in the boys' bathroom once we got home, as that was the least scary room in the house? 

Lucy is truly a great dog (great in the way that- have you ever had a dog? You love 'em and scratch their bellies and then why are they puking in the house and what did they roll in and can they ever just stop barking at whatever that God-forsaken noise is), she takes so much of the boys' abuse; my youngest is constantly grabbing her face and scratching her chin (is that even a thing dogs like?), and my oldest is obsessed with her. She has definitely gotten me out of my shell, since now I have a RESPONSIBILITY. I take her on several walks a day, and this means I have now met my neighbors (I do realize I have lived here for 3 years and don't know my neighbors- I am not a neighbor-type person. I want to go home and sit in my house. Working retail all your life will do this.).

Today I was taking Lucy for a walk around the neighborhood, the extended version that's maybe 1.5 miles. A side effect of her upbringing is that she is a nervous dog- she hates tarps, meeting new people makes her pee everywhere, and if something scared her at a spot, she will avoid that spot perhaps forever. Sometimes I get fed up with her scaredy cat antics, and today was one of those days. We pass a house that has all those little flags in the yard so as to prevent you from digging into an electrical cable or a gas line, etc. Lucy starts pulling away. I'm saying to myself, "Self, let's make this a TEACHABLE MOMENT. We will HELP this poor dog." So I pull her over to these yellow flags and start touching them and batting at them. "It's just a flag, it won't hurt you," I repeat as I try to pull her closer. She is not having it, absolutely refusing to come any closer, despite my sweet voice and attempts at behavior modification. I keep yanking at her, and she is not graciously accepting my help, so I storm back to the house, muttering about what a dumb dog she is. 

And folks, this is when I realize something- Lucy has been electric-fence-trained by white flags at our house. She had to learn quickly that stepping past white flags meant a zap on the collar. She wasn't naturally apprehensive of white flags, but we trained her to stay away from white flags. Now the neighbor's flags were yellow, but come on she's a color blind dog. And I'm a moron.

I was struck- how often in life do we feel like we know better, know more, can help someone else out by our wisdom, experience, eagerness to help, when we don't realize what their flags are and what they mean to them? I know very well those yellow flags aren't going to zap my dog, but she doesn't. We know we aren't going to cheat on, steal from, abuse, manipulate, lie to our friends, our partners, but maybe they don't see it the same way. They see glaring white flags, warning them of danger. 

Sometimes we need to take a step back from pushing, from assuming we have all the facts, of anger that someone isn't changing, progressing quickly enough, and come to realize that we aren't all knowing and all seeing. We also have our flags. Perhaps we need to extend a little kindness, for we don't know just what flags others are learning to cope with. 

When Life Hands you Big Bad Things

On Wednesday, my husband got a phone call from his dad. He stood up and walked around the living room, "My dad is calling."

"Answer it," I reply.

"No," he says, and he sits, staring at his phone. 

A few minutes later he reads a message his dad sent, that he has named him the beneficiary of a health savings account he has with a small amount in it, with instructions to divvy it up amongst the siblings if anything were to happen to him.

"It sounds like he's going to kill himself," I say. It's just a weird out-of-nowhere message. 

"No," he replies.

On Friday, I get home a little after 11 pm, walk in the door, and take a look at my husband. He looks like a mess. 

"What is it?" I ask him. I immediate start thinking about his brother with the drinking problem, maybe something happened to one of our boys. Panic.

"My dad killed himself."

He walks me through how he got a text message from his dad with his suicide note. I see the messages my husband sent in return. Pleading. Concerned. Desperate. 

His dad left the contact information for his ex, who happens to live in the same area, halfway across the country. He says he called her, he called his grandpa, no one knew what had happened, his dad wouldn't answer the phone, the police were dispatched for a "rescue" mission, and how he had gotten the news around 9 pm that his body had been found and he had been dead around a day.

His dad had a postmortem text sent to my husband with his suicide note.

I don't know how anyone deals with something like this. This isn't normal. This isn't ok. This is horrible. It's selfish. My husband and his siblings are a month away from mourning the loss of their mom to cancer 6 years ago and now they have to work out their feelings about their dad killing himself. 

He cheated on their mom. He abandoned them. He had a horrible drinking problem. His suicide note talks about how miserable he was, broke, lonely, how he should have never drank.

The siblings keep asking me when the funeral will be.

We met with my husband's grandparents. They live about 10 minutes from our new house. While upset over the death of their son (step-son for the grandma, since my husband's original grandma passed when he was 7), they said they have been expecting this call for awhile now. He's been a hard drinker for quite some time, unemployed, broke up with his one serious girlfriend he had after the divorce. He'd been hinting about it on facebook apparently. Could anyone have said anything to stop him?

My husband wishes he would have answered the phone call. He wishes he could have driven down there, picked him up, gotten him to see some hope. Would it have been enough to stop him from killing himself? Is it a darkness that would have crept back in eventually?

My sister-in-law told me that their dad called three of his children that Wednesday and not one answered. All emailed him back, but not one answered. To be fair, the majority of the time that my husband did answer the phone, his dad would be severely intoxicated, oddly rambling about stuff. What is it like to hear the slow descent into mental illness and addiction? I've only met the man maybe 4 times, once at our wedding. The other three times were when he came into town and took all of his children out to the bowling alley so he could drink while he hung out with them, the youngest sibling being a teenager.

When we met with my husband's grandparents, they said they want to tell people. They want everyone to know and talk about suicide and addiction. People keep quiet about it, about mental health issues. 

We can't even properly grasp the situation. A man has taken his own life. Can we even mourn it? He was a good dad sometimes, when they were young. He got lost in the grasp of addiction. It cost him his wife, his children, and eventually his life. Is it worth it? Is alcohol worth it? Are drugs worth it? Pornography, gambling, sex? Are any of these highs so fantastic that they are worth a life? Do you have a funeral to memorialize an addict? A philanderer? A man who abandons his children? He had no friends at the end, just him and an addiction. The addiction certainly won't come to the funeral.

I'm an outsider to all of these events. When my mother-in-law had cancer, I poured myself into helping, into trying to fix, into praying. But it didn't make me have any more of a right to be upset or feel a loss, because she wasn't my mother. I had her as a mother-in-law for about a year before she died. I mourned her for my husband, for the loss of a grandmother for the baby I was carrying, for all the things she could have been for me and my family. I mourned her for my husband. How do I mourn this man now? I barely met him. I would often run through conversations I would want to have with him, words I'd like to say if I ever had the chance to sit down with him, to discuss the impact he has had on my husband and his siblings. I won't get the chance now. My husband never got to say any last words. At least with his mother, we knew she was sick and that she had limited time. We had the chance to spend time with her, to make a few good last memories. 

And now I am left with a legacy of loss. My husband has inherited a strong cancer gene that killed one parent, and a strong mental health gene that killed another. My little boys have a quarter of each of those in them.

I am at a loss. I don't know how to deal with this.

My husband is in bed, sleeping. It is nearly 11 am. I can't tell him how to grieve. I don't know how I will one day process the death of either of my parents. I am lucky. I am privileged. 

I am left wondering if one day I will lose my husband to cancer or addiction.

One of his brothers has an arraignment next week to find out if he gets jail time for his 3rd DUI.

One of his siblings just got off parole for DUI and has completely changed her life.

One of his brothers just got diagnosed with mental illness and is trying to get out of the fog.

How do you even begin to wade through the process of coping with a suicide?

Things that I just don't get

I don't understand so many things

1. Why do boys hit and wrestle and chase constantly? Is it fun to attack others? Seriously makes me want to drink at about 10 a.m.
2. What is the deal with LinkedIn? I just discovered you can see who you've invited to connect with there. It's seriously embarrassing. I think I've asked people several times thinking each time I'm asking them for the first time. God. I hope once they've rejected me LinkedIn remembers and they don't get a new invite every time. Sweet Lord. Gonna go dig a pit and hide in it.
3. I had a great idea for a plexiglass mailbox. How sweet, right? Do you don't need to go outside to check if you have mail or not. Then a few days ago I realized just how stupid of an idea it was. Are all my ideas this bad?
4. Adult acne. Enough said.
5. Christians that are judgey of other Christians. Or hell mothers that are judgey of other mothers, especially within subcategories, like attachment parents. Ok, you are a good mom. Stop it with judging others. Who cares when the kid is weaned or when they eat their first solid food or when they sleep in a crib. Are we trying? Good job!
6. People that feel it necessary to share their digestive distresses via social media. Do you feel less like puking or crapping if others know you are doing it?
7. I have all the ideas and quippy things to say before I sit in front of my computer. Once there, I'm blank. Nothing. Nada. Definitely could talk at length about the baby just born to some royal or depressing stuff about the upcoming due date of my miscarried baby hooray!!!

8. Why do people hate commas so much? I love them.
9. Addictions.
10. Horoscopes. I'm a Scorpio. Does that really mean anything? Or what about the horoscopes you get on Chinese restaurant placemats that talk about the year you were born. So everyone born in 1981 is like me? Doubt that. Went to school with a lot of different characters. We shared the fact that we were all walking upright and had opposable thumbs.
11. Celebrity obsession. Reality tv. Guessing baby names for people you've never met and will never meet.
12. What kind of crack do they put in Ben and Jerry's? I need to know. I can't stop eating it. Ok maybe it's my addiction….
13. Hypocrisy.
14. Women's sizing. Like H&M is a different planet. Even Gap and Old Navy are inconsistent between the two and they are owned by the same parent company.

Loads of other stuff but it's time for me to go watch my children pick at their dinner hooray! My youngest has decided he will no longer eat boxed mac and cheese as some sort of protest. More for me, buddy. More for me.

Being Uncomfortable

I've gotten to a certain age where I'm pretty stuck in my routine. I mean, it's pretty easy seeing as I have young children, and children, as they say, are creatures of routine. Happy kids have a routine. We wake up and have breakfast (usually my awesome 7 ingredient oatmeal which my husband is only so happy to help me replicate on days when I do not want to get out of bed), play games or just chill for a bit. Then we do some sort of activity (if it's not the bone-chilling -18 out as it is today, we usually play in the snow) or go to the store for groceries (and coffee). Lunch, followed by nap, then calm after-nap activities, and then something before dinner (either outside, going to grandma's house, or the store depending on what we did earlier). After dinner we do some physical activity involving walking (usually at the mall since it gets dark at 5:30 still), then bath, books, and bed. Bed is always around 7:30-8, wake up is usually between 7:30-8. A very planned out life (or at least the bones of the day are very structured and don't usually get moved).

Unfortunately, this level of life routine has got me stuck in a personal rut. I do the same thing everyday. When the boys are in bed, I would go watch some tv while knitting (or folding laundry), and be in bed by 10. Not much wiggle room, considering the 8 pm bedtime can often slowly leech into 9, as kids want sips of water, or another story, etc. This hour is golden. I don't want to do anything except what I want to do. I've guarded it closely. And it has become a rut. There are so many things I could do in the evening but I want to be lazy.

It's a bit like an analogy I saw in a magazine about clutter (stay with me for a minute, it'll make sense)- by setting down an object, be it mail, random items, laundry, whatever on the areas where things congregate, you are saying that your time now is more important than your time later. You are robbing yourself of that time freedom later. If you had decided to take the extra minute to put the bill where it needs to go (or heaven forbid actually pay it), put the socks away, put the toys in the appropriate bins, books on the appropriate shelves, you wouldn't need to spend the time later to do it. Think of it- if every time you set something down, you decided to put it in it's right home- you would have clean counters. You would have time where you didn't have to sigh about the counters and then spend 45 minutes trying to figure out where stuff goes, what to do with it. Or if you have a spot where laundry piles up- you take off your work clothes and something isn't dirty so you don't need to throw it in the bin, and you are just too lazy to hang it up or find a cupboard for it. This is my life (except I don't work). If you take the extra minute to hang it, fold it, put it away, you wouldn't have the mound of shame looking at you while you are surfing netflix.
So going back to my evenings- I am robbing myself of life. I just want to veg out and be lazy, be by myself, and I need to start doing things. Now see, things make me uncomfortable. I like to do my routine. It's ingrained, it's automatic, and it's comfortable.
I wrote that I took up running (and I will re-take it up once it's safe to run outside again). I have decided to take up yoga as well. I tried yoga once when I was in undergrad; my friend Holy and I went and it was so boring. I was not zen at all. I would try to hold my poses longer than other people, I couldn't zone out. But I guess something has changed in 13 years.

One- I have no flexibility at all. Ow. Man it hurts to work those areas that enjoy sitting on the couch eating Ben & Jerry's. Two- I don't mind it so much. Granted, I still want to be the best at things, but I'm working on quieting the voices. I need to be gentle with myself. I can't be awesome at everything from the get go. Sure would be sweet if I was, but it's just not going to happen. It's ok to be uncomfortable. I laughed last night at class as I'm trying to stand on one foot and do some sort of squat pose. It's uncomfortable to be the baby, learning for the first time. It also puts me in a better space to teach my children. I get upset when I ask them to do something for like the hundredth time and they can't. It is teaching me to have patience with the growing process, to help my children navigate the uncomfortable learning areas, and to show them that they can always be growing, always learning, always changing.

I'm very uncomfortable, but I'm starting to be more zen about it.

I'm a Runner: And no, Nothing was Chasing Me, Thanks

If you are wondering if the world is ending, it may be.

I have decided to take up running.

Shocking, right?


I decided the other day that I hate this anxiety so I'm going to do something that I hate even more than the anxiety and that is running. Oh I hate running. I mean I've never really done it, but the one time I did I ran maybe 200 feet and was like ok, that was fun.

It is so anti-me that I have a funny story.
I texted my husband to ask if he wanted to go running with me when he got home.
He said sure.
He got home and I asked him to go change into his running clothes (as it was getting close to dinner). He comes back in with jeans and a thermal on.
I ask "are you wearing that running?" and he says yes and gives me an odd look.
I ask him to help get the boys' snowsuits on, as it was beyond freezing and I wanted them warm for their trip in the jogging stroller.
"Where are we taking them?" my husband asks, and I reply to the jogging track that's nearby.
"Why?" he asks.
"To go running," I reply because duh I've already said running like eight times.
He thought I meant running errands. Because never in a million years would I run. I loathe it. So we went running and it was pretty pathetic.
Well actually it was beyond pretty pathetic.
It was 17 degrees and felt like 3 with the wind chill. The bitter bitter windchill. And to make matters worse, the track was thick with slushy snow, so very hard to push a stroller on. We made it about half a mile before the littlest boy got cold and started crying.
And also, my husband got a stress fracture from running.
Pretty pathetic right?
ButI got a girl friend to run with me the following day and I ran 1.5 miles (jogged, ok? Geez) without really stopping so that was a success.
Can I walk today?
No not very well.

But I'm going to stick with it. Even though every minute is full of hatred for it.

I'm hoping if I can conquer running, then maybe there's a chance I can mind over matter this anxiety.

Or at least get in shape.

To My Fellow Chameleons

Today is the Super Bowl and I for one could care less. I am not a sports person. When I was in undergrad I didn't attend a single football or basketball game, and I attended a Big 10 school. I did not know the fight song and couldn't sing the school song at graduation. How horrible is that? I was also pretty lazy and apathetic at the time (perhaps now still), with a major case of senioritis which didn't help. My husband is (Thank you, Jesus) not a sports fan. He used to play baseball and occasionally when we had cable he would turn it to little league playoffs or some such for a bit. But overall, he could also care less.
I said to my husband today that I would watch sports if he cared about them. He found that quite laughable, and maybe it is just considering how much I care less about sports (and maybe that is being too generous; I dislike watching sports. It's boring. I know no rules. I went to a Cubs/White Sox game with a friend when I was in early college and I was bored to tears. It just went on and on. Sammy Sosa was right in front of us and I just wanted to go to sleep. Also, my friend and her brother took VERY detailed notes on some scorecard, so calling them fans wasn't doing it justice. Also- I was not able to drink legally then.) However, one thing that he isn't aware of too much- how big a chameleon I am.

Chameleon? What do you mean?

Follower. Adapter. Panty-waist spineless jellyfish. (I was looking for a specific word and googled thesaurus for follower and found that "toady" is one synonym. That just blows my mind in relation to the band- right? Anyone?) MILQUETOAST! Just came to me. Knew that sitting here mindlessly not doing cleaning would serve me adequately.

Anyway, I never thought I was such a follower. I was strong in my beliefs that I was a pretty good person, smart, a good Christian, when I was in high school. I was kind of a geek, boys generally avoided me, which was mostly to my benefit, as I'm sure that whole good-Christian-girl thing would've gone quickly had an actual living boy been interested in charming my panties off. I felt I was my own person and lived by my own rules, but in retrospect I'm sure most teenagers think they are their own person. I lived under very controlling parents and didn't do very much in the outside world, except walk around the mall with my equally sheltered friends.

Maybe to a degree I am my own person, but when it comes to love, I am such a follower.

Two of my exes were musicians. So I attended quite a few open mic nights, listened to indie music, read the appropriate periodicals, bought the correct gear for holidays, etc. One would have assumed I was a music fan (hell, I thought I was). And then I met the husband. He is not a musician, not a sports fan, kind of a video game nerd. I took up video games for a brief time, but I'm sooo less a video game nerd than I am a musician nerd. Living in a small northern town means relatively few bands travel this far north, husband with no musical interest means no desire to accompany me to concerts that involve a road trip, and children mean little to no free time or spending money to travel to aforementioned concerts that I would attend alone. Because the convenience factor is nil, I am not into music anymore. Granted I could listen to podcasts and download concerts and buy cds etc etc but I have no time. I have no money. I also have a weird apprehension (if you can call it that) to new music. I hate listening to music that I have never heard. Even was I was a crazy Incubus diehard fan, when they put out a new CD it would take me getting ready to go to their concert and wanting to know all the songs to get me to crack the case. I hate not knowing lyrics, not knowing if I like it or not, and wasting time listening to it several times if I don't like it. How weird is that? I might be the only weirdo with that disorder. But to get back to the point- he doesn't like it so I don't like it.

If he liked sports, I'm sure I would be hosting Super Bowl parties and making cupcakes in the team colors. If he was a golfer, I'm sure I would take up golf.

Maybe our problem as a couple is pure apathy in either direction. He wants to sit and do nothing. I want to do whatever he wants to do. When he wants to do nothing, I'm upset that he wants to do nothing. It's a vicious cycle.

I'm getting to be too existential in my old age. I over think everything. I think about everything. I also worry about the things that I think. I worry that I'm wasting my life. I think about all the things I could be doing- I could be like Taylor Swift and have a million friends and be involved and do everything and have a fantastic life. But hell that is a lie. I cannot motivate. I can't get myself to exercise on a daily basis. I can't bake fantastic creations for my family. I don't decorate our house. I don't have hobbies. I don't think this is normal. I'm convinced that if I only got enough sleep that I could do more but I'm starting to think that "more sleep" doesn't actually exist. I know I just have to go and do it, whatever the thing is that I want to do.

But what do I want to do? I need to meditate and find my inner purpose or something. How do you even go about doing that in your thirties? I can't Eat Pray Love myself to another continent or even to a day trip. I ask for signs from God but maybe He wants to point people in the right direction who are actively walking with Him. And I'm doing many things but actively walking is not one of them.

This is an incredibly rambly blog post. Mostly, it's like my thoughts. I have a lot, they are often disconnected or loosely connected, and they are usually a little depressing.

Did I mention my husband has been pushing me to join the military as an officer? Sure, I would love to serve my country and make a difference, but I have absolutely no desire to kill, to get yelled at, or to be deployed. I like to think go myself as an intelligent person, but who knows how smart the military would see me. I'd love to be in intelligence, but I might only qualify to work in the HR department or something menial. And to top it all off- having to run? Ugh. Really? Plus, 9 weeks away from my boys. Although to be honest, the thought of time to read by myself, write by myself, BE by myself sounds pretty fantastic. However, to be realistic I'm sure there aren't hours to myself every day to pursue the whole Hemingway thing. I could be wrong. But the husband is pressing this because I have applied to so many (so very very many) jobs and haven't gotten called, emailed, interviewed, nada. I wonder if there is some virus in my resume that deletes the ability to email me. I've considered this as a possibility. He feels disheartened that no one is out there caring. Ha- guess how I feel about it, buddy. Answer- NOT GREAT. But not sure if giving up my life for 4 years or more is exactly the next logical step. If any of you have answers- let me know.

I'm gonna go clean, since cleaning seems to be my only talent right now.

Creativity is Dead

I fear that perhaps I am best suited to be a stay-at-home mom forever. I'm just too thoughtful. It works well for being a mom of young kids, not so much perhaps for the working world, and definitely not for having "adult relationships".

Last night while laying in bed, I asked my husband what he thinks happens to your soul when it dies. Does it float up (or out) to heaven? Are you instantly transported to heaven? Is it like waking up from a dream when you don't remember what happened but obviously some time has passed? I was thinking these things because who doesn't ponder death before bed, right? Totally normal. I was thinking about the number of people I knew who have died, and the number of people I was around right before death (I was thinking about the horrible "death rattle" which if you are unfamiliar with, thank God). I was in the room when my grandfather died, and I wondered if I had been paying more attention would I have noticed his spirit leaving his body? I was with my mother-in-law just hours before she passed, and definitely into the alive but not alive stage.
But regardless of my weird pre-sleep ponderings, my husband took awhile to answer and finally guessed that they just go into waiting because we are all waiting for the return of Christ. "So Heaven in empty, or just filled with pre-Jesus people?" and he eventually got annoyed with my questions. He replied that he certainly doesn't think about things that have no answer.
And that's where being a stay-at-home mom for life comes in. All I do is think. I think about this and I think about that. I think about them and I think about me. I wonder what if and why and where and how come. If I had done one thing differently, or made a different choice. I'll spend hours on wikipedia looking up bubonic plague and side effects of common drugs (like ibuprofen) and birth defects and celebrities. I have so many questions. I'm curious.
It seems that most of the world despises curiosity. Mind your own business.
My son just spent the last 20 minutes telling me about ghosts. You need to walk quietly or you pop their dreams, he tells me. And they definitely are "mean ones" who steal your toys when you are asleep.
This is the kind of world I can get behind. Not ghosts, but make believe. Questioning things. And even if its silly, then why not? Silly is better than sad. Make believe is better than anxiety.

Here's to the silly ones.