Annals of Successful Parenting - Hazards of Success

Since last I wrote, we have successfully deposited the college student in her dorm. We have successfully provided the bed with the following supporting materials: a mattress topper, a mattress and mattress-topper allergy-barrier cover, a mattress pad; and sheets, a duvet, and a fuzzy blanket. We have met the roommate and found her nice. We have met the college president, who walked through the halls as we were unloading, all of us sweaty in the very humid, hot, unair-conditioned dorm. Within moments of arrival, the college student soon had her wall decorated with strings of lights and a collage of photos. Not a one of her family, I will mention. That’s okay. I’ll sit in the dark. (You’re supposed to say that with a Yiddish accent. “That’s uhkay, I’ll sit in the dahk.”)

As we were leaving campus, we passed a trio of mother, father, and new college student laden with bags and bins from Bed, Bath, and Beyond. The mother snapped a photo of her daughter and said aloud, sort of to us and sort of to the trees, “I’m leaving my firstborn at college. How is it possible?”  Her plaintive, confused voice could have been mine. “I just said ‘goodbye’ to mine,” I said. Then my voice cracked and I pushed my sunglasses up my nose. What else was there to say? There were many of us bewildered moms and dads and sad siblings orbiting the campus that day. 

This is the fruit of success, Readers. I say this with bitterness. Bitterness - because “they” all say that success can be empty. There are several reasons for success to be empty. There’s aiming for the wrong things, things that won’t actually bring fulfillment, things like money or fame or, you know, objects. We’ve had that drilled into us, after all. Rich men and camels and eyes of needles and heaven and such. Success can bring money, but money doesn’t buy happiness. Although, up to a certain point, in fact, money does buy happiness, it’s just that excess money doesn’t. But I digress. 

Other ways success can bring emptiness include an all-too-human tendency called hedonic adaptation, a tendency for people get used to their circumstances, good or bad.  I suppose it’s a type of regression to the mean, returning to a base level of happiness, which is a tendency of organisms, which we humans are. We seek homeostasis, right? This adaptation is good when you’re in a concentration camp, for example, because it allows you to endure and ultimately survive - unless you get killed, I mean. But in regular life, it can mean that once you attain a longed-for, worked-for goal, the happiness it brings you pales. For example, for years I wanted an agent. Now, I have an agent. This was super exciting for me for awhile. Now, however, I’m anxiously awaiting the next step: the publisher. (Please send good vibes, even if you don’t believe in sending good vibes) 

And then there’s the dubious success of raising children who leave. Literal emptiness. Which brings me back to my favorite subject, myself. How am I feeling? Last week, a friend invited me and another friend out for a “sad moms coffee.” We met when our children were toddlers in preschool. One sad mom summed up my feelings about the college student’s departure perfectly. “I know my child is where he is supposed to be, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. But I am mourning the end of his childhood.” 

Naturally, this coffee event ended in tears. No, it didn’t end in tears, because we are not total idiots. It contained tears, though. 

And yesterday, the first day of school in our town, a friend texted me after her two kids got to their first days of middle and high school, that she understood how I must be feeling about the college student being at college and the 9th grader starting high school, because she was so sad and crying. I texted back with attempts at sympathy, saying something about how every life landmark our children reach creates mixed emotions of pride and nostalgia, but really, I couldn’t help adding, “Yeah, we’re gonna get old, mama.” Which is what this is all about, isn’t it? I mean, not about the getting old, which we will be lucky to do, but about the end result of all this life: death. 

This may have something to do with the well of hypochondria I’ve fallen into this week. There was a tooth scare (it’s fine), and a pulled muscle in my torso somewhere that I know is from the insane amount of weed-pulling I did this weekend but that I fear is something ruptured or malignant.  Even a mosquito bite on my neck that flares up when I watch TV has me twitchy. I kid not. Zika? Malaria? 

Man, success sucks. 

Now, perhaps this post is not as uplifting as I might like it. So, I offer this tidbit of wisdom from the definitely wise Pema Chodron. It's something I'm working on right now. Perhaps you should, too. 

SEEING CLEARLY"Meditation is about seeing clearly the body that we have, the mind that we have, the domestic situation that we have, the job that we have, and the people who are in our lives. It’s about seeing how we react to all these things. It’s seeing our emotions and thoughts just as they are right now, in this very moment, in this very room, on this very seat. It’s about not trying to make them go away, not trying to become better than we are, but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness."Pema Chodron.

Gone Fishin' - Why Success Matters

Here's a brief dispatch from the beach, where I try to avoid serious thinking in favor of allowing the waves to mesmerize me.

Just to emphasize the paradox of the random symmetry of life I must mention that the garage door broke just before we left, almost exactly three years after we arrived at the beach and received an email from our neighbor asking if we meant to leave the garage door open. We had not. It was broken then, and it is broken now. This time we left it closed and un-openable.

But that's nothing to do with success. Being at the beach can make a person wonder if success even matters. Being at the beach in a beach rental property that is also for sale for just over two million dollars can make a person wonder if there's any point in defining success in any other way than as having lots of money and power.

So I'm just going to leave you with this little bit of wisdom: success matters, and success is not about the ability to buy a beach house.

Here's the thing. I think the drive for success is built into us. It's intertwined with the desire for meaning. Sure, people put a lot of emphasis on happiness, and happiness is definitely desirable. Howevs, the positive psychologists who study this stuff have figured out that happiness is a byproduct of being in the state of flow. And the state of flow, as I've discussed in other posts, is a condition of being totally absorbed in an activity. Now this activity is not just any activity. To achieve flow, you have to be involved in something that is challenging, but not so difficult that it's frustrating, and you have to actually achieve mastery of that challenge - and then go on to create another satisfying challenge. It's a process kind of like riding waves, if you will.

And this is why I conclude that success is important. In flow, you are continually striving for a goal, then resetting your goal and striving for the new one. It's made up of series of challenges and successes, and this process is essential to happiness. Therefore, ergo, success is important to happiness, and if we all agree that happiness matters, it follows that success matters, too.

Image by Phoebe Amory 2015

Update on Success and Happiness Talk with Gretchen Rubin

Hello, Readers, how the heck are you? I’m here to say that I did have my meeting with Gretchen Rubin (GR) on Sunday. Indeed I did. And I look forward to getting into what we talked about, because it was quite interesting. But I have yet to transcribe my recording, and I have yet to send my piece to GR for approval (I offered, she didn’t ask it of me), so I’m going to save the main bits for another time. I'm aiming for next week. 

Meanwhile, suffice it to say that I had no time to transcribe because I only returned home Monday night and there was “Downton Abbey” to watch, and then Tuesday I was busy all day, most of that busyness revolving around the Capital Region Spelling Bee. The 8th grader was representing her middle school, along with 4 other students, at the regionals. Boy did it take a long time. It took hours, literally. First there was an hour of written testing. Then there were two rounds of onstage bee. With over 150 kids, each of whom was able to ask for pronunciations, definitions, and usage in a sentence of each word, it took a long time. After that, there was elimination down to twenty-five spots, and the semi-finals began. I kept screaming (in my head, mind you, not aloud), “Auntie Mame, fall off! Fall off!” 

Since it’s likely you aren’t as interested in “Auntie Mame” as I, and since it’s even likelier that you don’t consider it a filmic instruction manual for life, as I do, you won’t know that this reference means, “Just flub your way out of this terrible situation.” Which is what Little Patrick Dennis urges Auntie Mame to do when she finds herself having to ride to hounds - side-saddle, no less, even though nobody rides side-saddle anymore— on a horse the town veterinarian has ordered put down, a task she seems likely to fail at most miserably. She doesn’t fall off, in the end, and neither did the 8th grader, until well into the 7th hour.

But you wanted to know about my meeting with GR. Well, I was doubtful it would come through, because I’m something of a pessimist, even if I’m overall an optimist. I insist. But the meeting did come about. I shouldn’t have doubted, actually, come to think of it, because GR is what she calls an Upholder. That means she meets inner and outer expectations, so if she agrees to do something, do it she does. And did. 

It happened in Washington, where I was visiting my father, and where she happened to be giving a book talk and signing at Politics and Prose Bookstore Sunday night to promote her newest book, Better Than Before. When I emailed to confirm, we arranged to meet at the bookstore before she gave her talk. With my friend C (as in met her in college) to support me, and to save me a seat, I met GR in the store’s office and recorded our twenty-or-so minute conversation. 

She was engaged and engaging. In fact, I seem to recall doing a distressing amount of the talking. She was good at drawing me out. Was I amazingly articulate and charming? I can’t say. I haven’t yet listened to the recording. But contrary to my usual self-deprecation, I’m going to mention that I had recently completed some online personality test like the Myers-Briggs but called something else, and the results said I am a charming and charismatic person. So, let’s go with yes. Because online quizzes don’t lie.

Anyway, the conversation went on until it was time for GR to go out and speak, so I considered that a success. I joined C in the crowd. There I marvelled at how GR worked the room. She was quite funny, fast-talking, and smart, and she took a lot of questions at the end. Meanwhile, I became worried that I might accidentally delete my voice memo recording, on the sort of impulse that makes you think you might pitch yourself over the railing of a high balcony or drive into oncoming headlights. (This is a documented impulse, by the way). So I saved it every which way I could think of, including email, Evernote, and text message. Afterwards, I had a nice spanikopita with C and my father. 

The Mensch Theory of Success, College, Camp, and Death

So between last week and this week I have traversed a hilly winding road of ups and downs. There was the winding road North to Maine to pick up the 13-year-old from camp. This involved a fun dinner with the husband’s college friend and his wife and children, highlights of which included a brief explanation of Herodotus in relation to success and happiness. Then there was the reunion with the 13-year-old, who was happy to see us, but wanted to stay at camp. This was as I had hoped. I had prepared for utter dejection, because that was how I left camp every year, wallowing in misery over leaving my dear friends behind, tears streaming down my face as the Dodge Dart bumped along the camp’s dirt road and my father eyed me in the rear view mirror. The 13-year-old was much more self-contained (naturally). She reported a sob-fest had happened the night before, so what we witnessed was exhausted depression. She found her people at camp, and they are theater people. And now, according to her, she has nothing to look forward to at all this year, until camp next year. 

There was the decided down of visiting our accountant. This was an appointment I had dreaded for months, and the husband and I had to really get our budget on paper beforehand. The upshot is that we, like most people we know, are among the privileged group of folk who will be expected to pay the full tuition, room, and board at any private college our children wish to attend. And, like most of them, we can’t do that out of pocket. While our parents could swing it for us, we can’t do it for our children, and that feels like failure. If it is, however, then it is failure for the majority of Americans. So I think it’s something else. All that talk about stagnant wages and real income remaining about the same since the 1970s has come home to roost. The percentage of total income that a private college cost when I went to college was much smaller than it is now. Because I have spent most of my life not talking about money nor wanting to think about it, I don’t really understand why this is, but my suspicion is that public and economic policy has a lot to do with it. I’m hopeful that things will change by the time our children’s children want to go to college, but it won’t happen for my children. 

I have to admit I feel really embarrassed writing that last paragraph. Talking about money is something I was brought up to avoid. But this has been on my mind, and it’s on so many people’s minds, that I thought I’d dip a toe in the topic. 

Well, Readers, this post hasn’t been funny at all. I apologize. I’m off my meds. Or something. Maybe.

So let’s return up the winding road to that conversation over dinner in Maine. The husband’s friend is a stay-at-home dad (SAHD) with an interest in the Classics, married to a doctor, so he is in some ways my male counterpart. When I asked him how he defined success a few years ago, he referred to the following passage in Herodotus, which led me to derive my “mensch theory of success,” the basis of which is that if, when you die, people think you were a good person, then you are successful. On this visit we returned to the topic and I asked him where to find the story, since there are several volumes of Herodotus, and as much as I am interested in the classics, and as thankful as I am for the translations readily available through the Internet Archives, I had been a bit overwhelmed trying to find it by myself. 

So this is about King Croesus, who was very rich. You may have heard that phrase “rich as Croesus.” This is that guy. And he thought he had it pretty good. He was successful and happy. Until he met a wandering sage from Athens called Solon. After showing Solon all his store rooms of gold, which he could have used to help send many deserving children to the private colleges of their hearts’ desires, if such places existed in Ancient Greece, Croesus asks Solon, according to Herodotus, the following:

Stranger of Athens, we have heard much of thy wisdom and of thy travels through many lands, from love of knowledge and a wish to see the world. I am curious therefore to inquire of thee, whom, of all the men that thou hast seen, thou deemest the most happy?" This he asked because he thought himself the happiest of mortals: but Solon answered him without flattery, according to his true sentiments, "Tellus of Athens, sire." Full of astonishment at what he heard, Croesus demanded sharply, "And wherefore dost thou deem Tellus happiest?" To which the other replied, "First, because his country was flourishing in his days, and he himself had sons both beautiful and good, and he lived to see children born to each of them, and these children all grew up; and further because, after a life spent in what our people look upon as comfort, his end was surpassingly glorious. In a battle between the Athenians and their neighbours near Eleusis, he came to the assistance of his countrymen, routed the foe, and died upon the field most gallantly. The Athenians gave him a public funeral on the spot where he fell, and paid him the highest honours." 

Thus did Solon admonish Croesus by the example of Tellus, enumerating the manifold particulars of his happiness. When he had ended, Croesus inquired a second time, who after Tellus seemed to him the happiest, expecting that at any rate, he would be given the second place. "Cleobis and Bito," Solon answered; "they were of Argive race; their fortune was enough for their wants, and they were besides endowed with so much bodily strength that they had both gained prizes at the Games. Also this tale is told of them:- There was a great festival in honour of the goddess Juno at Argos, to which their mother must needs be taken in a car. Now the oxen did not come home from the field in time: so the youths, fearful of being too late, put the yoke on their own necks, and themselves drew the car in which their mother rode. Five and forty furlongs did they draw her, and stopped before the temple. This deed of theirs was witnessed by the whole assembly of worshippers, and then their life closed in the best possible way. Herein, too, God showed forth most evidently, how much better a thing for man death is than life. For the Argive men, who stood around the car, extolled the vast strength of the youths; and the Argive women extolled the mother who was blessed with such a pair of sons; and the mother herself, overjoyed at the deed and at the praises it had won, standing straight before the image, besought the goddess to bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honoured her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke more, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi."  

So it looks to me like my Mensch Theory of Success needs some refining. From this passage we deduce that the happy person 

• lives a good life, 
• is a valiant warrior, 
• has enough money to meet his or her needs, 
• and dies a noble death. 

To these characteristics, I have to add one more. Since this passage is about happiness, but the husband's friend, the SAHD classicist, brought it up when I asked how he defined success, happiness is success.  

But you won't ever really know you've attained it because you won't attain it until you're dead. 

Have a nice weekend. 

Arugula, Stoves, Sedaris, Success

FYI: One burner doesn't work....

Hello. Have we all been enjoying our arugula? C’mon, you know what I’m talking about. Up and down the East Coast, which is where I've been, we've all taken a new interest in that particular leafy green, because we’ve all read that article in the paper about nutrient levels in leafy greens, and the most nutrient-filled is, yep, you know it, arugula. So don’t even pretend to have always loved it, just tuck into your arugula salads. I recommend a citrus twist. Yum. Just don’t think about that other news item  about how that final spritz of water that perks up our arugula before it arrives on the grocery store shelf contains, more often than it should, E. Coli and Campylobacter bacteria.

Anyhoo. I’ve been away, enjoying my arugula salad and otherwise vacationing. Since we last communicated, Readers, the husband, the 11-year-old, and I journeyed to pick up the 14-year-old from her ballet intensive. At least I think we picked up the 14 year old, although she appears to be a clone of the 14-year-old, a little taller, and a little tweaked, attitude-wise. But we persevered to the beach, and managed to close our garage door when we left the neighborhood. We're all getting used to one another again. Family dynamics have changed. 

Which seems like a good segueway to David Sedaris. Now, I’ve read a lot of definitions of success over the past two years, and I was not expecting anything about that topic from David Sedaris, but there I was, reading his latest book, when I came across something new. David and his boyfriend are driving around Australia with a friend, Pat, who invites them to picture a four burner stove on which one burner represents family, one friends, one health, and one work. To be successful, she says, you have to “cut off one of your burners. And to be really successful, you have to cut off two.”

So they each name the burner they've cut. David says it was friends, though he wasn’t proud of it, and also health, and his partner Hugh says it was work, which makes sense since he must travel around with David to David’s speaking engagements and therefore not have time for his own work; and their friend, a businesswoman with several homes and cars and what to David looks like success says family and health.

What do we think of this? This is so old school. This stove is a pot-bellied one and the analogy is, too. I mean, c’mon. What a narrow definition of success that is. One that excludes maintaining health and human connections. What would Arianna Huffington say about it? Where’s that Third Metric? Although, honestly, we all fear that David’s friend Pat is right – and by we I mean I – that to manifest material success requires singlemindedness, and that singlemindedness requires cutting out those pesky distractions like taking care of your body and meaningful connections to other people, related to you by blood, affection, or both. And vice-versa. Pat’s definition is what landed me in trouble, so feh – I reject it! Maybe we need to let a few things simmer on low while we bring others to the boil; but cutting off a whole burner? Bad idea.

When I started this success blog, I’d done that. I’d cut out work. Yes, yes, I was working – I was being a full time mom – but I wasn’t developing my professional self. I don’t want to wade into the quagmire of seeming to suggest motherhood isn’t work, which necessitates high boots and a tromp though the grasslands of apologia. Motherhood certainly is work, and it certainly should be compensated somehow, by respect, by social security benefits, by family leave policies, etc. That’s a whole different story. My point - and I think I do have one - is that, like many stay at home moms (SAHMs), I identifed myself as something else, too. Something related to a profession. While I was being a SAHM, I was also supposedly a writer, but I wasn’t really, because being a mother of young children is a full time job. So, for large swathes of time, I turned off that work burner.

Did it make me a better, more successful person in those other areas (burners?) No, I don’t think so. In fact, ironically, while that burner was off, it was the only thing that seemed to matter to me. Work. Profession. Earning money. I couldn’t stop thinking how I wasn’t doing any of it, and how much of a failure this made me. It wasn’t as if I focused better on those other burners. No, I focused on that one, and felt that lack of success there meant I was a failure everywhere.

This was a rawther counterproductive and downright miserable cycle of despair in which to find myself, and so I began to look for a better definition. I also began to look for some paying work. But the instant I turned on that work burner, I felt better. No, that’s wrong. First I felt really shitty, and I floundered around looking for jobs and so on, so really, the first time I obtained some paying work related to my profession, I felt better. A lot better. A billion percent better. It didn’t take much. It didn’t take the career coming to a boil. It just took a little bit, a simmer, if you will, and everything started to improve.

So my new view of success is much more holistic than Pat’s. Carrying on with the stove analogy, you want to be an Aga, or a Viking, or whatever. The idea is to get all the burners working. 

Frankly, I don’t think David subscribes to Pat's theory, either. For one, he points out that his friend Pat “seems like a genuinely happy person. And that alone constitutes success.” For another, while he says that he cut off the friends burner, there he is, riding around the Australian bush with his friend. But I’m not going to speak for him. I don’t know what he’s like, really. Antisocial, reclusive, peevish? His sandbox is the nexis of humor and pain, his medium is memoir: We know he’s got problems. Which brings us to the next burner, family. He ends his essay with a painful memory of a senseless power play between his 11 year old self and his father, which ended with him turning off the family burner. But then over time he realized that “without them, I was nothing.” It’s not a heartwarming realization, though. It's more a recognition of how connected we remain to family, even when we’re grown and evolved and fully therapized and can move thousands of miles away. There’s a note of resignation, or perhaps defiance, when he says, “Cut off your family, and how would you know who you are? Cut them off in order to gain success, and how could that success be measured? What would it possibly mean?” With a suggestion or implication or another tendril-like tenuous gesture that you need family, if only to measure how far you’ve come, how different you are from them.

Anyway, somehow, that family burner has to stay on, too.  I write this after returning from a week’s vacation with my sister the psychoanalyst and her family, for a couple days of which our father joined us.

But back to the burners. Yeah, I think the goal is really to keep them all going. As I mentioned, some may need to be turned to simmer for awhile while others come to the boil, but you need them all. As someone’s granny said, “If you don’t have your health, you have nothing.”

You can eat your arugula and have success, too! In fact, you must.

Secret of Successful Families: The Family Meeting

Bruce Feiler sums up his research on happy families by offering a “nonlist list of things that happy families do.” This list consists of the following three nonrule rules:

1. Adapt all the time. 
2. Talk. A lot. 
3. Go Out and Play.

Feiler offers multitudes of ways to follow each of these nonrules. One of them is the family meeting. The family meeting appeals to me for several reasons.

• First of all, there is so much in a minute. You don’t even have to have relatives who are psychoanalysts to know this. Nor do you have to be a mindfulness meditation expert. Just think about how (surprisingly) much it hurts if a driver passes you and gives you the finger, for example. And that’s someone you don’t even know, and a situation that’s not even personal. Now think about all the casual remarks that pass among family members rushing around to ballet and soccer and work that affect you. A stray snap on a day when you have a short fuse can have its own sort of a butterfly effect on your mood and life. Yes, it’s true, I do have relatives who are psychoanalysts, AND I practice mindfulness meditation, so I may be a bit more invested in what’s going on under the surface in a moment than most. In fact, this may be the secret to my failure more than anything else – all that time parsing and analyzing can get you into a thoroughly tangled state of conflict and make it hard to move forward with your goals. But since that last sentence completely undermines what I’m getting at, let’s pretend that I’m 100% in favor of trying to understand your emotions in a situation, so that you can make an informed decision, or can react intentionally instead of instinctively. This takes time, and conversation. A meeting provides a forum to catch some of those moments that could use a little dissecting: To address some of those moments that result in decisions on the fly – decisions and their effects that never get fully explained.

• Second of all, a family meeting sounds like a reasonable idea when it’s hard to find regular nights to eat together because this one’s got an extra rehearsal and that one’s soccer game time changed and that one forgot he had to teach his medical students and the other one has a book club, because all of those ones have book clubs; you’re not actually a suburban mommy if you don’t - but that’s another story. These meetings don’t have to be long. They shouldn’t be long. Sunday night, which Bruce uses, seems like a good time to me. Usually everyone is home then, and there’s an opportunity to look at the calendar. This doesn’t guarantee that we won’t be scrambling for forgotten appointments, but it does help us become aware of our commitments, at least for a moment, together. This group moment might well improve the chances that we’ll get where we need to be on time. I make no promises, nor do I have any proof, since as of this writing, our family has had only one family meeting.

• Third of all, the family meeting, as Bruce describes it, is child-centered. Or to be more precise, while parents may set the agenda, the children should be vocal participants. This gives them practice explaining themselves, exploring and expressing their opinions, and listening to others’, which I defy anyone to deny is good life training. Since the message in my family of origin was “Children should be seen and not heard,” this idea appeals to my rebellious inner child. Let the children be heard and seen. Then let the parents make final decisions.

• And last of all, the family meeting is a way to solidify or otherwise emphasize the idea of the family unit as a unit. I like this idea of emphasizing the family as a unit. It’s one of Bruce’s ideas that’s so fundamental you don’t even see it: To be a successful family involves focusing on the family itself, and seeing it as a working group, not just as a staging ground for “real life.”

The Meeting

Now, I’d been mulling this idea for a while. I was intrigued and wanted to do it, despite the hoke factor. So when the 5^th grader came home, I think it was the very day I behaved so admirably at the DARE assembly, with a letter announcing that she’d won a leadership award, and that there would be a ceremony at an arena at a community college to recognize her and the other recipients, I had my entrée.

Readers, if you would kindly lower your bayonets, I will continue. After feeling my moment of pride in my offspring – a moment immediately followed by one of complete amazement: I have never won thing one for leadership – I realized that this ceremony would conflict with the 9^th grader’s ballet schedule. Frankly, that went without saying, since the 9^th grader spends less time not dancing than she does dancing. So the question was, should she miss the classes, which were in rehearsals for her end of the year performance, to attend her sister’s ceremony? Perfect for a family meeting.

I’d like to tell you that each participant met the announcement with equal enthusiasm; but that would be a lie. The husband was on board – surprising to me, considering the aforementioned hoke factor.  He was even willing to commit to weekly meetings. However, when we told the children we were having a meeting,  the 9^th grader’s reaction was, “Oh no,” and the 5^th grader’s was, “Are we in trouble?”

But it went well. Or at least, it didn’t go badly. When I brought up the awards ceremony - ballet schedule conflict, I tried to remember Bruce’s advice to let the children do a lot of the talking. The 5^th grader immediately announced that she wanted her sister to attend her award ceremony. The 9^th grader countered immediately with acquiescence. Conflict resolved? More like conflict swept underground. I suddenly saw how good an idea a family meeting was. I think it’s the kind of thing that might just help keep people close. If you’re the kind of person who acquiesces because your sister states a strong preference, despite your own mixed feelings, then eventually, you may avoid your sister, to avoid hearing her state her preferences. But if your sister can start to understand that her preference acts like a command, then she may begin to be a little more careful and less categorical – more empathetic – in stating it.

Since their conversation had apparently ended, it was up to me and the husband to stir the pot. How did the 9^th grader feel about missing the ballet class to go to the ceremony? For that matter, how would the 9^th grader feel about having her sister at her upcoming recital? And how would the 5^th grader feel about the looming conflict over missing a soccer tournament to go to (another) dance recital? I wanted the conversation to be both concrete (about this particular conflict) and hypothetical (attending each others’ awards and recitals, etc.) Okay, I know, this may be slightly nauseating, as if I envision a golden-paved road of award upon award for my children, stretching into the future. However, even the most curmudgenly reader must admit there are many milestones ahead (God willing), with attendant ceremonies. It seems worthwhile to figure out who needs to go to what when.  But mostly, I wanted the big sister to express her preferences and feelings about attending her sister’s award ceremony, and to see how important her presence was to her younger sister. Also, I wanted the little sister to realize that her big sister would be sacrificing something very important to her (dance class) at a difficult time (rehearsing for upcoming recital).

The upshot was that we, the parental units, listened to the children, and then we told them we would make a decision. Meeting adjourned. Not exactly an unqualified success, but not terrible, either. Later, the 9^th grader came to us privately and said she didn’t want to miss her class. We told her we had wanted her to say that at the meeting so that the 5^th grader would know, but of course she hadn’t wanted to hurt her sister’s feelings. I suppose immediate openness was too much to expect from one meeting.

In the end, we decided the 9^th grader should go to the ceremony. In private, I told the 5^th grader that her sister was making a sacrifice by missing her rehearsal. The 5^th grader said, “Now you are making me feel guilty.” I told her I wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty as much as I was trying to make her appreciate that her sister was doing something nice for her – and that she ought to thank her.

So the 9^th grader came to the ceremony. On the way, the 5^th grader thanked her for missing rehearsal. Afterwards, the 9^th grader hugged the 5^th grader.

Overall, I thought it was good for the 9^th grader to hear her sister characterized as a leader, and good for the 5^th grader to know her sister heard that characterization.

We haven’t had a family meeting since; but I stand by the process.

Do Good and Succeed

“The organizational psychologist Adam Grant argues that the key

You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

to his own success – and yours too – is tirelessly helping others.”  - Susan Dominus, “The Saintly Way to Succeed.” New York Times Magazine, Sunday, March 31, 2013.

Well, I have to write about this one, don’t I? I’ve known my share of saints, or pseudo-saints. People who engage in activity, sometimes frenetic, that I’m tempted to label pathological. Let’s be honest: I do label it pathological. In fact, if I were to have titled this article, I would have called it, “The potentially pathological origin of success.”

When I was in my 20s, I used to hang around with a guy who became capital-S successful. This guy claimed to feel only two emotions: happy; and uncomfortable. We can argue about whether “uncomfortable” is an emotion; but I did that and got nowhere, so let’s not bother. What I am getting at, Readers, is that I had an annoying tendency to pick at people’s motives for how they lived. My modus operandi was pinpointing the thing they didn’t want to think about or feel and proving that that motivated them to work too hard or shut down emotion or whatever thing I considered a fault. A pathology.

My idea, I guess, was that once we all faced the things we were avoiding, we would all – do what? Sit around together, I guess, being real. And unemployed. But it would be an authentic real unemployment. Not some pathetic attempt to cover up our inadequacies with public recognition or a paycheck to spend on clothes, movies, and other entertainment to mask our inner selves. Or with actual accomplishments. Heavens.

So. While I set about to prove that this guy needed to EXAMINE his feelings and UNDERSTAND his motivations, and generally face his demons, he set about – well, I can’t tell you exactly because that would be too revealing. Let’s just say that he set about implementing a vision he had for improving the world through access to knowledge, a vision that involved changing technology for us - with the intention of improving the world.  Meanwhile, I EXAMINED my feelings and UNDERSTOOD my motivations, and did – well, nothing extraordinary. Years later, he’s still working on his vision, much of it in place, trying, as he told me not so long ago, to make things a little better for people.

I’ve found that the really successful people I’ve met all have this kind of annoying claim that success really stems from helping improve the world in whatever way you can.

Adam Grant, the focus of this piece, lives by a philosophy of helping others whenever and however he can, and he usually can. He’s a professor of organizational psychology at Wharton who studies happiness and success at work, among other things. Many other things. So many other things. This guy, in fact, is so busy with helpful acts that most people would collapse under the weight of them all. Aside from being the youngest tenured prof at Wharton, he’s Google’s go-to guy, just for starters, and he helps everyone and anyone else who asks.

Another annoying point most capital-S successful people make is that by focusing on doing good work, pettier concerns (like success?) fade in importance. Ironically, as you let go of seeking success, it comes to you, apparently. Like a cat. Along with happiness. Also like a cat. Adam Grant is further proof. Like on steroids.

According to Adam Grant, helping others increases productivity and creativity, keys to organizational success. Sometimes more than traditional reward systems, doing good motivates even people in tedious jobs like telemarketing. He did a study of how to increase hand-washing in hospital personnel and found that if there was a sign over the sink saying “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases”, people washed their hands longer than if the sign simply read “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases.” So apparently we have this propensity for altruism built into us.

(Although maybe the outcome reflects our ability to use denial to our benefit. When only thinking of themselves catching diseases, people don’t wash their hands carefully because they assume they aren’t susceptible. It won’t happen to me.)

Research shows that people feel better about themselves and their lives when they give to others. Altruism makes the altruist feel good. This is the kind of truth that gets existentialist teens and early 20-somethings worked up about living virtuously: If even giving gives the giver something, then how can one ever live unselfishly?

Writing from the ripe old age of no longer 20-something, I ask, who the hell cares? Or, more insightfully – or at least less succinctly – why is it bad to feel good about something as Good as doing good? 

Readers, I now see the nobility in pursuing external work, even if it might be rooted in avoiding existential anxiety or fear or depression. At least it’s positive. At least it’s other-centered. At least it does some good for others, and some good for ourselves.

Yet, have I changed? After all, what I found most interesting about this article about Adam Grant was that Susan Dominus worried that motivation question, too. While he avoided getting into why he is the way he is by saying he’d simply inherited the “fix-it gene,” Dominus warmed the cockles of my heart by pressing on. She was into the potential pathology, too. So Grant has a book out, Give & Take or something, and he defines three kinds of people, because all experts have to make categories and lists: givers, matchers, and takers. The givers, the tireless givers like Grant, he says, are usually powered by dual motives – the desire to please, and its corollary, the fear of disappointing others.

I also learned this excellent term, “compensatory conviction,” which refers to the common situation where anxiety about one thing (the thing that evokes that “uncomfortable” emotion) motivates the pursuit of another. In Grant’s case, his pursuit is doing good.  Of his underlying anxiety Dominus writes, “Mortality, he said, was the one subject that gave him something like panic attacks.” It had been that way since he was a kid, and he had “lost days at a time to his anxiety.”

Panic? Anxiety? Fear of death? Read on, Macduff!

His solution was to notice that idleness allowed his anxiety to poke through, and to therefore eliminate idleness from his life. Doing good keeps him busy and makes him feel good the way altruism makes anyone feel good; but it also keeps him from feeling - uncomfortable. But at least he knows what his fear is, and even if, like my capital-S successful friend, he chooses not to navel-gaze, he is aware of his compensatory conviction. He just doesn’t have that need to confront it, that apparently I do. Susan Dominus does, too, so I am not alone. Maybe it’s a writer-thing.

So I say, hang onto your defense mechanisms, be powered by your existential fears, if they help you do your good in the world, Adam Grant, and everyone else.

Now, I’m thinking of sending him my book proposal and asking for some input. What do you think? He can’t say no.

Thanks is Not Just for Thanksgiving

Gratitude is on the menu this week. Really, though, giving thanks is not just for Thanksgiving anymore. It's become common knowledge that expressing gratitude for what's good in your life is more than smarmy Pollyanna-ism. It's a skill that promotes happiness and well-being, and these states contribute greatly to feeling successful. Indeed, the idea is now so prevalent among positive psychologists, happiness gurus, and abundance theorists that I don't even need to footnote this sentence. Or the previous one.

How does practicing gratitude make you happier and more successful? Well, readers, since it transpires that happiness is a learned skillset that relies on developing a positive attitude, it makes sense that when you want to create a sense of wealth and abundance in your life, you turn outward and notice things for which you are grateful. Once you do, it’s like noticing one lime green car. Once you see one, you can’t stop seeing lime green cars. Even if you never noticed them before, now they’re much more prevalent than you thought.

With all the above in mind, I am thankful for the following nouns:

• Heat, water, and electricity.

• The Norton Anthology of Poetry—for providing my children with many choice vocabulary words, profane and unexpected.

• The hours between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.—for providing me with a special alert time to meet myself and discuss my most intractable problems.

• The avatar of the twenty-five-year-old with a swinging blonde ponytail and enviable abs on the personal coach program of the Star Trac treadmill at the YMCA--she makes me work harder than I would on my own.

• My late father-in-law—for wearing a tux with just the right amount of careless disarray.

• Maple syrup.

Happy Thanksgiving.

The Dough Followed the Bread!

The first full week of school finds me a little calmer than last week. The refrigerator is here—or most of it. There’s just a toe plate missing, but hey, did you expect the whole thing to arrive at once? I didn’t. The thing works, and the produce is now in the humidity-controlled produce bins and not crammed amongst the milk bottles. The 9^th grader has found people with whom to eat lunch, and one of them is even named “Silken,” so that’s good. The 5^th grader has exchanged gifts with her “boyfriend,” so that’s good. (?) And I’ve triumphed over bureaucracy, too. The transportation people listened to my suggestion about the bus route and are implementing it, starting tomorrow.  Yay, me!  I’ve only had one unnecessary visit to the doctor, who very gently told me that armpit pain and fatigue don’t fit the rubric for West Nile Virus as much as for, uh, muscular pain brought on by too many Sun Salutations, and fatigue because of, possibly, too little vitamin D or sleep, or just because of life.  So, you know, overall, things are better. Although who can be sure it’s not something worse than West Nile Virus? I mean, besides the doctor? No one, I tell you. No one. But I’m fine, readers, really.

And then there was the baker I interviewed for the food co-op newsletter. An Amazon of a woman, mother of three, who is piloting the new bread program at the co-op. She works four nights a week from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. or something insane, then goes home and sees her children off to school, and tries to sleep.  When I interviewed her, she’d been up all night, but she was so enthusiastic about her bread and all the beautiful details she puts into it, and how she studies the customers’ buying patterns to determine what sells and how she lovingly arranges her loaves in a display with accompanying greens, that she practically blew me off my chair. So I asked her how she was managing the scheduling, and she said that becoming a baker was a recent career choice, and that before she’d had kids, she’d worked in healthcare and started nursing school, and now that her kids are in middle school and high school she felt like she could look at her professional life again. She decided that even though nursing would be a more practical choice, she was going to go for what she loved to do. And then, as if she were a living testimonial ripped from the pages of Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow, she said that after she went to culinary school, she spent several months figuring out how to get a job as a baker. One day she came to the co-op and just decided, on a whim, to ask if they needed one. It turned out they'd just decided to start the bread program, so she had a job. Then, on top of that, she said that because she was doing what she loved to do, the hard parts, like working nights, and like feeling like getting three whole hours of sleep in one twenty-four hour period was “wow,” things were going to fall into place. 

"When you do what you love," she said (with no prompting from me), "things shift." You work with a "different purpose," and the inconveniences are not problems. "I know in future everything will fall into place," she said. 

As I listened to her rapid-fire speech and considered her shiny, bright-eyed, sleep-deprived face, the thought--drugs-- did occur to me. But that was uncharitable. This dame was powered by pure satisfaction.  Could I have asked for a more serendipitous interview? 

Find the Motive, Another Facet of Goal Pursuit

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Do you see yourself as trying to be good or as getting better? Heidi Grant Halvorsen, PhD, wants to know.

Is this a trick question? You bet. If you see yourself pursuing goals to prove you're good--or great--at something, then you get the big red buzzer. You may indeed achieve your goals, but your life will be h-e-double toothpicks. As the polite like to say. Since I'm not that polite, I'll just say it. Wrong. Buzz. You have chosen the wrong motive and your life will be full of misery.

Perhaps I exaggerate.

Perhaps I do not.

Try it. Say, "I want to publish a book so everyone will say how talented I am."

Buzz! Wrong answer.

Say, "OMG! I got an A last test, but only a B+ this time--I must not be that smart. I think I'll develop an anxiety disorder, or perhaps an eating disorder."

Buzz! Wrong answer.

Just in case you didn't get the message in my previous posts, here it is. If you've been buzzed by the big red buzzer (and no, it's not that red Staples buzzer, it's more like the buzzer in Family Feud), then you're headed for trouble. Perhaps this sounds familiar. It is. HGH, PhD, is offering another way of looking at the mindset theory. If you're pursuing some goal to prove you're good enough, you're great enough, and people love you, then you're motivated by a fixed or entity mindset. This mindset's downside is that your self image becomes attached to having achieved --whatever--and therefore the risk of losing it threatens your sense of yourself as worthy.  If your motive is that you're going to show those bastards, then you're going to be too busy shoring up your self image to handle bumps and derailments in your path.

Bumps and derailments being the general rule in life, instead of the exception, it's much better to save those be good goals for straightforward things. I'm having a little trouble thinking of something straightforward. Which is the point. But the be good goal, the fixed mindset, works when you can just plug in numbers and check the math. Otherwise, you want to motivate yourself by the desire to improve. That way, the growth mindset way, also known as the incremental way, you can still feel good when a gigantic tree falls across the road, because you figure out how to deal with it. (Climb over it, go around it, chop it up and haul it away.) As HGH, PhD, says, "Whenever possible, try to turn your goals from being good to getting better....When your emphasis is on what there is to learn rather than what there is to prove, you will be a lot happier and will achieve a lot more."

So file away those SAT scores you remember from 30 years ago and roll up your sleeves. Why? Because people motivated by getting better/growth/incremental thinking

• Don't give up when the going gets tough
• Enjoy themselves more
• Deal with depression and anxiety better

Now I think we've polished every facet of that particular theory to perfection. Look! I can see myself!

What's It All About, Alfie?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Ballet-dancer_01.jpg

After yet another too-early wake-up powered by anxiety about college, I browsed through my Facebook links and found this short video by Dr. Ned Hallowell about raising successful children. If you don't want to watch, which takes about 9 minutes, you can skip right to my insightful summary.

Video Spotlight No. 10 | OPEN, The News and Discussion Blog of Avenues: The World School

What does he mean by successful? What we all mean, really, when it comes down to it: happy, healthy, productive, engaged in society, moral.

Can a Dilettante Be Successful?

It's school vacation in our state, so I don't have time for a long blog post. I'm too busy visiting family and reopening psychic wounds to post anything long. On the plus side, perhaps there will be fodder for future posts to excavate from the effects.

But I am thinking about this. A friend of mine, who is decidedly successful professionally--you can tell because now she is a consultant--mentioned that she often feels dissatisfied with herself. She said she finds that she's always thinking about her weaknesses, so that she can improve those areas, and balance out her skills.  Whereas men she knows, entrepreneurs and professionals, don't worry about areas they might be weak in; they focus on what they're good at and interested in, and keep on building on it.

Success, n.

http://www.terawarner.com/hhh/istockimages/success_failure_sign_-_med.jpg

Let’s be honest, I’ve gone over to the namby-pamby side of things, where success is called abundance and is defined in much the same way we talk about happiness or contentment. You know, success is whatever makes you feel good. Wealth is friends, family, feeling a little buzz about your place in the world. It’s been a little New-Age-y around here. A little sticky. 

What is it with all this garbage about happiness and contentment? These are consolation prizes, people, for if you happen to notice that while you’re meditating and chanting “ommmm” and smiling at people and giving them candy (did I say that? Is THAT what I want? Candy?) and everything, you haven’t actually gotten rich or famous or become highly prestigious.

These are the kinds of helpful thoughts that buzz around my head when I try to meditate. Or to work.

For some clarity, I  headed to the dictionary. Did I mention I used to work in a library? That’s right. Even considered library school, which has become way cooler over the last 20 years than it was when I took one course and decided no, thanks. Still, I’m all about the reference books.

Besides, as any writer knows, when defining terms, you might as well start at the dictionary.

So I started with my actual dictionary, the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1969) that I seem to have lifted from the cooperative house I lived in for five-and-a-half years in my 20s. No, that wasn’t the 1920s, that was MY 20s.

Success, n. 1. The achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted. 2.a. The gaining of fame or prosperity. b. The extent of such gain. 3. One that is successful. 4. Obsolete. Any result or outcome.

I ended up online, of course, where I looked up "success" in 30 dictionaries.  Thirty dictionaries, which all said pretty much the same thing, so I’ll quote you the Mirriam-Webster online definition, since we know and trust the Mirriam-Webster name (although maybe not so much if you’ve taken Reference Librarianship and know things like the 11^th edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica was an extraordinary achievement, whereas the 15^th was not.)

            Success, n. 1. (obsolete) Outcome, result.

            2.a. a degree or measure of succeeding. b. favorable or desired outcome; also the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.

3. One that succeeds.

 For thoroughness, I looked up succeed: 

Succeed, intransitive verb.

1.a. to come next after another in office or position or in possession of an estate. b. to follow after another in order.

2.a. to turn out well. b. to attain a desired object or end.

Transitive verb.

1. To follow in sequence and especially immediately.

 2. Come after as heir of successor.

Guess what? Not a single mention of abundance. All this talk about “wealth” and “abundance” meaning something other than having money and achieving concrete stuff notwithstanding, the dictionary offers a pretty darn depressing reality check. Success means having money and achieving things that other people have noticed you have achieved. I could have started and ended this post with the Word tools dictionary:

Success 

1. Achievement of intention. 

2. Attainment of fame, wealth, or power. 

3. Something that turns out well. 

4. Somebody successful.

Bummer for me.  

Can thirty dictionaries be wrong? I mean, is there a way around those key words like fame, wealth, power, achievement? 

http://agsblingblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/confusion.jpg

Well, my tens of readers, of course there is. There has to be. And I think--yes, I think I'm pulling out of my slough of despond--and I can see it. 

The dictionary is concerned with the standard definition of success, but most of the successful people I've talked to don't concern themselves with that one. They are, all of them, much more concerned with the day-to-day pursuit of their goals than with the glorious proofs of their attainment. They're more about quality of life, and about purpose than about the fruits of their labors. And if that's how the obviously successful people define success, why should poor slobs like me be any different?

And that brings me back to where I began, really: finding out what makes people feel successful.  After all, as my sister the psychoanalyst told me, you can be one of those people who achieves a great deal, but who, because of your psychology, is incapable of feeling good about any of it. 

Who wants to live like that? 

Phew, that was a close call. I almost had to shut down this whole operation. 

Expectations and Success

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/05/14/success.gif

Somebody told me a story. A college student who wanted to go on and study 18th century English Lit in grad school hit a wall: his father. His father told him to do something practical, like be a doctor, so he went to medical school and became a doctor. He got married, he joined a private practice, he lived in a wealthy suburb of Boston. He was successful, no doubt. But he didn't love his work. Eventually, when his own children were heading into the teenage years, he left his practice and went to graduate school where he earned his doctorate in English Literature. 18th century English Literature. Because he started out "later in life," and because, presumably he wasn't as flexible about where he would live as a young PhD graduate has to be, he never became a full professor. He worked in adjunct positions and so forth. And yes, he was very happy.

Now I don't know this guy. I only know his story third hand. What strikes me, besides his interest in 18th Century English Literature, which is what I would have studied in grad school if I'd decided to go, is that what finally made the guy happy was doing work that tapped into his True Self.   As a private doc, he had a high income (this was in the dawn of HMOs and Managed Care), prestige, etc. But he was unsatisfied. When he changed to literature, he found work was inherently intrinsically motivating. (He also had a nice portfolio, equity in a home in a desirable neighborhood, and who knows, maybe a nice inheritance from the now-deceased paternal wall, but never mind. Bucking expectations takes courage, whatever the circumstances.)

What also strikes me is that success is often defined by someone else's expectations for us. If we are approval-seekers, or non-confrontational types, or just upper middle class strivers, we often sublimate our own interests in pursuit of Success.We might not trust our instincts about what we want to do (my situation), or we might just buy into our elders' world view without question. We may never question it (result: mid life crisis involving expensive car/plastic surgery/affairs) or we may finally (result: major change of career or marriage.)

Here's another story. As a graduate student in the early 1960s, she was at the top of her class; yet she never finished her PhD. Her classmates and professors all expected her to go on, but she didn't. She lost interest in the topic and chose not to. Instead, she raised a family and pursued her academic interests informally. She's pretty hard line about success. She "never accomplished anything" that people expected of her. Nothing to show, not known in a field? Not successful. According to her own inherited beliefs about success.

Neither this person, nor the late-blooming English teacher qualify as successful under such guidelines. However, this doesn't prevent them from feeling satisfied and fulfilled in life. And this is where my thoughts get a little murky. On some level, what I'm getting at is similar to those folks who dissect happiness or contentment or fulfillment. At the feeling level, these terms are somewhat interchangeable. This brings me back to where I started: at the macro level of success, visible, notable, recognizable accomplishments are the best indicators. Is it really any more complicated than that? What do the rest of us do then? Do we feel like failures until and unless we achieve at this level? Do we do what I perhaps have been doing and bring it down to the micro level, charting our mini-accomplishments, breaking our goals down into chewable size and swalling little tastes of mini-success? Or do we do what this woman does, and remove success from the equation of life? Does success matter?

Divorce Saturday

Thank God It's Monday.

My adored cousin L, who is about my age (once you're over a certain age, a year or so doesn't matter, now does it?), but who had kids way before I did, used to complain that she hated the weekends. At that time I spent every weekend going to bookstores and cafes, going out to dinner and movies with friends, maybe having a date here and there, sleeping late, lounging around in sweats - doing, you know, whateverthehellIwanted. Well, now my kids are the age hers were when she started saying this, and now I own a home, and now I know what she meant.

Friday night rolls around. We manage to coordinate dance drop-offs and pick-ups, get everyone home, and have a decent dinner (which I make). The husband and I, because we have such a spectacular social life, usually end up watching old Masterpiece Theater episodes and going to bed early. Saturday morning looms, after all, and I need my rest.

Saturday rolls around. It's cleaning day. It's laundry day. It's yard work day. It's grocery shopping day.  But before cleaning and shopping; there's walking the dog, buying oranges and slicing them for soccer for the 3rd grader's game; there's a photo shoot for overpriced photos of the 3rd grader's soccer team; there's the farmers' market, which I have to get to early enough that the egg lady and the bread man haven't run out.  Farmer's Market overlaps with soccer games, so the husband and I tag-team that. We reconvene at the house and start cleaning. At some point in this morass of human filth (around the toilet bowl usually), I am overcome with a rush of heated despair: while I am cleaning this- this- this object, the grass is growing, the crabgrass is dying and offering a brief interlude when we could easily pull it out and plant seed and improve the lawn before all the leaves fall down (glory of fall) and need raking; the spiders are spinning webs in the corners of all the vestibules of my house; the acorns are taking the morning to embed themselves further into the yard pursuant to their goal of turning it into a forest; the laundry needs shifting and folding; we have nothing to eat; we have to remember to get the 7th grader to her rehearsal; the lawn needs mowing, the shrubs need trimming; and there is a nature fair/river festival/craft fair/state park where I would much rather be.

Instead, I am cleaning this- this- this toilet, and I have two more, and the tiles need extra care, and really all the floors should be washed by hand; and I hate the trim on the shower door; and why are the knobs on all my kitchen cabinets gold colored? And while I'm cleaning and the yard is growing and tangling like some stop-action example of entropy, I'm unable to paint the family room a better color because I'm cleaning the ding-dong toilet and the floors and the shower (who picked these ugly bronze-like and very ornate fixtures? I would pick something very simple that wipes clean easily) and I'm just becoming hotter and hotter and hotter and it's time for a divorce now, because this is definitely not my fault that all this stuff has to be done and it has to be done on Saturday. Isn't Saturday the Sabbath somewhere?

Around noon the children, who have been pressed into various chores, are now hiding. The dog wants to play. The husband and I take off our ipods. I'm sweaty and smelly and hungry, and I want someone to give me lunch. Now. The husband may have similar feelings, but I don't want to know. Furthermore, he's not allowed to. He needs to give me lunch. NOW. Besides, there is still laundry and meal-planning, and the desire to go to the gym and the dog needs his long afternoon exercise and there is just this constant awareness that my whole life is like, well, like my backyard - plug up one chipmunk hole and and a chipmunk runs out of another one. Don't even get me started on the wildlife in the yard. Don't even get me started on the wildlife in the house. Who knew there could be so many spiders? The 3rd grader does. She tracks 'em like a zealot. We are wearing out the stair treads removing them (sometimes in a cup, with humane intent, to the outside, where they apparently immediately pitch their webs in the vestibule; sometimes crushed in a tissue, with murderous intent, right down the drain). And then there are those lovely little things I brought home from the Coop that require removing from the ceiling.

Thing is, I would much rather do yard work than clean the house. But I would much rather have a clean house than not. So while we exhaust ourselves cleaning, I am aware most unpleasantly of all the other projects not happening. The basic maintenance, and then the so-called fun stuff about owning a home: painting it to your own liking, or whatever. Some consider this sort of work fun. And don't even get me started on what I really thought I'd be doing when I owned a home (back in the 20th Century, when I even gave a thought to any of this): hiring a maid to clean the house, and consulting with a designer about the interior of it. That is so far away from me now that I'm not even exactly sure where I learned of those possibilities. Oh yeah, wait, I remember. I was raised in that kind of home. Sigh. My freelance writing career is going to have to really take off before any of that becomes possible. Divorce Saturday.

Lest you condemn me as a big fat whiner (or a short, plump one - whatever), I have to admit that my attitude might have something to do with my world view. Is that a tautology? I believe it is. I will check my dictionary later. I do understand that 'smile until you feel happy' philosophy. It just doesn't work for me. Enjoying a clean house is definitely not the same thing as enjoying cleaning it, and let me assure you, that enjoying cleaning depends a lot on whether you can afford not to.

Nevertheless, there are pleasant things about this list of chores. For example, the Farmers' Market, once I've stalked the eggs and bread, provides a pleasant outdoor interlude. I usually run into my friend Annie there, and Annie is always so much busier than I am, and so cheerful about it, that I am biting my lip even daring to complain. We take a moment to appreciate the Mushroom Guy - who has  a very charming girlfriend who is missing half of her left pinkie - but only a moment, because that is all either Annie or I can spare with such a long list of to-dos. Then we're off, our baggy housework clothes flapping around us.

And at the end of the day, there is the occasional dinner that the husband and I have been invited to, or that we have invited friends to; if not, there is a clean house. Sometimes we've bucked the Saturday trend and spent the day at a festival/fair/nature preserve/state park/with friends, and we come home exhausted. We always turn in early then, because we are freakin' tired, and Sunday looms. Divorce Sunday. Hahahahahahahahahahaha.