Chai Tea Lottie

I and a few other people are discovering these days that blood relatives may come in and comfort ahead of so-called friends. That's not always the case. But I'm finding it to be true.

I am incredibly grateful for my children, my parents, and my brothers. I can understand family ties in a much different way now. I feel terribly sorry for those who can't rely on or trust their parents and siblings for support. I can see why a person in that situation would find it hard to trust or rely on anyone.

Other things I'm learning (again): God is there and will provide whatever is needed. I can choose which filter to look through to perceive "reality". And it's always best to choose the optimistic, loving filter.

People are more important than things, money, position, power, fame, reputation. If I choose to put people first, I will be satisfied deeply. If I go after other things ahead of people, I will always feel a hole in my self. But, it's important to choose which people to invest myself -- it circles back to blood.

This has been a long, cold spring. But sap is thawing, life is growing. I can choose to wallow in self-pity or I can thank God for my blessings; I have so many. I hope and pray my children can see what I "see" - help each other, stand by each other, always look for the bright side of the dark cloud (it's always there), feel compassion for those who willfully hurt us (such a person hurts inside him or herself much worse) and forgive those who don't know they've hurt us (Jesus gave us that model). Learn from the pain and always choose love. Be angry then let it go into oblivion.

Move on, take care of yourself. Choose fun. Choose the sunny outlook and the rain will blow away each time.

Love, Lottie

Harumph. I guess it does take a pointed comment from someone for me to realize that that someone does not want to have much contact with me, even though we share children and a lot of years.

It takes a lot of hints, but I'm getting there.

At the least, I've been bumped from the street where there is a large hole to a different street entirely. The new street may have some holes of its own, but it is insanity to keep trying something that never works and walking down a street with a black hole just doesn't work well for me. Black holes suck light, you know, and everything else.

So.

On to new things. First: a move to the country. Very scenic countryside, with lots of cows around, even. Someone's huge new house with a basement apartment - separate entrance with a patio even! Small, small, small. But this may work out well - I've been wanting to streamline to bare necessities. Zen mode. I think it will help my art, actually. No distractions of a house with lots of, well, distractions. I will set up a table and shelves and work steadily, every day. No room to start lots of projects. I will have to focus and I think focus is needed.

Second: a change of job. I can't commute from the new place to the mall in Tysons. This is a relief, too -- I am stressed out from malls, consumerism, materialism, marketingism. And terrible traffic. Frankly, I never liked living in this part of northern Virginia and always wished to move to a distant county (where I'm going). I feel like I'm going to where I'm supposed to be. I have a few job leads and I met a man at church last night who is a headhunter. I told him I'm "small potatoes" with no resume, but he cheerfully told me he'd still help me. The encouragement was nice.

Third: a new committment to church. This time around at this particular church, I'm finding all sorts of help and people support and friends. I'm really surprised. I guess I've been detached from some things for a long time. It's like my limbs are coming back to life and tingling with blood flow. Disconcerting, a bit prickly, but still better than numb.

OK -- gotta go! Love to all

Autobiography in Five Chapters

1. I walk down the street.
There is a huge hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I'm lost... hopeless.
It's not my fault.
It takes forever to get out.

2. I walk down the same street.
There is a huge hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend that I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe that I am in the same place again.
But it's not my fault.
Still, it takes me a long time to get out.

3. I walk down the same street.
There is a huge hole in the sidewalk.
I see it.
Still I fall in. It's a habit.
My eyes are wide open.
Already I know where I am.
It's my fault.
I climb out quickly.

4. I walk down the same street.
There is a huge hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

5. I walk down a different street.


--Portia Nelson

Read a comment on a blog recently where the person quipped about morning announcements and what's for lunch in the cafeteria. Had to laugh as this reminded me of my primary school education (5 different schools in 6 grades!), then I thought that my poor children have no idea of a fuzzy intercom voice screeching and blasting into the homeroom. Although today I think most schools have a video imitation-newscast; I remember seeing that happen when I had one of my jobs working as a school photographer assistant.

Anyway, my kids sometimes lament not going to the prom as a downside to homeschooling. Sheeeeeesh - proms! As opposed to not: having to get on schoolbuses after standing in the cold for 15 minutes, standing in lines to go to the water fountain and cafeteria, asking permission to use the bathroom, suffering stupid mean girl clicques and mean boy wedgies, (and girls, getting goosed by mean boys - yes, that happened to ME, long before sexual harassment hearings), being utterly bored in class and resorting to reading a book under cover of a desk, being utterly confused by a math lesson and dreading the class finding out your stupidity, being told what game to play during your twenty minutes of FREE time, and on and on and on. I saved my kids from all of that.

Of course, there are downsides to homeschooling, too. I won't go into them here, maybe another time. But I still firmly believe my children have not been permanently scarred by emotional abuses that happen in a large crowded institutionalized setting. I believe this as I am currently reliving some vivid memories of things that happened to me in 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. Terrible years for me. Made more relevant to my here and now by the fact of menopause. In 4th grade, hormones were surging in all of us girls - we were starting training bras at the same time - and now, at the end of this hormonal stage of life that began way back then, I'm finding that as my hormones surge in another direction, the flashing feelings of emotions are the same, sparking replays of scenes from school. Yikes. Not pleasant at all. It's not helpful, either, that one of my main traumas during those years was rejection by my "clicque" of friends and now that I am suffering current rejection by my supposed life-long mate, the hormonal feelings are extra charged. I feel like I am back in a time warp and I don't like it one bit.

However. I'm older and wiser. I know that feelings, even those caused by actual physical outbursts of cells out of whack, don't last and good times roll around again. I just have to go through this. I just have to go through this. I just have...

Well, my kids may never have those dreams where they're standing naked in the school cafeteria or finding out they've missed a whole semester of classes and the exam is today. They won't have memories of institutional school that affect their life forever. They'll have other nightmares and other memories that will affect their future lives, I guess. My hope for them is that they will have a more positive earth to stand on, even so.

so

my car mechanic is moving to another state. Which leaves me feeling a bit helpless as I don't fully understand the workings of my car. My father was great about things like that - he even would drive my car to fill it up with gas; to him, taking care of the car was the man thing to do for a woman. I did not marry a man who thought like that, so we both ended up as babes in the car shop until we found this guy, the afore mentioned mechanic. Great guy. He kept computer records of what he did and when and we trusted him utterly to know when the tires needed rotated and to keep his eyes on the belts and hoses and make sure all things were working properly. In between car appointments, he'd have us over for dinner and man, that guy could cook!

so

a few months ago, my husband and I were eating dinner at his house every few weeks or else going out to dinner with him and his wife. In between shared meals, our cars were in and out of his shop for their respective oil changes, etc. Now all is thrown to the winds - no husband, no mechanic, no one to go out to dinner with, no one to go to for car maintenance. I'm back to where I was at 21, except no father around, either.

I'm not about, at my age, to learn how to drain my car's oil pan. I COULD, but right now, there are so many other things that I am juggling. This means... finding a new mechanic. (finding a new husband is further down on the to do list). Now, the old mechanic has a guy who's taking his customers, but this means calling my old husband to find out the new guy's number and this all seems so complicated and if I'm not changing my own oil I can at LEAST find a new mechanic of my own, on my own. No more waiting for Dad to take care of my car, no more waiting for a husband to get around to it, no more putting all my trust in a mechanic, hoping he'll do right by me and keep my car innards in top condition. No, time to start taking care of some things by myself. So I told myself. Today.

so

this is really what I did. I figured since I'm breaking away from old thinking patterns of depending on a man to take care of my car, I would go about this in a very female way. I INTUITED finding my "way". Yes - I told myself, and my kids, that I was going out today to get an oil change. Did I look in the yellow pages or on the internet or ask a friend for a reference? No. I thought about those ideas, but instead, I just got in my car and drove out to the highway and "felt" my way towards where I would get the oil changed in my car. And sure enough, five miles down the road, I saw the perfect place - just what I had seen in my mind's eye - a DRIVE THROUGH oil change shop. Spiffing, spanking new, with big bay windows, painted white inside and out, with energetic and very polite mechanics who obviously make commission by selling oil and transmission products. They even have these little white trays with depressions so that they can show you your transmission fluid (brown and bubbly) and their transmission fluid (rosy pink and viscuous) and convince you to hand over another $50.00 on top of the $20.00 oil change (labor) and oil ($5.00) and disposal fee and taxes - which they don't tell you that until you see the bill. I'm not complaining, mind you, about the cost. It seemed to be in line with what my old mechanic charged. But this was much more entertaining! You stay in the car and HELP! You turn on your engine when they say so, and change gears as they drain transmission fluid, and you can watch the guy working underneath the floor on the car next to you. Yes, instead of raising the car up, they have a lower level under the car where other mechanics (the ones who aren't so verbose and good at selling, I guess, or else they take turns) drain stuff and hand up filters, etc.

so

it was all over and done with in 30 minutes. No dropping a car off and making sure I had a ride to and fro, as well as transportation the rest of the day. Drive in, sit awhile (the mechanics offer you a cup of coffee, too!), help and watch, pay, then go. Gee, if they had someone to do my nails and take my drycleaning and drop off a gallon of milk into the backseat, they'd be my dream assistant come true. But... while not a mechanic who can grill a great steak and whip up fantastic potatoes like my old one, this new place will do just fine. And I'm proud of myself for doing it all by myself, my own way. Just get in the car and drive. When the car needs oil, the mechanic will appear.

two posts in one day! Could be the coffee I had at 7:30 pm, the real stuff, not decaf. So I'm wired in more ways than one.

What was I going to write about? Hmmmm.

Work was fine. A co-worker said I should be the manager; that I was better at motivating people than the current manager. Flattering, but I do not want the responsibility. I'm also trying to make a decision whether to teach classes next year, too -- part of me wants to very much but another part doesn't want to be committed for a year. Although what the heck else am I planning to do next year, anyway?

I've been invited to a party next week and to go out dancing - whoee - a social life may be developing! I'll keep you all posted (or maybe not ;-) ). Weight is falling off, finally, and I'm fitting into old clothes. I planted seeds today for a container garden that I've planned for the back deck. Hopefully, the deer will not come that close to the house and nibble.

and that's the evening edition of today's chai tea lottie.

And warm! Why do I start most posts with a weather update? Maybe I should find some little icons to represent clouds, sun, rain, snow, etc. like a kindergarten weather chart.

Overwhelmedness can be depressing. I feel paralyzed by having too many things to do. I know I'm not the only one who suffers this. Perfectionism can be a root cause. I want an organized purse, bills caught up, appointments made and kept, house ready for a magazine photographer, body exercised and groomed and dresssed well, food in the pantry and food cooked each day to gourmet perfection, dog toenails clipped and hair brushed, garden neat and tidy.

But time is necessary to do jobs that pay bills, time is necessary to listen to kids' woes and worries and joys, time is necessary to take a kid to the emergency room (twice in two days) and then to a plastic surgeon (he's gonna be ok) then to drugstores to find specialized bandages and distilled water - and I mean drugstores plural because you can't find distilled water and specialized bandages in the same store these days. Time is necessary to catch up on sleep and do laundry and at least the dishes in the sink.

I want to say this to one of my regular readers (I do know I have a FEW) who is feeling the same stress:

Hmmmm. I don't have the answer.

OK -- here's what: take a nap if you can. Or have a cup of tea. Or go to the gym. Yes, Yes, Yes these seem to be time wasters, but I think doing things like these blips you out of loop of agonizing. You can stand back and look at the big picture. The house will never be perfect, nor you. Some of these things don't matter all that much. Who is keeping track of whether you are perfect or not? If there is someone outside of yourself who is keeping track and judging, disentangle yourself from such a person. Pick a few things that you can do. Leave the rest for "later". Start doing a few of those few things. You'll find yourself moving along. Have more tea when you get stuck in the loop again. Take another big walk. Repeat as needed.

Perfection won't happen if you follow my advice. But, it never will happen anyway!!!!! And that is a blessing to realize. You won't end up putting plastic in your boobs when you're 40 if you can get over trying to do all perfectly.

OK - I've had MY tea (chai, of course) and I'm off to do a few things on my list. Love to all!

Lottie's Back - should that be well, hello, Lottie in Louis Armstrong voice or Lottie's BAAAAACCCK?

I never killed this blog and after talking to two of my blogging kids, decided that I will be like most typical bloggers who say goodbye and then come back.

Yesterday's Washington Post had two things about MY IDEAS, dammit, but under other people's names. First - a weather cartoon: a pictorial calendar of the month of March and beginning of April. Each day in March is a weather prediction of snow, cold, wind chill, cold, frost, hard winds, cold, frigid. Then on April 1st, at 2 P.M. signs of spring, a warming trend. April 2nd: Unbearable Sweltering Heat.

Which is so true of this area. It is cold, cold, cold here. But it's late March, dammit. I ran out of oil for the furnace and decided that having the tank refilled would bring on the warm weather the next day, but no, even that didn't work. However, I and the cartoonist are right -- soon it will warm up considerably.

The other idea of mine seen in the Post was found in a review of recent artworks by various artists in D.C. They stole my ideas that I've been kicking around in my head!!!!! Urgh. One was photographs of what I want to paint and draw, so I guess I can pursue this theme of mine in paint and not be stealing intellect, and yes, yes, yes, it's not just a mind spasm here, I've made preliminary sketches, so there.

Lots of art happening in my studio, some coming along very well and each birthing a new idea or direction. Now my problem is time -- I wish to paint full-time but can't as I do need to keep my day job and anyway I find great feminine support at work. Newest person there is an Iranian grandmother who has some incredible life stories. She loves me, and I need love and hugs these days. There is something magical about a person coming up and squeezing your shoulders and saying "God bless you and your children", just out of the blue, when you're rummaging around in a drawer for ponchos to put out on hangars.

Ok, that's all for now. Hope Laura will put me back on her list. (Hi Laura, I love the man bonking his head on Derek's blog, I could even HEAR it, after watching it for a few minutes. Bonk, bonk, bonk)

Love to all!