7ToF: Nerd Central

1. I thought it would be so fun to do book puzzles on my bookstagram account. The first one was books with numbers in the title, and I spent hours gathering up the obvious ones (1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Two Towers, Station Eleven) and combing my shelves for less obvious ones (The Thirteenth Tale, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Tenth of December, Hyperbole and a Half). I even created rules: the number had to be in the title, not in the subtitle; collections like Best American Short Stories with the year in every title didn't count; Stephanie Plum didn't count, because it would have taken all the space.

2. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one else thought this was as much fun as I did. Only two people bothered to respond, and no one took up my challenge to think of more (although I have to admit I took all the easy ones). When I told MadMax about it, he started laughing and said affectionately, Oh, Mom, you are such a nerd. (I'm sure he meant it in the nicest possible way.) I already had a list of possible future puzzles going before I posted, though, so I will probably keep doing it. I may put less time and effort into future versions, though.

3. Best outcome: I re-discovered Eight Cousins, by Louisa May Alcott, which I adored as a child and read several times. I always liked it better than Little Women, which-- to be honest-- I never read all the way through until I was in my twenties. But now I can't really remember either one, so I'm in the midst of a re-read. Thirty pages in, all I can say so far is that Rose (from Eight Cousins) is more of a prissy snob than I remembered, sort of like Amy in Little Women, but we'll see.

4. Not long ago I wrote about my obsession with finding the perfect tea. I mentioned that I always warm the cup before I put tea in it. My reasoning was that if my tea was made in a warmed cup, it would stay hot longer than it would if made in a cold cup, and I lose interest in tea (or any hot drink) once it's cold.

I decided to put that to the test. We have a motley assortment of mugs, but we do have two that are the same. So I pre-heated one with hot tap water, then heated water in the electric tea kettle and poured it in each cup. After one minute, the water in the pre-warmed cup was four degrees warmer than the other cup; after five minutes, the difference was three degrees. Not as big a difference as I would have thought. NOW YOU KNOW.

But being a creature of habit, I still made my cup of tea the same way this morning.

5. Once again I got in a discussion with some friends about genre fiction. It just astonishes me how anti-romance people are. And honestly, I think it's a completely false opinion. I'm pretty sure if I handed them one of my favorite romance novels and actually forced them to read it, they'd come back and say, that's not a romance novel! It's just a good story! And yet it IS a romance novel, and the problem is that they don't know what they're talking about because they've never read one. Or maybe the problem is, as one Book Riot editor realized in this week's Interesting Read, our culture's misogyny has created a disdain for romance.

6. But having said that, I have to say it's been a long time since I've read a current romance novel (published in the last couple of years) that I finished. I'm all in favor of occasional escapist reading, but all of the ones I've read recently have been of the fantasy type-- the hero is fabulously wealthy, drop-dead gorgeous, and his only faults are the adorable sort. And/or they're so insanely attracted to each other that there is almost no story besides their physical attraction. I'm good for one or two of those a year--they can be fun to read-- but that seems to be all that's being published these days.

7. Summer is here. I lose faith every single year--winter lasts so dang long, and then spring never really seems to come, and then suddenly it is gorgeous and I almost get teary-eyed when I go outside to feed the chickens. We had record breaking heat and then wildfires for most of last summer, so this year is especially appreciated. Here is the picture I snapped this morning, strategically aimed so that you don't have to look at chickensh!t (you're welcome)(Past the fence is our neighbor's field).

And that's it for me. Have a great weekend.

yup, that nest is still empty

I halfway feel like I should apologize for that sad-panda post on Thursday, but you know what? It really helps. Writing stuff out and posting it works for me in a way that journaling does not. It helps me think things through, and it helps to see how people respond to it. So I guess occasionally you'll have to put up with it. Thank you. I feel better.

It occurred to me over the weekend that part of what I'm going through (still) is the long-term adjustment to being an empty nester. The short-term part of it, the month or two after each kid went off to college where I missed them intensely, was over pretty quickly. But the long-term transition away from devoting a signiticant portion of my time, energy, and attention to keeping track of their schedules and their school's events and their friends and their laundry and everything else-- I think I might still be working my way through that.

My kids were pretty independent even when they were still living at home. They managed their own homework and by the time they were seniors, they were driving themselves around. We didn't really see them all that much. But still there was always a part of me that was aware of what they were doing, when they'd be home, if they'd had dinner, when was the band concert, etc. Having all that energy back again is great (really great), but there's also a bit of a vacuum. Having a job for awhile filled the gap, but now I'm not working and I guess I'm back to figuring this out again.

Another aspect: I've been thinking about the distinction between being an introvert (someone who recharges via alone time) and being a lone wolf (someone who prefers to work alone). I am definitely an introvert, as I've told you ad nauseum, but I'm not a lone wolf. (I don't know enough about this to know if being a lone wolf is a subset of introverts, or if you can be an extrovert lone wolf??)

At work, I prefer to be part of a team. In fact, my perfect job situation would be to have my own office and yet still be part of a team that meets regularly and accomplishes work together, bouncing ideas off each other, vetting each other's work before it goes live/public/whatever, talking through things that aren't working, etc. I was lucky that for about six months that's exactly what this last job was. But then we moved into cubicles. If you have to work in a cubicle, as one of my colleagues still does, you have my utmost sympathy.

So it occurs to me that another part of the adjustment I've been going through recently has been the loss of my colleagues at work. I spent a year working every day as part of a team, so I'm not just missing the structure and the feeling of accomplishment you get from a paying job, I'm missing the feeling of being a member of a group. And since I'm an introvert, that's not something I can easily replace. I need to brainstorm some ideas on this. (Maybe starting with not grumping at my friends who want to be supportive when I'm feeling down. Just sayin.)

Remember awhile ago I told you that I am an Enneagram number 5? Fives are the observer type, and for observers, it can be hard, really hard, to push through the veil of observation to become a particpant in whatever's happening around you. Being part of a team at work makes this easier, because it just happens. You show up at work and boom! you're part of a team. But it's not so easy to make it happen on my own.

So, as always, work in progress.

7ToF: Will you help him change the world, can you dig it? yes I can

I've been waiting such a long time, for Saturday....
Listen children, all is not lost, all is not lost....

Love that song. Not feeling even slightly apologetic for putting it in your head, too.

1. I'm trying to stop reading on my Kindle. Only temporarily, because I love the thing, and there is nothing better for reading in bed at night. (We've discussed this before.) But I'm not reading the actual books that are sitting on my shelves, and there are a bunch I want to read. I'm so attached to my Kindle that this oddly feels a little scary. (how weird is that?)

2. My waitlist of e-books at our library's website has coincidentally come to a halt-- my next one is Amor Towle's Rules of Civility, which I'm supposed to get in six weeks, and the next half dozen are stacked up after that, so it's a good time to do this instead of rooting around for more kindle books to read.

3. This week's interesting column, from the UK version of Elle: I stopped eating carbs after 2:30, not because I think we should stop eating carbs at all, ever, but because of the discussion toward the end about how everyone processes carbs differently, and we each need to figure out our individual metabolism. I think this gets discussed way less often than it should be-- there is no one healthy way to eat that works for everybody. What looks like a healthy diet for you may not be healthy for me. And what worked for me twenty years ago is not going to work for me today. I guess the key is to pay attention to how my body responds to different things and figure out my own healthy way of eating.

4. Update: you may remember that a couple of months ago, I told you that I was going to try exercising more without dieting to drop the pounds I gained over the winter. I hate to weigh myself, but I thought this was working because my clothes fit again the way they did last summer, and I'm definitely stronger than I was when I started this. But then I had my annual physical this week, and not only had I not lost any weight, I'd actually gained some. I know, I know, muscle weighs more than fat and I can tell myself that the workouts are working and etc etc etc.

5. But at some point, I have to be shocked that I weigh within a few pounds of what I did when I was nine months pregnant with MadMax, and I gained forty pounds during that pregnancy. I am not a skinny person who is obsessing about a couple of extra pounds, I am a dumpy (plump?) 56-year-old who weighs more than 170. I really should not be carrying this much weight. So how can I work on this without a) obsessing about it, or b) beating myself up about it (because I got a thumbs up on everything else in my checkup, including all the bloodwork)(except I'm low on Vitamin D). I guess it goes back to the previous Thing: pay attention, and figure out what works for me.

6. And the most important Thing to remember: I have a basically healthy body that is taking good care of me. I need to continually remind myself of that-- to be gracious and thankful to my physical self for allowing me to be here--rather than to feel that stupid frantic sense of panic that I let myself feel all to easily-- how the hell did I get this heavy?? I'm a whale! I'm a disaster! No, actually, I'm not. On the whole, my body is coping remarkably well with the challenges of menopause.

7. I'm taking a Facebook vacation for the rest of the summer. I took about ten days off recently (partly because of being out of town), and when I went back to it, in ten minutes I was stressed and depressed. I do have my beloved groups there, so I won't be deleting my account or anything drastic, just taking a break.

Also due to my mental summer mode: I may not be posting regularly. Not sure about this yet, but I may ignore the usual Tuesday/Friday schedule, and get back to it after Labor Day. Also, at some point I am going to re-post the "Celebrating mid-life" posts from a couple of years ago (which, in spite of the name, are not always celebrations) so we can get started on that again.

And that's it for me. Hope you have a great weekend.

confessions that make no sense

When I first started blogging, I imagined myself as an anonymous writer, able to bare my soul and put it out there to an audience who had no idea who I was. In other words, I would be able to be totally honest without having to take responsibility for the things I said, because nobody in my real life would know about it.

But you know what? It turns out that for the most part, unless your blog hits the big time, the only people who read it are people who know you and are interested to hear what you have to say (<-- what I think on a good day)(alternatively: who know you and feel obligated to keep up with what you write <-- what I think on a bad day).

Which makes the stakes for honesty a lot higher. If I tell you what I'm really thinking, one of you could text me at any given moment, or call me, or run into me at the store, and say with the kindest concern, "How are you doing?"  and if I say, "Fine," respond, "No, really. How are you doing?" And I will end up having to have a conversation I don't want to have in the cereal aisle. Even though that's on me, it would be sweet of you to want to be supportive.

But on the other hand, I really am a private person who prefers to deal with things on my own. I can definitely carry my personal load of crap issues and also deal capably with my life--I've been doing it for years--so if you do run into me at Costco, just assume I'm fine unless it seems like I want to talk. I guess I might as well put that out there. (And given the string of high profile suicides recently, maybe I should also say that I'm nowhere close to being suicidal. It's not that kind of thing.)

The truth is that my light has gone out. Or at least gone into hiding. This little light of mine, I don't know how to let it shine anymore. I'm not happy, and haven't been for a long time. And I don't know what to do about it. I know (or I think I know, anyway) the reasons why I'm unhappy, and for the most part they are things I don't want to change, or can't change. For a long time now, my energy has been going into enduring instead of thriving.

What I'm trying to learn is how to dump all that, how to be really, truly OK, in the midst of any circumstances. The Buddhists call it equanimity. The Christians have Paul, who in his letter to the church at Phlippi says, "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." The circumstances don't have to matter. I can be at peace with myself no matter what.

But in the meantime, until I get there, I'm trying to plumb the depths of what exactly this is, and it isn't exactly pleasant. A lot of what's going on is me being, for lack of a better term, spoiled rotten. My entitled expectations of what my life "should" be like aren't being met, and so I start to whine. The problem isn't the circumstances, it's those expectations.

OK, that's all for now. Maybe I will revisit this another time, and maybe I won't. In a way, that's what the disappointment posts have been about. I really want to take care of this before I become a bitter old woman, which is where I'm going to end up unless I figure this out.

Insert standard disclaimer here about how lucky I am, and how could I be so ungrateful with the amazing life I have (which is totally true). I'm a straight white woman married to a white man with a high status job, I have amazing children, according to pretty much every indicator I should be the happiest woman on earth. This is not a situation that's likely to garner a lot of sympathy, and it doesn't deserve any. But I'm hoping speaking the truth will help jolt me into some new energy to get to work.

binging

Are you a binger? I keep reading and hearing about people who have spent the weekend binge-watching Scandal or Poldark, or binge reading everything by Maria de los Santos. Or they started with the first Louise Penny novel and didn't read anything else until they got caught up with the twelfth, or however many there are now.

Theoretically, I love this idea. I'm a bit obsessive, and I love to read and watch intelligent TV. But so far I have not been able to binge anything. (Well, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but that's different.)

In fact, I'm kind of the opposite of a binger. If I find a new author I like, I start picking up the books she or he has written (see Louise Penny example above). But I spread them out. I read maybe one every six months, or even one a year. I love, more than I can describe, knowing that I have a good, solid, reliable book that I know I will like sitting on the shelf or waiting on my kindle.

So I've read the first two Inspector Gamache novels, but the next two are on my kindle, deliciously ready when I am. I've read the first three Mary Russell novels, and O, Jerusalem is waiting for me. I've read two Kate Atkinson novels, and have three sitting on the shelf.

It's like people who stockpile food and water in case of an apocalypse. If everything in my life comes crashing down, at least I know I've got stacks of good books to read.

There is another side to this, though. Several times in the past, when I discovered a new author I liked, if I read a bunch of their books in a row I got tired of them and never went back. Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels are a great example. I loved, loved, loved the first four of those books-- they're not great literature, but they're a lot of fun to read. Then I read five, six, and seven, and suddenly I was sick of them and I haven't read another one since (what is she up to now, nineteen?).

I think if I had spread them out, maybe read one every six months instead of all at once, I would have kept going. I got tired of the Joe, Ranger, Joe, Ranger, Joe, Ranger schtick, and my understanding is that a dozen books later, she's still stringing that out. They're all bestsellers, so it must just be me.

This week I'm reading my first Anne Lamott book in ten years. It's an old one, Plan B, published in 2005. It is exactly, exactly the book I needed this week. But she has such a distinctive voice, and already I can tell I'm going to need to take a break for awhile before I read another one of hers.

And TV binge watching-- for some reason, I just can't do it. A couple of times over the past few years, I've set up the DVR to record a series recommended by friends. The episodes pile up and pile up, and I never watch them. I had over a hundred episodes of How I Met Your Mother recorded a while back, and I didn't watch a single one. I finally deleted them because I needed the space for something else. I guess it's just not my thing.

What about you?

And just because, here is your Anne Lamott quote of the day, about aging:

Look, my feet hurt some mornings, and my body is less forgiving when I exercise more than I am used to. But I love my life more, and me more. I'm so much juicier. And as that old saying goes, it's not that I think less of myself, but that I think of myself less often. And that feels like heaven to me.  --Anne Lamott, Plan B

7ToF: a bunch of updates, belly fat, and bookstagram

1. Declutter update: I didn't get much done this week. My main accomplishment was pulling everything out from underneath our bathroom sink, throwing out a bunch of old lotions and samples of skin care products, and reorganizing it. But since that only took a couple of hours, I can't claim to have had a good decluttering week. Next week I tackle the dreaded under-the-stairs storeroom, though, which has been the big, nasty part of this that I've been working up to all along. I'm saying it here so I'll have to do it.

2. Reading report: Thumbs up for The Dry, a murder mystery set in Australia, Sing Unburied Sing, a story about a black family on the Gulf coast which would be terribly depressing except her writing is so beautiful, I Am I Am I Am, a memoir about the author's surprisingly frequent brushes with death, A Study in Charlotte, a YA novel about Sherlock Holmes' great granddaughter at boarding school with Dr. Watson's great grandson, The Talent Code, non-fiction about the neurology behind skill development (which sounds yawn-y but he has such great stories to go with it that it's a good read).

2a. Thumbs sideways: The read-all-day book from Tuesday's post was The Rules Do Not Apply, by Ariel Levy. It starts out really interesting and entertaining, but the end as she grieves the complete dissolution of her life devolves a bit. It's good but trigger warning for pretty much everything. Don't tackle it unless you're in the mood for some heavy reading.

3. *slight blush* Remember I told you I was trying to figure out an alternative to my nightly use of face wipes? Yeah, well, I decided I didn't care that much. So I don't have an update to report on that. I'm still using face wipes.

4. Several years ago, I wrote a post about post-menopausal weight gain. We all deal with it. (And actually, a lot of men in their fifties are dealing with it, too, so maybe I shouldn't restrict this to women.) I'm really conflicted about this, because on the one hand, out of the dozens of women I know who are older than 50, I only know one woman who hasn't thickened around her middle, so why are we so worried about it? Why don't we just accept it as normal and get on with our day?

5.  And the reason why is because of this week's "Interesting Read": The Dangers of Belly Fat. Apparently gaining weight deep in your abdomen--which can happen without actually registering as overweight on the scale--leads to a host of health problems. Those of you who have been around awhile know how much I hate dieting, and I still do. But eating sensibly and (most importantly) staying active, are really important. Damn it. It's easy to do now in the summer when the weather is nice and we can go for frequent walks, but in the winter this is tough.

6. The short version of #6 and #7: I have a new account on Instagram for bookish pictures, @bookspate, if you're interested.

Long version: Last year I discovered #bookstagram, which is simply a hashtag on Instagram used for pictures of books. It's nerdy and fun. A couple of months ago I posted a few. Then I took an online class about taking better #bookstagram pictures.

And then, as seems to happen with all things on the internet, I discovered #bookstagram is A Thing. It's become so popular that publishers are paying attention and sending out free books to bookstagrammers who have lots of followers. The fun snaps of your #currentread or your favorite books or an organized bookshelf (#shelfie) have turned into professional quality photographs of shiny new collector's editions.

7. And yet still I'm doing it, because figuring out interesting groupings of books and how to take photos of them has turned into the creative project I was looking for a few months back. I know it's nerdy, and since I'm not the world's greatest photographer and I'm taking pictures of books I actually own and in many cases have owned for decades, I'm bucking the gorgeous #bookstagram trend.

But I've decided I don't care. (Keepin' it real on Instagram.) I created a separate account for this, so if you're on instagram and you're interested, it's @bookspate. Like all internet names these days, bookspate isn't the one I wanted, or even the fourteenth one I wanted, it's just what I came up with while endlessly trying to find a username that wasn't already taken. But it fits well enough-- google defines "spate" as "a large number of things or events occurring in quick succession."

And I'm off. Have a great weekend.

of socks and theology

Years ago, when I was thinking through my departure from Evangelicalism, I built up an elaborate scenario in my head.  

Let's say there's a family, distraught about their teenager's downward spiral into drug use. They've tried tough love, they've tried limiting his access to everything that might lead him down The Wrong Path, but the kid keeps discovering new ways to get high. His latest attempt involves burning his sister's pantyhose and trying to get high off the fumes.

In desperation, they write to a Christian advice columnist, who replies with encouraging words about love and faithfulness, and also says: don't keep pantyhose in your house! no one needs to wear pantyhose!

A thousand years later, this advice columnist's hundreds of letters are found and become the foundation of a new religion. The new believers have copies of his advice, but they no longer have the original letters asking for help. The word "pantyhose" has no literal translation in the language they speak; in fact, it has no meaning at all, so it gets translated as socks. Don't keep socks in your house! No one needs to wear socks!

So the signature characteristic of this new religion becomes going without socks. They are the Barefoot Believers, the people who will not let socks touch their feet, who will not let their homes be defiled by allowing socks across the threshold.

OK, so it's a bit heavy handed, and it exaggerates the process of translation to make a point. But you probably get the point without me even having to say it. We don't know the context of the New Testament writers. We don't have the letter(s) that people in Corinth or Ephesus wrote to Paul to tell him what was happening there.

Really, Paul's letters may have been responding to quite specific situations. Wives submit to your husbands may have meant simply, move back into your family household. It seems fairly obvious that the early Christians were expecting the immediate return of Jesus. Maybe the more fervent among them had moved out of their homes and were living in joyous, jumbled community, leaving their families behind. Who knows?

The larger point is: Evangelicals (including myself, when I was one) take the Bible way too literally. Instead of being clear on the large, over-arching themes (love, joy, compassion, mercy, forgiveness), the focus is on a few bedroom morality items, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. In some Evangelical circles, the whole point of faith has come down to standing firm against immorality. End of story.

The fact that Jesus said, "by this will everyone know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35 NIV), and not "if you condemn immorality" seems to have been lost somewhere.

I've discovered over the past few weeks that some of the podcasts I've been listening to are hosted by Evangelicals. Theoretically, I have no problem with this. Many members of my family are still Evangelical, devotedly so. There are many people I love dearly who are Evangelicals, and I respect their beliefs and my life is enriched by their presence.

But there are a number of issues where we disagree. We know better than to talk about them, because we're not going to change each other's minds. (The exactly-literal interpretation of Scripture is first on the list.)(partly because I would argue that their "exactly-literal" interpretation is more heavily influenced by middle class American conservativism than they would like to admit, but that's a different topic.)

I'm occasionally a little queasy while listening to the Evangelical podcasters. Because one of the primary features of Evangelicalism is the desire to convert people. It's the Great Commission (Go therefore and make disciples of all nations...), the last instruction Jesus gives before he is swept back up to heaven in the Gospel of Matthew.

And I can't help but wonder exactly where these friendly podcasters stand. I know there are progressive Evangelicals, Evangelicals who believe as I do that the church has no business meddling in what consenting adults do in their bedrooms. There are also Evangelicals, especially younger Evangelicals, who believe that the teaching of the New Testament is for believers, and therefore has no bearing on the activities of people who are not Evangelicals. And I'm sure there other varieties-- I haven't been an Evangelical in over thirty years now, so I'm not exactly up on it.

But there are also many Evangelicals who still feel, for example, that homosexuality is a sin that must be pro-actively fought. Just last August, 150 Evangelical leaders signed the infamous Nashville Statement that said, among a whole lot of other things, that it is sinful to even be open-minded about LGBTQ issues, let alone being actively supportive of gay or transgender friends.

So I kind of want my new favorite podcasters to declare themselves. Are they acting amusingly hip about pop culture so they can lure gay people into thinking they mean them no harm? And then when they're hooked, they get coerced into "conversion therapy," so they'll give up their supposedly sinful ways? Would they tell a 17-year-old whose boyfriend's condom broke that taking a morning-after pill would murder her baby?

Maybe they wouldn't, but maybe they would.

Maybe they are part of the new wave of open-minded Evangelicals who are willing to be supportive of the choices of people with different (or no) religious affiliation. But I can't help my skepticism, because that sneak attack is what a childhood of being raised Evangelical taught me to fear.

p.s. I'm avoiding naming them here because once when I named an author in a blog post, I got an email from his agent. It was an entirely different situation, but it made me aware that sometimes Google shows my posts to people I'm not expecting.

(edited to fix my Bible reference error, oops. I've left typos uncorrected in two of my last three posts --which almost makes me crazy-- but I am trying not to re-post so often)

in which you find out more than you wanted to know about my opinions on writing

I got sucked into reading an entire book in one day today (which would not have been possible except I had a migraine this morning so wasn't feeling up to much of anything except reading). Maybe I will tell you about the book another time, but it means that it's almost midnight and I haven't written the post I was planning for tomorrow. So you're getting the leftovers from Friday's post, apologies in advance, because I think I can pull that together in about fifteen minutes since it's already mostly written.

On Friday I warned you that I am bad about making changes to my posts after they've been published, which means if you've subscribed via email, they may show up in your inbox more than once. But I'm better about it than I used to be, because I've figured out some of my writing quirks and I look for them before I post.

For example: I search for the word "just," possibly my most overused word. Sometimes it will appear 5 or 6 times in one post. Usually at least half of them can be deleted. And I often throw in extra prepositions where they're not needed: "I went in to town to run errands..."-- in is just an extra word (just!). And "that." Good Lord, do I overuse "that."

Which brings me to a post I read on Book Riot this past week about calling a book "badly written." The author wants the Book Riot community to stop using that phrase, because it is so subjective, and because if a book is in print, presumably commas are in the right place, subjects and verbs agree, and therefore the minimum requirements of "good writing" are met.

But you know, just (!) like you can cultivate a taste for good wine, you can cultivate a taste for good writing. Of course it's subjective. Value judgments are always subjective. But that doesn't mean there's no difference between Boone's Farm and Dom Perignon (which I know is champagne and not wine, but since I have zero knowledge about wine, that's the only name I can pull out of my hat). Different people like different types of wine, and different people like different styles of writing. But that's different than saying everything in print is well-written.

I'm not going to apologize for being an overeducated English major and having marked opinions about what constitutes "good writing." I avoid reading things that I think are "badly written," just like a wine connoisseur is not going to apologize for skipping Strawberry Hill. (I just googled, and yes, they still make it. Good Grief.)(And also this post about Boone's Farm wines is hilarious and well-written, thank you very much.)

Oops. That sort of turned into a rant.

Years ago Dean and I decided not to take a wine appreciation course when some friends of ours wanted us to go with them.  We figured that it would just make it so we would want to spend a lot of money on wine. But we know we have no taste in wine. I would never try to convince you that there is no such thing as good wine.

Sadly, if you're a grammar maven, you will know that my grammatical standards are pretty low. I'm a complete hypocrite, because I look for a certain level of skill in what I'm reading, while I'm not exactly a shining beacon of high level writing myself. (Thank you, formative years spent in East Texas where correct grammar is not exactly a high priority.) But there is a certain level of loose inefficiency in writing that immediately throws me out of what I'm reading and into mental whining about the author's need for an editor. (deleted just in that sentence.)

And now it is 12:10 a.m. and that's all I've got to say about that. I really did have something interesting to talk about today. I will try again soon. There are eight occurrences of the word "just" in this post, but I have the excuse that some of them are talking about using the word just. 

And now there are ten. 

7ToF: mid-life aches and pains. Also what I learned from podcasts this week.

I added an email signup over there on the right side so you can type in your email address and receive posts in your inbox as they are published. Thank you for being interested, person-who-asked-for-it!

1. Fair warning: I am bad about editing and re-publishing my posts, so if you sign up, they may show up in your inbox more than once. All I can say is that I'm better about it than I used to be. (Originally this was followed by a long discussion about self-editing and the pros and cons of writing snobbery, but it was way too long so I'm moving it to a later post.)

2. A friend of mine who has young kids looked at me with panic in her eyes when she told me she had read my post about de-cluttering. For the record, the kind of decluttering project I'm doing right now probably wouldn't be possible with kids around--and is way less necessary, anyway. You've only got ten? twelve? years of stuff, not thirty-four. It's an empty nester project. I probably should have said that in the original post. When I had young kids, I was lucky to make a sweep of unwearable clothes and broken toys every year or two. Don't panic.

3. Dean and I were on one of our evening walks this week and the topic of aging came up. You spend your whole life knowing intuitively that you get older every day (and for the first half of your life you're really excited about that!!). We all know from our parents and grandparents and popular culture that getting old involves aching joints, less refreshing sleep, wrinkles, and an endless series of tiny indignities. But still, in spite of knowing this practically from birth, we are both frequently surprised and personally outraged as each new sign of age appears. And then, every time I adjust to the new normal, it gets worse. *grimace emoji* Aging is not for sissies.

4. I have a friend who told me once that Aleve worked as well for her as codeine, so I went out and bought some that day. But you know what? Aleve does nothing for me. And I bought the Costco size bottle. So since I had that big jug of Aleve, I've started taking one Advil and one Aleve when my particular ouch-y spots flare up, instead of my usual one Advil. The combination works better than either one of them alone.

Full disclosure: Dean, the medical professional, says-- with a barely suppressed eye roll-- that's because you're taking two painkillers instead of one.  You be the judge.

5. Also, arnica. May God bless the person who discovered arnica with an unending rain of blessings (seems likely that it was an Indian or a wise woman, since *clears throat* unnamed medical professionals are skeptical). I hesitate to even say this-- because the surest way I know to experience one of the signs of aging is to smugly note to myself that at least I don't have that yet-- but so far my knees are good. *knocks on wood* But when I do something a bit out of my normal level of athletic activity, they ache, and arnica clears it right up. What works for your aches and pains? Am I the only one thinking of trying copper?

6. I Heard It On a Podcast #1: From the 10% Happier Podcast, episode #133 with Catherine Price. Before you figure out how to eliminate the negative side of obsessive phone use, it's a good idea to figure out what positive things you want from your phone. Back in Jan/Feb when I was trying to dial back my phone usage, I spent lots of time figuring out what I could eliminate, but I never did the opposite: what do I want my phone to do for me? This seems worth some time. Texting-- the #1 benefit of my phone. GPS. Information like weather, movie times, business phone numbers and addresses. What else?

7. I Heard It On a Podcast #2: From The One You Feed, episode #224 with Cheri Huber. Everybody gets stuck in a downward sprial of negative thinking occasionally, and it gets worse when we're stressed. I'm the worst person ever. I'm such a failure. We've been endlessly told that the solution is to think positively! But unfortunately that usually means saying things we don't believe: I'm awesome! I'm amazing! I can do this! 

Really what we should be doing is telling ourselves things that are true: I love my family. I have good intentions. I care about the outcome of this situation. Even silly things like I love the color blue. Music makes me happy. Whatever you can tell yourself that you know to be true can break the cycle of negative falsehoods, because --I'll let you in on a secret here-- none of us is really the worst human being ever. 

p.s. Cheri Huber, who must be a genius to have come up with this, actually recommends recording yourself saying the true things so that you can play it back when you're down and hear your own voice telling you true, positive things. I'm not sure I'm quite brave enough, but I'll try it if you'll try it. We all have voice recorders on our phones, I guess.

Have a great weekend.

spiritual highs

I put this off till the last minute, so this is going to be more of a list of bullet points than a post.

I've been thinking about spiritual highs--the mind-altering experiences that some people have that seem to have some element of blissful hyper-awareness involved. These experiences become a kind of holy grail, an state of mind that people chase after, because they've heard it's so amazing. There's a lot to unpack here. The experience of transcendence or spiritual bliss or whatever your particular tradition encourages can be and often is life-changing.

But there are some things about the idea that are-- well, if not disturbing, at least troubling. For one thing, it's this kind of spiritual experience that tends to make people think they've found The Truth. If you're Buddhist or Christian or whatever, and you have a mind-blowing spiritual experience in the context of your faith, it convinces you that your tradition is Right. In future times of doubt or uncertainty, that moment of conversion or enlightenment or whatever will be the thing that you look back to convince yourself that you're on the right track.

The problem with that is that people of all religious traditions have mind-blowing experiences. There are Christians who have amazing conversion stories to tell-- addictions ended, diseases healed. Saint Theresa is famous for her exalted experience of God. Buddhists have enlightenment. Sufis have ecstatic whirling. I'm very quickly getting out of things I can knowledgeably discuss, but I've investigated enough spiritual traditions to be sure that every tradition offers a path to transcendence. So that confidence that your tradition is the Right Tradition because "look at these amazing experiences that we have!" is a false confidence. The fact that people experience spiritual highs in your tradition just means that yup, it's a legitimate spiritual tradition.

And then there's the whole element of spiritual snobbery. Oh, you haven't experienced enlightenment? Oh, you haven't spoken in tongues? Oh, you haven't (fill in the blank with whatever spiritual experience is the cool, popular experience of the moment)? It's a strong enough thing that people are known to lie about it, or to think they've experienced it when they really haven't, because surely someone who has been meditating faithfully for x number of years has experienced something that a newbie who sits down for the first time can experience.

The mainline church I attend (more on that another time) is full of people who have faithfully followed the teaching of their church for their entire lives, and yet have never had a conversion experience, because they've been attending our church since birth. Does that make them less Christian than the person whose remarkable conversion experience included coming back from the brink of death by addiction?

And can't the small, mini-mind-blowing experiences that all of us experience every time we learn something new add up over time to something more solid, more real than a one-time experience of "enlightenment" or "conversion" that peters out over the following years because it wasn't followed up by anything else?

Maybe this is just sour grapes on my part, because I've had plenty of the mini-mind-altering experiences, the a-ha! moment that changes perceptions and feelings and leads to small-scale but perceptible growth, but I've never experienced "enlightenment," full stop. Since I was raised Evangelical, I never experienced conversion (unless you count my reverse conversion away from Evangelicalism in my twenties, but that wasn't a one-time event).

I think it's typical of the American mindset, including my own, that we hear about the big bang, the WOW factor of a spiritual tradition, and that's what we want. We don't want the hours of practice, the days of grinding work to feed the poor or visit the sick, we don't want to give up our creature comforts, we just want the fireworks, and quickly.

I don't have much else to say about this, and obviously this isn't something I've got any answers to, beccause I'm not even sure this makes sense. But it's what I've been thinking about quite a bit after listening to a podcast last week. And since I'm so tired I can barely hold my eyes open, I may have to come back and edit this or write more on this topic another time.

7ToF: this will be quick because I'm on my way out of town. ROAD TRIP!

1. The post I had planned for Tuesday got eaten by the internet. I have no idea what happened. It was two-thirds typed. Blogger has an auto-save feature that saves it every 10-15 seconds, so I know it had been saved. It shouldn't have disappeared, but it did. And then there was the holiday on Monday, and I'm leaving to go out of town tomorrow, and there went the week. Oops. If I can remember it, I'll redo it next week.

2. I've discovered a really great thing about my de-cluttering project. With most home improvement projects--say, repainting a room or renovating your kitchen--you can't enjoy the results until you're done. But with decluttering, as soon as you've cleared out a single drawer, or made one good pass through a closet, the results are obvious. I'm not anywhere close to done but I'm already happy about how it’s going.

3. This week's major accomplishment: cleared out, dusted, and re-organized the massive roll-top desk Dean inherited from his grandfather. It was a cluttered mess, now it's a usable space. *throws confetti*

4. What's your opinion about getting rid of financial documents? I discussed this with a friend a couple of days ago. We've had all the same account numbers for 25 years, so anything with an account number is current. My friend says if it's in a trash bag and headed to the dump, how is anybody going to find it? It's not like there's someone in the back alley chomping at the bit to go through our trash. So far I've been just paranoid enough about this that I'm shredding everything that has an account number or address on it. But then you've got all this shredded stuff you have to do something with. (Hmmm, I suppose I could use it as confetti.) *throws confetti*

5. This week's interesting read: What I Got Wrong About Cultural Appropriation "The do-or-die way we talk about cultural appropriation has somehow made it easier to punish those who have the most to learn, and reward those who know just the bare minimum." The language in this article is fairly academic, but it's a thoughtful piece prompted by the furor over a young white student who wore a qipao, a Chinese dress, to her high school prom. Worth reading.

6. I'm making a genuine effort to read books by more diverse authors this year. So far I've read memoirs by Phoebe Robinson and Gabrielle Union, and our book club is doing Sing Unburied Sing in June. They're thought provoking and worth reading. I also read the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks which is about an African American woman whose cells changed the world of medical research-- fascinating. I thought I was pretty up on the ways we discriminate against people of color, but broadening my reading has opened my eyes to things I didn't know. It's never too late to learn. Or to change.

7. I'm driving to Seattle this weekend to meet up with my older sister and attend the memorial service of a cousin's son who was killed a couple of months ago. The whole situation is just so sad. So between the traveling and catching up when I get back, I may not be able to post by next Tuesday-- not sure yet. Say a prayer for Paige. In spite of the sad event, I'm looking forward to the road trip.

Hope you have a great weekend. I plan to-- my sister has only been to Seattle for professional meetings so I get to show her around a bit.