Mum Madness

Some days, I wonder just what planet I live on, but then I realize that it's just Texas. My latest foray into the unknown culture of this place began with a late-night quest for the mythical Homecoming Mum. Of course, all of the local grocery stores and Walgreens were already depleted of their allotted beribboned adornments, so I had no choice but to wait for Hobby Lobby to open the next day.

There, I was greeted by a meager assortment of baubles and bells, as well as the bases for this traditional item. I thought I had struck the jackpot when I found a pre-made one for the low, low price of...(insert choking sound here)... $45! I beat feet to Michael's, thinking that surely they would be cheaper there.

Oh, but I would be wrong. I did find a nicer pre-made one for $50, and one that was even cooler for $99, but I couldn't wrap my head around the concept of paying someone else to glue-gun and staple loads of ribbon, crappy-do ornaments, and curled ribbons onto what can only be described as an overly festooned rosette.

In fact, the last time I had seen a rosette like that was when I won Grand Champion Swine Showperson as a Senior in my own High School back in Kansas! So, why were we now pinning these things on all of the girls on their respective Homecoming weekends?

Apparently, because the bigger the Mum, the more you are loved.

And because Texans like everything big, these things have taken on ridiculous proportions. In fact, I was given an important piece of advice...put a necklace on it so it doesn't rip the girl's clothing. Yep, they're that big.

And it's not just for the girls. The boys have their own, albeit smaller, sized mum to wear on their arms. Garter belts...on steroids. Hopefully that's the only thing that's on steroids, because, after all, this is Texas and they like their football players big.

Because I'm a crafty gal when I want to be, I plunked down my $43 and took my booty home to create what I thought would be the ugliest, most gaudy piece of fluff imaginable...in other words, perfect. A surprising thing happened while wielding this glue gun, though...I began to swear like a sailor! Granted, this isn't a side of me that I like very much, and have successfully kept it under wraps for over 20 years, but this tradition is so overtly biased that I found myself struggling to not through the entire thing in the trash.

I'm all for traditions. I just find that spending upwards of $200 on an overgrown chrysanthemum is rather egregious.

I'm also very grateful that I didn't grow up with this particular tradition. As the youngest of 8 in a poor farming family, we didn't have extra money to lavish on many extras. Granted, I probably would have worked extra hours in the summer laboring in the fields to save enough to get whatever I could in order to "fit in". I did just that for many other reasons that today, seem quite trivial if I remember them at all.

It finally dawned on me that the reason for my profanity wasn't because it was hard, or because we couldn't afford it. It was because I kept thinking of all of the other girls who wouldn't be getting one. You see, I would have been one of the mum-less. I was never part of the "in crowd", which was even more exclusive in the 62-person high school of my youth.

After the contraption became a legitimate work of Texas art, I began to wonder at the stress I had just put on myself. A big part of it was because I didn't want to disappoint my son, who was really excited to give it to his girlfriend. Anytime he wants to involve me in his life, I'm there, so because this was important to him, it was important to me. The other huge piece was the sheer hypocracy of it all. After all, I constantly espouse the concept that we are all one, that what happens to a part affects the whole, and that everyone has a value that is beyond measure. Yet here I was, curling golden ribbon into ringlets so this mum would have enough bling to blind Stevie Wonder again.

I guess that goes to show you that even an enlightened individual (most of the time, anyway) gets caught up in the fever pitch of the masses, especially if it involves your children.

Flipping the Switch

There are some days when you think that all is well with the world, and what little there is that isn't working can simply be cured by a snooze in front of the TV. And then there are days when you wake up from that dozey state and the world just looks wrong.

Last night was one of those days.

I racked my brain trying to figure out why I woke up being hyper-critical of my children's action (when they truly hadn't been doing anything wrong), and why I was still extremely moody this morning when I noticed the date at the top of the newspaper: August 20th.

7 years ago, we dropped Kathryn off at her first full day of kindergarten. Then we drove to Baylor Medical Center to start the first round of my chemotherapy.

I truly thought I had addressed these emotional connections with this date through all of my various means of mental/emotional/energy/psychological work, but here I am, tears streaming down my face, emotions on my sleeve, intestines in my throat...that same heart-pounding fear coursing through my veins as if I were going to make that drive and get The Red Devil (Adriamycin) pumped into me.

I feel like a failure for allowing this to happen. AGAIN. And yet, I know that I'm not, since I'm aware enough to make this connection. And the more I allow these emotions to flow through me, the calmer I am about knowing that they won't get stuck somewhere in my tissues. I've had a great deal of pain and discomfort in my upper back area, so much so that my left hand and fingers will occasionally tingle with that pinched-nerve feeling. I haven't made time for a massage or chiropractor, so it will have to wait until Saturday, but in the meantime, I checked out my trusty "Heal Your Body" book by Louise Hay. This connects physical ailments with the metaphysical and emotional connections to them. Here's what it says about 5-T, the vertebrae where the tightness & pain begins:

Refusing to process the emotions. Dammed-up feelings, rage.

I have to accept the fact that I'm not the one controlling anything. Yes, I have great influence on how I react to situations and events, but not on the actual events. Even my own emotions are tossed around like a toy boat in a bathtub when the turbulence of deeply buried feelings bubble up from below. I guess a dam burst last night, and it's leaking out through my eyes.

The affirmation that accompanies this is also a good one to live by:

I let life flow through me. I am willing to live. All is well.

I've lost 2 people close to my own age lately from cancer, and yesterday another dear person asked me about a pea-sized lump that seems to be attached to her ribcage. She has 3 young children, and a family history to boot. You bet that unnerved me. I don't want anyone to have to deal with what I did, but at the same time, I'm powerless to stop it.

I let life flow through me. I am willing to live. All is well.

Time for Tomatoes!

At long last, I have a garden! A real one, with actual soil, not the clay stuff that came with the house. Raised beds, lovingly built by my adorable husband and filled with the black gold by the same sweet man and my increasingly buff son.

And then it sat.

And sat.

And sat.

The soil's organic matter decomposed, leaving the beds only half full. Grass began to peek around the edges of the 2x8x10 boards and tickled my feet when I walked on the pavestones placed in between the 2 large beds. My men began to fear that all of their hard work was for naught.

However, today I finally did something with them. 6 more bags of topsoil and 22 plants later, I have some green stuff sprouting from them! Because of the late date, I focused one bed on strictly ornamental flowering plants - annuals, since next spring that bed will be providing all sorts of yummy veggies. The other bed had 4 tomato plants that the greenhouse assured me would have time to produce some fruit. I also planted more basil, parsley, dill, sage, and a couple of interesting-looking pepper plants. I've never tried a fall garden, so am really looking forward to seeing how things grow. Now the next step is to get something in the corner of the yard that is also very barren. I've relocated our former patio table and chairs there, and soon will have some color to surround it. Let's just hope it won't be next year!

I feel LUCKY!!!

No, not the type of Dirty Harry "Do you feel lucky, punk?" lucky...the kind of lucky that makes one buy a lottery ticket. Even if the winning numbers are on someone else's piece of paper, it was the kind of day that made me realize what joy is out there in the world.

3 Yatzees in a single game. A 45-minute commute to downtown Dallas during morning rush hour. A shopping trip without a single argument.

Yep. It just doesn't get any better than that. Gotta love days like this! Never mind what tomorrow has in store, either. I'm embracing this feeling and lovin' every minute of it!

Backpack, be gone!

I threw away my son's backpack today. It was a nice backpack at one point in time, ready to carry the trappings of higher learning that all 8th graders need, as well as special pockets for Mp3 players, cell phones, and water bottles. However, when it finally hit the bottom of the trash can with a resounding whimper, it bore no resemblance to anything that had been loved. The shoulder harnesses had been brutally ripped from the body, merely hanging on by the proverbial thread, holes had been unceremoniously cut/gouged from the sides, taking on the anger/boredom from the 14 year old owner. Creative designs from pens and Sharpies were the only indication that it had at one point been something other than a simple receptacle, something that was valued beyond its practical use.

However, as time went on and the lessons became tediously difficult, the bag took on a new role. It was weapon, harness, pillow, stepstool, lunchbox, and secret-storer. It took everything it had to survive that last year of middle school, much like it had taken everything my son had in him to get to that last bell.

It's done. He's done, and now they can both rest easy with the knowledge that middle school is a thing of the past. High school will bring new challenges, but the new attitude will be accompanied by a brand new backpack.

Rat Park?

I somehow got on a list for Oprah's magazine, and most of the time it ends up in the electronic File 13. However, today was different. An article about how to stop self-sabotage caught my eye, and after nodding my head in agreement over how the author assisted a client through her issues, I noticed a link to something about Rat Park. I couldn't resist checking it out. Here's an excerpt from the online article:

"The term comes from a study conducted in 1981 by psychologist Bruce Alexander and colleagues. He noted that many addiction studies had something in common: The lab rats they used were locked in uncomfortable, isolating cages. Testing a hunch, Alexander gathered two groups of rats. For the first, he built a 200-square-foot rodent paradise called Rat Park. There a colony of white Wister rats found luxurious accommodations for all their favorite pastimes—mingling, mating, raising pups, writing articles for newspaper tabloids. The second group was housed in the traditional cages. Alexander offered both groups a choice of plain water or sugar water laced with morphine. Like rats in other studies, the traditionally caged animals became instant addicts. However, the residents of Rat Park tended to "just say no," avoiding the drug-treated sugar water. Even rats that were already addicted to morphine tended to lay off the hard stuff when in Rat Park. Put them back in their cages, however, and they'd stay stoned as Deadheads." (Martha Beck)

Whoa.... First thought: "How cool!" Second thought: "How Cruel!" Third thought: "Rats can write?"

How many times do we willingly cage ourselves, only to medicate our unhappiness with drugs, alcohol, excess shopping, illicit affairs, or extended stays in grad school? Who told us that there was no way out? We get to choose each day if we live in a cage or in our own version of Rat Park. I think the park sounds like a nicer place. How about you?

The experiment continues...

I did an experiment on myself a couple of months ago: I stopped eating meat. Yes, I still enjoyed my dairy and eggs, and I didn’t freak out when something was made with chicken stock, but I really wanted to see what would happen to me both physically and mentally when faced with a life sans animal flesh.

At first it was very difficult. Our family diet had become quite meat-centric, and it was very boring at the fast-food counter. I used the 6-week period called Lent in the Catholic faith tradition as my parameters, so I could keep up with my experiment easier. Here’s what happened:

- I lost weight. Well, not really that much, but my stomach wasn’t as bloated trying to keep up with the difficult digestive process that meat requires.
- I cooked more at home. After all, most vegetarian options at restaurants are limited to very cheesy offerings, and that gets boring.
- I found that I was able to be more open energetically. Meat was “dumbing down” my otherwise sensitive energy antennae.

Now that I’ve been partaking of burgers and brats again, I have noticed a couple more interesting tidbits:
- The bloat is back. In fact, I look like I’ve gained an entire size in my pants, though the scale still says the same number.
- I’ve found it more challenging to stay on top of my emotions. Hormones from the meat? Could be, or it could be the karmic load from taking the life of an unblessed animal.
- Energetically, I’ve found myself to be “dirtier”. There’s just more junk that seems to come my way, and it seems to be tougher to clear it out.

So, I’m going to take a page from my Feng Shui practice, and de-clutter my diet. Sure, the occasional chicken sandwich may still cross the road into my stomach, but I’m going to reset my default to wholesome, locally grown produce. And cheesecake. Can’t forget the cheesecake!