Goals

I know all about goal setting.  I don’t think there’s an idea more American than setting goals.  After all, America isn’t about what you are born with, but what you make of yourself. And if you are going to make anything of yourself, you have to set goals.  

So I know the drill.  Goals must be clearly defined, measurable, obtainable, and written down.  I think I knew this before I started kindergarten.

The problem is, whenever I hear of someone else’s goal, there is this part of me that thinks I need to set that goal, too.  Even when I don’t want to have that goal.  For example, I have a friend who set a goal to run a half marathon.  I don’t run.  I mean, if I were being chased by bad guys I would run, but short of that, I am happy to just walk.  But now that she has set this goal, I feel walking might be inadequate.  

My sister is trying to give up soda.  That’s fine.  But now this little voice in my head wonders if I should be giving up soda, too.  But I really don’t want to.  I like my Diet Coke.  I like it a lot.  Basically, you will take it from me when you pry it from my cold dead hands.  

So this leaves me with internal angst.  I think the answer might be to set my own goals and then maybe I won’t feel like such a slacker.  But now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty.  You see, I’m not feeling all that motivated to make big improvements in my life right now.  I’m kind of happy with the status quo.  

I can’t believe I’m confessing this.

I don’t want to be any fitter than I am.  I take a long walk every day and that does it for me.  I don’t want to eat any healthier than I do.  I like my chocolate and I’m a sucker for french fries.  I don’t want to go back to college for another degree.  I’ll rest on my laurels for a while.  I don’t want to go to a third world country and save the children.  The idea sounds really noble, but they eat such strange food in those places.

When I was working, they wanted me to set goals.  I hated that.  “Show up and do a good job” wasn’t an acceptable goal.  It wasn’t measurable.  I finally settled on “No more than 2 tardies a year” which was a joke because I’ve never been tardy a day in my life.  My private goal was “Keep everyone alive during my shift”, but that turned out to be unattainable, because, unfortunately, I am not a god.

It’s not that there isn’t room for improvement in my life.  I know it.  You don’t have to point it out to me.   And I’ll do it.  I will.  Okay, here we go.  By Christmas I will have set a goal to improve myself in each of the following categories:  Physical, Social, Intellectual, and Spiritual.  Phew.  Glad that’s over.  I’m proud to be an American.

What's for Dinner

My husband and I just had the conversation we have too often.  

:What do you want for dinner? 

:I don’t know, what do you want for dinner?  

:I suppose we could barbecue something.

:Nah, we just did that and I’m really not in the mood.  

:We could have fried rice.  

:Didn’t we have that earlier in the week?  Sarah wants lasagna, but that takes too long. 

:We could go to Wendy’s.  

:If I eat at Wendy’s again this week my hair may turn red and start looking like Pippi Longstocking. 

:Well, there’s always spaghetti.    

I didn’t use quotation marks because it really doesn’t matter which of us said what.  Our lines are interchangeable.  It’s a skit we’ve been performing for nearly 30 years and we know both parts.  It’s not a new problem, but it’s gotten worse in recent years.

I used to have a system.  Monday was Mexican night.  Wednesday was pizza night.  Friday was date night.  Sunday was a roast or chicken cooked in the crock pot.  That left only three nights a week to worry about.  But then the system collapsed due to a crumbling infrastructure.  There aren’t enough eaters in the house to support all that cooking, and those that are left have issues.  

About two years ago my body decided it didn’t like Mexican food anymore.  I haven’t been able to identify the specific ingredient, but peppers seem to be a likely candidate.  Makes me really sad, because I LIKE Mexican food.

We have the only teenager in America who doesn’t like pizza.  Go figure.  

And a roast seems like a lot of trouble for three people.

But the root of the problem is that I simply don’t like to cook. I think I’ve mentioned it before.  I don’t think about dinner until late afternoon and I want to eat no later than 5:30.  I want it to be quick, easy, fool proof, and to have no strange exotic ingredients.  Like celery.  I guess strictly speaking celery isn’t exotic.  It’s just that you buy celery, use one stalk, then the rest goes limp in your fridge and you have to buy it again.  So at 5 p.m. I don’t want to make something that requires celery.  Am I right or am I right?

I’ve looked at websites with thousands of dinner suggestions, but boil ‘em down to their chief ingredients and they all seem very much the same.  Can chicken with an apricot glaze really taste much different than chicken with an orange glaze?  If I make barbecued chicken with pasta today am I going to want barbecued chicken with rice tomorrow?  I don’t think so.

 And don’t suggest a new system.  Unless the new system includes the service of a cook and wait staff I’m not interested.  

So tonight it will be spaghetti.  Again.  I can go from decision to table in ten minutes.  Two minutes for the water to boil, eight minutes for the pasta to cook.  During that time the Prego jar is opened, the sauce warmed in the microwave, a bag of salad is removed from the fridge, and a loaf of bread is put on the table.  Voila.  

I have the most tolerant husband in the world.

The Lie

It was the summer of 1988.  We were living in the midwest and I’d just given birth to my third baby.  She joined her brother and sister, who were three and not quite two years old.  You might say I had my hands full.  The event I’m about to share is what led to the lie my children still talk about today.

For some insane reason, I decided I needed to go to the store on that fateful day.  I loaded the children into their car seats.  They were wedged so tightly on the backseat of the red Chevy Cavalier that when you closed the door they all bumped together.  We got to the store without incident and began to shop. I don’t remember what we were after, but at some point the melt down came and I knew I needed to get them out of the store.  But I had three children and God had only seen fit to give me two arms.

The baby was too small to hold her head up, so she got first priority in one arm.  My 23 month old son could walk, but he had forgotten how.  He was in the other arm.  The three year old chose this time to develop of case of spaghetti legs and eventually fall in a heap as we exited the store.  I did the only thing I could do.  I reached down with the hand that was holding her brother and grabbed her hand.  I then pushed/scooted/kicked her rebellious little body to the car.  So there I was with a baby in each arm, and a screaming three year old being drop-kicked across the parking lot.  I’m surprised I wasn’t made poster child for Planned Parenthood.

Something had to be done.  Somehow I had to impress these children.  That’s when the Lie was born.

The next time we headed out I found a really good grease spot in the parking lot.  I think someone had driven over some discarded fast food.  I took my children over and had them look at it.  This, I solemnly told them, was what happened to little children who didn’t walk properly and hold their mother’s hand in parking lots.  They were smashed flat and left nothing but a grease spot.  We looked around and found several more.  It was a fearsome and wondrous moment in their lives.

The story was repeated when the next two children came along.  All of them remember it to this day.  When they got older they would sometimes jump from smashed child to smashed child as we walked into a store.  Little ghouls. Now they recall it with nostalgic smiles.  As a grandmother I can’t wait to see if it is passed on to the next generation.

Nicknames

I had a classmate in first grade called Fat Tim.  I’m sure his parents didn’t name him that, but he answered to it just the same.  We didn’t call him that to be cruel, at least I didn’t.  It’s just the only name I ever heard him called.  Maybe it was something like Fat Albert.  I have no idea how he felt about it.  For all I know he’s had to spend years in therapy to get over it.  Perhaps there were two Tim’s in kindergarten, so he was differentiated as the fat one and the name stuck.

After all, what are you doing to do if there are several kids in the class or neighborhood with the same name?  When our kids were little, there were 4 Katie’s on the street.  Our Katie was, of course, Katie.  Then there was Little Katie, Big Katie, and (I’m not making this up) The Other Katie.  We really called her that.

That reminds me of a story my sister tells.  When her daughter was a toddler she was in daycare with a set of identical twins.  My niece called them “Audrey” and “the Other Audrey”.  I’m sure the Other Audrey had her own name.

Children are responsible for a lot of nicknames.  I have a great aunt who went through life being called “Lit”.  Her name was Mary Lou, but her older brothers and sisters called her “Little Bit”.  Then she became a big sister herself and the baby shortened Little Bit to “Lit” and that was that.  

My daughter has a million friends, and I sometimes nickname them to keep them straight.  Mostly I do it by where they live, so I can find my daughter when she calls for a ride home (see blog entry “Lost in My Hometown”).  So we have Apple Acres Maggie, Brick Wall Lauren, and Theater Allie, to name a few.

I might feel guilty about this, but I found out the other day that my her friends’ families do it, too.  I picked my daughter up from school and she asked if we could give her friend a ride home.  I said sure and they hopped in the car.  The friend then called her mom to tell her she had a ride home.  Her mom asked who with, and the girl answered “Blink Blink Sarah”.  When she finished her call I asked her about it.  She said they call my Sarah “Blink Blink” because her eye lashes are so long.

It seems we don’t always think a person’s given name is descriptive enough, and  we can do better.  Maybe the Indians had it right.  We should be called “Eagle Nose” or “Talks Too Much”.  We did call one of our sons “Sir Poops-a-lot” when he was a baby.  He’s glad THAT one faded away.

When someone calls me by a nickname, I instantly feel affection for them.  Strange.  My guess is that nicknames form connections.  They mean you have enough history with a person that they want to name you - somehow make you their own. 

It's a Bit Chilly

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are warm, and me.

 As I write this entry I realize I won’t have anyone commenting that they feel the same way.  I know I’m alone.  If I weren’t alone so many things would be different.  Global warming would be considered a godsend.  No one would live north of Texas.  And surely someone would have invented something to keep us warm that is a little more hi-tech than thermal underwear.  

Since I am alone, allow me to tell you what my life is like.  

I love to take walks.  I have to wear ear muffs until its summer.  Yes, people look at me funny.  This is probably one reason my teenager won’t come with me.

Restaurants and movie theaters are torture chambers.  I have to take a coat with me year-round.  In upscale restaurants I have resorted to warming my hands by the candle on the table.  

Somewhere, in some committee, it was decided that 70 degrees is “room temperature”.  They made it a fact by creating heaters and air conditioners that keep buildings at this magical temperature year round.  If I had been on that committee, I would have fought for at least 75.  Maybe closer to 80.  

I always look for a sunny spot.  Like lizards and turtles, I love sitting in the sun.  My front porch faces west, so in the afternoon I love to sit on my porch swing and read.  The sun is on my face and the bricks behind me give off a radiant heat.  Love it.

When I park my car I don’t look for the closest spot to the building.  I look for the sunniest spot.  I love that baking feeling you get when you climb in a car that has been sitting in the sun.  The wonderful heat seeps into me and I lean my back against the warm upholstery and smile.  

I remember being hot.  Once.  No, of course I do get hot in the summer.  It’s just that I tolerate the sensation of being hot better than that of being cold.  The slightest breeze can cool me off on a hot day, but it is very hard for me to get warm once I’m cold.  Added to that is the fact that Utah has two seasons - winter and damn late in the fall.  No, it has summer, but since I don’t consider it warm until it’s 80 degrees, that means only July and August are consistently warm.

My husband recites the poem The Cremation of Sam McGee to me every so often.  He’s such a romantic.  But I think he’s on to something.  Sam and I, we just want to be warm.

More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

I recently had an epiphany.  There is more than one way to do almost anything.  I’m not sure why it took nearly 50 years for this to occur to me.  

My husband and I recently started a dancing class.  The first night of class we started working on the East Coast Swing.  I paid very close attention to get every detail exactly right.  When I saw one couple turning their hand a different direction I asked the teacher to clarify which direction was correct, so I could get it just right.  I got frustrated when I was afraid we weren’t doing it perfectly.  The next day I spent several hours on the computer watching YouTube videos of people doing the East Coast Swing.  I was amazed to find that every single couple was doing it differently.  Much differently.  That is when it hit me.  There is more than one way to do the East Coast Swing and IT DOESN’T MATTER!  This was big.  My universe shifted.

We didn’t sign up to take this dance class because we hope to compete in ballroom dancing contests.  We didn’t sign up to be on Dancing with the Stars.  We signed up to do something fun together.  Our biggest aspiration concerning dancing is that the next time we go to a wedding reception we can actually dance together.  That’s it.  So what does it matter which direction our hands twist as long as we do it together?  There is no dance police.

I have essentially been stifling my own creativity for years.   It should have occurred to me earlier.  I remember taking an art class in college and hearing the teacher say something like “I set out to draw a (thing one), but then it started to look more like a (thing two) and it pleased me, so I went with it”.  Wow!  Is that allowed? 

Believe it or not, I don’t think this is a matter of having OCD.  It’s more an issue of trusting that my way is just as valid as the next guy’s. There is more than one way to do things and who is to say that my way isn’t just as acceptable as any other way. I need to be brave enough to forge my own path without looking to someone else to validate my methods. 

So I’m going to do it.  I’m going to dance like nobody’s watching.  

Here, kitty kitty kitty.