Lloyd Dobler makes an appearance in my bedroom

“What are you thinking about?” my husband asked me yesterday evening as we snuggled in bed.

“Lloyd Dobler,” I answered, half-dreaming. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the answer he expected.

“Who?” he sounded a bit alarmed. I guess he doesn’t appreciate thoughts of another guy encroaching on his wife at that time of evening.

“No, genius," his tone woke me up. "Not who. Lloyd Dobler. The guy from Say Anything. I was dreaming of his quote about not wanting to sell anything.”

“Huh?” The gerbil was running, but not going anywhere. I won’t reiterate the remainder of the conversation, or evening for that matter, because that is none of your business.

I found the quote this morning. “I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed.”

What made me think of Lloyd Dobler? Fundraising. Yep. I hate selling crap. It’s that time of year again. The time of year when all of my children’s organizations ramp up to collect our hard earned dollars before we blow them on the holidays. Every single activity that we participate in wants us to fundraise. We’re swimming in fliers of candy, cookie dough, book fairs, food sales, and wrapping paper.

My policy is that we don’t fundraise. Period. Most people interpret this as, “They’re so rich, they don’t need it.” Correct? No. It isn’t because we couldn’t use the assistance. It is because we have a list of priorities and we allocate our money and time according to it. When there is no more money to allocate, that particular activity ceases. 

We don’t fundraise because I refuse to hit up my friends and family for overpriced merchandise that they don’t want or need. I won’t spend my money out of guilt or peer pressure, and I won’t ask someone else to, either. Why is it Grandma Gert’s responsibility to buy wrapping paper so that my child can travel half-way across the country to compete in a competition that essentially means nothing?

I don’t understand the idea of fundraising in general. There are plenty of things I don’t own/buy/do because I can’t afford them. And they will stay that way, because unless it is a dire emergency, I won’t prioritize them with our money. Before I ask someone else to finance it, I’ll shut off our cable TV. Or maybe not upgrade my phone. 

Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who thinks this way. At least for me, it's a gift to have people in my life who I know won’t ask anything from me. I take care of myself. You take care of yourself. And when we’re together, we can just enjoy each other because neither of us is peddling crap for another school activity. I will not allow marketing to impose itself into my friendships. No amount of money would be worth it. Hell, Lloyd Dobler appearing in the bedroom was bad enough… He is way too young for me.

When did training for a 26.2 mile run become classified as fun?

Yesterday, my husband ran a marathon. When did training for a 26.2 mile run become classified as fun? The only marathon I ever competed in was a marathon session of the flu, during which I stayed awake for 96 hours while each successive child became sick since my husband was on a business trip. But now, is our life so awful that running 26.2 miles is less miserable than being at home?

What happened to our dreams from when we were young? If you ask a kid, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, none of them will respond with, “Upper middle management. And frustrated enough to run from here to the state border.”

I vaguely recall telling someone in elementary school that I was going to command a nuclear submarine when I grew up. I think it was a product of The Hunt for Red October. Turns out I’m relatively insubordinate and extremely claustrophobic, so submariner is not the career choice for me. But I loved to dance and sing. As an adult, there aren’t many socially acceptable opportunities to dance other than a little sway in a club. I haven’t sung a note since high school, unless you count my concerts in the shower.

As I young adult, I harassed my parents to relax constantly and couldn’t figure out what they did all the time. “You just work. You don’t have homework,” I’d snarl, wondering, how bad could it be? All I wanted was to be an adult. Now I know. It’s all homework. The work day is just the money to support the homework.

I wanted everything I have. I know that. I’m lucky. This is the life I picked, one tiny choice at a time. But being an adult is frustrating, even when you want everything you have. One of my favorite lines from my book is:

“The life we built together has become our cage, a gilded cage, but a cage nonetheless.”

My husband even designed a tattoo for me to commemorate it. I wrote my book to daydream and retreat from our life in my mind. Today, I’m proud of my husband for escaping the cage and denying reality (or his 40th birthday), if only for a while to challenge himself. I also thank him for proving that I should win every argument by default. No sane person runs 26.2 miles voluntarily.

This post isn’t about crap.

When I was in the fifth grade, crap was my favorite word. I remember it clearly. Chris R, a boy who hung the moon for me, instructed me in the proper usage of crap during a film in library class. He is also the first boy that I ever saw in his underwear, so I smile when I think about him. Huh. I used to want to see boys in their underwear. But I digress…

My children came off the bus the other day singing a lovely song:

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Gummy bears are chasing me.

One is red, one is blue,

One is peeing on my shoe.

Now I’m running for my life

‘cause the red one has a knife.

They are fixated with body functions. Peeing. Pooping. Farting. Boogers. I swear, I spend every dinner snapping, “Don’t talk about that at the table,” over and over.  Good Lord, I’m my mother.

Even our four-year old will arrogantly sneer at her brother and sister and say, “That is inappropriate. You aren’t supposed to use those words in front of me.” Then she’ll smile sweetly and whisper, “I farted.” It will be a miracle if she doesn’t get expelled from preschool. At least she is smart and sneaky.

I’m torn. I curse like a sailor. Always have. My poor parents tried to squelch it, but it just made me worse. I spent most of my real-life career working with men, so it was never an issue until I became a stay-at-home mom. Now I drop a random F bomb at a play date and the crowd goes silent. Whoops.

Kids, here is the bottom line. I drink plenty of tequila and you don’t drink it. There are certain words you can’t say until you come of age, or at least until speech therapy teaches you the letter F, which I’m saving for last. I honestly don’t care if you curse or talk about bodily functions – it will simply better prepare you for your college experience. What I do want is for you to recognize the difference and learn appropriate settings so that you don’t embarrass me in public. Is that too much to ask?

I hate cross-trainers. Just running shoes, please.

I need some new running shoes. Not cross-trainers. Not cute sneakers. Running shoes specifically designed to support my feet while I torture myself so that I can zip my jeans. My shoes blow out every so often. They look fine on the outside. Hell, sometimes they look brand new which is indicative of my preference only to run only when the weather is perfect and the path is clear. But materials can only be compressed a finite number of times before they loose their resilience, at least in my shoes.

A sales lady, towering over me in three inch heels, suggested a flashy pair of cross-trainers. I could lift in them. Run in them. Flip in them. Break land speed records in them. But I hate cross-trainers. They try to accomplish too much and in the end achieve nothing. They don’t stabilize my foot well enough to lift weights. They aren’t flexible or light to help me run. If I flip, I’m upside down and the shoe is irrelevant. The only land speed record I’ll ever break is the time to bridge the distance between my computer and the refrigerator.

My husband, who probably won’t appreciate being mentioned here, is currently being cross-trained at his place of employment. This doesn’t bother him, but in my head it plants doubt. Some days I hope that more versatility will correlate to job security. But the risk in cross-training is that you lose expertise. You take a person who is efficient and productive, an expert in their area, and stretch them over a wide expanse, allowing no depth of knowledge to accrue while increasing pressure on the individual. In an ideal world, this person would become an expert in everything. But like a cross-trainer shoe, the functionality will be superficial because the truth is that time and experience are required to become an expert in anything. If you know a little about everything, then probability is you know a lot about nothing.

Instead of treating employees like poorly designed shoes, what is wrong with recognizing that people are, in fact, not interchangeable? Management systems are in some contexts effective for setting standards and measurable goals, but many times reduce an employee to a procedure. Weren’t most of these systems based on Japanese business models of the 80s? Japan has an astronomical suicide rate and, if I read the papers correctly, has been essentially displaced by China. Are we now going to institute martial law and imitate environmental catastrophe to follow suit?

Just because some random guy could take out the garbage and watch basketball on our TV doesn’t indicate that if you sat him on my sofa he could replace my husband in my life. Employees are not interchangeable. Competent people are irreplaceable. The best employees in any business, be it hospitals or shoe salesmen, are those who can think for themselves. You know who that person is – the one that everyone in the office calls to solve a problem.  It is the person you search for when you call a business with a complaint, the one thinker in the bunch of drones who can assist with your issue. Why can he solve your problem? Because he is an expert. He knows the system. 

Now take that same guy and force him to learn three other jobs simultaneously for the same salary while increasing his hours. He may be smiling on the outside, but how many times can you compress the employee before he loses his resilience? 

Enough thinking. Time to go shoe shopping.

I'm stressed. What's for dinner?

Today I can’t write anything insightful or funny. I try and fail because I’m stressed. We hear that phrase all the time, overused and under thought. We’re stressed over our marriages, jobs, families, and perhaps even what to prepare for dinner. Damn. Add that one to my list for today also.

Stress is defined as a specific response by the body to a stimulus, as fear or pain, that disturbs or interferes with the normal physiological equilibrium of an organism. I’m not sure that I qualify as having a “normal physiological equilibrium”.  In fact, I’m relatively certain that normal and equilibrated are two adjectives that shouldn’t be used to describe me.

My loss-aversion drives me to react impulsively. But when I rationally consider my stressors, it becomes apparent that my fear is simply of people. I do not trust people. I try to. I want to cover my eyes and disillusion myself in optimism, but I can’t. 

I fundamentally believe that most people are not interested enough to understand or evaluate the information available to them. They also do not appreciate it when I bring contradicting information to their attention. I am required to advocate for myself and my family on a daily basis, swimming upstream against a current of ineptitude. 

In the past two hours, I have (you can skip this paragraph if you don’t care):

(1)    Mailed a letter citing sections of the Ohio Revised Code governing speech therapy for preschool aged children to explain the intricacies to my school district. It does not comfort me that they can not read or understand the laws, but are in theory capable of educating my children.

(2)    Researched the specific chemical properties of flexible PVC piping and its appropriate underground use around pools. It turns out that it can be eaten by termites. Who knew? Not my contractor, obviously.

(3)    Filed a complaint with PUCO over the distribution portion of my electric bill, which has more than doubled over the past year. Nothing funny about that. 

You can not unsee things which have already been seen, and attempting to squelch my uneasiness when I notice an inconsistency only propagates my anxiety. I can not ignore my problems or they consume me, tapeworms destroying me from the inside. Every fact that contradicts the information I have been given by authorities (contractors, educators, you name it) undermines my trust. The less I trust these people, the more pressure it places on me to discern the difference between those who are knowledgeable and those who simply like to hear themselves talk, which is sometimes an extremely difficult distinction.

So after careful evaluation, I can happily conclude that my stress is due not to my own failures, but to those of others. Thank God… For a moment there, I was starting to doubt myself.

As an aside, on a happy note, my cat has been miraculously rehabilitated. I scrubbed the litter boxes, separated them, removed the lids, and insisted that the kids clean them daily. She has faithfully pooped in the box every day since my last post. So much for fluffy kitty pandering.

Hopefully my letter to PUCO won’t tick them off enough that they shut off our electricity.