Dec
10
All the pretty (frozen) horses
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It is cold here in Seattle. I know, I know: you were born on the ice planet Hoth and if it weren’t for that tauntaun which provided warming entrails for you and your tribe you would have all perished in the great storm of ’06 when the temperatures reached nine hundred jillion below zero and you still can’t see very good out of that previously-frozen left cornea so what do I know about cold, but listen, all I’m saying is that it’s normally pretty mild here in the winter and I am not used to peering at a sub-20° thermometer for days on end, or worse, having to reluctantly lace on my shoes and go running in this shit, where my self-pitying tears instantly form a sheet of ice on my face.
(I love how that one light of ours is all, Ladies?)
The upside to this unusually chilly weather is how crystal-clear the days have been. The mountains look craggy and enormous, and with their fresh coats of snow they seem as imposing and dramatic as the Himalayas. The lakes are sparkling and glassy. The recent full moon was improbably detailed, like something Photoshopped over the city. The sunrises and sunsets have been achingly lovely.
We got our tree this week and at first I felt kind of awful that we didn’t go to the same U-cut farm we usually do. It was just so bone-chillingly cold and I imagined trying to bundle up the kids and Dylan refusing all head-coverings as usual and everyone crying with snot stuck to their lips and mittens getting lost and etfuckincetera so JB and I just stopped by one of those crappy-looking lots where a guy is selling trees from his trailer with a spray-painted sign propped nearby that says XMAS TREZ and guess what, the selection was MUCH nicer than our beloved tree farm and the Noble we picked out was about $30 cheaper. Who knew?
I really thought we’d have to come up with some bungee-cord solution for the tree this year because I pictured Dylan constantly trying to pull it down on his head, but I guess since it is not shaped like a horse it doesn’t really tickle his fancy. He “helped” with the lights and was briefly interested in some of the ornaments, but now it’s this total meh thing over there in the living room, not nearly as cool as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.
By the way can I just tell you what a total mouthbreathing fool I was for getting him that movie, because it features, in addition to Matt Damon’s horse-voice, a moving and dramatic and endless soundtrack with lots and lots and lots and LOTS of Bryan Adams songs. Of course Dylan is obsessed with it, is begging night and day for the “Horse? TV? Horse? TV?” and if I don’t seem to be obeying fast enough he goes and brings me the remote and stands there peering up at me expectedly, like THIS IS THE UNITED STATES CALLING ARE WE REACHING? Meanwhile I’ve got about eight thousand cheesy Bryan Adams songs stuck in my head here I am it’s just me and you tonight we make our dreams come TRUUEEE aarrrrrrgh.
PS: Dylan’s started . . . neighing. A LOT.
Dec
8
Keeping score
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A few weeks ago I took a personality test. Well, I’m not sure if that’s exactly the right term for it, but you probably know what I’m talking about: the thing where you go down a huge list of adjectives and mark the words you think other people would use to describe you, then you tackle that same list all over again except this time you mark the words you’d use to describe yourself.
I had a difficult time with both sections, being as how there were no choices like “spectacularly filthy-minded” or “prone to using prison slang” or even “possessing the sensibility of a small, excitable poodle”. It was also challenging to sit there and purposefully try to guess what people think about me, since my usual mode is to 1) be helplessly paranoid about what people think about me, or 2) try very hard NOT to think about what people think about me, so as to avoid Twitchy Mental Fallout from #1.
I think what I ended up doing was being fairly kind to myself in terms of what Other People Think, then ruthless in the Describe Yourself area. I’d mark off a hideously self-congratulatory-sounding word in the Other People section—thinking mainly of the wonderful comments I’ve received from blog readers who, though they may secretly believe I’m a spineless, urine-spraying idiot, go out of their way to say nice, supportive things to me whenever I’ve fretted about scary physical events or parenting tasks or whatever it may be—and then I’d keep that word in my brain, radiating Bat-signals of discomfort, until I found its antonym in the self-assessment section.
If I summoned the ability to admit that maybe sometimes other people don’t necessarily think I’m always a lazy chicken-shitted waste of food, I had to immediately make it clear that while that may be the case, it’s only because I have them FOOLED, because of COURSE I’m a lazy chicken-shitted waste of food. DUH.
I didn’t realize I was doing this, but it sort of became clear when the test administrator talked to me on the phone several days later. At the start of the conversation he gently told me that he was a little concerned about my results. “Have you had any traumatic, stressful events lately?” he asked, and when I said no, he asked if I’d ever been diagnosed with ADD.
(At that point I thought very seriously about just casually disconnecting the call, because I had this horrible Pandora’s-box feeling that if we talked for one more minute I’d discover that the test results indicated that not only was I unstable and roiling with all sorts of mental disorders, but that my brain was also filled with mealworms.)
In the course of our discussion and interpretation of the test, he became convinced that I’m not actually the nearly-suicidal ball of immobilized self-hatred that my results seemed to indicate. We talked a bit about what I actually am, which—mealworms aside—is this: really, really, really hard on myself.
I have a very hard time thinking, for instance, hey, I put in lot of time and effort and completed my first triathlon this summer, that took bravery and commitment and discipline. I have a much easier time focusing on how intimidated I was beforehand or how I was totally scared of the water. I find it almost physically impossible to mark off words like courageous or hard-working, but if there’s an option for craven or shiftless . . . well. Check!
Sometimes it’s like I believe that all of the changes I’ve made over the last several years are nothing but a whisper-thin veneer covering the real me. The real me never takes on challenges, never steps outside her comfort zone. She’s weak. She’s an addict. She’s a loser. She ruins everything around her.
Why do I still think this way? I’ve worked so hard, I’ve come so far. I want to get rid of this secret, sabotaging conviction that nothing inside of me has changed. Because it has. I have to believe that it has. It’s time to believe that it has.
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