Bullseye (I felt my compassion returning)

Happy Easter weekend.

All week I've been wanting – desperately desiring – to document the actions of (and my reactions to) my three-year-old house guest. All week I've refrained, because ... well, for lots of reasons. Mainly, it's because I know she's only a little kid, and she's stressing out even more than I am right now. Also, that she lacks the emotional experience and skills to deal with her feelings in a constructive and positive way, and that I should therefore cut her some slack.

In addition, I don't like to reveal to my adoring public just how easy it is to get a rise out of me, sometimes. Equanimity? Bah! All it takes is a new purple stain on my best down pillow, or the entire new crop of tiny green Meyer lemons plucked from my precious baby trees, or a forbidden cup of carrot juice sneaked into my bed (where it spilled and dried, leaving an enormous orange stain), or a stolen packet of sticky red Emergen-C powder sprinkled liberally all over the damp and humid bathroom ...

Any one of these or a thousand other small disasters might have been enough to make my brain explode. Added together, and combined with near-constant whining and screaming (primarily at bedtime) ... ugh. I can't talk about it. Except to say that I think it really must be different when it's your own kid, or at least a kid you love (like my nieces and nephews and a few other friends' kids), and when you're in your own home with a stable routine and the ability to arrange your world (or at least your bedroom) in a way that allows and encourages safe exploration without sacrificing beauty, tranquillity or the ability to get a decent half night's sleep every couple of nights or so.

I'm really tired right now.

But I'm getting over being pissed off. The other night we were trying to watch a movie, with the kid stretched out next to us – supposedly "falling asleep" but in reality whining, talking, and kicking her feet against the arm of the couch. It had been a long day already and all I wanted was a half hour or so of peace before I went to bed ... but it wasn't gonna happen. I was finally just about at the point where I was ready to abandon the movie and go hide out in my room, when I heard her say, "I miss daddy."

Somehow when she said that, I suddenly started feeling a little more kindly toward her. I don't totally understand everything that's going on with her daddy, but I do know him well enough to know that she's very likely in for a lifetime of disappointments wherever he's concerned.

Anyway. Ever since I saw her from that perspective it's been easier to bring myself back to the way I want to be in this kind of situation: calm, kind, understanding, firm. She isn't trying to make my life difficult. She's just a very young human whose entire world has been thrown into disarray over the last few weeks, and she's expressing her upsetness. It isn't about me. What is about me is the anger I feel when she does something I don't like. So I'm trying to look at that, and figure out what it's really about.

I really am too tired to write about this right now, but I will come back to it. Also, I have a small but painful sore or zit or something right between my eyebrows – that's the bullseye mentioned in the title. It's making me feel like I can't concentrate on anything but that spot.

About the article – I was right, a hundred bucks is not enough. The interview did take about an hour but getting my notes transcribed and shaped up into something printable was more like two and a half hours. So if you count travel time, that's a total of about four hours' work, or $25 per hour. That might seem great to someone who still gets a thrill out of seeing their name in print, but I got over that part years ago (actually, I'm probably using a pseudonym for this one). Possibly in this case my standards for myself were too high; it's just an extended blurb, really, not Great Art. I still think I could get it down to between two and three hours, once I'm back in practice. If nothing else, it's still a hundred bucks I didn't have before, and a lot of the people they have lined up to talk to are actually kind of interesting. Plus, I'd enjoy shaking my work routine up a little right now.

And finally, I realized today that I still have time before Easter to make an embarrassing confession: I've totally abandoned my Lent/spring training thing and am back to my same old habit of sleeping and dreaming as much as I can. Well, not exactly – I'm still getting up a little earlier than I really have to, which I never used to do. In that sense, I guess I have made a change. But not a very big one.

I'm still going to call the experiment a success, though. I learned some things that I think are worth knowing. First, I confirmed my belief that I really do feel much better when I have enough quality sleep and dream time, so that's something I need to make more of a priority. In fact, I've decided to get a new bed now (the new stains on my current bed are also a bit of a factor here).

Also, I've realized that even though there's always the same amount of time in every day, getting up earlier really does make me feel like I have more time – a lot more time! How does that work? Something I will continue to investigate throughout this holiday weekend and beyond.

Hand to heart

Since I'm online anyway, researching remedies for post-operative dog swelling, I will report that I've spent the better part of the day today kneeling on the floor in front of the couch, with my hand holding warm compresses against Tater's chest, feeling his sweet little dog heart beat, beat, beat. All day long. It's been nice.

The swelling isn't bad, and the incision doesn't look infected, but his licking woke me up this morning – I had thought he wouldn't be able to reach that one – and the area was starting to look a little angry. So I applied warm cloths for a half hour at a time, every hour or two, and it really brought the swelling down AND seems to have stopped him from wanting to lick so much. I'm glad I still have one more day to keep an eye on him before I have to go back to work; I'm hoping I won't have to make him wear one of those horrible Elizabethan collars during the day. If he still feels inclined to lick tomorrow, I may try having him wear a t-shirt instead and see if that discourages him enough.

Other plans for the holiday include spending some time in the yard again (this time in the sun), washing the dishes again, and installing new front and rear tubes on my bike. They were a Valentine's day present from Mr. A, along with some fancy silk lingerie – well, lightweight silk long johns – which are my kinda lingerie. I'm excited about the tubes most of all – my front one has been going flat every couple of days or so, and the back one is okay but it has a Presta valve and I'm always worried it will go flat when I'm out and about, because I can only pump it back up again at home, where I have the Presta adaptor. So now I'll have new Schrader tubes on both wheels (plus Mr. Tuffys). Such an exciting life I lead!

In the background right now I am watching the Science of Sleep, which a friend at work recommended to me. Visually, I'm enjoying it very much. Right now the guy is dressed in a furry brown bear suit – only with a long tail – and playing drums with a pair of paintbrushes, with a band doing some unknown version of my favorite old Velvet Underground tune (the one where Mo Tucker sings "If you close the door, the night will last forever"). Now he's in his neighbor woman's apartment and it's all full of strange toy animals, bird cages, a stuffed fabric telephone and typewriter – all these are reminding me of the stuffed toys I used to make when I was a kid. There was a tiny blue fleece elephant, which I still have somewhere, a green cat made out of an old wool cable-knit sock, dolls with long dresses and funny little felt shoes with real laces ... I used to love making that stuff.

Seeing it in a movie makes me want to start sewing toys again. But what to do with them when they're done? Sure, I have a large supply of nieces and nephews ... that would be one place to send them. Or I could sell them, I suppose. Or just give them away. I've been stalking all these craft blogs lately, and am constantly surprised at how madly people seem to love even just the most basic handmade things. It seems like a very supportive community, but I've been avoiding entering it because ... hmm. I guess because ... well, hmm. Why? Because what if people are mean to me? Or don't like my stuff? Or do like it, and steal my designs?

I have set myself a goal, however, of stepping over all these "what ifs" and putting at least a few little things into a shop at Etsy, which, if you don't already know about it, is a nice place to start sharing artwork without having to deal with any kind of pressure to produce more or faster or better than you want to, or can. I will post a link here when I have something to show.

Finally, I'm still thinking about this Lent thing. Ash Wednesday is this week – this Wednesday – and the closer it gets, the more nervous I feel about getting up early. I never felt this way when I gave up chocolate, or even sugar. I knew those would be hard, but I never worried that I wouldn't be able to do it. Getting up early scares me, though. Maybe because my only real experience of waking up very early took place during the years when I was having depression and panic disorders, when I would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning in a deep, sweating, nauseous panic and feel absolutely terrified to open my eyes ... But this is not going to be like that. For one thing, I'm not planning to get up at 4 a.m. Mr. A and I have discussed it and I think it's going to be something more like 6:22, which is still early, but very doable. Possibly 6:44. I'll unveil the actual plan as soon as I decide for sure what I'm going to do.

But for now, I have at least one more day to sleep until I wake up naturally – tomorrow, Presidents' Day. And Tuesday, too, except that on Tuesday I think I'll be going in to work early, hoping to get a jump on a deadline I'm afraid is going to bite me on the back later this week. I'm not going to think about that right now though. Right now, all I have to do is get Tater comfortable, get me comfortable, and get to sleep. So I'm going to go do that.

Do I dare to wake up early?

The above in reference to Prufrock's famous question about the peach, in acknowledgement that getting older changes things about us that we might not expect ...

I have been thinking about Lent, which begins next week, and trying to decide on something to give up. Last year I did sugar, and had a pretty good experience. Too good, maybe – it was hard, but not as hard as I thought it was going to be. This year, rather than focusing on food, I've been playing with the idea of taking a look at one of my other less favorite habits: sloth. What if, I've been asking myself, instead of planning my entire life around being able to sleep as late as possible every morning (based on what I have to do that day), I decided to bite the bullet and get up at the same time every single day for 40 days?

I'm not talking about sleep deprivation, which I don't think is healthy – all I'd have to do to get enough sleep would be to plan ahead and go to bed at an appropriate time. Instead, I would simply be regulating myself fairly strictly in an area where I've made a great point of allowing myself the maximum latitude possible. The goal is twofold: one, to challenge myself by doing something really hard – not so hard that I can't do it, but harder than I'm comfortable with – and two, to create a new habit of better self-discipline.

My usual practice is to give myself just enough time in the morning to get dressed and transport myself on time to wherever I need to be. Usually I wake up earlier than I need to, and spend the time before the alarm moving into and out of dreams, looking at the various things my mind has brought up to be played with, and stretching and snuggling with the Taterman. I've also been known to make liberal use of the snooze button – a great way to get into lucid dreaming, by the way, if you've ever been interested in it. I almost never just get up when the alarm sounds. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I did that. My dreamtime is too important to me.

But having Mr. A out of the house by 5 a.m. every weekday for these last many months has caused me to wonder what it would be like if I were the one waking up early. Could I even do it? Why would I? Why should I? After all, most mornings I don't even have to be to work until 10.

That last point is actually what's caught my imagination. If I have until 10 a.m. before I have to be anywhere, and if I could manage to get up quite a bit earlier than that, just think of how different my day would feel! I would suddenly have all this extra time in the morning to do whatever I want, and in the evenings I would probably not have my usual terrible time falling asleep because I'd be tired from having been up so early.

Just for the record, I'm not one of those people who believes getting up early is somehow naturally superior to and more virtuous than getting up late – we all have the same number of hours in the day, and early or late, as long as you're healthy and feeling good and getting everything done that you need to do, what does it matter what time you sleep? I will admit to feeling vaguely jealous of people who always wake up very early – the way they talk about the calm and quiet of the early morning, the beauty of the sunrise, etc. etc. makes me feel nostalgic for something ... I'm not sure exactly what. My experience of waking up very early is that I usually end up feeling nauseous, disoriented and slightly surreal for most of the day. And then, when it's time to go to bed again, I have trouble falling asleep.

Still, I'm curious about what it would be like if I did it every day for awhile. Would I get used to it, or would it mess up my sleep patterns even more? What would I do in those extra morning hours?

Probably the most important question is, what time would I choose to wake up every day? Remember, I'm not trying to totally destroy myself – just mix it up a little. Also, I'll be applying the same schedule on weekends as well as during the week, so it can't be too brutal. In addition, there's the matter of my strange number-phobia, which dictates that only a few times in each hour are okay to wake up at (e.g., 7:25 is acceptable, 7:30 is not). Right now I'm leaning toward something in the 6:30–7 a.m. range, and considering departing from my list of approved times. Maybe 6:41? 6:44? Or is that too wimpy? Maybe I should say 6:03 or 6:11?

What time do you usually get up in the morning? Do you use the snooze? How many times?

(An aside: I've been preparing for this new discipline by flossing my teeth every single day since I went to the dentist a few weeks ago. Flossing is another one of those things I hate to do, but which I know I should do ... So I've been being diligent, and just within the last few days have reached a place where I don't mind doing it anymore. My earlier habit was to do it only once or twice a week (terrible, I know!).)

In connection with all this Lent business, I wonder if you're aware that there are Seven Contrary Virtues that correspond to the Seven Deadly Sins? These are Humility, Kindness, Abstinence, Chastity, Patience, Liberality and Diligence, and practicing them is supposed to save you from Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth, respectively. Who knew?

Ever since I read Thich Nhat Hanh's rewriting of the Five Wonderful Precepts about ten or eleven years ago, I've been totally on the bandwagon with this idea of phrasing credos (or whatever you want to call them) in positive terms instead of negative. He says, as an example, that if your rule is "Don't kill," it's so specific and closed-ended that it leaves all sorts of ways for people to get around it. Someone might say, "Well, it's true that I eat meat – but hey, I'm not the one who kills the animal!" Whereas if you phrase it in a positive way, "Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and to learn the ways of protecting the lives of people, animals and plants," it creates a much larger and more meaningful challenge. You're not just held to obeying one strictly-defined "NO," but are free to explore all the countless ways of saying "YES!"

In a way, I suppose Lent is about saying No. I'm not now nor have I ever been Catholic, so I'm not all that familiar with the concept, though I do find it useful. In general though I like to say Yes more than No ... especially because No seems to come so naturally to me. So maybe instead of bumming myself out with the stern and intimidating "Thou shalt not sleep past 6:44 a.m." I'll create a positive version of the same challenge: "I shall rise to greet each beautiful new day at exactly 6:44 a.m.!"

Ugh. This is going to need some work. And possibly a new alarm clock as well.