Many Little Things

It is one of those times where a host of smallish problems has added up to the feeling of being overwhelmed, powerless, and devoid of hope.

My mouth hurts worse than I ever remember it hurting except when my jaw was broken. Nothing eases it enough for me to concentrate.

Kid-1 is in a vicious cycle of defiance that is exhausting to deal with for all of us.

A stomach flu bug is making its rounds through the house. Kid-3 had it Monday, I had it yesterday, Kid-2 has it today...

I didn't get as much studying done before my sociology exam as I would have liked, mostly due to the above named factors, so I think I missed at least 5 points on the exam (out of 100 possible points).

I am trying to go through the study guide for my critical thinking class and once again frustrated beyond belief at the way the class is playing out. The presentation of the material has been spotty and downright counter-productive at times. There are things on this study guide that we NEVER DISCUSSED and aren't in our books either.

Hubby needs me to do some major revisions for our popcorn sales tracking program for Cub Scouts. I can do them; it will just be time consuming and a little bit frustrating.

Mom has to go in for a PET scan on Friday. They ordered a repeat CT scan to check on the pneumonia spot in her lung that seemed odd when she was first diagnosed. It is still there and it isn't pneumonia. We are all thinking the same thing but no one wants to say it out loud: lung cancer. She has been a prolific smoker since she was a teenager so this isn't a paranoia-induced, unlikely possibility. But I am terrified. I am scared for her, for my dad, for my kids and for myself. I'm not ready to lose my mother! I know I am getting way ahead of myself here so I am trying very hard not to panic. So far, it isn't working.

And, of course, in addition to all of these added stressors, there are all of the normal ones. The worry about money, the kids' grades, extra-curricular activities, church, household maintenance, laundry, dishes, in-laws.... The list goes on and on, as it always has and undoubtedly always will. Right now, today, I don't feel strong enough to handle everything. All of these straws, so insignificant on their own, are adding up to a very heavy weight. And I can't afford to have my back break for all the normal reasons.

Please God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from here...
Please God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from here...
Please God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from here...
Please God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from here...
Please God, make me a bird, so I can fly far, far away from here...

Bleh

I should be doing my homework.

I really don't want to do it. It will only take a few minutes and it is super easy. The thing is... I have a hard time getting motivated in this class. I keep ending up over prepared. That is so discouraging.

Blech. Alright, gonna go do it.

It's so tough: I have to look up a little bit about parodies of the ontological argument for the existence of God. The ontological argument basically says that God is either necessarily existent (by definition must exist) or impossible (its definition contradicts itself - like a round square). Since God isn't impossible, God must be necessarily existent.

(Note: I am not saying I believe the ontological argument proves the existence of God; I am simply stating the argument as we have been taught in class.)

The parodies of this argument are numerous (and humorous!) with the most popular of these being The Flying Spaghetti Monster. I have a link to this at the bottom of my blog (and have for a long time). For class tomorrow I have to figure out what a parody is and find at least one example. Well, gee Wally, I don't know if I can handle that...

I have to say, school hasn't been what I expected. In most respects it is so much BETTER than I even dreamed. I love the classes. I love the knowledge. I love the potential. I have met a good friend and her hubby and feel like I am making connections with the professors. I am in awe of the attitudes and environment. Instead of spoon-feeding us the "right" answers, they are presenting me with the information and letting me make up my own mind. Even my one class where we are being treated like freshmen in high school, he has made it infinitely clear that he isn't trying to tell us what to think, only how to think.

Homework hasn't been anything like I expected. Based on my limited observations, I thought I would be having to study my brains out, always struggling to stay on top of things, worrying out papers that would be coming out of my ears. I made sure to budget all kinds of time to do homework and worried about where else I could sneak in the extra time. I had no idea how I would ever be able to say anything in class, let alone participate at an appropriate level.

After 4 weeks of class, I have to look at those expectations and say AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a joke. I am not having a lick of trouble in any of my classes. I find myself getting so frustrated because I have this pathetic tendency to DO the work that the professors assign only to find that half the rest of the class didn't do it and half of those who did do it had trouble with it. Meanwhile, I had been lamenting about how easy it was compared to what I expected. I am ahead of schedule in all of my classes and crushingly disappointed that there is no one to talk to about all the awesome things I am learning and how many connections there are between my classes. Mentally, school so far is NOT taxing at all.

I really don't know how to interpret this. On one hand, I think it is most likely just that it is only 4 weeks into the term. I'm sure it will get harder as I go. Once the "honeymoon period" is over, I will enjoy school less, right? Once it comes to turning in those papers, I will panic more about getting them done adequately, right? It has to be just that I haven't hit anything hard yet, right? On the other hand, my observations of others in my classes and limited knowledge of others in other classes... they already seem neck-deep in homework and readings. Even kids in my critical thinking class (the one I end up over-preparing for just by doing the readings and assignments) seem to be struggling to understand the material.

Maybe it comes easier to me? In high school I put forth minimal effort and pulled As and Bs. I never studied for tests. I never had trouble understanding material (except in calculus which I dropped and chemistry which I just couldn't get my head around). Now, I am doing the assigned readings, paying attention and taking notes in all my classes, and actually attending all my classes (which seems to be a novel concept for so many of my classmates - I don't get this at all; some of them don't go to class because they just don't feel like it, putting the strangest things as higher priorities!). Maybe that's enough to make the difference. I certainly can't believe that I have any quality which others do not that is helping me absorb the material better or quicker and so making it mentally easier on me than I expected! LOL

On the other hand, the physical demands of it are way more than I had anticipated. My plan was to spend a week getting acclimated to walking so much and doing stairs. Then to start going to the gym 3 days a week to give out the Couch-2-5K program. Well, I just finished my 4th week on campus and I still hurt so badly just from the walking and the stairs that I don't dare add to it. The feeling glass in my right knee has returned. Every muscle in my body is saying rude things to me. I am eating ibuprofen like candy (800 mg every 4-6 hours). It doesn't help that I am as fat and lazy and out of shape as I am but I honestly don't know whether to push harder or back off or hold my ground. I made an appointment with my doctor to see what to do about the knee and general muscle fatigue. I want to get moving as soon as I can but I can't handle much additional pain right now.

The aspect of returning to school that has surprised me the most is the emotional fatigue. I don't know why I didn't expect it. By the time I leave campus, I am fried emotionally. The amount of energy it takes for me to project confidence and calmness and smile and keep my head up... I still have not managed to pull off keeping my head up while I cross campus. I watch my feet and a little ways in front of me - eye contact is beyond me. I am just so afraid the whole time I am there. I feel out of place, for one thing: this fat, middle aged woman wandering around campus among these young, beautiful, confident kids. I want to hide all the time. In class I have to actually step aside of myself a little bit because of the fear. Obviously I don't completely back off - I have had it drilled into me hard enough that dissociating at school would be a VERY bad thing.

By the end of the day, I am running on empty emotionally. As I settle into the car after classes, all I can think is Thank God the say is over! only to remember that I still have another 4 hours of running to do and an additional 4 hours of home things. I know that it doesn't sound like much to most people. So I'm taking 4 classes this term - so what? It's not like I'm working or doing even a semi-adequate job of keeping up at home...

But I am trying (with the help of the Shrink and Hubby) to acknowledge everything I am doing: 4 classes, plus 4 kids (who are currently in 12 regularly scheduled activities plus the things that are immediately after school), hospice volunteering, all the catching up on doctors' appointments and dentist appointments, 2 sets of weekly therapy, new member class at church and all the normal household things. That's a lot of things.

In my mind, it doesn't count for much because I'm still not able to keep the house clean. The point system we set up last spring/summer is working well. It helps a lot, having the living room back for general use and the decrease in overall upkeep required with more people in the house. Still, the laundry and the dishes are my mortal enemies. I would give anything to be able to make myself enjoy housekeeping. But I don't; I despise it more than almost anything. And as a result, my laziness, selfishness and extreme lack of motivation tend to win. Doing so well at school, even with as easy as that is coming mentally, doesn't change the fact that I am a crappy wife, an inadequate mother, an abominable housekeeper, and a pathetic person.

Cute Kids Make Better Charity Cases

I've been thinking a bit about people's perceptions regarding charity. It's no secret that adorable children make the best pleas for aid. Combine a cute kid with a visibly miserable situation and people's hearts are more likely to swell with pity and be moved to deeds of charity. To really turn on the waterworks, take a cute kid in a crappy visual environment and have him or her plead for aid with politeness and grace, humility and gratitude. BAM - instant support!

But the reality is by and large extremely different than the idyllic imagery we play out in our minds or in the media publicity. Most kids in desperate situations show physical signs of their need. They are not just dirty and in torn clothes. They may have physical deformities or unusual physical traits associated with their particular plight. They may have scars or other visually uncomfortable distinguishing features. And most of all, just like in the population as a whole, the vast majority of real kids do not have idyllic, runway-model looks; they are by and large average looking with exceptions at either end of the spectrum from angelic to homely. In short, the reality of how these desperate children look is directly contrary to the pretty picture we paint or that the media paints for us to trigger our sympathies.

But it goes so much farther than that. When the average person performs a charitable deed, whether small like dropping coins in the Salvation Army's Christmas pail or extensive like volunteering significant time and resources to provide aid to a cause, we hold certain expectations of the results it will bring. Specifically, we firmly expect the recipient to be both grateful and humble. We often go so far as to expect praise of our moral character for performing the deed. The idyllic transaction might play out like this: (this is the meaning, not a specific example of dialog)

Child: Please help me! I need warm winter clothing and healthy food to eat. I can't get these things without your wonderful assistance. If you give me what I am needing, I can be normal and healthy and happy and I will love you for changing my life!

Charitable Person: Why of course I will help you! You remind me how lucky I am to not have to suffer like you do. I can give you what you ask without causing undue hardship to myself and I will be making the world a better place. I will rescue you from your pain. I will show myself and the world that I am a good person of significant moral worth! Here, have my scraps...

Child: Oh thank you so very much! You are so good and kind and praiseworthy! I appreciate your aid from the bottom of my heart and I will remember you with gratitude forevermore! You are the hero that rescued me from this hell that is not of my own making into a better place where I can grow up to be like you: healthy, wealthy and wise. I give you this token of my appreciation; I spent a huge amount of personal effort on it because you made such an impact on me and I am eternally grateful...

Charitable Person: You are so very welcome! I feel better about myself knowing that I have changed your life for the better and am now a hero in the mind of at least one person. I am going to bask in this praise and use it to justify to myself how I deserve all these comforts because I gave you my scraps to rescue you...

Okay so that isn't what either of them would explicitly say but all of the interactions thereabout can be boiled down to these messages. They are exaggerated for effect here, but this is the idyllic image we tend to envision.

Reality doesn't quite work that way. Not only are the children usually not the perfect little cherubim we have envisioned, but their attitudes and demeanor has been affected by their circumstances. They had no one to teach them humility and manners. All of their life experiences have taught them to distrust others, to look out for themselves, to depend only on themselves, to take what they require - by whatever means necessary - because no one will give it to them otherwise. They are fighters; they are strong but they are hardened from repeated circumstantial battering.

By and far, the more common emotional reactions to charitable deeds would be distrust of motives, anger at the tangible proof of how things are unfair and cruel, hostility born from resentment both at not having what the giver has and at the reasons why they don't have those things, pride and a sense of accepting the deed grudgingly because, while they need it, they don't want to admit that they cannot sustain themselves without the aid of people they perceive to have absolutely no understanding of their world.

A couple takes in a foster child and their (sometimes unstated and/or unconscious) expectation is that the child will be so grateful to them for being so magnanimous, as in the case of Pete from Pete's Dragon. But in reality these kids tend to be angry. They don't believe that the couple will be there for them, love them, and treat them right. The circumstances that necessitated the need for a foster home have taught these kids that parentals cannot be trusted or relied upon. They act out to test their assumptions and sometimes create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Even if repeated transgretions don't yield the negative results they expect, they may never fully come to trust the adults, believing that eventually they will turn on them or let them down or sometimes that they don't deserve the love and respect and safety being offered to them. Often this lack of (what they perceive to be) warranted gratitude and reciprocated faith creates tension and even ill-will and the cycle is perpetuated.

It's a shame the majority of people don't have more realistic expectations. Perhaps then there would be a greater disposition to give and receive aid. If people understood that the behavior is a learned response, a product of the hardships they have experienced, they would be less likely to mentally (or verbally) attribute it to moral failings. Really, in such situations, who is actually demonstrating the greater degree of moral shortcomings - the kid behaving in accordance with their experiences or the adults who hold unreasonable expectations for them?

Craziness in Pop Culture

Pop culture, especially horror and action-drama, love to have the protagonist experiencing things that others don't believe. We are presented with their overwhelming sensory experiences as they are accused of being crazy or of faking it. They fight and fight against it, often alienating former allies until they are able to prove their unusual experiences are valid and not imaginary or symptoms of psychosis. They win out against all odds and the hero has earned the right to a million "I told you so!"s and a massive sense of vindication.

Flightplan - no one believes Jodi Foster's daughter was on the airplane

The Eye - everyone thinks Jessica Alba has schizophrenia or some other disease-based mental illness rather than seeing through the eyes of the donor she received the transplant from

Mirrors - Keifer Sutherland is assumed to be hallucinating

Nightmare on Elm Street - Heather Langenkamp isn't dreaming of Freddie Kruger, she is insane like her mother was

Pete's Dragon - Elliot was an imaginary playmate

Supernatural - over and over the people are assumed crazy or pretending instead of the actual supernatural causes

In reality though, it doesn't matter what could be causing the experiences the person is having. They are labeled as experiencing a disease-based mental illness. They are told over and over that what they are experiencing isn't real. They are never believed. Eventually they learn to shut up or they get medicated or they get put away where their "delusions" and "hallucinations" can't upset anyone, make them uncomfortable, or cause the person to take desperate measures to try to alleviate their own suffering.

But what if? What if that schizophrenic man's senses pick up something more or different most people's do? What if the crazy cat-lady has an ability to communicate with her beloved pets in a way that most people aren't capable? What if the woman who sees the spirit of her dead daughter can see through the veil to an alternate reality that is opaque to most people? What if the joke of a psychic isn't a fraud or insane but actually has use of senses unavailable to most people? What if that man who thinks he is Jesus Christ is reliving the memory and sensory experiences from 2000+ years ago that most people will never experience?

And no one will ever believe them sincerely. They will be ridiculed or patronized or "diagnosed" and eventually, one way or another, they will be silenced. How ironic that the source of our fantasy life allows for so much more openmindedness, tolerance, and ultimate resolution than real life can ever afford.

Maybe, just maybe, the next time you see that man muttering to himself, you can consider the possibility that his world is actually BIGGER than yours, not restricted by a disability...

It Never Occurred to Me

Wow. I feel like such an utter idiot, some kind of parodied, stereotyped, racist white bitch. The thing is, I really don't consider (or rather didn't consider) myself racist. I tend to treat skin color as one more physical feature (like blonde, brunette, brown-eyed, tall, black...) and I have done everything in my power to teach my children that skin color alone means nothing about a person. For the most part, I think I have succeeded in this. (I have a funny anecdote about this, an "out of the mouths of babes" moment.

But I am really wondering now, how deep my professed non-prejudiced attitude goes. I get irritated when decisions are made based on race, whether for or against any specific ethnicity. But maybe I have this view only because I am white and don't face the bias every single day. Maybe I am not color-blind but rather just plain blind.

I read this article today. An Open Letter to Eric Kripke The author makes the point that there are almost no black characters (is "black" the currently acceptable terminology?) in Supernatural. All of the black women have been in one episode only and there have only been 4 of them. All of the black men have turned out to be tragically evil and killed off accordingly.

Wow. She's right. And I never even saw it!!! It never once occurred to me. How fucking blind am I?! Could Kripke be as naively unaware as I was? He's a small-town Ohio guy - similar upbring as my own. Maybe it never occurred to him. I can't fathom that he would have done it intentionally - it just doesn't seem to fit with the image he presents.

So, if he reads that article... what will he do?

Ethical Ponderence of the Day: Stealing

One of my classes this term is ethics. Another is critical thinking. Both have been looking at ethical dilemmas this week. It got me thinking about morals and what happens when two sets of morals conflict. Here is one example I've been pondering:

Is it ethical (not counting the LEGAL aspect at all) to steal something from someone who shouldn't have it to give it to someone who needs it but can't get it on their own?

More thoughts on this later...

More Consequences of Idiocy

Every day I find yet another reason to kick myself in the ass for not backing up my hard drive. I lost so much information, so much data, so much history... it continues to take my breath away. Today I realized another document that I have lost.

I had a spreadsheet laid out for all my course requirements, all my chosen courses for fulfilling those requirements, all 3 of the minors and the honors certificate. It calculated GPA and missing requirements. It cross-referenced between the minors and the requirements their courses meet. It was a bloody awesome spreadsheet!

I knew I had lost the document when my drive died. But I thought I had 2 backup plans. First, I had printed it out to take to my advisor and to show family/friends. Second, I thought I had sent a copy of it to my Once Best Friend. I checked the file where the hard copy should be and it wasn't in there. I have a vague recollection of it getting crumpled and torn and therefore thrown away.

Bummer. But I should have the file that I sent to her saved in my Sent Messages folder. Tonight I scoured my messages, incoming and sent, in both email accounts. It isn't there. Obviously I IMed it to her instead - a logical thing to do at the time. Except that now I have no copy of it anywhere. It's not like I can ask her if she still has a copy of it!

So I get to recreate the spreadsheet. The calculations and format won't be a hideous problem, more time consuming and annoying than anything. But I had gone through all the courses, all the major and minor requirements, and decided all of the courses I was going to try to take. It took a long time to do and will take an equally long time to reproduce. Add another thing to my never-ending to do lists.

I am so frustrated and angry at myself for this. DAMMIT! I know better!! Such a stupid thing, such an obvious thing... and it continues to bite me in the ass over and over and over.

Moral of the Story: BACK UP FILES! FREQUENTLY! ALWAYS! and PRINT HARD COPIES! FREQUENTLY! ALWAYS!