Stop right there! I mean it! Don’t take another step.

The other night my family was talking about the Giving Tree book by Shel Silverstein. We were lamenting that a children’s book that encourages poor boundary setting would be so popular. We were surprised that Shel Silverstein would make a book with the message that it’s ok to keep giving and giving or taking and taking until you’re empty. After a bit of discussion my daughter Maya said “Maybe we’re just wrong about what it’s about. Maybe you’re actually supposed to figure out that the boy’s an asshole in the end.”

This is an interesting twist. But it got me thinking… if the boy is an asshole, what does that make the tree?

Most of my life I’ve been a “yes” kind of person. I say most of my life because I don’t remember being a tiny baby so I can’t say conclusively if I was or wasn’t at that time. But since I can remember, I’ve always enjoyed being able to say yes to most requests.

This yessing has a good side and a bad side. On it’s good side, I have lots of friends. People think of me as easy going (I think anyway). I am open to all sorts of adventures. If you think it sounds fun, I’m probably game to go with you. I like to help people feel better about themselves. I don’t have a lot of enemies.

For the bad side, I’ll recount a little story. It’s about the pencil sharpener at my parent’s house. The pencil sharpener was in the garage screwed next to the door frame. This garage was full (I’m talking hoarder style full) of what-not: kiddie pools and big wheels (including the chic “Green Machine” with spin out levers), baby jumpy things, broken lawn mowers, lots of Joan Baez records, a giant freezer that contained ice cream and U-pick blueberries and dead animals that my dad found and wanted to keep, boxes full of stained glass and clay, Christmas decorations, headless dolls, paint cans, books, clothes, and one million tricycles. The garage was dark and damp and cold and it smelled like day old oysters. It was all the way at the back of the house, far away from help were a ghost of some sort to appear from behind the stack of animal skins saved for making a quilt (these skins ultimately got bugs in them and had to be thrown away. I was disappointed at the time because I thought this idea had some real potential).

The pencil sharpener was one of those heavy duty school sharpeners. Maybe it was stolen from whatever institution my parents were teaching at at the time and that’s why it was hidden away in the land of scary death. If you broke your pencil say, stabbing a hole in your spelling book from sheer frustration (it could be BOTH ANSWERS DEPENDING ON HOW YOU THINK ABOUT IT YOU STUPID JERKS! stab! stab! stab! stab!), and you had to sharpen up after dark, that was some scary shit.

Often, my older sister would ask me to sharpen her pencil for her. As a dyed in the wool yes gal, I was between a rock and a hard place with these requests. My desire to make her happy was at odds with my sense of personal safety. Sharpening pencils is relatively loud and you have to face the wall in order to get a good rotation, subtracting two perfectly good ghost identifying senses. It also takes time to get a good point, leaving long stretches of complete vulnerability to whatever freaky yak might return to reclaim its skin and a little revenge to boot.

But saying no was too hard. I was sure my sister would be so disappointed in me. Plus, I’d have to admit that I was scared, which was not ideal. And so I would gird my loins and take one for the team—run back, swing open the door into hell, slam on the light, sharpen for all my worth while imagining putrid and blood curdling mayhem behind me, jump back inside, slam the door on whatever horrible zombie was grasping for the fringe of my mullet, and bring that pencil safely home. It was over in minutes, but it took a toll. It was almost as bad as taking the compost out to dump in the garden, where serial killers and those aliens from Unsolved Mysteries lived.

One day I decided to check and see if my sister would return the pencil favor, because a team is only as strong as its weakest link. I pressed my pencil hard into my spelling book once again, until the lead snapped, and sweetly asked her if she would mind sharpening it for me.

She said no.

I coaxed. I wheedled. I told her I ALLLLLLWAYS sharpen her pencil when she asks! I probably begged. But she still refused.

I’d suspected that might be her answer all along, but still I was beside myself. I remember telling her to never, NEVER ask me to sharpen her pencil again, as long as we live.

But I also remember agreeing to do it the next time she asked because I couldn’t say no. The risk of her not getting what she needed from me, while I was perfectly capable of giving it, was too great. A few decades later my therapist told me that my ultra clear memory of this event likely meant it was a world building moment, a moment when I decided that others’ needs were more important than my own.

I’m not saying that I never said no. But mostly my noes looked like me saying yes a thousand times and then releasing the fiery demons of hell upon whomever asked me for something the thousand and oneth time. Not an efficient way to live, to say the least. It’s taken me more than forty years to feel ok saying no to people. Here are the steps I took:

Figuring out what I actually want in any given occasion. My decisions were all being made to avoid conflict with people and it turns out that if you constantly disregard your own needs, you can actually forget how to know what you want. I taught myself how to use a pendulum to figure out what I wanted. I hold out a pendulum in front of me and ask-should I sharpen my sister’s pencil? The pendulum spins clockwise for yes and counterclockwise for no. After I get an answer, I ask more questions. Are you saying yes because it’s the right thing to do right now? Are you saying no because deep down I really don’t want to face the reanimated yak? Is it ok if I do it anyway? Asking follow up questions has really allowed me to straighten out my convoluted and tangled up thought processes into something resembling healthy behavior. And I can always blame it on the pendulum if someone is disappointed.
Having an addictive personality. This one seems a little counterintuitive, but when you can’t even say no to yourself, how will you be able to say no to someone else? Quitting drinking, quitting smoking, quitting gluten (sort of), quitting coffee, and quitting cheese has helped me to understand saying no and meaning it. Ironically, having an addictive personality can also create the opposite effect in people who are not conflict avoidant. People like this also don’t know how to tell themselves no, but since they know what they want and they aren’t afraid to ask for it, they can become more and more certain that they should have everything exactly their way, all the time, even when it’s not balanced. If you can’t say no to yourself, how will you ever say yes to someone else?
Hypnosis! I tell everyone I know about hypnosis. I’ve seen three live hypnotists and done a million online sessions. I prefer the online sessions because I can listen to them and decide if I like the style or not and walk away if I don’t without any awkwardness. Here’s what I’ve learned: Almost all of our thoughts are subconscious. The subconscious mind runs the programs of our beliefs all day long. So if I learned once that I’m strong enough to do what everybody else wants, regardless of my own feelings, my subconscious takes that and makes it my program deep down. Talk therapy is great, but it takes a really long time to change that program underlying everything. Even if I tell myself “I am worth doing the things I want!!” the subconscious mind is still down there in the basement running a different code and saying something out loud isn’t enough to change it unless you say it a hundred times a day every day for a year. I read a book that describes our subconscious mind as a nightclub with a great big bouncer at the door. If you want to get into the nightclub and interact with the people inside, you have to get past the bouncer, which, in the analogy, is the mind’s security system that keeps everything running as it always has by deciding what thoughts get through into the subconscious. The bouncer bases his decisions on who is inside already, the kind of club it is, and what the management tells him to do. Hypnosis makes the bouncer veeeerrryyy sleeeeeeepy and distracts him so that you can slip by into the subconscious mind nightclub and move the furniture around and request some better songs from the DJ. (The book is called Instant Self Hypnosis by Forbes Robbin Blair).

What I’ve taken away from all this is simple. People don’t actually mind when I say no, most of the time. Sure they’re disappointed for a minute, but I think it actually makes them feel better, more like they can trust that I am doing something because I want to and not because I’m trying to make them like me. Their disappointment rarely lasts more than a few minutes, especially if I’m able to communicate why I’m saying no. I feel loads better these days. My nightclub is chill. We serve up justice and truth in there, most of the time. And I’m not going to end my life with some asshole sitting on my bare stump. It’s better for everyone, even the asshole, though he may not know it.

Me setting some legit boundaries with Poppy on my burnt cookie ice cream sandwich.

Go Susie! It’s Your Birthday!

Today is my birthday. I’m forty-four years old. I’m a huge fan of event days like Christmas and last days of school and birthdays, BUT I prefer the weeks leading up to those days, because during those times I can still look forward to them, imagine what’s going to happen, dream about the good food, and picture the people all gathered together. I always say that the worst thing about Christmas is that it’s the absolute furthest point away from the next Christmas that you can get. So I’ve been looking forward to my birthday for days and now it’s almost over and tomorrow will be back to the old mundane, which stresses me out. The minutes keep relentlessly marching forward, never to stop, no matter what.

I remember some time, maybe ten years back, I read an article that said that Brad Pitt was forty-five or something like that years old and I felt surprised that he was so old. I felt a small gratification that, even though I’m not rich and don’t have a vineyard in France, at least I wasn’t old yet. Linear time is funny like that. Because now that I’m the same age I judged Brad for being, now he’s fifty-six (I just checked)! No Benjamin Buttons for this guy. He just can’t beat me in the age category.

I’ve been thinking a lot about linear time lately, partly because of my birthday approach but also partly because of my alarm clock. Several nights ago I couldn’t sleep and I noticed the clock was blinking from when I turned off the electricity. As I stared at the numbers, I realized that I could compare the time that was blinking on the alarm clock (2:42) and compare it to the actual time it was (4:06 via my smartphone) and find out exactly what time I turned the power back on after I finished hooking up the grounding clamp in the backyard, because the clock starts at 12 when the power goes out and comes back on. A little mental math told me I finished that job at exactly 1:24 pm.

I started wondering how I could use this newly discovered tool for something useful. For example, when I’m cooking and I need to time something, I could unplug the clock and plug it back in to measure how long it’s been in for (perhaps not as efficient as other time measuring devices widely available). Or if someone sneaks into the house to murder me, I could reach down and unplug the clock and plug it back in to give the police an accurate time of death (much more promising for marketing appeal.)

Mulling this over made me remember how Sipsey stopped the Grandfather clock when Ruth died in Fried Green Tomatoes. When someone dies it’s like shutting off the power. If you believe in reincarnation, when they come back, when the power comes back on for them, they are inextricably mathematically linked in linear time to any other person they’ve ever met, in any lifetime, just like my alarm clock and my smartphone.

Incidentally, this thought process also made me want to watch Fried Green Tomatoes again, which is my birthday request for tonight, along with apple crisp and vanilla AND chocolate ice cream and pho soup with double noodles. I’m still looking forward to that, I’ll admit.

There’s a theory that in the fourth dimension there is no linear time and everything is happening all at once. It’s like if you think of your life as a giant sweet potato. At the pointy left end is your birth and at the pointy right end is your death. If you were to slice the sweet potato into rounds, going from left to right, you could pull out each individual moment—when you were born, your first day of high school, the day you retired, the day you died. That’s the way we experience time in this dimension, one split second at a time. I like to think that right now my sweet potato rounds are at the juiciest part. But in the fourth dimension, I’m a baby and I’m dead at the same time, because there are no singular moments there. Just a bunch of fat, blobby sweet potatoes, where one pointy end exists at the same time as the other pointy end forever and ever. Brad Pitt could beat me in the fourth dimension. Please don’t tell him I said that.

As an aside, I recently read an article that said since we, in the third dimension, throw two dimensional shadows, if you’re in the fourth dimension, you’d throw a three dimensional shadow. I think that’s terrifying. Can you imagine a three dimensional shadow? And you know that it ain’t no sweet potato throwing that thing. It would be some sort of outrageous looking thing, with its insides on the outside, no skin maybe, some crazy looking fourth dimension eyeballs, but they wouldn’t be balls at all because balls are three dimensional. Maybe we couldn’t even see it, because our eyeballs are built to collect three dimensional images. There would just be this creepy three dimensional shadow that’s a baby and dead all at once. Outrageous.

So to wrap up this weird birthday writing, I’ll say that while linear time forces us to experience Brad Pitt getting older and birthdays passing and Christmas being over again and again, one relentless second after another until we die, I also have to admit that it allows for a very specific human experience. Without it, we can’t reflect back or dream forward. We can’t see how far we’ve come or wonder where we’ll end up. We wouldn’t get to feel the growing anticipation that leads up to important events in our life. We wouldn’t feel the connections pinning us to all of those who came before us and those who are still to come, late at night, while watching a blinking alarm clock.

Therefore, I’ve decided that tonight after I slurp up my double rice noodles and watch Sipsey stop that grandfather clock when Ruth dies, and my birthday comes to a close, I’m going to try to feel both the bitter and the sweet sides of time passing and the world continuing its trajectory, rather than mourning the long distance between now and the next fun thing. Someday, when I’ve reached the dry hard point to the right side of my sweet potato, I’ll be able to look back on ALL the slices and feel content.

The Sweet Potato of Life-photo by Fructibus

True Justice is Blind

Today while I was cleaning the kitchen I was thinking about politics and karma. Karma is a funny word that we use a lot, mostly to make ourselves feel better when we think we’ve been abused and we can’t do anything about it. I’ve done a lot of things in my life that, were there really a full blown law of retribution, I would surely be in some hot water. I decided that maybe if I come clean about them, I might feel better and reduce my karmic debt. Here’s a woefully incomplete list of things I’m sorry for in chronological order.

1. I convinced my brother to ride his bike down a 2×4 propped on a giant concrete slab because I wanted to see if it could be done without getting hurt. It couldn’t. He banged his forehead on a rock and it bled a lot. The adults brought him inside to examine the wound. I ran to the bathroom to get a band aid and my dad didn’t take it when I offered it telling me “you’ve done enough here today.” I went away with the bandaid and I felt sorry for myself.

2. I stole a silver compass out of the Sunday School art cabinet. I cased the cabinet for about three weeks of Sunday Schools before I took the compass home, telling myself that nobody even knew it was there. I lost it almost immediately and felt sad.

3. I played a trust game with my sister Rachel on a rock wall. In the game one person has to close their eyes and the other person tells them where to step. I directed her off the end of the wall on purpose because I wanted to see what would happen. I told her it was an accident, but I could tell she didn’t believe me.

4. I found a cough drop on the chalkboard rim in my fourth grade classroom and I took it. I had it in my mouth a little while later when my teacher asked if anyone had seen it. I tried really hard not to breathe because the aroma would give me away. I never owned up to this. I’m sorry Mrs. Snarey, it was me that took it.

5. I put staples in Ms. Tunney’s apple in the 6th grade and got sent to the office. It wasn’t my idea, it was Mark L’s idea. I didn’t want her to get hurt, I just thought it was funny, like a whoopie cushion. I had the chance to apologize while she stood next to me in line on the way to the cafeteria but I chickened out and never spoke of it with her.

6. I slammed my sister Joan’s finger in the door of my parent’s van twice, one right after the other. She was making a silent scream after the first time and I didn’t understand why the door wouldn’t close so I gave it another go. Then I was jealous when a kind lady gave her a piece of gum to make her feel better.

7. I used one of those giant matches to light the kerosene heater in our living room and my little sister Anne wanted to blow it out. I tried to make some sparkler circles with the ember after she blew it out because I thought it would be impressive. The match was so long it went out of control and I hit her in the eye with it. I felt terrible and put some antibiotic ointment on it to make it stop hurting and it got in her eye and made it worse.

8. My friend Gretchen and I found corn cobs in a field behind her house and we lit the ends of them on fire and smoked them like cigarettes. It actually sort of worked. We knew it was wrong.

9. I stole a CD of Celtic dance music from Meijers Thrity Acre and got caught and my mom had to come and pay 10x the cost of what I stole as a penalty. It was $40 and I never paid her back, even though I said I would.

10. My friends and I tried to steal a newspaper machine to take the quarters out of it so we could get McDonalds. The security guard saw us and called the police and we lied and said we were just trying to get a newspaper and they let us go.

11. I’ve told a lot of people asking for money that I don’t have any cash on me when I actually do because it’s easier than telling them that I don’t give money to people on the street. This story has two sub points-1. I started not giving money to people when a lady told me she was out of gas in the parking lot at Market of Choice. I gave her a few dollars and then I randomly saw her again a few days later in the parking lot at Fred Meyers with the same story. We looked at each other and I squinted at her to show my displeasure (I’ve never been one for quality on-the-spot retorts). She looked away in regret (or maybe she didn’t recognize me) and I vowed to never give anyone money like that again. 2. I broke this rule one time outside of Lotus Garden. I’d paid for my dinner with cash and had my change in my hand-it was eleven cents. A man approached me and asked me if I had ten cents. I held up my hand and said “Oh my goodness I do!! Ask and you shall receive!” and handed him the dime. I thought it was an amazing coincidence but he didn’t think it was funny and I can surmise why.

12. I pre-paid for a ½ cord of mixed firewood to a young whipper snapper of a kid I found on Facebook marketplace. He told me five days in a row that he would deliver the wood the next day and he did not. I found his mom on Facebook and told on him. He pulled up at 10 pm that night in a ratty ass pick up truck and threw a ½ cord of logs as big around as my waist into the driveway and told me his mom had torn him a new one. I felt bad and so I didn’t complain that the logs were so big. He told me, “thanks for being so patient,” as he jumped into his truck and slammed the door and peeled away.

13. A boy at school answered a math question with the answer 69 and snickered. I got overly mad and I told him he was ruining math class for everyone including himself. I said “it’s like we’re having a nice party together and you’ve come along and pooped in our cake.” It was a little much and as well, did not have the intended effect of creating obedience. A very nice girl couldn’t stop laughing and I told her to, “go to the office if you think this is so funny!” She went, laughing so hard she was crying. I did apologize the next day, but it still goes on the list.

I could make this list very, very long if I tried. This was just with a little thinking back over the years. Plus, I’ve definitely omitted some things that only those who are close to me will ever know.

But back to karma. I don’t really believe that there is a law of nature that says if you do wrong, wrong will come to you or vice versa. I believe that when I make decisions that don’t honor the values that I believe in, I stop trusting myself a little more each time. Every time I stole something or dropped my sister off the side of a rock wall or lied to someone to make my life easier or got mad and said some weird bullshit to a room of twelve year olds, I respected myself a little less and life became less enjoyable. And every time I come clean and tell the truth and do better the next time, even when it’s hard, I respect myself a little more and my life gains meaning and feels settled, something that took me decades to understand.

A great friend once said that “true justice is blind,” and that has always stuck with me. I try to remember it when I feel like lashing out at people who are doing wrong. This whack-a-doo Osho, whom I love and hate, says it best:

The law of karma is not some philosophy, some abstraction. It is simply a theory which explains something true inside your being. The net result: either we respect ourselves, or we despise and feel contemptible, worthless and unlovable.

Every moment, you are creating yourself; either a grace will arise in your being or a disgrace: this is the law of karma. Nobody can avoid it. Nobody should try to cheat on karma, because that is not possible. Watch… and once you understand it things start changing. Once you know the inevitability of it you will be a totally different person.

-Osho The Wisdom of the Sands

Flirting with Danger-(Bees and electricity part two)

My birthday is coming up soon. I’ll be 44 years old and I’m pretty excited to be back in an even year. I always feel off in odd ages. My partner Marika asked me what I want and I referred back to my notes, where I keep a detailed list of things that would make great birthday presents for me. I start it the day after my birthday and add things that strike my fancy as the days go on. This year I looked back and was surprised to see that I’d added a Dual Voltage Multifunctional Electric Beard Straightening Brush. It was back in the fall. I’d seen an advertisement on Instagram.

Being 44 has its ups and downs. I HAVE indeed noticed a few stray longies on the ole chin, but nowhere near enough to require a Dual Voltage Multifunctional Electric Beard Straightener. I’m sure I had hatched some plan to use it on my head, which develops new and amazing cowlicks every few weeks. I went ahead and told Marika to get me the Scent of Samadhi underarm powder I’ve been coveting for months, but the beard straightener kept calling my name. What even is dual voltage? I wondered.

I looked it up and it means that you can use it with both 120 volts (used in the US) or 220 volts (everywhere else). Apparently lots of international travelers depend heavily on their beard straighteners for the optimum travel experience. Without that dual voltage, if they plug into the hostel in Northern France they could fry their appliance and have to walk around with an unkempt face fro or some crazy doodle longies if they are 40+ year-old women.

All this electricity research got me remembering something I’d been trying to forget. For the last couple years we’ve had a little problem at my house. Sometimes, when a person is sitting in the tub filled with water and she touches the spigots, she gets a little shock. (I say she because the only males in the house are chihuahuas and they don’t do many long soaks.) The shock is a little worse when there’s Epsom salts in the tub, or when you have a little cut.

It’s concerning, right? I mean, how many times have we seen people die in movies when the bad guy throws a toaster in the tub? We all know it’s bad, we all know water and electricity don’t mix well.

It started a couple years ago really, really small, so much so that I thought I might be imagining it. But then my daughter Maya said she felt it too. It was never a BIG shock. Just a little zap, exactly like the one you get if you chew on a lamp cord while you’re hiding behind the couch at your mom’s house. Which was why I was able to keep ignoring it for so long, I guess. I mean, nobody had died yet, ranking it in the “inconvenient, potentially lethal, probably too expensive to fix” category of problems. I got a special potholder to put on the sink to use to turn the water on and off. Then the potholder fell on the floor and the dog peed on it and it got lost in the washing machine, so I started turning the water on and off outside the tub, which is really annoying when you just need a little heat up. After a while I started using the rubber drain stopper, which I thought was really smart because everyone knows rubber doesn’t conduct electricity.

Each month or so I’d sit down and try to do a little research on why it’s happening and I’d quickly get overwhelmed with information and decide to think about it more tomorrow. You’d be surprised at how many people have this problem and how many things could be causing it. So after the dual voltage discovery, I felt like I was on an electric roll, so I decided to finally really try to find some answers to the tub issue. One of the things that kept popping up was a grounding problem. I vaguely remembered a metal stake in the ground outside under the electric box, mostly because I’ve run over it a number of times with the lawnmower. I decided to check it.

I had to go out and turn off the electric main, and the old paper wasp nest was there, as expected. This time I only wore one pair of gloves and no layers and no apiary hood. After months of getting electrocuted in my bathtub, my threshold of acceptability on dangerous activities has shifted quite a lot. Also there was only one wasp this early in the season and it flew away when I opened the box. I just reached in there and turned it off, no questions asked. I looked down at the metal stake and the wire that was supposed to be attached to it, laying lifeless about six inches away. I had to go to the hardware store and buy a “grounding clamp,” which is a pretty cool little device. Not quite on par with a dual voltage beard straightener, but for $2.39, it was worth a shot. I assembled it all up, grabbed the old tiki torch and used it to turn the power back on, and went inside to test the tub with one of those things with two metal points on wires and a needle dial. Nothin! I turned on the tub, poured a good couple cups of epsom salt in there, took off my electricity fixing carhartts, sat down in six inches of water and grabbed the spigot.

No shock. I may have just saved all our lives. I think, maybe, I might just deserve that beard straightener after all.

A roundabout way to find out who likes my overalls.

These days are very slow. I feel incredibly unmotivated to do all the things I have to do.

Yesterday we picked some nettles and made them into pesto. I didn’t want to go, I’ve become very accustomed to laying on the couch with pajamas on. I have two hoodies. I wear one while the other one is in the wash, then I switch. My step counter is in triple digits regularly, which kinda sounds like a good thing but it’s not. I did go sit in the backyard yesterday but I got too tired and had to come in and lie down for a snack. Due to all the eating lying down, I have bits of dehydrated food stuck in the folds of my clothing. I thought about shaking them out, but the prepper in me talked me out of it. There’s enough there to make a good sized meal, were it to be necessary. I’d be kicking myself for throwing it away if the world comes down and we are starving.

So when my partner Marika suggested we go for a walk and collect nettles for food, I was hesitant.

I’m not sure my muscles still work. What if I’ve atrophied into a sea worm and they have to leave me in the forest? What if we aren’t supposed to walk in the woods after all and the police find us? What if my bandana falls off and I have to breathe fresh air and I get hydroencephalitis? What if the sun burns my skin and I have to try to find the old aloe gel in the medicine cabinet and I cut myself on a discarded razor blade and, due to overcrowded medical facilities, I am left to stitch myself up with the embroidery thread that’s next to the aloe in the medicine cabinet? Wait, why is there embroidery thread in the medicine cabinet? I think I should organize this mess instead of going for a walk. I should lie down and think about it.

I decided to pendulum it, which is what i do when I don’t know what to do. Penduluming is when you hold a pendulum or something like a pendulum—keys with a rubber band tied to them (my fave), a necklace, a phone plugged into a charger, a rock glued to a string—out in front if you and ask it questions. For me it spins clockwise for yes and counterclockwise for no. Lately I’ve mostly been asking questions about which supplements I should be taking for maximum immunity. But yesterday I asked if I should go on a walk to get nettles instead of laying down in bed while thinking about cleaning out the medicine cabinet. The keys hit me in the face they spun so hard in the clockwise. I was glad I didn’t use the rock string. An outsider viewer might have thought I was self flagellating.

“So that’s a yes?” I asked, just to be sure, as the keys hurtled round like helicopter blades and knocked the buttered toast off the nightstand. My fate sealed, I put on my shoes.

Most people think that penduluming is supposed to be like magic or something.

“I can see your hand moving it!” they exclaim. My hand IS moving it, for certain. It’s well known that we have a subconscious mind. It’s like our personal operating system. It keeps us breathing, metabolizing, and keeps our heart beating, but it also makes sure that all the things we do remain within our own self concept, so you won’t wake up tomorrow and suddenly become a radically different person than you are today. For example, I will not wake up tomorrow and think that celery is not the greatest vegetable ever invented. It really is so good-crunchy and sweet and bitter. It’s good raw, good in soup, good with peanut butter AND dip! You can’t go wrong with celery. The strings aren’t my favorite but I recently read that they are made of collenchyma cells that are filled with LIVING PROTOPLASM. I didn’t even know dead protoplasm was a real thing! I thought it was something that ghosts were made of—the splattery green stuff that comes out when you shoot them in movies. But no, it’s real and it’s alive and it’s in your celery string.

Anyway. When I ask my pendulum a question, it allows me to get beyond my conscious, over thinking, occasionally manic mind to see what my lower levels believe. Even when I attempt to keep my hand still, the muscles that are partially controlling my subconscious can make it move, even ever so slightly. It’s not magic, it’s me! I admit it. I ask it all sorts of questions. Should i send this email/text? (usually yes) Should i wash my hair today? (sometimes yes, sometimes no) Do I need to buy this great smelling lotion? (usually no) Here are some I asked just now: Do you like these checkered overalls that I bought on eBay? (yes) Do they make me look fourteen? (no) Should I make a chocolate pie today? (no) Are my dogs healthy? (yes-secretly I knew the answer to that one because I just asked yesterday).

So we went for that walk to get the nettles. I didn’t get stung, not once. And I also didn’t get burned or develop hydroencephalitis or turn into a sea worm. My muscles still work and I got 6,696 steps and a hot plate of pasta with nutritious nettle pesto. I might just try it again today. I feel my motivation levels rising.

Fingerpainting

The other night my partner Marika, our daughter Maya, and I were taking a family walk with the dogs through Madison Meadow and the sun slipped down behind the trees. I told them that this is my favorite time to be walking the dogs because people haven’t remembered to pull down their blinds yet and you can see them inside, in their kitchens and living rooms.

“Naked?” Maya asked incredulously.

“No,” I said, though I did once accidentally see a hairy man doing a butt naked sun salutation in front of his window at the beach two years ago. “Not naked, just doing life stuff, like baking pies, dipping candles…”

“Finger painting,” my partner added, nodding thoughtfully.

“Really??? I always thought finger painting was a summer activity,” Maya said, quite earnestly, which is why I love her.

This story reminds me of when I was in pre-school and we did a finger painting exercise with chocolate pudding. My teacher, Ms. McGlaughlin, a kind, tall, old lady with giant glasses, gave us each a dollop of chocolate pudding on a piece of paper and we were instructed to make a picture with it.

I was pleasantly surprised with this project. As the helper doled out my medium, I remember thinking to myself that I would only eat a little bit. Not enough that anyone would notice it was gone but enough to get a taste. Then after I’d finished that I tried to paint a little as a voice whispered they won’t care if you eat a little more, followed by maniacal laughter. So I did. Then I ate some more for no other reason than that it tasted great. The jealous boy sitting next to me told me that I’m not supposed to eat the pudding and I felt a little pang of shame. I thought I’d just make a small picture with what was left, fully intending to do the thing right. But by then I had about enough pudding to paint a tadpole. I knew I was cooked and I might as well finish off the job.

As I was licking the last of the of pudding off my paper Ms. McLaughlin came by, peering at me though those enormous 80s glasses everyone was so fond of. She told me she was disappointed in me. I was a little sorry, but not too much, because she gave me another dollop. I made a house that looked like a poop stain out of the second serving, just fine with exchanging a little disappointment for free pudding.

Thinking back on it now, I wonder if Ms. McLaughlin was even really tall, or if I was just short. And maybe she wasn’t even old. Maybe she was like, 48 or something, a few years older than I am now. I wonder if she was mostly disappointed in me because she wouldn’t get to eat the extra pudding after the lesson.

We didn’t see anyone baking pies or dipping candles or finger painting or doing sun salutations on the rest of the walk, despite a lot of rubbernecking on my part.

I fingerpainted a chocolate pudding tadpole in honor of Ms. McGlaughlin, wherever she may be. She was the best!

How to cure mange

I went to Rite Aid today to pick up a prescription. As I was standing in line behind the blue tape on the floor, indicating a safe six foot zone, I began to imagine little corona viruses in the air. This is not a good pastime for me. I have a tendency toward…something, it might be a little bit of a mental disorder, I’m not sure. All I know is that I cannot let myself wander too far down the path of imagining small things in the air or on my body.

Once a few years ago I stumbled onto a site where they showed pictures of eyelash mites. Please, for the love of God, do not google eyelash mites. I’ll just describe them a little to you. First off, I’ll say they are pretty normal. A lot of people get them. This information does not make them any less horrifying. They are these little worm looking things that live around the follicles of your eyelashes. They eat the oil and goo that your eye makes. It’s actually pretty precious, they’re just helping out, right. But when I saw a picture of them, I couldn’t get it out of my mind. I’d try to teach math and boom. Eyelash mites. Drive home and boom. They’re starting to wiggle in my eyes. Start cooking dinner and boom. You see spaghetti, I see a pot of squirming, goo eating eyelash mites.

I started to panic a little. I had to get rid of them, but how? One might think a physician (or possibly more essentially a therapist) might have some good ideas, but I didn’t have time. These eyelash mites were thrashing around on my face and I had to do something fast.

One of our dogs, the tiny brown one, developed a case of mange right after we brought him home from the rescue. The vet said he wanted to scrape his skin to take a sample, but we weren’t down with that, because he was too cute to be scraped by some neanderthal with a scalpel. So we decided we’d try some stuff at home first. We researched and researched on what we could do for him and landed on an old country remedy for mange: sulfur powder. I found a place online that I could order food grade sulfur powder and we mixed it up with coconut oil and rubbed it all over his tiny puppy body a few times a day.

The remedy worked like a charm, but with one pretty specific drawback. Our entire house, along with all our clothes, hair, even our shoes smelled like a rancid egg fart for about a month. It was especially prominent when I got a little warm. I was like a giant fart furnace, the essence of the earth’s bowels emanating off my skin in waves so thick I could practically see them. I took to announcing to everyone everywhere that I had sulfur powder on me, I wasn’t farting. At the gym, during capture the flag at school, in line at the post office. I even told the mailman.

“Just so you know, my dog has mange and we treated it with food grade sulfur powder. I’m definitely not farting.” I imagine all these people were relieved to hear the news, because if it wasn’t sulfur powder then something must be horribly wrong inside me.

So anyway, as I was desperately clawing through our medicine cabinet, looking for something to kill the eyelash mites with, my eyes fell on the half pint jar of miracle fart oil. My infested eyes lit up! This would work. Mange is mites, mites are mites…I scooped out a healthy dose and rubbed it in. I could practically hear the mites screaming as they died and disappeared completely, leaving a nice, clean follicle behind.

I should probably have started this off by saying WARNING: TO ANYONE READING THIS, DO NOT EVER PUT COCONUT OIL WITH FOOD GRADE SULFUR POWDER MIXED INTO IT ON YOUR EYES TO KILL EYELASH MITES. Within seconds of the eyelash mites dying and disappearing forever, a small stinging began. Then the stinging increased a bit. Then a bit more. Suddenly my eyes felt like they were being sprayed with rubbing alcohol through a fire hose. I ran to the sink to wash it off, but water wouldn’t do it, because of the coconut oil. I grabbed the Dr. Bronner’s tea tree soap and lathered up, which, as you might surmise, only made it worse. I cried, I dabbed, I put ice cubes on my eyes. It took two hours for the pain to subside and I smelled like a spicy cabbage roll left in a gym locker over summer break. I went to watch Game of Thrones at my friend’s house later that evening and I had to take a dish towel with me to catch my tears. My eyeballs were bloodshot for days. But those freakin mites were dead, I was sure of it.

So today standing in line at Rite Aid, when I started to imagine tiny virus molecules floating through the air, I knew I had to stop myself. I gave myself chores. You have to try to squeeze each toe individually and count to ten in German at the same time. You have to remember all the food you’ve eaten over the last two weeks. You have to count all the Salonpas Pain Relieving products. And it worked! I got my prescription and made it home without dousing myself in essential oils. I only used 10-20 drops and it was nowhere near my eyes. And luckily for me, I’d gone through the medicine cabinet a year ago and got rid of the miracle fart oil.