The Journey For Us

Last night at the Winter Olympics, Dutch speed skater Sven Kramer listened to his coach in the 10,000-meter race and changed lanes. Kramer is the world champion. He holds the record for the distance. He knows the event, but he listened to his coach.

His coach was wrong. The lane change was illegal, and Kramer lost the gold medal in the event to a disqualification that left him angry and in tears, flinging his glasses into the infield and demanding of his coach, Gerard Kemkers, “What did you do?!”

All involved have some pretty major speed skating DNA. Kramer’s father was a two-time Olympic speed skater and Kemkers won the bronze in the 5,000-meters in Calgary in 1988. He was understandably devasted, saying, “My world collapsed. This is a disaster. This is the worst moment in my career.” When the cameras panned to him last night, the man looked absolutely destroyed by his mistake.

Perhaps part of Kramer’s anger and frustration stemmed from an event four years ago when he fell during the team pursuit semifinals in Turin in 2006, leaving his team to claim only third place in the event.

The whole business is an interesting study in laying blame. There is no doubt, watching the video of the event, that Kramer blames Kemkers. In fact, he said so, “Usually, I don’t want to blame anyone else, I take responsibility as the skater on the ice. But this time I can’t do anything else.”

There is also the argument, however, that Kramer is far from inexperienced in the sport and should have known what he was doing. Speaking to this point he said, “I should have gone with my own thoughts, but I was brought into doubt.”

And therein lies the real culprit in any failed decision, doubt. In a split second, doubt outweighed experience and instinct and BOTH men made a bad decision — Kemker to call for a lane change and Kramer to do it. Sadly enough, however, I don’t see any evidence of forgiveness, on Kramer’s part for Kemker or on Kemker’s part for himself.

No doubt this intense emotionalism is due to the level and importance of the venue. But in the midst of all this talk about the “spirit” of the Olympics, what I would really have liked to see was Kramer shaking Kemker’s hand and saying, “What did WE do.”

This morning I had a successful moment of practicing what I preach. I awakened spontaneously at 5 a.m. and instead of rolling over and going back to sleep, I turned on the light and went to work. Consequently, I’ve had five productive hours and it’s only mid-morning.

In part, I know I was eager to look at and to start work on assignments from a new client, but I’m also aware that as I move closer to where I need to be with my client base, maximizing my time is more critical than ever.

The unique characteristics of my working environment are never far from my mind, nor is the fact that I haven’t always managed those factors to my best benefit or that of my housemate.

I literally lose work time to my housemate’s emotionally unstable reaction to whatever I’m doing. As I ponder hardware updates in the coming year, I keep thinking about those two or three hours I’m nailed to my chair “watching” TV with her.

Before the term multi-tasking even existed, I did it. I have never been good at just sitting in front of the television. The netbook has helped enormously in reclaiming evening productivity for me, but it hasn’t completely solved the problem, which has me continuing to ponder the bottom-of-the-line iPad.

So when my housemate declares, in an offended tone, “I never bother you,” it’s all I can do not to just laugh. While “bother” might not be the word I would chose, every aspect of my working life is directly affected by her wants or needs — perceived and real. If I’m not actively responding to her, I’m listening. Some small corner of my mind is always tuned in her direction, to the point that I often awake at night when she coughs.

Since I stay in a state of hyper-awareness, which is extremely tiring, I’m not as receptive as I should be to fits like the one she threw at 10 o’clock last night that led to me scrubbing out her bathroom sink, which had vaulted up her OCD radar screen. It’s gotten easier to just cave in and deal with those immediate obsessions, but I can’t lie and say I’m always cheerful or gracious about it.

Increasingly I’m trying to divest myself of my preconceptions about night and day, meal times, and the like. That’s hard for a person who loves routine as much as I do, but only by embracing fluidity can I hope to get all the focused hours I need. Consequently, this morning was a real triumph.

Deviations from the norm haven’t been a good idea around here for a couple of years now, but two examples yesterday and today have re-emphasized that for me.

Yesterday I had an online business meeting that ran past two hours. I was discussing the potential of working in greater depth with a writing client and we had a lot of ground to cover.

My housemate appeared to be fine with it, but ultimately called in a panic. My client was extremely gracious about bringing our discussion to an abrupt conclusion and I spent the rest of the evening trying to calm R. down.

In her mind, all my future interactions with this gentlemen would involve two-hour commitments and she was beside herself about how she would cope with that.

Today, her anxieties shifted to food. First, I gave her half-and-half instead of heavy whipping cream for her coffee. There was no sinister purpose. The store was simply out of the whipping cream.

I lost count of the number of times she complained that her coffee did not taste right and I responded with everything I said in the above paragraph. This continued well into the evening when she insisted the peas served for supper were "stringy."

The product is actually a pearled barley with carrots and snow peas included. While I acknowledge that fresh snow peas can have strings, these did not. In spite of this, R. sat at the table and methodically picked portions of half-masticated peas out of her mouth, building a disgusting pile on the edge of her plate.

Apparently at some point during the meal, my eyes fell on this pile and my face registered something less than approval. The next thing I know, she’s shrieking, "I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I can’t chew these awful vegetables."

Very calmly, I said. "You do not control either my facial expressions or my thoughts. I didn’t say a word. You’re looking for any hint of a slight and completely over-reacting. Now settle down."

Beyond being less than savory dinner table behavior, the business with the peas is emblematic of her consistent fault-finding. I am sick of it. Sick unto death of it, in fact. However, I didn’t say so and I refuse to be called to account for unspoken thoughts no matter how clearly betrayed by my expression.

Two things are clear to me after the last 36 hours. We have reached a point where absolute adherence to routine is more important than ever, as are repeated, spontaneous explanations on my point. And, we are set for another round of food-related acting out.

A good friend has passed along his incredibly tasty recipe for peanut butter. I’m going to make a batch in the next couple of days and keep it on hand. After eight years, I’m tired of these reindeer games. If she wants to act like a little kid about food, then she can eat little kid food.

A professor killing three colleagues in Alabama during a faculty meeting.

A software engineer / bass guitarist flying a plane into an IRS building in Austin.

A California man bulldozing his foreclosed home. (He never missed a payment, the bank just decided to seize the property anyway.)

The John Birch Society co-sponsoring a national meeting of conservatives — with far too many people thinking this is a good idea.

An accomplished young actress with Down’s Syndrome counseling Sarah Palin to get a sense of humor.

Al Haig suddenly looking like a bastion of governmental stability lost to the ages.

Oh, and the apology of a philandering athlete played repeatedly on every channel in the nation at all hours of the day.

Please, tell me how the last ten days could have been any stranger?

When I was about ten years old, I read a small article in one of our regional newspapers predicting the world would end the next day. In some distress, I took the item to my father. He read it, looked at me with that grin of his I miss so deeply, and said, “Well, Shorty, if it is going to end, there’s nothing you can do about it, is there?”

Papa could get ticked off about national and world affairs, but he had a peculiarly serene sense of perspective about them at the same time. I have always believed that was the by-product of spending two years of his life in North Africa and Italy getting shot at every day by German fighter planes. He often said he never expected to see his 21st birthday and everthing that came after was just gravy.

My maternal grandfather refused to discuss politics, a stance to which I try to adhere. As a respected leader in his community, people frequently asked for whom he had cast his vote. His standard answer was, “For the right man.” I have a pretty good idea that he didn’t vote for FDR, but in truth, Grandpa Babe took the answer to that question to the grave with him.

I wish I could talk to either of those two men today about the simmering anger and frustration that permeates our land. They both lived through the conservative backlash to the New Deal when the likes of Father Charles Coughlin filled the radio waves with anti-Semitic vitriol, even expressing sympathy and support for Hitler and the Nazis.

I suspect both my father and my grandfather would tell me our nation has survived such rhetoric and such times before. My grandfather was raised by a woman who never got over mourning the loss of her southern family’s fortunes in the Civil War. My father often repeated Depression-Era wisdom told to him by his grandfather, a simple woodworker with far too many children to feed.

Because I can do nothing about the track on which our country appears to be set, I pay attention to the road in front of me. I put my head down and do what needs to be done in my world. But what really disturbs me is that while I deplore the tactics of some of those folks I mentioned at the top of this post, there is also a part of me that understands.

Yesterday I witnessed a dysfunctional family in their full glory. We have a neighbor who is both deaf and mentally challenged. I do not know how I would handle the rearing of such a child, and I am not passing judgment. I will say that she was never taught sign language nor was she schooled in observing the social boundaries that so many people with her disabilities find difficult to comprehend.

As a result, she is an extremely unpleasant person to be around. She’s in her early 40s, and her parents do everything for her. She should not be attempting to live alone. This arrangement only came about when she threw a temper tantrum in the wake of her parents buying a home for her sister as a wedding gift.

At any rate, she is so spoiled, that when something does not go her way, she throws a fit until her father gets her what she wants. He has just been diagnosed with colon cancer. Her mother survived breast cancer last year. The fragile support structure that buoys up her questionable independence will not be able to hold much longer.

My phone rang about 7:30. It was the father, demanding to know what I had done to knock out his daughter’s cable. We are having a significant issue with the property’s backyard lighting, and I had shown a workman where key wires were buried. Apparently in the process, her cable line was nicked. But here’s the statement that drew me up short.

“You have to do something about this so she’ll stop calling over here and driving me crazy.”

There are so many things wrong with that, I don’t even begin to know where to start. Essentially, he and his wife created a monster and now, as their health is declining, they are dealing with the consequences of that creation.

Throughout the remainder of the day this man, less than two weeks after major surgery, was over here at least half a dozen times, at one point attempting to find the cut line himself. He apparently paid the cable company for an “emergency” repair, which he supervised at 7 o’clock last night by spotlight.

And, he could not resist the pleasure of calling the president of the homeowner’s association to report my guilt in the whole matter. As I’ve said in other venues, my hands never touched that shovel. I saw the wire come out of the ground, and I still find it difficult to believe it was damaged in the process.

For once, the HOA president was completely on my side and pointed out a pattern on the part of this whole family of shifting the blame for any and everything off their own shoulders and on to those of the nearest convenient recipient. They also expect everyone to coddle their daughter and dance to her tune as they have done for lo these many years.

At the end of the day, a sick man exhausted himself, the cable company made a tidy profit, blame was rightfully or wrongly dispensed, and the daughter learned nothing. In fact, her inappropriate behavior was only reinforced. When I looked her straight in the eye mid-afternoon and told her I did not have time to listen to her ravings, the expression on her face was one of complete incomprehension.

Clearly she is accustomed to taking center stage with her fits and having people jump to make her world right again. When something does happen to one or both of her folks, her world will come crashing down with an impact even greater than that experienced by any of us who have lost a parent.

It was ironic that this was the same day the world listened to Tiger Woods explain his all-to-late realization that the rules do still apply for him. He represents the other end of the spectrum. Neither great gifts nor deficits rewrite the basic rules of human interaction. The mechanics of life may differ, but decency and good manners remain the same.

I won’t lie. My own emotions throughout the day ran the gamut from annoyed to purely angry. But as the day closed, the most overwhelming reaction I had for the entire family was frankly one of pity. Some genies cannot be put back in the bottle and some spirits, for want of a restraining hand, cannot be repaired.

People who are constantly optimistic make me suspicious. Do they not own a television? Do they print money in their basement and get away with it? Do they just not want to admit the dark nights of the soul when they’re curled up under the stairs washing down M&Ms with vodka?

I’m not an optimistic person by nature, and after several years of not just waiting for our ship to come in, but of standing on the dock pulling on the mooring ropes of the Titanic, I wonder how much of the effort has amounted to cursing the ocean.

For as much as I make a conscious effort to learn something or to find one positive image or idea in each day, sometimes they’re just not there. My more religious friends counsel patience and faith. I like to tell them about how Martin Luther wrote theology.

Sitting on the can.

No, I’m not making that up. It was his favorite place to write his sermons and essays, and he was known, in more fervent (or blocked) moments, to hurl . . . available material . . . at the devil, whom he believed visited him frequently in the john.

It’s historically disconcerting to ponder the fact that a good dose of Metamucil could have replaced the Reformation with a completely different kind of movement.

My point, however, is that Luther wasn’t the sort to just placidly take what heaven or hell was throwing his way. He threw . . . stuff . . . back.

I often have the urge to hurl back in sheer, unadulterated, fed-up frustration and anger. At least Luther had images tangible to his own belief structure to serve as targets. I, like most people, deal with more inchoate, shifting demons.

My anger does, however, serve as my barometer. At least if I can still work up a head of steam, I care. I’m engaged. It’s the days when I can’t even get hacked off that give me pause to worry.

I’d like to be optimistic. I’d like to be patient and to have consistent faith, but apparently I was not designed that way.

This afternoon I upgraded the version of WordPress powering TheJourneyFor.us and decided to go for a new theme. I really haven’t decided the look and personality that suits this site best, so until I do, we’re going minimalist. I’ll also try to keep structural disruption to a minimum until I find what I’m after. Thanks for your patience!

Update: I think we’ll try this on for size. I’m in a notebook frame of mind these days.

Yesterday I used 30 minutes of my errand time listening to a sweet little old man in the hardware store tell me how to replace a toilet flapper. I did not need this instruction, but he needed to tell me.

I have a talent for collecting little old guys who have a crush on me. This fellow, all of four-feet tall and roughly 135-years-old, pushes his colleagues out of the way to get to wait on me at the hardware store.

He’s a very brand-specific kind of a guy and fairly beamed with approval when I knew that the convenience in question was made by Kohler. He wanted to make sure, however, that I had properly diagnosed the problem.

“Are you sure it’s not the little black rubber gasket inside the filler valve?”

“Yes sir, I replaced that. It’s the flapper.”

“What did it do after you replaced the gasket?”

“The tank fills, but you can hear running water and when the level drops sufficiently, the water comes on again and refills the tank.”

“You’re sure the float is rising and not getting stuck?”

“Yes sir, I watched it three times.”

Finally satisfied that I had indeed performed a proper diagnosis, we took up the next 10 minutes discussing the merits of brands of replacement flappers. Well, he discussed this topic with himself and I occasionally made an encouraging noise in the back of my throat.

When he ultimately picked out what he determined was the best flapper for the job, he then opened the package and demonstrated how to install it before carrying the item to the register for me.

Of course, this was what he was waiting for. When I said thank you, I gave him a hug and his chest fairly swelled out with manly pride. I assured him I would come back and specifically ask for him if I had any problems.

And then I went home and replaced the flapper in about 3 minutes flat.

The moral of this story? Sometimes patience and the least little bit of attention are the greatest gifts of kindness we have to offer one another.

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a woman obsessed. The screen of my 13″ MacBook has been flickering since October. If you could see my browser history, you would be able to follow my virtual footprints as I’ve read everything I can find about this maddening problem.

The machine is out of warranty. I don’t have (nor am I going to pay for) AppleCare. I replaced the battery when I discovered it was bulging, but I’m reluctant to put any more money into a laptop that will celebrate its fourth birthday in November.

I didn’t realize, however, how absolutely preoccupied I was with this problem until I was walking down the hall yesterday from having replaced a toilet gasket and realized I was thinking about the screen flicker.

This is a signal to me that I need to start working on refocusing my concentration. I believe you can make things worse by being preoccupied with them. I’m not saying the power of my mind will affect the laptop one way or another — I wish — but haven’t you ever concentrated on an ache or a pain until it becomes unbearable?

If this mechanical problem is as intermittent and mysterious as it would appear to be, I’m not going to change it. If the screen fails, I will have to deal with it. Any repair or replacement involving money is stressful for me, but again, the power of my mind isn’t going to make money materialize. I’ve been working on that one for years. Heck, I can’t even bend a spoon, much less turn out a C note.

Finding the correct balance between intelligent forethought and obsessive worry presents a huge challenge for me. I have to be extremely careful not to have a conscious thought when I get up in the night to go to the bathroom or my mind will be off and running. Particularly during times when my business is slow, I can and do torture myself with a running procession of negative numbers.

As I approach my 800th consecutive exercise day, I have proven I possess physical discipline. Mental discipline? Not so much, but at least I’ve reached the point of awareness.

Last night I had a difficult conversation with my housemate that left us both disgruntled and upset. She asked to go to bed about 7:30 and after she was settled watching the winter Olympics, I signed on to Facebook.

There’s a new exes group from my old hometown specifically for sharing pre-1970 photos. You’d think I’d have little to discuss with people who graduated 20 years before me, but that is not the case.

Cross-generational friendships are a fact of life in our small, close-knit ranching community, so that I consider people my mother dated in the 1930s to be friends of mine even though I know their children and grandchildren.

It all makes for a special set of connections, and I’m having a lot of nostalgic fun with the group. Last night, there were several of us online at one time and I spent a happy hour reminiscing and laughing over photos.

This led my housemate to launch into one of her favorite rambles about how I’m planning to move back and she’s going to sell everything she owns and buy a little house in East Texas.

I don’t know what is more absurd: the idea that she has either the financial resources or the ability to live alone or that I have a time machine that will take me back to my hometown circa 1968.

That’s the thing about nostalgia. Those of us who are joining together online are living in a virtual representation of where we grew up, a place where time periods shift and blend together and people who have long been resting in their graves come back to life through shared memories.

It give me enormous pleasure and comfort, but I am all too well aware that the place I miss so deeply no longer exists. My housemate, who never lived in one locale longer than a couple of years, has absolutely no ability to comprehend a town like the one in which I was raised.

I realize that her overly facile assumptions and explanations are a product of that nomadic upbringing and her brain damage, but I cannot help that she sets my teeth on edge. Her over-simplifications and frankly condescending characterizations are like salt in a wound for me.

If I could go back in time and resurrect long-dead friends and regain the security and simplicity of days gone by, I would. The fact that I cannot, if dwelled upon in the wrong light, is painful.

I also resent my housemate’s opining on things she does not understand and that are not her memories to discuss. It’s invasive and a little insulting.

We said good night badly and I don’t know what today will hold. In the light of day, I know I over-reacted, but we all have things that are ours and ours alone, memories that are deeply personal and not subject to reinterpretation by outsiders.

I don’t intend to mention participating in this Facebook group to her again, which is a shame, because there are so few things I can share with her about my life online. I thought this was one, but her almost overwhelming need to be superior and all-knowing prevents that from happening.

The incident has made me even more aware of something I’ve known for a long time. Memory, by it’s very nature, is not meant to be perfect. Don’t seek to alter another’s internal landscape. It’s not yours to touch or to correct.