Self Improvement

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Five for Friday

1. For the month of September, I have been waking up at 5:41 and getting out of bed at 6:00. This past week, I’ve been pushing it back a teeny bit; my alarm goes off at 5:21 and I get out of bed at 5:45. The cat has been extremely accommodating in terms of hopping into bed and purring loudly at me at about 4:20. My question is, how freaking early do I need to get up to be able to DO things? 

    Things I’d like to do: Lie in bed for 15 minutes to do the Wordle and Connections and possibly read a blog or two. Make some tea. Take care of the cat. Unload the dishwasher. Write a blog post. Spend 10 minutes watching cat videos with Carla. Get dressed. Eat something. Get out the door on time (7:15). In an ideal world, I would also be able to exercise and shower before we leave for school, but that seems much too ambitious. It’s still something I’d LIKE to do, though.

    Things I have been able to do: Lie in bed to do my word games. Make tea. Take care of the cat. Spend 5-10 minutes watching cat videos with Carla. Get dressed. Eat something (sometimes). We haven’t been out the door on time since the first week of school. Admittedly, this isn’t always my issue. But lately I have been scrambling to be moderately presentable and still be 15 minutes late. 

    Possibly I can squeak back my out-of-bed time to 5:00; but even then, I don’t know if I’d be able to get in a blog post. Definitely not exercise, too. If you exercise before work or school, HOW????

    One of the reasons I want to work exercise into my morning routine is because it’s often the first thing I jettison if the day doesn’t proceed as planned. For the past two days, I didn’t exercise as planned because my days got thrown out of whack. It’s not the end of the world, or anything; I don’t set exercise goals, so I can’t fail, take that perfectionism – and I did at least manage a decent walk on Wednesday – but it’s frustrating when I’m trying to prioritise exercise for my mental, physical, and future health. (The British/Canadian spelling was accidental but I’m keeping it. I think Ses are much prettier than Zs.) Plus, “exercise” is a catch-all term that includes showering, putting on clothing an actual reasonable person might wear, and possibly even doing my hair and/or makeup. Even if I do a shorter workout, and even if I take a ten-minute shower, and even if I throw my wet hair up in a claw clip instead of drying it, the Exercise Plus Shower Plus Getting Ready routine takes about an hour. I have no earthly idea where I’d get a whole extra hour in the morning. I can’t go to bed earlier than nine; Carla’s bedtime is 8:30 and I read to her for thirty minutes. And if I went to bed promptly at nine, I would never see my husband, which is an unacceptable tradeoff for exercise. Listen, I know I don’t really have anything to complain about here. My schedule is very flexible, for the most part. I guess I just keep on working in a workout where I can, sometimes sacrificing it to the whims of life.

    2. I had a baking success and a baking flop this week. The flop was the apple honey cake I made in a nod to Rosh Hashanah. It looked lovely – although I had expected the apple-covered portion to be much darker and more caramelized; not sure why, the photo on the recipe page is not dark and caramelized – and it was fine. But it wasn’t my favorite. The crumb was too big; I think it compares in crumb size, if not exact texture, to cornbread (although my husband disagrees). And the cake had, to my tongue, no flavor. Also, the apples weren’t caramelized enough. The other thing I baked were brownies. Since I was making them for a loved one who’d just had surgery, and since this person is trying to avoid excess sugar and carbs, I decided to try a sugar-free (ish), flourless brownie. The brownies are flavored with dark chocolate, dates, and vanilla, and get their fluffiness from eggs and baking soda. I was skeptical, since I really am not a fan of dates. But they turned out SO well. They are fluffy and soft, rich and chocolatey, and perfectly satisfying. The only real difference I noted between these brownies and “regular brownies” is that they have a slight coconutty flavor (because they are made with coconut oil). Carla loved them; the person I intended them for loved them; I loved them. My husband’s reaction was “these are weird.” Next time, I might try them with butter instead of coconut oil, although I didn’t mind the coconut essence. I am definitely making them again. I like how I didn’t have to chop up the dates; I just let my food processor do all the work. 

    3. After your extremely helpful comments last week, Carla and I (and the cat) tackled her bedroom on Tuesday. We got rid of so much stuff. My strategy was to tell her that I would clean her room for her, she just had to tell me what to do. She had complete control over what stayed and what went into the donation pile (or the trash). I was so ready to get a handle on the mess that I only faltered once, when I saw a beautiful sweater I bought her just last year in the donation bag. But she’s the one who has to wear the clothes. If she’s not going to wear it, it shouldn’t be in her closet. We also got rid of tons of old socks and underthings that are way too small, and I placed a big order for replacements. Even though I said I would do all the work, Carla ended up doing a ton of stuff herself. She organized all her dresser drawers, for instance. AND she did all of her own laundry. She even said it was fun. While I don’t expect that will last, I feel so much relief that her laundry is now HER problem. Her clothing selection is much more manageable and her room looks so much better. 

    Oh hello there, you can’t seriously think this drawer would be better suited to T-shirts, can you?

    4. This weekend, a friend I haven’t seen for years is bringing her daughters to stay with us. I am so excited to see her! And her children, whom I anticipate I will hardly recognize, it’s been so long. One thing I’m trying very hard to do is to resist the little voice in my head that keeps saying, “She’s going to think you got so fat.” My friend, though it should not matter in the least except in terms of the pride I feel for her, is a tiny person to begin with. But she’s also extremely fit – like, she literally has two World records in the fitness arena. My little inner voice, which apparently ignores what a nice and non-judgy person my friend is, thinks she will judge me for being large and soft. 

    Here are my coping thoughts: When I went to my twentieth college reunion a few years ago, I was shocked by how OLD some of my classmates seemed. Some of them were balding, or had grey hair, or looked like – gasp! – middle-aged moms. It was especially shocking to see these aging people next to my dear friends, who looked exactly the same as they’d looked twenty years before. Obviously, it wasn’t that my close friends remained unchanged while people I didn’t know well had aged poorly. It was that my love imbued the people dear to me with youth and beauty that transcends time. I experienced this phenomenon more recently, when I got to see a college friend perform with his college band. The bar was packed with a bunch of half-drunk middle-aged farts. But my friend and his band were exactly as they were back in college. Love is transformative in so many ways, and I think it can allow you to see your people in their best light. The way I look at my husband, a distinguished, respected physician who brings hope and relief to so many patients, and see only the cute charming finance major I met nearly a quarter century ago. Anyway, I am trying with all my heart to believe that my fit friend is going to arrive and see past my frumpy, overweight, perimenopausal self to her dear friend of many years.

    5. I have two recent purchases to recommend. One is a fidget toy. Carla apparently saw that a classmate had one, and she wanted one, too. So I caved and got it for her. It’s not silent, per se, but it’s very quiet – just makes a soft shuck when it changes shape. And it is very cool; the shape shifting is mesmerizing. Even the cat likes it. Speaking of the cat, we bought him yet another cat toy. (The poor cat is once again hiding under the bed; it’s been a traumatic week, and he does not do well with loud sounds. This time, the loud sound was me putting ice cubes in the dryer to de-wrinkle my duvet cover. He has never scratched me before, but I have three large gashes to commemorate this particular trauma.) Anyway: this toy is perfect for him. It has a little butterfly dangler on the top, it has a couple of balls on a track that he can push around, and it has a little fringey thing who pokes his fringey face out of hidey holes at random around the circumference of the base. This toy is electronic (uses batteries or a charger) and it has several settings. With one, just the fringey guy hides and appears. Another setting turns the butterfly dangler on, so that it spins, stops, and spins the opposite way. Another setting has both things happen either at once or one after another, I haven’t figured it out yet. It will turn itself off after a few minutes if the cat ignores it for awhile, and then it turns back on as soon as he touches it. Leo LOVES this thing. I put it up on top of a cabinet when he’s not using it (so he doesn’t get bored with it – cats get bored so easily) and he will walk over to the cabinet and look longingly at it and meow until I fetch it down for him. 

    Keeping this butterfly thing AND the little fringey guy in line is a very serious endeavor.
    by

    Summer Social Life

    At long last, I am listening (with great pleasure) to Ina Garten’s memoir, Be Ready When the Luck Happens. The whole book is fascinating and enjoyable, but one part so far that’s stood out to me was about entertaining. Ina is talking about how she loves to entertain – and she shares a lot of fun “lessons learned” over time, like don’t make individual omelets for every person at the dinner party – and at one point, she mentions that she spends the day after entertaining lying on the couch, exhausted, swearing she will never have another dinner party again. Relatable much??? If even The Ina Garten gets worn out by entertaining, well, that makes me feel a little better about how I feel about having guests. 

    At the ripe old age of 44, I continue to struggle with the conflicting desire to be social and be solitary. Specifically, I would really, really like to be the type of person who entertains… but entertaining stresses me the eff out. 

    We have a great house for entertaining. We have a great outdoor space. We have plenty of room for people. What we don’t have is ease and comfort with bringing people together. 

    My husband and I have family friends who are exactly what I would like to be, in terms of hosts. They seem to always be hosting parties or get-togethers. They do marshmallow roasts and pizza nights and cookie baking parties. They host an annual Christmas celebration. They invite us over frequently, often the day before or day of the event, and I don’t know if we’re an afterthought or if they simply decide in the moment that they’re having people over that evening. When we do go – and we always say yes or no, not maybe – there are typically several other families there as well, who come and go at varying times. There’s always an abundance of food, drink options, children running in and out and around the house. The hosts often cook while we’re there, assembling pizzas, grilling meat, making sauce on the stove while guests chat at them from the other side of their kitchen island. It’s chaotic and noisy and people always seem to have a good time.

    I could never. It’s just not in my nature. Spontaneity is not my strong suit in general, but when it comes to having people over to my house… no. And so very MANY people? Just. No. 

    A few weeks ago, my husband and I made an attempt at semi-spontaneity. We invited friends over for snacks and drinks; they accepted. “Snacks and drinks” is my idea of easy, because – as I have posted before – I fret intensely and at length about what to feed people. We picked up some beer and a bottle of margarita mix. We bought a bunch of fruits and veggies, cheese, crackers, deli meat. I washed all the veggies in advance and then put together a couple of trays with everything on it so that the food would be ready to go when our guests arrived. I did a quick tidy of the house. And then the friends didn’t come over. 

    It was FINE. We had Snack Dinner, just the three of us, and watched a movie. But it was kind of a letdown. (Maybe “snacks and drinks” doesn’t sound like enough of a plan to be worthwhile?)

    This kind of thing happens, I know it does. I’ve read many articles and memes and blog posts about how millennials and successive generations don’t RSVP and opt out of things at the last minute. I also know that things happen; things come up, kids get crabby, the dog tracks poop through the house and suddenly your Saturday is spent deep cleaning the carpet. 

    We had a similar thing happen last weekend. My husband asked if a friend might want to bring his family over to swim, and the friend said yes. We bought food that would be good to eat by the pool, washed and prepped veggies and fruits, cleaned the pool, etc. And then they didn’t respond when my husband reached out. 

    This most recent disappointment, I think, was because we tried too hard to be too spontaneous. Saying, “Hey, why don’t you come over this weekend to swim?” is fine, but my husband’s approach was to get in the pool and then text the friend and say, “we’re in the pool, come over” while my approach was to pick a day and time in advance so everyone can PLAN. We ended up doing a hybrid of these things, where he reached out the morning of and said, “we plan on hopping in the pool around X time, so come on over.” The friend got back to my husband several hours after X time, and said, “Oh, hey, we ended up doing something else.” Which is FINE, I get it, but also we sat around all day not knowing if or when they would show up. I think that could have been avoided if we’d had specific plans. 

    I hope this doesn’t come across as complaining. (Truthfully, I was relieved, in both instances, that the plans didn’t pan out.) I am using these two examples to show how impossible it feels to invite people over. You plan, and it doesn’t work out. You try to be spontaneous, and it doesn’t work out. Or sometimes it DOES work out and there’s a flurry of planning and prepping and cleaning and the stress of having people in my space and do they think my house is clean enough and is the food I made good enough and is everyone having fun and why does every word that comes out of my mouth sound stupid and are they staying too long/long enough etc. etc. etc. 

    What I think would be WORSE would be to have spontaneous plans and not be prepared. Okay, I wrote that sentence, read it, thought THAT IS RIDICULOUS you cannot be prepared to be spontaneous, deleted it, then put it back. Because that is my problem in a nutshell. I don’t typically have things on hand to be able to be truly spontaneous. Do you? Like, if you were at your kids’ baseball game and you ran into friends, could you say, “Hey, come back with us to our house!” and then have them over without any sort of pre-planning? I don’t think I would have food. I mean, today I do, but that’s because I have all the veggies and deli meat and cheese we bought for our failed spontaneous swim day. That’s not normal. Or, on a normal week, I might have a bag of cut-up cauliflower and a pint of tomatoes and a pint of blueberries… but that doesn’t seem like enough to feed people if they randomly show up at your house. 

    Jill linked to a post by Katherine Goldstein about “deep casual hosting” that I read with keen interest. The article gives eight tips for how you can entertain while spending more time on connection and less time on preparation. I love that framing. That is, after all, WHY I want to entertain. I want to spend time with dear friends, deepen friendships, and create new relationships. Does a part of me want people to comment, after the fact, about how beautiful my home is or how delicious the meal was? Of course. But when I think about what I really want people to think and feel after they spend time with me, I’d much prefer they say, “Suzanne and Husband make us feel so welcome and comfortable.” One of the most complimentary things I feel about a person is that they are easy to be around, and I don’t think I am particularly easy to be around. Something to strive for.

    Goldstein’s most appealing and simultaneously most terrifying suggestion is the one to embrace last minute invitations. The idea is that people will have a more concrete idea of their plans at the last minute, and that the spontaneity of the ask will set a low bar for expectations. Goldstein also mentions a bonus, which is that your friends may feel less intimidated about reciprocating. 

    A friend I haven’t seen in ages texted me one Thursday saying, “Hey, I know it’s last minute, but are you free this weekend?” We were free on Saturday, and asked her and her spouse to come over. Because it was such a quick ask and because we’d had plans on the Friday night, I felt zero pressure to do anything. We drank wine and chatted and then the guys went and picked up takeout and it was very low-stress and simple and enjoyable. In retrospect, it feels like it worked out because we’d had plans the night before, so the house was cleaner than usual, and because they are already very good friends whom I don’t feel the need to impress. But maybe it worked out because that’s the ideal way to entertain. 

    The thing is, I don’t know that I can engineer future experiences to happen in the same way, because a) the exact confluence of factors that made it so seamless may never happen again and b) trying to engineer a similar outcome is the same as planning which is the very thing that causes stress.

    Yet I keep coming back to that same ridiculous thought: how can I plan to be spontaneous? Surely there are ways to do that. Keeping my house tidy enough that I won’t be embarrassed by guests is one strategy. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just neat enough. But what about the food? Goldstein’s tip is to keep it simple; she focuses on making more of what she’s going to cook anyway. What does that MEAN? Does that mean running into a friend at camp and saying, “Hey, come over tomorrow night” and then going out and buying more of the ingredients for tomorrow’s dinner, whatever it was going to be? I have no trouble ordering pizza or picking up sandwiches or whatever once in a while, but I also don’t want to do that on the regular. I have some “go-to” meals I feel fairly comfortable serving to guests, but I also get tired of them and don’t want to serve them every time. My freezer is full of ingredients, but that requires work (not to mention creativity) which seems antithetical to “deep casual hosting.” And also I hate cooking in front of people; now THAT’S stressful. 

    And what about the guests who DO expect a more elevated experience? One friend and his husband are always putting on elaborate dinner parties, where they assign seating and make gourmet food… He’s assured me he doesn’t expect the same thing, but… is that really true? Or what about my parents and my in-laws and their friends, whom we occasionally entertain? Maybe “deep casual hosting” doesn’t have to extend to Every Single Time You Have Someone Over??? 

    As usual, I am wildly overthinking this. There’s nothing to be done, I don’t think, aside from being an entirely different person. 

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    Supporting Friends in Times of Loss

    The prevailing advice for friends who want to support others in times of loss (or new baby, or after surgery, or during other tumultuous life events) is that you should offer something specific, rather than saying something generic like, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

    Photo by Angel Ayala on Pexels.com

    In fact, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do” seems frequently vilified as actively non-helpful. And I get that. I certainly don’t want to ask my friend who is grieving/recovering/etc. to take on the additional work of assigning me a job to do. It’s just that sometimes, a person really DOES want to help, and yet doesn’t have the full picture of what “help” might look like. 

    When dear family friends of ours lost their mother, I tried to do the specificity thing. I said, “I am happy to come do laundry, drive kids to appointments or activities, pick up groceries, make meals – whatever you need.” Okay, I suppose that is still a little broad. 

    I did check in with my friends every day for several weeks, and am trying to continue to purposefully reach out because I know they are still grieving. That feels doable but also like not enough. 

    Another close friend – K – recently lost a family member – a person I’ve never met. She asked if I could sit at the house for a few hours to accept food and flowers. I did not know this was a role people needed to fill, but I am so glad she reached out and I’m so glad I am able to do something to help. 

    K noted that she felt lucky to have a friend she could ask to take on this task. That sounds self-aggrandizing, but I’m not trying to toot my own miniature horn here – her point was that it feels important to have people in your life that you can count on for that kind of thing, that you know you could ask to do your laundry or buy you groceries or sit in your house and accept food and flowers. She said this experience of dealing with death has sharpened her sense of urgency around cultivating close connections with people. 

    I take her point. If I contemplate a situation where I needed someone to drive me to chemotherapy every week or couldn’t get out of bed and required someone to do laundry or drive Carla to and from school or any of the ten thousand mundane things necessary even during times of crisis, I do think I have a few people I could call on, without embarrassment, without feeling as though I were overstepping the boundaries of our relationships. Do you have people like that? It’s a small group, for sure, but I’m grateful it exists. (Unfortunately, two of these members of my support system live several states away which makes it much more difficult. When they’ve lost loved ones, it has been so hard to know what to do and how to support them from afar. In one case, I was able to fly to my friend’s house for the funeral; in another case, I was not able to leave Carla and it wouldn’t have been feasible/appropriate to take her.)

    The thing is, when I think about DOING supportive things for other people, the circle enlarges quite a bit. The neighbors in our old neighborhood, who were so kind to Carla when we lived there, and with whom I still exchange texts and holiday cards, and occasional visits: I would be happy to do any of those things and more for any of them. My neighbors here, whom I know less well, but with whom I feel like relationships are blossoming? Same. Any of the women I volunteer with. Any of the other parents of Carla’s classmates. Any of my blog friends. (Although again, there’s the distance issue at play with many of us.) A person in my outer circle had surgery a few years ago, and called me crying because she wasn’t able to lift her mattress enough to make her bed, so I went over and made her bed for her. It was such a small thing, but it took only a few minutes out of my day, and it helped her, and it felt so good to be useful.

    Because I know that I am a perfectly ordinary person, I am going to assume that most of us feel that way. That if help were needed, and we were available, we would step in. That’s comforting, and I hope when I do need help, I remember that. 

    I also hope I remember that “please let me know if there’s anything I can do” comes from a genuine desire to do something, anything in support. That it isn’t a meaningless platitude, but a sincere wish to know what I need. 

    That said, it would sure be nice to have a manual of all the things that are DEFINITELY NEEDED during times of life upheaval or crisis or transition. I’d even settle for a list of what to do in times of bereavement, because all of us will encounter loss both at home and in our communities.  

    My first instinct is always to make food. When a neighbor’s spouse died several years ago, I made a big pot of stew and a batch of cookies, packaged it all up with some disposable napkins, plates, and cutlery, and walked it down to her house. That felt like Doing Something. I hoped that even if she couldn’t eat the stew/cookies for whatever reason, she could share it with visitors, or at the very very least would take it as a token of my sympathy.

    But food is just one thing that’s universally needed! There have to be others, right? If there is a need for someone to sit at a house and accept food and flowers, there are certainly other roles that need filling. Collecting flowers and food from the funeral home after a wake? Making a post-funeral meal for people to come home to? Taking all the funeral clothing to the dry cleaner? Caring for pets? Watering plants? Running the vacuum around the house and cleaning the bathrooms? I don’t even know. 

    If you have lost someone (and if so, my heart is with you), what did you find most helpful from those around you? Or what did you most need during that time? If you’ve been the helper, what have you done to offer support? 

    Part of MY problem is that I get too much in my own head about stuff. I feel a little reluctant to say, “I will do X” when I don’t know if X is needed, or if X is something my friend might prefer to do herself (making her own dinner might feel like an injection of normalcy; she might think giving me her laundry is too intimate a task), or if X infringes on her privacy or personal space (I’m happy to pick up groceries, but maybe she doesn’t want me poking around in her fridge or pantry to put things away). 

    People are so gracious and so unwilling to inconvenience others, but I think most of us want to HELP, and don’t see helping as an inconvenience. If only we knew what to DO.

    I’m not sure how to end this post or if it even makes sense (I was up until three last night and that is the third night in the past five days that I’ve been involuntarily awake in the three o’clock hour, so let’s blame any issues on this post on THAT), but I would be interested in your thoughts.