What is it about the brain that allows us to do things that actively run counter our best interests? I know I am not alone in this. But lately it feels like everywhere I turn, I run into an obstacle. And that obstacle is me.
I keep waking up with headaches and jaw pain. This is, I am pretty sure, because I clench my teeth while I sleep. Luckily, I have a tool to prevent this from happening! An expensive tool, custom made for me at the dentist. For awhile it was packed away in a box, but it’s been on my nightstand for several weeks now. So why am I not using it??????
My feet hurt if I don’t wear shoes. This is just a fact. And yet sometimes I will simply… not put on my shoes! Or sometimes, I don’t want to wear shoes when other people are in the house, because I don’t want to explain to them that it’s okay for ME to wear shoes, but not for them. When probably they would be fine with it. Nope. Instead, I walk around in my socks and then my feet ache.
Exercise is essential for my mental health. I enjoy tiring my muscles out with strength training! I love being outside in the fresh air! I love the ache and exhaustion after I’ve worked hard. And yet I have not been exercising. Some of this is because my schedule is all over the place. But there are definitely some days where I could fit it in if I tried, and I talk myself out of it.
Alone time is essential for my mental health. As an introvert, I NEED time alone to recharge my batteries. And yet I have been going to parties and volunteering at events with lots of people and meeting friends for coffee and doing things at Carla’s school and hosting my husband’s family for Thanksgiving. It’s all good stuff, it’s all stuff I want to do. But it doesn’t have to happen all at once. I can postpone things! I can even say no! WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?
If I don’t get immediate feedback, I expect the worst. Why is this? There is no reason for this! It’s not as though I usually get negative feedback, which might justify an expectation of negative feedback. No! I typically get positive feedback! And yet if I don’t hear anything, I worry and fret and angst and wonder what I can do to pre-emptively “fix” whatever it is I’ve done. WHY? I am wasting so much time and energy on pointless anxiety!
I know I’m fortunate in that none of these things are truly debilitating or dangerous. There are so many worse ways I could be acting against my best interests. But I really wish I knew how to get out of my own way.
Do you ever stand in your own way?
P.S. I always think the song “My Own Worst Enemy” is by Blink 182, but it’s by Lit.
I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.
One of the differences in my personality vs my husband’s is that I expect to figure things out as I go, and he prefers to know things in advance. Say we are going to a concert in the park. He will go online, map out the directions, look at parking. He will probably visit the park website to see if there is any information about parking. This is all fine and good and useful. I, on the other hand, would probably plug the park address into my navigator on the way to the concert and figure out parking when I get there. I trust that most things will be easy enough to figure out as you go along, and I think I’ve mainly been right about that. This is not to say that my husband’s methodology is wrong – and it has plenty of benefits. It’s just different.
When it was time to wire our down payment to the title company, I figured it would be pretty intuitive. Just go to the bank with the wiring instructions, and the money would be wired. Easy peasy lemon squeeze. My reasoning is that banks deal with this kind of thing all the time. Sending a wire may be an unusual occurrence for us, but this is something banks do all the time. There must be systems in place.
My husband was not willing to leave it at that and had me ask the title company agent what we should do. (He was in the hospital, so I was left to this task.) The title company agent told me that we needed to go in a day or two early, to make sure the money was wired on the date of closing, but that any teller should be able to make the wire transfer. This satisfied me, and since I was the one doing the actual wire transfer, I felt good about it.
This, my friends, is what is known as “foreshadowing.”
But. If a blog is good for anything, it is for sharing one’s most humiliating moments publicly and in perpetuity.
Two days before our closing, I went to the bank.
I need to pause for a moment and describe the bank to you. You walk in the door and are immediately greeted by a small welcome desk. I have been a patron at this bank for more than a decade and I don’t think I have ever seen a human at the welcome desk, but it is there just in case. The welcome desk is positioned in roughly the center of the bank. To the left are offices; to the right is a big upside-down-L-shaped bank of counters behind which the tellers stand. There are spaces for at least eight tellers; on this day there were two tellers in attendance which is neither here nor there but between that and the welcome desk, I’m guessing this branch may have staffing issues. In front of the tellers is a big open space for patrons to wait in a cordoned off multi-server queue. There is also a large desk in this area that has pens, deposit slips, and advertisements for various services the bank offers; this desk does not feature prominently in the story to follow, but I included it in the drawing so I feel like I need to describe it to you. I have included a rendering of the interior of the bank for your reference. It is not to scale.
Two days before the closing on our new house, I went to the bank. I stood in line to wait for a teller. One teller was, I think, counting money using a very loud machine. Thpthpthpthpthpthpthp went the bills as the machine organized them into neat stacks. The only other teller was helping a very elderly man who had visible hearing aids. He was having trouble communicating with the teller and kept asking her what she’d said. I felt bad for this poor guy who could hardly hear, especially with all the noise of the money counting machine, which would fall silent and then comically renew its thpthpthp efforts every time the teller began to speak.
When I’d arrived, it was just me and one other person. But as I waited for the elderly man ahead of me to finish his halting interaction with the teller, people filed in behind me. The second teller finished counting money and took her position at the drive through window. The elderly man finished his business and I was next.
I explained to the teller that I needed to wire money for a down payment on a house.
“Oh,” she said, “mumble mumble something.”
Aha. So it wasn’t that the elderly man was hard of hearing, it was that the teller did not know how to project her voice through the plexiglass window and across the counter. Or perhaps a lethal combination of both.
I asked her to repeat herself.
“I can’t help you with that,” she said, more loudly, and in that forced-calm way that makes it seem like it’s my fault for not being able to hear her. “You need to meet with a banker.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’d like to meet with a banker then.”
“You have to go sign in on the whiteboard,” she said.
“The whiteboard?”
She motioned toward the front of the bank. “The whiteboard. Right when you come in. At the front, by the door.”
Okay. I thanked her and went back to the front of the store and looked for the whiteboard.
Let’s all take a minute and ask ourselves what a whiteboard might look like. This is what I pictured:
I could not find a whiteboard near the front of the bank. I looked around, scanning the walls, scanning the welcome desk.
“Right there,” the teller called. She had been watching me and was now directing me across the heads of many people waiting for her.
I looked. I turned in a circle, panic building as I continued to not see a whiteboard. Or anything resembling a whiteboard. Or even a clipboard or a sign up sheet or a notepad. The teller pointed, which was, ironically, pointless, because she was all the way across the room. “Right there! Right in front of you! The whiteboard!”
Internet, I cannot even describe to you my bafflement. There was a desk and NOTHING ON IT. Where was this whiteboard that she could see and I could not? It was not on the desk, it was not on the floor. I was sure – SURE – that the teller thought it was there, because it was normally there, but maybe no one had put it out yet that morning? I could feel the eyes of all the people in the line, waiting for their banking needs to be addressed by this lone teller or perhaps waiting to find out how long we could keep up this hilarious prank.
“RIGHT THERE,” the teller yelled across the bank. Finally, in a fit of descriptive genius she said, “Leaning against the wall!”
I looked to my left. Against the wall indeed something leaned. Was it a whiteboard? Apparently, in this teller’s mind, it was. I will let you be the judge:
I will share my opinion: This is not a whiteboard. This is a fucking A-frame sign that my eyes dismissed as an advertisement.
The sign was leaning against the wall just to the left of the door. Leaning, out of eyeline, as though it had been closed up for the day. It was not standing on top of the welcome desk, which would not have transformed it into a whiteboard, but would possibly have caught my eye.
I have added an X to the diagram of the bank, indicating the location of the not-a-whiteboard:
“This?” I asked, gesturing to the sign that I had not even acknowledged because it bore so tenuous a relationship to the word “whiteboard” in my mind, my face by now aflame and my pulse rapid in my throat. The horde of bank patrons looked on as the teller said, in tones of my-god-I-thought-I’d-have-to-hit-you-over-the-head-with-it, “Yes.”
I like to think that I would have eventually noticed and examined the sign, had I not been so completely befuddled by the spotlight of the teller’s attention. But perhaps I really am that dumb; who’s to say.
“Oh I see,” I said, not sure whether I was speaking to her or the other patrons or myself, “I just scan it and then sign in that way?”
A woman materialized behind the welcome desk. She would have been much more welcome, to me at least, a few moments prior to this little drama.
“Hi,” she said smoothly. “If you just scan the QR code, you’ll be able to sign in. You’ll get a few questions and I can walk you through how to answer them.”
I was so flustered I could hardly see. My hands were trembling under the pressure of all those eyes. But I managed to open my camera and scan the QR code, like the tech-savvy millennial I pretend to be.
“It should pre-load a number in your text messages, and you just hit send,” the woman directed, her voice low and soothing as though I might at any moment startle and take flight or maybe bare my teeth at her and growl. She was there to avert another scene as much as she was to help.
I dutifully sent the text; I was so discombobulated that I honestly don’t know if I could have figured out what to do by myself.
I understand and value technology. I do. But just because a technological tool may make simplify or improve workflow for the staff of a company doesn’t mean it is useful or workable for its customers. If I hadn’t been so publicly floundering, I don’t know that I would have gotten any help. I might still be there, in that bank, looking for an invisible whiteboard.
“You’ll get a text,” the woman explained, “and you just need to answer ‘yes.'”
A few long seconds passed and I got a reply text with some ridiculously simple question, like “Do you have an appointment today? 1. Yes 2. No” and the woman, reading over my shoulder said, “Now, type in a 2 and hit send.” She walked me through the remaining questions, all equally basic – “What are you here to do? 1. Deposit 2. Set up account 3. Withdrawal 4. Other” and “What is your name?” and “Do you have an account here?” etc. I could feel the eyes of the remaining patrons on me, curious to learn just how much help I really needed or possibly feeling grateful they were safely on the other side of the crowd control stanchions and far away from this check-in process.
Finally, I reached the end of the text questions – the “sign in process” – and I got a text that said, “Thank you! A banker will be with you shortly!”
That’s when the calming woman said, “Great! Thank you for signing in. I can help you right now.”
Picture me blinking rapidly as though something had short-circuited in my brain.
I followed her back to her office. We sat down. I explained to her why I was there: we would be closing in two days, my title company advised me to come and set up the wire in advance.
“Oh, we can’t pre-schedule a wire transfer,” she said.
I stared at her. “But… we haven’t signed closing documents yet. I don’t want to wire the money until the date of closing.”
She nodded. “I understand. But the wire transfer occurs the same day we schedule it.” She left her office briefly to double check that this was true with a colleague.
When she returned, she smiled at me pityingly.
“You’ll have to come back in two days,” she said. “I’ll make an appointment for you, so you don’t have to go through that again.”
Thank you SO MUCH for your kindness and commiseration yesterday. It is so helpful to be able to spill one’s very minor and yet deeply irritating frustrations to friends, and have them respond with back pats and consoling words.
While the pest control situation remains VERY IRRITATING, I feel much better about the sink. My dad and I did a FaceTime diagnosis and determined that there is a leak in the sprayer hose for the faucet. This is good news in some ways because a) it should be a fairly easy fix; i.e., replace the hose or at worst the entire faucet, and b) the leak is pretty gentle; I left a bowl under it last night and there are probably a couple of tablespoons of water in there (it must have been leaking for A LONG TIME, considering the volume of water the leak produces and the amount of water that was in my cupboard), and c) the water is clean water, not anything gross from the disposal or anything.
The leak didn’t appear to have caused any damage, and I took the opportunity to clean out the cupboard (much more reasonable to clean as you need to than having a scheduled monthly-cleaning-of-all-the-cupboards, so there GRANDMA) and consolidate/get rid of near-empty bottles and containers and bric-a-brac.
The Scrub Daddies seemed unscathed by the experience. Nicole asked if I like them (HI NICOLE), and yes, I do like them. They are very good at getting rid of tough, stuck-on food residue and somehow they do not smell or grow mold the way sponges do. They are also dishwasher safe and very cheerful to look at.
My father and I determined that the repair was probably outside my skill set. Actually, as I was lying scrunched under the kitchen sink, my phone in one hand, a flashlight in the other, I think my dad was gearing up to explain exactly what the next steps were… but as he was pointing out some sort of brackets that hold the faucet in place, and telling me about some special tool one needs to dislodge them, my mom, bless her, said in the background, “Sounds like the next step is to call a plumber.” And I did, and they will be coming out next week. (While they are here, I will be asking them to unclog some drains that have been bothering me for weeks now, but not to the point of being able to get past my terror of Drain Hair to do anything about it.) (Unclogging drains is usually my husband’s job anyway, but I am not going to pressure him lest he turns over the job to me.)
This morning, feeling much better about life in general, I opened the dishwasher to empty it and noticed that the dishes weren’t clean. There was a plate with some chocolate on it, which is how I could tell. Also, the little soap packet was lying on the floor of the dishwasher, semi-intact. Okay. Sometimes that happens – the mechanism that releases the soap doesn’t open at the right time or something. Fine.
I fiddled around with the little soap door, added a new packet of soap. (What? Maybe the original soap packet was faulty.)
I ran the dishes again.
When the dishwasher was finally done, I opened it to empty the dishes… and now there were two soap packets on the floor of the dishwasher. One was still semi-intact, the other was fresh as a daisy.
It is a testament to YOUR calming powers that I did not burst into tears right there. I had some Dire Thoughts, including how I am never again shopping at the appliance store from which we bought our dishwasher (and the horrific, problem-addled fridge). We bought this dishwasher just a few years ago! It should be fine!
(Okay, maybe “a few years ago” was actually six years ago. But dishwashers should last longer than six years, right? My parents had the same dishwasher the entire 18 years I lived at home with them.)
I mentally ran through what to do next: who repairs dishwashers? Is it the same people who repair the fridge? Could I ask the plumber to look into it? (Probably not.)
And then I remembered. When I was under the sink, trying to figure out where the leak was coming from, my dad pointed out the valve that goes to the dishwasher… and had me turn it off.
So basically I ran the dishwasher twice WITH NO WATER. But I was able to turn the valve on very easily and now the dishwasher is running again, this time with water.
