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shadowkatSo, I finally bit the bullet after months of procrastinating, and scheduled a trip to see my brother and his family for next weekend. Bought the Amtrak tickets and everything. Leave next Friday morning, and come back Sunday morning. July 23 - 25.
And ... I find out that my brother got a cold today, my niece had one last week, my niece's boyfriend is coming up from Virginia this weekend and may or may not be there when I arrive. Then, Wales contacts me and asks to go out to dinner this week. Movie Buddy asks to do a movie this week.
And..Crazy workplace is all of sudden dumping work on me. I'm busy.
WTF? Universe? You and are going to have words.
I called mother and told her.
Mother bursts out laughing. "I thought you were going to tell me something awful happened and you had to cancel your plans.
Mother: So you aren't you just taking one day off? I think your workplace can manage without you.
Me: Well, no two days.
Mother: I thought you were coming back on Sunday?
Me: I am, I've a neurologist appointment with the new neurologist on Monday. It's about the tremor. My primary care pushed for it - she's worried that I'm a candidate for Parkinson's since I'm diabetic and it can lead to Parkinson's.
Mother: Doubtful.
Me: Yeah, I know. I've managed to find a primary care doctor who is... well, more of a hypochondriac than I am.
Mother burst out laughing again.
I know I can't do a movie theater right now. I tried to envision it during work today - and my blood pressure went up just thinking about it. To appreciate the irony of this - you should know that the last movie I saw in a theater was Emma, and it was on March 8, 2020 - which was about the time the virus outbreak happened in NYC. I mean I went to a movie, no masks, and sat evenly distanced from folks in the Cobble Hill Theater.
You'd think I'd be fine about doing it now? But no. You'd think wrong. My anxieties aren't always logical - and it's highly annoying.
Going out to eat with Wales a few weeks ago - was nerve-wracking.
Wales: You don't look or sound nervous or anxious at all.
Me: Well, the fact that my right hand won't stop shaking long enough for me to eat my soup...is kind of evidence of it. I have a great poker face, but my hands always give me away.
It freaked me out. I was born a cautious person. It wasn't learned behavior, I came out of the womb cautious. My mother describes me as a little one year old girl - touching the grass before I'd step out on it.
She says my brother was the exact opposite - he's the daredevil. I, on the other hand, was always very cautious about things. It's enough to make me believe in past lives. Although I honestly think it is may be biochemical or nerve oriented. Some people are born worries, some don't have an adrenal response to fear at all. I honestly think I'd have been happier if it was the latter. Mother disagrees - she believes it's kept me safe.
I need to take baby steps back out into the world folks. Next is a train trip to see brother. Then, maybe a movie in a movie theater. Then an actual live performance - preferably outside, but that may not be possible. Then a plane trip to visit mother.
***
Crazy Work Place
Yesterday, I was invited to a meeting on Monday to discuss an emergency change order coming my way on a contract that I thought was completed. Also it's way outside that contract's scope. So, I alert my management. BYT Manager sets up meeting today to discuss, prior to the Monday meeting.
We all get on the line - it's a Team's Meeting.
Boss: How is everyone?
BYT, Breaking Bad, Et Moi: Okay.
Boss: So, after reviewing all the information that [my name] sent, I've decided this is an absolutely perfect fit. Are we on the same page?
Me: Uh, I'm sorry, Boss, but could you explain how it is a perfect fit - this is outside -
Boss: It's important to the President of [agency that me, Breaking Bad, and BYT are no longer a part of], and we are going to do this and I said it is a perfect fit. And I expect you all to do whatever is necessary to push this through quickly and help make this happen. Are we all on the same page here?
BYT: Yes.
Boss: Breaking Bad?
BB: Yes.
Me: Understood.
Boss: Good. Bye now.
Me to mother: I wanted to kill him. I spent two to three hours analyzing those contracts and preparing for that stupid meeting. He could have just sent me an email. Saved us all some time.
Mother: Don't kill - smack him. Let's just go and smack him.
Me: Yes, better approach, I'll just smack him with the poster I got from the Van Gough Exhibit.
I've come to the conclusion that our world is doomed to failure due to poor management or mismanagement. Also prevalent narcissism. I wonder sometimes if I'd be happier and more successful if I were narcissistic?
Mother: On the news today, it was 100 degrees in Antartica. And the Brazil rain forests that were reducing carbon dioxide in the air are now increasing it. Also, there's no longer any where to send the recycling since China can't do it any longer. My home health care aids don't even separate it - they just mix it in with the garbage. We've destroyed our world.
Me: Too many humans having kids and not caring about anything else.
Mother: Our society has become increasingly -
Me: Shallow -
Mother: Narcissistic.
***
Yet, I'm not really depressed by all of this - so much as resigned. What's that phrase? "I'm kind of paralyzed with not caring all that much?"
**
Ah well. Mother did find out that the reason they've not treated father's UTI is that they need to be sure his kidney's are okay. Basically they want to ensure that the infection hasn't gone to his kidney's. Which relieved us greatly.
She's struggling with her faith at the moment. Although for the most part they are okay. Financially - they are fine. We all are - in my immediate family. Can't speak for the extended one. It's just difficult going through this.
I was thinking about faith today - it's a mysterious thing, faith. I've always had it. Although it has been admittedly tough at times. It's hard though to believe in something greater than oneself, when the world feels so arbitrary. I saw a post on fresne's FB page this week - where she talks about that - how random everything feels. How can you have faith in a higher being of any sort - when one person is saved, and others are in pain. Someone who is evil - is happy, with wife, kids, perfect health, etc, while someone who is kind is struggling? Or the economic inequalities between people of color and those who are white? Etc. How is this free will? Why would the higher power save one person in a plane crash, yet kill so many others in poverty?
Or as mother put it - she didn't choose to break her hip. My father didn't choose to be put in a nursing home. (Actually he kind of did - since he picked their independent living situation based on the ability to put in a nursing facility close by.)
But if you look at Biblical Text or any Religious Text for that matter - it's never been equal. The Bible has assholes getting ahead. I mean King David was not a nice guy. While Moses suffered greatly. Also, Jesus is basically killed in the worst way possible. Christianity is not an easy religion, nor is the religion it sprouted from - Judaism.
I listened to a cameo today with soap opera actor Roger Howarth - which was purchase for a lovely older woman on the GH FB fan board - she'd just lost her son "suddenly". (She had already lost her husband and daughter ages ago. And now her brother in law is ailing.) Any how, the actor said something that stuck with me, more than one thing actually - "I come from a lot of faiths, and I'm in the business of imagining different realities and always have been - as is my family. So I tend to imagine different afterlifes, and where I hope beloved folks have gone. I've also been raised around a multitude of faiths, and have taken different things from them. Such as the Jewish tradition of putting stones on graves - I just put them where I feel the person who has gone, might want to be, or places that are important to me. And well, I've been know to pray to Kishnu, for things on occasion, even if he's basically just a huge elephant with a rat on his head."
The last line stuck with me. If I believe in anything it's that we don't know...and there is a weird pattern to it all that we cannot begin to see.
I feel at times as if we are all threads in an intricately woven tapestry that tells a intricate and complicated story - we cannot see. Perhaps it is the story-teller in me or just my crazy-ass imagination - but sometimes I think we are characters in someone else's story - being told far away from us. Each with our role and our purpose, however small it may seem. Cogs in a wheel. Threads in a tapestry. And that teller knows how it ends, and why, and what roles we play...and there's nothing we can do but surrender to it, somehow.
BYT said this week - that sometimes all you could do was just surrender, and stop fighting the tide. Place it all in God's hands, and hope for the best. Accept that you are powerless.
And I do feel powerless right now, my friends, wherever you may be.
Do I have any choices, really? So much is ingrained in DNA, and physical makeup.
Anyhow, it occurred to me today - that perhaps the television series The Good Place - at the end, very very end of that series - comes the closest to what I may or may not believe.
Faith at any rate - keeps me going. A little voice in my head, that says, live now, and don't give up. All things are temporary and subject to change.
And ... I find out that my brother got a cold today, my niece had one last week, my niece's boyfriend is coming up from Virginia this weekend and may or may not be there when I arrive. Then, Wales contacts me and asks to go out to dinner this week. Movie Buddy asks to do a movie this week.
And..Crazy workplace is all of sudden dumping work on me. I'm busy.
WTF? Universe? You and are going to have words.
I called mother and told her.
Mother bursts out laughing. "I thought you were going to tell me something awful happened and you had to cancel your plans.
Mother: So you aren't you just taking one day off? I think your workplace can manage without you.
Me: Well, no two days.
Mother: I thought you were coming back on Sunday?
Me: I am, I've a neurologist appointment with the new neurologist on Monday. It's about the tremor. My primary care pushed for it - she's worried that I'm a candidate for Parkinson's since I'm diabetic and it can lead to Parkinson's.
Mother: Doubtful.
Me: Yeah, I know. I've managed to find a primary care doctor who is... well, more of a hypochondriac than I am.
Mother burst out laughing again.
I know I can't do a movie theater right now. I tried to envision it during work today - and my blood pressure went up just thinking about it. To appreciate the irony of this - you should know that the last movie I saw in a theater was Emma, and it was on March 8, 2020 - which was about the time the virus outbreak happened in NYC. I mean I went to a movie, no masks, and sat evenly distanced from folks in the Cobble Hill Theater.
You'd think I'd be fine about doing it now? But no. You'd think wrong. My anxieties aren't always logical - and it's highly annoying.
Going out to eat with Wales a few weeks ago - was nerve-wracking.
Wales: You don't look or sound nervous or anxious at all.
Me: Well, the fact that my right hand won't stop shaking long enough for me to eat my soup...is kind of evidence of it. I have a great poker face, but my hands always give me away.
It freaked me out. I was born a cautious person. It wasn't learned behavior, I came out of the womb cautious. My mother describes me as a little one year old girl - touching the grass before I'd step out on it.
She says my brother was the exact opposite - he's the daredevil. I, on the other hand, was always very cautious about things. It's enough to make me believe in past lives. Although I honestly think it is may be biochemical or nerve oriented. Some people are born worries, some don't have an adrenal response to fear at all. I honestly think I'd have been happier if it was the latter. Mother disagrees - she believes it's kept me safe.
I need to take baby steps back out into the world folks. Next is a train trip to see brother. Then, maybe a movie in a movie theater. Then an actual live performance - preferably outside, but that may not be possible. Then a plane trip to visit mother.
***
Crazy Work Place
Yesterday, I was invited to a meeting on Monday to discuss an emergency change order coming my way on a contract that I thought was completed. Also it's way outside that contract's scope. So, I alert my management. BYT Manager sets up meeting today to discuss, prior to the Monday meeting.
We all get on the line - it's a Team's Meeting.
Boss: How is everyone?
BYT, Breaking Bad, Et Moi: Okay.
Boss: So, after reviewing all the information that [my name] sent, I've decided this is an absolutely perfect fit. Are we on the same page?
Me: Uh, I'm sorry, Boss, but could you explain how it is a perfect fit - this is outside -
Boss: It's important to the President of [agency that me, Breaking Bad, and BYT are no longer a part of], and we are going to do this and I said it is a perfect fit. And I expect you all to do whatever is necessary to push this through quickly and help make this happen. Are we all on the same page here?
BYT: Yes.
Boss: Breaking Bad?
BB: Yes.
Me: Understood.
Boss: Good. Bye now.
Me to mother: I wanted to kill him. I spent two to three hours analyzing those contracts and preparing for that stupid meeting. He could have just sent me an email. Saved us all some time.
Mother: Don't kill - smack him. Let's just go and smack him.
Me: Yes, better approach, I'll just smack him with the poster I got from the Van Gough Exhibit.
I've come to the conclusion that our world is doomed to failure due to poor management or mismanagement. Also prevalent narcissism. I wonder sometimes if I'd be happier and more successful if I were narcissistic?
Mother: On the news today, it was 100 degrees in Antartica. And the Brazil rain forests that were reducing carbon dioxide in the air are now increasing it. Also, there's no longer any where to send the recycling since China can't do it any longer. My home health care aids don't even separate it - they just mix it in with the garbage. We've destroyed our world.
Me: Too many humans having kids and not caring about anything else.
Mother: Our society has become increasingly -
Me: Shallow -
Mother: Narcissistic.
***
Yet, I'm not really depressed by all of this - so much as resigned. What's that phrase? "I'm kind of paralyzed with not caring all that much?"
**
Ah well. Mother did find out that the reason they've not treated father's UTI is that they need to be sure his kidney's are okay. Basically they want to ensure that the infection hasn't gone to his kidney's. Which relieved us greatly.
She's struggling with her faith at the moment. Although for the most part they are okay. Financially - they are fine. We all are - in my immediate family. Can't speak for the extended one. It's just difficult going through this.
I was thinking about faith today - it's a mysterious thing, faith. I've always had it. Although it has been admittedly tough at times. It's hard though to believe in something greater than oneself, when the world feels so arbitrary. I saw a post on fresne's FB page this week - where she talks about that - how random everything feels. How can you have faith in a higher being of any sort - when one person is saved, and others are in pain. Someone who is evil - is happy, with wife, kids, perfect health, etc, while someone who is kind is struggling? Or the economic inequalities between people of color and those who are white? Etc. How is this free will? Why would the higher power save one person in a plane crash, yet kill so many others in poverty?
Or as mother put it - she didn't choose to break her hip. My father didn't choose to be put in a nursing home. (Actually he kind of did - since he picked their independent living situation based on the ability to put in a nursing facility close by.)
But if you look at Biblical Text or any Religious Text for that matter - it's never been equal. The Bible has assholes getting ahead. I mean King David was not a nice guy. While Moses suffered greatly. Also, Jesus is basically killed in the worst way possible. Christianity is not an easy religion, nor is the religion it sprouted from - Judaism.
I listened to a cameo today with soap opera actor Roger Howarth - which was purchase for a lovely older woman on the GH FB fan board - she'd just lost her son "suddenly". (She had already lost her husband and daughter ages ago. And now her brother in law is ailing.) Any how, the actor said something that stuck with me, more than one thing actually - "I come from a lot of faiths, and I'm in the business of imagining different realities and always have been - as is my family. So I tend to imagine different afterlifes, and where I hope beloved folks have gone. I've also been raised around a multitude of faiths, and have taken different things from them. Such as the Jewish tradition of putting stones on graves - I just put them where I feel the person who has gone, might want to be, or places that are important to me. And well, I've been know to pray to Kishnu, for things on occasion, even if he's basically just a huge elephant with a rat on his head."
The last line stuck with me. If I believe in anything it's that we don't know...and there is a weird pattern to it all that we cannot begin to see.
I feel at times as if we are all threads in an intricately woven tapestry that tells a intricate and complicated story - we cannot see. Perhaps it is the story-teller in me or just my crazy-ass imagination - but sometimes I think we are characters in someone else's story - being told far away from us. Each with our role and our purpose, however small it may seem. Cogs in a wheel. Threads in a tapestry. And that teller knows how it ends, and why, and what roles we play...and there's nothing we can do but surrender to it, somehow.
BYT said this week - that sometimes all you could do was just surrender, and stop fighting the tide. Place it all in God's hands, and hope for the best. Accept that you are powerless.
And I do feel powerless right now, my friends, wherever you may be.
Do I have any choices, really? So much is ingrained in DNA, and physical makeup.
Anyhow, it occurred to me today - that perhaps the television series The Good Place - at the end, very very end of that series - comes the closest to what I may or may not believe.
Faith at any rate - keeps me going. A little voice in my head, that says, live now, and don't give up. All things are temporary and subject to change.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-17 01:54 pm (UTC)It's great that you are at least able to enough manage your anxiety. It may not be fun but your mother may be right about how it's served you.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-17 05:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-18 02:25 am (UTC)