Reflections on eating a banana

In my efforts to become more mindful - well, who am I kidding, there's no "more" to it, how about simply:

In my efforts to start becoming mindful...

Okay.  In my efforts to start becoming mindful I tried to pay attention to eating my banana yesterday.  Really think about how it felt and tasted in my mouth.  Where my tongue tasted the banana.  How the banana looked as I peeled it.  How it smelled.  I was really trying to pay attention to what I was doing, and to focus on the task at hand, without letting my mind wander.

After all, how long does it take to eat a banana?  I mean it's not a long and involved process.  People practice mindfulness all day long, focusing on the task at hand, relishing it, savoring it, putting all of their psychic energy into what they are doing at the moment.  Surely I could do that for the length of time it takes to eat a banana.

Nope.  Not a chance.  I made it maybe one minute and then realized that something had caught my attention and there I was, mindlessly munching away, thinking about something else.

Ahem!  Back to the banana, please!

It took several attempts at refocusing, but I did manage to finish my banana, thinking more about what I was doing than I have in a very long time.

This is the book that I am currently reading.  It is a slender little book.  Simple.  It requires no great effort to read.  It is easy to understand.

And I have had to force myself to read and re-read the first three chapters over and over.

Because in my haste to learn this thing they call mindfulness, I realized that I keep speed-reading through the book, trying to finish it rather than trying to read it.

That has been a revelation to me.

My focus in life is more about finishing the task than doing it.  And not simply onerous chores, where I could perhaps be excused for my desire to just get it over with so that I can move on.  No, I realized that, like with the banana episode yesterday, I so want to accomplish everything that I think I need to complete in a day, that I never slow down to relish or savor anything that I am in the process of doing.

I read during meals, meaning my mind is divided between my food and my book or magazine, so neither gets the attention it deserves.  I iron and watch TV.  While I put away Christmas things (a weeks-long process at our house - the goal is to have it all down and away by Valentine's Day!) I don't reflect on the items, their sentiment or sentimental value; nor do I wonder why we always put that thing in that place.  I simply put things away, all the while scanning the room for the next object, my mind already leaping ahead to the next task, calculating the absolute minimum amount of time I have to spend putting away Christmas things so that I can safely say I worked on the task.

My life is being lived in anticipation of the future, which sounds great, but what it really means is that I am throwing away the present at the same time.  Perhaps that explains, at least in part, why my memory is so faulty these days.  I am not paying attention to my own life, and so have very little recollection of what happened to it.

So while the whole eating-a-banana-mindfully experiment was not tremendously successful, it demonstrated that I can live mindfully, but I really have to work at it.  And it also caused me to realize that I am throwing away my life, in a sense, by spending all of my time anticipating and planning for the future, which I never fully experience since I am busy planning for the next future.

Today I will choose some other small and simple task to practice mindfulness.  It's time I paid attention to my life.


Interested in other books about mindfulness?  Try these:  The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems, Mindfulness in Plain English: Revised and Expanded Edition, A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook, and also by Thich Nhat Hanh Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life.

Sick Days

The luxury of a day off.  Why is it that we have to be sick, I mean really, really sick, before we give ourselves a day off of work and chores and responsibilities?  As the man once said, which one of us, on our death bed, will say "I should have gone to work more?" 

Now don't get me wrong, I am all in favor of people having a job.  Work is good for us.  It gives us a purpose.  It breaks up the days.  It means you get taxed so I have a job!  But why is it that we live to work?

I have been fighting a cold all week.  It started last Saturday and here it is, Thursday, and it's still hanging on.  It has me so drained that yesterday at work I literally put my head down on my desk to nap between calls.  I was coughing and sneezing so frequently that I became an instant black-belt practitioner of the use of the "mute" button while talking to the tax payers.  Last night I was so tired when I got home that I fell asleep within minutes of sitting down and still slept all night.  Today I have taken a nap already and it's only 10:19!

Finally common sense asserted itself.  I am sick.  I have sick time accumulated already.  Sick time is to use when you are sick, the idea being you can stay home and get well AND get paid for it.  Pretty nifty idea, huh?  My boss doesn't mind if I take a sick day.  Probably is glad I did, since she doesn't have to listen to me sniffle and snort today.  The government gave me those sick days to use in just such a situation.

So why is it that I felt like a slacker when I called in?

Why do we feel guilty for admitting that we are sick and need a day to recover?

Why do we think that our company will fall apart if we are absent for a mere 8 hours?

Why do we drive ourselves like slaves when we don't need to do it?

Yes, I know that there are folks out there who don't get sick time.  You don't work, you don't get paid.  But most of us do have that available to us and rarely, if ever, use it.  We think we have to be near death to call in sick.

And when I talk about calling in sick Scott always makes me feel like a total slacker.  Don't get me wrong, he NEVER says not to do it.  He encourages me to take the time if I feel like crud.  But somewhere in there he will mention oh-so-casually, that he hasn't missed a day of teaching since 1999.  Oh, except for the one day he took off to go to my dad's funeral.  So that doesn't count, 'cause it was for me, not for him.

Well today I called in sick.  Took my nap.  Sat around and stared out the window at nothing.  Tried to read and couldn't concentrate.  Ditto for playing solitaire.  I did try to get in to see my acupuncturist.  But she's not in on Thursdays.  Drat.  But my massage therapist is, and so I will go see her later this afternoon.  Until then, I'll just sit here and recuperate.  Let my batteries recharge.  Let my body heal itself.

And maybe some day this spring I will take a sick day before I get sick, just to do nothing and enjoy every minute of it.

The Sick Day Handbook: Strategies And Techniques for Faking It; Ferris Bueller's Day Off Bueller...Bueller... Edition (Special Collector's Edition); Probably The Best Music For Relaxation and Meditation

What a night!

I literally crawled home last night.

After a night on the town with Robin, my running buddy, it was the only way I could get to my house.  My car is parked two streets from our house, facing the wrong way, but against the curb - sorta.  But there was no way I was going to walk to my house.  I stood there, wobbling, took a tentative step and fell.  I tried to stand and couldn't even manage it.  I seriously considered the possibility of taking off my shoes to see if I had better luck in my bare feet.  No really, I did.  Eventually I hit upon the idea of crawling.  If you had driven up our street last night you would have been treated to the sight of me crawling on hands and knees along the driveway.  Not pretty, but it worked!  I was able to haul myself to an upright position at the front porch, and use the banister to steady myself as I laboriously climbed the seven steps to my front door.

I could blame Robin, but she really isn't responsible.  So I blame running.

Last night Robin and I went to the premiere of the Hood to Coast documentary.  (which was awesome, by the way)  Afterward we went our separate ways via public transportation.  My train, of course, showed up at the stop 26 minutes after hers left it!  Some folks are born lucky.

By the time I got to where my car was parked, the lot was deserted.  I mean not a car in the place, and it normally holds hundreds of cars.  The late hour was part of it, no doubt.  But 10:15 pm doesn't explain why there was no traffic on the streets, and almost none on the nearby highway.

When I stepped out of the train, the reason for the ghost-town parking lot was manifested.  There was a sheet of ice covering everything.  Nice, glossy, ice.  Shiny.  Pretty.  Slippery.  Deadly.  I started hyperventilating.

The car was parked about 35 yards from the train.  It took me 10 minutes to get to it.  I turned on the engine (and my already belabored heart skipped a beat as the little-engine-that-could refused the first attempt), plugged in my phone to recharge it (just in case), called Scott to get a weather report (it's maybe a little slippery, but fine), and sat to wait for the car to get warm and my nerves to calm down so that I could scrape the windows.

Ten minutes after that, with the car warm on the inside, and the windshield ice-free, I gathered up my courage and put it in "drive".

We all know that it is a good idea to test the road conditions when it is safe to do so, so creeping along at maybe 10 mph I hit the brakes and skidded a la Tokyo Drift.  Okay.  In slow mo.  But you get the picture.

Now terrified beyond words (for those of you who don't know, black ice in Wyoming caused an accident of epic proportions, flipping our pickup and tossing Scott out from under the canopy - I no longer "do" ice) I faced a steep hill with a sharp curve just to get out of the driveway of the train station.  With a lot of praying, a lot of self control to keep my foot off of the brake, and just enough pressure on the accelerator, I fish-tailed up the hill and managed to stop before I skidding into the street.

Made it.

Only 6.5 miles to go.

I won't detail the nightmare of driving on ice-covered streets.  Of chugging along at 15 mph.  Of realizing with horror that because I couldn't get the ice off the rear window, and had neglected to scrape the side mirrors, I could not see to change lanes.  And as I was in the left lane and would need to make a right turn, that was a problem.  (in case you are interested, I did it!)  There were city buses and cars and trucks pulled over and piled up left and right.  Idiots who drove 40.  Folks who thought MORE pressure on the brakes was needed due to the ice.

If you've never been to our house, the last mile is the worst.  Picture a half-mile long, very steep inclined bridge.  Then you get a reprieve of a quarter mile of gentle uphill.  One more steep uphill section where you also make a sharp left turn across traffic followed immediately by a right turn, only now you are heading down hill.  Then just a bit more gradual downhill to our street which, again, begins with a steep uphill.

I made it, white-knuckled with terror, to our street, turned, gently hit the accelerator, and prayed.  My little Suzuki Swift pulled a mere 20 feet up the hill then went from forward motion to treadmill (running in place that is) to gently sliding down the hill.  Backwards.  Oh, and sideways.  I got the car to stop.  And then tried again.  Exact same results. 

Exhausted, both physically and mentally, I said "screw it!" and managed to get back onto the other street where I parked on the wrong side of the road, but in a legal parking section, gathered my things, and headed for home on foot.

All went well until I hit the hill, and then I could get no traction.  If there was something I could hold onto, like the rock wall of the corner house, I was fine.  But the open tundra of the driveway defeated me.  And so I crawled.  A mere tenth of a mile, but ice melts and I soon had soaked jeans and soaked gloves.  Ahhh, the misery!



Warm and dry and the arms of someone I love never felt better.

Hood to Coast, the Movie

It's almost time.  Tonight is the world premiere of the Hood to Coast movie.  Wanna see the trailer?  Go to:  www.hoodtocoastmovie.com  This is what I did last summer.  And what I am going to do this summer.  With 11 other crazy people and 2 nutso drivers.  And 12,000 of our closest friends and competitors.

It was a blast.

Hood to Coast proclaims itself epic, and has done so long before everyone and everything is epic.

It deserves the name.  Imagine running 6 miles.  Now do it again.  And one more time.  All in 24 hours.  You'll run at least one leg of your three in the dark.  And I guarantee at least one leg is uphill.

Sometimes there are so many other runners with you that you feel claustrophobic.  At other times you would swear that you are the only runner on the course.

The course starts at Mt. Hood, at Timberline Lodge, and leg one drops what seems like 6000 feet in 6 miles.  I love leg one!  It ends at Seaside, OR, where the entire team joins the final runner to cross the finish line in the sand.  And in between are 197 miles of pain and bliss, fun and fear, cramped conditions, portapotties, frantic efforts to get to the next exchange, and eating out of a cooler.  There are serious injuries.  Digestional upsets.  Frayed nerves.  And valiant runners.

You cram 6 runners into one van and party all the way to the coast, blister, sunburn, shinsplints, and all.

I love it.

So tonight I relive the agony and the ecstasy, the pain and the glory.

And I bet I run tomorrow morning, even if Portland is calling for sleet tonight!

Hood To Coast  for the soundtrack to the movie

Weather

A friend recently wrote to me and commented on a pattern she has seen in my life:  she postulated the theory that winters are harder on me than she had realized and I tend to withdraw almost to hermitdom in my efforts to retreat from the dreary world around me.  Perspicacious woman that she is, she is correct. 

Winters in the Willamette Valley are sheer torture to me.  According to the Western Regional Climate Center, we get 296.6 cloudy and partly cloudy days a year.  And only 68.4 "clear" days (0/10 to 3/10 average sky cover) per year.  So yes, this part of the world is hard on me.

(I should move in with my sister in Arizona, where they get 222 clear days per year.  This is the sister who sent me a message earlier this week which read "Your weather sucks.  Yuck."  And she is right.  It does.)

Anyway, I am not a mushroom, and I need sunlight.  That is why my cubicle with a window is so precious to me.  The view ain't much, but it's a window to the outside, and when there is any sunlight, I can enjoy it.

Strange as it may sound, cloudy weather on the coast doesn't bother me quite so much.  Maybe it's the constant movement of the water.  Maybe it's the wind.  Maybe I just like the coast.  But I do know that I can go to the coast for a weekend and get rained on and love every minute of it and return to Portland feeling refreshed as if I had spent the same amount of time in Eastern Oregon where it would have been sunny and cold.

But back to my oh-so-wise friend and her observation.  I think she is right.  I didn't used to do the hermit thing every winter, not even the first winters I lived out here.  So maybe it's a combination of the weather and peri-menopause.  Or maybe it's the weight of successive winter dreariness.  Or maybe it's some other yet-to-be-discovered factor.

But I do know that my impending visit to the doc will help.  As will my lovely window view.  And my efforts to get outside more on sunny days.

But I am still going to try to get Scott to move to the desert.


La Crosse Technology WS-7014CH-IT Wireless Weather Station; Oregon Scientific BAR388HGA Wireless Weather Station with Atomic Clock, Black

Drama Gate and the Prodigal Dad

When I am at work people call me and tell me the most amazing things about themselves, their lives, their attitudes, their history, their futures.  Often times I suspect that they don't realize just how much they are revealing.  In their minds they are simply stating a few facts, answering a few of my questions, and receiving the answers they need.

My training is to answer questions about taxability, deductions and credits, and exemptions. We call it the "Drama Gate".  The reason is obvious.  Folks tend to get worked up when they discover that they have to claim all of their bingo winnings.  Or that they can't deduct the cost of paying for their daughter's lavish wedding.  Or that even though he has faithfully paid every penny of child support, and works two jobs to do so, dad can't deduct the kids on his taxes because they spend more than half the year living at mom's house.

Most of my callers are people who are feuding with their babymamas and babydaddies about who gets to claim the kids' deductions.  All that these folks seem to care about is how much money their kids can bring in, and/or how to make a preemptive strike to prevent the other parent from claiming the child.


I know, I haven't lived in their shoes.  I shouldn't judge.  And maybe the callers are light years beyond where they "ought" to be, given their own background and surroundings, but it's difficult not to compare the tears of the one father who mourned the loss of his daughter for nearly half of his life, and the parents who seem to be  interested only in one-upping the other parent in the race to get more.  Or prevent the other parent from getting more than they do.


If I was cynical I would point to these people and say "We are a greedy, vindictive and stupid nation".  Given my job and the folks I talk to, you can hardly blame me if I said that. 

But I realize that I get to talk to more of the folks who are struggling than those who have it all together.  By its very nature, my job will exclude those who can keep their lives in order.  Let's be honest, you don't call the IRS unless things are a mess. 

And if I forget that, all I need to do is remember the man I refer to as the Prodigal Dad.  He is also "The Man I Made Cry".  And then swear.  Almost in the same sentence.
He was calling to see if there was any possible credit for which he was eligible.  Because he is on disability he has no tax liability, and since there are only a limited number of refundable credits, there wasn't much to offer him.  I told him of the one for which I knew he qualified, and then jokingly asked "There's the adoption credit - did you adopt a child in 2010?"

Imagine my surprise when he started to sob and said "No, but I was adopted.  My daughter, who I gave up for adoption 28 years ago, came looking for me."  No doubt embarrassed about his emotional response he muttered my bugaboo of an obscenity.  Then he really was embarrassed and fell all over himself apologizing. 

We concluded the conversation soon after that but since then I have thought of him often.  Especially when I get another parent whose children are giant walking dollar signs and apparently nothing more. 

The Prodigal Dad.  A newly-made first-time father who is still overcome by his second chance.

May we all get that second chance.


Tax 2010/2011 for Dummies; J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2011: For Preparing Your 2010 Tax Return; and for the truly dedicated or masochistic:  U.S. Master Tax Guide, Hardbound Edition (2011)

Harder than I thought it was going to be

This "no saying the F-word" thing is turning out to be much harder than I ever suspected it would be!  So far I have made it into day #4 before I blew it.  Some days I start over more than a half a dozen times.  I am currently on day #2.  Again.  It's looking like getting that "No saying the F-word for 7 days" off my list is NOT going to be the easy one!

So why is this so difficult for me?  I was certainly taught better than this.  Saying "Gosh" or "Gee" would have gotten me a scolding growing up, and if I had ever let loose with an f-bomb in my Dad's hearing, I might not have survived it!

And even after my Dad metamorphosized into Mr. Live-and-let-live, he still frowned on vulgarity and coarseness. 

Profanity was NOT something I grew up doing.

In my early 20s I was reading a lot of Stephen King books, and good old Steve liberally salts his books with the F-word.  And I found myself thinking it a lot.  The cure was simple:  stop reading Stephen King. 

Of course it was my 9-1-1 days that really got me going.  You hear a lot of "F#@%" when taking calls from panicked and angry folks.  And my co-workers weren't much better.  Gradually I picked it up.  There were two memorable moments of my use of that word while at work.  Once was during a call.  I don't remember what the call was about, but the guy was literally using the F-word every other word or more.  It got so bad that I couldn't understand him and I needed to do so.  Finally I said "Sir, if you don't stop saying "f#@%" I won't be able to help you since I can't understand a word you are saying."  Silence on the other end, and then he calmly proceeded to answer my questions with no more profanity.

Lucky for me he took it well.  Profanity is expressly NOT allowed, and every word we said was recorded, so if he had complained to my supervisor, I would have been toast.

The second time was even more spectacular.  I was dispatching on one of the police nets and we had a little flurry of cop #1 decides to go to cop #2's call, while cop #1 goes off the call, meanwhile cop #3 calls in a traffic stop with a license plate and then cop #1 decides to go help out #3.  This makes for a lot of typing really fast, with mostly numbers, so that we have a record of who is going where and when they decided to go another place.  I was frantically typing things in and realized that I messed up one location.  Frustrated, I muttered "f@$&" under my breath.  Seconds later a message flashed across my screen from the sgt - "I heard that"  I nearly died!  My foot was still on the send pedal when I spoke, so every cop in Gresham hear me, as well as anyone with a police scanner tuned to that frequency.  Several other cops sent joshing messages, but I waited in fear for the sgt's call to my supervisor.  If he had complained, I was toast.  Lucky for me, he was forgiving.  But that scared me straight for a long time.

These days I find that I can censor my mouth around family and friends.  It is when I am stressed and/or frustrated that I slip up.  But not stressed over big things.  Silly little things will bring out the F in me.  Yesterday morning as I was driving to meet a friend my ear muffs rolled off the seat and onto the floor.  No biggie.  But I realized that I had just said "f$@#!"  And my response to the realization that I had just blown four days??  You guessed it - I said "F@%#" again.

sigh

You might ask why this is such a big deal to me.  You hear it all the time from all sorts of people these days.  But it still strikes me as coarse and unladylike.  I know.  A silly sounding reason.  But it's the reason that I want to knock it off.  I don't want to sound like someone making an appearance on Cops.  I don't want to sound white-trashy and common.  I want to sound like a mature, grown-up woman with control over her mouth. 

So I am back to finishing up day one and getting started on day two.  Just six more days to go....