Friday, May 21, 2021

 Friday, May 21, 2021

 

     I've been working on dropping my shoulders and pulling my shoulder blades together. I took a look at my back in the mirror as I did it. OMG! I created a deep gully at my spine, and the muscles to the outside of the shoulder blades became concaved. It looked weird. I assume it looks this bad because it's on an eighty-year-old body with loose skin to spare. While standing straight is a better look, I'd better not wear a backless dress and be careful when I'm in a bathing suit. 

            At 9 am, I had an appointment with Shelly. I turned to examine my role in troubled family relations. We've discovered our incompatibility as this one person and have gotten to know each other better. I've been pissed at the other person, thinking how could they not know who I was? I never conceal my personality. They do; they admit they do. While they've been keeping distance, I finally set my boundary. With that set and fear relieved, I've been able to look at the relationship with a clearer vision. Fear clouds everything; we've both been scared of each other. Now, I can see that I ignored information about aspects of their personality as much as they ignored aspects of mine.

            I only had one client today, adolescent E. I asked him if he knew that his not expressing his own needs made me uncomfortable. He had learned that from me last week. He was shocked then. He said he had nothing to work on. I may have lost his trust after telling him of my discomfort with his 'withholding' personal style. Better to be alienated from me now and learn that he has choices before getting involved in an intimate relationship he will later regret. We'll see. It's hard to convince people who never think of themselves and their own needs that they do harm. They figure, "If I do nothing, I've done nothing- particularly no harm." Ah, would that it would be, but it's not. As long as we're on the earth as humans, we have an impact. It's inescapable.

            When we recite the confessional in church, we confess what we have done and what we have failed to do. The law even recognizes that as a problem. Chauvin was charged for what he had done; his buddies were charged for what they had not done. Making yourself as small as possible doesn't always go well for anyone, not the person or others around them. The person who shrinks themselves winds up not being there; that creates its own problem.         

      Tommy, my techie, came over to help me. For starters, I had him look at my phone. I got a notification that I was out of storage. I deleted turkey videos that I texted to nieces for their children, all under three, and text conversations. The last problem I had unrelated to the PP video was with a document I got from the engraver.

            I am finally working on getting a headstone for Mike. I went to an engraver. He emailed me mock-ups of the brass plate for the gravestone. It is a copy of Sandor's design for the box, which held Mike's cremated ashes, a beautiful koa wood box made by Sandor's father-in-law. The question is, what size plate would look best on the gravestone.  

            All three choices wound up the same size in the first email I got. The engraver sent another one in three different attachments. When I printed them out, they were still all the same size. Tommy, my techie, figured it out. I was expecting the large ones, 12x 24 and 14 x28, to print out on several pieces of paper. That's not how it worked. The print was larger, and the edges of the document just didn't get printed. I suppose I could go down to Office Max to get it done correctly.

            After addressing those issues, Tommy and I sat down and revised the PP video. This worked out much better than doing it with Damon. I had direct input when working with Tommy and even made some of the changes myself.

            After that was finished, he showed me how he set up the Facebook page. He said I have to write something about my site—another hurdle to leap.

            _____ _____-_____

Musings:

            I'm back on my old horse, sacrifice. I heard someone say the choice is to sacrifice yourself or someone else—a bit extreme. 

            I hate the term because my mother used it as a weapon in my home. My mother was the perpetual victim, running around doing, doing, doing for everyone else. I find people who ego identify as victims or self-sacrificers are among the most dangerous. 

            As I think of it, every decision we make requires sacrifice. Do I want chocolate or vanilla? I can have both, but then I have to sacrifice my health or the amount of ice cream or both. Life is full of choices.  

            Today, parenthood is generally a choice to start with. What do you do for your child or yourself? Do you exhaust yourself to take care of your child? Well, what's your option. How does neglecting your child make you feel? If being a good parent is a personal need, you make your child your priority. To boot, nature interferes and pushes us in that direction. 

            I have an idea, co-creation. The goal is to have the optimal solution for everyone involved. But that requires being as interested in the other person's well-being as your own, and it requires a willingness to negotiate. Sadly, I'm not good at initiating this when others aren't into it. They see me as pushy. Thank God I had Mike. He was as excited by the idea of co-creation as I was. How did I get to be so lucky?