Wednesday, May 1, 2024

 Wednesday, May 1, 2024

  I huggled with Elsa before I get out of bed. This routine started with me walking to the other side of the bed and massaging and kissing her. Now, I call her over to lie beside me. We spoon. I rubbed her down, and then we just lay there. It's lovely to have something in my life that tolerates affection. Elsa does more than tolerate it. She's downright promiscuous. She walks up to people we meet when walking and demands to be petted. Nina and Gail depend on it. They greet her joyfully.  Elsa is like her mom, me, friendly.

 Today was Cylin's birthday!! I sent her a voicemail birthday greeting. I said, "You didn't answer because you knew what was in store. Here it comes!" I sang an improvised version of the version Mike and I sang. I sound like an animal in pain, but it's fun. I think some others find it entertaining. But probably not the musically sensitive—like Judy.

   Yesterday was Judy's birthday. I never got a chance to speak to her in person. Today, I asked her if she got my voicemail. She couldn't remember until I reminded her I sang to her. "Oh, yeah. I was so unbearable I turned it off after two bars." Some don't think it's funny. Oh, well. I can't win them all. Note to self: Don't sing Happy Birthday to Judy next year.

    I had trouble last night dealing with my negative voice. When it takes over, it destroys me.   When I woke up around 2 am, it started up. I recognize it now as an addiction. I refused to cooperate with the psychic demand. I grabbed my phone. The Tapping App was up and working again. I put on the sleep tape I like and fell back to sleep. It is so clear that I am deliberately upsetting myself.  This is how I lived when I was a child. I was constantly anticipating not just criticism, but criticism with a percussive delivery. It was like being tasered every time. I have presented my mother's style to people. They all jump and say, "Don't do that to me."  

   I recently criticized Steve Peters's take on the relationship between the prefrontal lobes and the limbic system, identifying humanness strictly with the prefrontal lobe. From his perspective, the limbic system, the chimp brain, is not part of the human being. Nuts to that idea. However, his paradigm helped me to separate myself from the hysteria generated by my limbic system and to control it.  

   People set boundaries in different ways. Some couples live with domains of power. It could be that each has a domain of control and the other has veto rights. I prefer a situation where at least some of the decisions are negotiated at the moment.  

   I thought Mike needed more control than I did.  We'd get out of the car, and I would have to hand him the keys so he was sure I didn't lose them.  I don't think I ever lost the keys. But he needed that to feel better, so I gave them to him. If I treated him like he treated me, he'd take offense. I was treating him like an incompetent. I didn't react badly to his behavior toward me. I knew it was his problem, and he gave me enough love and respect in other contexts that this was a mere blip on the radar. We had a system that honored each others' boundaries, and I knew I could rely on it. We were both raised by mothers who had zero respect for our boundaries. So, being able to ask someone to stop whatever they were doing was paramount for both of us. We could express our needs and have them honored. Honoring them didn't mean giving us what we wanted; it meant treating those needs with respect. 

   What is the opposite of that? When someone criticizes you for wanting something the other person is uncomfortable addressing, that dishonors the need and the person.  Or attacking a person's character; never do that. How's that for a simple rule. Especially don't use character assignation as a response when someone asks you for something you don't want to give. A simple no would suffice. Of course, the nay-sayer has to deal with being a bad person in their own eyes if they buy into the self-sacrifice for others paradigm. Bad paradigm. 

   I prefer a different paradigm. Sacrificing yourself to prove to yourself and others that you're a 'good person' is just as evil as being self-centered. All actions are selfish. Wiping yourself out inevitably backfires. Nah, I can't say that 100%. There are circumstances that demand some form of sacrifice. Usually, they're ones you have to make, or you wouldn't be able to live with yourself.

    I observed some people set boundaries with broad strokes. They never put themselves in a social situation that doesn't afford a quick exit. Suppose they are in a situation where someone makes them uncomfortable. Rather than letting the person know their feelings, they completely cut them out of their life. They can't ask for what they want or say no to what they don't want except through control of the circumstances. It makes intimacy difficult. 

   I finally figured out Adolescent D's problem. He's a perfectionist.  I spoke to him about it today. He said everyone wants to be perfect. He even saw it as a way of making oneself dominant in a social situation. I think perfectionism is a form of mental illness. Anyone who says they should be right at all times will be hoisted on their own petard.  

   If perfect is your goal, you will always be a failure. You'll inevitably fail when you evaluate your accomplishment by the standard of perfection. If your life goals are good enough and better, you can see a positive outcome and success. Perfectionism is always a dead end.

   Remarkably, D listed a number of things he'd handed in lately that were incomplete or not perfect. He also praised himself for the poem he wrote, where the other day, he condemned the people who praised him for doing so over something that was easy.  Wow! Wow! and Wow! If he can make this change, he will be home free. 

  Sandor stopped by. I had his name on my schedule and then forgot about it. He was coming to help me with tech problems, and I had been looking forward to his help. I didn't remember the appointment even when I heard his voice calling from the side door. He said, "Can I come in?"  I actually told him to wait. I wanted to check who it was. Wow! How's that for a mental lapse? This is a new low. 

   However, I see my mind regaining its sharpness when doing the morning puzzles, Wordle, NY Times mini, and Connections. I've heard several times it takes at least a year to recover from anesthesia, and I had eight hours of it.

   Sandor solved my problem on blogger.com. I post last year's update on blogger daily.   I wound up with two blogger sites under the same name. One through Safari has close to 63,000 hits. The one through Chrome has close to 100,000. The one on Safari hasn't had a new entry since June 16, 2022, and people are still reading it. It's one or two here and there and the occasional bot where over 1,000 show up for one day and not again for six months.  The numbers are high because English teachers have discovered it and require their students to read it.  

   The recent updates are on the Chrome site. When I paste the entry into the new post, an image window pops up and doesn't allow me to download the full text. Sandor spent half an hour to an hour trying to figure it out. He found out the problem comes from Microsoft, not Blogger.com. They tried to fix it but couldn't. Sandor found a workaround. I should post the solution on YouTube myself.

   When he finished, he stayed and worked on the church bulletin. We worked together on our own in silence. I love that type of companionship. It is what I miss most about Mike.