Thursday, July 18, 2024

Thursday, July 18, 2024 

 

    I went to bed late, around 10 p.m., and slept till shortly before 5 a.m. That’s late for me on both counts. I did some stinking thinking while waking. I thought of how scared I was to do things I wasn’t confident I could do, like drill a hole in the Schefflera tree trunk and put Round-up in the hole, like chop the heads off encroaching spider plants and put a small amount of either 30% vinegar or Round-Up in that, or trim the shrubs back, or cut back an agave stalk- or revise my tutoring ad and post it, or even repost my ad for the Purewick external catheter system I never used.  

  When I got up, I did my morning gentle seated yoga without too much interference from my wandering mind and walked with Elsa. I take her with me on my morning and evening walks. Each one is at least a mile and a half.  It’s a paved road. Is this too hard on her joints? Will she develop arthritis because of it? Should I walk her less? I looked it up on the Internet. It said limit long walks, don’t let your dog run or chase balls …..!! What!  All those promote arthritis.  Boy, is Elsa ever in trouble! She is a pathological chaser of balls. She could do it for hours.

   I wanted to mow the lawn and shower before my 10 a.m. appointment with the acupuncturist.  But when I checked this morning, I discovered my phone hadn’t charged overnight. Sometimes, I don’t place it correctly on the wireless charging pad. During my morning walk, I didn’t make phone calls or listen to a book on Audible. When I got home, I placed it correctly on the remote charger. Nothing! I found a cord and tried that -nothing. Yikes!  Like the rest of us, I am dependent on my phone. Moreover, I was seven days short of a 365 streak on my pedometer app.  Last time, I was 30 days away from that goal when I fell and broke my elbow and shoulder. Damn!

   The acupuncturist told me she heard of a problem like that but couldn’t remember the fix. Did you have a new update? Not that I knew. Once she left after her 10 a.m. appointment, I headed to T-Mobile to see what could be done. While driving to town, her words echoed in my ears along with Brian’s, “If you’re having a problem with an electronic device, turn It off and restart it.”  I did that at a red light. The phone was plugged into the car. I didn’t see any change. While waiting at T-Mobile, I hooked up the phone to the remote charger I had brought. The plan was to demonstrate that the phone didn’t charge on any connection,  plug-in, or remote. 

The clerk at T-Mobile spent a good five minutes cleaning the phone socket. Then, the charging cord worked while the wireless charger was still ineffective. I waited at the store while the phone charged. I wasn’t confident it would charge after I left. When I got home, I cleaned the back of the phone and the face of the charger with rubbing alcohol. Voila!  Now, everything works.

  I went home looking forward to eating half a bagel with cream cheese and lox before taking a long nap.  I used the bagel guillotine. The Costco bagels are softer than the ones from Zabar’s.  When I slice them with the guillotine., they squish. The Zabar’s bagels are firmer. After I had one with cream cheese and lox, I took a wonderful nap.  I get exhausted quickly.  When I was younger, I felt I rarely got tired. Looking back on it, I see that I did but denied it. Sometimes, I’d nap, but generally, I pushed through. Now, I can acknowledge how drained I get when I do something. Typically, I get energized by good social interactions with family, friends, students, or strangers. Difficult interactions can leave me exhausted. Getting any chore done is energizing.  My mom was like that. She loved to work hard and really throw herself into it.

   I told Adolescent D I looked for him at the check-out counters when I went to Costco the other day. He said he was on cart duty. This raised an alarm. Was he placed on cart duty because he messed up as a cashier’s assistant?  Today, I approached an employee and asked if being put on cart duty was a demotion when the assignment had been as a cashier’s assistant.  No, cart duty was part of that job description.  I was so glad I asked. I was not yet convinced D could function normally in the world.  I was so relieved.

  I think a lot about boundaries between people in interpersonal relationships.  Thinking about it on a larger scale is beyond me. I have no idea how to get politicians to negotiate.  For individuals, it’s who has control, and how it’s achieved is on a continuum. In a good relationship, it shifts. ‘

   Mike liked to say our relationship worked because there was always one adult present. That’s one aspect of control. To accomplish this in a relationship, you need two people who are comfortable accepting they’re not always adults. If one person is not willing or able to admit that, it’s all over but the shouting- and there will be plenty of that.

    There are moments in any relationship where one is entirely dominant. That happened between Mike and me on two counts. One of us had expertise that the other accepted. But there was another circumstance, too.  I was aware of it as I ceded control to Mike. He needed control more than I did in certain areas. Then, I needed it more in others. I don’t mean we did it perfectly, only that we had an underlying commitment to do so. That was enough for me to sustain me through awkward moments. 

   Then there are the moments when we were equals and disagreed. Some think any form of back-and-forth discussion is arguing.  The difference between discussing and arguing is the degree of discomfort I feel. If I feel comfortable, we listen to each other to see what accommodations we can make to satisfy the other. We want more information about the other person’s needs and wants. The details help. We express our thoughts by giving the other as much information as possible so they understand our priorities and what we must have versus what we can do without. 

   I observe couples each work out their systems. If they work for the people involved, they’re all good.  If someone is living in fear, it is not a good system. The exception to that is someone who comes into a relationship needing to be seen as perfect at all times and is devastated by any exception.  People who need to always be right are hoisted on their own petards. Since always being right is impossible, they are doomed to injury. No one can be always right, always the most knowing, always get their own way.  Worse yet, these people see themselves as victims while accusing everyone around them of being at fault.  Drives me nuts! I have never learned how to cope with people like that, probably because it’s what my mom was like.  She was infantile, throwing tantrums whenever I didn’t anticipate her needs, affirm her opinion, or welcome her criticism.