Balancing on Three Legs

Sydney, my cat had surgery to remove her back leg from the hip down just over a week ago. I am relieved to say that it went very well.  Now, missing the leg and with her lower quadrant shaved and sewn up, she looks as though part of her has been stuffed into a suede bag. I stayed home with her on her first day of recovery. She was a bit wobbly but really there was only one mishap. She lost balance while drinking water and fell into the water bowl. I was right there to towel her off and her stunned look went away almost instantly. 

I had planned to use Sydney’s recovery as a metaphor to represent how we were both trying to find balance in our lives. But, it appears, it only takes a cat a day or two to get back up on her feet (albeit only three of them now). While watching her teeter and sway that first day, I was reminded of my never ending quest to find balance in my own life. Work. Creative Life. House. Marriage. Family. Social Life. Physical Fitness. Intellectual Fitness. Finances. Relaxation. Sleep. All of these things are balls up in the air that must be juggled (and thank goodness I don’t have kids to add to the mix) and kept from ever touching the ground. I am not talented at keeping them all up in the air and then I have to retrieve the few that bounce away from me. Add a cold (which I had for a week), veterinary issues (two months, plus) and Greg’s grandmother in and out of the hospital (two weeks and counting) and I have really let some of these balls drop. 

How is it that some people don’t seem to have this problem? I have a coworker who appears to be a genius at maintaining balance in his life. I envy him for his ability to keep in touch with his social network, work on his own artwork, travel, read, etc. , without ever seeming to lose out on any area of his life. I have never been successful at doing this—of giving equal amounts of undue attention to the various important aspects of my life. In fact, I’m many times quite unsuccessful at this give and take. I know that I’m not alone. Something—or more than one thing--always seems to fall off. Is it a matter of needing more hours in the day? I don’t know that this would help. 

Sydney, like other cats, sleeps a good portion of the day (oh, how I could use some of that right about now), and I suppose she isn’t as worried about paying her vet bills as I am, cleaning the house, writing, reading, and being otherwise productive. She does seem to like to relax and play from time to time and these are definitely important items to include in my life as well. Needless to say, I am not buying her self-help book, even if she did have the moxie to write one.  Unless, that is, she were able to write a book on how to get a sufficient amount of sleep. Yes, that one I would buy. Surely, she knows that I am her market for such a future tome, as she is partially responsible for my lack of sleep in the first place.

How does my co-worker maintain such good balance in his life? Does it rest on his ability to get a good night’s rest? Is it possible that his outward expression of balance is all just a mirage for the rest of the world to see and admire? 

My guess is it’s all about starting good habits and sustaining those habits. It’s been said that if you can do something for 20 days (I think that’s the figure, but I could be wrong), the behavior or activity will become a habit. I’m looking forward to reading the forthcoming book, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg, who recently wrote an article in The New York Times magazine (“How Companies Learn Your Secrets”, Feb. 19, 2012) on how companies are using data to figure out consumers habits. It’s interesting to me that companies such as Target can determine your future purchases based on your buying habits. Of course, this information enhances their marketing and is so subtle that many customers are completely unaware of this extra sensory perception.  

If a discount retailer can know me well enough to know that I get occasional migraines that require nothing stronger than Excedrin Migraine, than I should have the ability to have enough insight into my own lifestyle to assess my current habits and form new (better) ones.  Lately, I’ve been in the habit of writing about my cat. I’ll give that a rest for a while as I work on forming some of these new habits.

The Jinx

Several years ago, I went on a work trip to Korea with my boss. The flight was 18 hours and about 17 hours in, my boss turned to me and exclaimed, “This has been a great flight! We haven’t had any turbulence!” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than I was responding, “Are you crazy??!! How can you say such a thing? Don’t you know about The Jinx?” Clearly, he had not grown up with a subtle but ever-present superstition coloring his every thought and deed. But, since I did grow up that way—even though I wouldn’t have characterized it as such for most of my life—I was very sensitive to the matter in which he had just doomed our flight with his remarks.  (For the record, the flight landed successfully.)

If his whole life had been spent knocking on wood and mumbling the Yiddish kinna hurra to keep the evil eye at bay, then the words never would have left his mouth and the mere thought would be squelched as instantly as it appeared. This, I know, from experience. I have lived my whole life this way, separated by a generation from the most superstitious of them all—my grandma Theresa. She had our entire family believing that green was an unlucky color. It wasn’t until I discovered the origin of this superstition, sometime after college, that I could embrace the color green in all of its blue-yellowness (or yellow-blueness, depending). How had she come to determine that the color was unlucky? When she was a little girl she had a pretty green dress and she got sick all over that dress. From there on, the color green was to blame. In other family superstition news, my mother told me to never ever put shoes on a table—it’s bad luck—and, so I never have.  And, I never will.

One day, at the end of a workweek, as my coworkers and I were all saying our farewells, I told one of them to “break a leg” with whatever it was she was doing that weekend. Imagine my surprise when she hobbled in the door on Monday on crutches. “I didn’t mean to actually break your leg,” I joked.  The theater tradition of telling someone “break a leg” instead of wishing them good luck is certainly a variation on warding off the evil eye by saying the opposite of what you mean. I even think this way.  For several weeks after her leg injury, I was dubbed “Teen Witch” after some character in a movie, or was it an after school special? I don’t know because I was too old to get the reference, though I was flattered to be referred to as a teen.  More recently, I used this awful power with a thought—harmless as it was—that, “wow, that light bulb in our porch light has never needed to be changed in the entire time we’ve lived in this house”. Like clockwork, the next day, it burned out. Just from the thought of it. Really. It was my fault—I jinxed it with mere thought.

And, that has made me begin to wonder about this year so far which is off to a kind of rocky start. I can’t recall having the thought “2012 is going to be a great year!” or anything of the sort.  And, as years go, it’s certainly not the worst thus far (knock on wood). But, even if I had a bout of fleeting optimism about the upcoming year, I can’t recall being so inconsiderate as to have not contradicted this with a healthy dose of woe to counteract it.  That would have been irresponsible. I wouldn’t do that.  I know better.  Sure, the logical among us aren’t worried about such things. Good things happen and bad things happen, they rationalize. These same people may even think that one has free will over these things. And, I’m not arguing, but…

…it really doesn’t hurt anyone to knock on wood, to keep shoes off the table, and even to avoid wearing green, if that’s what it takes.  I’m not saying that being superstitious is right for everyone. But, I do have some advice: on your return flight from Korea (which somehow takes 24 hours), don’t have a big meal that includes—delicious, though it may be—a copious amount of spicy cabbage, Korean barbecue, and kimchee (more cabbage!) That could really amount to some bad luck, at least for your fellow passengers.  

Paws for Reflection

A few weeks ago, I became aware of my cat’s mortality. She used up at least one if not a couple of her nine lives.  When we took her to the vet in November, we learned that she has an overactive thyroid for which she is now being treated. And then, out of the blue, at the end of December just three days before Christmas, she had a blood clot in her back leg.

In the middle of the night, she woke us up with her constant cries. She couldn’t put weight on her hind leg and she couldn’t get comfortable. She went up and down the stairs and all over the house, crying in pain.  Rather than having something in her paw or a sprain, we found out that she very likely had a blood clot. So we started treating her for that. The day after Christmas, the blood clot theory was confirmed when her leg swelled up and in response to whatever pain or nerve sensations she was having, she basically chewed through her lower leg to the bone.  She is now on Plavix and doing well—we’re hopeful that we’re saving her leg from being amputated by following a regimen prescribed by the vet. We’re bandaging her leg each day and using honey on alternate days. I’d like to take a moment here to praise the healing powers of honey. The honey, along with the silver sulfadiazine seems to be doing the trick.

Sydney—my cat—is 13 years old and the vet has alerted me that Sydney is now a senior citizen.  This stunned me almost as much as when someone recently referred to me as “middle aged”. Middle aged? Really? That stung and it didn’t help that my response was “What you talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” But, getting back to Sydney… I should also mention that I have been known to describe her as my soul mate and I don’t mean this in an ironic sense—well, maybe a little. I do believe that you can have more than one soul mate and I don’t mean to offend my other cat, Leroy, or my husband for that matter, but Sydney and I have clicked. We have an understanding that transcends your normal cat/person relationship. 

Sydney had belonged to a friend of mine who adopted her as a kitten. He was moving to an apartment and couldn’t bring a pet so he asked me if I would take her. I was reluctant—wouldn’t that mean making a commitment to a living thing, after all? But, when the friend shrugged and said, “Well, I guess I’ll just leave her by the side of the road”. (He denies ever having said this.) I didn’t hesitate to say I’d take her. He brought her over in her carrier on a rainy and dreary fall evening.  He left almost immediately and this didn’t prove to be such a good introduction for Sydney and me. For the next two weeks, she hid in the basement. She ate the food that I put out for her and used her cat litter, but I basically never saw her except for the one time in the middle of the night when I went into the kitchen and saw her glowing eyes staring at me. We mutually frightened one another and she flew from the counter right over my shoulder before running back to the safety of the basement.

I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to have a healthy human-cat relationship, and this was not it. After several hours together playing tennis one humid summer day, I asked this friend to come back to my house to persuade Sydney to come up from the basement and lead a normal life with me. He called her name and she came up the stairs.  He basically passed the cat master torch to me that afternoon, allowing me to pet her and get her to purr before he left. Then, I realized that I needed to take a shower and feared that this would be the end of my newfound feline friendship. But, as I was taking the shower, she sat on the bathmat and meowed until I came out. From that moment on, we were BFFs.  It turns out that Sydney is about trust. That’s her M.O. and now she trusted that I would be there for her.

And, I am. Still. I love this cat to the point that I am now a one-note character who only talks about her cats.  Since her health scare and the subsequent care that we’ve been administering, it’s also more like I just talk about her and not even my other cat, who is so adorable if not a bit fluffy (or big-boned, depending on how you look at it).  Leroy, it turns out is also a senior citizen, though he’s only 9 years old.  Apart from switching their food to the “senior cat” version, they are now both able to get into the movies with a significant discount.  I’m the only one in the household who regularly gets invitations to join AARP, however. I’m not sure how that keeps happening. I’m laughing it off until I’m eligible for the massive perks of being a member.

Until then, I’ll use my cats’ advancing ages as a reminder that we’re all getting up there but that not all of us have 8 more lives to go.  

Traditions

I’ve been thinking a lot about traditions lately. It’s that time of year when tradition is in full force—Thanksgiving through the New Year. I realized that in my husband’s family once something is done two years in a row, it becomes set in tradition. As such, we now host Thanksgiving dinner and have a small get-together with friends at our house on New Year’s Eve. It’s tradition.

Leading up to Christmas, we go to the Mayor’s Christmas Parade, see the lights on 34^th Street with Greg’s parents and his niece and nephew.  I would say that it’s tradition that we see It’s a Wonderful Life but this hasn’t happened each year because sometimes we don’t feel the need for a good cry. I also would say that each year I make latkes for Hanukkah but this isn’t always the case. But still, we have our traditions. On Christmas Eve, we go to Greg’s parents’ house for their annual Christmas Eve party. On Christmas day, we go to his grandmother’s house—she’s about to be 101 next month—and she’s been hosting Christmas day for decades.  On New Year’s Day, we go to Annapolis, to Greg’s uncle’s house.  All of this is the tradition and I’ve come to love it all. 

Then, there is a measly little day in the midst of it all, when I want to be introspective. That day is December 28^th—the anniversary of my mother’s death (she died 14 years ago). No matter how old I become, I still want my mommy and on that day, it’s not that I remember her more or honor her more than normal. I just want to make sure to take the day into account, even if I don’t say a word about it to anyone else.  The traditions that accompany this time of year, have helped me to separate the holidays from what could always be a terrible time of year for me if I were to let it.  It’s only on occasion, now, that I tear up when I hear Christmas music piping in over the sound system at the supermarket.  It used to always be the case.

Time is this corkscrew that moves forward and spirals around all at once. New things happen just as the circle of the calendar requires us to remember the past and to either celebrate it or memorialize it.  The new things this year: Greg and I got married in October after being together for over a decade (we really rushed into things); my brother and his girlfriend had a baby boy just one week ago. I think about how both of my parents would have loved these two events. 

This year’s traditions were the same but different. We were there but I was distracted.  My dear cat, Sydney, who I often describe as my soul mate (yes, I believe you can have more than one soul mate) had a pretty big health scare.  I couldn’t concentrate on all of the fun I was supposed to be having while thinking about her. After a couple of trips to the vet, lots of medication, and constant supervision, she seems to be doing well.  I may not have been fully engaged in the activities on Christmas Eve or on Christmas Day, but after all of this, I would say I’m about ready to see It’s a Wonderful Life right about now.

Free Your Creativity (from How Design)

Advice for Overcoming Unhealthy Creative Expectations

I Love a Parade...But Not Just Any Parade

The Christmas season got its unofficial start in Baltimore this past weekend with the Mayor’s Christmas Parade.  Sure, the monument lighting was a few days prior, but this parade really gets me in the mood for the holidays. Clocking in at nearly 3 hours, the parade did not disappoint—with a couple of exceptions. I missed the Latino dance troupes and the Buffalo Soldiers and I’m hoping that they’ll be back next year and that the warm temperatures will also return.  By now, if you have not experienced this parade firsthand, you are wondering why this parade is so special?  In all of my parade-watching experience, it is the one that delights the most.

As a small girl, my older cousin Emily took me to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and I remember being most enthralled with just being there.  To watch this parade on television now is beyond dull—it’s too polished, too produced. There’s just no edge to it. And, isn’t that what you want in a parade—a little edginess? The other parade of my youth was the Dairy Princess Parade held the first weekend in June each year in my hometown of Canton, NY.  The Dairy Princess Parade lacked in almost all production value.  I haven’t been in years, but the general gist of the parade was a celebration of the local dairy industry.  A big-rig Kraft truck drives up Canton’s Main Street as part of the parade.  Children are pelted with Kraft caramels. But that’s not the only attraction—there are the fire and police departments from municipalities in the area and some groups representing the U.S. military. The last year that I went, 1999—I was surprised to see the inclusion of a steel drum band (they came in from Canada) and a local chapter of PFLAG proudly walking up the street waving their rainbow flags. Of course, the parade’s star is the Dairy Princess herself along with her court.  The farmer’s daughter is elevated to celebrity if only for the day.

The Mayor’s Christmas Parade is a spin-off of the small town parade. It has the beauty pageant winners and the local firefighters and veterans’ groups. It has high school marching bands.  It even has Santa Claus as any good Christmas parade should. But this parade is backed by an enormous helping of irony, self-aware and otherwise. And, that is what makes it so special.

The first year that I encountered the parade was the best of all because it was so unexpected. In fact, we didn’t even know that there was a parade there that day—we just stumbled upon it.  It was an exceptionally warm December day so there was no need for a jacket. The parade opened up with the shrill sounds of a steam calliope as it made its way down 36^th Street (a.k.a. The Avenue). There was a Harley riding Santa, a gigantic cross riding down the street, and Boumis—lots and lots of Boumis, wearing their Shriner’s caps, or dressed as clowns, or riding magic carpets, or ATV vehicles. The most memorable float that year was the POW-MIA float which is so absent from many other Christmas parades. This float portrayed a vignette of a soldier being held prisoner in a makeshift jail while a woman in a rice paddy hat aimed a rifle at him from overhead. There was Underdog Lady. There was also the Boumi Shriner’s child burn victim float in which a real, live Shriner stood behind the wheelchair of a fake boy whose head and legs were wrapped in bandages. The parade ends with Santa in his sleigh, but not that year. That year, the scantily clad Hooters Girls brought up the rear, so to speak.

I wish that every year, the parade could be just that good. It’s a tough act to follow and even tougher if there was snow or frigid temperatures to contend with. But this year—the weather cooperated—and the major components were there. Lest one think that it’s just an opportunity to make fun of the people in the parade—whether it be the strange group of furry mascot wannabes, or the overweight tuba player who really shouldn’t wear white polyester, or the girl on the manger float who was clearly NOT amused—it doesn’t matter.  It’s how we get ourselves in the spirit of the holidays!

By the by, the biggest hits at the parade were these guys--who cleaned up after the horses. Now, that's the toughest job in show business!