Moments of Change...

I quit smoking when I was 20 years old. The precipitating moment happened when I was working out. I was doing an aerobics video (as we did in the late 80s) and I was really out of breath. Like wheezy out of breath. And I thought to myself that it was ridiculous that at 20 years old I should be out of breath doing a workout and so I was quitting smoking. And I did. It took me a couple of weeks. I limited the time each day that I would allow myself to smoke and took an hour off each end every couple of days. And that was that. Brent was still a smoker at that point and it would be a few more years before he quit completely so there were always cigarettes around if I wanted one, but I was done with it so I didn't. 

I was reminded of this moment today while I was working out. Not that I got wheezy and thought what do I quit now? But because of the trainer. He was telling his precipitating moment for weight loss transformation story. He was living in an apartment on the third floor of the building and was taking his groceries up. He had to stop on the landing at the second flight and rest before finishing. He was 24 and at that moment decided he didn't want to be heavy and out of shape anymore. He will always remember that moment. Just like I will always remember my no more smoking moment. 

The biggest difference between our stories is the way we tell them now. I assume the story he proceeded to tell over the next 20 minutes or so is his standard "this is how I changed" story. Just like if you ask me now or tomorrow or next year or had asked me 15 years ago I would tell you the same story about quitting smoking. Including the amusing anecdotes about the times my brain forgot I quit and went on autopilot looking for cigarettes without me even realizing what I was doing at first. I assume his story is the same story no matter how many times he tells it. So I noticed the glaring difference in them.

Shame. 

I can hear the shame in his voice as he talks about being an overweight kid. I can hear it when he talks about his siblings both being athletes and him feeling like his family would say about him, "well at least he's smart." I can hear it when he talks about needing to take that rest before walking up another flight of stairs. And even when he talks about it taking him over a year to lose the weight he was carrying and how even 10 years on in his journey he still sometimes has two pieces of cake. So much shame.

I have zero shame over smoking. 

I have regrets. Part of me wishes I hadn't. Because I know I did damage to my body. I know my lungs were still developing as a teenager and I prevented them from reaching full potential by smoking. I carry a deep wrinkle on my upper lip that I caused all of those years ago from smoking (the purse of the lips for smoking itself and the damage to the collagen in my face from the smoke). I wish I didn't have those. I wish I had been smart enough to realize that all of the health warnings around smoking were serious and would affect me. But that isn't the same as shame. 

And that's weird because technically what I was doing was not only damaging to my health it was illegal. So you would think there would be shame, but there isn't. It is a thing I did. It wasn't healthy. But I did it. 

Now part of the no shame is that it wasn't all bad. I know, health wise, all bad, but there were benefits. It helped me regulate my mood. Like gave me time to cool off when I was angry. Gave me an excuse to step outside away from crowds when I was overwhelmed with all of the people. It gave me deep conservations with other smokers who also sat outside with me while we smoked. We didn't have phones to stare at back then, so we talked to each other. Smoking was a social activity but it was limited in the number of people involved so it wasn't an overwhelming activity. All of that and I just looked so cool smoking. (Kidding, but not really, we did think it looked cool back then)

But no shame. 

But his story? Full of it.

And I get it. 

Weight is still an issue for me. I've had more Ah HA! This is it! moments that changed EVERYTHING than I can even remember anymore. And sometimes they do. I lose a lot of weight, or I reach some other health goal, and it's all fabulous until I gain it back, or lose it all depending on what I'm measuring and then wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. 

I inherited my unhealthy obsession with weight from my mother and my aunt and I tried not to pass it along to my son, but...

The good news is he isn't obsessed like I am. The bad news is that I still am. I want to be thin and muscular for vanity. I know that's part of it. But I also want to be as healthy as I can be. So that means I need to do cardio to battle back the heart disease that runs rampant in my family. I need to lift weights to keep my muscles and my bones strong to be able to keep moving relatively pain free. And I need to keep telling myself that being heavy isn't a shameful thing. 

We all need to do that. 

We need to do the things that feed our bodies in the best possible way. Healthy foods, exercise, fresh air, adventures. All of those things. And we need to move past the space where we judge ourselves and others over weight. I know some people who are on the outside very thin and fit looking but are actually soft, squishy, cardio averse squiggles. I also have some friends who fall squarely into the "unhealthy" BMI range (a made up measure that we shouldn't pay attention to but that's another story), who you would look at and think, "fat and unhealthy" because we are trained to see people like that. But who would kick your ass on a hike, or at the gym because they are fit. Fat, having it or not, doesn't measure fitness. 

Excess weight can be hard on your body. That's a truth. But that excess weight can be in the form of fat or muscle. Your frame is designed to hold what it is designed to hold. So if you have joint issues with your legs, especially hip to foot, you probably want to make sure you keep your weight a little lower. But more importantly than that you want to keep your muscles strong and your flexibility good. 

If you have a history of heart disease in your family you want to make sure you keep your cardio efforts up. Work that heart muscle, don't let it get sluggish. 

Basically maintain your fitness. 

And if you want extra cake, have it. No shame. 

I say all of that, and I know all of that but it's so hard to really live all of that. And hard not to nag Christopher to do all of that as well. Because I want him to be be healthy. And I know how much harder it gets as you age. And I know he has a family health history that means he has a predisposition to some serious issues that being healthy and fit can stave off. But his choices are his, and nothing I say will really change that. And I so don't want him to get any other message from me other than I really want him to be healthy.

Because that's my shame. And it's bad enough that he inherited my genetic code that says he will have a higher risk for heart disease, high blood pressure, arthritis and a few forms of cancer, he shouldn't have to have the family trait of stealth eating in a parking lot pretending the calories won't count if you never bring the food inside...or hiding a wrapper at the bottom of the trash can because you don't want anyone to know you polished off a whole bag of Doritos while watching Say Yes to the Dress...(allegedly) 

I'd really like to look back in 10 years and say "I remember the precipitating moment well. I was listening to an iFit trainer talk about his weight loss and the amount of shame he had in his story broke my heart. I changed right then and there. Never again did I attach a value judgement to my weight, or anyone else's for that matter."

Wouldn't that be lovely?

And if it happens you can say, I remember that day. And maybe you will join me in the change as well.

Does it Serve You?

Man, how many times have I written this blog? Seriously...if I weren't so lazy I could go back and find at least a dozen I would guess. But still...

Don't do things that don't serve you. 

Just don't.

Why am I writing this blog AGAIN today?

Well let's see...

This morning I was doing some chores around the house and was thinking, "I'm just so much more productive in the morning."

Which is true. I am more motivated. I am more likely to stay moving once I get up and get moving. I can and will tear through a list of things to do by 10 if I start at 7 rather than trying to do the same list starting at noon and trying to finish by...tomorrow. How does tomorrow sound?

It's just the way I am wired. 

Now, why was I having that conversation with myself? Because I keep trying to "balance my schedule." You know spread things out. Do a few chores in the morning. Then read for a little bit. Then a few more chores. Then workout. Then write. Then finish the chores. Then cook dinner. Balanced schedule. But more often than not I get the first round of things done (breakfast, make smoothies, tidy up the kitchen) then sit down to read for my allotted hour and then...well...then it's time to workout and I've skipped the morning set of chores but I really need to get my workout done so I can have my smoothie as lunch before I get to hungry...

And then after I work out and I am drinking my smoothie and sitting down to read for a bit, well, then it's time to rush around and scoop the litter and run the sweeper at least before I start dinner. Skipping all of the other things I had thought about doing. 

But if I never sit down in the morning and I just keep going I've got a good chunk of the things I wanted to get done, done before I ever go upstairs to workout. Sometimes including writing. I can cram a lot into the morning hours because a body in motion tends to stay in motion while a body at rest doesn't really want to get off the couch. (I'm pretty sure that's how that expression goes)

So anyway...I need to stop trying to balance the day and just know that for me an actually balanced day is get the things done that aren't as fun, then sit down to read and enjoy that without thinking about the chores that I am just ignoring at that point. 

Don't do things that don't serve you. 

The second reason I'm writing this blog AGAIN is because of the socks. 

I mentioned on a status awhile ago that I have a sock problem. I love a fun sock. But I can't wear crew socks even though I have a half a dozen (at least) pairs of really fun crew socks. I have thick calf muscles (it's not just my arms that are "muscles like man") But see...I figured that one out. I scrunch them down and wear them anyway. Not for long. Usually just when Brent and I go for a walk, I'll slip those on instead of my workout socks. Yes, I have workout socks. Bombas. They are the best...and the reason for this blog.

See, I wear Bombas for my workouts. They are sized (yay!!) and really comfortable, low enough rise that they don't cut off my circulation, high enough that they don't slip into the shoe never to be seen again. They have this really great arch weave that kind of hugs your foot. Honestly great socks. But not cheap.

Which is where my problem came. 

I tried buying some of their knee highs. The reviews said that they would stretch for wider calves. So I bought some thick ones and some thin ones. Super excited. And well...I don't know whose wider calves they were measuring but they surely weren't mine. 

And I must have bought them at a time I was thinking that somehow my calves would get thinner. I do this every once in awhile. I think if I don't do calf raises at the gym, or lower my weight there at least, they will get slim. Spoiler alert, they won't. They don't even get much squishier. I just have large calf muscles. I have big legs all over. I can kick down a door if you ever need me to. Just so you know. 

But anyway, I have like seven (7!!!) pairs of these Bombas knee highs in my sock box. I will never ever wear these Bombas. But when I look at them I think, oh they were so expensive, and I kept them past the return deadline, I can't possibly just get rid of them. 

Because that totally makes sense. Keeping something because I paid a lot for it. Even if I am never going to use it and it's just taking up space.

Sunk cost fallacy. 

We all fall into it at times. Even when we recognize it and can say, "Oh stop it, that's a sunk cost fallacy." 

So today I pulled them out and put them in the Goodwill pile with a couple of shirts that just don't fit my arms. The clothes are not right for my body shape and never will be, so I needed to get rid of them.

Because putting on a shirt that squeezes my arms makes me feel fat, even though I have strong arms, not fat ones. And even if they were fat why in the fuck would I want clothes that make me feel that way instead of saying, here, let's give you room to be comfortable and accepted. Or whatever kind clothes sound like. Same with socks that don't fit my legs. If they can't be scrunched down to keep because they are fucking funny, then they have to go. 

Don't keep things that don't serve you. 

So I'm writing it down, AGAIN, to remind myself and anyone else who needs the reminder, don't do things, or keep things, or think things, that don't serve you. 

If it doesn't work for you, or fit you, or even worse, makes you feel badly about yourself, get rid of it.

Even if it was a really expensive pair of fancy socks. 

Interpretations...

"Thank you so much. I just..." she trailed off and wiped the tears from her cheeks, "I guess I just didn't realize how much I needed to hear that. What you do is just, well, it's life changing I think." 

"I'm really happy for you. And I'm just grateful I can help." Fran reached over to pat her client's hand. 

"But I didn't SAY THAT."

"I wish more people were able to have someone like you to help them. You know my therapist said I needed to find closure, but I just didn't think it would ever be possible."

"Never give up hope. You never know what is possible until everything is done. And well, maybe not even then."

They both laughed at the little joke. 

"BUT I NEVER SAID THOSE THINGS!"

Fran walked her to the door. "Let me know if you ever need another session."

"I will. I just need to process all of this. And, if you don't mind, I would like to pass your name on to a friend. She lost her husband a few months ago and I think, when she's ready, this might help her as well."

"Of course. I always appreciate referrals. You have a wonderful rest of your day."

"I NEVER SAID ANY OF THAT!"

Fran locked the front door and spun on her heel. "I KNOW you never said that, but what you did say wasn't helpful."

"But she did look fat in that dress and it was a horrible color for her. Who else is going to let her know if I don't?"

"Nobody. Nobody is going to let her know. Because she looked fine. The color was fine, the dress was fine, her weight is fine. She's a beautiful woman. You telling her that you were sorry for being so judgmental was exactly what she needed to hear."

"BUT I DIDN'T SAY THAT!"

"You didn't. But you should have. You should have told her how sorry you were for hurting her feelings and damaging her self esteem. You should have told her that having her was the best thing you ever did. That being her mother was your greatest joy and that it was only fear that made you say those things. Fear that she would be like you. Have your problems. And that it wasn't until gaining the perspective of seeing a whole life that you realized it. And how much you wished you had done things differently and hoped for her forgiveness."

"There are so many things she is doing wrong and I need her to hear them. And you didn't tell her!"

Fran held up her hand, "You should have told her that worrying about your approval wasn't necessary because she already has it. You just wish you could have told her when you were still living."

"BUT I DIDN'T SAY THOSE THINGS!"

"No, you didn't. So I did."

"It's not right, what you are doing. It's just not right. You are putting words in to the mouths of people who cannot defend themselves."

Fran shook her head. "I'm just an interpreter. A conduit. A bridge between those that can hear the dead speak and those that cannot."

"Oh bullshit. You heard me loud and clear and you said something different!"

"I heard you loud and clear and I interpreted what you were saying to speak to the living. You had your chance to speak when you were alive and you, well frankly, what you had to say wasn't worth listening to so you should be grateful for what I did."

"Grateful? For you lying?"

"Think about your life. Think about conversations with your daughter. Have you ever had one that ended with her telling you how much she loved you? With tears of joy and relief in her eyes? With her looking forward to your next conversation?"

"Well, I..."

"That's what I thought."

"It's still not right. I didn't say those things. You are a fake and a charlatan!"

"Read my card. Go ahead."

"Francis Peters: Interpreter for the Dead"

"You spoke. I listened. Then I interpreted. Nothing fake there at all, is there?"

"BUT IT'S STILL NOT WHAT I SAID!"

"But it should have been." And with that Fran blew the salt ring away and the spirit that was her client's overbearing and awful mother went with it. Death sometimes changed them. Sometimes it didn't. But Fran was always good at interpreting what they should have said.  

Ghosts...

I am a ghost hunter.

Wait, no that's not right.

I am a ghost catcher.

No, still not it...

At the end of the month we will be going down to New Mexico to finish the last bit of Ann's estate. She had a safety deposit box that we need to open and empty. That's the last piece. We found the keys when we were cleaning out her house last year but couldn't open the box at that time because we only had a copy of the will. We needed the original will. Which we assume is in the box since we never found it. 

Don't put the original will in a safety deposit box unless your executor is also listed on the box. Just so you know. It makes it much harder to deal with everything.

But now we have been through probate with the copy of the will that we had. We can open the box. 

We had tried to get the bank to open it on Brent's authorization. Just send them the keys and copies of the letter of testamentary and a copy of the death certificate and then they could open it and send us the contents. We had thought it would be easy considering there was a pandemic on so travel was not easy, or recommended. And our first contact at the bank thought it would be easy as well. But her supervisor told her no, we could not do that. Brent had to open it in person. 

So we are flying down to New Mexico at the end of the month, once our vaccines are fully activated, and opening the box. My guess for contents? The aforementioned original copy of the will, his dad's military papers, a copy of his dad's death certificate and a copy of their marriage license. I'm pretty sure that's what will be in there. Possibly her passport if she had one. Nothing earth shattering, and really nothing we need. But...we don't know for sure so we are flying down to New Mexico to open a box. 

Now you are asking why we are both going. Or at least I would be asking if I were you. Why pay for two tickets and a hotel room just to open a box? And I can see it. I mean, we talked about it. If there were more flight options so we could have gotten a longer time between flights it probably would have been a fly down, open the box, fly home all in one day event. And then...well...I probably still would have gone with him. 

Because I'm a ghost shield. That's it.

I am a ghost shield. 

I will serve the same purpose I did when we went to New Mexico last year after Ann died. There was no reason for me to be there. Like, official reason. Brent was the sole heir. He was the name on the paperwork. There was nothing I could do to help with the processes. Except shield him from some of the ghosts. 

I sorted paperwork. 
I dug through drawers and looked in baskets.
I checked bookshelves.
I packed pictures and letters and mementos he might want later. 

He didn't have to. He didn't have to see the stack of letters between his father and his mother from the time Jack served in Vietnam. He didn't have to look at the Christmas letters from his Grandfather. He didn't have to see the things Ann had from her childhood and mementos of the complicated relationship she had with her own mother. He didn't have to see all of the accumulated things that had been tucked in boxes, stored away. He just had to deal with the things that had to be dealt with. 

While I handled the ghosts. 

And I know that I'm a pretty piss poor shield, actually. I only kept away some. But ghosts bleed around edges. The sneak in through the cracks. They are already with us. 

So I couldn't, and I can't keep all of the ghosts away. But I can help. 

We are flying down to New Mexico and the end of the month to open a safety deposit box. One we assume is filled with a handful of important papers and nothing else. 

But just incase there is more...

I will be there. 

Shielding him from whatever ghosts I can.  

Motherless Day....

So here starts the really bad part of May. 

Last Mother's Day was the first Mother's Day after my mom died. It was really hard. I wrote a blog about how I had been tripped up buying Ann's Mother's Day gift. That it shouldn't have been a surprise that it was difficult but for some reason I didn't think about how hard it was going to be. 

I wasn't surprised this year. I knew the onslaught of "Don't Forget Mom!" was coming and we couldn't do anything to stop it. I'm sure it was harder for Brent than it was for me. The firsts are always hard. 

But now here we are. The first Mother's Day where neither one of us has a living mother. Which is bad enough but Mother's Day 2020 is also the last day we spoke to Ann.

You all know I've struggled with the guilt over that conversation for most of the year. She was telling us things she was doing, massage, hair cuts, and I couldn't stay quiet. I told her I just didn't see a way to do massage safely. That if I were still practicing there is really no way I would do it, not right then. (Remember in May last year we were still having a hard time getting PPE for emergency room workers, let alone massage therapists) You cannot give a massage and not be in someone's space. She assured me that she trusted her therapist and was positive she was cleaning well between clients. We dropped it. But she knew that I didn't approve of the choice. 

A few days after that call she started to feel unwell. And then 10 days after the first "I don't feel good" she was gone. And she never called to let us know she was sick. We never knew. We had to reconstruct what happened from messages she sent to people. Not us. Others. 

I felt a lot of guilt. Would she have contacted us if I hadn't said anything? Did she feel like it would have been admitting she was wrong to let us know she was sick? It really ate at me.

Until I realized that the only thing worse would have been not to say anything. If she had told us all of her plans, and I had thought, that isn't safe and yet kept my mouth shut. She still would have gotten sick. And, honestly, the odds are she still wouldn't have called us. She clearly didn't think she was going to go to bed one night and not wake up. If she had thought it was that serious she would have gone to the hospital. She knew she was sick, she was positive she had Covid, but she was going to ride it out and be fine. She was a nurse after all, she knew how to handle things. 

Except, of course, it was that bad, it was worse than she would have realized. And so she didn't call the hospital, she didn't call an ambulance and she didn't call us. 

And if I hadn't said anything I would have been left reeling wondering if she would have taken my warnings seriously. If she would have thought, "Well Denise was a therapist and if she doesn't think there is a way to be totally safe, then there probably isn't." I would have lived with the guilt of silence. 

Now, I know, of course, that it didn't matter. She did what she was going to do anyway. But at least I tried. 

Because that's all we can do in life is try. Silence is worse. She didn't heed my warning, and again, we don't really know if she caught it from the therapist or the stylist or just out running an errand, but we do know that it didn't matter what we said, she had the information and made her own choices. Which is what all of us have done this year.

And always. 

But not saying something when you see a danger? When you see something wrong. When you know it could go really badly, or when you just know better from experience. Not saying something at all is worse. It's evil, in my opinion. You can't make someone heed the warning but to not give it is evil.

That's where I've landed a year later. 

She didn't call because she didn't think she was going to die. Not because I told her to be careful and she wasn't. She just didn't think that Mother's Day 2020 was going to be the last time we spoke. 

Neither did we. 

Another first done. 

 

Oh, Facebook, Stop Trying to "Help"

Looking over my "On This Day" feed the past couple of days and May of last year has disappeared. I knew I had posts, I was doing the ISO POD list. (Isolation Picture of the Day) so I knew if I had started it on May 1 I wouldn't have ended it on May3. And, honestly, unless I've mentioned going on a Facebook fast the odds of me not posting multiple times in a day are slim to none. And yet...no on this day memories. 

Then I realized what was going on. Facebook was helping again. May was rough last year. There was the whole pandemic thing. It was the first Mother's Day after Mom died. I lost a friend around the middle of the month. Then found out another had passed at the end. And then on the same day I found out we lost him we got the call from New Mexico that Ann was gone as well. It was a rough month. So Facebook is doing that thing where it just stops showing the memories. 

There are about six weeks around my Dad's death that they never show me. The month of August 2019 is gone as well. And now it looks like May 2020 will be disappeared as well. 

Which doesn't help.

I have to think that someone at Facebook is a fan of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Which, full disclosure, is one of those things that I hated so much I think people are pulling a prank on me when they talk about how much they love it. Like Jonathan Franzen books and Cirque du Soleil. But that sort of pretend it never happened doesn't work for me. 

In fact it makes it worse. Especially as time goes by. Like I can be rolling along perfectly fine, enjoying the summer sunshine and how lovely June can be and then I notice that my On This Day feed skipped a year. And there is a moment of my brain registering why, Oh yeah...that's the year Dad died. So it actually works to call attention to it instead of hiding it. 

Because that's the hard part of death. It's not the remembering. It's the vacancy. It's the missing parts. It's the hole that is left. 

Posting about my feelings when someone dies is what I need to do to deal with it. And it also gives others a chance to share their memories which is so wonderful. To hear how those that were important to you were important to others is fabulous. And even to get the comfort from those that might not share your grief on a personal level but want to let you know how much they care about you. That's the good stuff of life. The connections. 

By hiding those connections all that is left is the hole. 

I've let Facebook know, multiple times, that I do not want them to do this. I've not asked for them to hide things. I don't like it. They actually have a tool you can use to hide people or memories you don't want to see. It's something you can manage on your own. But they are helpful and will do it for you if you don't. 

It's frustrating. 

Because it's not helpful. Not at all. 

Memories are wonderful. For me even the sad ones are important. Remembering is what keeps them with me. Remembering how much it hurt when they left lets me know how lucky I was to have them at all. 

And Facebook in their oh so helpful ways has blocked all of those memories. 

Yet...

They still have shown Brent and I both a barrage of Mother's Day ads. 

You know...to buy presents for our dead mothers. 

That they are helpfully hiding memories of them dying. 

Maybe so we forget and buy them something?

Therapy Module...

She tapped her pencil against her notebook trying to work out how to fix the flaws in the program.

She would never actually use the pencil or the notebook for any other purpose but this nervous tic which was also fascinating to her. She had gone to a school that did not use any technology. Her parents had thought it would make her mind sharper. Make her more able to think deeply about problems and find solutions. They felt that computers had made people lazy thinkers. 

She wasn't sure if that was true or not. She was, in fact, extremely good at her job so maybe it was. But she also had struggled in college trying to learn to use all of the modern technology that her instructors just assumed she would understand like her peers did. And she also needed a pencil in her hand to work through issues, even when the answers would be lines of code typed on a screen. 

So here she sat tapping a pencil on the edge of notebook trying to figure out a solution to the problem she was pretty sure did not have a solution.

The idea was sound. To a point. But the obvious issues were, well obvious. And then there were the other more subtle issues. 

Joint therapy when the person you need to resolve issues with is dead. 

For years therapists had taught patients to pretend to have conversations with those they needed to resolve issues with and couldn't. Parents or partners that either wouldn't or couldn't participate in the sessions themselves. You just made it up. Had the conversation you needed to have with them in your own mind and tried to move on. 

Which worked for some people, but not for everyone. It was just you making it up, after all, so if you couldn't really bring yourself to believe that this is what they would say then you couldn't really move past the issue. 

But now, with the new personality transfers, you could have a conversation with a simulation of the person you needed closure from and actually hear the words from their own mouths. 

The problems she was facing were the same problems all of the people working on personality transfers were facing. The problem of wanting a personality transfer of someone who passed without doing the brain maps for instance. There was a work around, you took a group of people who knew the subject well and mapped their memories of that person. Then you worked those memories together into a patchwork quilt that should, in theory, be close to the person you wanted mapped. The problem was that everyone who interacted with a person seemed to interact with a different person. Even siblings had completely different memories of their parent's personalities. And sometimes those were conflicting. Which caused the program to crash when asked questions that it could not give a single answer to. Sometimes something as simple as "hello" could shut the whole thing down. 

So that was a problem.

The other one was when the personality mapping was done very effectively without room for any adjustments. When the simulation was too good. 

This worked fine in a lot of spaces. In the programs that wanted to seem just like spending time with a loved one. When you wanted your children to get to know their grandparents, or great grandparents in some cases. They could spend time with the simulations and it would be just like spending time with the living person would have been. Or if not just like, at least as close as you could get without a body.

 But for therapy? It was not a great situation.

Therapy programs needed you to be able to adjust the responses so you didn't get an eye roll instead of an "I hear you." Or an "of course I called you fat, look at you!" instead of "I was always insecure about my own weight and I took it out on you. I should never have done that and I regret it deeply." 

Just like you cannot get closure from some people you cannot get them from some personality transfers.

But how to do the tweaking so it still seemed natural and authentic but wasn't? How did you program a personality to change when the person it was attached to is gone? 

She tapped her pencil and thought. She made a few adjustments to her program and plugged in her headset for another try.

"Mom, hi."

Her mother looked around the room they were sitting in, "Is this virtual? I'm dead aren't I?" Then the look of disappointment, "We told you we didn't approve of these things."

And the program shut down again. 

Tap, tap, tap went the pencil. 

StepMonster...

Her stepdaughters had never cared for her. 

Well that wasn't actually true. To be perfectly fair and accurate, her stepdaughters hated her. 

She had grown to accept it. They were convinced she had been the reason their parent's marriage had crumbled, after all, and so how could they ever soften their stance toward her? It would have been disloyalty to their own mother to do so.

She knew that the marriage had been over long before she ever entered the picture but also felt like most children, even grown ones, tended to idealize their parent's marriages. So of course it wasn't that their parents actively disliked each other and did everything they could to demean and undermine the other, it was because after two years of living in separate rooms and living separate lives their father had fallen for another woman. A woman who had clearly seduced him away. 

And to be fair, she could have been wrong. After all what she knew about her husband's first marriage was what he had told her. Maybe they had been a wonderfully happy couple who would have made it to 70 years of wedded bliss if she hadn't turned up. Maybe he had made up the story of a bad marriage just to justify a drunken mistake on a weekend business trip. Never intending for it to go any further but she was just so beautiful he couldn't help himself? She did like the idea of being irresistible, but had plenty of proof that she was not, so she tended to believe her husband that his marriage was over long before they ever had dinner together. 

Her own children were mostly ambivalent toward her second husband. He wasn't like their father, at all, mostly in that he was still alive, but as her son said to her daughter, "For whatever reason he seems to make Mom happy so I guess we'll deal with it." Not a ringing endorsement but all things considered not bad. 

Their own father had been perfect. Now, to be fair, a large part of that was because he had died when they were 7 and 10 years old in that sweet spot of childhood where parents were still the pinnacle of coolness and wisdom. He had never fallen from that perch. She sometimes envied him. Except for the part that he didn't get to see them grow up to be the incredible adults they had become. But she envied that he remained perfect in their eyes. She had fallen from perfect to horrific and was only just now back to okay really all things considered. 

She understood. Her own father had died when was only two. She had no memories of him that were her own. Just inherited memories from her mother. Who hadn't been married to him long enough for the little interesting things he did to become annoying. And memories from his own mother who was, well, she was his mother. So everything she knew about him was how wonderful he was. The smartest, the most handsome, the best athlete, the most adoring husband and father a girl could have ever asked for. The only negative thing she had ever heard her mother say was that he was a son of a bitch for leaving her to do "all of this" on her own. 

And, again, to be fair, she wasn't supposed to have heard that. Her mother was probably pretty sure she was asleep, and she had only been four so even if she had heard she surely wouldn't remember. But it had been a pretty memorable day. It was the day she had found the most beautiful dress on the floor of her mother's room. Her mother had been sick in bed, which she remembered happened more in those days, so she had taken the dress into her own bedroom to try it on. 

It had two layers to it. The bottom was like glass against her skin. Smooth and cold. She remembered it giving her goosebumps. Over that was another dress made all of lace with what she thought were diamonds woven into the pattern. She had stood looking in the mirror in her room turning this way and that, admiring the way she sparkled. This was the best dress up outfit ever. She never wanted to take it off. 

And so she hadn't.

She wore it while she had a tea party with her dolls. With real lemonade she made all by herself from the bottle of lemon juice and a lot of sugar. And she wore it when she made herself lunch. Peanut butter and grape jelly. Grape jelly is a miracle of science really. It molds itself to the shape of the jelly jar, but then can be spread out flat on the bread, only to fall in jar shaped clumps on your lap while you eat. 

She kept the dress on when she went into the backyard to play. And was still wearing the dress later when she had grabbed some Cheetos from the pantry to snack on while watching TV. She must have fallen asleep on the couch because she didn't remember her mother coming in to the room. She only remembered her yelling. 

She yelled a lot. And there was a part of her that remembered a slap, but that couldn't be right because her mother never hit her. But there was still part of her that remembered a slap. 

That night when she was laying in her mother's bed, supposedly asleep, her mother had been on the phone with her grandmother and she had cried. She had said that she hadn't meant to, that she had sworn she would stop, but it had been their anniversary and it was so hard to face it sober. That's when she said her father was a son of a bitch. And somehow she understood that she was "all of this." From that moment on she tried even harder to be better. To help her mother more. To never be the reason her mother cried on the phone after she thought she was asleep.

Years later when she found out what sober meant it took her awhile to relate that word to her memory of what her mother had said. After all her mother never drank, how could she worry about being sober? It was a few years after that that she realized why her mother never drank anymore. 

But she had been a fatherless child and a husbandless mother. She had also faced it sober due to some strong advice from her own mother. 

Her stepdaughters felt that her father and her husband both dying young was part of why she had seduced their father. Her daddy issues and belief that the world owed her something. She had thought it would be amusing to mention to her husband, who was only ten years older than she, that his daughters had thought she had daddy issues, but knew he wouldn't find it nearly as funny as she did. 

She had thought for awhile that maybe their children at least would be friends. She had had hers young and he had been older when he had his so they were all very close in age. But her own children took exception to having their mother called a "husband stealing whore" and didn't much care for his daughters. And as it's difficult to like someone that doesn't like your child her husband had issue with the outright disdain her children showed to his daughters. They were not one big happy family. 

So she was surprised the day her youngest stepdaughter showed up unannounced at her front door. 

"Oh, Jillian, your father isn't here, he's travelling this week."

"I know. I'm here to talk to you."

And that was how she found out her second husband was having an affair with his first wife. It was not something she had ever suspected and she probably would have never found out since they were quickly remembering why they separated in the first place.

But, to be fair, her stepdaughters hated her. 

Dang It...

I have written on the first day of the month every month so far this year.

Dang it. 

By noticing it that means that I needed to write today. And the first month that I don't I will feel a little badly that I broke the pattern. And I'm pretty sure I will break the pattern at some point. Unless I go to the calendar right now and put in a reminder...which I am totally not going to do. Because there is no real reason to do so...hold on I'll be right back.

So...what should we talk about today? 

I honestly wasn't planning on writing until I checked and well you know...

Hmm....

I tried that new (new old?) heritage flour yesterday that a lot of people with gluten intolerances can actually tolerate. I made biscuits and gravy for dinner. Thinking that if I could handle it then I would have biscuits this morning for biscuit sandwiches which would be super yummy. I mean, I am sure they would have been but...

I am not one of those people that can tolerate the old style wheat grain flour. I ate one biscuit for dinner, I was going to have two, one with gravy and one with jam but stopped to fold laundry after the gravy biscuit and by the time I was done folding laundry I knew that was it. 

It starts like an allergic reaction, I can feel it in my face and my ears. A little itchy, a little phlegmy, congested feeling. That fades after an hour or so and then about 6 hours later the pain settles in. My joints swell. Puffy and painful. So that happens overnight, I feel it in my sleep when I turn over but really feel it in the morning when I get up and my feet hurt to step on and my knees hurt to bend and my hands ache and...then that fades after a few hours as well. First the pain just dissipates, then the swelling starts to go down, the puffiness fades away. 

I had been thinking about eating what I wanted in New Mexico at the end of the month. Sort of a goodbye to my home foods. But that was because I had forgotten (ALREADY) what a bad reaction felt like. I've had a few mild things. Chicken bugs me a bit. Too much sugar can cause a little issue. But they are small. A little puffiness, a little bit of discomfort. So a decent sized reaction was a moment of oh yeah...this is why I did this, because I felt like this EVERY DAY.

Which is another thing. I mean, every day. Every morning was a waiting game for the pain and swelling to go away so I could get on with things. Every morning was a deep breath before stepping out of bed because that first step was going to hurt and there was nothing I could do about it. Except there was. And I did. And then spent some time recently convincing myself that it wasn't really that bad and I could totally choose to do it if I wanted to.

And I mean, yeah, for sure. I could totally choose to do it if I wanted to. But it was that bad. It really sucked. I had just gotten very used to it. And I have a high pain threshold. So I just sucked it up and moved on. This is the way life goes so you deal with it. 

How many times do we do that? Grasp that something sucks, or isn't right, but then convince ourselves that it's just the way life goes so deal with it? And how many times would there have been a solution if we had just looked for one? 

And I'm not going to say easy. Because this isn't actually easy. It's not hard, like OH MY GOSH THIS IS SO HARD, but it's not easy. I am changing the way I cook. The way I eat. The way I live my life. It's a simple change, but not an easy one, if that makes sense? But how many other things in life are simple changes that we just don't do?

Like I hate to exercise. As most of you know. I will never be one of those people who LOVE to work out. But I also love to not be in pain. (See whole diet change) And if I keep moving my joints are much happier. I also love having visible muscles and the only other time I've had them aside from working out was mothering a toddler who was in the 99th percentile for height and weight but still was a toddler so wanted carried everywhere. I had some rocking biceps then for sure. But I'm not willing to go that route again so lifting other weights it is. And I have a family history that means cardio is important to keep my heart healthy. So the very simple answer to all of those issues is exercise. Which brings us back to I hate to do it. So it's not easy, but it is simple. And I do it five times a week like clock work because it's simple. But I also talk myself into doing it probably four times a week because it's not easy. 

There are other things, big and small, that through my life have had really simple answers. Don't do that. Do this. But not easy. I want to do that. I don't want to do this. Simple but not easy. 

I think I'm going to chew on that for awhile and it's going to become a short story. I can see someone with simple/not easy choices forming up right now. I just am not sure what all is going on there.

So, cool, I had no idea what to write about and did it anyway and now I have another piece starting. 

Simple. 

But not always easy.