It's all in the eyes

There are times when I catch a glimpse of these eyes looking back at me from a mirror and it startles me.  You probably don't see it, but since I've been staring back at these eyes for more than three decades, I notice the changes.  Sparkle.  Dull.  Bright.  Bloodshot.  Baggy.  Lively.  Exhausted.  I see it all.

I have so many blessings.  Some days I can choose to look at all of my busyness as managing an overabundance of blessings.  Many days I am much less optimistic.  No matter how I choose to look at it, I am tired.  Not just long-weekend of college all-nighters tired, but something rivaling the first three months after birthing a newborn tired.  The kind of tired that comes from trying to do it all for too long.

But I'm also tired of feeling this way.  My usual reaction to long stretches like this is to try to fix it all at once.  No patience to do it right.  So this time, I am going to systematically attack it. I am not going to try and get sleep, work less, relax more, exercise more, stress less, and spend more time playing, cooking, and reading, all in one day.  Small goals this time.  Once I accomplish one, I will be better equipped to accomplish another.

I'm starting with rest.  As much as I am tempted to move straight to the other more fun fixes, I am being smart enough to realize it just won't work without rest.  So, next week, I am setting a time to try and leave the office no matter what is left undone, and I am setting a time that my body needs to be in bed every night. Neither of those sound like they should be very hard for most people, but since I have not been able to accomplish either for about four months, they may not be very easy for me.

We all have to start somewhere.  I choose Monday.

Little Victories

My mom is staying with us for three weeks.  It is admittedly some work to arrange the house and schedule ahead of time to accommodate a guest for that amount of time, but it is a welcome change.  It is 1:00 on a Friday, the groceries are put away, a loaf of banana bread that I baked is cooling in the kitchen, lunches are eaten, my son is sleeping, and I'm sitting here with music, a cup of tea, and my blog.  Win!

Visits like this one mean that my camera is never far away from my side.  Since our camera is on a slow, sad journey towards the electronics recycling bin, I imagine I am going to be frustrated with many of the images that I take. But I have started saving for a big-girl camera (one that is so cool it has an extra lens), so I know that better picture-taking days are ahead.  In the mean-time, I am excited to tell you that a picture I took several years ago when the camera was still new has been posted by someone other than my family.

The Norwegian Embassy in Washington, D.C. publishes a quarterly magazine with  articles about current events in Norway and in the US.  For the fall issue, they requested "readers to send in photos of places or things in Norway that inspire them."  Since I have spent a lot of time vacationing in Norway with my family, I had a lot of pictures to consider.  I will save you the suspense, I did not actually get published in the magazine, but they did include my picture in an online gallery of reader-submitted photos.  I'm pretty sure that they probably included any photo sent in that was of good enough quality to post online, but I'll take every little victory I can get.  The photos aren't numbered in the gallery, so I've posted it with this blog for you to enjoy, but I would recommend spending a few minutes on the gallery, there are some beautiful images there, and I'm proud to be included among them.

A different kind of church

Sunday mornings have never been about sleeping in around my house.  Except for instances of college, illness, or vacation, Sunday mornings have been up-and-at-em time for church.  Today, both my husband and I are under the weather.  Not enough to stay in bed, but enough not to bring our germs to church.  Which is good, because since my son is feeling just fine, staying in bed is not an option anyway.

So after breakfast today, I went out for a walk.  It's a sunny, cold morning, enough that I could cover my bed-head with a hat, but not so cold that it was unpleasant. I haven't been exercising much lately because of my work schedule, so it's just as well that I wasn't up for a full jog today.  With some good tunes in my headphones, turned down just low enough to hear the birds, and some alone time to hear myself think, I got to spend some time churching in a whole different way.  I missed seeing my church family today, but sometimes it's good to change it up a little and see things when it's quiet.  Happy Sunday, all.

Power (?)

I took a few minutes in between cooking and laundry, ironically enough, to read an article in the Chicago Tribune today about power.  The article, "Women and Power", explored the definition of power that is met by the women on the Forbes 100 Most Powerful Women list, and whether Forbes' definition of "money, access, and connections," is really the measure we should be using.  Not surprisingly, most, but not all, of the women on the list have more money at their disposal than the rest of us.

Of course, first there had to be some talk about the disparity between men and women, the difference in the standards to which they are held, the corporate boy's club, etc.  I didn't find this as interesting as I did the quotes from a few very intelligent women that were interviewed about what they thought of this list.  First, a woman named Nilay Yapici, who is a "postdoctural fellow in the laboratory of neurogenetics and behavior at The Rockefeller University in New York."  I'm going to go out on a short limb here and guess that this woman is brilliant.  While her point of view that there should be more scientists and researchers on that list is certainly biased towards her profession, I think she is spot on.  She asked, "Who is really powerful: the person who gives the money, or the person who has the idea and makes the discovery?"  According to Forbes it's the money.  But I tend to agree with her underlying point, the people that make it happen aren't given nearly enough credit.  Obviously the research doesn't exist without the funding, and having the position to control where the funding goes gives that power, but shouldn't the brain that solves the problem get some too?

Next they asked psychotherapist Simone Kornfeld, (again, probably pretty smart) about supermodel Gisele Bundchen holding the number 83 spot.  First she noted that while Bundchen may be a very savvy businesswoman, her presence on this list is an acknowledgement of the "reality that beauty is power."  Whether we agree that it should be or not, I would bet that most women who grew up in this American society would have a similar reaction to mine: smirk.....pppfffttt.......shake of the head......sigh.....ain't that the truth.  But where Simone Kornfeld goes next fascinated me.  The article says that having Bundchen on that list "probably provoked the most eye rolls."  She says, "We push women to have beauty all the time, and then we get mad at them when they do."  It's such a sad statement, but I believe she is right.  Girls are pushed to reach an impossible standard, and when 99% of us can't meet it, we respond with envy, anger, gossip, and rejection.

I will admit, I am happy to be nowhere near the top 100 list.  I don't want the power to make the decisions that those people have to make.  I don't want to spend hours on my appearance every day with the worry that I would be caught with a bad hair day.  But of course there is some awe (envy) in watching these power players live out their lives in very public fashion.  I think that I'm mature enough to be done worrying about meeting societal standards that I can't/don't want to meet, but I won't pretend that I don't slip sometimes and fall to the temptation of making fun because the internet makes it easy.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on any of it.

"Click"

We've all had those moments.  The ones where a small smile crosses your face and you know that moment, no matter how ordinary, has been impressed in your memory to last a lifetime.

Like when I was a freshman at Indiana University, on a sunny afternoon during finals week, and a gathering of people ended up on the roof of Briscoe Hall for a study break.  At the moment a few people started to dance around to Brown-Eyed Girl, and everyone joined in just because, I remember stepping back and looking over that scene, realizing it was a snapshot in time I would never forget.  "Click"

Fast forward a few years to tonight.  My son lounged in the bathtub, playing with his boat, singing loudly along to a song called "10,000 Reasons" by Matt Redman.  The refrain goes something like "Bless the Lord oh my soul, oh my soul, worship His holy name.  Sing like never before, oh my soul, I worship Your holy name."  He makes up his own live rendition, but it's close enough.  Watching that cute little dude sing at the top of his lungs with no fear or embarrassment, to music like that, well, that's a moment I want to hold onto forever. "Click"

Dear God, in 15 years when that cute little dude is sauntering in past curfew and giving me attitude, please, please help me remember that moment.

People Watching

For several years I've been in restaurants, catching flying splatters of food and asking my child to sit still and eat, while I enviously eyed those headphone-wearing, laptop-toting, coffee-drinking solo patrons relaxing around me.  Tonight I am one of them, and I have to say, it's just as awesome as I imagined.  These are the types of things I took for granted before I lost the option to finish a cup of coffee while it is still hot.  So here I sit, ignored by the constant flow of people coming and going, and have very wisely switched to decaf.

Even though I am attempting to "escape" for a little while, I notice that I keep getting distracted from my solitary screen-staring by the real life going on around me.  The young couple with a new baby and a two-year-old taking turns eating and parenting, strained smiles and sleepy eyes.  The very serious-looking teenager sitting with her parents and talking about very serious-looking things.  The twenty-something guy who breaks into a grin as he texts or tweets or posts from his cell phone while waiting for his dinner.  The fellow laptop guy who asks me to watch his stuff as he gets up from the table, since I must be much less likely to swipe his things while I am busy with my own.

Then there are those that catch my attention because they hit a little closer to home.  The high-pitched story-telling I can hear from the kindergartner talking to her mom about school.  Watching her bounce around her table and eyeball my coffee as her mom coaxes her back.  I can't help but smile at her, which I'm sure isn't helping mom's case.  I always find it comforting when I see other little people floating around and other parents futilely trying to pull them back, because at least I know it's not just me who can't do it.  I also find it both comforting and sad to hear the exasperated mom in the bathroom with two girls under 6.  Comforting because the words coming out of her mouth are so very similar to the ones I have heard myself using, sad because they are words like stop, no, child's name in an exhausted whine, repeating the same commands in a louder voice in the hopes that maybe it just wasn't loud enough the first time, etc.  The ugly is always uglier when I see it reflected by someone else.  Thankfully it is quickly followed by compassion and a vow to not be the mom that reminds other moms to stop being so cranky.

We could all learn a thing or two from each other.  I raise my cup to you, exasperated bathroom mom, and hope that you can find yourself restfully pondering other people someday soon.