Furlough

This week I found out that, like many others, my co-workers and I will be taking two weeks of unpaid vacation between now and mid-June. The news managed to be both a shock and not-a-shock at the same time.  I knew that the budget picture was bad and was probably going to lead to some painful places, but I didn’t see this happening now.

Watching my own intellectual and emotional reaction, as well as those of my coworkers, has been illuminating. Fortunately, I have a strong safety net and won’t experience financial pain as a result.  For that reason (and probably because of my personality) my immediate concerns were for the impact on my coworkers and our programs.  We are, after all, a non-profit, which means many of us are working because we care about what we do and it pays  enough — just barely, in many cases — to pay the bills.

Slowly, though, I began to see that the furlough was going to force me to address head-on a question that I had been skirting the edges of for awhile.  How much of my job am I willing to do for free? Knowing I won’t be paid for two weeks, and that I’m not required to show up to work then, but can choose to do so, what am I going to do? How is that decision the same or different from my pattern of working unpaid overtime (to the tune of 10+ hours a week recently) because I’m a salaried employee and that’s what it takes to get the job done? Should my personal opinion of the strategies and decisions that were made by others and brought us to this point have any bearing on my choice now? I understand, more viscerally than before, why furloughs can be a game changer for the psychology of an organization.

I have been mentally making a list for myself of the reasons and situations compelling enough to me that I would show up knowing I wouldn’t be paid.  I’ll probably post something about that in a couple of days.  In the meantime, I’d welcome others comments and thoughts.

 

Pondering

Why is it that my weekend mood shifts so abruptly around 2 PM?

Morning and very early afternoon are sunny, hopeful, happy, full of possibility.  The fade into listlessness starts sometime after lunch and is obvious by mid-afternoon.

I thought maybe it was the fading of the coffee buzz, but I’ve paid attention the last two days, and that doesn’ t seem to be the case.

If 10:30 AM lasted all day, I’d almost be a different person.

 

A Little Too Much Adventure

I’m lucky to work with a group of very social, very inclusive people.  There are always plans afoot for something: a concert, a gallery crawl, swing dancing lessons, or just “going out”.  Some of the things I would do on my own, others take me further out of my comfort zone. But, I always feel welcome and enjoy the sense of camaraderie and the stimulus to my sense of adventure, if nothing else.

Which is why I gamely joined up for the drinks / dinner / concert plan last evening, and truly enjoyed about eighty percent of it. Really, these people are quite fun and funny, and hanging out with them at the bar, over pizza, and while eating gelato is a blast.  It did occur to me at one point, with some surprise, that I was a good 10-15 years older than anyone else there; but what struck me was mostly was that I hadn’t noticed before and that it didn’t seem to make much difference.

Even as the drink refills came more quickly, and the banter became more raucous, it was comfortable and entertaining.  I didn’t have anything to add to the conversation about how to convince a guy who wants a relationship with you that you’re really only in it for the sex and don’t actually consider it worthwhile to spend any time with him otherwise. But it was interesting in an anthropological kind of way.  Our only male reveler admitted to being a bit taken aback to hear his colleagues “talking like guys” and noted wryly that he didn’t think he’d ever dated anyone quite as, uh, efficiency-minded, as some of his female co-workers.

It was fun, and entertaining.

And then it turned on a dime.  All of sudden mellow became melancholy. Where I’d felt warm and included, I suddently felt painfully out of place.  The music at the concert was nice. But I was desperate to escape the crush of bodies, the cigarette smoke, and, mostly, the feeling that I had to pretend to be somebody I’m not.

And insecurities that I thought maturity was getting a grip on came pouring down with crushing force.  There was that sense of being a misfit, someone so out of step with everyone else that the only option is to try to blend into the woodwork and pretend to be normal.  Normal seems to involve relishing being part of the squirming mass of largely- drunken bodies.  Maybe normal even means wanting to have sex with someone you wouldn’t want to have breakfast with.  I somewhat doubt I’m ever going to make it on either of those counts.

Having at least some wisdom, I gently extricated myself from the club-hopping after the concert, and took myself off to bed with a mental pep-talk to the effect that I’m surely old enough to be comfortable with who I am, and to know that there’s more than one acceptable way to be in this world.

And I believe it, too.  With my mind.  But a day later, I’m still kind of shaken by my encounter with the irrational shade of high school insecurities.

 

Happy 2009

Wishing all good things in the new year to my faithful reader(s).

I am feeling unusually pleased with myself and with the world on this sunny morning.  Sometime in the middle of drinking my morning coffee it dawned on me that right now I like who I am; that I think I’m still growing and changing in ways that I feel good about; and that there are many good things in my life that I am happy about.

I appreciate the moment all the more for knowing it may be fleeting. Just a few weeks ago I found myself driving across town one morning sobbing for no apparent reason.  That’s never happened to me before, not even in the midst of depressive episodes; at least then I’ve generally had some idea where the tears were coming from. So, I’ve been watching myself with mild concern, warily considering the possibility that a emotional storm may be brewing somewhere that I’m not fully aware of yet.

But today I feel happy, and relaxed, and gentler than usual towards my own foibles.  And I resolve to enjoy that as much as I can for as long as it lasts.

 

Friday Night in the Emergency Room

About 10:45 last night I wandered downstairs to get a glass of water and say my goodnights.  Not surprisingly, I found my dad in one of his favorite positions: huddled over the space heater “toasting his bones.” He didn’t rouse up at all when I tried to say good night and tease him about how far forward he was hunched.

Or when I gave him a little shake.

Or at the “Dad . . . Dad? . . . DAD!! that came out of my mouth in increasingly shrill tones.

By that time, my mother was getting in on the action. We shook him. We tried putting a cold cloth on his head (mom) and rubbing an ice cube on his skin (me). We used our sternest and most urgent voices to entreat him to wake up and talk to us, to tell us his name, and where he was.  His eyes opened, he clearly knew we were there, and seemed to think he was answering us, but the short syllables that came out were incomprehensible.

It took about 2 minutes for me to decide that we needed to call 911. For the record, I did remember that there is some acronym to remind you what to check possible stroke victims for.  It has four letters.  I couldn’t remember what any of them were or what they were supposed to stand for. But I knew that an unresponsive 73 year old whose verbal abilities seemed scrambled was beyond what I should be trying to diagnose anyway.

Fast forward through about six hours of paramedics, emergency room waiting, tests, and beeping, burping, buzzing monitors and IVs and the bottom line is: he officially had an episode of “fainting or near-fainting.” His standing blood pressure was an impressively low 71/40-something and his magnesium was low. Otherwise, except for the chronic health issues we already knew about, he’s fine.

He doesn’t remember Mom and me picking him up and laying him out on the floor and checking his airway in response to the 911 operator’s instructions. Or the more than half-dozen paramedics filling our kitchen, strapping him to a gurney, and taking him out the front door and down the steps. Or most of the first two hours at the hospital, I would bet.

But, from the time he was with it enough to make his feelings known, he’s been clear about what he thinks: Mom and I overreacted; there was nothing wrong with him; we should have just picked him up and stuck him in the bed for the night; he’s sorry we cost us all a good night’s sleep; knows that we did what we thought was the right thing; he’s sorry that we thought it was necessary.

I understand that he’s embarrassed and resentful. His shots still get to me and trigger self-doubt. Was I too quick to dial 911?  Should I have done something else?  Should I have guessed that he’d gone back to taking his six-month- old prescription for sleeping pills without mentioning it to us? Would it have mattered?

 

. . . and Balance . . . and Swing

I gave up my regular Scottish country dancing habit, and my occasional dabbling in contra dance, nearly ten years ago when a pesky neuroma in my right foot took over my life.  I figured it for a temporary hiatus, but—after struggling for a couple of years just to be able to walk a few blocks without problems—I let fear of a relapse and natural inertia keep me away a long time.

Yesterday I finally got around to getting a pair of the new (to me) “dance sneakers” and I broke them in at a contra dance last night. My feet looked more like boats than my vanity would prefer, but they didn’t tingle and they didn’t swell, or even get sore beyond what a night’s sleep and a couple ibuprofen could take care of.

And it was fun. Oh, I got lost in the figures a couple times, was perpetually dizzy, and had the normal uncomfortable feeling of an introvert trying to be social with a room full of strangers. But more of it came back than I expected, my partners were quick to challenge my “beginner” status, and I can do a mean, fast swing.  (Hence the dizziness.)

Unfortunately, though, I’m still really lousy at the waltz.

 

Fall

I want to like this time of year.  I think of it as one of my favorite seasons: the bright blue skies, the crisp leaf smells, the pleasure of coming into the light and warmth of a house after a walk in the chilly dusk.

Yes, the thinking part of my brain votes a thumbs up on autumn — even on the gray, drizzly kind of autumn we’re having here today.  But, then there’s the other part my brain, the unconscious, animal, and intuitive part.  And that part isn’t so sure. It feels hopeful and energetic in the morning, mellowing out by early afternoon, and becoming downright sluggish by fall of dark.  It doesn’t always see much point in doing much at all after the sun goes down. And sometimes it just looks all the fall things that the mind loves, and shrugs at them with supreme indifference.

 

Of Course

I stayed up too late watching election coverage last night.  Had trouble getting up this morning.  Got out of the shower and toweled off before realizing I hadn’t washed my hair and had to get back in again.  Mentally reviewed my calendar, and decided I could get away with wearing the wrinkled khakis and blouse.  Nearly left my keys on the counter at Starbucks.  DID leave my coat hanging on the rack at the doctor’s office.  Feel like I’m barely coherent.

So, of course today is the day the local TV station calls for an interview. I should have seen that one coming. But I didn’t.

 

A Voting Autobiography

I’ve been mentally taking inventory today.

In my life, I have voted

in person

by absentee ballot

in absentee early voting

in “no excuses” early voting

I have voted with

a lever-operated voting booth

an optical scan machine

a touchscreen machine

I have voted at

a Masonic lodge

a school

a county parks building

the Board of Elections

two churches (Baptist and Greek Orthodox)

a library

One of my goals is to vote at a fire station one day.

My first election memory is the mock election my third grade class had in 1976.  It was interesting, but a couple of points confused me.

1. Why did I have to choose a political party if I could then turn around and vote for whomever I wanted anyway? Adults tried to explain, but it seemed pointless. Finally, my parents mentioned that there were some adults who thought that way too, and that they were called independent. I bucked the system and made a special request to register as an unaffiliated third grader.
2. My vote for Carter was strongly influenced by Sherri, the only African American kid in my class.  She made a stump speech that talked about her parents’ experiences in Georgia, and how they knew firsthand about Carter’s support for civil rights. This was good. I knew about civil rights.  It happened in the ’60s, just like Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.  First some people figured out about slavery being wrong, and they fought a war and got that settled. But the black people still had to sit on the back of the bus for a couple of years, until Rosa Parks came along showed everyone that wasn’t right either.  Civil rights was good. But I was a little confused about how Sherri’s parents could have been around with Abraham Lincoln.

 

The Senator, The Senator, the Senator, and the Governor

We are very proper about how we refer to the candidates in my house these days.  Proper to the point of stilted.  They uniformly get called by their current title plus their surname.

This all started a week or two ago when I called my dad on his tendency to refer to “Sarah” when discussing the political news.  “It bothers me when you call her by her first name like that” I snapped “because it makes me wonder whether you only do it because she’s a woman.”

I was shooting from the hip and it wasn’t a well-thought-out opener, but what I meant by it was pretty much exactly what I said.  I was “wondering” more than concluding anything. For one thing, it seemed kind of counter to my general perception of my dad for him to differentiate based on gender.  For another, I could think of other differences among the candidates — like his respect for their credentials, or the length of time their last names had been sufficient to identify them in any political discussion — that could be reasonable explanations for the discrepancy.  And, even without giving him the benefit of the doubt on that, the worst charge I would have leveled at him was perpetuating inequalities in language and address that subtly undermine the gender equality that he wants to support.  And though this habit of his has been niggling at me for awhile, I never seriously thought that Palin’s sex has much bearing on what he thinks of her credentials or whether he plans to vote for her.

All of which I wound up explaining to him.  Repeatedly.  Because apparently I hit a nerve.  “If you could even think that,” he said after several hours of brooding “for it to even cross your mind — well it makes me wonder what I did in raising you to make you even think I might react like that.”  Me, somewhat incredulous, “Wait.  You mean to tell me that you’re second-guessing 40 years worth of parenting decisions just because I questioned why you call the vice presidential candidate ‘Sarah’ instead of ‘Palin?’”  “Yeah, I guess so.”

Which is how I came to find out more about my dad and the serious thought he gave to raising daughters.  I’ve always considered him the more feminist of my two parents, but I’d never given much thought to the how or the why of that; it just was.  “When you were born” he said “when I knew I had a daughter, I knew I had to do everything I could to help you to understand . . . to believe that you could do and be anything you wanted.  That would be true for any child, but I knew, being a girl, there would be challenges you would face.”

I think he did a pretty good job of it, actually, and after a good bit of discussion I think I reassured him of that.

But he walks on eggshells with the titles now.  It’s all “Senator Obama” and “Governor Palin,” and “Senator McCain” and I have a feeling it’s going to continue that way for awhile.