Shake it out

It's that time of year again! The time where we all say smart, snooty sounding things like how we don't DO resolutions when it's really just a supreme lack confidence in our ability to actually KEEP doing our resolutions. Last year we made (I say we because I can't imagine you weren't influenced to at least TRY to keep the resolution I insisted we make together) the resolution to trust our guts about people and I think a lot of us did a pretty good job with that.  I remember thinking more than once at revealing moments with friends both old and new, "Well, I guess now I know all I need to know about you," because I practiced all 365 days this year trusting my gut.

And besides giving up the diet cokes AGAIN and dropping the same 15 pounds we drop together every year, what have we got?  You know I've been working on meditation this year.  I'm very distracted, but I try so that's something and I have learned a thing or two from it.  One of the whole points of meditation and mindfulness is to live in the present moment which doesn't sound that difficult, but is terribly difficult if you have a brain which responds to any shiny thought or iphone ping. Turns out, for me, the whole value of that project has to do with my constant judgement and evaluation of myself and every thought.  If you are meditating and a thought about how you can never focus comes to mind, you simply label that thought - judgement - and sweep it away so that you can return to your meditation.  Simple in theory, but not simple at all when you begin to realize how many of these thoughts you have in a just a minute of yourself and whatever situation you come across.

So that made me think, what if a person could apply that simple practice to the rest of her life? Do you realize that saying things like, "I'm not a morning person" actually creates a prediction for a lifetime of terrible mornings? You did that to yourself. If you only said, "It's morning and I am a person who has to awaken at 6:30" (or maybe something that doesn't sound so much like a robot) then you'd just be a person who gets out of bed around 6:30 and that's neither good nor bad.  Interesting that all the recovery stuff I've read says to live in reality and live it one day at a time - maybe it works because in that world every day is a new day, separate from the others and living in reality usually involves just letting things be exactly and only what they are - morning and a person. And then we try again tomorrow and the next day.

That's something as simple as mornings. What if you applied it to relationships?  If you are living exactly in the present, you're not anticipating all the ways you are likely to screw things up and you're not allowed to bring all your negative thoughts about how you have screwed up before this moment. You don't have to be who you've always been, or even who your ex said you were. How liberating to set those regrets, those limitations, down.  Tricky business, this present living stuff - stripped of judgement and anxiety, but entirely possible I think - and I really hated mornings.

For months I've tried to think of the right way to talk about this song with you and I think New Year's is about the best time there is for it.  I think that Florence Welch from Florence and the Machine could make Happy Birthday rock, but she really knocks it out of the park on "Shake it Out." This song about regret and about how tightly it holds to us (or we to it) speaks to me and I think maybe the best line I've ever heard sung is, "It's hard to dance with the Devil on your back so shake him out."  That's what I'm thinking about resolving this new year. What if you just laid it down - those things that you carry around that cause you not to dance? Those things that bring you shame or fear and keep you from laughing and from possibility?  Could you do that? Could you just look at them in the light, eulogize them on December 31, shake them out and then restart? Burn 'em, bury 'em, shout it out on your therapist's sofa - do whatever you need to do with them, but don't awaken on January 1, 2013 with their influence taking another step with you. It takes work but it's possible.

Now I'm not sure what awful messages you've practiced sending yourself for the last however many years. Maybe you stand in front of the mirror every morning and practice saying positive motivational things, but maybe you do like a lot of people and occasionally give in and listen to a running tape of old failures and regrets, an endless loop of self-fulfilling prophecies created by who knows what, but endorsed and repeatedly enforced by only you.  I'd love for December 31 to be the last day we give those labels any weight in our decisions, our relationships, our future. It really is hard to dance with the Devil on your back. Here's to shaking it out in 2013.

Cluck Cluck

So here's an interesting article which hails the pet chicken Cluck Cluck as a hero for alerting the sleeping family to a fire, but if you read the whole article, you see that their gratitude didn't extend very far since they took off out of the house and left the heroic clucker behind. Thank goodness the firefighters got to him before more smoke did. I'm betting Cluck Cluck is plotting his revenge already.

Weird news: Pet chicken fire alarm

Vultures pick at visitors’ cars in Fla. Everglades

To be added to the list of things which will cause me to lose my mind.

Vultures pick at visitors’ cars in Fla. Everglades

Genius detective

Saturday

Shopping with Kenny at Walmart. Retail environments make him woozy.

Oh what fun it is!

So here we are at the season of giving again and we are all surely noticing how miserably grumpy we all get about actually getting out into the hustle and bustle.  Let's commit in December to being the person who holds a door or lets someone else out in traffic because, let's face it, cutting someone off during that season could end up being the straw that broke the almost bat-shit crazy camel's back and none of us want that.  Gosh, if there's ever a time of year when you do see both the best and worst of people it's the holiday season, isn't it?  We usually start the season of Jesus' birth with a news story or two of a trampling at Walmart's Black Friday sales and just about the time you want to stick your head in the oven over the awfulness people do someone posts a Secret Santa video about some generous person giving money with no strings attached to another person or paying off a layaway account for a stranger.  It's a very emotional time.

Now for a long time, in between those two events, I believed the running commentary in my own head that said you've got to get those holiday cards out and they've got to be more perfect than last year's (no pressure) and you've got to make sure you've budgeted enough so that everyone in your life makes the faces you see in the Publix commercials on Christmas morning when they open presents. You've got to somehow hide the winter 10 (or 15 or 20) you've already managed to absorb by wearing either something flowy and black or distractingly sparkly at the company holiday party in hopes that your husband's colleagues will think you are not the same wife who drank too much and loudly whispered about every asshole at last year's party.  You've got to make one of those gingerbread houses - yes, because if the assault of GLITTER upon your house during the holidays isn't bad enough, let's stick it all together with the glue they call Royal Icing. Also, please decorate everything in increasingly Pinteresty ways and attend all 17 children's plays and musicals which for some reason occur all on the same day and time.  Make sure you do something thoughtful for the mailman, the yard guys, your neighbors, teachers, coaches, ministers. Did you wrap everything with poofy, hand-tied bows? Have you decorated your mantle? And posted a picture of it on Instagram?  What's wrong with you?  And for God's sake make sure while you're doing all of this that you set aside a day where you all decorate the tree together and listen to music loud enough to cover the snarky opinions regarding ornament placement that fly during those special family moments.

Oh what fun it was to experience the holidays with me!

The truth is, I didn't enjoy those moments because (and I know it's my fundamental problem), on a gut level, I resist feeling like I HAVE to do anything and that running commentary was making me the aforementioned bat-shit crazy camel. Thank God it finally occurred to me that I really don't have to any of those things.  A few years ago I started to cut back on the holiday parties and even tried just not sending a card last year.  Imagine my liberation! The world didn't crumble! Not even a tremor!  Fortunately, I'm married to a guy who's just happy when I'm happy (probably because I am pretty loud about it when I'm not happy) and stands beside me in my protest against Eggnog.  I haven't baked at all this season, but I might if I want to.  We managed to decorate the tree with only good will because I happen to LIKE that Olivia thinks all the similar ones need to be placed near each other. Symmetry issues? Bah Humbug.  If I want, I can use BOWS FROM A BAG!!! Did you hear THAT???

So in between the Black Friday Massacre and the celebration of the Baby Jesus' birth, the Barfield family will watch Elf almost every night and giggle when we answer the phone with, "Buddy the Elf. What's your favorite color?" I will feel pressured to wear nothing sparkly and I will eat any piece of fudge I damn well please.  I will respectfully decline any party in which there's a risk I might even soberly call someone a jackass and, just as legitimately, if my pajamas seem like the better option.  Everyone in our house will open some evidence that I thought of them and care for them and when Christopher laughs at Kenny and Olivia it will feel better than even the returning veteran commercials from Hallmark, Folgers and Kodak commercials COMBINED. Check the mail because a perfectly adequate holiday card of my smiling children will be arriving soon without any sort of newsletter.  I had time because I've opted not to do that Gingerbread house this year.

Here's hoping your holiday is everything YOU need it to be.

L

We don't want to miss this!

We've got to see this when it's released.  I'll buy the popcorn. You bring the tissues.