Holiday Planning – Holiday Peace

B.T. (that’s Before Teddy), I had started on a path to simplify our Christmas celebrations. Christmas has *never* been a source of stress for me, but I wanted to do the holiday a bit different. More Christ, more handmade, more heartfelt, less commercial.

Then Teddy. The year he was born, I actually had already made most of our Christmas presents before he was born. Though I wasn’t anticipating a Thanksgiving baby and  a NICU stay with a Christmas Eve discharge, I was anticipating a baby to be born around Christmas, and I was prepared. I won’t say that the holiday season was peaceful – I seem to recall doing a LOT of crying as I explained to my kids that Christmas might be a little different for them that year – we were planning to have to spend Christmas Day in the NICU. But we got the handmade and heartfelt in there.

But the next year… 2012 was a rough year. I don’t even remember most of the details any more. It’s a blur of surgeries and hospital stays and missing my family and lots and lots of tears and stress. We spent most of August through November in Iowa City and I did ZERO crafting. (well, not true. I did a lot of knitting, but I don’t generally knit for gifts.) I think we mostly bought gift cards for Christmas. I believe I sent Randy out the day before Christmas Eve to buy them. We’re awesome that way. It wasn’t a cheap decision, but it was one that I could live with.

Now I’m getting ready for Christmas this year, and I’m reconsidering things. I have made nearly everyone on our list at least one thing for Christmas (and usually also birthdays) every year since I can remember, until 2012. The 3 or so years before Teddy was born, we switched to all handmade for everyone except our kids, who got a mixture of handmade and store bought. And I can count on my fingers the number of those gifts that were ever used, worn, or displayed by the recipients (not including the stuff made for my immediate family). We’re talking over 100 items made, carefully and lovingly and with the recipient in mind. And I’m feeling like it’s been a huge waste of time.

This is why I don’t knit for most people for gifts. I’ll knit for my immediate family and for other knitters. But that’s about it. But I’m starting to rethink sewing and other crafting, as well. I have limited time each day, and I have begun to think that it is not a wise use of my time – it’s not being a good steward of my time – to spend it creating things that will be thrown away, sold at a garage sale for a quarter, or stuffed into a drawer and forgotten.

I’ve been of two minds about this for a while. On the one hand, there’s the principle of the thing. And there’s also a sense of If I Stick With This Long Enough, Eventually They’ll Appreciate It, Right?  And on the other hand, there’s the thought that I’m royally wasting my time, money, and effort.

Is not the whole point of gift giving to please the recipient? If the recipients of my gifts do not appreciate the value that is a handmade gift… then are we not all better off going a different route? Am I better off using my time to create things that other people *do* want (namely, custom orders through Wallypop and the other things that are selling well), and then using the money from my industriousness to buy something that the recipients might want?

I’m actually thinking so. So this year, while I’ll still be encouraging people to Give Handmade – and I’ll be giving handmade items to those who will appreciate them (either things made myself, or things made by others), I’m actually changing my personal strategy. It’ll mean each person on our list gets less – I still have the same amount of money to spend, and finished items cost a lot more than raw materials when my time is thrown in for free – but hopefully each person on our list will be more pleased with what they do get. We shall see.

–

How do I get Christmas to be stress free? Other than one obligatory event every year, I just don’t engage in the things that tend to be stressful about the holiday. I don’t do a ton of baking, unless I get a baking bug and want to. I don’t do any shopping. Crowds stress me out, and so I avoid them – even before Teddy, I was avoiding crowds. I don’t do holiday parties. Randy’s work stuff is always just for employees, so there’s no office party to worry about. We don’t travel. Until recently, I was able to keep Christmas Day as a day for *just our family,* at home, spending time together. We make a crock pot roast for dinner, we eat refrigerator rolls for breakfast, and we have snack food for lunch, so nobody’s cooking all day. We watch Christmas movies and play board games. We go for a walk if it’s nice, we go for a drive around the neighborhood to look at lights. It’s not stressful. Because I’ve made it that way. 🙂

Act like a whore…

I was posting about this on Facebook this week and thought I’d share my thoughts here, too.

 

This is a really awesome video. Go watch it.

 

It’s interesting to me how this video is extremely popular, and has been shared by a lot of people are are fairly liberal on the political spectrum, though her message is quite conservative. She says when you act like you have no self-respect, you are teaching men to treat you without respect. (“Teaching.” not “Inviting.”) And a lot of people seem to agree with that.

But the idea that when you dress like you have no self-respect, you are teaching men to treat you without respect is wholly rejected by today’s society. In a way, this is why I’m actually pretty surprised that the whole Miley Cyrus episode is generating as much interest as it is. When we tell our young women that no matter what they do, if men don’t treat them like ladies, with respect, etc., it’s the men’s fault because men are dogs and any problems that exist are men’s and men’s alone… then why are we surprised when our young women dance this way and show their goodies to everyone?

Because, NEWS FLASH, Ms Cyrus is NOT the only girl to ever do that. I’ve watched Roosevelt girls in their Jeggings popping and shaking their butts while waiting to cross the street.

 

So I posted this and got the typical liberal response. “I don’t buy that women dressing immodestly are responsible for provoking other people’s behavior. I don’t want my boys to get the message that they are entitled to treat women like crap if they dress ‘slutty.'”

 

Oy.

The whole “you’re saying women need to take some responsibilty for how they dress and act” getting twisted into “you’re saying men can’t help themselves and you’re telling your sons that it’s ok to treat women like dirt” thing is getting REALLY OLD.  This is what happened the last time I dared to mention that women might consider taking some responsibility for how they present themselves (in appearance and in behavior) before complaining too loudly about how men treat them.

The two are obviously completely different things and I’m sorry of certain segments of the population are either unwilling or unable to tell the difference. Perhaps this is a part of the problem.

I would never tell my sons they EVER have the right to treat a woman disrespectfully. But I would never tell my daughter that she can act and dress like a hooker and not expect to be treated as such.

You EARN respect.

Yes, people ought to start out with a baseline level of respect they afford to everyone they meet, but unless we’ve recently moved to Utopia, I don’t think that really happens in the real world. You typically have to EARN respect. (Isn’t that one of the things that’s really at the root of gentle discipline – you earn the respect of your kids by treating them respectfully.) You earn respect by treating others respectfully and by treating YOURSELF with respect. By being someone that people want to respect.

You likewise earn disrespect by behaving like someone who doesn’t want to be respected.

It’s like self-defense courses teach people to not look like a victim. Don’t walk hunched over, staring at the ground, and flashing cash. Should people feel free to rob you if you do this? NO, absolutely not. They don’t have the right to rob you. But consider the message you’re sending when you walk/dress/act like that. You are making yourself an easy target. It’s not placing the blame on you – if you get robbed, it’s still clearly the fault of the robber. But you presented yourself as a target.

If you cross the street against the crosswalk, do cars have the right to run you over? No. If someone runs you over, will they face charges? Probably. But you could have taken steps to prevent your untimely death by simply crossing at/with the light.

By similar token, if men treat you like dirt, cheating on you and talking disrespectfully to you, they clearly have a problem. But are you teaching them to treat you without respect by the way you behave (as though you don’t deserve respect)?

And it’s not even necessarily YOU. We’ve spent GENERATIONS saying that we don’t want to be treated special, we don’t want to be treated with respect, we’re no different from you. We dress to show our boobs and then get mad when men oogle. We dress to show our asses and then get mad when men stare to see if we bend over too far. And we dress like that and act like that and have spent generations training men that way and then we’re mad when they treat us without respect. argh.

No, I’m not saying men can’t help themselves or that lecherous behavior is ok. I still maintain that if a woman walks in the room naked and demands sex from someone she’s not married to, that man ought to have the respect to say, um, no thanks. He absolutely has that responsibility.  But it’s not ALL the men’s fault.

The You’re So Vain Policy.

Gosh, I feel like I just reviewed this. But our You’re So Vain Policy basically says, if I write something and you think it’s about you, then fine, it is. I mean, it probably isn’t. But that hardly matters. If you see yourself in something I write, then it might as well be about you. Whether that’s good or bad. Many times, I’m writing about myself, things I’m wrestling with, but I don’t necessarily say “I” when I write because… hm. I don’t know. It’s a habit I got into, making things more generic and less “me-centric.” Because, seriously, I’m not that interesting of a person. 🙂 I’m not vain enough to think anyone wants to read post after post about me, myself, and I.

So, to be more particular this time. If I have a weekend where I am doing research on medical topics and catching up on my blog reading and I read one too many blog posts speaking authoritatively but giving out mis-information, and I start to get worried for other parents who might not be so savvy with reading medical journals and PubMed and the NIH website, so I write a blog post exhorting people with medical needs kids to please do their own research or at least not base any decisions off of blog posts that don’t give citations, to please not assume that blog writers have any idea what they’re talking about, and particularly to please not believe that something is safe for their child because some person on the internet says it is, and then you read that post and you start grumping around because I’m talking about you… I guess I don’t have a whole lot to say in response to that.

If you think it was about you, then it might as well have been. If you read a blog post about blogs that disseminate incorrect information and see yourself in what I wrote… I mean… I guess… okay, then.

Have you recently (or ever) written a blog post about hand sanitizer being so terrible and never useful, ever? Have you written a blog post claiming all sorts of ridiculous things about immunosuppression? Have you written a blog post stating that there is never any medical reason to circumcise a newborn? Have you written a blog post that denies that vaccines can ever have an upside? Or claiming that vaccines can do things they actually can’t? Have you written a blog post claiming various remedies are safe for pretty much everyone, when they can be quite harmful to various groups of people, both born and unborn? Have you written a blog post encouraging parents to give their kids herbal remedies not generally considered safe for children?  If so, then Hell, Yes, I’m talking about you.

I’d provide links, but I honestly don’t want to give the authors of these posts (which I read with my very own two eyes this weekend) any publicity, and you don’t want to read them anyway.

Jealous?

Something I’ve noticed. It happens often enough that it’s caught my attention and made me curious. Moms of kids with serious health problems start getting harassed – either directly, or indirectly. Sometimes the harassment comes in the form of people claiming that the child in question isn’t actually ill (has happened a few times with kidney kids – these kids don’t tend to look ill). Sometimes it comes in the form of people making fun of the child himself. Sometimes just in the form of people escalating already tense relationships, or starting to make derogatory comments about the parents behind their backs. Sometimes it comes from friends, or former friends, or sometimes from family. Sometimes even from other special needs parents, which is super, super sad.

It’s a phenomenon that interests me because it’s just so… pathetic? Is that the right word? I don’t think so. Is there a word that means slimy and pathetic and sad and horrible all at the same time? While also denoting that the people perpetuating such behavior deserve our pity and need mental help? That word.

I think a certain percent of these things can be attributed to just normal human relations. Well, “normal,” anyway. Some people are just incapable of genuine human behavior, and they would be causing trouble regardless of the health status of the child.

But I think a certain percent is a direct result of the child’s health situation. Either because people have never really outgrown the childhood bully’s need to pick on the kid who’s least likely or able to reciprocate, or… something even sicker.

It’s taken me a while to accept that this is an actual possibility, but I do think it’s true in some cases. It has taken numerous other moms pointing out to me that this could be the case in some situations for me to accept it, that’s how sick and twisted it is.

Jealousy.

Yeah.

Is it possible that some people are jealous of very ill children? Or of their parents?

It seems impossible, doesn’t it? Who would be jealous of a family with a child fighting cancer, or  who’s waiting for an organ transplant, or who has a degenerative illness? Right? It’s sick, right?

But there is a certain personality that I think is capable of that emotion, and it’s not the actual illness they’re jealous of – it’s the attention. It’s the community sympathy, the “fame” that can sometimes accompany these illnesses, the fundraising and the meals and the offers of help. There’s a tendency among some special needs moms, even, to seem like they’re jealous of other special needs families whose kids are in “worse” shape.

 

I feel dirty even typing this.

 

I always feel like I’m a little insecure about Teddy’s issues. They’re not *that* bad, I say, because even though they’re bad – it could be worse. I have two other mamas of medical needs kids who I chat with on a regular basis and we’re all so insecure about our kids, the conversations are often ripe with undeveloped humor. Each of us believes the other person’s kid is WAY worse than our own kid.  I mean, I kind of feel (at least so far… liver/metabolic issue still pending) that at least Teddy’s only got ONE main problem. This means we usually see only ONE specialist and that one person is intimately familiar with most aspects of his health and care. That puts us in a far better spot than a kid with a variety of issues, seen by a variety of specialities, requiring a lot of care coordinating on the part of the parent.  There’s no jealousy, there’s a lot of, you know, “but we don’t have it so bad…” or “I feel like I shouldn’t even complain about this to you” type of conversations.

I *think* that’s normal. I don’t think the jealousy thing is normal. I think it’s, all things considered, not too super common. But, if true, it’s very very very sad and I can’t even begin to understand it.

When authority is wrong

A comment on a blog post of mine got me thinking. The comment was encouraging innocent citizens to submit to a search of their person or property without probable cause if requested by law enforcement, and was quoting the Bible where it tells us to obey the law and those in authority.

And I obviously don’t disagree with the Bible.

But does the Bible really advocate blind obedience to authority?

What about the times when the authorities are wrong?

I was once approached while volunteering at a school and told that I was not allowed to breastfeed my newborn in the empty hallway during classes. She was wrong. I did not stop. I was not rude or snotty about it. I just told her that I had the legal right to do so and I was planning to continue to feed my baby in the empty hallway, where I had gone because I wanted to be sensitive to the (potential and unspoken) concerns of the classroom teacher.

A year or so ago, a woman called 911 (I think in Des Moines, but I could be wrong) because someone was actively trying to break in her window. She told the 911 operator that she had her gun out and pointed at the window and if the man got in before the cops got there she was planning to shoot him. I believe she has that right in every state in the union, and I know she has that right in Iowa.  The 911 operator told her she HAD to put down her weapon. The woman explained that no, she would put her weapon down once the operator told her the police were on the scene, but not a minute earlier. And the woman was right.

How about this one? On our way to Omaha this weekend, we saw a car pulled over by a completely unmarked white SUV with the dashboard lights. It’s the police’s right to do that. It’s also my right to refuse to pull over for that car, and as a woman, if I were traveling alone, I would most definitely NOT pull over. I would put on my hazards, slow down, and pull off at the next populated exit to utilize a gas station parking lot, or call 911 on my cell phone. This PDF from a Maryland PD offers some helpful tips in this situation: http://www.co.ho.md.us/police/docs/tipsonunmarkedcars.pdf     They recommend doing exactly what I said above.

Recently, I have been watching 9/11 documentaries, which brought this subject to mind again. 911 operators, company security officers, and the WTC building operators were all telling people in those towers to stay put. Yes, that’s protocol for a high rise fire. Hundreds of people, whose instinct was to get out of there second-guessed themselves and headed back up to their offices, and ot their deaths, because they decided to obey authority instead of their own good sense.

Even when the authorities are not wrong, doesn’t mean that you have to do what they ask. You have to be calm and polite. On 9/11, police were directing people out on the street to go here, go there, get out of this building and out onto the street and walk, etc. Some of the people were asking why. The police were understandably PO’d at the questioning, but I think the people were right to ask. (Not to challenge – just to ask what the situation was. And if the situation is such that there’s not time to answer, then the policeman doesn’t have to answer.) Citizens are still allowed to make up their own minds. Am I safer in this building (which may be hit by a bomb or missile, but affords protection otherwise), or am I safer on the street (which offers no protection but allows mobility)?

If a policeman comes to my door and asks to search my house because he thinks I make cocaine in my basement, but he doesn’t have a warrant, I don’t have to consent to the search. If he feels he has probable cause and believes he can justify that to a court, he may enter against my will, but I do not have to help him, I do not have to let him in, and I do not have to consent.

That is the law.

I don’t see how obeying the law is against the teachings of the Bible.

“Because I’m not doing anything wrong” is not a reason to allow the search. It’s a reason to refuse the search.

I do see how consistent refusal to exercise our rights results in the gradual eroding of those rights, though, and that scares me. I also see how consistent blind obedience results in the gradual eroding of personal responsibility, and personal decision-making, and that scares me, too.

 

Tolerance

Have you ever noticed that many of those preaching tolerance don’t practice it? Some tend to be quite interested in making sure that others live up to their standards of tolerance, though. But the bugger of the issue is that if you’re going to practice tolerance, then that means that you need to be tolerant of those who do NOT believe the same things you do.

Disaster Preparedness

You know, I’ve been watching some 9/11 specials on TV. One of them is titled The Man Who Predicted 9/11. It’s about a guy who was the head of security for Dean Witter. He assessed the threats to the twin towers and then took steps to minimize the impact to his company. He and a consultant (a friend of his) realized early on that the underground parking (which was unguarded pre 1993) was a major weakness. He developed escape plans, and he drilled the employees – complete with evacuations – about every month.

Everyone hated him.

Then 1993 happened. And he gained the support of management, and most of the employees.

After 1993, he re-assessed the threats against the building and decided that another attack would most likely be aerial. He was, in fact, so concerned about this that he tried to convince upper management to move away from the WTC. Meanwhile, he continued drilling the employees. They began to hate him again. Several of the employees who survived (and most of them did) talked about what a PITA it was.

But on Sept 11, when they saw the other building on fire, they left. When the guards at the lobby told them they didn’t need to evacuate, they left anyway. They left because their security officer had drilled it into them that if there is any danger – any danger – the first thing you do is leave the building.

Apparently, the company had security officers (volunteers, just regular employees) on each floor who were in charge of evacuating their floors. Guess what? They actually did it.

And most of the Dean Witter employees got out.

This was such an interesting program to me, as a former disaster preparedness person. When I was working, one of my interestingly varied duties was developing the disaster recovery procedures for my department (the financial department). This covered not only getting people out of the building (and drilling evacuations), but also where we’d set up operations if we had to leave the building, where we’d get supplies, how we’d get the systems back up and running, computer backups, what files did we need to have copied and kept off site, what supplies we wanted to have in our emergency boxes at the warehouse, etc. It was actually a really fun aspect of my job.

And one that the rest of the company hated. Really. They didn’t want to practice evacuating. They didn’t want to take the time to think through whether there were physical files that they’d really miss if they caught fire. They didn’t want to sit down to figure out alternate ways of getting information – or of how we’d handle reporting requirements if we were unable to get information on a timely basis. I’m not going to pretend that the stakes were as high in our 8 story building. (I often joked that I didn’t personally need an evacuation route, because if push came to shove, I’d just jump.)

But I was struck, while watching this program, about how, because he drilled and drilled for an emergency, the folks in his office knew what to do as soon as they realized it was an emergency. It’s important.

Fun phone call

“hello? Hello? HELLO?”

“um, is Randy available?”

“no, is there something I can help you with?”

“I’m calling today to thank you for your support of veterans…”

(interrupting) “you’re certainly welcome.”

“Did you happen to see us on the news on Thursday?”

“No, I really don’t watch that much TV, was there something you needed from me?”

“well, we had the opportunity to be on the news there on Thursday (going on for a minute about the tv news, without ever once saying which channel or exactly who “we” is).”

“Congratulations! Was there something I could help you with?”

“Well, I don’t see the need to be smart about it.”

“ok.” click.

Are you Delusional? A Helpful Guide

1. Do widely varied people all tell you the same things about yourself (or a situation), yet you’re certain they’re all crazy? For example, if eighteen different people over the course of three years all tell you that you have body odor, but you don’t smell it yourself, do you choose to believe that all eight of those people can’t smell properly? If so, you MIGHT be delusional.

2. Do you twist the facts of a situation on a regular basis to make it seem like you’re more in the right and others are more in the wrong? For example, if someone told you that they thought brown shoes might look better with your outfit than pink shoes, do you instead twist it just a smidge so that when you retell the story (to yourself or others), you have the other person saying that you can’t dress yourself? If so, you might be delusional.

3. Do you state things that are in direct contrast to the obvious facts, but yet you find that you’re baffled when people don’t understand what you’re saying? (For example, have you ever said that it’s not raining when it is raining, and then when people disagree with you, you just can’t even fathom why they would do so?) If so… you just might be delusional.

4. Do you gather people around you who are essentially “yes-men,” agreeing with you and supporting your delusions? (And these people are able to do so because they only hear one version – your delusional version – which makes perfect sense as long as nobody looks too deeply.) Yeah, maybe you’re delusional.

The sad part of being delusional is that, oftentimes, the delusional person doesn’t see it. (um, duh.)

My mom, for example, was extremely delusional, and even though this post is kind of making light of being delusional, it really wasn’t funny at all. But what was even less funny was the realization I eventually came to – she wasn’t lying about stuff. She was telling the truth. She had lied to herself so much and so thoroughly (and was so willing to believe these lies) that she no longer knew what the actual truth was. Oh, sure, deep inside, she knew. But the loud part of her conscious mind just beat that part into submission. She and the truth had parted ways so long ago that I truly believe it was difficult, even painful, for her to remember what the truth was.

I’ve met several people who show somewhat lesser degrees of being delusional, as well. The common thread is the need to lie to oneself about a situation. Being unable to cope with the reality of the truth, the person makes just enough of a shift to turn the situation into one that is easier to cope with.

It’s very sad – very sad.

But it’s also extraordinarily frustrating to deal with.

I know we all have a bit of delusion in us. We choose to see a situation differently than its objective truth. And just like most things, in moderation, a little delusion doesn’t hurt anything (usually).  But when it gets large-scale enough to warrant a series on TLC… then it’s a problem.

Sigh. Wise words that can be hard to take.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…” Matthew 5:43-45

This is hard to do. Trust me. It’s hard to bless those who curse you. (or, one might say, those who speak unkindly of you to others not directly involved in a situation.)

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

This one is Plato and is not hard to do. But it’s hard to trust in. I do the best I can here – I live as best as I can. I’m human, sometimes I mess up. Sometimes my shyness (yes) come across as snobbishness or snottiness, which is unintended. And sometimes I just lapse into decidedly un-Christ-like responses to situations that get me upset. But, generally speaking, I do my best to live so that people will think good of me, not bad.

But it’s hard to trust in that. When you know that someone’s talking smack about you, it’s hard to sit and say “well, I hope people know me better than to believe it.”

I guess I also need to trust that those with whom I am acquainted – or those with whom I will be acquainted in the future – aren’t so gullible!!