elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

It's only Saturday, how can it be hard already?

Well, it has come to my attention that my feelings regarding a given topic (work, home, finances, you name it) are not necessarily actionable. Having a feeling is not an instruction. There are no clues within that feeling that result in a set of curative actions. In fact, the pseudo-instructions within feelings may be just the opposite, things you should for sure NOT do until the storm passes.

Have compassion for the person who has resolved to feel her feelings completely, yet has also resolved not to behave like a neanderthal. It very much shows how "stuffing" the feelings is such a dependable (yet poisonous) reaction.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:35 AM | Permalink

Several months ago I started a structured program to increase my happiness. It sounds trite now that I lay it out there flatly. A lot has happened in the past few months, much not having to do with the program, and some that did. Being on an intensive program like this is a little like going camping. You're super rough at it for the first couple days. If a couple days is all you have, then you'll never get to stand above the detritus and see what's there. After a couple days, the gear you have starts to have a place, the stove lights a little more quickly, you know where to stash the snacks during the hike. You're not overwhelmed by the details, the medium, the interface.

I'm at the point with the solution program where the first couple "days" is over, and I can just start to understand what it might be like to not think about the tools. Maybe I'm ready to start learning something. Who knows. It's important for me to not have any fixed expectations.

This time of year people are summing up the year and making new resolutions for the next. Being always the inner academic, I don't quite get it. It's just winter time, time to fudge up the date when writing checks, but other than that it's no cause for alarm. It's not like it's Fall or anything. Fall, now that's the time for big life transitions. I know we're expecting one next Fall, first kid in elementary school - public of course - and a chance for a refinance. The financial one-two punch of mortgage and daycare might (MIGHT) be somewhat diminished. And not in a way that, well, we have the same life just with better shoes. No, this these would be opportunity-grade changes. So Dec 31 seems a little dry at the moment.

I bring it up because there is such a desire from everyone to get their act together. January 1 is a crutch to get that started. The program I'm on is a little like having that Jan 1 crutch every week. So what were my new (week's) resolutions? I list them here for your review:

1) Stay on the program - SUCCESS
2) Be more romantic - PRETTY GOOD IF I SAY SO MYSELF
3) Don't feel bad about anything I could possibly eat or drink - SUCCESS BUT HARDER THAN I THOUGHT
4) Face some chronic health problems directly - STILL WORKING ON IT: ACUPUNCTURE, ANYONE?
5) Stay on the program - FAILURE FOR THAT WEEK BUT WHATEVER
6) Relax and enjoy my week “even though” everything - MODERATE SUCCESS
7) Make peace with my wardrobe - OH, YOU'RE LAUGHING? SHOP AT WORLD OF WIDE WOMEN AND SEE HOW YOU FEEL.
8) Take time for myself without strings attached - DIDN'T WORK
9) Don’t go to the starbucks in my building - IN PROGRESS

The first week was very hard to get into. The challenges just for that week are out of control high. The theory is you have to meet these challenges in order to reduce your threshold of need. This means having your act together on many levels, each trajectory you are tracking, mind and body. I felt like I had to have a week retreat on a desert island to make it happen. I finally gave in to my intransigent mediocrity, and made a decision to start. I decided the challenges for the week were designed to be super-hard in order to require us to give up our perfectionism right away and cut ourselves some slack.

The chronic health problem goal sounds scarier than it is. I have the dorkiest toe pain that only happens at night, and all medical experts are baffled. Yesterday I got acupuncture for the first time. We're still in the diagnostic stage. But yeah, I faced the issue directly, and expect to do so again.

The best goal I have come up with is this week's, which is not to go to the starbucks in my building. Coffee shouldn't be that easy to get. I was up to 3 a day, I no longer complained about the pastries (but I ate them without liking them) and became addicted to sugar. Sugar! I'm more of a bratwurst girl, sugar has no place in my daily life. But I rode that elevator every time I didn't know what else to do, which is apparently a lot. It had to stop. I'm not at all boycotting starbucks, I'm allowed to go to any other one in the world. There's one across the street even. Not sure, but there's something about coffee that should be more of a challenge. It should be cherished, time set aside for it, not just slogged down with nary a thought. Can I keep it up? Not sure. But given it's a 3 day weekend I think I'm in the clear.

The thing about resolutions is sometimes you have to continue them on subsequent weeks; they build on each other. Not in a good way either, but in an annoying to-do list kind of way. Does getting acupuncture help me not go to starbucks? Not in the slightest. But one can hope.

I'm again struck by how trite this seems and want to point out this is a small slice of the work I'm doing. There are some other very powerful things I am looking at, but this is probably what's worth posting now.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today, due to excess caffeine, was my first day to stumble out to the studio to test drive the wooden box. I found my papers in our flooding basement - that could have been harder I suppose. Then I decided I needed a folding chair, a pencil (yeah, right), and some CDs. Finally, everything found, episode of House dutifully watched in front of the treadmill, chinese food swallowed to compensate, and I'm off.

Well, except for the huge spider suspended over the door. No problem, I thought, I'll just unlock the door quickly and dash inside.

Well, except for the door's lock being sticky and I have to drop all the things, run into the house for some dish soap, and try again. The whole time the spider is looking at me deciding whether to attack. It's one of those jumping spiders, see. Not the web kind but the even yickier kind that jump.

I do make it in to the studio. It is tremendous having a space like that. I completely take it for granted. I don't know how I can sleep at night knowing it's out there unused unless I'm out there myself personally using it. The sustain pedal on the piano squeaks a little, but no worse than most.

What can I say about my relationship with pianos, piano playing, and music in general. I spent my childhood hating it. I spent my teenage years sneaking it. I spent my college years trying it. I spent my adult years believing in its continued hypothetical presence. Not sure what's next, but having my own at the ready is like taking off the clown suit. It's like having my body back. It feels completely natural even though it is so preposterous that a wooden box would make a difference to a human being, us meat puppets that we are.

The first thing I played was a friend's song, she doesn't know I learned it. Then I tried to play some of my old stuff. Often I did not write down any notes, or the notes were just suggestions and I was to infer the pattern from the ones I bothered to put down. The singing is nowhere, I'm far too distracted by learning my own stuff again. But still, a wonderful time.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:38 PM | Permalink

While watching Lord of the Rings - the first disc of the second movie - my older boy asked "Did this happen a long time ago?" Not sure what he is asking exactly, I conclude he refers to setting and say "Yes." But I was wrong, he asks "Did this happen a long time ago for real?" And a pause, because I want it so to have happened, and truly believe it did happen in the way the myth and legend have a reality more tangible than this one. But I ignore this protest in my heart and answer "No."

One area of the story always conflicted with me until today. This was the triangle of Boromir, Feremir, and their Dad. I call him Wackomir, he has another name. My realization today is this triangle is a reflection of the interior life of a human being. At least all the ones I know, myself included. There is a capable part of you, in that you believe it to be capable, and you set the bar high and expect that part of you to follow through. Then there is the part of you that has never performed to expectation, and you alternate between reforming - setting the bar high for that part and predicting failure, almost joyful at the predictability of the failure - and giving up completely, bitterly, insultingly.

I was conflicted. What is the role of having Wackomir be so gol darn mean to both his kids. Mean to Boromir in resting the world squarely on his shoulders. Mean to Feremir in squashing him to the point of wishing he were dead. What purpose does this meanness serve the story, which could continue fairly well without Wackomir losing it, strategically he was going to die in that battle anyway, he does not necessarily need to die in a crisis of inability to parent himself or others. It's a rough situation to observe, irritating, full of unnecessary anguish to the point where we wonder if the situation itself might be unnecessary.

The race of Man is at risk. A sizeable chink in our already meager defenses consists of this failure of parenting. By parenting I don't mean the actual raising of children. All three of the "mirs" - Feremir, Boromir, and Wackomir - are internal creatures. They represent the soul of Man. Wackomir is the ego. Boromir and Feremir are connected as two sides of the true self, the observant inner observer as third person omnipresent, the membrane between the world outside and the inner body and mind. Their cries and complaints, their roughness with being tortured by their dad is a representation of the world holding fast to truth, the world unwilling to be bent by the mind. Each son plays out differently, like a science experiment where one plant is talked to lovingly and the other ignored or thrown insults. In the story, the entire 3-man triangle is like a microscopic look at the mechanism for the fall of Man.

We thought that we were fighting the bad guys, the Orcs, the fallen wizards. These are external enemies. But it gets worse, like the soldier on the battlefield with cancer. There are internal battles too, once that no less portend our survival. One can win the external, physical battle and still fall to the machinations of internal abuse, ignoring and brutalizing key talents, sacrificing the fragile hope for beauty for the sake of the stronger and more base appearances.

This will continue to occupy my mind as I move forward with my day, the three of these men inside me each playing their role.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

After all, you're just like me, right?

Salad is for the virtuous. Salad is redemption for past sins. Salad is what you eat when you must be punished. Salad is clammy and cold and pale. Even the lettuce sounds cold. Iceberg. Salad is for people who want to fill their plate but really not eat anything at all. Salad has a thousand ways to customize how it tastes and it always tastes bad. The best salad still tastes worse than the worst steak. It's punishment on a plate.

The dad from the Incredibles: "I'll just have a salad." The way we turn to it as if it could help us but it can't. The resolutions. "I'll order salad instead of fries." Then the rebellion. "I'll order fries if I damn well want to." Or "One bite of salad and then you can have this whole cake. The whole thing! Pretty please, dear, you have to digest one real nutrient that does not come from flintstones at least once a month."

Men harbor little hate towards salad because as a rule they don't eat it. If they do eat it, they certainly don't feel any pressure to. And if any men feel pressured into eating salad then certainly that is a deep dark secret known only to their tailor. Women, however, hate salad the way one reasonably hates a supermodel. It/she didn't do anything to you personally, except every time it/she shows up you feel like celebrating in that very special way you celebrate when something very special happens: you speed out of there like your shift just ended at the fotomat. Now, I don't know whether there are women out there who love salad in the way you can love a steak, women who see salad as comfort food, but they must be a dime a dozen the way we order the things and bring them to potlucks. Truth is we all hate them, right, and we're just trying to hold on to something for this particular meal that won't fill us with regret and might enable either the chocolate or the bikini or both, depending on your metabolism.

Salad, in truth, is rarely prepared properly. And by salad I mean a green salad that is meant to be healthy and restoring, not the bacon-pea-mayonnaise thing you're thinking of which is easy to pull off. No, a green salad is a masterwork of subtlety and it's quite possible you have never had a true one. I have developed a few rules trying to cure myself of my hate of salads, and I have to tell you the rules have worked. Granted I don't want more than one a day, but if a few rules of preparation will change your mind from salads being an object of true white hot hate, to something you look forward to, then you might consider. That is, if you have goals in the chocolate or bikini department.

This might only be interesting to men if you are "underground" or else find yourself preparing salads for your female loved one because she can't bear to do it again again.

1) Tomatoes.
- Everyone cuts them too large. The tomato should be cut such that it flavors the lettuce. This means cubed salsa-size or only slightly bigger.
- If using cherry tomatoes, cut them at least once so they are not bursty.
- Never refrigerate your tomatoes. Even leftover ones, wrap in a ziplock and leave in a bowl. Tomatoes hate fridges the way crabs hate microwaves. (What, you're microwaving crab? Might as well microwave money and eat that.)
2) Lettuce
- Reconsider your fondness for iceberg. It is quite tasteless and usually treated with a chemical to make it artificially crispy. I remember this from my burger flipping day so take heed. (Okay, day. One single day. Move on, nothing to see here.) But there's life after iceberg. You can move to butter lettuce as your splurge lettuce, because even though it has no nutritional value either, it is more of an honest leaf.
- Try to include a mix of lettuce in your salad. Herb mix is great, spring mix, spinach, or romaine, and then mix it with your nutritionless splurge lettuce.
- Cut the lettuce to pieces the size of the fork you are trying to eat with. Tip the fork on its side and look at the rectangle the tines make. This is your target size. There is nothing worse than spearing some lettuce with other arrogant salad-y vegis in a drippy dressed salad, and having corners splat at the sides of your mouth during touchdown. Well, there may be worse things, but truly this is one of the reasons you hate salad. If you fix the size problem of your lettuce, you will be amazed at how less irritating it is to eat.
- One exception with lettuce size is if you are making a Cesar, which has its own rules I will not go into here.
3) Moisture
- Every homemade salad tends to be far too wet. This water dilutes the dressing and causes that watery pool in the bottom of the salad bowl. The vegetables should be bone dry before you dress them. This means using a salad spinner, also paper towels, and also examination of the bleed of the tomatoes. Yes, you should be that picky. If the tomatoes bleed too much and you think you want that natural flavor, pour it out and use it as part of your dressing. If you make the same old dressing the tomato juice will make it too acidic. (What, you're not making your own dressing)? One of the big reasons salads are unpleasant is they are too acidic. The acid makes you feel like you need a bowl of ice cream, you know, to balance things out. Salads should be yin and yang together, and not just yin. The water level in the bowl is an indication of too much yin. Kill a tree and dry your lettuce.
4) Fancy stuff
- A salad is an investment in your health. This means it needs some "candy" if you normally resist eating it. You can turn the salad into an entree by adding a protein like chicken or shrimp, or into a full meal by adding croutons. You can have fun with nuts or salad "sprouters" whatever those are. Another favorite is snap peas but always cut to salsa size.
- Protein needs its own dressing. If you are adding protein to your salad, choose the flavors you would like with the meat or beans, like a sesame teriaki or just regular salad dressing. Mix the protein in its own bowl and then top the dry salad with the protein. Especially chicken likes to soak up flavor, and if you try to dress the whole salad the chicken will be dry and the vegis too wet (Because vegis don't absorb). Does this make sense? A protein salad should have layers like a tunafish sandwich with lettuce. Dress the tuna, place it on the lettuce. You don't try to dress the lettuce. If you do, you will not like how the tuna tastes because the lettuce will hog all the mayo. Same thing with protein salads. Protein is a special thing to our taste buds, it needs a stage, like the lead singer. You can't just treat it like a cucumber.
- Adding carbs to your salad is also a big payoff for appeal. The best is to make your own croutons out of last night's baguette. If you're using packaged croutons, make sure you agree with the amount of fat you are getting. Just look at the number. There's nothing wrong with eating it anyway, but a carb is supposed to be a carb, right? To stretch the carbs farther add them after the dressing. But it's less fun that way. Carbs are great backup singers.
5) Salads need dressing
- Restaurants have completely thrown off our idea of what a salad should taste like. They serve undressed greens on a plate with dressing squiggled on top like mustard on a hot dog. It is absolutely impossible to create a true salad taste with attempting to stir things using your measly plate and fork. A salad should be tossed with the dressing in a big bowl with room in it. The tossing sound should make noise. Lots of dressing should end up on the side of the bowl, so be liberal. Then you can add the salad to the serving bowl or plate from the tossing bowl. Presentation counts - it's much more pleasant to keep fingers clean while eating a dressed salad by keeping a clean plate rim etc. (Note: if I am served an undressed salad, I will eat it with my hands like carrot sticks. Then it almost makes sense.)
- If you live with someone who wants a different dressing than you, then take a bowl and toss your own salad and put it on your own plate. They can have their bizarro dressing on top squirt salad if they want. They will never notice how bad it is, because they have always hated salads.
- I agree with Ponzi that the best dressing is Cardinis. But you should experiment with your own creations. You can get a lot of mileage out of adding a small amount of mayo to ordinary italian and blending first before dressing. I like the imported french mayo which expires and costs six bucks. But who wouldn't.
6) Salads should be room temperature.
- There is no such thing as a chilled salad that should be cold. Except maybe jello salad I guess. Next time you make a salad, if you do nothing else, just let everything (even the dressing) sit to room temperature before you eat it. You will be amazed at how much more flavor there is, how your teeth are happy you're not giving them the freeze-out biting into that chunk of tomato. You will like the whole thing.
7) Salads are not an afterthought
- There is no such thing as throwing together a salad to go with dinner. If something must be thrown together, choose broccoli or green beans, some single ingredient cooked thing. Be realistic that making a good salad will take the better part of the dinner prep. You'll burn off at least one glass of wine in the process, maybe two. And so virtuous!

December is a terrible month for salad. This is why everyone bakes cookies instead. The produce has all winterized, everything is expensive, genetically engineered, and tasteless. If you are eating salad because you have to, in self defense because of the cookies, it makes that green bowl of garbage even less appetizing. Admit it, it's been a long time since you looked forward to eating a salad.

What I'm here to tell you is it's not your fault, and really the December salad is quite disgusting. But you can fix it. I've been enjoying salads this entire month, and have avoided baking altogether - although consuming other's baked goods has not fazed me in the least. Done right, eating a salad does not have to be penance for sins committed, but a mouthful of sparkly fun.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:17 PM | Permalink

Peter Jackson was a little boy once, who played under his house with spiders that resembled the one that attacked Frodo. We have the same sort of house, with spiders I have never seen and resist imagining as much as possible. My boys will probably play down there someday, and I will be too frightened to go down and drag them out of there by the leg, dead or alive.

Ostensibly this dirt basement was the scene of caves, tracks, and turrets traveled by trucks, dinosaurs, a toy gorilla, trains, planes, the obligatory plastic army men. PJ probably wished for better lighting. Setting up the scene, it must have been a real treat when a living spider crawled over something he had staged. Almost like a real movie.

King Kong is like watching 3 hours of this. Except less witty than other imitations of other movies made by little boys. One wonders: he could have made ANY movie he wanted. Any one. Why this one, with the dreadful undertones impossible to justify, and the bloody payoff? Yet PJ has a place in my (internal) wall of heroes still. It would take many mis-steps to take him down. Unless he has a similar place for you, this movie will not be worth seeing. I'm sorry. (I am!)

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:36 PM | Permalink

Nigella Lawson has survived too much press. She has survived associations with other homemaker mogul types, as in "She's the British M___ S___ ." She has survived an almost-mention on the West Wing when Leo confesses he has to be home to catch her show. She has survived hosting a TV show in her own home, the loss of a husband, and the public eye throughout.

Years ago I went through a Nigella phase where I had to make peace with my own indulgences. What did I know. But underneath the fabulousness which usually covers up a void of nothingness, I imagined she has already made this peace. But what can one know for sure.

Recently I was reminded of a terrific phrase of hers, which I confess I cannot quote to you directly. She was explaining, in her book "How to Eat" how to prepare your pantry for absolutely anything your week might require. Personally, my pantry might require hosting an impromptu dinner on good weeks, or it might require lazyman's takeout, where you're so lazy you can't even make it to the restaurant to do takeout and you need to cook something even easier than that. It varies. But one thing she said: If you're going to prepare your pantry for any eventuality, you will have to accommodate some waste.

The thing to sink in about that is, this applies to everything. If you want to be responsive to internal and external demands of your time, your psyche, your space, you will find yourself - as you optimize and become more and more responsive - throwing away some of the materials and systems you prepare. You will throw away evenings, say no to events even though you had nothing to take their place, have entire categories of things to contemplate that just sit on the shelf and expire.

So much we do in the critical years is clever to the extreme, people and responsibilities are juggled and if we catch the coattails of true pleasure on the end of a terrific day, we are grateful. The dark side of this cleverness is the waste it produces almost as a mathematical remainder. It is almost inevitable that if you systematically avoid being stressed out, you will have a day where you don't have anything to do at all. Similarly, if you systematically strive for an exhilarating environment, there will be a day when it's all too much and you wish you had signed up for basket weaving.

We start out learning from the world and being responsive to it. Then, as we grow, we decide to frame success as the world responding to us. This is like the person who has a room in their house for every activity and mood. Success is when we can say we made a gesture that was true and meaningful to us, and the world responded to it in kind. The world provided "room" for the gesture. Then, the critical years begin. We have some success, but not in every area. We optimize and work hard, prioritizing, looking to have the dusty corners responsive too. This is where the waste starts to occur, and it shocks the part of us that is still learning. We haven't yet stopped responding to the world, really, and here we are trying to drive the entire ship, building it while driving it every day. We build some things that don't make sense. We create rooms we don't enjoy. That's the wasteful part.

Indulgence is by definition wasteful. It is a statement, saying "The world was not responsive to me," or in later years "The niche I carved out for myself turns out to be the wrong shape," and "I have created a world where I am trapped." Indulgence is an expression that this moment you are living requires punctuation, an exclamation point of sorts, in order to move on to the next sentence. The next subject (protagonist), the next object (mission), and the next reactive dynamic between them. It is performance art, ritualistic, as in spring break "Dance of the Unsupervised Trip" or in the hotel bar "Song of the Misplaced Ten Years." Eventually we stop being able to turn up the volume, but the drive to indulgence persists and can rotate venues, perhaps always attempting to punctuate the same thing, perhaps rotating as well.

What I would hope for anyone I love in my life is to come to terms with this indulgence, the image for me is of Nigella eating the sandwich with the gooey cheese all by herself in front of the TV. Coming to terms is like a transaction, a contract. This indulgent experience must happen, for all its inherent waste and display. Then when it comes time to punctuate, this transition must be listened to and moved on.

Many kinds of waste discussed here:
* The waste of preparing for something that never happens
* The waste of celebrating without the punctuation of closure
* The waste of providing room in your heart for someone who never comes along
* The waste of setting aside time to "restore" when you're ready for a sprint
* The waste of sprinting on empty and getting nowhere
* The waste of reacting too quickly to the world
* The waste of wrapping the world around you, painstakingly, so it reacts to you completely (and preposterously)
* The waste of hyper-optimizing every corner of your life
* The waste of listening too hard to idiots
* The waste of ignoring the wise ones
* The waste of not even knowing what should or shouldn't be worried about

For us optimizers, the detection of waste is akin to feeling heartbroken. The feeling is as if we walked past the love of our life on the street and never turned around, or got a chill as the person ahead of you in line buys a winning ticket. And we simply have to get over that. Because how else can we be ready for any eventuality? After all, you never know who's coming to dinner.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:21 PM | Permalink

The only time my computer made me laugh on Friday was when I saw this dialog, and then saw it again and again.

I just had to laugh - you can only have so much empathy for windows interaction designers who feel like they have the computing world resting on their shoulders and therefore have the sense of urgency of a televised moon landing for every update both real and imaginary. Now that urgency has turned into slapstick comedy, with dialogs crashing into doors and cracking us up. D'oh!

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:04 PM | Permalink

I'm finally caught up on sleep. The way that works is, we could have 1 person take the nap and I won. Serves me right, now I'm watching "Sound of Music" despite two tylenol PMs. I never understood the movie's visuals - so military and regal - it should have just been a tape, that would have worked out much better.

The thing I want to write about today is how it is to fall off a program. Some people just have a hard time following anyone else's programs, and therefore only follow their own. Very admirable self-knowledge, and also admirable for inventing fitting programs should the need arise. I formerly wrote about people who just aren't calendar people, and the ones who just aren't program people are closely related. I'd be in their camp too, frankly, if I had the confidence. Honestly perhaps the only shred of humility I have is the recognition that I am not the first person to be affected by the world even in this specific way, and if someone else has optimized for the cases I experience I'm happy to bring on their plan.

"Falling off" is an interesting part of the cycle of change. It can be either a break or a true dissolution. The dissolution will come from having absorbed enough of what I needed to learn from the program for who I am right now, and the program goes into permanent pause until one of the variables change. Either the program has something new to offer or I do. For the case of the falling off being a break, this usually is being overwhelmed with the structure of the program, of needing to set it aside because it is something, anything at all, and doesn't much matter what it is. Of course it's hard to know whether you're on a break or total dissolution until a certain amount of time has passed.

Whatever the flavor of falling off, there is always guilt. Who was the person who committed to this in the first place. How can I reach back in time and tell her not to bother. The taskmaster sayeth: isn't part of the discipline of sticking with it something that can be learned from in and of itself? It's hard to know what is the correct and structured path, and what is the gentle and supportive one, and you sure as heck can't have all 4. Moreover, programs never take place in a vacuum. Many well-meaning advice starts with the word "just." Such as "just write everything down on a 3x5 card," "just drink 8 glasses of water a day," "just act as if your (insert one: parenting, marriage, career) is the most important thing in your life and success will come." But these justs do exist in a vacuum, whereas your every subsequent moment does not. There is always something happening that has to be set aside for these justs to have existence. Eventually we get tired of saying no.

The falling off comes from these justs not being a match. Perhaps none of us are program people. We can't perpetually be on some kind of regimen. We do need to support our success by providing every environmental advantage. But often, having any kind of daily checklist - any program at all - will sink our advantageous environment by itself. The weeks go by with the glasses not drank, or whatever rituals incomplete, and the nurturing environment supported by the rituals of the program is instead supplanted by the guilt of not following through with the program. Oh, the tragedy of the break-up. Realistically, the gain you expect from the break from routine needs to be at least double the guilt you might feel for abandoning it, before the break-up can stick. Even with flaking out on something, we want to somehow make a profit.

I wonder what this is all about. Is there some natural cycle with taking on multiple programs in serial fashion. Is there some benefit to this cycle that goes beyond the temporary weight loss, or raft of structured journals, or various minor internal successes. Is this perhaps our highest and best use, trying out shoe after shoe until via osmosis we have transformed like it or not. Is this some sort of cultural dynamic. Or, are the people who never take on any programs at all, are they perhaps right in wasting time on true time-wasters like TV or the internet and saving time by never suffering the indignity of breaking up with a program or book.

Anyway. This break-up of mine right now is not sticking. The math is not yet right. At this time, the benefit of throwing in the towel does not offset the guilt, or the feeling like perhaps, something might be happening that will be markedly different than I could manufacture on my own. But I will say that this is the first time this has happened to me with any program. They are usually so impersonal, you can drop 'em and never look back. But as long as hope remains, so does the towel.

I am raising a glass to hope.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:51 PM | Permalink

Insane pile of accomplishments this week. However, I have truly been flattened by rudeness in trivial matters. If they're so trivial, why do they matter so much? I think it's connected. If people are willing to be rude over little things, then there's not much holding us together after all. It's actually quite destabilizing. It diminishes the parade of accomplishments, the gusts of which I can usually float my balloon over many a storm.

For you writers out there, we now have a pile, no make that a parade, somehow exuding gusts of something, and then hot air balloons flying overhead. That's called a mixed metaphor, several times over.

The pile:
* I'm paying the bills again. Really. With checks and everything! Hasn't happened since 2004.
* A great shopping trip for ME. Alterations extra. But the real accomplishment is being Cheerful. Because if you're grumpy you might as well go back and shop until you feel better.
* Might switch the kid's school to a place blocks away from my new job. Meaning, I had better start just calling it my job. The real accomplishment is making this decision and being ready, the big move for the kids will be later.
* The big thing with wires and hammers is coming on Saturday. Or, as they say in Pidgin in Papua New Guinea: "Big Fella Punch Him In The Face He Talk." Don't they all, mate, don't they all.

The trivial matters that dragged it all down:
* Returns to the store when the district manager is there. She demands the tags and demands that the items are unworn. I immediately give up and ask for store credit. She gives another snippy lecture on their policy, and why my reasons for return aren't good enough. She is visibly angry. Help, I already backed down because I "wore" the items and cruelly left the tags on the shelf in my bedroom. I've got no bargaining chips left. Please take these pilly sweaters that are disintegrating after 4 days. Please take this shirt that shows your bra no matter what you do and will have you doing the monkey dance to hike things around semi-constantly all day. Please. I don't even want store credit, a garbage can will do. BUT what I do want is to be treated nicely. Maybe being scolded by a matronly woman who is denying you cash is many people's idea of fun but not mine. To add extra insult, the store credit is in paper form - not a card - and painstakingly filled out by a trainee.
* Calling a cab and having the dispatcher be rude. The cab doesn't come for 30 minutes. Call back and they explain you weren't there. You weren't waiting outside. "It is freezing out, and my phone never rang!" But no. She explains like she has explained a thousand times to people like me tonight, people who belong in the real world where cabs call the originating phone number of the caller when they arrive outside, the real world where this has always been done like it or not for a thousand years. Now, she says, this call is "Not a courtesy. They will not call your phone unless you ask for it. Would you like a courtesy call?" I am at this point very confused because there is no courtesy for miles, and I have been transported someplace where the past thousand years of reality has been altered to the cab companies suddenly NOT calling the originating phone. "Did this just change, I mean, I used to get calls." "Calls are not a courtesy, ma'am." No kidding. Well then I will please enjoy waiting outside for another half hour while I experience the lack of courtesy. And how happy and cheerful do you think I will be for the cab driver at this point do you think.

Because when a super-successful girl wants to go home at 10pm on a school night, she wants to go home NOW.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:49 PM | Permalink

Wouldn't it be fun to take a day and do a project you wanted to do, then show it off at the end of the day?

Well, instead of the hack day of my dreams it has instead been hack week here in the grigg household. As in, hacking cough week. (And of course you want to hear about my health problems! But it is a reality that many families with kids especially at 18 months will have to become the walking wounded for the long haul, short term strategies leak over to long term).

The baby is at the coughing stage which lasts a month. He sounds like he is about to die. He coughs like an old pro, like a 3 pack a day smoker. People stare at us in restaurants. This does not rattle him at all. He is somewhat unfortunately for us, full of vim and feels fine.

The little man had some children's tylenol when the fever hit him, and 2 hours later he is symptom free and mysteriously no recurrence. We think he is from another planet where they build little boys out of superballs and springs.

Big man is gagging loudly every 3 minutes in his sleep, which wakes him up and me too. I have been drugged up in the guest room, this will be my third night. The guest bed is much nicer, and much quieter, and I almost don't miss him. Not sure what's happening tonight, him being at quarter speed for the land of the living. I woke up at 3:30am today and that was the end of that. Sleeping in the room with the movies and the internet is a risk. I watched Donnie Darko which is not as dark as people say. Had a great time, regret it now. Still overmedicated but going in to work Monday for sure.

Lots of sense of entitlement rushing in to take the place of the health. For example, being jealous of people who have taken the holidays off already, skating on holiday accruals that will evaporate anyway. Then there's feeling entitled to shop, regardless of the bills in the mailbox. If we don't pay the bills, the checks won't bounce, and the money never leaves our account. It's quite a system. Then there's being entitled to a square meal or two but not having to clean up and occasionally not even having to prepare it. The kitchen boycott continues. We finally set the timer for 1/2 hour and cleaned the bedroom only, 3 people. 6 more rooms to go. Laundry of course spilling over every basket, even dirty laundry in the "clean" basket. You know the drill.

So now I've aired my dirty laundry in public. What's your strategy for getting through leapfrog cold season with the castle walls somewhat intact?

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 04:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A few weeks ago, as is my wont (I love saying that. What's a wont, anyway?), I was itemizing all the opportunities for making the circumstances of my life more friendly to my identity and dreams. This is a kind of to-do list combined with wish list and identity trajectory thing. It's really just a list of opportunities, some more possible than others. One of those opportunities would be to bring more music into the house.

Back when having a house was hypothetical, I would of course combine the idea of home ownership with making decisions about what goes in the home. The reality, for many people, is once you have bought the place, you have little or no control over the contents, all available $$ being tied up with the place itself. However, back in the hypothetical days I thought: I won't have any place to sit down that isn't a seat related to a musical instrument. If you want to sit in MY living room, I thought, you would have your choice of the piano bench, the revolving circular kit drum seat, the cello seat. The tall perch for the double bass. I wanted a home that would not just be friendly for music but would insist on it, bordering on commanding obedience both dictatorially and comically.

Fast forward to my recent examinations of how to bring more music into the house, given that of course the living room has - like everyone's - regular seats, each flawed in their own way, and no money left over for the minor orchestra I had envisioned. The problem is insurmountable, with both of us being keyboardists and no pianos lying around with free signs on them that we would think worth the staircase. If we were guitar players that would be another thing, but if you need a piano in order to be musically fulfilled, it's a little like needing an old growth forest complete with elephants and a copper mine to sustain its fragile self inside your house.

With my new job, one of the perks (besides the location being next to a bus terminal, in the middle of a bustling city, near a mall and bookstores I actually want to visit, and having a starbucks on site) is the concert grand piano in the lobby. I assumed it was locked up, but I did find out it is available for anyone to play. There is no lock, you just take the squooshy cover off and go for it. It's a newer steinway, well tuned. But the location is so public. There are glass windows everywhere to the outside, and chairs and tables like a nightclub except brightly lit. All the Bellevue princesses click and clack around in their shoes, accompanied by their brooks brothers gentlemen with expense accounts. So of course I would never play it except in the middle of the night. On a Sunday. Which I have never yet done, but it's there as a comfort. Access to a working piano has gone from 0% to .05%, which is the right direction.

I did get to thinking about the unused assets around our home. We do have a finished garage that we meant to be a recording studio. Currently it is filled with stuff, but a piano could go in there if it was the right size, and free of course. The place is climate controlled and has its own door right off the alley.

Eventually I put two and two together, and took out an ad in Craigslist that I was sure no one would answer. The ad went something along the lines of, "We have a place to store your piano. It must be playable. You pay moving costs." Probably I worded it a little friendlier. It was just one idea, I have a list of maybe 100 of these opportunities to bring my life circumstance more in line with who I am and who I want to be. The piano storage thing was just one. I took this small action of posting the ad and forgot about it.

But last week, someone answered! And we'll be getting a piano to play very soon! Who knows what could happen? Access to a working piano will suddenly jump from .05% to 100%. I should warn you. Sometimes I think I only have a blog because I don't have a piano. We will see.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nothing masterful is going to happen this week from my direction. The whole family is sick. Just when you think you're going to get better, you get worse. We ran out of the 250 count bottle of advil. Countless infant tylenol squirters litter the kitchen.

Last time we were all this sick was when the firstborn was 18 months. There seems to be a sweet spot around that age, where the parents and the family will get everything that little person brings home. For a few years after that you really do get immunity, but it's hard going. I don't expect it will be as tough this time, but still.

The thing is, it goes on so long, and there's nothing you can do to make it go any faster. The disease(s) progress at their own pace. My strategy, rather than going into sick leave debt, is to come into work for that critical meeting only and then leave. Head pounding, hope I didn't infect anyone. It sure beats calling in sick for 2 weeks. Although ebay will miss me, I am sure.

This changes our December quite a lot. The holidays are suddenly impossible to shop for, a career impossible to build, and personal fulfillment is quite out of reach given all this happening. It's the same as anyone else's life, I suppose, I'm just not used to this specific handicap. I was actually planning on participating in the holidays this year (not grinching-out like usual), AND kicking butt at my job AND taking down the personal fulfillment goals list down a few notches. Really, I was. And how was I going to fit that all in? Great health, that's how. Har har har.

Here's hoping vibrancy, great deals, and every ounce of deserved renown comes your way this season.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:57 PM | Permalink

I think it's time I wrote a little more about this program I'm on. I want to share with everyone, but parts of the program feel - and are - intensely personal. I am not quite sure how to describe it because I am still learning everything.

Q: How does this sort of program differ from others?
A: Let's compare the program I'm on with GTD. Granted, I am a GTD voyeur and have not been on it myself. My understanding of GTD is there are a practical set of steps you can take in order to gain productivity and results. Let's compare the program I'm on with a health-focused program, like Weight Watchers. WW is a set of tools and enrolled support that, when used, give you success with your health goals. "The Solution" is different from these because the underlying assumption is you are a complicated person, with many strands of spaghetti to unravel before you will be ready to not rebel at the idea of someone telling you which % of milk to drink. It's all well and good to have the intention of clearing your e-mail inbox down to zero every day, but the fact is most of us have conflicting priorities that make this practice hard to maintain. GTD and WW assumption - and comfort they offer us - is that success can be simple. To me, this claim of simplicity is what distances me from the ability to be successful with a simple program. It doesn't take the priorities and complications into account.
Q: Is this a diet or what?
A: No, I am not on a diet. Obviously (insert photograph). I am on a structured program to see if I can need food less. This may or may not result in needing less food. Make sense? What this means is, I know what it feels like to be free of the cycles of demanding more out of myself than I have the tools to support, and then punishing or rewarding accordingly. I want to make that freedom stick.
Q: I didn't think you had an eating disorder.
A: Eating disorder is a harsh term. It puts a wall in between everyday experience, and other, presumably unusual and clinically diagnos-able behavior. I will maintain that everyone has an eating disorder of some kind. And therefore no-one. I read the other day that Woody Allen eats the same breakfast every day. Cheerios, raisins, banana, skim milk. Reasonable behavior or eating disorder? Well, if you believe that food should be a celebration and a joy, a tradition and an art, then yeah that menu falls below expectation. If you believe food should be a neutral agent in our lives, such as astronauts eating a prescribed amount of freeze dried caloric content and getting on with their lives, then that menu is just fine.
Q: What caused you to decide food was a problem, then?
A: I decided it was interfering with my health - by my inability to set reasonable limits, participate in the celebratory aspect of eating, and yet be where I wanted to be health wise. I could only envision myself as a successful person if I had mastered this. Honestly if something takes up 30% of your brain and that's all you had in the first place, it's time to recognize it's a problem. Eating disorder, maybe not, but it's my call?
Q: I didn't think you had a submissive enough personality to do this. If you resist someone telling you what % of milk to drink, how can you take on such a comprehensive program which tells you, in many respects, how to think?
A: The appropriate thing about this program is it has a certain newtonian credibility. In my case, the rock is about the size of a volkswagen. The rock represents my habits, my internal thoughts, all the minor sabotages that affect my health and happiness negatively. What would it take to move that rock. A program that tells me this is easy, that a checklist can move the rock, will lose credibility. A program that examines and weighs the rock, and helps with strategy for budging it, and has a structure of training to become stronger so it will eventually be movable, has more credibility. It's not that I'm suddenly submissive, it's that I'm OK with going along with a program that has this difference. I don't want to be sold a line that this is a simple thing to do.
Q: How is your life different now that you are on this program?
A: I am only halfway through kit 1 and there are 6 kits. So this will take possibly the rest of next year or longer. I have barely started. One of the first things I noticed is I have a huge resistance to the materials of the program itself. I don't like writing longhand, I didn't own a portable CD player, I had no uninterrupted time to myself to work on the synapse re-firing needed. I have come to peace with some of that via the following small changes. Other things that are easy for other people I have yet to come to terms with. Here is what I have done so far:

* Set aside both the morning and the evening to do this work. Morning before people get up. Evening after 8pm when people are asleep. If I set aside both, one or both will happen. Typically, one session will be homework (writing, visualizing) and the other session will be practical (meal prep, treadmill).
* Don't write in the workbook if I hate it so much. I created a bare bones template that allows me to write my answers to the prompts in the workbook into a simple doc file.
* Do the sketches in a real sketchbook with a real pen. I bought one of those micro-writers with a fine tip of .05, after getting tipped off from Wired magazine's japanese schoolgirl watch. I do a sketch for one week on the front, and a second week on the reverse. I tear the sketches out and keep them inside clear envelope pages inside a 3 ring binder.
* Keep a 3 ring binder as HQ. This headquarters has grocery lists, phone lists, notes from individual counseling sessions, and the aforementioned sketches.
* 3x5 cards, for writing down in a small and portable way the thing I'm supposed to think about this day, who I'm supposed to call, and what to look out for as far as other goals. If it's a z-axis "how" type of thing I'm supposed to actually remember, it goes on the card. Sometimes I never look at the card, but writing it and carrying it around does have an osmosis effect.
* I also use 3x5 cards for recipes. I do recipes a little different than most people. I separate it out into prep work and actual assembly. Then I have a menu card for that whole day if I am following a menu. Lately it has been all Amy's microwave meals though.

I hope this is useful to understand what I'm doing. I wish it was more easily explainable. Often the very moment it comes up I am ironically afloat in misery and effluvia surrounding the topic. I am not always a cheerleader. Half the time I feel like quitting. And the answers to any overview-type questions (such as explained here) are hard. Yes and no to is this a diet. Yes and no to is this therapy. Yes and no to do I think this is going to "work" and do I have a good idea of what that would even mean. Emphatic yes to do I need something to believe in, something that shows the possibility of actually working. Yes, emphatically yes. So that's enough for now.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:02 AM | Permalink

I was delighted to see a review of my dh's game on Rory's blog. You know, when he was working on it, we referred to it via a code name. MY code name for it was "Forenzia." As in, Forensics meets, uh, frenzy. Anyway, apparently the game is so spooky those of us raised on lighter fare cannot play it alone. Personally I like lighter fare. Casual gaming, light done right. Bopping mushrooms on the heads to get gold rings and the like.

One comment though. Many reviewers of this game think there is no music. They comment on the "audio." This might be inaccurate in terms of authorship, but it is, technically, accurate in terms of file format I suppose like any game. If you're looking for music (you know, verse bridge chorus, or the interactive equivalent therein) it's there, you just have to look for it.

Of course I speak not from experience of having played the game, being chicken shit, time and sleep deprived, and keystroke limited, but rather from the experience of having a home burned CD of the music in our car as evidence. No, we won't burn you one. We shouldn't even have this one. We play it for our kids. It's called "Dad's CD" or "The scary music CD." It reminds me, every time, of Frodo climbing Mt. Doom with trusty Sam, saying he forgot the smell of food or the taste of water. It reminds me of total abandonment, of fragility that exposes every nerve, and a world so fraught with danger that anxiety is a valid survival mechanism rather than just a nervous twitch.

One interesting thing that happens with soundtracks is we have yet to transcend the classic mode of figure and ground. Figure and ground is a term from painting or photography where there is a person or a tractor (figure) and then a fence behind it or a sunset (ground). It's a way of analyzing a 2d space. I look for interactive music that transcends its own awareness, and simply reacts to the environment. Yet it still needs to not be just a sound effect, some sort of tonal progression is needed too. With the Forenzia CD, the music has moments of this ultra-reactivity, where it completely adds to the universe and adds momentum. Then, it enters the figure-ground world, where we would more likely call it music in the first place. A mysterious tribe of drummers starts bopping along. Or, a voice starts hollering or chanting. All of a sudden the work is back in figure and ground mode. We gain self awareness, awareness of the music, and the music itself is aware. But something is lost by aspiring to this definition of music.

It's a little like watching a musical you didn't know was a musical. You have had this experience. You're just watching the story. Then one of the characters looks like he's gonna barf. Suddenly, you realize he is about to burst into song. Your mind switches into "musical" mode, where these bizarre events make sense, like cartoon violence. As a viewer, you are no longer the only observer, but the person singing is also sharing your viewer space, that third-person removal, that awareness.

The Forenzia music CD occasionally has moments like that, only of course the world is out to get you and you can't even trust gravity to work right.

It has been an interesting adventure for our family with having the head of household have such a good job. A lucky job. Every turn of events we realize how lucky we are, how likely this job was to never have happened, and how insecure we are with treating this as something we can rely on. Most people would argue that you can't count on any job these days. But I would argue being a composer for video game music anywhere outside California is particularly fragile and unlikely. Most people in this role never see a W-4 form. As a result of this fragility, it has placed emphasis on my career. My happy, transferable skill type career. I could move to any state, probably. In many ways I am much more stable with my career, despite 4 jobs in as many years (hey, I was a temp! It was part of zee plan!). Yet my dh's job is unquestionably better, more meaningful and more glamorous. It's the kind of job that makes other people feel they have not done enough with their life, which is sad.

So, even though my dh is about to get his 3 year snowboard or whatever they give out for longtime W-4 status in the game industry, we are still braced for impact, expecting the bubble to burst anytime. There have been layoffs in the company, in the industry, and the layoffs continue. It makes us grateful, and practical, and glad for my career and glad for his good ride as long as it lasts.

As if life didn't feel enough like a video game, one thing I have discovered after watching years of layoffs is they happen concurrent with morale events. The morale event is planned at the same time as the layoffs, it seems. There you are on the boat eating fried shrimp. Or, driving bumper boats like an idiot. Then, for some of those folks, that's the last company event they will attend. Lighter fare, indeed. I may just burst into song myself.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:05 AM | Permalink