elizabeth grigg - the other fourth meal

As predicted, I spent my first 3 day weekend in quite some time doing absolutely nothing. But you must remember that this "nothing" includes stripping down the dirty linens of last week, both literally and figuratively, and making the bed for the next week coming up. On Friday, I played housewife with a trip to the store for the things that fall under the "household" category. (That entire category is off budget, by the way. Splurge! Paper products!) On Saturday, exhausted from the shock of being a physical person the previous day, I settled into the bed, read HP5, took a nap, leaned on all the support I could. On Sunday (today), I was a bit more functional. Early on in the morning I decided not to do any work - you know, for my job - and this let me even begin to face the laundry etc and the shopping for actual food. In a brazen act of non-pouting, we began to fix the house. We heroically started with the soap squirter for the kitchen sink. The old one was a little, um, drooly. So what if in doing so, we also broke a pipe thing (now fixed). The other simple project was unscrewing the cleat for the curtains - there were 3 places in the house which had theirs broken off both sides. For years we have had to tie the cord for the roman shade to a chair to keep the shade open, which is just a shame because it is such a simple repair. The problem was the square head screw that fancypants shades used to screw in the cleat. We finally bought the specialty screwdriver to unscrew the dummy cleats. (The person inventing the square-head screwdriver should have an intervention.) After that, the repair blazed along exactly as simply as it would be reasonable to expect. Which never happens. So in total we had 2 repairs, not counting the thing we broke and also fixed which should count for a third. All this during the screeching, the recon trips into the basement for the banished toys, the power struggles, the tryke in the kitchen, the mandatory time outs, and my main plan which was laundry.

This is what I call doing absolutely nothing.

Anyway, I will probably pay for it tomorrow / next week by not getting some work in today, but something interesting happened this weekend beyond the usual. Little glimmers of my old creative self are waking up. Perhaps it's the "vegetables and liquor" diet (which I heartily recommend). Perhaps it's just simply waking up every day no longer wanting to be sleepwalking. The reason I know I am waking up is, the boring parts of my day are becoming sources of energy.

On Saturday I picked up HP5, just because I found it and took pity on it. Us Yanks find the whole boarding school thing so inventive: the houses, the prefects, the points. However, HP’s author got lots for free just being a brit. This is not uncommon, Tolkien had lots of room for invention but also was given many things for free (greek mythology, animal husbandry). This realization got me completely focused on finding the thing that I am getting for free right now that will give context to a work of writing. I have spoken previously about generative ideas. It seems this generative quality is related to the author finding an existing system to weave the story within. My quest now, is for something uniquely Yank of course, likely Tech, and something we all have in common that provides a great backdrop for drama. I will keep looking.

On Sunday (today) I looked at the grocery list and decided "it's a Trader Joe's list" so off I went. Actually, I changed first. This neighborhood is such a hipster hovel AND I always run into someone I know at TJs. Plus, I was wearing my size 1x tracksuit from Target, completely blowing the fetching Bill Murray vibe with a broken zipper, held together by a fake bling safety pin hair clip thing. I am probably the only person who would change out of sweats to go to the grocery store on her day off, but I should have taken a picture of the crowd as proof for you. Swank-y. And foodies, too. I overheard a couple planning a dish in the cheese aisle, the “chef” explaining and proposing the amazing amount of detail, the “non-chef” hesitantly saying "that sounds good!" but really hoping all he would be expected to do was eat it ;) . The store played the usual muzak. Riding home I was blathering to myself as usual in some tuneful way. But then I realized the blather was original. Derivitave, but original. Of course I completely forgot it instantly, but not the feeling like… if my house was quiet when I came home, AND if I had not sold my piano in the dotcom crash, I might have just written a song today. It's been years. That other life is starting to tickle a bit.

So if creativity is your "sweetest fruit" - and it is definitely one of mine - I do not know what to tell you about how to get there. Just look for evidence everywhere you can. And eat your vegetables.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 08:46 PM | Permalink

I am just livid that my weblog is not fixed and perfect in every way. It seems so cruel that I would work so hard and still not be at the finish line. Here is what I know is broken:

- The comment filter does not work. Lets in junk. A nightmare. Yes, it's set to 10.

- The main webpage does not show posts. Or, at least, it does not show posts when I expect it to.

- The RSS feed does not work in google reader. My feed is not the only one with this problem. However this is cold comfort.

All that aside - the real reason I'm writing is I had a day off last week. It will go down in history as the day off. I don't usually get days off. That's probably a good thing because I have been doing the tired-mom thing all weekend. Who knew that was coming? The good news is I am eating my vegetables. We had a gorgeous radish salad with the king crab tonight and the wine. The kids love the king crab (from grocery outlet, so cheap!). However that's all I'm up to. I mostly sleep and read HP.

The real thing that is happening is I am at a crossroads. It is called the "soul's leap" in the solutions work I am doing. I am working on facing the essential pain of the human condition. The unfair limits of it. Facing this will help give me security, that the human condition will continue to be a bother to me and I can work through it anyway. Sulking will no longer be an option. It has come to my notice that 99% of what I voluntarily do is sulk because I cannot face this pain. I want this to change. A few more days off and I may be there.

Comments still open.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reasons not to go: Lots of violence. Lots of darkness and tragedy. Most of the time I was not sure I could handle how horrible things had sunk to. As a mother, my tolerance for war and shooting and violence is way down. However, in this movie they work to amplify your nurturing instincts by focusing on the infertility. Then just when you're sympathetic, you see the worst of humanity and wonder, perhaps there is not any use. Very dark.

Reasons to go: As an individual, we do not manage our lives like we are on a battlefield. We are each precious people. There is no acceptable casualty rate, because as individuals we are either alive or not. The most striking image is of the young mother and newborn floating in a boat knowing if 1,000 coincidences don't line up perfectly in the next few minutes this small hope will be extinguished. Yet she waits for it. She made the choice to position herself in the unlikely place where compassion and humanity would pull through to triumph over coincidence. We carry ourselves like she carries that precious baby.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 06:59 AM | Permalink

The thing you are dying to know: "What is happening with Beth? Is she any happier than she was last year, and can she tell me how she got there?"

The response is in two categories, internal and external.

My internal work is centered around pouting. Pouting is the state when life circumstances dish something out, and you do not have the skill to face that it's not what you want. You don't have the skill to make lemonade out of lemons, and instead you smash the lemons against the side of the nearest building and curse. Pouting is any demonstrable behavior which says "I am not up to this challenge, and I am not up to asking for help either. Certainly I can't ask for help from YOU. So here I sit doing something that I wouldn't ordinarily do if I was in a good mood." Getting rid of pouting might just be the holy grail for me.

My external work - that which can be viewed externally - is centered around evenings. Evenings are prime pouting times. How that demonstrates itself is, I have spent the whole day doing things for other people or otherwise ignoring myself. I ate from the vending machine. I peed only once it became dire, and only after spending some time wishing I could have my body removed and be a robot with a brain slushing around in a futuristic fish tank like Mr. Burns. Also, I may have spent the day ignoring my needs for relaxation, for connecting with others, and fueling the need to create an identity out of my working life. Then there's the commute on top of that. So coming home I want my slippers and the paper. Except, for me, it's cooking. I want my deglazing and my truffle oil. I come home, put the apron on, and not only am I in a state of flow, but I am moving my body and feeding people. It works for me. Only trouble is, it makes my identity revolve around food.

I have yet to find a solution to the pouting. At this point, all I can do is call myself on it. I reach for a substance, a credit card, or a project that does not meet my needs, or I lock the door and say don't mess with texas. Not today. I do have the capability to observe - I do not have more details on how to turn positive action into a celebration of being alive, specialness, health, etc. But observation, I think I can pull that off. Am I pouting at this particular moment, yes or no. I think I have been pouting practically forever, so this awareness is pretty important.

Externally, the solution of course is to get out of the kitchen. It also means I need to eat vegetables in the evening, which forces me to connect with my body during the day and get most of my caloric needs met at other meals, at a time during the day when it's not "payback time." That's the first component, not to cook. The second component is to do my art.

Oh, golly, what IS my art you might ask. I have no idea. Pretty sure there are the twin stars of music and writing, and a few shiny moons out there too, but understand I have been so nuts and bolts for so long. The only thing I am 100% sure of is that I am on this planet to be engaged creatively. Yet here I am, with complete negative flow in the creative department. I get out of the kitchen and I miss it. I do good work in there. What could be so wrong with cooking. Well, if it eclipses everything else then yes, there are a few things wrong with it.

Which brings me to attendance. If you are not in the state of flow with a project, if you don't even know how to play your instrument for example, or just have a few 3x5 cards with ideas on them and not anything that could be described as momentum, what I simply must believe at this point is that attendance matters. I resolve to show up, almost every night, at some sort of thing in my own living room etc, that falls under the category of music or writing and can be described as creative in some way. It's awful. I might as well have taken ballet. I sit down to do the things I am best at, and I go about klunking around and can hardly stand every second I am there. The only thing that consoles me is the thought that someone - some THING - might be taking attendance, and at one point it will need to count for less and less of the grade.

It's odd to want to do something that you are good at, and have to slay dragons to get there, and find yourself looking at this thing thinking wow, how many more minutes do you think, before I can go back to my old habits. What a challenge to want it so badly you are willing to put up with the humiliation of being stumped on the interview question you were hoping they'd ask you.

So, in conclusion, no question I am happier than I was last year. But it wasn't this work that did it. Not at all. Between last year and this, it was really moving some bigger checker pieces around and just making it through some life events. If this year is a baseline, it will be more of a challenge to improve on for next year. (Depending on how much attendance affects my grade.)

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 07:40 AM | Permalink

In my own little way, I plan on trying out all the snazzy new web 2.0 stuff I was supposed to be all up on as of like two years ago. Being as how I'm in the business and all.

This is all inspired from the Time Magazine issue, which I bought, because I have been buying magazines lately (and being disappointed), and there was no reason to think this issue would be any different.

Tonight it was Flickr. I had a string of pictures that I discovered from Chris and Ponzi's wedding that I did not know what to do with. Not being the flickr pro, I saved each photo as a browser favorite as I found them. Actually, I was super slick because I saved as a "tab group" which was my first experience with that. But the bragging ends there.

My first discovery is that these are other people’s photographs. I don’t know what I was thinking. Of course they were. But it didn’t, you know, “hit home” until I goofed around with the so-called “Organizr” and could not make them show up. You see, each person has something called a photostream. It’s a little like Karma. It cannot be traded between persons. So  I was back to the first of my so-called squares. Square 1.

My goal was to provide you, dear readers, with a link to said photos. Then I realized I was faced with the classic dilemma. To tag or not to tag? I am a bit of a tagging purist. I think tagging should be used for things that are universal, the things we all have in common with each other. Things that do not get capitalized. Let’s take that rule to an extreme.

Pictures of Seattle: should not be tagged “Seattle” but rather tagged as per content, such as “fish store”

Pictures of a little boy: should not be tagged “Billy” but rather tagged “little boy”

I realize this breaks many people’s grandiose ideas of the future of tagging, but it can’t be good for everything or it won’t be good for anything, no pissing in the well, etc etc. Anyway it’s my funeral because the well is already pissed in.

So, pouting as I am on my epistemological ivory tower, I present to you a set of flickr photos via the corny and very web 1.0 “favorites” mechanism on flickr.

Let’s get to the pictures – which I have not figured out how to add captions to that are somehow “mine” even though the photos are “theirs.” Hopefully the sequence is the same for you as it is for me. Otherwise you will be paying no attention to little Owen's arm fat, which hardly qualifies as an item of concern. On him. I must go cry now. Look at the pictures.

 - Owen is very tired and instead of sleeping during his nap (well before the scheduled wedding), he chooses to park it on the dance floor. You can tell by the red ears that he's tired. I used to have a boss like that once. Remind me to delete that later.

- Owen likes pulling on the decorations to see if they will come down ever.

- Elliott is rockin with the Leung sisters. Note the giddy smile as if he is finally on top of the world, after 6 straight years of trying

- Blurry is artful, isn't it?

- Me and Julie. Note that I am showing the same giddy smile. That's because I'm pinching her butt and she is wondering whether to get mad or not. Psyche! (Unpshyche) Psyche!

- Owen has talked the nice concierge hostess lady into doing his every bidding.

- More Owen parking on the dance floor

- In other news, Elliott is breakdancing up a storm.

- Owen and Ponzi. Really more Ponzi than Owen. As it should be.

- Just before he did a dock sweep of all the beverages within reach

- OK please ignore the size of my arm fat, and the Mike Lowry type resemblance to my face. I don't look like this at all. But I am feeding Owen everything from my purse because the hardest part of weddings for little kids is the speeches before dinner.

OK. I know I horked the font size on this post but you will have to forgive me. I think in MS Word now and not this little square. I hope I haven't pasted in any little squares. We will see. Ciao!

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:23 PM | Permalink

This morning I shopped for the day's stack of Amy's at a little semi-organic grocery store near the bus transfer place in Montlake. (Yes, I'm back on the Amy's). The clerk told me he is quitting cigarettes. Today is his first day. He was smiling, but agitaged, and mentioned it to me because obviously it was the most major thing happening at the moment. His birthday was tomorrow and he did not want to be a smoker anymore.

I mentioned carrots - some people who quit cigarettes eat lots of carrots. Some of them turn orange. But it occupies the mouth.

I asked if he had a treat planned for the end of the day. Like buying a CD? (nope, no money). Like something BAD? (this was a possibility).

The first day is maybe not as bad as the 3rd, or the 30th. I am not sure what works for this most addictive substance. I do know that unless you pull out all the stops and let yourself do anything BUT that one thing, it will be much harder.

Support is a big thing too. I told him to talk to everyone that buys something from him today about it. Of course I have not given up that particular addiction so I can only share my own experience.

Today is 1 month off coffee.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 10:59 AM | Permalink

This year, Seattle has had tons of rain. I have never had seasonal affective disorder before, but many in Seattle do, due to the darkness and the rain preventing enjoying even daylight hours outside. One physical indicator of S.A.D. is a drop in Vit D compared to normal ranges. After being really mopey throughout November, I had my Vit D tested. Normal range is 32 - 100 (granted, I do not know the unit of measurement, centoids or whatever). I clocked in at 24. So I'm taking a little green pill once a week.

Ever since then, I am like a 1950s housewife who has been prescribed "energy" or "weight loss" pills by her doctor. I get tummyaches from rich food, and I can't go to sleep at 8:30 like someone who has to get up superearly really should. This phenomenon will eventually save my life, but right now it has led to more TV watching. Scrubs, Everybody Loves Raymond, Sex and the City. Once the commercials get really obnoxious, I take that as a cue to turn off the TV, usually around midnight. I suppose this does not sound unusual for most people but it is completely uncharacteristic for me. Even more surprising, I am fine the next day. What's up with that.

Commercials. Lots are for fast food. There is a theory in the fast food business that there is a big market for something called the fourth meal. This is a meal consumed in the evening that is not breakfast, lunch, or dinner. You have already had those meals. This one is extra. There is something more about the fourth meal, though. In the evenings, after our responsibilities have been disposed of either by psychological exhaustion or the hour no longer being appropriate, we can look to our own cravings. Now is the time to ask, what do we really, really want? If we have been depriving ourselves of something all day, being too good, eating carrots or whatever, then what we want is the opposite of a carrot. Indulgence. But there is another desire underneath that, something that we can only notice if we have been nurturing to ourselves all day, not depriving or indulging, and maybe busy but when we get that time in the evening we can check in. What do I really need? This is the fourth meal I am talking about. That which feeds us, in early stages of development to compensate for the essential pain of the day, but later a more balanced stage evolves which allows one to use that time to celebrate the earned rewards for being alive.

I grant you completely that I am not at this second, more balanced stage. I still do not nurture myself during the day in a way that lets me turn off the TV, or turn off the urge for a pizza. Lately it has been pomegranate martinis, alone, in front of the TV. (This is big fun in my book. It's possible you have to be a parent to understand.) But it is interesting how eventually, if I am persistent enough such as discovering and remedy-ing my Vit D shortage, new rooms of energy open up in my day and it is just a matter of how to furnish them. Right now that room is furnished with old boxes and junk, but I am happy the room is there. Eventually it will look like a decorator spent weeks. This all is metaphor  - eventually I will be doing what I really want with this new time and energy that I have earned, not just using it to react to the rest of the day's losses.

So. The fourth meal. That which truly feeds us at the end of the day. That which has a spin of fun on it, that which you would do if you had no other responsibilities. That sense of flow which is unseperable from your being and yet still has a lightness, for you can change activities anytime, it's no big deal. I think this more closely drives at what I am going to be writing about. Only please, don't get confused about my also having my name in the tagline. It looks like I am going to be eaten up at a fast food restaurant, as my own combo meal. This is not the case. Names in taglines are important and hopefully people will get used to not expecting recipes on how to fry up various parts of my body.

Enjoy.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 09:11 AM | Permalink

Today I started a feeble tracking system of various multipoint efforts on my own behalf. The calendar on which to place the colored stars, I bought a few days ago, but starts on Jan 1 of course, so can only be used starting today. The multipoint efforts have started for some time. Today, two of the initiatives counteracted themselves and exploded in some kind of antimatter collision. I am not to be blamed. Thus here I sit, watching pre-2001 editions of Sex and the City, and luxuriating in weight loss commercials.

There have been so many weight loss commercials that my (older) son loves quoting in a giddy way: "I feel sexy. (then, emphasis on I) 'I' feel sexy." Then he watches for my reaction which is a combination of deflation and cursing various parts of the ceiling.

Lots of people are getting tagged and such, as if there was not enough to blog about already. Warning, if you tag me, I will fit you in around November. Once your deposit clears. At any rate, one thing that did catch my eye was the predictions thing. Most people are choosing technical, or political, because they do have a blog after all. One has to predict the win of .xyz over .abc format, or the win of .dem over .rep format. Don't get me wrong, the fate of the world is at stake (with both), but it's a little like shooting cans in your backyard and taking stats.

With that fanfare, I present my list of personal predictions for 2007. For - what else - my own life!

- I will buy a chicken. Possibly three. Extra credit if alive. Yes, I am seriously considering getting the Seattle-allocated number of 3 chickens in a nice little house outside ours. I have it all figured out, except perhaps how to acquire the requisite level of sanity. It will be good for stories either way.

- I will enter the job market again, something which I am in complete denial about.

- My daily success will be measured by whether or not I do my art. Granted I make no claims on whether that art will happen. I am only saying I am defining success by whether I do it. This is very different from 2006, where my definition of success was to continue breathing.

- I will buy the car that I'm driving, and take that one small step to adulthood.

- I will make new friends as the result of my blog.

- I will ride an airplane somewhere, and make a big deal about it.

- I will learn to cook vegetables. The wierd ones.

- I will make this year not just a continuation of last year. I will do my best to seize this wonderful opportunity of the world having a little more room.

Posted by Elizabeth Grigg at 11:35 PM | Permalink