Duchess is a Wheel Greaser

She is also an Australian Sheep Dog.

I know because she told me.  As you know, she is at my house this week getting me in order – and I do mean getting me in order.  Not just physically – we cleaned out my pantry and my clothes closet –  but emotionally as well.

E used to tell me that I allowed my mother to work too hard while she is here.  My response has always been “I can’t stop her.”  Her announcement to the family this week was: “It makes me happy.  It gives me purpose.  I am a Wheel Greaser and an Australian Sheep Dog. “

This is a summary of her explanation:  She said she doesn’t have great visions or grand plans. She just works with people who do and helps them make them happen.  She did that for my father who needed someone to smooth out the bumps in his road.  He had to have a wife to keep his multitude of great, grinding, genius-level gears running smoothly.  That’s what my mom did.  She is a Wheel Greaser.

Her new revelation is that she is also an Australian Sheep Dog.  Those dogs are not happy unless they are working.  They were bred to herd.  That’s what they enjoy.   Mom says she loves coming here because it gives her purpose.  She loves jumping into the middle of whatever familial stuff we have going on at my house and herding us in the right direction.

And she is good at it too . . .

The thing is she sees the value of it.  Most people want to be center stage.  Seen as visionaries. Mom is not into that.  She is good at what she does and takes great pride in it.  ”Everybody brings something to the table.  This is what I bring . . . and I AM GOOD.”

She’s got that right.  I don’t just love my mother I am astounded by her.

That is, I suppose, why I wrote my book.  She may not need nor want applause but she’s getting it anyway!

“My Mother’s Rules”

Yes indeed,

My Mother does rule.

As I end this, I am in tears.

The Royal Visit

I made the whole family come to the airport with me to get Duchess.  She thought that was cool.  I drove with E riding shotgun.  Driving to the airport makes me nervous but I am into conquering things so we did that.  He was very supportive.

Mom gave me ‘what for’ about the state of my household.

She looked behind the desk in my son’s room:

“Do you see these balls of dust back here?”

She opened the refrigerator:

“Where is the food?”

She began vacuuming –  fifteen minutes after she got here, I might add.

“You know this is a good vacuum I bought you.  It hasn’t been maintained properly.  Everything must be maintained.  Now you see . . . “

I would continue but I think you get the picture.

Anyway Duchess was up and cleaning the kitchen at 4:57 a.m.  I know because I checked the clock.  She is making a big pot of green beans today.  The kids love it.  I’ve tried to replicate it in the past and have failed miserably. Personally I think it is a psychological thing on their part but what are you going to do?

Duchess and I are going to go buy big floppy hats for the graduation.  It will be 97 degrees out with no shade.

Everyone is interested in 17′s graduation except him.  Well that’s not quite accurate. 14 was downright nonplussed when he realized he had to go too.  He wants to invite a friend so he “will have something to do” during the ceremony.  He actually said that to me.

You guys have a good day.

My dad had a picture of Queen Nefertiti in his office when I was a kid.  For years I thought it was a picture of mom.  No lie.

Weirdness

Duchess (for all of the uninitiated that is what everyone in the family calls my mother) and I were on the phone last night talking about what makes people do the things they do. She was talking about people she knew and so was I. Nothing deep or meaningful but just about the stuff people get stuck on that dictate their behavior. They don’t even know why they do what they do. It’s fascinating.

People get wedded to a position and they can no longer hear opposing opinions. We were talking about how to approach someone we both like and get them to alter how they deal with us. We came up with something too. A way to derail the weirdness, maintain the friendship all without the other person knowing what has happened.

Duchess is deeper than the ocean.

This leads me to my thought for the day:

Go steady with your ideas . . . never marry them.

Now I am not talking religion or your basic core values that say things like love your family. What I am talking about is how you see the world and what you are doing in it.

For instance, as we discussed in my holiday letter I have, of late, abandoned My Little Patch of Land Theory. In short the theory went as follows: All I want is to stand peacefully on my little patch of land. I don’t look for trouble and I don’t insult easily I will let a whole lot of stuff pass me by.

I will do everything in my power to get along with people. I will back up, compromise and laugh off all kinds of stuff. My patch of land – my zone of insult was very small so I knew if you reached it you did it intentionally. You had to work to get there. So when you hopped that fence on to my land I KNOW that I have already done everything I can avoid it and you were just being disrespectful and as such deserved the explosion that lives at the end of that very long fuse I have purposely created.

Talk about an evolution of ideas.

I say that because years ago I purposely created that long fuse because my previous approach to unpleasantness was not working for me. I used to explode routinely and with little provocation. I was a girl who saw the whole world, at its very essence, as a threat. I was all wound up and very angry.

I also didn’t used to care what people thought of me. At all. Never had a lot of friends. (go figure) I usually just one trusting soul at a time who took the time to understand me.

But anyway, I could see that that way of thinking was not working so I began to monitor my reactions, assess the value of each outburst and leveled off. Next thing you now I have a huge cache of explosives somewhere all stored up from hurts I did not address. Then one day some poor unsuspecting soul unwittingly lights a spark and gets cussed out inter-syllabically for reasons they never understood.

That didn’t work either.

So when once I figured that out I started to store separate stockpiles of ammunition for everyone. In essence I made a point to “Know Where the Mad was Supposed to Go” – see Rule 34 My Mother’s Rules. That way I had a long fuse for each person and only lit up when they have burned me to the quick.

I found out last year that works great when you are a real life judge but not so much in everyday life. I like to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and I don’t like to bark orders. I want everybody to be happy and I like to be nice. But when you are a judge your kindness is never mistaken as weakness because everybody knows what’s up. Not so much out here in the hinterlands of reality.

When I took that attitude out into the regular world I found myself getting taken advantage of for long periods of time. Then I “wreak havoc” as E is found of telling me once they reached my Little Patch of Land and really accomplished nothing.

So now I am working a different approach. I am going to state my position professionally but consistently. Not with every little problem but with things that matter. Even here at home. ( I really blew this one at home. Do any of you recall my bog re my outburst over the lawn?) Bad, bad stuff at the house. That moment by the way authored my “False okay rule” that I talk about on the show.

Anyway I am working my new attitude like a job and it feels so foreign to me (because I really do love to let the small stuff just pass me by) and it is hard to know when something is too small too mention or is of sufficient value to bring to someone’s attention. Duchess says it’s not the ‘what’ but the ‘how’ of how you address it – so your girl is now working that. It’s a full time gig.

Wow, talk about catharsis. I had no intention of going here. But that is where I am.

For what it’s worth.

Random Stuff

I called my mother the other day and she had me laughing. She started going on about “all this technology”. She got some letter about paying a bill on line. Some other letter that said if you have any questions about some change in a utility policy check the web site. She was also having problems with her phone and when she called these people she said “It took me ten minutes and I had to punch a thousand numbers before I got to a live person.”

She said it took her over an hour to pay two bills and get someone to talk to her about her broken phone. By the time it was over she was so outdone she had to go to bed! We were both rolling! She told one lady “look, I got the money and I want to give it to you. Please just send me a bill. I’m too old for this!! I begging you just take the money!” She said by the time she was done on the phone she had the lady in hysterics and – more importantly – they are sending her a bill in the mail.

Someone asked me of Facebook how do you deal with a friend who she believes put her family at risk. Personally if I had such a friend I would tell them how I felt – calmly, but firmly, thus explaining my refusal to continue the friendship – in it’s current form. Might talk to them on the phone on occasion but when it comes to my family I don’t tip toe around. Frankly, I don’t even understand the dilemma. But maybe it’s just me. I have been told that I can be curt and cold when I believe someone has fooled with one of my “Core Issues.”

I have a surprise I am working on. I think you might like it. If It is going to actually happen I should know in two weeks. One hint: The Road.

I have another website change coming up too. This one should be funny (I hope)!

Onward and Upward! You guys take care.

The Waiting Room

When I went home last week, my mom and I went to a funeral of a friend of hers. She was 88.

I don’t have a good track record at funerals. I have been know to cry so hard I have to leave (and twice this happened when I accompanied my mother to funerals of people I didn’t know). I was still in my twenties then but really!

Anyway mom says we have to roll through and says “don’t worry it won’t be sad. She 88. There won’t be many people there anyway. We’re all dying off.”

And she was right. It wasn’t sad. In fact, it was more of a social hour. A few young people and I mean folks in their 30′s – her grandchildren – were there, but everyone else was around her age or just a bit younger.

That’s when it struck me.

You know that song about The Upper Room? It’s a gospel song talking about when people die they go to the ‘upper room’.

Well, we were in The Waiting Room. My mom even joked with one of her girl friends “See you next time – or maybe not – it might be me.”

Time is chipping away at my Rock of Gibraltar and I don’t like it. I accept it. I understand it. But frankly the heart usually doesn’t give a good you know what for what the head knows.

My mother saw the look on my face when she said that. She retorted: “Life is an inherently fatal disease – buck up.”

And that, I guess, is what that is.