Strong, Silent Type

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My husband is generally a man of few words and not someone earlier in our marriage I would have pointed to as a philosopher, but things change. Steve is Executive Vice President of Prime Lending. It’s a big job. Neither of us participate on social media and sometimes I feel like everyone in the world except us loves it. One day I asked him why he’s not on social media and his response was rather breathtaking.

“First of all, I don’t think I’m all that interesting and I don’t find anyone else all that interesting either. I aspire to a state of grace, not perfection. I always had pressure to be perfect and I’ve learned it’s not realistic. You can always be graceful and elegant, but you cannot be perfect.”

This must have been something that had been on his mind. The first sentence answers the question about social media. The other three seem unrelated to the question but so eloquently communicate something he’s learned over the years that he has obviously embraced wholly and make him seem pretty interesting.

It’s been fascinating over the past 20 some odd years watching this man grow, change and evolve. My bohemian albeit extremely talented and affluent brother once referred to him as “a banker with a soul.”

Amen

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Beetle

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My grandmother called me “My precious Annie.”  For some unknown reason, my grandfather called me “Beetle” which was short for “Annie Beetle Bum.”  All my aunts, uncles and cousins on the maternal side of my family still call me Beetle.  Cute and strange.  I had an Aunt-in-Law whose name was Kioko.  She was Japanese and not fluent in English.  After 15 years she found out my real name was Andrea and not Beetle.  She was shocked. She didn’t know what sounded right or not right for an American woman’s name and Beetle was all she’d ever heard.

One time, 20 years ago at my sister’s wedding shortly after I had married, one of my drunk uncles came up to my husband Steve and blurted “You got the Beetle!”  Steve now calls me Beetle most of the time.  So sweet how things like that stick and perpetuate over so many years.

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Are You My Mother?

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Just heard from my Mom. To me, she is the funniest person on the planet.  From the time I was one and a half years old and could understand what she was saying she has always made me laugh.  This is classic Mom:

I went in yesterday for a flu shot. They were giving them in the lobby of Kaiser which is big. I registered, waited my turn and was ushered to table number 3.
The pretty nurse said “how old are you?”
“I’m 80,” my mom said.

“Are you allergic to eggs?” she was asked

“No,” my mother replied.

“Have you ever had dizziness or disorientation?” pretty girl asked.

“No,” mom said.  “I mean maybe four times in my life when I drank too much champagne!”

“Normal,” pretty girl said.

“Do you have allergic reactions?” 

“To certain people,” my Mom replied.  (To those of you who know me, if you think I’m a rebel, you should meet my mom!!)

“Have you had any incidences lately with pests that felt disturbing in your life or left you feeling anything less than healthy?” pretty girl asked.

“Yes!” Mom said a little too loudly.  “There were deer on my redwood forest property in the last several days and they ate the flowers I JUST planted! SOOOOO frustrating!!”

“We’re almost done here.  Do you feel safe at home?”  

“Uh, I live in the middle of a redwood forest that is very isolated.  Are you referring to the person I live with or anxiety in general.  Are you a therapist or a person who gives a flu shot?  This is getting a little wierd….”

“Okay, final answer before I give you your flu shot. Are you or do you plan on getting pregnant in the near future?”

“Yes, as soon as I can.

Scary

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“You have to be strong,” the woman in the waiting room at the oncology radiology facility said. “My husband has lymphoma everywhere in its final stages and we are cheerful and optimistic. It’s what you have to do to be with cancer.” Her husband will probably die. He is completely hunched over by what I suppose is osteoporosis in addition to the lymphoma his lovely wife told me has taken over his entire body.

That first day we went for Steve’s radiation treatment, I noticed a bell on the counter with a ribbon tied to it. On the ribbon it said I made it the whole way! I was so new to this idea of my youngish husband having to go through radiation that I didn’t quite get what that was. Then, when Steve was in treatment, someone walked out, picked up the bell and rang it. Everyone in the waiting room applauded and some jumped up to hug the person who had just completed the grueling months long, daily treatment of radiation. I suddenly got it and of course, was one of the jump-up huggers. But I was also in tears.

A couple weeks ago was Steve’s last radiation treatment for a mild recurrence of prostate cancer. MILD? Can you really even say that if its cancer? You really can’t. It’s cancer. In his case even though his numbers are low and very encouraging, you get only one shot at radiation. One. You can’t do it again because radiation causes cancer. What? We are trying to solve cancer with a cancer-causing agent? Yep. OMG.

On Steve’s last day I was in the waiting room, waiting. My husband is a very subtle and humble person. He is not a person who has a need to bring attention to himself so I wasn’t expecting him to ring a little funny bell. I just assumed he would want to get out of there and put it all behind him while we wait and wait for results of radiation.   He walked out, made eye contact with me, picked up that bell and rang it loudly with a huge smile on his face. I burst into quiet tears; I try not to be a spectacle either. People applauded, jumped up to hug him and it was a demonstration of how beautiful people can be when we realize we are all in the same damn boat. Cancer levels the playing field.

 

 

Pearls of Wisdom

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This is my first post from long ago writings by me.   It made me chuckle when I re-visited these writings from roughly 1983 when I was in my mid 20’s that I had the audacity to call them Pearls of Wisdom.

It was hard for me to record these exactly as they were written 30 some odd years ago, I so wanted to update and edit.  But, for authenticity, I didn’t.  Here, from a 20 something year old are some guidelines for life….

–Being attached to outcomes distorts your perception of what’s happening.  You tend to ignore your intuition or gut feelings because you are absorbed with wishful thinking.  You can have a preference in the outcome but you must be able to clearly see what is happening in the present time to be able to create an action plan to get to where you want to be.

–If you wait to see what is expected of you before you perform, the level of expected performance is set by something or someone outside yourself and vey well may be lower than your own.  If you go for it and don’t put limits on yourself, no one else will either.

–The more you use your brain the better it works and the more creative it becomes,  it is resonating at a higher level and “tunes in” to higher creativity.

–You can’t be happy in a relationship until your happy with yourself.  Two halve’s don’t make a whole; it makes for a fragmented relationship with unrealistic exceptions resulting in resent.  If you are hoping for self confidence as a result of a relationship, your process will be mirrored for you and you will attract into your orbit someone who is hoping to get self confidence from you.  Self confidence is not given and recieved.  It’s way more personal than that.  (Seems a little dramatic now but when I wrote this I capitalized this next part which I will do here in honor of that young girl.)

SELF CONFIDENCE IS CREATED WITHIN YOURSELF BY A PROCESS OF TRYING/STUMBLING/FALLING/MAKING CORRECTIONS/TRYING AGAIN/AND FINALLY SUCCEEDING IN ENDEAVORS LARGE AND SMALL AND ASSERTING  WHO YOU ARE AND COMING TO BAT FOR YOUR PERSONAL BOUNDRIES ALONG THEY WAY.

–I have never seen anything healthy come as a result of an outburst of anger.  It usually only causes pain, fear and confusion.   For the person who is supposedly expressing themselves, it leads to feelings of being out of control and wounded self esteem.

–The older you get, you more you look like who you are.  So people who like themselves have an easier time aging.

–Creativity lies where there are no facades.

–We are not going to enjoy the “more” we get later if we’re not enjoying  what we have now.  Happiness comes from within, not from stuff.

— Work HARD!!

 

 

 

 

Youthful Advice

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I’ve got my younger self reminding me of a few things I’ve forgotten over the years which is kinda obnoxious.  I finally decided it’s time to go through VERY old cards, letters, documents  and my own writing and get rid of some stuff.  As a young woman I was incredibly ambitious and driven and I wrote a lot.

I wrote and conducted workshops, seminars and training programs for corporations but I also wrote for myself.  Unlike today, I was very analytical back then, trying (and in many cases succeeding, hehe) to figure everything out.

I’m WAY more laid back now looking for fun, funny and how I can help animals and other people.  In fact, going through all this stuff made me feel exhausted.  I read one document from the early 1980’s about my goals for the following year and it had an entry that said “Rest from time to time.”  Which was VERY unlike me!  It should have been a SMART goal!!  Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely!  “Rest from time to time” is simply not good enough for my old self!!

Now, as my friend Tim will tell you, I wallow with coffee and the paper until 9:00 or 9:30 in the morning.  It’s heaven!  But in many ways, that other life was heaven, too.  Just so demanding.

Why am I telling you all this?!  Well, it’s because as I hold all these tattered and yellowed pages with old fashioned computer fonts in my hands, I can’t just throw them away.  I have to capture them somewhere and my blog will be the victim.  Some of the upcoming posts of writings from years gone by will be longer than my normal short stories.  As usual with any post on any blog, read what you want and move along when you are over it.  I am going to post this stuff in smallish doses and will continue to write about the zoo and other stuff also.

BTW, it’s called The Accidental Texan and my earliest posts were about how much I hate it here.  I don’t hate it anymore.  I have a full life now and there are things here I love.  Lots of things, but mostly my gorillas.

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The buddies laughing and playing.