Mental Maintenance

I once actually read how-to books about housecleaning. My goal, sort of realized, was to figure out the least I could do yet stay in the “normal” range.

I realized I've done the same when it comes to "mental maintenance."

Our minds are not machines, and even if they were, machines need maintenance, too.

Be kind to your mind!

Hokey as these sound, they work.

Keeping a Journal. I've done this since I was 12 years old. Spent a lot of time scribbling away, but the benefits outweigh the costs. It is the best way to learn how to write. And you think through your thoughts.

From the author Julia Cameron, keep a Ta Da List. Write down the things you did do.

Write down 5+ things you are grateful for. Some of mine -- "I'm grateful I'm not her" -- are clearly not in the spirit, but even they work. Any focus on the positive helps.

Meditation: Literally 5 minutes. Just breathe. And it’s not so much clearing your mind as it is simply trying to let your mind be clear. My favorite book on the subject: 10% Happier.

Learn Something Different: I spend about 5 minutes a day using a phone app (Duolingo) to learn a few words of Spanish. I got excited in the supermarket yesterday when I realized the people in front of me were talking about onions (cebollas)!

Exercise ... Particularly yoga ... Exercise helps emotionally as well as physically. Studies show that exercise can be as effective for alleviating depression as medications. The yoga pose half-pigeon, which is done near the end of yoga class and stretches things deep in your hips, seems to dispel stress especially well.

Sleep. It is shocking how much better you can feel simply from getting enough sleep.

My Husband Wrote a Haiku!

Happy homecoming
Alert and excited, woops!

Poor nozzle control 

:)

Winning at Yoga

Is feeling competitive a good thing?

I used to think “Hell, no.” I used to avoid it in all things, at all costs.

I was the uncoordinated kid who was always picked last for teams. I wasn’t competitive as a kid in gym and sports, I came to loathe them, because I didn’t have a chance of “winning.”

Being forced into competitive situations then, when it didn’t fit, did harm.

I think this happens to a lot of people. How else do you explain why over 80% of all American adults don’t exercise?

So often, people have such bad memories that it leads to a lifelong aversion to any exercise, which is sad.

Who is at fault? The adults – gym teachers, coaches and parents – who get so caught up in vicarious competition that they forget the point. Shouldn’t we be teaching and encouraging all children about physical fitness?

I was lucky. I eventually discovered exercise can be fun.

Because my college had a PE requirement, I signed up for a student-taught dancercise class. (Hush, that was all the rage in the ‘80s.) The teacher, apparently a dancer, was just a good teacher, a nice person.

I wish I could remember her name. That class was life-changing, no exaggeration.

I have to laugh.  Recently, I asked a trainer at the local Y for advice.  I told him I wanted to be able to do the yoga poses that the most advanced students in my classes can do. You know, stuff like this. Which I am, incidentally, nowhere near doing.

“Wants to win at yoga,” wrote the trainer in his notes.

Yup, I’m finally good enough at a physical endeavor, which doesn’t even have to be that good, to experience feeling competitive as motivation.

Yay!

Crushes

[Wow, so this super-duper didn't age well. Avenatti was just sentenced to 14 years in prison (12/5/22) for embezzling millions of dollars from clients and Elon Musk has clearly lost his freaking mind.]
 

 [O.K., so this clearly didn't age well. Michael Avenatti, how could you?]

I know a woman who told her husband that she'd never cheat, except if Bruce Springsteen were a possibility, then all bets were off.

Who you have a crush on, like any all-time favorites list you might have, says something about you, I think.

My crushes, for example, make it pretty clear I’m liberal. Also, I like the good guys. And I like them smart. Also, fearless. And funny.

They are currently:

Michael Avenatti. I know, I know, he'd make a terrible boyfriend. I don't think he can turn that testosterone-fueled aggression and competitiveness off. Still, he and Stormy Daniels just might save the country.

Elon Musk. Yes, he's probably super-odd. Musk once asked a reporter how much time he should pencil in for a girlfriend: “How much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours?" Maybe it’s because I’m not that girlfriend, but I find that cluelessness in an otherwise super-genius kind of endearing.

And no, no crush of mine is about money. I’m not that practical; also, I’m not Melania Trump. (And I don't think even she likes Trump.)

It's just that Musk just might save the human race.

Jon Stewart. Nope, he's not on The Daily Show anymore, though many of his protégés continue what he started: Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah. Maybe it's a matter of me imprinting like a baby duck on the first because it’s Jon Stewart who I have a crush on. And he is still around and kicking. Yay!

How about you? :)

Tony's Bucket List

Tony's always thinking.

It boggles my mind to think there are people who believe animals’ souls are not as good as ours, that  they don’t have emotions like ours and even that they don't feel pain.

Take Tony. (Please ... ba da dum.)

He feels Christmas-morning-level joy and excitement at least three times a day: Breakfast, Dinner and Walk.

He tries to do right. When I tell my husband that, he sputters, "No, he doesn't! He doesn't try at all." (To be fair, this is usually after Tony has peed on my husband's shoe out of excitement. Totally not Tony’s fault.)

As for barking at passers-by, chewing up our dish towels, getting into the recyclable bin, leaping up to nip our butts: he's trying to do right, he's just not sure what that is.

After all, getting after the recyclable stuff has become Tony's official job. You know how you are supposed to clean those jars and cans? I defy you to find a better, easier, more thorough way to clean that peanut-butter jar than to give it to a dachshund. For Tony, it's better than a Kong, and when he's done, it'll be pristine.

Tony’s Bucket List
1. To be eating, always.
2. Barring that, to chew and shake things to make sure they're dead: toys, socks, dish towels, pizzle sticks. (What's a pizzle stick, you ask?)
3. To be in a lap.
4. To pee and/or poop in the garage.
5. To be in a car. Doesn't matter where, or if, it's going anywhere.
6. The holy grail: To pee or poop in my husband's fancy car.
7. To be outside … or maybe inside … or maybe outside … or maybe inside ….
9. To catch the neighborhood possum. (He thinks.)

10. To be the boss of all he surveys.

Favorite Movies of All Time

All-time favorites – of anything, really, music, books, places you’ve been – are things that really made a lasting impression on you. And whenever you make a list of your all-time favorites of something, it ends up showing you something about yourself, I think.

So, movies.

The first movie that made my all-time list was Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. That movie came out in 1969, when I was four. I didn't see it till it came out on television years later, when I was about 10 or 11, at just that age when I didn’t know whether I wanted to be the Sundance Kid or sleep with him. (My present-day self says, Why not both? And also now, I appreciate the charms of Butch as much, if not more.)

Next was Paper Moon, with Ryan O'Neil and a young Tatum O'Neil.

In college, we were all fascinated by The Big Chill.

I stole a tradition from a friend (Hi, Jared!) and now we always watch Moonstruck on Valentine's Day.

Speaking of holidays, for Halloween: Young Frankenstein (I don't do horror movies), for Christmas, A Christmas Story.

The Big Lebowski: My brother-in-law, in a stroke of genius, introduced this movie to our father-in-law.

The Hotel Budapest.

Raising Arizona.

I liked going to (most) children’s movies with my own kids. Some are amazingly good, like Shrek and Mulan.

And just recently, my daughter gave my husband Florence Foster Jenkins for Father's Day. Days later, I continue to think about this movie, based on a true story and so carefully written, acted and constructed.

So, I like funny movies, clever movies, movies with a touch of the absurd, movies in which the characters let their eccentricities all hang out.

Yeah, sounds about right.

What movies make your all-time list?

To Do Lists

Nutty.

I have ridiculous to-do lists. 

I am trying to be organized.

But even my lists are a mess. A day’s list for me is really several lists written on a Google calendar page. There are arrows, stars, exclamation points. Some things are circled, others underlined, some, but not all, numbered. This is what it’s like inside my head.

Still, I think it helps to write it down.

I work on my own. I often have several long-term projects going with lots of deadlines. And somehow, I managed to become the scheduler for our entire family.

I went through a phase where I read a lot of what my husband calls “productivity porn.” While reading a book about how to be efficient might feel like you are being efficient, spoiler alert, you’re really not.

However, once in a while, I would come across an idea that appealed. I’ve incorporated these into my to-do list, which might explain some of its complexity. I’ve written about this before.

I even read books about how to clean your house (really) and figured out how to do the least amount possible as quickly as possible to avoid ending up on the television show Hoarders.

Interestingly, one of the guys who wrote a book I liked, Tony Schwartz, turns out to be the guy who ghost-wrote The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump and is now abjectly sorry.

Another idea I like: Julia Cameron, who wrote a number of books about being creative (I liked her first such book the best), recommends, not a to-do list, but a ta-da list: Think about what you did get done, after you’ve finished your day. More often than not, although I feel like I didn’t do squat, I realize that I did do quite a lot. Yay!

Hey, whatever works.