It was drizzling rain when it was time to walk this morning. I grabbed my umbrella and went anyway. Fitness, not weakness.  These flowers were so stunning against the gray that I had to stop and take a picture. Later, there was Cards Against Humanity.
Saw this little guy on my walk this morning.
I’ve been wanting a good set of matching knives for quite a while. I told you I would be rewarding myself for my accomplishments this summer. I told you I had purchased my first reward. Here they are. The cleaver was not part of the set, but I needed one, so there it is.
I actually earned these on the 17th, but I wanted to get the kitchen re-organized before I opened them, and that happened yesterday. In fact, I used the paring knife to make dinner last night. That little thing will mince garlic and shallots just fine. P.S. I treated myself to a new knife sharpener as well. I’m cool like that.
And just so you know, I’ve already earned my second prize. It’s been in my cart at Amazon for a couple of days. I should probably go ahead and order it, don’t you think?
Last Thursday night, before the kids even left, I started tearing out my dining room. I worked on it Friday, spent Saturday, Sunday, and Monday elsewhere, then spent yesterday with the cousins and then in class. I was exhausted and hit the sheets before 9pm. This morning, I finished in here. As in, it’s done except for steam cleaning the carpet. I am well pleased.
And this afternoon, because the whole goal of the open shelving was to see what I have so I can use it, and because this one puzzle hangs two inches over it’s assigned space…. I’m going to put it together on my cleared table.
Also, in case you see this post and we aren’t Facebook friends…you need to read what I wrote there this morning:
Anger is a tertiary emotion. One of the elements is usually fear, which is a response to a threat of some kind. Now, if we as white society have learned to fear the “angry black man,” maybe we need to ask why he’s angry. What of his have we threatened? His life through race related crime? His pride through systemic discrimination? His family by rigging the economic system in such a way that he cannot earn enough money to support his children except by turning to crime?
I think somehow, we’ve become convinced that being politically correct means we don’t talk about race in “polite circles.” “Politically correct” has become a way for white people to pretend that race and sexuality and all those other differences among us don’t matter. We can pretend not-white is equal to white male heterosexual. Clearly it is not.
I’ve been challenged this week, as I have been challenged multiple times over my academic career. “What are you going to do about it?” And I think my answer is that I am done being politically correct if it means couching my opinions in language that ignores the effect of race on what I have to say.
I think, also, that I will remind myself and my white friends that while we may rant about the racial, sexual, and whatever else kind of violence happens in this country, we sit in a place of relative safety. Especially the heterosexual males among us.
Maybe, just possibly, people who are darker than us and people who are not male or not heterosexual aren’t overly sensitive and looking for discrimination where it doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s really there, everywhere, and we in our whiteness don’t see it because we perpetuate it with our own willful ignorance. We should probably be ashamed of that.
Hope it holds off till I get home. Aaaand no. It did not.
Guess I won’t get that dresser out of the house tonight after all.
So, I’ve been at this walking challenge for 12 days. Usually, I just walk. Sometimes I combine errands with the walk. And then, apparently, there are days like today when I spend my steps thinking. Solidifying concepts within myself.
Yesterday, I did some sharing with a companion. I won’t share again the story I told, primarily to protect the guilty, but after the tale was told I ended with “and this is why I won’t get married again until I don’t have kids at home.” I mean, I can look back now and trace the reasons for why people acted the way they did, and I can be objective and say things like “they did the best they could with the things they carried.” And I can and do believe that. But. There is something about seeing horror on a person’s face and pity in their eyes that will make me realize, yet again, that sometimes a person’s best still fucking sucks. Really hard. These stories I keep in my heart, they may be my normal, but they are not normal at all. For most people.
So today as I walked, that was what I was thinking about. And then my mind went on to considering one of my dearest friends. One who has let me down fairly frequently and whom I still call on, even though the success rate is 50/50 there. And that’s not a good track record. But. There are decades of longevity in that relationship. And I know the hidden stories in that heart. So I know that this person is a hero twice a day, minimum. Every morning that didn’t result in overnight suicide and every night that didn’t result in a cash-in that day is a success.
And the up-shot of all that, at around five thousand steps was this: There are times when just living to tell the tale counts as success. I am successful.
You know, I went into psychology to confront my own head. When I realized I was scoring great on the exams, but not really making headway with my own issues, I switched to social work. Man, have I done some serious demon confrontation in the past few years. Which is not to say I’m done. In fact, I woke up Saturday morning gasping for breath and on the verge of tears from a dream I had. My family, alive and dead, was talking about my dad. He wasn’t there. Because: dead. The conversation was pointed at my mother. And there was no resolution there. Which I guess is accurate, because there is never going to be any resolution there. It is a thing that just is. And while last year I was able to be loving and generous toward the fathers in my life on Father’s Day, that couldn’t happen for me this year. And that’s okay. That’s okay, because I am still successful: I’ve lived to tell the tale tales.
Or The Picture of Dorian Gray? Looks like I’m knitting!
Waking up where the nearest coffee is 3,000 steps away. One way.