seasonal ineffective disorder

We ran out of ice melter after the storm, and the driveway was a sheet of ice. Ever wonder if birdseed works? You know, just to create some traction. I thought I could kill two birds with one stone -- an unfortunate use of the expression, I see now. I thought I could get rid of some reject birdseed and also make the driveway less treacherous for my clients to walk on. So I scattered birdseed from where they park by the garage all the way to the gate, making a nice little path.

It was mostly millet, the cheap stuff we couldn't get through last year because everyone except juncos and sparrows considers millet an absolute joke of an excuse for food. They spit it out, and if they had lips, they would say ptooey, like a million times over, because that's how many millet seeds come in a bag. And you knew, you knew this would happen, but the sunflower seed costs an arm and part of a leg, and so you just thought maybe you could mix it with the millet and the birds would suck it up and eat the millet because they were on a roll. Like tucking a pill into someone's oatmeal. But no, they just spit it out. By "they" I mean both the birds and the person eating the oatmeal.

FYI, millet does not create traction on ice. Millet is a tiny, round seed that actually makes ice slipperier than ice. I put down some sand once I saw the ineffectiveness of my intervention, but the seed was already down. So as people made their way from their car to the gate it looked like they were walking through a forest in a wintry fairy tale, with a dozen little juncos picking the millet out of the path.

I did not start out this post intending to talk about the birdseed snafu. But I realize it is fitting. Because I have Seasonal Ineffective Disorder. When the days are short and cold like this, I am all over the place, like a bag of frozen peas that's spilled onto the kitchen floor. There are peas everywhere, out in the hallway, under the couch. One is wedged into the tread of my boots, and one went through the dryer. And even though ten times you think you have found them all, the next day there is always another pea, shriveled, just behind the chair leg or in the cat's food.

Or beads. Beads do that, too. You think you've found them all, but you never have. Anyway, I cannot get things done at a certain point in the wintertime. Not in a straight line anyway. This morning I got almost all of my 10,000 steps while shopping at Whole Foods. I'd get a lemon, get some mushrooms, go back and get another lemon, go get milk, come back and get one more mushroom, go find the almond flour, then get a third lemon. I lost my cart every five minutes and was there forever. With SID, if a thought occurs to me, I follow its instructions. It is like obeying the monkey mind. It's exhausting.

I know there are much more efficient ways to move through time --not that efficiency is everything. But honestly, I am a kite and in the wintertime someone lets go of the string. Every year we have to figure out how to tether me down.

Laura, whose middle name actually is Effective, Effie for short, helps me through each winter's relapse. The treatment protocol is paradoxical: she orders me to sit and read for an hour a day. No computer, no phone, no multi-tasking. I am instructed to set a timer and am not allowed to get up before it goes off. I get to have a cup of tea, but I had to lobby for this, as it is distracting to reach for it, then sip.

When my ineffectiveness is truly out of control -- perhaps I have gone upstairs five times in as many minutes, each time completing one small task -- she orders me to sit down and write. Tonight, as she finally came home for winter break and walked into the pea-strewn kitchen, she hugged me hello and then made me sit at the kitchen table and blog. It worked, and now I feel tethered. Tomorrow, however -- more peas, I'm sure.

nostalgia for the cave

I miss the cave days, where we all slept in a lump of warm bodies. Except in my imagination maybe I have a body pillow. But still; it was nice, that lump of family. Back when we were just developing language, we cracked each other up trying to figure out what the heck the other person was trying to say. What are you trying to tell me? Yesterday? Is that what you mean? We need more words, man!

And if only someone would invent writing! I would want to write down what you just looked like when you brought in that pile of berries, with your smile all blue and the kid on your shoulder, her teeth blue, too. Happy. Here. You. 

Gee. Even the people I'm nostalgic for are nostalgic.

I know; I know it wasn't like that. We made up words as we needed them, and maybe things back then were so tough and so primitive that you only needed to communicate a few things: Yes. No. You do it. Run. Ouchy-wawa. Found food. Hug. Something between teeth. But someone in those caves had to have a bit of poet in him, in her. Someone had to be the first person who started to hum, and then one day someone hummed a third above someone else. I miss those moments.

We didn't worry about being awake at night, because we knew we could nap whenever we wanted to. They say that's been the norm for us since way back when -- we'd have a middle of the night awakening, and then we'd go back for the second sleep. Cave dwellers did not think Ugh. I'm awake and "Frosty the Snowman" is stuck in my head. That torment did not exist in those days. Being up in the middle of the night back then gave you time to stoke the fire, time to go outside and pee, look at the stars, time for everyone to share the crazy highlights of the dream they just woke from. Mine was about flying -- crazy, huh? I flew right up to a giant beehive, ate some honey and then woke up when the little one pulled on my body pillow. Hey, look, I found a great dead branch while I was peeing by moonlight. I'll put it on the woodpile. That's what I would have said if I had had a few more words to play with.

I feel a special nostalgia for my neanderthal ancestors, who seem, no matter how you cut it, to have caught a truly bad break. I'm not saying they were perfect, and I do think humans have some lovely qualities. But they've found that we Neanderthals were homebodies, and liked to keep things organized in our homes. Everything had its place: tools in one pile, sticks in another. Sharp things were out of the way, which I feel particularly proud of somehow. And over in the corner, maybe a this-will-come-in-handy-someday pile of vines -- for when we invent straps, as long as we don't go extinct.

When humans came along and were such bullies, Neanderthals were overwhelmed, is all. I can see myself being flummoxed by this aggression, and I am, in this little reverie of mine, more nostalgic for the Neanderthals than for the wily, bully homo sapiens. As I tap out this blogpost under a blanket in the dark of night, I think wistfully of the things passed down to me from my Neanderthal ancestors, and proud of them for getting that little bit of DNA into the human family before their light flickered out forever. In comparison to humans, they weren't as good at social networking (check) and seem not to have been as committed to grabbing the bull by the horns (check). Some scientists think Neanderthals made life more difficult for themselves by doing everything together instead of divvying up the labor between the sexes (check). And apparently they were great at climbing trees (check, and thank you for that, ancient genes).

I miss these ancestors. They were just beginning to learn to hum.