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.

Louisville Slugger

     In all my years of studying counseling and psychotherapy, no one ever taught me to ask clients about their poop.
     On the contrary; we're taught not to give advice, not to fix it. Many a lip has been bitten in the consulting room, believe you me. And mostly, that is the right thing. It's partly the handing someone a fish thing, versus letting them pierce the worm on a hook and let it dangle in the water, then yank. Fish tastes way better that way. Not only that, but when we give advice it's usually given to take us off the hook (different hook, sans worm), relieving us of the squirmy feeling of wanting to fix something.
     Secretly, though, I love to fix the problem. I daresay this is counselors' dirty little secret. We give each other advice on the sly all the time, and it feels fabulous; like you've been holding your breath all week, and finally you can exhale with a paaaaaaaaah.
     My point today is this: graduate school did not teach me to help clients poop -- and it should have. It turns out that lots of depressed and anxious people are constipated. Freud has something worthwhile to say in there, but he doesn't have The Answer. Constipation, you've just gotta fix. Otherwise, you can't hear, you can't think, you can't do anything but desire to poop. When Buddha said desire is the source of all suffering, he may have been making a veiled reference to the matter of constipation.

     Remember the Squatty Potty? I bought one in the thick of my nutritional studies because it sounded like every home should have one, since humans in the developed world have not been pooping correctly since the days of squatting in the veld. I was alarmed to find I had been doing it wrong, and probably had raised three children to poop sub-optimally, too.
     It turns out -- hold your applause -- that no one in our household actually needs any assistance in pooping. Hydraulics: check.
     Not so fortunate are several of my clients. And what freedom I have felt when together we get to the bottom of things! How is your poop? I ask. Well, I am, in fact (here their face contorts exactly as yours is now), constipated.
     Well, screw that. Yesterday I met with a client who hadn't pooped in five days. Maybe one pebble, she moans. We have a long, meaty talk about her poop. I'm telling you, aside from conversations about life and death, this is my favorite kind of intercourse. That may not be the word I'm looking for.
     Wait right here, I say. I go upstairs and come down with the Squatty Potty. This is today's door prize, I tell her. Keep it. I demonstrate the correct positioning while perched on my office chair. I describe how it will position her colon differently.
     We then realize as the session ends that she had walked to my office. Carrying a Squatty Potty down Main Street, Farmington, Connecticut -- that's asking a lot of just about anyone, even someone looking to counseling to help expand their general sense of freedom in the world. Firmly set on getting this person unplugged, I drive her home.
     She wrote this morning: "The Squatty Potty worked. Today I delivered a Louisville Slugger. Literally."
     You will forgive her use of "literally," won't you? In the end, it had to feel that good.

how to perform beyond your capacity

     I noticed with interest readers' interest in the educational testing I had as a child. I don't remember it -- of course not. I'm not that smart. But here's the thing: if I really wanted to get my hands on the testing, I could get as close as anyone could. I would have the persistence and wherewithal to approach someone at Alice Peck Elementary School and persuade them (in writing; I can't think fast enough face-to-face to persuade many of much) to let me take a flashlight down into the school basement, find the box marked 1960-1965, and sift through its contents. Eventually I would find one moldy page, I'm thinking, with the test results and commentary written by hand.
     Paula Barrett Chu; age 8 years/2 months; grade 3:
     Overview: Not that smart, but will persist until the cows come home, provided cows are in a fenced area and have not strayed too far in the first place. 
     Conclusion: performs beyond her natural capacity. 
     Implications: Given time, she is somewhat smarter than she seems. Except when that is not true.
     Recommendations: [smudged].

     How can someone perform beyond their natural abilities? Watch and learn. Here is one of the "games" one plays on Lumosity.com when one wants to stretch their brain and feel it snap back at the same time. Here you want to move the seed to the hole in 21 moves, without bumping into the ladybugs. Those you need to move out of the way.

Here is what typically ends up happening:

 

     I've made 29 moves and still have one more to go. Why not show all 30, little seed safely in its hole? Because it took me a few rounds of the game to figure out that you can't take a screenshot of the completed puzzle -- the picture disappears as soon as the seed reaches the hole. Q.E.D. 

     But here, one step shy of getting the seed to the hole, the timer is already black, and my "route score" is moving in the same direction. And when the little celebratory tune sounds as I finally plant the precious seed in the damned hole, I can tell it is sarcastic.

     As life unfolds and I take 30 steps to do what perhaps could be done in 21, I will remind readers of my commitment to getting 10,000 steps a day -- which, when you add up all the detours and searches for phone, eyeglasses, and the 8-foot ladder, not the 5-foot one -- I am proud to say I do achieve.

     That's how you do it though, buttercups. You just keep going, even if you take a circuitous route. That allows you to attach a little extender to your brain's leash.

     Keep pulling until the collar is a little too tight and you start kind of panting. 

23 and us

     A couple of months ago, Laura and I both sent off tubes of spit so that "23andme" could analyze our respective DNA. It took me two tries, I'm afraid: I had eaten a cherry tomato from the garden right before my first sample*, and the results said that most of my ancestors were from the nightshade family. That didn't seem to represent my whole story. So I had to send off another ptooey of saliva.
     If you haven't seen what 23andme is up to, you are missing quite a party. They have located 988 of my relatives so far, for one thing. They live all over the globe, and clearly have an inherited fondness for travel. I'm anxious about what this could lead to -- what if they want to see Farmington, Connecticut? Our house is pretty big, but the toilets can handle only so much.
     There's a staggering amount of health-related information at 23andme. They can tell you what your risks are for various illnesses, how likely you are to tolerate an assortment of medicines, what kind of earwax you have (so that's what that stuff is!) and whether you have inherited a tendency to gather lint in your navel. Okay, I made that one up, but I'm telling you, I will not be surprised if someone is looking closely at that.
     There are a bunch of illnesses the risks for which they can predict with strong confidence. Two of them --Alzheimer's and Parkinson's -- are under cyber lock and key. You have to keep telling them you're sure you want to know about those two. They don't want to shock you -- if you had a genetic tendency toward atrial fibrillation or high blood pressure, that could be one tragic scene, right? So it's: If you're sure, click here. Are you really sure? Click here. I'm telling you, the suspense builds like crazy.
     Finally you reach a page where they've hidden your Alzheimer's and Parkinson's results (and a winky face saying "made ya look!").
     All in all, there are more lower-than-average than higher-than-average risks for me, despite increased risks of Parkinson's, gout, Type 2 diabetes, and-- hold onto your hats -- breast cancer.
     Two other things in 23andme have grabbed my attention. First is that my genome places me in the 97th percentile for Neanderthal genes. Let's let that sink in for a moment. I have more Neanderthal in me than 97% of the human population. This explains so much, and I anticipate that I will from here forward feel somewhat vindicated when I walk into a room and can't remember what I was going to do. That used to happen to my ancestors all the time.
     The finding helps me make sense of that educational testing I had as a child, which indicated that I am an overachiever, performing beyond my actual, measurable abilities. I do more than I am actually capable of. That idea alone is, of course, a bit over my head. But now we know how true it is. Oog, as my kin used to say, furrowing their gigantic brows in vague understanding.
     23andme can also tell you how short your telomeres have become. You want nice, long telomeres, since they erode with time and age, and shorter ones mean a decreasing ability for your cells to replicate nicely. Hence, we end up wrinkly and saggy (well, we Neanderthals do, anyway -- I can't speak for the rest of you). And eventually old, in the truest sense of the word. My telomeres are unusually shortened, likely from chemo -- the gift that keeps on giving. Mine are as short as someone who is 7.82 years older. This means my birthdate might as well have been January 3, 1948, making me almost a year older than my parents' firstborn, whom I now, given my aged telomeres, think of as my kid brother, Lee.
     A note about Laura: her ancestors are white. White white white, man. They built the original suburbs in Northern Europe and still live either there or in Greenwich, Connecticut. Apparently hardly any of them were attracted to Neanderthals -- which stings a bit, I have to say.

*I trust you'll excuse this error in light of my ancestry.

gluten intolerance

     I've sometimes thought that writers who drink -- think Hemingway as a classic example - do so because they kind of like feeling a bit depressed; drinking helps them lean toward their sadness in order to access deeper emotions so they can write. For them, drink is a catalyst between the gluten of depression and the yeast of creativity; it allows them to cook up some tasty writing. I'm not including alcoholics in this line of thinking, by the way -- just people looking to loosen their noggins.*
     I know the creative momentum that comes with feeling sad. When I was in the thick of cancer and all that, I couldn't stop writing. Mild melancholy and moderate struggle are useful for getting a spark of inspiration going; witness much of the great poetry, great music, great road trips, great howls at the moon.
     But it has to be mild melancholy. It doesn't work when you're lost in the darkest cave. Creativity can kick in, though, when the light is dim and there is a bit of cave-y feeling, like a fort around the lower bunk bed.

     Now, as I sit here with an impulse to write and no muse in sight, it's clear to me that writers who drink or get high are just cheating. They're stuck, and they know that if they can get themselves into an altered state of mind, cerebral ice jams will break apart. Hemingway was no different from the kids who share each other's Adderall and then find they've written a darned good history paper, by gum. Or people who indulge in cannabis and finally get traction on that essay when they speak from the perspective of their cat.

     Me, I'll occasionally have we what call a "girl beer" -- example du saison being ginger beer -- but not more than one. That single serving has never inspired anything other than a good burp or two, and I'm not game for going beyond that. I confess that I am both jealous and judging of those who allow themselves to cheat and hot-wire their imaginations with substance.
      You need some catalyst for creative juices to flow, but I want that to come from light, not from darkness. I know you need both elements -- for contrast and depth perception -- but still.
     I will admit to the thought that if I did get sick again, the upside is that I could write. Those of you who write, too, will forgive me for that terrible, fleeting notion. Yes, it seems I can write a bang up eulogy, but who wants grief as their muse? Not I.
     So much better is when I am amused and feeling up. That happens more routinely when Laura is around: she is my muse and, god bless her, my amusement; my own mind-altering catalyst. With her away most of the time, my creative mind gets kind of dense -- no yeast; just gluten.
     We've been talking about this when she is home, and we're trying to figure out how I can find some leavening within, so I can write.
     But this feels ridiculous to me: too quiet a life to be creative? Tell that to Thoreau. You can bet he wasn't walking into town to pick up a six-pack of Bud to get his writing groove on.

     I will say that I am a little hungry and thirsty after this post. Could be a good sign.

*Here I pause for a few minutes to google the relationship between eggnog and noggin -- a mighty close one which you will need to investigate on your own. I'm talking etymology, not ingestion.

self-monitoring scales

    There are several ways to find out if you are a high self-monitor or a low self-monitor. There's drawing a capital E on your forehead, of course. If your frame of reference is inside your head (low self-monitor), you'll draw it backwards from the perspective of the rest of the world. And if your frame of reference is the point of view of others (high self-monitor), you'll draw them a nice, legible E. Or, if you ever find yourself in a room that's built to be tilted and scientists ask you to hang a painting straight (they provide the painting), as a low self-monitor you will hang it according to your sense of what straight feels like, in reference to your own sense of relation to the earth; high self-monitors want the painting to match the off-kilter room.
     Something like that. I am less clear on the details of the painting-hanging test, never having had the opportunity to hang a painting, upon the request of scientists, in a tilted room. I wish.
     Overall, there seem to be a number of social advantages to being a high self-monitor. You tend to be better at getting people to like you, to listen to you, not to yell at you for getting in their way. You tend not to get in their way in the first place. You can shift, say, from the particular approach required for connecting to a 4-year-old, then manage a classroom of adolescents, then goof off with your family. You believe that Biblical thing about how you once spake as a child and now you've put away childish things, but you also know it's more complicated than that.
     But if you're too far into the high self-monitoring end of things, you're a terrible show off, or -- so much worse -- you're slick, and people smell something phony about you. You walk down the busy street wondering if you look good, look right for the occasion. You shape-shift for each conversation and you sort of lose track of who you are outside of the expectations of others.
     If you're too deep into the low self-monitoring end of things, you pick your nose and scratch your crotch as you walk down that street, forgetting that there is an art to hiding such things, the first involving strategic, casual gestures and the second involving strategic, casual use of pockets.
     Most psychiatric patients tend to be very low self-monitors. Sociopaths, though, are too high. You with me?
     Most of the rest of us are high self-monitors in peculiar ways, and way low in others. I, for example, kicked a black walnut for 3 miles today, absorbed in the challenge of keeping track of it among the autumn leaves and paying attention to cars as hazards but not caring about the possible judgment about what I was doing. That said, when the walnut crossed the street and many cars were parked at the light, I mimed, practiced as I am in such artistry, that I was crestfallen with my bad aim. I just kind of let my shoulders drop and my head fall. This communicated, "I may be kicking this walnut every 15 feet for a very long time, but you can see that I am sane. I am just really working on something here."
     (If you have ever been walking in one direction with other people around and then needed to turn and go back to your car, chances are you have mimed "Oops. Oh, my. I have forgotten something! Is it in this pocket? Is it in this one? Oh, dear! [perhaps a small stomp or huff would be good here] I am going to turn around, but you can see I am not a crazy person, because clearly I have (which is so unlike me!) forgotten something." You know what you do when no one is around? You just turn around. Nary a stomp or huff.)
     Still, by and large, in lots of the usual senses of self-monitoring, I tend toward the low end. I am either generally oblivious, rebellious, or too happy to care what you think. Few would accuse me of being slick. I think we can say that.
     That said, I have islands of absurdly heightened self-monitoring. Sometime in the mid-1990s, I got my first car with an automatic transmission. For months as I drove I tried to make it look like I was still shifting gears. Pulling away from stoplights, I'd drop my right hand toward where the gearshift used to be to give people in other cars, all of whom were looking into my car to see whether I was noble or corrupt, the illusion that I was shifting gears. Sometimes I'd even move my hand down, then up and toward the right, then down to the right. Ahhh...I think I'll just stay in 4th gear for awhile.    
     Your judgment of how I look is not much of a priority for me, but apparently your judgment of my goodness is. That I preferred the ease of an automatic transmission to the more ecological stick-shift was a selfish, indulgent choice. It's called "standard" for a reason, and I failed it.
     And when I walk by that piece of litter while you drive by, I assume you are wondering why I don't pick it up. So I often do, and I think, from the summit of high self-monitoring: "Note the Noble Soul Picking up Litter, Ye, Drivers on Main Street." Holding the Slurpee container with two fingers (the other digits extended and spread, so as to make it clear that the Slurpee container is litter I am nobly picking up, not something I would actually drink), I kick the walnut again. It shoots straight down the center of the sidewalk. I know no one is watching me make that perfect shot, but I think they are watching me carry the Slurpee container.
     This self-monitoring thing: it's more complicated than the E on the forehead. I can't say if the painting-hanging exercise nails you one way or another, but I'd love to try, if you know of a tilted room that needs decorating. Can I bring my walnut?