Once you get to a certain age or become involved in yuppie circles, if you’re female, at one point you will be invited to a women’s party.  The original was the Tupperware party,  and I can truthfully say I have never been invited to one of those.  But they come in all breeds now, Stampin Up, Tastefully Simple, Pampered Chef, Lia Sophia, Partylite, and that’s just off the top of my head.   I have gone to a bunch of them, though I am the guest you love to hate, I usually buy small at these things.  I go mostly to socialize and because I have friends who are going.

Well, the newest is the Dove chocolate party.  I was invited by a coworker and decided, what the hell, I’d go.  I also have an unspoken rule that when a new person invites me to a social event, I try to go.   It was actually a lot of fun, and surprisingly, the products were really good.  Yes, chocolate is another one of those things I am a snob at.  I go by chocolate that is suitable for truffle making.  Valhrona, Guittard, Schaffen Berger–these are all names well known by chocolatiers.  When making truffles myself, I usually use Omanhene because it is a really good value for the money.  But Dove–well, I like their dark chocolate, but I don’t consider them high brow.

I think Dove is trying to capitalize on the gourmet food trend, and actually their products were not bad.  I liked their smoothie mix and their mousse base.  As I said, I was surprised.  And so, after much internal wrangling, I decided to host a party myself.  A chocolate party–it seemed like it would be fun.

What I did not count on was my ego getting in the way.  I made up a decent guest list and sent out invites.  And I got 3 confirmations.  You always wonder what the minimum is, and my internal minimum was 5.  I felt like the biggest loser.

It’s stupid, I know.  Part of me hates those parties, because you’re basically asking your friends to spend money on your behalf.  So why do this to myself?  But it irked me that now three of my coworkers have or are doing these chocolate party things, and each one could get 10+ guests.  So what is wrong with me, that I can invite a bunch of people and I get 3?  And it shouldn’t be a popularity contest, but I just felt as I did in gym in 5th grade, the last one to be picked to play games.  So I stopped playing and canceled the damn thing.

Another part of it is that is seems like no one is available these days.  Everything has to be scheduled out weeks or months in advance.  Last week, I had a really horrible day for no good reason, I was just teary-eyed and felt alone.  I told nobody, because what was the point?  I didn’t schedule my break down a month in advance, so how could any of my friends juggle their schedule to accommodate me?  And it happens to me too, often we have schedules that have to be worked around.  With Rowan in school now, we’re even more constricted.  So yay for my poor husband, he gets to hear me out when I’m all emotional.

Who knew trying to host a party could could be such a self-esteem buster?  Well, I’ve learned my lesson.  The lesson is, never try.  Okay, okay so that’s a Homer Simpson quote and I’m really not as bad as that.   I can take the lesson as the universe doesn’t want me to spend money such a frivolous thing as chocolate right now, though that doesn’t make me feel much better either.  Actually, that makes me sound like the fox who called the grapes sour in Aesop’s fable.   So perhaps I will take the lesson as I need to get out more.  Anyone available for 2010?

Well, today Rowan lost her first tooth, finally.  Her two bottom front teeth already have her adult teeth growing behind them, so we’ve been wiggling and wiggling them.  Sadly, she swallowed the tooth she lost, I wanted to keep it.    Now I have to decide what the going rate for a tooth in absentia is.

Weatherwise, this has been a beautiful weekend.  We got out and got plenty of sunshine.  Yesterday we set up the the firepit and burned part of our old arbor.  The wood was so old Leif pushed it down and stomped on it, and then we fed it to the fire.  I love watching a fire.  Ever changing, and yet constant.

The sun was shining and the fire was going and we ended up talking about all sorts of things.  Earlier in the morning I had taken a walk and hadn’t come back before Rowan woke up, so when she did wake up she had a fit because I wasn’t there.  When I got back, she cheered right back up but Leif stayed grumpy.  Sometimes I have to shake my head ruefully, I picked a man with moods as bad as mine.

I was thinking of the stories we tell ourselves, how we came to be the people we are.  Our brains can only designate so many memories as important, and I’ve been caught in situations with old friends where we remember the same events completely differently.   I also wonder how my parents interpret my childhood, and how much it probably differs from mine.

It seems like the great American pastime is to badmouth our parents, and I feel a bit guilty about that.  Yet I am also only human and I still get frustrated with them, and frustrated with censoring half my life so that I don’t have to discuss it with them.   Then there is my husband, who gets along great with his mom, but his father caused him a lot a grief.   But his father is no longer alive.

Leif was saying that he wonders at the man he could have been if it had not been for the bad situation with his father.  Sometimes he feels like he is damaged.   And yet the past is past, it cannot be relived.

I know for me, I went through a period in my early 20s when I felt like the depression in my teens was just a lot of angst, that I had made it worse than it really was.   But situations that happened later in life (one of which being the birth of my daughter) made me realize, that no, it was real.  I explain it as I have a predisposition to depression.  Like diabetes, it can be controlled.  But I have to know that it can come back, and left untreated, it can have pretty serious consequences.   That’s okay, I just work around it.

I don’t really spend much time thinking about my past childhood years, I kind of figure that it laid the basis for who I would become.  It’s over, and I’m glad.  And my father never had the kind of alcohol problem my husband’s father did, for which I am grateful.  In fact, I feel a little sorry for my father that he got me as one of his kids, maybe there’s some karma being worked out there, who knows.  I don’t know how Ken thought of himself when we was Leif’s dad.  Was he like the 90% of drivers who think they’re above average?

It is strange to be outside with the wind and the trees and sunshine and to think of how much suffering this earth has seen.   The sun keeps on shining, the wind continues to blow, the trees continue to grow.   The earth is just there, and here we are creating drama and conflict and bitterness in our heads.  In fact, I was stunned the other day to look up suicide statistics, and to find our there are more suicides every year than homicides and war causalities combined.  Globally, it’s the 10th leading cause of death.  That’s pretty crazy.  If you’re afraid of being killed, statistically, you are the person most likely to do it–to yourself.  Only human beings do this sort of thing.   (For more info, you can see the WHO webpage)

Why am I bringing this up under a post entitled “Beautiful Day?”  Because it can be beautiful out, and there are many people who won’t see.  Even my cats know to just lay in the sun and warm their fur.  Even the insects take one last pass.  But humans can totally miss it, and before you know it, the sun had gone down, and night has fallen, and that day will never come again.   Well, I’m glad I took a walk out in it.

As you may or may not know, I was brought up Christian.  We went to church every Sunday and I memorized lots of Bible passages.  I used to have a big book of Bible stories that I loved.  (Esther was my favorite)  But I was thinking of the first three kings of Israel, Saul, David, and Solomon.  Of those, Solomon was my favorite.

Now the favorite of any good Christian girl should be David.  After all, he was the most god-fearing of the three.  And in Christianity, it’s how you end up that counts.  The apostle Paul, for example, started off persecuting Christians (until God struck him blind) but ended up being the most influential person in the early church.  Solomon, on the other hand, started out god-fearing but by the end he had turned away from God.

But when Solomon was a young man, just starting out his rule, God came to him in a dream and asked him what he would like, and Solomon asked him for wisdom.  God was pleased with his answer, so he gave him wisdom, and riches and honor besides.  Even as a kid, I could understand where Solomon was coming from.  It was daunting just to figure out what do with my life, the idea of ruling a kingdom–what a difficult task that would be.  Life seemed so confusing and there were so many things I didn’t get.  How great it would be understand things!

Of course, Solomon ending up with riches and a harem of 1,000 women is promptly glossed over as the cause of his downfall.  Don’t idolize Solomon, kids.  Yes, he was wise and filthy rich and could have any number of beautiful women–but he went to hell.    But coming from a more secular perspective, you could interpret that first he gained wisdom, then material abundance and a rocking love life.  (I suppose he might have been unhappy having a 1,000 women to choose from, but I somehow doubt it.)

I still admire Solomon.   It seems like the older the I get, the more I realize what I don’t know.    And I hope that at least I’ll at least acquire some wisdom on my way to old age.   In fact, I just finished a book that had a section on happiness and it was citing studies that generally people over 65 are happier than people in their 30s (assuming good health).  People get better on focusing on the good stuff and ignoring the inevitable negative stuff.  They also spend more time on the experiences that bring the most happiness.

Although that is somewhat comforting, it also is a little disconcerting.   So I’ll probably figure out what it’s all about right before I die?  Of course there is the perspective that the basic meaning of life is to figure out the meaning of life before you die.  And maybe have some fun along the way.

I know for me, I would like to be able to make a positive difference in this world.  But you have to get to a certain level of “evolvedness” first.   If I’m depressed, for example, I can’t help anyone–in fact, I will need help from other people.  And even being average, going to my job, taking of my family, etc., it more a net gain of zero than anything else.  To make a difference means I have to get to a place where I have the means to take care of myself and my family–I’m not going to be of much use if I can’t pay my own mortgage and feed my family.  It means I have to be emotionally mature enough to roll with the punches.  And it means I will need clarity on what it is I want to accomplish.

Not that it’s not worth it, but that’s a lot of work.   Like any big project, it’s mostly going to come about by small changes made consistently, rather than any big ones made irregularly.  And consistency does not come naturally to me, I have to work at that too.   Well, I suppose even if I don’t have clarity yet about the big picture, I’ve got plenty of things to work on in the meantime.

So I had sort of a pie-in-the-face incident happen lately (which I’m not really going to go into detail with).  Suffice it to say, my emotions went from “I’m feeling pretty good about myself” back to feeling “I am a complete moron.”

Among my long list of things to do to improve both myself and my life, emotional mastery sits pretty high.   I think I’m a pretty laid back person, until something goes wrong, and then I don’t exhibit laid back behavior at all.  I become easily distracted and teary.  And I wonder why is it so hard to come to a stop in the middle?  Obviously, it’s great to like yourself as a person.  And rationally, it’s pretty easy to say, “Yeah, I’m not perfect, but I’m pretty good.  I’ll give myself some leeway, because I’m still learning in the life.”

But what happens when you realize, actually sometimes the way you behave is selfish?  Sometimes arrogant?  And no, you didn’t go around thinking “Today, I’m going to be a total douche bag.  Yeah, I’ve been nice most days, but today I’m going to dump on people.”  No, usually what happens it that you behave in a manner that you find completely justifiable.  Except then you get called on it.  And then you feel like crap.  And then you wonder if all those times that you felt like you were a pretty decent person, perhaps you weren’t so great after all.  Where is the truth?

Perhaps the truth is irrelevant because we are all only human, and nobody is really perfect.  And if you believe in subjective truth, then there are multiple truths floating around anyway.  For me, I wrestle with being pretty happy with myself  (and secretly wondering if I”m being arrogant) to feeling pretty low about myself, which a useless state to be in, because then I can’t help anyone.  So where is the true humility?  Where is the path of wisdom, when you accept your faults but don’t berate yourself for them?

This is why I should be meditating, instead of falling asleep.

I ended up on one of the forums I lurk over, and awhile back I had posted about an issue that was bothering me.  I finally went to read the replies (if any).  It’s a little odd and uncomfortable to open yourself for discussion, but I was doing okay until the last reply.  It brought up something I hadn’t thought about and frankly, I just spent the last hour bawling my eyes out.  Even the cats were looking at me with the look What the hell is the matter with you? I feel. .so. . drained. . .right now.   Not that it’s a bad thing, but wow.  Guess that issue was a bit more painful than I thought.   Time to go to bed!

Edit the next morning:  I felt better after my good cry.  Sometimes you need that.  However, I was amused that during the night I dreamed I was out with friends and we were at a magnificent pastry shop.  I bought a piece of a fabulous triple-layer mousse cake, it was so good I licked my fingers clean afterwards.  It was a complete girly indulgence thing.  I woke and realized it was all a dream–no calories!  Yeah!

So as my coworkers who see my lunch can attest to, I like a lot of variety in my lunches.  Well, usually I pack of couple of snacks as well.  I must have a secret fear of starving to death at work because I always have a loaf of bread, peanut butter, and jam at work in case I forget/don’t like my lunch.  Of course, a PB & J for me is not as it is for other people.  I can’t stand soft, flimsy bread (Wonder Bread is not bread, it is some fakery trying to be bread) and I don’t like grape jelly either.  I usually have Whole Wheat Maximus Grain Bread, which must be toasted, crunchy peanut butter (or cashew or almond), and some non-grape jam, such as raspberry.

Incidentally, I also do this sort of thing with oatmeal.  I like steel cut Irish oatmeal, cooked with milk, with brown sugar and golden raisins on top.  White sugar and regular raisins don’t cut it for me.  I could do maple syrup (only real, never fake) or honey (preferably some single flower origin honey) and I can do other dried fruit, like little currents.  Oh yes, and I only ever make pancakes from scratch.  You can see why I have to do the grocery shopping in our household.

My family is actually okay with this sort of thing, until I started doing the cream cheese sandwiches.  Lately, on my Whole Wheat Maximus Grain bread, I spread garlic herb cream cheese (spinach artichoke is good too) with thick cut lengthwise cucumbers, sprouts, tomatoes, and pepperocini (or banana or jalapeno peppers).  Of course, making my lunch is of intense interest to my 5-year old, who watched me and promptly declared, “Yuck!  Eww!  Gross!  You are the queen of gross sandwiches!”   I don’t know what her problem is, it’s like the Dagwood of veggies sandwiches, and I love it.

So after writing in my blog last night, I went around and started perusing other blogs.  Which I shouldn’t have done late at night, because it fired up the inner critic.  And when I woke up this morning, I just felt bleh.  I had started second-guessing myself.  “Why do I write, nobody will read this drivel?”  “I sound completely arrogant.”  “Am I trying to impress people with the use of the word ‘abscribe’?” and ending with “I am a complete moron.”  But you know what?  I used to more of a complete moron and I still seem to have friends, so I think it will be okay.

I had to go to the clinic this morning because hallelujah, they got some H1N1 vaccine in.  I didn’t have to be there until 8:30, which meant that technically I could have taken Rowan to school but I didn’t want to.  She was moody and teary and I can’t stand to look into those sad brown eyes when her face is all pink, it twists my heart up.  So I made Leif take her to school instead.  (I called him later on and he once again assured me that he thinks she just isn’t a morning person and really, she’s fine.  And that she’s probably pushing boundaries to see what she can get away with.)

I ended up getting to the clinic early and decided to get the worst cappuccino I’ve had in awhile at the coffee stop inside.  My first hint–the very nice lady behind the counter said, “Now just so you know, we don’t put sugar into our cappuccino, so it won’t be sweet.”  Hmmm. . . who does automatically put sugar into cappuccino, McDonalds?  And who’s complaining that you don’t?  Then when I got it, it had a head of pure white foam.  No crema there.   Which just goes to show that even when I try not to be a snob (really, I am not a gourmet coffee drinker), I can’t help myself.   That’s okay, at least I’ve tried it at a different place.

The shot went fine.  The doctor asked me if it hurt, and it did a little, but to me it was a completely irrelevant question.  I wanted to tell him, “Sir, I did the amnio and the chorionic sampling, I can handle your little needle.”  They should make a badge for that, “I did the Amnio!”  And I realized that though I still dislike needles (because really, what is there to like?) I am not really afraid of them.  Except perhaps the amnio.  Oh, and rabies shots, because those sound pretty hardcore too.

I went back on my merry way to work, listening to Salt ‘n’ Pepa on the radio, “What a Man.”  I’ve always liked them, brassy chicks.  I got to work and one of my colleagues had made carrot cake AND saved a piece for me.  So then I knew it would be a good day, watered down cappuccino and all.

So two of the internet people I follow closely, Steve and Erin Pavlina, have recently announced their separation after 15 years of marriage.  I’m not one to follow regular Hollywood celebrities, but I reacted the same way most people did about the Gosselins–stunned.  It was all very amicable, they’re just growing in different directions and have decided to split to pursue their individual goals.

It was interesting to read the forums the first couple of days, especially when it came to Steve and Erin’s kids.  There was a lot of debate about the impact on them, and frankly a lot of judgement.  But there were a couple of interesting takes on the whole concept of marriage. One person pointed to marriage as a societal more that developed as a way to economic stability, and is supported by religious and government authorities as a way to stabilize (and control) society.  I think that’s not a far off perspective, especially when you consider infidelity (I think there’s a lot of evolutionary biology mixed in with that issue) and fertility (i.e., you can’t tell when a woman is fertile, unlike, say a horse).

Another person also brought up that the whole “happily ever after” was a lot more possible when people died in their 30s.  Marriage would only last about 15-20 years before one of the parties died, and perhaps now that we all live so much longer, we are seeing more of the natural end of relationships.

I think 15-20 years may be the lifespan of a marriage, and when it comes to a turning point, various things can happen–the couple may be different but find they are still growing together, and so the relationship enters another phase.  Or the couple may decide that the relationship has reached it’s end and part ways.  Or the couple may realize they are no longer a match and decide to stay in it, out of fear or apathy, even if it is no longer a good fit.

I guess it all depends on how you look at it.  I, for one, do not believe in the idea of soul mates.  Six billion people in the world and somehow you’ll manage to be in the same geographical location as your future mate?  That does not make sense to me.  But I can believe in a soul connection, that we are fated to meet certain people that will help us on our journey–though they may be friends, ex-lovers, or a person we will marry.

I’ve been thinking a lot about souls lately.  I was Christian, agnostic, atheist, agnostic again, and now I don’t know what to call myself.  But I do believe in something more and I find I believe in reincarnation, though I never thought I would.  I also find that I believe the souls of children choose their parents, though of course they forget what they chose them for by the time they are incarnate.

So from that perspective, I look at Rowan and wonder what her soul wanted to learn, that it could learn from being our child.  And I wonder if we’ll meet again–I kind of think we will (and we have).  But then I’ll talk to my Mom–and I know this sounds horrible–and I’ll wonder if I’ll want to meet my parents again.  I did learn a lot growing up in that household, but as an adult, my path feels miles away from them.  I don’t feel like I have a strong connection to their souls at all.

To be frank, from their perspective the reason my very existence is hurtful is because not only will I die someday, but they will never see me again.  Because I’m not going to their heaven.   I understand that–I grew up with that belief though I no longer abscribe to it.

And then there is my current husband of this lifetime.  I do think there is a soul connection there.  Sometimes he is maddeningly my karmic mirror–showing me all the aspects of myself that I dislike.  But I look back at all the years we’ve had together, and how different we have both become from each other’s influence–there were definitely lessons worth learning there.  And certainly, as the father of my children, he was an excellent choice, no complaints there either.  But I think it is normal–and valid–to wonder if 5, 10, 20 years from now, will we still be on compatible paths?  After all, people aren’t static.  Will we still have things to teach each other?

So it was kind of a rough morning–Leif was sick but thankfully, Rowan’s temperature was back to normal so back to school she went.   However, she had been really clingy which unfortunately tends to annoy me if overdone.  Whenever I would leave the room she would whine and look for me.  I had such a peaceful morning when I got up at 5, and then introducing my family to the morning an hour and a half later just got on my nerves.

(Aside: I thought I would have more problems adjusting to the time change, but Kinoko, in her infinite catness of being, has been trying to get me up earlier and earlier over the past few weeks.  I couldn’t figure out why she was attempting to be fed at 4 am–until the clocks changed and there she was, right at 5:00 am again.  Snot.)

I ended up taking Rowan to school.  I don’t really like taking her to school, because she clings to me and doesn’t seem to interact with the other kids.  Then again, I’m there, the observer who’s changing the environment by observing it.  I realized that I don’t like taking her to school because it is hard for me to remove her school experience from my school experience.

It’s hard to know what you really want for your kid.  I could say I want her to be happy, and I do of course.  But if she had an IQ of 70 and was happy all day long–well, to be truthful, I wouldn’t be.  I would like her to be fairly intelligent, I would like her to understand that her life is all her own–heaven or hell, it will mostly of her own making.  I don’t want her to suffer the way I did, having this sharp hurt of wondering what was so wrong with me that no one wanted to be friends, no one cared.

Yet I like myself now.  Oh sure, I’ve still got growing to do, make no mistake.  But my past led me to today.  So though I suffered through school, I finally, clumsily, learned how to make friends and how to be a friend.

If my daughter never suffers at all, wouldn’t she be vapid and insipid?  But too much suffering can break a person.  I am not a believer in the saying, “God never gives you more than you can handle.”  Sorry, there are too many suicides for me to believe that–too many instances where people opt out, because they can’t handle it anymore.  Certainly that was one of my dearest fantasies for many years, to end it.   And if my parents had known what I felt–but they didn’t.  A decade passed before they had a clue, too late for the 11 year old that used to fantasize about hanging herself outside the 6th grade classroom.

Obviously, I got over it eventually.  And I don’t really think Rowan will get as bad as that.  But where is the truth in that situation?  If you have your daughter that says, “I have no friends, no one plays with me,” but other adults will say, “Oh yeah, my kids said that all the time,” when and where do you intervene?  In my case, Leif picks her up and says every day, she comes out of school with a big smile.  He says that she’s probably not a morning person, grumpy as he is.  And that’s probably a fair assessment.  But I don’t ever want to stop listening, just in case.