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relationships

Lane on Love

the outside lane

For as little as I like the tie-dye and crystals that so often go along with the words holistic lifestyle, I think there is a lot to be said for looking at the simplest forms of function, and considering how your life might adapt to them. Even as metaphor, simple function reveals basic foundations for higher structure.

Consider the heartbeat.

When your heart is beating in a good, solid rhythm, it keeps your blood flow good and constant. Assuming your highway system of arteries, veins, and capillaries works properly, and the rest of your organs are cooperating, a steady, rhythmic heartbeat keeps you well oxygenated and flush with health. If you get your heart rate up with excitement or exercise for limited periods of time, it is even better. Your body reaps the benefits of that encapsulated increase. When your heartbeat slows to its resting rate, your body reaps the benefits of that slowed time for recuperation and repairs. However, if your heart rate is higher or lower for too long, it throws everything off and can cause other, radical problems.

I believe it is best to live your life like a heartbeat, within a steady rhythm of structure that works for you. It is okay to have stress or excitement in doses, but if you work in a pressure cooker of stress, or you’ve got someone jumping out from behind corners at you all the time, eventually, that’s going to exhaust your system and affect your whole life. Same for depressed conditions.

Specifically, I am thinking about relationships right now. I keep hearing people saying that they don’t feel the same initial passion for their partner, and think maybe it is time to move on. They still storge and phileo their partner, but they don’t feel so much eros. * Passion comes and goes, and comes back around again. That is the elevated part of the heartbeat rhythm. You can’t live in that state forever–it would sap the life out of you.

The best part of relationships come when you’ve known each other a while, and you can function alongside one another contentedly, without even realizing your contentment. The feeling of security and naturalized happiness that comes from familiarity is a beautiful thing. When your relationship reaches a level of involuntary muscle type service (meaning, it just happens on its own without you having to think about it), that is the best place. Yes, you have to do things to stimulate it and excite it, just like you need to exercise and elevate your heart rate for health, but you also need periods of rest, where the expectation is just for being quiet and still.

Most of the time, though, it should be a steady, unnoticed rhythm. You can put a finger on the pulse and feel that all is well. Steady doesn’t mean dead or dying–or boring. Steady means healthy and alive.

One other thing I have been thinking about, is how Thor is growing. He is growing right under our noses, so I don’t really notice it until his pants don’t fit and he’s wandering around in high-waters. When he has grown, I don’t go, “Oh no! Thor’s pants don’t fit anymore! Time to get a new kid to fit the 4Ts.” No, I buy him new pants.

Relationships are the same. We live together, constantly growing, and we may not even notice how our partners have grown and changed until our proverbial ankles get cold, and we realize our pants don’t fit anymore. That doesn’t mean it is time to change relationships. That just means it is time to go shopping for some new pants.

Shopping for pants takes time and effort. You have to get to the store, go into the store, look around the store, hopefully find what you want, stand in line to pay, pay, then get home and take the tags off and wash your new pants before you can put them on. So, if your relationship pants aren’t fitting right, don’t expect to just be able to go into your closet and pull out another pair with no effort. Chances are, those pants don’t fit either.

Take your time. Trust me. And buy quality pants. They last longer.

For small children, I suggest Garanimals.

*link goes to an article about the CS Lewis book, The Four Loves. I highly recommend this book. It is not an easy read, but it is an honest, almost surgical look at love, what we expect of it, and what it can really offer us. It almost entirely informed my view of what to look for in a partner–and I think I did pretty well on that count.

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Good Times

the outside lane

A billion years ago, at least it feels that way, I worked for a tiny staffing agency. I had been trying to get hired on at KCM for years, but having only banking experience, I had no computer skills and could barely type 30 wpm. One of the perks of the staffing job was that I would have access to the full training database, and could build skills while I worked. I was able to learn Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and all that good stuff. Buying a PC and connecting to the internet is how I built my typing speed. Chats go fast!

This was one of those jobs where I was fortunate to have really great coworkers. I enjoyed the girls I worked with, and was always thankful that they put up with me. I used to get lost when I was delivering checks. I got so lost one day, it took me two hours to find my way back to the office. My sense of direction: Lacking. Also, they were all teensy and adorable, and very energetic, and were in their early 20s compared to my then-ancient-feeling 27/28. I always felt like a She-Hulk next to them. I was the Khloe of the office Kardashians. But they were welcoming and kind to me, and very helpful.

TJ and I were leaving an errand today, when a silver SUV rolled up, and the window came down. It was one of my coworkers! Still teeny, still adorable, still just as perky. What a lovely surprise. Really.

Howling Sea Lane

Listen to the Average Blogger

the outside lane

I’ve been observing a self-imposed moment of silence on the Gifford shooting. In part, it’s because I wanted to know more before I said anything. In other part, it is because I wasn’t sure what to say. Fortunately, The Average Blogger has already said it better than I could have.

Here, from the perspective of someone who covers politics for a living, is an opinion I can respect.

Go read the whole thing. Here’s a nibble.

And I suppose if there is a way to make some good come of this horrific event, this is as acceptable an avenue as any. I’m a big fan of anything that goads our generally savage natures into being a little more civilized and polite. I think we all — and I do mean all: politicians, my colleagues in the media, and most of all the Great Unwashed Commenting Public — would get a lot farther in getting things done if we could just say, “Hm. You know, from where I’m sitting that argument doesn’t really hang together, and here is why, let’s figure out how to fix it,” than when we do things like, say, compare our opponents to Hitler, or throw bricks through their windows, or start talking about how such and such a policy is the worst thing since forever and we are all going to die.

But that’s sort of the point. Most people don’t throw bricks. Most people don’t buy a Glock and rip into a crowd of bystanders. In a face-to-face exchange, only those brimming with vitriol who have zero interest in results bother to bring up Hitler.

My husband is fond of saying that we don’t write highway laws based solely on the way Gary Busey rides a motorcycle. I’m pretty sure we should not rewrite our mores based solely on the way Jared Loughner might have interpreted something someone said some time.

Lancient History

The Dunce Cap

the outside lane

I think I caused Thor his first tardy this morning. Ice, you know. I hope he did all right. He was in the school a minute before the bell rang, and had disappeared down the hallway, and I had walked back into the parking lot before I heard it going off. Maybe he made it?

I spent a lot of time in trouble at school. Mom got notes saying things like, “Lane is a very social child,” and “Lane needs to be less concerned with other children’s work.” See, if I felt like it was taking too long for a child to learn something, I would take over for the teacher. Obviously, she couldn’t handle it. I knew how to do it. Thank you, Mrs. Barnett, I’ll take it from here.

I sat out in the hall at least once a week. Maybe more like once a day. By first grade, I had figured out how to make the most of my time, and would fantasize elaborate getaway schemes. I figured if I could just get hold of a dog costume, I could wear it under my clothes, and change into a dog when sent out in the hall. I figured the principal would pat me on the head, and let me outside, and I could get home from there. My only problem was in where to find a dog costume.

Sitting in the hall, or standing in the corner were just my norm. I was resigned to it. I didn’t mean to talk in class, but things needed saying, you know? And that was the worst of it. I was a talker.

Twice, in elementary school, I was sent to the principal’s office. Mrs. Hopkins. She was a short, even to me, red-headed woman, with big black shoes and thick stockings, and had a red spot in the white of one eye. The first time I was called in, it was because another early-drop-off student was in the library with me, and she hid all the date stamps in the card catalog (under S for stamp.) She was a 5th grader, and she threatened to beat me up if told anyone, so I didn’t say a word until Mrs. Hopkins suggested I was the one who had hidden the stamps. Then, I sang like a canary.

The second time was because of problems on the school bus. I had my part in those problems because I was an aggravating heifer, but I promised to cool it.

In 4th grade, I started spending a lot of time in the nurse’s office, in the sickroom. 3rd grade was when the worst of my stomach issues began–I had acid reflux (plus a few other issues) before it was a media friendly term. I even made it into a medical journal as a case study! My gullet is famous! In 4th grade, I also started spending a lot of recesses indoors because I wasn’t turning in my homework. Because making me stay inside in air conditioning, in a room full of books, being told all I was allowed to do was sit there and read was a punishment. Will you think less of me for admitting that when I realized my detentions were running low, I would pull a stunt just to be kept inside again? Punishment would have been to make me go outside.

Funnily enough, I did not get into any kind of trouble at all in 5th grade, save for having my name written on the board once. 6th grade was all kinds of hell, and I hid in the nurse’s office frequently. I kept my nose clean through 7th and 8th grades, with one exception for having used algebra to make fun of a classmate.

Honestly, with my math issues, my teacher should have given me extra credit. Instead, I got a trip to the Vice Principal for a paddling. He told me if I would sing him a song, he would pretend it had never happened. Again, like a canary.

In 10th grade, I learned how to skip school. An upper classman filled me in on the fact that Sister Isabelle never actually asked to speak to your mom, when you called home from the office phone. “Dial time and temperature. Pretend you’re asking to go home. Cover the phone with your hand and ask Sister Isabelle if she needs to talk to your mother. She’ll say no. If she says yes, get clumsy and disconnect.”

You give a mouse a cookie… You give a 16 year old a car and a too-trusting, eldery nun…

I also learned, in 10th grade, that if you failed a class, it wasn’t as big a deal as everyone had said. I failed Geometry, the only math I ever understood, by refusing to turn in homework. I made As and Bs on tests, and 0s on all my homework. I was protesting my parents, who were both behaving abonimably then (yeah. that’s how I rebelled, baby. I refused to turn in homework. I am so hardcore!) So I flunked the last half of Geometry, making my teacher crazy, and spent half a summer doing all the homework I had refused to do previously.

I didn’t mind summer school. It was something to do other than go to a stinking camp. So when Algebra II rolled around, I saw no reason to bother with it either. I skipped as much school than I attended in 11th and 12th grades, and I took the first semester of Algebra II twice, and the second semester three times. I finally tested out of it in order to graduate.

But you know what? I was never tardy. Ever. Mom had to drop me off an hour before school started, in order to get to work. So, I was always early, never tardy.

That in mind, maybe I’m actually starting Thor off right.

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Missing Things

the outside lane

I am amazed at how much of the stuff we left behind, I do not miss at all. Really amazed. To date, the only things I’ve found myself wanting are:

1. My knives
2. My Le Creuset cookware
3. My black boots–how did those get left behind?!
4. A couple of makeup items that I went ahead and replaced
5. My electric fireplace

I have not missed a single other thing.

Before we left, really packing only the bare necessities to get ourselves started, I made a deal with myself that whatever I didn’t miss, didn’t ever come into the townhouse. I see a very large donation to Goodwill in my future. And I see a very large bag of makeup trash coming out of my bathroom.

Thing is, I’ve never had “just a little bit” before. I have tried to pare my world down to a minimum, but never achieved it until now. I think I’m at a minimum because I only have 4 pair of work trousers to rotate. Ha! I am still not at a minimum, unless you count my kitchen, but I am closer to it than I have ever been. It feels good.