by Jennifer Farlin | Aug 4, 2015 | Life Reflections
While my husband was at the U.S. Army War College I attended FLAGS–Facilitating, Leadership and Group Skills. It’s a one-week workshop for milispouses to refine skills in leading, guiding, and supporting work in groups utilizing our strengths. It was also known as the week where Mom went to work and Dad had to get the kids everywhere and take care of everything.
While I was there we were told that we, metaphorically speaking, get 10 pennies each day to use how we wish. How we spend them is up to us. When the pennies are spent we are operating at a deficit–read We should leave mom alone right now.
Pennies are to patience what calories are to food.
These all cost at least one penny:
Don’t eat that off of the floor!
Where are all the couch cushions?
Don’t lock your brother in the garage!
Look where you are peeing!
You can have a favorite shirt but not a favorite pair of underwear!
Leave his butt alone!
Please don’t carry the dog on your head!
Go find your shoes!
Go find your goggles!
I don’t know where your shoes are!
I don’t know where your goggles are!
If I get up and make beds, tidy the house, make breakfast, clean up the kitchen, walk the dog, start a load of laundry, and clean the pee from all the toilets, while yelling all the things above plus the obvious hygiene related ones–it is then lunch time. So then I make lunch, clean up the kitchen, walk the dog, yell some more, and it is time to get them out of the house. Then we come home and I make dinner, I yell more about random things concerning goggles, forks, and lost shoes, walk the dog, and clean up the house–and now, maybe, I have 2 pennies left. One? None?
I’m exhausted so I think I am operating on a deficit. Summer equals little boys all day equals inflation for pennies.
I think the value of each of my pennies is dependent upon outside forces similar to the dollar and the global markets and inflation and all that–so my pennies are looking like a hay penny, or a half penny, or a plastic fake penny.
I’ve been sick for about a week. I don’t know to equate the exhaustion to just that though–summer marathon vacation, children, coughing propped up on pillows with 12 cough drops shoved in my cheeks, children, non stop activities, bad attitudes, outnumbered by boys, life complexities–and by that I mean what happened to all of our forks? children, and/or how is the kitchen trashed again–all could be contributing to the decline in the penny.
In a good market, or school day, I could probably get that above paragraph done in about 6 pennies leaving pennies left over for me. Today, during summer, it’s probably 17 pennies. Lately, though, I’m wondering what a normal day is? Go! Go! Go! Hurry! Go! Go! Stop trying to tape your brother to the wall! Hurry! Go! Where are all the forks!???!!
The lesson in the pennies is that we need to guard them, not waste them. Saying yes, when we want to say no, and unrealistic expectations are two of the biggest spenders that come to mind. Why do I think the house and the boys will effortlessly take care of themselves? And why does my 7 year old have to yell when he is 2 inches from me? Totally unrelated, but a question I still have.
Short of looking under the couch cushions for more pennies I’m thinking I’m just in debt, of course the couch cushions are currently missing so there’s that.
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by Jennifer Farlin | Jul 8, 2015 | Life Reflections
I’m that kid running alongside the merry go round trying to get on, succeeding, getting dizzy, jumping off, spinning into dirt, hearing my friends giggling as they whirl by, walking lopsidedly home, getting called back, doing it all again.
Hello. This has been my last few weeks. Heck, this has been my last few years. Forget it, it’s been my life. Dirty, dizzy, giddy, busy, going in circles? I’d like to at least think my circles are widening as I become wiser. My merry go round is more the circumference of Pluto vs the playground equipment of childhood. Whoosh–it still goes just as fast but more ground is covered.
I have a friend who calls the merry go round ride the Joyless Go Round of Death, I think that is a little creepy extreme and possibly a tad negative. I prefer to be more positive. It is all about attitude, isn’t it? I am constantly preaching this to my young boys. There are many things in life you cannot change but you can always change your attitude…they can mimic me while almost mastering eye rolling as they say it. I hope with enough repetition they will be brainwashed by the time they are adults with all my happiness talk. I tell them it is a choice you make not a mystical event that happens when everything is optimal/perfect/ideal.
Because when is everything ever perfect? And then how many times have you had things going pretty darn good and you were still, dare I say it, depressed? In fact, as someone who has dealt with depression on and off my entire life, it happens to sneak up on you whether things are good or bad and “bad” only being relative to whatever we think bad is for that day. I’m not trying to trivialize it because I know all sorts of variations on bad. The worst bad is the bad that snowballs and even despite our best attempts overwhelms and takes us down. That is life though. It has seasons and it is not suppose to be roses and sunshine. We don’t learn lessons without getting hurt, we don’t become resilient without stretching ourselves, and we won’t appreciate happiness without the reverse.
It’s also flippin’ scary. That whole here one minute, gone the next is real. As a spouse of an active duty pilot who flew one of the “less safe” aircraft out there–I know it. I mean I KNOW it. I’ve seen it. I’ve walked alongside it. I, gratefully, have not walked through it. Military spouses don’t talk about this because it’s too real. When your loved one is deployed and their level of safety is marginal, their whereabouts unknown, the country they might be in is “angry”, and CNN is unbearable to watch—you keep busy, you keep the TV off, and you don’t dwell because the biggest lesson is IT IS MUCH EASIER TO KEEP PUSHING ON THAN TO DIG YOURSELF OUT OF A HOLE.
Even if it means going around in circles. Whirling by at lightening speed. Because maybe with enough repetition we might just get it–like my young boys. Happiness is a choice. It’s work. And sometimes to know it–we need to get flung off, dizzy, maybe skinned up, maybe bruised up, maybe worse.
My sweet friend, we’ll call her Darla, is going through a hard time and she said to me that if I can do it then she can certainly try. She gives me more credit than she should, but thank you and I will take the complement. So I send this post out to her, hoping that the wind is ruffling her hair, the sun is warm, the merry go round is scenic, and to tell her that she has friends to help her back on the ride.
by Jennifer Farlin | Jul 6, 2015 | Life Reflections
My iPhone is trying to tell me something.
I was texting with my friend, we will call her Deirdre, and I was trying to do the “kdnvoiadjfnnlkjie” text which we all know means complaining with total frustration when my phone autocorrected it just as I hit SEND.
Gagged bluefin shake
I couldn’t have made that up if I tried.
I then tried to use the word “discouraged” and I was auto corrected–again.
Disco tagged
I am disco tagged.
We both agreed this was an improvement over discouraged.
She told me she needed to get something done like take out the fishes. Which to me conjures up something way better than unloading the dishwasher.
Naturally, the universe via my iPhone, is trying to tell me something. Lighten up.
Life lessons are much easier to understand when watching someone else’s unfold in a movie, or in a book, when written by an author that you know doesn’t kill off the main character. You know there is suppose to be that testing phase that is followed by euphoric glee of triumph. The thing is, sometimes these movies or books chronicle someone’s life over decades, meaning the pay off to their hard work is, like almost after they died. Van Gogh–never knew he was a “successful” painter–he died before it happened. If I was texting right now my iPhone would insert a gagged bluefin shake here.
I just looked up the word “discouraged” and it says: having lost confidence or enthusiasm. {bluk} How fortuitous the universe is telling me to be “disco tagged” instead. Let me look that up.
disco–Attend or dance at a disco. Music containing elements of funk, soul, pop, salsa and psychedelic
“for the next three hours he discoed nonstop”
tagged–To catch. A children’s game in which one player chases the others in an effort to touch one of them, who then takes the role of pursuer.
Disco tagged: to be caught and then taken on role of pursuer of the dance of funk and soul
Alright. Somebody’s gotta do it, might as well be me.
by Jennifer Farlin | Feb 17, 2015 | Life Reflections
I reluctantly went to a movie yesterday about an epic journey. As I had hours in the theater I wondered if these epic quests ever start subtly and why in real life they had to be so ambiguous, confusing, and/or uncomfortable.
I am the heroine in my own story. At least that is the plan. A yellow brick road, a fairy godmother, a movie musical score cueing specific key points…all would be ever so helpful on said journey. Taller and richer would be nice too, oh and athletic ability, and to sing like Streisand, and… totally not my life. I have to work with what I’ve got and figure out where to go and be and see and do it all while not tall. Do it while battling the forces of comfortable and safe and scary and unknown. Do it while raising human beings who will one day need to be able to navigate their own quest. Or perhaps they are on it already? Maybe I’m the wise oldish woman guiding them and that is my quest? I think not though. I am sure there is more.
But oh then there are those tricksters. They lurk under your comfy couch, behind your down pillows, in your favorite must see TV. They call to you like sirens in a storm luring you with thoughts of more money, more time, less responsibility. The tricksters make you think it is ok to take a break on your quest…and years later you find yourself “too” something to pick it back up again.
Too tired.
Too busy.
Too scared.
Too comfortable.
Too numb.
Not that I would ever do that. I’m none of these things. I am standing by with sword ready to attack, or so I tell myself. Those tricksters make people on their epic quests:
- Obscure what is really important in favor of flashy.
- Despair when prayers are not “answered”.
- Make them forget that growth is achieved through small ordinary steps at a time.
- Make them think the bad is permanent.
- Keep them doing what they shouldn’t. Fill it with trivia.
- Keep them distracted from doing anything important.
- Never ask if it is true.
I love the last one. Is it true? –the things we derail ourselves with while on this adventure?
Maybe when the epic quest becomes ambiguous and uncomfortable it means we are just getting closer to where we are suppose to be? I really hate that but ok, I’ll consider it.
I will unsheave my sword, give myself some Grace, and try to stay the course.
It’s important to note upon completion of this post and saving it the entire thing disappeared. It’s ok. I remembered and then I tried again.
I’m not saying I liked it, but I didn’t give up.
I will also concede that I might be tall compared to others.
Jen
Reference:
C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters
by Jennifer Farlin | Jan 29, 2015 | Life Reflections
A few nights ago we watched the musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If you aren’t familiar with my stage career in high school then you are fortunate. I was in all the plays. One audition stays with me to this day. I don’t know what I am saying, they all stay with me. A few that randomly come to mind are “the really bad singing incident in 1988” and “the dance crash of 1993.” However, none of them trump my audition for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Debbie I am so sorry. (All names have not been changed.)
I sort of forget some of it. January 15th, 1989. It was cold that day, real cold. The kind of cold that sticks with you and changes you forever. The time was 4:04 pm. The 798 red velvet clad seats in the auditorium held 237 people that day. I wore acid washed tapered jeans that buttoned just under my rib cage and a purple v-neck sweater with pink turtleneck. I cannot recall if my white Keds had safety pins with friendship beads on them or not. That part I can’t remember. But if they did the beads were pink, teal, and purple.
For the audition we were brought up on stage in groups of 3 to sing the following:
So Jacob came to Egypt,
No longer feeling old
And Joseph came to meet him
In his chariot
Of gold
Of gold
Of gold
Of gold
The notes were high. Real high. So high that if you google this music a banner pops up asking if you want to learn how to sing really high notes. I wish had. I wish I had known.
It was not for me that day to be on the side of fate. Debbie and I brought out the worst in each other when it came to singing. And yet there we were, side by side, under the bright lights attempting to sing. Now to be fair, Debbie can hold her own in the voice department. However, with me singing in her ear she became tone deaf. I, on the other hand, cannot sing, so I already was tone deaf. Add in that it was an audition, where, damn it man, even Streisand would have buckled under the pressure, and it was bad, real bad.
At one point Debbie had her fingers in her left ear, I had my fingers in my right ear, our faces squinting trying to find a note, any note. There was no end. No one stopped us. We kept on singing. Singing through the torture and the embarrassment, we even managed to sing the wrong words, at different times, with the sheet music in front of us. At such point, I’m pretty sure this is when the hysterical uncontrollable laughing started.
I remember the producer’s face, Mrs. We’ll-Call-Her-HUBER, standing to our right with her hands on her hips. “Enough!” she said. “Thank GOD”, we said. “NO!” She said. “The two of you–STAY.”
Oh dear.
So the poor soul who had to sing with us marched off and a fresh poor soul came to join us. “AGAIN!” shouted Mrs. Huber. And there we went, off key and lousy, trying to not laugh.
Trying to not laugh when you are not suppose to be laughing is really hard. And we did not do it well, in addition, to the singing.
We were told to stay on stage as one after another fresh faced good singers came and went after auditioning alongside of us. Well, who the hell knows what they sounded like, who could hear them? We continued to stand in the center spotlight trying to not laugh, trying to tune each other out, trying to hit the really high notes and not get the words mixed up, trying to get off the stage. I know whenever the word was Jacob one of us sang Joseph and whenever it was Joseph one of us sang Jacob. To this day I think these names are funny.
Finally the audition that I would be told years later was used as a cautionary tale to future would be actors ended. We were cast, as the camel. One of us was the front end, one the back end–I will let you decide who was where.
We were magnificent. And silent. We also came a part, by accident, on stage, during a show.
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by Jennifer Farlin | Jan 14, 2015 | Life Reflections
I’m a puke panicker. I FREAK out during puke events. It’s like my kryptonite. My oldest son doesn’t do puke receptacles–you know like buckets and toilets. He prefers to shock his mother. There was the time he had the norovirus (while my husband was deployed) and he threw up while walking up the stairs. The carpeted stairs. Like, he nailed every single stair. It’s important to note that there was a bathroom at the bottom of the stairs and a bathroom at the top of the stairs, the-stairs-that-were-carpeted. Then there was the time he threw up in his sleep–on an angle with projection. Or the time he threw up on our friends, or another time on our friend’s mother. Oh, then there was Syracuse. He puked the whole way–car seat, no bucket, no paper towels, 10 hours in snow storm, pregnant and morning sick. I had to use the clothes out of our luggage to absorb it out of survival. Fond memories of standing in McDonald’s parking lot off I-81 with coffee stirrers and napkins trying to clean car seat–because after hours of vomit that will take care of it.
My husband and I are ying and yang on this. He quietly soothes puking child. When child was baby he would pick up spewing babe with zero concern for himself or surrounding upholstery. I am the opposite. I do things like yell in slow motion baritone “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!” and then alternate with trancelike horrified staring. I intermittently scream things like “where are the Clorox wipes, why are you doing this to me, and for the love of God man go to the toilet”. I pace outside the bathroom and cry (because I do feel bad for my baby) pour bleach on everyone as they pass by me and mentally count laundry loads.
Currently we are in “Hell 2014-2015” as my husband coined it at 5 am. Above mentioned child has had stomach flu of various degrees THREE times starting on Thanksgiving Day, reoccurring at 12:04 am Christmas Day (I am still apologizing to the rug), and now again, as I type this. The rest of the family have had it at least once (I managed twice) since November. Both children are currently on plastic covered couches with buckets while my husband and I mill around like a scene in Outbreak.
I am possibly delirious.
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