Many scientists believe strong nuclear force is the most powerful force in the universe. Others believe gravity is the most potent while some would put hurricanes and avalanches at the top of the powerful category.

Albert Einstein said that compound interest is the most powerful force. If you started saving money at an early age and cash it in after you retire, you’ll believe the genius was correct.

The romantics among us believe love is the strongest emotion while the pessimists would argue that hate is powerful and dangerous.

These are sound theories. However, there’s something more powerful than keeping planets in line or making sure the sun stays millions of miles away.

I believe guilt is the most powerful force in the world. Guilt can make the strongest person cave under pressure. When used effectively, guilt can make us into better people.

Guilt was one of the strongest tools I had as a parent. If one of the boys hit the other, I had the standard reply.

“You hit your brother,” I’d say to the guilty party as the innocent one cried loudly and without taking a breath. I’d shake my head in disappointment while consoling the wailing child. I’d look straight in the eyes of the offender and ratchet up the guilt.

“Look how bad he feels. Now tell him you’re sorry,” I’d say.

Usually that philosophy worked. That is until the day the hitter said they didn’t feel bad about hitting their brother.

“He deserved it,” was the answer. Out went that line of guilt shaming because guilt only works if you feel bad about what you did.

When they were older, instilling guilt became a little more sophisticated. But I had the guilt grand master close by – my grandmother. She’d cook a huge meal, fill a plate to overflowing and then put it down in front of me. She’d sit next to me, point at the plate and smile.

“Looks good, doesn’t it,” she’d say. “I made all of this for you.”

The food looked delicious, but she and I both knew there was no way I could eat everything she’d heaped on the plate.

“I can’t eat all of this,” I’d say, trying to weasel out of all that food. She’d dab at her eyes.

“You don’t like what I fixed you,” she’d say. I’d reassure her I did and then she’d look at the plate and at me. I’d end up eating everything on there, just so she wouldn’t feel bad.

My mom updated the guilt about food with a line we knew was coming if we turned our noses up at what she’d fixed.

“There are starving children in China who’d be glad to eat this,” she’d say. That worked until my brother talked back one night.

“Well, then, they can have this,” he said. Let’s just say he was one of those starving children because he went to bed without any supper that night.

I tried to soften the guilt for my boys, but I’d been trained by the very best. I’d find myself mouthing words I couldn’t believe were coming out of my mouth, but there they were.

“I slaved for hours in front of that stove and you tell me you ate a taco over at your friend’s house so now you’re not hungry!” was one of my lines. “Fine, then, I’ll just throw it away.”

I never could throw away perfectly good food, so I’d just put it in the fridge for lunch the next day. Still, I never could tell them that – the guilt was so much more fun to dish out.

The romantic in me believes that love is the strongest force and will always win out over hate. Gravity keeps the universe in check and Mother Nature is savagely powerful.

But as a person who’s dished out guilt as well as crumbled underneath it, guilt is the ace of hearts in the deck of life.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Social media is having a field day with comedian Chris Rock’s Netflix special “Selective Outrage.”

Every review I’ve read about the hour-long show has zeroed in on the last eight minutes. That’s when Rock addressed the big incident – Will Smith came up on the stage at the Academy Awards and slapped him.

Netflix viewers came to hear what Rock would say about Will Smith. They wanted blood. They wanted vengeance.

But I tuned in because I’ve seen most of Chris Rock’s stand-up specials, and they were raunchy but funny.

As the special progressed, I stopped wondering about “the slap” and was, instead, intrigued by a couple of stories Rock told.

One was when Rock’s daughter, Lola, snuck out on a high school field trip, went to a bar and got drunk with some White friends.

The school threatened to expel them. The parents banded together and said they were going to get lawyers and sue the school for not supervising their daughters.

Then Rock overheard his daughter and her friends laughing about the incident and how they’d all get out of it. Without telling her or his daughter’s mother, Rock drove to the school, found the dean and told him to expel his daughter.

The dean complied. Rock said his daughter had to write letters and essays to other high schools to find admittance.

She did it.

When it was time to apply for college, she had to write more essays and took responsibility for her actions. She wrote those as well.

Today, she’s in culinary school in Paris doing extremely well.

But that story wasn’t in any review I read. Nor was the story he told about his mother having to go to a vet for dental work when she was a child because White dentists wouldn’t treat Black children.

I thought a lot about those two stories and why the media didn’t at least mention the incidents about the women in his family. For me, those were powerful stories, ones worth hearing and understanding.

But people didn’t tune in to hear Chris Rock talk about parenting or prejudice. They wanted to hear how he was going to get even with Will Smith.

Sensationalism is what gets people to click on articles which generates income. Take a look at the headlines on your news feed. There are certain phrases webmasters consistently use to get you to click on their story – “tragic mistake,” “baffled viewers” and “shoppers swear by this” are a few of the most common ones I see.

Probably a headline promoting how to handle the hard things in parenting wouldn’t generate the same clicks as “A serial murderer lived on my street and I can’t stop thinking about it.”

We’re being led down the path savvy marketers and artificial intelligence wants us to travel. They wanted us to watch the Chris Rock special to find out how he felt about Will Smith. They completely bypassed the first 50 minutes of the special to get to the “juicy” salacious, gossipy part.

And even then, they thought Rock was too easy on Smith or he deserved to get slapped. Our society has gotten quite good at negativity, criticism and sinking to the lowest common denominator.

I wouldn’t put Chris Rock down as a parenting expert. But I would put him down as someone who watched his mother overcome prejudice and poverty.

I’d also say he made some tough decisions to ensure his daughter grew up taking responsibility for her decisions.

Too bad he only gets credit for the “big slap” at the Oscars.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

When I was a young girl, I thought staying up all night long was the ultimate grown-up privilege.

As a teen, I routinely went to bed at one or two in the morning. At the time, it seemed like I’d be missing something if I didn’t stay up.

As a grown up, I know the answer – what I missed was sleep.

The years after the age of 50 are supposed to be the “golden years.” Ads in magazines picture laughing silver-haired couples skiing, drinking wine in a beautiful location or relaxing in an tropical paradise.

Reality is a little bit different.

For many, the golden years are spent in doctors’ offices, trying to figure out why the aches and pains we shrugged off for decades now affect our daily living.

No more eating burgers and fries without a care in the world. We know about bifocals, dentures, walkers, grip bars in the shower and how to navigate the unbelievably complicated Medicaid system.

Many people are able to do all the activities they did when they were in their 30’s, and their activity level is right up there with the young ‘uns.

They hike, go mountain climbing, and ride motorcycles without a care in the world. I marvel at pictures of people my age who are still canoeing down treacherous rivers while so many of us are cautious to a fault.

Even for those who are reluctant to go zip lining, there’s quite a few benefits for those on the other side of 50 and we don’t have to take karate classes to live it up.

First, we don’t care about what other people think.

Let’s start with our hair. Want to go all grey? No problem. We’ve made the color gray sound exotic. It’s platinum, silver or white.

Want to wear black socks with sandals? Go ahead. Nobody cares and nobody’s looking. In fact, if you want to wear support hose with shorts and sneakers, go right ahead. At our age, we’ve learned that comfort and practicality is what counts.

Want to play music loud? Go right ahead. Crank Neil Diamond and Paul McCartney up and sing along. Those guys are cool and retro now, so you’ll fit right in with the younger crowd.

We’ve mastered the best way to handle the whiners and complainers. When I was younger, I’d gripe to my friends about what this one had done to me or that one had said.

Not anymore.

I don’t care if they like me or don’t like me.

They want to whine and complain? I’m sorry they don’t have any other way to cope with life other than to gossip or talk about people behind their backs. I thank the heavens I’m not that negative or petty.

Don’t feel like cooking? Not a problem. The kids are grown, and Door Dash or Grub Hub bring us what we want to eat without our having to leave the recliner in the living room. Best of all, most of us are perfectly content with leftovers.

Despite the things my knees refuse to do these days, life is great. I can sing, think, dream, laugh, cry and celebrate. I can get where I want to go, whether it’s walking or driving.

I’ll never read “War and Peace,” I won’t learn how to macrame, nor will I attempt bungee jumping. I read what I want to read, attempt new arts and crafts if they look like fun and refuse to try and prove anything to anybody.

These are the golden years. There’s a little bit of tarnish in some spots, but all in all, life is good.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

I asked my 15-yr-old granddaughter what made somebody a social influencer. She said these are people who have the means to affect the way others think, dress and act. They use social media – mostly TikTok and Instagram – as their platform.

“What do they influence them to do?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. “Cooking, dancing, what to wear, or just hanging out with friends.”

I looked up a few of the most popular ones. Most promote themselves, but a few create videos about ways to live. Some were as useful as cotton candy while others had a bit of solid advice about living.

Folks, our generation and the ones before us, were robbed.

Most of us have family members who would’ve been famous if only we’d had a cell phone to capture their advice.

Growing up, our house was filled with noise and seven children with distinct personalities. We had enough adventures to fill hours of video – how to embrace being the middle child, where to hide money from siblings and how to survive an eccentric father.

My Aunt Bev and Uncle Jim were house flippers decades before Chip and Joanna Gaines. They didn’t pass a house being demolished that they didn’t come away with loads of items my aunt repurposed. They did so as a team and with lots of laughter.

The advice they could’ve filmed covered a variety of topics. Some could’ve been how to find valuable antiques in an off-the-beaten-path shop and others about how to rewire a house. They could’ve made a fortune.

My uncles could’ve entertained every outdoorsperson in the world with their fishing and hunting videos. The adventure they had looking for Jean Lafitte’s buried treasure would’ve gone viral overnight.

My cousin, Sylvia, is nine months older than me and had a fresh outlook on life as a teenager. She calmly and quietly worked for social change and always sought the good in people.

Sylvia is still the calmest person I know and lives the words she told us so many years ago – love unconditionally, embrace life and never miss a chance to celebrate. If she’d had a platform, she would’ve had a million followers.

Most moms back in the day could’ve easily hosted a YouTube channel. One fashion video would be entitled “you’re not going to wear that, are you?” The follow-up would be what to wear to a wedding, a funeral, a dance – all the places where we wonder what the words “casual chic” mean.

My mom loved telling me “All the kids are wearing this.” She’d be holding up something hideous.  Maybe if she’d had a platform, thousands would’ve thought her fashion choices were perfect and Mom would’ve been right – all the kids would’ve been wearing that.

If I would’ve had a cell phone and a platform years ago, I could’ve influenced mothers of boys. My parenting videos could include “this is what I found under my son’s bed this morning” and “let’s see how many orphaned socks we find in the couch cushions today.”

Other topics could’ve been prizes for contests boys love to compete in – who can belch the most times in a row and the number of times they can wear the same pair of socks without washing them.

I could’ve given advice to working moms on how to trick your child into believing the store-bought cupcakes you took up to his classroom were really home-made. Or how to get the Tooth Fairy off the hook when she forgets to put a few dollars under your child’s pillow.

Social influencers aren’t anything new. Their audience has simply gotten bigger. I’d pit aunts, uncles and parents with a sense of humor against any of these 20 somethings any day of the week.

Then we’d see who’d be living on Easy Street.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.             

Natalie was in a hurry. She was moving in two days, and she still had to pack up her belongings. That was too big a word for what she owned – stacks of worn romance paperbacks, a glass jar filled with small rocks she’d picked up on beaches over the years and T-shirts from every rock-and-roll concert she’d attended from the time she had a mouth full of braces and cheeks dotted with acne.

Natalie found someone in the grocery store wearing a red shirt and tapped him on the shoulder. The young man was wearing ear buds, oblivious to the sounds around him.

“Excuse me, do you have any extra boxes?” she asked him. He nodded and told her to check in the back through the folded doors by the milk cooler. “Just go on in. Nobody cares if you take boxes.”

Natalie pulled her backpack tighter and headed to the back of the store. She pushed through the double doors and saw boxes in a big container. Some had already been flattened while others were ripped or torn. Natalie started going through the boxes. She pushed the big boxes to the side. No way she’d be able to lift those once they were filled.

The perfect boxes, she decided, were the “Goldilocks boxes” – not too big, not too small. Natalie flattened all but one box and put the flattened ones in that box. She maneuvered out of the grocery store, careful not to knock over the cardboard display of Hostess Twinkies and not just because she didn’t want to pick them up. Those Hostess treats were irresistible and late-night snacking was just one of her many escape-from-reality tricks these days.

She got the boxes in the back seat of her Camry and then safely up the stairs to her apartment door. Natalie fished the house keys out of her backpack and let herself into the apartment. It was quiet. For the past year, she’d come home to the sound of her boyfriend, Josh, playing video games or Creedence Clearwater Revival playing almost full blast.

“Babe, there’s just no comparison,” Josh would say, pushing another Dorito in his mouth. “Just try and find a better song than ‘Fortunate Son.’ Did you know that’s an anti-war song?”

Of course she knew “Fortunate Son” was a rally against the Viet Nam war. She wondered if Josh knew anything about the politics of the 1960s. She sure did. Natalie’s father was an expert on the Viet Nam conflict, as he called it, and that conversation was a frequent topic at Sunday dinners. Some days she wanted to ask Josh if he knew the names Malcolm X, Medgar Evers or he’d ever read the writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

But who was she kidding? Both she and Josh had put each other in boxes months earlier. She was the sentimental person in the relationship – she kept movie stubs, ripped-in-half concert tickets and those T-shirts. Once Josh made her a bet – if she could show him a shirt from The Bangles or The Go-Gos, he’d clean the bathroom for six months. That was a bet she won fair and square. Josh was a dreamer but not about relationships or his purpose in life. He was determined to perfect a recipe for bathtub beer and learning how to count cards to win at blackjack in New Orleans. Las Vegas, he’d proclaim, was too jaded.

But now, the apartment was quiet, deathly quiet, and she had a job in front of her. The night she and Josh fought to the point where both were screaming and crying and then drained, Natalie knew their relationship was finished. They called it quits. Natalie said she’d stay in the apartment since she had a steady income as a public school teacher. Josh was an unemployed software developer. He said he was going to move back in with his parents and could be out in two weeks. At the time, Natalie was so angry, she told Josh he had until the end of the week to leave.

“Fine,” he’d told her. “I can make it even faster than that.”

For once, Josh was good to his word. The next day, when Natalie was teaching second graders, Josh recruited a couple of friends and cleaned everything he owned out of the apartment. Natalie came home to a garbage bag filled with trash outside the front door, a closet with empty hangers and the apartment key on the kitchen counter.

“He even took the extra toilet paper out of the cabinet,” Natalie told her co-teacher the next day.

Now it was her turn to pack. She decided she needed to find a one-bedroom place closer to school. It didn’t take her long to find a suitable apartment exactly where she needed it to be located. In a matter of hours, she’d signed sign a new lease. Natalie knew she’d learn to appreciate a place that was cheaper and didn’t have the wandering ghosts of Natalie and Josh haunting the rooms. But she’d dragged her feet leaving their apartment. Maybe she was hoping she and Josh could patch things up. Maybe, she told herself after finishing a carton of ice cream, she’d seen too many Disney movies.

But her back was up against the wall. The lease on this place was up in two days, and she’d put off packing long enough. It was time, as her mother would say, to roll up her sleeves and get crackin’.

Natalie dropped the boxes on the carpet and took off her jacket. She looked around and saw quite a few things Josh had overlooked.

“Guess he was in a hurry to get away from me,” she thought bitterly. She considered having a bonfire with the things he’d left behind, but that wasn’t her style. She’d figure out what to do with those odds and ends later.

Natalie rummaged around in the box pile and opened up one of the medium-sized boxes, taping the bottom shut. She started taking paperbacks off the bookshelf. There were at least a dozen books by Stephen King – she’d never own a St. Bernard, that was for sure – and a few romance paperbacks. When Josh saw those, he opened one up and started reading aloud.

“Horatio’s full lips met Darcy’s and the passion was instantaneous…” he began, and Natalie lunged across the couch and ripped the book from his hands, both of them laughing.

“Hey, a girl needs a little romance from time to time,” she’d told him. He’d leaned over and kissed her deeply and told her she wouldn’t need those books now that she was living with him.

When she put the romance books in the box, Darcy sarcastically thought not only did she need those books for the romance that was missing in her life, but she should’ve told him to take some as an instruction manual for how to handle a woman.

When the box was full, she closed the top – over, over, over, under, her father had taught her, and wrote “books” on top of the box. Funny how one brown rectangular object could hold so many memories, she thought. She pushed those thoughts aside and kept packing until she’d cleared the bookshelves.

She told herself not to think about what she was doing – just keep packing. After Natalie taped the bottom of one of the bigger boxes and flipped it over, that’s when she noticed what was stamped on the side of the box from the grocery store. It had contained Kleenex. And that’s when the tears hit Natalie. She hadn’t cried since she and Josh decided it was over. She hadn’t shed a tear when she came home and saw his apartment key on the counter. She’d remained dry eyed when she got a letter in the mail addressed to him. The tears didn’t start until she looked at that empty box that had contained Kleenex – a vital part of anyone’s break-up journey – and realized with a hard smack that Josh was gone. Really gone.

Without thinking, Natalie plopped down in the middle of the living room, put the empty Kleenex box over her head and cried hard tears, her body shaking from the sobbing. Finally, she stopped and took the box off her head and filled it with everything Josh had left in the apartment. He’d never notice she’d used the Kleenex box, but for once, Natalie didn’t care that the man she supposedly loved was as shallow as water in a small ditch. She would always know that was the last box of tissues she’d need where Josh was concerned.

And that made her feel like a fortunate son.

For many, ironing is an old skill, like churning butter or darning socks.

None of my sons, nieces or nephews own an iron or ironing board.

Why should they? Most of the clothes these days are permanent press or are supposed to look like we slept in them.

I usually don’t buy anything that needs ironing. If I can’t toss it in the dryer and hang it up wrinkle free, I don’t buy it.

Around the holidays, I needed two white pillowcases. I picked a package up at a home goods store, not looking closely at what kind of fabric the pillowcases were made from.

After I washed them, it was immediately obvious those pillowcases were 100 percent cotton. They came out of the dryer as wrinkled as raisins and would require ironing.

Maybe not, a little voice whispered. Who’d notice if the pillowcases were wrinkled? I could pass them off as vintage or “country chic.”

I held them up. It was obvious they were wrinkled, not something out of a fashion magazine.

I’d have to drag out the ironing board and the iron if I was going to put those on the guest bed. As I set up the ironing board, the loud squeaking sound brought me back to my childhood.

When I was a young girl, I often watched my grandmother Albedia ironing. She filled a glass Pepsi bottle with water and a watering attachment screwed on.

She’d sprinkle water over whatever she was ironing, add a bit of starch, and she transformed those wrinkled blobs into stiff-as-a-board shirts.

My mom would let me iron my dad’s linen handkerchiefs. Those were pretty easy, so we moved on to pillowcases. Once permanent press cases came on the market and my dad discovered Kleenex, we no longer had to iron.

Years later, my other grandmother offered to teach me how to iron more intricate items. She said I’d need to know how to iron if I was going to learn how to sew.

Since my mom had already showed me the basics, my grandmother started with shirts.  First the collar, she said, then the yoke, the sleeves and finally the body of the shirt.

As with most things I learned as a teenager, there were bumps along the road. One side of the sleeve would look smooth, but when I turned it over, there were wrinkles up and down the fabric.

She showed me the automatic water sprayer on the iron – what an improvement over that Pepsi bottle – and the wrinkles came right out.

When she taught me how to sew, I had to press open every seam. I didn’t understand why until I tried skipping that step. When the seam was puckered, I knew why she had me iron as I went.

A good lesson, she said. Take care of things as they happen because if you don’t, they show up anyway.

These days, I iron my husband’s flannel shirts. He takes care of clogged toilets, so I don’t mind ironing those shirts.

What I find is there’s a rhythm to ironing and satisfaction is watching the wrinkles disappear. Best of all, the end result is worth the effort.

Most of the chores we do require thought. I’ve yet to program the television’s remote control without paying strict attention. Ironing, on the other hand, allows my mind to wander.

Maybe the older generation was on to something. Perhaps the mindless chores give us time to think. I’ll never go so far as to churn my own butter, but ironing does give me time to ponder.

And that, like ironing, is an almost lost art.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Something that should be enjoyable is a massage. I always imagined being in a warm room with dimmed lights and soft music playing in the background. A masseuse gently works the cricks and aches out of my joints.

So far, this has not been my experience. The room is softly lit and there’s usually some incense burning. But then the masseuse gets to work, pushing on muscles and joints. Having a linebacker pound on my back wasn’t what I envisioned last week.

“That’s a little hard,” I finally said. She apologized and started back softer, but in less than 15 seconds, she was putting her full weight into my shoulder blade.

She said I had a lot of kinks to work out and, as we all know, getting rid of those knots required a bit of work.

In other words, “suck it up, buttercup.”

That’s exactly the sentiment I have for quite a few beauty treatments I’ve undergone. First on the list of “no pain, no gain” is getting rid of unwanted hair.

One of the traits I inherited from my mom’s side of the family is healthy hair. That hair, unfortunately, also likes to grow on my upper lip and chin.

In order to not look like my hairy Uncle Mitch, I go to a hair salon to have these areas waxed.

Waxing is not for the faint of heart although you might believe it’s going to be painless.

You lie down on a soft table and instrumental music is playing in the background. A nice technician comes in and asks where you’d like the hair removed.

“My entire face,” is the answer I want to say, but I just generally point to my upper lip. The very nice lady clucks her tongue and rolls up her sleeves.

Then she tells me to close my eyes, and I can hear her assembling all the ingredients. Before I know it, she’s got a wooden tongue depressor and is applying warm wax above and below my eyebrows.

Then she takes a piece of cotton material, puts it over the hot wax and rubs back and forth.

That feels nice, but then comes the pain train.

In one quick movement, she rips the fabric off my face, taking with it the unwanted hair. At this point, my eyes water and I wish I could learn to accept my hairy heritage instead of having a wax treatment.

Then she moves on to the most painful of all, the upper lip. I’ve had a wisdom tooth removed with only a shot of Novocain. That is nothing compared to having my upper lip ripped smooth.

After that, waxing my chin is a walk in the park.

This is all for unwanted hair. The hair you do want to keep requires almost constant maintenance. Some women spend every Saturday in the beautician’s chair, having their hair processed, straightened, colored and conditioned.

The treatments have a strong chemical smell and you get to sit there with your head covered in goop for about an hour. Sometimes your scalp burns, but what really burns is how much just having your hair done costs. One cut, color and style can easily run $100.

Sure, you can try it yourself, but you might end up like my mom did – with lilac hair and a trim as even as a 50-year-old sidewalk.

We’re told the look isn’t complete without make-up. One bottle of foundation can cost anywhere from $15 to $45 and eye shadow is about the same price. Lipstick that lasts more than five minutes can run up to $37 for just one tube.

Then you have to take it all off at night with special cleansers and apply expensive cream to keep the wrinkles away.

These routines and prices aren’t for me. I’m more of a drugstore make-up gal. I only wear mascara if I’m going to a place where there are grownups. Mostly, I keep my fingers crossed my mom’s genes will take care of the crow’s feet and laugh lines.

So far, so good.

For all of you who love massages, all-day hair appointments and the latest make-up trends, indulge and enjoy. For those who are more like me, wear those Earth shoes with pride.

Mostly, embrace you, in all your wonderful, less-than-perfect and, in some cases, hairy glory.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

Rumination:  The process of continuously thinking about the same thoughts, which tend to be sad or dark. – Healthline.org

 

I’d had a bad day. More than that, I’d had a bad run of days. After the last stupid thing I did happened, I sat down and went over what was bothering me so much.

The answer was practically everything.

That’s because I was ruminating.

I wrote it – I’m a ruminator. I’m that person who keeps thinking about the same mistakes I’ve made over and over again. It’s not a fun place to be because any little thing that goes wrong suddenly becomes a bonfire.

The latest log on the fire was published in my column last week. I boasted I’d helped my grandson with his math homework of lowest common denominator.

I wrote in the column, no I bragged in the column, how I explained that 3/6 is actually 1/3. Thanks to a sharp reader, Janice, that statement is incorrect. When I got that email, my heart sank and I could feel myself wearing a dunce cap.

And so the boulder of self-doubt and self-recrimination started rolling down the hill.

Sometimes, that boulder only weighs 10 pounds. On those days, it’s fairly easy to sidestep the menacing boulder.

But when that rock is the size of an elephant with no signs of stopping – a huge error in print for thousands to see – those are the days I pull the blanket over my head, close my eyes and prepare for the impact.

After the humiliation stopped being so crippling, I looked for articles for ways to get past the “you suck” feeling.

Here’s a few tips I found online.

Call a friend or family member. Let’s face it – we’ve done that and our friends and family members are sick of hearing us whine.

We’re sick of hearing ourselves whine. And because we’re beating ourselves up anyway, we feel guilty if we don’t ask what’s going on in their life because otherwise we’re a drain on someone else’s happiness.

Doing chores is suggested. That works for about a minute, because while you’re doing the mindless task of loading the dishwasher or vacuuming, the “you suck” thoughts come bouncing back into your head.

Watching a movie can be therapeutic but as soon as the end credits roll and you turn off the TV or computer, those sneaky thoughts come racing right back.

It’s as if the whispers were lurking in the background, sharpening their claws, waiting. And here you thought you’d been distracted.

I’ve tried reading a book, but three pages in, I can’t remember what I read. I remember what I was upset about. Then the self-inflicted insults come hurling right back.

Getting out and doing something physical can work unless, like me, you’re out of shape. Then I start beating myself up for those extra pounds and the days I sat in front of the computer instead of walking or riding a bike.

Not only was I beating myself up for the dumb things I’d said or done, now I felt bad about how I looked.

I followed one piece of advice –take action by writing down the steps you need to take to feel better.

I did that last week. Then I misplaced the book I wrote those steps in. I cringe every time I think of someone finding that yellow notebook and wondering what kind of helpless whiner wrote that to-do list.

Meditation was the least helpful remedy on the list. At this point in my life, if I relax in one spot for more than two minutes, I fall fast asleep.

That “focus on nothing but breathing” doesn’t work when those negative thoughts are running a marathon in your head.

The only ways I’ve found to stop ruminating are apologizing and giving myself and the other person time. Sooner rather than later, I’ll do something dumb again and I’ll have to start the process all over again.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

One of my best qualities is my refusal to give up.

It’s also one of my worst.

This decision to seldom cry “uncle” is fueled by knowledge I’m surrounded by things that refuse to give up.

The microwave is first on my list. When I put leftovers in that metal box, the microwave will beep for hours until I take that day-old meatloaf out.

How do I know? I heated up a cup of water to see how long until the microwave would give up. After an hour, I gave up, not the microwave.

We had a refrigerator that would beep if we left the door open too long. I hated that feature because I come from a long line of fridge gazers.

As kids, we’d open the door and look around to find something to snack on.

That gazing aggravated my father. He’d see feet underneath an open refrigerator door and someone’s right arm draped over the top of the door. Then he’d hit the roof.

“Visualize what’s in there, open the door, grab it and then shut the door,” he’d yell at least twice a day. Our answer was, for kids, pretty accurate.

“If I knew what was in there, I wouldn’t have to stand here looking around,” we’d reply in our defense.

There’s a few other things that refuse to give up.  Gum in the carpet is stubborn. Removal requires patience, ice and a lot of elbow grease. Carpet fibers hang on to gum like its gold.

I tried using peanut butter to remove the gum, just like I did when my youngest son got gum stuck in his hair.

Let’s just say that attempt was a total mess, especially as our dog was practically shoving me out of the way to get at the peanut butter.

Smoke detectors, when the battery needs changing, fall in the category of things that refuse to give up. So do screaming 2-year-old toddlers and any talking toy they own.

If you’ve ever been awakened in the middle of the night by a creepy clown voice asking if you want to have fun, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

The batteries in our flashlights last about an hour. The batteries in our granddaughter’s annoying cash register toy have been going strong for five years.

Being placed on hold is usually a quick hang up for me. But if I don’t have anything else to do, I’ll stay on hold to see how long companies will keep an actual customer on hold. So far, the record is 42 minutes and I still didn’t get a satisfactory answer.

There are times I do throw in the towel. I give up quickly in the grocery store line or in traffic. If another line looks like it’s moving faster, I’ll switch in a second.

I also give up before trying in the following circumstances:  running, jumping, hiking, long-distance spitting – my sons believed this was an actual contest – calculus, putting air in my bike tires and anything electrical. These are all better left to professionals.

However, I surprised myself when I didn’t give up in an area I usually don’t even attempt to conquer – math.

I was helping my grandson with his homework. He was struggling with one of the math pages and asked me to check his work. I had my eldest granddaughter look up the definition for “lowest common denominator.”

All his answers were wrong. We went over the correct definition a few times, and he said he’d erase and start over.

“Don’t give up,” I heard myself telling him. Once he understood the concept that 3/6 is actually 1/3, he finished the paper in no time. (** This is incorrect. I’ll be danged if I can find the right answer!)

For once, I was glad I didn’t give up on math. Now if I can get the dog to quit licking that spot in the carpet, all will be right with the world.

 

     This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald. 

“The toilet sounds funny,” I told my husband.

I didn’t say the toiler was overflowing or not filling with water. My specific description was “it sounds funny.”

For someone like me who’s mechanically challenged, sounds are the first indicator that something’s wrong. There was a problem with the valves in my last vehicle. The only way I could describe what was happening with the car was simple.

“The car sounds funny.”

It’s taken 30 years, but my engineer spouse has come to accept “funny” as meaning out of whack, needs looking at, starting to break.

There’s plenty of ways my hearing has helped me diagnose a problem. One of the latest has been my knees. They pop and creak more than they used to, so I know there’s an issue with them.

Come to find out – fluid on the knee.

One day, I heard a beeping sound. It wasn’t loud, but it was rhythmic. Every minute, I’d hear it, but the sound was faint. I couldn’t tell where that beeping was coming from, but the result was clear – something’s not right around here.

I went to the back bedroom, starting my sleuthing mission at the farthest end of the house. But after standing there for two minutes, I didn’t hear anything. I moved on to each room, the sound getting a little louder as I kept moving.

When I was in the kitchen, I heard the beeping loud and clear. I checked the microwave – all clear. The oven – all clear there. Then I heard that beep loud and clear – the dishwasher.

It seems I’d opened the door before the cycle was finished, and the dishwasher was letting me know I’d upset the cycle.

Once again, my ears diagnosed a problem.

My ears aren’t always accurate.

I have a hard time hearing my cell phone ring, and I’ve tried a variety of different tunes. They sounded fun, but there was a huge problem with those sounds. I’d hear the unfamiliar ring tone and think somebody else’s cell phone was ringing.

So I leave mine on the “circles” ringtone at full volume because that’s what came with the first cell phone I bought. Like a dog that hears the dinner bell, when I hear that tone, I know it’s my phone.

There are times when I have selective hearing.

Growing up in a house with seven children, I could tune out anything. Television blaring along with arguments were the typical soundtracks in our home. I could concentrate on my homework or a phone conversation with no problem.

To this day, when I’m home alone, I turn on the television or the radio just to have background noise. A totally quiet house or environment is unsettling.

As a mother of young children, when there was silence in the house, that meant trouble. On the flip side, I could hear the baby whimper in the middle of the night but never heard them sneaking in and out when they were teenagers.

In my defense, I naively trusted them. It’s only been in the last few years they admitted to a few middle-of-the-night adventures.

I also have selective interpretation with the little voice in my head.

“Don’t eat that piece of cake” translates to “That little ole slice won’t hurt you.”

“You need to fill up the gas tank” translates to “It’s too cold outside. Wait until the next time you’re in town to get gas.”

“You haven’t vacuumed in three weeks” translates to “My allergies are so much happier when I don’t stir up the dust.”

My husband only asked one question when I told him about the toilet – “Is it something I need to look at right now or can it wait?”

I considered the sound, how long it lasted and the tone. Then I gave him my expert opinion.

“It can wait.”

We professional listeners know the difference.

 

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.