Nervous Girl

Of Crazy Russian Saints, Kitchen Appliances, Lunchbags and Really Good Friends

On Wednesday, I was writing the last few lines of my last blog post, trying to figure out how to wrap it all up, when the doorbell rang. It was about four in the afternoon, and I assumed it was my daughter, not bothering to try the door (which was unlocked) before ringing the bell. When I got up, irritation written all over my face, to let her in and chastise her, I saw I'd been wrong. Yes, my adored one was at the door. But it wasn't my daughter.

It was this.

I stared in shock at the UPS man as he hopped in his truck and drove away. Then I burst into tears, (which is when my daughter arrived on the scene).

It turns out that several of my friends, having read my saga of kitchen appliance longing, thought it would be a hoot to chip in and cause one to arrive at my door. So they did. They would have been gratified if they had seen my flabbergasted response. A hoot, indeed. If you have any idea how it feels to know that many people came together on your behalf, just to make you smile (and cry) you're a lucky person. It may be the single nicest thing anyone's ever done for me in 44 1/2 years.

On that same day, another friend messaged me just to see how things were going. I responded, including an update on my husband's job search. The friend was unaware he'd been liberated from his employment, and suggested I pray for St. Xenia's intercession, as she's been known to help those seeking employment.  So of course I had to find out about St. Xenia.

She was a devout Russian woman who was widowed young. After her husband's sudden death, she gave all her belongings--ALL, including her house--to the poor and wandered about, homeless. People thought she was crazy, not only for that act but because she wandered around saying crazy-sounding things. Somebody figured out that "crazy" meant prophetic; her visions were from God.  And it turned out that everybody who helped her--merchants who gave her food, cab drivers who gave her rides--was blessed with increased business. People started competing to help her, but she took only what she needed.

I've been praying, and will continue to pray, for St. Xenia's intercession for my husband. And while I realize that saints aren't vending machines--you don't just press the right buttons and get the thing you ordered--it occurs to me that it might be pleasing to this saint if I gave some of my possessions to the poor.

I could sell my shiny new mixer and donate the proceeds to charity. But that would be an insult to the dear friends who conspired to make me so happy. A slap in the face, and I could never do that to these wonderful women. Who may possibly be expecting homemade pastries.

Then, like a slap in the face (the helpful, wake-up kind) it hit me: A way to honor St. Xenia and these friends who are clearly concerned about making sure others have good food to eat.

There's this tiny little grassroots organization that sprang into being last year with the sole purpose of providing brown bag lunches to the homeless. It's a small, but growing, group of caring people who want to show love in the most practical and essential of ways. They're feeding a lot of people and inspiring plenty more. They're not preaching. They're just taking care of people. I think if St. Xenia lived in modern-day Florida, she'd be slapping together sandwiches and handing out sack lunches right along with them.

So I am going to make a small donation (I haven't evolved quite to the place where I'm willing to liquidate all my possessions) to Brown Bag Lunches of Pinellas* in honor of St. Xenia and my sweet, sneaky, generous friends. As soon as I have a chance I will make them all some cookies with that shiny mixer.  And because of my deep commitment to helping others, I will eat St. Xenia's share.

*If you'd like to donate to this very worthy group, you can easily send them a donation via PayPal at [email protected] .  Even a few dollars will really make a difference for someone.

What are you waiting for? Something amazing, I guess.

"The Incredibles" is one of my family's favorite movies.  It's got a great story, terrific visuals, funny lines. It's also got three awesome messages  subtly woven throughout, rather than being preached at you: 1) Not only is it okay to be different, but your differences are what make  you valuable;  2) No matter how strong you are in one area, sometimes you're going to need someone else's strength; and 3)When we work together, we can do anything.

One of my favorite characters in the movie gets two short scenes, about thirty total seconds of screen time. It's the little boy who lives across the street from the Parrs (the Incredibles' secret suburban identity, in case you've never seen the movie).  The Parrs and all their other super counterparts are in hiding after the tide of public opinion has turned against superheroes. They're supposed to be acting just like regular people. Having to hide who they are is taking a toll, especially on Mr. Incredible, who misses hero work so much he sneaks out to do it under the guise of going bowling.

This little kid is on to Bob Parr/Mr. Incredible, though. He knows there's something different about him, even if he doesn't know exactly what, and he's keeping an eye peeled. One day Bob catches him watching and almost snarls at the kid, "What are you waiting for?" The kid looks back, all innocence, and says, " Something amazing, I guess." Bob, fresh from his dreary job at a monolithic insurance agency says,  "Me too, kid," before turning, deflated, to go in the house.

That's a little bit how it is around here these days.  I blog and write on the downstairs computer. My husband networks and applies for jobs on the upstairs one. We have lunch together and go for a walk. We go back to our screens. The kids come home, we listen to their daily adventures and woes. We make dinner and do homework. We might watch a little TV. We go to sleep. The next day we do it again.

We hope and believe that something good is coming, but we don't know exactly what, or when. Occasionally it occurs to me that maybe something good won't come, that we'll chug along, depleting our resources, until something really bad happens. Most of the time I don't feel that way. But sometimes I do, and I understand how Bob Parr feels.  He has something special, but he thinks nobody wants it. He's starting to question whether it even is special. Whether he is. He's slogging through the days, wondering if anything will ever change, with increasing doubt that it will.

Then, an opportunity comes. It looks too good to be true, a chance to resume his hero work, to be appreciated and rewarded for his true self. Of course, it is too good to be true. It's a trap laid by an enemy, and he wouldn't have survived it without his quirky family's help. They manage to escape, but Syndrome, the bad guy, pursues them. When they finally vanquish him, they're outside in their driveway. A huge fireball of an  explosion overhead signals Syndrome's destruction. It's silent for a moment. And then, from the driveway across the street, a triumphant shout.

The little kid across the street has finally gotten his payoff. Bob may have been on the verge of giving up, but the kid didn't. He knew if he kept watching, and waiting, he was going to get his something amazing.

That's why we keep doing what we're doing, even on the days it feels like hell, like it will always feel like hell. So that when a job offer comes, or a book gets published, we can stare at each other,  dumbfounded for a moment. Then we'll shout, like the little kid who never gave up hope, "That was totally wicked!"

 

Flinch

I am going to share with you my secret shame. It is secret because it will reveal that I am an even bigger dork than you already suspected. I know that hardly seems possible, but bear with me:

I would never have gotten Sorted into Gryffindor.

The secret part comes in because I'm forty-four years old and I've actually spent time thinking seriously about which House I would have been in.¹ The shame? Is that I'm such an absolute chicken.

The upside of being a Nervous Girl is that it has, by and large, kept me safe. I never dated Bad Boys.  Well, okay, once, but he dumped me--shocker. I never rode motorcycles, smoked, walked alone after dark.  One time, in high school, the mother of a guy I liked called my house late at night because he wasn't home and she wondered if we had snuck out together (in defiance of my father's rules? Not bloody likely). My aunt actually laughed in the woman's ear from the absurdity of it. Then she went to check my bed.  Where I was sound asleep, safe as houses. Of course.

The downside is, apparently, that nothing great is ever achieved from a place of safety.  This is what I'm reading in a book called The Flinch.²  I'm only about a quarter of the way through, so I can't provide much of a review, but the premise is this: we have this reflex of flinching before danger, like attacking bears, which keeps us safe. Although life is not as dangerous now as it was when the reflex evolved, we still have it. And it keeps us from taking risks or doing things that make us uncomfortable.  And taking risks, risking discomfort, is where your best stuff comes from.  I read somewhere else recently that courage doesn't before you do the thing you're scared of; it comes FROM doing it.

The book prescribes exercises, too (because otherwise, you're just reading about taking risks--unhelpful). The first one is to step into an ice cold shower, which I did this morning. My sadistic supportive husband wanted to stay and watch me do this. Probably this would have increased the discomfort factor, and thus would have been helpful, but I chased him out of the bathroom. He stood outside and listened to me yelp, anyway. It felt so unbearably cold that I started to turn up the heat. Then I turned it right back down and finished the shower. It turned out to be not so bad; kind of invigorating, actually. Tomorrow I'm going to try it again without turning up the heat, even temporarily.

Do you consider yourself courageous? If yes, what do you think made you that way? If not, what do you think it would take to change that? What's the biggest risk you've ever taken, and how did it turn out?

¹ On the bright side, I'm definitely a Ravenclaw, and they have a pretty cool Common Room.

² The book is a free download on Amazon right now, which, ironically, makes it a risk-free purchase.

Dream interpretations, please

Do you remember your dreams? I used to remember mine all the time. Now, maybe I remember a flash here and there. Occasionally, I'll have a few nights in a row where I have very vivid dreams. I might be in one of those phases right now.

I wish I'd written down Saturday night's dream. I tried really hard to focus on it so I could remember, step-by-step, what happened. I thought I had it down, but like a handful of sand, it has begun slipping through my fingers, and I can only remember some details: my friend Alana and I were climbing up these white steel ladders inside a glass atrium; there was some kind of party going on and she convinced me we'd have a better view from higher up. I'm not sure why nobody noticed us quite literally climbing the walls. Anyhow, when we got to where we needed to be, I found it was only a narrow platform, so I had my back to the wall, looking down in terror at something I thought I was going to be enjoying. At some point, we were no longer there, and I was with the Dixie Chicks in a room with shag carpeting, looking for something that had fallen to the floor. Later on, I was on a sunny beach, and the sand was dotted with thousands of colorful buttons as far as the eye could see. They were actually more like beads, and I think most of them were ceramic, but in the dream I understood them to be buttons. I wanted to gather as many as I could, but for some reason, I couldn't. And they were so pretty.

Then there was last night, which didn't jump around so much. In last night's dream, I learned I was going to be dying in two days' time. Strangely, I wasn't alarmed. But I was working very diligently to affix badges to my Brownie vest. It was frustrating, because the badges weren't sticking, and I didn't have enough room for all of them, so I didn't know where to put them. Finally, I said to myself that I was being stupid to be spending so much time on the Brownie vest, when I had so little time left to live. But it was as if the vest was some sort of record of my life that I wanted to leave behind. Or maybe it was something I needed to have ready for my journey ("flying up," anyone?).

I have my own theories about what the dreams might mean (not the least of which is that that margarita I had on Cinco de Mayo hit me a little harder than I thought). But I'd love for other people to take a crack at interpreting my dreams, if you're so inclined.

 

Cauliflower Theory

There's this diet I should be following right now go on periodically that emphasizes lean proteins, vegetables, and whole grains. It's a very good diet, healthy and effective, and it comes with lots of recipes, almost all of which are delicious.

Except for this one. Call me crazy, but I'm leery of any recipe that has the name of the food it's supposed to resemble in quotation marks. (Kids! Time for dinner! We're having "meat" loaf!) You see the problem.

Not that the Surprise South Beach Mashed "Potatoes" taste bad; it's just that they just don't taste like mashed potatoes.  Which is not exactly a surprise. (I'm also not a big fan of recipes with the word "surprise" in them.  When my food surprises me, it's usually not in a good way.)

When I first tried the cauliflower-masquerading-as-mashed-potatoes I was so disappointed, I almost gave up on cauliflower. I figured if it couldn't taste good even tarted up like a potato, it couldn't taste good. I was sad. Cauliflower is such a healthful food, and I wanted so much to like it. I felt I should like it. But I didn't. I ate my ersatz spuds grimly, like I was doing math problems.

Then I tried it prepared this way. It was awesome. It became my favorite vegetable. My husband requested it at least once a week.  We would roast a huge head of cauliflower and polish it off between the two of us in one sitting.

The difference was that the roasted cauliflower was allowed to be itself. Of course it wasn't going to work as an impersonation of something else. Impersonations are always measured against the original, and they almost never measure up. 

Thus was born Cauliflower Theory: Be what you are, even if you think people would like you better if you were something else. Even if you think you would like you better if you were something else. It never works. It never works. People can smell a fake from a mile away; also the desperation and fear that makes you tart yourself up as something you're not.

Go ahead. Embrace your inner cauliflower. Not everyone will love you, but you'll be surprised at how many do.  The ones that don't will never know what they're missing.