testing

Today was the exam for my Old Testament class and I got a 4.5, which is like a C+.

What I should think: Passed another one, yay!

What I actually think: omg I have never in my life gotten a C in anything maybe I should give up and kill myself

Seriously. I am not sure what to do with me. One of the books I chose to answer questions about was Ecclesiastes - all is vanity! Apparently I did not manage to internalize its message about enjoying the life you have.

Sigh.

Tomorrow we are picking up the rabbits. I'm not sure if that's additionally making me anxious (the thought of being responsible for more living things sends me into fits) or if it's overflow anxiety from the exam, or maybe if it's the other way around? It will be fine. I'll feel better in the morning. The rabbits will be cute. They will not immediately die under our care.

I feel unstable. And yet, objectively, nothing at all is wrong.

Help.

affirmative

Today in theology class we went over answers to some of the test-review questions and...at some basic level I don't follow how the instructor gets from his questions to his answers. It's not like my answers would be wrong (I don't think?), but it seems like I'm usually way off target compared to the answer he is looking for. Part of the problem is that I have arguments with several of the overarching theses of the book, so when I say "my answers" I don't mean my personal answers, but rather my attempt at formulating the answer he's looking for...basically it's an open-book pre-test and I'm still not getting to the right place. Hmm.

On a possibly-related note, today in the communicating course, I'm supposed to write what I'm afraid of, communications-wise, and "turn it into an affirmation." Like if I think I'm too critical my affirmation would be "My feedback is always positive and helpful!" Here goes?

I share my thoughts openly and fluently, and people listen when I speak. I choose my words and tone with care. I can talk about group dynamics without resorting to gossip, and my feedback is positive and helpful.

Well. That would be nice. It all sounds so serious, though. Do Buddhist communicators get to be funny? Because humor is something I'd have a hard time giving up. Though it's also clearly something I use as a crutch to compensate for my extreme social awkwardness, so if I really could share my thoughts openly and fluently, maybe I wouldn't need to be funny? I suspect I have problems that are beyond the scope of this course. Which isn't to say it won't be useful; every little step in the right direction helps!

thoughts

And this is how the vacation weeks fly by...

Monday: Water park 'til we couldn't water park no more, then overnight at the Courtyard by Marriott next door.
Tuesday: Courtyard by Marriott American-style buffet breakfast (woohoo), then home, then back out to lunch and a movie (Dora the Explorer. tee heeee.**)
Today: Dan went to work, the kids occupied themselves, and I did laundry.

I was supposed to be noticing when I exaggerated (Monday), when I gossiped (Tuesday), and when I used unhelpful language (today), but I think I'll have to re-do these exercises during a week when I interact with someone other than the other three Blochulays. Mostly what I noticed was how very, very nice it was to spend meltdown-free time together as a family. For example: at the end of the water park trip, the kids and Dan went up to the hotel room and I stayed and went to the "hamam" for an hour. And I didn't feel one bit guilty because I knew the kids would just turn on the TV and veg out and Dan would turn on his phone and veg out and hey cool, we are all old enough to veg out for an hour in our own ways and it no longer ends in tears! Maybe next year Dan can even come with me to the hamam. Goals...

In my unusual amount of electronics-free musing time on Monday I decided to pose myself the question: what would I do if I could fix my life any way I wanted to? Here's what I came up with:

• I'd ditch the job at church. I don't want to burn the few (and hard-won, if rickety) bridges I have here. But it's time to wrap it up and make time for other things.
• I'd stake out a lot of writing time and try to get the mess that's in my head down on paper. Chances are good that it's far less important, far less coherent, far less original than it feels. But it feels important, original, and like-it-could-be-coherent-if-I-spent-some-time-with-it. I think it deserves a chance. 
• I'd work on being a better (and by "better" I mostly mean "less bitter") stay-at-home-mom. No, I wasn't cut out for this. But what's more important than loving my kids? I can do better here.

I've got a new meditation mantra, too: "I am an insignificant speck of the universe." It's freeing, somehow.

** extra funny because the movie is about Dora as a teenager, and Caroline-the-newly-minted-teenager was a huge Dora fan when she was five. She learned a lot of German in her early days of kindergarten by watching Dora cartoons. Backpack! Rucksack! Rucksack! Backpack! Fun fact: in American-Dora, Dora speaks English and teaches a bit of Spanish. In German-Dora, Dora speaks German and teaches a bit of English. But the cartoon characters are the same, obviously, so you get the improbable Tico the colorful-vest-wearing squirrel speaking the Queen's English.

truth

Today I was supposed to notice when I was lying (first element of right speech: tell the truth). But lying, as my kids can tell you, is not something I am at all fond of...so I don't do it much (at least consciously?)...and also maybe today wasn't the best day for noticing myself being less than truthful because we were home the whole day and there wasn't much to lie about. I did spend an hour with a toothbrush and soft scrub cleaning the grout in the shower, and when I was getting a bucket of water to rinse I accidentally splashed some water on the floor, and screamed in frustration, and Dan called from the other room, "are you ok?" and I screamed back "NO. I. AM. NOT. OKAY." and that was partly a lie, because I was physically fine?

Funnily, the only other recently example of lying that I could think of while cleaning the grout also has to do with being fine. One of my German teachers was very anxious to teach us this lesson: if someone asks, "wie geht's?" you are always supposed to answer "gut, danke, und dir?" Always? Always. Anything other than "I'm fine, and you?" is an imposition on the asker and the truth of "how's it going?" is only ever shared - at the beginning of a conversation, at least - with one's very close friends. I've had trouble with this at work lately. People ask me how I'm doing and I'm bursting to answer truthfully, something along the lines of "nothing's seriously wrong, but I'd really love to run out that door and never come back, you?" But I'm not quite brave enough to try it.

I do have trouble nailing down the truth, which I suppose is a related problem. I feel like I've spend an exceedingly large amount of time trying to find answers to everyday questions like "where are you from?" and "what do you do for work?" that feel honest, rather than like oversimplified betrayals of my own ridiculously conflicted history and thoughts about these things.

Anyway. Truth: We're taking the kids to a water park tomorrow. Where I will undoubtedly have ample opportunities to observe myself struggling with tomorrow's assignment: not exaggerating.

yay for vacation!

Today was nice! The kids started [and Daniel finished] cleaning the porch, I started cleaning the bathrooms and then got excited and de-calced all the faucets, Daniel and Caroline built a rabbit stall, Christopher and I went on a non-essential outing to buy Pokémon cards and treats, Caroline and I went to church, we had yummy meals, the weather was lovely. Success!

Result of non-essential outing: one definitely non-essential but remarkably delicious Fasnacht (aka Carnival) chocolate-cream-filled donut.

And I listened to the 22-minute audio recording for the first week of the How to Communicate Like a Buddhist course. I registered for this class last year in something of a backwards way: I'd decided to sign up for a class on nutrition; I liked it so little that I actually wrote a note to complain (I never do that!); DailyOM's customer service was unexpectedly pleasant about it and offered a refund or an exchange; and I thought, well, I could also use some help communicating, let's give this other one a try. And then...I read the first page of the course materials, saw that the second of the four "elements of right speech" was "don't exaggerate" and thought nope, not willing to give that one up yet...

But here we are a year later and maybe I am up to it this time. In the first week's recording the instructor says that the purpose of communication is to help alleviate suffering in ourselves and others. That's sounds so...gentle and loving! I'm in. The homework for tonight is to fill in the blanks after a whole long lists of prompts, which would take me all night and then some, but here are a couple:

If I were 5% more honest in my relationships... I think of myself as a pretty honest person, so I'm not sure this would change anything, but I'm intrigued by the idea that a 5% change could make a difference. I'm definitely plagued by the notion that I have to do new things perfectly the first time. But five percent. one time in twenty. sounds remarkably achievable.

If I were to stay silent when I don't want to talk... is not a good theoretical question for me, I almost always stay silent when I don't want to talk. Not least because I know from experience that forcing myself to talk usually leads to embarrassment. But: if I were to stop beating myself up about staying silent when I don't want to talk...or - here's a crazy idea - if I were able to explain why I often stay silent when people think I should be talking...that would be pretty radical.

If I stopped talking about people... I wouldn't have anything to say! No, darn, there I go breaking the second rule of right speech. "Don't gossip" is the third rule of right speech, and another one I'm definitely going to have some trouble with. I have some baggage around this. When I was a teenager I'd often try to drag information about relatives or friends out of my parents during family meals, and my dad would scold me with, "Susannah, remember: great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events; little minds talk about people." From which I concluded - and believed, for a long time - that I had a little mind and if I were *really* smart I'd really want to discuss...strategy in the Peloponnesian wars, or whatever, rather than asking how my step-cousin Frankie was doing with his alcoholic mother. I'm convinced, though, that my dad was wrong. I'm not small-minded for being interested in other people. And "not talking about people" was, in our family, very much a way to make sure we kept up appearances and avoided talking about conflict, shame, mental illness, sexuality...all those elephants in the room that needed to hide behind the Peloponnesian wars. I'm not sure I'm ready to stop talking about people, is what I'm saying. But I'm definitely open to learning how to talk about them in a way that alleviates suffering. So, onwards.

communicating

For this evening's blog entry, three unrelated topics:

1. Food again. When we were on vacation in Appenzell, Dan went to a liquor store and found a random and somewhat insensitively named ginger liquor from Bern, and then had the brilliant idea of mixing it with fresh ginger tea for a hot winter drink. Yummmmmmmmm.

2. Existential stuff. This week I've been deeply feeling my longing for work companions. Not just people I work with - the drama on Sunday notwithstanding, I get along as well as can be expected with my co-workers. And not just friends, who are around but leading parallel lives so that we have to make an effort to see each other. I dream of having people I work with *and* have a personal relationship with...a team to share a vision with, colleagues who know me well enough to value my contributions and work around my deficiencies, people with whom I could celebrate success and strategize after failure. In short, the work environment I had (now nearly 10 years ago!!) at GAO... There's a good question, if I could drop everything here and have my old life in Seattle back, would I? I wouldn't. But why??

3. I feel like this blog has been extra boring lately, and it's not because I have nothing to say, but because I can't find the right way to say many of the things that are in my head/heart. I bought the DailyOM course "How to Communicate Like a Buddhist" ages ago and now the time seems right to work through it. There's a lot of journalling involved, and, well, since not much else is going on here, why not? Starting...tomorrow.

status

I have playgroup tomorrow morning and the kids have school, and then we have two weeks of school vacation. Yes, again, already, only five weeks after Christmas vacation. So everyone can go skiing, of course! We are not going skiing. And usually I dread this break, because our routine is interrupted and the weather is icky and I have to figure out what to do with two bored kids for two weeks - but I have to say, this time I'm happy it's here. The kids both just got their end-of-semester grades and are ready for a break from school, and I'm very looking forward to two weeks of not showing up at work.

pickles

Correction to yesterday: the sacristan was not mad at me for getting wax all over the floor, she was mad at me for inappropriately setting up for our service before our service, and also for taking responsibility for getting wax on the floor and for trying to clean it up. I should have just left it, and when she found the mess on Monday she would have assumed it was just "die Albaner" again (the Albanian mission has Mass in our church twice a month on Sunday evenings) and everything would have been fine. Because blaming the foreigners for anything that goes wrong is TOTALLY ABOVE BOARD. Ugh. I don't see how I'm going to last much longer here. I know I keep saying that and no, I still don't have a better plan.

In other unpleasant news, I told Christopher I'd pick him up at gym class tonight - he usually walks to and from the gym with a friend, but his friend was sick - and then I completely forgot about it and he had to walk home in the dark. Hashtag #terriblemother

So I'm feeling kinda crappy. But yes, there are also good things going on. Starting with the food-related...
(1) the aforementioned Trader Joe's peanut butter cups. are so good.
(2) I made some sour cream and onion dip for the Super Bowl. We did not watch the Super Bowl, but we did eat chips and dip and watch YouTube videos of Super Bowl ads, which is almost the same thing.
(3) I used this recipe to transform a turnip and a rutabaga from the veg box into some Japanese pickles and even though I didn't have any yuzu (I used some lime zest and some clementine zest) they came out very yummy, and now I have something new to do with turnips and/or rutabagas.
(4) My friend Mike and I have been meeting weekly at the excellently named Not Guilty for chai tea lattes, and though 95% of what we do is bitch about our respective jobs-at-churches, this is an island of sanity in the craziness of trying to make a life here.
(5) We got a letter today saying that Caroline has officially survived the probationary period at gymnasium. Yay Caroline!

Although the service on Sunday and its aftermath were somewhat scarring, I'm very taken by the story of Simeon and Hanna meeting Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus at the temple (Luke 2:22-40). In the sense of: raising kids isn't easy. Raising special kids is especially not easy. Trying to raise the Savior of the World might just do you in (see the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). And so how much would it mean for two elders to take the time to see your kid; to say, "This kid is going to be something special. You're part of an important project. Hang in there." I know it would have meant a lot to me...it would still mean a lot to me. How/could we make that happen more often?

drama

Yesterday we attempted to celebrate Candlemas with the little kids, and it was chaotic, and we ended up dripping wax all over the (carpeted. why is it carpeted, anyway?) church and now the sacristan is livid with me. The End.

From afar, it looks very peaceful. I think maybe this was before one of the girls was playing a game with her dad in which she tried to blow out the candles faster than he could re-light them. Ha, ha. 

down day (2)

Today the stars have aligned: Caroline is entertaining herself, Daniel is entertaining Christopher, and I have been able to take the day off. So far, I've read 50 pages of my book, taken a nap for an hour, and eaten too many (special delivery from TJ's) peanut butter cups. The question, as always, is whether this is self-indulgent sloth or much-needed self-care. In the middle, I suppose, is that it's much-needed recovery time from a state of self-indulgent anxiety? In any case, I'm enjoying it.

My book is a biography of Hannah Arendt. I'm trying to read books more actively so I don't get to the end quickly and then spend hours searching in vain for that one passage that struck me as cool somewhere a few hundred pages back, so I started sticking those little post-it bookmark thingys on pages I liked, but now there's a post-it bookmark thingy on every other page. Might have to order this one so I can go through it with a highlighter. 

Die Stunden verrinnen,
die Tage vergehen,
es bleibt ein Gewinnen
das bloße Bestehen.

(Something like: The hours flow on / the days are flying / the only success / is just surviving)

captures my feeling these days nicely. Arendt wrote that when she was a student just pushing twenty and not intellectually challenged enough, not a housewife perched precariously before the second half of her forties and not intellectually challenged enough, but I'll allow myself the comparison. I know something more interesting is coming. I hope something more interesting is coming. I am relatively sure that the Something requires that I myself change (and of course it's only ever possible to change ourselves). But I am also relatively sure that the Something requires one or more partners in crime, and I am desperate to find (recognize?) them.

Because. Yesterday no one came to playgroup, so I sat around and looked at my phone a lot and fussed about. And ran across one of my very favorite illustrative metaphors from church, this amazing laminated (!) sheet depicting which dishtowels and cleaning rags belong in which church kitchen / cleaning cart.

That's right - we don't just wash the dish towels and distribute them willy-nilly as if a dish towel were a dish towel. Can you imagine the chaos that might ensue?

When I first started work at Pfarrei Heilig Kreuz, we had playgroup in the Partyraum, and one day there were no dish towels in the drawer there. So I summoned all my courage and went down to ask the lady who works in the Beizli if she could give me one. No, she said flatly, and sent me down to the laundry to find clean ones, which I did, but I took the wrong clean ones, all hell broke loose, and now the Partyraum towels are individually marked with a red thread so that such an infarction never happens again.

Confession: The room in which we now have playgroup is not depicted here, so lately I've been stealing towels out of the central kitchen to use for my dish- and hand-wiping needs. One of these days the household manager is going to discover this shocking breach of protocol and then THERE WILL BE STRONGLY-WORDED NOTES.

Maybe, just maybe, our priorities are out of order and we need to spend far less time and energy focused inward?

Says the person who is taking the day off.