ABOUT TIME: My Mortgage is My Party Space by Kathryn Merrifield

We live in a service industry.  We have our nails done.  Our hair done.  Our houses done.  Our all done.  Our clothes bought.  Our food prepackaged and made for easy-but- not-too-easy-that-it’s-not-homemade-enough, preparation, so we fell better about our domestic skills.  We have our lawns cut (some of us) and watered, our kids entertained and scheduled, our TV programming specialized to our needs, when and how we want it.  There is no waiting or setting aside time for a “program.”  It’s recorded.  It's not an event.  Our mail is delivered too fast via e-mail and too slow in paper.  Our stars are in the same place.  Our Earth spins. 

What do you do for you?  I can’t sew, because my great grandmother labored at it and didn't want her daughter to suffer so.  My own grandmother did, though the clothes were a bit weird and the Halloween costumes, less so (weird, intentionally).  My mom, was a fine artist, turned interior designer, turned environmental activist (a legacy).

Our priorities have changed.  Everything is made for us.  So we don’t know about each stitch that goes into it.  We don’t know how bacon, or chicken, or flank steak is made – it’s killed and sliced and shipped, in case you were wondering.  Stuff is sewn, industrially.

You may have all that pedicure stuff, but you may not use it.  I do, because polish always chips when I do have it done, max four times per year, because I swim in a chlorinated pool to help my back and this is not good for beauty or nail polish or hair color longevity.  So I utilize the stuff I have.  I do it because there’s no impact with the drive or the the pick, or the push, or the brush, and there’s nothing that makes me wake up to the world like a WARM pool, so I won't change that.  It’s horizontal, the swim, maybe that’s it.  Blue Mind, maybe.  Maybe I’m born again.  There’s a reason for water and it’s to swim.  There's a reason to have stuff to do stuff to not depend on anyone.  

Be a self-starter.

So once I had a party at home, there was no other way.  I’ve tried to convince them kids of the better venue to make my life easier, but they won’t fall for it billed as a more exciting option or because so-and-so, liked it.  It's the same every time at the This Place and That Place and Good Place and Bad Place.  They like to be at home, with its own canned party which I’ve nailed down to a two-hour segment of play (hopefulness at good weather that always seems to cooperate), pizza or baked Costco chicken nuggets and Ore-Ida fries, more play (sports or cupcake decoration), then cake feasting (this time Costco despite my objections because I usually make it), then piñata, then part favors, then thank you and goodbye.

It's simple.

Honestly, I think that I’m just too lazy to schlepp all of that stuff to and from a venue.  Perhaps I just don’t want anyone orchestrating my child’s party and making money off it.  Maybe (ha-ha), I have too much time on my hands (hardly).   Or, there's "Control Freak."

Make it what you want but I orchestrated #25 birthday party last Sunday and it ROCKED!  Yes, two E-vites were never received and I have to do a make-up party because I feel like an asshole after apologizing to parents and kids and... feeling like an asshole, later to be rectified with more cupcakes or brownies and more kids here, so I don't feel like an asshole.

Perhaps, I just want to infuse my home with the happy presence of friends who make my children and me get through another day.  That’s it.  It’s the time with them.  It’s the amnesty of legal hardship because someone may fall on their (collective or individual) face at my house, but thinking that no bad things will happen or spiral or domino.  It’s watching them play soccer in the driveway and remember the story my mom told me of my older brother’s first birthday party, at home, where he and his friends ran up and down the driveway. No one needed to entertain them and they didn’t need to be entertained.  They had a driveway.

Kids don’t need to be entertained.  Give them room and let them be.  Give them time to roam.  Inhabit birthday venues as needed but not for the Jonses’.  The Jones’ don’t do anything different, anyway.

ABOUT TIME: Relationship - Are You Serious?

    How much time do you need to...

    Consider yourself in a serious relationship?

Friend wrote this post:  “Relationship question for all of you interested in weighing in: What is the least amount of times you think a couple can see each other on a weekly basis and say that they are in a ‘Serious Relationship’? Personally I have no number and am aware that work schedules, family/friend time, personal time, life obligations, etc. come into play so I am fine with whatever works, even once or twice a week, but I am just curious... what do others think? How often do you see your partner? What is your criteria and what is the absolute minimum you would accept?

 First off, Friend, you sound like a real giver.  What is the absolute minimum I would accept?  That is not how you start a negotiation.  Of course, if you’re a fairly authentic individual, it’s not really a negotiation but an experience.  Desperation is kind of like lowball pricing.  Maybe short-sale.  Short-sale is neat if…

I’m getting into that.

Does that mean you’d be bidding on a short-sale property and thus property would be either of you?

I think that’s the wrong question.

How about, what do you have to give? 

The other just appears that you don’t have a piece to spare.  That’s coming from a forty-four-year-old woman with three kids living in southern Westchester with far too many hobbies.  I read something once that narrowing your curiosities was a sign of maturity.  It was bad news.  Perhaps that makes me the girl version of Peter Pan.  Ummm, even though Peter Pan in the stage version WAS a girl (see: Julie Andrews).  It’s not a time to pick on people though.  It’s a time to investigate the time commitment of a serious relationship.

I’d like to shift that.  Let’s call it a “Committed Relationship” in which partners promise to keep each other safe by restricting certain intimacies, physical and emotional, that are unique to them.

            Just for kicks lets try on a Mock Dear Abby column to see if this one fits you.  Or, for the sake of analogy or, more dramatically, embellishment:

Dear Abby, 

My husband/boyfriend/partner is chatting online with a woman.  He’s telling her what he won’t tell me.  But I wish he would, even if it would risk hurt feelings.  The acute hurt comes from not trusting me with whatever his derelictions, hesitations, fears, hardships, disappointments are.  All I want is for him to tell me, mostly so he can rise up from them and know that there’s no chance of failure in sharing yourself.  
I've spent #___ years with this man and he's never taken the time to either disclose himself to me or even be mildly supportive.

Signed,

Getting Divorced from Scared and Selfish

Dear Getting Divorced from Scared and Selfish,

            Your concerns are real.  Men maybe different than women in their entitlements to emotion and disclosure, but relationships are about relations in every way.  How you relate determines must of who you become and how you accept each other and yourself.  Big ideas to learn from.  It sounds like you know what you need.

Signed,

Abby

 P.S.  It's okay if you kill him in his sleep.  

None of that is about time.  Time is something I monitor with a schedule of three kids, work, writing, and exercise because I’ve been blessed with this vessel of creativity, love for human differences, and hyperactivity (I should probably be taking meds for this but I’m hoping age will kill that off).  I do not watch TV because I have very little free spots of it, and I’d rather space out and tie up story knots or just listen to music.  My head is already too busy for TV information and I get the news via the internet.  Meditating to resolve whatever parenting snag is tugging at me also works.  And it’s very quiet… ahhhhh.

There just isn’t a lot of time.  I mean, really, I barely have time to read anymore.  Reading comes slowly to me because I read every single word.  Being an author makes you respect every single word.  It’s a curse but it’s also the little knots that tie up the loose ends of my errant spirit.

Time means the most, is what I think I’m saying here.  So, I suppose my take on this is that the once or twice per week of physical presence is fine.  But to me I think that having and giving space with that presence is a huge challenge.  People are so complicated, get their feelings hurt, need time when it’s not available.  What they want and what they do can be on opposite sides of the planet.  Actions and words, the same.  Sometimes just being there when you don’t really want to be, but find out it’s importance, is the serious part.  Or the committed part.  But you have the love part.  Any parent can probably relate to this and the unexpected magic that can happen in those moments.

So, committed or serious would seem to require time because depth requires it.  Hijacking a life, not required.  Changing yourself for someone else in a way that is contrary to your inner voice of intuition and just how you are.  Not required, in my book.  Owning anyone or trying to… 

Corny, but as Keb Mo would say, “That’s not love.  Love don’t feel that way…”

My intention was to, uh, include all kinds of comments to Friend’s post, but it would be so long and that would take more time.  You can comment on your own, if you feel inclined.

Be yourself.  It’s advice from my (now and present very much not short-sale but real) mentors gave me.  That was the best news I’d heard in a long time.  And she does give me her time.  More than most would.

Think Outside the Pink by Kathryn Merrifield

Notable for the month of October is other less popular diseases.
My dad died of prostate cancer... Much less popular, I know.  It came twice.  The second time it went to his bones and he died eighteen months before expected when I was pregnant with my third child.  Fracture hip and excess weight, he still managed to travel via plane to me without one single complaint about the pain I later discovered he endured.
His birthday would have been October 22nd.
Before July 13th, 2007, I spoke with him on the phone every day for two years.  He lived in California and we managed to make it happen despite a three-hour time difference.  To this day, I can't replicate that kind of phone schedule with one single human I know.  It's different but it's also not.
My grandmother died as a result of alcoholism in a fire set by her cigarette when I was 22.  She died of smoke inhalation.  Her birthday would have been October 28th.  She was my favorite and most loving human, to date.
My youngest son's birthday is October 18th.  He will be seven.
Think outside the pink.  Respect it, but understand where others land in all of that and where you land them if they don't behave as expected.
Contribute to research toward abating autism and contribute to charities dedicated to supporting families who deal with pediatric and adult heart disease.
I'm bracing myself for the feedback on this one but FB is a free venue for a writer so I'm writing my world.
None of that is love-less.  Loveless is not sharing why.  Loveless is keeping your experience to yourself: pink, blue, , purple, yellow, green, orange, gray, black (I'm not going indoor/outdoor paint colors or nail polish).
That's why.  Respect is two-sided or not at all.
There's more but I have to quote my dad here.  "Why does everyone have to FIGHT everything?  What is it with the FIGHT against cancer?  It's the language.  They have to change the language of it."
That from a former attorney, was a fairly significant statement.

Facebooks Wants Your Change by Kathryn Merrifield

So here we are with a gripping article about Facebook...  again.

http://nationalreport.net/facebook-begins-charging-users-2-99mo/

$2.99 per month.  No, I won't pay!  You greedy social networking creeps!

But, you know I might have to. 

Jerks. 

Someone go free on me again.  Then build me up to connect socially to friends, former classmates I haven't seen since my 1998 New York migration, help me stay connected with my relocating friends, family AND everyone! 

Then charge me two dollars and ninety nine cents per month and listen to me bitch about it.

That says a lot about consumer loyalty, my friends. 

Good ain't free.

How much have you saved in postage?  Remember that thing called the US Postal Service? 

How about printing out rolls of film for that one good pic out of 24-36 exposures (23-35 of which SUCKED) that you then have to fill... out... a... form to reprint specific negatives for a fee - then wait for them and send with a $3.99-$5.99 Hallmark Card and pay extra postage for that little bit extra trim size to accommodate your 4X6's or 5X7's to protect them... with cardboard... for extra durability and... cents toward stamps you have to tear off, lick and adhere to one upper righthand corner.

None of that here.  

You have free photo albums, you ingrates!  When is the last time you bought a scrapbook, for Godssake?

This is my message.  Cheap is cheap.  I spend a lot of time working for free because that's part of the job.  

It's actually part of both of my jobs, and part of my quite obviously meticulously-planned life and business plan.

Regardless, I've visited loyalty and not.  And there's a lot of not and that's not the lot of my world at all.  I'm old school and everyone should be.... (blah-blah-blah-blah..... [stop yourself because someone may be insulted by their own bad behavior]).

Lack of loyalty is flat-out heartless.

I'll pay my $2.99, thanks.  And you can steal all of my info Mr. Z, because I have not one thing to hide, Facebook.

It's part of the value-added program of how not to be an asshole in Year 2014.

Human value.  Like it or not.  That's all it is.

Of course, the good thing is… out of all of this...  Fappy the Anti-Masturbation Dolphin and Mansato could not survive (yer messing with me but it’s funny) without this is probably the worst bit of logic ever attributed to an article trying to buoy a FB forward-thinking business plan.  You may as well just be a flasher.

Let’s do it for the dolphins!  For Mansanto (wait, against it… I’m not sure)!  Save the earth!  World peace!

It’s a cause.

Now go to your room wearing your best red-pleated, white polka-dot skit…  Because that’s the way it works.

Pay your $2.99 and calm down and enjoy what you have.

Or just be really quiet and don’t say too much… and maybe you’ll go unnoticed and won't have to pay... one... dime.  Ssshhhhhh!

Yan Yan's, Produce, and the Library - by Kathryn Merrifield

Wondering if I’m a seasoned mother today.  Not like Lawry’s or a rub, but…

After a great morning at work, I hit a couple of errands and picked up some very cranky kids – Number Two Child whined in exhaustion and Number Three Child

stood, petrified by the Styley-Sweats (double-barreled noun defined as a need to wear something even though it makes you really hot and sweaty.  Cause, to be blamed by a very colorful Volcom hoody that MUST be worn because the vibrant tie-dye matches electric blue shorts and shoes).

Anyway, Number One child was fine hanging out in his creative mind on the swings, decompressing after six plus hours in class, from thing to thing, with no air conditioning, fully integrating a young brain, pliable to over-saturation.

The other two were sinking.

Number One was crying in borderline fakery that turned real quick.

I just needed to make some lunch plans with my friend who also works, takes care of three kids, is trying to be everywhere at once, and who I miss because our paths don’t cross the same way they used to when our kids attended the same preschool and elementary school. (Please note, that this is exactly the fifth lunch date I’ve made since I’ve become a mom.  More of a worker than a luncher.  And I’d most often rather chat in the dark during movie previews or on a run.  Or between swim sets.  Or, on a jog.  But I kinda hurt my earnestness, springiness, so, well…  I’m trying to take my own advice and rest for a few seconds…)

No one but Luke wanted to pick up the books I was ordained to put on hold at the library.  The books that I was needled into placing on hold via the Westchester Library System.  There were tears that I didn’t take too personally (liar, me) so we picked up the books.

Then, offender of time and pusher of Spring-fevered children, I made them go with me around the corner to the produce store to pick up a few things.  We found Yan-Yan’s there – those little Nutella-like breadsticks with animal words and funny descriptions etched into them like:  OWL      STAYS UP ALL NIGHT, and SEAL         LIKES TO LAYOUT IN THE SUN (comedic overtones, kinda).

That said, I also purchased produce – fruit, to be exact:  watermelon, two types of mango, gala apples, red seedless grapes, corn – some other stuff.  Pringles. 

I do live on both sides of the fence, nutritionally.  I know that too many “no’s” bounce back so I’m pretty reasonable, even if some people think I’m somewhat a hypocrite.

It was the Yan-Yans that redeemed me.

Venna Rose and Leo didn’t eat the entire containers of most definitely hydrogenated oil-infected food, but I washed the grapes and cut up the watermelon and we talked and settled into the late afternoon, when little hands started reaching for bites of washed grapes and cut watermelon, then retreated into their rooms and quiet corners of the house to read.

Perhaps you have to search for the kernel there. 

Any mom would say, you got them to eat fruit and read.

Today you succeeded.

Then the Pringles disappeared moments before dinner (shrug).