Meeting Dorcas

Three days ago—last Saturday morning—I finally met Son 1's new girlfriend. I'll call her Dorcas. I spent a little over an hour visiting, and she was very pleasant. Wife was also there, and was significantly less pleasant. I wish I had been surprised by that.

The context is that I was driving to Big City to visit Mother, Brother, and SIL. You remember that I didn't go there for Christmas Eve, because the weather was too fierce. But Saturday was calm and beautiful; so we rescheduled Christmas for Saturday. And Son 1 agreed that I could stop by around 10 o'clock in the morning.

I arrived just about on time, clutching a little cooking I had brought them as a gift. Son 1 let me in, and then resumed his place on the sofa with Dorcas. Wife was on the other side of the room, so I found a chair that let me see everyone. For a few minutes we discussed their new kitten. Then I asked Dorcas what she does for a living.

This is a stock photo, or maybe it is created by AI. It is certainly not really Dorcas.
But it's supposed to be a research engineer, which is good enough.

It turns out she works in technology. She is some kind of engineer. Well, she's an engineer half-time, and a doctoral student half-time. Her research is related to the corporate work she's doing. I suppose I shouldn't go into a lot of detail, because it's a new field and it might be possible to identify her through it. But she has published three articles (in collaboration, of course) and already holds a number of patents (ditto). This was actually pretty interesting, and for a few minutes I tried to draw her out.

It also turns out that there are some unexpected crossover points where her work might have implications for the stuff I used to do ... and therefore for the stuff I write about in the professional blog under my real name. So I asked her some more about these points, and ended up asking if she could send me any kind of non-classified document from which I could learn more (and maybe write about it). She sent me one URL. I have yet to explore it deeply. But I was pleased to get even the one.

Of course the conversation bounced around in a very non-linear fashion. Son 1 contributed to it. I tried to tell some funny stories from my own career. I didn't learn a lot about Dorcas's personality, except that she is fond of Son 1 and is willing to tolerate his family.

Then Wife entered the conversation by booming,* "I notice nobody has asked me any questions about Henry II!" Back when Wife was in graduate school, she was a medievalist, and was starting to study the tax policy of Henry II of England. This was before she failed her Qualifying Exams, which means it was before she was given her terminal Master's and booted out of graduate school for the second time. (I describe the first time she left graduate school in this post here.)

Gosh, dear, what can you tell us about Henry II?

So Wife spent several minutes haranguing** us about Henry II and his tax policy. It had nothing to do with the previous conversation, and plainly nobody else was interested. She even made several remarks acknowledging that nobody else was interested, in a tone that was (I think) supposed to be wry and self-deprecating, but came across as merely self-pitying. (And in any event none of these remarks stopped her from prolonging her lecture.) 

After maybe 75 or 80 minutes (total, not just of Wife's lecture), I said I had to be on my way. Before Wife could make (yet another!) remark about how I was getting out because I was bored with Henry II, Son 1 quickly joined in to say, "Yes, you've got other family members to visit!" And I replied, "Yes, and I want to get there in time for dinner!" So we all said goodbye. I got hugs from Wife and Son 1, and even from Dorcas (though when I arrived she had greeted me by shaking my hand, as I expected).

My impression is that it wasn't an unsuccessful first meeting ... well, except for Wife, but I claim no responsibility on that front. But of course I can't read minds: not Son 1's, and not Dorcas's. So I don't know when I'll see them next. I hope it's not long delayed. So far as I could make a judgement, I liked her.

_____

The rest of the weekend, I spent at Mother's. I got there  somewhere between 1:00 and 1:30. We ate dinner pretty much on schedule at 2:00. Since Brother and SIL put together the whole meal, I have to qualify or retract any earlier remarks suggesting that the two of them are always late or behind schedule (see also, for example here or here).

There was a lot of food. It was all elegant and tasty. Then there was a dessert. (This was the only part Mother made.) It, too, was elegant and tasty.

Finally we opened Christmas presents. I felt a lot of anxiety about this, because all I'd done was a little cooking for everyone. Fortunately Brother and SIL hadn't gotten me much: just a couple of books about food. (Seriously!) Mother got my a gift certificate at a gourmet food store, and insisted that she was always thrilled to get the kind of cooking that I delivered.

Late into the evening, Brother and SIL went home. I slept over. Mother and I spent most of Sunday talking aimlessly, though part of the time was about Father's death and how unprepared she was. I suggested that the best way to avoid a repetition is to talk about what has to be done, so that Brother and I are prepared.

Monday, I drove home after breakfast, but I wasn't good for much the rest of the day.

And here we are in Tuesday.  

__________

* I think that Wife's hearing is getting worse. Her voice is a lot duller, flatter and louder than it used to be.  

** As I was saying ....     

      

Christmas in Carrick

And here's a less-depressing Christmas song. It's nothing like what I'm doing right now, but it is one of my favorites from Golden Bough. Maybe that's because of all the food and drink they sing about!

The album calls this song "Christmas Comes But Once a Year," but a little googling led me to find the original title as I give it in the post's heading.

Here are the lyrics:

"And what have you done?"

So this is Christmas
And what have you done?
Another year over
And a new one just begun

I'm pretty sure I first heard this song on Christmas Day. It was sometime in the mid-1970's, at my parents' house, and Brother had been given an album which included it. At any rate, that's the image that pops into my head whenever I hear it ... the living room, the tree, the lights, and the stereo system. (Gosh, remember stereo systems?)

The other thing that I always hear is that question: "And what have you done?" Does everyone else find that challenge depressing, or is it just me? On the whole I think my answer is, "Not much." It makes me see why people are so eager to make New Year's Resolutions. Of course, I don't even do that: after watching Father go on so many diets that he swore with great fanfare would make him thin, ... and then watching him go off them again after two weeks with no visible change of girth, ... I figure it is better simply to fail quietly than to fail after calling a lot of attention to yourself. (No, it never really occurred to me to treat success as one of the options. Why do you ask?)

I'm not sure I have much more to say about this. But I'm sitting home alone, watching out my window as the weather lurches dramatically from stormy to calm and back to stormy again. It's Christmas, but without any of the usual Christmas-stuff going on. So here: have a song. 

Incidentally, I had a thought this morning. When John and Yoko sang this song, their slogan (referring to the Vietnam War) was, "War is over if you want it." That sentiment probably sounded idealistic to many, but in fact the events proved it to be remarkably practical. Because in general there is always one quick and certain way to end any war: Let the other guys win! And as long as your commitment to peace is stronger than your commitment to victory, that avenue is open and available. Sure enough, it worked in Vietnam.

Here are the lyrics:

Fun with health insurance, part 3

You all remember how I got put on Medicaid for a couple of years, even though the program was meant for the desperately poor. I explain that in part 1 and part 2.

Well, that finally came to an end, and it seems like I didn't bother to post about it. But starting in 2024, I began to buy regular health insurance through my state's ACA website, because I was finally ruled ineligible for Medicaid.

In some sense it is silly for me to buy anything of the kind, because I haven't actually seen a doctor since 2022. My old doctor retired while I was in Scotland during the spring of 2023; I thought about visiting the new doctor who bought his practice, but at the time I was still covered under Medicaid. I figured he probably didn't take Medicaid, and I didn't feel like explaining how it happened.

Since then? Well, my ACA plan assigned me to a doctor, but I've never made an appointment. I don't feel a strong need to. Maybe she could do something about my earwax, of course. But my annual physicals were never terribly informative. My old doctor would try to put me on statins, I would refuse, and then we'd spend a few months when I tried to bring down my blood pressure using diet and exercise. Not an obviously useful way for either of us to spend our time.

Then this fall, Congress declined to extend the ACA subsidies for most income classes. I went online and found that my premium would more than quadruple! In concrete numbers, my new premium would be more than $1000 per month higher than my old one! Of course I was hardly unique in this. You must have heard the story plenty of times by now. Maybe it happened to you.

I started searching online for other alternatives. Could I go without insurance altogether? Could I buy catastrophic-only insurance? And finally I called the insurance company who has been supporting me since I got off Medicaid.

In the course of the conversation, my agent asked: 

"How much do you make every month?"

I told him.

Then he asked: 

"And that's an IRA distribution, right? In other words, the exact amount is in your control?"

"Yes."

"Because here's something interesting. If you brought home $1000/month less than you bring home today, you'd still be eligible for subsidies. In fact, your premiums would be cheaper than they are today."

Say what?

I hung up the phone and went to check whether I could get by on the reduced income every month. Could I do it for at least a year? (After a year I'll be eligible for Medicare, and all the calculations change.) Looking at my expenses over the last few years, I learned two things.

• First, I normally spend more per month than the hypothetical number my insurance agent had suggested.
• Second, I normally spend less per month than I am pulling out of my IRA, with the result that I have been building up my savings account. If I take enough money out of my savings to make up the shortfall in my withdrawals—and if, naturally, nothing unexpected happens—I'll still be in comfortable shape by the end of the year.

Sounds like a plan.

So that's what I'm going to do. It's crazy, but it is what the system requires. For one year I will throttle back my income even farther than I have already done, and I'll make up the difference with savings. And these machinations will cut more than $1000/month (or $12,000/year) off my mandatory health insurance bill.

In case you wonder why some people think the current system is crazy ... well, I guess this is part of why.

    

Christmas Eve

I usually write some kind of post for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Looking back at the history of this blog, it seems like I have to go all the way back to 2017 before I find a year with nothing in that vein. But somehow this year seems like one of the least "Christmas-y" years in a while.

Normally at this point I am at Mother's house, in the extended banlieue of Big City, a couple of hours from where I live. But the weather has thrown up some ... challenges ... so that we decided collectively (on Tuesday) to wait for the weekend. I tried to joke, "If the Wise Men took several days to get to Bethlehem, we should be able to postpone our get-together by a few days as well." Meanwhile, Son 2 and Beryl explained to us all that they'll have to Christmas-in-place this year because of some unusual expenses (like buying a car). I sent an email to Son 1 and Wife suggesting that maybe I could drop by in a couple of days, and have gotten no reply.

So here I sit, at home in front of my computer, writing to you lot instead. 

• My apartment isn't decorated because I don't own a lot of Christmas decorations, and because there doesn't seem to be any point to decorate when it's just me. 
• I'm not listening to Christmas music, because I almost never listen to music anyway. (Although I did connect to a live-streamed Christmas concert by Golden Bough on Saturday.) 
• I've done vanishingly little Christmas shopping: something for Debbie, and for Son 2 + Beryl, since those had to be sent by mail (and therefore could be ordered online). 
• For Mother, Brother + SIL, Son 1 + Wife—in other words, for people I'm likely to see in person—I've done a little cooking. 

I'm really not in the Christmas spirit. 

      

Analysis through movies

The other day I was wasting time on Twitter, and I ran across someone who claimed, "Tell me your favorite Christmas movie and I’ll tell you your trauma."

I'd recently re-read this post from last year, so I felt I was game for the challenge. I replied, "Can you do this with favorite non-Christmas movies? Favorite Christmas movie: 'It's a Wonderful Life.' Favorite movie all-around: probably 'Lawrence of Arabia'."

The next morning, he had replied back: "you are deeply concerned about the impact you have on other people’s lives and often fear that you’re not doing enough."

Umm ... OK, I guess. Actually that's not too far off. Good to know. 

What you deserve

A few days ago I saw a short video on Twitter. It never uses the word deserve. But somehow that's the way I remember it. As if it had been about What you think you deserve in life.

Here's the YouTube version:

So naturally I started thinking: Is it true? Could someone judge—based solely on seeing that I married Wife—how much I love myself? Could someone assess what I think I deserve in life?

Yeah, probably. It's not a good look.

The next day, I got an email from Debbie inviting me to join some software tool called Giftster. Apparently it's a tool that lets you publish wish lists for all sorts of holiday gifts. She invited me to join a group that includes her and her family. 

Well, I haven't done it yet. Partly I hate the idea of having to set up yet another user ID and password for yet another tool that I'll probably never use. Or rather, I guess I'll use it twice a year: a few weeks before Debbie's birthday, and a few weeks before Christmas. But of course there's no way I would ever put any preferences of my own into such a tool! I've written about that before: Dorophobia!

And then suddenly all kinds of connections started to cascade down around my head. I've written about this topic before, in different flavors and through different lenses, all too many times.

With respect to romantic relationships: "Harems" and "Encouraging non-exclusivity? Why?" and "Punishment for my sins?" Also this post about a quote from Tolstoy applies too, if you think about D's principle (elucidated here) that (on the whole) spouses are of comparable attractiveness. Why should they be? Well if each spouse is competing with a large pool of others for the most attractive possible partner, that's just how it sorts out: those with the greatest drawing power (the most attractive) will get the most attractive mates, and likewise down the ladder. But if someone (like me) doesn't look for the most attractive mates—either because he doesn't think he deserves them, or for some more idiotic reason—then the pattern breaks down.

With respect to family: "My apartment" and "The empty table."  

At work: "On being the boss."  

And just at the level of general discussion: "Seventeenth date 3, Depression, dignity, arrogance" and "You don't count" and "What is money for?, 2: fear of beauty."

 

And there are probably more, that I didn't think to look for.

It's not a good look. Maybe I need to think about it, or take it seriously.

   

The romaine lettuce incident

OK, this story is from long, long ago. I don't really remember when it happened, but I think it was before Wife and I were even married—back when we were just "dating". (This means I was living in her apartment and we were regularly fucking, but the whole thing hadn't been formalized yet by a ceremony.) Call it ... well, maybe early-to-mid 1984. All our big turmoil was still in the future. I was still baffled when things went wrong, instead of cynically resigned to it. But the interesting thing is that I'm telling you the story now, not to tell you anything about Wife but actually to talk about me.

What happened?

I remember we were visiting my grandfather. Also, my parents were both there. Maybe we were helping him sort through the immense stacks of useless clutter that he and my grnadmother had accumulated over something close to fifty years of marriage. But it wasn't a holiday, because nobody had done any advanced planning for meals.

In the middle of the afternoon, Father (my dad) realized that the refrigerator had basically no food in it, because my grandfather was very old and lived alone. So he went shopping only when he absolutely had to, and he shopped for one person with a small appetite. I don't know whether he had known in advance that we were coming out to see him, but in any event he hadn't bothered to lay in any supplies. My grnadfather never really thought about other people except when he was forced to, and for many decades he had been able to rely on my grandmother to do all that for him.

So Father realized we were all going to need something for dinner, and he began making a shopping list. (He also planned to do the cooking.) So he asked for suggestions. 

What would we like for dinner?

Someone made a suggestion, and he wrote down the ingredients.

How about a salad? Would everyone like a salad too?

Sure, that sounds great.

What kind of lettuce should I get? 

At this point, Wife—who of course was just a Girlfriend back then, but you all know her as Wife—said, "Pretty much any kind would be fine, except please don't get romaine lettuce. I hate romaine lettuce."

My heart sank. Maybe it's too grandiose or self-important to say that I had a premonition of what was going to happen. But at some level that's exactly what I had. From that moment, I knew the whole evening was going to turn out badly.

And I say that because of course—maybe this doesn't sound like an "of-course" situation to you, but to me it was absolutely predictable!—when Father got back from the store we discovered that he had bought romaine lettuce for our salad!

So the arguing began.

Wife: Why did you buy romaine lettuce when that's the one and only kind of lettuce I told you I don't like?

Father: Well why the hell do you have to be so fussy?

Wife: But you asked for suggestions! Nobody expressed any different preferences, besides me! So why would you buy this? It wasn't to satisfy anyone else's preferences, because nobody else expressed any. Is this just a deliberate slap in the face because you hate me?

Father: My God, you think the world revolves around you! Jesus H. Christ, I bought what I bought. Leave me alone and don't give me so much shit over it. If you don't want to eat any salad, you don't have to!

On not disappearing against the wallpaper

I don't know how to tag this post properly. The reference in the title is to a post from seventeen years ago (yes, really!) where I wrote, in part:

I always start new jobs as The Quiet Guy ... you know, the one who tries his best to disappear against the wallpaper? Despite this, it always happens -- at every job I have ever held -- that one day I am introduced to somebody who says, "Oh, so you're Hosea. I've heard so much about you."

This post isn't about a new job. It isn't about new circumstances, or being around strangers, or anything like that. It's just a rueful reflection on my relationship with leadership.

Sometime in the middle of 2021, right around the time my salary and benefits ended from my closed work, the elected Chair disappeared from our local section of the professional society I belong to. I don't think she "disappeared" in any sense requiring the police, but at any rate she stopped showing up to meetings or answering emails. And I was asked to step in: "Hosea, you're a nice guy and you come to all our meetings anyway ... can you take over as Chair?"

Be careful whom you help. I'm still the Chair of that section today, over four years later, notwithstanding a society rule that you can only be Chair for two consecutive one-year terms before you become ineligible. But nobody else wanted the job, and our Regional Director said it's better to overshoot the term limits than to have no Chair. Anyway I have been trying—this year in particular—to get someone else to take on the job for next year.

Fine, that's nice, but so what?

Pushing and pulling

Yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter and found the following gem. Someone had posted a picture than says: "I pushed you away because I needed you to pull me close."

It sounds crazy, and part of me wants to ask "Would anybody ever do something so backwards?" But in fact I know they do. Just over thirteen years ago, I asked Wife for a divorce. We talked for most of that day, although Wife's side of the conversation included a lot of weeping, shouting, and recrimination. But at one point I asked her why she was so unhappy with the idea? Leaving aside the financial practicalities for just a minute ... isn't this what she wanted? All through our long marriage she had threatened me with divorce more times than I could count. She regularly told me she hated me. She treated me with disdain. She actively undermined me with the boys. Looking at all that history, wouldn't she be eager to get rid of me?

For a moment she looked truly shocked. Then she shouted back, "Didn't you understand? All the times I did those things, I was asking you to love me more!!"

Umm ... no, Babe. I didn't understand. I guess once again we were bad at communication.

So yeah. Have a picture.

      

My cough is back, 3

This is not me, obviously. But sometimes it feels like it might as well be.

I'm writing and posting this today to put a mark on the calendar. I hope I'm wrong, but it feels like today is the beginning of Coughing Season for me. Yes, it's the same damned allergic cough that I've complained about regularly for years (and that I've lived with regularly since long before I started complaining in these pages). Look up the posts tagged "cough" and you'll see what I mean.

Based on my calculations last spring, I guess this season—if that's what it is—should last till the end of February. Four months. That gives me hope for an endpoint.

It's funny how sharp the dividing line can be between On and Off. Over the last couple weeks I've had moments where it feels like my allergies are building up, but they have passed immediately and not returned until days later. I'm pretty sure I haven't taken a single cough drop since last February. Today I took five of them, to calm and soothe my throat. 

Just in time for the holidays, I guess. And in other news, ... I visited with Wife this afternoon and we talked very civilly for a couple of hours.

Time out for signals

I've got a bunch of posts to write and publish. Mostly they will fill in the last couple of weeks, between this one and today. Most of them are going to be back-dated.

See, back on October 8 I flew out to visit Debbie for a week. While I was there, we went to a silent retreat for the weekend, put on by a local UU Buddhist organization in her area. The prolonged time in silence helped me think about a number of things, some of which resolved themselves into blog posts that I wrote out long-hand on the airplane as I came home (October 14).

Then the very next evening (October 15), Marie arrived here in Beautiful City to spend a week visiting me. She flew home yesterday, on October 22. From this visit, I think I extracted maybe two topics to blog about.

So over the next few days I expect to post all of these topics online. I'll fit them in more or less where they belong sequentially. And I may not bother to type up the earlier ones before the later ones. So if you are watching this blog and hoping for a chronological account, you should keep the last fortnight in view all as a whole, until I get done. In the end, there will probably be six more posts added, all told: four from the visit with Debbie, and two from the visit with Marie. Of course that might change.

UPDATE 2025-10-28: OK, I've caught up now. All the back posts that I wanted to fill in the gaps in the last couple weeks have been posted. Onwards!     

     

Bad at chess

I was talking with Marie today, and she mentioned in the course of the discussion that she had never learned to play chess very well, not past the most rudimentary level. Neither have I, and it was no big deal. But then she told me why not: she found that she had a very low tolerance for losing! And of course the only way to learn to play chess well is to play a lot of it even though you start off playing badly; and that, in turn, means accepting that you are going to lose an awful lot of the time.

She also acknowledged that this low tolerance for losing might have made her life harder in other ways, but we didn't pursue it too far. (I still remembered sitting up talking a few nights ago, and didn't want to push anything too hard.) But I did start to wonder—silently, in my own mind—how far this preference had affected her other choices in life? In a post last year, I toyed with the idea of picturing Marie as a kind of atheist nun; but is it possible that she chose that path simply in order to reduce the number of direct contests she would have to fight? After all, if you never enter the arena, you can't lose. (You can't win either, but it doesn't feel to me like winning is nearly so important to Marie as not-losing.) 

Or consider her fears for many years about my continued friendship with Debbie, fears that seem only to have been put to rest recently. Of course it is more or less typical for a girlfriend to worry if her boyfriend keeps in touch with one of his exes. So maybe what is interesting is all the things that Marie didn't do. She didn't force the issue, or give me any kind of ultimatum. She didn't ask a lot of questions about Debbie, though sometimes if the subject came up she would cautiously ask one or two things before dropping the subject. Only once do I remember her ever criticizing Debbie (when I told her about how Debbie contracted COVID-19 ... I guess I never told that story here); after that I was careful to say less about Debbie and for a while she was careful to ask less. And she never overtly tried to compete.

In other words, Marie lived in fear that she was going to lose to Debbie, but she never did any of the common things that would have forced the contest out into the open. And maybe this was because she was afraid she might lose, and couldn't handle losing.

So what about me? I have remarked before that Marie and I have a lot in common, and that one thing we share is that our accomplishments are far smaller than our talents would lead you to guess. Do I share her unwillingness to lose?

It's possible. And after my ruminations last year on the concept of the Jungian Shadow (see here and especially here), I want to be careful about dogmatically asserting that I don't have this or that unappealing trait. There's always the risk that I have it but don't want to admit it.

At the same time, I don't think the data support it. Am I fearful of other things? Heavens, yes. But maybe not losing, at least not per se. When I was in high school, for example, I joined the cross-country team because I wanted to get in shape. I always came in last in all our races, but I knew in advance I was going to. It wasn't a problem. And in my long marriage to Wife, I learned that when she worked herself into a towering rage, the best thing I could do was to lose the argument. When we separated, I lost the marriage. I have put myself in the position of losing things a number of times—not as often as it would take to learn to play good chess, maybe, but still. So it is at any rate not obvious to me that this specific liability is one of mine.

Of course I have plenty of others, so there's no risk I'll run out. But it was interesting to think about.  

 

Sexualized politics

Marie and I had the strangest argument tonight ... admittedly after both of us had had way too much to drink. On the one hand it gave me what I think are some useful insights into how she thinks about politics. On the other hand, it made me despair of ever reaching a common understanding with her on the subject. It's not just about correcting this or that factual misunderstanding that she might have picked up somewhere along the way. For her ever to understand the way I see American politics—or as an alternate goal, using the famous Straussian criterion, for her ever to understand her opponents as they understand themselves—will require a total demolition and reconstruction of the furniture in her mind related to politics. It would have to start with massive cognitive dissonance and proceed through total breakdown. I don't want to inflict that on her, and I don't foresee it. But this means she will be a prisoner of her peculiar delusions for the rest of her life.

It all started when I was talking about something else. I was describing how people interpret moral topics, and I said that people respond far more than they realize to the intuitive picture in their head. So when a Malefactor does something bad, you get some people who see him intuitively as a saber-toothed tiger or a cave bear—that is to say, as a lethal threat to their friends, neighbors, and children. Then there are other people who see him as an erring child who can learn better with a little education. These two groups argue with each other over what to do with the malefactor; they quote studies and statistics, and delve deeply into academic criminology to argue their cases. But all this sophistication is window dressing. What really motivates the two groups is their intuitive picture of what is going on. Is he a saber-toothed tiger, or an erring child? On that question hinges the pragmatic decision whether he should be killed straightaway, or rehabilitated.

That was the theoretical point I was trying to make. So far, so good.

Marie stopped me to say that sometimes the roles switch. She said that in cases of rape or sexual crimes, Liberals are more likely to condemn a Malefactor as irredeemable, and Conservatives are more likely to wink and let it pass on the grounds that "boys will be boys."

Now, I had never used the words "liberal" or "conservative" in my discussion. So what I should have said is. "OK fine, that's one more example of what I'm talking about." Perhaps I could have reminded her that I never used words like "liberal" or "conservative" because I was trying to talk about a general disjunction in how people treat Malefactors, and not to make a political point. Then I should have steered the discussion resolutely back to the most general level possible.

Depressed?

I wonder if I'm depressed?

Look over the last few posts. Not exactly upbeat, are they? Now look over the last several years. Count how many posts have complained that I am stuck, becalmed, going nowhere. Do you detect a theme?

Some time ago—I guess it was back when I was still working and had medical insurance (so in 2021 or before)—I stopped taking my daily wellbutrin because I couldn't tell that it made any difference. Also I read random voices on Twitter who suggested that SSRI's are useless or worse. And since I haven't had a lot of firm commitments since my work ended, it's been hard to tell whether I'm slowing down.

But yes, I'm slowing down. I eat and drink, I browse the Internet, I sleep a lot; but I don't exercise, and compared to the time I have available I'm not very productive. Maybe the wellbutrin is the relevant factor.

At any rate, it's likely one relevant factor. Another may be my comparative isolation. When I ask Google about the consequences of prolonged isolation, it gives me an answer that includes depression, obesity, and social skills deterioration. (I'm pretty sure I can detect that last one in myself, though self-diagnosis is always tricky). And the first two linked articles—by the CDC and the APA, respectively—give a spooky list of long-term outcomes.

I'll try taking the wellbutrin again, starting after Marie goes home from her impending visit. (I don't want to change anything before then, in case of unexpected results.) I suppose this means I have to find a doctor, since my last one retired back in 2023 and I'll need a prescription. Maybe Wife has a stockpile I can hit up. But experimentation has to be the key. I hope for the best. 

So controlling, part 3

Yes, the first two posts by this name were more than ten years ago, here and here. Deal with it.

I wrote recently about the many little ways Debbie and I got in each other's way in the days leading up to the retreat. Well, they didn't end there. They peaked, if you want to call it that, while we were driving home. We had stopped to recharge her EV,* and on the way out of the parking lot I was giving her instructions at the same time that the GPS did. She asked me very pointedly if I thought that was helpful. I admitted that of course it wasn't, and added lamely that I wasn't aware I was doing it. For the rest of the day I was painfully aware of every syllable that escaped the barrier of my teeth. I was pretty aware of it the next day too.

Then this morning, as she was making breakfast,** Debbie was setting out some ingredients and said, "You can start on this, and I'll eat that." I asked, "Is that something you want me to do now, or do you mean when everything is ready?" Debbie admitted she wasn't aware she had said anything.

And suddenly the penny dropped. Some people vocalize tasks they are doing, while they are doing it. Some people imagine themselves doing a task when they see someone else doing it. So it stands to reason that some few people just start reciting instructions for things that other people are doing.Most of the time we probably contain the impulse, so that strangers don't see us standing alone talking to ourselves. But in certain kinds of liminal situations it can be unclear—even to the speaker, to say nothing of the hearer!—whether we are talking to ourselves or to others.

This, I think, must be another of the roots of Wife's insistence that I was "so controlling": a habit of talking through what someone else is doing, while she is doing it. Of course I don't do it all the time. If the task is one I don't understand, I keep quiet. And if the other person clearly has it covered, we are likely talking about something else. But especially when I am with someone who doesn't seem confident about a task that I would be confident of—or who seems to be doing it the wrong way around—I probably vocalize the task at hand. This leaves the other person the option of asking me to stop (as Debbie did), of ignoring me, or of complaining later (when there is no longer anything I can do about it) that I am "so controlling." Debbie took the first option. Wife, famously, took the last.

_____

* We had bad luck finding charging stations on the way home, with the result that we drove several miles out of our way—at least twice. The exercise convinced me that the EV-charging industry is a lenocracy, in John Michael Greer's felicitous coinage. Debbie is still convinced that electric cars are the wave of a bright, new future, and that experiences like ours are just growing pains. I look at the same data, the same experiences, and think of Greer's mordant observation, "If you want to see that the decline of a great civilization looks like, look out the window." 

** Debbie and I no longer cook together in the same kitchen. During this visit, she cooked and I washed dishes, except for the time we were at the retreat (when the retreat staff did both). 

This development has been slow but steady in coming. You remember that when I first visited her in her new state, eight years ago, we cooked together and washed dishes together. At the time I commented, "Who needs sex to be intimate, when you can work together in the same kitchen, picking up and handing off tasks smoothly and conveniently?" Two years later we were still cooking together. But by 2020, I was starting to notice slippages:

"... we didn't work together in the kitchen as smoothly and effortlessly as we have in the past, which made me realize we have gotten out of practice. Nothing serious, but we had to pay more attention not to bump into each other, and I didn't always know right away what to do next. Little things."

I don't remember how we handled cooking last year, and I can't find anywhere in this blog that I wrote it down. Not that it matters, I suppose. The Buddha teaches that all things are impermanent, after all. Right? So it should be no surprise that our ability to cook together smoothly in the same kitchen is impermanent as well.       

Silent retreat

This weekend, I'm on a silent, residential, meditation retreat with Debbie. It's just like the one I joined last year at this time; and at only a weekend it is shorter than the weeklong retreat we joined at the end of 2013. It's organized as a UU-Buddhist retreat in the state where Debbie lives.

A silent retreat isn't literally 100% silent all the time. There are instructions when you arrive, and there are occasional dharma talks. (This time around, we are watching videos by Pema Chödrön in place of dharma talks.) Also, there is a relaxation of the requirement for those who want to socialize quietly during meals, though there are still tables designated for those who want to eat in silence. And there are periods of "free time," which should be quiet but which are not policed too closely if you aren't disturbing others. But then there are meditation periods, when nobody speaks. And the whole campus "goes into silence" in the evening after the last meditation.

The purpose of silent meditation is that it allows you to watch your mind in action—particularly the repetitive scripts that keep us perpetually ill at ease—and in the run-up to this retreat I certainly had plenty to watch.

• I flew out to Debbie's place on Wednesday afternoon. Debbie spent the afternoon looking after her grandsons, and we had dinner with them and their father. (Mattie—their mother and Debbie's daughter—was late at work.) Debbie had to interrupt one of my stories because I was unaware that it was time for the kids to go to bed.
• Thursday was easy, with a couple of errands.
• Friday we drove to the retreat. So that morning Debbie decided that she had to vacuum and wipe down the entire inside of her car before we could pack it.
• Then we got in each other's way while packing—or rather, I got in her way, and we had to spend time talking about it.
• Debbie drives an EV (electric vehicle), so we had to plan the trip around where there were charging stations. There aren't a lot in her area. This part wasn't a big frustration, because I let her handle it. But it was an added challenge.
• Then there were other similar issues when we got to the Retreat Center, unpacked, and got through the first evening. If I avoid spelling them all out, that's partly because they were so trivial that they would bore you, ... and partly because they were so trivial that they would make me look really bad.
• It was all little stuff. But it was one minor irritation on top of another, all because I was running along my little tracks of automatic responses and—at least sometimes—she was running along hers. By bedtime last night I was very grumpy.

I slept long, ate breakfast alone in silence this morning, and hiked around the grounds for an hour. Then I joined the group to listen to Pema's first video, after which they rang the bell for silent meditation.

And oh—how delicious that silence was! After my grumpy and grumbling evening, after I blundered sullenly through the morning—the silence of that first sit felt like I could taste it. It was refreshing like cool water on a hot day. All of a sudden I felt, This is why I am here!*

I sat through the first two morning meditations. Then I skipped the thirs one to write this post instead. Now it's lunchtime, and maybe I'm a little less grumpy.

__________

* In fairness I should add that the other, later sits weren't all equally amazing. But the contrast that first morning was real.    

        

Another death

There's been another death this year, a woman I've known for a dozen years though not deeply. But for most of those years, I saw her regularly, once a week. I'll call her Janet, which wasn't her name in real life.

Janet and Debbie co-founded the UU Sangha that I attend regularly. During all the years up through when we suspended meeting because of COVID-19 in 2020, Janet facilitated every meeting, every week, except for the handful of times that she traveled to visit family. By the time we resumed meeting—first remotely, and then in a hybrid manner—her treatments for ovarian cancer had started taking a toll. So she was rarely there, and no longer led. Still, she was in everyone's hearts. This year Debbie traveled here (to Beautiful City, where I live) several times to visit with Janet and her family; and finally, five weeks ago, Janet died.

This is just some random UU congregation on the Internet, and not the one
Janet belonged to. But her Celebration of Life was easily this crowded.

The Sangha did an adapted Buddhist ceremony for the dead at our next meeting, and we are doing an abbreviated ceremony by Zoom once a week for the seven weeks thereafter. (Tonight is number five.) Last weekend the UU Church that hosts us (of which Janet was also an active member) held a Celebration of Life for her. In fact, Janet herself designed the Celebration of Life ceremony. There was a little Buddhist input, when the Sangha came up to the front to chant "The Three Refuges." And there was a walk through her life, with lots of photos. Several people stood up to talk about what she had meant in their lives. And there was lots of food. It was a lovely service.

Already some of the other members of the Sangha have started to think about their own deaths. (None of us is exactly young.) One woman has said she wants her service to look just like Janet's, and so she has started writing her life because nobody here knows anything about it.

Where does this leave me?

Son 1 has a girlfriend

This evening I discovered that Son 1 has a girlfriend. Of course I don't know how many others he might have had that I never knew about. I'm sure he'd never tell me. And even now, I learned of her kind of by accident.

A couple weeks ago, I sent Wife a couple of articles I'd seen about some witches who hexed Charlie Kirk shortly before he was shot. (See this link, this one [since the original article seems to have been taken down], and also this one.) She still hasn't said anything substantive about the articles, but yesterday she texted me that Son 1 had acquired a new kitten in addition to the cat I knew they already had. Then she mentioned another name I didn't know. I asked, "Who's ⸻? A third cat?" This evening, Wife replied:

No, she's Son 1's girlfriend. If he hasn't told you about her, maybe I shouldn't have. He didn't tell me either. I came home unexpectedly from a failed sleep study. I also just had a colonoscopy, but won't get the results back for a month. [Wow, nice that you managed to make it All About You again by the end of the paragraph!]

So this wasn't an Official Announcement, unlike when Son 2 called each of us in turn to announce his relationship with Beryl. This means I have no idea whether the young woman in question is a Serious Relationship, or just a casual fling that Wife happened to walk in on. (Didn't I say this would be one of the risks when Son 1 first said he was going to give Wife a place to live?)

On the other hand, I have to confess that I feel a little put out that I learned it like this. I can understand Son 1 telling nobody. But once the operation's security was compromised (so to speak), I could wish that he had wound up the job like a gentleman by notifying those who didn't know yet—namely, me. I assume that Son 2 already knows, because I think the boys talk more to each other than they do to either parent—well, except insofar as Son 1 has to coordinate basic household stuff with Wife because she lives there. But for personal things, I assume he talks to his brother first. Maybe I'm wrong.

If she's going to be a long-term item, I'd like to meet her. I wonder if I can possibly visit sometime while she's there ... maybe during the holidays? After all the obstacles I put up to Wife joining my family for the holidays, Son 1 would be well within his rights to say No. It would be no more than karma.

But maybe I can ask. 

       

Magical tales 3, bindings and blowback

I've told you some stories before about Wife's magical workings, for example here and here. Both of those posts also included commentary by John Michael Greer, after I had described some facet of the working to him. Well, I've got another. This is one I had forgotten all about until the first time (a couple years ago, I think) that I read Greer talk about bindings.

A magical binding is a spell you cast on someone else that prevents him from doing some particular thing. Greer has talked about these more than once in his blogs, as a way to illustrate a point about magical ethics that he calls "the raspberry jam principle." The principle runs like this: You can't spread raspberry jam without getting it all over your fingers or the table. In the same way, when you direct magic at somebody else, the very same energies are going to affect you too. The idea, therefore, is that you should never aim a spell at someone else that you aren't willing to undergo yourself, because sure as anything the blowback will catch you.

This also means that if you want to use magic to control someone else's behavior, you have to be very careful how you craft the spell. Greer has told the story more than once that early in his career as a mage, he was good friends with a woman who was threatened by a rapist. (I don't remember if this was her husband, or a domestic partner, or a stranger.) Greer protected her by putting a binding on this fellow that prevented him from raping. And Greer explained to his readers that he was careful to prevent the offender from raping, and not from all sexual contact. His point was that he knew the very same binding would affect him too. But he accepted that consequence, because he didn't want to rape anyone anyway! So it was no problem for him that the spell which blocked the other guy blocked him too.

Anyway, in today's Magic Monday post, someone asked about bindings again. Greer told his story. And I remembered something that had happened to Wife almost 25 years ago.

Back when the Twin Towers fell, Wife was still unambiguously Wiccan. (Her entanglement with Christianity came later.) Like many people she was angry about the attack, and felt that she wanted to Do Her Part in some way. And she hit on the idea of putting a binding on Osama bin Laden, so that he would be immobilized. So that he couldn't do anything. 

I don't know the details of the ritual. (I was generally supportive of her worship, but I wanted to stay away from this working.) I do remember that she made a doll to represent Osama, and then bound it with rope or twine—so that, symbolically, it was bound hand and foot and couldn't do anything—and tossed it in the back of the closet to sit in the dark. Doubtless there was more to it as well.

To this day, I have no idea whether her working had even the slightest effect on Osama bin Laden himself. I kind of assume not, partly because Wife was no mage, and partly because there were so many other people in the world wishing him (respectively) good or ill that I figure her spell likely got lost in the shuffle.

But interestingly enough, she got very sick after that--so sick that for the next two years or so she could scarcely crawl out of bed even just to go to the bathroom. She couldn't work. She couldn't look after the children. (We had to hire a nanny, and I didn't make all that much money. Interesting times.) In fact, she couldn't ... umm ... do anything! Wait, really?

At the time I never connected her illness with her working against Osama. But now after reading Greer for some years, I no longer treat the synchronicity as a coincidence.

I posted this story on Greer's blog. His reply was brief, but to the point:

Typical blowback. Never, ever cast a spell on anyone else you wouldn't want to experience yourself...because you will experience it, whether you want to or not.

And that, I guess, is that.     

      

Vajrayogini

It's not really related to anything else we've discussed, but two or three years ago I stumbled across the most remarkable Buddhist deity. Her name is Vajrayogini, and that's a picture of her up above.

What's so special about her, besides the utterly mind-blowing picture? I think she might be a key figure to help communicate what I used to see in "high-maintenance" women.

"Living consistently with your values" part 2

This post follows on from an earlier post a little more than four years ago.

Last week—I think it was last week—I was talking to Debbie over Zoom. She had just come in from roasting marshmallows with her family: daughter Mattie and her husband, plus their two boys (Debbie's grandsons). Roasting marshmallows? I said. That sounds like fun.

Oh it was, she added. And then she told me the story behind it.

The older boy is now in ... I'm not sure, but I think it's first grade. And at the beginning of the week, his teacher handed out a flyer about the Cub Scouts. Anyone who wanted to join could attend a meeting at a certain date and time, and they would roast marshmallows. 

Mattie and her husband told him No, they weren't going to sign him up for Scouts.The way Debbie described it, they gave two reasons:

1. The Boy Scouts require you to believe in God.
2. The Boy Scouts are homophobic.

Besides, said Mattie's husband, the main thing you do in Scouts is learn to go camping, and we already do a lot of camping.

But they were going to roast marshmallows!

So Mattie and her husband offered that the family could roast marshmallows on their own. And they did.

Psychological safety

Yesterday I too a couple of online classes related to job skills. In a sense it was silly of me to waste the time, because I'm retired—why should I need to improve my job skills now? But they were offered for free and I hated to waste them. Anyway, one of the classes was about how to develop your employees, and it made what should have been a commonplace observation: your employees need to feel psychologically safe before you can talk about developing their skills or their careers. Otherwise they won't take the risk.

Psychologically safe??

And right away I thought about this post here, plus any number of other times at work that the same topic came up (but I didn't write about it).

Looking back with the perspective of ... gosh, it looks like seven years by now! ... I think I was too harsh in my assessment of what was going on. You can go read the post itself for the Grand Narrative that I spun at the time, but I think the simpler explanation is that I didn't feel psychologically safe. And this was for a couple of reasons.

One is that I really felt our Human Resources department (by that time) was dangerous, or even predatory. Years before, when we had our own local HR staff, I had a good relationship with them. But by the time all this went down, HR was located elsewhere and I felt a distinct sense of menace from most of them.

Another is that I was working in a discipline that I had learned entirely on-the-job, and there were huge parts of it I didn't know. I had established a good position for myself over the years, but I knew that there were large provinces of my own field that I knew nothing about, and I didn't even know what the possibilities were in the profession. So I had no idea where to start a conversation.

Finally, I could never really bring myself to care about making any serious, long-term contributions to the business. I talk about this phenomenon here.

All in all, I think the lack of psychological safety I felt at work was largely just an extension of my status as the Consummate Outsider. (And see also the story about Aristotle that I tell in this post I already referenced.)

Is that a good thing? No, I guess not. But it's not as discreditable as the Grand Narrative I came up with seven years ago.    

Failed again, 2

This afternoon I logged into my bank account, and on a whim I looked up what you have to do to link a savings account as the backup to prevent overdrafts on a checking account. I discovered that the service is free. Next I wondered: Since I'm still listed on Son 1's accounts—that's why I get copied on his overdraft notifications—I wonder if I have the authority to link his savings account to his checking account?

Only one way to find out. So I tried it. Less than five minutes later, it was all done.

This should prevent future overdraft notifications, I think. Unless things get really bad, I mean.

I emailed Son 1 to tell him I had done it, and to explain that he could undo it if he chose. (I think.) I have heard nothing back from him, but I didn't really expect to. I hope this solves the problem.

    

The cat-whisperer

Last week, I was back in farm country visiting Schmidt again. I spent all day on Saturday the 9 driving there, and all day on Monday the 18 driving home. Marie visited too during the exact same stretch, except that she went back home the next day. We visited some, listened to music, watched some old movies, and generally hung out. Some notes follow.  

What was the occasion?

Schmidt had hernia surgery scheduled for Monday the 11. His doctors told him not to lift anything heavy for six weeks after. Schmidt had already explained to us that he had no intention of following this instruction literally, because he knew ways to use leverage to make the work easier on his healing incision. And he made a big point of saying that he could manage by himself if he had to. But he needed someone to drive him home from the hospital, because he would still have a lot of opiates in his system then. And yes, he supposed he could use some help with a few tasks around the farm in the early days.

So Marie and I came to visit. We drove him home, and we fixed dinners for a week. When we all went out shopping, I carried the big carton of cat litter that he bought (to supplement one he already owned). He pushed the cart so that he could lean on it. So I guess we helped in little ways. We also kept him company.

The cat-whisperer

Schmidt discussed his approach to training cats. (See also this post and this one.) He actually used the phrase "cat whisperer" for himself, as an allusion or hommage to the work of Buck Brannaman (see also this documentary), who has been nicknamed "the horse whisperer." Schmidt's basic point is the same as Buck's: it is your job to understand the animal you want to train. You can't expect the cat (or horse) to understand you, or to think like a human being. You have to think like a cat (or horse), and use that insight to encourage the behaviors you want. Schmidt went on to say that the conventional myth about cats being arrogant and uncooperative is just that—a myth and no more. He said that using his methods, he has had geat success—within reasonable limits, of course—getting his cats to do what he wants.

Schmidt and Marie talked about cats a lot. I didn't have much to contribute to those conversations.

Could Wife have Asperger's?, 3

OK, the last time I asked this was five years ago. I think the answer is definitely "Yes" based on lots of experiences that are all more or less summed up in this post. Wife herself thinks the answer is "No" (or that's what she said when I asked her), as described in this post and then this one right after.

But then this evening I was reading John Michael Greer's Ecosophia blog, specifically the comments to this post, and he makes the following remarks in comment #58:

My late wife was the same way — she was on the autism spectrum, and from late childhood on preferred to hang with boys (and then men) rather than girls (and then women) because she disliked the informal-power realm and never could do it well. That’s one of the reasons why she became the first female presiding officer of an Odd Fellows lodge in Washington state; when the Odd Fellows decided to let women join, the brothers of my lodge (who all knew her via social and charitable activities) asked her to join and then voted her into the big chair because they all knew her, liked her, and knew she’d follow the rules of formal power rather than trying to twist them into comformity with the ways of informal power.   

I read this, and right away I thought of Wife's career as a high school teacher.

She spent four years teaching at all-boys Catholic high schools. (That's one year before graduate school, and three years after.) Then she finally had a chance to teach at an all-girls Catholic high school. She jumped at the chance: partly for practical reasons (it was a lot closer to home, and her daily commute had become very difficult), but mostly for idealistic reasons. Wife called herself a feminist. She had gone to an all-women's college, and valued all-female spaces. She looked forward eagerly to training young women so that they could achieve the best they had in them.

Be careful what you wish for.

Wife was very successful in teaching boys, but she failed utterly at teaching girls. She held that job for only one year. If she had not been accepted at another graduate school after that (which rendered moot any question of her further employment) she would surely have been fired, and might have had to go back to secretarial work.

Of course I wasn't on campus. I had my own job. But the way she described it, the girls were all two-faced and treacherous.She often summarized the difference like this:

Back when I was teaching boys, I'd do something one of the boys didn't like and right away he'd shout out in the middle of class, "Oh, Mrs. Tanatu, that isn't even fair!" Then I'd tell him, "Suck it up, Johnson, this isn't a democracy." And we'd be done—the whole problem would be over. But with the girls, any time I do something they don't like they smile and smile just as sweet as pie. I never even know there's a problem. But then they go tell all their other teachers that I'm picking on them, and the other teachers come and ask me quietly, "Why are you being so mean to Sonya? Or Tanya? Or Suzie? Or Betty?" And these little conversations in the hallway are the first I've heard of it! I literally never knew there was a problem before this. But now the whole faculty thinks I have some kind of crazed vendetta against this or that girl, just because she never turns in her homework and wants me to coddle her anyway. God, but I miss teaching boys!

Is it just me, or does that sound pretty much exactly like what Greer says about his late wife? That she—like my Wife—understood formal power and could work with it effectively, but that she—also like my Wife—was totally at sea when it came to informal power, those quiet conversations in the hallway, and the focus on whether you like someone rather than on whether she's following the rules.

Sara Greer was like this because she was on the autism spectrum. Isn't it the most natural thing to assume that Wife was also somewhere on that spectrum, if she got identical results?