Pressure #5 - Tell us about a time when you didn't bend to peer pressure, and you swam against the stream.

More peer pressure, BlogHer? Alright. More peer pressure!

Have you read my biography post from three years ago? That might be a good place to start. To sum it up, though, and you can guess this from my title here if you're new, I am an Orthodox Christian single mother. I was always a single mom, and I am a convert to Orthodoxy. So there's a lot of pressure there.

When I found out I was pregnant, there were three camps of "peer pressure:"  Abortion, Adoption, and Motherhood. Surprisingly, the Motherhood camp was the smallest and quietest. I find this surprising because I was not a particularly young woman (25 years) nor at the time was I uneducated and broke. I was in college and working two jobs. But those things quickly disappeared and the abortion and adoption advocates became even louder.

Abortion was NEVER a consideration. Ever. But I DID consider adoption, if briefly. SO many people were pressuring me to "give my baby a chance" and "give him a better life." One person, when I said that I planned to raise my child, even told me that I had "no right to do that to an innocent child." Certainly, there was a lot of pressure. The adoption agencies I spoke to OBVIOUSLY wouldn't hear of any other choices.

But I chose to raise my son. It wasn't an easy choice, but I don't regret if for a moment.
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Pressure #4 - Tell us about a time you bent to peer pressure.

Oh, the dreaded peer pressure.

Readers, I confess, I used to be a REALLY HEAVY SMOKER. I started in high school, because my boyfriend and all of his friends smoked, and because at that time, I was really messed up and struggling with a lot of things. So, I started smoking. I didn't like it, but I fit in. Actually, in the words of Bill Clinton, for months and months, I didn't inhale! But the next boyfriend was a smoker, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that. So I kept smoking.

Eventually, I inhaled, and eventually, I got addicted. Later stilll, I quit, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Then, for some reason, I started AGAIN. Then I quit again. It's a battle, you know? I think with any addiction, it's always a struggle.

Am I now a nonsmoker? Well, mostly, yes. Once in a while I slip up. Once in a while I give in. But it's not an all-the-time thing.

And there's my deep, dark secret.
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Pressure #3 - Do you have a tendency to procrastinate, or do you like checking things off your to-do list?

HOW CUTE IS THAT PANDA?!

I am supposed to be writing something, aren't I? Right, yeah. I was going to answer a question about whether or not I procrastinate. I was going to answer the questions seriously, but I can't stop laughing? Do I have a tendency to procrastinate? Do primates have opposable thumbs? Is rain wet? Am I wasting times coming up with rhetorical questions instead of just admitting that I am a confirmed procrastinator? If a tree falls in the forest......... no. Wait. That's a different sort of question.

I like to joke that "one of these days, I will stop procrastinating."  Sometimes, I think I am THE WORST procrastinator, and then I look at some of the people in my life. What I've noticed? The most creative people, and the very highly intelligent people I know (the two are not mutually exclusive, by the way) are some of the WORST procrastinators ever. Perhaps the outlook is good for me after all?

Interestingly, if you do a google search, and you type in "procrastination linked to" google automatically suggests the following: "procrastination linked to perfectionism" (check), "procrastination linked to anxiety" (check), and "procrastination linked to intelligence" (so maybe there IS hope for me yet!) Google ALSO gives you a ton of great memes about procrastination, as you can see.

So, WHY do I procrastinate? According to Eric Jaffe, "True procrastination is a complicated failure of self-regulation: experts define it as the voluntary delay of some important task that we intend to do, despite knowing that we’ll suffer as a result. A poor concept of time may exacerbate the problem, but an inability to manage emotions seems to be its very foundation." And I thought I just really hated folding the laundry!

In my defense, I DO really hate folding the laundry.

Well, no, that's not actually true. I really LIKE folding the laundry, once I get going. I just tend to put it off. Every SINGLE time.

In the same article I quoted above, the author quotes Joseph Ferrari (great name, by the way), who is, apparently a "pioneer" in procrastination research (unlike me. I am a pioneer in procrastinating research.). Ferrari says that "to tell the chronic procrastinator to just do it would be like saying to a clinically depressed person, cheer up."

Now, one one hand, that makes sense to me. On the other hand, it really is almost that simple (for me, the chronic procrastinator, not for someone who is clinically depressed.). I haven't read the whole article. Ironically enough, I have bookmarked it to read later.

But it isn't quite that simple either. Because my brain says "just do it," and when I DO just do it, I realize how simple and fast "it" was, and how easy it will be to do it again in a day or two. But I never "just do it" in a day or two either. Whatever IT is.

Why do I do this? Well, it COULD be OCD related. The link between OCD and procrastination is PRETTY evident in a cursory google search, but I went into some of the results.

brainphysics.com says: "OCD manifests itself in a large variety of ways, and individuals usually suffer from a combination of symptoms. Most people with OCD also share common difficulty with daily activities, such as tardiness, perfectionism, procrastination, indecision, discouragement and family difficulties."

In an interview with NPR about his book Triggered, Fletcher Worman confesses, "It's funny — procrastination can be a symptom of OCD in the sense that because you know a project will require so much of your effort, and you're so frightened of screwing up, it's easy to just keep putting it off and putting it off and putting it off."

There's definitely a link. The link is there with ADHD too. In this article at Psych Central, Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist and clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is quoted saying, "I don’t know anyone with ADHD where procrastination is not an issue."  He also says, very cleverly I think, "For people with ADHD, there are two time zones: Now and Not Now. If it is not happening now, the ADD-er will tend to procrastinate until it gets closer to the ‘Now’ zone."

So, is it an OCD thing? An ADD/ADHD thing? A time management thing? Laziness? I don't know.

All of this was not the official answer to the BlogHer question, though. The question was, specifically, " Do you have a tendency to procrastinate, or do you like checking things off your to-do list?" The answer? MY answer? BOTH! As much as I really do have a very chronic procrastination issue, I LOVE getting that to-do list checked off.

And now, I have a million things to do. So I am going to go read a book. Cheers!

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Pressure #2 What are you currently feeling pressure to do that you don't particularly enjoy?

Can I confess something? I am thirty-three years old, and I have absolutely no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

No, that's not true.

I want to be a LOT of things when I grow up. The problem is that I do NOT want to be an office manager (anymore) or a teacher (of elementary or secondary students), and sometimes it feels like those are the only things I am physically able to do that I can study for.

I've been told over and over again to "learn a trade," and I agree in THEORY. But I have two major problems here. First, I am a nerdy nerd, an academic, a great big giant dork. I love to study. I do research for fun, and I can do it without even really thinking about it. I love the challenge, and I get bored without it. When I am bored or unhappy with something, I don't really tend to stick it out. It's not for lack of trying. It's not that I don't think I SHOULD stick it out. It's that, well, I can recognize a pattern, and I know what I've always done.

And then there are the physical limitations. Most of the "trades" that interest me require long hours standing, bending, lifting, walking, and generally being in fluorescent lighting all day. That's not going to work. I've dropped out of beauty school, music school, and nursing school over health issues.

But I want to run a business. I've got this dream of this great little tea room.......... And a whole lot of naysayers. Myself included.

But I am going back to school for business, and we'll see where we go from there.

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NaBloPoMo Pressure #1 - Do You Work Well Under Pressure?

In answer to this question, I wrote a stunningly brilliant post. It was cool and witty, and was a lot of fun to write. I hope it would have been a lot of fun to read, too, but we'll never find out. Alas, in the middle of trying to edit the NaBloPoMo badge at the bottom of the post, it was somehow utterly lost, converted entirely to the content of another scheduled post, never to be seen again. I am rather frustrated by this, because, really, it was cool. THERE WERE POP CULTURE REFERENCES, PEOPLE! POP CULTURE!

But, since I can't get it back, I guess now we test how well I work under pressure, right? Or at least how well I work while extremely frustrated and on the verge of cussing out the ENTIRE internet.

In a half-baked attempt to recreate what I had arduously written, having worked out what I wanted to say whilst soaking my sore muscles in a glorious mineral salt and tea-tree bath (good for the muscles, stress, and that pesky lupus rash that continues to plague me. Maybe I need another?), I will note that I made reference to different types of pressure that come to mind.

When I think of "pressure," the first thing that comes to mind, other than the awesome synthesizer action of Billy Joel and the Queen/Bowie combo, is the pressure canner I've been dreaming of owning for over a year now. Then there's the pressure of hands on muscles in a nice massage. You know the pressure? First it almost hurts, then EVERYTHING FEELS WONDERFUL. And last but not least, is the big warning! Contents under pressure! This is your captain speaking. We may experience some slight turbulence and explode.

So, my well-formed and thought-out answer to the question "do you work well under pressure?" is a firm, solid, and resounding "uhhhhhhhhh............ that depends.............."

In the past, I would have said that I THRIVED under pressure, that I worked best under pressure. In the past, that was probably true. But I am older now, and mostly, I want to be able to do things on MY terms. I am not sure that's really my desire, but you follow, right? My life has more demands, more stress, more issues, more concerns, and a lot more pressure now than it did when I "thrived under pressure." Right now, pressure is a state of being. Sometimes I think that I had better come out of all of this a diamond instead of just a lump of coal.

Understand that what I mean here is that, when I was younger, I had only myself to worry about, and I barely did THAT. I LOVED deadlines and heavy workloads. I lived for a good challenge. Now? I am older, I am sicker, and I have a lot of responsibilities that are more "pressure" than you can imagine til it's too late. I wouldn't trade it though, except for maybe the "sicker" part. That I would trade. But I can't, and so....

But really, it does depend on the type of pressure and how I am feeling that day.

Like a pressure canner, with the right amount of the right kind of pressure, I am sure I can be preserved to last for a long time (and be pretty darned tasty, too, if my amish jarred beef recipe is to be believed). But with the wrong kind of pressure, it's not pretty. I just sort of break. I can't function. I can't cope. I just want to hide.

Deadlines scare me a little bit now. Not a lot, and not always, but they do give me more anxiety than they used to for sure. And the wrong KIND of pressure to do something, even something I actually want to do, will just about guarantee that it will NOT get done. I don't know why that is, either, but I may have to delve into that part of myself later.

But the other pressure? The hands-of-massage pressure? I've got some friends that help me out with that. I've got a friend who "pressures" me lightheartedly to, for example, clean my carpets when I really want to do that, but am tempted to just watch old episodes of Supernanny instead. She's not REALLY pressuring me. She certainly won't judge me or give me a "bad grade" if I DON'T steam clean the carpets. But I want to do it, and I want to show HER that I can do it, because it's fun to sort of work together on the project, even though we're four hours away from each other. That pressure is a pressure under which I STILL thrive. And yes, it hurts at first, and then it feels wonderful. The task is complete (in record time!), and I've bonded with a friend. I have a sense of accomplishment AND of camaraderie.

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Alright, Flylady, I shined my sink. NOW what??

It's that time of year. The season has officially changed. The summer clothes need to packed away for next year, and the lovely sweaters get laundered and brought back out. That always throws me into a cleaning spree. Is fall cleaning a thing? If not, it bloody well should be! It CERTAINLY is a thing here. And this year, happy birthday to me, I am getting my dad's sleeper sofa, which I love. I ALSO inherited two FABULOUS dog crates.

Have I mentioned that my house is tiny? That I have OCD? Yeah......... And now, EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF FURNITURE I OWN HAS TO BE MOVED (except Roo's bed, which is a Goliath beast of a thing and will not move unless and until we are moving out of this house. It took three people four days to get it where it is now!) Also, the laundry/storage room was a big heap of cluttered chaos. I haven't been able to find anything in there since a few weeks after the last time I pulled EVERYTHING out and reorganized it. So I pulled everything out again. But good news! We think we found Hoffa behind the paint cans left behind by some previous inhabitant....

In the last week, I have thrown away two over-full big trash bins (you know, the small dumpster thing the sanitation folks send out?) of junk, my paper recycle bin has been filled to overflowing twice (it's more than overflowing now, and I DON'T think they pick up recycling this week. Oops!!). I've donated TWELVE bags of clothes and shoes, SIX boxes of food-that-isn't-gluten-free, and I am currently looking for the right family to give FIVE bins of toys and games for preschoolers, a play vanity, and a tricycle (Merry Christmas!). I even finally talked myself into throwing away the patio bench that I loved so much that has been broken since May and cannot be fixed.

I've rearranged both bedrooms, the living room, the storage room, and the carport. On Thursday, the lawn will get mowed and edged, and the garden spots will be adorned, and, in theory, my coveted sleeper sofa will be arriving in my living room.

And I am asking myself, again, how do I keep my house and my brain in shape once I have completed my own personal Extreme Home Makeover: Crap You Already Own Edition. I am also asking myself exactly WHERE I am going to store my extra towels now that I've moved the dresser they were stored in into my bedroom and my tall-boy into the storage room to hold art, craft, and school supplies so I can actually FIND them. But that's not what this post is about. Much.

I've tried "organizing," "housekeeping" and other such systems in the past, including letting my OCD and my ADD wage war and wreak havoc in my head - and my kitchen. And ALWAYS, ALWAYS, I overthink things WAY too much, and I let my OCD get the better of me (as it will do, whether you "allow" it to or not!), and I give up, and three months later, I spend ten days trying to sort through boxes of what-the-heck-is-this?! and I-forgot-I-owned-this! Seriously. I went through a box of stuff tongight. I didn't know the box existed, much less the really cool vases and the WEATHER RADIO it contained. I have no idea how long I've had it. Probably all summer. And I've been LOOKING for a weather radio. To PURCHASE. So glad I never got around to that!!

So, I am working my way through the laundry and the storage room at this point, and then, a thorough cleaning of the floors, and I am finished. I am determined that the contents of my storage room shall henceforth remain static. If something goes in, something comes out, and it will only contain (other than the laundry supplies. DUH!) art supplies, craft supplies, school supplies, a spare AC, ceramic space heaters, camping supplies, and seasonal decorations. And I may need to scale those back.

I need to maintain, and keep organizing regularly. But how?

So, I thought I'd give Flylady another go, but this time, I am determined not to try to get ahead of myself. She says to make shining your sink a habit, right? But the "baby steps" are theoretically a month's worth of things. Not me. Not this time. So, here's my plan.

Flylady has "zone missions," right? Each week, they focus on a different area of the house, and each day, there's a short "mission" for that area. I should do that.

I like the ideas at Organizing Made Fun's 31-day challenge. It was for October. Nobody says I can't do it now. It's like a daily mission. I should do that, too. That's two short tasks a day. Morning and afternoon, right?

And I am not doing Flylady's steps in 31 days. I don't shine my sink. It's not even close to a habit. I am just going to work on THAT step and the mission-things until I'm doing it without flipping out on myself or complaining, or stressing. THAT's a better plan for me, I think. I should TOTALLY do that.

I am hoping that maybe this time I can maintain without the crazy anxiety attacks I get. Because, honestly, as mildly as I've got it, OCD is a BEAST. I was talking to a friend tonight while I was working on the patio trying to get stuff done, and I said the following, almost ver batim:

"This is stupid. I am seriously about to have an anxiety attack because I don't have the right bin for my lumber, and I don't know where the lumber goes. And I want it in an opaque bin with no lid. If I am going to use a CLEAR bin, I want my garden stuff in that. Okay, transferring garden stuff to clear bin. That's a bit better. I still don't know where the heck to put it without making it look JUNKY. You know what I need? I need some pallets and some canvas and a sheet of plywood so I can build a little mini-shed-thing to store my garden stuff in, because then it wouldn't look junky. And another one (or two) for my lumber, because that makes SENSE, darn it. And I feel COMPLETELY insane right now, because I can acknowledge that I am about to have an anxiety attack. I can tell you exactly WHAT is triggering my anxiety attack. But I can't do a THING to prevent it, because if I go inside and get away from the trigger, the anxiety is only going to get WORSE. I feel stupid. A stupid, insane, neurotic mess. OMG. Where do these bins go?"

I've got a bunch of laundry to put away. I haven't vacuumed the floor yet. So I can't put the laundry away. I know that's ridiculous. But it's true. And that's neurosis. And it's OCD. And it's my daily self. So. I am going to go put away dishes, wash a couple, because my sink isn't shining right now, and go back to work on the carport and the laundry.

And when I am finished, I have this plan to thoroughly clean my vacuum cleaner. That gives me a bit of anxiety too, because it has to dry for 24-48 hours, and I vacuum about every six hours. Not the whole house, mind, but SOMETHING.

But after THAT, I am going to just see how I do doing the flylady system, basic daily cleaning, and some organizing challenges. Because my life is crisis cleaning, and I can't live like this. Especially not if I am going back to school full-time (starting up again tomorrow! YAY!) and trying to get a "real job"

But where the heck am I going to keep my rag towels?!

I keep trying to just breathe and remember:
Íosa Críost é buadhach (Isous Christos NIKA) (Jesus Christ is Victorious)

Stay tuned for the reason we started learning this phrase! Bullying and Boy Scouts.

With love as always

Halloween, food allergies, a rant, and a reply

I posted this as a reply on a post over at BlogHer, but I thought it warranted it's own space here.

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We also prefer give out stickers, halloween-themed pencils, and silly-band type treats. I take my boy trick or treating, but then I have to go through everything and make sure it's safe. He's been a trooper about it, but it does kind of bum me out to have to toss out 75% of his "candy haul." On the upside, it's fewer days of being relentlessly bugged every twenty seconds for a piece of candy even though the answer was "no, and don't ask again til after lunch" about a minute ago, and it's only 8:00 in the morning!

What has really driven me bats this year is the SCHOOL! It's our first time in public school, and it's ridiculous. When I went in to register him, I took his medical documentation to prove his allergy (gluten), and was told that we could fill out x-form and y-page and jump through a hoop or two and that the school would accommodate his needs. Well, they don't. They do NOT make accommodations for gluten allergies here. They also do NOT have any sort of list of ingredients on school foods that they will make available to me. So, my son qualifies for free lunch, but it costs me four or five times as much as it would cost me to feed him at home. And he's constantly being given "treats" for different things at school. Not ONCE has one of them been a safe food. Not ONE SINGLE TIME.

His birthday is this Friday. I was asked if I was sending cupcakes. I am not. I wish I could. But the school says they must be CUPCAKES (not cookies. That's not okay for some reason. What the heck??), store-bought, in the original packaging with the ingredients listed and peanut-free. That's doable in theory. Except there is not a single local store that carries any such thing WITHOUT GLUTEN. I'd have to drive an hour to spend something in the neighborhood of $50 to make that happen locally! So, not only does he not get to bring cupcakes in on HIS birthday, but if somebody ELSE brings in birthday cupcakes, he can't eat them, AND the teacher can't tell me in advance if there's going to be a birthday so that I can send my own child something safe.

I don't understand. If we can accommodate any allergies, shouldn't we accommodate all of them and/or just ban food from classroom parties?

NABLOPOMO - National Blog Post Month?

Right. So I signed up for this, and I committed to posting once a day in November. It's only the 3rd, and I've already failed!

OOPS!

But I am looking at the Blog Prompts, and they're not including weekends, so maybe it's not a total wash?

How's your weekend been?

Me? Thanks for asking. I've been absolutely plagued by the CUTEST PUPPY EVER. He showed up at my house Friday night, and by Sunday afternoon, he had decided to worm his way into my heart, defer and be all submissive with my dogs, and beg my son for belly rubs. So, of course, now it's just a few hours til it's time to decide once and for all whether he stays here or goes to the shelter in the hopes that his people come and claim him. And I REALLY can't decide. My heart is telling me to keep the little guy. My head is telling me not to. The boy is begging me to do it.

Seriously, I've worked with this pup TWICE, and he remembers "sit," "down," "wait," "give hug," "off," "leave it," "go to bed," and "come to me." That makes him about two commands shy of Mandy and about a billion more than Joey, who took six months to realize that he's ACTUALLY supposed to sit on command. And he's CUTE. And so sweet. And affectionate. Ugh. It's really not helping my decision-making process that he's so darned adorable. And obedient. At least, he is so far. He's only been here two days, and it can take a couple of weeks for their temperament to really show up. But, he's just tugging at my heart strings so hard!! It's a nightmare, I tell you!! A NIGHTMARE!! A cute, fluffy, whimpering, adorable, happy little nightmare.

See? Do you see??  Do you see my dilemma here???? How can you say no to these faces????????

I've also been working pretty much nonstop around the house this weekend, but more on that later, when I can come back with some pictures and the story! 

I hope you all enjoyed your extra hour of sleep last night. I know I did!  I'll be back some time on Monday with a less-insane update.

Love always,