Abby Grace is addicted to little yellow tennis balls.

I say “addiction” because little yellow tennis balls are like doggie-crack to Abby Grace.

She will do anything for a little yellow tennis ball.

To get AG to behave, all it takes is John or I holding up a tennis ball and she will stop dead in her tracks. To get her to come to us, take the little yellow tennis ball and make it squeak. No matter where she is in the house, her clickedy-clackedy paws can be heard ripping to find us. To get her to to perform almost any pug-tastic puglet trick, just pick up the little yellow tennis ball in front of her and she becomes the trickster immediately. Little yellow tennis balls can even pull her away from her pug-favorite carrott treats!

Like I said “addicted.”

She has recently mastered the art of the two-tennis-ball carry (seen below).

This munch-tastic miracle occurs when AG is moving from location to location and does not want to leave said tennis-balls behind. She has even been known to shove half of a third little yellow tennis ball into her mouth in order to increase travel efficiency even more!

Abby Grace likes her tennis balls.

Our mornings typically start out with a snort-snort-grunt-grunt. stop. grunt-grunt-click-click-snort. stop.

That is AG traveling room to room with the tennis balls in her mouth attempting to find her people to throw them for her so she can begin little-yellow-tennis-ball-track-and-find, a game that can keep her occupied for hours.

Keep away is another favorite, although if your finger finds its way too close to a little yellow-tennis ball while in AG’s possession, expect to lose that finger. She guards these bouncey-brights with her life.

At times, AG has been known to “prance” with her little yellow tennis balls, just to let everyone around her know that they are hers, she is proud of them, and should anyone want to join in the fun, she is in charge and you are simply entertainment for the afternoon.

When Abby Grace is in little-yellow-tennis-ball-land, the world beyond the yellow-flyers ceases to exist.

I think I had been in denial about exactly how addicted AG was to her tennis balls.

The other day, however, I could not deny it any longer. AG had woken us up promptly at 6 am, little-yellow-tennis-balls in tow. She proceeded to carry them around all morning.

I thought she had kicked the habit, but then I got out of the shower only to realize she had been staring at the door of the shower – tennis-balls-in-mouth – waiting for me to get out so play could re-commence.

It was that moment that revealed to me AG has a problem with little-yellow-tennis-balls and I had enabled it.

<sigh>

I have a lot of little yellow tennis balls in my life, do you?

These little yellow tennis balls are things that consume my time and attention. They are things that I obsess over, worry about, dedicate a great deal of my efforts to maintaining. Things that if anyone comes too close and attempts to grab them away, I’ll snap and may even bite.

Though I have become more intentional and persistent with establishing and maintaining balance in my life, I have learned how easy it is to place things in front of God. Things that have neither the worth or the value to be in that spot reserved for God alone.

These things act like little yellow tennis balls, pulling all of my focus and energy towards them – instead of God.

Some of Abby Grace’s little yellow tennis balls are so worn it’s time to chuck them in the garbage.

She has sucked the life out of them (literally) and now its time to retire them to the wasteland. The problem is, if she sees me throwing any of these little yellow tennis balls away, I’m concerned that she may follow them into the garbage too.

I wonder if I have ever followed a little yellow tennis ball into the garbage too…looking to eek that one last breath of life out of something that has always been – and will forever be – lifeless…

What are the little yellow tennis balls in your life?

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life…Deuteronomy 30:19-20 (NIV)

the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption, but the one who one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life… Galatians 6:8 (NASB)

Better Place Car (Renault) - Source: socialearth.org

While covering the 2010 EDTA Conference in Washington on electric vehicles for Clean Horizon Consulting, I learned that the first cars were actually electric vehicles. It is only under Thomas Edison’s advice that Ford chose to develop a model around a combustion engine. Edison knew that in terms of energy storage, it is hard to be more efficient than fossil fuels. Then, the technology struck back in the aftermath of the 1973 and 1979 oil crises. This eventually led to some product developments - for those who remember the infamous GM EV1. At that time, electric vehicles with its multiple drawbacks (range constraints, time to charge, lack of infrastructure, etc.) could not threaten the more flexible and established technology that was the combustion engine. Can the story be any different this time?

During the conference, even the most adamant electric vehicle (EV) evangelist knew that mass adoption of EVs will come down to one thing only: customer experience. Early adoption is never an issue especially for a technology that can appeal to both geeks and environmentalists. The real trick though is to secure mass adoption. This is actually where the technology failed in the past. You have to provide the average consumer with at least an on-par experience compared to what she is used to getting with her current car. This is all the more challenging that a seamless customer experience requires the emergence of an ecosystem linking a nebula of actors. If you wake-up at 7AM to get to this important meeting and your car is not  charged up, who should you call? The car manufacturer? the utility? the charging station manufacturer? All of them? For those of you who tried to get a Google Nexus while conserving your current T-Mobile account, you know that seamless interactions between companies’ customer services rarely self-emerge.

While the industry is still fighting to define standards, a self-emerging ecosystem seems like an utopia. As a consequence, EV will struggle through the next decade, slowly grabbing market share but growing slower than some could have expected. However, we should be aware of two important wild cards: Better Place and Smith.

For Better Place, an on-par, if not enhanced, customer experience is at the core of its value proposition. Instead of waiting for an ecosystem to emerge, they have chosen to develop it where it geographically and demographically made sense. The key to their success is to secure enough funding to develop the infrastructure required to satisfy their customers – namely the charging and swapping battery stations. That’s why they are currently focusing in a very dense mainly urban country like Israel; and banks clearly see some future in their endeavors since they just secured more than 350 million USD to build the infrastructure. Provided their business model prevails in Israel and Denmark (their next target), Better Place will still have to prove it can pull it off in a country like the US. But by that time, they may not be the only one company with such an approach!

Smith is a manufacturer of electric trucks that boast a range close to 150 miles. They focus on a “niche” market where their product will enhance the customer experience even with a sub-par infrastructure. Indeed, managers of truck fleets for city delivery (like Coke Cola or Staples) are already masters at managing highly complex environment. EV would not add another constraint to their job. On the contrary, they would relax one: the price volatility of oil. For firms with available capital upfront, it makes sense to invest a premium in EV to gain more predictability in their costs. With an EV, you know exactly what you transportation cost will be for the entire life of your truck! Then, I would not be surprised if most of the city delivery relied on EV trucks in the next 5 years. Interestingly, this may be the push that everybody waited to bring economies of scale to the battery production.

What if the electrification of city delivery became the enabler of a cheap electric car for mass market?

You would have to be living in an isolated cabin in Montana not to have heard of the term “enabler”. Basically an enabler is a person that allows another person, in a relationship, to continue with destructive behaviors by covering for them, and helping them out of bad situations caused by their poor judgment. While we typically think of the terms “co-dependency” and “enabler” as terms in dealing with chemical dependencies, it can apply equally to the “fat spouse” situation
Often the non-overweight spouse in this situation engages in “non-helping” assistance that allows the overweight wife or husband to continue to gain weight?

Of course, women are the most prone to engage in this sort of behavior, but men doing this sort of thing are not rare either. The codependency cycle works like this. Person one fears losing the love of the person two that has the bad habit. The fact that person two can not function without person one, makes person one feel needed and whole in a perverse sort of way.

In other words in many cases a husband or wife can in many ways be helping a spouse get bigger and bigger by not allowing that spouse to experience the results of their “fat” ways. Here are a few examples of this kind of behavior.

Do you ever perform tasks, that your spouse has trouble doing because of their weight?

Do you buy into the excuses that your spouse makes concerning diet, (for example discussions of metabolism, genetics, medication) when you know very well that they engage in a lot of unhealthy eating.

Do you cooperate with your spouse’s excuse making for not exercising, (e.g. bad knees, too little time, etc.)?

Do you ever buy unhealthy junk food for your spouse at their request?

Do you ever dine at restaurants that serve unhealthy food at your spouse’s request?

Perhaps you can see yourself in these questions. Maybe you can now understand how you could be “enabling” your spouse to be obese. Keep in mind that doing these sort of behaviors is silently approving of your wife or husbands overweight habits. This list could go on and on. I encourage you to add any other “fat spouse” enabling activities to the forum.

This article is from the original myfatspouse.com

In 1994, when I was married to Paul, I bought a new, side-by-side refrigerator.  The salesman said, “You’re going to love this refrigerator.”

About a week after the refrigerator was delivered, I was sitting at the kitchen table late one night indulging myself in a completely out of control binge.  I remember thinking, “I deserve some fun and excitement in my life.  My life has become so boring.”

Suddenly I hear this sexy masculine voice say to me, “Well, if its fun and excitement you’re looking for, baby, you’ve come to the right place.  Fun-and-Excitement is my middle name!”

I whirled around to see who was speaking to me, but there was no one in the kitchen.

And then I heard the same sexy masculine voice say.  “I find you extremely appealing.  How would you like to have some fun and excitement with me?”

“Where are you?” I asked still looking around.

“I’m over here.”

I looked in the direction that the voice was coming from.  My eyes landed on my new refrigerator.

A talking refrigerator?  No, that was impossible!  Oh, I’ve heard people say, “The refrigerator kept calling out my name telling me to eat the cheesecake until I could no longer resist.”  But it was a joke.  Everyone knows that a refrigerator can’t talk.

“You can talk?” I asked the refrigerator incredulously.

“I’m a talking refrigerator.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sam-the-Refrigerator, but you can call me Sammy.”

And that, dear reader, was how Sammy and I began our affair.  And what an affair it was!   Sammy was everything Paul was not.  He was fun, exciting, romantic and passionate — and he turned me on like no man had ever turned me on before.

“Hello, my sexy little buttercup,” Sammy would say when I would come into the kitchen at 3 A.M. to binge.  (He called me his sexy little buttercup – and I called him, well forget what I called him.  I don’t want to make you blush.)

“And may I say, Joan, that you’re looking more beautiful than ever tonight in your tattered flannel nightgown.  Very sexy.  Very sexy indeed.”

I’ve never met a man who was more into me than Sammy.  I kept testing and testing his limits, but he seemed to love me unconditionally.  I never showered for him.  I never shaved my legs or my underarms for him.  I never brushed my teeth for him.  I never even combed my hair for him.  But nothing I ever did seemed to gross Sammy out.  He loved me just the way I was.

Aside from talking, Sammy could sing too.  He used to love to sing to me Billy Joel’s song Just The Way You Are.  After he finished singing, Sammy would gaze deep into my eyes and say, “Has anyone ever told you how sexy and beautiful you are?  You have me so hot that my butter is melting inside.”

Dear reader, everything about Sammy I loved.  Especially his contents.  Once I told him, “I’ve never had a lover like you.”

“And you never will,” Sammy said.  “I want to fulfill all your food fantasies.  Tell me what you’re thinking, Joan?”

“I was thinking. . .”

“You were thinking,” Sammy said adoringly.  “Has anyone ever told you how cute you are when you’re thinking?  Come here and kiss me.”

“But your lips are so cold.”

“Perhaps some hot chocolate will warm them up.  I have plenty of milk in my heart.”

“No, it’s not hot chocolate that I’m craving.”

“Then what is it that you’re craving?”

“Well, what I’m really craving – no I can’t tell you my deepest darkest fantasies, you won’t respect me in the morning.  You’ll think I’m a food whore.”

“Whisper your dirty thoughts in my ear.”

So I whispered my dirty thoughts into Sammy’s ear.  “Tonight I want to eat four egg salad sandwiches piled high with mayonnaise, a whole bag of potato chips, and I want to finish it off with a bag of chocolate chip cookies and milk,” I said sensuously.  “Am I a naughty girl?”

Sammy laughed salaciously, “Oh, yes, you’re a very naughty, naughty girl.”

One day Sammy and I almost got caught in our red-hot love affair.  Paul walked in on us.  I practically gagged trying to stuff the rest of my chicken sandwich down my throat to get rid of the evidence.  But there were some telltale crumbs on my plate.

I prayed silently that Paul would not notice the crumbs and guess what I had been up to.

“Joanie, what are you doing up?” Paul asked.

“Oh,” I said trying to sound casual, “I couldn’t sleep so I came in here to have a glass of water.”

“I just woke up and I’m thirsty too.”

“Would you like me to make you a chicken sandwich?  There’s some left over chicken in the refrigerator.  I’d be happy to make it for you.”

Paul looked at me like I was crazy.  “Joanie, it’s the middle of the night.  Who eats in the middle of the night?  All I want is some water and I’m going back to bed.”

Paul poured himself a glass of water, drank it, and then began to walk out of the kitchen.  “You coming to bed, Joanie?”

“I’ll be there soon.”

As soon as Paul was out of the kitchen Sammy let out a sigh of relief.  “Phew!  That was a close call.  I was sweating bullets.  I thought I was going to defrost all the food inside.”

“I have a feeling Paul is beginning to suspect that I’m cheating on him.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, the other day he said I was fat.”

“What an ungentlemanly thing to say.  I’d like to punch him in the face.”

“But what if he suspects what’s going on?”

“I’m a refrigerator,” Sammy said.  “Paul will never suspect that you’re having an affair with me.”

“You’re right, he’s not that smart.”

“He’s an idiot for not wanting you.”

“You’re right.  He’s an idiot for not wanting me even if I am fat.”

“Just more of you to love,” Sammy said lovingly.  “Have I ever told you how much you turn me on my sexy little buttercup?  Come here and kiss me.”

“But your lips are so cold.”

“Sorry, but I need to be cold to satisfy you.  My temperature always has to between 35 and 38 degrees or the contents in my heart will spoil.  You don’t want your food to spoil.”

Paul was starting to stay at work later and later.  Soon he wasn’t coming home.

“We had this emergency case,” Paul would say.  Soon Paul was having a lot of emergency cases at work.  I turned to Sammy to tell my troubles to.

“Paul is so cold and emotionally distant from me.”  I broke down and began to cry.   “Do you know what it’s like to be married to a man who doesn’t desire you?”

“Please, don’t cry,” Sammy said, “you’re breaking my heart.”

“But if I can’t cry in front of you who can I tell my troubles to?  You are my best friend, my confidant and the only person who really understands me.”

“Joan, you need to eat.  You need to get your mind off this.”

“You’re right, Sammy.  I need to eat.  I need to numb my pain.  You know what the most pathetic thing is about this?  I get more love and understanding from you, a refrigerator, than I ever got from Paul.”

“Joan, you really need to get your mind off Paul and start thinking about food.”

“You’re right.”

Four grilled cheese sandwiches later, piled high with mayonnaise, a whole bag of potato chips, and a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream and I was no longer thinking about Paul.  I had exchanged my emotional pain for physical pain.  I felt like my stomach was about to burst.

Sammy was really concerned.  “Are you okay Joan?’

“Yep, I’m fine,” I burped.

It’s not like Sammy had never seen me in a food coma before.  Our whole relationship had been based on food and my binging.  Sammy was my enabler.  I had read enough psychology to know what an enabler was.

“I knew you ate too much, now you’re going to throw up,” Sammy said.

“Sammy, when have you ever seen me throw up?  I’m not bulimic.  I can hold my food down just as well as the next foodaholic.  I’m just feeling a little woozy from my binge.  I’ll be okay after I sleep it off.”

“Did I pleasure you tonight, Joan?”

“Oh, yes, Sammy, you pleasured me,” I burped.

“Was it as good for you as it was for me?”

“Best food binge I ever had, burp.”

“You say that every night, Joan.”

This story has kind of a sad ending.  When Paul and I divorced we had to sell the house.

I left Sammy behind for the new owner.  The small apartment my son and I moved into was much too small to accommodate a side-by-side refrigerator the size of Sammy.  I had to downsize my entire life.  The only thing that hadn’t been downsized was me.  When my marriage ended I weighed more than I had ever weighed in my life.  I weighed 275 pounds.

Sammy was heartbroken when he found out I couldn’t take him with me.  “Move into a bigger apartment,” Sammy begged me.

“I can’t afford it,” I said.

Sammy cried, “How can I ever live without you?”

Actually we both cried.  But I stuck to my guns.  I said, “Sammy, we’re not good for each other.”

Sammy said, “How can you say that after all we’ve been through together?”

“Our love affair, Sammy, has a tragic ending.”

“How can you say it ended tragically?  It was a beautiful affair.”

“It might have been beautiful for you, Sammy, but it was tragic for me.  “Look what loving you has done to me?  I’m fatter than ever.”

I looked at Sammy with tears in my eyes.  Maybe I was being too hard on him.  After all, if it wasn’t for Sammy and my binges that I had with him, I don’t know how I would have survived those last unhappy and sexless years of my marriage.

“Good bye, Sammy,” I whispered.  As I walked away I could hear Sammy’s voice singing Billy Joel’s song Just The Way You Are.

Senator Obama-tine, Darth Bama, and the Democrat Storm Troopers Vaporizing Fiscal Responsibility With the Debt Star

+

Some say, mostly liberals, that if they don’t raise the debt ceiling the government will shut down.

THEN LET IT SHUT DOWN! That might the one thing that actually saves this country. If the government is shut down and they can’t spend more money, that might be the best we could hope for.

The whole system is about to collapse. Are you ready?

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=75F9D458-18FE-70B2-A8F31147A5D25BFF

Dems to lift debt ceiling by $1.8 trillion, fear 2010 backlash

By: David Rogers
December 9, 2009 07:24 PM EST

In a bold but risky year-end strategy, Democrats are preparing to raise the federal debt ceiling by as much as $1.8 trillion before New Year’s rather than have to face the issue again prior to the 2010 elections. (Don’t EVER forget this, America. They are DESTROYING America with their TOTAL ABSENCE of fiscal responsibility. If you or I spend twice what we make each year, can we just go raise our credit limit? We go to the poor house. Eventually that will happen to America as well. We will become such a poor credit risk to foreign lenders that they will no longer buy our debt. Then what? The party ends, the handouts stop, the collapse happens, scores of people die, and we revert back to an existence of subsistence. If you can find a way to start a recall movement in your state for these irresponsible congressmen and senators, DO IT NOW. November 2010 may be too late.)

“We’ve incurred this debt. We have to pay our bills,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told POLITICO Wednesday. And the Maryland Democrat confirmed that the anticipated increase could be as high as $1.8 trillion — nearly twice what had been assumed in last spring’s budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year. (Then PAY YOUR BILLS, Mr. Hoyer. Raising the debt ceiling doesn’t pay the bills, it just makes the bill too big to pay. When a friend or family member provides drugs or money to an addict, or just turns a blind eye, that friend or family is called an enabler. You, Mr. Hoyer, and all of your liberal friends on the Hill are enablers to Mr. Obama who is addicted to power. You are enabling him by providing him money that we don’t have. You are enabling him because you want the same thing he wants. You want do destroy the capitalist economy that made America great, strip freedom, liberty, and choice from Americans, and turn America into a socialist nation with you and your pals in charge. We’ve seen too much of the results of your actions for you to just call it “mistakes.” You are intentionally destroying America. We will stop you.)

The leadership is betting that it’s better for the party to take its lumps now rather than risk further votes over the coming year. But the enormity of the number could create its own dynamic, much as another debt ceiling fight in 1985 gave rise to the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction act mandating across-the-board spending cuts nearly 25 years ago. (Their hoping you’ll forget what they did, and hoping that we won’t run out of money again before the November 2010 elections. This is devious, deceitful, and downright evil.)

(Read complete article by following this link or the one above.)

Screw you, Cookie. Tend to? You can’t commit, can you? Can’t just make me feel good about myself? You have to hedge. You have to hem. You have to haw. Yes, I said haw. I know you sound like you’re paying me a compliment but can’t you just love me?!

Major Hasan couldn’t have been more straightforward about who and what he was. An army psychiatrist, he put “SoA”—i.e., “Soldier of Allah”—on his business card. At the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, he was reprimanded for trying to persuade patients to convert to Islam and fellow pupils objected to his constant “anti-American propaganda,” but, as the Associated Press reported, “a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.”

This is your brain on political correctness.

As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in U.S. history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave the presentation to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors. Some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then-Captain Hasan was, in fact, “psychotic,” the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried “how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents.”

I have found myself working very hard at making sure my friends try all fiber related crafts. This past weekend, I converted a crocheter into a weaver. And today, I helped nudge a knitter into wheel owning spinner. And I am so pleased with myself.

Not amused: the scribbler.

Candid readers, it seems Ana Castillo, the learned subject of my Oct. 2 post, got wind of it and unwisely elected to counterpost, to the best of her limited abilities.  Below, therefore, I’ve cut and pasted the Oct. 9 blog entry from her website, verbatim, with one exception.  (I here elide the full name of the Berkeley grad student whose spelling/usage boner triggered my original post, a person whom Señorita Cosa gracelessly outs by name in her blog post — as my own post, you’ll recall, did not and still won’t.)

At the outset, let me note that Castillo includes, in her limp tissue of wet complaints, at least one bald-faced lie: that your faithful servant called the First Draqqueen a “gorilla” in a June 18, 2009 post.  Bullshit.  On the contrary, I used it to chastise those who do so call her, on the ground that Miss Hell Obomber doesn’t remotely resemble an ape, only a garden-variety, butt-ugly human being.  So get it straight, mentirosa.  Or did she just misread the post, as would be in keeping with her limited skill-set?  If so, I retract mentirosa and say she’s babosa.

My own reflections on Castillo’s devastating riposte follow.

———————————————————–
Friday, October 09, 2009

http://deanswift.wordpress.com/

This morning the world wakes to our the news that our president has been awarded the Nobel. But no doubt it has further fueled the ignorance the racism that has reared its very ugly head since his election in this country–just like the above link that went out yesterday about my reading last night.

By the way, it was extremely well attended.
And while I am not a size 42 (and nothing wrong with that) and don’t pump out books like the white privileged mystery writer she referred me I personally took no offense.
Anyone who calls Sara Palin ‘divine’ is in some serious need of soul saving.
It is true that people come to listen to my reading but what this hateful ’student’ can’t appreciate (but probably would understand if her hero Sara Palin came to Berkeley) is that my long time readers also come to SEE me.
Reading further on this white reactionary blog–she has referred to the first lady as a ‘gorilla’ and to those who must obviously be objecting to this hateful nonsense as ‘anti-white’? Whatever happened to Berkeley?
I’ll have to say it recalled the last time I was on this campus–as a Regent’s lecturer. As I began my reading at the Latina conference ’somene’ set off the fire alarm. the building was evacuated immediately, fire department called, program over–I went off to have Chinese food with friends. I asked Rosa M——z–the target of the hateful blog entry yesterday to read it beforei introducing me at the program. There are two emotions that motivate the human spirit, I told them afterward. One is love (the reason I have been invited, the students who helped to organized, the professors who teach my books and the community people who came out) and fear–the blog entry.

—————————————————

[October 23, 2009]

My, what a deft close reader Castillo is!  She sloppily infers that your faithful servant is herself a grad student, and at Berkeley, inter alia, because Sweet Thang, my source, is.  (Sorry to embarrass you, baby — I know you’ve gone all monkish on our collective ass the last year or two, but remember, there were times when you used to spoil me ROTTEN.  You know you did.)

As if I’d be caught dead in either the profession or the place.  Baby, when you write you need to get paid for it.  And living anywhere but Silver Lake (with the possible exception of Williamsburg, as I remember it anyway) sounds to me like hideous exile in the sticks.  I won’t even cross the line into Los Feliz, kids — that shit’s bourgeois.

And let’s not even start on Castillo’s syntax and usage boners — I guess your faithful servant was on to something after all, huh, mean old bitch that I am, as you Beaming Betty Crockers out there are forever complaining.  (Can’t a girl be tough and respected?  Spare me your sugary, femmy, nurturing, first-wave feminist kitsch, ladies of the Left.)  And, holy cow, her smug, insecure, posturing screed of a post’s just rotten with typos — if I dared hand my editor a piece in this shape, let alone tried to post it as a finished article, she’d throw it back in my face.  And rightly so.

Poor dumb creature — Castillo earnestly volunteers, with more rhetoric than sense, that “there are two emotions that motivate the human spirit,” love and fear.  Er, I submit she’s forgetting the third, much more interesting one: amusement, which very vitally motivates my blog entry.  My own amusement, that is — I don’t claim it’s objectively witty, just subjectively, and gives me the relief of shouting, or at least bitching, when confronted with yet another instance of fools swindled by knaves, a capsule formula for the university literature departments these days.

And I assure you, I continue to be amused, rather than angered, by this scribbling ideologue: Could Castillo’s wrapping herself in the flag of Obama bin Laden and his dragqueen spouse be ANY more cloying and fatuous?  I almost puked at her servile, abject “our president” — what’s with this hushed tone of reverence?  Lick boots much, chica?  And how about her frantic, fawning haste to point out “Look, look, I’m important, I was a Regent’s Lecturer at Berkeley!” (long since a hollow credential, alas, after literature in the mainline universities was defined down to include the pulp fiction of agitproppers like Castillo).

There, there, don’t cry — have a nice cup of Insecuri-Tea, dear, you’ll feel better.  And maybe just a bit of cheese with your whine?  Gross!  It’s unseemly — she’s like a needy puppy, yapping and whining as it runs back and forth to trip you in the hall, peeing on itself and your shoes in eagerness to be validated.

Above: A portentous littérateur reads, to an adoring claque of spectators, at Berkeley.

And how ’bout that pompous, overblown mandarinism?  (Pretty sad day for the mandarinate, if this mis-speller and sentence-fragmenter’s what they’re reduced to revering.)  Castillo and the quasi-literates who buy her printed effluvia exhibit a suffocating, lifeless deference to social authority and received opinions that would make Alfred Lord Tennyson and Queen Victoria blush for shame.  “My books are taught in the universities!”  (Cut to extreme close-up of celestial mandarin strolling through Hall of Mirrors, making heavy-lidded, purse-lipped faces to the glass, huelepedos nose held skyward in paroxysm of smarm.)  Oh, madam, I do apologize — please, your ladyship, say no more, we’re all terribly impressed out here in the trenches, where literature, if it’s to be made at all, will actually get made.

Actually, if she wants to read what might very well, after a few decades of cool judgment intervene first, be judged literature, by a first-tier intellect and first-tier stylist who happens to be Mexican-American but isn’t, mercifully, far gone in terminal self-adoration, or a bought-and-paid-for political hack, Castillo has much, much to learn from the deft Richard Rodriguez, especially his essay collection Days of Obligation: An Argument with My Mexican Father (best on style points) and Brown: The Last Discovery of America (best on substance).

Actual talent: Richard Rodriguez.

But, horrors!  To admit the greater merits of another writer like Rodriguez, whose writing, both as form and substance, soars out of the abysm of self-reference in which Castillo’s screeds are sunk, would be to move beyond squalling self-absorption, to grow a pair and quit blaming “society” for the fact that you can’t write, and that nobody but the closed circle of the professionally aggrieved, and the repressed white ladies in the English departments who enjoy missionarying and condescending to them, wants to read your prose.  If it’s only because Castillo’s a “minority” (and she’s sure as shit not a minority here in majority-Mexican L.A.), or if it’s only because “society” is holding her down, that she can’t write her way out of a wet paper sack, then how do we explain Rodriguez?

For Rodriguez’ writing transcends, rather than wallows in, the disadvantages he was born into.  In his marvelously complex life, the past isn’t disavowed, or lost — but neither is it sentimentalized, nourished, fostered, in a perennial bile of resentments, grievances, and unforgiven wrongs (Lucifer, anybody?) in the belly you croon to, day in, day out, that’s long since risen up your gorge and into your head and yellowed even your eyes, so that for decades you haven’t seen anything, anything at all, even the stars or the flowers, except through the jaundiced prism of your hatreds.

No, in Rodriguez that past is instead neutralized, sweetened, absorbed, turned into something rich and strange that no one’s quite sure of yet (but we’re sure that we like it, ’cause it’s stylish).  The narrative arc he began in Hunger of Memory, a mesmerizing account of how Rodriguez, like all of us who manage to write prose people not part of our clique care about, achieved escape velocity from private language and rocketed into public speech and citizenship, is still curving upward (let’s hope there’s a book-length sequel to Brown).  Rodriguez like all Americans worthy of the name is a self-fashioner where Castillo is a self-pitier; he long ago left the dank, close air of Berkeley, in whose English Department he did his grad work — apparently without ever writing an e-mail to colleagues beginning “you might of heard…” — for the bracing air of the city.  Was it inborn talent, or lots and lots of hard work?  Both?

Either way, Castillo’s camp of critical race theorists and moldy Marxists, forever blaming bad character on social and economic conditions — as if poor people were so poor they can’t pick up their yards — will live and die petulantly refusing to accept any explanation for inequalities of outcome that doesn’t always, suspiciously, circle back to mean, old, rich, male whitey.  (What pity I’m none of the above — well, okay, maybe I’m a little mean, just around the edges).  ‘Cause that might require these professional resenters, if only imaginatively, to exit the warm, solipsist womb of the university hall of mirrors, and this, we can infer, the comfortable charity-case scribblers, cozily cocooned in praise from the Lilliputians of the lit departments, will never bestir themselves to do.

Rodriguez, you see, was exposed to, and then eagerly immersed himself in, writers of times, places and situations other than his own — Gawd, he even read Protestant theology at Columbia — those crazy nuns, you see, trusted him to learn and generalize beyond his own parochial experience.  And now it’s paid big dividends in his subtly-toned, allusive, impersonal prose, and in a smart, well-balanced cultural criticism which may before long stand comparison with Carlyle’s and Arnold’s — because Rodriguez long ago disdained and bypassed the horrible self-ghettoization of “ethnic studies,” championed by soft-bigotry-of-low-expecations types like Castillo and her enablers in the lit departments.

Rodriguez’ great master Arnold: they share the long, bony, handsome head.

Speaking of which, shouldn’t having her deathless fictions put on a university lit syllabus be the kiss of death for little Miss Piss-on-the-Canon, in whose dim, dim horizon of expectations the horrid Barbara Cartland probably does loom as some “white privileged mystery writer,” a veritable mass-market Patricia Highsmith?  But don’t expect logical consistency or rhetorical coherence from this shameless self-promoter — Castillo’s blog post is far too busy tripping over itself in her haste to run and hide behind the skirts of (secular) Respectability, Piety and Orthodoxy, rushing to shut down any debate that might unsettle her and her claque’s easy, shallow certainties — and I’m reactionary?  Oh, this is too good!

Who’s the pious old fraud trying to convince, anyway?  I don’t think it’s really me, or you, candid reader — more like herself and the cowed claque of coffee shop radicals, parochial hippies and ugly introvert fat girls who turn out for her “readings.”  How exactly should I fear Castillo when she can’t even close-read another girl’s blog post, let alone a literary text?  Or excise the typos, solecisms and just plain infelicities from her own?  First cast out the beam from your own eye, hocicona, and then you’ll see clearly how to pull the mote outta mine.

Oh, and by the way: It’s not me but you, dear, who need some “soul-saving” — tsk, tsk, sounds rather Christian and reactionary of you, and don’t lefties pretend all human behavior’s caused by material condtions? — about Sarah Palin.  (Note the “h,” dim bulb — I only used the Italian spelling locally to cohere with “la divina.”  And must we hilariously infer that you took the epithet literally?  Oh dear; the dullness is just too painful.)  For as everyone on the right knows, and as all of you on the left dread, Sarah Palin has the body of a goddess (not the blood-drinking pre-Columbian ones you posture to revere, dear), and the raw energy and crowd appeal of a rock star, and she’s going to be the next President of the United States.

But then, you were probably just exercised ’cause you couldn’t construe my Latin about her.  That’s pretty embarrassing, no?  Shouldn’t a Latina be Latinaloquens?

Brian X. Chen at Wired (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/author/bxchen/) writes a good article about Adobe decision to realease a new Flash developer kit allowing programmers to “port” Flash based applications to Apple IPhone compliant ones (full article at http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/flash-economy/).

I really appreciate the concept of seing a technology as an enabler for something, because, I think is not only an enabler but a sort of “multiplier”.

Flash has, as written in the article, a wide base of users and a wide base of developers all of them needing something (easy and nice applications for users, money and easily reachable market places for developers): Apple IPhone and much more its application store could be the “take off condition” and the real breakthrough for developers.

Only a copule more point:

a) Flash has got a wide spreading also because allowed everybody to develop and release applications that now will be “evaluated and approved” by a third party (remember Google Voice case?)

b) IPhone apps store is really big at this moment, what will it be with some millions of Flash Apllications potentially being inserted?

This post as a comment also at http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/10/flash-economy/comment-page-1/#comment-95648

Overcoming Domestic Abuse-My Story
by Angel Shadow™

Where do I begin?

I grew up in an environment of alcoholism. This environment was filled with
physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, anxiety and most
importantly….denial. We weren’t allowed to discuss what went on in our
home. It was to be swept under the rug, like the dirty little secret it was.
I can’t count how many times we had to silently put the house back together
while my dad slept it off on the couch. I guess it was simply easier to
pretend it didn’t happen. I guess not acknowledging it, meant we didn’t have
to deal with it. But we did have to deal with it and not discussing it
didn’t make it go away…it allowed it to continue.

I could start with the emotional issues domestic violence causes. Or the
anxiety and panic attacks. The issues of trust and constantly being guarded.
Always looking over your shoulder, waiting for the next bomb to drop. The
effort to accept and forgive…at least enough to move on and live a normal
daily life. I could start with the importance of breaking the cycle, so this
doesn’t move on to the next generation. Or the importance of releasing the
anger and becoming a productive human being. These are all important topics that need to be addressed and I will try to include them all.

I could start with some of my own personal experiences. The constant
physical fights. The yelling and screaming. The broken “things.” Being
picked up by the throat, while my mom stood by and did nothing. Watching my mom get shoved through a kitchen window by the hair, pulled back through, and pushed out the door onto the porch. Then being told by my dad that if we tried to let her in, he’d shoot us.

I could talk about the small travel trailer that was pulled from place to place, sometimes with no running water and illegally wired electricity. Relocating was a constant. There was no need to feel secure, because in no time at all, we’d be on the move again.

I could discuss the countless times my parents left us with people we didn’t
even know; sneaking out when they thought we weren’t aware. And there were times those people made it very clear that we were not wanted there. I could never understand how I could be placed somewhere I wasn’t truly wanted. But it happened time and time again. I remember my brother and I spending some time on the porch because we weren’t allowed to enter the house while the other kids got to have their bowl of ice cream.

I remember wearing the same clothes everyday and let me tell you…other kids aren’t afraid to remind you of it. I could also talk about the sexual abuse I endured from one of my dad’s drunk friends when I was five years old. I could dwell on my mom’s attitude of, “If I can’t beat him, I’ll join him.” And how she spent her share of time on the bar stool beside him, while we were left at home alone, probably because no one would take us for the night. And of course, there’s my mom’s denial and how, “Her kids always came first.”

I started taking care of my sister when she was a baby. I was ten years old,
and had no idea how to care for an infant. I recall the first time I was
left alone with her. I stood out at the end of the driveway, looking up the
street, begging them to come back. That was the day something shifted in me.

I became hard as survival issues kicked in. When my parents would
conveniently find a different sitter for the night, I always seemed to run
them off. I literally had babysitters walk out on me, because I made their
experience with us a living hell. Who did they think they were, coming into
my home and telling me what to do? Thinking they could take care of my baby sister better than I could. I’ve been handling things just fine, thank you
very much. I certainly didn’t need them. Over time, my mom told me since I
kept running them off, I would just do it on my own. Like I hadn’t been
doing that already. My sister wouldn’t respond to anyone but me anyway.

I was never shown how to change a diaper or make a bottle. I guess it was
assumed I would figure it out. After all, they would only be gone “a couple
of hours.” What could possibly go wrong? But those couple hours always
turned into a day long event, usually extending into the early morning
hours, which would end with them coming home in a fight. Do you realize how scary it is to a ten year old child to be left at home alone, with an
infant, especially when it gets dark? We rarely had a phone, so I never had
any way of checking in to see when they’d be home. I was forced to learn to
deal with it.

These few examples I’ve shared are only the tip of the iceberg.

The emotional issues from domestic abuse could fill a book and there is no
way I can cover them all in this article. The programming that comes from
living in an abusive household is devastating to the human mind. In order to survive, the mind has to adapt and it becomes programmed to work in a
certain way. It remembers everything and protects against danger in ways we still don’t understand. The human mind literally has the ability to protect
itself and it does this by altering what we think, which effects the way we
see things. When our programming changes the way we think, it also effects
the way we feel because the mind and body are tightly connected. What
effects one, effects the other.

Emotional abuse is one of the hardest to overcome because of the programming done to the mind. You can reprogram the mind to think and operate in a different manner, but it takes time and a lot of hard, heavy and deep soul searching, which is hardly a walk in the park.

Anxiety and panic attacks are also experiences that come from abuse. In most cases, the attacks are chronic because the mind/body are used to working in fight or flight mode. When the mind is trained to live this way, it will continue to do so, even when there is no reason for it. It simply doesn’t
know any different. I’ve been experiencing anxiety since I was five years
old and it wasn’t until a few years ago, I finally figured it out. I still
get anxious from time to time, but I’ve learned to deal with attacks.

Growing up in an abusive environment made me hard, guarded and non-trusting. You’ll never see me cry. It doesn’t mean I don’t…it just means you won’t see it. I view life differently and I respond to it differently.

I don’t drink. How could I? Drinking is what caused my childhood to be the way it was. The thought of putting alcohol in my system makes me physically ill and brings on anxiety instantly.

I’ve had to overcome serious trust issues. How could I possible believe what
you tell me? You’re not really going to be there for me, so I simply won’t
count on it. I’ve learned to survive and I can take care of myself. I’ve
learned to accept certain things and I’ve learned to forgive. I’ve done this
for ME. Not for my parents, not for the bullies I encountered, not for the
other adults who treated me less than the trash in their garbage…but for
ME. For my own sanity and well-being. For my own piece of mind. I’m happy with the person I’ve become and I’ve become that person on my own.

I decided a long time ago, I would not remain a victim and I would not
become a product of my environment. I decided I would forgive as much as I could. Does that mean the circumstances I encountered were justified? Not for a second! But where do I place blame? With my father, who didn’t know how to stop?  With my mother, who allowed it to happen? I feel they both should be held responsible. But I’m no longer a victim of their circumstance. Their life is their’s to live as they choose. I simply choose to move in a difference direction.

I decided the cycle stops with me. It will not be passed on to
the next generation that I brought into this world. Which means my kids
won’t pass it on to their’s and nothing makes me happier! At least I can
sleep at night knowing that.

*****
Confessions of the Wounded Inner Child
by Angel Shadow™

I have always been there
But you chose not to see
The pain and bitter heartache
That you enforced on me.

I could not escape you
Trapped inside your hell
A child of your making
Bars upon the cell.

You taught me oh so much
Not to trust and not to care
My world became so shattered
My eyes a cold, blank stare.

I soon became so silent
And found a place to hide
To young to understand
I was only along for the ride.

Overtime, as I grew
These issues that you dealt
Became so overwhelming
The bitterness was felt.

It took me a long time
To emerge from the dark
To learn to heal and forgive
Was not a walk in the park.

I did learn how to heal
And I did this just for me
A new world was created
For my eyes to see.

I will not pass this on
The heartache and the tears
The children of tomorrow
Shall enjoy their wonder years.

I will learn to be stronger
And stand up on my own
For the next generation
Will not be my clone.

My life is in your hands
Even if you think unfair
Be careful what you teach
And treat me with more care.

For I will never forget
The weary ways of past
Overcoming this takes time
A large stone for me to cast.

My mind is like a thirsty sponge
Absorbing and so free
So please don’t damage and harm it
For you’re creating me.

© Copyright 2006 Angel Shadow™ (Poem)
© Copyright 2007 Angel Shadow™ (Article)
All rights reserved.
 
www.myspace.com/angelshadow7

www.shadowsandlightmagazine.wordpress.com

www.Writing.com/authors/angelshadow7

www.twitter.com/angelshadow7

After watching Hitch for the ump’tinth time 2′day and drawing inspiration from the love doctor. I feel that I should impart my impractical wisdumb upon the Earth cause folks is going through it ~

All day long I’ve been providing advice and counsel … I’ont know if “I” was sought out specifically to be a willing conduit into the world of men or if it was because I was the first ninja without a full-time day job they could get a hold of. (But that’s not the point, please keep up)

Maddening, exalting, thrilling and frustrating « The promise of “a four letter word beginning with L and ending in E” that’s right kids LOVE. I will no longer write this word out as it has caused so much confusion 2′day. Let’s call it “a four letter word beginning with L and ending in E” … anyway what was I saying ¿ Oh yeah a four letter word beginning with L and ending in E continues to drive folk into insanedness (ßrianism) trying to find the perfect partner. Here is something that The Merciless God of Perfection doesn’t want you to know » Perfection may not be worth the price, you are only human … relax.

Ya’ll didn’t see my tweet 2′day from Twitter  well if you were following MrTramueL on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MrTramueL you would have *Clears Throat for Speech* Mr.TramueL on the reflecting pool …be careful what you wish for, Physical attraction isn’t everything.

Physical vs Chemical in a physical reaction two substances are mixed or ground together without being transformed, meaning both can be recovered from such a mixture in their original state. A chemical reaction, on the other hand, produces an entirely new substance, one that is very different from either of the reactants and does not easily yield the original substances back again. *Science* … I know, I know you have questions,”Mr.TramueL what are you talking about? I thought we were discussing a four letter word beginning with L and ending in E?” and you are right we are but Mr.TramueL’s Law Of  intellectual Obscurity States: What fun is it to be a willing counduit into the world of men if you make yourself easy to understand? (Please stay on your toes) A relationship is more like the resulting compund in a chemical reaction – it is a discrete third entity that is more than just the mixture of the two, a whole new substance.

I’ont feel like writing any more so Imma just hip you with a few points to make your relationship last (do as I say not as I do) that’s right Mr.tramueL is a four letter word beginning with L and ending in E enabler.

• Refuse to allow others to push your buttons. One trick is to grow a whole new set of buttons that can not be easily pushed.
• Try to distinguish between needs and wants. What you seem to want most is not what you really need, in most cases.
• Give unconditionally.To give while expecting a return or certain results is the same as paying for something.

P.S. Has anyone seen Cressida? I ain’t talking about a Toyota either, Robinne Lee … she played Cressida Baylor in Hitch. I sure would like to react with her.

• Who is responsible for ensuring that the board is effective and composed of directors that individually and collectively are competent?
• Does the board evaluate its own effectiveness at least once a year?
• What does the board do to benchmark itself against other boards.
• Is the nature of the board and how it conducts its operations appropriate to the situation and circumstances of the company?
• Is the board aware of its accountabilities to various stakeholders?
• Does the board fully understand the requirements of the various stakeholders in the company?
• Have the cross-functional and inter-organizational processes that deliver these requirements been identified?
• Are the individual members of the board aware of their legal duties and responsibilities as directors?
• Has the board identified a distinctive purpose for the company, and agreed and shared a compelling vision?
• Has the board agreed and shared clear goals and values, established measurable objectives and put a performance management teamwork in place?
• Have the ‘vital few’ actions that must be done been identified, and roles and responsibilities relating to their achievement been allocated?
• Does the board pay sufficient attention to the implementation of objectives and policies?
• Are the enablers, critical success factors and resource requirements for implementation in place?
• Are the people of the organization motivated, empowered and equipped with the necessary skills to make it happen?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

I’m very concerned this afternoon and I’ll do my best to distract myself by reading, but before then, I’ll record what’s on my mind  The awful thing is, i can’t know how legitimate my sadness and concern are because these feelings may be due simply to the swing of hormones from my no longer being pregnant, and I hate not knowing whether what I’m feeling is valid or not.

But what’s on my mind is how challenging, how much of a struggle it is to be with someone who has steadily declining health and worsening chronic pain that can’t simply be medicated away.  I thought for a brief moment of idiocy, gosh, he’s got to see a doctor, but of course he has ben seeing doctors, to no avail.  They either prescribe medications that put him in a fog or they seem at a loss for what to do with him.

So what am I supposed to do?  I see my former (now current) neurologist so that Frank can ask him whatever questions he has about his health and can have him do basic check-ups or look at his MRIs.  I try to be as understanding and supportive as possible, waking him up with a cup of tea and encouraging him to go to the gym because that seems to help his depression, tremors, fatigue, and distract him from his pain, or at least it did in the first few weeks.  I also try to relieve his stress by making sure we have no financial stress, though of course the credit for this really goes to my parents.  I try to be as independent as possible, which I basically am except I do like to eat with him at least once a day as it gets lonely eating by myself.  I go to therapy of course to discuss difficulties I’m having and am reading a book about codependence, though I think I’ll need to buy it since I feel like marking it up.

But what’s most difficult to see is his spending so much of his very limited energy helping others, whether it’s talking to Steve three times a day giving him relationship advice or going over to his friend Jim’s to write his resume (which he’s doing now) or watching his brother’s two pugs, which we’ll be doing all of next week while his brother’s family is vacationing.  Frank reminds me and I know these are all individuals who would drop anything to help Frank in return, whether it’s help moving something or fixing something in the apartment or taking care of the dogs while Frank is away.  So it’s not like these people are using Frank.  What worries me, however, is how much time Frank consumes being other people’s therapist and sounding board.

He reminds me that he’s different from me, he needs friends in his life, he likes meeting up with people, but at what cost to his health and our relationship?  Sure, he no longer invites Steve to the apartment since he knows how much Steve stresses me out (or at least he knows Steve brings out the worst in me, even if he doesn’t realize how Steve antagonizes me and is constantly jousting me with his comments).  But I wish Frank spent more time on his own issues and not others.  He admits he avoids his problems and promises to discuss this in therapy, but there’s only so much time to deal with it in therapy and only so many therapy sessions insurance covers (20 a year, to be precise).  Can’t he confront it now, on his own, like I do with my issues?

I also asked him to confront why he never defends me to his friends who say hurtful things to me in his presence.  He’s always so worried about what I might have said to upset them and is oblivious to what’s been done to me.  His excuse is that I can look after myself, I have no problem saying what’son my mind, but he doesn’t either, yet it doesn’t prevent me from defending him when someone is wrongly accusing him.

I also asked him not to tell me not to cry when I’m hurt because I asked my therapist when to know if my tears as used to manipulate others and she says, if I find myself looking to get a certain reaction from my tears, then I’ll know, and I never do have this response–I cry because I need to when I’ve been hurt and because it’s unhealthy to hold it in and will only make me a punching bag for others.  So he eventually said he’ll deal with this in therapy, too, but will he ever reallybe able to cut out the needy interactions from his life.  His excuse is, he hasn’t read the codependent book yet, but I think fuck codependency, it’s a grab-all term.  Look at yourself!

I love him (a point that can’t be stressed enough), enjoy more than anything our time together (whether we’re out or just talking about current affairs or people or reading something together) and obviously want it to work out, but it’s taking so much strength from me to watch him deteriorate and hide in others’ problems.  He tells me to be patient, but I am patient: in fact, I think I’m patient to a fault.  The question isn’t, what more can I do?  The question is, when will he look after himself?  When will he stop letting every bump in the road disrupt what he needs to do for himself?  So that’s what’s on my mind.

I’ll try to distract myself now.

• Does your company have a vision of a flatter and more flexible form of organization?
• Is there a corporate-wide transformation program in place to  bring it about?
• Does it address winning business and the creation of value, ‘know-how,’ opportunities and new ventures?
• Does the program embrace facilitating skills, enabling processes and supporting technology?
• Is it designed to influence attitudes by changing behavior?
• How disruptive will it be of short-term customer relationship?
• What will be done to retain the commitment of those who may be disadvantaged at a particular stage in the change process?
• How committed is top management to achieving the transformation?
• How this commitment been communicated?
• Do the managers of the organization, and particularly the senior managers, behave as role models?
• Have all the requirements for a successful transformation been identified?
• What ‘building blocks’ or ‘pieces of the jigsaw puzzle’ might be missing?
• In particular, are the necessary enablers in place, and have skill requirements been addressed?
• Is it clear to the people of the organization that the program has been thought through?
• Is the reward system compatible with the changes that are being sought?
• Have likely obstacles and barriers been identified, and are programs in place to deal with them?

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight

The post below was written over six months ago. It was and is my final post on the matter. At the time when I wrote it, I decided to wait, reread the post, and think a while before publishing it. Which I have done. These are my final thoughts on this book.

*************

I have held off on updating this blog for several days now as I have tried to decide what to say. I find myself continuing to write post after post that, to me, sound prideful or superficial, as I continue to talk about all the great things in my marriage with minimal focus on what I can change in myself. But to be honest, and ESPECIALLY after reading this chapter, I am just convinced more and more that this book was not written for me.

I am sure that there are many people who have benefited and will benefit immensely from the advice, encouragement, and exercizes in this book. I’m sure that there are many marriages struggling today because neither partner is willing to yield any ground. I’m sure that many people need to learn to hold their tongues, to complain about fewer things and in a gentler manner. I’m sure that many people currently feel angry and bitter towards their spouses. And I believe that this book could be extremely helpful to them.

I am not that person. That doesn’t mean that I’m better than that person, just that I am different. I have different flaws. I have different areas in my heart and life and marriage that need attention.

I’m an enabler. It doesn’t show as much today as it used to, because I picked a better partner for this relationship than my last one, but that’s what I am, what I tend to be. I’m silent to a fault. I use good deeds in an attempt to earn love and affection. I fear abandonment. I’m scared to rock the boat. I still struggle with these issues. As much work as I have put in and as hard as I’ve tried, I am still dealing with these tendencies. I still feel nervous when I choose to confront someone; and more often than not my fear is that they will not like or love me anymore because I dared to find fault with them. I still delight in seeing the people around me happy, and blame myself when they aren’t. I still want to be a “good girl,” whatever that means, and I still fail to accept God’s grace for me and instead condemn myself with negative self-talk when I feel like I’ve let someone down. The biggest difference between now and then, is that Shawn doesn’t take advantage of me the way that Jeff did, and the way other people in non-romantic relationships have done as well.

So for me, a lot of the advice in this book is off the mark. And some of the phrasing is frankly hurtful. An excerpt from Chapter 15:

“Perhaps you don’t feel  this way, and maybe for good reason. Perhaps you wish some outsider could see the level of disrespect you get from your wife or husband – someone who would make your mate feel embarrassed to be exposed for who they really are behind closed doors.

“But that’s not the issue with love. Love honors even when it’s rejected. Love treats its beloved as special and sacred even when an ungrateful attitude is all you get in return.” [Emphasis mine]

I set the book down, dumbfounded, numb. I sat there on the couch staring silently into space for so long that Shawn had to ask me what was wrong. I read the passage to him, but couldn’t begin to put into words how deeply it bothered me, or why. It has been days since then and I’ve neither updated this blog nor continued the book in that time. I’ve waited, and mulled, and sought the right words to say what I needed to say.

Jeff rejected me. Jeff responded with ingratitude. Jeff ignored me. Jeff insulted me. And my response, time and again, was to try harder. To treat him better. To do even more for him. To try to make him happy. To try to win his love. Four years of pouring out everything I had for him. I know it wasn’t successful, and I don’t believe it was right, either.

And yes I know, I know that I wasn’t married to Jeff. I know there were fundamental flaws in our relationship based solely on that. But my mother was married to my father. And she was an enabler too. And for eight years, she surrendered her desires and happiness to what he wanted because she thought it was good and right and loving and Christian. For the majority of those eight years he drank, and cheated, and wasted what little money he could earn on booze and drugs and women, even when there wasn’t enough leftover to put food on the table for his three children.

You can’t tell me that the problem there was that my mother didn’t love him enough. You can’t tell me that the problem was that she failed to honor him.

True love is unconditional, yes. But that does NOT mean that it is boundariless! Nowhere in this book have I seen any acknowledgement of that fact! Nowhere have I seen any admission that sometimes love demands we hold our spouse accountable! And increasingly I find myself feeling not just that I don’t like it, but that it’s WRONG! It’s wrong to ignore both sides of the coin, it’s wrong to encourage people to open themselves up completely, to expose themselves and make themselves vulnerable, and to give no advice whatsoever on what to do when they are hurt as a result, sometimes grievously.

I think the Christian church fails in this area sometimes. Many times. I know that a huge reason why my mother allowed my father’s neglect and emotional abuse to continue for so many years was that she believed, that she had been taught, that to be a good Christian wife she must submit to him, and that to do that pretty much meant allowing him to do whatever the hell he wanted in their relationship. One of my mother’s good friends was told by her pastor that she simply needed to submit to her husband and that it was just her cross to bear when she came to him for cousel after her husband, an alcoholic, had begun beating her! And I wonder, I honestly, honestly wonder, if the authors of the book wouldn’t agree with that pastor.

There has been NOTHING about boundaries. There has been NOTHING about how love responds to real wrongdoing, to unforgivable sins, to abuse. It is narrow minded and foolish and dangerous to pretend these things don’t exist. Or that they don’t exist in Christian homes, which I think is more often the untruth we embrace.

Also in Chapter 15: “That’s what love dares to do — to say, ‘Of all the relationships I have, I will value ours the most. Of all the things I’m willing to sacrifice, I will sacrifice the most for you.’”

NO! No, no, no, no, no, no NO!! That is EXACTLY the attitude I had in my relationship with Jeff. I put him first. I sacrificed everything for him. And it was WRONG. And do you know why? Because GOD comes first! My relationship with GOD is the one I should value most! No man – husband or anything else – should come before that. And if that’s true, if my relationship with God comes first, then my relationship with my husband must have boundaries. There must be accountability for both of us. And maybe these authors believe that (I certainly hope that they do) but they aren’t saying it.

*pauses, takes a few deep breaths*

It worries me. It worries me that there is no consideration of these things. It worries me that there may be enablers out there, passive and weak-willed and terrified of abandonment, living out deeply unhealthy relationships with abusive partners, who may read this and not know it was written for someone else. It worries me that this is so very unbalanced. Love your spouse unconditionally, quit saying negative stuff, do a bunch of nice things for them, and don’t worry if you get nothing in return because after all this is what love dares to do.

The subtext as heard by a now-self-aware enabler? You make all the changes. You do all the hard work and make all the sacrifices. You be a good spouse, stop complaining, do good things, and be patient. Read this book in private, and don’t ask for anything from your spouse, because it’s not your job to ask/encourage/expect him to grow. Don’t bother him with your problems, he doesn’t want to hear them. Maybe he’ll change, maybe he won’t. Either way, you keep working at it. Work harder at it. Blame yourself if it doesn’t work, and keep working harder. Make the marriage better on your own, or kill yourself trying, and don’t expect any help from him in the process.

I want to like this book. Honestly, I do. I want to hope that it gets better, that it’s not so completely and utterly boundariless through the whole entire thing. I want to believe that I’m overreacting. I want to finish the darn thing just because I started it and I’d planned to see it through, all 40 days. And because I believe that marriage takes work, and I looked forward to a good resource for helping me work on mine. I want to keep my mouth shut and not publish this post because I don’t want to discourage Bekah from getting the most from this that she can.

I really don’t know if I can though. It’s like reading a play book from my past and  having someone tell me, “this is the right way to do this,” even when I know in my heart that it was terribly unhealthy for me to have so few boundaries with Jeff. Not just for me, but for him as well.

I haven’t thought about Jeff this much in years. I am not enjoying the trip down memory lane.

And I’m not finding much that speaks to me.

I’m saving this draft for the moment. I’ll pray about it, and reread the post and  the chapter both later on. I’ll decide what to do later. I really have nothing else to say at the moment.

Momma’s Man
★ / ★★★★

Have you ever seen a movie where fifteen minutes into it you have a feeling it’s going to be a disaster but you decide to sit through it, hoping that it will get better or maybe even redeem itself but ultimately doesn’t? “Momma’s Man,” written and directed by Azazel Jacobs, is that kind of movie. It tells the story of a man (Matt Boren) who initially visits his parents (Ken Jacobs and Flo Jacobs–the director’s real-life parents) for a few days but then decides he wants to say for a longer period of time as he totally abandons wife and child. He comes up with so many ways to stay such as lying to people about the health of his mother, lying to his parents about his wife cheating on him and even deliberately falling down the stairs hoping to break his bones. It’s supposed to be funny but I didn’t find anything amusing about it because I seriously thought that this man had a psychological disorder. And to me, people with psychological disorders are not to be poked fun of unless it’s done in a bona fide manner like in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In here, the character is so unlikeable because he fails to see how his actions cause a ripple effect to the lives around him. His parents are very worried about his mental state and his wife has no idea why he refuses to come back. I didn’t like the parents either. I felt like they have no real authority over their son: the mother is an enabler, the father is emotionally distant. No wonder their son wants to relive his childhood–he wasn’t brought up in a healthy way. I don’t want to delve into Freudian mechanics but the main character is literally fixated on everything about his younger years. As for the film’s tone, I found it to be really annoying. I couldn’t believe I was made to sit through bad song lyrics written by the main character back when he was a teenager or even watch him put shaving cream on his face for five minutes. I’m very familiar with independent filmmaking and I love smaller films. However, this one is just weak all across the board. The acting was painful for me to sit through, especially the mother’s, because her tone of delivery is so consistently flat. I have absolutely nothing positive to say about this picture (which is a rarity because I usually find something positive about most movies) and I urge everyone else to stay as far away as possible from this wreck. It was a waste of a hundred minutes.