relationships – Page 8 – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Clear the clutter: get real

June 29, 2011 by Karen, posted in family, Midlife Crisis, my one word, no fear, relationships, writing

I’m still thinking about my New Year’s Resolution: my one word that morphed into two words: Edit and Focus. After beginning the process of setting up a home office and the necessary decluttering that has come along with that, I am thinking it makes sense to continue the momentum that I’ve got built up and “take it on the road”…er, to the other rooms in the house. (Was that an original thought or did my husband plant it in my subconscious mind? Hmmmmm…..).

At the moment, the clutter that spilled over into my bedroom is reduced but still remains. What I have left to go through includes, but (unfortunately) is not limited to:

Knitting supplies: Patterns, yarn stash, needles and other sundries
A filing cabinet with warranties, extra office supplies, vital records, and infinite other minutiae
DVD’s, and (OMG!) video cassette tapes
All of my writing files, notebooks, journals, project ideas

I’m reading a book that mentions a resource that I was following about five years ago but forgot about: The FlyLady. Ready to get real and get rid of clutter but don’t know where to start? The FlyLady is your gal. Her BabySteps will take you right from square one to the finish line, presumably eradicating your clutter along the way.

My other decluttering activities this month: still parting with some books (one at a time, gifting them to friends), still unsubscribing from automatic emails (this month mostly from foodie ones…yes, it hurts). I’m also trying to bring less clutter into the house in the first place (yes, that’s Bill’s idea). I’m also looking at the clutter surrounding finances (mostly paper files that I’m afraid to part with).

P.S. Yes, I admit it: After I went through the house and retrieved every single book I owned…I found more books. 😦 Sad but true.

Date night: afternoon movie

June 23, 2011 by Karen, posted in baking, Date night, family, friends, movies, relationships

We haven’t had a babysitter in a while so we decided to watch a movie at home. Next up in the Netflix Queue was The Company Men. We found out about this movie from the preview of another movie (don’t ask me which one). I was surprised to know that it was a relatively recent movie starring Ben Affleck (and several other famous, well-liked actors: Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner). I hadn’t heard a thing about it before seeing the preview.

I was very interested to see this movie because it deals with a topic that is all too familiar to many of us: being “downsized” from a job by a company that is “reorganizing”. I’m not a big fan of Ben Affleck but because the topic interested me (and the Q was getting a little lean) we got it.

Around the same time I was also reading Caitlin Shetterly’s memoir: Made for You and Me. Both the movie and the book are very honest (even raw at times) accounts of what it’s like when life as you know it does a 180 degree turn. The movie follows three men who lose their jobs and the effects (for better, for worse) that it has on them, their families, their friendships. The book also talks about how much having, or not having, a job influences all aspects of life.

Both remind you what is important in life, and what is not, and ultimately, what really matters to you may not be what you think.

Date night at the Ogunquit Playhouse

June 18, 2011 by Karen, posted in Date night, family, local fun, relationships, Someone's gotta say it, tweens

Avenue Q opened up the season at the Ogunquit Playhouse this year. The show is sort of a perversion of Sesame Street that is funny as hell and certainly worth seeing. The night we went was during one of the Bruins’ Playoff games (season ticket holders have only limited say over what night the tickets are for) and was the first show in years that my husband and I could remember that wasn’t sold out. It was still impressively full, though, considering (reference: Bruins’ Playoff game).

This show’s ticket has the warning not to bring children under 17 due to the explicit language and, um, live (puppet) sex onstage (two darn good reasons, don’t you think?) but then I read an interview with Brad Kenney this month in the York Independent and became confused. He is quoted in the article as qualifying the aforementioned good advice by saying:

“Well, we recommend parental discretion for anyone under 17–but, if you do bring them, you will be considered VERY cool! And they probably know all the songs anyway!”

Huh?

I attended a Playhouse show a couple of years ago (The Full Monty) which was a show (obviously) intended for adult audiences. Parents in the front row somehow thought it would be okay to bring their kids to see it too, one of which looked to be about tween-aged. Not only was the poor boy uncomfortable, but the actors on the stage were uncomfortable as well! How do I know this? Because one of them gestured to the boy in the front row and made a comment about having a child in the audience cramping his style, or words to that effect.

Parents? Leave your kids at home for adult-themed live shows.

Brad? My 12-year-old does not already know any of the words to any of the songs in Avenue Q!

Chaos Theory

May 21, 2011 by Karen, posted in family, good grief, Midlife Crisis, no fear, relationships

When everything around you is falling apart, it can feel like the world is going to end (or maybe you wish that it would). Maybe you’re doing your level best to keep things harmonious in your life, but then somehow you lose your focus for a split second.

You make a bad decision and suddenly all hell breaks loose.

It can feel like vertigo: your surroundings are spinning and you are unable to feel stable despite exercising your strongest proprioceptive abilities. People are saying things that you’d never thought they’d say. Worse, people are saying things that you never thought they’d say to you.

To quote the brilliant, insightful Talking Heads from their song Once In A Lifetime:

“You may ask yourself, what is that beautiful house?/You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?/You may ask yourself, am I right, or am I wrong?/You may say to yourself, my god, what have I done?”

So, to paraphrase the illustrious Heads, how did I get here? Why did I do/say/think that? It can all be so confusing when you are in the midst of it. Everything can happen so fast that your head literally spins. What do I do/say/think now? Maybe your body takes over and your breathing changes to rapid gasps. You’re sitting down but don’t remember doing so. And are you rocking? Is this really happening?

Then, amidst the chaos you suddenly become aware of the calm. The calm inside you. And in that space you become aware of a thought forming. That still small voice says:

You have no control over how this will all turn out.

You might think this would be a scary thought to have at a time like this, but for some reason, it is not. Instead, you find that it’s a comfort.

Shanti: “The Peace which passeth understanding.” ~T.S. Eliot from The Waste Land

Mother’s monkey mind

May 14, 2011May 14, 2011 by Karen, posted in family, Holidays, Midlife Crisis, relationships, tweens

On a recent episode of The Middle, the mom Frankie got it wrong. For mother’s day, she thought she wanted the entire day to herself, free of husband and children, to do whatever she wanted to. This was a classic episode of “be careful what you wish for” because all she managed to do that day was fix things that were broken, defrosting things that were frozen, clean things that were dirty. By the time she finally sat down on the couch with her magazine and her baked goods, the fam came home. The day was over. Frankie was bereft.

Frankie got it wrong because having the whole day off when you never have the whole day to yourself is just too overwhelming to be fully appreciated without some advance planning. She was not given enough notice and did not give the day enough forethought to do it right. I am completely familiar with this phenomenon. I routinely screw up unscheduled blocks of time that I unexpectedly have to myself because…because there are just so many things that I want to do that I don’t have the time for in everyday, workaday life!

Have the gift of an unscheduled block of time? Enter the monkey mind, and all can be lost in a heartbeat. This monkey mind mayhem can be wreaked on any special day, not just Mother’s Day. Just thinking about all of the things I want to do: read? Write? Knit? Practice a little yoga? Bake a batch of cupcakes/brownies/cookies? Work in the garden? Sometimes it becomes like diagnosing an illness: a ruling out process that takes so long that by the time an activity is decided upon the time you had in which to engage in it has passed (like what happened to Frankie).

The truth is this: when our family members are not with us, we may have a small undercurrent of worry (What are they doing? Are they safe?), or at least of distraction that gets in the way.

In the end, she got it right. She did want her family around, just (barely) within earshot and eyeshot in the next room, working on a puzzle together, getting along with each other. They had strict instructions not to talk to her or try to engage her in any way whatsoever.

She had the best couple of hours ever.

Rate your mate

May 2, 2011May 4, 2011 by Karen, posted in relationships

The March 2011 Cosmopolitan Magazine contains The Sex Quiz for 20-somethings to take to find out what…well, you can do that math.

I decided to design a quiz that we forty(and over)-somethings can take to gauge the viability and durability of our marriages (or other less formal but no less consuming unions).

Here are the rules: read each question, then answer a,b, or c. Go!

Looks: He’s a) drop-dead gorgeous! b) not bad to look at c) drop-dead drab, but he’s mine and I love him
Sex: He a) rocks my world! b) Sometimes he’s not too tired c) I lie back and think of England
Housework: a) He could be on the cover of Porn for Women (he’s that good)! b) He knows what a vacuum is and he’s not afraid to use it…but that’s it c) He says, “My father never did housework and neither will I!”
Parenting: a) I wish he’d been my father! b) He’s got some…issues c) He’s not even sure how many kids we have!
Hygiene: a) He could be on the cover of Men’s Health Magazine! b) He has pretty good aim… c) I have to remind him to shower; ugh!