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Egocentricity

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

It has come to my attention that all of my posts have one major concern – Me.  I write about My feelings, My desires, My fears, My angst – pretty much, if it has to do with Me, I’ll write about it.  I’ve written about childhood humiliations, mid-life crises, relationship joys and woes, every kind of female “issue”, and parenthood challenges – all from behind the very specific Kathleen-focused pinwheel of topics.

Honestly, I did not set out to write a blog with an all-you-can-eat buffet of my emotional stew du jour.   I have some indication that I am a bit of a decent writer with a solid ability to express myself in ways that engage other people.  I intended to marry this expandable skill with the numerous social, economic, cultural and world-wide issues that face the human race, thereby bringing about a crisp commentary from one of the ordinary class of humans – middle-middle class working woman with a husband, two kids, a dog and a mortgage.

Instead, I have a series of blog posts filled with metaphorical anecdotes concerning my hormones, insecurities and day dreams.

Is there something wrong with this?

I must have decided there is not since I continue to write about these things that fill my ever shrinking cognizant capacity.

Clearly, even in this confessional opus, my number one concentration is My inability to write about someone other than Me!

However, before I toss my garbley goulash into the pig trough and start writing about other subjects where I have some great authority like the best ways to get cinnamon gum out of a washing machine, or how to collect old baby food jars until they overflow into the outdoor shed, or remain at a job you don’t like for nearly a decade without literally jumping out the window – I should like to state that I don’t believe any one of us can truly write about anything other than our own experience.

Even if I were to write about the life and times of Mickey Mouse, it would be colored with my intense personal impression of said rat based upon everything that has occurred in my life up to this point.  Suppose Mr. Mouse and I differ in opinion on how to bring about peace without using violence?  Would it then be possible to write objectively about Mr. Mouse’s career in which he engaged his country in not one, but two extended wars?

Maybe a better human than me could, but I am pretty sure I have given up trying to be objective.  (Especially where Mickey is concerned – don’t even get me started on a grown mouse who has a clubhouse full of perky sidekicks who only know how to sing his praises.)

So, I’ve decided – if anyone is 1) actually reading this and 2) in a place of even remotely caring about it – that I am going to continue to write about what I am faced with each moment on a cellular level – Me.

After all, stew is a meal in itself!

Proof of my proving abilities

/ autumncircles / 3 Comments

I have perfected an annoying art form of attempting to prove the unprovable.

For me, trying to do something – anything – in order to prove a point I have neither been asked nor have any reality-based need to prove is like trying to force an elephant through the exhaust of a mini-cooper. I might actually be able to get it to fit, but I would have to chop up the entire beast into small pieces, stick it in a blender until liquefied and then let it boil into a gaseous state. By that time, there is nothing left of the originally magnificent creature I so desperately wanted to prove I am of kindred benevolence.

I know this because I have metaphorically killed more magnanimous creations than I am admittedly capable of calculating.  I will either make half-failed (or half-successful, depending on your optimism vs. pessimism tendencies) efforts to do it myself, actually do it myself with varying levels of success (or failure), or sit paralyzed in fear of not doing it perfectly thereby not doing it.  The only way I won’t do it is to let someone else do it for me.  I have some switch inside that pulls the choke out at the slightest indication that I may feel left out of whatever wondrous triumph is about to occur.  Unfortunately, I pull so hard that I open up too much and inevitably stall out creating a self made vacuum bag full of words never shared, works of almost art, plays produced in my head, and songs never sung outside my car.

Want proof?

Hollis and Jolleen – a children’s book about two best friends and their adventures through a knot-hole in a tree to the world below filled with talking frogs, daisies and a mole.  Partially written with a TYPEWRITER.

A Way Home – a play I began writing while living in NYC and had a staged reading of in like 2003.  It still needs final edits.  (PS – I lived in NYC from early 1995 to early 1997…;o|)

Bhogobaan ekane ache – a written account of my spiritual journey – first written in 2003 with minor updates over the years.  Sent to some publishers and a monologue from it got me cast in Ochen Chotto Schpiel (see next point).

One Woman’s Voice – a compilation of about 40 poems of mine up until about 2004.  Sent it to a few publishers but figured work got in the way.  And my playwright’s revival in Ochen Chotto Schpiel (which did generate quite a bulk of very short plays that now reside only in my memories – both cranial and hard disk.)

Dreaming Tales of This and That and a Splashing Humpback – another compilation of over 30 poems for kids of all ages.  24 are done, the rest almost – but I need to illustrate it, although I don’t really draw very well.

Numerous visual arts – paintings, fabric, mixed media – that I have more supplies for than actual completed pieces.

Very brief foray into the possibility of an artistic tye-dye business.

This blog which I almost started for years and now only update periodically.

And, oh yeah, I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Drama – emphasis Acting.

Whew!  That’s a lot of almosts to cram into one old four-drawer metal filing cabinet stuck in my home office!  And it doesn’t even include the lists of aspirations I swallow deep down underneath rolls of Tums and diet coke – dancer, singer, cellist, elected official, world news anchor, race car driver, motivational speaker, smoking hot babe with perfect cha-chas, covert spy and mime extraordinaire.

Okay – really sounds like I’m headed towards the typical mid-life crisis, doesn’t it?  Yipes.

Katie – Bar the door.  No, seriously – bar it, lock it, nail it shut – goodness knows where this line of opening up and spreading my mid-life cheer will send me!

P.P.S. Truly just kidding about the mime part.

P.P.P.S.  See my point?

Phases of menopause?

/ autumncircles / Leave a comment

I’ve read what the clinical stages of menopause are – perimenopausal, premenopausal, menopausal, and post menopausal.  When this happens naturally for a woman varies based upon when she started her first menstrual cycle or based upon when her mother went through it.

For me, it’s unknown.  My mother had her hysterectomy at age 41 due to a rather large benign cyst that overtook her uterus.  They recommended taking everything – ovaries and all, so she did.  She was immediately went through physical menopause as they adjusted her artificial hormone replacement therapy.

No one thought to ask her mother when she went through menopause before she died at the age 82.

I had my hysterectomy last year – less than ten days before my 40th birthday.  Long story behind it, but I also had two other surgeries at the same time to repair some damage from having children.  The doctor recommended that I keep my ovaries and I did.  He assured me that this surgery would not trigger menopause and has run blood work that seems to indicate that my hormone levels are fine.

Then why the hot flashes?  Night sweats?  Super-inhuman mood swings?  Either total insomnia or nearly falling asleep in the restroom stall at work when I get a few moments to myself? And other symptoms that are unexplainable and remind me of being pregnant again?  Severe lower back pain?  Charlie horses in my calves?  Tender breasts?

WTF?!

Clinical stages verified by specific blood work results my ass!  Keeping your ovaries a sure-fire way to avoid early menopause due to a hysterectomy – bite me!

Let’s not forget the rage against the machinations of my own brain.  And the lingering ache from one of my surgeries that does not seem to want to go away.  And the entirely new way I had to learn to pee from the other one.

TMI?  Maybe, but dump all of that in a blender, pour in a dose of children being angry for not taking them out to dinner on a Friday night, a handful or two of happy Christmas versus new air conditioner, drop in some chopped up pieces of whatever the dog has chewed up today and pack in some not-so-random emotional angst until full.  Sprinkle with overflowing laundry, dishes, unscooped poop, and any minor misstep made from throughout the day.  Flip the switch to liquefy and let run from 6 a.m. to about 10 p.m. and if it hasn’t blown itself to bits by then, transfer contents to air tight ziploc bag and hide in the deep freeze until there is a free day to thaw it out and pour down the drain.

Or buy yourself a great handbag on e-bay that you neither need or can afford.

It is my currently preferred form of HRT – Handbag Replacement Therapy.

As for whether or not I’m actually in a phase of menopause – I wonder how many HRTs it will take before I am sure?