Something happened yesterday that has completely changed the scenario. Do you remember a post from a few days ago, Mom and the Prick Doctor, where I sent out a plea to my mother’s acupuncturist and asked him to focus on helping with her memory problems instead of her knee? I’ve been worried about both her short-term and long term-memory for a while, but something happened yesterday that shed light on just how serious the problem is. Her prick doctor left a comment here and not only did it confirm my worries, it amplified them.

Comment by The Prick Doc

As for your request, I would not find it at all unethical or unscrupulous to answer your plea for help if your mother was in fact… a patient of mine. Donna has shown up on occasion in pajamas at my place of residence, demanding treatment for different ailments with Acupuncture yes, but I think any health-care professional would find it unprofessional to give said treatment to anyone on their front lawn at 4am:)

I’m terribly relieved to learn that Mom is at least remembering to wear her pajamas, but really—this is serious.

She may require medication, or a doctor with bigger needles. My parents live in a small town. How is my father going to explain when his wife is arrested for stalking the Prick Doctor? Can you imagine the humiliation? Will the local folk think Dad is inadequate and that’s why Mom is so interested in the good doctor’s needles? Oh, I can just hear the rumors now!

We’ve already established that I am The Favorite Child, and with the title comes a certain amount of daunting responsibility. What’s a dedicated and loving daughter supposed to do in a situation like this? Well, first I obviously need to confer with the Prick Doctor myself and put together an intervention plan. Second, I need to grease the palms of the local sheriff in case he starts to notice Mom’s 4 a.m. escapades. These are things that can only happen in person.

Yes, I obviously need to go home and evaluate things for myself, take things into my own hands. Unfortunately, I can’t get away just now. It’ll be a few weeks until I can get to Vermont. My schedule is full of commitments until, well, the week of Christmas.

I’ve despised onion since I realized I have taste buds. I don’t like the texture, the flavor, the smell, the anything. I delete the nasty little things from recipes. They are banned from my refrigerator and I even avoid looking at them in the grocery store.

The problem is that onion is in everything. It’s just about impossible to order in a restaurant without having to ask them to please hold the onion, and if it’s soup or something with a sauce, forget it. My friends and family have tried to disguise them. In their various efforts to trick me they cut the little devils up smaller and hope I’ll not taste them, which just seems follish to me. If something powerful is small, it’s still powerful.

The thing is—I wish I liked onion. It’s in everything and life would be that much simpler if I could develop a taste for onion, scallion and chives (they’re all the same to me). When I was a child, my parents weren’t very sympathetic and kept threatening promising that one day my taste buds would mature. I just had to keep trying. Yea, well, I’m still waiting.

I’m wondering on Wednesday—is there hope? Did your taste buds mature and you now like a food item you never thought you’d like?

Here it is almost January again, and I’ve done little to extend my hands. I live in a large metropolitan area and it’s far too easy to indulge in an overload of anonymity. I’m guilty of allowing myself to become uninvolved. I need to change that, and I want to help my son begin to develop his own sense of community and compassion. This year I’ve completed some minor pro bono work, written a few checks, but I’ve still not taken on a cause or excused myself to spend time ‘giving back’. This needs to change. It needs to change now, and I do believe it will help with my six-month-funk I’ve been talking about.

In addition to some areas I want to get involved in and the community work I need to do on my own, I’m looking for something my son and I can do together. There are two hiccups:

1). I don’t want our work to involve church-sponsored activities or organized religion

2). He’s only four, so whatever we do as a team has to be age appropriate. I don’t want to scare him or put him in harms way.

I have a lot of hot buttons, but my biggest include men’s violence against women, child abuse and animal cruelty. None of my passions seem appropriate for a 4-year-old to help with.

What’s a girl to do when she needs advice? She turns to her blog, of course. Any ideas for this mommy and son team?

I posted Friday that I’ve been in a funk for several months, an ugly funk, and that I’m tired of this dark cloud I’ve allowed to settle. Like Thistle who responded that she, “… just recently come out the other side of a very big funk that has had me barely participating in my life for an extended period of time…and i am stronger for it…” I know the other side of my own funk holds new adventure and discovery. Packing the funk and waving adios requires I take a look at my tells, not to hide them from anyone, but because the only way to stop pandering is to reengage myself.

My Two Most Telling Tells

#1). My husband always says he can tell the state-of-my-mind by the state of my closet. He’s right. My closet currently looks like a two-year-old went on a treasure hunt and was particularly unamused with each discovery. When I’m in Funky Town, I typically stop exercising and become orgasmicaly enamored with all things chocolate. The dark and ill-fated affair adds plump to my frame and my clothes feel confining. I’ll start throwing pants and shirts into various heaps rather than putting them neatly away. Those lanky denims with zippers and buttons refusing closure-they’re only worthy of the floor.

Of course the messier my closet becomes, the messier I feel. Clutter and disorganization drive me crazier. I like things streamlined, neat, easy to find and most of all, I like a size six, but an eight will do. Putting on weight and excusing myself from an exercise regime only makes the funk worse. It’s a cycle, you see, and there’s only one person who can stop the wheels. My head feels better when my body feels better. This week, I’m committed to cleaning my closet.

#2). My sister would say my tell is an unusual avoidance of family and friends. I stop spending time with people who make me laugh. I avoid long phone calls that lead to probing questions. I’m a master at turning a conversational tide so that it washes over someone else rather than allowing it to expose me. I work from home and becoming a hermit is enticing. It’s so easy to avoid people; I hardly have to make an effort. I’ll wallow in excuses to stay home rather than enjoy a friend’s company, and I’ll drown myself in work rather than walk in the sunshine. Like a messy closet, a messy social life complicates my funk and dampens my enthusiasm for life, but it’s very hard for me to ask for help, and even harder to admit when I need it. This week, I’m committed to some girl time.

Side note:
Dear Graphic Goddess…I need you. I’m asking for your help. The hell with the deadlines. Let’s schedule those massages and margaritas!

Friday I said I was going to fake it till I make it, and I’m serious. When Jen commented that her friend who lost an astonishing 160 pounds said, “There was no motivation. Sometimes you just have to go through the motions and the motivation will follow,” I believe it. I’ve experienced it before, and I’ll do it again. I’m not talking about weight gain or loss and perhaps neither was she. Cleaning my closet and spending time with friends are small steps in eliminating funk, but if my tells aren’t telling me I suck, I may be able to hear something else.

So tell me, please, what’s your tell?

The good thing about desperation is it requires movement. I’m fully aware that my funk is self-imposed, that it’s all about my head and a bunch of tiny voices that I allow to dominate the conversation (yes, I talk to myself). It’s become quite boring, and if I’m bored with me, I can’t even begin to imagine the restlessness my family and friends feel in regards to our interactions. (yes, I know I’ve not been returning phone calls or emails, just deal with it for a tad longer).

I don’t like straight roads. I’ve apparently forgotten that I’m not the kind of gal who takes a third-row seat and waves a bystander’s flag. I’ve always jumped head first, but for a zillion unpulsing excuses, I’ve allowed myself to become one of those people who dips her toe instead of simply diving. It’s completely opposite of my instincts and my nature.

You know all those personality tests HR departments and leadership training programs like to throw at people to help determine individual strengths and personality traits? There are lots of them: Myers Briggs, the D.I.S.C., Keirsey. Want to know what my results always indicate? They say I’m crazy—I’m equally creative and analytical with a bent for domination. I used to think it was cool that only one percent of the population shares my traits. I now realize it really means I’m a freak—a creative, analytical freak, but still a freak and now I’m in a six month funk, so I’m a funky freaky. Are you following any of this? If you’re not, that’s OK. Sometimes I just have to write my way out of a box. If you get it, that’s a bonus and I’m sending you a big cyber hug.

I honestly believe we set our own boundaries, create our own boxes and stew in our own juices. I am my own bad dream. I also believe we set our own goals, create our own successes and stew in our own happiness. The scenario is up to me.

When someone in my life begins to ponder on and on and on and on about how to create change in their life, I get terribly frustrated. For God’s sake just do something, anything, but don’t simply stop.

Apparently I need to take my own advice. So listen up funk … I’m going to fake it till I make it and that dark cloud you’ve been hanging over my head … it’s time to let the sun shine.

While journeying across the blogsphere, I often run into people’s truth, nuggets that are contradictory to my own.

Commenting on a post regarding a family who has eight children, six of whom were born from the same pregnancy, a woman wrote, “It’s been proven that nobody puts four embryos back inside during an IVF procedure unless they’re trying to have multiples.”

Her absolute truth and proven hypothesis completely opposes my own experience. We were advised to place four of our embryos into my uterus during IVF, and we were hoping with all the strength of our marriage and the desire of Aphrodite that maybe, just maybe, one would survive.

Commenting on a post I wrote at The Imperfect Parent someone shared, “…My children know where the phrase, “rule of thumb” came from and that they can’t use that in my presence because of its history.”

She is referring to an urban myth of feminism perpetuated by influential activist, Del Martin who wrote in 1976 that ‘the rule of thumb’ originally referred to a British law limiting the maximum thickness of a stick with which it was permissible for a man to beat his wife, but this has been discredited. The law never existed.

These comments and others have left me to contemplate some of my own truths—items that once were clear, but that over time have been exposed and disintegrated. I’ve realized there are many. Here are a few:

• I’ll be your friend forever, no matter what.
• Marriage doesn’t take work, and two people who truly love each other never argue or fight.
• I never had acne as a teenager, so I’ll never get pimples as an adult.
• To become pregnant, or not, is simply a matter of birth control.
• People who incessantly complain about their children don’t really appreciate them.
• Someone who loves me would never intentionally hurt me.
• Being married means you get to have sex all the time.
• Given enough time, justice will prevail.
• If he or she can just hear my reasoning, they’ll understand and think like I do.

I’m wondering on Wednesday—what was your truth?

Last night our son Aaron read an eight-page book to us. Oh yes he did. My little guy has proudly started reading and I know I’m a dork for thinking this is the most exciting thing since Earth was created or humans discovered sex, but I believe this is the beginning of something great.

I’m thrilled at the idea of all the different places he’ll discover through reading; all the different characters, cultures, perspectives and journeys he’ll glimpse in pages and pages of words lovingly strung together by a host of authors. Whoever said power and money make the world go round is wrong. It’s words, baby. All the power is in the words.

“Well, what do you expect,” he said. “You’re not a spring chicken anymore. You’re a middle age woman.”

Obviously, he’s incredibly lucky that I was the one driving and both of my hands were firmly planted on the steering wheel.

“I’m WHAT? Did you just call me middle age? I can’t believe you just called me middle age. I’m not even 40 for god’s sake.”

He just did one of those man grin things and changed the subject. But I’m a woman. Regardless of my age, I don’t let these things go. It bothered me all damn day. Middle age? It’s not possible. I brought the subject up again later in the afternoon. I brought it back up at dinner. I brought it back up as we were getting ready for bed. I nagged him into conceding that even if my life expectancy is somewhere in my late 70s, 36 is still NOT middle age. YES, I nagged him into promising I still look young and that middle age is many, many years away.

But my husband wasn’t the only one throwing blows at my aging ego yesterday. To make things worse, I was perusing Twenty Four at Heart’s blog roll, which she has categorized into nice little bunches of links. There’s a category titled Heavy Hitters and one titled More Favorites. It’s really very civil. Want to know where she put me? She put me in the section titled Midlife Writers. What the hell Twenty Four? Have you been conspiring with my husband? I’d like to send a big fat announcement out…I’M NOT EVEN 40 YET!!! And haven’t you all heard that 40 is the new 30, which means I’ve got a long, long, long time before I hit midlife, right?! Right? RIGHT!

I thought I didn’t have to claim the title of a middle age woman until I hit 50. Have I been living in a fantasy land? Has middle age creped up on me and I didn’t realize it until my husband and another blogger hit me over the head. This is not good people, not good at all.

I’ve decided to take drastic measures. As soon as the salon opens today, I’m calling my favorite stylist to make an appointment for a color consultation. If I ever had any questions about whether or not I’d age gracefully, I am no longer wondering. I’m going to kick and scream the whole way. Botox anyone? Who knows a good plastic surgeon?

“I’ve been terribly lazy,” I said. “Plus, I really need to start going earlier in the morning. If I wait to work out until after I drop Aaron at preschool, it’s 10:30 before I get back into my office, and I feel like half the day is gone.”

“Oh.” she paused. Her tone of voice noticeably changing. “Where’s your office?”

“I have an office in my home.”

“So. You work?”

“Yes,” I hesitate picking up on her new, all-of-a-sudden hostile tone and body language. “I’m self employed and run a marketing communications company,” I explained.

“Oh,” she said again, crossing her arms in self defense and obvious discomfort. “I guess I just thought you were one of us.” And with the dismissal only a stay-at-home mom can wave in the face of another mother, she pivoted on her sneakered-heel and walked away in search of common ground with someone else.

First confused, then angry, I thought about this conversation for days. After my anger faded I started to wonder if this woman had difficult experiences in the past with other women. Had she been the victim of a verbal assault for making the decision to stay at home with her child rather than pursue a career? Maybe her obvious change-of-heart for me had more to do with her own experiences than with my choices. I’ll probably never know why she turned away so abruptly, but the interaction brought a multitude of questions to my mind about what I expect from other women, professionally and personally.

Do we expect women to help each other in the workplace differently than we expect men, or differently than men expect from each other? Do we expect mentoring and fellowship based on shared gender?

Add motherhood to the female-to-female equation and expectations seem even more complicated. Motherhood adds another dimension to the experiences women share, but nothing seems to bring on a cat fight faster than a disagreement about how to mother. There is absolutely nobody who can cut a mother down like another mother, and we see it happen all the time across the blogsphere, in the media, in popular culture and in our daily lives.

Much has been written about The Mommy Wars, including a book of the same title by Leslie Morgan Steiner, which is still on my reading list. The thesis of the general argument has been that women who work outside the home and women who choose to stay at home with their children routinely do psychological battle. Each feeling slighted by the other.

We talk about “girl power,” unite around common causes and hold each other up in times of crisis, sometimes, but do women only empower each other when we share the same desires, or philosophies, or politics, or religion, or what ever? It often seems that the idea of women standing on the shoulders of women is a fallacy. Just because we have the same female anatomy doesn’t mean we owe each other anything, or do our shared experiences, unique to the female journey, mean we do in fact owe each other something, and if so what?

I’m wondering on Wednesday—what do you expect from women?

If you see this avator, run.

Not only is she participating, she likes to contradict my childhood memories, call me on the carpet in her various comments here, and then she dials the phone and laughs when I answer. I’ve had to start monitoring my caller ID. Seriously, people. This is getting dangerous. The blog stalking all started a few weeks ago when I mentioned how amazing her apple pie is, and Goodfather suggested we raffle it. Yea, I blame it all on him. Goodfather, DON’T encourage her.

Now that she’s become a regular reader and she’s having too much fun (at my expense), she’s also become a Shout advocate and is making other people read too. Like everybody else, there are posts she likes and posts she doesn’t. Sometimes what I write makes her cry, and other times I make her laugh. She got such a little chuckle out of a post last week about my son being a “city boy” and not knowing that meat doesn’t really come from the grocery store, she printed it out and passed it around.

After sharing with various people, she decided the post was not simply a funny little tid bit—oh no, not my mother. She decided to use it as a weapon to expose a poor, unsuspecting soul and embarrass him.

Her acupuncturist is apparently from New York, or is it New Jersey? I forget. The point is that he’s not from my hometown in rural Vermont (he’s what the locals refer to as a turkey). This guy, the man my father affectionately calls her prick doctor, had no idea that one of his patients was intent on exposing his city boy niativity.

Their most recent appointment together went something like this…

Mom hands him the print out of my blog post.

He reads it, laughs, and then asks with serious medical concern, “Do chickens really dance when you cut their heads off?”Bingo, Mom thinks, The turkey is exposed. Trying not to roll her eyes and laugh at him for his obvious lack of insight, “Well of course. Where do you think the saying comes from, ‘running around like a chicken with your head cut off’?”

The city boy prick doctor has now become the unsuspecting giblet of a new family joke. His name is Lou, and Mom said she gave him this blog address. If he happens to be reading, I’d like to take this opportunity to send out a great big welcome and a plea for help.

Dear Lou,

Thanks so much for stopping by. Since you’re here, it seems like an appropriate time to beg a tiny favor of you. I need your help and I don’t think what I’m about to ask is unethical or unscrupulous. If it is, don’t worry. I’m willing to pay you.

The next time Mom asks you to help her out with a little prick or two, instead of treating her knee can you please focus on strengthening her memory? I’m certain that with all those little needles, there must be a magic spot, or seven, where when placed strategically you can create miracles. With a little help from you, we can probably get my mom to remember I’m actually 36-years-old. You see, Lou, Mom and I only get a limited amount of time together annually, and I’d really like to let her out of the house when she’s visiting, but there’s a problem. She thinks I’m still five and whenever we go out in public she still uses her loud mommy voice to call across a theater…or a store…or a restaurant…”Tricia, do you have to go potty?”

Did I mention I’m willing to pay?