Brilliant … But Bouncy

All I Wanted Was The Truth.

I lived with a liar for a year. Deep-down, Gregg was a good guy. He wanted to do what was right, but he was so insecure that he believed the truth was simply insufficient.

So Gregg lied. He lied about money, his relationships, his family and his job. For several weeks, he went out to “work.” He came home filthy dirty after eight hours – but he didn’t actually have a job! Gregg lied because he was afraid of what I would think about him if he told me the truth.

But all I wanted was the truth. I can deal with human error. But I can’t live with someone who is so dishonest that he spews lies at me when he’s only trying to protect himself.

I begged him for the truth, but I always had to figure out the truth on my own. And I’m doing the same thing now.

In the past month, I’ve watched two debates and two interviews with Donald Trump. And what I repeatedly heard were the same kinds of generalizations that I heard from Gregg more than 30 years ago.

What bothered me most is that I made the connection – that Trump is lying, just like Gregg, so that people will think more highly of him. I don’t want to feel sorry for Trump – and it’s hard not to, given that he’s simply afraid of the truth. He’s like a toddler covered in chocolate.

But what is completely beyond my comprehension is that other people don’t hear “lies” and “fabrications.” They hear “strength.”

But how does anyone surmise “strength” out of such weakness? Do you have to literally live with a pathological liar to be able to identify one?

Why can’t other people see that Trump fabricates “greatness” by using specific phrases meant to pacify? Why don’t they notice these kinds of generalized, vague statements?

• “People are saying…”
• “The fact is…”
• “Nobody really knows…”
• “It’s very important…”
• “We’ve done great things…”
• “I’m looking into that…”
• “We’ll see what happens…”
• “It’s just not true…”
• “Everybody knows it…”
• “It’s so ridiculous…”
• “And I’ll tell you what else…”

To me, it’s like asking a murderer: “Did you kill this person?”

And the murderer says, “People say I killed this person. And it’s very important, but nobody knows everything. You don’t know everything, and I can prove it. People are saying these things but it’s so ridiculous. They say things are happening all the time, and we’ve done great things. The fact is, this is what matters. And everybody knows it.”

I may have witnessed the murder with my own eyes, but after a liar starts pontificating, I am supposed to believe that what I saw was the product of my imagination.

After listening to Trump – or Gregg – I started to doubt my own sanity. I started to believe that I was the one with the problem – and only he could save me.

Because that’s what he wanted me to think.

After I realized that every word out of Gregg’s mouth was either entirely imagined or only partially true, I left him. I needed to be able to trust my partner.

I just don’t understand why so many millions of Americans – especially in the middle of a worldwide pandemic – can still trust a man who has just spent four years trying to make himself look better.

I don’t think it’s a matter of politics. I think it’s a matter of humanity.

God Bless You!

Lately in the mornings, I wake up and think: nope. No reason to get out of bed again today. Thank God for Loki, or I could literally stay in bed all day.

Earlier this week, I had my blood drawn and I was nearly giddy. Something to do! Of course, this was not a fun experience, and I have one scraped arm and one bruised arm to show for it – even three days later. But it did give me a reason to set an alarm!

On my way home from the blood draw, I saw a homeless man on the corner. He’s probably not thrilled with his days, either, but I refuse to give money to homeless people. I don’t want to support their drug habits. However, I always carry snacks in the car, and I see no reason not to share snacks.

I reached into my snack bag and found a bag of Fritos. The kids don’t really like Fritos, so I rolled down my window and held them out to the man. He hurried over to the window as the light was changing and traffic was starting to move.

“Thank you so much!” he said, his grin showing me his many missing teeth. “God bless you!”

“You’re welcome!” I hollered back. “Have a nice day!” And then I pressed down on the gas pedal and made my left turn.

As I pulled away, it hit me: I wasn’t wearing my mask.

Since I was alone in my car, and wasn’t planning on being near any people, I had taken off my mask. And the homeless guy sure wasn’t wearing a mask.

My first thought, quite honestly, was: What if I infected him? He’s not likely to have any resources for health care, and he’s very likely to have underlying conditions.

I tried to be rational about it.

Going out as little and as infrequently as I do, even with Dylan and Bill holding jobs outside the house, it’s highly unlikely that I’ve contracted coronavirus. And it’s equally unlikely that I’ve given it to the homeless man by providing him with Fritos.

But this is what my life has come to: I can’t even share a bag of Fritos with a man who has no food – at least, not without worrying. That six-second exchange worried me for the whole ride home.

And then I thought: REALLY?!? If THIS is how you’re going to give/get coronavirus, then so be it!

If being kind is my downfall – especially such a brief, minor kindness – then that’s just fine with me.

Honestly. This is not something I am going to change.

But maybe next time, at least, I’ll remember to put on a mask before opening my window.

I Miss Her.

If I had it to do over again, there are a few things I’d do differently with my first dog.

First of all, I would not spend the first five years of my new dog’s life whining that she wasn’t the right breed. I compromised with my family – something I rarely do – and got a small dog (who actually turned out to be medium-sized). I wanted a big dog my whole life, and I didn’t get one.

I also got a cava-chon, not a doodle. My first dog wasn’t a poodle mix (doodle) and I really wanted a doodle. I complained endlessly. I have a doodle now, and I can say in all honesty: I was an idiot. It didn’t matter that her hair wasn’t curly; she was the best dog in the world.

Second, I would feed my dog anything she wanted. It wouldn’t matter if she vomited up everything, which she did, and refused to eat her dry food, which she also did. I would pay the $2.25 per can for the chicken she liked, and I would give it to her every day for her whole life. And if she stopped liking that chicken, I would buy her whatever else she liked, no matter the cost.

Third, I would take her for walks all the time. I would take her early in the morning and late at night, and I would take her in the rain and snow. She loved walks, but I only took her for a few short walks a week. Instead, I sat at the computer with her under my feet, and complained that she was in my way when I moved my chair.

What I wouldn’t give to have her under my feet now.

Finally, I would take more videos of her – just her – so that when she left me, I would be able to look back and watch. She’s in 10 years worth of videos – waddling toward the camera, or a dot in the distance – but she was rarely the focal point.

My videos of her running through the fields, for example, are rare. I have no videos of her bringing me a toy during family game time. I have no videos of her running to get her stick when we came home from the store. I have no videos of her sitting quietly on a chair, tail thumping as I approached.

I don’t have videos of her just being her. And now that she’s gone, still photos just aren’t enough. I miss her. I want to be with her, and she’s just not here. When no one’s around, I still cry. A lot.

Sometimes I think it’s unfair that I treat my new dog so much better than I treated my first dog. He has a completely different personality; he doesn’t try so hard to please me. He gets everything he wants and needs – everything she wanted and needed – by sheer luck of being our second dog. He didn’t really earn it.

But I’m not going to make the same mistakes with him. I’m not going to blame him for not being her. And I’m going to treat him the way I should have always treated her, whether he deserves it or not.

And I’m going to take videos of his whole life, even if it seems boring. Because someday, I will treasure those videos. And I will watch them and cry – and laugh – and love them, the same way I do now with the tiny handful of videos I have of Xena.

I just wish I had more of her.

I Am Going to Grow Up.

So I did it. I put myself out there. I took what I was thinking, threw it onto paper (er, the computer), and even threw in an old poem that was banging around in my head.

“Write what you want to write,” they all said. So I did.

I tossed aside the whole parenting thing for a minute, and I was just ME. Then I put it up on my blog for the whole world to see.

One person liked my blog link on Facebook. (Thanks, Glenn.)

Three days went by, and someone said they liked my poem. Which was incredibly generous, I think. (Thanks, Chris.)

My blog readership is very low, and especially low since I’ve been inconsistent in the timing of my posts for the past several months. Truly, I wasn’t expecting people to emerge from the woodwork saying, “Wow, Kirsten, I like this!”

But the lack of comments is disheartening. I am the type of person who believes that no one likes me – until proven otherwise. I probably get that from my ridiculously supportive parents, who have encouraged me to write from the age of 8, and who have positively commented on every single blog post I’ve written for more than three years.

Until the last one.

After the last one, there were only crickets. (Thanks, Mom and Dad.)

But instead of being upset with my parents – who probably never gave it a second thought and may not have even read the blog post – I am going to GROW UP. I am going to hold my head high and say, “Well, I wrote for me, which is all I ever wanted to do.”

And then I am going to keep writing anyway because I’m not writing for positive reinforcement. I am not writing for my parents. I am not writing for anyone who actually read this post the whole way through. I’m writing because it helps me to figure out me.

Truthfully, this is rather dull subject matter for anyone except me. But I’m running with it anyway. And for those of you who really only wanted to hear about my poor, now-ignored children and my revelations about parenting, I would like to apologize.

I have other things to say, and my kids are practically grown. My past is going to leak in, because it’s stuck in my head permanently. And it helps me to remember that there are more important things in this world than chasing what I want, or getting what I want right now.

So I will keep writing. And I will stop looking for validation. I hope people will read this anyway, but I’m okay if no one does.

Thanks for listening.

A Child Ran From Me Today.

When I was younger, I went in search of myself in a big way. I’d been a quiet, fearful child with a sensitive heart – and I determined that being such a child was not going to help me in life. I rebelled in a big way, and left my happy home to live a life that was – emotionally and spiritually – as far from my parents’ way of life as I could be.

The only thing I’d ever been sure about, even then, is that I wanted to have kids and dogs. Nothing else much mattered to me (and honestly, I haven’t changed that much). Dogs are my happy place. And I’ve always deeply loved children. In fact, it’s why I now teach.

But one day, while living my rebel life, I walked on a small, sandy beach in my leather boots and torn blue jeans. There, I saw a little girl, maybe five or six years old. Forgetting my own appearance, my inner self reappeared, and I smiled at her.

The child’s eyes grew wide with horror and she started to cry, running back to her family on the sandy bank. And then I remembered: I’m no longer the person I was raised to be.

I had not only changed my lifestyle; I’d changed who I was.

I never forgot that little girl, looking up at the creature I’d become. And today, 30+ years later, I remembered, word for word, a poem I wrote that has been lurking in the back of my brain about that very incident.

It’s not my best writing, but it lives in my head, reminding me that once, long ago, I fought my inner self with such ferocity that even small children couldn’t see through the facade. It’s a painful memory – and one I hope I never lose.

“A child ran from me today,”

I whispered to him as we lay

making love in rows of vegetables somewhere.

“Why?” he whispered, kissing me,

but I just shrugged because he

ran his fingers down through my long hair.

And as we rode out in the sun,

I thought I felt that child run

back in the corner of my mind.

A sign said, “Grapeville, just one mile!”

(I scared that child with my smile.)

And then I turned away from all the signs.

KLMH circa 1987

I’m Not Going to Contribute to the Problem.

I keep thinking about March – the day the world started shutting down. I remember telling my kids: “If we all stay indoors and don’t go anywhere for awhile, the virus will die because it won’t have anywhere to go.”

Science supported this, of course, but that didn’t matter. The “world” shut down, except… the hospitals stayed open. Firefighters, police officers and garbage men continued to work. Gas stations and auto repair shops stayed open. Banks. Grocery stores. And lots, lots more were “essential.”

So of course, people went out. The world never actually shut down, because people were too busy taking care of people.

And the virus continued to spread. At first, we bemoaned the losses of great doctors and nurses who were trying to heal the sick. I remember watching a video of a doctor in the spring, with the doctor saying, “Hand to mouth, hand to mouth.” He was demonstrating how you get COVID, while assuring us that we could stay healthy by staying clean.

That doctor was on national TV. Then he disappeared, like viral sensations often do. Theories of how to stay safe abounded, vanished, started anew.

More than six months later, the country is “open for business as usual” in many places. Where I live, it is not. Our county is still on the uptick with viral counts and, like many places, we plan to stay closed until we have the illusion of control again.

But every day, since I am doing nothing else, I read the news. There is a great divide between people. There are those who are still in their homes – like me – carrying a mask in my pocket even while I walk the dog in solace. And then there are people who talk about “not being afraid,” who seemingly don’t care if they get – or transmit – the virus. The most frightening photos are the White House photos from September 26. But politics doesn’t determine common sense, does it?

Like everyone else, I want it to be over. I want to go back to my life, my job, my friends. I want to find a way to exist – for my family to exist – outside of this bubble. But I’m not going to contribute to the problem while I’m waiting for a vaccine.

I believe with every ounce of my being that there will be a vaccine, and that it will be available by summer of next year. It’s going to be a very long, agonizing wait to see if I’m right. But one day at a time, I am willing to wait, to stay masked, to stay away from people, to do the right thing.

It’s working in other countries. Yes – there’s virus everywhere. But the numbers – the sheer numbers – are staggering. Spain, Italy, Germany, France, and the U.K. combined have only 152, 271 deaths as of today. We have almost 210,000.

Lest we think it’s a population thing, Brazil – which is struggling mightily – has 4.9 million cases and it’s still nowhere near our 7.4 million. And Brazil didn’t even report cases until May – more than two months after we found the virus here. We had 35,500 cases JUST YESTERDAY! Brazil? They had less than 8,500 yesterday.

On this side of the pond, Canada swiftly shut its borders, which proved to be an act of brilliance. Canada – the entire country – has 2,000 fewer cases of coronavirus than our state of Pennsylvania.

There are three times as many people living in Canada. If that doesn’t say something about being spread out and staying away from people, I don’t know what does.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why so many people refuse to just do what is needed to get us out of this mess.

I Am Not ONLY A Parent.

I am a parent. It is my life, it is my greatest joy, and it is all I ever wanted to be. I didn’t know this until I became a parent – but I won’t apologize for changing my entire perspective on the universe when I transferred from “Kirsten” to “Mom.”

Some people don’t understand why I “changed” when my kids were born. My priorities shifted to: Kids First; Everything Else Second. Some people didn’t get it.

Others – who knew me as a self-absorbed, immature adult – were grateful for my new priorities. Regardless, the change was for the better. I am a better person because I am a parent.

But this pandemic has brought into focus one very clear fact: I am not only a parent. Social isolation has forced a kind of early “empty nest” feeling. After six months of feeling useless, I’ve recognized that I am still a human being. I have a whole personal history of my own. I have opinions and thoughts and beliefs about things other than parenting.

Lately, as I’ve contemplated writing my next blog post, I keep hitting a wall. This wall has giant, neon-spray-painted lettering on it that says: YOU NEED TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.

I have been hesitating to say anything for fear of I might start writing about myself and never look back.

Then … what about Shane? I feel like Shane is getting the short end of the stick, because he’s still a junior in high school and I haven’t talked much about him. He does have issues, of course, but he’s really taking care of himself. The kid has OCD, survived a vision processing disorder, has trouble with tests, takes things too literally and is finally looking at colleges. So I feel bad, not having written a sufficient amount about Shane.

I am sure Dylan won’t mind if I don’t write about him. (By the way, he got a new job – one that actually requires training, in a place where they actually care about their employees.)

I can still write about parenting, of course, as it affects me. And it will – always and forever – affect me.

I also wonder if I continue to write, and I write about things not related to my kids, will people still want to read it? Who cares about my opinions and beliefs? Why would anyone bother?

And how far down the rabbit hole should I go? What if I start writing about my personal history – one that includes more than a decade of delinquency – and it somehow impacts my children? I don’t want their friends talking about “your mama” any more than they already do.

And… Should I change the website address? If I write about myself, nothing in the world will make me rise to the level of either “brilliant” or “bouncy.” I am a more of a somewhat-bright, couch-potato sort.

I don’t know exactly how to proceed – or even if I should proceed. I like to write. I like to express my feelings. I don’t like that my feelings sometimes upset other people, but I can’t actually control that.

Even though most people on this earth don’t know this blog exists, it means something to me. So … do I continue? Do I keep writing only about parenting? Or do I forget about the whole blog and just keep my thoughts to myself? Or do I write about the pandemic, the issues, my feelings, my personal history, or … whatever I want to write?

Feel free to comment below or email me directly at brilliantbutbouncy@verizon.net.

I thank you, in advance, for any input.