Money, Money, Money...Money

"Practicing gratitude, we feel rich, full, enough. For those of us with a tendency toward greed, practicing gratitude can be like eating before you go grocery shopping."--Laura Jomon Martin

My older friend Linda loves anything new--or at least, new to her. If someone is getting rid of, say, a glass coffee table or a set of kitchen chairs, she can't pass it up. Her neighbor sells her all kinds of things--frog stuffed animals, a used television even though she has two TVs and four rooms, dining room chairs with tall backs that loom like gargoyles over her tiny kitchen table. Every week that I visit her she has some new acquisition to show me. She has a back-up cell phone even though she hardly ever leaves the house, a motorized wheelchair that sits untouched up against the wall, and an extra bed for those overnight visitors that have yet to materialize. When she told me yesterday that she was thinking about replacing her two perfectly good easy chairs with a couch that her neighbor was giving away, it was all I could do not to call her on her preoccupation with material things.

But I didn't have to say a word. "Some people have jobs to think about." She said, "All I have to think about all day is my furniture and things."

If I were to be honest with myself, I would have to say that the reason that Linda's chronic discontent with her stuff bothers me is because it's a condition that I also share. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about shopping: collecting coupons, making lists of books and clothes I want to buy, subscribing to shopping sites offering deep discounts. When I'm in shopping mode it's like I'm in a fog and nothing else exists but finding that next great deal. It's the very opposite of mindfulness. Yes, I may have a brief moment of clarity when I think of my household budget or the stuff that I already bought the day before, and sometimes that stops me in my tracks. Other times I live in denial, believing (right or wrong) that I deserve to buy myself something nice and that I can afford it.

This is a tough thing for me to admit because I don't want to believe that A. I'm acquisitive, even greedy at times B. I'm living an aspirational life that often centers around spending money. It was one thing when I was a single girl living in Hoboken and my bank account bore only my name. Now that I'm married, my actions affect more than one person.

That's when I pledge to go on a starvation diet. I won't buy anything but groceries for two months! I will only window-shop and I'll unsubscribe from Shop it To Me. I'll be a more mindful shopper and will only buy what I need. But then I'm faced with that gaping void again. What to do to replace that shopping high? Sweets? No, that's just as bad a habit. Alcohol? Ditto. Trashy celebrity gossip? Reality TV? No and no!

So I'm working on a list of things to do that are fun and free (or at least cheap). This is what I have so far:

Write down gratitudes
Listen to CDs I haven't played in years
Try new recipes
Take pictures when I see something unusual or compelling
Collage using old photographs, stamps, wrapping paper, pages from magazines, etc.
Take a long walk with the puppy, preferably leading to somewhere I haven't been
Reduce my book backlog by reading what I already own
Write an email to a friend or just pick up the phone
Send a pretty card to someone who will appreciate receiving it (Grandma, my Swedish cousins, etc.)
Read and write poetry. Remember how much you love poetry?
Work on that pile of hand washables. Not exactly fun, but you might find that cleaning a sweater you haven't worn in a year is almost like wearing something new.
Make a plan to write more, and then do it!
Go to the gym (someone I know who works in reception at a gym told me they have a thick binder of members who signed up at the gym but haven't checked in in months. Yet they continue to pay for membership. Gyms love these people.)
Pay the cats some attention. Maybe then they'll hate the dog less.

More suggestions are always welcome.

Present moments you'd rather skip

"To train in staying open and curious--to train in dissolving the barriers that we erect between ourselves and the world--is the best use of our human lives."--Pema Chodron

"Ordinary life might seem hassled, repetitive, and boring. When you are impatient, resentful, or uninterested in daily life, you will be blind to the the potential for living cheerfully and creatively."--Andy Karr and Michael Wood, from their essay "Mindfulness, Photography, and Living an Artistic Life"

How do you remain present, drinking in the moment with all your senses, if what you're experiencing is something you'd rather escape?

I was in the Hynes Convention Center T station last night when this question popped up. I was trying to read my copy of The Mindfulness Revolution but I kept looking up waiting for a train that wasn't coming. The station was packed with mostly college students from Berklee, with their bass guitar cases, ears plugged up with the sounds of their latest downloads. I recently made a conscious decision not to use headphones in public because I didn't like the way I was purposely cutting myself off from the world. So now I only use them when I'm at the gym, where I think it's OK to zone out to classic rock (which now means bands like Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Live, the stuff we were listening to in college. So what does that make Led Zeppelin and The Doors? Classical rock?)

So there was some breakdown on the Green Line and trains were running behind schedule. Nothing newsworthy there. But at that moment I wanted to be anywhere but standing in that station. It's been a while since I've had a vacation. I need to escape Brookline for a while--at least for a week. I'm tired of the snow and sleet and piles of dog sh*t everywhere because people seem to think the poo will melt along with the snow, so they might as well leave it there. If I have to climb a curbside mountain of snow in high-heeled boots, sometimes even sinking and getting stuck, to scoop up Carmelita's mess into a little pink baggie, and then carry that baggy swinging in my right hand like a noxious evening bag for the rest of the walk, so should every other dog owner. Maybe I'll write an Op-Ed for The Brookline Tab about that. When exactly did I turn into an 80-year old man?

T.S. Eliot was wrong--March, not April, is the cruelest month. Unless you're Irish there really isn't anything to celebrate, and the weather hasn't turned yet, so even when it's the first day of spring it doesn't feel any different from the last day of winter. March is 31 days of blah, unless you have Spring Break and plans to go to Daytona, or better yet, you have tickets to South America where you're going to help build houses or something.

The usual escapes--clothes shopping, red wine, chocolate, buying books to add to the Jenga-like pile on my bedside table--none of these things are working to snap me out of my funk. So if I can't find enjoyment in my usual escapes and I don't want to live in the present moment, then where is there to go? I guess acceptance of what is. Practicing gratitude. Not judging your circumstances as either good or bad. Letting yourself be bored or tired or cranky and not actively trying to change it. If you wait long enough, moods naturally shift.

So when I'm sandwiched between a college boy in a hoodie who hasn't showered since Friday night's kegger and an older woman in a massive puffy jacket who keeps sighing when people inevitably bump into her, I accept that this is life and yes it's sometimes irritating and inconvenient, boring and mediocre. There's no real alternative so you might as well just go with it.

That's what I imagine someone more mature than me--who doesn't expect life to be a thrill-a-minute-- might say.

A poem that struck me

Water

What is the vitality and necessity
of clean water?
Ask the man who is ill, who is lifting
his lips to the cup.

Ask the forest.

--From Evidence: Poems by Mary Oliver

We're all heroes and jerks

"Compassion brings us back to dealing with the world as the only way. We have to work with people. We have to work with our fathers, our mothers, our sisters and brothers, our neighbors, and our friends. We have to do that because the people with whom we are associated in our lives provide the only situations that drive us to the spiritual search. Without those people, we would not be able to look into such possibilities at all. They provide irritations, negativities, and demands. They provide us with everything.
"So, after all, our spiritual journey is not such a romantic thing at all. It is connected with our ordinary, sometimes irritating, everyday life."--Chogyam Trunga, from Work, Sex, Money: Real Life on the Path of Mindfulness

I surprised myself the other day when I was walking home from volunteering. I was in a perfectly good mood, which is usually the case after I see Linda, the older, disabled woman I visit once a week. Though on paper we don't have a lot in common--she doesn't like reading, watching movies, or cooking, for example, and I am not a fan of John Denver or Pillow Pets--we still find plenty to talk about and there's hardly a moment of silence when we get together.

Going to see Linda makes me feel good--I come away knowing that I brought her some companionship (and snacks!) and she got me out of my own head, which is usually a bad place to linger.

And let's face it--there's also that little glow of the do-gooder that we all experience when we volunteer or commit some random act of kindness. They say there are no unselfish acts, that in some way everything we do has some self-serving dimension. But who wants to acknowledge that when we're busy congratulating ourselves?

So this kind, caring, and compassionate woman (me, after volunteering) is crossing the street a few blocks from my house when a car drives across the pedestrian lane without stopping to let me cross, even though I'm in the middle of the road! In response, I stick my middle finger way up in the air and scowl at the driver through their driver's side window. I surprise myself with this jolt of anger over such a minor infraction. But in my head I'm thinking, does that person have so much disrespect for me that they risk running me over just to avoid the inconvenience of stopping? What's wrong with people today?

About five minutes later, I'm feeling shame mixed with fading anger. I know I overreacted, and the image I have of myself is not pretty.

The same thing happens when I'm home and my downstairs neighbors--Boston University students--have their stereo blasting dance music. Here I am trying to watch a sensitive, low-budget documentary about coffee production in Columbia or some place, and these jerks are making my floor shake like there's a Jersey Shore nightclub below me. I start to seethe and clench my teeth, wondering how they can be so completely witless and still be in college. Various neighbors (not just us) have asked them to turn it down (usually on a Sunday night at midnight) and yet it happens again the next night and the next. They are so disrespectful! Don't they know that I prefer 70's soul and disco?

It's easy to find fault with the world around you--and especially with the people around you. It's hard to consider their point of view. Maybe the person in the car who didn't stop for me was distracted with thoughts about work or his girlfriend. And the college guys--how many times in your early twenties did YOU blast music in your apartment without thought to your older neighbors who might have preferred classical over the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack?

I live right outside the city, in an apartment building that's close to another apartment building. The guy on the roof chipping ice and dumping it in the alley is not intentionally trying to flood our basement--he's probably not conscious of that possibility. He's just trying to stop the flooding in his own apartment. Even when people are intentionally rude or thoughtless doesn't mean they're incapable of also being a nice person.

Yesterday, I got a box of artisan chocolates in the mail from one of my authors, along with a card thanking me for helping to promote her essay collection. It absolutely made my day, this small act of kindness. I hadn't known she felt that way about my work. I started thinking about how I encounter people doing kind things almost as often as people doing rotten things. It does balance out in the end.

And that kind, caring, compassionate woman trying to cross the street? She's no saint. When Linda indirectly asked me to take her to a podiatry appointment early Monday morning I hesitated and made excuses--even told her to reschedule the appointment so someone else could take her. Not that I wasn't aware that it would be the right thing to do. I wanted to sleep in.

Mindless Humans

"Mindfulness benefits from the ability to concentrate attention but is not the same as concentration. It is a quality that human beings already have, but they have usually not been advised that they have it, that it is valuable, or that it can be cultivated. Mindfulness is the awareness that is not thinking but is aware of thinking, as well as each of the other ways we experience the sensory world; that is, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling through the body. Mindfulness is nonjudgmental and openhearted (friendly and inviting of whatever arises in awareness). It is cultivated by paying attention purposefully, deeply, and without judgment to whatever arises in the present moment, either inside or outside of us. By intentionally practicing mindfulness, deliberately paying more careful moment-to-moment attention, individuals can live more fully and less on "automatic pilot," thus being more present in their own lives."--Jeff Brantley, from his essay Mindfulness FAQ in the essay anthology The Mindfulness Revolution:Leading Psychologists, Scientists, Artists, and Meditation Teachers on the Power of Mindfulness in Daily Life, edited by Barry Boyce and the editors of the Shambhala Sun

It's hard to pay attention. I took the puppy out for a walk and figured I'd also pick up my dry cleaning since I was going out and coming back anyway. Carmelita wanted to sniff around at the yellow snow in front of our apartment building. Apparently, dog urine and other smelly substances are like a message board between dogs. Carmelita was just trying to get to know her neighbors. But I was already running late for work and nudged her to move on. Dogs can be as stubborn as cats, I've discovered. She just sat there and refused to move, probably sensing that I was too soft-hearted to pull too hard on the leash. Finally she finished reading the urine and followed behind me, then sprinted ahead of me. The sidewalks were covered in slush and ice and I'm surprised I didn't break a few vital leg bones.

We were halfway to the dry cleaner when she stopped again to watch the recycling truck pick up the bright blue containers filled with mixed plastic and paper. It must have sounded formidable to her--this metal monster creaking and screeching as it stopped in front of house after house. Or maybe she was just captivated by the smell of soggy milk cartons and cat food cans and their remnants of meat. Then Carmelita wanted to know what the girl walking toward us smelled like, and if she was open to being jumped on and then licked many, many times in the face. The girl looked like she was heading to class, and not wanting to break the invisible barrier between us, I swung Carmelita way to the right of her.

Then there were the birds. Had she even heard birds before? Their sounds captivated her; she looked all around her for what was making that sound she didn't recognize. The smells, sounds, tastes (there always seems to be something delectable in a dirty puddle)--she was taking it all in. Meanwhile I kept hurrying her on, feeling guilty but wanting my clean and nicely-pressed clothes. How could I be so selfish that I'd rush her when she was so engaged in nature?

No time for that. I picked her up and carried her away.

It's been a learning experience living with a puppy. They say that married couples can bring out both the best and worst in each other. Well, so can dog ownership. Having to take care of a puppy and give her our full attention has been harder than I anticipated, no matter how cute she is when she wrestles with her stuffed hedgehog toy, giving it the death grip and shaking it while making escalating "grrr" sounds, like Frankenstein when he gets increasingly angry about something. We have discovered how undisciplined we can be and how we both itch at the thought of a set schedule. We're both easily distracted and have always had to work hard to show up on time. But a set schedule is what is needed. That, and lots of play time and walk time--time that we didn't think we had enough of even before we brought the puppy home.

But when I do let myself relax and enjoy a walk around the block at night or a long game of tug-of-war with the chewed-up-meat-twist, the automatic pilot I'm on goes out, and I'm back to actually being engaged in the world. I'm not missing it all by walking too fast to some destination or being in such a thick cloud of thoughts that I don't notice my surroundings because I'm busy worrying over something abstract. Carmelita doesn't know that she's mindful. But I do. And I can actually choose to be more mindful.

Mike bought me a pink oval sticker with a drawing of a dog with a halo over his head. It says "Dog is good." Yes.

On notice

"Stand tall. Take a few moments to experience the sensation of simply standing well. Stand barefoot with your feet shoulder-width apart, stomach muscles engaged, and the rest of your body relaxed. Spread your toes widely to feel a sense of connection with the earth. Visualize roots growing downward from your feet. At the same time, imagine there's a fine thread pulling you upward from the crown of your head. Enjoy these opposing but complementary feelings: deep stability and graceful lightness."--Barbara Ann Kipfer, from 1,001 Ways to Live in the Moment

"Dogs live in the moment," Mike observed, as our puppy Carmelita lay on her back, one hind leg stretched toward him, her eyes rolled back, her front paws extended in the air. "Look at her, she's so relaxed."

Lucky her.

I spent this holiday weekend fretting about my to-do list. I had tried setting reasonable goals for myself by just writing down a couple of things each day in a Mini Goals Notepad. I had done this successfully at work when I knew I was leaving for vacation, and it had helped me focus and get some stuff done that I had been putting off for weeks.

But at home I couldn't stop at two to-dos. I wrote down ten things. Some were as simple as "go buy the Sunday paper" which Mike regarded as more of a reward than a task. Others were "send out submissions to magazines" which I could have spent all three days doing. I did go to the gym. Once. Then I went home and ate sponge cake with strawberries and sugar, tortilla chips, a burrito,and drank two IPAs, which basically canceled out the hour on the elliptical.

In between I was defiant (defying whom? The to-do list? The tssking voice in my head?), doing tasks not on the list. I cleared my desk of junk mail. I filled in an offer card for a free issue of More magazine, then ripped it up after considering the articles I'd be reading: "The Reinvention Coach is in!", "Does This Make Her Look Old?" and "500 Years of Cougar History!" Ugh. I could always read my mother's back issues the next time I'm in New Jersey.

What I didn't do very much of was stay focused. I started wondering if I had ADD. I thought about the point of this blog, and glanced at my shelf of mindfulness books. Then I thought about something a personal trainer had said to me at the gym.

"Did you know you lock your knees when you stand," she asked me. I recently re-joined Healthworks and was using one of my two free personal training sessions that comes with a new membership.

"Try just standing," she said, so I got up, facing her, and felt my legs tense and my knees lock into place like the lid of a Tupperware container snapping shut. This was how I always stood. I never thought about it. Sometimes I'm guilty of the tall girl syndrome of slouching, but I didn't think there was anything wrong with the position of my knees.

"Try softening your knees," the personal trainer, Ann, advised. "it will work different muscles in your legs that you've been neglecting. Otherwise you're at risk for arthritis and other joint problems later in life."

Great. Something else I've been neglecting--like answering emails from friends and hand washing that pile of delicate sweaters I haven't been able to wear in a year. Should I be adding "soften knees when standing to avoid early-onset arthritis" to the to-do list?

Since meeting with Ann I've had moments of mindfulness about my stance and have softened my knees. In line at Trader Joe's. Waiting for the "T." It's hard to change something that you automatically do. It's like a mouth breather suddenly breathing through their nose (I've never been able to do that, no matter how cottony my tongue tastes in the morning.)

What do they always say in meditation (#21 on my to-do list: meditate more)? Return to the breath. Return to softening your knees. Return to going to the gym. Return to writing that sentence. Return to the present moment.

And again.

Going over to the dog side

"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face."--Ben Williams

I once had a dog named Muffin. He was a mutt we adopted from the ASPCA and my first real pet (tadpoles and lizards don't count.) My dad built a wood doghouse for him, with a sign bearing his name and a little red heart. There's a picture of me when I was around 7-8 years old, huddled in a blue cardigan sweater in the Autumn chill, my arms wrapped around Muffin as he sits in his new little house.

I'd like to say that Muffin and I became best buddies, that he slept at the end of my bed every night, that I paraded him around the neighborhood with me, and that he leapt with excitement every time I got home from school or dance lessons. Actually, my parents ended up bearing the burden of training him, cleaning up after him, taking him for walks, and feeding him. I was a terrible pet owner--what I really wanted was an animated stuffed animal or a cartoon dog like Snoopy, who never needed a pooper scooper and who could entertain himself with WWI stories and the Red Baron when I wasn't around. I wasn't prepared for this living, breathing, barking, salivating, needy dog. Meanwhile, my parents struggled to train him, but not knowing much about dogs, they ended up being dragged through the streets at the end of Muffin's leash and they had to keep him outside on a long lead because they hadn't fully house-broken him.

Our family ended up giving Muffin away after losing a silly lawsuit having to do with Muffin's incessant barking at night and a neighbor's wife who complained. The sad thing is, I didn't even notice Muffin was gone for at least a day, maybe two. When I finally realized that he was missing, I cried to my mother, who reminded me of my delayed realization of the loss and who assured me he had gone to a loving family who "lived on a farm" (which even to this day they swear is the truth). My father felt bad for me, though, and gave me a Cookie Monster alarm clock as a consolation prize. I remember being more disappointed that my Dad didn't realize that I had long outgrown Sesame Street characters than I was about losing the family dog. I was secretly relieved to have our house back to normal and my parents' attention trained exclusively on me.

For years after I identified myself as more of a cat person. I have a strong affinity for cats because I find them elegant, graceful, independent, and interesting to watch. Basically they have all the traits to which I aspire to have myself.

Mike is also a cat person. He likes to say that he can judge if he's going to be friends with a guy by how that guy feels about cats. When our nephew Matt was going off to West Point, Mike advised him to keep this in mind. Months later when Matt was back home on break, he acknowledged that his Uncle had been right--guys who liked cats were definitely nicer than those who did not.

My husband and I currently have two Tuxedo cats, Audrey and Joey Thumbs. Audrey tends to favor me, while Joey usually chooses Mike's lap when she wants to snooze. I thought two cats was enough--more cats and I'd be perilously close to verging into "Cat Lady" territory. I'm very sensitive to the prospect of anyone calling me a "Cat Lady" since that image is not exactly synonymous with elegance and grace, but of someone who rarely brushes her hair and whose furniture is covered in cat hair and house is packed floor to ceiling with cat-embellished clutter (I would make a crack about people who wear cat sweatshirts, but I know some older women who might take that personally).

Occasionally I thought it might be fun to have a dog. But Mike worried about the responsibility and the end of our free-wheeling lifestyle of partying at the clubs three nights a week (at least). The truth is he was concerned because we both have full-time jobs and it would be mean to subject a dog to life in a modestly-sized apartment with no proper yard and no one home until 7 or 8PM every night.

So it was basically a "Christmas miracle" when, on a Saturday in December when we were out looking for a Christmas tree, we ended up adopting a rescue puppy from a kill shelter in Arkansas. Carmelita was the most excited little thing I had ever held in my two hands, and when she started licking my face I knew I had to have this tiny dog (Was it part Chihuahua? Daschund? No one knew). My husband, who I like to tease for his various eccentricities but who really has a generous heart, asked me if having a puppy would make me happy. I imagined walking Carmelita around our neighborhood, chatting with other dog owners who just minutes ago were strangers standing next to me at the dog run, taking the puppy to one those dog bakeries that have become so popular and buying her a cookie shaped like a bone. Owning a dog opened up a whole new world of possibilities. I was already in love with her warm puppy smell.

We signed the papers and Mike handed over the Christmas money that was originally going to buy a new Lulu Guinness purse for me.

"You know this is your Christmas present, right?" he asked, making sure I understood that there would be no British handbag under the tree this year.

"I know." Who cared? A designer purse can't lick your face and wag it's tail in a frenzy of excitement at your mere existence. It was merely pretty arm candy, not true love.

So has owning a dog for the last three weeks made me a happier person? I think so. I consider this my chance to make up for my absentee-ownership of Muffin. I get to roll around on the couch with a puppy nipping at my face, I'm entertained at the breakfast table by her running back and forth across the kitchen floor, gripping a paper tube three times her size between her tiny teeth. I laugh every time we put her in her little doggie parka to go outside (see pic above). And just today as we were taking her for a walk around the block strangers did in fact stop to interact with her. Dogs have a way of making people smile and even though I know they weren't smiling at me exactly, I still felt a little bit more connected to these former strangers. One woman actually said to us that seeing Carmelita made her 2010, although I find that over the top, and if true, a little sad.

The best moment is when I'm lying on the couch reading, an afghan covering my legs, a cat sleeping on my feet, and Carmelita dozing on my chest. Pure bliss.