August 24, 2011: DAY 6: For Women Just Learning To Wrestle Pigs...

I’m sure by now you are getting sick of me saying “up at 430.” Well, we were up at that time once again. Brett started out this season eating eggs and having a cup of coffee with me before he left. Today, he wanted nothing aside from ten more minutes of sleep on the couch and a promise that I will wake him when I see the lights of Coach’s car. That’s fine with me. More “Water for Elephants!”

            Brett informed me that his girlfriend would be coming over after practice, so I get my jog in early in order to have time to clean the house before she arrives. My friend Cat has a saying, “If you’re coming to see me, stop by anytime. If you’re coming to see my house, call ahead.” While I would love to feel the freedom of this statement, I have major OCD when it comes to my house being clean, and with five children running around, feeding the beast of my desire for cleanliness is difficult at best and often leaves me with my mouth drooling and my heart racing.

            The lack of perfection in my home is something I have had to learn to breathe through, just as other people breathe through paying their bills when they know from the start that they don’t have the adequate funds to do so. While I’m sure that learning to relax in a less than pristine environment is a good thing, I still secretly believe that so is my OCD. I love it. I relish in it. I roll in it like a dog rolls in poo. Okay bad analogy, because we all know how I feel about poo as well. But I will save that for another story.

            I want my house to look as if the maid has been here all the time and I have such a hard time controlling myself that when the kids leave so much as a spoon in the sink, I call them to it and then look around in bewilderment asking them if they see “Alice” anywhere in the house? As you can see, I’m not fully on the verge to recovery yet, but due to other events of the morning, I was unable to get my dishes done before I had to retrieve Brett and his guest. I was mortified, apologizing for the mess, etc. Brett, always there to help like any good, loving teenage son would, looked around the kitchen and said, “What are you talking about Mom? This place looks cleaner than usual.” Had he not had a guest I might have cuffed him.

            At noon, I took Brett’s friend home, delivered Maxx and Summer to Grandma’s for a two-day visit, and went on a parts run to Colfax. Wave’s mother has recently become my hero (not that she wasn’t already) but she has offered to take a small set of our brood on and off this week to help give me a break in harvest. Ahhh…

            At 500 PM, The Ag teacher from Tekoa and his wife arrive to help us load up three of the five pigs that we will be taking to the fair. Just like last year, we will moving them to the FFA barn in Tekoa so that the kids can wash them and work them more intensely during these next to weeks. When we started raising 4-H pigs last year, we all wondered how in the world we were ever going to butcher them. A friend of Wave’s told him that by the time the pigs were ready to go to the fair, we would be ready to kill them. I love our pigs. They are like dogs. Loyal and affectionate. They seem to only want to please, but I clearly remember that last year I felt different by the time we loaded them. It sounds cruel, and it is only a fleeting thought, but as I watched the Ag teacher back the trailer into the stall, I had flashbacks from last year’s pig loading attempt.

            The pigs were playful and jumpy as the teacher stepped in the stall to separate the three we will be taking to the fair. Dominus, Zagar and Alex were quickly separated from the other two, but by the time the gate opened on the back of the trailer they turned into 270 separate pounds of solid hatred, and the five of us were not enough to handle them. Especially with Jack singing to them loudly from atop a fuel tank next to the stall.

            Within minutes, all three of them squeezed under the gate on the trailer and were out in the driveway before we could do anything to stop them. Brett lured them with every marshmallow we had and thank goodness managed to get them back in the fence. Pigs are smart, but they are also playful. They love to follow you, and marshmallows, but it will be over their dead carcasses that they will get in the back of a trailer. Like I said, they are smart!

            It took over an hour and every bit of strength all of us had to get those three snorting, biting angry swine into the back of that trailer, and as the teacher closed the door I was already screaming “good riddance!” in the back of my mind; however, by the time we got to the barn and coaxed the pigs out of the truck and into their new pens they had returned to normal and we were quickly scratching their jowls again. All water seemed under the bridge between us, and we were almost sad to leave, but I knew in the back of my mind that tomorrow, bath day, was going to prove to be much of the same as it was at the barn and once again I would be thinking about how good pork chops are going to taste this winter.  

August 23, 2011: DAY 5: New visitors to the Warwick Farm

            Today’s up at 430 moment brought homemade cappuccinos, or as our family likes to call it, Uncle Mike’s Special Drink. Although I have the right tools: good strong coffee, Sugar in the Raw, and a coffee press for foaming the milk, no one can make them as good as Mike does. No one! The sun was just peaking up as I got Brett out the door and tiptoed back to my chair to read another chapter of “Water for Elephants.” No one got redlighted thank goodness, but I’m starting to wonder what in the world Jacob is thinking.  I also hope that the author answers the posed question about how much water a person would have to haul to satisfy an elephant. Before I could get through more than one chapter, or more than one cappuccino, Wave was up and ready to move a tractor to the field to plow fire lines. The air is super dry, and I am relieved that he is doing this before the combines roll today, so I make him a cup of coffee and we are out the door.

            I have not ridden in a tractor with Wave since last fall, and with coffee in hand, the crisp morning air smells so much like Fall it is both exhilarating and eerie at the same time. I love the cooler mornings, but Mother Nature needs to hold off for a little while longer. We have to get the crops in first.

            After plowing the field and gossiping in my husband’s ear for the first time in a week about everything that has been going on with the kids while he has been working, we are all too quickly done. Wave moves the tractor to his dad’s house and I back the pick-up up to the little tiny air compressor in order to move it into the next field so that the crew can blow off their combines before they start this morning. This is the first time I have done this alone, and considering the fact that the air compressor is so small behind the pick-up that you cannot see it, I was pretty damn proud that it only took to tries to touch ball to hitch!

            I returned home just as the kids were stirring and the crew is arriving, only to find a mama and baby moose heading toward our “newly” dug pond. I was so excited, since drawing in wildlife was one of the main reasons for digging the pond, that I called the kids on the radio to tell them to run out to the shop and watch. Unfortunately, Summer’s 4-H sheep had jimmied the chain on their fence loose and the kids were out rounding them up. I hoped that they did not get mixed up with the mama and baby in the process. Knowing Jack, he might try to coax one of moose into the fence as well.

            The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. No break downs, no major parts runs, no cussing on the radio yet. It felt like the calm before the storm. Everyone, even the other families on the radio seem pleasant and content, so I took the opportunity to move more rock and make banana bread. My back is really starting to hurt, but I’m determined to get that rock moved before we leave for the fair in two weeks. I’m determined to get a lot of things done before then. I’m not sure how Wave will handle the rest of harvest minus his family and the parts runner, but at least we will be in Colfax, so if something major does happen, we are already only ten minutes from the parts store. I’m already dreading the amount of times I will be coaxed into running a part up “real quick.” 

August 22, 2011: 4th DAY OF HARVEST: Catching up

NOTE TO READER: Since I decided to add my diary on my blog page days after harvest actually began, I am having to play catch up. Therefore, every free moment I get, I will add a day from the past in hopes of being caught up to the current day for you. Please stay tuned. Things tend to get a little crazy on the farm this harvest! 


DAY 4: The kiddos came home Sunday night. For three of the boys at least, this is it for the summer. They normally alternate every two weeks at their other homes for the summer, and now that they are back here that is over. Brett is back on a full-time football schedule, and I will have to work hard the next two weeks to get the rest of them on a regular schedule again. For Summer, this is her last two-week interval at our house for the summer. She will return to her mom’s house for the school year after the holiday.

            I’m super excited to see Maxx as he and I haven’t seen a lot of each other of late. He used to spend all of his time here, but with Brett having more needs now that he is in high school, I seem to be spending more time with Brett these days. That’s fun too, as it used to be just the opposite. Boy howdy, there is just not enough of this mommy to go around!

            So, at 4:30 Brett and I were up again for football. The athletic director, and our neighbor, Ken, kindly offered to pick Brett up in the mornings since he, and his daughters, have to be there anyway. I kissed Brett goodbye and thought fleetingly about going back to bed; but it feels so good in the cool morning air, and it’s so quiet, I have to stay up and sneak in a few more chapters of “Water for Elephants.” I think someone is going to get redlighted today, so I am on pins and needles as to who it is!

            At 7:00 I got a jog in and then I helped move combines again and taught Brett to flag for the first time. He did great. It was only a small move, but just doing that works the kinks out so that he can be ready when we really need him. Harvest is going along well, but every time I even think that thought I want to scream out, “Break a leg,” due to the recognition that you have to be careful what you say or else you could jinx yourself and everyone else. The wheat looks amazing, but shhh, don’t tell, and everything is up and running again. Yikes, scary just thinking it.

            Right now, it’s nice to hear the neighbors on the radio again. Seems like Heaton’s are starting to harvest and Mc Hargue’s are doing pretty well. My Grandpa Squibb works for Mc Hargue’s and today he gave a shout out to Jack telling him to have a good harvest and to keep the farm running well. We can hear all of them, but he can’t hear us. Right now, I like the camaraderie, but ask me how I feel about the radio chattering away in my kitchen by the end of harvest! However, I like being able to hear my grandfather working on the radio. Who else gets to do that?

            I managed to pick a few zucchini from the garden and it looks like I might even get a tomato this year. Oh boy! Terrible year for a garden around here. I don’t know why I even try. I moved a bunch of rock in this flower garden I have been working on all summer. This place is huge and it always has been a work in progress. It probably always will be. I have plans for all of it, but each project is massive and will take time. This flower bed alone has taken two years to establish and it is still not even close to done. All of this is helping me learn patience. Building and growing things tends to do that, and it has also helped me to understand my husband’s never ending patience so much better the longer we are married.  

            I found time to run Jack to the pool for 30 minutes. It just seems wrong not to let the kid swim while he has the chance. He would swim all year if we would let him, and I’ll lay testament right now that that kid will be a scuba diver when he is older. I’ve never seen anyone like him when it comes to diving and holding your breath under water. Brett just told me that they believe deep diving and forcing yourself to hold your breath for lengths of time encourages the blood vessels in your brain to grow and have been know to increase the amount of brain we use. We are not worried about Jack then; he will do just fine in life.

            Had to leave the pool to go on a minor parts run to Colfax. Brett has ridden with me on every run, and the company with my son is nice. He will get his license in a year and half and I know that after that, he will be gone.  I return home, leave Brett to get some sleep and take Summer to Tekoa to practice showing sheep for the upcoming Palouse Empire Fair. She is gaining confidence and doing much better – even though she doesn’t see it. Working on trusting herself will be the key. I think working with the animals will help her to stand on her own two feet. I am very excited to see her in the arena!

            By the time we got back home I had just enough time to make Mulligatawny Soup and rolls and head to my bedroom for a little quiet reading. Although I still have not had much time with Maxx, I am tired, Wave will be here soon, and still have not seen anyone get redlighted from the circus train.  

August 20, 2011: DAY 2 - THE PICNIC

We are up at 4:30 again. I cannot say that it is getting any easier just yet. Chad arrives at 7:00 ready to roll. I finished a new Lentil, Orecchiette, and Feta Cheese salad for the picnic today, only to discover that it didn’t taste good. Experiment gone wrong. I cannot serve this to my family. Thank goodness for my friend Shelly, Chad’s wife,  who taught me how to make the best Macaroni salad on short notice. After whipping it together, I go out to wash the farm truck I’ve been trying to get to for three days. I want to wash it and wax it before the sun bakes it and me. I get it washed, but it’s already to hot by the time I get to waxing so it will have to wait until this evening. Thankfully, the other truck driver does not arrive until tomorrow, so I still have time.

            I am soaked by the time I have to move Chad to the field and return home to feed and water the animals and create a new mud bog for the pigs. It will be almost 90 degrees today, and by the time I start filling the new hole they are already rolling and splashing in the water covering Jack and I will mud. Thank goodness I waited to shower.

            I grab a cooler and fill it with ice for the salad and fresh huckleberries for the homemade ice cream and it’s almost noon before Jack and I head out to the picnic, so we will be fashionably late at best.

            The picnic was fun, but I learned that Grandma and Grandpa are putting the family home on the market and moving to an apartment in Spokane next week due to Grandpa’s cancer. I can hardly enjoy myself after Grandma asks me to run to the house with her to pick out some family heirlooms so that the kids and I will have something to remember them by. I sort slowly through the stuff, only to feel terrible for taking some and even more terrible for passing other stuff over. Grandma went outside while I was finishing only to find Jack sitting on the step moping about something. She asked him what was wrong and he said that I was taking too long and he was supposed to be in harvest. I think we already know this kid’s future.

            Jack and I return home about 4:00 only to learn that one truck is broke down already so Chad had to take the unwaxed truck to the field. That is not good since it has fresh paint, but that’s harvest. It’s unpredictable, so you better have all your chores done early. I didn’t this time and I feel bad about it because the paint job is so amazing. Oh well, can’t dwell on what you missed this time of year or you’ll never get anything done.

            I leave a very sleepy, but undeterred Jack with Wave and head home to make dinner. I BBQ Black Butte Porter chicken, bake diced potato with garlic and onions, some amazing oatmeal banana cookies, and a vodka tonic. Shelly came over to eat dinner with me and we got to visit minus children for the first time in history.  It was strongly quiet and I could actually hear what she was saying.

            Wave’s dad called from Utah, where he is competing in the National Cowboy Poetry Contest. He wanted to check on harvest and let us know that he won the championship! He is now the nations number one cowboy poet. Of course, he says it’s nothing, but we all see it differently.

            Due to the truck down, Chad, Wave and Jack managed to come home in time for dinner and we all ate together – probably for the last time this summer.

  

Diary for Harvest 2011: Day 1

AUGUST 19, 2011: 

            This is possible first day of harvest, and I promised myself that no matter how busy it got, I would keep a diary. We are so stinking ready to get rolling that I swear the hair on our arms is standing to attention at just the thought of hearing a combine roar to life. This harvest is late, extremely late for the Palouse. There are years when we have finished on this day, so it’s crucial that we do not waste a second. The problem is that not all of the crops are ready, so harvesting will be spotty at best. Today, Wave will harvest alone, jumping from combine to truck just to get a few loads into the bin so that he can make a better plan for the whole crew who are arriving tomorrow at 7 am.

            At 430AM Brett and I are up and semi-concious so I can take him to football practice at the high school in Oakesdale. I return home at 5:30. Normally I would want to fall back into bed and catch a couple more winks, but we’ve been gearing for this day forever. Especially our 6-year-old Jack, who is awake and ready to make lunches for he and his dad. He wants to get on the combine even worse than Wave does, but it looks like plans have changed. Wave needs to spray a field for a neighbor and we need to get a birthday present for Summer before we are deep in harvest and can’t get back to town.            

            By 7:30 we realize that we have two flat tires; one on the Rogator and one on the combine. And I swear it’s all because I made that comment the other day over our five o’clock beer in the shop that after all the time farmers have had to get their equipment ready this year there should not be a single breakdown. I should have known.

            At 8:30, I am showered, lunches are made just in case, and Wave and I deliver Brett to Mt. Hope to buck bales for the day with my dad. We make a mad-dash to Spokane for the present and I can already feel the tension in my husband’s body. He does not want to be in Spokane. He should not be on blacktop at all this time of year. He should be hot, sweaty and itchy from the wheat chaff that has been misting doen his back all day. I hurry out of there before some unsuspecting elderly woman with a shopping cart gets ran over by a cranky farmer in need of a wheat fix.

            By noon we are back home. The tires guys have yet to show, and I want my husband as far away from the house as possible. He goes to the field to harvest what he can with the other combine with instructions that I will call him the moment they get that tire fixed. Executive orders already being bellowed out. Full crew or not, we are in harvest now.  I spend the rest of the afternoon making a highly fattening meatloaf and potatoes for dinner, and start the salad I need to make for the family picnic at my Dad’s tomorrow. Harvest or not, the picnic will not be missed as my grandfather has just been diagnosed with two kinds of cancer and he is still going out of his way to make us homemade ice cream. I bring the few huckleberries I managed to pick this year. There won’t be any for Wave, but Grandpa’s ice cream is worth it.

            Brett calls after he’s done bucking bales and has decided to skip tomorrow’s practice to go on one last run to the lake with his dad for the week-end. I can’t blame him, but I make sure he calls the coach and explains everything.

            My mom makes the long trek from Moses Lake to Tekoa to see her parents, so Jack and I go over to visit for the evening. Grandma Squibb, Aunt Lori, Jack and my mom are there. So fun to see them! We end up out at the cemetery on a ghost hunt just after dark. No ghosts, but the cool, golden harvest air is refreshing and it’s great to talk with everyone. I do miss the cemetery at night. We will have a full crew in the morning, so Wave and I get to bed early. The wheat sample tested well. We are go for a full day of harvest tomorrow and I can only imagine what kinds of trials and tribulations that will bring. 

“The ‘Chewing With Your Mouth Open’ Theory.”

I have been trying hard to find the simple words to explain this lack of temperance I see in strangers lately. I’m still not sure what to call it. Is it a lack of manners? Decorum? Decency? Hearing? Seeing?

            The other day I was at the pool and I saw some woman tugging on her young daughter’s arm and yelling, “You better hurry your ass up. I’m not going to have your dad mad at me again because of you!” When she saw that I was watching – and covering my son’s ear’s – she glared at me and quickly pushed her little girl, who was still trying to get her toes in her flip flop, toward the waiting car as if she were a piece of property instead of a child.

            Yesterday, at the grocery store I saw another woman yelling at her child who was pushing the cart toward the cart collection area. The young boy had hitched a ride on the bottom rung for the last few feet across the parking lot and allowed the cart to bump into the other carts. The child was laughing at his own effect on the row of carts in front of him, and I was laughing too. There was no danger and I could just imagine the feeling he had of getting a “free ride” at the amusement park. Before I could holler out, “Good one!” and hop on my own cart, the woman he was apparently with started yelling, “Get your ass over here!” as she lit a cigarette and again glared at me for watching. The boy, upon hearing the woman, lost every trace of his smile and humbly walked back to the car where she loudly reprimanded him so quickly that I could not figure out what she was angry with him about.

            Over and over, I see this behavior becoming commonplace in our environment. People yell, they spit on the sidewalk, they litter, they scratch their butts, pick their noses, smack their kids. And they do all of it in front of you and then glare at you when you can’t help but notice. For a while now I have been sadly pondering the reason why? Is it global, economical, or is it just a slow decline in what we are teaching our children.

            Having not traveled very much in my life, I cannot give an assessment on the global perspective.

            As for the economy, I asserted to my husband in the parking lot of the grocery store, must be playing a factor. After all, it doesn’t take a genius, or this writer searching the internet for data to back up her theory, to assert a simply math problem. That being that the increase in the cost of living plus the decrease in family income equal stress on a family. This then results in less tolerance for what seems like the menial problems of our children in comparison. All right, it could be a geometry problem, but I was never good at math. Anyway, that’s not to say that their problems are less important, it is simply to say that Suzie’s loss of her tenth boyfriend this year might seem a little trivial compared to, let’s say, her mom’s inability to keep a roof over Suzie’s head. Am I right? Of course.

            But then, as my husband, our son, and I were loading the groceries into the truck, my husband pointed out the “chewing with your mouth open theory.”

            “What?”

            “You heard me,” he said. “We’ve talked about how many people chew with their mouth open these days.”

            It’s true. You see it in movies, which seem to glorify it as sexy. I can’t hardly watch Michael Douglas anymore without throwing up. You see it in restaurants with men and women who are trying to be sexy. And we see it more and more in our families and our children. Not to be pretentious, but the last time I let my child get away with showing me his food was when he was eating pureed banana off of a baby spoon.

            “You don’t think it’s the stress of the economy?” I asked.

            “No way,” he said. “It’s a nice excuse, but your mom was a single mom, and you guys were poor growing up. I had times when I was poor too. That doesn’t make us act that way.”

            “True,” I agreed.

            “You know how you always complain about the fact that the boys never chewed with their mouth open until they started school?”

            “Yeah,” I said. “They learn it from their friends.”

            “It’s because there is no on there telling them not to. We are a couple generations deep into this.”

            He was right. I remember as a child my mom telling me about the woman who walked around in the cafeteria reprimanding them for not using their manners. I recall her telling me that if she misbehaved in public all that her mother would have to say was, “You just wait until we get home and I tell your father what you’ve done!” I also remember my grandfather poking me in the arm with a fork for putting my elbows on the table. It was practically a cardinal sin if I didn’t wash my hands before a meal – past my wrists and halfway up my arm – and I clearly recall the taste of Irish Spring soap in my mouth if I ever cussed.

            For the most part, I still employ those techniques with my children, but on some things it has become a joke that they, my children, chide me about, just as I chided my mom about bellbottom pants and coke bottle glasses.

            I had to inform them the other day that the reason you don’t put your elbows on the table is because “back in the day” – as we always refer to the past – men used to come in out of the field with their dirty clothes on. They would wash up to their elbows and therefore were only allowed to put their arms on the table up to their forearms because if their dared to soil the only clean piece of linen that their wives had, they would be darn lucky to eat for a week. My son’s response: “Well, it’s a good thing you have a washing machine.” (Note to reader: he did get poked in the elbow with a fork. Just ask him.)

            With my youngest son, since attending school, he cannot seem to close his mouth when he chews, and washing his hands at the sink has become something of a chore because all he wants is magic soap.

            Now, I have digressed from the way parents treat their children into the way children are behaving on purpose. What we teach now has a multi-generational effect. To this day I keep my elbows off the table at my grandparents house, I close my legs when I’m wearing a dress, and I would never in a million years think of screaming at my kid in the parking lot of the grocery store and then glaring at the others around me for calling their attention to it.

            No, if my kid acts up, I’m going to do what a gal from the generation before me did to her children. I will walk right over to the cashier and ask to borrow her intercom in order to inform the other shoppers that my child wanted to make a spectacle of himself, so could I please have everyone’s attention?

            I laughed forever when I heard that, and had planned for years to do that to my children should they ever feel the need to lose their decorum in public. The fact is though, I’ve never had to do it. Not because my children haven’t acted up in public. They have. Believe me, they have. The reason I have never had to do it is because I still believe for the time being that I am the parent. I am teaching them the same lessons that my parents taught me in the hopes that they will be able to handle my grandchild appropriately in public just as I have them. And just like pushing my mother to change her bellbottoms, my children are doing their best to bring me into the new generation of thinking about how we act among our peers. I only hope this time, it doesn’t work!

            

"I gotta Get Outta This Place!"

Preface: This is not my normal humorous style of writing. I was helping a friend in financial trouble and I just had to share this insight with you. 

When my son was two he broke his femur in half. Yes, in half.  The femur, also called the thigh bone, is the longest and largest bone in your body. Apparently, it is also the hardest to break. It was a harrowing experience to say the least and in many ways it changed my perspective about life, children, and parenting. One of the lessons that I learned was from something that Maxx’s doctor said to me a few years later.

You see, when Maxx started school at age five, he did not know how to go down the slide. No big deal, I thought. I figured that he was probably scared of falling off and breaking his leg again. When he was seven, Maxx still could not ride a bike. Try as he might, fall as he would, Maxx still could not get it. Not being blessed with coordination, I assumed he got it from me and again I was not worried. Then, when Maxx was in fourth grade, his teacher was concerned because he continued to babble and play around on the floor like a second grader. Did he have autism? Asperger Syndrome? We did not know. The odd thing about all of this was that Maxx was not that way at home - and he was very intelligent. Not that autistic children aren’t, but he just didn’t fit the spectrum in all cases like most autistic children do. Therefore, we just chalked it up to Maxx being Maxx. Finally, I talked to his doctor with the caveat that I was NOT concerned, just curious. Goodness knows I didn’t want my son going through a plethora of testing only to find out that he was “a real boy.” What my doctor said, changed my perspective on just about everything. He simply asked if Maxx had ever crawled.

Crawled?

Crawled.

Looking back on it, I could not remember, but with the broken leg and other issues when he was a child, it seemed possible that maybe he hadn’t really ever crawled. It turns out that children who miss a developmental stepping stone, like crawling or walking, often times are unable to do many other large motor skills, such as sliding down the slide or bike riding. The result being that they simply stop where they were and in some aspects of their life they simply stay at that age. In Maxx’s case, he simply needed to go back and relearn that step he missed so that the other steps could fall into place. So, what did we do at age 9? We crawled. We slide down the slide, we swung on a swing, and as a result he stepped the rest of the way up the ladder in a short period of time and has since caught up with his peers.

To this day, I use that lesson in other areas of my life. One being, how we are trained to relax. Some people take vacations, some shop till they drop, other’s have a drink after work with a friend, other people watch television at night, many go camping, play in the garden, some take a smoke break, other’s will even have a “bitch” session with a friend.  

Whatever it is you do, it is usually a learned pattern, from collegues, family, friends, or even just from yourself. Escaping from reality in order to relax is as much needed in everyday life as the need to crawl is as a child. If we are “on” all the time, we get exhausted. As a result, if we do not learn a healthy way to relax and recover our body and mind will find a way to do that for us; be that through anger, depression, hatred, resentment, you name it, your body will shut down to survive.

I write this because I have noticed with this economy and this fast-paced lifestyle we all live, it seems that more and more people are cutting out their “escape” time in order to make more time for work.

I was talking to a gal the other day who was strapped with money problems and devastated because she is too busy working to make money and yet too broke to do anything fun with her kids. Every night when she came home exhausted after work, she and her daughters would argue for an hour - while she tried to clean the house – about how they never got to do anything fun because their mom was always working. My friend said that she had gotten to the point where she was beginning to hate coming home and yet she was too tired and burned out to continue to work another hour.

I suggested an escape. Maybe a picnic, or a hike, on her next day off, but she simply shook her head. All that her children ever wanted to do was to go to the mall and shop. That was it; that was all. The problem was that she could not afford it. She had taken them last week, spent money, and it was fun while they were there, but after ward, the same stresses returned. The girls knew that they were heading back to boredom for another week, and my girlfriend knew that she was heading right to her check register to try and figure out if she had just overdrawn herself for the sake of a little fun.  She did not know what to do. It seemed that her plan had only caused more angst after it was over instead of making them all feel better.

I advised her that her plan was not going to work.  It was never going to work.

The reason: their escape was not fulfilling the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal was to make their time dealing with the stresses of reality more palatable. What I advised her to do was to think of a better escape. Frankly, it seemed obvious to me that the girls seemed more focused on venting than shopping. After all, that is the first thing they did when they hopped back in the car. No one was happier, nor were they refilled or rejuvenated. They were simply more stressed and equally as cranky.

I advised her that taking them shopping when she clearly couldn’t afford it was counterintuitive. It was like taking an alcoholic to the bar and then telling them they could only drink Diet Pepsi. Therefore, what she needed to recognize was that what her girls really needed was some time to vent their frustrations, just like she was doing to me. My suggestion: Allow the girls fifteen minutes a day while she was doing the dishes or straightening house after work for an unfettered, unjudged venting session. The rules. One, at the end of fifteen minutes, they were not allowed to complain any more until the next day. Two, they had to help clean while they vent. By setting this new pattern into place the girls would learn a new way to relieve their stresses and she could get the house cleaned.

She didn’t think they would ever go for it, but what parents forget is that when children are speaking, be that in anger, through tears, or in defiance, they are trying say something too. After all, wasn’t she being defiant when she was talking to me> Of course she was. She was frustrated, angry, and she needed to vent! To this day I’m not sure why that privilege is only recognized after you turn 18, but it is. She needed to listen to them, like I was listening to her, and I promised that things would change.

For my son, his escape was baking cookies and eating them while he vented his frustrations about his day to me. However, given an inch he would take a mile and he would complain himself right into tirade and a chocolate cake. His escape was not working either. Not only was he gaining weight, which he did not want to do when he was in football, but he had also gone past relieving himself of his frustrations to reliving them every day. When I realized this, I suggested that we sit out on the deck together and have a glass of iced tea and some crackers so that he could vent for fifteen minutes. This satisfied his need to munch as well as his need to get his frustrations off of his chest without allowing them to monopolize the conversation. When the fifteen minutes was over, we could continue to hang out and talk about other things, or we could pick up our tea and be done. 

Just like crawling, we take the steps we have learned and apply them to the next phases in our lives. As toddlers we escape by throwing a tantrum, so our parents tell us to go outside and play. This soon becomes our escape until we grow out of that and move on to the next. As a teenager, it could be sports, or music, or painting, but it could also be smoking, drinking, in some cases sex,  or something even worse. My suggestion: figure out what you do to escape. Figure out what your children do to escape. If it is unhealthy, teach them a better way, and you may find that you might learn a better way of escaping yourself.