Adventures in Daycare: The Fingers and the Nose and the Soap

Kid B (I've already forgotten his unusual name, but it started with a B) placed his fingers into his nostrils and felt about with determination. It was my first actual shift on the job, but I recognized this immediately as a moment that required hand-washing. I was operating with two understandings: the kids know how to wash their hands, and we are always to encourage them to do by themselves anything they know how to do on their own.

I followed Kid B to the washroom and he successfully planted his foot against the pedal, instigating the sprinkly flow of water. I think he kind of touched his hand to the soap dispenser but most definitely did not use soap. He took his foot off the pedal and began to make for the hand towels.

"Wait a minute, hold on... did you use soap?"

He silently nodded a Yes. I was quite confident I did not see soap use.

"I'm not so sure. I don't think I saw you use soap. I need to see you use soap. Can you do it again with soap?"

Hesitantly his 3-year-old foot with its black sneaker made its way back to the pedal and he started the hand-wash all over again. He stopped and started a few times, never going for the soap.

"Can you show me how you use the soap?"

He rather blankly stared.

"Show me how you use the soap!" I think I said it a few times, encouragingly.

I walked over, crouched next to him and changed my demeanor from helpful to more insistent.

"...You need to show me how you use the soap now." I said some variation of this about five times and the most I got was a hand being placed at the sprout of the dispenser, but absolutely no action of dispensing. I was pretty sure I was being challenged, and was not sure how to proceed at this point, so I went to quickly ask.

It turns out using soap is something that is a mild challenge for Kid B, but he's done it before. It also turns out English is his second language. He's Chinese. He only started learning 7 months ago. I couldn't tell from my experience with him to that point, he seemed to understand instructions just fine.

I went back and decided to help him. I had him open his palm and dispensed soap into it. "Now rub your hands together!" As I said that, his soaped hand made straight for the water flow and the soap ran quickly off his hand before he'd rubbed it into his other hand.

I had him put his hands under the dispenser again. I had him open one palm, dispensed soap again, and helped him rub it into both his hands. He successfully rinsed off about 75% of the soap, that was good enough for me, and he imitated some approximation of drying them with a paper towel (I noticed drying hands is a step into which many of the kids like the least possible effort).

Mission accomplished, I sent him back into the main room and headed over to the adult sink to wash my own hands.

I peered at him through the window while my hands were getting thoroughly soaked and lathered, just in time to see his fingers go straight into his nostrils.

Hello, Spring! ...Semester

We're in the midst of a deep freeze in Minnesota and the university has cruelly chosen this time as the start of a semester they term "spring" semester. Counting the days but trying to embrace the current.

Fourteen minutes of meditation complete. Sat on my bed in full lotus, legs crossed over each other so each foot was resting on the opposing knee. Thoughts flitted about between things I have to do and by which I feel intimidated, and a few women in my life. Make of that what you will.

The room is a mess and I have to prep it for a move this weekend. I think I will message my sister about that right now.

OK, I did that and then briefly forgot that I was writing this blog entry.

Not a whole lot to say, just would like to get back in the habit of writing regularly.

That's Right, I Read Dostoevsky

"It's a great thing when you realize you still have the ability to surprise yourself. Makes you wonder what else you can do..." -Lester Burnham, American Beauty.

I finished The Brothers Karamazov. 

I. Me. Steve. I did it. I read every word of the 1,045 pages of Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Or, more accurately, Andrew MacAndrew's English translation thereof. 

You can put it on the board, yes.

Ok, so, I am making more of a big deal of it than even I consider it to really be, but... disregarding Harry Potter books, I just have a record of not finishing books that I start, especially books of significant length.

I am eager to learn more about the book I just read and to say thoughtful things about it, but now I am focused on writing about the accomplishment of actually having read it.

1,045 pages sounds daunting. I bought the book at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport on May 30, I am pretty sure I began reading it on the flight to Denver I took that day. I am not certain that I got even 10 pages in. 

I completed it shortly after midnight on August 15th. 77 days. That averages to 13.5 pages per day. 13.5 pages per day. Suddenly doesn't sound so daunting, eh? I had set a goal of a mere 10 pages per day, amounting to a desired completion date of September 15. Exceeding my goal by an average of 3.5 pages per day amounted to completing my reading project a month early. 

Of course there were some days when I read zero pages, and some, especially in the last week or so, where I am pretty sure I took down a full 100 pages in 24-hour spans. Pretty sure I did that at least once as the book got riveting towards the end.

Half-baked Calamities Jane

Sometimes... No... Oftentimes, I initiate things and I finish them not. Or do I? No, the battlefield is strewn with... Ugh, jeez, did I really just write that?

Routine is so difficult to establish. I have been getting to bed around 10pm many nights recently,maybe 10:30, interspersed with late nights like tonight where I feel completely thrown off the rails.

I ate meat this past day. I am a vegetarian. I forgot to ask the Taco Bellies to substitute my beef for beans thus my fresco soft shell tacos came back with beef. No ex-girlfriends were present to judge me so I went and ate me a beefy taco. I then went to a Twins game and decided that'd be a fine time to go ahead and, since I'd already broken my vegetarian hitting streak, indulge in a delicious Kramwrkczuk's bratwurst and mighty fine and delicious it was. 

My party and I adjourned to Annie's in Dinkytown where I proceeded to order the California burger, with a veggie patty. Let vegetarianism re-commence. Now I know on which day I last ate meat and I eagerly await discovering how long I can go without doing so again.

Meditation (And Other) Progress

I just completed a 20-minute meditation session, the longest session yet. My goal right now is simply 10 minutes/day. That will stay the goal. I understand the object of meditation to be to clear one's mind completely and be able to focus solely on breathing. I am definitely a long way from that, and I seem to recall once reading that it can take over a year of practice before one can really start achieving such a state of... ? Quiet?

I feel some immediate benefits from the practice, though. It is relaxing. I try to breathe as deeply and slowly as possible, at as consistent a pace as possible. A few times I noticed I would inhale more quickly when my mind would get carried away and I was less focused on the breathing. Keeping the measured breathing pace thus acts as a physical indicator of how my mind is functioning and how, uhhh... centered?... I am staying.

I do not watch the clock while I am meditating. I have one hidden from view and I do not check it until I am pretty confident ten minutes have passed and so far I have yet to check it and find the time is not up. In fact, I find I have a decent sense of how much time has passed. I was rather hoping 20 minutes may have passed during this recent session and almost exactly that had (may have been 21!).

I have now gone to bed at around 10pm or shortly after for three consecutive nights, an astonishing accomplishment by my standards. I take 6mg of melatonin and I fall asleep while watching Arrested Development. Such a manic show may seem like an odd choice to fall asleep to, but, I think the melatonin helps. It is usually really hard for me to just turn the lights out and fall asleep. I have to be absolutely dead tired, or my mind will usually start acting up and I catch a major 2nd wind.

Waking times have been a little less consistent. This morning I stirred at about 3:15 which means I am probably mildly sleep-deprived? I've read that, while we all hear about the 8 hours of sleep we all need, the actual amount of sleep a person needs varies by individual, usually ranging from about 6-8.5 hours/night, and we all have to figure out for ourselves what our requirement is. I really have no clue what mine is. Good, consistent sleep has long been a big struggle. I would love to get on a cycle that will allow me to get some insight on my sleep requirement. Anyway, yesterday I awoke shortly after 6am, the morning before I believe it was shortly after 5am, maybe 5:15. So... no consistent wake time. I guess that's a shame because I've actually also heard that it is even more important to have a consistent waking time than it is a consistent bedtime.

Heartbroken? Have Your Cake

For the last 6 months, whenever I've been in a restaurant, driving, walking through a mall, listening to Pandora at work, sitting at a ballgame, or anywhere I might be exposed to music, I've been much more acutely aware of the constant presence of love songs, especially those about heartbreak. If you are me, most songs about heartbreak are excruciatingly unpleasant listening when you're actually going through it. For my suffering, I would like to reward myself with a self-appointed position of authority on songs about heartbreak and I would like to declare the best and worst songs out there about the topic.

Two caveats: I am leaving Bruce Springsteen out of this discussion because I am biased in his favor ("I'm Goin' Down" would probably win best song by a landslide... "Landslide" being a song just a little on the good side of the good/bad heartbreak-song spectrum, incidentally. Both FM and SP versions), and I am limiting the songs for consideration to those songs that I have encountered repeatedly in the last 6 months without seeking them out, so, of course this is heavily biased to songs popular right now. I'm just having fun, let's not over-think this. I know you're not over-thinking this, I am. Look, just read on, ok?

-Worst song about heartbreak:
That "if you ever leave me darling, leave some morphines at my door... cause it would take a whole lot of medication..." song. I am pretty sure it was this one that had me close to walking out of both that Soho pizza joint on Hennepin Ave one day and a Target the next thanks to its presence. I am not even going to dignify its existence by looking up title and artist or checking whether or not I got that opening line verbatim. Good god, dude, too many people do not understand how devastated you can be by heartbreak and life can still go on, too many drug addictions instigated, don't reinforce that mentality. People remain in unhealthy relationships based on the kind of fears that song articulates. And, I mean, it's just a bad, pathetic song. This song had some stiff competition from that "now you're just somebody that I used to know" song, and that, uhhh... jeez, there's another pretty bad one out there in solid circulation right now, I'm pretty sure, it just slipped my mind. Or maybe I just thought of the "morphine" song twice, it's that bad.

-Best song about heartbreak:
"The Distance," Cake.
Catchy, rockin', good music, very clever and evocative lyrics ("they deftly maneuver and muscle for rank"), somehow honest while also being hilarious. I often think the most resonant expressions of emotion in any art, certainly pop music, are those casually or subtly delivered as is this gem of a line from this song: "bowel-shaking earthquakes of doubt and remorse assail him, impale him, with monster-truck force." The song is so clever that it could be about something other than heartbreak and I don't know it. But it is to me and that's all that matters. Winner.

"If You Label Me, You Negate Me." -Wayne Campbell

"The ADD adult is often a night owl... something in the ADD adult dreads going to bed and turning the light off. The fear is of being alone with one's urgent mind for even a few short minutes."

-Gabor Mate, Scattered


I believe my last post is time-stamped 4:10 a.m.

I am typing this at 2:36 a.m.

I am feeling a little somber, contemplative, not quite of the detached mood. I think the best writing usually happens with some degree of detachment like that. My best writing does, anyway.

I took 6 mg of melatonin and it almost knocked me out but then I caught a 2nd wind. Now here I am.

I feel a little bit of shame at having embraced the ADHD label. I think it is rooted in the idea that I am looking for some force beyond my control to which I can ascribe my failures in life. I mean, I feel shame over the idea that I ... I dunno. I am sensitive to the idea that I am trying to lift the burden of my major failures in life off my own shoulders and place it elsewhere. It wasn't me that brought home all those bad grades, never finished homework assignments, failed college, instigated an unplanned pregnancy... it was the one-armed man!

Until sometime in late 2007, I assumed all these failures were due to me being some kind of morally deficient. Lazy. At some point in late elementary school or early middle school, other, normal kids developed studying habits. Because I am lazy and stupid and irresponsible, I did not, and thus by my own deficiency doomed myself to a life of constant non-achievement.

Sometime in late 2007, I do not recall why, I decided to sit at my desk at work and avoid work by taking an online ADHD assessment. Goodness gracious, me, the assessment said, I may very likely have ADHD and I should talk to a professional. Multiple professionals have since endorsed the label.

So what? How am I permitted to redefine myself and my history? Why does it matter?

Was it no longer Lazy that plopped my teenage ass in front of a TV for hours on weekday evenings when homework was to be done, and/or other wholesome activities could've been engaged? Was it now ADHD?

This is, of course, the debate that anyone in the country who bothers to think about the subject for 5 seconds engages in when they ponder this label. Is it some sort of real disease/problem or an excuse? The question matters because the answer determines the amount of sympathy we choose allot to the victim. Victim of Lazy: no sympathy. Victim of ADHD: maybe sympathy.

Whether it's Lazy or ADHD, how much control did I have? I do not know, I can't know. It doesn't matter.

How much control can I get now? Like anyone, I just want as much as I can get. I guess I embraced the label because, emotionally, it gave me permission to forgive myself a little bit, and gave me a mindset that whatever my problem is, whatever label it has on it, I can now take responsibility for it and do something about it, rather than just walking around telling myself about my inherent deficiencies and just sitting back and witnessing more sad prophecies proceed self-fulfilled.