Normalizing
A quick surf tells me that this term is still in use, but has grown even more confusing than it when I learned it in my '70's psychotherapy. Triple so since it has climbed aboard the math and tech bandwagons. Yikes! ! ! Metaphor mixing in progress. . .
Nonetheless, the term has been churning through my psychotic neural pathways since the snipe-a-thon with Hubs began a few nights ago. It came out of my mouth during yesterday morning's grandparent conference on how to get past the snit reflexes and keep our little ship of fools on a steady course through these choppy waters of grief and massive lifestyle changes. Hubs was feeling his trademark guilt over having handed the school train chauffer job over to me while he got his breadwinning robocop gig restabilized. His home office co-workers have been remarkably tolerant of all this domestic chaos, but enough is enough. It is time to shit or get off the pot. That pot has served us well, for both better and for worse. Take your dump, Honeypot. Let's normalize your long, grueling commute from the new house to the old farm compound which is well on its way to being repurposed as a commercial zone. Watch out for the gridlock. Them young cows get road ragey. Watch for the chicken shit on the roadway. It gets slippery.
Equally, I voted to normalize our current school train procedures. We'll worry about the stress cracks when they appear. The active awareness in handing over the job is an important diff between this go-round and the functional abandonment of work-a-holism and She's-Not-Working assumption. For now, our little ship of fools is desperately in need of Our New Normal, whatever that may be for this very specific and strictly personal little ship of fools. For now, the new house is just a house. It be the predictable expectations of Normalcy which make a house a home.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to ^it^. . . Just praying. . .
Yesterday went remarkably well. It is good to have a life partner instead of just another romantic fuck buddy.
The search for domestic support is still freezing on the sense that the websites I am looking at are modeled after dating/sex trafficking web sites. Shark city. . . I'd rather look for love at the alcoholic meat markets, aka nightclubs. Sorting. . .
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One of my favorite musicians is Canadian folk singer Bruce Cockburn, arfie. I finally got to see him live a couple of years ago, I sat on the front row at his show. One of my favorite songs: "The Trouble With Normal." That's because the chorus of the song has some dark humor to it that helps me process how we humans "normalize" bad stuff so readily. It goes "the trouble with normal is it always gets worse." True that.
In the 80's, the one bumper sticker on my car asked, "Why be Normal?"
My current quest for A New Normal doesnae really feel like a betrayal of that principle. Then only cultural norm I have yet to understand is a setting on a household appliance. There is no global norm to be. The pride and pretense in search of Normal is both foolish and impossible.
Knowing what to expect when you wake up in the morning is a proverbial horse of a different color. My spider sense says it isnae realistic or even desirable to expect anything to go back to where it was when Mommy was arrested and the children were taken into protective custody in October, 2018. That body of expectations became even less realistic after Mommy and Daddy's funeral in October, 2019. Not a one of us feels like we are in Kansas anymore.
However counter-culture this current quest for A New Normal is, I still believe this little ship of fools needs one. When I get a break in this cruel schedule, I'll run it by marketing to find a better name for ^it^. Is "Normal" the New N-Word, just as "Faith" is the New F-Word? Old Gnarly knows I'm sure getting allot of criticism for using both vulgar words. Enough so that I'm using the newly socially acceptable F-word in response.
Fuck off, political corrector. Insert Hank Williams here. "If ya mind your own business then you won't be minding mine," by whatever name.
No disrespect intended, Profie.
ATM, I'm thinking of the song Amazing Grace....Prayers for your's and All's Highest Good....this song became John's '''Hummy Song""" as I brought him home from the hospital shaking through the years until he was about 7 or 8....
And a comforting song Amazing Grace is, ML. My all time favorite version of Amazing Grace came in a long, stressed out grocery line. The lady ahead of me was humming it. I started singing along and her humming grew louder. The fellow behind me joined in. By the time we got to the check-out line, the cashier, bagger and who knows who else were joining in.
'Tis a pity this was before camera phones. It was an amazing grace fit for YouTube. I bet we attracted a whole flock of angels with that one.
The furniture arrived without a noteworthy hitch. Hubs tackled the pediatrician and the delivery dudes nearly had the furniture assembled when he returned to say the baby is all clear. Her lungs are clear and she is rocking with doctor approval once more. The furniture got rave reviews from the elder siblings. Promise fulfilled. When I first set the baby on the new couch, she looked at me like I had dropped her on Mars. What is **this** contraption!?!?!? She figured it out quick enough.
Amazing grace, indeed. . .
So Very Happy to read of the amazing gift "The Hummy song" brought...to you and those around you!! For me it was very healing and the thought of hope for future on my yellow brick road of raising John