Dreaming and Waking

My Most Annoying Personality Trait

When I first get into work on Sunday mornings, I turn all the highlighters cap down, make sure the pens and scissors are in the correct slots in the desk organizer, flip the ruler so it sticks out the left side of the file holder, and return the stapler, post-it notes, and calculator to the correct spots. My Friday assistant always shifts things around when she uses my desk; I need everything in its place before I start to work.

***

"I have a plan. I always have a plan."

***

It was like something straight out of a Judy Blume novel (Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great, to be exact):

"Everyone take two pieces of paper and write your name on them both. On one, write Good Things and on the other, Bad Things, or Not So Good Things, if you prefer. Then we will all write about each other’s best qualities and worst qualities on the sheets."

I took the leader's Bad Things paper first and wrote on it in my big handwriting: "I think this is a passive-aggressive exercise and if you have anything to tell me about my personality, you can tell me to my face." As we all grabbed papers at random in the half-hour that followed, I always knew who had that paper because they would look at me and chuckle.

At the end of the exercise, I stuffed my papers into my purse unread. At home, I dropped them into a desk drawer and forgot about them. I came across them months later while looking for something else.

I don't remember anything from either page except for one Not So Good Thing entry: "Sometimes you get a little 'my-way-or-the-highway'."

"Just a little?" I asked.

***

"There is a plan. Don't fuck with the plan."

***

I am going to start training a new assistant at work tomorrow. Wish him luck.

Orange highlighter for the customers with changes to their deliveries. All the grocery codes are written in black ink: a four letter code, one space, a slash, one more space, then the next code. Circle them in blue highlighter. Notes to the customers are highlighted in green; packing instructions in yellow; packing instructions in pink. Bin counts in blue pen. Office notes in red pen.

I have very specific ways of doing every tiny task. I always have a reason for doing things the exact way I do, but sometimes my reasons don't seem important to other people. I seem controlling and obsessive...

***

"Just stick with the plan, and everything will work out perfectly."

I have been a vegetarian for about a decade now. Since eating and socializing so often go together, at some point I mention my vegetarianism to most people I see more then once. Unlike my cousin, who is notorious within my extended family for having burst into tears over the Thanksgiving turkey during her brief time as a vegetarian, I try not to make a big deal out of my eating habits. A typical conversation would be:

"You have to try my beef stew! I always bring it to potlucks because everyone loves it."

"Oh, thank you – I'm sure it's great – but I'm a vegetarian."

The normal responses are "Well, more for the rest of us!" or "I also brought this veggie dip... no meat in there."

However, about a quarter of the people have a different reaction:

"I don't really eat much meat. Mostly just chicken and fish. Just a little red meat. I eat a lot of vegetarian meals at home, really."

I know some vegetarians are preachy, so I always assumed that the defensive reactions were trying to head me off lest I begin to lecture on animal rights or health concerns. Fair enough, really.

The other day, something reminded me of a funny commercial I'd seen on TV the night before, so I asked the person I was with if they'd seen the commercial.

"I don't have a TV, so I haven't seen it," she shrugged.

I wanted to say "I don't watch a lot of TV" (a blatant lie), or "I only watch TV while I'm crafting" (closer to true, but she wouldn't care), or "I didn't have a TV during university" (so what?), or "I watch a lot of TV because it makes me think less, and worry less, and then I don't get as worked up and anxious" (too much information).

I don't feel like watching a lot of TV is a healthy thing, but I do it anyway. I have it on in the background while I craft, while I surf the Internet and play on LJ, while I write, and while I nap.

I want to defend myself because part of me thinks that the girl who doesn't have TV is better then I am. She's right, but I don't want her to be. I don't want to have to change.

I said: "Well the commercial goes like this..."

This is a follow-up of sorts to my last post on what basic skills every adult should have.

The biggest test of whether or not something is a basic skill is whether or not most people are capable of doing it, so it shouldn't surprise me that everyone on that post responded with skills that they themselves possess. Obviously, we are all smart, well-adjusted people who have mastered all the basic skills.

But no one is really a finished masterpiece. We're works in progress. At least, I am. Or I'm just neurotic; depends on when you ask.

Confession is supposed to be good for the soul...

I always thought that an adult should be able to hang a picture straight. And yet, no matter how much I measure and even when I use a level, I always manage to get the picture crooked. Russ hangs our pictures.

I always thought an adult should be able to deal with hiring whoever is necessary to fix or improve their home, but I am very easily intimidated and overwhelmed by salespeople. Russ deals with them until it comes time to decide what colour of roof we should have. I point to a colour, sign the cheque, and smile a lot.

I always thought that adults should wash their floors regularly. I thought they should iron their clothing (not their underwear or their jeans, just their cotton shirts and things like that). I thought they should change their bed sheets every week. I am capable of doing all these things – they are basic skills, after all – but I never quite seem to get around to it.

But, I know how to refinish an oak floor, I can install moldings and baseboards, and I can put up towel rods (for some reason, those come out level). I almost never forget to scoop the kitty litter. I am a wizard with budgeting.

I feel better. So, confess: What life skills do you think you should have that you lack? What skills do you have, but never or rarely use? Do you feel guilty about not using those skills, or is that just my personal brand of madness? And, finally, what more-than-basic life skills do you possess?

Everyone else agrees that I am who I thought I was. According to the government, I am myself.

Getting a passport is the process of proving that you are who you have always been.

Since I'd misplaced my birth certificate during the move, I had to start by proving that I was born in a hospital in Timmins, Ontario, in the month of March, 1979.

Then I had to gather my rarely used photo identification and the names and phone numbers of people who are willing to admit to knowing me. And I had a cop sign the papers and pictures – though he didn’t look at them – saying that he, as a very important and official person, agrees that I exist and have existed for at least two years.

Now I am the proud owner of a Canadian passport, which none of you will ever see because my picture makes me look like a frog. An unhappy frog, because you can't smile in passport pictures.

Getting a passport is like solving a mystery: you gather all the clues and put them together in the right order, and you get a solution: an identity. I like how systematic and uncompromising it is. If you check everything off the "to do" list – if you take all the right steps – you get what you want.

Now I have one more piece of paper that tells me who I am and where I belong; one more tie to the world of government, politics, citizens, and borders. I am the same person as I was a couple of days ago, when I not only didn't have a passport, but I didn't have a birth certificate or an identification card either.

Without my official documents of belonging, I was still me, but I had to prove it over and over: to pick up theater tickets, to use my credit card, to pick up a package from the mailbox, to get my new passport. I used my Costco card and my GST form.

I'm me, according to the cards in my wallet. Why is that comforting?

W.I.F.E.: Wash – Iron – Fuck – Etc. I saw this on an icon today. And I am doing laundry again. And my mother called Russ her "son-in-law" again.

I'm a good third-wave feminist. Well, I'm a good theoretical feminist. Or a good feminist in theory. Anyway, I know it is possible to be a wife without being the kind of woman they always make fun of at domestic_snark.

But... Russ' Mum, when she catches him doing something like leaving his socks on the floor, says to me: "Well, he is your problem now." He is now mine to train, or to pick up after if I fail to train him adequately.*

My mother is a full-time wife and mother. She keeps an impeccable house and cooks a good dinner, to be consumed as a family at the kitchen table, every night. I thought I could avoid triggering that image of "wifedom" by not marrying Russ. We would live in blissful partnership. No wedding, no contract, means no expectation, from him or from myself, of being a good wife.

But, I am the one in our relationship that cares how the house looks, so I end up doing most of the cleaning and tidying. I am the organized one, so I do the bills, schedules, and meal plans. I am not very strong or handy, so I cannot fix the caulking in the bathroom or fix the living room fan. Russ is better at talking to contractors and electricians then I am. And I don’t drive, so I don't know how to change a tire or check the oil.

Russ does do the cooking and cleans the bathroom, but otherwise our housework is divided along very conventional gender lines. That's not how it was supposed to be; I'm a feminist. Skills be damned – I should be re-finishing the deck while he does the vacuuming.

There was a StatsCan survey back in July that the media tended hail as proof that "more men are doing housework", as if there was suddenly gender equality in household matters. What struck me was how little equality it actually represented. The gap is narrower, but we've got a long way to go:

The proportion of men who did some housework daily rose from 54% in 1986 to 69% in 2005. The proportion of women who did daily housework held steady at 90%.

Looking only at "core housework", men’s participation went from 40% to 59% and women’s dropped from 88% to 85%.

Russ does core housework every day, so he is part of the 59%. But when did I become a conventional, traditional woman doing "woman’s work"?

And just a quick look at the wedding industry reveals how old-fashioned we can get about marriage. When a woman gets engaged, perfect strangers will congratulate her as if she's just won some sort of contest, without knowing anything about her husband. British journalist Jemima Lewis: "If [the bride-to-be] is defensive, it is because she has realized how little the condition of womanhood has changed – and how antediluvian her own instincts really are."

When I took my minor in Women's Studies, I had little patience for the theorists who claimed that it was impossible to have gender equity within marriages and that we would have to create children in test tubes before we could be treated as equals.~ Though I still don't agree with them, I do see their point: I am a feminist; I have a university degree and a full-time job; and I was raised to believe that I can be anything and do anything – I should be the poster child for an non-traditional relationship. And I still change the bed instead of fixing the drywall.

Third-wave feminism, to speak very broadly, tends to be about choice: for example, women can choose to stay home and raise children, or choose to work. But what of the choices we seem to make that aren't really choices at all, such as to do the vacuuming because your mother taught you to, while your partner fixes the fence because his father taught him to. Am I making a deliberate choice to be this kind of wife and partner, or am I caving to my social training?

I'm going to go fold my partner's t-shirts.

*This isn't a slight against Russ, or any sort of hint that he needs to behave any differently then he does (really, sweetie). That is just what his mother is saying to me.

~An Internet cookie for anyone who can name that theorist – my mind is drawing a blank.

I do laundry once a week: three or four large loads one after the other, in cold water with biodegradable, allergen-free detergent. In the spring and summer, the t-shirts and towels flap in the breeze over our deck. In the winter or the rain, everything is hung in the basement. Our house's electrical system won't support a dryer.

Today, I stood on my deck in the warm morning sun. I hung a sheet; the wind swept it out like a tent. Then I pinned up socks in neat matched pairs – little knit couples to flutter around the sheet home.

Though I'm not married, at some point I became a wife. I thought that it snuck up on me; that it happened in little steps over the five years that Russ and I have been living together. I started becoming a wife when I picked up his dirty socks, when I took charge of the bills, when I referred to his mother as "mother-in-law", when he started having to ask me where things were around the house... but there was still a defining moment that solidified those other moments and transformed my role.

I don't actually remember the exact moment when I crossed the line between when I was not-a-wife and when I was a wife. It is only important in retrospect. But it comes down to laundry.

For our first four years together, Russ and I took our dirty clothes to someone else to wash. About every two weeks, we'd hand over big heavy of bags of clothing and a credit card, and the next day they would come back: the bag full of neatly, but unfamiliarly, folded items and the credit card bill a little bit heavier.

With our own house came our own washing machine. I like doing laundry, and my writing keeps me at home evenings while Russ' activities frequently take him out, so it seems natural for me to take over the task of keeping clean clothes in our closets.

I balance a basket of wet t-shirts on one hip, get the door with the other while gently pushing one of the cats out of my way with one foot. Russ' t-shirts are mostly black and jewel toned. I turn them inside out and try to hang them out of direct sunlight, to prevent fading.

On the deck of our first house, sometime during the hanging of the first load of laundry out of our first washing machine – it was probably work clothes from the renovations – I became a wife. Now I need to figure out how I feel about that.

When I was about seven, I was supposed to be in a recital for my skating class. It was a big recital, with all the classes participating. The different levels were different animals. My younger sister's class were all little bluebirds. My class was to be a mob of kangaroos.

For whatever reason, I did not want to skate in the recital. I can't remember why I was so resistant; perhaps I didn't want to wear the big, bulky kangaroo costume, perhaps I got claustrophobic in the big kangaroo head we were supposed to wear, or maybe it was plain old stage fright.

I went to all the rehearsals and skated with my class during the whole lead-up, but I made it clear that I didn’t want to participate in the final recital. My mother, having been around me for seven years and already having a fair idea of my determination (or stubbornness, if you will), knew that I would not be convinced, coerced or forced, so she advised the costume maker not to bother making me a costume. The costume maker, being experienced in dealing with more mutable and fickle children, tried to tell my mother that I might change my mind.

To paraphrase my mother: "No chance in hell."

I very happily did not skate in the recital. I cheered on my bluebird sister, flapping her little arm-wings with her class. I worried when she fell way behind her slightly older and larger classmates, and ended up half a rink behind them when they left the ice. I was very (and vocally) relieved to see one of the assistants skating out to meet her as she slowly crossed the ice alone. She continued her flapping as she was carried off.

I did not once doubt or regret my decision.

Ah, to know my own mind so well now!

Responses to my last post (about bumper stickers) got me to thinking about signs of belonging. Bumper stickers, for example, not only advertise someone's beliefs and hobbies, but they also signal what community that person belongs to. An inside joke stuck on the back of a car tells other members of the community that you belong.

Everyone wants to belong. But belonging is meaningless if other people don't know you belong. Other people need to know where you belong, and, by extension, where you don't belong.

Most of the messages we send out are subtle. We tell the world about ourselves through our clothes, our cars or other vehicles, our homes, our hairstyles, etc. Many of the things we surround ourselves with in our homes and our office desks, and many of the things we carry in our pockets and purses are, at least in part, symbolic of our membership(s). Individually, a notebook with a cat picture on the front, a cruelty-free cosmetic product, a hemp wallet and a bike lock don't mean anything. But together, they speak about the person carrying them all in their backpack.

The problem is that other people can misunderstand these passive messages. A stranger can't tell if you are wearing thrift store clothing because you don't have a lot of money or because you choose not to spend money on new clothing as a way of resisting wasteful consumerism. Or both. To clarify where we belong, we add active signs: bumper stickers, membership cards, pins, backpack patches, etc.

This leads me to thinking about identity and membership in LJ. Before you start reading someone's journal regularly and getting to know their personality (as presented in this personal but public format), much of what you know about a person here is their LJ icons - the equivilent of their physical appearance, prehaps - and their interest lists and community lists: their chosen memberships.

When creating and editing your LJ account, do you pick and choose your interests to indicate the kinds of communities you want other people to know you are in?