(no subject)
So, yesterday a big picture fell off my wall, hit the tile and -- you guessed it -- shattered. While I was cleaning it up I was bitching to myself about how I HATE cleaning up glass. I started thinking, "Now, wait a minute. Do I really hate cleaning up glass, or am I just grumpy right this moment? I didn't hate cleaning up glass when I broke Quin's wineglass, or when I broke the coffee carafe." In realizing this, I also realized that I only hate cleaning up glass when it shatters into a gazillion pieces; the other glass breakages were contained.
So then I started thinking about why I hated cleaning up shattered glass. It makes a mess, yes, but nothing terrible. After thinking about it for a while, I finally realized that I hated cleaning it up because of the way my mom cleaned it up when I was younger. EVERYTHING got vacuumed. She'd pull out the little hose thing and vacuum the grout to make sure she hadn't missed any, and she'd examine the floor for a twenty foot radius for tiny little shards. Her fear was that we'd step on one and cut our feet. It was this lengthy process that I hated, the fear that I'd miss one and gash my foot open. (And at least one always went missing, we'd find it later by stepping on it, which means we had this crazy fear AND we never succeeded in picking up all the glass, anyway.) Which, in turn, led me to wondering if it was really necessary. I mean, how big does a piece have to be before it's at foot-gashing length? The glass dust that I was cleaning up -- was that really a threat to me or the dogs? Could I just get the big pieces, sweep up decently, and not worry about it so much? Was my mom's worry valid, or another aspect of her (undiagnosed) OCD?
All this thinking about glass made me think about other things I don't know about. I called my older sister recently because I was going NUTS cleaning up after butchering a chicken for the dogs. I had to ask her -- how dangerous is raw meat, really? Because after I'd chopped up a chicken, I'd wash the cutting board, the knife, the sink, any towels nearby that might have picked up a teensy bit of chicken blood, any appliances on the counter, bleach the sponge and the dishrag... you get the idea. After talking to Batese I got a lot more sane about cleaning up, learning that yes I should be careful, but no I didn't have to sterilize the ENTIRE kitchen.
See, the thing is, my mom treated it like... well, she's a germaphobe, so that should tell you. I didn't know if that was safe behavior or crazy behavior.
All of this thinking led me to a realization that's probably an obvious one, but not something that had really occurred to me: if you're raised with a crazy pattern in your life, you may not know it's a crazy pattern. You might think it's normal. If you do think it might be a crazy pattern, you don't know at what point it becomes reasonable instead of crazy, or what to do instead, or when to stop.
It's really not just a matter of looking at the craziness (or crazy people) in our lives, but then looking at what's normal, too -- and how do you do that when you're not around it? (For the purposes of this ramble, 'normal' means 'emotionally and mentally healthy.' I realize that's not normal. ;-D) I mean, I might date a normal person, but the likelihood they're going to cut chicken while I'm around so I can learn the normal pattern is pretty damn slim. And if they do, I might very well just think they're doing the clean up "wrong."
Heck, there are plenty of things that I probably do that I don't need to, that I'm not even aware of. Things that were so normal in my household, it never occurs to me that they're not. When I was dating DK and I went to visit, it was interesting to be around her and her friends, because while they did other crazy things, they didn't do my crazy things. I remember thinking, "Oh, this is what's normal, healthy behavior."
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that it was an interesting observation, and one I'm going to try to keep in mind.
J
PS I stepped on a piece today -- two, in fact -- that were the kind of tiny little nuggets that you typically miss. They didn't cut me; I hopped around for a minute brushing it off my foot, then finding it in the carpet and throwing the pieces away. No big deal.
So then I started thinking about why I hated cleaning up shattered glass. It makes a mess, yes, but nothing terrible. After thinking about it for a while, I finally realized that I hated cleaning it up because of the way my mom cleaned it up when I was younger. EVERYTHING got vacuumed. She'd pull out the little hose thing and vacuum the grout to make sure she hadn't missed any, and she'd examine the floor for a twenty foot radius for tiny little shards. Her fear was that we'd step on one and cut our feet. It was this lengthy process that I hated, the fear that I'd miss one and gash my foot open. (And at least one always went missing, we'd find it later by stepping on it, which means we had this crazy fear AND we never succeeded in picking up all the glass, anyway.) Which, in turn, led me to wondering if it was really necessary. I mean, how big does a piece have to be before it's at foot-gashing length? The glass dust that I was cleaning up -- was that really a threat to me or the dogs? Could I just get the big pieces, sweep up decently, and not worry about it so much? Was my mom's worry valid, or another aspect of her (undiagnosed) OCD?
All this thinking about glass made me think about other things I don't know about. I called my older sister recently because I was going NUTS cleaning up after butchering a chicken for the dogs. I had to ask her -- how dangerous is raw meat, really? Because after I'd chopped up a chicken, I'd wash the cutting board, the knife, the sink, any towels nearby that might have picked up a teensy bit of chicken blood, any appliances on the counter, bleach the sponge and the dishrag... you get the idea. After talking to Batese I got a lot more sane about cleaning up, learning that yes I should be careful, but no I didn't have to sterilize the ENTIRE kitchen.
See, the thing is, my mom treated it like... well, she's a germaphobe, so that should tell you. I didn't know if that was safe behavior or crazy behavior.
All of this thinking led me to a realization that's probably an obvious one, but not something that had really occurred to me: if you're raised with a crazy pattern in your life, you may not know it's a crazy pattern. You might think it's normal. If you do think it might be a crazy pattern, you don't know at what point it becomes reasonable instead of crazy, or what to do instead, or when to stop.
It's really not just a matter of looking at the craziness (or crazy people) in our lives, but then looking at what's normal, too -- and how do you do that when you're not around it? (For the purposes of this ramble, 'normal' means 'emotionally and mentally healthy.' I realize that's not normal. ;-D) I mean, I might date a normal person, but the likelihood they're going to cut chicken while I'm around so I can learn the normal pattern is pretty damn slim. And if they do, I might very well just think they're doing the clean up "wrong."
Heck, there are plenty of things that I probably do that I don't need to, that I'm not even aware of. Things that were so normal in my household, it never occurs to me that they're not. When I was dating DK and I went to visit, it was interesting to be around her and her friends, because while they did other crazy things, they didn't do my crazy things. I remember thinking, "Oh, this is what's normal, healthy behavior."
I don't really know where I'm going with this, except that it was an interesting observation, and one I'm going to try to keep in mind.
J
PS I stepped on a piece today -- two, in fact -- that were the kind of tiny little nuggets that you typically miss. They didn't cut me; I hopped around for a minute brushing it off my foot, then finding it in the carpet and throwing the pieces away. No big deal.