News

Well it’s official, the kiddo has the flu. Whether Jon and I are going to get it remains to be seen. Ah, well.
Am I the only one that when my schedule is blown to hell for almost a week that it’s hard to get back to work? Darla is much more adaptable than Jon or myself to changes in routine, or interruptions. I’ve noticed a pattern with friends that are the oldest of a large family, three or more. They all seem to roll with changes better than those of us who are only children. Jon and I are both onlies. I was raised by an elderly parent(grandparent). There was very little change in our routine from day to day. Few if any visitors. It was very quiet, very isolated. It has left me with few coping skills for lots of people, lots of interruptions. I’ve talked about this with other onlies, or with people who are more than eight years apart from their nearest sibling, and find that we all have problems with this sort of thing. Darla, as the oldest of five, is so much more placid about all the changes and activity around here in the last year. The construction hasn’t really bothered her. It’s driven me nuts.
I’m finally getting a little used to all the people moving back and forth that I can see from my office, or on the roof near my office, that was fun. No, not really. But having both Jon and Trin sick at the same time has just really thrown me. It isn’t that I didn’t have chaos in my childhood, my grandmother and I both have a temper, but it was the usual chaos. It was the same problems, not new situations to adapt to, but the same routine stuff, good or bad. So you adapt to the usual, but as a child if you don’t get a lot of different situations, then, as an adult, you seem limited in your response to changes. Or, the people I know from similar circumstances seem unable to adapt to the degree that the people from homes with a lot of new and different experiences adapt.
So for all of you that mourn you didn’t have a peaceful childhood, think how much better it may have made you be able to adapt to changes, and breaks in routine. To all of you out there like myself that are still having trouble adapting, my sympathies. It has only recently been brought to my attention how much a prisoner of our childhood we are, the only way to change it is it to be aware of it. Be aware of why we do things, or why some things bother us so much more than they seem to bother others. Until you know why you react to something, you cannot control or change that reaction. You must know why, before you can change the how.
I’m off to try and roll with the vagaries of life. My usual response is to come out of my corner fighting. When there is nothing to fight against, only the disruptions of normal life, that’s when I am most often at a loss.