Plays, Probiotics, Cabinets and Cat(burglar)s...

...or Sometimes You Can Do It Alone,  Sometimes You Need Help 
...or The Religious Post

Wow, yesterday was an incredibly stressful day.  I am amazed it went as easily as it did.  I had two completely different stressors pulling at me in one horribly long day.

I woke up early and stayed up late to move my stuff out of the old apartment while the wasband is out of town.  He doesn't know.  But I just found out he suspected - he told one person with a key explicitly "don't let her into the house."  Fortunately I haven't played all my cards before this, still a couple up my sleeve.

Just to be clear, I'm fairly certain that I have every legal and ethical right to go into that apartment to get my stuff.  But still, he will be terribly angry, and all the need for stealth felt really freaky.  Plus asking so many people for favor after favor, just to get stuff boxed and moved and stored quickly was very hard for me.  (My friends have been great. Thank you, friends.)  I chose, collected, and moved the stuff in just a few hours.

Meanwhile, *Irene* reminded me that I had planned to go to see her perform in a play last night.  Irene is a very close older relative.  So I took off early from work (after starting late) to drive an hour and a half, straight to the play.  The play was delayed for almost an hour, because it is a little play at a senior center, put on mostly for the benefit of the players, so they don't worry too much about the time.  So Irene is introducing me around to her friends, and their questions show all the lies she has told about me.

Irene is a pathological liar.  Perhaps you think that is just a hyberbolic expression.  It is not.  I know because I have a touch of the condition myself.  It is a desire to lie for no particular gain or purpose.  I guess when I do it, it is just to make a story sound slightly more interesting, almost never to get out of a bad situation or for material gain or to make myself look better.  Really.  I don't think I do it often, but occasionally lies slip out, I can't figure out why I did it, but I can't take it back. I easily recognize some lies from Irene, for example, warped stories of happenings that I experienced first hand.  Other lies are just guessed from her mannerisms.  I tell you this not to shame her, but to explain that yesterday was not an isolated incident.  Also, she likes to point out my faults, usually jokingly, but quite clearly, right in front of me.  Multiple faults, multiple times per evening.  Sometimes they are true, sometimes they are not, and it really doesn't make a difference.

Irene's friends, who clearly have great affection for her, try to chat with me.
"Oh, you're just in research now?  Your not a practicing doctor anymore?"
"How is your garden doing?  I hear it's really growing this year."
"I loved that cannoli you made for Irene last week." (I have never made cannoli in my life, and I haven't brought Irene any baked goods in the past year.)
Irene will give me a quick, strain look, as if to say, "Please don't tell, it's just a little lie."

So you see she takes the facts and twists them to me me look bigger and better.  Perhaps I should say "She is old, she is a pathological liar.  Maybe she just made a slip of the tongue.  Maybe her friends just misheard, or didn't remember clearly."  But I couldn't get through the evening, and as I drove her home, I told her that I don't appreciate that she lies about me; that she is so embarrassed by my mediocrity that she makes up all these embellishments.  I felt bad right away.  But it is the same thing every time I see her.  I can't stop from exploding.  Before I drove off to finish moving stuff, I went back up to her house to apologize, try to smooth things over, keep this night a happy memory for her.

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A couple weeks ago, I caught the end of an interesting article on Radiolab .  The piece was about a recent study I have heard somewhere before, about feeding yogurt to mice.  Well, not literally yogurt, more like a pill of the probiotics that make milk into yogurt.  One upshot of the probiotic diet was a significant decrease in the panic reaction to stressors.  Basically: mice were fed a standard diet, or a high probiotic diet.  The mice were dropped into a tank of water.  Standard diet : mouse swims a couple minutes, is overcome by panic, goes into dead float; Probiotic diet: mouse keeps swimming and swimming and swimming, blood chemistry shows much lower levels of panic enzymes.

I would usually make fun of someone who tried to mimic the results of such a study by trying to change her diet.  But this time I figure "what the heck", bought several quarts of kefir and yogurt, and started flooding my system with probiotics, maybe an average of 30oz per day.  And....I do feel more relaxed, although somewhat queezy. Apparently, even good bacteria can play havoc with your stomach when you overdo it, no surprise.  It is hard to say, but perhaps this induced calm help me do what I needed to do yesterday, and still make it to work for a productive day today.  I don't even remember crying.

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We learn that the Jewish calendar is not merely linear.  Time does not progress as a straight line, but cyclically.  One could imagine a spiral or helix, so that each year we travel forward on one axis, while concurrently returning to the same spot on the other axis.

Last year this was a terrible time of change and turmoil, choices and loss.  I am now terribly nervous as I watch events unfold in the shadow of the last year.  I am making the choices, I am preparing for the changes.  I worry that all the choices and preparations will be overturned and fly away like ashes in the wind, just like a year ago.  Above all, I need to remember that if it happens again, it is because the Master Above took control, to do what was right for me.  And I want to try again to be grateful that He would hold my hand and pull me onto the right path by force.

I am afraid this sounds off-putting, as if I am so righteous that I can be happy when I don't get my way.  I'm not that righteous.  But somehow, it really just seemed clear before.  And I so desperately want someone, and Someone, to hold my hand and just tell me what to do, I'm so tired.  I was listening to Dune on audio CD this morning - the characters ask each other, when do people outgrow the ability to sleep in complete comfort, without the burden of worry.  Does everyone really feel this way?

I went to a lecture years ago which I probably remember because the speaker had a lovely S. African accent.  He taught "The rabbis tell us we are always being chased by something.  If we are lucky, it is by good things, like preparing for holiday guests, or a wedding.  So we can hope and pray to be chased by good, but not to avoid being chased."  That is heavy, and the thought of it makes me more tired.  I feel like there is never enough time.  Certainly this week (this month, this year) I didn't get done so many of the chores that are chasing me.  I can't find time (and here I sit blogging), and I can't figure out how to get more.  So ironically I dedicated more time to an area where I have been sorely lacking - prayer.  I had fallen into a rut of only saying morning blessings and Sh'mah, with little other set prayer.  This year I started attending synagogue every week again, after years of almost never dragging myself out on shabbos.  I regularly pray all four services now on Saturdays. I love it.  So I have gone back (just recently, can't promise if it will stick) to saying the Amida every morning.  Maybe I can try for afternoon also.

Is it the probiotics settling my nerves, or the prayer?  I believe He wants us to try ourselves, while asking for help, so I'm gonna stick with both.