Quilts and Quilting

Monday Minute -- Sleeping with a Night Light

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

February 11, 2008

SLEEPING WITH A NIGHT LIGHT I was talking to another heart by-pass survivor recently and she mentioned that she likes sleeping with a night light. Later when her husband comes to bed he turns it off and if she wakes in the night she feels afraid. Now this was a woman of "a certain age" as I am myself. She was embarrassed about her need for the light and her fear. But I understood completely. One of the things that happens if you survive a life-threatening surgery, event, or illness, is that you feel fragile. For all the years of your adolescence and adulthood, you felt strong and capable and only afraid of real terrors - like the first time your teenager stays out all night, or ice on the streets. Then all of a sudden, you feel fragile and that almost any pain or unexplained twitch becomes a "oh no, am I going to have another heart attack?" And at night, you look for comfort and reassurance. The thing I reminded my friend, is that in the hospital - the last place she felt "safe" - there was always a light on at night. And people moving around. And a call button in case anything really went wrong. I also was very tuned into the fact that there were always people talking - in low voices, but still talking all night. So when I got out of the hospital, I started going to sleep with the TV on - poker tournaments, re-runs of old shows, and DVDs of The West Wing with four episodes in a row. The thing is, I usually fall asleep in the first five minutes. It was well into 2007 before I knew who won the 2006 World Series of Poker. I saw the beginning of the final table about 30 times, but never the end. But falling asleep with hundreds of people milling around a casino in Las Vegas and commentators in the background, makes me feel safe. Other nights, I listen to the end of season 3 of West Wing. Josh brings Donna moose meat from Helsinki. I don't really know what happens at the end of the episode. I saw it many years ago when it was first on the air, but these days I hit the seven minute mark and fall asleep with the busting sounds of an imaginary White House substituting for the safety of the cardiac ward. Safety is all an illusion, obviously. Night lights don't make us safe. Neither does television, or a special pillow or a stuffed animal - even a real one for that matter. But we surround ourselves with illusions of safety, because there really are some monsters in the closet. I turn my television on each morning and make sure they are showing ads on the Today Show. I used to watch reruns of one of my old favorite shows, "Murder She Wrote." Then one day, my son called from college and said "Mom, are you watching TV?" I said "Yes, why." "Mom!!!" he said "They just flew a plane into the World Trade Center." We all learned that morning that if they are not showing ads on the national news, something major, and probably awful, has happened. So now I turn on the TV first thing in the morning tuned to The Today Show or another news show. As soon as an ad comes on, I know it's safe to get on with my day. Of course that's an illusion, too. Because awful things can happen any time of the day, not just first thing in the morning, but I like the illusion and it lets me get on with my day. Fear is a funny thing. Sometimes it is a real emotion, in reaction to real dangers. But most of the time it's a fake feeling, brought on by our overactive imaginations. Safety, real safety, comes from facing life as it comes. The only resolution for fear is to do it anyway - whatever it is you are afraid of. It's almost certainly not going to be as bad as you think, and if it turns out to be that bad, worrying about it ahead of time will only make it worse. In the meantime, if a night light makes you feel safer, plug it in. If nothing else, it will help you get to the bathroom safely. This is Nancy Kirk, with your Monday Minute.

www.kirkcollection.com

Update on The BIG Little Book of Thank You Notes

When I finished the manuscript, I thought it would be a simple matter to get it to the printer and back ready to ship.  WRONG!

It turns out that other people actually take weekends and holidays off -- now why didn't I think of that?

Then, they needed a few more sentences I hadn't written.

Then it turned out the old ISBN numbers I had were the wrong number of digits -- the whole system changed between the time I started the book and when I finished.

But there is hope that soon we will be at the final moment of YES!  Soon.  I'll let you know as soon as I have a final ship date.

Nancy Kirk
The Kirk Collection
www.kirkcollection.com

Monday Minute -- Learning from the Turtle

The Monday Minute
Quilts ~ Inspiration ~ Lifestyle ~ with Nancy Kirk

January 21, 2008

LEARNING FROM THE TURTLE A good friend of mine moved to another state recently and called last night, telling me how homesick she is feeling. She loves her new job, the condo she is renting is nice, there is all the fresh fruit in the world (think Florida), plus there is no snow and we just got hit with another storm today. But nothing feels like "home" for her yet. The water tastes different. The TV stations have different names and none of the channels are on the same numbers on the cable box. The newspaper doesn't look familiar and the comics are different from the ones she liked at "home." Old friends are not available for a quick burger after work. So it just doesn't feel like "home". Moving is considered the third most stressful experience in life - right after death of a spouse and divorce, and I think the stress levels get higher the older we get and the more set in our ways. I've reached the point in life where I don't even go to new stores for Christmas shopping because I don't want the stress of learning my way around a new store. I get upset when they rearrange my neighborhood grocery store. I know that's silly in many ways, but it's still true. I know a big move is coming fairly soon. I have a 17 room house with two people as permanent residents, and one of my daughter's friends in the spare room. But it's still a big place to manage, and it is completely full - of stuff. My stuff, my late husband's stuff, business stuff, my daughter's stuff, and just a little bit of my son's stuff - he finally moved his pre-college clothes and two car loads of other miscellaneous stuff out during Christmas. I can't move really soon, because I have to deal with the stuff first, but within the next couple of years, some serious downsizing is in my future as my daughter finishes school and moves into her own space. It means letting go and going through a grieving process, for a part of my life which is finished or finishing now. It brings up lots of great memories and some sad ones - a lot of life has happened in this house. We moved here the day we got our son, Ben. His adoption caseworker brought him to the old house and we put his small bag of things on the moving van with ours and all moved together to this house - he was 4 and next week he celebrates his 25th birthday. We brought Jessica home to this house - she was seven months old. She has never lived anywhere else. When we first looked at the house, we knew we were planning to adopt and would need more room. We never expected 17 rooms, but when we walked in, we knew it was our house and made a full price offer within 30 minutes. We lived through Bill's cancer in this house, and when his life was done I held his hand while he died in this house. The thing we have to learn from the turtle is that the real home goes with us, no matter where we go. Home is a state of mind, not a structure or a city or a country. Home is made up of the memories and experiences of the past, and the way we meld them into our experience of the present. I heard a wonderful folk singer many years ago who wrote hauntingly beautiful songs about home. During the performance, she told us of the home where she grew up in Appalachia, up a hollow with no electricity or plumbing, but filled with a big family and lots of love and music. She had been writing about that place for many years after she moved away and was spending her life touring and performing. She had the chance to go back "home" after her parents died, and she was so excited to visit that log cabin and finally "go home". When she got there, she found the town was all electric, they had city water and sewage and when she went to see her home, it was an empty lot - the cabin had been torn down many years before. She realized the home she had been singing about all those years really existed inside her head -- and she could always carry that home with her no matter where she lived. When I move, I know I may have to learn new station numbers on the cable box, maybe a new newspaper depending on where I move, and how to live with a lot less stuff. People facing a move to a senior living center or nursing home may have to leave behind all their furniture, books, art work, beloved pets. Downsizing will hard, moving be will be hard and I'm sure there will be grieving involved. I just hope I remember the turtle, and that my real "home" goes with me wherever I go. This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute.

www.kirkcollection.com

Six Lessons Learned While Standing in Line

The Monday Minute


SIX LESSONS LEARNED WHILE STANDING IN LINE

For the first time in many years I ventured out on Black Friday - the day after Thanksgiving when the Christmas shopping season officially kicks off. For those outside the United States I should probably explain that Black Friday is a good thing, not a day of mourning - it represents the day most retailers become profitable for the year or "in the black."

Over the past 20 years or so it has become a day which starts earlier and earlier with some Malls now opening at midnight on Thanksgiving night. In Omaha we haven't gone quite that crazy - our big stores opened at 5 a.m. I got to the first one a little after 6 - one of the big office supply stores to pick up some computer accessories for stocking stuffers. Then the second store - no lines, no problems.

Then I went to Nebraska Furniture Mart, the largest furniture store in the country. Big mistake - huge! Well, not really because their Friday morning bargains were truly bargains and after shopping for an hour, I got in one of the 20 checkout lines which stretched from one side of the store to the other. It was almost four hours before I inched my way to the cash register. Here are six lessons I learned on the way:

• I was very smart to go to the bathroom before I started shopping. : )
  
• When the line goes at a perpendicular to the main traffic aisles, everyone who is still shopping wants to cross in front of you. Life is easier if you just leave three feet between you and the person in front of you. Fewer people bump into you if they can move freely.
  
• Time goes faster if you sing Christmas Carols under your breath - it reminds you why you got up this early and helps you forget how much your feet hurt.
  
• You can do your full cardiac warm-up routine standing in line. Actually in four hours you can do it many times - my rehab nurses will be proud.
  
• Smiles go a long way when everyone is getting irritated. If you sympathize with the people around you whose feet hurt as much as yours they feel better and so do you.
  
• The person behind you hasn't learned all these valuable lessons and spends the whole time complaining that our line moves the slowest, people must be cutting in, the store needs better staff and on and on. Other than a nod of sympathy, what can you do? My final solution came when we finally made it to the cashier's desk. I told the woman behind me to take my place and check out first. It cost me another two minutes but made her think she had won the lottery.

The Christmas season offers lots of opportunities for stress - long lines, tired feet, the conflict between generous impulses and budget realities - I could go on and on. But it also offers wonderful opportunities to give little gifts of the season.

• You can let someone ahead of you in line or allow a driver to exit from a crowded parking lot.
  
• You can smile at a tired cashier who has been hearing about long lines all day.
  
• You can give a call to a neighbor when you are heading to the store to see if she needs anything.
  
• You can take some neighborhood kids downtown to see the Christmas lights one evening.
  
• You can carve out an hour to visit someone you know who is in a nursing home.
  
• Give a quarter to every bell ringer you pass - keep some change handy just for this. It's not much, but it will make you feel good and it helps fill the kettles.

You can add a lot of Christmas spirit for not much effort and almost no money. Do you have some other ideas? I'd love to hear what you've found to do to keep up your Christmas spirit. Nothing should cost more than a quarter or take more than an hour. Think you can find 29 things for the next 29 days? Send me your ideas and we'll publish as many as we can in a future Minute.

This is Nancy Kirk with your Monday Minute.