The back burner simmer.

Its rather odd to wake up the first few days of January and have the snow completely melted and sunshine beaming in the windows, but, hey, I’ll take it for now.  Makes it easier to get out and grocery shop anyway.  It is super cold, however, and I guess that is why this is winter. 

A negative to working at home like I do is if there is a computer issue, its all on me to fix. If  I can’t get connected in to the systems for some reason I have to go to a support queue to be managed in a way, way too long and overburdened system.  That’s how my January morning is starting out.  It gives me time to look around my desk, see what I need to throw out and begin organizing my paperwork for taxes and what not, but, gosh, patience for this is not my strong suit.  One of the trade-offs for my work-at-home life. Today is one of those days; the tech support queue is long and the time I was going to have “for myself” this morning is being spent waiting in that queue.  

I often reflect and have the time “for myself” late at night, so this is a little different for me to just be waiting here.  If I look to the left, there it is - the big pile of papers and filing.  If I look to the right, eh.  Not much.  If I look ahead, well, that’s another story.  That’s the window, that’s daydream land.  While I am waiting in this queue, you see, I have to be ready for that tech support person to come on.  I am basically stuck here...simmering.  I can’t really get up and go about my day because they might be here any second, and if I am not, boom, they let me go and on to the next one who has been willing to wait.  I’m not scheduled to work yet so thank goodness I tried my systems early. 

This is when I usually shred stuff.  I feel good about shredding things.  It makes me feel like I am so organized.  I like deciding what doesn’t need to be shredded and can just be thrown in the recycling bin.  I am constantly amazed at the amount of paper garbage that comes in our  mail.  I know we have made great progress in the land of junk mail but wow, it is still a huge issue in my house.  I stopped taking magazines years ago, we do not get the paper but I get a tremendous amount of other junkmail.  If I could figure out a way to get the bills to stop coming in the mail, that’d be perfect.  

Oh, here’s the support tech now.  I guess its time to focus on a bit of work.  That wasn’t so bad; an hour and a half.  I got some shredding done and had breakfast.  Made a call.  Its not always a bad thing to be put on the back burner! 

Conforming, or not.

I scrapped the idea of writing anything about the holidays because, well, I figured there was lots to read out there about the holidays.  “I am not going to do what every one else is doing” , I thought to myself.  That’s the way I am sometimes...a rebel.  I use to think it was charming to be someone who doesn’t always follow the rules.  Now, I’m less convinced.  Could it be that I have finally matured? Grown up? Become a conforming non-conformist?

When my son was a teenager, he and I had a few talks about conforming non-conformity.  I had this thing, you know, where I wanted him to dress a certain way, be a certain thing.  He had other ideas.  What he did not accept was that he was not an “original”.  Very few people are, truly, original.  I mean, and this is where he use to get pretty mad at me, if it is possible to find certain articles of clothing, say flannel shirts, then doesn’t that make wearing flannel shirts not original? If it is “popular” to go to Goodwill and find too small t-shirts with elementary school names on them, or city park and recreation league teams, isn’t that the norm? He and I had many discussions on “Clothes make the man, son” and he hated that phrase.  

I was pretty good about it though, and let a few pretty wild things walk out this door back then.  I wanted him to feel like he could express himself but not put himself in danger.  We traveled to Great America one October for Halloween.  In true style, he wore red pants and a brilliant orange windbreaker...and no doubt, his trademark tennis ball yellow sneakers.  The whole park was decorated for Halloween and ghouls, goblins, witches and vampires lurked.  He and his friend walked through the park, and I will admit...he was a standout.  One lovely young female vampire, standing on a pedestal, cloaked and pale, looked down upon him and said “My, my, you are a colorful little fellow, aren’t you?”  

The thing is, I love those memories about him.  He was fun.  He was fearless, in some ways.   I use to try to challenge him that wearing bright tennis ball yellow skateboard sneakers was not “original” if there was a company out there producing them.  He didn’t like it that I held that opinion, but I think he understood my point.   He was the only kid in school with them and I guess that made them original enough. 

A year or so later, he was feeling restless one night and took a stroll out of the house. Late.  Late, late.  He walked for a few miles and was stopped not far from arriving back home, by the police.  Seems a gas station convenience store was robbed and the “perpetrator” was seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, which is what he was wearing.  The police asked if he would go to the gas station convenience store for a possible identification.  Now, although some may have considered him a rebel, he was still a very polite young man, so he agreed.  The police took him to the clerk and had him repeat a phrase, which included calling her a name or two.  She replied the thief wasn’t him, as the thief had a noticeable speech impediment.  

"Besides," she said “He certainly wasn’t wearing THOSE shoes!” 

Blame it all on my roots...

Hubs and I had an interesting and entertaining weekend.  About  six weeks or so ago, daughter called and asked if I thought dad would like to go to a concert as a Christmas gift.  Not just any concert, but, Garth Brooks.  She loved Garth Brooks as a kid and he always enjoyed him, too, mainly because she had so many of his CDs.  Garth was doing a series of concerts to benefit Nashville flooding relief and tickets were an amazing $25 each.  

Well, I said, I’m sure he would but we are going to have to tell him because, well, he needs to know he has enough people working, etc. and oh, by the way, this is Christmas week.  But, we dove in, drove down and boogied down, country style, in Nashville. 

The concert was great.  Fantastic even.  It was loud and pure entertainment.  We did know all the songs, thanks to that middle-schooler-now-mom that loves Garth Brooks.  But what was better, and maybe even selfish, was that our two daughters were ours for the weekend.  Both their husbands opted out of the two day trip and we had them to ourselves.  (Our son was unable to attend but,  boy,  do I wish he were there).  Beautiful young women, good friends to each other and independent thinkers.  We had great fun, lots of laughs, deep talks, and now, new memories.  We didn’t get to eat the fancy meal I would have liked, but we did enjoy some tremendous music and some pretty decent pulled pork.   We didn’t dress up, which I also would have liked, but we sang loud at a dueling piano club with gusto and walked back to the hotel, talking way too loudly,  I'm sure.   We stayed up late, we enjoyed each other’s company and just let it happen.  It was the week before Christmas, and we all still had much to do, but we just let it fly.  We ate too much, spent too much and stayed awake too much.  

Nashville is a great city.  A wonderful place for a quick weekend getaway and a super easy drive from our location.  Be spontaneous and take a little trip; you won’t regret it.  Its a walking city, easy to get where the action is.  See the dueling pianos at Bang This.   Gosh, if there is a concert at the Bridgestone, take that in.  If its a hockey game instead, see that! See a college basketball game at Belmont or Vanderbilt.  You want football? Titans stadium is only blocks from where the honky tonks line both sides of the street.  There’s loads to do in Nashville; certainly lots more than I've mentioned here, and lots more than country music. 

However, if you have time to steal away with your adult child(ren), and see them in a new light, their new light...no spouse (the husbands were missed, but it would have been different if they had been there!), no kids, no schedule to speak of, not  your house, not their house ~ treat yourself.  Spend the time with the people you grew, listen to them, speak with them, you absolutely won’t regret it. 

December stuff

My holidays as a kid were a little different than my holidays now.  Since we were often quite far away from where my mom’s family lived in southern Illinois or my dad’s family in northern Indiana, there was often just the five of us.

We lived in a trailer most of my childhood..oh, excuse me. I meant mobile home.  The first one was tiny ~ 8 feet wide and 40 feet long.  I don’t have a lot of memories of this one, just the fuzzy few photographs and snippets.  The next mobile home was 10 feet by 50 feet.  My parents referred to it as “The Anderson” years later; the manufacturer.   

I don’t have a lot of things from my childhood as, well, you can imagine. There was no place to keep anything! I may have a report card or two and maybe a drawing.   I think my mom may have bought new Christmas decorations every year or something, until I was older, because I don’t remember decorations being pulled out and hung with great care.  This might speak to my yen for collecting things, although clutter is getting less and less attractive to me.  

When we were close enough to get there, we would travel to my mom’s hometown at Christmas.   My mom had been married before she met my dad and had two boys.  Those two brothers lived with my grandmother, so in order to spend the holidays with them, we traveled when we could.  I had a uncle, named Dude, with three daughters close in age to my sister and I.  We really loved visiting them.  My Aunt May and Uncle Dude would get a huge “flocked” tree every year and I thought it was the most glamorous thing ever.  It was so much bigger and grander than anything we could put up in the little trailer.  My mom’s sister and family often traveled up from Florida as well...they also had two girls close in age to us.  I just realized my younger brother, always a “man’s man”, must have been mortified during these visits!   

These memories are busting through the cobwebs of my mind this blustery December day.  I get a little sad during some of these memory walks, as I think most of us do, when we think of times we no longer have.  I don’t have contact with any of my cousins.  I don’t know their families or their homes.  We never made a solid connection with each other, I guess because we only saw each other those one or two times a year, if then.  Each of my uncles passed away, and their wives, and I wasn’t at their funerals.  My older brother Darrell lives the closest to the old town, and is in contact with what remains of my mom’s family, but, that is also a thinning thread.  

Yesterday, surrounded by aunts,  uncles, cousins and a great grandmother, my little granddaughter made her first Christmas cut out cookie.  She heard Happy Birthday sung to her by her large family.  She ran and giggled and dodged and played.  She heard laughter and banter, and licked sugar off of her sticky fingers.  It was a great cookie and memory making day.  I wish the same for each of you...make memories. 

49 reasons...

Its great how songs secure some memories for us. Songs don’t just serve as background to me, they are a piece of the memory or thought process. I’ve always thought that music is a language and some people are gifted with delivering it, as my daughter Lindsey is, and the rest of us, well, we get to receive it.

Not a musician but appreciative of music and musical gifts and talents, I have a lot of songs that remind me of things, or events. I'm sure you do, too. Or things remind me of songs. Not too long ago, my husband and I were driving along and listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Before Young...you know the album. As we rode along and I sang along to all the songs, he seemed surprised. He said “You know all the words to this album?” “Well, yeah, of course.” came my reply, and was equally surprised that he was surprised. Was it because we didn’t know each other then? That we have a hard time picturing each other during that time of our lives that it surprised him that I would know? I was in California for goodness sakes! Of course I know those songs!

Anyway, my sister and I use to sit in our bedroom and play that album over and over and over. Sister harmony is the best. Neither she nor I were great singers but we could sing together because, well, we just could. Or at least we believed we could. We had a floor length mirror at the foot of the bed we shared in the apartment in San Francisco. We would sit on the floor, facing the mirror, backs against the end of the bed and could prop our feet against the wall, if we needed to stretch out. We would hold the album between us while memorizing the lyrics and sing. And sing. And sing. Too young to date, and in a new place, we’d spend a LOT of time together. Sometimes we’d look in the mirror, at ourself or each other, and sometimes we would avoid looking.

I am truly thankful for people who have the gift of music. Whether its writing it, or singing it or playing it. I have always thought of music as the language of the world. Yes, I know all the words to all the songs on that great album, and lots of others, too. He's in for a real treat when I break out Janis Joplin....

She's out of the woods, she's out of the dark, she's out of the night....

I think this is my last post on my bully. I ask that you indulge me in just a few things I need to release to the wind here - some points about bullying in the workplace that I may have missed or glossed over in previous posts. This is also going to be a bit mushy.

The bully chooses her victim. I have said this before and had some deep discussions regarding this theory with my psychologist. Its not that my bully just has a bad personality. She is well liked by many and doesn’t bully everyone. Oh, she’s narcissistic...another characteristic, and that causes some people to steer clear of her. I don’t exactly understand why nor will I ever, probably, but I think there were several things about me that got to her, and I was to some degree an easy target. I felt a responsibility to protect her, as well, and how twisted is that? If you know anything about abuse, its a phenomena that happens again and again. We are dependent on our abuser for something, or feel protective of them, or feel as though we are somehow to blame for it. She was going to bully someone in the building, of that I am sure...if it wasn’t me, it was going to be someone else, someone she could. Bullies have a second sense about who it can be, and like all abusers, groom their victim. I believe if she hasn’t started already, she will soon be bullying someone. I suspect it has already started. My therapist has said not necessarily. We’ll see.

Being an elected official, and being in the office of an elected official, does not mean the personnel policies adopted by the entity do not apply. Nor does it mean the adopted laws of the Federal Employment Act do not apply. Part of how my bully was able to bully me for so long is based in the belief that she could run her office and her staff any way she deemed fit. This is NOT the case and all adopted handbooks, ordinances and policies apply to everyone that receives a paycheck from the entity. If the opposite were true, as a very knowledgeable lawyer in employment issues put it to me, then a judge could bully a bailiff, a sheriff could bully his jailers, etc. and we all know that’s not the case, right? People can not be mistreated or harassed at their jobs, nor their workplace be a hostile environment.

Since the above is true, it is the responsibility of the human resources department of an entity, if there is one, to protect the employee from a developing harassment or hostility. In my case, I spoke to 3 different Human Resources Directors. Each women in their 40s or so, like me, and like my bully. (Ha! Yes, I know I am no longer in my 40s, but I was) They seemed to simply want to stay out of bully’s way and told me that while they certainly empathized with my situation and recognized the behavior that there was no way for them to intervene as she was an elected official. These ladies may want to do a little more research and training. If there is not a human resources department, the employee would be offered protection under the governing board for the entity and the legal department who is charged with making sure all laws are followed by all parties, elected or otherwise. The employee always has recourse, no one is exempt from fair treatment.

Workplace bullying is like any abusive treatment of an individual by another. There is a psychology to it and a recovery time from it. Its not something that someone can just “get over”. It is not a “personality conflict” between two people. I lost a tremendous amount of respect for some people I really liked because of statements just like those. In trying to protect the bully after the fact and perhaps themselves, co-workers of mine lied to an attorney in interviews regarding pay equity (which was a side to my being off work before worker’s compensation was approved). Again, Dr.’s theory is that they were trying to protect themselves, to not be me and of course, there were their jobs to keep. God grant me the courage, should I ever need to be in similar shoes, to tell the truth, to not be afraid.

To my co-workers who lied; I wish you no harm but I do not respect you. I hope you are not next. If you are next, talk to your HR Director. To my co-workers who knew and stood silent; I wish you no harm. I do wish you a voice. To those that said “it’s a personality conflict” or “that’s something personal between the two of you” when I reached out to you; I wish you no harm. A couple of you I have known for a very, very long time. Our journey together is over.

I will be FOREVER grateful to the people who believed me. The young HR Director who was in the first year of his career and believed that right is right and wrong is just wrong. His courage and his support will stay with me forever. The chief executive of my entity who pointed me in a direction to have a conversation with a legal advisor and gave me a name. Although this well respected lawyer could not get involved in my situation much beyond the surface because of a conflict of interest, his advice to me that April day changed my life. I broke down in that first conversation with Mr. Lawyer as it was the first time I heard “Well, that’s illegal as well as immoral. She can’t do that...here’s what to do.” Thank you to the wise physician in the Occupational Health facility I visited that same April day, who was unbelievably kind and knowledgeable. The two nursing staff ladies in the exam room with me that day who were as dumbfounded as I, I think, as to how I “presented”, but who showed only compassion. The insurance company representative and the nurse case manager; the two psychologists - thank you for your professionalism and help. My personal physician, who has a military background in post traumatic stress and offered great support and information. These folks are my heroes. They believed me, they listened and they were standing with me. I did not pursue this any further through the court system, or insurance, although it was advised and considered. I had to weigh it out. When the two year mark passed, I said a silent prayer and hoped I had done the right thing by letting it go. Time is the best healer, and I continue to take my time to get beyond this evil that so consumed me.

To dear friends and extended family who reached out to me and tried to figure out what to say to let me know they care, I know. I am sorry I couldn’t talk to you about it but, it was mine to work through, and it was so very painful. Sorry about all the crying as I know you aren’t use to that from me. I do so appreciate you all. If I lost touch with you over the last three years, its not you...its me. You know who you are.

Finally, to my family. My husband, who understood. Although I know it was hard, he got it. To my girls, thank you forever for all the listening you did, when you probably didn’t want to. To my boy, who heard.

For all of you that are reading my story, I hope this does not nor has it ever happened to you. Stand up for yourself, stand up for others. Know right, do right. There is NEVER EVER a time when it is acceptable for one person to abuse another. Not no way, not no how.

Heading home.

As more and more information comes out about bullying and bullies, largely in part to these recent horrific stories, I struggle with my own assuredness that I am better. I feel better. I look back at pictures from the period and know I had some good times but my memory of those days are kind of blurry. That’s what bullying and the aftermath has done for me. I have forgotten aspects of many good days. So what have I been doing the last three years?

I didn’t medicate through my treatment. I opted not to go the anti-depressant drug route and I don’t know if it was a mistake or not but it was my choice. However, I was in a fog. The depression consumed me. I functioned, I know I did, but I know I haven’t always been altogether engaged.

I use past tense purposefully although I am sure I am not all the way out of those gloomy times. But lately, I am more myself than I have been for years, I know this. I think my friends and family who have known me for a long time would speak to my silliness, my quirkiness and my fun. What drew my husband to me, he tells me, was that I was bubbly to his quietness. I worked with a man years ago who nicknamed me Sparky. That was before bullying, before depression. B.D. It bothers me a lot but the recent awareness that the traits that made me ME are rising again to the surface thrills me. Thrills me.

I surrounded myself with family and I just shut up...maybe shut out. Over the last three years I stopped talking with people. Some might think that was the depression. I don’t think so, I think it was the healing. I have a group of lovely, lovely friends. About 10 of us and I love us, I really do. But, I had to stop talking. People say the way to get through a rough period is to surround yourself with friends and keep busy. I couldn’t. I just simply could not. It was different than grief and depression I think. I instead dropped out and focused on my home, my family and getting better...focused, what? On me? What? It wasn’t a dark time...those days that were dark were the days I spent outside my home in a work environment where eyes turned the other way while I crumbled. I was now in the days of my recovery.

There wasn’t a lot of “work” being done around the house as I was not into it. So its not like I became a super home maker; I most definitely did not. You have more than likely seen those commericals about depression and they are pretty accurate. It was very hard to be motivated. If I had people in, and I did throw some big events over the last three years, it was for family. In the midst of my recovering I realized my family had no idea what had been going on. None. As I came out of it I realized I wanted very much...and it has become my priority...for my family to know each other. It didn’t matter that they had no idea what was going on but what mattered to me was that we were so much out of contact that they didn’t know what was going on, if that makes sense. It has always been a priority for my kids to know each other and to spend time together but the extended family became a focus for me. I have over the last three years gotten to know each a little better and spent a little more time with them; I love, love, love my family.

I love where I am headed.