Self

End of the Weekend

By / November 4, 2012 / 1 Comment

I’ve hit a period when I’ve got lots of projects in process and I’m excited about working on all of them. This is much nicer than having lots of projects that I’m dreading. However at the end of a long day, which is also the end of a weekend when I did not accomplish as much as I might have wished, discouragement can show up.

Then I have to sit down and count the things I did. Postcards are ready to go. The calendar test print is ready for approval. I’m well into cropping the recolored images for Body Politic. I’ve reached March in the 2011 family photo book. I spent hours visiting with a friend and walked away both feeling refreshed and feeling like I’d actually been helpful. Twelve black garbage bags full of raked leaves. Updated chore charts for the kids and a plan for incentives which will hopefully encourage cleanliness through the upcoming holiday season. A batch of cookies. Meetings attended. I have to count these things done, because my brain is all too ready to remind me of the things I intended but did not get to.

Time to go to sleep and try again tomorrow.

Exercise and Mental Health

By / April 21, 2014 / 6 Comments

Several years ago I met an acquaintance as I was headed out of the grocery store and she was headed in. She was obviously on her way home from exercising at the gym. We chatted for a minute about her regular trips to they gym and about physical fitness in general. “a gym membership is cheaper than depression meds.” she quipped. I laughed and we parted to go our separate ways.

I’ve thought about that conversation quite a bit lately, particularly on the days when I’m pounding my feet on a treadmill. Over the past several months it has become clear that I have two choices to regulate my emotional state. I can either exercise three to five days per week, or I can find a doctor and get anti anxiety/depression medication. When I try to avoid those choices my emotional state vacillates wildly. My capabilities change. I hate it. I don’t think it is fair. I know that declaring life as unfair makes me sound five years old and I’m mad about that too. I remember the days when I was an extremely stable person emotionally, but things are different now. So I get mad about it and I use that anger to get me to the gym where I’m allowed to be angry at every running footstep I need to take.

I choose exercise, it has better side effects. When I’m not being angry that life is not fair, I am able to be very grateful that exercise does work. Not everyone is so fortunate. I know people who struggle with brain imbalances much worse than mine. I also know that my choices may change in the future. Physiology and psychology are in constant flux. There may come a day when instead of either/or I’m faced with and. In the meantime, I’m once again being mindful and getting my exercise, because taking two weeks off landed me in a place where I wondered if I was going crazy.

I finally understand the quip my acquaintance made. She was not joking at all. She masked it as a joke, passing it off lightly because we didn’t know each other well and parking lots are not good for deep conversation. Now I understand her, because on the way home from the gym I stop at the store and run into acquaintances.
“Oh you’re so good. I should get to the gym more.” They say.
I smile and sometimes I make a light comment, because I don’t want them to feel bad about their choices. My exercise is not about being good and doing the things I’m supposed to do. It is definitely not about being better than anyone else. If I could choose to stay home and stay emotionally stable, I would do that. It would be so much easier. Instead I run because running is better than feeling like I might be going crazy. Running is better than crying.

It feels wrong to be praised for this thing I feel forced to do and which I often do resentfully. I also know how recently I’ve become regular about exercise and how easy it is for me to fall back out of the pattern. Exercise is a new habit and it wears on me in unfamiliar ways. Howard thinks that the resentment will wear away and exercise can be something I just enjoy. Maybe he is right. I know that used to be true. Perhaps it will be true again. A few times I’ve felt the edges of enjoyment, I definitely feel satisfaction some days. Mostly I just get moving because whether or not I enjoy it does not matter as much as the fact that I need it. Perhaps these other emotions will emerge when exercise is a familiar part of my routines, like a comfortable pair of shoes. Right now I need to be grouchy about exercise, because the anger gets me out the door, and when I come home I am more able to do everything else.

All I Can Do

By / October 25, 2012 / 2 Comments

…for we know that it is by grace we are saved, after all we can do.
2 Nephi 25:23

I always trip over that “after all we can do” part of the verse. I believe it too thoroughly, trying to make the job of giving grace and blessings easy for God, as if He is more likely to grant them that way. In fact, I try my very hardest to put God out of work by doing all the work myself.

Then I hit a place like this week, where the things I want most are out of my control. Howard is in the midst of plotting the climax of the current Schlock storyline. He’s gathering all the threads of story to pull them together into a satisfying conclusion and there are threads everywhere. I know he can do this, he is brilliant with this, but the only help I can provide is to listen when he needs to talk plot and to read the occasional script.

Howard is also working hard on a yet-to-be-announced prose project. I’m excited that he gets to do this project. I love that he is getting to write a story for which he does not have to draw pictures. It lets Howard grow in new ways and that is good. But growth is not easy and I can’t write the words for him.

Then there is the calendar project. We need the calendar to launch our holiday season and pay for Christmas. It will get done in plenty of time. Howard is already half done with the line art and a third done with the coloring. Again, there is nothing I can do except support Howard’s efforts.
And pray.
Because when I run out of things to do, I have to acknowledge how much of my life is beyond my control. I turn to deity and pray for Howard’s good health, that the hand pain will stay away, that he’ll be inspired with the story bits he needs, that he’ll have a run of good work days, that he won’t feel too stressed or depressed or frustrated.

I read the scripture again and it feels very odd that all I can do is support and pray. I want something else, something active. I want my writing to be part of the solution, right now it adds an additional time burden without providing anything measurable in terms of payment. I want to be filling store orders, shipping merchandise to excited customers, but the orders ebb and flow. We’re currently in a lull before the holiday rush. Our next big merchandise push will be for the calendar, which is not yet ready.

I’ve done all I can do, now I need to exercise faith. Faith in Howard, who has always come through. Faith in God, who has already–repeatedly–informed me that everything is going to be fine. I know it is going to be fine, I just want to get to the part where it already is. I want to have things to do again, work which obviously helps to support our family financially. I wish I could carry more of the financial burden; Howard has been over burdened with work for years. Instead I must wait patiently in this one area of my life and focus my doing on the parenting, household, writing, and gardening parts of my life. It is not as though I lack for things to do, I’m just antsy like a child who has many things but wants something else. I must learn to wait and trust. That is all I can do.

Things I’ve Been Thinking About Which Are Not Long Enough for a Full Blog Post

By / October 24, 2012 / 1 Comment

These photos of people being scared. At first they were just funny, but then as I clicked through I became fascinated by the sameness of the facial expressions. It got to the point where I was staring at the photos trying to determine if they are real or people posing in caricatures of fear. I came to the conclusion that they are real.

***

I’ve been thinking about Charles Darwin ever since Howard tweeted this quotation from one of Darwin’s letters: “I am very poorly today and very stupid and hate everything and everybody.” I find comforting that I’m not the only one who has stupid days. However I’ve been thinking even more about a statement made later in the article about Darwin

“He was not quick, witty, or social. He spent decades working out his ideas, slowly, mostly by himself, writing letters and tending to a weak heart and a constantly upset stomach. He was a Slow Processor, who soaked in the data, thought, stared, tried to make sense of what he was seeing, hoping for a breakthrough. All around were snappier brains, busy being dazzling, but not Darwin’s, which just plodded on until it finally saw something special, hiding in plain view.”

Darwin changed the world, but he didn’t do it with a flash of brilliance or by leaping insight. It makes me think of the tortoise and the hare. Also of my son Link, who is amazing, but not in a flashy, leap-of-insight way. He lives in a family of hares, I’m one of them, and I’ve learned a lot about how to commit to small daily effort just from watching him.

***

At the end of a school project–a child’s science fair project display, for a not so random example–there is an urge to just get the thing done. I want to be able to stop thinking about it. I want Get Child to Do Science Fair Project off of my to do list. This is how parents end up doing the work for their kids. It was very hard to restrict myself to cutting and taping while letting Patch do all the thinking and organizing. I could to it so much faster and neater, but then I’ve already learned the things that this project has to teach. Patch needs to struggle with them so that he can too. The result is a display that he is proud of and a project he can describe in detail because he knows how it works. Also: Mythbusters is a great way to expose kids to the scientific method. I know that there is a lot of theater and pseudo science in the show, but Patch instantly understood hypothesis, test with variables and controls, and conclusion. They were made familiar by Mythbusters.

***

I find it interesting how I can succeed at things all day long, but a small failure late in the day can alter my perception of the entire day. Out of all the things I could have gotten wrong yesterday, cookies are the least important. I guess it just threw me for a loop because cookies are easy. I have the recipe memorized, I can make them half asleep and they turn out great. But they didn’t last night, and it sent me back to thinking about the Darwin quote, the “I am stupid” part of it.

***

In Polish the idiomatic expression which means “Not my problem” translates to “Not my circus, not my monkey.” This makes everyone at Chez Tayler very happy and has now entered our family lexicon. Thanks to Dan Wells for tweeting it.

***

Watched an episode of Nanny 911 and spent the whole thing thinking about the power of a film editor. I half want to go through and track what people are wearing to deconstruct how misleading the episode was. All the tantrum footage was in the first part and all of the happy footage in the second, giving the impression that the nanny had made everything better. I’ll grant that she really did teach some important skills that the family needed to learn, but she also spent lots of time looking disapproving for the benefit of the camera. That sort of family therapy is best managed without the audience. I won’t be watching any more, though if I could find a similar show with a different editorial approach or tone, I might sample that. The psychology on display is interesting.

***

This is week five of Dancing with the Stars. I love that show and have been keeping my enthusiasm under wraps because I could bore everyone to tears talking about the relationships between the dance teams, the emotional arcs of the people involved, the editorial choices made about the clips, the execution of various dances, who I hope stays to the end, who I’d like to see go home, how this season compares to prior seasons, and the difficulties the show is going to have going back to a regular season after having this all star cast. Besides, blogging all of that isn’t nearly as much fun as finding someone else who loves the show as much as I do and sitting down in person to chatter.

***

The Iron Man 3 trailer hits all the right emotional notes for me. I hope the movie I get to see is the one in that trailer. I like emotional depth in my heroes and thus far Iron Man has amused me, but I don’t re-watch because I’ve already seen what there is to see.

***

I can not express how much I admire Robison Wells. He writes about his experience of mental illness and thus gives words to a problem that is usually kept out of sight.

***

I was recently at a laser tag place where I watched one teen hand something to another teen and say “Here you go. I feel like such a mom.” Later that same evening I heard a different teen say “Yeah. Moms are just like that.” I think I’ve figured out why I’m reluctant to self identify as a mom. Obviously I am one. I spend a large portion of my days nurturing my children and just about anyone else who gets near me. Yet when I start writing a list of who I am, mom ends up on the list at the tail end when I’m trying to come up with more things. Yet in the majority of advertising and entertainment, as well as in the minds of all teenagers everywhere, to be mom is to be unfashionable, over-responsible, rules-driven, boring, and ender-of-all-fun. Why would I want to identify with that?

***

Catherine Schaffer wrote a great post about why apocalypse stories are so popular. She has many good thoughts, but right at the end she wrote:

In our increasingly globalized world, even the most hawkish among us must admit, on some level, that our worst enemies are still human. So while some may argue that it’s justifiable to kill the enemy, there is no acceptable pleasure in it. Zombies, meanwhile, can be killed with gleeful abandon.

And I thought: of course. The rise of zombie fiction makes sense now. I find it very interesting that we are also seeing sympathetic zombie fiction, such as My Life as a White Trash Zombie by Diana Rowland. Even when we pick the ultimate enemy, some of us are still going to try to empathize. Which is hopeful for the human race I think.

***

My head is full of similar random thoughts all the time. Every thing I see or hear triggers new thoughts. This is why it is so important for me to step away and deliberately select activities that allow me to sort thoughts rather than giving me new ones.

Making Better Choices About Time

By / October 21, 2012 / 1 Comment

It is the interstitial moments that are my downfall. They are the spaces between one task and the next, when I’ve completed one email for business and before I’ve gathered my parenting thoughts to write the next one to a teacher. In that fraction of a moment some part of my brain tells me I should go check twitter. So I do. In fact I click through my saved tabs taking a look at all of my regular websites to see if there is anything new. If there is, I read it. If nothing is new, I feel like I want something new, so I am tempted to click something else, to go find something new. Ten or twenty minutes later I resurface and turn my mind to the next task. Sometimes that brief click through actually does refresh my mind, making me ready for the next thing. More often it fractures my focus, filling my mind with distraction. I have decided that I need to pay attention to this tendency, to acknowledge that sometimes I need a break, but that I should focus my break time on activities which actually refresh and refocus instead of those which distract and fracture. To that end, I have made the following list. These are the things I should do instead of clicking through internet tabs for the umpteenth time.

  • Spend time in spiritual study and scripture reading. Granted this is a larger break, but a very worthwhile one.
  • Go to the gym. Again a longer brake, again very worth the time.
  • Do a five minute house chore like switching out laundry loads or vacuuming a room.
  • Step outside my house and breath outdoor air for five minutes.
  • Spend a few minutes on a gardening task or watering the indoor plants.
  • Glance through fiction notes to see if new ideas jump out. (This one may lead into writing hijacking an hour.)
  • Spend ten or fifteen minutes working on the family photo book projects.
  • Declare writing time and go write fiction for awhile.
  • Read one of those books I’ve been intending to study for style and prose.
  • Read or watch one of the articles or TED talks that I put away to look at later when I had time to focus on it.
  • Just sit and stare at nothing to see what thoughts parade themselves into consciousness.

Some of these things will take more time thank a quick click through websites, but they actually feed and rest my brain in ways that clicking doesn’t. Having the list is a good start. The next part is learning to be mindful.

Swirls of Thoughts on Conference Sunday

By / October 7, 2012 / 1 Comment

My brain is full. Usually when my brain is full it feels like a chaotic muddle, a mess to be sorted. Today most of the fullness is the result of listening to four sessions of LDS General Conference. All the thoughts, impressions, and inspirations I gathered from the speakers are not a chaotic muddle. Instead they are like colors of paint swirling together and mixing as they are carried on a current. I feel no need to snatch or clean because I can trust that the things I need will stay with me while the rest will move onward.

I am thinking about a bird of prey tangled in a net. Rescue workers approach carefully, trying to cut the strands so that the bird can fly free, but knowing that the bird will not understand and will attack them for their efforts. Threads part and the bird does fly, but sadly a portion of the net is still tangled on the bird, possibly to get caught on something else and trap the bird again. I think of the be-netted bird when I can see that someone is trapped in a net of habits and compulsions that they can not even perceive. I see it. I want to cut them out, but unlike a bird that can be rescued, people treasure their entrapping nets and they dive back into them. I am left standing with my hands in my pockets knowing that all I can do is hope to help my friend see the net for the trap that it is and then to begin to cut threads for themselves.

I think about the cultural shifts and how so small a change as the minimum age for missionaries can have rippling effects. Suddenly a decision which seemed years off moves much closer. Will there be a missionary boom for a couple of years like the baby boom after the first world war? Will BYU be easier to get into next year as more high school graduates opt for mission before college? In a couple of years it will all settle out, but during the settling process some things will shift. It will be interesting to watch.

My thoughts drift to the many family members and friends who are suffering from lack of employment, under employment, and health issues. The amount I can do to help feels paltry in the face of their needs and I feel guilty for feeling stressed by my own financial strains which are so much less dire. Yet I remember years ago when I was pregnant with Gleek and it seemed that every female relative and friend was suffering from fertility issues. I was growing with blessings that they longed for. Within two years every single one of those women became pregnant. Their longed for children came on a schedule different than the one they wanted, but the children still came. I feel that this is the same, that employment and health are nearby and that the desired security will arrive by faith, not by frantic efforts to exert control. So I try to exercise faith on their behalf. Do what you can. Trust for the rest.

I think much about Simon Peter and Christ. I think even more on the command to pick up discipleship and never put it down again. I ponder what service I am to give in making the world a better place.

Then I close my eyes and think of nothing in particular because I’m still fighting a head cold and too much thinking makes me sleepy. The things I need to do will stay with me, brought back to me over and again by the whisperings of inspiration and divine guidance. For now, I rest.

Unconscious Doing

By / October 2, 2012 / 1 Comment

“Can you hand me the sour cream?”
“My backpack is in the front room will you go get it for me?”
“I need a spoon.”

Until I went away I didn’t notice the barrage of small requests my kids make of me just because I am in the room. I notice them now because last week I was not here and they got their sour cream, backpacks, and spoons for themselves. I also notice the requests which are not made because I anticipate them and get them done before the child thinks to ask. I pour milk for the child who is chattering, spoon in hand, but hasn’t yet looked at the bowl in front of her. I put sharpened pencils next to the homework binder to minimize interruptions to the study process. Anticipating the next necessary task is something I do constantly. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it is one of the good gifts of anxiety, which carries over into relaxed tasks as well as worrisome ones. Perhaps I just learned to do this in the years when I was managing babies, toddlers, and preschoolers all of whom really did need someone to pour milk, hand out spoons, and find lost items. Maybe I learned it then and just never stopped.

My children don’t think about it either. They make these requests even when they are physically closer to the requested item than I am. If I’m paying attention and point this out, we all laugh together and they get it themselves. Yet the next time I’ll likely be distracted and just fulfill the request even if it makes far more sense for the child to do so. The thing is, I like anticipating needs and answering them. I like smoothing the obstacles so that important work can get done. Efficiency is pleasing to me and so I put forth the effort to create it whenever possible. This is why my attempts to re-train us all to let the kids do more are like emptying a bathtub with a spoon. Probably a spoon I fetched for a child because they asked for it.

“I think you had to leave because you’re so big. You fill the house.” Howard said as we were discussing my absence and trying to sort out why we all had to do this hard thing. This statement led to much teasing as I pointed out that perhaps different phrasing might be appropriate from a husband who is trying to welcome his wife home and make her feel loved. But after the jokes about wording were complete, I had to acknowledge that Howard is right. This is my house, arranged in the ways that I’ve selected, the schedule is primarily my design. Everyone else flows along with these things because I do a good job organizing. I do such a good job that until I’m not there to do it, no one stops to think if there could be another way. I’m pervasive and we could only see it by removing me from the picture for a week. A really hard week during which the folks at home sometimes despaired that they could keep it all together. In contrast I wrestled, not with guilt exactly, but with a deep part of myself which was convinced that leaving was a major dereliction and would cause harm. Logically I knew it was not true, but that deep place inside me believes that one of my primary jobs in life is to reduce stress for everyone else, particularly for Howard and the kids. I couldn’t even see this driving need until I put myself into a place where I couldn’t perform that function. Now I see it. Now I see how it has me fetching spoons and back packs every single day.

I think seeing it is half the battle. I can’t unknow this and I don’t want to. Seeing it will cause a hundred little shifts in my responses to these unthinking requests. All those tiny changes are likely to result in large pattern shifts over time. It will be interesting to see how much things are different in six months.

Being Back at Home

By / October 1, 2012 / 1 Comment

One nice thing about being away from home for a week, it makes me glad to return to all the little tasks of the house. I’d completely forgotten that there is a satisfaction to dishes and laundry. Doing these things definitely becomes a burden over time, but being away from them for a week let me remember when I first started doing my own laundry and felt very grown up about it. This evening I enjoyed the process of planning and preparing dinner, even taking time for extra touches like putting a pitcher of water on the table so that everyone could remain seated instead of constantly bobbing out of their chairs to go get drinks or salt. I need to try to remember that these things are nice instead of always feeling burdened by them.

Kiki cried last night. At first it just seemed part of her head cold or perhaps just a cranky day. However it quickly became apparent that the real reason was that I had come home. She’d been strong and responsible all week long, with me home she could relax and confess how hard it had all been. Except, she told me, it wasn’t all hard. Lots of it was interesting and fun. She liked being grown up, but it was really nice to stop for awhile. I hugged her tight and reassured her that I want nothing more than several months of all of us staying home. It was what she needed to hear, not just that I would be here, but that I wanted to be here. She’d been picturing me off having a gloriously fun time only to return to the work of mothering. I did have fun, but I also spent a lot of time wishing that I were at home doing my regular things.

The other kids did not cry, but they were all quick to drop what they were doing and come hug me. Then they ran back to their things. None of them had tales of woe or worry. They were just glad to have me back.

So today I’ve been picking up where I left off. I’ve shipped out the orders which accumulated in my absence. I cycled many loads of laundry. I tackled the accounting. I slept in my own bed. All is well. Yet there are still reminders of my trip. I just picked a leaf out of my keyboard, remnant of sitting outside to type. I’ve also decided to aim for writing 500-1000 words per day. Those words can be blog posts or fiction. I’m not going to post word counts publicly, I’m just going to try to stretch a little and see where it takes me. If I don’t do something, then it would be all too easy for me to just dive into routine. I watched today how all those little tasks, which I was newly happy to do, each took a bite out of my day until it was consumed. If I want to write, I have to prioritize writing. So I shall.

For now, it is time to step away from the computer and complete the remaining small tasks of the day.

Arriving Home

By / September 30, 2012

I’m home. This is a deeply happy thing, like in my bones happy. I started to feel it on the flight home as I approached Utah. I wish I knew if physical proximity to my heart’s residence actually had an effect or if it was all the effect of knowing that I was going home. Part of me would like to believe in a connection to the place I have created here, as if I could draw strength from the ground I have nurtured. I certainly felt like the forest around Mary’s house nourished my spirit. On the drive from the airport I immediately noticed how brown Utah is and how few trees it has. The only natural forests here are in the mountains and they are very different. Another part of me thinks that whole idea is a little bit hokey, but it doesn’t matter because I’m back with my people.

So how was my trip? I ask myself the same question, and I think it is going to take me a week or more to figure out the full answer. For today and tomorrow I am unpacking and resettling. I’m not going to have the mental and emotional space to figure out what this trip has done for/to me until after I figure out how it has shifted things here at home. In my absence my kids have learned some additional self reliance and I should not hurry to take back the tasks that they did for themselves this past week. This requires me to observe. Watching the group effort to pack lunches was certainly interesting and useful. It resembled the lunches on the retreat–make the ingredients available and let the people serve themselves. I’m also going to discover tasks that have piled up, waiting for me to return. But there are no crises and that is good.

In some ways I don’t want to unpack my brain from the trip. I know that some of the contents of my head have shifted and there will be changes as a result. Creating those shifts is exactly why I went. Yet, I’m tired and sorting it all out sounds every bit as difficult as going on the trip and being on the trip. Right now I’d really like to just have things be calm and normal. One of the things I have to figure out is if this desire to retract into ordinary routine is a wise impulse to allow time for writing, or if it is me trying to escape anxiety by making myself smaller. The two possible reasons require opposite responses from me. But I don’t have to figure it out today. Possibly not even this week. For this next week I will focus on creating calm stability for everyone in our house.

How was my trip? It was good. It was hard, but only because of things I carried inside my head. The location was lovely. The company was delightful. The food was excellent. I’m glad I went. I’m sorry that my going caused stress for Howard and the kids, even though letting them learn from stress was part of the point. I wish I’d been better able to disconnect my own stress and anxieties. I came home and the house is as I left it or perhaps even a bit cleaner. I think I will be able to incorporate more writing into my days here at home. I don’t know if the trip was necessary to making that change, it will definitely color the stories I write. And I get to sleep in my own bed. Now if only I could just get the lingering mosquito bites to stop itching.

Letting Go of Home Thoughts is Hard

By / September 28, 2012

One of the reasons this retreat is being difficult is that the schedule tracking portion of my brain will not stay switched off. Occasionally I can be fully present in Tennessee, out in the forest, part of a conversation. But then I’ll happen to glance at a clock and without me bidding it to, my brain does the calculation to Utah time and supplies the fact that at home Howard is helping the kids get out the door to school. This wakes up the portion of my brain that is convinced that I’ve committed gross dereliction of duty by not being present at home to manage the schedule. I’ve left my kids before. I’ve left them for a week before. But I usually arrange for them to be on vacation or visiting with relatives. They are outside the usual schedule as much as I am. This time they are at home, following routine. I am not. But my brain keeps tracking their routine and telling me that I should really check up on homework or bedtime or a dozen other things.

I can’t escape from home thoughts yet home feels so far away. I’m really not sure what conclusion to draw from all of this. I’m not sure how this knowledge should affect future decisions. Does this fall into the “Don’t do that again” camp or is it that I need more practice letting go?

In the category of less conflicted lessons learned: don’t wear ballet flats into the woods, or if you do, spray with mosquito repellent first. The tops of my feet look like I have chicken pox. These bites don’t itch as much as the bites from Utah mosquitoes, but twenty-five bites on my feet is enough to draw notice. Particularly late at night when I’m trying to sleep and thinking about home things instead. I probably should be spending those wakeful hours thinking about plot things. But it feels like an additional dereliction, as if fretting over the home schedule is penance I must pay for not being there. And simultaneously I can also feel guilty because I have this opportunity and I am wasting it by thinking about home instead of thinking about writing fiction.

Over all, this is being good. I hope it is being good. It will take me months to see the results of what coming has begun. Hopefully I’ll be able to step back into my regular schedule and none of us will be sufficiently dinged by this experience that repairs are necessary.