Category Archives: Tradition

Thanksgiving Greetings from an Ingrate, 2019

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JC Schildbach

 

I don’t know if I’d call it a run of bad luck, but our Thanksgiving Dinners out at fancy restaurants took a bit of a turn a few years ago, and never quite got back on track.

 

M, in particular, had a rough go of things.  Three years ago, we had to cancel our reservations at Ray’s Boathouse last-minute, when a bad reaction to some sort of hair-care product caused M’s scalp to start burning – not in a literal, Michael-Jackson Pepsi-commercial sort of way, but in a painful, hot sensation that was making her want to dig at her head with a fork.  This led to a last-minute trip to Safeway, where the kid, her then-boyfriend, and I grabbed up all manner of potentially scalp-soothing products, along with a turkey breast, a bag of potatoes, and a few pre-packaged sides.  Turkey breast in the pressure cooker, potatoes boiled for mashing, sides in the microwave, and Thanksgiving was saved, more-or-less.  We ate in our dining room, M’s hair slicked back with a heavy coating of some aloe-based goo, John Coltrane playing quietly in the background, as we talked and laughed aboutt all manner of things, including our abandoned holiday meal plans.

 

The next year brought a return to Preservation Kitchen, albeit with a different group of people than the previous time(s) we had been there for Thanksgiving.  Things started off well, beyond my uncomfortable collar/tie combo. Drinks ordered and received; dinner ordered and received; lively conversation and laughter. Then, as the main course was coming to a close, M fell silent. In the midst of a raucous exchange I was having with current and former co-workers, and with M sitting right next to me, I didn’t notice what those across from her began to notice – that she was absolutely not feeling well.  She had gone pale, and was staring down at the table, occasionally looking up wide-eyed, blinking and sweating. She let me know she needed to leave.  In my oft-clueless fashion, I told her we still had dessert on the way, and implored her to let me continue on with the party just a bit longer.  Before long, other guests were interrupting the conversation(s) I was having, to tell me to maybe just pay attention to her and help her out.  By the time it sunk in that this wasn’t just M feeling tired after a long meal, she was bolting from the table to the bathroom.  After a few minutes of vomiting, she returned to our group, and Thanksgiving dinner came to an end…roughly 90% successfully (and, no, the food had nothing to do with it.  M was in bed for the next few days with an illness that had been rolling around her school).

 

By Thanksgiving of last year, the owners of Preservation Kitchen had retired, and it was no more. And while this was disappointing, we had never gone to the same restaurant two years in a row.  Also, with a slightly larger party than most years, and a much greater geographic spread for the members of the party, we looked for something somewhat central to the majority.  I won’t spell out specifically where that was, as I like to give the benefit of the doubt to businesses who may not be performing up-to-snuff.  But we were seated in a very awkward location, practically a hallway, with another large party so close behind us that the wait staff had difficulty maneuvering between us (as did numerous other diners on their way to and from the restrooms).  In addition, the staff seemed to be the ‘B’ team–forced to work on the holiday in order to keep their jobs. Before we had even ordered drinks, a glass of water had been launched onto the table, the waiter perhaps not understanding the dynamics of weight distribution of items on trays, leading to more than one in our party enjoying a soggier-than-expected experience.  A trip by a few of us to the same restaurant on a ‘regular’ day several months later, though, suggested that the restaurant may not have an ‘A’ team.  And truly, truly, truly I try to look for the good in restaurant visits and not be overly critical, knowing the difficulty of the jobs involved.

 

So, this year, by the end of summer, when Thanksgiving reservations started opening up at restaurants that offer Thanksgiving meals, I began asking (to M first, of course) if our ‘regulars’ would be willing to turn up at our house in the event we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner.  While all who didn’t already have plans agreed they would be willing, more than one floated the condition that if we were going to host, the hosts should not be put in the position of cooking on top of hosting.  In the spirit of the low-hassle Thanksgiving, they encouraged the ordering of a Thanksgiving meal from a grocery store, rather than going to the hassle of shopping and preparing all the items.  While M, at first, enthusiastically floated notions of an extravagant meal we would cook and dish up with love and thanks (as we had done multiple times prior to starting our restaurant tradition) she quickly acquiesced when I presented her with the truth(s) that if we decided to make the food, not only would we (well, I) end up doing a boatload of shopping, but we (all of us) would end up cleaning house, while the cooking chores would fall to God-only-knows who, as each of us (M, the kid, and I) are all kitchen divas who don’t cook well with others. I then showed her offerings from several local (well national-local) stores, appealing to her “sense of fanciness” with a trip to the Whole Foods website, and their various meal options.

Thanks 2019

Oh, so fancy.  Catered, kind of, by Whole Foods.

Ultimately, the decision was made that Whole Foods would be cooking for us. We’re just reheating what they provide. Compared to what we, as a group, usually spend at a restaurant on Thanksgiving, it’s a very reasonable cost—even while ordering a meal for many more people than we’re expecting.  And I suppose if we aren’t happy with dinner, we can try another restaurant or grocery store next year–or maybe go back to full-on hosting.  At least this year, we’ll have nobody but ourselves to blame for the service—which, I’m sure, will be fantastic.

 

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Happy Halloween 2019! – The New Decoration

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

The Octopus Project started last year, but in the final lead-up to Halloween, I realized I just didn’t have the time to bring it all together. Hell, I almost didn’t have enough time to bring it all together this year.  In part, the lack of time this year was because I spent a ridiculous amount of time figuring out how to make my vampire ghosts more reflective (liquid rubber with inlaid ‘airport grade’ glass beads was the answer — the resin experiments definitely did not work).  I also had to completely repaint the pink demon due to the knots in the plywood bleeding through the paint — not sure if that was a problem of the paint or whatever chemicals they treat plywood with.

Octo 1

At any rate, the inspiration for the octopus came partly from the kid destroying the back sliding-glass door.  This freed up the ‘window panel insert’.  That is, all the windows on the front of our house, along with the back sliding glass door, have a metal insert in between the two layers of glass in order to make it look like there are several, roughly one-foot-square window panes. I kinda hate these inserts.

I also had a 5-foot x 4-foot painting that I did in high school — the kid and one of her friends were going to turn it into something a few years back, but only got so far as whiting it out. I had thought several times of painting it to look like a window with some sort of monster inside, but with the 6-foot x 3-foot metal window/door insert, I thought I could make it look like something was busting out of a window.  But what?  In the course of scribbling out ideas, the thought of tentacles hit me. I sketched a few tentacled monsters, but decided a giant octopus was the direction to go. I got the canvas done last year just before Halloween.

Some very thin ply-board that was here when we bought the house seemed like a good way to maybe give the tentacles a bit of motion, as the board is not particularly sturdy (why did I think this was a good idea?).  An outlet hole had been cut out of it, and it was cracked in places, but I managed to sketch out one large tentacle and fit two smaller ones in the remaining spaces, away from the damaged parts of the board.  Over the course of working on the project, I had to think and rethink how to put the pieces together. Ultimately, it was clear I had to attach a frame to the frame on the canvas in order to assemble everything in a way that looked more-or-less like I wanted.

Octo 2

Making this all come together was something of a nightmare, and involved me out in the cold last night having to rig up various bits of fishing wire, nails, and screws to keep things in place. I have no idea how I’m going to store this thing — just how much of it I have to take apart before I can fit it reasonably back into the workshop.  There are six different parts — eight if you count the 2 x 4s on the garage door that it’s hanging from — and I dread the idea of having to detach and reattach at least some of them.  Now that it’s all together, I really want to get some more of that ply-board, and make that tentacle on the right much bigger.  Maybe next year.

Happy Halloween.

No Year’s Resolutions 2019

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

New Year’s morning, my wife roused me from a dream to tell me it was time to help set up the dining room for Osechi (Osechi Ryori:  Japanese traditional New Year’s Day food).

I mention the dream because it has stuck with me—or, rather, a portion of it has stuck with me—since then. A particular image from that dream has entered my thoughts multiple times daily since then—whether because I’m hanging onto it or struggling to forget it.  The image involves me surveying the damage from a shart (shart: what happens, as the saying goes, when one gambles on a fart and loses; a combination of sh*t and fart).

I don’t recall much of anything that happened in the dream before the shart occurred. But I do recall that I was wearing blue underwear and the aftermath was very much like a runny version of the gravy from almond chicken (almond chicken: a staple of American Chinese restaurant menus, where breaded, boneless, fried chicken is covered in a light brown American-style gravy –flour and fat— full of chopped almonds).

baby-new-year

Just what am I looking at?  And what does it mean?

I haven’t looked up any of the elements of the dream in any dream dictionaries, online or otherwise – not the blue, not the almonds, not the shart, not any of it.  So, if you’re into dream analysis and have a clear understanding of what these elements add up to – well, I probably don’t want to know. Keep it to yourself.

Perhaps this image has stuck with me because most dreams I (and I would guess most other people) have that involve, what I will call “bathroom stuff” are usually tied to bathroom functions that never come to fruition.  For example, a dream where one is running around looking for a place to pee, only to have each option for relief somehow thwarted.  One eventually wakes up and realizes that the dream was trying to push one to wake up and go take a piss in a completely ‘normal’, non-thwarted, perfectly relieving fashion.  I do not recall any of these previous dreams resulting in actually finding ‘release’ while in the dream, much less, having a ‘release’ with unintended consequences.

I’m happy to report that, in this particular instance, there was no corresponding pushing or expulsion activity married to the dream.  That is, despite a flash of anxiety on waking, there was no indication the dream had come true.

I bring all this up, in part, because for several years now, initially starting in an annual series of posts on Facebook, and later moving to my blog (and a few connected social media sites), I put out New Year’s resolutions.  These started out as lighthearted, silly jokes, usually concluding with one ‘positive’, ‘real’, but vague, resolution.  For instance, I would have three resolutions that suggested I was going to do spectacularly impossible things (establish the ultimate matrix for determining whether a ‘Men’s Rights’ Internet account or website is a parody account or actually intended to be serious);or completely bland, totally achievable goals, (resolving to actually trim my toenails regularly). Those would be followed by one resolution involving haircare, which would be followed by one that said I would live joyfully or some such sh*t.

Then, at the end of the year, I would write up a ‘year end review’, where I tracked my success in meeting the resolutions (silly and not-so), before I moved on to a new set.

In the process of doing the review of my 2-18 resolutions, I realized that maybe a bit too much seriousness had crept in, too much silliness leaked out. It had, at least to me, a darker tone about it than previous years.  Then again, in spite of numerous good things in 2018, the whole year had a darker tone to it.

2018 was a year of numerous things going to hell, and me struggling to reel them back in— none of which I will share here now.  All in all, things turned out okay, but not without a lingering, nasty aftertaste…or several different lingering, nasty aftertastes.

2018 also had some great moments of joy—specific moments of laughter and happiness I can vividly recall, also none of which I will share here now.

This far into 2019, it would be a bit strange to be making resolutions anyway, unless maybe I was claiming they were tied to a little procrastinating around the Lunar New Year. But, still, I’m abandoning the idea of resolutions, at least for 2019.  And I’m trying to learn to accept that much of life is way beyond my control, and that I’ll be okay…or I won’t…and that not being okay will probably be okay as well.

I tried to attach some meaning to the dream of the shart – that it was advising me not too push things too hard or they would become messy – or perhaps to push hard because even if the outcome was messy, it would still be fine—I’d wake up to a fantastic meal with some of the people I loved most, or a disgusting mess in my pants that really wouldn’t be that difficult to clean up.

At any rate, the (forced) meanings kept coming back to how I should or shouldn’t force things, how forcing things would turn out either good or bad.  And then it got all meta – about how I keep starting posts, only to abandon them because they seem too forced –and therefore too bland, like almond chicken –or too sloppy, poorly planned, and offensive, like a shart.

The whole concept of intentions –push to get a reaction, or hold back to make the right, polite points, merely led to almost every writing effort over the last year turning into either a dull essay, or a mean-spirited rant – with those efforts usually being abandoned to steer clear of that dullness, or to unload that spite on somebody in some pointless, online argument that added up to nothing beyond the sound of clacking keys and the fury of unanswered tantrums.  For the most part, the posts just didn’t get finished, or if the writing was more or less completed, did not get put out into the world…much like I’ve been struggling over the whole idea of posting a shart-centered missive, ostensibly connected to New Year’s resolutions.

Ultimately, I realize I’m attempting to assign meaning to this dream because 1) it occurred on the first day of the year; 2) I was woken out of the dream at the point of a particularly striking and unpleasant visual unlike anything I recalled from any previous dreams; and 3) I’m struggling with just how much energy and effort I can and ‘should’ be devoting to writing, especially pieces that feel obligatory/how much energy I can and ‘should’ be devoting to engaging in patterned behaviors in general/how much energy I can and ‘should’ be devoting to breaking old patterns of behavior.

Maybe it all just comes down to the message that I should sh*t or get on the pot…and sh*t…or get off the pot. At least don’t sh*t my pants unintentionally?

Or perhaps push it. Push it real good.  But with intention.  Although I’m pretty sure that wasn’t initially related to scatological…uh…actions.  But then again…

I know it’s gotta mean something about making sure you know what you intend to accomplish, or that you are making reasonable efforts to make sure you have some kind of control over the outcome of your actions, or…?

Anyway, Happy (belated?) (Lunar?) New Year!

 

 

 

 

2018 Year in Review

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JCS Bach, LMHC

father time, yo!Ok, time (well, a little late, but still time) for the obligatory review of last year’s resolutions and the pass/fail ratings.

  1. Finish the damn downstairs: Definite fail.  I made some progress, in the same kind of way that sitting up in bed is progress toward walking from Seattle to London.  Ok, maybe it was a little better than that…some framing happened.  And I moved a light fixture (yes, it’s fully functioning).  So that was good.  At this rate, only about 38 more years to completion.
  2. Every Day is Halloween: Pass!  Well, pass in the way that the horrible sh*t in your life drives you to do something to distract you from all that horrible sh*t.  I got started early with Halloween decorations (early June(?)) and knocked out a lot of new decorations that I’d been thinking about for years.  You can see the earlier posts.  I also actually came up with the perfect use for a big, old canvas and some other cast-off materials I have.  Unfortunately, once I figured out what I wanted to do, it got more and more ambitious, and I ultimately had to bail.  It will be done in time for Halloween 2019.  That’s not a resolution. That’s a promise.
  3.   Read/Write—don’t watch/scroll. Pass/Fail? Hmmmm…I did a lot of reading…but plenty was of the scrolling variety.  I read some excellent books, but didn’t really keep up the idea of bailing on pointless Internet foolishness in favor of reading enlightening books. As for the writing…well, you can scroll back just a smidge and see the sum total of the writing I did this year…well, not ALL of the writing I did this year, but about 80% of the writing I actually finished this year…well, the writing that extended beyond stupid Internet arguments.  I did have a record number of my Internet arguments shut down by moderators. I like to think that was (mostly) because the people I was arguing with started calling me names, but moderators don’t tend to explain themselves once they shut something down.
  4. No more hair resolutions. Well, if I can make it through my next post without resolving anything about my hair (assuming I’m going to do a post about my 2019 resolutions), I’m in business with this one.  Stay tuned. I’m sure the suspense is killing you.
  5. Be better to those closer. I’m a little conflicted on my success with this one.  I guess it needs some clarifying definitions—which I’m not going to supply right now.  Things got rough on a pretty constant basis. Plenty of my friends/family/colleagues of one stripe or another got into some major life changes/deep sh*t that took up a lot of my time, energy, and, in some cases, cash.  A lot of those occurrences also drained a lot of my patience—patience I could no longer spare on those who are peripheral and antagonistic. So, with that I give a hearty, ‘Much love and/or go f*ck yourself!’  If I’ve been at all close to my target with this resolution (and you actually know me) you know where on that spectrum you lie. For the rest of you, consider yourself square in the middle—and please consider that a good thing.

Happy more-or-less New Year, you beautiful sods!

New Year’s Resolutions, 2018

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JC Schildbach, LMHC

Gettin’ down to it a few days into the New Year:

  1. Finish the damn downstairs. At least for the time being, I’m back on a four tens schedule (four days a week, ten hours a day), which leaves me three days off. For the last year, that’s not been the case (was working 5 8s in the evenings), and I’ve had difficulty getting any sizeable chunks of time I could devote to working on finishing renovations we started downstairs years ago when my MIL was planning to move in with us. Way back when, we put together a bedroom down there (walled off a room and framed in a closet, among other things). Then, when the MIL decided not to travel half a world away to torment herself and us, the remainder of the project lost its urgency. Numerous other things made the project less important, like the kid becoming an adult, and the assumption that she would move out. But now, it would be nice to have a clean, open space, with a really nice TV and toys, so I need to make this happen, if for no other reason than to keep one of the dogs from pooping down there amongst the rubble.
  2. Every Day is Halloween. Stealing the idea from a Ministry song, but it works, nonetheless. I do a big Halloween display each year, but mostly dedicate only a few weeks in October to making it all happen. Funny thing is, making the new decorations is one of the most fun times I have. So, I want to make sure I’m working on new decorations (and repairing old decorations) throughout the year, especially during the summer when I can be out in the workshop with an open door, and free-flowing air, rather than in the colder months when I have to run a heater, and frequently have to wander away to avoid succumbing to excessive dust and toxic fumes.New Year Martini baby
  3. Read/Write—don’t watch/scroll. Okay, in the course of writing this post, I’ve gone on Facebook twice, in part because they sent me notifications, but also because it’s become habit to bounce onto the Internet every 27 seconds, just because. In the past month (or less) I did a little experiment about picking up a book every time I’m tempted to log on or turn on the TV, and I’ve read a fair amount more than I’d become accustomed to (I mean, books, not Internet articles). Not sure how I’m going to work this one, since I keep breaking my personal promises to only go online for a short stint, but I think I can pay a little more attention and do a little more book reading than post-scanning.
  4. No more hair resolutions. Ok, I’ve had my fun with the hair jokes. But now that my hair is thinning for real, and…well…the joke is played out, this is the last hair-based resolution I’ll make (unless I can think of some more amusing ones in future).
  5. Be better to those closer. I talk a lot of sh*t at the people who are closest to me (the ones who live with me or interact with me out of friendship or family ties), while engaging a saintly amount of patience towards those who are more tenuously connected to me. This is not to say that I should abandon the patience I exercise toward those who are already the beneficiaries of my kindness, but that I should just plain be kinder to everybody…be it my immediate family, my extended family, my pets, my friends (who, I guess, are part of my extended family). You always hate the ones you love, or some such…

Happy New Year, Lovelies!!

Thanksgiving Greetings from an Ingrate, 2016: Where’s the Mashed Potatoes?

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J.C. Schildbach, LMHC

Okay…this post has nothing to do with a lack of mashed potatoes.  I just love that line.  It’s become a staple of M and my faux-complaining about, well, really any meal–not just Thanksgiving.  Not that we want mashed potatoes at every meal, but anyway…

A friend recently called me out for not being an ingrate. This via a Facebook post, wherein I was responding to her efforts at working through the 24-days-of-gratitude challenge, or whatever it’s called when you note something you’re thankful for every day throughout November until Thanksgiving. I commented that I had been planning to do the same, although “planning” is perhaps too strong a word…it had occurred to me that I could engage in that challenge, and that I had done it in the past…although, maybe not in November. I might have just chosen 24 or 25 random days, having missed the point entirely…or maybe having expanded the point out in the most glorious of ways by refusing to confine my thankfulness to some specific stretch on a calendar. At any rate, not being an ingrate perhaps takes away from these annual posts, but at least somebody gets the point…that I’m not really an ingrate.

To those who don’t know me, it might be easy to imagine I am such. I enjoy complaining–embrace complaining–as an art form. It’s performance. It’s fun. It’s pure joy, garnering accolades and laughs when in the right company—and disturbed, ‘are-you-okay?’-furrowed-brow looks when in the ‘wrong’ company.

You see, when a big portion of your work is devoted to listening, absorbing, and redirecting the misery of the world, complaining is life-saving, life-affirming, the stuff of thanks.

Or not.

It’s all a matter of perspective. Much of the ‘wrong’ company involves people in my same field, but with a vastly different view of how we need to approach life in order to receive the blessings of thanks, or the thanks of blessings, or whatever life-denying positivity they think will cancel out the darkness of the season…that same darkness our ancestors feared was the impending end of time.

ingrate-thanksgiving

Blurry and off-color…just like misplaced anger!

When I set out to write this annual exercise in ingratitude/gratitude, I tried to think of a good Thanksgiving story from my past.

As I’ve noted in previous ‘ingrate’ posts, I have very few specific childhood memories of Thanksgiving. It was just some day off from school—two days actually–where things were, perhaps, much worse than school…having to put on church clothes only to have a meal that wasn’t particularly interesting.

Perhaps my emotional deficit around Thanksgiving is that it comes between my own balls-out/dress-up/mess-up-the-house-with-monster-decorations/get-candy enthusiasm of Halloween, and the hyper-sentimentality/religious significance/songs/smells/twinkling-lights/PRESENTS!! of Christmas.

How can Thanksgiving compete with that? New Year’s doesn’t fare all that well in comparison, either. Perhaps as a child, I was too close to family, too frequently in contact with them, to realize the value in being able to meet up yet again.  Getting together with family is something that’s become far too infrequent, with siblings spread out across six states, and cousins across at least four more that I know of.

In the absence of the frequent family gathering, I have grown to love, if not the sham history of the holiday, then what the idea of the holiday represents…coming together, helping each other out, recognizing what we have, and why all those elements are potentially so great.

Again this year, my immediate family and I are going out to eat for Thanksgiving–at a favorite restaurant where we’ve enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner before. Again this year, it is a function of our work schedules. That is to say, we could request time off, but, as with every year of the last decade, I work in a 24/7 operation, and M works at a school that caters to doctors (who work in a 24/7 operation). So, we pick and choose which holidays to celebrate more or less enthusiastically.

M was insisting she wanted to make a Thanksgiving meal this year. When the idea was first proposed, I went along with it. Then, at some later time, the kid and I ganged up on her, and pointed out that she had to work the day before, and the day after, Thanksgiving, as do I.  Well, actually, I’m working the day before, the day of, and the day after Thanksgiving, which means a portion of the argument rested on what a pain it would be for me to help do the shopping and cooking and all that, while still attempting to get any sleep–have I mentioned that I work nights?  Coordinating the menu, the purchase of the food, and the preparation of the food, was far more work than we were all ultimately prepared to do, all for just the three of us.

We managed to nail down Christmas plans that would allow more time before and after that holiday to indulge in such excessive amounts of preparation and work, and still get in a fair amount of relaxation, all in the company of family. I’ll hold to my feeling that thanks shouldn’t be a chore, and that holidays should be centered around a desire to celebrate, rather than an obligation to go through the motions of celebration.

I am incredibly thankful, once again, that I have the great fortune to pay to indulge in the hospitality provided by others. And once again, I intend to tip with guilt-laden generosity.

Wherever you are today, I hope you have reason to recognize your situation as one of great fortune as well.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Happy Halloween! The New Decorations: 2016

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J.C. Schildbach, LMHC

We’re breaking records for October rain here in this part of the world–as well as having just generally rotten weather–so much so that I kept blowing off putting up the decorations.  I still haven’t gotten the lights set out–the big LED lamps that illuminate the whole Halloween display.  I’ll get to that as soon as I’m done posting this…and well before I dry out from having just gone out to hang the new decorations.  (Yep, taking it down to the wire, despite Halloween and tricks and treats falling on a school night plagued by terrible weather).

Both of the new pieces are based on drawings the kid did many years ago, when she was about five.  Of course, there are modifications.  I’d post images of the source material, but I didn’t ask her permission for that.  Maybe later.

deca-hand

What is it?!?  Isn’t it obvious?

So, the ten-armed creature here (which was a twelve-armed creature in its original form) is a random monster from the days when the kid would sit around drawing picture after picture, or very involved pictures with numerous characters.  So far as I know, it has no name, and isn’t any particular kind of beast.  I always envisioned it as floating about, or perhaps ‘swimming’ through the air.  At any rate, it was made to hang from our plum tree.  It’s about six-and-a-half feet tall.  And, in case you’re wondering, yes, cutting something like that out of a single piece of 4′ x 8′ plywood is rather time-consuming.

new-witch

With an actual, aged broom…y’know, for realism!

The witch here was taken from my favorite material object in the entire world…a construction paper haunted house that the kid made all those years ago, with numerous drawings of monsters glued to the outside.  Her witch was standing, not flying on a broom.  And I added the gym socks.  But I think I retained the spirit of the original pretty well.

Happy Halloween, everybody!

Escaping the Groundhog Trap

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J.C. Schildbach, LMHC

I’m not a big fan of Groundhog Day—the holiday or the movie.

As a kid, the holiday just confused me. Why a groundhog? Can’t you just see if you cast a shadow yourself? Or if a bush, a stone, a dog…anything casts a shadow? I wondered at the particular properties of groundhogs, and why their shadows might be somehow different than those of any other thing on the planet. I suppose I never quite felt like anybody adequately explained the magical properties of particular varieties of burrowing rodents for me to really get behind the holiday or its alleged meaning.

The lack of a real explanation is one of the things that keeps me from enjoying the movie, Groundhog Day as well. What caused this to happen? And why is the resolution what it is? What would make any magical powers of time control so interested in getting Bill Murray’s character, Phil, together with Andie MacDowell’s character, Rita? Perhaps a resident of Punxsutawney is one of the aliens from Edge of Tomorrow who accidentally infected Phil with the time control powers. But that can’t be it, because then Phil would’ve had to die every day, and he only died on some of those days.

Beyond that, the movie just follows the theme of so many movies from the 1980s about how great small-town America is, and how some cynical guy from the big city needs to learn to appreciate that. As for Murray’s arc in the movie, it’s rather similar to Scrooged.

The audience is also expected to root for Phil to ‘get the girl,’ even after he uses his powers of time repetition to manipulate one of the local women into sleeping with him, and then trying to manipulate Rita into falling for him by pretending to like everything she likes—information he gathers from her in conversations she will never remember.

Ultimately, Phil has to get through one day being kind and helpful, rather than acting like his usual, egocentric self (but, again, why is this the resolution—and would it really matter whether Rita decided she liked him or not?). But that last, single day of generous Phil doesn’t feel much different from the videogame-style resets that go on through the rest of the movie, or in Edge of Tomorrow, and hardly seems like a long-term change to his character as much as it feels like him resigning himself to being a decent human being for one day if he ever wants to get out of Punxsutawney. How is his decency not just more manipulation—another possible route out of the repetition he is trapped in?

Many people have labeled Phil’s situation in Groundhog Day an “existential dilemma” or otherwise termed the movie as existentialist. Properly speaking, though, if Phil’s was an existential problem, he wouldn’t have a long period of being able to make whatever decisions he wanted with no thought, responsibility, or consequences at all, only to be pushed into making the “right” decisions–as judged by whatever power kept him perpetually trapped in Punxsutawney on a particular day–until he did what was deemed correct by that power and the “spell” was broken. He would be responsible for whatever he did, and nothing would compel him to do anything.

groundhog drive

The most important lesson of all–Don’t drive angry.

Still, it’s something of a tribute to Groundhog Day, the movie, that it has become synonymous in our culture with repetitive behavior or situations. And it is perhaps the fantasy that we could relive a particular day until we did it right, managing to impress everyone around us, and connect with our one true love in the process (as well as the opportunity to indulge in a great deal of irresponsible behavior along the way), that has led it to this level of popular recognition. Or perhaps it’s the underlying idea that we are trapped by our own behaviors in repetitive cycles, and that we can change ourselves in order to achieve a better life—along with the wishful notion that we need to be good people if we really want to get what we want.

After all, the idea of breaking out of repetitive cycles and habits, or perhaps of creating better habits and repetitive cycles, along with being better people…good people…our best selves, is what underlies much religion, philosophy, and, yes, therapy.

We all struggle through our own behavioral patterns, habits, and the potential sameness of our days, the rut of weeks, months, seasons, and years. But no bizarre fluke of time is going to trap us in a loop and push us to do things differently and become better people, or pursue what we want. That’s on us.

Whatever I might think of him, Phil found out that it wasn’t a groundhog, or the celebration that surrounded a groundhog’s shadow, that was at the core of his problem. Rather it was his own shadows, the darkness he threw out into the world.

So maybe Groundhog Day is the perfect time to look around at our own shadows and what they say about our forecasts—how much more winter we may have in store—and then think about what, if anything, we want to do to change that.

Happy Groundhog Day.

 

Merry Elvismas!

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by JC Schildbach, LMHC

Well, it’s Elvismas time, pretty baby.  And the snow is fallin’ on the ground…

In years past, I held Elvismas parties each year on Elvis’ birthday (January 8), as well as “Departure Day” parties, on the anniversary of Elvis…leaving us.

I won’t get into all the gory details right now, but will say that I do hope to get the house put back together enough to where I can get the shrine, or a version of it, put back up.

In years past, my dear friends over at Creepy Cult (see their web site–under construction–here: Creeps;  or their Etsy page here: And Creeps;  or their Facebook page here: And More Creeps–all with plenty of nifty things) would print up postcards for me on the occasions of the parties–at least when I got them the artwork on time and they had extra space on a print run to fit them in–because they’re cool like that, and because I’m cheap like that.

Elvis consumed

The image above is one such postcard from all the way back in 1993, when I devoted a bit more of my time to doing design work–if you want to call it that.  Elvis had a twin brother, Jesse, who never got to see the light of day; and Elvis easily had enough cool for at least two people.  So the image addresses that concept, along with Vernon Presley’s story that on the night of Elvis’ birth, he saw a powerful omen–the sky ringed in blue.

Peace, y’all.

A Christmas Wishbone

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by JC Schildbach, LMHC

Christmas morning, I found myself cleaning the remains of a chicken and stuffing out of the Crock Pot, to make way for the roast I was going to crock—which I suppose made it a crock rather than a roast.

As I scooped stuffing from the pot, and rent that flightless bird’s flesh from its bones, I came across a fully intact wishbone. I paused in my work, rinsed the wishbone, and set it on the kitchen windowsill.

Not quite a partridge in a pear tree, but you take what you can get.

Not quite a partridge in a pear tree, but you take what you can get.

Continuing on with the operation, packing the chicken and stuffing away, neat and tidy in Pyrex containers, then prepping the roast…er, crock…the tradition of wishbones rolled around in my head. I’m not talking about the origins of the whole wishbone thing—where it came from, who was first to practice it, but rather, the more personal memories around it.

I can’t say as I have a whole lot of specific personal memories around wishbones. I know if mom was cooking a chicken, then there would be at least a minor squabble around who would get the wishbone—or, perhaps more accurately, when somebody found the wishbone, there would be a minor dispute around who would get to break it with the lucky discoverer. If one of my older brothers came across it, there would be inevitable teasing, just to see if they could get a rise out of one or more of us.

And then there was that time I won the wishbone-breaking contest and was rewarded almost instantly with the new bike I had wished for, and then felt bad because I could’ve wished that my cousin Brad’s hypochondria would be cured instead.

Okay, that never happened.  I don’t even have a cousin Brad.

I thought on how I had witnessed my kid and her best friend, when they were probably about seven years old, engage in the wishbone-breaking contest immediately on finding one during dinner, despite my having never taught/explained it to my kid. There is, perhaps, some lesson in there about kids picking up all kinds of things beyond the specifics of what their parents teach them, but I’m not really sure what to make of that, or its importance. Weird things permeate the culture? I failed in this particular instance of ensuring that I was the one to pass a bizarre superstition on to my offspring?

I briefly entertained the question of whether two people could conspire to wish the same thing, thereby increasing the chances of the wish coming true. After all, so long as they didn’t speak of it afterward, they couldn’t truly know what the other had wished. A wishbone technicality would still invoke the magic—right?

At any rate, as soon as my wife got up from her mid-morning nap, and got herself a cup of coffee, I presented her with the wishbone. She immediately grabbed hold.  I warned her she needed to think on her wish. She closed her eyes briefly, then gave me the nod.

It was on.

After a few seconds, she remarked on how the wishbone was too wet (from its days packed in chicken-fat-soaked stuffing at the bottom of a crock pot) and not likely to break.  She relaxed her effort. There was a brief pause where I hadn’t quite processed what she said or did, and continued on with the match. Then, just as I followed her lead, conceding that the wishbone was, perhaps, too saturated to complete the fight, she resumed the pull, and…snap. She won. Was it a brilliant strategy, or dumb luck? I didn’t ask, just conceded. Victory was hers.

Victory is hers!

Victory is hers!

I like to believe she wished for something like I wished for…you know, that silly garbage about another year of relative happiness, good health, and enough stuff.

Still, I daren’t ask. Because maybe she did wish for that same silly garbage. Or maybe she wished for world peace. Or maybe she wished for a new bike.  Or maybe something much better…or much worse.

But whatever it was, I don’t wanna jinx it.