not better

The issue was the things that he isn't comfortable with my doing. Some are boundary issues, some are his issues. I said if I didn't try out things that make me uncomfortable I would have a very narrow life. He said he does so in his life, but not in his work (in therapy). I said that is a lousy role model and he said don't take what he does as a role model.

But that is how it works. And it has to be real.

juggling

Gave back tests today in one class and gave a test in another class. I haven't even printed those out to grade. Got the last Science, Technology, and Society speaker pinned down, though the next question is a committee to evaluate STS courses, which turns out to be complicated. I did get in an hour's bike ride before I went to a 2 hour plus college curriculum committee meeting. We took a quick trip to WalMart because my daughter has finished crocheting a scarf and wanted more wool desperately. Tomorrow is a little less pressed, except there is a lecture I really want to hear on Womanist God Talk. I hate to think how long Friday's univeristy curriculum committee meeting will take, but I will have to leave early. Put that all together and I don't have time to worry much about the question of whether to change therapists. This weekend's excitement is going to be a 66 mile bike ride. Then next week I will be able to get more information to make the decision.

1947

A box of memorabilia of my first father (who died when I was not quite three) arrived yesterday completely out of the blue from a cousin I haven't talked to in years. It included this high school graduation picture.

There's a famous story:

A Buddhist teacher saw five of his students return from the market, riding their bicycles. When they had dismounted, the teacher asked the students,

"Why are you riding your bicycles?"

The first student replied, "The bicycle is carrying this sack of potatoes. I am glad that I do not have to carry them on my back!"

The teacher praised the student, saying, "You are a smart boy. When you grow old, you will not walk hunched over, as I do."

The second student replied, "I love to watch the trees and fields pass by as I roll down the path."

The teacher commended the student, "Your eyes are open and you see the world."

The third student replied, "When I ride my bicycle, I am content to chant, nam myoho renge kyo."

The teacher gave praise to the third student, "Your mind will roll with the ease of a newly trued wheel."

The fourth student answered, "Riding my bicycle, I live in harmony with all beings."

The teacher was pleased and said, "You are riding on the golden path of non-harming."

The fifth student replied, "I ride my bicycle to ride my bicycle."

The teacher went and sat at the feet of the fifth student, and said, "I am your disciple."

slapped on the wrist

We had a wonderful speaker on Science, Technology, and Society in Monday and Tuesday. Due to a miscommunication with the committee member who contacted him and to his particular situation, I offered him an honorarium higher than the other speakers. It turned out that what I offered him is high enough that it was supposed to either go out to competitive bidding or be justified as a sole source procurement at least 28 days before he arrived (we only made the arrangement with him a month ago). So today I had to write a letter apologizing for my mistake and saying that I now understand proper procedures. The instructions ask for what will be done to discipline the person making the mistake, but I simply said I took responsibility for my mistake and would make sure it wouldn't happen again. It brings up a lot of childhood feelings for me. Yes, I know I'm bad, I won't do it again.

frustrated again

It didn't work for long. But I won't write about that. Tomorrow (Saturday) my son needs to be at school (1/2 hour away) at 5:30 am to go to a Lego robot workshop. I'm hoping against hope the rain will have stopped so I can at least go home and get an early start on a long bike ride. I need more experimentation with what to eat when I ride long distances. Then Monday my daughter needs to be at school at 5:30 to go on a four-day field trip to the coast (if it isn't cancelled because of the next hurricane). I'm very much a morning person, but that is pushing it, particularly since I've been wound up and not getting to bed early enough.

theory of healing

The person I work with and I are in agreement that the key to healing childhood pain is to bring it to the surface and experience it as fully as possible. To me the next step is to change the past, to do something to make it come out differently so it is not just retraumatizing (at the very least, that in re-experiencing it I am not alone with it as I was then). He said he believes in that too, but my way of doing so is new to him. I do it through action, not words, either experiencing being comforted and taken care of or some symbolic ritual (like handing a marble back and forth).

better

A better day today. The committee chair who was unhappy yesterday with the curriculum I had struggled to put together was happy today with the revisions I made.

On my personal journey, I think I've finally worked through a situation in which I was feeling unsafe and unsupported. Once some of the issues were resolved, I picked up a marble as a symbol. The other person said the marble was a symbol of what we are handing back and forth, so I handed it to him. It took him a while to figure out that I wanted to actually hand the marble back and forth. But I think he is beginning to really see the advantages of using that kind of symbol and wants to learn.

bike humor

I got a laugh today from a captioning contest for this photo:

Suggestions from rec.bicycles.misc:
"The peloton outfitted with the latest in GPS technology, hits a magnetic anomaly on Fillmore St"
"Helping a fellow biker, the breakaway pack searches for a lost contact lens"
"The BIG ONE drops California into the sea, as the remainder of the men's field weaves its way up Fillmore Street for the last time."
"Where did you say the finish line was? I know it's around here somewhere..."
"The Shriners trade up. Replace headgear too."
"Timothy Leary plays one last prank."

the doctors don't know

The community that supports my approach to diabetes is at the newsgroup alt.support.diabetes. One of the members of that community has being doing her own research in the medical literature and has compiled quite an impressive collection of information on innovative approaches to diabetes. For example, doctors will say that type 2 diabetes inevitably progresses. But no research has been done following diabetics who actually keep their blood glucose in the normal range--what is defined as tight control in the studies is significantly above the normal range.

I said Friday I need to learn to be more flexible

Yesterday I was going out for an early morning 35 mile ride (which still takes me over 3 hours). I had 1/2 cut of granola with a peach on top and a little heavy cream--a high carbohydrate treat. As I was getting ready to leave I pumped up my tires and the rear tube failed at the valve. I didn't have a spare tube and I knew my bike shop was going to be closed that day (small town with big-time college football, many stores close on football Saturdays). I wanted so much to go out riding that I decided to take the tube out of my husband's front tire and put it in my tire. I actually checked both sides for pinching before I inflated it, but somehow I did end up with it pinched and it blew when I tried to put the wheel back onto the bike. I burst into tears. I was too upset to go for a long walk to work off that granola and my blood sugar did go high and then crash--I felt hungry most of the morning. I drove to a bike shop 20 miles away and bought three new tubes and I got in a ride in the late afternoon. But I guess I have to be more careful about high carb breakfasts and eat my extra carbs when I am safely out on my ride.

Actually there was another funny story yesterday when I finally did go out riding. This isn't a very bicycle-oriented area, and they have put in lots of traffic lights that only turn when a car is waiting. Some of them have pedestrian buttons and some have no way for a bicycle to cause the light to turn. When I went out for my ride the football game was about to start and the traffic had pretty much cleared but there were two policemen still directing traffic where my neighborhood road meets the main street of town. I said to one of them that my problems is I don't trigger the demand light, and he started telling me what he described as one of the funniest things he had seen--a student jumping off his moped late at night to hit the pedestrian button to get a green light. Meanwhile the other cop is holding up cars and motioning to me to cross the street. So I didn't point out that there is something wrong with a system that forces us into running red lights.

science

Some enterprising person did a scientific experiment where they divided diabetic volunteers up into two groups. One group hiked uphill 3-5 times a week for a vertical rise of 600 meters. The other group hiked downhill the same distance. Both groups took a cable car the other way. A glucose tolerance test after two months showed a 9% average improvement for the group that hiked uphill and a 25% average improvement for the group that hiked downhill. The conclusion is that eccentric muscle work is more helpful for diabetes than concentric muscle work. I think it is an amusing scientific experiment.

trusting God

Sometimes I'm able to take the attitude that if what to do isn't clear, just wait for the answer to become clear. I'm naturally a fairly action-oriented person; I'm sure there are other people who need to push themselves in the opposite direction. But for me it was helpful to hear someone say yesterday that she struggles to let go of trying to control everything and trust God. That is another way of going in the same general direction and putting the two together makes something stronger (at least for me).

experiential learning

I'm teaching an honors seminar this fall on computers and society. I told the students that this course would be about experiencing the online world, not just studying it. At the moment we are doing history and it is harder to do, but I have them writing blogs and I had those who know how to program computers spend a class period teaching those who don't know how it works. Judging from the people who have written about it so far it seems to have been a successful exercise. I find it interesting that I am stressing the experiential in my teaching at the same time that in my own inner journey I am emphasizing I need to focus on what I can experience rather than what I can understand.