I remember a film called Joe versus the Volcano, a film that started with extreme brilliance and promise only to spiral into a weird world that dwelt on orange crush and leather luggage. I remember watching the beginning of it, about a man in a boring day job, whose eyes got suctioned by fluorescent lights and he lived for the moments he could play his tropical lamp on his desk. I remember him walking to work, and stepping aside a dandelion growing in a crack in a sidewalk. I remember it all because, at the time, I was smacking my head and thinking: God how fucking brilliant...life really is like that.

England had it's own version of this, a tv show called The Fall And Rise Of Reginald Perrin. It was the story about an ordinary guy with an ordinary life, and he had his routines to boot. I haven't seen it, but Mr. Y tells me that it was about a man who worked in a bog standard factory and had his own routines. Twelve and a half minutes to walk to the train station. A little rhyme he would make himself say before opening a door. Routines.

And I can see that too many of them are overkilling brain-sucking nightmares, but you know....routines can also give balance. Maybe when you don't have routines...you miss them.

I've been trying to think about normal life, about ways of working and doing things that signyify an achievement. I even blogged about this last week, about my search for the definition of normal. My project at work is quite slow so I am left with acres of time on my hands. I watch tv, I write on my blog, and Alice is getting out of my head and onto paper. But I am still convinced that perhaps there is a real way that normal life works, that there are real definitions of normal. There simply has to be. Life can't always be so crazy.

Maybe if you did put me in a family with 2.4 kids, an SUV, a house with a white picket fence and a dog named Fido, I would still find a way to paint the house with graffiti crazy, sprinkling little mental dust around the place that got ground into the carpet and couldn't be vaccuumed up and finding some way to de-normal the normal. Maybe I simply can't be normal. The truth of the matter is, my diagnosis gives me the gentle gift of being able to feel way too much. Perhaps that also means I simply live too much.

What constitutes a normal day? Is it the fact that every morning I check out the spider web on the flowerbox outside, just to see how the little guy is doing? Is it the way Mr. Y greets me every morning, with a new nickname? (Good morning, my Gorgeous. Good morning, my little chicken egg. Good morning, my turnip). Is it taking the same train every Wednesday morning into London, taking the same tube or walking the same path? It is watching certain TV programs during the day? Is it picking up Petunia and worshipping her?

Why is figuring out if a routine is necessary so difficult?

Why is figuring out what is normal on my mind?

After losing my job last November, I had lots of routines. Mostly, they involved sitting in an oversized green armchair with my hair in a ponytail and my pajamas on, going for days without eating or showering and generally concluding in floods of tears. But they also included things like: blogging from this time to this time. IM with Best Friend from this time to this time. Ed was on tv from this time to this time. Wallowing in self-misery, was used as a schedule filler.

Before losing my job, I had routines. Get up at exactly 7:15 every morning. Walk the dog, shower, juice, and sandwich, then drive to work. Work, hating the entire day, then go home and freeze my ass off walking the dog again. Make dinner for X Partner Unit and I, watch tv, go to bed.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now my days are different. They're punctuated by logging in to work from home in my boxer shorts, a bodum of coffee at my elbow. Days punctuated with IM from Best Friend and text messages from Mr. Y reading things like: Make sure some nice white wine in the fridge for outdoor enjoyment later! Love ya! Occasionally getting on a train to London for meetings, where I take great pleasure in the people watching and the sights, sounds and whipping wind. Being in love one million times a day with my lovely boy.

But there's nothing that's dead-on routine about any of it. There's no predicatibility, no sameness, it's always changing and growing, shaping itself to be something new and dynamic the next day. Even how I feel about Mr. Y is changing (but only in a good way, darling, it's honestly getting more stable and larger and less "help-me-down-off-the-ledge"). And I really am not stressed about not having so many routines, I really enjoy "going with the flow", only I wonder if at some point I too need routines, if I too need to avoid the dandelion in the sidewalk and if I should count how long to walk to the train platform. When do I get my routines?

And as more time goes by and I realize I just Tigger my way around life (Since bouncing is what Tiggers do best! Hoo hoo hoo hoo!), I also realize that I like the fact that things are sometimes unpredictable. I like to not always know what's around the bend. We can maybe dial down the crazy a bit, I've had enough of that, but as more time passes, I realize that Emma was right-normal is a setting on a dryer, and I don't even have one of those.

Perhaps I have the off-counter routines like the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggles of the world. The Morks, the Joes, the Amelia Bedelias. For the Joes and the Reginald Perrins, maybe that's a routine too far. Perhaps people with routines make the world balance since they have to deal with people like me, tightrope walkers with poor inner ears or flame throwers that forgot the zippos. The bouncing types that spend a lot of time thinking and feeling but wonder what color of grass is on the other side of the fence, the yard that includes children and carpools and Sunday barbecues with the family.

Through all the thinking, I have determined that maybe my life isn't normal...but I wouldn't give it up for the world. Not one crazy, passionate, happy, stressful minute of it.

Maybe someday for my routines. But I get a text message from fabulous Mr. Y asking if I want to go to the Channel Islands with him.

A very unusual thunderstorm hits and I curl up on the couch, staring out the window, armed with a chocolate shake and all the lights and the TV off, just soaking up the outrageous rock of thunder and the peals of lightning in the sky.

I walk to the post office, and people I have never even met and maybe never will again say hello and ask me how my day was.

And I think....I'm settling in. Maybe someday I'll have routines. But thankfully not now.

-H.

PS-one thing I do know-my routines need to include my girls. I think my heart is ripped out without them, so I just keep telling myself: November 28...November 28....

My Girls

PPS-Luuka has been found, after lounging around the Jersey post office after being with Rob, and is now on her way (again) to Eric.

Posted by: Everydaystranger at 07:00 AM | Comments (20) | Add Comment
Post contains 1318 words, total size 8 kb.

1 oh Helen, your girls are gorgeous! That's only 116 days, you know.

Posted by: melanie at August 04, 2004 07:47 AM (jDC3U)

2 Maybe it has something to do with the difference between structure and routines? Permanence? Identity? Do we need routines to maintain our identity?

Posted by: ember at August 04, 2004 08:33 AM (kLa46)

3 you have as always succinctly and eloquently stated my exact conundrum with patterns in my life and the directions they lead. I guess really it boils down to some times you need structure and some times you need to go with the flow. It is the intelligent and centered who know how to read internally and tell the difference between what is and is not needed at any given point in life.

Posted by: stinkerbell at August 04, 2004 09:27 AM (m18uI)

4 That's a nice pair of pussies (well, someone was going to say it). The thing with routines is they are ordinary, but they are necessary so that something out of the ordinary can happen. Many people like the anchor routines provide because it gives order to an uncertain, dare I say chaotic, world. It's a coping mechanism. Some people love it and some people hate it. It's like the pickles in a McDonald's hamburger. Did I mention what nice pussies you have. (couldn't help myself).

Posted by: Simon at August 04, 2004 10:59 AM (OyeEA)

5 awww, your kitty girls are adorable! they'll be with you in no time at all. i think your new life is a little to "new" for routines. you may fall into some, but there's nothing wrong with wanting a life that's more unpredictable. actually, i admire your wanting that. i always want to control everything. i remember some quote saying the only thing that's certain in life is change...or something like that. and that's true. life is constant change. recognizing that is far from crazy, in fact it's the most sane thing i've heard in a long time. xoxox

Posted by: kat at August 04, 2004 12:00 PM (FhSIP)

6 Don't get too entranced with routines - you'll catch a brain cloud! ;-)

Posted by: Jim at August 04, 2004 01:02 PM (IOwam)

7 The nice thing about routines is that it's so much fun to break them.

Posted by: Easy at August 04, 2004 01:16 PM (6uVmJ)

8 Creatures of habit enjoy (possibly even NEED) routines. But routines may suck the joy right out of life for some. Just as everyone isn't cut out to be a programmer, everyone isn't cut out to have scores of rigid routines. And sometimes one trait (like routines) has to be quelled due to another. For example, if I had Reginald's trait of timing my walk AND my competitive nature, I'd have that 12.5 minute walk down to 10 minutes flat by the end of the first week and down to 4:50 by the end of the month Find the balance of traits you have and those you want that makes your life the most enjoyable and content.

Posted by: Solomon at August 04, 2004 01:45 PM (k1sTy)

9 What sweet and beautiful little girls! Awww....November is right around the corner. :-)

Posted by: Amber at August 04, 2004 02:16 PM (zQE5D)

10 I've been thinking about your routine issue and I've formed the following tentative view: maybe you want routine and normal because you've had enough unsettledness to last a liftime, because you just want to be able to take waking up next to Mr. Y for granted as an accepted fact, because routine and normal in this life means it's yours and nothing can take it away, because you crave some stability. Routine can provide some of that even if it is less exciting. Or maybe I'm full of shite.

Posted by: RP at August 04, 2004 03:25 PM (LlPKh)

11 It's funny you mention routines... I always started my day by reading your latest post, until recently. For some reason I whittled down my SharpReader list to just the sites that update frequently. I broke my routine and before I knew it I was forgetting to check in with you. I'm fixing that. Your cats remind me of our family cat when I was little. Except ours was 17+ lbs. I have no cat to call my own so I am an honorary godfather for my friends' cat Sophie. Here's a link from my fotolog: http://www.fotolog.net/larubia/?pid=8343859 Take care, little flame. Just like a cat you'll eventually get that pillow called your life fluffed just right and then settle down for a nice, long nap.

Posted by: Paul at August 04, 2004 03:27 PM (xdj7o)

12 Aww helen, your girls are absolutely gorgeous! Time will fly and they'll be back with you in no time And yes, come to the channel islands! They're very purdy AxXx

Posted by: Lemurgirl at August 04, 2004 04:07 PM (I/cn9)

13 Oh, they are the sweetest.

Posted by: Donna at August 04, 2004 04:33 PM (3+LTh)

14 Helen, why is it taking so long to get them there? Are there quarantine issues between Sweden and England? Gosh, you've been in England since some time in April or May, haven't you? That's almost a year you have to wait. What's up with that? I think I would be so bereft!

Posted by: wench at August 04, 2004 04:57 PM (j4ByO)

15 It's not a question of what's normal, darling. It's a question of what's normal *for you*. And of course that's going to change over time, as you move jobs and houses, lovers and lives. I'm wondering if you're associating normalcy with stability. It certainly seems that as you and Mr Y settle in and you feel more stable, things will 'normalize' and it'll be easier to know what you can count on. By the way, I watched The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin as a kid (I was a TOTAL PBS geek) and remember it fondly - especially his bits at the ice cream company. Fucking hilarious.

Posted by: Kaetchen at August 04, 2004 06:19 PM (1nMRx)

16 Pretty pretty kitty catses. I've always been terribly partial to black or black&white cats.

Posted by: Terry at August 04, 2004 08:54 PM (1agsG)

17 Normal, shmormal. Normal is as normal does, and routines only exist to be broken. I do live the life you described (2.4 kids, house in the 'burbs, etc.), but my life - THANK GOD, BUDDHA, ALLA AND ANYONE ELSE I'VE LEFT OUT - is decidedly not "normal". Just be. And be happy. All the rest is icing.

Posted by: Jennifer at August 04, 2004 09:51 PM (N+5K8)

18 Did you know that Joe v the volcano was on tonight !!!!! Spooky or what..

Posted by: sasoozie at August 04, 2004 10:39 PM (dx0qs)

19 Well£¬it depends.He has many strange ideas in his mind.She is a composer for the harp.I feel like sleeping taking a walkI can't follow you.The Beatles represented part of the spirit of their age.Did you enter the contest? Where is your office?What do you think? He asked me some personal questions, but I would never answer them.

Posted by: cheap-ugg-boots-order.blogspot.com at November 20, 2012 07:03 AM (jv0JF)

20 He is respectful to his elders.There is a mark of ink on his shirt.Where do you want to meet? Did you know he was having an affaircheating on his wife?Don't cry over spilt milk.What he likes best is making jokes.Brevity is the soul of wit.Will you please try to find out for me what time the train arrives? You mustn't aim too high.As a matter of fact, he was pretending to be ill.

Posted by: saleuggbaileybuttonboots.blogspot.com at November 28, 2012 04:37 AM (sQP0V)

Hide Comments | Add Comment