Concerned
October 2009
My hair’s on fire.
- I’m rootin’ tootin’ mad.
OK, mouseketeers, I’m cranky and trying to shake it off.
I am all for eccentricity, personal quirks, individual phobias and neuroses. I’m accommodating of these things in both myself and people I interact with up to the point where such are not good for me.
When they’re my own, I work to change myself – sometimes unsuccessfully. But I try. And I don’t expect others to put up with my nonsense.
When it’s other people, I develop power and control issues which surprise me.
It’s all the rage in business seminars to adminster mini Meyer Briggs personality tests. I don’t believe I’ve ever taken the full Meyer Briggs, but I’ve taken multiple short form tests.
That would be me - a combination that doesn't exist in nature.
I’m a combination that doesn’t exist in nature. Test administrators always try to tell me that I’ve done something wrong – fudged my answers. In one test, where personalities are color coded, I’m equally green and blue – which translates as analytical/emotional. In another test where participants are labeled as creatures, I’m a chameleon meaning I’m still analytical/emotional, but I possess the tendency to always see both sides of a situation. (Those who know me well will tell you this is my greatest strength and my greatest weakness – it explains my inability to make a decision. It also explains why some of my co-workers thing I’m two-faced.)
In tests designed to reveal which side of your brain is dominant, I always come out as using both sides equally. I’m told, yada yada, that only 10% of the population thinks like this.
All of this conspires to make me a nontraditional worker. Things that motivate most folks, don’t work for me at all. Things that irritate most folks don’t bother me. The flip side is that I get my panties knotted and shredded over stuff that most folks regard as downright ridiculous.
There’s nothing worse than getting all enraged knowing that 90% of the world cannot even begin to understand why. And so, I suppress the anger as much as possible and just try to get on with things.
Michael L. Smith's fabulous and incomparable Mad Bluebird photo
At this moment, I’d like to go all Dexter.
I’m trying to shake it off.
Years ago, my father told me that his overriding management technique was to treat people as if they were going to do the best job possible with the best possible outcome. I suppose this is the management version of The Secret. He went on to say that if you treat people like they’re incompetent, they will be. If you treat them as if they’re dishonest, they will be. If you treat them as if they don’t have a strong work ethic, they won’t. If you deny them the right to self-direction, they’ll foment rebellion.
I adopted Daddy’s modus operandi years ago. It has served me well
I’ve found these things to be true. I believe that most people want to do a good job. I believe that most people want to love their work. I believe that most people want to behave ethically and with good principles. I believe that most people know how to best complete a task based on their own personality type. – the corollary to that is that I believe that the people who actually do the task know best how to do it. And if they don’t, it’s a result of bad management in the past.
But by the elastic in Great Aunt Gertrude’s girdle, I get wound up, infuriated, and my hair bursts into flame when I’m treated as if I don’t know what I’m doing when nothing in my work history supports such a conclusion. This becomes apocalyptical if the treatment is such that it is witnessed by co-workers or consumers. Apparently, one of my peccadilloes is the right to be right. (I’m working on it. Really, I have no idea why it bugs me so much to be “corrected” when it’s my opinion that nothing is in need of correction. I’m quick to admit when I don’t know. And I’m quick to ask for help when I don’t know. I was always that kid in class that asked questions. I don’t have that “fear of looking stupid” gene. And in terms of customer service, I practically coined the “I don’t know, but I’ll find out” response.)
Maybe some chammomile tea will help return me to my cheerful eccentric self.
The only other thing that rips off my safety-sealed-for-your-protection lid is being treated as if I’m dishonest.
We all have power and control issues, but in keeping with my unusual brain, mine are eccentric. If I’ve been given authority for something, I don’t like having my decisions questioned with a view to changing them. As such, I have an on/off switch. Rather than protest my innocence, explain my rationale, or ask why I’m being interrogated when there is no problem, I’m apt to wash my hands of the whole mess. You don’t like what I did or how I’m going about it? Fine. Do it yourself.
This is not an adult response. I’ve been working on it for years. I’ve got to figure out an appropriately assertive, but nonthreatening way to get across the idea that just because I’m not doing something the way you would do it doesn’t mean I’m doing it wrong.
So? What makes you go all purple prose postal?
Secret Garden Gate
Incognito in Vines
Cow Udder Pink
If I were going to channel the writers of Sex in the City, I might begin this post with “Can a toilet paper holder make a woman happy?”
I finally got around to painting the guest bathroom. Trust me, it needed paint like my 401K needs funding. Whilst buying the paint, I picked up the toilet paper holder of my dreams – black wrought iron and cleverly designed so that toilet paper can be installed without disassembling the holder.
I am challenged when it comes to inserting toilet paper in the standard type of holder. I become all fumble-fingers and end up hopping around the bathroom with my jeans around my ankles trying to pick up the middle rod. It’s always an Abbot & Costello moment not that I think those boys ever changed the toilet paper roll.
[I’m generally opposed to jokes that bash gender, race or ethnicity, but I absolutely love this one: How many men does it take to change a toilet paper roll? Nobody knows. It’s never been done. OK. Got that out of my system.]
I’m pretty tickled with the holder. In fact, I’m pretty tickled with the whole bathroom.
I’m two-for-two on recent paint jobs. After the disasters of recent years, this is heady stuff. The lavender office and now the cow bathroom have been freshly painted with the color being right the first time. Right and fabulous.
Um, cow bathroom – yes.
Back when black and white cow motifs were all the rage, I made the mistake of saying (out loud) that I thought they were cute. I’m not generally a “cute” person, but I live in a barn. I like black. And I do, now and again, enjoy a touch of whimsy which explains why Miss Piggy lives on my desk in my oh-so-elegant lavender office. It also explains the cow bathroom.
Since I had declared the cuteness of black and white cow stuff out loud in front of God and everybody, my entire extended family gave me such stuff for every gift-giving occasion. It got entirely out of hand. By the time I shrieked, “Enough already, people,” I had cow dishes, posters, photos, cards, plant holders, door stops, stuffed animals, coffee mugs, sweatshirts, socks, salt & pepper shakers, cleverly designed lotion dispensers, Christmas ornaments, soap, stools, canisters, soup tureens, cookie jars, and, I’m not kidding, perfume.
Surreptitiously, I had been getting rid of the nastier stuff as the years rolled by. A few years ago, I got rid of 90% of it. During the cow purge, I discovered that I like cow images. I saved those. I also saved the 4,327,643.5 greeting cards bearing cows that I received along with the cow gifts. I also cut out and saved particularly amusing cow cartoons. (No, really, they do exist – Far Side, for example.)
Over the past ten years or so, I’ve been putting some of these things in frames. I actually hung some of them, but most of them were languishing in a box pending painting.
While recovering from what was probably swine flu, I woke up with a powerful urge to finally paint the bathroom I’ve been trying to paint since 1998. I decided, after ten years of pondering, that cow udder pink would be just peachy – although I wanted a cow udder pink that veered towards orchid rather than peach.
I skipped-to-my-lou’d over to the Lowes and picked out paint in less than 5 minutes which left me plenty of time to snag the black wrought iron toilet paper roll holder. It was a good day. Those of you who know me know how out of character that is. It took me 3 hours in the paint aisle once to choose a white paint. There’s something to be said for buying paint in the wet-noodly-stage of flu recovery.
It was even better when the molding came off without cracking. Spackling went enormously well. Primer was easy-peasy. Paint went on like a dream AND the painter’s tape didn’t pull off the edges of the new paint when I pulled it off the wall. Really, it was like someone else painted the bathroom. (Of course, there’s paint in places there shouldn’t be and I’ll eventually get around to fixing that.)
After all that, I painted the vanity and medicine cabinet, spray painted some stuff black and begun the onerous task of hanging stuff on the walls.
One wall has always borne three of Jennifer O’Meara’s “American Barns” prints. I love these things and I could flay myself for not having bought more when they were on the market – they weren’t particularly costly. My goal was to complete that wall with a ton of barn images and cow images and touches of whimsy as well as the other three walls. I have two thick file folders of images suitable for framing (some blatantly stolen from Flickr).
People in bifocals with a significant astigmatism find lining up photographs and prints on a wall to be challenging. I got about half of it done when I ran out of frames (and energy).
My to-do list now includes the purchase of more frames (from Dollar General and similar fine framing establishments). I also must deal with the ceiling and the floor, but significant progress has been made.
And so? Can a toilet paper roll holder make this woman happy? Well, no, not in and of itself. But I’m tickled cow udder pink with the progress of the bathroom. If memory serves, I think pink is one of those colors that is said to provoke a feeling of happiness. And then there are the simple conveniences like being able to put toilet paper on the holder one-handed that do make me smile. But I’m especially happy that it’s all gone so well.
[And, in other news, I’ve replaced my stolen camera with an exact replica! In fact, for all I know, it could be my stolen camera. I mean do we really know? Is E-Bay just a giant fencing site?]
W. Va. Fur and Root 