What is the “day that will live in infamy?” Pearl Harbor Day.  Quickly – what is the date?  I’ll admit it.  I had to look up the year even though that day led us into World War II.  It was the worst event in the collective American memory….until 2001.

There are all kinds of theories surrounding both attacks, claiming that the US government knew that they were coming, but allowed them to happen because the government needed an event that would justify war.  Maybe. Maybe not.  I don’t know and, frankly, I don’t care.  My thoughts today are on our memories.

It was the worst day in the history of our nation, said many.  Now, 78 years later, most middle-aged Americans can’t tell you what that date was.  Young American adults my son’s age REALLY can’t tell you. We don’t remember.  The horror has faded.  For many of us, that horror was replaced in 2001.  That infamous day won’t suffer Pearl Harbor’s Day fate if only because it’s impossible to forget the date of the September 11 attacks.  But, my grandchildren, in middle-age, may have to look up the year.

It’s a fine line, isn’t it, both personally and collectively? How long do we remember hurts, slights and attacks and in what way do we remember them? Do we remember them forever and allow them to embitter us? Do we remember them forever just so that we can avoid the experience again? Do we forget about them and move on?

How many of our political nightmares are the remnants of centuries old wrongs? The Irish only recently stopped killing each other over actions that began with James II in 1687, but really got cranked up in 1919.  Roots of issues within the Middle East go back literally to the Bronze Age.  For issues between the West and the Middle East, cast your eye back to The Crusades, at least.  These are not new conflicts.  They are very, very old ones that have claimed the people who once claimed them and the conflicts continue to kill.  And, for what? Clearly, I don’t get it.

That’s the macro view.  For a micro view, there’s the sociopath who lied to get me fired, the man who married someone else while we were dating or the one who threw me away. The very mention of some people’s names causes my stomach to burn and these events happened decades ago!  How stupid is that?

If I hang onto those hurts, who suffers?  I do.  Those people have moved on.  They probably don’t even remember the incidents that make my blood pressure rise. So, I ask again, who suffers?

I do.

I stayed fat to be invisible.  I punished myself with food. I committed slow suicide with cigarettes.  And with every bite, with every puff, I gave them more of my life.  And, guess what? They didn’t care then, either.

So, it’s time to forget our old Days of Infamy. It’s time to learn the lesson, but let the horror fade. It’s time to live our lives in ways that are best for us and for those around us.  Easier said than done, it’s crucial for, until we let go of that hurt, we continue punishing ourselves and we deserve better than that.

 “I love this thing you’re doing with your hair.  It’s so… down-to-earth and natural-like.  I wish I could be more like that.”

Bobbi-Claire Akins says that to Birdee Pruett in Hope Floats (you know that movie where Sandra Bullock is adorable and Harry Connick is delicious?).  Anyway, you and I both know that what Bobbi-Claire means is that Birdee’s hair looks like a cat has been sucking on it and Bobbi-Claire wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that.

I told you yesterday that we were going to talk about Bobbi-Claire and so we are.

The backhanded compliment is truly an art form, I think.  I’ve never learned how to deliver one particularly well, but I can appreciate it when someone else does.  I can appreciate it from a distance, that is.  Up close and personal, I find generally them cowardly and unattractive unless they are delivered in the voice of Julia Sugarbaker, then they’re pretty impressive.

I believe that we all know people who deliver them, don’t we?  You know the people I mean – they look all positive and fresh upon first meeting; but, the more time we spend with them, the more negative and stale they look.  We end  up feeling tired and drained after too much time in their company because, while they appear to be kind, they are really not.

Like the lye my sister once made for some kind of home ec project, these people will eat at us and eat at us until we’re left feeling raw and burned without a clue as to why.  They damn with faint praise. They deliver slights so skillfully and so deftly, that we’re not entirely sure they were slights at all.  Maybe they are corrosive people, but maybe we are just being too sensitive.

Clotille Jones says that we’re not and that we need to get away from those people!

Lyers, those most insidious of the negative and corrosive, are a special breed.  They likely have some particular personality disorder or another; but, I’ll let one of my psychologist friends define all that.  I truly believe, though, that they are forged that way – either in the womb or in early development.  In either case, they have been that way FAR too long for anyone else to change them or to even defeat them using their own weapons of choice, those backhanded compliments.  The only way I can deal effectively with them is to recognize them for what they are and to limit my exposure to them.  Even after I identify a snake, I still have to beware of its poison.  Some venom can be absorbed just by exposure.  It’s important to remember that.

Clotille says that if you wrestle with a pig, you’ll both get dirty and the pig will like it.  (That’s not exactly appropriate here, but I like it when she says that.) What is appropriate is when she says that when you lie down with dogs you get fleas.  Or, in this case, when you lye down with negative people, you come up the less for it.

Last week, it was a real struggle to remember that I am the Positive Thinking Blog Goddess.  My spirit was more Gorgon than goddess, for sure!  Friday evening finally arrived – a day or so late, but it got here. At home, I relaxed awhile, then dissected my nasty attitude to see what could be done about it.  Even two years after I initiated my lifestyle changes, I still struggle with some of the same bad habits – stress eating among them; so, I run self-diagnostics all the time.  I have to really keep an eye on my stress levels or, before I know it, I’ll be on the evening news as the source of disorderly conduct in the frozen food section. In my Friday evening diagnostics, I identified a few stressors that were contributing to my general curmudgeoniness and devised a plan to eradicate them.  The first stressor was the state of my home.  (Sorry, Hoarders, I’ve already been busy with the front end loader; you’re too late to start shooting.)

Yes, Fall cleaning has begun at the Doty Hjem!  And, the house is in worse shape than ever.

But, I’m okay with it since it’s all part of the process.  Since Cinderella’s mice didn’t show up while I was sleeping, I started with my son’s room, removed all the furniture, washed it, cleaned the carpets and am (at this minute) waiting on the carpets to dry so that I can restore the furniture.  I’ve washed ten loads of clothes, towels and bed linens, I’ve vacuumed, dusted, washed, sorted and scrubbed.  I’m exhausted and feel SO much better!

There are myriad stressors I can do absolutely nothing about, making it even more important that I affect the ones that I can.  My job is stressful. My schedule is stressful. My son’s departure is stressful. Those are largely out of my control; however, cat hair dust bunnies are totally within my dominion.  In wrangling them, I am able to manage some portion of my world, decreasing my stress levels.  AND decreasing the likelihood that I will stress eat.

If you know me, you know that I’m not a fastidious housekeeper.  (If you know me well, the word fastidious likely has you shrieking with laughter.  Just know that I’m sticking my tongue out at you.) I do not get my jollies dusting, vacuuming or polishing.  And I would almost rather take a beating than iron clothes. Still, I knew that I had to clean the Hjem thoroughly for the betterment of all mankind; so, I rounded up some friends to help – Tatu, Shakira, Disturbed and, yes, Ricky Martin.  I shimmied, boogied and jammed my way through all manner of vile and tedious housework.  The time went quickly and I got a lot done.

So, as I wait for the carpet to dry, allowing me to finish that room, I salute Mary Poppins – you got it, chica! A spoonful of sugar does help the medicine go down – drinking out of The Cup of Life makes it just that much better.

We are so busy, busy, busy!  More than once, I’ve shared my thoughts on our need to disconnect,  to unplug from the external stimuli that constantly bombard us and plug into ourselves.

You hear divorcing people talking all the time about a changed spouse – “waking up with a stranger.”  What if the stranger you woke up with was yourself?

After losing my job in North Carolina, I moved to New Orleans where I learned that I like to garden. I like to sew. I remembered that I enjoy taking photographs.  I remembered myself.

I got busy when I moved to Tennessee and forgot those lessons; but, have recently been learning them again, in spite of my business and my busy-ness.  If I lose myself, what am I left with?

Read more on Tuesday’s Nashville.com – Missing the Trees for the Forest.

Whew!  Yesterday was a battle, let me tell you!  As I wrote, I woke with a negative attitude.  Everything I wrote was ugly; so, I just shared some pretty photos with you.  Yesterday, my wolves were fighting and it was a real struggle to feed the right one.

As I’ve shared with you before, I do not believe that happiness, or even attitude, is completely a choice.  I do, however, believe that my focus and my expressions are 100% my choice.  I can choose to share those negative emotions or I can choose to keep my mouth shut.  I can choose to be nasty or I can choose to be silent. It’s like I told my son when he was little, “You have every right to feel angry and to express that anger.  I have every right not to hear it.  Go to you room and have at it.”

I met with my new friend Nicole yesterday afternoon (get ready because in a few days, y’all are going to meet her and you’re going to love her!) and we talked about blogging since she does it, too.  I told her that I had chosen not to write much yesterday because I just couldn’t seem to write anything that was edifying. The news, movies, magazines, televisions shows, etc., are all doing a fine job of tearing us down, making us feel less than, arming us with snarky little phrases that we then sling at each other. I choose not to be a part of that cycle.

She holds a similar philosophy.  We choose not to be manipulated by the media.  We choose not to splatter other people with our own bile.  We choose to edify.

Or we try really, really hard to, anyway.

Nicole has lost well over 200 pounds!  Go ahead.  Read it again.  It’s just as amazing the second time. And the third, and the fourth….. Like me, she found that attitude and focus were essential in getting the weight off.  At my biggest weight, I was mostly invisible. At her biggest weight, she was the object of scorn.  Some of her stories made me feel ashamed to be human, I tell you!  But she didn’t let that scorn or other people’s doubts or even any of her own doubts get her in way.  She held her focus and lost more than half of her body weight while growing her spirit at the same time.  Amazing! She refused to allow other people to splatter her with their bile and she refused to splatter anyone else with her own.  She remained positive and, as a result, is victorious.

That is my goal: to remain both positive and victorious.  To do that, I must take care not to splatter others.

I’ve written three posts for today and I don’t like any of them. They are neither edifying nor positive nor enlightening.  In writing them all, I have, in fact, become Empress of Planet Crankypants.  Rather than populate my planet with other cranky people, I think that I will keep those posts to myself and, instead, share with you some photos I took last weekend in Kentucky at the Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.  Pretty scenery makes things better.  That and ice cream.

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“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” ― Maya Angelou

I’ve long been a believer in this.  Often, we cannot control what happens to us.  We may be a victim of something like identity theft, abuse, rape, an accident or a natural disaster.  There’s not much we can do about those things if we can’t get out of the way.  We are affected by those events.  The next steps are up to us, though.

What do we do?

Do we stay in abusive relationships? Do we refuse to file charges? Do we live on hand-outs? Or do we cry about it for awhile, dust ourselves off and get back in there to fight again?

Do we volunteer to remain a victim or do we triumph over those events and become victors?

Understand that when I ask that question, I don’t ask it either lightly or glibly.  I’ve been metaphorically kicked in the teeth several times.  I am acquainted with the dark side of the street and I know people who know it much better than I ever want to.  All of us have chosen to pick ourselves up and get back into the fray.

• I knew a woman whose mother literally sold her for heroin money when she was a child.  This same woman was beaten and left for dead beside a road in the Southwest.  In pain, she worked everyday and raised her son.
• I met a woman in California who left her native Scotland to escape her abusive husband.  She now heads up an organization to teach abused (but victorious) women job skills and to get them clothing appropriate to go on job interviews and to work in.
• Then, there’s John Walsh.  I can’t even imagine taking the pain of my child’s murder and using it to catch others.  America’s Most Wanted has helped catch quite a few violent criminals.  And I, myself, once used a Code Adam to shut down a store when my son, then three, got out of the cart and hid in a round clothes rack.
• And, of course, there’s Richard Hagerman and Donna Whitson whose daughter Amber’s murder led to the creation of AMBER Alerts.

As with anything, there are shades of gray and most of us are Shades of Gray Victims.  We are Victors in one area, but Volunteer Victims in another.  I was a Victor over Hurricane Katrina.  A Victor over an assault. But, a Volunteer Victim to my own bad recordings and beliefs, which led to being a Volunteer Victim to my unhealthy weight and lifestyle for YEARS.  I am sure that when I sit down to really examine my attitudes, I will find that I am still a Volunteer Victim to some beliefs.  As I find them, I’ll just have to root them out!

If the situation is difficult, unpleasant or not to our liking, we must either change it, change our attitudes about it or change our location.  The change likely won’t be easy; but, if the situation is bad enough, it’ll be worth it.

Victimhood has a time limit.  Once that’s done, we’re either a Volunteer or a Victor.  Our choice.

Maya Angelou said that.  I’m not sure I agree with the wise woman this time, though.  We know better than to do a lot of the things that we do; but, we do them anyway.  We drink, then do all manner of things like dance in public or call somebody.  (Don’t act like you don’t know what a Drunk Dial is.) Worse, we drink, then we drive.

We also eat mass-produced hamburgers that aren’t even cooked on-site anymore. (Seriously, they microwave most of that stuff now.)  We know better than that, we really do.  We know that we need to eat more vegetables and that we need the vibrantly colored ones. We know that we need to eat less sugar, less sodium and (perhaps) less fat.  We know that we need to limit our intake of all white foods.  Or do we?

We’ve heard obviously biased claims for so long, what can we believe anymore? “Lose 50 pounds in two weeks by eating nothing but popcorn!” “Order these boxed foods and lose pounds and inches fast!” “Wrap your body in plastic wrap and lose two dress sizes before Wheel of Fortune is over.” “Order this bottle of questionable chemicals and lose ugly fat without changing your lifestyle.”  Hype.  Hype. Hype. (Hype – short for hyperbole – an extravagant statement or figure of speech not intended to be taken literally, as “to wait an eternity.”) These claims, by definition, cannot be taken seriously.

My advice to all of us is this: educate ourselves and eschew any diet that makes outrageous claims or that has us cut out entire food groups.  (I say that knowing that I’ve admitted to cutting out nearly all dairy.  I made that cut not because I think that everyone needs to, but because of how my own body reacts to it.)  Proceed with caution with any diet or lifestyle plan that promises outlandish rewards without work.  Let’s take that further: proceed with caution with ANYTHING that promises outlandish rewards without work.  Proceed with caution and be ready to throw ourselves into full-throttle reverse!

The key here is that we have to educate ourselves on what is logical in a nutritional sense, in a scientific sense and in a lifestyle sense.  We have to pay attention to the fine print of diet aids and ads, and we have to really note where it says: results not typical.

This weekend, while in McCreary County, Kentucky – one of the poorest in the country – we stopped to ask directions from a guy at a gas station.  He turned, cigarette in hand and mouthed directions.  Stoma clearly visible on his neck, he could not speak; but, still smoked.  No, Ms Angelou. We don’t always do better.

And shame on us for it.

But, she also said, “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”

Let’s educate ourselves so that we really know better, then let’s challenge ourselves to actually apply that knowledge and do better.

A friend posted this on Facebook earlier this week:

Conviction sometimes comes from the most unlikely places. Chip and I received a letter today from one of the Compassion International children we sponsor. Her name is Wilne. She lives in Haiti. In the middle of her narrative about going to school and playing soccer, she told us that she gets water from a tank. She then asked us about our community and what we do everyday. This was a poignant moment of discussion for us. What do we say? “We turn a tap in our house and water comes out of it all the time.” “We use water to keep flowers alive in our yard.” “Our dogs have plenty of water to drink every day.” Of course, we’d never say these things to Wilne. Not only would it be insensitive, but she probably has absolutely no context for understanding such things. Her simple statement, however, did more to make me examine my ridiculously luxurious life than anything else has in quite some time. I pray I don’t soon forget it.

I thought about this on Saturday as I was touring the interpretive center at an old coal mining facility.  We adjust the thermostat, turn on the water, turn on the hot water, get dinner out of the refrigerator, turn on the dryer, etc., etc., etc.  Every day, we perform thousands of tasks of convenience that were unimaginable to even my mother as a small child.  She and her brothers hoed and picked cotton in the Mississippi heat.  I work at a desk.  Indoors.  With lights and air conditioning.

It’s tragically easy to forget how easy we’ve got it, how far we’ve come and on whose shoulders we arrived.  Men like the miners depicted in the photo died to provide energy.  More died building the roads, railroads, bridges, buildings, pipelines and all the other things that let us live with the convenience that we do.

We honor the soldiers who fought for our freedom – as we should.  Today, let’s honor the workers who worked for our convenience.