Monk Mode

One day I will write about October of 2022.

The Yin-Yang. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The Wonder of It. About how events from the last five years finally converged into one loud noise called October 2022, thus changing the trajectory of my life.

But I’m still swirling around in it. You can’t write about the speed of the wind if you’re swirling around in a tornado.

So. I have just emerged from a self-imposed six-month long Monk Mode. If you aren’t familiar with it: Monk Mode = A Challenge + a Detox.

Here are the rules:

A definite start and stop date. My Monk Mode lasted from mid-April to October 1st.

A commitment to do certain amounts of certain kinds of work: The work I did this summer required me to be charming, gracious, cooperative, outgoing, patient, accepting, and unwaveringly generous. I rarely manifest all of these qualities simultaneously for such an extended amount of time.

A commitment to abstain from certain distractions or vices: I abstained from gossip. Complaining. Dating, socializing, drinking, phone usage, unhealthy eating, travel and unnecessary spending.

Definite rules for both commitments:

I would fast while at work, keeping my metabolism within my control and my brain sharp.

I would not sit down, building my endurance and lengthening my muscles.

I would not be late, call out of work for any reason, or ask for time off.

I would do more than was expected of me.

I would read two books a week.

I would write a minimum of two hours a day.

I would meditate and exercise every morning.

I would avoid sugar, carbs and unnecessary calories.

I did well. While I can’t give specific details since I’ll be writing it up as an essay for a magazine, here are my successes:

I was only late once due to a traffic detour, and once I had to leave an hour early.

(While I tried my best to avoid gossip and controversy, it tends to follow me wherever I go. I got through it).

I lost weight, my blood pressure went down, my endurance and vitality went through the roof, especially in the gym and doing my cardio.

And on Sundays, my day off, I let all rules relax. After church, anything went. Buy impractical baby blue platform clogs from Free People? Yep. Gin and tonics at 10:00 a.m. with wings, on the patio? Hell yah. Take five naps while binge-watching old movies? Indeed.

I vowed to leave Monk Mode the same way I started it: with joy in my heart. And I’m proud to say that at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday night, October 1, 2022, as I walked to my car with a big smile on my face, I knew I had accomplished my goal.

What a fantastic summer. And I still have October to look forward to. Chef’s kiss.

Filth and Squalor

I’m so happy my youngest son lives in filth and squalor.

Last Sunday I went to visit his college campus, to bring him some groceries and see the new house that he shares with five roommates. All I knew going in was that he lives in one of the “lacrosse houses” right off campus, and he needed provisions.

I pulled up to a dilapidated house with an overgrown lawn, and while I’m no Pollyanna, I was still shocked at its condition.

“This can’t be it,” I said to Google Maps Lady, as I peered toward the property.

“Fuck yes, it is,” Google Maps lady replied, with a trace of superior satisfaction.

Egads. And I had arrived just in time to witness a conversation one of the boys was having with two older pissed-off looking men. All I heard was the tail end.

“It’s up to you guys,” one man said, getting in his truck. “The city is issuing tickets, so get it cleaned up.”

Hm, I thought. Get what cleaned up? The yard? The house? Their act?

This absolutely can’t be it, and as I began to text my son, there he suddenly was, standing in the doorway with his lopsided smile. All 6’1” of his cuteness, and my heart went pitter-pat, as it always does when I see my sons anywhere, even standing in our own kitchen.

I gave him a hug and asked what the altercation was about.

“I have no idea. And of course you pull up at that exact moment. We haven’t seen him since we moved in.”

The inside looked as I expected. Use your imagination. Really think about it, now. Six juniors in college, athletes. Got the image?

Yep.

There was barely enough room in the refrigerator to fit the groceries I had brought him, so we loaded some back into my car to be brought home, frozen, and brought back on my next visit. A tour of the house revealed more funk and wildness, but I was happy to see that his basement bedroom reflected his personal fastidiousness and penchant for order. Comfy bed, neatly appropriated desk, belongings stored away, posters of rap stars giving the middle finger to the photographer, and inevitable strobe lights lining the walls.

“Nice bedroom, honey,” I said. “Could double as an S&M dungeon.”

“What’s that?”

“Never mind.”

“Wait until you see this,” he said, leading me to a set of six ascending stairs. “I have a door right to the backyard.”

How nice, I thought, and he opened the door to reveal another overgrown lawn, this one littered with no fewer than 6,000 red Solo cups.

“You say you didn’t know what the landlord wanted you to clean up? Perhaps the back yard?”

“Could be,” he said. “We had a mixer yesterday.”

“That sounds fun.”

“It got broken up pretty quickly, but we managed to keep it going for a few hours.”

“Who called the cops?”

“Hard to say.”

I looked up over their rusted metal fence at a very upscale apartment building that looked directly down at their house.

“Maybe the tenants of that apartment building?”

He looked up.

“I never thought of that. Could be.”

As we left the house, a young man appeared at the door.

“The backyard cleaned up?” he asked Tommy.

“No, you can get to it,” my son answered.

Seeing my confused expression, my son revealed to me that the boy was a freshman on the lacrosse team who had arrived for yard clean-up duty.

I drove home with a big grin on my face.

My youngest, the STEM genius of the family. The boy who was given such a generous scholarship package for college that he will graduate debt-free. The boy who was accepted into West Point. The boy who has made Dean’s list for four straight semesters. The boy who has always been self-motivated, self-disciplined, self-regulating and self-governing. The boy who sets his own alarm clocks, never needs reminding, does what needs to be done, and is not prone to emotion or sentiment. The boy who has never studied more than a minute in his life, because it comes so easily to him. The boy who has always said, “I can do it myself.” The boy who majors in cybersecurity and does schoolwork that we can’t even explain, much less recognize. The boy with the purest heart you’d ever want to meet.

That perfect neat boy lives in filth and squalor. He’s living his life, in his own little chaotic orderly life.

It’s all we should ever want for any of our children.

Scusi?

(Only post this week, sorry, and thanks for checking in)

So fine, I was bored. Does it excuse it? Maybe not. But he had it coming. Or did he?

I get a LOT of DMs and follow requests in my Instagram account. I’m sure you do, too, right? And tbh, I’m not even sure what’s considered “normal.” Five a day? Ten? A hundred a month?

I won’t tell you how many I get. It’s unseemly.

My IG account is very very private, and very very boring. I only have like thirteen followers and eight posts on there, and I haven’t even posted anything since Alaska. When a DM pops up from a stranger, of course I immediately delete it.

But one day I was at work, and I was bored. So when a DM popped up from this silver fox, I did the unthinkable, for me at least:

I replied. And instantly, ohhhh, the regret. Why do I do this to men? Here’s a smatter:

Him: Hello Mary

Him: How are you doing?

Me: Fine

Him: How’s your day been so far?

Me: (Heart sign)

Next day:

Him: Hey

Me: Hi

Him: How are you?

Me: Good

Him: Where are you from?

Me: Earth

Him: This is lovely- what part?

(This, my friends, indicates that he is a foreigner, and has only the limited English-speaking capacity for basic greetings).

Me: The western part.

Him: Is that west or the east coast?

Me: The eastern coast of the western part of the Earth.

Him: I love this, are you from LA?

Me: Yes, actually, how did you know?

Him: I have much friends out there.

Me: I wonder if any of them are living in tents outside my house in Beverly Hills.

Him: You live in Beverly Hills?

Me: Of course

Him: Would love to come visit (creepy winky emoji)

Me: Sure come on out

Him: When would you like me?

Me: How about tomorrow?

Him: That is very soon.

Me: Let’ start our lives together as soon as possible.

Him: I don’t understand?

Me: I’m aware of that.

THE END

Farvel

My son just left for Europe. Thought you’d enjoy a timeline of his departure:

Three months before:

Him: I’m going to Europe.

Me: Really? When?

Him: I’m not sure.

Me: For how long?

Him: Again…

Two months before:

Me: Something arrived for you from Amazon.

Him: Awesome, my lederhosen!

Me: Excuse me?

One month before:

Me: Another package here for you.

Him: YES! My dirndl!

Me: Isn’t a dirndl for women?

Him: Traditionally.

Two weeks before:

Him: Can I get Vienna sausage through customs?

One week before:

Him: (Playing video games)

Me: Shouldn’t you be getting prepared?

Him: (Looks up and throws on German Alpine hat). I’m ready.

Me: My error.

Five days before:

Him: Can you drive me to the airport on Wednesday?

Me: Sure, I’m off.

Him: I’m flying out of Newark.

Me: Forget it.

Two days before:

Him: (Doing nothing).

Me: Aren’t you leaving tomorrow?

Him: I had the day wrong, my flight is Thursday.

Me: Shouldn’t that have been an important piece of information?

Him: Seemingly.

One day before:

Treats me to a European costume fashion show, showing me all of his outfits.

Me: You’re not going to walk around wearing those outfits, are you? I mean, is this a joke?

Him: No joke. Of course I’m going to wear them.

Me: What if you get arrested for stupidity?

Him: It will be worth it.

The day:

Him: Cleans out car, arranges transportation, looks for passport, gets last minute Euros, packs, wonders where he will park at JFK, calls travel companion, picks travel outfit, gripes and groans about running out of time.

Him: Ok, I’m out of here.

Me: Way to not leave everything to the last minute.

Him: Thanks, Mom, your support means a lot to me. Farvel.

Hiya

As I move closer to my writing residence in Ohio next month, things are progressing quickly.

Thanks to my marketing team for nominating me for FabOver40 contest. I won’t win, because it requires many followers on many social media platforms, and I do not have that. But I will still post it on my Chrysalis Collective Facebook page, so don’t be surprised if it pops up on your phone. Here’s the link:

https://votefab40.com/2022/mary-oves

Here’s something else I won this month:

https://udayton.edu/blogs/erma/2022/08/mary_oves.php

Fyodor

Small cheat today. Enjoy my favorite passage from “Brothers Karamazov”:

“And above all, do not be so ashamed of yourself, for that is at the root of it all… You have known for a long time what you must do. You have sense enough: don’t give way to drunkenness and incontinence of speech; don’t give way to sensual lust; and, above all, to the love of money. And close your taverns. If you can’t close all, at least two or three. And, above all- don’t lie… Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, and around him, and so loses all respect for love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself. The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one. You know it is sometimes very pleasant to take offense, isn’t it? A man may know that nobody has insulted him, but that he has invented the insult for himself, has lied and exaggerated to make it picturesque, has caught at a word and made a mountain out of a molehill- he knows that himself, yet he will be the first to take offense, and will revel in his resentment till he feels great pleasure in it, and so pass to genuine vindictiveness. But get up, sit down, I beg you. All this, too, is deceitful posturing.”

-Fyodor Dostoevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov”

Bermuda Triangle

Mary arrives home and pulls into driveway at 9:15 p.m. While it is true that she is home earlier than expected, it is important to note that during the summer Mary has become somewhat of a quasi-nocturnal creature, sometimes not returning home until 10:00 p.m. This is significant because while Mary is not a nocturnal creature, it is accurate to say that the unusual earlyish-late hour would naturally startle anyone whom she might catch unawares.

As she walks up the sidewalk, Mary senses the chaos before actually seeing it or hearing it. She opens front door to a cavalcade of noise and light and smell and visual bedlam emanating from the kitchen. And there, bustling around, are her three sons: One home from college to attend a funeral, one soon to leave on a European vacation, and one recently relocated to south Jersey by his engineering company.

At first she is shocked to paralysis merely by the appearance of all three in the kitchen at the same time. This is an anomaly, an event that usually only occurs twice a year: once on Thanksgiving Day, and then again on Christmas.

But this Bermuda Triangle of boys has descended upon her kitchen on September 6th, 2022.

After the initial shock, Mary notices the activity. Boy One stirs thick soup over a burner turned so high that the soup bubbles and spurts onto the burners and onto the floor. Boy Two is making potato skins, slopping sour cream onto a plate, often missing. Boy Three pours Chinese food from leftover containers into a casserole dish, whereupon he throws dish into microwave. Lo Mein and fried rice litter the floor and counter.

Mary stands, aghast the spectacle, and three boys look up, frozen at the sight of her.

(Not like deer in headlights. That is a tired cliché. More like three brothers who committed a murder, and are now huddled over the bathtub, hacking the body into pieces so that the drain catches the blood run-off).

Mary: (Speechless)

Boy 1: Oh, um, hi Mom.

Mary: Hi.

Boy 2: Wow, um, you’re home early.

Mary: Yes.

Silence.

Boy 3: Mom, this is not what it looks like.

Mary: (Sigh).

Sure it is.

Undead

I woke up yesterday morning and saw a dead fly floating in a half-filled glass of orange juice, and thought, “How nice. He died doing what he loved.”

Imagine his last moments of pleasure. What ecstasy. I bet he whispered, “It was worth it,” as he drifted into a sugar-induced coma.

Alex Honnold was once quoted as saying he knew that one day he would die in a rock-climbing accident, but that it was o.k. It was how he wanted to go.

The people who die on Mount Everest. In racing cars. Big-wave surfing. Eating cheesey stuffed-crust pizza. No matter the activity, there is someone who is just happy going out doing what he loves to do.

I’m not afraid of death. I mean that literally. My sons know that if they do anything other than laugh and smile at my funeral, I will haunt them forever. Our household is one filled with laughter, mutual admiration, and clear perspective on the important things in life.

The day I croak should be filled with the same.

There is a company called the Undead that will put the fun back into your funeral. They hire an actor who looks like you, and the actor walks around the funeral telling funny stories and making people laugh. I’m considering it.

I want my actor to walk around complaining about the traffic to the cemetery. I want her to remind the men that even when she’s in a casket, you should always compliment a woman’s outfit. I want her to roll her eyes at the skinny bitches who only eat salad at the funeral luncheon, and ignore the rolls entirely. I want her to remember to thank the banquet waiters for their hard work, and to brag about the next trip she’s going on.

Mostly I want her to laugh. And laugh and laugh and laugh. Because if a bunch of people standing around eating meatball sandwiches and chicken francaise simply because you are no longer there to enjoy it isn’t funny, I don’t know what is.

Have a nice weekend.

Pre-Gaming

What’s up with the lionization of the hatred of work?

I know social media is supposed to be funny, but teaching this new generation that they should hate waking up early, hate sitting in an office, hate their bosses, and just hate work in general is a very dangerous proposition.

The latest IG post said:

I hope when I die, it’s early in the morning so I don’t go to work that day for no reason.

Sure, funny. But prescient, also. Why is having a job such a catastrophe?

I’ve always loved working. Always. There has never been a job I’ve ever dreaded doing, or hating going into. I have to work. It feeds my energy and passion.

Here’s some advice on how to have a great week from the Stoics:

Monday: Rise and Shine

On those mornings you struggle with getting up, keep this thought in mind: “I am awakening to the work of a human being. Why then am I annoyed that I am going to do what I’m made for, the very things for which I was put into this world?”

-Marcus Aurelius

Tuesday: Prepare Yourself for Negativity

I know that these wrong-doers are still akin to me- and that none can do me harm, or implicate me in ugliness- nor can I be angry at others or hate them, for we are made for cooperation.

-Marcus Aurelius

Wednesday: Clarify Your Intentions

Let all your efforts be directed to something, let it keep that end in view. It’s not activity that disturbs people, but false conceptions of things that drive them mad.

-Seneca

Thursday: Be Ruthless to Things That Don’t Matter

How many have laid waste to your life when you weren’t aware of what you were losing? How much was wasted in pointless grief, foolish joy, greedy desire, and social amusements? How little of your own was left to you?

-Seneca

Friday: Turn “Have to” to “Get to”

The task of a philosopher: we should bring our will into harmony with whatever happens, so that nothing happens against our will and nothing that we wish for fails to happen.

-Epictetus

Saturday: Take a Walk

We should take wandering outdoor walks so that the mind might be nourished and refreshed by the open air and deep breathing.

-Seneca

Sunday: A Week in Review

I will keep constant watch over myself and- most usefully- will put up each day for review.

Advice from the Stoics

A client asked me last night, “What’s your secret?”

Take that as you will.

I will answer today with some advice from the Stoics. Here are seven things the Stoics implore humans never do:

Don’t be overheard complaining. I don’t complain about relationships, the weather, myself, life, people, and money, and never, ever, ever around people at work. Maybe I’ll quietly vent a little with a close friend or a family member, but even these small lapses from joy can mar a day. I keep my words and language clear, positive and consistent. Don’t go by my writing, as I am a humorist, and complaining is all in good fun and funnier than sunshine and rainbows.

Don’t talk more than you listen. I have out-of-body experiences when dealing with clients, and lose myself in their stories, their words, and their lifeforce. If they try to bring the conversation back to me, I answer politely and immediately bring it back to them. I actually find myself incredibly boring but hysterical, which is amusing when you consider the fact that this is my personal blog.

Don’t tie your identity to things you own. I used to tell my students who would complain about where they lived, or how they dressed to never define themselves by such things. Same goes for possessions like boats and vacation houses and businesses. Who cares? Live from inside.

Don’t compare yourself to others. I am not intimidated about walking into any room. Not a room filled with billionaires, not a room filled with famous athletes, not a room filled with great writers. I compare myself to no one.

Don’t judge others. Speaks for itself. He who is without sin throw the first stone?

Don’t suffer imagined troubles. Ninety-percent of our problems are in our minds. I ask myself: what problems do I have right now? Usually the answer is: None. How lucky am I not receive a phone call that my child has a terminal illness? Live for the moment, not what you think might happen.

Don’t overindulge. Not in food, alcohol, sex (tough one), clothing (tougher!!). Be content with a little.

A little goes a long way.