Taking Careful Care of your Extrovert

Over the last couple of years, I have seen a lot of articles about understanding introverts, and as more and more people self-identify and scream to be understood, introverts have become something of a superior, protected class in modern society. A personality hipster, they ironically have permission to demand to be known, while keeping you at a safe distance because they just CAN'T EVEN.

From the extrovert with a capital E: how do I get to know you? How do I know? How do I? How do? How?

Just let me love yoooooooooooooou.

So, without further ado, for those of you frustrated or fascinated by the extroverts in your lives, I present my own guide to the care of your own extrovert.

1.  Human contact is a need for us.  It's not as intense as food or water; it's more like the need for sleep.  We won't necessarily die outright if we don't get it on a regular basis, but we'll be unfocused, unhappy, and emotionally unstable.  If I go too long without human contact, without touch or conversation or genuine interaction, I get mopey.  I may wait around the corner of a dark alley and jump you for a hug. Do you want to have coffee? Breakfast? Lifelong friendship?

Omelet bar anyone?

Other possibilities are the development of social anxiety because we are dependent on being welcome in a social group. Years ago another extrovert friend suggested going to the mall when it started to get bad, and that works somewhat because it's a lot of low-stakes interactions in a short time.  It's like eating fast food when you really want a home-grilled steak, but it keeps the worst of it at bay.

An extrovert with social anxiety is just a broken person. And nobody wants that to happen.

2.  There are fewer of us than you think there are.  Most people are neither clearly extroverted nor introverted, though society works pretty hard to make everyone feel like they're at one extreme or the other.  There's a huge middle range of "I like people pretty well in medium-sized doses," but because the world is hell-bent on quantifying and classifying everyone to make sure they feel as unwelcome as possible, most of those folks in the middle get shoved to one side or the other instead of being allowed to just go on enjoying occasional moderately-sized parties and spending occasional afternoons reading alone in the library.  Just like getting overwhelmed by the holiday shopping crowds doesn't necessarily make you a true introvert, enjoying a large party once in a while doesn't make you a true extrovert. Think Goldilocks. Juuuuuust right.

3.  We need alone time, just much less of it than other people. Just kidding! Hahahaha! I don't think life is very fun alone. Quiet, yes. But alone? Nooooooooooooooo. Can we just sip coffee and read good books in the same room? Please? Do you like British Literature? Because I am thinking I will make a pot of french press Peet's coffee while I read Far from the Madding Crowd, and you can read Pride and Prejudice and every once in a while we will interrupt each other and read the best passages aloud. Because someone needs to know.

4.  By the time an extrovert with any sort of self-awareness reaches adulthood, she understands that 'Social Butterfly' is not a lifestyle for everyone, and that other people do not feel the same way about human contact.  As noted above, people seem to assume that the world is divided into only introverts and extroverts, and what springs from that is an expectation that people who talk to people are all extroverts bent on making everyone else conform to their behavior.  NOT TRUE. We just like you.

5.  Contrary to popular belief, it's not an extrovert-friendly world, and it's becoming less so.  When I am among people, I make eye contact, smile, maybe chat if there's an opportunity (like being stuck in a long grocery store line).  As an extrovert, that's a small boost of energy, a little positive moment in the day.  Now, though, more often than not people don't meet one another's eyes, they don't smile or shake hands, they keep earphones in their ears at all times, avoiding human contact.  Sometimes I look around, and I'm in a wasteland of empty stares and deaf ears.  Even surrounded by people, I can't make any sort of contact or connection, and that's the worst kind of being Alone.

So, let's all seek first to understand, then to be understood. And let's not fall back on our 9 question personality quiz we took on Facebook to determine who we are. Just because you are the most like Disney princess Ariel, your soul is the color blue, your spirit animal is a raccoon, the number of children you should have is 4, your favorite season is autumn, your quiz says you're an introvert and you were voted most likely to be a crazy cat lady in high school, it is still worth it to share yourself with actual human beings. Relationships are all we can truly possess in this world.

Surviving the Big One...

Hi there!

I'm taking a (very) short break from my impending earthquake prepping/paranoia to discuss how very inconvenient this is. You know, not just the paranoia, but also the 30% chance that sometime in the next 50 years, we will all die in the biggest natural disaster North America has ever seen. (Why meeeeeeeee?)

If you have somehow managed to live in blissful ignorance up until now, stop it immediately and read all about it here: in the New Yorker. 

I find this information to be scary, fascinating, disturbing, and unhelpful. Also annoying. Because what is that guy at the New Yorker going to do when this all goes down? Sit back in his cubicle and be all like, I KNEW it.

Here is what would be helpful to me: Warning! Big earthquake coming. If you follow these 10 steps to prepare, you will probably make it. If you follow these 20 steps and purchase these survival items, you will be on the front lines of helping your region recover from the Big One. If you learn to sew pioneer dresses, cook over a fire, basic first aid, and stockpile 5 years worth of food, you will earn the Girl Scout earthquake badge. Better get started now! You will be elected the next mayor of Portland and when they rebuild the parks, you will have one named after you for sure! 

With that kind of a helpful, friendly heads up, I could shop for the items, warn and help my friends, and start campaigning. But NO. 

Instead, I get this: The biggest earthquake since the Northwest was populated is imminent. If you're unfortunate enough to find yourself on the coast, in the inundation zone, you will die. If you are at home, your home will likely be shaken off of its foundation and be uninhabitable. If you find yourself on the wrong side of a river from your family, you may not be able to get to them. If you find yourself in need of medical care, you can just FORGET ABOUT IT RIGHT NOW. If, and it is a very big IF you survive, it is almost certain that you will lose everything.

But on the bright side, if you take this too seriously and plan to move or pay to bolt your house to its foundation, your neighbors and friends will probably make fun of you. Do we have any good choices here??

A few of the thoughts swirling around in my head...

• Today we are 315 years into a 243 year major earthquake cycle. The scientists say there is a 30% chance of the Big One taking place in the next 50 years. As each year passes, do the chances go up? I am bad at math. But if someone could work out for me approximately when we go over a 50% likelihood, that would be great because I will then move to Maui. Can the tsunami get me there?
• Is earthquake insurance a thing? Like if it happens, we survive, and my house is basically totaled, will Safeco pay for my house to be rebuilt? Side note: do I still want to live here if I am waiting months to years for electricity, running water, sewer, and even longer for hospitals to be rebuilt?
• How do I communicate with the world once this occurs (again IF I survive. I feel like we need to establish that basic assumption.) I am thinking maybe like a flag waving system like Anne Shirley and Diana Barry had in Anne of Green Gables?

• If I take the warnings seriously and I TRY to prepare, am I setting myself up to be the laughing stock of my friends? OR, should I anticipate which items will be the most scarce on the obvious post-earthquake black market? I'm thinking stockpiling spam, condoms and triple antibiotic ointment might make me pretty popular with the neighbors, come the apocalypse. (Or, wait. Will we need to repopulate the earth? Maybe not condoms.)

I think the obvious thing here is that we're all going to die. 

If you're still reading, what I mean is that even if we survive the big earthquake it doesn't mean that we won at life and now we're never gonna die. Everyone goes sometime. What if we all lived most of our days like they were pretty darn precious and the people around us were worth loving well? What would that look like? Just something to think about.

But you better believe that I'm stocking up on matches and children's Motrin.  Just in case.

Foster kitties, genius parenting and emotional breakdowns

Have a you ever had a brilliant idea before? You know, like a few years ago just before Easter, I saw a little boy selling bunnies for $10. And I thought to myself, I could have some fun with this.

 So I gave him $10, but told him I would return his bunny on Tuesday after Easter because we couldn't keep one. My kids LOVED it, and I patted myself on the back for being a genius parent. And then that moment was gone.

Sometimes when one has experienced a brief moment of brilliance, like the aforementioned story, this can build a false confidence in one's eye for good ideas.  Good ideas do not necessarily beget more good ideas.  This leads me to our current situation, which is of the feline variety.

It all started very simply. We have been considering getting a cat. My friend Donia posted on Facebook that they have discovered that their sweet kitty turned out to be a loose woman and just like that, we have a kitten on the way. I have a few months to get used to the idea and prepare, so I naturally found myself browsing Craigslist for any smoking deals on cat paraphernalia. What I found instead, was my next great idea: a local shelter is looking for people who would like to foster half grown kittens to help them socialize so they can be adopted before they are full grown, after which their chances of finding a permanent home diminish significantly. Here are some of the things I thought after reading this:

• A two week trial period with a cat, perfect!
• My kids can get used to having a cat around and learn to care for it.
• This kitty needs love and affection, of which we have lots! We can help it.
• There is a sweet orphan kitty out there yearning for us to pet it. She needs us.

I called the shelter, made an appointment, and on Valentine's Day we loaded up the kids for the exciting trip to a meeting at Petco to pick up our foster kitten.  Cindy from the shelter had such a big heart to help the kitties (and us!) that she brought us TWO cats instead of one, and they were brother and sister! How precious. The poor sweet creatures had no names, so my kids named the girl Nosey and the boy Val (short for Valentine.) I'm not going to lie, driving home with our happy kids and two adorable kitties in a carrier in the car, Shane and I gave each other knowing looks across the car, communicating things like "we are the best parents ever" and "we care so much for these down-on-their-luck baby kitties and they might become such a part of our family that we cry when we have to give them back."  Then we got home.

We decided to create a comfortable kitty apartment in our laundry room with a big litter box and baskets with soft blankets for beds. We introduced the cats...and opened the travel carrier door. There was hissing. There was scratching. There was an immediate escape plan that involved the cats lodging themselves behind my dryer. When we peered behind the washing machine, the felines let us know that sticking our hands back there to attempt retrieval was a very bad idea. Someone had to do it, and that someone was Shane, who sustained injuries as a repayment for his kindness. It all came crashing down. We had volunteered to care for FERAL CATS. For two weeks. And this was only day 1.

Day two our expectations changed a bit. We had all pictured cuddling a sweet kitty and now we were reduced to hoping that we could feed the cats without getting hurt. My big kids were disappointed, while Amelia (age 3) remained remarkably upbeat about our new pet situation. In fact she checked on them frequently and felt no need to close the door afterward.

Nosey was found within minutes under Josh's bed, but Val was not. We knew with about 90% certainty that no exterior doors had been opened while they had been roaming free, so we set to searching. Note: when someone else's feral cat is loose in your house, you have to drop all other plans and find it. Now. But we just could not find it. We searched rooms and closets, over and under furniture and closed doors along the way to narrow down the field. But no Val turned up, so then we wondered if we had missed him somewhere and actually shut him into a closet (please God not mine.) Then we searched again, and again. We started saying things to each other like "you don't need to look in there, I just checked that area thoroughly!" But still no cat. I did not think that I could get to sleep that night without knowing where he was. Here is a list of things that I thought as I drifted off to sleep:

• What am I going to tell Cindy? I lost your cat on day 2?
• What if he's in my closet pooping in my shoes?
• Is he watching me right now?
• If we looked everywhere 16 times tonight, what is going to change tomorrow?
• What if I NEVER find the cat and never know what happened?
• Should I lie and tell Cindy that we decided we wanted to keep Val and love him richly for the rest of his natural born days? Would she buy it?
• IS that darn cat capable of attacking my children in their sleep?
• Why oh why oh why did I think this was a good idea?!

As I thought these thoughts, I heard a sound. The cats had not made any sound up to this point, but as she apparently pined for her brother, Nosey began to YOWL like I have never heard before. It sounded much less like a cat and more like sounds coming from the lobotomy table at a haunted house. Painful. Wretched. Loud.

The next day, day 3: I decided to find the humor in it all and called my dad. He shared with me a very helpful story: when he was a kid they had a cat that climbed up so high in a very tall tree that they couldn't get it down and it LIVED UP IN THAT TREE WITH NO FOOD FOR 6 WEEKS!!! They tried to help it but couldn't climb that high to retrieve it or get food up to the poor thing. Moral of the story: I could be wondering for months what had become of Val. Then, as I thought the sort of things that get people committed to mental institutions, I see that cursed cat sneaking across my living room! With no sense of why I should hang up, I gave my Dad the play by play as I guided the cat back up the stairs and into Amelia's room, the only one with the door open. I took my eyes off of him for about .6 seconds to hang up with Dad and then I go to get the cat. But he isn't there. I can't find him. AGAIN.

I left Amelia's door open and the laundry room door open so Val could eat and use the litter box but I still didn't lay eyes on him for a whole day.

Day 4. Help me Ronda, it is time for this to END. Shane discovered Val in the drawer of Amelia's crib, which we still have set up. Josh wants to keep it for his kids. Val's capture and return to our laundry room happened. After scratching, hissing and generally acting like he needed an exorcism, Val and his loving sister have been reunited and in gratitude they tracked Frisky's kitty paté all over my once sparkling laundry room. 

Aspirations to genius parenting have floated off with the wind and I am merely hoping to survive this very unfortunate incident.  You know how foster/adoptive parents sometimes say, "We adopted him hoping to help him and improve his life and instead, he has made ours so much richer than we ever could have imagined"? 

Yeah, this is nothing like that.