Self-Improvement Goal 2: Test My Limits

One Saturday evening a month or two ago, I was talking to my good friend, Eoin, about how I should probably get to bed at a decent hour so that I could be rested and fresh for the girls when they woke up early the next morning. He was up visiting us and Madame E and the two of them usually come over late Saturday afternoon and stay til Sunday afternoon.

"I try to save my strength so that I'm not a mess when the girls want breakfast," I explained.

"Well, I don't like to save my strength," he replied casually, "I like to test my limits."

A little bell went off in my head. This is a new perspective. I used to be the kind of girl who would burn the candle at both ends and, for the most part, be able to keep my committments and work at an above average level of quality and efficiency. Ever since I had my babies, though, I've taken another approach to life, as I probably should.

When the doctor was completing my last check and filling out my release paperwork after I gave birth to Riley via c-section, she advised me that I should sleep when the baby slept and that I should preserve my strength. Of course, the first few weeks home were really tough: the most pain I'd ever lived through, layered over nicely with a frosting of post-partem, hormone induced depression. I started needing people. I started protecting myself and my inner resources. Not bad things, generally, but they began to cause me to fence myself in.

Four years later, with all my scars healed and the depression kept at bay (for the most part), I'm still trying to conserve my energy. I'm cutting short my leisure activities so that I can get rest that may or may not come, insomnia being a regular guest at my house. While it is true, that I need to get my required rest, being the one person in the family who has to bring home the bacon, I also have discovered that always doing "what's best for me" isn't always best for me.

As much as I need to be there for my kids and "bring it" at work, I also need to let my hair down and relax. All work and no play make Flannery a raging bitch on wheels. This is something I've discovered slowly, but not really the point of this post.

In other words, I've told you that so I can tell you this: Last night I tested my limits. We were celebrating the August birthdays last night at my parent's house. They had supplied some tasty chicken and fixin's from Belgrade Gardens, home of the best broasted chicken in the world...well...in my world. As is our tradition, we settled in to play a no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament. The players included me, my Dad, my Uncle Charlie, my Mom, my Grandma and Quinn, my cousin's 12 year-old son.

The tournament was held in the dining room of my parent's contemporary home. Rachel, Quinn's mom sat down at one end of the table to complete a pile of paperwork required for her daughter, Bailey, to return to school. Doc, opting out of this tournament, was watching From Russia With Love in the living room and Riley, Lucy and Bailey were playing together.

My parent's house has a very open floor plan. You can walk from the kitchen moving counter-clockwise, past the front door on your left, the stairs to the second floor on your right, turn right and walk past a sunken family room and then the living room on the left. Then you turn right and walk through a wide corridor containing a piano into the dining room. With one more right turn, you'll find yourself back in kitchen. It's important to know this layout because it is the flight path of Riley and Bailey as they chased each other around the house.

As you may have gathered, this was not a nice, quiet game of poker. We had James Bond blowing things up in the living room, Lucy playing the piano, Riley and Bailey chasing each other and screaming like girls, Rachel doing her paperwork out loud and getting progressively aggravated, and we the players: laughing, joking, calling each other names.

After about an hour of play, my Grandma and my Uncle were out. It was just me, my Mom and Dad, and Quinn. I could tell my Mom was getting to her breaking point as was I. The noise coupled with Quinn's exhuberant style of play were starting to break us down. At one point I thought I'd just throw all my chips in against whatever I drew next and be done with this damn game. Chaos is such an enemy of concentration, an essential part of winning at poker. I just wanted to throw in the towel and go for a walk while taking deep draughts from a hip flask full of scotch.

But, I remembered what my good friend Eoin had said: I like to test my limits. I had just reached a limit. I knew my Mom was standing on the brink right next to me. I took a deep breath, laid both of my hands flat on the table, closed my eyes, exhaled and pushed the chaos away from me. Hell, I'd been through worse; I used to work retail during the holidays.

Wouldn't you know it? The next hand after my mini medidation, my Mom threw all her chips in on a hand that could be better described as a foot. She'd cracked and I'd held it together. I had tested my limit and found that I didn't crumble. So I pressed on.

It wasn't all easy going after that. We kept going back and forth. My Dad had the chip lead and I was trailing Quinn. I was so far behind because my Dad landed himself a straight royal flush; a very rare hand that I was honored to be defeated by. But I perservered. Quinn is a very good player, but he is also a bit inexperienced. Therefore, it is a challenge to play him because, while he can be easy to read, he is also very unpredictable. But I chiseled away at his chips with solid play until I finally beat his spade flush with a higher spade flush and he was out of the game.

I didn't exactly feel exhilarated by beating a twelve-year old at poker at his own birthday party. Actually, I felt like kind of heel about that. But I did feel stronger. So, flush with that kind of inner victory, I take the next bold steps into my late thirties knowing I can be all I can be and then some. Thank you, Eoin, for giving me a push in the right direction.