Like a lot of people I know, I don’t keep a regular journal. I used to pretend I was the journaling type—after all, I’m a therapist. Aren’t we supposed to be the kind of people who keep long and profound journals?? So I’d buy a journal in the new year, find it collecting dust months later, and feel frustrated. Now I’ve just accepted it: I don’t keep a journal. But I do do product-cloud journaling from time to time.

Product clouds look like this. They’re simply a list of things or products, organized in the rough shape of a cloud. The font size of each object in the cloud depends on the popularity or importance of the object. A product cloud of 2008 presidential candidates, for example, would have ‘Obama’ and ‘McCain’ in large font sizes (Obama would be somewhat larger than McCain), and ‘Kucinich’ much smaller. ‘Clinton’ would be nearly as large as McCain. You get the idea. And for a non-journaling person like me, this is a great way to get things off my mind and onto paper.

Normally, if I can just get all the things on my mind disgorged onto a notepad, I can think, feel, and act with clarity. I don’t need to reflect at length on my life, or my career, or my relationships. I just need to clear out all the little things going on in my head. Here’s an example of a cloud I wrote this morning (click on the image for a larger view):

You can see, then, that laundry just needs to happen tonight, and that I’ll be doing something about my checkbook and paperwork today, even if I don’t make it to the grocery store. After doing this cloud, I felt a lot more organized, and the “sluggish Monday feeling” was almost gone. (Almost. It’s still a little early in the day.)

Oh, and here’s one more rule about this journaling technique: you are free to do it whenever you like. You don’t have to do it daily, or at all. If the spirit moves you, give it a try. I say this because a lot of my clients are like I used to be: they think they’re “supposed to” do these kinds of self-help things, and the “supposed-to” obligation short-circuits the whole thing, making it just another task, another product in the cloud. Give it a try if you like, or…don’t! Either way, I wish you a non-sluggish Monday.

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Long ago—nearly half my lifetime ago!—I had two cats. I was working as an administrative assistant at the time, in Minneapolis, and every other week or so, I would take time over lunch to go to the high-end pet store around the corner from my office. I’d purchase expensive organic cat food, and then head back up the street for my own lunch. And where did I often go for lunch? McDonald’s.

Huh???

I remember noticing this at the time and laughing at myself: why was I feeding my cats better than I fed myself? Why was their health more important than my own? And now that I have dogs, I am noticing some of the same patterns, even if the choices I make are slightly different. If I have that third glass of wine and feel less-than-stellar the next morning, I notice that my dogs feel just fine and are enjoying the morning walk. If I overeat, or overwork, or let myself get caught up in the daily stress of being a human, I’ll come home and see that my dogs had been napping contentedly all day.

To some degree, of course, this is inevitable: it’s the humans in my house who have to earn the money, pay the bills, do the laundry (I haven’t figured out how to train the dogs on that one, alas), and so on. But I have a lot of control over my life…a lot more than I sometimes assume. Sometimes that third glass of wine was a good choice, and worth the morning-after feeling. But other times I need to be conscious of my need for a good night’s sleep, something that my dogs enjoy every night of the year.

This self-care test is simple, and it suggests immediate solutions. If your dog is living better than you, there are steps you can take today to improve your daily routines. (And if you don’t have a dog, don’t you think you should get one?)

Hoku and Stella, living their happy lives.

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Ever since my mother died in June 1996, I haven’t been a fan of Mother’s Day. I expect you understand. Even before her death, it wasn’t a major day because my mother never expressed very much enthusiasm about it. But I do keep the day, in various ways. I know other mothers in my life, and sometimes I honor them (SC and SL, it’s your turn this year!). And I think about mothering itself—about generativity, creativity, giving birth to things. And I think about my own mother.

I read two essays on Mother’s Day this morning in slate.com, and they’re both great. The first is closer to my experience: a person in early-middle life who misses her mother and muses on Mother’s Day. (The “Deathbed Menu” line is terrific!) And the second article is even more fun: a lesbian mom who wants the day all to herself and has to tussle with her partner for the honors of motherhood in the life of their young daughter.

Whoever you are, and whoever (or wherever in the universe) your mother is, I hope you can enjoy these spring days of birth, nurturing, and new life. Happy Mother’s Day.

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I’ve worked with lots of clients who belong to blended families—both parents and kids. These days, it seems blended families are the new normal. If “The Brady Bunch” were televised today, it would hardly be a surprising premise. Two people, both of whom have kids from previous marriages, hook up. *Yawn* But in its day, I suppose, “The Brady Bunch” was radical.

Too bad it was a simplistic fantasy of a blended family, nothing like the real thing.

When blended families form, often enough the people involved don’t know how complicated the relationships can be. If you and I get married, and we both already have kids, you are not automatically going to be recognized as a parent by my kids. (And vice versa.) And in many ways, you shouldn’t. They already know who their parents are, or were. To the best of my recollection, “The Brady Bunch” never let its viewers know what happened to the girls’ dad or the boys’ mom. They just hooked up as an intact family and never looked back. But we all know it can’t be this simple. “You’re not my real dad!” you can imagine Jan saying to the befuddled Mike Brady. And she’s right: he’s not. Let’s have some respect for the perspectives of kids in blended families who know in their bones that parenting relationships in these situations need to be negotiated.

So if you’re a member of a blended family, and feel frustrated that your spouse—or your child, or your spouse’s child—is behaving badly, take a step back and give everyone (including yourself) a break. Blended families need time to negotiate the new relationships and make sense of a very unfamiliar new family structure.

(Having said all that, I confess I enjoyed “The Brady Bunch” when I saw it in reruns in the seventies. If only because they made a trip to Hawaii look awesome!)

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