Go read this. For me, it couldn’t have come at a better time. She’s nailed the whole marriage and relationship thing. The lady is clever.
http://conscious-transitions.com/what-we-learned-about-love/
I Blinked
Sisters, today I give you a warning. Listen well, for I did not when I was likewise warned. Will you listen?
I became old overnight. I blinked and it was over. I must have crossed the threshold in my sleep. And recently too, because I’m telling no lies when I tell you I was young one day, and old the next.
Yesterday, “Free Bird” was blasting from my sound system, I drank too much beer and I danced. Today, my husband complains he cannot hear with all the racket. I went from growing my career, to giving my notice to retire. While it was unlikely that I would conceive a child and become a mother for the first time, it was still possible. Yet in 3 short months I will be grandmother, (step).
I wear bifocals. Actually, trifocals. What do I see with all that corrected vision? Wrinkles and leathery patches from eyes to cleavage. My gray hair is dyed, and gravity has definitely had its way with me. It used to be about looking hot in a swim suit, now it’s about protecting my knees. I always planned to go for my doctorate. Instead I golf. Poorly.
The future is shorter than the past. What was all potential is now resource management.
Heed my advice: enjoy your youth. Revel in it, swim in it, surrender to it. Forget about insecurities and shyness, let your wildness rule the day. Fully inhabit your youth.
I am not depressed, or lost in grief for my lost youth. I am just noticing that it slipped past while I was worrying about what other people thought, and whether the opposite sex found me acceptable, and hoping against hope that my parents would be as impressed with me as I wanted them to be.
So don’t do that is all I’m saying. Just enjoy yourself. But if you can’t, then don’t blink.
Uhm, yah – World of Warcraft**
My excuse for not blogging? World of Warcraft. It’s got me and I don’t want to be ungot. The only reason I’m blogging now is because I don’t have enough bandwidth left today to download the latest patch. Curse my stupid satellite internet provider.
I won’t bore you with the details of my character’s killing prowess, or all the super cool equipment she’s amassed to effect all that killing. But I assure you it is quite wicked. I won’t tell you about it because I think it’s a rule, “you do not talk about WoW.” Well, probably less a rule than advice for keeping friends.
I’m catching a lot of hell for this new hobby of mine. People have so much judgement about gaming. Remember D&D? People, mostly adults, were actually afraid of that one. I just read that some terrorist, (whose name I won’t mention in order to deny him any semblance of publicity), “played a lot of World of Warcraft.” As if this somehow explains his evil deeds in real life. Really? Is that the best the investigative mind can come up with? I snort in derision.
I suggest WoW is a healthy pastime, certainly healthier than oh say, compulsive shopping, eating, gambling, frog-licking, … Why, check out this informative article about elderly people benefiting from the game: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/24/world-of-warcraft-cognitive-older-people_n_1300190.html
I’ll tell you one thing, you do have to be a fairly smart cookie to figure out World of Warcraft. And there are no tutorials either. You figure it out either by trial and error, (translated: dying a lot), or the hugely more enjoyable option of asking other players for help. Choose option B. My free advice.
So for all you haters out there who think you get a vote in how I spend my time outside of work, family care, household care, meal preparation, pet care, and a whole host of other obligatory fun, I say to you – go suck it. Besides, once I’ve gotten this out of my system, or it stops friggin’ snowing outside, I’ll probably move on to other distractions. Unless you keep nagging me about it, in which case it becomes imbued with all kinds of resistance energy. I’ll be uber devoted to the game then just to remind us both who’s in charge ’round here. Let’s not go down that path.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I believe I do have enough bandwidth to do some educational reading about my character and how to level her.
** I promise this is my very last blog entry about World of Warcraft.
My Panacea
My paladin never smiles
Step right up, ladies and gents. Have I got an amazing product for you. What I have here is nothing short of a modern day miracle and I guar-an-tee it’ll change your life. Are you feeling stressed, pressed, and messed … up? Are you running from one task to the next all the while feeling there has to be something better? Work got ya down? Too much to do and not enough time? Well, say no more because I have come to set you free.
(must be averagely intelligent, childless or have reliable, saint-like childcare arrangements, paid time off benefits, and access to abundant internet bandwidth)
I have been having a crappy life for the last few months. I don’t know how that fits with some alignment of the planets, or which deity on Mt Olympus I pissed off, but I’m pretty sure there’s a big target painted on my personal GPS coordinates.
It culminated (I hope) with today’s cancellation of a 2-week Hawaiian vacation, and then getting rear-ended by a dumba** broad in a minivan without snow-tires or a clue about driving in winter. Now you might think this would reduce me to sniveling out a blog about my sorry life. But you would be wrong.
No, I write today to share with the world a most awesome cure for stress and fatigue I have discovered. I call it, “The Pajama Day.” Here’s how it works:
- take a weekday off work, a weekend day won’t work
- get rid of your family for 24 hours
- lay in a supply of finger foods that can be eaten with one hand
- wake up very early, brush teeth if you want
- put your earphones in and log onto World of Warcraft
- don’t stop till you drop, or you run into your daily bandwidth limit
There are only a few rules you must follow to make this protocol successful. You may not do any chores around the house. You may not change into day clothes. You may not answer the phone, door, or texts. It is okay to tell your loved ones you’ll be offline for a day, so they don’t worry.
The goal is to slay everything that crosses your digital path and slay ‘em but good. Leveling up isn’t the goal, it’s all about the violence. I had to create another character to get the right combination of weaponry and force, but once I did – hoo whee!
Some of my friends find shoe shopping the end-all, be-all panacea for mental stress and distress. For me though, I need an outlet more expressive. When I lived in the US, I used to go target-shooting at the range. Now that I live in Canada, well, not so much an option anymore. This is better, I think.
Give my stress-cure a go and see if you don’t feel better, if not grungier, for the experience.
Like this:
Satan Doesn’t Knit
eBook costs $4 more than HARDCOVER!
It will be a very cold day in Hell before I pay $20 for an eBook. Do you hear me, Random House, Digital, Inc.?! I’m talkin’ to you.
By the way, I learned of this book on NPR’s Fresh Air this morning. Thank you, NPR. You do good work.
Like this:
For My Sister
I miss you.
Empirical Research
I am a technophile. My love of all things gadgety goes way back. I fondly remember watching my dad fiddle with electronic gizmos and his woebegone attempts to fix things like toasters, radios, and what have you. One afternoon without adult supervision, I set to on a beloved cuckoo clock purchased in Germany’s Black Forest. I took it apart right down to it’s tiniest pieces, like a parts schematic. I had to know how it worked and I had every intention of putting it back together. Except well, you might be surprised how very many tiny pieces are inside one of those clocks.
Having declared my love for technology, I do have some reservations about the eBook phenom. I’m having a hard time liking it. It doesn’t feel as satisfying as paper-made books. I do like reading in the dark, but don’t like how heavy the iPad is, (first gen). I don’t like not knowing how far along I am in the book. I do like being able to look up a word definition with a touch (on the Kindle app). I love being able to download a book the moment I think I want it. But I miss going to a big bookstore and browsing with a hot latte in hand.
Maybe this wishy-washiness points to a technology issue, they just haven’t got it quite right yet. Or maybe there is no one perfect solution. I hope that’s the case because I’d hate to see brick and mortar bookstores go away.
In the spirit of my early empirical investigations (the clock debacle), I’m curious to know what you think about reading on eReaders? Click your opinions and leave a comment if you feel so moved. Thanks for helping out with my research.
Neat Neat Super Neat
Stuff like this makes me wish I was smarter.
All Work and No Exercise
All work and no exercise makes this blogger healthy, wealthy, and wise. No, that’s not right. All work and no exercise makes this blogger, something something and…something.
Oh heck, all work and no exercise makes this blogger tired, grumpy, and unable to rhyme. Plus I think I’ve suffered a head injury I didn’t know about. I’m not myself and though it’s not a bad thing, it’s weirdly different.
I’m putting in lots of OT for this project at work, but the kicker is that I’m enjoying myself. What? That’s right, I’m enjoying the project, the people, and the stress. I do wish the full frenzied panic the project team and the users are currently experiencing could have been whipped up a month ago, so we could have dealt with it and still meet our deadlines. But you just can’t make yourself panic, you know? Not when you know you still have a month left in the plan to get it all done. A month seems like a nice long time.
The point is that liking my job is a first for me. For the entirety of my existence, (starting most assuredly with potty training), I’ve considered work coercive. I’ve never had a job I liked and while I’ve always been a hard worker, it’s been an exhausting struggle between my need to please, and support myself, and how I’ve felt about doing it.
What gives? There is something different about this experience that makes it kind of fun, with the sometimes urge to kill notwithstanding. I’ve winnowed it down to a few observations that probably only apply to me and my personality. Other people will have a different list that hits for them. They can do their own exploration.
- I’ve grown up a bit. This is the most important one, and the one everything else follows. My paradigm has shifted from victim-being-coerced, to grown-up who speaks up and asks for what she wants and has the skills to get her wants/needs met elsewhere if she isn’t satisfied. I do believe that once you get your big girl panties on, you manifest all the rest.
- This particular workplace and these particular people are all lined up for me. I like the folks I work with, and they seem to like me. Most of the time. I’ve been able to tailor my space to suit me and it’s lovely. My only complaint is about the inferno-setting on the thermostat I don’t control, which carries some risk for the people I work with. I won’t be held responsible for what happens when my office gets to 80 degrees…
- The job pays okay too.
- We’re located near some fine eating establishments, oh and my health club too. I guess.
- Parking is cheap, well, cheap’ish.
- I get time-for-time when I put in overtime.
- Our manager isn’t a time-clock nazi. He knows he’s getting a bargain.
- …
Well, I tried to come up with a classic 10-list, but that’s enough for this early in the morning. You get the gist with 7, I think.
So that’s it for now. For all my talk about liking my work, I’ve been blogging instead of working. So, my cred is a little suspect at the moment.
Shoes
I am currently listening to the roar of poorly maintained snow mobiles in this otherwise blissful piece of paradise we call home. They drone around and around making my bones rattle.
We enjoyed a walk down our country road earlier today, and were surprised to hear heavy metal music blaring from outside speakers at a house where no one was outside listening.
There aren’t many cars on our road, but most of the ones we do encounter are speeding way too fast to be able to avoid wildlife, children, or us if things got out of control, especially on the snowpack.
I find myself increasingly sensitive to the rude behavior of others. Or maybe it’s not rude, just thoughtless. Tailgaters, smokers, and people who don’t hold open doors – you all make me wish I had a villainous super power.
I’d be a scary super villain. How did Galadriel put it?
In the place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Morn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!
(www.imdb.com/character/ch0000136/quotes)
You go girl.
On the other hand, Pema Chodron says instead of trying to make the whole word soft for my feet, I should instead put on a pair of shoes. I paraphrase something awful. Her words deserve a better treatment than that, so here’s part of the transcript from an interview she did with Bill Moyers.
…the analogy is that you’re barefooted, it’s like being barefooted and walking across blazing-hot sand or across cut glass. Or in a field with thorns. And your feet are bare, and you say, this is just, you know, it’s really hurting, it’s terrible, it’s too sharp, it’s too painful, it’s too hot. Do I have a great idea! I am just going to cover the whole, everywhere I go, I’m going to cover it with leather. And then it won’t hurt my feet anymore. That’s like saying, “I’m going to get rid of her and get rid of him and get the temperature right, and I’m going to ban perfume in the world and, you know, there will be no, nothing that bothers me anywhere. There — I am going to get rid of everything, including mosquitoes, that bothers me, anywhere in the world, and then I will be a very happy, content person.” We’re laughing, but it’s what we all do. That is how we do approach things. We think, if we could just get rid of them or cover it with leather, then our pain would go away. Well, sure, because, you know, then it wouldn’t be cutting our feet anymore — I mean, it’s just logical, isn’t it? But it doesn’t make any sense, really. So he said, “but if you simply wrap the leather around your feet” — in other words, shoes — then you could walk across the boiling sand and the cut glass and the thorns, and it wouldn’t bother you. So the analogy is, if you work with your mind, instead of trying to change everything on the outside, that’s how your temper will cool down.
(www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/portraits_chodron.html)
Okay then, Ani Pema, I’m ready to see things differently. That’s as far as I can go for now, just being ready. It’s a start.
