NEW YEAR THOUGHTS

For me, the start of a new year always involves some level of self-examination.  My intention is to examine my conscience and determine where there is room for improvement.  I intend to take a look at my experiences through the past year,  my victories and my struggles.  Ideally, I would build on what worked and put some strategies in place to help avoid the inevitable rough spots in the future.  In years past, this exercise usually amounts to nothing more than a quick debate in my head about whether or not to bother making resolutions.  The typical ones come up… Eat healthier, exercise more, stop procrastinating and quit smoking.  I’ve made those year after year and something in me just refuses to take the list seriously. The procrastinator in me believes that I will take those things more seriously next year.  I won’t kid you into believing that this year will be any different. I should add stop being stubborn to the list.  But that would add more pressure and just one more thing to put off for another day…

There’s also the outward examination.  I look in the mirror.  This exercise is becoming more painful as time passes.  I see the beginnings of wrink (ok, who am I kidding?)  I see the wrinkles deepening around my eyes and mouth . The gray hair taking over and the results of Mr. Gravity wreaking havoc on the rest of me.  The freckles on the backs of my hands aren’t freckles anymore (how does that happen?)  It takes me a little longer to bound out of bed in the morning and I don’t run up and down the steps as I always have. “Things” aren’t so firm and toned.  My skin requires constant hydrating to prevent it from taking on alligator characteristics… I have to constantly remind myself to stand up straight. It’s wearing me out!

Yeah, it’s bleak.  And if you’re behind me in age, I apologize if I’m scaring you to death.  But it’s a fact of life and it is frightening and I’m smack-dab in the middle of a panic.  I see so many women my age who seem to be just fine with where they are in life.  Of course, they’ve dyed the gray away in their hair.  Maybe they go to the gym faithfully.  Maybe they’ve had or are contemplating tummy-tucks and some facial reconstruction.  Maybe they’ve already experienced my panic and chose to take steps to fix things. Maybe they just don’t care.

The experiences my mom has endured this past year has forced me to look at my own stuff in a way I never have.  When I look at her, I see me in the future and I get panicky. I don’t wanna be frail.  I don’t wanna depend on other people to do things for me.  I don’t want to become bitter.  I don’t want to become bitter.  More than anything I don’t want to become bitter.

This might be the year that I change things.  Time is going to pass no matter what.  Aging is inevitable.  We’re born, we live, we die. But I don’t want to become bitter.

Let me say that I hate this post. It’s not what I wanted to say but I’m trying to work through this.  It’s giving me a hard time and I can’t hold it in.

FULL AND EMPTY

I just spent about 20 minutes writing a newsy, introspective, albeit ranty post full of all the juicy categories you see up there.  I had just finished when the phone rang.  It was Juju and I was excited to talk to her, being that she and Mr. Juju were in Toronto last night to see U2 (and Snow Patrol.)  As we started our conversation I’d realized that I’d not published my post.  I clicked something- which I thought was Publish and sat back to enjoy the conversation.

Now I see that I did not click Publish.  Dagnabbit anyhow.  It’s G.O.N.E., GONE.  And of course the title makes no sense whatso EVER.

Excuse me while I go find a pigeon to kick.

GOT TO SLEEP IN TODAY :-)

So I come on here this morning and I had some mail to read.  There were a couple of weird things in my mail which turned out to be invitations to be friends with people from that nablopolamalooza thing that I attempted and failed at last month.  Firstly I thought, geez, people you’re a little late, that was last months news.  Anyway, I clicked on the invites and they were some of those weird people who claim to make tons of money on the internet doing weird things and I followed my usual impulse to click the delete button.  There was a bunch of negative people also leaving weird religious messages about tragic crap and of course they were followed by comments such as “get a life” and crap like that by people who piss me off by using the internet to spew their weird psychotic tendencies because they have nothing better to do with their life.  I realized that I’d wasted 5 minutes of my precious morning and just went on the nablopolamalooza site and spent 5 more precious minutes trying to find out how the hell to be an unmember of the whole stupid thing.  But I got out of there and deleted my badge which never showed up correctly on my sidebar anyway.  So don’t look for me to be signing up for any of that weird crap in the future.

So there.

Anyway… it’s a beautiful morning and I’m waiting for PD to wake up so that we can get on with our day.  We’ll most likely attend a huge annual Labor Day celebration at a park near our home which we usually attend.  There are rides for the kiddies, pretty good food which is bad for you, a giant flea market, music, sometimes a celebrity or two, a petting zoo, some artists displaying their work and some nifty port-a-potties with running water so you can actually wash your hands.  It’s all sponsored by assorted Labor Unions.  More often than not, we get sunburns and end up buying a bunch of stuff we don’t really need and seeing a few people that we haven’t talked to in ages and get some exercise walking the whole length of the park to search for wherever we left our car.  But it’s fun and it’s a tradition.  Oh yeah, they have all-day Bingo too, for those people who think that’s what celebrating Labor Day is all about.  Which I’ll never understand, but who am I to judge?  The sunburn thing makes more sense to me.  What’s a good holiday without a sunburn?

You enjoy your weekend and be safe.

A FAVORITE OF MINE…

You know how sometimes you find yourself randomly clicking and realize that you have about 24 windows open and you start closing them and you’ll see something that piques your interest and you’ll click on it and then all of a sudden you have 53 other windows open and you can’t even remember what you were looking for in the first place?  Well… firstly, of course I’m exaggerating about the numbers here and secondly, this was supposed to be an intro to get you to read this old post of mine from Old One Wink at a Time and I got sidetracked way back, like halfway through the first sentence.

Anyway, before I get an aneurysm, click here and read this.  I don’t even remember posting it but I think it’s funny as heck.  Mostly the ensuing comments, I mean. Feel free to share your own total (again or for the first time.) I’ll warn you now, it might take a few minutes.  More if you’re honest…

KNOTTING UP LOOSE ENDS

Several times lately I’ve sat down here to write and realized that things I wanted to say needed to be explained and didn’t have the time or energy to get into the whole whatever so I just didn’t write.  And Lord knows I don’t need one more reason to add to the list as long as my arm that’s keeping me from writing here.  So if you can find it in your heart to bear with me and muddle through a bunch of uninteresting but necessary (to me) details so that I can maneuver around this bump and move on, I’ll love you forever.

So I saw the foot doctor on Thursday.  He’s more or less satisfied with how my foot has healed (nearly 100%) but concerned about the pain I’ve had elsewhere in my foot since the boot came off.  So he wrote me a script for an anti-inflammatory and ambushed me with a hypo gave me a big-ass shot of cortisone in that little hollow spot in front of my outside ankle bone.  Crikey, that “pinched.”  Kind of like the same way a guillotine pinches your neck.  Incidentally, I lost the bandaid somewhere in my bed between that night and this morning when I woke up and found it pasted to my right ass cheek.  WTF. He told me to keep doing what I’m doing, stop when it hurts and come back on July 30.

Yesterday I decided I was totally fed up with sitting around and cleaned my whole house and did laundry and brought the rest of my summer clothes out of the attic.  PD and I decided we felt like entertaining so we invited some friends over to sample his recent acquirance of bison meat and I spent a couple of hours making supplementary food and getting the back yard ready for guests.  In other words, I totally abused my foot.  And it felt good. (The abusing of, not the foot, per se.)

Work is still the same, basically but with a few thousand twists.  No need to elaborate, so I won’t. *Yawn*  HR is being a pain in the ass, starting to pressure me about not working the over time.  They can’t quite seem to understand the complicated medical term “until further notice.”  Duh already.

In case you’re wondering, I still can’t get below 10 cigarettes per day and no, my weight has not changed despite the massive amounts of food I ingest on a daily basis.  Is there such a thing as a tapeworm with a nicotine addiction?  Surely there must be.  I must confess though, that several times on recent weekends, due to the frequency of friends dropping over to enjoy a fire and a few beers, I’ve gone over my daily limit.  I know.  You can’t say anything I haven’t thought or heard already.  But thanks.

So now we’re up to par on the foot/work/cig/weight fronts.  Now I can move on to other things.

Oh wait!  The old guy?  The Friday before Father’s Day, I spotted him (standing this time) on his porch.  Still with that faraway stare out into space, hands folded on the crook of a cane.  A car was parked in front of his house this time and a younger man was leaning into the back seat.  Led me to wonder if he’d had a visitor and who and why and a zillion other things for the rest of my drive home.

And YES I’m loving being able to drive again!  JOY JOY JOY

I CAN ALSO CROSS ONE EYE…

˙sǝıʇıןıqɐ ʎɯ uı ǝɔuǝpıɟuoɔ ɹnoʎ ɯǝǝpǝɹ oʇ ɥɔıɥʍ uı ʎɐʍ ןןɐɯs ɐ ǝq ʇɥƃıɯ sıɥʇ ʇɥƃnoɥʇ ı ‘sǝnssı qǝʍ snoɹǝɯnu ʎq pǝƃuǝןןɐɥɔ uǝʇɟo os ɯɐ ı ǝɔuıs

YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO

Battles – Atlas

Clear off a space on your desk in front of you, send the family out for icecream, turn the speakers up and do what I’ve been doing for the past half hour.

HIS INTENTIONS ARE GOOD

PD has taken it upon himself to aid me in the frightful task of smoking cessation (mine).  He subscribes to the school of thought that the very best way for me to quit is to allot me a certain number of the cursed things cigarettes each day, tapering off until I’m smoke-free.  This week he’s kindly counted out 15 cigarettes each day and sends me out in the world with that much ammunition.  Next week he’ll arm me with 14 per day and so on and so on.

I hesitate to even post this information due to the fact that you wonderful people have heard so many different versions of this song and dance routine that I’m sure you’re thinking, “Yeah, right.  Here we go again…”  Yeah, well, you’re gonna hear it- and if and when I fail again, you can say “I told you so” but you can say it to yourself because if you say it to me I’ll cry.  And then I’ll try again and you’ll have to read about it again.  And so on.

I have to confess that I’m not exactly buying this method one hundred per cent.  And I’ve been honest with PD about it.  The times that I’ve tried this method before, what happens is this: by the time you get down to say, 5 cigarettes per day, those five cigarettes become the most important thing in the world and that’s all you can think about.  I feel like I wrote this before and if I did, I apologize. But that’s what I’m expecting.  In the mean time, I’m working on getting more exercise and drinking voluminous amounts of water. (Not entirely sure if I’m using voluminous correctly, I looked it up [honest I did, it's somewhere between volcano and vomit in the dictionary] and I’m still not sure.  Anyway, I’m drinking gallons of water.  And trying to occupy my mind with prayer/song lyrics/plots to murder people who stress me into lighting up.

So.  I guess the plan is that 14 weeks from now I’ll be smoking one cigarette per day.  That ought to be quite an entertaining time to read here.

And as a side note fodder for your added entertainment in the coming weeks maybe I’ll chronicle my weight each week.  Just for fun.  Officially, today my weight is 123 lbs.  I actually lost two pounds since last week, not sure what to attribute that to…  And to wrap this up,  I would like to discourage any off-site wagering as to what the figure may be at Christmas time.  That would be funny, I know, but mean. 

And just because this page needs some color, here’s a recent sunset behind our house that I like.  A lot.

A BUNCH OF STUFF

We’ve had our DSL back all day and I carried with me in my travels a happy little sense that when I got back home I would be able to catch up on all of your collective news and answer my mail.

I was ill-prepared to find that after I’d gone to the iTunes store to check on some music, a red light came on the modem and POOF, my connection was gone. After a reboot, an unplug and forty two cartwheels, it’s back on but don’t know for how long. Anyway…

You wanted to know how I qualify for Ignorant Person status. Here is proof that I am, indeed, one:

On Day One of our garage sale, which was advertised to commence at NINE O’CLOCK AM, I was busy finishing setting up in the garage at 8:10 am with the garage door still closed, when I heard someone come up the driveway. First I thought that the closed door might be a good sign that we weren’t “open” for business yet and the earlybird may have left. Not the case. PD had been adamant when the subject came up, and no, we wouldn’t give in to those “vulture types” (my words, not his) and let them rush us before we were ready. So I went outside and informed the white-haired woman clutching her little change purse that we were not yet ready for shoppers. She looked a little indignant and informed me that she would just look around. I politely told her that she wouldn’t be able to buy anything until 9 o’clock and she was welcome to come back. She promptly planted her hands on her hips, eyes flashing, and said quite plainly and with great conviction, “Well, YOU are an ignorant person!” She turned on her heel and marched away.

No, I didn’t see that coming. And I still can hardly believe that something so ridiculous could cause a person to make such a pronouncement to another. What is it with people anymore?

Now on to something that could possibly make you a little squeamish. < That is your warning.

Last night I agreed to sit with a friend’s two little ones so that he and his wife could go out for a couple of hours. It just so happened that they’d gotten a new puppy and their cat had had 4 4-week-old kittens (had had 4 4!!) and so I found myself with not just two little girls but six animals in my charge. The puppy is still being potty-trained so I took him outside a couple of times. He’s a little thing, so I scooped him up and started in the house when the mama cat came flying out of nowhere and high-tailed it out the door. She ran across the porch and I wasn’t sure if she would go under the banister, so I ran after her and reached down under her front legs to grab her. Well. That was not in her plan. She freaked and scrambled to get out of my grasp and all I saw were paws flailing wildly and then I felt the pain in my finger. By the time I realized that her claw had not only pierced the bottom fleshy part of my index finger, but had gone clear through and come out the other side, (I know!) she was hanging by just that one claw from my finger. It was completely surreal when I realized what was happening. Oh and yeah, it hurt like hell.

Now all I can think about is the gazillion cat germs that are probably multiplying inside my finger… I doused it with soap and water and peroxide, and then put antibiotic cream and a band aid on it. I figure it will have to be amputated at some point. PD said a current tetanus shot will probly not do me a lot of good.

I hope you caught The Kings of Leon on SNL tonite.  Great band.

PD and I spent about an hour today picking up three wheelbarrows full of sticks which were strewn all over the back of our yard, mostly under the cherry tree. My legs hurt already. I’ll not be able to get out of bed tomorrow.

A Happy Birthday to my little sister Hazel today.  Love ya!

COMING SOON…

In order to do justice to the band, my post about the Airborne Toxic Event show shall be forthcoming. To attempt that just now, at 1:30am after the show would just be ridiculous. ;-P Which is probly how I looked when, well… you’ll just have to come back in a couple days.  Actually, Monday is a good bet…

I will say, however, the show was FABULOUS.