Cute Overload 1 comment
Something uplifting to end the week … thanks to Moni3 for flagging it … otters holding hands, can you believe it? 🙂
Lint From Below 5 comments
So, I wonder about blogging sometimes. Meaning that I wonder about the activity itself. Sure, I often ponder specific posts and topics, usually when I'm hurtling down a highway or waiting for some students to finish some in-class group work. Neither of these times are conducive to the activity of writing, thinking, processing, creating.
But I also wonder about blogging itself. I love to write, but lately I don't have much to say, which makes the act seem indulgent somehow. I like to talk about my life, but then wonder about that value to others. Then I look at my own blogging pattern and I notice a profound upswing in my own interest/energy re.: blogging in the fall/winter, with a falling off as the New Year begins and my life gets more active.
I've started a new relationship, and I wonder if the energy that used to be spent writing is now being spent in conversation with her …? When in doubt, I think it is probably a good thing for real life to trump on-line life.
My New Love wonders if blogging / writing is my way of working things out and I think there is some truth to that. Maybe the energy of a new relationship reduces the angst (or sets it aside for a while) so that there is less to work out?
Maybe I'm still in vacation mode …? Reverse hibernating?
In any case, I just wanted to say that I really am still around, as evidenced by my willingness to destroy my professional reputation by sending out jokes that make no mathematical sense whatsoever but are good for a chuckle. (See below.) I'm reading other people's stuff. I'm enjoying Jennifer's new blog immensely and highly recommend it to
others. Her talent scares me. I can't imagine how she has been so kind to praise my blog when she writes as blazingly well as she does.
I miss wizzy and wish she would surface. Confession: I ate sushi pizza this week with Lex and margotinto in "our" place. Can you forgive me?
Bad E-Mail Joke that EVERYONE has called me on for the math. I don't write 'em, I just send 'em and yes my MBA filter was off or broken or still in Hawaii. I don't know … but here it is …
If you had purchased $1000.00 of Nortel stock three years ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have had $16.50 left of the original $1000.00.
WorldCom, you would have less than $5.00 left.
But if over the last three years you had purchased $1000.00 worth of beer, drank all the beer, then returned the cans or bottles for your refund you would
have $614.00.
So based on the above, the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and recycle.
This Woman Rocks! 1 comment
The Fat Liberation Movement re-born here! This woman rocks … you go girl !
Necessity is My Mother Click Here To Comment!
With a nod of appreciation to Deborah, I have just completed The Yahoo Personals and Clorox Cleanliness and Compatibility Study.
CONGRATULATIONS! You possess the "cleaner out of necessity" personality type. You certainly wouldn't call yourself neat, but it usually isn't to a level where people can't enter your house. Overall, you are pretty low maintenance, but probably get more than one request in a relationship to pick up your socks.
As I have said before, I really don't like cleaning but I do like things to be neat and clean. Yes, there is a behaviour gap there. I'm committed to keeping up with the basics and, every two weeks, a nice woman comes and does my floors and dusting. So far, it works. I don't mind doing laundry and every once in a while I get a burst of "clean the kitchen!" energy. However, every once in a while, usually when I'm working on a performance project or have heavy-duty grading pressure … the place just gets totally out of control. It does bother me but my energies are usually elsewhere and I can't bother with it until the pressure point, whatever it is, is relieved.
Vox Hunt: Weekend Results Click Here To Comment!
Show us something you did, made, saw or bought this past weekend.
Cookies!!! Made these at T's house on Saturday afternoon …
An Ode to Age and Experience Click Here To Comment!
I have a an unusual relationship pattern as regards age and the people I have dated. I had three "serious" relationships with people much older than me. The relationships lasted 2.5 years, 6 years and 9 years and the age difference was 11 years, 13 years and (gasp) 22 years, respectively. I've had a bit of a break from all that for about six years in which I have "dated". The women I've wound up with for these more short-term adventures (measured in months rather than years) were all, to a one, younger than me.
That was fun but a LOT of hard work. I felt like the young'uns placed me in a mentor/teacher role, which throws the relationship dynamic immediately off into someplace not very healthy and most of my hard work was in trying to right that balance.
So, I've just started something lovely that has real staying power. And, ta-da, she is older than me. By 11 years. Interesting how damn easy this is in comparison. Furthermore, she has raised now-adult children and has lived through a very complex, rich and often difficult life. Thus, the following things are true:
- She is probably the most laid-back person I've ever met. Her sweet response to most day-to-day decisions and choices is "It's all good!" Do not mistake this for "not caring". No – she does care very much about the important things. But she knows clearly what these are and the rest of it … she can go with the flow. She has figured out her priorities and knows them in her bones.
- Having raised and launched other people into their lives, she knows that the human body often behaves in very non-sexy ways. And has very non-sexy needs. For example, when a person has a really horrible cold, she knows what to do to help. It has been ages since I felt this pampered while feeling crummy.
- She knows about individual needs for space and time boundaries. She actually "gets it", and can articulate clearly using polysyllabic words, that the best way to start this off is for both of us to figure out how to make small adjustments in our already full and busy lives for this relationship. There is NO expectation, on either of our parts, that anything has to be given up to create this new thing in our lives. This feels incredibly respectful.
- I know you shouldn't go into relationships thinking that people will change, but I've been guilty of this in the past with regard to one behaviour in particular. Smoking. In some of my past relationships, I've nagged my partners/lovers about this habit and they have felt the need to hide and/or lie to me about it. (Hint to smokers: Just DO NOT bother to lie to your non-smoking partner/lover about the smoke you had out back before you came home from work. We know about it. You taste like an ashtray and your hair smells like a stale bar-room. You'd need to have a shower and to rinse your mouth with bleach to fix this. Just don't bother.) In this case, she figured all this out, all by herself, 15 years ago and stopped smoking. I don't have to do this part anymore … YAY!!!
- We are still learning and discovering new things about each other and there are some surprises along the way. The part that makes this SO much easier is that we both KNOW that is what we are doing. We don't expect to correctly "read" each other or totally "get" what the other person meant … we get to ask. To clarify. To laugh about our misinterpretations. Or to marvel when we get it right.
This is really fun and just so much damn easier. I think all this comes with having lived life and been through a few hoops, some of them with flames. As she says, "It's all good!"
New Blogger Alert! Click Here To Comment!
My friend Jennifer has just started her first blog here. She is a smart, witty, philosophical sort, in that down-east sort of way, and a fine writer to boot. Please drop by to welcome her to the blogosphere.
I say this is her "first" blog because I know she is going to get hooked and will soon be managing several.
Yay, Jennifer!
Kona Coffee vs. Neo Citran 3 comments
So, here I sit, at home, with a supply of Kona coffee over there beside my coffee grinder. Yum.
So, here I sit, at home, with a terrible chest cold and sore throat. As I frequently whine about, when I have a sore throat, I just can't drink coffee. I find it way too irritating on my throat.
There is some kind of lesson in this. I am going to head back to bed to contemplate it. With Neo Citran rather than Kona coffee.
Sigh.
Sniffle.
Cough.
QotD: Dude Where’s My Keys? 1 comment
What's the story behind a time when you got locked out?
Once upon a time, in that three year limbo between "the divorce" and "the condo", I lived for two years in the basement of a square brick bungalow in a working class part of East York, north of Mortimer, west of Woodbine. I had two rooms in this basement of a bungalow: a bedroom and a kitchen/computer area/working-eating table. The ceilings were so low I bumped my head a lot. Oh, I had a bathroom too. A total of about 400 sq. ft. I had a private entrance (the back door to the house) as well as a shared entrance which was the side door to the house.
I did have access to shared laundry facilities which was a blessing. If you came in the side door to the house and down the basement stairs and took a sharp left, you found yourself in the laundry area. A locked door separated my living area from this laundry area. The locked door had a window pane in it that was obscured by some blinds most of the time. The window pane and the various entrances play key roles in the tale I am about to tell.
One day, I decided I needed to put a load of laundry in before heading out for the day. It was summer time and my landlord, a lovely young woman who had just bought the house a few months before renting me the basement, was away at her parent's cottage up north. It was early morning and I slipped into the laundry area wearing very little. Perhaps the t-shirt I slept in. I don't recall … it was something but it wasn't much. I busily loaded my wash into the washer, added soap and turned it on. The moment I heard the water pouring over my clothes was the same moment that I turned around to face … the locked door. Yes, this was the ONE time that I forgot to unlock the door or prop it open before dealing with the wash. I stood there, nearly naked, and completely trapped. Wanting to laugh but not quite being able to.
It was about 7:30 a.m. and my testosterone-rich neighbour was rumbling around the driveway that was right outside the door, starting his car, fetching his coffee, yelling at his dog, and just generally being very present right outside the side door. I could see his feet, in shadow, through the window over the washing machine. Going out there would do nothing for me at all as my back door (main door) was locked anyway.
I put my keen, non-caffinated (obviously) brain to work on this problem and quickly ascertained that the only solution was to break the window pane in the door. I had some towels in the dryer and there were some tools in the storage cupboard by the laundry machines. I wrapped my arm in a towel, grabbed a hammer and, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, smashed the window pane.
Now, I had a new set of problems. Bare feet, broken glass and severe damage to my landlord's property. I put the towel down over the glass and gingerly got to the door, reached through and unlocked it. Another towel went down over the broken glass on the other side, which was much more plentiful. Thankfully, I did not cut my feet or, in fact, hurt myself in any way.
After getting that mess cleaned up, I stared at the now empty window space and, eventually the hinges to the door. Happily, the hinges popped off easily and – even better – the door fit in the back of my mini SUV … sort of. Well, it fit well enough. After making some calls, I found a glazier who could replace the window in the door fairly cheaply.
24 hours later, one would never imagine anything bad took place. The door was back in place, window intact, glass cleaned up. I did tell my landlord about this when she returned and I also showed her where I hid a key in the storage area where the tools were. Because I NEVER wanted to go through that again. She was pretty cool about it all, and was mostly worried about whether or not I hurt myself with all the broken glass around.
There could be several morals to this story …
- drink coffee before putting laundry in
- do not enter shared space in a nearly naked state, even if the other party is gone for weeks
- PAY ATTENTION, even at 7:30 a.m.
- strategically placed spare keys rock
I'm open to hearing other interpretations, if anyone has any forthcoming.