Diary of Another Almost-Perfect Day

A pretty decent day, it was!

Worked on internet pursuits for a bit. Played with cat. Wrote on Facebook. Ate. Puttered around.

Pulled weeds in flower garden, threw balls – basketballs, footballs, misc. random balls, and frisbee into shed. Tried to throw through foot-wide gap in doors — missed most throws. Duh. Picked up branches. Threw in pile behind shed.

Laid out circle of bricks for fire ring. Looked at pile behind shed and wondered how wooden Christmas Santa decoration would burn: red and white? Ho-ho-ho!

Got out lawn mower. Examined lawn mower for loose parts — top plastic cover rattles. Located new machine screw. Put in hole and tightened. Wired front part of piece on, wrapped around spark plug holder. Flimsy. Will do for now. Didn’t help much. Oh, well.

Mowed for a while. Twenty dollar mower knew its way around yard; belonged to former owner. Took back brand new mower to save money and buy this one from garage sale two doors down. Could be a dumb decision. Mower spluttered and missed, threatened to quit. I pushed her as far as she would go, then she died.

Time for repair — probably a tune-up, balance and sharpen blade…hope it doesn’t add up to price of brand new mower!

Pulled weeds and mulched part of flower garden. Need to buy lots more cedar mulch!

Fetched child. Dropped off at Y. Came home. Messed around on computer; fielded phone calls from friends of child. Tired of answering phone; went to Y to get child. Child not there. Called child’s friends’ mom. Child’s friends at Y? No, not there. Checked library. Probably walking home.

Children home.

Lectured children on calling parents.

Another child arrived. They played, outdoors, indoors, upstairs, downstairs. “Dibs on computer,” said Son. “I get first dibs forever. I bought computer with hard-earned money,” said Mom.

(Computer given to Mom, don’t tell Son.)

Cat taken upstairs, put in little nest. Kids downstairs, cat upstairs, wailing. Cat rescued.

Supper ready for son and one friend. Kids running around, rescuing baby bird, digging up worms. Need knife to cut up worm. Take worm to bird, bird allegedly eats some, then sits with mouth open wide. Mother and father bird, do you know where your child is?

Son and friend eat. I eat. Kids play upstairs and in yard. TV blares to no one.

I go back to yard. Pull more weeds, clear thousands of maple squirter helicopters out of garden. Throw down mulch. Sun goes down. Kids at Lincoln School playground; it’s getting dark. I drive to get kids, pull up on cement right into playground.

Return home, kids grab coats, jeans, stuff left here over last two weeks. One boy walks, I drive two home.

On way home, I stop, accelerate, squeal tires, make Son laugh, I laugh, too.

Get to driveway — gravel. I skid tires, spit gravel. We laugh.

Throw handfuls of red mulch on front garden, think of fires in fire ring in summer, people sitting around, laughing, talking, light of fire flashing on shadowed faces, marshmallows toasting. Maybe a song; a joke. Summer. Ahhhh, perfect. Nothing like it. Think about wood behind shed and dream.

Day not over yet — summer not yet begun, more lawns to mow, mulch to throw, flowers to grow, fires to glow, friends to know.

Time to go!

Mysterious New Family Member

An alien, ghostly, mysterious creature has taken residence in my home.

Sometimes I feel like I’m being watched. This sighting has confirmed my suspicions. I believe the creature comes from the planet Jupiter. Do you suppose the medication bottle tempts this dark creature? Or does it contain an antidote to the terror that is soon to strike the big house on the corner of 4th and Van Buren?

The case of the lost eyeballs

Someone is watching…

Beware…

He might just be looking for you!

Drugs

In my very minor experience with allergies, there is this issue of obtaining medicine. Benadryl’s a pretty good one. The recommended dosage is two tablets. I take only one, and even with that dosage, I’m ready for nap about an hour after taking it. It makes for a good sleep aid, if one is so inclined. If I had my druthers, I’d take one that doesn’t make me drowsy, but most of the non-drowsy stuff available off the shelves doesn’t really work that well.

I wrote to a friend about this a while back. She’d advised that I take an antihistamine. Here’s my response:

“The unclehistamine that works well for me is Claritin D. Of course, you’ve gotta go to the counter and get it and swear on a stack of bibles and give up your life and make a pact with the devil that you will not use it for making meth. You also have to show your driver’s license; leave a tooth impression; have them take your finger, toe and elbow prints; sign, seal and deliver your honor in blood; cross your fingers 13 times while saying, ‘There’s no place like home,’ present a copy of your birth certificate; give your mother’s maiden name or that of your favorite pet; recite your social security number backwards; send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the charity of your choice (what they’ll do with it I have no clue); play three bars of ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ on your cell phone; take lessons on how to swallow a pill; prove that you actually have allergies (even though you’ve been sneezing and dripping snot and tears all over the counter); prove that you have not taken any multivitamins for the last 64-1/2 hours; and inhale the gas of five helium balloons and sing the National Anthem while doing jumping jacks and eating five powdered donuts, all in 30 seconds.”

So I don’t take Claritin D.

Hair

Do you remember the Texas Mormon cult that was invaded and kids were carted off to foster care?

Consider the women’s hair — the stuff they piled on top of their heads, stacked up to around 3-4 inches’ worth of dead bodily protein.

Miles and miles of hair. Drains clogged with hair. Vats of Drano, at the ready to unclog drains on a weekly basis.

Gallons of shampoo. Kegs of it; water towers filled with shampoo.

One hour scheduled every morning for the washing, combing, roping, chaining, pinning, tying, taming, sculpting, nailing, and constructing of great edifices made of hair.

Chiropractic care for spines and necks needing adjustment due to the weight of baskets of hair.

Real-hair wig makers have got to have fantasies and dreams about raiding the compound, tainting all drinking water with powerful sedatives, then entering darkened rooms at night with scissors at the ready, carrying bags of hair ties to wrap around the long ropes and contractor’s garbage bags to hold the booty.

Pandemonium would strike the next morning in the women’s wing with the sound of weeping and wailing filling rooms and rushing down the halls like the flood of Noah.

But would there also be unspoken feelings of relief mixed into the stew of fear, shock and loss?

And what would they do with all that shampoo?

Sorta Like Dilbert

Working at Powercom was filled with many adventures when it came to company relationships and management of details that were to be attended to by almost every employee, in order for the business to run as smoothly as possible.

Each employee had a modus operandi when it came to certain procedures. The phrase I like to use for some of this is, “the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing.” And I might add that what the right hand knew about how to do it may not have been known, appreciated, or regarded as necessary by the left hand.

According to the top management (the right hand) at Powercom, the term for taking short cuts (by the left hand[s]), resulting in a domino effect of problems down the line, was called “horking.”

There are many definitions of the word “hork”, most not related to this particular use; but in the urban dictionary, this one fits the best as the “official” urban slang definition pertaining to the Powercom situation: “Horked: To be out-of-whack; to be destroyed; to be completely unworkable” (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=horked). When used at Powercom, the long-term, snowball, molehill-to-mountain effect of something so seemingly small at the outset, brought a special meaning to the word that could only be understand by those experiencing it.

Because I spent good portion of my day ensuring that the bookkeeping system was in proper running order, I wrote a number of email memos about the protocol that the president and I believed would result in the fewest problems down the line. Usually it was a response written in the bitter aftermath of horking. Upon reflection, I now know that these emails served more as a mode of self-expression than they did as a request for a change in employee behavior.

In hopes that employees (guilty or innocent) would actually READ the emails I sent (which, to this day, I still doubt), I would try make them at least a little interesting. My way of adding interest to written information was not to add to the email any National Geographic text, experimental research data, or the stuff of ancient science reel-to-reel films, but to throw in some humor – something that might encourage the reader to proceed forth to the next word in hopes of discovering something else to catch them a little off-guard.

Here follows one of my attempts to influence the left-handers in the office. By the way, I am left-handed, so I am not discriminating against anyone, lest I discriminate against myself. I knew full well that anything I directed to any employee at Powercom was likewise directed to myself, owing to the very likely reality that I was the only one reading it anyway.

When I speak of “it” in the following quote, I am referring to the protocol that I was writing about in that particular email.

Please note the following and abide by it for the benefit of Powercom and all of its employees, including yourself, even if you do not believe it is necessary:  DO NOT HORK IT.

WE DO NOT LIKE HORKING. IT MESSES UP EVERYTHING WE ARE DOING. IT CAUSES HEADACHES, NOSEBLEEDS, HERNIAS, ULCERS, AND ATHLETE’S FOOT.

DO NOT HORK…

…unless you do unintentional, self-inflicted horking. In this case, you will be required to fill out a forgiveness request form, which you must submit to the Office Mom within 30 years following the commitment of said horking. Upon receipt of this request, the Office Mom will return to you a response to your request within 30 years following the receipt of this request. Once you have received the response to this request, you will then be asked to attend a company review in order to defend your request in light of the response, after which the review committee will deliberate the request within 30 years following the end of the review. The results of the committee’s deliberation will then be submitted to Molly Koehler within 30 years following the deliberation. Molly, if she is still alive, will then return these results to you within 30 years following this decision, after which you have 30 years to file a rebuttal, which will result in the enactment of the same process as delineated above. By then, the world will have come to a fiery end and we’ll all be floating around with wings and playing harps. Or at least some of us will. Or maybe a couple of us will. Oh, well — let’s all practice wielding our pitchforks during lunch break.

Obviously, if this memo was read, the information contained therein was too complicated and lengthy for potential horkers to read, comprehend, or, if read indeed, to be taken seriously, considering that the consequences of horking would be postponed for up to and at least 180 years.

I guess that’s why those emails didn’t work.

Maybe you, too, will read halfway through this post and give up. By then, it won’t matter. The consequences will not reverberate into the future some 180 years, although you never know. As far as I can tell, we won’t be around to care.

All I offer now is one final word of advice to you, which you are welcome to interpret in any way you wish:

DO NOT HORK.

……unless you do unintentional, self-inflicted horking. In this case, you will be required to fill out a forgiveness request form, which you must submit to the Office Mom within 30 years following the commitment of said horking. Upon receipt of this request, the Office Mom will return to you a response to your request within 30 years following the receipt of this request. Once you have…..

Oh what the “hork”!!!!! LONG LIVE HORKING!!!!!!!!!

Somewhere Close to Ecstasy

It’s a beautiful Thursday – a gorgeous spring day.

I’m home, listening to music, throwing laundry around (well, not literally), and just enjoying. I enjoy cleaning sometimes. I enjoy organizing my space, though you might not know it to look at it!

How simple can it be?

Sometimes the more I try to enjoy life, the harder it gets.

It’s actually rather simple. And the only reason I think it’s not is because I’ve believed for so long that enjoyment is the exception, rather than the rule.

Not that I’ve wanted enjoyment to be the exception! I just didn’t realize how simple it was.

It’s such a great day – I love my house, my garden, the flowers that the previous owner planted and the few I’m going to see if I can nurture to some semblance of health and beauty. Oh! I forgot! Flowers require care, but they still do their thing pretty easily with not a whole lot of nurturing or effort by me….

Sort of a metaphor, don’tcha think?

Like “consider the lilies, they neither toil nor spin…” Something to remember, and practice. And I’m still practicing. Interest concept. Practicing letting joy come into my life, instead of having to MAKE it happen. Practicing actually implies effort, something that I can’t do, but I keep at it until I can. The only practice involves remembering, and then letting it soak in until it finally becomes natural. Letting myself get THROUGH the frustrations – the feelings that come from just plain old living – instead of running away from them and trying NOT to feel them, and in that case, yes, it’s a practice. It can be considered “work,” even at the same time that it all yields a result: that of allowing oneself to play. Everything the opposite of all I’ve believed.

It never ceases to amaze me.

I’m listening to a radio station on the ‘net, and what should happen to come on as I write? “Here Comes the Sun” by George Harrison. No coincidence, that.

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

Little darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right
It’s all right

I couldn’t say it any better.

Dangers abound. I’m scared.

So our nation is getting hit with a big pandemic again.

How does the word “pandemic” differ from the word “epidemic”?

All this mass panic and the embarrassing (or reassuring) lack of evidence of same leads me to think that funny things are going on.

If not just sheer media-fed terrorism that we inflict upon ourselves, some suggest that this is a conspiracy. Could be. I don’t know. I think people will find whatever evidence they need to support whatever they believe.

No matter what, it makes me laugh. I apologize if you get this thing — I don’t wish to make light of anything you might get that could be called the swine flu, the bird flu, the raccoon flu, the armadillo flu, the koala flu, or the chimney flu(e).

Back to the pandemic vs. epidemic question.

I guess there are some criteria by which an epidemic “mutates” into a pandemic.

A week or so, I heard 100 people had it. In the U.S., I guess. Wow! Sheer, mass hysteria abounds! Schools are closing across the nation!

And some of us are just living life as usual. In fact, I think most of us are. Who are these panicked people? I suppose many are connected with the medical industry. After all, that’s where many transmittable diseases get passed along. I go to the doc’s office with the flu, I blow my nose and touch the door handles, I rub my germy fingers through the pages of the boring hunting magazine, and I “womanhandle” the pen with which I write my check. Those who work in medical clinics would probably be justified in feeling a bit vulnerable.

But 100 cases? Head lice are pandemic! Ask me about early 2008! We finally risked our health by going to the medical clinic to get the only stuff that really worked. Prior to that, I’d invested a veritable fortune in a formula said to safely get rid of the critters that I faithfully applied to Benjamin and to myself. It didn’t work. But the (very expensive — thank God for insurance) medicine certainly did. Easily. Quickly. And relatively painlessly.

Anyway, I think most people, when they heard the news, felt a little concerned, but yawned and went on about their day, saying to themselves, “Yeah. I’ve heard that one before!”

That said, I hope you don’t get it. I don’t know any who have, though there have been some who thought they had something that might have been it.

And I heard also that they’ve “re-named” it.

I find it quite interesting to note the myriad views about medicine versus natural health care…and if anyone is prone to fear, both approaches play upon it. Unintentionally, I’m sure. Just as much as they can fan the flames of fear, they can also soothe, because they offer assistance and remedy.

In a forum that I frequent regularly, someone posted videos from natural health doctors and practititioners in opposition to the views of the medical establishment about this current virus.

In summary, medical cures were to be feared, especially vaccinations. It was believed that the vaccinations were just as harmful as the illness itself, or more so.

Logic tells me that if this were true, then wouldn’t there be a pandemic of vaccine-related illnesses, with possible long-term ill effects? The irony is that even if a vaccine is directed at a particular strain of the virus, there are other strains floating around in the atmosphere that one could fall victim to.

The natural health practitioners offer some good advice, no doubt. And so do physicians. I find, though, that the advice both offer can be almost, if not as, harmful as the illness itself. The stresses of life, and the stresses of having to pick and choose from the myriad possibilities and find the right one that will not maim you for life or kill you can be pretty darned frustrating.

And that’s what I find interesting about life. That there are so many choices. Different ones work for different people. What works for one doesn’t work for another. So we wander through all of this and wonder if there’s anything that works for everyone — and we wish there were.

Could it be this chaos is intentional — in terms of who we are and why we’re here? Could it be that this is some kind of game we’re playing to convince ourselves that all is NOT well? I mean, think about it. What if we were all really glorious, beautiful, joyful beings, and we decided that we were going to play a game of convincing ourselves that we really WEREN’T? How would we do that? If we were divine, perfectly powerful, perfectly clever, perfectly WISE beings, and we decided to create a play-place which we chose to forget all of that and orchestrate an amazing world in which the object of the game and everything about it was to fool ourselves — convince ourselves — that we really WEREN’T who we are — simply because we could — how would we do it?

We’d set up myriad illnesses with myriad ways to heal those illnesses, myriad approaches to living, thinking, and breathing, earning, eating, emoting, worshiping, creating, inventing, and then navigate our way through it all.

Some of us might get so frustrated with this whole system that we knew something was up. We might feel so bad about all of it that we tried this, tried that, approached this, approached that, sorted, experimented, read book after book, saw counselors and shrinks galore, and still found some of the same frustrations coming back at us again and again.

And what if those same frustrations and emotions were put in front of us for the express purpose that we dive into them — into the feeling of them — in order to see them for what they really were — and break free, once we discovered again and again, that they were simply ways to keep us from knowing our power and the amazing beings we really are? What if we created them for that reason?

Interesting to think about.

Just interesting.

I know y’all probably think I’ve gone way off my rocker now.

I look pretty much the same as I ever did. But I sure like finding new ways to think about the same-old, same-old stuff. I kinda get the feeling that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

But that’s me.