Archive for October 2009
Trials of Existence
The last day of October has finally arrived. Have the retail stores put out their Valentines Day promotions yet?
Personally, I am anxiously awaiting a hard enough ground freeze to support adequate snow cover so as to deter those who wield the villainous leaf blowing tool, from unleashing their wicked noise pollution upon those of us who prefer the otherwise pristine sounds of autumn.
Of course, it will only provide a fleeting respite, as the hallowed quiet of a fresh-fallen blanket of snow will all too soon be shredded with the similar strain of auditory insult from the next great seasonal machine of the suburban homeowner, the snowblower.
It is a hard life I’ve chosen to carve out here amidst the lawns and driveways of middle American suburbia. However, from the undeniable convenience of my proximity to an incredibly large variety of entertainment options, this afternoon I will prepare myself for battle against the harsh elements as a spectator of on-campus outdoor football. I have my first opportunity to visit the new stadium on the campus of the University of Minnesota.
I will say hello to the Michigan State Spartans while I’m there, and report back here on the whole stadium experience, after I have had a chance to reclaim my body temperature. Of all the tricks I know for staying comfortable and dry in the cold weather, I tend to fall short when the activity I’m dressing for involves sitting in one place for 3 hours.
If you are reading this on the same day it is posted, and live in a part of the US that practices Daylight Saving Time adjustments, don’t forget to set your clocks back to Standard Time tonight.
Picture Purrfect
Just thought I would share a picture of the critter that rules us, enjoying one of her favorite ways to nap.
Consider Vacuuming
The following is one version of a creative nonfiction piece I wrote years ago and find myself returning to on occasion.
There is a saying that goes… “If a little is good, more must be better.” Most often, I bristle at the mention – see “salt” in a recipe, or eye shadow, or cologne. However, there is an instance for which I embrace the premise wholeheartedly. Consider, vacuuming.
Sometimes I wonder what vacuuming would be like as an Olympic competition. I’d like to see the judging criteria for such an event. The style aspect is easy to imagine. It’s the technical merit that I need defined. I think it would take a significant amount of technology to adequately measure results that provide a panel of judges an opportunity to make truly unbiased declarations.
In the mean time, I struggle with an ongoing dilemma when it comes to the fine art of vacuuming… perfectionism. If I am going to haul the noisy apparatus out and bother with the chore at all in the first place, then how do I justify overlooking the crap along the walls and under the edge of the couch? I can’t seem to get myself to just do a light once-over touch-up. Unfortunately, my ‘all-or-none’ compulsion means the floor is more often than not an avant-garde pallet of detritus due to my usually choosing none.
For their part, vacuum manufacturers, or more precisely, their marketing departments, are sensitive to my plight. Ad campaigns tout the effectiveness of modern vacuum appliances at cleaning along edges. Attachments are provided to facilitate reaching under the couch. Manuals even provide diagrams suggesting patterns to follow for optimal effect. Looks like an exercise in lawn mowing to me. Did you know that a recommended technique involves a “cross-hatching” pattern? First, move in a north-south pattern of sweeps, then turn and work east-west (direction for reference only, your orientation may vary). At least with lawn mowing, if I become distracted, I can see where I left off.
What I need from the Research and Development team of the manufacturers, is a way to measure the point of diminishing returns. Otherwise, left to my own mind, I don’t know at what point more vacuuming no longer provides better results. I become the prisoner of an ordeal than can take up the better part of a day for just the family room alone. In addition, one thing leads to the next. If I am going to hook up the hose and nozzle attachment to consume the gray mass of dust at the corners, why not reach up and take care of the cobweb dangling from the coving overhead? If I am going to move the couch to access the flotsam beneath, why neglect the accumulated crumbs petrifying within? The coins under the cushions can provide additional reward for that effort.
It’s hard to argue the benefit of all this additional effort, so due to perfectionism, the task of vacuuming looms daunting in my grand scheme of things. I admit solutions abound. Clearly the simple practice of removing shoes at the door and limiting food to the dining area will reduce the major source of debris to be vacuumed in the first place. In my situation, history proves such logic inconsequential. There are teenagers to be factored in as well, so logic may never play its worth in the equation anyway. Oh, and a cat, so let the kids off the hook for another 60% of responsibility as source.
All things considered, without a new development in vacuuming appliances or some dramatic change in daily activity around this house, I rely on practicing the art of heedlessness. When I finally do succumb to the pressing need for vacuuming, I practice as my mantra, the aforementioned: “More is better… more is better…”
All Right
There is a phrase that is commonly used during emergency response, to calm a patient’s mind, that had me thinking the other day, if it applies during critical incidences, there is no less reason for it to apply other times in our lives.
Everything’s gonna be all right.
If we can tell someone who is in serious trauma, that everything is going to be all right, then how can it not apply for situations like not getting out of the house in the morning by the intended time, or when a car surges into our lane without bothering to signal, or when I discover I forgot to properly punctuate a question. How many times in a single day would it benefit us to contemplate the simple notion that everything is going to be all right?
And by now, I think we get the drill: If we say it often enough, we will tend to believe it, and if we believe it, it will come to be.
All right? All right.
When you are helping someone in crisis and they just can’t see any way out, intuition tells you that there will be a calm after their storm. Even if you can’t see any solution to their crisis, you sense that somehow, there will come a time when the crisis is over and everything is okay. They might ask how you can say such a thing, but you know that eventually everything is going to be all right. That’s just the way it is, looking in from the outside. It’s a view we deserve to take more often regarding our own daily dilemmas, both the important and the less so.
Feeling Like Fall
You feel like the fall season might be in full swing around here? I haven’t captured the photo yet that I really want. The trees in several places nearby have dropped their leaves straight to the ground below and created a virtual carpet of color beneath the branches. The sight of leaves covering the ground so completely is one of my favorite things. The next windy day will alter that artwork. I guess the fleeting nature of the scene is one of the reasons I value it so highly. It’s a shame I haven’t gotten out with the camera to capture the views. Although, with my basic camera, the scale of the whole vista of tree and surrounding turf is likely too wide to adequately frame without losing valuable detail that the eye so easily drinks in. It can’t look nearly as amazing in picture as it does in person.
We are scheduled to revert to standard time on the first Sunday of November, so that means this coming weekend we get to set our clocks back 1 hour. It’s my favorite weekend of the year. Something about getting one extra hour really appeals to me. I feel sorry for the person that has to work the night-shift when this happens. Clock-watching at work on that night must be a real bummer. Once the clocks change back that 1 hour to standard time, I feel like fall finally has truly arrived.
Am I Wrong?
Do you believe in ghosts? For me, the evidence presented, for the span of time which accounts have been reported, has all been pretty similar. None of it has ever really advanced the whole concept forward toward a more universal acceptance. And in an overwhelming majority of depictions, it is framed as a threat. I’m not buying that representation.
If I was lucky enough to be gifted by contact with a ghost, I would be thrilled. Why is fear the response most often dredged up to an opportunity to actually communicate with a spirit? Imagine what my reality show about investigating the paranormal would look like. It would be dark, spooky, and the image would be in that ghoulish night vision green. An apparition would seem to appear and I would become thrilled to see it and with no fear whatsoever, attempt to engage in conversation. Then nothing would happen. Oh well. Maybe that is why I don’t work in reality television.
There is a heck of a lot more excitement to be had if I panic and run, or even just hyperventilate in fear, isn’t there?
It seems to me that all of the drama related to interactions with ghosts, comes from the people that are alive, not the ghosts, themselves.
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Boo!
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Normal Thinking
The difference between dysfunctional and normal is relative to how you frame it.
It makes sense that it applies to the usual, typical, or expected. How often have we heard a qualification about someone’s strange behavior being okay because they have always been that way; that is normal for them. But then the definition above goes on to reveal that when the word pertains to a person, it describes freedom from disorders, physical or mental. So, when someone is not free from making bad decisions, and they always do it, their behavior is normal for them, but it is not normal behavior for people in general.
Have you ever experienced the phenomena where a simple word you are reading or trying to write suddenly looks entirely foreign, like, “That can’t possibly be how it’s spelled?” Or, “Is that even a word!?” …Is that normal?
How come, during the work week, when I wake up, if I linger under those warm covers for just a moment, plotting how I will get a leg out and inspire the rest of me to follow, I can fall back to sleep in an instant, yet when I wake at approximately the same time on a weekend, my mind takes off on some amazing adventure-train of thought at record pace, leaving sleep behind in the distance? That’s normal for me, but is it normal?
Maybe I’ll go see if I can get the cat’s opinion on that.
What’s It All About?
I would love to tell you what it is that needs to be heard around the world to solve the economic slump/climate change/obesity epidemic/terror threat/bad calls by baseball umpires problem, but all I can say about everything is that if it wasn’t one of these issues, it would be something else. Sometimes I think that the answers might be right in front of us, in a Randy Newman song or something, and we’re just not hearing it.
I’m pretty sure our cat knows the answers. I think she keeps trying to explain it to me, over and over and over. Sometimes, if I give her some verbal response, she gets this look of hope as if she thinks I just might be understanding what she is saying. Not even close. Meow. Meow. Meooow. Mew. I’m just not gettin’ it. It seems, the less I appear to get it, the more it upsets her. So she empties the contents of her stomach as some sort of stress response.
I’m not a cat guy. We had a few dogs over the years of my childhood. The last one was a britney spaniel that would jump for the tennis ball we bounced off the floor. Wonderfully entertaining. One of the things I really liked about him, even though I didn’t realize it at the time, was that he didn’t throw up all over the house. That’s a really appealing attribute. In the end, we gave him up because he had begun to run away and be gone for days at a time. I have a feeling he may have known what it’s all about, too. The difference is that he didn’t spend any energy trying to tell us about it. It’s as if he expected us to figure it out for ourselves. I respect that.
I’ve always been more of a dog guy.
Strange Things
I’m not quite sure why the thermostat in the hallway at my house was reading 20° last night, but that is what I found when I was feeling chilly enough to get up and peek at it to see if the furnace was working. My first guess was that it was battery related. The instructions indicate that when the batteries get low, the display will flash, “Lo Bat” for 1 or 2 months. No sign of that. I have no explanation. I pulled out the batteries, cycled the control off and on, reseated the batteries, and then the display returned to normal and I suddenly had a reading of 68°. Logic would indicate that somehow the reading had switched to Celsius. That doesn’t explain why I was feeling chilly.
Shortly after that, I think I experienced my first ever asthma attack. I don’t really know if what I went through qualifies for the label of attack, but my lungs sure were making me wheeze all of a sudden, and I wasn’t doing anything that I can identify would cause such a reaction. It seemed to come on over a very short time, and appeared out of nowhere. I found my peak flow meter to test myself, to see if the congestion I was noticing would result in a remarkably low reading. I sure expected it would, but it didn’t. I achieved the same kind of numbers as my usual. Cyndie suggested I try my inhaler to see what that would do. She is a smart girl. It calmed my lungs right back down to normal. I have no idea what that was about.
Some superstitious people believe that things like this happen in threes. I didn’t wait around to see. I went to bed after the two.
Relative Something 