Chicken and Sponge

Managing My Time With Time To Myself

 

I love this tree, which I think is actually three, since there are three trunks, but it functions as one.  I took this picture about a month ago, but now the flowers are fading and shriveling.  No reason to post this today, but I wanted to share it because I think it's cool.

Time on my hands and no Mick to proof-read for me today.  Mick can usually find two, if not more, typos in each post.  Do I not know how to spell or type or proof-read?  One would think not.  Those typos always get by me when looking at my own writing.  So all mistakes are actually Mick's fault for not being here to point them out to me.

Mick and his brother Frank are on a road trip.  Fifteen or twenty years ago, my heart would have been filled with dread and I would have made sure I had bail money ( or perhaps not) ready for when they got their one phone call.  They are pretty tame these days.  Frank assured me that all his prescription medicine is legal, even when crossing the border, which is what they are doing.  Frank can't even stand up straight these days and can walk about 15 paces before he either has to sit or find a motorized shopping cart.  He can't get into too much trouble.  Or maybe he still can, but he certainly can't get very far, very fast.  Old age has tamed them both.

Mick and Frank are on their way to Canada to check out the fishing vessel Little Stormer.  Mick has earnest money on it and has seen it courtesy of the internet, but this will be the first time in person.  He is quite excited.  Little Stormer is owned by an old Canadian fisherman who wants to retire.  It sounds like he's one of those crotchety, finicky old coots who obsessed over his boat and gave it continual TLC.  Just the kind of person you want to buy something from.  So here's hoping that our expectations are met.  The guys will be home some time on sunday.

So in the meantime, here I am.  Because the weather is beautiful, I am in a quandary over what to do with myself.  If the weather were not so nice, I wouldn't feel so overwhelmed with options.  No, nothing fun like going to a beach or having a daiquiri party--those were my Pelican days of long ago.  I'm debating between weeding, organizing (in the shop), mending ( you don't want to hear it, it goes on and on, the endless stream of ripped underwear and now other clothing added to the mix), shampooing carpets, or just getting ahead on writing.  Also, I need to go to the store and I wouldn't even bother to mention that, but it's one of those necessary evils that cuts into everything else.  Weeding must be done soon, if I do it at all, because it won't take long and it'll be too hot to do anything.  If I wait until evening, there may be hordes of evening insects waiting for me to inhale.  Plus, something got Mick on sunday and now he has a red ping-pong ball-sized lump on his shoulder blade.  He managed to leave the house this morning without my checking on the current state of his deformity.  I just don't want a matching one.

Part of my time over the next few days will be spent putting music on my ipod.  This is one of those little techno-tasks that is supposed to be so easy a "child can do it".  I hate it when advertisers use that as a selling point.  It's so insulting.  Everyone knows that the children can do all that computer stuff with absolute ease, while people like yours truly somehow manage to blunder through the process, and maybe even learn something, but it never seems "so easy".  I spend most of my time muttering, "Now what?  How did he get that little box to pop up?"  No matter.  Blunder through it I will.

It's kind of like when I have to use Miranda's camera.  Now she has no trouble doing about anything with that camera.  It's supposed to be idiot-proof, just point and shoot. Not true.  It isn't idiot-proof and I am proof of that.  I still have trouble using it.  Too many options, too many different settings.  I really want to take pictures over the next few days, but had to give Mick mine to take pictures of the boat.  Now my camera IS idiot-proof.  That is why I love it so much, even though I want a different camera that will take higher quality pictures.

This has been a year of learning new skills, some minor, some not.  It's turning into a year of change for us.  While waiting is a drag and wears on the spirit, not to mention the bank account, major change is just around the corner for us.  It can't come soon enough.

I have two days at home alone while the girls are in school, four days with Mick gone (yes, time to sleep in the middle of the bed again and try to crush the continental divide that is developing), and then on monday, Memorial Day, we should all be together again.  I love to accomplish projects while everyone is out of my hair.  Today, that only leaves me four hours.  Time to get at it.

When Every Morning is Just "One of Those Mornings"

 

Humongous ling cod.  What you don't see in this picture is that he came out of the water with a half-swallowed halibut hanging out of his mouth.  Today, I feel like this ling cod--hanging in limbo has reached the point of being painful as my gills are quivering for oxygen, as my mouth opens and closes uselessly.  I don't enjoy transitions.

If you believe in the Law of Attraction, then you musn't waste your time and energy belly-aching about what you don't want and focus on what you do want instead.  Like attracts like.  However, those little movies we play for ourselves in our heads are only interesting to ourselves--unless one has psychotic fantasies and then that's interesting to so many people, like the police and psychiatrists and Hollywood.

So I decided today to indulge in some minor belly-aching.

Before my morning started, I was caught in one of those bizarre dreams where physical needs drive the dream with me looking and looking for a bathroom.  I was in a college building that had everything, crowds of people going to and fro to class, live music for some inexplicable reason, and no restrooms.  Every time I thought I'd found a toilet stall, it turned out to be something really useful like a shower instead.  I was walking through this building with one hand cupping my behind.  Humiliating, yes.  Restful sleep, uh, not really.

So usually one wakes up from a dream like this and realizes that their sub-conscious had been sending a message to wake up and get thee to a toilet before discovering what real humiliation is all about.  Well, not today.  I didn't have to "go".  So why was I blessed with such a riveting dream?

In this case, Louise, our English bulldog.  I pray that she isn't now like my familiar, considering how not-smart she is, and isn't able to communicate telepathically with me.  No, I'm hoping that I was just so soundly asleep, which would be truly rare, that I didn't immediately hear her stirring and grumbling and growling in her crate.  When I did wake up and realized that my plumbing was just fine and still sleeping, that is exactly what Louise was doing.  It wasn't quite 5:00 a.m.

Now, Louise, being not-smart (kinder than calling her stupid), is such a creature of habit that she only wants to go out the back door of the bedroom to go outside first thing in the morning.  This is her habit.  As previously mentioned, the back door is hooked up to the security system and emits a loud electronic voice that announces throughout the house: "Back master bedroom door!"  Completely obnoxious.  It was before 5:00 a.m.  Sam was actually still asleep.  Louise could not be coaxed away from that door to be let out the slider.  No way, nothing doing.  So I sighed and let her out anyway, prepared for Sam to pop out at any moment.

Nothing.  Nothing happened.  In fact, Hedwig wasn't anywhere to be seen either and normally she'd be underfoot ( if I was in a vertical position) or she'd be butt-in-my-face if I was still horizontal.  I really should have got up and looked to see if we'd been victims of alien abduction in the middle of the night.  Instead, I flopped back down in bed and drifted off--and not to dream about colleges without proper restrooms.  This is basically the end of this little story.  It wasn't long and I did hear Sam get up and get on Mick's laptop, head phones on, off-key singing.  Then she used the bathroom and I could tell by her quiet humming and shrieking, and I got up--to find Hedwig underfoot and yowling.  Well, one more night without an alien abduction.

Some things just BUG me; call them pet peeves, call them minor irritations, call them whatever you like.  You know what I'm talking about.  We all have different triggers, different little irritants, and some we share.

Maybe you are lucky enough to not dream about urgently needing to use a bathroom.  I also have recurring dreams about STILL being in school and realizing that I've forgotten to attend one of my classes all semester and now I have to go take a final.  That's just the dream department.  In real life, there are many more irritants present every day that we are forced to tolerate.

Super loud commercials.  Who do they think they are fooling?  Yes, it gets my attention, and it makes me so irate that I vow to not buy whatever product that the company is trying to deafen me with.  Along that line, I also do NOTlike sound effects that are louder than the dialogue.  I don't care if it's more realistic.  Realism is overrated.

Thunder sticks.  If you don't know what I'm talking about, thunder sticks are those white, inflatable tubes that they hand out at basketball games.  You get two per package and the object is to bang the two sticks together and distract the opposing teams players as they try to make free throws.  In reality, all those stupid thunder sticks do is irritate fans who don't like loud noise and don't appreciate getting bonked in the head repeatedly by over-enthusiastic, drunken and uncoordinated fans.  The players are professionals.  They make a lot of money.  They are going to make most of their free throws (that's why they're called free) regardless of a bunch of idiots banging inflatable tubes together.  Lose the thunder sticks.  Invest in a big foam thumb or something.

One thing I noticed recently that really gets on my nerves involves restrooms again.  Big surprise.  I seem to be obsessed with my bodily functions today.  I have been in several public restrooms in the past month that have NO HOOKfor me to hang my purse on. ???? What is that all about?  I hate to be a germ phobe, but I kind of am.  I don't want to set my purse down on some nasty, old bathroom floor that has who knows what tracked all over it.  And then what?  I have to hold my purse in my lap again at some point?  I don't think so.  So I'm forced to try and balance my purse on my lap and pee at the same time.  Hey, I'm overweight--I don't have a lot of lap to deal with.  What if I'm wearing a coat?  No hook, so I'm forced to just bunch it up.  It gets crowded in those stalls.  Bathrooms without hooks are designed by men who are either disgusting and would just throw their own coat on the filthy floor and not care or they are men whose wives have to carry their wallets and reading glasses in their purses.  INSTALL HOOKS!  It's a matter of public safety.

My last complaint involves DRINKABILITY.  That is almost enough to make me quit watching TV.  Almost, but not quite.  For those who don't know, drinkability is a word coined by some sadistic idiot for a Budweiser commercial.  I'd threaten to not buy Budweiser anymore in protest, but I never did drink Budweiser or any other beer in the first place.  For the record, I hate made up words.

It could be argued that I have too much time on my hands if all I can do is complain about inconsequential stuff like this.  That wouldn't be true, though.  I really don't have that much time on my hands.  I simply don't use my time wisely.  There's a difference.

Is this the end of my list?  Ha!  Not by a long shot!  But that is enough for today.  Now I might need to find something productive to do.  I could even do some weeding and obsess about more things that irritate me.  Or maybe I should focus on what I do want instead of what I don't.  I'll weed and fantasize about clean public restrooms with lots of hooks and a world where the commercials aren't too loud and people don't make up stupid words.  A world where people wielding thunder sticks have perfect aim and never hit the person in front of them.  A world where my child sleeps in, the cat sleeps in, and the dog shows some flexibility.  That would be almost perfect.