blisters and dirt

Where I’ve been.

At art fairs, getting blisters on my feet; walking the dog, re-opening old blisters; planting flowers and moving flowers and spraying stinky stuff all over my yard to keep the rats-on-long-legs out of my yard.

Grrrr.

Had a good “rant” going a couple of days ago when I read a “financial advice” column that started with the author advising a young new mother who was considering going back to work to pray about her decision.

Really?

That’s financial advice now? To pray?

Got distracted by dinner preparations or Dexter the Dumb Dog or my gin and tonic, though, so it never got written.

Noticed in the NYTimes that Michele Bachman missed three, count them, three, opportunities to change the world. Or maybe it was just politics. But she didn’t. Alas.

And that Angeline Jolie’s aunt died of breast cancer; further vindication of her (Angelina’s) decision to have a double mastectomy as a preventive measure.

And apparently the newest styles for the summer involve completely see-through white tops for women. Any color bra seems to be fine.

Read a little Rilke (Diaries) and paid more than expected for my “oil change” (the new loss-leader for car dealerships to draw you in so they can lube things and replace things and rotate things. What do I know?).

Since eliminating the ONE photo of the couple playing nude Scrabble on what one can only hope was a nude beach (You won’t find it, so don’t bother looking. Sicko.), I have seen my stats go through a subtle transformation.

Looks like this now:

Better, I guess, but I’ve lost 3 “followers,” although I can’t help but wonder why they were hanging around if that was all they were looking for. I do still really like the Versace post. I think it was some of my best work. . .

Maybe I’m just not writing enough. Or timely enough. Or funny enough.

If only I had bought a big metal chicken at Bed Bath and Beyond today. . .

 

better?

Today.

Is that better than yesterday?

(Sweden naked? Down sex? FAT LADY KRISPY KREME?)

 

 

beach sex, aka why bother?

And no, I’m not referring to it being a waste of time, or too much sand, or ILLEGAL.

Why bother writing thoughtful, insightful posts, with embedded video and attributed photos? Why spend the time to write about The Things That Matter, when most of the people-who-are-not-already-followers who seem to show up at my blog are drawn by the results of their searches for:

There’s one picture of a couple playing Scrabble at a nude beach. You can’t see anything. Get over it!

I don’t write about, post pictures of, condone, nor encourage any of the following: sex on the beach, beach sex, sex on beach, sex in beach (wha?), or naked sunburn in Italy (wha? wha?)

I’m going right now and deleting that post. If there is anybody left tomorrow I’ll keep writing.

The Why’s and Wherefore’s

Husband often asks me, when I’m about to initiate a difficult conversation, say, (or maybe even an argument,) with someone, if I have first figured out what I hope to accomplish. I guess that understanding this is perhaps a worthy goal for just about everything we do in a day.

Have been trying to figure this out myself, since three days ago when I decided that I really wanted to start a second blog. Why not just post these thoughts in the blog I already have?

I do actually hope that some of my current blog followers will follow this one as well. (Hint-hint-nudge-nudge-wink-wink)

But I want this one to be different.

So back to the question, worded in a slightly different way: Why bother?

What, exactly, does this thing I’m about to do (fill in the blank) accomplish . . . and I would complete that sentence . . .  that will help fulfill my personal/emotional/spiritual goals as a person with a short time on this planet and a whole lot of life I’d like to live?

And here’s what, why, how, at least, as best I can explain it:

I (like to) believe we’re all searching for what I, for lack of a better term, will call Enlightenment. To live, laugh, love, better and more fully; to find Happiness, by which I mean the inner state that has nothing to do with the outer circumstances, but which resides deep within, burning like an ember; maybe to do one thing every day that feels like we Made a Difference.

(It’s funny, but it reminds me of the conversation I had with Husband the other day about that tattoo I’m trying to talk myself into/out of getting: Chinese characters that say “Live the moment.” But then I thought, and said, “But what if the moment sucks?”)

Anyway.

I want to try to post one thing each day for a year that helps toward this goal: to live, laugh, love, better and more fully; to find Happiness, that inner state that has nothing to do with outer circumstances; to do one thing every day that Made a Difference. It might be something I read, something I observed, something I did or said or that someone did or said to me. Every single one of them could probably fit under the category I call “Grace.” Some of it might be obvious (Duh!), some hopefully insightful, some somewhere in between. Maybe you’ll have heard it before, maybe it will remind you of something that you would like to share. There won’t be the same type of political commentary, or feminist “propaganda,” or making fun of advertising. Well, unless they contribute toward my quest for enlightenment. Who knows, maybe I’ll find that it’s not necessary, or not getting read, and abandon it entirely. I suppose I could start a separate category, but for some inexplicable reason, I want it to be separate.

Maybe it’s silly to think we can find Enlightenment at all — it is the ongoing quest of some of whom I already consider to be the most enlightened people I know — but maybe we’ll all feel better knowing that we’re looking together.

The new blog can be found at: notaguruatall.wordpress.com. I’m going to post this same post as my “introduction,” well, except for this paragraph — that would be weird — so please read on. After this, I will not duplicate.

Hope to see you there.

how do they know?

I’m surprised now and again by young authors (Jonathan Safran Foer) or playwrights (Annie Baker) who seem to be wise beyond their years. I wrote about this when I wrote about Safran Foer’s story “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly.”

Today, I read an article in the February 25 issue of the New Yorker about Ms. Baker. (And just now noticed, as I was pasting in the link, that the article is titled “Just Saying.” Weird.)

She is talking about a dramatic transformation from her sternly moralistic self at the age of 23, when she realized “. . .that she, too, would make mistakes and hurt people,” and this “annihilated her.”  The article continues: “It’s this crisis in her understanding the helped impel her to make the emotional teachers in her play–the beacons of moral honor–people who are themselves failing in full-fledged adulthood. ‘The story of their lives might not immediately appear to be exemplary or what the younger character would want,’ she explains. ‘But there’s a kind of transcendence and nobility they embody through having not lived the lives they wanted to.’”

She’s 31.

How does she know this already?

Hit me! a.k.a. I apparently can’t do simple math

I’m 4,996 “hits” from 100,000.

I don’t suppose I could entice any of you just to click on random posts from the archives so I could celebrate 100,000 hits before the 3-year anniversary of this blog (February 28)?

I didn’t think so.

I’d offer a prize, but I wouldn’t know where to begin.

it’s always so nice to be appreciated

Samuel Snoek-Brown has graciously nominated me for a Blogger Reader Appreciation Award. While this, like the Versatile Blogger award, and many others, is one of those awards that we bloggers use to pat each other on the back, I just don’t think there’s enough of that going around generally speaking, so I’m going to take this pat on the back thankyouverymuch, and pass it on.

(Like Kendall at thisisnotthatblog said on Twitter one day — this day needs more high fives.)

He acknowledged my blog by saying it was “Snark done right,” and I had a moment of pause where I thought, Really? Snarky? But yeah, I’ll admit it; I can be a little snarky. At least, despite the fact that this might be a blatant display of self-indulgence and/or bad manners, well, at least I’m executing correctly. He also finished off the compliment with this:

“The posts here almost always crack me up. This is snark done right, people. But when they don’t crack me up, it’s because blogger “sheriji” has said something numbingly profound. Seriously, I love this blog.”

Wow. Numbingly profound. That has to be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said.

To accept the award, I have to follow these rules:

1.  When I pass it on, I provide a link to his post, and thank the blogger who nominated me.

Thanks Samuel!!!

2.  Answer 10 questions within my own blog.

My Favorite Color

All of them. Seriously. This is not a cop-out. Which color I “prefer” depends on the day or my mood or whether it’s something I want to paint on my walls (really deep, interesting colors, or a sunny Tuscan yellow), wear (autumn colors, browns, forest greens, gray, burgundy), or drink coffee out of it (red, or blue, or lime green, or purple, or. . . you get the idea). Plus did you hear that 75% of people prefer blue? So that pretty much rules that one out. . .

My favorite animal to include in a story?

I’ve never written a story with an animal in it, but my favorite animal in a story is the Porcupine named Fluffy. Just because Porcupines. Aren’t. Fluffy.

If I had to write an animal in a story, it would have to be a giraffe or a rhinocerous. Puppy dogs and bears get way too much press already, and I’m always rooting for the underdog (see My Favorite Color).

My favorite non-alcoholic drink while writing?

(Buzzkill.)(Literally) Fine. Coffee. I do love coffee.

Printed books or e-books?

I can’t decide. I love the convenience of e-books and that I can “buy” a sample of every book I ever read a good review of so that I don’t forget about them when it’s time to actually buy a book, but I won’t take my tablet to the beach or in the tub, and it’s not as much fun to mark up and I certainly can’t share it with my Husband because then we’re both wanting the tablet at the same time, so not all that convenient I guess.

Harrumph. Do I have to choose?

My favorite writer(s) now?

I can’t get enough of Merwin, Jane Kenyon, or Dorianne Laux for poetry. I just loved Light in August (Faulkner), but find a lot of his fiction quite challenging. Was really sad when Penelope Lively’s Moon Tiger was all read to the end. Am always watching for Safran-Foer to publish another book, and read every story by Alice Munro the moment I see it.

Your favorite writer(s) ten years ago?

Can’t remember back that far. I do know that there are never enough good books in a stack next to my bed for me to read, so please recommend recommend recommend!

Your favorite poet Classic & Current?

Ooh, I answered that one already. Merwin, Kenyon, Laux; and, of course, Shakespeare.

Your favorite time of day to write?

When I don’t feel like I’m ignoring/neglecting anybody else to do so. Depends completely on the circumstances of the day.

What is your passion when it comes to your writing?

It’s funny, I had decided not to read S S-B’s answers so as not to be influenced (besides being kind of bummed that he stole my favorite color answer), but what he wrote really struck home with me. Especially: “I’ve discovered I’m obsessed with home and community. Not really with domestic life or human society, but with the ways in which home becomes the greatest source of conflict and why people so often fail to connect with each other and yet keep trying, desperately reaching out for one another with the same hands they use to push people away.”

I started the blog because I wanted to talk to people, no, I wanted to talk with people. (I love the comments, and the conversations I get into with other bloggers [sorry oldblack, I think I hijacked "Anne" just a wee bit].)  I find that if I make a conscious effort to read other blogs, and the newspaper, and keep up with my New Yorker’s, etc., etc., I have a lot more to think about and a lot more to say. I, too, am always looking for connection. Facebook and Twitter just wasn’t doing it for me because there wasn’t enough room to really write something, to really say something. I’m also always looking for the right thing to say so I can figure out what I actually think or feel. It’s probably a very inefficient way to communicate with myself forcryingoutloud, but there it is. The fact that there are almost 200 of you out there who have signed up to read this stuff regularly is just fun. It does help me feel like maybe, just maybe, I’m okay too.

3.  Nominate other blogs that I find a joy to read. (Ten is recommended, but I’m going to go with the presumption that the joy part is more important than the number, so I may have fewer, I may have more.)

4.  Provide links to these nominated blogs and kindly let the recipients know that they have been nominated.

Redamancy Lit — quotes beautiful writing in all forms. Am sad when she’s gone for stretches now and then.

This is Not That Blog — Short and sweet, often more about the pictures than the words, but Kendall puts things in such a particular way that it not only must be me, but makes me laugh out loud almost every single time. I only wish she posted more often.

Rage Against the Minivan — I don’t always agree with her, although I usually do; but she writes about stuff, and posts writings by other writers, that always gives me something to think about. We need more bloggers like this — issues regarding women, families, raising children, society and its influences both good and bad, etc. etc. Great stuff.

(Sidebar: I was just going through the list of blogs I read regularly and I got completely sidetracked by Louis CK. Here:

watch?v=ey4WSb-BVDQ&feature=fvst

Misfits Miscellany — poems. A couple of them mine, but most not, because that would be weird, and well, impossible, and then it would just be my blog.

Quieter Elephant — a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, but all about life and our reactions to it. Plus I always want to know, quieter than what?

Oldblack — he doesn’t post real often, and the posts are usually pretty short, and he claims to be both dark AND boring, but he is very interested in the conversation, so I find myself checking in with him regularly, and he with me. Listens with his head, and his heart.

5.  Include the award logo within your own blog post.

Can I follow instructions or what?

 

tumblwho?

Okay, starting to get Twitter.

Now can someone explain Tumblr to me?

 

I just can’t make myself care

I follow this blog because I like the hairstyling tips, but for the most part I just find myself irritated in a I-wish-I-could-just-outgrow-highscool-already sort of way.

And today’s post is headlined by this picture:

and I just can’t figure out why I’m supposed to care.

Am I supposed to be learning something valuable from this?

I try to spend as much time reading other blogs, and various news sources, as I do writing on my own. To turn the view outward, to learn about other people, the world.

But I don’t really think I need to know how many lipsticks someone else carries, or to wonder what that mysterious purple pencil with the clear plastic cap is supposed to be.

Maybe I’m missing something.

fed up?

I’m sick of politics and politicians, I’m sick of women being treated like chattel, I’m sick of feeling like no matter how I spend my time or my day or my life or my money I could have/should have spent it better.

I peruse headlines for something to write about and I just sigh in a combination of resignation and despair.

I’m going to take the dog for a walk, and then we’re going to have tuna steaks and salad for dinner, with an amusing white wine.  Then I’m going to write a list of things my son should do between now and when he graduates from college and moves to Madison, Wisconsin to start his FIRST REAL JOB (yarly! yeah! go First Son!) (get a credit card, buy clothes for work, figure out what furniture/dishes/potsandpans he needs and how many of those things he can get from our basement on his way from Cleveland to Madison, research cars and think about what kind of a car he wants/needs/can afford, etc. etc.) and then I’m going to read my book or knit.

I’m also going to ponder, as I have been for the past two weeks, two really important questions:

Should I quit at least one of my jobs?

Can I afford/justify these boots?

These two questions are, in case you didn’t notice, directly related.

And the boots are $515, ifthatmakesanydifference.

I’m thinking no, no matter what the answer to the first question is.

And I can’t wait for my glow-in-the-dark paint to come so I can make these jars:

That’s all.