kellementology

If I remember correctly, my sister got a piggy bank for her fourth birthday.  She is the youngest in our family, so it’s never been quite clear as to why my younger brother and myself were passed up on the piggy gifting.  It was a cute little pig — fat-bellied and pink, just like she was when she was little.  She’s thin as a whip now (smart, too…) and no longer has her piggy bank (thanks to the bottom-dwelling loser who crawled through her bedroom window and broke it, stealing her money…), but I’m thinking that owning one while she was growing up must have put the idea of saving into her brain in a fierce kind of way.  By the time she was 20, she had a nice little nest egg in the bank, a flashy sports car, and her own condominium.

Yes, she did.

My brother and I have never been as thrilled as she has been to save money, and I’m thinking it’s because we didn’t have piggy banks.  You know, tainted at an early age?  Marked and doomed to be spend thrifts?  We must have thought that money grew on trees, or that we’d make excellent tax payers when we grew up.  You know, sort of simulate the economy single handedly?  I know Uncle Sam probably has a special place reserved for each of us some day…

…AFTER we all survive the financial doom and gloom that continues to unfold before us all.

I recently bought a very cute piggy for one of my nieces who turned two, thinking not only that it was the cutest thing I’d ever seen, but that maybe I could accomplish a few thing with my purchase (since I never bought one for my three sons or any of my nieces or nephews except the youngest…):

1.  Say Happy Birthday to a real cutie pie (and give her the gift that will pay big rewards later in life…SAVINGS, a sense of self-worth, independence, moo-lah — wait, that would be a cow bank…)

2.  Stimulate the economy by doing more than just clicking ads…(I’m extremely good at this…Ask me how to S.P.E.N.D.)

3. Support the talented blogger, Lynn of Korff Ceramic Originals who makes these incredibly cute and well-made banks (plus a whole lot more…)

4.  Out class those who are burying their savings in Folger’s coffee cans in their back yards (which is what my mother would have done if she still had a back yard to dig in…)

Think about it.

Piggy banks can be excellent for those of us well beyond toddlerhood, too, right?  It’s never too late to save.  They can be used for incentive:  money for every mile you run, or sit up you complete, or pound you lose. You can save loose change from the washer or your teen aged son’s bedroom floor — your husband’s pockets.  Set a goal and insert the coinage or paper.  It works.  Little by little.

Hell, if I used one to deposit the money I saved for each glass of wine I didn’t drink, I’d have a nice little nest egg in about a week.  But I worry about the future of all those wineries I stimulate.

Ask Warren Buffet.  He knows. I’ll bet he had a piggy bank when he was growing up, too. Think about it.  The holidays are around the corner, and Lynn personalizes…How cool is that?
I’m thinking I just may need more piggy banks…

Random thoughts and observations after returning from my morning walk today (which is saying quite a bit considering I wasn’t thrilled with the idea to begin with…):

1.  Holding my coffee cup under the drip as the coffee is brewing makes for an excellent rich roasty first cuppa in the morning.  The second?  It has to be what swill tastes like.

2.  The kids in carpool this morning were mumbling about their plans for after school as usual, but “not being able to meet tonight because I’m going over to so-and-so’s house to watch the debate” surprised me.  From an 8th grader?  How cool is that?

3.  The Clean Eating magazine I picked up at Whole Foods the last time I was there and filled my basket for much more than the $40 my son tells me is possible to spend, is something I shouldn’t be feeling snarky about.  I’m sure that their tag line of “Improving your life one meal at a time” doesn’t include butter or whole anything and that the recipe on the cover for Cheesecake Pears has far fewer calories than the Key Lime Cheesecake I just made.  *sigh*

4.  The swill-tasting second cup is growing on me, because let’s face it.  It’s coffee, right?

5.  Lots of people were out walking and jogging this morning and as I approached each person walking in the opposite direction, I looked up, got ready to make eye contact, and say, “Good Morning,” with a smile on my face.  Now you could argue that I’m full of shit or just plain phoney, but I’ve learned that I’m the one that gets the perks from it.  It makes me feel good.

6.  Mostly women don’t return the eye contact or the greeting.  And I don’t think it’s because I look like some perky idiot.  I’m fairly reserved and pleasant about the whole thing.  The men respond.  They smile pleasantly whether they’re jogging, or on a bike, hell, even the guys setting up for their day’s work responded pleasantly.  What is up with women anyway?  How hard is it to be friendly?  Pretend, okay?

7.  Is it just me, or does “LOW-FAT HOLIDAY MENUS” sound like an oxymoron?

8.  I’m reading a piece by Frank McCourt in William Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth and he writes:

“You were made conscious all the time, for instance, of how you had to prepare to go to confession.  You had to examine your conscience.  This was a form of introspection that was imposed on us.  But it was valuable.  It forced us to think, “Were we good?” or “Were we bad?” and to think about our various transgressions.  Before you went to the confession booth you would go over the seven deadly sins to see if there was one you ought to mention.  The one that always confused me was pride.  How could pride be a sin?  In America you hear, “Walk tall, be proud of your heritage.”  But we were taught that pride is what got Lucifer kicked out of heaven because he thought he was equal to God, if not greater.  You were supposed to think little of yourself.  Get rid of that evil.”

Actually, demonstrated pride was totally smacked down in my family.  [Yes, it was.] Thinking about it now, it relates to the idea that perhaps we weren’t as good as others, so shouldn’t act as if we were.  We didn’t deserve anything and weren’t worth anything, so shouldn’t act as if we deserved more than what we had.  It sounds pretty awful writing it, and even more awful reading it back to myself now.  But yes, that just about sums it up.

9.  I’d love a small, old house close to the beach.  *waiting for thunderbolt* Maybe that cute one I saw this morning with the shiny garage floor I’d totally trade in for the grungy carpeted floor in my house and the chic framed vintage travel poster hanging on the wall.  Or maybe the house with the walled patio topped with bright fuschia bougainvillas.  On second thought, maybe the one with the weathered flagstones leading up to the bright red front door and the large paned windows…Clearly, I’m over the not feeling like I deserve things.  I was never that good at it anyway.  Ever.

10.    Must go iron hair.  Have to meet with contractor today about remodel that will most likely not happen now since no one is lending money to anybody, regardless of status as bonafide tax-paying stalwart American middle class “we can shoulder everything, so just stick it to us baby” diehards.

Can’t quite figure out whom I should thank first:

• all the realtors who talked people who couldn’t afford a house on a particular salary into that house and made off like bandits with their commissions;
• purple kool-aid drinking I don’t feel sorry for you people who actually believed the crap they were fed; or
• the mortgage company that approved the loans and then passed them off as soon as they could.

Wait.  Perhaps Richard Fuld, the now defunct Lehman Brothers’ former CEO can front us.  Surely someone who made that much money while his company took a swirl down the drain has a dime to spare. Okay, so maybe a million dollar painting he doesn’t need anymore?  Just a drop in the bucket, doncha think?

I click “Write” on my Wordpress dashboard, waiting for the spinning wheel that is my brain to slow knowing that it won’t and that focusing on a single stream of steady thought on any one idea will seem impossible. 

No, be impossible.

In 20 minute’s time, I’ve gone from thinking about working out a recipe for apple cinnamon nut ice cream, to worrying about the huge bowl of bread dough I have fermenting in the fridge, then mulling over tonight’s debate between Palin and Biden before reading through most of this Slate article and being completely distracted by a list linked inside that article. Or maybe it was somewhere else on the page…can’t remember.

I don’t normally spend my time reading these types of articles, but once in a while, one will catch my eye because the writing is good and it actually feels as if there’s a person behind that writing. Quite a concept, yes?  Aspects of it will get me thinking, of course, and the entire time, somewhere hovering above it all (at least today) are Natalie Goldberg’s words about writers I scanned over this morning in the bathroom: 

Writers live twice.  They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning.  But there’s another part of them that they have been training.  The one that lives everything a second time.  That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it.  Looks at the texture and details.

Okay, so Natalie, I haven’t been “training” because that would imply that this living twice business is something I choose to do.  You don’t choose it.  “It” chooses you.  For example, not only have I thought about what I’ve described just now, but I’ve thought about it many times since, and am now thinking about it again.  And yet again when revising this paragraph.  Still thinking…

I do this all day long.

It’s like watching myself live my life and even though it’s odd, it provides me quite a bit of time to think about how and why I do what I do.  As much as I can say there’s a soothing (insane) aspect to it, unfortunately it doesn’t lend itself to improving my productivity.  Bills are sitting in front of me, there are quite a few piles of recipes I’ve torn from magazines ready to be recycled sitting in the middle of my family room floor (where they’ve migrated after being on the kitchen counter for several days), and I need to get off my derrier to go for a walk today.

But I’ve arrived at the conclusion that the bloggosphere can be quite the brutal place — at times, what I imagine it would feel like to go through a carwash without my car, each spray of water or rotating brush pushing me first one way, and then another and never quite making it to the end.

I’m tired of it but have no one to blame but myself.  I think much of it stems from the fact that who I am and what I have to say here doesn’t exactly fit anywhere.  This conclusion isn’t earth-shattering, nor is it meant to be accompanied by a whine. I don’t whine.  I have been known to climb up on a soapbox and metaphorically flip the world the bird, however — just not as much as I used to.

*sigh*

I am a middle-aged woman.  That I enjoy who I am at this particular point in my life doesn’t really change the fact that I’m somewhat of an oddity in the Bloggosphere.  Sometimes, it’s overwhelming to be surrounded by twenty and thirty somethings with toddlers, techies with jargon I never completely understand, snarling, snarking political junkies, celeb gossip mongers, and the increasingly less than attractive you-too-can-make-money-at-home crowd.

I’m an anomaly.  And I guess that’s the most annoying part of this since I always have been, so why should my persona here be less so?  One would think I’d get used to being reminded that I’ve always been a square peg.

I have no stories to tell about my toddlers, my Satanical boss, my commute, my gigabytes, and there is no way in hell I could ever sit down here and try to be funny every freaking day because people want a cheap laugh.  But I’m also not going to wallow in the bathos of my life (liar, liar, pants on fire…), lamenting about mistakes and missed opportunities. No, really. 

What I will do is continue to look in the mirror each day, and after taking more than the normal minute or so to scan my body and realize it doesn’t exactly look like it used to even five years ago, suck in my stomach, tuck in my ass, smile and know that I am me.  Still.

Sounds like a warning, doesn’t it?

Heh.

  

Well, hello.  Remember me?  I’m the one who used to write here quite regularly.  I’m never quite sure how it gets to be Tuesday after it seems that Thursday was just yesterday, but that’s how it goes.

I think I’ve figured out that if I had a way to hang on to my thoughts while I was out walking, or putzing around during the day, I’d have no problem sitting here and downloading them.  But the time passes, and then whatever I thought was so pithy has evaporated.  You know, kind of like that bailout the House was trying to get passed?

I could spend all kinds of time writing about that, but everyone else seems to be handling that quite well.  I’m sure my opinions aren’t needed.

I did notice on my walk this morning, that everyone seems to be sharing theirs, however.  No matter whom I passed, I heard comments regarding “credit,” or “Wall St.” and the beyond annoying “Main St.” reference that is supposed to be us, I guess.  You know.  Average Joes?   This isn’t Kansas, and I don’t live on Main Street.  In fact, does anyone any longer?  I just want to yell, “Snapoutofit!” to all the talking heads.  Ugh.

What a train wreck.

Instead of getting up at the crack of dawn to walk this week, I’ve been trying to think about wondering if I might possibly consider attempting to somewhat establish a new routine.  The old routine, walking with my VBF, has been an excellent one that has lasted fairly well for more than two years now.  But she’s quite the busy person, and her appointments have been getting earlier and earlier.  How sad is that?

Although neither one of us is too thrilled with the idea of getting up to exercise that early,  it gets it over with and I know I feel good about that.  Plus, I can have bed head hair and clothes that I wouldn’t be caught dead in at any other time of day, unless you count that I leave them on the rest of the day.  Let’s call it conserving water, shall we?

So today, after I dropped my carpool charges off at school, I continued down the street to park and try my routine near the beach.  Sounds motivational, doesn’t it?  The goal here would be to do this twice a week so I wouldn’t have to think about it.  I’m in the car already, so why not?

It goes something like this:

I park at the beginning of my route, walk about 20 minutes in one direction, then turn around and go back.  Allowing for issues such as feet that ache, a shin that stings, and a butt muscle that is mysteriously aching, the entire effort takes 40 minutes — about the time it takes my friend and I to complete our route.

I can’t figure out what the aches were all about today, because I haven’t had those problems for quite some time.  Walking by myself has never been a thrill a minute, so who knows.  Maybe I wasn’t walking as fast as my friend and I walk.  Her dog usually drags her on the leash, and that keeps us hopping.  But, we do have some hills that have me gasping for breath and I didn’t have to deal with anything like that today.  Maybe I just feel like complaining.  Wonder of all wonders.

The nice part about this route is the beauty.  The sun still hadn’t made it over Mt. Soledad, so the beach was cast in shadows.  Here and there, as the sun rose, the light shot through the side streets, coloring the water as it pushed up onto the sand. Very nice.   It looked like there would be blue skies forever today — so different from yesterday’s unusual thunder and pathetic sprinkle of rain.

A thrill a minute, everyone.

Totally.

Now, I only have about five more days of the week to fill with exercise.  I can’t tell you how unexcited I am by this prospect.

It challenges watching dirt cover the ground.

I’ve been reading portions of William Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth, a collection of pieces by talented writers on The Art and Craft of Memoir. It lays open in a place that I’ll see it throughout the day so that I can noncommittally pick it up and think about what the writers have to say about their respective experiences writing memoir.

One of the pieces,”Points of Departure,” by  Jill Ker Conway discusses so many different things worth my consideration.  But what I can’t get past is the sheer magnitude of her life — and that I’ve never heard of her before.  How does that happen, and why, after learning of it all, do I not feel insignificant?

Most likely because I’ve never suffered from being or feeling insignificant.  Of course, everything is relative, so it’s easy to say that I’ve been significant to my family, or good friends, or a student here and there.  Perhaps even to birds I’ve trapped inside and released before they hurt themselves crashing against a window to get out.  Definitely the IRS since they can depend on us for tax dollars. But I’m not talking about any of that.  It’s so much larger than the tiny details that we essentially are.

I wander through my day and think, “What does it mean?”

I’ve learned that Anne Lamott’s KFKD will play, relentlessly telling me all things non-constructive — anything to keep me from actually writing something relevant.

Anything.

At least if I continue to read Conway, I’ll write, but I’ll want to write about what distracts me, such as her opinion about women being “lodged in family networks [being] very attractive to the political right because it provides a good reason for keeping [them] from establishing a strong independent identity of their own.”

That’s a few good days of writing all by itself.

Instead, I’ll think more about what she has to say about memories and their separation from the emotion they so readily evoke.

I’ll also think about her question, “Why did it happen that way?”

In the meantime, I’ll write, too.

It’s easier to take on.

The visit from the “floor” man was interesting yesterday.  I found out he is a general contractor, and the floor sample and measurement plan quickly became secondary to the larger discussion around what to do about bathrooms, and closets, and fireplaces, and windows, and stair railings….

The list seems endless.

We’ve gone through a couple of remodels before, and the visit with this man was different from the start.  He wasn’t trying to sell me anything.  I didn’t feel like he was the one with the agenda.  He was thoughtful, and listened (which is quite challenging around me when I’ve been mulling over something for as long as I have this and finally get to talk about it with someone who gets it).

A quote — actually several — is due today by email and I’ve been told I can think about all of it, or parts.  Again, absolutely no pressure.  Refreshingly, he isn’t the one saying that, I’m just realizing it.

Giddy with possibilities, which as far as I’m concerned, is the secret to happiness…I went through the house and took photos of everything.  You know.  Just in case.

In case we like the quote and work begins.  It’s always fun to have before and after photos.

But I can also say that it was to document that the house was completely spotless and organized.

Well, except for the closet.

Clearly, I can only pretend to act like I’d maybe kind of wannabe Martha.

I’m truly in a quandry.  As I look back over the past year, so much has changed that no one would notice but me.  I’m speaking of my blog world, and not the real world, which is so chaotic right now.  I’d like to say that I believe I can impact change on the latter, but for as much as I harp, I’m not close to being a blip on the radar of change. With respect to cyberspace, that’s different.

There’s been a shift of my interests there,  and when I think carefully about that shift, it seems that it’s been coerced by the group that loves to look at, think about, and cook great food.  It’s compelling, and I imagine at times that I have some small shop with a large window in front that people can walk by each day, gazing at what I’ve put out for them, to tempt them to stop and look a bit longer, or perhaps even walk inside and stay for a while.  The key word would be imagine.

I once imagined or even longed for a shop of my own one day, but I’ve decided that having an imaginary shop is much less expensive, and perhaps just as rewarding considering I do get to decide what to prepare, and enjoy it myself.

But as I’ve said before, it’s quite time consuming keeping that shop, and so this place is pushed aside.  And when I have time for neither, this is the space I want to fill.  Often the other is more of a compulsion, a responsibility, a job.

Writing here has never felt that way.

I’m not quite sure how that happened, but I find it all very interesting — interesting enough to wonder about something.  What if the two were combined?  Others have done it.  And as I read through the many food blogs I enjoy, I notice that because their writers only keep one blog, they are more inclined to write about other facets of life and living.  It’s nice. 

But I was thinking of something different.  Certainly it’s been done before, and a perfect example of someone who does it very well is Pioneer Woman.  I’ve always thought that having a single place that contains a space for everything that keeps my brain occupied would be perfect, but have always been limited by my knowledge of how all of this website business works.  Finding time to write, cook, photograph, and learn how to set up and manage an involved website would be quite daunting for me, but I think I could do it. The only aspect of it all that’s holding me back is being unsure about whether the two can actually coexist.

In the long run, I think it would help me be a bit more humane to my readers here.  It must seem at times as if I’m schizophrenic, ranting about politics, moaning over my pets, or snarking about whatever unfortunate person is being lambasted in the press.  Somehow, I think that if each of those personalities could fit into its own box, it would be so much more neat and orderly.

Labeled.  You know how I crave labels…

So think about that.  You know, give it a good three or four seconds of your valuable time and let me know what you think.

In the mean time, I have to get my real world shaped up.  I may not be building a lodge like Pioneer Woman, but this place certainly needs some attention.  I’ve long complained about the damage our pets have done to the carpet, and have finally decided to have someone come out to give an estimate on floors.  I want to get rid of all the carpet so I can enjoy my aging pets who will continue to leak, drip, and drop their various and assorted bodily unmentionables regardless of how much I dab and complain about it.  No more carpet would mean no more dust, fuss, or muss.

The challenging part of this is that our bathrooms need to be done as well.  Needing to be done can be defined as taking out all the early ‘80’s fake burnished gold metal that seems to be covering everything, ripping out the shower since it’s feeble at best, and the tile since it’s really good at growing mold that I don’t want to know the scientific name for or what it’s doing to us.

So if we have the floors done first, then have the bathrooms done, the work on the bathrooms will mess up the floors.  If we wait to do the bathrooms first, then the carpet continues to be the disgusting eyesore it’s become. 

In a nut shell, I don’t want to have another blog about being any kind of a weekend warrior when it comes to remodeling or redecorating on a budget.  But it’s one of the things my brain spends time on, so it could have its very own space for you, kind reader, to skip if you’re not into the Martha side of life.

Just thinking, that’s all.

Good thing it’s free, right?

Okay, back to work.

It would be so nice if it was all free!