kellementology

life according to me

Category: Detours & Diversions

  • Good Old Days?

    1920s

    One way I can tell the economy is rotten is by the increase in spam emails I’ve been getting. A portion of each morning is spent deleting yet another “You, too, can make money at home” message or invitation to “join me in getting out of debt.”  Most are automatically caught as junk and deleted, but a few make it through.

    Occasionally someone I know will actually send me an email, and if it’s my mother or her sister, it’s one of those feel good messages with the giant multi-colored text.  You know, in case someone doesn’t know where her reading glasses are, she’ll be able to read it from a 15-foot distance.  Ironically, both of those factors cause me not to want to read the emails, but I did this morning, shaking my head the entire time I was reading.  I know it’s meant to be — well, I’m not sure.   Boastful?  Condescending?  Perhaps sarcastic?  Maybe funny.  Hmmm…

    Maybe you’ve seen it:

    The idea of a parent bailing us…
    CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL THE KIDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1920’s, 30’s 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s !!
    First, we survived being born to mothers who carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.
    They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.
    Then after that trauma, our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
    We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks  some of us took hitchhiking.
    As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.
    Riding in the back of a Ute on a warm day was always a special treat.
    We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
    Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonalds, KFC, Subway or Red Rooster.
    Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn’t open on the weekends, somehow we didn’t starve to death!
    We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
    We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Fruit Tingles and some fire crackers to blow up frogs and lizards with.
    We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren’t overweight because……
    WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
    We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. 1930s
    No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
    We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and cubby houses and played in creek beds with matchbox cars.
    We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape or DVD movies, nosurround sound, no mobile  phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms……….WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
    We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.
    Only girls had pierced ears!
    We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
    You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross buns at Easter time…….no really!
    We were given BB guns and sling shots for our 10th birthdays,
    We drank milk laced with Strontium 90 from cows that had eaten grass covered in nuclear fallout from the atomic testing at Maralinga in 1956.
    We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!
    Mum didn’t have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!
    Footy had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
    Our teachers used to belt us with big sticks and leather straps and bullies always ruled the playground at school.
    The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.  They actually sided with the law!
    Our parents got married before they had children and didn’t invent stupid names for their kids like ‘Kiora’ and ‘Blade’…..
    This generation has produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever!
    The past 70 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas.
    We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned
    HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!
    And YOU are one of them!
    CONGRATULATIONS!
    You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.
    And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

    Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn’t it?!

    1940

    Outside of this giving me a few interesting memories about my own childhood and that of my sons, being the born party pooper I am, I couldn’t help but think of a few other things as well.

    • Yes, many of us did grow up in houses with asbestos — right up until it was scraped off the ceiling about 10 years ago — well past my childhood.  No men in white suits showed up to remove it.  My mother and my oldest son used spray bottles and sheets of plastic, scraping it off with wide spatulas.  My oldest son has never been able to breathe to begin with, so Hell.  Why not take on this little Do-It-Yourself project?  Just because something was tolerated in the past doesn’t make it appropriate to ignore it today.
    • On the lead-based paint?  Absolutely many people survived — most noticeably the person who wrote this email.  But those who happened to have their cribs positioned near windows that could be chewed on when teething didn’t quite survive the same way.  They ended up with permanent brain damage and have needed medical attention, and special assistance in school to the tune of millions and millions of tax payer dollars.  They never had a chance, and their parents didn’t know, because lead-based paint is what was used. You could call Oliver Stone to see if he has a film in the works about a government conspiracy on this…

    1950children2

    • Childproof caps were definitely a horrible thing to inflict upon the unsuspecting public. But I’m thinking it may have been necessary since the “If you touch this medicine, I’ll knock the shit out of you” threat to children had seen better days.  Anyone who’s been beat by a parent more than once will confirm this.
    • Seatbelts?  Well, just go back up to the lead-based paint issue.  If you survive a car crash but have injuries so severe that long-term medical care is required, ultimately the tax payer is paying the bill to keep you alive.  (Just think about all those “child-proof” caps you’ll have to deal with.) And if you survived that car crash even though you didn’t have a seat belt on, I’m thinking you should have to foot the bill for your own care.  I’m tired of paying for my health care AND everyone else’s.  How hard is it to just buckle the damn thing?
    • The reason there were no lawsuits from injuries caused from falling out of trees or needing stitches because the neighbor’s kid ran over you with a bike is because 1) there weren’t very many lawyers.  College was something most couldn’t afford — hence, fewer lawyers; and 2) People couldn’t afford lawsuits even if they realized that sometimes the losers in the world DO need to be accountable for their actions.  The tree I was in and fell out of when I was 8 was on private property.  I was trespassing and stealing fruit.  If anyone needed a lawyer, it was the farmer.

    1960

    • Yes, I had a teacher who had a paddle and used it.  She was pissed because I wouldn’t hold hands with a boy during a game, so she lifted my dress (ahhh…remember when girls had to wear dresses to school?  So lovely to have to tolerate that while playing on the monkey bars…) and paddled my butt in front of the entire class.  Should kids today have to tolerate that to grow up and say, “Look at me!  I survived a teacher who whacked me!  Should any kid have to deal with a bully anywhere?  At some point, just sucking it up in those situations is weak.  Teaching kids how to stand up for themselves and to know what’s okay, and what isn’t matters.  Of course, today, bullies often have guns, don’t they?
    • Drink milk with Strontium 90?  And survive?  Evidently, the concentration is key to whether you end up with bone cancer, cancer of the soft tissues surrounding the bone, or leukemia.  It doesn’t just come from cows grazing in a field, it’s connected with weapons testing, which has decreased tremendously since the government was forced to realize that it was affecting people’s health.  You know, like benzene in drinking water.  Scary stuff.  And sure.  I’m totally angry that the government has regulated this out of my environment.  Not.

    family1970s

    • “Mum” may not have to go to work to help Dad make ends meet today, either.  In fact, “Mum” may have a college degree, and realize that working all day, and taking care of her house and family after she gets home is like having two jobs for less than what Dad earns, so how stupid is that?  “Mum” can now choose to stay at home to raise her children instead of paying the childcare  provider her entire salary AND have a title: SAHM.  Some of us refuse to call ourselves anything of that nature, however.
    • Yes, the “Good Old Days” are gone, aren’t they?  Just think.  Without our beloved laptops, computers, Macs, PCs or however you lovingly refer to them, we wouldn’t be able to write and send emails such as the one above, would we?  We’d actually be getting the work done that our employers pay us to do!  What an interesting concept.

    I could keep going, but this is way past the length all those You Too Can Make Money At Home Blogging gurus mention.  God forbid that whatever is on my mind exceeds a few paragraphs.

    Goodness.  What a snarky woman I am today.

    I’ll write about something pleasant next time, or just avoid reading those emails.

  • Walk, write. Just get off your ass.

    I should go outside today and walk.

    The cold isn’t quite as bracing as it’s been the last week or so for my west coast bones, and I’m tempted to stretch them in the warm, bright sunlight somewhat like a fat, old lazy cat.

    Tempted would be the key word there.

    But if I ventured out to traipse back and forth through my old walking course in the neighborhood across the street, what would I think about?  The thought is almost as scary as being stuck on an airplane without a book — nothing to occupy my busy brain.  Nothing to worry about or to plan for, to gossip with a friend over.  Just quiet.  Well, and the occasional home owner who seems surprised to see a human walking down his street after his garage door opens just enough to allow him a line of vision.  Interloper that I’d be, my presence would put him in the awkward position of making eye contact and possibly uttering a greeting, or more commonly, have to avert his gaze so as not to invite one.

    I could use the time to prod myself over writing if I went for a walk.  Or organize my plan of attack on the area of our house that is supposed to be a garage and is more like a junkyard right now.  Or make some kind of a schedule for something.  Anything.  You know, so I can have one.

    Aren’t people supposed to have schedules?

    I think people have schedules to have them — not because they’re necessary.  It takes time to plan them, and keep them, and check things off as you complete them. It fills the time in a day so that when your head hits the pillow at night, you can feel like you’ve been a good productive human instead of a lazy ass.

    If I had a schedule, I would be well into it today, have my grocery list made, probably already have purchased and put away those groceries, and be up to my very sore elbows in some new recipe.  (Minestrone sounds heavenly right now in case you’re wondering, but I’m struggling to decide whether that lentil recipe with orzo would be better….)

    But I’m here instead, thinking about next week, yet another new year, and the overwhelming possibilities that come with that inevitable flip of a single calendar page.

    All I have to do is reach out and choose.

    It’s amazing, isn’t it?

    For instance, I could write a book.  I keep threatening to, but know that I’ll get around to it some day — after I have a schedule.  The world needs another book about yet another human who overcomes challenge and adversity and still has a positive outlook on life, right?  I’d definitely need a schedule to complete this daunting task, and would absolutely need to walk every single morning to get it done.  I know this.  Walking helps me sort out the tiny details as much as it also helps me unravel huge structural knots.

    I could finally upgrade this site to 2.7 because I should have a long time ago.  But where would the spammers get to park their disgusting crap?

    I could flip the switch on my food blog since it’s been ready and waiting for the domain I’m paying for and haven’t used so far, needing a week to work out all the kinks I never quite understand.  Actually, I will be doing that next week.  Yikes!

    I could make a list of resolutions to consider, but I’m never very good at that, so wouldn’t take it very seriously and would struggle not to put something on it like, “I will make sure I change out of my pajamas every day all year before 2PM.” What’s the point of taking off flannel bottoms if all I’m going to put on is yoga pants?

    I could get a job, but then I’d have to have a schedule, right? And clothes, and, and, and…I’m still removing suit coats and trousers I no longer wear.  Why would I want to start that all over again.  God forbid having to worry about whether my sweater is five years old, or my shoes are not quite fashionable.

    I could go on a health-nut get-into-shape change-my-life type permanent binge, but then what would I do with a new body?  Write a new blog so I could tell others how they, too, can have killer abs?  I know mine are under my middle age spread somewhere.

    I’d rather say, “Let’s not and say we did” to it all right now.

    But that walk is sounding kind of nice about now.

  • Crickets. I hear crickets…

    I sit at my Mac on an enormous grey exercise ball scanning all of my open windows.  There’s twhirl in the upper corner — not nearly as noisy as it has been, but there, its colorful avatars proudly displaying each person’s thoughts, comments, responses, and taunts to visit yet another link.  And email is open, too, even though it shouldn’t be considering an audible reminder lets me know when I have a tweet, or more junk mail.

    Blurb is open too, as I’m compiling a friend’s family recipes into a cookbook.  But I’m here instead.  I swore I heard crickets coming from the general vicinity and thought I might fill the space a bit with words that don’t add up to much more than my thoughts, which I suppose are something.

    I’ve learned that in order to write more than what I’m taking up space with at this moment, I’ve got to read and be involved.  To do something other than what I’ve been doing.  I’ve also learned that I can’t wake up at 4am and expect to function at this point in the day.

    None of this is unfortunate, however.  In fact, it’s how I’ve always wondered life might be if I had the choice to do what I wanted and when from one day to the next.  My house is even clean.  My cupboards organized.  The last bit of cat crap sprayed on the wall in her last explosion decontaminated.  The nasty white carpet I’ve complained about for the past year and a half soon to be torn from the floor and replaced by indescribably beautiful wood.

    And we’re going to Las Vegas this weekend.

    Like how I slipped that one in there?  You’re thinking we just went, right?  Actually it was a year ago, I think.

    This means I have to go shopping you know.  Maybe a few tops to wear with my jeans.  Pretend I know how I’m supposed to dress…

    Like I could pretend even if I wanted to.

    It’s more fun to watch the the twenty somethings doing their party thing — from afar, mind you. *remembering that twentysomething girl barfing in a trash can last time…*

    But it will be relaxing as it always is, and there’s sure to be good food on our agenda.  What?  Like that’s a surprise.

  • Time for a Remodel

    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!

  • Pigs, Lipstick, and Other Shiny Objects

    This is not a light-hearted post, so if you’re just not in the mood to be real, that’s fine.  But right now,  I’m thinking that blogging about my patio flowers, or thoughts about floor covering choices for a remodel, or how much I’d like to mail my flea-ridden pets to Siberia are not worth spending time on.

    My mind is heavy with the election, and decisions, policies and issues, and I have to pull the plug sometimes. I’m listening to 911 coverage in the background, remembering, and thinking how strange it is that seven years can go by so quickly, yet so slowly…

    (more…)

  • Top Ten Wordless Wednesday Words

    My top ten words for this Nearly Wordless Wednesday — not to be confused with Wordless Wednesday since I’m incapable of being wordless on any day of the week — are (you know, in case you were wondering, and waiting, and thinking perhaps that you, too, might feel some ridiculous remote affinity to me):

    1. mundane – which is rude since this is not Monday, which is usually mundane, but wasn’t this week.  Mundane even sounds mundane.
    2. lackluster – like an old piece of silver you might find in a box of baubles saved for reasons you’ve forgotten but which remind you of when you saved them.  It must have been important because they were shiny once upon a time, like a lot of things.
    3. preoccupied — but not “in a brown study” as some nutjobs might be wont to describe it — as in, “She was preoccupied with the concept of nothingness and its effect on boredom during the Dog Days of Summer, which were missed, and so now are being rewound and reviewed in case she missed anything.”
    4. morose — which sort of reminds me of moron or maroon, which makes me think of Bugs Bunny who is never morose.
    5. doldrums — which is far more interesting than “blah” since it actually sounds like it exists somewhere physically, as a suburb might, or a shopping mall, which means you might be able to go there and find something interesting, unless its residents were blah, and whom you’d not want to spend time with since you already find your own self, well, blah.
    6. humdrum — like sitting on a park bench staring at nothing and finding it interesting since it passes the time, but is not in anyway something you could do while in the doldrums since “being humdrum in the doldrums” would attract the attention of others such as shadow puppets.
    7. quotidian — which is nothing like it sounds, unless you’ve been forced to take a Latin class by your parents who swear it will make you a better writer  (Um, right.) because you’d know that quotidian has to do with repetitive daily actions, which can be mundane, and having nothing to do with something unexpected or surprising, as in winning the Lotto, which would never be quotidian.
    8. pedestrian — which is, when you think of it, only a person walking, but can also be lacking inspiration.  So picture a humdrum person in the doldrums walking across the same street to get to the same bus stop to go to the same job to earn the same paycheck to pay the same bills at the same desk at the same time every month.  You know, a pedestrian pedestrian.
    9. ho-hum — as in John McCain.  As in plain baloney on Wonder Bread.  As in this post.
    10. meh — as in, “I feel like pwning some noobs since it would be way more interesting than sitting here and trying to imitate the writing style of Dave Eggers in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.  Wait.  Maybe it’s A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius — which is anything but meh.  Like me.

    p.s. Gratuitous Wordless Wednesday Photo courtest of my mother who bought this card for my middle son’s recent birthday.

  • Yeah? So — what of it?

    Last week, one of the bloggers I’ve come across in foodland wrote a post inquiring about what readers like or don’t like in a blog.  Although I always enjoy this particular person’s posts because she’s extremely smart, very opinionated, and an excellent writer, they’re unusual in that they aren’t always about recipes and food porn shots.

    No, not THAT kind of food porn.  This kind.

    She attracts tons of comments, also unusual for much of foodland. No, not the sheer quantity, which is quite impressive, but the quality. Nearly every commenter has something substantive to say about whatever she has written.

    I know I’ve been hooked more than once to chime in — whether it’s in response to what she has written, or to what one of the commentators has mentioned.   And although I’ve taken liberties before with her generous space (she allows 3000 character comments…whoa!) to respond in a near post, I’ve waited on this one, just to see if the slow burn that I developed reading that day would dissipate.

    Nope.

    Maybe it’s because everyone has an opinion and that’s annoying.  No, that wouldn’t work since I’m the leader of the pack.

    Or, it could be that a blog is such a personal thing as compared to a magazine, or a newspaper, and, well, it’s free. So as much as we all wonder at times who reads our blathering and who doesn’t (or why), it isn’t like we’ll go out of business and stop the presses if no one reads.  We just hobble pathetically along, right?  Uh-huh.  Whatever.

    I think my favorite comment had to do with “lengthy blog posts” which is probably why I’m still simmering.

    When have I NOT done a lengthy post? Excuse the hell out of me, but Hell would freeze over first.  I found it quite ironic, since the person making the comment was doing so on a blog that publishes lengthy posts. Excellent posts, mind you, but lengthy.  Glad I’m in such good company.   In much the same way that there are political cartoonists who turn huge issues into a few words and an image, some choose to write, far too many talk whether anyone is listening or not, and some joke.  I’d rather not read blogs that only publish one short silly post after another.  What’s the point?  They didn’t invest any kind of thought, so why should I?  *Tsk, tsk.  Cranky, aren’t we?*

    A few comments had to do with changing things on the blog. They were concerned that something would change.

    News Flash.  Things Change.  You know, like the planet?  Or haven’t you noticed?  Half the fun of having a blog is to CHANGE things.  What?  It’s difficult to read the words and the thinking behind the words if the font changes?  Or the header?  Or the widgets…wait, I need to fan myself…

    Some of the commenters groused about music players on blogs — you know, where you open a blog and the author has a favorite piece playing?

    I’m thinking that it’s not TOO CHALLENGING to lower the volume if you choose not to listen.  But perhaps for those individuals, finding the volume button is.

    Even better?  Some mentioned that since they read blogs while at work, the players were on loud and that others might hear.

    WAIT.  Let me get this straight.  A person is reading blogs at work instead of working, but she wants YOU to not have a music player on your blog so HER coworkers can’t hear it...  Okay, the line forms to the left for egotistical maniacs.  Seriously.

    Another chimer-inner and subsequent dittoers voiced their complaints about blogs and awards. That they’re tiresome.  That they know the only reason people give out awards is to get credit for links.

    Actually, at least from my speck of perspective, when I pass on an award that someone has given me, it’s because I believe that person deserves it.  Go back to the point about investing time in reading blogs.  When you do that, you can actually say thanks to someone else, and recognize that effort in a meaningful way.  Oh, but wait.  That would be a long, involved post, wouldn’t it?  And you’d actually have to be able to say why you enjoyed someone’s blog for a reason other than it’s short. But what do I know?

    This one’s the doozie.  Some mentioned that the only time people comment on their blog is after they’ve posted, and only because they want that individual to come comment on theirs.

    Huh?  You’ve got to be kidding.  And then some people defended themselves over this crap, like they actually needed to dignify it with any kind of response other than bull*hit.  So let’s see.  I spend my time writing which is no small investment of time, and then my reward is to visit those I enjoy reading AND look around for new ones, and that’s categorized as fishing for comments?  Bear in mind this is BEFORE I do my housework for gawdsakes. What if I read other’s blogs first?  Wait.  I do my email first, and that actually takes a while.  So if I read blogs first, and commented — which I almost always take the time to do — I’d never get around to posting.  Who are these people and why are they so whiney?

    Last, but not least.  Advertisements. I bet you knew this was coming?  Several people mentioned the ads and how annoying they are.

    Fine.  Ever looked at a magazine?  Newspaper?  Watch television?  I know.  I don’t like commercials, either, which is why TiVo exists, or why I wait to go to the bathroom on the commercials — you know, to piss off the advertisers.  Except for Target.  I love their ads.  Where was I?  Oh yes, advertisements on blogs.  Guess what?  Don’t pay attention to them then.  It’s really not that difficult.  Sure, if a site has ten pop-ups then it’s a problem, but you should have figured out how to block those a long time ago.  Tune into this Bat Channel, yanno?  As for the sites that run lots of those square tech ads?  Hell.  Click on them once in a while.  They actually lead to sites that have good information if that’s what you’re looking for.  It’s not like some boogie man will pop out and bite your head off.  But now that I’m thinking of it, that’s not a bad idea.  At least it would spare us the inane comments.

    And while I’m on the subject…my ads pay for my hosting service.  Would you bend over and pick up that check if it blew up against your shoe?  Now it would be swell if they paid for all the time I spent writing and managing, cooking, shooting, and editing.  But it doesn’t.  The MoH pays for that, and I’m sure he’s wishing I’d get off my butt and actually write something that involved an advance and some sales.

    But he’s a very patient man.

    So, what’s your take on all of this hooplah?  I’m being overly sensitive, right?  I should just shut my mouth and get back to work?

    Pass you a slice of that cake?

    Hell, I’m relieved none of them said they were sick of people who plastered stoopid photos of themselves all over their blogs all the time.

    Heh.

  • Wordle and Other Excellent Friday Distractions

    Have you spent time with wordle yet?

    It’s fun if you don’t have anything better to do. In fact, it’s perfect if you do have things to do, but just can’t seem to motivate yourself to do them.

    Cleaning the house seems more attractive by comparison considering the dark mood I was in after spending some time pencil writing last evening. I actually accomplished something while sitting in the late afternoon sun, thinking, remembering, questioning. And then my neighbor came home and wandered over to talk.  This would be the neighbor who feigns neighborliness until one’s out of earshot.  The one who puts his trash out on Sunday morning to sit for an entire day so the rest of the neighborhood can enjoy its loveliness.  The one who who seizes any moment to mention that our dog barks when she doesn’t.  And who lets the spindly trees that are supposed to be a hedge grow without trimming them.  Robert Frost had something to say about good fences making good neighbors, didn’t he?

    Sometimes, I like to think that things happen for a reason, and the exercise was enough to make me really wonder about whether some aspects of our lives need to be put down on paper — even if they’re fictionalized. And if they actually happened, then why the need to fictionalize?

    I’m just not sure.

    But my mood was with me through the night, and it wasn’t until after I returned from my early walk with my friend that I realized the mood was gone, my spirits lifted.

    That’s what exercise, non-stop blathering about everything under the sun, and laughter will do.

    Of course, finding more interesting ways to distract myself also works.  I haven’t been able to decide whether I look best in Mucha,

    Modigliani,

    or Botticelli, 

    but I’m leaning toward the latter since we saw La Primavera, The Birth of Venus, and other beautiful works while we were in Italy.

    Well, and the eyebrows are right.  Nonexistent. Or very nearly.

    In my next life, I will have eyebrows.

    Perhaps I will write about that.

  • Naples & “Rude Ebullience”

    On Sunday, the fifth day of our vacation to Italy, we were ready to leave Rome.  Not so much because we were tired of being there; we’d only put a small dent in what there is to see and do.  It was more because knowing the reservations at two more places had been made, and it was inevitable that we go.  Besides, after reading so much about Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast, I know I was looking forward to being near the ocean.  I’m glad I had the short time to do a post while we were there because as much as I can say I’m able to hang on to memories, being able to savor the better moments after it’s all over can get lost in the shuffle.

    When we travel, my volatile personality battles with itself.  I’m an odd combination of someone who loves beautiful hotels with soft towels and scented soap, and one who also enjoys being very casual, and comfortable.  Going unnoticed.  Because I’d approached my planning for our trip from the latter perspective, I quickly decided that we’d not be staying in Positano, a picturebook perfect place that I would have loved to stay — but not with two of my sons in tow.  So Sorrento seemed to be a better choice.  If we decided to take a bus to Positano, or a boat to Capri, then I’d be satisfied with that, hoping to return someday just with the MoH.

    Some would call me a dreamer, or not very practical.  I’d prefer to say that I look for the silver lining of most aspects of life.  I’m a highly observant person with a near lethal critical eye, so I enjoy looking for the softer more beautiful characteristics in as much as I can find.  It works, because although I am incapable of not noticing the underbelly of just about everything, I prefer to wallow in everything else.  Yes, this is about Italy…

    Because we spent so much time on line before we left trying to book train fare and failing (that’s a whole post in itself…) we took time to go to Stazione Termini the day before leaving Rome to use the self-serve ticket machines.  All went perfectly, so on Sunday, after allowing one of the swarms of men who offer to “help” put luggage on the train and then actually haggle with you about what the service they forced on you is worth, we were off to Naples.  I knew there would be a bit of confusion once we arrived there, because never having been there, we couldn’t quite figure out how we’d get from the train station to the docks to catch a boat to Sorrento.

    Bear in mind that I’m a planner by profession, so if I say something is not quite clear after I’ve spent time thinking about it and searching for options, then that means I’ve decided that we’ll just figure it out.  Besides, the MoH kept telling me we would be on a bit of an adventure, so I allowed myself some moments of letting go of my worries.

    And then we arrived in Naples.  Yes, I’d read about Naples, which was why I never considered staying there for even a second.  To be fair, we’d just stayed in a huge city, so even if I’d planned for us to venture into Naples to see the spectacular Museo Archilogico Nazionale, we’d do so from a smaller town.  Any possibility of doing that evaporated when we stepped off the train.  The “loves the finer things in life” side of me kicked in when the four of us had to traipse across the station four or five times just looking for information about where to catch the “tram” I’d read about.  Yes, I understand that Italy works differently than other places, and that it’s best to relax and “go with the flow.”  I.  Get.  It.  Okay?  But then we decided to venture outside the station to figure it out ourselves.  Surely there would be obvious signs to follow.  When one can read Spanish, Italian isn’t that different, thankfully.

    But there were no signs, and the station was in some kind of transition with construction going on that looked as if it was stalled and hadn’t been touched in quite some time.  Walkways were blocked, and as we ventured out toward the large square in front of the station where buses were lined up, we were more than cautious about traffic.  For as much as vehicles didn’t honk their horns in Rome, it seemed every one of them used their horns to warn anyone in their path — red light, stop sign or not.  Trash was everywhere, accumulated against buildings, wafting across streets as traffic passed, and worse, wedging in the wheels of our luggage as we searched for the yet unseen “tram” mentioned in one of our travel books.  (Erm, thanks, Rick Steves.  You might want to edit that book.  And don’t forget to change the phone number for museum reservations in Florence while you’re at it.)

    We walked back and forth.  We asked people for direction, and then finally we found the city buses and began to look at their numbers hoping to see the “1” we needed.  A tram looks different than a bus, doesn’t it?  Or so we thought.  Right as we’d decided to go for it and walk the distance to the port, we located a bus — full sized — with a “1” emblazoned across its front.  Perhaps that was our tram.  But by the time we’d figured it out, it left and we stood on the curb waiting, trying to decide if we should wait for the next, walk, or catch a cab.  After eyeballing the cabs streaming by in the frantic traffic, we knew there was no possibility of the four of us and luggage fitting into one tiny vehicle.  One cab driver actually stopped in the middle of a huge intersection, motioning at us out his window, wondering if we needed his cab, and we had to wave him on.

    So we set off in the general direction of the port.  It was beyond hot, and the area we walked through looked as if it might be a business district.  All was closed since it was Sunday and the traffic immediately became sporadic.  Light posts were missing from their bases, wires exposed in a tangled mess.  Phones had been vandlized, receivers hanging from their sturdy cords, missing covers for the ear and mouth device.  At one point, a young man with a beautiful girl on the back of his motorcycle drove up onto the sidewalk in front of us pulling his bike alongside the store windows and cruised in the opposite direction, slowly, as if allowing the girl to window shop.

    We began to look into the shadowed alleys to find one that looked safe.  Yes, I was not feeling very safe, and that’s a rare thing.  But we found one and just being able to walk in the shade calmed my nerves long enough to notice the high rise buildings from which laundry slowly flapped in a breeze we couldn’t feel.  I could begin to smell the salt from the bay, so knew we couldn’t be that far away.

    I was wrong.  The port is huge, and we came out, luggage in tow, near where the large cruise ships dock.  More of the seemingly always present orange plastic construction fencing lined the busy street, so we had to pick our way through it all, then wander along the docks until we finally found where the ferries dropped off and picked up people headed across the Bay of Naples. 

    The MoH’s suitcase experienced a flat as a result of this particular leg of our adventure, so he had to carry it for the remainder of our vacation.  He thought it had just become heavy since he was just as tired as the rest of us from our ordeal, and he just pulled it harder.  The poor wheel had all its rubber worn completely flat on one side.

    If I told you I was traumatized over this experience (um…not the flat on the suitcase wheel — Naples), I’d expect you to know it was an exaggeration.  But I can say that I was offended.  Seriously.  And then I was embarrassed by my reaction, so that pissed me off.  Picture an ugly black cloud with lightning bolts flashing out of it hovering over my hatless head, and you’d have the right picture.

    So much for relaxing.  For adopting a “whatever” mentality.  For embracing the casual “no worries” attitude that the MoH abhors when he hears someone mutter that particular phrase.  I was only an ugly American who would wallow in self pity, unbeknownst to anyone but her family.  MoH being the mostly calm person he is, ventured off to find a cool Coke to share once we’d found a bench to sit and wait.

    When the ferry to Sorrento arrived and we were settled on board, my mood had passed, the deep blue water we skimmed over helping to soothe my ugliness.  It was only then that the MoH realized that the Cirumvesuviana we’d opted not to take to Sorrento had a stop we could have taken to the bay to catch the ferry.  The travel book had evidently neglected to mention that particular piece of information.  Of course, there was more than enough mention made of the rampant crime and pickpocketing that goes on, so clearly, that factored into our decision to forego use of the Circumvesuviana at that point in our little adventure. 

    Underbelly indeed.

    Maybe if I was 25, I’d have a different outlook than I now do.  But when I was 25, I had two babies and wouldn’t have been able to even afford thinking about Italy, so who knows.  I do know that as much as Naples might be described by some as having “an attractive, rude ebullience,” I will say that the only thing I found attractive about it was being able to board the ferry to Sorrento — regardless of what Rick Steves thinks.

    The silver lining?  The MoH. He doesn’t always understand my strangeness, but is always willing to lighten things up when the time is right.  It’s nice.

  • Nobody likes orange.

    Finally.  A new, peaceful theme.

    IMG_1047.JPG

    I wasn’t truly loving the orange in my last digs, but something odd has happened as a result of that recent having to live with it for as long as I did and survive.  When I’m out and about, all things orange catch my eye.  And I have been doing a bit of shopping since our vacation is looming…

    …in twelve days.

    So why am I messing around with my blog theme, you ask?

    (more…)