Every time someone tells me a story about a marital dispute someone they know is having, or some other calamitous, or even stupendous happening, in someone’s life I may or may not know, I invariably want to know the back story.
Privacy was the subject in two posts in two blogs I read recently, both written from two points of view. One was decrying the lack of privacy in today’s world, though it was a reminder that privacy is, and always will be an illusion, unless we manage to live like the early trappers, and get lost in the forests somewhere.
Annoying myself should not be my main goal, despite the title of this post, which is already raising my blood pressure, thinking about the self-imposed challenge of going for thirty days without getting annoyed.
I realized this morning that I get annoyed on the average of every five minutes while driving the surface streets. If I hit the freeway at a quiet time, that’s no sweat. The idea of this challenge came to me when I found myself dawdling behind an Echo, which was driving at approximately the speed that an iceberg melts, and I swung over to change lanes and pass it.
Forging friendships shouldn’t be hard. We all know, perhaps may even be, one of those paragons of virtue who are kind, compassionate, and helpful, and have a flashy personality to boot. Maybe even a flashy personality who likes to wear boots.
Most of us love those people. Not everyone does, because some people are just miserable, and hate all kind, compassionate, flashy, boot-wearing paragons, most notably those who are arch-enemies and nemeses (the plural form of nemesis, an arch-rival) of superheroes and urban legends. I’ve always thought how interesting life would be with your very own arch-enemy, or nemesis. If anyone ever doubted their own importance in the world, they could rest assured of their value by whether they keep a superhero up at night with their shenanigans.
I have a slew of titles saved which have no stories. These titles look so forlorn, so homeless, like unmoored dinghies bobbing on choppy literary waters, waiting for a safe plot in which to berth.
Handwriting was very normal at one time. Typing was the only subject in school in which I received a ‘D’, but I seem to remember we had to take it. Some people will laugh at that, I’m sure. Especially those people who type 95 wpm with no errors. Those people are what I like to call over-achieving braggarts. I never could break the 45 wpm typing barrier, but where my handwriting used to be clear as a bell, now I can barely read it.
As I was blogging, meaning looking for inspiration, I read about a scale that is a kinder, gentler device that measures your body weight. It is called a Quantum scale and only tells you how many pounds you’ve lost, keeping you blissfully in the dark about what you currently weigh.
Literature is chock full of orphans. There are so many orphans in storyland, you have to wonder whether an epidemic was killing off most couples at any given time in history. To name just a few of the better known ones off the top of my head: Harry Potter, Batman, Superman, Jane Eyre, Tarzan, Anne of Green Gables, Emily of New Moon, Heidi, Mary Lennox of The Secret Garden, Pollyanna, Little Orphan Annie, Oliver, David Copperfield, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Dorothy of The Wizard of Oz, Kinsey Milhone, the kick-ass private eye of the alphabet mystery series, and Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights.
I once learned that paramedics, and cops, despite their training and good intentions, don’t have to rush in where angels fear to tread. It is in their contracts or something, that if they don’t feel safe, they can let you lie there like a plucked chicken, waiting for the roaster.
Doing the transformation tango is not easy. After two years of back trouble, I have decided it is time to do what that seventy year-old woman did (not the one who got pregnant) and transform myself, although being pregnant would certainly qualify as a transformational experience. This was a woman who, in her fifties, or sixties, decided she wanted to be in phenomenal shape for the rest of her life, and knew it would require more than just a stroll around the block. I am not sure why I decided to do the transformational tango now; it wasn’t the advent of the new year that pushed me over the edge.