APOLOGIES TO PETER PAUL AND MARY

I'm in love with a black 'n white cat,
A black 'n white cat tolerates me.

He's not as big as he appears

Although he does weigh in at twenty-three.

WATCHING LIFE ON A 3" SCREEN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Hk8IzdwYEA

What is wrong with this picture?

This commercial displays a lovely young woman in a green green valley who is surrounded by hundreds of orange-costumed dancers in a wonderfully exotic and beautifully choreographed display.

And what is she looking at?

The aps on her new cell phone.

Does that bother anyone else?

It's like seeing people videotaping a beautiful sunset, but not watching it themselves. A couple walking down the street, holding hands, but each talking on a cell phone to someone else.

Are we missing life around us and watching the imitation on a screen?

THOUGHTS ON HALF OF A YEAR PASSING

Time flies when you're having fun.

It's a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up - from Harry Potter, no less

How long a minute is, depends on which side of the bathroom door you're on. ~Zall's Second Law

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. ~Carl Sandburg

The Future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is. ~C.S. Lewis

Time is a brisk wind, for each hour it brings something new... but who can understand and measure its sharp breath, its mystery and its design? ~Paracelsus

Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent. ~Ambrose Bierce

Let not the sands of time get in your lunch.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. - Mother Teresa

We didn't lose the game; we just ran out of time - Vince Lombardi

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. - Albert Einstein

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. - Henry David Thoreau

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. - Dave Barry

COSTCO CUSTOMS

There seems to be an elevated courtesy aura at Costcos.

Most grocery stores operate at an elementary school playground mentality. The bigger kids who can run faster are the ones who determine what games get played, and who goes first.

To me, the most insulting practice is refusal to make eye contact. Instead of politely asking if you can get over to the baking soda, people suddenly concentrate their attention, as if their life depended on it, on the bags of whole wheat organic flour that you simply know this overweight, middle-aged man with twelve six-packs of Budweiser in his cart is not the least bit interested in.

However, at the Costco on the west side of Tucson (my closest Costco... three hours away from my home), the polite and gracious responses seem to rise to rise to the level of a high-class social event, complete with a never-ending buffet of drinks and hors d'oeurves at the end of every aisle.

And since everyone is either pushing a massive shopping cart or moving dolly, and there is a real danger of losing personal extremities by an enthusiast customer purchasing an entire living room set of furniture, a wall-mount computer screen, and every sale item in the bakery mistakenly running over your foot, out of necessity, life seems to be taken at a slower pace.

It may also help that I usually shop Monday morning, where the majority of consumers are over the age of 65 and are as likely to be riding a motorized cart as not.

But conversations are easy and open - you pass the same people going to the opposite (read that "wrong") direction on every aisle, and can openly remark, "Did you know there is lite Miracle Whip in 75 lb. containers over by fresh produce?" - you become familiar with the same harried mother with four children under the age of four who is feeding her brood completely by samples of taco sauce, chocolate muffins, and Monster energy drink - you can even have the same employee who was climbing agilely to retrieve a 50-pack of Betty Crocker Super-Duper Brownie Mix for a gentleman in a wheelchair check your receipt and look under your cart for illegal medications, crack cocaine, empty vodka bottles and corn dog sticks.

The only place where tempers rise and personal behavior does revert to adolescent level is at the check-out area.

Suddenly there you become the ENEMY when, with 152 items in your cart, you try to edge into a line with the clear sign "150 ITEMS OR LESS". The scooter with an 85 year old woman steadily plows into your row, and you contemplate whether is is worth sneaking up in back of her and turning off her oxygen tank. And do you dare risk amputation and jump into the metal crash-cart-roller-derby of an new register opening?

The important part today for me was getting up there before the monsoon rain hits, and driving home fast enough that I didn't now have to put tie the tarp over my open truck bed..

(I also made certain I purchased only items that were firmly and completed surrounded by four layers of plastic).

TAKE A DEEP BREATH

I need to admit several things tonight.

No. 1 - Talking for more than an hour on the phone with my sibling makes my face break out.

I will happily chat with my oldest daughter for days on end, and we never seem to run of things to talk/gossip/complain/praise.

And I don't seem to have any acne developments from this.

But about once a month, I call my brother, and normally leave a message on his answering machine, and he calls me back later when he can.

And we don't have a conversation - we have an exchange of obscure musical trivia facts.

I openly confess that I am incredibly jealous of my brother's brain. He has what is commonly referred to as a photographic memory, and besides the retention of an impossible amount of facts, is a talented and able musician.

Unfortunately, my brother's brain is almost missing a few things. Such as the regular give-and-talk of a tête-à-tête - letting the other person get a word in edgewise.

So somehow an hour on the phone becomes, literally, an hour with the phone stuck on my face as I resign myself to occasionally "uh hu,"s and "yeah, right"s, while I attempt to take care of the dogs, fill the horses' water, finish the dishes and eat my own dinner.

And then I notice that I am developing a sixteen-year-old-worthy zit on my left cheek.


No. 2 - I cannot walk and talk.

For years, I have excused my noticeable lack-of-grace with the glib idiom "I can't chew bubble gum and walk to the same time."

A common method of determining if you are running a good pace is to make certain you can talk while you are running.

I have never been able to do that. I have trouble talking while I am walking.

My lungs have extremely diminished capacity (I love 'diminished' - the word shrinks as you pronounce it) small due to a collapsed sternum , or what is called pectus excavatum - also referred to as a 'monkey chest' in children.

Regardless, I used to run four miles at a time… just really, really slowly.

Today, as I was huffing and puffing on a fairly short walk over to the mud football field to move the water hose for the 474th time this week (but boy, am I getting a impressive crop of mud), I finally accepted something.

I need to breath in with one step, breath out with the next. Without speaking. To just be able to walk and keep my breath.


No. 3 - I have been keeping up with daily exercise, smaller portions, healthier food for over two weeks… and I have GAINED four pounds.

SCARY MOVIE MCDVIII

I don't normally watch horror movies. I get scared enough on my own without having to watch someone else's imagination go wild. Disney movies upset me enough.

But tonight Josiah and I sat and watched the movie "1408" on television with John Cusack.

(I mean, John Cusack was in the movie, not sitting with us and watching it. Although that would have been cool, wouldn't it?)

The plot was a terrifying concept from a story by Stephen King - an evil presence in a particular hotel room that would force you to re-live over and over your worst memories. Until you were ready to accept death as an escape.

Which reinforces something that I need to hear again... and again... and again.

Our memories are strengthened the more we feed them.

If I concentrate on that summer in 1966 camping with my sister's family up at Lake Naciomento (that really is the lake's name), I can focus on the positive aspects - swimming, reading, campfires and marshmallows in the evening - that's feeding that memory.

Or I can target on failing miserably (and repeatedly) at learning to water-ski, hiding out on my own from my nieces, sunburns, and drinking beer (which I hate - still do) - and that's feeding that memory.

Stephen King may argue with me (I mean, he wrote the original story, right?), but I think the reason the room 1408 had such power was because these particular horrible, atrocious images had been replayed and replayed over and over until they were ingrained, entrenched, if you will, like a groove in a record.

So the needle heads automatically straight to them.

But if we focus on our positive, pleasant, uplifting memories, then those are the ones that have more power.

What do you think?

PLAYING COWBOY

I like individuals with a bit of an attitude.

Ones that draw outside the borders. Uses only broken crayons. Scribble all over newspapers instead of their coloring books.

And why am I using elementary school examples?

I don't go out of my way to break the law - in fact, I discovered last night I was driving without my wallet (i.e. drivers license, any identification AND my ATM... which is how I discovered I did not have it), I was quite upset - at myself.

Well, and the fact that I couldn't get any money out of the bank, but that's another problem.

But I admit that in a lot of things which are NOT criminally connected I like seeing how much I can get away with.

I play devil's advocate, questioning the liberal case as if I'm a conservative... and then the conservative as if I'm a liberal.

If I am instructed to go sixteen steps, then I just have to find out what happens when I go twenty.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I am much more the type to go twelve steps and see if I can get away with that. Lazy, no - energy-saving, yes.

So today when I mounted a little sorrel gelding (appropriately named 'Red'), I noticed that he was not especially eager to leave the barn and his fellow horses.

Oh, no.

It was fun to have a horse who did not want to obey - in any way possible.

Wait a minute, I have one of those at HOME.