TIME TO STOP AND SMELL THE FUR

One great thing about getting older is that hopefully I have learned something from all the mistakes I have made.

And recognized that a lot of mistakes can't be undone or changed and you have to learn to live with them.

But today I really tried to take time to do the following:

- Walked both dogs until they wanted to turn around.

- Spent probably ten minutes total rubbing my horses' bellies (they both love it, don't ask me why).

- Washed all my bedding not because it needed to be done but because I wanted a fresher smelling bed tonight.

- Lay down on the floor and scratched my dog's stomach until he actually was fully satisfied.

- And then, of course, spent double that time spending attention to my cat so he wouldn't be jealous.

- Talked on the phone with my middle/difficult child until she begged to get off to watch a Star Trek: The Next Generation rerun on television.

- Listened to my borderline suicidal husband without offering any advice or counsel or becoming at all frightened.

It was nice. I need to do this more often.

WHERE DOES QUIRKY END AND MENTAL ILLNESS BEGIN?

I have been an incredibly SLOPPY dresser almost all of my life.

The 60's and 70's allowed the excuse of jeans and baggy T-shirts in the name of ‘freedom’ (just take away the cigarette in the photo to the left, and that's me). I was never involved in any social activity that demanded any other sort of attire. I could use drab and loose clothing to fade into the wallpaper, since for much of my young life I felt that it was where I belonged.

But moving into an office environment taught me to survive with two jackets, three skirts and a handful of tops. I could happily exist with three pairs of shoes (running, work and everyday), make-up was always minimal, my hair remained short, straight and while incredibly boring, infinitely manageable.

And I must admit I ADORE uniforms - no clothing class, concerns about color combinations and/or hemlines. Plus if FedEx and UPS guys weren't so quickly indentificable, we would have less time to check out their fantastic legs.

When “casual attire” came in, it took me a couple of jobs to learn my beloved jeans and baggy T-shirts were not it - however, khakis and knit tops did not require nylons or heels.

Wait a minute, where was I going with this?

Oh, yes - quirky vs. eccentric is wherein lies the dilemma (and I just love that word, dilemma - but when you say it like "dee-LEMMM-a!!").

I'm at the crossroads of my fashion (or lackthereof) life.

I am old enough that I am 1) not trying to attract any men, 2) am not moving forward professionally (understatement of the decade there, my friends) and/or 3) I honestly simply don't care very much about other people's opinions.

However, AM I now old enough to begin dressing seriously like a crazy old lady who wanders in the park talking to the pigeons?

I think I want to be.

SOLVING MULTIPLE PROBLEMS

Here are the problems:

- I need more exercise. I have lost a few pounds, but my body has cleverly compensated for the lower of caloric intake by clinging on to every fat cell available, claiming a close personal friendship of some twenty some years. And unless I force up my metabolism to pick up in some way, I don't think anything else is gonna come off.

- I also have two horses who both seriously need more exercise. However, the mare (Sally) is an very slow walker (she is in her mid-20's, which for a horse is seriously old), and the gelding (Najale) strides out at a fast enough pace that I need to occasionally jog to keep up with him. And I cannot take just one of them out - the mare literally freaks out if seperated from her baby.

- I optimistically purchased a Wal-Mart on-sale (read that as  'cheap') bicycle, with the concept being of riding it to the mailbox (a mile and a half down the road) and back as a work-out. My only requirement was some form of mountain-bike tires - while I live on what is officially called a dirt road, it is actually 25% dirt, 13% small rocks, 46% middle-size rocks and 16% large boulders that can easily blow out a tire on a semi. Transportation of these back-roads involves constant veering around rocks, easing through gullies and ridges, and praying that whatever sort of wheel you are riding on can survive at least one more day.

Today, I discovered a marvelous and also quite ridiculous solution to all three of these problems.

I rode the bicycle for about twenty minutes in the pasture, both chasing and being chased by the horses. It was great exercise for all three of us.

And I did leave a note inside the house that if I did not come back within 45 minutes, they should search for my body out back.

It was ridiculously fun, extremely undignified, and just what I needed today.

INFATUATION OR LOVE? AND WHO CARES?

I have lost my heart... once again.

I do have as a personal resolution to fall in love at least once a day.

Think about it - remember how you felt the last time you fell in love? How wonderful you felt, how beautiful the world became, how perfect the person you loved was? Colors were brighter, the songs on the radio became 'your' song(s), you felt so beautiful?

Well, why not feel that way all the time?

Now, I'm married, and very sold on monogamy (is that marriage to one person or a type of wood?), and I don't want to ever have a romantic relationship/ affair/ liaison with any other man... or woman, either, I guess, in today's progressive world.

But I can fall in love with the purple and yellow blossoms on the cactus right outside my front door - I can be infatuated with Starbucks Double-Chocolate Chip Frappuccino - I can dance around when I see the awesome reds, purples and oranges of the sunset behind the Huachuca Mountains.

Why not?

And this week I fell in love with a vacuum cleaner.

I have had a standard-run-of-the-mill-on-sale-at-Sears vacuum cleaner for years, but it is now demanding more and more attention, muscle to move around (is it getting heavier or am I simply getting weaker?)  and dirt- bags it's particular size which are becoming more and more difficult to locate at local stores (a sales technique, I know - wasn't it just a few days again that VHS was still 'the' thing?).

So I bought a new run-of-the-mill-on-sale-at-Target vacuum cleaner .

And promptly fell head over heels (which makes no sense as an expression - I mean, you are head over heels right now, aren't you?) with it's lighter weight, double the rpm or hertz or amps (whatever the correct term is) and easily-changed attachments that actually WORK.

Okay, so perhaps my expectations are small - but it is a great feeling.

ANIMAL CRUELITY

Our laundry room is tacked on to the farthest end of our house. And although this placement is convenient for location of a cat's litter box, it isn't practical for something like washing one's clothes.

This small, non-ventilated room is either the coldest or the hottest place in the house. There is barely room for the two machines, let alone folding or hanging garments. During the washer's spin cycle, the pictures on all walls rattle. And at it's loudest, the dryer's ending cycle beep can barely be heard ten feet away, even with the door left open.

This morning, however, I heard just a little too much of something. I was switching clothes from the washer to the dryer (sidebar - I know in Europe they have combination washer/dryers that go through the wash cycle and then in the same machine, dry the clothing - when the heck is that going to catch on over here!?) when I heard a sound that made me pause -

A tiny splashing sound accompanied by a metallic scratching noise.

Now, it couldn't be the cat - unlike most domesticated felines, Pandora is approximately the size of a small lion, and does NOTHING quietly. Both the dogs were sound asleep in front of the television (I know, I know, I should limit the number of soap operas they view daily - I'm trying).

It sounded like it was coming from the boarded off water-heater area to the immediate left of the dryer.

I do not trust my hearing ever, so I grabbed my son and made him listen and track down the noise.

And yes, it was coming from the water-heater. Unmistakably, a mouse or small rat had fallen into the water and was trying frantically to not drown.

Talk about a conflict of emotions.

1) The automatic maternal "RESCUE THE POOR MOUSE!" mode kicks in before anything else. Then...

2) "Yuck, there is a MOUSE in our water supply!" And then...

 3) "OMG how much is it gonna cost to get a plumber to come all the way out here and remove a small carcass from the water heater?

I could not find a plumber who believed the situation - "Lady, (southern accent here), them heaters are self-contained - ain't no way a mouse or a rat could get into one."

So somewhere in my house an animal has died, and I cannot tell if its death is at all related to our water supply.

But I am drinking only Diet Coke in bottles for the next two weeks.

IN-LAWS

Where did the idea originate that mother-in-laws are always evil?

I can appreciate that for many centuries, several generations of families lived under the same roof, and that could lead to a few (cough, cough, wink, wink, nudge, nudge) conflicts.

My own mother lived in our house for over five years, and I think the only reason my marriage survived was 1) my husband was the one who brought up the concept of her moving in with us after her first bout of breast cancer, 2) her already loose grip of reality was rapidly weakened by Alzheimer's, and 3) he was raised with an extremely high level of respect for his own mom.

I have a wonderful relationship with my own mother-in-law, but I think that is mainly because 1) she lives in Oregon, 2) I don't live in Oregon, 3) she does not travel.... at all, and 3) I get to visit her about once every three years.

And I may have been concerned about becoming the evil mother-in-law (and I still may, I have one eligible child), but I was lucky enough to gain a wonderful son-in-law.

Who just sent me a combination of Christmas/Birthday/Mother's Day/Grandparent's Day/Hanukkah presents for the next sixteen years - his old laptop AND a brand-new Triple Format DVD-RW / CD-RW Mobile Slim Drive (which, as far as I understand it, gives more capability to the laptop than any other computer I have ever owned).

 

Yeah - it's easy to be a wonderful mother-in-law when you got a son-in-law like mine.

SABOTAGE

Self-defeating behaviors sometimes need to be pointed out to us.

But we often find ourselves taking actions that we intellectually know are not going to improve our quality of life - for example, reaching for that cigarette twenty minutes after we "quit" for good - procrastinating on preparing the presentation that will precipitate your promotion (hey, pretty good for amount of p's, yeah?) - or instead of driving to the gym, stopping at the mall and spending half of your paycheck on DVDs which you KNOW you will watch late at night while eating out of a huge bowl of heavily-buttered popcorn.

I am finding myself currently in a cycle of  "a persistent pattern of behavior detrimental to the self, including being drawn to problematic situations or relationships and failing to accomplish tasks crucial to life objectives." (see this site)

And so, of course, am drawn to Google for self-diagnosis and free counsel.

I liked some of the suggestions from this site - to help you become aware of self-defeating acts. And in color are my responses:

Physical awareness. Where do you feel the tension? Pinpoint it -- a knot in your stomach... tight shoulders, etc. -- and give the sensation a name. Yeah, my stomach - like I WANT ICE CREAM.

Emotional awareness. Attach an emotion to the physical sensation. Example: "I feel angry... bored... afraid, etc."  Duh... it's called HUNGER and emotionally also wanting COMFORT FOOD.

Impulse awareness. Complete the sentence, "This feeling makes me want to..." Fill in the blank with your immediate emotional reaction. STUFF MY FACE?

Consequence awareness. Answer the question, "If I respond this way, what's likely to happen?" Think through all the possible consequences. Okay, this is where I am supposed to act like an adult and act mature? Yeah, if I eat an entire Ben and Jerry's Double Chocolate Brownie Fudge while watching the Jay Leno show, I will consume an entire's day worth of calories and two week's worth of fat intake in aprx. 14 minutes.

Solution awareness. Complete the sentence, "A better thing to do would be..."  Sure, like at 11:20 p.m. when I am in my pajamas, I have a whole  lot of options such as "go to the gym and work-out" or living three miles from the Mexican border to be able to "walk the dogs for 40 minutes" or "saddle Najale and do ground work with him" - NOT.

Benefit awareness. Finish the sentence, "If I try that strategy, the benefits will be..." List as many as possible.  Sure, I can list benefits - losing weight, discovering my waist again, and being able to leave all the Just-My-Size, Women Within, and Silhouette fat-women-clothing-disguised-as-figure-flattering catalogs aside.

Yeah, forget it - just next time my husband insists on bringing ice cream home, I'm just gonna throw it immediately into the trash.

Hey, now that's not self-defeating.......... is it?