post christmas indolence

well christmas is packed away and i have a new haircut. those are my accomplishments for the day. oh and i made some plans with some friends for friday, and i talked to a couple other friends on the phone. but that was basically it.

i didn't get over to exercise. i meant to, but being lazy appealed to me more. and lazy is the theme for my week. time to be industrious again, next week. no need to seize the day just now.

sometimes, i think it's quite a blessing that i've no real special gift in life that i need to feel guilty about wasting. i mean, there's no worry that if i take a day off, that cancer is not going to be cured or that world peace won't be declared. the world can afford for me to be couch vegetation. no one's going to die without me. what a relief.

however.

my dad worked almost every day of his life. he never really considered retiring. i marvel at that. but at the same time, i understand it. because if you take all the rest of your life off from doing something meaningful in some way, then what will you do with yourself all day, everyday? run charities? train for marathons? i'd rather rob banks and live under bridges.

so sure, having a few days off to treasure once in awhile is really nice, but all day, everyday? i think i'd sooner die. So i guess being in the middle is nice. not so valuable to the world so that i can't take off and be lazy at times- and not so useless that i can't find employment.

it's not my birthday

but my family was here this weekend, and i don't intend to be with them on my birthday, so we celebrated this weekend. they took me out to dinner. and my grandson bought me (with his own money) a gift card to steak and shake. score. i love the steak and shake.

and my mother gave me a fireplace set for my fireplace. which was a very welcome gift. as i have this fireplace here that i really enjoy, but i've never had the "tools."

and so now that they are all gone, i've fired up a duralog (which my sister in law gave me a case for christmas) and i've got a bowl full of sliced pears, and a glass of wine. and it's not my birthday, and i'm all by myself, but it's nice.

i've decided that i will make my New Year's Eve resolutions this year. i don't usually. i think they are stupid, mostly.

people always want to lose weight, stop smoking, stop being whomever it is that they are. whatever.

but all the same, i'm thinking that i'm not getting any younger, sitting here by myself. and i'm bored with myself. i need to change something or other.

but quite honestly, the things i want to change, i can't. the things i can change, won't make things any better, and don't matter that much to me, so why bother? so it's a little hard to set these goals for myself.

wouldn't it be great to be able to set goals for other people, instead? change the rotten things about them, instead?

something like "you will resolve to quit being an ass this year" or "you will resolve to not be so stubborn" or "you will resolve to listen to others for a change" or "you will resolve to quit doing the things that bug me this year."
"you will quit being so judgmental." "you will reflect, realize you were wrong, and apologize."

yeah. that'd be really cool.

i'll wish for that when i blow out my birthday candles this year. but it's not my birthday.
(-:

Many things is on my mind...

words in the way.

Happy Days after christmas. from sly and the family stone.

the alternate title for this post is "death by hallmark"

my mother tried to kill me this holiday. first by making me watch hallmark christmas specials on end. then by throwing a pillow at me. long stories. not interesting.

but it is a wonder that i'm alive. anyway, christmas is mercifully over for another year. all that's left -the credit card bills to pay. it's all good.

and i'm back home in my apt. where i belong now. and that's good. for my mental health. there's really so little of it left in reserve at the moment.

and i've got that feeling again. that something is about to happen. however, it doesn't feel like it's a good thing.

2014, about to happen. and many things is on my mind.

quote of the day

so i'm really not feeling so good.

hence, i'm really liking this quote i found today.

"sometimes i feel like the last cookie in the cookie jar."

a pre-christmas whine.

ugg. i don't feel well.

actually, i'd rather say, "i don't feel good" even if that's grammatically incorrect. i think if you're bordering on being sick, you should be allowed to say it however you'd like.

i feel like i haven't felt very well quite a lot this fall. none of it serious. but it's been a bit annoying. it really can't be stress causing it- as i've got, more or less, no stress these days. but it does seem like there have been quite a few weekends where i've been terribly glad to be able to vegetate. i'm really glad i can sleep in to heart's content in the morning.


so i don't know what it is. or why it is. but tonight, it's a mild headache. and just a general yuck feeling.

having served a small dinner party earlier tonight, i hope that i haven't got anything catching. i was feeling ok then. but after they left, and i was tucking the last of the dishes into the dishwasher, i found myself leaning against the counter and thinking, "wow, i don't feel good." anyway, i hope i haven't sent my guests home with anything.

and i hope it passes quickly. it would suck to be sick on christmas. and let's hope for a less puny new year.

it's the little things

things that make me happier:

paper bags with handles. who knew? how much better and easier they could make your life.

direct deposit for your paycheck. having just acquired this again after a year and a half, i'm delighted.

having all your christmas stuff done (ok, except one thing) a full 4 days before christmas.

discovering a wine that you really like a lot. a fairly cheap wine at that.

having two weeks off. sure, there's no paycheck, but love the free time.

that my neighbor across the way has a really pretty christmas tree.

running into a student at store and getting a big hug for changing her life.

having a trash dumpster that you can take trash to at any time. not having to haul the can out to the curb.

having a fire place.

the warm slippers that my daughter gave me.

that i don't have to go back out in the rain today.

that the only thing i forgot to get at the store is an onion.

seeing the handwriting of my dad.

leftovers.

my dog's better than your dog.

so there was a blind guy who blacked out and fell onto a subway track as a train was coming. his guide dog jumped down there and licked his face to get him to wake up and move. which i guess he did. yeah. blind guy saved by heroic dog. the rest of the story is that the dog was about to be retired. and i guess when a guide dog retires, he has to start packing. to make room for the new dog. but generous donations after the man's lucky and publicized fall, will now allow the man to keep his old dog and get a new dog.

at any rate, this little news item got me to thinking how awfully cruel this system of retiring service dogs is. i mean, yeah, i guess i understand that a service dog has to be helpful and not something to be taken care of, but gee, golly whiz- a dog like this is priceless. part of the family. how do you ship a dog whose meant this much in your life off to shady pines?

i like dogs. well, a lot of them, anyway. i actually think dogs are much like people. there are dogs you like and dogs you don't. i think i give dogs the dignity of being individuals rather than lumping them all together.

i guess i am a bit of a dog racist though, in that there are breeds of dogs i really don't like. for really no good reason, except that i just don't. for instance, poodles. hate them. and greyhounds. skeletons with skin. and yeah- labradoodles and chihuahuas. icky.

and on the flipside, i'm prone to liking beagles. and collies. and dachshunds. just because of their faces.

but on the whole, i think dogs are rather wonderful. and if i could find a dog who didn't depend on me for anything at all- walks in cold weather or being fed when i'm traveling or being kept company when i'm not home, i'd have a dog for sure.

i was back to the hometown for this weekend. and my son's dog greeted me royally. (my grandson had two friends over and one of them commented "wow, he didn't act like that when i got here. he must really like you.") and then sat on me, literally sat on me almost the whole time i was there. we are friends i'd say. he made me feel like "i never want you to go away. to make my point, i will sit on you. i like you that much."

i like him that much too.

brrr

everything seems mean.
icy fingers clutch my heart
winter's not my friend.

the best gift

yippee!

it is my plan to have all my Christmas shopping finished up tomorrow. and actually, i'm already through with all the hard stuff. yeah!

and with the exception of a few items that need to be wrapped beforehand, as they'll need to be given this week- i will have a whole week to wrap them up.

yeah! the holiday is almost in the bag here. meaning that after all this stuff is done, i can just enjoy the time off.

you must know- i do so love time off. not because i have exciting things to do really. but because i'm lazy. let's face it, i'm a slug when i can be. and now, i can be.

really, i don't even care if i get anything good for gifts now. my gift is that the holiday work is, for the most part, over.

i wonder

i wonder how it feels to know that your own happiness is at the expense of someone else's?

i would think it would be awful.

but then again, if you're the type of person who take that kind of happiness, well then you're just the sort for whom it wouldn't be awful.

what am i talking about? well, if it concerns you, you'll know.

anyway. to dwell on sweeter things. can i just say how wonderful i think that my son and my daughter in law are? honestly, i couldn't think any higher of the two of them at this moment.

i feel very blessed regarding both my children and their respective spouses, right now. i'm a very blessed and lucky mother. and quite undeserving. but blessed and lucky all the same.

i wonder.

All we are is all we are.

William Glasser wrote, “What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today.”

I think this true. I'd forgotten that I studied the work of William glasser way back in college. Reality therapy. Choice theory. All that. I'd forgotten it. Or maybe, I hadn't so much forgotten it, but rather I'd forgotten that it was something I'd learned about.

Anyway. I was reading about something else tonight, and saw this quote. And it kind of all flashed back to me.

Glasser was/is controversial. He believed that mental illness was more or less just caused by unhappiness. And that most of that unhappiness is caused by failed relationships. And that people have control over their thoughts and actions. But not their feelings or their physiology. And focus in therapy should be on helping people make better choices. In spite of how they feel or their physical functions.
Anyway. Some would say this is hogwash. That you don't have to find a way to live with your past. And that you need meds to fix a mental illness.

I don't know. I guess I just know that there are people that ain't right and that your surroundings and your past do affect you. I'm not a big fan of meds, I guess. I've seen too many kids prescribed into all kinds of confusion. I think they mask depression which I think needs to be dealt with rather than medicated. It seems to me that meds for depression just buries the problem rather than helping. I've not really found that burying things helps anyone feel better really.

So all that aside, I do believe this quote. I believe that painful things from my past have almost everything to do with who I am today. Not that they define me- but that they profoundly affect the way i see and understand the world.

And it's a circle.

So I got into somewhat of a set-to with a cab driver this week. I remarked on how many homeless people I saw. He said it was their own fault, that there were plenty of jobs for those who wanted to work. I said, "yeah, but I saw saw a woman today who was lying on the ground (temp was 28 degrees) with no shoes on. You think this is because she's lazy?"

He kind of chAnged the subject. I looked out the window. My uncle later teased me about it. My aunt said my heart was too tender. It didn't feel like a compliment.

The thought of the lady on the street with no shoes made me profoundly sad. But really? Shouldn't this make a person sad? Shouldn't it?

What kind of pain turns you into a woman lying on the cold ground with no shoes? But moreover, what kind of pain turns you into a guy who tells that woman "get a job.""

it's the most

depressing time of the year. for a great many people. i think it's because everyone else around seems super giddy. and you're expected to be wildly super-giddy even if you don't feel that way. it's just hard to be happy when you're not.

i'm actually ok this year. certainly not giddy, i don't do giddy. but i don't want to curl up into a ball and hope that i spontaneously combust or anything. there were years like that. but i'm better now.

so as i said. i'm ok. but across facebook came an article that noted that i live in one of the top ten depressing states of the union. i can attest to that. this is a dismal, conservative, right-wing, fundamentalist nightmare of a place. that is for sure.

but at least i've now moved to a section of it, that is a bit less so. there are actually smart, interesting people to be found here amongst the bible thumpers and the fiscally conservative right wing nazis.

but after i read the article and became a bit depressed thinking about where i live, i noted that there was an article underneath that one that was a listing of the top ten depressing vocations.

and wouldn't you know it? teaching was one of them. and although they didn't go into more detail, i would suspect that teaching special education would be considered a bit more depressing than that. and i'm imagining that the job i had for years upon years where i worked with medically fragile and/or physically impaired students (and their families) who quite often up and died on me, well, i kinda think that "hmm, it's a wonder that i wasn't more depressed than i was for a time."

anyway, i am glad for my own sake that i'm now out of that job. seriously, that really became too much. i do believe that i suffered from what they call "compassion fatigue."

yesterday when i was at work, at a break, i was talking to an older co-worker. we've only known each other for a year now. and she's retired from k-12 education as well. so we have a bit in common. so, we were actually trading some stories about our families. and i was telling her a story about some of my family members. and she said, "well, i'm sure that you handled that well; you're the most easy going, happy-go-lucky person that i've ever met. nothing ever seems to rattle you. you're always always calm."

ha ha, i thought. and i guess i am that, here and now. and actually i would say that for the most part, i used to be as well. however, back when there was crisis after crisis and problem after unsolvable problem, and children up and dying and stuff, i do think that while i might have been calm on the outside, that i was bleeding profusely on the inside. i think i was bleeding out in a manner of speaking. which can make a person quite depressed.

don't they say, "anger turned inward is depression?"
and so i think i might just have been depressed on top of depressed on top of depressed.

add to that a terrible person who didn't understand, and who broke my heart to smithereens. and well, you know? it's a wonder of wonder that i'm still here, and that i lived to tell the tale.

as for this time of year, i'll still never be giddy. it's still not the most wonderful time or place of the year. but i won't and don't feel like ripping my head off when i hear christmas music anymore. and sometimes, i'll actually hum along even. and that's something.

no good deed

they say that no good deed goes unpunished.

and so it is. a few years back, for Christmas, I put together a family calendar, made copies, and gave them as gifts to everyone in the family. and everyone loved them. so now it's more or less expected of me.

I use photos taken throughout the year, and i put them together into collages month by month. and i attempt to do 3 things. make sure if it's someone's birthday month that they are featured, make sure everyone in the family is represented in each month, and finally, i make sure seasonal or family events that occur in each month are featured.

and i pull pics from everywhere. people's sd cards, their facebook accounts, my phone, my ipad, from actual developed pictures.

and EVERY year, when i'm done, i say to myself, "DO NOT WAIT UNTIL DECEMBER OF NEXT YEAR TO DO THIS!" and yet, i always always always do. )-:

at first i used to use my pc. and i'd use publisher to make a collage of the pictures, which took days, and i'd print the pictures and the calendar pages off, and then put them together myself. that got old. so then, i started making the collages, and i'd save them on to a flashdrive, and take it into a store, and construct them on a photo kiosk, and i'd pick them up in a week or so.

and then i got my ipad and i started putting the collages together in pages. which still took days, but wasn't as aggravating as using publisher. BUT THEN, i beat my head against a wall trying to figure out how to turn a pages document into a jpeg file because the photo kiosks won't use pdf or pages files. grrr. it was maddening. i thought i was saving time by constructing in pages. only to be faced with this file dilemma. so it took me HOURS and HOURS to figure out a convoluted way of accomplishing this. but i finally did.

and then, by the next year i forgot my convoluted way. so then i devised another convoluted way. only to forget that this year. GRRRR!

but even more than that, last year when i took my flash in, the store called me in a couple days, and said they had them ready. and i went in, and they weren't ready. and so they told me to come back at a certain time, and i did. then when i got there, they still weren't ready, and i waited in the store for another TWO hours. (i did end up getting a 50 dollar compensatory gift card out of that deal though.)

so anyway, let's just say i wasn't looking forward to this year. but fortunately, there were more googleable directions of convoluted ways to turn pages documents into jpegs. and i found one that was only a 5 step process that didn't involve acquiring a new app or programs. so yeah! so i did that 5 step process, 12 times. well, actually 13 times- as i had to have a cover picture too.

and then i found a great discount (40% off!) on printing photo calendars online. only to be defeated because the website wouldn't work all the way with their ipad app. but then after gnashing my teeth for a few minutes, i hit on the solution of uploading my collage pictures via the ipad but using my pc to construct the calendar layouts and ordering. and so i did that, and then i hit send, and a mere two hours later, i picked up the order at the corner store. well ok, actually, i only printed two of the 7 calendars i needed to make. (just enough to get the discount, but since i always find mistakes after, i thought i could do the others tonight after i picked those two tonight.)

and so that's what i did. after work, i stopped, picked up the two calendars, came home and found the two mistakes , revised the pages, and then i revised a new order for the other 5.

SO tomorrow afternoon- i will pick up the other 5, and unbelievably, i'll have these blamed things DONE well before Christmas! and actually, even with the few glitches, it's really been the easiest year ever! but i'm SO GLAD, once again, that it's OVER for the year!

and while i'm sure i won't get around to making the collages until next year, i did do one thing good. i wrote down the 5 step process in a safe place! so- next year, it might be a bit more like a walk in the park.

but right now, i'm tired. and i'm still i'm thinking, "no good deed goes unpunished."

dream, dream, dream, dream, dream

arggg.

i can't remember a span of time when i've dreamed so much. yeah, i know, most of us actually dream every night. but honestly, i rarely know i've dreamed. only when i've had a terrible nightmare. or once in a great while, i will have vivid weird dreams. but usually when i'm troubled over something, and it appears that my brain is trying to work something out that's too troubling for me to work on while i'm awake.

but i'm not particularly troubled by anything right now. no more than what i've been troubled about. which is to say that there's nothing particularly new in my life right now. so nothing new to be worked out.

i can't say i really like waking up to dreams. they alter and color my mood, on waking up. and either they are bad or sad, and they make me feel bad or sad. or they are wonderful, and then they are not true on waking up. which is disappointing. i feel haunted by them.

so i've not been terribly happy about all these dreams i'm aware of lately. even while they've not been terribly disturbing. i just do not like them.

maybe because i don't have control over them. you see, that's been the key to my feeling better in my life. i now control everything. and i let nothing into my life now that i can't control. if you can control it, it can't hurt you.

and yet, i know i really have control over nothing anyway. i really do know that. that life lesson has been beat into me. that you can be good, honest, kind, well-meaning, and earnest, and none of that counts for anything in this life. well ok, maybe somewhere it counts, but it doesn't help you secure anything or keep anything safe and sound anyway.

all you really can do is dream about that.

but then you wake up to reality.