Laid up

Have been ill with the flu for the past week.....BUT....have come out on the other side. There's many things to post and many things to reflect about. Can't wait for a few minutes to finish writing them. Now that I'm up to it, I must tackle some laundry, dishes and homework!

Napkin Diaries -Monday's observations

• I saw my first bluebird of the season this morning.
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• Holy crap - gas is expensive!
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• Yes I did witness and almost accident on the highway yesterday between an 18wheeler and 2 compact cars. It got even more dicey when the 2nd car to pass the truck was almost pinned to the divider and "thanked" the trucker by slamming on his brakes and slowing down in front of him. Mocking him through his rear-view. Yes I saw the whole thing. And yes, I was driving safely.
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• I am getting tired of writing papers. Well not entirely, I know it's not going to be over any time soon but I know my brain needs a break at some point.
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• I saw a jogger on the road and thought, that was me a year ago, man, I really need to get back to that daily torture.
  

When the sore thumb that sticks out is really a pickle

Have you ever seen the bit on "Sesame Street" when they sing "one of these things, is not like    the other?"          

Seriously! I mean, when has it ever not been the truth!

Scene:
I was walking thru the market the other day, minding my own business, strolling along, whistling
and I turned down the dairy aisle, I was heading for the milk. I had spent the day in the library so I hadn't interacted with many people (if you count a blog a person, well that's another post entirely) but I had spotted two grocery stock boys working in the dairy section. I grab a loaf of bread. I laugh OUT LOUD and thought of...

My mother and I used to laugh at this because it was so hard to forget, hence the purpose OF the clip. In my own humor, I smile and turn around and start making the trek to the check out area and a flash happens. Instinctively I grab my phone as if there was an important message that came from the flash in text form that I had to read. I look up and realize that I was alone in the aisle.

::::POOF!:::::

Everyone was gone. No stock boys. No other customers. No store jingly-music. No other ambient sounds. Just drowning quiet. Odd, I thought. I shrug and keep moving. I finally see a woman walking up to me and she's strolling as if she's in the park checking out the birds. When she reaches me she says, "I hate it when that happens!"

Stunned by her oddness and her buoyancy of being in a shop to witness said flash (which to clarify, was actually a brief power outage) which she of course has witnessed before. Her exuberance made me conjure a partial smile and I almost said "you've lost it lady" but I pick up the pace and then I had my final realization.

1-Don't go grocery shopping alone. Always go in pairs.
2-Your phone does not have all the answers even if some ppl are glued to them like another appendage.
3-Sesame street tunes are classics! none of this recent garbage. I mean the oldies are goodies!
4- Regionally speaking, the natives here are odd. Just plain odd. They are on their own ferris wheel that keeps going round and round and no one gets on and no one can get off.

I wish there was more to explain, but I couldn't. The ferris wheel analogy really does do it for me I think.......

"Hi, Motivation isn't in right now....

but if you could come back at the end of semester when this is all over, then maybe we could get together and do something. Thanks!"

Not much more to say than that. It's the wee early hours of a daylight savings morning and not only am I tired but I just lost 60 more minutes and my eyelids are clamping shut. Oy.

Maybe tomorrow will be a better compositional day.

Tsunami thoughts towards Earth's tilt

You wouldn't be alive or human if you didn't pause for a second and feel compassion for our fellow human beings half a world away today. Regardless of what your faith, political position, or crankiness of life, it would be truly terrible if you didn't feel sad for the onslaught of photos and videos that were coming in from Japan today. I'm sure for many more days we will be hearing stories and seeing new videos of devastation and heartbreak. With many reporters making comparisons to Chile, Russia, Sumatra, etc, you can't help feel that we as mere inhabitants on this planet always tend to get so wrapped up in our own microcosms of life that we forget that within moments it's all gone.

It can be a tornado - as the mid-west of the US can attest to...
It can be a hurricane - Katrina, Gloria, Bob...
It can be volcanoes - Iceland's "Eyjafjallajökull", Italy's Mt. Vesuvius and Etna, Hawaii's Kīlauea and Mauna Loa...
It can be massive snow storms - ask anyone in the US east of Minnesota, Europe in 2010..
It can be torrential rain - recent flooding in Australia, Sri Lanka...

I mean, I can go on but it's too depressing already, right?

The point is, as my mother would say, we're only here in passing. Of course the meaning is vastly lost in the translation but she meant that what we do (in our lives) is a blip in the grand scheme of the world. Also, that what happens to the planet can always be redone (or corrected) whether we want it to or not. These were deep words for a woman of my mother's stature.

Now more than ever, I feel that we (and yes, I mean the universal we) need to remember that we are much more than the hottest gossip, blockbuster movie, newest phone or electronic gadget or car. I'm no expert in any field. Or brilliant scholar from ivy-leagued walls. I'm just putting some common sense pieces of thought together and have begun to think about what is more than this.

Mother nature definitely has a larger say in our lives than we give her credit for.

Tonight I'll light a candle and see what I can hear.

Ducking Puddles

For almost being the weekend, I don't think I was anticipating so much dreary weather. The annoying rain was just that - annoying, but light and once in a while heavy. However it wasn't like that when I was walking to my car, without an umbrella of course AND without the hood for my windbreaker, I mean how bad could it have gotten?

Bad.

I was drenched from head to toe. I actually was grateful I grabbed a scarf on the way out of the house and ridiculously had to use it as a "head wrap" to help block out some of the heavy drops. I looked like a fool and it sorta worked. Still, I realize that it could be worse. It could be snow and I'd be stuck in the midst of a blizzard and have no food w/ a sm. bottle of water to survive on for who knows how long. So yeah, I can live with this.

So as my clothes were drying in my bathroom......a tune entered...and began to infiltrate my brain.....

In my past life

I came across this and it caught my eye....

When I've worked in 3 out of 4 of the jobs listed I must be doing something right.

How Jobs gave me perspective

However it still doesn't give me much solace about where I'm going.

Do you read

I was recently pondering the idea that someone reads the words I write. It was a brief, fleeting moment of sorts, but a firm guttural feeling told me this was the case. I had never before thought about how that would make me feel OR how in the world someone (essentially a stranger) would react or feel entertained by my words. I laughed at the notion that the person would be intrigued and not die of boredom. After all, there's so much I want to put in here and yet I leave so much of it out. My brain, daily, wants to spew out stories, information and and observations but hesitates to do so partially because if I start I feel that my fingers will bleed and that would be bad. Bad.

So instead I realize that there's no sense is being shy or being reserved in text. Words are words but their arrangement and feeling become more than that. Especially, when you try to say more things than you're really writing.

Can you imagine how I flirt? lol.