Month: September 2014

Happy Tuesday!

I’m feeling about 50x better than this time yesterday, which I attribute to going to bed around 9pm last night.  Stayed up and watched a couple episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm but was asleep before 10:00 anyway.  Woke up this morning feeling refreshed and rested and – naturally – disinclined to get out of bed which is about 100x more comfortable than it was before.  (Plus there’s no lingering smell of cat pee at all.)  Nevertheless, I did get up and now here I am repeating another day at the office.  

Yesterday evening was pleasant too — I mowed the back yard (Ryan said he’d mow the front….but…..you know…), then had pizza for dinner while playing Skyrim on the couch.  It’s so nice to just relax and not think about anything except why it’s taking three dragonbone arrows to kill those frost trolls, and why the dragon priest I just killed doesn’t have a mask.  Ahhhh.  

The plan for tonight is to mow the front lawn and go grocery shopping.  I think that I commented a week or so ago that I’d successfully avoided grocery shopping for about a month — so now I guess it’s been 6 weeks or so.  Need to clean out my refrigerator before I go.  Yuck.  

Oh I should also do another load of laundry.  I AM going to get caught up on this shit.  And it’s going to be awesome to not have any dirty laundry at all.  

Per Liesl, the bees from yesterday’s post was not a good example of the modern art desserts so I thought I’d post another cool one.  This is a cheese platter.  

mark bradford bradford cheese

Need to get ingredients to make at least one thing in this book while I’m at Aldi today, so I can stop putting up pictures from the book and start putting up ones that I’ve taken.  Mmhm.

I didn’t actually have that much to say.  Mostly I guess I wanted to encourage all of you to purchase memory foam mattress pads and additional quilted mattress pads to go on top, as this will add about 3″ of padding to your bed and be absolutely amazing.  If you don’t like soft beds, don’t do this.  But if you like your bed experience to be one of sinking into a soft, sheet-y embrace where you can immediately forget about everything you were worrying about before, then go the memory foam route.

comments

Been perusing some articles online this morning (it’s been a slow morning…) and was just reminded of why I never read comments at the end of these articles.  I live in a state of self-imposed ignorance regarding the intelligence of my fellow human beings; I like to think that everyone has critical thinking abilities (c’mon, critical thinking is the same as common sense isn’t it??) and that people will try to figure things out for themselves before posting completely idiotic statements online.  But….every time I go read comments after reading almost any type of article, I am amazed at how stupid some people are.  

Sorry if that’s mean.  But regardless, it’s true.

If you’re interested in the specifics (also I feel like I should offer examples instead of just arbitrarily throwing my opinion out there) – was reading this piece from the Atlantic, Is There Any Rational Case for Banning Gay Marriage?  I personally thought the article was well-reasoned…but don’t ask what made me keep scrolling down to view the comments.  Maybe I wanted to see if anyone would actually have a logical rebuttal?  Instead, comments like these (“Think about this for a moment: If your parents were gay you wouldn’t exist”; “Don’t be ridiculous. You are comparing the natural, biological pairing of a male and female, to some boy putting his wee wee up another boy’s butt”; “Homosexual pairing is a chosen biological dead end and as such merits absolutely no taxpayer subsidy or state sponsorship”) have a sort of snowball effect culminating in my desire to pull out my hair and yell profanities at random people.  

(HA!  Another reason I have a blog is to keep me from pulling out my hair and yelling at random people.  Good stuff.)

I will also note that a lot of the comments on this article (and I didn’t even make it very far) were positive and called these bigots out on being close-minded and stupid (i.e. it’s absolutely ridiculous to say that if your parents were gay then you wouldn’t exist; that assumes that gay people are either unable to conceive even after having intercourse with a member of the opposite sex, or that because they are not attracted to the opposite sex then they would never feel themselves pressured to pretend to be…).  

Anyway, had to vent a little.  I’m done now.  I think.  

mmhmmm.

So I ate a chunk of Gruyere last night while watching Curb Your Enthusiasm in bed, and I do not recommend this or plan to repeat it.  I’m blaming my weird mood on the cheese.  Totally legit.

Found this poem (below) this morning.  Liked it a lot.  Reminded me of this quote.

o'keefe

I Am Afraid

(Elizabeth Jacqueline Mpanga)

I am afraid of myself,
afraid of opening up to show my true colours
i am afraid of myself
afraid to put myself out there and let loose

i am afraid of the unknown
afraid of how people might react to the real me
i am afraid of pain
the pain that is caused by the rejection of a loved one
the pain that is caused by being judged toO harshly for one’s mistakes

i am afraid of my past
afraid that it will catch up with me and expose my ills
i am afraid of my shortcomings
afraid that they will come to light and ruin me
i left it all in the past, am a different person,
yet i am still afraid

i am afraid of forgiveness
afraid that if i forgive my past mistakes and people,
i won’t have anyone to blame for my present failures
i am afraid of loving
afraid because i refused to love when i should have loved

i am afraid of my own shadow
afraid that i can not trust myself with another’s heart
i am afraid of being kind and good
because it opens me up and exposes me to other people
i am afraid because i might get hurt

i am afraid of the present
afraid because i have no idea what my actions will result in later on
i am afraid of my fear
afraid because it will lead me to fail

i am afraid to ask forgiveness
afraid because i do not forgive easily
i am afraid of being alone ‘
afraid because loneliness hurts

i am afraid of rejection
afraid because deep down i just want to be loved
i am afraid of the night
afraid that my nightmares will come and get me

i am afraid of myself
afraid that i might not be good enough
i am afraid of being judged by others
yet i judge others

i am afraid of death
afraid because i don’t know where i’ll end up
i am afraid of myself
afraid because i do not trust myself

 

It’s so odd that I can be convinced that fear of this sort is detrimental and selfish, and yet I still cling to it somewhere in the back of my mind.  I’m reminded of the chapter from the Tao that I have tacked up next to my computer monitor — “Because he believes in himself, he doesn’t try to convince others.  Because he is content with himself, he doesn’t need others’ approval.  Because he accepts himself, the whole world accepts him.”

Why do I harbor fear at all?  Why am I not able to let it go – let it flow away from and out of me, and be content with the knowledge that “the universe is forever out of control, and that trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao”?  Why do I let other people have such a huge impact on my moods and attitudes?  Is it good to be mindful of my shortcomings in this area, or does that just make me feel worse?  How can it both be simple and complicated to answer my own questions?