Wonderblog

I was watching Veronica have some time with her daddy this morning. They seemed happy, so I got a plastic shopping bag and went outside to do what I do pretty much every weekend.

Pick up doggie poop

I was sad. It has become a favorite mommy-daughter activity. As I make a slow grid pattern over the lawn, Veronica will trail me, paying close attention to the grass. Sometimes she finds it first, but if she does not, I will stop and point.

“Look! What’s that?”

she will carefully look around and then point her chubby toddler finger and announce “Doggie Poop!”

I will carefully wrap the plastic bag around the offending matter, and we will start our search trek again.

She’s very serious about it. Sometime, she will even count the pieces. “Doggie poop! one…two..three!”

“Very good!”

She will not always take this task so seriously. She will not always be this companionable as I do my (no pun intended) duty.

AND plastic grocery bags may not always be available. They are under attack from different sides.

So I was sad this morning, because I didn’t have my apprentice in the dog poop patrol.

Then the back door swung open “She wants to come with you!” Chris announced. And my tow-headed delight came running out to join the party.

“Look! It’s doggie poop!” I told her.

“Doggie Poop!”

Life can be really funny sometimes. I don’t want our doggie poop saturday mornings to stop.

So, I have a daughter. She’d the only child I have. I thought I might like to have a son, but that didn’t happen.

Now, Boys are fun because they are so active and brave. My little one is pretty active too. But she does what girls do.

And what THIS girl likes to do is go out and have breakfast on a weekend.  I am pretty sure most sons would not find that charming.

She just turned 3, and I’ve decided it’s time to begin the brunching.

She does alright. She enjoys playing with the sugar packets (they make an interesting noise when you shake them), and she is happy with the kidcups she can get. “Horsey!” She likes the scrambled eggs and often says “How bout french fries?”

…requesting something not traditionally on the menu might very well be exactly the sort of thing a lady doing brunch should do…Although I will try to redirect towards potatoes

My goal, as we progress along the brunch training path, is to get a full cup of coffee.

http://writtenbymurphy.com/wonderblog/?p=32

I wrote this blog entry about losing contact with people who once meant so much to me. I was ending my college career.

One of those friends did stay in touch, though.

Is it facebook? I don’t know. But that light touch of “hey, I’m here and I care” was maintained over the last ten years.

You just never know.

“I just heard that Norah Jones is doing a country album…”

my reply “I just got an album from a group that is British Country Acid House…”

Nerds are supposed to be ‘in vogue’ right now.

But, that sort of response I gave to a casual conversation…THAT is the essense of nerd-dom. Because the other woman said “I have no idea what any of those things mean”

and that was the end of that conversational train of thought. No “Please explain.”

Maybe I did the faux pas. Maybe I just should have said “oh! Fancy that! Norah Jones…”

But I wanted to talk about it, and about what I was thinking about the topic.

They didn’t have a way to even pick up that thread.

sigh

It’s lonely at the nerdtop

Yesterday in a toastmaster’s meeting, the speaker was talking about new year’s resolutions and goals. She was encouraging us, reaching deep to instpire.

“Imagine this: What would it look like if you were to be a hero a year from now?”

I know she was trying for us to do positive reinforcement. But for me…”hero’…It is a tired word.

HEROIC is an adjective that seems always to be followed by “Sacrifice”

Billy, Don’t be a Hero. I’m not wanting to be a hero. You know, maybe I’m retiring from being a hero.

Not for my current crop of associates.

I was telling chris about this. He said “If you throw yourself on the grenade and nobody knows it’s a grenade, what does it get you?”

Exactly.

I’m tired of the dirty needs and grenade absorption. All the others who’ve seen me throw myself on the ground just keep thinking I”m an idiot.

Fight your own grenades. i don’t want it anymore.

But if I don’t want to be a hero, what then?

I knew this guy that wanted to be an actor. He took some big chances in his early twenties, and made some big changes to study acting.

Right as he was starting this he had a job at a grocery store. He told me it was easy to fall into believing that this grocery store job would be the rest of his life.

“A grocery store? Your job for the rest of your LIFE? are you kidding me?”

“That’s how the people there see it.”

It was familiar. It was just enough to scrape together a comfortable life.

He wanted more than the produce section, though. He leaped out of that pond.

I’m long past my early twenties now. I get it, I get what those grocery store careerists were about. Many environments become that way.

Something that starts out as an “okay for now” place can take on a “this is just how it’s done” cast, and the next thing you know it’s just how you have been doing it. How you are doing it. How you will be doing it now and ever and unto ages of ages.

Familiar is what happens when you stop trying. Or it also happens when you try to make a shoe fit. Settling for the less scary road.

Because it’s what people do.

But it wasn’t for my actor friend.

And I have *thought* I was the same way. Strive! More! reach! Never settle!

But I find myself falling into the comfortable and familiar, telling myself it is just how these things are done.

That’s not what I want.

I want to do more. I want to be better than the norm.

which means I have to try. I have to get up every morning and TRY.

I have to also figure out a practical way to try in increments that match my stride.

Because it’s a long road. A long unfamiliar road.

On my WonderWeekly, I wrote about the lure and sparkle of gold stars. We want approval. We crave recognition.

But how much does it really give us? It’s a sort of subtraction stew. The more you get the more you want.

At what point do we…oh, wait..do *I* get over it? i’m trying to get over it.

But I see it in other people and I realize what a trap it is.

This scenario happens so often:

Hey, Jane! I like your hair.

You do? I don’t really like it. Do you think it’s okay?

Or:

Ashley, your house is beautiful! Thank you for having us over.

No, it’s not. I think your house is so much better.

I have started to respond to these ladies, “Do you want me to agree with you? Do you want me to tell you that you are right, that your hair/house/project is crap? Why are you arguing with me? Are you calling me a liar?”

Women seem especially susceptible to this error.

We want to be voted in by the WHOLE group as homecoming queen.

We want to be recognized, stand out of the crowd, and be pointed out as special and extraordinary.

But I’m discovering that the only person who counts when deciding who is special is the self.  I have to tell myself what I have permission to do. I have to tell myself that my hair looks good, and that I have the right to ask for that particular day off or even that salary in the job interview

It counts far more than when someone else give it to me. When I recognize myself, that’s when the gears engage and I can get things rolling.

I dont’ want to be dependent on someone else to believe in myself. It’s time for me to get over that.

I like being appreciated. Who doesnt’ love a compliment? But I have to have my motivation engine inside me, not located somewhere I can’t always get to.

I read a blogpost from a writer who was describing a leap of productivity she had managed to attain.

She had figured out a way to write 10,000 words a day.

Ten Thousand words a day!

WOw. If I could achieve that sort of productivity, I would be able to be a prolific writer.

I had come up with my own ideas about how much a writer could writer. But this woman describes some really practical ways to make it possible to write like crazy.

hm.

Now all I need is to figure out what story I want to tell.

heh. Yes, there is that.

Reading Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

I’ve thought many a time that if I had time to do nothing but write, I would blog the books I’m reading as I read them. My opinions and discoveries in the books change a lot over the course of the reading of them.

Right now little Carol is having a hard time adjusting to life as the wife of a small-town prairie doctor. Her struggle at this moment is having to ask her husband for money every day. Money to EAT.

The lack of freedom and autonomy in such a system leaves me chilled. Here is the reality:

Refrigerators and other food preservation techniques were in their infancy. If one wanted to eat meat for dinner, it had to be purchased that day and eaten that day. Leftovers were very tricky. Not tricky because they were boring and unappealing. Tricky because they might POISON you because they had turned bad overnight.

Credit cards and ATMS were far in the future. The 20s version of credit cards was having the storekeeper keep a tab for you. In Carol’s case, the grocer didn’t give credit. So.

The lovely graciousness of having a servant and a parlour was more than mitigated by having to ASK HER HUSBAND FOR MONEY EVERY DAY.

EVERY DAY.

TO EAT.

And the forward-thinking solution to this degrading dilemma?

The husband should give her an allowance

Oh ladies. Ladies, ladies, ladies. Let us never forget.

less than a year ago, I’d been celebrating my son’s first birthday, and his wife Julie had smiles for him.  He was about to be promoted. THe promotion came and Julie went.

There seemed to be no telling with life. You get lucky, but not everyone agrees that you get to keep your luck.

Julie said she wouldn’t stop him if he wanted to move across the country to be near her and the boy. But it wasn’t his idea of a way to start a new life together-but-not. ‘Come on along! I won’t set the law on you!’

Operations manager of the drugstore, though, he’d had higher hopes for that. Because it was only one step away from store manager, and store manager was the way to go. That was a darn good career.

Operations manager was a lot more responsibility, which meant he had a reason not to go home. Because home wasn’t much to write home about. Heh.

Wasn’t work supposed to be the best part of his life? But here was death in the breakroom.