Category: Blather

Blather

Ebenezer

Sally4 Comments

Yesterday I gathered a pile of rocks.

The idea came from a conversation that I had had the previous weekend. A friend came to visit. I can’t remember how the conversation turned to Myers-Briggs personality types, but it did.

I am an INTJ.

The first time I took the test — maybe in the 80s — I was off-the-scale Introvert, and overall INTJ. The introvert doesn’t bother me. I understand that. I TOTALLY need alone time.

It’s the rest of the personality that I haven’t learned to appreciate. To break it down, I is for introversion (opposite: extroversion), N is for Intuition (opposite: sensing), T is for Thinking (opposite: feeling), and J is for Judging (opposite: perceiving).

I’ve taken the test multiple times, spaced out over years and years. Always the same result — INTJ.

Famous INTJs: Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lenin, Mark Zuckerberg, Ayn Rand, Jodi Foster, Hilary Clinton.

Ugh. Every time I look at a list of INTJs, I see overly-ambitious people that I wouldn’t want to have dinner with. (Okay — maybe I would like to have dinner with Jodi Foster.) That’s not really fair to them.

Some of my children are INTJs. I absolutely ADORE them and LOVE having dinner with them. They love to learn. They think outside the box. They come up with innovative solutions. It’s easy to see the positives in them.

In my conversation last weekend, my friend asked, “What are the good points of an INTJ?”

“You’re asking the wrong person,” I replied.

I knew that I should have an answer to that question.

Hence my pile of rocks.

I want to learn to embrace my INTJ-ness.

So I made two lists of INTJ attributes: one positive, or strengths; the other negative, or weaknesses.

  • Independent
  • Thirst for Knowledge
  • Strategic/Innovative Thinking
  • Dependability
  • Ambitious
  • Problem-solving
  • Self-confident
  • Arrogance
  • Perfectionism
  • Judgemental Attitude
  • Emotional Detachment
  • Resistance to Authority
  • Misanthropy (dislike of humans)
  • Overanalyzing

It’s scary how well they describe me. What I WANT to do is pair up positives and negatives, and then write each pairing on a rock.

For instance, I see Self-confidence being misread as Arrogance. They belong on the same rock.

When I was in high school, I remember overhearing someone say that I was “stuck-up” — aka arrogant. I knew arrogant girls. They sat in the lunch room and talked about everyone. They didn’t think, but they KNEW that they were better than the riff-raff that surrounded them.

I did not want to be part of that group so I sat with a bunch of boys and played card games at lunch.

I was quiet, and didn’t always join things, especially things the other girls did. I suppose that can be read as stuck-up. The truth was that I didn’t feel like I fit in. Self-confidence, I guess, allowed me to see that I didn’t fit in and told me that I didn’t have to change who I was. I wish I understood that better in those days.

I suppose that too much self-confidence CAN lead to arrogance. Someone may start actually believing that they are better than others. I don’t think that’s a trap I’ve fallen into. God help me if I have.

But here I go, blathering on, when I really wanted to ask for a little help. How would you pair up those strengths and weaknesses? Do I really need to pair them? Should I just write them?

I want my little pile of rocks to remind me to be my best me, not my worst.

Blather · Life

About My Week

Sally6 Comments

Following up on a few recent posts —

First, the fawn. It most definitely is the time of year for fawns around here.

One of my co-workers has three doe-fawn pairs that frequent her yard. She has actually named them all. “Do you feed them?” I asked, marveling that she could recognize and differentiate these deer.

She admitted that she did. “I cut up apples for them,” she said, slightly embarrassed.

I thought about suggesting that she just put in some hosta. That seems to work at attracting them to my house. Honestly, I wish it didn’t.

But there is something delightful about those spindly-legged fawns.

The other day I was driving down the road and I saw a doe slowly walking across the street. I slowed right down. One deer usually means more deer.

A fawn leaped out behind her, skittered part way across, saw me and turned back. I was now at a complete stop.

I waited.

The doe waited on the other side.

He jumped out in the road again, but indecisiveness took over, and, again, skittered back to the side where he had started. I got my phone out to try to capture some of the drama.

Mama Doe took a little action. She ran back to her fawn, but he was heading into the road AGAIN. She leaped over him, down the gully, and was gone.

After a moment’s thought, he joined her.

I thought, Learn to be decisive. Indecision is literally going to kill you, my friend.

Second, lifeguarding. I’m still riding a bit of a high from passing the lifeguarding class.

I was talking to the Aquatics Director one day last week, and I said, “I may not be the strongest guard out there, but I will never hesitate to take action.”

I know this about myself. I think it’s generally a good ability. I don’t foolishly jump in, but I can pretty quickly come up with an emergency plan and implement it.

Case in point (not lifeguarding related) — yesterday morning, a member came out to the front desk to report a bat in the women’s locker room.

It wasn’t flying around; it was simply hanging out on outside of the door to the sauna, a warm abode.

Two staff women were already in the women’s locker room trying to clear the area so a male custodian could come in and solve the problem.

I asked for, and got, a container and a piece of cardboard. I took the container and placed it over the bat, trapping it inside. I opened the sauna door so I had access to both sides of the door. Then, I placed the cardboard on one, slide the container along the other side, and trapped the little bat inside. I carried it out and handed the container with the bat trapped inside to a custodian and off he went.

Problem solved.

Third, I’ve been paying attention to the birds on the wire.

Since the post the other day, and my abysmal attempt to snap my own photograph, I’ve been paying more attention.

Last night, I saw two mourning doves above me on the telephone wires.

Yes, wires plural.

One sat on one wire, the other perched on the parallel wire.

One was looking off into the field, the other looking at the back of its partner’s head.

I know I shouldn’t read too much into this. They are just some birds on a wire, after all. Still, it made me sad — because this is the state of too many human relationships. A gulf between. Looking in the same direction but not at the same thing.

And that’s about it.

This week I also cut some peonies and put them in my room,

and I snapped a shot of some roadside daisies.

Beauty abounds this time of year.

This stream-of-consciousness writing began with Linda Hill’s prompt “starts with ab-” and took a meandering route through some ab- words, mostly “about”.

Blather · swimming

Saturday Blather on Lifeguarding

Sally15 Comments

The bruises are finally clearing up on my arms.

Last week if I had had to go to the Emergency Room for some unrelated something, I’m sure the staff would have taken one look at my arms and wondered if I was being abused. A few forearm bruises and major bruising on both upper arms from encounters with a rescue tube, a rescue board, and a backboard — all inflicted by teenagers uncomfortably grabbing hold of my arms to “rescue” me.

I was equally uncomfortable being the sixty-something year old taking a class with kids who could be my own kids or grandkids.

But I had set my sight on the goal, and doggone if I wasn’t going to achieve it.

The first week was awful. See last week’s post — A Full Week — which I probably should have called, “Whose Dumb Idea Was This?”

The second week was bad in a different way. On Monday, a man came in that I’ve been trying to talk into giving a talk for our seniors. I kind of want him to take me seriously, but there I was, taking a class with a 15 year old and a young 20-something.

And I was struggling.

Seriously, whose dumb idea was this?

On Tuesday, he came in again to swim. Dang.

And a few other people I knew. Dang again.

There’s literally no place to hide in a swimming pool.

I suppose I could just sink to the bottom, but then my classmates would be compelled to rescue me. Oh wait — I did that. That’s how I got bruised. (It was part of the class.)

The third night was the waterfront module and the class size went from three to ten — all teenagers except for the one twenty-something. And me.

I could feel the lap swimmers staring at me.

Ugh.

Yesterday, one of those lap swimmers came into my office with a membership question. He stared at me.

And stared.

How do you spell uncomfortable? B-E-I-N-G-S-T-A-R-E-D-A-T

Finally, he said, “Were you in the lifeguarding class the other night?”

“Um, yes,” I replied. “I was the old person.”

“That is such an inspiration,” he said. “It is good for the young people to see that.”

Whew. I felt slightly better.

Here’s the thing, though. I’ve taking the lifeguarding class a bunch of times. There are two times I am especially proud of my accomplishment: the first and the last.

The first time I took lifeguarding was 1978 at Syracuse University. I was a scrawny 115 lbs of nothing. The instructor was Doris Soladay, a tall lean woman with a confidence I wished I had.

In the intervening 45 years since I took that class, I have thought about her often.

Lifeguarding has changed. We no longer do the hair-carry. Rescue tubes were invented and became a required piece of equipment. Gloves — non-latex, or course — became required PPE along with the rescue mask. Yes, we used to do mouth-to-mouth literally mouth-to-mouth. Now there are bag-valve masks and AEDS. It has changed.

In 1978, for the final rescue scenarios, Doris Soladay paired us up with another student. She paired me with a football player. He was at least twice my weight and had no neck. I pulled her aside and asked that she pair me with someone a little closer to my size. I’ll never forget her answer.

“If you can rescue him, you can rescue anyone.”

She knew that I needed to build that confidence even more than the knowledge of how to rescue. Knowledge comes easy. Confidence, not so much.

I rescued him. I passed. And I was incredibly proud of myself.

The other night, when I passed again, I felt almost as proud.

And I whispered a little thank-you to Doris Soladay.

The bruises on my arms are badges of honor that will fade, but my sense of accomplishment will not.

Blather · Life

A Full Week

Sally15 Comments

I’m not sure when I’ve had such a full week.

For those who don’t know my schedule — which hopefully is the vast majority of you because it would be kind of creepy if you did know — on most days, I start work at 5 AM. Yes, you read that right — 5 AM.

Since I NEED to start my day with reading, I get up between 3:30 and 3:45 AM. I journal. I read. I sit and sip my coffee. Then it’s rush-rush-rush to go to work.

Honestly, I don’t mind that schedule. In fact, I pretty much LOVE that schedule. I love the early morning people — like me — that I get to see when they arrive to work out at the gym where I work.

Like an idiot, however, I signed up to take a lifeguarding class. A class that went from 5 – 9 PM Monday through Wednesday this past week and next.

“Whose dumb idea was this?” I asked myself more than once.

“Oh yeah, mine,” I answered myself.

So — up at 3:30, to bed at 9:30 (at best) and repeat X3.

The first night of lifeguarding class, two of the six students failed the swim test.

The second night of lifeguarding class, I excused myself at one point to go cry in the locker room. The class was physically taxing on me. If you added up the ages of the other students in the class, I still had ten years on them. I didn’t cry though. I just pulled myself together and pushed through.

By the third night I was finally in the groove and class went well.

Then it was Thursday. On Thursday night, one of my sons was arriving with his wife for a short visit. I had offered them my newly created guest room.

Of course, because they were my first guests, I still had a lot to do in the room. I mean, A LOT to do.

I’m living in the house in which I grew up. It contains all my parents’ stuff. It contains grandparent stuff from both sides of the family. It contains stuff from my brother who predeceased my parents. It contains a lot of MY stuff, my kids’ stuff. So basically, there is stuff and more stuff in this house.

The new guest room still had a lot of stuff in it. It still HAS a lot of stuff in it. Putting clean sheets on the bed and cleaning the bathroom was the easy part of getting the room ready. Dealing with the stuff was … umm… not so much.

I kept working away at it, afraid to sit down because I was afraid I would fall asleep because I was still tired from lifeguarding class. Finally, it was 7 or 7:30 and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I called it good, and went to bed.

Friday was a blur. Work and going for a walk with my visiting son are the two things that stand out.

The last thing I filled — and actually I mean OVERfilled — was my week.

Will next week be better? I don’t know. I’ve got three more days of lifeguarding class. Whose dumb idea was that?

This is in response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt: the last thing you filled.

Blather

1901

Sally5 Comments

On my way to work this morning, I heard a story on the radio about an incandescent light bulb that was lit in 1901 and is still burning.

A photo of the Centennial Light Bulb pendant light in Livermore, California. This photo was taken in 2016.

In 1901, my maternal grandmother was 5 years old. My paternal grandfather hadn’t been born, and wouldn’t be for another 2 years.

However, here’s something contemporaneous with that 1901 light bulb: Walt Disney was born.

Can’t you picture a cartoon light bulb appearing over Walt Disney’s head time and time and time and time again over the course of his life as he had one idea after another? I think that light bulb would look remarkably like this light bulb that was born the same time he was.

Blather

Sink, Sank, Sunk

Sally6 Comments

Saturday has become my favorite day for blogging. Last week, one of my readers told me that reading the Saturday post was “like we were sitting together having a chat and a cuppa.” That’s such a huge compliment!

On Saturdays I’ve given myself permission to blather using the Stream of Consciousness prompt given by Linda Hill. This week that prompt is: sink/sank/sunk

So let me update you on my kitchen sink. I called the plumber a few months ago. He came. He saw. He fixed. Sort of. A slow drip still exists. It’s not leaking behind or under the sink. It’s just drip…………………….drip………………………….dripping. Should I call the plumber again? Let’s just say it isn’t annoying enough for me to do that. Yet.

My heart sank one day at work this week when I learned of a mistake I had made. It wasn’t a clerical error or something that involved money or something silly like that. It involved feelings. I had hurt someone’s feelings in a terrible way. I apologized — twice — but the damage is done. As unfeeling as some people may think I am — I mean, I DO operate in a logic brain most of the time, and hold my feelings pretty close to me — I also care INTENSELY about feelings.

AND, as unfeeling as some people may think I am, on this occasion, I turned to a co-worker and literally cried on her shoulder. When I first went to her office and started crying, she said, “I can’t tell if you are kidding or if these are real tears.” I don’t think she had seen me cry before.

I assured her the tears were real.

After about half an hour of listening to me, she grabbed my hand and said, “Let’s take a walk outside.”

It’s amazing what fresh air and sunshine can do for the soul — especially the hurting soul.

While I was apologizing to the person I had hurt, she said to me, “I don’t even want to come to work anymore.”

Same, sister, same.

But I have a co-worker who has my back. She understands what happened and why. That’s worth a WHOLE LOT.

And I have tulips at my desk at work.

So when I walk through the door going through the sink-sank-sunk emotions of I-don’t-want-to-be-here, I see the tulips and they lift my heart.

Blather · family · Life

Saturday Blather

Sally4 Comments

I should have taken pictures last weekend — at the very least, a photograph of the big stick we moved into the storage unit.

Yep, we stored a stick. It’s actually a tall dried stalk of bamboo.

“It’s a staff,” Mary said.

Someone had given it to her. It was cool. She said all that, too.

I agree. It was kind of cool. But when I saw the prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday — stick — it hit me that we had stored a stick.

I’m sure there are worse things out there in storage units. I don’t even want to think about that.

But photographs from my road trip last week were limited to one, which I’ll share in a sec.

I drove to Virginia to pick up her from college. Last year, when it came to moving out, there had been tears. Not the I’m-sad-that-I’m-leaving-school variety. More the I’m-overwhelmed-with-this-process variety.

Packing up and moving is a tough business, don’t you think?

But we successfully emptied the dorm room, stored some stuff in a shared storage unit (including a stick/staff), loaded up the car, and headed home. Without any tears.

I didn’t take a single picture of that process. In fact, I only took one photo — I promise, I’ll share it soon, but it’s really nothing great so don’t build up your hopes.

I wish I had taken a picture of the view from the stables. The school has a riding program, and one of the storage unit sharers was up at the stable when we went to get the key.

First, I love horses. Such beautiful animals. We visited some of the horses in the barn, then Mary’s friend walked us out and pointed out some in the pastures. Beautiful, beautiful animals out grazing in beautiful Virginia fields. The fields were dotted with trees leafing out, flowers blooming, and horse nibbling at the grass while swishing away the flies with their long beautiful tails. I really should have taken a photograph.

Here’s a photograph (nope, still not the one) documenting my early love of horses. I think I was three years old.

And here’s another one (still not the one) showing my continued love of horses. I was maybe ten years old?

Without further ado, I should just show you the picture I took last weekend. Honestly, this is the problem with Stream of Consciousness writing. You start off thinking that you’re going one place and then you end up in another place entirely.

We had just loaded up the car and Mary had run in for one check. I was waiting outside the dorm and started to read the plaque there. It was from 1955 when the dorm was built. The reason I took the picture was to remind me of how far we’ve come. At this all women’s college in 1955, all the married women on the plaque are swallowed up by their husbands’ names. The unmarried women still have their first names. The married ones do not.

To me, that feels sad — that namelessness.

But we’re making progress, aren’t we?

I have a name — and I like it when people call me by name. Most of the time.

Sometimes it’s unnerving when people know my name and I don’t know theirs.

A woman stopped me the other day when I was getting ice cream with Mary. She said, “You’re Sally, aren’t you?”

I have no idea who she was. She knew me from my work with the senior programming I’ve been doing.

But this has nothing to do with sticks. Or horses.

Not that it has to, of course. I’m just blathering at this point.

I should end now.

Blather

Stream of Consciousness Blather

Sally5 Comments

True story: I’m overwhelmed, overanxious, overtired and pretty much over this post every day business.

This morning, from my tiny room in an AirBnB with questionable internet, I wrote a 700+ word post baring my soul about some of my over-anxiety and overwhelmed-ness.

Then, my daughter messaged me. She was ready to be picked up from her college dorm so we could drop a few more things in the storage unit before we began the long drive home. I quickly read through my stream-of-consciousness blather, added a few tags, and hit “Publish.” The spinny-thing started spinning.

It gave me a minute to read through it all again. Whew! That’s pretty raw! I thought, but I had already hit “Publish.” Too late. But the spinny-thing was still spinning.

I brought my stuff to the car — everything except my computer, that is. I came back in to check on the status of my post. Had it published? Well, the spinny-thing was still spinning.

I stared at it, re-read the post, thought Oof! I don’t know how this person or that person will react to it!

I used the bathroom — I had a long drive ahead of me. I checked the computer. Guess what? Yep, the spinny-thing was still spinning.

Okay, time to reload, I thought. I hit the reload button.

“Changes you made may not be saved,”my computer said.

I decided to take my chances. I hit reload again.

Everything disappeared.

Everything.

I’m pretty sure that sometimes technology errors save us from ourselves.

I drove 9 hours and thought about that more than once. Some things are best kept private.

Life is still overwhelming and I’m still overanxious. I’m definitely overtired.

But I’ll keep plugging away at posting every day.

Thanks for sticking with me.

Blather · Music

Music from My Childhood

Sally5 Comments

Last night I went with one of my sons and his wife and daughter to a concert by Le Vent du Nord, a French-Canadian folk music group from Quebec. It now ranks among the few times I wished I had stuck with French instead of switching to Latin in high school.

Side note: our French teacher taught us by having us memorize dialogues in French. To date, I have yet to say to ANYBODY, “Regarde cette belle neige com el tombe,” whereas Latin words seem to commonly crop up/creep in. Caveat emptor, cogito ergo sum, and all that.

Such joy on that stage! Oh my goodness! Laughter doesn’t need a language any more than music does.

When one of the band members first pulled out his accordion, I was transported back to Bosnia 2017, when one of men there had started playing his accordion after dinner and soon everyone was singing along. I told my daughter-in-law about that experience and she had had a similar one in Switzerland. I have yet to go to dinner at anyone’s house in the USA, have someone start playing the accordion and people start singing along.

When I saw Linda Hill Stream of Consciousness prompt for this week — “a song from your childhood” — I immediately thought of an album, not a single song. If I had to choose a single song, it would be The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” which is the first song I distinctly remember hearing and wanting to hear over and over. I was four years old when that came out.

The album from my childhood that I thought of was an album of folk music my father gave me when I was in 5th grade. It was assorted artists and assorted songs. Do I distinctly remember any of the songs? No. Well, I do remember “Mrs. Murphy’s Chowder” but it certainly wasn’t my favorite song on the album. It’s kind of a strange song, if you know it. When they listed the ingredients of the chowder, it went something like, “Ice cream, cold cream, benzene, gasoline, soup beans, string beans, floating all around. Sponge cake, beef steak, mistake, stomach ache, egg puffs, ear muffs, begging to be found…” Clearly I listened to it waaaay too many times. And, like I said, it wasn’t my favorite song.

I think that album was like a packet of assorted wildflower seeds that was sown in my heart and took root. Goodness, I love folk music. It is my absolute favorite.

These days, I listen to Scottish folk music all the time. If you walk into my office, you may hear a little skirl of bagpipes playing softly in the background or some sad homesick song about Scotland.

I loved the Québécois music I heard last night. In fact, let me end my blather with a song from Le Vent du Nord, “Ma Louise.”

Check out the foot-tapping guy in the background. I could have listened to that all night.

All I understood was “Au revoir, ma Louise.” I looked up the translation of all the lyrics. Of course, it’s a sad song with happy music.

A to Z Blogging Challenge · Blather · collage · Writing

Finish My Limerick – Y

Sally16 Comments

There once was a snail named Yoda
Whose slime was a written code(ah)
“In the goo, my words are —
Crunch me not, oh large car”

YES! The finish line is in sight!

I feel like I’ve been running a marathon.

Or maybe a biathlon.

Or triathlon.

The multi-event races are probably a better depiction of my month of April.

So. Many. Things.

I chose to participate in the A-to-Z Challenge — which involved posting through the month of April using a different letter of the alphabet for each day. April 1 was A. Today, April 29 is Y. For the challenge, I chose to write four lines of a limerick and ask my readers to finish the limerick.

Like an idiot, I thought, I’ll collage every day, too. A collage to go with each unfinished limerick I post.

Each collage takes time.

And they started to feel forced.

For me, art needs to kind of happen.

When I sit down to intentionally create something, it generally looks like crap. BUT, when I sit down and start to play with the various images I’ve already cut out, something different happens. I suppose, it could still look like crap, but the process is definitely more satisfying.

Take my superglued tiara princess of yesterday. Here’s the process of how she came to be:

  • The letter X. I searched for names that begin with X. When I saw Xaviera, I thought of a tiara. That was the seed.
  • I looked through what I had with princesses and tiaras, but all those darn tiaras were sitting firmly entrenched on the princesses’ heads —
  • SUPER GLUE! — Actually, I thought of Ramona Quimby making a crown for herself out of burdocks. I remember reading that to my kids and KNOWING that had I thought of that at age 8, I would most certainly have done it.
  • From there, I went to the idea of princess whose crown kept slipping, and like Ramona, didn’t think through the consequences of her solution.
  • Where would the princess be after that? I suppose she would have gone to see the royal physician to get it removed. I found a picture that I could use as background for a doctor’s office.
  • I labeled the blank tube “Super Glue.” Sure she would have brought the tube with her to show the doctor.
  • I labeled the book Stupid Things We Do. I wanted to write Stupid Things People Do but didn’t have enough space. Surely the royal physician would have had to pull out a book like that for a reference before he tackled the problem at hand.

Today’s limerick proved to be a problem because once I settle on Yoda, I wanted to use Yoda-speak, but my mind couldn’t twist the words around appropriately. I felt like I was in a yoga class with pretzel people.

So anyway — this month I had those two things going on — limericks and collages — and then life kept happening, too.

Work — busy, busy, busy.

Church — must write the minutes to a meeting that happened two weeks ago!

Taxes were in the middle of the month — yes, I procrastinated.

The grass is growing — must figure out my mowing dilemma.

Life keeps chugging along.

The good news is that two things will finish up tomorrow — limericks and collages.

This blather has been brought to you by Linda Hill’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday.