Tag: stream-of-consciousness

Life · Writing

Decision Making

Sally8 Comments

My youngest daughter is faced with a challenging decision. She and her current roommate are moving into a new apartment. It’s two bedroom, two bath, but one of the bedrooms has a bath attached while the other bedroom would use the common bathroom.

“The one with the private bath is clearly the better one,” she told me. “How do we choose who gets it?”

Draw straws? Flip a coin?

One of her sisters suggested they each bid on the room. How much more would they be willing to pay for the room with the private bath? Later, though, she said that would kill their friendship. Both girls would feel resentful — one for the privacy, the other for the money.

I asked dilemma-daughter again the other day. “Did you figure it out?”

“No,” she said sadly. “This is so hard!”

And yet I think we both know that if this is the hardest decision she has to make in her life, her life will have been pretty easy.

It’s less about making the right decision, and more about being able to sit with whatever decision is made. She will have another hard decision next week, next month, next year. Another opportunity to move on and not second-guess.

I think that’s called living.

This is my post for Stream of Consciousness Saturday, where the prompt was “Straw.”

It’s been a while since I’ve participated in this weekly prompt, but I’m trying to get those creative juices flowing again.

Blather

Weird

Sally5 Comments

The Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS) prompt for today is “i before e.”

Earlier today, I had had a conversation with someone who remarked how he still remembered and leaned on that rule.

“Kind of weird,” I said.

He didn’t get it.

Weird is such a great word — and it’s weird that it doesn’t follow the rule, even when the rhyme is completed — “or when sounded ay as in neighbor and weigh.” We don’t pronounce it wayrd. Weird.

I looked the rule up to make sure I was saying it right. There is funny stuff out in internetland.

How about this one: “I before E unless you leisurely deceive eight overweight heirs to forfeit their sovereign conceits.”

Weird, right?

Ooh, ooh! Here’s another: “I before E except when your foreign neighbors Keith and Heidi receive eight counterfeit beigh sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird.”

I had to look up the word beigh: a provincial governor in the Ottoman empire. I suppose an alternate spelling to Bey.

Or maybe they meant beige.

Or maybe I misread it — I am, after all, trying to do stream-of-consciousness writing, not look-up-funny-things-and-copy-them writing.

Good golly, there are a lot of them. They refer to overweight reindeer and beige sleighs involved in heists.

I kind of stream-of-consciously wrote this last night and meant to post it, but I fell asleep.

Weird.