Remembering....sort of.

Man, I had the best post ever. And it disappeared, just took flight into the ether. Ah well, you'll just have to trust me that it was brilliant and would have solved half of all the problems in the world.

I was talking, I think, about the committee in my head. There is a committee in your head too, honey so back off. This whole committee thing is from an interview I was listening to, and interview with the author Elizabeth George. She said that we all have a committee in our heads. The committee is made up of people like the little girl who invited everyone but you to a birthday party, the boy that never asked you out, the teacher that wondered if you would ever make anything of yourself, the partner who broke your heart...you get the picture.

At any rate, we listen to this committee and boy are the HARD. They have an opinion on everything, and it's never kind or helpful. And yet we listen to them. Stop! Ban the committee!

You know what I rarely, if ever, listen to? The smart me. The me that says things like "don't put your keys there. You'll never find them again" and "don't even ask, he'll say no and you'll be crushed".

I listened to the smart me this morning. I was making breakfast and plannning lunches in my head* when my brain said "Nope, the boy doesn't need lunch made". I had no idea why I didn't need to make him lunch. Couldnt' think of anything going on. Almost decided that just to be safe I better make him a lunch. But the smart me said "look, you may not remember the WHY, but trust me on the WHAT. And WHAT you have to remember is to not make him lunch". And I listened. And made no lunch. And remembered halfway through the morning that he had a half day and was going to a friend's for lunch and a board game after school.

*yes, there is a lot going on in my head. As the Magpies say it "I don't why it is but my brain works all the time".

Beauty: Fading, or non-existent?

I work in an office blessed with a myriad of windows. I love it. Except when people outside forget that what is to them a mirror is to us a window. Don't pee on my window!

One of the things that still interests me - joining this like watching spring arrive, hares run around, storms....ummm...storm - is people that use it as a mirror in the morning. They stop right where my desk is and do a quick once-over. Except for one woman. The woman who does it a dozen times a day.

Yes, you read that correctly: AT LEAST 12 times every single day she stops at my window. Coming in to work, going back to her car for lunch and every single cigarette break she has a routine: she pats her hair, straightens imaginary creases in her outfit, turns her head left, swivels right and pats her hair again. The she does this weird lip-rubbing thing that I remember my mother doing just after she had put lipstick on.

Now, to be fair, this woman is extremely pretty. Other people's heads swivel to watch her go by. What I would like to know is: is she vain, and making sure she is as pretty as she thinks she is? Is she insecure, continually doubting her own good looks? Is she worried that her looks are fading and every second that passes leaves her less beatiful than the previous second?

Coming out of the...cupboard.

I decided to clean out a cupboard on the holiday Monday. It turned into four, actually because they were all connected and it didn't make sense to do just one, when things were bleeding from one area to another.

I had decided to do it because I was getting tired of half full bags of food stuffs flying off the shelf and hitting me in the head whenever the door was opened. It's all done: things are neatly packaged and clearly labelled. An ENTIRE LARGE GREEN garbage bag of stuff was thrown out. And in the process of finding out what I had, I discovered that what I had was:

Four containers of molasses. Three of one kind in various stages of fullness, and one of a different type.

Four bags of icing sugar. One unopened, one almost new, one half full and one so empty it's a wonder I even had it hanging around.

Two bags of brown rice, neither of which were even open. Not sure how that happened*.

Three bags of cornmeal, all of which were mainly done. So I guess it was good that I kept buying it.

Two boxes of cornstarch, two bottles of corn syrup and rice flour bought for some recipe that I no longer recall/want to make.

The neatness should last....a month or so. I'm guessing.

*I love how that makes it sound like I know why the rest of it happened. When really, the answer is it happened because whilst I can remember titles/authors/plots/character names etc. from books I read decades ago I don't seem to be able to recall what I do and do not have in my cupboard.

Merciless, and oh yeah!

Before I get into the meat of things, how do y'all spell the word that starts with the letter Y, and means hurrah? Do you spell it Yay, as in Hooray, or Yeah, which can be confusing as it is pronounced two ways. Apparently my use of yeah for Hurrah confuses someone, she's never sure what I mean. I don't think context is something she is willing to consider. I'd just like to hear what others use.

Anyway...a couple of nights ago I decided it was time to do two clothes things: exchange winter things for summer and go through all boxes/drawers/hangers and dump what I'll never wear again (too ugly, size 2). And I did it! I was cold and merciless to my things. If it hadn't been worn in months it was gone. And stuff that was size 2 or size 4 left too. I was not skinny when I wore those, I was scrawny. It was very freeing, getting rid of those things!

Now the hurray or yeah part: for the first time in a while, there was a pile of things that didn't fit to get rid of. Things that didn't fit because they were too BIG. Yeah!

Is Disney the New Wilderness Adventure?

You know how kids like to use extremes? "You NEVER, we ALWAYS, EVERYONE at school" -you know what I mean. So last night the girl and I are talking and she says that EVERYONE in her grade has been to Disney World, or Disney Land.

I know this isn't true, but she started on a list of those she knew who had as a certainty and I have to say it was a pretty extensive list. Now, I certainly went on vacations as a kid and they were awesome, but no Disney. Lots of trips to PEI, lots to the West. We weren't really poor, either, so no Disney wasn't because of that.

The thing in my day was going camping. Almost everyone I knew had at least one family holiday somewhere more or less out in the wild. Some completely out there, some in say Algonquin Park, some in Newfoundland-Labradour but all somewhere that had no city, no games, no lights no electricty no plug ins for all the "stuff" that people had even then.

So what's going on? When did Walt Disney World become the new vacance de choix?

Me and my new five hundred friends.

I'm going to keep writing this, curse all of you who aren't reading it. Not even my own sister. Which means I could talk about her, I guess. But then if I did she'd choose that one time to be the first time she read it. And I'd feel awful. So I won't.

But despite having zero readers, I am still going to write. Because I have to practice somewhere, yes?

So...I have worms. Not me personally, I mean I now have a vermicomposting box with five hundred little red wriggling friends who are busy turning scraps into soil. How very clever of them. The purchase of worms to deal with kitchen waste if part of the mini-Kyoto accord me myself and I made.

Do I talk to the wormies? Of course. Have I named them? No. Because there are five hundred of them. Which the girl fears will somehow (and for no given reason) escape from their little earth world and come to get her in the night. Which isn't going to happen, anymore than elves are going to clean the house in the night.

Tip 'O the Day

Don't dance in the elevator with your eyes closed if the music you're listening to via headphones is so loud you can't hear the doors open.

One is one and all alone.

Have the words first and last lost their meaning? How can something be one of the last, or one of the first?