Dealing with stuff

Posted on January 30, 2013 by chenson70

I was listening to my iPod on the way home tonight and a lyric in a song caught my ear:

When stink fades into smell..

I think this is akin to “Things look better in the morning” or “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger”. Basically, sooner or later, the things that make us gag because they stink so bad will eventually not even elicit a response from us.

Is it because we actually learn to live with the new normal, that we grow stronger and can handle things that we didn’t know we could? Do things actually get better? Or is our first reaction always exaggerated doom so there is no place to go but up? Maybe it’s some sort of combination of three. But I am always completely amazed by the things that we humans handle. Natural disasters, deaths, debilitating pain, homelessness, etc. I don’t know that I could handle those things and keep my sanity.

I remember reading or hearing once about a theory that if everyone could take their problems and label them and put them in a pile and we could all walk around and pick the pile of problems that we wanted to take on, we would all eventually come back to our own pile. Our pile somehow would look more manageable. It would feel “comfortable.” We have some level of understanding with our own problems, a feeling of familiarity and intimacy with them.

I’ve always liked this. When I’ve felt overwhelmed or down, I’ve thought, “I bet I would come right back to this pile of problems.” Now I know they probably wouldn’t stink to me either.

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On another note, Matt and I have completed a beginning beekeeping class and passed the first part of the NC Certified Beekeepers test. I’m keeping a blog about being a new beekeeper (Buzzing Around in My Head), so if you are interested, come by.

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I saw these fortune cookies on tumblr.com and thought they were hilarious. I may try my hand at writing some. These are all from Pleated Jeans.com.

Not my monkeys

Posted on January 10, 2013 by chenson70

I’ve been taking my new puppy to a friend’s house (thanks tons, Wendy!) each day, a house that is within easy driving distance from work, so that I can easily pop over at lunch and let him out during the middle of the day.

The house to the right of Wendy is a rental house and the last renters trashed the house. The landlord has hired a company to renovate the house for the next set of renters.

The guy in charge of the project is almost always outside in the yard when I am in Wendy’s yard, walking Louie the puppy. He’s a friendly guy and very chatty. I’ve learned more than I ever wanted about the condition of the house post-renters, what a bad job the previous property managers did, how upset the landlord is, how much money property managers make, how much money he makes on projects, where his parents live, how many times he’s been to court, how crazy his cat is, etc. Not even the sight of me bagging Louie’s poop discourages the pseudo-monologue.

Today, our conversation/monologue went to this place:

Guy: I’ve been married 32 years and in all those years I have never cussed my wife nor have I ever raised a hand to my wife.

me: *long pause* That’s the way it should be.

I don’t know whose background this reveals the most about (probably his) that he thought that this was an achievement worthy of mentioning to a complete stranger and that I think that this is an ante into marriage and totally not worthy of mention. For me, it would be like advertising that a car has a steering wheel — duh, it better. My husband promises not to hit me — well, no shit, that is given in this marriage. I promise not to poison any meals that I cook and hand to you. Do we have to put that in the vows?

I realize that for many, many people the reality of violence in their relationships means that my mindset is not their mindset. A spouse or boyfriend (or a wife/girlfriend) that doesn’t physically abuse them would be very different from current status. I don’t understand the dynamics between those partners, the demons that drive the abusers and the abusees, etc. I guess I should count myself lucky, but it makes it hard for me to relate to Mr. Chatty.

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I found this on the internets today and I am totally going to introduce it to my daily conversation:

Source: flickr.com via Amy on Pinterest

According to the internets, this is a Polish idiom that means “Not my problem”. Now, I’ve seen a few occasions where the internets have been wrong, so if you know anything about Polish (and I’m specifically putting a call out there to my friend, “Princess” Jenn, whose grandmother provided us a picture of Jenn’s ancestor King John Sobieski of Poland to hang in our freshman dorm room), I would appreciate validation. I would hate to be going around saying, “Not my circus, not my monkeys” when I really should be saying, “Not my circus, not my clowns”. I want to be right. Especially when you’re talking about monkeys. Or circuses. Or (especially) clowns.

Have those lips been kissed?

Posted on January 8, 2013 by chenson70

Twice recently, I have received a bag or a box of memorabilia, mostly related to my father. It has been wonderful either seeing pictures that I have never seen before or reliving old memories.

But it has also made me sad. When my mom remarried and sold the house in which my sister and I grew up, I was in the midst of a depression. We were cleaning out our childhood rooms and going through 25 years of accumulated detritus. Since I was depressed, I had no sense of sentimentality, at all. I threw away most of the keepsakes of my youth — pictures, yearbooks, awards. I wish that I had kept all that stuff.

One thing that I DID keep was a poem. It was written by Jim Maloney. We went to school together from elementary school through high school graduation.

Jim may have written this to be satirical (I was often the butt of teasing because of my goody-two-shoes mentality, but my mother had me convinced that anything beyond chaste kissing would result in the total ruin of the rest of my life — no job, no husband, no family, no income — life in the street, living for handouts), but I have hung on to it, choosing instead to think of it as my own personal ode.

Jim–I thank you. This poem brings a smile to my face, 25 years later.

Have Those Lips Been Kissed

Have Those Lips Yet Been Kissed?

Cristy, of extreme beauty and grace,

even more than the goddess of beauty in face,

And the body fair, as a swan in flight.

The subject of many a dream at night.

Upon thinking, one most wonder.

When dreaming, one must ponder.

Have those lips yet been kissed?

Have young men in their velvet prime missed?

One could fight for thee with sword or fist.

For have those lips yet been kissed?

Cristy, of wonderful beauty and charm,

Could any one dare to do thee harm?

The vilest evil, the coldest heart,

Not one could damage, not even start.

When thinking, one most wonder.

Upon dreaming, one must ponder.

Young men would kill for just one kiss.

And when you’re gone the world will miss.

And one would fight with sword or fist.

And kill one another for just one kiss.

–Jim Maloney

Join ASS

Posted on January 4, 2013 by chenson70

OMG! I wasn’t feeling like a VIP, so I went to the ENT and I was diagnosed with ENS.

I hate acronyms. I hear sentences like the one above at work all the time. We have an “Acronyms and Key Terms Definition” document and it has over 3600 terms. Seriously, over 3000 acronyms.

It’s annoying. We talk and write in alphabet soup all the time. And it’s a tool for showing how much you know — if you can stuff a ton of acronyms into your sentences, then obviously you know what’s going on. Poor newbies — they must wonder when they left planet Earth and entered a world where another language is spoken. It’s not welcoming. It’s not living up to the promise on the Statue of Liberty — “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…” Need to add “give me your acronymically-challenged.”

I blame FDR for the popularity of acronyms. Think about it, are there any presidents before Franklin Roosevelt that are known by their initials? Do we refer to Abraham Lincoln as AL? Or George Washington as GW? Or Millard Fillmore as MF? No, we don’t. FDR must liked going by his DJ FDR initials so much that he introduced acronyms into our society — OSS, CIA, FBI.

And now, they are everywhere. It’s just a sign of laziness–we’re too lazy to say the whole thing. We even create acronyms for our curses: SOB, BS, FU, WTF. My personal opinion: if you are going to call someone a “SOB”, then you’re not really irritated enough to be calling them anything. If you’re passionate enough to be cursing, then USE THE WHOLE CURSE, you son of a bitch!

STOP BEING LAZY, AMERICA! I urge you join my new group ASS — Acronyms Signal Sloth. I thought about calling it Acronyms Signal Satan, but I really don’t know if Satan hates acronyms as much as I do or not. And I really don’t want to be speaking on behalf of Satan.

Fight sloth, laziness (and potentially evil) — NO MORE ACRONYMS!

my mama always said

Monthly Archives: January 2013

Dealing with stuff

Not my monkeys