an encouragement to kids going back to school

Your dreams are not guaranteed to come true.  You do not have unlimited potential and all that crap.  You have limited time and potential.  But unless you have dreams and pursue them, you will never know if you can make them come true.  So it's better to have dreams and try hard to make them come true than to deny yourself and automatically fail by eliminating even the chance of success.  Probably.  : )

The trouble with nature

So.  Bugs.  Summer.  I understand that the poor things don't get to move much for about half of the year, so I understand why they would just want to crawl all over the place when they can, but why do they like crawling all over me so much? 

When I can, I bike to a park with my blanket, notebook, and books.  I spread out the blanket and plop myself down and immediately become the Most Engrossing Thing Ever to the insects and arachnids in the area.  These guys love me.  They can't get enough of me.  It's kind of crazymaking.

I imagine this is what would happen if I went to a cat show.  I am very allergic to cats, and they just love me!  I don't make eye contact and, a cat-lover explained that I am mysterious and interesting to them. 

Perhaps I need to practice making eye contact with insects and arachnids.  Do I have to make contact with all their eyes?  That could be . . . difficult. 

I just want to enjoy nature, listen to the wind and the birds, read my book, be a sun camel, try not to smell the nearly stagnant river water, avoid getting hit in the head by those kids and their soccer ball, and relax.  I want to commune with nature, dagnabbit! 

Unfortunately, nature feels the same way.  And so we commune: nature walking all over me, me swatting nature or brushing it off without killing it.  It is not exactly relaxing, but there is definitely communing.  Sigh . . . 

Sometimes, when the book is really good, I don't even notice.

Being sick is gross; also, how do you deal with office jerks?

I bet for once I'm the one driving my cube neighbor nuts. It might be an overall stalemate, though, because I'm miserable, too. I'm sure he really enjoys hearing me blow my nose every 37 seconds. At least when I'm trying to clear my nose, I can't hear him talking on the phone. :)

If only I could be this obnoxious while sitting next to the passive-aggressive meanie-head I've been working overtime for the last few days. Then again, it's probably good I never see him. It might be hard to keep from saying the hilarious/cutting things I've been thinking up to say, especially if he actually said some of the things he's written in his emails recently. Am I really working so hard to make a jerk like this look good?

I find myself curious to know if he realizes how awful of a co-worker he is. I hear stories from other people; it seems he treats everyone the same. Does he know the effects of his behavior or is he just awkward (not realizing he's being so mean, difficult, and disrespectful)? I wonder what would happen if I asked him? Would it be worse if he did realize or if he didn't?

How do you confront people like him when you know you have to keep working with them? How do you let them know when their thoughtlessness has crossed a line (especially when you suspect they are actually doing it on purpose) without making your working relationship worse?

Lessons Learned Lately

If the candle wick won't blow out, and it's spewing smoke, and you're worried it will set the smoke alarm off, you should NOT blow very hard on it because the candle wax is liquid and will go spraying everywhere, making you VERY GLAD you are wearing glasses due to an earlier melt-down.

So, um, what's the best way to remove and dispose of candle wax from the following surfaces?

• glass
• hair
• countertops
• walls with weak and cheap paint
• plates
• cardboard

(I already scraped it off my skin. No scars this time.  :)

What I learned the day I visited the doctor's office

• Road rage is good for me.  It seems to get my blood pressure up to something more normal and lower my usually ridiculous heart rate.  Who knew my contrariness went that far.  Go figure.
• Book binges make my hip hurt, and I don't care.
• Despite all my problems, I am darn healthy for someone in my situation.
• Apparently, I strike the nurse as someone who would be a good teacher.  This makes me happy.

So, this new job - when do I get to feel like it's real?

After I get the email with the start date details that shows the background check is finished?
After my first day?
After my first paycheck?

I've got to figure out how to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. If it's going to fall, it will fall. I don't need to stress out waiting for it. Sheesh.

(Have you ever felt like this?)

Cell Phone satire

I didn't notice that the post "Do You Find People Annoyed by Cell Phone Users Annoying?" was labeled "File Under: Satire Seriously" until someone in a comment mentioned that it was so.  I was, however, 99% sure that this rant was in a non-serious, humorous vein by the end of the post itself.  Unfortunately, it seems like some of the commenters never reached that conclusion.  I wanted to give you the heads up, so you can enjoy it in the spirit it was meant to be conveyed.  Also, be sure to read some of those comments from people who feel entitled to use their cell phones in an annoying manner in public.  Unintentionally hilarious.

So funny.  Donald Miller writes as someone who rudely uses a cell phone in public and blames the others around him for being selfish and insensitive for being annoyed at him for these behaviors.  I think we've all met the people who think this way and aren't being sarcastic about it.  Sigh. 

I can't even tell you how infuriating this can be when you work in retail.  There are several satisfying suggestions on how to deal with the situation in Pretending You Care: A Retail Handbook, but recently, I've been able to keep my blood pressure under control by just telling myself they were raised by wolves and have just been reintroduced to society or something.  I try not to think about how they ignore the questions I'm required to ask and thus move me closer to being fired because, obviously, they don't care enough about the people around them to, well, care.

Do you have any enraging or just irritating public cell phone menace stories?

What I did the day after my interviews of doom

It was a nice day.

• Exercised with some good books.
• Had some juice.
• Folded clothes, did laundry, dusted, vacuumed.
• Basked in the sun reading another good book and ignoring the sidelong glances from other people in the courtyard as they tried to figure out what form of domestic violence could possibly result in the horrible swelling and bruising on my back and the resulting stiffness in my movements. (Even if the skin looks like this, I figure it can still get happy from the sun, right?)
• Did not obsessively deconstruct the interviews because I did that yesterday.
• Cut my fingernails!!!!!
• Had a sandwich and some milk.
• Caught up on email tasks I had been putting off prepping for the interview.
• Wrote thank you follow-up letters to my interviewers.
• Put lotion on my incipient and ridiculous sunburn. (I was only out for 4 chapters!  I swear!)
• Had some ramen and peas.
• Watched some DVDs.
• Wrote some blog posts.
• Put more lotion on the sunburn, admiring its randomness.
• Went to bed.
• Got out of bed when the fire alarm went off and staggered outside and shivered and coughed (and read) for a long time before I was allowed back into the apartment building where I went back to bed.

Ahhhhh. Refreshing.

Going gray gracefully

Do you ever wonder if the amount of gray/white/silver hair you have is normal? I sure do. Mostly I wonder because everyone my age who has any seems to dye their hair. Even my older sister dyes hers (unconfirmed accusation). I have no idea when she started.

My hair started going back in college, but my mom said it was a genetic gift from her mom. I think she said her mom's hair was all white by the time she turned 30. I was kind of looking forward to that because my excessively oily skin makes my face look younger, and white hair with that face would have been startling. It didn't happen, and I'm okay with that.

I can only think of one person I know who let her hair go gray without hiding it. How sad is that? Dye is so expensive I could never afford it, but even if I could, I'm too cheap to spend money on it. (And then agonize about when my face looks old enough that I need to get my hair dyed gray or risk looking really creepy . . .)

Why do you suppose people get so panicky about gray hair? Are you panicky about it?

How do you feel about going gray naturally? Are you planning on doing it?

P.S. Tonight's moon is a lovely silver Cheshire cat smirk.

Personal Boycotts

A few months ago, I started shopping at a certain store that was on my way home because I realized that their regular prices were cheaper than the sale prices at the other two stores on my way home.  As December descended upon us, I was reminded by the silence at the entryways that this particular store does not let Salvation Army bell ringers on their property.

When this store originally made their decision against the Salvation Army a few years or so ago, I was pretty ticked off, but since I never shopped there, what did my response matter?  Now that I do shop there most of the time, I found myself contemplating my anger and what I should do about it. 

Part of my miffedness was somewhat childish, I suppose.  I was used to hearing the bell-ringers.  They were a cheerful, regular part of the holidays for me.  I saved change all year to give them.  Going shopping in December and not being reminded of this easy way I could help people in need just seemed different, kind of wrong, like something was missing.

I could have just used this reminder to go online and give, but I remember being a bell-ringer during a particularly bitter winter.  I remember how grateful I was when people dropped in their pennies.  (I think I can still hear that bell reverberating in my head.)  Bell-ringers work in less-than comfortable conditions to make sure that other people can be more comfortable.  I guess I just want to reward that effort.

So I did my own private, personal boycott of that store, and I think maybe I will write them a brief letter (not condemning but) explaining why I chose to take (more of) my money elsewhere this month.  I figure it can't hurt.

Have you ever quietly voted with your dollars like this?  Why or why not?