Scattered Thoughts

As I was frantically trying to catch up on all the blogging I've missed reading over the last week or two or three today I had this horrible thought - what if at some point there are just too many blogs I like to read? Already, there are some I just never get to or only read if the post is a short one (and I'm totally ashamed to admit that) but I try to cull my blogroll and I just ... can't... Once I take things off that page, they're pretty much gone forever and sometimes I just can't bear that last cutting of the link.

I can't even think how terrible it will be while I travel to keep up. Do you guys feel that way? Will we invent a little screen for our eyeglasses that scrolls blogs all day for us? That would help. What else? It's an information world and there's too many talented bloggers. We should vote some off the island or something. Of course, since I just said that - it means you can't vote me off. ha!

Which makes me think of the books I read this weekend - for anyone into sort of near future speculative fiction-y kind of stuff - I totally recommend PopCo by Scarlett Thomas, and, although I found the science a bit more than I wanted in a novel (there's really not a lot of it, but it hurt my little brain), Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio. Excellent reads and unique ideas, both of them.

I've mentioned before that I always used to write things down when I read / heard about them so I could look them up in the library but that I love the internet because now I can look them up right away - so here's a couple of the interesting things I looked up lately that various books have referenced...

The girl in PopCo drank Gunpowder Tea and now I really want to try it.

Some of the women in Darwin's Radio were using Quinacrine to sterilize themselves.

And, from Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, his reference to the controversy caused by the look on Theresa's face in The Ecstasy of St Theresa was interesting to look into.

Oh, and ONLY NINE MORE DAYS OF WORK! Wahoooooo!

Observed

Yesterday, during my mad rush of activity and the trip to 'town' - I neglected to put on my 'town' clothes and basically just left in what I was wearing.

That would be a black baseball hat, black tank top, black and beige board shorts and beige sandals. Hey, I figure as long as I'm color coordinated, what the hell should I care?

The tank top was a bit short but I endeavored to stretch it down a little to meet the top of the shorts. Why I do this, I don't know because I can tell you my belly is not hanging out, over or under anything.

I've always been twitchy about my tummy since it's the one thing I've never been able to tame to MY satisfaction. After the amount of teenagers I see these days with entire extra PEOPLE hanging off their waists between their too short shirt and low jeans, I've become even more paranoid about bellies, let me tell you. ick. So, ever careful about bulging and unattractiveness, I tend to think I am usually dressing to cover my flaws.

ANYWAYS, my point is - in the bank, the video store, liquor store and grocery store I noticed this....

Every woman who walked towards me looked first at the space between my shorts and my shirt, then up to my face.

Every man who walked towards me looked first at my face.

Struck me as a bit strange, is all. I've never really paid attention before and I'm sure there're millions of reasons to do with competitiveness and attractiveness and the baseball hat or something but I think I've always just automatically thought the roles would be reversed.

I know, I know, you're in awe of the deepness of my thoughts so early on a Sunday morning. ha.

Farm Life Parallelity

(since we're in the 'making up words' mode)

This afternoon it struck me how much my weekend life has settled into the rhythm of long and physically taxing days at the farm.

Life here is separate from the world 'out there' and I've found that time moves in it's own way.

Up with the roosters in the morning, Stef's out to feed the animals and free the various day-roaming critters. By 7 am I've already been woken up by Mr. Starey McPat-a-Face at least five times, jumped up my own heart rate trying to shock him into compliance by getting right up in his face and shouting - before finally giving in, getting up to feed and free my particular free-roaming spawn of Satan upon the unsuspecting population before crawling back into bed for a couple more hours of defiant sleep.

Days here are full of furious activity punctuated by short,deep rest periods and so later, waking up to hammering and chainsaws as Stef works on her new deck, I put laundrey in before staggering back home to rest with a few cups of coffee and a slightly more accomodating cat on my lap.

As a load of fill arrives and all converge in the heat of the day to push mounds of dirt around, I spring into action myself and sprint five feet to the car to head into town to pick up some movies and, at a loss as to what to do with that slowly rotting lime in my fridge - a six pack of Corona.

Nothing goes to waste here on the farm. I return home proud of my ingenuity.

From my pool of afternoon sunlight, chilled Corona in hand, on my own little deck, I watch Stef spraypaint floats (some sort of geese training device) and, as exhaustion threatens to overcome me, pick up the laundrey and deposit it unfolded in the bedroom for another day. Staggering back outside hauling my three pounds of goose down comforter for airing, I take the opportunity to collapse into my deck chair with a book for a well deserved rest.

As the sun starts to set I watch from a distance as Stef wields large cutting implements in an effort to prevent the blackberry bushes along the driveway from hemming us in and contemplate my own set of plant life.

The lettuce, the geraniums, a bunch of things I know not what they are and the miniature rose bush at the corner of the canopy. The day after Matt left I came home to find it perched on my doorstep with a note from Stef. Over the next 6 months inside the fifth wheel it flourished... until my mother the plant lady came and chastised me for keeping it in the house because it's an outdoor plant and we live in 'paradise'.

Needless to say she guilted me into putting it outside and over the last two months it's grown in a slope with most of it's leaves stunted and sporting holes. The pre-outdoor thrice weekly blooms now struggle to a half-hearted opening once every 10 days.

Lethargic with the heat, I struggle with the guilt awhile before flipping convention the finger and toting the poor thing back inside.

God forbid that something else that came out of that relationship should be allowed to accept defeat. We do what we can, you know?

A hard days work complete, I head inside to watch a movie before returning to the deck to write to you. 'My' laptop - a godsend - a couple of covered candles, some low level lights around the canopy, the cat sleeps in his own chair across from me. I can hear Stef out in the barn as I slice a piece of my warm peach into my glass of wine, lean back in my chair to check out the stars, content in the knowledge of a day's hard work well done before shooing away the moths from the screen, closing the laptop and giving Cabot back his rightful place on my lap.

Chapter 2. Verse 1. Line 1.

So, here's the thing. I was lying in bed last night waiting for the cat to just calm down and I was thinking, well, isn't it about the right time to start a new chapter?

Domain names. New job. New facial bits. No boy.

I guess I should reiterate here that I bought 'getsoutmore.com' / 'airborneYOUKNOWWHAT.com' / 'floatingmyownboat.com' and 'reallynot.com'.

So, here we are. A brand new notebook. A fresh first page. It's exciting, yes?

One day, when I get my shit together (ie: winter) then some of you'll be able to log in and see more areas of the site (such as the last journal if you so desire) and even, while I'm travelling, be able to upload pictures and stuff directly to the boat for me to see. Exciting hey? These Squarespace people are very nice and have neat-o stuff. Yes, they do.

Anyways, I guess I should start off by saying that I failed the test yesterday.

Now, before you break down weeping piteously at my inability to learn 1,000 greek and latin prefixes, combining forms and suffixes in like FOUR days - let's just review this for a sec.

I took the actual course back when I could concentrate on one thing for more than a minute at a time (ie: 14 years ago) and wrote a perfect final exam. You know, so I'm smart and good already, right? Yay me.

Most people take that course and then within a week or two write the test I wrote yesterday and FAIL IT. I think the failure rate is something like 80% on the first try.

I failed by 3 questions.

So, really, relatively I actually ROCK THE ENTIRE MEDICAL TERMINOLOGY WORLD.

Now, because my new boss is so wonderful - she put my transfer through already to take effect the day after I leave my current job. I get five days off and then start training - closer to home. In a low-stress job that pays only $2.00 an hour less than my high stress make-everyone-cry job. Okay, it IS only casual but there's lots of work, I can apply for permanent jobs, I can also temp (I have an interview and testing on the 15th), and I can pay the premiums to continue my benefits and I can do all this for at least 6 months even if I never actually work a shift.

Which is great - except I only have 12 more days to actually PASS the test. Normally, you have to wait a month before you can rewrite the test. Because the HR people are being extremely accomodating for me, I'm rewriting next Friday.

You know, a lot of the time I am utterly shamed by the way we treat each other on this planet and then, suddenly, things like this where people decide to believe in a complete stranger and do everything they can to facilitate good things for them manages to prop up my faith in the human condition.

So, consider me officially propped.

Two very funny things that came from you smarty-pants boys playing with the language and then I am off to the porch and books, books, books for the long weekend.

tachycardia: n., from the greek for "bad sweater".

and, unrelatedly...

*snort*

that would be son (sound), rrhrage (to burst forth), algia (with pain), from my rhin/o (nose)

sonrrhabloghaljen!

jen screams, blogs, bursts forth. some pain.

Just In Case I Haven't Actually Mentioned It Yet

I made the right decisions last week....

...and I am one big fuck-off bag o' happy.

That is all.

An Old Post - New Year's Eve 2003

Reflection

I guess this could be included in the meaning/purpose/justification series Anyways, it's an excerpt from a book I bought in Winnipeg last November and is called "The Meaning of Things, Applying Philosophy to Life" by A.C. Grayling. A.C. Grayling is Reader in Philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London.

And so without further ado....

Perseverance

Courage and hope both depend on a crucial virtue: perseverance, the ability to keep going in adverse circumstances - with a cheerful countenance if possible, but if not, then at least in the spirit of Seneca's world-weary observation, 'Even after a bad harvest there must be sowing.'

It is said that perseverance is a good trait except when applied to inappropriate aims. This places the emphasis on knowing when aims are the right ones. Someone might say that the tone-deaf, lump-fingered man who persists in his endeavours to play the violin is obviously on the wrong tack, and it does not help to praise him for persevering. But someone else might reply that any worthy aim, such as playing the violin, dignifies the struggle to achieve it, and however difficult it might be for such a man to learn to play, he has still gained much from trying.

This is an encouraging reply. Arguably, most of us could do most of what we desire - or at least, like the aspiring violinist, could gain a great deal from trying - if we found the right way to approach it. Some techniques suit some people, others suit others; one has to find the method best adapted to oneself.

One of John F. Kennedy's speech-writers left a fingerprint on history in 1961 with the brilliant remark that America was going to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade not because it was an easy thing to do, but because it was a hard thing to do; and doing hard things is what makes you better.

I have to say here....that yesterday when I was showing Tony my new cell phone, he made the comment (being into things like that) that my cell phone had a more sophisticated computer system than the first space shuttle. Just think about that for a second...

Anything that requires perseverance is a hard thing in the meaning of this saying, and therefore improves you. The secret to persevering is an understanding of the 'learning curve', a graph with a line that rises, then dips somewhat, only to rise higher,- and so on, rising then dipping then rising again, continuously to the top of the page. It represents the standard shape of the progress people make in mastering anything new. All goes swimmingly; then suddenly one seems to regress, to lose what advance has been made. At this point most people give up. But if they were to persist they would find that each dip is followed by a higher rise, and the overall pattern is upward and onward, making true the Latin motto, Per ardua ad astra (through adversity to the stars).

It is a commonplace that perseverance tends to be more successful than violence - dripping water wears the stone that could not be hammered to pieces. It suggests a number of further traits in anyone who perseveres: determination, ambition, strength of resolve. The cynic would say that we should frequently substitute 'obstinacy;, 'folly' and 'blindness' respectively. The opposite of perseverance is giving up, trying something else, abandoning ambitions. Let it be conceded that if the ambition was to join the Shuttle crew, the decision was probably wise, but generally speaking the best and most satisfying choice is to see things through. As Ruskin said, it is not what we get but what we become by our endeavours that makes them worthwhile.

So, the last two years have been, for me, about perseverance. And I have learned many valuable things. Among them, the things I am willing to sacrifice and the things I'm not. Some of those things have come as a shock to those who know me. I've been told how stupid I am more times than I can count.

But, hey, you guys, you don't have to look into the same mirror that I do in the morning. And the person that looks in my mirror every morning has things that you don't have, things that you put me down for wanting. And maybe they're things you don't need. But I'm not you. The job I've always wanted. My own home. The knowledge that I really don't have to do the things I don't want to. That I can walk away from the bad people and things in my life, without looking back. That I can survive a serious illness relying only on my own strength and weather the fallout that follows. That my choices for relationships are different from yours, but that that doesn't make either of us wrong, only different. I understand that, do you?

The understanding that my expectations aren't too high, because the only people who say that are the people who want to treat others like crap and blame their actions on everyone but themselves. That sometimes, people you don't know are more important than the people you do. That people you may never meet are still important relationships worth nurturing and effort. That sometimes, the people who have known you for years want only that you stay the same person they want you to be, instead of recognizing who you are now, and sometimes, those people aren't worth any effort at all.

I learned to take responsibility, real internal responsibility for my actions. Not all the time but more often than not. I make the right choice, instead of making the wrong one, more often than I used to. And even the wrong ones, I stand by.

And 2004 will be more of the same. So, get out of the road if you don't want to get mowed down. Cause the best way to play chicken is to tear out the steering wheel and slam your foot down on the gas.

But for now, you'll have to excuse me, a nauseated dog and Lara Croft are pawing at my leg and beeping on the TV, respectively.

e @ 9:10AM | 2004-01-01| Happy New Year, Jen. And very empowered one at that, I think. I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels like this. It's still upsetting when to be you, you have to leave behind your family- since that's often who it is. They also tend to have slightly weird expectations, particularly parents, which may have more to do with living vicariously through you than any desire to see you happy- at least mine do. This year for me, and for my husband, has become the year of shedding bossy people who think they can play more of a guiding role in our lives than we feel they should (my mother in law and my father are a case in point). No matter what we do in life, we'll be a disappointment to someone, piss someone off, get mildly in someone's way. Living up to everyone's expectations is impossible; one has only one life, and you have to manage your own life the best you can. That's been my personal philosophy since I was 22 and sick of being pulled to pieces in all directions. Alors, continue comme ça, Jen, c'est la seule façon d'être heureuse! Bonne Année!

Such a Girl.

I'm studying for that test tomorrow. Send good smart thoughts. I beg you. Send such masses of good thoughts that they actually weasel into my brain with all kinds of complicated latin / greek spellings and definitions and help me pass the damn thing.

It's a medical terminology exam. I took the course in 1992. I've been studying for three days - because I'm a lazy fuckwit and my life is far too busy at the moment.

Also, because I just don't have time to debate with myself - I picked www.getsoutmore.com

Errr.....

And www.floatingmyownboat.com / reallynot.com and www.airborneYOUKNOW.com as well.

But the last three are only for one year so I can decide if I want them as well. If I weren't broke, I would have got the rest too, but the line has to be drawn somewhere, does it not? Within a couple days www.floatingmyownboat.com and getsoutmore.com will forward here. The rest are jus' gonna hang at www.godaddy.com (where they were VERY INEXPENSIVE!!!! ) until I work it out.

Thanks for weighing in with your opinion guys! GetsOutMore won in the catchy, short enough for the t-shirt / coffee mugs, easy to remember, no spelling explanations required category - all requirements met.