My favorite time of the week

Goldie's job is to keep every bird off the beach. She is chasing that seagull (see the dot in the sky). Sometimes she actually outruns the birds and has to turn around to get behind them again.

I just can't believe she is 12 years old. She runs and runs, and it is a joy to watch. She is half greyhound, and she can go maybe 30 mph, which is why I only let her off leash at this isolated beach.

This is one of the best times in my week. I run a little, too, though much slower.

More creative solutions

From the same woman who ran her dog through the carwash (after a fecal incident, ironically), here is today's creative solution.

When I got to the gym for water aerobics, I found that the towel in my gym bag was not a fresh, fluffy towel, but a still-really-wet from Thursday's class towel. I usually swap them out as soon as I get home from the gym, but the gin and tonics must have been really calling Thursday night.

I had a bright idea and left my towel in the dry sauna for the duration of my class and prayed no one would steal its damp $5.99 Target goodness.

When I got out, I had a lovely warm, kinda crispy towel. I r jeenius.

Blogging about blogging - #57 in a series

Adding to the list of things I suck at:

Thank you to everyone who has given me an award or tagged me lately. I have to admit that I am very bad about both. I won't post award buttons on my blog for several reasons: 1) They create even more visual clutter. Aren't the ad and the flickr thing bad enough? 2) I feel silly tooting my own horn 3) When I win the Pulitzer, you bet I will put up a button. But I'm holding out til then.

And memes...I'm just bad at. I have the best of intentions, then I remember something I just have to post about and the meme falls off my radar screen and then I can't remember what I was spozed to meme about.

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As far as reading posts goes, I will not read your posts if they:
Consist of poetry
Describe vomiting*
Describe fecal incidents*
Describe mucus incidents*
I am just sick of being grossed out. I really, really don't need to hear it.
*Unless you are Jonniker. For some reason, she can get away with these.

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I must admit a peculiar prejudice against acronyms used as names for children and spouses, especially big long acronyms. It just pulls me up too hard each time I see "TBCWMN" and have to translate it in my head. OF COURSE I have to translate it in my head, because that is the way my brain is wired. And of course I can't remember what it means from post to post, because I am ancient and forgetful.

So most of the time I skim or click off to another blog. Sorry.

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I am going to try to start being better about commenting on comments, because I love it so much when other bloggers do it to me. Goon Squad Sarah and Mir are especially great at this.

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I love Linkateria so much that I can't understand why it gets 1/10 of the hits that Red Stapler does. Maybe it isn't as fun as I think it is. I know it is awfully random, but I don't put up links there that I don't absolutely find fascinating. Just go over there and make me happy, willya? If you comment, you get extra cookies in your goodie bag.

Well excuse me for living

Every so often I meet someone who bugs me in a way that I can't quite put my finger on. They seem friendly, chatty, nice. But there is just something that keeps tickling me like an itch I cannot scratch...then I realize what it is: they don't care if I exist.

Oh, that isn't quite true. They need my existence, but only as an audience, a moon to reflect their brilliance back at them. Any life I have outside of that just isn't useful to them.

They exist for themselves and themselves only. Anything anyone else says or does just gets in the way of their constant narrative arc of their own life.

I met one tonight at water aerobics. She complimented my necklace to get going, but for the next half hour after that, it was all her show. From my necklace, she led into her jewelry collection, then into how much she loved art and design, to the homes she had remodeled (in excruciating, painful detail. I heard about grout, people, grout) to jobs she had had....any sentence I managed to wedge in was a bridge back to her, lovely her, and all of her fascinating (to her) interests.

Because I have been led down this primrose path of complete narcissism before, I recognized what was going on within the first few minutes. That wisdom did not spare me, however, as I have been blessed with a polite, blank face that leads people like this to believe that I am interested in their blather. She did not stop going on about herself until the last side-stretch was over.

The woman I used to give a ride to church was another of these.

My favorite time was when she called after my sister died. "How are you doing?" she asked. I told her that I was doing terribly. She said "So you won't be giving me a ride to church tomorrow?"

Thank you for your sympathy. Right.

She had a bunch of kids and I always wondered how it would be to grow up with someone so utterly self-centered. It would make you a little, or a lot, nuts, I think.

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(They took the video that was here down. Too bad, because I am sure that all the links to this video were the most publicity this woman every got. Oh well. Some people just don't understand the internets, I guess).

Didn't anyone out there GO to High School??

I know I am a bit late to weigh in on the Jena Six story. But I forge on, better late than never, that's me.

I have only one point to make - doesn't anyone who has reported on or commented on this story remember high school?

So much has been made of this "white tree" thing...

At my school, we had the jock table, the cheerleader table, the ASB table, the band geek area, the drama people bench, the "loadie" circle...all inviolate areas for each group. None of it was overtly racist or classist, but you just KNEW not to go where you didn't belong. If you went there, nothing good was going to come of it.

My group was the smart/funny/weird kids who liked movie and comics. We didn't define it that way but looking back on it, that was true. You had to have all four of those qualifications to belong, or at least be strong on 3 out of 4.

(Oddly enough, we called ourselves the Jewish Liberation Army, the JLA. We were NOT Jewish and we went to a school where Jews were few and far between. We just thought the Christians at our school were so annoying that we wanted to do something to drive them nuts. So we became promoters and cheerleaders for All Things Jewish. I remember standing and cheering in history class when our teacher did the lesson on Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Kids are weird, that's my only excuse.)

The JLA hung out BEHIND McDonalds at lunch. We sat out back on the curb by the trash because we just didn't feel like fighting the more popular kids for tables inside and anyway, the fresh air, the big fat seagulls, and the proximity to the restrooms suited us. Or at least that's what we claimed at the time.

High school is ALL about finding your people, your peer group, the place where you slot yourself and pretty much stay there for the rest of your life, unless something miraculous happens. I'll bet many of the ASB people are still politically active and that the surfers are still surfing.

So reading about Jena having a tree where only white kids sat made me think that was actually kind of a tepid distinction. I am just surprised that it wasn't the tree for "white kids who also belong to the Volleyball team" or something more specific. Because in high school, the cliques are sliced and diced a lot finer than just "white" and "black" no matter where you are.

People WANT to separate themselves from each other, and they do, often in ways that are cruel and violent. I don't know if that is racism or if that is just humanity.

What was your clique?

I admit bafflement

I cancelled my Facebook account at the behest of my blogging friends like Motherhood Uncensored and Mothergoosemouse. You KNOW I can't resist a good bandwagon.

Yes, it was the whole breastfeeding thing again. It seems Facebook considers breastfeeding photos obscene, but pro-anorexia and pedophilia are fine...so I decided to part ways with them and their perverted ideas. I don't really miss getting friended and poked, to tell the truth.

I just have a hard time believing that anyone, in 2007, is still getting all het up about breastfeeding. Don't we all know that it is good for babies and moms? That it helps protect against a host of health problems? That it is normal and natural? That it has nothing to do with nudity or sex? That everyone who can do it, should? (And I am not blaming those who can't!!)

Now there is a new protest springing up. You too can get your button:


Just click on it and it will take you over to the League of Maternal Justice so you can become one of the cool, bandwagon-hopping bloggers.

Oh hai

I was going through old photos in my folder and found this one of the exMrStapler's dog. One thing led to another and voila, LOLDog.

Don't start with Nazis

I was exceptionally fortunate to have Mary Olive Hill as my spiritual advisor for 7 years before she died at age 90.

Her main topic was always forgiveness.

It took me a long time to realize what that meant. Not just forgiving people, but forgiving everything for being the way it is. That cracked window, that aching joint, that whiny neighbor. They very shittiness of life in a human body must be forgiven.

In reality you can either do something about things that bother you or not do something, but just hating doesn't serve any purpose so you might as well just get over being pissy about it.

That's why the serenity prayer is honestly one of the wisest things ever written:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

That about sums it up. Really. The spiritual wisdom of the ages in 3 lines. Nifty.

But back to Mary Hill.

New people in class always objected to the idea of forgiveness. "How is someone supposed to forgive Hitler?" they would ask angrily.

On these occasions, Mary had a great little smile.

"Don't start with Hitler," she would say. "Start with your mother-in-law."

As usual, Mary Hill was right. I may not be able to change the great injustices of the world, but there are plenty of small annoyances to work on in the mean time.

After just 9 short years of spiritual practice, I can usually drive to work without getting angry at the idiot drivers around me. I always was a great student.

What do you need to forgive lately?