You Can’t Kill An Idea
I refuse to believe that this will always be inevitable, I refuse to believe that this is the best we can expect:
Note to Self: Motivation
“Accept that you won’t always be insanely motivated. If you’re waiting to take action until you’re incredibly motivated, you’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself. It’s better to ease the strain by allowing yourself to be mildly interested or even in a state of dread. Allowing yourself to be in this state makes it easier to move past it because you’re no longer resisting it. When you resist the state you’re in, you perpetuate it.”
From Zen Habits’ Why Motivation Doesn’t Really Matter - excellent reminder to self that where I am is where I be.
Oh My
I just upgraded my iPhone and am blogging from the WP app-lesse if I asplode anything.
Ha! Took Em Long Enough
I was about eight when my stepdad gave me the whole light = wave / particle talk, based on a line of interrogation I’d subjected him to around the Elven cloak Frodo used to hide from various baddies in The Lord of the Rings. I remember proposing this as a solution to the question of an invisibility cloak and becoming VERY indignant at being told the Adults - who were supposedly SOOO much smarter than me by virtue of being taller or some other criteria they never actually specified - hadn’t yet figured out how to make it work. I mean really, how hard could it be if light is both a wave and a particle? Just exploit the hell out of both possibilities instead of acting like it’s one or the other. Adults back then had problems with quantum physics too, as I recall.
I wonder if the folks having fun with the prototype are much older than me, or if they were having similar conversations about that time? What’s the quote - if we can dream it we can do it? Pretty damned cool.
A Good Hosing
Heidi is coming to visit this week, and we’ve been using her arrival date as an excuse to get some things done around the house, as we’re otherwise slothful 8-year olds with credit cards. I spent a couple of hours yesterday cleaning off the lower patio, scrubbing dirt off the back porch/walkway walls (deposited by our canine dirt-delivery systems), rinsing schmutz off the patio furniture and the arbor over the firepit and all the windows I could get to by water before my back got annoyed and Stephen had to step in and rearrange the remainder of what I’d left akimbo.
Though we did need to attack the dog-dirt with a sponge and soapy water, a good blast from the hose took care of most of the grime elsewhere. As I was flagging about an hour and a half into it I was reminded of several important things:
1) What I put out there is what I’ll get back - standing under the water’s point of impact as I spray it above my head at the eaves/overhead beams means I will get a) pleasantly misted and thus nicely cooled in the summer sun, or b) a faceful of cobwebs, bird poop, and dirt of unknown origin-infused water, all depending on my intention/direction.
2) One pass at something is not always enough - washing off half the dirt on the wall then admiring the effect the remainder creates (sort of an amber wash over sage green stucco) is fine by way of taking a short break to let my shoulders rest; calling it art, or an artistic effect, or just plain better looking that way is pure laziness.
3) I can do more than I think I can do - this time last year I wouldn’t have been able to be out in the sun and heat (mild as it is right now) for more than an half-hour before starting to get heat exhaustion, nor would I have had the energy for a solid two and a half hours of bending, twisting, lunging and waving my arms around, all while standing up no less.
Conclusions? A good hosing cures many ills, and brings wisdom.
A Handful of Answers
As called out by The Amazon Iowan in her post of many questions (I’ve gone on a bit… it just happened, quite beyond my control really, so it’s all after the break): Read the rest of this entry »
Dreaming of Tea
I dreamt that I was pouring Arabic coffee into the gorgeous little Persian carpet coffee cups I keep stashed above my refrigerator. The first cup bled tea out the bottom, though I could have sworn I poured in the richly dark cardamom-infused stuff of life, not the glowing honey mint-infused stuff of life. The cup wasn’t cracked, it simply lacked proper glazing across the bottom, which the set in real life does not, as it’s entirely glazed porcelain. I remember making pouty-face (hey, it was a dream, I can pout in dreams) and pouring into the next cup, which held as it should. But I was denied the taste - I woke up just as I was raising the cup to my lips, breathing in the dark spice but not yet burnt.
Canine Secrets
I just walked into the kitchen to add more sugar to my coffee (all hail hot and sexy mens who make me strong coffee) and caught a flash of movement to my right. Both dogs were standing in the den gazing up into the corner of the ceiling with big grins on their faces, tails wagging at half-speed. I asked them what they were so entertained by, and by way of reply they strolled over to me, still grinning, and sat on my feet. Neither looked particularly guilty of anything, nor did they seem to think my attention to the Fascinating Thing in the corner of the den was required.
As I stirred my coffee and sat back down at my computer, they trotted around the house in tandem, as if checking room to room for more of the Fascinating Thing that caught their attention (or perhaps other Fascinating Things - they still haven’t told me), then ran out in the backyard. They seem to have found it out there at the moment, floating in the sunshine, or perhaps tangled in the grass… their big doggy grins have taken on a touch of smug. I suspect within a few minutes of coming back inside Angus will feel the need to scan the bedroom floor for socks just in case another Fascinating Thing is hiding in a wonderfully smelly toe, and Emma will resume her station on the living room couch where she can keep both eyes out for more Fascinating Things.
Toodle-Oodle-Ooo
This week’s Unconscious Muttering:
1. Homicide :: Division
2. Divisive :: Racial Bias
3. Flash :: Point
4. Steaming ::Asphalt
5. Crunch :: Broken glass
6. Look out! :: Duck
7. Anticipating :: Pain
8. Slim :: Shank
9. Navel :: Gazing
10. Help :: Wanted
Who Put That There?
Back from hospital, getting staples removed and the surgeon’s blessing to move freely about the cabin of my life, Aunt Lola’s funeral and concomitant ice storm, coughing fever depths of the flu. Raised the shade this morning on my office door, which is all window, and saw that a rosebush I’d cruelly pruned back two years ago not only survived and thrived, but has sent tendrils become blooming canes full of creamy pink old fashioned blossoms all up and over the ugly concrete block wall behind it. I didn’t think it would be able to reach the scrap of lattice left bolted along the top edge of that section of wall, but there you go. Life will have its way, whether I’d intended it to have its way quite right there or not. Looming in the sky above the persistent roses is an ambivalent fogbank creeping in from the ocean. It’s well draped over Playa but not quite committing to crossing Sepulveda and embracing our neighborhood… a tease for proper rain, which I’d rather have more of anyway. So there. You hear me fogbank? Pfft to you until you grace us with a with softly furred view out every window.
Gmail’s got a habit of putting potentially interesting emails into my spam folder despite my best efforts to tell it otherwise. Today two of them from the same source are titled Accepting Responsibility and Getting Out Ketchup Stains. I can’t quite decide if that’s a mixed message or two steps along the same path.
If I were writing this post on purpose, or with purpose, or in a purposeful fashion, I’d have a third random thing to comment on. But I’m not, and don’t.