You know you know one of these dancers.

Today's blip courtesy Dennis, who lives Scientific American.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39049000/ns/health-behavior/

Don't Fence Me In!

OK, peeps, so this morning I took myself for a little snowshoe up in the Happy Jack hills. It was a balmy, sunny, probably mid-40s, and even though the snow was crusty on top, well, this little excursion was just what I needed.

Then, I got back and tried to sneak into the office to work all afternoon on this slide show I have to submit for a presentation I am giving in Montana by the 15th of March. And lo and behold, who is the first person I encounter? Yes, the prof who runs this afternoon's seminar, who expected me to be out today... And I am not out. So, I will attend seminar. Which is no big deal, but...

Then I got into my e-mail account, and really, people, please don't put deadlines or schedules on me! I mean, seriously, there are people out there who want me to do things, and they would like me to do those things at their leisure, and frankly, the older I get the more I realize that as much as I am programmed to a) help people out and b) get shite done, I am also programmed to c) react poorly to schedule expectations.

I used to practically kill myself to do things when people asked or expected, and now that I am approaching middle age, I don't want to kill myself for other people any more.

And I still hate money, too. I don't mean "economics" or similar terms people have equated with "money." I mean "money," and this urge people have to center their lives around buying crap and making money.

Ew!

Quit bitching, please.

You know, peeps, this morning I got an e-mail bitch from someone who had read an ad I had placed on a list, thinking, as had the person who passed it on to me, that it was legit, and then had forwarded the ad. She found that the ad was in fact a hoax (of which I am still not certain, because someone else e-mailed me about the ad saying not that it was a hoax, but that the problem being advertised had been solved quite a while ago.)

Regardless, the person who bitched at me, did so because she had been humiliated to have forwarded this ad to her coworkers and then learned it was bad information. First of all, if my coworkers ever harass me to the point of humiliation for making a fairly minor mistake- in the larger scheme of things- then I will probably quit my job because it will be clear that those coworkers are not folks with whom I cannot have a collegial relationship.

But, I apologized to this offended writer and offered to apologize myself to her coworkers for her passing on bad information. Really!

Then, I was just sitting here at the dining table in the Lodge of the Log Cabin Motel in Pinedale, Wyoming, where we are staying for the weekend and which I recommend highly, and a woman came to the front desk. The office is separated from the main lodge by a door, which is open because it is an absolutely gorgeous, clear, slightly breezy, balmy autumn evening. The woman came in with a thundering and only slightly veiled aggressive, "HELLO?" No one answered. The manager has been outside watering the mixed flowers hanging in pots from cabin rafters- nice.

Finally, I get up and go to the door and say, "She should be right around here. She has been out watering the flowers." Well, the woman disappeared out the door and came back soon enough, bellowing, "Have you seen her back here yet? How can a person get any help?!"

"I haven't seen her yet, no, but I know she is on the grounds."

"I just walked all around the grounds and didn't find her! I guess my cabin is the only one that doesn't need watering!"

I said, "I don't work here, so I can't help you. But I can give you a piece of paper if you want to leave her a note on the desk there." (I am trying to do homework. Now I have been distracted. But I don't mind offering some little token of assistance to someone who is obviously all worked up about something. Really!)

"He's already going out to get one. That won't help!"

You know what? Screw you. I have thought this a couple times today. And I felt sympathy for the young woman going about her business working here, for not having been in the office at the exact moment this woman wanted- something. Excuse me: needed help.

Honestly, peeps, there are some ways you can really piss off a pretty good-natured and accommodating person, and the first is to act like you are better or more deserving than that person, and even more so, by expecting that person, who is accommodating you, to go above and beyond the normal call of duty simply because you know you can rely on her to take care of you. Those people need some care, too, and all the more, for the shite they take on from insensitive, self-centered folks with exorbitant "needs."

Yes, I am bitching.

OK, now I am hearing the owner saying the people cannot stay here. The woman is going berzerk, and they have to leave. Good. Boot her ass out.

Why can't we all just get along?

I know it's a tall order. The one reminder with which I was left as I walked out of my counselor's office yesterday morning was that just because I am a pretty cool person who tries to understand and get along with other people doesn't mean I can expect everyone else to be that way because dang they just are not necessarily and I will only be disappointed. (Which I am on a regular basis.)

By the way, the FFM counsels me such, but he charges $95 an hour and whines that the check's always in the mail, whereas when I go to a regular counselor, I only pay a buck a session because I'm broke and marginally employed. So, it's way cheaper- though I am finding with time that the FFM offers up such fine advice basically for free.

Anyway, check out this picture and imagine it's a gun-toting capitalist and a welfare-state commie drinking at the bowl of harmony or something. And they both can afford to go see a doc for their diarrhea when they learn the milk is spoiled. Or at least buy a bottle of Immodium AD or take a day off from work to sit on the toilet.

Happy Birthday

I think I've got laryngitis from yelling at the game last night (GO, DEXTER FOWLER! GO IAN STEWART!), which will make some people happy, and others not so much because they will have to do all the talking at the Friends of the SH Knight Geological Museum table today at Freedom Has a Birthday. Speaking of which, Happy Birthday America.

I've witnessed plenty of instances of Americans being appropriately myopically self-centered Americans lately, and of those in Power and Control here in America tightening the strings- noose? Speaking clearly from a more local level; crap, I haven't had a chance to catch up with national news in days! Having witnessed as I have, the American Personality in full bloom, I find it fitting to share this comment from John D, via Edison Rathbane, that I finally got down the e-mail list to retrieve. Here ya go:

You might mention the height measurements on the inside doorframes of some fast > food restaurants, to help identify characteristics of questionable individuals > when the cctv security recording is viewed later. You might get into the scary > big picture viewpoint identifying all of the locations where we are videotaped > through the various paces of our day, and of what use that information might be > to organized crime, if it were all compiled into one database, analyzing individual > civilian movements over time, either to exploit, or to 'better serve' them, by > understanding better than they do, what their needs and interests are. You might > mention where China fits in to all of this. Not sure I entirely buy the 'economic > warrior' ideology as described thus far, maybe I'm not quite sure who I am fighting > for or how it will benefit me. Perhaps it's just a goof that i shouldn't be taking > too seriously!

Have a great weekend. I mean you, and only you, because you deserve it and dammit better get it, America.

What is ordinary?

Back from Utah for a couple days. It rained every day, to some degree, but the trip was good nonetheless. I wonder how many people go to the canyons for a vacation and get a chance to see the blue sheen of the water running off the colored rock and reflecting the sky? It makes the whole scene quite different from the pictures we're shown.

Counting the Mad

by Donald Justice

This one was put in a jacket,
This one was sent home,

This one was given bread and meat

But would eat none,

And this one cried No No No No

All day long.

This one looked at the window

As though it were a wall,

This one saw things that were not there,

This one things that were,

And this one cried No No No No

All day long.

This one thought himself a bird,

This one a dog,

And this one thought himself a man,

An ordinary man,

And cried and cried No No No No

All day long.

from New and Selected Poems. © Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.

That's one of the Poems of the Day that the FFM sent while I was gone. He sends them to people sometimes, and some of them strike me more than others.

I did a lot of complaining on the trip about other people's unobservant actions, just being completely oblivious, or not giving a crap, to others around them. We are an ordinarily self-centered bunch anymore. And I couldn't help but feel bad for the people who sat in their RVs to eat breakfast, when it was perfectly gorgeous (the rain of course did not usually happen in the morning, and sometime after midnight a person could crawl out of a tent to see an amazing star show, and then rise to sunshine later on) outside, with a functional picnic table sitting empty just a few feet from the trailer. One couple from Texas parked their RV at least the night before we arrived at Petrified Forest State Park in Escalante, and until they left the morning after the afternoon we got there, we never saw them exit the vehicle. I'm not sure why people spend all that money on gas to go to a place like that and then not see it.

Anyway, I'm just another ordinary person; who am I to judge? I just think I have it better than people like I bitched about all weekend. But I don't know for sure.

Son of a Witch; Why Am I Up So Early?

I woke up this morning, way early even though the FFM wasn't even here, but that's a good thing because I fell asleep reading my homework last night... anyway, thinking about aging. I don't know quite how it happened, but I think it started with my realization that I just really don't, apparently, require 8 hours of sleep to feel decent any more, as one change in my own life recently. But that I definitely need TIME to get around in the morning. I used to be able to jump out of bed at 5AM and shower and do little household things and be at work by 6. This week I'm having trouble getting used to the fact again that I have to be in a classroom AT 9AM or I'm being a jerk walking in late and interrupting other people's education, including my own. At first, when I started to become resentful of having to be in a classroom to teach at 8:30, I thought it was a growing natural urge to not do what people want me to do. Now I think really my body doesn't want me to do it, too.

Then I thought about how Greg was in a lot of pain yesterday with rheumatoid arthritis, using a cane to walk, and how I called him "old man" even though he's not that much older than I am, and in fact should be healthier now that he's quit smoking and has kept his weight down, and that you just never know.

And that made me think about how I've put on an extra few pounds over the past several months and would like to lose about 5 of it, but there is no way I'm going to get to the gym to start running again this week. But that's OK because I am aware and have a plan and have started to work on it, being more careful about what- and how much- I eat (except last night at potluck because there was a giant amazing feast laid out before me and colorful Fiestaware plates on which to put it.)

And then I had this moment of realization: We extroverts receive our connection to the world mostly through the environment outside ourselves, and that input and feedback is really meaningful in how we establish who we are in the wider milieu. So, it makes a big difference whether someone says, "Well, remember you are getting older so your metabolism is slowing down" (as the FFM did, graciously, when I brought up the extra pounds, or, "Wow, you're getting pretty chubby," similar words I have heard in reference to myself and which are not helpful, frankly.)

I used to think there was something wrong with me that I am so sensitive to and affected by the things people do and say around and to me, but really that's just the way I process the world, and it's fine. Just like you people who pretend shite doesn't bug you because other people's words and actions don't matter- because you're tough and independent. (Maybe you're just introverts, and that's fine, too.)

I've been told I am "too sensitive." I've also been told I am "highly sensitive" and an "ESP" (Extra Sensitive Person; yeah, that's a label you can find in some of those new age self-development books.) While that's a matter of perspective, you can see who says what is going to either turn me off or piss me off, or make me feel like the other person actually understands me. Big difference.

So, why did I just blab all that? I don't know; maybe I didn't get enough sleep after all, and maybe getting up earlier isn't going to suit me, now that I'm older.

Anyway, thanks, FFM, for not being a dick about those few extra pounds I'm carrying, and for all of you out there, I'm letting you know it's still going to drive me nuts that people don't behave the way I, um, would like them to, by being what I consider kinder to each other. I have yet to learn the lesson of disappointment.

On that note, I'll follow this up with a quote from Gregory MaGuire's Son of a Witch tomorrow, that I read to Barry and the FFM this weekend. If you have not read any of this man's books, check them out. I love him! But now, off to school.