Potted Pleasure

[https://pixabay.com/photos/hyacinth-purple-pastel-spring-4110726/]

I don’t do it every year, but this year I did spring for a pot of hyacinths.  Mmmmm!  They smelled wonderful!

I sometimes think I’d like to really get into gardening, but the problem is the work involved.  I know how lazy I am and I’d give up all too soon.  The only motivation I have comes from me, myself and I.  And, I have to say, myself and I are two of the biggest slackers you’ll find.  I can’t much count on them for anything.  Only me is somewhat dependable.  Alas!

At any rate, I’m still COVID free, despite everything, though I remain rather anti-social.  With the possibility of a new wave, I still may have to go a step further and just hibernate til it’s all over.  Does anyone volunteer to wake me at the appropriate pandemic-free time?

I Did It!

I ventured forth out into the world and met with actual people.  Face to face.  No masks (some of the time; outdoors).

Kind of a surreal experience, actually.  But if I get sick, I know specifically who to blame…  After all, what are friends for?

I Have a Superpower

It’s called forgetfulness.  Now, granted, in most circumstances, people wouldn’t consider that a good thing, a superpower.  And, for the most part they’d be right.  I can go from thinking about something to forgotten in less than 30 seconds.  I know a lot of people like to blame this kind of thing on age, but I can’t in all honesty do that – I’ve been this way at least since I was a teenager.

The most embarrassing example I can think of was that I was supposed to go to a Candy Striper meeting after school.  I was at home and discussed this with my mom, who was at work.  It was agreed that my uncle would take me to the meeting and mom would pick me up when she got off work.  I hung up the phone from that conversation, went upstairs and promptly forgot all about it as I got involved doing something else.  We lived with my grandparents, and my aunt would stop by to visit them after work.  I hear the phone ring and she went to answer it for them.  Then I heard her say, “Well, I don’t know.  I’ll see if she’s here.”

All at once it came rushing back to me that I was supposed to be somewhere.  Somewhere that my mother presently was and looking for me, concerned that she couldn’t find me.  (No, I don’t recall why my uncle never called to remind me.)

To be fair, my memory is amazing – either amazingly bad or amazingly good.  And it’s not entirely predictable which it will be at any given moment.  But I’ll remember things in detail years later when I’ve had no reason to retain the information, and people just stare, asking “How do you remember that?”

It isn’t all bad, though – here’s where the superpower bit comes in.  My memory tends to be static.  If I meet you right now and you tell me you are 25 years old, when someone asks me ten years later how old you are, I will automatically tell them “25”.  It might then occur to me that some time has passed since you told me that, so I’ll likely acknowledge you are probably a couple of years older.  I’m not likely to remember that it was ten years ago.  So, my friends, there’s your fountain of youth.  You’re as young as you tell me you are, pretty much for the rest of your life!  Pick an age, any age and I’ll stick with it!

Well, that was…weird!

Imagine seeing something like this, only walking down the street.

I drive past a school on my way home from work, and a woman (presumably), had on a brimmed hat that effectively covered the upper part of her face, and her mask was a pinky flesh-tone below it, so the above is basically exactly what I saw – a person with no face.

I’m fine with seeing these in stores.  Walking down the street?  Not so much…

But, yeah, it got my attention.

Quotes I Like

If speaking kindly to plants can help them grow, just imagine what speaking kindly to humans can do.

Unknown

Consider the Source

We’ve seen more and more misinformation spread in the world these past few years.  And people don’t seem to think about the source of the information they are being given, or the motivation of the person giving it.

For instance, I am not a Trump fan.  At all.  And I see other non-Trump fans raging with stories of all the terrible things he’s done.  Their motivation is fairly clear – they have an opinion and want to persuade others to agree with them.  But you also see former Trump fans/associates attacking him viciously, telling stories of all the terrible things he’s done.  Their motivation isn’t so clear.  Did they truly witness these terrible things taking place and were so appalled that it changed their opinion of him, or did they have a falling out with him over something and broke ties?  Perhaps some of what they say is merely spiteful revenge, trying to get back at someone they are angry with.  They would not be the first to do it, nor the last.  We see it all the time.

So we, as viewers/listeners/readers, need to sift through what is said.  We need to look for evidence/proof either for or against what they are saying in order to find the kernel of truth.

People say a lot of things that aren’t true, but they aren’t necessarily lying.  Maybe they don’t have all the facts and spoke too soon about what little they do know.  Maybe they were misinformed themselves.  And maybe they just spoke without thinking and later realized what they had said was wrong, but have no way to correct it with everyone who might have heard it – either directly from them, or from someone else who heard it and repeated it.

The same thing is true in storytelling.  Whether on the screen or in print form, there are unreliable narrators – people providing information or opinions that are not at all or only partially accurate.  They have reasons for doing it also, some of them innocent and some of them malicious.

I wrote a story once in which there was a conflict between a man and woman.  Each was basing their actions/words on their point of view of a situation, but each was only looking at the situation from their side and not learning the full story.  Some readers got very upset, saying one person was wrong and the other right, and seemed to think the story was flawed because that could never happen that someone would have such a wrong, stupid opinion.  But it happens every day.  If those readers stuck with the story to the end, they eventually saw each character realize that they weren’t seeing the full picture and that they had been too harsh with the other person.

It’s well worth remembering, in life and fiction, to consider the source of information.  What is said, how it is said, the motivation behind it being said – all of those things and more factor in to whether that information is true and worthwhile.

Creatures of Habit, We Are

It’s funny how much we are creatures of habit.  We simply follow an example that has been set and never give it much thought.  My mother always used white sheets on the beds and Tide or Cheer detergent.  So I always did the same once I left home.

Then I got a new bed and didn’t have sheets the right size, but my roommate did.  But they were…gasp!…floral!  It actually felt weird sleeping on patterned sheets, and took a while to get used to doing it.  I’m still not much on patterns, but I have graduated to colors.  Progress!

And you can only imagine how betrayed I felt when I learned Mom started using a different detergent?  NOT use Tide or Cheer?  Impossible.  Those MUST be used for laundry.

Turns out, not necessarily.  Personal preference, new products, your own judgement of how well something works for its intended purpose – all those things can be factors.

It doesn’t have to be just the knee-jerk reaction of doing what we’ve always done, what we’ve always seen our parents do.

Try it – you might find something new you like better than “the way things were”.

I recall a humorous story I read, I think in Reader’s Digest, where a new wife always cut the ends off of a roast and threw them out before cooking the roast.  Her husband finally worked up the nerve to ask her why she did that, since he couldn’t see anything wrong with that meat that it should be tossed.

She acknowledged that she didn’t know why it was done, just that her mother had always done it that way.  So she called her mom and asked why.  Her mother told her she’d only had one roasting pan that was somewhat small.  Cutting off the ends of the roasts was the only way they would fit into her pan.

I Hate Shopping

Truly.  I’m a marketer’s nightmare.  If I have what I want/need, then I want it to last forever, or at least until I have a reason to want/need something else.  I don’t care that it isn’t the newest on the market, that it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, that it’s not the latest fashion or any of that.  I have to have a reason to want to bother shopping to get something else than what I have.

The trouble is, things don’t last forever.  They have this unfortunate tendency to wear out and need replacing.  Such as sneakers/walking shoes.  And, unfortunately, what the fashionistas have dictated are the popular colors and styles in any given season aren’t necessarily what I want.

When I bought my current shoes, I was able to get them in taupe – a nice neutral color.  Now about all I can find is either black, white or neon, and mostly styles that I don’t want or consider overpriced.

But, shop I must.  Or go barefoot.  Yeah, that probably isn’t really an option.  Particularly since it’s winter.

Keep me in your thoughts that I’ll find something quickly and end my suffering!

Alas! Farewell!

Johnny Fever (Howard Hesseman) has gone on to DJ in Rock n’ Roll Heaven.  You know it will be a hell of a show.

Thanks for the memories.

Well, yeah. What’s your point?

Don’t know about the rest of you, but for a time, I struggled in college.  I found it difficult to make myself knuckle down and study.  I had a history class, and I really like the professor – his lessons were interesting as well as educational.  But for whatever reason, I didn’t really prepare for the final as I should.  I forget whether there was an actual reason (probably not) or I just simply…didn’t

Ah, but fools that they were, they made it an essay test.  Words are my friends.  Words help me.  So I took the little I remembered about each subject of a question and bluffed my way through it, puffing up the word count with verbosity.  In truth, I was basically saying the same one or two facts over and over, just in different ways

His Teaching Assistant called to give me my grade afterwards.  He actually told me, “Well, you passed, but I really don’t think you gave it your best effort.”

Dude, I gave it virtually no effort – let’s hope that wasn’t my best!