Flowers in California

Flowers in California

Monday, April 7, 2014

Thoughts and Things

I'll share a few words on thoughts that have been floating around in my head and in the case of the shredded cheese, flying through the air and hitting me.

1.  I have long enjoyed eating eggs at breakfast but recently found that cereal was easier and day after day I dug into a bowl.  I still bought eggs though and they sat abandoned in the fridge.  Then they staged a rebellion.  I didn't see it coming.  Twice, when I was standing at the fridge, an egg carton fell out of the fridge and each time, one egg broke on the floor.  These were messy reminders for me to reconsider my breakfast choices.  Even at the grocery store, I picked up a carton and one egg was broken.  It was always one egg, there was always one message.  Eggs want to be a part of my life again.  I am pleased to welcome them back.

2.  It can be uncomfortable enough running into a former hairstylist but running into a former psychologist would be far worse.  You just know that responding "Because I'm well" to the question of why you stopped coming to them would be met with a derisive "Yeah, right" because they of all people would know how far from the truth that likely continues to be.  It would be so demoralizing.  Nobody enjoys comments like that when they're out on a lovely spring day. It's a situation I really hope to avoid.

3.  I was thinking about feet and about how I want to fix up my feet before I ever go for a pedicure again. While this may seem unnecessary, I don't want someone to have to work hard simply because I've been too lazy to reach down and moisturize my feet when required (Rocky Mountain Soap Foot Butter is excellent for this and no, I'm not being paid to promote it; it's really good).  It must be strange working on people's feet no matter how disappointing you find their lack of foot care to be.  I expect my feet have caused some despair in the past and I'll do my best to ensure that no esthetician ever has to scrape, boil or use excessive chemical force to make my feet smooth and nice again.

4.  There is a house on our street that my son and I describe as "the yellow house that's not yellow."  It used to be yellow.  Its siding is now of a colour close to yellow and could perhaps be described as beige or washed-out tan.  Regardless of one's feelings on the current colour (and mine are not very positive), I continue to feel that the house is, at heart, still a yellow house and should be recognized as such.  I feel this way about no other houses around here, some of which have had more drastic colour changes.  That house will always be yellow to me.

5.  I've been thinking about what it would be like to have a seal for a pet.  I can picture having one around the house.  Puddles and splashing would probably be concerns and might make seal ownership difficult but I find it interesting to think of which animals we invite into our homes and which ones have never become pets.  I can see why something like a camel could be a problem (they're pretty tall) and I know people have run into problems with pigs (they do get big) but I'm not sure why monkeys are such a no-no (although I wouldn't want a monkey - my feelings on monkeys are iffy at best) and what about squirrels, groundhogs, and smaller-sized goats?  I wonder when and how we made decisions about who gets in and who doesn't.

6.  My son threw a bag of shredded cheese at me yesterday so I could open it for him.  It hit me on the leg and it hurt.  While I'm glad it wasn't solid cheese as who knows how badly that could injure a person, the kid throws pretty hard.  The time may have come to tell him that he has to stop throwing dairy (and perhaps other grocery products) at his mother.  I guess we all knew this day would come.

7.  I saw a woman today whose hair I liked.  I've heard people say that a woman would be flattered if you went up to her and asked her where she got her hair done.  I would be.  I'd be a little uncomfortable doing that though and I have a hairstylist I like right now.  I'd be more interested in taking the woman with good hair to my stylist and saying "Here, this is how I want my hair to look."  It could be somewhat inconvenient but it's better than saying nothing and taking pictures of the hair from many different angles.  I'd fully expect a person to be troubled by that.

Happy thoughts to all!  Please be careful when throwing cheese and other dairy products.

JAHD












Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Walking Along

Does it ever happen to you that you're walking along and you suddenly think you've dislocated your hip and then you decide that you couldn't have dislocated your hip or you wouldn't be walking along but you think that you probably shouldn't have jumped into those new abdominal exercises because you could hurt yourself but you are prone to jumping into things full force which sometimes leads to regret later and then you keep walking along, observe some traffic actions that make you borderline hostile, and then are pleased when a bus driver indicates he'd wait for you and you motion that you don't want the bus and you keep walking and you hear a train whistle and you wonder why because you don't always hear them and that might mean construction or an animal on the tracks or a human on the tracks and you hope everyone is okay and you think about how you like railroad history and other bits of local history and then, lost in thought, you realize you've veered just off the sidewalk and onto some ice and you almost fall but don't which is lucky because you don't want to explain to an emergency crew that you fell on ice when there's a completely clear sidewalk and you just know the looks you'd see them exchange and then you keep walking and don't think about anything particularly interesting for a while and then you keep walking and see a somewhat new neighbour and you wonder if you should be friendly at some point but there were some hurt feelings with the previous people in that house and you don't want that to happen again although that's rather silly and at some point you notice a patch of snow on the sidewalk that kind of looks like a bunny and then you see some that reminds you of Australia but you're not entirely sure of the shape of Australia but you are not as confused about that as you are about how Nevada, California and Arizona are located relative to to each other and you find the whole area of New York City confusing and think that maybe, especially with the NYC area, the maps gets changed between times you look at them and with California it does't really matter how it's placed geographically as long as the ocean is there, the Tower of Terror at Disneyland is there and that you can still stay at that nice simple motel in Anaheim when you're lucky enough to go back there even if last October the staff at the motel didn't seem really enthusiastic but maybe that was due to it being off-season and it didn't matter because it was cool to see the Haunted Mansion decorated for Halloween (and Christmas) and then you arrive home, relax, have a little lunch and enjoy the rest of your day?

No?  Me neither.

JAHD