A List of Random Thoughts

I have some thoughts to share with you this evening.  I make no promise that they will enrich your life in any way.  With that disclaimer out of the way, please proceed.

1.  As I lay in bed the other night, reading, I saw a creature flying around up near the ceiling.  While its size appeared similar to that of a Canada Goose, its disposition seemed much more menacing.  It turned out to be a moth.  (I did not have my contact lenses in at the time.)  Now, as the days go by and I have to go to sleep each night not knowing where it might be and how evil its intentions are, I live with the dark threat of its presence.  I know that this situation may not end well for at least one of us.  I fear it may be me.

2.  I ventured away from my usual grocery store today and shopped elsewhere.  I was there at a busy time and the store is very big.  I got a sense that shopping there is a bit of a competitive sport.  Scraps of various fruits and vegetables littered the floor and it looked look quite a battle had been raging for a while.  Strangely, I liked it.  It was nice to feel some energy in the food shopping experience and I will return to that store.  After purchasing expired juice, moldy cheese and being charged way too much for a watermelon at my normal store, I'm ready for a change.  I'll try not to trip on the scattered produce and think things should go quite well.

3.  I remain astonished that Chunky Monkey ice cream is banana-flavoured.  I would never have guessed at the connection between monkeys and bananas that led to this name and thank my friend Patty for kindly pointing this out to me.  Who, other than Patty, knew?  As it turns out, I don't care for banana-flavoured ice cream and would only like it less if it  really lived up to its name and contained pieces of monkey (or any meat really).  Some items should never be brought together.  In my opinion, chicken and pizza also fall into this category.

4.  This morning (Saturday) at about 7:30, people starting using chainsaws at a house across the street. Whatever they were doing was over with quickly.  As this was my first day off since I left my Saturday job, I was somewhat disappointed by this morning ruckus.  It is legal to do this that early on a Saturday morning but it seems mean.  Perhaps what's most concerning about all of this is that no trees appear to have been altered or removed at that house.  I'm not sure I want to know for what purpose the chainsaws were used.

5.  I have reason to believe that people are sneaking into my house and stealing selected items of clothing.  I have many reasons to wonder why anyone would do that.  Moments ago, as I was putting clothes into the washing machine, I remembered a top that I hadn't seen for a while.  There is another top I had already declared to be lost.  These are not valuable items but I bought them because I wanted to wear them and that's difficult now.  Perhaps I will have to institute better inventory control methods.  It's sad when it comes to this inside one's home.

6.  After accepting and enjoying medium roast coffee at Starbucks a few times when the dark roast was not ready, I began to wonder if perhaps medium roast was my preference after all.  I ordered it the other day and it's true.  How could I not have known for so long?  Are there other choices in my life that I should question?  There are a variety of tomato colours out there - have I been wrong to stick to red all these years?  What about eggs?  And maybe I could have loved lop ear rabbits after all - I've stuck to ones whose ears are well-supported.  Apparently there are many things that need reconsideration now.

7.  Aside from the fact that I have long loved rabbits and I keep them as pets, I consider it an honour that a young jackrabbit (whom we've named Alonzo) feels comfortable spending a lot of his time outside our house.  While occasionally he gets alarmed and will scamper away when we are near, often he continues lying down as we come and go and talk to him.  He seems to know he's pretty safe here and last week even stayed still as three men in a furnace cleaning truck arrived out front.  I see neighbours of mine chase rabbits away - I value the comfort of a wild animal so much more highly than a perfect lawn.  I am glad Alonzo has us.

Those are my thoughts for this evening.  I sense that I will have a lot more to say in the coming days so, you know, you have been warned.

Happy Sunday night!

JAHD

A Trip to the Bookstore - Gone Wrong

For me, going to a bookstore is a simple pleasure.  Sometimes I buy an item or two (or more); sometimes I come away with ideas for future purchases.  Occasionally I come away disappointed because I felt like discovering a tantalizing new book and couldn't make it happen.  While I fear for the future of bookstores and admit that I myself buy a lot of books online due to price differences I can't ignore, the stores are still here and still wonderful and I still love going to them.  Or, usually, I love going to them.

The pleasure of this evening's trip ended almost the minute I walked through the door.  A pleasant - no sweet, sweet makes it worse  - young woman greeted my husband and me.  Although I tend to be a bit of a lone wolf when shopping, I can appreciate the warmth of a friendly greeting.  But this woman was greeting us from behind her nicely arranged display of the book she was promoting, had written, and was probably really hoping we would buy.

While I responded to the greeting, I did not head over to the table.  Instead, I headed to the product section of the store.  My strategy was that she would then think I don't even like books and only came to bookstores to look at flowered cushions and odd teas.  Do people do that?  I then proceeded to sneak back through other sections of the store to the bestsellers at the front that I wanted to see.  (I also enjoy looking at magazines but under the circumstances, a move in that direction was too risky.)  We left the store through Starbucks.  It seemed to be for the best.  (Incidentally, I did get a coffee out of the deal.  It was good.)

Now, if my attitude seems cold and callous and surprising considering that I like to write too, I would argue that the actions I took were out of kindness.  If I did go up to table and the sweet woman told me many details about her book, it would be worse for me to reject the purchase at that point. Then, I would be rejecting something about which she is excited, something on which she has worked hard.  This way, I avoided an author's table; that is what I do.  The chance I would want to buy the book is small - there are many books - and I don't want to feel pressured to do so.  I did what I felt I had to do.

With me being me, I felt bad about what I did.  When I met up with my husband, we discussed the situation (a lot of the discussion was really me going on and on and him gently agreeing).  While the subtle nuances of it all did not affect his emotional wellbeing in the way it affected mine (they seldom do), he felt that the table need not have been that close to the entrance.  I think people should feel free to enter and browse in a bookstore without feeling obligated right away.

I bought no books or, for that matter, flowered cushions and odd teas this evening.  I might head to a bookstore again as early as tomorrow to make up for this failed trip (I have a coupon - it will expire!) and I hope that nothing as unpleasant happens on that visit.  I love books, I love their possibilities and I love being able to freely explore them.  I wish this author the best of luck with her new book and I applaud her for all the work that's gone into it and the courage it takes to sit there.  And yes, maybe I did a horrible thing.  But all I wanted to do was look at books.

JAHD

Learning from a Bowl of Sugar Snap Peas

I think I learned what it means to eat.

It all started after dinner this evening.  Feeling the need for more nutrition after a dinner of poor food choices, I put some sugar snap peas in a bowl and began eating.  I didn't eat many.  Something occurred as I ate though.

Sugar snap peas, while not an especially crunchy or difficult food to eat, require some more chewing effort than I, a lazy eater, sometimes wish to expend.  This evening as I chewed them, I began thinking - about food, about how it becomes our body, about its goodness and wow, I came to understand the role of food in our lives.  It is simple.  We eat - we must eat and it matters what we eat.

I don't know if I can adequately explain what I experienced.  Perhaps it was an example of mindfulness.  It was nice.  I hope that it was the beginning of a changed and more appreciative relationship to food.  I'm grateful that I can nurture my body with sugar snap peas.  I'm grateful to have had this experience.  I'll try not to devour a bowl of potato chips to celebrate.

JAHD

Thoughts of the Late, Late Night

I am awake and it is 1:49 a.m.  More accurately, perhaps, my mind is awake.  I don't know that I feel as energetic physically.  But I have had lots of things floating around in my mind.  Lots.

Among the things I've been pondering are the following issues, some of which you may wish to consider as well:

1.  Why do football players wear padding?  My son and I were discussing this recently while watching rugby players tear each other apart in a game.  He's heard that football padding makes injuries worse.  That makes it even more curious.  And, in my opinion, it doesn't make the players look especially attractive.

2.  What does a turtle look like from the bottom?  It's probably easy to find that out but, until you do, you could carry around a completely erroneous image in your head.  What good does that do anyone?

3.  The growing prominence of spinach.  Subway is giving it some of the attention this lovely vegetable has long deserved.  I've had a difficult relationship with lettuce but I guarantee I'll never yank a piece of spinach out of a hamburger or sandwich.  I don't think Popeye did justice to spinach.  I've tended to picture it as a green, mush-like substance.  And while it's clearly different from mucous, it's not great that mucous comes to mind.  (It never is.)  Raw spinach leaves are so much nicer than that and I welcome them to their new place of importance in the food landscape.  Way to go spinach!

4.  Captain Kangaroo - When I think of Popeye, I tend to think of his cartoons being shown within Captain Kangaroo's show (whether this took place or not, I'm not yet sure.  I have to do more Internet digging.)  Captain Kangaroo was one of the first shows I watched.  The Captain and Mr. Greenjeans were important influences in my young life.  I don't know whether that's a credit to them or not.

5.  Whether I'm feeling creative again because I've been exercising rather strenuously, eating better or doing a visualization exercise involve chakras and creativity.  Not knowing what factor or factors has/have made the difference, I want to keep working on each of them.  It's good to feel alive again.

6.  Whether I should go against my new rule (it's three days old!) of not eating after 7 pm.  While a noble and perhaps a necessary rule if I want to lose weight, it seems that at times when I really can't sleep, eating a small amount gives my body something to do and seems to lull me to sleep.  Lulling is good.

7.  The power of cheese to lead to some interesting dreams.  The mind can go to some offbeat places after eating cheese at night.  Travel like that avoids some of the inconveniences of the more traditional forms.  True, I didn't eat cheese last week when I dreamed about a grizzly bear being down the street and eating a live creature (animal? person?, I'm not sure; I know it wasn't something that normally gets eaten in the street) but that wasn't a great dream anyways.  I want a dream where people and situations morph into new people and situations.  Once someone gets eaten by a bear, their morphing days are over.  Cheese leads to better outcomes in dreams; cheese rules.

After writing the rough version of point 7 last night (it didn't mention the unfortunate bear incident; I felt a need to add that this morning, wisely or not), my mind seemed to come to rest.  I headed back to bed.  Sleep continued to elude me for a long time.  I didn't even have cheese dreams.  I did not have a good sleep at all.  Sigh.

Maybe if the temperature in our house was not so hot last night, I would have had a dream incorporating all or some of the above elements.  Captain Kangaroo, Mr. Greenjeans and I would have eaten a great lunch of spinach leaves while discussing the creativity chakra (second).  Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Greenjeans would have morphed into football and rugby players who want to discuss their uniforms.  (Let's throw in a soccer player too simply because I challenge any man to look bad in a soccer uniform.  Thanks!)   At the end, a big turtle would enter, walking upright.  We'd see it's underside and have our turtle questions answered.  So much would have been addressed and probably very quickly.  Oh, what a glorious dream that would have been.

After two nights of struggling to sleep, I appreciate this (in)activity more than usual.  Sleep matters and because our minds are so good at dreaming (even more so when aided by cheese), I trust that our dream process matters too.  Somewhere within, we're all creative.  We have a lot to share.  Sleep well, everyone, and dream lots!  And please, watch out for bears.  That's advice you won't go wrong heeding, whether you're asleep or awake.  Enjoy!

JAHD

A Conversation Overheard

I was on a bus today and a woman entered and began talking, loudly, on her phone.  Initially I felt, as many people would feel, hostility towards her.  What made her feel it was ok to impose her words on our ears?  Was she oblivious to the people around her or did she simply not care?

As I listened to her words, however, my thoughts changed.  I learned a little about this woman's life.  Her current retail job situation was not good and she was going to start seeking other retail job openings.  She had a man in her life and he had been mad at her about something.  Other than this and his beer drinking and purchasing habits, I didn't learn a lot about him.  All in all though, I got the impression that this woman's life is not easy and that her options may be limited.

It would have been easy to judge this woman based only on her cell phone talking habits.  There is so much more to her story though and I realize now there is room for compassion.  I'm glad I'm heard her story.  It made me realize that she has one and that it matters, regardless of how loudly she talks on her phone.

JAHD

I Saw Kids Playing

Moments ago, I returned from a baseball game.  It was near my house and my son was there watching some friends of his play.  It was a beautiful night for a walk to the park.

My son is playing baseball this year but is in a younger league.  His team's season has not been good.  Their win-loss record is unfortunate and for various reasons, my husband, son and I are dismayed by how some things are handled.  I try to be positive about it all and focus on how well my son is hitting but I have found the whole thing a bit of a strain.  It hasn't been a fun experience for any of us.

This evening, at this other game, I saw another version of children at play.  It didn't occur on the baseball diamond.  My son and some other kids who were there to watch the game, whether voluntarily or because a sibling was in the game, started playing some version of baseball on their own.  They were throwing, hitting, running and they were having fun.  It wasn't orderly and it was kind of loud but they played as they wanted to and their enthusiasm was real.

I am a big fan of baseball.  After this experience tonight though, I wonder if sometimes we are forcing children to play games in rather strict, somber, adult ways.  The oldest kids playing this impromptu game tonight were 12 or 13.  They're still not very old and yet, on the baseball diamond, we have such high expectations of kids in this age group and expect them to handle their positions so responsibly.  They're kids after all, I realize now.  Maybe we should let them act like kids a little more often.  It was so nice to see them run free.

JAHD

Venturing Out on a Rainy Day

I was out walking in the rain today.  I had a coat on and the rain wasn't much of a bother to me.  I became interested in the plight of one type of creature though and noticed that they were having, as they always do when it rains, much rougher days.

For humans, getting out of our comfort zones is supposed to be a good thing.  We can extend ourselves, grow, take on new challenges.  For worms, it's really not a good idea.  It seems they would be much better off staying in their worm homes, looking out their worm windows should they be lucky enough to have them, and accepting that staying within their usual boundaries is the best choice for them.  We know what happens when they don't do it.  I wish we could communicate the message to them.

Today I saw a robin eating something on the sidewalk.  As I got close, the robin flew away and I realized that it had been eating a still-wiggling worm.  I picked it up on a stick and put it in the grass.  I wanted to help it but doubt I made much of a difference and I may have ruined that robin's lunch.  Soon after, I saw a big worm in the middle of an alley.  One car had gone by and missed it but I don't know that its luck would hold out.  And really, it was in an alley - was there that much to see that it made the perilous journey worthwhile?

Worms that venture out and are not eaten nor involved in unfortunate accidents often do not do well either.  When the sun is shining again, we don't see them out basking in the sun, eating ice cream cones, riding bikes, or coming home with bags full of new purchases from the mall.  Rather, we see sad evidence of how their journeys ended.  It's not pleasant.

Perhaps to worms it's worth it to venture out on rainy days despite the serious problems many of them do encounter.  Maybe they have something to teach us all about taking chances and enjoying ourselves for a period of time, however short.  I don't know but I do think they should think a little harder about their rainy day travel habits.  It might work out well for birds but it often doesn't end up well for them.  I think worms have a lot to consider.

JAHD 

   

It's Too Sad

Sometimes I read something so sad that I don't know how I can forward knowing what I have learned.  It happened a few minutes ago.  I read a story so sad and it had elements in it to which I could relate so closely.  I have said a prayer since; I hope that helps.

I want to find good, hope, the silver lining in stories, in problems, in the challenges that people face.  With some things, though, I don't see how there can be any good and I don't understand why such horrible things have to happen.  I don't understand.

We can love each other, we can care, we can try to help, we can pray, we can push for changes in our own small ways.  There will always be sadness though and people will always hurt.  I wish that life weren't that way.

JAHD

When Coffee Disappoints

My relationship with coffee has not been without problems lately.  It's not that I love it any less but I am tiring of its unpredictability.  I want certainty that I will enjoy a pleasant tasting drink every time I pick up a cup.  On many occasions lately, coffee has failed to provide me with that.  It has been disappointing and I'm not sure how we can resolve the issues we've had.

It is not price that determines whether or not I enjoy a cup of coffee.  Recently I enjoyed a cup from a convenience store; there have been times when I've been disappointed by coffee from some fancier vendors.  It is not that I am consistently pleased or disappointed with one vendor - sometimes I love a cup of Starbucks coffee, sometimes every sip tastes of bitterness and defeat.  We make coffee at home.  Sometimes that coffee is terrible.  But not always.  The coffee that someone brought me from Colombia was very good but I can't really ask her to go back regularly for that (I suppose).

I don't know what the factors are that lead to success or failure with coffee.  It seems so random.  It's a bit of an adventure to discover what tastes good and what doesn't but I'm not seeking adventure when I drink coffee.  I'm seeking one consistent pleasure in my relatively simple little life.  I'm not asking for a lot or not right now anyways.

To me, coffee has one ideal taste.  Every time I pick up a cup, I want to be greeted by it.  I will keep on picking up cups and keep on searching for that taste..  It's uncertain right now if my favourite bean and I can resolve our differences.  I like to think this is an important relationship for both of us.  I hope that we find our way.

JAHD

On Acquaintances and Not Talking

I may be a horrible person.  Before anyone rushes to assure me that this is simply not true (and I do hope that someone would do that), I'll let everyone know I'm okay with it.  If I'm horrible, I'm horrible.  There's no point in fighting it.

What has led me to consider this possibility is my reluctance to converse with people I know a little bit but not much.  We are acquaintances at best and while these people are all friendly, I don't always feel like coming up with something to say to them.  There's the nice bus driver, the woman who always knows my name in that store and various other people with whom I come in contact.  It can be nice to exchange a word or two but when this sets up an expectation for the next encounter, I don't enjoy the obligation.  Sometimes, I have avoided people to prevent conversations from happening.  This is where the horrible stuff starts to emerge.

I love meaningful interaction with people.  I love listening and talking and laughing with people whom I know and who know me.  My acquaintances and I cannot communicate at a meaningful level.  Our talk must be more superficial and it may be an effort for them too.  To me, really, what is the point?  We can smile, we can be polite to each other but it's probably best if none of us makes an effort to talk when there is simply nothing to say.

I think I will try to stop avoiding people and, instead, approach them in a more relaxed, honest manner.  It's ok that conversations don't take place every time acquaintances meet.  I'll try to be comfortable with the fact that I don't always have interesting things to say and that maybe I'm doing everyone a favour.  After all, the bus driver doesn't have the choice of avoiding me when he pulls up to my stop.  He might be glad if I just quietly let him be.

JAHD