Kick it up a notch

I've been using a brain training site ( www.lumosity.com ) for a couple of years. This morning I'd completed the days exercises and clicked on the link to see see what (how) I'd been doing at the beginning of this adventure. It's shown as a kinky line. It started out really low. No surprise there. But after a year, last summer about this time actually, it rose dramatically. Really dramatically. I mean suddenly it appears I was three times smarter than I had been a while before. So I was knocked back on my heels and sat in that akward position trying to remember what the hell happened last summer.

Okay, here's the thing. I did remember. I do remember. Remember, I've been doing exercises to aid in, among other things, memory, for a couple of years or more.

I remember doing the Penguin maze puzzle thing one day and thinking, 'wait a minute. I'm not doing the best I can do. I'm just trying to do better than I have previously.' I decided to really invest in this thing. To REALLY do my best. That's when the line took a leap skyward.

Now a year has passed and it's finally hit me. I do that thing--that simply trying to not do worse--in a lot of aspects, perhaps most aspects, of my life. I'm going to stop doing that. I'm going to kick it up a notch.

A woman now, but not so long ago....

A friend came to visit yesterday. She was about 15 when I first met her. A cute and curious teen drawn into my shop to view the shiny things. She was, as my mother would have said, 'as bright as a button.' And yesterday she sat in my living room with her husband and their beautiful baby girl.

I'm more conscious now of the distinction between having and being a friend. I started this with the words, 'a friend came to visit'. I don't know if that is true. A young woman came to visit an old woman who is her friend. I suspect that I am, to her, more of a project. Someone you feel you must drop in on while you are home for a visit in summer.

As I made tea and chatted I made several statements that, while I can't recall what they were at present, were obviously unacceptable. The first two or three times I saw the look pass between this smart young couple and received a gentle nudge to a more modern way of thinking, to the right way of thinking, about matters quite inconsequential, I blundered on. That's what I do. Eventually, a wave of profound sadness mercifully shut me up.

The sadness I felt: it was the realization that I had been that young woman. Maybe not to that extent, I don't know. How would I know really. But the experience, I think, I hope, has softened me and ground down my opinionated edges. And while I'm grateful for the lessons, I'm resolved to be less accessible to some of my teachers.

She stopped by again today. She left a note. I wasn't home.

A new affirmation for you

Here's an affirmation for you. Bury your little bundle of index cards in the back yard and get out a blank card, put your favorite butterfly sticker on it, get out your strawberry scented, lavender coloured felt pen and write "DO LIFE" across that sucker in your best handwriting.
Now roll it up and stick it up....

Well, you get the idea.

I didn't know that about me

Sitting at my desk this morning and saw a post van pull up out front. The mailman (yeah, I know, postal worker) was heading up my walk with a parcel. I went to the door, got the parcel and exchanged comments on the weather. 

Now, here's the thing...

My thoughts from the moment he put his first step on my walk were:

What the hell is this.

I didn't order anything.

Oh, great, did I click some link I shouldn't have.

It's probably the cell phone I ordered online, gave up on after a week and got at the store instead.

Now I'll have the hassel of sending whatever this is back.

yaddah yaddah yaddah

Actually it looks like it's something, perfectly legit, connected to the new TV/internet provider I signed up with a couple of days ago.

So today I'm pondering the flood of negative shit that streamed through my pea brain. Why didn't I assume something like, 'oh, who is sending me chocolates,' or at least 'what a mystery. I can hardly wait to see what this is.'

Hmmm.....

Gambling had me by the … ovum?

Well, who would have ever thought it. I have a gambling problem. Me. It happened so fast and I can’t believe how insidious it is. I was listening to CBC radio one day and a broadcaster did a bit about a promotion that BC Lottery was doing on their on-line website. You deposit a hundred dollars, make a hundred dollar bet on a certain game, and you win a hundred dollars. Well, I did it and it worked. I was up a hundred dollars. But it worked for them, not for me. I don’t dare even think about how much I’ve pumped into that stupid thing since then. It isn’t desperate or ruinous or compared to a lot of folks, significant. Thing is, I don’t like it.

I started getting on there three times a day. I’d sign in and sit with my first coffee. And what I find really creepy is, it’s in the house. MY house. 24/7.

Today I was having lunch with a friend and she had just lost a whack of money and had decided she was going to go to the local casino and opt out. That’s where she has a problem. After lunch I went online and spent a mindless hour or so watching fruit flash by my bleary eyes. That’s where I have a problem. I realized this used to be fun, and now it isn’t. I ran it down to zero balance and opted out for six months. It feels good.

I'd highly recommend it. 

How did I get here from there?

Sometime in the middle of the last century Alan Watts had this bit in one of his books. He said something like – think of a line of seventeen dots where the one on the left is the least, the right the most, spiritual. Where would you put yourself was his question. The answer, of course…if you put yourself anywhere you are nowhere. (I’m not doing this justice, but you get the idea.)

I thought of this the other day when I was on my back deck doing tai chi. A drunk came up to the back door of the neighbor’s house. I have to tell you, in our neighborhood, this is all going on 20 feet away, tops. So my lady neighbor came out and said, ‘Go away, Al, you’re drunk,’ to which Al said, several times, ‘I want to talk to your husband,’ to which neighbor said, ‘this is my house too and I’m telling you to get out of here.’ I’m parting the wild horse’s mane. From my vantage point I could see that another neighbor, across the street and down a bit, was heading over.

Man neighbor got to the door and he told drunk person to go away and drunk person did, after five minutes more of back and forth. Neighbor from across the street and down a bit is getting closer and I’m waving hands as clouds doing my best impression of someone who is above all this shit. Man neighbor goes back in his, oops, their house and across the street and down a bit finally makes it to the rescue. He’s in a wheelchair and borderline ancient (like me) so his intervention is a delightful mix of chivalry and delusion but hey. By now I’m creeping low like a snake and about to step up to the seven stars. It’s all pretty much in hand and it looks like I’m going to be able to shoot the tiger and get out of here when, bless her heart, neighbor lady looks my way and asks at volume heard three doors in every direction, ‘Valerie, have you met …?’

So, I’ve swept the Lotus but it looks like drawing the bow to shoot the Tiger is out of the question. I rather grudgingly lean on the railing and join the conversation. In the back of my soon-to-be-enlightened mind (my delusion) I’m feeling that this is all something I should not be subjected to. WTF, right?

We consoled, we fumed, we vented, we calmed, we called it  a day and two doors down wheeled away and neighbor lady said she’d have to find someone else to mow the lawn during their vacation. Drunk fella was going to do it but now… I said I’d be glad to, no problem. Neighbor lady happy. Yay. Now I’m really full of myself. I’m the spiritual person who was doing the tai chi and had to put up with this disruptive life stuff then had to talk to the neighbors and didn’t close the tai chi but in the end I got to save the day.

Good news is, it only took maybe five minutes for me to recognize how full of shit I am. How, if it weren’t for my freaking ego I’d recognize in the moment that we were neighbors sharing a moment. The bad news is that now I’m quite pleased with myself for being so evolved as to only take five minutes or so to get a grip… 

Stuck at square one and loving it.  

A trait I admire in men. And a few women.

Women and men are different. To that I say hallelujah. But there's one thing men seem a lot better at than women. Having a disagreement with their same sex buddy. A man might say, 'hey, what the hell. I can't believe you just said (did) that' when they hear (see) their friend, in their eyes, being a jerk. A woman on the other hand is likely as not going to have nothing more to do with their friend for a while (or for freakin' ever) and no discussion. End of. That's weird.

And the tactics are interesting. I was having coffee with a friend yesterday and she was going through this cold shoulder situation with another woman. She'd phoned her friend who greeted her as if she were a telemarketer who had been way too persistent. Whoa. I knew about that one. So, she got off the phone then started to worry that maybe something was really wrong at her friends house. She went running over there and her friend opened the door and blanked her. The stare. No words. She might as well have been dressed head to toe in drab and carrying a handful of pamphlets.

The timing couldn't have been better for this discussion as far as I was concerned. I'd just experienced the same thing a few weeks ago. Still don't know what the phooey. So, M's experience and my experience were somewhat exorcised in one mutual therapy session. That's what woman ARE good at.

Yeah, I know. Not all men do it right. Not all women do it wrong. But ladies, I think we can, overall, do better.