Five minute Friday: May 11, 2014

Yes, that's a Sunday. I KNOW.

Grateful.

When most people are in their growing-up years, their formative years, you know, the pre-18 most formative years of them all, they're taught to be grateful. You want more toys? Be grateful for what you have. Don't like your dinner? Be grateful you have dinner at all because some people are going to bed hungry. (Ok, then send my pork chops to those kids in Africa. Sure, we all know what you were thinking.)

As you get older, you are supposed to be grateful on your own. With those life lessons pounded into your head as a kid, by now, they should be well settled and you should have LEARNED. Be grateful for what you have and stop asking for more. For me, I always worried that I was never grateful enough. I still am. If I feel myself start to complain, which happens a lot, or wish for more, which also happens fairly frequently, I am immediately sorry for it. I think I'm trying to protect myself against something bad happening - you know, karma, careening around the corner like the bus that it is, ready to slam me down just for being so ungrateful when so many people have it worse than I do. And as we all know, SOMEone always has it worse than you.

So. I suppose I have to be grateful in the small, everyday things and not fret that I'm not being grateful enough. Don't think about it, just be. When I appreciate those beautiful azaleas outside, that's good. When my daughter throws her arms around me without provocation and proclaims her love for me, that's enough. I'm grateful, and it's enough to know that I'm feeling it and not so worried about saying it.

Sometimes you just gotta be cranky.

Not being a teenager anymore (yeah that's right, I said it), and with two kids still in elementary school, I'm not too up on the newest catchphrases and teen lingo. Thanks to the wonderful world of Facebook, I have been enlightened. Unfortunately. As a writer, I don't enjoy hating words and phrases, but people keep forcing my hand. Therefore I've decided to compile a list of the top 10 Phrases I Hate, in no particular order.

Phrases I Hate

10. "Totes adorbs," or just "adorbs," or, for that matter, just "totes." Apparently this stands for "totally adorable." If you are over the age of 16, and even that number is questionable, please, PLEASE never say this. It sounds utterly ridiculous. My teeth actually hurt when grown adults use this phrase. Adorbs is no better. And Totes is a kind of umbrella and it should stay that way.

9. "Truth." This is the newest kind of one-word definitive statement. Remember the old days when people used to say, "That's true" or "I completely agree"? Those days are over. It's the hipper, cooler form of "true dat." Those phrases are for the elderly and the shut-ins or at least those stuck in the early 2000s. Now, if you agree with an article, something someone says or, better yet, a particularly meaningful MEME, the correct response is "Truth." Simple, straightforward, and POWERFUL. And stupid.

8. "No bueno." I can't express how ridiculous I think this one is. Again, we just have to come up with new ways to say things, don't we? This one replaces "This is bad." What was wrong with that? And why the Spanish - is this Dora's influence again? It sounds another of those kind of new-wave, hipster, catchy word-crap things. Trying too hard. I keep hearing it from people every time something goes wrong in their life, like it's just the most awesome thing to say, and I want to tell them that I'm already sick of it. It's almost like they're excited about sharing the crappy event of their day just so that they can say it. Can we at least switch to another language? How about Greek?

7. "Cray" or "cray cray." I guess crazy was just too long to say. Ahh, what a relief to leave out that long, cumbersome z. That really helps free up my time so that I can do other things, like make up more stupid words. I realize this one isn't completely new but it's still stupid enough to make the list.

6. "Want." This is similar to #9. I believe that we as a society have simply become too lazy to speak too many words in a row. Perhaps this is the result of too much texting - no more complete sentences and instead just one-word statements. We're beginning to sound like a bunch of 1-year olds pointing our chubby little fingers. Or maybe neanderthals, grunting demands without all those pesky words getting in the way.

5. I have no problem with Twitter. I've even been thinking of joining myself because let's face it - don't you think my humor deserves a larger audience than it currently has?! That being said, IMO there is only one place for hashtags: Twitter. And NOWHERE ELSE. Please don't use hashtags on Facebook. Ok fine, so a friend pointed out hashtags are searchable on fb, but that doesn't make them any less annoying. Especially the super-long hashtags and my least favorite hashtag ever: #blessed. Dear lord. This should be eradicated from the earth. #neverwanttoseethisagainorIjustmaykillsomeone

and this leads me to...

4. Saying "hashtag" out loud before a word. It's bad enough having to read it, but hearing someone say it gives me a headache. Like I don't have enough regular stuff to hurt my head. I think the first time I heard this was last season on American Idol with everyone's favorite most annoying entertainer, Mariah Carey, when she described one singer's performance like this: "Hashtag POW." I'm sorry, but WHAT? At first I wasn't sure if she was even speaking English. Who-tag what now?

3. "Beauteous." Yes I know it’s literary and everything but I find it annoyingly pretentious, or at least pretentiously annoying. Can we all please just agree to say beautiful unless you’re starring in some kind of 19th century period piece? Again: for those times when the normal, commonplace word is just NOT enough. It just sounds silly.

2. Saying the letters "O-M-G" aloud. Most people come to accept these abbreviations in everyday facebook or email chat, with OMG being probably the most popular one. But saying it out loud? There is no need for that. The first time someone said "oh em gee," I honestly thought they were stammering, at a loss for words. I waited for the rest, only to quickly realize that there was no rest. That's it. They said "OMG" aloud. HATE IT. Can we just go back to taking the Lord's name in vain like normal people? What was so wrong with that?

1. "I can't even." I honestly don't mind this one too much except that EVERYONE is saying it all of a sudden, and a LOT! Stop it!! You can't even WHAT? I'm sorry, when a word or phrase gets overused it loses any modicum of coolness it may have once had. And really, really should be avoided by the over-35 crowd.

I realize this may make me sound even older and more curmudgeonly than usual, and I don't care. Someone had to say it. (In normal English.)

Five minute Friday: May 2

Mess.

As a regular person, this could go in so many ways. As a parent, we all know where it's going to go. :)

Alexander and Colette are clearly brother and sister. They look SO much alike, from their big blue eyes to their crowded set of teeth to their goofy sense of humor. However, there are also many differences. One is that Colette is neat and clean, and Alexander is... well, a MESS.

He's 9 years old now. When he was 2, I expected his messes. He was a huge drooler, so he always had a bib on until he was, like, 3, and I carried extras around with me in the diaper bag. As he got older, he began using his shirt sleeve/shoulder as a napkin. I made jokes that they should sew napkins onto the shoulders of all of his shirts, detachable so that I could toss those directly into the OxiClean without even looking at them.

Unfortunately, he hasn't cleaned up his act much at this age. At the end of any typical day I can see exactly what he's eaten throughout the day. I know in the morning if he's brushed his teeth or not just by looking at his shirt. If he's used the towel, it's often on the floor. He's a MESS, and he leaves a mess wherever he's been. He's like my own little Pigpen.

The ironic thing is that he's in Cub Scouts, and one of their sayings is "Leave no trace." Cracks me up. Oh, he leaves traces all right, and lots of them. The path of his destruction has become legendary in this house.

The past couple of nights when I've checked on Colette before bed, she's entangled in her quilt. It's falling off the bed, it's over her head. Her pillow is askew and her sheets are all wadded up at the bottom of the bed. No matter how neatly she starts out, it's nothing short of a disaster by morning.

I really need just one neat kid. Please, can we keep her messes contained to nighttime tossings and turnings? I'm hoping her big brother will learn a thing or two from her.

Five minute Friday: April 25, 2014

Five minute Friday was... 4 days ago. I think it's time for me to come up with a new title, maybe?

What's another "f" word that could come after "five minute"? No, not THAT one. Anyway...

This (or last) week's word is "friend."

When I was younger, I wanted more friends. More specifically, I was worried about being popular. Of course, now I know that being popular really has nothing to do with having friends. Not good ones, anyway. That's more about quantity than quality.

Being a shy child, making lots of friends did not come easily to me. It was hard for me to reach out to others and make new friendships or cultivate casual ones that I already had in school. I always wondered what was wrong with me that I didn't have a whole big bunch of friends like I thought I was supposed to.

As I got older, I became less concerned with how many friends I had and contemplated more often just how important the ones I had were. But even then, it proved difficult each time I changed jobs or moved. My good "old" friends were always there, but making new ones still eluded me.

Now that we've been living here for several years, I have found myself with more friends - good ones - than probably ever before. Turns out whoever said that "once you stop looking for it, it will come" kinda knew what they were talking about. I've made a few good friends, and I look forward to getting to know the more casual acquaintances I have even better. I'm just happy that I stopped worrying about making friends and began enjoying the ones I had (some without even realizing they had turned into friendships).

I always knew I was a catch.

Five minute Friday - April 18

Oops, I missed last week. :)

Today's word is: glue.

I'll admit it, I am a picky person. By that I don't mean picky in the figurative sense (although sure, I can be that too) but in the literal sense. I like picking things. Even as a kid, I was always that person who liked peeling off sunburned skin. Now, as a mother, I'm like one of those mother gorillas who go all over her children picking bugs off of them (except the main difference here is I don't eat what I remove from them). But I do pick at them all the time - their faces, fixing their hair, clipping their nails all the time, making sure every little thing is relatively neat and in place and nothing is hanging off. Pick, pick, pick.

I remember once as a child in elementary school, walking out of school. I couldn't have been any more than 7 or so years old. And I have a terrible memory, generally speaking, so when I have a memory as a younger child, one would have to assume it's something fairly important or pivotal. Well, for some reason, I remember seeing another student walking out of the school peeling glue off of her hands. I don't know if she was in art class (well, I hope so, I guess) or what the situation was, but she had glue ALLLL over her hands and she was so dutifully picking it off. I remember being so envious! Every so often, after that time, I would purposely put a little glue on my hands just so I could peel it off.

I'm not sure why this is, but I suppose glue doesn't just hold together, but it can also come apart if you try hard enough. I'd like to keep that literal and not figurative.

Five minute Friday - April 4

This week's prompt from http://lisajobaker.com/five-minute-friday/ is "writer."

And I'm only supposed to take 5 minutes?

Ever since I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. This of course does not include the "I want to be a nurse" proclamation as a young child, the veterinarian thing (until I found out that vets also put animals to sleep), and the ballerina thing that was too off-again on-again to be a true dancer.

When I was about 12 years old, I was writing a book. The book, strangely enough, was about a 12-year-old girl who liked doing the exact same things as I did. She probably looked the same, too - I can't remember. I got up to about 15 chapters, all about 1 1/2 pages or so in length, until I decided it was horrible and threw the whole thing away.

Oh, how I wish I hadn't done that! First of all, what a kick it would be to go back to that now and see it. But also... hey, what if what was the ONE? The seed for my great novel that somehow has gone unwritten all of these years?

But yes, I did become a writer. I was a newspaper writer, covering town council meetings and BOE snoozefests. Oh, and that one time I contributed to the piece about a mall shooting that ended up winning a NJPA award. I wrote for a soap opera magazine, which wasn't quite as fun as it sounds. I wrote for medical journals, which pretty much wasn't fun at all. :)

I am a writer, and a published one, but the book still eludes me. When will that great idea come to me? Or did I trash it at 12 years old? I sure hope not.

Living a thousand lives

When I was a kid, one of my very favorite things to do was read. I loved to pick the next Judy Blume book in line from the shelf at our local library - and if you took me to that library today I could lead you to the shelf - take it home, and read it that same afternoon. As I got older and became an English major, this love for reading served me well. I loved the John Steinbeck, the Emily Dickinson and the JD Salinger. I enjoyed dissecting the Sylvia Plath and the Adrienne Rich. I fell asleep, time after time, face down on the smooth, cool pages of Beowulf, which can be incredibly comfortable if you're tired (or bored) enough.

In the years that have passed, with work and kids to get in the way, as well as the advent of the internet and all things technological, reading has fallen a bit by the wayside. Ok, more than just a bit. This bothers me, not just because as a former English major I can picture one of my professors frowning at my veritable abandonment of the written word, but because I can remember with great fondness just how much I relished it once upon a time. So last year, when New Year's resolution time rolled around, I made a decision to read more. And I did - I read about 5 books last year, which won't win me any reading awards, but was a vast improvement from the previous year's zero. And I was happy about that. This year, I decided to raise the stakes to one book a month. So far, I have read four books and it's still February.

I remember the joy of becoming immersed in a book. That feeling you get when you are transported somewhere else, when you are barely aware of where you are, of your breathing, of even being alive at all. When a book so sucks you in it's like you go into a coma, but you're not asleep - you're in another plane, you're inside the story, not interacting but rather like a fly on the wall who's watching every little thing transpire right up close. And when you love a book so much and it ends, the intense and surprising despair you feel when it's over. I remember when I read Kathryn Stockett's The Help, and as I neared the end I kept casting quick glances to the small stack of pages at the end of the book. "It's ok, I still have several more pages to go," I thought to myself, trying unsuccessfully to extend the experience for as long as I could. Reading eagerly to find out how it would end, and when I suddenly, unexpectedly reached that end, I was crushed. Without warning, I was thrust back into the real world, left hanging with no more to go, and I looked up and around me as if suddenly realizing where I was. Because of my investment in the story (not to mention that awful feeling that I had been deceived by someone I trusted once I learned that several of the pages were for an afterword and dedications) I started to cry a little. I felt like my friends had left me behind and were continuing on in some other level without me. Then, of course, I felt stupid for crying and was kind of glad that those same friends weren't watching.

Many years ago - it has to be close to 20 - I was temping somewhere doing some kind of clerical work. I don't even remember the name of the company or exactly what I was doing. But I do know it was before everyone at work had computers on their desks, before the internet was there to suck everyone in when they should be working, before everyone was on Facebook at their lunch hour (and other hours). For weeks, I spent my lunch breaks in the cafeteria glued to Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone, a massive tome with an even more massive lifetime packed into it. I still recall the day I finished that book at my lunch hour. I closed the book and stared at the cover, lifted my jaw from the cafeteria table, and just said "Wow. Wow. Wow" over and over. And when you finish a story of that emotional magnitude, you look around at everyone else, eating their lunches, flipping through magazines, living their dull little lives, and you just want to shake them and say, "Don't you KNOW what just happened here? How you can you just sit there like that like nothing happened?" But they don't know, and they don't know you, and for that reason, their earth is not shaking like yours is, which is probably why they look so bored and just generally glum in the first place. They don't know what happened, and it's not their fault, but sadly, they weren't where you just were, so they missed out. It's their loss. Or as author John Green put it, "“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” EXACTLY!

And as time goes on, many favorites hold a place of honor on your own mental bookshelf and sometimes you don't even remember why. You may remember the general subject and perhaps a few details, but the intricacies of the story and why you fell so in love with it have escaped you long ago. This is the kind of thing that happens as you get older. :) Once you realize this has happened, you know you need to go back and re-read some favorites so that you can experience that feeling of falling in love all over again. This was an addendum to my book-reading resolution - to add in some long-forgotten classics to the ever-growing pile of newer fiction. For many years, Toni Morrison's Beloved held court as my all-time favorite book, and I'm sorry to say most of the details of the story have been lost from me. But it's on my list of re-reads. I recently read John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men again, and I'm so glad that I reconnected with George and Lenny after all these years. The Winter of Our Discontent is next after I finish Jonathan Tropper's This Is Where I Leave You, which has had me laughing out loud for several days now. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is on deck as well, but it may be a couple of months before I get to it. :)

Then there are the new classics that you are so excited to share with others and so pleased to add to your list of favorites... such as Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. When you feel like you're experiencing the journey right alongside the author - laughing, crying and having spiritual awakenings as she does - rather than just reading about it, you know you have a classic on your hands. Elizabeth's story was so awe-inspiring it made me wonder exactly what I'm doing with my life. (Which I've been wondering anyway.)

Some days I almost wish it was like the old days again, with no internet available so that I would have more time to read. Once I get going with a good book, I wonder what kept me away for so long. I almost wish for a simpler time where there would be nothing to distract me from my latest literary adventure. Almost.