Starting the New Year Right

Friends make it possible to throw yourself into things you might not normally do, solely for the sheer fact that you're too lazy to do it. 

As part of the New Year's Resolution package, a couple of my friends and I are working on "FlyLady."  If you don't know FlyLady, go here: http://www.flylady.com/ (I am in no way affiliated, nor to I get any compensation or whatnot.)  It's all about organizing and cleaning and making your home a place that's nice all the time for YOU - not just when company comes over.  Apparently my friends have houses that are in desperate need of attention - like mine is.  So, we've joined, and we working this through together.  I know I need a change.  I need to get rid of this mess and clutter.  I just need to do it, and I'm hoping FlyLady can help.

Now if only there was a FlyLady site for exercise....anyone???

New Year, Same Resolutions

When I was younger, I didn't really think about "resolutions."  What for?  I resolve to make money and have fun!  That was about it.  But for some reason, as I get older, these resolutions seem to be needed in order to help me focus on things I'd like to accomplish in the future.  Maybe I just didn't didn't have a need to focus when I was young, after all, life focused me all by itself.  Go to school.  Get a job.  Pay off your student loans.  Simple.  Basic.

Now I think I need to put some focus out there in front of me.  Big things that need to be accomplished, because I'm not getting any younger, and someday it will be too late for me to do them.  Either my brain won't work as well, or my body, or it'll just be curtains completely!

I don't know what I want to accomplish for 2011.  Lose Weight.  Of course.  When have I not been working on that?  A few years back my friends and I decided we'd have our own book club, and select books to read and discuss.  (We all live in different states, so we'd just get together and have chats online.)  It was a great idea...and it never went anywhere.  We put for the effort, but we just couldn't get our acts together.  I ended buying us all a magnet for the Bad Girls Book Club. (Amazon didn't show the magnet, but they have a print here.  (Why they have the photo sideways, I don't know, but it says "Bad Girls Book Club" Where half the group doesn't read the book and the other half doesn't show up.)


Makes me laugh even now because it fit us all perfectly.

Books are big for me.  I'd like to read more, but I just don't make the time to do it.  I come up with a lot of excuses, but never get anywhere.  About 18 feet behind me right now is a wall of books.  I'd guess there are about 600 books sitting there, just waiting to be read.  (I've read some, but not even 25% of them.)  I'd be happy if I could read two books in the new year.

So here I sit and ponder what it is I'd like to accomplish in 2011, and what it is that I actually will accomplish.

What to do in 2011?  Does anyone have their list ready to go?

I think I have to become a Twitter-er

Yes, it's December 23, and rather than think about all the Christmas-y things I need to be thinking about, I am considering signing up for Twitter.  Not for personal reasons really.  I don't have much to say, and I don't have a lot of friends to say it to.

My first encounter with Twitter was for a client.  She signed me up with Co-Tweet so I could post for her business.  Well, that didn't go very well.  I was new to the whole Twitter thing, and didn't grasp the concept.  Quite frankly, I still don't.  I mean, isn't it just that Twitter has taken the FB and MySpace "status" and created a site just for status - and nothing more?

Anyway, I didn't do a great job posting because I didn't know what to post - or how to post.  Since then, I've created a Twitter account for the non-profit I'm involved with.  I post - well, I cheat.  I post to Facebook and then that posts to Twitter.  But does anyone read Twitter?  Because I don't.  So all those people I'm following who are posting - they're posting on deaf ears.  (or eyes!)

Now I've had some time to post, and now I'm posting updates for a new client.  While I still don't feel like I know why Twitter is so great, I am a much better poster.  But now - maybe it's time to get my own account.  Maybe from my own business standpoint.  Because from a personal standpoint - meh.  I have a lot of teenage nieces and nephews, and none of them use Twitter.  So it doesn't seem like much of a "teen" thing.  Maybe it is all about business.

Who knows.  I'll try it.  It'll give me an excuse to be able to post comments to Tosh.0.  No wait, let me see if I can get this right.... @danieltosh - is that how I write it?

I Miss Talk Shows

I don't know why, but today I'm missing talk shows.  (Notice how I'm avoiding the fact that I haven't posted in a couple of months?)  Real talk shows.  If you're around my age, you should be able to remember a time on TV when you could flip between several channel and stop on at least one talk show with some good topics.  Not now.  At least, not on my TV.

I grew up watching Mike Douglas (I was little - my mom watched it, and I watched with her).  And then there was Phil Donahue.  And then Giraldo, Sally Jess Raphael, and a slew of others whose names I can't remember.  But there was always something on - someone wanting to talk about something.  What killed the talk show?

Was it Morton Downey Jr.?  I happened to be in New York before we got syndicated and I saw his show.  I couldn't believe it.  I just remember thinking "I can't believe they allow this on television!"  Was it this over-the-top, brutal interrogation show that killed the regular talk show?  Because soon after, Jerry Springer came to being.  Well, that's not true.  Jerry was there, having intelligent conversations, but then it started to go zany.  And then zany was "in."  The more shocking, the better, and who really cared if it was a true story or not?

Now, before I get any further, let me just say something about Oprah.  I don't like.  I don't watch her.  She's all show and no substance.  I don't like that people treat her as some type of god, and that she acts that way, too.  So, I'm excluding her form of "talk show" from my blog.  Boo Oprah.  (Go ahead and chastise me.  I won't mind.)

So, zany.  Shocking.  possibly true or untrue.  Did that kill the talk show?  Did that start the whole "reality TV" thing which killed the ability to talk to real people about real topics?

I know, I know - there's still Dr. Phil and Tyra.  Let me say, I'm not a Dr. Phil fan, but at least most of the time he keeps to the traditional format, and that I can appreciate.  So I watch.  Tyra - well, I love America's Next Top Model (yes, I'm feeding into the reality TV machine).  Her talk show - eh.  All right.  I've watched it.  But, she's done so there's no sense talking about her.

So, if anyone out there reads this, let me know your thoughts on the whole non-talk show epidemic.  Maybe there are local talk shows still going on.  (Not here in Michigan!)

Gray Days

Or is it "grey?"  :)

I love gray days.  I love a nice, quiet, cloudy, rainy, drizzly, deep, dark day.  The weather seems to quiet everything and everyone.  I keep all the lights off, and just maybe I'll have the TV or radio on.  But otherwise I'll keep it dark inside too.  It's nice.  And calm.  Nothing frenetic.  No annoyances.  Just quiet time to relax and get work done.

Happy Gray Grey Monday!

Getting Beat Up

This weekend was a BEAUTIFUL weekend in Michigan.  It was unseasonably warm weather, blue skies, sunny, and the Michigan State Spartans kicked much ass! :)

Saturday morning was much like any other morning.  My husband had gone to work for a few hours.  My son had eaten breakfast and was playing some games.  I was getting dressed and ready to get some yard work done.  I step out of my house and see a couple of kids in my back yard by my garage.  I say in a loud voice "Get out of my yard!"  And they run off down the little hill the separates my property from the neighbor.  Immediately following, much like an echo, I hear this woman's voice scream back "you don't yell at those  kids."  Now, I'm a bit dumbfounded, but not enough that my brain stops working, so I say loudly "I wasn't yelling at them."

And then it gets a bit blurry, where she's screaming a bunch of stuff, and I hear her say something about "they're just getting a cat out of the yard" to which I reply "there's always cats in my yard."  Now, I have never seen these kids before.  Don't know a thing about them.  They don't go to school here, because they're not at the bus stop.  I think they're with their "part time mom" (divorce situation).  Then I see kid #3, who I know, with his cat coming out of my back yard.  I look at him and throw my hands up in the air and say "Joe???" - you know, in that WTF kind of way.  He just looks at me and runs off.

Whatever.  This psycho woman is still yelling.  Then she RUNS from across the yard up the little hill toward my property line and stops.  I was a bit taken aback.  She was going to beat me up.  Seriously.  Now, it sounds stupid as I write this out, but that was her intention.  But maybe when she got up to the property line, one decent brain cell in her head clicked in, or maybe when she saw me, and saw that I didn't run away, she thought twice.

Now, I'm not a big person.  I'm an average 5'4" woman.  She was about three inches taller and a good 30 pounds heavier.  I'm not looking for a fight, but I won't let anyone lay a hand on me either.  I will defend myself.  (I always tell my husband that if I ever got attacked and was killed, he'd know that I fought every step of the way.)

She screams at me that I ALWAYS scream at the kids, and then asks me "is this your pole?!!" (there's an old pole on the property where she was) and I say "yeah, I guess" and she screams "Well this is MY PROPERTY" and points to where she's standing.  Then she walks off saying some other shit, and then she starts yelling again as she calls someone on the phone.  I hear her scream something like "She was inches away from getting her ass whipped."

I don't know this woman.  She is NOT the owner of the property next door.  I know who the owners are.  I haven't met them, but I've seen them.  She was merely a visitor, I guess, to their property.  And I guess those were her kids.  I don't know.  I don't know a thing about her.  And I never scream at kids.  Because there aren't any around here except for mine, and then one other.  And they're in school all day.  And at night, I'm making dinner and spending it with my family.

Was she tripped out on crack?  She had to be on something, because no one snaps like that.  She's nuts, or on drugs or something.  Did she think I was someone else?  Was she hearing things?  Was she seeing things?  I don't know.  She's some 45-55 year old crazed woman with issues.  Because we're all a little too old for fisticuffs. 

This isn't the first problem we've had with neighbors, but it certainly is the worst.  My thought for that day?  WTF.  Seriously.

My husband talked to the police, by the way.  They figure it's an isolated incident, but if she goes psycho again, we'll be having them pay a visit.

What does it mean to "grow old gracefully?"

(I'm ignoring the shame I feel for not posting in several weeks.  To be fair, I have had a ton of volunteer work due to an event we put on, and I'm just now reclaiming my "regular" life.)

Today is "International Walk to School Day."  Seriously.  http://www.walktoschool.org/  Now, if you already walk to school, it's not a big deal.  But when you're being bussed, walking to school takes on actual meaning.  My son's school participates, so we got up and out the door to meet at the designated area so that we could all walk to school together - hundreds of kids, parents, grandparents, teachers and dogs all strolling down the sidewalk toward the school with lots of fun and fanfare.  I'd guess it's about half a mile to the school, so a solid mile round trip for the parents to get back to their cars.

It was your standard, cold morning here.  Probably about 40 degrees and the sun was just peeking up over the trees.  The walk went well, as always.  On the way back to my car I was walking behind a group of parents and I spotted a woman who sparked this blog.  She was dressed for 75 degree, hanging out on the patio weather.  Why, on a day you know you're going to have to walk about a mile, do you wear 2 inch heel sandals - with no socks?

In high school, we used to freeze our asses off at the bus stop because we refused to wear hats and gloves and scarves and boots.  Because that wasn't cool.  When I went to college, it was very apparent who the Freshman were once winter hit.  They were still trying to be cool - guys with their varsity jackets wide open with deck shoes and no socks in 10 degree weather with a foot of snow on the ground.  Seriously. 

When we get older, we realize we're being complete idiots, and we start to dress properly.  Looks be damned, I'm COLD!  Gimme a parka and big, poofy mittens!

Now, I can't say that this woman was still trying to dress to impress, or to be cool (Fonzie cool), or she was still trying to hold on to her youth.  But it just struck me that on way of growing old gracefully means you know when to bundle up, and wear clothes that are functional - and you do it.

What did I wear?  Jeans, my husband's coat, tennies.  And not one damn spot of makeup!  Who do I need to impress?  My husband and son already love me!