Just some things I realized this week

I have developed an addiction to Pinterest.  I know lots of people suffer similar addictions, but here's the thing: I don't cook.  I don't sew. I don't own a home. I'm not crafty.  I don't have kids or a partner.  I simply scroll through other people's lives and covet their food and their homes and their families and their ability to sort of "have it all."  It's pretty damn mesmerizing and time consuming.  Come to think of it, maybe my Pinterest addiction is somehow connected to my own empty life.  Why live it when you can watch it?  Or something like that.

It's the end of April and I'm still freezing.  I actually wore gloves to the dog park yesterday afternoon.  And yet, while I stood there wrapped as if for a late fall day, I was eaten alive by black flies.  How very incongruous that was.  I can't help but feel like this is Mother Nature's way of flipping us all the bird.  I don't know what her problem is, but as my own personal brand of rebellion, I am thinking of chucking a #2 plastic bottle out of my car window at an illegally high rate of speed and yelling "Save yourself, Mother Nature!"  This is merely a fantasy of course, since I cannot tolerate littering or people who engage in it.  Still, it's fun to dream.

The other day when I took Beckett for a walk at the Crossings, I watched a little boy of about 4 years old pointing and jumping and wildly telling his father about the ducks in the pond.  "Daddy, they're swimming!" he screamed.  Followed by "They're coming right toward us!"  Sad thing is, daddy was so busy texting, with his phone in his face and his back to his little boy, that all he could honestly do - and all he made the effort to do - was nod halfheartedly while mumbling "Uh huh.  Good deal, bud."  I don't know who I felt sorrier for, the little boy, whose father clearly couldn't be bothered, or the father, who will someday know the pain of an adult child who can't be bothered, either.  Whatever the case, texting while your kid is begging for your attention?  Shitty parenting move, 100% of the time.  As the years go by, don't even waste your time pretending to wonder why your kid doesn't call or come home when given the choice.  Kids never forget anything.

There truly are two kinds of people in this world:  People who watch and people who do.  I think both have value. I guess the trick is being the right kind of person at the right time.

I'm trying very hard to take a news-and-politics moratorium. It may be overly indulgent to decide that I simply don't want to sit glued to my television and computer watching day after day of gruesome violence and destruction and scandal, but there it is.  I'm checking out of it all for as long as my "need to know" mentality will allow.

I'm putting the final, FINAL (she said, for the millionth time) finishing touches on my thesis and dropping it in the mail to my thesis reader this weekend. About two weeks early. Because why not? I think it's ready, even though I'm not. And I guess that's the lesson for this week, folks - learning when to let go of something, knowing when it's time, when it's right, when every cue the universe is sending seems to be saying the same thing: "Let.Go." I actually wrote on someone's Facebook page yesterday, in response to a quote she had posted: "Accepting and releasing are the two essentials to living a free and authentic life."  Then I had one of those "Did I actually say that?" moments when I read it back and realized I generally don't live my life that way - I suck at releasing anything, even when that thing is serving me in a negative way, or not at all, and is well past its expiration date. And acceptance?  Well, that one remains as abstract as Pi. Still, I figure I have a better shot at learning acceptance than solving Pi, so I persevere.

Happy freezing cold last week in April!

Til next time,

Hasky