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July 30, 2007
A Question of Ethics?
Is it considered unethical to wash down green superfood tablets with coke?
Posted by Anna at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 26, 2007
It's a GIRL?????
35 years ago I arrived on the scene, not the baby James everyone was expecting. That may explain why all pictures under the age of 7 feature me wearing pajamas.
Here I am, 17 1/2 hours old, wishing to god someone would bring me a book.
Can you see the intelligence in those eyes? In these pictures I'm either working on my plan for world domination, or trying to figure out how to get to the bookshelf, my memory is a little fuzzy.
My first birthday, was I not freaking adorable?
Posted by Anna at 12:01 PM | Comments (1)
July 25, 2007
Happiness is.....
... finding an unopened box of your favorite girl scout cookies in the cabinet, just when you need them most.
Posted by Anna at 1:10 PM | Comments (0)
July 22, 2007
Who Are You, Really?: Understanding Your Life's Energy
This post is for my fellow self-improvement junkies, if your eyes glaze over and head starts to spin whenever the topic of personal growth comes up, feel free to skip ahead to the next post. I'll be there in a minute.
Friday I visited a little out-of-the-way shop which sells import goods and lots of other interesting stuff, including a nook in the back of the store filled with overstock books all on sale for a fraction of their original price. Seated on the floor I looked over the shelves of books, needing something, anything interesting to help me introvert over the weekend. After perusing and rejecting several options I pulled "Who Are You, Really?: Understanding Your Life's Energy" by Gary Null, Ph.D. off the shelf. Intuitively I knew, this is what I need today.
Dr. Null believes each person's life energy fits into one of seven categories, Dynamic Aggressive, Dynamic Assertive, Dynamic Supportive, Creative Assertive, Adaptive Supportive, Adaptive Assertive or Adaptive Aggressive. He explains briefly how natural life energy works and the effects of conditioning on life energy before heading into detailed explanations of each energy type. Reading definitions of the energy types I could recognize some of the people in my life, almost as if he knew them personally. I read the chapter on Dynamic Assertives and recognized myself, then read the chapter on Dynamic Supportives and felt like he had been following me around with a note pad. I couldn't decide which embodied the true me. Before I finished the book I was emailing recommendations to others, read this book. He explores each energy type at it's high point and low point, stressing the strengths and pitfalls of each, he gives suggestions for avoiding those traps, for staying on the high side of your energy type as much as possible, while accepting low points as normal, he also advises on highly compatible as well as highly incompatible energy types. I couldn't leave the book down for long, it took me less than twenty-four hours to complete it. At the end of the book is a simple assessment for each energy type, true and false questions. As it turns out I was right, I scored equally high (7 of 8) on both Dynamic Assertive and Dynamic Supportive. This book has earned a position in my "reference" library, those few books I turn to again and again when I'm needing insight.
(Update 6-7-2008 follow up post on this review )
Posted by Anna at 9:01 PM | Comments (1)
After the storm....
Do you see it?
It missed my house by three feet
And it wasn't even my tree (but the neighbor cleaned it up within a couple days)
Must have been quite the party, too bad I missed it.
Posted by Anna at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)
July 21, 2007
Saturday in Introversiana
The Schedule:
Southern Women's Show:
This is a fund raiser I feel compelled to attend, not because I consider myself a "Southern Woman" in any sense, but because it's a cause I firmly believe in. I cajole myself out of the car, promising to spend the absolute minimum time possible. In and out.
Well, almost. The first table was actually interesting, I gained some information which may be useful in the future. I signed up for their door prize, a gym bag, and since there were only two names entered in the drawing before me, an entire hour into the show, I may have a pretty good chance. Second table, a mine field, I never saw it coming.
She put my head in a machine where the black light and magnifying mirror revealed all, sun damage, pores clogged by oil, huge pieces of fluff from drying my face on a towel this morning, suddenly I felt like Quasimodo. Two other women braved looking into the viewing side of the machine, then ran screaming from the room. Throngs of onlookers listened to the microdermabrasion lady lecture on the benefits of using the contents of the small but expensively priced jar in her hand. Heads nodded in blind agreement as she applied small samples to the backs of their hands with a tongue depressor. I slipped from the crowd and moved on, superficially browsing the arrays of jewelry and quilted handbags, fingering the spray nozzle of my pepper spray for security.
A few tables later a group of women sat around admiring their freshly manicured and pedicured nails. I passed by, the fingernails I'd bitten off just two days ago tucked behind my back in shame. Makeup, facials, definitely against my religion, just the smell of them reminds me of old church ladies. I'm spotted from across the room by one of the two women I happen to know. She introduces me to her daughter who quietly confided in me a few minutes later she'd been dragged there against her will, and was looking for an opportunity to escape. I wished her good luck over a plate of tiny hors d’oeuvres, while fending off suggestions I can't possibly do housework without exotic lingerie, and badly need to have a glamour shot made. Finally the door cleared and I slipped out unseen, rushing to my car I knew just the place I needed to be to restore my dignity.
Tanning Salon:
Adorable Young Attendent: "Do you want a 10 minute bed or a 20 minute bed?"
Me: "I doesn't matter to me, you know that."
A: "Well, are you in a relaxing mood today?"
M: "I'm in a procrastinating mood today."
A: "20 minute bed."
For 20 minutes I laid under the UV lights, the face of the microdermabrasion lady swimming in my head, her nasally accent taunting me. "Sun damage.... sun damage.... SUUUUUUUN DAMMMMMAGGGGGE". Just when I thought I couldn't possibly take another second the bed snapped and the lights went off. Relieved I put my clothes back on, returned the pair of goggles and walked out the door, the grocery store came next.
Kroger:
What could be more vanilla than Kroger on a Saturday? I feel at home here, wandering well stocked aisles of merchandise, returning the smile of the guy behind the flower counter, exchanging how-do-you-do's with the produce stocker, here I am loved. Basket slung over my arm I follow the open path around the store, feeling un-inspired, nothing is appetizing to me today.
A faint memory of a dream from last night edges into my consciousness, a dream about food, maybe my body was trying to tell me something. Spaghetti. In the dream, but that wasn't the only dream I had, what was the one that awoke me, the one I laid motionless on the bed staring into the darkness, glad it was only a dream. Fire. I remember fire, then the dream floods back, the house was on fire, not my house, a different house, and four of the people in it were sleeping.
I remember racing through the house trying to wake people, one woke up and grabbed one of the sleeping children, another ran into a room where my sister was sleeping. I grabbed the smallest child sleeping by the door and raced through it, our clothes catching fire in the process. Stop. Drop. Roll. Roll, roll I yelled at the child I was holding as my body rolled over the top of hers. We were out. Safe. No, my sister was missing, and it was too late, did she wake up? Where was she? Then I woke up. Darkness, it was just a dream, a really bad dream, relief. I walked past the jars of spaghetti sauce, disinterested.
I made my way to the skin care aisle and took the last package of facial wipes from the shelf, you know, the ones that keep your pores open, contain UV protection and take 30 years off. I check out and take my bags, stop to put my sunglasses on before I walk through the automatic doors. Library, dammit, it's too late now, I've got dairy products in my bag, and it's 300 degrees outside.
Library:
The forgotten stop.
Not that I really want to go to the library today, but I have to. Thanks to the immigration witch hunt I have to supply a birth certificate to renew my driver's license set to expire next week. And I didn't notice that in the fine print until yesterday. I haven't seen my birth certificate in over 15 years, so I called the county recorder in the county I was born in. Half a world away.
Not so easy, you have to mail in a form. A form you print off the internet. On a printer which ran out of ink several months ago using an incredibly expensive ink cartridge. The library, on the other hand, charges 15 cents per page. You do the math. Like I said, I'm in a procrastinating mood today.
What I want to know is this. I need to get a form, off the internet, fill it out, take it to a notary public, who will use my driver's license to verify my identity, so I can get a copy of my birth certificate mailed to me in 4 to 6 weeks, while I drive on an expired license, so I can go to the driver's licensing station and prove to them I am a legal US resident, and be given a driver's license.
Who designed this freaking headache? And for what purpose? Did they not realize I had to produce a birth certificate to prove I was old enough to get my first driver's license? Or that I had to produce a birth certificate to prove I was who I said I was when I got my social security card, which I had to produce in order to prove my identity when I changed my driver's license from a Minnesota license to a Tennessee license?
The library visit has been moved to tomorrow, until then I'll be hiding under my bed.
Posted by Anna at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)
July 17, 2007
The Darkest Hour....
I just got home from work. To discover a mess in my yard. I can't tell how much of a mess yet, because it is pitch black out, but this much I know. Somehow during my shift at work I acquired a neighbors tree.
It must have been quite dramatic, because it prompted another neighbor to track down my work phone number and call me. He didn't know my last name, and didn't even get my first name right, but when he uttered the magical name of the street I live on my supervisor knew the "emergency" call was for me. On the way to answer the call I thought of every horrible, life shattering reason I would receive an emergency call at work. My house never even crossed my mind. What I can see, as I wait for daylight is that I have a lot of cleanup to do. Broken glass, random leaves and branches mostly, a few shingles, and one large black walnut tree. I'm hoping my neighbor is neighborly enough to realize it is his tree laying just a yard or two from my house, and is sharpening his chainsaw. But for now, all I can do is wait.
Posted by Anna at 3:51 AM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2007
Cell Phone 101: It only works if it's turned on
Me: "What time do you want to get up tomorrow? I'll set the alarm on my phone."
Un-named Parent: "I have an alarm clock, I'll set it."
Me: "Why don't you use the alarm on your phone, then you wouldn't have to travel with so much stuff."
Un-named Parent: "I don't know how to do that".
Me: *demonstrating how to set the alarm on my phone, which is almost the same as the un-named parent's* "See, it's easy, just like this."
*Un-named Parent clicks through the menu, setting the alarm just like I did, then promptly turns off the phone.*
Me: "What did you just do? You have to leave the phone ON for it to work."
Un-named Parent: "But won't that run the battery down? What if it runs down before 6:00 in the morning?"
Me: "You have a charger" right?" *plugging phone into my charger because they're the same.*
Un-named Parent: *finally understanding* "Is that why I never get any calls on my phone?"
**********
a few minutes later, following a lesson in using the 'silent' and 'meeting' options on the phone as an alternative to keeping it turned off all the time, Un-named Parent chases a moth down the hall and across my bedroom before finally stomping it's short life out on the floor.
Un-named Parent: *smiling proudly* "I may not know how to turn on a cell phone but I do know how to turn off a moth."
Posted by Anna at 12:14 PM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2007
Lookin' for a kiss....
This little guy has been on my window the last three nights, he's not getting any lovin' but he seems to like the food. Maybe I need to give him a name.
Posted by Anna at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
Summer Vacation
Merci, I can hardly tolerate such laziness!
Posted by Anna at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
July 4, 2007
Independence Day, 2007
Fireworks. Cotton Candy. Cat Fight.
I love the fireworks. I go to the fireworks, at the fairgrounds, every year. It's insane, it takes 40 minutes to get in and parked, 10 minutes to walk across the grounds to spend 15 minutes standing in line for a $2.00 bag of pink and blue fluffy cotton candy. 10 minutes to walk back to my car, 15 minutes waiting for the show to start, and 50 minutes watching traffic go by before I get a turn to leave. For 15 minutes of fireworks and 114 calories worth of sugar.
I. Like. To. Be. THERE.
It's about the experience, it's about the cotton candy, laying back on the hood of my car watching sparkly ashes glowing as they float through the smoke filled sky. The car next to me left five minutes before the end of a 15 minute exhibition to beat traffic, all I could think was "Where you gotta be so fast?"
Then there's the best part of the show, watching 4 cars trying to cram themselves into a three inch gap between two other cars.
Car # 1: "If I just keep moving, and don't stop at all, everyone else will let me have it."
Car # 2: "I was in this line before they were, I'm not giving up my position."
Car # 3: "Next year I'm leaving 7 minutes before the end of the show."
Car # 4: "Look at all these jerks, I wonder if they know how stupid they look."
And the cat fight, after being shut out by four or five vehicles, the passenger of one truck got out, walked between two vehicles, asked the other driver if she would let them go, of course the driver refused. The passenger stood knee-to-bumper with the car, as though she could force the driver to wait until her friend got enough of her vehicle into the stream of traffic. The driver was not having it and inched forward anyway. Miss Knee-to-bumper summoned a Sheriff's Reserve officer over to complain about the car "hitting" her. Both of them wound up sitting while traffic inched forward enough for 7 other cars to cram into the single lane ahead of them. The guy in the big green truck looked at me, laughing and shaking his head at their impatience, then quickly gunned his truck to shut out the next person. I wanted to holler at him out my window "Where you gotta be so fast?"
The fireworks are over, the cotton candy is gone, I imagine the cat fight girls are mad about something else, and it was worth every minute.
Posted by Anna at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)