I got an email from the CEO of JCPenney. I'm not important. It's not like it was a personal email. It was one of those emails the CEO of a large company sends when he or she wants to make hoi polloi feel all important and in the know about things happening in the huge corporation they head up.
So the deal with Penney's now, or jcp as they're branding themselves, is that instead of a department store in which you go to buy things, they've revised their stores to be a "collection of smaller shops" staffed with super-knowledgeable, specialized sales associates. I get where they're going with this. I suppose in the past, Penney's associates was that yesterday, they worked in home furnishings, today, they're bounced over to the cashwrap in Menswear, tomorrow, they'll be manning the jewelry counter. It's hard to know everything about everything in the store, and by breaking the store into smaller, organized departments, and training up the staff to know their department inside and out, and not have them bouncing all over the store from day-to-day, Penney's will be able to deliver better service to its customers.
I think this probably is a great idea. Nothing's more frustrating than having a question about a product in a certain department, asking the person in the store nametag who's hovering around in that very department, and getting a blank stare in return.
Thing is, this doesn't sound so new to me.
Remember that show "Are You Being Served?" that took place in Grace Brothers, a department store in London? It was a fictional store on a Britcom, but I think it had a real-life antecedent in department stores all over London and even here in the States. The characters on AYBS? were assigned to their own departments, mainly Menswear and Ladies' Ready Made. They stayed in their own departments, knew their wares inside and out, and none of them was bounced all over the store. There was an episode where the staff of Grace Brothers was cross-trained in toys, but it was such an uncommon occurrence that the characters were scandalized, and it provided much opportunity for laughing at the awkwardness that ensued.
The New jcp reminds me a lot of that. Which means everything old is new again. I wonder if this means that instead of everything moving farther and farther from where people live, if in another few decades, we'll see a return to downtowns. I kind of hope so, and I hope it happens before all those glorious old buildings come tumbling down and are replaced by the metal box-buildings everybody's putting up these days.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Monday, October 15, 2012
You Called Me An Idiot. I Believe What You Meant To Say Is This:
There's this thing happening these days that's really unpleasant. It's this tendency to think that one's own way of thinking is the only way, and anybody who doesn't agree with those views is "an idiot." I think this is why everything is so odious. Anybody who doesn't share your opinions in politics is "an idiot." Anyone who doesn't follow your particular religion is "an idiot." Anyone who likes or dislikes something you dislike or like, respectively, is "an idiot."
I go through spells in my life where I get called an idiot a lot. I will not say that it rolls off my back like water off a duck. Quite the opposite, I'm afraid, as evidenced by the fact that I'm even writing about it. Do I identify myself as an idiot? No. I don't think I know everything and have all the answers, but I'm not an idiot. I DO know a real-life idiot, and I could introduce you to her, so you could see with your own eyes what an idiot is really like, but I believe that there are enough actual idiots running around that we all know one, so I shan't waste your time or my sanity.
I'm not sure if those who call/have called me "idiot" think I'm one of those actual, "Oh my Gawd, how does he/she not drown in the shower" idiots. I mean, I've done some idiotic things- opening two loaded filing cabinets once, and the thing tipped over on me- idiotic? Yep. I was filing invoices, found one that I missed two drawers above the one I was working in, didn't even think, opened the drawer, and had an object lesson on why you don't open two file cabinet drawers at once. Doing things like that are not part of my daily life, though.
Then there are the kind of idiots who say things without thinking. We've all been there, as well, either out of distraction, ignorance (the kind of ignorance that means Not Knowing Any Better, not ignernce, meaning they either know better or not, but aren't self-aware enough to self-edit), fatigue, stress, you know, heat-of-the-moment situations. Saying an idiot thing once in a while does not an idiot make. It's if someone has a track record of pretty much every single time you see them, every time they open their mouths, idiocy flows forth, well, then. There you have an idiot.
I really don't think I'm either of those kinds of idiots. What I do think is that the people who call me and other people "idiot" really mean to say "I disagree with you, but I'm too inarticulate to voice my disagreement in a coherent way, so I will insult your intelligence and hope it sticks and makes you think that I think you're as stupid as I feel right now."
It usually happens when somebody draws me into a political discussion. I'm not a political scientist. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I'm a registered independent. I find it troubling when someone can sum up their political beliefs in one word, or on a bumper sticker. I choose my side on an issue, based on what I know about that issue. I don't say yes to something because all my friends do, and on the flip, I don't say no because everyone else is saying yes. Sometimes, when I am presented with new evidence, I've been known to change my mind. This doesn't make me a flip-flopper; it makes me somebody who uses her brain. I probably do more research on matters that matter than the people who tramp around in their "Arch Conservative!!!!" or "SuperLiberal!" T-shirts (figuratively- I've never actually encountered someone who's wearing T-shirts like these) who are the ones calling me "idiot."
I don't know what to do about all the rancor and idiot-calling that's going around. Especially since it's an election year. But I don't enjoy it. I don't like debates. I mean I don't like being drawn into them. If I were attracted to that sort of thing, I'd run for some kind of office where you have to debate other people. It just isn't me.
I definitely don't come from the school of thought that says "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Life isn't always nice. People aren't always nice. Are there some real idiots out there that deserve to be called out for their idiocy? You bet! I just think that idiot shouldn't be the default response to the different or the other opinion. Why not say what's really happening?
I wish that instead of "Idiot!" being the first response to a dissenting opinion, even an opinion one feels strongly, even viscerally, that people could just say out loud what's really going on, that they disagree, and the disagreement is kind of uncomfortable for them. If done right, disagreement can lead to discussion, which can lead to learning new information and seeing things from another angle, which can lead to changing a mind, or having to say 'I was wrong,' or less pejoratively, 'I used to think a certain way, but in light of new things I've learned from listening to people and reading things I didn't agree with, I've come to a conclusion that's different from the position I held in the past.' We're so afraid of having to acknowledge ignorance.
It's less time and energy-consuming just to bellow out "Idiot!!!" and go on our ways. And that's too bad.
I go through spells in my life where I get called an idiot a lot. I will not say that it rolls off my back like water off a duck. Quite the opposite, I'm afraid, as evidenced by the fact that I'm even writing about it. Do I identify myself as an idiot? No. I don't think I know everything and have all the answers, but I'm not an idiot. I DO know a real-life idiot, and I could introduce you to her, so you could see with your own eyes what an idiot is really like, but I believe that there are enough actual idiots running around that we all know one, so I shan't waste your time or my sanity.
I'm not sure if those who call/have called me "idiot" think I'm one of those actual, "Oh my Gawd, how does he/she not drown in the shower" idiots. I mean, I've done some idiotic things- opening two loaded filing cabinets once, and the thing tipped over on me- idiotic? Yep. I was filing invoices, found one that I missed two drawers above the one I was working in, didn't even think, opened the drawer, and had an object lesson on why you don't open two file cabinet drawers at once. Doing things like that are not part of my daily life, though.
Then there are the kind of idiots who say things without thinking. We've all been there, as well, either out of distraction, ignorance (the kind of ignorance that means Not Knowing Any Better, not ignernce, meaning they either know better or not, but aren't self-aware enough to self-edit), fatigue, stress, you know, heat-of-the-moment situations. Saying an idiot thing once in a while does not an idiot make. It's if someone has a track record of pretty much every single time you see them, every time they open their mouths, idiocy flows forth, well, then. There you have an idiot.
I really don't think I'm either of those kinds of idiots. What I do think is that the people who call me and other people "idiot" really mean to say "I disagree with you, but I'm too inarticulate to voice my disagreement in a coherent way, so I will insult your intelligence and hope it sticks and makes you think that I think you're as stupid as I feel right now."
It usually happens when somebody draws me into a political discussion. I'm not a political scientist. I'm not a Republican, I'm not a Democrat. I'm a registered independent. I find it troubling when someone can sum up their political beliefs in one word, or on a bumper sticker. I choose my side on an issue, based on what I know about that issue. I don't say yes to something because all my friends do, and on the flip, I don't say no because everyone else is saying yes. Sometimes, when I am presented with new evidence, I've been known to change my mind. This doesn't make me a flip-flopper; it makes me somebody who uses her brain. I probably do more research on matters that matter than the people who tramp around in their "Arch Conservative!!!!" or "SuperLiberal!" T-shirts (figuratively- I've never actually encountered someone who's wearing T-shirts like these) who are the ones calling me "idiot."
I don't know what to do about all the rancor and idiot-calling that's going around. Especially since it's an election year. But I don't enjoy it. I don't like debates. I mean I don't like being drawn into them. If I were attracted to that sort of thing, I'd run for some kind of office where you have to debate other people. It just isn't me.
I definitely don't come from the school of thought that says "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." Life isn't always nice. People aren't always nice. Are there some real idiots out there that deserve to be called out for their idiocy? You bet! I just think that idiot shouldn't be the default response to the different or the other opinion. Why not say what's really happening?
I wish that instead of "Idiot!" being the first response to a dissenting opinion, even an opinion one feels strongly, even viscerally, that people could just say out loud what's really going on, that they disagree, and the disagreement is kind of uncomfortable for them. If done right, disagreement can lead to discussion, which can lead to learning new information and seeing things from another angle, which can lead to changing a mind, or having to say 'I was wrong,' or less pejoratively, 'I used to think a certain way, but in light of new things I've learned from listening to people and reading things I didn't agree with, I've come to a conclusion that's different from the position I held in the past.' We're so afraid of having to acknowledge ignorance.
It's less time and energy-consuming just to bellow out "Idiot!!!" and go on our ways. And that's too bad.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Some Dreams Are Better Left Unfilfilled
The other day, I saw a piece of small farm equipment go past the house, and it looked like the kid who was driving it was doing so on a pallet jack. You know what a pallet jack is. It's a motorized thing, not quite like a fork-lift, but it'll hook onto pallets, pick them up a workable distance off the floor, and enable the operator to move them around. The operator drives the pallet jack by standing at the controls, which are located at the back of the machine. Think of the Segue Scooter's distant, muscled-up, blue-collar cousin, I think.
My senior year of high school, and all school breaks until the summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at a warehouse. It was a little place. The whole building wasn't even as big as a quarter of a Sams Club, but it was big enough to need automated help in moving pallets around, especially from the loading dock to the warehouse proper, when we'd get shipments from our suppliers, and from the packing table to the loading dock, to load up our customers' orders that we pulled and packed.
We had a couple of the manual pallet movers that were just forks with wheels and a handle. That's the one I'd use to slog pallets around. It was school bus yellow and its brand name was "Big Joe." Big Joe was difficult to get rolling and even more difficult to stop. I always said Big Joe needed Jake brakes. It always felt a little like punishment to have to drag a loaded up pallet with Big Joe, especially when there was a much cooler pallet jack in the warehouse.
The cool, motorized, ride-on pallet jack was a Hyster, for what it's worth. That's all I know about it. That, and it was big and a more lemony yellow than Big Joe and much cooler and more fun-looking to run than Big Joe. My mom aptly called it "the surfboard," because the kid that got to drive it around looked a little like he was surfing when he drove the Hyster pallet jack.
Oh, how' I'd dream of getting to drive the Hyster pallet jack around the warehouse sometime! I didn't even care if it was loaded up or not, in fact, it probably would have been better for all if it weren't loaded. I would have "Squeeeeeeeeeee'd" like the schoolgirl I was if one of the people in charge, which included my mother, who was warehouse manager by the time I went to work there, would just let me take a parade lap from the loading dock, into the cigarette stamping room, then into the main part of the warehouse to tour the rows and aisles of goods in style.
Of course, nobody ever let me drive the Hyster pallet jack. Of course not! That'd be like handing the spider monkey the keys to the locker where they keep the crack. But from the very first time I laid eyes on that Hyster pallet jack seventeen years ago, I was in love. Every so often, I'll see a similar motorized pallet jack at Sam's Club or one of the home improvement superstores. Or maybe even that kid and the piece of small farm equipment the other day. I see the motorized pallet jack and feel a pang of regret for never getting to drive one.
*sigh*
Although, I cannot promise that even now that I'm allegedly a "grown up person" that if I DID get at the controls to a motorized pallet jack, that witnesses wouldn't hear shrill, maniacal, possessed-person laughter while the pallet jack darts and dashes and travels at speeds completely inappropriate.
It's sad, but I guess some dreams are better left unfulfilled.
My senior year of high school, and all school breaks until the summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at a warehouse. It was a little place. The whole building wasn't even as big as a quarter of a Sams Club, but it was big enough to need automated help in moving pallets around, especially from the loading dock to the warehouse proper, when we'd get shipments from our suppliers, and from the packing table to the loading dock, to load up our customers' orders that we pulled and packed.
We had a couple of the manual pallet movers that were just forks with wheels and a handle. That's the one I'd use to slog pallets around. It was school bus yellow and its brand name was "Big Joe." Big Joe was difficult to get rolling and even more difficult to stop. I always said Big Joe needed Jake brakes. It always felt a little like punishment to have to drag a loaded up pallet with Big Joe, especially when there was a much cooler pallet jack in the warehouse.
The cool, motorized, ride-on pallet jack was a Hyster, for what it's worth. That's all I know about it. That, and it was big and a more lemony yellow than Big Joe and much cooler and more fun-looking to run than Big Joe. My mom aptly called it "the surfboard," because the kid that got to drive it around looked a little like he was surfing when he drove the Hyster pallet jack.
Oh, how' I'd dream of getting to drive the Hyster pallet jack around the warehouse sometime! I didn't even care if it was loaded up or not, in fact, it probably would have been better for all if it weren't loaded. I would have "Squeeeeeeeeeee'd" like the schoolgirl I was if one of the people in charge, which included my mother, who was warehouse manager by the time I went to work there, would just let me take a parade lap from the loading dock, into the cigarette stamping room, then into the main part of the warehouse to tour the rows and aisles of goods in style.
Of course, nobody ever let me drive the Hyster pallet jack. Of course not! That'd be like handing the spider monkey the keys to the locker where they keep the crack. But from the very first time I laid eyes on that Hyster pallet jack seventeen years ago, I was in love. Every so often, I'll see a similar motorized pallet jack at Sam's Club or one of the home improvement superstores. Or maybe even that kid and the piece of small farm equipment the other day. I see the motorized pallet jack and feel a pang of regret for never getting to drive one.
*sigh*
Although, I cannot promise that even now that I'm allegedly a "grown up person" that if I DID get at the controls to a motorized pallet jack, that witnesses wouldn't hear shrill, maniacal, possessed-person laughter while the pallet jack darts and dashes and travels at speeds completely inappropriate.
It's sad, but I guess some dreams are better left unfulfilled.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Saturday with the Grammar Witch: Enough with the Fecking Ellipses!
Oh, I hate to go all Grammar Witch on everybody on a Saturday and everything, but something has gotten so far out of control that I'm afraid we're at an epidemic. What's so dire? I'll tell you. Lately, it appears to have come into fashion among some circles to replace all punctuation with ellipses.
Did I just get a 'huh?' Okay. It goes something like this:
I'm in a thoughtful mood today... Not sure why... Maybe it's the General Foods International Coffee I'm drinking... French Vanilla Cappuccino... Tasty...
See what I did there? Any possible punctuation, especially periods, and I just added two more dots, effectively turning my full-stop sentence enders into rolling, North Philadelphia stops. If you read the passage above aloud, it takes on kind of a mushy, NPR Ladies quality. That's the best case. It's not that important of a passage. It's about being in a thoughtful mood and drinking an International Coffee.
When used liberally all over the place in an email, status update, note, or other communique, it makes the writer look wishy-washy, hesitant, gutless and nutless. I cannot think of one person who, in real life, would want to be seen as wishy-washy, hesitant, gutless or nutless, so why has it become so cool to replace any and all other punctuation with these damn ellipses? Have people really become as afraid as they look to just pinch off the end of the sentence?
I understand that one reason might be because people are trying to convey a mood of thoughtfulness and musing. It's okay to use an ellipsis here and there to do just that, but when it's every sentence just fading off into three or four dots at the "end," the dots start to draw attention away from the musing and to themselves. They're distracting in their rambling.
I suspect that in certain kinds of messages, there's a need to convey something that could be construed as unpleasant to the message's target, so instead of just coming out with it, the message writer gets all passive-aggressive in hopes of padding the brunt of their message with lots of ellipses, so maybe the reader understands how much the writer really didn't want to have to write a criticism or a suggestion or whatever. The thing to remember in this case is that "dots do not equal diplomacy."
The least charitable part of me thinks people just don't know better. Now, am I always grammatically correct? Not by a mile. I find myself starting sentences with "And" way too much. I lean heavily on cliche sometimes. I dangle participles and splice commas. If I'm not Queen of the Run-On Sentence, I'm at least a duchess, or maybe a baroness. Sometimes, I break the rules of grammar for effect. Sometimes, it's just plain sloppiness. I admit that. However, I try not to let any one grammatical infraction happen over and over on a page, paragraph, or sentence so as to let it call attention to itself and make itself a nuisance.
Truly, as Carole Maso said, you need to know the rules before you can break them, and with the amount of ellipses as periods, commas, semicolons, and such that I see on a daily basis, I think people just don't know the rules. When CAN you use ellipses correctly?
It's okay, correct even, to use ellipses at the end of a sentence, ONCE IN A WHILE, to convey kind of a trailing off of your train of thought, to convey musing or rambling. The emphasis on ONCE IN A WHILE cannot be highlighted enough. Here, let me try: IT'S OKAY TO USE ELLIPSES SPARINGLY IN THIS MANNER!
If you're quoting a passage and need to shorten it up, take out the bits you think are redundant, insert a set of ellipses to show that you removed something, and sew it up. Don't change the meaning of the original quote, though. This is a tricky line to walk. With clever enough trimming, you can decontextualize just about anything and twist it to whatever purpose you wish. Know your power, wield it correctly and judiciously.
When you're writing out the number such as pi, that good ol' decimal that goes on forever. All I remember is 3.14... That shows there's more to the story than what I'm taking the time to write, because sure as sugar, as soon as I wrote out pi to the fourteenth decimal place or whatever on that geometry quiz in the tenth grade, I went to the girls' room, had a whiz, and forgot all the numbers past the four, which is all you really need to figure out the area of a circle, at least for my purposes.
I use ellipses a lot when I type the captions for Zoe's pictures on Facebook, but I use them to indicate that someone out of the frame is "talking" to her. You don't "hear" what the other person is saying, only Zoe's reaction to them, thus, the ellipses. I've excised half the conversation, but I want to show the reader that Zoe's interacting with someone they don't see. I'm not just using the ellipses as my exclusive form of punctuation.
I'm not an island on this one. There's an excellent resource called Grammar Girl. Find her at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ when you're in a grammatical pinch. I had to consult her to find out if it's ever okay to use ellipses at the end of a sentence. She'll back me up on the whole sparingly thing.
And no, I'm not Grammar Girl. I wish! Alas, I'm just me. I'm me, but it makes me some kind of Grammar Meanie when I see ellipses dotting up an email or a status update like some kind of herpaderp Morse Code that's all dot, no dash. I don't expect everyone to have perfect grammar. Honestly, I don't WANT everyone to have perfect grammar, because then what would I have to be smug about? I'm not good at sports! I'm not particularly handy or good in emergencies. But I DO know grammar.
Maybe just knock it off with all the fecking ellipses for a while, and do well enough with your grammar to keep yourselves under my radar for a while, then come out with a whopper of a mistake, so I can help you fix it and then I can feel important and good about myself for a little while. Does that sound okay? Okay. I promise tomorrow, I won't get all Grammar Witchy on you. It's the weekend, after all.
Did I just get a 'huh?' Okay. It goes something like this:
I'm in a thoughtful mood today... Not sure why... Maybe it's the General Foods International Coffee I'm drinking... French Vanilla Cappuccino... Tasty...
See what I did there? Any possible punctuation, especially periods, and I just added two more dots, effectively turning my full-stop sentence enders into rolling, North Philadelphia stops. If you read the passage above aloud, it takes on kind of a mushy, NPR Ladies quality. That's the best case. It's not that important of a passage. It's about being in a thoughtful mood and drinking an International Coffee.
When used liberally all over the place in an email, status update, note, or other communique, it makes the writer look wishy-washy, hesitant, gutless and nutless. I cannot think of one person who, in real life, would want to be seen as wishy-washy, hesitant, gutless or nutless, so why has it become so cool to replace any and all other punctuation with these damn ellipses? Have people really become as afraid as they look to just pinch off the end of the sentence?
I understand that one reason might be because people are trying to convey a mood of thoughtfulness and musing. It's okay to use an ellipsis here and there to do just that, but when it's every sentence just fading off into three or four dots at the "end," the dots start to draw attention away from the musing and to themselves. They're distracting in their rambling.
I suspect that in certain kinds of messages, there's a need to convey something that could be construed as unpleasant to the message's target, so instead of just coming out with it, the message writer gets all passive-aggressive in hopes of padding the brunt of their message with lots of ellipses, so maybe the reader understands how much the writer really didn't want to have to write a criticism or a suggestion or whatever. The thing to remember in this case is that "dots do not equal diplomacy."
The least charitable part of me thinks people just don't know better. Now, am I always grammatically correct? Not by a mile. I find myself starting sentences with "And" way too much. I lean heavily on cliche sometimes. I dangle participles and splice commas. If I'm not Queen of the Run-On Sentence, I'm at least a duchess, or maybe a baroness. Sometimes, I break the rules of grammar for effect. Sometimes, it's just plain sloppiness. I admit that. However, I try not to let any one grammatical infraction happen over and over on a page, paragraph, or sentence so as to let it call attention to itself and make itself a nuisance.
Truly, as Carole Maso said, you need to know the rules before you can break them, and with the amount of ellipses as periods, commas, semicolons, and such that I see on a daily basis, I think people just don't know the rules. When CAN you use ellipses correctly?
It's okay, correct even, to use ellipses at the end of a sentence, ONCE IN A WHILE, to convey kind of a trailing off of your train of thought, to convey musing or rambling. The emphasis on ONCE IN A WHILE cannot be highlighted enough. Here, let me try: IT'S OKAY TO USE ELLIPSES SPARINGLY IN THIS MANNER!
If you're quoting a passage and need to shorten it up, take out the bits you think are redundant, insert a set of ellipses to show that you removed something, and sew it up. Don't change the meaning of the original quote, though. This is a tricky line to walk. With clever enough trimming, you can decontextualize just about anything and twist it to whatever purpose you wish. Know your power, wield it correctly and judiciously.
When you're writing out the number such as pi, that good ol' decimal that goes on forever. All I remember is 3.14... That shows there's more to the story than what I'm taking the time to write, because sure as sugar, as soon as I wrote out pi to the fourteenth decimal place or whatever on that geometry quiz in the tenth grade, I went to the girls' room, had a whiz, and forgot all the numbers past the four, which is all you really need to figure out the area of a circle, at least for my purposes.
I use ellipses a lot when I type the captions for Zoe's pictures on Facebook, but I use them to indicate that someone out of the frame is "talking" to her. You don't "hear" what the other person is saying, only Zoe's reaction to them, thus, the ellipses. I've excised half the conversation, but I want to show the reader that Zoe's interacting with someone they don't see. I'm not just using the ellipses as my exclusive form of punctuation.
I'm not an island on this one. There's an excellent resource called Grammar Girl. Find her at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/ when you're in a grammatical pinch. I had to consult her to find out if it's ever okay to use ellipses at the end of a sentence. She'll back me up on the whole sparingly thing.
And no, I'm not Grammar Girl. I wish! Alas, I'm just me. I'm me, but it makes me some kind of Grammar Meanie when I see ellipses dotting up an email or a status update like some kind of herpaderp Morse Code that's all dot, no dash. I don't expect everyone to have perfect grammar. Honestly, I don't WANT everyone to have perfect grammar, because then what would I have to be smug about? I'm not good at sports! I'm not particularly handy or good in emergencies. But I DO know grammar.
Maybe just knock it off with all the fecking ellipses for a while, and do well enough with your grammar to keep yourselves under my radar for a while, then come out with a whopper of a mistake, so I can help you fix it and then I can feel important and good about myself for a little while. Does that sound okay? Okay. I promise tomorrow, I won't get all Grammar Witchy on you. It's the weekend, after all.
Friday, October 12, 2012
When "Good Enough" Isn't
In a lot of ways, like I wrote yesterday, I'm a perfectionist, and it's hobbled me a lot in life. And I'm working to change that. I really am. I'm trying to embrace "good enough." But there's one place in my life that good enough just isn't good enough. Not anymore. And that's the gym.
For a long time, I've ridden on the wave of feeling like anything I do in the gym is better than what a lot of people do, so it's okay if I half-ass form, or phone in this stretch of cardio workout, or pick up lighter weights than I really ought to for this exercise, because at least I'm doing something, and that's better than doing nothing!
In a way, it's true that doing something is better than doing nothing, exercise-wise, especially when you're just starting out. You don't want to get mired in perfection. You want to do your exercises right, and use excellent form (for results as well as to prevent injury), but you don't want to get hung up on feeling discouraged because you didn't get all the choreography down, or you couldn't get through the set of weights.
But I've been at this a while, and I'm sure that it's the exercising that's kept me off anxiety meds and also kept me off those scooters at the Wal-Mart for people who are too out of shape to make it around the big box on foot. I can't even use the excuse of 'I'll dial back this workout today a little bit because I'm pregnant [or just had a baby]! I get points just for being here!' That one only worked during 2011. I meant to pack that up and put it in the attic with the rest of the maternity stuff.
So it's time for me to ditch the "Good Enough" attitude in the gym. I need to start wrapping my head around "I could not have given more today," and really mean it. I want to be the best I can be, and also for a much more shallow reason, I'd like to buckle down and do better in the gym so I actually look like I spend the time in the gym that I do. Right now, I look like somebody's frumpy mom, because I've hit a plateau with a giant belly-flop.
So here's what I'm doing about it. In Oxygen magazine, a publication dedicated to women's fitness without a lot of fluff, I saw a reader's workout featured that's called a "Delt Stack." My shoulders are one of my muscle groups that are seen a lot in the summer, since I'm either no-sleeves or long-sleeves, no short-sleeves to be seen, and even in long sleeves, I look weak-shouldered. So this Delt Stack thing, I was really interested in. I basically do a tri-set, 3 exercises for the shoulders (in this case, Overhead Press, Front Raise, and Bent-Over Lateral Raise), 12 repetitions a piece (that's a set), repeated three times, resting a minute between tri-sets. Then I pick up different dumbbells and do a SuperSet, which is two exercises that work the shoulders (in this case, Upright Rows and Posterior Flyes), done right smack back-to-back, 12 reps apiece, like the tri-set. Same drill. I rest a minute between supersets, and repeat the whole thing three times. Then I finish off with lat-raise drop-sets. These are the killer. For me, I use a pair of 8s, 5s, and 3s, because I start with the heaviest pair, do lat raises until I can't eke out another rep, then I pick up the next lightest right after, work until I can't move the muscles in that exercise one more time, and finally, with no rest, I pick up the lightest dumbbells of the three, and do the lateral raises until I can't eke out another rep. And then I rest a minute and start all over again, and I repeat until I've done three sets of Drop Sets.
It's really hard, this Delt Stack! I mean really hard! I'm really glad I work out in my own home gym in my own basement, where there aren't windows where the casual observer can just see me working out, or hear me for that matter. I've never been one much to make noise in the gym, apart from the occasional "woo-hoo!" if I nail a tricky step combination. Doing this Delt Stack, if you just had the audio and no video, you'd think I was in labor. And in a way, maybe it's sort of like that. This is my weakest muscle group for me, and this Delt Stack is a collection of very challenging exercises, in challenging weights, done in a mind-bendingly challenging sequence and pace. And the precision and pushing through the hard parts is starting to make its way into other workouts. I'm not cheating on squats and lunges so much anymore. I'm making an effort to do Puddle Jumps, and not just step side-to-side while the video presenters I follow are leaping and looking tortured. I'm every bit as tortured as they are now!
This is Hard Work, and now every time I'm in the kitchen, and I eye up my jar of Nutella with thoughts of devouring the whole thing, my shoulders whimper a little, as if to say "we worked so hard, and you're not going to ruin it all by digging into that jar of Nutella like a savage, are you?" And instead of doing that, I either eat something else, or just take a small spoonful. It's a step in the right direction for me. There was a day not too long ago when I would have scooped out half a cup and eaten it all. Sometimes, I can even walk away from the Nutella and not even hear it calling out to me from the cupboard, because I think about what I want to see as payoff from the Hard Work I put in, in the gym. I want to keep this up, and move on from where I was before.
Good Enough just isn't good enough for me anymore!
For a long time, I've ridden on the wave of feeling like anything I do in the gym is better than what a lot of people do, so it's okay if I half-ass form, or phone in this stretch of cardio workout, or pick up lighter weights than I really ought to for this exercise, because at least I'm doing something, and that's better than doing nothing!
In a way, it's true that doing something is better than doing nothing, exercise-wise, especially when you're just starting out. You don't want to get mired in perfection. You want to do your exercises right, and use excellent form (for results as well as to prevent injury), but you don't want to get hung up on feeling discouraged because you didn't get all the choreography down, or you couldn't get through the set of weights.
But I've been at this a while, and I'm sure that it's the exercising that's kept me off anxiety meds and also kept me off those scooters at the Wal-Mart for people who are too out of shape to make it around the big box on foot. I can't even use the excuse of 'I'll dial back this workout today a little bit because I'm pregnant [or just had a baby]! I get points just for being here!' That one only worked during 2011. I meant to pack that up and put it in the attic with the rest of the maternity stuff.
So it's time for me to ditch the "Good Enough" attitude in the gym. I need to start wrapping my head around "I could not have given more today," and really mean it. I want to be the best I can be, and also for a much more shallow reason, I'd like to buckle down and do better in the gym so I actually look like I spend the time in the gym that I do. Right now, I look like somebody's frumpy mom, because I've hit a plateau with a giant belly-flop.
So here's what I'm doing about it. In Oxygen magazine, a publication dedicated to women's fitness without a lot of fluff, I saw a reader's workout featured that's called a "Delt Stack." My shoulders are one of my muscle groups that are seen a lot in the summer, since I'm either no-sleeves or long-sleeves, no short-sleeves to be seen, and even in long sleeves, I look weak-shouldered. So this Delt Stack thing, I was really interested in. I basically do a tri-set, 3 exercises for the shoulders (in this case, Overhead Press, Front Raise, and Bent-Over Lateral Raise), 12 repetitions a piece (that's a set), repeated three times, resting a minute between tri-sets. Then I pick up different dumbbells and do a SuperSet, which is two exercises that work the shoulders (in this case, Upright Rows and Posterior Flyes), done right smack back-to-back, 12 reps apiece, like the tri-set. Same drill. I rest a minute between supersets, and repeat the whole thing three times. Then I finish off with lat-raise drop-sets. These are the killer. For me, I use a pair of 8s, 5s, and 3s, because I start with the heaviest pair, do lat raises until I can't eke out another rep, then I pick up the next lightest right after, work until I can't move the muscles in that exercise one more time, and finally, with no rest, I pick up the lightest dumbbells of the three, and do the lateral raises until I can't eke out another rep. And then I rest a minute and start all over again, and I repeat until I've done three sets of Drop Sets.
It's really hard, this Delt Stack! I mean really hard! I'm really glad I work out in my own home gym in my own basement, where there aren't windows where the casual observer can just see me working out, or hear me for that matter. I've never been one much to make noise in the gym, apart from the occasional "woo-hoo!" if I nail a tricky step combination. Doing this Delt Stack, if you just had the audio and no video, you'd think I was in labor. And in a way, maybe it's sort of like that. This is my weakest muscle group for me, and this Delt Stack is a collection of very challenging exercises, in challenging weights, done in a mind-bendingly challenging sequence and pace. And the precision and pushing through the hard parts is starting to make its way into other workouts. I'm not cheating on squats and lunges so much anymore. I'm making an effort to do Puddle Jumps, and not just step side-to-side while the video presenters I follow are leaping and looking tortured. I'm every bit as tortured as they are now!
This is Hard Work, and now every time I'm in the kitchen, and I eye up my jar of Nutella with thoughts of devouring the whole thing, my shoulders whimper a little, as if to say "we worked so hard, and you're not going to ruin it all by digging into that jar of Nutella like a savage, are you?" And instead of doing that, I either eat something else, or just take a small spoonful. It's a step in the right direction for me. There was a day not too long ago when I would have scooped out half a cup and eaten it all. Sometimes, I can even walk away from the Nutella and not even hear it calling out to me from the cupboard, because I think about what I want to see as payoff from the Hard Work I put in, in the gym. I want to keep this up, and move on from where I was before.
Good Enough just isn't good enough for me anymore!
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Procrastifection
I think the reason I'm such a procrastinator is that I'm a perfectionist, deep down! I will call this condition procrastifection. I know they seem like two diametrically opposed things, procrastination and perfectionism, but hear me out.
When I have a project in front of me, especially on I'm not particularly happy about (okay, I'm talking about housework), I get bogged down in making sure everything's perfect, meaning everything from trying to make sure the finished product is perfect to having the conditions be perfect for me to even start in the first place.
Maybe you know this drill: while looking through cruddy windows, I think I ought to wash them. But wait. It's sunny out. When it's sunny, the windows will streak. Better wait for an overcast day. Or dusting. I figure that if I'm going to get out the Pledge and dustcloth, I need to dust everything, and the coffee-table's all piled up, so maybe I'd better clean that off first, but there's stuff on it that I need for [some imaginary project] I'm working on. My kitchen counters suffer the same neglect by way of procrastifection. Thanks to Facebook, I see pictures of the insides of my friend's houses, and I have one friend in particular, who's busy up to her eyelashes, and yet her kitchen counters are always so beautifully absent of any clutter whatsoever, that I feel Ashamed when I cast my glance into my cluttered up countertops. Actually, my sister's countertops are always free of clutter, too, unless I'm at her house. She and her husband must feel like Pigpen's in da house whenever I come for a visit. But I want my countertops to be like theirs! Clutter-free and wide open in case I want or need to do anything like cook or bake without first having to put away three weeks' worth of dishes I left out to "air dry" and just got used to them being out where I could see them.
But here's how the sickness works in the case of the kitchen counters: I roll into the kitchen with a good head of steam behind me, repeating that TODAY'S THE DAY THESE COUNTERS BECOME COUNTERS AGAIN AND NOT A CATASTROPHE OF CLUTTER!!! And then I see that the dishwasher is busy in the middle of a wash cycle, and the sink is piled with dishes for another wash cycle right behind it. Well, the procrastifector can't just put away the dishes that are already dry. No. If the procrastifector is going to put away dishes, she wants to put ALL the dishes away, so we'll just wait until that second load is done. But then, the reason those dishes are sitting out is because the cupboards are too cluttered up with stuff I don't really use, but am not so ready to just get rid of yet, so I need to sort the drawers and cupboards and take up to the attic purgatory the stuff I'm not ready just to let move on, and if that isn't an awful job.... hey, is that the Lipton Tea I'm supposed to try out for the Amazon Vine Program? I think I'll have a cup of that, and then go write my review. That's productive. Yeah, I'll feel good about myself, having been that productive. Okay. And right here's a perfectly good air-dried cup to make that tea in! All right, me!
I know I need to actually start reading and following my FLYLady emails again. FLYLady, if you don't know about her, is this homekeeping guru who was once a procrastifector just like me, and she got her house on track by first starting with keeping her kitchen sink shined, and then just working fifteen minutes at a time until everything was in place, and then the rest is maintenance. The trick to following the FLYLady is to time your 15-minute intervals of work just right. If you've got a big job to do like I do, it'd probably behoove you to do a 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off plan for a couple hours, and repeat daily. Trouble is, I'll do 15 minutes of tidying up and take off the next 3 days.
Ert.
I'd like to become a recovering Procrastifector. I don't think it's something for which there's a cure. Just treatment and recovering. But that's what I'd like. And that means letting go of thinking I need to have everything perfect before, during, and after I do the work. I've got to learn to be okay with "good enough," without being "half-assed," and "well, it's better than it was before," instead of "oh my goodness, my house just rolled out of the pages of Museum House Digest, if there's such a magazine. There probably isn't.
I'd just like my house not to look like an article entitled "Crap! There's people at the door and this place looks like the Hoarders show barfed up in here!" And the way to do that is to roll up the ol' sleeves, kick the excuses to the curb, and start Procrastifection Rehab.
It's really all just an excuse not to do anything at all.
When I have a project in front of me, especially on I'm not particularly happy about (okay, I'm talking about housework), I get bogged down in making sure everything's perfect, meaning everything from trying to make sure the finished product is perfect to having the conditions be perfect for me to even start in the first place.
Maybe you know this drill: while looking through cruddy windows, I think I ought to wash them. But wait. It's sunny out. When it's sunny, the windows will streak. Better wait for an overcast day. Or dusting. I figure that if I'm going to get out the Pledge and dustcloth, I need to dust everything, and the coffee-table's all piled up, so maybe I'd better clean that off first, but there's stuff on it that I need for [some imaginary project] I'm working on. My kitchen counters suffer the same neglect by way of procrastifection. Thanks to Facebook, I see pictures of the insides of my friend's houses, and I have one friend in particular, who's busy up to her eyelashes, and yet her kitchen counters are always so beautifully absent of any clutter whatsoever, that I feel Ashamed when I cast my glance into my cluttered up countertops. Actually, my sister's countertops are always free of clutter, too, unless I'm at her house. She and her husband must feel like Pigpen's in da house whenever I come for a visit. But I want my countertops to be like theirs! Clutter-free and wide open in case I want or need to do anything like cook or bake without first having to put away three weeks' worth of dishes I left out to "air dry" and just got used to them being out where I could see them.
But here's how the sickness works in the case of the kitchen counters: I roll into the kitchen with a good head of steam behind me, repeating that TODAY'S THE DAY THESE COUNTERS BECOME COUNTERS AGAIN AND NOT A CATASTROPHE OF CLUTTER!!! And then I see that the dishwasher is busy in the middle of a wash cycle, and the sink is piled with dishes for another wash cycle right behind it. Well, the procrastifector can't just put away the dishes that are already dry. No. If the procrastifector is going to put away dishes, she wants to put ALL the dishes away, so we'll just wait until that second load is done. But then, the reason those dishes are sitting out is because the cupboards are too cluttered up with stuff I don't really use, but am not so ready to just get rid of yet, so I need to sort the drawers and cupboards and take up to the attic purgatory the stuff I'm not ready just to let move on, and if that isn't an awful job.... hey, is that the Lipton Tea I'm supposed to try out for the Amazon Vine Program? I think I'll have a cup of that, and then go write my review. That's productive. Yeah, I'll feel good about myself, having been that productive. Okay. And right here's a perfectly good air-dried cup to make that tea in! All right, me!
I know I need to actually start reading and following my FLYLady emails again. FLYLady, if you don't know about her, is this homekeeping guru who was once a procrastifector just like me, and she got her house on track by first starting with keeping her kitchen sink shined, and then just working fifteen minutes at a time until everything was in place, and then the rest is maintenance. The trick to following the FLYLady is to time your 15-minute intervals of work just right. If you've got a big job to do like I do, it'd probably behoove you to do a 15 minutes on, 15 minutes off plan for a couple hours, and repeat daily. Trouble is, I'll do 15 minutes of tidying up and take off the next 3 days.
Ert.
I'd like to become a recovering Procrastifector. I don't think it's something for which there's a cure. Just treatment and recovering. But that's what I'd like. And that means letting go of thinking I need to have everything perfect before, during, and after I do the work. I've got to learn to be okay with "good enough," without being "half-assed," and "well, it's better than it was before," instead of "oh my goodness, my house just rolled out of the pages of Museum House Digest, if there's such a magazine. There probably isn't.
I'd just like my house not to look like an article entitled "Crap! There's people at the door and this place looks like the Hoarders show barfed up in here!" And the way to do that is to roll up the ol' sleeves, kick the excuses to the curb, and start Procrastifection Rehab.
It's really all just an excuse not to do anything at all.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Birthday Cards from Years Past
I've been sorting through the boxes of stuff I took from Zoe's closet and thrown into the spare room upstairs. It's a little bit like Andy Warhol's time capsules. I never know what I'm going to find in those pack-ratty boxes!
Yesterday, I found my scrapbook of birthday and holiday cards from when I was a toddler. Mom gave me the album before I had Zoe, and I looked through it then, and then put it in a box for safekeeping. I was so happy to find it today! Talk about a time capsule!
Not only are the cards themselves like looking into the past, design-wise, but they're like hearing the voices of people who are gone now, like Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, Grandma Evans, Great-Gramma Whitmire. On another day, looking through my scrapbook of birthday cards from over thirty years ago would be bittersweet. Today, it's just fun, especially because I'm also sitting here, looking at the stack of birthday cards Zoe received for her first birthday, and I have a pink scrapbook I bought and haven't really known what to do with. This is perfect!
I love looking at the handwriting. I'm sure I look at today's
handwriting (especially my own!) with a jaundiced eye, and figure
all-around our handwriting today is messier than people's writing was,
thirty years ago, but I'm sure that back then it was just the same as today. I think we all tend to be a little more meticulous with our handwritten messages when they go on a card. Still, though, we wrote with pens a lot more back then than we do today, and it shows.
Some of the cards, I don't really remember very well, but there are others that I do remember vividly. I remember this card to the left, with the little girl and the pink gingham background, because it always fascinated me, the way her head or her hair came to a point on the back of her head. And I remember the card on the right because the little doll's legs were a wheel that turned, making her look like she was walking. I must have been two when I got that card.
I vividly remember getting the Halloween card on the far left. It was from Almyra Lovell, a friend of my parents'. She lived in the trailer court in Wellsville, by the railroad tracks and near where WJQZ is today. I remember visiting Almyra at her trailer a few times when we'd make a trip to Town to shop at Giant or Bells. The card has a scarecrow on it, and even though I was just 2 when I got that card, that scarecrow with his friendly crow friends have always been what come to mind when I think of Halloween.
The Christmas card with the little girl with the red pigtails, canopy bed, and colorful quilt is from my parents for Christmas that same year, when I was two. That card has has stuck with me over the years because I always wanted a canopy bed, but our trailer and house were always too small for canopy beds. And I wanted my hair with bangs and pigtails! My hair was always in a pixie-cut, for ease of styling and for minimum brushing meltdowns due to tangles.
Other cards are special because the people who wrote them are gone, and seeing their handwriting brings them back to me. Great Grandma Wynick, for instance. I'd recognize her handwriting anywhere. She wrote with felt-tip pens a lot, and even when she wrote in ballpoint, she pressed down into the paper hard.
Then there's Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al. I spent a lot of time at their trailer when I was a pre-schooler. It was there that I got to watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. We didn't get PBS at our place until almost right before I went to kindergarten, so up to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al's it was a treat to get to see Grover and Oscar and Bert'n'Ernie. Their place always smelled like Newport News menthols, Skoal, pipe tobacco, and lemon air freshener. They had air conditioning in the summer, and in the winter, Aunt Flossie always let me sit on the heating vent! I never got away with sitting right on the heating vent at home! Plus, they always had those little cookies that come in strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, with the thin layer of frosting between two styrofoam-like wafers, and I loved those! And Aunt Flossie made me my first ice cream soda, with vanilla ice cream and 7-up. There's more to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, but that's all for another day. Today, I'm talking about my cards.
Birthday Four was apparently a big one. I remember Grandpy and Grandma got me my red Radio Flyer wagon. Mom and Dad got me my blue "Bop-Ball," which is what I called my "hippity-hoppity." Looking back, that Bop-Ball was a great thigh, glute, calf, and hammie workout. Does anybody know if they make those in big-people size?
Raggedy Ann was big for me that year. I had a Raggedy Ann cake. I remember it because first of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did I! And second of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did the Raggedy Ann on my cake.
Do you remember what red food color used to taste like, back in the 70s and 80s? It tasted like gawdawful, is how it tasted! It's a little better now, but not much. In 1982, I remember I wanted a BIG piece of cake with the red icing, and my tongue turned inside-out from that bitter red food color!
My sister got a Raggedy Ann birthday cake once, too. Mom had the special pan that's all molded to Raggedy-Ann shape and all. But Colleen's Raggedy Ann birthday cake had yellow hair. At the time, Mom said it was because Colleen was blonde. I think we all know that Mom was just trying to save us all from the mind-numbingly awful red food colored icing. And I for one, appreciate it!
The card that makes me laugh the hardest, though, is from my Cousin Theresa, whom I've always looked up to. She wrote me a card on a flap of wrapping paper, in her beautiful handwriting.
This card bears typing out for you. It says:
Dear April,
Hi!
You're 4 years old & you'll soon be starting school! You'll enjoy it, though, believe me! Your favorite year will be your sophomore I guarantee!
Well, you have a nice birthday!
Love Theresa
Theresa would have been a sophomore in high school that year, so apparently, she was happy with school that year. And what makes me really, really laugh is that sophomore year WAS my best year in high school, the year I came closest to being a Cool Kid, plus it was the year I had the best hair of my entire high school career. I really had those crispy bangs down pat by then. 1993-94 was really the last year when it was acceptable to have big hair in the 1990s.
I have all the cards Zoe's received in her whole life, and I'm going to make her an album like this so 34 years in the future, she can leaf through it and smile, too!
Yesterday, I found my scrapbook of birthday and holiday cards from when I was a toddler. Mom gave me the album before I had Zoe, and I looked through it then, and then put it in a box for safekeeping. I was so happy to find it today! Talk about a time capsule!
Not only are the cards themselves like looking into the past, design-wise, but they're like hearing the voices of people who are gone now, like Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, Grandma Evans, Great-Gramma Whitmire. On another day, looking through my scrapbook of birthday cards from over thirty years ago would be bittersweet. Today, it's just fun, especially because I'm also sitting here, looking at the stack of birthday cards Zoe received for her first birthday, and I have a pink scrapbook I bought and haven't really known what to do with. This is perfect! |
| Neat handwriting from Adeline |
 |
| Grandma Jeanette's handwriting |
I love looking at the handwriting. I'm sure I look at today's
handwriting (especially my own!) with a jaundiced eye, and figure
all-around our handwriting today is messier than people's writing was,
thirty years ago, but I'm sure that back then it was just the same as today. I think we all tend to be a little more meticulous with our handwritten messages when they go on a card. Still, though, we wrote with pens a lot more back then than we do today, and it shows.
Some of the cards, I don't really remember very well, but there are others that I do remember vividly. I remember this card to the left, with the little girl and the pink gingham background, because it always fascinated me, the way her head or her hair came to a point on the back of her head. And I remember the card on the right because the little doll's legs were a wheel that turned, making her look like she was walking. I must have been two when I got that card.
The Christmas card with the little girl with the red pigtails, canopy bed, and colorful quilt is from my parents for Christmas that same year, when I was two. That card has has stuck with me over the years because I always wanted a canopy bed, but our trailer and house were always too small for canopy beds. And I wanted my hair with bangs and pigtails! My hair was always in a pixie-cut, for ease of styling and for minimum brushing meltdowns due to tangles.
 |
| Valentine's Day, 1982, From Great-Grandma Wynick |
Other cards are special because the people who wrote them are gone, and seeing their handwriting brings them back to me. Great Grandma Wynick, for instance. I'd recognize her handwriting anywhere. She wrote with felt-tip pens a lot, and even when she wrote in ballpoint, she pressed down into the paper hard.
Then there's Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al. I spent a lot of time at their trailer when I was a pre-schooler. It was there that I got to watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. We didn't get PBS at our place until almost right before I went to kindergarten, so up to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al's it was a treat to get to see Grover and Oscar and Bert'n'Ernie. Their place always smelled like Newport News menthols, Skoal, pipe tobacco, and lemon air freshener. They had air conditioning in the summer, and in the winter, Aunt Flossie always let me sit on the heating vent! I never got away with sitting right on the heating vent at home! Plus, they always had those little cookies that come in strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate, with the thin layer of frosting between two styrofoam-like wafers, and I loved those! And Aunt Flossie made me my first ice cream soda, with vanilla ice cream and 7-up. There's more to Aunt Flossie and Uncle Al, but that's all for another day. Today, I'm talking about my cards.
Birthday Four was apparently a big one. I remember Grandpy and Grandma got me my red Radio Flyer wagon. Mom and Dad got me my blue "Bop-Ball," which is what I called my "hippity-hoppity." Looking back, that Bop-Ball was a great thigh, glute, calf, and hammie workout. Does anybody know if they make those in big-people size?Raggedy Ann was big for me that year. I had a Raggedy Ann cake. I remember it because first of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did I! And second of all, Raggedy Ann had red hair, and so did the Raggedy Ann on my cake.
Do you remember what red food color used to taste like, back in the 70s and 80s? It tasted like gawdawful, is how it tasted! It's a little better now, but not much. In 1982, I remember I wanted a BIG piece of cake with the red icing, and my tongue turned inside-out from that bitter red food color!
 |
| Handwritten Birthday Wishes from Cousin Theresa |
The card that makes me laugh the hardest, though, is from my Cousin Theresa, whom I've always looked up to. She wrote me a card on a flap of wrapping paper, in her beautiful handwriting.
This card bears typing out for you. It says:
Dear April,
Hi!
You're 4 years old & you'll soon be starting school! You'll enjoy it, though, believe me! Your favorite year will be your sophomore I guarantee!
Well, you have a nice birthday!
Love Theresa
Theresa would have been a sophomore in high school that year, so apparently, she was happy with school that year. And what makes me really, really laugh is that sophomore year WAS my best year in high school, the year I came closest to being a Cool Kid, plus it was the year I had the best hair of my entire high school career. I really had those crispy bangs down pat by then. 1993-94 was really the last year when it was acceptable to have big hair in the 1990s.
I have all the cards Zoe's received in her whole life, and I'm going to make her an album like this so 34 years in the future, she can leaf through it and smile, too!
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