my mom recently asked me, nonchalantly, “do you think i should have seen a psychiatrist sometime?” of course she should have. so should i. i think, perhaps, a good 99.9% of us should. because we’re not as friggin put together as we all think we are. so i asked her, “well, if you think they do any good, why didn’t you let me keep seeing one after my childhood trauma?” to which her response was, “well, she was weird; all new-agey and crap. i didn’t like her.” as if that was the only psychiatrist that was available to us at the time, so she had no other choice. but i digress…

counseling doesn’t have to come from some shrink in a chair with a diploma over her head and the ny times crossword on her lap behind the notepad. counseling literally means “guidance: something that provides direction or advice as to a decision or course of action.” and that is never something you can get too much of. everyone could use a little input. some constructive criticisms (which aren’t necessarily all bad!). otherwise, you know what you get? an over-inflated (read: hollow) idea of who you are and why you think you’re perfect.

as for the knees… i’ve never necessarily been rough on mine, but i gotta say, they’re still going… and one day they’ll be gone. and then i’ll wish i had taken the stairs more often. so; be kind to your knees, yes. but take the stairs. that is all.

i confess; in a rubbermaid container, beneath a layer of dust and stored under the bed – between the dried remains of the first corsage i ever received and my mickey mouse ears from disneyland - there are a few sappy love letters from boys from back in my high school days. i confess this because they are the only ones i felt worthy of keeping. why? they were probably the most sincere. those that i received later in life, in the grown up years… well, those are gone. folded, spindled, mutilated, maimed, damaged, bowdlerized, butchered, crushed, cut to pieces, defaced, disable, expurgated, mangled, ravaged and burned.

(i had some pain in the past – it doesn’t show, does it?)

the ones from the school years, though, the last time i read them – sometime in the last decade – they still made me smile. feel a little warm and fuzzy. shoot, had i had a glass of wine and some eighties love songs playing, probably would have cost me a fortune in long distance calls. good thing for me, and my bf, that i didn’t, eh?

oh, now… *his* love letters… well, those are keepers. but i digress… keep your old love letters, the ones that matter to you, because even when you are at your happiest in life, should you need a little pick-me-up, they’re good for that. to remember how special you really must be to have inspired such words from others.

bank statements, on the other hand, those can just go. why? think about it. those times in your life when you had no money, but now you do? nothing but bad thoughts there, amiright? and just the opposite… don’t have a lot of money now, but maybe you used to? doesn’t make the old heart warm, now, does it? or maybe you’ve been fortunate enough to have had a steady income for the past decade, and well, good for you. but when you’re looking back and seeing the $850 you spent on the water pump for your car or the $4500 for your kids braces (and then he never wore the retainer!) or the $1200 for the tickets to hawaii that you never got to use because your grandma passed away and you had to go to the funeral or, or, you see where i’m going with this, right? and trust me – worst case scenario, you get audited and the irs wants them? the bank can get them for you. that’s what they get all those ridiculous fees for. customer service.

now, for one that hit home just this morning (when we got up at 6 to go for the first bike ride in a month)…

Stretch.

this one’s big, people. h-u-g-e!! so this is one of those moments when i’ll walk close to the edge of saying something personal. now, fortunately for the rest of the world, i can’t say as i’ve ever been accused of being reckless with someone else’s heart. well, maybe once… but i’ll come back to that. suffice to say it was justified.

i have, however, on many occasions, put up with people that were reckless with mine. note the use of the plural. because you’d think after the first time, i’d've learned my lesson. but i didn’t. i let it happen, again. and what adds insult to injury is, the second time around, it was even worse than the first. and it took me for-ev-er to figure out that i didn’t have to put up with it. or maybe not so much that i didn’t have to put up with it. i mean, i knew that. but how to get out of the situation that was causing the pain.

hence the reason i could have possibly been accused of being reckless with their heart. because i finally – finally got my $#&% together and got the hell outta dodge. and, somehow, they didn’t see it coming. though they should have. i’m just sayin’.

so look, i know it’s hard to make heads or tails outta this without the details, and for that, i’m sorry. but what matters is this: you only have one heart – be true to it. it’s not trite. it’s true. you have to let yourself love yourself. it’s the only way you’ll ever survive in this crazy, messed up world.

oh, and…

 Floss.

i’ve heard them (whoever they are) say that if you don’t, bad things can happen. fatal things. so, just do it.

this one’s pretty easy for me. in a two-way street sort of way. i’ll explain. i worry all the time. seriously. i worry i’m going bald. i worry i’m going crazy. i worry my wrists are way, way worse off than i think they are, and one day very soon i won’t be able to write legibly any more and will be forced to only type for the rest of my life…which will mean that eventually i’ll be typing with my eyes. cause they can do that $#*& now. i’m just sayin’. i worry i’ll have no retirement, i worry that i’ll never see the world, or at the very least, never leave this continent. i worry i don’t get enough sleep. that i get too much sleep. that i paid too much for a mattress that is already letting me down, less than three years later. *sigh* you see where this is going.

frankly, it’d drive me, and my bf, insane. if it wasn’t for the fact that he’s much, much, much better at not worrying than i am. and from the very beginning of our relationship, he starting trying to teach me how to not worry. and whenever i am, he gently guides me back to reality. a gentle nudge that usually sounds a whole lot like the algebra and the bubble gum analogy.

and he’s right. i know he’s right. and you know what? i – and everyone else – would be a lot better off if we could all remember that. worrying doesn’t change the future. it just takes away from the present. does that mean we should all float aimlessly through life, that nothing bad is gonna happen? no. but it does mean that no matter how bad (or not so bad) something that may or may not happen to us might or might not be, worrying about it isn’t going to help. because it’s always going to be the thing you didn’t worry about.

that thing that blindsides you at 4:00 on some idle tuesday.

happy tuesday! go forth and don’t worry!

i know, i know… as my mom said in an email to me this morning (in reply to my email, the first one i’d sent her in a week) “yeah, it’s been since like christmas since i’ve heard from you. yeah, yeah. hardy-har. you know, i’m not on a schedule here. it’s my blog, and i’ll blog if i want to.

well, that’s not entirely accurate. i want to blog way more often than i do. so i guess it’s more accurate to say, it’s my blog and i’ll procrastinate on blogging while i take care of things that pay the bills if i want to… but i digress.

second today in my series of advice that i’ve given, taken and ignored…

i think of the above stanza of the song pretty often. in relation to myself, i think, ‘ehm, no.’ i mean, when i look back on pictures of me 20 years ago, the first thing i think is ‘daaaayuuummm… no wonder i was a virgin all through school. can we say unibrow?’ no, but seriously, the one part of this i do try to take for myself is the last statement, about being fat. i know i’m not. not really. sure, i could stand to lose a few, most of us could. but as i just mentioned to the bf the other day, hey – i’m still in single digit sizes. which, honestly? i wasn’t always in. so i gotta find that precious balance between not being so hard on myself, and not convincing myself that just because i’m not fat doesn’t mean i couldn’t end up fat. and it’s not necessarily that being fat scares me… it’s the health risks that go along with it. what it means to your heart, your joints, your respritory system, your back, your colon and, some would say most of all, your mind – your self worth, your self value. you don’t have to be stuck up. you don’t have to be a diva. but you do have to love yourself. because you can’t love someone else until you do.

and as for the rest of this part of the song? i think of it every time i see girls that are currently in those random, awkward stages we have all gone through and survived. the girls that sit quietly in the corner of the library, reading books about third-world countries and wondering what they could be doing about it. the girls that at the tender ages of 13, 14, 16… think that they have to paint themselves another face, because the one they have is so inherently flawed. that’s your mind’s eye, sweetie. not the rest of the world’s.

but please, don’t misunderstand. there’s a huge chasm of a gap between teaching girls self-worth and empowerment and puffing them up with endless praise and princess tiaras. one will teach them they can do anything, and don’t need anyone’s approval. the other will teach them they can do nothing without it getting someone’s approval.

and seeing as how this is quite possibly the most fabulous collection of unsolicited advice ever assembled and subsequently put to music, i thought i’d start here, and work my way through it. so to start things off, here is all of the advice in it’s entirety, and i’ll begin breaking it down in my next post:

Wear sunscreen.  If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.  The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.  I will dispense this advice now.

 Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth — oh, never mind — you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded.  But trust me in twenty years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.  You are not as fat as you imagine.  Don’t worry about the future, or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.  The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindsides you at 4:00 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.

 Do one thing every day that scares you – sing.  Don’t be reckless with other peoples’ hearts and don’t put up with people that are reckless with yours.  Floss.  Don’t waste your time on jealousy.  Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind, the race is long.  But in the end – it’s only with yourself.  Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults.  If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. 

 Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements.  Stretch.  Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives.  Some of the most interesting 40 year-olds still don’t.  Get plenty of counseling.  Be kind to your knees – you’ll miss them when they’re gone. 

 Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t.  Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on your 75^th wedding anniversary.  Whatever you do don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either, your choices are half chance.  So are everybody else’s.  Enjoy your body.  Use it every way you can.  Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.  Dance.  Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.  Read the directions – even if you don’t follow them.  Do not read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.

 Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.  Be nice to your siblings, they’re your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.  Understand that friends come and go, but to a precious few you should hold on.  Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, ‘cause the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.

 Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.  Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.  Travel.  Accept certain inalienable truths; prices will rise, politicians will philander, you too will get old.  And when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.  Respect your elders.  Don’t expect anyone else to support you.  Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse, but you never know when either one might run out. 

 Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you’re 40 it will look 85.  Be careful who’s advise you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.  Advise is a form of nostalgia – dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.   But trust me on the sunscreen. 

i’ll tell you this much – i haven’t “tanned” since i was sixteen, and considering how dark-like-a-native i know i can get, i’m pretty freakin’ lily white. but i’m also skin-cancer-free, and hardly frecked, and definitely not leathery. so there’s that. ;o) more to come…

oh yeah…

cause i skipped kindergarten.

anyway….

another thought i had was a song, actually. you know – “everybody’s free (to wear sunscreen)”. the ultimate graduation song. well, of course it’s not really age-appropriate for kindergarteners. better for college. high school, anyway. point is, the song was in my head, which gave me an idea for a series of blog posts. which i was going to start on, till i went to start writing a post a few hours ago only to discover that i couldn’t access my blog, because it was apparently down, so while waiting for hostgator to fix the mysterious problem, i got distracted and checked my email, which included a cute little forward from a friend of mine, which was about what happens when you ask 26 first graders to come up with their own endings to well-known proverbs… which of course isn’t kindergartners, but i’ve already changed the subject here, haven’t you been following along? *sheesh* so all that said… i’ll start on my series sometime this weekend, and in the meantime, enjoy some random thoughts plucked from the minds of first graders, because seriously, they cracked me up!

1. Don’t change horses…     until they stop running.
2. Strike while the…     bug is close.
3. It’s always darkest before…     Daylight Saving Time.
4. Never underestimate the power…     of termites.
5. You can lead a horse to water but…     How?
6. Don’t bite the hand that…     looks dirty.
7. No news is…     impossible
8. A miss is as good as a…     Mr.
9. You can’t teach an old dog new…     Math
10. If you lie down with dogs, you’ll…     stink in the morning.
11. Love all, trust…     Me.
12. The pen is mightier than…     the pigs.
13. An idle mind is…     the best way to relax.
14. Where there’s smoke there’s…     pollution.
15. Happy the bride who…     gets all the presents.
16. A penny saved is…     not much.
17. Two’s company, three’s…     the Musketeers.
18. Don’t put off till tomorrow what…     you put on to go to bed.
19. Laugh and the whole world laughs with you, cry and…     You have to blow your nose.
20. There are none so blind as…     Stevie Wonder.
21. Children should be seen and not…     spanked or grounded.
22. If at first you don’t succeed…     get new batteries.
23. You get out of something only what you…     See in the picture on the box
24. When the blind lead the blind…      get out of the way.
25. A bird in the hand is…     going to poop on you.
26. Better late than…     pregnant

“this’ll only take a few minutes” – translates roughly to “this is totally easy, based on either a id-10t error or a loose nut between the keyboard and the chair”

“the best choice is to rebuild it/start over” – translates to “i’ll take it back to the office if you want, but basically, you’re f$#ked, and i hope you backed your $hit up sometime in the past decade” and

“this’ll take 15 minutes, tops.” – which translates to “this is actually going to take all night, and possibly half of tomorrow, because no matter how close i get to fixing it, there will be one last corrupted file and/or one last missing driver and/or one final fatal error that will keep you from your lunch/dinner/bedtime.

to which i’ve told him that the best way to keep jobs in the first or second catagory is to avoid claiming they fit in the third under any and all circumstances.

a funny thing happened yesterday, though. he didn’t curse a thing. in fact, he didn’t even make any claim as to how long it was going to take to do anything. wordpress, though, did me in. wordpress told me that upgrading the software on my blog would “famously take five minutes.” yeah, well… no. not really.

oh, *downloading* the upgrade took way less than five minutes. heck, even installing it still had me way under. it was the actual act of upgrading that got screwed. that, it turns out, had the infamous 15-minute curse written all over it. i should have known.

so here i am, finally, almost 24 hours later, almost completely back to normal. and in fact, in many ways, a better than normal. because now that the stupid upgrade seems to be working, i got to make a few cool changes. like adding some new *clickables* over yonder <— (howdy, doubleclicktech and bake@350!! ) and i was finally able to turn commenting back on, because i was finally able to include an actual, workable spam filter. so!

so thanks for enduring the black out. i’ll try not to have another for another couple of years. or so. ;op

which is funny, really — sidenote — i used to shop kroger religiously. thought their produce was the bomb-diggity. and i used to hate heb, i guess because when i first came to texas, heb wasn’t heb, it was heb food pantry. which reminded me of aldi stores back in the midwest, which were stores where almost-dead groceries went to go be sold to poor folk for discounts. but i digress…

go get you some blackberries, and make some blackberry breakfast bars. they are absolutely wondrous. and you don’t even have to eat them just for breakfast. grab one whenever you’re just plain hungry. and now, i do something completely unbitchy; i share my recipe:

2 cups fresh blackberries (two of the little plastic packs)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup quick cooking rolled oats (or regular oats)
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup margarine or butter melted

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a mixing bowl stir together flour, oats, brown sugar, ¼ teaspoon cinnamon, and baking soda. Stir in melted margarine or butter till thoroughly combined. Set aside 1 cup of the oat mixture for topping. Press remaining oat mixture into an ungreased 9×9x2-inch pan. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

For filling, in a medium saucepan combine berries, sugar, water, lemon juice and ½ teaspoon cinnamon. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat. Simmer, uncovered, for about 8 minutes or till slightly thickened, stirring frequently. Remove from heat.

Carefully spread filling on top of baked crust. Sprinkle with reserved oat mixture. Lightly press oat mixture into filling. Bake in the 350-degree oven for 20 to 25 minutes more or till topping is set. Cool in pan on a wire rack. Cut into bars.

you’ve got to try these!! now, go!!!

of course nowadays, i wouldn’t be caught dead attending one of their churches or their camp, but still, those are good childhood memories and i’m happy to see when i check up on the camp website every now and again that it looks so similar to how it did way back when…

anyway… here’s the little ditty that’s in my head, courtesy of some guitar-strumming music leader all those years ago:

“vas is das, my momma said, das is my hat-racker, ya, momma dear.
hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my sweat-boxer, ya, momma dear.
sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my eye-winker, ya, momma dear.
eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my horn-blower, ya, momma dear.
horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my food-chomper, ya, momma dear.
food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my chin-chowser, ya, momma dear.
chin-chowser, food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my rubber-necker, ya, momma dear.
rubber-necker, chin-chowser, food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my bread-basket, ya, momma dear.
bread-basket, rubber-necker, chin-chowser, food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my knee-knobber, ya, momma dear.
knee-knobber, bread-basket, rubber-necker, chin-chowser, food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)
vas is das, my momma said, das is my foot-stomper, ya, momma dear.
foot-stomper, knee-knobber, bread-basket, rubber-necker, chin-chowser, food-chomper, horn-blower, eye-winker, sweat-boxer, hat-racker, rinky-dinky-doo. das what i learned in the camp (summer camp!)”

during the singing of which the tempo would increase with each verse, and we would point to our head, forehead, eye, nose, mouth, chin, neck, tummy, knee and foot as appropriate. as one can imagine, the further into the song we got, the harder it was to keep up, and hilarity would ensue. ah, good times.