Is it possible to find good ol' elevator music anymore? It seems like my past several rides have been shared with a little TV screen instead of bad music. I prefer the bad music. At least there was a chance you might have a short conversation with a fellow rider. Now everyone is so engrossed in the screen that I'm afraid to make idle chit-chat for fear of interrupting. I admit that it was just idle chit-chat. But at least it was human contact. In fact, I've learned some interesting things in elevators. One elevator in Chicago held three out of four riders with summer homes in Michigan. Once I was told for the fourth time that I had the look of a Kennedy. (Which I'd always taken as a compliment until I saw pictures in a special article on the Kennedys in Newsweek Magazine. Oh well.) In elevators, I've collected names of new perfumes, told dapper gentlemen that I liked their bow ties and learned how to say some numbers in Arabic. All of which I find much more interesting than the weather on the little TV screen.
Instead of absorbing myself in the screen on my last elevator ride, I started thinking about all of the other things I'm missing due to modern technology. I'm sure there are plenty of modern things that I use everyday and never think about how much I appreciate them. But they're here now and maybe I'll be mourning them in 20 years when they're gone. Here are a few of the things that I wish were still around.
-The smell of bacon coming from open windows on summer mornings, instead of sealed up houses full of air conditioning.
-Wondering who's calling, instead of deciding if I want to answer.
-Kids with grass stains from real grass playgrounds.
-Not paying extra for the guy to pump my gas.
-Small, messy bookstores, instead of huge bookstores or worse yet, no bookstores at all.
-Wool sweaters that got stinky when they got wet, instead of fleece. (Do cheerleaders still wear wool?)
-The anticipation of checking the real mailbox when I get home.
-Kids carrying their books to school, girls held to their chests and boys to their sides, instead of wheeling their backpacks.
-Hearing people's conversations in their cars at red lights because they had their windows down.
-Dressing up for flights.
-Bird songs outside my window, instead of the neighbor's air conditioner.
-Photo albums, instead of computer screens.
-Seeing how people so precisely fold their newspapers to read them in public places. Does anyone read the newspaper anymore?
-Learning something about strangers at a bus stop based on the titles of their books, instead of their titleless Readers, Nooks and iPads.
-Square ice cubes from real ice cube trays, instead of automatic ice makers.
-Passing houses on the sidewalk and hearing plates and silverware clank in the kitchen. Strange, but it's one of my favorites, and I'm afraid air conditioners have robbed that one, too.
-Brown lunch bags with potato chip grease stains, instead of colorful, nylon insulated bags.
-Chalkboards. Green ones with yellow chalk and black ones with white chalk.
-The swishing of brooms and scraping of rakes, instead of noisy leaf blowers.
-Ladies with curlers in their hair.
I guess I shouldn't have shrugged my shoulders when my parents used to talk about the good old days. Eventually we all mourn them. But they must be good enough to appreciate while we have them, or we wouldn't miss them when they're gone. So I thought I might suggest that on your next elevator ride you could pass the time thinking about what you miss about the good old days and what you appreciate about the present days. Unless, of course, you find the weather more interesting.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
If you know you'll be happy, just do it
I've never gone to bed telling myself that I wished I hadn't run that day, but I often go to bed telling myself that I wish I had.
Why is it so hard to do what we KNOW will make us feel happier in the end? I suppose there are a thousand self-help books on this subject. Don't worry. This isn't a chapter from one of those. If I'd read one, maybe I wouldn't keep making the same mistakes. Then again, I suppose I probably would or there wouldn't be quite as many books published because we all would've kicked this bad habit of not doing what we know we really want to be doing day after day, or more likely, year after year.
Take running for example. (And remember it's only one example. I could talk about eating McDonald's, cleaning my closet, watching some stupid TV show, finding myself a dinner date when I'd rather be alone, staying in one town when I'm traveling and really getting to know it instead of listening to the little voice that tells me to move on and see it all....or wait a minute. I've kicked that one, haven't I?)
Anyway, back to running. I love to run. I love how I feel when I'm running. I love seeing people that I know on the running path. I love seeing people that I don't know yet and wondering if one day I'll know them. I love hearing my GPS watch beep every time I finish a mile. I love how my running shoes feel. I even love how they feel when it's raining and my hot feet keep the water inside my shoes warm. I love feeling the breeze go through my sweaty hair on the days I'm not too embarrassed to take the ponytail out. (It's kind of like skinny dipping.) I love running in the snow. I love running on super hot days and stopping to stretch and having my own real beads of sweat fall from my elbows and hit the ground. The first time I felt it I was surprised. I thought it only happened to the athletes in Gatorade commercials. Anyway, you get the point. I love to run. So, why is it a struggle nearly every morning to get up and go when I know it's the thing that will make me happy?
I've never gone to bed telling myself that I wished I would've wasted more time lying awake in bed in the morning. And I've never said that I'm in such great shape that an extra mile or so would have just put me over the perfection edge. I've never told myself that I'm glad I didn't see if the lake was calm or wavy or ferocious like those cold mornings I catch the waves crashing on the corrugated breakwall one indentation at a time like hammers in a grand piano hitting string after string to play a scale. (That sounds like a bad attempt at poetry which, if you've been following this blog, is nothing that I ever do. But it really happens like that. Just stop and picture it for a second. They crash, but not all at once. They really do fill each section one at a time, first really tall and loud and little by little shorter and quieter and it's like notes are playing. There is no less-flowery way to explain it. And speaking of flowers....) I know I'd be sad to miss the day that the daffodils had bloomed. And I'm certainly never happy to have missed a morning that the lion stood roaring for a few minutes in the zoo.
Get the picture? I love running. I actually can't think of one thing to say about running that I don't like. Well, lately there has been one thing. I've wasted my whole run trying to remember all the verses to "Twas the Night Before Christmas" because the only line that seems to keep repeating itself is the one about the bowl full of jelly shaking when Santa laughs. At least mine only shakes when I run, something Santa probably wishes he could do.
So, you've heard it all. I've said it a thousand times, now I've written it and I've reread it. Do you think it will be any easier to get out of bed tomorrow morning? Shouldn't yesterday's deliberation while looking out at the rain and finally deciding to just go and then being greeted by a rainbow and the only 30 minutes of blue skies for the whole day be enough to remind me that in the end I'm definitely going to be happier if I run? I don't really need a self-help book, do I? I may not be lucky enough to catch the rainbow everyday, but I almost always find the pot of gold.
Why is it so hard to do what we KNOW will make us feel happier in the end? I suppose there are a thousand self-help books on this subject. Don't worry. This isn't a chapter from one of those. If I'd read one, maybe I wouldn't keep making the same mistakes. Then again, I suppose I probably would or there wouldn't be quite as many books published because we all would've kicked this bad habit of not doing what we know we really want to be doing day after day, or more likely, year after year.
Take running for example. (And remember it's only one example. I could talk about eating McDonald's, cleaning my closet, watching some stupid TV show, finding myself a dinner date when I'd rather be alone, staying in one town when I'm traveling and really getting to know it instead of listening to the little voice that tells me to move on and see it all....or wait a minute. I've kicked that one, haven't I?)
Anyway, back to running. I love to run. I love how I feel when I'm running. I love seeing people that I know on the running path. I love seeing people that I don't know yet and wondering if one day I'll know them. I love hearing my GPS watch beep every time I finish a mile. I love how my running shoes feel. I even love how they feel when it's raining and my hot feet keep the water inside my shoes warm. I love feeling the breeze go through my sweaty hair on the days I'm not too embarrassed to take the ponytail out. (It's kind of like skinny dipping.) I love running in the snow. I love running on super hot days and stopping to stretch and having my own real beads of sweat fall from my elbows and hit the ground. The first time I felt it I was surprised. I thought it only happened to the athletes in Gatorade commercials. Anyway, you get the point. I love to run. So, why is it a struggle nearly every morning to get up and go when I know it's the thing that will make me happy?
I've never gone to bed telling myself that I wished I would've wasted more time lying awake in bed in the morning. And I've never said that I'm in such great shape that an extra mile or so would have just put me over the perfection edge. I've never told myself that I'm glad I didn't see if the lake was calm or wavy or ferocious like those cold mornings I catch the waves crashing on the corrugated breakwall one indentation at a time like hammers in a grand piano hitting string after string to play a scale. (That sounds like a bad attempt at poetry which, if you've been following this blog, is nothing that I ever do. But it really happens like that. Just stop and picture it for a second. They crash, but not all at once. They really do fill each section one at a time, first really tall and loud and little by little shorter and quieter and it's like notes are playing. There is no less-flowery way to explain it. And speaking of flowers....) I know I'd be sad to miss the day that the daffodils had bloomed. And I'm certainly never happy to have missed a morning that the lion stood roaring for a few minutes in the zoo.
Get the picture? I love running. I actually can't think of one thing to say about running that I don't like. Well, lately there has been one thing. I've wasted my whole run trying to remember all the verses to "Twas the Night Before Christmas" because the only line that seems to keep repeating itself is the one about the bowl full of jelly shaking when Santa laughs. At least mine only shakes when I run, something Santa probably wishes he could do.
So, you've heard it all. I've said it a thousand times, now I've written it and I've reread it. Do you think it will be any easier to get out of bed tomorrow morning? Shouldn't yesterday's deliberation while looking out at the rain and finally deciding to just go and then being greeted by a rainbow and the only 30 minutes of blue skies for the whole day be enough to remind me that in the end I'm definitely going to be happier if I run? I don't really need a self-help book, do I? I may not be lucky enough to catch the rainbow everyday, but I almost always find the pot of gold.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
It's in the bag.
My mom's purse that I remember the best was the white one that looked like a basket. It had a gold clasp and I used to like to turn it and pull the top part off of the bottom part. They would only come apart when they were lined up perfectly. Then the two pieces would flop back and the bag would be open. The lining was blue fabric with little white flowers on it. It wasn't attached at the bottom, so you could turn it inside-out and really get it clean. That's the only time I'd see the one red flower that my mom said had been colored in by an uncapped, red felt-tipped pen. I loved the artistic accident.
She kept her purses in the sweater closet. It was half-filled with handknit sweaters and half-filled with purses, but it was still only named the sweater closet. The "changing of the purses" (as my brothers and I called the process of emptying the contents of, for example, the brown vinyl one that looked like a bowling bag into the red corduroy one with chain handles) usually took a little while. If it was REALLY time to get out of the house, she wouldn't make the change. It always involved emptying the unwanted junk from the bottom of the purse that had been stashed in the closet, and then refilling it with only the essentials from the one currently in use. What this meant was that the one being retired to the closet would be tucked away with all of the unwanted stuff that didn't make the transfer. And then, when she wanted that purse again, it had to be emptied for the next change. I always wondered why she didn't just throw the junk out in the first transfer, but she never did. It wasn't until the next time that she had the courage to part with the paperclips, safety pins, gritty pennies, kleenex with pink lipstick blots and leaky red pens.
Before my trip to Ecuador last week I did a "changing of the wallets." The stuff that got changed? An Italian stamp, the 5k race times of my Ethiopian friends scribbled on a six and a half year old tiny sheet of paper now as soft as kleenex, two rupees and a fortune which read, "Get your mind set....confidence will lead you on." (I HAD TO transfer that! Pulling it out of the tiny inner pocket of the wallet was like pulling it out of a cookie again. Only this time, I swore I was going to live it).
And today, as I finally accepted the fact that the straw summer bags should be tucked away and the leather ones pulled to the front, I had a "changing of the bags." Unlike my mother (and my practices with my wallet) I always empty my bags before they're stashed. The thought of finding the chewed gum wadded up in a napkin or a couple of stray Sugar Babies with sand and hair stuck to them has been enough to keep me emptying! The only problem is, this prevents surprises. Unless, of course, you have a bag with 8 diffferent pockets and compartments. And that's the one I had with me at the restaurant tonight when I was madly searching for a pen.
I knew I hadn't put one in the bag this morning, but I was sure that there must have been one that was overlooked in last year's emptying frenzy. Nope. No pen. But, I discovered a treat in the inside back pocket with the smaller zipped pocket inside that one. I found a clipping from the New York Times of February 2005. It was an article about Paris with a photo of the carousel on Place des Abbesses. Someone had given it to me before I ran the 2005 Paris Marathon. It didn't mean anything to me at the time. I was going to Paris to run a marathon, not ride a carousel. But for some reason, it got stashed in the bag and never emptied. And there it was today to remind me that in 2005 I'd had no idea that I'd be living in Paris in 2010 and take my own photo of the carousel in Place des Abbesses.
So, as I struggle with decisions of just what to do with my life in 2011, who knows what I might have absentmindedly stashed away to be discovered in 2016. Maybe I'd better go back to the trash can and dig out the instruction manual for my new camera lense and the brochure for the fall session of writing classes at Newberry Library. Wouldn't it be fun to discover those in the bottom of a bag in 5 years and be able to smile? And why does the fortune stay with the stuff that gets transferred instead of the stuff that gets emptied? What's it going to take to make me believe in that one little cookie from 1999?
She kept her purses in the sweater closet. It was half-filled with handknit sweaters and half-filled with purses, but it was still only named the sweater closet. The "changing of the purses" (as my brothers and I called the process of emptying the contents of, for example, the brown vinyl one that looked like a bowling bag into the red corduroy one with chain handles) usually took a little while. If it was REALLY time to get out of the house, she wouldn't make the change. It always involved emptying the unwanted junk from the bottom of the purse that had been stashed in the closet, and then refilling it with only the essentials from the one currently in use. What this meant was that the one being retired to the closet would be tucked away with all of the unwanted stuff that didn't make the transfer. And then, when she wanted that purse again, it had to be emptied for the next change. I always wondered why she didn't just throw the junk out in the first transfer, but she never did. It wasn't until the next time that she had the courage to part with the paperclips, safety pins, gritty pennies, kleenex with pink lipstick blots and leaky red pens.
Before my trip to Ecuador last week I did a "changing of the wallets." The stuff that got changed? An Italian stamp, the 5k race times of my Ethiopian friends scribbled on a six and a half year old tiny sheet of paper now as soft as kleenex, two rupees and a fortune which read, "Get your mind set....confidence will lead you on." (I HAD TO transfer that! Pulling it out of the tiny inner pocket of the wallet was like pulling it out of a cookie again. Only this time, I swore I was going to live it).
And today, as I finally accepted the fact that the straw summer bags should be tucked away and the leather ones pulled to the front, I had a "changing of the bags." Unlike my mother (and my practices with my wallet) I always empty my bags before they're stashed. The thought of finding the chewed gum wadded up in a napkin or a couple of stray Sugar Babies with sand and hair stuck to them has been enough to keep me emptying! The only problem is, this prevents surprises. Unless, of course, you have a bag with 8 diffferent pockets and compartments. And that's the one I had with me at the restaurant tonight when I was madly searching for a pen.
I knew I hadn't put one in the bag this morning, but I was sure that there must have been one that was overlooked in last year's emptying frenzy. Nope. No pen. But, I discovered a treat in the inside back pocket with the smaller zipped pocket inside that one. I found a clipping from the New York Times of February 2005. It was an article about Paris with a photo of the carousel on Place des Abbesses. Someone had given it to me before I ran the 2005 Paris Marathon. It didn't mean anything to me at the time. I was going to Paris to run a marathon, not ride a carousel. But for some reason, it got stashed in the bag and never emptied. And there it was today to remind me that in 2005 I'd had no idea that I'd be living in Paris in 2010 and take my own photo of the carousel in Place des Abbesses.
So, as I struggle with decisions of just what to do with my life in 2011, who knows what I might have absentmindedly stashed away to be discovered in 2016. Maybe I'd better go back to the trash can and dig out the instruction manual for my new camera lense and the brochure for the fall session of writing classes at Newberry Library. Wouldn't it be fun to discover those in the bottom of a bag in 5 years and be able to smile? And why does the fortune stay with the stuff that gets transferred instead of the stuff that gets emptied? What's it going to take to make me believe in that one little cookie from 1999?
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