Scattered thoughts inspired by Sixty minutes

Sixty minutes was most indefinately created for old people. Case-in-point: ducolax, fiber laxitive commercials, are aired on nearly every commercial break.

Anyway, thats beside the point. More importantly, tonight  on sixty minutes they were reviewing some of the great interviews that were conducted by the late Don Hewitt. I'm not really familiar with him.

But...what caught my attention, as I sat at my reception desk in the waiting room tonight, was that Don Hewitt once interviewed Gorbichoff (?) Is that how you spell it?
Anyway, during the interview, which was conducted outside on Gorbichoff's private tennis court, the dictator noted that when he and his wife were first married they had very little money and therefore did not have much furniture.

"We had to do everything on the floor", he said, "we ate on the floor, we made love on the floor."
He paused a moment, then added, "That's why we got girls."

really?

"Tommy, you think thats true?" I ask, turning to face my co-worker.
She looks up from the catalogue she's thumbing through. "huh? what?"
"Gorbichoff just said if you make love on the floor you'll concieve a girl. You think that's true?"
Tommy just grins politely and shakes her head.
"I've heard lots of old wives tales about how to concieve a certain sex of child, but I've never heard that one."

Suddenly a miriad of memories flood my brain. Memories you don't want to hear anything about. Come to think of it though, both of my girls were concieved on the floor. Coincidence? Probably. But my very interesting and creative son Matthew, concieved via car. Could that have something to do with his creative personality?
Creative love making = creative offspring.
Its an interesting and creative idea.

OCD, and the never-ending quest for the perfect kitchen calendar

Nate continues to deny that he has OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). Its cute really, this ability of his to live within his own make-believe world. What is really mind-boggeling, however, is that he can continue to proclaim he is not obsessive in the face of his latest obsession.

Nate's newest obsession, that is finding the perfect 2010 calendar to hang in our kitchen, began with the ringing in of the new year and persists to this present day.

We have been out on numerous shopping trips with the agenda to find our new calendar in mind, none of which proved fruitful. Once, I even thought we'd found it, the one. It was a charming little calendar, donning various photographs of England's country side. I figured it would be a shoo-in. No such luck. Nate, of course, zoned in on the one photograph in the lot of tweleve that he didn't much care for, thus rendering the entire calendar useless.

Another, near success, was a beautiful number entitled, 'twelve places to visit before you die.', but was ultimately rejected due to an apparant bend in its corner.

 I, personally don't understand the importance of aesthetics for a calendar we only end up mutilating and scribbling on, over the course of the year. And, anyone who knows me knows I'm none too patient with these obsessive behaviors. Therefore, in order to avoid conflict, I have tried to assure my husband that I have every confidence in his ability to find a beautiful calendar to grace the walls of our ugly kitchen, and to keep my mouth shut. That was of course until last night, when I foolishly attempted to make a point, make a joke, and put an end to this insanity for good, all in one move.

I was at the mall, returning some pants I had bought for Brooke a while back, (she found them so hideous she wouldn't even touch them, and dubbed them 'the ugly grandma pants'), and decided to stop in at See's candies for a free sample while I was there. (I'm afraid I'm terribly shameless about my use of the free sample policy at See's.) Anyway, as I was walking back toward the exit closest to my car, I glanced at the calendar booth set up in the middle of the mall, and noticed this perfectly tacky calendar:

And...what's better is it was 75% off making this little gem only $3.00.

I was sold. I bought the calendar, knowing Nate's disdain for any pictures of animal life as well as his absolute disgust for rodents, and hung it, proudly on the kitchen wall.

All evening I waited in anticipation for Nate to return from work and happen upon this calendar. Surely he would see the humor. Surely he would see that I was making light of his silly quest. Surely we would both have a good laugh over photos of gerbils in flower pots, and sporting bifocals. Surely this would ease the tension he's been building.

Surely I do not know my husband as well as I thought I did.

Needless to say, my joke did not have the desired effect. Nate was both appauled and disgusted as well as angry for the $3 I wasted on an ugly calendar. My gerbil friends were immediately pulled off the wall and discarded as mere trash. I then, spent the remainder of the evening listening to Nate's lecture on handling finances responsibly. And so, continues the quest for the perfect kitchen calendar.

Maybe I should have gotten the goats.

Melancholy and the ugly monster

When someone very close to you is going through something very hard, the effects of that hardship kind of radiates out to you. Like tentacles of an octapus, it takes hold and pulls you in. Then, before you know it, you're right there beside them, living out their nightmare.

This ugly monster, this octapus with its angry tentacles has been present in my relationship with this friend from the beginning, sometimes loosening its grip, sometimes sliping out of sight completely, giving me false hope that it has gone away when in realtiy its laying just beneath the surface, waiting to rear its ugly head once again.

For a while, I've been able to justify, "Its just a little case of the blues," You say. "It'll get better when this happens, or when this is over." Then, when things don't get better, I blamed myself. "Maybe if I were a better friend." Inevitably the frustration reached its boiling point, pushing all kindness and understanding out the window, leaving only anger, or so I thought. Eventually, the anger, too has subsided revealing the sadness that has, from the beginning been laying right there underneath it all. Now, I must figure out what to do next, how to move on and how I can best help my dear friend. This process will take some time.

In the meantime, I'll take it one day at a time, one moment at a time if I have to. I'll have to insist on having 'the talk' again, my own little intervention of sorts. This time I'm going to be more than persuasive about seeking a professional on this matter. This time, there's an ultimatum, me or the monster.

Plugged in and tuned out

I have a beef with the technology-obsessed twenty-something generation and I'm going to bitch about it. First, I must confess: I am not technology savvy, I do not know how to text, I do not even own a cell phone and I absolutely refuse to waste my time with twitter. Some might say that I just don't understand. To that I will agree: I don't. and I don't want to.

This little beef stems mostly from my twenty-two year old neice whom, I absolutely adore, and absolutely love spending time with, but could do without the constant interruption from her cell phone when we are together. Am I selfish to want the precious little time we have to spend with eachother to be completely devoted to just us? Mabe, but in my opinion this is a matter of:

                               1. common courtesy

2. making the most of the moment we're in at the moment we're in it

I know I'm not alone in this school of thought. John Mayer just wrote a current blog post vowing to turn off the texting device and stay the heck out of twitter for a week. He encourages his fans and friends to do the same and when those seven days are up to write about what they missed or didn't miss while on the tech fast. My hope is that all these techies have some real moments that otherwise would have been spoiled by their obnoxious gadgets.

Lets take a moment to examine my points more closely. First, can anyone really argue that there is ever an appropriate time other than when one is not in the company of others to answer a phone call or text? I mean, nothing says "I don't really want to be here with you" like answering a call in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with someone else. Its just plain rude. If someone I was dating (thinking back to when I was single) had their cell on while out to dinner with me, it would be the last supper they had with me. If someone's phone starts playing 'don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like me' in the movie theatre you can bet the owner of that phone is getting more than a nasty look from me. And when I'm in the middle of doing my job, which would be checking patients in at the clinic, and they start talking on their phone I suddenly develop an overly loud voice. Why should visiting with family be any exception? Its not any less rude to text in the middle of a conversation with a family member or friend.

My second, and perhaps even more important point was that these young people who are constantly attached to their cell phones and text messenger gadgets are missing out on moments of their lives, or at the very least lessening the value of the moments in their lives. Everywhere you go you're subjected to teenage kids ignoring the parent they are currently with to punch out messages to friends on their little key pads. Or worse, parents who put the moment they're in with their child on hold while they answer a call from their cell phone.

I miss the good old days when telephones were anchored to the kitchen wall, not your hip. When phone calls from boyfriends were taken excitedly to the closet where a person could have a private conversation. I miss the days when leaving the house meant leaving all calls to be answered by the machine and time spent with loved ones was real quality time.

Thats my beef. I'm done.