It's Friday

I have been happily "retired" from the work force since my oldest son was born 7 and 1/2 years ago.  And still, when I wake up on Friday's the first thought in my head is - "it's Friday" and a little tune pops in that makes me want to do a little dance. 

I don't mind hard work.  I work very hard now between raising my kids, relating to my husband, keeping my house, homseschooling us all, writing . . . my life is full of activity.  Still there is nothing like a Friday to end the week right.  I'm so glad tht we don't have our days off in the middle of the week.  Wouldn't that just be awful.  Wednesday rollaround and we turn out the lights in the office knowing that we are going to be absent on Thursday and Friday only to have to come back and work again on Saturday and Sunday?

Okay, I know that's still five days of work with two days off, and some people even keep that kind of schedule without losing their sanity so it can't be all bad, right?  Wrong, those people are only happy because they pretend that Wednesday is Friday.  Friday carries a special additive that separates it from all other days.  Even the sound of the word rolling around on your tongue - go ahead - say it "Friday" - get fancy and roll that r like they tried to teach you in Spanish class.

Life is good, aint it?

Wow - that link to the Matrix quiz degraded faster than most, didn't it.  I've looked but I can't restore it.  Sorry about that.

There are a few needs that we all have.  We need to be warm, fed, and have clothes.  We need to be loved.  We need to know our potential.  And we need room to grow toward our potential.  If you are like me and have survived multiple classes where you dealt with Maslow's hierachy of needs, you know that I left one out.  We all need to be safe.

There are a lot of degrees to safety.  We need safety from the elements, safety in relationships, financial safety, safety in health, I'm sure you can think of other areas we need to be able to feel safe.

I can think of another.  We need to feel safe in our homes.  We all need a place where we can be who we are without fear that we will be mocked, judged, abused, manipulated, used, or otherwise dehumanized.  This morning I am trying to control my anger over a situation that has robbed someone I love of her ability to feel safe in her own home for 20 years.

It isn't my story to tell, so I won't. 

OH Man!  I know I said I was done with these quizzes but I found one more on Secret_Identity's site that I HAD to take. . .

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War Report -

Michael received a field promotion for extreme bravery and commitment to the cause under friendly fire.  Tucker was courtmartialed for creating friendly fire a little too much.

I had a really bad night last night.  I started trying to log on to the Internet at 5:30 when my hubby came home so he could see the changes I made to my Xanga look (while I was cleaning house, I decided to clean the Xanga house as well.)  Plus I hadn't yet made it out to read sites and leave coments.

I finally gave up and went to bed.  Tim was able to log on about midnight. 

I don't know what it is about my relationship with the servers of the world that I have these kinds of recurring issues.  As far as I know I've never done anything evil to a computer that would make all it's cohorts band together to torment me.  But that appears to be what has happened.

When my friend sends me email, at some point during the week, guaranteed, she'll send something that flat out doesn't get delivered.  At first I thought this was because of the particular Internet service I was using, so I fired them.  (Talk about an empowering experience!)  But, even with an entirely different service, the probem continues.

I love to talk.  More specifically, I love to be involved with the thoughts, ideas, and lives of my friends.  Since we got transferred out to the backside of nowhere three years ago, all my oldest and bestest friends live at least 12 hours drive away.  (With two little kids in the back seat, I don't make that drie very often.)  But the Internet, email and digital pictures enable me to stay pretty much included in the circle.  So disruption or unreliability in my Internet service sends me from totally laid back to orbit in about 3 seconds flat.

My husband is a computer genius.  My friend's husband is a computer genius.  Between the two of them, they don't have any idea what the problem is.  I know the problem.  It's a mischievous spirit that can't stand to see someone who has things going fairly well.  No amount of recoding is going to fix that, because the thing will just come back in a new form.

NOw while I'm online and happy, I'm coming to visit your sites.  Starting with the lovely people who commented on my blog from yesterday.  That way if my computer blows up, I'll have returned the favor for your encouragement. 

I'm winning!

I started the battle yesterday in my sons' closet.  They asked for my help finding pieces to their game and before you could sound the alarm, I was knee deep in battle with a ferocious army of clutter.  I fought hard and valiantly.  I beat the miserable force out of the closet, only to discover that it had retrenched under their bed.

The fading sun forced us to disengage and regroup.  With dawn's early light, I reentered the fray using a new weapon of mass destruction - the vacuum cleaner.  Now as we break for our midday planning session, the clutter has been chased onto the open field between the bed and the closet.  We have it surrounded.  If we can prevent Tucker from turning traitor (he shows signs of weakening resolve so we're getting worried) we should be raising the flag of victory by supper time.

(And sometime after that I hope to have time to check on on my Xanga friends and leave you comments.)

Overdosed on Me -

I'm a lion, I'm a strawberry, I'm a bear with a rainbow on its chest and a fairy with a tattoo on her butt, I'm blue, I'm Introspective, I'm and experimenter.  I'm Alice in Wonderland, I'm either Galadriel or Celedon, I'm . . . finally tired of these quizzes.  Last night I surfed around the taking quiz after quiz after quiz.  (The messy results are in the blog below.)

Finally I got thinking about why it's so fascinating to me what these tests say.  I've been intrigued since the first time I took the first communications class by the disconnect between what I think I'm saying and what other people think they heard.  When I'm talking to a "test" the results are discreet and easily calculated.  But, when real live human type people are on the other end of the message, there's no predicting how much of what I'm trying to say will get through.

I try to be a good listener.  I ask questions to double check and see if what I heard was what you meant to say.  (Yes, this drives my husband nuts, but that's the price you pay for clarity.    I recognize that at least half the responsibility for your success in speaking to me, is mine as the listener.

So having said that, I'm back now to the question of why people hear the message they hear and what it says about them and me.  One of the things that I've been fascinated with in the past is the idea of the "ladder of abstraction."  I've noticed that a great many of the communication gaffes I've experienced result from participants being perched on different rungs of the ladder.  I speak about a specific thing, and the hearer generalizes.  Or I'm trying to be general and the hearer starts dissecting the details of the metaphor.

Metaphor is both the genius and the bane of communication.  Without metaphor we can't communicate at all regarding abstract concepts.  Try to explain numbers to a child and you'll see immediately what I mean.  Numbers don't mean anything without a metaphor "Let's take these apples . . . "  The more mathematical the scientific model, the more metaphorical the language that explains it.  That's how it is that I'm able to understand scientific ideas that are way beyond my ability to compute.

But metaphor has gross limitations as well.  ((Now let me be clear.  In many ways, wormy is a bona fide genius.  I'm not being sarcastic in anyway to use that word.  On the other hand, he is my brother and has waived all rights regarding the content of our conversations.))  So, I had a conversation with my brother, the math genius, some time back where we were talking about statistical probability of a certain event.  The probability in question was something like 10 with a million zeros to 1 against the event ever occurring.  My brother, the math genius, kept saying, but that's not the same as saying that it "WON'T" occur, because in all those numbers, there is that one chance.

But, that's the flaw of metaphor.  Those numbers don't mean that if you repeat the trial all those times the event WILL happen once.  Those numbers mean that EVERY time you repeat the trial the odds are 1 in 10 with a million zeros behind it against your success.  For most of the rest of us non-genius types, we'd just say that the odds of that event happening are zero.

In math the separation between the formula and the metaphor is a clear distinction.  When I'm trying to convince my husband why HE has to be the person in charge of trash disposal in our household, the line isn't quite so clear.  Introduce the idea that things change or that time passes and you get a very messy business with lines that look like string art.

And maybe that's the bottom line.  That's why communication isn't a science.  It's too chaotic for that.  Communicating is an art.  So all those silly quizzes have one thing right, an artfully drawn word picture.

Oh, rats.  It's 9:00.  I'm due at church in 20 minutes.  My hair isn't dry and I'm the TEACHER this morning. 

Another Saturday night and I ain't got no body . . . Okay so I do have a body.  I even have a somebody.  What I don't have is an exciting evening of weekend fun.  My high point today came when I scored three cases of canned veggies at the local supermarket cause they were selling them 4 cans for .99.

I've balanced the checkbook.  Gotten over my kvetching about the income tax situation long enough to hit the send button for e-filing.  And now I'm faced with decision time.  I can either make dinner or invite my kids to play Candyland.  Hmmmmm, even if I'm not all that hungry - cooking beats the C Game any day of the week.

I took another of those web quizzes designed to reveal fascinating truths about my personality (results below.)  I really like these things, but even the quiz is boring me this arfternoon.  Amazingly enough, the personality traits fit pretty well with all the other quizzes I've taken, so I didn't learn anything new.

That's probably a good thing though.  This past couple of weeks have felt like a significant phase of self-discovery and growth.  I haven't been compelled to do anything wild to assert my new self, my reaction has been more like a grunt of pain.  Uhnnn! 

Strawberry: 70/100 Pear: 40/100 Banana: 30/100 Tomato: 0/100 Lemon: 0/100

Take the What Fruit Are You? test by webkin and aaronr!
 
 
EXPERIMENTER
(Dominant Introvert Abstract Thinker )

terri

Like just 4% of the population you are an EXPERIMENTER (DIAT). Although you're slightly shy (admit it!), you love control. When a problem comes in your way, you stomp on it swiftly and decisively. You are bothered easily by failure in others and failure in yourself. You don't like people that you don't think are intelligent. Rather than arguing with them, however, you would just as soon ignore them altogether. In relationships, you have a strong heart. And because you're introverted, people take you as someone they can trust. But the fact is that in addition to solving problems, you like to create them. So there's a decent chance that you'll cheat on a loved one. If you do, you'll likely get away with it. You're a good person at heart, but then again, who isn't?

You Wanna hear about doggie doo?

I had a great plan today.  After a morning of hands-on science experiments, I'm taking the kids to do errands, go shopping, visit the post office, and then meet Tim for dinner.  We'd have a lovely meal and enjoy some good family time (without having to do dishes after.)

I have a "pond" in my front yard.  Not a big pond.  In fact a very small pond.  Just about perfect for one of those little garden arrangements with plants and a couple of goldfish.  There is a whole Xanga blog in why my perfect little pond is a foot and a half deep puddle of muddy red water instead of the attractive adition to the landscape that I had planned.  But, that will have to be for another day.  The point is, you might ask, what does the pond have to do with the plan.  That's my question too.  When I told my children to go ahead of me to the van while I grabbed my purse, why did they go instead to the pond and jump in?

For that matter, why did the manual of science experiments you can do with stuff you have lying around the house not mention that the ink-separating-on-a-coffee-filter-into-the-various-colors-that-comprise-that-pigment requires a REALLY cheap marker.  I have markers.  I have great markers.  I have the kind of permanent pigment markers that DON'T RUN when the water migrates across the coffee filter.  In the book, they drew a circle with blue ink then dripped water in the center.  The water "drew" the ink outward and separated it into multiple colors that resulted in a tye-dye-sunburst kind of thing that looked really cool.  When I did the same experiment with MY markers - I got very tidy circles on coffee filters that didn't run at all no matter how much water we put on them.

Why did my 5 year old decide to have a screaming fit in Barnes and Noble?  (Where we went to buy a DIFFEReNT book of easy science experiments.)  Tucker likes the bookstore.  He likes to look at the books and play on the stage in the children's area.  He likes to orchestrate train wrecks using the courtesy "Thomas the Tank Engine" train set that they set up to encourage kids to ask for those little $10 each train cars.  Today, he literally dragged his feet all the way in the store.  After I found the book we came for, I gave my kids a half hour to play and browse then it was time to go.  You'd have thought I'd told him it was time to go to hell.  Michael was really helpful.  He "interpreted" for those people who didn't quite get it.  "My, Mommy is making Tucker do something he doesn't want to do."  (At the top of his lungs to be heard over the screams.)

Long story short.  By the time we got done with the grocery shopping, I wasn't sure where these kids came from, but I'm fairly certain that they aren't related to me.  I didn't get half the things I had on my list, but I did get an economy sized headache and a predisposition to sell my kids to the highest bidder.

Dinner was good.  I think.  Tucker and Michael got into the "I gotta go to the bathroom."  "No thank you, I don't need to go."  "Oh NOW I need to go" game.  So Tim and I took turns escorting the demon spawn to the bathroom.   I'm pretty sure we had dinner together.  At least both our plates showed signs that someone had been eating off them by the time the check got there, but I know he and Tucker were gone when I placed the order.  I was gone when they brought the food.  I was there when they brought refills on drinks.  I was gone when they brought the check.  But, I got back in time to realize that SOMEONE had to sign the receipt and I was the only grown-up there to handle it.  Are you confused?  So am I.  What happened to my day?  What happened to my plan to get things done and have a nice family time?

I have been at home all week long.  From last Sunday until last night, I never left the house except to walk the dog.  For some reason I was thinking that a day out would be a nice change of pace.  I don't know why I thought that.  I can't wait for a nice boring day where all I have to worry about is "did the doggie doo and where did she doo it."

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My friend, Mary, is back writing on Xanga and would appreciate a visit.  Like many of us, she's a writer (unlike me - she's published) and welcomes comments.

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See which Greek Goddess you are.">

See which Greek Goddess you are.

Well, I'm speechless.  That's a rare occurrence in my life, but I sit here with no idea at all what to say.  Yesterday's blog prompted comments from people that were as long as the original blog in some cases.  I'm thrilled that so many people were inspired to share their thoughts and feelings here.  I'd like to write something really humble and saintly today, but inside I'm hopping up and down saying "Woo, hooo!"

Today I feel some pressure (from myself) to write something "meaningful" today.  That pretty much blows away my earlier idea.  I was going to write something clever about my response to Tim's mid-day "How's it going?" call.  Lately I've resorted to giving him the report on the dog's bowel movements.  You know - WHERE - did it take place and was it on schedule, that kind of thing.  Somehow, that doesn't seem appropriate any more.