Perspective--Things You Don't Like And Things You Do

Perspective--Things You Don't Like And Things You Do

Think about something that drives you crazy. Now, think about something that makes you happy. Does it change your perspective on the former? 

Something that drives me crazy is the political attack advertising we are subjected to during the election season here (I'm not certain how long that is, but my guess is it's six months long--probably just seems that long).  I'm sure many of you share the same opinion--they spend all their time calling each other spineless, lying, cheating scoundrels, while all the while evading the question as to how they really will do anything or support anything.  Ours were like a series of cannonballs lobbed at each other.  One would accuse the other of something egregious and evil, then the other would reply calling his or her opponent a liar, and deny whatever he or she was accused of doing, then pointing to the opponent and calling him or her a liar and a chest, and on and on and on...

Ours was especially gruesome as the attackers were buying time on local radio and TV stations that broadcast to both their own state and ours.  Thus, we were hearing all this malarkey about an election in which we DO NOT HAVE A VOTE!  (Sorry about the screaming, but this does drive me crazy.  

Now the problem is I have to name something that makes me happy and I can only think about THOSE STUPID ATTACK ADS!

I think I am going to have to do something to get them off my mind... 

So, I have just returned from a walk around my house.  I am refreshed.  What did I do?  I ate two toot rolls (the only sweets I could find), a stepped out on my upstairs balcony and felt the chilly breeze (it's in the 50's here and I am only wearing a long-sleeved tee shirt), and watched the fading afternoon sun as it descended behind a building across the inlet.  Then I grabbed a book of poems off the shelf in our bedroom and read two of my favorite poems by Billy Collins--"The Lanyard" and "The Trouble With Poetry."  (I'd write them right here, but you can go to youtube and type in the title of the former and its author.  You'll get a reading by the author).   So, now I am relieved.  Have these three little escapes have made me "happy?"  Well, not exactly, but I am happier so I think this handles the second part to the prompt up above.  Now has it changed my perspective on those "attack ads?"  DUH?

OK, OK...  Let's turn that question around.  Has thinking about those attack ads changed my perspective on things I like?  No, apparently not.  So, no harm done, I suppose.  I won't be moving to Australia as the next election year rolls around after all.

Loving Yourself

Loving Yourself

Love to love you
What do you love most about yourself? What do you love most about your favorite person? Are the two connected? 

"Love about myself?"  I thought you weren't allowed to "love yourself."  That would reflect a massive ego or something called narcissism, I think.  Maybe I should look that one up.  "Having an excessive interest in oneself or one's physical appearance."  So much for liking my body for deciding to cooperate in reaching my goal weight this year.   Yes, I dropped a few pounds--well, if you've had a reasonably close look at me (say within a hundred yards or so) you'd say I had to lose quite a few--I could go on, but the point is that excessive focus on oneself is not a good beginning to any interaction.  So, I am a little stuck.  Loving something about myself is not so good, right?

But some amount of self-love is necessary for growth and survival.  Narcissism is more about the degree of self-love,  We all need enough self-love, just not so much.   So what do I love about myself?  Let me see, I think I'm....

Maybe this will work better in reverse.  What do I like most about my favorite person--OK, "love" most about my favorite person.  She swears--I am not making this up--that I once told her with a straight face that what I loved most about her was that she loved me.  I think you might now be able to better understand why this prompt gives me so much trouble.  I'm running around in circles here.

I guess the important thing to learn was right in front of me all the time.  The starting point is to love yourself.  Then move on to the people that love you, then....  Don't over-analyze, just do it--of course they are connected.  I just can't tell you exactly how.

Saturday Mornings Remain A Treat Or Should I Say Retreat?

Saturday Mornings Remain A Treat Or Should I Say Retreat?

It's quiet now, just me and what I'm thinking.  Saturdays when I arise before the rest and the business of this busy day has not yet been declared.  It feels just as true as it did when I was working.  A brief respite, a quiet cup of coffee, with no other obligation.  Sure, I can go out and get the paper.  For someone else to read, nothing's urgent to me at moments like this.

I'd rather sit and look about, watching water roll back to our inlet, wondering where it's been this time since the tide rolled it out some hours ago.  Is it the same water now, just back from a visit to the Sound?  I can't see how it would be kept together once it went into the Sound.  Even the creatures that inhabit these waters may not wind up here in the same place when the great force of the tide pushes the sea back in.   They could have spent their entire lives until today out in the Sound, or in some other inlet not so far away.  Today they'll spend in ours.  I imagine they feel as if they are sheltered here in our shallow space.  Here, the sun warms them, and there are no waves to toss or push or pull them this way and that.  Things are calm and peaceful, do they enjoy this sort of day and place.

Oh, they may be eaten by something larger, caught by larger creatures of the Sea--we've spotted dolphins feeding in our inlet--more than once a mother and its young.  Perhaps places like this are where they're taught to hunt for food.

The creatures washed in here by the tides might be even be caught by people fishing from the occasional bateaux that float in and cast their bait.  For most this will only be a misadventure--once caught, they're quickly released.   Released because they exceed a size limit for their species, or a bag limit for the fisherman, or simply because the fisherman values more the catching of the fish, not taking it home as food.  But today's chillier than most, so the fishermen will be scarce.  

If they escape all that hunting going on during this day, then they'll once again wash out to sea, perhaps never to return.  We believe these creatures lack a consciousness, so they don't think about where they've been or where they're going, they just exist.  Like some humans (perhaps all of us at some times) living without reflection, just plodding through their days.  But what if they have this consciousness?  What do they think of these daily visits?  Do they look forward to new places, or do they long to return here to our small space, where they can rest, a retreat for some who might just enjoy these visits like I do a quiet Saturday morning.

Make A List

Make A List

If you had to make a list of all the things family members would need to know if you suddenly went away, what would it include?  Accounts, passwords, poems, feelings never shared.  It would be too easy to just turn on the maudlin faucet for this one, so I am just spinning out the obscure details that have started popping up since I heard for the second time, "I need to know about that," from a certain someone.

The subject at hand was the explanation for a fund available to each of us (my wife and myself) from my former employer since I had been a certain age when they eliminated their own medigap plan for retirees 65 and over in 2000.  Creating this fund relieved my employer of the necessity to go on administering a plan for a population of retiring employees that will, for lack of a better expression, die off slowly over the coming forty to fifty years.

Leaving a lump sum to cover such a plan for a year or two when purchased on the open market let my employer drop this plan a bit less painfully.  Do companies really feel pain when they eliminate a costly benefit?   Probably not, but a sense of fair play does show up in decisions like this one made by my former employer.

The other subject it raised was a savings plan (including some company match) that same company set up when it had (a few years earlier) eliminated health benefits for retirees under 65.  I need to create an easy-to-follow file for accessing that one.  

That leads to the various pensions that trickle in from older former employers (are the employers I worked for and left earlier in my career "older employers?").   Well, that depends on who's working there now, but I expect all the employees are younger than yours truly.  The employer itself has also been in existence longer now than it had been when I left them, so are they an "older employer?"  The company I most recently left has been around for more than 160 years, so it is, in fact, my oldest employer.   They are all my former employers, but some are "former-er" than others, and one is the "former-est" (Don't look at me, "more former" and "most former" don't sound much better to me).  If indeed she survives being married to me that long, she'll need some guidance on how to contact these pension funds to stop my pension and claim her surviving spouse's benefit.

I am satisfied that Social Security will over-communicate with her on the subject of those survivor benefits.  I have been buried in paper over just becoming eligible for medicare, so if they are still in existence when I expire, she will get all the help she needs from then for Social Security and Medicare benefits.  I have to go back for just a second--"expire"--isn't that just the best expression for kicking the bucket you've ever heard?  It has lots of layers.  Is it like an old magazine subscription that expires and stops showing up?  Or is it like an out-of-date prescription medication hanging around your medicine cabinet too long--too old to be trusted any more?  OK, there's a rabbit trail we don't need to follow.  (Or is it like a free offer on some kind of free product its maker wants you to get hooked on?)

Back to the list, do you have a list of all your latest passwords for accounts, newsletters, web sites, e-mail accounts, old blogs--set up, but abandoned for a while, etc., etc.  How else will they ever find out the balance you owe or they owe you if you don't provide usernames and passwords (BTW. "username" does not yet pass muster with s p e l l  c h e c k e r s,  i t  s h o u l d  b e " u s e r  n a m e--isthatenoughspacesforyou,spellcheck?).  Come to think of it, BTW probably doesn't work for the spellcheckers either (note the space eliminated in the name of spell checkers, I may just win this one).  I kid you not, I just went to spell check and I got this message--"An error occurred while trying to perform this function, please try again later."  Yes...

Then there are the mysteries of bill payer functions in your checking account.  What's the difference between autopay of e-bills and automatic recurring payments, and what about autopay of minimum payment due on certain credit card accounts?  Some of this I set up myself and can't exactly explain.  Maybe this one needs some work before sharing....

Old email accounts--how many of you have set up an "ad/junk mail receiving account?  Some of these web sites want us to use our email address as a username, which allows them to send a multitude of ads, special offers and other useless news about special rates to Aruba in July, etc.  I have a different email I never really visit that gets all that junk.  Old blogs--I have set up and not really made public a blog or two over the past few years where works in progress are stored--you may not believe it, but there even worse poems I have written that are sitting there in case I ever want to try to salvage them.  

It goes on, but I have to stop for a while and go somewhere.

Sweatshirt Weather

Sweatshirt Weather

We knew it was wishful thinking then.  In August when we bought new sweatshirts in anticipation.  How much longer could hot weather hold out in SC anyway?  A long, long time, it turns out.   We had consistent eighty degree weather until this week.  Even with highs in the mid-70's, you really needn't do much more than don a long-sleeved shirt.

There was even an ominous event that accompanied one of my initial days of long-sleeved shirt wearing.  For the first time in my life that I can recall (oh shut your face, I can too remember what I did yesterday), a bird scored a direct hit on me (my shirt actually) in a certain sort of "bombing run" the nature of which I am sure you understand quite clearly without further elaboration on my part.  Anyway, all that is past.  Today's high will be 54 degrees Fahrenheit.  As I sit here, however, the winds are howling by and I'm thinking a windbreaker layer will be required.  But, for now, on goes my Saugatuck sweatshirt made by Gear, the company that makes the best sweatshirts I have ever worn.

I know sweatshirt weather will never be the cultural icon that flip flops have been.  People around these parts wear flip flops, and visitors will wear them no matter what the weather.  I actually bought a pair of flip flops this year, but have resisted wearing them for the most part--just me being rebellious, I guess.  They are everywhere, and the noise they make--flip flop, flip flop, FLIP FLOP, flip flop, flip flop, flip flop, Flip Flop...  It goes on and on.  Do sweatshirts have such an annoying presence?  No, except perhaps in what's written on them--which you can control by exercising a little self-control.  No "I'm with Stupid ->," and no "Older Than Dirt," etc.  

Well, enjoy your day, I have to go outside in my sweatshirt and enjoy the moment... 

NOVEMBER ONE’S

November One's

Wicked westerly winds wakened us--
Wishing winter would wander our way
We weren’t wanting wintry winds which would
Whip our windowpanes.

We weren’t wishing winds to
Wreak wanton waste
A winter wretchedly
Wiping away whatever waited here.

Blows buffeted boughs bending above us.
Building biceps into branches.
Bewildering birds about, who
Saw sparkling sunlight in the East,
Sought safety on the sand,
slumping, seeming to sleep,
Sensing an urge to search southern skies
Safer skies than our November One’s