Monthly Archives: October 2016

27Oct/16
traffic backed up

Top Ten Reasons I Hate Driving

Humor, Life, Rants, , ,

did I say how much I hate this…

traffic backed up

this is one reason…

I used to love driving, really I did, but that has changed now. Now there are too many cars on the road and too many people driving them that maybe shouldn’t be driving. Before you say anything, yes, my age may have something to do with my hatred of driving but I know a lot of people way younger than me that hate it too. Maybe I need a driver to go along with the pool boy I always wanted. By the way, I don’t have a pool but I’m sure I can think of some things to keep him busy. Back to the reason for this post…reasons I hate driving.

Here are my top ten…and believe me, I do have more than 10.

  1. Rude drivers – people who act like they are the only car on the road and everyone needs to just get out of their way. You see them coming and just move over so they can go by totally oblivious to anyone else being on the road. Because if you don’t get out of their way they will just run into you. I don’t think there’s a day that goes by lately that when I pull in my drive way after going somewhere, that I don’t just sit in my car for a few minutes and give thanks for making it home alive.
  2. Drivers who are texting or on their phones – here in my state as well as many others it is against the law to be on their phone but that sure doesn’t stop the ones I see every day texting or talking away. I actually saw a guy watching a movie on his iPad one day.
  3. Tailgaters – this one is high on my “hate list”. I especially hate when I am on a road that has more than one lane and the driver tailgating me can pass me, but doesn’t. It is like they are in the zone and don’t even know they are doing it until I slam on my brakes and wake them up. Yeah, I may or may not do that sometimes.
  4. Traffic – Is there anywhere you can go these days where there is no traffic? This is kind of a rhetorical question, because no.. it seems like there is traffic everywhere. Even the quaint little towns I used to love driving through because they didn’t have any, now do. Maybe this is due to the fact some huge builder is building homes there now because it is such a “quaint little town.”
  5. Maniacs – Well I’m not sure if they really are maniacs or not but they act like it. They weave back and forth in traffic thinking they are special and can pass everyone in the long line of traffic that is backed up the whole way for miles, only to end up a the same light or right beside you in the traffic line. I always look over and smile at them. It kinda helps pass the time.
  6. Dogs, Deer and Kids – Not especially in that order and I don’t hate them. I worry that they are going to run out in the street in front of my car when I see them alongside the road. I really worry about this. My reflexes aren’t what they used to be and I worry iI won’t be able to stop in time. And it’s not just the ones I mentioned. I don’t even want to hit a squirrel or skunk for that matter. Once there was this huge gathering of birds on the highway, traffic was in from of me, in back of me and beside me and I had no where to go but right through them. I felt there little bodies hitting under the car and it made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t even look in the rear view mirror.
  7. Driving at night – My night vision isn’t what it once was either, but really I never liked driving at night before when my vision was perfect. Come to think of it I really don’t like the dark. I like sunny days and daylight. Maybe it goes back to my childhood, who knows.
  8. Speed Limits – I am not complaining that we have them, I am saying no one bothers to follow them. I try, but it is difficult to drive the speed limit when everyone else is going 25 miles over it. Remember when we lowered the speed limit for safety and to conserve gas? I think that was why…but now they are constantly increasing it to 70 and even 80 in some areas. Do we really need to go that fast? Just leave in plenty of time and you will get there…and alive. And really it doesn’t matter what the speed limits are because no one goes the speed limit!! It is also hard to get off the ramp and onto these roads because you can’t really get up to 70 or 80 right off the bat and no one will let you in front of them because they are all speeding by at 90 miles an hour. So much for that safety thing.
  9. Getting to where I need to go – I don’t have a fancy car that has the map thingy that tells you where to go and when to turn. I used a friends “talking map thingy” once and it told me to turn where there wasn’t even a road. And I read all of the stories of people driving into ponds or oceans because it told them to do that. Not that I would do that by the way, but if it was dark I might not know the pond was there. Anyway, I don’t use one. I print out the map instructions and sometimes still get lost. And who is like me here, in that I turn the radio down when I am looking for the address or where to turn?? And what does that do? I still can’t find it.
  10. And last but certainly not least is Parallel Parking – I absolutely hate to do this and thank goodness we don’t have to very often these days. However should the occasion arise where I am in one of the ‘quaint little towns”, that is really the only way you can park. I will drive around for hours(well maybe 15 minutes) to find a place where I can just pull in. And in all other instances, I will use the parking decks. I will gladly pay rather than parallel park and hold up traffic with my back and forth trying to get in the space where there are SUV’s parked in front and back of me. What? They couldn’t make those spaces just a smidgen bigger??

I have heard that millennials don’t like driving either. They like living in the city so they can walk to work or take public transportation. I get it. I like living in my quaint little town, I can walk to the bank, post office and to get a cup of coffee in a few minutes time. I don’t like driving. I really like being a passenger. I like looking out the window and really seeing the landscape instead of staring straight ahead watching the maniac in front of me. Honestly, I just don’t like to drive anymore. It isn’t fun and in fact it is downright stressful. And who needs stress? I really do think I just need to get a driver. He can be best friends with the pool boy.

I leave you as always with a question and a quote. How do you feel about driving? I’d love to hear your comments.

“Baseball is a lot like driving, it’s the one who gets home safely that counts.” ~  Tommy Lasorda

20Oct/16
too many choices

Why Do We Have So Many Choices?

Life, Rants, ,

except in politics, but that’s another story….

too many choices

too many choices, I just can’t make a decision

I am really not just talking about shoes, although I may have a slight problem choosing the right ones especially when I go into one of those huge shoe stores. I’m talking about having just too many choices these days. I had a conversation with a friend this past weekend about music and groups and how when we were growing up we knew the names of all the groups and musicians. Now when we watch the awards shows on tv, 90% of the time we don’t know any of the nominees. I don’t think it’s because we are older, I think there are just so many of them that we don’t know who they all are. Speaking of tv, when we were young we had maybe 4 channels on the tv to choose from and that was enough, now I have several hundred and can’t find anything worth watching. I have channels I never even knew I had, nor do I know what is on them. Nor do I want to.

And it isn’t just tv or shoes. I go to the grocery store and am looking for a can of corn. I think there used to be maybe 2 or 3 kinds of corn. Del Monte and Green Giant quickly come to mind. Now there are rows and rows of corn to pick from. Some have salt, some don’t, some are organic, some aren’t, some aren’t even yellow. Some I don’t even know what kind of corn it is because I don’t understand what the label says. I looked and looked and until I finally just wanted to scream, “I just want a freakin can of corn.” I thought I was just thinking this in my head but maybe I really said it out loud because the woman next to me shielded her baby and zoomed off to the next aisle.

If you go to the beauty counter to get a red nail polish, there are 500 red nail polishes(that may be a slight exaggeration). Reddish brown, reddish purple, reddish red, red with a hint of black, red with a hint of gold. I just want to pick a bottle up and read the label and it says…”RED.” Is that too much to ask? Don’t even get me started on hair care products. Hair conditioners, mousse, shampoo and hair sprays. I can’t decide which one to use for my kind of hair. There is one for curly, there is one for dry hair, there is one for older women…well no there really isn’t but I’m surprised and then there is one for color treated(oops, now you know this blonde isn’t real). So which one should I pick? I stand there staring at them until my eyes get blurry and my head hurts and then I just get the same old one I always get. The one for curly hair. Maybe thats why my hair is so much more curly now.

Then there is clothing. And the color of the clothing. Recently, I needed a navy top to go under a sweater I bought that was white with navy stripes. Every navy top I got was the wrong shade of navy. How many shades of navy can there be you ask? Well the answer to that is at least 5 because I am now the proud owner of 5 different navy tops. And no, not one of them match my sweater. Why do we need so many shades of each color? We don’t need all these choices! And even with all the choices we have it is really hard to find just a plain ordinary beige top. Off white, cream colored. I needed this color as well as the navy one for under something and could not find one anywhere. Oh there were plenty of cream tops, racks of them in fact but they had a pocket or something lacy hanging out of the bottom or worse, had dolman sleeves..which doesn’t work too well under a jacket or sweater.

Do you know all the brands of cars there are today? I just saw a commercial for a new car and it was called Genesis. I thought, wow I never heard of that. I looked it up and it is Hyundai’s new luxury car. Wait, Hyundai has a luxury car…But seriously, when I was growing up, we basically had Chevys, Fords, Oldsmobile and Plymouths. Also there were a few cool sports cars. But I knew them all. When I would see one I could name it. Now I have no idea what car I am seeing in front of me on the road until I look at the name and even then I don’t know what it is.

When did all of this start? This “having so many choices” thing.. Do we really need all of these choices or does having too many of them just make us want more? Or does it make us throw up our hands and decide to not get anything at all? I don’t know the answer to those questions, but I do know this, if I finally do find a lipstick color or hair spray I love after the many hours and weeks of searching and trying one after another of them till I find it, someone somewhere in an office far away makes a decision that I shouldn’t use that color or hair spray anymore because they decide to discontinue it. Then the never ending search through the aisles and aisles of lipstick and hair spray begins anew. So I guess when all is said and done it really doesn’t matter how many choices we have.

What do you think? Do we have to many choices these days?

Here are a couple quotes about choices.

“Too many choices can overwhelm us and cause us to not choose at all. For businesses, this means that if they offer us too many choices, we may not buy anything.” ~ Sheena lyengar, Author of “The Art of Choosing.”

And I really like this one, and it can pertain to anything in life.

“We are our choices.” ~ J.P. Sartre

 

 

14Oct/16
Butterfly

Refinding My Joy

Life, , , ,

it was lost but now it’s found…

finding joy

find joy in the simple things

My word for 2016 was “joy.” I was going to find joy every day and try to make others happy and joyful too. It was a wonderful idea and I got some of my friends onboard with it as well. We shared our stories each and every day of how and where we were finding our joy. It was truly a wonderful goal, this whole “finding joy” thing was quite uplifting and hearing about everyone else’s joy made me even more joyful. That went on for a few months and then life somehow got in the way. My life wasn’t joyful anymore.

I decided this week to try and to “refind” my joy. I am bound and determined that it is out there, just waiting for me to rediscover it and allow it to once again come into my life. I want to be joyful. I need to feel happiness again. But I am also not a fool, I know every day can’t be just sunshine and joy. There is pain all around us and we can’t ignore it. But what we can do is find one thing every day that make us feel “JOY.”

In thinking about writing this I decided to look up some quotes about “joy.”  I was amazed by the ones I found and want to share 5 of them with you. They filled me with joy just reading them. I hope they will bring you some as well.

1.“Joy is prayer; joy is strength: joy is love; joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.” ~ Mother Teresa

2. “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero ( I love this one by the way)

3. “Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.” ~ Rollo May

4. “A joyful heart is the normal result of a heart burning with love. She gives most who gives with joy.” ~ Mother Teresa

5. “Joy is a decision, a really brave one, about how you are going to respond to life.” ~ Wess Stafford

I love all of these, but that last one really made me stop and think. Doesn’t everything in life come down to this? It is really not about what life gives us or takes away. It is how we respond to it. We can find joy in simple things. The picture above of the butterfly brings me joy. Seeing butterflies in my garden makes me smile and brings me joy, my son loved them and I know he is sending them to us. I see joy in the faces of my grandchildren and I find it in the love my family and friends show me every day. And I know for sure that joy still dwells somewhere deep within my heart.

This is my goal for the remainder of 2016. I am going to find my joy again. I am going to embrace it and never let it go.

What brings you joy?

 

06Oct/16

Please Don’t Ask Me How I Am…

Lifestyle,

I know this sounds both rude and weird but let me explain.

just trying to hold things together...

I’m trying to hold things together…

I don’t know if everyone that experiences a loss feels this way or not. Maybe it’s just people who have lost a piece of themselves..a part of their heart, a human being they carried inside their own body for nine months and raised to watch them become an adult and have children of their own. Maybe it’s only people like me that can truly understand how I feel when someone asks me this question, “how are you?”

I don’t know how I am. I don’t know how to answer this question. I get asked this every day and every day I don’t know how to answer. I just look at them and finally say, “I’m doing ok.” What am I supposed to say? What do they want me to say? Do they really want to know the truth? Because on the rare occasion I do try to put into words how I really feel, I see the look on their face and it tells me they really didn’t want to know. It is a look like, oh, no, she is really going to tell me and I don’t want to know, because I won’t know what to say to her.

I get it. I know it is difficult being the friend or family member of someone who has lost a child. I didn’t know what to say to others when I found out they had experienced this kind of loss. I do now. I love all the heartfelt emails, texts and cards people have sent and the words they so thoughtfully wrote to me have warmed my heart. I think it is easier to write than to speak, especially when you are face to face with the person who just lost their child.

I don’t want to be rude and I know it seems that I am not grateful for the people who take the time to ask me this question. I love that you take the time to ask me anything at all, just be aware I really don’t know how to answer. I want you to keep talking to me and allowing me to talk about my son. I feel like people are afraid I will break down and they won’t know how to handle the situation. It helps me to talk about it, but if it makes you uncomfortable then don’t ask. “if you don’t want to hear the answers, don’t ask the questions.”

There is another part of this that is hard as well. I don’t know how to act. I am out with family members or friends and we are laughing and having a great time and suddenly it dawns on me, what if someone sees me laughing. Why is she laughing? She just lost her son, she must not care. But then what is the answer? To look sad all the time and bring everyone down and make them feel sad too. I don’t want people to feel sad and feel so bad they don’t want to even be around me. I am aware of how you must feel and the thin tightrope you think you have to stay on. Ask me real questions, ask me tough questions. I may or may not have the answer but it will be better than asking me how I am.

I have so many days where I feel strong and happy and ready to take on the world. And then there are days when I have a hard time doing just about anything at all. I have had many losses in my life. Many. To have lost my Dad at such a long age was very hard. My Mom was in decline for years and it was almost a blessing that she finally gave up the fight. I lost my sister, my only sibling in a terrible freak accident that no one could have foreseen and was one of the hardest things I ever had to go through. But this. Losing my son, is…you know what, I can’t even put it into words. I have been sitting here trying to come up with the right words and they are none.

I am trying to be strong for my family. I know they all have had a hard time with this as well. I am blessed to have family and friends that have held me up and supported me through this horrific time in my life. I don’t know what I would have done without them. I don’t know what the future holds. I do know I am not the same person I was two months ago. I will never be that person again. I know it will get easier, but it will never be the same. And neither will I. I am on a this journey I never expected to be on and I hope everyone will stay with me as I figure out who I am now and where I am headed.

In closing, please don’t ask me how I am… because I don’t really know the answer. I usually end with a question, but I don’t have one. So instead I will end with two beautiful quotes I have found.

“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind protecting it’s sanity covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it’s never gone. ~ Rose Kennedy

“Do not judge the bereaved mother. She comes in many forms. She is breathing, but she is dying. She may look young, but inside she has become ancient. She smiles, but her heart sobs. She walks, she talks, she cooks, she IS, but she IS NOT, all at once. She is here, but a part of her is elsewhere for eternity.” ~ Unknown