I suppose it’s a question for the superstitious of us: yes, I am one.
When something out of the ordinary happens and then happens again within the space of a day, I expect it to happen yet again. Soon. It’s dreadful if two people die unexpectedly. It’s kind of exciting if I hear from two people from my past. In my case, today I had the latter happen.
First, I spoke to an old friend from my MySpace days. (Yeah, that’s a long time ago, right? Gotta be.) And second, I was contacted on Facebook by my ex husband. The one I would have shared a 32nd wedding anniversary with this year. I spoke to him on the phone too, for the first time in more than 20 years.
Will there be a third? Or have I voided the possibility by asking the question? Ah, there’s another superstition.
I used to hate people who told me, with their nose seemingly turned up in disdain, that they didn’t watch TV. That was back when I used to do barely anything else when I got home from work at night. Knit and watch TV. Every single night.
Fast forward to now: I never watch TV. I don’t turn my nose up at people who do – I understand that their leisure time is as valuable to them as mine is to me – they just choose to do something different with it. But I do have to say that I’m really feeling the effects of NOT watching it. Why?
Pop-culture can be very important in any work of art. It has the ability to connect the artist to his audience in a unique way, like, remember where you were when the last episode of M*A*S*H was aired? Or when we heard those famous words, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”? Can you? I can. But do I know a damned thing about what’s going on on “The Office”? No.
In the spirit of my prompt for these first ten days of January here on Just Jot It January, I decided to allow my mind wander along the thread of inspiration endowed upon me by this post by Opinionated Man on HarsH ReaLiTy.
My question for the day: when is it okay to say anything?
I once worked for a woman who owned a wool shop. It was an interesting job in that I was in a position to help people with their knitting and crocheting projects; this included aiding them in getting the right yarn for their pattern. While I worked hard to make sure they would meet with the maximum amount of success with their finished article, my boss would say anything to make a sale. Not happy with the colours the proper materials come in? Sure, that other one will work. No. It won’t, I used to think to myself. But how can you argue with the owner of a store in front of a customer? She did this knowing full well that in 99% of cases the customer wouldn’t come back and complain because they would think it was their fault for not doing something correctly. The patrons who would complain were knowledgeable enough not to buy the wrong product in the first place.
When I did say something to my unscrupulous boss, she brushed it off, insisting that the project the poor customer was about to embark upon, their hours and hours of work, would come out fine.
Honesty is one of the virtues I hold in highest importance. Bad sales practices are not confined to the retailers you might think they are. Keep your eyes open and do your research.
I’d like to tell you a story. It’s a true story of a weary traveler who landed after a thirteen hour flight in a country far far away from home. Alone, tired, and barely able to read the signs or speak the language, she found a train that would take her to a station close to the hotel in which she was booked for the night.
Crude map in hand, and fully equipped with an address, she approached a policeman who was standing guard at a road block and showed him her piece of paper. Much to her astonishment, he directed her to go in the exact opposite direction to which she believed she was supposed to go. This should have been her first clue, indicating what was to come. After a little wandering around, she decided to ignore his directions and go where she thought she should. So far, so good.
She walked a little way and came across another hotel. Surely, she thought, they would know where their competition was located! Sure enough she was rewarded with success – another, even clearer map of where she was to go. So off she went.
She had been informed by the website from which she had made the reservation that the hotel was only a ten minute walk from the train station. She wandered along sparsely lit streets, dragging enough luggage for an eleven day trip behind her, quite positive that soon she would recline on a cozy bed, softly slipping into dreamland.
An hour later, she stopped at a convenience store. Whilst waiting to speak to the busy clerk, a stranger stepped up and asked her if she was looking for directions. In English! (It must have been the two maps in her hand that made him ask.) Yes! She replied and showed him the address of the hotel. Oh dear, he said. That is indeed a long way away.
And so she set off again, trudging down dark unfamiliar streets, the traffic on the wrong side of the road and the sidewalks non-existent. Had she never visited this far away country before and felt supremely safe there, she would have lost her shit by now.
After several miles back in the direction she had come, she stopped at yet another convenience store – one that appeared to be on her initial map, a landmark promising that she was close to her destination. Finally.
The clerk there, in broken English, told her she needed to go up the street – again, not in the direction she would have gone, but he was quite insistent. So off she crawled, lugging behind her her tonnes of luggage. By the time she reached the train tracks from which she could, in the distance, see the station at which she had disembarked from her train she was almost in tears. And so she set off in the direction of a large supermarket, hoping that there, someone would be able to finally give her a definite direction.
It was by chance that she came across and made the decision to go into a car-rental office. She stepped up to the desk with her luggage and placed her two maps on the counter.
Help, she whispered, holding back the tears. Three men behind the counter shuffled about, trying to make sense of this woman, our poor traveler. She attempted to speak their language but came out instead with a word here and there and, in her extreme exhaustion, flailed about in sign language, gesturing her utter desperation until the three employees were all but backing away in fear. And then he appeared. Her knight in shining armor.
With one glance at the original map, which just happened to have GPS coordinates included in the address, he gestured to her, Come with me.
She heaved her luggage into the trunk (he wasn’t that gallant) and slipped into the passenger seat as he punched in the coordinates on his street finder, and within seconds they were whipping in and out of traffic in that little rental Toyota. Three minutes later they were at her hotel. Eureka!!!!
He popped open the trunk and went into the lobby while she struggled with her suitcases, wheeling them finally through the door of her refuge. The knight (Sir Non-Gallant) spoke to the desk clerk, laughed a little (by this time she didn’t care) and she thanked him profusely for dropping her off.
And that is how she came to rest, finally, sixteen and three-quarter hours from the time she had boarded her plane to the moment her head hit the pillow and she drifted off into a thankful slumber.
And thank God for little GPS-equipped Toyotas and the marvelous, kind-hearted Japanese men who rent them out.
Ah, how infinite is our wisdom when we’re tired? That really is the question. It’s the reason I left the suitcase laying in the middle of the living room floor and it’s why there was no glass.
Last night after I finished writing my post, I started to get myself ready for bed so that when my son went to bed I could go as well. I considered having a glass of wine, but decided against it for two reasons – one, there was too much left in the bottle for the three or four ounces I usually take upstairs with me but not enough to leave the rest in the bottle, and two, because I was really too tired to stay up and drink it anyway. Likewise with my decision to take neither my laptop nor my tablet to bed with me: I really just needed sleep.
Chris came out to say goodnight to me and went off to bed, so I turned off the light, and the laptop and promptly, in my rush to get to bed, forgot that there was a suitcase laying in the middle of the floor. I tripped, I stumbled, I spent what felt like a full 20 seconds trying to save myself until I realized I was going down. And I did. On my knees and elbows. The pain was so intense, especially from my already sore shoulder joint which I’m almost sure I knocked right out of its socket since I have barely any muscle left to protect it, that I lay there for a few minutes hoping not to throw up. Finally Chris came back downstairs and called to my eldest son who was in the basement and he helped me get back up.
Had I had the glass, the laptop, or the tablet in my hands – I don’t even want to imagine the mess. Had I not tried to save myself I might have hit my head on the bannister. As it was I landed six inches away.
So, is the glass half full or half empty? Thankfully there was no glass. Next time there will be no suitcase.
Twofer the price of one, that is. I think I got about two hours of sleep last night with Alex’s coughing, and I’ve had no more than two minutes to myself at any given moment all day. Looking after a sick kid is very demanding on the attention. He’s sleeping peacefully at the moment and so far my two minutes have extended all the way to about twenty.
Still, all day I’ve been thinking about what I could write for SoCS today, given my own prompt, but nothing really stuck out as a good word that started with ‘t.’ Concentration has been a rare thing though, although I have managed to get a lot of blogs read during my minutes between being asked to do this or that, or pay attention, or simply rub his back – not easy to type whilst rubbing someone’s back. So I’ve been here but I haven’t.
I’m seriously ready to drop off to sleep any minute now. Just waiting for the other teenager to go to bed. *sigh*
I have quite a few blog posts lined up in my head for the coming weeks. I still have dozens of pictures to share, and I kept a journal while I was gone as well, though I have to re-read it to see if it’s exciting enough to copy out – perhaps I can spruce it up a little without straying from the facts.
Lots to do, but much of it depends on the kids going back to school next week. It’s supposed to rain all day tomorrow and then on Monday the temperature is supposed to drop to -10C. I hope the rain dries up in the meantime, otherwise we’re going to have a repeat of last year. No fun at all. I shall certainly try not to fall and almost kill myself this year on my paper route.
I’m tired just thinking about it. …who am I trying to kid? I’m just tired. And that would be my whine for the evening.
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
Of all the reasons I went to Japan when I did–because seriously, who goes on vacation just before Christmas when they’re a single parent with kids–this is probably the last thing my readers here can relate to. Yet, it’s an interesting story. An incredible story. So I’d like to share it with you, and perhaps you’ll enjoy it anyway. Perhaps it will inspire you to dream, and dream big.
Ever since I visited Japan nine years ago, I’ve wanted to go back. It’s a wonderful country, with kind, lovely, helpful people. But I wanted to go back in the spring, to see the cherry blossoms. Yet I went in December. Why?
It started out with a friend, Susie, who I met here at WordPress. (I’ll attach a link to her awesome Etsy store at the end of this post. Her jewelery is amazing.) She got tickets to a concert I would have given my right arm to see. But not only did she buy more than she needed, she won them. In a lottery. The band’s fan club does that sort of thing. To give you an idea of how incredible this is, the band in question plays to sold-out shows at Nippon Budokan, which has a seating capacity of 20,000. They played there yesterday. But the venue my friend got the tickets to? 2400 standing on the floor. And my ticket was number 252… almost within the first ten percent of the people to be let in. More about that later.
So the next thing was, whether or not to accept the ticket. Could I find someone to look after my kids? Their dad was busy with work – it’s his busiest time of year. No help there. Except I have a best friend who agreed to look after them. Yes. I could go. The flight was reasonably priced and, when I looked for places to stay I found some excellent deals for far less, in fact, than anywhere I could hope to stay on vacation in my own country. I was going to Japan to see my favourite band. It was now or never. Did I mention it was the final concert of the tour I really wanted to see?
Fast forward to the day before the concert. I was going to meet Susie the day of, but I decided to pop by the venue one day in advance when she planned to pick up our tickets. Good thing I did – she was detained on the day of the concert and I would have waited to see her and not made it to the front of the line where, as it turned out, I met a gal from Portugal who spoke English, who told me I needed 500 yen in cash to get in the door, even with my ticket. Can you imagine? Had I not known, I might have spent thousands of dollars to go to a concert and not gotten in for the sake of $5. So, with my 500 yen at the ready, I had to figure out when my number was being called. It was all in Japanese… except my new Portuguese friend introduced me to a lady who spoke both English and Japanese fluently… who just happened to hold ticket number 251… the one before mine. I followed her in. I’m shaking, writing this.
So I got in, as up front as I wanted to be, somewhere in the middle where I could see the lead singer – the one I’d come all that way to see.
Here’s my picture, taken by the lead guitarist.
Seriously, how often do you get your picture taken from the stage?
As I watched this awesome concert that I’d been so blessed with being able to attend, that so many stars had fallen into place for me to be in that spot, at that moment in time, I remember thinking to myself how important it was to fully be in that moment. The music, the crowd, the incredible … moment!
I walked back to my hotel that night feeling truly truly blessed.
It was a bittersweet walk. Alone, I felt a little lost. My real reason for being so far away from home was over and I still had a couple of days left to go. I almost felt as though I had nothing left to look forward to. But.
When I got back to the hotel that night I went online to find out the concert had been taped, which is why I’m writing this today. It was played back to me, live on a streaming website, this morning. I had the chance to relive that wonderful moment! How often does that happen?
Here’s a tiny little excerpt of the concert. I know you can’t possibly understand most of what’s being sung, nor may you know who these people are on stage. But I was there. During this song, the lead singer, Atsushi Sakurai, made eye contact with me. This alone means the world to me. He is my muse – the one who has lead me through my novel and kept me going. He is my inspiration, pure and simple.
(Click on the word “Post.” One of those hands in the air is mine.)
You may not understand, but perhaps it will inspire you to hope that one day all your stars may align as mine did two and a half short weeks ago in Tokyo, Japan.
Susie’s jewelery! https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/birdicatt (I didn’t realize her shop was closed up until she gets back – please be sure to visit her after January 9th!)
It seems to me that we all must consume things. We eat, for instance, consuming the nutrients we require to survive. But yet, the word “consumed” has so many negative connotations. Being consumed is, at the moment I write this, the most complete thing I can think of. By complete I mean absolute. It goes against the grain of thought for me, because I don’t believe anything is absolute.
The feeling of being consumed is to me almost absolute. Consumed by guilt, consumed by the feeling that I must do something – writing for instance – is so overwhelming that it feels … consuming. The all-consuming feeling that falling in love brings; it permeates every thought, every action.
Of course there is also being consumed, like the pie right down to the last crumb. Is that not absolute?
With one word – with one prompt of my own making – with one blog post I have managed to skew my philosophy on life. How does this happen?
Before I went to Japan I dropped in to my local cell phone provider’s store to inquire about a package deal that would allow me to use my mobile in the event I couldn’t get online while I was away. They were offering a deal that included something like 40 minutes talk time, 150 texts and 20mb of data for $70. I asked what would happen if I wasn’t able to use my phone in Japan and was assured that it wouldn’t be a problem – if I didn’t use the service, the company would refund the $70. What could I possibly lose? So I went for it.
Today I called the company to let them know I hadn’t been able to connect to a wireless provider while I was in Japan and could I please get my money back. No, I was told. There was no way they could refund the money. They don’t do that. So I asked to speak to a manager.
Armed with the fact that I have 6 phones on my plan, and have been with the company for about 20 years, I formulated my response to the next guy I was to talk to while I waited on hold. After five minutes my speech was at the ready. The gentleman who answered was polite – he said he’d check in to the matter, and would I please hold for a moment longer. Eventually he came back and told me that they don’t normally give refunds for travel packages, and the store shouldn’t have told me they do, but he would make an exception for me since I was a long-standing customer and he agreed to remove the $70 charge from my bill.
Now call me suspicious, but I wonder why I had to go through all that. The store told me I could have my money back. Was all the tension-building just a strategy to make me believe that the company is, in fact, wonderful and cause me to tell all my friends to go to them because they are kind and forgiving if you’re loyal?
