Life in progress

Category Archives: Life


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SoCS – All in my Head

If you’ve been following me for a while you’ll know that I occasionally have problems with my eyes. I’ve tried eating carrots – that worked for a while. I tried Lutein, same thing. I tried drinking more water, I watched my sugar intake, I went to the doctor and an optometrist… The dietary stuff worked for a while, the professionals had no idea. I got a very slightly different prescription from the eye doctor which I’ve never bothered to fill. Actually putting on my glasses helps, sometimes.

With all of these temporary solutions that seem to work when I expect them to, I’ve become convinced that it’s stress. Mind over matter. I’ll start a journal to see when I lose my eyesight the most (this morning was bad) but rather than concentrating on what I’m consuming, I’ll keep track of what I’m doing or have planned. At the moment I’ve got to look forward to having all the kids home for two weeks until school starts. On top of that, my mother is bored at the retirement home and wants to come over… where she’ll spend the day getting stressed over my youngest son Alex’s screaming and teasing her, which in turn stresses me out.

Yeah. Looking at it in (hazy) black and white makes it look all the more logical, don’t you agree?

This fuzzy, unedited stream of consciousness post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/08/21/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-2215/ Just click on the link and join in today!

SoCS badge 2015


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SoCS – Today

Today I got a few things accomplished.

Tonight I went out with friends for dinner and drinks – something I haven’t done in many years.

It’s important, I think, to connect with people. I consider myself lucky to have friends. Friends aren’t something I’ve had a lot of in my life, at least not since high school. Oh, I’ve had a few here and there, but the life I lead isn’t one many people can find something in common with. I’m a parent, yes, but my kids are … special. Being a writer and admitting it usually results in people looking at me as though I’ve grown an extra head.

ID-10028266

freedigitalphotos.net

Wine is good. Friends are good. Here’s a goat.

This odd yet intensely personal post is brought to you by Stream of Consciousness Saturday. https://lindaghill.com/2015/08/14/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-1515/

SoCS badge 2015

It’s fun for everyone!


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One-Liner Wednesday – Instantaneous Gratification in Action

Walking the track yesterday was going so well I didn’t want to stop, even though my foot hurt… just another half an hour, I said to myself: blister = no more track for the rest of the week.

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use the tag #1lineWed for more exposure.

Have fun!


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My To-Do List w/o Aug 10-16, 2015

Because I just know everyone out there in WordPressLand is interested in my to-do list for the next week, I’m posting it publicly. You see, I have a partial week off. Which means the kids are with their dad for a week, but I still have to drive my mother here and there, and I still have my basement troll (aka my eldest son) and his cats dwelling in my dungeon. During this time I hope to accomplish the following:

  1. Finish editing my novel.
  2. Write the remainder of my Second Seat series for my fiction blog – only 21 days left to go and I’ll have published one entry every day for an entire year!
  3. Annihilate all of the fruit flies in my house, if not the world.
  4. Pitch an article to at least three different publications for my Interview with a Magician. (Yes, I italicized it to make it look as awesome as it’s gonna be.)
  5. Write some fiction, poetry, and articles to sell, to raise money for my upcoming trip to Tokyo!! (Yes, I’m going again in November. The tickets are booked because I won the lottery to get the concert tickets I wanted!!!!!)
  6. (And this may be the hardest of all,) get away from the computer and get some exercise.
  7. (And this may be the hardest thing to avoid, but I have to be realistic,) procrastinate.
  8. Remind everyone that there’s a contest going on for which we have one (fantastic) entry so far. It’s for the new SoCS badge in case you missed the memo. Don’t make me break out the pom-poms. And for pity’s sake don’t make me enter it myself. You’ll rue the day you have to look at any more of my mad paint skillz.

 

So there you have it, WordPressLand. Can I do it? I think I can. Wish me luck.


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SoCS – The Build-Up before the Fall

I can’t be the only one this happens to: I’ll have something–an event–to look forward to and I’m so enthusiastic about it that I can’t wait. I look forward to this one thing so much that I’ll begin to imagine what it’ll be like. How much fun it will be. And then the day comes when it’s actually going to happen…

And I don’t feel like going.

I’ve been thinking about what this phenomenon must be caused by, and the only thing I can come up with is that I’m afraid whatever it is won’t measure up to my expectations. That I’ve built the event up so much in my mind that nothing can possibly match it. And the longer I wait for it, the more I don’t want to do it, because I’ve had so long to envision what it’s going to be like that I’ve basically already done it in my head.

Enthusiasm is such a fickle thing, isn’t it? It’s like when I get an idea for a story in my head that I just HAVE to get down on paper. It’s gonna be great! But if I don’t get to writing it almost immediately, it becomes, ehh, whatever.

There should be an opposite for enthusiasm. You’re either enthused or unenthused… but unenthusiastic isn’t quite the right word, in my mind. Disenthusiastic, on the other hand, comes closer. Un-, to me, means I never was. Dis-, to me, means I was and then I wasn’t.

Do you ever write a word so many times that it stops making sense anymore? Or just doesn’t look right. I’m getting that now…

This late entry is part of SoCS, which in this case stands for Stream of Consciousness Sunday. Feel free to use it occasionally. You can find the rules here: https://lindaghill.com/2015/08/07/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-815/

Happy Sunday, all.

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

P.S. Don’t forget the new badge contest! You can find it here: https://lindaghill.com/2015/08/06/get-out-your-crayons-kids-its-time-for-the-2nd-annual-socs-badge-contest/ Let’s have some enthusiasm! Go, artists and photographers, Go!


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One-Liner Wednesday – Either I’m really short…

Guess where I was yesterday.

CAM00758

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use the tag #1lineWed for more exposure.

Have fun!


by 19 Comments

SoCS – Ever Ready

The word “ready” has been tiptoeing around my head all day. Doing a ballet, actually. Unfortunately the pirouettes caused me to have to pop a couple of Tylenols, but I had them at the ready. So that was okay.

“Ready,” I’ve decided, should be an emotion. It’s an abstract sort of thing – ready isn’t something you can touch. It’s not something you can do. It’s the cusp of doing something… the edge of an action. When you’re teetering you may take the plunge before you’re ready just to find that you were ready after all. The opposite can be disastrous.

A machine can be ready but it still takes a human being (most of the time) to make it do what it’s ready for. Is the human ready? What decides us if we’re ready? Desperation, definitely. It’s a gathering of the emotions, isn’t it? Sometimes the gathering is slow – a culmination of years of want, of desire, of need. Sometimes the choice comes upon us suddenly, as in “it’s now or never!” Regardless, we take logic into account (sometimes), but in the end, “ready” is a feeling.

So next time you ask someone how they feel, give them the option: are you sad? happy? scared? content? ready?

And yeah, they’ll probably look at you with their eyebrows scrunched up in the middle and say, “Ready for what?” To which you may reply, “It was just something I read somewhere.”

This tired example of stream of consciousness writing is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/07/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-115/ Be sure to join in next week!

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions


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One-Liner Wednesday – Just one?

Name one indulgence you never want to give up.

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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. Please ensure that the One-Liner Wednesday you’re pinging back to is this week’s! Otherwise, no one will likely see it but me.

As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday (SoCS), 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.

Unlike SoCS, this is not a prompt so there’s no need to stick to the same “theme.”

The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

3. Use the tag #1lineWed for more exposure.

Have fun!


by 34 Comments

There are Two Morals to this Story

It all started last night – two fruit flies sat on the edge of a ledge in my kitchen. Side by side. So close that I could kill them both with one slap. I wound up for the hit (they were big fruit flies, okay?) and I… missed. The fruit flies that is. What I hit was the fruit fly trap (that’s not working). It fell off the shelf knocking a wine glass into the sink where it broke. Damnit! I thought. I smashed a wine glass for nothing.

But that’s not where it ended.

This morning I was getting Alex ready for camp. He followed me into the kitchen and started complaining that his foot hurt. I didn’t get a chance to look at it; someone knocked at the door. While I dealt with that, Alex began to scream. He didn’t come out of the kitchen and the man at the door (the postman) is Deaf, so I ignored Alex and finished up with the postman. When I got back into the kitchen there was blood everywhere. It took me a while to figure out where it was coming from – turns out there was a cut–a hole actually–on the bottom of his foot. Yes, the fruit flies strike again.

So while I was discussing with Alex whether or not he would go to camp, Chris, my Autistic son came downstairs and began to insist I take Alex out of the house. He had plans to spend time in the living room (rather than the computer room where he locks himself whenever his little brother is home). When Chris has plans, they’re not easily changed. He ranted. He yelled. He swore. He threatened. He banged doors and hit walls. And then he went for a walk. Luckily by the time he came back he’d calmed himself – he even apologised and gave me a hug. I still couldn’t help imagine what might have happened if he’d been hit by a car or something while he was out. It’s the writer in me… and I’ve always had a bit of a morbid imagination. Anyway, I could just see it.

Officer: What happened, Ma’am?

Me: Well you see, it all began with an attempted murder… of two fruit flies.

The morals of the story? Karma’s truly a bitch. And never underestimate the significance of a fruit fly.


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SoCS – Division

It’s been a busy day. So busy, in fact, that I’m getting this post in just under the wire. My attention has been widely divided today between sick family members (nothing life threatening though) and needy ones. Alex was, as usual, the most needy. I went on a nice bus ride with him today between thunderstorms which he hates so much he has to hide under my arm when he sees lightning outside. And then Chris wanted to go and see Antman, which I didn’t even know existed until he told me he wanted to go to it. While he was at the movies I devised a way to sit for a couple of hours to work on my editing.

To devise… the present tense of the word must be division, mustn’t it? Or is it devision. Spell check doesn’t like that one. But yeah, to have to devised a plan has to be to have made a devision. Or a division.

Do you ever look at a word for so long that it no longer makes any sense? When it happens to me, I tend to canoodle new words into my vocabulary. I’m not even sure I just used the word “canoodle” correctly, but it sounds good and this is stream of consciousness writing and I’m not allowed to go back and edit it…

*waves goodbye to my last paragraph as it drifts off into the wavy sea of internet land*

Bed is good. I think I’ll go there.

Alex

Alex

This post is brought to you by the letters V, I, and S, and SoCS: https://lindaghill.com/2015/07/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-2515/

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions

Badge by: Doobster at Mindful Digressions