I complain, when my youngest son, Alex, is here that I’m not able to sit down for five minutes without having to get up for something he needs or wants, but since he left for his dad’s on Friday I’m finding myself sitting for too long, so, at odds with myself, and unable come up with a One-Liner Wednesday for this week I began pacing the floor between the kitchen, and the living room and, with the puppy looking on suspiciously, came up with this long-assed run-on sentence that’s really going nowhere.
Anyone who would like to participate, 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 our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our new, very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
It started with an appointment. My son’s behavioral specialist was to go his school to talk to the teacher to observe him on Tuesday, and then come to see me today. On Tuesday afternoon I received a note from the teacher to say the specialist had canceled due to the flu. I, therefore, assumed she wouldn’t be coming here either. Sure enough, I received a phone call this morning from the behavioral specialist’s office. What happened during that phone call is what’s has me… worried? I wouldn’t go that far: thoughtful, perhaps, ever since.
The nice lady who called me only wanted to let me know my appointment was canceled and would be rescheduled. In order to seem, I don’t know, friendly, or sociable, I felt the need to explain that I already knew the behavioral specialist was sick, since she’d canceled Tuesday’s appointment. But even while I was explaining this, my inner editor was screaming at me, “This is not important to the plot! She doesn’t need to know! She’s probably got a dozen more phone calls to make – let her go!” It’s this conciseness with which I feel the need to write, that makes me wonder what it’s doing to me socially.
And isn’t that true for all of us, to some degree? Whether we’re trying to take shortcuts in speech (how many times have you heard someone utter “lol” out loud? Do you do it?) or cutting ourselves short, as I feel I should have done this morning, it has to be affecting the way we socialize. Writing has become the norm, and speech secondary. We spent far fewer hours with pen and keyboard even twenty years ago, unless it was part of our job, versus talking on the phone or in person. Now our lives are largely lived with the written word.
Writing has always been, in a practical way, different from speech. Drafting a formal letter, whether the recipient is a business associate or a lover, is done with care. Choosing the right words is essential to get the point across. With this in mind, are we bloggers actually better at speaking? Has the practice of finding the correct way to say things, and the editing that goes into many of our posts, improved our skills of communication across the board? And have Facebook and Twitter minimalized our speech to the bare necessities?
I have to wonder how we are evolving. And really, that’s what it is. An evolution of mankind who, at one time walked miles to convey a message, now looks no further than his pocket. We’re not quite to the point that our hands get more use than our tongues, but will we, one day, end up with wrists that bend in odd ways, and mouths that are used only to consume food? But I’m getting ahead of myself (and everyone else).
How we socialize with one another–how we communicate–cannot not be affected by what we spend three quarters of our time doing in order to communicate. Small talk is how we connect with one another. It’s how we discover our shared sentiments. It’s what we do on Facebook and Twitter, but without the human interaction–or at the very least it’s human interaction with a machine as a buffer. Will there come a day when we save our small talk only for such situations as taking pictures of our food on social media, and keep our direct interaction as a form of necessity? I think you really have only to look around a restaurant, or peer into people’s kitchens at dinner time these days for the answer.
Mmmm… this is a lovely cup of coffee. So warm and fragrant on a cold winter morning. I sit here with my puppy at my elbow, licking his front paw and the kid on his laptop, grinding his teeth as he’s done since he began to grow teeth… it’s one of those habits that you do when you’re concentrating on something else. Like sticking your tongue out. Apparently when I concentrate the corners of my mouth turn down and I look miserable. I’m not doing it now because I’m thinking about it.
It’s weird, the things we do without thinking about them. I’m guilty of sticking my tongue out when I’m concentrating on a physical activity. My “misery” look is reserved for when I’m doing something on my lap, like writing, reading, or knitting. I think once in a while about picking up knitting again. I used to do it when I watched TV – it was something to do with my hands that I didn’t have to look at. I’ve always been a multi-tasker I suppose, even before it was a well-used phrase. I have to wonder if that is the reason, in part, why I have to get up and walk away once in a while from my intense concentration on my writing. Or maybe that’s just an excuse to snack…
I admit it. I graze. I know I shouldn’t, and there have been times when I’ve been able to stop for months on end. But I always seem to fall back into the pattern of eating when I’m bored, or when I’m procrastinating.
I have a busy day ahead of me. One kid wants to go to a movie and the other wants to go for a ride on the city bus. The latter wanted to go to the mall for something. Earlier in the week I thought it was a good idea, but now I can’t remember what it was we needed to get. I really should write lists more often. Having a cell phone with me all the time is like carrying around a notepad and a pen – I really have no excuse.
I wondered what I should title this post. Now I know.
This is actually week #1 for me, since I’ve never participated in Share Your World before. This is exciting! On to the questions.
Have you done something you truly want to do today?
I’ve been procrastinating all day. I have so many huge projects to get on with, and yet all I can manage is to look at the clock and stress over time running out. What is that, anyway? Is there a name for this kind of anxiety? It’s weird. I think part of my problem is lack of exercise. I need to get out more often.
What can you help the world with?
What I’d like to help the world with is inspiration. I love being inspired and I strive to share my love of inspiration with the world. What I think I do help the world with (or at least I hope I do) is teaching by example, things like compassion, non-judgementalism, and that it doesn’t hurt to be honest.
If life was ‘just a bowl of cherries’… which fruit other than a cherry would you be..?
An avocado. Like me, they’re so misunderstood. Though I’d enjoy being in a state where I’m mistaken for a vegetable more often.
Quotes List: At least three of your favorite quotes?
“Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.” ~ Chuang Tzu
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.” ~ Charles Schulz
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.” ~ Groucho Marx
Bonus question: What are you grateful for from last week, and what are you looking forward to in the week coming up?
I’m grateful that puppy Winston is beginning to heal from his wounds, and is healthy and active.
To answer the second part of the question, more of just this:
As a child I was always told, “Don’t say you don’t like it if you haven’t tried it.” I have to say, I was more open to trying strange foods back then than I am now. But then again who knows if I’d have put a bug in my mouth and munched on it when I was a kid… I certainly won’t do it now.
Back then I did eat quite a few things that I still enjoy, that most people find weird. Pickled herring, blood pudding, and sour pickled onions to name a few. One thing I’ve only recently had the opportunity to eat again because of Japanese sushi, that I haven’t had since I was a child is eel. My parent’s best friends, Dot and Bob, lived next door to us all my life growing up. Bob worked in downtown Toronto for the city and he knew a lot of different shop owners. One such place he used to frequent had fresh eels. And I’m talking really fresh… he brought them home live. I remember playing with them in the kitchen sink at his house. One time in particular, when Dot (who hated them) and I were alone, one jumped out of the sink and was writhing around on the kitchen floor. She screamed for me and I, four years old at the time, had the job of picking it up and putting it back in the sink. It’s no wonder I’m not afraid of snakes. And no, I didn’t get in trouble for playing with my food.
I haven’t seen a live one since, but I do still enjoy the flavour. If you’re looking for it in a sushi place, the Japanese word is unagi. Now I have a craving for sushi…
For the past couple of months the water coming out of my water heater has been getting colder and colder. It’s to the level now that I can turn the shower on full-hot, do (only) what I have to in there, and get out to a mirror that hasn’t seen steam in weeks. The water heater is a rental, so I called the company to come and fix it.
Today a contractor came out to have a look. To start with, he ignored both the puppy and the cute kitty, so that was one strike against him already.
He felt the pipes coming out of the water heater and asked me to turn on the tap. I did. Then he asked me to compare the temperature of the pipe going out to the wash basin compared to the pipe coming directly out of the hot water tank. After being told it was too hot for him to touch, I held it. And held it. I had to admit it was a bit hotter than the other one, but not nearly as hot as he claimed it to be. Strike two.
Next, he told me it’s definitely the “mixer pipe” at the top of the tank, where the cold and the hot mix to regulate how much goes out so no one scalds themselves. “We only put these regulators on for the very young, the handicapped, and the elderly,” he said. “Everyone else has the sense to turn the cold on if the water’s too hot.” With a young son, a handicapped son, and an elderly mother that comes to visit, my thought was “Strike Three.”
You’d think that would be enough, but he got one more strike in before he left. “Do you have cash? Because, I don’t like to paint everyone with the same brush but people who’ve given me cheques in the past have ended up bouncing them and not paying. I can fix your mixer pipe for $200. Cash. It’s not covered under the rental of the water tank.”
Would you trust someone who doesn’t trust you? Or is he just a poor plumber who can’t get paid? Sounds fishy to me.
Fingers. How could we live without them? I’ve spent more time wagging mine at the puppy in the last couple of months since we got him than I think I have in the last ten years at my kids. Then there’s Alex. He’s Deaf, so there’s not much communicating going on if he doesn’t have his fingers for sign language. Back when he was at the hospital half the time I had to ask them to put his IVs in his feet, so he could still communicate. They couldn’t leave his hands unwrapped (with bandages) or he picked them off. What’s kind of amusing is that I can swear as much as I want to (or feel I need to) in front of Alex without guilt, but I don’t dare give anyone the finger.
Fingers hold rings, but I still haven’t found mine. I probably lost it in the parking lot of the grocery store. Fat chance anyone would turn it in, but I’ve asked a couple of times anyway. There’s a Dollar Store there too. Maybe I should ask in there. One can always hope.
Funny thing about fingers – I’ve been touch-typing since I was a little girl. I learned on an old Underwood with keys you could get your fingers stuck between and letters that got stuck together if you typed too fast. But I’ve never been able to play the piano. It must be a different part of the brain. …then again, you have no idea how many typos I make in the process of typing a single sentence. It’s silly… glad I can watch the screen as I type.
The puppy finally got his cone off his head today. It’s been twelve days since his surgery. He’s looking very handsome without it. Pictures to come. Later. For now, with the cone.
Mendaciloquent. Yes, you read it right. Or did you? It seems to be one of those words that can only be found in places like the Grandiloquent Dictionary. The closest Merriam-Webster and Oxford come to it is mendacious. According to my trusty thesaurus, mendacious is synonymous with deceitful, fraudulent, and untrustworthy, among others. From what I can gather, mendaciloquent means all that, but to the nth degree. Perhaps it’s lying with eloquence.
I was amused in a wry sort of way that a few mentions of politics came up on the first page of my Google search for the word of the day. I could talk about how much I love The Donald, (that’s sarcasm … or is it mendaciloquence? I’m not sure anymore) but you wouldn’t be able to shut me up for days. And then I’d be told to, “go back to Canada!”, to which I’d reply, “I never left!” and then a wall would go up and it would be a complete mess, so I won’t talk about liars in politics.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it ’til I die – I don’t see the point in lying just for the sake of lying. Or for the sake of making oneself look better in someone else’s eyes. The truth always comes out eventually. Even fiction, no matter what the story, no matter how outrageous it may be, has its own truth.
The problem arises when people can’t discern the difference between fiction and dishonesty. There are people out there who build their entire lives around a fiction. They survive by it; then it’s devastating for them when reality seeps in.
The truth is now I need to go to bed. That ain’t no mendaciloquence.
The “Mendaciloquent” prompt is brought to you by Coralee at Musefully Mendaciloquent. If you don’t already know her, click on the link and check out her blog!
To find the rules for Just Jot It January, click here and join in today. It’s never too late! And don’t forget to ping back your January 27th post here! If you’d like to combine this with One-Liner Wednesday (which will be posted several hours after this), have at it! Just be sure to link back to both prompts.
It’s been a rough day, both emotionally and financially. I’m having a hard time concentrating; I wonder if writing it out will help.
I was sitting down to breakfast with my best friend, John, when Winston came in from playing in the back yard, huffing like he was choking on something. He ran around a little and then he tried to lay down but every time he did, he whined like it hurt. After watching this go on for a few minutes I decided to take him to the vet. They checked him out as soon as we arrived. Since his gums were pink and he didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, they left us waiting for about twenty minutes. By the time the vet came to see him he was filling up with air – his stomach was bloated and getting worse by the minute. They tried to vent his tummy with a nasogastric tube but nothing came out. X-rays showed that his stomach was twisted. They’d have to operate.
So we left him there and a couple of hours later they called with good news; they got the air out while he was anesthetized and thought maybe he didn’t need surgery after all. If all went well, I was to pick him up at 4:30. At 4:25 the vet called. He needed surgery after all. The gas had come back.
Almost three painstaking hours later the vet called me. He’d come out of surgery okay and the repair was done, but they still don’t know why he filled up with gas. Anyway, there are no foreign objects in there and all his inner pathways are now clear. The vet said that they’d keep him overnight but of course there’s no one there to watch him, to see if he fills up again. So the vet is going to take him home with her. Wow, right? Probably close to $2,500 worth of wow. All for a free puppy.
Oh, and I lost one of my silver rings today.
They say bad things come in threes. Hopefully losing my “f”‘s will count for the third.
I received a nice email from one of my son Christopher’s teachers the other day, explaining that if he didn’t get an assignment completed he would fail the course. The course is photography. The assignment, landscapes.
I only had one chance this weekend to get out with him, and that was at 7:30 this morning. So we went to my favourite spot, the Waterfront Trail so he could take some pictures. I couldn’t resist getting a few myself.
lindaghill.com 