I love to inspire people. There are many ways to do so, however. I’m told that my prompts inspire writing, which is great – it would be wonderful to inspire a painting, but I don’t know that I have the face for it. I’m afraid any painting I’m in would have to include a broomstick. Haha.
But I also get a lot of satisfaction out of inspiring people to live better lives, be happier, be grateful for what they have… the list is endless.
I want to ask you this: if you could inspire people to do one or two things just by doing them yourself, what would they be? Please answer in the comments or, if you’re inspired to blog about it either link back here or comment with a link to your post so everyone can read.
Over the course of my day today, I will be going through boxes in my basement to find things I want to get rid of sell in a garage sale next week. First, I could use the extra space, second, I want to declutter, and third, I need the money for a trip I’m going to take in December.
I feel fortunate to live in a place where I can stand on my front lawn and sell things I no longer need. Garage sales are big here – I don’t know if they are in other places in North America. People spend their entire weekends out driving around town looking for bargains, and bartering around prices until they get what they want for next to nothing. Even if I get next to nothing, I figure I’ll be up a little bit from what I had when my stuff was sitting in the basement just growing older.
It’s amazing the things we accumulate, isn’t it? I have boxes of things I haven’t looked at since I moved them here almost five years ago from my house in Gatineau, and most of THAT stuff was already in boxes there and hadn’t been used in the fifteen years I was there. I would love to live light, with few possessions. But when you have a six bedroom house with a basement it’s difficult to justify getting rid of anything – I have the room. I have rooms I rarely go into so the mess gets ignored.
I was very lucky to find this house when I first moved here. It was originally a two bedroom bungalow, but the previous owners built three bedrooms and a half bath into the attic. When I moved in I kept one of the two original bedrooms as a guest room and turned the other bedroom into a computer room. The final room my eldest son moved into – he was happy to have the entire basement to himself and, as teenagers are wont to do, came out only for meals, showers, and to go out with his friends. He was as white as a ghost before he moved out.
Ragweed season is here and both Alex and I are sneezing. That was a left turn out of nowhere!
Wish me luck with my sorting and selling, if you please.
There are people in the world whose words are consistent with their actions and there are people who say one thing and then do another. Okay yes, there are times that the former type lapse into the latter, just as I’m sure there are people who are almost constantly doing things contrary to what they say might be tempted to actually do what they say. But it’s the latter type I see as not really knowing what they want out of life.
Of the latter type there seem to be two sub-types, as it were. There are those who say they’re going to do something and then never do. (We’re all guilty of that occasionally though, aren’t we? I was going back to school in September… ha. Maybe next year.) And there are those who say they feel a certain way but their actions don’t match. Take, for instance, a person who says he wants to meet, in person, a friend who he met online. He might say, “I’d love to get together,” but then always finds an excuse not to. Or a woman who is cheating on her husband: at night she may come home and tell him she loves him, and would go to the ends of the earth for him, but the moment he leaves the house in the morning she’s having it off with the pool boy.
Lying to the people around oneself aside, the dishonesty in these kinds of actions must take a toll on the psyche. In the case of the woman – does she want the happy life she portrays with her husband? Or is freedom what she really wants? Likely she has no real idea, so she juggles both, possibly while she attempts to figure it out. Even in the less life-altering case of the man, the stress of having to keep up the appearance of wanting something he doesn’t really want (which is shown in his actions) has to come with some kind of cost. The cost is in energy and on the conscience.
I strive to match my words with my actions as much as I possibly can. I try to be honest with myself, even if I can’t always be honest with everyone I meet. (Of course that hairdo looks wonderful on you!) In being honest with myself and for the important things with other people, I feel that I am able to know what it is I want in my life.
Do you know what you want? What you really really want?
It’s been a particularly tough day with my son, Alex today. For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, he’s a Deaf, four foot tall, cute as a button thirteen year old who has somehow managed to combine adolescence with the terrible twos. He has scabs on both knees from a fall he took last week. They were both healing nicely but …
Alex can’t leave a scab alone. It doesn’t matter if he opens it up again, he’ll just keep picking and picking until it gets infected and I have no idea what to do. Today I tried the following:
1. Telling him “no.”
2. Taking away his laptop and turning off the tv.
3. Putting him in his room.
4. Saying please (trying to reason with him).
5. Putting a bandage on it. (He took it off.)
6. Restraining him.
7. Ignoring him.
8. Putting a cloth damp with rubbing alcohol on the cuts (which by that time were oozing pus).
9. Threatening to put MORE alcohol on if he didn’t stop touching it (in the end he held the alcohol-soaked cloth on it himself).
And what, of all this worked eventually? Ignoring him. For a limited amount of time.
This has been my day from the moment I woke up to the moment he finally went to sleep after whining that his knees hurt for about an hour from the time he went to bed.
Any suggestions? Because I’m looking forward to the same thing tomorrow and every day until he goes to his dad’s on Monday… and at this rate every other day ’til Christmas, if it’s healed by then.
P.S. If you “like” this post I’ll consider it support. 🙂
I had the pleasure today of going out for lunch with my son, Alex. For those of you who are new to this blog, Alex is Deaf and he is tube-fed. He nibbles a little, drinks even less, and has never eaten a meal in all of his thirteen and three-quarter years. However it’s fun for both of us: I get to treat myself to a meal and he gets to people-watch, which is his favourite thing in the whole world.
So we went into Montana’s and sat down in a booth and the waitress came over to ask if we wanted anything to drink. I ordered him a glass of water without ice (I’m won’t pay for something he won’t drink – he did end up sipping about a half-teaspoon of it though) and I ordered myself a beer. A few minutes later she came back with that and took our order. We had agreed on a salmon salad – Alex liked the picture – so I asked for it and he pointed to it.
“Just one?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Shall I get him a plate?” she half-whispered, I suppose so as not to embarrass me.
“Sure,” I said.
She looked at me briefly as though she was assessing how cheap I must be and left the table. Five minutes later she came back with not one, but two small plates. I mean seriously, SURELY I was going to split the salad evenly. I did manage to not tell her to go fuck herself however – I said thank you instead.
When the salad came she put it in the middle of the table. Of course I immediately moved it in front of me and gave Alex a nibble on his plate. After two miniscule bites of salmon he was full.
The thing is this: every time this happens I’m tempted to lift up his shirt and show the waitress his g-tube button, permanently implanted in his stomach, and explain why I’m not feeding him. But then I think, why should I have to? What I do in a restaurant, as long as I’m being polite and paying for my food, shouldn’t matter. Yet how much do you want to bet she went home and told her husband, “There was this woman who came in today and ordered herself a beer and a salad and let her kid starve, blah blah blah…” Actually, it’s kind of funny, when you think about it.
Would you explain to people why you’re not feeding your child? Or would you just allow them to judge and tell everyone about it who will listen?
I read an article yesterday that talked about what is important to us and how we spend our time doing things that aren’t important. The article went on to say what you do is what you are.
To a certain degree I agree. I write, I am a writer. I take care of my family, I am a mother. But what do I do that makes me simply a human being? I spend time thinking about what I can do to help others, I try to spend time relaxing and even more time attempting to be inspired by something that I would like to write. I don’t think it’s possible to ever really be doing nothing. Even when we’re playing mindless games or watching crappy television programs, our minds are active.
The article stated also that if we laze around doing useless things then our lives are useless. If we spend all our time working for things we think we need (extras, that is) then we’re probably even worse off, especially if our goal in life is to provide for our family. A family we rarely see.
Anyway, it got me thinking about what I spend my time doing. I often say I’m doing nothing, and it’s true that many days little gets accomplished that I can actually see with my eyes. The dishes pile up, the dusting and vacuuming don’t get done. But in all, my children are happy and I’m pretty content. Sitting with Alex, even if we’re both on our laptops, keeps him happy and avoiding Chris unless he wants something – and then being available to talk to him when he does – makes for a peaceful household. The dishes, the dust, the vacuum cleaner – they don’t really care what I do with my time.
Am I the only one who is incredibly distracted by all the articles on Robin Williams? I think it’s the vast contradiction between the man who made us laugh and the exceptionally sad circumstances of his death that have me reeling so much over the news. I’ve tried to write more on the subject, but no matter what I write, it just makes no sense.
In other news, I went upstairs to go to bed the other night (it must have been more than a week ago by now) and Alex was talking in his sleep. Keep in mind that he doesn’t speak – he only signs. I actually walked to my room to the sound of applause. I’ve seen him do it before though. It’s quite funny to watch him have a conversation with someone in his dream. He giggles a lot as well.
When I was at the Museum of Nature in Ottawa I saw a Splitfin Flashlight fish. Try saying that three times fast.
Don’t forget to get your entries in for the badge design contest tomorrow!
That’s really all I can come up with at the moment. (See first paragraph.)
If I could live my life again – if I could go back to when I was younger to redo the things I’ve done in the past, I wonder which ones I’d skip and what I’d do twice.
I know I wouldn’t drink all that tequila I did that one night when I was in my twenties – the time I wanted to die and get it over with the next day. And I wouldn’t say to myself, Sure, I can handle going over this jump without my feet in the stirrups! What’s the worst that can happen? I’ll fall off the horse! Little did I know I’d somehow land on the ground before the horse did. Can you say squash? Luckily it was only my ankle.
I’d probably go with my gut the second time around and call off the first wedding the night before I was to get married. But then I’d never have met some of the people I did. And I’d never have adopted the greatest dog that ever lived. George, the St. Bernard.
So what WOULD I do twice? I’d definitely fall in love. That has to be one of the most wonderful things of all. And I’d travel again, especially to Japan. I would laugh at all the same things over again, and I’d race like a daredevil down the side of the highway on horseback. I’d go up in a hot air balloon again. …oh wait, I’ve already done that twice. And I’d take so many of the chances I took the first time around.
But if there was one thing I’d do twice, it’s have my babies. All three of them. …but not at the same time so it wouldn’t be one thing, it would be three. I’d do those three things twice.
As you can see by the photo, I’m thoroughly enjoying the weather as I sit on my back deck with a glass of white wine, writing this post. Life is good. After I finish this post I’ll probably go back to editing my novel. Just yesterday I found a huge, gaping plot hole wherein the history of my character’s family didn’t match up with the present. I had to go back and write an entire backstory (to keep it straight in my own mind) on a character that won’t even exist unless I end up writing a prequel to my novel. On a happy note, I have enough history to write a prequel. Seriously, I’m putting an awful lot of effort into this mythical epic that I keep talking about. It WILL see the light of day if it kills me.
In other news, I’m going away for the weekend. My son Christopher wishes to go on his annual pilgrimage to Ottawa to visit the museums. I found a great deal on a place to stay: one of the colleges in town is offering a whole two bedroom apartment, including a kitchen, for $64/night. Can’t beat that! And since I lived close by for fifteen years I know the area, so getting around is going to be a breeze. On the way home we’ll pick up Alex, who has been visiting with his dad all week (which is why I’m able to sit outside in peace) so it’s a bonus for my ex too, not having to make the three hour drive to get him home. Long and short of it, I won’t be around to read the SoCS posts this weekend. I’ll do my best to get caught up early next week though.
The best news of all comes on the heels of my post from a couple of days ago entitled “How for would YOU go?” I looked into getting backstage at the venue that my main character performs in at the beginning of the sequel (written in July as part of CampNaNo) and guess what? http://nac-cna.ca/en/special/event/9938 So I’ll be going back to Ottawa again on the 28th of September to tour the National Arts Centre backstage! I’m so excited! 😀
I tell ya, sometimes the universe comes together just right.
I’m here. I’m always here. But aren’t we all? Where else would we be but here?
Here, for me, is usually my living room couch with my laptop on my lap. At least when I’m at rest. And by ‘at rest’ I mean working, because working on my novels, whether writing or editing is right up there with relaxing with a good book. I may call it working but to me it’s nothing like work.
Back to the ‘here.’ There is a marked difference between being here and sitting next to Alex than there is being here when he’s at his dad’s. I’m afraid, most of the time, to allow myself to concentrate on my work. There’s nothing worse than being wrenched out of it by someone demanding something of me. It’s like laying down for a nap when you know the phone will probably ring. What’s the use?
Not only that, but the difference in noise is also a factor. When I’m alone I can put my music on–when I’m writing or editing it’s always the Japanese band, Buck-Tick–but when Alex is here I’m usually listening to him sing. And by singing I mean a long, drawn out single note, because he’s Deaf and doesn’t understand that singing means more than one sound. The good news is, he can watch TV and play video games with the sound off and he doesn’t know the difference. At least I don’t have to listen to Dora the Explorer all day long.
So here I sit, now trying to decide if I should take the plunge or just give up on the idea of working for the day. It’s stressful not to work.
lindaghill.com 