If it’s not one thing… I’m sure at some point or another I’ve started a post like this before. In fact if I have, it’ll probably show up in the “see also” previews below this post. And the truth is, I hate being negative. So I’ll just get this over and done with. It’s really not that bad. In fact it probably hasn’t even been worth all this intro to it.
You know I had a bug bite the other day that made my hand swell? Well, that’s better. Now I have a sore on the very tip of my “d” finger. Why do I refer to my finger as my “d” finger? It only hurts when I type. No idea what the problem is. Can’t see anything except a painful blister. Yeah, wasn’t worth the intro.
In other news:
I used a sprint (set a timer for 10 minutes and just typed until the buzzer went off) to kick-start my novel writing. I got less than 400 words written in that 10 minutes, but it got me back into my story. I managed to write another 1,600 words today. The moral of the story is, sprints work when you’re stuck. It’s kind of like stream of consciousness that no one will ever read.
Every time I see “Cookie Policy” on a website I think about my own cookie policy – don’t buy them if I don’t want to gain weight. And definitely not if I go to the store hungry.
How is it that people think by writing f*ck instead of fuck no one will be offended? Is an asterisk any less offensive than a “u” just because it looks like a pretty flower? Okay, maybe it is.
Getting back to not wanting to write about miserable things, I’m actually a funny person most of the time. You can tell by my humorous fiction over at my fiction blog. Oh, and the novelette I’ll be (hopefully) publishing next week! It’s a light, romantic comedy that you’ll be able to read over a lunchtime or two. On sale soon for just $0.99 at Amazon and Kobo. Watch out for my celebratory post when the details are finalized!
It’s hard to be funny when you’re under pressure to be though, isn’t it? Waaay back when my SoCS prompt was fairly new, I made the prompt for the week “funny.” We all found it difficult to write about anything that was laugh-out-loud funny, so most of us wrote about something peculiar instead.
Knock, knock! Hang on, that one doesn’t work very well in a post. Why did the chicken cross the road?
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. Try to make it either funny or inspirational.
3. Use our unique tag #1linerWeds.
4. Add our very cool badge to your post for extra exposure!
What am I doing here when i’m too tired to be here? I just came to say I ate so much tonight, I feel like a snake who swallowed an elephant whole. i may not move for the next three days. Also, while i was out, my son was using my laptop and now my left shift key doesn’t work. Which is why some of my “i”s aren’t capitalized.
i usually take a glass of wine up to bed with me, but tonight it will be water. I hope i’m feeling better enough by the morning that I’ll be able to drink coffee.
Do you remember the old Memorex commercial? No? If you’re wondering why I’m asking, see the title of this post. Okay, on with my point.
What kind of person are you? Are you like me and wonder what happened to someone if they don’t show up online for, like, twelve hours? Or do you figure they’re just living their life in real life? Because seriously, it’s hard to differentiate between online life and real life sometimes. If someone stays offline for three days it’s not the same as if they don’t come out of their house for three days. But we still wonder, are they laying on the kitchen floor in the puddle of grease they slipped on because it’s been thirty-six hours since they last posted a picture of a cat on Facebook?
You hear stories of how the mailman calls 911 because the old lady in 226 hasn’t emptied her mailbox since last Tuesday, but you do the same thing for your online friends and you end up with the police knocking on YOUR door with a restraining order. Okay, there may be exceptions: like when they don’t show up online for months (yeah, I’m looking at you, Paul Curran). But the fact is, we don’t really (usually) know what goes on in the background of our online friend’s lives. Just like we shouldn’t judge people by the way they look, we shouldn’t necessarily worry or think others are ignoring us when they’re not around the internet at the same time every day.
I do consider my online friends as friends. It’s a totally different friendship we have with our physical neighbours though. Right?
I was always good at doing the limbo when I was younger. Now I probably suck at it. In fact, I’m afraid to even try it. I have to wonder if it somehow prepared me for the more…what’s the word… existential form of limbo I face now. The constant feeling I’ve had for many years that there’s something more out there for me. Riches, lifestyle, fame… I can admit to craving those things maybe 20 years ago. (make that 30) But then again I didn’t have kids to worry about 30 years ago. I could do with the first two now – riches and a better lifestyle – but fame is something I can do without. I like being invisible.
The feeling of limbo has changed. Morphed in some way. Back thirty years ago I had no idea how I might achieve such things. Now I at least have writing… not likely to gain me all these things, but the minute possibility is there. And hey, who could have imagined I’d have even this many people interested in what I have to say? Me, the wallflower at parties – the one of the couple who used to stand back and listen to what everyone else was chatting about, and only speaking when spoken to.
The limbo is wrapped up now in waiting to be published. I’m very very close with the smaller project. The bigger one needs more work, but I’m still determined to get it out there before the year is up. I promised my muse I would, after all.
NOTE: Don’t forget to check the comments in this week’s prompt to be sure your link is there!! Not all of the pingbacks are working.
My last experience with pingbacks not working gave me enough insight to figure out what’s going on this time.
Some of the pingbacks on One-Liner Wednesday worked, and some didn’t. It turns out that this time, if you have a .wordpress.com site–a free site that is–your pingbacks won’t work, at least when you’re trying to link to a custom site like mine. If you have a custom site, they work. Last time it was the other way around.
I hate to have to ask you again, but please, if you participate in one of my prompts, check to make sure your link is in my comment section after you’ve posted. This goes for yesterday’s One-Liner Wednesday, and based on the last WP breakdown of pingbacks, likely anything you link to for the next week. I’ll leave a reminder on the Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday.
You know what always pissed me off when I was working in an office? Smokers. They were allowed smoke breaks but because I didn’t smoke, I had to stay at my desk and work. It was unfair! Except in the middle of winter – then I used to laugh at them, outside in the cold, smoking their brains out.
I always said I never started smoking because everyone who did wanted to quit. What was the point of starting? Logical, right? But my parents smoke/d (my mother still does), their best friends smoked – practically everyone I grew up with did. I have asthma from breathing it in all those years ago. Back then they didn’t care if I was in the car, or the house, or where ever they were when they lit up. It wasn’t commonly known how much damage it could do. After I became pregnant for the first time (in 1994), my mother stopped smoking around me. I find now that when I smell smoke it bothers me more than it used to.
And you know what’s weird? If I’m sitting beside a smoker, the smoke always comes to me. If I get up and move to the other side of them, it follows me. I can’t catch a break. Unless I’m nowhere near a smoker of course.
So why did I want to go out and have a smoke break with the smokers? Oh yeah, to get away from my desk.
I’m going to go off on a rant here. It may be bizarre–it may be the most bizarre rant you’ve read all month–but make no mistake about it, it’s a rant. Laugh at me if you must. In fact, it might be for the best if you do – for all of us.
So, menopause. You’ve all heard of it. Even if you’re not there yet or you’ll never be there, you probably know about the hot flashes. Some of you may have read or know first hand about the mood swings. The books all tell us about bouts of unexpected crying, of possible depression, and of flying into rages over the littlest things. But what about the laughter?
Laughter, you ask? I’ve never heard of a menopausal woman flying into a fit of laughter. Well guess what? Neither have I? So why am I ranting about it?
Imagine this scenario: You’re trying to get your kid into bed but he’s busy playing with the dog. You’ve been asking him to get into his pyjamas for fifteen solid minutes. You’re trying to make his bed so he can actually get in it, you’re frustrated, harried from a long day, tired, about to lose your cool, and suddenly the dog jumps on you and your kid starts giggling. And then completely out of the blue, despite the fact that you were just about to blow your stack, you start giggling with the kid. UGGHHH!!! Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to start laughing when you’re trying to be mad?!?
And it keeps happening! Used to be when I was angry, I stayed angry. Wake me up six times through the night because you want to be covered up by me when you’re perfectly capable of doing it yourself, I’m going to be damned mad! I’ve got to get up in an hour, and I’ve only slept for 45 minutes all night! But now? By the sixth time I’m snickering and wondering if I’m ready for the funny farm!!
The only reason I can think of for this new bout of hilarity is menopause. Why didn’t anyone tell me it would be like this!!!???!!!
Is it just me? Is that why? If not, let’s discuss this well-kept secret so everyone can have it to look forward to, along with the damned hot flashes!
I spend way too much time on Facebook. The reasons I go there are to find things to laugh at, see pretty pictures, get world news (shake your finger at me if you must, but it’s where learn what’s going on), and get into arguments.
One of my most recent was over the gender bathroom issue. I’m talking about this here at the risk of sounding like I’m trying to validate my views. I’m not. I just really want to talk about it, because it’s been on my mind for weeks. Before I go any further, I want to go on record to state that I’m not against transgender people using the bathroom of their choice. I realize the chances of a transgender woman (male to female) getting beaten to death is much higher if she uses the men’s washroom than that she will abuse anyone in the women’s washroom. In fact chances are that she’s so self-conscious, it’s unlikely she’d even look anyone in the eye, let alone peek under a bathroom stall. I’m not here to debate whether it’s right or wrong for transgender people to choose a bathroom. If you are not of the same opinion as I, that is your right. If you comment just to state your opinion on which side you’re on, you’ll get a smile emoji and I’ll say nothing else. All I really ask is that you keep it civil.
The whole Facebook argument started when I came across a meme on a friend’s page concerning not only the bathroom issue, but whether or not transgender people should use change rooms in gyms. I wasn’t aware that this was an issue, so my comment was something like, You mean they’re allowed to use public change rooms too? Okay, yes I probably could have worded it better. I was called out for using both the word “they” and the word “allowed.” I had to explain that I didn’t mean I think transgender people are inhuman, but rather I was speaking in a broad sense the same way I would speak about men vs. women. I don’t consider men to be inhuman, even though I call them “them” when differentiating between my sex and the sex that isn’t mine. Also, I didn’t mean to say that they’re any less human by saying they’re not “allowed” to use the women’s washroom, any more than I’m saying cisgendered men are lesser beings because they’re not “allowed” to use the women’s washroom. They’re not. Right? I just love over-sensitivity.
So on with the actual discussion. I told the woman I was speaking to (we’ll call her Mary) that I wasn’t necessarily against transgender women using a change room where she could feel comfortable. I agreed it was important that she not have to change in front of men. But in all the gym change rooms I’ve been into, everyone gets naked and I wouldn’t be comfortable changing in front of a person who is, no matter how she identifies or feels deep inside to be, is still physically a man. And I wouldn’t want my daughter (if I had one) to be confronted with a grown man’s penis. Mary asked me what there was to be afraid of. It’s just a penis.
I tried to explain to her that the sex education of my children should be up to me, that I should be able to decide when the time, the place, and the mode of teaching is appropriate. I believe it is both my right and my responsibility as a parent to choose how and when my children learn certain things. No one should make this choice for me, whether it’s a person with the physical attributes of a male in a change room or a flasher on the street. She disagreed, telling me that it would be the perfect opportunity to teach a young daughter the difference between boys and girls. She said it was the same as when her daughter asked about her infant son. She then went on to tell me how much of a bigot I am, and how I’m part of the problem.
The next day I went to my government’s website to see how we deal with this situation in Ontario (Canada). I found out that my government does its best to accommodate transgender people. They state that it’s necessary for all businesses to have a safe place for everyone to go to the washroom, change, and shower. Most facilities already have family rooms that are well-partitioned and/or are for single-person use. This, to me, is the perfect solution and ensures that everyone is comfortable. Still, I’m seen as a bigot.
It seems there is a line between common sense and entitlement. Political correctness, not wanting to offend anyone and over-sensitivity overrun our society to the point that there is little logic left in the world. Society runs on emotion, and that is the case for Mary who, as I found out later in our discussion, is the mother of a transgender girl.
I believe until we, as a society, are able to think with our brains rather than our hearts we will always be in conflict. But hasn’t it always been that way?
One of the hardest things for me to endure, as the mother of a Deaf child, is the exclusion of Alex by the hearing neighbourhood kids. Admittedly, part of it is my fault. Explaining why would be going off on a tangent, however, so I’ll leave that for tomorrow’s post.
Alex does have friends at school, but they live all over the province. Some are in residence on campus, many live miles away. So it’s difficult for him to get together with them outside of school. But like any kid, he sees children his own age outside his own house playing and he wants to join in. There are a couple who will play with him as long as their friends aren’t around – understandable in a way, since once they start discussing what they’re going to do, it’s hard to include Alex in the conversation. But even when they’re alone with Alex, they eventually get frustrated with trying to communicate with him. So they stop playing.
Then there are the kids across the street. He went over to play with them once, but they had no tolerance for him. They complained to one of Alex’s friends that does play with him that he “gives them a headache.” I wonder where they got that phrase from. It’s not often you see a perfectly healthy 7 or 10 year old child with an actual headache. Since that one time, they’ve sent him away and left me to explain to him that they don’t want to play with him. Or worse, they’ve let him stay and made fun of him, thinking he can’t understand. As I’ve mentioned before, most of sign language is body language and facial expression. He understands just fine. Incredibly, I’ve even had one of them accuse him of hitting her so she could use the excuse that he was mean to her. She figured, I suppose, that he would be unable to explain to me what really happened.
It doesn’t seem to matter how much we teach our children tolerance (though the kids and their parents across the street could use a lot more), they will be kids. They have their own interests, which don’t always include being able to play with only minimal communication. It’s a tough issue. One I can’t see a solution for.
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