Category: Random

Crazy, Magical Life

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Welcome, friends, to this grand adventure we call “life.” Come as you are—we are not formal here, at least not much of the time.

Here in life, you may be anything you wish to be—within reason, of course. You cannot be a unicorn for the simple reason that unicorns don’t exist within the realm of real. Also, you cannot be younger, though I haven’t quite figured out why on that one. Younger exists in reality, though I suppose that negates the statement, “Come as you are,” so perhaps that has something to do with it.

You can be a dreamer. An innovator. A creative. In fact, those types of individuals thrive around here, especially in pandemic life when we’re kinda making things up as we go. The innovators will discover ways to keep busy in the most challenging times. If you would like to be a plumber, you can do that. A teacher is a noble choice. A philanthropist, an accountant, a millionaire… all are within your grasp. If you put your mind to it, and you are willing to do the necessary hard work and persevere through the tough times and the setbacks, you truly can be anything you want to be (well… except for a unicorn).

You will have adventures here in life. Some may be amazing, planned adventures based in travel or exploring or taking risks. Other adventures may be unexpected and threaten to derail you from the path you are traveling. Each of these adventures has many lessons to teach if you are open to learning. Life’s lessons can be hard but internalizing them will allow you to move forward freely and more informed for the next adventure. Or mis-adventure, as the case may be. Always keep in mind that difficult roads often lead to beautiful places.

Welcome to this crazy world where things seldom go as planned—sometimes for long stretches at a time. But there are always other people here to share your experiences and help you through. To celebrate your joys, and to help you bear your heartache.

So come as you are to this crazy world. The people make it all worthwhile. The love, the joy, the laughter, and even the tears. These things are precious. And even if there are no unicorns, life can still be magical beyond measure.

{Photo by Pierre Châtel-Innocenti on Unsplash}

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*Superstar* (a little February fun)

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When I am alone in my car (and the circumstances are just right), I am the greatest singer on Earth. Day after day, week after week, year after year, I work hard to perfect my craft. I belt out the lyrics of songs I know, and I make up lyrics to the songs I don’t know. The acoustics are just perfect in my car with a background white noise of the tires humming along.

As I drive down the road in my own (somewhat odd and perhaps a bit self-serving) universe, I hold free concerts for thousands of adoring fans. They hold up their cell phones (since lighters are no longer a concert-fan-thing) and sway to the music. Sometimes, if I inspire this crowd of concert-goers, they will sing along in a great moment of unity, joining in for the chorus, or if I point to them, prompting them to sing. They know each of my songs by heart, and I love when they sing to me!

The minute I pull into the driveway of my building at work, the crowd begins to dissipate, fading into the trees surrounding the parking lot. My concert comes to an end. I step out of my car and back into the façade of professional educator. I become normal again. No fame and no fans follow me into the building. In seconds, I have gone from Superman to Clark Kent. I push my glasses up my nose as I settle into the desk chair and turn on some soft streaming music to fill the quiet that descended with the normalcy of the day.

As much fun as it is to think about superstardom, I embrace my normal life and the role that best fits my true strengths. Yes, I may (okay…I do) sing in the car, I only sing when I am alone for a reason. It’s just better that way.

Trust me.

{Photo by Austin Neill on Unsplash}

The Letter Z

Published on by PositivelyUnbroken3 Comments

Today’s nonsensical post will be brought to you by the letter Z. It was going to be sponsored by X, but my fingers inadvertently hit the wrong key. So Z, it is!

Lately, my thoughts have been somewhat Zigzaggy as they skip from one subject to another, seemingly at random and with little warning. I believe this to be the result of new responsibilities while trying to tie up previous commitments. And a lack of a stable and steady landing pad. Or perhaps I am just becoming sentimental as my last child zooms through his senior year of high school and contemplates the next steps on his journey.

I have zero tolerance for these mind-wanderings as they make me feel freakishly unfocused. Perhaps some invisible zombies have taken over my brain, and I am halfway to zombie-state, myself. Having recently made it through Halloween, this is a distinct—though distant—possibility.

Adding zombies to the zany zoo of my life might be a bit crazy, eh? Then again, it is likely that I wouldn’t recognize the difference between the animals, the kids, and the zombies. While we’re at it, let’s throw in a lizard or two. But now maybe we have gotten so far off topic that we are conjuring a magic potion that will cure the zombies: tongue of lizard, eye of newt, and two chicken teeth, ground to green pulp….

Together with the magic potion, all of the words in this post will be stuffed into a tiny Ziploc freezer bag (because freezer bags are stronger). I will zip them in where they will stay—until further notice—in the zone of the Zodiac in Xanadu.

Oops. That was meant for the X-sponsored post…. I need to catch some Zzzs!

Boredom

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When I was a kid, summers were long and slow, and by mid-August, boredom had fully settled in. The long summer days had been filled with play and bike rides and make believe. We had spent time with friends and siblings and cousins—perhaps to the point of annoying each other. We had filled long nights with neighborhood hide-and-seek games that stretched well past dark. We had caught fireflies then set them free. We had grown Monarch butterflies from tiny caterpillars. We went to camp, and we read piles of books. We had spent long, lazy days in the pool until our lips turned blue. Picnics and bike rides, baseball games and kite-flying, watermelon and popsicles—we had done it all. We were bored. And we were ready to go back to school.

But in Massachusetts, where we started school after Labor Day, we still had many long days stretching out in front of us. And we had to fill them.

Being bored was never really a bad thing. Boredom instilled me with creativity. I thought up fun things to keep myself busy. I worked to create useful things from the items we had around our home. I learned to make craft items that people would use, giving me an eye for how shapes, colors, and textures worked together.

I became a deep thinker. In my boredom, I had grand daydreams in which I traveled the world and beyond, taking imaginative detours and side roads. I tried on different identities, playing pretend and dress-up, shedding my quiet personality and donning the cloak of someone more adventurous. I thought about the way the elements of my life fit together.

Boredom pushed me outside where I learned about nature. I watched caterpillars hatch from miniscule eggs and butterflies emerge from chrysalises. We rescued baby bunnies from the neighborhood cats, and nursed an oriole with a broken wing. I explored trails and woods and followed streams. Occasionally, I came to the end of the road and had to figure out where to go next.

Boredom gave me focus. It gave me time to reflect on who I was, what I wanted to do, and how I planned to get there. It forced me to think about which career options would be the best for me, my future plans, and how to deal with my thoughts about myself.

Boredom forced me to realize that life is not all that bad.

And now, as I watch kids focus on their phones, compulsively check messages, and interact with the people sitting next to them via text, I can’t help but think we’ve gotten pretty far off track. Maybe what we need is a little more boredom.

{Photo by Charlein Gracia on Unsplash}

The Adventure Continues

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I recently took my kids to Canada for a few days of exploring in Montreal. When we hit the northernmost Vermont border, we had to cross into Canada for our second driving adventure of the trip.

Crossing between the U.S. and Canada is always a bit strange. Like… the road keeps going, but you have to stop to get permission to keep driving. So you pull up to a very secure looking toll-booth-type structure, talk to the border patrol, and drive on in, even though the road looks the same. (Well, other than the speed limit signs, which are now in kilometers per hour, making it appear that the speed limit has increased substantially…). And talking to the border patrol officers is a bit unnerving because they are trained to be intimidating. Or maybe they just see too much in their jobs, and they quickly learn “intimidating” is the best approach. Who knows?

I am not (usually) intimidating. In fact, I like to talk to people and engage them in conversation. So as we pulled up to the window, my daughter warned me not to banter with the agent. Because apparently, I don’t know any better.

“Where are you from?” the man asked harshly in his French-Canadian accent. His directness caught me by surprise, and I momentarily forgot where we were from. But as he took the pile of passports from my hand, I quickly recovered and responded to his question. “Where are you going?”

“Montreal,” I informed him, and when asked, I told him how long we would be there.

“Do you have family in Montreal?”

“No, sir,” I responded.

“Do you have friends in Montreal?” he pressed.

“No, sir,” I answered. He studied the passports. “We’re on an adventure,” I offered, deviating from the expected script.

He snapped right back to the script. “Do you have any weapons in the car?”

“No, sir.”

“That would be an adventure,” he stated. It took me a split second to realize that he had ventured from the script, as well.

“What?” I asked. “If we had weapons?” He nodded. “Yes, it would,” I agreed

“The adventure would stop here,” he smiled and chuckled a bit to himself.

“I’m sure it would,” I smiled back.

“Go. Have fun.” He handed me our passports and waved us through. We thanked him and drove away. We were a bit giddy that the interchange had turned to an unexpected bit of fun.

And, of course, we were thrilled that our adventure would continue.

Highway Musings

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The other day, I was driving up the highway on my way home from work. It was a hot, sunny, summer day leading up to the Fourth of July. An ice cream truck drove by—from my daughter’s favorite ice cream store. According to my daughter, this place has the best chocolate ice cream anywhere. And I must say, their chocolate raspberry truffle ice cream is my personal favorite.

As the truck passed me, the driver stuck an arm out the window, as if to wave. I’m sure she was just throwing out a piece of fuzz or catching some air or some other oddity, but it looked, for all intent, like she was waving. To me. As she passed.

And just for a moment, my mind responded in kind. It meandered off the beaten path into a world of adventure. I had the brief flash of imagination that my daughter had somehow managed to “borrow” (i.e. steal) this vehicle to take it on a joy-ride. Maybe she could sell some ice cream along the way. Or host an ice cream party of her own making. She realized as she was driving, of course, that she had accidentally taken the same route as her mother, and at the same time, so she felt obligated to wave. As one does when one is driving a stolen vehicle.

I couldn’t imagine when I might see her again, as she was heading north to some unknown destination. But by the time she reappeared at our house, no doubt the adventure would be over, the truck safely returned, and she would enter the house bearing ice cream for all. I couldn’t wait!

Clearly, sometimes the traffic gets the better of me. In my adventure, there was no thought of police, fines, or any of the consequences of stealing a truck. No, my highway imaginings were all about the ice cream, the thrill, and the fun. But if I’m stuck in traffic, I guess I’m lucky if my mind wanders away on some fun adventure!

Tidbits

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Over the past month, I have had the opportunity to sit in on several hours of student-led review sessions for Anatomy and Physiology. In fact, I have spent so much time in these sessions that I am pretty sure I had an outside chance at passing the first exam, even though I never attended an actual class lecture or read the book.

As a non-science-type in these review sessions, I have begun to extract random tidbits of information that I find interesting or thought-provoking, that I might write into something meaningful (or completely meaning-less, I’m not sure). I would compile a bunch of random, overheard sentences or thoughts into a book, perhaps—something like Lessons Plucked from a Life of Listening. This book would contain helpful tidbits of information from many areas of life.

The particular idea that set me on this trajectory was the question of what would happen if our skin weren’t waterproof, and we were to go swimming. While the thought in the room was that the body would explode, I started to really think about that. If your skin weren’t waterproof, how waterlogged would you become? How heavy would your body be as you attempted to drag it out of the water? And what unsanitary microscopic creatures might enter your body if you were swimming in, say, a lake? My mind took off on a jaunt through a hundred different possibilities, as it often does. This book could definitely be a wild adventure—especially for a reader who would never know what was coming up next!

These thoughts, and the wanderings of my mind, led me back to reality… and to life. As I was running through the possibilities of the book such tidbits might become, I began to realize that life, too, is a series of tidbits. We take our memories and experiences as well as facts, thoughts, and ideas, and we pull them together into something that makes sense to us. From such a grouping of tidbits, we form a life. As we think back on our past, memory is a series of moments we remember for one reason or another. These memories become treasures that we hold onto, or lessons that we learn from, as we continue to move forward and create new experiences—new moments, or tidbits, which we will add to our ever-growing treasure trove.

So if I can create a (marginally) meaningful life by compiling tidbits, it would seem I could create a (marginally) meaningful book in the same way. And once compiled, that book might just be about life, in some strange way. So I’m going to keep compiling my list of tidbits while I live my life, and maybe one day, that list will make its way onto a different page.

Random Acts of Interference

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There are days—too many, if you’re asking my opinion—when I have run out of some food item or other, and I have to stop at the grocery store on my way home from work. Grapes come to mind, for instance. Or milk.

So the other day, I was on my way into the store in somewhat of a rush. Someone had planted one of those “Gotcha!” displays right as you’re walking from the door to the food aisles, and you have to walk right by it because the cash registers prevent you from walking a different way. The “Gotcha!” displays are there to grab your attention and convince you to buy something you absolutely don’t need and didn’t intend to buy when you walked in the door.

On this particular day, I discovered that M&Ms had three new flavors, and the display urged customers to buy all three and vote on their favorite. But what caught my attention was the bright pink bag. New M&Ms? In a bright pink bag? What flavor could they be…?

And like a magnet, the colorful display pulled me off my very focused task of buying Oreos (because those are healthy), grapes, and strawberries. I stood examining the bag, the flavor (raspberry crunch), and anticipating how that flavor might taste for just a split second too long.

“Ma’am, you don’t need any of those,” I heard from behind me. I turned to see a man, a complete stranger, leaning on his cart, waiting to get by my distracted self. I considered this interruption, and I smiled.

“Thank you,” I said. “You are absolutely right. I do not need those. I was trying to figure out what flavor they were.

“Those crunch things? My wife eats those all the time.”

And for a split second, I wanted to say, Oh, your wife needs them, but I don’t? But I didn’t because this man had just saved me from hundreds of unnecessary calories.

“Have a nice day!” I said instead. “And thanks again. Because I really didn’t need those!” I took my basket and walked away smiling.

Someday, I thought, I am going to master the art of interference so I, too, can thwart someone’s encounter with the “Gotcha!” display.

 

Driving Snow

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I was driving up the highway yesterday. The temperature was hovering somewhere between hint-of-spring and freezing, and it was raining. Or was it snowing? The precipitation seemed to depend upon the temperature. One minute it was raining, and the next, it was snowing.

My daughter was in the passenger seat, talking a Friday streak of words and stories from the week. But she was also paying attention to the snow. The roads, at this point, were mainly just wet, but could have frozen over with a frigid wind. And the snow—taken at highway driving speeds—was getting heavier and obscuring visibility. The further north we traveled, the heavier the snow became.

On my left, a driver passed me at an uncomfortably fast rate of speed. I let out a breath. “I guess he’s in a hurry,” I said out loud to no one in particular. In my mind’s eye, a warning flashed as I envisioned his tires losing traction on a particularly slick patch of ice.

In the second he lost traction, he would realize he had made a mistake by going so fast. He would be unable to correct his mistake because the second you realize what has happened is a second too late.

The truth is, we are all just one misstep away from losing traction—both on the road and in life. Whether we are moving too fast, not paying attention, or we misjudge something around us that triggers the loss of traction, that split second can throw us off course and completely change our trajectory, whether it is in work, in family life, or on the road.

So adjust the pieces of your life accordingly. Slow down and consider your surroundings. Keep all four wheels in contact with the road, and we’ll all be just fine.

{Photo taken on April 6th from the safety of the roadside}

The Right Tools

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On Christmas morning, we woke up to the quintessential “white Christmas.” Snow was falling thick and heavy, sticking to the trees and piling up on the lawn and driveway. It was the scene everyone longs for on Christmas.

But a white Christmas does not come without its challenges, most notably, the need to deal with snow removal. Snow doesn’t simply go away, and it can’t stay on the driveway and walkways… unless we want to be immobilized until spring, that is, and I’m pretty sure that was not in the cards. So I donned my warm winter snow boots, jacket, and gloves, and I trudged to the shed where—it was promised—I would find my dad’s “snow shovel.”

Let me take a moment to explain my use of quotes on the term “snow shovel.” In my parents’ house, the shovel that had been used (for many years) to rid the walkways of snow seems to be more of a lightweight garden shovel than an actual, dedicated snow shovel.

Sure enough, the shovel that I expected to find was standing at attention on the floor of the shed, waiting for me, taunting me, no doubt. Mom had also offered me a beautiful, rusty child’s snow shovel that I had when I was a child, back in the Dark Ages. This shovel held a picture of a cheerful snowman, and the handle was wiggly and just a few sizes too short for my adult frame.

I used the child-shovel to do a quick scraping of the stairs before I grabbed the larger shovel and headed out toward Mom’s car. After I removed the snow from the car (with a proper tool, not with the shovel!), I started to clean out the snow around the car. I shoveled, removing the snow so she would be able to get to the drivers side door without incident. The shovel was heavy with a long handle. It wasn’t flat like the scraper I was used to, and I struggled with it. With each scoop of snow I threw, I could hear Dad’s voice: “I’ve used this shovel for 40 winters, and it has always served me well. It’s a good snow shovel, nice and light.” Clearly, Dad had not held one of the newer plastic shovels designed specifically for snow. If he had, he’d know it was the right tool for the job.

From the car, I shoveled a narrow path down the driveway, a temporary walkway until the plow arrived to remove the snow from the driveway. When I was done, I retreated to the cozy warmth of the house.

The next day, I went out and purchased two new shovels for Mom, one large with a wide, flat blade and one, a very small scoop with a telescoping handle. It was far from an extravagant purchase, but Mom now has the tools she needs for the next storm. However, I am willing to confess it was maybe a little selfish of me. Now, when I’m at Mom’s house and it snows, I have the shovels I need so I don’t feel like I’m stuck and trying to dig out from the 1950s!