Humor – Page 2 – Voices in My Head

Creativity and Cosmic Humor

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Every so often when I’m feeling bereft of creativity, I confess that I resort to paging through old computer files in search of ideas, inspiration, or anything else that will light the spark of creativity. Today is such a day. My search has yielded a plethora of half written fragments of aha’s that seemed intelligible for at least a one brief moment in time, but were left hanging mid-air awaiting completion. There they sit, undone. I know the feeling.

This morning I found something that I considered “lifting” from myself for today’s blog, but since my preferred choice refers to a winter and a dog both recently passed, I would need to fess up to my self-plagiarism and explain myself. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow, since I’ve already confessed today.

But here’s a funny thing—in my search, I came upon a story about my six-year old behavior. Surprise, surprise—right in the middle of a sentence of intense revelation, there is a recipe for linguine. Now I ask you—how in the world did linguine insert itself in the middle of my childhood? I have no idea, but it looks like an easy and idiot-proof recipe and I think it might be dinner.

Hold on—maybe this is all only a bit of cosmic humor to remind me about how clever and creative God is. Is it a coincidence that the linguine recipe is stuck in the middle of some writing about my former smoking habit? Is it coincidence that the linguine component reminds me of a forgotten addiction that drove me to Overeater’s Anonymous? Is it a coincidence that I came upon this bit of cosmic humor as I was in search of some creativity? Is it yet another reminder that God always provides?

Yesterday I was so bored that I took myself out for an invigorating adventure to McDonalds for a crispy buttermilk chicken sandwich to eat in the car, then to a trip to Sam’s to fill up with gas. It’s no wonder I need to rummage around in old files in hopes of finding a spark of inspiration. I went outside in search of myself, but I wasn’t there. Apparently, I need to go inside more.

God never disappoints. Need inspiration? Go inside. Need help? Go inside. Need joy? Go inside. Need dinner? Try linguine. I have everything I need except maybe the shrimp. Hmm. That might call for another exciting trip out for groceries. Then I’ll return home, eat linguine, and go right back inside where I can see life through the window of my Soul.

Note: The photo above is courtesy of New Waves of Light, a website designed by anonymous individuals around the world who share the intention of bringing light and love to a world of darkness and chaos. (newwavesoflight.org or NWOL.us).

Ironing Out the Wrinkles

Thanks to Professor Blog’s compassion in granting me a day off yesterday, life is back in some semblance of proper working order. The ironing is done, my desktop is clear, and the cobwebs in the head are gone. Balance and sanity are restored. At least for now.

With iron in hand and mind in motion, I had an epiphany. I don’t need to put pressure on the iron to get the wrinkles out. I need only to guide it gently and let the heat do its work. Life is so much easier when I don’t try to strong-arm my way through it.

My favorite blogs are the two that were written without applying blunt force to attack the job as if it was a permanently pre-wrinkled mess shirt. The wrinkles smoothed themselves out with little or no help from me. My faves are also the blogs that received a pretty fair positive response. Day Off That should tell me something, right?

Life is short. Relax, enjoy, have fun, and don’t get all caught up in the unsightly wrinkles.

It’s amazing what a little time off will do. Thanks, Prof.

May I Be Excused?

It’s a gorgeous morning. I’d like to take a walk before the temperature exceeds the humidity. I’d like to tackle the expanding pile of laundry before summer’s end. Small patches of bare space are peeking through the papers that blanket the surface of my desk. The house is in a state a of disarray, the result of a neglectful owner caught in a daily struggle to learn the art of balance. I want to catch up with friends, return phone calls, answer emails. Take care of business, have a little fun.

I need a day off.

Blog writing as a hobby is an all-consuming adventure that eats up a huge chunk of my day. By the time I close the clamshell, it’s lunchtime and I need a nap. I need to loosen up a bit and relax some of the rigidity that has closed in around me in an effort to get a tighter grip on self-discipline. A blog a day keeps balance away.

I need a day off.

Read Julia’s blog is on a friends’ daily to do list, perhaps a have to entry rather than a want to. God bless her for her loyalty. Maybe she needs a day off too.

I need to get out on this lovely morning and walk off some of the excess body that I have accumulated during these days as a pandemic shut-in. I need to clean up my act, get myself back in proper working order, do some ironing.

Professor Blog has granted my request for one day off and excused me from the classroom for a field-trip in search of balance. Yay!

Ta tah for now. See you tomorrow.

Body by Design

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Here we go again, with the blank page and blinking cursor taunting me, coupled with a cacophony of voices clamoring for attention, “Me, ME, no, me!” Everybody wants to get into the act. Which “me” will it be today? My muddled mind considers the possibilities. It could be a long morning. Hmmm.

The loudest voice today is the “me” that comes with a body attached—you know, the one that requires a lifetime of food, shelter, and clothing?

Have you ever thought about how much time, effort, energy, and work we must expend simply to maintain our physical selves? A third of our lives? Half? More? It boggles the mind. I keep thinking about how clever God is to have set us up with this dense, physical contraption that we walk around in all day, the vehicle that transports us through a lifetime of providing for its varied myriad of needs.

Donald Trump sometimes blames a “rigged system” for whatever it is that happens to be displeasing him at the moment, and I wonder—are we living in a rigged system set up with bodies designed as textbooks to teach us what we need to learn?

I use my own life as an example, typical of so many others. I begin my lessons by being born into a family populated with people who can try and test me on every level. I live under the same roof, breathe the same air, and deal with the assorted personality quirks that come with the territory. There I are stuck until I am well educated and mature enough to move out and move on.

In case I have not learned from family relationships, Part 2 of my learning thrusts me out into the next phase of my life into survival mode where I must work to earn a living to support my physical body to survive. Rent, food, and shelter is expensive, even before adding in the rest of what’s needed for the living of life. Eventually, I get married, start a family, and in the process, up the ante of relational challenges.

It seems to me that a very brilliant God has rigged the system to make sure that we will be given every opportunity to learn what we came for. The good news is that it is rigged in our favor. If we don’t get the lesson one way, we will get it another.

Our bodies serve as teachers, purveyors of endless possibility for physical and spiritual growth. If we haven’t aced Relationship 101 in our family classroom, we are given another opportunity in the workplace, where once again, we are tried and tested by other characters on the stage of our life.

This all makes me wonder—once we leave these bodies, will we find ourselves walking around in an afterlife as etheric beings without need for food, shelter, and clothing? Will we still have lessons to learn but without need for the care and maintenance of dense physical bodies? Whoa. What a concept. No need for spending a huge percentage of existence walking around in survival mode. To imagine the freedom is mind boggling.

The very idea of that much freedom makes me want to work harder to do whatever I must in order to earn my way into the next phase, whatever that might be. It makes me ask myself what percentage of time and energy I spend on my spiritual growth compared to my physical survival. It makes me want to work harder while I’m here.

Body by design. What a clever plan. What an amazing gift.. What a brilliant God.

Bare and Unbedazzled

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The world of appearances is crumbling. The façade is falling away, leaving us bare, naked, and exposed to the truth that lies within. Wow. That’s a heavy way to start a day! It wasn’t at all what I had in mind when I opened a new Word page, but there it is, born of its own accord.

I had more in mind continuing yesterday’s conversation about fingernails, both the bedazzled and unbedazzled variety such as my own. I’m not sure how I swooped from crumbling facades to fingernails, but there you have it. It happens.

Oh right. It happens!

Yesterday, I kept being distracted by my fingernails. They seemed to call my attention to themselves periodically, as if to say, “Hey—listen up you! There is a lesson here for you.”

Really? In fingernails?

Yes. In fingernails.

Then a funny thing happened—suddenly Dolly Parton was in my face—it’s pretty hard to miss Dolly with her gigantic presence of sequins and personality sparkling all over the place. Suddenly yesterday’s blog (Here) turned into a comparison between the worlds and lives of Dolly and the Dalai Lama—amazing teachers, each in their own way.

So anyway, what about the fingernails?

Oh, right.

My nails have not seen an unpolished day since I was in my early teens. They have been through generations of incarnations, from healthy and strong, to discolored and fragile, to beautiful to embarrassing, and as they changed throughout the decades, like the rest of my body, they have required more and more care and cover-up.

Then I discovered the miracle of a gel manicure, the antidote to the broken, the damaged, split, snagged, the ragged. “Oh but wait,” I was warned by others. “They’ll ruin your nails.” Too late. There will likely never be a day in my life when my nails will see the light of day.

Hello pandemic, bye bye fingernail façade.

Since gel requires the equivalent of a lightweight jack hammer to be removed, there was nothing to do but watch my nails grow out a silly millimeter daily, and pray that the governor would lift the ban on nail salons before I was totally exposed. No such luck.

Two months of silly millimeters later, I took matters into my hands and unearthed the jackhammer. Look out, gel—here I come.

Surprise, surprise. My nails and I made liars out of the naysayers with their dire warnings of nail death by gel. When the façade was finally gone and the nails were laid bare, they were restored to their original, teenaged natural beauty. Renewed, regenerated, resurrected, reborn. Well, almost—they are a tiny bit wrinkled, but still . . . strong, healthy nonetheless. Imagine that.

During these weeks of pandemic nail-induced anxiety, I recognized that my focus on the state of my nails is a distraction, a reflection of so many other areas of my life. How much of what I see is focused on external distractions? Can I see beyond the tempting lure of her Dollyness into the heart and soul of His Dalainess? Can I realize the beauty that lies within the soul of each and every one of us, regardless of appearance? Can I see it within myself?

The pandemic has laid us bare by shining its light so that we may see. The old is crumbling. The new is being reborn. Though the appearance of it may be terrifying, the result will be the healing rebirth of a strong, healthy, beautiful new humanity. We are a work in progress, each in our own way. Our job is to see past the damaged and broken and look into the face of a new vision born of our own creation, and watch as it unfolds before our eyes. Regardless of appearance, it’s all good.

Glitz, Glamor, and Humility

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Have you ever wondered what it might be like to take a temporary tour of someone else’s brain to see what it’s like to live in there? I do. This notion came to me as the result of once writing a list of people that I admired and noting the specific qualities about them that I would like to develop within myself. There were many names listed, but the only one that I remember is Grace Kelly, the lovely screen star turned real-life American princess of Monaco, the icon of perfection. I admired her grace, elegance, and beauty.

Today’s list has only two names, and when put together in the same sentence, seem absolutely ludicrous because on the surface they appear to be the pinnacle of contrast: Dolly Parton and the Dalai Lama. Dolly Parton, the worldly, glitzy glamorous entertainer, and His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, humble spiritual leader of Buddhism and political leader of Tibet. The very thought that there is any commonality between them makes me want to giggle.

Dally has been quoted as saying, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.” Who doesn’t love Dolly? She’s smart, talented, unbelievably generous, utterly adorable, and has a heart of gold. The Dalai Lama is—well, he’s the Dalai Lama. I have never met him, but I know those who have and they report that His Holiness has an impish sense of humor and is quick to laugh at himself. There is something totally lovable about those who have the ability to poke fun at themselves.

Dolly is full of sparkles and spangles, big hair, eyelashes, and bedazzled fingernails. The Dalai Lama is a simple monk who wears only robes of saffron and maroon. Somewhere between the sparkle and spirituality lies a commonality that cannot be denied. Beneath the external appearance, there is a profound inner beauty, wisdom, strength, courage, intelligence, kindness, compassion, generosity of spirit, and a concern for the health and well-being of humanity.

Both offer a life of service simply by their presence in the world, by the very state of their being—Dolly by entertaining us with her considerable gifts and talents, and the Dalai Lama by his dedicated life of spiritual leadership and service to his country and to humanity. And yet at the same time, both are still human. Like them, we must find a balance between our persona and our soul, and deal with all aspects of our humanness. Both present us with a portrait of possibilities about who we are and how we present ourselves in the world, and how we walk around in our heads.

These icons inspire me to strive to embody the qualities in them that I admire the most. They make me want to recognize and acknowledge the best within myself and let go of all that is not. For me, it’s humility, compassion, kindness, generosity of spirit, self-acceptance, fearlessness, and humor to add a bit of lightheartedness to the mix. Which reminds me—my own unbedazzled fingernails were part of the inspiration for this blog, but that’s a story for another day.

Today, I would like to invite you to think about the people you admire, and what qualities they embody that you might like to add to your personal storehouse of ideals. The power of imagination is miraculous—if you can dream it, you can be it. If there are any qualities that you would like to adopt as a model to shape a new behavior for yourself, start dreaming!

I also invite and challenge you to inspire others by sharing your comments in the section below.

The Pitcher and the Pandemic

This morning I shocked myself awake by catching an unexpected glimpse of myself in the mirror. Good Lord I look like the wild woman of Borneo. Thanks, pandemic. That picture brought to mind an image of a swinging vine, and the memory of a failed bar with the same name that my inexperienced, entrepreneurial husband swore would make him rich, which then conjured up a picture of wild-woman me swinging on a vine high amidst the trees in the jungle.

In the space between flushing a toilet and walking away, I took myself on a no-cost tour of the jungles of Borneo and enjoyed a sky-high swinging vine excursion in the process. Wow. What a trip—all in less than five seconds, and I never even had to leave home to enjoy it. Isn’t the mind amazing?

I thought I knew where this morning’s writing adventure might be going, but then a funny thing happened. While sitting peacefully in my Lazygirl minding my own business, the silence was shattered by the sound of a large ceramic pitcher crashing down from a bookshelf and smashing to smithereens on the hardwood floor. Books that had been sitting in the same place for many months suddenly fell over of their own accord and that was the end of the pitcher.

This sudden unexpected turn of events leaves me in a bit of a quandary. Where do I go from here? So many options. I could just forget it and return to my original writing thoughts. Or I could shift gears and launch off on a tear about whodunit and why, or chalk it off as a freaky accident, or question the possibility of whether I might have just touched a nerve of a dearly departed ex-husband, or whether or not it’s feasible to even consider such possibilities.

It brings to mind the recollection of other strange happenings—a notebook fell from a top shelf twice, potholders monogrammed with my mother’s initials were mysteriously displaced from a hook while I was not at home, a small picture of the Charles Bridge in Prague purchased when my mother and I visited there fell over twice, pots and pans turned themselves around in a cupboard so that their handles faced backwards; is someone or something trying to tell me something? Could it have been my mother telling me that she wanted me to move? She didn’t like my neighborhood. She didn’t think it was safe. Nine years have passed since I moved, and there have not been any odd occurrences since. Until today.

So what just happened? I have no idea, but it certainly makes me wonder. Am I missing something? Is there some “reality” that I know nothing about? It makes me think about life after life, and about how the life that I live while here on this earth might influence the life that I have after I take my last breath. It makes me want to try harder to do the best that I can while I am still here so that I will be able to live in a safe neighborhood when it’s time to move on. It reinforces my desire to get it right.

Why does anything happen? Who knows? But there is always a reason, if only just to stop us in our tracks for a minute and make us think. The pitcher and the pandemic—the perfect duo specifically tailored to help me learn a thing or two. Now all I have to do is figure out what.

I think I’ll go comb my hair, swing on a vine, and think about it for a while.

Loving What I Hate

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Yesterday I spent a few hours hanging out in a dentist’s chair with a myriad of dental miscellanea and numerous fingers simultaneously stuffed into my mouth. Whoopee. When will lunch with friends be considered essential business, I wonder?

I have never been a big fan of dental visits, dating back to my early childhood when my poverty- stricken widowed mother dutifully took my sisters and me to a free dental clinic that was furnished with rows and rows of stark black dental chairs manned by budding dental students who poked and prodded and operated without benefit of Novocain. It was terrifying.

Later when things improved, off I went to a dentist who flew his own plane and had a mistress. I swear he poked around my mouth and created multitudes of man-made cavities to support his habits. I don’t know how my mother and I ever survived those years, but I’m fairly certain that she provided at least the down payment for the plane, while my school principal questioned my excessive requests to be excused for dental appointments. Had she known early on about his expensive indulgences, I’m sure she would have jumped chairs and moved on sooner.

Hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars later, I still have all of my teeth—well, sort of, I guess, if an implant, a bunch of crowns, and a permanent bridge count as my teeth. I guess they do—I paid for them.

I have spent about a kazillion hours stressing out over the thought of an upcoming dental appointment. Noooo! Don’t make me go. I don’t want to . . . oh, the things that stick in our memory banks. It makes me wonder—how much of my life is, or has been, influenced by memories of the past?

I’ve done my best to drop the pre-dental-appointment hand-wringing habit, but sometimes I still catch myself in the act of stressing out ahead of time. Occasionally, I’ll even toss in a little resentment about how much it’s going to cost to sit in a dentist’s chair and endure a few hours of torture in the process.

Somewhere along the way though, sandwiched between the lines of past memory and present resentment, the light dawns and I realize that I am seeing amiss. I am seeing fear and hate. I could be seeing gratitude and love instead. A little transformation, please.

I am grateful that I still have teeth in my head to fix. I am grateful that I am able to pay to for necessary repairs. I am grateful that the days of terrifying dental torture is a thing of the past. I am grateful for the amazingly fabulous, wonderful technology that has brought dentistry into the present where I now live. I am grateful for a staff of kind, caring and experienced people who look after my dental health. I am grateful for every opportunity to let go of the past and transform fear into love.

Just to keep this in perspective, I offer one final note—and this one is the mother of all gratitude— I am especially grateful that my name is not George Washington and that I don’t have to live with wooden teeth. Eeks.

Learning Lessons in Real Time

I just spent a couple of hours writing today’s blog. I put the finishing touches on it before pushing the publish button, then accidentally pushed the delete button instead. Shoot me now. It was all about how everything happens for a reason and that there is a lesson that can be found in every unhappy, unfortunate situation. Well now. Didn’t I just give myself the opportunity of a lifetime to practice what I preach? Back to square one. Sigh.

Fellow writers and bloggers, can you relate? Lesson 1: Save. I knew that, but I flunked Save. Some of us are slow learners.

So I suck my heart back up out of my stomach and begin again. Okay, so where was I? There was something about learning from my mistakes, about wrenching my elbow out of joint while trying to extract my foot from my mouth, blah blah blah.

It was about converting miseries into miracles. I felt pretty good about it too, and even managed to find a link to add (a shortcoming, you may recall) but now alas, poof—it’s all gone. Maybe with luck I can find a new link to the thing about links. Stay tuned but don’t hold your breath.

Meanwhile, like the kid in the room with all of the manure, I know that there must be a pony in here somewhere.

Well I’m just going to have to fumble my way through this one till I find a point, or come to an end, or figure it out, or giggle my way through this cruel twist of fate, or maybe suss out a lesson, or learn to get by on a hum, a wing, and a prayer. You know—resort to your basic stream-of-consciousness stuff. What can I say?

One of the things that I’ve learned along the way is that by the time I’ve pushed the publish button, I feel as if I’ve put in a whole day’s work and it’s only 9:00 a.m. I’m done. It’s breakfast first then nap. Like I always say—we get to repeat our lessons until we learn them. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

It would really be cool if the missing blog suddenly reappeared like magic but I doubt that’s going to happen. But the miracle that I was talking about in the missing blog was about finding compassion, love, healing, and happy endings in the midst of what I call the miseries, those life situations that make you want to pull the ostrich act and run off in search of sand into which to stick the head, kind of like now, this moment, when I’d like to run off and stick my head under the covers.

Well so here’s my question to myself. Have I learned anything here (besides push the Save button, I mean)? I don’t know about that yet. It’s a little too soon. Maybe I’ll figure it out later. Or not.

Maybe it’s just about another lesson in letting go, and going with the flow, of being okay with the way things are, of loving and forgiving myself in spite of my silly foibles, of making the best of whatever the situation is. The deleted blog took a lot of time and thought. This one was whipped off in about ten minutes and was a whole lot more fun to write. Don’t know about you, but I enjoyed the process. Hope you enjoyed the read!

Ta ta for now. Off for my nap.

What’s the Point?

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Some days are just better than others. Some days I can sit down at the computer and stuff rolls out faster than I can type. Other days, not so much. Today is one of those other days. I keep wanting to compare my life to my jumbled computer filing system, but that’s just bad news and doesn’t work out well. It’s frustrating.

Friends tell me that during the pandemic, they’ve cleaned out every drawer, every closet in their home. I, on the other hand, have added to my disorganization by creating a new anthology of computer files thanks to my recent habit of writing a daily blog. Good luck to me if I want to add a link to something that I wrote days or weeks ago, because I can’t find it. One of these days I’ll print them all out and stick them in a notebook with some sort of index system. The whole sorry mess mirrors the closets and drawers of my life that still beg for my attention. Sigh

Wait—is this the point where my dear friend who was upset with me for not showing myself in a more favorable light might be angry with me again? Or perhaps is it the point where I might be a little angry with myself? (See? A link here would be a really nice touch, wouldn’t it?)

Okay, now I‘m stuck. Where am I supposed to be going from here? Is this the moment of panic where I say to myself, “See? I knew I couldn’t do it!”? Nope. Not going there.

Maybe it’s time to have a little chat with myself. Okay, fine. So I’m stuck. It’s not the end of the world. Maybe there’s a reason for stuck. Is there a point to all of this go-nowhere jabber? Am I missing something?

Oh—I get it. Maybe the point is that I don’t always have to know what I’m doing, or what is going on, but it’s okay, because that’s life. Maybe the point is that there doesn’t always have to be a point to everything, or that there may be one, but I just may not see it. Maybe my only job is to let life flow without having to control the outcome, or have an opinion about everything, and just let it be whatever it is. Maybe I’m just supposed to be the observer, the one who sits back, watches, and accepts without judging, who forgives and loves unconditionally.

I like it. That kind of a life would work for me—a-let-go-let-God sort of an existence. Maybe I just need to have enough faith, enough trust in the process to know that it’s all okay, whatever it is. Pollyanna? Maybe. But isn’t that a better existence than stressing out over every cluttered closet or lost computer file, or guys who run around with M-14’s because they don’t want to wear masks?

Maybe it’s time to practice equanimity and work on seeking a balance between being and doing (Be-Do). I can be Pollyanna and still clean up a few computer files along the way. I can shift my focus from fear to love. I can have a little faith, trust myself, and add a link. And I did. Yay me. It’s a start. Just start. Maybe that’s the point.