National Grammar Day!

I have never gotten a penny for my thoughts. I have gotten an IOU if I would just keep my thoughts to myself ...

Who would have ever thought I'd get excited about National Grammar Day? Definitely not me. Both of my parents and all of my grandparents spoke well and had incredible diction. We were corrected, and rightly so, when we made blunders.

Punctuation Day would be much more difficult to celebrate. I'd have an awful time with spelling, so for me Spelling Day would be horrible. (I had a teacher once who offered to give me an A in Creative Spelling if that were only the class she was teaching.)

Sharpen your red pencils and celebrate National Grammar Day!

In Praise of Plodding

What is a plodder?

A plodder is someone who evaluates a situation before rushing in.
He or she looks at options and weighs the best one for him/herself before making a choice.
He looks at the ramifications of those choices on the overall situation.
After weighing all options, the plodder takes determined and deliberate action.

I have let my writing muse take a vacation since November and I'm not proud of that. Then again, I've let the housework muse have a holiday for two years and the gardening muse went on walk about for close to a decade.

I have decided to schedule each of these muses, to go forth a little at a time and plod.

It isn't like an untold story will whither away and die, it is simply untold. An untold story is a promise not yet fulfilled. A house not tended and a garden left alone have more consequence.

I have taken a lesson from one of the family dogs. She would nap and ponder what she wanted from the next moment. She would evaluate all of her options: a cookie, a dog treat, a game of ball, or another nap. Undoubtedly she made the best decisions for herself at the time. She plodded and lived a happy life. My turn to plod.

Shooting the Messenger

Energy work is a delicate and precarious thing. It doesn't seem like it could be or should be, but when you are working with someone's beliefs about themselves and their lives, things get tricky. Some days very tricky.

The ego is a very delicate and fragile thing.

We all want to perceive ourselves the way Garrison Keillor sees the people of Lake Woebegon: "All the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."

We want to be the strong one, the good looking one, the above average one.

A lot of people don't want to hear that they aren't up to expectations.

The healer has a responsibility to get out of his or her own way and let the Universe (Spirit, God) guide the session.

How much harder for the client to hear the truth and unvarnished.

Just my thoughts.

I told someone about herself today, and I didn't make it pretty. It was raw and unvarnished.

I should have varnished it; polished things; made it smoother.

The result is that I was shot for it.

People lie when they say they want the truth.

The result?

The messenger has been shot and is bleeding.

The friendship has been irrevocably damaged.

Next time, I'll use polish (Lemon Pledge I think) and see what difference it makes.

Twenty years and I still make mistakes.

L

Judge Not

We've heard it all before, haven't we? Judge not, lest yee be judged.

I have a couple of problems with that. The first is that we are all judging all of the time.

1. when to pull out into traffic
2. who to vote for (or against as the case may be)
3. what radio stations to listen to (or television programming)
4. which blogs are worth the time/effort to read and/or respond to


You get the idea.

I've spent most of my life looking for ways to be diplomatic and NOT judge because usually the things I judge harshly come home to roost on my own roof. When I judged people for being stupid about their health, mine fell to bits. I took a dislike to a particular car manufacturer and wound up owning two from that maker. At one point, I feared becoming overly heavy ... I was moderately heavy and now am - you follow my meaning.

In December I went to a local meeting of RWA (Romance Writers of America) and they needed Readers for their annual contest. I volunteered and then promptly forgot about it. Then I found out that I volunteered to read more than one category - I volunteered for two.

So, since these are published authors and I am actually evaluating and judging them (if it were merely reading they'd never know I'd seen their pieces), does this mean that I will not only have a full length novel published but it will be an award winner as well?

Hmm. Maybe I should look into judging more favorably!

are you too old to dance?

I've mused for some time on the meaning, at least to me, of Thanksgiving. I hate the staid idea that it is the whole Indian and Pilgrim thing. I hate the idea that it ushers in the official beginning of shopping season. I am not sure I like the idea that it means winter is 'here'. I know for college students it heralds finals and winter break.

I spent the weekend with my husband's aunt, aged 92. Martha is still cognizant of what is around her, who her friends are, who visited last week, and how she feels about the current president.

She is at a time in her life where she is supposed to be making plans to die: when, where, and even how to dispose of her worldly goods. Instead, Martha made plans for dinner with friends, what to buy for x-mas, and decided not to give anything to her nephew when she dies. "He's a collector, I've seen your house, you don't need anything else." She's right, we don't.

I looked at the woman who once had a strong frame and constitution, the woman who told off color jokes all night, the woman who decorated her living room so there was plenty of room to dance in it. It made me realize, she is the embodiment of what I want to be when I grow up.

It is time for me to think about moving the sofa - getting rid of the extra chairs, and putting a stereo in the living room. If she can dance - why can't I?