See You In A Few!

I think I'm going to give myself a little holiday, so have a good (insert amount of time) until I see you again and all the best if this is a busy week for you!

Yay!

Happy Solstice guys!

Now we start edging towards longer days!  (Sorry other hemisphere!)

Just Saying!

I'm not really sure I'm near wanting to date right now, or to go through the whole "find a relationship" thing, but I'm sort of vaguely not horrified by the idea anymore, so.. yay?

I bring this up because it came up in conversation the other day with a friend and they got all excited because they thought of their cool, attractive, nice, interesting friend and they were SO excited to show me a picture of him because they were sure I would find him handsome too (and they assured me he's a great guy) so we went over to a computer and they brought up this guy's facebook profile and I started laughing as my friend looked at this guy's photo of him and his wife and two kids!

"Oh," said my friend, "I guess he and I haven't talked in a while... sorry?"

So yeah... if you're wanting to get your single friend to consider maybe thinking about dating a friend of yours, you might want to make sure said person is actually single first. 

I So Sleepy

This *%^%$&*(*& dark time short day stuff is STILL messing with me!  I'm sleepy at all the wrong times and man oh man I can not wait for solstice so we can start inching back to reasonably long days!!!


Oh, and I woke up in the middle of last night and had "very important" thoughts that I now no longer can remember so I have to hope they weren't really all that "important"!

I... Think So?

We had some actual wind this weekend and I got a call Sunday morning from my Dad (on his cell).

He asked if I had power and you guys?  I had to think about it!  See, I have a regular land line for just this reason, so it always works, even when there's no power.  I was using my laptop at the time but... it's a laptop so was running on battery power!  I had no lights on because it was bright enough not to so that didn't help.  I sort of paused for a moment, figured, no I had power and so told my Dad no, I have power!

But man that was a funny feeling!  If I hadn't been on the spot like that, I'd have heard the hum of the fridge and realized my modem was still running and giving me wifi, but still... with no lights on it was hard to immediately answer!

(And he had to call from his cell because they have a digital phone line and it goes off after a while, so keep those cells charged y'all!)

Resolute

I found the last few years that rather than setting myself up to probably fail by forcing January 1st to be a I WILL DO SOMETHING ALL YEAR STARTING TODAY kind of day, I start up new habits in Fall.  For example, I'm on my second and a half's month of daily meditation.  Yeah, I started at the beginning of October, wanted to see if I could do it for *just* a month, and then liked the results, so set it up to try for another month and so far, here I am at all those days in a row!

The gym and exercise, to be honest, is still a hard one for me to get back into consistently.  Part of that is the strong dislike I have while doing it, and part of it is the time hassle that surrounds it (see "it's not an hour, it's two" post from a while ago) but I am managing to get in a daily "minimum" that involves me, in whatever I'm wearing, in my kitchen, watching some show, doing mini cardio (walking on the spot, etc.)  This time last year I tried to get a swimming routine going but I think it tapered off around the holiday break (because the pool got busy with families and events) and then I didn't want to compete with the January resolution crunch.

But increasing my cardio is really something I want to do.  I just don't want to try to start it on January first, you know?  Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, to be perfectly honest, part of why it's hard for me to get into a regular gym or yoga practice, beyond the above is that I find my body is that much more prone to owies.  I tried "daily yoga" at the start of december (not necessarily a class, there are a ton of videos online too) and my knee went out day two so I had to significantly reduce the amount I was doing. 

There's also a part of me that sits here and yells at me that I'm just lazy.  And I'm not a fan of that part of me, even if it's motivated me in the past.  I'm not "just lazy" and even if I do have a lazy day now and again that's totally ok. 

So yeah.  If there's something you'd like to do more consistently, may I suggest you start doing that thing now so that when the new year starts you've already got a few weeks under your belt?  You may not function like I do, however, but I've found for myself that the pressure of new year doesn't work in my favour.

Your mileage, may, of course, vary.

That Episode

Whenever I watch the Survivor episode when the loved ones visit, I always wonder who I would have come out.  (Well, I wonder this through my tears and occasional sobbing...) 

I mean, let's be real, I'm never getting on Survivor, but still... I can't figure out who I would bring.

I'd love to bring a parent, but I feel like they're probably too old for the travel and wouldn't do well in the heat or if there was a challenge.  I could bring my brother, I suppose, but I wondered the other day about bringing Jason.  If there was a challenge, he'd probably manage it (although brother could too) but I feel like Jason would have some insight on where I was in the game and how I could/should proceed and I feel like he'd be like YOU CAN DO IT.  But I don't know!

Maybe in my imaginary time on Survivor I'll have a boyfriend or husband, but who knows.

Any of you know who you're bringing to your Survivor loved ones visit?

GAH!

I can't handle food that has stuff in it.  And by "stuff", I mean like bones.  If there's an odd texture in the food that I can't bite through, I'm not ok.

It's one of the reasons I really don't eat fish.  Or can't eat the end of a shrimp thingy.  Or oranges with seeds in them!  I just... can't.  GAH!

So, imagine my horror when someone made me mashed potatoes and I found a little pebble in them!  Found... WITH MY TEETH!

Luckily, it wasn't a hard bite so no damage was done, I more found it with my tongue and teeth than chomped into it (that could have been bad) but GAH!  I spent the rest of the evening feeling almost sick to my stomach over it.  There's no real reason, I just... can't handle stuff in food like that!  No bones, no... exoskeleton and no rocks!!!!

I'm pretty sure it was because my friend does mashed potatoes with the peel on them and the little thing must have been pretty stuck in there but gah I do not want to talk about it, I just wanted to let them off the hook of "how on earth did that happen?"  It just did.  And yeah.

For what it's worth, I haven't been able to stomach mussels since the last time I ate some that had grit (sand?) in them. 

BAH!  GAH!  Make this post go away now!!!!

Me And Myself!

You sometimes see that question, or occasionally a photo meme of "would you date you?"  And because that question came across my feed the other day I started to think about it.  And yes, I think I would date me.  But here's why!

I assume that I would know what I wanted or needed.  So if my back hurt, I would assume *I* would know that I'd like a back rub and what pressure and all the rest.  Or if I was hungry, *I* probably would know what to make for dinner!  Or if I was sad or something, wouldn't *I* know just what to say or how many hugs to give?  Like, wouldn't dating me mean that I would totally know how to take care of me?

I would have to make sure that both me and me got upset at different times because it would be hard if we both had a panic attack at the same time, but yeah, I have to figure that if I dated me, I'd be pretty darn good at being a good date!  (Which I think is not what the question is really about, but yeah, I used to kind of not like myself much, but now I do so yay me!)

Unknown

This may sound obvious but I'm currently working with the realization that I do not know what people think of me.

I don't mean that perhaps the way you might think, I mean it more in terms of letting my mind readjust and hopefully letting myself relax a bit.

See, I've always sort of felt/believed I knew what people were thinking of/about me and that in general it was usually (to my mind) not positive.  This is likely a basis of social anxiety or something to do with it... not so much in a huge "everyone's out to get me" kind of exaggerated way just in a "they must be thinking I'm dumb" or whatever the thought is.

I was given, by my counsellor, an assignment to spend some time observing what I was thinking.  So I took a notepad with me and wrote stuff down.  And what I noticed was that I kept thinking I had to do something or be a certain way or act a certain way because of what I *thought* the other person was thinking.  Like, for example, someone came over and glanced at my notes and my thought was "Oh lord they must think I'm weird, what if they read it and think I'm talking about them or..." etc etc.  But then I stopped.  I had no idea what they were thinking.  Heck, maybe they thought "oh, she's writing a book!" or "wow, she's taking detailed notes, she must be super smart" or whatever.  The point being, I really realized that other than directly asking and assuming the person would be comfortable being completely honest with me in their response, I had no actual way of knowing what they were thinking.

Which is kind of a mind blower for me.  (I know, may be obvious to you but to me it was like... what?)  A lot of positive personal mental change can come down to noticing what your head tells you, observing that, and then, when possible, making changes around it.  Doesn't mean it's easy though.

I think I'm babbling about this because I didn't go to a social event this weekend.  And I got very upset about not going because what (bad/horrible/unkind/mean/not nice) things would they be thinking of me for not going?  "Oh, she's anti social"  "Oh, she never goes to things anymore"  "Oh, she's lame"  etc etc.  Well maybe those thoughts I'm having are wrong.  And they're certainly not helpful, because they don't make me more likely to go to the next event, they just make me feel crappy.  So, I could try to guess what else they might be thinking "Oh, I hope she feels better"  "Oh, I hope she knows we missed her"  "Oh, I didn't even notice she wasn't here" or I can just tell myself I have no idea what they might be thinking and try to let it go.

It's a learning curve.  It's slow.  It's difficult.  There's still anxiety, worry, stress, upset.  But I'm hoping this can be a good forward movement for me.

I have no idea what that person is thinking.  Phew!

Nope!

One of the things that amuses me a little is what I like to call the Canadian snow myth.

Well, let me be clear, pretty much *just* where I live but still, hear me out!

Often, there's this joke view of Canada as a snow filled vast expanse.

And yes, much of our country does have quite a snow filled Winter (or longer) but the West Coast, where I have always lived, does not.  And little Victoria here?  Hardly gets snow at all. 

But the part that makes me laugh is when I travel down to the states and hear the "great white north" stuff and then I watch the weather at this time of year and?  Snow in Nevada!  Snow in Southern California!  Snow in some other state.  And here?  Nope!

It's not a big deal, and I know it's partly a joke and partly a misconception about us Canadians, but it always makes me giggle when the states has snow and I don't. 

A Non Update

I don't really have a good update on the flickr photo thing.  As you may have noticed, I'm just not using photos here anymore, which is unfortunate, but one thing at a time.

And for now, after putting in several hours worth of really frustrating work, I decided to just suck it up and buy a year's worth of pro to literally buy myself some more time to deal with having to get rid of nearly a thousand photos and the links to the blog posts they were on.

I know, not a *real* problem, but certainly a frustration.  And that really wasn't in my budget.  (Not that much is, but that's a whole other story.)  And yeah, not a way I want to be spending my time either.

I did message them and they did get back to me and they suggested a few things.  I appreciated the response and suggestions, just none of them were any easier than what I had already started to do, mainly because I linked so many photos to this blog, to just delete, or move to another account will break so many links and well, that's not something I really feel like doing, even if they're archived posts not being read anymore. 

So my solution for now is to pay them money to not delete my photos while I work on making sure things still function here in old posts.  And once I've done that (nine hundred and something more to go), then I'll figure out what, if anything, I'm going to do about bringing photos back here.

Woo Hoo!

Just a couple more weeks until the days start getting longer again!

Woo hoo with a double woo!

(No, but really, I still think my brain just never gets used to the short days... it really is like "oh, it's dark?  ok, we're done, and it's bedtime, except you're not sleepy")

Story

I wonder what my "life" would look like if someone was writing it?

Like, I often feel inferior to characters on shows who are so... whatever it may be, witty, clever, fast thinking, well spoken, interesting, etc etc and then I have to remind myself they're written.  As in... someone is taking time and writing out that wit, interest, thought, etc.

So, maybe I'd also be super (insert thing here) if I was a written character. 

Now, who shall I get to write my life?

Send Security

So, someone broke into my house and placed a single piece of green glitter on my bedside table.

I say this because I have not been in contact with green glitter, nor is there any in my house.  And yes, I know it is potentially a seasonal thing that I may have accidentally come in contact with but that still would not place it on my bedside table.

So, clearly, it was a planned attack.

If I suddenly disappear, you know who to look for. 

(They're hopefully not in cahoots with the banana peel people, you know?)

Ping!

My lightbulb "blew up" the other night.  It did that thing where you turn it on as usual and there's a POP and it goes dark.  You know?  And then you wonder if you have extra electricity in your finger that caused it to go and what will you do with that super power now eh?

So.. anyway, I replaced it with another bulb and it seems this bulb has a rather frustrating idiosyncracy.

It... pings.  Not immediately after it's turned off, but I figure once the glass has cooled enough.  Unforunatey, that ping seems to happen *right* as I'm about to totally just fall asleep and then PING and BAM I'm back to fully awake.

Argh.

Maybe now that I've written about it it will stop, but if it doesn't, I may have to replace that bulb cuz man, it's no fun being ping-ed awake.

(Or maybe it's more of a ting?)

Oh Crap

My first thought was that I was going to write a post about an issue I was having with my eyes but then I realized it's the first of December which means... which means GAH!

Well, I mean, I can put a positive spin on things and say that that means twenty one days until the days start getting lighter again YAY!

But also this is that time of year that things can get really stressful and I'm really really hoping to avoid that this year, or at least mitigate it.

My avoidance of shopping centers has already started and I'm aware that others may too be stressed and not at their best.

But yeah, December is here and the end of a year I have not really gotten into the swing of yet.  As in, 2017 doesn't seem like it was nearly two years ago... !!!