Lately, I come home after work and just read a bunch of Reddit posts that are, at best, mildly amusing/interesting/inspiring. Mostly though, it’s a distraction, sucking my mental and emotional energy and time with nothing positive to show for it.

I need to organize my time, but it seems like there’s a huge disconnect between the tasks/activities that I know I need to get done in the short term and my long-term dreams and goals. I’ve done so much brainstorming and planning and whatnot at various times in the last few years, but somehow none of it is motivating me in the realm of daily progress. My dreams are above the cloudline, but I’m living down below.

Now I know the only foe is time.

22,000 days, 22,000 days

It’s not a lot, it’s all you got

22,000 days…

Wasting time’s an aggravation

Got no time for confrontation

You want to take a lot

By love by law or stealth

Time’s the only real wealth you have got

– Moody Blues

I’ve been trying to figure out what are the most important principles I want to teach my children, and I have decided on the following list:

• Hope, for yourself and for others

• Personal responsibility and self respect (Sober judgment of yourself, self discipline and hard work)
• Patience, kindness, and charity toward others (Love your neighbor)
• Integrity and correct handling of the truth

Now – the hard part – I need to instill these values in my children. Probably by exemplifying them.

And now these three remain: Faith, Hope, and Love. But the greatest of these is Love. – I Co 13:13 (NIV)

In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. – Elwood P. Dowd, Harvey

I will keep nothing near me that does not make me happy.

And it’s a good thing, too, because otherwise I don’t know what I would’ve written about.

So here’s what happened: as I was doing some quick shopping (well, maybe it was a little leisurely), an unfamiliar male (of Caucasian descent, reasonably attractive, and perhaps somewhat shy of four decades of existence) chose to disrupt my mundane thoughts of cotton balls and toothpaste by suddenly and quite unexpectedly gushing at me, “Oh, you know, you are just so cute!”

I was quite flustered, of course, so I laughed and thanked him and went about my shopping. And since that moment, I’ve been trying to analyze what reason he could have had for doing such a thing.

Top of the list of potential explanations is that he was on the phone, using a headset that I didn’t notice, and was actually gushing at someone else. Extra points for this, because it means I should be embarrassed about responding to a compliment not meant for me.

There are a number of other possibilities:

• He saw someone looking worn down and stressed who could use something to lift her spirits.
• He was some kind of con artist or thief, and had I stopped to talk, would have been talked into providing my first pet’s breed, the town where I was born, and the middle name of my paternal grandfather’s cousin once removed (George, maybe?).
• He was conducting a social experiment.
• Someone dared him.
• He was high, drunk, or otherwise mentally impaired.
• He was practicing “being nice”. His therapist told him he has anger issues, which can be mitigated by random acts of kindness.
• He thought I was someone else, someone he actually knows.
• He likes confounding people and making strangers spend hours thinking about him.

(You may have noticed I left out of the list the idea that he was sincerely overcome by my incredible cuteness, for simple fact that I have a mirror. Which I have looked into. And barely escaped being turned to stone. As the saying goes, “a face only a mother – and my crazy husband – could love.”)

Whatever the reason… Thank you, kind sir, for putting a smile on my old, tired face. 🙂

‘Nuff said

What did I actually do? Ate and read crap and wished to be on vacation, and felt guilty about not doing what I intended to.

My baby girl is sick with a bad cold or possibly the flu, and just wants to snuggle up on my lap.

I’m sitting here, stroking her hair and rubbing her back, thinking maybe I could be more of a cat-person than I realized.

It’s fun, eating and talking, but I feel more comfortable with something for my hands and eyes to do.

Also, I’m a little surprised that I still blush. It seems like something I should have grown out of by now.