ok, to continue with the end of yesterday’s note about finding joy – yesterday morning i was on the phone with my friend christine; we were both in our cars, going to work, me here in spfld, she in denver. she pulled into the mcdonald’s drive-thru, which she does every morning, and she was ordering, and she wanted the “#1 with no ham” and the guy told her she could get the #2 with no ham and it would be a dollar cheaper, and then he told her she could get MORE hash browns if she wanted. she was so DELIGHTED with this news, and felt that the fellow was a genius. it made her day!
now, as mcdonald’s continues to supersize most of america (and eventually the world) into ever more fat fatness, at least my very lovely and genetically thin friend christine has benefitted from mcd’s largess.
so, my friend randy will watch tv, christine will find more new and exciting things to order for breakfast from mcdonald’s, and all will be right with the world. actually, christine likes watching tv, too, and is perfectly content to lie on the couch watching, and being alone. there’s certainly something to be said for that; both of us have been in enough relationships in our lives to realize that the possibilities for things going wrong are pretty inevitable, and the frustration we’ve felt involved with one man or another can sometimes be too much. she told me that she was lying on her couch, enjoying TV, and she thought about having somebody else there, somebody to cook dinner with and have around the house. she thought it might be nice, but decided, ultimately, that it would annoy her.
i told her i thought that when she meets a new and wonderful man, she’ll feel differently, she’ll like having him around. she agreed, but pointed out that each time that has happened for either of us, it has always ended, and usually ended badly, and then there’s that horrible, horribly long period of feeling shitty and depressed, sometimes it doesn’t go away and you can’t get the man out of your mind, not ever…
this play i’m in, “you can’t take it with you,” continues to be a lot of fun. last night we rehearsed act 1 scene 1, where i do the most leaping around, performing bad ballet all over the stage. it was a little tiring, but also energizing and quite enjoyable. in the play, my sister, alice, meets a lovely man and they fall in love and he proposes to her. they have a couple of plot-necessarry obstacles, but mostly it’s all in my alice’s head, and everything gets resolved at the end, and of course the ending is a happy one.
last night as i was driving home (in a pretty good mood), i thought about that, wishing that somehow life could be that simple. i know it can’t, it isn’t, life is complex and ever-changing, and really, if there’d been a sequel to the play, maybe the marriage wouldn’t have worked out, maybe they’d have gotten tired of each other, or bored, or maybe they found that they really were just too different, or they found out things about each other that they just couldn’t tolerate.
but that’s life, right? good with the bad and all of that. this morning while doing the stair master at the fit club, i read a fitness magazine, and it was so chock-full of advice on everything, as they tend to be. two articles i thought about, though – one was that as the new year is starting, it would be a good time to think about what you value in life, and what you want out of it, what’s important to you. since i have some free time this afternoon, and i’d otherwise spend it probably working myself up about issues i have going on right now, i decided that instead, i’ll write out a list like that. writing things down, it does make things more clear.
taking a trip makes things more clear, as well, and believe me, every day i think about how i could escape to someplace warm for a few days. maybe i’ll manage it somehow…
the other thing in the magazine that interested me was an article about meditation. when i used to take yoga, we did a little bit of meditation, and then i tried to do it on my own for a while, but i quickly lost interest. but this article said that meditation can really help you think about things in a more positive way, it said it can make you more focused, calmer, more clear-headed. i certainly need all of that. it also said that meditating buddhist monks were able to read people much better than the average person. i guess a person has about six or so different fleeting expressions going on in their face every…minute? and most of us, even trained professional therapists, can’t read all of that, because they happen so fast. but the article claimed that the meditating monks could read almost all of the expressions. it said this would be good for helping your relationships, because you could get a better sense of what the other person is thinking.
i feel that i probably won’t be able to reach that level, but on the other hand, i could use a big dollop of that positive attitude stuff, so i’m going to attempt the meditating, too.
whew, suddenly i’m very busy.
oh, and one more thing in the magazine, it said that taking a foreign language class is an excellent way to keep your mind sharp. so i’m thinking about that, too, but not so much. sometimes i do try to think of the french i learned, and perhaps i need to go to paris to see if i could get around.
travel, i can tell you that, that’s one thing that’s important to me, seeing new places. i haven’t travelled much lately, and it’s time to figure out how to make it happen more. i’ve wanted to go to a place i’ve known about in the south of france for about eight years now, and maybe if i start to think about actual, concrete plans, i can make it happen. maybe next september, when the weather will be good and it won’t be so crowded.
ok, while i’m at it, one more thing i want to accomplish is to do another “grace talk,” my one woman-show. since i’m not writing for the paper, i don’t know how i’m going to advertise, but i think i should figure that out. my friend randy bought me a gorgeous green skirt&sweater for xmas, plus some fabulous pointy green shoes, so i have the outfit for the show. all i need is some topics, and then i need to do some writing, some rehearsing, advertising, and then POOF! easy as that, it’s done.
ok. gonna get right on things now. maybe the dam has broken, huh, the inactivity/lethargy/ surliness/anger is abating? let’s hope so.
ok then,
grace