Year of Quotes No. 37
Sep 12
1 Comment
Country roads lead me home.
People ask me all the time, “Aren’t you scared, living out there in the country all by yourself?”
And I always think, “Noooo…aren’t you scared living in the city?”
Country crazies stick to ourselves themselves; that’s why they live in the country. Except for the ones who were born here and just never escaped.
But city crazies are the social types. They don’t like to be alone, they like to come stand by you. And they can follow you home and you wouldn’t even know it. Do you think I wouldn’t figure it out if someone was following me home?
“Hmmm, that car has been behind me for 30 minutes, making every turn that I do, country road after country road… Well, I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.”
See my driveway? It’s there.
The city crazies would have stopped following me by the time I got on the highway, or if I go the back way, maybe they’d hang on 10 minutes or so, but I doubt it.
So, when people ask me that question, I always answer that most crime happens in the city, not the country. We don’t get a lot of muggings around here, and people don’t drive out all this way just to cause trouble. If something of yours gets stolen, you can almost guarantee you know the person who did it. And all the crazy killer types don’t much care to bother with us.
To which I always get some variation of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre thrown at me. “That’s not true! Terrible things always happen down some back road, in some little cabin, in the middle of the woods!”
Have you even been listening to me? Have you learned nothing from these movies?
Let me explain. No, let me sum up: that’s just the country way of saying, “Hey you, kid! Get off my lawn!”
My front yard.
Sometimes I do get the impression that the grass is out to get me.
Aren’t most of those movies about people who wind up in places they shouldn’t be? Maybe they get lost and knock on the wrong door for directions. Maybe their car breaks down in front of the wrong long dirt road. Maybe they even go looking for mischief – and then they find it. Whatever the case, the country crazies don’t generally come out looking for you. It’s not really their fault if you go find them, is it? Nobody invited you.
So no, creepy slasher movies that happen way out in the country don’t make me scared to live, well, way out in the country. I do, however, believe in “better safe than sorry.” So I have two security systems in place:
Louis: security guard, first defense, weapon of mass barking, attack dog (trained in both the I Will Jump on You I Can Reach Your Knees and Just Because I Won’t Come Near You Doesn’t Mean I’m Not Dangerous schools of combat).
Zombie early warning system. Crack the door and look in the mirror before you open up the storm door. Okay, this is not a great plan, but it’s what I’ve got.
Having said all this, I’ll admit that I get a little weirded out if Louis is acting nervous. Not so much when we’re outside, because I figure it’s just another animal that he’s smelling. But when he’s acting like that inside the house? That’s creepy.
And every now and then, I’ll come up that long, dark (cause it’s always night when this happens) driveway, pull up to the house, and the chills will go down my spine. It’s the sharks all over again: something unseen and menacing and utterly imaginary is stalking me. I’ll go searching through closets and under beds and around corners and into dark rooms. No boogie man is going to jump out at me! Better to face my fears and know for sure I’m foolish there is nothing to worry about. Of course I never find anything; I’m the only crazy one there.
Oh, and stay off my lawn.
♦
Items of Interest:
What to do if you think you’re in a scary movie
Wherefore At My Door, Opossum, Oh Possum
A Snake in the Grass…err…Weeds
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Sep 9
the Infinite Monkey speaks: bust a move
Random brilliance from across the blogosphere…
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You are the choreographer of your own life. Who needs to learn the “correct” way to do a dance?
As the Hammer would say…just bust a move.
– Blogdramedy
from:
Beyonce. A newer, improved Madonna? (comments)
∞
I Exercised! ……for maybe five minutes
Oh, my friends… I’ll have to fight hard for this one.
On month eight of twelve, I finally pulled out my tiny trampoline to start fulfilling my exercise resolution. Should I tell you that I didn’t even do that until the third week of August? Yeah, I think I’ll keep that to myself. Should I tell you that there are various items sitting on it right now, that I dumped there when I came in the door, and that it’s been accumulating detritus for a week? I don’t think I’ll tell you that, either.
In August, I realized that I want all these things for myself, and yet I don’t have a plan for getting them. I set these goals, these resolutions, but I never took the time to map out how I would reach the end of this one-year journey, what steps I would take to get there. In one case, that didn’t matter: I wanted to take a photography class, so I found one and signed up. But the rest of the goals I wanted to accomplish do not fall into that one-and-done category. The rest of my goals required thought and planning and…well, more goals, defined steps to get there.
Simply thinking about my big goals hasn’t provided me with the concrete guidance I need. Thinking about a goal gives me an overall idea of what I want and how I might accomplish it, but when it’s time to do the work, I am left to meander here and there, finding my way to the end any way I am able. It’s like following pathways in the woods: some are real, some are dead ends, and some just lead you around and around to nowhere.
There’s another drawback to just “thinking” about what I want: I’m noticing that I spend too little of my thought-life in the present. Particularly with the resolutions I’m not successful with, the ones that are more difficult for me motivation-wise. I spend most of my time in “if only”. If only I had stuck with my healthy eating in April, where would I be now? I’d feel so much better; I’d weigh less; I’d be happier with myself and with my body. If only I had kept strictly to my budget, I’d have more money in the bank, I’d be this much closer to paying off that last credit card.
If I’m not thinking about the past, then I’m “could-ing” myself into the future. By this time next year, I could have this much money in the bank. By this time next year, I could be at this weight. The thing is, when I’m concentrating on the “if only’s”, I am less happy, less motivated, and it’s even harder for me to keep going. Because I’m concentrating on something negative, on what I didn’t do or what I wish I had done. Those thoughts and feelings hold me back as much as anything else, because they mire me in my failures.
I fully believe in visualizing yourself attaining your goals, but if all you’re doing is planning and thinking about the future, then the present slips beneath you unnoticed. All your excitement and your hope is focused on some vague point down the road. It seems to me that it would benefit my journey more if my excitement and my hope were centered around my next step. Anything that I can do to make my next step easier and more natural, then that will make my end goal that much more possible to achieve.
At this point I’m just going to keep plodding away. I know I’ll continue at least three of my resolutions into 2013, and I’ll use the experience I’ve gained so far to build on next year. I can’t continue just “thinking” about what I want to do – or should do, or might do, or will do in the future. So, I’ll spend the last months of this year putting together a real set of goals: not just a final destination, but the steps I’ll take to get there. No more wandering down forest paths – I’m going to make myself a map. That way, I’ll know where I’m going, I can accurately measure my accomplishments, and I can focus on the steps I’m taking RIGHT NOW .
♦
Items of Interest:
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steadily skipping stones 