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 |   Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland |
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Reflections and ruminations from a modern day Alice - Life is Wonderland  Welcome to the place were I chronicle my own falls down dark holes and adventures chasing white rabbits! Come on In, Take a Bite, You Never Know What You May Find... "Curiouser and curiouser." Alice in Wonderland    |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 4th Would you rather be surprised or surprise someone else? Write about it! I am 100% Type A, and admittedly, a control freak of almost epic proportions. I would much rather be in charge of surprising someone else than being the one of the receiving end. Truth be told, I don't really like surprises. I am that person who has a plan B, and C and D...so allowing myself to be surprised by a scenario I didn't see coming, one that I couldn't plan for...well that sounds pretty awful to me. I realize that makes me sound pretty dry and drab. I'm not. I like adventure and excitement. I just also like to have an idea of what I am walking into in case things go horribly wrong. For example, I would be all game for visiting Jurassic Park, but I would sure as shit would have a backup for my backup satellite phone with a private chopper pilot on speed dial. We all know, the people who fail to prepare are the very first to find themselves dino-chow. I'm also pretty certain that I would easily become suspicious of someone trying to surprise me. It would take a lot of deception on their part I think. I don't know anyone in my circle who could pull the wool completely over my eyes honestly. My husband is horrible at keeping a secret and my daughter takes a certain glee in dropping really big, unnecessary specific hints herself. I can usually see what the two of them are cooking up like a freight train bearing down the track. Subtle diversions and pointed misdirection though....those skills fall squarely in my wheelhouse. Last summer our family bought my daughter a horse, one she had been taking lessons on that suddenly became available. We managed to hide the secret from her. Our deception going so far as making her believe that she was helping to train him for another special little girl who was coming after her lesson to pick him up. It was a cruelty that lasted only seconds though. Before she could shed a tear at his imminent departure from her life, we walked him into the arena. He was shining bright from a bath and my sister had braided his mane and tail. We'd draped him with with flowers and ribbons. She looked confused to find us all there. Then we told her that she was the special little girl and that the family had bought Roo for her very own. He wasn't leaving. In fact, he was coming home with her to her Aunt's farm that very afternoon. She was stunned into silence, taking more than a few moments to have it all register before her eyes filled with a happy tears and she threw her arms around his big brown head. Best. Surprise. Ever. My sister's husband takes the cake on surprises though. She went away for a seminar and while she was gone, he bought her a donkey on Craigslist. I listened anxiously as he told me about what a "steal" he was. I wasn't sure my sister would like coming home to another animal, especially one that had never been vetted or handled and still had all his "man bits". She WAS surprised. The day she came home my cell phone rang and I picked it up only to hear her say, "What the FUCK is in my barn?!" Two weeks of misery quarantine and one gelding surgery later, Sebastian had managed to find his way into her heart. He is now the coolest barnyard resident and her husband has officially dodged the bullet with his very high risk surprise. |
| 30 Day Blogging challenge PROMPT November 3rd Write about a time when you waited a long time for something. Did you end up getting what you wanted? Was it worth it? I wish I had gotten my crap together this weekend and been able to react to this prompt on Sunday because it would have been completely appropriate. As a mother of a 9 year old, I feel like I wait a long time for just about everything these days. My daughter can move with an uncanny slowness that never ceases to amaze me. As a matter of fact, the more pressed for time I am, she can actually slow her motion skills down to a barely perceptible state of motion. This past Sunday for example, I waited twenty minutes for her to put on her soccer socks and cleats...twenty minutes...how is that even humanly possible? Seriously though, before my daughter - at the time when I only waited for things I truly wanted - I would have to say the longest I ever waited for something was my flight to New Zealand. I was 17 and super excited to embark on my first overseas adventure. The flight was endless. I remember taking Dramamine to knock myself out, only to find upon waking up, that I had just as many flight hours remaining. With the time change, the flight basically was the equivalent of being in the air for 24 hours....it was horrifically tedious. Was it worth it? Yes. A million times, yes. We landed in Auckland, NZ to embark on the first leg of a three week tour that would take us science delegates to amazing places and expose us to one in a lifetime experiences. I spent a week living in a rustic cabin on Kangaroo Island. I visited Victoria, Australia and bush walked in the Outback with a rope tied around my waste and found myself completely disoriented inside of two minutes. I ended the trip with a dive on the Great Barrier Reef, which at the time was the culmination of all my dreams. |
| 30 Day Blogging Challenge PROMPT November 2nd Write about jouska. From Psychology Today, jouska is defined as “a hypothetical conversation that you play out over and over in your head. For example, replaying an argument in your head where you say all the right things and “win” the argument, or practicing asking your boss for a raise and playing out his or her responses and your comebacks.” Playing catch-up today after a weekend storm knocked out power in our town all day Friday. It is not the way I wanted to start off the challenge by epically failing to keep up the very first weekend  I have such conversations all the time. I call them, "the things I'd rather be saying" conversations, and they typically involved me being brutally honest with my siblings, my boss and my husband. In these conversations I am much more articulate and witty and my words tend to pack more of bite than they would normally. It is these little conversations that keep me sane sometimes I think. It is like getting to be the best version of yourself rather than the polite, subdued person we are forced to be by the constraints of society or by the guidelines of courtesy. |
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