Coming to My Senses

What I'm reading...

What I'm smelling...(it's insanely seductive)

What I'm drinking...

High on this thing called 

autumn.

Interludes

The season of limbo.  The time of year that the calendar pages seem to flip in slow motion.  

Historically, once March arrives in the middle/south, we can say goodbye to the foreshadowing meridian of winter’s clutches.   We begin getting sporadic, unexpected teases from the sun, that vixen of hope, promising warmer, longer, laughter-filled days.   

In the last three years or so, I seem more and more anxious to leave behind the dark and colorless cold that strips me of resolve and optimism.  Should I blame it on this "midlife" stage of my life?  Can I simply attribute it to a number on my timeline?  And should I expect it to worsen with every year?  Argh!  Please, say it ain't so.  I can hardly bear to think about it and what it does to me.  I’ve evolved into a lifeless killjoy to the point that I hardly recognize myself anymore.

Who are you these days?  Do I know you?  

Just what's up with you anyway?  

Oh -- Excuse me while I take this call ... (She's no good for you, T, run for your life!)

Oh, do get a grip.  So many countless blessings.  Enough to fill a single-spaced spiral notebook … or maybe a few?  Far too many to dwell (and rot) on the smog of monotony.

So to dodge it, I do what works best.  I find distractions.  Focusing my mind on the positive, the productive, the entertaining, the engaging.  Time will pass far more quickly this way.   I wake reluctantly to my alarm this morning, telling myself I needed sleep more than the gym.  I do that a lot. But I just kept moving, one foot in front of the other, then coffee, then the cold morning air jarring my sluggish senses into motion. And sure enough, by twelve minutes into cardio on the elliptical, I was putting on my training gloves, ready to burn it with the weights.  Leg Day.  And I was even okay with THAT!  

After getting ready for work, I look outside and see that I'll need an umbrella as I make my way to the car for the morning commute.  I begin the drive, dreading the day, pissed that it's cold and gray and ugly and lifeless looking out there -- AGAIN -- wishing I could turn around, go home, and crawl back into bed.  But rather than focusing on the sleet and rain on my commute, the morons clogging up the left lane, I cranked up the volume knob and begin singing -- out-singing -- with Dido’s “Thank You.”  Great song!  Oh, isn't music one of the BEST therapists?  And then another song, and another, and then I’m whizzing past yet another moron, passing him in his land yacht on the right, and whipping back around him before taking the last left and into my parking building.  Excuse me, biscuit-eatin', goin-nowhere-in-particular-today cruiser!  (Being diplomatic with my word choice here.)  Coming through. 

Done.  I made it.  See, life is still good.

And suddenly it’s mid morning.  I’m sitting at my desk, bored, caught up with work, and no docket for the day.  My stomach begins to growl.  NO, I said to myself emphatically, YOU’RE NOT HUNGRY ALREADY.  YOU WILL NOT EAT … NOT YET.  MOVE ALONG!  And there it goes, my mind begins to roam, heading in directions that it doesn’t need to go.  

Disengage the crap, T.  Let go of the mind fog.  

  

And that’s when I grabbed my Kindle, waiting to be escorted to THAT OTHER PLACE I so desperately needed to go today.

  

So I’ve been reading this rather boring book on my Kindle, The Unimaginable.  I chose it because its description snared me and because it got rather good reviews.  I love that my Kindle gives me that little percentage meter at the bottom of the display, allowing me to see how far I’ve progressed.  Ironically, I’d almost given up on this book several times.  Typcially if it doesn’t grab me by the third chapter (or before), I ditch it.   

I’m not completely sure why I've stayed so long this time.  It wasn’t until I hit the 50%+ that I became engrossed -- the kind of engrossed where you forget where you are, what day it is, all stimulus blocked, all sights, sounds, smells temporarily stifled.  All that you're aware of  is the next word on the page, the next sentence, the next paragraph.  Give it to me!  Keep it coming.  I’m hooked.

So.  The three main characters have found themselves in a very dangerous predicament, encountering unspeakable terrors by a band of pirates on their leisure passage across the Indian Ocean.  "Unspeakable terrors."  I’ve finally hit the good stuff.  And I read on because there is something about Jessica, the main character, that resonates with me.  A description of the book reads:  “After twenty-eight years of playing by the rules,” referring to Jessica.  And so she's successfully escaped from the ordinary … but now look where it’s landed her?  In one dangerous and deadly terror-filled mess.

And I love that Kindle allows me to highlight and create notes:

Jessica:  “…but I always felt out of place, like I was just biding my time, waiting to be transported somewhere else where people wouldn’t roll their eyes at my curiosity and desire [to see more, do more, meet new people, learn new things] … but I was a practical girl so I learned to curb my enthusiasm, fly under life’s radar, and wait until the time was right to follow my dreams instead of everyone else’s…happy vs. comfortable…in the end I think I was running to something rather than running away from it…”

 

Yeah, I found myself whispering silently to myself as I read those words.  

I get that.

And so I read on, waiting for their inevitable rescue...

waiting for the main guy and Jessica to fall in love and live happily ever after...  

Yeah, yeah, yeah...Way too predictable.

But I've gotten this far, and I'm in it for the long haul.  

Besides, before I know it I’ll awaken from this dormant interlude and it will be the first day of spring

Sh*t My Dad Says

I began reading this book while vacationing on Marco Island.  I would flip back and forth from the carnal rollicking of Bared To You to the funny and flippant Shit My Dad Says.   (All that "extra" heat in the Florida sun necessitated a lighter escape to my senses.)

"After being dumped by his longtime girlfriend, 

twenty-eight-year-old Justin Halpern found himself living at home 

with his seventy-three-year-old dad. 

Sam Halpern, who is "like Socrates, but angrier, and with worse hair," 

has never minced words, and when Justin moved back home, 

he began to record all the ridiculous things his dad said to him..."

I had an uncle like Sam Halpern.  Uncle Milbert.  He's passed on now.  Seemingly always harboring a grumpy disposition, we'd grown used to his swearing and outbursts, his candid and colorful cracks at life while paying no mind to present company, for there was never an inhibited bone in his body.  We  never knew quite what to say in response to his conniptions, so we usually tried to stay calm and unaffected, pretending that we didn't hear him, or if we did hear him, we were taking no position on the subject.  It was an awkward time of silence serving to underscore the honesty of his perspective.  Our family loves retelling stories about Uncle Milbert.

This book was a goldmine of flashbacks for me.  What a funny read, my basking in the sun punctuated with laugh after laugh.  Gotta love this guy's honesty.  I'm blogging only a few of my favorites from the book.

    One day I was on a walk with him and my dog, Angus, who was sniffing around in a bush outside my neighbor’s house.  My dad turned to me and said, “Look at the dog’s asshole.”

    “What?  Why?”

    “You can tell by the dilation of his asshole that he’s going to shit soon.  See.  There it goes.” 

    It was at that moment as my dog emptied his bowels in my neighbor’s yard and my dad stood there proudly watching his prediction come true, that I realized how wise, even prophetic, he really is.

"Do people your age know how to comb their hair? It looks like two squirrels crawled on their heads and started fucking."

~~~

On Toilet Training

“You are four years old.  You have to shit in the toilet.  This is not one of those negotiations where we’ll go back and forth and find a middle ground.  This ends with you shitting in a toilet.”

~~~

“You say you’re sick, huh? Well, it looks like you’ve come down with a case of bullshit.” 

~~~

On the Baseball

Steroids Scandall

“People are surprised Mark McGwire did steroids?  Look at 

him!  He looks like they should

 have him in a stall on display at the fair with some poor son of a bitch cleaning up his shit!”

I give it a 10.

My Book Review: Bared To You

The book I had begun reading just before leaving on vacation, "Bared To You," a Crossfire novel, by Sylvia Day...

Waste of time.

Darn.  I wanted to be dazzled.

The plot was woefully lacking.

Redundant.  Think pushing the REWIND button over and over again while watching a movie.  Sex, sex and more sex.  Really steamy, hot sex.

Okay.  Whatever.  Not that really good sex isn't a wonderful thing.  Of course it is.  But there's more to a "good book" than just "good sex."

No plot.  No ah-ha moment, no crescendo.  No oh-wow-this-speaks-to-me moments.  At times I even found the content to be somewhat cheesy.  At times creepy?  Maybe even a tad disturbing and depressing.

In fact, it is apparently one in a series of more no-plot-just-good-sex books.  

The hopeless romantic in me will not budge:  If it had been a great romance with a juicy, substantive plot AND GOOD SEX, now THAT would do it for me.

Yes, yes, YES!  (Play on words!)

I'll give it a ... 2?

Bared To You

I've been reading this book since just before leaving on vacation.*  I can't decide how I feel about it.  My overall opinion?  Eh.

But what does that say about ME?  Mercy.  Yikes.

(* I've been reading three books at once, in fact.  That should say something about my feelings on THIS book, that I can't finish it before starting another!)

Maybe it's my age that keeps me from connecting with the characters and the plot.  (But in retrospect, I know how I am...I'm not sure I would have connected with them even when I was much younger!)  Or maybe I'm too unyielding.  Boring.  Too tightly wrapped.  

(sigh)

I'd love to know what this character Gideon looks like.  I see him in my mind's eye.  I think this is what keeps me going back for more.  Delicious.

This isn't my idea of true love.  But then, this isn't ABOUT true love.  It's about really good sex. 

I'm pretty naive at times.  But in defense of self, there are far worse things to be. 

I will read on.  I want to know how it ends.  And then I'll write my OWN review...for what THAT'S worth.

The Traveler's Gift

I recently just finished reading a book loaned to me by a friend,

  "The Traveler's Gift," 

by Andy Andrews.

"A Little Treasure of Wisdom for Life."

This is a must read.

Everyone should read this book.  

Everyone. 

Just do it.

I want to buy a copy for everyone I know 

and insist that they read it.

I give it a:

One of the "inside cover" reviews:

I have already decided that I'm buying each of my sons a copy of this book.  And it will be on my list for "hard to buy for people."  You just can't lose with this one.