The Meanderings My Mind Takes

This will probably be a post where you think I have multiple personality disorder.  Sorry.  I haven't blogged in days, thanks to my scheduled postings.  When that lag happens, my mind gets backed up with random thoughts that for some reason I feel compelled to share. 

~ I still love space heaters.  In the winter, I have the perfect excuse to have them on with it being justifiably cold.  The comforting hum, the comforting warmth emanating from them.  I'm soooo glad one sits on my nightstand, so I can easily turn it on during the night when I get cold.  It costs about 10 cents per hour to run on the "high" setting and 5 cents an hour to run on the "low" setting based on my calculations per the kilowatt charge on our electric bill.  A worthy 10 cents in my estimation.  Shut up, I know I'm an uber nerd who would calculate that!  That's why you love me (looking at husband).  I may technically be an ISFJ personality, but there are glimmers of an N instead of an F occasionally.

~ My aunt from California is in town this weekend.  It took Miss J a few hours to warm up to her, like she takes with everyone.  See, playdates with her are kind of useless.  Playdates are about 2 hours, and that's the time it takes for her to get acclimated.  After you get over that 2 hour hump, my dear one becomes engaging, talkative, and actually charming.  It's odd to see her not speak a single word for two hours.  Then suddenly a switch activates after two hours, and she becomes a complete chatterbox.  She even let us leave her in the basement with my aunt for about an hour.  My aunt will be here until Monday night, and we'll be spending time with her on Sunday afternoon and evening.  Must remember to take my camera to my mom's house to take pictures.  Ah, Brown Flowers (my mom's 70s couch) will likely make many appearances.  :(

~ My aunt loved the house.  I forget about what a lovely job I do complaining about it, which means people think it's about to fall down.  People tend to be taken aback by it when they actually see how freaking huge it is and the view of the water from every room.  It WAS a clear day, you could see the Seattle skyline, and sailboats and a huge ship sailed by while she was here, so it was fairly picture perfect to look out upon.  (Except for the frigid temperatures)

~ I need to operate by "to do" lists.  Really, they keep me on track.  I did so well on Friday night just checking things off.  Saturday with my aunt in town not much got done.  Hopefully this morning we'll be able to check a few things off before we go to my mom's.  It's therapeutic to stay on top of that.  This past week I got 0 done after work, so I just felt so unbelievably behind going into the weekend.  Developing my "to do" list on Friday and then spending quite a bit of time just working through it really did help mentally.  I'm almost feeling caught up on home stuff.

~ I did exercise most nights this past week.  I got some exercise equipment, and it's been awesome to take some time to devote to that.  As we all know, there's only so much time in the day, and my home chores suffered this past week.  It really is hard to find the balance between chores, exercise, reading, hobbies, blogging, a toddler, and a husband.  I can maybe devote time to three of those, but it's dang near impossible to do justice to all of those every week.

~ I got some fuzzy socks on Black Friday for a great price.  Those super soft socks that are really warm and almost tickle your feet continuously.  I've been addicted to them. I even wore them to work one day!   Ha ha, I had on fuzzy socks I got in black so no one can tell!!!!

~ The amount of junk e-mail I get is insane.  There's been a huge uptick recently.  Boo.

~ I think my mind is adequately purged now.  Now to what I wanted to talk about.

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Back to Thirteen Reasons Why, my new favorite book.  I've been talking about this book intermittently now for months in my hope that more people will read it.  The theme of the book is teenage suicide, so it isn't the happiest book in the world.  You can probably imagine that I'm not the one to read romance books with happy endings.  Yeah, the sappy stuff isn't my cup o' tea.  I do like dark books with a thought-provoking ending.  It's just not realistic to always have a happy ending.  Sure, it makes the reader feel more satisfied, but again it's not realistic for things to end happily all the time.  If I ever write a book, it's not going to have that saccharine sweet happy ending.  That's not life, people. Not sure where my bitterness comes from since my life is pretty darn good compared to most.  Maybe it's not bitterness exactly, or even pessimism, but it's a sense that nothing can ever be perfect no matter how much you try.  Perfection is an illusion.  It seems like people shove the perfection standard in people's faces from a young age (a "perfect" childhood, a "perfect" marriage, a "perfect" job, a "perfect" child), and people feel worthless and unsatisfied when they can't attain that picture perfection that is held as the standard in book endings.  I'm just gonna tell you that perfection doesn't exist to begin with, so if you're aiming for perfection with regard to human relations, you just ain't ever gonna get there.  The earlier in your life you figure that out, I think the happier you can be long-term.

See, I digress.  Meandering thoughts are not good for me.

One of the key points in Thirteen Reasons Why is that you can never realize the impact on what you do to other people unless you're extremely mindful.  You make an offhand comment or do something stupid, but you don't know what the other person has already experienced in his/her life and how the person will respond to the action.  This happens all the time with everyone.  But in the realm of teenagers, those little things can really add up.  And gossip is so rampant in that age group.  As adults, most people have developed coping mechanisms over time.  Plus, I don't think adults are as rude to each other as teenagers can be.

In a teenager's world, what would be little things to most adults are HUGE for teenagers.  Add in the lack of maturity and self-centeredness, and it's a recipe for disaster.  I think this book is really good for teenagers because it illustrates how those "little" things can indeed add up, and the message it gives to teenagers is to really think about how others can interpret what seems like little things at the time but really can be much more to someone else.

Like most teenagers, I was subject to rumors, speculation, and gossip.  Probably the big one in school was when Paul tried to strangle me at school and then followed it up with a weapon.  He was dragged off and expelled.  The whole school was buzzing why a senior tried to strangle a sophomore in the middle of the hall.  I hate attention, and after that I had everyone (or so it felt) looking at me and speculating what the story was.  Thank goodness the school year ended about two weeks later, and that's when I left to go to community college after that.  Had I gone back to high school as a junior, I'm sure everyone would have forgotten over the summer intellectually, but it felt like people never would forget from my perspective at the time.  Sure, I knew what happened between Paul and me, which built up over months of interactions only at lunchtime where he would ask me out and I would say no, but the rest of the school thought the premise was much more juicy.

So, again, it's a great book, and I recommend that you read it.