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I do not like pitch darkness. I sleep with a light on somewhere down the hall and leave shades open to catch early sunlight. But tonight I awoke to absolute darkness and a familiar if slowly recognized noise. And through my lonesome experience in the wee hours of the morning, I’ve come to value the tools that are surprisingly useful when the lights go out. Continue reading
Did you ever browse an online gallery of great stuff and notice that everything you love (and/or can afford) is “On Hold” or “Sold”? This happened to me a million times when I was “Windows-shopping” at Fab.com as a means of procrastinating on my tax preparation. Liking what everyone else likes is so vanilla, it’s liking Pat Boone, the Partridge Family, or Justin Bieber, Readers Digest, USA Today and “Fifty Shades of Grey” (without recognizing that it’s poorly written). It’s Pringles, cheese in a can and Pop Tarts.
Birds of a Feather All Turn Right
And there I was scrolling through a hundred quilts and only six appealed to me, leading me to believe I had supremely discriminating taste, except that every one of the six antique Indian quilts made of recycled saris that caught my eye had caught someone else’s before mine. When this happens over and over again, it begins to make you feel positively mundane. As humans, we yearn to be recognized as special little snowflakes. And yet life and shopping kept reminding me of my place among the masses.
So as a public service, I am offering you all a chance to release your inner rebel. Prove you’re just a little different by commenting en masse on this post. What do you love that most people hate? Okay, “hate” is a strong word for veggies and Stooges , but I am a woman of passion and hyperbole, and I encourage those traits in others, but for you with delicate sensibilities I will rephrase the question. What do you love that others despise, dislike, dismiss or dismay about?
Here are the first eight that fluttered into my unique mind.
Just A Dusting
1. Shoveling Snow (without a snowblower, we’re talking about using a shovel and your back, in cold, inhospitable New England weather, even in March when we should be so over the white stuff)
2. Brussel Sprouts, Beets, Broccoli (This bad bunch of veggies just taste good to me. I especially can’t explain why I like beets, when they taste so much like dirt, but I do.)
Flower most dandy
3. Dandelions (If you look at them with fresh eyes; you’ll see that they really are very pretty. You can cover my yard, anyday. I wrote a whole blog homage to this flower. http://wp.me/p13Md6-rW )
Shemp and those other two Stooges
Stooges photo is not property of Brain4Rent and was found uncredited on http://www.forcesofgeek.com/2012/04/slapstick-legacy-of-three-stooges.html
4. Shemp of The Three Stooges (Added bonus, he shared a hairdo with my grandfather at age 20). Enjoy a youtube clip of his comedic genius. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veFlhmnZybc
Renters always like my apt’s shiny clean bathroom
5. Cleaning my own bathroom (There are so many “AHA” moments of instant gratification throughout the process: that sparkly white porcelain, the aroma of bleach that I equate with dead germs, a mirror devoid of toothpaste speckles. What’s not to love?)
Fluffy & flexible
6. Squirrels (They can dig in my garden, empty my birdfeeder, rummage through my trash, as long as they entertain me with their acrobatic antics. Plus they are cute and inquisitive.)
Day After Christmas
7. Taking Down the Christmas Tree (I wrote a blog on the dangers of Christmas trees that basically sums up my sentiment http://wp.me/p13Md6-nX )
and, finally,
8. When I am Proven Right…except maybe in this instance because if I convince you all that these are in fact good things, my uniqueness quotient deteriorates significantly, and I’ll get all flocked up, again.
To see if we all like the same quilts, check out this link: http://fab.com/sale/20185/
Posted in brain4rent, branding, humor, ideas, Lists, photography
Tagged birds, Brussel Sprouts, dandelions, fab.com, flock, Humor, originality, Shemp, Shoveling Snow, special snowflake, Squirrels, the masses, unique personality, uniqueness
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April offers us poetry month and the first flower flash mob Continue reading
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Have you lived through the experience of giving up on a dream? If so, how/when did you decide to pull the plug, to resort to Plan B, to fall back on the safety net? And, do you regret that choice? Continue reading
Posted from Greater Boston April 16, 2013. When sleep wasn’t an option, as night edged toward morn, the truth found its way into my heart and my head. I’d kept it at bay with constant social media updates of who’d been found, how to get info, that cell phones and airspace around Boston were denied, and then an impromptu ice cream run with Leisa. But at 3 am I awoke and started the insomniacs list of chores. The rabbits were fed and cages cleaned, litter boxes changed, the carpet swept of hay (no vacuums allowed in quiet mode) and the bathroom sink and faucet polished to shiny. I’d restored order to my house. And then the stillness of the night accosted my reserve. With nothing left to occupy my mind and hands, the tears that had been stalled by my busy-ness pumped their way into my eyes and started a slow salty track down my tired face. The world was changed again and I was helpless in the face of its vagaries.
The day’s story for me unfolded its first devastating petal on Twitter, “two explosions at the Boston Marathon”. My husband, home sick, needed sleep more than news and it was probably one of those manhole cover deals anyway. So I scoured the news sites and channels for several minutes before the confirming stories (undoubtedly being vetted first) started filtering in. Time to wake up Jon. My husband and I shared updates, sitting in info central (my office) comparing stories and checking out source reliability with two cell phones, one laptop, one tablet and one TV flipping from site to site and station to station. Anyone I knew who’d been at the Marathon was safe, but that was small consolation to the 100+ who’d been injured, or worse. My relief turned to guilt every time I was tempted to say, “Thank God, at least so and so is safe.” As if that person was more deserving of safety based merely on his or her connection to my life.
After dinner I sought out the distraction of mindless television, ”Dancing With the Stars” shifted to a different station so non-stop news updates would not be interrupted. But a continuous scroll at the bottom of the screen offered casualty count updates and locals, Tom Bergeron and Aly Raisman, expressed their heartfelt support, so it wasn’t as mindless as I’d hoped. Eventually emotional exhaustion overwhelmed my staring eyes, and closed them to the chaos of the day.
And then it was 3 a.m. and I was up again to face reality. By 3:30 am, with tears plopping on the thick white fur of my resting bunny, the contempt was rising. The contempt for humans, for this mess of the world, for the futility of all good things. I headed back to the computer and FaceBook. And ultimately, post by post, my “friends” helped me find perspective.
The Guinea Pig Whisperer of MSPCA Nevins Farm Uli Thomann elicited an unexpected smile and reinforced my initial belief that animals are better behaved than humans with one of his posts. And so, the conversion of my hardening heart began.
Guinea Pig Zone posted by Uli Thomann
Then George Takei’s share of the Fred Rogers quote and BISH editorial cartoon started the process of devilifying humanity.
Fred Rogers Quote, Bish Cartoon shared by George Takei
I remembered one of the first international supportive tweets that I read came from Darrell Dexter Premier of Nova Scotia, the province that supplies the giant Boston Christmas tree every year, and saw another Uli Thomann FB post that shared the NYC Light Brigade message from Brooklyn, NY.
NYC Light Brigade post shared by Uli Thomann
Nancy Irvine’s shared the belief that all the world is one.
One Love One Heart One Vision shared by Nancy Irvine
Julie Kautz Mills shared the wisdom of Gandhi.
Gandhi quote, Livin3.com image shared by Julie Kautz Mills
My husband Jonathan Campbell responded eloquently to his niece when she asked “What’s the matter with the world?”
“What I told someone else earlier, what is RIGHT with the world is the number of people who ran towards the blast to help. What is RIGHT with the world are the marathon runners who continued on to the hospital to offer to give blood.
Amidst the momentary mists of misery and evil, there was faithfulness and sacrificial love for strangers in peril.
” The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. ”
John 1:5”
And finally Mark Harry Harding re-posted the words of Martin Luther King Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. quote and image shared by Mark Harry Harding
And I realized I was not powerless to the vagaries. I, no, we all, have our roles to play in making this a better world. It’s 4:55 right now and a few birds have started tweeting their own messages of the day. And, I am headed to bed because if I am going to get my part right, I need some sleep. I have work to do. A new day is coming.
Peace.
©2013 by Alison Colby-Campbell
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It is entirely possible that we do not give our children the best of everything because we love them, but rather we love them because we gave them everything. Continue reading
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My junk drawer is a visual masterpiece, a virtual kaleidoscope with colors and shapes shifting throughout my search for scissors…ah, yes, that’s what I’d been looking for. Continue reading
