A Friend's Blog

To the one person who may be reading this, I have been asked to share the link to a very dear friend's blog. She is a much better writer than I am, and certainly deserves the shoutout, so take a look and pass the link along yourself if you like what you see!

Can I Skip It?

I have never felt more like skipping my birthday for a year than I do now. I simply have no idea what to do for it, whether to have a party for myself, to go off on some wild adventure, to stay at home and do nothing . . . ? I don't even want cake and ice cream! It is odd. What do you do when the prospect of a birthday no longer seems exciting and fun?

Redesign

One good reason to put off redesigning your blog is that they come up with better and better new free templates you can use. So that is what I have done. And now, magically, you can see the full picture of me in the Cotswalds, which before was just a segment of the beautiful hills and sheep. Let it be noted, however, that I no longer wear my glasses, because they are broken. I am either sight-ful, with contacts, or battily blind without them.

Climbing Is Cheery

Recently, I've been in the process of taking up climbing (as in, rock climbing, only right now it's in the form of bouldering at the gym, because I have no partner yet), and there are two main things I've picked up so far. First, climbing is cheery! Yesterday at the gym, as I was scratching my head at the boulder wall, and putting together one or two moves, mostly the wrong ones, this kid came in, strapped on his shoes, and began climbing each wall in turn. Every time he got off, whether he had sent it (that is, completed the wall by grabbing the top) or not, he'd jump off and land with a big smile on his face. That, I think, is what climbing is all about. And, coincidentally, that is when I decided I could do the wall that I had been staring at, after he nimbly walked up it. So I sent it too. :)

Second, climbers are smart. If it comes to a thing you do for the love of it, you try to do it the best way possible. So it seems to me that a lot of climbing involves thinking yourself through the process--thinking confidently and quietly, the same way you are going to climb it. And this is precisely where I fall down. I am used to taking the mental shortcut, if I can find it. There are no shortcuts in climbing. You think through all of it or none of it. Even if you don't realize you are thinking, you have to be thinking. Because it's the muscle-memory and the spatial reasoning working together--that is what the great climbers can do.

A third thing I could mention, which doesn't even bear mentioning, is conditioning. You have to be very strong, physically. This is something that pertains to the malleability of our bodies, though, so I don't find it to be a big issue. If I keep doing it, I'll be conditioned for it, right? The attitude and the thought process are the more valuable lessons.

I'll Sit and Cry

Only when they make me!

Change

I was just watching the 60 Minutes interview with Archbishop Dolan and he was talking about how people shouldn't focus on the Church's rules and restrictions but instead receive her rich heritage with joy and gratitude. His entire face lit up as he said this. In my case, none of the Church's doctrines or moral teachings are a challenge to me in the sense that I have difficulty believing or obeying (for the most part, anyway) in my day to day life. On the other hand, what I'd want to change is how long it takes God to do some leeeetle particular vocational things I'd like to happen around, say, NOW. I CAN'T do what I want, I'm limited by God's not opening this or that door . . . wait, what does this sound like? Yes, you got it: it's simple dissent! Instead of complaining--which, incidentally, I'm supposed to have given up for Lent--I need to be grateful for God's immense gifts in my life. Instead of asking for change in the circumstances of my life, I need to ask for a change of heart.

Made-Up Sayings

At some point when I was young, my dad told me, "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you; cry and you all get wet." Upon reflection, this saying epitomizes our shared optimist philosophy: it's better to laugh so that everyone can have a good time, but at least if you cry you all get wet and that becomes funny too! Unfortunately, thanks to the powers of Google, I just discovered that this saying, which I took to be a wise dictum handed on through the ages, is actually a bastardization of a couple lines of a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. The actual lines are "Laugh, and the world laughs with you; / Weep, and you weep alone."

So now I'm chagrined, because I just repeated what I thought was a real saying to my coworkers, only to have them all aver that they had never heard that before. I'm chagrined because I should have expected this from my dad, who also repeated many a line from The Far Side or Deep Thoughts (by Jack Handy) to me as if they were wise sayings. (Coincidentally, my youngest sister has a memory store full of Jack Handy quotes, which she can pull out on any occasion.) And I am chagrined because it's a rainy day and now I have a depressing quote on my hands. Weep and you weep alone . . . no way! :-)