A to Z reflections

Who knew there were so many gerbil blogs? Or born again Christian blogs? Ok, so I knew there were lots of the latter (day saints) but I didn't realize so many blogs were completely devoted to God and furry rodents. Not that they have anything in common – I'm sure God doesn't spend his days eating rabbit pellets and running on a wheel – what? You think I'm a complete heathen? Sheesh.

My point is I was bowled over by how many special interest blogs there are in the world: God, gerbils, guinea pigs, diseases, art, writing (yes, writing is a disease). You name it and I found it in my quest to visit as many A to Z Challenge blogs as possible during the month of April. When the dust settled there was 1,719 blogs taking part in the challenge and despite a serious attempt to get around and say howdy, I only managed to visit 410. "Only."

There were some people who ploughed through a lot more. I don't know where they found the time or the stamina. Alex J. Cavanaugh, the dearly beloved Alex J. Cavanaugh, was EVERYWHERE. He was so busy spreading love dust through the blogosphere that I swear that man was hopped up on bennies and espresso.  Either that or he's a zombie or a vampire or some other critter that never needs sleep. (Gerbils don't sleep much... not that I'm saying Alex is a gerbil, but seriously, have you ever seen a close-up photo of his whiskers face? Or his paws hands?)

While the gerbil blogs weren't MY cup of tea, I'm sure gerbil lovers were delighted to find those blogs during the challenge. That's what it's all about, isn't it? Find other bloggers who ARE your cup of tea. People who write like you do, who think like you do – or even if they aren't anything at all like you, they're funny enough, or they're wise enough, or whatever enough to make you want to pull up a chair and stay for a prolonged visit. I found many, many bloggers just like this. I wanted to say, "Where have you been all my life?" but I thought they might have me arrested. Still, I'm a happy new stalker for many of them. That's the best part of A to Z – meeting new people. Socializing like a big old butterfly.

If I liked a blog at all, I gave them a follow. First off, following is the only way I'll find them again. And hey, everyone likes getting new followers – it doesn't cost me a darn thing to give someone a new follow so why wouldn't I do it? I was absolutely thrilled by how my own followers increased during the challenge. I went from 260-something to 398. In the last week my followers crested the 400 mark. Don't think for a delirious moment that I wasn't dancing around the kitchen! It wasn't long ago that I started a blog late one night, thinking that no one else was reading my pathetic bleatings. Then one magical day I got a comment – I just about fell over with joy! Then I got a FOLLOWER! Wooooooot!!! I appreciate each and every person who takes their precious time to read my drivel and to comment on it. (Hugs to you all.)

One of the things I did find difficult was visiting all my "regular" favourites during the challenge. I simply didn't have enough time in the day to get around to see everybody and I apologize to my blogging friends for being absent during April.

Overall, I think the challenge has made me a better blogger. There's more to blogging than just writing a post and waiting to see who reads it. Yes, you have to strive to produce creative, interesting posts but you should also:

1. Respond to people's comments. If they can take time to comment on your blog, you should acknowledge them.

2. Read and comment on their blogs. Follow them, if you aren't already.

3. Support other bloggers any way you can. If I find something I love, I'll mention it on Facebook. Why not spread some joy?

I mean, really, why not?

:)

Still Alice

Just now I finished reading Still Alice by Lisa Genova and it's freaking me out. I feel like I have Alzheimer's myself, like I'm losing my memory, like I've spent the afternoon drowning in a thick soup.

The book is fantastic. A page turner. You know what's going to happen to this woman, this Alice, a Harvard professor, a top of the line brainiac, who gets early onset Alzheimer's. You know it's not going to end well. You know you're gonna sucked into the miasma that becomes her life. You know that, but you have to find out what happens anyway so you skip heavy-hearted through the pages, hoping for a miracle you know darned well isn't going to happen.

I don't have Alzheimer's. Gawd, I don't think so. But my memory is nothing like it used to be and it wasn't great to begin with. Dave is constantly saying, "Don't you remember? I told you such-and-such yesterday," but I have no idea what he's talking about. Reading Genova's book exacerbated my own faulty memory problems and their surrounding anxiety. Having just finished the final page, I could swear I am still climbing to the top of a deep, dark, slippery well.

But it was on sale ...

I've been out of laundry detergent for a WEEK. As anyone who wears clothes knows, that's enough of a backlog of dirty socks and underwear to set-dress for Hoarders. I was just too darned busy to get to the store and buy soap, you know? So last night the whole family went to Wal-mart – I know, big-time excitement. Part Ringling Brothers, part You Tube, a trip to Scrawl-mart is about as close to Disneyland as it gets in this house.

That bargain-seeking fever hit us as soon as we walked through the front doors and into the loving arms of the blue vested, blue haired, arthritis-adled Wal-nuts greeter. I snatched the flyer from her trembling fingers and almost knocked her down in my rush to the Hoover Dam sized display of Gain laundry goop sitting right across from the $6 pre-roasted chickens. (Question: how come the pre-cooked chickens cost less than the raw ones in the meat department? Anyone?)

Gleefully I plucked bottle after bottle of liquid Gain from the display and tossed it cavalierly into my cart.

"It's on SALE," I squealed.

"Better get SOME MORE," said Dave, his toothpaste-white teeth glinting like a tart salesman's eyes at a bingo hall.

And so we put lots and lots of Gain in our cart. We were gaining, one might say, a plethora of fresh-scented bargoons and we were delirious with consumeristic joy.

That was yesterday.

Today I heard bad words coming from the room we euphemistically call the laundry department.

"FECK," said Dave, only he didn't say feck.

"Oh dear," I thought. Musically. "What can the matter be?" After I pondered why Johnny was so late at the fair and who Johnny was anyway, I rushed to the Maytag to see.

Dave was standing in front of the washing machine holding one of the many containers of Gain.

"It's fecking FABRIC SOFTENER," he said. I looked at him like he had two heads so he said it again. Only this time he pointed to the bottle of Gain, like he was a professor, the Gain was a blackboard and I was the kid wearing the dunce cap in the front row. "It's. Fabric. SOFTENER."

Realization dawned. We had bought six bottles of fabric softener when what we needed was detergent. Even more ridiculous, we had bought a bottle of Downy fabric softener to go along with our Gain fabric softener.

Final score: fabric softener 7; detergent zip.

Our clothes will be filthy this week but they'll be softer than a baby's bottom.

Come to think of it, they'll be as smelly as a baby's bottom, too. Le sigh.

The doughnut lesson

Yesterday I talked about aging – again. Obviously one of my favourite blog topics and will likely continue to be as the rot process carries merrily along. I just wanted to say how much I loved your comments. I think everybody who chimed in feels pretty much the same about our age and our looks and how it's what's inside that really counts.

Last night this point was driven home to me by, surprise, my very own writing.

I was at my writer's group (my lovely, lovely writer's group – how I love those girls) and reading another chapter of my novel, when I came to the following paragraph. I was dazzled by my own brilliantness. If I was on Oprah, it would be The Doughnut Life Lesson. If I was Forrest Gump I'd be saying, "Life is like a box of doughnuts." 

A doughnut box lay between them, empty save for the one with sprinkles; the one in the variety pack that nobody ever eats. When they were really young, Weezie’s boys would fight over the sprinkle doughnut, dazzled by the bright coloured candy on top. But, once they realized that the sprinkles were as tasty as dust, they started fighting over the less ostentatious Boston cream or the ignominious plain old-fashioned. Weezie used the sprinkle doughnut as a lesson in life. “See?” she had told them. “Looks aren’t everything. Remember that when you’re choosing a wife.”

On aging

I just had a deep thought.

I was rushing past the bathroom mirror to shut the running water off in the tub and I caught a glimpse of myself going by. And I thought, "gee, I'm old." And also, "this is how I look now. But that's OK. I am good with looking my age."

But that's not my deep thought.

This whole getting old thing is taking a lot of getting used to and I think I just now figured out why.
Bear with me a second as I sort through it.

When we're kids, and up to the age when we stop growing, our looks change drastically every five minutes, or so it seems. Kids get used to seeing something different every time they look in the mirror.

In the years between 20 and 50, things pretty much stay the same. We might get fatter, or our hair gets thinner. Or grayer. But basically everything stays constant. At least that's how it's been with me. For 30 years, every look in the mirror showed the face I have been intimately familiar with.

Once I hit 50, things really began to change. The wrinkles in my face are coming out of nowhere. The texture of my skin is thinner. The gray is coming faster. The face I have known for so long is changing as quickly as it did when I was a kid, only it's the reverse. Instead of growing, my face will be growing old, at the same rate as it grew up back in my youth.

That's why I get so freaked out when I look in the mirror. Every time I see myself, I look different. And if I'm lucky enough to live another 20 years, I will watch the changes come faster and faster.

Our lives are like the life cycle of a tree, I guess. We start as seeds, we grow, we stay the same big strong tree for decades or centuries, and then we start to rot at the same speed at which we first grew.

It's the speed of the rot that freaks me out.

The photo, above, was taken in 1981 at a set for a movie being filmed in this area - a tacky horror flick called Humongous. I was working for the Gravenhurst News at the time. It was my first job and I was only 20 years old. It was the beginning of my face as I knew it for 30 years. I have to say, there were many times when I cursed my face for not being pretty enough, but now that I see my new-old face in the mirror, I can appreciate it for how beautiful it really was. (I'm hoping to write a magazine article about that old movie - it's why I dug through my yellowed, dusty archives of newspaper clippings and probably what got me pontificating on the wonders of aging.)