From Dec 17, 2008

I might be the only weird person like me.

Of course, I might not be.

Here’s why I’m weird: I tend to picture animal faces in the backs of cars.  I do this to entertain myself on the hellaciously long drive home from work.  The brake lights are the eyes, and the bumpers often form mouths. The license plates are noses.

I saw a turtle in one yesterday.

Some cars have sheepish grins.  Some are cuter than others.

I know, I’m weird.  So?

From Nov 30, 2008

Music is such a beautiful thing.

I added all of my long-time favorites to my playlist and have been sitting here, listening… pretending to surf the internet.  Instead of searching, though, I’m nostalgic.

It’s a beautiful thing.  This life is beautiful.  The experiences I’ve gone through are beautiful.

Music accentuates the moments.  They enhance the emotion.  There are songs I didn’t put on here, simply because the times I associate with them are so painful that I wouldn’t want to revisit those thoughts any time soon, and especially not while I’m playing the songs that are supposed to provide me “mood” music while I write.

Instead, I chose those songs, forever engrained in my heart, that draw out positive emotions.  Or powerful emotions.

Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the stories behind these songs.

Maybe not.

From Nov 28, 2008

I have a theory that playing the piano somehow makes me smarter.  Not in that I’m smarter because I play the piano, but because playing the piano uses a part of my brain that I otherwise don’t use very much.

It’s that whole dexterity/creative part.  I’m sure it falls into my motor cortex rather than my frontal cortex, and this is how I know:

When I think about what it is that I’m playing, I fuck it up.  My fingers hit the wrong notes and it sounds all crummy and sloppy.  But when I don’t think about it, I play beautifully. I just let my fingers do the movements, and wah-lah!  Music flowing from my fingers.  It’s rather amazing.

I was thinking this while I was playing today.  I was thinking, “Wow, Ash, look at your fingers GO!” They were like wild fire, a mind of their own, and something brilliant was coming from them.  Astonished might even be the word.

As long as I know how the song “goes” I can play it well.  I have to know exactly how it sounds in order for it to come out right.  Also, I have to practice reading sheet music, but once I have that down, I can play what’s on the paper just out of sort of “instinct” as to where those notes make my fingers go.  Of course, if I’m picking up a piece for the first time, then I will be sloppy and have to spend all day making it work.

Eventually, though, once the part of my brain that hears the music coming from my fingers knows how the tune goes, then I don’t have to think about it much at all.  In fact, my cognitive processes totally get in the way of my ability to play!

What I’m playing now: Five or six Bach pieces, Fur Elise, and now Pachelbel’s Cannon in D.

I started out with the hard version of latter.  And I’m able to play a little more than half of it– stretching the bejesus out of my fingers and skipping over a few notes because there are just too few hands to make the notes work… And finally, after playing a great many hours on this, I decided to look at the second version of the Cannon in D that I printed out at the same time as I printed the hard version, and was SHOCKED to find that I had also printed the super easy version.  So I spent some time on that as well.

It was a good day.  I’m almost done with the laundry, I got to spend some time with Raine, and I spent hours at the piano.

Ei, my achin back.

From Nov 27, 2008

I’m a little weirded out to discover that Thanksgiving is an American holiday!

I know, naive.

But still…

So, for my non-American pretties, I’m going to tell you what today was all about!

We (the kids, my honey and I) first went to my family’s.  We get together for every holiday and there’s usually 20-30 of us who sit together and eat turkey, green bean casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, carrot & onion casserole, rolls, and this year we had a relish tray (dunno why it’s called that, there’s no relish) with artichoke hearts, olives, pickles, and… cucumbers).  We also had Landon’s amazing baked butternut squash, cauliflower, broccoli, asparagus, beets cooked with orange marmalade…

Then we went to Landon’s family’s and repeat.  There we had proscuitto-wrapped asparagus, ambrosia, and… baked sweet potatoes with fruit.

Traditional desserts are pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, apple, cherry, or any other peach pie… *drool*

Both Landon’s & my families are basically Lutheran, and there’s always a prayer of thanksgiving and this year both houses had wine and beer (hooray!).

We eat until we’re so stuffed we must rush home to unbutton our pants.

And then the families send us home with turkey carcasses and leftovers so that we can eat turkey until we’re content and Landon can make turkey noodle soup.

It’s a holiday of giving thanks for your family, and spending time together (sometimes pretending) you like each other.

I love it; it might even be my most favorite holiday ever.

From Nov 24, 2008

Life is becoming so much more simple.
And far more enjoyable.
Cleansing the clutter from my emotional experience.
I am working on the always-pleasant lifestyle.

Which is the converse of the stressed out lifestyle. And it’s going well.
And I like that.
I’m beginning to identify the feelings that trigger the out of control stress reaction.
Mostly these triggers are things like feeling anxious,
or like I don’t have enough of something to do the best job I can otherwise.

I don’t have to eliminate all negative emotion.
In fact, being irritated and then venting about it actually helps a lot.
I can and should vent, as long as I don’t dwell on it.

I have physical reasons to avoid stressing out, too.
Stress makes me sick.  Hell, it makes EVERYONE sick.
Stress could be the leading cause of cancer.

But would we know it?  Would we acknowledge it?
Stress can cause heart problems.
Stress can cause emotional problems.
Stress can cause skin problems.
Stress can cause CANCER.

You can’t escape stress any more than you can escape pollution.
But I can feel the triggers, and I can be aware of them.
I can choose how much time I spend letting them control me.

The always-pleasant lifestyle might actually be working.