Random rubbish blowing through my mind like fall leaves

Ah...Fall...I love this time of year...temps are cooling...leaves are changing...candy is in season...it's all good.

These are some random things that have been breezing through my brain lately.

Tis' the season when mother nature plays funny games with my ageing eyesight. This is how they should test older drivers. If you jump and hit your brakes every time a suspiciously squirrel-like leaf blows across the road in front of you...you are good.

Speaking of eyesight issues. The other day I got a rather innocent e-mail at work and I just lost it. A full on case of the simples. Laughing, snorting, wheezing, more laughing, trying not to pee, more snorting. It had nothing to do with the e-mail or the person who sent it. It was just the fact that my eyes and my brain interpreted "art-teast" as "art teets". I know...right...it's not that funny...but at the time I thought the way my brain misread the word was hysterical. I've been doing that a lot lately and mishearing the conversations of my co-workers. At least I am pretty sure they weren't talking about fornication in the front lobby.

Poor Lamar Odom! One would have thought that being found unconscious in a Nevada brothel would be the complete rock bottom one could hit. But no...the media has to note that he has been hanging out at said brothel for four days taking herbal Viagra and drinking Cognac. It's not bad enough that he might lose his life but..."come on man"...this is just too much.

Sign at local church...Octoberfest...Nov. 1st. I will just let that sit for a bit.

Speaking of religion...I noticed a guy the other day with lots of Christian stuff all in his manly truck windows and a big JESUS tattoo on his arm. The next day I saw a semi-trailer with JESUS painted in ginourmous red letters. Now...loving Jesus is all well and good but I'm thinking he would have preferred that you spent that money on the poor. I'm just sayin'!

I wonder what the Guinness Book of Records holds as the longest one can go without vacuuming one's carpet when one has several pets? Just wondering...no particular reason. Ahem...moving on....

I found myself having a debate with myself the other morning over whether or not I should wear the black socks I just pulled out of the sock hug fest in my drawer even thought they did not quite match or should I just go with it...who will notice...sad to say I just went for it and now my sock drawer has two, lonely, mismatched socks.

Can someone explain to me why Kitten Face feels the need to shred me in the morning before I get dressed for work? She was particularly vicious this morning. I suspect she is practicing for the day she works out how to open the cans of cat food and no longer needs my opposable thumb.

How can a reasonable person be expected to haul themselves out of bed in the morning when it's still dark outside??? That's just WRONG!!

I feel like I may be trying to catch a cold so be prepared...there could be a whiny...lengthy blog...full of phlegm references in the near future.

In the mean time...I shall try to clean the litter boxes before I head off to bed...unless of course I get distracted again...oh look...a chicken!!!

What kind of world is this anyway?

I must confess...I am feeling very down about the state of humanity right now. I just read a story about and 11 year old boy who had been bullying his 8 year old neighbor. When she refused to let him see her puppy he promptly went in the house and got his dad's 12 gauge shotgun and shot her in the chest killing her. OVER A PUPPY!!!

Now...lest you think I am an anti-gun nut...I grew up with guns in the house. Three of them to be exact. I still have them. I also possessed many toy guns...including toy automatic rifles or machine guns as us older folks grew up calling them. The difference appears to be that despite my parents' overall lack of parenting skills I was taught the difference between what was real and what was fake. I was taught not to point even a toy gun at another person. I was taught not to touch my dad's guns which were never locked up. They were unloaded and the bullets stored elsewhere but I had access to them. Oddly enough...it never would have occurred to me to solve a dispute with ANYONE by using one of those guns! As a teenager I was allowed to touch those guns but it still never would have occurred to me to use one of them to harm anyone. That whole "thou shalt not kill" thing was pretty ingrained in me at a young age.

I don't understand how we got to the point where being bullied, or feeling like an outcast, or being angry at the world, or being told no leads to killing someone. How is that okay? How violent do we have to become before someone says enough? How self-absorbed and entitled do we have to be to think it's okay to kill others to meet our goals? How does wanting to be "famous" or "be someone" become so important to someone that they resort to mass murder!! I got news people...most of us will never be famous...we will never be a household name and we will never be worshiped and adored by the masses. How has becoming famous or "someone" become that important?

We are stressed out. Our brains are over stimulated by too much media exposure. We are obsessed with social media and so called mass produced "reality". We live in a very uncivilized time. Politics has become uber violent. We love our violent contact sports. We make blanket judgments of others with no understanding of their situations. We hate those that disagree with us. We use religion to club one another over the head with our righteousness. We would rather have our ginourmous TV's, our new cars, the newest smart phones, the newest this and the newest that rather than feed the hungry and provide health care to those who need it...especially veterans. We are rude to one another on a daily basis. We are harsh and judgmental and unforgiving of those who differ from us.

Rather than try to re-build the social contract that holds us all together we have instead decided to cling to our guns to protect ourselves. More and more people are getting conceal and carry permits. More and more people, both the mentally stable and the mentally unstable are arming themselves to go out and do the simplest of tasks. How sad is it that people feel the need to arm themselves to go shopping or to the movies? Why do we continue to live in such fear of one another that we would prefer killing someone over working to re-build a more civilized world together? How is killing someone a reasonable response to being told "NO?" What are we doing people? For the love of GOD can we just stop thinking we are SO important that we have the right to take someone else's life! I just need this insanity to stop.

Havens

I have found in my life that I need special havens of solitude...or safety...or whatever. Sometimes they are physical places, sometimes psychological, sometimes emotional. Whatever I call them they are my havens. They have varied over my decades on this earth.

I think the first haven I can remember was my closet. You see I lived with a very emotionally volatile and abusive father and a mother who was too overwhelmed to handle it all. I was also sexually abused as a child but not by my father. Needless to say...I never felt safe. I always felt exposed, vulnerable and anxious. So, I would create little "forts" in my closet and would play and nap in there. I could shut the door and feel hidden and safe. That worked really well until I grew too tall for that particular haven.

At one point in time the sexual abuse by my neighbor got bad enough that I was afraid to sleep in my room lest he come to the window and make lewd suggestions. I took the couch cushions and made a pallet between my mom's side of their bed and a dresser and slept there for I don't know how many nights before I moved back to my own room. I cannot remember what I told my parents and they evidently didn't feel the need to dwell too deeply.

I also found refuge in my friend Elaine's home. I LOVED her house. There was always activity going on and I felt safe there. I am sure it made her mom nuts that I was there SO much but she had no idea how important their home was to me. It was a safe haven and a refuge where I could feel a bit less anxious.

One of my favorite places of refuge was a large cage/hutch that my grandfather had built for his pet squirrel Bill. I could put plastic around it to keep the wind out and play in there. I could use it as my fort and my grandfather's homemade wheelbarrow as my boat. If you turned it upside you could both crawl inside it and hide and sit on top of it and pretend the metal wheels were the ship's wheel. I used to love to sit in there when it rained. It had an overhanging roof so if it wasn't pouring too hard you could sit in there and experience the rain without getting wet. I still remember the sounds and the smell. I loved it.

This area, my hometown, and the surrounding areas have also been my safe havens. Spring River, the dam, Center Creek, the courthouse, my old college paper routes, the old Morrow Mill area when the dam was still there, Kellogg Lake, Municipal Park, Central Park etc.... I feel a level of comfort here that I have never found anywhere else. I know the trees, the water, the grass, the wildlife...it's home. I feel a connection here to the and the land and the water that gives me comfort.

These days my havens are experienced mostly from my car...which is a VERY special haven in and of itself. I cannot imagine trying to live without my car. It is my safe zone, my freedom and where I generally feel safe and in control. Why all this musing about safe havens you wonder?

Well this weekend I found myself asking my friends indulgence while I retreated into my safe haven and tried to re-boot my spirit and my soul. I get to the point where the empathy takes a dramatic toll on me. I knew I was getting too stressed when the latest school shooting caused me to totally lose my temper in an irrational way. I was just so angry at the pointless loss of human life. I get too overloaded with the emotions of others and I feel pushed and pushed to the edge, the exhaustion takes over and I just need to be quiet and alone for awhile. So I retreated to my house and spent a quiet weekend doing things around the house and hanging out with my fur babies. I did see other humans. I had a lovely lunch with friends on Saturday and the aforementioned Elaine came by to visit with me for awhile today and I took Johnny his birthday Snickers today.

So when I retreat into myself and hide out in my house it is in attempt to recreate a haven of sanity for myself. A place to flush out the emotional overload and re-boot myself so to speak. I wish I could explain the need for silence and aloneness but I find myself floundering. So I thank my friends for their indulgence while I retreat into my haven of silence so that I can bounce back into my quirky self.