Category Archives: stupidity

Taking my own advice

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I give excellent advice – to anyone other than myself.  I have many people ask my opinion and they feel very comfortable getting into very personal matters.  They trust my discretion and they know my words come from a place of empathy and understanding.  I’ve had many people over the years tell me that I should have been a Social Worker.  I have a great ability to listen and to give thoughtful and meaningful opinions or just listen when necessary.

I’ve learned over the years that I can dish it out, but I can’t take it – my own advice, that is, but today I listened to my gut and went to the walk-in clinic.  I know I’m sick when I willingly sit in a waiting room with a multitude of people with the same symptoms I have for a chance to feel better.

After the obligatory three hours between waiting room, exam room and lung test I was given my diagnosis as well as a prescription for some very strong antibiotics.  My seemingly benign flu had morphed into Pneumonia and the doctor was concerned that I had a lung infection as well.  A simple test proved that the lung infection was non-existent but Pneumonia is a big enough hurdle to jump over.

Learning to trust my gut when it comes to personal matters is going to be on the forefront of my goals for the new year.  I didn’t, and still don’t, feel as sick as I am but I’m certainly glad I followed some sage advice today and got myself to the clinic for a professional diagnosis.  I would have told everyone else to get to the doctor, but it took a nudge from a friend or two to take the advice I would have freely expelled to anyone else and get the help I needed.

If you are great at giving advice….take a moment and see if you are following your own wise words.  It was a good lesson learned for me today.

Strong work ethic and stronger cough medicine

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The rattling sound in my chest is an inescapable reminder that I am still sick.  That coupled with the fact that I could pass for James Earl Jones on the phone have steered me from my objective of getting back to work and led me right back to my couch.

I have never in my working life called in sick to just have a day off.   I would never have been able to enjoy a day knowing that my colleagues were doing extra duties to cover my work load because I had lied about my health to have a day of leisure.  Even when I am sick, I have a hard time not going to work.  But this time I didn’t have a choice – this flu kicked my butt.

I worked a few hours on the morning of the 30th and went back in for a few hours on the 31st but my road paved with good intentions quickly became the road home and I spend the next two and a half days curled in the fetal position in my living room praying for the coughing to stop.  I’m not a whiny sick person but whatever this bug was proved that even the strongest people can revert to child-like behavior when they don’t feel like themselves.

Today, after feeling a tremendous amount of guilt for missing so much work, I dragged myself out of bed and made a valiant effort to forget that I am still sick.  I was shocked to open the door to a temperature of -34C.  After only a few seconds of vehement debate, my car turned over and I was on my way to the lodge.  I was greeted warmly by my coworkers until I opened my mouth and spoke a few words.  Their smiles turned to looks of fear and, as they backed further away from me, they all told me to go home.

sick

As much guilt as I feel for not being able to perform my job, my bosses and fellow employees made me see that I was doing them more of an disservice by being there and possibly spreading my germs.  Although I am past the contagious stage, I quickly heeded their advice and am now curled up on my couch once again with three layers of blankets and a hot cup of tea.

On a side note:  I should have realized how severe this flu was when I discovered I haven’t had coffee in four days!!

100 Word Song – Opportunities

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Did the money really matter? They were selling themselves short, losing sight of their true strengths. The opportunity had presented itself so innocently but the cost of their choice was epic.

Both educated and inclined to succeed, they relied on their looks to pave the way to their future. They completely negated their worth as human beings. Not only were they selling their bodies, they were selling their souls for the almighty dollar.

That money took the best part of them. It threw away their innocence and replaced it with bitterness and contempt. The adage lies – money can’t buy happiness.

two_prostitutes_by_cellar_fcp

(image credit: newyorkdailysun.com)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Written for the 100 Word Song Challenge: Opportunities, Pet Shop Boys. Lance and Leeroy at My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog came up with this new challenge.  Go and check it out!

‘Til Disaster do us Part – Trifecta Challenge

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It was a mistake.  It was a disastrous mistake and one that he should never have discovered.  It only happened once, okay maybe more than once but, to her, it really meant nothing.

Her day had begun perfectly.  The sunrise was breathtaking and the streams of light tickled the beading on her designer wedding dress as they rose to greet the morning.  One Mimosa turned into several as her bridesmaids tended to her every need.  Hair was curled, make-up was applied and swollen feet were wedged into dyed stilettos.

Their vows drew tears from family and friends, promises of a love eternal, but below the surface it was all a lie.  He played the part of the dutiful groom, picking up the train of her dress when she walked and catering to her every whim.  All of his smiles for the photographs seemed so genuine and full of love.  If she had only seen the hurt and anger bubbling below the superficial quality of his grin.

His thank-you speech began as she has seen him rehearse it many times but what followed was a shocking turn of events.  She was initially intrigued but her curiosity suddenly turned to horror as his words fell heavily on her ears.  The sea of dismayed and tortured looks rested solely on her.  Each guest held a photo in their hands of a moment in time she would regret for the rest of her life.  Three days before the wedding she had slept with the best man and every person in the room held photographic evidence of her betrayal.

Her exit from the reception felt like it was in slow motion.  The limousine that waited to whisk them away to their honeymoon sat idle and she jumped in the back seat.  They drove for an eternity and finally found a small, seedy pub in the middle of nowhere.  She entered and ordered a drink.  “Give me a Zombie, and keep them coming until I turn into one”.

drunk bride

Written for the Trifecta Weekly Challenge and inspired by what is, most-likely, an urban legend.  (Photo credit: flickr.com)

And now, the weekly prompt.  Make sure you’re using the THIRD definition of the word, as always.  Good luck and bottoms up!
1
usually zombi

a :  the supernatural power that according to voodoo belief may enter into and reanimate a dead body

b :  a will-less and speechless human in the West Indies capable only of automatic movement who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated

b :  a person markedly strange in appearance or behavior

2
a :  a person held to resemble the so-called walking dead;especially :  automaton

I saw your car at the bar…

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I’m amazed and thrilled at how the times have changed.  Not so long ago there was a certain stigma attached to people who “had” to leave their car in the bar parking lot after a night of imbibing.  They were ridiculed by their friends for being so intoxicated that they had to leave their vehicle behind because they were too drunk to drive.

You could drive by the pub in the early hours of the morning and see people doing the “army crawl” across the lot, continually peering over their shoulder to see if they were being watched while they skulked across the pavement to retrieve their vehicle.

car in lot

Nowadays having the clear thought to leave your car behind is being worn like a badge of honor rather than a badge of shame. People that have the foresight to give up their keys and find an alternate way home should be seen as heroes.  If you have to say to yourself, “I’m fine”, you’re probably not fine enough to drive.

On the rare occasion that I go out for a  few drinks, I am one of those people who will put their keys aside and choose to be judged, if you will, for leaving my car in the parking lot and choosing to get a ride home.  Knowing that I choose to put other people’s safety ahead of my need to have my car in the driveway in the morning is a great feeling.  Even in a small town like the one I live in, choosing to do the right thing just feels right.  I may only encountered a deer or a wild turkey, or nothing at all, but I choose to not take the chance of something greater being in my path.

It takes just a split second to make that choice not to drive if you have been drinking. And it also takes a split second to be on the wrong side of the line and cost someone else time in the hospital or even worse.  Make the right decision – park your car for the night and get that safe ride home. I’d rather be the one the one they point the finger at to say “I saw your car at the bar” then to be the one that caused the accident that cost someone their life.

What a tangled web we weave

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I have always been a big fan of telling the truth.  I’m not going to start with the lies now and say I haven’t told my share of the little white variety, but telling the truth is a much simpler way to ride the tracks of life.  It keeps our journey going in one direction with no sudden derailment or unexpected change in our course.

The art of deceit really is that, an art form.  It takes an organized mind to weave the web of lies and keep track of those lies.  Deceit has a way of exponentially evolving into more lies and the teller of those fallacies must internally document each line of betrayal in order to follow their own fibs.  It takes a somewhat composed mentality to follow the flowchart of untruths.

A web is conventionally described as something intricately contrived, something that will ensnare or entangle.  If only the teller of all the falsities realized that the victim of their woven trap was going to be themselves in the end.  It takes a cunning mind to begin weaving that web and follow each string that they have strung within it, but it takes an absolute genius to conform to all of the strings of lies within their web and remember which lie each string represents.

There does come a point when that continuous flow of distortion will fracture.  It takes one proverbial fly in the ointment, or in this case the web, and all of the falsehoods spectacularly disintegrate and split into a million loose ribbons of fiction.  If you sort through the wreckage, there is not one shred of truth to be found within that mangled mass of treachery.  Deception becomes a labyrinth with no possible escape.

Telling the truth will ultimately lead you to the most authentic experience you could have.  Sure, lies can give you the immediate escape you seek, but the truth has a way of rearing its ugly head when you least expect it.  It brings stark reality back into the fold and as the web is dismantled, it becomes a collection of meaningless strings.

Living an authentic life has more of a purpose than a life shadowed with doubt and deception.  You can protect yourself with layers of hypocrisy for only so long before people start to see the true core of your being.  They will systematically clip those strings you have so cleverly woven and expose the person that you really are.

You can only have legitimate relationships by being your true self.   If you begin any relationship with dishonesty, it will never be a true relationship.  Smoke and mirrors can only last until the smoke dissipates and you are left staring at your stark reality.  Don’t let that reflection be shrouded with the web of your lies.

Think Twice Before You Post

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Social media has taken over the way we communicate with each other.  When I was a child (and yes, this will make me seem old) we didn’t have cell phones to text every waking idea.  Instead, we wrote letters – in long hand!!  For those of you studying history it was called “cursive”.  We had pen pals from around the world and when we wished to communicate with them we drafted well thought out letters, put a stamp on an envelope and sent it out across the void.  It may have taken weeks, even months, to reach its destination but we also didn’t have to worry about how many other people would read, and potentially misinterpret, the message we conveyed.

stanford-tuck envelope 3

(image credit: forum.keypublishing.com)

The ease of communication now is also dominating the amount of information that we share with others on the social media sites but there are many out there who don’t take the time to think of what they are posting before it’s out there….for ALL to see.  We have such a need to interact with people but we don’t take the time to second guess the content of what we are sharing and who we are conceivably sharing it with.

Facebook and Twitter make publicizing our lives far too easy.  With one click of a button, your latest thought, action or location can be sent into cyberspace and be laid at the feet of the millions of people with access to the “information highway”.  What we don’t think about ahead of time is the fact that once that data has been shared it cannot be un-shared.  You may think that by pressing delete on your keyboard that the material is no longer available, but think again.  It has been data stamped and encrypted and is still recoverable.

There are many minds out there that are far more creative and light years beyond us in terms of technology that have unlimited access to those morsels of personal details that you felt the need to share.  And they, in turn, may feel the need to resurrect that fragment of your life and make you vulnerable in a way you never thought possible.  Innocent pictures of your “girls night out” may find themselves on websites with completely ulterior motives.  Your potential new employer may, and most likely will, seek you out on Facebook to see if the information you have used to beef up your resume has any semblance of truth.  They will also judge your character on the photos you have chosen to share with the world.

Choose your words and your images wisely.  I am trying not to be hypocritical in this post as I am a humble slave to social media.  This blog would not exist were it not for the ease of sharing thoughts and ideas across the vast blogosphere and sharing my posts through Facebook and Twitter.  But I do give pause to the content of my words and status updates before I hit the publish button.  Although I am free to write about any topic I choose, I also want my words to portray my character in a way that I feel truly represents the person I am and will leave no room for any of those words to come back and haunt me.

Don’t always trust the privacy settings to give you that sense of security.  The only real security you can have is filtering the information you post in the first place.  The postman only used to ring twice.  Words that have been sent into cyberspace will ring forever.

Shocking discoveries

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I was sifting through my email folders at work today to thin out the bulking cyber drawers and make room for the onslaught of new information for the upcoming season.   I amaze myself with the number of emails I find worthy of saving.  Some are amusing and will get filed back into that vault of humor and some made the hair on the back of my neck stand up today.

In amongst the random emails in my personal folder were a few messages from a former guest regarding his overdue payment for his summer vacation.  This conversation took place back in the autumn of 2011.  His excuses became very creative when it came to explaining why we had not received payment – they bordered on comical, really.  And then I came across one where he said he was going to “blow a gasket” if his office couldn’t get this sorted out.  Normally an off-handed comment like that would not have even registered in the realm of my abnormal or even intimidating.  But looking at this email now, and knowing the person that sent it, the threatening tone of that letter became overwhelmingly real.

Two short months after lengthy discussions and warnings that we would take this man to small claims court to get our money his name appeared before us in such a shocking way that I was speechless.  His name was on the 6:00 pm news – he had been charged with the murder of his girlfriend.   The two faces we had become so familiar with on our vacation property were now splashed all over the media and the complicated story began to unravel.

The financial indiscretion with us was only the tip of the iceberg and, as the investigation continued, his trail of lies and deceit became public knowledge.  In a heated discussion about their financial situation, he lost control and she lost her life.  He hid her body under one of the beds in the house and frantically called friends to say she had never returned home.  Days later, the police arrived at his door for further interrogation and noticed the acrid smell of decomposition coming from the house.

I have deleted his emails.  I don’t want to feel any connection to this horrible monster, nor do I want to be reminded of the heinous crime he committed to conceal his sordid past.  May he get the justice he deserves and may she rest in peace.

A city in heightened terror

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The horrific event today in Boston paints my words in a dark color.  The world has turned on its axis again and the ominous cloud that lingered above humanity grows bigger.   What evil force drives people to commit such heinous and unforgivable acts?

I sat on my deck  tonight listening to the sounds of nature.  But those sounds lent no comfort knowing that the sound of terror pierced the ears of so many in a city that should be celebrating – a city that had so much enthusiasm a few hours ago and is now fearfully peeking from behind closed curtains and pacing the hallways of local hospitals.

Innocent children and adults have lost their lives and others who harnessed their athleticism for charities may run no more as they fight for life and limb in hospitals around the city.  Adrenaline was replaced by fear – triumph replaced by tears.

I can only write my words of sorrow and my feelings of disgust for the explosions at the Boston Marathon.  The tragedy has happened but the ripple effect of those explosions will continue as people fear everyone and trust no-one.  My heart  and prayers go out to all of those affected.

Braker, braker

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Dear Driver in front of me on my way to work,

Why, oh why, must you incessantly tap your brakes for no apparent reason.  I understand you became alarmed when you noticed you were going 52 km/h in a 50 zone, but did you know that by relieving the pressure your foot is putting on the gas pedal that your car will slow its pace without having to brake?  Since you are on a relatively level road, the decrease in acceleration will happen naturally and not cause a chain reaction of undue panic in the cars behind you.

brake lights

(image courtesy of diymyhonda.com)

Instead, in a town littered with reckless wild animals that like to create their own crossing spots, you choose to feather your brakes causing drivers behind you to look for invisible dangers encroaching the sides of the road.  Your reckless braking in the wee hours of the still darkened morning is causing those needing more caffeine (such as myself) to shout obscenities that should not even be thought of that early in the morning let alone uttered aloud at a decibel suited for a live concert.

Perhaps my opinion is somewhat jaded since I have been driving a stick-shift since I was 17 and am used to gearing down rather than braking, but, for the love of God please stop putting your brakes on every 10 seconds when there is nothing ahead of you but the open road and no wild beasts leaping from the woods to ambush your car.

I thank you in advance for your cooperation in this matter.

Sincerely,

The person that flipped you off from the CR-V behind you.