Sherri Cornelius

• I hate making breakfast. Why should the only chore I truly dislike be the first thing I have to do in the morning? When the youngest is about 8 I think I’ll never cook/pour breakfast again. They can get their own rackin-frackin cereal, and I shall never eat breakfast again. I truly resent the breakfast thing.

• I hate my laptop. I try to keep a good attitude (at least I have a laptop, etc.) but it’s so annoying with its myriad of problems. Here, let me list them:
  1. The battery is only good for about ten minutes, yet..
  2. …the power jack is so loose that I must remain absolutely still in order to keep it plugged in, even when it’s sitting on a table. Hard to do when you’re typing. This is something I fixed before.
  3. The hinges are so loose the screen falls down at the slightest movement. Also something I’ve fixed, several times.
  4. The little eraser mouse thingy drifts, so I disabled it, however…
  5. …the pad thingy is alternately completely unresponsive and extremely sensitive, so I end up selecting and clicking things I don’t mean to.
  6. The damn thing is slow as hell.

  It’s hard to concentrate on the  book when I’m obsessively checking to make sure everything is placed just so. And yes, I’ve checked settings and upgraded software and defragged and replaced parts, and I think it’s just time to admit it’s too old. It’s an old damn laptop.

• My tummy hurts.
• Thinking about my dream last night. I was working for a rich family I don’t know in real life. They had been hit by a tornado, but instead of tearing down the old, ruined house, they’d simply built a new one on the other side of the barn. They were all living happily in this new house, with all their new things, but occasionally sent the house manager over to the old house to retrieve things. This time it was a large, pink teddy bear.The two main things I felt during this dream were the self-centered nature of the family, and sadness and confusion when confronted by this old house, ruined and abandoned. I was sad, yet I knew it was best for this family to forget the old house. It had been useful and was no longer, and even in the dream I understood I should adopt this attitude as well.There was more, but I think this is a pretty clear answer to a question I posed to the Universe yesterday.
• I’m extremely grateful for my loyal friends. That’s you.

• I’m just going to start typing and see where I end up, ‘kay?
• I’ve been a lazy bum. No treadmill, no supplements, much junk food, very little writing. Buying a car and then driving said car on many shopping trips during PMS sucked my energy. I hope to get back on track (or at least the treadmill) tomorrow. But you know what? Walking just doesn’t seem to change my body, never has. Maybe it’s because I’ve always walked in my jobs, or chased kids all day, or whatever. I use those muscles already. When I get on the bike, now that is a workout. I could get a stationary bike, I guess, but I don’t know if I could stay steady enough to read or type, and if I don’t have those things I’d just quit after ten minutes anyway. I don’t know.
• The writing is becoming easier. Sometimes you wake up from a state you didn’t even know you were in, and I’m not talking about Idaho. Sometimes you can look back and put a flavor on a previous segment of time, you can say that time in my life tasted like sad, dazed, frantic, joyful, etc. Well, looking back at the past year or so, I think my flavor was clenched. I was a big old bowl of grasping energy with milk, and I’m lactose intolerant. I don’t know if I’m ready to totally unclench yet, that’s the thing. I want to, but if I’ve learned anything about my personality it’s that the more I fight for something, the more elusive it becomes. I feel like I’m relaxing my grip a little, and with relaxation comes ease, and with ease comes enjoyment, and with enjoyment comes … well, for me with enjoyment comes guilt, but I’m working on that. I have to start somewhere. Somehow the point of the paragraph got lost, that when I think about writing now, I’m not paralyzed.
• And for some reason, that makes me think of Twitter. I enjoy Twitter very much. It’s a non-demanding way to have a conversation. If you want to follow me on Twitter, go here. I’m sort of stuck at 50 followers, which isn’t a bad number, but I wouldn’t mind some more.
• Something has been thumping the outside of my house for a month, can’t figure out what it is.
• Today feels full of possibility.

When I’m on the treadmill the thoughts fly through my head. I like putting them down here as they come to me, but I must admit it’s nerve-wracking. Except for minor tweaking of language, the treadmill posts are unedited and uncensored. I don’t stop to think about what I’m saying, and afterwards I wonder if I should take it down. And no, it’s not because I’ve said anything horrible or misrepresented myself. It’s just that despite my apparent over-sharing tendency I’m pretty guarded in some ways, and accidentally exposing something I meant to keep hidden is my biggest fear, and second to that is offending someone I didn’t mean to offend. Both have happened to my detriment, have made me timid.

So I think the treadmill posts are actually good for me. They scare the hell out of me, yeah, but they also expand the boundaries of my self-trust.

I’d planned to discuss love in this post, building on the comments from yesterday, but I’m out of time. Next time, then.

• I’m fat. Can’t deny it any longer. I feel skinny, but I’m just not. I think I’ve been able to deny it so long because I had pretty good muscle tone. The muscles are leaving and the fat is replacing it, so even though the needle on the scale has been stationary for a couple of years, I am increasing in size. My lower body has been getting bigger since I started exercising, I think, because my muscles are getting bigger but I’m not losing any fat. Hopefully this public declaration will help push me into a proper diet. I’m don’t like diet helpers like pills or drinks, because I know when I go off them I’ll simply gain the weight back. No yo-yo dieting for me. I’d like to eat natural foods and very little sugar and literally exercise my ass off. 50 lbs is my goal. I’ll even post my starting weight to properly embarrass myself into decreasing the number: 178.
• Having a teenage step-daughter in my life (Hi, Z) makes me think about love. What is it, really? Is it based in the physical, i.e. a hormonal imbalance leading to temporary delusion? Based in a higher power, moving us toward our soul mate? A karmic fulfillment of your purpose as a human being? I take a different view for each of the different types of love, and I wish to hell we had a different word for each one. LOVE is too broad.
• Which leads me to the question: Should you feel guilty about your feelings? In any case, love is not a conscious decision, so if you “fall in love” with someone (whatever the eff that means) at an inopportune time, is that something to regret, or to celebrate no matter what? The emotion itself is a good thing, right? Or is romantic love inherently disruptive?
• Bohemian Rhapsody just came on my media player. Woo!
• Also thinking about the recent economic downturn as portrayed by the media. People are saying things like, “People can’t even send their kids to college anymore!” “This guy can’t pay his $7,000 mortagage and may have to go to a smaller house! It’s a tragedy!” “They’ve had to forgo their yearly vacation to the Bahamas! In my world, people don’t send kids to college. The kids do it themselves. People live in very modest dwellings and buy their clothes at Goodwill to save money for entertainment. They have no savings. They don’t take vacations.  I’m not saying it’s fun to have the rug pulled out of you at any income level, and I hate what it’s doing to our economy as a whole, but on a personal level I guess I just can’t fathom having that much money in the first place, and so I can’t sympathize as much as the media wants me to. That makes me sound like a total bitch, probably. From where I am, the middle class is a myth. Am I middle class? I think I am, barely. But the middle class I see represented on tv as the “average”? Those people are rich to me. To say there’s a huge difference between $30,000/yr and #100,000/yr is a massive understatement, but they’re lumped into the same category. My mind is boggled, that’s all.

This was a heavy TftT, huh? Discuss among yourselves.

Things I’m thinking about today:

• American Idol. I love, love, love Kara dioGuardia (the new judge). A lot of my favorite contestants got kicked off last night- Rose, Osmond, Girl w/Pink Hair-and a bunch I didn’t like are gone as well-Bikini Girl is the only one I can remember right now. Good ones who stayed are Norman Gentle, Guy w/Cool Sideswept Black Hair. Bad ones who stayed: Tatiana “Obnoxious Girl”.
• Busy life. I’ve become a lot busier lately. Been going to the doctor, getting car repairs done, picking up kids from school functions, writing more. I’m glad. I was bored.
• Dumping people. In my last post I was talking about letting the toxic people go, either by chance or by design, but I realized this morning that calling them “toxic” was dismissive and not entirely true. The word implies that there was something wrong with each person, or that I hated them, or that they’d done some injury to me. Really, those weren’t the criteria for letting these people go. I had to assess my own reactions to each person’s involvement, ask myself, “Do I feel off-balance when interacting with this person? Do interactions with this person cause me to act in a way that is out of line with what I want? Am I getting as much as I’m giving? Have I been honest with myself in previous assessments of this relationship?” You see it really had nothing to do with the people themselves, but with my needs at the moment. I realize that sounds really selfish, but as a person who automatically neglects her own needs, even for complete strangers, you might forgive me. They aren’t bad people, and I miss them. FWIW, since I made the decision to assess my relationships with brutal honesty, I’ve felt more stable, more comfortable, more in touch with myself.
• My doctor visit. Going in for a follow-up on the sinus thing. Got a better dose of thyroid hormone a few days ago, and I already feel better in that regard. I <3 thyroid hormone. You do too, you just don’t know it.
• 5 Essential FireFox Plug-ins (oops, broke my rule about linking while walking.)

And that’s it. Sorry I rambled. These “Thoughts from the Treadmill” posts always make me nervous, because I never edit. What if I said something that will make someone scream at me? *cowers, trembles, hits publish*

I guess it’s been about a week since I posted. For five of those seven days, my eyes have been closed, as they are right now. I can type blind. I have some weird cold or flu or sinus thing that has affected my vision. Isn’t that weird? I’m not sneezy or runny, but I have enjoyed the return of the migraine, thanks to the vision problems. I think. It’s hard to tell which came first. It’s a combination of the sinus thing and the fragrance thing, as I’ve spent a lot of time around other people in the past week.

I appreciate the efforts of my SIL Rhonda to make her family as fragrance-free as possible when they came over last weekend. Brown Bootie the Daring Dachshund went to live with them, so I’m happy about that. I know they’ll take good care of her.

After their visit I was sick with a slammin’ migraine for an entire two days, but DH took care of everything and let me recover.

I felt better in time for my daughter’s choir concert. I’d have gone anyway, because she had the big solo, but I was really glad to have felt well enough for it. The concert was held in a packed auditorium, and I had a little eye tightness, but I was surprised to find I handled the fragrances quite well. Abby was angelic, the star of the show, and the other two kids were good during the concert, so it was a success.

The next day (Wednesday) I woke up feeling under the weather, and unfortunately the migraine came back. I was able to hold off the full-blown migraine yesterday by lying around with my eyes closed all. day. long. ugh. Today I woke up with energy, but still can’t see. Keep your fingers crossed for tomorrow. I’m really bored and need to do some housework.

Peace out.

My laptop was out of commission yet again, only for a couple of days this time. I dropped it and snapped off the plug inside the power jack. Ordered a new cord, from one of those powerselling eBay guys. The cord cost less than the shipping, altogether about $18.

Just a couple of weeks ago I spent all day tearing down the laptop to replace the power jack, first time soldering a piece to a motherboard, and I think I might have loosened my terrible soldering job, because now the connection, even with this new cord, is a little iffy. I’d list all the other challenges I’ve had with the power cord, but I don’ wanna. Let’s just say it started with Cody the Questionable Coyote chewing the cord, and went from there.

Speaking of dogs, we’ve had a dachshund visitor for a week. She somehow ended up outside our door (looking at you, neighbor) on the first rainy night in weeks. I’m a sucker, all right? I know the dog could have found a dry place to sleep, but I didn’t want to chance it. She’s so much better behaved than Cody ever was, so the only problem is the family’s allergies.

During a naming brainstorm session, Jonah hollered out, “Brown Bootie!” Um, why that name, sweetie? “Because she’s mostly black except for her brown bootie.” (Think doberman markings.) So of COURSE I had to start calling her that. How could I not? We shortened it to B.B. for outdoor calling. Don’t want my neighbors to think I’m weird.

We made up a song for her and everything, sung to the tune of “My Buddy.” That old doll commercial, remember? Do a Youtube search. I don’t link while on the treadmill. Everything’s the same except the name and a couple of lines. We don’t work that hard.

So then the kids decided that B.B. wouldn’t do, so they decided upon Bendy, cuz she’s, like, a long-ass bendy weiner dog. Now, you might know there once was a crocodile hunter, and he had a daughter named Bindy, who had a show called “Bindy the Jungle Girl”. So (again, look it up) the song is now: Bendy the weiner dog. WeinER.

After doing a reasonable search for her real parents, I put her on Freecycle, and I have a lady coming to meet her tonight. So Brown Bootie might soon have a permanent home and, hopefully, a real dog’s name. We’ll miss her.

SSS, as we used to sign our notes in middle school. Sorry So Sloppy. That’s just how I roll in THOUGHTS FROM THE TREADMILL!!!  Mwahahaha!

I’ll shut up now.

Maybe I’ll just write all my posts while I’m on the treadmill. I’ve modified my rig so that I have better balance while typing. Haven’t fallen off since that one time a couple of days ago. The biggest problem I’m having now is that I no think so clear. The physical act of walking seems to override the mental act of writing, so I have to go a little slower. Think through things. Might be a good exercise for my mind as well as my body. And I’m more likely to stay on this thing longer if I’m distracted. Bor-ing.

I’ve started to think that my lower back pain may be aggravated by all the junk I have in my trunk. The two pigs fighting under a blanket. The honeysuckle hams strapped to my ass. I think they twist my spine when I walk, fighting for space. Something has to give, and it ain’t gonna be the hams.

Enough random thoughts for one day. It’s almost time to get off here. Hope you have a lovely day.