Back on the treadmill…

Nose to the grindstone.

It’s Monday, and the miracle is that I am back on the treadmill. My commitment to exercise, which has risen from the ashes more often than any phoenix, has been resurrected once again.

I was never a particularly active kid. ‘Bookworm’ was the term of choice in those days rather than ‘couch potato.’ I guess the term had to change when it became a near certainty that the kid who was not outside running around was also not inside reading a book. TV, Nintendo, iTunes, Netflix maybe–but not many books. That, however, is a subject for another time.

Today’s subject is exercise. Blccch!

In New York, I walked everywhere. Plus, I went to the gym. Then we moved to Florida, and now, the most walking I do is behind the lawn mower around a .38 acre yard once every ten days or so. During the summer. You can’t really say that makes me a candidate for the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. (I also eat more than I need to because a snack is always a good excuse to stop painting, or mowing, or cleaning, or writing. [Almost anything is a good excuse to stop writing. That is going to have to change! One step at a time, however.])

I thought I would walk a lot down here. It’s the Sunshine State, right? Decent weather year-round. My plan was to wander the neighborhood every day. Even, perhaps, walk to local stores or the library. Nobody really does that here, but it is certainly possible. They are no further away than many of my NY destinations were. No reason I couldn’t take a hike.

I was reckoning without the humidity, however. All those places are walk-able, but holy cow! I never intended to do laps in a sauna. Plus, there are two big dogs roaming my neighborhood that are bigger than the Shetland ponies my grandfather raised. They seem friendly, but… And there’s another dog—smaller, but ferocious—that charges the fence in an extremely loud and business-like way every time I walk by his house. (I like dogs. I just prefer their owners to be around when they are taller than I am and I am encroaching on their territory. The first time, at least. And that fence—it looks awfully low when there is a snarling, snapping and all-too-powerful bundle of unfriendliness on the other side.)

Outdoor rambles were clearly not going to become a regular thing.

So, after a week or two of mining Craigslist, I acquired a treadmill and an elliptical. We set them up in the laundry room. (We have a big laundry room.) And we already had weights, which my husband had set up in the garage.

Our own gym!

Kind of cool, right?

The trick, of course, is not only to have the equipment but to use the equipment.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I decided that I was going to walk to work–like in the old days. The idea was that I should get up, have breakfast, spend 20-30 minutes on the treadmill and only then check my email and Facebook and all the million other time-wasting sites I lived without for an unspecified number of decades but which are now indispensable.

It was working.

Then I went to Maine.

Even in Maine, I managed to get to the fitness room at the hotel twice. Twice! That, in itself, was a miracle.

But I came back from Maine, and the fitness schedule fell apart.

I’m back on the treadmill, though. As of last Wednesday.

This is a good thing. In and of itself, it’s a good thing. I feel better, and I will probably live longer. (No cracks, please, about it just seeming longer.)

It’s also a good thing because discipline in one area reinforces discipline in others. I heard an acting career coach once talk about how the actors who were working were all actors who went to the gym. Her point was not that they looked better, although they probably did, or had more energy, although they almost certainly did–but that the same things required to make it in show business are the same things required to keep you going to the gym.

Commitment, discipline, a willingness to suffer. Dedication to a result that isn’t immediately apparent.

With apologies to the lyricist of New York, New York,* if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere.

And if you don’t make it the first 800 times, that’s no reason not to try again.

So…I’m back on the treadmill.

* Fred Ebb of the fabulous Kander & Ebb.

My life is like a Rube Goldberg machine…

…and not in a good way

If you don’t know what a Rube Goldberg machine is, click here or here.

They tend to be vast elaborate, multi-step methods for achieving a relatively simple outcome. And see, that’s what happens to me. Things that should be easy just aren’t.

Take the Moderncat Cover Cat contest.

I don’t have a cat. But I have a friend who has a cat–as well as a lot of other friends. And we’ve all been mobilized for the last few weeks to vote for Bingley.

Now, I don’t know Bingley personally, but he’s a very photogenic cat. Plus, he’s a therapy cat. A do-gooder. He totally deserves to be a Cover Cat. I was happy to vote as often as I could. (It’s not like a presidential election. They encourage multiple votes in this contest.)

Everything was going smoothly until the other day. I tried to vote on my Blackberry. I’ve done that before. There was no reason for it to turn into a two day ordeal.

But the trackball was sticking.

That’s happened on previous occasions, as well.

The last time, I googled for the instructions on how to remove and clean it, and it was easy-peazy-one-two-threesie. I popped the trackball out, took it apart, cleaned it off, and popped it back into the phone. Why would I think it would be different this time?

Shows what I know.

I popped it out, took it apart, and that’s when things began to go to hell.

It kind of fell apart, instead of coming apart in an orderly fashion. You know, in such a way that you could take note of how it goes back together? So, I had to google for the instructions again, because I had unaccountably failed to save them the first time. Take note, and heed this warning. If you find an explanation on the internet that makes sense to you—for whatever it might be—trackball cleaning, how to make ice cream, the meaning of life, etc.—save it! Because it will disappear the next time you want it. Maybe the website moved, maybe the google search order has changed. Whatever. But you won’t be able to find it when you want it.

I found a different set of instructions.

They were not clear.

I tried to follow them anyway.

And the little magnetic thingies* that look like rollers kept popping out. And sticking to each other.

And that was bad enough, but then they popped out again. And bounced off the desk. Onto the grey carpet. These things are tiny. They have light grey spindles and black magnets on the head. I can barely see them when I’m holding one on the tip of my finger. Do you think I can find them on the grey carpet?

But I did.

I didn’t even really need that flashlight for which I now had to climb the stairs– or my husband whose sharper eyes I had enlisted.

Having bounced separately, the two of them experienced a magnetic attraction on the way down. They had miraculously turned into conjoined twins, now twice as big as they would have been had they fallen separately. Twice as big made them at least ten times as visible. I found them!

And then I went through the same thing all over again.

Googled for better instructions.

Fumbled and fiddled around with floundering fingers.

Lost a magnetic thingie and the trackball.

We will draw a veil over the rest of the day. After all, this blog would like to preserve a family friendly atmosphere.

And it turns out that, for $1.67 plus $0.50 shipping, you can just buy a new trackball at Amazon.

* remember–‘thingy’ is a technical term used in this blog for that for which I cannot immediately recollect the name

Choices — aaaagh!

‘Life is in the minding.‘

Saturdays and Sundays in this blog don’t have a theme. They are wide open.

Any subject.

Any subject at all.

Consequently, with the universe from which to choose, it is sometimes hard to think of anything to write.

Why is that?

I’m not sure, but today I think it has something to do with some lines that have always resonated with me from Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love.

Will you be a poet, or a scholar?
I don’t mind.
Oh, it helps to mind. Life is in the minding.

There is something about choices. It’s great to have them, but they can be overwhelming.

Have you ever walked into a library or a bookstore and left without any books? Or a video rental store and gone home to watch reruns of Law & Order?

Maybe it’s just me, but I enter such establishments with anticipation. I’m going to find something great to read or watch. And I wander up and down the aisles looking at everything that is on offer on the shelves. Picking up this movie, flipping through those pages. Do I feel like watching a comedy or a thriller? Do I want to read Jane Austen or Maya Angelou? And as I ponder these choices I begin to hyperventilate.

Figuratively speaking.

I mean, I don’t have to breathe into a paper bag or anything.

I just find myself thinking sometimes, when I have a lot of choices, “oh, just forget it!” and walking out without anything.

It’s not an option when you have a blog post to write.

Or…I guess it could be. We could declare Silent Saturdays. Seems like a cop-out, though, doesn’t it?

I was reading something somewhere (I have got to start taking writing things down! The old memory is not what it used to be) about practicing making choices. The idea was that you should never say “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter.” Even if you really don’t care which restaurant you’re going patronize tonight, you should make a choice. Voice a preference.

Art is all about making choices. We better get used to it.

Moonrise Kingdom

Big stars, little movie–good fun

The Find for this Friday is Wes Anderson’s new movie, Moonrise Kingdom.

Over on the island of New Penzance, one of the Khaki Scouts is missing. Within hours, it is discovered that Suzy Bishop, the daughter of local lawyers and lighthouse residents, is also missing. Could Sam and Suzy be together? And where are they?

Young love, New England eccentricity, the mob instincts of children, broken marriages, and Social Services are all satirized and celebrated in this sweet and silly and brilliantly-acted film.

Newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward hold their own with Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Ed Norton, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton and Bob Balaban. In a world where budget considerations often limit a movie to one star, I’m not sure how this one ended up with seven who are not only “names” but honest-to-god actors, but I’m glad it did. Their presence is reassuring in such a wacky atmosphere.

And as a side note, I defy you to find any movie in which Frances McDormand appears that is not worth seeing.

This one is funny and moving and put together with meticulous care.

I don’t know much about the technical jargon of cinematography, so I may not be describing this accurately, but the film stock, the color palette and the camera work–while clearly professional–are all highly reminiscent of the old 8mm cameras we used back in the day. That, almost more than the blue eye shadow, the battery-operated record player and Bill Murray’s Madras pants, anchors the story in the sixties.

The score, largely Benjamin Britten with some telling Hank Williams songs thrown in, is gorgeous. The island is sunny and scenic. The story is both recognizable and brand-new. The actors are so good that you will not notice how good they are. And if you think that is easy, you don’t know much about acting.

Reviewers call it “dreamlike,” “endearing,” and “a near perfect balance between humanism and the surreal.”

So do I.

Southern Style

Myrtles and Turtles

(Actually, there are no turtles in this post. Just stretching for a sub-headline. Sorry. We might talk about turtles in a future post, though, so don’t give up hope.)

Today, on this Thankful Thursday, I am thankful for Crepe Myrtles. And generous neighbors.

When we bought Casa Lagarto, there were already six Crepe Myrtle trees in the yard. Now we have ten! (Generous neighbors.) Two of them have white flowers, four are various shades of pink and red, and four of them are mysteries.

The mystery myrtles haven’t bloomed yet, but the others have flowered, and two of them are flat-out gorgeous. Those last four–well, they could be anything. I can’t wait to find out!

There are two things I love about crepe myrtles:

They are easy.
You don’t have to do much besides leave them alone. Some people prune them drastically every year. Others call that “crepe murder,” and–needless to say with a name like that–frown on it. Being a Libra, always seeking balance, I, once again, walk the middle ground. A little pruning for shaping, but not scalping. So far, they have weathered both drought and deluge, the grasshoppers (and other pests) seem to leave them alone, and they haven’t needed any fertilizer or other intervention.
They are Southern.
I think they actually come from southeast Asia, but the sight of a crepe myrtle always says “the South” to me–by which I mean the southern United States. In other words…home. Sure, palm trees are more recognizably Florida, perhaps–but a crepe myrtle is Southern style. Delicate, lacy flowers. Thriving in warmth. Blooming anywhere from Virginia to Miami. Nowadays, there are some cold-hardy varieties, I think. And maybe they grow in California and other western areas. But you tend to stick with what you learned as a child. Driving down I-95, it was the sight of the first blooming crepe myrtles that meant we were headed south. To me, it still does.

Easy. I like that, because I am the world’s worst gardener. And it’s nice to have the epitome of Southern Style on the property.

I’ve got a palm tree, you know. but it’s the crepe myrtles that I love.

Where have all the book sales gone…

Wondering Wednesdays

Wondering Wednesdays is a new feature I’m introducing here at the blog. Monday Miracles, Tuesday Tips and Thankful Thursdays having been so helpful in providing a little structure for coming up with ideas. With a Friday Finding appearing last week, it seemed like Wednesday could have a theme, too.

I started out thinking it might be Wednesday’s Woes (and we may detour into that some weeks), but it seemed a little less woeful to devote this post to things about which I am wondering.

This Wednesday, I am wondering about book sales.

When I was a kid, I loved my school fair every year. It wasn’t the rides or the goldfish toss or the occasional celebrity appearance by Batman.

It was the book sale.

Tables and tables of used books set out in the cafeteria at five for a quarter or something insane like that.

I would spend hours looking through them, and then I would buy armloads.

And I am wondering what is going to happen to used book sales now that we are all transitioning to Kindles and iPads and Nooks and eReaders of all shapes and descriptions?

In the last few years, I have noticed fewer and fewer shelves of books at flea markets and street fairs. Thrift stores still have them. The library periodically (no pun intended) does a fundraiser of a book sale.

Aren’t they going to run out of material? Won’t books–actual hard copy books–known rather snidely these days as “dead tree books”–become so rare that they will no longer be available at a quarter apiece? Will those terrifically musty, dusty stores–where you take in a stack of old paperbacks and get store credit of one-fourth the cover price to be applied to new stacks of old paperbacks you can purchase at one-half the cover price–will they just disappear from lack of product to sell? What about the “Take One, Leave One” shelves at marinas all up and down the Intercoastal Waterway?

I like my Kindle. It sure makes it easier to travel with plenty of reading material. Mine uses eInk and no back-light, and it is easy on the eyes. I really like it.

But I can’t read it in the bathtub without worrying about dropping it, I can’t lend a book to a friend, I can’t sell those I’ve finished at a yard sale, and I will never be thrilled to discover the one Mr. & Mrs. North murder mystery I don’t own in a cardboard box in the back of garage.

Win something, lose something.

I’m wondering if we are ahead.

Tooting your own horn

You don’t need money to toot your own horn. You just need a horn.
—from a Citibank ad, of all things

A playwright is always his or her own first producer.

That’s an inconvenient truth.

It also applies to almost any kind of artist.

I’m extremely sorry to have to tell you this, but the chances of somebody knocking on your door to offer you a recording contract when they hear you singing in the shower are slim.

Your private journal, however steeped in literary eloquence, isn’t going to bring you a publisher if no one ever sees it.

You’ve got to get over all that early training about only speaking when you’re spoken to and acting like a lady and being modest and so forth.

Put your stuff out there.

Marketing is key. And it’s not just for Fortune 500 companies any longer.

These days, we all have access to a relatively inexpensive marketing tool that levels the playing field. It is easy–and important–to have your own website.

A lot of web hosts provide powerful tools to get you up and running quickly. In order to put your own stamp on your design, however, I highly recommend that you achieve a basic understanding of HTML (main markup language for web pages). Even if you use any or all of the various WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editors that allow for drag-and-drop design and which have come a long way since the early days, understanding the underlying codes is invaluable when there’s a problem.

Being able to edit the HTML can save you hours of confusion and frustration.

And this Tuesday’s Tip is a pointer to a great online tutorial, W3Schools, and a reminder about a nifty little program that makes editing that code much easier: Notepad++.

W3Schools is a terrific reference to all the major web design languages. It has great interactive online tutorials and lots of examples for beginners and a searchable reference for more knowledgeable users. I use it all the time.

And once W3Schools has helped me figure out what the code should look like on my webpage, I go to Notepad++ to help me implement the solution.

It’s possible to edit HTML in the regular old Notepad that comes with Windows. Notepad++, however–free to download and use–provides a number of additional features that will make you wonder how you ever survived without them.

It lets you edit multiple documents in the same window. Great for cutting and pasting useful bits of code from one page to another.
It allows color coding of syntax. Comments in one color, keywords in another, etc. So much easier to read the code that way.
It allows collapsing and expanding of sections of code. Just make the whole table disappear (in the code), while you work on the rest of the page, for example.
It allows search and replace across multiple documents. If you change the directory structure of your website, you can globally replace all references to any particular path.

There are other features I haven’t yet explored, but those alone have saved me hours of time.

We’d all like to spend all our time on creative endeavors. But if we want those endeavors noticed, we might have to toot our own horns.

Sometimes you CAN put off until tomorrow…

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

I procrastinate a lot.

And I usually feel guilty about it. The world is set up to reward those who get things done. Even your sneakers urge you “Just do it.”

Laziness, in my case, leads to some extraordinary efficiency–because I am going to find the easiest way to do something if it kills me–and to many missed opportunities. (Could have had this post done a week ago, for example.)

Today’s Monday Miracle, though, is the discovery that procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Here at Casa Lagarto, I don’t have much furniture, but I do have a labyrinth. I’m very fond of the labyrinth, because hey! It’s a labyrinth! Do you have one? And because my mom and I made it together, and because it was a cool way to use up some slate that was just sitting in the yard when we bought the Casa, and because it is a lovely peaceful way to spend some time outdoors.

When we laid out the slate, it was clear that maintenance was going to be a factor. I live in a subtropical climate. Grass and weeds grow like…well, like weeds…if given half a chance.

Being lazy, I didn’t do much prep work. We pretty much just drew the pattern with a non-permanent eco-friendly spray paint and dropped the stones where we wanted them. There was no digging or grading or anything.

And there we had the labyrinth. On top of the grass. (There wasn’t really so much grass right then. More of that anon.) The slate varied in height from thin little…um…slates…to slabs over two inches thick. Clearly, it was not going to be possible to mow the labyrinth as it existed on the first day.

I pondered the situation and decided that I was going to have to set each stone into the ground. You know. Level. So a mower could pass over it cleanly. But it was hot, and we had just moved a whole lot of rock, and it seemed that the digging part of the project could wait for another day. Meanwhile, I would use the weed whacker to trim the grass in and around the labyrinth.

That was two years ago.

The digging part of the project hasn’t happened yet. It was always too hot or too cold or I was too busy with other projects. Honestly, I just didn’t want to do it. Even weed whacking seven circuits every week or so was not enough to convince me that the effort involved in sinking them into the ground would be worth it.

They sank a little bit over time.

And then–Tropical Storm Debby!

The uphill side of all the stones is totally level with the ground. The downhill side not so much. But a little fill dirt will take care of that. And any fool knows it is easier to drop dirt than dig it up.

So, I’m not gonna need to do any digging to get my labyrinth in shape. (In fact, had I done it at the beginning, I’d be digging again to dig it out!) I’ll probably be able to mow over it this time next week.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing.

Oh, and the grass?

That’s another area where procrastination helped.

We had a lot of bare spots in the yard. And then we made more by hiring some guys with a stump grinder to get rid of the cypress knees and some tree roots so we could mow. ( I’m tellin’ you, between the labyrinth and the cypress knees and the sweet gum balls, the back yard was a death trap for lawn mower blades!)

And the Man of the House (hereafter to be known as the MotH) kept wanting to buy sod.

I don’t know much about laying sod, but I have a pretty fair notion that it’s not like rolling out a carpet. I was not enthusiastic. I kept saying, “We just have to give it a chance. It’s not getting enough water,” and putting on the sprinkler when my memory of the necessity coincided with our designated watering days.

Plus, we put out a little grass seed now and then.

Recovery was slow.

Until Tropical Storm Debby.

Now, the lawn is doing rather well. And the MotH is no longer muttering about sod.

Procrastination is not always a bad thing. And neither are tropical storms.

Outsmarting Yourself

I cannot play the guitar.

I cannot play the guitar, and it’s my own fault. I outsmarted myself.

Now, it is possible I was never going to be able to play the guitar well. Maybe I didn’t have the dexterity in my fingers or the musical ability. I certainly don’t have much of an ear. (Digital guitar tuners. A most excellent invention! I really like this one.)

I do, however, have enough of an ear to love music. I bought myself a guitar when I was a teenager, along with a book entitled something highly original like “How to Play the Guitar.”

I learned some chords. About six, I think. Maybe seven. C, F, Dm, D, Am, Em, G7. I learned to strum. I learned to pick out a melody. (I can still play the first nine notes of “Dueling Banjos.” Not a lot of call for that, believe it or not. Go figure.)

I spent hours warbling away with a collection of music books, a guitar pick and extremely sore fingers. And I mean hours! It’s a wonder my parents didn’t kill me. Fortunately, it seems that my noise sensitivity is not inherited. Not from them, anyway. We survived this period.

I still have the guitar, the music books and the picks. And a great admiration for guitar players.

But I cannot play the guitar.

One of the reasons I never got beyond those six or seven chords is that I picked up a book or an article somewhere about transposing. And suddenly, I didn’t have to learn any additional chords in order to play all those songs I hadn’t yet mastered.

(Wow! That is looking back through rose-colored glasses for sure. As if I had ever mastered even one song.)

Let us pause for a moment, in the interest of honesty, and amend that ‘songs I hadn’t yet mastered’ to ‘songs written with chords I didn’t yet know.’

Suddenly, I didn’t have to learn any additional chords to play accompaniment for any song in the books. I spent hours working out the transposition and penciling the new chord symbols into my music. I mean hours. I thought I was so smart to have figured that out.

I wonder what would have happened if I had spent those hours learning and practicing the new chords.

Honored Guest

The missing Chinese proverb—and a stroke of luck

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…No!

It wasn’t a galaxy far away. It was just something lost in the mists of my mind.

I think it was a Chinese proverb. But it might have been Japanese. Or something somebody made up. (Some days the mists are foggier than others.) I just don’t really remember, and I’m sorry about that…because I like to give credit where it is due.

However, the proverb—whatever its origin—was something to the effect that you should treat your house as if an honored guest were about to visit.

We all know what that means, right?

Impending guests, honored or not, tend to jump start the housework.

Suddenly, we look around, and we see things with new eyes. Truth be told, they are probably far sharper eyes than any guest is likely to bring. And, honestly, my most honored guests are the ones I can trust to turn a blind eye to some of my less-than-perfect housekeeping. Nonetheless, a guest on the horizon is a definite motivator.

I’ve had a stroke of luck recently along those lines.

I was expecting an especially honored guest around the end of May. Much cleaning and polishing occurred. (And some actual decorating, because, see, the guest room was not actually ready at the point the invitation was issued and accepted.) And then my honored guest was unable to come for the anticipated visit.

But my house was clean, and my guest room ready, so I figured I was ahead of the game. Plus, it wasn’t a straight-out cancellation, but rather a postponement. So, now, whenever housework weighs heavily—and you know it does, because there is always something more interesting to do—but whenever it weighs heavily, I remember that the honored guest is still pending.

And I gather up my dust cloths and my vacuum attachments and I get to work. There are still a few months to go before the rescheduled arrival, but I figure it will be easier to keep the house clean on an ongoing basis than to launch a massive recovery effort closer to time.

And you know what?

I like having a clean house.

It’s okay if I turn out to be the honored guest.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants