Part Three: Six Guilty Pleasures

It might seem a little strange or shallow to post this on Thanksgiving Day, when others are writing lovely and profound pieces on gratitude.  But when I thought about it, I realized that the fact that I’ve made peace with certain things about myself is indeed something to be thankful for, as is the fact that my husband and children accept and love me as I am.   Happy Thanksgiving.

Name six guilty pleasures you once considered guilty but you now have either abandoned or made peace with:

1. I sleep with a stuffed animal at night.  No, I don’t mean my husband, though I do sleep with him, too.  I mean I sleep with a stuffed rabbit I got as an adult.  And I make no apologies.  I’m a very mature and responsible adult, and I’m not ashamed—it helps me sleep and gives me comfort and hurts no one.  I didn’t have one as a child, so it fulfils a need I always had.  My husband is fine with it.  And if you’ve got a problem with it, well… you’ve got a problem.

2. As a child, I loved the smell of mothballs.  I think it’s because my mama kept our quilts in a trunk with mothballs, pulling them out when the weather got cold.  So I associate the smell of mothballs with comfort and warmth, and when I was small, I’d inhale deeply the mothball smell of the quilt as my mama pulled it up to my chin at night.   But they are now known to be pretty serious carcinogens, so no more deep breathing of mothball fumes for me.

3. I am not thin and svelte. In fact, my ex-husband used to say that I was “hearty peasant stock,” meaning…not petite.  (And he didn’t mean that as a compliment). I used to worry a little about this and feel guilty when I’d eat something I knew to be highly caloric.  No more.  I adore food, so when I do partake of a high-fat indulgence, I savor every bite.  I just make sure I eat healthy otherwise and that I don’t indulge myself too often and that I buy things with elastic.  Thank God for elastic.

4. Though we don’t have much money, I do occasionally buy books.  For one thing, our local library seldom has the book I want to read.  For another, I love owning a book, especially a new one.  (See post below).  I don’t buy many clothes or shoes or spend much on beauty (though I probably should)!  So I don’t feel guilty buying books, especially those I know I’ll read again and again.

5. I indulge my love for yard art.  I love whirligigs and windchimes and gnomes and pink flamingoes and ceramic frogs and…well, the list goes on and on.  Yeah, I like stuff that some consider bad taste or tacky, but I don’t care.  I could never stand to live in one of those communities with covenants that ban certain “distasteful” yard ornaments.  Nobody’s going to take my gnomes from my home.  No sirree.

6. My greatest pleasure ever is being a mother.  It’s not a guilty pleasure, but I used to worry a bit about the fact that I wasn’t like the other mothers.  At school functions, I’d feel so out of place, and I’d worry that I’d embarrass my children. I mean, it was pretty obvious that these mothers had never told their children that their food had been nibbled by a mischievous kitchen rat! (See post below).  But my children love me as I am.  And I love them as they are.  A lot.  So I’ve stopped comparing myself to other mothers.   I yam what I yam, as Popeye always said.  

And that’s not so bad.

And now, I hereby tag anyone who would like to be tagged for this meme.  It really was a lot of fun to do, even if I did ramble.  But no need to feel guilty about that!

Part Two: Six Guilty Pleasures

Name six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage (or money!) to indulge:

1. I have always had a longing to see Niagara Falls.  Now I know for those of you who are world travelers, that must seem kind of…I dunno…quotidian.  But, really, I’ve always wanted to go there.  Funny thing is, I’ve never had the inclination (or money) to travel overseas, but I’ve always yearned to see all of the United States and Canada, though I’ve barely made it beyond North Carolina or Virginia.  Maybe someday…when I have more time and money.

2. North Carolina has a rich heritage of literature, a very active community of writers, and a wonderful organization called the North Carolina Writer’s Network.  As Lee Smith once said, you can hardly throw a rock in North Carolina without hitting a writer.  The Network has lots of workshops and a yearly festival.  I’d like to go someday to the workshops and the festival and talk to other writers.  Maybe someday…when I have more courage, time, and money.

3. I’d like to learn to play the cello.  When I listen to recordings of Yo-Yo Ma, it really strikes a chord in me (no pun intended).  Sometimes I find myself listening with tears running down my face, and sometimes, I feel an actual vibration in my body, as though I am the cello being played.  Yeah, I know.  Weird.   But the cello…um…really resonates with me.

4. I’d like to own a laptop.  The idea of sitting outside while tapping away on my laptop is very exciting because outside is where my creative inspiration strikes most often.  Plus, people just look really hip and cool reclining with their laptops perched on their stomachs, and Lord knows, I’ve always wanted to look hip and cool.  My daughter Ariel loves the laptop she had to get for college, and she looks especially hip and cool with it.  When she was small, she drew a keyboard on the inside of old pizza boxes and pretended it was a laptop.  She really looked cool pretending that, but I don’t think I would. 

5. I would like to finish my novel.  I started one about three years ago, but my life took a turn for the worse for a time, and I lost my muse.  That’s why I started this blog—to find it again.  Ah, well…maybe someday…when I have more…courage and confidence.

6. I don’t suppose this is a guilty pleasure, but it is a wish.  I wish I weren’t so painfully shy.  Perhaps you can’t see it from my writing, but I can barely talk when I meet new people, and I can barely breathe when I’m in a crowd.  So when I say painfully shy, I mean it is physically painful for me sometimes to interact with people.  Only my family (and my friends to some extent) know who I really am because it takes me so long to open up to people.  But now that I think about it, maybe you, my faithful readers, know me after all.  Because my writing, I think, reveals who I am–for better or for worse. 

******Okay, well, I didn’t mean to get so serious here or be so long-winded either.  Sorry.  There’s something about the holidays that makes me pensive.  But, again, if you’re interested—Part Three will be tomorrow—Six Guilty Pleasures You Once Considered Guilty But Have Either Abandoned or Made Peace With.******

Six Guilty Pleasures

 

My friend June over at Spatter tagged me with a meme:  Six Guilty Pleasures.  And it’s been kind of fun doing it.  June herself wrote a great post on it here.   Now, the truth is, I don’t feel near as guilty as I should when I do these things, but I’ll pretend I do. 

Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having:

1. I buy Nestle’s Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels and Nestle’s Toll House Butterscotch Morsels regularly to make my children’s favorite oatmeal cookies to send to them at college. At least, that’s my premise for purchase.  Truthfully, many of those morsels never make it into the cookies.   Because I eat them.   By the handful.  No, make that plural.  Handfuls.  Both the chocolate and the butterscotch.  I keep them in a small Tupperware container for easy, surreptitious access.  The butterscotch ones are uncommonly good with peanut butter, which brings me to number two…

2. I love peanut butter.  I mean, really, really love peanut butter.  I’m a Jif girl, always have been.  I eat peanut butter by the spoonful (but I don’t double dip!).  We buy it in huge quantities—in those giant jars.  Last time we went to Sam’s Club, we bought ten jars.  Partly to give to our son Benjamin because he is nuts (no pun intended) about it, too, but really, I personally eat at least one of those jars every single week. If it weren’t for Nestle’s Morsels and peanut butter, I’d be thin and svelte.

3. And speaking of food, back when my children were small, sometimes when preparing their food, I’d be so hungry, I’d take a bite.  Being the alert and clever children that they are, they’d usually notice and ask indignantly, “Who took that bite?”  I invented a story about a greedy kitchen rat named Raggedy Rat who would always take a bite of something when I turned my back. “Darn that Raggedy Rat!” I’d exclaim.  I always thought they’d bought my story until they told me years later that they were always onto me.  They never were easy to fool, though Lord knows I tried.

4. Regular readers of my blog may remember my “googly eyes” post .  If you’re new to my blog, I’ll wait while you go read it.   No, really, I don’t mind.   Go ahead.
                
                  *goes to kitchen to find some morsels*
                  *eats a spoonful of peanut butter*
     
I’m back.  Did you read it?  Well, here’s my new guilty pleasure.  Sometimes, I  put googly eyes on fruits and vegetables at the grocery store.  It doesn’t do any  harm (they peel right off) and I know it makes people laugh because I’ve loitered  around to see reactions.      

5. I love to eavesdrop.  I don’t mean I lurk in closets or behind bushes to overhear private conversations.  I mean, I love to sit in a public place and listen to conversations.  I would much rather listen to people talk than to talk myself, which you probably don’t believe due to the fact that I do seem to ramble on at some length in my posts.  Trust me; I’m really very shy and quiet.

6. When I say I love books, I don’t just mean I love to read, though I do.  I do get a lot of books from the library, but on the happy occasions when I buy or receive a brand new book, I take enormous sensuous pleasure in the newness of that book.  I inhale that new book smell, I run my fingers across the cover (I particularly love it when the cover has dimension), and I even relish the sound of pages ruffling and the little puff of air when you ruffle them.  Yeah, I know that a little weird. But it’s the truth.        

My goodness, how embarrassing.  I’ve rambled on so long that I’ll have to post Part Two tomorrow, Six Guilty Pleasures You Wish You Had the Courage to Indulge.  Not that you’d be interested.  But if you are…

Telling On Myself/Learning To Practice What I Preach/Irony Hits Me Upside My Head

The one thing that is guaranteed to send me off into the deep end is a computer glitch.  The most frustrating aspect of this is the fact that I rarely have any idea at all how I got into the trouble.  In addition, even if the problem inexplicably resolves itself, I rarely have any idea at all how I got out of trouble.  So I live with the terrible knowledge that somewhere down the road, it’s probably going to happen again. 

So it was on Monday, when I tried to post my piece about sundogs and The Cloud Appreciation Society.   I’ve been blogging for a couple of weeks now, so I was feeling confident, almost smug. (Here’s where I should tell you that my very first photo post took me three hours to finish.  Three hours.)  But I was getting a handle on this blogging thing.  Yeah. This was going to be a piece of cake.

When I tried to load the photograph of the sundog, it was huge, covering my whole blog page, so that my sidebar completely disappeared.  I was flummoxed, as the photo was about the same pixel size as all the other photos I had uploaded.  So I went back, reduced its size further, and reloaded it.  Still enormous.  Still no sidebar.  So, over and over and over again, I reduced the size of the sundog picture until it was only 48KB.   Still gigantic.  In the course of doing this, I accidentally deleted the written part of my post, including my links to The Cloud Appreciation Society and my pictures of clouds.

By now, I had been working on this for two hours.  I was actually trembling with frustration, sweating profusely, and almost hyperventilating.  It was about this time that Tom, my husband, came in.  He was excited. 

“Beth, you’ve got to come out and see this cloud.  It’s settled right on top of the mountain like snow, and the little wisps of it are trailing down the sides, but the sky is pure blue above!  It’s amazing!”

I wiped my perspiring hands on my jeans. “Umm, not right now, honey.  I’m trying to make this post upload.  You know… the one about The Cloud Appreciation Society.”

Tom stared at me.  “Just come out for a second.  This cloud is really something.”

“Not right now!  I’ve got to finish this cloud post!”  I felt irritated.  Why doesn’t he leave me alone?  Damn this stupid post.  Stupid blog.  Stupid sundog.  Stupid cloud. 

Tom was still staring at me.  In a significant way.  But, of course, I was too distracted to care about why.  Dadgummit,  I was going to finish this post about the beauty of sundogs and clouds if it killed me.  

Tom didn’t say another word.  He grabbed his camera and went back out.

I retyped the piece and redid the links to The Cloud Appreciation Society.  And that’s when it happened.  Yep, it was like in the movies.  In the old movies, that is.  You know, where the lead character has a sudden epiphany.  Their eyes widen in amazement, their mouth falls open, and they hear, as though in a dream, the words that opened their eyes, that single revelatory phrase, over and over, echoing through their astonished mind.  The Cloud Appreciation Society…Cloud appreciation…cloud appreciation…cloud appreciation…

Yep.  Irony hit me upside my head with a sledgehammer.  And, just like in the movies, I shook my head and smiled a rueful smile, as I faced the folly of my ways.  Slipping on my shoes and grabbing my camera, I headed outside.  Outside to look up.  To look up at the wonder of the clouds.  To “marvel at their ephemeral beauty.”

Footnote:  Indeed, beauty is ephemeral.  So I was too late to capture the cloud enshrouding the mountaintop at its best.  But here’s what I did see once I came to my senses and went outside.