here is the book people, I hope you guys let me know how you like it. I could go farther on writing it but that would not help the story. It took me two hours to read through this and I hope you guys can glean something from it. I lost count of hours spent working on it. But, here it is. It is my original story, I’m trusting you to hold it in respect and not to defame it or steal it. Click on the link and download the free pdf of my book. Please help out a starting author. support local music and writings. enjoy the story. leave comments, help me help it to be better.
Frootes by my daughter
another one from my very wonderful daughter Sylvia
Bear Girl by my daughter
90 days
Had the urging to give my ninety days notice that I will no longer be killing animals and processing them. Too much blood and killing for this guy for awhile. Quite an interesting job it has been but I need to move on. I’m quite excited as I peek into the future and see something awesome coming after this. The first notice I have ever given to any employer. This is momentous. To God be the glory!
P.S. if you know anyone in iowa near Muscatine who needs a job to do let me know.
Sunshine
Crash
Hope
Alloptragomatist
here is one for us outcasts who belong!!!!!
Novelty in what we do
Have you ever tried doing your job left handed? I have tried it and so far, only been able to do parts of it. But for some reason, switching hands leads to our brain synapses being all fired up and excitable.
Now, for those who know, I butcher and play with knives for my job now. I have an overwhelming urge to move away from the killing of animals and playing with knives to doing something less bloody. Maybe, like Odd Thomas, to become a simple short order cook or furniture delivery person. Maybe simplifying would be just what life ordered. if a person is in the knife field of work, I strongly suggest only the professionals even attempt using their non dominant hand to do their work. For the rest of us, lets dive in and spur our creativity.
Brush with your left hand. (Sorry left handers, you’ll have to flip all these examples.) It is a wild, novel idea that will cause your brain to reengage in your task.
Hit a baseball with your non dominant hand.
Take a different route to work.
Add smelling vases to your car for parts of your journey. This olfactory thing is reverting back to the joy of little children. Study them if you are unsure about this. What do they do? They smell things, pick them up, feel them, lick them, taste them, see what else these things do. As adults we have forgotten these simple things to make memories and impressions.
Introduce smells when meeting people so that it becomes a memorable experience. This leads to our brain associating something meaningful to meeting someone new. We all used to do this as little children but somehow forgot to as adults. I, for one, am terrible lately at names and have started trying this, it helps more than just kicking myself for not remembering.
Write left handed. This one is tough. I have a left handed son, who has trouble writing still (he’s only 4 though), his teachers are trying to teach him how a right hander would do it. Sorry, teachers, it doesn’t work that way. Left handers write a whole world different. The only way I could get him to move forward was by learning to write left handed as well.
Listen to something and read it at the same time. The audio and the visual!
If you would like more novel things, I recently read Neurobics. This may help you as well. They dissect what things like 83 things you can do different to increase your memory and make life more full. http://www.keepyourbrainalive.com/
Again, our work and our life and our marriages and our child raising experiences do not all have to be dull and one dimensional, add sights, sounds, smells and tastes to generally everything and enjoy. Ideas from you the reader?
Recipe for disaster
Hot water boiling to the skin, a shower curtain and a sink with edges have a recipe for disaster hidden within.
Ok, my oldest daughter likes the water almost scalding. On one particular evening, we were having a band jam at my house, ordered pizza in and was so caught up in our thing doing that we sent our eldest to bathe. It wasn’t five minutes later and commotion happened and chaos. My wife and I headed up to figure out what happened that could cause screaming, crying, shouting and all sorts of mayhem.
She (my daughter) had hopped in the scalding water, burnt herself, stood up on the side of the tub to let it cool down and had been holding onto the shower curtain. Of course we all know that the shower rod is not attached, it is not a grab handle in emergencies. Well, a seven year old didn’t know that yet but learned it that day. Upon the curtain and rod falling down and knocking her into the sink and then back into the scalding hot water, she was hit with the rod as it did its gymnastics.
Why am I telling you this story? Well, quite simply, how often do we set ourselves up for a disaster?
We, text while driving, put on makeup or look in the mirror at our teeth. We of course, have a cup of hot coffee that we are about to take a sip of when the car in front of us hits the brakes, we have to throw down our phone and coffee flies everywhere, our mirror gets jolted and of course we get irritable to say the least.
Daily, we (not all mind you) set some terrible recipe for disaster or another upon ourselves. Oh to be back in the 1800′s where one could ride a horse and reload a six shooter as the extent of multitasking.
Today, there is this pretty light here and that pretty light there and this event online and this person doing crazy things and all this compiles to a recipe for disaster.
All the while we tend to throw hands up in disgust at all of it but not willing to give anything up or change behaviors.
Now, some, like my daughter, had to learn the hard way. Some learn only that way. Some don’t have to check the boundaries for soundness.
My wife tends to lose her keys, and I got to admit this irks me quite a bit. I am learning how to approach this problem so she can see it sets up a recipe for disaster every single time. One becomes late looking for keys, or misses picking up a child or some other such disaster. Now, we can avoid these things most generally by taking proactive steps towards the solution instead of mixing the recipe for disaster we can mix it for greatness. One tiny detail is sometimes what it takes to change the whole series of events.
If we put our keys where they go daily, habitually, we will improve our own lives. If we leave early, we get to work early enough to enjoy our coffee instead of wearing it because of the rush. If we do our mirror looking at ourselves at home and our texting outside of a vehicle, I think that maybe, just maybe we can make this world a less disasterous place.
Wanna try it this way?
Dialogue of a preoccupied person
Now, it is commonplace to have dinner, be with family or friends, be on the phone, looking at twitter, facebook and email. We are preoccupied. We try to have conversation and compete with nineteen other things for attention. Our conversation has gotten digital but the depth has gone back to cavemanic era. We uh, yeah and uh huh our way through our days. Our family feels disconnected and we are failing.
So very often I am guilty myself of this. I check my email daily more than I should and guess what? Nothing important twenty minutes ago, nothing important now. Then I make the rounds. I check facebook and scroll to where I was last at, don’t want to miss anything of course. Then check email again cuz that scrolling probably gave time for something important to come it. Nope. Zip, zilch, nada, meganegatory. Then I check my blog, see if there is a comment. Nope, back to facebook, nothing, repeat.
Until I realized the tumult of this bad habit, I was wasting entire days off doing nothing and going nowhere productive. I have since had to discipline myself a little and notice in detail what I am doing to produce good fruit.
So very often my wife and I will be watching a movie together and I’ll be on my phone checking something, and it dawns on me that I’m a preoccupied person that my wife can’t connect with if I’m not there 100%. Instead I thought it was ok to be there 60% or so and then watched in horror as the train wreck happened. Then it was time to fix this thing to balance it back out.
Balance is a very iffy thing. Life is constantly pushing one thing out of balance or another. It is our very struggle to find balance for long. There is something else coming which will do its part to unbalance life.
So, in all things, I am targeting my preoccupation, to balance life and marriage. I don’t want to check email every ten minutes. My marriage is more important. I don’t need to have my devices on while eating supper with the family. I don’t need to look at my phone during church. I just need to be. What time is it? Now. Where are we? Here.
Here and now. Present and accounted for.
Are you noticing low tech communication failing in your family because of this high tech world? Lets not forget that people and our relationships with them are more important than a facebook update. Peace and love all.
