Take care of yourself

So I thought I was doing pretty good with the whole keeping healthy thing. My weight is good, I don't eat crap, and I get in some exercise. For various reasons, I had to get a physical recently and the doctor didn't seem too concerned about my general health. Woohoo, instant validation of my reasoning to stay away from the doctor's office--namely "I'm healthy, I don't need to go see that guy." Then he told me to get blood drawn for cholesterol.

Dammit if it wasn't high. I guess high cholesterol runs in families and, you guessed it, runs in ours. Yeah, you're welcome.

Eat the best you can given the food services situation, exercise regularly, do modern jazz dance, and get a physical once in a while. That's my plan, except for the jazz dance, so that I can hang around and irritate my kids 'til I'm 103 (to paraphrase Jiminy Cricket.)

Getting fired

I mentioned getting fired as one of those times where you might be in serious trouble. If you've got bills to pay and suddenly no way to pay them, then you are most certainly in trouble. Otherwise, it might not be so bad.

I can count on one hand the number of places I've worked. Lots of positions, few employers. The second job I had I got fired from. It was a mix of principal and dumbness, which is kinda funny. The boss at the golf course would have a meeting once a month and insist that we be there without pay. I grumbled the first couple times, then finally argued with him about it. He didn't budge so I didn't go to the next meeting, for which I wasn't put on the schedule for the next week. The next month, I just forgot and when I remembered it was too late to worry about it.

Next day, the boss was waiting for me to show up. He said basically that that was twice and I was done. When I brought up the whole lack of pay thing, he said that we could have talked about it. Well, we already had and he was choosing to ignore that bit. So that was that. I felt pretty crappy about getting canned, even if it was a shitty job. Took about a month of constant looking to get another job, but I did and that was that.

Have a valentine

It's Valentine's Day, so give your friends a valentine. It's nice to get one and it's even better to give one.

Just make sure you're only giving Hershey kisses to your boyfriend.

Tabasco makes everything better

In my brief and unremarkable time in the reserves, I did manage to learn a few things. How to drive a Vietnam War-era five ton truck, that was a good one. Um, the wonderful world of petroleum supply. Ooh, how to improvise a gasket from a manila folder. Hmm, let's see...oh yeah, that diesel doesn't make a very good paint thinner, but if the paint sucks to begin with it doesn't matter much.

The best, absolutely most useful thing I learned during that time by far was the Miracle of Tabasco. See, sometimes we would be out doing some training and for whatever reason, someone would decide that instead of trucking actual food to the training site we would have MREs. MRE stands for 'Meal Ready to Eat,' but was more like 'Meal Rejected by Everyone.' They weren't completely without merit, because they had little packets of treats. Usually gum, matches, toilet paper (although that must have been a joke, because if you were eating MREs you weren't going to need toilet paper any time soon), and a little, tiny bottle of Tabasco.

Tabasco made Chicken a la King into Chicken a la Awesome. It turned some truly foul, cold, mushy meals into palatable stuff. I'm not saying it was something you'd order at a restaurant, but at least you could eat it. The trick was to collect all the unused bottles you could so you had a stockpile in case you got stuck with something really bad, like Green Eggs and Ham. The Dreaded Green Eggs and Ham. That was the unluckiest pick of the draw, unless you knew the secret way to eat it. I don't even remember what the real name of that bit of nastiness was, but it had something approximating a ham omelette and included two very dry crackers and a packet of 'cheese.' The secret was to mix the cheese and every bottle of Tabasco into the packet of Green Eggs and Ham, then spread it on a cracker. The worst of the MREs was transformed into the best. Tabasco, in sufficient quantities, could overcome the worst that the Army could come up with. That's saying something.

There are other hot sauces that are almost as good, Tapatio for one. But Tabasco will always be the King when it comes to salvaging nasty food.

Happy dance

I've already told you this, but it's important enough for me to tell you again in front of the whole world (wide web, anyway.) Every year that goes by without you being a mama, I do a happy dance. When you get in to your late twenties, early thirties, I won't be dancing anymore. But in the meantime, I consider each baby-less year a little victory.

I was ridiculously stupidly young when you were born. Now, don't get me wrong, I wouldn't change a thing because then I wouldn't have you around to listen to my terrible jokes. But. I would not recommend the teen parenthood path to anyone, nor would I recommend the just young parenthood path. Go do some stuff before you have kids. Get your career started, travel, finish your studies, whatever. It's all a million times harder once you've got anklebiters of your own. And more expensive. Holy crap, kids are expensive.

Be smart, be careful, and stay away from boys. They're nothing but trouble. Oh, and they smell, too.

If you join the army

Do it for the right reasons and do it smart. I sure as hell didn't. Here's how bad I screwed it up.

I had vague feelings about wanting to do something for my country (damned 'Profiles in Courage') and knew that the GI Bill could get me through college. When the recruiter came around, I thought I would hear what he had to say. First mistake, recruiters are there to get you to sign up so treat them like used car salesmen. Then when it sounded good, I thought 'ok, the reserves wouldn't be so bad and they'll give me a promotion based on my college credit.' Mistakes two and three: don't go in enlisted, be an officer; get any promises in writing. Then, because apparently I was on a roll with the bad decisions, I picked a job based on how long the training was so I could get back in time for the fall quarter. Mistake four: pick a job you want to do and will be useful once you get out. Some guy was being offered a shot at helicopter pilot school and a warrant officer position when I was picking my job. I thought, 'damn, I would jump at that' and didn't. Truck driving is great if you want to be a truck driver, I should have gone for flight school.

Last mistake (or first mistake): think hard about what you want to do and why you want to do it. I got disillusioned pretty quickly with the mindless sweeping of the motor pool and driving the aging diesel out of Humvees.

I think the military is a good option for some people, especially if they can stay off painting and barnacle scraping positions. For others with a 'can do for the country' bent, do AmeriCorps or Peace Corps or some local organization. There are lots of options and some of them might even pay you.

Just don't end up sweeping the motor pool.

Nine lives

With two close calls, I am choosing to believe that I have nine lives to cash in and not three strikes before I'm out. See, I had a pretty bad wreck when you were little. The kind involving multiple cars, stuck doors and fire. I got out of that one with bruises, whiplash, some singed hair, and a head trip that lasted for quite awhile. "What if I had gone for McDonald's instead of El Pollo Loco? What if I had been in a faster line at the store?" What if, what if, what if.

"What if" doesn't get you anywhere. What happened happened and there aren't any parallel universes to explore the other possibilities in. You deal with what happened, otherwise you just get yourself in a tizzy. I do, anyway.

So this other close call was, of course, the bike wreck. No head trip this time, I've already done that. However, it was a bit of a wake up call. You don't know when things are going to go pear-shaped, but you can bet that they will at some stage. Don't let it mess with your head, before or after.

Way I figure, I can have things go badly once every ten years and still make 100. Ha, see what you have to look forward to?

In search of what?

I just read some Kerouac and some other beatnik dude that liked to get wasted and wander. So then I think, 'I'll read something lighter, maybe a travel book. A motorcycle travel book!" Turns out one of my favorite bike journalists has collected his articles and put them in a book. Freakin' awesome! Except that it turns out that he's another dude that likes to get wasted and wander. So...hm. What do you make of that?

Well, I reckon that if you are having issues and you decide the best course of action is to head for Tierra del Fuego and a bottle, you are looking to escape some questions because you certainly are not looking for answers. Just deal with your crap, then head to Peru for fun.

Oh, and if you want to know why binge drinking is bad then read the last half of "Big Sur." What a mess.

It's the little things

Heh, I had a Bush song in my head.

You know what's going to trip you up? The little things. Because something gets in your way that is really insignificant, but annoying, and distracts you from what you should be doing. Pretty soon, you've wasted the evening and now have even less time to finish that paper.

Some people set time limits, as in "if I can't fix it in five minutes, I'm done with it," while others try to ignore it. You have to work out what's best for you. I'm horrible at it, so don't ask me.

Stay on task

I have gotten really bad at staying focused. Not that I was much good at it before, but now I'm hopeless. So, what to do? I read something somewhere about some Zen monks that did one thing at a time until it was done, then moved on to the next thing. These guys would tend to the garden when it was time to garden and when it was time to eat they would cook the food, do the dishes, then sit down to eat.

That's pretty hard to do when you are expected to multitask, but it really makes sense to focus on doing the task at hand. Try telling that to the boss, though. So I'm trying to adopt a method that includes a to do list, working on the first item until I can't go any farther with it for whatever reason, then moving on to the second item, etc. Kinda like working in series, then switching to parallel when the circuit craps out.

Of course, with my feeble brain I need to keep note of where I left off on the last task.