Category Archives: Cartoon Blogs

Left Brain, Right Brain

“Are you left-brained or right-brained?”

This is one of those things that people feel a remarkable freedom to ask within the first five minutes of getting acquainted. You are supposed to know, and there’s no equivocating allowed. It’s like being asked whether you’re Republican or Democrat: as an adult, you are assumed to have already picked a team. To blush and mumble “I don’t know,” or “I forget,” is cause for sideways glances and a quick re-shuffling of the cocktail party conversation groupings.

It doesn’t look good.

I verbalize the big picture.

Leaps of logic are fun play toys, yet I absolutely, positively, and in every conceivable way on this and every other planet STINK at filling out online forms. It’s the lurking ambiguity in the questions that undoes me. There are just too many possible ways to interpret the intention of what’s being asked.

It always ends in Rick rescuing me with gentle reassurance that it will all be okay, and no… drooping mascara, a runny nose and hiccups don’t make me look fat.

Even the “which way does your hemispheric boat float?” quizzes don’t help me. They involve questions such as:

Do you have a place for everything and keep everything in its place? Yes or no?

See, they don’t provide the only answer which works for me: eventually.

Can you tell approximately how much time passed without a watch? Yes or no?

I can hardly tell how much time has passed WITH a watch. One state line and a shift in daylight savings time, and I’m left faking it for six months until my clocks are all miraculously correct again.

Speaking in strictly relative terms, is it easier for you to understand algebra or geometry?

Let me tell you, speaking in strictly relative terms, it’s easier for me to understand who my aunts and uncles are than who my second-cousin, once removed, might be. Besides, I don’t do math: too much ambiguity in the questions.

Besides, why do we have to pick? Don’t we need the whole magilla engaged, most of the time? It’s like asking, “When driving at 75 mph, do you keep your eyes open or your hands on the steering wheel?”

I took the quiz and scored 12 “righties” and 6 “lefties.” So the next time someone asks, I”m going with “I’m a mildly loquacious liberal independent ‘big thinker’ with an aversion to being pinned down by online forms and boorish conversation partners.”

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Honk If You Love Dextromethorphan

What’s worse?

The exhaustion, annoyance, and odd sense of guilt produced by spending five weeks with your nose running non-stop…

… and the constant sniffing is so disgusting that your mutinous head has been trying to blow itself off your own shoulders in record-breaking sneezing fits……

… while simultaneously coping with a cough that sounds like a seal straining to pass a lung at three minute intervals,…

… or being the healthy one who has to listen to it all?

Happy 54th Anniversary, Mom and Dad

Some people are born into families with a ton of cash, while others marry for gold.

After watching you two through all these years, we know there’s a wealth that often eludes them all.

Congratulations on 54 years of “I STILL do!”

On Finding a Unique Voice

You are the only one who sees the world the way you do… you know… properly.

On the most intimate level, this can make for terrible “he said, she said” relationships. Even with people you’ve never met before, it can lead to ridiculous arguments over who had the right to a particular parking spot.

Just now out of curiosity, I googled the keywords “parking spot fight Walmart” and got back 249,000 entries. I rest my case.

On the other hand, if you have the good fortune to have a best friend who gets that life is not a question of “who’s right,” but rather “who’s point of view will we talk about now,” you are truly blessed.

Take Rick, for instance. (Or rather, just borrow him for a minute. I want him back right away.)

One of the (MANY) great things about Rick is that before he jumps to a cranky place about how a conversation or interaction rolled out, he’ll consciously pause and ask, “How did you see that unfold?” He just takes it for granted that his perspective isn’t the only possible way a moment in the universe can have been interpreted or experienced.

As much as that makes him a gem of a husband, I think it’s what also makes him such a courageous, yet humble, creative being.

I think he accepts and celebrates that he’s the only one who sees life from his unique perch. And I think all true artists–painters, song writers, poets, street mimes… okay, maybe not street mimes, but the rest, for sure– share this understanding in common. For many, it’s what drives the urge to create: to find and express your unique voice.

It’s not that easy to be tortured by artistic loneliness, either. At least, it’s not for me. Because as soon as I find another author I adore (Muriel Barbery, of “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” is this month’s contender), I immediately struggle to write more like them. But I’m not them, and if I’m to be successful as a writer, I need to become more like me in my writing, not less.

Sometimes I feel like Phoebe on Friends when she declared, “I’d give anything not to be understood in my own time!”

But I figure if I just keep my eyes on Rick, and my ears open for my muse, and my heart filled with the confidence that comes from being in a community of artistic courage, I may yet be misunderstood in my own time.

Are we confused yet?

A Well-Stocked Pantry

Rick is really good at making sure that the necessary elements of life are in place well before they are needed.

For instance, before I knew we were actually going to require ten pounds of un-shelled peanuts from Costco in our tiny condominium, presto! There he was, jogging up to the check-out counter just in time to plunk the monster bag on to the conveyor belt.

“Look what I found!” He grinned like he had just walked in from the bush with a winter’s supply of venison dragging in the snow behind him.

We were provisioned for peanuts from Thanksgiving through the Super Bowl. We still have about 6 lbs. left.

The only problem with being well-provisioned is that in small homes, you tend to run shy on storage space. Add “enough” peanuts to “ample” paper towels, multiply by the correct number of “just in case” light bulbs, and divide by 1150 sq. feet, and you get the picture.

The thing is, I’ll never complain.

Because in addition to a well-provisioned pantry and sundries shelf, Rick is also really wonderful at making sure I’m always all stocked up in the other important stuff.

Like words of affection and encouragement, frequent gestures of small kindnesses, a funny comment that I never see coming, or a strong arm slipped gently around my waist before we stroll past threatening dogs on our walk…

Those other things that strain our cupboards on occasion? They’re just peanuts.

Moving Day

We’re done moving.

It’s time to settle down, settle in, and settle up.

And there’s a lot of settling up to do,

When you go from two homes, to none, and back to two.

Yes, there have been boxes to get through.

At a combined age of 106, what can you do?

We’ve reduced and renewed, rented and re-used,

Reclaimed and recycled the stuff of our lives.

There are stories to tell ’bout chimneys and bricks and fire pits.

Of tomes unread, and the friends who stayed when others fled.

But meanwhile…

Here’s to book club, and Oscar nights.

To dreams catching hold, while others take flight.

To Rick, and me, and the Muse makes three.

And to choosing to live in the day’s soft light.

Lindsey Vonn for Best Actress

When individuals struggle with intrusive thoughts and try to calm the resulting anxiety by repetitive behavior, it’s called “obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

When networks do the same thing, it’s called “comprehensive coverage.”

It’s one of the reasons we don’t watch much TV. It’s not the only reason: we also like to read, write, play Scrabble, take long walks on the beach, talk, not talk, eat soup… But it’s a big part of the equation.

I don’t know anyone who eats the exact same meal, or wears the same outfit, or listens to the same playlist five days in a row. Yet TV news programming seems to suffer from obsessive fixations on single “hot” topics and people to the exclusion of anything else that might be happening in the world. And someone must be watching, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.

The guilty parties know who they are. That’s all we’ll say, except for this: quit it, will ya? We really shouldn’t be encouraging this type of behavior.

CNN will air the same 30-second clip of a street sign blowing in the wind during a storm in Florida 18 times in a row. How many times did I need to see OJ Simpson’s white Bronco meandering down the freeway? And of the 217 US athletes participating in the 2010 Olympics, I was left with the images of red hair and big teeth, joy tantrums of skis pumping in the air, and a little flavor-saver goatee burned into my retina.

And this is too bad, because Shaun, Lindsey, and Apolo are all very fine athletes who I’d rather admire than resent from relentless over-exposure.

Hey, Mr. Programming Director? “Please give me more coverage” is not the same request as “Please give me the same coverage, more.”

Okay, so networks spend a fair chunk of change to be on my screen. NBC alone forked over $5.5 BILLION for the US broadcast rights of the Olympic Games from 1996 to 2012. This may give them (and their sponsors) a certain amount of leverage in determining who is, and who is not, eligible for “poster child” status and preferred spotlight time.

But at the end of the day, we, Joe and Josephine Consumer, have three weapons at hand that trump any decisions the media make about who and what they air:

… the channel changer, the DVR fast-forward function, and TV on/off button.

rickandkathy.com

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