Brain Tricks

This is another older post but I'm just practicing so bear with me.....

It seems I'm into tricking my brain right now. Hmmmmm....perhaps I need to find a new sport? Anyway, here's another way to learn just how one's brain deals with difficulty - the difficulty being one's self. This implies that one's brain is not completely attached to one's needs in order to enjoy it's life. One's brain can at times be a bit tricky. Take for instance this example; no matter how many times I reach for the curtain cord, whether to open or close the curtain, I invariably grab the wrong one and have to switch and just that little tiny teeny dig at me gets me really pissed with my brain - I don't mean the alcoholic kind of pissed either. Why is it that this trick has to be played over and over again seemingly hilarious to my brain which is watching and waiting with grande anticipation for just the moment when that little tug reveals to me that it's got me again. And oh how my brain must enjoy the throes of completely unabashed joy each and every time. Really, just writing this makes me want to go pull the cord and get it right so I can upend my brain for once. But no, it won't happen. I know because I've tried it. I've tried, just at the very instant of choosing which cord, and it doesn't matter if the cord is one of those unending ones which go either way or if it's actually two cords because either way you'll (I'll) get it wrong, but just at the very instant, I plan my brain gotcha and switch cords and DAMN! It switched as well and I'm left with double jeopardy!!! I cannot NOT open and close the curtains as my brain/body demands light, preferably sunlight and at night I still get the creeps if I'm sitting with my back to the window, a furniture arrangement which sometimes leaves me with no choice as when I put my giant piano into my not so giant living room and had to ditch my couch for a small little tiny love seat which is not very inducive to good posture but that's not what this is all about. So every time I go to open/close the mere apprehension of failure is cause enough to AAARRRGHHH down the streets and into the night. Crap, now I have to go close the curtains.....it leads to the alcoholic kind of pissed...

The Chicken Move

The Chicken Move

This is an old post but since I'm new in here I'm testing some of the functions of posting in a blog environment.

OK. I had to move the 15 chickens (layers) from our Rose's place to another farm. About a 150 mile trek all told. So, went to Rosie's with boxes....wrangled the chickens into the boxes and into my jeep. So far so good, only a few battle scars to my face. Chickens can be violent. They would make good terrorists. We could unleash them on Donald Trump..they would have a hey day with his 'comb'. Then the journey to their new coop where dogs and cats like the chickens and protect them but do our chickens know that??? NO! They are terrified! SO, again, another battle with the same chickens - there are 15 of them - did I mention that? - more battle scars, cats removed from the coop, dog outside guarding the entire situation and finally, new home, a few snooty girl fights among them and I managed to drive away with only a few minor injuries. Life is exciting - right!
It's interesting to note that the original post was from way back in December of 2015....so the Donald Trump thing still holds true today!!!

The Catholic School Girl's Bathroom, Episode Two

So, after getting used to the Catholic girls bathroom rules etc. and after a couple years brushing up on them, I became a bit more confident and my personality started to take on weird turns. It may have been the result of repressed mischievousness being one of nine siblings. Anyway, this is a catholic girls bathroom story again....as I said I became more confident...fear of the nunners was replaced by intrigue....how to get around them...I was in 3rd grade, seven years old and still very little. As it happened we were sent to the girls bathroom in groups of 6 or so and it came to me suddenly that here was an opportunity to play out a trick on my fellow classmates. I have no idea why or how I came up with it but I determined that in order to carry it out I had to be last in line of my group so that if I stalled in the stall I would be left alone in the girls bathroom. At that point I would lock the stall door and very deftly, and since I was small it was pretty easy, crawl out from under the door, quickly shoot to the next one, latch it shut and on down the line till all the doors were closed and latched so that the next group of girls would have to crawl under if they wanted to pee. I thought this was very funny. My little brain giggled in anticipation while I sat at my desk and waited for the next group of frustrated little girls to return to the classroom. Eventually someone figured it out and ratted on me so that on my final trickster event day, as I crawled out from under the first latched door, I came face to toes with an ominous pair of black shoes poking out from under the folds of black nunner robes....CRAP...I glanced upward, my butt half still in the stall, my brain half on alert to the terms of my dilemma ....and there was Jesus, still hanging on his cross, disgusted, thinking this little girl will never learn, I'll be hanging here eternally and she'll still be up to her tricks in the Catholic girls bathroom. I could imagine him shaking his head in defeat, if he could have thrown up his hands in defeat he would have done just that...I was mortified....guilty before even being charged and already supplicant on my hands and knees. What could I do but back crawl into the stall and think. I stood up and waited for some brilliant excuse to come to me but there was nothing... and for a moment felt cheated of my trick and then felt fairly relieved that I hadn't finished latching all the doors and would be spared the humility of crawling around the bathroom floor in front of Jesus and the nunner. Again I have no idea what my punishment was. Probably banned from the Catholic girls bathroom altogether which is the most likely result as I remember riding home on the school bus at the end of the day being squashed between a hundred stinking children with my bladder full up to my armpits and barely (and often unsuccessfully) making it home before relief. There were many afternoons when I walked home in wet knee socks with my shoes squishing underneath me and hoping no one noticed the river that followed me to my door. Life was hard for a seven year old girl in Catholic school.....Amen

Catholic School Girl's Bathroom

So I did my usual late night brain deluge of weird ideas, recollections, and scenarios and this one had to do with 8 years of Catholic grade school that probably established half of the oddities in my personality for the rest of my life. When I was plopped into 1st grade at the age of ‘just turned 5’ I had already had about 6 months of public school in another town. I was only 4 when I started and they didn’t have kindergarten so first grade was it. Then we moved and ended up in the Catholic school where things took a turn for the weird and fantastic. I was just a little kid and very small for my age and I didn’t have a whole lot of life experience. So when I was introduced to the rolling paper towel dispenser in the girls bathroom I was intrigued! I had never seen anything like it. Every time the towel was pulled a crank would turn and the dispenser would make a sort of metallic clang and then after a few seconds it would click and then it would be ready to turn again and there, right in front of me was a clean spot every time! I couldn’t get over it! And no matter how many times I pulled the towel a clean one came around. Engineering wasn’t in my brain yet so I just figured there was this one towel and somehow it got clean every time I pulled. I still remember = pull, clang, click, pull, clang, click…which must have been highly annoying to the nunners whose tea room was on the other side of the wall….so while I was indulging in a high concentration of magical towel pulling, all of my attention totally engrossed in the clean white towel from the rolling towel dispenser, it did not register that something creepy was about to bring my rolling towel dispensing to a shrieking halt….’STOP!!! JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?’ I froze. One little hand on each side of the rolling towel. I was stuck. It was like the game Statue we used to play where all the kids would dance around and do goofy things on the lawn till whoever was it yelled freeze and you had to stop in whatever position you were in even if one foot was over your head or up behind your butt and whoever moved first was kicked out. It was a stupid game but that was my reaction to the evil voice behind me. Then I started trembling, ‘TURN AROUND!’ Slowly, shaking, I let my fingers slide off the rolling towel and turned and there came face to face with Jesus on the cross! A black wooden cross as big as my face with Jesus hanging there suffering at the end of a string of blackened beads the size of crab apples! WHAT!!?
WHAT WAS THIS??? Jesus hung there against multiple folds of black cloth that fell all the way to the floor. I lifted my eyes following the big black bead trail to where it wrapped all around the waist of a creature that I had never imagined. Things like this were not in my life’s tableau at that age. The worst thing that ever happened at public school was falling on the playground and skinning my knee or getting paste in my pigtails in art class while I was making lovely ornaments for my mom and dad…. My gaze crept up ...more black cloth in wide folds led up to one huge white bib. Stiff and stark white, so white it could glow in the dark, made out of some kind of hard cardboard so stiff that it moved as one piece whenever the creature moved – which wasn’t much – there was only a threatening stillness (later when I had time to think I would wonder why the nunners needed these bibs and why there were never any crumbs or stains on them and thought maybe they must have a stack of them in their tea room so they could change them periodically during the day…) and then the creature’s seething face, eyes gleaming behind gold wired glasses and then a crown of white! But on that crown was no white lace veil like one would expect, just more black. A sheet of night hung from that crown and fell almost to the floor. I was just a little girl, very small for my age and I knew this was not a good thing. If I hadn’t already peed and washed my hands and dried them on the rolling towel dispenser which is where my problem started I would have peed right there on the floor in front of the giant black creature and Jesus on the cross! I wondered if maybe Jesus had found the rolling towel dispenser too and this is what resulted... I vaguely remember a long arm extended, a finger pointing straight out the door, long billowing black sleeves. I thought that I could be snapped right up and stuffed up those sleeves never to be seen again and only brought out for daily torment. I had a good imagination but I didn’t know it was imagination so I thought this all could really happen and no one would ever find me…
I have no recollection of whatever happened after that. Whatever my punishment was. I was scared shitless and maybe that was it. I remember having to use the rolling towel dispenser again and when I did I would place two fingers on each side and verrry slowly tug the towel till it stopped and wait for the threatening clang, the click, swipe my hands across the clean part and run like hell out of the girls bathroom hoping that the nunners weren’t having their tea or if they were I would be blessed with lightning speed and could get to my classroom before even the fasted nunner could get to the girls bathroom door and block my path. I swear the Catholics build those schools just to frighten the hell out of little children…