#Inktober52, #Inktober, "Praying Mantis"

I was about 8 or 10 the first time I saw a praying mantis.  Who could've thought bugs could get so big?!  I ran inside to confer with Dad and showed him the insect monstrosity in the entomology book.  I was disappointed Dad already knew all about them.  We moved the mantis to a place it wouldn't be run over by the lawn mower and that was pretty much it.  I don't have a good story for this week's prompt.  I don't even have a good drawing.  I did this little sketch, thought to myself it looks like an alien, and decided that's good enough.  I have another project I want to work on.

Sometimes life is like that.  In the past, I often spent more time on what other people might want me to do instead of what I wanted to do.  I'm pretty sure nobody really cares if I spend a day creating a better mantis.  The painting I'm working on will make me happier and will have a much longer shelf life.

I've been fighting with myself about living life in balance lately.  I listen to too much news, get upset about politicians' stupid decisions, and don't focus on my own priorities while all this social distancing is providing plenty of opportunity to paint and think about better things.  Hence, I'm going to paint today.  I hope you find something to do that makes you happy today too.

Volunteering at the food giveaway makes me happy, and it gives me insight into people's attitudes towards Covid-19.  I'm less happy about the current attitudes.  Everyone wore a face mask in April.  This week, very few had on masks.  People apparently believe the worst is behind us and we don't have to worry about the disease since the state is opening up businesses even though the numbers in Ohio are going up.  We're less safe now than we were in April.  Wear your mask.  Social distance.  Be smart, stay safe, stay healthy.

In ditch digging news, I went out to the back 80 last Sunday and hit the ceiling when I saw the landscapers who take care of the property behind me dumped a huge pile of weeds and dirt in my ditch, effectively blocking the water flow.  I had already sent a nice letter to the owner of that property to get the landscaper under control.  I didn't receive a response.  I chastised the guy driving the lawn mower around.  I talked to the owner on the phone this week and am pretty sure this recurring landscaper problem may finally be addressed.

I walked back there to check my drainage process another day and felt stunned.  There was no water at all in the ditch.  Wet mud.  It took me a while to actually comprehend I had succeeded in ditch digging.  I felt waves of joy surrounding me.  I'm pretty sure Lake Erie is flooding Canada from all the water I've drained into it.  In more realistic terms, the ditch was about 2 feet of water in it when I started, with plenty of standing water in the yards.  I'll continue to demolish ditch obstacles through the summer, but all that is window dressing.  My ditch works!

My next project is cleaning up my neighbor's yard.  He's old and can't do it and the younger guy who helps out is stretched too thin.  I don't want to come off as all holy or anything about this.  I'll be happier to see the yard cleaned up but mostly I've been happy with my ditch digging exercise.  I'm not disciplined about regular exercise but I can be very diligent with projects.  It's a win/win for everybody :)

"House"

The closest park to my house has a pool and ball fields and too many yelling kids.  There's a tiny pond with an arching bridge and half the geese in NE Ohio, so you know even when the grass isn't green there's enough green goose poop to keep things colorful.  People like to take wedding and prom pictures by the sculpted gardens and fountains.  The police station and city hall are on the property which makes me feel over disciplined even if the only thing I'm doing is walking the dog.  Even the sculpted gardens feels overly disciplined.

The next park is a golf course so I don't think that really counts, but the park after that has actual trees and wildlife.  I like that park, but it's just far enough away to drive, and such a short drive feels wasteful.  My new exercise goal is to not only walk to the park, but to actually walk it too.  I'm either going to get healthier or have a cardiac arrest.

Maybe I should point out I live downhill from everything except Lake Erie.  This means I have to walk up 2 fairly significant hills just to get to the first park.  If I ever achieve my goal of getting to the nature park, there's 2 significant hills within the park.  The last time I walked up that second hill I stood at the top with spots in my eyes.  Uh uh uh ugh.

Yesterday, I decided the weather was crappy enough I could justify only walking the first hill, but all this stupid exercise made me feel energetic enough to walk up the second too.  Then, oh why not, I'll walk a bit more.  The freezing Canadian wind chilled by the frozen lake whipped my face raw but I persevered.  I got to the next stop on my exercise plan and saw the sign for the good park in the distance.  I turned around and walked home with the frozen wind whipping my other cheek.  It took hours to feel warm again.  My shoulders hurt.  Since when does walking make shoulders ache?

Sadly, I think walking some more might help.  Stupid exercise.  There's some sort of built in addictive process involved.  I wasn't even interested in dinner afterwards.  Unlike some of you people, I'm obviously a reluctant exerciser.  I just want miraculous physical ability without wasting my time and effort.

I'm trying to keep things interesting so I don't lose interest and give up.  The word for the week was blue not long ago.  I looked for blue things on my walk.  Now I look for other colors too.  I noticed a house with pink shutters and awnings for sale.  I looked up the price when I got home ($116,000).  I amused myself by imagining a little old lady living there.  Another house looks like it's been split into 4 or more apartments with adjoining decks.  I imagined some excellent deck parties.  The garage for someone else's house looks about the size of my entire house.  I figured out the comparison and it is.

It occurs to me that all this stupid exercise has some benefits beyond my ability to walk up hills and endure weather.  With nothing else to do other than try to avoid a heart attack, my mind is going places it hasn't gone in a long time.  Fantasy, math, and observation are as essential to the creative life as a paintbrush.  We need quiet time to hear things in our minds.  The act of creation is a physical activity.  It can help to actually live in our bodies instead of just our heads.  I'm going to keep looking at houses and making up stories for the people who live in them.

"Worn"

My first thought for “worn” is that I’m worn out.  What happened to those days when I could stay up 3 nights in a row doing homework?  What about those days when I partied through the night and watched the sunrise?

I went to dinner with my coworkers, and they joked about how I am the “young one” in the office.  That’s one of the perks of my job; it makes me feel there’s still a lot more in my life to accomplish.  And even though I am the young one, I can see that my coworkers who are mostly in their 60s and even 70s have a lot more life in them too, especially when you compare them to some of our volunteers and donors.

Aside from bad genes, I think most of us decide when we’re old and start acting like it.  When I was miserably married in my 30s, I felt old and fat and thought that 60 more years of this kind of misery was more than I could bear.  Once the divorce was signed, I realized my body would start cooperating with me again if I just got out and had some fun.  I started dancing every weekend.  I felt better in my 40s than I did in my 30s.

Looking back on my life, I see that it’s been a journey of peaks and valleys.  When I’m happy, I’m fit.  When I’m depressed, I’m not.  Not being fit can lead to bad choices and too many cookies and more reasons to be depressed.

When my brother moved in recently, he came with a lot of exercise equipment.  Some of it’s in the living room, and he’s prone to jumping up during tv commercials to do pushups.  It’s kind of impressive, but I’ve never done a pushup in my life, and I don’t really anticipate a time when I would enjoy doing them.  He’s gotten me to exercise with my iron door stop instead.  5 repetitions of this, then that, then these optional movements, and then I can ignore fitness again and eat M&Ms while I read my book in peace.  Bro is actually a good fitness instructor because he isn’t too pushy about it – though he did mention running an 8 minute mile.  I think 8 minute miles are in the same impossible category as pushups.  I’ll stick with my cast iron door stop.

The point is, we’re only limited by our own thoughts.  If you want to be fit, you can be.  You can start at whatever point you’re at because “fitness” is a vague term.  You can be more fit than you are at the moment by taking the steps instead of the elevator or picking up something heavy a few times just cuz.  It isn’t necessary to eat the whole package of cookies at one sitting.  (maybe?)  After a while, we quit feeling as worn out.

I don’t want to imply that people don’t have real physical issues to get around.  People get sick, and all this stuff is harder when we’re sick.  It’s just a reminder that we can put some effort into feeling better with a little positive action.  Even 5 repetitions of something simple can help.

Our brains work the same way.  “Use it or lose it” has some truth to it, but it isn’t a finite truth.  If you want to be more creative, or smarter, or more charming, or whatever, work on it a bit and it gets easier.

At least I’m working with this theory until I feel like dancing again J

"Stretch"

Sometimes we have to reach outside our comfort zones.  We have to stretch our minds, stretch our bodies, stretch our openness to the extraordinary – except I don’t like that whole thing about stretching my body because that sounds an awful lot like exercising, which I oppose on principle. 

My exercise program consists of trying to master the corpse pose in yoga.  Mom taught it to me when I was about 5, and if it worked then, I figure it ought to be working for me now.  Dad used to do handstands against the door and do pushups in that position.  He also liked to do pushups with as many kids as possible on his back for more resistance.  I certainly wasn’t ever going to accomplish that, so why bother?  Besides, I’m not sure it’s worth the effort to have kids to create exercise equipment.

I’m not a complete slug.  I do physical things.  I’m even considering raking my leaves since I’ve successfully postponed that task into December, and still haven’t gotten enough snow to justify forgetting about them until spring.  It’s just that I really can’t see the point of doing unnecessary work or counting.  A friend told me about her new exercise routine.  She likes 17, so she’s doing 17 repetitions of each of her exercises.  I’m sure I’d lose track after about 3 or 4, and that means I could accidently do more than 17 leg lifts or crunches.

I was listening to the news and heard President Obama sent Jason Mraz to Myanmar/Burma, “the first international artist to perform… in the country since the end of military rule… and the second Western act to perform in the country in decades” according to Huff Post.  I like Jason, so I turned on youtube and danced my dog around the room.  This had the unfortunate result of getting Jason stuck in my head for 3 days, which just goes to show exercise is dangerous.  You can listen to Jason here  or here, but be warned; just looking up these links made me burst into a new round of singing, chair dancing, and toe tapping.

I recently found this little booklet.  For a mere 25 cents, you could learn how to develop a new personality.  Unfortunately, Joe Bonomo seemed to think exercise was part of the plan, and obviously women needed a new personality far more than men.  No matter how much I might be willing to stretch in theory, I don’t think I can go with his program.  Besides exercise, Joe said “The girl who is too self-sufficient… or gives the appearance of being so… can drive a guy away.  He’ll think she’s perfectly capable… too capable… of taking care of herself and her own problems.”

Hmm… I knew I was doing something wrong.  I should’ve learned how to swoon on cue so the man could catch me like in the picture, but wouldn’t you think with all that exercising that the woman couldn’t faint because of all that excess healthiness?

Joe seemed to know a lot about fixing women.  Some of his other books included “Lovelier after 40”, “Simplify your Housekeeping”, “Figure Ritual for Beautiful Bust Contour”, and “How to Give Successful Parties”.

I figure I got enough exercise today just looking for my sketchbook.  That involved climbing stairs, bending, squats…

I had a simple idea when I started this project today, but PhotoShop gives me too many toys to play with.  I ended up wasting a heck of a lot of time for what ended up being a pretty simple idea, no matter how many options I tried.  Even so, all of us should experiment with options in our software.  Sometimes we end up with a new favorite.