With Singular Focus or a Lack Thereof...

I do believe that the combination of amphetamine and coffee is making me more frantic and manic than usual. I wish I were kidding you. Currently, I am multitasking at unhealthy levels. Even for me.

I'm uploading pictures to flickr. Reading and commenting on blogs, reading work emails and responding to them, working on this post, listening to music, having short online chats with friends, updating contacts in my email, going through my sitemeter to see who is visiting, updating Facebook, twittering (tweeting?), fretting about the upcoming busy weekend, and trying to figure out how to edit a video using Picassa so I can upload it to youtube and bore you to death with a snippet of life from Golden Manor.

Plus my hands feel dry and I need to dig out the lotion from my purse, but if I stop typing now and do that, I'll end up doing six other things before I get back to this post. Now I just paused to read a text message on my phone and before I got back to this post, I checked my gmail and deleted a couple of things without reading them, took a drink of water and thought for a second about opening my flickr tab because pictures have uploaded and I need to tag them and finish the process.

Please, oh please, tell me that you are just as scattered.

I remember when I was a kid and my siblings and I would be sprawled out over our M&M colored beanbags watching The Price Is Right or The Flintstones and my mother would say something to us through the passthrough to the kitchen. Not one of the three of us would respond and she would raise her voice and would finish by bellowing at us that we couldn't do anything when the television was on. Her point was that our focused attention was a bad thing. We were not so easily distracted.

I do believe I have said the same thing to The Spawn. Now I'm thinking that the ability to do just one thing and to focus on it completely is a skill I need to relearn. Seriously.

So, on to the real purpose of this post. I have been asked to dig through my obsessively sorted and categorized photo files because susan has tagged me with the photo meme. I cannot deny susan who thinks possibly naughty things when she sees the milk mustache advertisements, so here goes. Business first, though.

The Rules:

1. Go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures.
2. Pick the 4th picture in that folder.
3. Explain the picture.
4. Tag 4 people to do the same.


So here is the picture in my 4th folder. My folders go like this: Baseball, Birds, Blogging Pix, Bloomington, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

That is MathMan in 1990 during one of our trips to Indiana. We'd already graduated from Indiana University, where we met and married. When we visited my family in southeastern Indiana, we would typically swing through Bloomington. On this particular trip, we went through the campus and took a bunch of pictures.

MathMan is standing in front of the old arcade at the corner of Kirkwood and Indiana. What was it called? Spaceport or something like that? Anyway, look at him, so young! So hairy! Dang, he was such a hottie back then. (Still is.) No wonder I propositioned him the second time I met him........

Oh, and about that shirt - it was a gift from my parents who had just returned from a cruise. Looking back over the years of grief I have given MathMan, the message on that shirt seems a bit cruel. I think I'd better have a word with my mother about that........of course, she'll have to turn off the television and put down her crossword puzzle so I can speak to her.

Consider yourself tagged, my happy little amphetamines:

Kulkuri
Nan
The Earth Bound Misfit
SaoirseDaily2

Coffey, Pee or Me

Music Maven and R.E.M.'s best fan Beth Coffey has tickled me with the random six things tag. Tags come with rules, you know, so I shall post them below and then proceed to break them. Beth knows this about me and still she took this huge risk. For dismissing the rules with such a cavalier attitude, I worry that when Beth and I do finally manage to get together for many drinks, karmic retribution will come to me in when I duck into the toilet, do my business and find, too late, that there is no toilet paper.

That doesn't scare me. I've had to drip dry before, but only when I've had to pee in some field or along the side of a road or in my roommate's bottom drawer during one highly intoxicated episode.......but enough about my bathroom habits.

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The Rules
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Six random things...
1. I'm convinced that The Actor, if he should ever follow his musical talents, should play bass and euphonium for a band called Oedipus Wrecks.

2. This morning, as we rode silently, listening to Akon na na na na, I realized that The Actor, Cupcake and I were all being uncharacteristically quiet and calm on our ride to school. "Raise your hand if you're glad it's Wednesday," I said. All three of us raised our hands. The Actor didn't even open his eyes to do it. "Raise your hand if you wish it were Friday," I added. All of our hands shot up in the air. Then we went back to sleepy silence.

3. I almost always sleep in the fetal position on my right side.

4. I would love to live in an old house, but I'm pretty spoiled by the conveniences of this newish house.

5. I was going to convert to Judaism, but the rabbi was difficult about it and wouldn't let me take the fifteen week crash course so I decided screw it. Yes, I was that committed to the religion.

6. When MathMan's mother died suddenly and unexpectedly exactly sixteen years ago tonight, I had to call him at work and tell him. That remains the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. MathMan - if I could have one magical power, it would be the ability to give you and our kids more time with your parents, who died entirely too young.

So there it is - my six things. Now I have to tag six people.

BAC at Yikes
Bubs at Sprawling Ramshackle Compound
TheMom at the Attentive Aphorist
Roger Bell at Many Things
Liberality
Kulkuri at Yooper in Crackerland

I know these tags and memes get run into the ground, but if you don't do it, I'm going to come pee in your bottom drawer, so I suggest you seriously consider following through. Thank you.

P.S. I just noticed that for the first time in a long time, I actually followed the rules of the meme. I wonder what my karmic reward will be? Maybe it's best not to wonder.....