Efficientless

I have got to get better at this than I am, more efficient I mean.  Time and energy - creativity, if you will - is a limited resource.  I get pulled and pushed from one important thing to the next, trying to prioritize and balance the things I want to do with the things I need to do.  Laundry or taking pictures of LEGOs; making dinner or trying desperately to remember the names of every damned stuffed animal housed under this roof; shaving or, not... shaving... that is...

See, I just did it; I was inefficient and slothful in my writing.

Truly, in the interest of time (yours and mine), I'd get to whatever point I have to make today but, I can't remember what it might have been.  It seems to have had something to do with those Scoopeable tortilla chips.  I mean what's up with those, I am pretty sure it's just another way marketers are trying to get more money out of us, I mean, do we really need a tablespoon of salsa with every bite?

But see that sounds suspiciously like a...

rant.  Yep, I got Popoed, it's a widget I installed on my blog that warns me when I am starting to get ranty, I'd recommend it.  And, I've been trying not to rant.

Truthfully, the reason I am inefficient at this is because I am un-ill-prepared most of the time.  I wrote about this once before in a post called Elements of a Post  in which I just show a bunch of random stuff and try to reconcile it all together in a salient way, and, a lot of this starts out just like that.  It's as though I am playing a silly little game with myself and dragging you along with me.  And for this blundering, meandering style I am sincerely unapologetic.  I learn a lot this way.  I learn about myself and through the side entrances of my conscience, through the free associations and ridiculous leaps of faith and misguided lapses of judgement, sometimes our mind can lead us toward the truth, if we let it.

Case in point (and this is one of the things I wanted to use today) we got the carpet cleaned the other day, it needed it.  After the carpet dried for a couple hours it was time for the arduous and annoying task of getting the furniture down off the little Styrofoam pedestals upon which it'd been put.

I ask the boys, who've been trapped in the basement for a while now, to come up and give me a hand.

"Boys," I explain, "I need to get those little blue thingees out from under the furniture and get it all back where it supposed to be."

"Sounds like fun, what'll we do?"  Zack says.

I tell them, "I need you to crawl under the couch and grab them when I lift it up."

"Cool, are ya gonna drop it on our heads?"  Nick this time.

"Yes, yes I am.  NOW GET UNDER THERE," I pretend order.

They scramble to the floor.  We joke, they laugh; they butt heads, they laugh; they nearly tip over the side table, they laugh; I do bad physical comedy, they laugh. In no time we finish what I assumed was a chore giggling, breathless and giddy.  What just happened?  I remember wondering.

"That was fun," Zack says.

"Yeah, it was.  Now go throw those away for me boys, and thanks for your help."

"Awwww, Dad, can't we keep them?"  Nick asks.

"Keep what?"

"All these blue blocks.  Please."

"Nick, it's just trash and..."  I look at him and he is standing there, hugging eight blue furniture squares, some tucked under his arms, one under his chin, several between his legs and think to myself:  I just thought getting those out was going to be a bother, what do I know?

"Sure, Nick, keep them."

There's more, there's always more:

Nick's Army of "Blue Blockhead Guys"

"The dumb guy, there's always a dumb guy.  He's got a bomb..."

Nick's masked leader.

Zack's "Blue Blockhead But Mine Are Cyclops" Army

Cyclops in formation

Zack's Leader brandishes a Cyclops flag and looks pissed off.

A guy with a "magical glowing sword"

The scene when Mom got home

Yep, I'd say we had fun for nearly two hours playing with the trash.  Which gets me back to my point, Scoopables are stupid which is, basically, I never know what's going on.


So that covers the carpet square thingee (what are those called, I wonder?) story, there was something else that was burning a hole in my pocket.  Oh, yeah, literally in my pocket.

You might remember that I often write down notes to myself, ideas for posts, earth-shattering ideas, mysteries solved, that sort of thing.  Well I have been carrying this one around for over a week now, God's truth, I don't know why I have, it doesn't seem like much.

(And, I am nearly out of time.  I need to make dough for pizza tonight, Marci will be home soon and I hate to ignore her when she gets home, nobody likes that, and I'll need to go meet the boys bus soon...

I'm gonna show you this anyway, I'll try to be quick about it):

What this says is:  "This is what we can/will do? techno - 20 This is what we are doing old/vynal  CD - 50"
Why would I carry a folded up piece of paper for ten days with this gibberish written on it?

Well, I sort of remember.  I was considering when I was a young man and always thinking about what was to come what we will do, can do.  My example was how technologies change, how exciting it all seemed watching typewriters morph into word-processors and then PCs and laptops and tablets and phones.  I remember this sort of 'what's next' feeling I had as a kid.  I was comparing that feeling to the one I have now, about doing.  I am not, at fifty-plus, so much thinking about what's next now as thinking about what works now, what we are doing now.  Much as the boys saw the potential in the carpet blocks I think more about getting the most out of what I have, not worrying about what's to come.  It's sort of related to chips and salsa... or was... once, in my mind at least.

You know what?  On the other hand I think I might have saved this piece of paper because of these words, small and smeared on the other side:

Yeah, "fried potatoes in bacon grease."

Well, that makes a lot more sense.
 

From Marci's "...things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..."
 
N: "When I am a dad, I am going to pack my kids sandwiches everyday."
 
M: "Why is that?"
 
N: "Because the prayer says 'Give us this day our daily bread,' so, you know."


So making sandwiches for your kids is like a prayer, yeah, I'm good with that...