I Am Grateful for Intelligence

The Best.Jeep.Ever. has needed some TLC lately. It was time for an oil change, a couple lightbulbs needed replacing, new tires, a nice bath… I'm never upset about spending money on the Godly Automotive Wonder that takes me everywhere I want to go exploring. I love my Jeep even with its big 'ole feet. You know what they say about a large carbon footprint... oh wait...

I admit I've never changed my own oil or a flat tire though. Some things are better left to the boys to get dirty with, or the experts that have all the right tools to keep an easy 10-minute job from being a 5-hour headache. However, I'm not one of those girls that's completely helpless in the garage either. I own REAL tools. They are not pink or sparkly - they are SnapOn silver, Dewalt yellow, Home Depot orange, Makita blue, or Ryobi green with black dirt accents. (And none of them are diminutive! ;) I've replaced my own headlights, battery, wipers, and tail lights in the past. I've installed iPod adapters (which required taking apart the dash to get to the back of the stereo head unit) in both the Camaro and the Jeep all by myself. Once I even changed my own idle air control (IAC) valve after a brilliant mechanic broke it (and zip-tied it as a fix! WTF?!), then wanted to charge me $183 for a replacement! I did it myself for less than $70. Go me!

Obviously, I am not afraid or ignorant of my vehicles.

So I found myself at the local auto parts store the other day. It happened to be a day when I chose to wear nicer clothes because the boyfriend was with me and I like to look my best when we present ourselves together in public. We are each other's arm candy. :) My outfit that day included a beautiful cotton sweater, designer jeans, high heeled boots, appropriate jewelry, and my expensive (not!) sunglasses (THOSE have sparkles on the sides!) pushed to the top of my head. My flashiest name-brand purse (under $100 people, so hush up) hung from my shoulder. To be fair, I suppose this look does give off a certain impression, especially to men found under a car more often than in it.

Looks can be so deceiving tho, can't they? This is why I don't judge books by their cover (except for the new teen novel Tiger's Curse by Colleen Houck - I totally bought that solely because the cover was cool and it turned out to be an awesome story! SCORE! Her next book, Tiger's Quest, is coming out in June. Preorder now!).

I was looking for the lightbulb that goes over the license plate, assumably so my next victim of Texting While Driving can see who ran them over in the dark and report me to the police.

(I'm KIDDING.)

(Ok, not completely.)

Having never replaced this particular bulb before, and knowing there are usually several to choose from, I walked up to the register to ask the I-Just-Graduated-College-And-This-Is-My-Chosen-Career clerk to retrieve the correct part number.

"Hello, I need the lightbulb that goes over the license plate of my 2005 Jeep Liberty."

"Lightbulbs are in Aisle 5."

"Thank you, but do you mind looking up the number for me? It's much faster than going through the book." (You'd think the fact that I KNOW there is a number - or a book over there to look in for that matter - would be his first clue, but it went right over his head.)

"Oh sure… you said it's an Oh Five Jeep Liberty?"

I nod.

Not that he looked up to confirm.

(Tap tap tap.) "Okaaaayy… number 168…"

"Thank you." I turned to walk away.

A dirty, plump finger shoots out rather close to my ear. "It's down Aisle 5 there… on the right… here, I'll just get it for you."

I'm sorry, did the back of my head look confused? Even tho I'm already walking in the proper direction, Mr. Helpful whips past me like Dale Earnhardt Junior at Talladega.

"Thanks but really, I can find… umm, ok," I say pointlessly into the backdraft. Thanks for providing great customer service?

The clerk was already scanning the rows so I had no choice but to shut up and follow him. I'm sure he's looked at these things many times more than I, so a nanosecond after I arrive he dives for the correct item and starts heading back to the register. Again, I follow. About halfway there he turns around, shakes the package in my direction, and says as if speaking to a child:

"Now make sure you tell whoever is installing this not to touch the bulb…"

Wait... what? Whoever is installing this? What am I? Chopped liver? Why would the person installing it not be me, the same one asking for the part?

The boyfriend comes up behind me just then, at which point I apparently disappear in a chauvinistic puff of smoke. Relieved there is a penis in the vicinity, Mr. Helpful redirects his comment to my appropriately-gendered partner: "Hey, make sure you use a rag to hold the bulb when you put this in…"

Make sure you use a rag to hold what's left of your ego, pal, cuz mine is rearing up to its entire righteous five-foot-three height.

"I will be the one installing this, thank you," I say as I take the package from his outstretched hand. "And I know not to touch the bulbs because they are halogen and the oils on your fingers will ruin them," I add as I stalk to the register with an unladylike semi-snort of laughter while the two men stand there looking at each other, one with embarrassment and the other with a smirk.

Hello Auto Zone? The 50s called… they'd like their counter boy back.

"Ummm…" Mr. Helpful says, gesturing toward Automotive Genius No. 2, "… he'll ring you up." He wouldn't even look at me as he slunk behind the checkout and disappeared between the stacks of thingamabobs* and whoseywhatsits. I notice the other cashiers trying not to crack up. Whether it's at me or him I have no idea since my nose is so far up in the air at this point, I would drown if it started to rain.


So what have we learned today, kids?

For those of you who are curious, as I was, having never taken the time (until now) to actually find out WHY you shouldn't touch halogen bulbs, The Straight Dope (fighting ignorance since 1973!) has the answer here. If you don't have time to read all the technical explanations offered, the short version is "because it's baaad...m'kay?" Ok, not really. :) It's because your oily fingerprints leave enough residue to impede the infrared component of a halogen's light spectrum from exiting the glass, thereby collecting heat and creating a weak spot, which eventually can cause the glass to explode from stress (much like the heads of chauvinistic males when coming into contact with my ego), shortening the life of the bulb. (In which case I'd say the lifespan of the bulb is the least of your problems.)

Whew... good thing Mr. Helpful mentioned that rag! I thought they were only for dusting!

Ladies (and gentlemen), you now know how to completely disassemble a snarky cashier the next time they condescend to you about halogens. Word.

Happy Jeep having a day at the spa. :)

*You know how I know Macs are the smarter machines? Because they know how to spell thingamabobs!

I cannot imagine why anyone needs drugs or pot when u can get that high on a sunset. Driving NOT recomended until you come down!

I Am Grateful For Imagination

My habit of thought over the past couple decades has been that we have our salary rates all wrong in this society. We pay those in Hollywood or sports millions of dollars to create a couple hours of entertainment for us while our teachers and firemen and emergency response teams are doing their work mostly on good morals and shoestring budgets. It didn't seem fair.

However, today, I received a different perspective out of the blue. I was watching a YouTube video of a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and although I've realized this before, it was not quite in this way: science has created things that used to only be science fiction from Hollywood. Would they have created these technologies WITHOUT Hollywood first dreaming them up?

Einstein of course has the famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I've always believed that to be true in my head, and now I realize perhaps it has moved down to my heart.

Is the economic pay scale of the USA not a perfect example of that quote? Who do we pay the most? The ones with imagination (Hollywood at least), or the ones with knowledge (educators and heroes)?

Scientists' minds generally lean toward logic and fact finding - they want to prove things work or exist or figure out why something is true. We consider them "at the forefront of technology" but are they really? Maybe scientists are actually the ones at the end of the line. What if the creative geniuses in Hollywood are the ones blazing the trail of evolution and we don't even realize it?

A logical mind that seeks facts is not normally the same type of mind that envisions things so far out that the majority of people on the planet hadn't even dreamed of it. (There are always exceptions of course - Tyson being one of them I think - and those are truly remarkable people with minds that are balanced in both creativity and logic.)

A specific example is another YouTube video I saw about a guy that created a machine to turn plastic back into petroleum. Most people in first world countries now have also heard of biofuel - breaking down what we consider garbage into usable fuel. Where do these ideas come from (at least some of them)? Most people from the 80s will remember the movie Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist character uses garbage to fuel the DeLorean time machine at one point. (I'm sure there are earlier examples, but that's the first one that came to mind.) That is now POSSIBLE in our real world (and actually has been for some time). It's not affordable for most, or prevalent in our society yet, but neither was TV when it was first invented. Or cell phones. Or cars. Or dozens of other technologies that have become commonplace perhaps because a scientist saw a cool, convenient gadget in a movie or a tv show (or in the case of 19th century inventors, perhaps heard an idea from a storyteller of some sort) and said, "I can figure out how to make that real!" And let's not forget the creative minds in companies like Apple who can come up with a product out of seemingly nowhere (iPods!) that we never knew we couldn't live without.

So perhaps our Hollywood staff is not as overpaid as I thought. I mean what value would you put on evolution? On advancing our thoughts and ideas? On education? Does it even really matter if we advance and get smarter and make new things? IS it even "getting smarter" or just becoming different? I guess it depends on the roads we choose, which is based on creativity, not always logic.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads."

And in the opposite vein - what of our "heroes?" The firemen and policemen and EMTs that save lives (some would add soldiers to that, but war is a whole other subject I'm not getting into here). I'm always the first to admire and thank emergency response people for their "underpaid service," but is our ability to prolong our lives actually what's mucking up the planet? Should we be thanking the ones that save us? From this new perspective, I'm not sure.

Certainly I was grateful to everyone involved is saving my grandparents' lives when they had a car accident about a year ago, but then again maybe it's a selfish thing for me to want my grandparents to live forever. I don't think even *I* want to live in this particular body forever! How boring would that be? About as boring as only getting to read one book, or only watching one movie... forever. Why would I wish that on them? Forever is a VERY long time. (And if you get into the philosophical question of "why are we here" I can imagine only being able to "live" one story forever might have been the impetus for multiple lives... but that's a whole other blog!)

Perhaps we are playing God or not facing our fears by keeping people alive for so long, and the consequences are the typical collection of physical inconveniences that we now label "old age." Are years of incontinence and dementia something to celebrate? :\ Perhaps we have advanced in our physical technologies, and we pat ourselves on the back for our so-called advances in social sciences, but are we actually still in the dark ages about death and other lifetimes?

Who would we be if we did not fear death?

Perhaps my grandfather could've avoided all the indignities and challenges of emphysema and Alzheimers if he had not been wearing a seatbelt and was therefore removed from the trouble of dealing with all that for another several years. My grandmother was NOT wearing a seatbelt and would have died without the help of the Intensive Care Unit. It's really a miracle she survived. I am extremely grateful to spend a few more years pestering her over the phone (we live on opposite coasts), but was it fair to keep her here only to be trapped in the house with my grandfather who needs someone to babysit him like a child at all times due to the medical problems he has now? What kind of existence is that (especially for a woman that is still very mobile herself)? Obviously a car crash full of anxiety and fear as you transition into another state of being is not an ideal way to go (I am not saying I wish that upon anyone, especially not my grandparents!), but perhaps we've created the ways in which we most commonly leave this existence through our misunderstanding of death and consequential fear of it.

If you knew in your heart all deaths have the possibility of being peaceful and happy, would you be more accepting of it and therefore be okay when your loved ones take that journey? Many people pay lip service to the idea, but underneath their concept of death, and what they believe in their heart about it, is still based in fear. I believe it will take a shift in a majority of society's consciousness to change that.

Native American elders (from a century ago, before the casinos) would simply decide when it was their time to leave, and they would go out in the woods or plains or wherever and have a peaceful, purposeful death. Same with Buddhists. We don't have nearly enough movies about that. Instead the film industry makes the most money from perpetuating our imaginings of a violent death, which in my opinion just creates more violent deaths in our world. It's a vicious circle.

By the way, I still think our teachers are WAY WAY underpaid. They give us a basis for learning to survive in this society. The trouble with teachers is that we have a limited idea of who our teachers are. To me, EVERYONE on this planet is a teacher in some way to everyone they come in contact with. Should we all get paid appropriately for what we teach each other? Well actually, I think we do. We have a beautiful Earth as our school, friends and family to love and support us, and most importantly our imaginations which fill in all the space between. To me, those things are the best payment of all.

Well… now my thought associations appear to have come full circle in the edits, so YAY for that!

I still haven't justified sports - perhaps that's truly only entertainment - but now I can allow for the possibility that maybe we're not as screwed up as we think in what we put value on.

I Am Grateful For Sunsets

For every afternoon in summer when I think surely I will die of heatstroke due to my western-facing windows and a condo without central air conditioning, I get the MOST AWESOME SUNSETS EVER in winter, and the ability to keep the drapes open for the entire thing, while the last rays warm my bedroom for the evening ahead.

(This pic was actually taken on my birthday, Dec 30, 2010, at Oceanside beach, but you get the idea. I am often too busy watching the sunset to take pics of each one!)

The Infinite List

I know I've been more silent than I've wanted to be this past month. I really do love writing, but my brain goes so much faster than my fingers have time to catch up with. No sooner do I have a subject to write about than it's replaced by another thought and another and another, until I give up trying to get to any one of them or have any hope of following the train of thought back to its origin. I hope I'll find a method to reconcile that soon. Of course that would mean self-discipline, which is not one of my strong points either.  **SIGH!**

Regardless, Jason Mraz, as usual, has posted something on his blog that I feel strongly about - Gratitude. I love expressing gratitude whether it's out loud, in my thoughts, or written; to a person or just the Universe in general. His post inspired a list that wouldn't stop forming in my head even after I clicked the submit button the first time. I posted on his comments FOUR times. Is that bad Netiquette? Even if it's good things you're posting?

I thought the list was worth reposting here, especially since I find it so hard to slow myself down long enough to write anything of substance lately. Here's hoping to this being the start of more regularity (the first thing on HIS list, and I can only imagine all the forms of regularity he's actually implying there :D ) in posts this year. At least it's my favorite subject to kick off 2011 with. :) (Figures it would be a kind of "pirated" subject as well...)

I'm grateful for:

Love
Music
San Diego
Big Blue (the Pacific)
Vitamineral Green
YOU for introducing me to it [meaning Jason]
YOU again for << insert a hundred different things you've said that offered me a new way to look at things or to think about or products to try >>
My teachers
Others who have presented new perspectives to me, always keeping it fresh
LIFE
AIR
FOOD
Beautiful clouds and amazing sunsets
MAGIC
Physics
Science
Science
Science
Brains!
Vegetation in all its glory
Animal friends and Wildlife
Nature in general
OUR PLANET
Trees [ok, just added those last two in]
The wonders of the Cosmos
Indoor plumbing
Beauty
Boys
Good Health (did I say that already?)
Omnipossibility :)
The smell of coffee
Chocolate
Money
Barter
Craigslist
Pure potential
Meaningful play
Cafe Gratitude (FOR SURE!)
Organic cotton
Down comforters
The Stars!!!
New Experiences
Colors
Reiki
Technology
Apple Computers
Communication
Messages in the sand
Google
Words/Language
and all the things I don't support and agree with in the world because they allow me to define that which I DO enjoy/support/believe. :)

Of course by now I've thought of another one as well: the ability to help those with less since I have a bit more at the moment. :)

Take 90 seconds and answer the most powerful question in the world:

What are YOU grateful for?!

GO!