Monthly Archives: April 2011

100 ways

Boy do I need some simplicity right up through here. Don’t you? I ran across this list at Live the Charmed Life, and saw quite a few slap-yourself-on-the-head clues I’ve been missing. They’re all worth employing, because they’re all empowering. I need more of that this day; I need to accept the challenge.

A Hundred Ways to Uncomplicate Your Life

1. Don’t try to read other people’s minds

2. Get up 30 minutes earlier so that you don’t 1) rush/get a ticket while driving too fast; 2) have to explain why you’re late

3. Get 8 hours of sleep per night so that you think more clearly

4. Stick to your budget

5. Start saving and investing every week, no matter how little you can spare

6. Balance your checkbook

7. Don’t try to be friends with everyone, but rather cultivate closer relationships with fewer people

8. Don’t try to do business with everyone; identify your target client and take very good care of them

9. Before getting angry, ask yourself if it will really matter in 20 years

10. Focus on being a good person, not on pleasing others

11. Stay home this Saturday, and finish off that nagging chore that you need to finish

12. Kiss and make up

13. Make a weekly menu, and shop for only those items at the market

14. Ask your grandparents the best way to uncomplicate life, and try it for a month

15. Fill up your gas tank when it’s half full

16. Don’t drink alcohol when you’re tired, sad or mad

17. Pay your bills on time

18. Get an annual physical examination

19. Say “I love you” to your significant other and to your children, every day

20. For just one day, imagine everyone’s intentions are good, because most people’s are

21. Give away clothes that haven’t been worn in two years

22. Throw out clothes that are in disrepair, and can’t be mended

23. When you have a conflict with someone, talk it out — don’t let it turn into more than it is

24. Know what your priorities are in life, and act as if they are your priorities

25. Tell the truth

26. Don’t cheat

27. Don’t steal

28. If you’re holding on to a ridiculous grudge, let it go

29. Clean your house weekly, so that it doesn’t become too large a chore

30. Do your best, at work or at school

31. Don’t eat when you aren’t hungry

32. Eat when you are hungry

33. Be yourself

34. Say no unapologetically

35. Cook simple meals

36. Don’t try to keep up with the Joneses

37. Pay off your car before buying a new one

38. Organise your desk at the office

39. Change your smoke alarm batteries when the clocks spring forward, and again when they fall back

40. Organise your important paperwork

41. Take only half the clothes that you planned to take with you on holiday

42. Help your children with their homework every night, and have an open dialogue with their teachers

43. Have white sheets and white towels in children’s rooms/bathrooms, because they’re easily bleached

44. Spend your time with nice people

45. Avoid drama

46. Don’t text or talk on the phone while driving

47. Turn off the television/video games/computer; they’re time consumers

48. Don’t engage in office politics

49. Refuse to gossip, or talk behind other people’s backs

50. Do the dishes right after dinner

51. Never go to sleep angry

52. Ask nicely for what you need and want

53. Walk 10,000 steps per day to help your heart

54. Do 20 push-ups before speaking in anger

55. Leave work at work

56. Don’t befriend anyone who isn’t trustworthy

57. Don’t envy others

58. Have your oil changed

59. Take vitamin C BEFORE you catch a cold

60. Don’t work more than 8 hours per day

61. Weed your garden weekly

62. Wash your car weekly

63. Have a spring cleaning month every year, and do one room at a time

64. You don’t need to be best friends with work colleagues, but build respectful partnerships

65. Don’t drink and drive

66. Don’t look for reasons to be angry or sad, look for reasons to be happy

67. Be friendly with your neighbours

68. Return emails and phone messages promptly

69. Schedule in free time

70. Don’t procrastinate

71. Do what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it

72. Be more flexible when you’re able to be

73. Forgive and forget — end of story

74. Break the consumerism habit…put a three month moratorium in place on buying anything not deemed a necessity

75. Start your diet on September 1, rather than January 1, so that you won’t also have holiday pounds to lose

76. Take care of any health issues or concerns

77. Have your tires rotated

78. Have your brakes checked

79. Have your eyes checked

80. Don’t let your imagination run away with you

81. Let go of perfection in others

82. Let go of perfection in yourself

83. Don’t try to help those that refuse to help themselves

84. Find a way to reduce your commute to work

85. Have an alloted amount of worry time per day/week, that you strictly abide by

86. Drink more water

87. Eat more salmon

88. Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill

89. Wear your hair in a classic, easy to care for style

90. Finish what you start

91. Wear classic clothes and shoes that never go out of style

92. Create a daily routine

93. Have a 1, 5, 10 and 20 year plan for your financial and life goals

94. Slow down

95. Eat out less often

96. When you ask your husband which outfit looks best, thank him for his answer and wear the one he liked rather than focusing on why he didn’t like the other one

97. Allow your children to grow up

98. Clean out your garage, and donate anything that hasn’t been used in the past year

99. Stretch every day

100. If a relationship is over, let it go

A handful, eh? Some were hard to read and process. Still, I need to pay attention. Are you following most of these?

Ask the Rat II

OK, time for another installment of Ask the Rat, since the first one was a success. Ask, and it shall be answered. And since I’ve been up since 2 a.m., I’ve had lots of time to think of wise things to say.

One day, I shall write an Ask the Fiends column, just so I can get answers on how long someone can go without sleeping through the night. I want to cut off my right leg about now. Just throw it in ze dumpster. But hey, does that sully my sunny disposition? Mais non. I’m losing two talented students to another school district today; why should hip joints and lost teenagers bother me? Am I making sense? Do I have a fever? I think maybe the whole never-reaching-deep-sustained-restful-sleep thing is getting to me. I could crack up any day now.

Hmm. I guess I have a rattitude after all. That’s all right, though; it will make it even more pleasurable to address your burning questions about life, love, music, people, lambs and toads and tree sloths and fruit bats and orangutans and breakfast cereals.

Ready, steady, ax. Dear Rat Fink…

Attention talent scouts

Yes, it’s the obligatory Grammie post. We have to have one now and again.

But honestly — is this personality or what? We had Justin last night while Jake went to the movies with his mama. After eating dinner at McDonald’s, having ice cream for dessert, and hearing a lengthy treatise about something really important in the car (we were completely entertained, though mostly confused — we’re still learning Justinese), we came home to bath time.

And there, the real artist revealed himself. Gerber, Huggies, Johnson’s…you need this kid in your next ad campaign. Behold, The Natural:

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If only we could all approach life with this much joy…and two-year-olds could stay two for a little while longer. :-)

Various & Sundry XXXIII

Check this out. A 16-year-old student of mine did this for his art project. What a talent. I was flattered, too, until some goob posted on Facebook that I looked like “Hil Dog.” Aaaaaaand now I’m depressed.

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Now why didn’t I discover this earlier? (Oh yeah…it’s so amazing, he’s been keeping it a secret.) Do you mean to tell me there’s a young, beautiful, skinny, jet-setting investment-banker-ballerina-movie-star version of me out there somewhere? Les jump, brotha.

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Seen in the comment list on a word nerd site: Monet makes the Van Gogh. I admit, it was so dumb, I laffed.

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Next summer is my 35th high school reunion. I’ve never been to one (never wanted to go). Should I go to this one?

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So I hit Time‘s site to see the 2011 poll for Most Influential Person, and who do I find as #1? Most influential? Like, to the nation? If that’s the case, abandon all hope, for we are surely doomed.

PS, I like Wednesdays. ‘Specially those early release kind.

FO

 

You know, about money…

Even when you say it’s not, it is. It *is* about money.

I’ve been watching with great interest the whole Mad Men story with Matthew Weiner, and how his battle with AMC to retain the series the way he wants it almost cost him the whole shootin’ match with Lionsgate. Weiner swears it’s not about money, but rather artistic freedom. Well, sorry Matt, but artistic freedom IS about money, or at least the freedom from being weighed down by its constraints. In other words, it’s always about money for somebody. Looking at the deal he finally struck with the studio (demands that cast members not be cut for financial reasons, Weiner’s reticence to give up two minutes of episode time so AMC could air two more commercials), money is indeed at the forefront of this drama — only with the studio on the major spending end.

I suppose that’s what producers do, after all. Spend money to bring something to the screen. And I’d be more cynical about the whole issue if MM was not my favorite show ever. Worst part: only three more seasons, and it’s all over for good. I guess it had to end somewhere. Truthfully, who wants to see Roger Sterling in a leisure suit? Or anyone else, for that matter? I think 1970 is a good place to stop if it all has to end. Besides, I’m sure Weiner wants the show to go out on a “high,” as opposed to dragging it into an era when the players would surely be watching themselves become extinct in a world that has definitely moved on.

Why do we (I) even get so incredibly attached to a made-up story on television anyway? The vicarious lifestyle, seeing people endure real problems like one’s own, fantasizing about being someone else…I suppose it all figures in. I know that’s why I love fiction, in books and on the screen. This show also brings back memories for me — a kid growing up in the 1960s and 70s. I recognize (and recall fondly) the clothing, the hats, the decor; everything has a personal place for me.

Mad Men will remain my absolute favorite drama of all time — unless something better comes along in the future, which just might happen. But I have to get through the final three seasons, which, at this rate, could take ten years.

What show is your favorite, and why? (Yes, this is where you participate in the discourse, my fiends.)

Yipes I’m late for the shower.

Photo – AMC, Lionsgate