It’s a free game in which you collect brightly colored produce, flowers, rain drops, wheat sheaves, and acorns. You accomplish this by moving pieces around the board while dealing with Darwin the Goat who eats wheat sheaves and Fidget the Squirrel who thunks acorns with his tail.
What’s not to love?
Zen-Den, on the other hand, was reading a copy of Smithsonian magazine, but he looked up to ask me how my game was going.
I told him I was on a particularly fun, but difficult, level where in order to win I needed to get Fidget the Squirrel to whack all the acorns on the screen.
To which Zen-Den commented: “Sure, any game in which nuts get a little tail is a good one. Enjoy.”
I love when the absurd intersects with the ridiculous, and everything suddenly makes sense.
{ Classic TV: Catch the toast. Kiss the grapefruit. }
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I. Years ago Zen-Den and I were walking around a discount mall complex. It was crowded, we were walking slowly, and we chanced to overhear part of a serious conversation between two people who we didn’t know.
What we heard was: “We used the snot out of those oven mitts.”
We started laughing because neither one of us could imagine a scenario where you’d say this sentence with such earnestness. Of course Z-D and I, being who we are, immediately adopted this sentence as our favorite inside joke that means absolutely nothing, but it’s darned funny to say.
Don’t judge.
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II. I’ve been cooking and baking more this winter than usual. We didn’t decorate the house for the holidays, but instead I decided to be festive and make some foods that we especially like: stews, soups, casseroles, breads, biscuits.
Even though the holidays are over now, I’ve just kept on cooking.
All was going well in my happy little cooking world until our last oven mitt ripped in two. This left me with one square potholder and a dish towel to use when getting food out of the oven, and off the top of the stove.
I adapt. No big deal, right?
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III. It didn’t concern me to not have any oven mitts because I was making do with what I had. It was only when Zen-Den walked into the kitchen and asked me what I was doing that I began to realize that this conversation was going to go somewhere funny.
I got the giggles but was able to explain the situation to him, and for the first time ever I was able to say in all truthfulness: “We used the snot out of those oven mitts, didn’t we?”
Thereby using our favorite absurd overheard sentence in a non-ironic way to describe the present ridiculous situation– and to finally understand why anyone would say that sentence to begin with.
{ File this under: NEVER TAKE YOURSELF TOO SERIOUSLY }
• A FEW WEEKS AGO WHEN I began to think about what my One Word for this year would be I was sure it’d be SMART. My egotistical little brain that craves attention told me that this word was a good one. But after The Orange One made reference to Putin being smart I could not, in good conscience, use the now tainted word “smart” as my one word.
• THEN WHILE READING A CHRISTMAS GIFT, a wonderful book of essays called I’m Judging You: The Do-Better Manual by Luvvie Ajayi, the word BETTER seemed like it’d be my One Word. But the more I thought about this word the less applicable it seemed to my overall mind-set right now.
It’s not that I don’t want to strive to be a better version of me, I do; it’s just that I feel that “better” could be anxiety-producing for me, a reformed semi-perfectionist who has finally become comfortable with the concept of good enough.
• WELL, ON NEW YEAR’S EVE I still had not decided on a word for 2017. In a last-ditch effort to discern what my One Word would be, I approached the problem in a less cerebral, more spiritual way. That is, as I drifted off to sleep I intentionally put the question into my mind, so that when I awakened the next morning the first thing I thought about would be my answer.
And my spirit didn’t let me down. No, thanks to it I had a word for 2017 that allows me to creatively incorporate the essence of smartness with the desire for betterment. Yes, my whole being told me in no uncertain terms to: RELAX.
So I think I will. 😉
Question of the Day
DO YOU PICK ONE WORD TO BE YOUR THEME FOR EACH YEAR?
If so, what’s this year’s word and how did you come by it?
If not, what do you do instead? Resolutions? Goals? Nothing?
Much hustle and bustle. Much family related stress. Much TV watching for the non-shoppers, much discount shopping for the wackos people who like to do that sort of thing.
I thought a few fun links might be appreciated this week while you, my gentle readers, eye-rolled at familial lunacy OR made like a potato on the couch OR foraged in over-heated junked-up stores.
Whatever you decide to do makes no difference to me, but please…
Be safe. Be happy. Be.
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A cheery anthem from an unlikely source that gets us where we’re going.
Details about wishbone karma just in time for Thanksgiving.
Zen-Den and I were sitting in our living room the other evening.
Zen-Den, on the other hand, was reading a copy of Smithsonian magazine, but he looked up to ask me how my game was going.
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 