Monday Cat Blogging

Black Friday....Shop Till it Hurts

It's a peculiar phenomenon. Every year, retail stores compete with each other to entice shoppers into their stores on the Friday following Thanksgiving. With Christmas being the time most of us spend a good chunk of any money we have on gifts and whatnot...retailers pull out all the stops to try and get you to spend at their stores before you bust your bank account or max out your cards.

Hence there are the super duper door busting special sales. Special is a key word here. The really fantastic bargains are available in limited quantity with no rain checks. What this creates is a horde of hundreds lined up awaiting the opening of a store to buy, say, a plasma T.V. for twenty bucks...when there are maybe two of them in the store. It's called "bait and switch" and is the oldest marketing scam in the book. You have to ask yourself why a retail store, with a warehouse the size of a football field and spending millions on advertising a particular item, would only carry a couple of that same sale item in the store. The answer is simple....get you and your money inside and then separate the two.

I've also noticed another trend...stores opening earlier and earlier. You see, when all the stores open up at the same time people have the opportunity to shop and compare. Can't have any of that because in retail, it's definitely first come first serve when it comes to getting that increasingly scarce consumer dollar. So some stores started opening a bit earlier...like 6am. Then some started earlier....like 5am. This year I saw that many were opening at 3 in the morning and I believe a couple even opened at midnight.

I feel sorry for the poor slobs who work in the store. Many years ago I worked at Target and got to experience my first Black Friday event. I worked as a stocker at that time and had spent the pre-opening hours unloading a truck and putting stuff on shelves. The intercom announced that the store was opening and I immediately heard a low rumble. I looked up and saw a crowd of people literally running down the aisle straight toward me. I dived into the stockroom afraid for my life and hoping to stay there for the rest of the day. No such luck. My boss drafted me to run the cash registers and, after thirty seconds of training, I was on the thing until the store closed at night.

I can imagine how much it sucks for employees to be dragged to work so they can open a store at three in the morning, put up with insane crowds of pissed off people who waited for hours to buy a sale item that was gone withing ten seconds of opening. So....if you're going out to participate in the consumer feeding frenzy today....smile at the person wearing the red or blue shirt and name tag. No matter how crappy your day is, it's a good bet that theirs is much worse and started much sooner.

Thanksgiving Zen Walk

Not Everybody Enjoys Thanksgiving

I dunno, I've never really been all that thrilled with Thanksgiving. Sure it's grand to visit with family but there doesn't have to be a special day set aside every year for that and, if the family has some problems, the artificial get-together can be a bit uncomfortable. Two families that I married into and later divorced out of have left a bad taste in my mouth about sitting around trying to act like the Osmonds when the dynamics is more like the Osbournes.

Then there is the eating. Lots and lots of eating. Now, don't get me wrong, nobody likes to eat more than me and I can put the food away with the best of them. Yet that seems to be the focal point of this holiday...being thankful that one has the ability to load up a dining table with enough food to feed some families in the world for a month. Even the homeless and destitute get to join in with local charities spending massive amounts of their resources to make sure that everybody gets a chance to stuff themselves with turkey and gravy. I'm not sure the intent is to help them be thankful so much as grateful...a subtle difference.

Oh gosh...I sound like a grouchy old fart, don't I?

I do have some good Thanksgiving memories, more good ones than bad as a matter of fact. I miss my parents and my sister and Thanksgiving day with assorted relatives, some now gone. I miss my kids and their kids separated by time and distance.

I really miss my Mom's chicken and dressing. That's probably what bums me out the most.

Monday Cat Blogging

Great American Smokeout

No cigarettes.

Do it for one day.

I dare you.

One Pill Makes You Larger and One Pill Makes You Small

Medication is the answer to every problem these days. Feel depressed? There's a pill for that. Anxious? There's a pill. Overweight? Just take these pills. Sleepy, not sleepy, pain, aches, sneezes, sniffles, pee too much, not peeing enough, can't get it up....pop a pill and make everything all right.

What really aggravates me is the accepted treatment for any mental health issue by throwing meds at people. Now...I'm not one of those types that believe medications have no place in mental health treatment. I'm just of the opinion that they only treat symptoms. Kind of like taking an aspirin when you have a headache. Gives relief; but if you have pounding headaches every day, maybe you should look a bit closer at finding the cause rather than crunching down bottle after bottle of Excedrin. Same with depression. If you're taking an anti-depressant year after year, are you really getting a handle on dealing with your depression? If you take pain pills long enough, sometimes you may discover that the only pain you are relieving is that of not taking the pills. There is no end to the number of people I know who are suffering all the mental and emotional devastation of a drug addict but who are convinced that they are not addicts because...well...it's prescribed by my doctor for my back pain...it's medicine.

It's okay to feel depressed. It's normal to feel pain. Though there definitely are times when both can become so debilitating that we need some relief to continue functioning...many of us become so dependent upon fiddling with our brain chemistry that we forget how to manage our own feelings. Some no longer even know how they feel.

Sorry for the rant but I had to get this off my chest. Enough preaching. Just remember to keep your head.

Pay Up!

Monday Cat Blogging

Age is a Number

This is one of my early memories which, for some reason, also seem to be my most vivid. The Jack LaLanne Show. I watched this on a prehistoric black and white vacuum-tubed television every morning. Not because I had a particular interest in exercise shows but because when the show ended, I would yell at my Mom that it was time for me to go to kindergarten. It was one of the ways I could tell time before I learned the advanced skills of reading a clock. I watched the show, not really understanding why he was jumping around all over the place...but he had a cool dog that I always wanted for myself.

Jack LaLanne is still alive! Dang...the man is 95 years old and still in better shape than most people a quarter of his age. What's his secret? Pills? Supplements? A complex diet program? Makeup?

Exercise and eat wholesome foods.

That's it.

I've never been particularly concerned about getting older. My fear is of getting older and getting sicker. What's the point of living into your 60's, 70's, and beyond if your life consists of pain and infirmary? I want my body to feel good whether my life ends next week or I live to be a hundred.

I still want that dog too.

Face It

I'm starting to believe that something worse than a poor self-image is one seeped in delusion. Of course, focusing on your faults and failures can be a road to depression and, perhaps, even an increase in the behaviors that cause those negative aspects about ourselves. But...then again...it can also be a motivator to change.

Walking around and telling myself "I'm a bit overweight, I could stand to lose a few pounds, but I'm not Faaaat! Not me. Lookit my arms...see how skinny they are?".

Don't look at my belly though. Don't ask me what my weight is this week. Don't comment about the closet full of triple X sized sweatshirts I wear every day to hide my body. Let me keep myself in ignorance about myself.

Trouble is, there isn't any bliss in that arrangement.

Score!

I love coffee. I love the taste of it and I love it rich and black. No sugar or creamer for me, and don't even try to give me any of that flavored crap. My favorite kind is Colombian. Not "Colombian roast" type knockoffs...but the real stuff...with the little seal of Juan Valdez and his donkey. Yet sometimes it seems as if it's easier to buy plutonium than my beloved Colombian coffee. There's always Folder's, but it goes at a premium price and is never ever on sale. Close to ten bucks for a 27.8 oz. plastic container.

Then, the other day, I was browsing in Big Lots. It's a great store. They have all kinds of items that you usually can't find anywhere else at very cheap prices. Most of the stuff is marketed for foreign stores and I suppose that, sometimes, the manufacturers decide it's more cost effective to unload to places like Big Lots rather than ship it to wherever. Anyway, on this particular day I spied Yuban Colombian coffee. $8 for a 44 oz. metal can.

I about passed out from excitement. Yuban is my favorite. You cannot find Yuban Colombian where I live. You certainly can't find any coffee in the old style big cans.

A once in a lifetime opportunity for coffee fiends.

I bought a dozen.

I'm going back today for more.

Monday Cat Blogging

Monday Cat Blogging

Money Get Back

What helps to keep me from not smoking is pondering all the positive aspects of life without cigarettes. I smell better, for one, both as far as my own body aroma and my ability to detect other fragrances is concerned. Food has more taste and I find that I get by with far less Tabasco sauce. I don't wake up in the morning hacking and coughing. I don't get one side of my face wet and cold when I drive in bad weather because there is no need to roll down a window for smoke to escape. I don't have to stand out in the rain at work sucking on a cig. I generally feel better with fewer headaches, sore throats, stuffed sinuses, etc, etc, etc.

I also don't have to spend money on cigarettes...and it's adding up....big time.

This habit cost me around $10 a day. I guess that's not much as far as addictions go. I know crack addicts that go through hundreds every day. Still, ten bucks is ten bucks.

$70 a week - that's a night out at a decent restaurant and a tank of gas. $280 a month - that's a car payment or the utility bills. $3360 a year - a pretty nice vacation. Over the years I've pissed away a great deal of money for cigarettes. It's time I stopped giving my hard earned cash to the tobacco industry.

Keep your hands off my stack, R.J. Reynolds.

On a Roll

I'm on my tenth day of not smoking. That's pretty good for me because the last several attempts at quitting, all I was able to manage was a couple of days...maybe three.

Do I think about smoking?

Hell yeah.

But I'm able to choose not to smoke and feel all right about it. It's been a very long time since I have been able to do that.

Monday Cat Blogging

One Week!

Seven days. No cigarettes. Not one. Not even a puff.

That may seem like no big deal to a lot of people and I know that I've pretty much devoted the whole week to yammering about not smoking...but this is a huge thing for me. I've been trying to quit for years. Usually I could do it for about 3 days before relapsing, with all the resulting frustration and guilt along with the bonus of an increase in the amount I smoked. It was a vicious cycle that I could not figure a way out of, and it was killing me.

Something clicked this time. I don't know what or how, but something is different about this attempt. Oh...there are still the urges, the temptations, the self-rationalizations; but it doesn't seem to have any power over me any more. At long last, I feel like I have control.

And....if I can control this....I can control other things about my body as well.

Adding Up

I really like the quitmeter thingie that is on the top of my blog here. I've always believed that if you don't have some way of tracking a goal, you may as well call it wishful thinking. The meter is an ongoing reminder of progress...real progress...especially for those times when it doesn't seem that I'm making any difference at all.

I look up at that quitmeter this morning, my sixth since my latest attempt to quit smoking. I'm facing the trial of going through the weekend. I'm facing increasingly intrusive thoughts of rationalizing smoking again. I get worried. Then I study on the meter. Nearly $50 saved. Well, that's good, but it's not like I'm impoverished and those nicotine patches and cinnamon toothpicks cost money too.

200 plus cigarettes not smoked.

Whoa. That's a carton. I went through a carton in five days? Two hundred cigarettes. Two hundred butts. Somewhere around a thousand times I inhaled smoke into my lungs. When did I become such a heavy smoker? Why did I let it go on for so long?

Here Come De Judge

I finally get a chance to use my abilities, expertise, and talent to the fullest at my job today. There is to be a chili cook-off in my department and I'm to be one of the judges. This might be a good thing because I love chili. It also might be a bad thing because I love chili....and my standards are pretty high. Kansans seem to have an aversion to spicy foods. For instance; what they call flaming hot salsa here in Kansas, they use in Texas to rub on a baby's gums to soothe them when they are teething.

I've also noticed that the chili in this neck of the woods seems to be very heavy on beans and light on the beef. That's not necessarily bad. I actually prefer my chili con frijoles. I'm not smoking today, so my senses will be sharper than usual and there won't be any unfortunate lighter accidents as I perform my judiciary duties.

Tell Me Lies.... Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Okay. I've completed three days without smoking. I've saved around $30 that I would have normally spent on cigarettes, which about covers the cost of nicotine patches for a week. My teeth are clean and my breath is nicely scented thanks to all the cinnamon toothpicks I've been chomping on. I can actually smell things again and can take a deep breath without feeling like my lungs are going to seize up on me. My smoker's cough is fading. I have more O2 in my blood and have a bit more energy during the day.

This is a dangerous time for me.

It's dangerous because all the immediate ill effects of smoking are fading and I only have memories of what I liked about smoking. This is the point when I start talking to myself and...when the addict voice talks...it lies.

and oh the lies I can lie to myself

"Go ahead and have one. You don't have to completely stop. If you just have one or two cigarettes a day, that will make it easier to quit. Well, (insert name of friend) smokes and they are perfectly healthy. You can smoke tomorrow because it will be a stressful day. Smoking keeps you from overeating."

and on, and on, and on.....with the always lurking whisper from that addict voice inside of me; "no one will ever know"

I've discovered that in this stage of the quitting process, I can find a lot of excuses to relapse. Everything from being stressed to being bored, they all sound good. The only way I've figured how to fight against those sweet little lies is to mentally shout "YOU LIE!" every time they pop up in my brain's self dialogue.

It's working for me so far.

I may start having to yell it out loud if my inner liar gets more persistent. That should make for interesting times at work.

Substitutes

This is what I put in my mouth three or four dozen times a day rather than a lit cigarette. It actually works pretty well for those especially tough times; like driving, talking to people who are smoking or smell like smoke, after a meal, watching TV, being on the computer, reading, sitting, standing,....come to think of it...just being awake. Hot little cinnamon toothpicks seem to do the trick and allows me to get past that momentary urge to light up a cig; and, really, the urge only lasts for a second or two.

I have a two tube a day habit now.

Counting Flowers on the Wall

The hard part, the really hard part about giving up cigarettes, is not so much giving up the cigarettes as giving up everything you've always done with cigarettes....or at least getting use to doing them without smoking.

Take mornings for instance. I'd always start my morning off with coffee and a few smokes. Now, I just have my coffee and stare dumbly into space while my right hand makes automatic movements to grab a non-existent pack and lighter. I drink coffee, I want a cigarette. I don't drink coffee, I want a cigarette even more. I want one if I check my email. I want one when I write on my blog. I want one if I read the paper. I want one when I turn on the TV. Thank goodness Captain Kangaroo is no longer on the air in the morning.

This is what makes giving up this particular addiction so difficult. If you've smoked for years, cigarettes become entrenched in virtually every aspect of your life. Take the cigarettes away and you're left with a lot of holes in your day and each and every one of them is a pit to fall back into relapsing. The real work in recovery is filling those holes...quickly. Leave them there for long and they will refill themselves with what use to be there. That is a fact that I've learned from the experience of several prior attempts.

Now, don't tell my I've nothing to do.

Monday Cat Blogging

 

I Have Way Too Much Free Time

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Boss Day

Okay...so I know that I often complain about my workload and the supervisor that gives it to me but, in actuality, I'm quite fond of both my job and my boss. My boss is pretty demanding. She expects a very high level of performance and, though it irritates me at times, it has made me excel in my profession. She also is probably one of the hardest working individuals in the agency where I am employed. My little domain of responsibility is puny compared to what she has to keep track of. I try to keep that in mind when I feel overwhelmed with my job. My boss has never demanded that others work harder than herself.

So happy boss day, Lisa. You don't even know about this blog so you'll never know that a primary reason I stay in your department is because I believe it's the best in the agency... and that's largely due to you.

Monday Cat Blogging

A Parable

I was with my wife this morning doing a bit of shopping at the local Walmart. I know, Wally World is not the socially/politically correct place to go; but I'm a working stiff who can't afford Whole Food Nation or the Gap. So, if you think I'm a bad liberal for shopping there, bite me.

Anyway...whilst I was wheeling out my cart of stuff to the parking lot and grumbling why coffee was over eight freaking bucks a can, I noticed a couple of young girls fighting over a balloon. Their mother was stashing bags of groceries in her car and the girls were really starting to go at each other.

"Lemme hold it!"

"No! It's mine!"

"But I wanna hold it too!"

"Mom!"

Mom turned to the girls with that look of soul shriveling fury that only a mother who has reached her limits can generate. Without saying a word, she reached over, grabbed the balloon, and let it go. The girls just stood there with their mouths open watching it drift away as the mom ordered both of them into the car.

There's a moral there, but I'll let you figure it out yourself.

It's What I Do

I have a lot of people ask me what I do for a living. It's really hard to talk much about my job, mainly because there is a lot of confidentiality involved. No...I'm not a secret agent or brothel madam; I just deal with people and the things I deal with are rather personal. What I can say is that I try and help others. The video below is probably the best way I can describe a typical work day without giving any details of what I do during the day. I go from place to place and attempt to keep bad things from happening to complete strangers. Most of the time, like the guy in the video, I'm perceived as something of an asshole by those who don't understand what I'm doing and why and that I probably saved them from disaster.

It's what I do.

...and I wouldn't do anything else

I Love Coffee

I really do. I've been drinking coffee for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I'd mix it up with creamer and sugar and always thought it was a great treat. Now...before you go off on my parents for letting me do this, keep in mind that it's probably a much better option than soda pop. Plus the caffeine most likely tamed my ADD tendencies without the need for the amphetamine pills they throw at every kid these days who show the slightest hint of being energetic.

Later on, I rejected the cream and sugar to take my coffee straight up black. I loved the flavor. I loved the smell. Even in the Navy, where the coffee was usually strong enough to take the paint off a bulkhead, I drank it by the gallon. Wherever I have lived, the one appliance that I considered a necessity of life was a coffee pot. If I was broke, I bought coffee over food....in fact...there were times I used coffee to kill hunger because I didn't have any food.

I love coffee. I've tried to limit my consumption by drinking tea once in awhile. I like tea, but it just doesn't do quite what I need. I've tried de-caff but it tastes terrible and my brain isn't fooled one little bit, usually giving me a grand headache until I deliver the real stuff.

Coffee rules my day.

Monday Cat Blogging

Just What is it that I Really Want?

From the time we are born, we all want things. At first, it's pretty simple. You want to be warm. You want to be fed. You want to be dry. Not much but I think it's the start of a life-long path of confusing what we want most with what we want at the moment. In the beginning, it's all the same. Later on in life....it gets complicated.

Try an experiment sometime. Ask a kid what they want to be when he or she grows up. You'll hear some lofty goals and enthusiastic passion that you won't find in many adults. Now, take that same kid to a candy store and ask what they want.

Different answer.

Instant gratification. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Biologically, it's a good survival instinct. Those that take advantage of opportunities when they come across them tend to have a better chance at surviving. Not so great a thing when what you want at the moment interferes with what you want the most. Eating lots of food when it might be a long time before the next meal..good. Eating lots of food because there is lots of food...not good.

This is a problem that I deal with almost every day. The decision as to whether I want something now or maintain what I want the most; which may take a very long time to obtain, if ever. Success is the continuation toward a goal with the knowledge of what must be traded in day to day desire. Do I want a piece of pie or do I want to have a flat belly? Do I want to watch my favorite television show or do I want to be physically fit? Do I want a cigarette or do I want to have a healthy life?

What do I want the most?

Who Needs a Life?

I am beginning to think that the primary duty of a supervisor is to delegate their work load to others. At least it seems that way to me. When my team is down several members, our supervisors leap into action and assign us to cover the shortfall. When reports on their departments have to be in ASAP my supervisors selfishly remain at their office for an extra five minutes past quitting time to write an email instructing me to get them done yesterday.

I'm drowning in paperwork....mine and that of my supervisors in my management heavy agency.

Is it the weekend yet?

$100 Winner

Monday Cat Blogging

Visit

Road Trip from Jay Sheer on Vimeo.

Now Comes the Hard Part

It's been my experience, based on the several times I've tried to quit smoking, that the first few days are surprisingly easy. Well.. maybe easy is not the right word, but certainly bearable. What makes it bearable for me is using nicotine patches. You can say all you want about how I'm just substituting one nicotine delivery system for another; but the patches deliver a far less amount of nicotine during the day than with all the cigarettes and without all the smoke. Plus, it stabilizes my mood so that I don't wind up getting fired or divorced. The most important thing that the patch does; however, it to keep me from getting cigarettes and lighting up "just one...or maybe two". If I don't put a fresh one on first thing in the morning, I will "put it off" and I will smoke before the day is over. So my ritual in the mornings has become exercising, showering, patch; with no opportunity to think about it or let my mind create any of the excuses that seem to be perfectly reasonable at the time.

After the first few days though....man! I get brief and very intense cravings periodically through the day. They only last a second or two but make me almost want to cry because the are so powerful.

I'm hoping that will pass.

Monday Cat Blogging

Flex Time

There's a neat little policy where I work. Rather than pay for overtime, my boss would much prefer that I utilize flex time. I mean...really prefer...as in "you ask for some overtime pay I'm going to ask if you are worth it". Submitting requests to be paid for overtime is a pain with paperwork (as if there isn't enough of that in my life) and one is almost made to feel as if you are stealing by asking to be paid for putting in over forty hours a week.

Simply put...not worth the trouble. So I do the flex time thingy. Flex time basically means that I go off the clock. Theoretically I'm not doing any work. The problem is, I still have all the deadlines and tasks that have to be completed. Thanks to modern technology, I can perform a great deal of work on a laptop at home. I can even have my phone calls routed to my cell.

whoop de doo

CPR Training

It's that time again. This morning I'll be with a bunch of other people watching a film about CPR and spending a great deal of time trying to resuscitate a legless, armless dummy like the one above. The dummies are suppose to give you a feel for what it is like to perform CPR though...if it were to be truly realistic...there would be significant amounts of vomit and perhaps a bit of blood involved. They should also make dummies with pot bellies and facial hair just to add to realism. They might have some with large breasts; though I suppose a few in class would likely steal those for themselves.

I think I've probably taken these classes at least a couple of dozen times over the years. I sit listening to the instructor while wondering why my agency doesn't join the 21st century and get defibrillators instead of depending on the hit-or-miss method of pushing up and down on a person's rib cage until an ambulance arrives. Still, better than nothing, I suppose. If I flopped to the floor at work due to a heart attack, I'd rather people around me try anything they could to save my ass. Jump up and down on me. Break my ribs. Hook up jumper cables to my nipples. Try something, anything.

The dummies in the class never recover. I would hope for a better result.

Monday Cat Blogging

 

Sitting With Cicadas

Monday Cat Blogging