What Can't Be Explained

I'm having a little "poltergeist" /Stephen King moment. This morning I walked into the exercise room as I do every morning. I grabbed my running clothes from the dresser. Fine. Get the clothes, get dressed, drink a cup of coffee and eat some toast. Thirty minutes later I return to the room to get my shoes. And there, lying on the carpet in front of the door, is my runner's knee band.

A little history. The runner's band is a padded black band that velcros around the knee and offers stability and support to the kneecap. I bought a band last year when my left knee was giving me trouble. The knee flared up again this spring and I spent weeks looking for my band. I keep a tidy house so there were a limited number of places where it could be. I looked in all of them. Nothing. Not in my gym bag, not in the dresser where I keep my workout clothes, not in the bin on top of the dresser where I keep my i-pod. I even searched other closets and drawers and never could find the band.

I was slightly irritated, as I'd paid $20 or something for it and it just didn't seem logical that it would disappear. But after intense searching, I figured it had droppped out of my bag or car somewhere along the way and was gone. The knee patched itself up, so no worries.

On Monday of this week, I wasn't feeling well so I did a quick indoor run on the treadmill. My knee started hurting again and has throbbed all week, making me wish I had my band.

Then this morning... ta-dah! I came back into the exercise room and the band is practically sitting in the middle of the floor! Where did it come from? How did it get there? I have retraced my steps. I was in that room yesterday stretching out, which would have put me right by the door, and nothing was there. I didn't take anything in there this morning, like my gym bag, which I KNOW it wasn't in anyway. It is the freakiest thing. Where in the world did this thing come from? There's no where it could have dropped from. Even if it somehow came from the dresser, it seems unlikely it would land by the door.

So there's my ghost story for the month of October. Weird, huh?

Do You Seek Out New Friends?

Ever notice how easy it is to become complacent and not reach out to others, even when you think you might have something in common?

For example, yesterday in my Toastmaster's meeting a new member gave her Icebreaker speech. This is a 4-6 speech that introduces the speaker to the group. I loved yesterday's speaker. She spoke of searching for meaning in her life, but did so with humor and insight. She grew up in Germany and now lives in the U.S. As she was speaking, I was thinking, "She's someone I would be interested in getting to know better."

And yet, I left the meeting without saying anything to her other than, "Great speech."

Does anyone else relate to this? Do you actively seek out new friends or are you content with those already in your inner circle?  I tend to be a person who has a wide range of acquaintances, but few close friends.  But I like having a wide breadth to chose from and that so many of my friends are so different from one another. I sometimes wonder if I threw a party and invited everyone, would anyone get along? =)

I have my artsy friends, my writer friends, my running friends, my past colleague friends, my spiritual friends, my younger friends, my older friends, my neighbor-friends, my funny friends, my wound oh-so-tight friends, my long-distance friends, my "kind-of-wish-they-weren't-anymore" friends (Oh, save it. You have them too.), and of course, my best friend.

Many fall into several groups, depending on the day and time you catch them. I wonder how others categorize me? I know I'm a writer and runner friend to some. But I do tend to slot people into categories (just to keep track of them) and it's fun imagining how I may get slotted myself.

Then again, some things may be better left unexamined...

Wrap It Up

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've already started the mental planning to wrap my year up. Might as well be Christmas next week for where I am in my head. I've pulled out the calendar and looked at what projects I know I'll have due, mapped out timelines to have them completed, and am for the most part looking forward to winding down with a very slow fourth quarter. I feel like I worked like a maniac this summer--sometimes 30 hour weeks! (Ha ha--had to put that in there for the hubby!!) =) 

But I'm ready to pull back. I've felt it coming on for sometime and I'm ready to act on it. While I love my life and my work, I feel stagnant. I'm adept at what I do, but my writing isn't going anywhere. There's never time to fool around and be creative and explore new genres. So I'm making plans to ease back on the magazine and corporate writing and take some time to just... play. With words. No pressure to produce or publish. Just write because it's there.

This will involve a partial drawback from society. That part will be temporary, I'm sure. There are only so many days in a row I can stay at home and see and talk to no one. My "pay attention to me" meter quickly goes out of whack. But people are on my nerves at the moment. All of them--family, friends, clients, people in line ahead of me at CVS, ... I find myself muttering the word, "moron" just a little too often, telling me that it's not others who have the problem, it's me. Time to take a step back.

I've got a couple projects that will take me through to the end of the year. After that, who knows? It's one aspect of my working life that I absolutely love--I never know what I'll be doing a month from now.

Meanwhile, time is flying by. I guess I better work on getting that Christmas tree up, eh?

Cheers,

Dena

What's That Number?

I have lost the ability to remember telephone numbers. I suspect I am not alone in this.

I knew lots of  phone numbers as a child. I knew my number, my mom's work, my aunt's, grandparents, best friend, local radio station... No problem. But with the advent of phones that allow you to program in every number you may ever conceivable need, my retention ability has gone the way of the dodo.

Blair and I were in town this weekend and I wanted to call my mom. "Oh, shoot, I forgot my cell phone," I said.

"I've got mine," he said, handing it to me.

I stared at it and realized I didn't have the slightest clue what my mom's number was. Couldn't even guess at the area code. If I can't hit the star button and then say, "Mom," there's apparently no reaching her.

As of today, I know 4 telephone numbers. My home phone, my cell, Blair's work (only b/c I make myself dial it in case I'm ever out without my cell phone and need to reach him) and my cousin Amy's number from when we were kids. That's it.

My friend Trisha has the freakish ability to remember almost any phone number she's ever dialed. She could prank call a random anyone from the phone book and be asked their number two years later and be able to recite it back. Not the most entertaining of party tricks but hey, it's more than I've got going for me.

Do you think cell phones are making us dumber? Aren't we losing some sort of mental conditioning that comes from having to remember a multitude of seven and ten digit numbers? I'm not sure our society can afford much more dumbing down.

I'd call someone to complain, except I don't have their number.