Failure To Be Asked and Compromise - What a Mix

Time once more for Mama Kat's Writer's Challenge.

This weeks topics:

1.) Ask someone who loves you what one of your weaknesses is.
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings Of Moi)

2.) “I need all the help I can get and if repeating something healthy and inspiring to myself several times a day helps, then I’m going to do it!” -What affirmation makes you feel better? WELL THINK OF ONE.
(inspired by Shanna from Smiles, Miles, and Trials)

3.) I Wanna Be MADE! You remember the MTV series where nerdy high school kids are made to be popular and what not? If you could be MADE into anything…what you be made into?

4.) I’m reading a book about dogs and kids…it says you may need to compromise some of your dog standards when choosing a dog that will fit every family member’s needs. I think that’s like marriage. What did you compromise when you married?

5.) Why didn’t they ask you? Write a list of 5 or 10 sentences that begin with the words ‘No one ever asked me’; then, write about one of them in detail, or use them all in a poem, or use several in a personal description of yourself.
(writingfix.com)

I'm going to go with #4 and #5 this week.


#4 - What did you compromise when you married?

I like to listen to music, preferably loud, as I drift off to sleep. L on the other hand is one of those people who requires near absolute silence to fall asleep. (Once asleep, she is impervious to most noises). You can see where this is going. It was one of the bigger compromises of married life for me to accept the no-noise-of-any-sort-at-bedtime rule.

Even now, more than 34 years later, I still miss listening to music at bedtime. There is something so soothing about listening to Led Zeppelin or Pure Prairie League as you drift off to the land of nod. Any Jackson Browne ballad acts as a soporific for me. Just about any tune to stop the continuous running of the brain is a great sleep aid for me. Call it the primitive power of music if you will.

Now it is an entirely different battle for silence at night. The combination of L, Molly (the dog), and me snoring is enough to wake the dead. There is nothing worse than waking up in annoyance at someone snoring only to realize that the snorer is you. Add into it the occasional bursts of night time flatulence from Molly and you can truly enjoy a premier sleeping experience at our house.

Maybe I can convince L to let me listen to music just to drown out the snores at night? It's worth a try! (Of course, it won't do anything to the olfactory effects from the dog, but as they say: half a loaf is better than none. Maybe Bizarro got it right in reverse.)

#5 - No one ever asked me

No one ever asked me ...

... to be the centerfold in their magazine.
... to be the cap-person on their human pyramid.
... to join their ballet company.
... to serve as their fashion consultant.
... to run the anchor leg of the race.
... what I wash first in the shower.
... if I have ever crawled through a window.
... to retrieve something fallen into a narrow crevice.
... to sing for them.

We can eliminate the interest of some of these right off the bat. Regular readers already know why no one asks me to sing. (The curious might want to read this entry.)

Retrieving things from a small area is out for the simple reason that my hands are large. "How large?", I hear you ask. Well ...

I have never been asked if I have crawled through a window because unless it is a patio door, it isn't going to happen. I have been asked numerous times to hoist someone up to the window - does that count?

I wash my head first in the shower, then the body, and then finally shampoo the hair (what there is left of it). Just seems like the logical way to go. I almost always shower rather than use a bathtub. Might have been too much exposure to the humor of my dad's railroad work colleagues when young. They were fond of asking the semi-rhetorical question "Why would I want to wash my head in the same water as my @**?"

The rest of the failures can be traced to one simple fact: I am a really big klutz. When you are 6'5" and 300lbs, you get asked to play football and rugby, not dance on stage or pose for the centerfold. {*grin*} And when you wear size 16 shoes, your ballet career is over before it even began. Likewise, unless it is a strongman competition, you are not going to be asked to tread and kneel atop anyone.

Finally, I am noted more for my sense of anti-fashion rather than fashion. After all, I have been seen in public wearing these:

I think that explains it all!



P.S. If you have ever wondered how those review blurbs for new books come about, venture on over to Eos Books - The Next Chapter and see how my review of BRAINS yesterday was blurb-a-tized. I have never seen so many ellipses in my life. {*grin*}