Germ warfare

As I lay here on the couch, recovering from my FOURTH major cold/sinus infection since May, I am reflecting on how it is that only some of the millions of germs that surround us, actually make it through to become full fledged illness. Having very little scientific knowledge, and mainly first hand medical information learned along the illness highway during my life so far, I don't have much idea. Now I know there is that thing called the immune system. Which, it appears, some of us got less of than others. But really, doesn't it seem like there are these sneaky little germs that play some sort of physical bait and switch on us from time to time in order to slide a little virus in here or there? Germ delinquents.
I honestly think I would have been one of those described with the "weak disposition" who was often "sickly", if someone were writing about me in the pioneer days or something. (Weren't we the first to go in the Donner party...?) It's very disgruntling. I guess with the progression of a technologically based civilization that is able to research and test almost anything, we are inadvertently creating these mega bugs- super germs. But not super in the same sense of super man or wonder woman unfortunately. Just super annoying and super disgusting.


And before you tell me all the things I could be doing to prevent these attacks, let me explain that I am WELL armored and fully locked and loaded. I know what every over the counter medication does; have multiple steroid sprays and inhalers and prescription allergy "preventers", etc.,etc. I carry them with me EVERYWHERE. (If you've seen Sleepless in Seattle, you can think of Meg Ryan's perpetually allergic boyfriend and get a good idea of my daily routine.) Anyone that knows me will tell you that a Kleenex has been my calling card (or at least evidence of my visit) all my life and had I been a little more forward thinking, I would have invested in their stock a longgg time ago. This onslaught by these invisible invaders has pushed me to the point where I am tempted to declare martial law within the Land of Lynn to somehow put these attackers at bay once and for all! The riots and mayhem going on in my nasal passages deserve some special germ tear gas; or maybe I'll just bring in some germ tanks and germ bazookas and blow that stuff right outta ... my nose?

Car-hopping

Well, I am soon to be the owner of a new (to me) Nissan Murano. I have been excited about this car since I first saw it in Florida about mid 2003. So basically it's been calling out to me ever since. This is a poignant thing because I have NEVER bought a car without being impulsive. They ALL call out to me. I've owned (as in bought on my own) five different cars over the past 14 years, and believe me, if it hadn't been for ending up so upside down in the last car, there probably would have been more.
There have been 3 cars I've always considered "dream cars" since I was young. A Ford Ranger truck, of the circa 1978 design; a Jeep Wrangler; and a Ford Mustang- the new GTs are awesome. And my very first car purchase just out of college was a new Ford Ranger...of the 1994 design, but still- it fulfills the majority of that category! (Mine was navy blue)
I later traded in the Ranger for a used, red, Nissan 240sx sports car. I have no idea why other than I wanted a change and back in those days, if I stopped at a car dealership, it was like being at a toy store and I was bound to leave with something (typically more debt). But the Nissan proved to be a very decent car, and while it was my first step backwards in the equity ratio, I had a lot of fun in it!
Then I got real stupid a couple years later, missing my truck, I traded the Nissan for another Ranger, I dont remember what year, and it was silver like the picture. I had that for a year or so, and then moved up to the big leagues and got a new Ford F150 truck. And this was a sweet vehicle, but unfortunately, it was bought in Iowa, where there's LOTS of black ice in the winter. And I learned first hand how poorly a truck handles in the snow and ice after sliding off the country highways at 55 miles and hour a few times. Anyway- it eventually got traded in too for the last in the line up, the 1995 Isuzu Rodeo which I was chained to for the last 9 years.
All this to say that while I still have 2 more dream cars to hopefully experience one day, this latest car will certainly feel like a dream for quite some time!

Always a welcome guest.

Ahhhh...the spectacular dog-days of summer. Well, they're almost gone where I live, but I'm pleading with mother nature right now to keep squeezing a few more weeks out for me! I have to tell you, I really don't mind the heat (so I rarely have to get out of the kitchen...) I really don't- the humidity bugs me, but I'll take what I get when it's finally warm.

This summer has been rich with fun little weekend trips to bodies of water and the associated lonnnggg car rides to get there and back. Reminds me of my family summer vacations of yesteryear... My mom was always determined that we get to go SOMEPLACE for a summer vacation. Now, as my memory recalls, it seems like we went to some city named Carbonville or something on one of these trips. I don't remember there being much in that town. Maybe dinosaur bones, which I was VERY into at that time. But WOW, what an enterprising name for a city! I also remember going camping and there being these huge moths on all of the trees- some migration thing I guess- I don't think they bothered me as much back then as they did my sister? (Feel free to comment sister). Regardless of where we went, there was always a "delicious" potted-meat lunch to look forward to at our rest-stop picnic table (I still shudder at that). There were also at least 3 vacation-like trips that involved moving cross-country, and taking my sister to her first year of college. Those trips also entailed the extremely long car rides, where there was a distinct line down the middle of the back seat where sis and I sat, and crossing it meant really nasty glares and stuff. Of course I crossed it often.


And I'm not forgetting the every 4 year AIRPLANE trips to my parents' home state of Florida to see all the relatives. Those were great fun as a kid. You can't beat a plane ride to a warm, tropical type place. Especially since we lived in very non-tropical places growing up. We spent lots of time around my Granddad then, playing around in his plant nursery with golf carts and he always was willing to buy junk food treats for us when we were there! Not sure if mom knew that or not?
It's hard to "grow up" and not get summers off anymore. No matter what age I am, I'm still wanting to be riding my bike all over the neighborhood and playing in sprinklers and pools and laying around eating popcicles and soaking up the sun. Up here especially, if you don't take advantage of it while you got it- it's gone in no time and you're right back to wishing for it all over again! You can almost come close to "summer overload" (I know, it does actually feel almost blasphemous to say it). But you have to be outside absolutely as much as possible, from dusk til dawn, and believe me, you need those sun vitamins up here! But, I would absolutely NOT complain, and besides, my tan is certainly not suffering! (Though my mother reminds me often that my skin may suffer from excessive wrinkling later in life....). I think the essence of summer is the permission to be tranquil. It's a season of (hopefully) balmy indulgence. And who doesn't like a little of that! Even my dog enjoys her dog days, once she gets a little "coolin off". Probably what we ALL really need is a good splash of cold water to remind us not to take life too seriously. But please don't experiment on me to see if that works.

The great thing about getting older is that
you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.


~Madeleine L’Engle

One of these things is not like the other....

Different, an adjective, is defined by Webster's as: 1: partly or totally unlike in nature, form, or quality : dissimilar; 2: not the same: as a: distinct; 3: unusual, special and;
Oriented: intellectually, emotionally, or functionally directed.

Even Sesame Street tried to tell us that it was okay, but nobody truly likes to be different. I think it's because our human nature prefers what we are familiar with or have experienced to be like us. So that which is farther away from our "norm", becomes uncomfortable. I think different is not an easy thing to accept on the whole- but especially not when it has to do with us personally. I've tried to remember my first experience of meeting someone who was atypical from the usual line-up of everyday people. I'm sure it was someone from the inner-city Massachusetts church where my Dad was pastoring when I was between the ages of 2 and 9. You really could meet just about any walk of life, culture, age, shape, smell, and so-on there. My bad memory tells me that it was probably someone from the street that first caught my "Oh wow that's peculiar" eye, and probably their not-so-fresh aroma that put the exclamation point on the end of it. Needless to say, that kind of semi-alarming differentness sticks in the memory as being not too appealing, not very normal, and certainly not desirable. This my friends, sets the tone for future encounters with those of an "alien" nature- whatever orientation that might be. Our own culture has been telling us it's better to look, act, think and feel a certain "acceptable" way, for ages. And that's pretty easy to buy into when you're surrounded by so many others who ALSO want to align with that. I observed from an early age the kids that can't afford or maybe even choose not to ascribe to the social status symbols necessary to help you get through school a little more unscathed. They are the left-outs, the name-called, the weird kids with a myriad of stereotypes, and they eventually flock together to help feel a little less ostracized, a little less unusual. So you end up with a lot of groupings of sameness. And for whatever reasons, some of the groups are "better" than the others, and some are not. But what about the kids that don't fit into ANY of those? The ones that seem to gravitate toward the extreme of "freak" and "weird"? I guess I call that an attempt to embrace their differentness- they make their own place amongst all of the social haves and have-nots. And most of the time that evens out eventually, and sometimes it doesn't.

Even into adulthood we find names to describe the different. Eccentric seems to be a polite term for someone that people would call a "few fries short of a happy meal." Or there's offbeat, whimsical, unconventional, and one of my favorites, quirky. Oh yes, and let's not forget queer... I think we learn early on how we're going to respond to what seems unusual either by how we choose to interpret the behavior of the person, or by choosing to believe the collective societal say-so's about those atypical orientations. In selecting the first option, that means ignoring whatever name and stereotype someone is given, and seeing what they're actually like. That seems to be a difficult concept for a majority of people, unless the unorthodoxed person effects them personally in some way. I just love when this happens, because now all of a sudden, those that could be so far removed, are no longer behind the front lines anymore. Because now all of what goes along with those stereotypes may possibly apply to them as well- if they apply to the one you know, or love or are related to.

This word has been a part of me personally for as far back as I can remember. And for many reasons. One of these being that I intrinsically did not want to do what everyone else was doing, or wanted me to do, from a very early age. This unfortunately resulted in a few less friends in the neighborhood ( which certainly helped to develop my "creative side")and also apparently encouraged a few bratty kids to hold a little "Lynn protest march" out in front of our house one day. And let me tell ya, that's not an easy thing to forget. But I didn't like those kids, and wasn't willing to be bossed around by them, so thus was an introduction to my first feelings of being different at around 7 or 8 years old.
I would say next to follow in the different line-up would be moving to a place where no one is the same religion as you are- and most all girls are raised to be as feminine as the day is long. So I was already going in with 2 strikes- and the older you get, the weirder you seem if you don't act like everyone else, especially when A LOT of the everyone elses have a specific thing in common. So I was "weird" and "strange" and it was hard to find that group to fit into.
Now when you start to realize that you are, indeed, peculiar- thoughts rush back to all of those people you thought were weird and strange and smelly and whatever, and you really do panic for awhile wondering why you have to be the one that has a permanent freak flag flying? And of course, there are different levels of dissimilarness which some of us can change if we want to, and some of us cannot. And when you end up with one of the cannots, there's either a long process of finding acceptance within yourself for that, or a life-long battle of never really knowing who you are and why you have always felt...different. It's a wonderful thing to figure out why you're different, but unfortunately, not much that is unusual is celebrated. To finally put together all of the feelings and interactions and thoughts with an explanation- to find that "missing link", is a monumental figuring-out moment in the "different" life. But no one throws a party for something like that. It's no easy thing to embrace being "strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint." We would be a world of bland, insipid people without the different. No Einsteins or Da Vincis or Tchaikovskys. And somehow, someway, there's got to be something that assists those that are afraid of the divergent to realize that they are just as strange to those that have been in social exile.

I will admit that no matter how much you work to discern and deal with the nature of our humanness, you still can't take the human out of the nature. Because no matter how many times I have been left out or set aside or presupposed there are still times when I struggle to accept and or understand those that are exceptionally foreign in their orientations to me. So I too have to remind myself, that we are all searching for our own definitions within our different orientations.