RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) I am not good with words.

I have always wanted, very badly, to be the kind of person that can say things that would help people.  If someone is hurting or sad, I want to be able to sit with them, or write to them, and be able to say something that will make it better.  Problem is, if I am emotionally close to someone (and those are usually the people I want to comfort the most) I feel the things that they feel and that renders me kind of stupid.  Seriously, when I am sad, I can't express myself properly, and if someone I love is sad, scared, nervous, or anything like that, I catch it and I can't say anything helpful. I go completely off the rails. I end up saying the most bizarre and cringe worthy stuff in an attempt to help them and that tends to not help at all. 

What I seem to be good at is doing, or at least trying my best to do. You need a hug? I got you. My hugs have been honed by almost 41 years of squishy, southern womanhood and I will try very hard to squeeze the sad right out of you. I will go out of my way to make you laugh if I feel you are sad, to the point of probably seeming like a bit tactless, because I want you not to be sad. You need me to cook you dinner? Clean your house? Walk your dog? Try and poke food into your face if I don't think you're eating? Tell you a long rambling story about how I once fell down in front of everyone in the lunchroom and inadvertently did the splits in a puddle of school mashed potatoes? I can do that! I will buy you useless presents or make you something out of my seemingly endless stash of arts and crafts supplies if I think it will help, even if it doesn't really. I will send you a hug over email if I think you need one! I will also sometimes stand back and not say anything, because the knowledge that my words can't help makes me too afraid to say anything, and that sucks because I want very badly to help and it's a helpless feeling when I can't and I don't want to make it worse.

Why am I telling you a thing most of you know?  Because I didn't 100% understand this about myself until recently. I mean, I KNEW, but I didn't KNOW, ya know?  Realizing a spiritual gift is a little like finding out about a new super power and not knowing how to use it. It's my own kind of origin story, and I'm just trying to reign it all in now that I see what is going on. I suppose I'm mainly telling you this because if I come at you from nowhere with a gift, or food, or a weird story, or if I jump on you with a hug, I'm trying to help. I know it sometimes makes me seem like a golden retriever that no one ever trained, but please know it comes from a good place and it's because I love you very much and want to make you happy.

Geez, I really am like a Golden Retriever. Makes me reconsider my thoughts about reincarnation. What if this is my first human form?!  That would really explain the clumsiness, shedding, and the irresistible urge to fetch. 
 
2) Y'all...I need to lose at least five pounds and it is not happening! I know what is going on, though. I'm way out of practice of doing the things that keep the weight off. From Thanksgiving to New Years, we were not home very much and cooking and eating became catch as catch can.  Desserts became something I indulged in when I had managed to mostly give them up before. Also...potato chips. They are my kryptonite. I also pinched a nerve in my back the one day I was able to go to the gym to take my class, and my arms went numb for a while and I couldn't grasp anything, so lifting weights was out of the question and running only made it worse.  I am slowly trying to get back into my good habits, but it's hard! It's nice just to eat without worrying about everything you put in your mouth and going out to eat when you don't feel like cooking is great. Exercise is hard and sweaty and not as much fun as people make you think it is. I think back to the 6 months of being hungry last year and it makes me want to stuff my face even when I know better and at the same time not eat at all because I don't ever want to go through that again.  Ugh, I just need to work harder. The people at the weight loss clinic will not be happy with me when I go back to weigh in!  They can bite me though, because I am working on it!  Heehee...they can bite me, but they won't, because I'm way too fattening right now.

3) We have been binge watching the show Vikings on Amazon Prime, and I am surprised that I kind of love it.  Steve has always been fascinated with ancient Norse culture and history, so finding a show that is done by the History channel (making it a little more accurate than say, HBO, where I'm sure it would become a vehicle for gratuitous sex and nudity -not that there's anything wrong with that if that's what you're looking for *ahem Game of Thrones*- and drawing from real history as well as mythology) was a lot of fun. Granted, I have to take a break from time to time because it's kind of violent and I don't like mainstreaming stuff like that, but when it's not violent, it's great!  It has also sent me down a Wikipedia wormhole reading about the genuine historical people that it depicts, and now I know way more about Norse/early Anglo-Saxon history than is probably useful, but I have no regrets. You should watch it if you get the chance.

4) I know that parenthetical sentence above is a lot of grammatical nonsense (as is most of my writing) and I apologize. Don't come at me. I'm not good at words!

5) I hug you again, but for different reasons than before.