Objects in the mirror; change in blog name

Yesterday, while driving, it occurred to me that I had forgotten the perfect name for my blog that I thought of long ago.  There it was, right outside the window on the car mirror:  Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.  How crazy is that?  Why aren't the objects in the mirror just as close as they appear to be? 

I've always wanted that saying as some sort of article title, tag line or quote on my business card, and when I started my very first blog, it left me completely until yesterday. Just goes to show you I don't look at my right side mirror very often!

First of all, WHY do they (car manufacturers) do that?  With all our technology, you'd think they could make a mirror for the passenger side of the car that shows the REAL size and distance from the object to you. 

This little feature on the cars has haunted me since the day I first got behind the wheel in driver's ed oh so long ago.  Exactly HOW MUCH closer is this object?  Just a bit?  Quite a bit?  RIGHT NEXT TO ME?  How can I ever trust it?  What moron thought this is a good idea? OH GOD, I'll never trust my right-side merging and can I really believe that the driver's side mirror is telling me the truth?  Arrrghh!

Back in the day, there were no outside mirrors on cars, and then there was only one, on the driver's side.  Finally, some safety guy, or insurance person, or mother came along and said "we need a mirror on the other side too!"  But, maybe that mirror should be misleading, just to keep a little excitement in the driving experience!  Yeah, that's it!  Let's keep it fun!

So who made that decision to put in a funky mirror that distorts the image to make it appear farther away giving me a false sense of security?  Who I ask?

The newer cars have cool things in the mirrors that light up when someone is in your smack zone.  The closer they come to your zone, the brighter the lights get and some even beep.  So, if you look in the distorted mirror, you think the car is farther away but the lights KNOW the truth.  The light sensors shout "danger, danger - don't believe what you see in the mirror!"

Odd, eh?

Well, if I were an English teacher, or a philosophy teacher, I'd use this sentence as a class assignment.  It's a goodie.  Think about how it actually pertains to our lives, in a metaphorical sense.

The objects in the mirror are usually the things behind you, right?  Stuff from your past.  Looking back on your past, don't some events or situations seem LARGER than they really were?  Or, do they seem smaller than you thought at the time? 

We don't get any blinking lights that go off and say "hey! that old stuff is sneaking up on you again and it's getting close!  There's gonna be a big bang here!"  Memories are always conjured up with filters on them.  Either we make the story bigger, worse, more drama, or we minimize what happened.  We pick and choose what we remember, for the most part.  And HOW we remember it.  We give memories new or continued life if we keep talking about them, writing about them, dwelling on them.  Some are good, and some need to be given a proper burial and let go of completely.

So there you have it!  My blog name has been changed to what I originally wanted it to be.  And if you have any thoughts about the car mirrors, memories or whatever, leave me a comment.  By the way, be careful while driving, and keeping old memories - be sure to watch for the signal before the big bang!

TTFN!

If it itches, scratch it!

I just read a book call Spontaneous Healing  by Andrew Weil who talks about the body's ability to heal itself.  After all, it is how the human race, and most living things, survived.  You get cut, your skin heals.  You get an infection, and your body sends little white blood cell soldiers to attack and repair.  Your skin is constantly renewing and replacing old skin.  Your body wants to survive and wants to be in a state of wellness. This is a great book!

So that brings me to my itch.  And why I scratch it against everyone else's admonishing "LEAVE THAT ALONE!"  What the hell sense does that make?  My body is sending me a signal:  something is bad here,needs help to repair so pay attention to this area! Scratch me! Now, please! (FYI - this is NOT in Dr. Weil's book!  It is my own revelation about how the human body works).

Think about this.  If I swallow wrong, and start choking, which is my body's normal reflex to save itself.  It is a series of violent spasms set off by my brain after it says "holey crap, we're losing oxygen fast and we gotta get this damn thing outta here".   Not one person in the room will say "hey Jackie! Stop that extreme coughing and hacking!"

When I cut my finger, not one person will say "hey! don't press on that - just let it bleed!"  Nor will they say, "Stop that sweating! Right now!  You don't need to sweat!  I'm sure you'll cool off your internal organs and brain some other way."

But when you have an itch. . .now, that's a different story, eh?  Stop scratching!  Quit that!  You'll make it bleed!  God, you are making ME itch now!

Well, this is how I feel about that.  If I itch, I WILL scratch.  And I have been.  This year, for the first time in my life, I have developed eczema on my legs that turns into hives.  I've soaked in oatmeal baths, used all manner of creams, sprays, lotions, and have had steroid shots and pills.  Through all of it, I continued to itch and only scratching brought relief.  So I scratch.

Did it bleed?  Yep, it did.  Did it scab? Yep, it did.  Did it bruise from such crazed scratching?  Yep it did.  Did it heal?  YEP IT DID.  All of it.  And I felt better while scratching and after scratching.  That is what God invented scratching for!  In case you get an itch!

I've had plenty of time to think about why the body itches in the first place.  Something bad is inside and wants out.  It wants out so badly it will erupt and nudge, and jiggle your nerves until you help it out by scratching it right the hell out of you.

I actually believe that by scratching, you send some signal to the brain saying "Hey buddy, I'm helping you out as much as I can here!  Here's the place!  Yep, right here!  Send white blood cells!  Dude, you aren't sending enough!  What if bleeding and open sores happen?  Will you send more little white cell soldiers then? Good, because here comes a bleedy sore for you!  Yeah buddy, right here right now". 

And the brain GETS IT!  It says "finally, you moron!  I've been nudging your nerves all day now to get you to scratch here to help the blood flow faster to that area with the yucky stuff, and finally you listen to me!  Here's some relief for ya sister!  And stop listening to those people who say "stop that itching".  What the hell do they know?  They are not your BRAIN!"

So that's my take on it.  Not very scientific, except for the part that the body was meant to survive, be healthy and reproduce.  And I know it sends me signals to help it do that:  hunger pangs mean feed me, sneezing means get this crap out of my nose, pain in my ear means turn the music down, and itching means . . .scratch me!

Can you deny this?  Go ahead.  Tell me your thoughts. Just don't tell me to quit scratching, cause I won't!

TTFN

Why are "annuals" called that, when they don't come back every year?

Let's just talk about this crazy word for a minute.  When we talk about annual plants, that means you have to buy them fresh and new every year.  You can't just plant them once and watch them pop up again every spring.  Who, in their right mind, decided to call them annuals? 

In my mind, the plants that come back every year, are annuals, like this definition of Annual from the dictionary:

adjective

1. of, for, or pertaining to a year; yearly: annual salary.

2. occurring or returning once a year: an annual celebration.

 

Got that?  "Returning once a year.  Yearly".  Well, that is NOT what happens with THOSE kinds of plants.  The kind of plants that need to be replanted each year should be called "quarterlies" or more like "3-monthlys" for they really only last about 3 months and you gotta replant them every season.

 

I was talking about this with my daughter the other day we wondered how did these plants ever survive in the beginning?  If they don't come back in the next spring, that means they just completely die.  They don't sow any seeds that sprout back up in the new season.  Or if they do sow seeds, why don't they just grow right there where they were dropped?  They don't leave roots behind to re-sprout.  They leave nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.  Yet somehow, magically, they are here now. 

 

So where does the fresh crop of "3-monthlys" come from?  I think they come from seeds, but who gathers them?  And if they can be gathered, why can't the plants just drop them in the dirt, scattered by the wind, or bird poop, and grow the next year?

 

I am wondering if no one harvested the seeds, if the annuals would be gone forever?

 

Perennials, on the other hand, are plants that live for MORE than 2 years.  They appear to die out, but return each growing season.  Actually, they continue to grow, albeit so slowly, all year through stem or root systems.  So they seem to be named correctly, according to me.

 

It's the "annuals" that I just can't grasp.  Like, how it all got started - who figured it out and how they managed to collect the seeds before all the flowers were gone forever.  Smart little cave people!  Or, maybe it was the aliens. . . hmmmm....still could be.  Every year, the aliens stop by earth and drop off a fresh batch of "annual" seeds to . . .umm...Burpee and. . .Andersons. ...yeah, that's it.  Aliens.

 

Let me know if you KNOW where the real, true source of the "annual" seeds come from each year, or how it all started in the beginning. 

As far as I'm concerned, the 3-monthlys come from aliens and that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

TTFN!

 

 

Bruno the Leonberger with the funky tail fur

Just a short post for my Leonberger friends who have heard about Bruno's tail. Yep, never grew back right after he lost a lot of hair last year.  As far as he knows, it's a beautiful tail!

How I think Risoto was discovered

Last night, we had friends over for dinner and made a wonderful Truffle butter, chantrell mushroom and shallot Risotto with broth and white wine. It was so good, I ate the leftover for breakfast!

I don't make risotto often, it takes quite a bit of time and fussing compared to rice. I think risotto is Italian for "rice that is stuffed full of liquid over a long period of time".  The rice itself can be cooked like normal rice; 2 cups of water, 1 cup rice boil till done, etc.  But to make risotto, you use the same rice with 5 cups of broth and 1/2 cup of wine and you add it to the rice in 1/2 cup increments, only adding the next 1/2 cup after the first is fully absorbed.  That, my friends, is a lot of liquid going into a little bit of rice!

I wonder who discovered that method?  Probably the wife who cooked the rice with a normal amount of liquid, and when her hubby didn't get home from the orchard on time,  she added more liquid.  When he still didn't come home, she added more.  She did this about five times, is my guess.

On the sixth time, when her hubby still didn't show, she sat down and had a glass of wine, and then another, and waited.  By the time she saw him coming down the lane, the rice was drying out and she was down to 1/2 cup of wine in the bottle - so she dumped that in for one last effort to keep the rice moist and fluffy.

Well!  The rice was quite the hit with the husband!  Or at least he knew better than to say a word about this new-textured creamy concoction (having noticed the empty wine bottle on the table, and the wild look in his bride's eyes). 

He raved about the creamy rice and when he asked her what she called it, she said, in a slightly tipsy fashion "thish is reese-oh too!", meaning to say, "this is rice TOO!"  (she also said a few other words about him being late from the orchard again, but that's another story)

Not wanting to offend his wife, he told all the neighbors about the new rice-oh-too, and the wife started having the neighboring wives over to show them how to make the new dish. After much experimenting with rice, water and wine the recipe became our modern day risotto.

If you know a different version of how this was discovered, please post.  Otherwise, this is my story, and I'm sticking with it!

TTFN!