September 2019

Okay… I get that this will sound a bit random to many of you, but I never saw the movie, The Karate Kid, which was released in 1984, until 20 years later.

There are reasons for this, beyond the fact that I’m not a huge fan of the film genre known as “kick butt” movies.

I spent the 80’s as a seriously broke single mom. And, for most of those years, I was a seriously broke full-time student single mom. Four college degrees in 10 years cuts down on the movies a whole lot! (Though Dave and I did make it to E.T. !!!)

In fact, I didn’t see The Karate Kid until my hypnosis guru sent a whole bunch of us for homework. That was when I was beginning to put together the puzzle pieces of auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning.

To be specific, “Wax on. Wax off.” It’s all three of those processing paths in one!

Oddly, Mr. Miyagi seems to have taken up residence in my head again this week. Then, as I closed my book one night, and reached to turn off the light, I figured it out.

It’s the buttons!!!

Many, many buttons, as you may have noticed. It goes like this:

Choose a button of the right size for the space. Make a blob of glue. Put button on blob. All the while, focusing on the message of the Muse-in-progress.

Admittedly, “Wax on. Wax off.” is tidier. It really kind of works the same way, though. The visual choice of the button and the place to put it on the canvas. The auditory/digital repetition of the message. The tactile movement of placing the button. And, the internalizing of the process which is, in and of itself, creating change.

It will be a while longer before she’s ready for viewing. A few more buttons. Some dandelions to paint. (Really!) Lots of honoring and tending which, in the land of Intentional Creativity ®, basically means cleaning up rough edges, bringing some things forward and some back, and, especially if I’m the artist, about seven more coats of lipstick.

I’ll get the hang of mouths one of these days!

She’ll also need some more prayer dots. This time for the victims of the shooting in west Texas over the weekend.

For this moment, though, the internet is back on and Bill has dinner in the oven. Exhausted beasties, just home from Camp, are napped out, each in their personal favorite traffic pattern. Leaping over them hurts a bit less. And my girls had a good first week in school. All of which means more dots. These, for gratitude.

Well, it’s been an interesting weekend!

Order out of chaos work (Read that moving closets and drapes!) going on in the house. Also, painting. Lots of painting! Mostly art. Only a tiny bit of touch up on walls.

After my ortho doc assured me, provided I rested a bunch in the meantime, that doing the Abundance Workshop I have coming up next weekend wasn’t going to make what hurts worse, my current Muse painting, who insists on going along, has been in quite the rush to get things done.

It’s the resting part that has presented a bit of a challenge.

I can paint sitting down, which pretty much counts but, in order to get my legs up, I need the magic chair. No problem with the chair.

The problem, instead, is with the TV and internet. There hasn’t been any!!!

Now, I realize that, in the face of hurricanes and wars and crushing poverty and a huge lack of health care and major challenges with our educational system and tragic mass shootings and overwhelming questions about human rights, this is not actually a big deal.

I, however, am a pattern learner.

You know how, if you happen to have a front lawn, and you head out your door every day and walk to the mailbox by the exact same route, pretty soon you’ll have an actual path worn in your lawn? You know… grass mashed down, then worn away, then soil compacted until there is, essentially, a very obvious groove in your otherwise lovely lawn.

Well, our brains work the same way. Doing the same thing, the same way, over and over again, actually creates neuro-pathways, or grooves, in our brains and then we tend to “stay in the grooves,” as it were, and keep doing things the same way.

Loathe as I am to admit this, after all the years of knee surgeries, one of my grooves is put feet up… turn on TV. Lots and lots of Food Network and Cooking Channel. Lots of HGTV. (Well, less these days. I mean, even I can only stand just so much house flipping!)

Then there’s the wonder of ROKU and Netflix. The West Wing, whenever I want it. Tony Bourdain.

And, just between us, it took me a while to wear a new groove in my brain to juggle two remotes and figure out which buttons to push and when. I am not a techie person. (At least, historically, I haven’t been!)

This weekend, since somebody put a huge roadblock in my path, and Bill was off communing with tens of thousands of techie/geeky folks at Dragon Con, and the thing called a router, which may be part of the problem, lives in the basement where I can’t get right now, doing some new things was called for.

Here’s what I’ve learned…

YouTube TV doesn’t work on a laptop though they don’t mention that until you’ve already signed up for the free trial.

You can get a whole season of Next Iron Chef in your I-tunes library. (Probably more!)

There are a couple of music mixes on YouTube that actually work for me and I can knit while I listen. Next task… figuring out how to get rid of the ads!!!

And, I can watch Netflix on my laptop! Who knew???

(Feel free to laugh!)

All of these miracles, and this blog post, are possible because my dear neighbor shared her internet access with me. Apparently their signal works at our house, too!

Here’s the cool part… I’ve downloaded apps and figured out how to find them again. I’ve found some stuff that works for me and some other stuff that doesn’t. I’ve had some new experiences to learn from. Which is, just as my old friend Steve Glenn promised, empowering. And the Muses all agree!

One of the songs from that music mix on YouTube keeps running through my head. Here it is… just in case you’d like for it to run around in your head, too….

http://https://youtu.be/EkaKwXddT_I

Month: September 2019

Buttons are dots, too!

A Holiday from Stuck!