Peppered Thought – The Spice of Life

Don’t you believe what people tell you; goats are FUN!

Anyway, another glorious weekend paying tribute to fathers.

Thanks dad, for teaching me how to put up a tent in the dark without throwing it in the campfire.

Thanks for always advising me to primer before I paint, but holding in the “I told you so” when I don’t and have to do it again.

Thank you for introducing me to the awesomeness of yellow (see tee above.)

Thanks for the ears that stick out and get cold before any other part of my body in winter.

And last but not least, thanks for always being there. Love you!

1. Every time you open the closet you scan your mind to judge if today is the day you will wear your Oscar the Grouch dress in public. Nope, not quite eccentric enough yet. Maybe when my hair goes white and I can dye it cotton candy pink.

2. Every single day you can find an excuse for some sort of party. “It’s Thursday? Sweet – I dub thee ‘Madeleine Pool Party Day.’ “

3.  Doing laundry is an excuse to think up better fort-building techniques.

4. You feel stupid for writing this blog and being unrelentingly optimistic in general, then you get a tweet from a random stranger, and are revived with a fresh sense of optimism.

5. You love sending random care packages to people; but get frustrated they don’t tell you they have received them.

6. You would rather mix cookies with your hand and pretend you’re Lionel Poilâne than use a fancy $300 mixer. Seriously, that video makes me mega-happy.

7. You have surprised yourself by how much you like soccer and MMA yet aren’t a huge fan of American football and baseball. Just a strange little sports quirk.

photo credit Why did I put a picture of Brian Williams? Because it’s my blog.

It was hard.
There, done.

Just teasing!

It was hard, since music is a huge part of my life.
It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be, but it wasn’t without its slip-ups. I noticed it is very hard for me not to “extreme multitask” in the morning when I break my technology fast. I immediately want to open 5 tabs on my browser, watch the news on tv, sip my coffee and be in the garden outside. This week I have learned that news in the morning is pretty pointless. I mean, Brian Williams isn’t even on at that hour, so who cares? p.s. I LOVE brian Williams. That was a sort of relief on my psyche – I don’t need morning news!

Getting into the no music in the car portion, that was a toss-up. In the mornings on the way to work, it is extremely pleasant and helpful to have silence. I can think about the day ahead, focus my thoughts on what I want to achieve that day and I can listen to my car. That was something I hadn’t done in a while. I learned that not only do I need an oil change, but I definitely need to have a couple of other things looked at. Usually my cure for that is to crank up the music louder.

The drawback in the silence in the car though came after work. All I wanted to do when I hit the driver’s seat at 5:05 was crank out some tunes. I learned that’s when I need it most. To shake all my stress about work out so it stays at work.

The gym is another place that I cannot stay silent. What made this week especially hard was the fact that I just got a new mp3 player and only got to use it once before the Silence took effect. Which I think the Harpies at the gym may have gotten wind of, because they seemed to flock near me more so this week. *grumble grumble* I am very excited to drown out their inane chatter today! But I have learned that music makes more of a difference than I thought when I work out. I learned I can go for longer, faster periods on the elliptical if I am listening to the Hives and extreme upbeat tunes like that. So I am doubly excited to go to the gym now to crank out some Tyrannosaurus Hives, and the like.

But I have learned quite a bit about focus; if I’m not watching the TV, turn it off. I don’t always need to be listening to music while I surf, and Harpies will flock near the person without headphones at the gym.

p.s. a couple of you asked what I would listen to first when the week was up, and let me tell you; the first thing I wanted to hear was the bluesy croon of Jack White.

How awesome  is he?! Photo Credit

The reason my posts have been lacking. Also freaking out a bit at the stressful workload I have accumulated. Posts will be aplenty hopefully by the end of next week!

In the meantime, please enjoy this perfect example of how Americans in the past (more and more are slowly coming around) have viewed soccer:

Here is a great little “Apathetic’s Guide” to the World Cup.

I was professing my love for Esquire Magazine. Which, I may add, the love has grown and only lessened slightly when I found out they put Tom Cruise on the cover of this year’s ”How to be a Man” issue.

photo by Tommaso

I decided to learn a little more about silence this coming week. As I mentioned Friday, I will be taking a break from most music (except for Black Sabbath) and places where I would normally have music (car, gym, work)

The seed was planted in my brain by, of all random places, this post on Ninja Motorhome. The sentence about how the silence has overwhelmed him really struck me. I realized it had started to overwhelm me too, rather than fill me with peace and calm. After reading this post on Zen Habits, it sealed it. Whatever Tesla is a proponent of, count me in (well, maybe not the death ray.)

So this week I will be trying to keep silent and not turn the tv on for background noise, not turn music on while showering, no headphones at the gym.

We shall see how it goes.