Posted in Books, Canada, Holidays, Uncategorized, Zombies

Who Loves Ya Baby?

1tidy4How many times
can you fall off
the planet before
you start to think,
hmmm, maybe I
need better
gravity boots.

My strange week began with me frenetically organizing and cleaning my house.

At first, I thought it was simply having finally read Marie Kondo’s book, the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and tidying. Though commonsense, it’s all been said and done, in various ways. It’s easy to declutter, you have less stuff that’s more organized. I should write a book. My house looks like a poor woman’s Martha Stewart, with fewer prison ponchos (it’s a good thing).

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Then came the gut punch, the calendar explained my sudden need to keep busy – a year ago my 30 year friendship stopped, just as my best friend’s heart had stopped https://yadadarcyyada.com/2015/02/06/goodbye-dearest-friend/ I wanted to do anything but think about my losses, all of them, before and after this one. I wanted to drown my sorrows in the bottom of a neatly folded and lined-up sock drawer. To gamble I could keep the traveling elastic bands and pens all in one place, just one more time.

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Even after everything was organized, sorted, recycled, and donated, my feelings of pain, loss, and fear still cluttered my house, heart, and mind. So I purged some of those feelings blocking me from respecting joy, hope, and love. I folded my memories into my life; if I keep hanging them, they’ll take up too much space in my emotional closet.

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We’re told we need to be smart, work smart, have smart things, but where is smart really getting us?

  • For example, if credit cards are so smart, why can’t they pay off their outstanding balances, huh?

  • If TVs are so smart, why do we have to spend so much time looking for something good to watch?

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  • Maybe we need smart pets that feed, groom, and even walk themselves.

  • I have a feeling if I got a smart fridge, I’d hear things like: “Are you here again, girl, get yourself a life!” or “What are you doing, Donna, this is highly irregular!”

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  • Why stop there? Smart coffee machines, ha, amateurs, how about smart coffee that changes itself from espresso to latte to whatever passes as coffee, depending on your mood.

  • Someday your smart car will hold you in contempt without a valid high IQ score.

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  • Smart wine that critiques itself so you can sound like a wine connoisseur, although then everyone will sound the same, so it will be just the wine talking.

  • Smart couches that tell us the best spot to park our caboose.

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War, depression, corruption, terrorism, anxiety, climate change, poverty, prejudice, ignorance, disease, political games, scams, abuse, addiction, melodrama, not to mention simultaneous epidemics of starvation and obesity – we don’t need a zombie apocalypse, we’re doing just fine on our own.

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We self-scan, aka us working for a store for free, while putting others out of work (and already over-paying), all the while supporting companies that destroy the environment, while using what amounts to slave labour. Really?

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And our complaints are many: my laptop is too heavy, there’s too much food in my house, my smartphone isn’t the latest model, my smartphone doesn’t have a long enough battery life, there’s too many movies/TV shows to stream/watch. I clearly have the wrong definition of ‘smart’.

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So I will try to be smarter.

I will thank my body for it’s hard work, especially my heart which has taken a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’.

I will commune with my mind, who has respectfully stayed with me through thick and thin.

Everything in its place and a place for everything…as long as it sparks joy.

Happy Valentine’s Day…Who loves ya, baby?

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