These Certain Musings

From the 30-Day Blog Challenge…

Five weaknesses, eh? Frankly, I don’t like this one very much. What if my archenemies are reading, and are suddenly inspired to orchestrate my destruction?

Gah. Very well. Weaknesses.

First weakness that comes to mind: food. Remember Five Fonts of Happiness and my chatter about food? Yeah. I have to work hard to keep myself from eating to excess. It isn’t a matter of using food as a response to stress or emotion. I love food. I love consuming food. When I was in my most intense period of karate training, one of my favorite benefits was the ability to eat four or five full meals a day without an ounce of weight gain. I don’t mean little snack-y meals. I mean having chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, salad and pie at four in the afternoon, then chowing down on pasta, meatballs, salad, breadsticks and ice cream at nine at night.

Then there’s my temper. Every year, that becomes less and less of a weakness, but it’s still there. Mostly it’s my outward and visible reactions that have improved. On the inside, I still feel that same surge, that same feeling of expansion, as if the anger is a physical thing pressing out against my ribs and skull. If my anger is over something that happens to and/or threatens a family member or close friend, I have to do a bunch of self-talk to remain focused.

Tied into that is my pride, and that weakness becomes readily apparent whenever I face a physical challenge in front of witnesses. It’s been four or five years since I’ve sat a horse for more than an hour, but it you invited me to ride all day, I’d jump at the chance then grit my teeth into a smile when I dismounted at the end of the day. I’ll spar until I’m ready to pass out if my opponent is still going. I’ll keep going long past the point when I should cry uncle, then spend however-many-days pretending my body doesn’t feel as if it’s been tumbled down a cliff and rubbed raw with rock salt.

I also suffer from clutter-blindness. My home is clean—I have this weird thing about clean floors and counters–but ohmigosh the clutter would drive my neat-tidy friends into insanity. From June to August, I can walk past a stack of sweaters destined to be stored for the summer with nary a blink. The Christmas wreath from my front door is, I’ve just noticed, is still sitting on a little used chair in my dining room. Alas, my son seems to have acquired clutter-blindness as well, so keeping such things under control in this house is an ongoing battle.

Lastly, I can be extremely lazy. Really. Were it not necessary I run like crazy to make ends meet, I’d train a little karate, write my stories, do a little gardening, then hire somebody to take care of everything else. Now and then, I seem to believe I’ve already hired that person. Alas, reality soon blunders in when I open the kitchen cupboard and realize every bowl is still sitting in the dishwasher.