Susanne's Two Cents

Gaming

msmouce — Sun, 08 May 2011 00:33:19 +0000

I know this is not the place for quick, short posts, but my God, how much time does it waste to play these online games? I’m not talking about playing educational games, which research is showing are effective for learning. I’m talking about recreational gaming. How much time out of our precious lives is being wasted on this stuff? You can spend HOURS playing games, building your realm/kingdom/whatever, and to what effect? What do you have to show for it, after all, when all is said and done? (offline) Nothing. What a colossal waste of time most of these are.

Mature Women’s Hair

msmouce — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 00:00:53 +0000

This may be really dumb, but it is a real burr in a particularly sensitive area to me. We “mature” women often choose to keep our hair cut short. We even (OMG!) sometimes choose not to color it. What do we hear from others? NOOOOO! DON’T DO THAT!!!!!! Why? Look around you, people! How many MEN are running around with undyed, short-cut (easy to care for, easy to manage) hair? They get older; they just go on getting hair cuts and going on with life. Why the HELL do we have to go on struggling to try to look younger? Most men do NOT do that (although some do). Why the HELL should we? If my hair is short and gray, oh my gosh, maybe my FACE will show?! GOD FORBID! So what? To HECK with all you age/gender discriminators! If I want to chop off my hair and not color it and let all the gray grow in, well, what the HELL? It’s real. It’s me. Why do I have to try and cover up who I really am with fake colors and cover my face with hanging hair? My face is mine. I’ve had it all my life, and if it’s not good enough for someone, they can look the other way! I’ve EARNED my gray hairs AND my wrinkles, dammit.

Mary Oliver: Don’t Be So Mean to Her!

msmouce — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:49:43 +0000

I know some people think Mary Oliver, as a poet, is overrated, but some of her poems still make me weep, in a good way. So maybe I’m just too easily impressed. Whatever!
I’m still loving this one right now:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Unconditional Love and Other Myths

msmouce — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:57:01 +0000

What does it mean to love unconditionally? What would that literally look like? We want to apply our own modifications to that term, and it will look a little different to each of us as we put our own spin on it. For the majority, I think, it means that we feel we should be loved no matter what we do. I agree, especially if we belong to a loving creator who owns us, no matter what. Does that mean, though, that the creator, or anyone else, should love everything we do as well? Even if we love our children unconditionally, which most of us think we do, does it mean that we are happy and supportive of everything they do? I hope not. I do not support my children or anyone else who thinks they need, for instance, to hurt others. I don’t support acts of selfishness, violence, dishonesty, or lack of honor in any form. Does that mean I don’t love those who do them? Of course not; I do not cease to love when I dislike or even hate the behavior. Supporting those I love does not mean I support everything they do; this is true even if they are doing things they believe will make them “happy,” if that means they are acting dishonorably or immorally.

Nor can I excuse myself when I behave badly. I do not expect support for my bad behaviors.

I would hope someone would love me enough to tell me that I have spinach between my teeth, that my breath stinks, that I am acting like an ass.

Love sometimes means having to say, “Hey! I love you, but you’re acting like an idiot!” That’s unconditional love. I go on loving you no matter what, even when I hate what you do, and even when I have to say so. I hope those who love me would do the same.

Just my two cents…

Love Romance Novels in a Serious/Funny Vein?

msmouce — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 01:12:46 +0000

My Dears;
If you love a good read that is not just your typical “bodice ripper” romance, please give Deanna Raybourn a chance. Her novels are mysteries, romances, lovely grammatically correct and Victorianly whimsical all at once. Her blog appears at http://www.deannaraybourn.com/blog/. However, start with her first novel; it will definitely keep you coming back for more, if you are addicted to that kind of thing, which I am. I do NOT enjoy the simple hot-sex, rip-my-clothes-off romp that are what are classified as “romances” these days. Raybourn’s novels are wonderful, simply put.

Trust: It’s Not For Everyone

msmouce — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 23:37:29 +0000

I am finding that trust is something that I have given away too cheaply. Someone seems to “get” you; he/she seems to know that you are so deep, so in earnest, and he/she agrees! Suddenly, you are a team….Be careful. Not everyone who seems to know you, who you are, what you stand for, what makes you “tick,” is really for you, on your side. Understanding that makes anyone who has been wooing you by seemingly understanding you stand in a new light. Who are they? What is their purpose? I’m not saying that we should never trust anyone. I am saying that we need to guard our souls. Not everyone has a pure motive for admiring you, for connecting to you. I am just saying, “Please be vigilant.” I have not always been, and people who do not have integrity can sneak in, into the areas where we are vulnerable. Be careful!!!

The Clarity of Pain

msmouce — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:24:36 +0000

When I am well, I forget what pain is like. I think we all do. As with the well-used example of the woman in childbirth goes, if you remembered pain like that, you’d never have another child. The memory of some kinds of pain fades; however, the memory of other kinds does not.

At any rate, over the last weekend I had occasion to remember this idea. I sometimes have very intense flare-ups of the disease that has become part of my life. It is strange, when you are in the middle of intense and ongoing pain, to remember that, should it actually fade, even temporarily, we tend to forget its existence.

And yet, while it is in the spotlight in your life, it’s hard to ignore. It becomes your world because there is no escape. It is all about the pain.

I think the worst part of that is how it places me so much in the center. It’s hard to forget myself, and I do so wish to.

Mind Reading

msmouce — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 23:21:38 +0000

Did you ever have someone in your life for whom you had great affection, perhaps even love, and who, on occasion, reacted to you in a totally mystifying way…at first? I mean that you were completely mystified by the fact that the person seemed to be angry or hurt or affronted in some way. And perhaps, not always, but perhaps now and then, just seemed to come off at you in a way that hit you like a lightning bolt, out of the blue, and left you wondering, “What the HECK was that about???” And then, perhaps, if you pursue and pester and persist in asking this person what is wrong, they finally, with great reluctance, relate to you some (to you) seemingly irrelevant remark or action of yours that greatly wounded them. And you, in your fuzzy, foggy little world, are suddenly blasted out of your comfortable little place by the fact that you have, somehow, however inadvertently, inflicted a mortal emotional wound on someone that you value above pretty much everyone else in the known universe. How does that feel?

Mind-boggling? Disorienting? Like you’ve been blind-sided when you thought everything was fine? Asking yourself: How long has THIS been stewing without a word while I was thinking everything was fine???

I hate that.

Susanne’s Two Cents —My ART and WordPress Domain

msmouce — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:30:46 +0000

I have a domain name again through WordPress as of today. I must say, I love the WordPress tools. When I was creating my own pages, they were….well…okay, but not wonderful. WordPress makes it so easy to have a great-looking blog page!

Here is my feeble attempt to connect my blog page with my art shop. Still under construction here…http://www.etsy.com/shop/msmouce

I have to say that a very nice person looked at my art shop recently and was very complimentary. It made me feel good to know that someone had looked at my work and liked it. And then, a week or so later, I mentioned to the same person that I am a teacher. The next comment has stayed with me ever since, and it replays in my mind from time to time: “Oh! So art is just your hobby. I thought you were an artist” (or words to that effect). I think that the comment stung a bit because I am an artist. I am a teacher. I am also a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a friend, a colleague, a writer, a gardener, any number of other things. The comment made me think about how many roles I play in my life, and how many roles we all play, and how very convenient and very simplistic it would be if we could simply label and slot people.

Was I insulted? Perhaps. However, I understand the tendency. We all do it. It makes our lives simpler to be able to classify others. If we can do that, we can know (at least we think we can know) how to deal with them without having the bother and work of actually taking time to know who they really are.

We are all multidimensional beings. I am an artist, and I am many other things as well, just as we all are. We don’t pour our passions into every single thing we do, but those parts of us that receive the greater portion of our love or hate or intensity say the most about us. It may be a good thing to explore our various dimensions and discover who we are for ourselves and decide how much we wish to share.

I am an artist.

Healing Art

msmouce — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 23:18:27 +0000

Let’s see if I can sustain a longer-term attempt at blogging. It will surprise me, absolutely, if I continue….

Art and Me: I’ve been producing, apparently, a large number of art objects. However, they have all been created within the context of the counseling I have been involved in. I don’t know if they will ever see the light of day, and I am trying very hard not to focus in on that. But I have a sense that this plethora of paintings and drawings all hang together somehow. I will update soon, not that anyone knows or cares about what I am going through. I think this is almost like my journal, unread by anyone but me, and that’s okay. The important thing, to me, as that I am willing to share… That’s new…