All posts by X Teri

Unbearable Certainty

10/03/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

I walked into the E-Z Mart store with very few collected small winning lottery tickets from swinging for the fences with the impossible Megamillions and Powerball.

Instead of taking the cash, I told the clerk, “No, I’d like them back in $1 fast-play lottery tickets. I’m feeling very lucky today. I know I’m going to win.”

She laughed and smiled.

“No, I’m serious. It’s time. Remember? A plane will fall on you on a long enough timeline, and you might win the lottery.”

“Well, remember who sold them to you when you win.”

She printed off the tickets. I was shorted 3. While I was standing to the left of the register, I looked at the very first printed ticket.

Though you think I’m joking, the first line of the first ticket was a winner. Had I bought a higher denomination ticket, the amount would have been five times what I won. To think I’d have to work almost ninety hours to net that much money is preposterous.

The clerk is a believer now.

I’ve never had to file a claim form with the lottery. What I won won’t be enough to make much of a dent in my debt. But there’s no better feeling than to waste a tiny bit of money to get such a return. I haven’t gone to a casino or wasted my money gambling on anything substantive since very early 2021. Living single without a roommate and having emergency surgery tends to take the money out of your pocket.

Do you want to hear something even crazier?

I’m going to win something even bigger. I hope the work crew I throw in each week will win, just like everyone else buying tickets foolishly. I can’t imagine a better, more satisfying irony than to work like a mule for 18 years being eclipsed by something as impractical and impossible as a lottery. I’d love to look around at people and just experience the moment of incredulity. If such an impossible outcome ever happens, I’m going to need to block the work doors to prevent them from stampeding out of there.

Today, I won “a” lottery. A small one. It didn’t hurt my afternoon feelings at all.

I included a screenshot of an email I sent myself on Sept. 18th.

Love, X

Personal

Still Flying

09/28/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

Another coincidence for my Saturday back in September 1991. Each year, I hold my breath, expecting another wrinkle to reach me. Most years, it’s silent. But I’ve had a few that bring new information or entirely another perspective. It’s been 32 years. I’ve abandoned the idea that the coincidences will ever stop coming. The first true website came out in August 1991. Prior to that, only nerds used the nascent internet to connect via forums and text-based interaction. This year, someone linked a previously hidden Google directory of discussions related to my memorable Saturday September morning. I read all of it that was available to me this morning at 1 a.m.

Because of the way my labyrinth brain works, it made me want to sit and read “Juan Salvador Gaviota” (Jonathan Livingston Seagull) in Spanish. Every time I get another copy, someone who hasn’t read it pops into my life, and I give it to them, knowing they will experience something wonderful when they read it for the first time. When I was learning Spanish proficiently, it was one of the few books that ignited the possibility of thinking in another language. “Prince of Tides” was another one. (“El Principe de Las Mareas,” which sounds much more exotic to me.) Another one was “Your Erroneous Zones,” by Wayne Dyer, a book that fell into my hands by fortuitous accident after another house fire while I was in junior high school. Though not directly connected, Dyer’s book connected me to the same metaphysical ideas that Richard Bach wrote about in “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is an allegory about flying – and about life’s hidden meaning, one usually reserved for the outliers.

Maybe Joe Frasca is spending his eternity doing acrobatics. I hope so. If so, I’m envious of the fact that he is up there, looking down on the topography we experience mostly in two dimensions.

Love, X
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Fayetteville, Lemon Moment

September’s Fading

09/27/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

I walked at least quarter of a mile down the middle of the creek barefoot. It wasn’t until I hit the second thick spider web at eye level that I broke a branch off above me to wave as I walked. I felt bad for a second as soon as I hit one of the tangled webs in front of me with a stick. Two feet to one side was a lovely, thick, multicolored spider minding its own business. I broke off another leafy branch and rescued the spider to place it on the bank. Had I encountered it with my face, all thoughts of potential rescue would have been abandoned in a wild windmill of frenetic arm waving.

To say that it’s gorgeous down here in the cool water is an understatement.

Behavior, Mental Health, Personal

Fortuitous

09/25/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

“The world won’t treat you better just because you’re a good person.”

It’s a nice reminder. The corollary to this is also true:

“Just because you’re a bad person doesn’t mean you will ever suffer the consequences for it.”

Even if you do everything right, you might still fail.

And if you do a buffet of stupid things, the odds grow increasingly against you.

Then there’s fate, luck, or whatever you might label it. Despite it all, I’m lucky.

On the anniversary day of my emergency surgery, I changed my desktop monitor wallpaper to the first picture I snapped once I realized I was not in purgatory. (Admittedly, my presence in the hospital bed might qualify. Both for me and the people supposed to be caring for me.) I’m not sure how many times over the intervening days I’ve stopped and looked at the picture.

Oddly, it mostly stopped me from saying, “Time is short,” with such frequency. It definitely has not abated the mental recitation. It had to have been in my subconscious the other day when I sprinted past a safety point for my body. It didn’t occur to me that perhaps my explanation for why I had several 200+ floor days on my Fitbit should be attributed to it.

I spent too much time thinking about September 28th, 1991 as well. And about the two terrible head traumas I had as a child. I’m not including the punches from hands that should not have inflicted such anger. Those hands grew silent, as happens to all of us.

What’s my point? I don’t have one. There may well not be one, and I’m okay with that.

Love, X

Animals, Humor, Personal

Cats: 3, X:0

09/25/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

Evidently, today is the day for feline revolution.

I got up super early as I always do and went into Erika’s living room in darkness to fetch my clothes from the back of the couch. As I put on layers, something seemed off. By the time I threw my shirt on, I realized in horror that I felt wet. I stood there about 30 seconds, my mind attempting to correlate the wetness. And then I realized that either Acorn or Meatball (or both?) had taken advantage of one of their night time perches to disgorge on my nearby clothes. I evaluated my options and finally stripped down. Skulking around in the dark, I retrieved my haircut towel from the laundry hamper, loosely held it around my waist, and retrieved the ball of wet clothing. I scurried across to my apartment feeling like the cats were laughing at me.

It gets better! Once inside my apartment, I dropped the towel and my clothes. Because my cat Güino has me trained, I walked over to give him treats before anything else. And realized I had walked through clear cat vomit in the darkness of my kitchen apartment. I put down paper towels temporarily. As I attempted to walk away, the paper towels stuck to the bottom of my left foot like industrial glue. Extricating myself from that, I threw my clothes in my laundry and walked back to the living room. I bet you can guess what happened next? Going in front of the cat tower, I stepped in my cat’s other offering in the middle of the living room floor. And then repeated the same stupid fly trap dance with more paper towels. No need for stretching this morning. The paper towel dance limbered me up nicely.

The cats sometimes occasionally vomit. How in the world they all aligned perfectly for my early Monday morning is anyone’s guess.

Before I left for work, I asked my cat if he had any other surprises for me or if perhaps he got my extra car keys and threw up in the driver seat.

Since the cat revolution has already started, It will be too late for you by the time you read this. I apologize on behalf of all the cats for your sticky feet. We’re lucky they do not have opposable thumbs.

Humor

Fall!

09/24/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

I’m glad fall is here.
I’m not going to miss all these stickers.
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Humor, Mental Health, Psychology

The Unwelcome Power of Negativity

09/24/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

I modified this affirmational meme with just one slash across the letter “L.”

I love attempting to mess with informational memes. After I made this one on a lark, I couldn’t escape the idea that there was another hidden meaning to my humor.

This is exactly how negativity or a negative person can affect the big picture. One small act or word transforms your state of mind, your day, and your ability to focus on what matters.

Negative people are consumed by an external validation that things aren’t okay. Of course they aren’t – in multiple ways. The world is a terror for many people.

But for the rest of us, the obstacles and messes don’t make us lose focus or become embittered.

Studies have repeatedly shown that if you want to improve your life, you should reduce negative thoughts and people more frequently than you tell yourself positive ones. Negativity is stronger than positivity. You can surround yourself with sixteen positive, engaging people; one spoiled one will literally corrupt your bushel.

Love, X

Business, Humor, Opinion, Work

Superhero For Mockery

09/24/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

“Put your hands up. This is a mockery.”

We need a superhero with this famous tagline phrase.

He swoops in at the very moment someone sends us a CYA email, one that probably starts with the passive-aggressive “per my last email.”

Or when management blames us for failing to complete a 9,000-item checklist with staff better suited to boil water.

Let’s not forget in-service or education, the kind that includes things we don’t need to know (or we’d already know it), where the goal is to get through as quickly as possible without succumbing to insanity as our fingers click keys faster than a cocaine-fueled chipmunk.

We definitely need this superhero when we have a malingerer. The ones with apparently infinite time to tell us stories, usually punctuated by, “I am SO busy.” All they’ll feel is the splash of the water balloon, right after they feel something press into the small of their back.

When we hear the phrase, “We’re family.” Lord knows that when we’re with family at Thanksgiving, most of us are calculating how quickly we can stuff Uncle Larry and his opinions into the garage deep freezer. It’s best to avoid that phrase at work.

He’d dramatically run into the meeting, the could-have-been-an-email kind, and force us to put our hands up and admit no one knows why we’re in a budget crisis yet spending thousands on a gathering to consume bad pastry products and pray that we might be drinking poisoned coffee.

My superhero would have the elements of Terry Tate, Office Linebacker, armed with only scathing sarcasm, eye-rolls, and water balloons to lob at the offenders upon discovery.

Lastly, my superhero would tell us jokes until we laughed. Even if takes ninety-seven jokes to do so. And to remind us that work is just work, not a mission to save mankind or fool ourselves into getting our identity mixed up with commerce-driven endeavors.

A lot of work is Greek tragedy, at least to those wrapped up in it. Look at how all those turned out.

Take a step back. Lighten up. Do your job well. But not so much that you can’t appreciate the farce of sacrificing your well-being for a position that will be refilled faster than a manager’s coffee cup.

And if you forget? My superhero will be there when you least expect it.

“Put your hands up! This is a mockery!”

Love, X
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Exercise, Fayetteville, Lemon Moment, Personal

Beautiful Melancholy

09/23/2023 X Teri Leave a comment

I’m not supposed to express confusing emotions on social media. I mixed an errand with an early morning walk. That was my intention. But I ended up sprinting. I waited until each breath was more difficult and then my Fitbit began to alarm, flash, and vibrate. Of course I kept going. Even harder. As often happens when you’re pushing past your natural limit, I hit the void point. For those of you who’ve never experienced it, it’s very similar to being on a jet with a steep incline that suddenly pops through the clouds. When I stopped running and resumed walking, it was impossible to look at the sunrise in the same way. Stunning. There was also a tinge of melancholy. Because I wanted so badly to turn to someone with a pointed finger, “OMG. Look!” It’s possible that they might just acknowledge such an obvious observation with a nod. Mundane sights transformed are one of my secret joys. Perhaps it might not have been so beautiful had my brain not been soaked in adrenaline.

PS I included a couple from last night because the light and color was a cliché of color.

Love, X