Small things of habit and comfort

I am a creature of (crazy?) (insane?) habit.  As I’m trying to pay attention, I am noticing these things.  Things like:

…carrying the 300 page manuscript around even though I know I won’t be able to work on it;

…always parking in the same parking spot.  (Sometimes I do change it, but even when I do change, I seem to make sure it is the furthest one in the row…preferably next to a curb);

 …driving with the window down and the heater on full;

…waiting to the last minute to turn things in or buy presents for people, even when I know the deadline is coming up.

My cat is a creature of habit as well.  She stands outside the bathroom when I take a shower and when I open the door she meows at me.  Then she turns around and stretches, waiting for me to pull her tail.  After I do this, she goes to her scratching post and scratches it before sitting down to watch me running around like a crazy person trying to find things that I can’t find because it’s not like I didn’t know that the morning was coming or anything.

The last two mornings someone has parked in my spot.  We now have to park (because of construction) in what some call the lower forty and some call New Mexico.  It’s not so bad except it’s up hill at the end of the day and it’s about three times as far as I used to have to park.  I have claimed my spot with the oil stain drip mark my car leaves, so I thought people would leave it alone.  But as we all have to fight for a space now or park even further away and take the shuttle, I guess I should have put a sign up…’UNDEAD ONLY’ or something…’BACK OFF, THIS IS MY SPOT AND I DON’T LIKE CHANGE’…’DRIVER SLIGHTLY CRAZY AND CAN’T REMEMBER FROM DAY TO DAY WHERE SHE PARKS HER CAR, SO CONSISTENCY IS BETTER’?   

This morning the same someone was in my spot before me.  They had parked over the line, taking up two spaces so I couldn’t even park next to it, which was very rude.  Got me to thinking again how the smallest, thoughtless act…the insane habit stuff that you don’t think about…can effect others around you.  The acts that I derive unconscious comfort from, could be driving someone else up the wall.  The acts I don’t think about, could be upsetting someone else’s unconscious comfort…maybe I didn’t see the sign that said ‘THIS PARKING SPOT IN THE LOWER FORTY IS FOR THE LITTLE GOLD PICK-UP…DRIVER IN A HURRY, COS THEY DO REALLY IMPORTANT BIG THINGS ALL DAY AND CAN’T BE BOTHERED ABOUT THE SMALL THINGS.’

…Maybe…

All I do are small things, but when you can’t make the big things change, the small things count. 

I was pleased to see there was a notice on the windshield of the little gold pick-up for being inconsiderate and parking in two places…kinda went out of my way to see it and giggle a bit.  Then I carried in my 300 page manuscript the ¼ mile to work, not because I will be able to work on it, but because I found I couldn’t leave it in the car.

Small things can be a world of comfort.

Like the way my cat shouts at me, meowing a little cat cry like she is sooooo hungry when I haven’t feed her yet.  Then, when I do feed her, she pauses and lifts her head to let me pet her before she eats… 

Small things can make a world of diference.

xb.

When the 5 year old makes up the rules there are dinosaurs and teleportation special skills

This is what happens when the 5 year old makes up the rules.

‘You can’t have purple trees!  There are no purple trees,’ the 9 year old argues from the back seat.

‘Yes, you can, this is my game and there are purple trees!’ the 6 year old replies.

I was asked to referee…I don’t think the 9 year old was too happy.  In my world, there can be purple trees.  I like it that way.

I may have said before, but I’m not sure that I have so I will say again, we like to play board games.  We don’t play Monopoly or Risk and I only got Uno for the 5 year old when he turned 6 because he said it was ‘what I always wanted!’  No, most of those games are too urbane for our little family.  We play games involving stacks and stacks of cards and tokens in buckets and often little figures we move around the table that is just not quite big enough.

Until fairly recently, I have allowed everyone else (even the 6 year old) to tell me the rules, because I didn’t quite get the mechanism behind them.  I’m used to card games and I play a killer gin, but save modifiers and converting the odds in the remaining dice to the probability of completing a task are kind of new to me.  I have a hard enough time trying to figure out the rules behind polite company in every day life, let alone those set in another universe.

A while back, when the 6 year old was still 5, he set up a game for us to play on the living room floor.  He made up the rules, as he likes to do and I played along.  After a while I had to write down what he said because he is in the same breath the most simple and complex human being and it boggles my mind.  I’m wondering if somewhere in here I will start to understand the spirit of playing, despite not understanding all the rules?

Quotes from the game:

‘Kaboosha…it is disabled!’

– As my tank blows up…a lot of my tanks blew up.

‘You might get snake eyes…you-might-get-snake-eyes.’

– I think this was supposed to be a good thing.

‘Well, in my game, tanks fire missiles.’

– After being told by his big brother that tanks do not fire air to air missiles.

‘If you want to get snake eyes you have to get double six. … oooh, so close.  Crippled…actually, dismobilized.  You were so close!’

– I think this (again) was supposed to be a good thing.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him that double six is not ‘snake eyes’.  I am not sure that I want that phone call from the teacher.

‘It flies into little tiny peaches.’

– Tee Hee!

‘There’s a lot of things I want to be when I grow up…an artist…actually, there’s only two.  An artist and a board game maker.’

– He’s got high ambition.

‘Pretty intense, isn’t it?’

– His actual words. 

‘Mom, pause game.  You can definitely do what you need to do now.’

– I’m not sure that I asked him to stop the game because I had to do something.  I am always doing that though…maybe he just knew.

‘What?  She puts her blowey-up things next to her soldiers!’

– The rules being a mystery to me, I guess this was a faux pas?

‘You don’t use cats!…and plus there is no cats in warriors.’

– I tried to use the cat as a weapon of mass destruction.  Apparently this was against regulations.

‘Add him to your experience pile.’

– A pile of toy soldiers that could be resurrected if necessary…they were placed right next to the pile of dinosaurs that would be used in the ‘next phase’.

And perhaps my favorite:

Me – ‘I don’t understand.’

– I really didn’t.  My head hurt and I wanted to praise his creativeness and inguinity, but there was dinner to make.

The small one’s answer and the point of this post? –  

‘I know!  Good game, isn’t it?!’

xb.