iQuit

The world has officially passed me by.

It seems I’ve been spending more and more time just attempting to keep up with it. And really, I’m not even keeping up, I’m just attempting to fall behind-er as slowly as possible. I’ve gotten tired of the losing battle. I’ve given up.

I can’t keep up with technology. I don’t want five remotes to figure out, 500 channels to cruise or the ability to watch three shows at the same time while recording two more. I just want to see a damned episode of HOUSE, find out what the weather is going to do tomorrow, and shut the thing the hell off. It would be nice to be able to pop in a DVD, but the menu of 17 parameters I must choose from in order to play it sucks the fun out of it. Just PLAY it, for god’s sake.

I don’t want a car commanded by computers and co-dependent on electronic components. I’d like to be able to manually open my windows in case said computers go belly up and refuse to let me out of my electronically-sealed vehicle. I’d like to not have to study hieroglyphics to understand the cryptic symbols that randomly light up on the dashboard next to the dials and meters that measure stuff I don’t understand. I need to know how fast I’m going and how much gas I’ve got. A radio would be nice. And build the damned thing so that it doesn’t take a genius with a PhD to change the oil.

I don’t want a smart phone. I don’t own one and hope I never will. Using a freakin’ phone shouldn’t be so much work – and it sure shouldn’t cost so much. I don’t want to surf the net, check emails, look up the answers to trivia questions while at dinner with friends or take photos and videos. I don’t have time to learn all that garbage and I don’t want to. It’s a PHONE, for crap’s sake. I just want it to make calls, get calls, and indulge in the occasional text message. I want to push a button and know that I’m going to be connected with the person I’m calling – not accidentally be taking a video of the inside of my ear.

I don’t have time for all the social media stuff. I have no desire to post my every move to Facebook or Twitter or TwitSpace. And I don’t want to have to wade through posts about your kid’s runny nose, or hear your religious or political rants just to be able locate some actual conversation I was having. It’s too damned tedious and steals minutes of my life I can’t get back.

I can’t keep up with computer and software upgrades. It would be a full time job just to keep abreast of all the advancements and changes in the software I use every day. My computer is now too outdated (at just a few years old) to upgrade the operating system and graphic design software further. I’d have to buy a new computer and all new software and spend about $5000. WTF!? I have a perfectly good computer and perfectly fine software. Why must you keep changing and upgrading and making it more complicated and expensive? Is it REALLY necessary to change the entire interface and all the toolbars EVERY SINGLE UPGRADE? There’s no way I can keep up financially or intellectually. I got a life going on here, I can’t devote the hours it would take just to wrap my brain around the latest thing, especially when I know what I learn is going to be outdated in a few months when the NEXT thing comes out.

I believe we have officially reached the point of diminishing returns with technology. Technology is supposed to make life easier and save us time. It’s gotten to the point where it instead sucks away our time and makes us RUN to keep up. We are slaves to technology, instead of the other way around.

So put down the gadgets once in awhile. There’s a whole real world out there. You oughta take a look at it sometime.

Lookin' out my back door

One of my very favorite things to do is sit outside on my deck – that is, in fact, where I am as I am writing this. Though I’m in the middle of a neighborhood, the backyard is so densely foliated that I’m essentially invisible. Acacia, Eucalyptus, Willow, Pine and other trees keep me shielded from view. One of these trees, a large Acacia, leans over the deck at a precarious angle. It sheds annoying seed pods most of the summer, but also provides lovely afternoon shade. Alas, it’s scheduled to be cut down, as the angle of the lean is reaching the edge of what the laws of physics will support. Afternoon shade will become the responsibility of the smaller trees behind it. The shade won’t be as rich, and will come later in the day, but at least it won’t be raining seed pods.

The deck itself extends the complete length of my garage studio. It’s populated by pots full of jewel toned petunias that grow and bloom with abandon but that don’t play well with others – they’ve all but choked the poor pansies, marigolds and lavender out of the pots. But they take the heat, the rain, the fog, the cold – they just TAKE it, and claim their space and hold their ground and bloom brilliantly where they are planted. If only we all had that sort of resilience.

The morning glories I grew from seedlings are starting to flower. Anybody who knows my sleeping habits knows how useless it is for me to have a plant that blooms in the morning and whose flowers have faded by afternoon. In retrospect, I’d be better suited to moonflowers, as I miss most of the glory. But when I get up to pee at 6am, I peek out the window and am greeting by brilliant red and blue blooms among emerald green leafy vines.

The rightmost railing of my deck is home to a big, prolifically flowering star jasmine vine. Densely populated with tiny white star-shaped blooms, it is a magnet for hummingbirds and honeybees. At night, the sweet heavy scent of the blossoms wafts through the open window and fills my sleeping area with its perfume.

The yard, a rambling, eclectic collection of grasses, wildflowers and fruit trees, grows as nature intends it. The underground stream keeps the water table high, and the entire yard is self-maintaining. The plum tree becomes laden with plump purple fruit at the end of July. Two kinds of apple trees and a pear tree bear fruit most of the summer. The walnut tree has seen better days, but it graces me by dropping a few nuts each fall. The persimmons turn flaming orange in the late fall, and remain on the tree long after the leaves have fallen. Nature’s Christmas ornaments.

Surrounding one side of the property is a blackberry thicket about 30 feet deep. Blackberry thickets are nature’s ultimate home security system. Nothing larger than a small fox can creep through that thorny mass without having its flesh stripped off the bone. You'd have to wear chainmail to get past unscathed - it’s more effective protection than a moat filled with piranha. The downside of the blackberry’s protective nature is that it thinks it owns the place. Left unattended, the bushes would take over the yard and consume the house inside of a year. In consolation, the bushes offer up succulent, sweet, delicious berries in abundance. As with all things, it’s give and take.

People, birds, and miscellaneous four-legged critters enjoy the fruit. The deer love to munch the fallen plums and apples. Birds adore the blackberries (although I don’t enjoy washing the resulting purple bird poop off the deck.). The raccoons will strip the persimmon tree bare if I don’t get to it first. I don’t know what the little grey fox eats. But it loves to come out in the late mornings and sun itself at the edge of the blackberry thicket.

At night, a symphony of crickets and tree frogs provide background music. During the daytime, the soundtrack is a combination of natural and manmade. Birds. Rustling trees, and the neighbor’s collection of wind chimes – the tiny, tinkling ones when the breeze is light and heavy, deep-toned ones when it’s gusty. If the wind is blowing the right way, the voices of children on the nearby school playground can be heard. Sometimes the evening breeze will bring me a muffled high school football game, complete with marching band. The neighbors to my west play music outside some afternoons. They listen to classic rock, which is my favorite. Not all the sounds are soothing; today’s playlist includes the chainsaw and woodchipper symphony in F major .

One of my neighbors has chickens. I can’t see them, but I can hear them. It makes me smile; I have an affinity for chickens. I do not have an affinity for roosters, so I’m happy their menagerie doesn’t include them.

I have a little side yard too that’s kind of a mini-version of the back yard. It’s got its own star jasmine bush and blackberry sentries. Lovely, climbing red rose vines bloom all summer long. My additions include more petunias and morning glories, and snap dragons. There are all manner of leafy vining plants covering the fence – if the fence is even under there any more.

There are big garden spiders that build enormous, intricate round webs suspended by threads strung from one side of the yard to the other (a 20 foot span) and from the ground to a tree limb (8-10 feet). I have no idea how they get these supporting girders strung. But they do it with no building permits, no committee meetings, no unions, no blueprints, and no assistance, using only materials that they shoot out of their butts. If the web gets knocked down, it’s completely remade in 24 hours. The spiders only come out at night. Sometimes I come out after dark with a flashlight and watch them work. If humans could be that single-minded and focused and resourceful, imagine what they could accomplish. I hate spiders, and these spiders are among the creepiest, ugliest varieties I’ve seen. But I have so much respect and admiration for their ingenuity and work ethic that I leave them alone.

I love my place. When I’m away from it, I can’t wait to come back. When I take a ‘vacation’, this is where I want to be. But since I live here, that kinda makes every day its own vacation. There is beautiful, peaceful energy here that is sacred to me and essential to my well-being. I’m protective of this beautiful space and selective about whom I invite in to it. Though I’m only a renter, we’re all nothing more than renters on the planet in the grand scheme of things. I don’t own the property, nor does it own me. We’re all here solely because we want to be. And that’s really the only reason to ever be anywhere.

UnRomanced

Lately, I’ve lamented the demise of romance in general and romance stories in particular. So-called “romance” novels are nowadays filled with explicit sex, graphic violence and cocky, arrogant men with bad, bad manners. Sex has replaced love and romance (um…they’re not the same thing. Not even close.). Gone is the deliciousness of sexual tension. Instead, stories are filled with explicit sexual encounters that are contrived, add nothing to the story, and often commit the cardinal sin of jarring the reader out of the story. Additionally, “romance” novels now often include graphically violent plots told in far too much grisly detail.

Is this really what people want to read?? The prevalence of such novels on bookshelves suggests that it is. Must we continually up the ‘shock value’ to reach an audience? Yes, apparently.

It’s a sad, sad commentary on society. What in the world has happened to good old fashioned romantic love stories, told with metaphor and innuendo that leave the specifics to the reader’s own glorious imagination? That is sexy. Spelling it out in porno-graphic detail is a complete, eye-rolling, close-the-book-and-don’t-bother-reading-further, turnoff.

The most disturbing trend in the “romance” genre is the “paranormal” romance story – in which the protagonist or his/her love interest is some sort of sub- or non-human creature-zoid. People are having rampant sex with vampires, demons, werewolves, and a host of other un-dead or non-living entities as though it’s business-as-usual at the neighborhood hookup bar. Okay, I readily admit that pickins’ in the human realm can be pretty slim sometimes. It’s bad enough having to weed through the smarmy drunks with beer bellies and receding hairlines and their cliché come-ons…now I also have to worry about whether they are actually human? That adds a whole new layer of complexity to dating.

I have a rather extensive ‘laundry list’ of qualities I seek in a man. I am willing to negotiate on some of them. But if it’s too much to ask that the guy in question at least be human, I’m screwed.

Until the world comes to its senses, I suppose I’m going to have to amend my list of dating criteria to account for the possibility that a suitor may not be entirely…well, human.

1. I am a lady and expect to be treated as such. No uninvited groping, kissing, biting, or showing of fangs. Now, maybe you and your Therapist attribute these tendencies to the evil influence of your psycho-undead-creator-mentor, but from where I stand, behavior like that means your mama just didn’t raise you right. I’ll have none of it.
2. Please don’t be part of a Special Ops team who has pissed off some underground demon faction. It’s a real downer when our waiter at the restaurant shape-shifts into a banshee and comes at us with the salad tongs.
3. Eat normal food. If you order a glass of O-negative or a side of brains (thereby forcing me to add this restaurant to my “list of places I can’t go back to”), you are NOT getting a second date.
4. Practice full disclosure. I don’t wanna find out you’ve got a forked tongue, fangs, scales, or any extra body parts after I’ve invited you home for a nightcap.
5. If you can’t go out in the daylight without spontaneously combusting, walk beneath the full moon without morphing in to something wolfen, or walk past a church without convulsing, our dating options are severely limited. You’d better at least be able to cook because we’ll be staying home a lot.
6. Maybe money isn’t necessary on YOUR alternate paranormal plane, but it comes in pretty handy down here, bub. You’d better have your own ATM card; I’m NOT paying for everything.
7. You WILL learn to drive, hail a cab, and navigate public transit. I am not FLYING anywhere with you.
8. The fact that your parents are dead doesn’t bother me. The fact that you still want me to meet them does. I politely decline.
9. Please don’t be offended if I don’t pet your doggie. It’s not that I don’t like dogs. I’ve just never seen one that has three heads and breathes fire. As for YOU; please stop looking at my hamster like it’s some tasty exotic appetizer.
10. I don’t care how many cool supernatural powers you have. If you can’t fix a leaky faucet or unclog a toilet, you’re of no use to me.

Too restrictive? I suppose I could loosen a few items if you’re particularly charming and good-looking. Having a sense of humor (especially after having the life sucked out of you and being condemned to an existence of half-living) will also get you huge bonus points.

Mostly, I’m just looking for the same thing everybody else is looking for; the chance to live happily every after with somebody who won’t run at the first sign of conflict – whether it’s arguing about the position of the toilet seat, who folds the laundry, or who walks the three-headed hellhound.

Is that too much to ask?