Need a Thursday Boost?

Today has been slow and blue and when that's the case, I often need a quick dose of cheer. Usually, this comes in the form of a fur ball frantically wagging his tail, squealing, and running laps around the house when I open the front door. Today I can't wait until 6pm and have compiled a little Thursday cuteness.

A Poem for A Sort-Of Anniversary

Marriage
Lawrence Raab

Years later they find themselves talking
about chances, moments when their lives
might have swerved off
for the smallest reason.
                               What if
I hadn't phoned, he says, that morning?
What if you'd been out,
as you were when I tried three times
the night before?
                       Then she tells him a secret.
She'd been there all evening, and she knew
he was the one calling, which was why
she hadn't answered.
                            Because she felt--
because she was certain--her life would change
if she picked up the phone, said hello,
said, I was just thinking
of you.
            I was afraid,
she tells him. And in the morning
I also knew it was you, but I just
answered the phone
                          the way anyone
answers a phone when it starts to ring,
not thinking you have a choice.

The Facebook Detox Challenge

I have to try to take a pause from Facebook. This will be difficult because I utilize it as a quick, lickety-split procrastination tool while at work (shh, don't tell). It's the perfect break between tasks or 30-45 second pause when I need to refocus. But I'm quickly learning that it's not perfect and I need to experiment with a break-up. Why?

Well, I continuously use others as a gauge for myself. To some extent, I realize that it's impossible not to do this and that we are programmed to do this our whole lives. From the minute we are born at x weight and start talking at x months even though little Suzy started talking at x-3 months, it's always about comparison. While I absolutely treasure my many years spent in a dance studio, I realize that these years of looking in the mirror and seeing legs higher than mine, toes pointed better than mine, and pirouettes turning faster than mine meant that I was never looking at me for me.

For me, Facebook is today's mirror. I wish that I could embrace the status updates and photos of remote vacations and fresh babies and home purchases as just updates, but instead my brain says "why am I not traveling to Kazakhstan, birthing 22 children and buying a brick split-level on a cul-de-sac?" Now this is where it's complicated because I don't actually want those things. But Facebook, and I suppose society, are trying to tell me I do. Until I'm stronger and can embrace that maybe I don't, I'm going to take a break.

Hockey Hysteria

I have it. I guess the abbreviated season has created a shorter, more intense period of obsession for me. This hysteria manifests itself in a few ways:

• My fantasy hockey league. I participated in my first league in 2003, being provided with a team to fill out the league's roster, then shocking the others with a third place finish. This actually created my hockey love and every season since, I've participated in fantasy hockey (wow, tenth anniversary I suppose). I am terrible at it. My team's name is the Merwinners. I mean, c'mon. 
• Purchasing the NHL Gamecenter Live package, enabling me to watch EVERY Rangers game through the xbox game system, complete with the Rangers' commentators, intermission reports, and player interviews. Dear me oh my. This is an amazing resource to feed the disease.
• Anger, physical violence, and depression when the losses happen. And let me tell you, they've been coming in droves this year. I haven't figured out a way to maturely deal with the inevitable downside of being an obsessive fan yet.
• Clothing and accessories. I only own two Rangers shirts, but I also have a ridiculously oversized "true blue" jersey and a baseball cap. And I am "this close" to buying these items: 

(I'm serious about wanting everything except the wedges. Rangers shoes!? With heels?! And Swarovski crystals?! WHAT?!)

I don't really know how this happened to me or why I love it so much but I don't really care. It's fun, it's great, and usually, the only thing that suffers are the couch cushions that I punch when the boneheads make a boneheaded play. LGR!!!!!