Inconceivable!

Easter postcard circa early 20th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Daily Prompt:

“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” – the White Queen, Alice in Wonderland.

What are the six impossible things you believe in? (If you can only manage one or two, that’s also okay.)

No problem, I can probably manage a dozen.  And all before breakfast as well.  The White Queen’s got nothing on me. But as impossible as this might sound, I am going to limit myself to six, because breakfast cannot be put off forever.

My guidelines will be the six definitions of impossible.
1.  not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.  Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Cupid and the Tooth Fairy.  They are all out there.  I’ve seen the results of their existence.  That’s good enough for me

2. unable to be done, performed, effected, etc.: an impossible assignment.  I believe in miracles.  They happen all the time.  You will never get there in time, you will never walk again, you will never beat this disease, you will never be truly happy – all pessimistic lies.  Never, NEVER say never.

3.  incapable of being true, as a rumor.  Here’s the thing about rumors and gossip – what you hear is no doubt true about somebody, and that somebody is quite possibly the person spreading the misery.  We see in others what we most despise in ourselves.  You may think it’s impossible to stop the rumors or to shut some one up, but see number 2 above.  Miracles happen when gossip is important only to the gossip-er and not the gossip-ee.

4.  not to be done, endured, etc., with any degree of reason or propriety: an impossible situation.  Perfect example – High School.  Raise your hand if you thought you’d never make it out of there alive.  And yet, here you are.  You endured.  It’s kind of amazing the impossible situations that can in fact be endured and lived through and written about later with a great deal of humor which was totally inconceivable at the time it was actually happening to you.

5.  utterly impracticable: an impossible plan.  I believe I am going to live forever in some form or other.  I believe there is life on other planets, life after death, life in other dimensions.   One day I believe we will all understand and know everything there is to know about our universe and the cosmos and everything in it,  because we are all part of some great connection and learning process and yes, crazy huge master plan.  I will HAVE to live forever to get all this figured out properly.

6 . synonyms:  unbearable, intolerable, unmanageable.  Hmmmph.  We can bear, tolerate and manage tiny moments in time. We’re doing it right now. We string these tiny moments together, and voila!  There are no impossibilities at all.

So, to sum up, it would appear that I believe in Santa Claus, miracles, gossip, high school, eternal life and living in the moment.  What a bizarre list.

I also believe in breakfast and more coffee.  And in having an inconceivably miraculous day

J is for Jabberwocky

J is also for Johnny Depp, and his inspired version of Jabberwocky in the Alice in Wonderland movie.

Jabberwocky, the unedited version, by Lewis Carroll

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

I love the poem (most poems make exactly this much sense to me) and I love that movie, and what can I say about Johnny Depp that hasn’t already been said?  Probably by me?

We’ve had a perfectly beamish day, picking up a mimsy new filing cabinet at uffish old Wal-Mart and then galumphing back home to put it together.  My magical housekeeping fervor continues.  Callooh callay, this vorpal stack of papers is finally going to get filed!  I expect to feel quite brillig once it’s all done.

Six More Weeks of Winter

Doh.  As if, in this part of the country, we really need a groundhog to figure that out for us. It’s a beautiful sunshiney day, temperature just slightly below freezing, roads mostly bare.  Shadows everywhere.  It ain’t spring yet.

First thing this morning I went to a new (to me) place to get my hair cut.  It truly was a mess (my hair, not the hair place) because I’ve been cutting it myself for longer than I cared to admit when I was asked.  The hairdresser wanted to know why I do that.  There are a lot of reasons, actually.  Impatience and insanity top the list.  But I also know the meaning of ‘just a trim’, and can take off the minimum amount of hair necessary to perk things up.  Of course it all eventually gets out of hand and uneven and shapeless but it’s a quick fix for however long it works.  No appointment necessary.  If there’s a spot I missed yesterday I can just snip away at it today, no worries.  Plus I normally hate how a stylist styles my hair and can hardly wait to get home to mess with it.  I also rarely like whatever products they’ve mucked about with.  My hair is super fine and most body building preparations just weigh it down flat.  I also hate looking at myself sitting in front of those huge mirrors, draped in a big black cape,  resembling that big fat caterpillar on a mushroom from Alice in Wonderland.

Those mirrors are not flattering.  All I really am interested in seeing is my head.  I try not to look at the great amounts of hair covering my face and the cape and the floor.  Or the look of pained concentration on the face of the poor girl who is trying to turn a shapeless mess into something not quite so scary.

Today I came out of the salon with my head looking pretty much like it does right out of the shower.  Hair flat and straight and pasted to my skull.  Why do these people think I want to look like that?  I do not have an Emma Watson face anymore!  Okay, I never did, but you know what I mean.   Hair hides wrinkles.  Or at least it should give you something else to look at without having to squint your eyes to find it.  It’s a lovely precise cut but it’s so short it’s kind of shocking.  I don’t like shocks.   What all this means is – if an old lady comes out of a hair salon and laughs in disbelief at her own image in her rear view mirror, you can rest assured that it will take at least six weeks worth of hair growth for her to get over herself and back to what she would consider “looking normal.”

Anyway I’ve pouffed it up a bit so I look like a fluffy drowned rat.  Much better.  I won’t be tempted to pick up those scissors for quite some time.

I’ve Lost My Invisible Cat

I’ve Lost My Invisible Cat and Other FV Horror Stories by someone who seriously needs to find a more productive hobby.

The Cheshire Cat as depicted in American McGee’s Alice (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I really did  misplace the cat.  Way back when the new Alice in Wonderland movie came out the Farmville people put a Cheshire Cat and a big hookah smoking caterpillar on a hot pink mushroom up for sale and I of course got both of them.  The cat is blue and not exactly pretty so it’s no big deal when it disappears leaving only a little white crescent smile hanging in mid-air.  I re-arranged my entire farm one night when my time would have been better spent sleeping and promptly forgot where I put the cat.  I don’t know what made me suddenly obsess about locating the stupid thing.  It’s in there somewhere.  It’s not easy to pinpoint something that’s invisible.

So, it’s Canada Day once again!  I’m sitting here listening to honking horns and sirens and shouting and cheering noises blowing through my window with the fresh summer breeze.  I guess it’s coming  from the Mall which is a mere two blocks from our house.  And that’s about as close as I’m likely to get to the celebrations.  By the time it’s dark I’ll have forgotten about the inevitable fireworks until the gunshot explosions shatter the darkness.  Then I’ll watch them from my kitchen window.  I’m such a party girl.

It’s a day off for us, but W. has opted to go open the car wash.  Later he’ll come home and complain that it wasn’t at all busy.  That is if he even makes it there.  They’ll have streets closed all over the place.  There’s also construction all along my driving to work route where they’re industriously (hahahaha….insert sarcastic eye rolling here) replacing crumbling sections of curbs.  Mostly they are just putting up barriers and arrows for lane changes and digging holes and generally annoying people like me who forget to go a different way.  I did actually discover a much more timely route which knocks off about five minutes of driving time, but there’s a merge on to a busy highway and then a lane change to the far left, two things I would normally try to avoid.   It takes me to WM on a new street with an entrance to the parking lot at the back of the store.  I also get to drive by the smokers on their break .  There’s a little shack (because Gawd forbid they might ever have to smoke in the rain) and a picnic table about a meter from where the huge trucks lumber by to unload.   Not exactly scenic.  I also avoid ever eating lunch out there.

And speaking of driving, because I sort of was there for a minute, what’s the record for driving with your right signal light flashing and not ever making a right turn?  Six blocks?  Ten?  The guy I was following last night was going for the gold.  Then he suddenly turned his signal off altogether and zipped over two lanes and made a left at a light.  He is one of the reasons why I could never drive for a living without doubling my blood pressure medication.

There are so many count-downs to things on Facebook these days.  The ones for Eclipse and the end of the teachers’ school year thankfully are now over.  One of my teacher friends had it calculated in hours, never mind sleeps.  Now we’re on to waiting for vacations to begin.  I notice nobody ever counts down the fun stuff.  Like – 6 more days until our European holiday comes to an end!  WOOT!!

One other random thing I feel compelled to mention for no particular reason.  Margaret was asked to take over the publication of our store’s newsletter and agreed mostly because it meant we would get a lap top in the Vision Centre.  One day as the deadline approached (its due out tomorrow) she announced to me that I would be in charge of doing the newsletter.  This is what all good managers do – they take on extra work and then they delegate.  Or perhaps she just suddenly remembered that she can’t spell or proofread or recognize grammatical errors.  Not saying she isn’t smart, just challenged when it comes to putting things down on paper.  Turns out the lap top is kept in the personnel office and we have to go and fetch it and take it back.  The publishing program is one I’ve never worked with before this week.  Our promised internet connection isn’t working and neither is the trouble shooting and we can’t spark anyone’s interest in helping us get that up and running.  The store manager has ‘gone to the lake’.  I’m not willing to do the work from home and off the clock like the girl who did the last issue ended up doing because she didn’t have the internet connection at work either.  And the basket in the back of suggestions and newsletter input is empty.  However, I rose to the challenge and got it done.  Put in some policy blather, safety tips, sun awareness advice, contest winners, cartoons, random questions and quotes and a recipe for a Jamaican Jerk sauce for the barbecue fanatics out there.  I wanted to suggest somewhere in large bold type that no one had the right to complain about the newsletter content until the damned basket at the back was full.  But Margaret thought that might be construed as rude.  So the next issue is due in two weeks.  It will be interesting to see if I still have the job of putting it together.  It got me out of seeing a few contact lens patients, so that’s a bonus.

I seem to still be in the newsletter zone, posting a ten topic blog.  Almost feel like going back and arranging it into cute little columns with colored headers.  Almost.  But I don’t have time if I’m ever going to find that blue cat.  Got to get back to the important stuff now.