Ida Clare, It's Black Friday in Big Thicket

 

 

Black Friday Shopper who has been waiting in line a really long time.

 

 

 

 

Dear Creative Chicks,

It's Black Friday in Big Thicket.  What's in your my wallet?  A picture of Alec Baldwin. Happy?

Sigh.  I am a bargain shopper.  I will hold off buying something I want until it goes on sale.  You never catch me without a 40% off coupon off from Hobby Lobby.  I buy used stuff and am happy to get it.  I shop garage sales and thrift stores, but I just can’t get revved up about getting up early, standing in line shivering in the cold with otherwise normal people who turn into stampeding idiots once the Friday gets black enough to open the doors of a corporate giant needing to balance their bottom line.

You go girl.  I don’t blame you.  It’s a big game to see if you can be one of the ones who cashes in on saving the cash.  I just can’t do it.  I don’t have the stamina to deal with some of the strapping big lumberjacks who may be carrying a weapon at Wal-mart.  After all, there is a reason they’re wearing camouflage clothing.  They think they’re invisible and we won’t see them stealing our hard won X-box from our buggy while we are bent over wrestling a six-year old for a Furby. 

Black Friday in Big Thicket should be named, Black-Eye Friday or Black and Blue Friday, because if it’s a ridiculous enough sale and they have only six of them to go around, somebody is gonna get hurt.

It’s too much for me.  Besides, I’ve got to keep my little digits ready for Cyber Monday where I can spend every dime I have in the comfort of my footed pajamas.

Don’t forget to shop at Shell Out More at Small Store Saturday and Sell Your Soul Sunday!

Me -- I’ll be sleeping off my turkey and dressing binge.

Hugs,

Ida Clare I'm Feeling Snarky!

It has been brought to my attention that I am not being as honest as I could be in this space and that my tone has changed somewhat since I started this blog

“You mean you’ve changed from sarcastic to really sarcastic?”

No, it’s the other way around.

“Really?  You mean you aren’t sarcastic as you used to be?  I find that hard to believe.”

Oh, I hate to admit this, but when I first started this blog, I had planned to hide out here and keep a low profile.  It was easy to make snarky remarks about people I didn’t know.  But the longer I’m here, the more hesitant (read: afraid) I am to make snarky remarks about people who drive around with guns-racks in their pickups and are so religious that they have the ear of God on speed dial.

The real reason I seem to have curbed my enthusiasm for snarky-ism is my mother.  I haven’t talked about Ida Mama because I wanted to respect her privacy and I was afraid that people here might blame her for my audacity to mention that I am not a fan of Duck Dynasty or that the emperor doesn’t have on any clothes. (Here the emperor would be a naked redneck and really, who would want to call attention to that?)

So in deference to Ida Mama, I have toned things down so much that I just don’t write anything snarky and that has got to stop.  I haven’t written much about politics or religion because my mother told me that you don’t talk about them in mixed company.  I guess she meant a mix of Democrats and Republicans or Heathens or Christians.  Here, it can get you thrown out of Golden Corral before you have a chance to swing by the chocolate fountain three or four times. 

However, it is difficult not to speak up with Texas politics being what it is and a prize-winning buffoon of a U.S. Congressman with a last name straight out of Mayberry named: (wait for it) Gohmert. Here is his picture below.   Shazam!

My mother is well-known and well-loved in her community and surely she will be forgiven for her wayward daughter making a few wisecracks about butt-cracks in Wal-mart.  The truth is nobody reads this blog anyway except a few Big Thicket Outcasts who keep their opinions and their butt-cracks to themselves.

Hugs,

Ida Clare, Start Where You Are!

One of the problems with being a know-it-all is that I don’t really know it all.  Unfortunately this becomes evident when I have to learn something new. 

And I don’t know about you but I don’t like being a beginner.  I have new Serif software I’m trying to learn and it is kicking my roundly comfortable butt out of my comfort zone.

Like Frank Sinatra in the iconic New York, New York song:

I want to wake up in that city
That doesn't sleep
And find I'm king of the hill
Top of the heap

Like that guy, I want to wake up knowing that I’m king of the learning curve and top of the software heap, but here in Big Thicket, it ain’t going that way.

So what I have to learn over and over again is to accept that with being a beginner, comes discomfort, not knowing, and imperfection.  If I can calm down and relax, I might also enjoy the process of learning something new.

A wiser person than me said, “Start where you are.”  Why in the world would I think I should know how to make that software do what I want with no instruction, no teacher or no advice from someone who has gone before me? 

Instead of listening to my diligent, persevering, inner student, I am listening to my whining, complaining, inner critic browbeat me because I’m not learning it fast enough, I’m not retaining what I’ve already learned, and since I’m not doing it perfectly, I shouldn’t just do it at all.

What my critic inspires me to do succumb to overwhelm and move right into being paralyzed and stuck.  No thanks!  I'll never get to the top of the heap from over there.  I have to start where I am: in the land of not knowing.
                                                . 
So today, I hope you will join me in starting where you are.  When you begin at the beginning, you get an opportunity to be teachable.  And I get the opportunity to not be a know-it-all.

Hugs,

And since I now have that song on my brain, here is the video.