etc. | But I Digress . . . | Page 2
August 29, 2021 etc., writingcoloring inside the lines, creativity, lateral thinking, thinking, thinking inside the boxJanet Coburn	
I know that great pride is taken by many people for coloring outside the lines and thinking outside the box. But what if this isn’t possible?
Let’s face it – in real life there are lines we can’t break and boxes we can’t get out of. You may think that this stifles creative thinking and artistic expression and so on, but the fact is it doesn’t have to.
Take arts, crafts, music, and writing. You can do all these things for yourself and break all the rules you want to. Don’t use complementary colors! Start a sentence with a conjunction! Go wild!
But often there are constraints on your creativity – when you have a client to please or a style guide you must follow. Rules and boundaries – well, abound.
In these blog posts, I can do pretty much what I want to. End a sentence with a preposition, as I just did. A purist may cringe, but that’s just too bad. If he or she wants to stop reading my blog because I’ve broken the grammatical rules, so be it.
However, in my life, I’ve encountered situations where I couldn’t just do as I pleased. The best example is when I worked for magazine- and book-publishing companies. I had to write what they told me to write and how to write it. Word limits, and cutting prose to fit the word limits, and cutting it again if someone wanted to enlarge the picture on the page. There was no thinking outside the box there, except perhaps seeing if removing a single word would bring up a line and make the paragraph shorter. Do that enough times and you have gained space for the picture of a castle or whatever.
Writing textbooks for children was the worst. There was something called a “scope and sequence chart” which dictated in what order things were to be taught, what they were, and how many times they had to be used. For example, a lesson might cover the consonant blends “tr” and “gr,” and they had to be used two times in each paragraph. Add to that that it had to be a paragraph of 200 words or fewer, and must be written at a second-grade reading level, as measured by a computer.
Think outside that box! I dare you.
But boxes aren’t really boxes if you think about it. You can draw a four-sided box on a piece of paper, but when you get a box from Amazon or eBay, it’s really a cube or a three-dimensional rectangular object. Inside of that, there’s plenty of space to play around.
I think that most situations in life are more like a cube than a four-line box on flat paper. Even in a box on paper, you can always draw something wonderful inside the box instead of just coloring it in one color. There are many dimensions and directions you can go, even if there are constraints in some directions.
To use my example above, I can write a paragraph about a monkey in a tree that grabs food from a tiger’s grip if it tries quickly. Or I can write about a grandmother who grows plants and tries to trap rabbits before they eat them. The ideas are mine, even if they have to be shaped to fit the box.
(And boy, are some instructions complex! I once had to make up an original story based on some existing pictures that had already had another story written about them. I could change the order of the pictures, but not the pictures themselves. And the plot of the story had to be completely new. But I digress.)
I think the most useful kind of thinking is lateral thinking, and that can be done even inside a box. Stop thinking about choosing A or B, and consider C, even if it comes from “out of left field.” Turn the box on its corner and you gain a whole new perspective.
Sometimes you don’t have to break the rules that keep you in a box. Sometimes it helps to look at the rules – and the box – differently instead. It’s an intellectual puzzle – to create something beautiful that’s still inside the box. It’s what sonnets are made of, if you think about it.
Planning the Normandy Invasion
August 15, 2021 etc., holidays, humor, travelbed and breakfast, husband, overseas travel, overthinking, packingJanet Coburn	
Hubby and I are going to take a little three-day getaway this month to celebrate our anniversary. No problem, right? You forget that I have my obsessive moments, and when I don’t, Dan takes over.
Packing for a three-day trip to a b&b/working farm should be no problem, right?
Clothing is not a problem. T-shirts and jeans (or shorts). Undergarments. Shoes. There, the list is done.
We only signed up for one huge country breakfast, so the rest of the food planning is on us (unless we want to leave our cozy cabin and go searching for a restaurant or pay big bucks for elaborate but homey farmhouse fare – and we don’t have big bucks just now).
We decided on a picnic like the kind we used to have. Cheese. French bread. Summer sausage. Apples. Carrot sticks/celery/radishes/whatever. Crackers. Wine.
Thus began the debates. Do we really need a styrofoam cooler to transport these delicacies, or will a paper bag do for a three-hour drive? Should we bring dip for the vegetables, which would require a cooler, or just some peanut butter, which wouldn’t? Should we take the tabletop ice maker, even though the cabin has a complete refrigerator/freezer – indeed, a complete, if small, kitchen plus bowls, plates, utensils, and the like? (The ice maker was Dan’s idea.) Should we toss in a couple of cans of soup just in case we eat our way through the picnic and still have the munchies?
Now consider us planning for a trip abroad which we hope to take in the spring. Dan is much more casual about long-distance trips where any eating difficulties can be solved with money. But then there’s the rest of our kit, and my anxiety kicks into overdrive. I have already begun planning, purchasing, and, if not actually packing, deciding which things need to go in the carry-on and which in the regular suitcases. (And OMG, the weight limits! And we have two CPAP machines!)
First, there’s the issue of money. Will we change some US currency at the airport? At a bank for a better rate? Will anyone there accept US dollars? How much cash should we get for a ten-day trip? Will our credit and debit cards work overseas? Will they charge exorbitant fees, plus a rate for foreign exchange? (Our bank does. See, I’ve already begun checking these things out.)
What else will we need? Rain slickers? Check, and ordered. Power converters? Check, and ordered (the kind with USB ports so we can recharge our electronics, including my absolutely necessary e-reader so I can read myself to sleep). Road map of the entire country. Check, and ordered. Extra underwear. Check. (I have a dread of running out without a laundry handy.) Multi-compartment pill case that holds day/night and day-of-the-week drugs. Still looking for just the right-sized one. (I know that should be easy, but somehow it isn’t.)
And what other problems might we encounter? Need to make a phone call, either locally or to home? Should we buy a sim card? A burner phone? A phone card (once we get there)? Pay for an overseas plan with our regular carrier? Would it be cheaper to get the pay-as-you-go plan or sign up for unlimited service? (All that hinges on how many calls we’re likely to make, which I just don’t know. This requires much perusing of our carrier’s website, calls to them, and some tricky math on my part.) And dear God, we can’t forget to make reservations for boarding the cats! Plus, who knows what COVID restrictions will be in place then?
My hope is that I can get all these questions answered, purchases made, and Absolutely Everything Prepared For, so that, finally, we can just jump on a plane and be whisked off to the vacation of a lifetime.
I’m sure as soon as we do, I’ll realize that I’ve forgotten something. My friend Robbin always used to tell me that as long as I had underwear and my meds, I’d be okay.
Good thing we never traveled together.
Plus-Size People’s Problems
August 8, 2021 etc., fashionadvertising, clothes shopping, general crankiness, men, plus-size fashion, rantJanet Coburn	
It’s encouraging that, in the name of body positivity, TV ads and shows are now acknowledging plus-size women. They can be seen in clothing ads, beauty and skincare ads (along with senior women), on television and on the internet and other venues. They exercise. They dance, even if they jiggle. They are moms and consumers of every sort of product.
There are still some problems with the representation of fat women. In news stories, they are only shown from the neck down (unless they’re needed as a talking head), making it seem that fat is a shameful thing and that fat people should hide their identities.
Attractive, plus-size clothing is still hard to find. Especially underwear. Above a certain size, for example, it’s difficult to find panties that are any color other than white. Or that are anything but granny-panties. I may be plus-size, but I’d like my underwear to be attractive, at least.
But what about plus-size men? Don’t they deserve a little body positivity too? Fat men don’t appear in commercials, doing anything, unless they’re being shown as a figure of fun. Exercising? They’re sweating profusely and falling off the stationary bike, if they are pictured in a gym at all. Dancing? Nope. Since John Goodman is now a talking head (or fingertip), fat men are difficult to find in TV programs and ads.
Plus-size men also have limited apparel choices similar to those of plus-size women. Some clothing stores have a Big and Tall department, but their definition of big and tall leaves a lot to be desired. Again with the underwear. Plus-size underwear is invariably white. And plus-size underwear is about all big men are offered.
For fat men to find clothes that fit them, they must go to special shops that cater to their needs. Some of them even have tailors to make sure that the fit is right, and customers pay a price for that. The selection is larger than at non-specialty shops, but the prices are higher – much higher. Sometimes an adequate selection is not even present and the plus-size man must place a special order rather than buy something off the rack. Fortunately, the stores’ selection includes ties and belts for the large man, something that is available practically nowhere else.
In fact, it was difficult to find a photo to go with this post. I use a stock photo service and their choices were severely limited and confined mostly to the standard images that most people think of when they see fat men. There were large men eating pizza and drinking beer. There were fat men portrayed from the neck down, often with a tape measure circling their girth. There were plus-size men exercising or being defeated by exercising. There were even “standard” sized men pinching a scant inch on their obviously toned bodies. I had to search to find one of a fat man doing a normal activity – reading the paper.
One of the few places where I’ve seen plus-sized men presented as desirable is in the song “Fat Boys” by Uncle Bonsai. Here’s it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHzHhV456pk
(If that link doesn’t work for you, here’s a sample of the lyrics.)
Skinny boys got nothin’
To lean against in bed
Bony arms and shoulders
Only bruise my head.
I just want an overgrown boy
Unconditioned, unrehearsed
Fleshy body waiting for the squeeze
Overweight and overblown boys
Whet my whistle, quench my thirst
Chubby cheeks just drop me to my knees.
I love several men who are overweight, downright fat, or obese even. Does it bother me? Not at all. I also love bald-headed men. (Here’s another link, this one from Christine Lavin, if this one works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sirJa_OltKk.) Men with hairy backs. Men who smoke. Men who flirt (even with other women). Really, the only quality that really attracts me is a mustache or beard. And I’ll give a guy a pass on that if he has all my required attributes above the eyeballs: bright, witty, and creative. Body size and shape have nothing to do with it.
Full disclosure: This is a rewrite of a post I shared four years ago. I thought it was time to refresh it, especially since the problem still exists.