Cardiogirl: 19% body fat 100% fun

Okay, today I got sidetracked over at Ducks of Happiness. I’m not sure how to refer to her. She has left me a few comments as H. and I like that the period is always there. Somehow it refines her.

Anyway, I read one post, commented. Then added her to my Google Reader because I am absent minded and forget my buddies who I love reading unless they are spoon fed to me. Then I was clicking through her posts in the Google Reader because I could. And it gives me a sense of accomplishment to feel like I read something as the number of new posts goes down. It’s sort of like crossing something off the list, you know? And feeling accomplished after that.

I know, that’s lame. But it’s how I feel.

So I was reading her stuff and she’s fun. And then I realized, dammit! I haven’t written anything. I’m not getting up as early in the morning as I used to and now I have to portion out my time before the whole getting-the-kids-up-for-school thing takes place.

And I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to write about today. I haven’t been planning ahead like I usually do. I’m sure that doesn’t show.

So H. had written in one of her posts about her love of crossword puzzles. And since I am coming up blank for a post today, reading that reminded me of the craze of crossword puzzles back when I was a freshman in college.

Each day the campus newspaper was published and each day on the back page, along with the comics, was the crossword puzzle. I’m embarrassed to admit prior to college (mumbles) I had never completed a crossword puzzle. Never even tried.

I’m more of a Wordsearch gal. I love
those
word searches.
The answers are
right there,
just hiding among
the other letters. For some reason, most of my life, the words have just jumped out at me when I look at the grid. I don’t really have to look for them, they just suddenly pop out.

But crossword puzzles are like the Philosophy Class of word games. It requires a lot of thought (the good ones) and it makes me feel bad about myself when I can’t figure out the weird word that begins with A that is only four or five letters long but is always used. I still can’t remember what that word is. It’s not akin or alas. It has a strange obscure meaning, and it used to show up a lot in the puzzles in the campus paper.

It was usually in the upper left quadrant and I only learned it back then because along with the new crossword puzzle the answer key was published for yesterday’s puzzle. After a couple days (okay weeks) I learned that the A word was used a lot as filler and the obscure clue was always the same.

So eventually I got that one right because it was used frequently. But I never felt like I mastered it or was really smart enough to do a crossword puzzle.

But at our breakfast table that first year everyone brought a pen (yeah, most of them used pen and I felt like a loser for using a pencil that could be erased) and worked on it as they ate their cereal. The hard core ones took the paper with them all day long from class to class to finish the puzzle by the end of the day.

I gave it my attention at breakfast and that was about it.

Of course the next day, when I got the paper, I immediately looked at the answer guide from the previous puzzle and silently chastised myself for not getting all of the answers right. I hated that crossword puzzle. I’m not sure I ever completed an entire puzzle that year. I think I got close by the end of that freshman year, maybe I finished all but two or three words a couple of times.

But I never got into it. I feel the same way about Sudoku. It could be a generalized fear of the grid. I don’t like looking at those black and white squares. Just seeing the image of all those little mocking squares causes a small spark of anxiety, truth be told.

I like to think it’s because right now I don’t have time to focus, uninterrupted, because I have small children. But I think it’s really because I’m impatient and I don’t want to have to think about what I’m doing.

I want the words to just pop out at me. Without much effort on my part. Kind of how I want life to just happen for me right now, without much effort on my part.

If I were to talk to Paula about this I imagine she would encourage me to work on some of these puzzles, as a growth area. That’s something to consider.

But between you and me, right now I’d rather just do a word search.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 5:22 am and is filed under Anxiety, Observations, Stream of Consciousness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.