December 21, 2012 and the Mayan prediction…it’s either the end of time or a new beginning…the classic “glass half empty, glass half full”.  The Mayans  have always been shrouded in mystery, wise and far before their time.  Scholars and scientists have interpreted them as a serious, sometimes savage people whose use of mathematics and astronomy is mind-boggling.  They were one of the first civilizations to develop a written language as a form of communication and carved their messages into the sides of pyramids.  These ancient billboards stand today as a testament to the past and some would believe…a key to the future.

The Mayans were brilliant…maybe smarter than we thought.  What if these ancient carvings were the first tabloids and the laugh is on us?  Come on…there had to be a Mayan or two with a sense of humor.

Maybe Kankar and Yax got fed up with dragging all those stones up the hill for the pyramid, and one night, after hitting the ale skins hard, decided to add some old school graffiti to the side of the wall.  What if two thousand and twelve was the biggest number they could think of, one and two were the only numbers they knew, or maybe they just ran out of room.  Could be Mikrak and Kozak, two local “go-to” guys for the latest information on the hill, got tired of being so serious and decided to lighten up, using the pyramids like an ancient internet to ruin our day…April Fools.

We’ve all heard nothing is ever definite unless it’s written in stone…right?  Uh-oh.

The world didn’t grind to a halt at the beginning of 2000 and December 21, 2012 will come and go…probably.  Still, the “what if” of it lingers like a dead skunk smell and a whiff of it now and then is a reminder of how quick and fragile time is and what we make of what we get is what should define us.

Whether it’s a bunch of bunk, or written in stone and out of our control, I’m not taking any chances.  I’m making the next three hundred and fifty six days the best I can for me.  I’m considering this blog my pyramid and sending it into cyberspace so that someday, somewhere, someone will read it and say “this chick really got it”…

I love a metaphor…like the little black dress, it’s timeless and fits every occasion.  My plan is simple…five steps each day to the best day…my metafive…so to speak.

1.  Make my bed every morning.

2.  Don’t litter.

3.  Look up and let go.

4.  Eat cake.

5.  Laugh and cry.

I’m about to jump off the bridge…come on…join me…you’ve got nothing to lose…

and just in case Mayans were right…well…I’m just saying….

I think I’ll start with step four…later peeps…

Cynthia Neilson

I fell asleep with the television on last night and woke up around three this morning with some guy screaming above the sound of a blender, trying to convince me that I couldn’t go another day without the special “Ninja Blade” technology…it’s cutting and chopping capabilities guaranteed to cut my kitchen time in half.

I lay there wondering why we are so driven to get out of the kitchen.  When I was a little girl, growing up in an Italian household, the kitchen was the heartbeat of the house…it was where the drama began and ended and it was always funny even when it was serious.  I was the oldest of six children and we had dinner together, with my father holding court at the head of the table.  When he got mad the first words out of his mouth were “Jesus MaryandJoseph”.  So much so, that when I was little I thought MaryandJoseph was Jesus’s last name.  Our kitchen was small and the table with all eight of us around it took up most of the room, so there was no escape if you were under fire for some indiscretion.  I don’t ever remember my parents having conversations about our behavior, but they always seemed in sync and when my Dad’s radar was up, my Mother was copiloting right behind him.  I was a bit of a smart mouth and my father could smack me and continue eating before I even felt the sting.  My Dad never had to yell at us to listen to him.  We just knew we should.   When he got ready to lecture, he would light a cigarette and use the end of the matchstick to poke around in his ear.  One time my brothers were on the skewer for something they did and my Dad sat back to ponder their fate, lighting his cigarette, poking the end of the match in his ear…and setting the side of his head on fire.  “Jesus MaryandJoseph!”

The back door of our house was in our kitchen.  It was always unlocked and except for a handful of days, there was always someone there.  We didn’t have Ninja blade technology…we didn’t even have a dishwasher, because my father said he already had four…my three sisters and I.  We fought over who would wash and dry and put away.  I don’t really remember being told we had to do it…we just did it…together.

The last time I saw my Dad he was standing at the kitchen door.  I drove away too fast, as usual.  I can picture him shaking his head.  “Jesus MaryandJoseph.”

I live on a large farm east of Nashville.  One of my neighbors from up in my holler knocked on my kitchen door this afternoon.  She was missing a horse and wondered if I might have seen him.

I tripped and fell down a flight of stairs on New Years Eve, so the last thing I wanted to do was hike across my farm looking for someone else’s horse, but I knew I couldn’t enjoy my pity party on the couch like a black and blue slug, drinking hot chocolate and watching Turner Classic Movies if I didn’t at least make an effort to aid in the search.

My daughter had come by to check up on me in the guise of a free meal.  She was also bringing me the book I had sent to her father for Christmas.  It was a beautiful hardcover book with pictures of her and her brother from the time they were little until now.  I thought it a nice gesture to show how much we had still managed to grow even though we were no longer married.  On the front, the kids when they were small, with the caption: Though we no longer fly together….On the back, them at the age they are now with the caption:  We still continue to soar….

I had it overnighted to Los Angeles and when my daughter flew out there, she opened the box so she could wrap the book and put it under the tree. She called me laughing hysterically.  Apparently there was a…mistake.  The front and back of the book were exactly what I had designed, but inside the first page was a young black man holding a baby with the caption, “Our Boo has arrived.”  The rest of the pages were filled with the rest of Boo’s black family.

The company is making a new one with the right pictures…I’m keeping the first edition.  It’s on my coffee table as we speak and is a true indicator of my life…hilarious.

Anyhow…my daughter and I set out to look for the horse.  I was still limping a little, but it was cold and after about ten minutes I couldn’t feel my legs from the knees down anyway.  The sun was going in and out of the clouds and it started to snow.  It was quiet and pretty and whatever we talked about, I remember laughing…we usually do.

Two creeks and four barbed-wire fences later and we found the runaway hanging out with my herd of misfits.  I didn’t have a lead rope with me so we left him there.  He’s having a sleepover and his owners will come and get him in the morning.  They were so happy and relieved that he was found.

It was too late to make dinner, so we ate salad and chips and when my child walked out the kitchen door she had a bag full of things she stole from my refrigerator, including the variety cheesecake pack that I was planning to eat while I watched the Cary Grant movie marathon that I dvr’d on my t.v.

The sun came out again.  She flashed her big smile, her black pony-tail flying and drove away…too fast.  Jesus MaryandJoseph.

I’m in my kitchen making cornbread in a glass bowl.  Cary Grant will wait.

I made my bed.  I didn’t litter.  I looked up and I let go.  I laughed and I cried and I’m eating cornbread in about fifteen minutes.

Day three hundred and fifty five is done.

Tomorrow peeps…

Cynthia Neilson

“Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” Aristotle-Greek philosopher and the original type A personality.

If this is true, then happiness is infinity…it stretches out around us with no beginning and no end.  Because there is no wall or fence or border, no top or bottom or side, then we never know if we’ve reached the end of happiness.  Maybe happiness is the God particle…the start and the finish.

And if humans, according to Ari, are simply receptacles for happiness, then it totally explains why some of us are buckets and some of us are sieves.

Those who are buckets have enough and sometimes overflow…and the sieves, well, they’ll never have enough and will never appreciate what they do have because they constantly try to keep filling up, never full, never satisfied.

There are leaky buckets…you know the type I mean…the fake happys…the ones who want for nothing and yet need everything.  It’s a slow leak, and they try to fill the bucket so fast that it tips over and they are left empty and misunderstood.  Leaky buckets can be deceiving.  At least you know what you aren’t getting with a sieve.

If happiness is the infinite end-all, then the pursuit of it can either be joyful or desperate, and those are the common denominators that we all share as human beings.

Of course, Aristotle could have been a total whack job, the crazy guy who walked his pet cricket he had tied to a string around the city walls, spouting limericks and picking his lunch and dinner from two weeks ago out of his foot long beard.

His buddy Socrates said…”If you get a good wife you’ll become happy.  If you get a bad one you’ll become a philosopher.”

It’s clear to me that Aristotle wasn’t happily married and spent a lot of time in the dog house…thinking.
Happiness is best when it comes simply.  It truly is the little things…take today for instance.

It was a beautiful sunny day in Nashville, but really cold.  I threw on my running clothes with the best intentions and decided to head to the track for some interval training.  My nose has been running for two months because my daughter’s cats are “visiting” and I’m highly allergic to them, so the snot froze on my face from my back door to my Jeep.  Too cold to run…I’d ride my spin bike later.   I was already in the car so I headed to Walmart.  I’m there every other day.  I can’t explain it.  I know I’m always out of toilet paper.  I won’t buy the twelve roll jumbo pack.  It’s the principle…

Making each day the best also involves my eating better.  My cart was full of fresh fruit and green things.  I whistled down the potato chip aisle and past the Pepperidge Farm cookie display.  Not today boys…I’m eating healthy.

I didn’t even mind that there were only three checkout aisles open for thirty shoppers.  Standing in line gives me a chance to catch up on the Kardashenanigans and the stars caught with and without make-up and cellulite.  All the cover girls look like they have abnormally large heads and and none of the guys own shirts and have huge arms and chests and little heads.

I was almost past the danger zone…the gum and candy and bags of honey roasted peanuts.  I was about to put my organic panic on the conveyor belt when my hand brushed by a box of Crunch and Munch.  OMG.  Toffee coated popcorn and peanut bliss.  Mine…all mine…a reward for riding my spin bike an extra mile…or three.

I piled my groceries into my Jeep, tossed the contraband up in front with me and pulled out of the parking lot.  I reached over to open the box and pull out the foil bag.  I couldn’t open it with one hand so I waited until I got to the light.  I couldn’t open it with two hands.  There was air in the bag.  You see where I’m going with this.  I pushed against the sides and the bag exploded…toffee and peanut goodness flying everywhere.  Nooooooo…..

I drove to the car wash to vacuum out my car, eating the popcorn that landed in my lap and hair.  I applied the five second rule a couple of times…okay…all the way to the car wash and pulled in to clean out the rest that was left.  I can’t leave any remnants of food in my car due to the Great Mouse War of 2009.

Let me preface this story by telling you that I am a tree-hugger and an animal lover.  In the old days I gave a home to anything that let me pick it up.  I took in a lot of strays.  I had to put a stop to it because I think people were just driving by and tossing their unwanted animals over my fence.

We live in the country.  Mice live in the country.  Mice like to come inside in the winter.  At first, it was cute…the little mousie sat in my shoe watching t.v. with us.  He had an odd bend in his tail and a black spot on his side.  We named him Felix.  Felix didn’t like living alone and pretty soon he had himself a girlfriend.  She made a nest inside my box of checks, shredding the deposit slips to make a honeymoon bed.  Felix and his girlfriend made deposits of their own everywhere and had to go.  I am a strong believer in Karma and I don’t like to kill anything…so I bought a live trap and made a nice peanut butter and banana stew and set it out for Felix.

I’m thinking Felix held the door open and let his girlfriend go in first, because the next morning I found both of them frantically jumping around in the plastic trap.  I took the box and rode out to one of my barns, wished them well and let them go.

I have a lot of hair.  It takes a long time to dry so sometimes I go to bed with it wet.  When it dries it expands like one of those amazing sponges.  It is also a tangled mess.  You might call it a rat’s nest.

I was asleep in bed a couple of nights after I threw Felix and his girlfriend out.  I had washed my hair and it dried like a huge tumbleweed.

***Disclaimer…proceed with caution…discretion advised…not for the squeamish***

I felt a tug at my hair and half awake, I reached up to touch it.  Something was in my hair and when I made contact it squeaked.  I shot out of bed smacking at my hair and running in a circle.  The more I smacked at it, the more tangled it became.  We were both squealing.  Finally I smacked it free from my hair and it hit the wall and fell to the floor.   I turned on the light.  He looked familiar.  Crooked tail and spot on his side…it was Felix.  He’d come back.  I couldn’t believe it.

He was still breathing and I put him back in the live trap.  The next day I spray painted him neon orange and let him go about two miles from my house.  Two nights later Felix, dressed in orange, strolled by right in front of the t.v., stopped and smirked.  I went to Walmart and bought a snap-trap.  Checkmate.  Sorry Felix.

I forgot about the girlfriend.  She moved into my Jeep, leaving her calling cards all over my dashboard and car seat.  The cheek.  I put a snap-trap under the passenger seat and FORGOT ALL ABOUT IT.  About two weeks later I noticed an odd smell in my car and took it to the dealer thinking it was something mechanical.  They took the engine apart, found nothing, and I drove away with the windows open, three hundred dollars poorer.

That night I sat bolt upright in bed.  I remembered the trap under the seat.  Sure enough…there were the remains of Felix’s girlfriend.  They got the last laugh on me.  When I evicted them, they had left behind a nest full of children and for the rest of the winter it was me against them.  Snap. Squeak.  I’m not proud of it.  If only Felix hadn’t smirked.

Now I try to keep food to a minimum in my car, especially in the winter.  While I was vacuuming it out today, my friend and workout pal Patricia pulled in.  We’d promised each other to try to eat healthy and work out over the holiday until we could get back on our training schedule.  She was eating an apple.  I was standing holding the empty Crunch and Munch box.  Busted.

In the whole scheme of things…it all worked out.  I only ate a handful of Crunch and Munch, so I didn’t have to do the extra mileage on the spin bike.  Win win.  It’s supposed to be warmer tomorrow…back to business as usual.

My bucket is full.

Day three hundred and fifty four…over.  Check.

Cynthia Neilson

***AN OPEN PLEA TO THE PIE FAIRY OF OHIO***

I am asking you to reconsider your decision to stop playing Secret Santa and sending your anonymous pecan pies at Christmas to Bill Welch of Columbus.   You’ve done it for 35 years.  He’s 87.  Let’s be honest here…how many more pies could he be expecting?  You left him a note to say your wings are too short now and you’re getting too fat to fly, but I ain’t buying it.

I can see where you might have grown tired flapping those wings while carrying a torch in one hand and a pie in the other.  Maybe you’re just fed up waiting for some recognition or reciprocation.  HE’S A GUY.  Your 35 years of secretly plotting and planning and delighting over surprising him was over in ten minutes of chewing and swallowing.

Over 35 years, you lovingly rolled out the crust and melted the butter…you heated the oven and slid the pie in…watching, waiting until it was bubbly perfection.  Maybe over the years you tweaked the recipe…tried different sugars and butter, smaller pecans…trying to make it better…wondering if he’d notice the difference.  He didn’t.  HE’S A GUY.

If you think he’ll go without pecan pie next Christmas, you’re wrong.  He’ll be inundated with pies…I guarantee you that a whole bunch of broads will jump on the bandwagon and roll out the pie crusts.  Bill’s popularity is about to spike, I hope he’s not a diabetic.

But it won’t be your pie and the hope that you had that it meant something to him will be gone too…because you decided you were done.  Now you will never know.  A 35 year old secret…this isn’t just about pie.

Pie Fairy…it isn’t enough to just bake the pie…you need to taste it too… together.  So what if your wings are too short and you’re carrying too much weight for liftoff.  Don’t wait another day.  Take your pie, walk up to the door and knock on it.  He’s 87.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Day three hundred and fifty three…poof!

Cynthia Neilson

Super brainiac physicist Stephen Hawking announced that one of the greatest mysteries to him is…women.  This man, arguably the world’s most well known theorist is man enough to admit that he can’t explain the female mystique.

Mr. Hawking…I applaud you.  It takes guts to confess that you’re up against a force that can’t be explained or rationalized, especially when it goes against the very grain of your logic and mathematical reasoning.  The measure of your I.Q.  pales in comparison to that of your common sense.

The pendulum that swings between powerful and powerless has always had a male lean.  I think it always will…and that’s not necessarily a bad thing…because it’s all a matter of perspective.

Now before you chicks start getting your tails in a knot and pelting me with tampons…hear me out.  Safe to say most guys won’t read past “tampons” so it’s not like I’m in danger of revealing any secrets of the sisterhood.

I totally recognize how hard women fought for equality…I really think at the very core of it all, we wanted recognition.  We wanted to be acknowledged and appreciated and compensated for our contribution to the world and to the family as much as our male counterparts.

But the simple freedom of equality should be across the board for all human beings, regardless of your genitalia and what you want to do with it.

Historically, men have been hunters and women have been prey…pursued, caught and conquered.  In order for women to blend into the territory of the male, we had to change our plumage and learn to hunt too.  We are prey…we are hunters…uh-oh…paradox.

It’s said that you can’t really tame a lion. You can put them in a cage and think that they are getting used to you, but in fact, they are lulling you into a false sense of security.  You, in fact, are adapting to their environment.  And when you least expect it, they turn on you and kill you.

Girls…we’ve been had.  We walked into the cage with the lion and turned our backs.  We’ve fallen into a trap.  We’ve feminized men and they are using it against us.  We’ve become hunters and the men have turned into creatures of flight.  Men, unlike women, DON’T WANT TO BE CAUGHT.

And, once again, WE’RE DOING ALL THE WORK.

We need to take back our most powerful weapon…female mystique.  Our mystery is what attracts men.  And if we keep changing our plumage then they will think we are different prey and chase us again.  They’re simple creatures and distracted by shiny silky things.  And you can say what you want about it, but there is power in manipulation, especially if the end result is fun and involves some good wine and great romance.

My friend Patricia and I were out running today.  It was warm and I needed to work off the gingerbread pita chips I had for lunch.  About half way into our run, she reached into her pocket and her key was gone.  We turned back and retraced our steps.

Two knights on a shiny Mule (a glorified golf-cart made to look like a monster truck with camouflage) pulled up and asked if they could help.  We were RUNNING.  They were DRIVING.  You see where I’m going with this.  Though we were totally capable of finding the key ourselves…we sent them off on their quest and a few minutes later, they drove back with grins on their faces and her key in their hand.  We were all girlie thank-you.  We finished our RUN and they DROVE off…all puffed up because they had saved the day.  In a strange twist, though they found the key…we made their day. Our heroes…

Girls…there isn’t anything wrong with waving your own sword…just make sure it’s double-edged and you’re wearing a great thong under that armor.

Stephen Hawking says we are the biggest mystery in the universe.  He has a big brain.

Day Three Hundred and Fifty Two…OO RAH!

Cynthia Neilson