List for the Lazys

Sometimes my time is out of control. Back-to-back events. Classes, parties, studies, meetings. I envy people who can just sack out on the couch and doze through Party of Five episodes. I need and seek activity. Always have and I'm afraid I always will. But I'm realizing I have no barometer. No device that tells me when the engine is hot and the oil is low. I get to the end of my rope and crash, or meltdown. It's not pretty.
I'm trying to remind myself that I need to make time for me and stuff that makes me happy. So a perfect day goes a little something like this:
* Wake up early (To let the dogs outside, or to roll over and tell Mark to do it)
* Read for a few hours before getting up.
* Coffee, oatmeal, newspaper.
* A little lite weeding in the garden before the sun gets too hot. Brush dogs.
* An hour-long workout. Strenght and strectch.
* More lounging and reading. Think about lunch.
* Maybe a scooter ride to bookstore or Target.
* Think about dinner. Make a new recipe.
* Wine or beer on the back porch.
* A game of cribbage.
* Hang out with friends drinking on the porch or other lazy location.
* Good night.

Now that I've got the list, it sounds like a full day...but a great day.

Dirty little whirlwind

I've hit the point when I'm actually a decade older than people entering the workforce. I've had a few of these realizations lately, one after the other.

It's interesting to think all the stuff they take for granted, all the technology that has been at their fingertips since the day they were born ...in the late 1980s.
Shoot, I was already watching M-TV when you twerpts were still in diapers. Some of these humbling realizations have come like this:

A puzzled look when I said, "Oooh, way to go Doogie Houser."

"Is this Robert Smith? I've only heard the remixed versions of his songs."

(Ugh...everything you like emo comes straight from the hands of Robert Smith.)

"A grill...you know one of those metal things people put on their teeth,"

(Apparently my age, makes me unaware of popular culture? Little do you know I can flow...and wave my arms like Ralph Macchio.)

"Is this Save Ferris?"
(puzzled look) "Who?!"

But here's the deal, this isn't really about age. It's about relevancy. It's about appreciating knowledge and feeling like what you think or now is worthwhile. The dismissal you get when someone assumes you don't understand what a grill is isn't so much an age thing. It's the idea that someone would think that I don't understand the world around me, and at a certain age stopped caring.
When you hang out with people five or ten years younger, it's not about the now, it's about what stays. Robert Smith, not Doogie Houser. I have a hard time having a prolonged conversation with people who have no understanding of the history of punk rock, although mine is limited as well. But I feel the same way about people who don't read a lot or examine what is being spoon fed to them on cable.
So I guess the point is not so much about age, but about thinking about what you consume and evaluating it.