Tag Archives: fun

Reduce Stress Instantly, The Flying Lawn Chair Incident

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Stress. The Flying Lawn Chair Incident. How to Save Time Instantly.

Dateline: DFW Airport International Branch Headquarters, chair in the corner, face to the wall.

First, I’d like to apologize to those unfortunate passengers on flights with me this weekend. If you are thinking, “Maybe I was on a plane with her and I didn’t know it,” you were not. If you recall a short blond woman, her agonized face mashed into the window, who seemed determined to cough up her lungs, or heard one side of the 737 you were in crackle and thunder, just maybe you were. I’m very, very sorry.

Want to save yourself a lot of stress and lower your personal “annoying-to-others” score? It’s really not that tough. Technically. Technically, like jumping rope for five minutes a day can change your life—technically.

To save time and stress, all you have to do is pass out a little permission and decide:

Other people get to do what they do. They do not require my agreement. My opinion is not important, nor does it make any sense for me to insist on telling people what I think of what other people do. To comment takes time and it’s annoying, except to those very few godlike beings who agree with everything I think about people who aren’t like us. Okay, enough with the sermon.

The following account is true. A retired weatherman had an idea how he could make use of several weather balloons cluttering up his garage and change the face of aviation as we know it. First he tied four balloons to an aluminum and plastic weave lawn chair. Next he strapped himself in. Then he popped the launch cords on the balloons. Ten . . . nine . . . eight . . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . LIFT OFF!

Yeah, baby. We are flying now. Mostly we are tumbling end-over-end through the first ten thousand feet. “Oh, what a beautiful blue sky–whoa, there’s my house! Oh, what a beautiful blue sky–whoa, there’s Chicago!” The view went from spectacular to, well, nauseating. But the Man Who Launched His Lawn Chair (MWLLC) was having a ball. Airport radars spotted an unidentified blip on their radar screens. News syndicates were alerted. Planes were diverted. Non-believers were converted. (Sorry, like the MWLLC, I couldn’t stop myself.)

The MWLLC’s wife wrung her hands, though when reporters asked her if she was surprised at her husband’s antics, she admitted such projects on slow summer afternoons were nothing new for her husband. She also admitted the MWLLC had stopped telling her his plans since she’d taken to calling the police and asking the procedures for getting a spouse committed.

What’s the point of this tale? As you read, did any part of you think…What kind of crazy person does something like that?

To instantly reduce stress, let go and let other people have fun. Enjoy their enjoying. You’d think we’d all be savvy on this strategy, but such is not the case. At least not for me and, unless you are Dr. L from the radio who makes no wrong moves, like me, you fall into the boring trap of questioning why other people enjoy activities and possessions you do not. And, if you are like me, when you ask this question, your tone informs listeners that, unlike myself, people are crazy and not as wise as I am if they:

Get up at 2 a.m. on Black Friday. Deep fry their turkey. Don’t deep fry their turkey. Salt their food before tasting it. Buy expensive cars. Spank their kids. Don’t spank their kids. Put up an artificial tree. Spend a day finding a real tree. Watch that stupid television show. Enjoy mincemeat pie. Watch NASCAR, golf, basketball, baseball, fake-real television families, or prison shows. Try to buy love by giving expensive Christmas presents. Are too cheap to give expensive Christmas presents. Are foolish enough to take out a second mortgage to send their child to private college. Are selfish enough to refuse to take out a second mortgage to send their child to private college.

You’ve got the picture. I know. Ouch. Ouch. Guilty. Guilty. One of the elements of psychology that continuously amazes me is how hard and complicated something as simple as enjoying the moment really is.

About the promised Triple Stuffed Turkey Recipe? Next year when I can breathe like a normal person again. Coming: Unique Gifts Only You Can Give.

No Shirt, No Shoes, Pajamas…No Problem

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gangbreakdreamstime_12327351The more things you take personally, the less enjoyable your life is going to be.  

Your Emotional Guidance System…exaggerates how much other people’s choices actually affect you.…I am reminded of the wife who prayed when leaving the house with her husband driving…that their car would at no time be behind a woman in an SUV talking on a cell phone….Because, should Fate be so unkind…the tone of the outing would be sacrificed to a rant on the downfall of society.

Your Thinking Guidance System is able to distinguish between events passing over your life like puffy clouds in the clear blue sky…and events truly affecting you….such as a piano falling on your car.

Dateline: Dallas, Hilton International Headquarters…Substation

The next Jessica LeFave mystery will include inside travel tips, Mysteryshrink style, on how to enjoy yourself in Las Vegas.  Someone should benefit from all the mistakes I’ve bumbled into.  ….Not that I would complain.  Not for a second.  

Here’s an early bonus travel tip:  When people show up for breakfast in the hotel dining room dressed in their pajamas….you might want to bump up what you’re willing to pay per night.  Now, I’m the first to say, I wish I were more flexible.  Having no standards would be absolutely yummy.  I wish I could be as cheery as the wife and mother of the Pajama Family…who appeared perfectly okay with her husband trotting across the dining room in flip-flops and a kid’s discarded Winnie the Pooh bathrobe cinched over…but, not quite concealing…his boxers…. Who knows what kind of trauma I caused the children requiring them to give up the jammies and comb their bed hair before eating in restaurants.  And, no matter how much my Thinking Guidance System repeats that a negligee and fuzzy slippers shouldn’t be an issue….I don’t know that I could test out the proposition. 

At this sub-genre of Hilton products, the Pajama family parades back and forth from the far wall to the buffet…buffet to the wall table…occasionally yelling out orders to whichever of the clan is elbow deep sorting through the bacon bin.

Bonus Pre-view Travel Tip:  When a hotel-like facility promises a ‘complimentary hot breakfast’ and your fellow diners show up in pajamas, you can expect two things for sure.  One:  When a restaurant feels a need to add the word ‘hot’ to the term ‘breakfast’ this is best translated as—“Stuff will be defrosted and micro-waved for you.” And, “No room service, but feel free to roll out of bed and schlep to the breakfast table without any concern regarding whether or not the sight of you in your makeshift coverings is killing the appetites of the other guests.”

I know.  The ads spin these issues, saying that such places are ‘homey’; that when you stay with them you are ‘one of the family’.   Well, this is not an appealing concept to someone who’s played Omaha in the summer and made last minute reservations.  

This concept would perhaps work, if the guests treating the hotel as ‘home’ was a set of those constantly recurring young couples making romantic comedies…and the perky pair trotted in all trim, modeling European designer pajama ensembles.  But, alas, most of us aren’t haunted by either the paparazzi or modeling contracts…thus ’pajama casual’ isn’t likely to take off.

Speaking for my family’s likelihood of being welcomed in public in our pj’s, I’ll quote my sister regarding the time a cousin, lost in a back-to-nature illusion….an illusion based on her experience living in a tent during a lengthy stretch of unemployment….The cousin informed us that a nude wedding was planned and we were invited.  My sister responded:  “No, thanks.  I see my family members in clothes on a regular basis….and, given what I’ve seen so far, I have no desire to see any of them naked.”

Yes, whatever we pay attention to grows larger. 

What you notice and focus on in the world…and ‘yes’ you do have a choice…grows bigger and what you leave alone…doesn’t.  The next entry, “Texas Psychologist Freaks Out in Oklahoma Motel Incident,” will fill in a few details on how to trash an evening and frighten farm folks in town for the rodeo by focusing on the less than perfect features of a festive motel room…

Everything Fun is Dangerous

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“Everything fun is dangerous.”

This T-Shirt caption had me thinking how each person has their own comfort zone.  How, for example, for some people horses and writing are in that comfort space and website development means stepping just beyond and being anxious like crazy. Anxiety is the body’s response to real or perceived threats. How could learning a skill be threatening? 

Learning a new skill can be threatening if you have the belief you are supposed to already know everything, or have the belief that everything should be easy for you.

Which got me to thinking, ”To what degree have I let my choices be determined by my Emotional Guidance System’s desire to avoid anxiety?” To what degree have I held others back, my Emotional Guidance System in charge and tossing out all sorts of scary things like “What if __happens. . . .But, what if__ . . .”

Oh, I probably shoud mention the picture on the T-shirt caption showed a flaming skeleton on a Harley.

Feathers At the Check-out Stand

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 The feathers.  As you all remember (Doubt entry) when the lady went up on her roof and split the pillow?  She learned what happens when gossip, or any negative or positive bit  (flake, feather, comment) is set free in the world.  The effect is like thousands of little bits of what you say lands on, sticks to, and changes others. AND remember–NO GUILT here thinking about all the negative feathers you’ve shot into the atmosphere. 

None.  Stop it. 

You remember when something against the rules was done in your third grade class, and the teacher looked out across the room and said, “I’m not talking to all of you, only the one who did this…”  You and I and the rest of the folks I see wanting to work on self… we cringed and felt bad and we hadn’t even done it.

And we’re not putting our energy there in 2009.  We’re putting our energy on quieting the pillow-ripper, the feather blower in our own heads. Our INNER TORTURER.

Our ravaging EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Because that’s where the work starts.  Until we get in better charge of our own INNER TORTURER,  we’re spitting downer feathers because all those “you can’t do it” flakes we’re spewing on our lives keep us from even VISUALIZING what is possible. 

So, I’m in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport, in my third hour of waiting for a late plane.  The best I can do is wander the stores and read magazine headlines.  Which is when I asked myself, “Do the feathers blown into our brains off magazines, do they stick?  The following are the lead stories from two of these.   

Men’s Health:   Lose Your Gut!  See results in 8 days.  15 Powerful foods that fight fat.  Free workout poster.

Women’s Health:  Lose  Your Belly!  See results in 8 days.  No poster.

  So, that’s been the problem.    No flipping poster!

How Dryer Lint Can Ruin Your Life

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Oh yeah.  mv5bmje2mze5mte5nv5bml5banbnxkftztcwodi4oduymq__v1__sy140_sx100_.jpg  The accumulation of all your leftover junky thoughtstreams about your many failures and weakness.  Story later today.

   We’ve lived in the same house for years which has a large laundry room on the second level.  The dryer, like all, has a removable lint filter (cleaned often) which has behind it a tube leading through the wall to the outside.  Sometime during growing up I was told that if you didn’t keep that tube clean, it was a fire hazard.  Then I’ve seen thirty foot wire brushes designed to clear that pipe.  (Okay, it was that Air Mall catalog always in the front pocket of your seat with the marshmellow gun.)  Then there is the occasional unexplained house fire.

   Think of this pipe as a room in your brain.  This room is full of bad stuff about yourself that you remind yourself about and worry that if enough lint accumulates . . . Oh, who knows?  But it will be awful.  So we need to worry.  

  On the occasion of a new dryer I called in a chimney sweep to clear out the pipe, which after all these years, had to be disgusting.  I left him to pull the old dryer away from the wall and get to work.

   He called me in a few minutes later.

   ”Clear already?” I asked.

   “Yep.”   He stepped to the side of the pipe hole in the wall.  “Do you see that light, ma’am?”

   “Yes.”

   “That’s daylight.  There’s no pipe here accumulating anything.”

  Turns out I made the whole story up.