Listen Here, Gladys

I recently saw a social media post from fayeplunkettpeirce with some advice that I have begun practicing. She suggests naming your brain to establish a relationship beneficial to your emotional health. Her advice is to talk to your brain before getting out of bed to set up intentions for the day (at least that’s the message I got.) I named my brain Gladys after a step grandmother who  was abrasive and cold-hearted. Nope, I didn’t like her. So, as Faye suggests, I talk to Gladys to keep intrusive thoughts from the dark side on notice that today is not the day for that.

I talked to Gladys a lot today. First, there was bad news about the health of a dear friend. Gladys thought I should go back to bed and cuddle my Cavapoo Betty and pretend I was still at the beach. Right off the bat I told Gladys that we weren’t doing that today. That I was making a list of all the things I wanted to accomplish and  would try to get most of them done.  Walk the Dog was first on the list.  That is something I do first thing every morning any way and gave me the opportunity to strike something off the list early on. I win.

Gladys kept trying to distract me all day:

–By wanting me to cuss out all the bad drivers on the road and get my BP flying high. At the next stop light Gladys and I had a chat. Listen here, Gladys, I’m not going there today so back off.  And the guy behind me in his fancy-ass Tesla can also back off.

–By trying to put me in a dark place of self pity because my BFF is going out of town for 3 MONTHS. I gave Gladys a few minutes to adjust her attitude. I told her this could be an opportunity to reach out to people I like but don’t make time for because I’m always in cahoots with this friend. Good cahoots, mostly.

–By distracting me from spending time playing in my art room. Gladys barks at me to do stuff like wash the stupid Corkcicles (why can’t they go in the daggone dishwasher?) They pile up until there are no clean ones available and I have to buy more. At least more of the wine glass style. But I got the best of Gladys on one of the items on my List today. Last week at the beach I created some collages that I thought were fun and cool. (By the way, don’t ask your husband for his opinion of your creations.  You’ll want to smack him silly. Just like Gladys. She usually tells me my stuff is crap.) The task was to mat and frame two of the things I worked on from an online class. I got as far as measuring and placing an Amazon order for frames. Another win. Here are the pieces I measured!

This one was from a fun class by an artist that I haven’t been able to find again on YouTube. The substrate is a small cardboard box from a local donut shop. I cut up a children’s book to make the shapes. It is a book I recommend. Maybe not to cut up but to enchant a small child with the illustrations. “The Imaginaries – Little Scraps of Larger Stories” by Emily Winfield Martin.

The second piece started out as just a mish mash of my handmade papers torn into bits of shades of blue and blue-green. Then I went on a walk on the beach and found all kinds of natural treasures washed up on the sand. I gathered as many as I could hold in both hands and took them home for fodder. Note to self – using Krazy Glue instead of a glue stick is not recommended. My fingers stayed glued together until my husband came home and got out the acetone.

There is one area that Gladys is especially good at – WORRYING. And I’m usually not able to convince her to stop because everything I worry about doesn’t happen.  So that’s a good thing, right? There’s a Chinese proverb I love: “That the birds of worry and care fly over your head, this you cannot change, but that they build nests in your hair, this can prevent.”  Too often I have nests in my nests.

The dog ate a hearing aid. Will it kill her? Lithium battery recovered.

The dog ate my retainer. This sounds like a 13 year old’s excuse for a lost appliance. What actually happened is I had some kind of violent dream about my mouth and I ripped my retainer out in the middle of the night. No dog in her right mind would pass up chewing such a personal item from her owner. If she hid it like she does other forbidden stolen items, I can’t find it in the usual spots. And I don’t know how long it takes for a bougie designer dog to poop out a 3” piece of plastic.

And I wonder, is there a reason to replace the retainer? I paid about $300 for it 10 years ago.  I’m sure with tariffs it’ll cost a lot more now. How fast do teeth go back to hiding behind each other? I’m 80. Can I count on 5 to 10 more years of straight (ish) teeth without the retainer that has been around the world with me.  Gladys is really fussing with that one and I can’t get her to stop nagging about calling the dentist

UPDATE: The cleaning person found the retainer on the floor behind the toilet. I can’t describe the look on her face when she told me. I had no explanation.

Speaking of China (see above), I forgot to tell Gladys to not let me order any more stuff from Instagram. Five days ago I clicked on a picture of a cute dress labeled Nordstrom Clearance. It was a great price so I clicked to order one. I immediately saw the receipt was from highsilence.com based in Hong Kong. Right away I checked the terms and conditions on the website and read that if you cancel before the order is shipped they will issue a refund. Within 5 minutes I emailed their customer support and said I wanted to cancel the order and they could verify the time stamp of my email and see that the dress could not possibly have shipped in 5 minutes. Five emails back and forth they denied my request for various reasons. Today, 5 days later, they notified me that the order has been shipped from Scotland (what the what?) and if I don’t like the dress I can return it and get a refund by mailing it to HONG KONG at my expense. Wanna bet the cost to return it would be far higher than what I paid for the dress? In about 3 months I’ll receive my cheap polyester dress after it’s been held up in Scotland and US Customs for a long time.

Of course, most people might see the site name right at the top of the ad. I only zeroed in on NORDSTROM CLEARANCE.

I’ve got to have a serious talk with Gladys about this. But will she ever learn? I’ll keep trying. I won’t give up on talking some sense into Gladys.

Bless her heart.