Oceans, Mountains, and a new Snorkel

Hi. My name is Tishabug, and I'm a scaredy-cat.  err.. scaredy-bug?

When anyone suggests, in even the slightest of passings, that I should try something new or go even a step outside my comfort zone, my initial, internal reaction goes something like this:

"No."

Then, thank goodness, my sanity kicks in a little, and counters with a more logical reaction,  something like this:

"Heck to the bazillion-plus nos!"

Unfortunately, my Mommabug brought me up better than that. So my *third* internal reaction takes me into pep talk mode, trying to determine what is truly the worst thing that is likely happen (usually nothing too awful) and whether I'll regret not trying it later. (Probably.)  

And then, there's still a reasonably decent chance I'll talk myself out of it, especially if there's no one to do it with--at least, noone who I can trust not to laugh (too hard).

Nonetheless, I do find that I have to occasionally, grudgingly give in to adventures that will expand my horizons.  Because, as it turns out, this is necessary to maintain my masquerade as a Normal Person. Also, sometimes, I give in just to make the B.H.E. shut up about it.

And since I have to give in, I try to put all the "try" I can muster behind it, and go in as whole-hog body and soul (but not so much pocketbook - I'm pretty cheap) as I can.

The latest adventure I've let myself be talked into is SCUBA certification.  

Despite enjoying a good pool swim, and having a half-bajillion (give or take 3) Caribbean snorkeling trips under my belt, being out in any natural body of water alarms me.  

But many friends have suggested SCUBA, and I've often thought it would be nice to get even closer to the magical worlds we see from the surface…  And then…  B.H.E. found a Groupon.  (Truly, I ask you, who can resist a good Groupon?)  So SCUBA lessons it is.

It's been an intense week, with about 10-12 class hours and 6 pool hours crammed into 3 weeknights (after a full day at the office),  and 5 open water dives scheduled for 2 sessions this weekend… but the feeling of accomplishment is pretty awesome.  I even bought my own mask and "dry" snorkel--a million times better than the cheapos we usually get offered on snorkel tours. And they match! Who knew a new snorkel could be this exciting?

Today was the first set of open water dives:  About 3-4 hours in a very murky lake, doing a series of skills at various depths.   Even after modest success in the pool, I was nervous.  But we went, I did it, the instructor (who knew I was pretty nervous) even said I did a good job, and was quite proud of me.

I thought I'd gone a little off on a couple of the skills… but after talking to the others in the class, it sounds like I didn't come off any worse than they did.   

   In fact, the only notable snafu - the only point where I slowed the rest of the class,  came after the dives were done.  In the climb (in full gear) up from the shore to the parking lot (have I mentioned Texas is in a multi-year drought, so the water level is insanely low?),  I fell.  And then I faltered.  

And finally my wobbly post-SCUBA legs and top-heavy gravitational configuration just didn't want to carry all that weight up the dusty Slope.  

More like sandy Hillside.  

A Really Steep Rocky, Pebbly hillside.

As in, "When the heck did Texas grow a Mountain?!?!?" 

Nonetheless, I passed today's dives.

So as long as I pass the final dive tests tomorrow, I'll be an ANDI certified diver, allowed to to dive 100 feet into the wonders of our planet's inner space.  I will have proved I can do this horrifically scary thing, and then, thank goodness, I'll never have to do this scary thing again.  

But I probably will.  I really should go see what those Caribbean conchs look like up-close in their natural habitat. And it turns out, it's pretty peaceful down there, where humans can't talk.  Besides, we found a really good deal on a trip to St Lucia, that includes all the diving we can take.

 I just hope mountain-climbing won't be on the final.

Pertaining to Long Words

My name is Tishabug, and I'm a wordaholic. 

I love words nearly as much as I love books. 

I love how words look, how they feel in my mouth, the power they hold to reveal or conceal, how, short or long, a single word can become a whole story in itself.   

  Over the years, I've picked up new and interesting words from signs, by listening, through reading (rather a lot), from daily word emails, and as co-captain of the Terre Haute North Vigo High School state championship SpellBowl team. (Why, yes, it is quite appropriate to bow.)  

I've even been known to make up a word or two in my time.

 I don't often, if ever, use most of the interesting words I've collected. As much as they delight me, I have also learned the  value of speaking plainly and clearly -- to eschew obfuscation of my oral intent via sesquipedalian declamations.  

A fancy words just isn't very useful if the person you're talking to isn't crystal clear on it's meaning and connotation.

So I continue to collect words in silence.  Some are big, some are simple, some delight me in their appropriateness, their puniness, or that just look, when written out, very much like or opposite from their meaning.  Sometime, I even look at word I've known for decades,  and find that truly looking at it on the written page, it seems all of a sudden alien.

One of my favorite words came my way from the book Crazy English, by  Richard Lederer:   

Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian

This is certainly one of the most delightful words I've ever met.

First, it's impossible not to smile at the utter silliness of its pieces and parts. I can just see hippopotamuses (or is it hippopotami?) and monsters, quipping and skipping joyfully around a sundial. 

Second, speak it.  Say it out loud.  Feel it roll around your mouth like a month-old puppy let out on the fresh grass after a long afternoon in his crate.  It makes the mouth unabashedly happy.

Now, consider the appropriateness of its definition. It's an adjective meaning "pertaining to extremely long words." How perfect is a word that defines its very self!

Finally, consider all of these as you look at the word on the typed screen.  Notice how it starts all big and wide and round, and roly-poly, just as it sounds, proudly showing off its excessive width.  Then as it nears the end, it squishes tighter together, trying to make room for every last letter, holding its breath to fit those last letters in before it runs out of space.

Yes indeed, it's a Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian delight.

 Just thinking on this word is, in spite of myself, bringing a little up-curved grin to the side of my mouth.

But, for all that, I'm glad I never faced this word in SpellBowl competition. The sudden appearance of 150 imaginary quipping monsters and hippopotami (or is it -muses?) would surely have instigated an official challenge from our team nemesis, those unimaginative arch-rivals from Bloomington South.

Reading Like a Velociraptor

I've always been a voracious reader.  

I love that adjective here. Voracious. Try moving your mouth around it's delightfully vicious syllables.  Now think of a Jurassic Park-style velociraptor attacking a book with his long, sharp, hungry teeth… ripping it to shreds, devouring it, grinning with the anticipation of a sated appetite as every bite goes down his craw.

That's how I read. I devour books with eager, hungry abandon:  getting what I want or need out of the book, not worrying if the odd bit or corner or sentence falls along the wayside. I eat each book up, feeding my hunger for stories, for knowledge, for understanding, for escape.

And yet, I've always struggled with literature classes, and continue to struggle with literary criticism or analysis.  I rarely come up with the "right" answers in class, and, more importantly, find that I just don't really care. 

 The best part of books, to me, is that they leave openings for the imagination to fill in the blanks and create the pictures.  A book is like a conversation: shaped as much by the nature of the listener/reader as by the words of the talker/writer.  The writing and storytelling of the author are certainly important, but their meaning for me, the reader, is shaped as I read by my own life experiences, sometimes even by the time and place I read any given sentence.  

Perhaps it's time to finally get around to finding a book club, to give me the extra excuse to find more time to read. 

Except for that part where I don't actually like to  discuss or critique books with a bunch of strangers, because it is a little too much like baring my soul...  

Maybe I can just bare my voracious velociraptor fangs instead. 

Or , you know, distract them with wine and cookies.

Some Good Reads...

Recent favorites :  The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern;  A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Currently reading : Little, Big by John Crowley

What good books have you read lately?

Golden Aspirations

The Olympics are something magical, and I am just another junkie this week, eating up every carefully choreographed "local girl does good" story.

in 1984, I imagined myself vaulting into history in Mary-Lou Retton's star-spangled gymnastics uniform.

 In the  early 90s, I was star-struck the evening I ran into figure skater Debi Thomas in the ladies' room at a B-52s concert. 

I've watched Misty May and Kerri Walsh bring beach volleyball into national prominence, over more than a decade.

I've learned the basics of Curling.... from a TV morning show host.

I've watched every medal ceremony starring an American athlete that I can find and stay awake for.

And I. Eat. It. Up.

During those podiums where Americans win gold, I move my lips and debate with myself:   When I am up there someday,  will I quietly  mouth the words, or sing them loud and proud (if out of key).

But here's my secret:  I will never actually be on that podium.  

I can give you a million reasonable excuses why:  I'm uncoordinated, I stink at sports, I overthink too much. Heck, at 38 I'm just plain too old for most of them.

But the reality is, that competition is  just not my thing. I just don't like working at beating other people. I don't like video games that pit me against a fellow player. I've never been much for Monopoly.

Don't get me wrong:  When put it competitive situations, I can and do fight for myself or my team - I've won plenty (especially where logical thought is involved), and lost more than a few.  

But competition begins to turn many otherwise good people, myself included, into someone ugly. Someone who wants to take the advantages at the expense of the competition.   Someone who puts too much store by "winning", and loses sight of the true goal of the competition, that we are all really only competing against ourselves.

So when these athletes compete, and especially manage to remain full of a sense of good sportsmanship and fun during the process, even, occasionally, at the expense of a win, I admire them that much deeper.  I watch the Olympics less for the medals, and more for the joy of thinking myself something better, something stronger, something more capable of handling both victory and defeat with grace.. of being something more than I am.  The Olympics are Hope.

And, yeah, if I ever should win Gold (overthinking as a sport? anyone?)...
I'm totally going to belt out my nation's anthem on the podium.

Unless they make me wear spandex on international TV.

A Question of Questions

These are the thinks I think... and then overthink...

A favorite TV series of mine was recently brought to mind.  If you looked beneath this particular show's surface of alien makeup and special effects, you found it was less about seeking answers of deep space, and more about seeking answers deep within humanity and within one's self.

In this particular case, that underlying deepness focused on three deceptively simple questions: 

Who are you?   What do you want?   Where are you going? 

Three short questions we've all answered a million times, often with little to no thought at all:

   I'm Helen's daughter.     I'd like a cold iced tea, please.     I'm off to the beach.     A reader.     Hope.     The cafeteria.     Perrian's wife.     A friend.     The office.     That shy girl in pigtails.     Creature comforts.     To infinity, and beyond.    Nobody special.   To be noticed.    The library.

Slowly through the course of the show,  a character of dubious origins, a sort of "fixer",  asked these three questions of each character.   Episodes, or even seasons, later,  the answers they declared developed an eerie tendency to come true.  

As you might expect, it was rarely to their benefit. 

In fact, the only good outcome came for the junior character who, after many refusals to answer, finally suggested he wanted to see this shady character's head on a pike. 

My original intent in starting this post was to try to come up with and record some of my own answers.   Then, as I began the exercise in navel-gazing, I found myself wondering: can any of us really truly understand what the answers to any of these are, in a long-term, big-picture, whole-life sense?  What is the purpose in even asking these questions?

Besides,  the very act of sharing would cause me to censor my answers, to pick the best of me, to mask the worst, to self-censor, and to otherwise cleanse for an audience, whether intentionally or not. 

Further, I wonder, wouldn't it be somewhat futile to try to write down ideas in a way that would be necessarily be limited by the boundaries and prejudices of the English language?

Perhaps it is  better to keep the reflections of the past light, and instead to look forward, to move on, to "just go," to stop wasting time wondering and defining, and just to live.  

So I'll just leave you with a random sampling of applicable answers....  and while you're here, please do share your own random, meaningful, or entertaining (but true) sets of answers in the comments.

___________________

Who am I?    A girl. A woman. A daughter. A ponderer. The Dred Pirate Roberts. A tester. A geek. A wife. A dog-owner.

What do I want?     A good book. Ice cream. Peace on Earth. Two million dollars. Friends. A red-ryder bb gun. A good laugh.  Financial security. To make someone giggle uncontrollably. 

Where am I going?   To bed.

Are We There Yet, Dad?

       In many ways I am still that little Tishabug of the past, trying not to cross the imaginary line in the backseat of the faux-wood-panelled station-wagon (so my Dorkfaced brother won't whine that I'm on *his* side of the car),  popping her head out from behind a large book to ask "are we there yet?"  
        I've asked this on hundreds of such trips, by station-wagon, plane, bus, train, bicycle, and boat. (Sometimes staying merely days, others lasting years. I've lived, so far, in 6 US states, and even 1 foreign country.)  And still usually from behind the pages of a book (or, more recently, from behind the cover of my trusty nook.)   For years I've pushed forwards to the "next" destination:  a degree, a promotion, marriage, a better company, a higher title, a larger salary.  Then, one day, I found I'd "arrived..." but was too stressed and tired to enjoy the benefits.  
       It was then that I finally began to understand there is no 'There.'  Life is an ongoing road trip.  Focusing on the destination misses the point, which can be found only in the journey itself.  The happy accidents of the roadside stands, wildflowers, unfortunately worded signs, and delightfully cheesy tourist traps are, perhaps, themselves the point. So I've resolved to slow my speed, take the byways, roll down the windows, put my feet on the dash, stop for funny signs, and enjoy the ride!  

Meet Tishabug

So. After years of writing in journals for no one but myself, and posting the occasional short blurb to facebook, I've finally built up some courage to put myself out there a little more, and start a blog. 

       The name, Flight of the Tishabug, comes from a childhood endearment that my parents dropped long ago, when I probably insisted I was far too old for such a babyish nickname.  Yet, in my head, the name has lived on in a parallel world, a world with it's own language, it's own reality.  In that world, I still think of myself as the wide-eyed, painfully shy little pig-tailed little wallflower called Tishabug.   Tishabug is the fly on the wall: listening, observing, taking it all in.  She's the industrious ant of Aesop's fable, planning ahead for the rainy day, yet living with the grasshopper who prefers to put playtime first. But she still tries to find time to fly for the pure joy of flight, to sing loud, off-key joyful noises.


      So come on along through the good and bad as she explores the world - the hope, the loneliness, the joys, the fears - share with me as Tishabug forges diligently onwards, with The Nellypup and B.H.E. (Best. Husband. Ever.) at her/my side.  I hope to write of the adventures we share, the world I observe, the paths of my ponderings, and the words that describe it all--even when those words exist only in the imaginary dictionary in my brain.