Thursday Thirteen

1. So far, I have determined that my word for 2023 is not calm or peace or anything like that. It is tired. As I told a friend yesterday, I have been tired since our adventure at Christmas, followed by the burst pipes at my little piece of rental property, and the shocking shower episodes. Follow this with my efforts to try to get stuff in order to take to the tax man, add to that what seems to be some kind of lingering sinus thing, my chronic pain issues, some family worries, and not sleeping well, and you get, well, tired.

2. I do hope that is not going to be the speed and mantra of this entire year. If it is, I will be a worn-out frazzled old lady in another month.

3. Earlier, I was reading that there have been Sasquatch sightings in my county. I found a listing for one in the northwestern part of the county (Buchanan for the locals) in 2003. Virginia doesn't have many visits from Sasquatch, although the thing I was reading earlier insisted that an entire family of them lives close by and offers us gifts, if we're on the same frequency.

4. Of course, reading about Sasquatch made me wonder about UFO sightings. Couldn't find but one in my county (over in the same area, in 2005), but lots of folks in the nearby city apparently see odd things in the sky. I saw a UFO once when I was a child, but I've not seen anything since.

5. I have seen ghosts, though. I've seen lots of ghosts. The Googler lists loads of sightings in Virginia, but none in Botetourt. I find that hard to believe. We're an old county. We just had our 250th birthday! Sure, there are ghosts here. (I know, because I've seen them!)

6. But I'm moving off into wackadoodle territory, so let's step back and start this odd musing for Thursday Thirteen over again. Like, where does the word wackadoodle come from? Apparently, it originated in the mid-1800s and meant someone you didn't take seriously. The word ultimately comes from wacky. Calling someone a wackadoodle is an insult, but it's milder than calling a person an idiot, though they basically mean the same thing.

7. Tuesday night, I went out into the cold to look for the green comet. I could not find it. It may be that we had too many high clouds, though I could see the brighter stars. Or it may be that my rural area is no longer as dark as it once was. As a child, I could see the Milky Way at night, but I haven't seen it in some time when I've been out stargazing.

8.  A few minutes ago, I learned about the OASIS Scale, which measures anxiety. It's free and you can find it here. I have anxiety and have experienced panic attacks. I've been known to leave a shopping cart in the middle of Walmart and walk out. Grocery stores are difficult for me, for some reason.

9. The book I found this information in is called Unf#ck Your Brain, by Dr. Faith G. Harper. Her website has some free .pdf downloads for various things if you're interested. I am listening to the book, which is a mistake. The book has good information in it, but it is full of curse words, for one thing, which I didn't think I would mind but frequency of curse words becomes irritating after a while, and for another, the author is the reader, and she doesn't know why she placed periods at the ends of her sentences when she wrote them. I may have been better off to have read this book instead of listening to it.

10. Since listening to this book, I have been rethinking my own use of foul language. I swear a lot, by my own standards, but I generally just say f#ck. I don't use many other words, but I think after listening to this book, I am going to try to limit my own use of profanity. We can consider that a New Year's goal, maybe.

11. Do you ever wonder what we're on this earth for? If it is to learn a lesson about something, then do we die as soon as the lesson is learned? If we have free will, why do we need to learn lessons? Or are we just here?

12. I have always had issues with the laws of attraction (especially as laid out in The Secret), because it indicates that one invites disasters into his or her life. For example, if a plane crashes, everyone on that plane had some secret desire to be in a plane crash. Really? Do all of these people who are shot have some secret attraction to bullets? Really? While I can see that it might be valuable to seek out others who think like you, or who have similar interests, I don't think that much of what life throws at you are things you have attracted. Sometimes sh*t is just sh*t, and it stinks (and sometimes a bad word is the best word that works).

13. Growing old is nature's joke on humanity. Or maybe it is payback for the hell we have wrought upon this old Earth. It certainly isn't fun, or funny, though.

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 792nd time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.