Very late retreat blogging

Last night theCSO and I were up very late talking to our newest set of couple friends. (Yes, we have achieved couple friendom. Everybody is cool with everybody else. This has been unseen in our social lives since Jennifer Beautiful broke up with her husband Emergency Backup Mark. We hearted Emergency Backup Mark because he could sit at one end of the table and solve the world's problems with theCSO while CC and Jennifer Beautiful could discuss girl stuff like whether Kennedy was the last US president to really understand economics.)

Anywho, she was up very late and is spending today taking a bunch of YRUUers through a ropes course. She has been doing a bunch of stuff with YRUU kids, including some memorable nights at the retreat sitting up talking about clothes, cute boys and how weird parents are. (And after awhile, CC let the kids discuss THEIR interests...)

I did take a break from doing YRUU stuff to go to a creative writing workshop where we were doing a sort of writing-as-therapy thing. In general, asking CC to write about herself is like putting her in a pulpit or taking her to a sushi buffet. But I think I actually wrote some neat stuff. Here's two samples of what I wrote, prompt first:

Introduce yourself

Hello, a pretty conventional greeting. I'm a pretty conventional girl, or at least I try to be. I wasn't always, once sub-conventional, but I've improved a lot recently. I can pass.

How do you do? I'm proper, you see, raised in McLean riding horses and all that. For awhile I dressed in self-consciously torn, dirty sneakers, trying to be hipper. But now I've embraced who I am. Torn, dirty sneakers are one culture, leather pumps are mine.

Oh, I'm much the same, and yourself? Used to, people would ask how I was doing and I would say "fine." But I noticed that sometimes I was lying. So now I say "Much the same." It's funny and it's always true.

Mighty fine weather we're having. How 'bout them skins? I'm sometimes uncomfortable in social situations, but I try not to show it. I brazen my way through with conventionalities...

I'm Suzyn, by the way I spell it funny and have since I was a kid. It's spelled the normal way on my birth certificate, but Susan Smith is awfully dull, don't you think? There's such a thing as too conventional.

But enough about me, how about you?





Talk about the concept of idleness


Idleness!

Goodness, don't scare me like that!

I'm not good at idleness, not good at downtime. To me, the prospect is scary.

When I imagine free time, I imagine trouble and unpleasant thoughts whooshing in like the red sea to fill the void.

Our minister talks about mindfullness. I fully admit that I suck at it. I can't sit through Joys and Concerns without checking my blackberry for new email.

But as scary as the concept is, surely I do relax sometimes. I watch "House," I read trasky mysteries, God knows I talk on the phone.

But being idle? Truly idle? Sitting-there-contemplating-the-world idle?

What do I look like, the Dalai Lama?



CC

Ps. I am fascinated with the concept of faking one's own death. For ideas on survival afterwards, click the link.