Free Your Mind: Offload Mental Clutter!

Like I said on the supers thread, I've got the prepositions locked in my brain, and I need the space back. So here goes: aboard about above across after against along amid among around at before behind below beneath beside between beyond but by down during except for from in into like near of off on over past since through throughout to toward under underneath until unto up upon with within without. 

Oh...the quadratic equation. Don't need that either. x= the negative of b, plus or minus b squared minus 4ac, all over 2a. 

Hmmm...I'm sure I can come up with more. 

Just one question. We're not throwing these in the trash, are we? Can we recycle?

Since my DD just joined a sorority, how about I unload the Greek alphabet that now keeps running through my head from my college days?  Alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta, iota, kappa, lambda, mu, nu, xi, omicron, pi, rho, sigma, tau, upsilon, phi, chi, psi, omega (all of which I remember to the tune of "Mademoiselle from Armentières", for reasons unbeknownst to me).  Now I can quit thinking about that and replace it in my mind with "Jesse's Girl"!

Now, I'm letting go of my obsession with 'between' vs. 'among'; 'less' vs. 'fewer'; 'whether' vs. 'if'; 'lie, lay, lain, lying' vs. 'lay, laid, laid, laying'; 'he and I' vs. 'him and me'; plural vs. possessive; and 'i' before 'e' except after 'c' (and words that say 'a' as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh') so that I can just absorb what I'm reading/hearing rather than dissect it.

I was going to unload one other thing but decided to keep it in my brain after all because it has become a private joke that can quickly bring a smile.  So this one I'm just sharing but keeping a copy for myself.  On a friend's fridge we saw a test paper her son had brought home from elementary school where he had to read a word and then choose the proper definition from the second list by placing the letter in the space beside the word.  Mind you, he made the best choice available.  It is the teacher from whom we continue to get a laugh.  The word was "outwit" and the definition was "to be clever than someone else", as if 'clever' were a comparative form of a word.  So, using her definition, would you use it like this: "Sally was clev, but Sam was clever."  We now frequently praise one another by saying, "Well done, Honey!  You were very clev," which always prompts the response, "But not clever than someone else!"

I feel better now.

burn out (but the post limits would refuse to take most of it anyway)

I mean Patrick Pearse - The Fool, immediately followed by Portia's "quality of mercy is not strained" immediately followed by John Milton's "nathless he so endured" immediately followed by Walter de la Mare's "The Listeners", a couple of sections (as Gaeilge) of Peig, "The Pirate king" lyrics, the "poor wand'rin one" lyrics, "the love song of J Alfred Prufrock", more French and English karaoke lyrics than I even want to think about not to mention "crazy signs" I WISH I could get out of my head, phone numbers of people who've been dead for years, codes for credit cards DH had over twenty years ago, "old" phone numbers going back over twenty years plus all the interim ones since for friends but even for professional reasons

but I was told the best way to stave off dementia and Alzheimer's was to train my memory

now if someone could only train it to turn it off  

then I could apply the lesson to the monster when he's in hyper mode

Hugs

Sadhbh 

I don't do socks any more since the kids' feet are all as big as DH's now.  The kids wrote their initials on their socks with permanent marker, but I still make them sort socks.  As for mental clutter, I have a lot of useless stuff in my brain that I'll never do anything with.  All the standard operating procedures from previous jobs, 10 years' worth of medical terminology, TV show trivia, silly songs.  Sometimes I feel like the female version of Cliff Claven.

I have nothing to offload, I'm closer to senile dementia than I previously thought, arghhh

Thanks Ellen!

BTW, pairing learning with music helps some children learn. That's why we do a lot of it in preschool. With me everyone, A, B, C, D, E, F, G to the tune of Twinkle, twinkle little star.

Your welcome. 

Clev.

freaky mind sameness is gone. I love my clicker! No more scratches on my car door!!

My stand against the man is my refusal to use the self checkouts. Although, it's more from the fact that they hate me and like to thumb their electronic little noses at me. Scan, scan, scan...nothing. The clerk comes over, and boom...works fine. I hate those things!

And Sam, LOL! I never really thought about the shake and bake thingies. Funny!

for thinking up this great post.

Ellen,

Only you could start everyone talking about SOCKS!

And yes, I have a mind full of clutter, but wives and moms have to!

My gripe is that I am a person who loves sauces and dressings, etc. And my whole family is PLAIN. They want their burgers plain, their sandwiches PLAIN. ALL PLAIN!

So every time I go to a driveup window, I have to STRESS PLAIN-PLAIN-PLAIN. And always have to check the order to see if their sandwiches are PLAIN.

Why is that my job?? Mine isn't PLAIN.

Oh, and I discovered sock rings about a decade ago and no longer have to worry about matching my dh's socks!

Lyn

I just sang along to Johnny Horton's Battle of New Orleans and knew every word. Brought back so many memories of my first job working as a waitress and the boss who was a Johnny Horton fan. I don't think I want to purge that. I think I can sing North to Alaska too.

However I meant to comment on self-checkouts which I hate with a passion. I figure It's good for me to stand in line . I hate that I can't even buy a carton of milk without  something going wrong at self-checkouts.  I have tried them in lots of stores and none of them like me so I return the favor.

Lyn, sock rings only work if the wearers will put them on their socks when they take them off, before throwing them into the wash!  I tried them and found that I had to sit down and pair up everyone's dirty socks prior to washing them because everyone "forgot".  Eventually, I decided I'd rather sit and pair up clean socks than have to sit amidst the odor of dirty ones.  How did you convince your family to make use of them?

Orchid, getting rid of mental clutter is, sincerely, a good mental health technique.  When you're home, you should be able to forget about work stuff.  You can't worry about everything all the time and keep your blood pressure down (not to mention retain your sanity)!

Kaelee, I guess I'm the only person who LOVES self-checkouts and who uses them almost to the exclusion of the regular ones.  Of course, that could be because I have the Joe Btfsplk black cloud over my head (for those of you old enough to remember the comic strip Lil Abner -- and, no, that's not how most of us in Kentucky live, thank you very much!) when it comes to check-outs.  I swear to you that, when I have to go to a cashier, I take an inordinantly long time surveying them first to determine which line has fewer people/fewer items, which cashier is moving faster, etc.  Inevitably, however, whichever line I get into develops a problem almost as soon as I enter it and get hemmed in by someone behind me.  The cash register runs out of tape, the cashier has to do a price check for someone or get a check approval or ask the manager why something isn't ringing up like the customer in front of me thinks it should or needs to know whether they can accept a coupon, or the customer wants to question him/her on the price that was charged for each item or... the list is endless, as is my wait.  My luck in this regard has become legend among our family members and circle of friends, so much so that I warn people I meet that if they ever see me out at a store in line, regardless of whether I'm the only person in it, to get in another line unless they want to be there all day.  And I've even seen it happen that people I know do that and manage to get out before me! 

So, I almost always use the self-service checkout and am a much happier and calmer person.  The one exception was one day when the machine kept telling me to take out the last item bagged, put it back on the scanner, and wait.  Turned out, the lady at the machine next to me had set her purse on my scale, which was throwing everything off since they determine by weight whether you've rung up everything in your bags.  Other than that, I have had only rare and quickly remedied minor glitches.

Ellen, try thinking about "The Song that Doesn't End".  That one should help you wipe out all traces of "Jesse's Girl"!

Perhaps it's because I was a cashier in a grocery store the summer after I graduated high school (long before scanners) that lousy checkout experiences drive me up the wall.  Here's one of my checkout experiences from the cashier perspective:

My grocery store was having one of the deals where you were entitled to purchase one featured piece of china for a special price for every $30 you spent on groceries.  One week the featured piece would be soup bowls, one week plates, etc.  This particular week, the featured piece was coffee cups, but we were out of them at the time.  Our manager told us to offer to either sign the back of the receipt, which they could bring back later when we'd restocked the cups, or to allow them to substitute another piece that we had available.  (Of course, we had one of each of the pieces glued down on each of the four sides of the display.)

A woman came into my line who was maybe in her late 40's or early 50's and significantly overweight, but that didn't stop her from wearing short shorts and a midriff top that exposed a large expanse of her belly.  So I got a bad feeling right away that she wasn't going to be the most perceptive individual I'd ever dealt with.  The first thing she did was put an egg timer on the belt -- one of hourglass types.  Then she said, "How do those work, anyway?"  I told her about turning it upside down and waiting until the sand runs to the bottom to determine when your egg is done.  She looked at me with the most perplexed expression and said, "How do you get the eggs in there?"  The man behind her in line was visibly amused but attempted to hold it in.  I, of course, was required to try to explain the whole process to her with a straight face.

Then the real fun began.  She wanted to purchase 3 of the coffee cups for her daughter who was getting married.  I explained that we were out and offered her the options.  She said, "Oh, that's okay.  I'll just take the 3 coffee cups."  Hmmm.

I explained, once again, that we were out except for the display, which was not available for sale, and told her she could choose another piece or come back later in the week with her signed receipt.  She said, "No, I'll just go ahead and get the coffee cups now."  Alrighty, then.

Finally, I gave up and said, "Knock yourself out" (or, in truth, something more polite that meant the same thing).  She came back and said, "Oh, there aren't any over there.  Those are all glued down!  How can I get my coffee cups?" 

As I explained the whole options thing to her one more time, the man behind her gave up any pretense at politeness and leaned against the checkout stand, laughing loudly until the tears ran.  After she left, he marveled that she had been able to raise a child to adulthood. 

So, maybe my experiences as a cashier set my expectations and helped form my desire to just check myself out and be done with it without too much human interaction.  That, and my Joe Btfsplk black cloud.

Jv, I can understand the appeal of self-checkouts.  And truly, I worked as a cashier when I was between traveling in Europe and living in Europe.  It made me give up on humanity.  But I still think that supermarkets that offer them are trying to work out how to do away with cashiers.