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Renee CK

writer, editor, tweetable http://twitter.com/chicskirt

I'm a fun girl who's on a quest to figure it all out. I'm cynical but living the dream- I'm not sure how that happened exactly. Follow along in my blog for fun, mayhem, and merriment. There's never a dull day! (Or, go download my book!)...

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Driving Zen

getting from point a to point b

Yesterday I observed…

* the po po pulling out of someone’s driveway- and that another remained talking to two people in the garage

* a woman in a tube top mowing the lawn on an old riding lawn mower

* the speed limit

* the youth minister from our church stopping at the same stop sign I was at

* that a lot of pieces of property are up for sale

* that the house down the street from me looks almost complete on the outside

* that my dog was not doing his impersonation of a speed bump

I observed all these things because I did one simple thing- I turned off my radio.  It was that 3 minute period just before the hour that is loaded with advertisement (and I know, they have to pay for air time) and all I was doing was trying to find something that wasn’t someone yelling at me that they have the best deal on __________ or talking extremely fast about the 4.9 percent a.p.r. added to the final sale total plus the additional…

I like to have noise around me.  We have a watchman TV mounted to our kitchen cabinets and though I’m never fully watching anything, I usually have it on when I’m in the kitchen. I like the noise.  I remembered this when I was driving.  I don’t have quiet.  I try to avoid it when I can.

So, with my radio off, I decided to piss off the person on my bumper getting ready to sit in my backseat as I drove the speed limit. (I may need to suspend my membership in the lead foot of America club)  I listened to my engine revving up and slowing down as I changed gears. (The zen of driving a stick would be a whole ‘nother post.)  I took time to come to full and complete stops and count to 5 as if there were a police officer behind me. 

And I thought.

I thought about all the things around me because I had nothing distracting me.  No singing Alecia Keys at the top of my lungs.  No NPR making me feel like I’m in a fly infested orphanage in Ruwanda. (Or guilty for not having room in my life for 2 or 3 of those sweet children who need a forever home.)  I thought that if my children were in the car with me, we could actually talk to each other. Okay, I guess I can’t claim that I never turn off my radio. I am very deliberate about doing it when I pick the kids up from school when I ask them how their day went.  But still, after the “what did you learn” and “who did you play with on the playground” answers are over, I could dig deeper.

In my Carrie Bradshaw way, I had to wonder “why do we have to have noise to fill the quiet?”

Enjoy!
Renée