Playing solitaire on real cards

So, over the course of the past two days, my solitaire playing has showed me how addictive it can be. I went over to talk to Marian (WHO IS BACK AT WORK!) and she was busy putting out a computer center fire, so I sat down at the extra computer behind the desk, and you guessed it, started a game of solitaire.

While I was on the reference desk today, for one hour instead of the usual two, I played solitaire.

On the way home from work, I bought a pack of cards. They're the pink kind, for October being breast cancer awareness month, but I bought them because everything in my apartment is pink. My laptop is pink, my cell phone is pink, my wireless mouse is pink. Even my Kleenex is pink. (I only buy pink Kleenex.)

And I opened the pack of cards and smelled them. They smelled like cucumbers. I had to laugh. They are not only pink, but they have ribbons on the cards. Like inside the clubs and spades and diamonds...pink ribbons. I thought it was really silly and thought, that will be distracting when I'm playing...there's also a little card inside instead of telling you how to play cards, it gives you tips on how to detect breast cancer, make sure you get your mammograms and do your breast self-exams.

I came home, and called the person in my family who calls playing solitaire "smoking a cigarette," my mother. When she's stressed or bored, she plays solitaire. With real cards, on the kitchen table, or on her side of my parent's bed.

We talked about next week (the sinus surgery upcoming on Wednesday), that she's bringing extra pillows (so I can sleep sitting up), and I told her to bring her cards, we could play Canasta. And while we talked, I shuffled the cards and made piles of the cards on the bed.

In an episode of "The Good Wife" this year, a lawyer said to the lawyers of the Good Wife team (I'm not remembering their names), "things are dead." (well, that was the essence of the quote.) But that ideas, bytes, bits, they are more important than a bowl, a carrot.

And all those commercials for pre-made dinners? That say cutting up food is drudgery? They lie! I like cutting up food. It's relaxing. It's empowering. I'm making something. (In other words, don't buy me a food processor.)

What did I do after I got off the phone with my mother? I figured out how to play solitaire again (I had to use this e-how video) and I dealt cards all evening as I watched Mary Tyler Moore, Dick Van Dyke, Bob Newhart, and The Odd Couple. But here's the thing. It wasn't just playing the game (which I lost more than I won--I'm not sure I even won a single game, to tell you the truth), it was holding the cards in my hands. The sound the cards made when I shuffled them. The feel of the cards in my hands.

I can tell you now, if given the choice, I would rather play solitaire on cards than on the computer. I don't care if I win. I don't care that I got 49 points in 140 seconds. I don't care how many games I've won, and what my highest score is. That is NOT why I play. I play to have something to do with my hands when I'm bored or stressed.

I think I summed up my computer solitaire addiction perfectly today when I said to Marian, this is one of the things that I'm doing because I'm anxious and it's not doing a bit of good.

Playing solitaire on the computer at two thirty in the morning...

Yeah, so if I play endless games of computer free cell or solitaire, you can guess that I am in anxiety h-e-double hockey sticks.

Called my parent's house this morning as I woke up from bad dreams around 10 a.m. (Thank you God that I work at 1 p.m.)

So, what are you anxious about, my dad asked.

• my car
• the surgery (for deviated septum -- nose sinus surgery, Wednesday the 19th)
  
• my mother coming to visit; (my apartment is SO NOT READY)
• getting into grad school
• what if I don't get into grad school
• things I'll miss if I do get into grad school, like how well the Penguins are doing.
• Sidney Crosby (so you can imagine my GLEE that he has been cleared for contact today!!!)
• moving
• Mother Goose (where I sing to babies and their mamas)
  

Yesterday I had 64 folks (babies and adults) in my 10 am session. That's like performance, making sure you are projecting to the folks in the back of the double room. In the 11 am session, I was off (don't know why...) (um, anxiety, um, having 64 folks in session 1) and so were they. It was like doing story time to a wall. I didn't let them know THIS IS PARTICIPATORY and even though we're four weeks in, it was almost all new folks so there weren't people modeling "this is what we do when she reads the book about animal sounds." (You make the animal sounds!!)

My dearest friend, Marian the Librarian, is a ghost that I see once in a blue moon...she can't seem to get healthy!! And she was my sounding board at work for years! So then I started going out with the ladies who lunch (my nickname for them) and then the soy allergy came ker-blow into that, I eat in, and now I've gotten to a point where I just read on my lunch hour, so I try to not go at noon, I go at 12:30 so that I miss the people that sit and talk while eating. Yes, I am going into myself. It's bad.

I need to find out WHAT I can eat at some of the restaurants the ladies go to. B/c I need to spend some lunch money--the way you get to know what's going on, and the way to kvetch about it, at our library, is to go out for lunch.