Squeaky Doors and WD-40

My office door squeaks. It annoys me, but I let it be. Day in and day out, it squeaks. I cringe, I shake my head, I even swear (mildly) but that was all there is to it. I don’t close my door very often so it doesn’t really matter. Or so I thought.

Yesterday was a particularly challenging day. I had to deal with difficult people, make difficult phone calls and deal with personal issues that were taking a toll on me. I had to open and close my door several times and the squeaking just drove me crazy. I could not stand it anymore. Finally, I resolved to deal with it.

I emailed the building administrator and asked them to do something about it. As I was writing the email, I also realized that it was such a small job and all it needs is WD-40 on the hinges. I sent the email anyway.

As I was standing by the door, opening and closing it, trying to find the spot where the actual squeaking occurs, Barry, our engineer, came to me with a can of WD-40 and a smile. He sprayed the hinges, swung the door a few times until the squeaks were almost gone. What a relief!

We have a lot of squeaks in our lives. What are the other things that bug us that we avoid dealing with, just because it bugs us? Why do we drag our feet and just ignore the squeaks? We know what to do and how to deal with them, and for the most part, the solutions are easy - like the WD-40. But, why do we wait?

I just came from a meeting and our boss just spoke of his squeaky door – updating/redoing our main website. Sure, there are many other things that require his time that are more important. But this one’s pretty easy for him. He just did not want to deal with it. I can relate to the look on his face when someone brought the topic out. The thorn’s always been there. He was just ignoring it. Now he promised to deal with it.

Squeaky doors are part of our lives. Whether it’s a phone call, a letter, a thank you note, a doctor’s appointment, the laundry, whatever - we deal with our squeaky doors the same way. We set them aside and try to ignore them, until they hit us in the face and let their presence be known and dealt with.

Some squeaky doors are harmless. Some are not. It’s up to us to ascertain. But then again, we’ll just deal with that later.

I Want My Foreplay!

It’s one of those things. You reach a certain age and life becomes routine. It’s just like sex without foreplay.

I want my foreplay. I want to feel the excitement of what is about to happen. I want to get the goose bumps when a hand touches my skin. I want the anticipation of the ecstasy― the build up of emotion, and the hard work and sweat that go with it. I want my foreplay. I want it back.

I am of course NOT talking about sexual foreplay, literally ― (oh, ye with dirty minds!) I meant foreplay in our daily lives – on everything we do, and how we do them. How many times have we gone into an activity on an “automatic mode”? It just isn’t the same, is it? When we say “been there, done that”, what are we really saying? That it doesn’t matter anymore? That it isn’t exciting anymore and it doesn’t really turn us on? That we’d rather not do it and just sit down and watch TV? Whether work or play, somewhere along the way, we have lost our “foreplay” and a part of ourselves in the process.

Quite sad, really, isn’t it? But as we age, we find ourselves doing things out of rote — mechanical and not emotional — from memory, often without feelings — and not from the heart. Somehow, we’ve lost our muse, we’ve lost our youth, we’ve lost our foreplay.

We humans are creatures of habit. We have our favorite chair, our favorite TV show, our favorite food and day in and day out, we do the same thing. How do we add spice back to our now bland and settled lives? How do we keep the adrenaline going? How do we get our foreplay back?

Well, I’ll think about it after watching my favorite show, sitting on my favorite chair while eating my favorite food….