Guess what I saw yesterday and forgot to include in this post when I published it an hour ago?
Guess what this cat is lying on?
A dog bed!
Guess what new kind of fruit I saw for the first time yesterday?
A mini apple!
Guess what would be a good next line?
“How do you like them apples?”
“Does a mini apple a day keep only short doctors away?”
“Do mini apples come from Minneapolis?”
[your guessed line here]
Guess what bread you use to make an American cheese sandwich?
Guess what is the inside to this greeting card?
Guess what? I will reveal the answer to that question when I get a guess about the inside of that greeting card from one of you!
Guess what I was doing yesterday evening?
You might not have guessed it from those photos, but I was food shopping yesterday evening with my boyfriend Michael at a new-to-us supermarket.
Guess what supermarket it was?
Guess what I was thinking as I took these few photos after food shopping?
Guess what I’m doing today?
I’m going back to work after a two-week vacation in Edinburgh with my son and I’m probably making plane reservations to Minneapolis for my September 21 heart surgery.
Guess what I’m worried about, right now?
I’m letting go of all worries. Guess what you could do with worries, too?
I reacted by googling “Stroop” with my trusty, stroop phone.
Now, I’m not saying that I used “stroop” correctly in that previous paragraph. But doesn’t “stroop” sound like it might mean something that fits there?
The Stroop effect is the finding that naming the color of the first set of words is easier and quicker than the second. In psychology, the Stroop effect is a demonstration of interference in the reaction time of a task.
I’ll name this: that Wikipedia definition of Stroop did not make it easier or quicker for me to identify the stroop I had just seen. Indeed, it interfered in my reaction time finding out what “stroop” meant.
Before I show you photos I took yesterday, I’ll give you this task: take some reaction time to consider what “stroop” sounds like it might mean, to you.
Okay? Ready?
Here are my photos:
No matter what you think stroop might mean, one of those photos does demonstrate stroop. Here’s my second set of words about that: something shown above inspired this entire stroop post.
Would you like to take a guess, before the big stroop reveal?
Whatever stroop set of words you leave in a comment, I hope my reaction time is quick enough.
Thanks to waffles and Wikipedia, to the Stroop effect, to everything else that helped me blog today, and to you — of course! — no matter what your stroopy reactions are to this Stroop post.
As I’ve written about before (like here), I have certain repeating, repetitive dialog exchanges with people, especially my boyfriend Michael (not shown, identified,* in any photos in this almost-two-year blog).
For example, when I am telling Michael a story, this exchange can happen:
Me: Guess what I did then, Michael.
Michael (exaggerated pause, indicating thinking): You cried?
Michael is a very good guesser. Maybe that’s because I’m a very good
And that incorrect guess would show that you’re probably not as good a guesser as Michael, but that’s because
you don’t know me as well as Michael does and/or
I sort of set you up there, didn’t I?
This is what I want to do now in this post. I want you to
Guess what I did yesterday.
If you guessed “cry” there …
YOU’RE RIGHT!**
However, I’m not that impressed by that guess, because I told you I cried in my weird blog post yesterday morning.
Also, I did much more than cry, yesterday. How am I going to tell you, in this post, what I did?
Guess!
What I Did Yesterday: A photojournalistic essay
by Ann
I wrote a blog post in the morning, sitting on a sofa with two cats and a calculator.
Then, I had lunch at a favorite restaurant in Arlington, Massachusetts, USA, with my son Aaron.
Guess how old Aaron (not pictured) is! He’s 16, soon to be 17. Guess what I do, sometimes, when I think about how lucky I am that he still likes having lunch with his mother.
Guess how Aaron feels about my taking photos for this blog! Like Michael, Aaron is not exactly thrilled, but he’s also tolerant of my stopping to capture images I like.
Here are the photos I took, as Aaron and I walked through Arlington after lunch:
Aaron got into one of those shots above. Can you guess which one?
Then, because neither Michael nor Aaron wanted to see a movie I wanted to see, guess what I did next! (There’s a hint, about that, in this post.)
Guess what’s telling me where those hints are, about which movie I saw yesterday. WordPress!
You may not guess this, but I always want to put a “?” at the end of a sentence that begins with “Guess.” Guess who told me not to do that!
My son, Aaron.
Guess what I did when I saw Into The Woods yesterday!
Right now, I am secretly guessing what some of the comments about this post are going to say. Let’s see if I’m RIGHT!**
Any more guesses about what I did yesterday?
Michael, Aaron, and I went into Harvard Square last night.
As I’m looking closely at that last photo, I’m guessing that somebody else wanted to capture a memory of what I was seeing there, last night.
Guess what I did, after I took that picture!
Michael and I dropped Aaron off at Tasty Burger in Harvard Square, so he could join his friends for a sleep-over.
Michael and I went home.
I fell asleep while we were watching “Chopped” (not pictured).
I decided to give my sleep machine another try by wearing one of these masks (pictured previously here and here):
Guess what I did when I had to wear machines in the hospital when I was a little kid!?!?
I never cried then, actually.
Maybe that’s why I love crying so much, now.
Guess what song I’m going to include in this post!
If you guessed a song from Into the Woods ….
You’re WRONG!**
(Did you guess I would find a live version of Seal singing “Don’t Cry” here on YouTube?)
Guess what I’m going to do now!
I’m going to give thanks, of course, to Michael, Aaron, the Madrona Tree Restaurant in Arlington, Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods, Harvard Square, Aaron’s friends, Seal, guessers everywhere, and you — of course! — for reading and guessing here, today.
* Would you like to guess whether Michael is pictured, unidentified, in any photos in this blog?
** If you’ve ever been to Boston’s beautiful baseball stadium/temple Fenway Park any time in the last few decades, you might guess how I came up with that kind of RIGHT and WRONG, here in this non-judgmental blog. If not, I’ll tell you.*** The scoreboard in Fenway Park asks people to guess the number of people attending the game and it reveals, after dramatic pauses, who is WRONG and who is RIGHT.
In yesterday’s post, which had lots of sentences, this was one of them:
Guess where Bernard blogs?
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I love guessing games. I often ask people to guess things, and I enjoy when people ask me to guess, too.
I’m guessing I love guessing games because that was a tradition in my family. When I was growing up, my father, mother, sister, and I would try to guess something somebody was thinking about, by asking Yes or No Questions. For example, my father might say, “Guess who I saw today?” and the game was afoot.
Later, I remember driving with my sister and my young son to visit my mother, and the three of us playing that same game in the car. “Guess what I did last weekend?” Or somebody would start a story, “Something happened … ” and somebody would say, “Wait! Let us guess what it was!”
I think it’s fun to guess. Although — as I’ve written about before (guess how many times!) — guessing things, without balancing that with reality testing, can sometimes lead to confusion, errors, and pain.
Something I’m not sure of: Should there be a question mark at the end of a “Guess” invitation, like the one about our fellow blogger above? Is that a question or a statement?
Guess!
I have to end this blog post early today. Would anybody like to guess why?
One more game, before I go: Guess what item in my local supermarket has this incredible price per pound:
This is too much fun! I don’t want this post to end.
I just HAVE to tell you this: Here’s actual dialog between Michael and me, earlier this morning:
Ann: I’ve got to go blog.
Michael: What’s today’s topic, baby?
Ann: “Guess.”
Michael: Work?
Ann: No. That’s the topic.
Michael: What?
Ann: “Guess.”
Michael: I can’t. What is it?
Ann: (laughter)
Guess what that reminds me of?
Thanks to my family, to Michael, to guessers everywhere, and to you — of course! — for reading (and, I hope, guessing) today.
After much deliberation (a full 20 minutes of it), I have decided upon the title for today’s post. And look! I already have a visual for it:
As regular readers of this blog might know, I love watches. As a matter of fact, 168 days ago (but who’s counting?) I wrote about another one of my favorite watches, here. And for those of you who don’t click on links (and I know you’re out there, people!), here’s the photo of that other watch:
If you want to read more about that watch (and the reasons why I’ve collected watches), you’re just going to have to click on that link.
So there!
Readers of this blog may notice that my writing has a certain “tone,” right now.
Although, you know what? I have no real idea whether people can tell my “tone”, my feelings, or my state of mind, right now (or at any point).
That’s the whole friggin’ problem with communicating through written words, isn’t it? We’re missing certain clues, to help us ascertain what somebody else is genuinely feeling or thinking.
However, given that we’re always guessing what other people think, what would you guess about how I’m feeling, right now? (And, yes, I am inviting people to indulge in the “cognitive distortion” of mind reading — something we do, as humans, every day).
So, how would you complete this sentence? As Ann is writing these words, she is __________.
Have you filled it in yet? If not, I’ll wait.
Time’s up!
Now, I’m going to do some mind reading of my own. That is, I’m going to guess how you might have filled in that sentence, as follows:
Playful
Annoyed
Annoying
Joyful
Worried
Confused
Hopeful
Impatient
Distracted
Focused
Accepting
Pissed
Okay, that last guess made me stop (although stopping so soon makes it unlikely I would have guessed what YOU thought). So why did I stop? Well, I know people are reading this blog all over the world, and I know that the word “pissed” means angry* to some people (including me) and drunk to others. So, I stopped, because I don’t want anybody to think I might be drunk in the morning or at any time while I’m writing these posts (because I’m not).
Hey! Wait a minute! Why do I care what you — or anybody else — thinks? Haven’t I written, throughout this year, about letting go of caring what other people think? (Yes, I have. And here’s an example of that**.)
But here’s the deal, people. I genuinely want people to know who I am. Authentically.
And genuinely and authentically, I am ALL*** of those things in that list. And more.****
As I assume you are (or have been), too.
Oh, no! Look at the time!
As therapists often (and genuinely) say …. We have to stop now.
Thanks to each and every one of you — with all your various parts, feelings, thoughts, guesses, etc. — for reading today.
* So why was I angry, at that point? Because here’s something I know about myself: I tend to get angry when I’m HUNGRY. And by the way, anger is okay. It’s just another human feeling. However, I do know a “cure” for feelings of anger related to hunger. Eating something. Which I did.
** Written way back, on Day 2.
*** Except for drunk, a possible misunderstanding which I believe I have cleared up sufficiently at this point.
**** Including, most likely, what YOU guessed (if it’s not already on that list).
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 
