It's officially the last half of Autumn :-)

Autumn Equinox marks the middle of the Autumn, and it was a couple of days ago.
I am working on my husband's birthday, next Sunday,
on my household binder,
on preparing for the next two Sabbaths (Samhain and Yule)
and resting at Pinterest in between the chores :-D

One thing lead to another, and I found "31 days of inspired holidays".

Er... I don't know if you find that inspiring, but I didn't.

So, I'll try to do better, and spend the 31 days of October to write my own 31 days of inspired holidays, about my preparations to Samhain, Witches' New Year, and the first day of Winter, the night of the year. :-)

Household Binder

Well... I'm a little slow in certain areas of life. I have been pinning household binder ideas and such for quite a long time now, but it wasn't before now the idea actually has rooted and seems viable. I suppose I needed the time to ruminate the idea :-D

So - Mabon is at the door, my husband's 50th birthday as well, my sister's and her son's birthdays are this month too, and then there's the 101 things in 1001 days, that I really need to start DOING something about.

I plan on starting slowly with the Household Binder, and add, remove and replace sections after need.

Right now I need

- some sort of calendar with
-- appointments
-- events
-- Sabbaths and other such reoccurring dates, holidays, birthdays etc. (with gift ideas and wishlists and cards)

- Budget
- Cleaning, household chores and such - we both need the routines and structures of this
- I suppose I need contact information. And not only to doctors and such, but also the rest of the addresses and telephone numbers.
- to do lists, planning, steps, projects and crafts etc.
- food plan, menus, grocery lists, pantry inventories etc.
- I think we need also a house renovation and decoration part
- I think the health journal might be a good thing to have in this
- I also want to have our wardrobe lists here.
- wishlists and such
- some party information, like guest lists and allergies/dislikes etc.
- library lists, book inventories, reading journal, book wish lists etc.
- inventories?

My problem here is perfectionism.
I can't do this, unless I know EXACTLY what comes where and how I want it, and what routines are going to work - and I can't know until I have tried this out! :-D

So - I have been printing a lot of free organizer/planner/household binder printables. My binder is full of post-its and page markers and notes.

So - Year at a Glance.
What to do with that? I wrote in Sabbaths, birthdays, Jewish holidays, Finnish holidays, Danish holidays, Swedish holidays and our special dates like wedding anniversary.
Here she says that she also adds in the learning blocks, so it might be a good idea to have some sort of 1001 days follow-up...

I transfer all these dates to each monthly calendar page, and all the appointments and such.
I also write them in a separate monthly list with the days in a list form, so that I can cross out the days.

And then weekly lists and daily lists. The daily lists I write every morning together with my husband.
I have seen a couple of these daily lists... or what to call them. On them are usually the daily chores, the morning, day and evening routines, dinner plans, calls to make, errands to run, bills to pay etc. The core of every day is what has been appointed to this specific day in the "year at glance".

I don't understand the "water to drink" or "take your vitamins". Feels to me like someone trying to find something to fill up the empty space.

Also I noticed that I need a special Sabbath binder. There's so much information and organization to be done for each Sabbath, that this needs an own binder. :-)
(Yes, it makes me happy. Binders, lists, organization, planners...)

Ah. I'll keep filling my binder.  I really need to start working with Henric's birthday. 

Logical Fallacy: loaded questions

"Are you still beating your wife?"

The correct answer to the classic trick question "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" is 'mu'.

Assuming that you have no wife or you have never beaten your wife, the answer "yes" is wrong because it implies that you used to beat your wife and then stopped, but "no" is worse because it suggests that you have one and are still beating her.

According to various Discordians and Douglas Hofstadter the correct answer is usually "mu", a Japanese word alleged to mean "Your question cannot be answered because it depends on incorrect assumptions".

The word 'mu' is actually from Chinese, meaning 'nothing'; it is used in mainstream Japanese in that sense. In Chinese it can also mean "have not" (as in "I have not done it", or "lack of", which may or may not be a definite, complete 'nothing').

Native speakers of Japanese do not recognize the Discordian question-denying use, which almost certainly derives from overgeneralization of the answer in the following well-known Rinzai Zen koan:

A monk asked Joshu, "Does a dog have the Buddha nature?" Joshu retorted, "Mu!"

------------------ 

A common way out of this argument is to not respond with a simple 'yes' or 'no' answer, but with a full statement that also includes context. To use an earlier example, a good response to the question "Do you still beat your wife?" would be either
"I have never beaten my wife" or
"I have never had a wife."
This removes the ambiguity of the expected response, therefore nullifying the tactic. 

However, the askers of said questions have learned to get around this tactic by accusing the one who answers with "dodging" the question. A rhetorical question such as "Then please explain, how could I possibly have beaten a wife that I've never had?" can be an effective antidote to this further tactic, placing the burden on the deceptive questioner either to expose his tactic or stop the line of inquiry.

"Where did you hide the money you stole?"

"For how long are we going to tolerate this abuse of power?"

"Why can't you accept these simple facts?"

"What did I do to deserve this abuse...?"

"Why does everyone hate me?"

-------- 

"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.
"Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman, "That's the first question, you know."

-- Lewis Carroll

---------

"I recently had the 'pleasure' of being presented with a loaded question:

"When is being true to self a rationalization for stomping all over other people?"

it appeared in a post that in its entirety read:

"Being true to oneself is important. Yes, of course. But there are many ways of being true to self and not all of them are pretty. Dictators are true to themselves, serial killers are true to themselves and so on. When is being true to self a rationalisation for stomping all over other people?"

I responded:

"Did you just suggest that I am dictator-like and serialkiller-like? Inferred from the fact that you use an expression I am the only one using in this thread."

The person attempts to wriggle out of it by saying:

"Not at all, Dov, not at all. I am speaking in general, general principles. Please do not take it personally."

The problem is that by using a variation of my unique phrase: Be true to yourself, the person has de facto made it personal. There are no general principles in sight.

I replied:

"See, in my experience, people who keep telling others that they are assuming things, when they are simply sharing their perspective and their understanding, or feeling about something, which is just as valid as anyone else's, are also going to be dishonest about what they actually meant by what they said, to avoid ending up with egg on their face.

It's all very easy to claim 'general principles', when the innuendo one is making is really very clear. I believe it's called plausible deniability."

and they responded:

"Dov, you are confusing a number of things, but I really don't have time to get into this with you right now.

If you see yourself in the general principles I delineated, well, so be it, hopefully it could be a source of learning for you. I was looking beyond just you, though, as I do not think ad hominem is helpful, and if I used shocking examples of dictators and so on, it was simply an attempt to show the limitations of what I was describing, not calling you names."

I replied:

"Now, it's clear to me that you did intend the comment about dictators and serial killers to target me, along with the part about stomping, you made sure that it would be so by using an expression from one of my posts, the only one containing that expression - the very fact that you are now admitting that you see it as "a source of learning" for me and that not "looking beyond just you" would have been an "ad hominem", (personal attack) proves this. (Your use of Latin here, when you usually speak plain English is very telling, btw - why are you trying to dominate me and control me, ----, through the use of foreign terms?)

You may have been very clever in how you formulated that post,---- - after all you do it all the time, both here in Gaia and in your job. It's just a variation of the technique used to compose 'Company Audits', but that doesn't change the fact that to me it's clear that you targeted me.""

- Dov