As most people know, I am a little bit off. I like to do things such as browse Wikipedia, take on eating challenges, and eat disgusting cupcakes. I have another interest that I have actually never discussed on this blog before. Get ready to add another tally to my weird column.

When I was young, I learned about the saints. I just didn’t learn about who they were, I also learned about the process to become canonized as one. When educated on this long process, I became familiar with a concept called incorruptibility. To check the holiness of prospective saints, church officials would sometimes exhume the body and examine it to see if it had decomposed. If the body had not decayed, the person was said to be incorruptible. As a young kid, the thought of men digging up someone’s grave and opening up the coffin made an impression on me.

This impression has stayed with me throughout my life. While at first I felt a little disturbed about someone’s final resting place being disturbed, that feeling of uneasiness has actually turned to a mild fascination over the years. As my well-documented interest in cemeteries grew, so did my interest in the state of physical bodies after death. As I walk on the grounds of graveyards I constantly think about the caskets I am walking above of. What is the contents of those boxes? Corpses? Bones? Dust? A combination of the three?

When I watch the reruns of “Forensic Files” I am always intrigued when they exhume a body for evidence. The image of big machinery lifting a casket out of the earth is eerie but interesting. I always think about what must go through the DNA specialist’s mind when doing work on the remains. What about the horror of family members seeing a loved one ripped out of the ground? The other day I was watching an episode where they had to exhume a body in New Orleans. Because of the wet climate, the coffin had sunk in the middle but not at the end where the lady’s head was at. While everywhere from below the neck was gone, the head was intact. Remarkably, the head is what they needed to test.

To me, I have just always believed that once the casket is closed during the funeral service, it will stay that way for eternity. The physical contents will sit underground forever. Thus, when the very rare occurrence happens where a body is exhumed, it just seems very unnatural but also remarkable. It reminds me exactly of a time capsule that was never meant to be open.

I decided to write about this for tonight’s post when I did some reading on Abraham Lincoln yesterday evening. As a U.S. Presidents nerd combined with my interest in this blog topic, I became very interested when I learned that Abraham Lincoln’s body was exhumed. Needing to make sure that Chicago gangsters didn’t steal his corpse, Lincoln’s body was exhumed around 30 years after his assassination in 1901. What they found blew my mind…

When his casket was opened, an overpowering choking smell flowed out. However, Lincoln’s body was completely intact! His beard, hair, and mole all looked the same as it did three decades prior. I get a kick out of it though that his suit was covered in yellow mold and his gloves had completely rotted away. You could see red fragments mixed in with the mold. Do you know where those fragments came from? It was the remains from the American flag that he was buried in.

Whether for religious, DNA, historical, or identification purposes, I am a little drawn to the practice of exhuming bodies. While I hate to see the dead unearthed for no reason, if it is for a good/necessary cause I am going to pay attention. Don’t Blink.

Last night, Sidney and I sat down on the couch to watch a movie. Called “Wild Horses,” the film starred Robert Duvall and James Franco. I thought it was okay, Sidney couldn’t stay awake. But the movie itself is an afterthought in all of this.

During a scene at the start of the film when Robert Duvall rides his horse to the Texas/Mexico border to settle a disagreement, I suddenly had a vivid memory flood my head. I was taken back to when I was probably four or five years old at the most. I was underneath these old, green metal bleachers at a large field that sat between a middle school and an elementary school. I was playing underneath the bleachers by myself while my mom sat on one of the rows below me, watching my sister. The sights, sounds, and smells were all immediately brought back to me at that minute as I sat on the couch.

The funny thing is, I don’t think I had thought of that moment since when it actually happened over 20 years ago.

Now I know there must be a psychological term and explanation for this (besides a flashback) but I didn’t want to Google it and take away some of the luster of this blog post. To be completely honest, this has happened to me on multiple occasions in the past few years. I will be engaged in some normal activity when something is triggered in my brain and a completely random thought from a couple decades ago takes over.

Another example would be the transportation of my mind back to when I drank grape juice in my mom’s kitchen during a point in my toddler years. My focused self at work seemed to just float away and a scene from the past took over. Suddenly I could remember everything from the taste of the juice to the color of the plastic cup (red) to the design on the kitchen tiles. Again, I had never even scratched the surface of remembering this memory for years until it all came to me at once.

What I find fascinating about these random thoughts is that they come out of nowhere when I am fully conscious and seem to be triggered while I am engaged in meaningful activity. Why would a Robert Duvall movie take me back to playing under the bleachers in overgrown grass? Why would sitting in a meeting cause my brain to fetch a scene of me drinking grape juice?

I guess you could call these flashbacks but they aren’t really what I have understood flashbacks to be. I go from a non-stressful moment in the present to a non-stressful moment in the past. The moment in the past is the first time I ever remembered it since it had happened. It doesn’t necessarily weird me out, it just makes me think.

Does this ever happen to you? Mind you these thoughts always come when I am wide awake and take over my brain with vivid detail. I find this all very interesting and I am excited to see what insignificant moment of my past I get to experience next. Don’t Blink.

It is common advice to “not wish your life away.” This refers to not looking so forward to a certain day, such as Christmas or Friday, that you totally discount the days between now and then. For example, I would “wish away” valuable days of my life if I started to obsessively countdown the days until the official kickoff of college football season. It is perfectly fine and healthy to look forward to things coming up, it is just not productive to spend all your energy awaiting them at the expense of the days inbetween.

This is very solid advice but sometimes I think we need to be just as mindful about a related way of thinking. I believe sometimes we discount the time we have left with something because we already dread it ending.

For example, when I was in Spokane this summer I didn’t fly out until 8 p.m. on our day of departure. However, instead of enjoying every minute of that extended day I spent some of it feeling bummed that I was leaving while also dreading the upcoming long flight. While taking a nice walk with my mom, playing with my niece, and eating a big steak dinner numbed some of those negative feelngs, I could have done a better job savoring the remaining hours that I had as opposed to dreading them slipping away.

With summer coming to a conclusion for teachers, Sidney is excited to return to the classroom but also a little let down that her break is nearing its end. I have tried my best to tell her that she still has actual days off to enjoy and that it is important to live each of them one at a time while not looking too far ahead. However, it is hard to buy in when you know that no matter what you do, you can’t stop time.

I think we just have to look at time slipping away, the type of time we don’t want to slip away, in psychological terms. I do this with sleep each night. If I get in my bed at 2 a.m. and I have to get up at 5 a.m., I try not to think like this: dang it, I only have three hours of sleep. Rather, I think back to when I was a child and we would make trips from where I lived in Spokane to see my grandparents in Walla Walla. It was just a three hour drive but we thought it took forever. So, when I hit the sack at 2 a.m. I tell myself this: you get to sleep for as long as it takes to drive from Spokane to Walla Walla. Putting it in those terms, it really does make me feel better…and yes, I still use that example in my head to this day.

We got to use this type of thinking on a grander scale. If you are dreading the weekend coming to an end and it is Sunday, you have to tell yourself that you still have some quality hours to enjoy. If you are on summer break and you only have a week left you have to tell yourself that a week break is still significant. It is the same duration of time as spring break, a period that during the school year sure seems really long. If you only have a day left of vacation, try to tell yourself that you have 86,400 seconds left. Conceptualize it in a way that will put your remaining time in a favorable light.

Use psychological methods to deal with a fun or great experience coming to an end but also look at it from a realistic standpoint as well. Feel good about the awesome time you had and know that life will go on and more memorable times will come. You can’t stop time but you can make the most out of it. Don’t Blink.

Note: This afternoon Brent is taking a Sunday off, releasing some control, and letting his beautiful fiancé write a guest blog post for Don’t Blink. Sidney Mathis, a second grade teacher in Myrtle Beach, writes about what it is like to date a blogger.

Today is a day that will go down in Don’t Blink history. Brent has granted me, Sidney Mathis, permission to takeover this blog and compose a post of my VERY OWN!

As a part of my inaugural blog, please allow me to include a disclaimer. I am in no way, shape, or form a blogger. There are in fact a plethora of other things I’d call myself before I claimed to be a blogger. Teacher…? Yes. Southern Belle….? Yes. Reality TV connoisseur? You betcha! Blogger….? Absolutely not. With that being said….please bear with me as you read my debut post. Here goes nothing!

Sidney, Brent’s fiancé, takes over the blogging duties for Sunday.

———-

As many of you may know, I teach 2nd grade. One of my favorite things to do in my classroom is hold a Community Circle meeting on Friday mornings. In these meetings we all participate in a reflective exercise called “The Peak and the Pit”. The objective is for each person to share what they believed to be the best part of the week—PEAK— and the worst part of the week—PIT. (Yes…I stole this idea from an episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”…..please don’t judge me.) Anyway…in an effort to get my game-face on for the upcoming school year, I thought I’d share with y’all 2 PEAKS and 2 PITS of dating a BLOGGER.

———-

The PEAKS

1. Hassle-Free Scrapbooking
Since Brent and I have met, I’ve been in 133 blog posts. That means that Brent has mentioned me, by name, in over 100 of his posts in the last 15 months. Not only am I very flattered by the recurrence of my name on brentreser.com, but it makes keeping track of our time together very manageable. It’s like having a virtual scrapbook. With just a few clicks, I can go back and reread and relive some of my favorite memories with Brent. What’s the best part? I didn’t have to contribute ANYTHING. Even though I’m a sucker for a good craftivity, scrapbooks are not my thing. But thank goodness for dating a blogger…all of the scrapbooking and memory keeping has been done for me! Score!

2. Priceless Side-Kick
Brent is forever on the hunt for the next great blog idea. Most times this involves some type of trip, dinner, outing, etc. On most of these excursions, the blogger needs a side-kick…someone to take part in the adventures, keep him company, and occasionally offer opinions. How is this a perk of dating a blogger, you ask? You get to tag along, take part in some pretty interesting adventures, and all the while have no obligations!! I usually pay very little and NEVER have to write about it. It’s like those old, corny MasterCard commercials. Bar Tab…$30. Tank of Gas….$25. Having an unforgettable adventure (and getting to read about it the next day)… PRICELESS!

———-

THE PITS

1. The Time Element
Writing posts for Don’t Blink takes up a fair share of Brent’s time. Luckily Brent doesn’t normally post during the weekend, so we get to spend lots of uninterrupted time together. But during the work week, Brent’s blog can easily consume up to 8 hours of his time. So naturally the time he devotes to writing creates a void of time for myself. As a teacher, on any given weekday I can be home no later than 4 p.m. That leaves about an hour for me to run home, do some chores and relax before Brent gets done with his work at 5 p.m. Brent usually goes home and gets started writing as soon as possible, and can take up to 2 hours to reach completion. That leaves me two options. 1. Sit at my house bored and waiting for my phone to PING with a new “Don’t Blink” post notification, or I can go to Brent’s house and watch him write. Let me tell you…he doesn’t like it when I watch him write…sooooo….9 times out of 10…the blog contributes to my boredom.

2. Pausing for Pictures
Sprinkling pictures throughout a post is definitely a forte of this blog’s namesake. Brent is very conscientious about getting photo-documentation for most of his blog posts. However, this means that I have to stop for photographs…A LOT. If we’re out at dinner…I have to wait until a picture of my entrée is taken before digging in. If we are out at a new bar, a selfie is a necessity. Or if we go try out a new putt-putt course, we have to double back around the front of the course before leaving in order to get a good pic of the signage. I know that all of the picture moments are meant to keep with Brent’s mantra of “Don’t Blink”, and most of the time I kindly oblige. But sometimes I just don’t WANT to pause for a picture. I want to just plow through my dinner, socialize at a bar, and head straight for home after playing mini golf.

——-

So there you have it…the PEAKS and PITS of dating a blogger. Maybe next year Brent will let me takeover again and I’ll fill all of you in on the pits and peaks of MARRYING a blogger. Until then, keep reading and….. you guessed it!!…Don’t Blink.