About Sars

I am the full time rider/conductor of the Bi-Polar Express (2.oh!) Welcome to my ride. Please keep hands and feet inside the pretty pink car at all times, for your safety of course. Rose colored glasses are not only encouraged, but required.

Birthday wishes

I haven't known him my whole life but we are connected in a place of loving friendship that was formed before we met. There is no material gift I can think of that can match what he has or who he is…

Cheek slapper

Shoulder shaker

Tissue box

Tool box

Traffic director

Crossing guard (possibly for the apocalypse)

Glue

Ear

Champion

Writer

Artist

Father

Husband

Friend

Mentor

Care-taker

Shoulder

And the most amazing person I've ever known.

Happy birthday friend. Love you

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toes in the water

When you have time to sit down and think about things, and you are already one prone to self analyze, it’s easy to nit-pick yourself to death. To find every fault and flaw that you could possibly find… including a few that aren’t even there. I’m good at working myself into a state of panic over nothing. I constantly question those things which don’t need to be questioned. This wasn’t always the case, but for whatever reason, it’s become so. I think I’ve made it my mission in life to sell myself short of what I’m worth. I settle for almost enough or not quite because I’ve nit-picked myself to certainty that I’m not worthy or good enough for whatever the best is. What caused or causes this I’m not sure… I don’t let my friends and fam do it, so why is it good enough for me?? I will fight for them and with them, but when it comes time for them to fight for me I can’t fight. If it isn’t for someone else, I lose my ability to charge forward for what is good. Maybe I should figure out why. Maybe this is the time for breakthrough in my self-analysis. (side note have you noticed that has the word anal in it… I don’t think that’s a coincidence… it’s a bunch of shit. We do it to ourselves or let others do it for us instead of just doing the work… anyhow) A time where putting it out there means I recognize it is true and I will start the process to fix it. No more hiding behind the need to give and care for others. My shield of protection is pretty but it will crack if I don’t give it a break. I’ve been holding up my shield for long time and I want to put it down… Fill it with cool water and sit back in the pool. I want to lay there in the sun and relax, take a look at things from a fresh place, a new point of view I’ve not had. Take the time to look at what’s been lost and make it work for me. Let my hurt teach me, instead of just using it to teach others… learn that while it’s still okay to love unconditionally and give unselfishly it’s not okay to allow it to be returned with conditions or motives… take the time to find the balance. I won’t find it in this place of uncertainty and I won’t find it in someone else’s pool. I’m not sure where, and it may take a some time to sort out… I need to kick back with a tasty beverage, it’s a nice day and the water is warm. I think I’ll stay in the pool a while…

knee deep, maybe

It’s a funny perspective you get when you read your own journal. If you are someone like me, the first thing you do is catch all the grammatical errors you’ve made. Then you laugh and cry at the things you’ve written. This time I wasn’t reading my blog or my writing but the journal. They say you can’t go back, but maybe sometimes you should. I was reminded of angers and hurts over things that weren’t mine to be angry and hurt over. During a time when I was struggling with my own issues of title-waves and boundary dodging, self-worth and self gratification I was taking up what precious little sanity and energy I had worrying for someone else over a problem that is nowhere near mine to solve. In fact it may never be solved. I was talking to a mentor one day about some stress and issues, she kindly and calmly said “don’t take his shit on as your own”. This doesn’t sound that big but she never, ever swore and it caught me off guard. That was her point. To this day I still “take his shit on as my own”. I can read my journal and see the improvement, but it’s still there. The shit. Sometimes you have to go back to pick up the waders you left behind so you can get out of the muck you’re currently in. I went and got my waders. I’m even practicing putting them on. It helps that they’re pink… but you probably knew that.

Clip in pedals?

Some days I look at my knuckles, bloodied from scraping the bottom of my barrel, and ask the same questions I asked so many times before… Where did my positive energy go? How did this happen? How did I let it get so low? Did I blow a fuse on the idiot light for my positive energy meter? I am left wondering how long the cycle continues until I figure out how to change the course.

We all have a cycle of life that we can follow blindly or change as we go along. I think sometimes I get so comfortable in the motions that I don't pause to realize I'm not comfortable with the motion. I get in my groove of doing everything I can to make everyone around me happy and am blind to the fact that I'm not happy. I'm that girl. (no, not that girl) the girl that doesn't pause to look at the details when there is something that someone needs, the one that will spend all that she has getting things for others and then realizing she left herself with $20 for food for the next 2 weeks. And i'm that girl that will laugh, cry, hurt, love, be happy, sad and angry with you. It's easier than doing them for me. I'll let my tears fall silently and sting my cheeks before I let you know my barrel is empty of energy.

So I'm looking for the way to change the cycle. To continue being that girl that cares for, and takes care of, the people I love but not at the price of depleting my barrel. I will find it. I've started working out, so you know I've been cycling and jogging and getting in shape. I've changed the fuse for my idiot light. And while I'm hovering a lot lower than I'd like, my knuckles aren't bleeding. I can't touch the bottom quite yet. This is a better place than usual. And I'll keep pushing myself toward a new cycle. (maybe a cruiser this time or a road cycle- we'll see what mood I'm in) Until I find it, I think I'll buy a box of fuses and maybe wear gloves.

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I need a 1/4" socket please

That bridge of delusion that I had built was replaced by one of reality paved with intuition. It wasn’t a stable bridge, always splintering and cracking. So I hired back the road crew, I’d fired when I started building the thing and funny if they didn’t do their job (I think I fired them for that the first time…). They even had some hired boy to wash my car and install a five point harness so I wouldn’t get thrown out the side. My car has no doors… I like a little wind in my hair… you know, now that I have some. The thing about the five point harness is we have to use it… all the way, properly. We can’t just wear the lap belt. Because when you hit the edge of the construction zone at nice pace (I’ll never admit to anything) well, a lap belt doesn’t protect the most important parts. You can get tossed around and spit out. Basically, we get no protection if we don’t use safety gear. Our intuition is all that we have when we strip down to the bare core of our soul. It’s what starts the other things moving and keeps us safe. Intuition is what gives us the “fight or flight” reaction. And like many other things in my little world… I know it and choose not to use it to my advantage. I allow the desire to keep my dress from getting wrinkled to keep me from buckling up. I grasp too tightly to the wheel when I know the rule of crashing and I should have let go. There’s no place to fix the hurts and we can’t get out and blame the car. We’re so quick to jump up and blame– brake failure, bad parts, this, that, blah, blah, blah when really, the signs were up for the zone ahead, advanced warning. I had the harness, I chose to wear only the lap belt, I have to take the time to mend the wound and fix the car… on my own, and if I get stuck, I can always google.

knock, knock, knockin on mama’s dooor

I have been waiting for this day to come… waiting with baited breath for the sheriff to come a knockin at my door and serve me with papers from the psycho landlady. Yeah, he went to my mom’s (where I keep a permanent address) and of course she knew him. So he told her if he couldn’t deliver it today we would get continued. I told her to SIGN IT! I’ll be damned if she gets any more time.

She is suing for 5 months rent and contractor fees paid for a kitchen addition asked for by the plaintiff (me) less the thousand dollar security deposit she has kept. Here’s the good part: she states that she is suing out of “self-defense” because I am suing her for double my deposit. I broke the six month lease and she was without a renter for almost two months. Ding-ding a prize to who can see where she fucks herself! Even if I conceded a six month lease (which I would not) she states in legal documents that she currently has a renter. She can’t ask for anything beyond the date that tenant moved in.. which was June. “Almost two months” does not equal two months and legally, she would have to account for exact amounts of time. It would be the date the tenant signed the lease. So if it was May (when I saw the u-haul) that’s really a month. Fa-juck-ed!!! Who got the prize?

Enough law lesson… whatever. I’m kind of excited. At the same time, I feel sorry for her. She is either getting really bad counsel or none at all. If none at all, I take it back and she really is just an idiot. But if someone is telling her to do this because she has a chance… That is a really bad friend. I am fortunate to have good counsel, a wide network of friends and (oh yeah) a brain to do some frickin research. It’s not cool to be a big bitch. And I’m not trying to take her for all she’s worth or even get all I could ask for. So for now I need chill out. Smugness and arrogance is unbecoming. Large smiles on my bright shining face however, very becoming. I wonder what song will get stuck in my head that day? I wonder if when she pays me I can give her that ticket with her receipt? Now what did I do with that gift box???

I believe that sometimes you have to look reality in the eye and deny it.
~Garrison Keillor

I might even take country

Okay, so I think the iPod in my head is broken… or some pod gnome has broken the tamper-proof seal and found a way to make the shuffle go back to one song, every day, at least 5 times and sometimes stick it on repeat so I can’t get it off. The worst is that it chooses the worst songs ever! The past three weeks have been mostly Journey with a sprinkling of other selected gems. Quite a combo when you get (wait for it, wait for it…..) oh yeah Wheel in the Sky that keeps on turnin’ in your frikin head! And ya know, I’ve heard this song the better part of my life and didn’t know until now that the first verse contains the line: Sent a letter on a long summer day, Made of silver, not of clay… wtf? does this mean anyway? The letter is made of silver? I’m really not that dense nor do I have issues with metaphor but huh???? Anyhow, maybethe little gremlins just want me to go round and round with the dichotomy between silver and clay and that neither are materials for wheels in the sky. Whatever… Tomorrow I know I’ll be working instead of playing and it didn’t take a wheel to figure it out. Then there is Mr. Roboto. because you know, he is a modren man, (secret, secret, he’s got a secret). Maybe the little bastards are trying to tell me something beyond the fact that Styx sucked and Dennis DeYoung was either way fucked up on something potent or just really, really weird. Maybe I just need a secret or I need to play robot and go do some menial labor… Regardless, Domo Aregato I need a beer-o . Add to all of this (oh yes, the piece de resistance – did I spell that with a snotty French accent??) Think keyboard, think synthesizer – do-do-do-do. do-da-do-do-do. do-do-do-do. do-da-do-do-do-da-do… are ya there, do you feel it yet… oh yes. The long curly blondish hair with the shiny lip gloss and bright blue eyes that scream – I am all that is 1986. It’s The Final Countdown just pops up randomly cutting off a Johnny Cash song or Weezer or something far cooler. (Oh that it would cut off Styx, I’ll take Euro-glam over Styx) This is the only one of the three I could kinda, maybe, sort of understand getting lodged in my nogg. I used to be that evil person that would have the ring-back tone on my phone, you know “please enjoy the music while your party is reached”. I purposely chose something that was just not right and that song was the final countdown. I never had to hear it, so maybe this is my penance for that. But seriously… Mr. Roboto? You’re wondering who I am-machine or mannequin, With parts made in Japan, I am the modren man … Who spells modern like that? And I am not Kilroy… well maybe I am, that could be the secret (secret) hhhmmm I’ll have to think about that while the wheel in the sky counts down a final time today.

c’mon click it – you know you want too

click

So I’m sitting watching TV, a show I used to watch every week. One of those newer dramas that replace soap operas in my generation. You know there are like 5 or 6 of them I can think of: House, Burn Notice, The Closer, Shark, Saving Grace and like 15 different Law&Order’s. I don’t get to follow much of anything, not that I ever really did. But the show isn’t the point. I am sitting in a living room watching whatever I want and no one is changing the channel during the commercials. I watched an entire hour of the same channel. It’s not 1 am, I’m not laying in bed while the bf sleeps soundly next to me. It’s just an evening of drama on TV. When I’m all done… It will have been two. I don’t know, I may have to start flipping through channels to make sure that I’m awake.

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tastes just like chicken

The other night I made dinner and it was not up to my standards. I may have given it some modicum effort, but I didn’t show it the attention it needed to become really tasty. Sometimes it’s like that with dinner. Maybe I was cooking for convenience and not pleasure or flavor. I’ve been cooking a long time. My mom taught me to cook when I was eight and I’ve been in the kitchen ever since. My sister not so much, but she’s come into her own over the years. As a wife and mother she didn’t get much choice, but she enjoys moments of being in the kitchen and sharing time with people she loves. Each of us brings our own style into the kitchen. My mom rarely looks at a recipe more than once or twice. She has things she’s been making forever. Things may vary a little from when she started making them, ingredients adapted to diets and what not. But the base is still there. You can count on certain things to appear at every holiday and her lemon bars will always taste better than anyone else’s. My sister, on the other hand, is newer to the joy of cooking. She’s developed a style of weeknight quickness that suits her busy life with husband and child. Quick recipes and repeats of things that worked, sometimes things that didn’t (we’ll remember next time) are the way of working mom. I cook because I want to. There is no one I have to answer to if dinner isn’t ready at 6. When I’m in the kitchen I make what I feel like. What is fresh and smells good. What flavors work well and balance each other. I use these and a background of experimenting with a little of every style to hone my skills. I find that I am a much more patient cook these days. I like that.

Each of us is in the kitchen often and we all have favorite dishes to make. Funny, they all have a sauce of some kind. Of course we all have our own ways of making sauce. My mom makes it the same way she has all her life, from memory, because that’s the easiest way for her. She knows just how it will taste and that is what she wants. My sister opens the jar and puts it in the pan. On occasion she’ll add some garlic to spice it up or some seasoning the crossed her line of sight. Her husband likes it and her child is okay so it’s tasty for her. It works for her time table and suits needs right now. For both of them the method isn’t chosen for flavor first, but convenience. It is about need for food and really has nothing to do with what sauce they chose. For me, the sauce is the focal point. The sauce needs attention and patience to reach it’s full potential. Sometimes you need to stand there and stir the whole time, other times you just give it a little stir and room to develop. Always, though, you check for seasoning and add what it needs to balance the flavor. When it’s just right the satisfaction is amazing.

I think how we approach our relationships are reflected in the way we cook. We cook the same thing over and over because it’s easy. Other times we do the little things to spice it up. And still others we are watching, stirring, and balancing flavors. There are occasions when we watch too closely or are impatient with the dish and it turns out badly. The beauty is, it’s just one dish. I get to make more. If the food is consistently bad, change the way you cook. But if it’s good, you must be doing something right. And a tasty dish is a wonderful thing…. I just might have to make dinner.

learning curve

It’s such a bummer when what you have/need to do gets in the way of what you want to do. I want to sit and write every couple of days. I want to hang out at the beach and not have it be windy and cold too. Neither is happening so there ya go. What’s the happs? Let me see……. I feel the need to make a list…

~I didn’t get the job, didn’t even make the first cut. hhmmm not sure what this says about things and haven’t decided what to do yet.

~Applied for a job at local university and haven’t heard a single syllable from them

~Still have not conquered the jet ski, though I have not had a chance. Maybe I can do it while it’s on the trailer!!! That is an idea..

~I refused the unsettling offer from judge judy and have court in two and a half weeks. Let’s see how it goes.

~Have desire (want) to jog/hike/ride bike, have gear to jog/hike/ride bike, usually have energy to jog/hike/ride bike

I also have an overwhelming amount of excuses why I do not jog/hike/ride bike. I am looking for a box to hold them so I can shove them under my bed with the miscellaneous collections of items. It will probably need a latched lid. I think I have one of those. It will make it easier to remind myself that sometimes my want and need are the same and I can have them both. I’ll have too look it up, but I think that’s in the book.

“Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do.” ~Shaquille O’Neal

I don’t think he said this first, but you get the idea…