big brother and the brewing company

Sooooo there I was, there I was, there I was, in *dramatic pause* the jungle… okay not quite the jungle but there are some plants and stuff, so work with me here. I’m plodding along through my lovely day of minutia when I realize I am being watched. No monkeys in trees and no gorillas in the mist, just good ol’ Big Brother watching me. Yup I have stepped in a puddle of ‘wtf bitches’ and I’m a little fired up about it. Policies are being handed down, rules are being implemented, websites being blocked, uh no, no that’s not cool. If I’m not scrollin porn, back off my shit. I need a break from address label hell. When the day comes where they say I have to cover my tattoos or wear “regular” earrings I’m gonna find some kind of alternative lifestyle and tell them where to find it on the blocked fucking websites. and watch while their conservative little retinas burn. um, kay… Moving on, In the mean time I’m using that aggression for better things, like staple pulling and label printing and explaning the ways that wine can cause migraines. You know, hard, important stuff.

Fortunately for me it was my day of escape to the social world of bars and pubs. The land where anything can happen. When you have nights that leave you saying “I so need to write this stuff down. Who could make this shit up??”. *stops laughing and clears throat* Aaaahh, the brewery, (at least it is when the beer is pouring from the tap) where I beertender/serve/keep the general mayhem that is the owner to a minimum, one solitary night a week. He is kind of like a tazmanian devil on crack with some pot to calm the nerves, then throw in some beer to round it out and get him drunk. Mind you, with his metabolism it only takes about 1 ½. Things were already busy when I rolled in at the usual appointed hour. Cool more money right?? Not cool, no really. My partner in crime, the big man that keeps things flowing so I can keep people happy was not there. I was a little panicked when I didn’t see him and trust me he doesn’t blend into the crowd, his head is above the others. We’re kind of like Mutt & Jeff, being he’s like 6 foot, a lot and I’m a solid 5’4”. But we work well together. Instead, I got the mayhem. Actually I got the ‘really fuckin high’ mayhem. (I was informed immediately upon arrival of the regulars that have known him for years) Goodie, treats for sars! So I braced myself for the progressive disaster that was ahead for sure. But you know, I was keeping a positive attitude. Fortunately I had favorites sitting at the bar (said regulars) that saved my sanity and the mayhem’s life. How do you have beer on tap and a regulator that doesn’t regulate? (hhhmmm?? Basic grammar, I mean beer 101??) And wouldn’t you as a customer get a little bummed when your favorite beertender says for the third week in a row, “We have a pale, a pale ale or how about the pale? Oh, oh… I can get you an apricot if you like – I am talented. What’s it like? Much like the pale, hoppy, with an apricot essence.” Pissed, I’d be pissed. People that come from out of town because of some write up in some brewery publication don’t want to hear that they can sample 1 kind of beer. From the regular crowd I can see the looks of ‘we came for an Amber or Brown or is there Root Beer?’ My pasted smile is causing TMJ. By now they all know me and the mayhem that I deal with… Thus the ‘chip’ at the bar constantly playing the role of regulator. Maybe he’s earned a new name. And riddle me this? (since I asked) How does a business work if every guy you know, that’s your age has helped you open the bar and thus gets free beer?!? How do you run a business with incorrect tax programmed into the register? Hello, you get to pay the difference or just fix the damn thing. Better yet… 10 key! We’re old skool anyhow not taking plastic and my ever faithful post-it tab system. I have yet to have walk away from the pink post-it without paying. Oh, and if you can’t speak a single sentence without apologizing three times or backpedaling twice or touching the female closest to you, how do you get anywhere??? Wait, wait… I got it… this only happens when your drunk! Well the tax thing not so much, but everything else is on a slide that has a sharp grade, it gets steeper with every sip. You can’t sub for the guy that usually cooks, and is 90% sober when you are the opposite (and hiiigh to boot). It doesn’t set well with the one who has to go out front and tell everyone the no’s and the why’s. gee, I guess I had some pent up shit, it was quite a day. Maybe I need a beer. Should I have a pale, a pale or a pale ale????

snakes in the grass, better step on the gas

I am not a religious person, well, anymore. I used to be the church pastor’s dream member. I attended twice on Sunday, once on Wednesday (leading youth groups), had my own little group and would sing with the band anytime I could. I had a “mentor” to help lead me in becoming a better leader, I started a band for the youth where there was none and to top it all off I did 20 minutes a day of private “devotional time”. The best part… it wasn’t fake. I believed it. I had faith in it. I wasn’t just there so I could look good for my conservative yuppie friends and get a tax write off. I wasn’t trying to impress people or meet some ultimatum set by someone I was dating, I walked my talk. Most of what was me from that time is gone. I encountered what is the poster face for most protestant religions, hypocracy. Apparently I wasn’t the pastor’s dream member. Who I dated was wrong and my tattoos were wrong. So walking the talk didn’t matter it was all facade. Funny, what I believed in then and what I know now are different. What remains is the drive to find what is good in others and the feeling that if you believe it, you should live it. Today as my mind-Pod shuffled around, searching for a song to answer a question, it landed for the briefest moment on a song from that time. How funny that all these years later songs long taken out of the rotation surface and give me cause to a look at what’s up. It was a song you’d catch me singing all the time then. Not for meaning but because it suited me, my voice. I loved to sing. I was forever doing what I could to get myself singing with the Sunday group or Wednesday, stoked when I got to sing my own choice. Not so much like that now. Maybe if I thought I were a little cooler or if I were all that enough to be a bit Maynard and stand to the side of my drummer for an entire show and still be that f-in cool… I might have tried harder to have a band. I am not about putting myself in the center of attention. I will sometimes do the kare-jokey but I sit on the side and let people wonder. When my shuffle skipped itself and stopped here I think it was a good thing. I think it was a reminder of the confidence and drive. I found myself hitting repeat on my mind-pod. The song I hear in my head is by a Christian artist but was written by Shawn Colvin. When I wasn’t looking I stepped into this puddle of funk. It’s a deep sucker too. I lost my grasp on that little girl that shines. She was never perfect but it didn’t matter. I think I’ve left pieces of her along my journey. Every time I allowed someone to hammer at my confidence or use up my energy, they kept some of that little girl. A couple of them got some really big chunks… The ex hub actually walked up to me and took it, I think. And I think theres a new chunk chipped out of there that caught me completely off guard. Non the less… I’m going to find the little girl. I live by the water so it should be easy. If I’m lucky she saw my missing pieces and is keeping them safe, just waiting for me….

Diamond in the Rough
Shawn Colvin – John Leventhal

As a little girl I came down to the water
With a little stone in my hand
It would shimmer and sing
And we knew everything
As a little girl I came down
But in a little while I got steeped in authority
Heaven only knows what went wrong
There is nothing so cruel than
to bury that jewel
When it was mine all along
I’m gonna find it
You’re shining I can see you
You’re smiling that’s enough
I’m holding on to you
Like a diamond in the rough
Every now and then
I can see that I’m getting somewhere
Where I have to go is so deep
I was angry back then and you
know I still am
I have lost too much sleep
But I’m gonna find it
You’re shining I can see you
You’re smiling that’s enough
I’m holding on to you
Like a diamond in the rough
Like a diamond in the rough
In my dreams I go down by the water
With a little girl in my arms
And we shimmer and sing
And we know everything
In my dreams I go down
You’re shining I can see you
You’re smiling that’s enough
I’m holding on to you
Like a diamond in the rough
Like a diamond in the rough

pong

ping… There is kind of a sound in the back of your head when you have those realizations that change things, you know, like a light bulb over a cartoon characters head? Maybe not a big change, but a change. I’ve been trying not to let the bull shit with the psycho landlady get me into a funk. I’m climbing out of the hole I fell in and finally feeling better. I am not sad face girl. Or at least I wasn’t and I don’t want to be.

So it hit me, the ping. The other night when I got to sit on the right side of the bar with a beer in hand and friends at my side. That’s a beautiful thing. There was no pressure to paint a smile, it just was… sometimes it wavered and the eyes glassed but there was comfort and love there. And it was open. They know where I am, that I’m not totally back or if I even know where “back” is. And they’re okay with it. That makes it easy for me to be okay with it. My friends have this bomb-shit-diggety pad. (I think it’s a requirement to be my friend that you have a killer pad. It sure seems that way because they all seem to.) Sun deck and hot tub and big yard and car-lot/museum and crazy-cool occupants with loving, happy energy. They’d invited me to join their space and share when they found this pad. When I declined initially, my reasons were solid and still hold true. But there was an unease with my answer that I didn’t share with anyone really, I just ran it. Maybe I didn’t really fully get it, I just knew my heart said to stay put, they’ll love you no less. They love me no less. So last when they reiterated their open invitation for me… I again declined, only this time a little different reason hit me (ping). Right now I reside with my sis and her fam. They are awesome. They have changed so much from the days of being my baby sister and her husband and baby to my sister/friend and her family. We have an easy relationship – all of us. Her husband is, for all intents and purposes, my brother. He has been there for me just like my brother has, when shit hit the fan and I need support against the evil ex. He wanted to murder-death-kill his ass with a vengeance, not because my sister was pissed but because this ass-clown hurt his family. Plus I think he and my brother had a good time planning really nasty evil shit to do to get him back for years of crap inflicted on me. Anyway, I digress. They have welcomed me and given me a place to be for as long as I need. It also lets me see my doodle grow and hear him excitedly tell me stories I wouldn’t otherwise hear. But, yeah… it is their house and I live with them. I can’t walk around naked with a towel on my head after a shower. I can’t watch what I want to on tv unless everyone is in bed or I ask permission. My furniture, (very cool) kitchen equipment picked up over the years, decoratives, photos, books (okay not all my books, I gotta draw the line somewhere) are all packed up and in storage. I look around and though everything is familiar and comfortable… it isn’t mine. The ping comes when i realize that if I leave here to move in with other friends I love in a home that is already theirs it will be the same situation less the child. I’ll still feel just as displaced.

I’m in my thirties and with the exception of the 22 days at the psycho ladies house of fung, remembering I slept there twice (slut!), I’ve never lived alone. ping. And though I have to say the hot tub does call to me… I think it’s time to stay put until I can make that happen.

Not like the show

Do you remember those commercials back in the day… It's 1 o'clock, do you know where your kids are?

Well no, no I don't. They're probably hangin out with my ability to sleep. Maybe they're playing keep-away with it, or catch or dodge ball. Regardless of where it is, I want it back. 12 hours in 4 days….. Not enough. Maybe I need drugs. Okay maybe not. But shit jack! I need some rest!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

you’re kidding right?

I believe in Karma. So I’m trying to figure out what it is that I’ve done to earn bad karma. The paperwork from the court came today and in a small way the psycho landlady prevailed. No, no… I don’t have to give her any money. But (and this is a BIG but) she doesn’t have to give me any either. What the fuck??? (no text abbreviations on this one). Explain to me how I turn her down, she asks what she can do to make it work for me, I tell her, she concedes, proceeds to turn into the psycho landlady causing anxiety and headaches, thus causing me to give notice, so she tells me three days, I accept her terms and am out in two and a half… does not scream: Plaintiff adhered to terms of contract, award plaintiff.

This is a cap to one solid month of roller-coaster emotion that I didn’t want to ride on. I didn’t buy the ticket for the whirly, spinny I’m-not-ready ride… I thought I was in the car for the slightly bumpy, ever fun (apparently I’m good at it) strong-silent-packs-a-punch-when-he’s-not ride. I can deal with bumpy and the long stretches I can be patient through… but I hate the whirly and spinny. So just as I’m getting to a good stretch of chill section… we merge with throw-other-crap-at-you-for-fun! Wtf mate!!! Who built this shit? Where’s my hubcap, I want off!

Don’t get me wrong, not everything has been bad. I had a lovely time hangin with the sis and the mom unit. We shopped, ate and mostly laughed. It was good. And maybe losing the money to the psycho is getting me back for winning some from the gym… who knows. Maybe it’s not karma, maybe it’s something else… And I guess sometimes it’s just like that… when something unexpected hits you square in the chest… Maybe at first you are too stunned to react. But then the magnitude of it all comes down like a shit brickhouse and crushes you. When the anger is so strong that it’s just disappointment. All you can do is sit there and shake. Then realize something has to give, usually it’s you, but that’s okay. The shakes will stop and I’ll figure out some other way.

itchy and scratchy show

It seems like I never get visitors at my desk. I used to get hot guys (okay they had issues, but eye candy people… work with me!) and people I knew (yes issues but some were going to the medical assistance place, you know, alcoholics that don’t get caught). I guess I get a few, the odd gardener with his leaves or a farmer with some branch the size of my car. And the people with the bugs. People bring bugs and they want to know what they are. I do not want to know what they are. Living creatures, yada-yada-yada I want them away from me and my general area so I don’t start having phantom itching and the creepy crawlies. But certainly these people never match the psychosis I saw at the votex… until last week a lady came in (I think she escaped the mental ward under the vortex… really) with a vile of “bugs”. It was one of the little glass tubes that your mom used to get samples of perfume in from the Avon lady. She had her “bugs” in alcohol. That would be bad if there were, in fact, bugs in there in the first place but became a big bone of contention when she was trying to show us the “bugs”. She said they were all over the floor of her car and biting her to the point she was drawing blood she was scratching so much (“do you want to see?”, “no thank you, we have the idea”). This was not some sweet little old lady with dementia either, she was loud and angry because the environmental health department wouldn’t help her and sent her to us.

So I used the tactics I learned at the vortex for dealing with difficult people and told her we’d be happy to have one of our gardening experts take a look under the microscope and let her know what they found. (nothing!) “No!” This wasn’t good enough. She wanted to know “now damnit” and we were going to help her this is what we’re here for and if we don’t she was going to public heath and sit there until someone told her what the hell was eating her skin. By now the department across the lobby is staring and one of the farm geeks (the wino, that likes bugs) wander out to check on us. He calmly asked how he could help her and we got to hear it all over again. All the while watching her itch and scratch and getting that phantom feeling. He calmly took her “bugs” back to the lab and looked at them under the microscope – really. He found nothing but one teeeeny dirt particle. By now she’s pacing and pissed and muttering about mites and chiggers, itching and scratching, going on and on about how we just don’t want to admit we have them. So he tells her that whatever she may have caught, he can’t find. It’s just not visible except one small particle. She went frickin ballistic! Asked him if he wanted to pull up his pants and sit in her car. See how he likes his goddamn feet getting eaten. This went on for a while. Finally she storms out the door at which point we look at him and he just says “new sample”. Apparently “the alcohol in the vile must have disintegrated the damn things, Even though that’s what you people told me to do”.

She brings back the big cloth gauzy thing and we all freak out because she made comments about the doctor. She proceeds to scrape some of the “bugs” into a new sample jar. He labels them and assures her that the lab will contact her with the results of their findings. He will send them the next day. She is calm now and thanks him and leaves. We still can’t see anything. But none the less, he’s gonna pass the buck, I mean, send them along for analysis… to the university entomology lab… with an email outlining the situation in advance. He’s sure they’ll make up some invisible bug with a name that only means something funny to them. Yay, farm geek. You get to handle the crazy people from here on out.

So this afternoon the farm geek walked past my desk when I happened the be rubbing my arm, as if it itched. He asked me if I was itchy from the invisi-chiggamites? I calmly replied (while scratching my head) no, I’d gone to the doctor for better drugs so I can come back with a new psychosis…

Spinning, weaving round each new experience

TOOL means this song with regard to afterlife and energy movement and all manner of new-agy stuff I don’t have time to get into right now. I love this song for the feeling I get when I hear it and know that it’s slow steady rhythm is going to pick up pace into a heart pounding anthem. I need that rush. Especially now. In those moments at the gym where I’m discouraged and feeling unattractive and unwanted, I hear… “This body, this body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion… Of what it means to be alive” I end up keeping pace with the song (all 7 minutes of it) and before I know it I’m totally into my workout. It never ceases to pump me and remind me that someone else can’t take who I am. I choose to be here, I choose this moment and I will choose the next. I will take all the realities of before and mold them into my beyond. I love the change of pace, kinda like life. It’s roller coaster is comforting, a reminder of sorts.

Parabola
We barely remember who or what came before this precious moment,
We are Choosing to be here right now. Hold on, stay inside…
This holy reality, this holy experience. Choosing to be here in…

This body. This body holding me. Be my reminder here that I am not alone in
This body, this body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion.

Alive

This holy reality, in this holy experience. Choosing to be here in…

This body. This body holding me. Be my reminder here that I am not alone in
This body, this body holding me, feeling eternal all this pain is an illusion…
Of what it means to be alive

Swirling round with this familiar parable.
Spinning, weaving round each new experience.
Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this
chance to be alive and breathing
chance to be alive and breathing.

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality.
Embrace this moment. Remember. we are eternal.
all this pain is an illusion.

under advisement

Two to three weeks. wtf mate?!? I have to wait to find out what the psycho landlady owes me for two to three weeks. Lame. I am still confident and this is working right now. I am being wise with the money that keeps getting thrown at me. Bills are being paid and I’m trying to come up with the fun thing I want to do for me… hhhmmm still, I hate the waiting

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

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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…