Category Archives: stuff

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.

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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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.

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

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

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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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.

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.

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…

Since we all have to come up for air on occasion, I decided to stop and take a breath. Noooo, not the kind where I’m focusing and trying to spell how it sounds, but a real breath. The de-stress myself kind of breath. The stretch-it-out, send-a-text, why-isn’t-it-5-yet, man-this-makes-me-have-to-pee, kind of breath. You know that kind right? Whatever. You do you just aren’t admitting it. I am… I needed to think about my day how silly and hour can be.

That was exciting. Shew… Now I wait. Stretch, breathe. (recurring theme) That’s the next step in this process. Wait. Wait to find out whether they bought your truth filled crap and ranked you high enough to put your name on “the list”. Then wait some more to see if they pick you from “the list” to have an interview with three other people in another uncomfortable room. This time however, appearance and personality are part of the package. You can make up for a lot with confidence. I’m still glad I smelled good today. People always remember that girl that showed up for her interview with bloodshot eyes, smelling like she had smoked a whole pack of cigarettes in the car with the windows up, then sprayed on a bottle of musky perfume to cover it right before walking in. (yes I still remember her, she will be my benchmark for the unhireable) Or the kid who doesn’t tell you he’s only 20 but accepts your offer of a beer while he waits for his interview at the bar. (oh, but you knew, test #1 – FAIL!) If you don’t tell me no, you won’t tell your friends either. Can we say big fucking fine??? Not good things to do at an interview. Man I’ve gotten long winded today. I need to go for a hike. And stretch. And breathe. And maybe watch Judge Judy…

I love it when something other than my life inspires me to write. That’s a good day, a pink kind of day. Sometimes a phrase or a song can do it. This time it was a book. It must be time to take out the canvas once more. It’s been put away for more than a year. The negativity is draining. But right now I have lots of good flow. Maybe the heat is burning off the nasty junk. I suppose I shouldn’t be so quick to decide the weather is wrong. It could be just write…

ears ringing the bells’ toll
pay it, pay up
the reaper is sowing
deeds like seeds of the flesh
sprout unsightly weeds
love in the moment
feeding the fire
karma’s desire
pay it! pay up!
bare my soul for alms
meet my needs
chaff or seeds
ears ringing
the bells’ toll