Random

These two lines have a way of rolling in and out of my mind. They are completely unrelated, but stick with me none-the-less.

"I'll let those be lessons learned. I'd rather learn that than find out that spending my weekend snorting coke off a hookers ass has a negative outlook for a healthy lifestyle." -my friend Dana, 2004, discussing some of life's bigger lessons.


"Imagine my surprise when you loved me back." -Postsecret.com

Confession

This may come as a surprise to most of you, but I have a number of irrational fears. Most of them are too silly and embarrassing to mention and granted, the one I am about to confess is both of those things, but it is also very unusual.

Ok. Deep breath... My irrational fear is of Johnny Depp. He is a good looking guy – I’m not denying that, but he has such a black undertone to him; he creeps me out. (Also, he never ever looks clean.) I imagine he’s the type of guy who would sit quietly next to you, enjoying a cup of coffee and nice conversation, when out of the blue he will scream and pounce at you – just to freak you out. I don’t like those kinds of people.

To top it off, I have nightmares about the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, where Johnny Depp stars as Willy Wonka. Seriously? They have made a movie like that for kids? Depp’s costume and hairstyle in and of themselves are enough to make me duck under the covers, but when you add in the creepy voice he uses, I just about cannot contain my hysterics. Recently, I was flipping through the channels and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was playing on ABC. I swear to you, the hair stood straight up on my head. I have had three nightmares about him in that movie. Irrational? Completely.

She Talks to Angels

I saw the Black Crowes in concert in October of 2006. This is still one of the best songs of all time...

A breather

The last few weeks have flown by in a haze of work and nonesense. I've been keeping busy with three jobs - all of which I love. The normal 8:00 to 5:00, plus a bunch of overtime is spent at UND; men's hockey games plus a few extras (like High School Musical) are spent at the Ralph Engelstad Arena; and my latest addition to time-burning is Bath & Body Works. I enjoy all of them, but I don't necessarily need or truly want to work all of them. It's just a great and needed time-filler. Keeps me out of trouble!

I had started off the year deciding not to take any classes or work extra jobs to take some time to enjoy my freedom; get back to my writing, exercising, and having fun. However, I am not a person who can tolerate a lot of free time - and I have just now figured that out. On my Saturday's off, I don't leisurely clean, wash clothes, pay bills, etc. throughout the day, then when finished with the chores, meet up with friends or move on to something enjoyable. No. Not me. I'm the person who will sleep as late as humanly possible, then read or putz around town. I'll shower at 7:30 if I'm meeting friends at 8:00. I'll wait with all the chores until (literally) 9:30 on Sunday night, then zoom through my apartment and finish everything in absolute record time so I can still shower and be in bed by midnight. I don't think it's a matter of procrastination as a whole (although it does contribute a little) - but I want to be challenged. If I know I have the whole day to do laundry, I lose interest quickly and move onto something else.

Anyway, tomorrow I have the day off. From all jobs. The week before last I worked about 70 hours between my 3 jobs; and last week, I worked about 60 hours. My head was swimming with work and I would go to sleep and dream that I was working, and the next morning get back to work and be confused about where I'd left off... "I thought I did this already?" In my dreams...

I'm not sure yet what I'm going to do with my free time tomorrow... but I've got all day to decide! ;)

Love One Another

Love one another, but make not a bond of love
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup, but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread, but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping;
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together;
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

~Khalil Gibran (1883–1931)

A Golden Day

I found you and I lost you,
All on a gleaming day.
The day was filled with sunshine,
And the land was full of May.
A golden bird was singing
Its melody divine,
I found you and I loved you,
And all the world was mine.
I found you and I lost you,
All on a golden day,
But when I dream of you, dear,
It is always brimming May.

~Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906)

Hope floats... and carries, guides, and protects

"What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger."

What a pontificating statement... Rainbows and butterflies. Who came up with that? Because I'd like to kick him in the shins, throw jello in his face, and run.

What a sack of shit.

What doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger; it breaks you into a million pieces. You struggle and fight and hurt and ache and mourn. Once you can see the light at the end of the tunnel you begin to learn and grow. Eventually you learn how to put the pieces back together and you heal and then you become stronger.

And sometimes you don't become stronger, you just heal. But in healing, there can be so much damage and scar tissue that it becomes just another old wound; something to keep hidden and protected, and you're so concerned with protecting that old wound that taking the next step to find the extra strength isn't even on the agenda.

And if you were lucky enough to heal and become stronger, count yourself blessed. It's because you were lucky or smart enough to keep a shred of hope in the first place.

Spring is welcome anytime

As I write this blog, it is -32°F, with a -46°F windchill. I have had enough of winter!

Last night I worked at the Ralph for the High School Musical (Ice Tour) - which was a whole experience in itself - but at 9:30 when I was packing up, getting ready to go home, a friend offered to give me a ride to my car. Granted, I only had to walk approximately 3 blocks to my car, but the windchill was somewhere around -50°F and my legs went numb after just 20 seconds outside. On our short little jaunt to my car, a woman flagged us down. We stopped, and she jumped in the car. This woman was there with 2 little girls for the musical and she couldn't find her car. She had left her girls inside the Ralph so she could go search for her car, and she was starting to freeze on her third attempt out. So my generous friend offered to drive her around and help her look for her car after she dropped me off at mine. Ok. That is what you call ridiculously cold. And may I just say... ENOUGH ALREADY.

here we go with the dreams again

Also, this weekend I had a very disturbing dream. I dreamt I gave birth to a beautiful baby, but he looked very much like his father in one way. Eyebrows. This tiny newborn baby had huge, bushy black eyebrows and I was horrified.

Now, it's just funny. And actually, if I didn't maintain my eyebrows the way I do, they would probably look very much like my dream-baby brows.

My incompetence knows no bounds

This weekend was a rather dull and bumbling waste of time. Last week was a long and *slightly* stressful work week so Friday night I crashed at about 8:30 and slept 12 straight hours. That was surprising and super wonderful. Saturday, I worked a few more hours and wasted my afternoon with another delightful nap. Saturday night I found myself in a bit of a conundrum. A couple weeks ago, I made a vow to myself that I would only eat out once a week, and drink alcohol once a week, to monitor the intake of calories and the outflow of cash. Well, I’ve made good the deal with myself with only one slipup in three weeks. Saturday night, I couldn’t eat out or drink because I already used my allotment for the week. To occupy my sober-time I decided to make chocolate chip cookies and thought it would be a nice treat to mail some home and bring some into work.

Let me state now that I do not claim to be a master cook or baker. My family relentlessly heckles me and my ability and desire to be anywhere near a kitchen. Kitchen work, in any form, is not something I have ever grown fond of. In all reality, how fun is it to cook for one person? If a piece of toast is going to satisfy the grumbling in my belly as well as a steak; I am going with the toast. But I will say that my cooking has gotten better (the frequency anyway) because of my new resolution. I can only handle toast (yes, TOAST, and it is whole wheat if that makes you feel any better) about 4 days a week, so that leaves 2 more days in which I have to find something else to consume. Last week, I made BBQ chicken and a baked potato, spaghetti (whole wheat), and a casserole. Not difficult things to make, but all those meals required me to turn on the oven/stove. PROGRESS!

Back to this weekend… I thought I was doing great, whipping up those chocolate chip cookies on Saturday night, all the while smirking and humming to myself; anticipating the looks of shock on my parent’s faces as they opened a package of homemade cookies from THEIR DAUGHTER. However, I encountered a small problem. The dough was extremely dry. When I attempted to bake the cookies, they didn’t melt into gooey soft wonderful-ness. They stayed in their dry, lumpy form and turned brown. I blamed my measuring cups; I blamed the recipe (don’t the cookbook editors check their recipes before printing?!); I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. All my planning and hard work turned into floury ugly lumps. I covered the bowl of cookie dough and put it in the refrigerator, not yet willing to give up on my little project, hoping a night of sleep would reveal the error in my recipe.

The next afternoon, I opened the microwave to warm up some leftover spaghetti to find a bowl of half melted, congealed butter. Butter that was patiently waiting to be stirred into cookie dough.

Can you imagine the swearing that occurred? The hair on Charlie’s ears were singed.

To my family, who know my mothers fabulous cooking: The cooking gene didn't carry through. From now on, I will bring pickles to all family events.

Single in the City

As Valentine's day approaches, the lump of bile in my throat grows. This is the third year I have been single over Valentine's day and I have come to loathe the 14th day of February. Yes, many say that V-day is a crock. It's based on consumerism and Hallmark's pitch to meet sales quotas for the year, blah blah blah. If you happen to notice, the people that say this are the same people with mates (mates for lack of a better word; somehow spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend, lover, special someone don't fit). These are the people who buy the huge, gawdy cards and go out to dinner sheepishly shaking their heads that they fell for the Valentines day 2-for-1 deal at Red Lobster. While all the singletons (singletons for lack of a better word; somehow 'lonely, empty drunks' doesn't fit...well, maybe it does) either protest bitterly and outspokenly, masking their own disappointment at not having a mate, or hang their heads low and their eyes lower in hopes that they might not see the red lace and bouquets of roses that are the symbols of love and happiness ever after and be reminded that they haven't found their pot-o-gold yet.

Often I get frustrated with married folk who insist that I'm so lucky to be 26 years old and single. How independent I have become! How strong! How carefree! I am often reminded that we singletons don't have to worry about adjusting our plans to fit the schedule of a mate or family. We don't have the fights, worries, annoyances, grievances, and endless disappointments of a spouse and children. We may come and go as we please, eat pizza every day for a week, and stay up all night watching "MythBusters" marathons without it affecting another soul. We don't argue over money or whose turn it is to pick up little Jack from daycare. We can leave our hair in the drain, towels on the floor, crumbs in the bed, forget an oil change for months on end and no one would nag us.

I'll tell you what else we don't have.

We don't have someone to go home to at night; that person who doesn't feel so much a mate as a home. We don't have that special someone to share our miseries with... or our joys. We don't have someone who can pick up takeout for dinner tonight because I've just had such a long, rotten day that the thought of another responsibility or decision could send me to the Betty Ford Clinic.

We go home to empty houses and laundry lists of responsibilities and no one to take half the burden. We watch "Everyone Loves Raymond" and have no one to giggle and roll our eyes with. We have awkward dates and cold beds, and friends who transform from beer-ponging streakers to exhausted, constipated parents with whom we have nothing left in common.

We don't have little Jack's arms wrapped tightly around our necks as we kiss him goodnight or have the satisfaction and contentment from comforting him when he scrapes his knees. We don't have a date for a wedding who doesn't cause three months worth of gossip and endless questions about "where does he work? how did you meet? is it serious?"

Mostly, we don't have the comfort that we are implicitly loved – by someone who loves you not because you share the same blood, or dozens of cases of beer in college, but because you are you – and that is so wonderful that you are the only one they chose to wake up next to every morning for the rest of their life.

Valentine's day is just another lovely reminder.

From "Pillars of the Earth"

Ellen was being sent away for being a fornicator and she was saying goodbye to her lover, Tom Builder...

"Don't look so sad," she said. Her eyes were full of tears.
"I can't help it," he said. "I am sad."
"I'm sorry I've made you so unhappy."
"Don't be sorry for that. Be sorry that you made me so happy. That's what hurts, woman. That you made me so happy."

Emotional Constipation

So many thoughts and feelings flowing through my mind, I need to let them out. I just can't find the words...

Puppies - 4 1/2 Weeks