On Flying Away

That which was once in my hands has drifted away with the slightest breeze.
I have not failed to control gravity.
Only failed to realize some hearts are like anvils and others, like feathers.

I do not regret what I have lost because in love, nothing is ever truly lost except chances you never take to share your heart.

If I have committed any crime, let my penalty be lessons in how to release my heart to the wind.

Anvils were never meant to fly.
It's not their fault, simply their shape of creation.

There is no end to this road. Only alternate paths obscured by too many daydreams.
It's not my fault. It's the shape of my creation.

Besides, the world is too young and full of hope to let me down so easily.

Same mistake, different sunset...

Proof that God exists: Canada.

sure we make fun of Canada for loving maple syrup too much and for having funny looking money but really, it's just love teasing because they're our little brother to the North and siblings pick on siblings.

But one thing remains the same: I ALWAYS have an adventure in Canada. I won't say I get "lost" because as Jana Stanfield says in one of my favorite songs "I'm not lost, I'm exploring/ Life is an adventure worth enjoying."

I used to hate getting lost. I used to panic as a child and my mom always turned it into some great exploration of dark cities when "we should have been home by now." I'm not exactly sure when I "turned into my mother" in that respect, haha but I'm glad it happened. The more I've become like her, the more I've come to realize how many of my friends HATE getting lost.

Yeah, it sucks when you really have somewhere to be, but some of the best adventures I've ever had, I couldn't tell you where in the hell I was! :)

Point in case: I think I hit up every Tim Horton's in the lower British Columbia area trying to get home today. My friends got engaged at one of the universities up there and I drove up to literally hide in the bushes (which by the way, were FULL of spiderwebs and thorns!) to shoot photos of the event because I'm also their wedding photographer. After all the romance and hugging (and my friend LAUGHING at me because I was crying more than her and teasing me for being such a hopeless romantic) I headed off the campus to get on Highway 1 Eastbound for the good ol' USA. It was supposed to be a straight shot.

I suppose for people with no sense of adventure, it was. But me, no. Adventure seeks me out like an obsessed lover who can't let go of my hand. I take ONE left turn and suddenly I' three cities and 40 miles in the wrong direction looking for a place to turn around.

After enough turns down farm roads to nowhere, I landed at a Tim Horton's with a toasted egg salad sandwich, a bottle of Pepsi (because in Canada it comes in bottles OR cans at restaurants) and a sprinkle covered donut.
I decided to dine in because really, I had nowhere urgent to be, I didn't feel like eating in my car and really, I had no freaking idea where I was so I might as well enjoy a sit-down meal.

And it was fabulous. :) As I sat there staring out the window thinking about my friends, the ring, the lake where he proposed and the rose petals scattered across the ground, I couldn't help but smile and giggle to myself a bit. I'm sure the other patrons thought I was totally nuts but whatever. Life is beautiful. :)

And then I heard it drifting softly through the ceiling speaks and fading into the crowd of hungry people below:

Been around the world don't matter anywhere I go
Small town stars to city lights
I find my kind of folks
It's about you and who you are
It's all a state of mind
And as I'm giving you my heart
I hope you find

That's where I come from
That's who I am
Hard workin' and God Blessed
Yes sir thank-you ma'am
The best things around that I have ever seen
Just look around you'll see what I mean

I always hear Paul Brandt in Canada. Particularly when I'm lost, even more particularly, when I'm at a Tim Hortons. The song came out several years ago and he's still one of the most beautiful artists I've ever heard, but there's something about that song that just makes me fall in love.

It doesn't matter where I am, where I was or where I was trying to be. I got to watch the sky turn to fire and then blush itself into darkness. I got to watch it all happen over open fields void of city lights, congested traffic or even commercial architecture. And I got to enjoy it!

I should have been home in 55 minutes, according to google maps. But given that my directions were for the wrong highway to begin with and my new directions were dictated over the phone at the border and written on my windshield and written in green eyeliner it's almost a miracle that I didn't wind up in Alaska! haha

It took me almost two and a half hours to make a 55 minute drive. When I finally did get to the border, I was at the wrong port which put me an additional 25 minutes away from home.

But on that wrong turn road, I found a local dairy that is already selling eggnog. Ahead of the season. A week after a friend and I had a conversation about how we wished eggnog was already on sale because cold weather requires awesome drinks.
I'm not exactly sure which highway I was on when I actually saw the dairy, but I got the name of the place.

I can just look it up on google maps another Saturday.
Who knows, maybe I'll find the right way to Canada by mistake. :)

Maps are good. Life is better. ^_^

Between Poets and Pirates...

The problem with love songs is, there are so many of them. And I swear they only play on rainy days when I'm traveling the same brain-dead stretch of 90 miles I could do in my sleep. This leaves me nothing but time to listen to the radio and thinks about the lyrics.

Maybe I should be fair and clarify I mostly listen to country music and they and the ones with rainy-day-love-song Sundays. I heard "Better as a Memory" from Kenny Chesney's Poets and Pirates album and I swear the sky got a little bit darker and the rain fell softer.

But I suppose the upside is that even sadness can be beautiful.

And really, if my sadness was that beautiful, I'd be okay with having my heart broken.
Which is not to say my heart was broken this weekend, it's just a long drive down a long freeway filled with seven years of memories. And I suppose somewhere along the way, I'd find something that makes me sad. But like I said, if you can make it beautiful, you can make it okay.

I suppose the fact that my heart is capable of breaking shows I haven't forgotten what it means to love. And that still counts for something, right?

I saw lightning last night. that made me cry.
I can tell you the exact day I last saw lightning in these parts. I know exactly what I was doing, exactly where I was going and it made me cry then too. Some things in life are just too beautiful to conjure apathetic reactions.

After seven long years, I've decided to try really hard to learn to become friends with the rain. It's definitely not easy, but we were at peace this morning. And the drive home still had beauty.

*sigh*

I'm all.... flustery

dammit.


I found a worry stone on ym desk tonight. I got it when I was probably about 12 years old. I found the chunk of rose quartz in one of those "educational toys for children" stores my mom always loved so much. I used to be really into gemstones. I remember getting the rose quartz in particular because it was supposed to symbolize love.

I've never once been able to find it when I've been worried.

However, it seems to randomly appear at the most unusual times... Like now. When I'm all flustery.

And I guess it wouldn't be so bad if I could just figure out what the hell happened that made me suddenly burst into giggles. I spent the earlier part of the evening hanging out with my friends who work at the tattoo shop and now I'm at home giggling over absolutely nothing.

I blame these stupid movies with their predictably happy endings.

Michael Jackson's memorial was today. My mom says he might some day be more famous than Elvis.

I don't care what she says, he'll always be the reigning king. ;)

Note to self:

1. don't blog after midnight.

2. don't listen to love songs after midnight.

3. don't follow your own advice.

Catch-22s are fun. :)

Now if only you didn't have seven blogs in which to write endless post-midnight love poetry while daydreaming (can you do that at night?) and telling yourself there has to be more to life than predictable movie plot endings...

This is why Elvis is still The King.

I can't help falling in love. It's a curse.

Petals on the Wind (a poem for hopeful hearts)

Wind pushes heavily against window panes
as rain pounds on the roof and
trees wrestle each other to the ground
outside the safety of my four-walled home.

This midnight pounding of my heart makes me glad
I don't have to bear it alone
but fearful I might be preemptive to tell you
how glad I am you called.

There is no Oz,
no faraway land into which I will be tossed
but childish fears cling to the darkness
in milliseconds of flickering electricity.
I wonder if I might cry if the lights go out
and have to explain what you can't see.

In the midst of the worst,
I can only remind myself the harder the rain
the more chance of bluer skies in the morning.
The better chance I'll have to sleep
because nothing can keep up forever.
No storm can beat down both heart and soul.

Like sharp bolts of lightning
you seem to shatter the silence of my day
in ways I didn't realize needed to be broken.

In these days, it is almost too early to speak
and yet
it seems you hear me in my thoughts.
I wade through prepositions, conjunctions and
adjectives I feel would be the least intimidating
trying to find the perfect expression when suddenly
my mouth opens and it all comes out wrong.

This is my nature.
I am not a gentle breeze.
I am not a perfectly opened flower.
But I am a twisted oak.

I was here long before your arrival,
standing strong through older storms.
I bend, I bow, but I do not break.

I cannot be easily uprooted,
but if given the chance,
I would stretch my arms to encircle you
if only you'd climb my branches.

Is it too soon to ask?
Asking you nothing more than to take shelter,
fall asleep without a word.
I do not require anything more of you than what you give.
I have weathered many storms.
I will bend, but not break beneath your weight.
I will protect you as much as you protect me.
I will grow in your presence, offer shade and peace
but I will never filter out the sun.

Though I cannot prove it,
I am already growing in your presence.
is it too soon to ask?
Just pause a while and I promise you'll see a difference.
I did not get here overnight.
I will not take you there tomorrow.
But as the sun sets and the moon begins to rise,
I will be here.
Steady.

I might not be the most beautiful flora,
but the rings inside me tell stories
of a thousand different years.
Is it too soon to ask you to climb with me?
To risk the thought of falling
and see the world from my own view?
I can only promise as much safety as you're willing to trust.
For just as you can fall,
so I can be cut down.

I won't ask you to pick my fruits,
to tend my weeds, to bring me water.
But as one branch grows from another
so I feel my arms longing to reach out to yours.
And if words happen to fail me,
as so often they do,
would it be too much to ask
if I could blush in silence
and you'd be content to just be?

On Turning 28...

Saturday was my birthday.
I'm officially 2 years from turning 30.

If there's only two things I've learned in the last 48 hours it's this:

1. I never expected to love or be loved as deeply as I am by people who have been pivotal flagstones during the most important times of my life. Years only add depth, not distance. At some point, I guess I just assumed love faded into complacent appreciation. I am loved by default. And then you find yourself having a 3am slumber party on someone else's couch and you realize that you are far more than you ever thought yourself capable to be. Not because of any particular achievement, but because you catch a look in someone's eyes and realize that "default" has never been in anyone's vocabulary but your own. And in that moment, I became Judy Collins. I really don't know love at all. But I know it is out there. I know how to give it out en masse. That was the easiest lesson in life. But no one ever taught me how to receive. Maybe it was expected that I would know. I thought I did. Like a Phoenix, I am just barely beginning to emerge from the ashes. Life has never been so unexpected.

2. It seems as though I live up to my fullest potential when I am completely honest. Unfortunately, honesty comes with the price of vulnerability. However, vulnerability is the fastest road to trust. This holy trinity of "becoming" is something I've long tried to fight off. It didn't occur to me until today but, I seem to be the most successful in life when I open my mouth and have no idea what to say. The hardest challenge now comes in trying to pull the nails out of dreams I long ago crucified in fear of stealing a fate not created for me. Like Jana Stanfield said, "What if we're all meant to be what we secretly dream?"
What if unfathomable dreams have been trapped in clenched hands for so long that I could no longer feel them struggling to escape.
The nigh insurmountable act of faith comes in two small words: letting go.
I got a new book for my birthday in which the author said her life began at 28.
Reading that page sent a chill down my spine.
it seems there are prophets among the shadows.

Speak to me, for I am listening...

More Life Lessons

1. jelly beans and salsa do NOT mix well together.

2. Don Pancho tortillas hold up about as well as 1-ply toilet paper trying to stop a leak int he Titanic.

3. A boy once told me "If I could afford to, I'd bring you flowers every day" and I thought "How HAPPY would me life be if I had flowers every day!?!" Four years later, I come in to work after the most GLORIOUS weekend and find dandelions on my desk.
I put them in water and they were still alive when I left.

4. Never in my life before today did it occur to me to put dandelions in water. I guess I never figured they'd last long since they always die a few hours after I stick them in my hair...

God, can you forgive me for how much I've underestimated the care you take in even the smallest of beauties?

Life Lessons for a Monday Afternoon:

1. A sure sign you've gone overboard on your "casserole" skills: when you have a full an hearty meal and you haven't even added the cheese or pasta yet.

2. Hardware stores are fabulous places to hang out... but there's no way in hell a girl can buy sealant materials for redoing her bathroom without everything sounding obscene and causing her to burst into giggles.

3. Having a feminist mm definitely sets you apart from a huge majority of girls in the universe. Mainly, you can't lose patience with someone who doesn't know how to do home repairs, fix a flat tire, change spark plugs and make a casserole to feed 8 with only three ingredients and five spices.

4. Chives. No idea what the hell they're for but they don't make a noticeable difference when added to food. However, people tend to think you an exotic cook when you say things like "yeah... I just added a dash of chives for good measure."

5. I have it on good authority that "Democrats are all going to hell" and apparently it's listed in Leviticus. When I pointed out that Jesus himself was a Liberal, this seemed to not make too much of a difference in the other person's logic. LOL

6. Sometimes people surprise you. Sometimes they knock you FLAT on your ass when they pick dandelions and have them waiting for you at work. It brings out a a glaringly obvious point that I am entirely hypocritical in holding people very near and dear to my heart but somehow assuming 98% of the world does not hold me in the same regard. This seems to be the most confusing thought torturing me all day... why on EARTH would someone just randomly bring me flowers? Logic and Stupidity have been yelling at each other in my head all day. Stupidity has some hilarious points in its rebuttal.

7. Randomly receiving flowers is a nice salve to the sting of a bleary Monday morning that kicks you in the shins and reminds you how unhappy you are in a job that is not in your calling, not in your passion, not in your skill set and not what you used to do for a living. It hurts to know a job exists from I used to leave and cry every day that God would love me enough to do something I loved so very much and at which, I made such an incredible difference. But maybe dandelions are his way of saying I haven't been rendered totally useless yet.

8. I really really really REALLY miss working in television. It was only three days of work but I feel like my best friend just moved out of town and I won't see them for another ten years.

9. For as little effort as I put forth, I make a damn good casserole. (guess who's bowl is empty.)

10. My birthday is 11 days from tomorrow. For the first time in my life, I'm not excited about it. In fact, I've made plans to leave town on my birthday and spend it with the small group of friends whom I consider to be family, since my family is all at least 1,500 miles away. It's not a fear of getting old. I just want to disappear from everyone in this town for a while. I feel like an ant beneath a magnifying glass and I'm tired of everyone watching and waiting for me to burst into flames.

11. I miss home. I miss the effing SUN that comes out more than once every six freaking months. I miss being able to put on sunglasses, feel my skin bake in the afternoon heat and hang out at the river. I miss my friends. I miss people who "knew me when." I miss the friends I used to perform on stage with. I miss working for shitty wages at the biggest little radio station in the middle of the desert. I miss all the stupid rabbits that I had to fight not to run over on the college campus at night. I miss the smell of alfalfa and corn when the crops were ready for harvest. I miss sitting on the back porch and hearing the marching band practicing at the high school. I miss going to the country fair and knowing every single person who walked through the gates. I miss being no more than 2 miles from all of my best friends' houses. I miss the black sky thunderstorms and lighting that threatened to strike us all dead. And yet, I know if I moved back, nothing would still be the same...

I hate these grey skies. They are all-consuming in their misery. And yet I keep telling myself there's still hope for this city of subdued excitement. There has to be... I'm not prepared to die here. I was talking to a friend of mine today and he said the same thing he always says when I feel this way:
"it's not your fault. You're born to do other, better things."

He always says I'm destined for things bigger than this city. Bigger than any of us can imagine. I keep waiting for him to be right.
Until then, I suppose I'll have to settle for making really good casseroles.
*sigh*

Tiny Happys

I got four hours of sleep last night.
My first thought when I woke up this morning was

"WOW!!! Hey God, whatever you did... that was COOL!" and then like a three year old I said "Do it AGAIN!" and slept for another 15 minutes.

It felt like I slept for days.

Sometimes it's the little things in life that make life. Yes?

^_^

You Don't Bring Me Flowers Anymore...

There's something about rain in the middle of the night

that feel's like the sky is crying.


Or maybe it's just a tragic result of the fact that I can still smell someone else's hug on my shirt.

I'd be stupid to say I still have hope, but like I already said before, some diseases have no cures...
*sigh*



And baby I remember all the things you taught me
I learned how to laugh and I learned how to cry
Well, I learned how to love and I learned how to lie
So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye

So you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye
You don't bring me flowers any more...



Olympia Bridge; 2007

Three Stupid Things about Life on a Tuesday:

1. Love is not a disease. Therefore, you cannot be cured of it.
2. Same thing with stupidity.
3. Love and stupidity often go hand in hand.

I suppose this is why they say ignorance is bliss. ;)

Also, it was a typical greycloudyrainingtypicalseattlesuicidal day when I decided to make a peanut butter and honey sandwich for lunch.

The rain stopped.
the skies cleared.
The sun came out.
Birds sang.

I think a lightning bolt on my plate would have been a more subtle hint that God wanted a bite.... hehehe


life is weird, y'know that?
But then again, so is putting bee spit on toasted solids consisting of baked vegetable secretions, plants ground into powder and chicken reproductive byproducts so really, who am I to judge? :)

Hard Pills to Swallow

only two things have really shaken me up this week, and possibly shaken me up more than anything else in my entire life.

1. My mom is allergic to onions. I have no idea why this news is so "life-altering" to me but I suddenly almost feel like the last 28 years of my life have been a complete lie. I'm sure it stems mostly from the idea that I could have lived my entire life with her and never known such a small detail about her. I've wrestled with logic for the last three days and can find none. All I know is it came as a bigger shock than finding out Santa wasn't real.

2. My fish is old. He's also sick, but more than that, he's old. I've had carnival fish before and they've all died within a month or two. But this fish I've had for years. Going on four years, two cities, four different houses, he DIED once already in an ice storm and came back to life after 18 hours.

I realize now why God didn't make it a habit of bringing things back from the dead. I guess I took a "Green Mile" mentality and assumed my fish would live forever. Out live me, even, so I wouldn't have to face the fact that he will eventually die and not come back.

I've been giving him medicine, watching him get smaller, less lively, less colorful, less alive... I've given him treats, new toys, more colorful gravel, a better view of the bedroom, I've put up pictures for him to look at so he won't be lonely, I talk to him every morning and night, I give him kisses (and he still swims up to the side of the bowl to give kisses back) and I feel slightly more sane than Tom Hank's relationship with a volleyball, but still not quite capable of grasping the fact that Picasso is not sick. He's dying. He will eventually be dead.

We live in a culture so obsessed with youth, with life, with saving someone form this "HORRID" thing called death. I've literally been to more than a dozen funerals in my life. That averages out to one about every two and a half years since birth.
I'm aware that people die when they get old and that's okay. Most people are not. My abuelo died last year on my birthday and while yes, I was very sad, I was very happy he lived to be so old. When I came back from the services, all my friends and coworkers told me how sorry they were and asked if anything was done to try to revive him. And really, I was more than put off by the question. He was well into his 80s, he wasn't mentally ever in just one place at the same time and he was happy to go. And we were happy to let him.

I guess I've just come to expect too many Elijah's in my life. My great-grandmother was my best friend growing up and one day she "moved off to Texas" and eventually she died. Yeah, it was hard, but I didn't see it happen. My great-grandfather moved off to Mexico almost 20 years ago and he was in his 80s as well. I never heard from him again. I know logically, he probably passed on a very long time ago but in my mind, there's a chance he might still be out there at 107 or whatever. When I moved here 7 years ago, I had to leave my cat behind with my parents. After 18 years, she passed away. I know she's gone and my parents showed me where they buried her but in my mind, she just moved off to Mexico to go explore.

Picasso is different. He's MY fish. he's only ever been mine. No relation to anyone else, no one else helped raise him, no one else has the attachment to him that I do. We're a team. When he dies, it will be "my fault" for not being able to make him live forever.

I'm not sure how to reconcile with this thought.
It's just hard watching him die.

Time is all we've lost

Sunshine go away today
I don't feel much like dancing
Some man's gone, he's tried to run my life
Don't know what he's asking

Sometime between last week and this morning, I realized I've been trying to play a part simply because it was expected of me. I've had at least six or seven friends get married in the last FIVE months. To date (that I can remember off the top of my head) I've caught wedding bouquets from Jen, Laurel, Kara, Megan and my aunt Crystal's weddings. That's only what I can remember. And at Crystal's wedding, I was on crutches. After a while, the sparkle wears off. I don't catch bouquets out of luck. I've simply mastered the anticipation of velocity, force and distance over the last ten years and know exactly where and how to stick my hand up in the air. Clearly the myth of "next to get married" isn't true.

He tells me I'd better get in line
Can't hear what he's saying
When I grow up I'm going to make it mine
But these ain't dues I been paying

When I was 21, I decided to get married simply because there was nothing left for me to do in life besides get married and have kids. I'd already been on television, I'd performed on stage, I'd been published in newspapers, I'd gotten a tattoo, cut my infamously long hair, graduated high school, gone to college, been a radio dj, and by the time the ring came around, I had a solid plan for a power suit career. Why not add a husband and a few glue-eaters to the mix? I mean, once you're done living your own life, you give it over to someone else and you mush it together like two different colors of play-doh and it's never your own color again. That's not a bad thing, but it's what you do when you've done everything you thought you wanted to do. I bought the dress. I bought the shoes. I wore the ring, I got the toasting glasses and had a MAJOR family blow-out that led to people not speaking to me until they DIED... all over my choice of a cake topper. And then one day, I woke up and it was all over.

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
But he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

I got a car, an apartment, a mini fridge and when I bought my very first, very own TV/VCR, I knew there was no going back. See, there was already a tv in the living room, and there was another in the bedroom. There was no room or need for a third television. It was the most purposeful purchase I've ever made in my life and at the time, 75 dollars seemed like a million I couldn't afford. And then life came back for seconds. I fell back into television, back into radio, back into newspapers, I got a bigger apartment, a nicer bed, a full sized fridge and tv three times bigger than my first. History repeats itself and, if we are to follow logical conclusions, it should be "about that time again.... eh?" And I've thought long and hard about it, I truly have. But this morning, I woke up with a new decision.

Working starts to make me wonder where
The fruits of what I do are going
He says in love and war all is fair
But he's got cards he ain't showing

I've been going through boxes, going through life, going through things I used to wonder how I could ever live without. And really, there's not much justification for a lot of what makes these walls "home." I spent the weekend daydreaming about shelf paper, painting the walls, shampooing the carpet. Alternately, selling everything I can't fit into a $20 U-hual and leaving this town like an awkward one-night stand. Which is not to say I haven't enjoyed my time here. I just wonder why I'm still here. Why I haven't left yet. Why I should even bother to leave. I still have the grad school paperwork for new Mexico and the hand written letter from the department head. That was 2007. I could still go work for the Smithsonian and make my grandfather the happiest man on earth. I could join Immigration and make my dad proud that I still fair very well with a gun. More than anything, I've been thinking about Lizzy. Airports, airplanes. The one place I've always been the happiest. The only thing ever holding me back in life is the possibility of love.

How much does it cost, I'll buy it
The time is all we've lost, I'll try it
But he can't even run his own life
I'll be damned if he'll run mine, Sunshine

I've thought long and hard about the subject since I started going through all these different boxes and I've come to a very solid conclusion: I'm tired of love. This is not some "scorned lover tries to put up a brick wall" psychological game. I'm really done for now. I called my mom once and said "Mom.... I'm in love with a dumbass..." to which she so June Cleaver-ly replied "Honey, EVERY guy you've EVER dated was a dumbass. That's just how guys are." I laughed until i cried and she commented on how that wasn't the pep talk either of us intended. I asked her a few months ago if she'd be disappointed in me if I never got married. She was more than a little upset by the question and said "I don't know where you got this idea that you HAD to be married. The only thing I want for you in life is to be happy." And honestly, there was never a more freeing moment in my life. I bought the 1950s cookware I'd always wanted, I bought a sparkly diamond ring because I had a preferred customer coupon. I indulged in everything I thought I couldn't have because "Someday I'm gonna get married and we'll have to consolidate our belongings and the reality is, no guy wants a tie-dyed couch or pink dishes." so I held back. But I can't afford to wait any longer to be who I want to be in fear that it might drive away someone who might love me. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of waiting to LIVE.

Sunshine come on back another day
I promise you I'll be singing
This old world, she's gonna turn around
Brand new bells'll be ringing

I don't feel any sense of loss for the friends of mine who've gotten married. I couldn't be happier for them. I'm just eager to let go of the expectation I feel to follow in their trail. Back in January, I found a dress pattern in the fabric store that spoke to me. The girls there all know me by name and one in particular is on a first-name basis with me. I showed her the dress pattern and she said it was beautiful (and on super sale for $2.99 down from at least $16 so of course I had to buy it). As I was walking to the front of the store, I passed a floor sign that had the exact same style dress, but in white. And it was the most beautiful dress I'd ever seen in my whole life. I grabbed the clerk and said "Isn't that the EXACT same thing I just found in the drawer???" and even she was a bit amazed. The funny thing is, the pattern I got wasn't from the bridal section. I still have a picture of the floor sign on my cameraphone, but I don't think the dress will ever be white when I make it.
But then, it doesn't need to be. See, I haven't given up on love. I'm just finding it in new places. Who knows, I might make the dress in red and wear it to all the weddings I've been invited to for 2009. Maybe I'll make it as a wedding dress for a friend. Maybe I'll wear it to a fancy dinner party and feel like Cinderella.... but go home with BOTH my shoes.

I saw the movie Hitch last night for the first time and I've spent the day in a season 2 Gilmore Girls marathon as they plan for her wedding. I only caught a few episodes back when it was on the air but I know things don't work out for her and this guy. However, that doesn't make it any less exciting. And that was when I realized it. I don't have any current desire to be in love. I'm not stupid enough to say "forever and ever amen." But for now, I'm more than happy enough watching it happen to others. And while it may sound completely against the societal norm, I should be allowed for that to be enough.
And honestly, I don't think I've ever been happier.

In the middle of the summer of 2005 when my mom and I were barely speaking, she came down to see me in Arizona and we pulled her old wedding dress out of the garage. She said "It's 70s, and I know you like vintage stuff, but I don't ever expect you to wear it. BUT - it has bell sleeves and I think you'd think they were cool and I've always wanted to see what you would look like in it so would you humour me and try it on?"

My neighbors must have thought I looked like an idiot standing in the front lawn wearing black flip flops and a LONG SLEEVE white satin dress in 117 degree sunshine. (114 in the shade)
But the point was not to hope some marital luck would rub off on me or even that I might fall in love with the dress and daydream about my very own "someday" when a prince would come.
Sometimes you just want to see what it would look like. And in the front yard that day, we both looked like complete idiots. But we had fun. And really, how many people can wander around the house in their mom's wedding dress without getting in trouble?

Life should be lived. Not waited for. And if at all possible, take pictures along the way...

Permanent Press

Sometimes I think this whole life is a wash. I'm just a pawn to be moved around whenever and wherever God pleases. And that's usually how it goes. And juuust when I start to contemplate complacency, He throws me for a loop. And then another. And another. and so many more than I'm about to hurl corn dogs all over visitors at Magic Mountain because, let's face it, God is weird. And He does weird stuff.

It's been a strange week indeed. I was "ambushed" at work on my lunch break the other day and its had me on a whirlwind ever since. In a place where I thought I had no voice, suddenly I felt crushed by the weight of every question you're not supposed to answer around coworkers.
Politics, religion, feminism, liberalism, Catholicism, activism, ism ism ism ism BAM!

what the hell just happened?
Someone uttered the words "and if anyone tells you that you're wrong, tell them they're just stupid."

I swear you could have knocked me over with a perfectly cliche, fluffy little feather.
I've been trying SO hard to make a difference, so hard to show what I do and why I do it, trying to justify the importance of the work I do and thereby, justifying my existence to a certain extent.
And all I've ever felt was the /whoosh/ of brick walls springing up all around me.

It started with a stranger's tale of tragedy. It blossomed into a crazy idea, it fizzled into conservativism and was somehow resurrected through the ghost of Eleanor Roosevelt whose words so often inspire my greatest achievements through her simplest quote: "do one thing every day that scares you."

It started with eye contact, then a hello. Then telling one person my idea and jumping off a cliff to see if it would fly. I fell... but with grace. I suppose it could have been worse. I was ignored, brushed off, written off, misunderstood and underrepresented. This is nothing new in life.
But then comes this hurricane, this left-field twister of "HOLYCRAPGOD'SHEREANDHEWANTSTOPARTY!" and then all bets are off.

Suddenly I'm the one receiving eye contact and hellos, cheeseburgers lead to the most random miracles before I know it, I wake up in the middle of a group of people -- GUYS, no less-- who want to hear what I have to say. Who believe in what I do. Who are defending me to ghosts they've never met.
It's a strange world. At the end, one of them said "I really enjoyed this discussion" and as he walked away all I could do was hold my breathe and wait until I burst into flames. I mean, that's what happens to girls like me, right?

Girls who are called "bitch" for saying no, for saying "you're wrong" for saying "you wronged me." Girls who say "no, I will not settle for your estimation of my abilities", girls who don't conform to societal norms of beauty standards and self-image ploys. Girls who dare to dream further than the horizon shows them and girls who are stupid enough to to keep running until they either fall off the edge of the earth, or come full circle back to where they stand.

I've been told a lot of lies in my life and I was stupid enough to believe them for too long.
It's been a strange week.
I went to three different doctors appointments, received the potentially "worst" news for my situation and couldn't be happier to know that the worst thing I might face is the best thing I could hope for to bring resolution.

I discovered that even once your hair stylist "chops it all off"... there's still plenty more hair she can claim.

I slept the whole night through last night... for the first time since 2007. For me, this is a major accomplishment. Granted, a legitimate full night's sleep left me with a massive headache and groggy feeling all day long, but maybe my body is just trying to figure out what the hell happened that it was able to finally rest.

I got home close to 9:30 tonight and really hadn't been anywhere amazing. I just wandered around one of my favorite stores for a few hours until they closed. I went there to buy a skirt. I walked out with pink satin sheets and a handful of closet organizing devices. There's clearly something wrong with me... :)

As proof, I came home and decided to do an impromptu photo shoot. I haven't done much art in a long time and while I've missed it, I realized the other night how much I need it too.
"He not busy being born is busy dying" ... I'm sure Dylan had no idea the extent his words would someday reach.

I thought a lot about the ambush conversation. About love, life, marriage, all my friends with husbands and babies. I tried to imagine what I'd be like someday if I were there again. I came up with two people.
Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball. I've got all the potential to be beautiful and famous... buried deep beneath a hurricane of DUMBASS that makes me walk into walls, trip on my OWN shoes, spill salsa on my white shirt and hyperventilate whenever I get within five feet of a cute guy.

I've had a prophetic glimpse into my future... it involves a lot of pizza. ;)



Not everyone makes a casserole dish look so classy as a hat. :)

Better to have gone crazy than never be optimistic at all?

People say things like "I hope things get better" and "Well at least they can't get any worse" when they're not sure how to respond to certain situations.

2009 has quickly established itself with a "2 steps forward, three steps back" reputation.
For every "absolutely wonderful" thing that's happened, something horrible has followed. I'm tired of waxing poetic religion on the topic because that leaves me with too many questionable options.

predestination:
1. God is mad at me and smiting me for sin I am blind to.
2. God is smiting me because I was born simply to live a mediocre to crappy life then die and go to hell.
3. God wants my life to suck so nothing I do will improve my situation and I should stop trying altogether.

Other options:
1. the Devil hates me and is trying to make me believe one of the previous possibilities.
2. God is pulling a "Job" and throwing me to the wolves to see if I'm more faithful than not.
3. My true destiny is to be a motivational speaker and I'm sweeping the stock market with all the Character I'm building now.
4. There is no God and this is all random happenstance so I should respond to all these situations the way I want to instead of the way I know I "should."
5. The fact that I would even list #4 as a possibility is proof that I'm deserving of all this "smite" and more because "good Christians" never let anything bother them and just post bible verses in their statuses and skip along down the trails without a care in the world.
6. God really, really, REALLY wants me to finally do something nice for myself and use my vacation time for a REAL vacation because he loves me and wants me to be happy and the only way to get me there is sometimes to break me in half.
7. This will later become a crucial chapter in the book everyone tells me I should someday write about my life.
8. The worse life gets in big ways, the more I remember how much I need to appreciate tiny little things in my life that make me so happy but get so easily overshadowed by big happinessessessses.
9. God doesn't want me to move back to Arizona yet because he's planning to pull a "Hail Mary" in the last 30 seconds of the 4th quarter.
10. Plan A was only ever a fool's dream, The Cards were never meant to win the Super Bowl and my life was always meant to be a roller coaster so other people find entertainment in my different art mediums.
11. This is all just a really bad dream and when I wake up, I will realize the last 28 years of my "life" were really just a figment of my imagination and I am actually a three legged dog owned by a writer, whose ideas I heard in my sleep and worked into this fabulous life story but I cannot communicate to my master because every time I bark, he puts me in a backyard full of potholes with a passive aggressive gopher.

I might not know much about God, life, "religion" or the purpose of my existence, but I'm pretty sure it's either #6 or #11...

I bought myself a diamond ring over the weekend.
It really doesn't solve any of my problems, but it sure is pretty to look at. :)

Words of Wisdom

I got an email fwd joke from a friend last week and he said, "you can't win a fight with God!"

I've been fighting with God for a little over a year now and I think we're in a stalemate. Not because God can't win, but maybe because I won't stop fighting long enough to allow myself to lose.

I want to believe, but all that keeps going through my mind is
"Who the HELL am I and why on EARTH would God want to use ME?????"

And the only answer that keeps coming back is
"why not?"

But I can't figure out where that second voice is coming from. I mean, it makes so much sense and yet, no sense at all. Since I was a child, I've told God and everyone on earth that I wanted to change the world. He's GIVING me that chance and I'm too stupid to move forward because I keep waiting for some long-haired hippie in a white robe to jump out and say "PSYCHE!!!"

It's the only feeling on earth more frustrating than being in love.... ;)

I have no doubt that I could build water wells in Africa or harvest crops in Haiti. I have no doubt I could teach children in the ghettos or use my art to change people's lives. And yet, at the mere though of approaching "God's People" and saying "He created me for a purpose and I can really make a big difference if you could just listen to me for five minutes"

I completely withdraw into myself and admit defeat. Because I don't read Greek. I don't know 57 original root Hebrew words for the word "love." I couldn't point to Galilee on a map if the fate of the entire world depended on it and I'm still too scared to read the book of Revelation.

But the problem is, even if I could do all that... I still don't think they would listen.

I am the daughter of Moses.
God have mercy on my soul...

Blind Elephant Convention

I swear on all that is holy, my downstairs neighbor goes drunk bowling in his bedroom at least three times a week. It'll be like one or two in the morning and then I hear this SLAM!! so forceful it shakes the ground.

I don't know if he'd tripping and falling, if his arm hits the wall or what. But it shakes my floor. And most of the time, scares the CRAP out of me because it sounds like someone's breaking in to my house, which of course translates immediately into my dreams so I don't sleep well for the rest of the night and if I do, I have really bad dreams of people breaking in to my house and whatnot.

I suppose it's not that big of a change though, considering I already have a fair amount of unprovoked nightmares on my own. Pretty sure that's about 80% of what contributes to my insomnia. Even if I *could* fall asleep, I wouldn't stay asleep so just stay up until you're tired enough to pass out for the remainder of the night.

But first, I have to put new sheets on my bed.
Stupid human trick #42: how to tell if the milk in your cereal bowl is getting warm? Spill it all over yourself while sitting on your bed.

yeah. genius.

My heart is still pounding. I'm so damn sick of my neighbors. If I say anything to the one who makes all the noise, he just starts pounding on the ceiling any time he hears ANYTHING from my apartment (I mean as little as accidentally dropping a shoe on the ground.) The other roommate isn't too bad, but in order to ask him to keep his roommate in check, I have to risk the loud one answering the door. I've had it out with them enough times to know his roommate is a passive aggressive ass who will only play his radio louder and longer into the night if I complain to him directly than if I just put up with the jolting slams and bangs several times a month. When our leases are up, someone will be moving. I love my apartment, but if I have to live above this guy for another year.... I'm gonna be a bitch and buy a pogo stick. ;)

distraction distraction distraction.
I'm afraid to fall asleep. What a wimp. But it's either that or proofread this entry for AP Style, dead construction and passive voice. And really, that's worse than a nightmare. ;) I've actually refused to buy greeting cards because I couldn't get past the grammar. It was proper, but not for a newspaper.

I have the /weirdest/ damn occupational hazards.

Midnight Confections

are better than midnight confessions.

However, when combined, you get Little Debbie brownies and this
"And yet, I find myself constantly at his mercy with just a smile."

I've noticed a theme in this blog where I seem to talk incessantly about love. I've got six blogs. None of the other five are as embarrassingly mushy as this one. I keep telling myself it's just a phase and I'll grow out of it.

I got a "Save the date" card from one of my friends today. We went to college together. She sent out this giant postcard covered in pictures of her and her fiance with a story about them written on the back. It was utterly adorable.

And made em immediately think "I want to be happy in life..."
But the funny thing is, I am happy. I guess I just want a variety of happy.
I'm selfish. ;)

I don't know if there's something in the air or the water or what, but four of my friends have gotten married just since November.

For the last few weeks I've had THREE bouquets sitting in vases on my stove. It was pretty funny.

I was talking to a friend today about marriage and our hopes and fears, etc and I told her I've come to the strangest conclusion recently.
I've surrendered my heart to God and decided not to worry about love anymore. In that, if I'm meant to be married, I'm content to wait for the right one and not go out and seek losers in a bar or fill out surveys on websites. But if I'm not meant to be married, it's okay. Because I've already had the greatest love of my life thus far. And even though it ended several years ago, it was still the most I've ever been in love and if that's the closest I'll ever get, I'm okay with that. Because it's not every day that you fall completely and entirely head over heels in love.

I trip and stumble over guys all the time. One friend asked me once why I bother having crushes that never go anywhere or why I'm not mad about having crushes on guys who don't like me back. She said their lack of fruition made the entire ordeal a complete waste of time. And all I could really think to say was,
imagine if every time a certain guy walked past you, he made you smile. If every time he spoke your name, you fell apart. If every time you were near him, your stomach was consumed with thousands of butterflies and you struggled to not choke in response to his casual hello. Is being that happy really waste of time because it doesn't lead to another happiness?
Why can't certain kinds of happy leave us feeling content?


But I guess we're all a little selfish that way. ;) It's embarrassing to admit but, I love the way I feel when my heart flutters and my cheeks burn.

Mainly, I want someone to cook waffles for.
I don't own a waffle iron but if I did, I'd wear dresses, dance to Bobby Darin and make every Saturday morning feel a little bit more like heaven.

I wonder if God ever gets butterflies in His stomach...

Til Death do us Part

I've had my fish Picasso for a little over three years now. That's officially longer than any boy I've ever been romantically attached to.

My fish is very consistent, very predictable in his behaviour and for as utterly ridiculous as it may sound, I love him and I believe if fish are capable of love, he loves me too.

We tend to have the same sleep schedule, which means I should have been asleep 2 hours ago. It's 2:45 in the morning. Fortunately I don't have to work until later in the afternoon. Regardless, I can't sleep. Because I'm worried about my fish. I've been worried about him for weeks now and I don't know if he's getting better.

I can tell his mood by the way he swims, the color of his scales (blue = happy, red = sad) and I can generally tell when he's sleeping. However, he's been sleeping at the top of his bowl lately and I'm terrified I'm going to wake up one of these mornings and find him dead.

Which might not sound like much of a big deal to many people because "he's just a fish" but I talk to him on a regular basis and even as I type this, there is a lipstick print on his fishbowl from where he swims up to get kisses from me. I'm sure on some level, I've entirely redefined "pathetic" but to hell with it.

I've been giving him his special medicine for a week but the water seems suddenly very cloudy today. According to the medicine instructions, I'm scheduled to change his water out tomorrow anyway and then settle into "the waiting game" to see if his fins will grow back or if time will finally take its toll.

I feel like the most humiliatingly childish excuse of a pathetic loser because, while most girls my age are dragging themselves home from bars and sorting through piles of phone numbers from hot guys, I'm at home in fuzzy monkey print pajama pants and a hoodie whispering to a fishbowl and crying because his tail fin drags when he swims and right now he only has use of his two, very small side fins and I wonder if there's something I did to cause him to get sick andhave his fins start to atrophy and more than anything, I wonder if he's in pain.

Maybe he doesn't care because he's a fish. Maybe he can't even feel pain and this is all a waste of flustered emotions.

Just 3 degrees farenheit in either direction is enough to kill him. I worry about the current weather and our nighttime lows, I worry about how much my electric bill will be when it finally arrives because we had a record freezing winter and I turned my heater on not to save me but my fish. I know it's pathetic, but I live alone and I need SOMETHING to love. Some reason to say "It actually matters if I don't come home tonight."

I woke him up and he swam aroudn for about 5 minutes and now he's back in the same spot as before.
And I just realized... he's looking at me. maybe he's sleepy.
Maybe /he/ can't sleep because he can tell I'M upset and he's worried about me too...?

When we moved to Olympia 2 years ago, he was really mad at me for about a week and a half until I put up a picture of the captiol building so he oculd see where I worked.

He's looking *right* at me right now.
I don't want to go to sleep because I have this horrible feelinghe might die.
But if he's waiting for me to fall asleep so he can go peacefully, maybe I'm just making things harder.

There's something different about his eyes. They aren't focusing on anything and they're a different color and holy crap almighty! Who the HELL stays up all ngiht blogging online about their FISH?

I'm such a loser.
I should probably just go to bed. I've already said my good-byes to him several times this week. But tonight, I'm especially scared to sleep. Maybe I've been to too many funerals and I'm paranoid about death.
Or maybe I know it so well that I can see it coming...

*sigh*

you're a loser, beck. this is why you're not married. you're in love with a fish...

Queen of the broken

I should have been in bed hours ago.
If I were smart, I wouldn't be typing right now.
But alas, I am a slave to my art and have been cursed with incurable writer's disease.

People say a lot of things about me. One friend recently told me that reading my blogs (on another of my sites) is like reading prose. Or rather, that I only write my blogs /in/ prose. Another friend teased me about my use of old school html coding.

More than any of these, Friday night, I was hanging out with some people from work with whom I am friendly and one of them looked at me and announced to the whole room that all I ever blog about (on the other aforementioned site) is how much I "hate" guys and he called me a man-hater. Some of the people at the gathering had never met me before so this was a possibly formative statement in regard to their first impression of me.

To say I was deeply hurt would be a tragically understated response. I was pissed. Mortified. Humiliated. ... Crushed. For as much as some guys have put me through in my life, it's a miracle I want to even consider dating a logical pass time EVER. Granted, I'm not trying to currently date anyone, but that's an entirely separate story.

So I've been dealing with that wound in the midst of a sudden flurry of broken hearts among my circle of girlfriends. If I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me "Why doesn't he love me?" within the last seven days, I swear I'd have enough money to fly out to every guy's house and kick their asses. AND still have money left over to bail me out of jail for assault. ;)

Seriously though, what is happening in the universe that this centrifugal forces is pulling all these hearts into the epicenter of some sort of storm where the only survival is through tears and brokenness? What is with all these guys suddenly turning cold and uncaring? Why are so many of my friends falling victim to the backside of Love's swift hand.

Moreover, why are they coming to ME for help? ME for advice? ME to fix their problems, cheer them up, renew their faith?

I hold a guy's attention about as well as "President" Bush held the nation's popular vote his last year in office.

I should be curled up in bed with my husband and two cats while our child sleeps soundly in the next room and we wonder how we ever got so lucky. But instead, he's asleep with his new wife and the puppy and cat they got together. I should be fast asleep dreaming about sugarplum fairies and happily ever after and for some reason, I keep having this horrible recurring dream about my ex boyfriend and his new girlfriend's wedding. And I've been dreaming about this for nearly TWO WEEKS now. It's bloody ridiculous!

And yet, I get text messages, "why doesn't he love me?" emails "I love him so much. Why won't he treat me the same?" and late night visits from teary-eyed friends asking "Why isn't God listening to me? Why can't I walk away from him? Why won't he love me back?"

You are asking a CHAMPION OF FAILURE to tell you how to succeed.
Where on earth is the logic in that?
Don't get me wrong, I /love/ my friends to death and I would do anything to help them. But you can't logically ask a blind man to read to you. Therefore, what is with this standing assumption that I have any idea how to /succeed/ at affairs of the heart?

For my next magic trick, I'm going to pull a teenage of act insolence and say "I blame my parents." More specifically, my mother. See, mom taught me one-sided love. Love is a gift. When you gift a gift, you're supposed to give a gift you'd like to receive. Additionally, you should never give a gift with any expectations of receiving anything in return. You give a give "of the heart" (no pun intended) simply because it gives you joy to offer something to someone else. "

As is with heart strings, I give all the love I would want to receive from someone, I love without expecting to be loved in return and I have no regrets when my list of unrequited love affairs becomes longer than Santa's "to-do" list in November.

What makes me an expert at "advising" affairs of the heart? What makes me even seem like a logical resource?

The teary-eyed friend in my bedroom tonight shrugged and said "I dunno... you... listen. And you have really weird analogies that make me laugh."

I wonder if this sudden influx doesn't involve some not-so-hidden message that God is trying to reveal to me.

I have become the Queen of Broken Hearts. They flock to my like I can mend their wings. Like I can command gravity. Like I could get a guy for /myself/....

*sigh*

I've come to terms with my lot in life and I've decided I can still be happy, even if no one ever wants to marry me. This is the root fear of every woman. We are powerless to its effects.

But what qualifies ME?

What is it, God, that you expect of me? Why do you have me continually fail and sit in humiliation as I seek love and this guy who doesn't even KNOW me labels me an "unfair man-hater" while I sit idly by, pretending it's not hopeless to keep dreaming?

The truth is, I have every right to be a "man-hater." I have every good reason to turn inward, grow cold-hearted and turn only evil glances toward prospective lovers. None of my friends would think less of me. In fact, they'd probably say it's been a long time comin'.
But if I did that, I would have no gifts left to give anyone. Who wants to put a bow on hate? Not me. And it's not something I'd ever want to receive, despite how many times it's arrived on my doorstep.

I don't know why his stupidly flippant comment matters enough to make me cry.
But I suppose there are a lot of things I don't understand tonight.

Hey God, if you're still listening...have all my chances really passed on by? I don't want to be dreaming in vain.

Lay Me Down

A song can supposedly "take you back" in time...


Tonight it had suddenly and unexpectedly taken me back to 2001.

I didn't think it was that big of a deal. But the last three minutes have been the longest and most uncomfortable I've felt in a very long time.

My stomach is churning. Like when you drink a glass of cold milk in the summertime and then go outside to play.
You're fine for a minute or two and then you realize you probably made a very bad mistake.
Sometimes I'm amazed at the power songs can have on our lives.

Although I suppose there could be worse things in life... like actually /being/ back in 2001.
*sigh*

There are some moments I think I will spend the rest of my life anticipating. Not all of them are happy.

People think I stand so tall and brave. And yet, all it takes is one mistaken identity of a stranger on a street and I crumble to dust. I have mastered the "Happy" poker face in all possible emergency situations. I'm not brave. I'm just a fabulous actress. ;)

They say these things fade with time.
But they never say how much...

Wistful Spinster

"Beauty is not caused. It is."
-Emily Dickinson


It's these damned insomniac nights that keep me awake all lovelorn and pathetic.
These cold winter nights with too-quiet re-run tv shows streaming online, reminding me of when I was young enough to dream of being beautiful and foolish enough to hope for fairytale romances.

I spent decades waiting to be beautiful. This morning, I left the house wishing I could be invisible. And of course, everyone I didn't want to see saw me. But then again, I suppose that was bound to happen if I didn't want anyone to see me anyway....

Beauty is so ridiculous. Though not as much as love. Tonight I threw away a bottle of perfume from someone I once loved. Someone who swore they'd devote their life to my joy, their days to mine, someone who told me he loved me so much he couldn't be without me.

It almost makes me wonder where he is tonight...

It's just perfume. A logical part of my brain said "There are starving children in Africa and you're throwing away perfectly usable perfume." Meanwhile the sensible part of my brain said "Why would you possibly want a reminder of something that stopped making you smile years ago?"
And the "me" side of me said "Oh for FUCK'S sake just throw the damn thing away already and stop reverting to childhood packrat psychological defects!"

I know it's just perfume. It wasn't ever one I really loved anyway. And yet, for some reason it still matters. Long after he did. Funny how that works.

My mom keeps referring to me as being 30. She's only off by 2 years and four months. But it might as well be the same thing, I suppose. lol

I spent the last four days sick in bed with nothing to do but watch movies. I never realized how embarrassingly romantic-comedytastic my movie collection is. I like mushy love stories. I'll never admit it with pride, but they get all the lives I'll never live.

Me? I stay up past midnight every night, writing poetry writing in journals, writing in blogs... I burn candles that remind me of a boy I once dated. Probably the one thing I loved the very most about his was that he always had candles by his bed. He used to read to me by candlelight and I remember thinking I was greatly missing out on one of the best things in life.

I had dozens of candles. I was just too chicken to ever burn them because if I did, I might not have any left, should the opportunity arise whereupon I could read by candlelight and someone would think me beautiful and romantic.

What the hell is so important about romance anyway? I wonder sometimes if God created it to enrich us or drive us all mad! ;)

the man int the too-quiet tv show is talking above the darkness of this night.

"I've had The Great Romance of my life... and I've had the pain the pain that comes when you lose it. I'm not anxious to go through that again."

I wonder if Emily Dickinson would agree or if she would think it worse to be a lovelorn spinster.
I'll likely never see again the boy for whom I burn so many candles. I doubt, in the times I cross his mind, that it would ever ocurr to him I still write about him. He never bought me perfume, he wasn't the great romance and it was pretty much doomed to fail from the start.

But he was beauty, in every way.
How he stood, how he talked, how he breathed, how he looked into my eyes and filled my chest with a thousand spastic butterflies, desperate to make their escape. He is without a doubt the most beautiful person I've ever known.

And just like the seasons, I will never see an autmn like him again.

Well, my lungs feel like my long-absent asthma is creeping back in and I'm just rambling.
It's about time this poor candle got some rest and my mind drifted elsewhere for a while.

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain."
-Dickinson

The truth is,

You're not something I need.
You're not something I want.
You're not something I miss.

One of these statements is a lie.


I'm working on it...

In the meantime, there's something powerfully therapeutic about ripping apart once beautiful dresses that never fit you right and sewing them back together until you would think it was only ever created with you in mind.

I'd like to take credit and say I'm a masterful seamstress but that would probably be a load of crap.

I can only attribute my successes to the fact that I know what all the rules are and I know exactly how to bend and break them to my good favor.

I used to work in television but being beautiful professionally was too hard.
I wait until no one is looking. Until there are no witnesses, no photos, no documented proof that I could be every bit as graceful as Audrey Hepburn, and then I let go.

I dance like no one's watching, sing like I'm the opening act for the Superbowl half-time, cook like I'm better than the perfect integration of wholesome Donna Reed and powerful Martha Stewart.
I spend all day speaking simple language, trying to mask my thoughts, my daydreams, my aspirations.

I go to work, spend the day pushing my glasses up my nose and coming up with ridiculous analogies as to why you CAN'T just shove a knife into the cd drive slot of your laptop (seriously???) and all my customers laugh and ask me how long it took me to memorize the training manual's many informative analogies because I had it perfected. I always feel slightly ashamed and a tiny bit proud when I tell them I came up with all those silly stories on my own.

Someone asked me on the phone yesterday how I even thought to come up with these stories and I told him simply "In high school, there were some tough guys who didn't understand poetry. My English teacher asked me to help them and somehow I was able to relate John Donne to an intake manifold and they all passed the class." I'm sure my English teacher had no idea what kind of impact he would come to have on my life.

It seems of all my teachers, the ones I had for English have left the deepest impacts in my daily life. Larry was probably by far, my favorite. He was my English 102 professor. I used to bring my poetry and song lyrics to him after class and he would always ask me "what do you plan to do with this?"

Writing for the sake of writing leaves no goal to accomplish and therefore gives you nothing to focus on or rate your level of success.
My purpose for this blog is to see if anyone hears me without my having to make noise.
But more than that, I have a blog for my personal bullshit. I have a blog for my silly anecdotes to entertain my friends. I have a blog that I can visit when I just need to escape.
But at the end of the day, there's still sometimes a bit leftover that doesn't fit into any of the rest.

A jaded dreamer, too stubborn to give up but too weak to keep caring. I am tied to my dreams as much as I am to my faith in people. I want to give up. I want to walk away. Lately, I've even wanted to walk away from God. I've come to understand all too well what some of my friends consider "those Christian people" to be. I've had enough of the condescending "I'm praying for you" form strangers who don't know me or anything about me, I'm done with the "It's all in God's time" cookie fortune and I'm done believing in things that I will likely never see.

Which is not to say I am unappreciative of love or happiness. Heaven knows I'm just about the most hopeless romantic that ever existed. But in the midst of it all, I've surrendered the fantasy that someone will fall madly in love with me, tell me they can't live without me in their life, get down on one knee and ask me to give them a chance to love me for the rest of my life.
I will probably come to own a lot of cats in my life.
And maybe I was only ever meant to write about love, not dwell in it myself.

I suppose I could handle that.... with some degree of annoyance. lol

I'm incapable of surviving on little girl dreams anymore.
I want something real and something lasting or I want nothing at all.
And who knows, maybe I'll meet someone in six months and have to eat crow on this post. But if happiness is punishment that's quite alright with me.

In the meantime, I sew beautiful dresses to dance in while I cook dinner for one and hope that someday it will matter.

My heart is a garden of beauty and secrets.
The problem lies in convincing you a dandelion is not a weed.

Midnight Confessions

Fine, I admit it.
I didn't by earth-friendly toilet bowl cleaner.

I've struggled with this decision for two days now and here's the thing: if I'm going to be dealing with germs in the most vile and disgusting fixture in my house, I want the germs dead... not smelling like organic coconut and tea tree oil. Yes, I'm sure it is better for Mother Nature but it doesn't kill germs. And it's not like I'm bleaching everything in my house or using only harsh chemicals to clean. I use oxyclean and grew up on simple green to the point that the smell of it instantly causes flashbacks to Southern California in the mid-eighties.

I grew up in a family that valued recycling, we crushed eggshells and mixed them with coffee grounds and used it to fertilize plants. I've been good for nearly 28 years. My mom raised me well.
But she also said bleach is the only thing that really kills germs and well, this is pretty much the most important seat in the house to keep clean. I spent 45 minutes on the phone with my mom a few months back while she googled the main ingredients as I tried to determine which eco-conscious dishwasher detergent I should buy and it had been 2 year since I'd even run OUT of dishwasher soap. I'm not flippant about natural resources.

Sometimes I can't sleep at night because I know people around the world aren't recycling.
I called my best friend en route to Hawai'i to ask her if it was wrong of me to buy a 50-bag box of trash bags or a 45-bag box at the same price, but made from 65% post-consumer products. In the end, I realized five bags was being selfish and I went with the recycled ones... and then had a lovely conversation with a fairly cute boy who was looking for eco-friendly paper towels and we had a brief but pleasant chat about how the recycled brand toilet paper was potentially not really as good as it seemed because it was 1-ply and therefore would probably be used up faster by the average American and thus, buying the 24 pack of MD that was on sale might not be recycled materials but you would use less than the other one.

I have the weirdest conversations with strangers.
I discussed my toilet cleaning dilemma with my grocery checker (whose line I wind up in every time for the last 3+ years... she's awesome)
and she said I should focus more on the fact that I was buying trash bags for the first time in THREE years. I told her I'd been surviving off a 90-bag supply that my friends (the previous tenants) had left behind but they had already been using the supply for a few months before I moved in. She said I should still be proud of myself because that meant I was recycling enough that I didn't need to take out as much trash.

Even still, I felt bad about the cleaner so I crunched a few numbers on the trash side and figured, say there were 80 bags when I moved in. Over three years, that averages out to filling approximately 2.2 trash bags per month. Which is really about as often as I take out my trash. Not because I am lazy, but because it generally takes that long to fill it. And I don't take out the trash if the bag is only half full.

So I suppose on judgement day, God might be able to overlook the fact that I had a germ-free toilet and show grace and mercy upon my other attempts to keep his planet clean.
besides, isn't cleanliness supposed to be next to godliness? ;)

I made acorn squash tonight and when only a thin rind was left I felt bad about throwing it away and once again wished I had some sort of compost container. They might have one at the University up the street. You know, I just realized at this very moment that I live immediately across from the University's recycling center.

I wonder if that subconsciously adds to my concern. lol

These are the thoughts that keep me up at night...

You are not invincible.

There comes a time in life when we must all face our downfalls. Admit to ourselves the fact that we will get shut off notices from the electric company, the love of our life loves someone else and a college degree really only takes up space on the shelf as we spent cold winter Sundays wondering where we went wrong on the yellow brick road to happily ever after.

But the most crushing of all humiliating blows is this:
No matter how many years go by, no matter how smart you are, how strong you grow, how wise you become or how tough you think you might be

there is no expiration upon which hot pink towels will stop bleeding into your whites in the washing machine.

Fortunately I have an eccentric enough of a wardrobe that people probably won't even notice.

Nevertheless, I admit defeat. Life can be so unfair.
*tragic sigh*

Take a Chance on Me...

The abridged version:
I told my hairstylist one of my "New Year's Resolutions" was to let her do absolutely anything to my hair that she wanted. Any cut, any style, any color. Well, okay not quite. No baldies and no mohawks. She said "dammit!" to the mohawk. Going bald isn't even considering getting a haircut in my book, though. It's more of a cop out; hair to no hair. You can't do anything with nothing and no hair is definitely not something that can be worked with.

As for the mokawk, I'm pretty sure I'd get in a lot of trouble at work, even though all my work is done with customers over the phone. But still, I'd rather not rock the boat there any more than I do just by existing and being different. *rolls eyes*

So anyway, I went in Friday afternoon, January 2nd and said "let's do it."
There's a long explanation as to why I chose this adventure but I'm tired of retelling it so we'll skip it for now and get to the happy ending.



I literally had a crowd of people watching me the entire time, whispering and making sarcastic comments in attempt to scare me about the fate of my hair. Unfortunately for them, I love my stylist and trust her implicitly so even when I felt massive chunks of hair falling from my head I could only think "wow. I can't WAIT to see what she's doing!" Because the deal was, if I were to trust her with this, I couldn't peek or see anything until she was completely done. Surprisingly, it was a lot easier to keep my eyes closed for an hour and a half than I expected. lol
And of course, I loved the end result. However, I didn't expect quite the reaction I got from my friends.

I posted the photos on two of my other blogs and to say they were "ecstatic" would be a severe understatement. Most responded with "HOLY SHIT!" and it eventually downgraded to a string of repeated "WOW!" and eventually ending with "that's SO YOU!"

What strikes me as the most amusing is that I had nothing to do with the process or results. I thought it was hilarious that, without knowing it, my stylist, Jen, picked a shade of red almost identical to how I had my hair back in college when I lived in Arizona. some people have never seen the color on me and found it radically different, while other saw it as a bit of "return to self."

One of the latter friends made a comment that stuck with me all last night and has left me full of thought this morning.
"You're like my own personal Madonna! I love the before AND after! I love how you are always changing your look but it is always so you!"

On surface value, nothing she said is entirely significant beyond complimentary admiration. Deeper than that, though, I've noticed a commonality in my friends over the last two years commenting on the "versatility" of my physical identity. And I say "identity" rather than "appearance" because I seem to have achieved a "look" that I am apparently known for, and yet, it's a look that seems ever-evolving.

Not that this is any attempt to focus attention on me by any means. I guess part of me is still a little surprised to hear words like "inspiring" "ever-changing" and "wild" when friends talk about me. When Megan got married a week ago, she told me my hair could be whatever I wanted for the wedding and cited her reasons that "I never know what color your hair is going to be or what you will look like when I see you and that's one of the things I love about you most."

In April, I had a layover in San Fransisco and called one of my old college buddies to see if she could meet me for a while. Her only response was "Who should I look for? I never know what your hair will look like and I might walk right past you!" And of course it was funny and I've heard the same sentiment from so many other friends but after a while, it's caused me to do a bit of self reflection.

Some people are constantly changing because they want to be someone else. Some people change because they hate what they are and some people change because that's just how they were created to be.

I'm not entirely sure who I am. I am not immune to the effects of the media in a beauty-driven society but I by no means dislike my looks or what God created me to be. It would be nice to be two inches taller, have nails that don't chip so easily, a natural tan etc etc, but it would also be nice to meet the love of my life in the organic whole foods section of the Fred Meyer, share a cup of tea and find a winning lottery ticket on the way home. But But God is not a movie producer and violins don't start playing every time I daydream about my crush of the week. *rolls eyes*

For me, it lies more in that I looked exactly the same for so many years that I became both fearful of change and incapable of recognizing an opportunity to grow. Because change /should/ be growth. I spent years in high school trying to paint myself pretty, to no avail. You can paint a house fifty different colors, but that won't change the shape of the house. But that doesn't stop you from changing the landscaping, stucco to shingles, and... I have no idea where I'm trying to go with this metaphor.

Being a teenager sucks. You'll pretty much always think you're fat and ugly no matter what you look like. But eventually you realize physical appearance is only the exterior of who you are. It can become you or you can use it to show what's inside. I spent so much of my teenage years terrified of the world that I was afraid to take chances. I had panic attacks if I couldn't find the exact brand of toothpaste I was used to. Not just brand, but it had to be the specific type with the same labels and pictures on the boxes because in my inverted universe, the wrong kind of toothpaste could someday cause time paradox that could end all human existence. Or at least my own. lol

I think my only real "personal" fear left is the possibility that I will grow complacent with myself. With my gifts, my talents, my my appearance and as an artist, my desire to create. Jen is inspired through the free will I give her whenever she does my hair and I in turn am inspired to do more with my wardrobe, make up and hairstyles. Somehow this translates to inspiration to my friends.

I don't really see how I play a factor in their inspiration but what right do I have to tell someone I don't actually make a difference to them?

Yesterday I got an email from a 20 year old girl whom I've known since she was even born. She had commented on some of my pieces of artwork and some of my activism photography and in her email, said I gave her "a whisper of courage."

I cannot take credit for whatever it is she feels through my art. I've never failed to admit I didn't choose the path of photography. God grabbed me one day and said "DETOUR!! try this instead." I had no camera, I had no talent and one day, I literally woke up as a professional in the field. It would be a sin not to create the images I see in my head.
More often than not, life inspires my art. And somehow from there, my art seems to inspire others. This is a phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me. I've had friends and old coworkers call me on the phone to excitedly tell me they saw a photo in a newspaper and they instantly knew it was mine because it had my "style" and it was that style that showed the artist before they read the byline. Honestly, I couldn't ask for a greater compliment than to have my creations recognized because they reflect me first.

I suppose in a bigger picture, you could add a spiritual twist and say God's greatest compliment is to have his created people recognized as his work without them having to say "I'm a Christian." I've thought many times about God personified as an equal artist and really, the only thought that comes to mind is "seriously, what's up with the Giraffe??"
Quite possibly one of the most awkward animals God has ever created. Perhaps that leads in to why I love them so much... I relate a little too well? lol

A whisper of courage... what would that even sound like? I have no idea what my art means to her but when I read her message I immediately thought of the Jana Stanfield song "If I were Brave"

What if we're all meant to do what we secretly dream?

What would you ask, if you knew you could have anything?
Like the mighty oak sleeps, in the heart of a seed,
are there miracles in you and me?

If I were brave, I'd walk the razor's edge,
where fools and dreamers dare to tread.
I'd never lose faith, even when losing my way.
What step would I take today, if I were brave?

Particularly the first line, what if I really am supposed to live out my dreams? What if I'm meant to be as happy as I seek, to create as much beauty as I attempt to make and to love as many people as I'm afraid to admit carry weight in my heart?

What would happen if we said everything we truly felt and attempted everything we were afraid of failing? I bet we could flip this world on its head. :)

Until then, I suppose the most I can do is keep screaming my dreams through the lens of a camera and hoping people still hear me. A man in a grocery store once told me that my hair was my beauty and to cut it would destroy the best of what I am.

But he was wrong. My beauty comes from within. My face is only a momentary snapshot of million possibilities I can be.

Epic.

Three thousand nine-hundred and forty-one kids (or what felt like it) gathered around the television last night to shout the countdown from 15 seconds to the dropping of the ball.

Then as if we were in a movie, for possibly the first time in my entire life, I witnessed the entire room burst into singing Auld Lange... whatever that song is they sing at midnight. I'm too lazy to look up the spelling. Sue me.

From there, it was an exodus of bodies migrating from bedrooms and kitchens into the living room where everyone was hugging and kissing each other. Then, slowly, as lips were still parting, this quiet chant fell over the group and began to grow in strength and volume.

"19 days... 19 days.... 19 days.. NINETEEN DAYS!"

Fists shook in the air, glasses lifted and emptied into smiling mouths as it became undeniably evident that "secret voter ballots" aren't very secret at all.

More than drinking, more than celebrating the dawning of a new year full of resolutions to be nicer and lose weight, more than mourning the loss of the people you failed to properly love, pounds you couldn't shed and number of times you lit up a cigarette anyway despite previous resolutions, my politically charged friends chose to celebrate the historical changing of the guards on January 20.

It's hard not to fall in love with people so impassioned.

I finally fell asleep around 4am with tangled hair, smudged eyeliner and hopes of remembering more about 2009 than I did in 2008.

I dreamed I was in charge of making $300 worth of peach tea (brewing sun tea and mashing hundreds of peaches) for the wedding of a friend whom I undoubtedly expect to become engaged this year. I was elected to be the tea maker, florist and photographer.

I am taking this psychological mutation to imply that I have been in too many weddings recently, I work entirely too much and I work entirely too much.

In 2007, I remember shooting photos last new year's ever of bands that were performing, shooting photos for a Valentine's day theatre show and it being pointed out that I didn't have a date. I don't remember anything about March except that my roommate was supposed to move out and then decided to stay until the end of the month. April, I turned 27 and immediately took off for a week in Mexico after my premonition about my abuelo dying came true. I don't remember Ma or June, though I'm sure I have photos documenting whatever I did. I spent the 4th of July weekend working photo shoots, I spent August helping my boyfriend pack as he prepared to move to Italy, sent him off in September and I spent from then through December playing flute at football games, volleyball games, orchestral christmas company partyness and in between all that, I've been playing hockey.

Sometimes the only place I feel at peace is on the rink with a stick in my hands and a guy twice my size charging at me.

January holds a lot of dreams, hopes and fears for me. a project I've been working on since about March of last year will finally either come to fruition or fail completely. It makes me sad to think I could work so hard on something and still have my efforts fall on deaf ears again, but as my grandfather said "dress like them, talk like them, tell them your great ideas and if they don't listen, give up and leave."

This is not to sound pessimistic or passive aggressive but merely an acceptance that sometimes you can't change things drenched in apathy. I talked to my grandfather for 2 hours today and at one point, upon telling him my plans for the year he said "Are you hearing what you're saying? You're not happy. you should meet my friend at work. She's a little younger than you and
shes a lot like you... Really really intelligent, really really bright and really realy wasting her time."

I've been in this town almost seven years now. That's a frighteningly long time to stay in one place despite the 15 moves in between. And like I told him, this is a beautiful town, I love the local culture of art, I love my friends and I love everything I am able to do here but eventually you hit a plateau. I hit mine in 2006. My heart left and I never got it back. Over the last few months, my mind has been in search of my heart and it's only a matter of time now before my body finally follows.

I wouldn't mind staying longer if I were getting married and settling down with a family but let's face it, I have a better chance of winning an award for curing cancer than I do of getting a guy to marry me again. Which is not to say all is lost in the love department but I grow weary of watching prince after prince turn into frogs. If marriage and family was my only lifelong dream, I could understand parking at a roadside stand and increasing my search. But I was made for more than that.

My life is over as soon as I get that ring and stroller. Who I am as an individual ceases to exist. And that's a fine exchange for when I'm /ready/ to give that up.
Like Bridget Jones said, "I'm not willing to gamble my life on someone who's not quite sure. I'm still looking for something... more extrordinary than that."

There was a time when I was content to live with a Ring Pop proposal and a goldfish named William was enough for me to desire. All of my "someday"s drifted into a sea of what could have been and I was left with a pile of dirty laundry and dinner that always needed cooking.

In a world that's supposedly "raining men" all I seem to find is overcast skies. I know what's out there, I know what I'm capable of finding and capable of becoming. It's been five years since I saw a real honest-to-God lighting and thunderstorm. There are some things this town just can't offer me anymore. And there are some things in life I can't live without.

This year brings a lot of uncertainty on my part, but I've noticed when you follow a calling, it rarely comes with roadmaps.

And so I trek forward, sifting through my own laundry and own dinner to fill my belly. Maybe there's still a Mark Darcy out there waiting to stumble upon the diary in my nightstand drawer. Maybe the most I'll ever get is a selection of overcast skies.

Regardless, I made a promise to myself in 2003 that I'd never again settle with my dreams or self-worth. I've walked this tightrope for a year and found myself giving up more and more each day. I'd rather face failure dead-on than spend another year daydreaming about what I could do "if given the chance."

This life is my only chance.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said "Do one thing every day that scares you."
It's only day one and I'm already scared shitless.

Life is still beautiful, you jsut have to see it fromt he right angle. :)