The 2005 Kiss-Off

Well, it is time to say goodbye to the past 12 months. You remember that Boyz II Men song, "It's so hard to say goodbye"? Uh uh...Don't worry about me having seperation anxiety...This year is soooo over!!

Thank you to my friends for being a constant in my life. And many thanks to God for keeping me sane for another year and for bringing back some of my family relationships. It was at a key time. I am thankful that at least I enjoy my job. I am thankful that I have a whole new year ahead of me to do it up right!

I am done with smoking. I am ready to make honest-to-God efforts to become a healthier person. I am going to try hard to be more bold this year...to try being comfortable in my own skin. And...I am going to spend more time with my art...photographing, drawing and writing. But hey, I've already made some more than half-hearted attempts at my writing, thanks to this blog.

I was blog-surfing and came across this one comment someone made. It basically said, that you should never stop making resolutions, even if you feel like you have not been good at keeping to them. Making resolutions means that you are still willing to have the humility to admit that you are still (and always) a work in progress.

hope you're an animal lover.

This site is soooo stinkin' cute...I might just die. Check out more adorable pictures like this one. http://cuteoverload.com/

Something for the soul

My friend Alecia is a quote-junkie. Janelle made me a poster (with glitter and all) to hang in my cubicle at work, with a number of good quotes. As a result of recent influence from my friends, I have taken to collecting quotations. Enjoy!

"There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you." -Maya Angelou

"I have in irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the world is a little better for my having lived in it." -Abraham Lincoln

"What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." -Aristotle

Sour Apple? Bitter perhaps, brilliant as usual...

Fiona Apple is kind of a well-kept secret. She has been around for a while now...since she was a brooding teenager, with her first album, Tidal. I think her angry-girl vibe, waif-like stature and sunken blue eyes sort of scared off the mainstream, however she has continued to impress me.

Her latest album (a Christmas present), once again showcases her lyrical talent and she easily blends genres with her music. She mixes a nearly 1920's Hollywood Vaudeville sound at times, with bluesy, jazzy melodies, and combines classical instruments like her piano with almost electronic sounding arrangements. The end result is a moving, sometimes comical and always genuinely unique experience, which makes her album's title undeniably fitting...Extraordinary Machine. Give it a listen. http://www.fiona-apple.com/

25 of my all time favorite songs for dancing, venting, crying, lovin' (wink, wink) and leaving to

1. Don't Disturb this Groove, The System
2. After the Dance, Marvin Gaye
3. Touch, Seal
4. Sleep to Dream, Fiona Apple
5. I'm Goin' Down, Mary J. Blige
6. Fooled Ya Baby, Nikka Costa
7. Next Lifetime, Erykah Badu
8. So Have I for You, Nikka Costa
9. After the Dance, Marvin Gaye
10. Hot and Cold, Huey Lewis & the News
11. Wishing Well, Terrence Trent D'Arby
12. Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
13. September, Earth Wind & Fire
14. Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve
15. Jesus to a Child, George Michael
16. The Beautiful Ones, Prince
17. Cherish the Day, Sade
18. The Sky Fell Down, Frank Sinatra
19. Imagine, John Lennon
20. Brown Sugar, D'Angelo
21. I Feel for You, Chaka Khan
22. Golden Lady, Stevie Wonder
23. Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Queen
24. Warning, Incubus
25. Material Girl, Madonna

If you haven't heard these, you should give them a listen...you will feel something!

01.31.1997

Dreams lie quiet in sad eyes,
Hidden in dark corners,
Forgotten by souless bodies

Weak hearts beat in irregular rhythms,
and cold hands wait for forgiving arms

Clocks stop...
calendar pages yellow and fade
in honor of innocent lies

Wedded bliss, birth, death
Celebrations with no excuses
melt together until
they cannot be told apart

Be hopeful young man,
young woman,
young hearts, minds, spirits

Do not shut dreams away
like stiff corpses in waiting coffins
Do not hand them over to
the welcoming darkness

Do not let dreams lie quiet

Random musings from the wee hours

Not sure what to write tonight but have a lot o' nothin swimming around in my head. Care to hear? Sure you would....

I have been judgemental about people who say they love sushi for years now, assuming it was just some faddish thing like "having to drink only Starbucks coffee." I figured people only "claimed" to like it because they thought it was an uber-trendy thing to enjoy, because otherwise, how could you possibly like eating something that tastes and smells like the inside of a fishtank?... I decided however, that I could only say I hated it, if in fact I gave it a fair chance. So I decided to try the new Japanese resturant they built down the road, Koji Osakaya and I have to say I was a bit humbled by the experience. I ate with chopsticks, I drank miso soup from the bowl (I will admit to asking the waitress why I had no spoon at first), and I even tried a tiny piece of raw fish...which honestly was...disgusting! HOWEVER, since then, I have more than once had an actual craving for the Tsunami rolls (shrimp, cream cheese, avacado, some other stuff and rice all wrapped up in ultra fishy seaweed) and have even gone back a second time for take-out!! I am a convert, and not the anti-foodie I once thought.

******

I saw the movie, Out of Africa last night. Beautiful movie. Beautiful cinematography. Very beautiful soundtrack. Depressing as hell but deeply moving. I have yet to see a Meryl Streep movie I don't love.

******

My cats have gone insane. I think I need to find a kitty obedience school. They are tearing up the carpet outside my bedroom door, they have started climbing the entertainment center, and eating the one plant I thought was safe from them and today I came home from being gone overnight to see that they had puked (probably from eating my solitary houseplant) right in the center of my red faux-suede loveseat. They are about 2 1/2 years old, which in cat years puts them at right about 16 I would guess. Teenagers (even feline ones) are from hell.

Belated Expectations

So something happened last night that was very surreal. I was curious about my impending 10-year reunion (which I doubt I will attend, but whatever), so I decided to go to my highschool website. I had never checked it out before, but you can go to this section called "alumni" and search for classmates that have put posts on the site. So I looked up my class, 1996. Then I looked up Matt...and lo and behold his email address was there.

Matt is, for those of you that don't know, the inspiration for all of my shitty highschool poetry and aforementioned teenage angst (see my very first post.) He was "that" guy. The one you never totally get over. Or maybe that's just me? Who knows? My friends and family know how disgustingly sentimental and emotional I can be, so maybe it's just me that never got totally over a boy she met 10 years ago and hasn't seen for at least half that time.

Anyway, I emailed him (of course) and even sent him the link to this blog. Then I went to bed wondering. Does he even ever read his email? Would he care to see that I sent him one? And all those other things you might wonder about the first boy you loved. See the thing is...it's sad. I have had a couple shitty relationships, and my heart has been trampled on, and now as a result of fear from that happening again, I am chronically single. So for years, when I was feeling melancholy, Matt was who I thought about. I always hoped that he was somewhere feeling equally melancholy, thinking about me. Thinking that I was "the one that got away", and hoping that someday our paths would cross again. I wrote him letters over the years, and sent them to his father's address, believing that he would read them and realize what he had lost in me. But my letters were always unanswered. So, I would stop from time to time and "give-up". However me, always the romantic, ever the optimist would try and try again (never realizing that instead of looking like the sentimental, romantic, I might turn out looking like the obsessive psycho...just an unfortunate side-effect, and of course totally not the case I assure you all.) I realized finally after many dashed attempts, that it was simply not meant to be. (So I am a little slow, so what.) And even then, a little flame of hope in my heart, weak as it may have been, continued to burn for a time, even after I gave up on the letters...until finally it stopped altogether.

Mind you, I am not suggesting this has opened up the floodgates or anything. Honestly. It is the first time in years that I feel somewhat detatched. Curious, perhaps...but definitely not that schoolgirl kind of hopefullness I used to have. I absolutely would love to hear from Matt, don't get me wrong. Just like so many other people in my past, and especially him, I miss the friendship most of all. But, time has a way of changing so much. It can bring new love, children, heartbreak, newfound spirituality and so many things, it is unimaginable how one might have changed over the years. I guess one of the things that has changed in me, is that I try now not to imagine, or expect for my life to turn out a certain way, because when you do that, put limitations on yourself, on others, you will be very disappointed when life gives you something else. And worst of all, we limit what life and more importantly, what God may have waiting for us ahead.

03.22.1998

We are climbing a hill
with no top,
wandering a lonely road
that has no end.
Together, yet somehow miles apart
You and I.
A pair of one-eyed Jacks,
looking through the wrong eyes,
in the wrong direction.
Fumbling for something,
neither of us understanding.
Losing our common ground
Gaining newfound freedom
wishing we had never left that safe place,
when it was easy
to be in love

These are a few of my favorite things...

So I have decided that I need to rediscover some of the things I love the most. So I made a list of 20, in no particular order:

1. Making lists :)
2. Beautiful eyes
3. All shades of blue (yes, blue...not gray)
4. Sunshine
5. Tchaikovsky
6. a genuine smile
7."Sleepwalk", by Santo and Johnny
8. writing
9. singing
10. sleeping...in the nude
11. men's flannel pajamas
12. gerbera daisies
13. bare feet...mine, not yours
14. banana flavored anything
15. SAN FRANCISCO
16. kissing...when there is someone good to kiss
17. creating something
18. taking long drives
19. Italian food
20. people who make me laugh

02.26.2002

This was not written as a poem, just an attempt at expressing what I want to find in love...and what I expect we all really want....

I want softness and romance,
flowers, love letters, wooing.
I want passion, intensity,
heat, fire...fireworks.
Stars in my eyes. I want to glow,
to burn...to feel everything
down to my toes and in my fingertips.
I want to be longed for,
to be yearned for,
to be held, to hold.
I want to connect, to chill with, to vibe with.
To get it all, to have it all, to fall deep, deep...deep
and stay there for a long time
and after that...
I want it all again.

We can be alone...together.

I have been struggling. In so many ways as of late, but as always with my finances, to name one big one. I feel like I work just to work and at the end of the day I don't have a lot to show for it. And recently, I have had some really disheartening epiphanies about my job. Don't get me wrong, I actually enjoy my job, I just think I can't do it for much longer without some sort of payoff. So basically things in the $$ area of my life are looking grim is what I'm saying.

I'm like, "Christmas, who cares about Christmas when I can't pay my bills" ...y'know. I blame myself for my financial problems, my enormous debt...all of it. It is truly my fault, but now it is a mountain I cannot climb fast enough.

I am giving you some background so you can understand where I am right now. I have been feeling really scared about money recently, and with everything else I am just emotionally "spent", no pun intended. I called my sister Joy last week, because she has been my biggest support in the last few years, just to cry on her shoulder. When it comes to money, I hate sharing my issues with almost everyone. I just needed someone to help me troubleshoot and to tell me that I was smarter than my problem and I could overcome it.

And what is so beautiful about my sister Joy, is that she not just listened, but she absorbed it all, as if it were her struggle too. And I could tell it pained her, because she couldn't just say "don't worry". What I didn't even realize is that she took things so seriously that she wrestled with the situation and how to help me fix it.

So, tonight I came home from work and found a large envelope with a check for 500.00 from Joy's mom, Nancy, and a beautiful card signed by my sister, niece and brother as well. It is more than enough to help me out, but it's not even the money. I know that Nancy and the rest of my family don't have that money to give, but the fact that I have people who would rush to my aid like that is an incredible blessing to me. I feel very conflicted over whether or not I can accept this money, when a lot of my problems are my own making, so I am really trying to pray and reflect on everything before making any decisions.

500.00 is a lot to me. To a lot of people, they think it is a regular thing for parents to give their kids 500.00 here and 1000.00 there for things they need or even just want. I very rarely take money from other people and I certainly don't know how to ask. I consider my problems, mine alone and I assume I should solve them alone. I feel blessed to have family, who are so willing to help carry me through things and unwilling to let me handle life all by myself.

*****

Nancy wrote this in the card she sent. I thought it was really beautiful:

Time flows like a river

from life into Eternity

God's blessings are with

those whose struggles and sorrows

are past

as He receives them

into His loving presence

and with us

as we cherish

thoughts of loved ones past

And in the realms of

Eternity to come

what is yet to come...

(note: better to have your speakers on for sound too)http://www.lifetalk.net/2ndcoming/ee.html

Circle of Friends

I have really been touched recently by the warmth and sincerity of my friends. I am so blessed to know people who really value those in their lives. I know that what will make me happy are my friends and family and their continued support.

This year is drawing to a close very soon and although it has been tough (not just for me, but for a lot of us), there have been so many things to be thankful for. My best friend Jana gave birth to a beautiful baby, Evan James. I made some new friends like Janelle :) I watched Corri become an independent woman in her very own apartment, and I am watching my sister Joy become an independent woman...all the way across the country. Although my father passed away, his passing brought parts of my family I have never even met, together. And while there are some things I might change (like having a bigger paycheck) I actually do like my job.

I spent a good hour on the phone with my sister tonight, and she really brought some clarity to this year. She reminded me that these kind of struggles are God's way of preparing and refining me for something really awesome that is yet to come.

I want my MTV!!!

Do you remember when the Real World was a semi-interesting show? When there was more to their cast than seven overly-tanned, booty-shorts wearing Hooters-esque sorority girls and drunken, belligerent frat boys?? Well, I sure do...it was when seven (albeit undeserving) strangers, who actually were kind of different, were picked to live in a outrageously decorated manison and have their lives taped.

I grew up with this show...real or not-so-real, I loved it and in turn I loved all of the cheesy spin-offs to follow in it's trendy footsteps: Road Rules, Real World vs. Road Rules Challenges...The Gauntlet, The Inferno, I and II and on and on and on. And now we even have Laguna Beach and Making the Band (basically the Real World with singing and dancing and even more booty shorts.) So, tonight as the newest season of RW/RR challenges begins I have to ask myself...when will it end!! Or better yet, when will I realize I am just too old to watch this nonsense. Do I have to be 10 years older than all of the cast members before I say enough is enough?? With 2006 approaching I have to consider the possibility of giving up my guilty pleasure...perhaps a resolution is in order (?)

But it's sooo hard, I do love me some MTV "reality" TV.

Please pass the eraser...!

...because I would definitly like to erase this year permanently! 2006 had better be f***ing wonderful!!!

Nikka who?

So, I have to say while it's on my mind... if you have never heard of Nikka Costa, then you are definitly missing out on some seriously awesome music. I think if I could transform myself into any person it would be this woman. She is like Janis Joplin meets Chaka Khan, meets Mary J. Blige, meets Shakira (physically at least, definitly no yodeling here.) Anyway she is multitalented and she is an incredible performer besides being a great songwriter and competely gorgeous, minus the "diva" attitude. She sings her guts out..funky, blusey, soulful music at it's best. Check out her website at http://www.nikkacosta.com/.