“It shocks me how I wish for…what is lost and cannot come back.”  ― Sue Monk Kidd

When I was little, we’d all (as a family) get on our bikes, my little brother, my Mom, Dad, and I, and we’d bike all over town on the Bluebonnet Trail. We’d bike forever — past the Little League fields, past some old brick buildings and elementary schools, over hills that rolled away from us, crossing semi-busy streets, and under endless power lines. Out on the trail, those power lines were serious business; wooden giants holding up the skies with steel cables thicker than my nine-year-old arm. We didn’t stop pedaling until we were all completely exhausted. My brother and I would start whining and carrying on and my Dad would tell us that one day, we’d treasure these memories. My brother and I exchanged sly glances — we were already at the age where

we thought we knew everything. Although, even by then I was the nostalgic sort, so I pretty much got it. Near sunset, we’d head home, tired but happy. We all knew what waited for us there.

It was time for milkshakes. These were no ordinary milkshakes. They were a special class of EPIC milkshakes. We had a handheld mixer that would fit in a tall glass with a wide mouth. We’d each concoct our own; a splash of vanilla extract, a large dollop of Hersey’s Chocolate syrup, and the perfect, sweet spot ratio of milk to our ice cream of choice. It was the best milkshake I’d ever had, and to this day, they are still the best milkshakes I’ve ever had. I think the last time I had one, I was around 12 or 13. Back then, I took everything for granted, even when I thought I didn’t. Tonight, I’d gladly empty out my bank account for one more of those milkshakes and the ability to travel back in time for a few sweet hours.

Listen, I’ve enjoyed your company over these last couple years. We’ve had some good times, mostly good times, but there were some bad in there. I know you know what I’m talking about. Remember at that Christmas party when you disappeared after “making an appearance” for about 15 minutes?? I mean, what was that about?! I was showing everyone that Hamster on a Piano video and you just ditched me. It was awkward, explaining to my friends that you left without saying anything. I had to wait until I got home to see you again…and, I mean, things like that hurt, ya know? But I got over that, and the time at Starbucks, and when we visited my parents, and so on. I started to bring along things to keep you jazzed whenever we went out — but it wore me down. I’m not your babysitter, I’m your partner, and it is starting to feel like all I do is accommodate you. Examples? I’m glad you asked.

Lately, you’ve brought couch potato to a whole new level. You only interact with me on the couch or when we lie in bed together — and I like to go out, have a good time! Also, when did you get so anti-social? Taking you out is a drag. We have to sit in a corner somewhere the whole time or you just shut down and go to your “thinking” place. I’m a girl that needs spontaneity, adventure, and yet, some significant level of reliability. Look, I know you mean well. No, no, don’t start with that “I can change” business. Here in the real world, hon, a girl’s gotta eat. No, I don’t really know why I said that. Yes, it is a cliche. That’s what you’ve driven me to! Cliches, paranoia, and I think I’m developing a tic on my right eye. Of course I blame you! I spend the morning writing with you, I get up for one second and that’s it, you’re gone. It’s childish, honey, and your petulance has taken its toll.

Yeah, this does mean it’s over. We can still be friends — I’ll keep you around for spare parts. Ha! It was a joke! I was trying to lighten the mood, not cool on my part. Look, you’re gonna find the right girl some day, I know it — oh no, don’t cry, that just makes this embarrassing for both of us. I’ll find you a good home, don’t worry. Until then, you can stay here. Like I said, we’ll stay friends. But I want you to know, this all would’ve been avoided if you’d just stay turned on instead of being a asshole and staring at me with that blank face of yours like an idiot. Think about that.

Listen, I’ve got to run. I’ll see you around?

“I’m proud to see his penis 25 foot tall. It’s great. It’s huge. It’s enormous. Massive. If I looked like that I’d walk down the street in my panties too.” -  Victoria Beckham on David Beckham‘s penis

It is nice to be reminded that women do not hold the monopoly on unrealistic body expectations… I wonder if this has any element of cultural difference, like British obsession vs. American obsession?

Found this awhile back and found it to be highly informational.  I am also fascinated with how likable people become when they are self-deprecating, open, and genuine about their own insecurities. But this openness isn’t an acceptable social norm… It’s a long vid, so it isn’t for the faint of heart and the half-hearted browsers. This is frank and open documentary about penis size. So, it follows logically that you don’t watch it if you aren’t interested or able to handle the topic. As for me, I loved it. I’ve had an explosion of ideas since the first watch…if you’ll pardon the expression.

My Penis and Everyone Else’s from Lawrence Barraclough on Vimeo.

The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind. – Maya Angelou

I’ve finally discovered the source behind my blogger’s block. I simply don’t know how to blog about being active, relatively happy and constantly busy. Blogging about nature walks and wandering thoughts, I can definitely do. Picking up a skateboard, going back to college and signing up for a mud run seem more like topics for a Facebook post instead of an interesting blog post.

Oh yes, I said skateboard. I quit smoking for the final time and I’ve decided to replace smoking with a significantly less cancerous but only slightly less dangerous hobby. I forgot when choosing this sport that my body is 28 years old and stubbornly resists contact with concrete. As I teeter precariously atop my tiny, rocking slab of wood and slide ever more rapidly down tiny hills, I’m increasingly aware of the fragility of my poor, weary bones. After one day of practice, I felt accomplished just knowing I spent slightly more time on the board than running away from it and watching it careen wildly into a curb or tree.

This is a challenge. One that I did not even attempt to surmount as a kid. I think I got on a board maybe twice, and after I found that I would not automatically know how to carve the sidewalk into waves of owned pavement, I gave it up. Looking back, “giving up” seemed to be the most important pattern in my young life. Anything that I didn’t show immediate talent for or didn’t have a hope of being The Best at, I gave up. Singing was my secret career goal and I accepted myself as mediocre without ever demanding an impartial audience. Dance, I quit. Playing the tuba, I quit. Cheerleading, I quit but that was totally legit. I was too sarcastic and nerdy to ever be okay with cheerleading. Sports, I didn’t even try. I learned to ride a bike before memory, so it was as natural as breathing for me. I loved the wind in my hair and the freedom of flying down the streets of my suburbia to Anywhere (within a 5 mile radius). And yet, I wouldn’t even fathom the idea of attempting BMX-style tricks or something more complicated. I played tackle football and roller hockey with the neighborhood boys and read. I read for hours and hours. During the summer months, I read fantasy novels and played Flashlight Tag. During school years, I read the English textbooks during the first few weeks of class and everything I could find that looked even a little interesting from the school library. That is the sum all of my childhood years.

It may be crazy and you can call me suicidal, but I’m determined to see what I am capable of completing. I’m tired of re-routing around dead ends before I even see the detour signs. So, that brings me back to skateboarding and mud runs. Mud run competitions are a fantastic way to remember you are alive and they require much more than a good set of lungs. So, I’m going to try out being an athlete for awhile. I’m going to skate, run and climb. Tomorrow morning, my skateboard will be by the front door and I will be sure to plug in a few hours trying not to die while slipping and sliding around wide corners. I’m going to fall and I may not be The Best, but I’m going to give it a damn good try.

Drag your thoughts away from your troubles… by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.  ~Mark Twain

There is a tiny, ferocious ball of stress sitting right over my heart. I can feel it with each breath, spinning endlessly in a whirlwind of worries. Aside from the stress I have a tendency to collect and keep as a pet, I am genuinely stretched thin. School, studying, work, friends, eating better, working out, volunteering….I’m finding dropped balls every time I turn around. I, of course, place my priorities where I need to; school comes first, work comes second and so on. I worry about deciding on a major, about not writing anymore, about neglecting people in my life, about the current economic situation, about the future, etc., etc., etc.

I know what you’ll say. Stop worrying. You can only do so much. Concentrate on what is important, leave the rest to work itself out. I tell myself these things already. It doesn’t do much good when my Government assignment is forcing me to read article after article about the budget shortfall and the education cuts in my state. Everywhere people are scrambling and panicking and I didn’t even know. I mean, I’d heard, but had it settled into my awareness? Not really. Suddenly I feel galvanized to action, ready to adopt a cause, ready to set out on a path to save the world! Then, I think about school, and work, and I’m right back to where I started.

So, I figure what the hell, right? Try writing about it.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.  ~Anatole France

Early on this year, I moved into my new home. Just another apartment in a long line of apartment complexes, with one notable difference – near total silence. An unnerving quiet sat heavily over the new development. Most of the buildings were empty and in a state of wary anticipation. The fresh outdoor paint glistened wet and shiny. The pale-grey pavement celebrated each day, yet to be soiled by the stains of leaky car fuel and peeled tire rubber. It was eerie and blissful. Each night I would walk onto my patio and breathe in deeply, listening to nothing specific. Cars in the distance thrummed away, softly and quietly on their way to Any Other Place. The few inhabitants in my complex were, for the most part, home already.

Tonight, I am thinking back on those days with longing. Just yesterday, I was startled out of my apartment by the terrified and hopeless screams of a small child. I searched upstairs and below, looking in confusion for the source of the screams I had initially ignored. After a ten minutes of fruitless searching, I reluctantly returned to the warmth of my apartment. The child still screamed, but the cries had diminished in volume and the echoes made it impossible to locate the source. The only thing I’d determined was that it definitely came from an apartment near to or within my building. I stepped out on my patio again to see if I could hear more, something to help make my decision, only to discover that it had been made for me. No less than three police vehicles, one ambulance and one firetruck sat directly below me. Lights flashing urgently but not a peep of a siren, the men stood outside their vehicles, whispering furiously into their walkies. I shouted down at them, “Is this about the kid I heard crying a minute ago??” They answered “Yes. But everything is fine now, ma’am.”

Skeptical, as I always am when faced with certain authority figures, I stuck around long enough to ensure that everything was indeed “fine”. Knowing I would never receive an answer, I didn’t bother asking what happened. I only hoped against hoped that the faceless child I worried about wasn’t soon to be carted away in that curiously inactive ambulance. I received no answers. I am left still wondering.

Tonight is an altogether different matter. For the last few hours, the sounds of heavy boots and low voices have been lumbering up and down the stairs outside my door. Above me, I hear the thud and drag of heavy objects being tossed or pulled about in seemingly no pattern whatsoever. Not wishing to be THAT neighbor, I’ve coolly kept my thoughts and irrational desires to slam objects against my ceiling to myself. I’ve seen no moving truck. No dinosaur-sized pieces of random furniture. Surely, they aren’t moving dressers weighing several metric tons. So what on EARTH could be making all that noise?? And at this time of night?

I realize in this single moment, I am no longer the carefree, stay-out-all-hours 21 year old I once was. I am now 27 going on 50. I am that crazy old lady in the neighborhood, the one you only see disappearing behind lace curtains.

In the end though, I think I prefer this inane noise over the glassy silence. It is the sound of life, the sound of things happening. It’s comforting to know that two doors down, a couple that argued vigorously last night has clearly made up. And that despite yesterday’s anguished cries of one little baby, peace has surely returned to Apartment 3B.

According to the most nut-job liberal, all Republicans are bumbling, redneck fools and if allowed to have their way, will ensure that we all end in one glorious, simultaneous burst of nuclear warfare.

We are all guilty of this ridiculous behavior. If Glenn Beck said it, if Jon Stewart said it, if Obama said it, if Bush said it….you’ll hear it all day long. Repeated ad nauseam, oft misquoted and definitely misrepresented,  it’s worse than a kindergarten Telephone Game.

We Are Sheep People

Obama will say a given day that he wants change and hope for the future and the next day the word on the street is that he’s promised to deliver us the moon. Better yet, the entire universe…cupped neatly in a silver spoon!  Bush condemns evil and acknowledges he believes in its inherent presence in the enemy and suddenly he is a psychotic cult leader, hell-bent on dragging us through religious war until we finally achieve what Alexander the Great almost did…world domination. Of course, I read in the newspaper yesterday a direct quote from Obama saying the same thing, yet it seems to have slid under the radar of the frothing Bush-haters.

Speaking of frothing…No one, and I mean NO ONE, has the ability to sell exaggeration like a rabid and frantic group of Right Wing Extremists. If you don’t believe in God, you’re against him. Obama is the second coming of Hitler, the gays are representative of the end of times and all liberals are tree-hugging hippies that deserve to be shot for speaking out against the country you love so dearly.

Puh-lease. Can we cut the drama for just two seconds? I mean, I’m going to start breaking out in hives from all the panic going on around here. It’s true that it is much easier to get our panties in a wad about something trivial than something important. When it is something important, it might mean you actually have to do something about it. The trivial tends to sort itself out in the end. So…we panic. We provide the grounds for  “fear mongering” to plant its roots. We panic about the president and the speeches and all the fluff. And in the meantime, we are sadly letting the heart of the issues clog up with fat and our poor bodies have to work twice as hard just to keep on surviving, to keep on beating.

Children in our country are starving. We actually have children that die because they can’t get enough food to eat. Doesn’t that blow your mind?? I throw away enough food at work or donate food at work that could keep them alive for a full year. We have a McDonald’s on almost every major street corner!  And yet we expend so much of our resources elsewhere…

I could go on. And on. But I’d be listing off the issues we all hear on a daily basis.  Our world is on shaky ground. We are in a longer war than anyone expected and many people are dying. Our children, our husbands, our families are suffering losses and most of the world is no longer able to sufficiently explain why. I know I’m confused.  I don’t have the answers and I don’t know who does. But I do know one thing for certain.  We have to care.  And we have to care about the right things in the right way. Not in a straight ticket way. In a reasonable yet passionate way.

My parents drilled an important lesson in my head from a young age. “Jennifer, you need to learn now. Life isn’t fair. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Life can and will be very hard. It is what you make of it.” So go on, and blame Obama. Blame Bush. Blame Reagan. Blame JKF. They are why your paychecks suck. Not the fact that you don’t want to put 100% into everything you do. Not the fact that we all seem to be looking most for that Get-Rich-Quick scheme or our 15 minutes of fame.

With all that in mind, why would are we wasting time and breath talking about the subtle nuances of a president’s jargon or our president’s skin color? Why are we talking about race at all? Aren’t we over that yet??

This is what I am thinking about right now. In a flash, in the tiniest of seconds, our lives could be over. In that time, what impact have I made? Whose life did I make better?  This feels far more important than the much easier to discuss topics of petty politics and celebrity gossip. Or voting exactly like one of the Baldwins tell you to.

I wish I had time to write and think right now. In the few brief moments between Job Number One and Job Number Two today, I have time for a few things. I have time to eat. I have time to shower. I have time to watch a cooking show. But I do not have time to write. Documented introspection is a luxury that I can’t often afford.

I made a decision to change my life last week. It’s one I always wanted to make, but spent most of my time finding reasons why it was impossible. I’m certain it was my debilitating fear of failure leading the way during those excuses. Someone casually made me see it was not only possible, it was urgent. I’m going to go to college. I’m going now, while I still have enough of my twenties left to graduate in my early thirties. It’s like the clouds that surrounded me for years vanished and suddenly sunlight burst through, with a few simple words of advice.

I’m excited. I know what I’m going to do now. The exact when and what are as yet still blank pages, but I know no longer feel worried about how I am going to fill them in. The only important thing right now is that I know I am going to. I’m through wasting my intelligence on the lower rungs retail management and the random health care positions.

I have a direction. And more importantly, I finally have the drive.

“We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.” – William Somerset Maugham

I haven’t been feeling like writing lately. Or if I do feel like writing, I haven’t been able to keep my interest in the topic long enough to finish a post. I have 18 drafts of different blog posts at the moment. And I just added another one to that list. My life is busy now, filled with all those little things that sneakily stack up until you stop for a moment to wonder aloud, “Where has all the time gone?” I keep looking up to find another month past and not quite sure where or when it went.

It’s a great change from my recent past. This time last year, I was barely living minute to minute. Walking around every single day in an endless fog, I had plenty of time to write…and think. Oh, the endless thinking. I developed a deep obsession with my cellphone and computer, keeping them both with me at all times, desperate for any and all distractions from the thoughts running rampant through my mind. I remember one particular low point, when I went without the internet for about a week. I spent each day walking around like a zombie, muttering popular ‘Net acronyms under my breath in a comforting chant. Or something else less sad…

Surrounded by the strangers that once made up my family and in the middle of isolated, swampy Florida country, I was doing my absolute best to cope with the abrupt changes I’d recently experienced in my life. Like a tiny kid left alone in the deep end of a pool, I was frantically treading water, expending all my energy striving for each individual breath. My normally gabby and bubbly nature was not only absent – it felt as if it had never existed at all. I was positively monosyllabic for three months, if you can imagine. Flash forward just one year and the changes are radical. Wonderfully radical.

I’m pleasantly busy now. I enjoy my job and I love my roommates. I have a family again.  The kind of family that you create and makes you number yourself among the lucky ones. The kind of family that makes love feel like a gift and not an obligation. My “family” is most certainly not conventional (most are not blood-related to me in any way) but it is far more gratifying and meaningful than the one I happened into. I spent my holiday season putting up lights and decorations, eating delicious home-cooked meals, shopping, laughing, worrying, working and playing – and I did it all with people I love and that love me in return. I didn’t spend this holiday crying, fighting, or scared. I didn’t spend it feeling bad about myself or holding my tongue. I didn’t spend it waiting for the other shoe to drop…and it was a total relief.

I’ve finally cut out the drama in my life or at the very least, cut it down to a minuscule level. It may be a little more routine and a little less exciting, but after the last few years, I am blissfully willing to trade in a little excitement for the more mundane. The last five years weren’t very kind to me and I can honestly say that I don’t remember the last time I felt this happy. But I do now. Feel happy, I mean.

As far as resolutions go, this year I will settle for one.

I propose a toast. To strive toward a life of adventure and fulfillment, to not letting the precious minutes of my life go to waste. Time is a terrible thing to waste, or so I’ve been told, and I’ve got a monumental to-do list of things to complete before I die.

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

Speaking of memories…

The holidays are here.

I assumed the holidays wouldn’t be easy this year and expecting that, I wasn’t all that surprised to have sly, sharp jabs of memories sneaking their way in over the last few days. While so many things in my life are going right these days, I also haven’t had much time to sit back, take a few deep breaths and acknowledge the few that aren’t. Those few struggles I do have are definitely the ones that tend to make the holidays a strange affair.

I don’t have the typical family problems around the holidays. You know the typical family problems; the family gripes, drama and panics that all culminate in singing carols in the living room on Christmas Eve and opening presents in p.j.’s on Christmas morn’. In fact, ever since I moved out of my home in my mid-teens, I rarely see family at all, much less for the holidays. I was very young when I started my own network of friends and trusted ones; creating my own family out of the supportive people around me. Is it the same? Sometimes, yes, and sometimes, no. Like anything in life, it has its pluses and minuses. It’s a pretty incredible feeling to know that the friends and loved ones I do have, love me back for no other reason than they want to. No one I know was obligated by blood or familial ties to care for and spend time with me. And yet, there they are. When I have a bad day, when I am pissy for no reason, when I want to play, when I have chattering nonsense to share; they are there to hug, admonish, laugh, and listen. So, all in all, I’m a very lucky girl.

But it doesn’t mean that I avoid the pangs of missing that blood obligation come winter. Something about family, knowing that they’ve seen your face change from a wrinkled babe, to a just-beginning-to-be-wrinkled 26 year-old, of having memories so old that they’ve become lore and no one really remembers how it went down – there is a comfort in that.

I feel compelled every so often to go walk up and down my childhood street. I resist the urge to sit on the front porch and look down the worn, grey street littered with fall leaves. I feel to need to pause in front of the house where I had my first babysitting job – and the one next to it where I regularly dog-sat – a strange house where I inadvertently saw my first Playboy (a mint collection many years in the making) and so shaped my idea of what men might really want.  Nearby, I would find the giant sewer drain where I smoked my first cigarette and the little creek where I had my first kiss. The stump across the street is all that remains of the pride and plague that was the largest, tallest tree in our neighborhood, and for all we knew, the world.  It was in that tree that the neighbor boys would climb, jump and, inexplicably, pee out of. I definitely wouldn’t mind a  glare at the peach tree in my old backyard, still resentful of too many afternoons picking up the rotten, fly-infested peaches that fell to the ground uneaten. To this day, I won’t eat peaches raw. But I always inevitably resist the compulsion and I don’t do any of those things. Although my childhood home isn’t that far from here, there is never a good time to walk down that particular memory lane. Especially when it’s fraught with so many potential potholes and detours of regret. And I can obviously do that just as well sitting in my room, thirty minutes away.

I’m not worried though. With every passing month, the memories of the past dim ever darker and I find a new reason to be excited about the future. Sometimes the lessons I’ve learned don’t reveal themselves right away. It’s a surprise I may stumble upon when I’m least expecting it and I find, to my pleased astonishment, that I’ve actually learned something along the way. Learning is a small, but gratifying reward for the pain of growing. Already a in the midst of a hurricane of activity and blessed to have incredible friends all around, these holidays will fly by and I am certain they will have all the moments of sweetness I could hope for – the memories from holidays past will only serve to remind me how far along I’ve actually come.