Eat, Drink, and Be Married…

I am in awe of the world’s obsession with food. It seems that everything we do, whether it surrounds happiness, sadness, holidays, dating, etc…is all directly connected to food. What is this about? It seems that there is no way to get away from the over consuming celebration of- well…life?...Will our bodies explode from it one day? Will our families sit around a table of food while we sit nearby in a box waiting to be lowered into the ground by 10 weight lifters…who, by the way have their own food issues…

So why do I ramble on about food when it’s so obviously a tradition that goes back in time- even before Jenny Craig existed (is she even alive still?...I would think that her heart has to have stopped by now from over consumption of ephedra and cardboard frozen meals)? Oh well…I guess I’m feeling out of control and as though there needs to be a way to say “no thank you” without people taken offense. Is there an exact amount that society likes people to eat? Too little deems you an anorexic. Too much deems you a pig! I love food as much as the next person but WHY…oh WHY?...is it the center of the universe? Can’t people just eat in bed all alone once in awhile and enjoy the fact that no one’s talking at them while they unknowingly shove 4000 calories frantically in their mouths out of “celebration”?

My fiance’s family eats every single meal out in an Italian restaurant. This is a big problem for me. Don’t get me wrong…I LOVE Italian food. The problem is that I’ve taught aerobics and eaten rations of protein, fruits, and vegetables out of Tupperware containers five times a day for over 15 years. I am not the kind of girl who can have a slice (actually…a loaf) of bread unleashed on her! I know it’s a social thing but to me they may as well be shooting me up with heroin. I have been swiping empty plates from the people at the tables next to me while they aren’t looking and pretending that I have just eaten so much I couldn’t eat another bite. YET…Somehow they know??? “Calia hasn’t eaten! Get Calia some butter and a slice of chocolate cake?”…I say “no thank you. I’m full.” They say “but the chocolate cake is made with only half the sugar, and the icing is only made of butter, flour and eggs, not shortening like it’s supposed to be made”… “oh…great then…get me 2 pieces in that case. I thought it might’ve been fattening. I’ll just roll myself into my car later.”

Anyway…I do rant on and on…My “wedding” that I refuse to call “MY” anything is going to have food after the mass. I’m calling it the “after service- food consumption gathering.” It will be nice to see my family on that day- even if I can’t fit into any of my 5 wedding gowns that I carefully picked out to look as beautiful as I could on “my wedding day”. That is, when I was going to have a private mass with just my “husband to be”- before I even met him. (I like dresses!) I guess I’ll find some sort of burlap sack to throw on over my sauce, cheese, and bread clogged arteries…or maybe I could sew a couple of them together this week sometime. Where’s that stapler?...

The Fly on the Wall…

It’s interesting to me that so many people have complete communication breakdowns within their relationships. I say this because I received correspondence from a guy who talked on and on and on about how his girlfriend of many years “wanted a ring but he needed a prenup and didn’t know how to tell her without her getting really upset.” It seemed like after many years together, asking for a prenup, even though people don’t want to enter a marriage thinking that it might not succeed, was really no big deal. It seemed to be his biggest worry though. I tried to help him through a good solution but he seemed to be defending his relationship at every turn. I didn’t think much about it since it didn’t seem as though he really wanted my help other than to tell me “how great his relationship was and how jealous he isn’t”. Okay…nothing more I could do. I didn’t have enough information to go on and it wasn’t really my business anyway (like I ever care what’s my business and what isn’t…hee…hee…) Or was it?...Days later, I was strangely put right in the middle of the relationship as a “fly on the wall” when his girlfriend told me her side of the story. Apparently she doesn’t even like him at all and would “never marry him and the relationship has lasted much longer than it should have.”…uh oh…It appeared that I was the only person with all of the information now. Someone was using this “prenup” issue as an excuse. I wasn’t sure if he knew that the relationship was over and his desperation to keep someone he “wasn’t jealous of” every time he turned around made him come up with excuses for why it wasn’t working, or if he really thought it was working but she had somehow made him feel like the only problem was that he wasn’t proposing in hopes that he wouldn’t propose and she could keep it all in its place. Wwwhhheeeww….! What a mess! I was pretty sure that it was a little of both but clearly the two of them weren’t communicating with each other on the topic. It seemed like the relationship, as it stood currently, was a huge energy sucking waste of time for both of them. Of course it wasn’t the first I had seen this. I have seen many people stand frozen in time while their relationships stole years from them. The problem with this was the blame of each other when they would finally take action and pull it apart. This one wasn’t going to end pretty. I was quite sure that one of them was going to cheat on the other and use an excuse that it was the other’s fault for reasons that likely weren’t anywhere near the actual reason- they didn’t like each other. The jealousy, the marriage, the prenup, the kids,…they were all just “stuff” that protected each of them from the real truth that apparently seemed more hurtful than slinging excuses at each other.

The point is that if people had a fly on the wall of their relationships that they could play back in order to get the whole story, it would be much easier to know where they really stand. Now, I’m not suggesting that we bug each other’s conversations with friends…though it’s actually not a bad idea if we are planning on not having a real conversation with each other…BUT as a rule, people in unhealthy relationships get caught up in the drama of not knowing what’s going to happen. Again, it’s none of my business but I know what’s going to happen. That guy is going to end up in years of therapy talking about how the love of his life got away because he was afraid to ask her for a prenup “when all she wanted was to marry him.” His therapist will ask him why he thinks that he pushes women away from him and leave him single and dwelling on the fact that he has a fear of commitment while he weeps around town for 10 years (because that will be the only information he will have for the therapist). As for the girl- she will be dating someone else in 2 months and not even remember his name.

So how can we protect ourselves from staying involved in something that will pass our lives away? It’s actually not easy but we can do our best to recognize the warning signs of the reality that our relationship is the wrong relationship for us.

1. If your partner is out all the time flirting with other people and you are pretending that it doesn’t make you jealous, it’s probably not the right relationship for you…
2. If every time you talk in public, your partner is questioning why you talked about what you talked about, it’s probably not the right relationship for you….
3. If your partner is throwing out ridiculous requests that you can only fail at:

•  “I want a ring but I won’t sign a prenup…”
•  “Rotate the silverware so it’s used evenly…”
•  “I want to go out of town but only when you’re working, not on your days off…”
•  “I want a child but you have had a hysterectomy…”
•  “My parents won’t accept you because you’re not the right religion…”
•  “My children don’t like you and they come first…”
•  “I don’t like the color of your hair, how you talk, your body type, and I don’t want to be seen in public with you…”

Bottom line- it’s not happening! It’s probably NOT the right relationship for you… You don’t need a fly on the wall to tell you that it’s time to move on.  You will only have yourself to blame when years pass you by if you don’t heed the warning signs and move on yourself. Waiting for the other person to take action will leave you screwed up thinking it’s over for all the wrong reasons because most people don’t have the courage to tell you the simple truth- It’s not me, it’s you…AND we all know it’s THEM!...

You sing better than Fergie

No two minds think alike! That is why one person’s compliment is another person’s diss. I sing a Black Eyed Peas song and people always come up afterwards and say, “You sing better than Fergie.”…um…well geez…Thanks? The thing is that as a “singer” who has spent many years learning the technical elements of how vocal chords work, I sure as heck better sing better than Fergie! The real question is “Am I Fergilicious?” The way I see it, Fergie’s thing is not singing. I thought her identity was wrapped around being extremely attractive.


We all have something that we’re good at. The trouble we face is when we get mislabeled into a category in which we do not belong. I would be considered a complete failure if I considered myself an auto mechanic. It’s not that I can’t fix cars…wait…It is exactly like I can’t fix cars. I do know how to put gas in them but I this doesn’t make me a very good mechanic. In fact, if people brought me their cars to fix, I would most certainly let them down 100% of the time!...This is why they don’t. My constant failure would ruin my self image.

There was a guy who used to come into to work to fix the copy machine. One day as he was leaving, I smiled at him and asked, “all fixed?” He said, “No. I couldn’t fix it. I need to come back next week with parts.”…um… “Okay (I thought), but since his only job was to fix the copy machine, leaving without it being fixed seemed a little sad to me.” I wanted to help him by giving him a different title. Perhaps “guy who dressed really nicely and had a nice smile?” Somehow it seemed like if that was what he was going for, he had achieved his goal for the day. Clearly “copy machine fixit guy” was not the best category to place him in this time.

I contend that too many people are spending time doing things that don’t make them feel good. I know that as children, we are told that we can be or do anything we want to in life. I suppose that’s true and I definitely believe in doing the most we can to stretch our own abilities, BUT there is something to be said for recognizing our own individual strengths and capitalizing on them. The most important thing when it comes to living a happy a full life is finding what it is that we excel at and working to make ourselves the best we can be at it. Of course it isn’t wrong to try new things, but setting unrealistic goals for ourselves is counterproductive to seeing the value in what we, as individuals, have to offer the world. Not everyone can be a singer, an engineer, an auto mechanic, a copy machine repairman, Fergie…BUT, every ONE can be amazing at whatever has been gifted to them. The key is to figure out what that is! Once we do, if we love it and take the time to foster its growth, it will provide happiness to us forever.

AH! What a MESS!

I spilled an entire gallon of water into my refrigerator today. My initial response was to grab it and save it as it poured, in slow motion, from the top shelf down the back to soak each shelf beneath it and then rest in the bottom of the drawers on the bottom. I didn’t stop it though. I thought, “Oh good! Now my refrigerator is going to be clean!” My fridge is sort of old and worn out and though I’m a little obsessive with keeping things in order, I tend to laugh at the things lying around this place that I would refer to as “old crap”. This fridge certainly falls under the “old crap” category. The power went out the other day and apparently it was not a complete outage but a reduction in voltage. I peered into the fridge to look for something to remind me not to think about…well…anything…and I noticed that it looked much better in a low light setting. I’m actually thinking of putting some sort of a 3 way bulb in there so I don’t have to burn my eyes out during those late night hunts for food anymore. So it got me to thinking…(of course it did!) I realized that on many occasions, making a big mess helps us to take action. I could’ve gone another year or so without cleaning that fridge but now it is crystal clean and sparklingly beautiful!

Have you ever met anyone who hung on to an old relationship because breaking it off would be too painful? I have! In fact, I’ve even watched people hang on and on and on all the while knowing it wasn’t working but not wanting to take any action for fear of the pain. Next thing they know they wake up one day and have been cheated on and left anyway. This actually happens more often than I can even comment on. All I can think when this happens is “wait a minute! You can’t cheat on me! I didn’t like you first!”…BUT NO. You wake up one day and all of your food is rotten and your milk is spoiled because that refrigerator that you didn’t want to hurt by replacing it for a more efficient version of itself that could make you happy with its stainless steel exterior and cooler interior, has somehow decided to stop even trying to cool your food as it had originally promised because it just didn’t feel like working anymore.

The point is that a lot of time and pain can be spared when we stop putting Band-Aids and excuses on a household appliance in order to drag out its stay in our lives beyond its usefulness. Do we really need a gallon of water spilled on our heads to help us realize that even though it may be hard to lift in order to make room for a new one, 10 years down the road it’s going to feel even heavier and when we pull out our backs lifting it, we aren’t exactly going to feel quite as resilient as we do today. I think that if we were smart and we knew a mess was impending, we would do ourselves a huge favor to just blow that fridge up and start again.

Brake Failure: Stop Safely ASAP

My car has been mocking me a lot lately. Personally I think it over warns me. It’s sort of like a car that cries “wolf.” It’s a Volvo and really like it but I can’t just assume it’s always right. I mean…it is right when a headlight burns out. Of course I have mixed feelings about that warning too. Usually people don’t know they have a headlight out until they get pulled over for it. NOT ME- I have to know the second it blows. This would be considered a gentle reminder to a normal person that she should make sure she stops and picks up a bulb. Again…I don’t have the ability to let things go. I have to stop everything I’m doing and take care of it right that minute and for the entire ride down the street to the auto parts store, that warning screams at me from my dash “DIPPED BEAM”…I find that very upsetting.

As for this “brake failure” thing…what the heck is up with that message? I come from a family that used duct tape to cover up the check engine light when it was on. I don’t think that’s supposed to be the “normal” response, but nothing ever caught on fire…well…once…but it didn’t happen that often. The point is that my brakes work fine. My ABS is another story…but the brakes themselves are fine…

So what did this warning message trigger in my mind you may ask? Well…it reminded me of all the times I have complained that I’ve given friends advice and they have completely disregarded it. I need to “brake” this down a little bit. What are the reasons that I am not heeding my car’s warning?

• Obviously brake failure isn’t going to be cheap if I take it to the dealer 
• I would have to borrow a car or get a ride from a friend- I’d be completely reliant on someone else.
• I don’t believe it’s really broken.
• I actually know it’s broken and I really don’t need anyone telling me that it is because I have no intention of fixing it.

Interesting…so it appears that I have an awful lot in common with some of my friends who have ignored my advice on occasion. When it comes to relationships, the excuses for ignoring a giant red flashing message compare to my dashboard quite nicely:

• If I was giving my 2 cents about a guy that I don’t think is ever going to pan out, my friend would weigh out the cost- If she chose to believe me, she would have to give up the one thing that, though a huge negative factor and life stunting relationship, is the one thing that gives her enough “nothing” to feel excited about for the few minutes a day she gets said “nothing.” So what if the “stop safely asap” message is correct this time?...eh…it hasn’t happened before…She’ll take care of it when she absolutely has to…maybe from the bottom of a lake or something…
• She would have to eventually allow someone new to drive her around…ie: dinner, movies, etc…the early stages of dating always suck…
• She knows it’s keeping her frozen and broken but it’s too hard to let it go for fear of the outside possibility that the person just might come through for her just after she lets go. It would just be easier to ignore the problem for now and hope that in a few years, another person will present himself once this current one has gotten married to someone completely different.

So it makes complete sense…people do what they want to and pretty much only heed warnings if they are convenient for them. Brake failure: Stop safely asap. Exactly how many warnings will I get until that one time that my brakes actually do fail?...don’t know yet…There might be a lesson to be learned in this though. People will eventually find out their own answers to the open ended questions of their lives. Maybe warning lights and well meaning friends are set in front of us to help save us from catastrophe or perhaps they are holding us stuck in full view of what just might happen one day. Would it be better to just drive until the brakes go out completely knowing that we’ve lived right now to the fullest? Does everything have to have a happily ever after attached to it? Maybe some people just don’t worry that much about what is ahead of them. I wish I was that cool. I think I’m going to go tomorrow and have my brakes checked.

If Every Day Was Christmas…

If every day was Christmas…would you be too excited to sleep the night before? Would you stand peering through the door hoping to catch a peek of a shadow leaving presents under the tree? Would you make a list of everything you wanted and hope upon hope that Santa would get it for you?...or would you save the list for one day when it wasn’t Christmas so there would be something to get excited about?

The truth is that the world is full of so many special occasions that we forget what we’re celebrating. People celebrate birthdays, secretaries, bosses, bringing children to work, Halloween, winning a game…etc… Come to think of it, when I was a kid, I was on a softball team that never won a game- ever. The other teams used to load into the back of their coach’s pickup truck and celebrate their win by going to the ice cream store. Our team only went once and that was at the end of the season because we really had tried to do our best but still lost every game. We just weren’t all that good at sports. Don’t get me wrong- my sisters and I singing in the outfield was likely a much better show than the game itself- but I guess that would depend on if you came to watch a softball game- or hear little girls singing. Personally…I would choose the singing kids any day. The point is that I have to wonder if that one day that we went to the ice cream store to celebrate our hard work was more memorable and exciting than the other team’s daily outing for ice cream cones. I wonder if they have a specific day that they would consider to have been special or if they just remember those 4 years that they went to the baseball field, hit the singing girls in the faces with balls and got ice cream for it? I remember that one day. We were so excited. We got into the back of the truck with our hats on and drove around the block to the ice cream store. The girls at the counter took each of our orders. Mine was for a small soft vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles. I love soft serve vanilla with rainbow sprinkles still! It reminds me of one of the best days of my life.

The point is that sometimes I feel like what we do on a regular basis takes the excitement out of memories we may have the ability to capture. I get dressed up every Friday & Saturday (and some Sundays and even weeknights) and dance and sing. It is a huge party. I have so much fun. I laugh all night and I would consider myself to “party” for a living. No- I don’t drink or “party” like many people would consider that word. I just have a huge amount of fun dancing and singing. It’s like New Year’s Eve every single weekend. Dress up, dance, sing…I wonder if there’s a danger in doing the things you love to do too much? Don’t get me wrong…I still love to do it but it is definitely my job. I’ve gone to people’s weddings every weekend for years and years and years now. People come up to me to tell me that I sang at their wedding 10 years ago and introduce me to their beautiful children (and new boyfriends). They remember me being there and are excited to see me because they had so much fun on their wedding day that they will never forget it. That’s nice. Unfortunately I can’t make any distinction between the weddings unless a cake fell or if I went into anaphylactic shock from accidentally eating a walnut in a cookie I shouldn’t have eaten anyway… To me, everyday is Christmas.

This seems like a strange thing to be complaining about and I really am not complaining…exactly…I am more noticing that too much of a good thing takes the wind out of the sail of something that should feel amazing. I LOVE my jobs. I have fun all the time. I just wish I knew how to capture one moment as different from the rest. Everyone always thinks their party is different or better than others. As someone who has been at every single party every thrown, I need to say that there is very little difference between them. I contend that the reason the person throwing the party thinks theirs is special or different is due to the anticipation of preparing for it. They make their list of what they want… they can’t sleep all night the night before… they wake up early on the day of it and run down the stairs so excited that they could burst. Perhaps celebrating Christmas only once a year is a much better way to make it memorable? I don’t know though…I do everything too much…I’m too excited…I jump around and sing all the time…everyday is Christmas…What would be memorable to me right now? Maybe a walk by myself around a lake where I don’t know anyone…AH! I would remember that for a good long time!

It's not MY fault...

I have often watched and wondered as people use anything and everything to get out of an uncomfortable situation. It’s an ageless problem. When we’re kids, when our mothers catch us doing something wrong, our instant response is to tell her something that one of our sisters has done in hopes that it will be bad enough to make our offense seem much smaller. When we are teenagers, the words “she got me in trouble for…” come up again and again. I remember getting pulled over one time for speeding and being very angry at the cop who pulled me over. A wiser lady asked me if I was mad at the cop, mad at myself for speeding, or mad that I had gotten caught. Um…interesting…BUT…that cop didn’t need to be sitting there that day while I drove quickly by…Of course it was his job. “He got me in trouble!”


It never ends. People need to have someone to blame their actions on. Have you ever talked to a guy who talks about “his crazy ex wife?” I’ve actually caught myself walking away thinking, “Poor guy. His wife was crazy!”…I have a feeling that she wasn’t all that crazy. Don’t get me wrong…I have met “crazy” in my day. In fact, I believe it’s very possible that that same guy drove his wife to “act crazy.” He may have just left some of the story out- he may have left her alone with his children while he stepped out night after night into a bar and hooked up with young girls. Perhaps he told her that she wasn’t good enough for him because he had a “high pressure” job and “guys like him usually have hotter wives.”…Maybe he walked out one day for good and she called a few too many times to ask him how he could do that to her and their children?? He can blame the end of his relationship on the fact that she was crazy all he wants to but the fact remains that if everyone you meet is “crazy”, you might want to take a look in the mirror to find out what’s making them that way.

So why are humans so afraid to take responsibility for their actions? If we speed, it might be our fault that we got a speeding ticket. If we cheat, it might be our fault when the person we have cheated on throws a rock through our window. What is so scary about admitting that we did something that we aren’t proud of? Do we need to fluff up our feathers and walk around telling our life stories with twisted details in order to feel good about ourselves? I knew a guy who used to tell so many stories about his life that when someone would ask him a question regarding his personal life, he would pick up his drink and sip it slowly while he scanned his “lie rolodex” in his mind. It was obvious to me that he was getting his story straight in order for it to match previous stories that he had told the specific person. He was a VERY smart man so he did this quite well. I had to wonder how a less educated man would pull it off though. Of course a less educated man probably wasn’t trying it on overly educated women so there are probably different degrees of the “formulate your lie, slow water sip.” All in all- it’s very hard to maintain an alter ego that is so different from the real you. So much work goes into creating and maintaining each story that I can’t imagine that it doesn’t become overwhelming once in awhile. I wonder whose fault it would be when he screws up his story and gets caught in a lie?...I’m sure it will be the “crazy” girl who questions the validity of the story who will eventually “get him in trouble!”