Suction Cups suck

Who invented suction cups? They seem like such a great idea…but…when the temperature rises or lowers by 10 degrees, you get everything that’s suction cupped to your window, in your lap. This can be a huge distraction. There I was, driving down the highway, as my GPS leaped from my window onto the floor on the passenger side, hitting the hazard light button and bouncing off the gear shift on its way. Whoa!…I thought, “This is freakin’ Joel’s fault!” …I actually think that this is hilarious. He’s pretty much the person I blame for everything. I don’t really believe it (completely), as it has been 7 years since we broke up…but he really did act sort of like a suction cup! He stuck to me while the temperature was right for him (falling off a few times a week of course! I’d just pick him up and stick him back on!) By the time he crashed to the floor the last time, shifting my transmission into neutral, he had already stuck himself to someone else’s window. Clearly the world is really just full of suction cups that can only be counted on if all factors are perfectly aligned! I have to say that I’m pretty sick of suction cups! I’m going to invent some sort of window attachment device that is less susceptible to climate change. How about superglue? At least that way when I was done with whatever I had mounted to it, I could just take it to the dump so no one else gets to drive around town with it.

I Guess This Says it All!

I find this to be absolutely hilarious!  Not because it is indeed superficially hilarious, but because it is also startlingly true to form when it comes to assessing the importance of intellectual ability placed on the beautiful people.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not dissing good looking people.  I have been considered to be good looking but it always threw me off since I spent most of my life just being the "funny, flute toting,computer geek!"...actually I'm not sure who called me that last part other then me right now, but you get the picture. The strangest thing is that most of the guys I have spent any time with sort of just wished that I would shut up (and fix their computer after they left the room).  Looking back, they may have been right.  Having a conversation with them over the noisy banter in their heads about whether or not "she will do me" may have been a waste of my voice.  I will say that there is something glaringly wrong with this video though:  What girl that looks like her ever orders fries?  I thought we had an unspoken agreement with the universe that we have to pretend in public that we can't eat anything other than berrys and lettuce?...Oh well...That's it...I am inspired now!  I'm going to stop eating my fries in bed!

I just saw an interview on FOX news (no dissing-  I like FOX news!  It's sort of my favorite!  I like it because it insights so many people into an incoherent rage that they can't communicate in complete sentences...I think that's funny!)  Anyway...let's talk about the interview with the new Miss Universe.  Yes!  She was definitely beautiful....Yes!  She was definitely beautiful...Yes!  She was definitely beautiful!...She said, "um...I think it was a destiny thing.  There were 83 beautiful woman and only one would win."

...Yes!  She was definitely beautiful! 

Apparently the clincher that won her the title in the pagent was her answer to her question about how she felt about the internet: "It is a door, uh, and I think, uh, we should teach children values, uh, cause it's good and we should use it."... Is it a tiny bit spiteful that I sort of envisioned myself holding her head under a sink and spelling the sign language letters into her hand "www-aaa-tttt-eee-rrr", but then I took a step into reality and realized that I could never do that.  It would've messed up her hair!

Now, I'm sure I'm going to get all sorts of angry responses to this.  I apologize up front because I am mostly just joking.  I'm sure Miss Universe is smart and she's just playing into the act that we all sometimes have to in order to gain respect from the opposite sex.  Too much strength and confidence is often a turn off to the wrong person!  The catch is knowing when someone is attracted to your strength and confidence because he/she wants to break it down as a self-fulfilling project! The moral of this story is...wait...I don't know what the moral is...the moral is...um...always do your hair before leaving the house?...

or...you could just be yourself and not worry what people might "want" in a partner...Most likely, someone wants exactly what you already are.  Never be afraid to be that person!  Besides...playing dumb the rest of your life might actually make your brain freeze that way!

Getting “Off Track!”

I have been running into people lately who have insisted that they keep meeting all the “wrong type” of people and are thinking of giving up on being with someone all together! Believe me when I say that I hear them on this. The interesting thing is that I have sort of figured this problem out! (Now let’s get this straight here…I figured it out- I didn’t say that I can fix it!) I have found that simply making the statement “I meet all of the wrong people” brings more of whatever your definition of “the wrong people” is. We can really get into a rut that seems to leave us stuck wondering if things will ever change. The problem is that the more time and energy we allow our minds to give this problem, the bigger the problem it becomes!

Here’s an example: I thought I had it all together in my 20’s when I met a guy who seemed to be who I was “meant to have met” and spend my life with. Wow! How confident I was that I had it all!

Scene fades in…Calia is sitting at her ping pong table (yeah…well I was in my 20’s and in college…who needs more than a ping pong table as her dining room table?)

Calia’s inner voice: Wow! I’m so lucky! I have met this great guy and I am ready to have it all- good times, vacations together, I’ll probably get married, I’m going to get my first job in my new exciting career, I’ll have a house and children and live happily ever after! Everybody wants to be me!

(cue the doom music that Calia can’t hear lurking in the background…)

Calia’s friends: Wow! We want to be you!
Calia: I bet you do!

(fast forward a few months…cue the thunder and clouds in the sky getting ready to open up a storm over Calia and the guy’s beautiful new house as the guy starts to suck the life and personality from Calia’s every living breath!)

Calia’s inner voice: Boy! I’m so excited! This is sure a beautiful day! I’m really on my way to having everything! Everybody wants to be me!
Calia’s friends: Have you heard from Calia lately? She is really in a bad situation. She’s not allowed to call us anymore. She has really changed!

(cue the roar of the monster hiding in the closet next to Calia’s beautiful dresses!)

Calia: Look at all of my beautiful dresses! Everybody wants to be me!

(fast forward a few months…cue Calia’s mother coming to the end of the driveway of Calia’s ex’s new house as she picks Calia up with only her beautiful dresses and the license plate from the car she has just signed over to the ex!)

Calia:…
Calia:…
Calia:…I can’t believe I didn’t see this coming…I don’t even want to be me!

Calia picks up her old car from a lot that she had left it on when she bought a new one the year before that would be acceptable to her new boyfriend. The crying Calia gets into the old car after the friendly guy at the lot pulls the license plate from her weak and shaking hands and puts it onto it. She pulls out of the lot and 100 feet from where it had sat for a year, the muffler drops off into the street…She opened the door, got out and started walking…She wasn’t sure exactly where she was going. Just walking I guess…Her new apartment with nothing in it but the dresses she took from the house she thought she had started her future in and the silverware her parents had put into the drawers in the kitchen didn’t seem to make her very happy. But then again, nothing really made her happy anymore. So she just kept walking…

The next chapter starts but unfortunately it is longer than Calia’s “plan” had originally intended. She wasn’t sure what was making her more unhappy: Losing him, or losing all that time and having to completely start over after believing that she had already started her life!...yeah…she decided that all she needed to do was meet someone else and quickly start again! She gave herself a specific time-frame- 5 minutes! That was all she had right?...She even set an alarm on her blackberry to go off 6 months later with the message “get a life!”…OMG!...that thing went off every 6 minutes for 4 weeks until she decided that hitting the snooze on this negative message was becoming counterproductive to actually “getting a life!” She’d go on dates with the “wrong guy” and the alarm would go off! He’d ask what it was. She’d politely tell him. “Yeah…it’s my biological clock!”…This was actually extremely hilarious to her in a sort of “poke your eyes out” kinda way…the guy never thought it was quite as funny for some reason though.

That chapter ended a few years later- way behind schedule, with absolutely no worth while content…other than some pretty funny dating stories. Dating when you’re not ready and constantly choosing to date people who your subconscious mind has picked out to prove to your conscious that life, indeed sucks, can throw you way off track but can make for some really great tales to commiserate about with other jaded, angry people who are paddling in circles in the same boat! Something happened as she came to that realization. She woke up one day and turned off that alarm. At first the silence was deafening…then it was a little scary…then it was soothing…

Ahh…

No more pressure to get “on track”. No more self-defeating dates with people who were more of the same. No more commiserating with people about how “there’s no one out there!” No more negative energy. No more need to have done things on the time frame that had already long passed. No more believing that since it didn’t happen the way she had planned it to happen, that it would never happen. The more she had tried to control it, the more energy she had put into believing that no good was ever going to come and that time was up. She took up a new phrase that she really started to enjoy. In fact, she used it nearly all the time. She found her old playful giggle as she started to free her self-imposed restrictions and negative believes with it.

“What are they going to do to me?”…

• What are they going to do to me if I love my life?
• What are they going to do to me if I meet the one a little later and the old “not the one” is one or two divorces ahead of me?
• What are they going to do to me if I have my children a little later because something magical saved me from false starting my life and living completely on the wrong track?
• What are they going to do to me if I drive 95 on the highway?...okay…um… ‘giggle’…so they actually can do something about that…oh well…you live, you learn…hee hee…

The point is simple: When you think you’re off track, it’s very easy to stay on that track for much longer than you need to. You don’t have to impose a specific age and set of circumstances that you must have to make you happy. You can make a list of the things that you would like to achieve. In fact, I would suggest it. It’s nice to be clear about what it is you are looking for. Just make sure those are the things you really want and you are putting yourself into situations that bring you closer to finding them. In the meantime, don’t sit around waiting for your life to start! Do everything in the world you’ve ever wanted to do and life will find you! That’s what I call getting yourself on the right track!

Note: I wrote this in response to an email that I got that I was unable to respond to because I didn’t know where to send it. I hope it helps to make things clear enough to recognize that you are exactly where you are meant to be right now, and changing a few simple things about the way you treat yourself will set your life in motion towards everything you’ve imagined for your future. Possibly this is more wordy than “entertaining” but I’m like that sometimes! Happy day! Calia

Weather haters!

I was in the grocery store the other day and the lady in front of me was complaining about the weather. She said, “Thank God this weather is going to break soon!...I felt the need to get into the conversation. I’m not sure what it is about me that allows me to get provoked to respond sometimes, BUT it happens from time to time. (I probably ate sugar or something. I do know that when I am free of sugar for 48 hours or so, someone could actually punch me in the face and I would say, “I’m sorry. Did I get in your way? Have a very happy day!” – This was not the case today.) I said, “What? It's summer!  This weather is perfect!" I was beginning to think that all that global warming was a pile of crap!  I hope it stays this hot until October!”…She took this statement as a personal attack as she loaded her bologna and diet soda into her cart and replied sternly, “Don’t wish that on me!”…I could’ve left it alone, but I didn’t. I said, “What’s the heat going to do to you?"…again, this was not what she wanted to hear and she stomped away as the cashier and I giggled together.

I am VERY aware that I like extremes. It’s like that in my life. Possibly it’s a manic state and my synapses are stuck on “high!” Who cares though? I have a feeling that this same lady is the type who will complain about the cold in the winter. As a matter of fact, I like to flit around the grocery store when it’s 100 degrees out, looking for people to engage me in a conversation about whether or not it’s “hot enough for ya?”…They are called seasons! Move if you don’t like them! The issue is that some people are NEVER happy! Of course I’m not quite sure that they want to be. It’s a lesson that I have long been learning. Sometimes I think I can “fix” the world. It’s a family trait though. When my sister left her husband many years ago, my mother said, “Go back and fix it!”…It sounded like good advice to me, but where that topic was concerned, my sister wasn’t interested in wearing our “Roze Colored Glasses!”

So what about the lady who lives on the east coast and doesn’t like seasons?…well…it likely isn’t my place to convince her to love everyday as it is given to her- hot, cold, or mild! She likes to complain so I should SHUT UP!…(ha…good luck with that!…I’m working on it though!…as long as someone doesn’t say something that reminds me of something that I could say back... But maybe that’s what makes me a good conversationalist.) I’m going to practice what to say to people so I don’t always feel the need to egg someone on who is asking for a confrontation from now on!

Lady in Store: I hope this weather is over soon!

Calia: Yeah. You can always wish you were dead so you wouldn’t have to deal with it!

(darn…that wasn’t good. It’s as if my writing has the same problem my mouth does. Even fictional lady in my little skit just provoked me! Let me try again!)

Lady in Store: Boy! I sure wish fall would come. I hate this weather!

Calia: What are you? About 60? I guess you should’ve considered that 30 years ago before you moved to NY State!

(crap…again?…)

Lady in Store: Ah! I can’t wait until this dreadful summer is done!

Calia: (stop…think…smile…wait…darn…I can’t type a response that isn’t in direct conflict to her statement. It’s like my “leave it alone” switch is broken…ah…okay…here goes!…) giggle…

That was the best I could do! Not to mention that the resistance I felt to it was incredible! Oh well…if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all!…but maybe she should consider not crapping all over my world with her unhappy existence!…I’m just saying…

Time to empty our closets!

Doesn’t it seem like everyone in the world has some sort of issue? I have to wonder if “dysfunction” is the norm. Nobody does anything in moderation. I know that I don’t! If I want to have a slice of pizza, I eat a whole pizza. If I write a song, I sit down until an entire album is done. If I find an outfit that looks nice, I buy it in 5 colors…This is one of my personality traits. Am I weird?…sure…but no weirder than the guy at the gym who likely passed over the point of getting his body in shape about 6 months ago and now can’t rest his arms at his sides. Did he just get obsessed or is his image of himself distorted? He looks like he is his own reflection in a funhouse mirror. The question is, what was his issue before? Was it the other extreme? Is it possible that some kid in high school made a comment to him about having small shoulders and now 15 years later, he still worries that his shoulders are small?…uh…they aren’t man!… The point is that we bounce from one extreme to another with little ability to stop when we hit the middle of the road.

I don’t think that everyone has this tendency but it is clear that “personality disorders” are the new “black.” Our subconscious mind is so powerful that we can stare in a mirror at ourselves and see the person we may have believed ourselves to be at one fleeting moment during our past when someone else’s insecurities forced them to redirect their self destructive thoughts towards us. Great! Thank you! What is wrong with just being confident with the person we’ve become?…well…nothing…as long as we can see clearly who that person actually is.

I noticed an older couple at the gym last night with a similar issue. They weren’t obsessive though (that I know of). They are stuck in that fleeting moment when someone told them that they looked “great!”…their “glory days” if you will. They definitely had strong healthy bodies and had worked hard for them, but they were both wearing outfits stolen out of the 1983 movie, “Flashdance.”…My only question about this is, how does this stuff not fall apart in the dryer? I have a fleece that I’ve washed once and now I’m wondering where I can get a new one. Were clothes in the 80’s made with some sort of indestructible fabric?…and too bad if so because whether it still fits you or not, there should be a general rule on how long to keep things in your closet. I have a way to make this work for me. If I’m wearing an outfit that I think I may have had for too long, I ask the person next to me how long they have been married. If I’ve owned the outfit longer than their marriage lasted, I take it to the Salvation Army. One time, I had to get rid of an outfit I had only for 6 months…apparently the guy’s wife started getting really emotional when she was 3 months pregnant and he didn’t want the child to grow up in an unhappy household. Until then, she was his best friend but “she just changed!”…Yeah…just throw it away…I’m sure there’s someone better out there that won’t change!…Whoa…so we can easily toss away our relationships but won’t empty our closets?…I think I’m going to try to empty my emotional closet. Things can be done in moderation with little or no consequence. But if you eat an entire block of cheese every single night, your pants from the 80’s that you’re still hoping to get back into, will stay there forever!

Women are from venus…Men are hiding their heads under a blanket in my living room?

I’ve known for many years that women and men think and communicate differently. For example, over the last few years, it seems that men are more comfortable with communication via text messaging than actually talking or getting together. It must be due to the need for some attention but the additional need to control the amount of attention given back. How many times have I been in the middle of a “conversation” text message and then all of a sudden there was just no response? The conversation never ended. There was no “okay, catch ya later.” – Nothing. Just cut! Apparently this is the male version of one of my favorites – “blah blah blah! I CAN’T HEAR YOU! Wah bladaladalada!”…usually when I uncover my eyes, the guy who started the conversation that I was uncomfortable with, is gone.

I met a guy one time that had his own version of this. He was older than I was but he insisted he was 8 years younger…that should’ve been my first clue that something wasn’t quite right! One day we were talking in my living room and then all of a sudden, as I sat on the floor, he was lying on the couch with the blanket tight over his face… Um…huh?... I tried to move the blanket away from his face so I could find out what was wrong. I couldn’t recall what could’ve gone wrong in the conversation. He grunted and said in a muffled, blanket covered voice, “just go!” uh…confused again! It was my house! After struggling with the blanket for 5 minutes or so and getting nowhere with this 6 foot 5, 38 year old man, I walked into the kitchen. As I walked back into the living room, his BMW was pealing out of my driveway. Of course I did what any girl would do: I made myself a pizza. I played with whether or not to go find him over a slice, or 3… I mean…that seemed like an irrational action on his part. I’ve had guys flip me off cause I wasn’t singing Mony, Mony in a small town bar, guys invite me places and just not show, I even had a guy kick a footprint into the side of my little red sports car when I was 22. I was totally unaccustomed to the “hiding his head under a blanket” tactic. Eventually I went looking for him. We had been hanging out for nearly 2 weeks so I was beyond the 1 week rule where you can simply let someone speed out of your driveway without having to wonder why. I caught up with him later and he told me that I needed to read some book about that blanket being his cave. I didn’t read the book though I’m quite certain that there is no book that tells grown men to hide under a blanket and run from a 5’3” blonde girl. I suppose I don’t really care. He disappeared completely a couple weeks later. – and I’m not talking about him just not coming around- DISAPPEARED! Quit his job, moved out of the area…gone! …I think he left a pair of scrubs at my house. Does that mean that we’re together?

Oh! That explains it- we’re all getting bad advice!

I was looking online at what the dating rules are to see if I am following them at all. And by the way... I’m totally not! I am going to give a few of them a shot though. My friend Robin talked about “the Rules” book and noted different areas that she does or doesn’t follow them in her blog. I actually think she does a little better than I do. I definitely call too much and do feel the need to explain up front why I’m still single. It’s only because I have actually been asked, “why are you still single”, as though I’m broken or something and then I feel the need to explain myself. Ok! So I was in a relationship too long and ended up in a weird demographic. If I followed the rules, that guy would be wondering on the first date if I had a house full of cats! - NO CATS!

I also have an issue with not calling. I can’t stand that one. I feel like I’m being rude if I don’t thank a guy for a nice time in a text or something when I get home that night or the next day. A big no-no apparently! Oops…As a matter of fact, when a guy waits 3 days to call me, I’ve completely readjusted any excitement I had felt about him to the realization that he just wasn’t interested and by the time he calls, I don’t even feel like talking. I’ve moved on. (I suppose that is either a protective mechanism or the fact that I move at the speed of light and get bored and go on to my next goal- either way- 3 days is a long time in my world!) Oh well!

So that brings me to this site I came across. I may have just uncovered the problem. Men are being told to play a completely different game than women are. It’s no wonder that there are any couples at all. “Just be yourself”… but be a completely different person and you’ll get her? Uh…huh? It’s a huge game. Some guys like rules girls while other guys get mad and think girls are playing games. I suppose that dating is sort of a game but it is getting ridiculous. A little bit of a chase is a good idea while you’re getting to know someone, but come on! Do we really need all these books of rules? I haven’t even read the manual on my toaster! Shouldn’t I just be able to stick a piece of bread in and make toast without being told that shoving a metal object into a conductive electrical device might be hazardous? Thank God for the warning on my hair dryer or else I would be showering and drying my hair at the same time! Feeww!

Here are a few of the statements offered as advice to men that may be single handedly taking down the dating community:


Be willing to let her moan and groan and not give in because the nice guy isn’t respected.

This is absolutely crazy. I think that in this regard, if a woman is moaning and groaning about something, you really aren’t going to get very far with her in a relationship. I don’t think I’ve ever “moaned and groaned” about anything that I wasn’t able to take care of for myself. The person who wrote this was trying to help a nice guy compete with that ‘jerk’ with confidence that many of us try to ‘fix’ because we know we are “different and he’ll come around”. Well…that being said, we can’t fix him and he will likely still be a jerk, but we will eventually figure it out. There’s really nothing a nice guy can do to pretend he’s a jerk so we’ll like him! It’s just bad advice. We are the ones who are wrong here…but that isn’t really going to change much. Sometimes a nice guy is just not strong enough or does not demonstrate a sense of security that peaks our interest! Hopefully at the right place and the right time, we will choose a nice guy who has a little something of his own that attracts us to his inner character and we’ll be with him forever while the ‘jerk’ can continue to play out all of these rules.


You must have the attitude which shows that you are not there to impress her rather she is the one who is lucky to sit next to you.

Oh my! This one actually made me cringe. Why would I spend even a few minutes with someone who thought that he was doing me a favor by going somewhere with me? If he has a line of women, he should go to the next one and leave me out of the game if this is how he feels!



Do you know that women do not always mean what they say? They might say something and mean the exact opposite.

Another gem of advice! It has been my experience that women are much better communicators than men sometimes. If someone has told men that I mean the exact opposite of what I say, it truly explains why I am constantly trying to figure out how they could’ve possibly misinterpreted my exacting nature when it comes to open communication. I just thought they weren’t listening! Now I suppose it’s that they are listening and using a secret decoder ring to figure out what the opposite of what I said was! …On a positive side… this means that they are at least smarter than I had originally noted- not any better off with me, but smarter!


When it comes to impressing women, your looks do not matter. That gorgeous girl in the corner does not care a full blow beer belly, a bald head, or if you work as a mechanic at your brother's garage. None of these things matter.

Sorry about this one. That girl does care if you have a beer belly and are a mechanic in your brother’s garage. Every girl that I talk to seems to be hoping to meet an educated, driven man and is constantly saying that “there are no single guys out there.” There are single guys out there…and many of those guys are single for a reason. The thing is that while confidence counts and impresses women, how could a guy have any confidence if he has a beer belly and works in his brother’s garage? This goes for people in general. We need to make sure that the person we make ourselves into is the type of person we’d be proud to be. When we are working towards, or have achieved many of our goals in life, we are one step closer to wearing the confidence it takes to attract great people into our lives!


Good luck ladies!

You- Over there…The one who can’t stand me!

I have to wonder why some of us try so hard to get people who aren’t worth our time to like us. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone out of my way to prove to someone that they should want to be my friend. Why the heck?…Sometimes people just don’t like me…wait…no. That’s not true. I’m very likable. I’m friendly, smart, funny…they must be confused. I’m sure they like me but just don’t know it yet!… “Here! I made you some brownies.”, “Here! I wrote you a poem.”, “Here! I’ll give you my car.”
List of things to do today:

1. Ignore all the people who like me already! There must be something wrong with them.(check)
2. Accidentally run into the girl who rolled her eyes at me yesterday and explain the joke that she rolled her eyes at. When she rolls her eyes again, try harder!(check)
3. Call the guy who won’t answer his phone when I call and leave him a funny message about the fact that he won’t answer. (check)
4. Find someone who doesn’t want help and try to help them. (check)

The strange thing is that when you think about how many “good” friends we really need, the number is very low. I have many, many people in my life that I consider “friends”, but only a few who truly understand me and care about me. Those few are the ones I tend to put the least amount of effort into. Doesn’t it seem to be a little self-destructive to sabotage your real friendships by putting so much time into people who have blatantly let you know that they don’t want you in their lives? So why would a person waste her time on those people? Why do women want the guy whose the “player” that she knows has cheated on every girl he’s ever been with? Why do kids want to be friends with the “popular” kids that are never nice to them. Come to think of it. Many of those people aren’t even nice to the people they like. I did this as a kid too.
(Scene fades to a 7 year old Calia…Pigtail braids and the plaid pants from the nurse’s office after having fallen into the creek on the way to school in the morning…on a daily basis)
There is one girl who is my best friend who only likes me every other day. My parents told me that her parents are divorced and she probably has some problems. “Oh no! She has problems? I should help her!”…I’ll give her everything I have. I’ll do her homework. I’ll invite her over to my house so she can have dinner in a home where there is a mother and a father. If I make a joke, I’ll let her take the credit for it….But I am only 7 years old and she isn’t even nice. Can’t she do her own homework? Doesn’t she already have a McDonald’s hamburger on the table at her house that her mother left there for her before she went to work (I had to eat a well-balanced meal and wasn’t even allowed to eat candy or pudding pops!)? …Is she even funny?
(Scene fades to present day)
That girl hasn’t been heard from since she moved away in 6th grade. What the heck happened to her? I wonder if she is happy? I should call her and see if she needs some money or something. Maybe she needs me to baby-sit her kids sometime? I’m sure she’s very busy and her life is way more important than mine.
Darn! I wonder if our patterns of how we allow people to treat us are established before we are even 10 years old? If so, we are all pretty screwed. I had such an amazing childhood that I wanted to show everyone who didn’t, how great life could be by treating them with complete respect and unconditional kindness. I wonder if the kids who did have the good childhoods wondered why I didn’t want to play with them? The funny thing is that I have run into those kids, now 20-some years later with kids of their own, who have expressed to me that they always liked me. I guess I didn’t know that. I must’ve been working too hard trying to make the people who didn’t like me, and weren’t going to, care about me!
(scene fades to reminiscent times of elementary school)
Wow! I would’ve had a heck of a lot more time if I had just spent it with people who were worth it…(scene fades to reminiscent times of my 20’s)…Wow! I would’ve had a heck of a lot more time if I had just spent it with people who were worth it!
(scene fade to present)
…Wow! There are some really great people in my life who care about me unconditionally. I like them. I’m glad I don’t care what those other people who don’t want to like me think!…anymore…Day 5…

Email: Please Read this email!

Oh geez…These subject lines in my email are so enticing. I’m not sure they can be trusted though. For a while there, I was getting to work to find 15 emails in my inbox with the subject “You look so stupid today Croze.” I have to say that it hurt me a little you know?…After all, I had worked nearly all day on the previous Sunday to put together 5 perfect outfits and accessories so during the week, I could wake up, work out, jump in the shower and go off to work looking the best I could (with what I had to work with of course…and actually it wasn’t bad if I did say so myself.) BUT…apparently someone was watching and thought I looked stupid on a daily basis. I would run to the ladies room to see if I had accidentally over-moussed my hair into a Mohawk or something…After all-That would’ve looked a little stupid with my knee-length skirt and high boots…Nope…no Mohawk. Feewww…I didn’t look obviously stupid to the point that a little person inside my computer would’ve noticed. Granted, I sometimes play a little game that makes me sound stupid once in awhile, but that is just one of those blonde acts that I have found makes people feel more comfortable with saying stupid things around me themselves. It allows me to pull memories of my daily encounters out of my head at random throughout the evening for personal amusement…I know…I’m a little childish and gamey sometimes!…whatcha gonna do? Where the harassing emails were concerned though, eventually I decided to create a rule in my email that put all of the “you look stupid CRoze” and “Look at your stupid face here Croze” emails in a separate folder that I could choose to go to when I felt like beating myself up with a tiny bit of negative self-talk! On a bad day, I could just pull a chocolate cake out of my top drawer and open the folder so I could be sure to make my day as bad as possible!…ah!…Asi Es La Vida!
So today I got all sorts of emails with the subject, “Please Read!”…No! I’m not falling for that crap! I feel so silly when I get sucked into spam. I hope no one expects me to read any of my real email… “Someone has sent you an Ecard”… “Important”… “You may already have won!”…Actually, I open the “you may already have won” ones…what if I have already won something good and I didn’t open it? I’m not an idiot you know! (oops…virus…reformat…hmm…Oh well! Now I have a brand new computer again! Lucky me! I guess I did win! Whoohooo!) It seems that there are so many people “crying important” that I don’t believe them when it is. I don’t like to be a sucker, but I don’t like to be insensitive either. I’m sure that that guy from a different country who can’t seem to remember which country he’s in from correspondence to correspondence really needs me to cash that fake money order through my account! Far be it for me to question him!
I wish we could simply trust everyone blindly. Personally I still have hope that there’s good in everyone but sometimes a few bad seeds taint my Pollyanna view. One time I was in the middle of singing when a guy came up to me, showed me a knife, plunged it into his chest and then fell under my dress on the stage!…I wasn’t falling for that old “stab yourself in the chest” trick! It was Friday the 13th and I was certain that it was a collapsible knife. I didn’t miss a step as I danced over him. We kept singing and the bartender ran up and pulled the knife out thinking that it was a joke too. The blood started pouring out when he did though…oops…not a fake knife!…Well! I guess that’ll teach people not to “cry knife” in front of me so often! No one’s going to pull the wool over my eyes twice!…Sorry. Oh well… he lived!…and I still believe that people are basically good. Sometimes they just get cluttered with everyday stuff that brings out the worst in them…and then they use it- to the extreme! But I still won’t believe they are bad- Even if they do send me emails with the subject line “Boy you sure can’t get a guy. I guess no one likes you.”

Locked doors annoy me!

I can’t stand to come home and find my house locked. As a kid, we never locked our doors. It was just one of those things. If we got into a car and it wasn’t dinging, either the keys were lost in the house somewhere, or it wasn’t our car! I recently found a key to my house that my friend used to get in to water my plants one time when I went away. Actually, I had it hidden but she took it because she was afraid that someone would find it and get in….um…yeah…ME! I had to go in a window after that trip. She found it and gave it back and I put it back in its hiding place so if someone ever comes in to pick something up while I’m not home and decides to lock the door on the way out, I’ll be able to get in! Don’t get me wrong…this unlocked door practice has gotten me freaked out once in awhile. I came home at 3am from singing one time and opened the door to hear the door to the upstairs close. I freaked out! I was sure someone had just run up the stairs. I ran back to my car and called a friend. He drove over and went through the house with me. This seemed like a better alternative to the way I had done it in the past when I got scared: I had called him a few times to stay on the phone with me while I went through my house opening closet after closet and checking under beds and in the sleeves of coats. As I thought about it, I wondered what he was going to do if I did find someone in one of my sleeves?…We decided that having him come over was a better option….well…actually…WE decided that I should lock the doors on evenings when I would be coming home at 3am so he wouldn’t have to come over. Personally I think he was being a baby about it…but he did have to drive 20 minutes to rescue me. That may have seemed fun before he had a girlfriend, but once he was locked into a relationship, the 3am “I didn’t lock my house and a crazy person is inside” call didn’t seem humorous to her at all!
I have the same issue at work. I like my door wide open so I can enter and exit of my own volition. (that reminds me of a story…I knew this girl who was very pretty. She used big words all the time to seem smarter than she was. The problem was that she didn’t use the right ones. My friend and I used to laugh about it all the time after he got off the phone with her. One of those words was “volition”. She said something like, “I can’t help my son by making all of his decisions for him. It will be of his own vernacular to make things happen or not.” …hee hee…nope…the word is “volition”!)…anyway…the locked door! One time as a kid, someone had broken into our house and we had come home to hear him inside. We walked in the back door and he had to break out of the front door to escape- with nothing! Kind of hilarious if you ask me! I have to say that if I was going to rob a house, I’d choose the one with the biggest alarm system sign in the front yard. I guess I would assume that someone who lived there thought there was something inside that was worth stealing! I don’t worry about it. Someone stole my cdman off my front seat of my car in the driveway a number of years ago. I always wondered why the person hadn’t just asked if he could have it? If he seemed like his reason for needing it was good enough, I certainly would’ve given it to him.
….oh well…so much for locks! I’m sick of them. It is ironic that so many people seem to think that I’ve locked myself up when it comes to caring about someone though. I don’t think it’s true. I do think that I’m just waiting for someone to politely ask me if I’d like to spend some time with him instead of trying to beat me over the head and stealing my time from me just because I’m there. I’ll leave my door open. It’s worth seeing who tries to get in. Possibly everyone has been trying so hard to unlock a door that’s already open, that they are actually locking it?

The Sun Sets in the West

This is why I don’t go outside! I got to the place where I was singing tonight and my mic was set up in the front of the tent facing the crowd – and the sun! It was glaring directly into my eyes for an hour. I was dripping wet from the sweltering 90 degree heat and even a pair of sunglasses couldn’t stop the rays from closing my eyes tightly! I was trying so hard but I was getting really frustrated. The crowd was so appreciative though…from what I could see. After the first set, the sun went down behind a building and all was well again. The cobblestone sidewalk that I was dancing and singing on was reminiscent of the streets of Italy. Yes! It was there that I learned that cobblestone walks and strappy sandals are not exactly a great match. I would’ve loved a pair of sneakers about then – tonight was no different!

I danced and sang as I peered through the courtyard to a bridal party from a wedding in a nearby banquet hall. (yeah…we all know that I have been doing this so long that dancing and singing are second nature! All of a sudden the night will be over and I don’t remember singing anything!) One girl was standing outside in a full-length satin gown with a huge tattoo on the back of her neck with a cigarette in her hand. I thought that seemed strange because I didn’t think that people smoked anymore in this day and age but I suppose that if you’re going to get a tattoo and put on a strapless dress without using a serious amount of coverup, or at the very least a shawl, a cigarette was the perfect accessory to compliment the ensemble! I figured that all that was left for her to do was spit on the ground now. I dismissed the thought and continued singing. Our crowd was drinking heavily. There’s nothing like a hot summer evening, a cobblestone walk and a drunk guy dancing in front of me with a cigarette and a beer spilling over the side of the plastic cup and down his arm as he points at me in a flirtatious fashion with his cigarette hand, that says “ah this is the life!” I can never figure out why guys become so disheveled and point to me? It’s possible that I should start drinking. Possibly there’s an insider view that I’ve been missing all of these years that would become clear if I joined them in the fun! Oh well…not this night I guess. I’d hate to have made it all these years living a healthy lifestyle and then make a conscious decision to become an alcoholic in my 30’s. Of course that’s exactly what would happen if I started to drink now. There is no such thing as moderation in my life….Just then, my thought was interrupted by the bridal party girl across the courtyard as she was being carried out with her head between the legs of her beautiful dress, throwing up as her friends walked her slowly to a vehicle. It was only 45 minutes into the reception! I felt a little badly that I had been wrong about her before! She definitely wasn’t what I had judged her to be! It goes to show that sometimes we make rash generalizations about people from their actions or outward appearance that may not be fair! If only someone would’ve seen this coming!…My mistake!

  

The evening drew to a close and my feet were officially done. I wondered if there were only a certain number of bounces that a pair of feet could withstand before they had to be retired? I had definitely not been told how many that was exactly, but I was quite sure that I had reached that number tonight. It’s too bad really. You would think that these bodies of ours would come with an instruction manual with a warning on certain parts that will wear out before others. Who knows though? Maybe mothers are issued those instruction manuals in the hospital before they bring us home as babies but they lose them along the way in all the clutter of raising us. I think that when I have my children, I’m going to keep that book with the baby’s hair from her first haircut! That manual seems far more useful than this hair that I have sitting in a drawer from 35 years ago that no one has any idea what to do with.

Table of Contents:

I. Shelf life on feet and knees on your new baby 

a. expected for human who isn’t a gymnast or a dancer – lifetime
b. expected for gymnast or dancer- 37 years

II. What to do when your baby daughter brings home a narcissist in her teens

a. Convince her to marry him when she’s 18. She’ll long be divorced from him in time to meet someone nice and have a life! Just make sure she stays in school along the way! 

Oh well! I suppose there isn’t any instruction manual for life and human nature. That might be what makes it interesting. Besides, how many of us have actually gone back and written one in hopes that people who come after us won’t have to learn the same lessons we have had to learn? For the most part, anyone who would benefit from it would need to write her own anyway. People are so stubborn that way! Maybe that’s why we’ll all be in a retirement home playing video scrabble one day in silence as we sit next to each other and text our thoughts and lol’s to the person next to us! “u cant walk? Lol? Feet only last for 60 years. Didn’t any 1 tell u that?”…nope…lol…

Life is a journey. We jump around, fall down, get up, fall down, have children, they jump around, fall down, get up, fall down…With all of the ups and downs, we’re just lucky to survive it as long as we do! Possibly all of the falls help us to grow and work to protect us from more of the bad stuff so we end up with nothing but good in the end. I’m pretty sure that must be the case. One thing remains true: The sun always comes up in the morning and then at the end of the long day, sets in the west!

Truly Out in Left Field

I have to say that the hardest thing about going to a baseball game is figuring out what the heck to wear. I honestly don’t know how people do it? My lifestyle is such that putting on a gown and going to a social event or theatre outing is far easier than going to Yankee Stadium. I threw a few things on and then off early in the morning as I got ready to go to work knowing that I would need to have an outfit flexible enough to go from work to play with the removal of a sweater. NOT EASY! Jeans weren’t exactly my thing and the silk Ralph Lauren dress certainly wasn’t appearing to make the cut- no matter how many times I tried it on. Crap! I felt my eyes starting to swell up at the anxiety it created to have to pack everything necessary to look like I just threw something on. I wore black pants, a spaghetti strapped top and sandals. It wasn’t exactly right, but it would do.

After struggling with the traffic in every single direction, we finally got to the gate of the stadium where the guy who picked up my bag to pretend to check it for God knows what, commented on it’s weight. I think he was surprised by the fact that inside my purse, there was another smaller purse. I’m not one to go anywhere unprepared and Yankee’s Stadium was no different. What if someone had a computer crash or needed a grounding adapter…or a button sewn on?…I would be able to help tonight. The smaller purse inside was for a quick trip to the bathroom in the event that someone sitting above me was to spill a beer on my head or something. I was ready.

We sat in the Audi Yankee’s Club directly over right field…um…nope…apparently not. I stand corrected. I was informed that it was indeed left field. I wasn’t sure how anyone would’ve known that though. I guess they could’ve described it as “house left” and it would’ve been clearer to me. From where I was sitting, it was clearly stage right field. My “guy” was very patient. In fact, the more patient he was, the more I found myself saying things that would intentionally drive him crazy to no avail. For example, when scurrying from the stadium to the parking ramp, I looked at the cluttered ground and asked, “Why do sports people tend to spit so much more than theatre people?” He didn’t know. I’m still not exactly sure what the answer to that question is but I’m certain it has something to do with all of the hotdogs and beer ingested at the event itself. I’ve never been at a Broadway show where the attendees stood outside screaming in flip flops and t-shirts that enhanced their beer bellies as they forced greasy sandwiches and beverages with foamy topping into their already stuffed tummies. I suppose I would spit right on the ground too in that case.

It was actually a very enjoyable experience though it may sound like a foreign event to me. I had a nice time with great company and it was an experience that I’ve hardly taken advantage of in this lifetime. I hope to get better at it this summer. I’m going to get a few “ballgame costumes”. Maybe a hat, a logo’d shirt and a feaux water bottle that looks like a beer on the outside. I’ll giggle and misbehave, scream and yell at the umpires when they make a bad call, and possibly I’ll even jump out of the stands onto the field and rush a player just to see what the 4 police officers guarding the edge of the field from the possibility of 300 thousand or so game goers causing a riot will possibly be able to do to me? Hey. It’s worth a try I suppose. Sometimes we all need to do something completely out of our own character. Then again, maybe I will simply start small by wearing a pair of jeans next time. I suppose that going as far as to test the officers to see if they will arrest me is going a bit to the extreme!…Of course, it is in my nature to test the water to its fullest extent! I’ll let you know how it goes!…or you can read about it in the papers one day… “Crazy blonde chick in Versace gown storms stage left field in Yankee Stadium: gets tazered by 4 officers as onlookers watch in amazement that the ground crew is still able to get through the YMCA without missing a single letter!”

He “might’ve been black”

Political correctness is getting really confusing these days. I was watching the local news this morning as they broke in with a late breaking news story. “Man shot and killed. Police don’t have a description of the suspect yet, but they say he might’ve been black.”…um…ok. Might he also have been white?…or possibly a beigy taupe?…I suppose we’ll never know. Allegedly, he/she, Christian/Jewish, white/black, bi-racial, of Middle Eastern decent, shot and killed a man. We know he might’ve done it because the said man is lying in the street.

It’s really hard to keep up with what we are supposed to refer to people as. We’re pretty sure the “N” word is still off limits though…well…unless you are a gangsta rapper or someone’s brotha! Personally I like African American people. They tend to be far cooler than I am. I’m okay with that. (Did you notice I called them “African American”? That was so 2002! “Black” is fine again I hear…unless you are on a local news channel, in which case black is only fine if you are referring to the inner kindness of someone who “might’ve killed a man!”) I have a friend who referred to herself as “brown” one day. I suppose it makes sense. I’m sort of a “cream” myself.

Oh well…I suppose my point is that people don’t need to identify each other with a cultural description all the time. I’m certain that most of us have other identifying characteristics that won’t offend everyone in the room when using them to describe ourselves. Personally, I prefer it when people say, “you know Calia. She’s that bouncy girl with the big personality!…and when they describe me to a sketch artist, the picture comes back as nothing but teeth with a callout bubble over them with the words “Happy Day!”

Good morning! Rise and Shine!

I went for a run in the senior citizen village near my house at 6:30am yesterday. It was such a beautiful day. 64 degrees, a light wind, and morning sun shining through puffy white clouds. What a great morning. I was certain that all sorts of happy faces would be outside to greet me. I rounded the bend towards the first loop. There was not a soul there. The houses were shut up tight and the silence was deafening…of course the pounding techno in my ears that bled through the headphones attached to my ipod likely penetrated the peaceful sanctity of the tiny little self-contained town, but it kept me sealed off nicely from reality.

Where exactly was everybody? Isn’t retirement all about early mornings and sipping coffee or tea out on the porch on a beautiful summer-like day? It was truly how I saw it to be. I had actually considered getting myself a little cottage in this village. It was about my speed. I liked the purity of retired couples. Don’t get me wrong…I know that I race around like a crazy demon most of the day, but I really love the morals of the generations earlier than ours. Life was simpler then. You didn’t have to worry about digging the remote control out of the couch. The Internet NEVER went down. You didn’t have to proofread your text messages to make sure your predictive text didn’t just tell someone you’ve been “stuck in dog with the flu.”…Just then, my thought was interrupted by the wind of a 1983 Cavalier as it tore across the street and a newspaper shot out directly at the front window of the cottage next to me. What the heck? I guess paperboys don’t go door to door anymore…Not to mention that there must be a mechanic somewhere who is keeping Cavaliers running. Go figure. My parent’s wouldn’t even run in the 80’s. hmm…Note to self: paper routes apparently don’t pay well.

Anyway…I still like my little retirement village. I don’t know where everyone was hanging out, but I’ll likely set up a keyboard and a mic on the lawn one day this summer and make some friends. It should be a great way to spend those warm summer nights. I fit in way better there than any bar or nightclub I could waste the rest of my years hanging out in!

Stereotypes!

There was a guy where I sang a couple weeks ago that started talking to me. He was covered in tattoos and had all sorts of facial hair. He started talking about his “old” wife. I asked him if he had a younger one but apparently he only meant that she was not his wife any longer. He had all sorts of girls names printed on his body though. I wasn’t sure if they were his children’s names or if he simply hadn’t learned his lesson about how his track record with permanence is less than worthy of using needles and ink to express his sentiments!…May I suggest henna?

The guy asked me what I thought he did for a living. Without a beat, I said, “Construction worker?”…uh…nope…he apparently was an accountant…but he was looking for a job. (Oh. Really? I’m surprised! There are so many accounting firms in search of people to select “off the grid” under the ethnicity box on their application.)

So why is it so easy to give someone the wrong impression? One bad day…one flippant remark…one visit to the store in sweat pants…The love of your life could be standing right there in front of you thinking, “hmm…what a mess!”…one (okay…maybe 4 or 5) misplaced tattoo/s…someone with dog hair on their coat (yeah…that’s mine…if someone has dog hair on them, there is absolutely no way I’m going out on a date with him! I’m actually lucky if I don’t sneeze on him before he even asks.)

The question is do we always need to be on our best behavior? It’s like being an extra character in a show. You can phone in your “passenger number 2”, but what if a producer is watching for that perfect “passenger number 2” in a movie with the same title? You wouldn’t get chosen for the role unless you played the role as though you were the most important character on the stage. Actually, that’s sort of why my “passenger number 2” likes to take a tap solo in front of the main character once in awhile. Of course in most cases this hasn’t gotten the best response from the powers that be but oh well…I just better not be stereotyped as the “unruly passenger number 2!”…

The bottom line is that being the best at being you while still heeding your social barometer will go a long way towards achieving anything you want out of your life. And if you plan on expressing yourself on body parts that people might see one day, don’t worry about that accounting degree…

...But she's a witch...

I have a friend who dates random girls from time to time. He meets them in various places and they hardly ever pan out for some reason. Sometimes we wonder if it’s just him being too picky, but of course, what the heck do we know? A couple weeks ago he told me that he had met a great girl online. She was a lawyer, smart, funny, attractive…finally the perfect girl right? A few days passed and he stopped into my office and said, “There’s a problem. She’s a witch.”…uh… “What do you mean?” I asked. “Did she make you pay for dinner?”…He said, “No. She’s a real witch. She writes spells.”…hmm…That can’t be good. I didn’t tell him, but I was a little worried. It’s not that I have any judgments as to who is right or wrong in their belief system (though I have my own personal views that I follow closely), but I firmly feel that what works for people as individuals holds an awful lot of power over circumstance. What if she puts a pox on his house or something? Personally, I don’t practice Wicca. In fact, I’m a catholic. In theory, I should condemn her to eternal hell-fire and burn her at the stake…wait…or is that the Baptists?…No matter. To each his own. I firmly believe that as long as people have something that sets their idealistic foundation in place, I have no reason to question it. Besides, I might need a witch for something one day. Who knows? I like to keep a cross section of the world’s population at my fingertips in case I need to write a paper or something. I carry honorary memberships with the African American population, the gay and lesbian association, children with special needs, the Jewish community, the poor people, the rich people, the dirty people, the clean people, the liberals, the tea party!…I like people! I am happy to add “guy who is going to marry a witch” to the list! (I’m assuming he has to marry her right? There can’t possibly be a way out!)

What the heck happened to Steve?

There used to be a guy would comment on these blogs. Well…Something happened to all of the comments on the entire site and everything was deleted…then I never heard from Steve again. Unfortunately, it was right after his final comment about nice guys finishing last and pretty much giving up on the whole thing…uh…Steve?…Did you jump ship? Well I hope you didn’t give up and leave the country (like I have often considered myself!) I just thought, “hmm…I hope my blog didn’t send him into a downward spiral of cheese sticks and vodka.” (Again…the cheese sticks are sort of my thing…but oh well…MY blog!)

I’m sure that he has long since dated someone new, or at the very least met a line of girls who are just about the same or worse than the one he was speaking about a few months back. You know…so many of us write dating off completely but eventually we all get back on the horse. I suppose the trouble is that once we’ve established our personal likes and dislikes, we do tend to be standing in line at the gate of all the wrong horses to get back on.

I thought this over extensively. (What do I have to do?…I was driving down the highway and ran out of things to dwell on…so off my mind went…right into the cesspool of psychological disharmony!) How young would we have to be to not have established some sort of dynamic with the human race yet? Givers need takers so they seek out takers who take too much. If another giver comes along, our minds immediately think that there must be something wrong with them. (This is not a great testimony to our own giving nature really…though it does clear up some of our growing misconceptions that have festered upon watching people choose mates “who aren’t as nice as us” because “nice guys/girls finish last.” I once spent some time picking up after a guy, making his meals, shoveling his driveway, getting the groceries, wiring the house for sound and internet…then he decided that I was “too nice” and ended up with someone who would tell him to “get your own damn dinner! What is wrong with you? You don’t have feet?”) Strangely enough, it makes a little sense. People want to work for the things that matter to them or else it quickly becomes less interesting.

That being said though, If we have spent our lives working overtime to prove ourselves to the people around us, when we meet someone who isn’t asking us to prove anything it can be very easy to not recognize that person as a possibility and dismiss him/her. Is it because our definition of love is skewed by past experience of what it may have been? Whether it’s childhood dynamics or early dating experiences, we may have the tendency to be drawn towards people who treat us badly because it is what is familiar to us. We all have people in our lives that have screwed us over. If we were to really think about it, are “all” the people we’ve met since, exactly the same as those people? We might feel like they are. But is it really “all” or is it just the ones we’ve counted in as having potential? I have to say that I have passed many “nice guys” up because of lack of chemistry over the years. I don’t remember their names though. I’m certain they were dismissed very early on. The ones I tried for were the ones whose names I remember. They were narcissistic, condescending jerks…. I LOVE THEM! Why?…well…because I love a project. Will they ever make good life partners?...I am certain they will not. Can I spot one 50 ft across a room? Definitely! Do I identify him as someone I don’t want or as someone I want a chance to meet and show him that I am worth his time?…uh...well…baby steps!... No... I don’t want him. He’ll never be what I want for my future but he is the definition of what hasn’t worked for me in the past!

Great! Now we know it’s us!…Good to know…but how can we change what our lifetime of experiences has convinced us is what chemistry is?…don’t know…but I am making a set of questions to answer when someone comes into our lives:

Why am I attracted to this person?…If it is because that person reminds us of someone in our past, consider what those common traits are. If one of those traits is that that person doesn’t care whether you live or die, dismiss!

Is this person too nice?…If your answer is yes because he/she didn’t playfully tell you that you were fat as you ordered dinner, take a second look at this person. You may want to eat again one day!

Is this person exactly what you’ve always said you were looking for when people asked why you were single?…If so, send him/her away just so you can prove to everyone around you that you were right that he/she didn’t exist and wallow in self pity! It’s a lot of fun!...hee hee...

I contend that just being aware of what we are looking for and why, will go a long way towards choosing someone who will compliment what we have to offer instead of setting ourselves up to fail over and over again….Steve…I hope you met someone who appreciates a nice guy and not more of the same! Happy day!

Why am I getting Forbes Magazine?

I have to say that Internet ordering traps are ridiculous. For some reason I started receiving Forbes Magazine a few months ago. It had my name and address on it as though I had ordered it so I went online to find the company. I contacted them and explained that I was getting it by mistake and asked them to stop sending it. They told me that they couldn’t stop it…huh?…but I’m not going to pay for it.…I can’t imagine that it’s good business to send magazines to people who aren’t going to pay for them. Is Forbes run by the government? Possibly there was a clause in the stimulus that gave all US citizens Forbes magazine for personal betterment? That’s great! I will put it to good use…like the $3 a week that was in my paycheck last year. I almost bought myself a boat.…I know! I’ll have to put the next one that comes in the bathroom for guests to read.

I get so upset when I’m forced into things. I know that people would say that no one makes you do anything. Not true! I know that I didn’t order a magazine. They are making me receive it. Then again, they won’t be “making me” pay for it. How much do we have to give away until someone values what we have to offer?…Ironically, I think that the more we give away, the more we devalue our time. I wonder if it’s human nature to think that what costs more is better? If Forbes can afford to send me their magazine for free, I’m assuming that they have no need to sell it. They definitely don’t need me to subscribe to it! It must be so bad that they can’t even give it away! If that’s the case though, I think they should just put it in the grocery store entrances with the real estate listings so we can decide if we need it or not. It would save a lot of paper.

So how does this apply to our lives when it comes to dating? It seems quite clear to me. (Thank you Forbes) As long as we seem like our time and energy has no worth to us, person after person will continue to take it from us with no regard for the actual value of it. If there is a small price to pay, people won’t be as quick to waste so much of our time. We shouldn’t just mail ourselves to random people! Maybe if we followed this simple rule, it would save some of the content on our pages for people who feel like reading!

An Avocado Breast Milk Puree?

Who are you and what have you done with my sister?…She used to talk about things like…well…I can’t remember…but usually the funniest part was when she had absolutely NO childhood memories whatsoever. Why not? I was only a few years older than she was and I could replay everyday of my life yet somehow she virtually didn’t even remember which bedroom she had in our big beautiful house. Now her message on my voicemail ended with a simple, “I’ve gotta go. I’m feeding my child an avocado breast milk puree…and he doesn’t seem to like it very much.” I pushed ‘end’ on my phone and thought to myself “really? That sounds so yummy to me! Strange kid!” This is the girl who asked me to drive three hours 10 years ago to make her meals for a special protein diet we were going to do together to lose a few pounds and as I placed the last of the 36 rations into the freezer, she called me from the theatre to ask, “Why can’t I have a twizzler? What kind of gosh darn diet are we doing that you can’t eat twizzlers?”…um…I don’t know lil’ sis, why don’t you just grab a quick avocado breast milk puree?

She is not the only one of my sisters who has leaped into the realm of child-dom and left me to wonder what the heck they are all talking about on a daily basis. My one sister, who is the closest in age to me, has 6 children…or 27?…no…I think it’s 6. Yes. 6! She and her husband sat down with me a few weeks ago after we broke into our mother’s house and made dinner while she was out of town. (Don’t be upset. We really didn’t break in. We were in charge of the fish and we unlocked the door and left all the lights on the whole time she was gone so it seemed like things were the way they usually were. We even moved her car every 8 minutes so no one would suspect that she wasn’t home. She comes and goes a lot!) After dinner, they sent the children outside and she said, “Oh good. Now we can have some adult conversation!”…I looked around the room for another adult who might possibly be able to add anything useful to her and her husband’s adult conversation, but as I turned side to side, I could only see my own reflection in the glass of the backlit windowpanes. Adult conversation? Don’t adults talk about their kids? It’s a long shot to think that I have much to add in that regard but I did just get a really nice purse. I smiled and asked if they wanted to go outside and play baseball with the kids. Of course she said no because she’s played sports with me before and she is very aware that I truly have no business doing so!…other than that time I thought maybe I could play softball and the last sister (who hasn’t been mentioned in this yet) accidentally got a baseball bat directly between the eyes and had to wear dark sunglasses for 6 years or so.

Alas the dark-eyed sister…actually she healed up extremely nicely and is known very often for her beauty…and how she gets people to do things for her…That last part isn’t my judgment of her. It’s in her own words. One time I drove 4 hours to pick her up from her last day at a job she worked. She was pregnant at the time and she pointed out a few things that needed to go with her that day: 6 boxes of text books, some percussion instruments, some drawings…They all needed to be carried down a flight of stairs and packed in my car. As I carried a very heavy one by a couple of ladies who worked there, she whispered, “Could you not act like those are so heavy. I’m sort of known around here as someone who gets people to do things for her.”..Of course!…My bad!…Now she has a 16 month old and apparently taking care of a baby is harder than it looks. Like from my other sister, I get messages from her sometimes about baby related things too, but usually her phone battery dies in the middle of them. Come to think of it, I think I’ve even gotten some messages from the 1 year old…I don’t understand his messages either…oh well…I guess I’m in that awkward stage of life where I only have things in common with unmarried 23 year old girls…who are Mormons, or something that makes it so they don’t party all night. As for “adult conversation?” I paid my mortgage today…and then jumped on my trampoline for a little while. I never get tired of that thing!…of course I haven’t gotten used to those springs breaking and throwing me to the ground. No matter how ready you are for it, it’s always quite shocking! It’s dangerous to be an adult!

Yeah…But Can you do this?

I was singing at a hospital function the other night. These are always a lot of fun and I really like all the people there because they really appreciate a good time. They dance and party in a “society” way all evening. I like to look at all of the dresses because I’m sort of a dress junkie. Interestingly enough, some of these dresses weren’t all that great this year. There was one that was a mint green, one sleeved mini dress that was tight at the top and bulged at the waist. Hmm…I like to think about ways I can cut garments like this apart so they would be flattering. (Clearly after so many years, I’m not paying any attention to what I’m singing anymore!) Often I decide they would make better shirts than dresses…better skirts than dresses…better with an extra sleeve…a different neckline…well…in this case, all I could come up with that I could’ve done with it was to cut it apart into fancy green napkins for St. Patrick’s day. I guess it was a good thing that it wasn’t mine.

I stopped into one of the social circles to say hello. One of the Doctors said a polite hello and we started talking. “What have you been up to?” I asked. He replied, “Just saving lives.”…Well then. Instead of my usual reply about how I’ve been just singing and working out most of the waking hours of my days, I lifted my leg over my head and giggled, “yeah...but can you do this?”…From the look on his face, I assumed that he could not.

We all have a role in life. Possibly mine is aerobic flexibility and playful taunts? His is “saving lives!”…For some reason when I hear those words strung together in a sentence, the Mighty Mouse theme song plays in my head and my voice gets really low! “Here I come to save the day! Mighty Mouse is on his way!” The other day my brother told me that he really wants a job “between the aisles in a grocery store so that when someone slips on a banana peel, he could call security!”…I’m certain there are many job openings for banana peel slip intervention specialists. I suppose that we all have places where we can use our skills to make a difference in some way. The best we can do for ourselves is to take full advantage of what we have been offered as our special skills and make them as strong as they can be! If you are able to leap capital “T” in a single bound, for God’s Sake DO IT!

Would it help if we were a little “off?”

I was on the phone with my brother today. He has Down’s syndrome and lives in a group home but comes home to my mother’s house on the weekends. He calls the group home his “college dorm!” He is lovable and funny and people really enjoy being around him. Anyway…I was on the phone with him and as I we were talking about what time I would pick him up, I heard him utter a deep, exasperated “uhh…the TV.”…Then from the background I heard one of his staff members thank him for letting them know. I was very confused because it really hadn’t seemed like there had been much of a ruckus but he was distracted from our conversation for a second. I asked him what was going on and he replied, “Oh. I was watching the television in here and Mark just threw it out the window. The whole set.”…I knew that he was on the second floor of the house so I questioned him further. I asked him if it was his TV and he told me that it was the staff’s TV/VCR combo. I laughed so hard because I found it to be quite an eye opener that sometimes we live in situations that seem completely normal to us but if similar things had taken place in other people’s lives, it would’ve caused quite a stir. To him, the fact that the TV he was watching had been thrown out the window, was nothing more than an everyday annoyance. If someone had thrown my TV out the window, I think I would’ve taken it a little harder…on a couple of different levels: 1: I would wonder why someone would simply throw it out the window before asking if he could use it himself. 2: Because I live alone and my neighbors only break into my house to look for cash. Chances are that they would simply take the TV instead of breaking it.

The question is, are we freer to do what we want to do if we are mentally challenged in some way? It seems as though that may be the only difference between someone who is functioning at the standard level of mental capacity, and someone who isn’t. Maybe that guy who threw the TV out the window was simply doing what many of us have thought of doing at times… A cliffhanger season finale… Election Results night…The Jerry Springer Show…We just don’t have the guts to follow through. A little voice goes off in our head and says, “Wait. That’s not right!” That voice, while it might be keeping us out of prison, sort of sucks. Is it really the “boss” of us? If I was allowed to throw a TV out the window once in awhile, maybe I’d be more fulfilled. Once in awhile, tossing that rational voice aside and driving your car into the front window of a McDonalds when they don’t have strawberry shakes, might just be good for you!

Well...Maybe I got carried away a little there... There may be some repercussions to the strawberry shake scenario. Perhaps something a little smaller, like not drying your hands in a public restroom, would be a better place to start expressing ourselves. The point is that so often we are trapped behind our rational thoughts, that we never take the chances we need to take in order to get onto the next path that’s been carved out for our lives. Maybe the color was bad on that old TV/VCR combo and it needed to be thrown out the window so my brother’s staff would be forced to buy a new one that would be able to tune in more of the educational channels….Maybe an anger management show or two?… Possibly we should follow his lead and step out from behind our fears once in awhile in order to view the life that’s been hiding just around the corner from us.

Some “Old Guy” was buying us drinks!

I was talking to a friend whose daughter was out in the bar where I sang the other night. Her daughter came out with some of her friends and is 23 years old. Her mother repeated to me what she had said: “Mom! Some old guy was buying us drinks all night! It was so funny!”…WELL…I know which guy was buying those girls drinks all night and the “old guy” she was referring to is 34 years old! The funny thing is that I know that feeling! When I was 27, I met a guy who was 41 years old. He was way out of shape and what I considered to be “my Dad’s age”, yet there was something interesting about him. He was accomplished and had been separated from his wife since I was 10! He certainly was “old” though. The funny thing is that if I had actually dated or ended up with him permanently, he would be REALLY old now! Few! I can’t imagine dating a 50-year-old man now! It sounds so “mature!” The best part about this girl’s actual assessment of the 34-year-old guy is that he struts around these girls as though he believes that they think he’s their age. I mean- he REALLY wants to date a 21-year-old girl. I’m assuming it’s just his insecurity that makes him feel like a big strong man when young girls fall all over him…but the question is, are they “falling all over him?” or are they just going home and giggling about “the old guy buying them drinks all night!”…???hmm…

Age is just a number! The thing about that number is that once you’ve reached 32, it is calculated by young people in dog years! The truth is that 40 sounds really old to a 20-something. I remember a show called “30-something” when I was growing up. It was about these older people who had kids and all sorts of deep family issues. I have to assume that to a 30-something guy, there is something about the freedom that he feels when he is with someone who has the eyes of a child. The heavy conversation doesn’t exist. The weight of a mortgage…or a job for that matter doesn’t exist. Ahh! The sense of freshness and having your whole life ahead of you sweeps you up like a rebirth! I can see where someone who has been loaded down with responsibilities would love to feel that way again! Unfortunately though, those girls will one day want a “re-birth” of their own when they are 40 and their 55 year old husband with a beer belly may not be it anymore! You only live once though! There’s nothing like starting completely over with a maintenance payment to cover your ex-wife, children, and her 35 year old boyfriend at age 55! Ah! Such is life!

I suppose that I’m “old” now too. Oh well! At least now I know things I didn’t know about back then. I know how a young girl thinks. I know how and “old girl” thinks! Lucky me. The point is that often we need a secret decoder ring to interpret the thoughts of someone more than 5 years older or younger than us! 10 years is a little too much no matter how much some of us would like to think it isn’t! I’ve placed an age decoder chart here for those of you who still think it’s worth a try:

Music
50’s-call them phonographs
40’s call them turntables
30’s call them cd’s
20’s call them ipods (They just keep getting smaller.)

Pants
50’s call them trousers
40’s call them parachute pants
30’s call them Jordache
20’s call them leggings

Underwear
50’s call them britches
40’s call them briefs
30’s call them panties
20’s only call them for a special occasion when they want them to show above their low cut jeans

Couch
50’s call them davenports
40’s call them sofas
30’s call them futons
20’s call them a place where they’ve woken up after a long night that they can’t remember

Phone etiquette
50’s call you that night
40’s call you from the office or when their wife isn’t home
30’s call you after 3 days
20’s text you or don’t call at all!

Desperate Bulk Emailing

I tend to get a lot of emails from random people with big problems. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind other people’s problems, in fact, I relish in them…it’s a sort of sickness that I was sucked into long before I was old enough to know better than to care! Oh well!…At least now I know that I probably can’t help, but sadly still don’t think that it can hurt to try!…Anyway…I got another email from a random guy who was apparently looking to meet a girl online. I have to say that it was a good try, but the problem with this sort of correspondence lies in tone of the message. When the details sound blatantly pathetic, the letter likely won’t provide the expected results. There is no reason to include sentences like “my wife left me and I nearly lost my life”…or “I have decided not to ever marry again!”…um…those are two big no-no’s. When a single girl hears these things, she doesn’t say, “Oh! Good! He’s divorced and miserable! I should snap him right up!”…or… “Excellent! He has decided to never marry again! What I’ve been thinking that I need is a guy who has decided, prior to meeting me that he will never commit to me! My favorite!”…uh…dude…The old Calia would’ve written back explaining why what he wrote wasn’t going to be an affective way of meeting a healthy, nice girl to “not plan his future” with. In fact, I probably would’ve rewritten it and helped him to hack all of the email addresses he had sent it to in order to delete it from the women’s inboxes. Not this time though! I am dismissing it as another ridiculous thing that has touched my life as fuel for fodder that keeps my questioning light burning in the back of my mind- and most of all- pure entertainment! Thank you to whomever it was who sent that. I truly hope you don’t live happily ever after like you don’t want to!

Nervous and Jumpy?

I was a little offended yesterday when I was talking to the secretary at work, who is very classy and wonderful, and she said “You always make me feel so nervous and jumpy.”…hmm…That seemed less soothing than my intention of making people feel relaxed and at ease. I paused and said, “Geez..thanks a lot...It’s kind of what I was going for.” I like to pretend that people don’t bother me, which is ironic because people generally bother me way more than I should allow them to. I pondered the thought of making people feel nervous and jumpy…hmm…What about me would make people feel that way?…I decided to do a yoga tape when I got home. It was a little slow so I turned the dvd player to play 3 times faster. It actually was a pretty good workout- 10 minutes instead of 30! I was pretty proud of myself for actually doing yoga. Usually I liked spin or high intensity boot camp aerobics. I was now centered and virtually Buddhist. I felt a sigh of relief that there was nothing nervous and jumpy about me! I woke up this morning and turned on a meditation recording that I downloaded last night for my Ipod. I was really working on myself now! I ran on my Nordic-track as it played for nearly 30 minutes!

I think all of this self-exploration has been very good for me. No more nervous and jumpy people. No more uproarious laughter from my friends in the cafeteria as I run a monologue about my mother’s cat. No more skipping down the hall giggling about the evening before! No more smiley miscommunications as I take a cheap shot at someone as though I didn’t know I’ve done it! I am truly centered and grounded now! I’m so excited about this new found me that I can’t wait to get out of work and go for a run to my new relaxation/techno cd! Whooohooo! I FEEL GREAT! I love it when a plan comes together!