Too Friendly!

I know that I am always complaining about people who aren’t friendly. You know?…No eye contact from a cashier…holding the door open for someone and having them act like I should’ve done it anyway…someone beeping their horn at me as I sit in a line of 1000 cars at a tunnel or bridge into NYC as though I was the one who was holding up their pace!…oops…sorry sir…I just thought I would wait for the traffic in front of me to move before I turned my car into Chitty-chitty bang bang and flew over this mess! My mistake!…BUT…I actually ran into someone today who was TOO Friendly to the point that I drove to a different neighborhood on the way home in case he was following me.

I walked into the store and in the produce department a man caught my eye and very energetically said, “Hi! There she is! How are you? Have a great day okay?"...well...that was nice!...I was pleased by his friendly nature and walked to my next destination – the juice aisle!…I like all natural juices. The ones that cost about $11 an ounce because apparently someone has taken extra care to not add deadly toxins to them. Thanks guys! Call me picky, but I’m trying to cut down on the deadly toxins!…Would you believe that I ran into the same guy? He caught my eye and said, "Well! Twice in one day. How are you! Hey! Have a GREAT day okay!?"...um...okay...Thank you…This time seemed a little over the top since it had been a matter of maybe 2 minutes since his first greeting. I smiled and thanked him and walked away, this time a little less confident that he wasn’t an ax murderer.

I continued my original quest for hot chocolate and butter as I dismissed the eary feeling of the apparent fact that my grocery store was doubling as a mental ward. “I’m sure it’ll all be fine. That guy was just being nice. I’m sure people think I’m too friendly sometimes.” I think that often people worry that friendly people have ulterior motives for being that way. I’m sure I have made people feel that way before. One time I saw a kid walking down the street in the subzero temperature and pulled my car over and gave her my coat. She was a little taken back by the gesture but put it on graciously…and probably took it off as she got around the corner. The little puke! Oh well…I had many more coats. I actually give my sister a coat almost every time she comes over. Funny thing is that I’ve never actually seen her wear one. Duh Calia! Oh well…Too nice…I didn’t want anything in return. Of course I have to wonder if I did? Possibly I just like the feeling of being friendly and taking care of people?…I guess that is my ulterior motive then. I kept playing the scenario over in my mind as I pranced, all smiles, through the grocery store. I came to the conclusion that the guy was probably just being friendly….feeww…!

I got around the corner and put my groceries on the counter to be rung out. As I set the last one down, a burst of energy and condiments came pouring onto the counter behind mine. “HI! THERE SHE IS! HOW ARE YOU? I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY OKAY?”…The look on my face must’ve been one of utter confusion as he repeated himself again with his expression all toothy with vibrant excitement blasting from his hurried jolliness to just have happened to run into me here today!…I paused…and then smiled and thanked him…and then bagged my own groceries which I threw into my cart and bolted out of the store to the safety of my “just friendly enough” environment! Ah…I looked into the mirror to see if there was a reflection of a raging psychopath in the backseat…nope! No psychopath…just the ungrateful twirp I call “me”, who clearly couldn’t take it when people don’t carry themselves with the exact amount of niceness that’s comfortable for her!…Oh well…

But I'm Trying not to think about that!…

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve sat around talking to someone about how badly they need to forget about someone or something, I’d be an extremely wealthy girl! They always say that when someone gets going on a negative topic, that we should work hard to change the subject. Yeah! But sometimes it just gets so juicy!

Here’s how it goes:

Person 1: My ex is making my life miserable.

Person 2: ooh! Yeah! My ex is making my life miserable too!

Person1: No. My ex took my kids, my house, my dog and I have nothing left in the world!

Person 2: Oh yeah! My ex took my kids, my house, my dog and ran over my laptop in the driveway when she left with my car!

Person 1: You think that’s bad? I have to pay my ex $2000 a month and I am living in a hotel.

Person 2: Hmm…we should dig a hole in the earth and jump into it! That’ll show them.

They keep talking and the scene forwards to 5 years later…they are sitting on the same bar stools complaining about their latest ex’s in the exact same scenario!…This time they realize that they have even failed at their original plan of jumping into a hole in the earth! Life sucks!…

It’s very interesting how much time people spend trying to “forget”!…The more I think of something I don’t want to think about, the more I think about it!…uh…duh!…Good plan!

We could all do ourselves a favor to end a conversation the second it takes a negative turn. Talking about something different will go a lot further when it comes to helping to forget. The more we talk it up, the more of it we will attract for our future!

Calia's response to the conversation above: You're freakin' not kidding people su...(thoughts shift to fix the negativity in the air)...s(uc)...ink their teeth into such great chicken wings! How about those Mets!

What are the “right” reasons?

The rain beat against the house throughout the night to the point that I thought it might blow it right over. The interesting thing was that I found it sort of soothing. I set a bag of my favorite clothes and a pair of sneakers by the front door in case I needed to run out quickly and went back to bed to listen to the rain and wind. (Clearly I have a need to be prepared for every situation!) I had been dreaming about a conversation I had had with a friend during the day about how he didn’t know anyone in a relationship with a family who was actually happy. He seemed to believe that everyone had gotten involved with someone for all the wrong reasons. I had to admit that I heard him on this. Most everyone I knew who was in a “family” structure only voiced its negative aspects to me too. But were there any “right” reasons to be with someone? Was there truly a magical beam of light that had been sent to each of these people when they originally met each other that told them to spend their lives together? The thing is that I still believed that there must’ve been. Why else would anyone tie himself to another person for what is supposed to be his entire life? When I asked a guy who used to hook up randomly with other women even though he was married to one, why he stayed in his marriage even though he was so unhappy, he answered, “Cause what’s the alternative?”…oh…bleek!…and come to think of it…remind me to ask his wife the same question sometime and see what her take on it is.

The truth is that there is magic in every single moment. I drove to work with the rain pounding down on my car and passed a guy walking down the street wearing one of those umbrella hats. You know…the ones that sit right on your head?…Wow! This is not the coolest looking thing in the world but I have to admit that it made me giggle and sort of wish I had one. It was extremely functional. It was sort of like a bluetooth headset for a phone- it doesn’t exactly look very slick, but it makes life a lot easier. The point is that he was taking advantage of what he had to do in order to make the rainiest morning in the history of January, truly fantastic (for me anyway!) I felt sort of warm and protected by it myself. He wasn't thrown off by the rainstorm. He just continued through his day the best way he knew how. Is this the issue with all of these unhappy people in relationships? Did they really “get married too young”, or “marry the wrong person”, or “meet their soul-mate after getting married to the “next best thing”?…I actually don’t think so. I think that people are shocked by the changes that they go through as they move through different stages of life and make the choice to stick it out or not. In fact, they justify it to suit their needs when they don’t. Most of our parents stayed in their marriages for a lifetime. Leaving is really just the popular choice of our attention deficit/need for excitement/too many temptations from other unhappy people in the workplace generation!

The real question in my dream about a couple at the zoo…and don’t ask me what the heck the zoo was about…I’m not a huge fan of the zoo! It’s sort of a park only it has animals in it. I’m not a fan of animals. I find them scary- like “eat my head” scary!…especially birds! Birds are the scariest of all of them. They are sort of like clowns (also very scary) only with wings…as a matter of fact…the circus in the next scene of my dream was even scarier than the zoo…You know what?…I have absolutely no idea what that dream was about...uh...

So…what are the right reasons for people to have a relationship with a significant other? I think that everyone has their own idea of this and it is likely these preconceived personal expectations of what they think it should be like that have caused the unhappiness with the reality of what it is. Is it magical?…probably for the first 6 months or so. Is it joyous?…probably when your child takes his first steps….Is it exciting?…likely on the one night a week when you have a babysitter and go to dinner together but call home every 5 minutes and check the nanny cam from your blackberry sitting on the table in front of you and then go home early cause you’re too tired to be out anyway!…hmm…apparently my expectations aren’t set too high! As a matter of fact, that actually sounds good to me! I hope for a best friend and someone who has common interests and an appreciation for the good and bad things…and most of all, someone who I still have all of those things in common with once we’re too old to remember to finish the conversation we were having about what all the unhappy people who have recycled one unhappy relationship for another, for another, for another, are complaining about! I won’t settle for less! We’ll grow old together, happily…or kill each other trying!

Music to Drown out the World?

I have often noticed that when I’m feeling stressed out, putting really loud techno in my ears or turning on the TV is a remedy for it. Now when I say stressed, I’m referring to things in my life that I feel I cannot control because they involve other people. I’m not suggesting that I’m a control freak, but I have to wonder why I sometimes I can’t shelter myself a little better from the way other people affect my personal well-being. For example, last night I was singing and a couple of older men who are often out to see me when I sing waited for me to go on break. I ran to the rest room and wanted to simply walk by with a quick hello but they wouldn’t let me do that. Well! How silly that sounds! Wouldn’t let me? They aren’t the boss of me!…Okay…you go girl…but “girl” sort of sputtered out of her “going” when she realized that they weren’t going to allow her to walk by. I nicely said that the music was too loud for me to speak over and after a long day at work and a late night of singing, my next set would be hard to get through if I continued to scream to them over the music. Reasonable right?…I guess not. I turned to walk away and the one guy said, “So how is your New Year going?”…I was baffled and replied quietly, “It’s going well thank you. I just can’t talk over the music because I’m a little tired and can’t scream in a conversation and then have to sing for 2 more hours.”…He smiled and started to talk about how his New Year was going and got deeply into the politics of the educational system, health care reform and about how Obama was negatively affecting the structure of every aspect of the country….um…yeah…but I can barely speak anymore because I’ve just used all of my energy explaining why I can’t be in this conversation. I felt like I was going to burst into tears. It was like going to McDonalds and saying, “Yes. I’d like a cheeseburger” and having the tattooed teenager at the cash register with the picture coded buttons saying, “No. I’ll get you a diet coke instead.”…Ok…the kid was probably right. I didn’t really need a cheeseburger and shouldn’t have even asked for it.

This is obviously something that I struggle with. I don’t want to be rude to people and I do my best to be kind, but by the time I have repeated my wishes over and over with little or no regard for my feelings on the other person’s part, I feel angry and usually end up being rude to them anyway. That’s not right. I never stay mad though. I immediately dismiss my feelings by changing the channel in my mind to something else. No room to feel angry, sad, frustrated or hurt right? But is there?…If I turn up the music to drown out the feeling of being out of control, am I just burying it alive?…Actually it sort of sounds like a good idea to me…but we need to remember that I’m the one who is apparently not expressing myself clearly so my advice on this topic is likely extremely bad! Yeah…have a bowl of pasta…go to the gym…turn up the music…They all seem like logical choices for avoiding an uncomfortable personal thought or two. As a matter of fact, I’ve gotten through many years using this approach. It definitely works in terms of fixing the big picture! - But what about the close up? If on a daily basis someone makes me feel like what I want doesn’t matter, even if I have expressed my needs clearly, have I fixed the problem? …If I feel like I’m going to burst into tears when I’m doing someone a favor and they want to change the time to a less convenient time for me to accommodate themselves AND I ALLOW THEM TO, has my coping mechanism really worked efficiently?…MALFUNCTION!… MAYDAY!… I NEED A BLOCK OF CHEESE!… I CAN’T GET THE MUSIC LOUD ENOUGH TO DROWN OUT MY NEGATIVE ENERGY!…uh oh…that can’t be good. I’m so screwed!

So then…what is the answer to making a permanent change? I have to think that this is a process of self-enlightenment that I will likely fail at for awhile since it is in my nature to allow others to affect me in this way. Again…failure is another thing that doesn’t exactly sit well with me! AH!…delete…Where’s my ipod?…Wait though… I do think that stopping myself from turning on the music, eating, or going to the gym for the few minutes it takes to figure out what I’m really feeling might be a step in the right direction towards validating my right to feel that way. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll still crank the music at the gym, but I will do it because it makes me feel good, not because it makes me forget that I don’t!

For God's Sake- Relax!

I guess it’s just me…I have a serious problem with just lying around. People always tell me to “just relax”, but for some reason, my definition of relaxing and theirs, are extremely different. When I have free time, I wouldn’t mind lying on the couch and watching a 48-minute, commercial free episode of CSI or something. Of course, most of the time, I’d rather bring a mini-trampoline into the living room and watch it while I’m jumping. Other than that, relaxing to me is something more like sitting on my bed with my laptop over me and writing a book or sitting in my recording studio producing a techno song….wait a minute…at the beginning of this blog, I was thinking that people would hear me on this, but I just realized that I have an extremely different view of relaxing. Maybe I’m just a little high-strung? But whatcha gonna do about that? I tried yoga once but I got thrown out…but come to think of it, I get thrown out of a lot of places. I also got thrown out of an Amway meeting one time too. I guess I didn’t see eye to eye with the guy who told me that if my parents were teachers, they were “losers and unsuccessful!”…I didn’t think that was nice…so I told him so…in front of nearly 500 people….Geez…people hate to be outwitted when they are speaking in front of a group. Big baby!

Anyway…relaxing…I asked around to find out what other people do to relax. One person said that he and his girlfriend like to sit on the couch and read. I looked at him with a blank stare on my face and then looked to another friend for clarification. My other friend said, “That’s READ a book – Not WRITE one.”…oh. I suppose I could pick up some technical manuals or something. That way I wouldn’t feel guilty about the incredible waste of time due to the fact that I was learning something that I would likely use in some crazy technology emergency. I’m just waiting for the government to break into a TV show someday with a special announcement that they are desperately seeking a singing, dancing, aerobics instructor who can run an algorithm on a 12 digit passcode while reciting Shakespeare! I’ll throw my hand up and yell, “ooh! Ooh! Pick me! What's in a name? That which we call Calia Roze by any other name would smell like feet."…or something like that!…Maybe I should “just relax”…

I like making plans with you!...maybe one day you'll show up!

It’s like that old episode of Seinfeld when Jerry went to pick up the rental car that he had reserved but there wasn’t one there for him. He explained what the word “reservation” meant and they said, “We know what the word reservation means sir.” He replied, “I don’t think you do!”…

I bring this up due to the fact that I seem to have a number of people in my life who make plans with me and have no intention of ever showing up to them. Um? WTF?…I can’t figure out what good it would do anyone to guilt me repeatedly about not getting together and then when I make a plan, confirm the plan and then follow through the plan, the person simply either doesn’t contact me, or waits until there’s no way I am still waiting to send out a quick email to apologize, half-heartedly, for canceling. The funny thing is that this happens to me all the time and usually I feel bad and end up sending a sugar and spice email wishing them well!…Come on! This is clearly my fault. I couldn’t possibly think in the way a person who would desperately crave the feeling of having someone waiting for them to show up while sitting back and controlling their actions by not going. This type of person is obviously unhealthy right?…BUT…whose the unhealthy one? The person who keeps being a jerk by repeating his actions, or the person who consistently allows the other to apologize and thinks that the next time it will be different?..uh…DUH! Delete! This is not a friendship.

I’m not angry about it. I’m more baffled by the recurring nature of the problem with multiple people in my life. It’s actually kind of funny that I would have a revolving door on my “friend storage unit” that is completely open for people to run through on a whim with no need for any reciprocation. Should I go the next time any of these people invite me somewhere?…absolutely not!…Will I?…probably…but when it involves driving 3 hours to get there, I will definitely take a change of clothes and a candy bar…baby steps!

Has everyone been given the same opportunities?

I was driving through the Holland tunnel yesterday and just happened to notice a lady walking with a cane and a tin can as she asked people in cars for money in the pouring rain. I guess I’m not sure why I noticed her as I see people like her all the time. I want to give to them but then wonder where to draw the line? One time I drove up to a man with a sign that said, “Will work for food” and gave him a tray of twice baked potatoes. He didn’t seem to be thrilled with the potatoes but I didn’t have a job to offer him. Not to mention the fact that I wasn’t exactly sure what his skill set was. He seemed to be strong in the “holding a sign and standing in front of people going about their business department” though. I have to suspect that this may actually be his job… What was the deal with this lady with a cane though? I wondered if people’s luck is predetermined or if we all get the same set of opportunities that we either know how to use or not? If I had been given her set of circumstances, would my body be breaking down to the point of walking with a limp and needing a cane, or is her life just harder than mine? The truth is that I’m really not sure what the answer to that question is but I’m not afraid to acknowledge that I have caught a few breaks in my lifetime! We have to run the balance between feeling really bad for these people and becoming completely numb to them. I don’t like the fact that I have to ignore them at my window. I don’t like the fact that I’ve been frustrated with a bad hair day while people are standing in the pouring rain just doing their best to stay alive in the elements. I don’t like the fact that the man didn’t say thank you that day when I gave him my family’s dinner…

I try to remember to be grateful for the lucky breaks I’ve been given but I also remember having to work for many of the opportunities I have been so luckily “given”. I went to college. I practiced my instruments. I did my homework. I got a job and when it was no longer the job I was happy in, I did what I needed to do to develop the skills necessary to get a new one that I would be happier in…No- I wasn’t brought up in poverty but we weren’t rich either. As a matter of fact, by today’s standards, what my parents supported 5 children on would be considered poverty. We still lived in the happiest, most beautiful house anyone could ever ask for. I guess it’s all how it’s presented to us. When I look at things, I see the possibilities in them and have been given the problem solving skills to be able to figure out what I need to do to change my current circumstances if I want to. When someone standing on the street corner holding a sign looks at what their life has become, do they sit in realization that it is what it is, or have they ever been taught to make a mental note of how they want it to be and how to get there?

Mental note:

• Acknowledge what I have in this moment!


• Recognize what I can learn from the people who come into my environment. Why take life for granted, as there is always somewhere to go!

Runny Noses aren’t Sexy!

Everyone gets sick once in a while. The trouble is that when you have to sing ALL THE TIME, there is really no room for it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing like a nice deviated septum to help form a crystal clear resonance, but it leaves little room for a mid-winter clogged head! So there I was, wearing a beautiful velvet dress, my hair was in flowing blonde locks, I was wearing the right shoes (I know because my toes had fallen asleep and I was 3 inches taller than usual)…Ah! Perfection!…Other than not being able to sing a note…or breathe at all. That’s beauty at its best! I reached into my bag, that luckily has everything anyone would ever need in it from phillips head screwdrivers to shoe sole grippers and an inhaler, and took out my emergency Afrin stash that I always know better than to use! I couldn’t be stopped! I squirted it into my cloggy useless head. Within a minute, I could breathe. I felt so much better. I was standing there laughing and talking with my band mates and in the middle of a laugh, I let out a snort…Now that’s as classy as it comes! Clearly my nose was a little too dry but the snort was the perfect topper for my look! Yes…sick is HOT! Every guy clearly was whispering to his friends, “I need me a piece of that!”…ah…shucks…thank you! (giggle…giggle…snort…drip…)

Whoa…What a Mess!

Let’s just say that I drove my sister and my one year old nephew home this weekend and there’s so much food in my back seat that I will likely need to sell the car. I know that it sounds a bit extreme…but we all know that I’m a single girl with no children…AND…I am a bit extreme!… The thing is that though I took care of a baby for one of my other sisters’ way back, I had forgotten how darn messy babies are. These little people are not exactly the easiest creatures to care for…though I have to say that I’d take that responsibility long before taking care of those darn fish that my mother asked me to feed a couple months ago. That pressure nearly killed me!

I’m not saying that I’m too regimented to be flexible when it comes to a few flying organic cheese puffs and cheerios beaten down into the groves of my neatly armor-alled leather interior of my car…wait a minute…am I?…hmm… (silence)

The next day…

I had to go think about that question for a while. I’m back now. The answer is that I am a little too regimented, but only because of the fact that I’m not in the baby stage yet and I’ve grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle…and that lifestyle doesn’t involve any organic cheese puffs pretty much as a rule. I guess what I was getting at was that children need to be grown with and not handed to you in the middle of the process. I’m certain that if I had a child, I would be fine with the flying food, or at the very least, cover the interior of my car with plastic wrap…though I’m pretty sure that somewhere on the label of plastic wrap there is a warning about not covering babies in it…not sure. At any rate, babies are not an easy job. I worry that as we get older, we get so good at being free and having the ability to just pick up and move about with ease, that we are shocked at the responsibility when it makes it to us. A 20 year old mother likely never gets the chance to know she has her own life and thinks nothing of adding a child in…of course, by the time they are 30 and screaming at their husbands that they want a divorce and then have to take their 10 year olds through the agony of their parents splitting up and then try to start dating all over again while they are in the middle of raising them has it’s drawbacks too…but hey…at least then, they don’t have to worry about giving birth in their 50’s!…potato/pototo!

I guess what I’m saying is that sometimes we become so set in our ways that we leave very little room for positive change. Do we just allow ourselves to stay where we are out of comfort? Or should we leave room for possibilities and learn to open our minds to the chance that our car may not always be clean and that people waiting behind us in the middle of the NYC street while we fight with the instructions on the car seat that apparently needs to be mounted to the frame of the car by a certified fireman, can wait?…I’ll try to leave room for it…but I should also assess whether I enjoy complaining about not having it more than I would enjoy having it!…Oh well…for now, I’m just gonna clean my car so I can drive it again and put all the rest out of my head. This stuff is too intense!

Boy! Some People Sure are in a Hurry!

I never understand why people insist on tailgating when I have had to set my cruise control to 9 mph above the speed limit just so I don’t get a ticket in the new speed trap near my house. It happens on a daily basis. Everyone is in such a hurry all the time. Don’t get me wrong- I love to drive fast! I just can’t stand wasting the time it takes to get pulled over. The funny thing is that the “old” Calia (and by “old”, I mean “younger” or “used to be” cause certainly I am the “oldest" Calia I have ever been!) would’ve slammed on her brakes to make the angry person behind her go even slower for the entire length of the road. Hee hee… I’ve stopped doing that though! Now, when someone wants to drive faster than I do, I put on my blinker and allow them to speed passed me. The coolest part about this is that every time I do, by the time I get a little way up the street, I find them pulled over by the nice Policeman that I was trying to avoid in the first place. I’m not kidding! It happens 4 out of 5 times. It’s like I’m in a protective bubble that allows for me to not take any revenge because karma gets the person every single time.

I’ve started applying this in all areas of my life. I used to feel like people around me were always pushing me to act a certain way, which would make me feel a need to “react!” I would do this either by doing what they would want me to do and complaining about it later, or doing exactly the opposite of what they wanted me to do just to defy their suggestion. Either way, I would end up being the one who was stressed out! This new way actually makes me giggle as I go at my own pace down the road of life. If someone pushes, I let them pass. If someone wants me to fight them, I turn away and let someone else endure the hassle. I have no need for it whatsoever!

Possibly we should consider slowing down our life to the speed we choose to live it! It just might, at the very least, change our answer to, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” from, “um…no!”, to “cause I was leaving myself a message on my cell phone reminding me to a blog about this exact moment!”

Sometimes Parents Need a Time Out!

I went to a basketball game the other night. It was a lot of fun but the mother of one of the kids behind me was screaming at her daughter on the court the whole time! “BOX! BOX!”…what the heck? I could’ve used a box of popcorn right about then. She had a point!

I’m glad I don’t have kids yet. I had no idea what the etiquette for parents was these days. I'll keep going to these games so I can work on it for when it’s my turn to watch my child. I can just picture myself sitting in the auditorium yelling, “PITCH!, PITCH”, “YOU CALL THAT A SOLO! THE OTHER KIDS ARE PLAYING TOO LOUD! PIANISSIMO PEOPLE! PIANISSIMO!”…

I’m really happy to have this opportunity to learn from other parents. Luckily I won’t just be thrown into it blindly like people in their child-bearing years! I will make my children proud to say, “Uh! MOM! U R SUCH N M-BEAR-S-MNT!”

Typoes

Writing all the time opens up a world of possibility to screw up. I often write quick responses to people in email while I’m talking to other people. This is a problem if I don’t take the time to proofread them!…um…this has been known to happen…a lot! Just the other day, I went back and read a response I had written AFTER I had sent it. I told the person to “way out their evils”…oops…That’s as ridiculous as writing “two bad for you!” or “their you go!”…I must’ve looked like a complete idiot! I wonder if she noticed? Come to think of it…I wonder if she even understood the meaning of the sentence at all?

It can be very embarrassing for me considering the number of times I haven’t been able to get over bad grammar in email from people to the point of blocking their addresses from my account! We have become such a fast-paced world (and don’t get me wrong on this, I love “fast!”), that we can get ourselves in a lot of trouble by firing off a quick text or email without thinking about what it might sound like. In my case, this one made me sound like an idiot. Too bad too! (or should I say, “To bad two?”) I was sort of attached to my reputation of not being academically challenged. Darn!…one quick and lasting impression to be “wayed” out on paper for the rest of my life. I can never run for office as a politician now, because eventually it will surface on the front page of some grocery store slander rag! “Roze is an Idiot! She can ‘sea’ Russia from her house!” …These are moments you just can’t take back!

So I guess that even though I like things to move along at a good pace, I'm gonna make a list of things that I should think about before I do:

• Speak


• Send an email


• send a text


• wish a Jewish person a Merry Christmas


• say “watcha gonna do? Shoot me? To a person with a gun pointed at me…

It’ll just be best that way. It’s going to be my New Year’s Revelation!

Note to self: Don’t just rush ‘threw’….hee hee…

Birds of a feather

I have been noticing lately that married people tend to shut out single people from their lives. I find this very interesting. It’s not as though they are doing it intentionally…though in some cases it does seem to be intentional…but usually only after someone’s spouse has somehow suggested that a single person is attractive or mentioned something unknowingly inappropriate. They can’t really be blamed for this though. People have their ways of starting confrontation. Women sometimes trap men into saying things just so they can get angry with them. Men-Do not fall into this vicious trap. It’s the old “Honey, Do these pants make me look fat?” trick…There is no good answer to this question. You are being set up to fail and your answer will be used against you for the rest of your life (but don’t worry because the rest of your life may not be all that long after you answer this question)! It’s equally as bad a question as a guy asking a girl if certain parts of his body are the biggest she’s ever seen. Again- NO GOOD ANSWER!…Clearly uproarious laugher will be taken as a diss…even a “Yes honey!” and a wink can be badly misconstrued. These are the social traps that people get themselves into. The answer to “Honey, Do these pants make me look fat?” is “huh?…Oh. I forgot to tell you about what happened at work today!”…I personally like, “no fatter than usual honey”, or, “No. It’s not the pants that are making you look fat. I think it’s the cheese that’s making you look fat!”…but that’s just me…because I think it’s extremely funny. But keep in mind that you may be asking for a lifetime of performance anxiety when I return my response to you as “hee hee…No. I think it’s cute honey!”…Not good! DON’T GO THERE!

So are single people meant to only spend time with other single people? I agree that it can be a little easier to spend time with people who share common interests, but sometimes we end up commiserating about the negative aspects of singleness…Believe me! I know about this. I know how that conversation can start. “Hi!”, “Hello”, “My ex sucks!”, “So does mine”…and there you have it - The beginning of a beautiful friendship. But are we doing each other any good by dwelling in past and present shortcomings? I wonder if it would be possible for a bunch of single people to get together and never bring up anything that has to do with the single life?…Probably not. This is what we know about. It’s hard to talk about things we don’t know about but maybe we could dwell on something different for the first 10 minutes of the conversation at least. Like say…Politics?…Well…maybe politics isn’t the best topic to start with. I know how democrats get…hee hee…see that? I just lost half of my readers with one sentence. Note to self: in conversation with other single people, leave out single talk and politics….um…What’s left?…Okay…music. I love techno…and there go the other half of my readers…and here in ends the blog!…

Boy! That was a cliffhanger. Scared ya didn’t I? No worries! I didn’t end it. Ixnay on the usicmay!…Oh well. I suppose that we could just try to make sure that we aren’t dragging each other down by over-conversing about topics that become depressing. If you are having trouble meeting someone, change the sentence to, “I know there’s someone out there for me.” If you are bored because you have too much time on your hands, change the sentence to “I am so lucky to have some of the free time that so many people don’t have the luxury of”…These are simple changes we can make that will help us to use the law of attraction in our favor. If single people have only each other, we'd better learn how to build each other up instead of drag each other into a spiral of depression!…I mean…Single people are lucky to have each other to share the excitement of a world full of opportunities and possibilities!…Oh yeah! I’m getting good at this!…

Is the Easy Way Always Better?

I use my dvr recorder a lot so that I have something to watch without commercials on a Sunday afternoon when there’s nothing interesting on!…I select the program from the guide and click “record/all episodes”. That’s easy right?…Way easier than figuring out what time it is on and then programming it to turn on for one hour and 10 minutes at a certain time of day. The only problem with this is that I miss the ending of every single show I record because the guide knows what time the show is “supposed” to be on but it always starts 2 minutes or so late. Well! I guess I really haven’t saved myself any time at all by taking the easy way of recording the program. In fact, I have just wasted 47 minutes watching a show and have no idea how it ended. Of course this obsession with knowing the ending of things may be an issue for all of society these days. People read books and flip to the end cause they can’t wait. We renew our cell phone contracts early in order to get the newest gadget because we want it now! We buy prepackaged/microwavable pouches of foods that sort of taste like the food we wanted so we only have to wait the 30 seconds it takes to heat them up. We ask on the first date, “Where’s this going?”…not because we are all into someone, but because we’d hate to waste time getting to know them if it isn’t going anywhere. Guys sometimes do this in bars to the opposite extreme. If a girl seems to be too into having a conversation instead of offering up a late-night make-out session, he will often dismiss her very quickly. It all depends on what he is looking for in the moment. He probably won’t marry the girl he is looking for that night but she may tie him down by calling his wife sometime during the next 6 months or so “accidentally.” This will leave him with just the “easy” girl when his wife throws his stuff out the window and takes custody of his children. There’s nothing that says “love” like being “all that’s left over” once a guy loses the love of his life! That’s beautiful! Personally I’d rather be the girl that a guy like that says, “Forget her. She’s not drunk enough” about. This gives me the opportunity to giggle as I watch him walking out the door at 3am with the girl in the low-cut top who was much less of a conversationalist because I already flipped to the end of that story.

So what’s this fascination with knowing how things are going to turn out? I am VERY guilty of this. I try to just enjoy myself along the way but there is a very anxious side to me. I mean…who wants to bake the cookies all day so they taste like the ones Grandma used to make if we can have a half-assed cookie from the store right now right?…Wait a minute…Slow down…Why did Grandma make the cookies? Did she make it so she would have them around later or did she make them because she loved to bake? I’m quite sure that the feeling of handing them to her Grandchildren warm on the plate and watching their smiles as they ate them made her want to bake more again the next day but it wasn’t the only reason. It was what she wanted to spend her time doing. She lived to take care of people and loved putting all of her energy into preparing for these special moments. The homemade cookies and the handmade gifts that she created for us for our birthdays were far better than the expensive ones children “expect” today. Grandma doesn’t make cookies anymore because she’s too busy driving the grandchildren to their friends’ houses so they can play video games (that they own themselves but want to play somewhere else because they can). Parents work day and night to be able to afford ipods and cell phones for their 9 and 10 year old children. People, in general, skip over the good times along the way while we are anxiously awaiting the “ending”…wait…Hold on!…It’s time to make some cookies. Buy the ingredients from the recipe and invite someone over to make them with you. You’ll recognize them in the store. They are the things in the baking aisle that cost 1/10th of the cost of the baggie next to them that you simply need to add water to. Those taste okay and they look fine on a plate but how much love was baked into them? It might be worth taking the time to smell the cookies once in awhile…This is the time we have to work with. We can always write our own ending later…

A tiny bit obsessive…

I can’t describe the feeling I get when I wake up in the middle of the night to find that my sheets haven’t stayed tucked into the bottom of my bed. I jump up and remake the bed as though I’m a mad housewife demon. I know what you’re thinking…How could anyone really care all that much?…What?…I definitely care. Don’t get me wrong- I always keep “a ventilation foot” out of one side of the bed, but the covers need to be neatly on the bed while I sleep. I can wake from a dead sleep and find myself annoyed at the bedspread monsters that have pulled the sheets and blankets from my neatly tailored slumber machine.

The question is though…How could something bother me so much while I’m sleeping? Am I actually the princess from “The Princess and the Pea?”…Should it be re-titled “The raging blonde girl and her defective square corners?” I thought of sewing the sheets to my bed but I decided against it because I thought that I might not make it to the bathroom as easily as I may need to…not to mention that keeping a seam ripper on the night stand next to my glass of water doesn’t seem like a logical necessity. Forget that one for a second though: The bigger issue is the nagging realization that has been so clearly pointed out by this: I am an extremely inflexible girl when it comes to wanting my things the way I want them. Is this an age issue? I wonder if 21 year old girls freak about their sheets falling on the floor?…Of course a lot of them are so used to sleeping on whatever floor they’ve accidentally dropped their pants on in their drunkenness, they may not realize that it’s more comfortable to lie somewhere where a coffee table doesn’t knock them in the head when they get up to answer their text message in the morning while they figure out where the heck they are… Oh well… It might make me sound old, but personally, this obsessive, overly structured girl will take 1000 count Egyptian cotton sheets that are neatly tucked underneath her mattress any day! If it is a sign of age, I am indeed extremely old!…Old like a fox!

What are we complaining about?

I have to wonder if sometimes it’s easier to complain about not meeting anyone than it is to accept any of the people we may meet along the way? Are they all bad? I watched a movie called “The Wedding Date”. In it, there was this really hot looking guy who was hired to go to a wedding with a single woman. He told her that “every woman has the exact love life that she wants”. At first I thought it was a ridiculous statement. I spent a lot of thinking about what he had told this girl. It was full of wisdom. Boy! I was impressed. Of course…it was a movie so I guess it wasn’t really his thought since it was likely not an ad-lib on his part. I am quite certain it was a written line in the script since it was the entire premise of the movie. It didn’t matter though. It was silly right?…Not necessarily. The point of it was that this girl had spent so much time being angry about how someone in her past had treated her that she never allowed herself to move ahead. She had spent year after year “not meeting anyone!”

I met a guy one time that kept saying over an over again to me, “It’s hard for me to meet anyone because of how much I’ve done with my life. There doesn’t seem to be anyone good enough for me.” I thought, “You’re an ass to say that to me.”…and then I said, “You’re an ass to say that to me!” He corrected his statement when he realized that I was a good person with the same level of education and qualities that he was complaining about not existing in a person. He said, “Yeah. But in my family’s country, I could meet a much younger girl whose only been touched by her mother and she would come here and take care of me without having her own thing.”…um…nope…not better!…A good try though. I said, “You should definitely do that then. Just make sure that when you bring her here, she doesn’t make any friends who will Americanize her because she’ll leave you within a year. You’re an ass for saying that to me.”…and then I left. (again…that is why I always drive myself. Someone always says something that I can’t resist commenting on and it almost always requires a dramatic exit!)

I guess the point I’m making though, is that sometimes complaining that no one exists leaves out major details about why we aren’t meeting that person. If we have dug a moat around our house, eventually someone will put up a sign on the perimeter that says, ‘Caution. Moat! There is no entry!’…If we have hung fly paper next to the front door and when a guy walks in, he gets stuck in it while we sit in the next room wondering why he never showed up, someone will post a warning on the door for the fed ex guy, ‘Caution. Fly Paper! Easily traps unsuspecting guys at door. You’ll be taken out to the garbage before you get a chance to have a conversation.’…I’m not saying that any one of us have met “the one” already. I just wonder if we should think about the possibility that we might be too busy complaining to "a one" about not being able to meet anyone to notice him…It is something to consider. Who knows?...But I am going to consider taking the nail strip off the end of my visitor driveway just in case the hot guy in the movie was right!