Why Do Alcoholics and Drug Addicts Always have Snowplows?

I am constantly baffled by the world. I don’t know why I should be though. It is consistently typical. The strange thing is that people always shock me. If I could only wrap my mind around the fact that some people just aren’t all rosy and wonderful, I would be less surprised by them. The trouble is that no matter how many times people have treated me badly or how many people have shown me that some people are just not “good”, I still believe that every single person in the world has beauty in them…Ah…That’s so nice isn’t it? Can you hear the orchestration playing underneath the movie with the happy ending?…the flutes playing a high, danceable melody while the strings pluck in pizzicato unison to the tune of the sunny human race?…THEN THE TRUMPET SOUNDS! (as though it has witnessed a bad spin on a game show) “Wah, wah, wah, w---ahh!” … Is there really another man on my porch in a “Deliverance” pair of farmer jeans, boots and a Carhartt jacket asking me for more money for plowing?…How many of you am I paying for this? Come on people! I’m at the point that I am afraid to come home all year round. In the summer it’s for mowing. In the winter it’s for plowing. Why am I being extorted to this extreme? They may as well get one of the guys who washes the unexpecting people’s windshields as they wait in traffic at the entrance to any of the NYC tunnels, and let him live in my basement. That way when I wake up and he hands me my 2 squares of toilet paper off the roll to me in the morning, I could tip him for such a kind gesture! Forget about the fact that I could get it myself, or that there’s a strange freakin’ man standing in my bathroom!…AAGH!…There I go…I’m getting all ranty again!…I just don’t know what to do to regain control over the way people make me feel when they back me into a corner with all of their “good deeds!”…I’ve given each of the three men thank you cards with money in them telling them that can drive over a few inches of snow and not to worry about it unless I call them. I have told them each in person! At the end of last season, I even threw a temper tantrum and cried when one of them sat on the hood of my car when I pulled into my driveway until I gave him $100 for “back plowing!”…I truly don’t know what else I can do! The only answer seems to be to sell the house and move. But does that seem a bit extreme?…The funny thing is that I would actually do it if I wasn’t pretty sure that wherever I ended up, I would quickly be in a new, similar situation all over again!

AH! There’s the problem. I am constantly taken advantage of and no matter where I go, the common denominator will still be there- ME! Do I really think that these three guys don’t know they are running a $100 a week con on me? If they plow an inch of snow and expect to be paid even though I told them not to bother with it, whose fault is it if I don’t pay them?…Yeah…but how will they afford their alcohol and pain killers?…Is that MY problem though?…Wait a minute…why do I feel like it is?…Again, I reiterate, the problem is mine. For some reason I am guilted by people who want to take the easy route to life while I work hard for the life I have. I always feel as though they wouldn’t treat me that way if they didn’t really need the money. The trouble is that I really need my money because I don’t collect unemployment or disability like they do. As a matter of fact, I work for everything in my life all by myself. Geez…I would even shovel my own driveway if I wasn’t afraid that if I went outside, some helpful neighbor would come out and ask me for money for advice about how to shovel my driveway! This is a lifelong issue of mine and I suppose that there is no easy fix to the problem.

What should I do about the uneasy feeling I get from being taken advantage of? I can either decide to not let it bother me, or I can try to stop it from happening. Something tells me that this is easier said than done though. I have a constant need to put myself last on the scale of worthiness. Interestingly enough, this places me last on the scale of “haveliness!” The best I can do in this area at this moment, is acknowledge all of those people out there who often put everyone else’s needs ahead of their own sanity: The divorced woman on a budget who constantly gives her time away to help others but wonders where her next mortgage payment will come from; The mother of 2 who won’t take child support from her husband or ask him to take care of his children on the weekends he’s supposed to so he can move on with his life, get married and have another whole family while she tends to the one he already started; The man who gives his money to the drug addict to start a business…once…twice…three times…and consistently sees no progress in the addict while he strives to make the best choices for his own life in order to move ahead and achieve his own dreams…The list goes on and on…Starting today, we should try to take a few minutes to do what is good for ourselves so the people who seem to think that we owe them something but don’t know how to use it once we give it to them don’t waste all of our assets! I have a feeling that we’ll be one step closer to achieving all of our life's dreams once we stop wasting so much time trying to help others achieve what we think is best for them. If our resources aren’t unlimited, we really don’t have the funds to pay 3 different people to plow an inch of snow off of our driveways and shouldn’t feel guilty for that fact!

Do People Who Listen to Screamo Eventually Poke their Own Eyes Out?

I couldn’t help but listen to a screamo song as I scanned through the channels on the radio the other day. It was like a train wreck that I couldn’t look away from. The screaming anger of the disturbed man who was muttering unintelligible rant over loud guitars, eased my racing mind to a soothing rage as I pressed my gas pedal to the floor to get to my destination faster- so I could get there in time to kill someone before anyone else did! This was definitely not relaxing to me. Where was the 808?…Where was the happy hardcore?…and more importantly, where was my knife?

It’s funny what people enjoy. People’s tastes in life differ greatly! The question was though, what formed those tastes?…Was it childhood experiences? If so, it explained why I liked bouncy fast music with a techno kick drum…that or broadway music of course. My parents were all about happiness and fairytales. If something was bad, we ignored it! Play some happy music! If something was serious, we made light of it. Put on a show! Being a kid was amazing.

So in comparison to my fairytale techno dream, where do the angry people come from? Is it really relaxing to them to listen to what sounds like noise to me?…I am a musician and understand that people’s musical tastes are often noise to others. In fact, I’m quite certain that my music would have the ability to spin a screamo lover into a rage. I probably shouldn’t listen to theirs and they probably shouldn’t listen to mine…but you have to admit that there’s something to it! All of that dark anger has to surface somehow. Hopefully music is the worst of it. It is clear however, that should probably all do our best not to cross over into someone else’s category to prevent the upset of the happy/angry human race!

Sometimes “Less” is “More”

I was watching a powerpoint presentation this morning and when it was finished, I realized that I hadn’t read a single word of it! The pretty colored typewriter entrances were so beautiful as the letters danced, one by one, onto the screen from alternating corners!…Ah! What a work of art! I started thinking about flowers, animations, beautiful snowstorms,…the waterfall I had seen yesterday!… “Calia? Do you have anything to add on the subject?”…uh…what?…I wondered how long it had been over…and what the heck was the presentation about?… “Yes! I just want to say that I think Mary did a really nice job on this!”…Luckily my strong personality was one that could insight a crowd and there was an instant round of applause for Mary’s hard work that permanently distracted everyone from my real answer that would’ve been, “huh?” I tuned out the conversation again as I thought about all the times in college I had used a similar technique!

I flashed back to an evening when I was sitting in a drafting class (I think…I actually have no idea what the class was about). It was about an hour and 45 minutes into the class when I found myself pushing the desk with my foot, slowly out of the room to prevent the numbing in my brain from overcoming my vital organs! The door slammed on the room as I cleared the threshold and sat, still in my chair, on the other side in the hallway. Seconds later, the professor opened the door and said, “Calia? Do we need to take a break?”… “Oh my God YES! Thank you!”…Luckily this professor understood the creative mind…either that or he knew that it was likely the department would need my singing voice for an upcoming show and it was best not to worry about the fact that there would be no chance that I was going to be able to do any drafting after this 4 credit course was completed! – He was right! I still can’t draft and I don’t even remember going to that class after that day. I have no idea what happened. Hmm…The question does remain however…how the heck did I get those degrees of mine? I have to assume that in my case, “more” was “less” and my versions of the assignments given may have been completely off the mark, but at the top of the entertainment meter! Lucky me!

Now I use my brain for something other than perpetuating the image of the dumb blonde performer!…Boy! It sure was a lot of work! Once in a while I tune my thoughts to a different channel out of habit, but most of the time, when I have no idea what’s going on, I just answer a question with a thought that stimulates the conversation in a useful direction….ie: “Yes. The presentation was very good, though I wondered what she was getting at on slide 16? What do you think?”…Someone else who wasn’t listening will be bound to agree with me!

Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t notice you sitting next to me…

I was listening to my ipod at the gym the other day while I was on an elliptical trainer. I was carefully pretending not to notice the man flagging me down by peering deeply at the closed-captions of CNN as they scrolled along the bottom of the screen on the television up above my head. This guy has been a recurring admirer. He is very nice but doesn’t seem to take ‘no’ for an answer…and I’m not exactly in love with his knee-socks. I noticed that everyone in that place was pretty much doing their own thing. We love to ignore each other there. What a community of friendly people. The strange thing is that I can’t tell you how many conversations I get into with people who say that they don’t have the opportunity to meet people…um…of course we could possibly take our headphones off or put the magazines down and interact?…nah…

Is it possible that we so content to complain about the fact that there “isn’t anyone out there” that we are actually ignoring each other on purpose? I can’t imagine that anyone wants to dwell in loneliness. I suppose some of us are good at resolving ourselves to it though. The funny thing is that it seems that many of us aren’t really all that lonely until someone points out that we should be. How many people try set us up when they find out we’re single? If I had a dollar for every person who knew “the perfect guy” for me, I’d be a billionaire!…Of course, what they usually mean by “perfect” is that he is single too...um…ok…I have to admit that this is a little bit closer to “perfect” for me than married, separated or has a girlfriend, but in most cases these set-ups have been awkward and paled in comparison to sitting on my couch and eating cheese sticks! These “well-meaning fixer-uppers” are just trying to help but I have to admit that from the outside view of their relationships at times, sometimes I suspect that their motive is one of wanting everyone to be equally as miserable as they are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-relationship! In fact, I reiterate from a previous entry that I have met a nice guy. He really is a good person who goes out of his way to make me happy!- and I am so good at being single and complaining about it, that I sometimes make his life miserable! He paid for my groceries the other night- and I cried…Um…Calia?…the words are, “Thank you! That was very nice of you!”…I’m going to do my best to be the kind of person he deserves because if my need to maintain my “act” that there isn’t anyone nice out there ruins my new possibility, I’m gonna look like a complete idiot!

So then…what are people looking for that they are so afraid to look up from their engrossing reading material and pounding music to notice?…It may be time to figure out what we really want for ourselves because I am pretty sure that we can have exactly that! If what we want is to complain that there is no one out there, we will be right. If what we want is to meet someone great and include that person in our life, possibly turning to the person next to us and saying “hello”, is a great place to start!

Oops...Drove into the past...

I went for a ride to see some friends sing the other day. I started driving as my GPS lead the way. Next thing I knew, I was driving down some back roads into the 80’s…It was so crazy. Why did so many people have old cars piled up in their front lawns?…1983 Dodge Omnis, Pacers, pick up trucks, mini vans…Unbelievable! Where the heck had I gone? More importantly, was I safe here? Did this little city mouse even speak the language in the backwards sticks? Well! At least I had my GPS to tell me where I was…wait…No I don’t. LOST SATELLITE RECEPTION! Crap…Now what? I kept driving deeper and deeper into the past as I practiced my southern accent in case I needed to stop and ask someone to use their toilet in their trailer. Ex-ciuse maey, Cud aye yuse yeour bathreym?…It was possible that no one would fall for it. I decided that I should proceed to the next town. Eventually it would have to come out somewhere right?…I wonder if these people have cable?…I drove a little further and then noticed house after house with huge satellite dishes on top and in the front lawns next to the broken down cars and large garages…um…Nope! No cable. My phone beeped in my ear, “no service, no service, you are so screwed!”…Oh well! I just kept going.

A few miles later, my phone had come back into cell range and a friend called me. I told him a landmark of where I was and he knew where to find me. Feeww!…He showed up a few minutes later and we drove to the club where the band was playing…which just happened to be 5 miles from a mall on the same road right off the exit of the highway I would’ve normally taken had my GPS not decided that traveling back in time would be the better route! I made it out safely and had a great day.

I guess the point my GPS was making was that sometimes the directions that are given to you that seem like the “shortest route possible”, take you to places that you don’t necessarily need to go. If you stay on target with your goals, there may be a more direct route you can take without dragging yourself to the past over and over again on the way to the present! From now on, I’m going to continue on the path that I’m on and not look for the shortest distance to where I’m going, because though quicker may seem like a good idea at the time, a person could get stuck there forever until the next passerby finds her and the two of them build an infrastructure that will allow for the future to let itself in.

It’s ALL in The Presentation!

I recently went to a school science fair. It was very interesting to say the least. There were so many interesting things to be learned. The strange thing is that I would start reading the data and find myself getting stuck on misspellings and crooked pages taped improperly to the poster board and would lose interest. For some reason, I found the data to be secondary to the presentation. I continued my pattern as I walked from exhibit to exhibit…look, scan, look for errors, don’t read the data, move on…I chose the winner as though I had read them. The one I had picked due to its design had apparently won for content too. Go figure!

Growing up, my father was an artist. We never bought anything with a cardboard sign with the words “4-sale” on it. It didn’t matter how nice the car or the bike would be behind the sign, we would always pass it by. There is something to be said for considering that there is value in things that are stuck behind a rough exterior and we likely bought some lemons in our day…BUT…I contend that it’s still all in the person’s ability to present their product. Whether it is a car, a boat, scientific data, or a person with a kind heart…it is all the same. It’s an innate instinct in human nature to choose what looks the best.

People who take time to groom themselves and wear the “right” outfit appear more “successful” and therefore become more successful. A man with a straggly beard and a tattoo will come off like a slacker with no future even if he has a PhD? Come to think of it, I think I’ve known people like that. I have a feeling it was a game they were playing though. They were definitely smart enough to know that people’s perception of them would be far off base. Maybe that was part of the “educated” man’s challenge. Maybe those guys were trying to see who would look past the outer layer and look for a deeper meaning? Probably…isn’t that what the job of a PhD is? But I still can’t say that the straggly beard and tattoo would ever make it through my first once over. I would likely move on to the one who wore the suit and dressed as though he thought he was the president of the united states! (Of course then I’d be sure he was an idiot! Who the heck would want that job?)

So are we missing out by not going out with the guy who can’t spell or the girl who can’t seem to run a brush through her hair?…Is it the same reason that so many guys want really young girls without any life skills or thoughts other than to brush their hair?…Probably! But what can we do about it? If those things are important to us, they will dictate our first impression! Personally, I find it important to dress nicely and do my hair. I try my hardest not to let myself be seen selling a good product with a bad sign out in the yard in front. I’m sure there are people who want the beaten down old shoe with a million dollars stuffed in the toe. Maybe the project with the misspellings had the best data?…don’t know…I didn’t read it.

What Women Want is a Teddy Bear?

I am embarrassed to say that I keep getting sucked into bad advertising. This morning, I heard a commercial that I thought was a Saturday Night Live skit. The man said, “What women really want is a teddy bear!”…I looked up thinking I would see a comedian doing a skit about how he tried to please a woman with a stuffed animal, but was shocked to see a 30something woman kissing her boyfriend with the graciousness that would be equivalent to him having just rescued her from out from under a truck. I thought, “What men really want is a trampoline.”…I giggled to myself about how little the opposite sex really knows about what the other “really wants!” Judging from the commercial I saw just before this one about the girl in her new pajamas (who was also extremely excited), advertising for Valentine’s Day should likely be thought up by someone who is of the same sex the gift is for. That being said, I have never had a Valentine other than my father when I was a kid, but it does seem that it is a ridiculous holiday invented by Hallmark to force card sales. I know you’re thinking, “Boy! She’s got a little bit of a bad attitude!”…uh…yeah?…what about it? In fact, I wrote these little verses for Valentine’s Day last year:

Verse 1:

Roses and red

Violets are blue

You hate wacky chicks

But what can you do?

I’m outside your house

So put on a shirt

You stink like a louse

You’re lower than dirt

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Verse 2:

Roses are expensive

Words are always free

Chocolate makes you fat…

So I sent it to your girlfriend!

Verse 3:

Roses are dead

In less than a week

Give me the money

And kiss my @ss-cheek!

Well! That wasn’t right!…I have to say that I’m sort of just kidding though I don’t know what the importance of one day is. However, I have recently met the first “nice” guy who is “datable” (that means not married, no kids, smart, funny, doesn’t already have a girlfriend…I think…(of course I’ve been wrong about that in the past)…did I mention he’s nice to me?…weird!). Anyway…the point is that he doesn’t need to be told how to be kind. He doesn’t need to be begged for a teddy bear. He doesn’t need to order me some pajamas…(honestly because when I first saw the commercial for pajama-grams, I thought the guy was actually ordering the girl in the commercial. I was confused at first, but in my experience, it seemed about right to me. Why wouldn’t a guy mail order a date other than his girlfriend for Valentine’s Day?…It seemed quite obvious that some women place too much importance on one day and even more probable that many men would rather order a hot looking girl in some footy pajamas who wouldn’t talk back for a few hours!)…There I go again with the great attitude. The point is that though I think the commercials for all of these gimmicky “items” demean men’s natural instinct (to not understand why one specific day would be so important that a woman might base how much she believes a man cares about her on it), I actually have a nice guy in my life who will think to throw his name on a card without being told.

I don’t know how other women feel about materialist stuff, but I truly don’t care. My favorite bible story as a kid was the one about the “widow’s mite.” In my own words, the woman gave only one penny while all of the others gave extravagantly. When they were all done making their contributions, it was pointed out that the woman who gave the penny, had given the most of everyone because it was all she had to give while the rest gave only a small portion of what they had to offer….I like that story and have always lived my life by it. I can’t stand a guy who feels the need to base his worth on how big the gifts he gives are. I’d rather be with the guy who signs his name to a card he picked out just for me. Who cares about what someone’s secretary picked up and wrapped for his girlfriend?? Who cares about the pajamas that some announcer told guys who forgot to go get something, is the perfect gift for a holiday that’s commercialized meaning has badly broken down people’s ability to think for themselves? What do women want?…who the heck knows?

Practice Makes Permanent!

I was watching the superbowl this week and cringed as I listened to the National Anthem. For some reason, Carrie Underwood did it live. Weird! I thought they usually lip synced the anthem to prevent the singer from falling on her face?…Not this time though. She definitely started it too high for her range…or too low…or something…Not sure. Actually it sounded like it was too low for her on the bottom and too high for her on the top! Maybe it just wasn’t her song. I always thought that she was a good singer. I mean…she’s pretty! (Isn’t that what a good singer is these days?…either that, or a drug addict/cutter…there doesn’t seem to be much in between- in the pop or country industry at least!) Clearly, poor Carrie worked for years and years on her sound. She likely had been practicing since she was a little girl. Oops…somehow she had been practicing a pinched off, screamy, nasal sound that was uncomfortable to listen too. Now, I understand that this may sound a little harsh, and also a little jealous coming from a singer who isn’t a famous grammy winner…BUT…my point is that sometimes people spend their lives working on something with no basis of knowledge about how to actually do it. In this case, she practiced singing that song in a way that was intolerable to listen to. They always say that practice makes perfect, but if you practice it all wrong, practice simply makes permanent!- permanently wrong!

This concept applies to everything that we do. Sports are the same! If I were to take a softball bat and work by myself in my back yard with a pitching machine 14 hours a day, would I become a great softball player?…probably not! I would likely learn to become really great at dodging out of the way of the ball due to the fact that I have no idea how to swing a bat. Without the proper training, practice is useless.

You may say that dating can fall into the same pitfalls. How many people date tons of people who are incompatible and mistreat them? Does this make them good at dating?…or only good at being bad at dating?…

I’m Gonna Need Some Green Bags!

I went to Sam’s Club yesterday. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve been there before, but not in years. I suspect it is a huge bargain for families, but a single person likely couldn’t eat all of the produce before it went bad since everything is in packages that are the size apparently meant to feed small countries. I walked through there feeling like I was Alice in Wonderland. This was an unbelievable experience. I could buy a lifetime supply of lettuce and eggs…but then again, I would have to invite many people over to eat it. It was so cheap in comparison to what I usually spent on groceries though! What was a girl to do? The refrigerator sized boxes of peanut butter Cap’n Crunch tantalized me. That stuff is so good…other than the fact that after about 3 bowls of it, the roof of your mouth is cut up as though you took a cheese grater to it. Not to mention that I haven’t eaten it since the 80’s. I’m not sure that it has any nutritional value…especially since I used to put sugar on it. (shh…don’t tell my parents. They would be really annoyed about that!) I guess I could go back and get some another time. I suppose it would last until my own children are old enough to enjoy it….of course I don’t have any children yet. It sure is a toss up though. What if Sam’s Club goes out of business before I have children?…Even more…What if global warming burns the earth to a crisp before I have children?…Maybe I should pick up the big box of Capn’ Crunch while there’s still time…

It is very interesting that I’m even considering buying all of these industrial sized packages simply because they are available. It definitely explains why McDonald’s has so affectively “supersized” the nation! Why not pick up the “bigger” one if it’s available for only a few pennies more? We sure have become a glutinous society! Even in dating. Have you ever known a person who has hung onto their current significant other while they are secretly dating someone else?…That’s not right! If there’s someone for everyone (according to the old saying), do you still meet them if someone else is holding onto two?…Uncool!…I should take my own advice and not buy the Cap’n Crunch for my non-existent kids while I still have some raisin bran in the cupboard left over from the early 90’s. There are starving children in Africa who could use some of what the Cap’n has to offer. Besides, I’m sure that by the time my children are old enough to beg for sugared cereal, the FDA will be long regulated and passing out rations of trans-fat free mueslix! YUM! Here you go kids- A colorless, healthy, bowl of crap-brown nutrients! “Thank you mommy! We love crap-brown nutrients!”

Friskie’s Cat appetizers

...well…I have finally pin-pointed all the world’s problems right here… I don’t remember needing any all-natural spanakopita for our cat…but then again, I don’t remember ever feeding our cat. Were we supposed to? This all-natural crap has certainly gone too far. Personally, give me a few chemicals any day. I have a friend who swears by all-natural deodorant. Ok. That’s nice! But what about the fact that it doesn’t work? When I use it, it should be called “all-natural ordorant.”…See? Again…defeats the purpose of the message it’s sending us. What’s that message? It’s screaming “get some gosh darn powder fresh secret so people can stand next to you for God’s sake!”…aaah!…As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want anything near my body that hasn’t been tested on animals first. That stuff’ll kill ya! I’m just saying that you won’t ever find me rubbing a pomegranate under my arm. Juice it and serve it to me with some eggs! The funny thing is that same friend refuses to take an ibuprofen but complains on a daily basis that he has a headache!…um…sorry man. That’s because you need an ibuprofen. Good luck with the outliving me by 30 years thing! Nothing like an extra 30 years with a headache! I’m sure it’ll be worth it though! All those endangered species (like dogs and cats) will be alive to keep you company since their shelf life, now that we have all-natural appetizers and high-priced veterinarians, is longer than humans. I hope the vets are leaving good notes next to their empty ibuprofen bottles and diet soda cans so the next generation can read the kitty charts. The only problem is, the next generation doesn’t read all that well…hopefully the notes will have diagrams and teacher’s assistants to read them for them. It would be horrible for “any cat to be left behind!”

Nice Guys Finish Last?

It’s interesting how we see things sometimes. I ran into a guy who has recently decided that in order to get a girl to like him, he needs her to think he isn’t nice! Okay…that’s the old “nice guys finish last” stuff. It is an age-old speculation. The problem is that “nice guys” who have convinced themselves that they will in fact always “finish last”, perpetuate it…geez…which came first? The chicken or the egg?…or should I say “the nice guy finishing last” or the “nice guy who got to the finish line first and when the gold ribbon turned out to be all tarnished, had to go to the back of the race?” The truth is that a healthy, nice girl, wants a nice guy. The catch is that the guy has likely chosen the previously broken girl who expects to be treated badly in order to set both of them up in a self-fulfilling prophecy of defeat!…Combine that with the pattern of believing that girls don’t want “nice guys”, and we have a recipe for serial relationship failure! Well that’s just freakin’ terrific! So does that mean that he’s screwed?…No. I just know that he will likely read this and by now he has already decided that he is. Oh well…don’t worry! You’re not screwed…yet…(hee hee!)

What is a guy supposed to think if over and over again, he watches guys who don’t seem to be as nice as him, constantly walking away with the girl while he stands alone? If he is “nice” and he feels like he’s “last”, then “all nice guys finish last.”…It is an inaccurate syllogism. Unfortunately though, he is right about the fact that some girls are attracted to the “bad boy!” BUT…what he is wrong about are the reasons she would be attracted to that bad boy. It is not that he is “bad”, it’s the confidence he walks into a room with that she is drawn to. It’s likely something he developed from many years of superficial praise from meaningless relationships. From a woman’s point of view, she unknowingly thinks, “maybe I’ll be different and he will treat me well…blah blah blah…I’ve got to have him!” Yeah…you’ll be different! Good luck with that!…The only thing that would make it possible is if “he” were different! The problem is that no “healthy” woman wants a bad boy for much more than to write blogs about!…Oh well…it’s all in the way you spin the story I guess!…Anyway…the issue is the level of confidence that anyone would be able to exude when they are on the heals of realizing that someone they put their trust in has let them down…. another problem with the fact that you can’t be in a “relationship” all by yourself!…Of course if it was possible, you would only have yourself to blame when it went bad…possibly a thought for another time though…The truth is that the confidence does come back once all of the trouble has been sorted out, but sometimes a little bit of “something” in the attention from the opposite sex area would go a long way towards jumpstarting the process. That being said, that little bit of something could dangerously set you in motion towards another unhealthy relationship simply because that feeling of having someone showing you attention on the heals of feeling nothing but pain for an extended period of time, can easily make you think of that person as your “savior.” It’s never what you think. “The soul mate” will show up in your life when you are ready for her – not when you intend to meet her. No games are necessary. People need to realize that their lives aren’t a race to “finish first.” Staying true to yourself and believing that there is someone who is looking for someone exactly like you, is the only way to be sure that what presents itself is the real thing. The catch is that she won’t get here until you’ve stopped speculating about previous, fresh experiences while the "variable" will only give you her version of the truth as she sees it at the time she decides to torment you with it. It’s really not worth it.

The magic eightball would say "outlook not good, try again."...Oh boy. Does that mean that people need to wallow in their own discontentment for the unknown period of time it takes them to heal? Unfortunately it means that everyone has the right to need that time, and annoyingly, it's during that time that people believe they need someone new more than ever. The most important thing though, is to use it to regain one’s confidence! The "self contentment" a person learns from using the negative experience to grow, coupled with the fact that “I’m happy in this moment, I just want more!”, is the magic that will eventually shine out of you when you walk into the room where your soul mate will be. That’s when you’ll look ahead at the people who ran the race on the low road as they are wheezing and tired with very little to show for their light-hearted efforts at taking the “easy way”, and be rejuvenated on the path you were meant to be on all along. In this case, the “nice guy finishes happy!”

Somebody needs a sandwich!

Now don’t get me wrong – I LOVE skinny! It feels so good to run around in my tiny clothes with all sorts of confidence and energy…BUT…what is up with these girls who apparently haven’t eaten since the 80’s? …and more importantly: How the heck do they do it? I come and go with my size from tiny to regular sized. Regular sized is the size I would be if I ate 3 meals a day and exercised. Tiny is the size I get when I don’t eat bread or sugar. Of course I LOVE bread and sugar. It’s really a toss up though. Who really needs it? Then again…sometimes I’m completely convinced that I need it. It’s as though my on/off switch is worn out. It will be set to “off”, and then at around 3pm, it slides to “on” and stays there till the next day.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so hard on myself though. My tiny little 12-year-old niece came over last night to look through my dress collection for a dress to wear to a dance on Saturday night. I thought it was ridiculous that she thought that I would have a dress that would fit a little girl. Well…she tried on a few of my dresses that I wear when I’m a little smaller than I am currently and they fit her perfectly. I had cut one of them from a floor-length gown into a short party dress that looked amazing on her. When I say “cut”, I mean jagged edge “cut”, someone needs to fix it “cut”, my sister called my mother and told her she needed her to hem the dress because she thought I had “cut it with a knife CUT”…Oh well…Sometimes I get a little anxious to see what a dress might look like if I change it and just cut it off- extremely unevenly! It’s kind of funny actually! It’s called “no fear!”…I’m lucky to have it. Things like that don’t worry me. If I ruin it, I’ll get a new one! I do have to say that I got lucky on the Versace dress I did that to once though. My mother helped me before I cut it into a doll costume! …On a side note though…I find it very interesting that my body would be the size of a 12-year-old girl’s at certain times! Possibly someone should tell me when I get there again (cause I will), that I need a sandwich…and I’ll run 10 miles down the street to get myself one!

This is why I should start drinking...

I got to the wedding I was singing at the other day and the guy who's in charge of the band had already been drinking for hours. This is always a wild ride. As a matter of fact, he actually calls it his “wild ride”. We’ll be playing songs that we don’t even know are coming. The song will start and we’ll have to figure out what they are in the first few measures so we know who’s supposed to be singing. When he started drinking a half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, I knew we were in for trouble. I have a great sense of humor, but this sometimes had potential for disaster. He was laughing and fun and said, “Come on! Lighten up. I look ridiculous when I’m sober.”…Interestingly enough, that made sense to me for some reason. I still don’t understand why people need to drink in order to have fun though. I’ve never had that problem. I have fun wherever I go…but then again…I’ve always hated being around drunk people. So maybe that’s the key to everything. It does seem that people are way freer to do stupid things when they are drinking. I’m almost always rational…other than the time I was listening to techno and running through my house with scissors…but I actually found that to be extremely humorous and said out loud, “Oh my gosh! That’s crazy! I just ran with scissors!”

So what is this fascination with overwhelming amounts of alcohol? Do people really need it in order to have fun, or do people need it in order to have an excuse for having fun? I guess I have fun nearly all the time…except when I’m worried about the behavior of the people around me when they are drunk. There’s nothing I can really do about that though…if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!…I will practice by slurring my speach and spilling things on myself. MY! That is FUN!…

And then the ketchup sandwich in the playroom was born…

People have interesting ways of dealing with anger. I remember getting so angry at my sister when I was really young, that I used to huff and puff and feel like I was going to explode. Come on! She broke my Donnie and Marie microphone! MOM! …My mother would say, “girls!”…That's it? Nice Mom! Thanks. That should take care of it! …AAGH!…and then the ketchup sandwich in the playroom was born…it tasted just like a cheeseburger – except without the burger…or the cheese…Okay…so it was just bread. From that day on, my sister could do anything she wanted to me: “Really? Your so late getting ready for school that I have to wait for you to run down the stairs in your footie pajamas as the bus passes us so that we need to sprint to the corner?….NO PROBLEM! That doesn’t bother me at all - I’ll have some ketchup and bread please!”…”Hmm?…You took my new outfit out of my closet while I was sleeping and are wearing it?…No Worry- I hope you cut the tags off! Pickles please!…”

The point is that everyone has their own way of coping with their personal aggravations. I have a family member who has recently decided that her way is to email me death threats in the middle of the night and tell me that “I will die soon enough”…and “If you were younger, I’d give you advice to stop exercising and eating healthy because you’re gonna die soon anyway”…and “A woman’s place is with her husband but you’ll never know about that!”…geez…that’s really sweet. Apparently this is her little way of making herself feel better. I drove down the street with the computer I had just built for a child who didn’t have one, playing her words in my head: “I care about people that you don’t even know exist because you are too busy being self-centered and singing and dancing!”. In my head I thought, "boy…I wonder how I can help her?" I came up with an answer: “I know…I need to send an autoresponse message to these daily bursts of happiness that lets her know that I’m not getting them anymore. That should really help her through this hard time." It read:

Ketchup, pickles and a little bread
Too bad for you that I’m not dead
Your angry message did not reach me
Again I smile cause I’m still peachy
Cheers…

I’m sure that eventually she’ll stop sending them after 20 or 30 of these messages. I’m not playing with her anymore...but my computer is (hee hee). It can deal with her anger management coping mechanism...Thank God my computer is my new ketchup sandwich! It sort of makes her point about me not being empathetic though...but she is definitely miserable enough for the both of us!...

What a pretty summer dress...

There was a girl at a wedding that I was singing at who was wearing the prettiest little white mini-sundress with no stockings and cute shoes. Yeah…but it was the middle of winter and 6 degrees outside. She did look cute but for some reason she hadn’t processed the level of inappropriate a white sundress in the middle of winter was. I sort of wonder why the guy with her hadn’t mentioned it when she got ready? I’ve never been with anyone who wouldn’t have said, “You’re wearing THAT?”…but then again, it would’ve come across as a little negative. Of course in this case, he would’ve been right. It’s really a toss up. Do we want people to be honest with us or is it better that they just let us look stupid? I’m not sure that guys really care for the most part though. Again…I reiterate…most guys I’ve spent time with have been a little hung-up on fashion and designers…that is likely why it didn’t work out…hmm…note to self: Figure out why gay men try to date women and why they are so darn hot! Nothing like setting myself up in a situation that it’s only chance of success is at failing! Good thinking as always Calia! Duh!

So what do guys really notice? There was a girl at a basketball game the other night that walked up the bleachers towards her boyfriend in a peek-a-boo mini dress. He said, “Wow. It looks like you dressed for the weather.” The funny thing is that she probably thought that he would be impressed at how hot she was. I think he may have thought that she was trying too hard. I am not really dissing her because I have been known to have this issue myself. Getting ready to go to a formal event is far easier for me than dressing for a sporting event. It will actually take me 3 hours to look like I just threw something on in this case. Jeans and a t-shirt with tousled hair is a full-day process. Gowns and heals are like my “sweat suit.” I think the point is that it seems that guys like to feel like someone took a little time to look nice for them but most that I have talked to in my lifetime, preferred little or no makeup and a natural look to “all done up!” Who wants a girl who looks like a completely different person in the morning? I suppose I don’t really know the answer but I try to do the best I can to dress appropriately for the occasion. So what if it takes a little longer to get dressed to go to the pumpkin farm? I’m sure the pumpkins appreciate my effort to look like it took no effort!…”oh…this old thing?…I just picked this up off the floor of my bedroom and threw it on!”…(which means that I probably went out and bought 15 outfits, tried them on all day the day before, washed them and ripped them up to look like they were old…and by the way…there is nothing on my bedroom floor!…Thank God!)