Think outside of the “Box”

It seems that it’s an age-old problem. People are trying to get each other to hear their thoughts and appreciate them. Men and women are very different from each other, and yet, there’s some sort of human need to connect them. Personally, I’d like the opportunity to study up on the things that matter to someone before I meet him. I’m like that though! I don’t like going in blind and wondering if a guy prefers girls who eat a lot, don’t eat, wear make-up, like designer clothes, want kids, act dumb, have a brain…it’s that “getting to know someone” phase that is extremely annoying to me! There’s too much room for error! I like comfortable…uh oh…there’s the first problem: Men thrive on newness and mystery while I would rather know everything upfront. So how do we get a guy to listen to us? I was thinking of making a t-shirt with a pull-cord about at chest level that activates a sound byte of a girl giggling, “Oh my God! I’m so drunk.”…I think it would be a best seller…or at the very least, an excellent icebreaker when out in a bar. Of course, I’d have 100-year-old men and blue-collar guys who run book pulling on my shirt all night. Far be it that an engineer, or never married/no kids lawyer, have the nerve to even say “hello!” I ran into a guy once who told me that he wanted me to find him a “hot looking dumb girl.” He went on to say he “didn’t need anyone with a brain because he could always read a book after he was done with her.”…NICE!…I handed him a book I wrote called, “Why Men are Idiots… and the Women Behind Them who are Dumb Enough to Love Them”…amusing to both of us actually…but it doesn’t change the fact that I am left standing outside the box peering in as guy after guy finds hot looking girl after girl who he can easily get into the box with!

Forcing the Connection

I was looking at computers on amazon today. (That’s what I do when I want some entertainment!) On the bottom of the page, there was a “suggestions” section. Amazon uses this to direct buyers to other things that they may be interested in. It said, “Customers who bought this netbook, also bought “The South Beach Diet” book. Um…really?…I could see a jump drive or possibly an external dvd burner…but the south beach diet?…I think we may be going a little too far in trying to find “connections!” What do I know though? I always sort of sucked at analogies. You know?…from the vocabulary workbook?

large: big: triumph:______

Calia: …um? Cheese?…
Teacher: No Calia, the answer was ‘success’.
Calia: Oh. Let me try another one!

Netbook: South beach Diet: Dating: _____

Calia: …Man?
Teacher: Nope! I’m sorry Cal; the answer was ‘cheese.’
Calia: (defeated) Oh.

I suppose I’ve always had this problem though. My interpretation of the world seems to be different than everyone else’s. In my college philosophy classes, all of my opinions were always wrong for some reason. How the heck could that be? I guess I sort of thought that people were taking themselves a little too seriously. Life really isn’t that deep! We are gradually becoming a world of people who are in so much therapy and in search of deep seeded self-reflective enlightenment, that we can’t even run into someone in the grocery store without searching for the meaning in it. I mean…what are the odds of needing eggs on the same day that your college sweetheart needed to pick up bologna and soda for his wife and 5 kids?…and you’re wearing sweatpants and a headband?? …hmm...pretty good actually... (This is why we should always get dressed as though we have somewhere to be!)

Family: Husband: Calia: Netbook

Life’s a really long video game…

I can’t believe how we are taking our lives into our hands each day when we hit the road. The girl behind me at a light today was smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone. Don’t get me wrong…I do talk on the phone when I drive but I don’t even hold the phone when I’m at home! I can’t imagine holding one while I’m driving. I feel like I’m playing that old video game, ‘Frogger’, and I’m just trying to get from point A to point B without getting squashed into an X! As a matter of fact, I feel that way all the time. This is truer than I’d like it to be when it comes to dating too! You almost need to run in front of traffic and cross your fingers that someone won’t speed up while you’re right in front of him and flatten you out without looking back. The dating highway is full of people talking on their phones to other people they may find interesting in case you’re not the “one”, looking in their rear view mirrors to focus on what has long been left behind, and traveling too quickly on slippery pavement with bald tires because buying something new would cost too much upfront so it’s just easiest to drive the old ones into the ground until the tread falls off completely! I happen to think that regular maintenance could save us an awful lot of time that may be wasted by being broken down along the road while we’re waiting for someone to come save us. Possibly we should put down our phones and stop looking behind us so we can give what stands in front of us our full attention. Besides…if you keep running across the street in hopes that things are better on the other side, eventually you will tempt the odds to the point of getting hit by a truck or two anyway. I’m sure there’s someone who will be happy to try to kill you on your side of the street!

Love is on sale!

I got an email from a dating site today. It’s heading was “Love is on sale!”…well! If it’s on sale, I should pick up a spare! How could I let this opportunity to buy cheap love pass me by! It came just in the nick of time too! I was almost out of my old love. Well…actually I had diluted it with water way back when so I could take my time to decide what type wouldn’t leave those tough to get out stains. It’s so nice to know that the spam emailers were so concerned about little ‘ole me that they sent me this personalized “love coupon!” My heart is leaping with anxious desire! I wonder whom I will pick! Should I sleep on the sidewalk outside so when I get there all the good ones aren’t picked over? I know! I’ll run through the door the minute the sale starts and pick up as many as I can and then go through them in the corner by myself to sort out the size 0’s and 16’s. I guess I could pick up an 8 and cut it down to a 4-6 if that’s all that’s left. This is truly the happiest day of my life! I knew I was holding out for something wonderful! What a great bargain!

What inspires our favorite songs?

I recently read an article about the fact that most of our favorite love songs are inspired by real life events. Okay! I’d have to say that I do agree…but there’s a catch to that. I once met a guy who made plans with me to meet him and when he didn’t show up, I started to call him. Finally that night, he picked up the phone after a number of calls and answered “Stalker! I’m eating a grilled cheese sandwich.”…Of course I did what every songwriter would do: I wrote a song called “Stalker! I’m eating a grilled cheese sandwich” and emailed it to him. He didn’t seem to take it well. I mean…he didn’t get a restraining order or anything…but he was definitely put off by the fact that he stood me up, blew me off with a nasty comment about calling me a stalker, and then instead of me going away, I wrote a song about him…Okay…wait…now I’m starting to see his point a little. But…well…hmm…All I can say is if you don’t want a song written about you, don’t hang out with a songwriter. The article I read was about love inspiring songs, but you do know that it goes both ways don’t you? I have walked away from guys and written some huge hits such as “Are you really that dumb? Or were you just nervous?”, “Come on! Don’t you think you should’ve at least cleared the clothes off of the floor of your bedroom?”, or the ever popular, “Let me out at the light…no…forget it, I’ll get out here.” Love is inspiring! But can we ever live up to the fantastic spin put on one small moment then embellished into a 4-minute masterpiece? I worry that we are putting too much emphasis on fairytale love that is invented in the minds of the creative! Don’t get me wrong! I believe in it…but I’m one of the creative…so finding anyone to live up to the song I’ve already written continues to be a quest for a cartoon character out of a fairytale romance novel! Wish me luck! Can you think of any songs that you have based your mantra on? Do you really know what they were about or have you invented your own meaning behind them? One year I sang Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always love you”, for nearly every wedding first dance theme. Isn’t that song about her leaving?…oh well…Chances are those marriages broke up already anyway so no harm done! If you aren’t going to listen long enough to get to the verse in order to make sure your first dance isn’t about breaking up, I suppose you probably aren’t going to handle your first fight over who used up the toothpaste very well either!

There is definitely no shortage of seagulls…

I learned something important about myself today…I’m not a fan of the outdoors. As a matter of fact, if I could dig a tunnel from my house to my car, and from my car to work, I’d be happy. The funny thing is that I do love to hike for hours and hours in creeks and gorges. So then what’s the problem? Who knows…I went to the ocean to hear my friend’s band play and as I stepped out onto the sand and saw the mass of people lying around, my heart started pounding. I looked from side to side- ocean, sand, sun…wait!…Where’s the shelter? Oh no. I decided that I needed to get out of the sun so I threw off my flip flops and started running for my hotel room – 50 blocks (3 miles)…this is not as easy as it may sound. I am used to running, jumping and playing – but in sneakers or high heels…not barefoot in the sand. The sun beat down on me and I could actually hear my skin aging. Help! I looked around. It all looked the same- guys with beer-bellies and tattoos…elderly people with bathing suits and sneakers… sand, water… sand, water…I played out the bible story about the footsteps in the sand over and over again in my head trying to remember if the point of the story was that the blisters on the bottom of Jesus’ feet never healed? Had he been wearing flip flops and Capri pants?…well no wonder people wanted to walk behind him! He was the only one covered up appropriately. The person I was following clearly needed a larger swimsuit…I quickly passed him. I could always poke my mind’s eye out later so I could get the vision out of my head! I felt a little anxious for the people just lying there. I clearly have a problem with throwing away a moment to nothingness. The strange thing is that some people would say that the nothingness was somethingness!… I could run and take in so much of the day by observing the things around me and loving the feeling of being able to run free. To each his own though. I did learn, however, that I don’t need to do things that I don’t enjoy in hopes that I might meet someone to spend time with. My routine is actually perfect the way it is. When I’m doing something I love to do, someone will appear and love to do it with me…otherwise, I’ll likely run right by him one morning coming home from my run as he sits on the toilet reading about what he might do one day! He’s probably not for me… I love my life the way it is. No need to try so hard. There’s no way my guy will let me pass him by!

Dumped for Punctuation

I was talking to a friend who has recently decided not to keep seeing a girl because she doesn’t use punctuation in text messages. I immediately thought, “Wow! That seems to be awfully close-minded.”…Then I remembered the guy I stopped talking to cause he had a sign on his car that said, “4-sale”. I have to say that now that I think about it, I’m completely with my friend on this. Not using punctuation is just lazy. I think I would let the person know that it bothered me before cutting him out though. If he didn’t take it into account and use it from then on, at least with me, I would consider him to not want to take an interest in me and then decide not to see him anymore.

People get choosey as they get a little older and settled. In a way, it’s a good thing, but on the other hand, have you ever noticed that a person who needs someone for survival, always has someone? It’s ironic that the people who have figured out how to live alone and be happy with their lives while they wait for someone to share it with, seem to stay alone for years and years dismissing each other over the wrong outfit, punctuation, a messy house, food in their teeth, a bad laugh, tattoos, etc… So what are we supposed to do about it? No one is ever going to be “perfect”. Are people settling for the person who “annoys them the least?”…geez…I hope not! They always say that once you truly love yourself, you are ready to love another person. Blah, blah, blah…okay! That made a lot of sense in the generation before us before they started handing out baggage to infants as they left the hospital! Those infants are grown-ups now and are settling for the person who can take care of them the best. I’m not sure that half of them have ever learned to love themselves. They have been taught to survive by stringing together bouts of external validation from random partnerships with the “rent with the option to buy” mentality. Don’t they know that when you rent, you have no return on your investment? I think that people should be a little more choosey and find something that really fits them instead of just living out of their suitcase in order to make a quick exit if they need to. There’s nothing wrong with trying on different outfits in the store, but there really is no need to take one home cause there isn’t one there that fits your body type! Go to the next store. Maybe there’s a great one there that enhances your assets and minimizes your flaws. If you’ve already used up all your cash on the one that didn’t fit, you won’t be in the position to buy it!