Sunday, November 27, 2011

30 things: day 25

Day 25 - what is in your bag?
This:

I'm not big on purses. I have a few, they always end up maxed out, full of stuff I never need, but they're a necessary evil. If I can get away with just a clutch, or a wallet, or just my essentials tucked into my pockets, I'm good to go!
But...there's always some kind of purse situation going on. This one contains my huge wallet, my favorite, slowly peeling away sunglasses, a bottle of echinacea, a baggie fo vitamins, some loose change, some loose cough drops, my call out phone from work, a loose checkbook (yeah, I still go to people who take those), a wedding invitation, some eye drops, my iPod, something for my lips, a starbucks cozy, and some mock-up business cards that I still have yet to order stock in. It's not quite the purse of a crazy lady, but it's certianly nothing you'd want to get lost in.

Now that wasn't so bad.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

waffle irons are the demise of our society

When its busy, its busy, but when it's slow it's really slow. It lends plenty of time to browse the news headlines, catch up on the latest YouTube clips, see what's happening in the entertainment world, and so on and so forth.

Here’s my conclusion = it's all a bunch of crap. Capital C, Crap. Really, with the minor few exceptions, it is rancid, disgusting, and self-absorbed.

Entertainment is all about women (and men) who are so caught up in their inflated egos, flawless faces, "enhanced" bodies, always making sure that they don’t have a blemish, a bump, a shred of being a normal person, that if/when they are like the "rest of us", they're propped up on a pedestal for showing a crack in their shallow armor. "OMG, she's so relatable, she likes cupcakes and picks up her doggies poop in plastic bags just like I do (gasp!!!)" We are talking about nobodies, no-damn-bodies, regular folk, turned celebutants - the Kate Gosselins & the Kim Kardashains and the other self-made YouTube celebrities, blah, blah, blah…I'm just totally disgusted. What are they actually doing in the world? Anything decent besides clogging up the internet with twitter feeds and other forms of lackluster abbreviated and shortened ways to "communicate"? No, but the masses are still buying their bullshit. Caveat: this is not the weekender YouTuber who still has a sense of humor, the musicians, or those who are making tutorials that are both free and worth the time it takes to watch them. It's not all bad…yet.

Speaking of YouTube, have you seen the Black Friday video clips? I have. We've graduated to a complete society of animals, worse than ever before. "We" is a term I use loosely, my ass was in bed asleep, which, in my shift-working opinion, is PRICELESS. Still there were blocks and miles of lines of "people" who would rather trample, push, shove, and beat someone out of a $3 waffle iron for what? I doubt that Uncle Andy, your niece, or your half-sister all wanted one for Christmas. Waffle irons…this is what's become of us.

Why, pray tell Lauren, is it that now everyone is so desperate for a deal or looking for another way to market themselves and earn a few extra bucks? Here's one for you. How about we just blame the recession we’re in on government employee pensions? Oh, yeeeaaah…that's what happened! Who ever sold the public on this huge farce should actually get some recognition. This is good SHIT. I mean really, good way to SHIFT the blame. How about we also blame the impending zombie apocalypse and the PIG flu while we're at it? Let's make sure of one thing though: let's NOT place any blame on the banks, the financial institutions, the mortgage companies, or God forbid, the individuals who lacked any shred of personal responsibility in this thing we call our financial demise. It's easier to attack government pensions, public safety, the prisons, the state parole system, your local police force…they did it. It's their fault. Damn them and their boats and their cars and their single family homes and their 40, 50, 60, and 70 hour mandatory work weeks. They're visible, they're out there every day and every night any time you call, it must be their fault. All that phone answering and driving in circles…how frivolous. However "we" (another loose using of the word) don't want to give the perception that "we" don’t care about safety, "we" want everyone to come when "we" call for help, BUT "we" don’t want to have to pay for it like "we" used to when there was less crime, more cops, better equipment, and fewer damn fights over damn waffle irons.

I'll tell you what I miss. I miss when not every single person I knew had some level of worry or sleeplessness about how they were going to pay the bills. I miss the time when you wanted to talk so someone and you picked up the phone and called them. No tweeting, no texting, no mass emailing, no Facebooking the really important things in life to the people who are supposed to mean the most to you. I miss when you heard someone else's voice on the other end of the line, you smiled and actually believed the words that were coming out of their mouth. I know, I get paid to talk, but here's a concept: call me. I would love to have a conversation with someone that I 1) know personally and 2) don't have to interrogate for officer safety. I miss being invited to weddings, funerals, and baby showers with an actual contact, paper invitation, or phone call. I'm not talking about your bachelorette parties, Glee premier get togethers, and Vegas trips, by all means, group invite away, but have a little decorum, recognize tradition, make the people in your life a priority again.
I know, there's a lot to bitch and moan about even in this Thanksgiving week. I’m not ungrateful, I’m just fed up with the excuses and the brush offs and the complete lack of decency. I'm ready for 2012. I'm already reflecting back on 2011 and it's had more downs than ups. It's been a Hell of a Year.

Happy Saturday & Happy Holidays,
Lo

Oh yeah, PS, the views and opinions expressed in this little tirade are those of the author and not her employer.

I just needed to get that all out.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

30 things: Day 24

day 24- a letter to your parents


I've been avoiding this. My relationship with my parents has been kind of a yo-yo in recent years. I'm, in fact, no longer talking to my father after my entire lifetime of being his daughter coupled with sharing a house with him as a joint tenant and co-owner for the last seven years. A decision made with an open heart that I regret frequently.


If I would have written this 3 months ago, it would have a different content, 3 years ago, even more different, 10 years ago, probably wouldn't even seem like the same writer.

I can chalk it up to this: at some point, at some age, for some reason, when you're an adult and no longer completely dependent on your parents, the playing field just evens out. They're and adult and so are you. Long ago, I came to realize that I made more than my mother ever did as as an adult and my father ever did as an adult and breadwinner for a family of five. Different times, different economy, but it made me think.

As I've gotten older, I've come to realize that my parents...well they're just people. People, who like me, just don't know what the fucking answer is sometimes and they're just trying to do the best thing they can. Yeah, there were a lot of mistakes and a lot of selfishness and a lot of just plain bad faith, but they did try to do the right thing. If I was going to write a letter to either one of them, it would go something like this:

Thank you for trying your hardest and trying to stay together for us kids. Dad, thanks for teaching us a strong work ethic, even when you couldn't make enough and had to ask others to help you support your family from time to time. I know that couldn't have been easy as a man. Mom, thanks for trying to keep it all together and doing the best you could with three kids who were "spirited", a husband who was working and/or at school and not as available as he should have been, and being creative to work around a very basic budget and an exhausting commitment that you stuck with as long as you could have.

I wish a lot of things. Mom, I wish you would have left a miserable marriage long before it got to the point it did. We would have survived. I don't know how you did it. At my age now, you were not happy, you were not heard, and you were raising two children with a third on the way. If I was your friend back then, I would have helped you get out and get on your own two feet. You deserved more. I'm glad you finally got out and found someone to love you the way you should be.

Dad, I wish you weren't so selfish to rob your wife and mother of your children of the support she needed for years. I wish you would have taught your son how to treat women and what respecting his mother was supposed to look like. I wish you would have learned to value your children for their relationships and not just the amount of money they could bring in to support you in your disabled, elderly years. I know some of this you can't help because you need help. I've seen the blank stare in your eyes when something sensible is said to you and it just washed over you like a wave. I wish that the handful of people that are still near and dear to you would really push you to get help so you can mend what is left of the shred of relationship that might be left between you and I. You always showed love in your own ways, it was constant, but you were not. I still love you, but I don't like you anymore. Please get some help before it's too late.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

30 things: day 23

day 23- something you crave for a lot

I crave laughter, cause it really is the best medicine...and I crave salsa. I love salsa. That's it...:) I'm really just a simple girl.

30 Things: Day 22

day 22- what makes you different from everyone else?

This Who song is playing in my head as I start to type out this blog.

WHAT makes me different? I know who made me, where I came from, where I am now, and where I want to be soon and in the not so near future. But what makes me so re markedly different? I worked really, really damn hard when I was a teenager and got a really, really good job when I was 21. That was 9 years ago, well 10 if you count the internship. I've been doing what I do for 10 years, 14 1/2 if you count the volunteer work. I think that's very notable. I signed my signature over and over and over again on documents to the title of a house when I was 23 years old. That's pretty damn cool. I walked on a car lot as a single woman at the ripe old age of 24, told the car salesman that I wanted to test drive a 50K brand new car that was sitting on his lot, and then I told him I wanted to buy it. No co-signer, just me and my proof of income. I drove home in that car about an hour later. Take that misogynistic car sales industry! Yeah, OK, those are things I've done, accomplished, have to show for some hard work and a lot of overtime, but it's not exactly WHO I am. Really WHO I am or was got me those things.

Now what makes me different? Sometimes I just feel like a girl still waiting to grow up, sometimes I feel like a woman who has it figured out, sometimes I feel sexy, sometimes I feel like I don't want anyone looking at me. I felt broken and lost just a few months ago. Shattered. A shell of someone who used to look forward to living. Someone who used to laugh and still carry other people's burdens. Someone who's door was always open for her friends and family. Then it all came crashing down. It was expected that I would continue to be the rescuer, the burden carrier, the one with the big heart and the dry shoulder. I clearly forgot who I was and what I needed, because I stopped putting myself first, I forgot how to say "no", "stop", "enough!" and then...I let all that baggage drag me down. I was drowning. Suffocating.

Luckily, I feel like there's been new life breathed into me lately, like someone came along and saw my lifeless, passionless, angry self that was desperately in need of a few big breaths of relief. peace, and hope to bring me back to life. I literally had to pull myself out from underneath some people to get where I am now. I had to extract myself physically, emotionally, and mentally from a few very close people's lives to feel like I wasn't suffocating and being stepped on. I got there because I lost track of who I was, what I needed, and what made me different amongst the crowd.

Despite the fact that I've spent quite a bit of time on my social experiment lately and writing the best "me" to find me the best "him", I honestly couldn't come up with a quick answer to this last week when I had the good intentions on writing this. So, I turned to the people. My Facebook friends. Sometimes you just need a different perspective. They said these things:

You care, genuinely care.
You travel more than most.
You have a low bullshit tolerance and you're not afraid to say it out loud when you're not buying it.
You won't let anyone step on your toes, you're in charge, and were when you were younger.
You're not afraid to step out of the box that society puts us all in.
You're fiercely loyal and commit 100%
You give big, laugh big, love big, and party big.
You stand for what you believe in.
You live by doing not by standing by and seeing what happens.
You believe in honesty, don't put on a show for others, you don't give expecting in return, you're genuine.
You admit that life is shitty but also amazing.

They said amazing things that I will be glad to claim and wouldn't be ashamed of if they ended up carved on my tombstone. Yes, I said tombstone, like in a Western. Tombstones belong to folks like me & Wyatt Earp...ya know (: inside joke :)

In the end, I'm just me, good, bad, or otherwise. I'm not perfect, but I'm not totally rotten. I won't back down but I won't put up a fight for something that I don't believe in. I can forgive, I will forgive, but I won't forget. I want the things that money can't buy. I want people to think well of me, but I don't care to be the center of attention, the object of men's desire, or the most popular. I want to be loved, I want to be happy, and I want to look back on my life without regrets and with a smile on my old wrinkled face. I want my smile lines, my callused hands, and my battle scars to tell their own stories.

I am the same as everyone else who wants to live a happy, full life and I'm different than everyone else because they will never have lived MY life, THIS life, full of my own successes and failures, my shattered expectations, my dreams that faded away, and all the moments, past and yet to come, that took my breath away.


To thine own self be true
- Shakespeare