You're gonna wish...

I am simply in awe of her, her talent, and her attitude about life.  

Never a victim.

Always with a voice.

Connected to her emotions. 

Conscious in her life. 

Simply herself

& 

better than ever.

You're gonna wish you never had met me. 

everything old is new again

I've started a new project, a marketable challenge, I'm only 2 posts in, and then I screeched to a halt...
what am I doing?  A new chapter?  Out with the old and in with the new?
NO!


this blog, my Karma blog that I started in 2008, the one that's seen me through so much, my life raft, my safety harness...am I abandoning it?  Fracturing it into little pieces or new volumes? Recreating an old classic?

am I fooling myself into thinking that if I start one with a new title, I'll...what, exactly?
be braver?
what am I hiding? ...what are you hiding?...

I'm not.  I'm not hiding, but this (the marrying of the two) is like leaving your diary unlocked and out in the open because you don't want your secrets to be secret anymore.  It still has a cover, but it's not bound.  It's there for the reading, if the reader so chooses.

this space will always be mine, it was once only mine, and like any good relationship, it takes time to reveal itself...these 300+ posts are my heart and my soul, my love and my hate, and they will always be here, to anchor me, to remind me where I once was, to keep showing me how far I've come.  I'm not done writing this volume either, but, as I look back, these stories they have to be told...they just need a new platform

so, slowly...slowly, I'll dust them off, shine them up, and put them out on display...because everything old is new again

and that's just another part of my beautiful mess

"I met a gal"

I wouldn't say that I live in a tight-knit neighborhood.  Even with living in the same house I grew up in from the age of less than one years old, I keep an eye out and exchange quick waves here and there as I see my neighbors coming and going, but we don't chit chat over the fence often.

Until recently.  My to-the-left-side neighbor recently lost his wife.  It was unexpected, undiagnosed pancreatic cancer.  She went in for what could have been appendicitis and a week later she was gone.  We exchanged a few conversations as I was coming and going over the garbage toters, but that's the extend of it.  I never knew his wife well, just that she was a sweet lady that waved every time she saw me.  Millie.  It's a sweet lady's kind of name.

A couple of weeks ago, Harry, the new widower, told me that he was going out of town to Washington State to visit some family and keep an extra eye on the house.  He'd shaved his beard and cut his long hair, they were the things that Millie loved him to keep, and so for as long as he's lived next door, he kept them.  I suspect that with her gone, he needed a little transformation to let her go little by little.

He has impeccable timing when it comes to catching me in a hurry, but under his current life's circumstances, no matter what I'm rushing out the door for, I always stop and lend him an ear and a few moments.  After all, what good are you neighbors if you can't chit chat with them in passing?

This morning as our shared gardener and him talked about the lawn, I wandered over and said hi.
Right away he said:

"Hey I met a gal."
"You did?  Awww, that's nice."
"She said she knows you."
"Oh, really?" (now I'm thinking it was just someone he ran into out and about and not a new love interest)
"Yeah, she said you took a report from her a while back."
"A report?  Must have been a while ago.  I haven't taken a report in a long time."
"She lives right back here about 7 houses down."
"Oh, OK maybe I did then,but that would have been at least 10 years ago."
"Yeah, she's lived here for quite some time."

"Remember when I went to Washington a few weeks ago?"
"Yeah."
"Well, my daughter decided to sign me up on my Apple for an online dating service and that's how I met her."
(I just smiled, I felt the goodness of where this story was just about to go.)
"We got to talking and getting along pretty quickly and I was just sitting there scratching my head up in Washington when I found out that she lives like 7 houses down the street from here."
(me still smiling, listening to him talk about meeting someone online that was practically living in his backyard...oh, Universe, you are speaking directly to me again)
"Really?  THAT is so close, that's crazy.  How cool is that?"
"So we met over dinner and you know, I'm still dealing with what happened with my wife, but I saw this gal and it was like love at first sight."
(cue big grins, happy feelings, all that jazz, this story makes me smile on the inside)

"Awwww, that's sooo great.  I totally believe in that stuff.  I'm happy for you."
"Yeah, but with everything that I've just been through, we're just getting to know each other.  We're starting out as friends first.  You know, Millie and I were friends first.  If you don't start a relationship as friends first, you're just spinning your wheels.  It's the key."
"Oh, Harry, you're the Universe speaking to me right now. I've been having this conversation in my head and out loud with someone who I know who used to live right in our backyard too.  He's one of my best friends, but he didn't know that until I told him that recently."
Harry's turn to grin at me.
"Well, it just blows my mind that she lives so close, so we'll see how it goes."
"Well, I think it's great and you better keep me informed.  I wanna know where this goes too."

Love stories are everywhere.  "Chance" meetings are not always so.  I'm firm believer that people are brought into each other's lives for a direct purpose.  I believe in friends first.  I believe that people are meant to be together but it's all about timing.

Harry and Millie made a promise to be each other's "to death do us part."  Death parted them.  Quickly, unfairly, , but still love always remains.  To see him struggle and get by the "best that could be expected" over the last few weeks made my heart sad for him.  To now see him smile about his new, quick, and unexpected turn of events made my morning today.

"What's meant to be will always find a way."

~ Trisha Yearwood 

"There is never a time or place for love.  It happens accidentaly, in a heartbeat, in a single, flashing, throbbing moment."
~ Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

wish

I wish I may, I wish I might, I wish many, many things in hindsight...

30 things: Day 30

Day 30: Your favorite song. I don't have just one, but this one will do for now, for this year, and for the end of this year which is just about 5minutes away.

The lyrics:

Made a wrong turn once or twice
Dug my way out, blood and fire
Bad decisions, that's alright
Welcome to my silly life

Mistreated, misplaced, misunderstood
Miss 'No way, it's all good'
It didn't slow me down.
Mistaken, always second guessing
Underestimated, look I'm still around

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than fucking perfect
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me

You're so mean when you talk
About yourself. You were wrong.
Change the voices in your head
Make them like you instead.

So complicated,
Look happy, You'll make it!
Filled with so much hatred
Such a tired game
It's enough, I've done all I could think of
Chased down all my demons
I've seen you do the same
(Ohh ohhhhhhh)

Pretty, pretty please, don't you ever, ever feel
Like you're less than fucking perfect
Pretty, pretty please, if you ever, ever feel
Like you're nothing, you're fucking perfect to me

The whole world's scared, so I swallow the fear
The only thing I should be drinking is an ice cold beer
So cool in line and we try try try but we try too hard
And it's a waste of my time.
Done looking for the critics, cause they're everywhere
They don't like my jeans, they don't get my hair
Exchange ourselves and we do it all the time
Why do we do that, why do I do that (why do I do that)?




and so I did it...with 3 mintues to spare...I wrote my 30 things.

Happy New Year to you and to me!!!

30 things: Day 19

Day 19- nicknames you have and why you have them:

Laurie - there's only one person who ever calls me this and when he first started, I balked at it. "I'm not Laurie, I'm Lauren!" Now, I rarely talk to him and I wish I heard that "Laurie" more often.

Lauuuurenah! - Mom's nickname, she says it with a little bit of a drone, a little bit of a lilt, usually with some exasperation or heavy laughter. It's Mom's nickname. 'Nuff said.

Lolo - This kind of just started one day. Someone at work used to call me on occasion, but then I started camping with a group that had a guy Loren and then there was the me Lauren and the children just could not keep up. So, from then on, I was Lolo. There are those that might actually think my name is Lolo, for that's how I'm introduced in that circle. It fits, it's fun. I like it.

Lo - one of my bestest friends calls me Lo with such affection, I can't help but smile at it. It is a nickname of a nickname, but it's short and sweet and I answer to this name as well.

LC - My initials and another work nickname. For the record, I was LC before that Hills girl and her fashion line were born. I think if I ever get married and change my last name, I will still use LC because I like it and it's always going to be part of me.

H2o - This one night I went drinking. I drank a lot. Then I walked to some one's house that lived downtown by the bars. When I got there, I drank a LOT..of water. I mean a TON of water. I was doing the quick flush before I ended up puking. It worked, but then I owed that girl a lot of bottled water. One day I repaid her. I went to Costco and bought her a case of water and left it on her porch when she wasn't home. I became H2o after that. :)

Karma - Well, this is my blog after all. My writing soul mate, Carly, my dear heart, started calling me that sometime in the last few years. I was new to this whole blogging thing and on an absolute whim, I don't even know how I found her, I read something brilliant that she read and then I told her and we have been friends ever since. I answer to Karma, literally and figuratively. It is an ironic flattery to have that as a nickname.

Lotus blossoms, deodorant, and karma in the am...

Write about karma, write about karma, write about karma...

In the last hour of my last official graveyard shift of the year, I had an "ah-ha" moment. Weird little signals the universe is sending me. I have found recently that although I am itching for some new ink in a bad way, I am both:
a) slightly committment phobic about what I want permanently stamped on my body and,
b) slightly stricken with ADD when it comes to making a decision if it love "it" or not.

Somewhere buried in the memory of the years-old desktop, I have pictures of some lotus blossoms I saw at the Japanese Gardens in Portland, OR a few years ago. I've had an admiration for the flowers for quite sometime now, but recently I really have invested in a sincere apprecation for their symbolism. Starting at the bottom of a mug bog, growing through the muck and mire, eventually a mature, beautiful blossom appears. Of all the images that have struck my fancy, the emblem for the Secret deodorant website really caught my attention. Secret Global Secret Women’s Deodorant & Antiperspirant Yes, deodorant is my inspiration. You don't want to know where the idea for my last tattoo came from... :)

Back to my karmatic sign...as I printed out the Secret image last week to take to my tattoo guy in the near future and showed my graveyard comrade who declared "that is soo you!" My sister gave me the nod of approval when I pranced in and asked her to draw it on my back so I could get an idea of how it would look. The image has been sitting on the trunk at the end of my bed for a week, looking up at me occasionally as I come and go from my bedroom. I pushed it to the back burner pretty easily.

But you see...karma has a way of bringing things back to the surface. Eeking out the will to make it through the 5-6am hour, I was relishing in photography blogs to keep me awake when I stumbled across this wedding image from Amy Cloud Photography and let out a gasp!

There it is! My tattoo...THE one that has had my attention for so long. What are the chances?! Melissa, the comrade, wandered over and shook her head and smiled at the coincidence of finding THIS picture of THIS girl with THIS tattoo, and just said "I think it's karma, Lauren" before wandering down the hallway and out of the room.

Not to be dissuaded that someone else has found the image to be so inspirational, I take it as a sign from the tattoo universe that it is indeed beautiful and meant to be permanently a part of me.

Midflight thoughts

Heartburn has me up at 5something AM...in more ways than one. Being gone in Mexico for a week was only a small band-aid. In fact, I think it just magnified some of the other problems. There are a lot of fake people out there with no real substance or motivation in life. Weeding them out of my life is proving to be harder than I ever thought it would be.



I usually have a lot of time to think when I'm flying. I just plug in my ipod and let the music carry me to wherever my mind needs to go. I watch the clouds roll by and the landscape below dot its way across the horizon like notes on a scale. I'm always amazed at clouds - the more I look at them, the more I think they must have been one of God's greatest creations. I also love watching the sunset from the sky. It's like nothing else. You'll never be able to see the colors that are created with the sun boucing off the tops of the clouds unless you're in the sky to see where they meet. I don't like the suffocating feeling of flying, but the time it gives me to gather my thoughts is usually welcome. My mind wandered all over the place on this flight. I think it found permanent residency in some of the places that it travelled to.

I watched a Tyler Perry movie "The Family That Preys" on the flight and it settled in right next to my thoughts. I love his movies for the underlying messages that he conveys. The tagline for this movie is "Follow your heart, but watch your back."
There were a couple of questions posed throughout the film that I made note of on a personal level...
Remember when you used to dream? At what point did you stop dreaming about what you want from life?
Are you living or just existing? This was acompanied by the lyrics of the theme song:

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,
May you never take one single breath for granted,
GOD forbid love ever leave you empty handed,
I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,
Promise me that you'll give faith a fighting chance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance....I hope you dance.

I hope you never fear those mountains in the distance,
Never settle for the path of least resistance
Livin' might mean takin' chances but they're worth takin',
Lovin' might be a mistake but it's worth makin',
Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,
When you come close to sellin' out reconsider,
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.
I love the lyrics from that song, but I forget to listen to them with more than just my ears sometimes. It's high time I started listening to things with my heart more often. Settling for the path of least resistance seems to be the story of my life as of late...



Despite my best efforts, flying is always an comedic adventure somehow and this one was no exception. I lost one side of my earphone cover before the flight even started, cut my toe open on my computer bag midflight somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico, broke the underwire on the right side of my bra as I was talking to my flight neighbor, and cracked the Mexican pottery that I was so careful to carry on while I had to repack the liquids prior to reboarding in Houston, Texas. As I practically crawled out of my skin from being stuck on a plane for far too long with an achey toe and the fear that I was going to be stabbed through and through by razor sharp wire, I couldn't help but imagine that all the times I've been on a plane, I had never felt so conflicted about coming home. If home is where your heart is, then I don't quite know where to hang my hat, but I do want to find out where that place is. I think I'm going to have to start down some paths of resistance while I'm still young enough to believe that I can do anything.

Right now I'm going to try and believe that I can sleep despite Insomnia's best efforts to keep my mind from drifting off into those clouds again...