Close your eyes and sleep to dream

I've been reading a lot of political blogs lately and what I've found is that they tend to depress me and make me lose hope in everything and I think hope is important to have. It makes getting up in the morning worthwhile if you believe that there are positives to counter all the negatives, that there is light somewhere within the darkness. So I decided to stop obsessing over wanting to read everything and know everything because what can one person do with all that knowledge anyway? I want to know what is going on, but I need to continue to have hope that things will be ok. I'm not sure if I'm just fooling myself or what. I've become somewhat jaded about everything and I am not exaggerating when I write this. I'm like the dark cloud over Eyeore's head threatening to rain at any moment and spoil everyone's day. Tell me something wonderful and I'll be able to root out the evil that's lurking beneath the all the wonderfulness. I've turned into quite the killjoy for sure.

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and we were both lamenting about how our lives did not turn out the way we had dreamed they would--how things happened that we had no control over and how we had to adapt to a different life plan. There isn't a place to go where we can just cry about the losses that probably aren't significant to most of the outside world but still feel huge to us. There's this fear of expressing dissatisfaction when you know that mostly your life is blessed, because the rule is that you count your blessings and you do not ask for more than enough when you have enough. And so we discuss this with each other and tell each other that we're lucky because we are. And the speaking of the words that feel like a betrayal helps for a while. We hang up our phones and get on with the lives we have and we feel less alone knowing there is at least one person walking the earth who feels the same things.

I'm on one of my cleaning binges again. It's always all or nothing with me and I tend to disrespect housecleaning now that I have been doing it more than half of my life. There's nothing rewarding about it but I get to the point where I feel like I need control of something, anything, and so I clean. Even when I know that tomorrow at this time everything I've done will be undone there are at least a few moments when things are in order and that gives me a little peace. My gravestone will probably read something like, She lived, She cleaned, She saw her cleaning come undone, She died.

I'm almost done the Bible and know that I will have to go back and read it all again because there is just so much to take in after just one reading. My mind is filled with all the stories and all the questions I have that I am afraid I will never get the answers to--at least not in this life. I've found some of the most beautiful prose inside the Bible and I wasn't expecting that. And I've also found that while there were things I did not understand, I did get the messages of love that were preached throughout, and the messages of forgiveness. Life is so complicated, and people make it more complicated than it needs to be. The message of loving one another is such a simple thing, yet most of us can't sustain that sort of love long enough to make a difference. There are too many outside annoyances calling our attention away from what is most important and we simply allow those distractions to steal the gift of love away and put it on a back burner. I start off each day swearing to do better and by noon I'm off track. I'm not sure good intentions count for anything when good intentions are all I ever end up having.

Watermelon is great this time of the year...and air conditioning is the greatest invention of all time when it is 100 degrees outside. I feel alive when I go outside and within a minute am covered in sweat. I feel alive when I come inside and am met with a wall of cool air. I am here in this corner of the world struggling to make sense of everything that doesn't make sense. I turn the page and think about all the things I need to put down in words so that I will not be forgotten. I scream inside my head, don't forget me.

Brighter than sunshine

I came home from the grocery store Sunday afternoon to find my son sitting on a bench outside the front door armed with a hose and one of those car cleaning mitts. I asked him what he was doing and he explained that my husband was being driven crazy by a tiny bird that kept coming up to the brass kick plate on our front door. Apparently, the little bird could see it's reflection in the kick plate and hopped around cheep-cheeping at himself. So I was like...um...ok. "But what are YOU doing?" And he told me that he was waiting for the bird to return so that he could spray it with water or toss the mitt at it so that it would go away. This is what I live with. I went inside and I had to hear all about the terrorist bird (about the size of baseball) who would NOT stop making a racket while my husband was trying to watch TV. I told him to turn up the volume. I mean, REALLY. The little bird wasn't hurting anything or anyone. He was just hopping along the front step looking at himself and cheeping merrily and we have to immediately institute plans to murder the poor thing.

This reminds me of the time years ago when we were taking a road trip back home with the kids. It was a 18 hour trip and about 10 minutes into the ride, the kids were in the back screeching at each other at the top of their lungs. I had brought a book to immerse myself in and I just tuned them out but my husband went ballistic and pronounced that "Everyone better knock it off and remain silent for the rest of the trip!" Now that's reality for you!

The bird hasn't been back all week while my husband has been out of town so let's see if he makes a reappearance to start harassing him this weekend again.

I can't believe it's mid April already. Time is flying. My youngest daughter is getting ready to graduate from high school and I thought I'd be truly depressed by the prospect of her leaving to go off to college, but strangely, I'm just so excited for her and how well she has done. I really have been blessed to have children who have remained grounded in a world where it's so easy to get distracted by excesses everywhere. She has been especially hard hit by the loss of friendships due to their involvement in drinking,drugs and just plain rebellion towards EVERYTHING and she has managed to pick herself up and find new friends and a new way of life without them. She has kept her eye on the prize and I am unendingly proud of her for that.

I hope they're following their bliss (or, red shoes make me happy, too)

I'll never understand why it seems so hard for people to be happy for you when good things happen in your life. I used to live next door to a woman who would drop everything in her own life if you were having a rough time. She'd cook you dinners and listen endlessly while you cried on her shoulder. But the second something good happened that you wanted to share, she backed off being your friend in search of a new needy person to aid. It was like she grew taller and brighter when your life was in ruins and I think it was because she was secretly happy that whatever was happening to you wasn't happening to her. It almost felt as if she wanted to be a witness to your pain rather than help alleviate it. Like, she did all that cooking and listening because there was the payoff of having a front row seat to watch the devastation up close and personal. I like to call people like this misery magnets. I don't like people like this because there's a real lack of sincerity going on under the guise of compassion. I mean, if you can't be happy for me when I'm happy, I would basically rather not know you.

I wonder what holds a lot of us back from being happy for one another when good things happen. Why can't a simple joy be shared without vultures waiting on the sidelines to rip us to shreds for the crime of finding a little happiness? I read these posts today and I was struck again how mean-spirited and petty people can be. The blogger posted a couple of pictures of items she had purchased and along came a killjoy to question if she really ought to be purchasing red shoes when she was just recently lamenting over financial difficulties in her life. I don't get it. How do the red shoes take away from any of us out here reading about them? If red shoes gave the blogger a reason to smile then who are we to steal that away from her?

We've all got sad tales to tell. I know I've got at least a million of them. We seem to cling to them like they're life rafts instead of recognizing them as anchors that are pulling us under. We like following trainwrecks, and scoff at people who present their lives in a positive light. I'm guilty of this sometimes. I don't mind people who have wonderful lives who write about them, but I will say that I have read blogs where the blogger will present a life of peaches and cream then one day snap and confess that it's all been a cover for all sorts of dysfunction going on. WTF? I don't like that crap. At least be real. Have a good day then a bad day like the rest of us, and don't concoct fairytales to tell just because it might sound better than my bitching about spit on the mirrors from people sloppily brushing their teeth.

I don't mind admitting that I'm all over the place most of the time. But I am able to be happy for other people when I see that they are happy. It shouldn't be that difficult to share in the little joys that help give us hope that things will get better--the joys that lighten our hearts momentarily. I just wish we could all be happy for one another when good things happen instead of thinking someone else's joy means there might be less for us somehow, or that someone isn't deserving of happiness just because we say so.

Hey, I gotta run...

So. I'm starting to get a little perturbed with friends who call here and talk my ear off then want to beat a quick exit if I talk about myself for a moment. Ditto for the friends who call then while they are in the middle of talking to me, indicate they are getting another phone call they need to take and say, "I don't mean to cut you off but I really need to take this call," then basically cut me off and end the call.

This is why I don't like telephones--the rude factor creeps in almost all the time. There's never any reciprocation and part of the reason there's no reciprocation is that I do not grab my phone every time I want to vent. Talking to other people never helps me get through things--ever. I work things out in my head on my own or I write them out here but I do not force anyone to come here to read or give me feedback because that's not how I do things. I do not think other people hold the answers I need to get through this life. I think I hold the answers--I mean, I KNOW I hold the answers, although I do not know if I will ever be smart enough to find them within me. I keep trying, though, because I am stubborn and determined.

But I get tired of being the shoulder to cry on, the chipper cheerleader who searches her brain for positive things to say only to be cut off in the middle of doing what I know they are calling me to do for them in the first place. It feels like a slap in the face or a punch in the gut. It feels like a door being slammed in my face.

If I ruled the world, I would make a rule that if you call me, you do not get to end the call (unless there's an emergency)--that the end of the call should be left up to me especially if you interrupt my day, and I take the time to listen to you.

My slice of life quotes - Time travel

She said, "If you could be young again, I think we'd be the best of friends because I'd make you laugh," and I told her she was right because I've often thought the same thing myself but that I'd be the one making HER laugh because everyone knows between the two of us that I'm the funny one~~and in that moment I thought that life could not be more complete or perfect or fulfilling.