I have this apple

I have this apple that I ate yesterday. It was really tasty and my favorite kind: honey crisp. It was small enough that it wasn't too much for a snack and ripe enough that when I cut into it with a knife and tasted it, it was crunchy and sweet. But I didn't want to eat this apple.

I didn't want it for all it represented to me. It was a perfect little apple borne of something unhappy. I got this apple from a fruit basket. A fruit basket that was given to us by my parents' accountant. The fruit basket had loads of other fruits and chocolates and fruit spreads from a great, well known place in Brooklyn. But we got it because it was a gift to the aggrieved. We had it in our house instead of my dad. How can a bunch of fruit soothe in times of loss I have no idea. This was a tasty apple and I hated every bite I took of it. It was awful and I wanted to throw it against the wall.

But I didn't. I had an apple. It was a good part of my lunch, good for me and my fruit serving for the day. It was the worst apple I ever had.

I'm liking you a little less Brooklyn

When I go home now it's not the  same. I don't like you as much as I did before, Brooklyn. You're not the same to me anymore. You don't hold the same magic since my memories of past years seem like a distance life lived by someone else now. I don't eagerly await the time to go back. I don't long for experiencing all of what the other Brooklynites experience day by day. I don't want to be there as much since he's not there anymore.

My Brooklyn was my family in Brooklyn. Everyone together and we're no longer our group of five plus. And I hate that. I truly, truly hate that. It makes me so upset and it won't ever be the same again. And I hate that too.

I'm trying to like my new future, I'm trying to like where I am but I can't see forward at all, and I just never saw it past this. How could I? How am I supposed to figure out what to do now without you to guide me? I can find my own path sure, but you're not there for me to tell you how I'm making my way along it. You're not going to be there for me to tell you how I get through the tough spots. I want to ask you how you got through the tough spots. I want to bounce ideas off of you and get your thoughts,  I wanted to ask you why in the hell California has 4 basketball teams?!!

I wasn't done telling you everything I wanted to tell you about how I go about my day. I wanted to tell you so much more. I can tell you in my dreams I suppose or quiet times when I am reminded of something you said or a funny joke you made. But it's not the same and I hate having to settle for that. I hate that most of all. it isn't right and it isn't fair.

So I am dissatisfied with you Brooklyn. You haven't held up in my mind and you've lost a little bit of your sparkle. I'll miss you and think of you and still check to see how you're doing, Brooklyn. But you're a little less my Brooklyn.

I'm gonna be a writer

For a while I have been trying to figure out where my creativities should be focused. art? writing? photography? Music? I can like those alot but I am not drawn to them and go out of my way make it so I do them everyday. I just don't. If I were, I'd already have my camera, or my keyboard or new paints to swirl around. But what I do realize is that I like to write. The funny thing is I'm not a reader! Hah!

Such is life with irony and all. I don't like to read books. I think that came away when I was done with grad school. I can't do it anymore unless it is something I know ahead of time I am really gonna like: The Boys are Back I read in two weeks, Middlesex I read in 2 months, Petite Anglaise I read in a few months, first four Sookie Stackhouse novels I read in 1 year, currently reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. These are the only books I've read in the past 4 years. I have a few more but I never finished them: Dreams from my Father, The Wachoula Woods Accord, Animals in Translation (all non-fiction by the way; I think I should stick to fiction).

But I like more and more when I can write something and it can become something to bring emotion, or provide detail to something everyone  thinks but never says, or come up with a perspective that others may not have considered. Being in my head all day makes me want to be less of me and explore the rest of the world so writing seems like an easy enough way to do it. Once you do it enough you get better too, right?

I'll think on this some more and figure out what route to take.

It's gonna be good.

I'll probably change my mind in a week.

Too many things twirling around

I wanted to write about the awful weekend I had, but then thought maybe I should write about the serendipitous thing that happened a few weeks ago when I started my evening class, then I thought, maybe I should write about something I've been thinking about that should just be put down on paper and then I realized, I have way too many thoughts swirling around in my head and it is making me sick, truly, which is why my weekend was awful and it is driving me crazy!

So to sum up, I have lots to write but am too frazzled to get it all straight and coherent so I am choosing to write as whatever comes.

So what I am going to write about is taking it easy. I have been very focused on making my life as simple as I can ever since I was done with grad school. Things like that made my life very stressful, for many, many years and I no longer want to accept that life should be that way. Nowhere does it say that you have to suffer or struggle to get to where you want to be. And so, I take that to heart and make it what I live by. I never, ever feel the need to stress out about something because there is nothing in this world that is worth getting yourself physically ill about. Now most times I can tell myself and I can successfully convince myself of this, but I don't always listen to myself.

That's when I get caught up in something that stresses me out so much I can't function. I have had some background level stress for a while now. My dad is in the hospital. For 2 months. I know I am not dealing with it well. So it remains this low level, background stress that saddens me, depresses me and makes me full of angst and full of memory. So with a background level just pulsing, small pulses, everyday, anything else that comes along gets added on to it. So there is a small pulse in the background and then a more pressing pulse of stress on top of that. Think of it as two rhythms going on at once, different time signatures...that's bound to drive anyone batty with ill-timed music going off in their head, right?

So I deal with the one, maybe but the other just keeps pulsing along, low, slow, in the background. And something else comes along that sends a spike of stress through my system, so low and slow gets added on to super charged high intensity short lived spiked stress. No way to deal with that. My body doesn't know how. So I shut down and haven't recovered. My brain has gone fuzzy, my routine, turned upside down and things I planned to do, went by the wayside. I become disappointed, disillusioned and frustrated. rinse,repeat...

I'm going to try some meditation, and breathing. Some way to calm things down and turn things down to normal level, to turn the pulsing to low and as slow as possible. Now.

Feeling depressed

In a bad way today. Weather, mood, job related, who knows? Been this way for a few days. Doesn't help that my dad is in the hospital. Doesn't help that we don't know why.

This coming weekend was supposed to be fun and relaxing and I was looking forward to it, but it was not to be.

I've thought a lot lately about how things go in life, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But I only come up with the end result and why should it end that way? Seems like we all got gypped.  I  think about that funny quote that used to be tossed around the internet in the early days about a soliloquy rattled off by George Constanza's character on Seinfeld. How we should really start out life with death and old age and wind up at the end an embryo about to be someone's orgasm. That to me seems like the better way to go!

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus?!?! I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you go live in an old age home. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You drink alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities. You become a little baby, you go back, spend your last 9 months floating with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap, then you finish off as an orgasm! Amen.”

 - George Costanza

But we're here and should make the best use of our time, because it is so, so limited and we don't realize it I think until it smacks us in the face. In a bad way. And then we sit up and take notice but do we really do something about it? I've tried. But I tend to wind up feeling like I do today. Then I try to pull myself out and it becomes a cycle that I feel wasted too much of my precious, limited time...rinse, repeat.

How to break free from that, I don't know. My means of escape at times is sleep...or a movie.

I've tried to pry myself out of my work situation where I am unhappy and feel that I worked too hard for too long to have it be this way. I've tried, tried, tried. Still waiting on the results...

Focus on the good things, right? But ignore the not so good? Where is the balance? Just accept that life is this way? Just looking for some answers and rambling on here but it may in some way help to ease the time spent and the focused thoughts that could use some reassessment.

100 Years Old

I was at a funeral yesterday. It was a celebration of life of someone I wish I could have known better but knew well enough. She died one month shy of her 101st birthday. I've never known anyone who lived that long, can you imagine what that must be like? Lots of people like to mention how they would never want to live that long because of all of the people you lose along the way, but what about the things and people you do get to see as well? What about the history and experiences you can have? What about the loves and lives you can share, so many more than most people.

She was small in stature, with a tough as nails exterior and an organized mind like you would not believe yet a sweetness you could. Can you imagine all that she saw and did starting in 1911? So many things came and went in her life, good and bad, new and old.  Family came first to her of course and most important to her was that she was a wife, a mother of two, grandmother of five and great-grandmother of 6. She did cross-stitch, read several books a week, could recall details in her own and other people's lives half her age!  When I first met her she was 92 years old and frying a steak in a cast iron skillet in an apartment she lived in alone; only because her husband with whom she had been married to for 69 years had only recently passed away. She sent many cards for birthdays, holidays, and notes to say hello and how she was doing. She had her own way of doing things and saying things as well. She would laugh just as easily as she would tell you you were wrong about something and she would precisely lay out why. She took her time with things but she sure could tell a story that kept you rapt in the details and waiting for the punchline in that old Baltimore way.

We were planning a visit to see her this weekend, I hadn't seen her since her 99th birthday nearly two years ago. I couldn't be there for her 100th because of hurricane Irene...

I'm gonna miss her but can only feel a melancholy happiness. I'm glad  I am able to say I knew someone so wonderful who had seen so much, and I got to be a tiny little part of that.

counting on you, mystical spirits of the fate-o-sphere

This time around I'd really like if you could make things go my way...just saying...
This time around I think I'd really like to move on...
This time around I just want to say when the mood or force moves you, have it be positive to my future happiness...
This time around I can feel it!

Just Fucking Put It In There

Those of us with unclean minds might interpret that title wrongly. But it does leave itself open doesn't it? No, really I mean to vent my frustrations with someone I work with who doesn't understand what it means to work in a team environment.

I suggested an edit to a document that would clearly make it more succinct and understandable. Merely makes the document stand on its own and provides detail if someone were to question the specifics of a chemical that is being described.

But no, this newbie, pretending to know it all, decides that she "disagrees" and won't take my comment and will undermine my authority by doing so. I am the eco lead. Do as I say fuck nut. Just put the production volume information into the hazard characterization. Just cause it's a hazard characterization doesn't mean you can't have exposure information in it.

Just fucking do it, minion. Don't care how long you've been here as a contractor, as an employee you've only been here < 6 months. I didn't drag my ass to work everyday for nearly 4 years for you to undermine me. Just fucking put it in there, it's not a hardship asshole.

My teeth hurt

Got braces on the bottom yesterday to top off the full metal regalia I have on my top teeth. I can't shake the pain. I'm trying to brave through it but that's dumb. I should just go and take something for it but I won't. Maybe later.

What a pain!

Mystical Spirits of the Fate-o-Sphere

So I don't really believe in a higher being. I am spiritual and believe in worshiping the earth around us, every part of it except things humans have had a hand in. I firmly believe to respect every living thing as best we can. After all, chances are it was here waaaaaaay before we got here. I think alot of us fail to recognize how new we are to this place. It's hard to grasp that concept in human terms.

The one thing I strongly believe in is some higher force of nature that guides us along. To me they are spirits watching and hovering. Not good, not bad but take things as they come and deal them out as it happens. No force or influence to make things go one way or another for anyone. It just happens.

So when I find myself in a situation where I have done everything I can in my power to make my fate work for me, the only thing left is to speak to the mystical spirits of the fate-o-sphere and let them know I have done all I can and the rest is in their hands and can you please make it favorable for me this twist of fate? And if it does not, and if my requests go unanswered as they did last fall when the job of my dreams was whisked from my grasp because of budget constraints? Then I say fuck it all...who knows? I'll try again next time!