Archive | September, 2012

Wagons and wheels

13 Sep

Why do wagons have wheels?

Because if they didn’t have wheels we probably wouldn’t fall off them!

Yeah I know that is not a very funny joke but I constantly keep falling off all of mine because they keep moving.  I mean wouldn’t it be so  much easier if they stood still.  My wagon navigation skills would rival that of my cycling abilities.  Or would it be too easy?  I mean if my wagons were never moving it doesn’t really pose me with a great challenge now does it?

Although it also poses another question about people jumping on wagons.  If the wagons didn’t have wheels it would be easy for people to just jump on other people’s wagons too!  I mean I really hate it when a person who I know didn’t like my wagon before all the sudden wants to be on my wagon.  No really I don’t mind if people join my wagon as long as they remember it was my wagon to begin with!

So to answer the initial question, why do wagons have wheels?

I don’t think people would buy them if they didn’t have wheels.

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Can I give you some advice?

7 Sep

I’m not really going to give you advice well just this one thing someone told me today, “all men are dogs.”  I can neither confirm nor deny that statement and I don’t know a lot about dogs so all I have to say is “no comment.”

What I do know a lot about is advice.  I know how to give it and I’m really good at it if I don’t say so myself.  I know how to listen to people giving it to me and I know how to pretend I’m actually ‘taking’ their advice.  What I did have a hard time with was taking my own advice.  And I’m not talking about that advice like ‘ you should eat 7 servings of vegetables a day.’  I’m talking about that internal voice that tells you something is not right.

I had the eternal problem of not trusting my internal advice voice.  I could listen to others talk about what they felt was right for me and I always thought “wow yeah that makes sense.”  To only find out that these people didn’t know what the heck they were talking about!  Ha I mean since I tell people what to do all the time and I barely know what I’m talking about, what was I thinking?  Of course if  we are talking about Beastie Boys or Zelda then I’m your expert!

A few years back I went though a tumultuous time  trying to figure out an issue one of my little guys was going through.  I would tell everybody my story and boy did everybody have an opinion and offer their advice to me.  I was so lost and hungry for someone to give me the answer that I bought anything they were selling.  Only to find out that those I choose to lisen to were all wrong and all that ‘advice’ I decided to follow had only prolonged finding the solution.  Talk about feeling horrible and disappointed with myself which in turn I had to forgive myself for (see the ‘Please forgive me’ post).  If I had trusted me we would have all been in a different place.  Well live and learn and learn I did.  More and more instances arose in my life where I would look to others for their input.  Which honestly I do  love to hear other people’s perspective I just needed to learn that I know what is best for me.  I know all my surrounding circumstances.  I know what feels right.  I am the one who has to live with the outcome.  So I should really be listening to me!

So if I could give you one piece of advice it would be trust yourself, you know best.  I took this advice and I’m getting better and listening to me.

The girl with the rainbow tattoo

3 Sep

Rainbows appear when raindrops (similar to a prism) reflect sunlight, which breaks white sunlight into color.  Sounds so simple.  What’s interesting to add is that no two viewers of that rainbow will see the exact same rainbow because each will view it at a different set of droplets and view at different angles.  Interesting since I just like the cheeriness rainbows bring into our lives.  Well mine anyways.  I always thought that when I grew up I would change my name to Rainbow Bright, find my white horse with rainbow-colored hair, slap on that color belt and live happily ever after with my sprite Twink in Rainbow land.   Sadly as you all know we don’t grow up and become cartoon characters, which I think is pretty weak sauce if you ask me!

My plan then became to bring color into the colorless land.  Umm sounds easy enough right?  Ha well I’m not a miracle worker!  What I can do though is to not add to the murkiness of the world now.  The thing I learned about gloomy bitter people is that misery loves company and don’t we know it!  That negative ugly energy somehow makes it into our rainbow-colored world and just sucks all the color crystals out.  That’s why we need to feed our color sprites.  Come on stay with me.  If we tend to all those parts of our lives that make us happy colorful people then those Murkys and Lurkys of the world can’t touch us.  Don’t we all know that person in our life that once they just walk into a room they suck the ‘color’ right out?  What do we do with these people?

The choice is yours really and that choice will probably depend on your happiness.  I know for awhile I felt it was my job to save these people.  But I quickly discovered that nobody can MAKE you happy.  This is something that only you can do.  Once I stopped looking to others for my happiness I was happy.  How about them apples or in this case rainbows.  So until I find that ‘color belt’ I will just have to rely on my rainbow tattoo!

Please forgive me

2 Sep

I recently had someone comment to me about how forgiving I was.  I thought about it and thought “yeah I guess I am.”  Like so many people in this world I would be stuck if I didn’t forgive people and as other awesome forgiving people out there know it’s about me and my mental health to forgive.  Of course forgiveness is not forgetting.  But this is not about forgiving someone else.  This is about forgiving MYself.  That is a concept that is as foreign to me as proving a theorem in Geometry, blah!  This a journey I never thought I would actually have to make.

I am that person who strives to be a friend who can give her friends that soft and caring loving ear.   Who doesn’t judge because deep down she knows she doesn’t have a right and that’s not what friends do.   All our journeys are different and a good friend tries to say those words that a friend needs to hear most, “you are okay, you did your best, don’t be so hard on yourself.”  After you have a good talk with a good friend you feel better but there is still something nagging, well for me anyways.  I just hear, “you should have known better, what’s wrong with you?”  This self-talk becomes so destructive that we become so mean to ourselves.  Why?? I still don’t understand that but I finally decided to think of what I would say to my own children if they made a mistake, “what are you stupid??” Ha no I’m kidding I would probably use my nicest sweetest voice to tell them it’s okay and people make mistakes.  They are already so mad at themselves they don’t need anymore negative emotions.  As one of my smart teachers said, “why do we fall down, to learn how to get up” (and by teacher I mean Bruce Wayne’s dad in the movie Batman Begins).  I think those are words to live by but hard to remember when we are laying on the floor with a broken piece inside or outside for that matter but this is all ‘hypothetical’ so I’m going to say inside.

I recently read this book, The Way of the Happy Woman by Sara Avant Stover and I believe it changed my life.  I have been telling all my girlfriends to pick it up.  This is when I realized how unbelievable mean I was being to myself.  I finally started to realize that all the crap I had been carrying around with me over the years was weighing me down and taking its toll on my body.  I had a wake up call and if I didn’t forgive myself for all the grudges I had been holding against myself I was going down fast.  So I began to tune it all out and just be with myself and tell myself who is in charge and it’s myself (did you follow that).  I forgave myself for everything, for yelling at my kids that morning, for feeding my children caged chicken eggs (please don’t tell Oprah but they were on sale and I was short that week) or for having a bad hair day (I’m allowed to you know).  My point is I started to be nice to myself.  I started to talk to me like I talk to my friends and it felt good to be let into such an elite club.  I mean just ask you who is reading this right now, you should know!  I learned to be MY friend.  Don’t get me wrong it’s easy to fall back into old habits but I bounce back pretty quickly now since it feels good being so nice to yourself.  You should totally try it, it will make you awesome just like me!!

I’m kind of a mess

1 Sep

When life gets out of control hopefully we all try to do those things that bring us back to our center.  Recently I thought I would try something new just for this purpose.  I heard about Bikram Yoga and thought hey I love hanging out in 105 degree rooms consisting of 40% humidity especially with my curly hair, I should totally try this.  So one morning I decided to get up super early to make a 6:00 am class and partake in this 90 min adventure before work.  So I packed my lunch and grabbed my work wardrobe to make this surreal experience a reality.  So fast forward, which I wish I could have during that class.  Boy it’s hot in there!  I finished and I’m pretty sure I was in the final stages of full on dehydration.  I rehydrated myself and did all the pre-work grooming I needed to get myself into the office at a bright and early 8:00 am.  As I was driving to work I was feeling pretty good about myself.  I had just survived being stranded in the desert while doing the full locust pose.  I was feeling pretty good right about now when i realized, I didn’t brush my teeth today!  How could I not brush my teeth?  Look at me in my cute outfit and I just spent 90 mins doing what I’m supposed to do to be a very grounded spiritual person and I couldn’t manage to brush my teeth?  As I told this story to my friend her response which are words I live by now, “you can’t have it ALL together.”

I realized that as much as we try to have it all together at moments I am generally not one of those people.  I am that person who drops my sunglasses about 100 times a day.  I park horribly and I’m that person I see so many post photos about where people are mad at the parking jobs of these ‘not together’ people.  I was even called out from work to re-park my car.  The security guard literally asks me every morning I come to work if I parked okay.  I need an assistant.  I might not be as important as famous actors and actresses but why can’t I seem to get myself together?   Then I realized my problem is multitasking.  I am NOT a good multitasker.  If you ask me to get you a cup of coffee, I can do that.  I can even put cream AND sugar in it if you want.  But please don’t ask me for coffee AND a trombone.  I would bring you back a Fanta and some crayons (ok maybe not that crazy but close I’m sure).  As soon as there is one more task I’m a mess.  We are in a society that celebrates multitasking to the max!  Why do I have to do a million things in 5 minuets.  I think I would rather do 500,000 things okay or even 250,000 things pretty good or 1 thing awesomly.  I mean why do we have to do everything?? Who are we trying to impress?  People who probably don’t care one iota (I love that word and try to interject it most of my conversations but fail miserably a lot) about us?  I used to think multitasking was something to strive to be.  Then I realized I’m not a juggler.  I didn’t go to clown school although I have been to a clown convention.

My point is and yes I have a point is just like my very wise friend said to me, “we can’t have it all together.”  So if you forget to brush your teeth or park your car bad, who cares?? I don’t!  In fact I would rather spend my precious time here on this planet with other messes out there so if you’re reading this and you’re a mess….Holla!!!  We are awesome!