No more contusions please

1 Oct

Bruises are the result when broken capillaries are damaged when some type of trauma occurs.  I will also be the first to tell you that I have weak capillaries because I bruise so easily and have been asked many times if I was in some domestic abuse situation (Note: if you are being abused please stop reading this and seek help and then call me to let me know if you are ok).  I have to be honest I don’t even remember how I get most of the bruises on my body.   Of course once you have a bruise it becomes some kind of beacon for another object or some sort of a target to hit that exact spot, Game on!

However, the most painful bruises are the ones nobody can see and seem to take so much longer to heal.  These are the most common bruises that we all carry, some can just hide them better.  Some don’t bruise as easy and some just heal faster.  No matter what category you fit into, bruises hurt.   I used to wish I could be one of those people who didn’t bruise so easily but now I see it differently.  Now I like to look down and see that super awesome purple, blue, blackish tattoo on my leg and think “Oh that must have hurt.” To looking down days later to see it healing and getting lighter and lighter reminding me that bruises do go away.  They give me hope that the bruises that hurt so bad inside get lighter and lighter everyday too.  And when “something” comes along to hit that exact spot that is so painful already I just have to remember that my broken capillaries are healing, just in their own time…

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!

Soul Mates: To be or not to be

29 Aug

In Aristophanes’s speech from Plato’s Symposium we are given a greek mythology explanation of soul mates.  While it is very interesting and makes me feel smart to read it all I will not put you through what I went though so I will paraphrase for you.  Basically two ‘beings’ would come together to form another ‘being’ and when Zeus was all stressing out that this super happy double life ‘being’ might be stronger than the Gods, ‘it’ had to be destroyed.  His plan, to cut this ‘being’ up!  Oh and I’m not talking about the music ‘cut it up’ I’m talking going Samurai sword on them and dismembering their bodies into what the human body appears to us today.  By the way I think this is a very logical explanation of why our bodies are shaped the way they are.  Any how his reasoning was that two beings (the earth kind) would constantly be in search of their other half and when they found them they would finally be complete.  The End.

While that is a very interesting take of the creation of humans and the definition of soul mates I think we can all agree that a more common definition is that there is a deep shared feeling or connection with another person.  Of course these connections can be on many different levels such as compatibility, spirituality, love, sexuality, or intimacy.  Now I could spend a lot of time on each of these topics well some more than others but hey this is a family blog!  I recently found myself lost in the world without my other half, again not for this blog topic and wondered if there was even such a thing as a soul mate.  Is this something we want to believe in so bad so we don’t feel alone in the world?  Obviously not since the those crazy Greeks were talking soul mates before most of us were here.  Yes I said most, you know who you are.

I did my own soul searching because doesn’t it make sense that we know our own soul before we can find that other half of ourself out there?   Well during my searching I found something.  I found that I have many deep connections with people and things.  Yes I sad things.  I love riding my bike and when I’m out there on my bike I feel it my soul.  I know I sound like a five-year old but have you ever seen a five-year old on their bike?  They are unbelievably happy and I know exactly what that feels like.  My bike is my soul-mate.  Do you have a favorite band or music?  When I turn on the Beastie Boys I feel they GET me.  They are all over the place but still saying something you just have to listen closely to get the message, this something I completely relate to.  The Beastie Boys are a soul mates.

During this journey of realizing the things that make my soul sing and bring me happiness I also discovered that it is possible to give birth to your soul mate or in my case mates.  Don’t worry it’s not as gross as it sounds I am referring to my own two amazing boys who make me insane and insanely happy.  One day when I was sitting there wondering how I got to this place and by this place I am referring to the McDonald’s playground in the craziest town (I will not tell you the name of that town for the sake of my safety).  I looked at them and it hit me with those toothless smiles and realized I am who I am because of them and I want to be better for them.   That’s when it hit me, THEY were my soul mates and no matter what else happens in my life or other crazy place I end up with them (Legoland for my birthday) I’m with the only two people who matter in my crazy life.  I even know the exact times I fell in love with them but I will save that for another blog.

So next time someone asks me if I believe in soul mates I know that answer because for so long I didn’t know what to say.  The answer is I do and coffee is my soul mate! It gets me and tastes delicious!

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Infomercials How I Love Thee

25 Aug

I have recently found myself addicted to the mulit-billion dollar industry of infomercials.  From the abdomenizer to the thigh master, I love a good infomercial and I know I’m not alone.  How do I know I’m not alone?  I don’t know how many friend’s I know actually had one of these items.  I am not sure if it’s the fitness craz infiltrating the George Foreman monopoly of infomercials but the new wave of infomercials have gotten smart!  Well smarter than me anyways.  This new birth of infomercials have give us P90X, Insanity, The Brazilian Butt workout and my personal favorite that I actually own, is the Tracy Anderson Metamorphosis.  This is a 90 day plan for women based on your body type will have a specific workout routine just for you!  Sounds amazing right?!  I know I was sold too.  Just like many of you other infomercial junkies I found myself searching through my TV guide on my DVR to actually watch Tracy in the middle of the day!  Yeah it’s true infomercials aren’t just on in the middle of the night anymore this is the “New style” and I can dream about having the most tone thighs in the middle of the day!  So I bought it!  Yep I did and I’m still waiting for my transformation to occur.   Tracy said that if I did everything she told me to do I could have the perfect body!  I am still waiting…

Here is the great thing about Infomercials now, they aren’t just for workout equipment or routines but now skin care.  That’s right my other new obsession is the home care skin care line promoted by my old pal Cindy Crawford.  Yesyou read that right, miss super model herself is pushing her latest and greatest find and sharing it with the rest of the world.  Her secret is that she is friends with these scientists who apparently discovered a rare melon in a remote region in the south of France that stays fresh and firm longer than the rest of the melons in the world.  So these super smart scientists (or SSSs) have found a way to extract the enzyme and make face cream for us normal aging melons!  It is a miracle and it’s all mine.  Well it can be yours to all you have to do is go to the website and sign up and PAY!!  So while the rest of the world is aging I will be smearing a rare melon on my face and doing everything Tracy Anderson tells me to do.  Funny thing is that both of these ladies have straight hair!  I am not trying to be like them but I do enjoy is the idea of the infomercial.  That 30 mins of bliss that if you use their product then something great will happen.  I love the journey of the infomercial.  The excitement of the actors or those who have used the product and LOVED it.  I want to feel that joy, that excitement, that euphoria!!

I love Infomercials…

Curly Hair

24 Aug

I have had curly for exactly 38 years, 4 days and give or take a few hours.  I have not always enjoyed the curls.  In fact if you can believe it I went through a “I want straight-hair” phase.  Shocking I know.  I even went through a perm phase or as my grandpa and the cowardly lion from the Wizard of Oz called them a “permanent.”   I know you are asking yourself, “why would someone with naturally curly hair get a perm?”   That is a great question and I will have to refer you to my mother on that one.  Oh and if you do ask her about that can you ask her what she was thinking with those God awful beige corduroy knickers she made me wear in the 3rd grade.  I am still not over that!

So back to my hair.  Yes I was like most young girls who saw everything great about other girls and wanted to take the best of their qualities and make the perfect version of ourselves.  Which is funny because all those pieces didn’t include any of who we really were.  I remember the first time I had straight hair.  It was a dream come true.  My friend was getting married and I was lucky enough to be in the wedding party.  First bridesmaid gig and boy was it a treat to actually go get my hair did!  So I marched into the beauty shop of lovely Fontana and tell the hair dresser make me beautiful!  So she asks, “would you like your hair straightened?”  I was shocked and thought, “there is no way she can make this head of hair straight.”  I had no idea that black women had been paying these hair dressers to make their hair straight for years.  Remember I grew up in Fontana obviously I didn’t make it into the  beauty salon very often.  Any who after a shampoo, a blow-dry and a serious hot iron session I had straight hair like those girls on TV.   Wow I looked at myself in the mirror and had no idea who was staring back.  So it began my quest to recreate this amazing moment of my hair’s history.  Of course I was never able to perfect it so I kept the curly hair.

Then it happened!  Julia Roberts portrays a crazy red-headed prostitute in Pretty Woman.  Well this changed everything.  People were all into the curls.  Now should I even go into the fact that we are a society trying to emulate a  prostitute.  The answer is No, not in this blog.  Ok so now my hair had clout and street cred!  I had hair like Vivian Ward and that’s fine by me (minus the fact I was not a prostitute).   So time continues and technology develops and brings the beauty salon straighten irons into the homes of regular folk like myself.   I was obsessed.  Planning days in advance as to when and how I was going to wash my hair, blow dry and then spend the next laborious hours of straightening my hair.  It wasn’t until I was actually burning my hands, arms and scalp with the hot iron did I start to question what I was doing.  I was finally able to look like all the other ‘pretty’ girls.  But didn’t they just make a movie about a Pretty Woman who didn’t have curly hair?? I was confused.  Who was I?  Do I have straight hair or curly hair?  Well the answer is easy and since you are on my blog you know the answer.  I am a curly girl.  I am a girl who is happy to look in the mirror and see her hair all over the place because that is exactly how I am.  All over the place.  I love that my hair get frizzy when the weather is humid because that is exactly how I feel when it’s humid.  I have finally accepted and actually love this part of who I am.  It feels so amazing to be accepting of me.   You know what else I learned?? That the only opinion that matters is yours anyways since you are the one who is with you the whole time so be who you are.

I will end my first post with a realization I had tonight…I am really good at being me!

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