Fear and Confidence

The other day, my friend asked: “What’s your biggest fear?” I automatically responded: “dying alone”, cringing as I heard the words leave my mouth. It’s such a cliché response! And of course my friend immediately pounced on me and gave me the cliché retort to my answer:  “every man dies alone… blah blah blah.”

I wasn’t thinking of literally dying alone though – as in not having someone physically by my side while the last remnants of life slipped away from me.  I’m not too worried about the dying part of dying alone. It’s the alone part that scares me. I fear that by the time I die, I will not have found true, unconditionally reciprocated love.

The fact that I felt like “dying alone” is a cliché of a fear, is reflective of how common it is for people to fear loneliness.  All people seem to have a natural aversion to loneliness, after all, humans are beings who need each other. From the time we are born, we need more care and protection than any other animal I can think of. We are fragile and don’t have the same natural protections as wild animals. We have no fur to keep us warm. We’re not fast enough to out run most predatory animals. Except for some impressive par-corers, we don’t have the reflexes and agility to make a fast escape in the trees, nor do we have wings to fly or fins to swim away when we’re in danger. In short, if you take us away from all of the collaborative efforts of the other people in the world, we are going to die in the most pathetic lame way possible.

A while back, I watched a video of a Giraffe birth. The first moment of this creature’s life was a four foot drop onto hard pact dirt. The little Giraffe not only handled the fall like a champ, but it took its first steps within minutes of its crash landing. A human baby can barely sit up without help for the first 6 months of life. Clearly, we humans need each other in a way that most animals don’t. Our relative frailty and dependence is a weakness to the individuals of our species, but a strength to the species as a whole. The fact that we bond together - care for, share knowledge with, teach and cooperate with one another, is the only reason that our frail, hairless, uncoordinated species has been able to survive and thrive. It’s through our social interactions that we’ve been able to develop language to preserve and build on knowledge and through cooperation have used that language and knowledge to manufacture our own versions of fur, fins and wings as well as compensating for any other natural endowments we lack. Thus, it seems like having a fear of being alone just makes good sense.

Most people therefore seek out other people. I on the other hand, spent most of my life dealing with my aversion to loneliness by avoiding people. I’ve always worried too much about what people think of me -because I’ve always liked people. (I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met that I couldn’t see some relatable or endearing quality in… even people that I don’t like or get along with, I feel like I can at least kind of see why they are the way they are). Ironically the fact that I cared so much rendered me painfully shy. I would put so much pressure on myself to think of the perfect thing to say to people to make them like me, that I couldn’t think of anything to say to them at all and then I would chastise myself internally for being so awkward and lame. At the same time I never wanted to put myself out there too much because I worried that people would reject me and I wouldn’t be able to recover from it.  I think most people experience social anxiety to a certain degree, but I had it bad.

I worried that if I exposed myself too much and was rejected by people, what little faith I had in myself might be shaken to the point that I would just become this dull cowering ball of mush. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy though because whenever I was in a social situation I would freeze. I lacked faith in people. I didn’t trust others to accept me and appreciate me for who I was and at the same time I didn’t trust myself to act in a way that was worthy of appreciation or acceptance.  I would be the very lame person that I was so afraid of becoming, so I thought that was who I was. 

In the last couple of years, I’ve really started to come out of my shell though. My job requires me to interact with people all the time, so I was forced out of my shell and I translated that to my social life as well. I knew that I could force myself to speak competently and confidently with clients at work, so I made myself talk to strangers outside of work too, willing myself to just fire out the first thought that was in my mind before I had the chance to muddle my brain with self-doubt. When I wasn’t diverting so much effort into protecting myself from ridicule, I let people I’d normally be guarded around see what I was actually like and it turned out that most people liked and appreciated me.

I started to really enjoy talking with people. I started to seek people out and my life has only become better as a result. Every once in a while I do get ridiculed to varying degrees for stupid things that I’ve said or done. People sometimes glare at me when I make a bad choice while driving or biking and I’ve heard a sharp “what did you say?” or two when I’ve blurted something out that was probably not phrased in the most sensitive way. There have, of course, been instances where I’ve been rejected – be it getting turned down for a date or struggling to find tenants to rent my house etc. Each incident that cast light on my imperfections, would make me cringe, but it hurt less and less to be rejected or ridiculed after a while because I realized at the end of the day, I was ok. My life went on despite the fact that not every person I met adored me. Enough people understood who I was and appreciated me for it, to make me feel assured that I am a worthwhile person.

The more I put myself out there, the more I realized I wasn’t as fragile as I’d made myself believe. As I tried new things, I discovered new capabilities I had which made me feel more assured of the fact that I could rely on myself. I could walk up to a guy and strike up conversation. I could fix the webcam on my laptop. I didn’t need someone else to call and complain on my behalf when the repair shop didn’t fix the issue with my car. I found out that I could fight my own battles and take care of myself.

Now I am striking out on my own and taking charge of my life in ways that I never have before, and though I do feel the nagging ache of loneliness at times, I have enough self confidence to believe that eventually my perfect man will want to be with me the way I want to be with him. For now though, I feel that I can count on myself to bounce back after rough patches and press forward to make my life what I want it to be.

Whisking up memories

My brother texted me the other day to see if I would be interested in writing a story for his 6th grad class who is reading a book about collecting things. He said I could write about any kind of collection. I said, Challenge Accepted! And then I wrote this story:



Whisking up memories

Rhombi Diamond was exhausted and famished when she ambled into Crazy Carmen’s Hawaiian Bake Shop behind her parents and her little brother, Hex. They’d just come from the most amazing beach she’d ever visited, with shimmering course black sand that blanketed the shore between the highway and a stretch of tide pools containing innumerable aquatic wonders: majestic sea turtles idling in tiny ponds of ocean water as they waited for the tide to whisk them back out to sea, brightly colored sea anemones with dozens of flowing arms swaying with the tide, skittish black crabs scuttling around the rocks to avoid the people and waves that chased after them and hundreds of tiny fish darting this way and that in the shallow pools. Rhombi and Hex spent hours crawling along the rocks watching and taking pictures of the amazing critters they saw in the tide pools.

About the time they felt like they’d seen all that there was to see in the tidal pools, their parents called them over for a snack of deliciously fresh pineapple, macadamia nuts and coconut water that they’d bought earlier that day from a farmers market. After they’d eaten, Rhombi’s father surprised her with snorkeling gear and Mrs. Diamond presented Hex with a brand new beach bucket and shovel. Hex immediately complained that he’d rather go snorkeling with Mr. Diamond and Rhombi, but he was only 6 and had just started swimming lessons that year, so when his mother explained that the water was much deeper than even the “deep end” of the pool near their house, he was happy enough to stay on the beach and build a sandcastle with Mrs. Diamond.

Meanwhile, Mr. Diamond gave Rhombi a quick lesson on how to use the snorkel to breath, telling her to just inhale and exhale through her mouth and not her nose while she swam; he also told her that there was coral under the water but that she was not to touch it or stand on it because the coral was alive and could be hurt if she put too much weight on it or broke pieces off. Then he tightened her diving mask so she wouldn’t get water into it and helped Rhombi carefully climb from the edge of the rocks that formed the tide pool into the deep, warm ocean water.

Rhombi had thought that nothing could be more amazing than the creature she’d seen in the tide pools earlier, but as soon as she put her face in the water, with her vision unobscured inside of her diving mask, she felt like she was suddenly in another world. Vibrant yellow coral that had been hidden by the foamy ocean waves now sprung into view jutting up from the ocean floor. Bright blue, yellow and orange striped fish swam all about her and meandered around the coral reef below. Swimming along the surface of the water, Rhombi felt like she was part of the ocean itself. Beautiful blue green waves rolled towards shore and gently tugged at her as she glided over them and with her face under water she could hear nothing but the solitary sound of her own breath being drawn in through her snorkel (which she thought, sounded almost like Darth Vader from Star Wars) and through her mask she could see nothing but the watery world all around her. It was like nothing but the ocean and its wondrous creatures existed.

She followed close by her father’s side as they explored the coral reef and she enjoyed the freedom of swimming along in the vast ocean, but when the waves began to pull harder and the tide started to roll in over the top of the tidal pools, Mr. Diamond told Rhombi it was time to head back to the beach.

As her father helped her out of the water, Rhombi begged to be allowed to take just a tiny bit of coral or a small hermit crab home with her to remember the trip, but her father explained that the hermit crabs and the coral would not survive long away from the ocean water adding: “besides if everyone took a hermit crab or some coral when they came to that beach there would be no critters in the tide pools and no coral reef left for anyone to enjoy”.
“Ok, I guess that makes sense.” Rhombi begrudgingly agreed.

It had been an exciting day, but when they pulled into the parking lot of Crazy Carmen’s around 2:00 PM, it had also been hours since their snack on the beach, so when they stepped inside, Rhombi’s eyes lit up almost as wide as the cookies she saw in the bakery display case. Mrs. Diamond told Rhombi and Hex that they could each pick out one dessert to have with their lunch. Hex wanted a Hershey’s candy bar, but Rhombi wanted to try something more unique since she’d never been to Hawaii before, so she picked out a “Hawaiian Oatmeal Macadamia nut cookie”.

The moment she sank her teeth into the warm soft cookie she felt like she was back on the beach again. The taste of the sweet pineapple, creamy coconut and buttery macadamia nuts leapt from her mouth to her memory transporting her back in time a few hours to earlier when she’d enjoyed a snack with her family before snorkeling for the first time. Suddenly Rhombi had an idea, “Mom”, she asked, “can you see if you can get this cookie recipe, I want to make these when we get home, so I can remember how much fun I had today whenever I eat these cookies.”
“That’s a great idea Rhombi! After lunch, I’ll see if I can do to coax the secret ingredients out of somebody” Mrs. Diamond said with a wink.

After lunch while Rhombi, Hex and Mr. Diamond headed back to their rental car, Mrs. Diamond lingered at the bakery counter talking to Crazy Carmen herself. Five minutes later she returned to the car triumphantly waiving a small white index card. “Your secret recipe my dear” She chirped as she handed the card to a beaming Rhombi.

The day after her family returned home from vacation, Rhombi, Hex and their mother baked a batch of the Hawaiian Otameal Cookies from Crazy Carmen’s recipe, and they all agreed that they could almost taste the memories. Every vacation after that, Rhombi made it a point to find the cookie that tasted the most like the place she’d visited and get the recipe from the baker who’d made it. Then when she got home, she would paste the recipe in a scrap book along with a picture or two from the trip, so she could pull out her cookie cook book and be whisked back to the exciting places she’d been whenever she wanted.

The more amazing places she went, the more delicious recipes filled her book. She had chewy cinnaminy Maple snicker doodle cookies that reminded her of a family trip to Vermont where they’d watch the leaves turn vibrant shades of orange and red one fall. There was a recipe in her book for gooey peanut-buttery Ohio buckeyes for when she wanted to reminisce about waterskiing with her cousins in a lake near Cleveland one summer. There was a page dedicated to the crumbly salty-sweet ‘Sandies” that brought back memories of the warm sandy beaches and endless pecan orchards she’d visited in South Carolina and dozens more delectable recipes from her other unforgettable vacations, but though her book expanded and grew through Rhombi’s life, no matter how many places she went and how many cookies she tasted, her absolute favorite always remained the recipe she’d pasted onto the first page of her cookie cook book under a picture of her family’s house: “Mom’s chocolate chip cookies”. 

Trying to Nav. through singledom

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the different bonds people form as part of their life strategy. There are 3 basic approaches a person can take when it comes to incorporating other people into their lives. Approach 1:  remain uncommitted and “go it alone”, 2: find one person (or in some less common cases two, or three people etc), to form a partnership for life and  just take on the world as a dynamic duo (or trio or quartet etc) without ever having children.  3:  have kids and form a family unit. In the last few months (since I called off my engagement), my opinion about which of these strategies is best for me has varied widely on a day to day basis as I’ve tried to figure out the direction I would like to steer my life.

One of the main reasons I had wanted to get married several months ago, when I accepted the proposal of my then boyfriend, was because I wanted to have a child and I wanted said child to have as stable a life as possible, so being married to the father of that someday baby seemed the easiest thing to do. As a 29 year old woman who had a good job, but not one that I considered satisfying or meaningful, I’d felt I was in a position where I could either search for meaning through pursuing a career that would be fulfilling OR I could have a child.

 At the time my dream was to open a bakery/café of my own, where I would spend the day turning raw ingredients into delectable breads and cakes and sell the quirky, witty greeting cards I'd designed at the register … and maybe have a stand-up comedy night once a month. Other than an affinity for baking, I had no particular qualifications or plan to start my dream cafe. I worried that if I did open a café, my business might fail after a few years, or never get off the ground at all, and then I would have wasted the last of my reproductively viable years and have nothing but frustration and failure to show for it.

 On the other hand I had everything I would need to create a brand new human life and by all accounts of my family and  friends who had children, having a child is the ultimate source of meaning and fulfillment. Since I felt my age and financial resources prevented me from having both a meaningful/satisfying career AND a child I figured having a baby as soon as possible was the safer bet.

Later, if I felt I had enough money and time, I could go to culinary school to learn how to use proper industrial baking equipment, apply for a loan and THEN have my bakery when I was in my 40s or 50s, in the mean time my life would feel like it had a purpose because I would be a devoted mother … so that was my plan. I was going to stop feeling dissatisfied with my own life by postponing the pursuit of my goals indefinitely and strive for a sense of fulfillment through the new life that I would create with my soon-to-be husband.

The plan didn't quite sit well with me though. It felt wrong to put that responsibility onto a life that I had forced into existence. It felt like too much to ask of someone to have to exist just so they could give meaning to my life. It was horribly selfish and I knew it.

 I couldn't think of any unselfish reasons to have kids though, and so many people have kids, so that seemed like it made it ok. If everyone else thought it was fine to decide to create a life, then it must be fine. Forget about overpopulation; our awesome purpose giving children could figure that out. Don’t worry about the potential suffering of the child; most people get by without any major catastrophes. So what if I couldn’t afford to stay at home and raise my kid and would have to pay the exorbitant cost for child-care so that some random stranger could spend more time raising my child and shaping them to be who they would grow to be? That’s just the way it works now and people turn out fine.

Despite the weak justifications and nagging worries and guilt in the back of my mind, I could still see reasons to have a child though. I wanted a child because children are cute and loving (and, as I’ve said, give meaning to your life). I wanted to live vicariously through my child and reminisce about school as he/she progressed through each grade. I wanted to teach and shape my child into an outstanding human being who would achieve the success with his/her life and career that I never did (because I’d decided to have a child instead?).  I wanted my niece to have a cousin to play with so they could be lifelong friends. There’re just all sorts of events and milestones to make you feel like a proud parent and having a child just opens up so many experiences to you that you cannot have without a child, so I wanted that.

 Also, I kind of expected my child to grow up to be a companion to me after his/her father died (because let’s face it, my former fiancé was 14 years older than me, didn’t eat particularly well and had made some questionable choices about drugs and his general health when he’d been younger, so I didn’t expect him to live nearly as long as I would). In short, I wanted a guarantee that I would  not end up old and alone.


I decided I wanted more than to not be alone though, so I broke off my engagement, thus (at the very least) tabling the possibility of having a child. Having children vs. not having children wasn’t the ultimate deciding factor in my calling off my engagement though. My decision ultimately stemmed from the fact that I wanted more from my life and more from my life partner than I would’ve had if I’d stayed with my ex-fiancé. I could have settled down with him and had a perfectly content life, but it would have been settling… down…

After I got through my weepy, self-doubting, self-pitying, “oh-god-what-if-I-just made-the-biggest-mistake of-my-life?” phase and transitioned in to acceptance of my singledom, I was overwhelmed with the possibilities for my future and I didn’t know exactly how I wanted to integrate other people into my new life. Having a child was certainly not a motivating factor for me at that point though. A child was not going to be my vehicle towards finding a purposeful existence. If I had a kid, it was going to be at some point after I felt satisfied that my life was meaningful and fulfilling already.

I wished I was the kind of person who could be content with savage independence. I wanted to be significant enough to myself to not need another. It would be so clean and liberating. There would be no frustrating and tedious arguments about mundane daily life, no one to scold me for drinking out of the milk carton or demand to know why I’d just left my socks in the middle of the living room floor. I wouldn’t have to settle for compromises; everything could be my own way.  How I spent my free time, how I spent my money, where I went on vacation, what I ate for dinner and when, would all be entirely up to me if I could just ditch that stupid nagging need for companionship. 

It would be a selfish lifestyle in certain ways, I felt - making so many decisions without considering anyone else, but in other ways it was also a very courteous way to live; without burdening anyone else with the need to console me, care for me or compromise and yield to my wishes. I would indirectly be doing a favor to others. I wasn’t ever thinking that I would want to suddenly abandon my parents and the rest of my family or cast off all of my friends or anything like that, but if I could be fully self-sufficient, it seemed that it would actually improve my relationship with others in my life. Without having to consult a significant other’s schedule or finances, I would be uninhibited and able to spend time with the people in my life more freely. It would be great… if I could manage to convince myself that I didn’t need to be in a romantic relationship with anyone.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the freedom of going it alone, could ever be enough for me to settle the nagging of loneliness and vulnerability inside me. Maybe someday I’ll be confident and strong enough to ignore my longing for a companion, but at the moment, I can’t help but worry about being alone and long to feel like the person I love will always be there for me when I need them. If I didn’t have a partner in life to rely on, hiccups in life could turn into major catastrophes. There would be no one to help me get by if I suddenly lost my job or was injured to the point where I couldn’t work for a significant amount of time. No one would be there to hold me and console me at night if a tragedy befell someone I loved and I wouldn't have the joy or comfort of feeling unconditionally loved and unconditionally loving someone else.

 I happen to like helping others and enjoy surprising someone I care about with a gift or card and I love sharing secrets and inside jokes with people who are particularly close. I enjoy cooking and sharing meals with someone each night, spooning at bed time and trusting someone enough to have sexy and/or intimate time with them. – those shared experiences make me feel significant… and in spite of my dream to be fully independent, I quite like to matter to other people because other people matter to me.

I recently enjoyed an amazing week in Hawaii with a friend, his wife, father and sister in law and part of what made it such a great week (aside from the fact that we were in tropical paradise) was that I felt like I got to be an honorary member of a really happy cohesive family. Each person contributed to the “family” in various ways, volunteering to cook, or clean or just adding an interesting element to conversation, but no one was a burden on anyone else. Everyone took care of his or her self as an individual, but offered to strengthen the “family” unit by contributing to the group. My friend and his wife don’t have kids and they may never have kids, but he told me they were just happy to “share their life experiences with each other”. They have each other’s backs when needed and lend help to one another on a daily basis, but they still manage to each be very independent people, traveling on their own at time and pursuing their own projects and goals and coming together with family and friends occasionally to form a happy little unit to share a vacation or visit with.

 I was struck by the balance they’d achieved in their relationship – they have the security and joy of each other’s love, they have strong bonds with their existing families and friends without needing to have kids and they both function as individuals. To me, they seem to have the perfect union. I hope someday I can achieve a similar situation as my friend’s for myself, but unfortunately cultivating that kind of a relationship is not as simple as deciding that is how I want to live my life, so for now I’ll just have to try to embrace my independence, enjoy the pursuit of the perfect partner, and check to see if any of my roommates want to spoon with me when I’m feeling lonely.  

going bananas in Hilo

I’ve been fighting off a cold since I left for vacation five days ago and had been up past midnight playing a board game last night with Michael, his father, Ivy and Judy, thus I was still pretty tired when I woke up this morning around 7:30AM, but I’d been sleeping on the futon in the living room of Michael and Ivy’s vacation rental, so when the sound of Michael making tea in the kitchen roused me, I knew there wasn’t much chance I was going to be able to get back to sleep. Remembering that I had a delicious “apple banana” to slice into my breakfast cereal, was sufficiently exciting to put a little spring in my step though. It’s weird, I was never really a fan of bananas for the vast majority of my life, but in the last few months, I have been growing to appreciate them to an almost obsessive degree… I still don’t like the fruit by itself so much (although these apple bananas that they have in Hawaii are definitely delectable enough to stand alone!), but I love bananas IN everything now: cereal, cupcakes, cottage cheese, bread and as I discovered at lunch today- ice cream. It’s like the perfect balance of sweetness with just a pop of tartness, so it harmonizes perfectly with any sort of slightly bland food and make it sing!

About the time everyone was finishing breakfast and I was helping myself to a third cup of tea, the power to the rental house went out, and since basically everything in the house is dependent on power: stove, tv, phone – even water (since there is an electric pump required to bring water into the house), when the power went out, so did we.

It was the second day in a row of beautiful blue skies and bright warm sunshine in Hilo (every other day since I’ve been here it has rained for the majority of the day and night), so we took advantage of the weather and hit up a few of the local beaches. The first spot had a small black sand beach dotted with jagged rocks and the ocean was packed practically elbow to elbow with surfers and boogie boarders bravely (if not recklessly) riding beautiful curling waves of crystal blue and aquamarine into the rocky black shore of the beach. There was also a small hot spring, about the size of a back yard pool a couple dozen yards from the surf. About ten kids and one woman who looked to be about 20 were splashing around in the pool. Michael and his father decided to join them and have a soak, but Ivy, Judy and I wishing to avoid being bombarded by the gallivanting, splashing children abstained. It only took about two minutes for the kids to drive Michael and his father back out of the pool.

After that, we headed off to a larger volcanic spring pool that was just a bit down the road. It was a much bigger pool (probably about the same length and width as an Olympic swimming pool, but much shallower). The water wasn’t nearly as warm as the first pool we’d gone to that day, but it was the perfect temperature to swim around (without overheating or getting too cold). As soon as I ducked my head under the clear salty water, all of the lethargy and malaise I’d been feeling that morning evaporated and I was instantly rejuvenated.

This was the second time I went to this particular pool since I arrived in Hilo. The first time I’d splashed around and done a few laps with Michael I had felt clumsy and stiff as I swam, but today, my muscles felt loose and (aided by the buoyancy instilling salt water) I easily glided across the pool with the rhythm and precision I’d had when I’d been on swim team in high school and college. I’d forgotten how fun it was to weightlessly dart along the surface of the water, catching glimpses of bright yellow and black and white striped fish swimming around the lava rocks below me. I swam about a half a mile or so doing various strokes (back stroke, breast stroke and free style) before I decided to find out what everyone else was doing.

Michael and I found a floating seed of some sort that was about the size of a golf ball and we got Ivy and Judy, who had decided not to join us in the pool, to throw it out into the water so that Michael and I could race to it and see who could grab it first. I thoroughly enjoyed trouncing Michael at that game (both physically and competitively). I beat him to the grab 7 out of 7 times and probably narrowly avoided giving him a nose bleed for the second time since I’ve known him, but hey, if someone grabs your toes, their face be damned, you’ve got to do what it takes to get your foot back right?

After some coaxing and after seeing how much fun Michael and I were having, Ivy and Judy decided to get their swim suits and join us in the pool, bringing Michael and Ivy’s snorkeling mask with them. While Michael and his father showed the girls how to use a snorkel, I took some time to do some underwater exploring of my own, pulling myself along the rocks under water as far as I could without coming up for air. It’s so beautiful and peaceful to be under water in general, with the net of light woven by the waves dancing across the bottom of a pool and beams of sunlight cast like shimmering javelins into the water, but having the added bonus of tropical fish and beautiful volcanic rocks to swim among elevated the experience to: truly awe inspiring. As I held in my breath and silently shimmied between the surface of the water and the rocky bottom of the pool, it was like the most beautiful and complete solicitude I’d ever experienced: total silence, not another person in my line of vision and my body surrounded by water that was exactly the perfect temperature. It was heavenly.

As the tide of the ocean began to rise and the heated water from the pool became diluted with the cooler ocean water, I decided to maintain my body heat by laying out and sunning myself on a rock while I watched the waves crash and roll to shore spilling into the pool. Much to my chagrin though, in a quest to develop an enviable tan to show off to my coworkers when I got back to the office on Wednesday, I’d flagrantly disregarded the power of the sun and had NOT put on sunscreen that morning. It occurred to me as I lay stretched across the surface of the warm rock that I might regret that move later, but I told myself a little sun burn was a small price to pay to make my ghostly white skin enviably tan. However as we journeyed further down the coast of Hilo, I could feel the heat radiating from my sunburned skin, so I decided I’d better cut my losses and applied a protective coat of sunscreen.

We knew we were getting close to our next stop for the day, a beach which our tourist guidebook described as a “complete tanning” beach, when we were passed by an extremely tan dreadlocked man zooming along on a motor cycle wearing nothing but a tattered loin cloth which flapped so violently in the wind, it seemed certain that he would be a nude motorcyclist within a few miles. I am not sure if we saw that motorcyclist at the beach or not when we arrived though since we didn’t linger long there and unclothed, extremely tan, dreadlocked men seemed to be the catch of the day at that gorgeous beach- which was covered with a multitude of less gorgeous naked bodies.

It was only a few miles down the road that we stopped at our last tourist destination for the day, Kalapana lava flow, an area of several square miles that, 30 years earlier, had been completely covered by a 60 ft deep lava flow, leaving an expanse of solid black lava rock dotted here and there with ferns and young coconut trees that’d been able to root in the crevices of the volcanic rock. It was impressive to stand on the hardened lava and realize that three decades earlier if you’d have been in that spot you’d have been floating several stories above the pacific ocean off the coast of the town of Kalapana. It’s amazing how quickly a volcano can completely change a place- turning ocean into land, sandy beaches into jagged cliffs or towns into rock. Walking on the hot black surface of the lava and pondering the magnitude of the geological events that had occurred helped us all work up a pretty good appetite, so we made like a fissure and split, heading off to Pahua to grab some grub.

As I inspected my lobster red face in the mirror of the bathroom at a Thai restaurant where we were having supper, I suddenly remembered all of the consequences of over exposure to the sun (melanoma, moles, freckles, extreme pain) which greatly outweigh the benefit of sporting an awesome tan for a few weeks, but it was too late to go back and make wiser sunscreen choices at that point, so I suppose I’ll just have to hope that my better judgment gets back from vacation by the time I do. Despite the burn though, this was one of the best days I’ve had in a really long time. 

HI flying

As I was boarding my flight to Hawaii to this morning, a disheveled older man with a scraggly beard who was standing a few people ahead of me in the queue to get on the plane, began rifling through a trash can that was sitting right next to the line of people getting on the plane. He plunged shoulder deep into the trash emerging seconds later with a triumphant look on his face and a discarded coffee cup. He swigged back whatever liquid remained before tossing the cup back into the trash from whence it had come.

I watched the scene unfold with only one (obvious) thought echoing through my mind:  please don’t let this man be seated next to me on the plane! I changed the phrase to myself like a mantra, as if I could somehow ward him off and change reality if in fact the man was holding a ticket for seat 30B (the seat next to mine). Please don’t let him be sitting next to me. Please don’t let him be sitting next to me. I silently pleaded as I hand my ticket to the flight attendant at the gate and made my way down the ramp to the plane.

The closer I got to my seat, 30A, the smaller the buffer of people there was between myself and the crazy dirty coffee man, until, around row 25, I was directly behind him. I held my breath, partially in anticipation and partly because the man smelled exactly like what you would think a man who drinks back washed coffee out of a trash can would smell like. My internal chanting became more desperate and specific: God, please don’t let this man be in seat 30B! Please, oh please, don’t let me spend the next 7 hours of my life elbow to elbow with a man who has such little regard for social conformity that he shamelessly  - proudly even – fishes through trash cans and guzzles the dregs of other peoples discarded coffee in front of an audience of dozens of people who will soon be sharing a plane with him.

I continued to follow behind the man, passing row 26, row 27, 28, 29 and then to my great relief, he walked passed row thirty. Continuing deeper into the bowels of the plane where he would be someone else’s problem. I jubilantly crammed by carry-on bag into the overhead big above my seat and shoved my laptop case under the seat in front of mine.

There was only one seat between my window seat and the aisle of the plane, and for a long while, that seat remained empty. I began to visualize myself luxuriously sprawled across the seats in the lap of luxury on my flight to tropical island vacation, but fate did not deal me that particular hand. As it happened, shortly before they closed the doors from the plane, a tall, attractive young man wearing Stanford University volleyball team sweats eased himself into the seat next to me.

My new seat partner immediately offered to switch and let me have the aisle seat if I preferred. “No thanks. I don’t like the aisle, I take it you prefer the window seat as well?”
“Yeah, it’s easier to sleep when you can lean against it. I thought I’d booked the window. Oh well” He replied
“yeah. I like that too.” I said dismissively.
Even though he’d been looking out for his own interests, I started to feel bad about not offering to switch seats with him when he chivalrously got up a minute later to help a hapless old lady with her bag. She had been trying to get help from the flight attendants in finding a space for her rolling carry-on bag, but after several minutes the flight attendants more or less gave up and told her she would have to pay to check it. Upon hearing this, the guy got up and sprung to action, saying “ I think I see a way to make this work.”

He began re arranging bags in the overhead compartments, transferring them from one compartment to the other and fitting them perfectly into place (as if he were masterfully playing a real life game of Tetris). What made the feat all the more impressive was the way he would grab a piece of luggage from one compartment, then look instantly at the appropriate person and ask “is this your bag – can I move it?” each time having correctly identified the bags owner, he would receive polite consent. When he had finished moving the bags that had already been in the overhead bins, he reached over and took the old woman’s bag easing it into the perfectly sized space he’d created in one of the bins. The woman gratefully offered to buy my seatmate a drink when we arrived in Maui. He just flashed a winning smile at her, as he shrugged, saying “it was no big problem”.

After he was done heroically aiding the elderly lady, he slid into the seat next to me and eased himself into conversation with me as nimbly as he’d eased the bags into place. After discussing the vacations we were each embarking on, he told me about how he had worked for a while as PE teacher in Hawaii, then switched his career up, becoming an investment banker in New York, but found that to be ultimately un-fulfilling so was back in school again getting a masters in creative writing with the hopes of becoming a writing teacher after completing his degree and publishing a book.

I was even happier at that point to be sitting next to that kind, interesting young man than I would have been if I had had the whole row to myself. I seem to keep running into people lately living lives that embody different aspects of things that I want to do. I tried to glean as much information about writing and the possible benefit in obtaining a masters in creative writing as I could from my new acquaintance. The main thing I got out of our conversation was that it is impossible to be a writing teacher without publishing a book, and it is greatly helpful to publish a book if you take a lot of “writing workshop” classes and gain connections with fellow students and professors in a writing class. I however, feel that when it comes time for me to think about final edits and publishing, I can probably find a less formal group to “workshop” my writing. Still, it was good to get his perspective.

I did however lose some respect and admiration for the kid when, about half an hour before we landed, he turned to me and said, “hey check out this little Haiku I really like.” And then showed me a little book he had of Haikus and pointed to one about wearing sandals in the summer and spring or something. There is something about guys being into poetry that I just don’t approve of. I always feel suspicious that they are just pretending to like poetry to seem more appealing to women, but then if they actually are into poetry, I feel like they are less masculine than most men. I know it’s judgmental of me, but it’s just an immediate reaction that I can’t quiet in myself.  Since this particular guy had already mentioned he was an aspiring writer and had already proven his chivalry, when we parted ways, I was left with an overall positive impression of him.

As I sat in the airport after my encounter with this stranger, I began to reflect on the chance meetings I’ve had lately. I am not a fatalist, but Career-wise, the “things happen for a reason” person would probably tell me that, the world is cheering me on and encouraging me in the direction I’m moving. Running into Anosh on New Years, who works in marketing, and this guy on the airplane, who works in writing, has given me insight into two aspects that I would like to weave into a career. Plus my company’s encouragement of me in taking over the Shamrock Facebook page is another good sign. I am not sure if writing for advertisements is ultimately where I will end up, but at least it’s a good direction to point myself while I continue to search for what’s write and build up an appealing skill set to put on my resume.

On the other hand a “things happen for a reason person” might tell me that the seemingly ceaseless challenges I’ve been facing due to cohabitation lately and think that the world was telling me that I need to just live by myself. (First having to find an immediate living situation for myself, then finding a permanent one, then having to find tenants for Tony’s and my home when he decided to move out and now having to find more roommates for my new home since two out of three of my current roommates have decided to take up residence elsewhere… it’s exhausting).

My career and living situation are both challenging aspects of my life that require more thought and attention than I’d like right now, but I am still confident that I will end up in the right place on both fronts… and hopefully I’ll meet more attractive intelligent young men to offer me more guidance along the way too.   

REALLY rubbing my face in my mistake

When I left my office after work on Monday evening, the pitch blackness of 5:30 PM was not far off and I was setting out without a headlight on my bicycle. I had almost forgotten through the course of the day that earlier that morning when I’d gone to re-unite the light affixed to the handle bars of my bike with its faithful companion, a rechargeable battery pack which I’d been charging via USB cable in my bedroom, something had gone horribly awry.In the dark morning’s lack of light, as I preformed the same procedure that I've preformed a hundred times: plugging the light into the battery pack (in exactly the same way I always do),  I bent plug from my light so severely it would no longer go in the outlet of the battery pack and by repeatedly trying to jam the obviously ruined plug into the battery pack I managed to dislodge the “plug in hole” on the battery pack so that it was just kind of rattling loosely around. I had however, already made up my mind that I would be riding my bike to work that day because, due to weather and post-work engagements, it was the only day that I would actually have the opportunity to cycle to work last week, so I rode to my office in the predawn darkness and arrived without incident. 

I was explaining this to my coworker Sarah, as I got ready to go home that evening and I was telling her that I was a little worried about one particular stretch of my ride because there were really no street lights to illuminate the road, but I figured if I pedaled fast enough and got passed that part I would be fine… and if I didn't  it might be bad. Well, I didn't pedal fast enough, I came to the dark stretch of road about 5 minutes after it was officially a bad idea to be out cycling with no headlight.

I saw the metal fence post that slanted low across my path about 1 second before the front tire of my bike struck it and though I do enjoy being right about things, as I sailed off my bike, over the handle bars and skidded face first across the gravel towards a road with fast moving cross traffic, it was of little consequence to me that I’d been right about that particular stretch of road- It was in fact kind of dangerous to ride there with no headlights.

As a car zoomed by about 3 feet from my head, I looked over and saw my glasses laying on the ground  half a foot in front of me. I felt a flash of pain shoot through my right elbow and my cheek stung from what I assumed to be a dozen or more tiny cuts carved out by the gravel that I could still feel clinging to my face. My right knee throbbed and my left hand burned with pain, and my bike laid flat on the ground behind me, but the thing that concerned me the most was my poor glasses. My beloved glasses. The glasses that framed my face better than any other pair of glasses I’d ever put on. That pair of glasses, that had survived a cold night alone in a ditch (after I’d stumbled and fallen into said ditch when I'd been drunk five months earlier), those glasses that I’d just paid $50.00 to have the arm welded back on a month prior, those glasses that I loved above any other material object I owned were laying covered in mud and gravel (and from what I could tell in the dark… without my glasses on) were now irreparably disfigured with deep scratches to the left lens and arms that were bent in opposing directions. I reached out and picked them up, gingerly brushing off the dirt. As I'd feared, the lens was indeed deeply scratched, but I was able to bend the arms back into the right position and as I put them on my face I found that they still fit and were still mostly usable – at least it was easier for me to see with them on than with them off.

I assessed my own injuries and decided that I had not injured myself badly enough to prohibit me from riding the remaining 5 miles home- assuming my bike was still ride-able.  It was. The chain had come off, but thankfully, my bike had sustained no major damage. Once I had my chain situated properly, I jumped back on it and rode home.

As I was riding it occurred to me how lucky I had been. It had of course been unfortunate that I’d fallen and it was very very unfortunate that I would have to replace the lenses in my glasses, but judging by how badly my left side of my face stung and how badly the left side of my glasses were scratched, If I had not been wearing my glasses I might have needed stitches on my eye lid or something. My glasses, who had put up with so much abuse from me already, had actually saved me. They threw themselves into an onslaught of gravel and dirt and saved my eye from being cut open.

I've always liked my glasses, but I love these glasses now… being a 4 eyed nerd saved my face tonight! My helmet had a great assist too. I think I might have sustained a pretty bad noggin injury if I hadn't had that big Styrofoam and plastic head adornment. Also, if it had been summer time and I hadn't been wearing two layers of pants and a thick jacket over a long sleeved shirt and 2 pairs of gloves, I think I’d have a lot less skin right now, so all in all, I think that night I managed to really grind in a fairly important, albeit obvious, lesson about the need for a light when bicycling in the dark. In fact, my new bicycle headlight should be delivered to my office by Monday!

Little house in the sprawling suburbs

When Laura Ingalls was 10 years old she – or anyone else in her family - could have told you exactly how everything in her home worked… and her family would have made 99% of the things that were part of their life… from their home itself to the bread they ate for dinner… everything had at one time been a part of nature that they had used their own hands and ingenuity to transform into something that sustained their lives… it’s so natural and amazing… I think that was supposed to be the stopping point for technology. With that situation… you really could lose it all – your house your possessions all your money and just start over and be fine in a couple years. The only things they really could not make themselves were glass, their gun, nails and maybe their pots and pans… but people have been melting down metal and sand to make those things forever so I’m sure if they really wanted to and lived near a mine and/or a beach they could make those things on their own too.

I cannot even being to explain most of the things in Tony’s and my house were made… I would guess that machines spit out about 90 % of everything we own. Even fairly simple concepts like electricity in its most basic form – a light bulb- are too much for me to really comprehend – I do understand that a light bulb works because the filament inside is superheated and gives off light… I just don’t really follow how the electricity is created, stored and brought to me by PG&E. I think there was a quote in Little Town on the Prairie about how” no one really know s how electricity works but we know how to capture it now” (not a direct quote by the way – just a vague recollection). Even photographs or radios- technology that has been around for quite a while (by today’s standards) boggles my mind. It might as well be magic; I just have no idea how you can capture images with light and broadcast sounds thousands of miles through wires… and not even through wires now. There are a few super geniuses out there (or maybe a lot of super geniuses) who really get that stuff and could make it from scratch on their own… and they should have that technology in their home though, but I really feel like many of the world’s problems come from the fact that people all have these things in their home that they cannot make on their own… The technology that is supposed to make our lives so much “simpler” just ends up making them so complicated that everyone barely has time to have a life anymore…. We want these things that we don’t understand – and can’t make ourselves so we need to buy them with money (or steal them)… but let’s assume we go the money route - We need a job to earn money … oh but wait… how will we get ourselves to the job there are so many people that we can’t all work locally, so I guess we need a car or a bus pass or whatever to get to work – more money- and if we’re off working at the job how will we have time to grow our food… I guess we won’t… we’ll buy that too – we need more money – oh and by the way who is going to watch the kids while we’re earning money for the food and the car… and that other thing we wanted to buy with the money we wanted in the first place… hmm I guess we’ll have to pay someone to do that – more money… and in the whole swirl and mess of all of that we all become focused on money rather than the actual things that make our lives possible... and we feel like we need all of this technology because everyone else has it and commercials make it seem vital to happiness… but the things that are really vital to happiness and survival – food and family and friends are things that get put on the back burner most of the time.

I see my parents and my brother only a few times a year now… and most of my really good friends live hundreds if not thousands of miles away. I call them and email but its not the same. I spend 10-12 hours a day at my office working – then waiting for Tony to give me a ride… and I am there all by myself so I really only get a few hours of actual human interaction a day… and once Tony and I get home – after I make dinner I am usually too tired and stressed to do much besides sit on the opposite side of the couch from Tony and watch TV (often while I surf the internet on my laptop and hesurfs the internet on his) … is that life ?

Our society is so fragile and codependent- Hardly anyone has seeds enough to grow food to feed their whole household… for the next year so if we didn’t have the money and capability (transportation etc) to buy food we’d all pretty much starve… we rely so much on the technology that we have and the strangers whose job it is to fill their certain role that makes society work- and yet we don’t even have time for each other while we all go off to earn money we leave our families and our friends behind.

The Ingalls made everything themselves. Tony and I are responsible for making less than 0.1 % of the things in our home… even when I make bread I make it with flour that was grown hundreds of miles away, milled somewhere else , treated with chemicals, packaged with packaging materials from god knows where and shipped to the Costo from which I purchased it… and that is probably simplifying the whole scenario… It is impressive –or at least mind boggling the technology that exists in the modern world… but I just don’t feel like things are really “better” and although people seem to be frowning in the pictures during “little house on the prairie times” after reading Laura’s books I know that they really weren’t unhappy. – they had a purpose and they had a handle on the world. Things now are just so out of control and so so interconnected… everyone is born with the same potential, as the Ingalls were, to create a life for themselves out of only what is found in Nature… that would be awesome… once you are exposed to the modern world though I think its kind of hard to get out there and figure out how to function without technology… people have done it I supposed… the Amish still live that simple and satisfying life… and I read a book about a guy who went and lived in an Amish community for a couple years and he did fine… I think they had a machine that bailed hay and or threshed wheat or something so I:m not really sure if that totally counts though… anyway, people act as though Amish are psychos or at least a little odd… but I think they’re awesome… except for whatever oppression they have towards woman and weird religious stuff. I think in the perfect world there would be life like on the prairie but without the religious stuff getting in the way…. How much pressure would it take away if you didn’t have to worry about money… If money was just something that brought unnecessary luxuries and you realized that they were UNECESSARY… I mean hell… I guess I do live in that world where these things are unnecessary it’s just that I, like pretty much everyone else, feel like I need these things to survive… but If I could find someone to teach me how to make a log cabin and dig a well then I guess I’d be all set… the one thing that makes it seem like only a crazy person would shun techno is medicine… the fact that we can save a family from all dying of small pox or scarlet fever or whatever… that is nice… sickness was a lot more serious on Laura Ingalls’s prairie… but I wonder if we could just take our new knowledge of medicine and make it work without having to use so much high tech stuff. Obviously it wouldn’t work as well without lasers and defibrillators, but we could probably do pretty ok … right? –well maybe not, medicine is one of those things that is way over my head (like lights and cameras).

when I think about where the world will go from here I can only hope that somehow we’ll start to go backwards towards that…maybe we can take our new knowledge of medicine and our ideas of equality and compassion for nature and go back to a simpler life… maybe… I don’t really see that happening, even I would be hard pressed to give up the technologies in my life… after all I’m “writing” down my thoughts about how I’d like to get back to nature by typing on a lap top in my centrally heated home whilst I recline on our lazy boy sofa. I wonder if I could do it for a week though… just totally give up technology … I wonder if I could get Tony to do that … I think they did that on an episode of I Love Lucy and it went HILARIOUSLY wrong… but I already know how to bake bread without it magically expanding to the length of my whole kitchen and pinning me against the sink so I think I could manage it… I wonder if I could get Tony on board… I guess not he has to drive to his job where he works on computers… I suppose I have to be on a computer for my job too… and I guess my bike really isn’t natural… although I think its allowable… maybe we could do it on a weekend… or I could Tony probably would not be on board…It would have to be during the summer though when I had more food in my garden… Ok Memorial day weekend… that’s when I’m going for it…maybe depending on what’s growing I wish Tony could be on board with that kind of life but he is a little tech child and gets anxious when he is too far from a computer… I guess that’s why he needed a pocket sized computer phone that can be with him always… blah. What is the world coming to?

I try to “be the change I want to see” though. I have my garden… and I make my own bread (mostly) by hand now (I can’t help that I love my kitchen aid mixer) and I bike to work and I am hoping to be able to save enough money to move some where that I can afford to be home enough to raise my kids rather than sending them to day care and that is what life is about… being with your family and having a life that you feel like you are a part of and can be proud of. I guess I can satisfy myself with that until the rest of the world decides to start winding things back to the way they should be. Hopefully most people will eventually get on board.

Travels through Podunk

We used to have an electric stapler at my office… well actually that is to say, we used to have an electric stapler that worked at my office… now we have one that doesn’t work, so after the electric stapler stopped shooting out staples, about 4-5 months ago, I went back to using an old fashioned stapler – with an arm that you have to push down on to staple things. Pushing down whilst holding a paper underneath the stapler arm is a little harder than just holding papers under the stapler and having it do the pushing down on its own, but I keep myself in pretty good shape, so I’ve managed so far. My stapler upped the ante a little over 2 weeks ago though, when I started having a little trouble ramming the unused staples to the front of the unused staple chamber (Don’t I have such an amazing vocabulary when it comes to the stapler anatomy… I think I must have a secret dream of working for Swingline … Swingline makes staplers… THE BEST STAPLERS… unlike the staplers that we have at my office… the piece of crap on my desk is made by “Bates” who the hell are they ?… they obviously could use someone like me at their factory to tell them about the proper anatomy of a stapler…).

Anyway, The lazy rammer spring added a third step to the stapling process… not only did I have to hold the papers under the arm AND push down with the stapler… now I had to tap the nose of the stapler on my desks a couple times (to help slide the unused staples forward) before moving onto the aforementioned stapling procedures… on Monday though, stapling at the Menlo Park Shamrock office just got a little too Podunk even for me… ‘cause the spring in my stapler wore out completely, so now to staple something I have to open up the staple chamber, physically push the staples to the front with my finger… or a pen… I prefer using a pen ‘cause its no fun when the staple chamber snaps shut on my fingers… so now to staple something I have to ram the staples to the front, tap the nose of the stapler (on my now dimpled) desktop, gather the papers together and then push down… AND THEN I do the two table taps, get the papers together and push down on the damn arm… so at this point I think at this point it is actually easier (and safer) to go without the stapler entirely and just install the individual staples to my paperwork by hand… or maybe I’ll get a new stapler… I think that our Xerox machine is set up to add a stapler that would actually staple things as I print them… so then I wouldn’t even have to gather the papers together it would be 0 step stapling… God what opulence that would be ! I think I will just have Jose get me a Swingline next time he’s at office depot though.

Another kinda Podunk thing happened to me on the way to work today. I was riding along on my bicycle just about to start onto the Dumbarton bridge (which is about 2-3 miles from my office) when my pedal stopped turning… “weird” I thought to myself as I awkwardly continued along as best I could: peddling fine with my right food and fumbling to keep my left foot balanced on it’s pedal as it circled around…It was like trying to stand still on a log in the river… just very unnatural, and just when I was starting to get a system down, the left pedal just fell clean off. I could kind of see that might be coming, so I just casually stopped my bike, walked back, picked up the pedal and screwed it back on… “Phew problem solved”. It was too easy. It was like I went around putting pedals on my bike all the time … so I got back on my bike and for about 15 seconds I was sailing along thinking I am just super handy dandy and should have my own bike fixin’ show or something… and then the pedal again stopped turning and again fell off. “Hmm maybe I didn’t screw it in right the first time” I thought, so I went and grabbed my pedal out of the road and squatted down on the right side of my bike to inspect how that pedal was managing NOT to fall off. From what I could tell, it seemed to be screwed in the same way as I had just screwed in the left pedal and I don’t know how many ways there can be to screw in a pedal, so I slapped the left pedal back in the same exact way this time being sure that it was as tight as I could possibly make it. Still though, about 25 seconds later it stopped turning… and fell off…

At this point, I figured since I was only a couple miles from my office, and I would be going downhill for the second half of the bridge, I might as well just ride it the rest of the way with one pedal and fix the problem later on… so I rode a few miles today with only one pedal… and I got a few “what’s wrong with this picture” looks from other bikers, but by the time I got here I was pretty good at using the little nub that comes out of the crank as a pedal and I was even a little early to the office… I must say though, it required a lot more effort to be constantly kicking the crank nub rather than just being able to rest my foot on the pedal. (sorry I think I have much better terms for stapler anatomy than bike anatomy) I never really thought about how important pedals are before… or how important it is that they turn as you push them, but it is really important… and I guess the answer to the age old questions… “ how many Jillian’s does it take to screw in a bicycle pedal” is > 1.

My Left Pinkie

My co worker, Jose, bought bagels last Saturday and he said that I could have one whenever I wanted, so yesterday I decided to take him up on it... but, there were only 4 bagels and I didn't wan to be overly greedy by having a whole one myself, so I decided to just have a half. Being the great conservationist that I am I figured that I should not get a plate or the table dirty by cutting the bagel on a solid surface. Instead I thought I'd save the water that it would take to wash a plate or the table and just hold the bagel over the trash can and saw through it with the extremely dull bread knife that we keep at my office... needless to say my super conversational intentions resulted in the senseless waste of the several blood soaked napkins and bandages that I used to try to damn the river of blood that was rushing out of my partially severed pinkie finger after I failed at cutting the bagel without a cutting board . I guess partially severed might be a bit (a tiny bit) of an exaggeration but there did seem to be guts oozing out of my finger along with the blood... it was really quite gross and disturbing.


I think overall it was a positive experience though... I now have the motivation I need to look more seriously into furthering my culinary aspirations by finding a knife skills class... or at the very least I'm going to look into watching a you tube video or something about knife skills ... and also from now on I'm going to think more seriously about tearing breads and similar products in half rather than using a knife whenever that is possible... but I think I have also gained a much deeper appreciation for my left pinkie and all that it does for me...

I never really thought about it before, but a lot of the really good letters on my key board happen to be over there in left-pinkie- ville... not to mention "caps lock" and my favorite shift key... hell i didn't even realize that there was another shift key over there by my right pinkie until just now when I looked down to see what letters were over by my left pinkie. Every a and q in this blog entry... and every other blog entry I've ever done have been brought to you by my good old left pinkie. and every symbol and capital letter have been as well.

Another thing that I have realized since I took it upon myself to cut open my finger is how easily your blood can be rerouted within your body. Every time I make a sudden movement or clench any muscle on my body, now my blood just seems to swish around until it finds itself right there In my left pinkie. A second ago, for example, when I was reaching down with my left hand to pick up a fallen post if from the floor all of the blood in the right side of my body seemed to make a B line for my left had there by making my wounded pinkie throb and ache and sting- just a little.

I must say though, I do think my body is doing a great job of putting things back together right . The informatory response has been really tremendous. So many good little white blood cells have rushed into my pinkie that it's felt like a little heater ever since I cut it... in fact so many of my little immune system warriors are on the scene right now that I can barley feel my left pinkie at all its just so jam packed with goodness. I think I've blogged about it before, but I just really have a great immune system. I know that sounds arrogant, but I think that the very fact that my clumsy mind has not managed to kill me off yet speaks volumes of the greatness of my immune system.

SO in summation Jill + Knife + good intentions = Jill - left pinkie... almost

The start of another year

I rang in the new year at my parents place in Oxnard. My friend Megan slept over on new years eve and we watched TV and gave ourselves facials and just chatted and hung out. It was nice. I haven't had a chance to hang out with Megan alone much since I started dating Tony and it felt very low key with no pressure to have to go out and do something like it seems to when one of us makes a trip to see the other. It felt like we were roommates again. ( I had lived with Megan in San Francisco for about a year when I first moved to the Bay Area).

Megan said that she wanted to sleep in on New Year's Day... and since she usually sleeps until 11:00 AM or later I figured I would have the better part of New Years to myself. I decided I would take that time to try to do something nice for my parents.

We had had a fire in the fire place on New Years eve, so when I woke up on New Years day I got dressed and headed over to the beach (about a block from my parents house) to find some drift wood to replace what I had burned. It was a gorgeous morning ! When I got to the beach I could see the Channel Islands, which are about 30 miles off the coast of Oxnard, clearer than I had ever seen them before. I could even make out some of the larger trees and bushes on the island. Normally there is so much fog and haze that you can't even tell there are Islands across the water at all.

After enjoying the view for a minute I got to my task at hand - the firewood. It didn't take me long to spot a perfect log just at the edge of the surf. It was big enough that if I chopped it up it would build 2 fires for my parents, but it didn't seem to big to carry. I hoisted the log on my shoulders like a yolk and carried it back to my parents house. By the time I got there my sandy wet shoulders told me that this was not going to be immediately useful as fire wood, so I set the log in my parents garage to dry out, changed into a dry sweat shirt and headed back to the beach to look a little farther up the sand for some DRY firewood (this time I had a camera in hand - to get a photo of the lovely channel Islands).

Only about 10 or 15 minutes had passed since I had just left the beach, but already a haze had began to from and the view of the islands was much more obscure than it had been on my first trip. Though, the islands were little more than a dark outline at that point, I took a picture anyway, just to prove to myself (or anyone else who might doubt it) that there were in fact islands off the coast of Oxnard shores. I had to walk a little farther to find any decent sized driftwood in the dry sand, but I finally came upon a few pieces that looked like they would make for a couple of good fires. There were to longish pieces of wood and 3-4 small ones. The whole load combined was much lighter than the first log that I had carried, but it was much more awkward to carry. I ended up shoving the two longer pieces of wood under my arms and balancing the smaller ones on top like a primitive forklift.

Surprisingly no one looked twice at me as I ambled back to my parents house. I guess the neighbors are used to seeing this sort of thing from my father though. He is always ready to carry a good piece of driftwood home for a fire... or decorative garden ornament. I must say there is something very satisfying about hauling your own firewood home. It's a good practical down home work out... my feeling of satisfaction was somewhat diminished after I set down my second load of wood though and I realized that there had been dog shit all over one of the logs and it was not on my sweat shirt... but overall I still felt like I'd accomplished something.

I wanted to keep the productive feeling going, so I changed my shirt... again and made myself a pumpkin curry for lunch which I thought was quite tasty... Megan woke up just as I was finishing mine, so I felt a little guilty that I hadn't waited for her to eat lunch, but there was plenty to go around. We had a lazy roommate style afternoon and then I took Megan back home to Thousand Oaks. All and all it was a pretty uneventful day, but I thought it was a good start to a new year.

older folks + technology = ERROR

The last few days have really reminded me about what amusing creatures the older folks of the the world are....

PART 1:
last weekend I went to visit my great Aunt and Uncle whom I haven't visited for a couple years and my dad wanted to show them videos of my niece Bailey, since they haven't seen her yet. When my dad pulled out the chords to hook his video camera up to their TV, my great uncle got a somewhat annoyed look on his face and warned my father " you better not go messing with those wires 'cause it took my son hours to hook everything up, and I don't know how to reconnect it if you mess it up... and tomorrow there are some football games that i am NOT going to miss ." My dad took Uncle Bill's lack of confidence in him in stride and assured my (great) Uncle that he was going to be very careful and it shouldn't be too hard to just plug his camera in... 15 minutes later the camera was plugged in and my dad asked Uncle Bill to put the TV on channel 3... so my uncle changed the cable channel to 3. My dad tried to play the video ... it didn't show up on the TV... so my dad asked my uncle if he had a separate remote that controlled only the TV and not the satellite. Uncle Bill showed my dad where the remote for the TV was and my dad tried to change the channel. It didn't work... Uncle Bill was QUITE VISIBLY annoyed and concerned at this point "THAT REMOTE WORKED BEFORE YOU GOT HERE" He began.. " Oh maybe the batteries are dead, I'll try putting in some new batteries I brought" my dad interjected "WELL THE BATTERIES WORKED FINE BEFORE YOU GOT HERE ! IF I HAVE TO CALL A GUY TO COME OUT HERE YOU'RE PAYING THE BILL - I AM NOT MISSING MY FOOTBALL GAMES TOMORROW" my uncle pouted... By now my mom, great aunt and I had given up on trying to make pleasant conversation in the background while the boys messed with the TV and were all now intently watching my dad to see if he was going to pull this off or if my parents and I were going to find ourselves suddenly and forever banished from the house. My greatest worry was that we were going to have to cut our visit short and I wasn't going to get to eat any of the delicious smelling Chile Rellenos that my (great) aunt had made...

After my dads brand new batteries did not work, my uncle abandoned any sliver of confidence he might have had in my father, " YOU CALL MY SON AND TELL HIM WHAT YOU DID SO HE CAN TELL YOU HOW TO FIX IT" Uncle Bill demanded. After a failed attempt to explain that he hadn't even removed or touched any of the wires that were already plugged in, my father resigned himself to the fact that there was no other way to get my uncle to settle down than to call his cousin and tell him that he had somehow broken the remote" Ok, I think I have his number in the car, I'll go get it" my dad finally said " NO I'VE GOT IT RIGHT HERE ! " Uncle Bill insisted... clearly he was as worried that my dad was going to just drive off leaving us to fix the situation...

So my dad called up my cousin and started to explain the problem... I can only imagine the laugh my uncle Rick was having on the other end of the phone, when my uncle suddenly decided that my dad was explaining the problem wrong "HERE JOHN LET ME TELL HIM WHAT YOU DID" Uncle bill said, ripping the phone away from my father and consequently robbing him of any chance of redemption that he might have had " HE BROKE THE REMOTE, IT WONT TURN THE TV ON ANYMORE" Uncle Bill explained to his son... "Oh ok I'll try that" Uncle Bill said as he pressed the "TV" button on his universal remote... and Presto- The TV magically turned on... It was pretty amusing to see the whole thing play out... I knew from the second that my Uncle told my dad not to touch the TV that my dad was totally screwed, and I had a feeling the "try the TV button" tip had probably been given to Uncle Bill a few times before... later when we were driving home my dad told my mom and I the only thing that my uncle was able to say to him before the phone was yanked away was "Boy I'm glad this is you and not me"... The Chile Rellenos alone would have made the 3 hour drive to Grass Valley worth the trip, but that TV fiasco definitely made it even more memorable

PART 2:
A few weeks ago I mailed an invoice for $ 1,405.00 to an Elderly customer- after reaching a frustrating impasse when trying to get her to read me her credit card # over the phone (Her son had originally put the charges for the move on his card, but our driver had only taken down 15 of the 16 digits of the card number then when I had called to get the missing digit he decided it would be easier if I just contacted his mother directly for payment... When I called her, she did a great job telling me the numbers on the front of the card, but somehow that darn security code on the back was just too complicated for her 'cause she kept reading me either the first 4 or the last 4 digits off of the front of the card when i asked her to read the last 3 digits on the back of the card).

I always worry a little bit when a customer has an outstanding bill... so I was relieved yesterday to see an envelope with her name on the return address... but when I looked at the amount on the check, I was baffled to see that she had made it out for $ 119.00. ... I figured I must have made an error on the bill I had sent her... somehow I must have mailed another customers bill, but I checked the 2nd copy of the bill that I had kept with her paperwork and I could not find anywhere she could have come up with such a random amount... and then I looked at the address... room 119.... could it be? was she so senile she mailed me a check made out for the amount of her room number... I can only assume she did, and I gotta say it's a pity she did not live in room 9999 'cause that would have more than covered her move... as it is, I have mailed her a copy of her check and a new bill... hopefully we'll get to $1,405.00 some day...

PART 3:
Today while driving home from work my dad called me. (Tony had just set up a new lap top for him while he and my mom were visiting for Thanksgiving...) my dad asked " I got the lap top out of the box... now how do you plug it in ? " what ? I thought to myself has my dad suddenly caught the disease? - This old-people-are-bat-shit-crazy disease that seems to be going around lately... What's going on here my dad is not a tech geek, but I know he's seen a plug before . "well did you find the part with the 2 prongs?" I asked, only half jokingly... my dad said that he had and ended up figuring out on his own that he had to plug the wall plug into the powers upply and the power supply into the lap top... so I guess that is understandable... Most of his other questions he called with throughout the night were understandable too... and dad if you're reading I'm not making fun of you it was just so funny to hear you say (after the last few days that I've had) "how do you plug it in" ?

Just Ignore this one... its for my benefit only

Hello self, I’m writing to you because I think it is somehow less creepy and more socially acceptable for us to communicate this way rather than communicating verbally . Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that we're REALLY crazy… but there are those who would if they heard us chattering about at work and such. I know we just get lonely sitting in an office all day by ourselves, but some people, even you and I at times, think that it’s crazy to talk to ourselves… so lets try to do this instead from now on.

Writing to each other is actually totally acceptable and even encouraged by lots of people. It’s weird ‘cause it seems to be the exact same thing as talking to ourselves, but when we write it out, we’re just keeping a dieary or a journal and we're being reflective and creative and the same people that would say we are crazy for TALKING to ourselves would SUGGEST TO US that we should try keeping a dieary instead... they want us to keep a written record of what we would have said if we had been speaking instead of typing… maybe they just want to read it to each other and laugh at us...

Ok that’s getting a little creepy now… I guess it’s not really what you say it’s how you say it. When I talk to myself as if I’m two people, I guess that’s the crazy part… not just the talking to myself outloud… actually come to think of it, all the time in movies and stuff the characters talk to themselves... there's a lot of talking themselves through things in movies and we (and by we, I mean you and I dear reader(s)) don’t think they’re crazy… even when they say things like “damn it Jane ! think ! Think about what you’re doing !”. I know in movies they have to do that so that we can know what the character is thinking, but it's not really that realistic... how many people really speak to themseleves with such wit and articulation when they are disarming a bomb or in a hostage situation... I wish the voices in my head were as witty as they are in movies... it would make my work day so much more entertaining.

The guy that walks by my window at work everyday screams obscenities at no one… and I think that guy is super crazy… he is usually saying kind of violent things like that he would fuck that bitch up and stuff and I guess I’m just worried that if he saw me he might mistake me for that bitch that he wants to fuck up, so I usually stay really still when h e walks by… I think crazy people are like T-Rexs and can only see movement, so I’m pretty sure by sitting still and holding my breath and stuff I’m saving my life… That tid bit of information about T-rexs is coming directly from something Jeff Goldblum said in Jurrassic park so I dont know if thats really how it works with T-rex's or not... Jeff Goldblum is not actually a scientist... he just played one on tv... actually it was in a movie... actually it was in several movies, the fly, jurassic park, independence day... hmm maybe he IS a scientist... he seems to get cast as one a lot...

Anyway, so here I am writing on my blog… this is one of those disorganized random entries… to try to get me back on the horse again… I sense that I will have a little more free time to think at work since the holidays are coming up, so I’m hoping to use whatever extra time I have to write on my blog… I wasn’t sure what I’d write about today, so I’m just kinda letting it flow… I had thought about perhaps writing about the bagles I just made, which are not perfect, but are more bagel like than any other bagels I’ve ever made… but then I started to think about that movie I never saw called “Julie and Julia” about some chick who wrote a blog about cooking all of Julia child’s recipe’s… and then I started to think about the blog where I got the bagel recipe I used… which is some guys blog about baking, and then I started to think… eww I don’t want to be some poser who joins the” I’m going blog about cooking ‘cause maybe someone will make a movie out of it” crowd. I need my own thing for someone to make a hit movie out of staring A-list celebrities… Wow, that makes me sound like I’m some attention starved spotlight monger . I’m not… I don’t think I would like to be a celebrity, but I would like the cut of profits from a successful movie… god it would be so awesome to have money.

I find I my middle age I am getting more and more resentful of people who have money… I feel that I work just as hard as most people (although not as hard as some…. Most of whom have far less money than I), yet I have much less than a lot of people that work less than me… WTF ? stupid capitalism… its just not a good system… geeze… It’s a good thing I wasn’t alive during the cold war. I’d get my ass beat up for all of my pinko commy thinking… It’s totally un-American to want the world to be fair I guess… wow, I really am bitter… anyway, I’m tired of writing now. I apologize Carly, and anyone else who may have read this for the random all-over-the place-ness o f this blog entry… and I assure you I am not really crazy or uber haterful of the rich… I’m just lonely at work and wish that I got paid more for what I do… or wish I did something that paid more… or wish the world was nothing but fairness and happiness and perfect bagels… anyway, this blog sucked and I’m sure I will be ashamed that I posted it upon re-reading it, but hey, gotta get my head back in the game and all that… Blah… oh wait I used to do voquations at the end… ok so final thought: Jill+ other Jill = bat shit crazy !

Do not eat me

About 1.5 hours ago I decided to eat 1.5 yVes soy dogs despite the slimy whitish film that seemed to have formed over them... I was hungry and I saw the slime and kind of though "eww... maybe I shouldn't eat that..." but then I said to myself "how could I waste such a perfect vegan low calorie high protein snack ?...Y Vyes I think I will have a couple slimy hot dogs"... so guess how I feel right now! bleeah...

I think that I have learned a valuable lesson today about eating slimy foods that are not supposed to be slimy... Their package said that they were best by 10/7/09, so I figured I still had a solid 2 weeks, but maybe I should trust the appearance of the food over the date on the packaging... the solid nasty smelling glob of cream that I threw away yesterday said that it was good until tomorrow... but it didn't fool me... somehow the slime on the hot dogs was more ambiguous though... I couldn't remember if there was always slime on them or not... they did seem grosser than normal... but to be perfectly honest soy dogs are pretty far down on my preferred proteins list... and the package didn't say anything about how quickly the dogs were to be consumed once the package was opened... so I figured if there was some urgent rush to eat these soy dogs after the initial breaking of the seal, then they would clearly state it somewhere on the label... My stomach tells me that I assumed wrong however... and the answer to the quirie about how long is too long for the open package of soy dogs to be hanging out in the fridge would be some number less than 10 days ...

... but I was just this young naive kid 1.5 hours ago... I didn't know the horrible feeling my tummy would have if I ate slimey soy dogs... back then I had even foolishly thought it was a good idea to compensate for the sliminess of the hot dogs (and the lack of ketchup or mustard at my office) by putting mayonnaise on them... "MAYONAISE ? on a hot dog ? !" you might say...and you'd be exactly right... mayonaise does not belong on hot dogs. I know that now... and I fully regret my decision at this point. It seems that covering 1 white slimy substance with another white slimy substance does not actually cancel out the effects of the first white slimy substance... I think in fact the addition of the second white slime may have amplified the nasty feeling in my stomach right now... 'cause now the slimy bacteria that were living on the hot dog can happily wallow in the nice pillowy comfort of the mayonnaise and reproduce like crazy... My tummy feels like a Holiday Inn for diseasey bacteria right now. YAY!

Anyway, I thought I should put the word out about not eating slimy hot dogs just in case there was someone else out there that might go ahead and eat them anyway... and also if I suddenly keel over tonight and die there will be a clue as to what might have caused that. I don't Blame Yves.... they probably should say how long you have to eat their soy things once you open them... but they probably figure there is no one stupid or gross enough to eat a slimy hot dog... guess they didn't figure on me... although I do deserve a small pat on the head for a tiny bit of brain power 'cause I initially microwaved 3 slimey hot dogs but I only ate 1.5 of them, so I guess maybe I'm not completely stupid... just half dumb... 'cause it did eventually dawn on me that the nasty taste and texture was worse than the usual experience that accompanies inadequately sauced soy products.

hmm they have a 1-800 # on the Yves package... I am half tempted to call and ask if I'm going to die... but that would entail making a non work related call ... and if you've read all of my blog entries you probably know how I feel about that...

So to sum up soy dog + slime = DO NOT EAT ME !