Pyrex mystery!

Meanwhile, whilst thrifting...I have a bad habit of finding things mysterious to me and trying to identify them. Yesterday I found this small round clear glass piece of Pyrex, marked "France D". It has a sloped base, but sits flat on the taller rims. It has a semi-circle notch on both sides, opposite to one another, that almost look like ashtray ridges. I've looked everywhere. My best guess is that it's some sort of obscure laboratory part. I'm interested in selling it when I find out what it is. It's my current mystère-du-jour.

I'm sitting in bed eating cinnamon toast and listening to talk radio. It's election day and boy do I not give a flying fuck. I am sick of the constant phone calls, the mail full of glossy attack ads, and the general vomit of political signs all over town. I am done done done. No matter how much I care about the issues, come election day, I usually feel this way. The whole process makes me hate to participate, hate to vote. I'd rather pretend to not care than participate in the orgy of power. That being said, I will step away from the computer and go vote, because I need to shut up about everything if I'm not willing to do the easiest thing available to me.

Cheers to all! Happy thrifting :)

Linking up with Sir Thrift-A-Lot's Thirftasaurus :)

Update: A friendly comment from a reader revealed that this is a milk saver! Thanks readers!

The Boys from Brazil

I realized this week that every movie that I watch that has violence, provides me with some sort of implicit social commentary on the nature of violence. If this were intentional, it seems like peace would be easier to achieve. If the Hunger Games trilogy is so popular, shouldn't we be seeing a peaceful revolution developing right in front of us? Some part of me thinks it is on the horizon, that somehow generations are being formed that will shift global consciousness towards peace and reconciliation. Or maybe I'm too hopeful for my own good.

Yesterday, I watched Red Dawn (1984), directed by John Milius, and starring a young Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen, and at the end of it felt like I'd watched a commentary on present-day Afghanistan. Young people are driven out into the wilderness during an attack on the US, and they become like cave-dwellers in the mountains, paranoid and hungry, willing to kill anyone who crosses them, even their closest friends. Isolation mixed with fear can produce some pretty nasty consequences.

Today I watched The Boys from Brazil (1978), directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. World War II themes combined with 1970s era South America? It sounds like a recipe for my perfect movie. Also, Steve Gutenberg was pretty hot as a young twenty-something ;) It answers the strange and wonderful question, "Should you kill baby Hitler, if you knew he was Hitler?" Fascinating movie about social engineering and evil intent.

I guess the more violence I see, the more senseless it becomes. Perhaps that's just my special brain working. I don't know any better; it's the only one I've ever had :)

Change is scary...

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Viktor E. Frankl

I saw some Oprah thing recently, Oprah's therapist-guru-friend, Iyanla Vanzant, goes to some woman's house and confronts her in her kitchen about her "racket" and how she's a "hustler". It was weird. But it also stuck with me, so this is what I've been thinking about (after the minute of footage that I saw, so this is obviously my own opinion, and probably nowhere near her therapeutic method - fyi).

Some people work incredibly hard to keep from getting real help. They manipulate, and complain, and victimize themselves to avoid getting help, to avoid confronting the things that they've done and the things that have been done to them. It's nasty ugly stuff to watch, but it's also addictive, this vicious cycle of "Help me! Go away!" One can get lost in the circular logic.

I don't know how to stop people from doing this. But I think it might have something to do with accepting that life will not change, and that we must.

Peace out :)

Look! It's a castle!

Vintage Fisher Price castle - 1970s - reminds me of toys at Grandma's house :)

So maybe it's the coming month of fewer hours at work, but I've been bulking up on inventory like a fun thrift store hobbyist. I'm actually quite content right now, listening to country, drinking some cafe au lait, and trying on vintage eyeglasses while I list them, and it's been quite a long time since I haven't begrudgingly listed on my off days. Less stress overall = more enjoyment in the little things I suppose.

I went in and got a CT scan yesterday. As time passes, I am becoming more and more angry about how all of this hullabaloo has gone down. One person that saw the incident said I might have had a small seizure, or I could have fainted and fallen down. Both are equally likely. But I defaulted, thinking it wouldn't matter, and shouldn't I call my diabetes doctor just to let them know? But thus began a series of events that cannot be undone, and now my driver's license is in jeopardy and I'm getting all of these tests run that cost a lot of money, and scare me a little.

Everyone who knows me, knows I'm high strung, intense, sometimes over-the-top. But I'm also very aware of it, and I suppose that makes me not-so-scary. Yeah, I panic, I freak out, but I also am the person you want to call in a genuine crisis, because while I freak out about the stupidest things, I do not freak out when shit is on the line. I am calm and cool, and focused. Yeah, it's weird, but it's me, and I'm okay with that.

I'm really missing the dogs today, and I wish they were sitting next to me.

Peace out :)

Love them anyway :)

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.

 ~ Kent M. Keith 

When I was in high school, and going through a pretty difficult time in my life (parent in the hospital), my school found it prudent to send me to a sports psychologist. Whatever. That was the last thing I needed at the time. They might as well have sent me to an accountant. I was sixteen, and my life was falling apart. I did not need to talk about swimming.

But he was a wonderful man, who really wanted to help me, but who, because of his credentials, could only do so under the auspices of sports psychology. Now that I'm older, I know that he could have done it differently and still have been ethical, but I guess he did the best he could with the information he was given. I admit that I was a particularly difficult teenager, who probably said that nothing was wrong, so I really can't blame the guy for trying.

My heroes were Ralph Waldo Emerson and David Thoreau. I was a romantic, a dreamer, at my core. So when he gave me this poem, it became incredibly formational in my approach to life. The ideas spoke to me in my I-refuse-to-be-cynical view of the world. They told me that there was power in my choices. It gave me hope to think that there were other people in the world who fought as hard as I did.

That thought still gives me hope :)

Dogs should come in pairs.

Training a dog is hard work, especially when the dog has not been treated well or has been living in a chaotic situation for a while. The dog is hesitant, and the new owner is hesitant. The dog bites in fear, so the owner strikes it. And soon the cycle begins again...

It's difficult to treat animals, specifically dogs, well. Dogs are vulnerable because they are small, and they have no prefrontal cortex, so they are easy to manipulate. It's so interesting to me that some people have been making a deal out of Mitt Romney's treatment of animals. What makes dogs so special (besides the fact that they're pretty freakin' cute)? Why are we not raging against the establishment that allows millions of cows to lay in their own fecal matter each day? Why are we not raging against the establishment that tells us we are safer because all of our meat gets washed in ammonia? Why are we not shouting it from the rooftops? Why are we not all acting for change?

That's my spiel for the day. I like my new dog. I don't love her yet, because I don't really know her, but I'm working on it. This week will be a test of how we'll get along, because I'll be in and out during the day, and she'll be alone sometimes. I think that dogs should come in pairs, but I need more time before I can get another, and I don't think it's a good idea to put more than one person and one [small] animal in my apartment. I only have so much space to walk.

What are you recycling?

There's a woman on Etsy that makes envelopes from old containers (think cereal boxes and the like). It got me to thinking-why can't I do that? Why don't I do that? So I am, right after I finish writing this post. I have an empty cereal box in my recycling basket just waiting to be cut up and reused.

Last week's unpleasant feedback re. shipping made me question myself, and that's never good. Questioning myself leads inevitably to self-hatred, and that's a dangerous road for me. So I have to work incredibly hard to allow criticism in without it affecting how I see myself. Bleh.

But I took it to heart. I am more committed now to presentation and aesthetic. It's obviously not going to change overnight, and I'm not going to change who I am, but it is a movement towards allowing other people's feeling to impact my life in healthy ways. I haven't always done that. I was raised to swallow other people's feelings and make them my own. I don't do that anymore. It's difficult to protect myself and love other people at the same time. It's a constant process. It means not denying pain when I hurt. It means letting myself be truly angry, and then figuring out why I'm angry and how I can act on that anger in a productive and meaningful way.

For me, I always come back to recycling. It's the core of who I am.

It's how I see God.

Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate

 

This recent post by Katy over at "The Non-Consumer Advocate" got some heated responses, so much so that she shut down commentary on the post.

I myself have been the recipient of some pretty nasty online communication. It hurts when people are rude because they can be, instead of assuming the best and perhaps beginning some dialogue about their "negative" feelings. I think that people on Katy's blog were generally able to say how they felt, and the conversation was cordial and honest.

I talk about online manners a lot because I work online. Very, very rarely do I get to meet a customer face-to-face, or a reader for that matter, and I have learned time and again how important it is to be literal in one's communication, and kind above all else. Sometimes, it is even appropriate to anticipate problems and address them before they happen.

I admit that this week, I did not respond well to an online overreaction. I was curt and annoyed when someone took offense at something that was in-no-way meant to be offensive. But in the end, I am only reminded that I am also human, and often fail. Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate.

The pain can't last forever.

Have you ever felt debilitating emotional pain? Have you ever done everything in your power to then cover up or numb that awful feeling(s)? If so, you are not alone. And I am here to tell you that that numbing that you seek is perfectly understandable. Those terrible feelings are oftentimes the reason people attempt suicide. Sometimes those feelings do indeed feel worse than one imagines death could ever possibly feel. "Hell? This is hell."

So this is a shout out to all those who have felt those debilitating feelings of awful, unspeakable pain. You are not alone. Ride it out.

Someday the pain will end. It has to. It really must end at some point. I'm beginning to think that if I equate emotional pain with physical pain, I can begin to imagine that this awful feeling in my chest that makes me want to die is actually my heart healing from a horrific injury. It has been blasted, and now it is doing the difficult work of putting itself back together. I'm not going to pour salt into it by sleeping around and making it worse. I'm not going to start drinking excessively. Alcohol will only make it worse.

All of things we do to ease the pain only prolong the feeling(s). And in order to get over those feelings, we must FEEL them. We must do the awful, heartbreaking work of sitting with those feelings and waiting.

So wait, dearies. It will end. Someday, somehow, it will end.

Garbage in, garbage out

 

In yoga tonight, I had thoughts running through my mind throughout the class. That's rare. Usually, I am able to get rid of everything very quickly and focus on how much pain I'm in. Maybe I am feeling stronger, so am therefore able to let my mind wander, but it got me to thinking. How am I getting rid of the negativity in my life? How am I dealing with the garbage that comes in? Am I doing anything?

I am a firm believer that the brain and body carry everything with them. Your brain remembers everything that has happened to you. It is stored in there somewhere, and someday something that you've never remembered before from 3rd grade will pop up suddenly because something in your environment triggered that particular neurotransmitter to fire (or get fired on?).

So that's all well and good when you work at Clouds-R-Us, where everyone is friendly and happy and no one has an unkind word for anyone else, and nothing bad ever happens to anyone. But for the rest of us who have constant good and bad flowing into our lives, I think it's important to stop and think every once in a while, "How much good am I putting into my life? Is there any way that I can replace some of the bad with some good? Is watching Law and Order a good thing or a bad thing for my overall health and well-being?"

Yoga is part of that for me. Yoga gives me a great deal of good and at the same time reminds me to breathe out the bad, and to let go of the things I try so hard to hold on to. Yoga isn't for everyone, but it is a symbol of what each of us needs in our lives-a time and place, set aside, for the purpose of cleansing and renewal.

I hope you find this space for yourself somehow, and if not, I hope you start to look for it.

Costly, long-suffering, hope

After this weekend's horrible events in Northern California, I've really been struggling to hold on to my stringent peace position. I have made my life about the work of peace and justice in the world, and for the first time, I'm wavering. I'm beginning to understand those who call cops "pigs". I'm losing my grip on my own beliefs. When I see indifferent violence being carried out in my own world, to my friends, my brain gets fuzzy.

Please recognize that I know that there is horrific violence in the world every day. I know that in my being; I have known it my whole life. And short of banging on soft surfaces with my fists and screaming alone in an empty room, I am not a violent person. I don't believe in violence. I think it's silly, that we as a species would resort to harming one another to solve our problems. I actually don't understand it. I resist it in my very soul. But something changed inside of me when I saw that video on Saturday morning. Perhaps the door in my heart, that I'd shut long ago, had been opened, and I began to see that violence is not just something I hate, but something that is real.

This is not a naive experience for me. I was not born into my beliefs; I have had to earn them. And they have come at a very high price. Violence is real to me, but perhaps I've been looking at it with compassion all this time. I try desperately to understand the aggressor in every situation, to feel compassion for them, to find empathy for the pain that they must experience as a perpetrator, and then later as a survivor of that perpetration. But to see the indifference with which that cop calmly shook that can...my soul cannot contain it.

I wish that I could give you some kind of resolution to this issue (I myself have found a little here and here). I wish I could give you all the hope you need for your own life. That is my life's work. But today, I will fail you. I'm so very sorry.

Please don't suck it up!

I hate passive aggression, hate it. It makes my cheeks flush, heart races, blood pressure goes up, brow furrows. None of these are good things.

Instead of coming out and saying, "I'm not happy with you", the passive aggressive person waits until you're not expecting it, long after any uncomfortableness has passed. They lie in wait until you're innocently drinking from the stream like a young deer, enjoying the fresh cool water, the blue blue sky, and the gentle breeze blowing over your fur. Then POW! You're shot in the heart, and proceed to die a long slow miserable death, choking on your own blood and gasping for air. All you want to know, before you are gone, is "Why?" and "What the hell is wrong with you (i.e. passive aggressive shooter)?"

A few years ago, this was the only aggression I knew and understood. Then I met a wonderful person who wonderfully told me how she felt at the exact moment she was feeling it. Then that particular anger-inducing incident was over, in her mind. I would of course grieve for days about the loss of our friendship, and come crying to her to take me back, which she always would. But she was never stewing. She was just sad that I had to be sad for so long. She had never even considered not being my friend (Thank you God. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I never deserved that amazing gift).

Phew. This relationship lifted the heavy load off of my back that I'd been carrying for decades. Now, whenever some idiot wants to come and return the heavy load, or give me a new one, I can't even stomach it. The idea of taking it back makes me sick.

My motto is: Don't make your problem my problem. Tell me how you feel and be done with it. If you don't, you'll still treat me (and possibly other people) badly, probably unintentionally, and you don't want that.

Tell 'em how you feel, no matter how bad or shameful it seems to you. Your feelings outside of your body are better than your feelings inside your body eating away at all of your organs.