You crazy!

Oh dear. I'm at the children's hospital thrift store, when a female volunteer starts talking to me, telling me about the sale racks. For whatever reason, in close spaces, I don't like to be approached by strangers telling me things that I can find out by looking at the signs, but whatever.

Then she starts following another woman, picking out clothes for her, telling her how cute she would look in this top, "It's a Small! You're tiny!" Then she returned to the cash register and began to watch me as I wandered through the store. Every time I looked her way, there she was, staring at me. It was creepy. And it wasn't smiley. It was stonefaced, maybe-she-thinks-I'm-going-to-steal-something, staring.

This same store has signs all over, saying, "DON"T STEAL! YOU ARE STEALING FROM CHILDREN, SICK CHILDREN!!!!!!!!" I don't know why I keep going back, but I do.

All the water is pouring out.

What can I say? Sweat is pouring down my face, and I don't know if I can hydrate fast enough to replenish it. It reminds me of the jungle, so I should probably be paying more attention to my water intake than I am, or I may begin taking on water and looking swollen (not pretty, friends).

In Brazil, they drink hot drinks in an effort to stay cool. No matter how hard I try, I can't get on board that train. Hot just makes me more hot. I am currently sitting with a hot cup of coffee and becoming very aware of my American need for ice.

I was thinking about offering up an online dating update today, but my computer is on the fritz and I'm going to the Apple store in the mall (I know! Me at the mall!) to see if they can help me, and I need to leave right now.

Peace out :)

The death of the hybrid dream...for now

I listed this as a political tie :)

I had some not-so-fun talks yesterday about the car situation. I had to be told, first by a friend, then by my dad, that I need to let go of my used hybrid dream. It's not possible in my current financial situation. It hurts to hear the truth. It really does, but it's the only way to move forward. I've been stuck in the dream, and it's kept me stuck in the Rabbit, which I discovered last night is full of black widows, not because it doesn't run, but because the tree in our front yard has an entire ecosystem existing inside of it.

So instead of the $8000 range, I am now looking more at the $2000 range. Hey, moving from 30+ to 20+ years-old is a move in the right direction. I found an '87 Honda Shuttle that I really like, but the owner hasn't responded yet to my query. A very eager man came to look at the Rabbit last night at 9:30, and wanted to take it right there, on-the-spot, cash in hand. But it was late, and I had blood sugar on the lower side, so I wasn't willing to make such a huge decision. Also, it was dark, and everything looks different when the sun comes up.

My dad says I need to get a Honda. I told him that they get stolen more than any other car. He didn't believe me. I told him that it felt ethically wrong to lower my mpg by buying a new car. He quoted Lenin. That made me feel better.

Single and in need

Oil + vinegar + seasonings = Homemade dressing

Are you married, or partnered? Is there a single (i.e. unmarried) person in your life that you love to love? If not, get one, and soon. The fate of single-kind rests in your hands. We are weak and unorganized. We tend to gather in groups, but real unity doesn't always stick. We need more stable entities to ground us, hold us to a neighborhood, a home. We need people who will stay even when that staying is not a civil agreement marked by the courts.

I don't know when I first started adopting families. I was probably about fifteen or so. I needed something that my own environment wasn't providing, and I looked far and wide for something boring to latch onto. I found that stable boring wonderful something in my best friend and her parents, who sat down every night at 9pm to have dinner together. I was always welcomed warmly, though I never had anything to give beyond my strong dish-washing abilities ;) Those moments helped me stay grounded in a chaotic world, and have served as a template for other families and other dinners.

Tonight, I shared one such dinner. We discussed pink slime and my current employment status. Many strawberries were eaten, and I had an extra helping of salad. It was wonderful because it was shared. I don't sit at home and cry when I eat dinner by myself. I enjoy silence quite a lot, and often long for it during the chaos of the day. But there are times, usually Saturday nights, when all I want is a family to eat dinner with. So thanks to all of my family friends, who welcome me warmly into their homes no matter what I'm wearing, or how much I monopolize the conversation.

It's too bad I'm not urban.

I am so enjoying my tiny little apartment. It's really too bad that it's not ideal for a long-term solution. The space itself is okay, but not having a kitchen is clearly a problem, as is being connected to someone else's garage. I'm starting to dream about a tiny little place of my own, but I think that a small place in a good location would be difficult to find. I think that there are a lot of mother-in-law places on my street, but I don't know if that would be a good long-term solution either. I want something that I can stay in. I want to have enough space for my stuff, and a little wiggle room, but not too much. I like to feel cozy.

I used to have a one bedroom place. It was a duplex. Later I lived in a studio which was also a duplex. I preferred the one bedroom. It was small, but very well organized. My kitchen was large enough to cook, and I had a washer and dry hooked up in there as well. The trouble with that place was that the landlords were ridiculous about the lawn, but refused to put in sprinklers. So in the end, it was a battle over me not wanting to water crab grass in 110 degree weather, and them wanting the crab grass to be green. I'd come home to a threatening hose on my front porch as a warning. Ridiculous.

I have a lot to say about landlords, and some things I've been thinking about in terms of ethics and city planning. Perhaps tomorrow...

Cheers!

Ideals vs. reality

Today was not a good day for me personally, but it was a pretty good thrifting day. I spent less, which is always great. I didn't take care of myself as well as I should, though. I'm losing steam, and making unwise decisions, or maybe I'm just being thrown complex problems. Who knows?

The dog and I are not a good fit. We're just not. But I'm caught between the ideal of never going back on an agreement, and the reality of a dog who needs a different structure to thrive.

Can someone bring me some ice cream? I think that ice cream would make me feel better.

What's up with that?

 

At my job, I can make one hundred good decisions, and generally just be my bad ass self, and then one bad decision, and suddenly, I'm a failure. Everything I've done for the past few days is for naught, and I should never be gainfully employed, and I suck suck suck.

What's up with that?

Forgiving ourselves: treating ourselves the way we'd want to be treated by other people, is a difficult thing indeed. I can't tell you how many times this subject comes up for me in conversation with other people. At least once a day, I have to explain that it is unacceptable for you (i.e. the person sitting in front of me) to demean yourself in my presence. Don't do it. It serves no purpose. It is never therapeutic for you to hate yourself. It will never do you any good, no matter how much you think about it. So knock it off.

Speech over. Peace out mofos.

Bootstraps, anyone?

 

This story kills me.

People offer us love, and we deny it. People offer us help, aid, and we throw it away, saying we'd rather find it ourselves. I have an image of a toddler in my head, practicing the art of independence-"Do it myself!"

There's a TED talk on vulnerability I'd like to watch today and perhaps respond to tomorrow.

Sometimes I say "yes", when I want to say "no", not because "no" is the right answer, but because I know that I am resisting the love of another person, wanting to avoid attachment. Sometimes we need to accept the love that is offered to us, even if it comes in a form that is unpleasant (e.g. I give my neighbors meat even though I don't believe I should; I buy Hershey chocolate because the man that put up my shelves asked for it, even though I believe that they practice slavery). Sometimes I think we need to take more time to make decisions. Sometimes those decisions will end up bringing us closer together.

And we need eachother. Life is tough, remember?

An addiction to thrift?

 

So I read a blog post this morning that talked about thrift addiction (i.e. the addiction to thrift store shopping). I've been wondering lately if I have such an addiction, and this blog post really hit me hard. I resonated with the idea that I thrift for therapy. I go thrifting at the end of a long day: I walk the aisles; I comb through racks; I talk to my crazy thrift store friends. I freely admit it. I know I do it. I do it intentionally. And I haven't run the numbers, but I think I'm in the black overall.

Here's my take on this, if we're going to use the word addiction to describe the things we use to define us, that consume our time and energy, and give us purpose in life. The word addiction has a negative connotation, yet we all use it freely. People say they're addicted to their Diet Cola of choice, but I don't stress about that. People say they're addicted to running, to a particular sport, to a place they like to go (e.g. Yosemite), but I say that if it isn't harming anyone, then it isn't a real addiction.

Thrifting can be an addiction if it comes between you and people, if it distances you from those you love. I mentioned once that I feared that someone I loved would ask me to give up thrift entirely, and that I would be challenged to let go of something I didn't think I could live without, because it permeated every part of my life. Honestly, I don't know if I could, and that scares me. I wouldn't define it as an addiction, but I have allowed it to become something I depend on to the point of dependence.

Scary, but is it wrong?

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.

A life of thrift

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You're blessed when you're content with just who you are - no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought."

Matthew 5:4-5 (The Message)

Thrift means never having everything you want, all at the same time. Thrift means sacrificing what you want for the greater good. Thrift means being content with who you are, no more, no less.

 

Living a life of thrift means not selling your soul, the invaluable, intangible part of you.

Where do you get your toilet paper?

I get my 100% recycled toilet paper at our local Fresh & Easy. I like to purchase 100% recycled paper products as often as possible. I get my mailing supplies from thrift stores, or reuse stores, and I use recycled materials from the recycling and trash bins for the stuffing. I know it sounds weird, but it's simple and clean (unless I make the unfortunate mistake of sending send old bread bags to a person with a wicked wheat allergy-that might cause me more problems than I'm willing to deal with).

I need a new car.

 

I need a new car. I am done being a teenager with my old beater. I've had my youth. Now I want to be an adult. I'm tired of climbing in the back hatch because my doors won't open. I'm tired of the doors not opening. I'm tired of it being cold in the winter and hot in the summer. I'm done. It's time.

I just don't know how to make a new car happen. My meager subsistence is not enough to afford me any kind of vehicle other than my own. But to put another dollar into that damn thing will be the end of me. So I need a plan. Here are the options my friend and I came up with this evening. Option-creating is a no-holds-barred event. No option is too stupid when we're trying to develop a list of possibilities. So this is the beginning of the process. As it continues, the list will whittle down.

• Call my alien friends and ask them to send me a car
• Get a car loan from a bank
• Take out more student loan money next semester
• Find a sugar daddy

The rest of the list is not G-rated, so I won't be explicit. I need a car. I know what I want. Now I need to figure out how to get what I want.

No one asked for this.

The following statements may make you shudder. I don't know you all that well, so please bear with me. This is a personal thing for every person, a decision that no one does or should make lightly. The decision is whether or not to have children, or more specifically bear children.

When I was a child, I learned about overpopulation, and it seemed like a perfect time for me to decide not to have kids. After all, from my experience, families weren't all that great, so I'd be doing myself and the rest of the world one big favor. Well, I was a kid, a kid without hormones. And now I am an adult, one big grown-up, and boy have things changed. Could I care about overpopulation? Not much.  I figure that a couple won't hurt anyone. But that's not true.

For every child that I bear on my own, I have to raise: feed, clothe, emotionally support, etc. That child, once brought into the world, is in it. They didn't ask to be, but they are, and it will be my responsibility to care for them. Now that's all well and good. I want children. I (hopefully) have the capacity to bear children; great. But just like my vocation, I choose my personal familial set-up based on a higher ethic. I do not only think of myself and my own needs when I bring a child/ren into the world. My faith informs me that I am not an island, and in knowing that, I lose the blasé attitude that what I do doesn't and shouldn't matter to anyone else.

There are children in the world who already need homes, and they aren't all in China, or Ethiopia, or Guatemala. They're around the corner from your house. They're living in a broken foster care system whose only hope is the faithful action of millions. It may not be a childhood dream of mine, but it's the reality I face as an adult. And right now, I'm not in a place to have a child, but when I am, this reality will weigh heavily on my decision.

You can read more here about people who make this same decision, but for other reasons.

For more information about foster-adoption in your area, search with your specific state or county.

We are never alone

"Jiddu Krishnamurti, one of the most revered spiritual teachers of [the 20th] century, once asked a small group of listeners what they would say to a close friend who is about to die. Their answers dealt with assurances, words about beginning and endings, and various gestures of compassion. Krishnamurti stopped them short. 'There is only one thing you can say to give the deepest comfort,' he said. 'Tell him that in his death a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you go also. He will not be alone.'"

Larry Dossey (The Sun,  Feb. 2006)