Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Reconnecting and Refinancing

Finally got paid today after a two week suspension of the use of my debit card. Don't think that stopped me from utilizing my newly acquired GAP card though...I'm taking some stuff back, good-bye red converse. Things that I paid for that were weighing on my mind: car insurance, bed-guy, closing the loan for my car (only three more years to pay off my grandparents!!), my gym pass (a steal at $19 bucks a month @ 24-hour fitness) and my cell phone bill. I also hit up the employee store at Nuskin to spend my 250 pts on product. I got some cool pale pink lipstick a la 1960s and some AC shakes and some lifepak nano since it was buy one get one free. I feel a paragraph dedicated to fish burps coming on...

So, I feel sad that Nano comes with Marine Omega, the fish oil gel capsule. It's the most disgusting thing in the world, unless of course you eat Long John Silver's that day. All day Wednesday I was burping a icky shrimpy taste. The occurence led me to wonder if I really burped that much everyday or if it was the fish gels that unleashed their hideous wonder on my gastric system. Gross. It did taste though as if I had had a substantial meal that day other than cereal. I wonder if Willy Wonka knows that Nuskin has modified his gum-meal gum into gel-meal gel. Maybe I should slip my uneaten fish pills onto his desk and I'll win the whole factory....what do you think nuskin would have instead of a chocolate fountain/river?

I thought I was done with the fish pill topic, but I had to share the story about how Heather's mother inadvertently smeared a marine omega all over her face and clothing after choking on the thing, biting into it and thinking that she had swallowed the treacherous med. Apparently she walked around with an orange-y substance on her person until her husband pointed it out. I have a feeling she looked like some kind of crazy lady with orange oil dripping haphazardly from her lips, her little pointed teeth gleaming with pleasure from her last kill....I almost wet my pants when she told me the story.

I am willing to donate all my fish oils to anyone who wants them.

So i think i covered the refinancing part of this blog and now I'm going to talk about reconnecting. I'll start from today and move backwards. I called my grandma and talked to her. She is one of the most generous women I've ever known. I know that part of that is from a stand-point of being her grandchild, but really she is just really really giving. She has certain expectations for her generosity, but in the best way possible so as to not let people take advantage of her. It's a good balance and one I admired in my mother before her passing. I think I want to be like that.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Angel Friends

So insomnia has struck again. Perhaps its the fact that I took a 3 hour Sunday afternoon nap. It might have something to do with the fact that I can tell the people above me are taking showers at 6am. But I've only had 3 hours of sleep so I know that its not because I don't need it. I miss my mom the most during these hours...

I think I've started to get used to the idea of living without her. The other day I was thinking to myself that I will live more years without her than with and it made me wonder what that was all about. Like, will she be replaced slowly but surely by other things? I won't deny that I used her as kind of a crutch through some of my most difficult years. And even now almost 3 years after she's gone I still feel this yearning to talk to her and tell her all my troubles in these early sleepless hours. Mom would laugh that a couple of days ago I had an entire dream-fest about Michael Phelps (totally appropriate, I assure you!) and that I always have dreams about the PPC where I work Friday night before I go in for a Saturday morning shift. She knew me from the very start and loved me enough to let me fight her through half of my adolescence and teenage years without giving up on me in the sense that she thought that maybe someday I could become a civilized person. A person who is able to take all her passion and sensitivity (that usually got misdirected as bursts of fits on poor little siblings) learn to control them and become not only a decent human being, but a pretty amazing person.

Could she have ever imagined that I'd finally start to make amends with her father, a feat even her daughter thought impossible through years of instability and even more suffering on both parts after she died? Could she see how her children would come to realize that we actually were better friends to each other than anybody else we'd known in our lives? I graduated. Barely. Not everyone does that and I don't think I would have given it as much effort had I not known that she thought that was best for me. Well, the experience has broken me down, but then built me up as this brilliant, beautiful woman who wants to follow in her mother's footsteps, patience in the Lord's time her only hangup.

I do feel like I'm special. Not that nobody else is special, but just that I have something different to do that a lot of the people I know. The grass is always greener which is why for years now I've been aching to find companionship and start a little family. Wondering what's wrong with myself has been counteractive, I know, but inevitable in my limited understanding the great Plan.

Ha ha, I was just thinking that a plan is a plan. The plan is meant to be followed, but we are the ones choosing our own life's path that coincides with the big one. The general Plan is just that; our more specific plans less set, more fluid and definitely requires a lot of improvisation as we actually deal with road blocks, forks, floods and any other "life is a highway" metaphor impediments that you can think of.

It's been hard to accept that my plan is so very different from most others, I know. It's hard to not to take the consolation "good job, but you're meant for something else," because I don't have an immediate idea of what the something else is. Yes, I could go on a mission and save lives. Yes I could head off to New York to become the next big Broadway costume designer. I could settle down at a job in Provo until the end of time just waiting for that one guy to finally stumble upon me admist the thousands of others and realize that I am just amazing. But I don't want to do any of those things right now (not that a drive for those goals didn't get me where I am today). I don't feel like any of those things are what I should do right now and I have this almost indescribable feeling that what's next is on the horizon and I just need to be patient enough as I move closer to it...

Well, the sun is coming up and my eyes are stinging a little from sobbing over the whole first part of this. It's one sob closer to wisdom from suffering though and a nobler person to lament over could not be less than my mother. I've realized that the only little figurines that I display and the paintings I have are angels in some form or another. I did not realize this really until last Christmas. I'm usually not a theme person, I'm eclectic by nature. But I think its an unconcious way to help me feel for the presence of her and of Him that I yearn for. After all, through all this whenever I'm sad or lonely and cannot sleep I sing to myself "Angel Friends" from the musical My Turn on Earth and repeat perfectly in my mind my mummy's beautiful voice. It's nice to know that I have other-worldly beings who can still be my unseen comforters and lull me to sleep, taking me away for a little while to build up my strength for another brutal day in which I will hopefully come off champion.

Friday, August 15, 2008

Promptings and the subconcious hand...

So my sister-in-law subtly encouraged me to write a new entry on my blog. That made me feel important, like someone actually wants to be a witness to my life. Or at least ridiculous little tidbits that show up on a blog. I hope if you are reading this then I can offer you a complimentary wetting-of-the-pants. Not really that funny sorry, but that was.

Recap since I got locked into my house. I saw Iron Man. Then I saw the Hulk. Did not know that they were brother movies. The pinnacle of my happiness in the last two weeks, really...that gives an idea of my contentment, finding Robert Downey Jr. in cahoots with Edward Norton after 2 hours of fabulous action and love. I like the message of these movies: if you are greedy or creepy you will get dominated by a creature.

So yeah, I also auditioned as Marian Paroo for the Center Street Musical Theater. There are callbacks tomorrow morning and one of my lovely co-workers is staying later for me so I can go. I'm actually pretty excited even though I've heard mixed reviews about this theater, one of them being from my sister Katie who quit after a week of rehearsing as some kind of street urchin in A Christmas Carol. The other was from another friend who shall remain nameless (siblings don't have copyrights, sorry Katie), who said while they LOVE the people who own the company, but that their middle name is nepotism. It's aight, I haven't participated in unpaid community theater for 10 years and this was the last theater that had auditions for fall productions.

I talked a bunch with my aunt Sneebie ('Debbie' in real life, I don't even know the origin of the 'Sn' anymore) these last two days searching for some sort of assurance that my life is not in vain and that I will indeed find a use for my degree. Upon finding out that I just graduated many customers at the PPC will ask what I plan to do with my degree. I usually answer something vague like "um, I'll probably go into design or something," or even better I'll shrug my shoulders and say in irony, "work here" indicating the PPC. Sneebie and I decided that next time somebody asks me, "so what do you plan to do with your degree?" I answer, "Shut up."

I was pacified by this plan and thus could move on to other pressing issues in my life. We talked about my upcoming plans to audition for the Missoula Children's Theater touring company. I would stay here in Provo at least until next year then go live with the Sneeb until I left with the company. She's "tight" with the Producer/Owner of MCT so it'll be good to see the benefits on the positive side of nepotism.

I feel compelled to lay before myself and my readers/entourage my thoughts about a certain relationship that I've had for many years. You will all know who this is and so therefore I will keep him nameless as well. A few weeks ago I was talking with, let's call him, Mr. Z. explaining that I wanted to be free from him the way I was when the 3rd epoch of our relationship ended in a vow that we would never speak to each other again. It was devastating at first when that happened, but the ensuing months proved to be very healing as I thought about him very rarely and was able to feel free from his gravitational presence. I think the biggest magnet to him he explained himself when he said a few months ago, "People are drawn to me. they may like me, they may not, but they don't forget me and they will continue to think about me."

Mr. Z. earns the award for most quotable person in my life. Apart from that I realized he was right, but I decided that this was only so because people didn't realize that they were drawn to him. So what did I do? I didn't speak to him for the next 3 weeks. Did I think about him? Yes, he won on that point. But did he think about me more? Most definitely. It wasn't a contest, it was a test for myself that I could live without him if I chose. I didn't want to live without him, but I could jump ship when, not if, it comes down to severing him from certain parts of my life that he will not be noticed, will not be thought of and definitely not be influenced by.

There's a creeping feeling of insecurity that I will cave, I think this is where my bravery will be tested to the limits! The point for this whole section of the blog is to say that I started the severing process. First I told him he wasn't husband material as mentioned in an earlier blog, then I asked him a favor that challenged his "I'll do anything for my friends" motto. Asking a question favor like the one I asked changes things, however subtly. He didn't deny me the favor, but all of a sudden in one conversation our relationship was reduced to something much more business-like. It bounced back after that, but not to its full strength. I can't tell if I'm breaking it down on purpose by testing the strength of our relationship or if its the "freedom-from-him" mantra of my subconscious that made me ask the favor in the first place well knowing that it would cause some kind of disturbance. I am never content to leave well enough alone.

Phew. I need an editor for my blog. Feel free to leave a comment. Feel free to dis him, dis me for sticking around for him and congratulate me on drifting away. The encouragement could do wonders. But these are matters of the heart and my 'family' is the only thing I've got so I've got to fix it.

Friday, August 1, 2008

"How am I supposed to live without you?"

Don't know who this "you" is yet, but Heather my good friend informed me that "you" is nobody I know as yet. Question of the day: does infatuation have a negative connotation? Heather and Shana at work think that it doesn't, but they fully admit to never having been infatuated. Anyways on to more important news of the family...

Today I got locked into my own house. Yes you heard me right, locked IN. I dead-bolted my door this morning after I realized that I had forgotten to lock it before going to bed last night. Afraid that someone might come a burgling in the middle of my morning pilates routine in my jammas I decided this was a safe way to go. On my way to purchase fuschia thread and zipper for a 50s jumper that I'm making I discovered that what I had done to the dead-bolt could not be undone. Try and try as I might it would not budge. The next logical solution would to be to try with the key from the outside. So, I climbed on a kitchen chair and thrust myself out the kitchen window in my skirt and everything. No luck. I decided right then and there that if I had to climb in and out of my kitchen window for the rest of the summer, then so be it. I was going to surrender myself to the karma that has been plaguing my life for the last 25 years and has culminated into one of the worst weeks of my life.

I know not making to the next level on American Idol shouldn't have gotten me that down, and maybe I shouldn't have been so upset that my brother and sister-in-law decided to move two weeks early leaving me no time to play with Louise and Baby, AND I should have just accepted the fact a certain person that I had been interested in for a long time is not husband material. There's nothing like losing hope one little moment of life at a time. Patience and losing all expectation are the themes of my life so I shouldn't be surprised when I get locked into my apartment. What I learned today: Just because you replace an old sticky lock with a new shiny one doesn't mean you won't get screwed.