2012...

Earlier this year I read this great, hilarious, insightful article about raising kids, and while it scared the ever-living crap out of me (I have found that if I ever get dreamy-eyed about having a child, all I need to do is read articles about raising said child, and it's pretty much the best birth control ever), I also came across a concept in the article where I was like, YES. I am going to use that as my manifesto for 2012! And it wasn't about doing more crunches (which I totally don't need to do for like, another three weeks! Thanks Stomach Flu diet! You're the BEST!) or getting up earlier (which I actually DO need to do) but it was about elevating thought, and therefore moments, in my life.

The author called it the difference between chronos time (time that moves forward in a sequential, linear way) and kairos time. Kairos time is what we experience in heightened, measured moments, moments when we fully take in all the gorgeousness that surrounds us, when perspective shifts and we see the long stretch of how damn lucky we are to be alive smeared over days and days of beauty, it's when time stops and we see things in slow motion and we are able to fill it like a balloon with gratitude, and it's when we take the full, deep breaths, step outside the box of chronos time, and gaze at all we have to offer.

That's Kairos time.

And this year? 2012? I'm working on filling my life with as many kairos moments as I can. That's all. It's simple. It's not advanced science, it's not pushing myself harder to DO MORE BE MORE, it's the allowing of grace, in all its forms, to inform me in as many daily moments as I can that life is so, so, so incredibly good.

Come to think of it... this blogger already does that (and she has two beautiful children) quite brilliantly. Go have a read and treat yourself.

It's gonna be a good year. I can feel it.

what gratitude looks like

Benni and I hosted my family for Thanksgiving this year. It was Benni's first turkey (I'm a pro, having hosted about four Thanksgivings now) and he was so worried, and I kept saying, baby, it's not that hard to cook a turkey. Just baste, and everything will be fine.

Are you ready to get basted, turkey??

And it turned out fine. Better than fine, actually. (The vegetables we roasted underneath the turkey made it smell AMAZING.)

After dinner we all watched some football, and then I decided to have a Gingerbread House competition. I had purchased two gingerbread house kits from Bed Bath and Beyond the evening before (the woman at the counter: "How cute! Are these for the kids?" Me: "No, they're to keep my parents occupied so they don't ask me why I'm not married." I love talking to total strangers so much). And my family peeled themselves away from the television and worked hard. We separated into two teams, and my brother Scott was deemed Judge and Executioner of the Gingerbread House Contest. (When you put things in caps it makes it sound more official.)

Here's Val, my cousin Tom's girlfriend, concentrating hard.

Here's Team One's Gingerbread House! (Team One consisted of: Benni, my mom, Val, and Tom.)

Here's my aunt Darlyne and my brother Jeff working hard on Team Two's Gingerbread House (Team Two consisted of: me, my aunt, and my brother Jeff.)

Jeff puts the finishing touches on our Gingerbread House. He created the frosting "icicles" by using a wooden skewer to drag them down. Can you tell he's the artist in the family?

Here's Team Two's finished house! (I think ours is pretty awesome.)

Scott decided it was a tie. But I just think that's because he doesn't want to jeopardize his chances at getting Christmas presents.

Two houses, both alike in Gingerbread, in fair Burbank, where we lay our scene... The required family photo behind the two houses. Left to right: Benni, Me, Aunt Darlyne, Jeff, Scott, my mom, Tom, and Val.

Of course, we never really do things the same way everyone else does. So, just in case you were wondering about me... yes. The Weird is genetic. I was born that way.

**********************

And finally, to move on to the holidays... Lori over at Lori Times Five makes the cutest little coffee cup sleeves ever. She knits them and then sews on different plants that represent qualities like courage, and compassion. (Her Etsy store is here.) She calls them Green Sleeves and I sort of fell in love (not that I don't already adore Lori - she's beautiful, inside and out, and takes breathtaking photographs and is the owner of the world's CUTEST DOG) when I first saw them so I had to buy a couple to hand out as gifts to my coffee-loving friends.

So when I got my very own Green Sleeve over the Thanksgiving holiday (along with everyone else's), the first thing I did was rush out to our neighborhood Starbucks with Benni and ask that he take a picture that I could send back to Lori.

So Lori, this is for you... thank you, a hundred times over, for making my day every time I get my hot chocolate fix. :)

And yes, I did get whipped cream up my nose in order for Benni to get this shot. Because I'm professional like that.

Love to you all,
Tracy

Not all who wander are lost...

...but I'm a little lost in my new apartment right now, buried under boxes and trying to figure out exactly why I thought the sofa would fit in that one spot.

As a result I'm behind on a lot of things, including changing my address for all my bills, figuring out exactly where all my underwear got packed, eating a real meal that doesn't come with Fire Sauce or french fries, and of course, reading all of your blogs. So this post is just me taking a breather before I dive back into my to-do list and I'll be back and in better shape next week.

The always lovely Robin over at Your Daily Dose tagged me to answer eight questions about myself and because there's too much going on for me to sit down and actually blog about it I thought to myself, Hey, why not? Answering eight questions can't be too hard. So thank you Robin for tagging me - you are always so consistently thoughtful and such a great blogger friend :)

Robin thought these questions up herself and now I have an extra homework assignment to think of eight different questions to tag others with. I'll do that later too.

Here we go!


1. We all dance with the seven sins from time to time. Which of the seven sins do you dance with most frequently, and why? They are wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.

I think I probably dabble in all of these in some minor form or another during my day. Except pride. I'm really, really good at not showing pride.*

2. If you could live for a week in the body of someone famous, who would it be? You would still be you, but you could access their need to know info as you needed to know it. Of course, the kicker is that they would live in your body and have the same privileges.

I would live for a week in Stephen Hawking's body. That way, I'd be brilliant for a week in his body, he'd be able to move and speak clearly in my body, and we'd both be richer for the experience.

3. Do you believe that angels walk among us? That there are true psychics, mediums, or anyone who is more connected to God than the average person?

This is tricky. I don't believe angels walk among us physically but rather come to us as inspired thoughts (maybe it's that little voice inside all of us) and I don't think anyone is more connected than anyone else to God. I just think there are people who are better listeners than others. I'm working on becoming a good listener.

4) Have you ever dreamed about a future event that happened, a past event that happened when you were but a very young child, or anything that was just so real, but otherworldly, that you felt its truth in your soul? If so, I'm listening.

I've never dreamed about the future... my dreams are usually very obvious though, so I almost always feel their truth. I don't usually get too much otherworldly activity in my life...for which I'm very grateful. Once upon a time I took two weeks away from everyone and everything in my life and just prayed and meditated in a hotel room by myself. I grew so much spiritually that one morning I heard what the sunrise sounds like...but that's another blog post for another time. That's about the closest I've come to otherworldly (except for that time I was in the same room as a very cranky ghost...but that's ANOTHER blog post for another time.)

5) Do you feel like you have a gift that you aren't using? It could be for anything. Design, writing, art, photography, decoration. The list is endless.

I think I'd be a really good suicide counselor. I don't think I'm strong enough to use this gift to its full potential though.

6) Is there someone that you are unwilling to forgive? Is it weighing on your heart? Eating you up on the inside? This is a yes or no. If it is yes, I hope you make the choice today to want to forgive and then let it go. Throw out your desire into the universe.

I have forgiven everyone who needs forgiving - not for them, but for me. Forgiveness is a two-way road. It blesses both people and allows movement and freedom on both sides - and if one side isn't moving, the other side isn't either.

7) If we were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every man, which one would be the one that would make the most difference in making this world a better place to live?

I wasn't sure if this question meant "man" as in "mankind" or as in "males." So I'll answer both. If I were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every person (mankind) I would take judgment away. How many times do we needlessly judge others? And for what? To build ourselves up? To tear others down? Our judgmentalism keeps us from reaching to those in need, to realizing that everyone is doing their best, to letting ourselves lead guilt-free lives full of unconditional love for ourselves and others. What does it matter how the person next to you is living their life? It doesn't affect you any. Let it go, get over it, live your own life and stop telling people what to do with their lives.

If I were able to take away or add one element into the heart of each and every male, I would take away the need to dominate women physically, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. If someone sat me down and explained to me for a thousand years why men need to keep women from having power over their own lives, jobs, bodies, sexuality, and happiness, I still wouldn't get it. What is it that drives so many men to want to control women?

8) What is the last movie you saw at the movie theater? Using the five star system, how would you rate it?

Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I'd give it 6 stars out of 5. It's one of the smartest movies about relationships that I've ever seen. Don't let the 8-Bit video game fighting montages scare you away. Go with your loved one, giggle and laugh out loud, and then get over the past.


That's all, folks! Also, just to let you know - my girl Lira over at The Struggling Actress is away at Burning Man (that dirty hippie!) so she asked me to guest post for her. She's putting up my post Sept. 1st so go check it out!



*irony alert

"This Ship of Fools"...Poetry Friday, Volume Three!

Better late than never...you'll have to forgive the tardiness of this post and the absence of any other posts this past week, as my brain is completely fried and honestly, I really think it caught the midnight train going anywhere... and now you have that song in your head.... ;)

Missing: Tracy's brain, average in size, pinkish-grayish in color, probably somewhat skittish and covered in sparkles, stickers, and Popsicle sticks... tends to have a short attention span unless you put on any program from The Discovery Channel or the original Star Wars trilogy...if seen please mail back to Burbank, California and I'll reimburse you for the shipping charges....

Yeesh.

Anyways, here's your poems this week to celebrate National Poetry Month... I'll be back next week and blogging normally er as normal as I get, anyways...

For My Daughter in Reply to a Question

by David Ignatow

We're not going to die.
we'll find a way.
We'll breathe deeply
and eat carefully.
We'll think always on life.
There'll be no fading for you or for me.
We'll be the first
and we'll not laugh at ourselves ever
and your children will be my grandchildren.
Nothing will have changed
except by addition.
There'll never be another as you
and never another as I.
No one ever will confuse you
nor confuse me with another.
We will not be forgotten and passed over
and buried under the births and deaths to come.

***************************************************************

September Twelfth, 2001

by X.J. Kennedy

Two caught on film who hurtle
from the eighty-second floor,
choosing between a fireball
and to jump holding hands,

aren't us. I wake beside you,
stretch, scratch, taste the air,
the incredible joy of coffee
and the morning light.

Alive, we open eyelids
on our pitiful share of time,
we bubbles rising and bursting
in a boiling pot.

***********************************************

Yes

by Catherine Doty

It's about the blood
banging in the body,
and the brain
lolling in its bed
like a happy baby.
At your touch, the nerve,
that volatile spook tree,
vibrates. The lungs
take up their work
with a giddy vigor.
Tremors in the joints
and tympani,
dust storms
in the canister of sugar.
The coil of ribs
heats up, begins
to glow. Come
here.

************************************

Meteor

by Larissa Szporluk

I chose this. To be this
stone, grow nothing. I wanted this
absolute position in the heavens
more than anything, than you,
my two, too beautiful, my children.
A man I knew once
muttered in his terrors of the night,
no, no, no, instead of yelling.
It was this, this dismal low,
that made me leave him. I will leave them.
All the butterflies the lord above
can muster, all their roses.
I will leave whatever colors
struggle to be noticed. To leave,
to leave. That's the verb I am,
have always been, always will be,
heading, like a dewdrop, into steamy
confrontation, my train of neutral green
lasting half a second
before casting off its freight -- his arms
outside the sheet, how warm they were,
like Rome the year it burned,
Nero at the window, loving no one,
fusion crust. I fly because
my space is crossed
with fear and hair and tail and hate,
the bowels of a lioness,
iron in her roar.

*********************************

Fog

by Carl Sandburg

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

***********************************************

Sea of Faith

by John Brehm

Once while I was teaching "Dover Beach"
to a class of freshmen, a young woman
raised her hand and said, "I'm confused
about this 'Sea of Faith'. "Well," I said,
"let's talk about it. We probably need
to talk a bit about figurative language.
What confuses you about it?"
"I mean, is it a real sea?" she asked.
"You mean, is it a real body of water
that you could point to on a map
or visit on vacation?"
"Yes," she said. "Is it a real sea?"
Oh Christ, I thought, is this where we are?
Next year I'll be teaching them the alphabet
and how to sound words out.
I'll have to teach them geography, apparently,
before we can move on to poetry.
I'll have to teach them history too --
a few weeks in the Dark Ages might be instructive.
"Yes," I wanted to say, "it is.
It is a real sea. In fact it flows
right into the Sea of Ignorance
IN WHICH YOU ARE DROWNING.
Let me throw you a Rope of Salvation
before the Sharks of Desire gobble you up.
Let me hoist you back up onto this Ship of Fools
so that we may continue our search
for the Fountain of Youth. Here, take a drink
of this. It's fresh from the River of Forgetfulness."

But of course I didn't say any of that.
I tried to explain in such a way
as to protect her from humiliation,
tried to explain that poets
often speak of things that don't exist.
It was only much later that I wished
I could have answered differently,
only after I'd betrayed myself
and had been betrayed that I wished
it was true, wished there really was a Sea of Faith
that you could wade out into,
dive under its blue and magic waters,
hold your breath, swim like a fish
down to the bottom, and then emerge again
able to believe in everything, faithful
and unafraid to ask even the simplest of questions,
happy to have them simply answered.


And my two poet bloggers that I am highlighting this week: Wine and Words, over at Quiet Commotion, who writes with such an astonishing grace and tenacity that her poems sometimes grab me by the throat and don't let go for weeks. Take this one, for example, or this one; beautiful, hard to read, unflinchingly brave. Please go check her out.

Next up is Maggie May over at Flux Capacitor. I really, really wish I had a proper warning for what you are getting yourself into when you read the way Maggie May writes...about her day, her health, her children, her experiences...but I don't. Words do not do justice to how beautiful her writing is, how amazed I am every time I read her blog and how my heart soars or plummets along with hers as she blogs about her daily struggles. Just...visit. See for yourself. Dare to disagree.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Catch ya next week...brain tied to a freakin' leash if need be.

"Miles to go before I sleep"... Poetry Friday, Volume Two!

Praying

by Mary Oliver


It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

*******************************************************

Advice for a Stegosaurus

by Jessica Goodheart


Never mind the asteroid,
the hot throat of the volcano,
a sun that daily drops into a void.

Comb the drying riverbed for drink.
Strut your bird-hipped body.
Practice a lizard grin. Don't think.

Stretch out your tail. Walk, as you must,
in a slow deliberate gait.
Don't look back, Dinosaur. Dust is dust.

You'll leave your bones, your fossil feet
and armored eye-lids.
Put your chin to the wind. Eat what you eat.

*******************************************************

When Your Face Came Rising

by Yevgeny Vevtushenko


When your face came rising
above my crumpled life,
the only thing I understood at first
was how meager were all possessions.
But your face cast a peculiar glow
on forests, seas, and rivers,
initiating into the colors of the world
uninitiated me.
I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid,
the unexpected dawn might end,
ending the discoveries, tears, and raptures,
but I refuse to fight this fear.
This fear - I understand -
is love itself. I cherish this fear, not knowing how to cherish,
I, careless guardian of my love.
This fear has ringed me tightly.
These moments are so brief, I know,
and for me, the colors will disappear
when once your face has set...

************************************************

Earth

by John Hall Wheelock


"A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily
The Martian Astronomer, gazing off into the air -
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."

*********************************************************

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

*************************************************

Curiosity

by Alastair Reid

may have killed the cat; more likely
the cat was just unlucky, or else curious
to see what death was like, having no cause
to go on licking paws, or fathering
litter on litter of kittens, predictably.

Nevertheless, to be curious
is dangerous enough. To distrust
what is always said, what seems
to ask odd questions, interfere in dreams,
leave home, smell rats, have hunches
do not endear cats to those doggy circles
where well-smelt baskets, suitable wives, good lunches
are the order of things, and where prevails
much wagging of incurious heads and tails.

Face it. Curiosity
will not cause us to die--
only lack of it will.
Never to want to see
the other side of the hill
or that improbable country
where living is an idyll
(although a probable hell)
would kill us all.

Only the curious have, if they live, a tale
worth telling at all.

Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,
are changeable, marry too many wives,
desert their children, chill all dinner tables
with tales of their nine lives.
Well, they are lucky. Let them be
nine-lived and contradictory,
curious enough to change, prepared to pay
the cat price, which is to die
and die again and again,
each time with no less pain.
A cat minority of one
is all that can be counted on
to tell the truth. And what cats have to tell
on each return from hell
is this: that dying is what the living do,
that dying is what the loving do,
and that dead dogs are those who do not know
that dying is what, to live, each has to do.

As for my two blogger poets that I'm highlighting, I count myself as disgustingly lucky because I actually knew them in person long before any of us started our crazy blogs. I went to college with the incredible JMarls over at Snapshots, and let me tell you: all the rumors of her being the hot, quiet girl who blew everyone away with her acting talent are absolutely true. And to make things worse...ugh. She's an amazing creative writer and fantastic poet. (She actually labels her poetry under "Bad Poetry." Gross, I know, right?) So please...go check out her blog for yourself and prepare to be blown away.

The other gorgeous girl that I'm introducing to you has a wicked wit, a freakin' awesome tattoo, and a vocabulary that could make you cry. Introducing Mildly Sensational over at Sunlight in my Threshold, who doesn't blog nearly enough for my liking but when she does...wow. Just...wow. Her cute little throwaway poems, like this one or this one, are fantastic...and her creative short stories? Also kick ass. So not fair.

So that's all folks...enjoy the poetry, I hope each poem livens your spirits and your Friday just a bit, and please, go give some of these blogger poets who pour out their hearts a little love and some kind comments. They deserve it :)

Have a fantastic weekend!

"For we are the last of the loud"... Poetry Friday, Volume One!

No title

by Charles Bukowski

all theories
like clichés
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird.
wish us
luck.

*********************************

"let it go -- the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise -- let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go -- the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers -- you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go -- the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things -- let all go
dear
so comes love"

- e.e. cummings

***********************************

Blessing the boats

by Lucille Clifton


(at St. Mary's)

may the tide
that is entering even now
the lip of our understanding
carry you out
beyond the face of fear
may you kiss
the wind then turn from it
certain that it will
love your back    may you
open your eyes to water
water waving forever
and may you in your innocence
sail through this to that

*************************************

The Second Sermon on the Warpland

by Gwendolyn Brooks

For Walter Bradford

1.

This is the urgency: Live!
and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.

2.

Salve salvage in the spin.
Endorse the splendor splashes;
stylize the flawed utility;
prop a malign or failing light–
but know the whirlwind is our commonwealth.
Not the easy man, who rides above them all,
not the jumbo brigand,
not the pet bird of poets, that sweetest sonnet,
shall straddle the whirlwind.
Nevertheless, live.

3.

All about are the cold places,
all about are the pushmen and jeopardy, theft–
all about are the stormers and scramblers but
what must our Season be, which starts from Fear?
Live and go out.
Define and
medicate the whirlwind.

4.

The time
cracks into furious flower. Lifts its face
all unashamed. And sways in wicked grace.
Whose half-black hands assemble oranges
is tom-tom hearted
(goes in bearing oranges and boom).
And there are bells for orphans–
and red and shriek and sheen.
A garbageman is dignified
as any diplomat.
Big Bessie’s feet hurt like nobody’s business,
but she stands–bigly–under the unruly scrutiny, stands
in the wild weed.

In the wild weed
she is a citizen,
and is a moment of highest quality; admirable.

It is lonesome, yes. For we are the last of the loud.
Nevertheless, live.

Conduct your blooming in the noise and whip of the
whirlwind.

**********************************

The Master

by Donald Hall

Where the poet stops, the poem
begins. The poem asks only
that the poet get out of the way.

The poem empties itself
in order to fill itself up.

The poem is nearest the poet
when the poet laments
that it has vanished forever.

When the poet disappears
the poem becomes visible.

What may the poem choose,
best for the poet?
It will choose that poet
not choose for himself.

****************************************

from "Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved"

by Gregory Orr

Weeping, weeping, weeping.
No wonder the oceans are full;
No wonder the seas are rising.

It's not the beloved's fault.
Dying is part of the story.
It's not your fault either:
Tears are also.

But
You can't read when you're
Crying. Sobbing, you won't
Hear the song that resurrects
The body of the beloved.

Why not rest awhile? If weeping
Is one of the world's tasks,
It doesn't lack adherents.
Someone will take your place,
Someone will weep for you.

******************************************

And my two blogger poets that I am highlighting today:

Marion, over at Dragonfly's Poetry and Prolixity, because she writes beautiful poems of her own, shares the gorgeous poems of others, and occasionally leaves me comments calling me an enlightened being. :) Can you tell she's one of my favorites?

Another poet I highly recommend you check out: Akka over at Drunk Love Heart writes all of her own poetry (this one is one of my favorites) and then illustrates it too. It's amazing... and totally inspiring.

Happy National Poetry Month, guys! Have a wonderful weekend :)

truthiness

Okay, so sometime in the last two weeks when I wasn't blogging I got tagged not once, but twice, for the same award. It looks like this:


And it comes with the homework assignment that I have to write 6 things about myself, some of them true, at least one of them not so true, then let you guys guess in the comments section (only if you want to) what is and isn't accurate, and finally I'll reveal the truth in another post later this week. Oh, and I also have to tag seven people to do the same, if they are willing and able. :) Phew. Sounds like a lot of hard work, no?

Since I haven't done one of these "facts all about me" posts in a while, (I tend to lean more towards raconteur-style blogging, I like to think - maybe that's why I got a Creative Writing award?) and it's Monday and everyone's screaming at each other like five year old children over every single internet forum about the Health Care bill that passed, I thought: why not avoid all topical, political, and personal debate today and just blab on about myself for a post? Well, why not indeed.

Ergo:

1) Even though I'm definitely a tomboy, I still put a lot of care into my appearance by doing my hair and makeup every day and making sure I always look my cutest. Hey, being a tomboy doesn't mean you have to dress like a guy :)

2) I went to modeling school when I was in junior high school, competed in modeling contests and shows, and even landed myself a modeling agent at one point. I also took professional acting classes as a kid at a renowned professional theater company in Southern California.

3) I worked retail once in LA and had Drew Carey as a customer. I asked him for his autograph - on his credit card slip. I had no idea who he was, but I did make him laugh really hard. I only found out it was him after he left the store.

4) I was a theater technician at my college, both during the school year and the summertime. I worked in the shop building sets, painting scenery, hanging lights from thirty feet above the stage, and did running crew as well for most of the productions.

5) I consider myself fairly fearless, but I hate roller-coasters. They scare the crap out of me!

6) I hate snakes. I can deal with spiders, cockroaches, bees, hornets, lizards, whatever...but snakes are gross.

K, so that's it! Feel free to play along and post six facts about yourself on your own blogs, or take the time to guess which facts about me you think are true in my comments section. I tag:

Happy Hour...Somewhere, because she cracks me up

A Polar Bear's Love Song, because she's my bestest friend

The Struggling Actress, because I can't wait to see what she comes up

James Gang in Kearney, because he needs an award that isn't pink and frilly on his page and I'd love to learn more about him and his family

Jeans Friday, because I love her sense of humor, hilarious stories about her dad, and how open she is with her heart

Okie over at Cucullus non facit monachum, because he loves Latin as much as I do and is a true creative writer

and Clarity over at Clarity in Wonderland, because we've never met and she's still my British bff who offers me Cadbury Creme eggs and a good listening ear in a crisis, even as she is going through her own grieving. Clarity - I'll let you know in December if I'm going through withdrawal and need any creme eggs. In the meantime, darling, if there is anything I can do for you...just let me know. ::Hugs::

So that's it!

Oh, and many, many thanks to the two lovely bloggers who passed along the award to me: B. Nagel, whose creative and anecdotal writing is simply amazing (check out one of his short stories here) and Robin, who blogs every single day, leaves the kindest comments on my posts, and is so compellingly honest and direct in her writing style (like in this post)- it just blows me away.

Go and check out B.'s and Robin's facts if you have the time, too!

Happy (completely politics-free!) rest of your Monday!

"I've got friends/in all the right places..."

My blog title, while being an oft-used phrase, is also a lyric from one of two songs that I'm totally obsessed with, appropriately titled I've Got Friends, by Manchester Orchestra. You can find it here, just so it can get stuck in your head too. Yeah, you're welcome. The other song I'm obsessed with is what I would describe as the perfect spring/summer pick-me-up-but-in-a-chill-kind-of-way song. It's not getting a ton of radio play, which I like because while video killed the radio star, radio has a way of killing almost every song I like by playing it 40.times.a.freakin.day.

Not cool, radio.

So here's the second song, Sweet Disposition, by The Temper Trap, off the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack. Please, do yourself a favor if you're able to - turn it up loud. And get ready to be obsessed. Or to leave me a comment and tell me I have crappy taste in music. Whichever.

Anyways, the blog post title came from how damn nifty all of you are. I wanted to say thanks for all your lovely comments over the past few weeks as life keeps punching me in the back of the head (not cool, life) but knowing that you guys are out there and being supportive and awesome and that some of you are going through similar shite helps a lot. You really have no idea how much you guys make my day.

This is a bit belated but I've got some specific gratitude to offer up to some bloggers that have shown me some extra love over the past few weeks - first a quick thank you!! to Anne and Carissa, both of whom sent me very cool items of lust from giveaways that I had won from them. Anne painted a cute little canvas square with flowers and a shooting star and decorated it with glitter, and then included a box of Sweethearts candy for me to get addicted to, (my favorite, Anne!) and Carissa sent me a bucketload of awesome stuff from Etsy, including a desktop calendar from this amazing photographer. Seriously, staring at these photos all day makes my happiness scale almost explode. Carissa, thank you again.

I also got awards from two bloggers that I am in awe of: Darcy and Jonas. Darcy writes with a striking honesty and humor that simply blows me away and makes me rethink why the hell I blog in the first place. Her candor and her willingness to look life straight in the eye just completely inspires me, so when she gave me the Best Blogger award, all I could do was humbly sneak off into a corner and try to convince myself that maybe I actually deserved it. A couple weeks later, I'm still not convinced, but here it is in all its glory:

And the second part of the award asks that I name 15(!) new blogs that I enjoy. Which I'll leave for another day because this is getting long-winded already.

Jonas is also an incredible writer - if you haven't checked him out yet...how do I say this? He writes a very fine line between fact and fiction and lets his readers choose to parse out what is truth and what is not... I have a feeling that Jonas might be a bit of a trickster/scoundrel in real life and I gotta tell you, I don't think I mind that one bit.

So thanks, everyone :) I feel very loved on the blogosphere.

And to spread that love...I know it's not much, but I updated my blog roll so that it's pretty much up to speed with what blogs I'm following and loving right now. As I am starting to get more followers (hi guys! I'm so excited to meet you all and read your blogs!) I want more than anything for visitors and new followers to get a sense of my fabulous taste in other people's blogs and go check them out. I love reading your guys' posts and I've been slacking on promoting y'all properly until now. So sorry about that, but better late than never, right?

Have a wonderful rest of your week, everyone!

PS I also want to thank my bestie Radical Bradacal and one of my newest favorite bloggers, B. Nagel, for playing along and posting images of what makes them happy. Thanks guys! I loved them :)

let the sun shine

Well, it's not exactly sunshine-y outside, but it's less pouring rain-y than it was last week, so I'll take it. Although I'm happy that more showers are headed our way tomorrow, because, let's face it: SoCal needs all the rain we can get. Although we also need to figure out a way to trap this water, make it clean, and then use it while we're in a drought. But I digress.

I wanted to say thanks for everyone's very cool and incredibly supportive comments on my last couple posts - my 2009 post was a little bit brutally honest and I was really worried that my 2010 post was going to scare the crap out of most of you. And then, of course, there was my Haiti/suicide post, which I'm sure livened up everyone's day. So I'm letting the sun shine back in for this post because even though a lot of us get the January blues, there's still plenty of love and laughter to go around.

There's also some really good news too - if any of you had a chance to vote for the first online suicide prevention network in Chase's Community giveaway, it came in third place and won $100,000! They also now have over 7,000 volunteers who want to help make I'mAlive a reality. Writing that post about my acquaintance's suicide was tough - but I got through it, and a lot of that was because of all of your incredibly kind and brave comments. You guys all rock.

On a more personal blog note, I am very grateful to announce that I won a blog giveaway hosted by the adorable Carissa over at The Lovely Dove. She's been blogging for just over a year (and I just got to meet her in person at the SoCal Blogger's Brunch, so I feel twice as blessed) and to celebrate she gave away a beautiful desktop calendar, a cute little journal, and a very cool handwoven bracelet that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to take off. You can check out the stuff here and please, if you get a chance, do stop by Carissa's and say hi. And tell her I sent you :)

And finally - the beautiful Jo over at Jo Knows gave me the Happy 101 award -

it looks like this:

...and the mission, should I choose to accept it, is to pass it along to three other bloggers and write ten things that make me happy. And since we're all kind of fighting off the January Sucks, I thought I'd make a happiness advice list so that everyone can try these Get Happy tips.

1) Have an impromptu picnic - grab your favorite food to-go and eat it in in a grassy park with your socks and shoes off. Don't put on your Ipod, that's cheating. Just enjoy the sunshine and people watch in the park.

2) Smile at five complete strangers for no other reason than the fact that we're all in this together. If they scowl instead of smile, rest assured that three hours later they will feel like an idiot for not smiling back.

3) Celebrate Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day - it's today, Monday, January 25th, and no, I'm not making that up - by pouncing on some bubble wrap that you have lying around and popping it until you feel better about life. Or until you run out, whichever happens first.

4) Buy your friend, roommate, girlfriend, boyfriend, mom, dad, favorite sibling or mortal enemy flowers for no reason at all, and have them sent to the office to brighten his or her entire week.

5) Loan a friend a book you think they'd like. Tell them why.

6) Let someone have the right of way while driving. Even if you're 100 percent sure you had the right of way and that the person you let in might be a total idiot. Let them in anyways. Then breathe deeply.

7) Blow bubbles. I promise you that blowing bubbles with a $1 bottle of bubble solution is one of the fastest and cheapest ways to get happy.

8) If you feel safe enough to do so, buy a homeless person coffee and a muffin. It's what I do instead of giving cash (which I usually don't have anyways) and homeless people appreciate the human interaction, even if they can't always show it.

9) Forgive someone. Even if they don't deserve it. YOU deserve it. And no, you don't have to tell them.

10) Go to the dog park. Bring dog treats and watch your popularity skyrocket. (Just make sure the owners are cool with you spoiling their dogs' appetites!)

And I pass along this award to three of the most upbeat people I know:

Gwen, over at Confessions of a Control Freak;

Irenicineri, over at Harmonious Grub; and

Eeeno, over at Eeeno's World.

I adore all three of these girls for their upbeat perspectives on life and how awesomely kick-ass they are in their own ways. (Come to think of it, two of them know martial arts and a third probably boxes like a pro. Coincidence? Probably not.)

So here's to a shinier Monday, everyone!



photo credit: I found it here.

oof.

So I got sick on Wednesday...the kind of sick where you need to sleep for fourteen hours, then you wake up and think, "Wow, that was exhausting. I think I need a nap after all that sleep." So I kind of took the rest of the week off from life.

Now that it's Monday I'm doing slightly better and disgustingly far behind on everything... blogging, reading blogs, eating solid food, paying my bills, push-ups, checking email... you know, the important stuff. So I'll keep this blog post short(er) as I write another promised post and make a small correction to my last post.

As you might note, my last blog post was awarding my guy blogger buds one of the most effeminate blogger awards out there. I was given the award by Kris, who then kindly mentioned as a comment in my post that she'd actually given me TWO awards, the other one being the much more manly Sugar Doll Award.

It looks like this:

So I sort of unintentionally gave all my guy friends two really, really pink awards. Let it never be said that I don't serve up huge heapings of irony with my blog. Anyways, boys, there you go. You're all Sugar Dolls, doesn't that make you feel tough? Hmmm?

Also, I finally get a chance to blog about the Winter SoCal Blogger's Brunch, thrown by this amazing girl. I've mentioned before how awesome I think Dionne is - she does all her own illustrations for her adorable blogs, hosts incredible giveaways with the coolest stuff (I once won a Peacock teacup from her), cooks insanely amazing-looking food and has a heart of pure gold.

Dionne decided to throw a Winter SoCal Blogger's Brunch just after New Year's for some Southern Cali bloggers at one of my favorite cafes in all of LA, then made sure our table was covered in beautiful decorations, provided hand-made notebooks and place settings for us, and gave each of us a huge goody bag of hand-made stuff from a ton of Etsy sellers. (You can see all the cool stuff we got here). My friend Kristy (of "lying bitch" fame) and I went and got to meet some great people - including Carissa, Maggi, and Ashley, three of my new favorite bloggers.

Here's a picture of us:

From left to right: Maggi, Dionne, Me, Carissa, Ashley, and Kristy. Yay!

We all had a blast so all I can really say is thank you, again, Dionne, for hosting such a fantastic event. I look forward to the next one and I'm so glad I added three more SoCal bloggers to my wolf pack! (If you don't know what movie that last line references, don't ask.)

I'll be blogging more throughout the week as I get back on my feet. Have a wonderful Monday!

first things first...

...the ever awesome Kris over at Behold the Metatron gave me a Kreativ Blogger award. How cool is that?

It looks like this:

Kris resides in New York, has tons of inside tips about the coolest city that never sleeps, and posts recipes involving cheese and pasta that make me drool. I have a feeling that if we met in real life we'd get along famously.

Anyways, the rules are to post ten "interesting" things about myself and then pass along this award to ten other bloggers, so I thought I'd play nice and follow the rules for once. Kris, thank you so much for this - very sweet and kind of you and I'm glad you are enjoying my blog.

1) One of my goals in life, once I get the time and money, is to go back to school and get a Master's degree in Divinity.

2) I was all set to go to school in Santa Cruz (northern California) and study marine biology until I met an actual marine biologist. She said 95% of the job is staring at a computer screen and analyzing data. I said no thanks, I'll go to SeaWorld instead. And while we're at it, I'll get my degree in Acting.

3) I have been working on writing my first feature length film script for over two years now. I'm currently revising my second draft. This is the year I'm going to finish it, if only because I have friends who have sat me down and told me, very firmly, that this is the year I'm going to finish it.

4) I stay friends with my exes. Of the guys I've dated in the past, three of them read this blog, as does the guy I'm currently with. They all suck at leaving me comments (aHEM) but it's okay because I know they adore me. I adore them too.

5) I believe that everyone has at least three minor superpowers. Two of mine are: a) I always know, without having to check and even before fully stepping into one, if a bathroom stall is out of toilet paper. I don't know HOW I developed this power but it freakin' ROCKS. b) I get involved a lot in strangers' lives because people come up to me constantly and just start conversations. My friends don't believe it until they see it, but old people, young people, middle aged people, homeless people, wealthy people... people of all types just come up to me and start talking about whatever is on their minds and I just nod and smile and my friends look at me, like, Does she know this person? No, no I do not know this person. But I'm glad to meet them!

6) My idea of hell would be: forced to run on a treadmill at a gym with all glass windows for walls on a busy street corner while watching some obnoxious dating reality show on the high-def television. While Megan Fox cooked cabbage on the treadmill next to mine and read People Magazine out loud. With her voice.

7) I will gladly trap and gently release all spiders that come into the apartment, I have dug my hands into buckets of dirt and come up gleeful with fingers crawling in worms, I will step on cockroaches for other people, if my friends had pet tarantulas I would cuddle and pet them, crickets and grasshoppers amuse me to no end, and if you put me in a mansion with ONE bee or hornet I would lose my freakin' MIND in abject and utter terror.

8) I was born at home, on my own bed, in a small town in New Hampshire.

9) I write poetry. No, I will not make any of you read it. It's trite and emo, much like my Tweets.

10) I have been studying martial arts since I was sixteen. I have a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and have also studied boxing, White Dragon style Kung Fu, and Escrima, which is Filipino sword and knife fighting. I am proficient in nunchucks, escrima sticks, knives, and I'm okay with a bow staff and a handgun. If killer bees take over the planet I'm screwed.


And now for the tagging... just for a change, and because there's not as many male bloggers out there, I'm gonna tag some of my guy blogger buddies. Go check 'em out - all of these guys are smart, funny, creative, and pretty damn cool.

1) First up is my real-life buddy Anthony. He's a talented as hell artist and you should check out what he can draw. This piece of his is my favorite, and if you like Flight of the Conchords, I think you'll like it too.

2) Dave is all sorts of awesome...and his family is a-dor-able. Go say hi!

3) Des always comes up with the best quotes and pictures to get us all thinking. I love his blog and always look forward to seeing what he's gonna come up with next.

4) My favorite librarian since Henry DeTamble is B.Nagel. I don't even think I know his first name but B. is a fantastic writer and can keep up with my sarcasm fairly well. I approve.

5) Jonas is my favorite. But don't tell him, k? :)

6) Scrap Cat and The Mr. Pillow is a bit of a wild-card... he doesn't blog nearly enough for my liking and he's a little unorthodox in his story telling but I think he's fantastic just the same...can't go wrong with a Neil Gaiman fan!

7) Best photographer I know. If you like photography blogs, keep an eye on Mark...he's my roommate's brother and has more talent with a camera than I will ever have in my entire life. Not.Fair.

8) One of the most politically curious and knowledgeable guys I know. And I don't get to see him nearly as often as I'd like to in real life, which bums me out. He gives the best hugs.

9) This guy cracks me up. Particularly this post. Warning: you might die laughing.

10) Oh, and that boy I adore happens to have a blog of his most very own as well. Too bad I can't guilt him into posting more... OH WAIT.


PS I'm sorry, guys, that this award looks all frilly, so feel free to copy and paste Angelina Jolie's half naked body draped all over it. But let's keep it tasteful, okay??

spreading the love, aka Did You Just Call My Hot Chocolate a Bastard?

Do you guys know how much I love you?

I really, really do.

You all say the kindest, coolest things on my blog, so much so that while I was hanging out with my friend Kristy last night on our Hot Chocolate Crawl (more on that later) she said, "Your followers always say the nicest things on your blog. Sometimes it makes me want to leave a comment that just says 'You Lying Bitch.'"

Which I believe she has before, isn't that charming? So if you see a totally sarcastic comment here or there on my blog, believe it or not, it's usually one of my real life friends. Feel free to return the favor and visit their blogs and call them lying bitches as well. (Just a friendly suggestion!)

Anyways, I'm in the mood to spread the love because over the last couple weeks I've been getting a lot of love. I'll start with one of my favorite bloggers, Nichole, over at littlebrownpen. She takes incredible photographs of her adorable family, she finds the cutest stuff on Etsy (my addiction) and is one of the most genuinely kind and funny people I've had the pleasure of following. And a few weeks ago she blogged about being in Vermont and picking up gifts for family and friends and like a total jerk I left a comment that was all, "That's awesome, wish I could be on your gift list!" or something to that effect.

Next thing I know I've got an email from her that's asking for my mailing address and a short explanation that says she's engaging in some random acts of kindness.

And last week, a small package from Little Brown Pen arrived. When I opened it up, I saw this:


And what Nichole did was take photos while she was in Paris of individual numbers and letters, then print out photos of each and make an adjustable calendar out of it. Like this:


And I'd seen this on her website (you can check out the direct Etsy link here) and I'd been yearning and pining to find a way to make room in my budget for this...

And instead she sent it to me for free. For being a smartass.

Nichole, je t'aime.

So if you like what you see and want to own one of your most very own, last I saw, she had three left on her Etsy site....

And next up is my darling Clarity, who is my British counterpart. We have way too many things in common and I think if we ever actually sat down to tea together we probably wouldn't leave until they elected a new Queen. Also, Clarity can make the bed and blog at the same time, a feat which I liken alongside dodging bullets and having x-ray vision.

So Clarity gave me the Kreative Blogger award,

(it looks like this)

...and I'm supposed to pass it along, for whatever that means to y'all. And I'd like to pass it along to my aforementioned You Lying Bitch friend Kristy, because she is another one of those incredible writers who needs to blog more ("I only write when I'm inspired," she said. "Then be inspired MORE," I said) and takes words and turns them into poetry in a way that I fear I will never be able to - her words fly off the page and burn little paper hearts into your skin and the back of your neck. It's incredible, her writing, so please, go check her out, and maybe if she has more followers she'll feel pressured to write more.

I am also giving this award to my blogger friend (whom I will get to meet in person in January) Dionne, who not only writes incredible posts but also does all her own illustrations to match each of her posts, and she takes amazing photos, AND she makes the most amazing food ever. So she already has globs of followers, for good reason, but if you haven't checked out her blog, please do so, because she's a wonderful human being, amazing and kind, and when I asked her for her recipes she friended me on Facebook so I could find them.

You don't get any cuter than that.

As for our Hot Chocolate Crawl: when you don't drink alcohol you have to come up with creative ways to hang out with people (no, designated driving does NOT count) so I came up with a Hot Chocolate Crawl for Kristy, myself, and Benni, because Kristy had not met Benni yet and since I'd known her since college her approval was crucial.

So we hopped from one place to the next practically making ourselves sick on all the chocolate and getting into loud political and social discussions until almost 1 in the morning, because that's the kind of friends I keep around. Rest assured that the other patrons of this place know how I feel now about Michael Vick and health care and whether it's possible to have true democracy if you have more than nine people in a room. And it was around 9 pm at our first stop here that Benni had a White Hot Chocolate and called Kristy's Vanilla Hot Chocolate a bastardization between regular Hot Chocolate and White Hot Chocolate and Kristy said, "Did you just call my hot chocolate a bastard?"

And then I turned to her and said, "I am SO naming my next blog that." And then she called me a lying bitch.

guest blogging bookends

Let's all flash back to Monday, shall we? When I wrote about how my blogger-friend Jonas had emailed me and asked me to guest post something on his blog, no one had ever asked me that before, wasn't that wonderful?

And a ton of you (very awesome people) left super kind comments and encouragement. And then I get to my friend Krista's comment:

"tracy...did you get my email?"

So what happened is that I was asked on the exact same day to do two separate guest blogs, by two different people, on two separate email accounts, both of which I rarely ever check because, let's face it, I'm slightly technophobic. In fact, I've been known to yell, to no one in particular when my email server is down, "Why can't we just go back to using carrier pigeons?!" And then my friends point out that if we did that not only would it take 4 to 6 weeks to deliver a single letter but there'd probably be avian flu all over it as well.

Anyways, my friend Krista had emailed a group of her blogger friends asking them to write about what inspired them, and of course, my first thought was to simply write back an email to Krista that said, "You."

Krista is one of those people who can take a noun, a verb, and an adjective (and sometimes an adverb when she's feeling all crazy) and out of those simple bricks build a literary cathedral. I read her blog and and I relearn how to use the English language because she crafts sentences that are pure poetry. I leave her comment after comment telling her exactly this, too, and she very graciously never calls me a stalker and I have yet to see a restraining order appear on my doorstep.

I'll leave it up to Krista to explain how and where we met (she introduces me on my guest blog) and I can tell you, without a doubt, that Krista is that friend we've all been waiting for; she's The One who probably answers the phone at 2 am and never judges you for acting stupid and probably doesn't have to be that person that just talks to fill in the silences. And even though, after finding each other again after spending a few years apart, we still have yet to be able to hang out and see each other due to our busy lives, I refuse to let Krista go a second time as my friend. I'm just sort of greedy that way.

So please, if you have the time to go check out my guest blog over at My Life as I See It, (it's titled Radical Moments of Love) I'd love that, and feel free to then poke around and read some of Krista's beautiful prose and note that yes, she is the mother of the cutest little girl on the entire planet.

Krista, I adore you. Thanks for asking me to guest post. It means the world to me, it really does.

blog love... and I'm a winner!

Hi guys,

I hope you all had lovely weekends... I will post a bunch of photos I took over the weekend tomorrow (playing catch up at work today) and in the meantime I thought I'd share with everyone that I have won my very first blog giveaway, over at Miss Anne's blog Indefinitely Definite. Anne, thank you SO MUCH - I LOVE your blog...I love the fact that you post inspiring quotes with beautiful pictures, share adorable heart-warming videos that you've found, and seem like an all-around awesome kind of woman. What other kind of person would have a surprise giveaway on her own birthday? (And no, I don't know what I won yet -- but I will post pictures when I get it!)

So Anne, happy belated birthday (again) and thank you so much for all of the blog love and support. I love reading your thoughtful comments on my blog and you've always been so kind to me. :)

And to pass along a little bit of love, I wanted to highlight the fact that my bff Radical Bradical is now blogging, and she was inspired by my top ten list to create one of her own, which I think kind of rocks: The 10 Best Things About Being an Adult. Because trust me, we all need reminders.

Finally, I got a lot of fantastic responses from everyone who commented on my Top 10 Lists, but one person really stood out after I began reading her blog, and reading this post made me sit back and re-think a few things. You can feel free to agree or disagree with the blogger's point of view, but it's totally fascinating to read someone else's perspective on a somewhat controversial issue. Go ahead, take a look. :)

Have a wonderful, survivable rest of your Monday and I should have lots and lots of photos up tomorrow that documented how amazing my weekend was... let's just say that I went to a wedding on Saturday night and the bride and groom had set up a photobooth(!)

Apologies to the other guests for how much I hogged that damn machine. But seriously, how fantastic an idea is that?!

all hands on deck

So, I haven't posted for a few days, because as a working actor in LA, things can go from normal to crazy VERY quickly.

Like late last week, when I literally had three auditions in one day, then booked a print job (a photography shoot, usually for a stock photography company or ad agency) for this upcoming Friday. The print audition goes a little something like this: they tell you what to wear (in this case it was active sportswear), then they go through whether or not you have any conflicts (for example, if you booked a shoot with Pepsi you better not have booked a shoot with Coca-Cola in the last year or so) and then they get your sizes and tell you any other necessary information. Like allergies!

Wait, what?

Yep, as they finish taking my photographs and I'm heading out, the photographer calls out to me, "You're not allergic to cats, dogs, or gerbils, right?"

Gerbils?

Not that I know of...

So I booked a job. Which means all my carefully made plans of when I was working and where I was going this week had to get a little squished and re-arranged and a couple rain checks were doled out, and I'll be on a set on Friday getting photographs of me, possibly interacting with dogs, cats, and...gerbils.

Ain't life grand.

At any rate, I apologize for the posting slackage, and here's a much more awesome blog than mine to follow while you go through withdrawal. Hopefully later this week I'll have more time to post blogs and then you'll get a good one next week that explains any gerbil allergies that might have popped up on Friday.

Seriously, go check out this blog. It's the coolest idea ever, and I'm totally jealous that I didn't think of it first. Here's the author's explanation of the art project, because the blog itself drops you right into the middle of the action. And don't think I'm not stealing some of these ideas, because I totally am...

:)

tying it all together

I'm about to jet off for the weekend, guys, and I've got a Tori Amos concert at the Greek Amphitheater to catch tomorrow night (see ya there, Di!), and some sort of post-birthday ambush thing going on Saturday night (my friends Eric and Stacy are kidnapping me and not telling me where I'm going -- nevertheless, I'm excited).

In the meantime, I've got an ice cream date with one of my favorite girls tonight after a casting workshop, and tomorrow I get to visit my mom and swim in her swimming pool. I got no complaints :)

Before I bid you guys a fantastic weekend, wanted to leave you guys a couple things to check out:

steps two, three, four, and five of how to make it as a working actor in LA are up on my Examiner.com page, so check 'em out...

and remember that blog I posted about those cute little chalkboard signs? Well Shanna over at Shanna Suburbia had an even cuter idea...and then I read Nina's blog over at Naturally Nina and saw that idea put into adorable action. I'm totally doing this with some plates or serving trays that I find at a flea market.

Right now I'm craving fresh watermelon slices, ice cold lemonade, central air-conditioning, and a good pair of comfy jean shorts with flip flops. I hope all of you have a lovely summer weekend and I'll catch y'all later. :)

a noise within

A very small, somewhat whimsical incident that happened last night set this blog in motion, and like most of my rambling thoughts, it might take a while for me to link a few ideas together like a string of Christmas lights, but when I finally get around to it, damned if the whole tree don't light up. I'm like that with my epiphanies and the way I share the points I want to get across.

Going to bed last night, I couldn't set aside the nagging thought that maybe I'd set my alarm clock wrong. Setting the alarm clock incorrectly is something I very rarely do, but my sleep has been sketchy lately so maybe I had reason to trust my gut. Either way, I told that nagging little voice inside to kindly shut the hell up so I could go back to sleep, but it wouldn't. Check the alarm clock time and make sure it's correct, it said. Over and over and over again. I tried to reason with it for a while, saying, Look, little naggy neurotic voice, I never, EVER do that, I'm not THAT person, and the light from the alarm clock is going to make it even harder for me to fall back asleep.

At which point Little Nagging Voice became Booming Old Testament Voice and it said JUST CHECK THE FREAKIN' ALARM CLOCK! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BY TRUSTING YOUR INSTINCTS!

So I did. Raise your hands if you know the punchline. My alarm clock was set to 7:40 PM, a rather ineffectual time to get up and go to work. I laughed a little, shook my head in wonder and gratitude for a universe and a gut instinct that looks out for my best interests, re-set the alarm clock and went back to attempting to sleep.

So that's a cute story, and I could leave it at that. But I never really do. Things always tie themselves to other things in my life, unrelated incidents years ago suddenly springing back to life, a bulb on that string of lights flickering back on, and I get to see the big picture about how everything, and I truly mean everything, is connected in this world. That's the beauty and the tragedy and the mystery of it.

And I remember college, taking a Self-Defense for Women's class as part of my PE requirement, totally bored and snotty about it since I already had a first degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do and I was so sure there wasn't anything else I could be taught about self-defense from women who didn't even know martial arts. I remember reading the number one reason women got attacked. Wasn't the shoes, wasn't the purse, wasn't the car or what clothes a woman was wearing. It was that she doubted her instincts.

You've been there, right? Sure you have. Something's...off. About this person. This situation. It doesn't feel right. I'm not comfortable. And always the choice. Do I make a scene? Risk being the over reactive, crazy one? Walk away? Ask for help? How do I even ask for help? Excuse me, officer, I have a funny feeling about this guy I'm on a date with...

Most women, if they survive an attack, tell people later on that they had a funny feeling. Too busy being polite, they shoved that noise within down and smiled and did what polite society would dictate.

Don't ever do that.

Follow your instincts. Please. Because there are enough bad things that happen in this world that come from that blind spot, totally left field, you never saw it coming. And then there are the bad things that you felt or sensed, long before they ever happened, and they build, almost as if they were inevitable. Bad things are not inevitable. They are a series of small little decisions and you have the right to walk away any time you'd like from a situation that you are not comfortable in.

Here's an amazing story from one of my long-lost friends, one that I've repeated to many people often times, having no idea that years later when we finally reconnected, my friend had blogged about it. And I have a story of my own, about following my instincts, in two different kinds of ways. I'm blessed in that I have fairly good instincts (read: alarm clock) and I'm totally and utterly grateful that the night that this happened to me, I listened to not just myself, but to someone else as well. The man who might have attacked my friend and I.

To make a long story short, my friend and I were coming out of a club in a bad part of London, her totally drunk and me, the sober one, looking out for her. A series of bad decisions on her part (and a total inability, on my part, to control her) lead my friend to follow a man down a dark alley as he promised to find us the nearest bus station. I noticed a few things: the alley, the fact that no one else around seemed particularly interested in our welfare, and a car full of men that the man now leading my friend down a dark alley had nodded to. The sounds going on within my body were less of a noise and more of a thudding, panicked roar. I had no choice but to follow my friend into that alley, gearing up for what I truly believe, to this day, might have ended up being a fight for our lives.

"You ladies sure don't know your way around here, do you," the man said conversationally, and my friend wobbled on my shoulder and I found myself doing the bravest thing I've ever done. I didn't clench my fists with all my Tae Kwon Do skill, I didn't look for a weapon. I looked the man straight in the eyes. His eyes caught mine and his widened. I'm not sure what my face looked like other than grim determination and maybe a glimmer of hope.

"I guess it's a good thing that we have kind people like you around to do the right thing, then," I said. Because even though my instincts were saying THIS IS NOT GOOD WHY AREN'T WE RUNNING LIKE HELL another voice told me to give him a chance to be the person he was trying to become. So I did. It could have ended badly. I don't always recommend giving people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to situations like that. But in this case, the entire situation changed.

He looked at me, and my wobbly friend, and he nodded. Maybe he was coming to peace with what he was about to do, I don't know. He pointed outside the alley and told us where the bus station was (he was telling the truth). And then he turned around and ran like hell, faster than I've ever seen anyone run who's life or a gold medal didn't depend on it, in the opposite direction. My friend celebrated the fact that she had five more minutes to live by throwing up a little. I kind of felt like that too.

We got home safe, and I think about that night in the alley quite a lot. I think about what it means to trust your instincts, what it means to trust other people, where to draw the line. It's a tough call. I don't ever think about what might have happened If. Because when you trust your instincts, the good that unfolds is what seems inevitable. As in, it couldn't have happened any other way because I was listening to myself. And as long as I listen to myself, regardless of what situations I may even end up being wrong or right about, I have no regrets.

speaking of uncomfortable...

I changed my blog design.

I know, I know. You were so used to the black one. It was so sophisticated, in a New York sort of way, and it matched my dark sense of humor and nail polish so well.

The thing is, the sun has come out.

It's that rare time of year in Southern California where instead of skipping directly from Mildly Cold (I have a few East Coast readers who would stab me with a knitting needle if I deigned to call 60 degrees cold) to Really Damn Hot, there is a lovely in-between period, which I've heard people from other parts of the country that actually experience such things as "weather" and "seasons" call Spring.

Ah, spring. Spring is in the air. I feel like frolicking, and going on long drives, both of which I frequently do anyways, but that's not the point. The sun is out but it's not yet burning my shoulders (which inevitably freckle, thanks to my pale Scottish roots), there's a refreshing breeze in the air, birds are singing (I can literally hear them singing as I type this) and GOOD GOD I've become a raving optimist/romantic. I mean, blogging about singing birds? I might as well go down to Anaheim and audition for Snow White. Except I'm probably still too short. THANKS FOR BRINGING THAT UP AGAIN.

But seriously, every once in a while, I crave color, sunshine, happiness, good thoughts, singing loudly in cars, balloons, kittens, the whole nine yards of all that stuff that I usually try to maintain a healthy level of skepticism about. I desperately hold on to my New England roots of "if it's really, really cheerful, maybe we should shoot it," but I can't help but feel a little overcome by bright blue skies, puffy white clouds, and sun streaming through the window when I wake up in the mornings. Not to mention the daffodils that I got at Trader Joe's (thanks, Struggling Actress, for the daffodil recommendation) are still beside my alarm clock on my nightstand, in a bright apple green glass vase, and I can't help but smile.

So here I am, loving color again. My old place was all black and stainless steel, very efficient, very grown up, knowing exactly where it was going and what it was doing. Black and white photographs that I took of London hung on the walls in black frames. The bathroom? You guessed it. Black, white, stainless steel.

Um...yeah. My bathroom now? It looks like a marine biologist's happy place. Aquamarine glass tea light holders match aquamarine stones that I found at a craft store, which I'm using to decorate the base of my towel holder. I just bought bamboo soap and toothbrush holders (not to mention a bamboo tissue box cover) and I have white frames that have actual seashells in them holding pictures of the ocean that I've taken while in Laguna Beach, Mexico, and Bermuda. And this is probably the time to mention that I found matching aquamarine towels on sale at Ikea. I know, I need help. I won't even go into the bamboo wooden elephant wind chime that I have hanging from the ceiling. It's just too much.

Except...it isn't. I feel lighter these days, and I want my space to reflect that. I want color, and I want flowers, and I want to be a girl without apologizing for it. Because in case you haven't noticed, girls rock.

Ergo, color. Color is everywhere in my room, not like in a "Rachel Ray threw up" kind of a way, and it doesn't look like I live in a circus, per se... but I bought some colorful frames (again, Ikea) that I'm going to use to house pictures of my loved ones, and I'm putting out all my beautiful colorful lanterns that I've collected, and it's just enough color. And no pink in sight, so it's not like anyone has to hold an intervention. Just lots of bright green, deep royal blue, and a nice dark red.

And since I got so addicted to light and fresh color in my living space, I figured my blog space should reflect the same. Hope you enjoy, and that my blog brightens your day just a little bit.