Broken Glassware and the new Kara Collection.

There are moments where I want to drive to a store, buy a cheap box of glassware and throw it, piece by piece against something hard, just to hear each piece break into thousands of smaller pieces.

The box I would buy would represent all of the stupid, tiny, ridiculous decisions I have to worry about. All the choices I have made that have formed nice, beautiful glasses, the fact they form a matching set would illustrate my identity. Maybe I am best represented by wine glasses, maybe the glasses that are perfectly smooth and round, or maybe still, maybe my glasses are all tinted blue.

Regardless, I’d take that box and glass by glass I’d shatter them. It would be so freeing. All of my decisions keep leading me to yet another empty glass to add to my collection. At times I just want to take the whole set and smash them so I can start over without any trace of what was.

Only after they were in thousands of pieces would someone outside of me understand how much were contained in those empty glasses. They were never empty to me; they were built out of thousands of tiny decisions. Some of those decisions took me years of my life to form the courage to make.

People keep asking me why there is no wedding, why there isn’t some grand reception for people to attend, why we’re not flying back home to share the event with family. Why bother? I’d spend another several months of my life making a bunch of tiny, ridiculous decisions and form another empty glass that would be my wedding. I really don’t care if I have bridesmaids, if I have a designer cake, if I wear a white dress. To me, that’s all glassware.

I think deep down, I’m more of a mug person. I’m going to start collecting mugs. That way, they don’t have to match and if a glass slips in there, it’s fine. I’ll just say it’s there to add character. Plus, you can drink more things out of a mug such as hot tea or cocoa and in fact, most anything can be drunk out of a mug. That’s what is so great about it, no one looks at the mug, and they care more about what’s in it. It’s about damn time I cared more about what is in my decisions than what they look like.

So no, no white wedding gown. In fact, today I started dreaming about what it would be like to get married in jeans and a t-shirt. Of course, knowing me, I’d insist on wearing my Birkenstocks and its too damn cold for that. Sigh, so I guess, I’ll have to cave and buy a nice dress and some cute shoes. I’ll just consider that my first mug in the new Kara Collection.

(insert commerical with theme music here)

What's in a name?

It’s interesting how much history you can pull up just be researching your surname. Then if you look at your other names, there is so much to learn. I find myself looking at baby name websites, just because I love learning about the history that goes into the word that people then decide to name their child. They are often common everyday words that over time just sounded like a good think to call a child. Makes me wonder if in the future, people will be naming their kids words that are based on things like cancer, Ritalin, cassette, vagina or other words used in common speech that we would never think of naming a kid. Who knows, maybe some other word will evolve to be a name. Don’t believe me? Look at all the names that are a variant of some root word for “pure.” It’s kind of crazy. I find it odd that I may someday have a great (times 15) grandchild with a name like Cassette Ritaline, who goes by “Cassie” for short.

Just saying.

Pretty soon, I'll be changing my name. The small price I pay for falling maddly in love and getting married. Someday I'll need to do this whole buy a dress thing. It's on my list.

Wishing Comfort

Soft Comfort
Warmth
Happy face pancakes and bacon
Window view
Maple Syrup
Cold Milk
Smiling feet
Funny words
Soft Warm Clean Armor
Ride with Ruby
See the Blue Beauty
New Armor Getaway
Words of Wisdom
Hugging hands
Cold star brew
Bread roll
View through glass
Half sandwich and cup of soup
Warmth
Loving Comfort

Break

Ruby highway
Destination unknown
Brain stimulates
Heart growth
Tea Pop snicker
Quiet Return
Home Comfort
Consumption
Color Viewing
Hugging warmth
Comfortable Peace

Rest

Floating Islands

Yesterday we saw what I think is properly called a superior mirage. From the New Hampshire coast, we could see islands that were below the horizon line called the isles of shoals. They are about 5 miles off the coast, so normally, you wouldn’t see them. As best as I can figure, the air right above the ocean water was so cold that it resulted in this effect as seen in the image below.



And this would be an actual photo of the islands that all logic would say I should not be able to see due to the curvature of the nice planet. Yes, those are over five mile away:

New Car

Yesterday, we traded our gas guzzling, road warrior car in. It definitely had personality. While I would complain about some of its features, and when directly asked, would say, I wasn’t a fan of her, I am a little bit sad she’s gone. It was the car that my sailor drove when he picked me up at the airport, each and every time this last year. It was the car we took to the beach down in Charleston. The whole thing is so very strange. Growing up, I never cared so much when my family got a new car, even if it was a car that drove a lot. I guess it’s because I love him so much that my happiness for him oozes into things he touches. It’s kind of sad and girly, I know, but what can I say? On the other hand, it was sort of like his bachelor mobile. Now we have a pretty prius. Yes, I did say pretty. It also feels more like an “us” car. Also, the forty miles a gallon it gets isn't bad either.

Pinky

I keep telling people that I want a mini pink bulldozer or bobcat. It would live under my carport and I'd drive it around during our New Englander blizzards and help out with neighborhood snow removel. I do not believe that people fully understand how wonderful it would be to own such a vehicle up here in cold Maine so I've altered a photo for you. It's a bad photoshop job, I know this, BUT, I think it does a good job of illustrating the coolness that would be a pink roover snow scooper.

Are we really free?

I once had a roommate who spent a great deal of her time trying to convince people that she would make a good teacher. She wanted people to view her as smart, trustworthy, a good role model, understanding and fully capable of teaching children. She also wanted lots of brownie points for going into a field where people were unappreciated, underpaid and expected people to treat her as taking one for the team as it were, a martyr almost. She was full of the biggest, smelliest, most fowl type of bullshit ever created. Why you may ask? She’s a liar of the worst kind; she falsified herself and her intentions.

She didn’t want to go in to teaching with the priority of helping others, but rather to help herself. She had always had the selfish goal of ONLY helping people, only teaching in a school district that was within some short radius of her hometown. It must suck to be her. I don’t envy her at all in any way. People always assume that if you go into some kind of service position that your intentions are truly unselfish and you intend to help where you are needed. I assume that is why she falsified herself to the extreme. You can’t really call yourself a good role model when you are only interested in helping people when it’s convenient with your personal goals. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if someone told me that she refuses to interview or teach just down the highway, in some inner city school district, which would in no way help her achieve her personal goals and dreams.

I provide this personal example to illustrate that it is this pressure that leads to a public falsified self is quite common. Just look at politicians, specifically, those trying to win a presidential bid. Each one is trying to present himself (or herself) as a person for the people. That they are who we each wish we could be, have the time to be. (This reminds me of the priest character in the movie Keeping the Faith) But are they really? Maybe….

Stop and ask yourself, what does he (or she) gain? What are their goals? Why the heck can’t people just be honest? There is nothing wrong with anyone or their dreams or goals. However, there is something wrong about lying about the most basic core of you. We live in a country where we are supposed to be free, but are we? If you have to lie about your most fundamental self in order to achieve basic dreams, then are we really free?

Give me boats, fruit and angels and call it a day.

I do absolutely love how when I drive home from work I see something new everyday. There always seems to be a new boat in the harbor or some odd house I missed every other time before I went that path. Due to all the winding, narrow streets, every day can be a new adventure. If I only had a way to take photos from all the bridges in town…but alas! Come tourist season, there will be harbor cruses. How amazing! It may very well be something I do on a weekly basis. I may trade it off with other boat tours. It might akso be fun to go out a ways in the ocean and spend an afternoon watching whales.

I also have discovered the best grocery store ever! I think it may even be better than the Merc back home. Food there is expensive, but what’s new in my life? Seriously, the story of my life, where’s the money? I’m finding it hard to remain positive when I make so little money doing a job that is really quite stressful. There is by far nothing more depressing than working several hours a week, only to find by the time a pay check comes around, not having enough for life’s simple pleasures.

Regardless, I find myself sneaking over there and spending a dollar now and again just to sample the sweet luxury that is high quality food. There is just something about gourmet chips and fresh fruit that gets me going with excitement.

That reminds me of another point. If it does become the case that this country has a national health care system, is someone going to address the fact that healthy food is so expensive? I was just wondering.

Alas, life continues. Thankfully, I’ll be working fewer hours this week and in the upcoming weeks so maybe I will regain my sense of self long enough to read a good book or make some snow angels.

Re: Why don't you tell me these things?

What goes into making a decision and what kind of information do you need to make one confidently? This concept is so basic, that even personality questionnaires inquire how you go about solving programs in an effort to identify your profile. It’s often believed that a general difference is that people either rely on feelings or logic to make decisions, the whole head versus heart concept. However, there is so much more to it.

I think you reach a point in your life where you are very aware of what is expected of you. It’s surprising how many different directions a mind can be pulled. As much as I like to make fun of Sociology, that field’s concept of a role is very applicable to my point. Regardless of where you stand in life, you must fill roles and if you fail at doing so, there are consequences.

Just to provide a list for the sake of discussion, here is what I would say would be some of my roles I’m expected to fill: daughter, niece, cousin, fiancée, co-worker, neighbor, sister, role model, female, twenty-five year old, Kansan, Mainer, military spouse (soon to be), friend, assistant, servant (I work in the service industry at the moment), and probably others, but I’ve made my point. To further complicated things, each role as subcomponents.

I suppose that a person just acts and doesn’t think about himself like this, with the brake down of identity, but to do so is my auto-pilot. I have moments, sometimes several hour long moments where my emotions are just out of sync with my situation. However, these days, due to my good health, it may simply be more of an issue with circumstance. I find myself having trouble simply being myself, because for so long, whenever I was myself, I was struck down. I have found that when people say, “be yourself,” what they really mean, is “be the person I think you want to be.”

I don’t feel safe being myself, to be quite honest, except when I am completely alone, alone with my sailor (not out in public), or when I am on a vacation and take on a “to hell with you attitude,” and don’t worry about what effect I have on people. Granted, I should probably just take on this attitude in my everyday life, but if you have seen me on vacation, you know that kind of thinking won’t sit well in a structured atmosphere like a work environment. So, I function on auto-pilot sometimes. It’s how bills get paid and things get done. However, the consequence is that I suffer. If I spend too many days just acting like I should to fill a role, then I sort of loose myself and bury myself. When someone asks me something simple like what I want to do or what movie would I want to watch I just freeze. I have to take a few moments and dig inside my brain to find myself again and answer. Sometimes, it takes a while.

I guess to some degree I have never really felt accepted. It doesn’t help that I’m in Maine. My sense of humor gets lost on people, so I hold my tongue when I have something witty to say. I hate discussing politics and religion with anyone who is going to make personal insults in my direction when I do. Clearly, any one who sinks to such a low as to use that kind of tactic is a complete waste of my time and energy and since probably 99% of the population does exactly that, it’s hard for me to really speak my mind.

Not all vacations require a beach

I once saw this movie that had a great concept: “Take a vacation from you problems.” I loved it and still do. People worry too much and at times take life way to seriously. It’s also odd that people think they have to physically leave their house, neighborhood, city, heck, even state and country just to get away and relax. It’s often the case that people live some where, or close to some where that people travel to trying to accomplish the same thing.

Now, I’m no different. I often don’t care how strong or good the argument is I am convinced that I have to at least leave my house to accomplish this type of relaxation by taking a break from all that ails me. However, I am realizing that there were lots of things I missed out on where I used to live because I was closed minded and assumed that it was all boring. If you live somewhere long enough, you just assume you’ve done everything, but that’s often the furthest from the truth.

Granted, in some parts of the country, like small towns in western Kansas, there may only be so much, but if you live near a city as big as Kansas City, then you really have no room to complain. I live in a town of about nine thousand, and even if you factor out all the geographic differences like take away the ocean and the mountains, you still have community classes, events, locally owned stores and restaurants. Things come and go and there are new ones to explore. I don’t care where you live, most every where has a city part to relax in and things like kites and bubbles are widely available. Don’t be afraid to let your inner kid escape when it comes to that kind of thing. Allow yourself to take a Saturday and be a “dumb tourist” in your town. It will force you to live in the moment and you’ll see the whole place through new eyes and sleep better because of it.

What happend to religous freedom?

I find it odd that a lot of people who are decedents of people who fled to the United States for religious freedom are now denying people the vary thing their ancestors valued above all else. Think about it. Imagine a bunch of people on a very tiny boat. Imagine their collective body odor after three months of sea voyage. Imagine building a house and a life from scratch with materials and resources that were just here and possibly having no idea ahead of time of what you could work with. Some of us are descendants of people who voluntarily choose to endure such awfulness just for the freedom to believe what they wanted to. Now, their descendants are a bunch of closed minded pansy asses. If zombies come up out of the ground and start attacking people it will be because after they rolled over in their grave a few hundred times they got restless.

Proclamtion of the Obvious

There was a summer, back in my golden years of a youngster, which I spent, almost in its entirety, playing Sim City 2000 on our super Nintendo system. I rarely left the house. I was determined to build the ultimate city and somehow squeeze half a million people on my city grid. It would probably be an understatement to say that I was obsessed. I finally reached my goal on hot summer afternoon in August, just as the school year was rapidly approaching. I even recall doing a happy dance when that monumental occasion occurred. I spent the next couple of days showing my city off to my parents, my sister. I think I may have even tried to explain its awesomeness to our dogs.

I then began to build another city, partly out of boredom and partly out of habit. Playing that game had simply become what I did in my freedom and during a summer as a child, was most of my time. I had to turn over the gaming system to my younger sister, for reasons my parents could not explain to me in my satisfaction. She taunted me, she rubbed it in my face and in my angry dramatic reply of dissatisfaction I accidently saved my new, pitiful, tiny city over my fantastic mega city. It was gone forever, my entire summer’s worth of work, gone in that very instant. It was very traumatic.

I went back to school a couple weeks later and was miserable. I spent a large part of my day yearning to be outside. I stared repeatedly out of my classroom window and daydreamed of pterodactyls flying by and ripping the roof right off of my classroom so that I could absorb sunshine. At the time, I repeatedly kicked myself in the ass with guilt, telling myself how foolish I had been. How I had wasted the entire summer, but I came to realize later, that I had learned a lot from the experience.

Sadly, I also think that because of that experience I am scared to really fully commit myself to something, even a leisure type hobby. All of my good ideas and energy went into something that I don’t have anymore and even when I did, it wasn’t easily accessible. Part of that is probably because despite how much I keep trying to deny it, I want to be able to see my work and accomplishments in some fashion. I would be much happier building a table than playing a video game. I don’t want to have to turn on a piece of electronic equipment and open a file before I can be proud of my work and my life. I want it out in the open, in plain sight, so I can share my joy and happiness. I’m not suggesting I want people to ask about my work or accomplishments and I never picture it as conversation starting points. It’s just that I want my space, my appearance, my behavior, etc. to all represent me.

Besides, if you only gave the world a chance, you’d see how wonderful it is. Seriously, if you can, you should go outside and look around, cool stuff like this is out there, I promise:

I had to walk on an outdoor trail three times before I saw things this small when I was in Charleston after spending several days inside staring at a computer screen because I was afraid of the Southern heat. Some people are not meant to live indoors CONSTANTLY and I am one of them...are you?