Advice
July 21st, 2009 § Leave a Comment
Last night I pulled down a box of old cards and letters that I have received over the years. Many are brightly colored with felt bunny rabbits or chickens wishing me a Happy Birthday or a Hoppy Easter. Some were poems and love promises made and broken by boyfriends past. I often feel pangs of nostalgia and when I do, I bring that box down from the shelf in my closet and read through the piles of old letters and cards.
They remind me of who I was to people in my past, of how much I am loved by my family and friends and how much I was once loved by people who have long since fell in love with other people and married.
I came across a yellowed note card with my grandmothers swooshy writing on it. It wasn’t a special note card. Nothing like the hundreds of other cards that she picked with care and scrutiny. This was a plain note card and on it, in her unmistakable handwriting, was a piece of advice that she wrote for me years prior, but somehow she must have known in that very moment, I needed to hear it again.
“Be thankful for what you have and you will always have more. If you focus on what you don’t have you will never have enough.”
But then again, maybe it is something we all have to remind ourselves of, every now and then.
Dog Sitting
July 20th, 2009 § Leave a Comment
I rarely go anywhere. I have the heart of a traveler with the means of a pauper. Meaning – - were I a homeless person, someone would take my cup of coins and then tell me I still owe them $200 – - that kind of pauper poor.
These past couple of weekends though, I got on a plane and went places. Not exotic places like the Argentina kind of exotic that my brother and sister in law are going to on their anniversary — but nonetheless still great.
Paul and I went to Denver for the 4th of July and then to my mom’s house in Morgan Hill this past weekend for a quick visit. i was excited to get away for the weekends and was eager to breathe in new scenery. Taking trips when you have pets however, adds a whole other layer of stress when planning for a trip. I’ve had pets for the better part of 10 years which means my level of spontaneity has decreased to the level of someone suffering from OCD and agoraphobia.
Having dogs requires me to make calculated decisions when planning trips and when making decisions on where to live. Whenever I look for a new place to live (which is more often than I care to admit) I have to find an apartment that has a sliding glass door which leads to an outside patio with a minimum 8 foot fence and concrete slabbing around it so my Houdini’s can’t orchestrate an escape. This realization came to me after I lived in an apartment with a dirt backyard and received a call from a neighbor saying, “I think I have your dog Charlie, he jumped on me as I was walking by your yard and followed me home…your black dog must be a little fatter because he is stuck halfway between the fence and your yard so I pushed him back in.”
To add to that, Jack and Charlie have been known to bark during the day because, afterall they are dogs and that’s what dogs do, especially during times it’s inconvinient for them to do so, like when you tell your apartment manager you have one dog…not two. So, I also need a landlord who doesn’t require their complex to rest in complete and quiet serenity void of sounds like children playing and dogs barking – - at the children playing.
This trip, required me to find a new pet sitter since my old one was in the Los Angeles area – - which I was no longer a resident of. Jack and Charlie’s old pet sitter, Melissa was wonderful. She loved Jack and Charlie. Loved them so much that when I told her we were moving she asked if she could come say goodbye and when she did she gave them hugs and cried. Yes, that kind of love. So needless to say, I hoped to find someone who would love them just as much as Melissa. Someone who would walk through my front door and welcome my unruly, “jump on you until you have raised claw welts on your thighs” dogs. I managed to find someone on the Internet who seemed highly recommended, licensed, insured and with reasonable rates to boot.
We met, he was nice enough so I handed him two sets of keys to my apartment and gave him my travel itinerary and care instructions for Jack and Charlie. I tried to quiet the angst inside of me – the visions of Jack and Charlie spending the weekend howling on the back porch in the middle of the night calling out for someone to bring them food and water because this guy ended up being a convicted felon who cleaned out my apartment but left my dogs because they would just slow him down. This is followed by me arriving home expecting to be met at the door by two excited balls of fur but instead finding them rigamortized on their doggy beds with their lips curled in a frozen snarl - – have I mentioned my pension for worse case scenario thinking?
So, I left my apartment and my pooches in his hands and prayed that all would go okay and he wouldn’t sell Jack and Charlie to a circus (this notion is actually far fetched given that any circus would require animals to know a variety of special tricks and not just respond to ”sit” and “stay” only on the rare occasions they actually felt like listening.)
When I finally arrived home I thankfully arrived to find a house that looked to be in the same exact shape as when I had left. The same, except for the soft music playing on the TV, lights on for me and Jack and Charlie greeting me at the front door with just as much enthusiasm as ever, and this includes when I leave for 5 minutes to go and check the mail.
Confessions
July 16th, 2009 § 2 Comments
I am plagued with guilt for a number of things that I know are wrong or unsavory but I do them anyhow.
“If everyone lived life as if someone else was watching, they would strive to live up to a higher moral code.” I am sure this is some famous quote from some anonymous wise person in a long robe and flowy beard. Granted this notion is devoid in its consideration of celebrities a’la Amy Winehouse but nonetheless, it makes sense that were someone watching me, chances are my list would be much shorter.
Every morning instead of reading a legitimate paper I instead read TMZ, Defamer and any news that has made the headlines of AOL.com. I understand this is not “real” news, but it is terribly more interesting than the Wall Street Journal.
I Google stalk ex boyfriends. When I am bored, and sometimes when I am so super busy at work when the last thing I should be doing is anything other than working, I type random ex’s names in Google just for kicks. I haven’t decided yet if I do this to discover good or bad news or just out of pure desire to snoop. Some I hope are doing well and a few I hope have a public declaration of lawsuits, bankruptcy, rare skin diseases, incurable hiccups or other misfortune.
I charged my coffee from McDonald’s last week because I could only find 50 cents in my car. And that was after getting out of the car to look under the seats.
I sit on my bathroom counter and scrutinize my pores. Once I even became so obsessed I missed an entire television show that I had every intention of watching.
I ate 24 Skittles last night at 11:00 even though I had sworn off sugar 3 hours prior.
There is a lady at my work who has a candy jar filled with chocolate M&M’s and delicious Lifesavers. Only until she is away from her office, do I then enter to take a ration of candy much greater than someone with real decency would grab.
I open beer bottles with my teeth. I discovered this talent in high school, when I was undoubtedly opening a old timey can of root beer, because underage drinking is deplorable and wrong. Since then my teeth have suffered the brunt of unyielding plastic potato chip bags, that annoying Fort Knox bubble wrap packaging that every manufacturer uses which is nearly impossible to break into without suffering cuts, scratches, broken nails and sprained fingers and the aforementioned beer bottles. To add to this, I don’t floss everyday nor do I floss every month.
I often wish that the girl who talks on the phone in the bathroom stall at my work, would drop her phone into the toilet so that I can pee in peace.
Thanks for listening, that was better than Church.
