Leftovers

Beauty Shop Slut

Yes, I am the neighborhood beauty shop slut. I have visited four different salons within a 5 mile radius in the past 12 months. After getting over the guilt from being less than faithful, I have learned quite a bit about my neighborhood through my multiple hair job partners.

I have moved into a sub culture of people who are anything but nomads. Every single hair stylist has said the same thing to me, almost verbatim, “I grew up here, and now I live two blocks from here. My parents live down the street, and my boyfriend/ husband grew up here too. We plan to stay here forever.”

My response is always the same “Oh. Have you ever been outside the area?” Always the same response in the same giddy tone “Nope!”.

I can’t imagine never living outside of your birth cocoon. Thus, I have come to the conclusion that where you have been and where you feel is “home”, should encompass people who have more like-experiences with you. It was a light on why I feel disconnected with my neighborhood culture. I have lived (more than 90 days) in four different locations (all geographically separated by hundreds of miles) in a span of eight years. This doesn’t make me better or smarter then my neighbor, but it sure gives me a different outlook on life, family, friends, and culture. It’s like I am bird who is trying to fit in with a bunch of turtles who stay in their shells. Not much in common.

The same extends to witnessing a huge divide in the values encompassed by Northerners and Southerners. If you stay long enough in Tennessee or Texas to get past that “Southern hospitality” you’ll soon witness a culture of people deep rooted in traditional family roles, football, and race. From the outside, it’s always a joke a city girl moving into the country or vice versa, but the real life cohesiveness doesn’t always encompass a happy ending.

I once believed the era of the Civil War and Woman Liberation was dead and gone, but I am wrong. Just like taking the Sex and the City foursome out of New York would be considered ill taste, asking a Northern bred liberal to settle in the south probably won’t fly. I wonder if it is unreasonable to turn down jobs and a future based on location knowing, location is more than just geographic codes but a completely different culture.

A Bid Farewell & Lessons Learned

Putting down the computer, away from Twitter and Facebook, we all have circles of “touchable” friends in our life. Some are from our childhood, college roommates, or colleagues we once worked with, but they are sustainable friendships.

In my life, I have had the luck of loosing and regaining touch with some of my greatest friends. Moving 11 times in 11 years, with endless goodbyes and hellos, makes me hesitate to tell someone I will eventually “see” them again at our goodbyes. The future between us in unknown.

Sunday I said goodbye to a girlfriend I retouched with a year ago. She’s a vibrant person who has a good heart but tends to dream a little too much. Her dreaming is contangous in both good and bad ways. We hadn’t been in touch for several years, until one day we found each other. I had forgotten what it was like to have her around, to laugh, and be comfortable with wanting more than a suburban house, 2.5 kids, dog, and cat in life. As always, she doesn’t stay around for long, and a year has almost past and it was long overdue for a goodbye.

This goodbye may be forever, or not. I do know the first few days of her leaving, I got teary eyed and wanted to beg her to stay. She influenced me to want more, expect more, and not be settled with what life handed you. I’ll miss that about her especially as I settle back into life as it was before we reconnected.

I would like to be optimistic and say some friendships are meant to last, but reality is life doesn’t allow it. Life has expectations, agreements, and responsibilities requiring us to give up something. Yesterday, the final goodbye was said as I watched a lively and emotional dreamer exit my life. Today, I shed no tears but choose to accept silence.

Life’s Ironic

Life’s full of crap, most of it is ironic. Here’s my top list:

1. Doctor denying you medication when you obviously need it.

2. Insurance on “defective pets”, allows them to be “refundable”

3. Divorce rate in 2008 decreasing: Just wait until 2011 when all the troops arrive back from Iraq to find their spouse has upped and left them.

4. Life Coaches are really paid friends when you’ve successfully pissed off everyone around you to where they refuse to hear your personal problems anymore.

5. Self Help section in Barnes and Nobles: if you are in need of HELP, why would you ever ask yourself?

6. Nutcrackers: My nut broke my 12 inch Irish King cracker.

Traveling List

We are finally ending the Thanksgiving Day celebration as we gently transition into regular life again. Like most, first I must endure the travel home.

Yesterday I successfully put my foot down and finished one website (minus the PayPal installation). I have learned several things through pushing myself to the end:
1. Pick a comfy chair: If you plan to sit for an undetermined amount of time at a computer, get some padding underneath those under cheeks. Sitting for 5 hours on an oak chair does not help “shape” anything - except flatter.

2. Hydrate with water: Not sure if my body is ultra dehydrated but going back and forth from holiday Amaretto and coffee does not make a person pee. Hydrate with water and coffee.

3. Illustrators are gods: Give me pencil and I can whip up a cute dog or Christmas tree in the matter of minuets. Sit me in front of Adobe Illustrator and after 2 hours I will yield useless crap. Illustrators are the most underpaid, overused, and gotta be pissed off people in the world. They probably all had dreams of getting a fine arts degree, sketch incredible well, only to be working tediously with a damn computer to make a living. God Bless them.

4. I am a Working Machine!: I am a horrible girlfriend, cook, forgetful friend, and mouthy employee, but damn it, I can produce. I proved what I thought inside..give me a few uninterrupted hours (minus coffee breaks and pumpkin pie snaking) and I can whip shit into place. GRRRR!

Everyone needs a bit of a break after solidifying their ass to a chair for 5 hours, that’s why I am spending my day at home making a Gingerbread Train. It’s good to try something, to get out of the same old drudgery….so why not a Train?

To-Do: Organize Head Space

Coming down from overeating and oversleeping, keeping my to-do list at a minimum is the safest route to sloth recovery. My main purpose today is to organize my head space.

Trudging my feet through the mud in getting some websites up and running, I realized I need to be “mentally” organized. I noticed a habitual pattern in my running lately, where I almost reach my goal and then stop. I tell myself “I’ll get the extra half mile done just by walking through the day” or “I’ll make up for it later”. I am making the conscious decision to willingly stop working right before I reach my goal. I question whether or not I do this with my business goals.

“You eat an elephant on bite at a time.”

Currently I am working on five blogs at once. Two is content only, one needs data input and marketing, and the last two, well, they need it all! I was working tid bits here and there. Gave me variety and flexibility to work on what I “felt” like. It also, gave me the excuse to stop just before the finish line.

Today, I am going to start eating my elephant one bite at a time. First, organize and write a plan of what needs to be done. Then, from here on out, each day, each bite, will be finished 100% until I take on another.

Oobi & the Amazing WordPress

Barely sliding into Sat morning, and I am sunk deep into the couch, focused on WordPress. I won’t admit how long I was singing, but I awoke from my “WordPress Sleep” singing the Oobi themesong. WTF?

Recovering from hearing “Oobi” in my head all day, stripped in my skivies, blasted the radio and cleaned my house like no other. I am a firm believer that cleaning needs to resemble the Tom Cruise underwear scene. Cleaning is a huge stress reliever for me. Completely thought about making Merry Maids a career, but realized turning a “stress reliever” into a career, it could become a “stress inducer”.

Eitherway, after opening my big obnoxious mouth and spouting off random shit via email, a bit of cleaning did my body good. At least noone was effected by asshole comments. While cleaning I had to ask God why I was born with a mouth and hands. Obviously He didn’t mean for me to actually “communicate” with them, but use them for another deed instead.. Silly me…

Skipping the last two items, figuring a 50% completion rate was just about the “norm”, I ended my domestic duty filled day, with doing something very domestic….watching a classic movie.

Sugary Thursday

So my boss rocks, well, really my job rocks. Though somedays clients may get under my skin, the overall job is a killer one. A Gen Y’s dream (except that I am Gen X hogging it!). There’s no heat in the building, which my boss ok’d I worked from home.

Can’t imagine a better work environment (except being in a loft overlooking NYC) on a cold, cold day. Wrapped in a snuggly blanket, strong cup of Joe in my hands, and my MacBook Pro nestled on my knees. Who says work sucks?

Rocked my to-do list, time for me to send it a sail. So, to meet expectations, I’ll just say good night…

Not So Sinful Sunday

My Sunday was less sinful than hoped for. Instead of busting out my top things right upon rising, as taught by a legendary lister, I worked it in reverse order. Stopping at number 4. Though I enjoyed a good nap on couch and met friend for dinner, I’m wouldn’t say it was a good trade.

The nap resulted in waking up feeling like someone threw a rock at my head. Should have guessed the multi-color crap I coughed up during my A.M. run was a sign a cold still lurking. Hard headed, nothing stops me from running except post boob-job recovery.

I would have traded dinner for accomplishing number 1. Feeling completely obligated to show face, and kinda thinking real life human conversation instead of Twitter might be good, I relunctantly ate an overpriced salad. Unfortunately, what I realized was trying to talk about nothing is a lot of work. Owning a dog as the only thing in common won’t flourish deep and energizing conversation. Shit, if barely afforded me 50min of meaningless crap.

Lesson of the day is, I value Twitter tweets, blogger’s blogs, newspapers online, and Facebook friends (even if I don’t speak their language.). Simply because you are geographically separated from people who share your real interests and stimulate your mind, doesn’t make them less worthy of your time.