Thursday, March 24, 2011

Decisions

So i know I don't write on here much, but i do think about it often.. usually when I'm about to go to sleep or driving. i have most of my internal dialogues while driving. It's usually big plans that i will never follow through with or conversations that have past and I'm re-working them in my mind to see how i could have changed what i said or seemed a different person somehow or what have you. The car is my unwinding. It is where i go when I am worked up and when I am when I am not. I don't love driving and I hate traffic, yet I get most of my thinking done in the car. I notice more stuff while driving, things that I want to talk about and things that no one else would want to listen to. A lot of times while I am driving I will a screen shot of what I'm looking at, i feel like what i am looking at turns into a picture that i wish i could print out and show people my perspective, yes the guy working on the street light but blur everything out and make the squirrel that is watching him from the same pole he is working on more vivid.... all of that in the second that i see it and drive past...
I want to be different, to act different, to talk differently. but i am not different. I am me. I do not want to accept that, I want to be artistic, trendy, a poet and a writer yet a theologian and a philosopher, I want to be outdoorsy and graceful. petite and strong. I am only me. I have my strengths and I know that i am needed and appreciated by my friends and family, they are satisfied with me as I am, yet I am not. I am a lazy person, I avoid my issues; basically I am not the change I want to see. Someone once told me, "you say you are lazy and that it's a problem but do not let that be an excuse to continue being lazy. face it, deal with it and change it." I havent done that yet. I usually know what my problem is; no self discipline or general laziness, yet I talk about it, moan about it, gripe about how I dont like it then move along and change nothing. It is the same thing as the timshel issue in the bible. are we a slave to sin? is it our destiny? Thou Mayest! I have a choice to make. Will I continue being self absorbed and lazy or will I get back to work and make a valiant effort to be different?! will I be the change I want to see.. and how do I change without loosing me?

I work in a house where a 99 yr old lady lives, she gets disoriented every day in one way or another. some days she thinks I'm the paid help in a nursing home, other days she asks if she is related to the people who live here (her grandchildren) other days she just doesn't ask. She sits in her chair all day, she eats in her room, sleeps in her room and sometimes comes out for a glass of buttermilk. Today she said that she sometimes feels like she is dreaming all the time. She can remember Taylor's name but has to ask if they are kin (Taylor is her great-granddaughter. She can't see well enough to read and she cant hear well enough to watch TV. she just sits in her chair all day doing nothing but living in a fog. Lonely and bored, waiting to die. I wonder what it's like to not know where you are or why your there. to not know what is real and what is in your head.... I like her a lot though. She's funny and sassy and walking around at 99 yrs old.

I need to make a choice. Do I really want to change for the better; become disciplined or not?

Monday, January 24, 2011

Day to Day

So today as I was driving to work I saw a strange sight; a cargo van with a ladder on top was coming up behind me with it's cop lights flashing. that's right a cop was posing as a normal work van! he wasn't pulling me over but as he drove by followed by a "regular" compact car who was also a hidden cop my whole driving world view was altered. no longer can i look behind me and keep speeding, thinking there is no-one but a fellow worker behind me, no, it could be a cop waiting to catch me riding dirty! He had a ladder on the top of the van!! you loose some of the intimidation of being pulled over when A. its a van and B. it has a freaking ladder on top. what is this world coming to? I can't trust anyone on the road anymore.

I also see roadkill every day. Today I say two victims on the way to work.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Back from the edge...

Well... I've been back for a while now. I got back to the states and my particular state of Fl, late December. I made it just in time to surprise my mom for the holidays which was really great for everyone. I'm not always a big fan of the "holiday" season but this Christmas was nice and mostly stress-free.
now its the New Year! and I've started a new job working for my friend's parents which is really cool. I get to claim a full time job while still being able to wear slippers and sit on the couch all day; that's what i call the life. even though i am back from my Asian adventures for now, i still want to keep this blog going.. I'm not sure what it will look like but i guess it's up to me............ ( i love the ... option in typing... i do it a lot.... maybe i make to many pauses when i speak in real life too...)
this it for now but I'm going to try and be more consistent with updating and try to think of better things to talk about in general. i will be driving a long way to and from work so maybe it will be mostly stories of how the cars bugged me that day or some crazy person i saw along the drive.... i'll think of something.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Winter!

It is December and winter has finally decided to join us here... by winter i mean it is in the high 70's during the day and the low 60's in the middle of the night... the locals here think that the weather is very very cold. they are just not used to any type of weather that doesn't bake your skin.
here is an example of reactions to winter:
the other evening i was visiting a friend and her husband, around 6pm as i was getting ready to leave her husband offered to give me a ride home on his motorcycle. since i'm lazy and cheap of course i said yes, so he went to put on a sweater for the drive... he comes out wearing a long sleeve button up shirt, with a fleece sweater over that and a beanie to wear under his full head helmet. mind you its probably in the low 70's at this point. then as we are saying our goodbyes i look over and he is putting a newspaper under the front of his sweater for insulation! i didn't know whether to laugh or pretend i was also cold... i was only wearing my short sleeve shirt with a cardigan over it. once we were on our way he looked back at me and was startled to see i wasn't covering my head with my scarf to shield from the cold! don't worry, my ears didn't fall off due to this under caution of mine.
I love these people.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

hair

My hair is falling out. I have several theories about why this is happening.
1. its getting below 80 degree's F and i'm shedding/molting
2. I'm slightly stressed
3. I don't actually own a brush or comb so I'm not combing out all the dead/broken hair in a normal way.
4. I don't shower very often so I'm not ruffing up my hair much there either...

you know how loose hair will fall out in the shower, it is just a bit more extreme when I do take a shower because I haven't been keeping up with the maintenance... when I do wash my hair, my hands come away covered with hair... is that normal? I'm reminded of the movie "the Little Princess" where Sarah pretends to put a curse on the bully and tells her she shouldn't brush her hair so much... maybe someone put a curse on me and my hair.

November at a glance...

awesome ingenuity
Cafe Shillong

I want to sit under a tree and listen to his stories.
Water? Panne? Tikasay.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

How to travel in style


At the beginning of the month I was able to accompany some friends up to a different district about 8 or so hours north of the city. It was so nice to get out of the city; yes the road was long and arduous, but at least we were in a car and not the bus. The lady, we’ll call her T, we were going with has her own car so we got to enjoy her son’s sometimes erratic driving and some awesome music for several hours arriving late at night to her late husband’s home village. We stayed for several days, visiting and watching soaps on TV, then prepared to travel back to the city…. Now for the good part. T’s son had been traveling throughout the districts while we stayed in the village the whole week and when he came back to pick us up, he brought a friend with him, so me and Jessica and T sat in the back while her son and friend sat up front, switching driving on the hard roads. The point of all this jabber is that while the trip should take about 8 hrs, it took us ALL day to get back… first we had to make a detour into a nearby national park to see the elephants and the famous one horned rhino… that took a while, then we had to stop for tea with some family on the way out of town, then we had to stop and buy some tea, then we stopped for a snack/light pre-lunch.  As I finally settled in to get what little sleep I could while being jerked around in the car we pulled into a nice resort along the highway. It turns out that the friend works for a big hospital in the city and that hospital was somehow connected to this nice resort in the middle of nowhere and he was treating us to lunch. We didn’t just go into the restaurant.. No that would be too fast and easy; no instead we got a room and hung out for about 2-3 hrs! We rested, watched Bride Wars on TV (in English!) then got served our nice lunch in our room. Did I mention that T’s son and friend were not in the room with us?! No it was just us ladies resting and hanging out for this whole time... then after we had been done a while we got a tour of the place while the two guys ate really fast in the room! it was the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. I kept looking at Jessica and asking what is going on?! Are we staying here? Are we leaving soon? Why are we here and what are are we doing?! They all just acted like this was completely normal. I enjoyed it and I guess they were just trying to make the trip less strenuous but I just wanted to get home and take a nice hot shower.
Oh and also we had five live ducks in the trunk of the car the whole way back; I’m amazed the birds made it all the way back to the city.. they sat in the sun and heat of the trunk while we took our sweet time and then got thrashed around the trunk as we kept having to slam on our brakes avoiding the potholes and sudden pavement changes… T later said that the ducks were all very tasty!

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to travel more than 4 hours without stopping at a hotel to take a rest again…