Sunday, October 26, 2008

Blessed

Sometimes God let’s things go on a long time while he tries to teach you a lesson and sometimes only a matter of minutes before it smacks you in the face.
The same day that my car was broken in to I had run to CVS to pick up a couple things and while waiting in line, a little frustrated with God and definitely feeling very “Woe Is Me” I noticed that the man at the check out counter was taking quite a while to check out. Now everyone else was getting angry but I noticed that the clerk was a little embarrassed and that he and the man were trying to quickly count pennies while the line grew. I myself am not against paying for things with change now and again so I knew that it can sometimes take a while to count it all up, but as I watched the man search his pockets a second and third time to come up with more change I looked to the counter and saw that he wasn’t trying pick up a pack of gum or gallon of milk and just didn’t want to break a ten or use his debit card. This man was buying a roll of generic toilet paper. Just one roll. He was gathering together every bit of change that he could find to buy some toilet paper.

As I stood there, still two people back in line, wishing that I had had any cash on my (or change for that matter) the best I could tell is either they finally got to the total or the clerk gave up as he handed him back a couple dimes and he was on his way. Now for good reason my day thus far had been really bad. I only have a couple people here in Dallas that I know, so when something like the car being broken in to I just felt overwhelmed with the sense of being alone in this city. And to loose these things that I loved, and believe me I did not take them for granted one bit, it felt like one more blow that I just didn’t need. But then to stand in a line, just feet away from a man without even the necessities of life, all of a sudden the iPod or the GPS system (while things I love and still miss daily) did not seem all that important. I began to realize how blessed I am. Blessed that they didn’t steal my car, talk about feeling isolated in a city, what would I have done then? Blessed that I wasn’t in the car when they decided that they wanted the items. Blessed that I have a whole apartment full of other items that I really do love and make me oh so happy just to see them. They aren’t expensive, by any means, and I may never have that type of life, but I could name 100 material objects that I have that bring joy to my life. They would confuse you and make you laugh at me, but they do. Then put that aside and I could name about 30-40 people that I know or have known that have changed my life and thinking about them makes me feel enormously blessed.

I guess in the end possessions are just possessions. They are just there to crowd up your life and make things beautiful around you while you are living. People form your character. They help build your memories that you will reflect on for the rest of your life. But you can’t take the people or the memories or the possessions with you after you are gone so you have to maintain perspective on what really matters and live your life. So for today and as long as I can I am going to try to realize how blessed I really am, even though the things I had have been taken away. Maybe like Job, God has a plan to bring them back x’s 2, you never know.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

The menu for illness

I love chinese food. As everyone who knows me can attest, I have somewhat of a "selective palette". Meaning I do not always like all types of food and all restaurants, but I typically like chinese food. I like Japanese food. I am really pretty open to them, but man last Monday I had a horrible bout of food poisioning from chinese food. It was the first place that I had ordered food from here in Dallas. I had actually been wondering about a good place here and came out of my house Monday morning and there hanging on my door knob was this amazing menu glistening in the sun, so I decided to give it a try. It took me a good couple of days to recover, but things are fine now.

Word to the wise for those in the Dallas area, stay clear of this place if at all possible.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Take-Lock-Hide




A few days ago I had the distinct pleasure of having my car broken in to. I have now been told that this is a normal part of Dallas life, so yeah, that is totally something that they should put in the welcome packet. I came out of my apartment to go watch a friend play a football game and saw the most beautiful and horrible thing. Piles of glass that looked like blue topaz gemstone, my birthstone ironically, on the ground and inside my car. As I looked around I noticed it was gone, all of it gone. My brand new GPS system, iPod, my Ralph Lauren Romance perfume and all of the chargers. As time went on and the police came and went I started to realized that my makeup was gone. I mean really, who steals someone else’s half used make-up. (I think that confused me the most.)

So for the next two days I drove around with cardboard taped up to my door and went through it making sure that there was nothing else left in the car of value or that had any personal information on it, just in case it happened again. (Including Proof of Insurance with blacked out information) Here in Dallas they have a whole campaign to help people protect themselves against auto break-ins. There are signs everywhere. I think that it should have been my first warning. The campaign says “TAKE-LOCK-HIDE”. It is supposed to remind you to lock your car and hide your belongings. Sadly, what they mean is for you to hide it inside your house. And that someone else would be the one’s taking things. Who knew?

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Tonsil's

**Disclaimer: I am about to tell a potentially embarrassing story about someone, so in an attempt to protect their identity, I will just not say who it is. I will just refer to them as “person x”

When “person x” was a child he had his tonsils out. After the surgery he wanted to keep them, for some unknown reason, so they were kept in this spice jar. Occasionally over the next few weeks and months we would find out that he had taken them out of the jar and put them in his mouth. Finally I think his family took them away and hid them for a little while. Okay, so that is the end of the disgusting details.

So I have noticed something about myself over the past couple of months that made me think about this story. I went through a really tough time about 2 years ago and kind of shut down emotionally and everything for about a full year. When I think back about that time and and how things are now it is drastically different that I don’t even feel like the same person. But I have noticed that even now when things get rough I find myself drawn to thinking a lot about that time, which is so odd to me. I start to want to listen to the music that was a prominent part of that time if my life. To me it feels kind of like when “person x” would put those tonsils back in his mouth. It was an unnecessary part of his body, and it is not necessarily healthy for me to go back and constantly dwell on a painful place. Maybe this is something that that everyone does in some way or another, so it may not be a big deal, but something I noticed and something I definitely want to work on.

So this is not an entry about being sad, cause I’m not, but just a realization that I thought I would share with you, my friends.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Person of Contradiction




I have discovered that I am a person of contradiction, well at least as far as my television shows go since I have moved here to Texas. I have always prided myself as being a person who watches “intelligent television”. Who stays away from those mindless shows like Real World or Laguna Beach; someone who try’s to focus her attention more on shows like Charlie Rose, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls. Shows that challenge your mind and make you think about the world and politics and stretch you mentally. When I first moved to Dallas I started to watch The Hills as a nostalgic thing since my brother and I would watch in together before I moved. I always fought it and actually made fun of him for watching it and yet here I was watching it alone. Then things only got worse....A friend had been talking about Gossip Girls for several weeks, and there wasn’t anything good on so I thought I would check it out, yet while watching it i saw a preview for a new show, Privileged, and I was hooked. Then the new 90210 started up and all do my friends were reminiscing about the original, I was the only one not watching the new show so I thought I would check it out. That is one thing about being new to Dallas is that for the time being I don’t have a lot of friends so I have quite a bit of time on my hands and a pretty empty DVR.

So this is where we ended up, a DVR split between shows that inspire me to tears and are intelligently stimulating and then the polar opposite, shows that are an escape from the real world. Shows that are so fake that they are laughable most of the time, but somehow very endearing. How did this begin? I could blame it on my brother, on his addiction to The Hills, but sadly I think that this is where I would probably be anyway. Stuck in the contradiction.