Friday, September 30, 2005

Crushy Crushy Crushy

Can I tell you about my huge crush. My huge crush on a small pilot. His name is Cory and he is SO DREAMY! He is probably 5'5", slim, and has the most lovely delicate face and voice. I can hear is voice in my head it's so lovely.

He is quite the tough guy, but he isn't tough in the violent type of way, he is tough in the intellectual type of way. He is a union rep and is SO concerned about the passengers and employees. This man is regularly standing up to the company, I am sure he enjoys it (and he has a rich wife, so he has less to lose if he loses his job) but he seems to do it becuase it's the right thing to do, not for his ego.

I can't say that my attraction is centered in the physical, (even though when the alarm went off I was in the middle of a sexual scenerio with him) it's more adoration/admiration. I just want to look at him, fawn over him, linger over every work he speaks in his soft, gentle voice, stroke his arm. Thats what it is I think, it is his gentle power. He is tough, but he does it with a gentle voice.

And speaking of, yesterday I had dairy queen with a gentle giant. His name is Andy and is so sweet. When he started at the airline we had discussed being roommates, I was having second thoughts about it becuase I was pretty sure I would want to kiss him, not a good thing to do to your roommate. (I know from experience ;) ) The roommate thing didn't work out, fortunately, but he promised to buy me breakfast (not in a sicko way) as an apology.

One day I flew with him, and Ole, the hottest German you could ever imagine. I had never met Ole before, so I assumed he was an ass, as most blazing hot men are, so when I came in to the flight deck I mostly talked to Andy. Turns out Ole is as beautiful on the inside as the outside, in a very 4th grade way he tried to set Andy and me up. In the end things never panned out, but becuase he is so nervous around me I thought he was interested.

In the end now he is in a relationship, arent they all?, of course they are, if they were available I would reject them! I have got to change something in my haed that when a good man is in front of me, I don't freak out and reject him so I don't get rejected first or get disappointed when I find some fatal flaw. It would be easier if I knew who would be good for me beforehand, If someone had the word "match" glowing on his forehead I would know to say "He calls too much but put up with it, in the long run it is worth it." It's harder to do when you are sure it will all fall apart, so why exert any effort?

When I think about men is when the fact that I have problems becomes really clear. In the rest of my life I am getting by, but that is the one place that I have no clue what I am doing, and have no clue how to do right. I think that the answer is to keep doing what I am doing (therapy, medication) and to start saying yes to nice boys.

mood: tired, woman-y (I want a sweetheart for myself. I want to have butterflies for someone and for them to have them back. And I want to discover that we have mutual butterflies before he moves on and gets engaged to another woman!)

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Bliss

Right now I am on the airplane, with a Bollywood movie on, and writing a post. The only way I could be happier is if I was also having sex, eating dark chocolate, and having (paper) money thrown at me

mood: bliss

Not Ready

I don’t hate the idea of massage school. I am already good at massage, and it would give me the ability to comfort, even help heal people! But I don’t like the circumstances. I don’t like the feeling of pressure, the “your life will end if you don’t” feeling.

The airline sent out some memos. For flight attendants there are voluntary leaves and for pilots voluntary furloughs, after that it will be involuntary furloughs. They are “waiting for mainline’s decision about travel benifits” I hope for the best, but with this company I expect worse than worse.

I realize I have not had enough sleep, I am probably overreacting to the time-frame, I am just so mad! I wanted to move on voluntarily, to be ready. I wanted to go to school while flying. I need an active job while in school or else I will gain weight. I am so frustrated and disappointed. I am not ready yet!

And it sucks to know that things will probably get worse at my airline, that is saying alot. Working for this airline is really hard- how could it possibly get harder?

This post is going nowhere. I am too tired to think straight, I think I should just think of something else.

mood: Sore-eyed exausted.

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

From the airline website

Slide10

"What actions are being taken?

Wal-Mart airlines has initiated a 10% reduction in costs by all departments

-Non-essential items, such as travel, will be reduced or eliminated"

IDIOTS! YOU PAY US NOTHING! THE HOURS AND CONDITIONS ARE GRUELING! WHY EXACTLY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE CHOOSE TO WORK IN AN INDUSTRY THIS FUCKING SHITTY? DUH! SUCK A FUCK YOU FUCKING FUCK FUCKER FUCKER FUCKS!

MOOD: FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUK!

Sanity

As a child I loved books and games where you had to survive with few resources. The boxcar children, swiss family robinson, and most recently “the life of Pi” were and are the kind of stories that kept me riveted. All that these upcoming changes that may occur are bringing me is an opportunity to play this survival challenge with a bigger and funner outcome- real life rewards.

This is not a real crisis. I will continue to have shelte, food, and peace, and damn it I am not giving up my medicine. I have my friends and family, what more in life do I need?

So how to deal with anxiety...One, I am getting anxious, my fight or flight response is kicking in. So I need to use it. I have a plan...find out about school, healthcare options, and budgeting. Planning is done. I do not need to think about it anymore, analyzing it and analyzing it does not help me. Saying “what if” only helps me ONE TIME, so I am mindful of it, after that it is a waste of energy.

After the plan is made, action. Thinking about it does not help. Only action. If here, on the plane, I can not do anything more regarding school, than thinking about school is useless. Here on the plane I can write a post, organize my bag, write an estimated budget, meditate, and tend to the plane, but that is all. Thinking when I don’t have the opportunity to act does me harm.

If I feel anxiety I can tell myself- this anxiety is not accurate. I have a plan, until this plan has been tested I have no reason to worry. If the plan doesn’t work I can worry at that point, until I come up with a new plan.

mood: intense, but level headed. (sort of glad to be a little anxious from my period, it is propelling me into action!)

Monday, September 26, 2005

Re-Incarnation

For the record, I have cramps right now. I am feeling anxious but am doing a good job of keeping my mind while my emotions aren’t where they should be.

I have a gut feeling that it is time to begin the plan for my future. The mainline carrier that my airline is contracted with has filed for bankruptcy this year, has missed a 22 million dollar payment to my carrier, and if it misses the payment on the 17th then my airline can file for bankruptcy too.

If you haven’t gathered this from my earlier posts, I work for what I call “the Wal-mart of Airlines” My starting pay was 14,000 a year. I now make around 20,000. The pilots start around 21,000. I assume you can see with this number alone that this airline is not one that cuts fat, it cuts muscle. I have seen ugliness from this airline that made me sick to my stomach. I do not look forward to the contract negotiations with the pilots or the flight attendants, whether or not it files for bankruptcy. Strikes are an expectation.

I had made the decision to remain here because it has part time available. The part-time option allows me to persue another career in the future, I am sensing that it is time to start on my new career plan now, becuase I imagine sometime in the near future the company will give me the option of being part time or laid off, and I want to have all of my ducks in a row when this happens.

It is amazing to me that just yesterday I examined my dreams for my future and flying was not included (not that it was excluded or intentionally not included.) My dream since high-school was to be a physical therapist, but I notice I did not include that in my future plan. What I did include was massage therapy, a healing modality used in physical therapy, and with many of the blessings (and minus the headaches) of flying. And here I am the next day, feeling it is time to begin the process.

The first step I think is to get a condo. I won’t be approved while in school, or if I am forced to go part time, so I need to start that ball rolling now. The good news is I am already connected to a morgage broker, she has an application in the mail, so the process has in a way begun already.

Another important step is I must find out what insurance is available to me through the school and the state, because I this risperdal could be my saving grace, it could be what gets me through the transition, and through school.

And of course, how will I pay? I must have that planned.

Fortunately, I have some college already, so I may not have as much to pay for.

I am officially feeling anxious now, so I am going to stop writing about this. I can see it is time to start, and so I should feel NOT anxious, becuase I know I am on top of things,

whew!

mood: anxious

Today felt good

I hung out with Lily today. We went to an Indian restaurant which was fun, because she had never had Indian food before. She is just so lovely, she just sparkles!

As I had wrote in an earlier post, she took a girl in who had no-where to go, I asked her if she might like some clothes I was donating to the Goodwill, I had some in there that was nearly new, but I didn't fit in them. I loved being able to give them right to her. Sure, she could go to the Goodwill and buy them herself, but they would charge $5-$6 each, and that adds up when you have 3 kids!

I had 4 boxes and two bags. She took it all! It's amazing how we were able to help each other equally! She got some for her kids, her "new kid," and for a friend of hers who has nothing, not even a bed. My favorite part of the day was the fact that I am the poorest of my friends, and I was able to help her, who is poor, and she is able to help someone that is even more poor! It goes to show that your life is as good as you are grateful.

mood: like (literally) a million bucks!
Harmony and a beat makes me horny.

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Me in 20 years

Did you know...

That in 20 years I will be married, to my first and only husband. We will have two children, a foster brother and sister who we had adopted, but we maintain a sometimes strained but courteous relationship with the birth mother.

I work only part time, I instruct a yoga class once a week and have a few on-going massage clients who I give a nice discount to. Now and then I try for freelance writing gigs, but I don't persue it much because I don't like deadlines.

The rest of the time I am working at home. Cooking organic meals from scratch as much as possible, authentic recipies from all over the world, usually vegetable based, but when I use meat I only buy it from the small organic farms that treat the animals well.

My husband is an attorney who works on social justice cases. He makes decent money, but we live very modestly. We have a small house in a nice neighborhood in the city, not the suburbs. We have one car, a fuel cell, and we wear very few labels, only those that are well made, using fair labor, and are not marked up for status value.
Our most extravagent material items are the environmental things for our home. Solar power, a grey water system, extremely energy efficient appliances, a double flush toilet. We do spend alot of our money on travel and cultural events, and we acknowledge how fortunate we are to be able to do this.

I am in good health. Therapy, meditation, exercise, and a good diet (and a great sex life) help me to only need low doses of medication. I am about 175 pounds, I had abandoned the skinny goal years ago. I am well muscled but still pleasantly fat. I have more energy than I did in my 20's

Our kids are the center of my whole world. I am able to stand up to the social phobia and depression so they can live a full, stimulating life. During the summer we do a lot of exploring during the day. During the school year I get a lot of the household things done during the day so at night we can focus on homework, and time hanging out together, the whole family. Our kids are not over-scheduled. The have usually 2 activities going on at a time (a sport and a cultural activity) they spend much of their days playing.

In our house we have a tv, but the antenna isn't very good and we rarely watch it. What is my favorite activity to do alone? Blogging of course!

mood: nice

I didn't have to use my AK

I started the day with toast made with homemade bread with natural peanut butter.

For lunch I made a stir fry with all fresh vegetables.

After lunch my roommate and I biked to an art gallery, explored the area, and then went to a "latino fest" with a live salsa band.

For dinner we enjoyed beans and rice with fresh corn on the cob.

Tonight I went out with Carter (the beautiful blonde) to a popular bar/bowling alley, a place thats very "uptown" (my neighborhood.), the place where I ate bison for the first time. When we arrived a very Barishnikov looking man welcomed us, I recognized him immediatley. His name is droopy-eyes and he was one of a dozen high-school fixation crushes. I didn't say anything like "Hey- arent you droopy-eyes from South high?" he kept walking into my eyeline and I caught him looking at me. Ahhh it was heaven- it felt like justice. He looked very good.

I gotta say it was a good day

mood: inebriated

Friday, September 23, 2005

Blogging DOES lead to enlightenment

If I ever needed proof that blogging is good for me I got it today.

A few days ago I called myself "aesthetically indifferent." This term could be applied to how I appear, but having called myself that I was shook by how it felt, it was like I just wrote a lie, but yet it is how I behave. I knew I had to look deeper.

For the next day or so I reflected on this. I have been girly since the day I was born. I had power struggles with my mom when I was little, she wanted me to wear pants now and then, I felt wearing pants would be an insult to my feminine identity (I can REALLY relate to the trannys who say they knew they were a girl since they were little- my mom didn't socialize me to want to wear skirts, I just felt right in them)

When I was an adolecent I would bring large quantities of makeup on vacation, in case I wanted to "experiment." I went to modeling school. To this day I have boxes and boxes of clothes and cosmetics, filling up my room. I was always a girly girl, and inside, I remain one to this day, so why do I fight it so hard? Why, if I love makeup and clothes and being pretty, am I so unwilling to explore that, even as much as the average person?

My initial assumptions had to do with the power of sexiness, of being afraid of the attention, and afraid of that power in my hands (I have done my share of hurting boys, needlessly.) I also assumed that since the depression makes self-care a challenge, I cover it up by claiming to not care about "such petty things"

Today I brought it up with Dr. T. I thought the conversation would be about the fact that I am confident enough now to claim my identity, and as the social phobia is lessened and my boundaries stronger I will be able to handle the attention, but it went somewhere else.

When I started discussing it I got real tense and embarrassed, and then as she started talking the emotion came right up beneath the surface, we were on to something. She suggested it had to do with being put in a parental role (caretaker of my father) when I didn't want it. By not taking care of myself it was a way to say "look, I am not fit to be a parent- don't give me this responsibility." And I had "mal-adaptively" twisted my thinking to "my needs are not important" so I could more easily cope with the fact that I was treated that way.

I didn't cry loud and hard, I wept, deeply and reluctantly. I felt my body shrink down, I felt EMBARRASSED to be crying- in a therapist's office! She said that as I am discussing this, I am coming from the perspective of a nine year old. It was really unpleasant. It didn't feel like that cathartic type of crying, where you let it out and feel a little better each moment, it felt horrible, I was going back there, acknowledging it happened, it was no longer a detached abstract story, it was an actual memory.

When I was going through adolecence I had no mother, and no parent. My dad MOST CERTIANLY implied that I was vain, even though fixation on one's appearance is quite normal at that age. And right away, with my first boyfriend, I was jumping into sex, and shamed quite harshly by our "loving Christian" America for it. So, when I talk about grooming, I am talking about grief. Grief of losing my mother, grief of losing my father, grief of losing 10 years worth of childhood, and the grief of never having experienced age-appropriate, sweet, hand-holding puppy love. When all of this is attached to the fun of decorating one's self in the mirror, then one might tell themself that they don't really care how they look.

I am closing up a bit even writing this post. But this is a GREAT thing. If I am finding these tender spots I know I am looking where I need to (and I know that I am getting through that cold, icy armor that I thought was permanent)

Dr. T. told me to watch movies with mothers who are there in that part of their daughter's life and to mourn it. To mourn the fact that no one (mom or dad) was there telling me to wash my makeup off before bed. To mourn that I didn't have anyone to tell me about boys, I had PLENTY of people telling me how BAD I was for dressing in a way that showed my beautiful new body, and how shameful I should feel for having sex young, but no-one to explain this new terrain (adolecence) that I was entering.

I feel cheated, every moment of my life I feel cheated. If I can have the courage to really FEEL and mourn what I have missed out on, than maybe I can one day let go of this huge chip on my shoulder.

And it all started...with a blog post.

mood: lump in my throat and chest. Not anxiety, a lump. But I feel really genuine

I am Ginger, of course!

I am not the type who sends e-mail forwards or does those "What Gilligan's Isle character are you?" quizzes (okay, that is a boldfaced lie) but I feel SOOO COOOL that I got tagged (I assume that the reason is not because I am a new reader but because I am SOOO COOOL) that I am doing it and LOVING it:

1. Delve into your blog archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag five people to do the same.

"Here Goes!"

mood: SOOO COOOL

Thursday, September 22, 2005

A tribute to Lily

It’s BAAAACK! I am a religious lunatic again.

I decided, spur of the moment, to go to the credit union to ask why I had recieved no notice on a credit card application. The woman I spoke to said It was rejected due to past credit history, and I said “Ok, what is the next step? I have no debt but my student loans, which are paid on time, so I am interested in learning about a secured card since that was rejected, so I can improve my credit.” She looked at my info and said that if I reapply she would approve it. !!!!!!

I went down to the train and realized I didn’t have the cash for a ticket, so I had to go back to the bank. I got some cash and stopped at the convenience store fo a changemaker. I chit-chatted with the woman at the counter as usual, and then a conversation started.

Her name is Lily. We had talked about graditude, and the things that really matter in life and how lucky we both feel whenever we have the opportunity to help someone. She told me a story. She works at the airport and takes her lunch breaks on the third floor. She met an Ethiopian girl who was very friendly, but Lily could tell something was wrong. She saw this girl there every day for 5 days, and on the 5th day she was crying. It turns out this girl’s brother said he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, and she had nowhere to go (I can’t imagine she would be able to afford a ticket back to Ethiopia- and can you imagine being a girl alone with nowhere to go, in a foriegn country?)

Lily, a poor immigrant, someone you might imagine being a RECIEVER of charity, took this girl in! Lily has 3 kids. (I have to hold back tears right now writing this, I am in public.) I, with more resources and less responsibilities, would have taken her to the police, or maybe made a phonecall or two on her behalf, but Lily took her in! She says she has 4 kids now.

I had mentioned how most of the giving I do is for selfish reasons, I sponsered Hosna as a birthday present to myself. It makes me feel so happy. She lit up. She agreed, she values the opportunity to help this young woman.

The fanatisism hadn’t left me, it was just toned down. if something is just a fad you keep it at high intensity so you fool yourself that you are serious about it. If you love something set it free, if it doesn’t come back it was never yours. So much I have been reading about has been about being mindful. I may not have been drunk on spiritual bliss like I was a few weeks ago, but I have been more mindful, I have observed and acknowledged some habit energies, and have been doing a mindfulness meditation during take offs (no, I don’t have my eyes closed with my legs crossed and my hands up, and no, I do not chant “Om” in front of all the passengers. i do it in my brace position staring straight ahead- in fact, it makes me a better flight attendant, because I am focused on the sounds, so i will notice quicker if something is wrong)

I plan to see Lily again tomorrow. I got her a grocery store gift card. Part of it is a thank you, she uplifted me so much for what she did. And also, I may not be willing to take in a homeless girl from the other side of the globe, but I want in on the fun too ;)

mood: no longer spiritually drunk, more like spiritually buzzed ;)

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

THIS is why I wanted a laptop

It is 7:45PM, do you know where your Diana is? In a plane. On the ground. In the rain.

The flight started out rather oddly, while at the gate, checking in, an announcement was made that there was a severe thunderstorm watch and that gate agents should prepare for emergency procedures. I have been flying for two and a half years, and I have never heard such an announcement, and we have had far worse storms than the one in the area.

We boarded quickly in hopes that we could take off before the storm arrived, but none of us expected it would happen (being the pessimists our company and industry conditions us to be) Of course we are in a ground hold, (when no planes are allowed to take off or land, usually due to weather.) I was not surprised. The cabin is doing great. The announcements may have scared them into remembering that the airlines don’t control the weather.

It is 8:46. We had a brief moment when we thought we would take off, but now we have to be re-routed and will need more fuel. This computer (and a good nap I took today) is really helping me to stay calm and happy, and helps my mood rub off ofn the passengers (you would be shocked of what a difference that makes.) Right at the beginning I brought drinks around, I am thinking I should walk through the cabin now, but I think all that will happen is they will ask questions I don’t know the answer to.

It is 8:52, off to the gate to get more fuel.

9:10, the jetbridge is being moved

9:31 cancelled

10:09 on a plane that (may) fly to traverse city, waiting to board becuse the ramp is closed because of lightning- my mood has taken a little turn :(

10:11, gonna take a little nap

10:26 boarding

11:43 made announcement that we are about to push back from the gate

11:48 actually pushed back

11:55 tenth in line?

At 12:07 we finally took off. Its 12:49 now, I am done serving drinks and am hopeful that things will go okay from this point forward (except for the 3 hours sleep of course)

Do you know what kept popping in my head thorough all of this. My job is cool, my life is cool. If I can feel like that when I am this miserable, I think I might be in the right place.

mood: SO TIRED!

Inquire Within

I have decided, since I am in this empowered “I don’t want no-one” mood, I am in a good place to think of what it is that I do want. When I meet someone I am attracted to, or who has a quality I admire, I am often willing to commit to them even if they are not right for me, because I want them and that quality near me. If I “look deeply” into what it is that will fit me, especially in the long term, I can enjoy the company of those that are not a long term match, without fooling myself into thinking they are.

The most important trait I require has been on my mind since I have begun studying Buddhist philosophy. My number one necessity is someone not only smart, but wise. This demand narrows my choices WAY down. Smart people are out there, I could always find the nearest “MENSA” meeting, but there are as many (or more) smart fools than there are dumb ones.

I am sure you have met the smart guy or girl with the big ego, with a smug tone they interrupt you and point out that you used a word wrong(in front of EVERYONE, they talk to you like you are 5 years old, explaining thier opinions as if they were fact, and that you have none of your own. There is many a smart person who over-values money, who knowingly uses their intelligence to create destruction, and uses their intelligence to rationalize it . And of course there is the smart person who uses their intelligene to manipulate people. These people are smart, but I don’t want them, because they behave foolishly. I don’t care how much money a person has or makes, but someone who is smart and wise is going to be responsible with money (as well as other things in life.)

On the topic of being wise, the person I will choose must be moral. Being religious can often help a person be moral, but it can just as easily get in the way, as religious is sometimes mis-used as an ethical get-out-of-jail-free pass. I wont accept any racists, homophobes, elitists, selfish, dishonest, or mean people.

Something that I think is a must is the person I choose should be tactile. At the age of 12 I lived alone with my alcoholic dad, and I withdrew from being cuddly (hard to cuddle someone who is passed out drunk, they might fall off their chair, or mistake you for their childhood pet, they might pat you on the head and call you “buttons”) Without close family to hug and cuddle I have been, and continue to be, hungry for human touch. This could be a big reason why I became and remained so sexual, even if it was with the wrong people. When my partner reaches out to touch me without prompting it makes me unmeasurably happy, and when he doesn’t provide an adequate amount of sex it makes me unmeasurably pissed off. I think a “non-touchy-feely” person would not be a good match for me, because accurate or not, i would read it as indifference

Another “good-match” issue, the absence of which is not a flaw in one’s character, but necessary to fit me is confidence. I have been on my own for 16 years. I am alone more than I am in relationships and I am not comfortble with leaning on people, I struggle with it with my own friends and family nd I have known thrm for years. I have no patience for the men who need to make “me & me” a “we” which is a good thing, and any man with confdidence sees my strong need for self as a positive aspect of my personality, not a threat. I also, sadly, suffer from insecurity and nervousness. When I am with an insecure and nervous person these qualities come out, when I am with someone relaxed I feel less need to comfort and calm them so i cn instead comfort and calm myself. And cockyness is not the equivelent of confidence, it is another type of lack of confidence. It is overcompensation, and/or overemphasis on one positive quality (good looks, intelligence, prowess in sports) becuase the person does not feel an overall sense of confidence.

A last good match issue is (appropriate) humor. I am far too serious most of the time, so a person who can lighten me up a little is a good thing. But they have to know how to be serious. My ex hassem used to joke when I was discussing my feelings, perhaps it was his way of using something I liked about him to disarm me, whatever the reason it ended up hurting me. And who can forget Earl? No, he is not a person I have dated, nor would he be, because he is completely unable to have a real conversation. Talking to him is like, well torture really. He thinks everything in life is a set up for a punchline. Humor is important, but it must be appropriate.

Race is not important, but culture may be. I have dated many international men but wonder if dating between cultures might make things more complicated than they need to be. I think I used to seek out those complications intentionally. I have had had a difficult time finding men that stimulated me intellectually, so by finding someone from a different culture I would be stimulated by the different communication styles and interactions. I have found regularly though, that the difference in expectations (traditional vs modern mostly) can leave both parties dissatisfied, even if everything else is as it should be. Another reason I have found international men appealing is Americans of all economic backgrounds are afflicted with a bad case of entitlement. I find that is less common in men from outside the US, so I am able to find a much more “high quality”

In the US black-white relations are so strained, and the dynamics can be uncomfortable, the power dynamics are never just “I pick the resturaunt” i also feel for the Sisters, Living as an African American has a unique set of struggles, so while dating interculturally can lead to happiness, I can understand that desire to be with some one who understands without you having to explain. with poverty, mortality, and the justice system so disproportionaltley affecting the black community, it limits the choices black women have, so i can see where the hostility comes from when a white woman takes a jewel of a man who is black off the market, however, I don’t intent to limit myself intentionally just because of this. Even with the cultural difference, as much as we try to deny it, a human is a human is a human.

Now lets get to the superficial things. Appearance doesn’t matter but attraction does. Timothy Bearclaw is the one man who could ever melt me from a mile away, even after he gained a hundred pounds. I am open to fat, scrawny, acne, disability, facial disfigurement, if they are beautiful inside, but the chemistry has to be there. The problems that get in the way if say, someone has cystic acne, is they may be insecure. Being outcast and rejected alot can be hard on a person and can lead to them withdrawing. I think this was the biggest problem with New York Name Dropper Man. He kept up a big facade, and it ruined everything. I also have the problem with my own insecurity. When I am slim and can pick and choose, i am more confident about dating someone not conventionally georgeous. But when I am overweight I am embarrassed to say that I hate the idea that people would think “he’s all she can get/she’s all he can get” I much prefer the impression of “wow, he must be pretty marvelous if he can get that hot girl” and “He must treat her kindly, she is smart enough to know that is what really matters”

When it comes to appearance I am a bit picky in the other direction. Men are rarely as good at managing being attractive as women are. If a woman is attractive it is expected, if a man is attractive he is rewarded for it, and most of them develop big(ger) egos from it. I have met a model-georgeous man who was as beautiful on the inside as he is on the outside, so I would accept him, but for all of the rest of those model georgeous men who arent as perfectly built on the inside as they are on the outside, I am sorry to break your hearts, but please leave the line now.

I am not fond of mustaches, my dad had a mustache when I was a kid so when I see “moustache” I think “dad” and you don’t want someone thinking about thier dad when you are trying to woo them. I of course would be an idiot if I would reject someone just because they had a mustache, but I would absolutely reject someone just becuase they had a low ponytail. I am serious. I dont care how smart, confident, charitable, and georgeous he is. Jesus himself would be shown the door if he ever put those back-lit locks in a low hair tie. I just HATE low ponytails on men, eww. The one exception I will ever make is for Naveen Andrews, (my boyfriend.) He can wear a ponytail during yard work, while wearing a ribbed tank shirt, and sweating, while i watch, but it does have to be a mid-head ponytail.

Character traits necessary to earn my devotion
Smart & Wise (includes responsible)
Moral
Sense of Humor
Tactile
Confident
Most importantly of all: No low-ponytail

I demand someone be all of these things, and if I expect this man to want me too, I ought to be WISE enough to put my energy into developing these things in myself, instead of wasting my energy on worrying and comparing myself to others.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Pressure

I am starting to think the reason I want a partner right now is social pressure. Carrie has a wedding in November, Jane just had a baby, Linda and her boyfriend just bought a house, Sweet-stay-at-home-mommy and her husband just built a house! I even met my neighbor friend while knocking on the door to flirt with her boyfriend! Really, the only unattached people I know are my 23 year old roommate, and Carter, the “beautiful blonde” I complalned of earlier. Both are drop-dead-beautiful, and lets be honest, beautiful women have more choices available to them than-whats the right thing to call myself?-the aestheticly indifferent

I think my aesthetic indifference is proof that it’s not genuine desire for a partner thats driving me. Think of it, when you meet someone you can’t stop thinking of ways to be more beautiful. You shave and moisturize your legs, you wear new, often uncomfortable clothes (heels for example) you primp regularly to make sure nothing is out of place. My sexiness factor right now is down there with a man’s (oops! there goes my sexism again) Sure I do the basics, shower, teeth, trimmed nails, but the extras? hardly. I have shaved and worn makeup a few times, but I am hardly in “allure” mode.

If I don’t feel like being glam-o-rama thats okay! You don’t have to be on the prowl 100% of the time. I guess I just need to accept that thats where I am at, and not let my ego be hurt by the fact that my phone isn’t ringing off the hook (in fact it feels like it is, it’s just none of the callers are offering sex or undying devotion)

So Why now? Why is this theme re-popping in my head? Once again, the absence of my favorite distraction. It’s so much easier to be patient when I can say “I want one like that- so I will hold out” than when there is no sight of anyone worthy around, then I’m like “Oh shit, they all have one and I don’t, find one quick!” which is the attitude that leads me to settle, settle, settle. It’s fair to say that I have slipped back into the “oh shit” mode, but now as I realize the fact, I am pushing myself back to patience and reality (hard to do when the whole world is “in love”)

mood: suddenly re-empowered

Monday, September 19, 2005

The end of a steamy affair

My steamy relationship with the hot italian may be coming to an end.

Things in the beginning were delicious, but now they are lukewarm.

He is not giving me what I need. I keep going back, in hopes that he will change, but I still get lackluster performance.

It seems as if he's blown a gasket! Every time I spend time with him he gets all hot headed! Steam is coming out of his top instead of his "other parts" (if you know what I mean)

I don't know what is wrong with him, I don't know what I should do differently, I don't know anything about his past, and it's not like he came with an instruction manual!

I am hoping things will work out, but I have started looking for someone new.

Lets give it one last chance Mel!

Diana, the goddess of love and sexism

I have felt quite crabby this last week. I was even depressed one day. When I am in a bad mood I tend to worry. It's hard for me keep a level head that it may just be a bad day, because I have that worry that it could be an oncoming depression, but thankfully, the last two days I have been feeling better.

One obvious reason of why my mood has been down just occured to me, one of my favorite "companions" has not been in my life. It feels rediculously nerdy to say "in my life" since the means of our friendship is over the computer, but I mean it, he is important to me and I have missed (nerdy again) his company. (as have many, many others)

One of biggest gifts my friend has brought to me is an alternative way of looking at men. I am sad to say I hold some deep seeded sexist opinions about men. My mentally ill dad was a drain on my mom, and in my sudden & early-blossoming in adolecence I witnessed the extreme lenghts males would go to to get close to a beautiful female's body, while at the same time having little to no regard for the person inside of it. These experiences have created in me a self-fulfilling dislike for men, and my absent friend, as well as some other friends I have met recently, have really helped me see that this dislike can only be accurately applied to a few, and a way to stop hating all men is to stop dating the bad ones (what a concept!)

The thing that is most freeing about working towards ending my sexism is the fact that, try as I may to change it, I am mostly heterosexual, and will probably find the most long-term satisfaction with a man. So if I am to find true love, I will have to begin seeing men as worthy of love. (some of them of course) Up until recently, when I began having platonic relationships with men, I felt like I needed to learn to "tolerate" men, even though they are selfish, needy, id-driven and unintelligent. This kind of mindset would make me a very unappealing partner to men who arent these things (would you want to date someone who thinks this of you?) and this mindset allowed me to accept this sort of behavior from people I dated, which only validated my incorrect assumptions.

Without my favorite "distraction" around I have reverted a bit to my old thoughts and patterns. I have felt that I ought to develop myself so I can "catch one" instead of reality- focus on developing myself FOR MYSELF and then hope that at one point I will run into a good match. Another bad pattern I have reverted to, again because I didn't have my distraction close at hand, was worrying about the future in regards to a partner. When I focus on the future (or the past for that matter) I don't even experience the present. I have spent a lot of my life mourning the past and fearing the future, and so when I have experiences put in front of me in the present I don't accept or acknowledge them, perhaps until the future when I mourn missing them in the past ;)

All in all I am pleased to know 2 things. One, that I have friends in my life who inspire me to grow and think correctly. And two, that I can continue to grow and think correctly, even when they are gone.

mood: back to calm :)

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Bygone Era

I couldn't be more pleased to see the honor on the Emmy's for Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather, and Peter Jennings. Honoring them was not just honoring 3 men, it was honoring what journalism used to be, and what it may never be again.

I was so moved seeing a documentary on Peter Jennings, and seeing how he had studied in and about the Middle East, so when he told you about the news, you trusted that what he was reporting was the closest thing to truth as he could find (very difficult since there are 3 sides to every story, person #1's side, person #2's side, and of course, the truth.)

Today we have a 24 hour news station dedicated to right-wing news. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with having "all conservative, all the time" but instead they call THEMSELVES "truth" and anyone who reports on something critical of the administration "slanted," its a pretty nifty little trick, if you don't have the data to back up your policy choices, than put your energy into discrediting those that have data and good arguements to back up their points.

And why do the people in power on the right do this? Because they are evil? Well yes, the dirty tricks are quite evil, but they arent evil for evil's sake, they do it for money. They want the power to belong to the private sector because the more power they have the less is in their way to making money. It's so easy to understand if you are willing to look at it, but many people are not, they are not well educated (do you think America's education system is underfunded ONLY because it's cheaper?) I also recognize that people without power who support the right are human, and prefer to subscribe to the easier worldview than the one that forces them to accept that they (we) contribute to the problems of the world. I dont like knowing that my shirt was made by a person, possibly a child, who cant make ends meet in a third world country with the wages they earned, yet I paid enough for them to make a living, but that money went to a rich white men in the U.S.

Okay, this officially rates as being a rant, and I don't apologize. The movie yesterday validated and created a framework for what I already knew, and getting angry is a good thing! This anger I feel has repelled me from purchasing milk with rBGH (well the anger, and knowing that the cows on the hormone regularly get infections in their udders so milk from cows with rBGH regularly has PUS in it! BLECH!) This anger compels me to continue and expand on what I purchase from thrift stores. I am opposed to the practice of pulling resources from the earth, cheaply manufacturing them, and then disposing of them a year later. The less I buy new the less has been pulled from the earth, and the less is tossed in a landfill. It's a pretty self-serving "gift" to the earth and society, I get lots of nice stuff and it's REALLY INEXPENSIVE! (if owning large quantities of cheap stuff is not American, then I don't know what is) I don't apologize for getting mad, I apologize for all of the times I have held my tounge.

I also don't apologize for my rant because I want people to know they are not alone. I remember so vividly the days after 9/11, no one dared to say anything against the president and I felt ready to burst at the seams. Half of us think like me, and a great majority of the other half are good people who have been manipulated, so there is nothing to fear, we have power in numbers. RAH RAH SIS BOOM BAH!

mood: more relaxed than I have been all week

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Give me a bridge- I am ready to jump

"The Corporation" is too much truth for me. Too much reality.

TOO MUCH
TOO MUCH
TOO MUCH

I hope you all realize that this privlege of blogging will not last forever. It will be legal to write about the cute Prada handbag that people are lining up for, but political posts, anti-business posts, censored.

I really can't blame people for putting their heads in the sand. I really can't blame people for turning their heads. It hurts! It hurts so much! It is so frightening. If you acknowledge the present you have to acknowledge the future. This is why people hate Micheal Moore so much. He scares us. He tells us TOO MUCH TRUTH. He tries to drum the truth into our heads, and so it feels like he is blugeoning us.

I am going to finish the film. I am proud that I am willing to take it in. It is pretty straightforward, spin-proof, discredit-proof, but that doesn't mean anything anymore. People watch Fox news and the 700 club and don't recognize the manipulative tone of voice and word choices. If people have the ability to find news that soothes them and helps them feel good about things that arent good, then how many of us have the energy to suggest differently? Especially if we are belittled by our own co-workers for it? (I was ATTACKED by a captian when he heard I didn't own a car. In truth, the main reason I don't is for economic reasons- but he started challenging every aspect of my life [he even suggested the bus was worse for the environment that a car!] when I hadn't even MENTIONED that I think about environmental issues [except for my inflammatory statement "there is no harm in studying global warming"])

mood: even risperdal (trademark) couldn't keep me from anxiously eating two cups of carrots with about a quarter cup of dip (pure fat & calories)

UPDATE: I watched the rest- the movie shows you the future, but gives you the key to saving it. Please rent it.

http://www.thecorporation.com/

Mark Kingwell, Philosopher, in Deleted Scenes from the film "The Corporation":

"Economists, especially right wing economists, like to say there is a model of 'rational self interest of behavior' which defines human life, human desire. But of course what they can't countenance in that model is departures from what they call 'rational self intrest' which happen all the time. We have to complicate the model, there may be other directed actions rather than self directed actions: self sacrifice; minimization of profit for the sake of some other value; and so on and so on. And this of course is not news to any human, but it is news to a lot of economists, becuase it's not the way they had concieved the world. You know we should take the time to notice this discrepincy, becuse it is the key to rebuilding the picture such that its richer and more human and not so much about profit"

Friday, September 16, 2005

I are the smartest gurl in the whole wurld!

I just did a bunch of computer stuff with my neighbor's computer. Her old one has a damaged hard drive, so she had to buy a new one. Transferring her programs and documents was easy, but getting her internet service to work on the new computer was not.

We got help from the tech support on the internet part, but the rest of it I used my own reasoning, and although it's not perfect, we really got somewhere :)

I am proud. I have little computer background but am okay at figuring things out! I feel like a genius!

mood: accomplished

Wyoming

This week has been interesting. I have not biked a single day this week, when I look back it's becuase I am incredibly, incredibly tired from this "night shift" I signed up for this month.

Night 1:

Putting some of the things I have been reading in practice, I regognize that by suffering from the 4 hour's sleep overnights in Idaho, I can appreciate the 6 hours of sleep overnights I will have this week, where before I would have complained.

My company has just started flying west. We cover most of the east and south, but we never traveled farther west than Nebraska, until recently when we got planes that had the flaps angle that can handle the mountains. The first day I was struck by how different Wyoming feels compared to anywhere else I have seen.

IMG_7939

The van driver "Wally" was very friendly. He shook our hands and introduced himself. On the drive to the hotel we saw 10-15 deer! I am not exaggurating! Two of them were bucks, one had four points! They were just hanging out in groups- on the side of the road! As we approached the hotel we passed a white dog, it looked like a pitbull, it had been hanging around the area awile apparently.

I stayed in room 1416.

Night 2:

We sat in the hotel van waiting for a passenger before leaving for the hotel. The VERY nice captain and Wally were chatting away like best friends. Across the street suddenly there is a crash. A man backed into the parked car behind him. We watched him get out and check, and them walk into the airport, we assumed he was looking for the owner or a police officer. While the driver was in the airport, the captian peeked to see if there was damage (it sure sounded like it!)

damage

We all expected the driver to come out with at least a note to put on the car, but he just drove away! What a jerk! We all talked about ethics and how jerky he was, and the captian decided to write a note for the car that had been hit. Now here is the sad part. I had taken a picture, FOR MY BLOG, I never even CONSIDERED turning the hit and run driver in! All of this "lovingkindness" I have been studying and the one time I have the opportunity to REALLY help someone (take good evidence pictures) I ZONE it! Well the good thing is the captain didn't zone, he had gotten the licence plate of the driver, so we were able to talk to the parked car's owner and I e-mailed the pictures (sadly, the evidence picture, which was visible on my camera, turned out like this. I "protected" the picture on the camera so I could try to find a way to upload it with more detail, but in the process I reformatted the card. DOH!)

IMG_7940

The owner wrote the nicest e-mail back to me. He said he hadn't got any info because the cop was out of town. (???) Funny that he would choose now for a vacation, because there was a police convention at the hotel!

IMG_7948

Scary huh? Well speaking of scary, there are rumors that this hotel is haunted! When I had stayed here before I had heard footsteps up above me, I had told this to the crew the next day, and the van driver said "above you was the roof" OOOOOOOOOOH! (It's very possible that I heard people in the halls, and the sound reflected to sound like it was coming from above)

IMG_7945

The captian had said room 1416 was haunted. He said his food had been rearranged in the fridge when he had stayed there before! One of the van drivers said people say they see a woman with a kitchen knife in the kitchen! They dared me to take 1416 again. I decided to do it.

IMG_7946

I hate to admit to it. I am a very rational person. I believe in ghosts! I think 75% of the sightings are actually sleep paralysis or a half dream state, but I can't help it, I feel like there is something that happens sometimes, like the house absorbs the energy of things that have happened in it, okay I will shut up now before I embarrass myself. But if this "energy" mumbo-jumbo is true, the hotel had some really haunted "vibes" It felt like it had a lot of history take place in it. They even used KEYS to open the doors!

IMG_7950

The first night I wasn't scared, but this night I was tense, maybe it was because I was in an alledgedly haunted room, maybe not. But I will confess, when I had turned off the T.V. I felt nervous. I figured that if I heard a noise, like the heater clicking, I would freak out, so I turned it back on to go to sleep. hee hee.

Night 3:

My first officer was from this city! No big deal, but he saw people he knew! It was a town of 60,000, yet there he was, saying hi to people on the airplane! "He's the uncle of someone I know" On the way to the hotel the driver says he recognized the hit & run driver! He was someone high up in the "Elk's club!" So, since stranger things have happened I asked the first officer if he knew a kid I had an embarrassing obsessive crush on in college (a boy so letchy I nicknamed him "Molester Mike") I wish I hadn't asked him, becuse he had gone to high school with him. I came up with some spur of the moment description of how I knew him "he was in pre-occupational therapy when I was in pre-physical therapy" becuase "he hit on me the first week of school and said a few suggestive things which to a horny freshman with low self esteem is SOOO hot! and so for the next two years I would stumble over my words and act all giddy and idiotic when he was around and frankly, I feel humiliated just recalling the memory" well that just didn't sound so good. I pray the first officer doesn't run into him and mention that I brought him up. What a painful flashback!

Guess what room I stayed in that night? 1416

IMG_0002

(The ghost is in front of the camera, that is why it is blurry)

mood: tired but not depressed

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Day and night

I just took a 4 hour nap. I feel like a new person. This "Night shift" idea was a good one, but it hasn't ended up the way I had planned. I hoped I would be biking every day, and eating at home. Instead I have put off getting ready so long that I have only biked twice, and I HAVE been eating at home, but alot of what I have eaten has been high calorie convenience food, becuase I have been too tired to cook.

I would love to go back to sleep, but I still feel really renewed, the last week has been a struggle -the prior week was too, but I was so cheery (maybe the sleep deprivation helped) that I made it through. But this week I wasn't making it, but I am now.

To tie this into the things I have been studying, my suffering from sleep deprivation the first too weeks has helped me recognize what a blessing it is to be adequately rested :) Tee hee

mood: tired but no longer drained

Its about time

Yesterday I felt depressed, usually when I feel depressed I write about it to analyze it, but yesterday I didn't want to.

In my life I regularly feel like I fall short, correction, In my life I feel like I fall short. My blog is a refuge from that. I don't have expectations of myself on my blog. I van write or I can't write, I can spell because "becuase." I can be too serious or insensitive. That makes me feel free.

Having comments on sets me up to reciprocate when kind people take the time to respond to my posts. I struggle to reciprocate in my face-to-face life, and I realize I have started to put pressure on myself here, and becuase the blog means so much to me, I have sometimes given energy to people I have never met at the expense of the people I have known for years, who I REALLY owe!

Also, I have been feeling rather vulnerable since I have started posting religious stuff. That is SO PERSONAL, and I feel like it does me good to write it out, but I just can't stand the idea of being accused of being "New Age," and if a single person wrote it it would devestate me (if you want to devestate me on purpose it wont work since I already told you- ha ha!) so having comments off will help me feel safer to say what I feel. My name might be fake, but the emotions are all me.

I would HATE it if this upset anyone. It is by no means a "Fuck you" (although from some people "fuck you" is like a term of endearment ;) ) If you no longer have interest in reading I am disappointed, but I understand. However, the way I look at it I am taking the pressure off you too! I prefer to be a lurker, but I know a lot of people don't like that. Now you can lurk away- no worries ;)

mood: tension released

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

The biggest fool

I am watching Born into Brothels right now.

I am such a fool.

My life is SO GOOD!

What a silly privledge it is for me to sit and wallow in how sad I feel all of the time.

mood: tired, foolish

Monday, September 12, 2005

Faith

If you have faith in the strength of your legs you are not afraid to go out into the world. You know that they will hold you up, even if the winds get very strong. When you have faith that your legs are strong, you welcome challenges and tests of their strength, becuase they help you learn where they are weak and how to make them stronger.

If you build a brick wall around yourself you don't get knocked over by the wind because you never go out into it. Some people are told that this is faith. They are told they should NOT test the strength of their legs because the wind will knock them over. If the person was to test their legs they would either be knocked over or not. If they were able to remain upright, they would know their legs were indeed strong. If they were knocked over, they would learn that their legs are not strong, which is good, because they would know they need to change things so they can stand up outside.

Challenges and questions are not our enemy, they are our friend. They help us get information about the things we believe and the choices we make. Change is scary, so it makes sense why we shield ourselves from questions and challenges- because we might learn that something should be changed. But if you really think something is true, take a chance, welcome questions- test your faith.

Dear Carrie,

You have always been my rock, that is how I have always seen you.

Solid, strong, big enough to carry me.

Did I take the time to get to know you too?

I met her- I met Daisy

I got to meet her today, Jane's new daughter Daisy. It is a beautiful thing to know a baby is being born into a family with parents who love and communicate with each other, the kind you sense, in your gut, that they will have a happy marriage. And speaking of marriage, I feel that way about Carrie and her fiance. They really look after and support each-other, and I am really happy for them being together.

I guess today was a pretty good day. I witnessed my good friends' bliss and felt the way I should feel- happy for them. When I saw Jane's house for the first time I melted down. When I first went shopping for wedding dresses for Carrie I melted down. With my new medication I am able to see these moments for what they are, happy events in people's lives, not happy events for other people's lives...everyone but me.

I don't know if I will ever give birth to a child. Like Bjork's character in Dancer in the Dark, for me to have a child might be selfish, I am giving birth to him knowing he will have this dibilitating disease. Besides, I don't expect I will be married anytime soon, I have only had 2 long term relationships (3 if you include a long-term unrequited relationship) none of the 3 had been healthy. If I plan to have children, I put time constraints on falling in love, something that is not guarunteed and cannot be forced. If giving birth to a child is a goal for me I am sure I will marry the wrong man, deluding myself in exchange for a name on a morgage and sperm.

I think I am doing pretty well in that department in fact. I met a nice, good looking man at the party last night, but there was nothing there. I don't know if he wasn't attracted to me, or if I wasn't attracted to him or both, but I didn't feel an intense need to force it.

Forcing it has been my pattern, if I run across someone dateable, I force myself into thinking I should date him. If I'm not attracted to him I assume it's because I'm being too picky. If he's not attracted to me I assume I need to change somehow so he will be. How does it end up? Maybe we date, but without the "spark" it feels like torture to spend time together. When it ends I feel like a man-eater or a loser, neither way feels good, when all along we shouldn't have dated in the first place.

Looking at big moments in the cycle of life you naturally look back. I hate looking back at myself, it's rarely flattering, but at the same time it helps me see that even though I am not exactly what I want to be today, I have made quite a bit of progress.

I can't say I feel 100% positive about my day. I am seeing that there is a lot about Carrie I am not aware of. Her and Jane have always been my caretakers, I really don't know what I have done for them. I have never meant to, but I looked at them as perfect, so I really took from them and didn't return. I try to return with gifts & other things but I always feel I fall short.

I don't want to write more, I really dont. It's too painful to even look at. Carrie and my conversations are regularly forced and polite. She told me something today that she didnt then, that "when you worked at the Steakhouse/Perkins you just seemed different, not being yourself." Well yeah, I was suicidal at the time. But I hid it from them (or tried to) I honestly don't know what I am feeling right now, fear is a big part of it.

I think I should go to bed, not think about this until I have rested. I can see myself going into a downward spiral, where I slowly convince myself that none of my friends even know me and ten years from now it will all fall apart. It is fair to say that Carrie, Jane and Sweet-stay-at-home mommy dont understand me really well, and that is reason to examine our dynamics, but the dramatic idea that I am alone and unloved in this universe is just hooey- and I am sick of falling in that stupid mental trap. They have been there for me for 10 unstable years, to imagine they will leave me now is disrespectful to their loyalty and love.

Let today be the day I stop letting my emotions and thinking mutate into the familiar gloomy abyss. If I have made a mistake I can look at it and work to remedy it, but this stupid loop in my head about how I should have stayed in better touch with them doesn't help me BE in better touch. The self-flaggelation method hasn't helped in the last 10 years, so it wont work for the next. Maybe its time to try something else.

mood: on the border of depressed, but trying to stop the free-fall

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Aurora Borealis

Tonight I went to a party and while sitting outside we saw the Northern Lights.

They started flashing and pulsing.

It didn't seem real.

mood:
Then: awestruck
Now: exausted

Saturday, September 10, 2005

I've let you down- I am sorry

Someone was kind enough to point the following out:

....................................................................................

Diana:

I recently came upon your blog, and really like it. Coincidentally, however, this post came on the heels of a piece I wrote the other day concerning the "polltics" of commenting.

Although I can certainly understand how one might not have the energy or time to comment to/visit other blogs, I have noticed something interesting in the short time I've been reading (and commenting) to your posts.

You and ****** seem to have an IM style banter going on. When he makes a little quip, you unerringly respond. Sometimes these have the effect, to my mind, of almost trivializing an otherwise serious post.

Conversely, I notice that others--not just myself--who take the time to compose a detailed, thought out reply are sometimes simply ignored.

Perhaps I am too sensitive, but if I feel I am being excluded from a commenter clique, I will hesitate long and hard before visiting or commenting again.

Just my observation, for what it's worth.

....................................................................................

I am sorry to any and all of you who have felt the same way, now that my attention has been drawn to it I can't help but wonder how many readers I could have lost if I don't change this.

I appreciate constructive critisism alot, I look at it as telling someone they have spinach in their teeth. If your intention is to hurt my feelings (or spam) well of course I will delete your comment, but this is rare since most people have better things to do. Please don't worry about hurting my feelings (it's easy- I'm sensitive) as long as you are coming from a good place- and feel free to e-mail if you don't want to air your feelingsublicly.

Sort of the point of the "thank you" post was an apology for being unable to give as much as I take. The above comment really helped me to do a better job of it.

I also appreciate the suggestion I recieved from one of you of setting up "Bloglines." Please allow ATOM/RSS feed in your Blogger settings, that can make things easier for me. (even though continuing to post decipherable journal entries remains my first online goal)

Thanks Again! I don't ever expect you to read- thats why it means so much that you do.

mood: appreciative, rested

Friday, September 09, 2005

A few words of gratitude

I just want to take a moment to thank those of you who read my blog. I can't tell you just how much it means to me. It motivates me so much!

Thank you also for taking the time to comment, I love to know what you think- especially when you agree with me LOL! If you read my site and never comment I appreciate it just as much.

I want you to know that I am not good at reading and commenting on other blogs. I got burnt out on doing it too much when I started blogging. It sometimes takes all of my energy to finish a post (as my lack of copy-editing proves- hee hee) when I am done I usually am intellectually spent and leave the computer. It isn't meant selfishly, I want to reciprocate and then some, but I have limited energy and am learning that I have to budget it.

I had to write this so you all know.

mood: still lunatic-y :)

Thursday, September 08, 2005

My Religious Beliefs/The Prophecy of Satan

I wrote the following post and then hid it... I felt like I sounded like too much of a fanatic-fruitcake-new-agey-cheezeball.

I am posting it because it shows my state of mind:

Written 1:38 PM Sept 7, 2005

I am Unitarian (Unitarian Universalist AKA UU), always have been, always will be. Even when I told myself and others that I was Christian, I still thought like a UU. I believe that different people from different times and different places came up with wonderful, informative stories to explain life, the way things are, and the meaning of it all. Perhaps a higher power(s) are an invention by these story tellers, I like to believe that a higher power exists, but even if it doesn't, the fact that people from every corner of the world find it necessary to explain, understand, or deny the existance of a higher power is in itself, devine :)

What is nice about being Unitarian is people don't tell you you are wrong for what you believe. You can be Muslim-Unitarian, Christian-Unitarian, Pagan-Unitarian, even Athiest-Unitarian! You can also just be ?-Unitarian :) God bless Unitarians.

I am pretty much Pagan-Unitarian. I have faith in the rhythms and cycles of nature, and when I am not depressed I get a strong sense of a devine presence- I call that presence "God" or "The Universe", and sometimes I call it "Love" or "Mother Nature." Lately I have been craving spiritual guidance, someone to explain principles of the universe to me, but I wasn't running across any that could assist me in growing as a spiritual person becuase they required too much "suspension of disbelief" something I can maintain for a 2 hour movie, but not for a lifetime.

A passenger last month came on to the plane and said "I left some Journals" I thought he meant personal journals and so I said "...I was hoping to read them" he didn't realize my misunderstanding and gave me two of them, "parabola", a multi-faith religion journal, and "tricycle" a Buddist journal. I have always been fond of the Buddist things I have run accross, but reading this journal was very exciting to me, becuase it described things I already think, but had names for them! I turn everything into a spiritual practice. Even housekeeping has religious implications in my mind!

The most exciting thing is the excercises in mind-dicipline! I have noticed that sometimes I get in this wonderful state that is very powerful and beautiful. When I am in this state I feel very solid, and love and goodness comes flowing out of me as if I am a conduit of Nature's goodness, "God's Hands" if you will. What exites me about Buddism is it has NAMES for different mindstates, and tools on how to achieve them :) I just purchased a beginner's guide by Thich Nhat Hanh, he is so awesome, he had the best response to the tragedy of 9/11 of anyone.

So get ready kids, I plan to write flowery posts about songbirds and tranquil gardens! Soon I will be changing my name to Sunbeam! Be ready!

mood: tired! 4 hours sleep last 2 nights!

The freaky thing: This was all predicted by SATAN!

Satan said...

Alcohol is the lubricant of writers, Dope is for actors, ... is for people with anxiety disorders. Whatever your poison, use with care!

Diana Crabtree said...

...trancendental meditation?...

Satan said...

definately use with care... it's awesome but who wants to end up as one of those wishy-washy spirtual types.

Diana Crabtree said...

yeah, they have such scattered energy. Their auras are so translucent, not opaque like a person with balanced chakras. I want to tell those people "get a rose quartz would ya?"


Satan said...

LMAO

I really feel what you're saying Man you're like so in touch with the ebb and flow of the universe and everything MAN like totally Wow. yeah, rose quartz is cool, like when you hold it up to the sun and it's like, you know, rose, yeah, the sun inside a rose in the sun, like Wow.

Diana Crabtree said...

Woah! You just blew my mind!

Right now I feel the same way as when I have an amethyst held above my third eye.

I have a secret to tell you...shhhhhhhhhh!

The last four days I have been nuts. A lunatic. I have been out-of-my-mind Tom-Cruise-jumping-on-the-couch insane. You know how it feels to meet someone amazing, and all of the sudden every thing is beautiful? How you are able to see the kindness in the snarling woman? How watching ants can be an enjoyable and profound experience? Well I feel that way.

I know what your thinking "Yay! Diana finally got laid!" Well no, but I feel almost as peaceful as if I had, perhaps more, becuase the feeling comes from within myself instead of from someone else. OK, lets not fool ourselves, it's not more, but it's nice becuase it is missing the insecurity and fear of rejection, quite the opposite, I feel more centered and confident than I have in along time!

It started a month or so ago. A passenger returned to the airplane and said "I left a few journals on the plane" I thought he meant personal journals so I made a joking remark that I was planning to read them. He said "I'm done with these" and gave me two of them, one was called "Parabola" a multi-religion journal, and one was "tricycle" a Buddhist Journal.

I have known that I liked Buddhism for a long time. The only thing I ever heard that was "Buddhist" that I didn't like was in the film I heart Huckabees, but if I understand correctly the idea presented was based on a principle that is not a teaching of the buddah, but has been misinterpreted to be. Besides that, so far everything Buddhist I have seen or read has really made sense to me. My dad calls himself Buddhist too, so I imagine the worldview he raised me with helped me understand it.

Well when I started reading the articles in the journal, I don't know what to say, it was like "my language." What was the coolest thing was seeing things I already think with names attached to them. All this time I am thinking I am such a wierdo for the things I think about and suddenly I realize people have thought about these things for centuries.

The most intriguing thing for me is it helped me understand Jesus' teachings! I am serious, this is the SAME shit, problem is, the way Christianity is practiced today, most of them are missing the point (not you OG!)

I feel in love because all of a sudden I have 2 new men in my life, one I used to know, but I heard he was saying some things I really disagreed with, so I distanced myself - turns out it was a misunderstanding from an elaborate game of telephone. Another I just met, but I feel like I have known him my whole life.

So with this new sense of freedom I have felt so strong, so confident, so free, and not in an arrogant way- I feel SO POWERFUL but not becuase I am special, but becuase I have tapped in to something special, the Universe, and I suddenly can see things I didn't know were there (like wisdom- not because I am special, we all have it, I am just becoming open to it) but I wasn't watching where I was going. I kept getting rewarded for my mindset, people were drawn to me like magnets, and I was drawn to certain people too, you wouldn't believe me if I told you the cool people I met in the last 2 days!

With this enthusiasm momentum I went to the "Tibet Store" I had never been to. I wanted to get a little Tara Buddah (the female incarnation of the Buddah) to inspire me. The lady at the store showed me where it was, and then she started showing me Hindu statues too! Suddenly I felt like Eve in the garden of eden, I realized I was naked! She saw me as a new- agey- give- me- anything- pretty- and- eastern- so- I- can- decorate- myself- and- declare- myself- "enlightened"- asshole. I was hurt by her impression of me, but I had no way to defend myself. I had read the first 3 chapters of a book and some articles in a magazine and my heart was already devoted. I felt very emabarrassed and left.

I have made the decision to keep this semi-private until I have some knowlegable legs to stand on. The way I sound to myself is "There are these four noble truths man! and they are so, like amazing! And they totally are the same as Christ's word its like WOAH!" And that is not the way to be taken seriously. I have to calm myself down to the tone of a scholar, not a fanatic (you know- be like a Buddah) and then I can tell people, (but only if asked!)

Now as I write this I am getting really revved up again. I really don't think this is a phase, I think this is the real-deal with me. I don't plan to remain this insane, but I am hoping to study and use the tools I am learning to grow at an accelerated rate. But only time will tell. If this is just a passing-fancy, then I have some serious self-evaluation to do. I don't want to be a person who jumps into something head first without looking where they are going. Only time will tell.

mood: still crazy (a BIG part of the crazyness is the fact that my overnights are VERY short, so I am operating on reduced, and inconsistant sleep)

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

I could have saved someone's life- shame on me.

I have witnessed many anxiety and panic attacks in the 2 years I have been flying. I have held hands with a crying 6 foot 300 pound crying man, I have sung "somehwere over the rainbow" with a girl hyperventalating so much I thought she would pass out, but besides some edema from a sunburn, until this morning, I have never had a "real" medical emergency.

A man told me he felt faint. I got him a cold compress for his neck which helped. I asked him if he had any medical conditions, he said he had high blood pressure, I helped him get his medication and hoped he was just airsick. When he said he had to use the rest room I clicked into action. In training we were told that that can be an early signal of a heart attack so hearing that I got him some oxygen.

I was really proud of how competent I was, this man could be at the beginning of a heart attack and I was right there ready to help- I felt confident in my abilities that I could do a great job if it were to happen, or even better- prevent it.

I sat with him and got info on his symptoms, he wasn't nauseous, he wasn't sweating, and he had no chest pains, but he did have a stiff neck, faintness, abdominal discomfort, so kept an eye on him and let him rest, and the paramedics met the plane when we landed.

In the end it turned out it was anxiety! He was claustrophobic and hadn't slept much the night before! I was honestly shocked, he was so calm I didn't think anxiety for a second, but the paramedic described him as "a duck," calm on the outside but under the surface paddling like hell. The passenger rebooked to a later flight so he could chill out.

I can see today that therapy is a very good thing for me. How did I feel after leaving work? I should have felt really proud of my calmness in the situation, and happy that he was okay. Instead I felt ashamed, like I was stupid to think it was something serious when it was just anxiety.

I have heard that giving oxygen to someone having a heart attack can save their life, I am not trained as an EMT, I didn't know what was wrong, I did a good job, and if he had been in real trouble I would have really helped him. And even knowing that, I still felt really down on myself, not as in I didn't feel better than normal, instead I felt as if I had done something bad!

Therapy IS working, because I am recognizing that I am thinking this way, and I am challenging it instead of trusting the feeling that I had done something wrong.

I came up with why I do that to myself. I take accountability to unhealthy extremes. It gives me a sense of control. When I was a kid and my dad was passed out drunk every night, my life wasn't the way I wanted it. I was facing a difficult adolecence, my mother had died only 3 years earlier, my stepmother just left, I had developed early and was overwhelmed by the attention and teasing it led to, and I was having a hard time with classes. I was alone at that point, not only was he not helping me through these hard issues, but I was also alone safety wise. Someone in our tough neighborhood could have very easily watched my dad's evening routine and known that our house had the door unlocked, our belongings and a little girl inside, unguarded. Facing the fact that my life was like this and there was nothing I could do about it was a little too much for me to swallow. So I convinced myself, with quite a bit of logic twisting, that I was accountable.

I did everything I could to be perfect and easy, so he wouldn't have to drink anymore to run away from the pain of having to raise me. When it didn't work I felt that I failed, so instead I was bad (as bad as a goody-goody like me can be anyway.) At least then I felt a sense of cause and effect- I am a bad daughter, that's why he passes out everynight, becuase I am so hard to manage. Another reason I was "bad" is summed up by a poem I wrote back then:

Daddys on the bottle
Mommys in the grave
If no one's there to notice
then why should I behave?

Back then I learned to claim responsibility for things I had no control of, I would blame and punish myself when things went wrong so I didn't have to feel powerless.
Dr. T calls this a "Maladaptive Behavior" people don't have bad habits out of the blue, they start out as survival tools. Because they were "effective" at the time, we continue to do them, even if they interfere with our present lives.

[Hmm, maybe thats part of why I am idle in response to a messy house too. (Imagine the squalor you see on "Cops." the sinkfuls of dishes with flies, garbage and junk strewn all over the floors, that was my house was after my dad started drinking)]

To feel ashamed of myself today instead of proud makes no sense when I look at it in a vaccum. But when I look at the big picture, that I have the maladaptive behavior of expecting myself to be perfect and to be able to control everything, it makes sense.

Now what I need to do is treat myself the way my mom, (or my dad before he started drinking) would treat me. I should give myself a big hug and say "You did a good job today- I'm proud of you"

mood: cry-ey. But thats a good thing. I love to cry but I rarely can. I got some good tears out of this post, real good.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

A toughie

It took me about fifteen minutes from the time I titled this post to the time I started writing. I prepared some cappucino and throw jambalya mix in my new $4 thrift store rice cooker that says "Osaka Gakuin University" on the top, as well as some Japanese (I presume) writing in permanent marker on the top and the sides :)

During this 15 minutes I answered my own question...how do I write a post about my mood of slight discomfort when there are still people suffering in New Orleans, not to mention all over the world. The answer I came up with is contradictory, but correct...I have the right to analyze my uncomfortable mood but not to take my uncomfortable mood too seriously.

I will start with the second part, the "common sense" part...I should not take this mood too seriously. I have a disease where my brain tells me I am in crisis, sometimes I am, and sometimes I am not. Interestingly, when I am in crisis usually my brain is clear, and I face the crisis head on, this is why I feel that I, a woman with anxiety disorder, am a good candidate as a flight attendant, I can confidently say that I could evacuate a burning plane without panicing, after everyone was safe and the authorities arrived I would fall to pieces, there is no doubt about that, but in an actual crisis I am good.

But at times like this: I have enough money in my bank account, I have a furnished, safe home, I have a roommate, I have a job, I have health care, I have family and friends who love me, I feel worn out. The dishes need to be done and the house needs to be picked up. Its all very basic, but I feel like it is so big. It is a normal human behavior to attach an unpleasant mood to an outside thing, my favorite being the struggle of money. But I am doing very well with what I have. I use public transportation and my bicycle instead of a car, and I do most of my shopping at thrift stores, unless I want something not available at one. So my mood is not a reaction to something real, and if it is, it is not as big as my mind has made it.

(post never competed)

Saturday, September 03, 2005

What Kanye inspired me to do

ignored the teleprompter and had the bravery to say the truth. The speed of the Federal Government's response to the refugees in New Orleans is lacking, partly because our National Guard and equipment aren't available to us- they are in Iraq, looking for weapons of mass destruction that arent there- but there is mass destruction here.

took quite the risk by speaking up when he wasn't supposed to. We can't forget the backlash the Dixie Chicks recieved, however, alot of that was from a campaign of redneck DJ's, not the same people who play music. However, Kanye has that "representin' the middle class" vibe to him, so he could lose some fans who thought he was non-threatning, but I am sure the added street-cred will make up for those losses.

Today my sister and I were going to go biking. On the way to look at the house she is in the process of buying we saw a Pannekoeken Huis, something we hadn't seen for ages, and decided to have lunch, there we ran into her old friend.

Her friend told us Hope For The City, an anti-poverty organization, was sending trucks to New Orleans and that they were going to drop off some food that day. I thought that was a terrible idea. The cost to ship food in small quantities seemed like such a waste, the cash could be used to buy huge trucks full of water and vats of food. But my sister Linda says thats only half true. She works for a food shelf and she says yes, the food is cheaper in large quantities, but it takes a week or so to order, and she has found that when something happens they need the food right away, and the cash is more useful once the orders have come through, but in New Orleans, people need food...NOW!

We went to a cheap grocery store and got about $100 of food. It seemed like so much money, and like it would make so little difference, but we had to keep reminding ourselves that a little is bigger than nothing.

I was inspired by Kanye, who not only made a risky ad-lib, but who pointed the finger at himself, saying "I went shopping, and I still haven't donated." Initally I planned to go buy his albums. I think his music is a little sample-heavy, but his hooks are regularly running through my head, so I could stand listening to the CDs. Instead I decided to spend the money on donations. He said "I've been shopping and havent donated anything" and I realized, I too have been shopping and haven't donated anything, thank you Kanye for pointing that out!

mood: fortunate!

Imagine being in a hot stadium with (what is left of) your family, there is no electricity, no food, no medical help, with people dying all around you! People are getting shot around you, people are being raped around you. You don't know if anyone knows what is happening!

God Bless Them!



Friday, September 02, 2005

Freedom Monopoly

I have a French Monoply game.

I was setting the real estate up and was frustrated that it didn't have color blocks to identify the "neighborhoods", so I had to read each property name and match it up to the ones on the board.

IMG_7853

Before putting the game away I decided to use crayons and create the colored blocks myself, it was just too much work to set up if I had to match each card individually to the board. My roommate helped. We created a system where once a color had been used we put the crayon off to the side so we didn't accidentaly use the same color twice.

IMG_7860

My roommate asked "What does 'Hypothequee' (the word on the cards) mean?" I said "I don't know, maybe it says 'Real Estate'"

IMG_7856

MORTGAGE! "Hypothequee" means Mortgage! We had colored in the mortgage sides of the cards! Had I come up with the novel idea of turning the cards over I would have seen the color blocks were indeed there! I only had one beer, and that was hours ago!

I don't know what to say about this. I had clues, 1 of the 4 "Gares" (Railroads) looked different than the other 3, it was turned the other way! I just figured one of them had the info about if you own 1, 2, 3, or 4 railroads for all of them. There was the clue of course that they all said "Hypothequee" on them. There was the clue that when you are looking for something, try BOTH SIDES of the card! I just don't know what to say!

mood: very, very amused!

JANE HAD HER BABY!

There is a new person in the world! Jane had a little girl! We will call the little beauty Daisy! Jane called and said "Me and Daisy say hi!"

I just want to scream! This is so beautiful and wonderful and amazing! My friend Sweet -stay-at-home-mommy had her little boy around 20, and at the time she was a "friend of ours" but not exactly "one of us" The three of us, Jane, Carrie and I were best friends, and Jane is the first of us to get married, and now the first of us 3 to have a BEEEEEEBEEEEEEEEEEE!

Thank you universe!

mood: surreal! Too amazing! TOO AMAZING!

Sloth- One of my favorite 7 sins

I woke up this morning and had breakfast, and then I decided to go back to sleep.

I was not dreading the day to come, I did not feel unhappy, I just didn't have any plans forcing me to be awake, and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. There is a physical part of my job, the repeated pressurizing and depressurizing, the mild oxygen deficiency and the long hours and short sleep, and the combination of these things, plus the bad diet of expensive airport food, can really take the piss out of you. It is my experience that an alarm clock free nap can make all of the difference in the world (Maybe twice a year I end up sleeping an entire day...I kid you not!)

I have been worn down a bit. I haven't gotten to enjoy much time alone, although I have enjoyed the time I have spent with my new roommate and friends, I have been a bit on edge since the day Emma said she was going to move, so now the drama is over, she is moved in, my money is caught up, and my fun new bike-commute schedule starts next month, so I can finally AHHHHHHH unwind.

Speaking of my bike, and things being tense, yesterday in preperation for my month of biking I went to my local bike/snowboard shop, and told them I wanted to buy a new chain. The cute guy I see there alot (well they are all cute, but he's cuter because he is so nice to me) said "why do you want to replace the chain?" I said something like "because it sucks", he said something like "what exactly about it sucks?" I told him It had a stiff link, it's something I couldn't get out myself, and since it kept happening I decided I was sick of it and wanted to replace it. He bent it out and said "It probably needs some lube" (Dont think my mind didn't enjoy the innuendo that I could come up with from that- I resisted sharing any of it) He sprayed it down with a silicone lube spray and wiped it too. I said "You sure its going to be cool now?" he said yes.

He could have SO taken advantage of me there. (yes- in more ways than one LOL) Twice I had been told when you replace the chain sometimes you have to replace the other part too, because it wears and stretches. He could have replaced the chain and the gears and I would have grudgingly paid it, but I wouldn't be too eager to buy from the store. But because he fixed my problem for free I bought some lube, replaced my damaged bike map, and bought a gift certificate for my friend so she can get a special "Vagina Seat" for her bike. (I have a special doctor designed seat with a gap in the middle to protect my delicate baby-making parts- I call it, loudly, my vagina seat.)

mood: rested, and beginning to feel a spark of enthusiasm to begin the day