2/10/12

2/10/12

Though I've had boyfriends, i haven't really been on too many dates, or 'dated' anyone for that matter. We meet, there are fireworks, and I spend every day for the next however long (usually a year and a half) until we get sick of each other. I know, unhealthy.

I have especially never had a date on the biggest date day of them all, Valentine's Day. I fact, it usually turns out to be the opposite. No dinner, no chocolates. Not even a flower picked form the neighbor's yard. Valentine's Day has been synonymous with the hoping for the smallest of appreciations for love, coupled with disaster.

OK. Once a chef boyfriend of mine prepared a V Day special served at his restaurant who's title escapes me, but was the letters in 'I love you Karin' rearranged to spell something else. Aw. I still have the menu.

This year I have a 'date'. It's planned for Tuesday, not sure if it's coincidentally Valentine's Day or his plan. Either way it's hilarious and sweet. From a third party perspective, it reeks of desperation, but not from here. What really ever looks good on paper?

My date is with the guy who pumps my gas down the street. 37, form Afghanistan, easy on the eyes, works seven days a week, and adores my fro. The night of the full moon he told me that I was his moon. I make his day when I need fuel. He actually told me to only put in $5 at a time so I'd have to come back daily. Ridiculous, but gas station cute.

Best part about this date is that we'll eat kabobs and rice from his uncle's joint in town at his gas station because he'll still be working. I'm truly not interested in having any relations beyond friendship with my Persian speaking fuel friend (I could honestly use more friends), but he thinks I'm the jam and who doesn't love a flood of positive attention and showers of compliments?

At the very least I am staying wide and clear away from relationships with dudes who fail when it comes to showing appreciation or very much at all in the area of graciousness.

I think I'll bring him a cactus for his shop window. That was he can't kill it and always be reminded of me. Heeyah.

2/4/12

2/4/12

Remember life without cell phones? I do because i live it. After feeding the communications monster with contracts for 6 years, I went prepaid. The phone just became too much of a big deal... newer tech phones, high bills... Or I'd lose it. Once I even left my phone in the yard with sprinklers on all night. It became a responsibility that just didn't seem worth it. I figure mobile phones just aren't for me.

My first cell phone was on a family and friends plan given to me by my friends who were tired of not being able to reach me all the time. I was a late cellular bloomer. I resisted and for good reason. I couldn't see the benefit of always being available. The best thing about a cell phone back in the age of flip-phones, was being able to order food for pick up on the way home from work. Golden. Everything else could wait until I got home. Right?

I recently found myself in the same shameful situation again, friends and family tired of my always-out-of-reachness. Except there are no longer phones at home for most. So I made it a priority to step back into the new millennium and got myself and Android. It does everything I want. Pictures, email,3G, wifi, GPS, music and that cute lil green droid always on my screen. I love it.

Thank you for the motivation.

1/28/12

1/28/12

I used to cater my job choice around my misread self-perception that I was a work loner; that I would be more successful doing a job by myself, than with help. It wasn't so difficult a task, being a gardener, the outdoors is my office. Outside of lifting heavy things and second opinions, most work can be accomplished solo with the right tools. Time is usually not of the essence.

I think I had difficulty dealing with others. I lacked patience and was pretty bullheaded when it came to people's ignorance. Now I'd like to think I've grown to be a more accepting and versatile when it come to working with others. It's not so bad (...as long as they keep their hands out of my work, literally. And the person telling me what to do isn't an idiot. I guess I still need to work on it).

There will always be dumb people and now I use them and their idiotic ideas as reference. To remind myself of someone I no longer am or some place I am not at.

1/30/12

1/30/12

I work in retail. At a nursery, but I work in the 'front of the house'. I work the register, deal with customers, and stock the shelves. I like to compare myself to Andy Kaufman working as a busboy for humility and to keep laughing at life. Though I am extremely overqualified I do get paid decent. It's local and family run. It's also quality stuff and I get a sweet discount. Seeing that my biggest addiction is plants, it works out well.

Speaking of plant addiction, I want to know everything about them. There are far too many to become personally acquainted with in my lifetime, but I get satisfaction, knowledge, and joy from working in whatever plant situations I have not experienced yet. I'd enjoy working at a compost farm, just because I haven't. I've pruned Christmas trees and apples in the winter. Neither once is really any fun for very long, but now I now each type of tree, it's growth habit, and it's nature as a result. We're now friends!

I've changed employment many times over the years, going from one plant job to the next because I know there's always a new botanical challenge and tackling them only gives me a more diverse understanding and love of them. And plants are healing. No matter how you work with them it's meditative and giving back.

For now my meditation incorporates price guns and credit card machines. Merchandising. I don't get to touch and interact with plants as much as those who work in the back, in the grow houses (in fact that's all they do). But I do get to water and groom the jungle plants and cacti which for now is enough relief between stocking and dusting the fertilizers and pesticides.

1/27/12

1/27/12

I feel like I have a serious amount of experience.

Like I have been places, met people, and done things a notch or two beyond the 'average' American. I have taken risks and pushed the envelope just to see that I could accomplish it... or get away with it (or not get caught by authorities at least).

After years I have remained free from incarceration, serious bodily injury, and death. Now I am not claiming to be a dare devil or to take risks like a spy or something. I'm not even necessarily comparing myself to anyone but my former self, or what I thought my former self to be.

I know I have experience because I continue to crave the opportunity for a challenge. It's not really the challenge as much as it is the reward and feeling of success. Triumph. Mission accomplished. Proving silly rules wrong.

I think there are cocktails of chemicals... neurotransmitters... hormones... that are released whenever a situation calls for their remedying. You know, the feel goods that your body secretes, dopamine, serotonin, maybe with a bit of adrenaline and cortisol? Your bodies defense against the pain of scary shit about to happen.

I'm pretty sure that if you were to be devoured by sharks, your body would be looking out for you and give you a serious blast of everything it had to possible to make being eaten alive as least painful as possible.

Adrenaline junkies may be a common name given to those craving the high risk, but I'm not jumping out of planes. There have got to be varying degrees of risk takers. It all comes down to what is considered risk; and who's doing the considering.

Risks involving police and the law are common to most. Risks in relationships or with emotion are another complicated hairy beast. The cops aren't going to arrest anyone for misery, betrayal, or dishonesty.

These risks are paid for with your soul. Risks of thyself, taken by giving too much. Investing what you do not have, poorly. As with most risks, there is redemption with time.

Yet I think these risks in relationships release similar cocktails to those excreted when defying death; gambling with your life, physically. Like base jumping, just in much lower concentrations.

The potent cocktail may be best, released when actually in action, mostly adrenaline. But the time-released cocktail seeped to your mind whenever you look back at your accomplishment, is priceless.

1/26/12

During a time which I shall describe as punctuated with new crisis, I discovered my love for stories. I realized I liked to read; in fact, I love to read.

I attack it like you would an addiction. I spend as much of my free time doing it and I can't get enough. I read many books who's title and/or author's name I cannot remember and likely never knew. It really made no difference, I was tearing up 3 books a week and needed to feed the literacy monster I had awakened.

I was definitely encouraged as a kid. Much more than most of my chosen peers. I was taught that there was freedom in knowledge and the more you knew, the more prepared you'd be for life. Experience is the true teacher, but reading sets the path for learning. It's the inspiration. The seed. Yet, I was still not a bookworm.

Since my reading awakening I have made an honorable attempt at figuring out what type of writing excites me without reading every book I come across to see if it's 'good'. Once I start a book I for some reason feel obligated to finish it. Even if I'm bored to death I'm sure to find one revelation-inspiring stretch of words somewhere in the book. (Black Swan by N. Taleb comes to mind...)

At first I noticed the books I enjoyed centered around making me feel inspired, strong. Books that gave me hope and made me to 'be all I could be'; validation. Stories who's characters were faced with problems seemingly aligned with mine. Stories of heartbreak and failure followed by perseverance and triumph. The everyday hero winning the battle within themselves.

Stories do take you somewhere else. You can dream vicariously through them. You can find advice and encouragement along with regret and shame. You can dream possibilities and solutions; and close the door on the past.

I do love Michael Pollan and Barbara Kingsolver and their creative non-fiction. Fantastic at story-telling life, though they are a bit nerdy-tame.

I have recently been exposed to Richard Marcinko aka Demo Dick via my older brother.

(I usually acquire reading material by suggestion. Most top readers' lists are full of stuff I have no interest in and leave me with too many options, yet dead-ended. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong reviews... suggestions?)

Back to Marcinko. Best known as Commander of SEAL Teams 2 & 6. A full-throttle, bad-ass military man with clear vision, extreme honor, and titanium balls. A potty-mouthed, beer drinking, killing machine. I love him.

The baddest of the bad boys and the books her writes are not based on characters of imaginary reverence, they are based on real people who did insanely brave, calculated, dedicated, and bull-strength work in their lives for their country. Cherry on top, he's a fantastic writer.

I have read the infamous 'Rogue Warrior' and just finished 'Red Cell' this morning. I am thankful he has a dozen or so more. His writing reaffirms my conscious and morals. It feeds my warrior spirit and makes me proud to be an American.

1/15/12

1/15/12

Taurus
April 20 - May 20

Greek 'tauros' - the bull

- persistent, steadfast

- excels at work because of the importance of method and order

-wonderful sense of humor; uses it to be the center of attention

- not aggressive, but stubborn and self-indulgent

- loyal, faithful friend

- sensuous and amorous lover

- fond of music

Constellation - Taurus the Bull
Zodiac - Bull
Known as - The Builder
Ruling Planet - Venus; planet of art, procreation, and indulgence

Quality - Fixed; association with stability and strength

Element - Earth
Greatest Compatibility - Virgo, Capricorn
Partnerships/Marriage - Scorpio

Day - Friday
Color - green, orange, yellow; earth colors
Flowers - violet, poppy
Metal - copper
Lucky #'s - 6,4
Virtues - endurance, stability, harmonious disposition, ferocious willpower and loyalty to family and friends
Negative traits - rigidity, stubbornness, possessive/materialistic
Celebrities - Catherine the Great, Orson Wells, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Leonardo da Vinci
George Clooney, Al Pacino, Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Dennis Hopper.

1/7/12

1/7/12

I like to eat, drink, and smoke.

I stick stickers and burn candles.

I wear and patch holes in my jeans.

I rock Vans till they shred.

I use tools and people for what they were design for... and beyond

I am not a reservationist nor a conservative.

I am a consumer.

1/7/12

Every fall I plant bulbs on Sugar's grave in Teresa's back yard.

It's in a spot on the edge of the yard next to the garden shed

which she shares with Bonnie

a cat who passed not too long after lil Shuggs.

It's been two autumns.

There's got to be over 100 daffodil bulbs in there.

This year I also planted purply-indigo 'Blue Moon' tulips.

I hope the squirrels don't dig them up and eat them.

RIP Sugar and Bonnie.

1/7/12

Today a coworker asked me if I had a garden when the subject heirloom tomatoes came up... knowing I really don't have my 'own' space.

It struck me as preposterous...'Do I have a garden !?!'.

It's impossible for me not to.

No matter if I have a yard or not, wherever I spend my time will be a garden.

I thank the universe for this one positive, amazing, and healing habit.

A gift synonymous with passion.

1/6/12

1/6/12

Back from the hiatus. Back with a new mission.

September was the last time I wrote and the passed three months have been full of predictable decisions and unforeseen changes.

I ended my 'Growing Season in Phoenicia' early in October and said goodbye to my fantastic garden and new friends.

I booked a flight to Seattle to find out once and for all if my old love and had anything left... if there was any love left in my heart (or enough insanity still left in my mind) to make a relationship with him work.

I believe I knew the answer all along, but I needed to officially close the door. The finale. This seemed impossible to do over the phone.

Three weeks later I was back in the east, staying with my friend in NJ, and working a rad job with plants. I think my window of opportunity was open and just waiting for me to shut the front door.

1/6/12

During the last 8 years, I have moved every two. Started over, usually out of state. A new job. A new set of roads. A new beginning. Semi-nomadic. Gypsy-like.

I don't believe I enjoy it necessarily, at least, not so much as I did in my more youthful days.

I do love and require new situations and places. Exploring. Learning. Making it my town.

But at times I feel like a transient.

My life really can be packed up and shipped for about $100.

Low in the material possessions department which would be great if I was walking the Buddhist path or traveling the world, neither of which I'm currently undertaking.

I long for 'stuff'. I want sweet vintage furniture and my grandma's collectables.

I want windows turned into jungles by crowded houseplants.

I want two dogs.

I want my bed and a kick-ass teapot.

I want a place to call my own.

No one's fault but my own that I don't have these things yet...or gave them up ( I will never sell my records again!). Years spent living in destructive relationships and horrible decision making put me here. Poor and couch-surfing between a friend's and my brothers'.

It could be much worse. After all I wouldn't want to spend my time with any other people; and I am not on the streets. I still feel like a gypsy packing up my shit every few days to stay in my hometown during the workweek, and woodsy weekends up in the highlands.

I'm not complaining... really.

I'm just calculating the effect time has on resilience.

Patience is a big player in the equation.

Savin' the $ flow, so my roots can grow.