The Walkers are happy...


My house sits on a hill. Surrounding my house is many other hills, trails and various other paths for the joggers and walkers of my community to tackle. For years, as I drive my car, walk around and look around my neighborhood I see the same people going for their daily runs and the like.

After a while I get used to seeing these people and often attempt to gauge what their lives are like. Do they walk with babies? Are they always with a spouse? Alone?

Often I might see a woman walking with her husband and a few years later I see the same couple walking with a stroller carrying a tiny baby. It is interesting to see these people grow with their lives.

For the longest time I saw this woman walking every day of the week. She was slightly older and walked with a slight limp. Even though her walk was slow, everyday I saw her along the path, walking with a gusto. I never felt sorry for this woman. She always seemed like the type that was comfortable with herself. However, I always felt bad that for years she was always alone. She had this sadness in her face that made me think she had no one. No significant other. No children.

Yesterday as I was driving to the store when I saw this lone walker. This time a smile had replaced her normal bitter facial expression. I looked down at the ground and saw why. Walking beside her was an adorable puppy. It made me smile.

I don't care if it is a puppy a child or a man, everyone should have a companion. (Besides is there even a difference?) ;)If only just to bring a smile to a sullen face.

Some things to think about...

To the anonymous women who wrote me a heartfelt comment on my last post. I wanted to be a writer to be able to connect to people. I wanted to show stranger that life can be interesting even if you are not on the fame and fortune track.

Sometimes I think back to times when people told me I could not write because I had bad spelling. I used to think I could not write because I was not a regular Adams, Delillo or Eggers.

Then I get a comment from a stranger that reminds me why I write in the first place. See most of the time it is not about grammar or spelling. It is never about training or school. It has and always will be about connecting with people. It is about being able to tell the story in your head through paper (or a computer screen).

To the anonymous commenter. Thank you. You remind me why I want to be a writer to begin with.


More updates later.

Rachel

So I hear women are evil.


I was talking to the grandfather today...

he interrupts with a "hang on hon"

I hear ruffles and arguing in the background.

"Hon I have to go and call you back. I have to change. Your grandmother does not like what I am wearing to dinner.....THINGS HAVE NOT CHANGED IN 50 FUCKING YEARS"

The boyfriend, as we are leaving Star Wars today (for the second time this week) makes a comment, "everything bad that happens, happens because of some girl. Anakin would not have become Darth if it were not for Padame. Helen of Troy. Adam and Eve. It is all because of the women. "

Are we that evil? Do we screw with men's minds so much that wars or villains come out of it?

Come on people we can't be that bad. Yes we can be moody and pissy. We can cause men to become evil villains who want to take over the world. But at least it comes in a cute package. :)

So my father is out of town on business and my mother is home alone for the next couple of days. She called me this morning while I was on my way to work and told me something that almost made me crash I was laughing so hard.

My mother, late last night, decides she smells burning rubber and calls the fire department to ask if they knew of something burning in the neighborhood. They said they didn't but replied that they would send a few men to check it out. My mother feels assured and goes back to bed. Now let me say that my mother is alone and is paranoid. An hour or so later she hears a knock at the door and goes to answer it in her nightgown not knowing who it was.

She opens the door to see four large firemen standing there (she felt the need to tell me that one of them was very cute).
"Oh...Hi. Are you here because you found something? Is something burning?"

" Ma'am...do you know what a skunk smells like?"

Yes people. My mother thought the smell of a skunk was a fire with burning rubber somewhere in the neighborhood.

In other news...

Today I have been with my boyfriend for 7 months. I call it 7 months of joy, laughs, growth, and love...

He calls it..."7 months of putting up with you," "7 months and I am still alive," and, "7 months ago I had no gray hairs."

The season finale of The O.C made me cry many many times. I have to say that after a less than stellar season they pulled out all of the stops for the finale. Hopefully next season will be a good one.

I saw two puppies at the pet store this weekend. I am soooo tempted you have no idea. I like the Jack Russell and the King Charles Cavalier (sp?). I want a puppy!!!

I talked for over 5,000 minutes on my cell phone last month. I think I might have some issues. :0 Though I can't be the only one that talks that much.

Work is going well. There is some catty drama here in the office. I am not surprised bring that most of us are female. That and there are so many big egos here it is nutty. I am getting really involved in breast cancer awareness though so that is a good thing. It is just shocking to me how many women there are that have it.

I am going to start training for a marathon. I want to be ready by next years rock n roll marathon.

I looked at my bank account and felt like a real live grown up. It was just the thing I needed to help feed my ego. :)

more later

Thank God it's Friday!!!

So many thoughts are running through my head. Seriously my mind is a big ole clusterfuck of good things, bad things, and everything in between.

Last night at midnight I went with the boyfriend and some friends to the midnight showing of Revenge of the Sith. Wellllll....I am shocked I tell you. Just shocked! There were grown men dressed up in Star Wars garb like it was Halloween. There were guys who are probably lawyers and managers having light saber fights in front of the theatre. It was too funny for words. So we get into the movie and the boyfriend is jumping up and down like a little boy because it is the "last time he will ever see a Star Wars movie in the theatre for the first time."

I admit I got a little excited for him when he looked over and said "this is one of those things we will look back and remember STAR WARS."

So I feel asleep after the first three minutes (I was tired!!) However, I managed to stay awake for the last 45 minutes just in time to get my questions answered and to make me want to see the movie again (so I can see the whole thing).

More later but for now I leave you all with a question...

How many of you know that restaurants don't take checks???????

Conversations between me and the boyfriend...Part One


Yet another post in a 24 hour period. Being sick has be on a roll...

I love the boyfriend. He is cute and sexy. He is very sweet and trustworthy and smart. But I swear I have never met a bigger geek! Except maybe my brother.

During American Idol:

(during Bo's song)

Me - This song is making me cry
BF - Its pretty hot
Me - I'm crying
BF - You are on your period
Me - So what!!! That has nothing to do with it!!!!

During a time on AIM when (thank God) I was not at his house

BF - damn, i just laid a fart i wish i recorded
Me - oh dear God
Me - no more!!
BF - i've been farting all night
Me - why ?
Bf - no idea
(it is because he ate those low carb bars that cause farts)

ME - oh honey
BF - if i was naked in the water i can propel mself all the way to Catalina
BF - there's a visual
Me - visual?
BF - seeing my ass fart itself to Catalina
ME - please no more

BF - i think that one woke up CHina
Me - oh honey please yours are like way too much and it almost kicks me out of bed
BF - well, consider us even then
ME - i dont kick you out of bed you just no like cuddle
BF - hell yeah you do!! whered does all this gas come from>????
i swear, i could fill a blimp with all this hot air
i mean, it's gotten to the point where i can control the tone and staccatto of
the farts

ME - honey you keep up like this and you will be sleeping on the sofa and i will get
your bed


to be continued...

Yeah two posts in a 12 hour period.

I know this post will have nothing to do with the last one

I seriously never want to spend the night at my parents house again! They are coming home today. This house is a zoo. I just want some peace and quiet. My mother got home and was so pissed off that I somehow broke the spa and pool with my bare hands (because I am capable of that) , no one was here when I was sick (because that is my fault), there was tons of mail and the newspapers never got stopped. (again I am at fault). However, she praised my ability to take care of the house and said I kept it relatively clean. Yeah me!

I watched Return of the Jedi last night for the first time. All I have to say is, who what a twister! That and the Ewoks are super cute.

I am going to a midnight screening on Episode III this wednesday so I have until then to watch the first five. Needless to say it has been hectic. That and I feel the geekdom of these movies is rubbing off on me. I also must admit I am pretty hooked.

The boyfriend is pretty MIA due to deadlines at work. It seems he has 24 hours to do 48 hours worth of work. He gets very focused. He calls it tunnel-vision. I call it, "look at me butt-head, you are not listening"! ;)

The parents are coming home from their Hawaiian vacation today. I imagine with t-shirts that say "hang loose" on them and white shell necklaces. They could not bring me home a deed to a condo in Maui?? I don't ask for much!!!

My job is pretty hard not to get emotionally attached to. There are just way too many cancer patients out there. Working at a hospital is like looking at things the world tries to ignore every single day.

I am sick so I could be going crazy but can someone explain the Emperor to me? So Darth is the father, Leah is the sister. That is one fucked up family.

Speaking of which, anyone notice how much Buffy is like Star Wars?

Someone tell me why guys laugh so damn hard when they fart loud. In fact, even when they fart soft. There I am lying my head on the boyfriends lap feeling all cuddly and close when he starts laughing. I wonder what he is laughing at until the smell drifts into my nose and kills 2 million brain cells.

One of my friends, lets call her Elle, talked to me last night for the first time in months. We sounded like two strangers exchanging small talk. What makes friendships grow apart? Do we just change from high school that much? The friends I have now that I still talk to all the time are ones I either knew since I was an embryo or met after high school. Maybe there is something to that. I am also making a lot of new friends with the people at work. I like people that work at hospitals they are a lot more intelligent than my last job thats for sure. (we all remember the "baby mama drama")

Someone told me last night that my writing is as good as what they read in any respectable column. This makes me want to be done with school even more. That or I am so tempted to finish school on line and plunge head first into the journalism world. I am sick of school, I want to be in the working world already. A year and a half left. I am counting down.

I really want to go to Hawaii.

I want things that sparkle. That and one of those build-a-bear things.

What is the deal with this new extended daylight savings? What is that supposed to accomplish?

Is it easier to be real and piss people off, or fake and make others happy?

It is only in hindsight that everyone is a genius...

Well duh! Looking back on something that happens in our life we can always understand why it happened. However, while said thing is happening we might as well be blond with an IQ of 80. Really, everything we learn is learned because we look back on something, analyze it, figure it out and commit it to memory.

This does not only apply to simple things like putting your hand on a hot stove but rather those life circumstances that put words in our mouth like, "well if only....that is the reason...if the bastard wouldn't have, then I wouldn't have....I wish I had not....I wish I had...." it all makes sense in hindsight. And there we are, GENIUS!

What one has to realize is that at any given moment we are not supposed to know what the hell we are doing. Think about it. If we knew what the right way to do something every time, would life not be the most boring piece of shit you ever could imagine? Yes we can KNOW why things HAPPENED in the past once we look at it from the present. However, what is the point if the other option is pure hell...knowing everything.

Look at who you are today. Look at who is around you and what circumstances have been lain by your feet. According to countless religions, philosophers, and psychologists, everything happened because it had to happen for you to be who you are and who you are supposed to become. This poses the question of why we have to analyze anything at all?

Nietzsche, one of the greatest (and yet I imagine fucked up) minds in history poses the idea of Eternal Recurrence. He states:


What if a demon crept up to you one day and said to you, "This life as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you and everything in the same series and sequence - and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and this same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hour glass of existence will be turned again and again - and you with it, you dust of dust!" - Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who thus spoke? Or have you experienced a a tremendous moment in which you would have answered him, "You are a God and never have I heard anything more divine!" If this thought gained power over you it would, as you are now, transform and perhaps crush you, the question in all and everything: "do you want this again and again, times without number?" would lie as the heaviest burden upon all your actions. Or how well would you have to be disposed towards yourself and towards life would you have to become to have no greater desire than this eternal sanction and seal?




So essentially, if we were told we had to live our life again, the exact same way as we have before, would we be paralyzed with dread or euphoric with contentment?

It is the real genius who can say they would love to live their life exactly as it was before. It is the wise who would do everything in their power from that day forward of hearing from this "demon" to bring as much joy into their life as possible.

So as we will live our lives over and over again ("times without number"), what would we do differently? Not only how we would live life differently but how would we look at the pain we have gone through?

The Kabbalists use this analogy...what if someone said, "I will give you a million dollars for every hurdle you jump over in that race over there."
You would go out searching for hurdles! Well that is the way they look at problems. It is through the pain we become "rich" with wisdom and the ability to perceive real joy.

So maybe being deaf, dumb and blind as we trudge along through life ain't so bad. At least we know we might become millionaires.

It is the fear not the fire.....



I am still at my parents house, taking care of the dogs. Last night I could not sleep because I kept hearing noises coming from our attic (I kid you not). However, in the light of day I think it was probably a raccoon or something of that sort.

So there I am, sitting up in bed with two dogs who take up an entire 2/3s of said bed when I get to thinking....

Earlier that night I was watching the slightly disappointing Revelations on NBC when the son of someone had to jump through the fire in front of two weird people who are there merely for decoration. One of the decorative guys said to the boy who had to go through the fire (with me here?)..."It is the fear, not the fire that burns to the bone.." Cliche, yes. Scripted, yes. This show keeps pissing me off.

Fast forward a few hours and I am sitting up in bed, hugging my dog for dear life and I found myself repeating (out loud mind you!) "It is the fear, not the fire that burns to the bone."

Here is the part where you readers will no longer hold me in any respectful position in your mind from now on. It worked! I repeat a mantra from a television show and no longer was I scared..No sir!

Does this make me a cliche too?

Besides that I am making it a point to never sleep alone at my parents house again. There are too many dark rooms. There are weird noises. So many doors someone can just crawl through...:/

So being as that they are still on a vacation I should be on and I am stuck for the next 6 days, I am in a pickle. My dogs suck at being guard dogs that's for damn sure. Boris only barks when he hears a police siren 40 miles away. Sugar just runs and hides from strangers. Nala, well Nala is just a bitch.

Tonight the TV is staying on when I go to bed as is every light in every room except for mine. No way am I taking chances. I could also be insane and slightly paranoid...The jury is still out.

I need some help :)


So when I find blogs I enjoy I like to link them. (hint hint to those of you who like mine;) )

However, I have been doing it the hard way (going into the template, writing the weird code thing...can you tell I am not a computer genius?

I recently got this blogroll thing, and now I just have no idea how to use it or what it is really for. So this is basically me asking all of you who use blogroller to email me (link on the side) and give me some pointers on what I do with blogroll and what it is for.

more soon.....

My dogs are psychotic...no joke


Last night my pug took a crap in the living room. I am not sure if this was before or after he took a whiz on the leather sofa. This could also have been before Sugar, the pit bull, climbed up onto the kitchen counter and attempted to get at the boyfriends empty lasagna bowl leftover from dinner. This of course, caused the entire bowl to fall off the counter and completely shatter all over the entire floor. This interrupted our sleep and the boyfriend had to sweep up an entire floor in the middle of the night.....in his underwear.

So i am sitting at the parents house, while they are off galavanting in Hawaii and I am stuck baby-sitting these dogs. Yes, I use the word baby-sitting because that is the amount of work they require. So I screamed at Sugar, while Nala (yes there is a third dog) started barking at no one in particular and Boris proceeded to run around in circles probably because we interrupted his session of joyous masturbation. Did I mention the pug masturbates? Apparently you don't need retractable thumbs to do so.

Now I need a vacation....

Does anyone else think so?



Does anyone else like to curl up on the sofa with a bowl of low carb ice cream and a good movie rather than go out to a club in LA where they will not be able to walk from point A to point B without being grabbed by the opposite sex?

Does anyone else say one day they hate their mother and the next day say they are the greatest?

Does anyone else laugh at the thought that boys, age 3 or 30, still run around the house wagging their penis' at everything?

Does anyone else like to watch guilty pleasures rather than "serious" news?

Does anyone else like to go to a movie in the middle of the day so you feel like you have not wasted an entire evening?

Does anyone else talk to their dogs in baby talk like they can understand you?

Does anyone else try their hardest to turn their necks backward just so they can get a good view of their ass in the mirror?

Does anyone else fart sometimes when they laugh?

Does anyone else get really pissed off when someone they like gets voted off American Idol, but as yet to ever vote for anyone on the show?

Does anyone else make wishes at 11:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44 and 5:55....and seriously think your wishes might come true?

Does anyone else consider protein bars a balanced meal?

Does anyone else wear leopard print undies with ratty old sweat pants?

Does anyone else still feel fuzzy when someone says they love you....no matter how many times they have said it in the past?

Does anyone else already have Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince already pre-ordered?

Anyone? Anyone? Anyone weird out there? :)

I love the Border's bookstore by my house. It is always so lively and full of rich, stuck up, snobby Orange County folks. I still love it

However, I do not love mean, crabby ole ladies who cuss at you in the parking lot.

I was pulling my car out of the my space and this old hag comes zooming past my car at a pretty high speed for a narrow parking lot. I slam on my breaks and miss hitting her by about two inches. So, one would think it is her fault right? I was pulling out slowly, she had to see me, any decent person would have stopped. Well she DID stop. But this was after I almost hit her and it was only to block me from pulling out any further and leaving the lot.

When did old people get so mean?!?!


So there she is, parked in front of my car and not moving. I really need to get home because quite frankly I need to pee. She rolls down her window. I wonder if this is a queue. Does she need to tell me something? Did I really hit her? So I toll down my window...

" Look out your fucking window lady and learn how to drive! We are not in Fucking CHINA!"

She was like 70 years old. Does she kiss her mother with that mouth? What is this world coming to when old ladies are now hostile. Aren't they supposed to be cute and cuddly like my great grandma? And what was the deal about China?

So much confusion. My world is all askew. Old ladies are now mean to me.

So I read about the cricket formula. The cricket formula states that if you count the number of times a cricket chirpey chirps in 15 seconds and then add 37 to that number, you get the current temperature. Pretty nifty right? If someone tells you this you might think, "whoa what a cool thing this chick knows." RIGHT?

HA! NO!!! I tell the Boyfriend and well he is pretty impressed. But he has to be impressed or he will get the stink eye.

So I go and tell the brother and all I get is a, "Yeah I know. And there is a formula for rattlesnakes as well." Bastard! Is there nothing he does not know?!?!

So I am making this vow to myself. I vow to do whatever it takes to find a fact that the brother does not know. I don't care how long it takes. Oh yes, I will stump him.