Reconciling Life

This weekend I spent some time going through my various notebooks and journals from 2009 and I noticed one common theme running through the entries... I have been struggling to reconcile the life I want to be living with the one I am actually living. Spurred by this revelation into myself I decided to dig out my journals and notebooks from 2007 and 2008 and, not surprisingly, the same exact theme was running through those pages also!

How does one reconcile the life they are living to the one the want to be living?

This morning on the way to work (as I was driving through SNOW over the pass... SNOW! In the Bay Area!) it occured to me that I am not the same person I was two and a half years ago. In fact, I hardly even recognize the girl I was then. I think I can even pinpoint when the change happened. Perhaps not the exact moment, or even the exact day, but I know what it was that forever pushed me into changing the person I had become. What happened then motivated me to change, for better or for worse... And looking back I don't regret what happened because it pushed me to learn, to grow, to accept myself as I am.

But.

Until two and a half years ago my life was pretty constant. I had the same friends I'd had for years, the same job, the same boyfriend... I had been living and working and playing in the same towns since High School. I was dealing with the same issues, the same stereotypes, the same history, the same problems. I had become someone who held all of my personal feelings and emotions bottled up for fear of going against the crowd, for fear of standing alone, for fear of hurting anyone.

I was afraid that if people knew the real me they wouldn't like me and, you know, that actually ended up being true... It has been sad and frustrating and lonely acknowledging that. But at the same time, in the last couple of years I've actually met a few people who DO like the real me. I'm more comfortable in my skin, more in control of my life, I'm happier, more peaceful, stronger. But I'm STILL having a hard time reconciling my life as it currently sits to the life I've invisioned for myself. Maybe this is what life is about? The struggle to create the life you want out of the stuff you've been given?

Christmas Spirit Hands!

I might have gone just a tad bit overboard on the decorations this year. Maybe. Normally I dig my boxes of Christmas decor in from the garage, with the help of TheBoy, and start unwrapping ornaments and candles and decorations and... get totally overwhelmed. Needless to say only a handful of ornaments ever make it on the tree and one or two decorations get set out, but most of the things just get tossed back in the boxes and sent back to the garage.

But not this year baby! Every freaking ornament I OWN is on the wee little 5' tree we brought home last Sunday. Not to mention the dozen or so ornaments I bought new this year plus the three or four dozen ornaments and decorations my mama bought for me! (hi Mom! thanks for passing down the crazy Christmas gene!) I coordinated y'all. There are "themes" and I even thought about "accents" and "setting things off right".

I've got spirit, yes I do! I've got spirit, how about you?

Okay this post has no point other than the fact that Christmas has officially vomited all over Chez Ghetto and also, that I seriously have a case of the holiday spirits right now. The last few years have been decidedly un-Christmas-y so I'm thankful for this little burst of simple child-like joy at what used to be my absolute favorite time of year. Its the little things y'all.

Favorite things...

December 2nd... Day 2 of my "I'll blog every day and la, la, la, ti, da!"

What can I say y'all? Life is full!

But I'm squeezing this one in under the wire... In the spirit of my favorite holiday just past here are a few things I noticed, just today, that I am thankful for:

The nine minutes of "snooze" in the morning, snuggling with my two boys
Hot tea in travel mugs for the morning commute
Watching the baby animals in the fields outside of town grow up
Tree lined roads
Hilarious co-workers
My awesome boss
Hilarious co-workers (I know this is a duplicate, but I noticed a couple different times today!)
Tacos for dinner
My amazing husband
The way the cat follows me around the house meowing until I sit on the couch so he can cuddle with me

The love of writing that propelled me off the couch (even snuggled as I was between cat and hubby) to come and post on the interwebs and let you know that I am grateful for you. I love all my IIFs! And I'm honored to have "met" you all and that you share a bit of your lives with me.

Being Constant

*Anyone else get the irony in the fact that my first real post in ages is about being constant?

I got some very thought-provoking advice on Saturday night from a friend of a friend and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. TheBoy and I were at our friend's house for a surprise 60th birthday party and after having known this woman for roughly 11 minutes and giving a (very) brief description of my relationship with my father she looked right at me and said "you can't control anyone else's actions but your own, so just remain constant."

What I had been telling her, and my friend, was how my father has once again had some sort of come to Jesus moment and remembered he has a daughter out there. The man is actually borderline stalking me on Facebook. He sent me a friend request about a month ago or so and, as I have so far left his request in the never-ending limbo of "pending", he's taken to sending me e-mail messages through Facebook every couple of days or so.

I must confess, once or twice I did reply to him. I know that only encourages him but... he's half my DNA y'all! So my dilemma is whether I should give in and accept his friend request on Facebook and once again try and build some sort of relationship with this man or do I stick to my original plan (which has been working quite nicely) to ignore his existence via the ostrich head-in-sand method? What to do, what to do...

On one hand I'm cynical and jaded and we've freaking been in this exact same place a couple other times already and I always end up with hurt feelings and a bruised heart. Not to mention that after the last time I swore up and down that I'd never, NEVER, have anything to do with the man again. But. There is always a "but" isn't there? But somewhere, deep down, hidden very well, is a tee-tiny voice that whispers "what if something happens and you never get the chance to make amends?" What if indeed.

"You can't control anyone else's actions but your own, so just remain constant."

Remain constant. Honestly I am always going to have some sort of feelings for this man. Whether its sadness at his absence, anger at his unwillingness to think he's in any way to blame for our lack of relationship or wistfulness at the idea of having an actual father... Its useless to try and pretend that I have zero feelings for him, even if he is all but a stranger. I think that is the reason that what this woman said to me really struck a chord. Because I can be constant in my feelings for or about him and at the same time accept him for his faults and know that sometimes he'll be around and sometimes he'll be gone.

At least I think I can. Maybe.

Its just... in the last year or so I've really been trying hard to stop giving other people control of my happiness. I chose my attitude, I'm the only one who should have that power. And I've always said that at the end of your life you'll always regret the things you didn't do, more than the things you did. Life is too short for regret right? What if this IS the last chance I'll ever get to try and get to know the man who is responsible for my fat, rosy cheeks or my love of the water or my thick head of hair? I'm not sure if I'll regret letting Jim back into my life... But I'm fairly sure I'll regret it if I never get another shot. I don't like to wonder what if.

So in the car on the way home from the party Saturday night I made up my mind to accept my father's friend request on Facebook and let him into my life again and see what happens. I even went online that night and looked at the pending friend request, leaving my mouse hovering directly in between "confirm" and "ignore" for several minutes before giving up and going to bed. In fact, the entire time I have been writing this entry I've had another tab open to my Facebook homepage... but for whatever reason I haven't been able to bring myself to hit confirm.

Maybe it takes some time to settle into this whole being constant thing?

Na Blo Po Mo

SO I was totally going to sign on for National Blog Posting Month this year. I figured it would would force me to set aside some time each day for this here blog. But now here it is... the last freaking day in November and did I? Nope!

So I think I'm going to start my own little personal NaBloPoMo in December. I miss this little blog and the great outlet it provides and the amazing people I've met. I'll admit to getting drawn into by Facebook's instant gratification and the ease of quick and witty status updates but my writing is suffering for it.

Wish me luck!

Conversations of Faith

Me: "I feel like I have lost my grounding... I feel shaken & changed somehow. The 'GOD' of my childhood has collapsed under the weight of my adult life."

Friend: "It isn't that 'GOD' has collapsed... Its religious idealology that has you feeling abandoned. Teachings provide you with the raft to cross the river but once you are on the opposite shore & the raft has come apart you have to walk alone. Keep your eyes & heart open."

Like a Rock

Isn’t it interesting how you can know someone, for a brief period of time or perhaps not that well, and still they pop into your thoughts randomly? In High School I had a massive crush on this boy… Okay I had a lot of crushes on a lot of boys as a teenager, but I never even managed to let this guy know that I thought he was cute and funny so it has always been one of those “wonder what could have been” memories in my head.

I once had an opportunity to let him know I liked him, but I let it slip by and another one never presented itself. It was sometime in our junior year and it was raining outside. We had a class together, I forget now what subject, and had both decided to skip class that day in favor of hanging out in the parking lot. What can I say, it happened a lot. Somehow he and I ended up sitting in his truck (he had a GREAT truck – some things never change) just the two of us, listening to the radio, talking and laughing. It was great.

Until the Bob Seger song, Like a Rock, came on the radio. I reached over, mid-sentence, and turned the volume up on his radio, pausing to say how much I loved this song. His response stunned me. He said, “right, because of the truck ads”, with a dismissive tone in his voice, “a girl like you probably never heard this song before that.” Now, admittedly, I HAD seen the Chevy commercials featuring this song, I was a teenager after all and spent inordinate amounts of time in front of the TV. But I was a fairly big Bob Seger fan and to be dismissed like that was rather… offensive.

Luckily for me, the bell rang signaling the end of the period so I just opened the door of the truck and hopped out. I wish I could say I said something witty, or sarcastic, or anything at all really, but I didn’t. But every time I hear a Seger song on the radio I turn it up, roll down the windows and sing along to my heart’s content, and think about a boy I used to know, with a charming lopsided grin, who never got the opportunity to discover how much fun it could be with “a girl like me”.