It All Comes Down To Faith

In the last few years I have had the opportunity to go through various stages of life. Single and living at home, single with roommates, single and living with family; but the recurring theme has always been single. My first romantic relationship started at the young age of 15 and continued pretty much until I was 22. After that amount of time there was obviously a lot of emotion involved and I didn't feel like I had true closure until this year. The end of that relationship was pretty tragic and shocking for me and definitely affected me adversely. My state of mind was not improved by the marriages of my best friend and sister within the same month, despite how happy I was for them.

I floundered for a couple of years, after deciding that the way I had been living previously hadn't done my marriage prospects any good, so I tried other things. Things that were basically not good for me which I eventually realized before I did something really stupid. Basically I had lost my faith in good things happening to me. It took me a while but I got to a healthier place. Everyone has their own way of dealing with grief mine was to be blunt and brash. My honesty won me some friends but it could also be very off-putting. Mostly it came from being unsure of who I was and eventually it was that self-discovery that gave me the confidence to date again.

The great thing about finally knowing who I am is that it means I am more open to meeting people and also aware of what I want in a relationship. This also means that I know if someone rejects me it is not the end of the world. It just means that I am not what they are looking for in a mate. Part of that also means that I have faith. Faith that somewhere out there is someone that I am right for, someone who will accept me for who I already am, not some unrealistic idea. What gets me through the day despite an impending sense that time is passing too quickly and that my chances become fewer the older I get, is faith. Faith and hope in a divine plan that is beyond my understanding.

Happy Thoughts

Poor Communication & Etiquette

As previously mentioned I currently pay my bills by making sandwiches for people who pay for them. In this time I have made some interesting observations concerning human behavior. First is that people are rude. Second is that demographics are astonishingly telling. I work at two separate locations and the difference in how people treat me from one location to the other is dramatically different. Both are in affluent neighborhoods but the interesting thing is that the people at Location One are pretty friendly. They know some things about me and I usually know some things about them. At Location Two I am generally treated with disdain and have had assumptions made about my intelligence because of the job I do. Yes, I work for minimum wage but that doesn't make me stupid or not worth treating with respect.

At what point did it become okay to talk on your cell phone when ordering food? It is extremely rude and if I had my way I wouldn't serve you until you were done. I had someone come in last week and stand in front of the counter while on the phone and I continued to sweep and do some cleaning until he was done. When the phone call ended he was mad and asked if I was finally ready. I replied by telling him that I am always ready, just waiting for him. The most irritating part is when their sandwich is done or nearly so and they suddenly realize that something about their sandwich is not what they wanted. Usually this is because they were paying attention to something other than me and don't realize that what they told me and what they actually want are not the same thing. Inevitably they are put out and mad at me even though they were the ones not paying attention.

So my place of employ has what can be called membership cards. On these cards you can earn points that add up to free food. These cards can also double as gift cards so I don't always know which it is. I generally assume that if they hand me money and their card that the card is to add point onto and the money is to pay for their order. I can't tell you how many times that people have been upset with me because the card was actually a gift card and I use the money they gave me instead. Is it wrong for me to assume that if you hand me money at the register that it is to pay for your purchase?

Rant over, you may now continue with your day.

It's All About Perception

On this anniversary of significance it occurred to me that it is my perception of the events of ten years ago are pretty self-centered. What I mean by that is everything about it is based on my perception. I know where I was when I heard the news and how I felt. I remember how it affected my life as an adult, but it has never really occurred to me what effect it must have had on people who were teenagers or even younger at the time. My sister mentioned that she was in 9th grade and how everyone turned on the TV's in their classrooms to watch the story as it unfolded. I watched a documentary about one of the two photojournalists who was allowed at Ground Zero and how she tracked down some of the people she spent time with in the days and weeks she spent there. Link is: Portraits from Ground Zero. I would highly recommend it.

Cheers and Jeers

• Cheers to my landlord for taking care of our flooding problem so quickly

• Jeers to the guy who lives near my parents and whom uses his riding lawn mower on a lawn that would be much better served with a manual one. What a waste.
• Cheers to an anonymous benefactor.
• Jeers to assumptions that people make about others.
• Cheers for Diet Coke and chocolate, but not mixed together, that's gross.
• Jeers to adults who still act like children, mainly throwing tantrums when they don't get their way.
• Cheers for Hulu which keeps me entertained with old TV shows.
• Jeers to minimum wage that is not sufficient to pay bills.
• Cheers for the weather getting cooler.

Hug-o-war

"I will not play at tug o' war.
I'd rather play at hug o' war,
Where everyone hugs
Instead of tugs,
Where everyone giggles
And rolls on the rug,
Where everyone kisses,
And everyone grins,
And everyone cuddles,
And everyone wins." 

Shel Silverstein

Lungs?

Tell me this roast beef doesn't look like some kind of body part, specifically lungs.

"Boty Fat"

It's Labor Day and instead of laboring at the job I am not particularly fond of at the moment, I am spending it by laboring in my house. I am doing some cleaning and rearranging and came across this pictures that one of my students drew for me. It should be noted that people with autism are not typically known for their tact and in all reality this picture may not in fact be a reference to me, (though let's face it, it applies) it was just one of the reminders that sometimes the truest things come from the mouths of children.

The Idea vs. The Reality

I recently decided to end a relationship in my life and it was a decision that was probably overdue. I have often noted that the state of my bedroom is often a direct reflection of my mental state. In the the last few weeks my room has been an absolute disaster. I have had no desire to put things where they go or make any effort whatsoever to change the fact that I was literally tripping over things everyday, which often led to mild cursing. Since the end of said relationship I have cleaned my room and bathroom, kitchen, hallway and even managed to alphabetize the fridge magnets. And while the fridge thing was maybe a little extreme, it has helped me restore order to my mind and house.

The thing that was interesting was that ending the relationship was not as difficult as I imagined it would be. It sort of became a mutual parting and after I felt much better. Only now am I having a delayed reaction to the break-up. The seriously weird part is that I was reminded about how this person made me feel while I was at church which is a place he never went with me and was a major reason for our break-up. I realized that it is not so much HIM that I am missing, but the idea of him. It's the idea of someone who would send me text messages in the morning to ask how my day is going, or scare me during movie previews, or call me "Sweetie," that I miss the most.

I am not overjoyed that I now have to start over from scratch sometime in the (hopefully) near future with someone else. If anything I am comforted by the fact that the idea is still attainable. My faith and hope is still there and I actually have more confidence that someday eventually someone is going to love me for exactly who I am. All I can do is be the best version of me and trust that one day I will be someone's reality and not just their idea.

Stress in Visible Form

I am not vain about a lot of things. In general I am a firm believer that the essence of a person is not reflected in their outward appearance but in the depth of caring and compassion in their soul. I am however proud of the normally flawless nature of my skin. Up until my 30th birthday earlier this year I had only ever had two (yes, single digit two,) zits. Because this has never been a concern of mine, I have never really noticed when other people have a problem with them. Just as I never noticed how many people also drove Ford Rangers until I myself started driving one. The last few weeks have been rather stressful with events such as basement flooding, break-ups, car trouble, cutting of hours at work, re-establishment of hours at work, small paychecks, inability to start school as planned and etc. All of this has culminated in the explosion of my lower face into what can only be described as a painful field of zit suck. Sigh. I am trying to think happy thoughts, because at least I am confident in myself as a person not to care what other people think about it, as opposed to the possibility that as a teenager I would have taken to clothing myself in a burqa.