hannah.ananas

The end of the day

At the end of each day, I have my alone time. It is not an intentional act of mine, this alone time. It just happens. And I think it is necessary for me as a person… even though it isn’t intentional.

Whenever I am with people overnight somewhere, and we all head off to bed around the same time, everyone is usually surprised the next day to discover that I was awake close to an hour after we had all parted ways. My mom, I think, is accustomed to my going to bed later than she does in the first place, and so she doesn’t really notice it until we travel together. When we’re staying in the same room, she usually complains a good amount, until she finally goes to sleep and lets me finish my bedtime stuff.

Which brings me to my bedtime stuff. I would call it my bedtime ritual, except that it isn’t actually a ritual. And it isn’t exactly a routine either, because the order and timing change around, depending on the night. It’s just what I do before going to sleep. This includes, but is not limited to flossing and brushing my teeth, using the bathroom, washing my face, changing clothes, and reading. Such has been the case for the past few, possibly even several, years. This past year has added to it my showering, cleaning and irrigating my ears, and writing for my weblog (if I haven’t yet done it that day (which is most days)). Sometimes, I stretch after my shower, too, but I usually forget that one.

These things don’t necessarily take all that long under normal circumstances. Ask me to do them all in the middle of the day, and I’ll be finished quite quickly. But having me so they all at night, just before bed, means having them take around an hour, possibly longer. Like I mentioned, this time is my alone time. Perhaps it is a subconscious act, taking so long to do it all, my mind giving me a chance to unwind after whatever the day brought me. Some nights, I am utterly exhausted, and yet I still take around half an hour to get everything finished and actually turn out my light to sleep. Sometimes, I just find myself standing or sitting somewhere around my apartment or room, waiting… I suppose I must be waiting for the unwind to finish, or something to that effect…

Whenever I travel to dance events, there is usually someone already asleep by the time I come in to go to bed, and definitely by the time I am finishing my bedtime stuff. So, I usually find myself sitting on the bathroom floor (or next to a cracked-open bathroom door, if there isn’t really space to sit on the floor in the bathroom) in my pjs and with my hair wet, reading from my two books.

The first book is always the same. I began reading from it daily over three and a half years ago, as part of my desire to read the whole thing. I have kept to my word on it (although there are two or three days where I honestly couldn’t remember the next day if I had done my reading or not, so I read extra to make up for what might have been missed) since I began, and have read at least a little bit every day. I didn’t want to give myself a set amount that would burn me out, so I just said that I had to read something. That could be as little as a sentence. Some nights, it has been. Some nights, it has been pages. Usually, it is a few sentences or a little section within a section. One day, I will finish it. In the meantime, I am learning all sorts of outdated French words as I read through this Bible.

The second book is a different story. It isn’t even a requirement. I began the requirement to read each day several years ago, before the Bible thing began. Back then, I would find myself reading messages on envelopes or greeting cards as I was going to bed, because I needed to read at least a whole sentence in that day as part of my goal to read every day (which, in turn, was part of my goal to read lots and to read often). Now that I have the Bible required for every day, the second book is just for pleasure. For days when I’m at a particularly boring part in the Bible, I wanted to have something else to make the reading exciting and worth doing – extra encouragement, so to speak. So, the only requirement of the second book is that it be something I like reading. Right now, it is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The last one was Catch 22, and the one before that was a Sophie Kinsella. What exactly it is changes with each new book – just whatever’s next on the list, and also feels right for my nighttime book (gotta have something positive before bed, because those thoughts go with me into sleep). Another rough requirement for my nighttime book (Bible included, actually), is that it be only my nighttime book – I don’t carry it around and read it during the day, too. When I did in the past, I would rush through it so quickly, I’d be without a nighttime book again in only a couple or few days, and the whole purpose would be lost. So I have daytime books now, in addition to my nighttime ones. They’re usually on my Kindle (which is super cool), for easy transport. My nighttime books are always real books, because I don’t really have to haul them around. When I do take a trip, I usually just photograph the pages, if I’m limited on packing space/weight.

Anyway, I made it through the rest of my stuff too quickly tonight, so I had to spend more time on this than I had intended – I’m exhausted! Going to read now (and we’ll see if it happens quickly, because I’m really liking where I am in Zen right now) ad get to sleep as soon as possible! Sweet dreams, world.

Post-a-day 2017

Diving boards and rains

I never appreciated rain so much as when I was a lifeguard. I enjoyed that I was wonderfully trained and fit, both mentally and physically, and I liked the honor of the job, as well as the decent pay and good tan. However, I felt like a bit of a nervous wreck when it came down to it. If there were only a handful of people at a pool, it was all right – it felt like just a normal day at a pool. When there were several people, a party, even, I was okay, actually. The only time I was actually a nervous wreck, now that I really think about it, was when we were waiting for people to show up. When the pool was empty, my imagination worked my anxiety to the roof and beyond. Even before I arrived for a shift, I would be a mess inside, somewhat terrified of what might come at my next shift. I knew I didn’t have near the likelihood of beach lifeguards of having to save someone or having to treat a swimmer with any First Aid skills (or dealing with a shark), but it only comforted so much to know that the chances were merely lower than likely, as opposed to being near zero.

Somehow, I made it through that summer, though. I never did go back to lifeguarding, riding on the excuse that the company for which I had worked had closed, and so all of my credentials and paperwork disappeared with their closing (ignoring the fact that the owners of the company were parents of a friend and schoolmate).

Speaking of that friend and schoolmate, we only really became friends after that summer, but we were in band together before then, and so were loose acquaintances. We had our first one-on-one that summer, lifeguarding. He was all about making money, and so he showed up to lifeguard what seemed like every time somebody had to cancel on a shift. We only worked together once, but I remember it clearly still. Well, I remember most of it clearly, anyway.

No one showed up to swim that day. (This is the part where I’m unclear. There might have been one or two small groups who did show up eventually, but it was only a short while, and somewhere near the middle or end of the day.). It sprinkled some during the day, warding off swimmers. We, however, did do some swimming of our own.
It was during this swimming that Inwas confronted with a fear of mine: diving boards. I really am uncertain as to how the fear developed, but it did somehow. When I was little, I would run and/or jump off of any diving board around, even the long, tall ones at public pools. But by this time, high school, I was terrified of a board that had too much spring. Most public pool diving boards would go down a good couple or even few feet when an adult sprang from them. And my faith in the boards not breaking, as well as the jumpers not slipping, was low. This applied to anyone as the jumper, even myself, and even the most advanced diver. I think I was just panicked that the board would break off, and smack the jumper in the head, knocking out him/her, and resulting in serious injury. I once attempted a cartwheel off a home diving board at the neighbors’ house, and I ended up grabbing on to the end of the board, and falling legs first into the water, scratching my stomach on the board as I held tight to it with my hands (think of jumping out of a pool in reverse, and scratching your stomach on the side as you do it). But that never had anything to do with the spring of the board; that one was rather solid and non-springy. Plus, I kept using boards for years after that specific incident, though I was aware of potential danger from there on out.

Anyway, on that particular day, working together, this fellow lifeguard and school mate convinced me to jump off the diving board. It took me a while, and I was really reasoning with him against doing it, even as I stood atop it, but I eventually did it. I might even have done it multiple times, actually. All I remember about that part was that I finally did jump off, and I was okay about it.

And, I believe, I have been ever since. I still have to go check how much bounce awaits me before I actually do whatever jump I do, but I can do it, and I don’t feel like I am going insane each time.

Post-a-day 2017

Without a purpose

Have you ever lived without a purpose? I’m doing it right now. I almost feel even more like a crazy person than I ever have. I find myself wondering the point of everything I’ve done in my life, seeing it all as useless, as though I am somehow at the end of my productive and useful phase in life…, as though there is nothing good left to come.

I don’t actually believe this, but it is my experience right now. It is the result of having no purpose, I think. And yet, I am almost terrified of finding what I could call a low-level purpose, for fear of being stuck in it. I worked at Starbucks for a while a few years back. I was quite good at it, and I occasionally miss parts of it (like interacting with all the nice people, and making people’s days and such). However, I want to do so much more, that a job like that makes me sad for all the unused potential within myself. And yet, every day feels a little bit worse on the confidence front (not for confidence in myself, but for confidence in my future). These goals and desires I have for my future seem so unlikely to align, I am beginning to feel desperate and hopeless. Why bother?

I suppose it might be time to talk to Jude a bit, and to try out something new.

Post-a-day 2017

Mr. Right

I’ve been thinking tonight about my Prince Charming, my personal one, my desired future. It all started with thinking about musical theater as I showered. As most shower stream-thoughts go, I ended up on a very loosely connected tangent. Do you know the song by Chris August called “Stranger”? It’s a beautiful song, and I fell in love with it several years ago. A lot happened related to that song, but let’s not go there now. While some specific lyrics rolled through my head over and over again, as song lyrics so often do, something struck me.

I dreamed you.
Now, I’ve found you.
Call off the search,
’cause I found my stranger.

Those were the specifically inspiring words tonight. Though I have listened to the song more times than I know, and I know every word still, despite having stopped listening to it years ago (for reasons I won’t mention just yet), I have never had the thought that followed those words as they repeated in my head tonight.

“I have never dreamt you.”

Though I have wished and wished, and even hoped and prayed and asked for my partner in life, I have never dreamed him up. I have begun ideas before, but I have never come up with what my partner in life actually is. You could ask me now, and I would have no idea what to tell you about the partner I want. Sure, there are plenty of things I know that I don’t want, but everything else seems to change with how I feel each day, each time someone asks me about it.

Now, I don’t exactly see this as a bad thing. I just happened to realize that I have never dreamed him up. So, I can never have Chris August’s song become a reality for me – I can’t find my stranger. I don’t even have a vision in my head of what it looks like being with someone. Every time I have dreams where there seems to be a sort of partnership, I always seem to be the one taking care of someone else – the traditionally male role. Or, perhaps it is the mother role I play. I already seem to do that all over the place in life. It’s the reason I have always wondered if I can ever find someone to take care of me. But I digress…

I realized in the shower that I have no image of a person. I don’t know if I’m looking for someone tall, dark, and handsome. I don’t know if he is foreign or domestic made. I don’t even know what kind of skin he has. Again, I don’t necessarily see this as bad. I am just noticing it. I also notice how so many others seem to have dreamed up their partners years before they even have begun dating others. I mean, they seem to know what they want. By having that idea of what they want, they are able to seek it out. Sometimes, when they find it, they realize they didn’t want it after all. And sometimes they find something better along the way. But they have something to pursue. I don’t even have an idea to seek out, a type of someone or something to pursue. Perhaps that is an issue with being so open to the world and to new ideas, and for knowing that what I see or think isn’t always the best that the universe has to offer.

Post-a-day 2017

Swiping Nuts

My mom steals nuts. She really does. Well, sort of, anyway… She doesn’t actually steal in the traditional sense…

Every time we go to this specific grocery store, I somehow forget about this fact. That is, of course, I forget about it only until my mother walks up to me and offers me some nuts. “You want some nuts?” she’ll ask, and proffer me a handful of mixed nuts. The first time she did it, I didn’t understand. Where had she gotten a handful of nuts? Did she bring them in with her, and I just hadn’t noticed? But it quickly hit me.

“Did you get those from the …?”

“Mmhmm,” she cut me off, and then offered me the nuts again.

Naturally, I accepted. They were a bit old that first time, but that was it. Today, they were actually quite good. I really enjoyed them.

Perhaps you are wondering how it is my mother gets these nuts in a way that I do not feel any guilt or obligation in eating them. Well, you could call it a sort of recycling, in a way. You know how some stores have the pull-down dispensers for nuts, and sometimes even for cereals and other grains and such in the dried bulk foods section? And you know how there are almost always those same dried bulk foods spilled around on the little shelf below all of the dispensers? Do you see where this is going?

Hopefully, you aren’t entirely repulsed by this idea. It isn’t as though there is anything else on the shelves – they are cleaned constantly, as is required for something in such proximity to unpackaged foods.

Anyway, this particular store has a sort of tricky system for making those shelves look nice all of the time. Instead of just having it be a shelf to catch the falling dried foods, it is a sort of grate on top of the shelf, and the grate allows the foods to fall through it and onto the shelf, while leaving the appearance of a totally clean and clear shelf, free from food spillages.

So, as I went to get another bite of nuts after we finished what my mom brought over to me today, I had to enlist the help of my mother, because I did not yet know the last piece of information I just shared here. However, she happily showed me her secret means of stealing nuts destined for the trash, and I got my other desired bite of fresh nuts, and I felt good about helping prevent that extra bit of unnecessary waste.

Next time you’re at a grocer with some nut dispensers, perhaps you’ll consider helping prevent waste, eh? ;P Or you could just imagine my mother showing up and saying, “Want some nuts?”

Post-a-day 2017

Say, What?!

Today, my mom and I went around to help out in various places nearby. We still haven’t hit the highest bit of water for our area as a result of the storm (although the rain has stopped completely), but we have another day or two before then, and the roads were really quite passable in many places already today. So, we decided to get out and be active, since we’ve been so sedentary throughout the storm, and we’re likely to be stuck in our neighborhood another handful of days if the upcoming flooding goes as predicted (Fortunately, it keeps lowering its levels in the forecast every 12-ish hours or so, but we prefer to err on the safe side and be prepared for more days of being home.).

All of this is not the main point for this writing, however, so I move onward to my purpose.

As we were driving from our third helping location to our fourth, my mom was responding to a text message using voice recognition. I pointed out the direction we needed to go, accepted my mom’s correction of our very first turn, and then continued in reminding her of the safe way to get out of the flooded neighborhood. As I pointed out a stop sign that was hidden behind a whole line of cars, we herd a beep emit from her phone. We both instantly knew that the voice recognition had just ended.

And that, naturally, it had been doing its best to write up whatever it had been hearing of our conversation. I instantly told my mom to send it as-is to our friend. Why? Because he does that sort of thing to us all of the time. He regularly sends a message using voice recognition without even checking what ended up in the text of the message. He claimed that it is always close enough, so we can always figure it out. So, he knows that he sends nonsense messages a good amount of the time, and he doesn’t mind it.

Therefore, as I read it aloud to my mother, and could barely speak for the intensity of my laughter, I knew we had to send it to him as it was. I gave it to my mom, and told her just to try to read it, go on… She could barely do it herself, she began crying with laughter along with me. It wasn’t just that we were ‘getting back at’ our friend that we were laughing, but the fact that what had been put into the text of the message was hardly even close to what we had actually said. In the whole double sentence that seemed to have developed in the message, we had only actually said the words “No, left,” and “…turn right.” None of the others were words that we had even said.

Having thoroughly read the message, then, my mom sent it on to our friend. Actually, she had me read it a second time aloud, after the first time had been such a total struggle, and decided then to send it. So, I sent the message then, and then I gave it to her to read herself while at a stoplight. It was a wonderful and welcome comic and laughter-filled relief for the craziness of the day. Try it some time, and you’ll see what I mean by the joy we found in the text of the message. Turn on your voice recognition for a message to someone, and then begin conversation with a nearby person. You’re likely in for a real treat of words. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

A compliment to remember

About a year or two ago (though, I think it was two years ago), I received one of the most memorable compliments I have ever been given. I was reminded of it today, as my mom and I drove around in the sunny daylight that was following our storm so nicely. With all of the rain and flooding, many people have pulled out their trucks and boats, and gone to the rescue of those in need of water transportation in areas that formerly were roads (and which, I suppose, likely still are, just beneath all that water now). For this reason, I was reminded of a particular friend of mine who has a boat. (Or, at least, he did have a boat when we last were in touch. Currently, I’m not so sure, because we simply haven’t been much in touch since I moved to Japan.)

This particular friend was a childhood friend. In fact, he was one of the neighborhood kids. I secretly – or so I thought – had crushes on him and his brothers when we were all little, and we all would play together all along the street, the whole lot of kids. Anyway, as everyone moved off to college and parents moved off the street, a lot of us rather lost touch. Here in there, though, we each would see others briefly in life. About two years ago, this happened for me with this particular friend and his brothers.

We were at a country-western bar/dance club in Houston, and I recognized them. Sure, they were all massive men compared to the last time I had seen them, when they were all possibly in college. Big and strong, burly men was an easy way to describe the guys who stood before me in this bar. I was amazed, though delighted – I guess scrawny little boys can grow up to be big, strong men, after all. 😛

It was as I was talking with one of them that the memorable compliment came. He said to me simply, “You’re gorgeous.” And he said it multiple times. I’m not sure how many times exactly, but I know that it was more than once. What really stood out about it was not so much the words (though they were amazing), as how he said them. I can still hear it, even, it was so impactful. He did not say them in any condescending way – ‘How unexpected that you would be gorgeous,’ – or as though he were hitting on me – ‘Hey, let’s go to my place, gorgeous.’ He was simply stating something he believed, and earnestly, with feeling. It reminded me of how girlfriends (true ones, not the fake kind) might talk to the girlfriend who has just found the perfect dress for something, and is thrilled, or who is all dressed up for a big date or presentation or her wedding – there is no jealousy or dishonesty, but pure love and honesty in the declaration of her being gorgeous in that dress. He wasn’t being sleazy, but truly gentleman-like, and it was amazing. It really was.

And that was it.

Because of this brief interaction I had with this friend, he has remained in my regular thoughts these past couple-ish years. Every so often, I am reminded of him, and I am grateful for him, and I wonder how he is doing (and I usually get distracted by something or other before I am able to send him any kind of message to check in, but I occasionally manage it). This weekend especially, I have wondered how he is doing, over and over again, and I finally managed, after however many days this storm has been, to check in with him. It was brief, but I made contact and found out that he and his family are doing okay. They all hold special places in my heart, because of their various roles in my childhood, but he has an especially dear one, thanks to his beautiful compliment, whenever that was.

Post-a-day 2017

Water on my mind

I am unnerved, and I don’t know what else to share. I feel false even considering any other topic, as this is at the forefront of my mind. This storm is scary. Period. The winds were so weak, it hardly felt like a hurricane as it flew above us, spinning along at its loping pace. And the rain has reached such an amount that I might just forever be afraid of rain from here on out. Water is powerful. It is truly powerful. Oh, how I would love to be the kid with the water ring from Captain Planet right now… or that guy from Twilight…

Post-a-day 2017

The flood waters rise

Perhaps this is a temporary theme in my life right now. Every year, right at this time, there is a sort of uncomfortable and somewhat scary experience with water. Last year’s event had to do with the ocean and life, and this year’s is rain and houses. Last year, I began a journey of self-discovery in the sense of never apologizing for who I am. This is not to say that I shove things into people’s faces – by no means. I must still be responsible for who and how I am, however, I need not change myself or my ways for fear of offense or even not fitting in. In other words, I need not apologize via actual words (e.g. “I’m sorry.”) nor by altering my intended actions (e.g. Suddenly shaving my legs, because it is a cultural standard). I have spent this past year truly learning how to live that in my daily life. And the lesson is certainly not finished, as I continue in it every day. I even fail sometimes, but it happens less and less often, and every instance empowers me, no matter the outcome.

This year, we have a hurricane-turned-tropical storm that has decided to cleanse the Greater Houston Area, and then some. Hurricanes are typical around here at this time of year. However, the amount of rain caused in five days by a particularly bad hurricane many years ago, has been dropped to the Earth in only two days this weekend. And the rain clouds still have another three to five somewhat sedentary days of pouring before they are expected to move along. We have breaks – there’s one right now – in the rain, so that helps with spirits considerably. However, not all of the city is above the 100-year flood plane, as we are here. My sister and her family live in a particularly terrible flooding area, and somehow hitched a ride on a canoe this afternoon, and ended up at a nearby church for safe shelter – her house had what looked like a foot of water inside it, despite its being several feet above the level of the road. Supposedly, as they were all leaving (two other families were in their house, since they had still had power [the floor was still dry at the time], making it around, I’d guess, 13 people, five of them children aged five years and under), the water had reached the base of the stop sign at the corner by her house.

While my sister has done a good job of keeping spirits throughout the day, and even sent out an adorable photo of two of the kids in a super inflatable boat/raft that one might use for tubing, I have wondered what her thoughts are on all of her things in their house. It is quite likely that they will lose a huge chunk of their possessions. In the aforementioned photo, I saw family paintings on the walls, and wondered at them. They have such a huge history with family arguments and disagreements and, I think, even some police involvement. Not those particular paintings in her house necessarily, but paintings by that particular family member. It just had me wonder about the point of it all. Why did they all argue and share so much anger over things that now could disappear so easily from our lives? And then I wonder, “Why do we do that with any material objects?” Anything could be lost at any given moment for this or that reason. Why do we care so much about these objects in the first place?

And so, I wonder if that is this year’s work. It has already been on my mind off and one the past few weeks and couple or few months, and this past year’s topic was the same last year, being on my mind here and there already months before my water incident. And, also like last year, I am granted the option to pursue the idea, to learn by will instead of by requirement or force of any kind. My house and things are safe right now, and are likely to continue to be safe from this entire storm. The question is simply one of how much I am willing to let go of the things that I own. I am scared, but in a very good way.

Post-a-day 2017

The weather continues

Electricity was restored only a few handfuls of minutes after it was lost here in our house last night. However, the rain has off-and-on taken up temporary residence around us throughout last night, today, and this evening, giving us more water than anyone might ever want in such a short amount of time. And tornadoes decided to show up with the rain in certain areas throughout the past 22-ish hours.

If we were just talking about rain and wind and thunder and lightning, I’d be quite all right. But that last little addition to the standing hurricane (now tropical storm) has me nervous about going upstairs to shower or sleep.

It is never a good feeling when this is how your town’s winds look.

Again and still, I pray that we all be happy, healthy, holy.

Post-a-day 2017