Tag: surprise

¿Por qué no los dos?

We met a lovely and true-to-form German man at the opera the other night.  He was so practical, 6’7″, very kind, and totally straightforward.  He was very docile and calm, but he was definitely German to the core, and in the most delightful of ways for us – it felt like interacting with family, despite the obvious distance between us.

He asked me at one point what I had studied while in Europe – my mom had mentioned my having studied in Wien and Germany.  I replied, “Language and Culture.”

He considered it, gave a small smile, and replied, “Language and culture… It sounds like everything and nothing.”

I considered his words, and chuckled heartily.  It was, indeed, true.

Conversation went to a bit of something else, and then returned to my studies and what “language and culture” meant.  “Grammar, history, arts, religion, social change, music, poetry, writing, dialects, politics…,” I listed easily, trailing off slightly by the end, all of us understanding that there obviously were many more I could list.

“So, it sounds like you are qualified for just about everything, then,” declared honestly the German.

I smiled.  “Everything and nothing…”  And we all smiled, gave a bit of a chuckle, and felt the irony of it together, to varying degrees.

I understood the turn of phrase best of all, having experienced most acutely the struggles of the truth of this joint statement of ours… I am qualified for just about everything, then,… everything and nothing…

Thus, the question remains: What, of all of that everything and nothing, do I choose to pursue right now, for now?

I think my recent thoughts have been accurate: I need some more art in my life – self-made art.  🙂

So, let’s art… for now… and let’s be comfortable and secure in the fact that it is okay to have this be for now, and to have something else, something presently unknown, be the what’s next…  Yes, indeed.

Everything and nothing, my dear… you can do it, Banana.  🙂

Post-a-day 2020

Today’s list

I had several things on my list for ‘want to accomplish’ today.

The first half happened beautifully.

The second half were avoided beautifully.

Instead of doing laundry and folding clothes, I rearranged a bit of furniture how I had been contemplating doing for a while now, and then I cleaned up piles of papers and such that I had had around the floor in my room.

And I organized all my paperwork and labeled it to bring to my CPA.*

It was a huge positive move, but definitely not on the list for today. 😛

I also, instead of working on the photos – I moved them to tomorrow, when I’ll be somewhere with Internet already, using my computer, and can stay a while – today, I expanded immensely the efforts I had intended to make with my Italian studies.

Until just a few minutes ago, I was working on the Italian, which was possibly the fourth time today… I even did detail work on it… and that’s saying something.

I also, instead of hopping to it on those aforementioned tasks, I got myself out of the house, down to our main park in town, and I walked.

For hours.

I even ran into a friend, and I joined her and her friend (and the friend’s daughter) for another hour plus, which started right about when I had been considering heading home.

(Suffice it to say that I walked a lot today, and it was great.)

(And I rode the park train twice… and that was lovely(!).)

All in all, I had a great day.

I even listened to a couple hours of my audiobook while cooking/eating and then walking at the park.

So much accomplished today… it feels good going to bed now, exhausted from a reason other than illness.

Not typically my style, but I would like for it to become my style.

Last week was a good start, and this week was even better… let’s keep this Sunday outdoor social activity + self-improvement stuff up, Banana. 😉

*Not that I’m bourgeais (bourgey?) or anything – I hardly have money to survive in this society at the moment; I just used to work for her, and so we have a sort of arrangement for my taxes to be handled.

Post-a-day 2020

Good vs Evil vs Judgy People

I want to give more thought and writing thought and writing to this topic, but I just wanted to share briefly on it now, as it has been on my mind tonight.

At the opera tonight, I found myself wondering about how all the good things someone has done can be so easily disregarded the moment something bad shows up.

At least, when the bad is considered to be a high enough degree of bad, anyway, the good seems to be swept away.

People often declare a falseness to all the good – it could not be good, because it must have been motivated by something bad, since this bad we see now has happened…, because, it seems people are saying, the person is inherently bad.

Yet we are told that humans are inherently good – all the major religions seem to declare it, to some degree…, yet the crowd of accusations always seems to be filled with religious individuals belonging to those religions.

When someone does bad, do we not say it is often a cry for help, in some way or other?

If it is, then would we be not better placed helping the individual than condemning him or her?

And, even then, must we disregard all the good the person did separate from the bad the person did?

Having been the recipient of really bad, I threw this argument to myself tonight.

Can I (and do I) still accept and appreciate all the good the person contributed to my life, despite the extreme and intense bad the person thrust upon me in the end?

No, I do not like him or ever want to be around him again in my life, and I believe he is driven by a lot of pain that has led him to commit a lot of bad in the world around him.

But yes, I am grateful for the good acts I received from him.

… even if he had bad intentions behind them, I am still grateful for the benefits I received from the good.

And I know there were many times that bad drove the good acts from him…, but I also believe there were times that good drove his good acts… and I still appreciate all of the good acts, no matter the good will or ill intention behind them.

So, where does this leave me with society on this matter…?

I think as an outlier in my view…

Post-a-day 2020

A change in perspective, but not in mind

Have you ever had a time where you interact with a person you’ve known for a while, but you leave the interaction seeing the person entirely differently?

And then, have you ever left the interaction ready to cry, because that person just filled every need you had emotionally, but you are ovulating, and so his stellar level of physical fitness and adorably cute persona and face and hair ended up just reminding you of the facts that 1)you don’t have someone to be your someone, and 2)you really want someone to hurry up and be there for you to be your someone?

Okay, so maybe it is more a girl thing than a guy thing, and maybe it is more a me thing than an anyone else thing…, but, as the kids are saying these days, the struggle is real.

I am not attracted to him, though I have always acknowledged his adorableness and his pristinely perfect body – that is, I do not have a romantic attraction to him… I absolutely enjoy his presence and enjoy interacting with him, because he is a great guy, but I am not trying to date him or anything.

Yet tonight, as I struggled to get through what I was doing, he encouraged me so beautifully, and in the quiet, ‘I care about you,’ kind of encouragement, combined with the, ‘I am so proud of you for all you are doing for yourself right now,’ that it just touched me to the core.

Sitting at home later, I suddenly noticed that he was in my mind, and my mind was somewhat sad – I was okay that he wasn’t the someone for me, but his having been so perfectly wonderful with me tonight just re-emphasized the fact that I do not have that someone in my life yet (not in that capacity yet, anyway), and that I so totally want someone who will be like that, so caring and loving and calm and comfortable in his encouragement and help and love for me.

Suddenly, I wonder if I am all wrong in my interests, if something more like this guy is what I really want…, and then I remember that I have always wanted someone who is like this guy in the sense of being how he was tonight with the encouragement…. but that curl to the hair is risky cute.

Not that that’s actually news, though… we’ve known that from the start. 😂

Anyway… perhaps I’ll have lovely dreams that will sort out the remaining emotional stress from this, and I’ll have moved entirely forward by tomorrow when I awaken.

🙂

Post-a-day 2020′

Wetter weather

Riding home tonight, I was quite chilled at the drop in temperature from when I had initially gone out while the sun was still up, but I knew I could handle the twenty-ish blocks I had to go, so I wasn’t worried.

Plus, I had verified that no rain percentage was forecast (above 0%, anyway), and I was heading straight home, anyway, so I would be okay.

Nonetheless, I wasn’t exactly taking my time to get up those twenty blocks to home – I was going as fast as was acceptable.

Which made it even colder for me.

And then, just as I was glad to have avoided something on the road, I feel a sort of odd spwhack! on my whole body.

Just as I begin to process the wetness of all of my exposed skin, I realize that I have just driven through a poorly placed water sprinkler.

Though it chilled me that much more, the comedy of it warmed me with laughter the rest of the way home… I could hardly stop laughing at the silliness and the irony combined.

😛

Post-a-day 2020

Still processing…

Have you ever had those things in your life that show up out of left field (when you aren’t even playing a field sport), and shock you so terribly that you can’t even seem to find a reaction?

You can see myriad ways that one might react or could react, and yet you can’t actually seem to react, yourself.

…

It’s like someone else’s made-up horribly terribly bad dream… but you can’t seem to find a way for it not to be so that this thing has happened…

…

And then, out of nowhere again, comes the desire to go talk with the person involved, in order to find out what on Earth happened… how did this ever come to be, this horrible, dreadful, awful thing?

Because maybe then you’ll be able to figure out how to react, how to respond to it all… maybe then you’ll be able to process this nightmare-you-never-even-imagined-come-true…

Have you???

As of tonight, I have. :/

Post-a-day 2020

Okay, I think I need to go to Italy.

At this point, the only thing left would be for someone to meet me and offer me a place to stay in Italy, in order for my trip to be made certain.

(That, or someone offering me passage to Italy…, though I had kind of planned on managing that one myself, I don’t mind letting someone else handle it… again…[I just remembered that I actually did have a free trip to Italy that one time I went for a long weekend…yes… anyway…])

Italy just keeps popping up around me: in conversations unbidden, in my calendar (it is a page-a-day with Italian phrases and culture, and it genuinely was the only one on Amazon that seemed even remotely interesting… I mean seriously, Amazon?), in a whole handful of conversation partners reaching out, in comments from others, and even in the book I spontaneously started reading today (It’s the first in a series and it has “gelato” in the title, but the second book has nothing Italian about the title, and that‘s the one that got me interested in reading the series!), where the girl up and moves to Italy from the US… I mean…. wow… the world really wants Italia to be on my mind right now.

And so, I am letting it.

I am embracing all the Italia I can, and am beginning to look for more around me.

I have a friend to whom I plan to reach out (not in the middle of the night) about finding a conversation partner/tutor here in town, I have begun a challenge on Duolingo, I am reaching out to the online conversation partner offers, and I have a whole plan for how to practice my Italian.

What’s funny is that, whenever I ask the whole “Why now?” to the world, though I get no distinct answer, I suddenly start thinking of what it might be like there, and I think of all the Italian men, and I suddenly have an almost overwhelming thought of, “Well, I can probably handle the Italian men now,” and I suddenly have my answer.

I just wasn’t ready for Italian men before.

Now, I actually am ready to take them on and run my own way.

If you don’t know anything about Italian men, I don’t have the words to teach you much about them, nor can I fully speak on them, for I have not truly spent time with them in Italy.

However, everything I have been told about them from others has proven exactly true with the Italian men I’ve come to know here… even just the Italian heritage ones… oof… anyway.

So, now, I think I’m about ready to take them on, and, by the time I actually get there, I’ll have had enough mental prep (and physical prep from the gym) to take them with a grain of salt, and to smile about it. 😉

This is going to be fun and absolutely amazing – I can feel it in the humidity around me… yes…

Italia awaits… me. 😀

P.S. And I don’t mean just for a short visit – we’re talking a month plus here…. just FYI.

Post-a-day 2020

Mmm… Jell-o

“Who wants Jell-o?” someone announces to the room at large.

“Mmmm,” considers one girl…. then she continues quite casually, though not publicly, “I’ll take some Jell-o, if I get to eat it off of his rock-hard abs… with my mouth…”

“Fhooah!” guffaws breathily her friend, who can clearly hear her every word.

“Mmm,” she hums, savoring the idea…, “No hands, of course…,” and she smiles broadly, noticing that her friend has noticed all that she has been somewhat passively saying.

“Hands free life!” she quietly declares, and she shimmies her jazz hands with this reference to Japanese culture and their comical English.

“Not so subtle, are we now?” the friend says.

“Hey…, I’m being honest and open here… and isn’t that the best way to go about life?”

“Sure, but would you ever say that to him?” counters the friend.

She shrugs. After a brief consideration, she says genuinely, “The conversation would have to present itself naturally, like it did just now…. Get him to offer me some Jell-o, and we’ll see if I dare say it to him then.”

There is a pause while the two look at each other, considering not only the fact that she genuinely thought about it, but also the scenario itself…

Suddenly, the two girlfriends break into fitful giggles, chests and bellies pumping wildly with silent laughter, eyes watering.

Neither considers for now the likelihood of the situation presenting itself to them, but both enjoy thoroughly the absurdity of the imagined version they are presently sharing in their minds.

What on Earth would he say if she said that to him?

And what on Earth would happen if he knew she meant it?

God only knows…

😛

Post-a-day 2020

Trust

I regularly wonder, whenever a seemingly crazy scenario arises, why such a thing must be happening.

There must be some reason I am not meant to do such-and-such.

And, oftentimes, at least when I ask the Universe and God, “Why do you need it to be this way?”, something crazy comes out of it all.

Like with crazy traffic lights that won’t let me get to practice on time, despite my leaving early enough and at the usual time… I wonder if there is some cray accident that happened right where I would have been, had I been on time…, because I tend to get situations like that, and often…

Something goes crazy out of whack and just doesn’t make sense… until it suddenly makes perfect sense, due to some crazy scenario on the other end of it.

Today, I ended up stupidly sick – it appeared out of nowhere last night, as I was going to bed around 9pm, so I could get up early to attend the 5:15am workout class – and so missed going to Galveston for the day, and missed seeing my morning workout buddies at the early morning class, as planned.

I have been kind of avoiding the afternoon classes, because I didn’t really want to be around all the gorgeous and fit people when I’m feeling so unfit and fat-filled after my trip – I wanted to get some classes in in the mornings first, and then start seeing the afternoon gorgeous folk all again.

Nonetheless, when I got horribly sick, I knew I wouldn’t make it to the morning class today.

I had said that I needed to attend class every weekday this week, so I needed to go, but this sickness had me concerned I wouldn’t be able to go at all today.

When, around 2:30pm, I felt myself in extremely high energy, compared to the rest of the day so far, I knew that I was going to the 4:30pm class… it was during sunlight hours, so I would be riding only in the sunlight and not at night, when it would be loads colder, and I wasn’t guaranteed to feel alive and able for more than just a few hours, anyway, so waiting for a later class was just plain stupid – I needed the very next class possible, so I could get the workout done and, if needed, get back to bed ASAP.

And that next class was 4:30pm.

As I considered this fact, that I would be attending the one class I had kind of purposely been avoiding the past several days, I asked the Universe and God why they were determined that I attend this class.

I guess it’s meant to be, I thought.

The moment I walked into the gym, I knew that it was.

The friends I had met last week and whom I had invited to come check out and hopefully join our gym were standing in the gym.

The husband was talking right in front of me to the super sexy guy, and the wife was across the room, talking to the owner, but facing me – I saw her immediately as I entered, and she saw me… we both smiled huge smiles.

Okay… I get it.. thank you…, though can we acknowledge that this sickness totally sucks?… But yes, I know it had to suck so badly in order to keep me home this morning and until now…::sigh…but it still totally sucks… ugh…haha

***[Gross warning: avoid this paragraph, if you are sensitive to bodily function stuff]***

I mean, I was crying and choking and gagging from all the burning throat and horrible huge masses of golden and bloody mess that kept being (purposely) drawn down my nasal cavity and into my throat to be hacked out… and then I would gag again at what lay before me in the sink half the time… it was terrible…

Anyway…

So things did work out beautifully by getting sick and then going to that class today.

And it was a great time and a great workout; plus, super sexy guy was, as usual, super sexy and lovely. 😛

And my friends seemed really to like the workout – I can totally see them joining and totally loving it.

As for the sickness, it is still hurting me, but in an improved state of pain from last night’s and this morning’s states, which is good.

Here’s hoping for a super restful night that leaves me incredibly capable all day and evening tomorrow (when I have school class).

Peace

Post-a-day 2020

Seriously?

Can it really be?

Is my throat truly burning with a fire so bold, it could only been a painful yet brief illness?

I Just finished getting over a cold yesterday… my second one in a week(!).

Add in this new version, and it puts me at three different types of colds in ten days… man…

Ugh!

And I am scheduled to work out at 5:15am, and then go to Galveston for the day with my mom…

Ugh…

Help me, please…

Post-a-day 2020