Family time
So, my mom's in town, and my dad's arriving tonight. It's family time and I'm enjoying it a lot. Haven't seen my mom in such a long time, and my dad's about to retire so pretty soon, I won't be seeing him like I used to. That's sad.
So, I'm trying to make the most out of their visit. Yesterday was shopping day with my mom, and I realized how I'm still a baby in her eyes. She thoroughly enjoyed getting me clothes and other things. I felt spoiled, but I swear in the future, I'll be the one buying her things.
My dad and I are probably going to bike the heck out of ourselves while he's here. It's going to be so much fun. I know he enjoys it when I coax him to go riding with me, and we go down to the beach and pedal around there. I can tell that he's happy doing that.
==============================
Why do people sometimes say something that they don't mean? And I don't mean other people, because I know that I've been guilty of that at some point in time as well. People say it's because they don't want to disappoint, but now I see that finding out you've been duped is more of a disappointment than knowing right away what the other person is thinking or feeling. And when I think about that, I feel bad for all those times that I've done that. I guess it's a lesson learned for myself (and hopefully a lesson learned for one other person as well). It's hard to come face to face with someone, and tell them no right away, but it must be done in order to remain truthful to yourself and to others. There's something about that that commands respect. And I want that.
New Phone!!
Got my new phone yesterday! It's a Nokia 6610, and I'm still on a new-phone high. I think I've looked at my phone about fifty times in the last hour, even though no one has called or sent me a text message. Isn't that just the saddest thing?
I've set up everything though -- The Sex and the City theme has been downloaded and set up, and I can now access movie times, email and other information on the web via my phone. Technological advancement is such a wonder.
Whoops, see there, I took a break from typing to look at my phone again. Dammit!
Anyway....
I feel a little yucky right now because I haven't worked out the last couple of days. I ran with a friend on Monday, but that just doesn't feel sufficient, because I'm used to really working out every day. Arte, 'no? Haha! But it's just not a good feeling, that's all.
Tomorrow is TV Thursday again, and I have taken it upon myself to fix dinner for me and my TV buddy. So what will I serve? Pre-fixed food. Hahaha! My TV buddy is one of the best cooks I know, and all I can serve him is preservative-saturated food. Last time, I served him ready-to-eat potstickers, while I ate leftover Chinese. I should be embarrassed... I should be.... but somehow....
Okay, Mr. Trump, I hope you keep Bill out of the boardroom this week! Geez!
Isa pang serious....
PARTNERS AND MARRIAGEBy Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't fear marriage. Something about the closure seems constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier to understand for what it cuts out of our lives than for what it makes possible within our lives. When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I did not want to make a mistake. I saw my friends get married for reasons of social acceptability, or sexual fever, or just because they thought it was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as they and their partners became embittered and petty in their dealings with each other. I looked at older couples and saw, at best, mutual toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime of loveless nights and bickering and could not imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such a fate. And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old couples who somehow seemed to glow in each other's presence. They seemed really in love, not just dependent upon each other and tolerant of each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight, and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself, can they have survived so many years of sameness, so much irritation at the others habits? What keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem unable to even stay together, much less love each other?
The central secret seems to be in choosing well. There is something to the claim of fundamental compatibility. Good people can create a bad relationship, even though they both dearly want the relationship to succeed. It is important to find someone with whom you can create a good relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it is hard to see clearly in the early stages. Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors the way you see yourselves together. It blinds you to the thousands of little things by which relationships eventually survive or fail. You need to find a way to see beyond this initial overwhelming sexual fascination. Some people choose to involve themselves sexually and ride out the most heated period of sexual attraction in order to see what is on the other side. This can work, but it can also leave a trail of wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side altogether in an attempt to get to know each other apart from their sexuality. But they cannot see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them from having any normal perception of what life would be like together.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to become long-time friends before they realize they are attracted to each other. They get to know each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and fears. They see each other at their worst and at their best. They share time together before they get swept up into the entangling intimacy of their sexuality. This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you fall under the spell of your sexual attraction immediately, you need to look beyond it for other keys to compatibility. One of these is laughter. Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each others company over the long term. If your laughter together is good and healthy, and not at the expense of others, then you have a healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is the child of surprise. If you can make each other laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if you can always surprise each other, you can always keep the world around you new.
Beware of a relationship in which there is no laughter. Even the most intimate relationships based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn sour. Over time, sharing a common serious viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against those who do not share the same viewpoint, and your relationship can become based on being critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with the world in a way you respect. When two people first get together, they tend to see their relationship as existing only in the space between the two of them. They find each other endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power of the emotions they are sharing obscures the outside world. As the relationship ages and grows, the outside world becomes important again.
If your partner treats people or circumstances in a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come to grief. Look at the way he/she cares for others and deals with the daily affairs of life. If that makes you love him/her more, your love will grow. If it does not, be careful. If you do not respect the way you each deal with the world around you, eventually the two of you will not respect each other. Look also at how your partner confronts the mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry and practicality, and the real life of the heart resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and relationships, while the
other is drawn only to the literal and the practical, you must take care that the distance does not become an unbridgeable gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must find them by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of our hearts that we will not betray and private commitments to a vision of life that we will not deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you cannot nourish them in him/her, you will find yourselves growing further apart until you live in separate worlds where you share the business of life, but never touch each other where the heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and daily
failures that leaves so many couples bitter and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and then the real miracle of marriage can take place in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It is called transformation. Transformation is one of the most common events of nature. The seed becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes a child.
We never question these, because we see them around us every day. To us they are not miracles, though if we did not know them they would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make. Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom will come. If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or for the wrong reason, the bloom will be flawed. We are quite willing to accept the reality of negative transformation in a marriage. It was negative transformation that always had me terrified of the bitter
marriages that I feared when I was younger. It never occurred to me to question the dark miracle that transformed love into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable to accept the possibility that the first heat of love could be transformed into something positive that was actually deeper and more meaningful than the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in was the power of this passion and the fear that when it cooled I would be left with something lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well. Like negative transformation, it results from a slow accretion of little things. But instead of death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a thousand touches of love. Two histories intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate presence, two separate consciousness come together and share a view of life that passes before them. They remain separate, but they also become one. There is an expansion of awareness, not a closure and a constriction, as I had once feared. This is not to say that there is not tension and there are not traps. Tension and traps are part of every choice of life, from celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers. Each choice contains within it the lingering doubt that the road not taken somehow more fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to the richness that it alone contains. But only marriage allows life to deepen and expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two have chosen, against all odds, to become one.
Those who live together without marriage can know the pleasure of shared company, but there is a specific gravity in the marriage commitment that deepens that experience into something richer and more complex. So do not fear marriage, just as you should not rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act of faith and it contains within it the power of transformation. If you believe in your heart that you have found someone with whom you are able to grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can resist the endless attraction of the road not taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the strength of heart to embrace the cycles and seasons that your love will experience, then you may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a marriage well made is worth your patience. When the time comes, a thousand flowers will bloom...endlessly.
Serious muna....
Someone sent me this short thought, and it just hit a nerve:
Life is a Theater-- Invite Your Audience Carefully
Not everyone is healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives. There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of, or at least minimize, your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships. Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention. Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know or appreciate you? The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you, the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your life. "If you can't change the people around you, change the people you're around."
-Author unknown
Dammit, Donald!!
Okay, not happy with the results of last night's The Apprentice. Why was Bill in the bottom three?!?!
Friends is becoming more interesting.... Well, for me, because I'm rooting for Ross and Rachel to finally get back together.
Another late night last night. This one was way better though. I will never look at TV Thursdays the same way again. ;) Last night would be a hard act to follow.
And okay, I finally figured out how exactly to put pictures in this blog website. But I'm pigheaded, and I like typing my thoughts directly onto the webpage, as opposed to emailing them in with the pic. I suppose I'm being a Luddite right now. Okay, okay, next time, then!
Random thoughts that won't go away:
1. Shirley Hart (?) sounded really good
2. i want more lip balm
3. excited about new T-mobile service coming soon
4. drank way too much wine last night
5. i need new jeans, i need new jeans, i need new jeans!!
6. i can't wait to try these lush shampoo bars that i got recently
7. i need to find more interesting work
8. i have to finish all the books that i have but haven't read yet
Late night...
Slept at 4 am today. I feel like a zombie and barely made it through a yoga class. A yoga class!!! God knows how tired you have to be to struggle through yoga. I think part of it is because I have too many thoughts in my head right now. Thank you, Sarah Mclachlan, for providing the mood music to match my musings. Thank you, Venice Beach shop, for providing the incense. Thank you, Cingular, for providing the means of communication through which my mind was troubled. Dramatic, man!!!!
It's always sad when something you've wanted for so long doesn't work out. But what do you do when the opportunity to get it again comes along but you know it's not the right thing? Try to think every imaginable thought that will make you steer clear of the situation. Of course it doesn't make it less tragic.
I'm not making any sense because I can't go into details. I just wanted to put that out there, get it in writing. Then maybe I can get some sleep!!
On a lighter note, I'm looking forward to another late night tonight. Dinner and wine with a good friend, and good TV. And knitting. I'm going to learn how to knit! Woohoo! Then maybe I can spend my idle time doing something productive, no matter how ugly it turns out to be. Haha.
So, we're watching The Apprentice tonight.
Bill, if you're reading this, there's a girl here crossing her fingers for ya -- in more ways than one! Haha!
But hmmm... I wonder when they'll get rid of
her? Maybe tonight? Next week? Do it already!!!
Okay, so I have in my possession (temporary) a mini iPod. I have permission to use it. Do I dare? I know once I plug the earphones on and hit the play button, I'm going to be hooked. Heck, I'm already hooked, just looking at the ads and tv spots. Good job, capitalist America!
Alright, fine, I give in!
Okay, this is a picture of me, my dad, my mom and my uncle. This was taken at the airport on the night of my dad's last flight. I don't look sad in the picture, do I? But I felt depressed that day because I got so used to seeing my dad at least once every month, and now I don't even know when I'm going to see him again.
Testing...
So, this is what a blog is all about. Given that I'm in the IT field, I really should have learned and done this much sooner. Goes to show how boredom can sometimes be a good thing. Of course, that really is no excuse. Oh well, moving on....
People have been bugging me to start writing more, as in really writing. I know I do have a knack for it, but so far my experience has only been writing personal letters and emails that no one but the addressee really reads. So that's been on my mind lately. Maybe I will attempt a literary debut. I just have to figure out what it will be about. Think! Think, dammit!
So anyway, I just finished reading this book entitled A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. I suppose that's nothing special now since it's 2004 and the book was written in the 80's (and he's already written other critically-acclaimed books), but I'd still like to applaud his writing style and sense of humor. The book makes me want to pack my bags and move to France, and supposedly that is what more than just a few people did after they read his book. So the story is that he moved to Switzerland, and when the residents found out, they requested him not to write a book about the town because they didn't want to be swamped with immigrants and tourists seduced by his prose. I'm still trying to find the actual article that reports this. I'll be sure to post the link when I do.
Then I moved on to this book that I borrowed from the Brentwood library. It's called The Fencing Master, and it's by Arturo Perez-Reverte. It's proving to be entertaining so far, and the references to the sport has left me wondering whether I should take it up again. I don't even remember half the terms that I learned when I was still on the team, but thanks to this
fencing website, I'm able to brush up on fencing lingo again. But...should I or shouldn't I? That is the question.
Last but not the least for today, I'm very disappointed with the results of last week's American Idol batch. I don't care who the other person is, but I really wanted
this girl to go through to the finals. America, what were you thinking?!?!?!? Let's hope she gets another chance with the wildcard portion.
That said, I have to sign off for now. More on other trivial things tomorrow!
