Sweet Sweet Life

"Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible." ~Claude Bissell


I love surprises...they are the best thing ever.  Yesterday I had three and one person was behind them all.  Not just kinda surprises...I was completely caught off guard and blown away by every single one.  The day started out ok...I was almost verging on happy for not so much of a reason.  Then my reason walked up beside me and the day turned into the first one in a long time that was good...all day. I came home and wrote....loaded the camera and editing software...walked the dog.  Simple things but even the simple things were good.  Surprises kept coming. It was the most I've smiled in a day lately.  Planning on smiling more every day. 
 
There's something very healing about the ocean...its so easy to get wrapped up in our lives and forget where we are.  We live where most people have to plan and wait and spend a shit pot of money to come to for just a week a year.  Pretty lucky.  Almost all those people are gone...and the coast is clear.  Its funny how I ended up here...I thought my world was crashing on top of me when I lost my job just 9 months after buying a house and just a few months after loosing my Daddy.  I even had to replace the hvac the day after I found myself income free.  I never would have guessed that fork in the road was leading me here and into the path of someone I'd been looking for all along.  Crazy how it works.  
 
There's always a bigger picture out there but we decided on taking the days as they come and they only come one at a time.  Yesterday is done.  Can't do anything about tomorrow until it gets here...then just work on making it good too.  I want to be surprised everyday...by just how good it turns out.

Looking forward to...more days like yesterday.

Just a Girl in a Grown Up Costume

And now these three remain.  Faith, Hope and Love.  But the greatest of these is Love.

From just reading it's probably easy to think I'm the strongest most level headed person around. For the most part that's all I ever let people see of me. And I wish that was the case.  Maybe I'm better than average but the truth is I struggle too. Every days kick me in the balls just like they do everybody else.  Good days and bad days and going half mad days.  I cut down a tire and went hard into the wall last night...in public none the less. Awesome.  I managed to get away before I got really bad.  Mostly I do this on my own time and no one sees it but last night I had to reach for a hand to hold.  And he was there.  I think I apologized a hundred times. For being weak...for reaching out like a drowning person for something buoyant...just for being that person.  I was so freaked out this morning that I'd messed up by letting that side of me show.  Sometimes it surprises me just how much I trust him...more than any other person in my whole life.  Even with no promises and an uncertain future there is comfort just in his presence...the easiest person to be around ever.  It was all I needed...he brushed me off and stood me back up.  It's not something I'm going to be making a habit of.  I know that I can't stay spun out and that only I have the power to change my mind to "looking forward" to the good stuff.  Today is another day and it's started off as a really good one...better than I could have hoped.  I have so much to look forward to...Zac Brown concerts...jerk chicken nachos...trips to Florida...key lime pies on a stick...walks on the beach...talking...laughing...smiling...all with him by my side.

Permanent Reminder

Joy does not just happen to us.  We have to choose joy and keep choosing it everyday. (Henry Nouwen)

I decided to mark this time in my life and myself.  Inked on my foot now is Carpe Diem as a permanent reminder.  Seize the day.  Wikapedia also includes in the translation ...Trusting in the future as little as possible. Not meaning in a downer or haphazard approach to life way but as in tomorrow isn't a given...we have to make the most of right now.  A painful lesson I learned from my Daddy.  Even though he wasn't really in mind on the planning side of this one...it puts to words what I've wrestled with since his untimely exit.

It's unbelievable the relief I felt yesterday in just a few minutes and a few honest spoken words.  My ability to hide my emotions is out the door with him.  My feeling of being alone is replaced with feeling loved again.

Tomorrow will come.  Anger and hurt feelings will fade.  Relationships will heal.  I know you've heard me say it over and over...life works itself out.  The how and the when are out of our control.  All we can do is hold on and love the ones we love with all we have.  Let go of the bad...feeling scared...feeling guilty...feeling without.  It only drags us down and keeps us away from what we want.  Even when you can't, for sake of saving your own life, see a path out...there is one.

 

Shifting

Last night after 11 long hours with tourists I came home and bounded up the stairs two at a time to get to my bathroom confined puppy...he was feeling better and doing the happy dog dance to see me.  We walked even though it was late and I was dead tired. The weather was perfect...there had been 12 hours since anyone yakked, miss cat was drinking her kitten formula like it was whip cream vodka in a bowl and I cleared my head for the first time in days.  I decided that I have to shift my thinking.  All the things that I am missing so much I'm changing to looking forward to.  When I think about it as missing I can hardly breathe and I feel desperate and scared.  There's something I didn't tell you about the surfboard dumpster dive.  Last week I read The Secret again...kinda by accident.  Velcro isn't a big reader so I went through and dog earred pages and underlined the important stuff.  I'm so glad I did...I needed it.  What we think about and create in our mind is what shows up in our lives...the good and the bad.  On the beach that day there were a couple kids with their dad teaching them to surf.  I sat and watched them get all excited when they got up for the first time...funny the things that can make you happy if you let them.  The next morning I found the surfboard.  It was just a sign to show me I'm on the right path and that anything that you believe is possible... Is. 

I've been paying more attention to people that I wait on...I see the ones that are so happy to be together and never run out of smiles and things to say to each other.  Then I see the ones that haven't been happy in years having long over stayed their welcome. I wonder what they look forward to and if everything they do feels like a strained effort or over compromise.  I refuse to believe that's the way its supposed to be. It's wrong to spend your life that way.  It's all so incredibly short.

Today I have a million thoughts flying around and I feel like an air traffic controller keeping them all pointed towards good and not letting a rouge one spin me out. I have so many questions that I would like to know answers to...I always feel if I know everything I can handle whatever I'm up against.  But with that it almost seems like I admit doubt...and I don't have any. I'm not working through a broken heart.  I'm working through the challenge of believing what I know...that love like this comes around once.  I'm working through holding on and being strong.

Looking forward to hearing the key in the door and early morning coffee and foot lotion.  Looking forward to talking about everything and about nothing.  Looking forward to him having everything in his world that makes him happy and complete.  Looking forward to it including me.

Bet You Wish You Were Me

Yesterday after I took the furry one to the beach then came home and bathed the eleven hundred pounds of sand out of his fur, I went back down for what's become my daily therapy session with the sea.  Some days are better and a little easier than others...there isn't any type of pattern or progressive order to it that I've seen.  I smiled through the tears that the Keys in the Conch Shell brought on and they mixed with the saltwater as I butt floated in the waves.  It wasn't a bad day...just tough.  I came back home to a disastrous scene even by kennel standards.  It was the straw...I sat down in the floor in between piles from one end or the other and bawled.  Figuring out that the pity fairy wasn't coming with the carpet cleaner I gathered my wits, picked myself up and unfucked my house....for the first time.  After work I had a similar scene but at least most of the damage that time was centrally located on the linoleum.  Somewhere after midnight I finished the second round carpet cleaning.  Up to 7 yaks on the day so far and no matter how I try I still can't get a pepto to stay in him.  Now officially both of my kids are making me worry. At least the cat has ratcheted in the yakking since the dog has started.  Went to the grocery store and spent $25...and I got a potato out of the deal, seriously that's it.  40 varieties of cat food...rice for the dog...children's pepto that I've still not been successful with and baby food for the cat.  Me = fish out of water when it comes to the baby food isle trying to find shit...there are a lot of jars and they are very tiny and I don't see very well... its ubber confusing.  If you know me then you know that if the cat doesn't eat the baby food...more than likely I will...with vodka.
Wingman called to tell me Wagon Wheel was sang for me at the little marina bar where we drank cotton candy vodka. Wish I was there. It made me smile again and feel like I'm not in this boat all alone.  That maybe I'm being missed as much as I'm missing and being loved as much as I love.  Words don't do any justice to my feelings...hope he knows.

Saturday

Hang in there.  It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.  (frances hodges burnett)  Still can't believe how these things that are getting me by keep popping up so that I find them. 

I have recently spent about 85% of my food budget on cat food and the likes there of.  Gravy Lovers...Gravy pouches...crunchy tasty crap...the equivalent of kitty ensure...kitten milk formula...real baby food.  It's a good thing that my body has decided that food is the devil and is currently avoiding it like old fish bait in a hot cooler.  Carletta cat has about a 2 day capacity for liking the same thing these days. It's wearing me out but more I'm worried about her.  

The dog exercise program is on warp plan...I have walked his little ass off lately.  He got 30 miles in July and in August.  Today he got his check mark on the beach...first time in a while.  Since last Sunday when Velcro took me out to The Point, I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't walked out there.  It's where we went this morning.  He didn't know what to think of me wearing tennis shoes on the beach but quickly decided he didn't give a damn about my paw cover choices.  After many attempts of keeping him out of the water and my shoes dry I gave up and wound up knee deep...wet shorts and all. 

It made him happy and he made me laugh.  What difference does it really make if your shoes are full of sand and water..they are just shoes.  I'm looking at a lot of things and strangers differently.  Things are just that and are mattering to me less and less.  Really realizing that you can't look at a person and have a clue of what they are dealing with or struggling through.  I wonder at every down cast eye on the beach if they feel scared and are missing someone like crazy... trying to figure out what the fuck to do next.  Scary that it almost makes me sound soft. 

When I wake every morning I lie there and think about good stuff until I'm relatively sure that my head is a safe distance away from my ass.  Good stuff like riding out to Ponce de Leon Inlet to the scene of "shrimp ordering shrimp".  The fish reuben at the marina when the space shuttle boom accompanied the screwdrivers with which the bartender was trying to kill me.  Facial expressions and winks and foot pads and closeness.

As of last night Beaver has taken to wearing cologne...it makes him feel sexy but kinda creeps him out that I sniffed him no less than a 100 times. 

It's The Little Things

Is it bad when shells-n-cheese with hot sauce for breakfast is a step in the right direction nutritionally speaking?  My recent level of sobriety has scared me...not that I've opted for a wagon ride by any means but I've actually tackled more time than normal with a clear head. 
I miss sharing that I had tuna miracle for lunch.  And that I found my photo software that I've torn about multiple houses in search of.  And that I rode my bike on the road yesterday for the first time and really didn't do anything too stupid.  I did manage to find neutral at an awkward time...btw there is no hiding that when you do it.  And that I had my greatest dumpster dive find ever this morning...it wasn't actually a dive...it was beside the dumpster but still. 

The really cool thing is on the bottom there are all these notes written to this guy Rich...he apparently really influenced these note writers lives.  I am aware that its all ratty looking and I have no idea if it will really work for a surfboard but it made me smile and sometimes that's enough. 

Miss my best friend...