Lessons from a Derelict Roommate.

We had a difficult roommate situation a few months back, where we felt our only solution was to invite her to move out.  To say she was furious, would be an understatement, though she must have realized it was a possibility when the following things happened in quick succession:

• She left with four days notice to pursue a "get rich quick" pyramid scheme in another state for a month, and as result, got fired from her jobs.
• She made so many mistakes on her rent check that the landlord couldn't cash it, which we might have thought was an honest mistake, if she hadn't just bounced a $12 check for utilities.
• She scammed her friend out of $500, so we had to deal with said friend when she came knocking at our door to collect the money.  
• And she lied about pretty much anything and everything, including all that listed above.

It was bad; really, really bad.  We couldn't trust her, and we didn't know how many more surprises she had coming down the pipe, so we had no choice but to ask her to leave.  However, I really wished there was an alternative.  It was the beginning of the holiday season, and we didn't know where she would end up.  Was she going to be homeless?  How much debt was this girl dealing with? How was she going to get out from under this mess?

Much to my surprise I recently discovered that she's bounced back quite nicely.  She's back in the area, has a couple of good jobs doing what she loves, and she has a boyfriend.  To be honest, she seems to be doing much better than I am.  I'm sure she'd be surprised to hear me say this, but I'm really happy for her.  I'm glad things worked out.  As I've thought about her situation, I realize I can learn a thing or two from her.

Don't worry, I have no intention of scamming anyone, lying, or joining a pyramid scheme, but there is a lesson to be learned.  Ten months ago this girl wasn't just down on her luck, she was penniless, unemployed, and homeless.   Not only that, but she'd been fired and evicted, which makes it more difficult to get a new job and a new living situation.  But she didn't let those factors keep her back. Nope, she not only only bounced back, she managed to bounce onwards and upwards.

So here are my takeaways from this situation:

1) Let it go.

If you are currently in a less than desirable situation, you could blame your boss, your roommates, or ex.  You could shake your fist at the skies.  Or worst of all, you could emotionally flog yourself for your own stupid idiotic choices.  But at the end of the day, what's done is done.  Regardless for who is responsible, it's up to you make your situation better.  Don't waste your time playing the blame game. Let it go and get to work.

2) Know your passion.

What do you love doing?  What are your best talents?  Combine the answers to those two questions, and figure out a way to capitalize on it and you are golden.

3) Take chances.

I grew up in a risk-adverse family, where major decision-making involved carefully weighing and measuring the probability of success; that meant passing up any opportunity that wasn't darn close to being a sure thing.  My family would argue that it is because they value safety/security above all else, but I wonder if we're actually just secretly terrified of failing.  Perhaps we've unwittingly bestowed krytonite-type superpowers upon "mistakes" and "failure," when in truth the garden variety "failure" or "mistake" will most likely not destroy you.  In fact, after witnessing my roommate's situation, it appears that even really dramatic fall into the "pit of despair" failures don't need to destroy you, and they may even lead you to a better place all the way around.  So go ahead and take some chances, chase a dream, and follow your heart.......just as long as it doesn't involve pyramid schemes, lying, and scamming. :)

Catching A Tune

I'm getting back into writing, and since I'm pretty sure only about 5 people still read my blog, I figure no one will mind if I post a few story kernels from time to time. :)  Here's one I wrote last week.  

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I was within a dream, that much I knew, but the recollection of my waking life was slippery and difficult to grasp, so I let it go.

I was under a canopy of ancient trees filtering the morning sunlight.  The ground was soft and gave slightly as I stepped through the fallen leaves and moss.  There was no path, just a destination.  Ahead of me was a lake or a pond rather, where an old man sat upon a rock by the shore.  In his hands were a series of strings, much like those of a marionette, but attached to something in the water.  He whistled a sorrowful song as he tugged at the strings.

“I wondered when you’d get here,” he said without turning.

I knew him, but I didn’t know how. I tried to say hi, but my words got stuck somewhere between my throat and my lips.

“You ready to try?” he asked. Without waiting for a reply, he took a step back and looped the strings around my fingers.

“The trick is letting the noise slip through.”

Instantly there was tugging on the strings, and my mind was filled with an awful ratchet:  grinding metal, crying children, smoke detectors, howling cats, and the dripping of a leaky faucet.  I tried prying my fingers free from the strings, but the noise only increased with the addition of car alarms, sirens, gun fire, and helicopters.   

“It’ll help if you have something in mind,” the old man said as he placed his hands over mine.

He whistled his sorrowful song again, and gently tugged on each of the strings in turn.  The noise slipped away and was replaced by a stuccoes percussion of tapping wood, followed by a low melancholy hum and a soft garbling of a bird.  He tugged on another string and a sound that can only be described as the gentle flapping of an angel’s wings in a spring shower filled my mind.  It resonated and echoed through every hollow and cavernous space in my soul.  It was a sound that was felt more than heard, and it awoke so many emotions and sensations in my heart that I was overcome with dizziness. Then one by one the old man, let the strings fall slack, and each of the sounds were silenced.

“The trick is letting the noise slip through,” he said again.

Using his thumb, he wiped the tears that I hadn’t noticed on my cheek. 

“Your turn love,” he said with a smile.

I hung my head and shrugged.

“You’ve always had a lovely song.  Why don’t you start there?”

So I started to hum a simple melody I’d known since I was young, and one by one I tugged the strings, making sure to let the noise slip through.  

The Wonders of LASIK

Such a wonderful thing to be able to see with my own eyes again.  I’m now on Day 8 of my post-op and I have to say it’s kind of amazing.  I can see everything so clearly.  I still feel a little pain from time to time, but it’s manageable.  That said, I just wish someone would have told me a few things I should have had on hand for afterwards.

1)    A big box of tissues for the ride home. 

Your cornea is connected to your eyeball.  Your eyeball is connected to your tear duct.  Your tear duct is connected to your nose duct......or something like that.  Basically when the tears start flowing, the nose starts running.  While you most likely won’t be sobbing after the surgery, you have just had a very invasive procedure on your eyes and your tear ducts will be on overdrive, which means (at least in my case) your nose will be as well.   So unless you like using you shirt as a Kleenex (I will neither confirm nor deny I did this), you’ll want to have a ready supply on hand.

2)    Bring a big thick blindfold or better yet an ostrichpillow.

Everyone said I’d be sensitive to light. Nobody told me that I’d border on vampire abhorrence of sunlight.  On the ride home, I was wearing double sets of sunglasses, and I was still trying to bury my face in my lap while mumbling, "It burns. It burns."

3)    Less sticky medical tape 

After the procedure is over, you’ll need to wear these plastic shields over your eyes at night to prevent you from rubbing your eyes in your sleep. The shields are fine, but the tape they used leaves behind this gunky stickiness that is impossible to wash, rub, and scrub off; I tried every substance short of battery acid to remove it to no avail.  Now imagine having to use that tape every single night for month.  No bueno.  So I went to the store and found some medical paper tape that isn’t quite as sticky, but not nearly as gunky either.  Though it does require a little extra tape to get the job done, so you may end up looking like this each night:

4)  Sleeping pills that work

After the procedure, they want you to go right home and sleep for five hours at a minimum.  As the anesthetic eye drops wears off, there will be pain, and it's better if you can sleep through that.  They gave me one valium for the procedure; it is what my grandma would have called a "don't give a $hit pill," and it worked pretty well for that.  I was feeling pretty good about the world, and I had zero anxiety going into the procedure.  As I left the office, they handed me two Valium for when I got home, and in theory I'd go right to sleep.  Unfortunately it turns out that taking more valium does not make me sleep, but it does lead to behaving very drunk; the only thing I really remember from that time is that my eyes hurt.  If you got a phone call from me that evening, I apologize for anything I may have said.  So the moral of the story is that there are several safe sleeping pills available, ask your doctor if you can get a prescription for a couple of them beforehand to see what works for you, then take that after the procedure.

So there are my thoughts on LASIK.  Overall I was very satisfied with the procedure and I love the fact I can see without any sort assistance.  I'm going to try swimming today.  Wish me luck.  :)

Roses and Bamboo

I remember going through the store as a child and seeing tiny containers of miniature roses, and thinking to myself that these were the most beautiful flowers in the world.  

So naturally when I decided to try my hand at indoor horticulture as an adult, I started with a miniature rose.  Within a few weeks, it got mites and died.  I bought another one.  Within a few weeks, it got some sort of a fungus thing and died.  So I wised up and did some online research on miniature roses and then bought another one.  Within a few weeks, it got both mites and a fungus thing and died. 

A smarter person may have scrapped the whole miniature rose concept.  Not me, I was going to make it work.  I just needed to figure out how to keep the plant healthy.  I did even more research and bought all the necessary sprays and fertilizers and then bought another plant.   After a long drawn out three months of battling mites and fungus thing, the rose died.  I really, really wanted to have a healthy happy miniature rose, but the roses simply wouldn't grow for me.  

Fast forward a decade.  I happen to pick up a bamboo plant at an outdoor market.  I didn't think much of it and set it on my desk.  Based on my experiences with the roses, I didn't expect it to live very long.  We've had a rough time together. I've forgotten to water it for week long stretches, and as result had to cut way half of it's leaves from time to time.  At one point all it's leaves turned yellow, and I found out I was supposed to be giving it fertilizer, so I had to cut it back down to the stalks to start over.  Yet it came back to life and it's still with me.  

I'd venture that we all have miniature roses and bamboos in our life.  While we constantly strive to make the roses bloom only to watch them shrivel away in our hands, there is a bamboo plant we keep in the background that seems to grow no matter what.  If we could simply walk away from the wasted effort on the miniature roses and instead really focus on helping that bamboo grow, we'd find our time is better spent and the results much more satisfying.  That's my deep thought for the day. :)

Finding Love In The Time of Texting

It would seem the internet community has taken a special interest in my plight as a single adult. Almost every website I visit is wallpapered with ads to help me find love or at the very least a cowboy, a devout christian, a nice jewish boy, or a single dad.  And let us not overlook the emails I get from dating sites that want desperately to match me with my perfect someone.  One in particular likes to send me pictures and information about the quality men that they think are meant for me.  Here's my favorite example of said emails: 

  

I'm not sure if it's the haircut, the mustache or the name, but if Randy_Man is truly my match, I'd rather spend eternity alone. I'm just saying there are things that are much, much worse than being single.

But alas,  I've found myself in a bit of conundrum.  Either I really throw myself into the online dating world or risk going the rest of my life (or at least several weeks) without a date.  So I did some research (mostly asking people).  It seems that one of the best dating sites out there is Match.com, but I was a little concerned about the fact that I'm Mormon.  My previous attempts at dating outside my faith led to some rather difficult conversations....  

While I've also dabbled occasionally on the Mormon dating sites (LDS Single, LDS Mingles, and LDS Planet), I've had rather limited success, but to be fair that might be because I wouldn't pay the membership fee.

Anywho, I had a brilliant idea.  I would pay for one month's membership to Match.com and LDS Planet (the most popular Mormon dating site) and see which one helped me make the most/best connections.  My profile on each is pretty much identical.  Except for some reason LDS Planet cropped this picture:

So it is now:

Why would they do that?  Are jumper cables somehow suggestive or inappropriate?  On second thought don't answer that, I'd really rather not know.

To keep my side-by-side comparison fair, I've made it a rule to respond to every single message I receive and to send at least four messages a day.  So far, I'm four days in and Match.com is winning. In fact, I might actually have a date lined up for next week.  But I've still got 26 days to go, so anything could happen.  Let the games begin!

Decisions.....

It's a good thing I blogged about my awesome birthday last year, because my birthday this year choked and died on the news that one of my wee nieces has Leukemia.

When I heard the news, my imagination immediately conjured up images of the Grimm Reaper himself showing up at my door, complete with a birthday card and balloons, “Happy Birthday Aleigh, your niece has cancer.  Have a great day.”  

Sometimes I really wish I could punch my imagination in the face.

Regardless, this whole experience has helped remind me of a few things:

1)  Mortality doesn't last forever.  Everybody has an expiration date, and you never know when yours (or that of your loved ones) will be up.
2)  Los Angeles is a very long ways away from pretty much everyone that I love
3)  Los Angeles has never felt like home.  I've been here for 4 years now, and I still feel like a foreigner.  I don't think anyone could argue that I haven't given it a fair shake.
4)  I HATE being so very far away from my family

I'm still mulling over what I want to do next.  Big decisions lay ahead, and a very sick little girl is 1,000 miles away.  One way or another, I think it may be time for me to go home......at least for a while.  

Happy Birthday to Me

To celebrate my birthday this year, I'm going to blog about my birthday from last year, because I didn't blog about it last year, and it was totally awesome.  

It all started with the decision to spend my birthday on Catalina,  a tiny island off the coast of Los Angeles.

 I’d wanted to go for quite some time,  but last year it just made sense for several reasons:

1. My birthday was on a weekend.
2. You get a free ferry ride to the island on your birthday, and you get a bunch of other free stuff to boot.
3. I keep telling myself that I won't be in California for another year.  

So I conned convinced my best friend from high school and her daughter to travel down from Monterey to join me on my trip.

We took advantage of pretty much everything there was to do on the island. 

A Little Snorkeling 

I'm still not really sure why our guide had me put on a single red glove or why we had a guide at all; about 15 minutes into the tour he got seasick, and had to "feed the fishes". 

Underwater Boat Experience 
While it provided a much better photo op, the lighting and view were better snorkeling.

Ziplining
Totally awesome five line course.  Appropriate for ages 7 to 80, at least that was the age range of our group. 

Some Rock Climbing

I think I spend more time falling than climbing. 

Chilled at the Beach Club
Oddly enough it's a beach club that's open to the public.  They have the most amazing nachos EVER

Toured the Casino 

It's kind of mandatory to tour this place your first time on the island.  It's a stadium sized dance hall and movie theatre from the island's heyday. It's really quite stunning.  

Mini Golfing

I totally could have beat her if it wasn't for that annoying loopity loop.

Sunsets
Between my friend and I, we took close to 50 photos of the sunset, but I shall only torture you with one.  Pretty amazing, right? You should totally go and enjoy it for yourself.  :)

Flying Fish Tour
I kid you not, Catalina has these foot long fish that fly over the water.  Unfortunately the tours are at night, and my camera is crap-tacular in low light.  Instead I located this artist's representation of the experience.  They shine a light out on the water, and you watch those suckers fly.... until they hit the hull of the boat and drop out of sight.  Poor guys, I'd hate to imagine the headaches they have in the morning.

Making fun of other tourists
Is any vacation complete without poking fun at the other vacationers?
Nothing says love more like complementary color coordinated outfits?

Or how about those people who opted for the Segway tour of a town that in its entirety is ALMOST 3 square mile.

But you really can't blame them since car options are pretty limited in a tiny town on a small island.

In Conclusion
Catalina is pretty awesome and totally worth a visit, especially on your birthday.  Just make sure you should bring along some great friends.   And if you'd like to hear more stories and see a million more photos, just let me know. :)