"...The Same Old Bread And Rolls To Sell."

I love grocery stores. There's just something so, normal about them.We all go there because we all need food. I mean, unless you're Amish or just super economical (in which case, I think you're awesome. Good for you.) and you grow all your own food, you need a grocery store.



No matter how you get yourself into that parking lot, the minute you walk in those doors, and grab a shopping cart or basket, or little kid wagon-shaped-like-a-taxi thing, you become just like everyone else.

It doesn't matter  if you're on food stamps or you make a million dollars a day (although in the case of the latter, you may just be able to pay someone to go for you, or have it delivered... but I digress) you still have to truck up and down those aisles, looking for the cereal, or broccoli, or canned soup or frozen pizza or whatever it is that you needed to satiate your hunger for the next... however long.



Another thing about grocery stores, is that they tell you a lot about people. I'm going to admit right now, that I'm a complete grocery snoop. I'm the girl that's looking into all of your grocery carts out of the corner of my eye as you pass me in the aisle. I'll never snicker or sneer or give you the stink-eye if I see something I don't like, but I'm sorry -- if you're... quite heavy... and your cart is full of ho-hos and cartons of ice cream, I'm groaning. But on the inside. It goes something like this: "Oh, HONEY. No... no no no. Put those away. See? Look at that lady over there. She's picking up a nice green salad. Look how nice and healthy she is. Don't you want to be healthy? Now go put those away like a good girl and follow suit."



Nobody ever listens to my internal monologues.

My point is, no matter how my day has gone, when it comes time to write up my shopping list, and pop by the good ol' marketplace, I always get smiley inside. Because I know it as a pleasant ritual... that always results in better dinner than the night before when I was totally out of everything.

"A Very Merry Un-Birthday..."

On June 8, 2012 I will turn twenty-three years old. To me, that seems like, (probably because it HAS BEEN) a lifetime. I have witnessed over two-decades of the existence of the Earth and its inhabitants first-hand. Surely, I think, I must have something to show for it. So what have I learned?

I have learned, first and foremost, that I know nothing. Twenty-three years is hardly enough time to even SEE the world, much less understand it. There is so much more to do, to see, to feel, to accomplish, that one could spend eons on just one small portion of this great sphere. I have also learned that the world is round.

I know that whether you want to or not, your whole life is spent learning. My father always claims you have 100 units of ‘smarts’ to distribute at your leisure and it is what you choose to do with that brain capacity that determines who you are. So choose what you learn wisely. Some cannot be helped – the situation you were born into, the people who surround your formative years, the way you look and act and how that compares with socially accepted concepts of ‘beautiful’ and ‘intelligent’ and ‘normal.’ But some things CAN be adjusted and manipulated to better serve your own purposes – who YOU choose to spend your time with, what YOU choose to read, what YOU allow yourself to see and hear and do – are all part of what determine who you are and how you react to life as it comes at you.

So take every experience, and glean from it what you can. Use what you have been given – what cards you have been dealt – and try to derive a possible lesson. What did you like about what just happened? Would you change your approach to the situation if you had to do it over? What would you do differently? What WILL you do differently next time, if there is a next time? Take every situation, be it positive or negative in your eyes, and learn from it.

I have learned to always, always, ALWAYS enjoy little things. If you are sitting in a terrible meeting at work, enjoy the warm cup of coffee you are holding in your hands, even while your boss explains to you why your project went horribly awry. If you are driving in traffic and you can see that you will REMAIN in traffic for the next hour, enjoy the music playing on the radio, or turn off the radio and enjoy the relative silence. If you are burning time before a dentist appointment, take a second to observe the beauty of the flowers in the pot next to the chair you are sitting in, or in the painting on the wall. As my grandmother  always says “there is beauty everywhere. You just have to find it.”

I have learned to always try hard. Looking back at the things I have done and the places I have been, that I’m only truly proud of the things I worked hard on. Natural talent is great, and success is commendable, but if you breeze through life, what do you have to show for it? The things you win are empty if you haven’t poured yourself into it. Cookies always taste better when you make them yourself, and accomplishments are always worth more if you’ve poured yourself into them.

I have learned the importance of making an effort to understand yourself. Go to whatever lengths you need to – take personality exams, ask people you trust, spend some time alone sitting and pondering WHO YOU ARE and what makes you, YOU. It may take years and years, and you MAY change, but be aware of your habits, your tendencies, your preferences, and your faults. It will help you understand why other people react towards you the way they do, and help you be knowledgeable in regards to how you react towards others as well. Strive to be self-aware.

Also, strive to improve yourself. Once you know who you are, or even if you are still on the road to making that discovery, you can hopefully uncover flaws in your being – traits that you find undesirable, and wish to eradicate. The ones I find most often in myself are fears and bad habits. When I uncover a fear I wish to conquer, I purposefully throw myself into situations causing me to have to conquer, or at least confront, that fear. They are never pleasant endeavors, but I always feel a sense of pride in myself at the conclusion, knowing I am on the path to improvement – that I am striving towards excellence.

I have learned to, when possible, try to grasp a better understanding of people. If someone is exhibiting an annoying behavior, or seems to be doing something you can’t explain, try to become as much like Sherlock Holmes as possible, and derive from what you can observe.  The more insight you can glean from people’s behaviors, the better you can curb your actions to cater to their needs/wants/feelings. It may seem to some like you’re being a bit of a brown-noser at times, but it’s also essential to being a good friend, (I’m told) a good spouse, and just a good person in general.

I have learned to laugh. Everyone tells you this, but it’s only becoming more evident as time goes on, and I experience more & more of my life. Some things you just don’t have any power over, and so as opposed to stressing yourself (or other people!) out over it, just laugh. Even if it’s not funny, even if it has to be in your head or it’ll be horribly rude. Laugh. Laugh at good jokes, laugh at funny faces, laugh at cruel irony, laugh to ease tension, DON’T laugh at other people unless you can find a way to let them laugh WITH you, but essentially, try to find the bright spot in the clouds, and it will lead you to the sunshine.

I’m sure I’ve learned many other things – the importance of showering, how to shake hands and look someone in the eye, don’t wear plaid, stripes, and polka dots all at once… but sometimes those are just more fun to figure out all on your own. No one will, (or SHOULD!) hand you the step-by-step handbook to life before you get started because, after all, what fun would that be?

May God Bless you and Keep you,

-Elisabet

"When You're Tired, And You Can't Sleep..."

I was sifting through my emails, and found this one of a dream I remembered & typed out for my little sister. It truly was an odd one, but rather epic, if I do say so myself. My dreams always DO turn out a bit like a Lewis Caroll book. For clarification, my brother and sister are named Rik and Stina.

Enjoy!

I was at school and the choir was singing something with showtunes and they were really good but they wouldn’t let me do my homework so I left.

Then I was at home with some friends having a sleep over and a smoky ghosty reflection of a king I must have killed in a previous dream came to haunt/attack us. I shouted at him in a very commanding voice and ordered him to be gone. Something I did must have worked because he gave a very shocked expression and evaporated.

Then I went out my bedroom window and climbed down to the first floor and one door to the left, which was a tavern/hotel. Obviously. I had been there before. It was owned by a large bearded man with an almost German accent who had hid my elderly friend, someone important (like maybe some princess?) and I when we were being followed and trying to escape this country (that I had now returned to on a summer trip with my girlfriends) He was at the piano (which had been the place of my older friend, as he was a pianist) so I was surprised to see the tavern/hotel owner there in his stead. I greeted him. He was shocked to see me and as he embraced me, whispered that I should not be there. We both understood that people would still be hunting for me. I brushed the comment aside.

            I then remember riding a chinese spirit dragon as I flew around attempting to gain control of some other creature in dark woods in the middle of the night. I was unable to do so and wound up in a dark cavernous kitchen with my mother in the basement of some huge castle-like establishment. We knew we would be imprisoned or killed should we be found out, so we disguised ourselves as cooks and when people arrived, eluded conversation and questions with an elaborate display very like the dance sequence of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s “Toot Sweets” number, but without the singing. The previous cooks had prepared a huge array of cakes and candies on the top two or three racks of the large metal industrial trays, that I repeatedly jumped up and grabbed to pass out to the onlookers who totally bought in to the cook façade. Mom turned to me and in an attempt to get me out of the kitchen so I could complete the task we had entered enemy territory to do, said “we need more cinnamon. Go get some.” So I headed to where the cinnamon was kept. On my way up the industrial concrete and metal handrail back stairs usually seen in buildings, I passed Kristina and Rik. They were in the hallway behind a stage door that entered to a huge auditorium. They were helping out with some sort of enormous music festival/program. Stina looked like she was wearing two different ballgowns at the same time, and twirled around for me. Clearly she was proud of it. I nodded in approval even though I was totally baffled at her wardrobe choice. Rik was wearing some sort of ridiculous shirt made of satin with huge glittery treble and bass cleffs stuck all over it. I think there may have even been some gold wire curled around the colar as well. He looked at me as if he was wearing nothing unusual. I didn’t have time to comment as I was on a mission. I continued on my way up the stairs. I also ran into a woman who I knew from before. She ran a good portion of this establishment and knew all of the organization’s secrets. She was somehow a friend. I passed her and she asked me what I was doing. I told her I was going to get cinnamon. She coyly informed me that what I was looking for was in the same vault as the cinnamon. When I finally got to the floor I was looking for, It was a huge wide, long hallway with hundreds and hundreds of large metal doors with numbers on the outsides. I walked up to the gal at the front desk. She had a very bored expression on her face. I told her I needed cinnamon and she pulled a black rectangle out of her desk. It looked like a black credit card but slightly larger and about a quarter inch thick. She popped it into the computer and gave it access to the correct vault. I walked down the hall till I found the proper number, scanned my card, and the door opened. It was like a huge store room mixed with some sort of zoo/pet shop. Food stores lined the walls -- pet food was juxtaposed with glassed, lit cages containing animals I never saw, but I somehow knew one was something like a lion or other wild cat. I think it must have been making noise. There was another metal door (just a push door. No fancy lock) I had to go into in order to get to the human stores. I went in and got a container of cinnamon, and headed back into the pet-room. An odd fat woman with brightly orangey-yellow died hair, and red and yellow clothing (that looked something like a zoo uniform) was in the room fussing over her animals. (or at least over the cages.) I had been in this room once before and I knew this woman was bad news and would alert security if she saw me. But she was so preoccupied with her fussing that she did not take notice of me. I walked out another metal push-door out onto a small grassy lawn that looked somewhat like a balcony. To the right, and just around the corner of the building, there was another cage. A large outdoor mound that looked like the monkey cages at the zoo, with a tall wood pole in the middle holding up a cage of thick rope netting in a wide circle. Inside that cage was a lion man. He had pointy cat teeth and cat paw-like hands, and fuzzy pointy cat ears and wild hair, and probably a tail. I believe he could also fly. Anyway, he had a very good sense of smell, and though his back was initially turned, whipped around and looked me in the eye. He smiled. I smiled back. I knew this creature. I had come here once before to free him. He had been wild and untamed, but something about my body chemistry was different and he liked me and behaved normally when I was around. I knew he would not attack me. He spoke to me, greeting me as ‘smoke slayer’ or some such term of awesomeness I had heard a few times since I scared away the ghost king at the beginning of my dream. It hadn’t seemed like such a big deal at the time, but people seemed impressed. I told him we were going to get him out. (Apparently there were somehow a few other people with me at this time to help with this task.) There was a large hole in the netting and we tried to get him out that way, but before we could, the orange-haired lady bustled out of the building with a large bundle that she crawled into the tent and began to assemble. It was a huge yellow tent that must have been intended as a security protocol because it had much smaller holes than the cage and would be very difficult to escape from. Luckily, as she walked in with the tent, the lion man sped out of the hole in the netting and was hidden in amongst the rest of us as we walked away. I looked back and saw the woman busily and obliviously assembling the tent from the inside, which we knew meant she would be trapped inside it. The lion man saw this too, and stifled a laugh. (His mental capacity was probably only that of a 10 year old, so he acted like a little kid – puffing out his cheeks and covering his mouth as he silently giggled.)                     

And then I woke up. The end.

"What Will My Future Be... I Wonder?"

Well, it's happened.

I have officially, unofficially moved from my parent's place of residence, and have finally embarked on that great journey of life which is utterly mine own.

... I made it as far as my grandmother's house.

BUT! Fear not! For I have made a move in the right direction! My recently acquired full-time job is now a whole 1/2 hour closer than before, and I fully intend on beginning my search for a small, pitiful, apartment of my own even closer still to my new vocation.

Clearly growing up is harder than it appeared at first glance.

I mean, in high school, (and yes, even in college...) I argued with myself: "Really, how hard can it be?"

The logic of a high school student:
-You graduate high school.
-You go to college.
-You take tons of super hard classes, and become totally engrossed in your studies, make a few close friends while submersed in books in the depths of the library, and graduate summa cum laude with at LEAST 5 solid job offers. Heck, even if you fail at life, you went to college. You HAVE to at LEAST get ONE job offer, right? .... riiiight....
-You take said job, whatever it may be (naturally exactly in your field of study) which is totally acceptable, albeit entry level.
-You move to that area, (with your best friends, cuz they'll obviously be living and working in the same town as you.)
-Make oodles of money and pay off all those pesky loans (you MIGHT have, but you'll have gotten TONS of scholarships, right?!)
-Get your own place.
-Get married, etc etc etc (& those three etc's is exactly how you thought of it, too.)

Anyway,

The point I'm trying to make is that chances are, nobody's life is going to turn out to their exact specifications. Life happens, and sometimes you just have to roll with it.

Look for the good that's happening in your life now:
You have a roof over your head.
Your toilet is working.
You have an occupation at all.
Your jeans are in good condition.
           Except for the ones with holes...
           ... but those were on purpose.