Friday, April 29, 2005

TGIF

I have no reason to really care if it is Friday today or not as this was a very slow week at work and so I actually haven't worked that much. But it seems as though it is still nice that today is Friday so at least I don't have to feel guilty for not working the next two days. The longer I work with my trainer the longer I think I enjoy it. It seems as though not only have I gone down 2 sizes, I am more energetic, more flexible, and stronger. These are all good things. I hope at some point the scale will start to agree that I am indeed losing weight but alas right now the weight is staying the same and the body is changing. Oh well I shouldn't complain as Brad has lost weight but not changed sizes or had any of my other benefits and all things being equal I guess my side is better. I also get something else out of having a trainer twice a week. On Tuesdays and Fridays when she comes I am not as lonely and the day seems to go by faster. I need to figure out how to get some playmates that are home in the middle of the day like I am so that we can hang out together. I have even tried to volunteer at the Temple but thus far all I have gotten in response is that they will definitely call me. Oh well soon Brad will finish this movie and I will not be home by myself as much and it will be better. I have tried to not gripe about how terribly lonely I am since I only see him on Sundays because these hours are tougher on him then they are on me. At some point though I have to vent my frustration somewhere. I hate eating alone especially, for some reason eating alone seems like I am trying to hide that I am eating and it just seems like a social time to me. In any case this was supposed to be the last day of this movie and then I was going to get him back. They extended the deadline another month. Brad was so upset that the movie wasn't over but I feel like there is little I can do to lift his spirits when I was counting down the days as well. The thing that makes his hours so much worse is that my are the extreme opposite. When I do work it is very early in the morning so it is hard to stay up to see him when he comes home. I am then off by 1 or so and then have the rest of the day by myself. Those hours are hard enough but when you add to that the fact that we are so slow that in the past 3 days I have worked a total of 3 and a half hours I feel very guilty for being home while Brad is at work. So I suppose if you run through my emotions lately they have been, lonely, guilty, and grieving. Wow when you look at it that way it is no wonder no one is reading this blog. Well I will do my best to find a happy place tomorrow. Read then and see if I found it.

PS I keep hoping that I will click the spellcheck button and it will tell me I am a genious and everything is spelled correctly, that day hasn't come yet but I hope to find it soon.

Thursday, April 28, 2005

I fought the law

Ok so in truth I was going to send a scathing letter to the City of Los Angeles about my $330 ticket but I had not taken good pictures yet to send the letter off. Today when I got home I checked the mail and saw I had a letter from the city of Los Angeles parking violations bureau. It said the office had discovered that the citation was invalid so therefore no further action or payment by me was necessary. So basically I thought about fighting the law and I won. So anyway apparently random handicapped zones do not appear out of nowhere and disappear before you return to your car. So I suppose it is once again safe to park on the streets of Los Angeles. Ok I have to go get ready for class now. I shall blog more later. In the Mean time YEAH!!!!!!!

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

I am blogging this

I was lacking a creative name for today's post so that is all I came up with sorry. My parents are still meeting with lawyers and appraisers before they make a final decision about their house. My Dad really wants to sell and my Mom really doesn't want to sell. So my Mom is feeling a little sad because she realizes she can't make my Dad not sell and not have him resent her for it later. It is sad really when did we become grownups and have to consider everyone else over our own wants. I really wish they wouldn't sell but I also want them to make the best decision for themselves. I really want to throw myself on the ground and throw a big old tantrum though and say they can't sell.

Brad is still working insane hours. They were suppose to end this week but alas they have extended his deadline until May 20th. I find it a little funny that Brad asked me to marry him and then started working around the clock the next day. He is so burnt out and tired of this movie he was sorry they extended the deadline as well. The thing is that my hours are quite the opposite right now and it would be nice if for once we could meet in the middle. Oh well hopefully this will be over in just a couple more weeks.

We had a very lovely Seder Sunday and it was really nice to enjoy the company of good friends around our table. It has really put a burden on my heart though. I have not been able to stop thinking about Brad and I starting a ministry to the young adults at our synagogue that have no other place to fit in. See as we aren't married yet we can not attend the couple events. As we are not parents we can not attend family events. As we are not students we can not attend student groups. So we have fallen into a whole. It seems to me that there are several other people at the Temple who are in the same boat as we are which is how we made friends with Jamie and Jenny who came to our Seder. The more I think about it the more I realize that if I feel called to do something about it I really need to act upon it. So I am thinking about starting small and just inviting people to come over after Temple Friday night for dessert and coffee and see where it goes from there. I am not sure as this is all very new to me but I think I might talk to the Rabbi about it and see what he might suggest. Well I suppose that this is all I have to say for now. I will talk to you all later.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

The Love Letter

A little while ago I bought the DVD of the movie Jerry Maguire. There is a scene in there where he says you complete me. Shortly after I bought the movie a guest on Oprah was talking about that movie and said that the line gets women in trouble because then they look to a man to feel whole. At first I thought, but Brad does complete me or at least I feel more complete with Brad. I then began to think on the point a little more and I came to the realization that no Brad doesn't complete me because I am fully capable on my own. The answer is that with Brad I can be completely me. I do not have to hold a corner of myself back because he wouldn't understand. Instead if I am silly I can be silly, if I am sad I can be sad, if at any time a wild idea comes into my head I can tell him and we figure out together if it will work. In some ways it feels as if being completely me with someone makes me complete, that may be true but I think the point is that because I can be me I can be complete and that is where the distiction is. It is funny though how easy it is to forget that having someone you can be completely you around is special and unique. Sometimes when you are around someone else and you let a little too much of yourself out you quickly learn it was a mistake and this person can not handle all of you. I suppose the point is that I feel so fortunate that I will get to spend the rest of my life with someone who I can be honest with all of me, and trust them to handle it. It is also nice that he knows all of me and still loves me and will be goofy with me or grief a loss with me without making me feel stupid for taking it as a loss. I love that Brad totally gets my grief over my parents house and feels the loss too. That it isn't just me that is losing a dream but we are losing a dream together. But because we are ourselves with each other somewhere along the way the dreams we each held separately have merged and become our dreams together. This realization makes me even more sure that I am the luckiest woman alive that next Spring I will become his wife and we can begin finding our dreams together.

I know this post was a bit sappy but I thought you all could use it after my current posts. I hope that none of you got too bad of a stomach ache for reading it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

The Loss of a Dream

So news from parents came today and it is looking very much like they are going to sell their house. Now you may be saying big deal and I can see where you might be coming from but to me this was no ordinary house. Without tying into all the emotional aspects of why this is killing me I will start with this, I have never seen a house or yard that I would rather live in than the house I grew up in. My parents bought the house when I was 4 so I do not remember any house before it with any clarity. Every moment of my growing up was spent in that house and it has become a member of the family. 2.6 acres in Napa California is not something you can just find and when my parents happened upon it I recall them saying it was their dream home. When we moved in my Mother exclaimed that we were home now and she would never move again. I believed her. I never for a minute thought that there would ever be a time when my parents might live somewhere else. I thought that this is where they would die and then I would buy my brothers out and live there with my children. I did realize that the last aspect of that was a dream and would probally not be possible but I had hoped I would have a lot of time to work it out. I plan to get married at this house a year from now and while the sale will not make my parents have to move until after the wedding the reality is that my wedding will be the last memory created at the place where all of them start. In some ways I see it as poetic that it will make the wedding even more of beginning a new life and creating a new place that will be home to Brad and I, but the other part of me is not ready to let go. I suppose what I didn't say is that when my parents move out a bulldozer will come and knock down my parents house and replace the house with a community instead. I will never be able to show my children the house I grew up in nor will they have the pleasure of playing freely in Grandma and Grandpa's big back yard. I also know that I am being silly crying over a piece of land but that home is a piece of me and helped to mold me into who I am. I can not imagine any other place feeling more like home than that one did. There is another side to this I haven't stated yet, I am worried that if my parents sell the house they will have nothing left to do. Their days currently are spent remodeling the house to make it better for them. This is really the only exercise my Father gets and I worry about his health if he doesn't have that anymore. I guess what it all comes down to is that I am scared because I never picture a future without that home being apart of it. So if on my wedding day you see me crying more than the average bride know I am closing a door to much more of my past life than I ever anticipated and it will be a very hard day of letting go.

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Frustration

Ever have one of those days when you feel like the cosmos is spitting on you. I had been having such a lovely time, a nice three day weekend with Brad and good friends, cool birthday presents, beautiful scenery and things maybe picking up at work. So I suppose as per the law of gravity I had to come down. Yesterday I went out to my car after a long day working and there was a parking ticket on my car. I figured it was because my sticker had been pulled off only a few days before and I had yet to make it to the DMV. So I took the ticket off my window, was a little frustrated and looked at the ticket. It was for $330.00 for parking in a handicap zone. Let me be clear and say I was parked on a city street with no signs limiting parking and the curb was not then nor had it ever been painted blue for handicap. In fact the only blue thing anywhere near the area is for a payphone. So now I get to fight the law. I am going to have to turn into mega photographer taking pictures of the area to prove it wasn't a handicapped spot. So my solution to this problem is screw them I will ride my bike from now on. Let them find a way to give that a parking ticket. All this started because the city is trying to get the homeless out of the area and so they have removed all the parking under the bridge and so there is little to no parking and the parking that is there is being strickly enforced. So I guess a homeless person needed my registration more than I did. At least they didn't break into my car.

So this prompted me to try and get the new printer working because I need to print out some forms to take with me to the dmv. Well it is now 3 hours later and I still don't have the printer working. Oh well it is not my day. If I can not get them to work tonight I will print it from work tomorrow.

On better news we have our intro to Judaism class tonight and I will get to play another round of stomp the Rabbi. I will be accepting questions in the comments that you may have for me to see if I can stomp him again. Last week I asked how you could hire a Temple Goy if the Torah says everyone in your camp including the stranger should rest on the 7 day. He didn't answer me but Rabbi Maller at my temple did. The goy can not be employed they have to volunteer to do those things for you or you are breaking the Sabbath and the practice began when Jews moved into cold climates like Russia because they could not survive the cold from not lighting fires. So feel free to leave your burning question for next weeks episode of Stump the Rabbi.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Cold Dead Body

I don't know if any of you are aware of this because it hasn't gotten much press, but the Pope is dead. While I find it said that the old man has passed and that he was very important to a lot of people, I don't see why every time I turn on the TV or open the internet I have to see pictures of his cold dead body. I know that in the Catholic faith they find it important to view the body of a loved one and since so many people hold a high value on the Pope they have to show pictures of him to those that have to mourn. My question is how does that involve me. I have no desire to see a dead body and am a bit offended that the media is forcing him on me even in commercials. I think they should have a special channel where it is all dead Pope all day long. You could put music to it and treat it like the Yule log they show every year at Christmas. For that matter I nominate the channel that plays the Yule log as the Dead Pope channel. That way only people who want to gaze upon the stiff, cold body can do so whenever they please and I don't have to see it. I have never seen a dead body before and have made the choice not to. I did not see the remains of my Grandparents when they passed and missing that part of the process did not hinder my grieving process. I certainly don't care to see a religious figure I didn't care about or agree with in life dead. So please media take your cold dead body pictures somewhere else.

OK now that I am done with that rant I will move on to other news. I only have one more work day and then I will begin my three day weekend of wine tasting and birthday. I love my birthday. The attention whore in me comes out and I love that everyone stops and acknowledges that a great thing happened to the world 32 years ago.... Karin entered it and the world may never be the same again. (Hee hee hee) Tomorrow will be a very busy day, I have to work in the morning and then Michele comes in the afternoon to abuse me yet again. I swear she keeps getting more and more sadistic in the torture she calls training. Then Tomorrow night I have my very first Intro to Judaism class. 18 weeks and I should be almost converted. The Rabbi already said I will be the teachers star student. I am afraid I will be one of those know it all geeks that the class wants to pummel. I guess we will see.

Today in the mail I got a new toy. I got the Ipod Shuffle Sport Case. So now my Shuffle is in a water proof case so I can still go out and exercise if it is raining. Of course I got this just as it seems the rain is finally gone. Oh well I guess I run a little late some times. Last night Brad got home about the same time as my alarm started to go off to get up. Ah well we will get to see each other this weekend and he is going to go with me to my Intro class. I think he is afraid of me knowing more about being a Jew than him and that is why he is so willing to take this class. We will see if he stays as interested in the class when homework is assigned. To be honest I am not sure how interested I am in homework. I mean how can a assignment show what my faith is. Well rules are rules and I will have to play by them for now.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Pet Peeves

Ok so the other day Brad and I went to the movies. We saw Sin City and I hated it, but that is beside my point here. I find several things at a movie theatre just get on my nerves. The one that really gets me is the sound of people crunching all through the movie. Why in the world did we decide to have the worlds noisiest food as the movie staple. I really don't want to hear you crunching in the middle of the movie I paid to watch. I also hate people who come in late to a movie and then expect other people to change seats to accomendate them. First I got here early and chose the specific seats I did for a reason. Second believe it or not I am watching the previews and to me it is just as much a part of the movie as the movie itself. Third the world doesn't revolve around you so why am I being inconvenienced for your lack of time management. My last big annoyance in the theatre is children in movies they have no business seeing. First a 10 pm show is not for you to have your kids at. That show time is adults only and we don't want to listen to your screaming kids who are up way past their bedtime so they are tired and cranky. Two a rated R film is not for your 5 year old. There is a reason that the films are rated and if you have to bring Billy to the movies take him to a movie that is for him and not for me. Third I am not their parent, if I wanted kids I would have them so don't ask me to parent them for you. You know when they are being rude and distracting, so do something about it, don't make me turn around and tell Billy to please stop kicking my seat and throwing popcorn.

The thing is I really do like going to the movies. There is no better way to see a movie than on the big screen with the sound rumbling your seats. I just don't like other people distracting me from staying in the world of the movie. I don't want to know that I am surrounded by other people watching a movie, I want to be the third person omniscient who is floating above the story being played out. I can see now that this was my problem with Sin City. I could in no way feel apart of the movie being played out. The story didn't make me want to go there with them, so instead my brain focused on the none ceasing sound of crunching coming from the stranger next to me. Next time I hope people will eat dinner before the movie begins.

Sunday, April 03, 2005

Living with the Seven Dwarves

It seems as though lately my darling fiancee has been going through the stages of the dwarves. A few weeks ago he was sneezy, as he was feeling under the weather a bit. He is almost always Doc, as he has an amazing grasp on all sorts of random information. By the time he gets home at night he is usually sleepy. Right now he is trying to change his brakes and I think he is feeling a bit like Dopey, though I don't really think so. I am looking forward to him being Happy, I am hoping next weekend will help out with that. But this weekend he has been Grumpy. He came home yesterday in a grump and today has stayed in it. His brakes on his car aren't helping him out any in improving his mood. On days that he turns into Grumpy Dwarf I find it best to say as little as possible. I know his mood has little to do with me so it is best to not do anything to be the source of his Grumpiness. I actually don't mind Grumpy Dwarf that much, it can actually be funny to watch, but it does make me a little sad that he is so frustrated with things and there is little to nothing I can do to fix it. I know the movie is almost over and when it finally ends I should lose the dwarves and gain my fiancee. Actually though through this whole thing there is a dwarf that is yet to appear. I seriously doubt I will ever see this one manifest though, and he is Bashful. Although the good thing about living with the dwarves is that in Brad's eyes I am Snow White. I suppose there are worse things to be.