Money Can't Buy Time

At this time five years ago, I lost both of my grandparents, within just a couple of months of each other. It was a hard period of time for my family, and continues to be an emotional time of year for me. I miss them each individually, but I also miss the way they fit into the tight knit dynamic that is ever present in our growing family.

My mom's parents were amazing people. When we were little, they played with us, went sledding with us down their steep driveway in the snow, let us come over, fed us well, and filled our lives with memories that I still think of fondly. As we grew up and they moved to the coast, they allowed us to come visit, spend time, camp out in their yard, and bring armies of friends, boyfriends & girlfriends, and pets with us for weekends away from Portland. There was no shortage of love, quality time, or laughs in their house, and it quickly became my favorite place to spend weekends after I was able to drive and had a car of my own. 

Would you rather: Have more time, or have more money? 

At this time every year, I wish I would have had more time to spend with my grandma and grandpa; this one is simple, really - I would rather have more time. 

Where does money really get you anyway? Is it a necessary evil to survive, to pay bills, to feed & clothe yourself? Of course. But it is the root of any happiness? No, not at all. I mean, I suppose it contributes - without money, life would be pretty bleak, and I would argue that in the past year or so that I have finally had more of a disposable income and more ability to both spend and save, things are less stressful. But money certainly does not buy happiness on any level. 

I am far more concerned about the time I spend with people, than what I am spending to do so. I don't need to go out to dinner or see a concert, or to take lavish vacations in order to enjoy the company of someone in my life. I am often content to lay in silence in my boyfriend's arms after a home-cooked meal (yea, I make food sometimes now, it's a new thing). I enjoy long walks outside with my girlfriends or dinner at home with my mom & dad. There is more to life than things you have to pay for, and often times the ones you don't have to pay for end up being the best ones anyway. 

For the cost of half of a tank of gas in my '91 Toyota Tercel, I was able to spend years of weekends with my grandparents while they were here; I can't imagine not having those memories, those stories to think over when I visit the beach house now that they're gone. It didn't take a lot of money for me to have those weekends, to sit on the couch and watch TV with Grandpa, or to take a walk on the beach with Grandma. But it took time. Time I could have spent with friends or at the movies or at the mall. Time I preferred to spend with my cousins. 

Money doesn't buy anything as important as time. Sometimes that best thing you can do for yourself, is to make time for yourself, and then to make some time for someone else. Because in the end, you won't have any of the stuff you spent your money on, but you'll be able to find peace in knowing that the people in your life knew you valued your time with them. 

Tattoos Just Make You Better

I remember the day I got my nose pierced like it was yesterday; I was at Black Hole Body Piercing, and I was pretty newly 18 years old. The guy who pierced it punctured a capillary with the needle, so when he removed the chunk of wine cork from my nostril, a waterfall of blood came pouring out of my face, spilling onto my tee shirt. He quickly stuffed a stud into the hole and grabbed me a wad of Kleenex as I tried to blink away the stars I was seeing. It was quite the ordeal, and then I ended up removing the piercing within the year after it was too much of a nightmare to continuously take in and out for work, where I wasn't allowed to have it.

Would you rather: Have piercings or tattoos?

Outside of my ears, I don't have anything pierced that I once did; it turns out, I decided at some point that piercings weren't worth the trouble of cleaning and shopping for stainless jewelry to satisfy my nickel allergy. I would much prefer tattoos, both on my own body and on the bodies of others. 

I first got my ears pierced in 5th grade, and at some point in junior high was allowed to have a second set of holes in my lobes as well (those have since closed up, been repierced, and closed again). I had my belly button pierced at one time as well, and I have the scar but no longer the piercing. And then there was my nose. That was the extent of the piercing craze for me - I never did upper ears, or my brows, which were all the rage in my generation. I am not a huge fan of piercings and don't get cravings to add holes to my body on a regular basis.

The same is not true of tattoos. I crave tattoos. I have several and I want more, and I generally allow myself to plan for one with at least one quarterly bonus a year - I figure a bonus is meant to be spent on something fun, right? 

My first tattoo, I got when I was 18, and my mom went with me to get it. My friend Josh drew it for me; it's a very small, cross-legged Tinkerbell on the small of my back, off to the side of what would be a "tramp stamp." I got it at a tattoo studio in Milwaukie, which is no longer in business, where all of my high school friends were getting theirs done. It was pretty for a while, but I've had it for 12 years and it's needing redone really badly. I have every intention to cover it up with something big and bright and wild. 

Next, I went up to Dark Something-or-other in Vancouver, where I selected a crescent moon and single star off a wall of art. We added a second star and the initials of two close friends of mine who's passed away that year and a couple years prior, and I left. I never liked it. It was too small for my calf, and the guy just really didn't do a good job. Just last year, I had it covered up by the amazing artist at Tron City in Portland, with a huge purple rose and a swallow. I love it now; I think it's beautiful and I love how big and bright it is. I also love that you can't see the ugly moon anymore. 

My third tattoo I got at Red Rocket Tattoo in New York City. It says "Carpe Diem" in large black block lettering, and it's on my hip. I like it, My mom hates it. I hid it from her for a long time, because I was living with her and for some reason thought I would get in trouble for it. It's not my favorite tattoo, but I love the story behind it and that I got it on one of the best vacations I went on with my best friend. 

Fourth was the aforementioned cover up. 

My fifth tattoo, I got this year, again from Tron City. It's my largest one, and also my favorite, and the one I intend to add to next. It is on my side, up under my armpit, and it's two honey bees and a beehive, meant to represent my grandparents. There's a long story to it that you can read all about, but in general, this is by far my most meaningful tattoo - and the only one with a real story outside of I liked the design. I plan to add huge, vintage-style flowers to it, and probably soon - I like to get tattoos in the winter so they can heal without being on display when they're all gross and peeling. 

Not only do I have several tattoos and want many more, I am also fascinated by tattoos on other people.  I love them, love the stories. I like to look at them. My boyfriend has a tattoo on his shoulder blade that I love to outline with my finger when we're in bed watching TV. I enjoy watching people get tattooed as well, which I hear is weird...I sat through my girlfriend's 5+ hour session and loved it. 

I think tattoos are great. But more importantly, I think that if you want a tattoo or a piercing, you should just get it. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks - it's your body; treat it as such.

Take a Step Backwards, I Can Smell You

Recently, I interrupted my maintenance supervisor mid-sentence and said, dude, you are the loudest person I have ever heard...please speak in whisper. From around the corner, my assistant manager said, you are the TWO loudest people I have ever heard! Well, I can't argue with that.

Would you rather: Only be able to whisper, or only be able to shout?

#LoudGirlProblems. I am loud. I speak loudly. My best friend also speaks loudly. When we are together in public, we tend to be those two girls you can hear laughing from the other side of the store. People who speak loud, I feel, are less annoying than people who speak so softly that you have to get too close to them to hear what they're saying. It's weird when you have to cuddle up into someone's personal space to hear them. It's less weird - apparently - when you're sitting at lunch and can converse with people three tables down. That's me and Rachel. Across the grocery store from each other, sharing one list.

Based on the fact that I prefer to keep a safe distance from people, I would rather only be able to shout, than to have to lean in to whisper all the time.

I hate being close to people. Physically, I mean. I don't like when I can feel someone else's body heat radiating, or when I can smell their breath. I hate when people are too close to me in line at the grocery store, and I feel claustrophobic when I am in a room with too many people. The thought of having to be close enough to everyone that I could whisper and they could hear me, gives me anxiety. I talk to a lot of people on a daily basis, and about 25% of the time, I spray a stream of Febreeze over my desk after they've left; I can't even come to grips that I may have to be any closer to them than I already am.

On the flip side, once I am comfortable with someone, once I have a close relationship with them, I am like a leech (no, not like a clingy). If I know and love you, I want to be in your bubble, and I want you in mine. My hate of being close becomes a craving for touch. I like to hold and be held, and I prefer to be hugging, kissing, holding hands, than to not be doing those things.

So I suppose the whisper rule might be tolerable if I was going to be surrounded by only those people I like the best...

A Life in Reverse is Backwards

My cousin Daphnie just turned 13 and got to sign up for her own Facebook account. My immediate advice to her was, always remember that what you write on the internet will be there forever. Thanks to the new TimeHop app on the iPhone, we can even get a daily play by play of the things we posted on Facebook and other social media sites on this day last year, the year before last, all the way back to five years ago. A five year play by play of our lives on the internet. That's a scary thought.

Would you rather: Have a rewind button on your life, or a pause button on your life?

I downloaded the TimeHop app, because, well because I was curious, mostly. And I can say - with much certainty - after reading back on my life over the past 5 years, I would much rather have a pause button than a rewind one.

For several reasons.

I don't want to rewind because I don't want to move backwards. My life has progressed, has gotten better, has improved significantly, as time has moved forward - what would I be going backwards to? I mean, there are times in my life - specifically in my childhood - that would be pretty fun to revisit, but in that case, I'd have to argue that whatever that "scene select" feature is called on a DVD would be better than rewind...to rewind, I'd have to go backwards through all the bad to get to the good I was after. To rewind, I'd have to see all of my fuck ups, my mistakes, my heartaches, in reverse; I'd have to watch it all happen again. Not worth the headache to time hop back to some random fun memory, if you ask me.

I also don't want to rewind because I try to move forward in my life without regret. Rewinding feels like regret; it feels like saying hold on, I wanna do that over. I'm not happy with how I did that. That's what regret sounds like. I try my best to find a lesson or a purpose in the things that happen, the events that take place in my life. Sometimes it's hard to find purpose in the bad, but the reality is, without the bad, I wouldn't appreciate the good. I don't want to rewind because I want my present to be as happy and raw as it is, and changing something that happened in the past would alter the way I am currently experiencing life.

Today specifically, I wouldn't mind a pause feature. Today I feel like life is moving faster than I can keep up with, that people are making decisions and moving forward without me, that I am grasping at air as I fall over the side of a building. I need that slow motion feeling from the movies, where the hero rescues the girl just before she plummets. Today feels like I'd like to pause, mid-fall.

Then again. in the movies, it isn't a real pause; it's more like slow motion. I suppose if I were to really hit pause on my life, it'd be like a stand still. I don't really want my life to stand still...I just want to slow it the fuck down for a moment.

That's the thing about life though; you don't get to speed it up or slow it down. You don't get to back it up or make it stand still. You just have to live it as it happens. And though given the choice between rewinding and pausing I would choose to pause, the reality is I am much more content living my life in regular play mode. #noregrets.

I Love That #LyricalGenius

Last week, after reading my blog post about not getting to do whatever you want to do, my boyfriend noticed that I had written it in some cadence, with some (accidental) rhyming. He called me a Lyrical Genius. #LovedIt.

Day One of Ten: Would you rather...Sing every word you speak, or always speak in rhymes??

I am a terrible singer. Terrible. Awful. So very bad. I am tone deaf, I can't match pitch, and I rarely know the words to anything but the chorus of the latest Taylor Swift single. I am the girl who loves karaoke bars but will never torment the crowd by picking up the mic - rather I am astonished by those who do. I watched, jaw on the floor, as a guy rapped a full Eminem song last weekend at a bar, without sounding like he had his tongue in a light socket. I love to listen to people who can sing. I even love to listen to my fella and his roommate, who can't really sing. But the singing I do, I do in the shower. By my damn self.

To benefit the rest of the world, and to satisfy the writer in me, I would much prefer to always speak in rhyme.

That said, for being a writer, I always sucked at poetry. It felt restricted. I didn't like to read it or write it, and I certainly didn't want it to be my focus. I remember telling my freshman English teacher that I hated the structure of poetry, the way she was asking me to take my story and conform it into a standard prose, with a certain number of syllables per line. What next, are you going to try and tell me I can begin a sentence with the word and? Yes, I can! I didn't like reading poems; they felt stiff and forced, and it would be years into college before I finally found any appreciation for poets such as E.E. Cummings (probably because in high school I was being force fed Shakespeare, which felt a little like squeezing lemon juice into my eyes).

This same English teacher taught me, though, that in writing, it was acceptable to break a few rules. My poetry doesn't have to conform, it doesn't have to rhyme. No one ever said a poem had to be lyrical or read like a sonnet. If I want it to rhyme, great - but it doesn't have to. One of my favorite writing assignments in this particular English class, was to model a poem of my own life after Walt Whitman's Song of Myself. The assignment was essentially to write a poem about myself. But I wanted to make a point of the structure of his poem, so I took it a step further and wrote in his exact, precise style, line by line. And not only did my teacher love it, but she read it aloud to all of her classes and submitted to some publication somewhere that she was involved in; ironically, as much as I hated being confined as a writer, that was the best poem I ever wrote - and I was confined to Whitman's few hundred words to complete it.

When I write, I write by my own rules. I start sentences with and or but or because. I write with hash tags. I overuse the semicolon. And I don't even feel bad about it.

Because rules are made to be broken.

Needless to say, I prefer to do things I'm good at. I'm a good writer and a terrible singer. So as obnoxious as it may be to look for rhyming words all day every day, I would argue that listening to myself sing all day...would be much worse.