The Link Between Linen Pillows and Rocky Horror

If you've ever been to my home you know that I like pillows. Big pillows, cotton pillows, linen pillows, small pillows, cotton floor cushions (aka LARGE pillows), arm rest pillows (ok, they came with the sofa). Pillows, pillows, pillows.

Several years ago I found these nice linen covered pillows at a discount store. I favored these linen pillows. Over several years the pillows began to leak their stuffing. One by one I've had to say goodbye to them when sewing the edges no longer worked.

And now I am down to my last linen pillow.

This morning I woke up with the last pillow of its kind and went straight to brush my teeth. Looking in the mirrow I realized that this last linen pillow reminded me of the first time I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show. My friends had all seen it and we go together for my birthday. What no one warned me about was the rice. Someone should always warned others about things that could take up residence in your hair. If someone had said something I would have worn a hat. I enjoyed the movie but I kept finding rice in places, mainly my hair, for two weeks AFTER the movie.

So this morning brushing my teeth in the mirror I was reminded of Rocky Horror because I have little, white tuffs of pillow stuffin in my dreadlocks.
Great.
I am sure I'll be finding little white surprises for weeks. I love my hair, but it does has a hoarding problem.
I can only imagine what people behind me in line at the grocery store will think.

Is it me?

The other night, after my run, I realized I'd somehow caught a cold. I was fine before the run, or at least I felt fine. Afterwards the sneezing started.

I went for a run early in the evening. I used to run daily, but with moving and travel for work got out of the habit. Running for me is important for two reasons: 1) weight control/toning and 2) stress relief. When I run my mind goes blank, which I look forward to happening. I'm always thinking and I welcome my time to focus on nothing.

The weather has been nuts here lately, warm, then cold then overcast with a chance of rain (yet no rain appears) and back to warm and then cold all over again. I put on a sweatshirt that I'd forgotten I had and went out to relieve stress and start getting back into shape. All was fine until I noticed this truck slowing down next to me. Okay, fine, whatever.

I put on my really mean face (people always ask why I'm so pissed off when I run), to show that I wasn't interested. I was jogging. Unfortunately my mean jogger face didn't deter this guy - he drove back and forth and back again, over and over. I yelled that he was being, "#*&@! creepy!" And yet he continued to follow me no matter how mean I looked or how often I crossed the street.

And I complain that men never ask me out on dates.

This unwanted and creepy attention was really pissing me off. Are there prostitutes that jog to attract customers? Is there a group of call girls that work out as a way to entice creepy men? Forget police stings on prostitution, just send some female officers out for a jog. Seriously, why would a woman in bulky sweat clothes remind anyone of a prostitute?!


I couldn't just enjoy my run and I was becoming more stressed rather than less stressed. Finally I flagged down a cop and let him deal with the creepy truck guy. He was nice about it and drove around until I got back to my house. My run was ruined by some idiot and when I got home the sneezing started.

The next morning I was sure that I'd caught a cold. Bleh. So I went to get some herbal tea and homeopathic medicine. I get the medicine without incident and head over to get some tea at a local coffeeshop. For some reason I'm surrounded by cops, not one or three, but no less than six. I drink my tea, thinking positive thoughts about beating this cold, and I notice the guy sitting in front of my table has his camera phone pointing at me. Seems he was trying to "read" some text message - except he wasn't trying to read anything. He kept that phone trained on me the entire time. As soon as I noticed I put my sweater over my front and my book in my face.

The best part? Camera phone guy was there with his wife and trying to get a photo/video of me while the wife sat there. She didn't have a clue and she never looked at his phone.
He finally put it away after I kept the book up and gave him a pissed look.

Why do all the perverts like me?!

Where did the week go?

It's amazing how quickly time disappears when you're off from work. I've been off for one week and I'm wondering why I haven't accomplished much and how the time went so quickly.

A week at work feels like longer than five days. A week off from work feels like one day.

Okay, daily photo in preparation for the 365 Project that I'll officially start (ACK!) on the first day of 2009. Be prepared for some not so flattering photos until I get

1) get to know more about taking self portraits that look like what I see in the mirror

2) get a better camera

3) learn to take better photos while not fearing the camera!

I hope that everyone's holidays are going well - and I don't mean in the Halmark way either. My holidays are rarely of the Halmark variety. :P

I finally

Put up my Christmas tree.

I dragged it from my storage unit last week. I was filled with the idea that I'd put that tree up the minute I got it in the house. And then it sat for a week.

Last night, as the weather in Austin went from 81 degrees to 40 degrees, I finally put the tree up. Each year I have the idea of a picture perfect vision, the tree, the decorations, the lights....and each year I feel like a failure before I ever take the tree out of the box.

But I managed to get it done last night. The photo is sort of bright, but I love how the tree looks. I went down to see it from the street below and in the darkness it is a bright spot.

Not perfection, not picture perfect, but accomplished none the less.

Morning

I am a morning person. Early mornings. VERY early mornings.

I'm not sure if my body is programmed to like the morning best or if I learned it from my family. My mom was a single mother and in college, I was the first grandchild and we lived with my grandparents for a few years. I spent a LOT of time with my grandparents, Paw-paw and Gang-gan, until I moved away from New Orleans nine years ago. I think because I grew up in their house, and then later blocks away, help me have a close relationship with them.

I "ran away" from home a handful of times in my teens - well, I ran to my grandparent's house. I had my own room and another set of pets there. What always bothered me is that my mom never looked for me. Sure, she'd call my grandparents and talk about her day, but she'd never ask if I was there. Years later she told me that she knew I was there...apparently she and my grandmother had worked out a system.


Living with my grandparents meant hearing Paw-paw get ready for work while Gang-gan made his breakfast at 4am. At first I'd sleep until I heard my grandfather leave the house. Then one winter, I realized that if I got up with him my grandpa would share the hot cocoa my grandma made for his thermos.

And from that time on I got up early with both of them and I still get up early. At work I like the early shift and up until three years ago, I woke at 5am and was at work by 6am. There are benefits to going into work early - no traffic. (And I'm crazy in traffic.)

I'm babbling now. My point is that I love mornings; they connect me with my grandparents, now in their 80s.
The mornings are full of possibilities...which sometimes become realities....or not. With work and school it can be easy to forget that the day ahead could bring something unexpectedly great and clarity on some issue/problem from the day prior.
Recently I agreed to take a photo a day for one year, starting 1/1/09. Robin and Wendy are doing this also, so I don't feel so alone. And again, I HATE photos of myself, so I'm trying to get myself ready.
These are photos from my morning:
3) Bootini - since Noona passed he's taken up the role of following my every move in the mornings. Noona would be proud...or annoyed.
2) Second step of the morning - Gabby and his quest for the elixir known as shower water. Seriously, he goes nuts if I don't do this right away.
1) Me - with both cats in the exact same positions. It's a tough crowd sometimes.

Stepping out on a thin branch.

Since I can remember I've had a camera. I loved taking photos of relatives and pets as a kid.
One of my first toys was a Fisher-Price toy camera. I can still here the dull click sound it made when I "took" a photo.

I LOVED that camera.

I don't know if I ever told my mom this or she noticed on her own, but when I got a little older she gave me a real camera. I was the only 8 year old I knew with her own camera. Nevermind that most of the photos were of my family and all my pets.
I'm sure the drugstore loved developing roll after roll of my bunny, cats, hamsters and dogs. My mom was a single parent going to college. In hindsight I'm sure that buying film and those cube flashes and cost her money she could have used on other things. She never said a word to me when I'd dump film in her purse for developing. She never said, "Enough cat photos!" She allowed me to take my photos no matter how mundane.


I still love photography. I still want a really nice camera and lessons on light composition and all the technical things that would help me. I want to capture a moment well enough to share that moment with others. These moments, like my childhood photographs, are never photos of me. I discovered early on that I didn't like photographs of myself. I would pose for them with family during the holidays or some celebration and then just before the click...I would duck out of sight. My family has quite a few photos of everyone and my hands or the very top of my head.


I have reasons for not wanting my image captured that have nothing to do with America's Most Wanted, but these are all personal. And after a conversation with Robin, I've discovered that my reasons aren't so different from the reasons others don't like to be photographed.


All of this brings me to this moment. This weekend Robin suggested doing something others have done, taking a single self- portrait daily for 365 days, one year. Sounds simple for those unafraid of the camera, but not so simple for someone like me.

I want to grow and not just be comfortable in what I already know or have or have experienced. I want to reconcile my brain's image with the camera image. My growth starts on 1/1/09 and I'm interested and terrified of what might happen, but I'm doing it.
Thanks for the idea Robs.

Funk. I had it.

I realized yesterday that despite all the great things in my life, I've been in a funk. For some time. I feel like it sneaked up on me while I was juggling (sometimes poorly) work, school, my place and life.
The funk came to visit and never left.


I want the funk to leave and I've started taking steps to help it find its way to someone or something else. Having been excited about the new person I met, our talks and date, has been great. And I think that having this person persistently pursue me as I pushed him away has made me see my funk. I wouldn't allow him in and rejected him several times, but each time he came back... And finally I realized that I was just creating excuses not to see what would or could happen. The funk will do that - it will convince you that you're better off as you are currently. I am glad I realized that and allowed him into my life because he's a great guy.


It is amazing how once you let someone into your life you expect that connectedness daily. It happens fast.


But I sense he may be pulling away now that I've allowed him into my life. And for the first time in some time, I am not taking his distancing personally. In the past I would have taken it very personally; as a sign that something was wrong with me. Not now, nope.

He is his own person with his own complex issues. So I am allowing him the chance to distance himself or see what happens between us. It feels liberating not to try to figure out what happened or worry about what might happen and to let go of the funk I'd been feeling for some time.

I did it

I finally let go and let someone ask me out. If you know me you are aware that I'd rather walk down a dark and dangerous alley at night than date.

My dates don't go well. If they do (which is RARE) it usually doesn't lead to a second date. Which always make me think, how can two people have a very similar experience yet such a different experience?

I've gone on dates with men who wore utili-kilts. I've got nothing against men in skirts, but I don't want to date one. There are just some things that don't suit me and men in skirts are one of those things.


So someone's been asking me out and I've been putting him off. Okay, I've been saying no, no, no. I made excuses to myself and to him. And then one day I decided that I didn't want to be friends.
I knew there were other women interested in him, so I figured I'd disappear and he wouldn't notice. Apparently he did. We talked and I finally relented.

And I had a great time. I'm actually looking forward to a second date.