Feeling Gray in Blue Skies and Sunny

I am having one of those days and I cannot wait until my Sister from another Mister gets here to relieve my pain. I guess that is life, especially the life of a depressive. We have our days of elation, when we think the pain has gone away and then we remember that it takes time to feel alive, again. Even my magical pills cannot mask everything.

The Ups and Downs and Flubber me Fuck-ups

Life has a way of putting you in your place. It has a way of forcing you to be grateful for the good things that happen to you, because it also gives you heartache. I am grateful for so much in my life and although the times of disappointment and failure and fear and trauma and pain have taken their toll on me, I am grateful for what they have taught me and the times they have given me.

I met a person in Texas who changed my perspective and altered the path of my life. In the beginning, she talked with me until our eyelids became weights. In the middle, she kissed me until sunrise. In the end, she broke my heart. Two thirds of our time was great, but I will always wear the scar she gave me as a reminder of the consequences of risk. For now it feels fresh and painful and unexplainable. Later I will pull out the pictures and remember how it once felt to be someone's other, someone's more than a friend, someone's girlfriend. I wrote so many personal journal entries for years wondering why no one that I liked ever liked me back. One day it happened and it was real for a moment, and then it was gone. I am, however grateful for everything, even the pain I feel right now. For this pain means that I loved someone and although it is lost forever in the future, it lives forever in my heart.

When you're going through hell keep going

My Mom once sent me Winston Churchill's wisdom on a refrigerator magnet. It's true. Why can't a happy slice of success just be a happy occasion? There always has to be someone in your life fucking with you and making you feel like you can't do anything right.

Pills, Bills, and Mountainous Hills

Who do I know in their twenties that is not constantly wrestling between thoughts of positive potential for the future and thoughts of failure, disgrace, and depression? Unfortunately, most of my friends seem pretty damn happy, stable, and well...married. I suppose I received more eye rolls at my ideas, when I was younger than my friends, but I cannot help but wish I were them sometimes. It would be nice to know that you have a place of your own to go home to every night after your stable job. It would be nice to know that you have someone who loves you so much he or she offers assurance that they want to be with you for a very long time. I guess that I never realized that all of the "normal" parts of adulthood would be so stressful. Maybe I make them stressful through my choices and own obscene mind. I just want to go camping when I make plans to camp, so I can buy s'more fixins' and snacks. I sort of want my old life back and at the same time am so addicted and in love with my new life that it breaks my heart with the thought of giving it up. Everyday, I just really miss my Grandma, because when it came down to it, she was always the Bestest Person, Thing, and Idea in the whole wide world. I want to be brave like her.

Wild Berry Zinger

Tea Time at my Grandma's made me so giddy that I hopped. It was a special occasion, maybe I was sleeping over or we had just finished Chinese food, when someone would get the idea to put on the tea pot. Coffee mugs would be lined up awaiting the impending boiling water. We would pick our tea, traditionally from a variety box of Celestial Seasoning and my Grandma would always choose Wild Berry Zinger. I would remove my special zoo cup from the cupboard, wrapped in a plastic bag and taped, so no one else would use it. The cup had dancing, happy, clothed zoo animals on it and fit perfectly into my hand. The water would begin to steam and the stove would be turned off. The cups with tea bags already inserted would be filled with boiling water that immediately changed colors upon impact. My Grandma's Wild Berry Zinger would turn a dark purple and would zing with a berry berry aroma. We would add half and half and let the white swirl until it mixed with the tea. My Grandma always wanted me to add a half spoonful of honey and let it cool. I would push her cup to the edge of the table, so she could reach it from her wheelchair and we would talk about the time she hit a the boy in her class over the head with a baseball bat. We would sip tea and time would stop. My bestest friend, a cup of tea, and seemingly all the time in the world.

Somewhere in my mess of moving from state to state is the zoo cup, an item I inherited upon my Grandma's death. Today would have been my Grandma's 84th birthday, if she were still alive. Maybe we would have batted a balloon back and forth together, eaten grilled cheese, and in the evening sipped Wild Berry Zinger from a cup colored in dancing zoo animals.

Popcorn in a metal bowl

My dad makes the best popcorn on planet Earth. In his scorched and broken popcorn popper he pops red kernels while standing over the stove in his girl's AAU sweatpants, knitted slippers, Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt, and knit cap. Usually he hums as he retrieves the set of variously-sized metal bowls to fill for each family member watching a different television show simultaneously. The Dodd family has never done the Friday night TGIF family line-up together. Years ago, it may have been tried, but was quickly abandoned due to remote controls hurled across the room at siblings' heads and wet sobs saturating the popcorn. Thus we occupy all five televisions. However we do all share a common fondness for freshly popped popcorn...my Dad's freshly popped popcorn.

When the the popcorn popping in the popper becomes a weaker pop, he pulls the pan from the burner and distributes the white puffs into the variously sized metal bowls. He sprinkles salt and sometimes pepper or Parmesan cheese onto the corn and distributes it amongst the television viewers. Crunch.

Often my Dad surprises me with a metal bowl full of freshly popped popcorn and I unfailingly have just brushed my teeth. Unfailingly he says, "You can brush 'em again. Eat your popcorn!" I miss my Dad's popcorn. I haven't lived at home for sometime and thus have not tasted his popcorn for sometime. I haven't even talked to my dad in awhile. We don't have much of a phone call relationship, but more of a road trip across country relationship.

I hadn't thought about my Dad's popcorn in awhile, until I was laying in bed watching the season premiere of Glee on my computer. There was a knock on my room door and I soon found it to be John, the farmer I work for. He apologized for not making dinner, which I found to be ridiculous. I usually fend for myself and welcomed the chance to tonight. Usually the stove top is brimming with stockpots and cast iron pans cooking enough food to feed an orchestra. Looking at all of the cooking food day-after-day makes me tired. Occasionally I just want to put some peanut butter on bread and call it a night. Tonight was my night. I sneaked in from the library to an empty stove top, grabbed a bagel from the cupboard, some pesto, and bott.a.bing bott.a.bang - dinner! I scurried upstairs, typed hulu.com into my search engine, and started watching Glee. My Glee addiction started in Texas during my second season at TOS. My "sister" Jess, K, and I would stay up late in the office watching every episode diligently. Tonight, as I watched from a lonely room in Chimacum, WA, I remembered those days fondly-the beginning of everything, before the sleepless nights of worry mixed with the frolic of new countryside.

Glee had just begun when John came into my room to apologize for the lack of dinner. I told him that I had found something to eat and was quite content. "Would you like some popcorn?" He said in a caring voice. I thought about it for a moment and decided that popcorn would make an excellent compliment to my Glee viewing and said, "Sure." About ten minutes later John came up the stairs with a metal bowl filled with white, puffed kernels. Popcorn in a metal bowl...but not my Dad's.

I guess before this ramble commenced, I wanted to reach a moral. I tried to think of a metaphor that compares popcorn to life, but it didn't sound decent. I suppose my moral is this: Enjoy your Dad's popcorn, because you never know when the Pop will stop!

There's a Cat in My Bed!!!

Currently, there is a cat in my bed, snuggling next to my right leg on this cold, rainy, Pacific Northwest night. I should have gone to bed almost 2 hours ago, the reminiscing about snow with Alphabet got me in the mood to write.

I am laying in a new bed, again, in a new house, with a new family in Chimacum, WA. I am working on an organic farm, but this farm offers more than a pungent flower. Having worked on the farm for just over a week, I have already worked with bees, built a chicken coop, moved a sheep fence, worked with strawberries, harvested squash, dealt with chickens...It's a wonderful experience, but not really what I want to write about at this moment.

A few months ago, my nightly ritual was to sit on the dock on a lake in Texas next to K, shoot the breeze, and listen for splashes in the lake. We convinced ourselves that these splashes were not hungry bass, but lake LBJ dolphins and so we listened. We watched and listened for months and months, through cold chills and warm breezes. For me, there was no other place that I would have rather been, but with K listening for those dolphins. The days moved through each other and we both eventually left Texas. I turned off my ignition in Colorado and she in Washington. Then a storm fluttered by and I started my ignition and vacationed in Michigan for a couple of weeks, before I drove to Vashon. The details are now important, but only as a reminder of the the reasons we believe in what and whom. Sometimes you get that feeling and you just know that you have to be somewhere else. Thus I found myself on the lavender farm and eventually in Chimacum. K and I found ourselves, last Sunday night, on a dock in Port Townsend, WA watching and listening in the cool night air...then suddenly a puff...and again. We bent our knees and strained our eyes to the distant water polluted by the yacht club light. A fin splash! More puffs! Our hearts were racing as we hugged each other like a kid hugs his aunt after receiving a Super Soaker 2000. Orcas, we assumed were swimming in the distance and we were in Port Townsend, WA, together on a dock...listening. What strange courses life takes us through. A few short months ago neither of us could have predicted this moment and if we had, neither of us would have believed it. It happened, though and I am grateful.

Life is amazingly good right now. I am working in a field that I have always wanted to try, living in a beautiful place, and I have someone willing to scratch my finger when it is bee stung, triple in size, and filled with puss. That my friend is special.