Yo quiero!!

I was reading a magazine article about how you spend your energy. Basically, you need to be expending energy, and also recouping it at some sort of even ratio in order to feel happy, stay sane, not get burned out, etc. It asked you to fill in several circles that were cut in half - emotional, spiritual, mental, physical energies - to see what filled each half. One half was what was expended, one half was how it came back to you.
One lady was just exhausted and thought she needed a vacation, but when she filled out her circles, it turned out that really she wasn't spending enough mental energy. She needed a new job, not a beach vaca.

I feel like that today, and yesterday and the day before...

I'm looking forward to starting Grad school this fall... that will give me a good mental workout. But organizing files, making the Boss's flight arrangements, and re-organizing his business cards is sapping me of my mental vigor. But anyway, I found it interesting that by not spending enough mental energy you actually can feel more lethargic! Mysteries of the universe!

In other news, I am doing really great these days.
Yesterday, I (left work early b/c there was nothing to do and the boss was gone :) and came home to make a strawberry pie with the berries that I had picked at a beautiful farm, on a picturesque day. I liked doing it all from scratch! That was very fulfilling.
Then I went up to Alberta street for some fun-filled (and freak-filled!) people watching during the monthly "Last Thursday" art night. {the link does NOT do it justice!} It is very ripe for people watching! There were some Cirque Du Soleil style people on stilts, an aggressive 12 year old white boy trying to sell candy so he could "buy a bike," and the regular fare of Obama supporters and interesting art.

And for the daily spontaneous laughter, I was driving home when I spied a little Chihuahua with a major bout of machismo in the drivers seat of this little hot-rod. He was trying for all his life to start a rumble with the bikers and peds...!

Really?!?

This 2nd hand fortune seems to be eluding visibility.

It reads
"Maybe you can live on the moon in next century."

Oh, to be so lucky!

its a bird...its a plane... its a coon-skin cap??

There are lots of reasons why I love living in Portland!

Last weekend I was with one of my friends and we were about to pull out of her driveway when I exclaimed, "Watch out for the guy in the coon-skin cap!"
As he proceeded to walk by it became apparent that he was not actually wearing a coon-skin cap, it was only his gross ponytail protruding from underneath his backwards hat...

I love that after living here for a year and a half that I would automatically assume that he was wearing a coon-skin cap, of all things.

That's what we do here... we Keep Portland Weird!

Another friend of mine told me that while she was sitting in a coffee shop, she thought that she saw a guy walk by on stilts right outside the window. But in reality the street sloped sharply upwards and he was just really tall...

But I really did see 3 people unicycling down the street in the course of 1 week.
I guess that some people are really doing their part to "Keep Portland Weird" and the rest of us are just mentally compensating for it.

earth day... oh the irony!

I live in Portland.
Portland is where people who love, nay worship the earth live.
This means Earth Day is a sacred holiday.

It is also a time when people get to push their lefty agendas, particularly the one about global warming.

On Saturday I went to the local Earth Day festival.
I saw electric cars, all sorts of stuff about recycling, and anti-fossil fuel proponents. I even saw a sign claiming that meat-eating was the #2 leading cause of global warming.

Well, it just so happened that the day's temperature was at a record low. We're talking 30's- 40's and they were calling for SNOW. There was an intense hail-storm all throughout this Earth Day Festival, and lots of people were wearing all of their winter gear.

Global warming???
I think to celebrate Earth Day I am going to drive around and then eat some beef.
Hopefully then it will finally warm up around here!

I do like surprises, generally

Yesterday I found a chocolate chip cookie in my mailbox. This does not normally happen.

I started to look for clues in order to understand this mystery.

Clue #1: It was inside of a little brown bag that told me that it came from Noah's Bagels.
Clue #2: My apartment number was also written on the brown bag. Strange

I thought this was quite odd at first. Maybe someone wants me dead and poisoned the cookie!

My mind immediately wandered to scenes from Snow White where the wicked witch poisons the apple with what appears to be toxic waste.
I quickly discarded that unpleasant thought.
Well anyway, I thought, maybe the Bagel shop is doing a promotional!

However Clue #3 dispelled that. The receipt inside indicated that a) it was from a person - the bagel shop would not buy their own cookies and stuff the bags with receipts- and b) the person who bought the cookie bought 2 of them...

This was getting weirder, but I opened it up and ate it anyway. Sharing with my friend, who also agreed that while the whole things was creepy, the cookie still looked good.

I do realize that this is the same logic that nearly did Snow White in. I'm still in good health today, so unless its a slow-acting poison, I'm probably out of the woods.

Tightrope Walking of the Heart

Yesterday I had a realization.

Both of my efforts at a relationship with the aforementioned PERSON were capped by a viewing of Cirque du Soleil,

as in a matter of days later...

Its almost like Cirque du Soleil is the perfect analogy for our relationship.

Some days I felt like I was using all of my energy to just stay with it...
to not fall off one side or another...
tightrope walking...
I felt like I could understand how tightrope walking uses so much more energy than it seems like it would. You have to focus and use all of your muscles to attain that perfect balance...
... its so exhausting...

sigh

"sigh" is the best I can do right now.

Ever had just a total doozy of a week?

Last Sunday I had a much needed conversation with a certain person*.
I didn't realize until the end of our conversation how exhausted I really was. This was our second "go-round" as I like to call it... I thought that maybe this time it would be different, that maybe now he was really "ready," and that maybe he actually had realized what a good thing he had let go, and oh, you know... all of that other naive, or shall we say hopeful (?) thinking. But, alas, that was not the case.

But before you feel too bad for me, I was relieved. It needed to end, and as much as I was trying to be open, I just wasn't sure exactly at what point I would concede a loss. So his honesty about not really feeling like it was working made it a lot easier for me.
On paper it seemed like a match made in heaven! We had a lot in common but that wasn't necessarily translating into magnetic chemistry...

In other news, I finally realized the intensity of feeling that I once had for a previous boyfriend, who just so happens to live on another continent and be of a race different than mine. My parents freaked out (not really a surprise) and while I loved him, I never even entertained the possibility of our relationship making it through the long-haul - in part I guess because I knew I did not have their support. Over the course of 2 days I unpacked (through tears) all that had long laid buried.

And thats why "sigh" is the best I can do for now...

{*I first called him Anti-Mr. Darcy to invoke Anti-Christ connotations but the next day felt that may have been too harsh...}