a whoopie cushion is the best gift for a kid.

I bought a remote controlled whoopie cushion today. It’s not really a cushion. It’s more like a hard plastic box with a fart speaker. I am about to give it to my boyfriend’s 5, 8 and 9 year olds. They are also getting some other hilarious pranks such as the dribble cup, blue candy and squirting nickle, but I do believe the remote control whoopie cushion will take the prize for best novelty item. The package actually says ‘At Last’ on it, as if we have all been dreaming of this modern invention for decades.

I am going to encourage them to take it to their grandparents house.

I am also going to teach them about joke delivery, you know, like synchronizing the button-pushing with Grandma’s every move.

Merry Christmas Kids!

push ups and i don’t want to do them

I have to do these pushups for the 100 push up challenge and I have been procrastinating.  There are four boys in a room next to me having their first sleep over. It’s cute, the excitement of childhood, and it makes me feel boring. I never feel less like a child than when I’m around one/some. When I’m with friends I still feel pretty child”like”, probably because I am child”less”.  

 

Anyways, the pushups. I was able to do only 13 girlie pushups when I started. Now I can do 26. I do want to be stronger so I guess I’ll go do them.  first set 27, then 19, then 19, then 15, then 25.  ok. go.

i miss carlo.

Maine dishes

Geoff just made a wonderful filling breakfast of migas and bacon, toast and cherries, avocado and bluberry cake.  I have spent the last few days relaxing and napping (and eating).

Geoff’s parents’ friends came in yesterday for a visit (to Maine, where Geoff and I are currently vacationing) and Geoff’s mother and their friend Grace and I had an interesting conversation about posessions. The two ladies have spent some time traveling together and they were discussing some serving dishes that they had bought in France. Grace then began talking about all of the things that she has in her home in Dallas and that she and her husband talk sometimes about selling their house. She asked, “What would I do with all of my things?”.   I suggested that her daughter might want them. She said that her daughter has very different style and would not want them. So, it transformed into this conversation about why we even have all of these things. Being a young woman, and I say ‘young’ wholeheartedly, I feel the urge to build a home of my own. Through collecting dishware and linens, decorations and furniture, I feel that I am creating my own life and preparing for my own family with it’s own traditions, etc.

But, it seemed very clear that by the time you reach your mid sixties, you are ready to pack it up and downsize to something charming and small and manageable. Then, what is the point of having all of those possesions? My friend Meghan’s parents has a huge old house filled to the gills with antiques. I cannot imagine that they will downsize in their retirement. So, in a way I think “Well, to each their own”. But most people do, at some point, want to to get rid of what they worked long and hard to earn.

I would like to create a balance. I will work to earn the means to buy what I love and not much more. In the meantime, I will resist to the urge to buy little things that catch my eye. And I WILL buy plants, plants and more plants.

not quite ready

I am turning 30 in a few hours. I know that it’s not a big deal. I know that it’s just another day. I have been adding symbolic weight to tomorrow, believing in a way that it’s the day that I turn into an adult. I am ready to be an adult. I guess it’s safe to say that I’ve been one for awhile. I’m not really sure what that means to me yet. So maybe that is what I am trying to untangle.

I think it may be of some benefit to think about the woman I want to be. I’ve been influenced most strongly by my mother. Importantly, there have been other women in my formative years who have helped shape me as well.

The things that I learned from my mother that I would like to ‘keep’:

1. her sense of independence- she’s not afraid to do things by herself, she’ll drive anywhere, talk to strangers, earn her own money, build her own career

2. her love of learning- It’s safe to say that I spend more time listening to NPR than I do doing anything else. my mother is an avid reader and into facts and bits of information that she clips out of various magazines and passes on

3. her good heart- she’s very giving. she does it for the joy of it. she donated the flowers from my sister’s wedding to a local nursing home. She actually paid more to have the florist pick them up from the reception and re-deliver them to the home.

The things that I learned from other women in my life:

1. Independence- Again! This is a trait that I have encountered in most of the women whom I’ve been around. Thankfully, I will never have to rely on anyone. Regretfully, I am afriad to rely on someone (a man/husband).

2. Surround yourself with interesting conversationalists.

3. Don’t be afraid to be unconventional.

I learned this from my best friend’s mother. She invited college students to live in her house for free in exchange for doing chores and taking my friend to cheerleading practice, etc. My best friend and I learned a lot form the girls that lived in that house. They were at the halfway point in age between our mothers and us.

My best friend’s mother had her favorite maxim painted on the wall in her house above her upright piano. At the time, I thought she was crazy. I’ll never forget it though: “There are three things in life which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are beyond our comprehension, so we must do what we can with the third.”

4. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. People will love you no matter what.

I learned this from my high school boyfriend’s mother.  She was accepting of you and you were accepting of her. There was a feeling in their house of unconditional acceptance. I felt this even as a non family member. It was the fact that it could be true for a non family member that made it so impactful for me.  I want to strive to make other people feel as comfortable and accepted as that family did for me.

5. Take good care of your body and it will pay off. I have learned this from my aunt who is amazingly fit and beautiful. She has defied aging. I’m about to start putting this knowledge into practice. Well, I’m intending to. Hey, it’s hard, but I’m working on it.

not quite ready… I’m leaving to go to maine with Geoff in about 36 hours. I have not packed, cleaned up, finished working, celebrated my birthday, bought a thank you gift for Geoff’s parents, dropped my car off to get worked on. I’m just not quite ready yet.

One more thing. I have been photojournaling the last few hours of my twenties. I am going to try to post the photos to Flickr if i can figure it out.

aha

i have realized that my quarter life crisis has actually been lasting for a quarter of my life. interesting second meaning there.

Call me ishmael.

In school, they were always preparing us for the next step. I anticipated the future anxiously, mostly, when a teacher would say,  ‘They aren’t going to tell you to do your homework in junior high’ or ‘They won’t hold your hand in college. You have to have self discipline.’ . Nevertheless, I seemed to always make it through the next step, usually very succesfully. There were definitely times when I recalled what teachers had warned us so ominously about and wondered why they were so harsh since it really hadn’t been all that bad.

Why didn’t anyone warn me about after college? Why didn’t anyone warn me about being 24, 25, 26, 27, 28 and 29 and totally confused? General confusion has pervaded my life for seven years! What the hell! My mother told me that her twenties were the best times of her life! Well, I’ve had some good times but I am about to turn 30 in four weeks and I cannot wait to get out of the twenties.  I realize that I have a personal problem when it comes to predicting my future, but there was a litany of events that I thought would be occurring in life during the ages of 20 and 30 which did not.

I have gone through an exhausting spiritual search, traveled across the country, read about 95 self help books, quit smoking, moved four times, taken up yoga, and dated a Dutch sailor who almost convinced me to move to curacao in this chaos. I flew to Europe on September 15th, 2001 for God’s sake! I also have felt very bored and lonely and pathetic during these events. As I said, confusion.

My friend Sharon is often my guide as I watch her make huge life decisions. She said that she had reached a state of zen and said ‘Jul, I’ve realized, I’m not the one driving this boat.’ Very enlightening, but we are all still trying to drive it, like when my Dad would grab the wheel when I had my permit.

So, I invite comments and experiences to be shared openly and with raw honesty. I am going to chronicle my experience of my quarter life crisis. I did not know that I was having one until the other day my boyfriend told me that he was reading about it and that I seemed to have 20 out of the 24 symptoms. That’s a pretty solid diagnosis. So with that, I begin.