Knock

Listen its like poker you can play your best/ But you got to know when to fold your cards and take a rest/
And know when to hold your cards and hold your breath/ And hope that nobody else is stacking the deck

“I don’t play a hand unless it’s paired or suited.”

*pause*

uhm… then you don’t play very much, do you?

“Exactly.”

I learned to play poker (Omaha and hold ’em) my sophomore year of college from my boyfriend’s apartment-mate.  Scott is a beanpole of an Asian kid, quiet and witty.  He had a passion for poker, the likes of which I had never seen.  I harassing him regularly to teach me, in between hanging out in my boyfriend’s on-campus apartment while he was at class exclusively so I could watch TLC.

We sat down, finally, one night.  I absorbed the rules and layout of play quickly and let him deal me a few hands face up so he could explain strategy.  My boyfriend quickly got bored and wandered off to play Halo.  I was rapt as he explained statistics and percentages, numbers that made a game quickly less of a game and more of a math equation that I would NEVER get a grip on.

“So, you have a five of clubs and a eight of diamonds, what would you do?”

Play it, at least until the flop and see what my odds are for the straight.

“No. You would fold.”

…

“The odds of you hitting a five to nine or four to eight straight aren’t in your favor, and you have nothing else to work with.”

Oh.  So.  I fold.  That’s boring.

“No. That’s smart.”

He finally let me conceal my cards. I was so excited to have a secret.  We folded hand after hand.  I got bold and played hands he wouldn’t, he expressed (generally with a sigh) the luck I got in flops and rivers.  He still beat me, of course, but I was hooked.  My birthday was celebrated on the beach and I requested we play poker at a picnic table after lunch.

Now when I play, I always think of Scott.  I don’t talk to him anymore, I rarely talked to him after my boyfriend moved out of the apartment.  But I sit and play on free poker sites, rolling my eyes at how other people play.  I don’t fold as many hands, but I’ll ride my blind when given the opportunity and raise aggressively on good hands.  I’ve lost more than I’ve won, but I can hold my own.

Scott also once, for a minute, convinced me that horse sweat was poisonous and that’s why cowboy’s wear chaps.

He could apparently teach me anything.

Roses are red, Violets are blue…

Kit at bloggingdangerously struck a chord with me tonight in her writing assignment.  It was unexpected and a bit taboo for this blog, but a chord was struck no less.

 

I think it was diminished with an augmented fifth.

 

Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and I’m definitely one of those girls who says she doesn’t want anything and actually means it.  What I do want though, is acknowledgment. Acknowledgment that on this, the most “romantic” day of the year that there is happiness, joy and inspiration in this relationship.  A moment taken out of the hubbub of daily routine.

Generally a cheesy Hallmark card works fine.  Bonus points for the Fresh Ink brand of Hallmark.

Save the flowers and the dinners and the sparkly things for times when it means something to us, not all of us.  Save it for surprises.  Save it for just because’s.

 

 

I was adamant this would never work out.  I refused to get close to another self-proclaimed cocky piece-of-work.  Arms length was just close enough and left me free to be whatever it is I was going to be.  That didn’t work out, now did it?  All I ever wanted was to be fought for, to mean something undeniable to another person.  And once I got it, I STILL tried to reject it.

Four months later, there’s a million things I could say about how I feel.  You’ve heard them all, many times over.  I’ve stuck my foot in my mouth, eaten my slice of humble pie and admitted I was SORELY mistaken.

 

Roses are red, violets are blue

I don’t need a holiday to tell you what’s true.

Silver(fox) Lining

When I was young, I had a dream my brother was a sister instead.  The only part of this dream I remember was holding him up (wearing my favorite babydoll’s pink dress) so he could drink out of the faucet.  I thought the dream was weird when I had it, and I think its weird I still remember it.

My brother and I aren’t really close.  It’s not that we don’t get along because we absolutely do, we just have very little in common.  He’s insanely intelligent and reads computer programing books from cover to cover.  At the same time though, as far as I know, he has no intention of moving out of my parent’s house.  He works at a job he pretty much hates, goes to school part time and does his thing.  He’s a bit of a goober, but he means well most of the time.

My favorite recent memory of us?  My family went to Disneyland maybe three years ago.  My mom, brother and I all opted into flying because, well, eff driving if you can get away with it.  So we’re sitting in a row together, my brother at the window, myself in the middle and my mom on the aisle.  For a lack of anything worthwhile to do on a 45 minute flight, my brother and I proceed to cinch our seatbelts down as tight as they would go (he weighs 105 soaking wet, and I’m on the smallish side as well) and smack each other on the thigh with the tripled up seatbelt end.  For the record, you hit hard enough and that shit will leave welts.  So we’re laughing and hitting each other, and people are starting to turn around and stare and look disapprovingly.  All while my mom is trying so hard not to laugh that she’s tearing up. To which I reply “Geeze Mom, where’s your parenting? People are judging us!”  And we all bust up laughing while people continue to judge.

He plays bass too… and guitar.  He can pull viruses out of computer code, kick a mean hackysack and show excellent customer service (when he wants to).  Oh yeah, and he’s a furry.

Yeah, you saw that right. CSI isn’t entirely accurate because I guess it’s not all sex-related but he dresses up in his half suit (head, paws, tail) and goes to conventions.  And it’s who he is.  And that’s okay.  Weird, and I don’t really understand it, but it’s okay.  Because of things like this:

That is so entirely my brother that I can’t even begin to comment on it. If you’re out there, little bro, I love you. You’ve never ceased to make me laugh or failed to impress me with your technological knowledge. I’m so glad you’re my brother.

Feedback Requested

So, maybe I’m not making this thing private just yet. I’m in a bit of a pickle and I might be using this as a slight cop-out but… well, no buts. It is a cop-out. And next week I commit to doing better on my assignment. But for now:

Disclaimer: This is part of an assignment I have to do. It’s not really important what the assignment is for, or even the specifics of the assignment in the long run. All I’m asking of you is to comment. It can be supportive, it can be rational, it can even be discouraging. But comment none-the-less. And now, we cue the music…

The Assignment: Part 1

I’ve created a list. A list of things that I don’t feel I have full self-expression with, or freedom with. It’s a bit… lengthy to say the least. We all have our faults and what we view as short comings, but what those really become are opportunities to grow and thrive while surprising yourself with yourself. My list goes from mundane (financial stability) to personal (knowing that I’m always good enough) to repetitive (I actually wrote down “time to dance” twice. TWICE. Apparently it’s important). I’m going to talk about one or two here now.

The Assignment: Part 2

(yes I’m that official)

1) Grow a successful garden.  This seems stupid just writing it, but I need to get over that because it really bothers me.  It bothers me that I am so inauthentic about being a gardener that I come off as lazy.  Because I’m being lazy.  My garden doesn’t thrive because I don’t take care of it.  I purposefully pick plants that are highly specific to “sun/part/shade” and preferably drought resistant.  I PICK THAT.  IT’S A SELLING POINT FOR ME.  Because heaven forbid I go out and turn on the hose for 15 minutes twice a week.

Granted, I’m a great gardener for about a month after I pop plants in the ground.  I’m awesome.  “Oh look there, you’re getting a little droopy, here’s some water.  Whoopsie, there’s a weed, gotta get that outta there.”  Cut to one month later and I’m like “Plants? I have plants? Can’t they take care of themselves by now?  They’ve been around for like… two dozen days already. They should hunt and gather water for themselves.”  (Which leads me to how HORRIBLE of a parent I will be some day).  I replanted my garden last weekend, because that’s what I do.  When everything dies, I rip it out and start fresh, picking new plants because the other ones “just don’t work well in my space.”

Moving forward and in all seriousness, I am going to be the gardener that I actual am.  Sitting on my butt on the couch instead of watering outside, breathing in wonderful clean air from plants that love me is hardly a valid comparison.  And having a wonderful garden is something that says a lot about you as a person, too.  When I see a happy, thriving garden I think that the person who tends it is focused and dedicated not just to their garden but to many other things in life too.  I’m inventing the possibility that I’m probably a better gardener than I think… and in three months time, my garden will still be gorgeous.

2)  Time to dance.  Might as well address this one right away since it came up twice.  I’ve been really REALLY struggling with this, ever since junior year of college.  At that time though, I had options to create and doors to open that were pretty much right in front of me.  Or seemingly that way.  I had drive, and desperately needed that output to regain and grab hold of my sanity.

Here’s the deal: Dance saves me.  That itch that you get where you can’t sleep or you’re so mad you could punch something or you could scream and shout because you’re so happy or you just want to feel like you’ve achieved something… dance gives me that.  Turning on my head phones to ANYTHING that moves me… cranking it up to the point of doing longterm damage and flailing (because I’m aware entirely that that is EXACTLY what I do) around like a moron on speedballs… that gives me peace.  Exerting everything I feel in one fall swoop and collapsing into a pile of happy exhaustion.  Knowing that what I did just then was 100%, inarguably me.

But it’s fallen by the wayside.  Dance isn’t like writing where you can pick up a pencil anywhere you are and just go.  I’ve danced in the middle of the day, not giving a fuck to who was watching, on a crowded beach.  People stare.  People wonder what the heck you’re doing, or what you’re on.  It’s hard to get past your fears on that one.  Really hard.  So I’ve stopped.  And opportunities to perform aren’t coming up like that have before.  Or they’re out of my budget.

So here’s to myself.  I commit to dance. Twice a week, in my living room if I have to.  Going out counts, because it’s just as fun.  Because dance is who I am, and who I’ve been since the summer before 6th grade (a memory I distinctly remember but won’t delve into here).  “I just wanna dance…. I practiced! I just wanna dance…”

So reply…. tell me what you think.  Even if I don’t know you, or you don’t think I care what you have to think.  Please, reply.  It’s much appreciated.

Day 4: Ketchican

ohmygosh. We’ve finally hit a stride in the cruise where this is taking the place of “real life” and I’ve decided I can live like this… 🙂 So much so that I initially titled this post “day 3” and then realized that it is, in fact, the fourth day of my cruise. Whoops.

To finish up day 3 and the Chef’s Dinner:

AMAZING. So, my mom signed us up for the Chef’s dinner, which is a private table in the dining room with the chef and matre-d with a special menu and small tour of the kitchen. We headed down around 7 PM, and were given kitchen jackets and escorted through the Rigoletta dining room and through straight into the kitchen. It was a group of 8, which turned out to be all cruisecritic.com people we had met the day before, which was nice because we already kind of knew everyone and knew that we liked everyone. In the kitchen we met with the head chef and were given champagne and appetisers (again, spelling?) including caviar, foie grae (damn french names…) and salmon cooked only using salt. After chatting for a bit, we headed to our special table in the middle of the dining room for our other four or five courses. We had a FANTASTIC crab risotto that I would easily kill infants to get at again (kidding, ish), a strawberry palate-cleansing sorbet with grey goose poured over it, lamb shank, and delicious lemon thingy for dessert. Each course included wine, including another sampling of the late harvest sauv blanc I had the night before. We each got a rose, a copy of the menu, and a cook book of recipes from the ship to take home. I would love to say that I had an exciting evening after that, but my mom and I were so stuffed that we just went back to the cabin and watched movies.

I happened to look out one of the windows in the dining room as we were leaving at 10:30 (yes, dinner took three and half hours!) to find that it was STILL LIGHT OUT. Creepy Alaskan nights with no darkness… I assume it got dark around 12ish, but couldn’t tell you for sure without a window in the room and all…

Sometime in the middle of the night, we crossed into a different time zone, too.

Day 4: Ketchican!

Ketchican is our southern-most stop in Alaska (along the tail near Canada) and is like a residential neighborhood popping out of cedar forests and slate mountains. Theres the harbor, with the obligatory cruise-based shops right off of it, with a small downtown and the rest of the “city” sort of sprawls along the coast line. There are no roads in (and therefore out) of it, making it reachable only by boat or plane. It sort of is the highlight of entering the Inside Passage of Alaska, and as we speak there is land on either side of the ship, with Alaska proper being on the right side of the ship and an island strip along the left.

It was… cold. The high for the day was at around 53, which made me pretty jealous to hear that back home in Santa Cruz at 10 AMish was hovering at 82 degrees… Also, it typically rains in Ketchican, so we got lucky to be here on a day that it was just a little cloudy. What’s super neat tho is all of the bald eagles you see. Heading up to zip lining we saw an active nest the size of a VW in one of the trees, and I’ve probably seen about 15 of the eagles flying around, doing – ya know – eagly things.

Our exciting adventure in Ketchican was zip lining. Now, I don’t have a fear of heights but I am a control freak, so I was a little interested as to how I was going to take this one! We started out bussing 20 minutes to our destination with our driver, Jim, who has a dry sense of humor and gave us some sightseeing highlights along the way. Upon arriving to the National Rainforest (you read that right, they get 13 feet of rain a year), Olin guided is in the get suited up in harnesses. Olin and Neil were our group’s guides, and they were pretty amusing. Something I could’ve done without? Before we left, we ran into two of the cruisecritic.com ladies who let us know that they did the ziplining before and found out that, due to permafrost, the tree roots only go down FOUR FEET. Standing on a platform with 8 other people 37 feet off the ground when the tree starts swaying makes you a little uneasy with that knowledge, believe you me.

Our zipline trip consisted of 7 different lines, making a large horseshoe and finishing up near the hatchery close by. I didn’t buy a picture or anything at the gift shop there, but back in town on Creek Street (named so because the street literally is platforms on stilts over a creek) I got a pair of whalebone ebony (I think) earrings made locally by a woman who does work with balene as well. I think they’re pretty nifty.

We shoved off from Ketchican around 3:30, and are now headed to Jeauno (spelling again?), where my mom and I will be whale watching with Harv and Marv (I think). Dinner tonight, and maybe I’ll hit up the nightlife of the ship tonight since I have yet to do so.

Until tomorrowish!

Return to Sender

There was a time where the only way your written words could get to another person was with a stamp and a pen.  You would wait anxiously for the mailman to arrive, wondering if he had anything especially for you.  Rushing to the mailbox you would flip through bills and mailers, looking for a flowing script addressed just to you from someone you love.  Birthdays were a wonderful week, with cards coming in sporratically like little pieces of joy from other parts of the planet.

I have a Ziploc gallon sized bag that has resided in my childhood desk for as long as I can remember.  That desk is now for sale and cleaned out.  The bag has finally left my parents house and will follow me.  It has looked like variations of this since its inception:

Nothing of glory to look at really, but delve and see the wonderment.  Within this bag are a million memories and milestones; a hundred special notes that have made the cut year after year through birthdays, graduations and just because’s.  I opened this bag this evening, to see if anything else could be purged to save space in my increasingly cluttered life.  Not surprising I found myself smiling, laughing, tearing up and checking dates then returning every single one back to the bag.

There are a few cards from my mom’s best friends’ grandmother (who lives on to this day, and who’s cards I continue to keep to this day) whom I have NEVER in my life met.  Her scrawling penmanship makes me squint and focus to read, but invariably makes me smile.  She always signs her name with a smiley face made into the “V.”  I love this woman, and she clearly loves me as well.  She writes about what a great person I am, what a great person my mother is and all of my accomplishments over the years.  Thank you, Victoria.

There are birthday cards from friends that I got in middle and high school.  Funny things quickly penned onto binder and printer paper; The “card” my best friend Rachelle gave me when she got me tickets to Blink 182 freshman year of high school – with a note of “we already asked your mom!” in the post-script; group-signed cards.

There are letters from penpals in elementary school.  Friends from honor choir in Utah, second cousins in Oregon, my friend Amirtha who briefly moved to Santa Ana in second grade, only to move back for third.  There is an envelope of notes from Stephanie Beasley, my best friend in first grade who moved to Pismo, never to be heard of again.  Her letters say she was staying with her Aunt and now I wonder if there were problems with her family that my first grade self would have never clued in to.

There are a few letters from teachers.  I have two letters and a postcard from my elementary school music teacher, a woman who could have kidnapped me and I wouldn’t have complained a tick.  She wrote me from Budapest about the Kodaly Museum – a music theory that she taught us, even that young.  My second grade teacher, Mrs. Skoglund, thanked me for the presents, wrote about her bears and said she hope to come back to visit next year.  There were notes from two different composers who’s works I performed in while in elementary school.  These are all things I hardly understood the importance of at the time.

There are letters from my parents when I went to Science camp in 5th grade, Spinners-and-Splatters Girl Scout camp in ’94 and when I stayed with a friend when my brother was in the hospital in San Francisco for open-heart surgery. My mothers crisp writing on the backs of three postcards sent over a week breaks my heart now, it tells a tale of a woman torn 80 miles between two children who needed her.  My brother obviously took precedence but I remember having my own emotional breakdown at the end of the week, just wanting to have my family and a sense of normalcy back.

There are so many postcards that my dad sent to me while he was traveling for work, little notes that mean nothing at all but that I see now are so full of love that I can’t stand it.  He writes about cats in Malaysia, prairie dogs in Colorado, my sewing and buildings he won’t see in Chicago, bears not having toothbrushes from Puerto Rico, fall colors in Wisconsin and one from Missouri that only reads “This is in case I mailed your postcard without an address. Love, Dad.” (I did, in fact, receive the other postcard.  I was also super gloat-y that I got TWO postcards from Dad that trip.)

Drunken Moments We Decided to Blog About

First, I am not nearly the blogger that Kat @drawingcowboys is.  Second, she was actually the one to say “OMG I AM TOTALLY BLOGGING ABOUT THIS LATER!!!” because she is awesome.  Don’t judge.

So she did.  It is here. It is awesome and a complete picture of our evening.

Here is my side….

This whole thing started from the so-called lightbulb moment via text from me to her, something along the lines of “It’s done, I kicked him out.”  Proceeding this text were many things from my side about how I’m probably a bitch with her responding that of course I’m not (because I’m really not, I’m snarky.  It’s totally different).  Ultimately the decision was reached that seeing as we hadn’t met up in a LONG time…

Backstory: Seriously, I saw her went she borrowed the steam cleaner I rented on Sunday, but before that it was….. uhm… apparently not especially purposeful or memorable.  We were overdue.

… and neither of us had met our friends Alcohol and Happy Hour in a while either.  Plans were made!

Wednesday ended up being GORGEOUS.  Like, stereotypical “You’re from California so You Live By the Beach?” weather.  That weather we gloat about incessantly.  I made the decision that where ever we went should involve the outside somehow.  The ladies at my favorite boutique reminded me that the 515 has a patio, drinks and snackies. YESSSSSS!

The 515 is fancy to say the least.  Their happy hour is three drinks, THREE, of a four page drink menu.  Oh and food?  Uhm, that would be full price.  As I walked over, I found myself thinking “I’m having the 515 cocktail…. that has tequila.  I guess I’m having tequila.”

I generally avoid tequila.  There is never really a good situation that begins with tequila.  It kind of becomes the happy hour that NEVER ENDS because you can’t stop drinking it but after one drink you’re a bit tore up.  I knowingly sealed my fate.

Important notes:  We met up at like 5:45 and left by 7:30ish to walk back to my place.  We also had bruchetta that was horrible.  The dude totally and boisterously moved away from us  yet told us – halfheartedly – not to feel bad about having fun.  I did tell Kat that she wasn’t jewy enough either.

Cut to being home and me aimlessly moving about my house while Kat followed and flopped.  I showed her my ass on Boob Emancipation (cut to my ass here), we rambled and mumbled about things that probably weren’t important.  And off they went, back to their home for crackers and real man food.

An hour later I’m thinking to myself:

I don’t feel drunk anymore.  I’m not drunk anymore. Eff.

I AM STILL DRUNK

No I’m not drunk.  Maybe I’m still drunk?  Imma watch a movie.

Cue me passing out at 10:30.  After using the word “concurrently” in a sentence.

Buried Life #9: Fire a Gun

I did this a long time ago… but I’ve decided I want to blog all of my Buried Life adventures to catalogue them as legitimate adventures in this blog, ya know, to validate the nomenclature.  This adventure took place January 10, 2010.

My coworker, we’ll call her Belch (endearingly of course), is this quiet-petite-thing of a girl.  She’s always put together, has clients who are generally nice, barely pre-menopausal women covering gray who still shop at Banana Republic because they have the money to do so, and got me hooked on zombies.

Now, after working at the salon for two years, I have forged interesting bonds with my stylists.  I tend to pull the weird out of everyone, I think, because no one really knows what to expect from me.  I spend time listening to what they’re talking about with their clients, and chime in when appropriate.  Take for example T-Ball (another nickname, hope I can keep these straight later)… we talk about hockey and sports and almost nothing else at this point – thank you Olympics.  Belch and I started talking Zombies after both seeing Zombieland in theaters right when it came out.  She turned me on to the best video game ever made… the rest is history.

After playing Overkill obsessively, she suggested we go to the gun range and fire a real gun because they MAKE ZOMBIE TARGETS.  I shit you not.  They’re amazing!  Check out Osama-bin-Zombie:

Baller, right? They didn’t have him at the range, but they did have three others…  Anyway, she had experience shooting guns and took me down to Watsonville so we could shoot at “the real thing.”  Now, I had never in my life fired anything that didn’t shoot water, paintballs or rubber bullets.  I’d never even been near a gun before.  Needless to say, the adrenaline had me straight shaking.

Belch shot first, to show me how to load and fire the .22 Revolver we had chosen to share for the hour.  We bought three boxes of rounds (bullets? I have only gone once… bear with me), and alternated shooting five different targets, including….

Me shooting a zombie. GLORIOUS!  We shot a few different targets, and after an hour all I could taste was the sweet bite of gunpowder as we drove home, my hands still slightly shaking.

Welcome to the Neighborhood…. Tool.

I often threaten to do what I did today… although rarely do I sprout the balls to do so.  Maybe it’s the fluxing hormones post-ms, maybe it’s the fact that I was hungry.  Or maybe it’s the fact that my neighbor (known only due to the local parking permit) has been parked directly outside my house like this:

Note the fact that he drives a mustang.  Yes that is my car behind him, a mere inch from his bumper so I fit in the space.  The tree about marks where the driveway begins.

Three feet, ladies and gentleman.  Three feet from the driveway.

Now, I’ve bitched about parking on my street before.  This guy does not live on the property, or the house next to us (my landlord’s which is usually vacant unless they’re in town) or the house on the other side who’s occupants often part in front of our house much to my dismay…  In fact, the mazda 3 behind my car belongs to my housemate upstairs.  He couldn’t even park in front of his own house (as we often can’t.)

This car was left parked like this for FOUR DAYS.  FOUR.  Seriously.  It’s been driving me batty.  So I left him this:

Someone needed to tell him…

A Night of Unlearning

I seriously can’t get over how much fun last night was.  Here’s the short list of why:

– champagne toast (as well as multiple other ridiculous toasts)

– HBICs on the loose

– Sophia’s at 515

– Hands emerging from curtains

– Sharing lipglosses, secrets, boobie grabs, text messages and pictures of pets

– Struting into hotiv/brotiv like we straight own the place and dancing before we could get our coats off

– Meghan and I being SURROUNDED by guys while dancing.  Then realizing how creepy they all were.

– Elliot.  and Mike.  And thinking Mike was Elliot, playing it off and not being sad at all in the long run about it.  Although I think I told him my name was Amy….

– Average of $4 per drink.

– Telling off James for being there for the wrong reasons.

– Mike was extremely touchy-feely and I loved every minute of it…

– Getting my first number EVER. And a great (yet brief) makeover session…. like effing awesome.

– Catching up with a very drunk Meghan, who was weilding peperspray while getting a number on the corner.

– Peeing into bushes, then peeling off my shoes and tights possibly outside a client’s house.

– Obligatory stop at TacoBell.