embracing the ridiculous

(and the dangerous and scary and all other things)

I once had a co-worker ask me what she should do when she visited San Antonio, as I had just been down there for EPIC, an electronic book convention.

I told her that my absolute must do was a carriage ride around downtown. They leave from just outside the Menger, across from the Alamo.

Her response? Oh, no. I couldn't do that. I would look ridiculous, wouldn't I?

Maybe it's because I have pink hair. Maybe it's because at heart I really am five. But if I can figure out how to do something without really offending someone (ie: ask the carriage driver how much without insulting him) then I'm not afraid of looking ridiculous to do something that lets me see stuff I want to see, and do things I want to do.

Without that carriage ride I would never have known about how the city of San Antonio turned down a multi-million dollar hotel deal because it would have cast a shadow on the Alamo. I would never have known about the carrier pigeons who used to transmit the high school football game scores to the newspaper Friday night so people could read them Saturday morning. And I never would have gotten to ride in a carriage pulled by a horse named Fred, who wore a Carmen Miranda-like blob of cherries on his hat...

In the name of the ridiculous, I have ridden camels, stood in front of a giant wooden penis in Barcelona and straddled a toddler's bouncy horse in a Mexican restaurant in South Carolina. I have been to dinosaur parks in Kentucky and weird caves in Colorado. I have bought pictures of myself whitewater rafting, where I look both terrified and exhilarated. I have played nickel slots for two hours on the same dollar to look at cowboys while they played poker.

Just thinking of all the things I would have missed out on for fear of looking ridiculous makes me sad. Try it. You might like it.

lest I seem like all I do is bitch

we have a new patio. We have grass in the back, which the dogs adore. We have a giant chicken. It's glorious. It's in the front yard with the daisies and the marigolds and the glorious agave

I have people who love me, enough food to eat, zumba and yoga and the amazing June to keep me working on being fit.

I have 2 bassets of immense joy, and the crazy granny pibble

I have friends and godkids and a beautiful niece.

I have my family. My dad and my brother and my S and L.

Hell, I have Liam Neeson as a god at the theater and the Sherlock Holmes movie on Blu-Ray. how can life be bad?

sigh

so how far do you have to bend over and let someone f*** you up the a$$ before you're "good people"? I'm sick to death of it. I think I'm going to go back to waiting tables

*insert gibberish*

my brains are leaking out my ears.

Send tim mcgraw tickets

toxicity

I have a slightly toxic liver.

All the years of sugar abuse, really. It gives me gout-like symptoms, and sometimes a little bit of chemically induced crazy. A lot of inflammation.

So I've been trying to detox, which of course means a sugar binge was unavoidable. I am the queen of doing opposite what I'm supposed to do

Anyway, that's actually kind of beside the point. The point is that the sugar detox has got me thinking of how I let things become toxic in my personal and professional life.

I dwell. I know it. I hold grudges. My mother used to stare at me and go, "Lorna, you give people too much credit for thought. Only you are that deep that you think about other people that much"

whether or not she was right, she was right that I need to learn to let go more.

*g* If anyone can just tell me how, I'll get right on that

balance

trying to find balance between work and play. I've been doing a lot more turning off the email after a certain point at night and doing arts and crafts or watching movies.

Guess what? I'm getting more done.

I know! It's amazing. Now to find balance between exercise and diet and total slubbery

Better

turns out a good bit of my crazy was PMS, which considering I started a week early, I can be forgiven for not seeing.

Working like mad. Trying to get shit done and feeling thwarted. I love that word. Thwart.

Cahoots. I've been cahooted...

I haven't really, I just love to sat that, too

okay, work work work