My eye is better. My heart is full. My friends are wonderful. My body is exhausted. My creativity is low. And I have to pack. I am going to keep this short. Adventures are particularly sweet with friends but always too short.
Author: admin
Eye Opening
Sometimes things happens suddenly that cause everything to turn on its side and all expectations go out the window. Yesterday was one of those days. Instead of touring a cool city with some of my best friends, I ended up with a very painful corneal abrasion and my tours became to various local ERs and pharmacies. I have worn contact lenses since I was in the third grade, and yet this is the first time I ever managed to tear up by eye like it was being sandblasted. I’m okay. It sucked, but I am feeling a great deal better today than yesterday. And the experience reiterated how good and caring my friends are in my life. The experience reiterated how important it is not to take your health for granted and to feel compassion for those who are suffering. So much of life’s experiences are limited when your physical being is limited.
When you resist whatever bad is happening, like the pain that I was feeling, you feel tense, panicky, angry and raw. When you get to a level of acceptance, you feel calm, protected and able to be cared for and to rest.
“The things you take for granted, someone else is praying for.” – IAMFEARLESS.SOUL.COM
Friday, Friends and the Freakin’ Weekend
“The only trip you will regret is the one you don’t take.” – unknown
“Cheers to the freakin’ weekend.” – Rihanna
Happy Friday, readers and friends!! I am writing this from afar today. I am on a weekend trip with my best friends from college. We do this trip every year since we graduated and sometimes it feels like we are still back in school. It is such a blessing to reflect on life – life’s adventures, life’s misadventures, life’s sorrows and life’s greatest joys, with people who have known each other since the dawning of each other’s adult lives. It makes today a very special Favorite Things Friday. For new readers, I usually describe three favorite things, websites, songs, products, etc. on Fridays. Please see previous Friday posts for fun and helpful ideas. Fridays are always light, pleasant and airy here at Adulting – Second Half. But today, I am going to do it a little differently, in honor of my dear friends who knew me in my Adulting – First Half.
Here are my favorite things about being with really good friends. I hope this list will spur you on to make your own list about your friends and you will carry those warm feelings with you all of the way into a wonderful weekend.
My favorite things about being with my friends:
- Feeling like you never left off. Even if you haven’t seen each other all year long, you come together so easily and happily, it’s like you just saw each other yesterday.
- All of the inside jokes. Long histories make for crazy stories that never seem to lose their luster and novelty for the people who have shared funny times and hilarious memories.
- The feeling of total acceptance. Your long-time friends know almost everything about you and love you anyway.
- Knowing that you have a big group of gals who “have your back.” The wonderful feeling of being cared for and supported and the good feeling of being that same source of support and caring for others, in their times of need.
- Making more fond memories with new shared adventures, that will add to the cache of inside jokes.
- Really good insights and ideas and perspectives about situations going on in each other’s lives, that come from people who know each other well and earnestly care for one another.
I could go on and on, but I don’t like to get sappy on Fridays. Let’s just say that this wonderful group of women are treasures to me. They were a huge part of my first half of adulting and I look forward to all of the fun, joy, tenderness, reflections and wisdom that we will share as we travel together on this journey through our second halves of adulting.
“It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A friend is a gift you give yourself.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
Mother Nature Be Damned
I think that it is a cruel twist of fate, what Mother Nature did to us women. She made our biggest hormonal changes and fluctuations, occur simultaneously during two of our most emotionally challenging life stage changes – going to high school and during the emptying of our nests. And I wonder if Mother Nature laughs and clucks her tongue and shakes her head, at families like mine, who have women starting high school and going through empty nest syndrome at the same time. (all while being a little hormonally challenged) Mother Nature really does have high expectations of our sex.
Now, as a woman, I hate when my legitimate gripes get blamed on hormones. I’ve figured out lately, that it is not that my individual gripes are wrong and unjustified, it is just that sometimes I have a hard time keeping my response to the gripes at a proportional level. “You didn’t put your dishes into the dishwasher?!? PUT YOUR HEAD ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK NOW!!!!! AHHHH!!!”
My emotions are all over the map these days. I recently passed a local flooring store with a little sign out front that said, “Closing. Thanks for 50 great years!” I started sobbing. Now, I have never been in that particular little store and I am not in the market for flooring. The store always looked neat and cute from the outside and their mascot was a french bulldog. The flooring store owners were into Frenchies, before Frenchies became the “it” dog. I’m not sure exactly what I was sobbing about – nostalgia about a store I had never even been to nor had any plans to visit? Was I sad that I never got the chance to tell the owners that I recognized the fact that they “were Frenchie, when Frenchie wasn’t cool” and I admire that fact? Was I worried for the owners who probably sold their business for millions and were now free to travel the world? Goodness, who knows? I certainly don’t.
My daughter and I have had some interesting and challenging outbursts with each other. I was used to being the only really emotional person in my family. Now there are two of us. My husband needs a black and white striped shirt to go with his new position – referee. It is interesting to me, that all of our sons have moved out or are on the verge of moving out of our home, right at this critical time.
I have a sign in my kitchen that reads: “This too shall pass. Now would be good.” I’m kind of feeling that right now, Mother Nature. Could we move along with getting these hormones of mine (and my daughter’s while you are at it) all settled down? I think it would be best for all parties concerned. Truly. But of course, Mother Nature knows best.
“It’s like my hormones are partying and getting drunk, and I get stuck with the hangover. Daily.” – someecards
Dogstagram
I know that this is going to sound crazy from a person who is willing to spill her guts on a public blog, but I’m not one for social media. You probably couldn’t pick me out of a line-up from my ancient Facebook front page photo and my kids’ pictures are so old on my Facebook page, you might think they are competition for the waiting list on competitive, hard-to-get-into preschools (three of my kids are now adults). My LinkedIn was required for a part-time job that I had, that ended almost two years ago, when they shut down their local office. I imagine my LinkedIn appears like I still work there. I don’t know. I haven’t checked. I have an Instagram for this blog. It has one post.
When I admit my iffiness about social media to people, I get a variety of responses. I think some friends and family who love their social media, take it as an insult. I think sometimes people think that I am making some kind of judgmental statement with my ambivalence. I am not. I believe everyone has their passions and that is what makes the world go round. Facebook has been a very useful way for me to get in touch with long lost friends and relatives at almost instant notice and I think that is great. About a decade ago, I was much more into posting on Facebook, but then I started getting uncomfortable with it and the amount of time that I was spending on it. I’ve always been one of those people who is much more comfortable observing. Because I’m kind of a friendly, maybe even an “out-there” personality, I think I come across as a contradiction. I’m a natural introvert, who appears to be an extrovert.
The whole “Big Brother” thing kind of stresses me out, too. I’ve got nothing to hide, but I find it disconcerting to walk into a boutique and look at my phone, and have it remind me that I have been to that particular boutique two years ago and three times previous to that. I’m a little uncomfortable being tracked and stalked by my phone and whatever forces lie behind the tracking features. The more exposure everything seems to get, the more I seem to want to dive into my own little hole, like Alice, into my own little Wonderland.
That being said, all of that has served as a preface to a wild hair I got this weekend, when I thought it would be fun to turn our dogs into Instapups. Boredom and a lack of a schedule, brings out the crazy in me. If you follow my blog, you’ve read some stories about our dogs, so you can now follow them on ralphieandjosie on Instagram, if you are so inclined. I warn you, I get bored easily and I hate feeling overexposed, so I’m not sure how long it will last, but for now, I’m having fun with it. I’m not willing to put myself or my family out there too much on public pictorial stage, but hell, I’ll throw my dogs to the dogs, so to speak. 😉 And for now, they seem all in, tails wagging.
“Don’t say anything on online that you wouldn’t want plastered on a billboard with your face on it.” – Erin Bury
But Keep the Old
“Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.” – Girl Scout song (in honor of the fact that it is Girl Scout cookie time – YAY!)
My husband and I went to a few new restaurants this weekend and they were all a bust. These were local establishments that were on our “List to Try” and since it was a relatively unscheduled three-day weekend, we were eager to give them a try. Not one of them made it on the list “To Go to Again.” It became almost a comedy of how bad it could get. I kept looking to see if there were cameras pointed in our direction, like we were on one of those Candid Camera type shows. Servers not showing up to the table and when they finally came, due to our exaggerated flagging them down, they acted like they were doing us a huge favor by writing down our orders. At one restaurant, my husband ordered a beer. It came out flat and tasted like fruit juice. He asked for a different one. It came out the same style. He finally ordered a canned beer to be on the safe side and it was full of ice. We went to brunch yesterday and my chicken fried steak basically had a cold can of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup plopped unceremoniously on top of it. And this restaurant had pictures of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson on the wall, proving their visit! These establishments all had decent Yelp scores.
Do you ever feel like you are carrying some kind of strange energy that is coming with you wherever you go? By yesterday, I would have been more surprised if our brunch cafe would have turned out to be good and tasty. Sometimes I feel cursed by my need to adventure. Sometimes I feel envious of people who have the routine of going to their established favorites all of the time, whether it be restaurants, vacations, stores, etc. Maybe these people are better at owning what they like and knowing that their expectations will be met, at the places where they are loyal customers. I wish I didn’t get bored so easily. I have a huge fear of “ruts.” Maybe the price to pay for the need of novelty, is going through a lot of rocks before you find a gem. And while searching for new gems, it is probably best not to forget the special gems that you have found before and every once in a while, remember to go back to the old gems to appreciate their steadfast gleam.
“Develop the wings of loyalty and you will fly above the dooms of disappointments.” – Israelmore Ayivor
State of Mind
“If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to the state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘You know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.” – Jeff Foxworthy
“The state fair . . .where the four food groups are fried, deep-fried, sugared and on-a-stick.” – maxine.com
My daughter is going with her friends today, to the state fair. She is so excited. I am so excited that she has reached an age where I don’t have to go to the state fair with her. Honestly, I do like parts of the state fair. I like looking at the animals. I never knew that there were so many breeds of chickens until I went to a state fair. However, I have grown up past the rickety rides and the deep fried butter sticks. I’ll be satisfied just to hear her stories. I’m sure they’ll be good.
“State fairs are the confluence of the garish and the profound.”
― Douglas Wissing
Sonder
It has been a slow, easy, relaxing weekend. I like it. Last night, my husband and I fell on to the couch rather late and ended up watching the acclaimed film Roma. It is one of those slow, methodical, detail oriented, art house types of film that speaks to me more than it does to my husband. When we went to bed last night, I couldn’t decide whether I liked it or not (my husband clearly decided that he did NOT like it), but I could not stop thinking about it. This morning I decided that I liked the movie and I still could not stop thinking about it. I would say that it was the deeper, more artistic, more “left for interpretation”, Mexican version of the movie, The Help.
What I took from the movie is that no matter how you define your relationships with the other people in your life, you cannot help but forge a deeper connection that goes beyond the definition of what that relationship is supposed to be. Roma depicts a year in the life of a privileged Mexican family in the 1970s, from the viewpoint of their devoted nanny. The family’s nanny, Cleo, has to balance taking care of every practical and emotional aspect of the various family members during a particularly difficult time in the family’s collective lives, and yet she still tries to find time to nurture and to deal with her own life’s happenings and sorrows. This movie reminded me of instances like when you are a kid, and you are utterly shocked to see your teacher in the grocery store. Or even when you are older and you are devastated to hear that a trusted leader or clergy member or even a friend or family member, is not that superhuman that you had built them up in your mind to be. Sometimes we all fall into the egocentric state of mind that everything and everyone in our lives, revolves around us. We forget that other people’s lives and problems and ways of seeing and dealing with instances, are every bit as complicated and difficult to navigate, as our own. And depending on their “starting point”, sometimes even more complicated and difficult than we can even comprehend.
sonder
n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
Just No Damn Good
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
― George Bernard Shaw
We watched Bohemian Rhapsody last night. Bohemian Rhapsody is the well-regarded movie about the band Queen and most specifically, about its lead singer, Freddie Mercury. Freddie Mercury wrote the lyrics to the song “Bohemian Rhapsody” but he never revealed what the song lyrics meant and the band stood by him on that, as much as people like to guess and surmise about what the lyrics mean. Many people thought that the song was about Mercury coming out as a gay man. Others thought that it was about Mercury leaving his homeland of Zanzibar when he was a young man. This is what Freddie Mercury himself said about the song “Bohemian Rhapsody”: “I think people should just listen to it, think about it, and then make up their own minds as to what it says to them.”
Whether we realize it or not, we do what Freddie said, with all forms of music, art, dance, and even most communication. We bring our own mindsets, past experiences and moods to everything and everyone we encounter, and we create a layered story about what we are seeing, hearing and encountering, that has a lot more to do about us, than the object or person we are communing with. When I was in college, one of my roommates broke up with her boyfriend. She played Bonnie Raitt’s “I Can’t Make You Love Me, If You Don’t”, over and over, ad nauseum. The song became about her own love story and playing it over and over again, is what helped to soothe her and to heal her pain. For me, it became an annoying, whiny chant that I couldn’t get out of my head. I remember my own teenage summer vacation relationships, where we would end up writing letters to each other from afar. While I was still feeling the waves of a summer crush, I read those letters like they were great sonnets of overwhelming love, tragically unfulfilled by the cruel fate of distance and youth. When I was older and found some of these letters in a mementos box, my detached view saw nothing more than, “Hey, how are you? Summer was fun.” I had a hard time even picturing the person with whom I had exchanged letters.
Nowadays, with so much of our communication being in the form of texts (full of abbreviations) and email, it seems so much meaning gets misconstrued. I find myself needing to take pause and to separate my emotions before I react to any and all, correspondence coming my way. When I understand that all forms of art and conversation are every bit as much about me and my state of being, as it is about the artist and the conveyor of information, I can see the bigger picture and a fuller, more empathetic, compassionate and passionate understanding takes place.
“We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”
― Rudyard Kipling
“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.”
― Marcel Duchamp
I Forgot To Come Back
Hi friends!! Happy Friday!!! Yay!!! Yay!!! This blog celebrates Fridays in a light and happy way by celebrating three of my favorite things, ideas, tips, websites, songs, etc., on my favorite day of the week, Friday. Please check out previous Friday posts for other good ideas, and as always, I welcome your ideas and suggestions, in the Comments section.
Today, I am doing a tropical themed Friday. I grew up in Pittsburgh. I know how long and brutal northern winters can get. They are beautiful and cozy, too, I know, but sometimes you just need a break from the cold. My three favorite suggestions today will make you feel like you are on a Caribbean vacation without having to leave the house or spend thousands of dollars. Here we go:
Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess perfume and Escada Agua Del Sol perfume – If you spray either of these scents and close your eyes, you are at the beach. These scents are the essence of tropical vacations all in a little bottle. You can only get Bronze Goddess at certain times of the year at the Estee counter, but that’s okay. That is what eBay is for, right? If you are a perfume hound like me, remember that many times you can buy samples of scents that you would like to try from sellers on eBay at a fraction of the cost of a full bottle. However, these two scents are so wonderful, I recommend a full bottle purchase.
Steel Drum Island Collection CDs – Okay, close your eyes, spray one of the above mentioned scents and listen to one of these awesome, fun CDs and I assure you, you will be transported to an island or the deck of a cruise ship. I like to drive around with my car’s convertible top down, playing these CDs, especially when I pick up friends and family at the airport. Talk about setting the mood! Don’t worry, be happy! That’s what steel drums convey. I like their Volume 1 the best, but they are all good. They may have a digital form, but I still have an old fashioned CD player in my car, so they’re my jam. You can find more information at SteelDrumIsland’s website.
B.B.C. drink – There is a really cool story behind this one and by now, you know that I love stories, so read carefully before I give you the recipe. My husband and I honeymooned almost 25 years ago on the beautiful island of St. Martin/St. Maarten. We were married in October of 1994. When I decided to do a tropical theme for Favorite Things Friday, I went to my special drawer yesterday (we all have a special drawer, right?) and I found what I was searching for – a coaster. This coaster is a cardboard resort coaster, on which our favorite server wrote the recipe for our favorite honeymoon tropical drink. We have kept this coaster for all of these years, and it has made all of our moves. The resort that we stayed in was on the French side of the island and it was absolutely fabulous. The coaster jogged my memory and I decided to look up the resort yesterday, even considering a romantic revisit. It turns out that, sadly, the resort named La Belle Creole was destroyed by Hurricane Luis in 1995 and was never rebuilt. It is now in ruins and is laden by folklore and ghost stories. I told my husband that we broke the mold and I even suggested that maybe we are just ghosts! Anyway, this drink was created before Starbucks took hold. I would say that this drink tastes like a tropical, alcoholic version of a Starbucks iced coffee. Here is the recipe: 1/2 ounces fresh bananas, 2 oz Baileys Irish Creme, 1 oz Coco Lopez (canned coconut product). Blend with crushed ice in a blender. Yummy!!!
Okay, close your eyes, smell the islands, hear the islands, taste the islands! You are welcome!!! Happy Friday, my friends!!
“One of these days I am going to go on vacation and “forget” to come back.” -Margaritaville