Let Me 'Splain Sometheeng To Joo

Remember Pura Vida? 

Pura Vida, or Pure Life, is many things.  For one thing, it has been turned into a marketing tool for Costa Rica.  Probably a full third of the souvenirs (is that REALLY how it's spelled?  That just goes against my grain.  Just sayin'.) use it as the 'signature' of Costa Rica.  Because really, it is a philosophy of sorts, and one I can really subscribe to.  Not necessarily 'pure' life, but pure LIFE. Doesn't that just sound like us?  I like to think of it as grabbing all the forking gusto I can and wringing what I can't just grab out of what's left.  I guess some of this is coming from something Braja spoke about in a recent post.  I choose, every day, to see the beauty around me instead of the ugliness, and I try my damndest to see the beauty or the funny in the ugly.  Do ya feel me?

In that vein, I wanted to say, just for the record, that I have a lot on my plate right now.  I have birds trying to make a granny out of me.  I have a wonderful, two legged trip to prepare for-and this is a full time project in and of itself-we don't do anything halfassed, so I have a chitload of research to do.  Fortunately, I know the history of Amsterdam and the artwork, architecture and language barriers involved from previous trips, but Barcelona is a whole new ballgame.  In order to fully appreciate what we are seeing, there is a staggering amount of information to absorb.  Then there is El Juevo, who has been somewhat on the back burner for a month.  When the Innocent Bystander is home, he is the one who really suffers, because all focus is on the IB for the duration, so I try to rectify (I just like that word) the situation when the IB is on the boat by making it all about him, which means it is all about hockey.  Another train I can get on board, as I am a fan myself, but something that takes up a tremendous amount of time.  We have a routine, El Juevo and I.  We get there when the doors open, an hour prior to the game, so we can watch warmups.  That is after a 45 minute drive to the coliseum.  Add to that the minimum two and a half hours for the game, and the 45 minute drive home and you are looking at five hours per game.  We have games six days in the next week, and we have tickets to five of them.  And then, there is this:

Puss.  Someone evidently dropped her off back here instead of taking her to a shelter, and the night I found her out in the woods howling for her momma it was supposed to be a hard freeze, so I got her set up in a little corner with a towel and some dog/duck food I had.  I improved her conditions considerably yesterday so she was VERY comfortable last night.  I will take her next week and get her shots, wormed and spayed.  She will have to be an outside cat because of the birds, but we have a very nice screened in porch for her recovery period, after which she should do quite well as a houseboat cat.  This in addition to the five strays I feed over at the house.

My point?  Why yes!  I have one.  I explained all this as an apology.  After my recent reticence about posting, I felt I should warn you in advance that although I am going to do my best to continue posting and replying to as many comments as possible, and will continue to keep up with all your blogs, something has got to give, and the only thing I can think of that I can ease up on that will save any time is commenting myself.  So.  Don't think I'm not reading you, or that I no longer love you many.  I am just trying to keep myself from being overwhelmed.  I am sure that I will be moved along the way here and there to comment, because we all know what a big mouth I am, but they will be fewer and farther between.  Know that I am still out here, and I appreciate each and every one of you, and will stick my foot back in it as soon as I am able. Until then?  PURA VIDA!

*smooches*

On making friends

I was reading a post over at The Start of Something New and Dana was talking about how difficult it is making friends.  I started to make a comment, and when I read over what I was writing, I realized I was not commenting-I was writing a post-so I deleted what I'd written and went with a short comment.  (I did ask her permission last night to reference her post. *adjusts her Miss Ethical Blogger tiara*)

Her post got me thinking about how painfully shy I was as a kid and into my teens.  As a Seabee brat, we moved every two or three years, and every move was like having a tooth pulled without anesthesia.  We had to leave all our friends behind and the house and the neighborhood we'd just had time to get really comfortable with.  Making new friends was always hard, as the schools we went to were usually civilian schools.  Almost all of the kids in those schools had grown up in that area all of their lives, and the friendships had been cemented long before we got there.  I remember the year I was in the third grade, we moved THREE times-Rhode Island, Ohio and Puerto Rico (HA-I got to revisit MY motherland *wink*).  That was a tough year, but it ended up being a blessing, because we got to spend an unprecedented four years in Puerto Rico once we finally got there.

We moved again in the middle of my seventh grade school year.  That was a really tough time.  We were used to a tropical climate and were very tanned, and we moved to northern Ohio in the middle of wintertime.  I stood out like a sore thumb.  To make matters worse, I soon developed a horrible foot odor problem.  It either had to do with the shoes I was wearing, or perhaps the fact that for the last four years I'd been wearing sandals and suddenly I was wearing socks and shoes, but the stale frito/parmesean odor that followed me around like Pigpen's cloud o' pigpen offended even me.  I tried everything-powders, creams, bathing in potions my grandmother would concoct for me...nothing helped.  Needless to say, books were my only real friends for the remainder of that school year.

By the start of the eighth grade, my complexion had equalized so that I no longer stood out (I just realized as I'm writing this that I stood out the previous year because there really weren't many black kids at this public school at all-I can only remember ONE in any of my classes).  I don't know if I got new shoes, or if my feet just acclimated themselves to our new home, but my foot odor problem had also resolved itself.  I was ready to start the new year fresh.  I lived in walking distance of the school, so I arrived early that first day and was the first kid to arrive in my homeroom.  I picked a table in the back of the room and sat down and busied myself with my folders and notebooks and other little goodies in my new school supplies.

All of a sudden, this girl walks into the room, looks around at all the empty tables, and comes straight to mine and sat down.  She looked directly into my eyes and said "Hi.  My name is Christine McKee.  I am sick and tired of being shy and not having any friends.  What is your name?"

I was in shock, but I told her my name and we compared schedules.  Now, this school was on a module system.  The school day was broken down into fifteen minute segments (modules) and each student's schedule was pretty much unique.  But the gods had conspired together, and out of the 700 or so students in the school they had created only TWO schedules that were identical that I was ever aware of-Christine's and mine.  Need I say that our fast and deep friendship was absolutely meant to be?

As I grew older and made other moves, I kept that introduction in mind, and still do to this day. (I lost track of Chris over the years, although I could probably still find her-I STILL have her old home phone number memorized.  Her parents probably still live there all these thirty two or so years later.)  What I remember most was her saying she was tired of being shy and then just putting it out there.  I think that is the only cure for shyness.  You just have to be willing to put it out there, to take a risk.  Because it is always a risk-a risk of being rejected, of being ridiculed, of getting your hopes up and then being let down again.  But by not taking that risk, you are risking NOT meeting someone who might end up being that ONE person that you can let it all hang out with.  And the thing that stuck with me the most was that she was feeling the exact same insecurities as I was.  Over the years, I've found that probably 75% of the time, that is exactly the case with everyone I meet.  Almost EVERYONE is insecure.  I don't really have to imagine them nekkid to talk to them, because I finally realized that there are a lot more people in the world like me than there are the self confident people with perfect lives who never fart or burp or drip shit all over themselves when they are eating kind of people that populate the world in my imagination.  

I have many friends now.  And they are all perfect to me in their imperfections and their soap opera lives and their realness.  And I think I can chalk it all up to that first day of the eighth grade, and a girl named Chris.

Don't forget to comment on this post for your chance to win a slightly used IPhone-details of the contest and a description of the phone are on the post.  Good luck to all.

And now, a little lagniappe:

see more crazy cat pics