follower!

Why, I have a comment on my blog!! Whodathunk?!! Here I am, having posted a few times and have gotten to the point where i have actually told a few people I am posting!!! I've come out of the closet so to speak. And there it is, right under my *reply all* post... a comment!

I'm addicted. Must get more followers and comments..... now I'm on a mission.

Off to find followers.. more later.

pharmacy line

I was waiting for my prescriptions at the pharmacy earlier today (that is an entire blog unto itself, but we're not going there), settling down for my "15 to 20 minute wait", looking around for something, anything to read, and thinking that "15 to 20 minutes" can be amazingly short (like when the alarm goes off in the morning and you hit snooze for 15 minutes) and also astonishingly long (like when you are sitting in a Walgreens waiting for your prescriptions). How is that? How can the same amount of time feel like an eternity one day and then the next feel as though only seconds have passed?



Anyway... I was sitting there, waiting, watching the close circuit TV behind the desk so I could see any action happening in the store behind me. When a woman pushing a shopping cart pulled up to the counter with her little boy, who must have been around 18 months or maybe 2 years old. And as soon as she stopped the cart, the little boy looked at the pharmacist behind the counter (who was on the phone) and yelled, YELLED, "HI!". Big smile, big HI. Adorable. Except the pharmacisit was on the phone and couldn't respond. So the boy leaned out of the cart and towards the counter, pushed it up a few decibles, and yelled (still very cheery) "HI!". Still no response so he just went for it and let out a stream of "HI HI HI HI HI" until his mother shushed him and he just sat there and smiled.... looking around wide eyed and all happy, smiling this beaming smile. Absolutely unruffled by this world, and that pharmacist, or being shushed. A woman walked up behind mother and child to stand in line and he took one look at her and said (yep, you guessed it) "HI!". Without hesitation the woman in line responded, at the same decibel level and with the same perkiness "HI!". Great results, he beamed and looked around, looking for his next target. While he was putting his radar out there the mother of this young spunky maitre d to be had gotten the attention of the pharmacist and was told she would have to come back in "15 to 20 minutes". As she whirled the cart around the boy had locked me in his sights and wouldn't be distracted. THe cart turned, his head steered away from me and then he swung his head around again to find me... and as they were wheeling by me, he tossed out a big "HI!" for me. I responded with a big "HI!" and he was gone. Life continued there at the pharmacy waiting area. Another woman came in and sat down and I watched people going by in the close circuit security camera until woman and child returned to the counter again. As she was completing her transaction the boy looked around and saw that there was a fresh face in the waiting area and he beamed a "HI!" at the new woman sitting there and without hesitation she yelled back a big "HI!"..... and then he was gone. And we just sat there, no one talking , no eye contact. Just a few people sitting and waiting for our prescriptions. But having been greeted and responded with loud exuberant HI's. No one failed to respond to this little guy with anything other than a big HI. And everyone was just as loud and happy back to him.... even though we all returned to our fairly sedate state of waiting after the exchange.



For some reason I just found this incredibly touching and adorable and funny. And not just the little boy. Amazing how when we are confronted by innocent cheeriness we step up to it.....

reply all

I used the reply all button the other day when I wasn't supposed to. And it just so happened that I hit the reply all option while emailing my boss regarding a customer. Now you ask... which one wasn't supposed to see what? Because no matter how you slice it, it was just messy. And my boss got to witness my stupidity. Hitting reply all and including your customer when you are talking about said customer has to be one of the stupidest things a sales person can do. I admit, I've been a little tired lately and spaced out....

Hitting reply all by accident is like leaning over to whisper snide remarks out of the side of your neck about someone and realizing that you just made snide remarks TO the person you were talking ABOUT.

There is that moment when you realize.... O shit, I didn't did I? I had that moment. I only had it, though, when to my surprise my customer replied to the email!! With exclamation points and question marks and everything. I didn't realize that I emailed my customer my conversation ABOUT the customer until the customer emailed me back.

*sigh*

Anybody have any good "reply all" stories to make me feel better?

rainy tuesday

O how weird to be posting a blog for all to see and no one is looking! I can't tell you how many times I have left my freaking diary out and THAT certainly got read enough times. I even received quite a few comments on it! But I lay my life out on the line by blogging and no one seems to care, read, stop by or even leave comments!

O, the irony.

Well, I think it's probably good for me anyway.... to pour out my soul into cyberspace. Clear the stuck spots in my psyche.

grief

I have no life. Did I mention that? I look forward to work. I look forward to going to the office to see and interact with other people. It's pathetic, it really is. But this is a marked improvement upon the months BEFORE I was employed. Before I was hired in August I only left the house to go to yoga. Then I would come home, and shut the door, and wait. Wait until the next time I would have to go beyond the safe confines of my room to deal with the battleground that existed beyond that door.

When I was in complete isolation, this winter and spring, the only voice I wanted to hear was the voice of my yoga teacher telling me to breath, or lower my hip or use my mula bunda when standing in tree pose. And sometimes, when lying in Savasana, I would want to tell him to shut up too. Unless he was chanting. I could listen to someone chant for eternity. But after yoga I would leave the Studio as quickly as possible and get into my car without talking to a soul and get home as soon as I could and when I got into the safe confines of my room, I would feel okay again. Well, relatively okay based upon what was left of me after everything that went down this last January.

But anything that made me have to leave that room for any other reason other than to go to yoga was such a complete effort that I would be exhausted even before I opened the door of my room to emerge to complete whatever mission someone had given me. Grocery shopping. That was a necessity. I HAD to grocery shop because I had to eat. I tried NOT eating, which was fine really... except I needed choclate or sugar or twizzlers or something to stimulate my system. SOMETHING that would taste fine and sweet and rich, SOMETHING to let me know that there was something good in life. Still. Even after. After my crappy winter of 08. The winter that I survived... though I didn't really want to. The winter that I would go to bed as soon as I could.... it had to be dark... in order for me to turn the light out and go to sleep. It had to at least be dark. I couldn't try to go to sleep while it was still light out. For some reason I just couldn't allow myself to give into that. The winter that seemed to go on forever and then it turned to spring and that seemed to go on forever and then summer came and THAT seemed to go on forever... now Fall is here... and time seems to have sped up a little. I guess that is how I know that maybe some of the grief I have been carrying around with me since January is settling into me and becoming a part of me, grounding me and steadying me. Like a lead ball tied between my feet. Punch me and knock me over but I will automatically fly back up... like those punching bag dolls we had when we were little. Like a weeble. Weebles wobble but they don't fall down. Or they DO fall down but some cruel trick of gravity makes them bop right back up.... even if they don't want to.

I wonder if any of this sounds familiar to anyone else? I was so isolated and alone in my own mind and thoughts, and any effort to make contact with another human being was so... exhausting. and unfulfilling... and usually annoying that I thought for sure I was bound to go crazy. Or was crazy but no one had figured it out yet... but when they did then it was going to be four point restraints. I was truly afraid for my sanity during these past few months. So afraid that once I did collapse and crumble and I think my head almost exploded and I told my friend Laura that I really really really thought that I was going crazy.

Grief. It was grief that did this to me. Grief that punched me in the stomach one day and kept it's effing fist in there and every now and then it would spread it's fingers out wide and twist while it was also grabbing some of my guts and pieces of my heart and then it would twist some more just for fun. It would twist when I looked back, or looked ahead, or looked at the present and wondered how I was going to deal with it... this... the present. The thing I didn't want to be in. Twist when someone would ask me if I was feeling better... or if they hinted that I shouldn't let this get me down, or if someone would call and talk with that forced chipperness because they were sick of hearing me depressed. Grief that made me want to tell people to stop effing calling me if you want an effing progress report because THERE HAS BEEN NO PROGRESS. So please stop asking. It was grief that made me turn my back on just about everyone and everything in my life because everyone and everything in my life seemed to want me to just move on from this little hitch in my life. The hitch where I lost the guy... the guy who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It was grief that told me that although I wasn't going to spend the rest of my life with him..... HE had spent the rest of his life with ME.

But today.... looking back on this year... I realize now that there has been progress. That although it seems like I don't have a life.... I have one. The grief is not so close to the surface most days anymore. I mean, sometimes it's there, sure. When I think of what he and I might be doing now, if he were still alive. When I think of how another month has passed, every month when we come up on the 24th... the number of the day he died. It's there. It's there when I see someone else grieving. My eyes water up in an instant when someone tells me they had to put their dog down or when I read some sad news of someone too young dying in the obits. It's there and I can bring it up in an instant. But it doesn't own my anymore......

inspiration

So I'm bloggin. I need an outlet for my creativity, I need to blow off steam, I need to weep and wail, I need to be seen and heard, I need to move on, I need to make friends, I need to love and be loved, I need to grow, some days I need to shrink, I need A shrink. Wait, I have a shrink. Why do they call them shrinks anyway? What are the benefits of being shrunk? Is shrunk a word?

So here I am. Bloggin. Someone told me around about the beginning of the year, right about the time my life fell apart (for the second time) that I should write. They inferred that perhaps I could find relief from my grief and pain by writing. I do write, I keep a journal... but I have never let anyone, ever, read my journal. I have had boyfriends read my journal and nothing but baaaaad ever came from that. But I am tired of talking (I mean writing) to myself. I want to be heard..... even though being heard (or read) makes me feel incredibly vulnerable. But I have felt worse things in life than vulnerable so I am going to make the leap and..... did I mention? start blogging.

And that is it for now. Babysteps methinks. But tomorrow I think I will get into a little bit of history. Probably just my recent past... so as to drum up some sympathy. And I don't know how I am going to write. My style and format may change from day to day depending on how I feel. I think tomorrow I may tell a story of my recent past. Because some stuff I really need to get out, and my guess is that what I have to say, alot of people can relate to.

Any comments? Please feel free to leave them. I will delete creepy or abusive comments. No need for that now, right? But I would love to hear from people.... ask me a question! Let's get interactive!!!!

Til tomorrow.......