whitney houston welcomes me home

i was a relatively big whitney houston fan as a youth.  i mean i chose to do a music video to who song "how will i know" as a strapping 10 year old.

in her later years i just kind of felt bad that she wasn't able to continue her string of hits due to personal choices.  when i heard of her death at such a young age it shocked me but didn't shock me.  she was incredibly talented and losing the opportunity to hear what she might have shared with the world is sad.

for some reason, i found myself viewing the bodyguard on the lifetime movie network late afternoon one saturday afternoon.  the scene where her character comes on screen singing "i have nothing" literally made me stop whatever web surfing, picking up clutter or grabbing something eat or drink that i was doing.  i sat on my ottoman close to the TV and watched her sing this song.

for the last week or so i have come home from work and played "i have nothing" really loudly in my bedroom while changing out of work clothes.  i literally lipsync the words trying to embrace all of the angst, emotion and desperation she projects.  it's like whitney is welcoming me home by reminding me that i have nothing without the blessings of family and friends in my life.

where my commute time goes to die...

my laziness in the morning has necessitated taking the subway to work.  for the last month or so, almost every single ride on the downtown 6 train has encountered a very long stop at the 59th street station or a stop between the 59th street and 51st street station.  there is something about the 59th street station that causes any extra minutes i have on my morning commute to evaporate like my breath in the cold air.  i don't think it would bug me if i didn't exit the train at 51st street, which is the very next stop after 59th. 

this time sucking station is causing me to attempt, with all that i am and have, to get up a little bit earlier so that i can take the limited M1, M2 or M4 down fifth avenue instead.  enough of wasting valuable minutes of my life stuck underground at 59th and lexington.  if i'm going to be stuck somewhere i would prefer it to be above ground with the picturesque central park out the window.

this week's simple moments

1.  had my first 2012 girl scout thin mint cookies
2.  no matter how hard i try, there will always be dust bunnies in my apartment
3.  man on bus wearing truly awesome striped socks
4.  dressed almost exactly alike as receptionist.  man at qdoba even stopped us to comment on how we dressed alike that day.  awesome.
5.  opened my last bottle of bath & body work's strawberry lemonade lotion

15 minutes a day to take a photo

my time spent with my camera has been severly limited due to the dark day goal.  i miss it.  i miss photographing this great city.  i miss looking through the lens to find something worthy of capturing and keeping on my external hard drive.  i just miss being creative and taking time for looking at the beauty all around me.  that is about to change in a small way.

this awesome woman in australia, who has a blog, came up with the photo a day challenge.  each day of the month she has declared a subject to photograph.  some of the items are mundane or obscure.  others are specific but very open to interpretation.  i think it's a brilliant way to take about 15 minutes of your day to have a word or phrase in mind and figure out what it means to you and how you can represent it through a photograph.  i am having so much fun just taking at least one picture a day to keep those creative juices flowing.  you can see my #marchphotoaday pics via my twitter feed located to the left.

and thank goodness for a great camera on my iPhone.

daydreaming...take me away

for some reason, i have been daydreaming at work kinda a lot lately.  (not to worry that my work is suffering...i'm still my stellar employee self)  in those moments of daydreaming i seem to transport to a place that i fell in love with on my travels.  this week's daydreams consisted of the following favorite locales:

• saint chappelle upper room in paris, france
• tea at kensington palace's orangery restaurant in london, uk
• sandy beach north of charleston, sc
• standing in line for space mountain at disney world in orlando, fl
• a bench on the banks of the danube river in budapest, hungary
• top of the rock observation deck at dusk in rock center
• front stoop of my grandpappy's house
• room A550 and 5th floor bathroom of the hfac on byu's campus
• muir beach located about 20 miles north of san francisco, ca
• sitting at a table at cantina in prague, czech republic
• waiting in line to order amazing gelato at il granduca in florence, italy
• my bedroom at my first NY apartment on 92nd street and 2nd avenue
• bench overlooking the valley behind the chartres cathedral in chartres, france
• gas station in elko, nevada where we used to get flintstone ice cream push pops
• the delta sky club in heathrow and amsterdam airports

it has apparently been a week of pretty eclectic daydreaming locations.  these locations that pop into my head obviously had a special and often profound affect on me.  daydreaming about these places makes me want to return to each of them so i can again experience those feelings of joy, awe, reverence and wonder.  another bucket list item in the making...

this week's simple moments

1.  finally stepped foot in washington square park by nyu
2.  asked mooch to buy me shoes from payless on her worker bee discount because full price payless shoes aren't currently in my budget
3.  found out a close friend is moving out of the city - sad
4.  downloaded all episodes of downton abbey from iTunes...have i mentioned that i'm obsessed?
5.  saw tulips starting to poke through the dirt of the park avenue mall in february!
6.  construction worker called me 'hot mama'
7.  brilliantly brought my lunch to work on a rainy day to avoid the massive crowds at lunch time in the rockefeller center concourse
8.  climbed a ladder at work to put an HVAC diffuser in the ceiling - boo yah!
9.  booked a flight to utah to see the family and munchkins in april
10.  took a nap on the couch from 6:30 - 7:15pm on 2 out of 5 week nights this week

personal realization #9 - the dark day remedy

generally this blog is for posting about my life in new york and to make my friends jealous of all the cool things i get to do.  (can no longer hide from that simple truth)  it is relatively rare that i will post something deeply personal or a weakness i have or an event that has made me emotional.  it's just not my style and would detract from the "make my friends jealous" mantra.  

then came the dark day...

i decided to post about that truly horrible, gut wrenching, emotional black hole of a saturday because it fit perfectly in my personal realization post series.  the thing i didn't count on was the outpouring of support and love i received after the post was published.  amazing friends, many who i haven't seen in YEARS, sent me a text message, called me or posted in the comments section to check to make sure i was doing better and remind me how much they love me.  to each of you that reached out to me, i send you my sincerest thank you.  you were the remedy to my dark day and will continue to be my medicine for any dark days to come...

and my joani sent me flowers.  that really helped too. 

british ancestry = i'm british

most of my adult life i have wanted to be british.  i love almost everything about britain; only things on the not keen on list is their food, bad teeth and conversion rate of pound sterling to US dollar.  other than that, i'm in rapture with all things british.  

based on the above information it should make absolute sense that i soaked up all the british goodness of downton abbey on masterpiece classic.  it was doc who first implored me to watch the series that had been stuck on my DVR for a couple of weeks.  once i hit that first "play" i was on the downton abbey express train.  the acting is fantastic, the history is enlightening, the romance is sweet and the clothes and jewelry are too die for!  

i thought having high tea at the kensington palace orangery solidified my desire to claim britain as my own.  i didn't realize as i was drinking my ginger lemon tea that another british export would steal the love thunder from the orangery in such a short amount of time.  downton abbey gave me a home to rest my weary head and forget the cares of the world as i dived into the lives, trials and triumphants of the crawley family and their faithful friends belowstairs.  i implore you to watch downton abbey and realize your own strong desire to be british if even for a moment.

highclere castle was just added to list of places to see on my next british isles vacation...it's right up there with chatsworth house and the lake district.

a small snippet of scenes from my fave couples - mary & matthew and sybil & branson (plus it's made with a snow patrol song...bonus!)

fell off the wagon (not literally)

i truly was trying to curb my addiction over the last year or so.  i didn't buy that $1000 plane ticket to london in june to watch jimmy eat world perform the entirety of my FAVORITE album "bleed american".  still haven't plopped down the cash to see the lion king on broadway.  i saw less concerts and musicals last year than probably any year since 2002-2003 when i was a starving newbie new yorker. 

that hard work to battle my concert addiction is sayonara within the first couple of months of 2012.  thus far i have seen kelly clarkson at radio city music hall (awesome show!), bought tickets for snow patrol in april, heading to turn-of-the-century new york to see newsies the musical in april and for the peace de resistance...have tickets to see the cranberries in may!  anyone who knew me in high school couldn't be unaware of my love for the cranberries.  i remember exactly where i bought their "no need to argue" album.  i was in santa barbara, california at a music store at their outdoor shopping complex and i was 15 years old.  i am super, duper excited to finally see them live.  plus they are releasing a new album next week.  be still my beating heart!

i thought i had my addiction under control but alas i can't stop the goodness and joy i feel when i see tickets tacked up on my ticket board.  one day i will get this addiction under control...it's just not going to be today when i check the prices to fly to utah for snow patrol's show @ the depot.

personal realization #8 - the dark day

last saturday was, in the words of luke daines from gilmore girls, a dark day.  i have put my life on hold for about 5 weeks while working towards a goal.  last saturday i checked on the status of obtaining that goal.  the result i received was absolutely demoralizing and discouraging to the point that i spent most of the day crying and i never cry.  i mean i NEVER cry...unless i'm watching a pedigree dog commercial or preview for a disney film about an orphan chimpanzee.  if in the unlikely event that a tear does spill from my eye, i am extremely quick to shut down the tear ducts immediately before there is more splash down.

after many hours of an absolutely dejected and discouraged mood i opted to call my joani.  she said all the right things but there was something about the fact that she was saying these things through a telephone instead of directly to my face that made my mood even worse.  she then recommended that i call big lug to talk about what my next options for this goal could be.  i waited a few hours to get the crying under control to call him.  around 8pm i dialed his phone number and thankfully for me, but unlucky for him, he answered the phone with a "hey" and i immediately started crying.  i love my brother very much.  even more so because he was so patient with me during this phone call where my voice kept breaking and the silence on my end was, at times, deafening.

he took all the information i gave him and analyzed it to produce options for the next step towards my achievement of this goal.  he looked at the issues plaguing me and causing copious amounts of tears from a third party perspective and then compassionately helped me realize that all hope was not loss, nor would it ever be completely lost.  this ultimate goal just might take more effort and help from others.  i could no longer rely on only myself to gain success.  that was news to me but made perfect sense.

my life has been a road of hard work and receiving the fruits of that hard work.  i was taught at the knee of my joani to work hard for something that is worth achieving.  up until now i would estimate the veracity of that formula in almost 100% of the things i have worked hard for.  the fact that it wasn't working with this next goal was an entirely foreign concept to me which is why i didn't know how to handle the perceived failure of my dark day.  

i guess it was inevitable that this moment would happen.  i'm not sure i would have chosen this particular goal for this personal realization to take place.  it was a tough realization to swallow to know that hard work doesn't always equal getting what i want.  instead, i'm choosing to focus on allowing my family and friends to extend extra love & support and to ask for help because i can't do this on my own.  that is a personal realization that i can get behind and will hopefully cause less crying in the future.

a dedication to my mommy

yesterday was my mommy's birthday.  happy birthday joani g!  i wish i could have been at los hermanos with the familia to celebrate this most wonderful day of february when you were born!  hoping at least one family member ordered the monster burrito smothered in sauce and cheese.

my mommy is the best woman i know.  she is the epitome of kindness, honesty, strength, integrity, compassion, support, hard worker, goodness, intelligence (except when it comes to new technology), laughter, patience, selflessness, and so on and so on.  many people would claim that their mother is the best ever; but i would have sufficient examples about my mom to teach them who really IS the best mommy ever.  joani would win every time.

she is my best friend, most fervent supporter, amazing shoulder to lean and cry on, generous with her time and talents, wonderful us open viewing partner, an example of how i want to live my life through both difficulties and happiness and someone who all of her family and friends wants to spend as much time as possible with.  i love you oh so much my joani!  happy happy birthday!

vile lady neighbor update

i can report that since the night i called the cops on my horrid neighbor she has NOT screamed at her children!  hooray for her three boys!  i have seen her on the street a couple of times and gave her my most fervent annoyed with you stare. 

the thing that bothered me almost as much as her vileness is their front door is papered with drawings and colorings with the name Jesus.  there is even a palm cross from last year's Palm Sunday taped to their front door.  i had a VERY difficult time with a woman who behaved as she did but professed to place things on her front door stating "God is Love".  if this woman truly understood the nature of Jesus Christ and the profound love of God, she would NEVER treat anyone the way she was.  let alone her own children.