THEonlyGOALIE

Seriously?

2008-04-24T19:01:00.000-07:00

It seems I spend a lot of time at work and a lot of time in my car. Here is a morning car story for your enjoyment.

Dallas, TX drivers are not the best drivers. They are like New York drivers laced with just enough southern courtesy to make it in the great state of. Blinkers are apparently decorations that don't get utilized.

I was in the fast lane. I had merged and made my way across four lanes of traffic to reserve this right of passage, not to mention I waited for safe holes in traffic and used my blinkers to get there. While enjoying the tunes on my ipod, a heavy set, middle-aged man in a tanish, well-driven Chevrolet SUV too decided he should be in the fast lane.

Either he did not check his blind spot or he felt entitled to the space I was currently occupying, but he slid over in to the fast lane nearly taking out my front right end, with his --should I take the liberty of saying "dented"-- vehicle.

I, like most people, gripped the wheel took my foot off the gas and gently placed it on the break hoping for the best, yet bracing for the worst. In my gripping position the horn magically honked and I could tell he glanced back. I tried for my most horrified "you almost hit me" look.

He leaned his head so I could see it in his side mirror. He then proceeded to stick his tongue out at me.

Seriously...

What, are we five?

Clearly I Do

2008-04-18T21:15:00.000-07:00

Who makes a whole package of instant chocolate pudding and then proceeds to eat the entire four servings.

Clearly I do. I wouldn't be writing this if I didn't actually sit down after mixing the "cold serve" pudding and promise myself this is the last bite I am going to take... no wait... seriously this is the last bite I am going to take.

But I used fat free "lactose free" milk.

But the pudding mix is naturally fat free (never mind the millions of sugar grams).

And so, as a tribute to the fat free-ness, I just keep on eating. Not hungry, not full so I feel entitled to continue on my journey of finishing ALL four servings. Then because I live alone and there is no hall monitor, I use my finger to get the last little bit from the bowl before calling it a night.

Clearly I like chocolate pudding.

Birthday or is it Though?

2007-07-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow. I'll be 25. I haven't talked it up. Somehow it doesn't really seem like a big day. My mom cares. I like it that she does, but other than that, who really cares? I think once I went to college my birthday no longer mattered. It's just this day in the summer. It will be a rainy day in TX.

It might be that I have a job now. My birthday is on a Wednesday. I have two more days until the weekend so that I may "observe" it properly. Just an FYI: that doesn't mean going out and getting sloshed, but more likely sleeping in and laying in front of the TV with loads of DVDs... my how times have changed.

I wish I had some true blue college friends here or at least someone willing to veg in front of the TV with me. A birthday with a DVD and a glass of wine. That's a good day.

The year of 25: I'm thinking allowing more people in will be good.

The sound of Monday

2007-07-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

It's the sound of a dying cow. A languished, sad moo emanating from somewhere down a hallway. Really a dying cow?

No.

Just one of my bosses phone ring tone. It is listed as melancholy sax, as though a musical instrument has the right to sound like what I'd imagine a dying cow would sound like.

I'm not being morose. I don't sit around thinking about what sounds come out of different living animals as they die. The noise hit me a little off guard the first time I heard it and it has been the dying cow sound ever since.

The cow dies a lot on Monday.

It's sad, really.

Just One Moment

2007-03-22T19:27:00.000-07:00

Who has time these days to sit and watch the mystery of a tea bag darkening a cup of steaming clear liquid? Plumes of brown seeping out of the small bag polluting the water like a sinister cartoon character devilishly smoking an incredibly thin cigarette. All this while letting out a high crackling laugh and plotting to overthrow the hero.

I have time.

I have as much time as the man allows me.

It's enough time to notice the way the wind feels blowing through my hair. It's enough time to sit in silence.

It is enough time to notice things I haven't always taken the time to notice and appreciate.

I have time.

New Changes

2007-03-01T19:24:00.000-08:00

I have a job. I have a new life. I have a new city. I just haven't found any friends. I miss New Orleans. I hear things keep going downhill, but I can't not miss New Orleans.

Ringing in the New Year

2007-01-02T08:29:00.000-08:00

Being an unemployed graduate wasn't something I planned on. My brothers had a job immediately after graduating and so should I, right? After five long months of being unemployed, feeling frantic, and being severely harsh on myself for not living up to my own standards I have accepted a job that starts on January 8th and will be moving shortly.

It is like the saying, "Good things come to those who wait." I wasn't necessarily waiting, I more actively pursuing. There are tread marks on the new carpet in my bedroom where I spent many afternoons pacing willing an e-mail to pop up in my mail box. At some point a concerned person even let it be known that they hoped I wasn't waiting around to get married and start life that way. That's an interesting idea, but clearly not. I value my independence and proving to people that I can make it relatively on my own (my mother and father will always be sought out for their advice. They have lived longer than me and can only offer helpful words of wisdom... No matter if I decide to use their knowledge or not.). Besides, getting married would actually involve dating. I haven't had a date in a really long time. It seems like my dating life always suffers at the expense of something else I am doing. I wanted to make good grades, play soccer, be in a sorority, live off campus, and have two jobs. Not much time for dating. Then I graduated. Job searching became my focus, dating got the shaft again. It doesn't help that I really friendly and I like to joke around so I get stuck in the friend category more often than not. So marriage... That's going to take some time.

So anyway, here's to the new year! I'm ringing it in right. I finally have a job, I'm about to move, and the next phase of my life can begin!

Happy New Year to everyone. I hope it brings all sorts of new possibilities and happiness to each and everyone of you.

Button Pushing Problem

2006-10-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

It's what happens when you put a button in front of me. My finger gets twitchy and I just have to make a stab at it. I lock my car at least five times just because I like pressing the lock button. I probably hit the unlock button four times.

When I set my alarm I hit the button to check it several times. In the morning I hit the snooze several times, but that is more in an effort NOT to get out of my cozy, warm bed.

I hit the elevator button even if it is already lit. You know, the more you hit it, the faster the elevator comes.

I like typing on keyboards that make a clicking sound, it has something to do with typing on an old fashioned typewriter.

Thank goodness most icons on the computer only respond to the double click...

Being Smart Enough

2006-10-17T09:37:00.000-07:00

My whole life has been about proving myself. Born with dyslexia I never really cared much about what other people thought about me until I realized that I was different. I only knew I was different when one day papers from my backpack were thrown out the window of the school bus. Along with the throwing of the paper came the taunts, "you're stupid. You go to the stupid classes." The bus driver made me flag girl of the bus so I could sit behind her and read a book and never be bothered again.

It was then though that it dawned on me. The classes I went to as a child in elementary school weren't special in positive terms. I left the normal classroom every day away from the "normal" kids and went to my special (ed) classes.

If you were smart enough in the public school system in deep south MS you got to take a field trip every month to the high school for a program called IDEAS. I'm sure that stands for something really cool, but I can't remember. I can't remember, mainly because I was never allowed to take part in IDEAS.

In fifth grade, my fifth grade teacher (I do remember her name for many reasons, most of which are not favorable) pulled my mother aside and told her, "We think Josie's smart enough to take part in IDEAS now." As in, she has stayed in "normal" classes for a year now and functions quite "normally." My mother gave her THE look and replied, "Don't bother, we're putting her in Catholic school." My mother wasn't very keen on the public school's system of "normal" and "special" (as in not really special, just kind of stupid). In the Catholic school that I went to there were small classes and teachers worked harder not labeling students. I wasn't the stupid kid anymore. I was actually Bob's little sister. He did great things with his time there.

Just one more hurdle for me to jump. This time, armed with a confidence my mom passed along to me, I just put on my running shoes.

The World as a genre of Music

2006-10-16T11:41:00.000-07:00

If real life could be any genre of music, I think I'd want to live in a country song. Though slightly dramatized and maybe a little too gut wrenching at times, country music talks about life, love, and happiness in ways that make you want to live in a small house surrounded by acres of grass and a white picket fence.

Happiness is family and living in the country and has nothing to do with driving an Escalade. Love, especially love lost, hurts in a way that makes finding the right one to love even more great. Life isn't always happy, but life is always complete with a wholeness that makes more sense with a country twang.

What scares me is life becoming more like a rap song. I close my eyes trying to imagine one rap song I'd want my life to become. The only images I see are tube tops, thongs, dark night clubs... I can't even get in to the men that come to mind. It is something straight out of a nightmare. Large dark rooms with strobe lights and flashing red and yellow spot lights. Incessantly loud music. What happened to the grass and the white picket fences? What happened to real life? What happened?

I like going to bars (not in tube tops... that's just not how I roll).

I like dancing in clubs.

I wouldn't want that for life. Hopefully life is a little more country than rap for me.

"It"

2006-10-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

My brain is wandering. There isn't anything to do. The internet has lost it's appeal and I am sitting in a basement where the fluorescent glare combined with the glow of over 50 computers causes eye strain in ways I can't even describe.

This isn't the way it's supposed to be. I feel like this is "it." The "it" you feel resigned to do, but can't figure out why. The "it" you drive for hours to get to in the morning. The "it" that promotes recycled air and no sunlight. The "it" you can't bring yourself to hate, but you can't even begin to enjoy. Once upon a time "it" might have intrigued me, but I now know there is something out there I am supposed to be doing. "It" isn't this.

Sometimes I feel like a tiny ant in a huge ant hill. Everyone around me is going about their daily tasks and working just fine, but then there is me with my hands up screaming at the sky, "What about me?" This is the true feeling of being lost. I know where I am all the time. I'm at work, I'm in my car, I'm at home... But it is not a job I should be doing, I don't officially own my car yet, and it's my parents home.

I'm a guest in my own life. I'm between a here and there. Do I make roots here? What if I can't stay here? My feet are just beginning to sink a little deeper in the soil and every time I have to start over is getting harder and harder to pull them out.

Sickness

2006-10-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

Being sick is like taking an unpleasant holiday. Many days you might wish to just lie in bed and do nothing, but when you are sick, you are actually forced by your body to just chill out. Most of the time, for me at least, I have a millions things I want to be doing instead of lying in bed. The grass is always greener right?

So here are some reasons being sick this time wasn't my cup of tea:
1.) My DVD player broke and daytime television is terrible.
2.) My head was so congested that I got motion sick just walking down the hall.
3.) My room is a mess (making me want to clean it) and my laundry needed to be done.
4.) I couldn't accomplish either of these activities because I'd break out in a cold/hot sweat.
5.) I felt like a useless waste of space.
6.) I actually cried about something I saw on TV... it wasn't sad.

Mainly, I wasn't so sick that I felt like I was going to die, it was more the dizzy feeling making my stomach upset and the throbbing pain in my head. So I felt like I should have been able to do something, but I couldn't muster the gusto to get it done.

I'm somewhat better now. I'm not dizzy at the very least.

Scrapbooking... The never-ending battle

2006-09-27T13:45:00.000-07:00

Throughout my life I have collected things...beenie babies, Happy Meal toys, Star Wars Episode One figures, baseball cards, report cards, papers, pictures, awards, and the list goes on and on.

I have this urge to keep it all, but I don't want to. So trying to be constructive and preserve some memories... Like the note card that came on the flowers my brothers sent me when I was elected to the homecoming court my senior year... I am trying to scrapbook everything.

It looks like a war zone in my room. Besides not being completely unpacked and having boxes everywhere, I now have piles of papers and pictures everywhere too. I decided to work on scrapbooking all of my soccer memories first. I can't even explain how much stuff I have for soccer alone. I then decided that I should theme that section of scrapbooking and do all sports. So this includes the year I played basketball when I was about 10 and all the dance classes and pictures of me dancing and who can forget random horseback riding lesson pictures. I'd say I'm looking at roughly 50 to 70 pages for this one section alone. That is just how much stuff I have.

Then there are pictures and momentous of me growing up, birthday parties, birthday cards, graduation (HS and college), Germany (YFU 6-week trip in HS and the semester abroad in college), family trips to PA, sorority stuff, newspaper clippings, and ahhhhhhhhhh!

Then there is the creation of one scrapbook page. I want them to look creative and fun, so that involves getting scrapbook stickers as well as looking through magazines and cutting out fun phrases and words as well as ads that can be used as backgrounds on certain pages. I found some funny soccer ads that worked really well when I arranged some soccer pictures on it. This just takes a lot of time. I had no idea when I began, what kind of project this would end up being.

This is turning in to the never-ending battle. Me against mounds and mounds of paper.

One of life's little Let-Downs

2006-09-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

It's the alarm clock at 5:57 in the morning. It signals that I am still alive and well. That is not the let-down. The let-down comes shortly after the fog lifts and I recognize what my life has become. I wake up, go to a short-term job situation, come home, and get to do it all over again.

The let-down is that I am not moving away from this situation. It is like a ditch on the side of the road. I'm standing in it and instead of stepping out of it like a sane person I grab a shovel and I'm digging it deeper. You know, so that it's extra hard to get out of.

I was a fresh, ripe, impeccable peach sitting on the road-side stand waiting for someone to say, "That's the one I want!" I'm fermenting. Several months out of college, I'm beginning to get soft around the edges.

The dream is still out there, but I am starting to doubt myself. I hate doubt. It is an extra voice in my brain. I already have the voice of my mother, my father, my two older brothers, and my largest critic-- myself. I don't need to have a doubter in my head.

Needless to say, there are very few to no people to talk to about all this. Everyone just wants to tell me how great I am and how wonderful my resume looks and how anyone would be lucky to have me working for them. (pssst... *in the voice of wisdom* I'd have a job if all this were true... or at least some direction).

Golf

2006-09-12T18:32:00.000-07:00

My brother flew in to Austin on Thursday evening for the UT vs OHIO football game on Saturday. It was great seeing him. Friday was such a good day! In the morning we went golfing with my dad and my mom came in-tow to take pictures. Tom and I are not the best golfers. I have only been playing or learning to hit the ball for a little over a month.

My brother and I began to switch hit. We both hit the ball each turn, but then we would hit the ball from the best ball. This way we had two chances to get the ball to a better place.

Pretty funny though, we lost about half a bag of golf balls in the long grass and the ruff. That is just how bad... or not good if you want a little more positive attitude in the sentence... we are. It was nice not feeling like I needed to beat anyone and even better I got to be on the same "team," so to say, as my brother. It is funny, even with eight years between us, life has started to even out. I'm not the kid sister as much as I am making my way to being an equal.

It begins with golf?

Too much of the Same

2006-09-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

Variation. That doesn't happen in my life. At least not right now. I am used to going to school at different times every day and working different times every day with grocery shopping when I can fit it in and babysitting Friday or Saturday nights and soccer games on the weekend and rollarblading in the park when I'd get off of work at the preschool.

I can sum up what I do now: Work, lunch, exercise, sort through stuff in my room, and go to bed. That is normally the pattern of every day. It's getting harder to break that pattern, because I live so far away from the city and I don't really have any friends that live here. Then my cell phone doesn't work at my parents house. Everyone I normally call has Verizon... so no one ever calls anymore because they can't get through to me and it's not free to call my house phone.

I need to get a job. I miss having my own apartment. I love my parents and I love this time that I get to spend with them (though I really should have a job and my own apartment), but the distance and feeling cut off from everything is pretty hard.

No wonder they call college the best times you will have in your life.

Oh Deer

2006-09-07T09:43:00.000-07:00

The front of my car started shaking when I stop after going at least 30 mph. Time to go in to the shop!

So how do I get to go to work? Ah, daddy's car! The nice, new, pretty car that beeps angrily if you switch lanes without using your turn signal. The car that comes with the unspoken label, "You had better drive safe!"

I am about to turn on the feeder road to get on to I-35 when I see something out of the corner of my right eye. I can't see anything when I turn my head and look so I step on the gas...

I hit something.

It gets up and tries to continue running across the street, but it is so startled, as am I, that it falls in the middle of the two lanes to my left.

Oh my... Deer! I hit a baby deer, hence why I could not see it in front of daddy's car. It somehow makes it across four lanes of traffic and in to the woods on the other side.

I had to sit in an hour and a half of traffic feeling like a baby deer killer. I don't like to hurt animals or see hurt animals, so I am still feeling guilty about this one.

Just that Creepy Feeling

2006-09-05T09:01:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had an instant where you thought you might die? Where you see it coming and you're scared, but not really? As if you know what is going to happen, but it just doesn't register that you should be really afraid and saying a final prayer.

I was driving down 183. At a point in this road before Leander, TX it is four lanes of traffic with no middle divider. "Who cares?", you ask. The road is curving and it is also 65 mph. So then you get nut cases that drive 75 to 80 mph in the left lane. Add a little bit of wind and passing a car in the right lane and that nut case is all over the left lane of the on-coming traffic.

Insert me in to the on-coming traffic. It is almost as if the nut case forgot that he could ease off of the gas and maybe, just maybe, find the broad petal next to the gas called the "break." With someone next to me in the right lane I was trapped.

Closing my eyes didn't seem appropriate, seeing as to how I was driving something that weighs about as much as an elephant. I sucked in my breath, braced myself for the impact, kept my hands firmly on the steering wheel, and then nothing.

It is like the laws of nature decided to take a break at 7:20 this morning on 183 right about where my 4Runner was supposed to get hit by a white Dodge truck. Yes, I do remember the name and color of the truck, because everything moved in slow motion. Everything. The sound on the radio, the blur of the grass, the red vehicle next to me, the sound of my heart, and most of all the little pocket of air between my SUV and the truck.

So, not today.

What Nicole and I miss about New Orleans

2006-09-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

So Nicole began to miss New Orleans and if you've ever moved away from a place that you really love, you'll understand. She wrote the first 15 things, though I will have to admit some of them I should have repeated to emphasize how much I miss them too. Numbers 16-31 are all mine.

1. Daiquiris - especially the Chocolate Banana one from daiquiris and Creams
2. The Fly
3. Crawfish every weekend in the Spring
4. Breakfast at the Bluebird Cafe
5. Taking the streetcar downtown and wandering the Market and enjoying just being outside.
6. Cowboy Mouth concerts every other weekend
7. Quarter martini lunch at Commander's
8. (I never thought I'd say this) The sound of the little kids "tap dancing" on the streets in the quarter
9. Beignets at midnight
10. The two story Target SO CLOSE to my house (and mine because we were neighbors for a short time)
11. Cheap movies and Movie Watcher clubs and free popcorn Wednesdays
12. The Ponchatoula Strawberry Festival
13. The Oak Alley craft fair
14. Choosing which house I want to be "mine" on St. Charles (For me it was the white wedding cake house!)
15. Gelato at Angelo Broccatto's
16. Bacco's (oh so yummy food)
17. Port of Call burgers
18. Jiggers' burgers
19. Driving down River Road with my window down in late January
20. Biking on the levee
21. Rollerblading in Audubon Park
22. Babysitting my favorite little kids
23. Actually having friends that would go grocery shopping, watch movies, eat sushi, rollerblading, dance, give fashion advice, search for Taco Bells that don't exist in post Katrina land, and play soccer with me.
24. Playing co-ed soccer with Lazy by Nature
25. Going to the Soap Opera and getting all my clothes washed in 2 hours instead of taking all day
26. Hubig's Pies
27. Wine and pizza night with Heather
28. Free beer glasses at the Bulldog
29. WWOZ New Orleans heritage radio station
30. Being within 15 mins of three malls (even though they may not be the best malls)
31. Touchdown Jesus

The Back-Up Coffee

2006-08-29T09:55:00.000-07:00

I water down my coffee. I don't make it very strong in the first place. So because of this I feel entitled to at least two cups... more like travel mugs... full each morning. I also like drinking coffee out of a straw. Good stuff. The obsession with straws started after the accident leaving me without my front tooth for a year, but that is neither here nor there.

So on my way to work I have two travel mugs of coffee. They are called and commonly referred to as, "the coffee and the backup coffee."

The coffee always, without fail, gets to reside in the white knuckled grip of my right hand. You could try to steal it, but you'd have to pry it from this death grip. I wouldn't recommend trying this. It is only a short lived thing because, the grip relaxes with each passing swig. By the time the backup coffee makes its way in to my right hand, the grip is relaxed and noticeably more pink. There is no longer a desperate crazy look in my eyes.

It's not the caffeine. It's the flavor. I know I am repeating what I have already said, but some people need a hot shower in the morning to get started, I just need my coffee.

I've done without before... not for lack of trying to have some though... and life goes on. It's not air! I don't breathe coffee, though I must admit, the smell of coffee wafting through the air is awesome.

They should make coffee air filters.

Imagine waking up to French Roast and there isn't any coffee brewing.

I think there can be a real market for this.

Three Days going Strong

2006-08-24T09:52:00.000-07:00

My finger is still numb. It turns on and off like hot and cold water in an older building. As the numbness comes and goes it actually carries with it sensations that trap me in awareness. When it's numb it feels like it is dead and I am carrying with me a portion of skin and meat that is no longer "with" me spiritually, but is all there physically. I get to enter an antique store, but I can only look, I'm not allowed to touch. And then, when my finger re-awakens it tingles with hot needles of excitement. The flesh is alive and crawling with activity. It comes and goes and just as if I were standing under hot water as it abruptly runs cold--I always feel it.

There are worse things I know, but it's definately strange.

No Sense to be Tive with

2006-08-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

It started out like any other normal day yesterday. Get up, hit snooze, get up again, wash hair, get dressed, make coffee, and get out that door. It was about the time that I reached the door that I noticed not "all" of me was awake. The tip and side of my ring finger on my left hand was numb.

Ok, strange, but it will wake up.

About thirty minutes down the road it was still numb and my brain started making up things: Isn't it the left hand and arm that ache or act strange when a heart attack is happening? Wait, I'm too young to have a heart attack. No I'm not, they say kids are having them these days. Don't they? Oh my gosh, I'm having a heart attack. I can't breathe. My chest is tight. Am I having an asthma attack? Is this a heart attack? I feel like my whole hand is going numb. I'm getting dizzy. Why am I getting dizzy?

But then the common sense part of the brain took over: Chill out, you're not having a heart attack. Stop taking short breaths, you're going to pass out. Your whole hand is not numb, it's just that one finger.

My finger is still numb today. Pinched nerve? I hope that's all that is wrong. For now it is just annoying. My finger no longer has the sense to be sens-a-tive.

My NEW Life...

2006-08-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

So I have graduated... cum laude... hold your applause... and I am living at home with my parents because I don't have/can't find a job! WOOHOO! Big college graduate.

This new life is really strange. It feels like the Katrina semester all over again. I don't mind living at home. It feels like summer vacation when you have a summer job and you are living at home. There is only one problem and that is that summer is almost over. Once the whether starts getting colder, it's not really a summer job anymore is it? And it really wasn't ever vacation.

I thought, just keeping track of my family and the greatness everyone seems to have, that I would be a sure thing for a job or some sort of greatness. Apparently I missed the greatness gene. I'm not a slacker, you don't get good grades and participate in several clubs and engage in team sports and have several jobs by being a slacker.

It does make me wonder then...

What the heck is wrong with me?

Be Still My Heart

2006-06-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

The England vs. Trinidad game was CRAZY. Funny thing is, that Crouch kept messing up the whole game and seconds before he scored (in the last five minutes) we were all saying, "Watch him score off a head ball..." moments later he did. The bar went crazy: mainly people were there supporting Trinidad and they couldn't believe it.

Ha, we called it.

Also I got a new coffee machine and a new toaster(which I forgot broke a few days before my coffee machine). I'll post a picture of my new coffee machine later. It is so amazing. I like to just stand in the kitchen and stare at it. It has this green night glow clock on it that is amazing!

PS Beckham played a great game! He kept setting people up to make amazing shots, but they kept messing it up!

The end of a good run...

2006-06-07T20:01:00.000-07:00

My coffee machine stopped working this morning. I don't think that I can express the saddness I feel about this topic in words. I am sure the caffine headache will speak for itself soon. (I am stealing the coffee machine from the office for the weekend HAHA).