Stickers on laptops--why?

I'm selling my laptop to a friend (it's only about a year old) because we came across a great deal on a new one for a fraction of its original sale price and I needed an upgrade. Yay! While comparing the two I noticed I've been picking around the edges of the stickers on the older one. I don't remember doing it at all, in fact I've been trying really hard to leave them alone!

What is with the stickers anyway? Are they like adware-sticker style? Will computer manufacturers start auctioning off the "sticker spaces" to the highest bidder, you know, sort of like SUN auctioning for whose bull shit tool bars to include with their JAVA downloads? I get that some people think certain stickers (like ones indicating the processor or graphics card) give them visual bragging rights to the awesomeness of whatever is housed inside the plastic/metal shell, but I'm not big on the whole name brand thing and I'm not geeky enough to get a little tingly in my pants over the specs of a laptop! Do others not notice this, or do they just not care? Am I the only one who can't ignore the giant eyesores stuck below the keyboard?

Chris asked me why I don't just take them off and I don't have a good answer. There isn't any crucial info on them, it's only the ones with the warranty number and such on the underside of the computer that have to be left alone. So why do I not feel like I can just take the unimportant ones off? Hmmm...

I know, we can blame it on my childhood! *snort* I've been getting in trouble for peeling labels, stickers, band-aids, price tags, etc...since I was a little kid. When things are smooth and seem like they belong, I'm okay with leaving them be. But as soon as one little corner starts to lift up or the sticker looks like it doesn't belong there, I can't leave them alone until I've peeled them off! Unless of course I've been forbidden to do so, then I just THINK about peeling them off and try desperately to ignore them.

I guess since the stickers are on there all official looking I took it to mean I wasn't allowed to mess with them. But am I wrong? Can I really take them off? No one is going to give me hell for it like I got when I tore the tag off my pillow as a kid? Am I really asking this question? Why has it never occured to me that I could take the ugly things off!?!

Nonsense

I have nothing to blog about tonight. Nothing of any substance at all! So I'm going to instead ramble nonesense for a few paragraphs so I can feel that I've made my daily contribution to this blog, since it seems to be the only Na-WhatTheFuckEver I can accomplish!

I've had a relatively interesting day, but not the sort of interesting that you blog about, since really the interesting parts are all mundane.

I'm still itching from the weird sun rash, which may be a photosensitive rash thanks to the 1,000 mg King Kong dosage of Naprosyn I take every day! I'm not impressed.

I think I should chop off my hair. Or at least a good 6 inches of it. I could keep babying it and going through shitloads of conditioner and pretending it's okay, but it's not. I love my long hair, but I made a vow when I started growing it out years ago that if it ever got to the point that it looked blah and lifeless, then I would cut it off. It's better to have short, healthy hair than frizzy, damaged hair. I don't believe in long hair for the sake of long hair. So now I'm just trying to talk myself into letting someone chop it off...meh.

Oh...I just remembered that there is a container of perfectly ripe strawberries in the other room! *does a happy dance* I know, a happy dance over strawberries?? But you just don't understand how much I love berries and how bloody long I've been waiting for them to be ready! I have to ration them to myself or I'll eat too many too soon in the season and get the strawberry rash, which then means you can't have them again that summer! Needless to say been there, done that as a kid and it was one tragically depressing summer.

And with that I'll end my contentless yabber. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have something more worthwhile to write about! Like, maybe some progress on that writing thing that shall remain nameless.

Wind of Change

The past few weeks this song has been playing in my head. Tonight it wouldn't quit, so I had to go hunt down the video. Whenever I hear this song I immediately think of being a child and hearing about the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even though I was quite young at the time, I sensed it was an important event happening in the world around me.

I remember lying in the back of my parents car one night maybe a year later, watching the streetlights zip by in the darkness as we were headed home. The haunting whistling of this song filled my ears as I wondered what a wind of change would look like.

I think we all saw it last week, blowing through the US. Beautiful, wasn't it?

May it continue to blow and bring down the walls that the last 8 years have built between us and the rest of the world.



"The world is closing in, did you ever think
that we could be so close, like it brothers?
The future’s in the air, I can feel it everywhere
blowing with the wind of change.

Take me to the magic of the moment on a glory night,
where the children of tomorrow dream away
in the wind of change."

-Scorpions "Wind of Change"

Alexander and Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Oh yes, it's been one of those days...wish fixing it were as easy as moving to Australia!

Chris has never heard of that book! What a deprived childhood;-P I loved it as a child and think of it every time I have a shit day. Today I tried reciting the book to Chris since parts of it are programmed in my head from my days as a pre-school teacher, laugh all you want to, I do one mean reading of Cat in the Hat! But alas I couldn't remember it all. Never fear, YouTube is here! Who would have thought to look there for children's books? Craziness. I checked out a few readings and found this one, which isn't what most people would call child friendly, but watching the first few minutes of it made me laugh and reminded me of something entirely different, a Mad TV spoof of Jackass.

But my favorite Mad TV clip is this one, it NEVER fails to make me laugh!



"I'm sick of The Man giving me the finger! Well here's your finger, BIATCH!! Take a picture!"

Guess he got poked in the tummy one too many times, can't say I blame him. LOL!!

Ahhh...after all that laughing I can almost forget the kind of day I had.

And I just realised tomorrow is the next presidential debate! Town Hall style. This should be interesting. Will we see McCain blow his top live on national TV?? One has to wonder...

I'm 26 for a moment...

Life is such an odd thing. The older I get the more I realise that time passes so fast and yet we still will it to go faster. When I was 9, my 10th birthday couldn't come fast enough because then I'd finally be allowed to get my ears pierced. Then I couldn't wait to be 13 because I'd be a "teen" then! I counted down the days until my 16th birthday, convinced that the closer I got to adulthood the better life would be, when that didn't materialise at 16 I figured by 18 I'd be all set for college and getting out of my parents house. At 18 that didn't happen as planned and I was ready to be 21 because I thought by then I'd have my path in life all sorted out!

On my 21st birthday I decided life was hell and I really wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, or at least fast forward through my life a good bit and come out once things sorted themselves out because surely at 23 things would be better! At 23 I forced myself to leave my parent's house to go visit family friends in Florida and stayed there for almost 6 months, trying desperately to get something moving in my life because I thought for sure I was doomed to be forever stuck there, then ended up actually going back there to live and thought I'd really fucked up then. I think 23 was one of the longest years of my life, but also the one I changed the most in, although 24 comes in a close second.

By my 25th birthday I was engaged, moved to a foreign country, and married! Talk about time moving fast! I thought my 25th year would find me in the US, starting college. You see, I have this anxiety over college. I didn't get to go when I was 18, and in hindsight that isn't such a bad thing because who I am now is quite far from who I was then, and at least I didn't take up 4 years getting a degree I'd never use. But it was okay, I figured I could still squeeze in a degree before I was 30, not too bad. Things never quite go to plan though, and now halfway through 26 I'm still in NZ, planning our next step in life. By the time I start school I'll be 27, so that degree won't come until I'm in my 30's and that does not make me very happy. I feel like suddenly life is rushing by at a breakneck speed and if I blink I'm going to miss the chance to do what I want to do. So I plan, fret, worry, obsess, plan some more, pace and I think I've about driven myself crazy. I feel like I'm constantly trying to play catch up with life.

Why do we do this? I know I'm not the only one to have this problem. When we're young we're in such a hurry to grow up that we spend our time pushing forward, trying not to think about how young we are, constantly fighting to be seen as older, wiser, more mature, anything to not be the kids we are. Then we find ourselves in our mid 20's and people are telling us we've got to get our career going, find a great person to "settle down" with, we get the grandkids question, and it seems as if everyone around us is pitching in to keep pushing us forward, always looking for the next thing, the next item on the checklist. Spouse? Check! 2.5 kids? Check! 9-5 office job? Check! Career path in place? Check! House and the debt that comes with it? Check! 2 cars? Check!

On and on we go, speeding through the list, becoming the people that society has convinced us we want to be until we hit our 40's and then all the sudden we dig our heels in and try to bring the ride to a screeching halt! How the fuck did we get close to half a century old? Where did our life go? We had dreams! Things we wanted to do, places we wanted to go, and now what of them? We have a house to pay off, kids in high school that we've gotta put through college, we barely recognise ourselves in the mirror, and that 9-5 job? We've always secretly hated it. Is it any wonder why so many people go through a "mid-life crisis" and try to scramble back and do all the things that they shoulda/coulda/wanted to do when they were in their 20's but they were too consumed with getting to the next goalpost to take the time to do it?

I've often wondered if the US is the only place that has the "mid-life crisis" problem, because your 20's often go a bit different in more British countries. Over here it's not uncommon to find people in their late 20's or early 30's in school still. Taking 6 months or a year off to travel after high school, after college, and even between jobs is not unusual either. My sister in law took 3-4 months off of work and toured parts of South America! She had the leave saved up, here you get 4 weeks leave per year, so that wasn't too hard to save up, and she's a year older than me, not married. Here Chris and I were considered a bit "young" getting married when we did, while in the US people figured I'd never get married since at 23 I had no prospects!

As much as I worry about spending the next 4, 6, 10 years in school pursuing some degree to get me closer to some career aspirations I have, more than anything else I fear being that person that has a mid-life crisis at 40 because I feel like I never gave myself permission to let go and LIVE while I didn't have the burden of a mortgage, kids to create a stable home life for, and a business to carry.

I am convinced that when we are 70 we look back and instead of thinking "I should have spent more time at work." we are instead wishing that we'd lived in the moment, taken more risks, spent more time with the people we loved instead of worrying about all the things that in the end don't matter so much. Several times I've had people in their 60's and 70's tell me to enjoy being young, take risks, live life to the fullest, and just go for things instead of obsessing over them because before I know it, the chance will have passed me by. But how? They never tell me HOW! Which brings me to my next blog topic---letting go.

I love food, but sometimes it doesn't love me...

I'm a food geek, I admit it. I think about the food I eat more than most people I suppose. The nutritional composition of it, where it's come from, what's in it, who made it, how it could be made better, it's all swirling around in my head every time I take a bite of something. I suppose growing up with various food restrictions (my mom was Seventh Day Adventist) caused me to pay attention to what exactly I was eating as a kid, and with a mother who was rather particular about the food she ate in general, the habit just became more complex as I got older. When I was 14 my parents decided we were all going vegan. VEGAN. Us kids were less than impressed with all that. I mean, vegetarian we could get behind, but vegan?? They had good intentions though. My siblings both had rather severe asthma and my mother was hoping cutting out dairy products would impact their asthma for the better (it did, substantially' and was so worth it.)

And then when I was 19 I developed my first food intolerance--corn. I was heart broken, it was my favorite vegetable and suddenly I couldn't eat it without becoming violently ill. It was strange to say the least. I suspect a bad case of the flu I had immediately prior to reacting to corn caused my body to be in the perfect state to have a reaction, but we'll never really know for sure I guess. All I knew was that it sucked. But, I learned to live with it and get on with life, carefully avoiding a food I used to wolf down with gusto. Then, later that summer I got the same reaction to watermelon. Oh you can imagine how mad I was. The peak of summer in the southern US? All you feel like eating is watermelon! But after pushing the issue a few weeks after the first reaction I quickly made peace with the fact that my body was less than impressed with watermelon. It was okay though, I figured I'd just eat cantaloupe or honeydew melon instead, since they were in season and had the cool, refreshing qualities I loved so much in watermelon. But my digestive system had other ideas, and they were quickly added to the growing list of "foods to avoid".

Over the next few years oranges, tomatoes, lettuce, most greens, all bagged vegetable products in the grocery stores, and even apples were added to the list, as well as whole grains. I could eat highly refined grain products like pasta or bread products made with white flour, but any whole grain would have me writhing in pain. I think that was the most mysterious of all. Why whole grains? Why was the processed versions okay? I began to notice the trend with a few other things too. Like, fresh tomatoes--bad. Ketchup--fine. Oranges--bad. Small amounts of cooked orange juice concentrate--fine. Musing about it one day my mom and I decided that perhaps the reason they worked was because the offending food was processed to the degree that my body didn't quite recognise it as offensive....either that, or whatever was offending me was removed in the processing. We figured maybe I was reacting not to the foods, but the pesticides used on them as they grew? In time I had to leave my vegan way of eating in order to diversify my diet a bit. I'd read several studies done that showed some people with a family history of food allergies can "activate" them after restricting their diet radically and was concerned maybe veganism had helped trigger it. After that the development of new sensitivities halted for the most part, which I took to be a good sign!

Fast forward several years and I found myself living here in New Zealand. Moving to a new place is always a challenge, but when you have various food sensitivities that have you living in your bathroom for days, well, it's even more so. I recall many days when I first got here spent curled up on the bed, sick from some food that somehow contained something not compatible with me. But after living here for a while and trying new "safe" things and such, I began to notice my body calming down in some ways. One day I ended up eating something I didn't intend to (tomatoes) and yet an hour later I still hadn't had a reaction. Can you imagine how elated I was? I called my mom and almost bawled over the fact that I wasn't sick, and she spoke the words that had been milling around in my head "What else do you think you might be able to eat?" What else indeed. Apples, lettuce, and tomatoes turned out to be just fine here. My only guess is that either they are a different variety, or whatever chemical I was reacting to in the US is not in use here. In the last 6 months I've added in some whole grains as well!

But, last month it started all over again. Nothing seems to sit well, I dread eating, and I know every detail of my bathroom (if I owned the place it would be totally redone by now). Not good. So what's a foodie to do? Start a new post about my solution...LOL

How a perfectionist came to know wabi-sabi

I'm a perfectionist. I think I inherited it from my mother. Looking back I can see it in her frustration at not being able to keep a spotless house with 3 children running around all day, in her agitation at not being on time for something, in the way she would purse her lips and sigh when walking into my bedroom (aka "the disaster area"). Somehow it infected me at a young age, I remember coloring a picture as a child and being so mad with myself when I colored outside the lines that I would immediately flip to another page in the coloring book and start again. If only perfection were as easy to obtain as we get older...but it isn't. The constant pursuit of said perfection in this world is a recipe for insanity and in my teens it was something that made large portions of my life a living hell. I felt the need to control everything, because without control over something I couldn't make it perfect, and if it couldn't be perfect then what was the point in fucking with it to begin with?

Clearly something had to change, but how? I went through the rest of my teens still trying to make everything do exactly what I wanted, and panicking over everything that didn't fall neatly into place. I think my Christian background didn't help the matter any. I felt like I had to keep track of every wrong so I could ask forgiveness for it, keep a close watch on everything I did and said, and felt the weight not only of my own imperfections but the imperfections of everyone around me. Sure, I was told that it was okay to be imperfect because only Jesus could be a perfect human, but it all just felt so wrong to me.

Right before I turned 21 the world I was trying to juggle fell apart. I'm not going to repeat it here, but it was big, scary, and the effects of those months shoved me into a deep depression, worse than any I had dealt with before. Coming out of it was long and hard and along with the perfectionistic streak still whipping my ass I got the bonus of panic attacks! Such fun! And yet, during that time I felt something struggling to be left behind--the religion I was raised in. Through studying different religions and in specific the goddess traditions in paganism I learned something that Christianity failed to teach me. That this world is of our own creation. Within us all is divinity and we each day create the lives we live. They are not always ideal, they are not all a bed of roses, there are struggles we all face, but at the end of the day they are what they are, and there is completeness in them. I realised for the first time that it was okay to not have an absolute answer for everything, some things can only be known in time, and some things will in all honesty elude us for a lifetime. I learned a lot of other things, but that will come in later posts I'm sure.

While studying Japanese concepts I first learned about wabi-sabi, but it didn't sink in fully until about a year later. I was talking with Chris (the one I'm married to now) and had said something I can't recall now and Chris's response to it was something about how wabi-sabi my outlook was. Intrigued I looked into it further and the changes in my perfectionism finally clicked. One of the most valuable things I had learned was to appreciate the beauty in everything around me and that "imperfections" are often the very thing that make something so beautiful. Think of all the beauty we'd miss if everything was flawless. Beauty is fleeting, everchanging, and rarely ever perfect in the eyes of everyone, and that's okay. And in that new concept of beauty I was able to finally breathe, relax, and take a step back from the obessive pursuit of perfectionism.

Yes, there are still days when I obsess because the bathroom is a mess, the laundry pile I just folded has fallen over and I haven't gotten to everything on my to-do list. But then sparkling sunlight playing off a flower just past its "prime"catches my eye and everything pauses around me as I grab the camera to capture the perfect wabi-sabi moment happening right before my eyes.