.then: 1991.

.now.

Today Cean and I celebrate 21 years together.

Valentine's Day 1991 marked our first kiss, our first exchange of Valentine's cards and the beginning of the rest of our lives. Little did I know then, at the tender age of 17 going on 18, that I would be sitting here two decades later looking back at all of the life we have already lived.

I have never been a romantic. Even in those photos above, I was fighting it.  Always in self protection mode, I told myself that our being together did not make sense in any way. I was too young and too much of a bookworm.  We were on completely different planets,  with me about to start college and him nine years older and quite a lot of living already under his belt. I was inexperienced and lacking in self confidence. He was...the exact opposite.

But he saw something in me and wouldn't let go.

He said that I made him want to be a better person. 

He brought me to life in a way that nothing and no one ever had.

He won me over.

Looking back, I don't think that my heart ever stood a chance.

And here we are, so many years later. He still tells me how much he loves me and how proud he is of me. He still puts up with my closed-off and difficult ways. He still believes in me and he still compliments me.

He has always seen something in me that I don't see in myself and for that, I will forever be grateful.

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Last night, as Cean was making a special dinner for the three of us, his IPod on shuffle in the background, this song came on. I immediately started dancing in the kitchen, which led to both the boy and Cean joining in. As the three of us got our groove on, I had the thought that this song perfectly describes how I felt in the beginning.

We loved this band  back in the day, and it was one of the concerts we went to during our first year together.

And so I share it with you today.

"Hit" by the Sugarcubes

May all of you feel love and contentment today....and everyday.

"Beat Goes On" by Madonna (feat. Kayne West)

Wishing you a peaceful week.

And then “Blue Skies” started playing in my head.

And then I found “Blue Skies” on YouTube and proceeded to listen to Ella belt it out.

And then I chuckled out loud.

And then the chuckle turned into some odd combination of chuckle and tears.

And then I decided that I truly must be losing my mind.

You see, just last night I had one of my legendary melt downs. A small few things set me off and there was no going back after I shut the bathroom door in my husband’s face. I spent the evening alone and quiet on the outside. I was raging on the inside.

As is customary these days, I stayed up too late in an effort to make myself so tired that I would actually fall asleep when I close my eyes. As I prepared to do so, I knew without even trying that it would be a Futile effort. Instead, I retrieved my journal and a pen from my office and preceded to power scribble four pages of stuff.

That’s not entirely true, it was not just stuff.  It was about my frustration over the fact that I feel like my body is failing me in numerous ways. It was about the fact that I am going on weeks of not sleeping properly and how that is affecting me. It was the realization that all the internalizing that I do and the months of stress and anxiety is now breaking me physically.

It was all gray, very very gray.

So you see the irony of this whole “Blue Skies” phenomenon this morning and why it caused me to simultaneously chuckled and shed tears. It was like some force dropped it in my lap and challenged me to acknowledge the blue instead of the gray.

Mission accomplished, I think. I did notice it and as a result am now writing about it, but I am not entirely sure what to do with it.

I am thinking that I need to do something with it, but honestly, I am too fatigued to take it much further than sharing it here.

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So here we are with yet more music.  Apparently, that is just how this space rolls these days.

You will enjoy this because it is Ella, and it is snappy, and who doesn’t love “Blue Skies” even if they are only within a tiny little protective bubble that is surrounded by gray.

(nods head)

“Blue Skies” by Ella Fitzgerald

FUN!

Yes, I said it again, because it is often lacking in these parts.

On Saturday, the boys and I went to the Portland International Car Show and had a fabulous time. It has been years since I have been to a proper car show. Back in the day, I went to Los Angeles International Car show every year. I love cars. A lot. I believe that if money was no object, I would have many.

Sunday, the boy and I ran errands. We were all over the place, but we got a lot done and we found a few treasures.

And then poof, the weekend had come to a close. The weekends, they don't last nearly long enough.

I think that I might have woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, as, despite the good weekend, I am a bit on the grouchy side of things today. It may also be because being grouchy on a Monday is just plain normal.

I'll leave it at that, as any further words will just end up being a disjointed rambling mess.

Today's song: "Crystal" by New Order

Today's song is perfect for two reasons. First, it is about lack of sleep and second it is one of my all time favorite songs....ever.

Wishing you a weekend full of R&R.

"Insomnia" by Faithless (a live version)

LL Cool J: "Around the Way Girl"

.august 2011.

Happy Friday! I have a very good reason to celebrate today, as tomorrow morning Mill arrives bright and earlier at PDX Airport for a long weekend. This will be the second time in 5 months that she is able to come and visit, which to my mind is miraculous. :-)

In honor of her visit, today's Friday Groove is a fun little song that we used to adore back in the day.

"Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite:

"Sing it, baby!"

I take away the following two points from both reading what I did and understanding my reaction to it.

Number One: Too often in life, we are so busy just trying to keep everything together that we don’t realize when something is already broken. The repercussions of that can be devastating.

Number Two: We have absolutely no idea what goes on in other people’s lives. We might think we do based on what we witness, but we know nothing. Assumptions are bad things. We should avoid them at all costs.

I am not going to say anything further other than to reiterate that the above two realizations are important for each and every one of us as we navigate through our own lives.

Snow in the forecast is an event around these parts. There is always great anticipation, followed by a "will it or won't it." This weekend it sort of didn't if you were on the "valley floor." Oh, we saw some flakes yesterday morning, but nothing stuck and it was the usual disappointment we feel when we have been waiting for the white stuff for three days and then receive a whole lot of nothing. There is still a chance of snow in the forecast for the next few days, but at this point, my anticipation has whittled down to nothing.

All was not lost though, as my Dad offered to pick the boy and me up so that we could go to breakfast with my parents and then take a drive to where there would be actual white stuff.  We enjoyed some falling snow during breakfast and then we drove up to Skyline Drive, which runs along the West Hills and saw both big flakes falling as well as actual snow on the ground. That is where the above picture was taken.

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If you live in Southern California, you might be familiar with KCRW, the public radio station out of Santa Monica College.  We used to listen to this station constantly, and we discovered some really fantastic music as a result. That is where we first heard Richard Ashcroft's music when he went solo, today's song included. This reminds me that I really should start listening to this station online, because I am sure I am missing out on a myriad of fabulous new music.

Richard Ashcroft: "New York"

Not only do I miss the store, but I miss what going into a Tower Records (or any record store, for that matter) represented. I miss the ritual of spending time flipping through albums and then later CD’s. I miss searching for the next favorite dance track. I miss discovering that track as well as the thrill of finding something beloved that I had forgotten about. I miss the record store atmosphere.

My first crystal clear memory of Tower Records is going to the famed Sunset Strip location with my parents. On that trip, I purchased the 12” of Bryan Ferry’s "Kiss and Tell." (I also remember my Dad taking me to Licorice Pizza to buy the album that single came off of, "Bête Noire") After I found that 12” single, I walked around that big one story record store with it clutched to my chest, excited not only with my treasure, but also with being there. That was in 1987.

I also spent a lot of time in the Woodland Hills Tower Records throughout the 1990’s. I worked not far from there, and I would often stop in the store that was on Topanga Canyon Blvd on my way home. I spent many an evening wandering through the aisles and discovering new favorite songs at the listening stations. I bought a lot of CD’s and CD singles there. I also remember buying Cean a few Thelonius Monk CD’s that I found in their Jazz room for one of his birthdays. To this day, there are certain CD’s that remind me of that store.

My last memory, and the last time I was ever in a Tower Records store was in San Francisco in 2004. Today’s Friday Groove is the gem of a song that I discovered at a listening station in the sizable dance/electronic section that day. I also purchased Olive’s second CD.

It took me longer than most to embrace digital music. I just could not wrap my head around it. It seemed wrong. These days, I can count on one hand the number of actual CD’s that we purchase in a year. When there is a new album that we must have on CD, Cean drives over to Music Millennium. When there is an old album that I cannot purchase digitally, I usually purchase a used copy on Amazon.

The record store is an era gone by.

“I Need Your Love” by The Rapture:

This is what I shall call rudimentary film making. I use the term "film making" loosely, but since it is the first of its type for me, I shall declare it with gusto. This was actually an accident of sorts. Late-ish last night I was sitting in the living room thinking “hmmmm….don’t I have some sort of movie making program on this laptop?” We won’t talk about the fact that I have had said laptop for three years and only just realized that there IS an entire program aside from the trial version of a third party program.

But I digress.

Playing around turned into let’s insert a few pictures turned into let’s do a year in review via the Ipod pictures turned into let’s add music and a title and an end turned into what you see below.

It makes me happy, if simply for the fact that it reminded me that despite the fact that 2011 was not anywhere close to being a stellar year, there were still quite a lot of really good things sprinkled in throughout the months.  There always are, it is just a matter of acknowledging them, and I am not always good about doing that.

•          My mom and I went to Rhode Island
•          We adopted little Lily
•          Cean and I had regular date nights
•          So did the boy and I
•          Friends came to visit
•          I got Daisy v 2.0
•          Cean and I had an overnight in Hood River
•          There was birthday bowling
•          The boys took some good camping trips
•          Mill took us all to see the Go Go’s at the PDX Zoo when they came to visit
•          The boy experienced his first real concert when we took him with us to see Sade
•          Cean and I went to see Thievery Corporation again in September
•          There were fun costumes for Halloween
•         The holidays were low key and enjoyable

Anyway, here it is.

I'll start with the song and then chat (ramble) a bit below.

Today's pick is "Balmes" (A Better Life) by Ian Pooley feat. Esthero. I remember dancing around to this song when the boy was a baby because it made us happy....and I want to be exactly where Esthero sings about in this song, especially today.  It is cold, grey and dismal outside. This song transports me to somewhere warm and wonderful, if only in my head.

So, on to the chatting. Over the weekend,  I noticed that my hard drive had entered into the red zone as I was nearing zero memory left on my laptop. I have a few external hard drives, but those were nearly to capacity as well. I have been thinking about buying an additional external drive, but unfortunately now is not the time for such extras as the budget is frowning heavily on anything that is not absolutely necessary. I must admit, I was a bit nervous, because, well, I work and live on this laptop and memory is a bit essential.

Being the beginning of a new year, organization is on the brain. Yesterday saw me organizing work folders and backing files up. Then, I took a good long look at the cluster that was my external hard drive and realized that it was beyond disorganized. I spend all of last night deleting duplicates and triplicates of things (hello, I need to back up my entire music library, let me just do a quick cut and paste of the entire folder AGAIN and move on) and in some cases, wiping entire folders clean and doing a fresh backup of them.

And, big surprise, I am now out of the red zone on the laptop and have about 30% free on my external.

:-)

Me being me, I also decided to go through my photo files to see if there was anything that I could clean up there. I walk away from that experience with two observations:

• How many freaking times do I need to take pictures of the flowers and branches in our yard?
• I took a LARGE amount of self portraits in 2007, 2008 and 2009. I might be a little bit embarrassed by the sheer volume of times I felt the need to document how dark my soul was then.

I am pretty sure that I must have deleted well over 3,000 photos, if not more. I feel cleansed and I am now excited to move on to the LIST of organizational projects that I have written down.

We'll see how long that enthusiam lasts.

All of this to say, I ran out of steam last night and that is why this is late. This is probably entirely too much information, althought, it might prompt you...and you to embark on a hard drive cleanse as well...while listening to this song and envisioning yourself on a warm beach somewhere instead of in your flannel PJ's questioning why you felt the need to take 500 pictures of that flower that grows in your yard every.single.year. (the end result is totally worth the questioning though, I promise)

I thought that it might be fun to start a tradition of posting a fabulous groove each Friday. First, because it's Friday and that is something to celebrate. Second, because you all know I love my dance music.

Today, I also have a few other little fun tidbits to share, which I think, adds to the whole celebratory mood.

I found this little film yesterday and it made me really really happy. I love Garance and I loved the story that went with this.

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If you love nail polish, then you probably know about Zoya. They are currently having a fabulous promotion whereby they will send you two FREE bottles of nail polish. The only thing you pay is shipping. The offer is good through 1.9.2012 at 11:59 p.m. ET. The code to use is ZOYA2012.

Seriously, who does not love free nail polish? Especially when it's the good stuff like this. :-)

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I don't know how I did not know about this (it might be that bubble that I live in), but you can easily order prints for your IPhone/IPOD Touch photos via PostalPix. I did not discover this on my own, though, I found it when I ran across Elsie's tutorial on how to create an Instagram wall. I have ordered several 4x4 prints and can not wait to receive them and give this a try. I am telling you people, it really is the little things in life.

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And finally, the Friday Groove for today: Here Comes the Sun (Francois K. Remix). It's of the slow groove varity; however it is Nina Simone and it's a fabulous remix, which in my book makes it a winner.

<---------------- In case you forgot what we look like, to the left is our 2011 holiday picture.

Perhaps I should add one more awkward antidote before I really start typing? No, I'll attempt to get right into it and hope for the best.

I am terribly out of practice.

This is a new page. I have archived the original journal page that went with this website. The truth there is that I don't want what I wrote in the past to be available for public consumption anymore. I disabled the actual page months ago and killed my Vimeo account at the same time because I just felt that it was no longer pertinent. I knew then that if I ever decided to come back, I would start anew and then just go with the flow.

After being on the internet in a semi-blogging capacity for somewhere in the neighborhood of 7.5 years, I have definitely reached a point where it all feels very different for me. Because I had no idea what to do with that different last year, I simply closed the door.

I have written so many long and drawn out potential posts in the last year and none of them ended up seeing the light of day. In each of them, I attempted to sort out where I stood on contributing to this medium, but ultimately, they either sounded preachy and redundant or I felt that I came off as being jaded and bitchy.

The following are a few excerpts from what I wrote that get to the heart of the matter.

"I have heard it said (or more accurately, read the sentiments) that some people who blog have grown weary of sharing their life on the internet.  That is a potential progression of things, I suppose, when you have been on the internet for any great length of time and your purpose for being online is primarily of a personal nature.......I am one of those who have grown weary of sharing on the internet."

"My need to be completely anti-social for long periods of time when it comes to the internet  makes perfect sense given the fact that I am exactly this way in my personal life. And, since my online presence has always been primarily of the personal nature, it stands to reason that my personality would be represented equally in both worlds. I have come to realize that for me the internet is a different world. I don’t believe that was my perception way back when I started forging relationships and “meeting” new people online; however, it has morphed into something that I am no longer completely comfortable in anymore."

"I have “met” some really wonderful people online and I have been exposed to a variety of different things that I never would have been had it not been for my immersion into a certain little corner of the blogging world. I am grateful for that. It fed me at a time when I clearly needed that in my life. It also propelled me to……let out some personal “stuff”…..publically share some creativity…..venture down different paths in terms of how I perceive the world. Some of that stuck and some of it did not, for at the end of the day, I am exactly who I have always been and I have come full circle in both acknowledging that and accepting that."

"As much as I have wanted to find a balance that would suite me in this space, it has eluded me."

The thing is, I have spent the last 5 or 6 years wading through what in retrospect feels like wet sand in an attempt to find my true self and let my heart sing and my soul soar (or something like that). But, at the end of the day, it's not rocket science, for I am exactly the person I have always been. I think that I made it all into something that it just did not need to be.  I was looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I was looking for the one "answer" that would open everything up and suddenly make me happy and fulfilled. I was putting way too much stock on the so called journey of that particular time.

The truth is that life is a perpetual journey. Sometimes we are enlightened and other times we are kicked in the ass. Sometimes we flourish and sometimes (a lot of the time) we are our own worst enemy. None of this really starts or ends, it just is.

We all have very personal challenges and triumphs. 

Personally, the challenges have far outweighed the triumphs in recent years and I have, unfortunately, perpetuated that fact by allowing myself to stay stuck.  The norm there is that I avoid talking about it in any real way because on some level my stuck self hopes like hell that if I ignore it, it will go away.

And then it will all magically turn itself around in a puff of smoke just because I wish it so.

(insert massive eye roll here)

But sarcasm aside, I  could not come here and write about fluff and fun that simply did not exist. That ship sailed a long long time ago in my world. And, while I have enjoyed my diversions, I have been a shell of myself for longer than I care to admit. There's nothing to share in that and any attempt would have been utter bullshit.

The only thing left would have been the same post written in umpteenth different ways chronicling how I need to make changes, but I am afraid to make changes, but I am working to overcome the fear surrounding making changes. And, to add insult to injury, I can't even share what the changes are because that is not in the internet safe-zone.

(insert shaking of head here)

And so I closed the door here, and pretty much everywhere else in my life.

AGAIN. (at least I am consistent)

Here is where it gets better, though. And this, I admit, feels a little bit pie-in-sky optimistic, but.......

I might have just hit THE brick wall in terms of knowing that I simply cannot continue on this way. That would mean that I NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Maybe.

I don't want to make any crazy declarations here otherwise I might have to come back with my tail between my legs and declare myself a liar. But, I will say this, I am really looking forward to the end of 2012 when I can look back on the year and say to myself......"you did it, you finally did it."

HAPPY NEW YEAR and I am glad to be back. Maybe.