the grand scheme

"Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?"

So we had this mandatory morning meeting from HELL. Some block-head decided the way to boost moral and spread Christmas cheer and enthusiasm was to drag everyone out of their beds before 7AM on a Saterday and make them play dumb games with a very pop-quizzish slant to them. However, God is good, even if it's not always to me. As I left the house I came upon a little worm writhing on the already dry pavement with a few ants crawling on him.
'Never fear! I shall save thee little bug!'
I scooped him up on a leaf and put him down in the midst of nice moist soil he could snuggle down into. Yes, God even cares about little worms...enough to boot me out of bed snarling and hissing. So maybe, when you(or I) need someone, He'll boot somebody else out of bed too. Somehow, as horrible as that morning was, it was all worth it, because one life was saved, even if it was only a worm's. When things aren't going your way, when all your world looks grey, maybe this moment isn't about you, maybe it's about someone else, maybe it's about a little worm frying in the sun. I guess He really was doing something for me though, I don't regret that day afterall. heh.

ok that was really sappy, but...*shrug*

Rachmoninov’s second piano concerto

The more I listen to it the more I like it.
I love the begining of the first movement after the initial piano when the strings join all heavy and dark and thick.
The seccond movement has one of the most tender sadly-sweet melodies I’ve ever heard. It’s so beautifull, during the begining part I have to pause and close my eyes and soak it in like a sponge* that has been in the desert. I can hardly help crying sometimes from the beauty of it.

If you get a chance listen to it and tell me what you think.

*I'm thinking ocean sponge, as in live animal sponge. But not as in Sponge Bob.

like talking with your mouth full at a nice restaraunt

reading certain books in public can be hazardous to your pride and social standing. ...well at least if you read like I do. I get very involved with the characters and react outloud. I make faces, giggle, squeal with delight, talk back, sometimes read aloud, and generaly interact with the book. Say...if one of the characters is being particularly stupid I will often roll my eyes and hit my forhead with the book, if something happens that I predicted I exclaim triumphantly, if something really happy happens I will bounce up and down and grin exstatically, etc. So....when walking or sitting in a public place this can draw some very unwanted attention. heh. like today. I had to put away my book as I walked home because I could tell I was gearing up towards making quite a scene on state street. You ask what book? I'm on the 8th volume of Hana-Kimi, a cute sappy romantic comedy manga.

Ulitmate Dorkdom

...the ongoing saga of the bloody cold.

So this morning I get up and lug myself off to work in the cold morning air and about three blocks from my house my nose starts to bleed, actually gush would be the best word to describe the event. I stop to get some kleenex from my purse and as I look down my dress now has several red stripes, lucky it's sort of a redish purple already. Now, if any of you remember it, I was wearing that purple swirly patterned 'eowyn' style dress I made a while back, but because it was cold I had my sweatshirt on over it - bad fashion choice, but I was sick and cold and tierd, and to top it off I was also wearing a pastel rainbow colored scarf because it happened to be the one that was out, and it's the snuggliest one I have anyway, so yeah, I looked pretty dorky when I left the house, but now I've got blood down the front of me and a couple of dry kleenexes ain't gonna fix it. I've got bigger things to be worried about though, like how not to leave a bloody red trail down the pavement. So there I am walking down the street in the morning sun with a soggy red kleenx pressed to my nose, held high so that instead of running down my hand into my sleve it's running down my throat, and my other hand pinching the bridge of my nose to try and stem the flow....which...isn't....working. I walk all the way to work looking like a complete dork, muttering curses on my nose, and leave a lovely bloodstained fingerprint on the bell by the door. My nose is still bleeding. The manager comes and lets me in. I explain. It's still bleeding. She turns on the faucet so I can wash my hands and get a wet rag without leaving more evidence. ....And it's still bleeding. She takes care of the first delivery guy. And I sit on the stool holding my nose like some kid in the principle's office who got in a fight, only I don't look angry and pouty, I look dull and miserable, and wondering if I can 'call in sick' on account of a bloody nose.

nose...running...red

yup...I've got a cold. I've been calling it 'allergies' for a week now, but my denial tactic doesn't seem to have worked.
I think my subconcious must be trying the old bloodletting treatment because I can't even count how many times I've had a bloody nose today. I'm sick of blowing it, but if I don't my head feels like it's going to explode. I think I've been through two boxes of kleenex today. I think the sinus medicine dries out the nasal pasages a bit too well and that's why it's bleeding all the time, ...or I just blow too hard, heh. Anyway it seems I have two choices it can run clear or it can run red, either way it's still running, ugh. Good thing I like pretty red on white =) If I were my mom I'd be passed out.
It's actually kind of nice though when I'm just laying here feeling all limp and snuggly surrounded by my two fuzzy moss green blankets.
I just thought I'd share the joy with y'all =)

Fuzzy Dreams

I recently had a dream in which I found a little beetle sized bunny with pink irridescent wings scampering about in some clover. It was sooo cute! I took it home with me and fed it veggies and it grew up to be a normal sized bunny, all white and furry and cuddly - with pink shimmery wings.
Then I had another dream in which I was playing with a really fuzzy little animal that looked kind of like a cross between a penguine and a polar bear cub. It didn’t have a beak and it was fluffy but it was colored like a penguin and had flipper like wings. It was so cute how it waddled around on the snow drifts.
I guess I must have been feeling particularly snug and cuddly or something. =)
sigh, I like happy dreams.

Pathetic =)

IMing-cut
Originally uploaded by aelthwyn.

.....the window rattles, the house creaks, the computer fans whirr, keys go tatta-tap, somebody snickers.....
yes, that's right, we're IM-ing eachother. We were going to watch a movie, but then we ended up sitting there chatting online for about 3 hours I think. heh...geeks! =)

"profound" thought of the day

People often talk of the deceased as 'looking down on them' from heaven.
If that's all the afterlife is, then the closest thing to Heaven on Earth is TV.

neapolitan toes

I went through my closet this weekend and found a bunch of shoes that I never wear, so I decided I ought to try them out and see if I might actually ever want to wear them agian. Unfortunately I chose to try some out this morning and halfway to work I realised that they were a bad choice. When I finally got there and inspected my feet I dsicovered I now had neapolitan ice-feet. Cold, vanilla skin, chocolaty brown mud splotches (thanks to this weekend's rain) and bright strawberry blisters. yum =)

Never ask a Lady that

So I decided to finally go and get a library card, after having moved almost a year ago.
'How old are you?' the library clerk asks me.
The world stops. I stand there like a deer in the headlights. What am I supposed to say? My mind is a complete blank. I have no idea how old I am! I've never been good with math in my head so trying to figure it out from my birthday is going to take me half a century. The clock is ticking. The clerk is staring at me. I have to say something! Then as my mind is still groping around in the amnesiatic dark I hear my mouth spit out "21." Not untill several sentenses later, in the middle of a surprised "you don't look that old" speech does it occur to me 'wait a moment, what did I say? that's not how old I am! umm.... that would be, oh yeah, 24.' But what am I supposed to do? say "wait a minute, actually I'm 24, I don't know why I said 21, but I really do know how old I am, and yeah, that's how old I really am, really." If 21 was pushing it, how on earth could I be convinceing with 24? Feeling too stupid to try to correct myself I just took the card and made a run for it. Oh well.

Bee Season Open

Around our appartment complex there are a number of Trumpet/Lily type bushes (I’m not good with plant names). The bees love them. You walk down the little garden path and it sounds like you’re in a computer lab complete with buzzing florescent lights. The strange thing is, these bees seem to be dropping like flies. It’s quite treacherous for us bare-footers when the sidewalk is peppered with little booby-trapped corpses resting in peace with stinngers pointed up toward that big rose garden in the sky. Going down to check the mail has become reminiscent of Indianna Jones adventures, you have to watch your step and watch for things whizzing past your head at the same time. Is there some kind of Bee Pleague going around? Poisoned flowers? Homicidal stealth wasps protecting their territory from squatters? -Or how about this: the killer poisoned the bees and placed them on the sidewalk path expecting his target to step on them and then appear to have died from a severe allergic reaction to bees!

total randomness

Do you ever get a word or phrase stuck in your mind? well this morning I woke up with one repeating it'self to me over and over: scintillating rubber noodles. Over my chex this morning I thought to myself -yes, I've cracked.

reflection of the day

In general, once people get on a road, no matter how much it sucks, or how far out of the way it’s taking them, they rarely bother to take a different one.

yes I am feeling cynical.

Peachy =)

this is a divine moment. I think ambrosia must taste like bryers peach ice cream. mmmm.... yes this moment is beautifull.

Fads and Obsessions

A psychological observation and inquiry.

I have noticed that there are people who obsess and people who don’t. Another way of saying what I mean when I say obsess here is that some people are prone to fads. A fad being: "A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze." (from dictionary.com) I’m not sure what all the not-obsessive types would be, though one would be the kind that just doesn’t get excited about anything, in fact doesn’t really do or think about anything they don’t have to, I know some people like this. Anyway, the Obsessors seem to make up a good deal of the population - how else could pop-culture survive? That is not to say that all pop-culture savvy people are obsessors, nor that obsessors don’t obsess over many other things that are not popular - there are thousands of little one-person fads going on out there.

The characteristics of the Obsessor or Fadd-ish person, as I think of that personality type, are these: 1a) they are constantly finding new things they really like, 1b) they do not continue to really like most of these things for more than a few months to a year on average. 2) they will go to great lengths to discover all they can about the topic they are currently obsessed about (this may include anything from reading a number of heafty books, to stalking, to fumbling into highly embarrasing situations in the attempts to gain some connection with their obsession) 3) they are driven to collect as much paraphanalia associated with their obsessed topic as possible, and usually display it all prominently in their room, attempting to cover every inch. 4) it is difficult to talk to them about anything else, in fact it is dificult to talk to them at all because usually they are busy talking to you and anyone else who will listen about whatever it is they are obsessed with - this is because they cannot get it off their mind for a moment -every new topic leads back to this one. 5) they have a tendancy to try to appear to be experts on their topic, even with people who could care less about it -which means they won’t gain any respect from that individual. It doesn’t matter, they want to feel like an expert anyway.

The two main charactersistics are that Obsessors get extreemly interested and excited about things (that’s the obsession part of course), but they do not stick with one thing for very long (that’s the fad part). It seems it is impossible for them to be interested in more than one thing at once, but their interest is very intense.
I think it would be interesting to do a study on how much people actually remember from their previous obsessions. I think they probably do retain much of it, but it ceases to be constantly on their minds. Their paraphanalia is relegated to the back of drawers, boxes on the highest shelf, the far corner under the bed, and their vast stores of trivia filed away under ‘nostalgia’ or ‘I can’t believe I was into that’ categories of the mind.

Now it seems to me that in general people who stay very interested in one thing their whole life do not tend to obsess quite as much - we see charicatures of such people frequently enough; people whose whole life is centered around one thing, who don’t posess anything not related to it, who don’t talk about anything else, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one. Another difference seems to be that obsessors tend to focus on something more specific, while people who keep a deep interest over their lifetime tend to be interested in a broader subject, and will at various times be focused in on certain details of that topic, but without treating each with a greater enthusiasm than they show for the subject as a whole. An example could be perhaps one person who is really ‘into’ golf their whole life, and a person who is really ‘into’ Tiger Woods. The seccond person probably has interest in other golfing things only because of their connection with Tiger Woods, while the first person may be fairly interested in Tiger Woods because of his significance in the broader subject of golf. The first will watch many players, and will probably play golf himself because he enjoys it, while the seccond will only watch Tiger Woods play, and may try to learn how because he wants to be like Tiger Woods. The first might own one poster of Tiger Woods, perhaps, while the seccond will probably own several, and a key chain, and a calendar, and a hat,... and clippings of all the news or magazine articles about him.

I have never quite been able to understand the ‘serial obsessor’ types. For myself, whenever I discover something new I like it doesn’t overthrow my other likes. I also tend to learn and accumulate more slowly. As far as I can tell, the topics I like to talk about are pretty much always the same, and usually if I can’t stop talking about something it’s more likely to be a thought which is either troubling or which has suddenly hit me, rather than a thing or person, and doesn’t last more than a few days. I may often say similar things, or be reminded of the same things often, but they are of a wide variety, that is, unconnected to eachother.

I think part of what causes the fads of these obsessive people is that they are naturally intense and passionate, but are searching for a focus for these atributes, or rather, searching for themselves. Naturally everyone searches for himelf in some capacity, and in doing so will try out different interests, but these trials or phases are just more apparent in obsessive people because of their intense persuit.

The interesting thing to me is that with each new idea or topic they will passionately profess it is ‘SO true’ ‘SO right’ ‘SO wonderfull’ whatever it is, it is the only thing worthwhile. But how can they not notice that whatever is so right keeps changing, and therefore how can they be sure this time it is so right, since, after all, they have proven themselves wrong so often before, sometimes coming to despise their former tastes. Do they live so totally in the moment that they do not remember when they felt the same way about something else? That they cannot foresee this current feeling giving itself up for something different? How can one cope with this? How can one loose or reject or forget ones deepest passions? those things which give one individual identity and define one’s soul and approach to life? I am not meaning to sound criticle here so much as ask an honnest question, for I cannot immagine it myself. If I should ever stop liking fantasy, dragons, fairies, longing for Scottland, loosing myself if Beethoven’s music, wearing long skirts and loving to dress up in renaissance clothes, prefering long hair..... then I should feel as though I had ceased to be myself. These are so much a part of me, these are things which I feel intensely about, which I persue and love and preach, and surround myself with. How could I loose intrest in any of them without loosing part of myself? I am convinced I could not. But perhaps for some people this is not so. Perhaps they do not have a sense of losing themselves, or perhaps in spite of their intensity their obsessions never are as much a part of them as mine are to me? I do not know, though I should like to be able to understand. I may be entirely mis-percieving and mis-judging things in regards to such people. In any case, there are my observations. If you have any differing insights I would love to hear them.

Christmas in July

Well it's not quite July yet, but anyway, a couple days ago I made Gingerbread cookies to satisfy my craving, and today I am sporting a bright shiney rudolf nose, my souvenire from a nice day at the beach. I even got myself a gift: a pretty new bookshelf. yay! my room looks so much nicer. Yes, I am full of happiness and warm fuzzies.

Twister

ThePurpleDress-Katie
Originally uploaded by aelthwyn.

I have been playing twister with myself on top of a large piece of purpple velvet. It manages to be both slippery and sticky at once - at exactly the opposite moments I wish it to be either. Trying to straighten one end while holding down the other is an interesting yoga-ish feat. But now I have a new dress yay! -that's Katie (a new friend) doesn't she look pretty in it =)

Boo Hoo Hoo!

squirrel jumps suddenly onto limb
startled owl flys off indignantly

Death Wish?

Yesterday at work I was slitting a box and the knife got caught and then suddenly ripped free of the tape and flew at my wrist. For a moment I was waiting for a red waterfall to run forth. . .or at least trickle. . .but only a couple of drops came at which point I reflected that it really might have been more lucky if it had been more than a nick - lying down somewhere and regaining my strength from blood loss sounded like a pretty good alternative to facing the mountain of boxes I was supposed to, unrealistically, be able to finnish. And then I started reflecting on my dissappointment that it didn’t bleed, and realised that I’m always disappointed when things don’t bleed. Not that I actually have a death wish, but blood is so pretty, particularly against my white skin. yeah so, maybe I ought to be disturbed at myself.

They really are trying to kill me at work though. This week is Inventory which means we can't have any books left in boxes when they come to do that - they all have to be out so they can count them, and they all have to be registered in our system so they can get a good comparrison of their count to our reccords. HOWEVER some numbskull higher up in the company decided now would be the perfect week to ship us all the 'summer reading' which means at least twice the normal ammount of boxes coming in each day. Agh! To top this off the trash compactor key is lost so now the back room has also become garbage storage. Egad!

The Best of Fabrics, The Worst of Fabrics

I love sheer flowy fabric, it is so much fun! -to wear that is. Sewing it is another story entirely - then I think it's straight from hell. It stretches in odd directions and will not lay evenly on the floor when cutting it. It slides off your lap or the table when you're trying to sew or pin it. It unravels faster than the road-runner (I was watching Wile E. Coyote cartoons while cutting it out). Individual strings get pulled and gather it all up where you don't want it too, and once that happens there's no smoothing it out again, it will always look puckered there. It pretty much does exactly the opposite of whatever it is you are trying to do to it. It's absolute madness trying to tackle it, but if you perservere you end up with something very lovely....well sometimes. Sometimes you just end up with a ravely snagged mass of mutilated fabric. I am happy to say that this time I did come out triumphant, for the most part anyway.