Prayers of Thanksgiving

When people ask me how I am doing I simply quote Roseanne Roseannadanna. Sorry for the shortness of post but really. What can I say? I'm a really attractive guy.


Hope you have a great holiday!

Rescue Me

It's been three weeks and I can still remember the night when the noise came back. It came suddenly without any foreshadowing or warning. One day it didn't exist and the next there it was.
I have been ashamed to admit this but I am Post Traumatic Fan Disorder survivor. They say you can move past this that you have to find purpose in your life again. All I want is a night of quiet sleep. One where a noise doesn't haunt me. I feel as if fan lady slapped me with some noise voodoo. Whomever I have angered in life I'm sorry. Please make the noise stop.
I have a month left in my lease. If anybody knows of a quiet peaceful apartment I would be ever so grateful!

When October Goes

(This is my version of my 30 days of thankfulness that's clogging my news feed on Facebook.)

There are moments when you lay on your floor with music playing and you take a deep breath and you realize  that in this brief moment you are the youngest and the oldest you are ever going to be in life. What has happened has happened. What will happened is yet to be determined. Where I've been in the moment. I've been on my knees with a hack saw cutting off the chains of the actions of my past. I've been stretching my arms upward to grasp up to the dreams I placed on the shelf years ago and in the current moment I am laying here and I'm thankful for this present moment.

I lay here with my hands on my chest feeling them go up and down breath going in and out of my lungs each one a subtle reminder of that I am the product of amazing planning and fore thought. I am am the answer to the wonderful combination of the spiritual and the physical bodies combined. As I lay here in the twilight the melding of the day and the night watching the shadows stretch further in this moment I'm watching life go on.

As I lay here wrestling with demons of my past I realize that there is nothing I can do to change it. Actions have been done, I have reacted, been reacted on, and I have experienced all those memories once. What was once a noisy crowd of memories crashing over me, I've had to let them crush me with the all of their weight all of their sadness, all of the representations of what might have been, and allowed myself to wallow in the pain of all their sadness.

 In this moment I am here in the purple light the perfect combination of shadow and light. I realize that my body loves me and I love it. I realize in this moment this body is the place of where my soul lies. This is the place that will always be my home. I carry my heart and my home with me at all times. The physical body carries me on and in the moment now I am at rest.

With one more deep breath I exhale watching the purple twilight turn into the inky blackness of night. Slowly but surely the planets and the stars begin igniting the night. I have no idea what my future holds. I have no plan now. I have no written shopping list of inspirational quotes of "Families Together Forever" or "I didn't say it would be easy but I said it would be worth it." I know that my future only holds one word. Forgiveness. Forgiveness for the things I've done, Forgiveness for this moment, and Forgiveness for the things I will do. My future holds the combination of light and dark. The metaphor of twilight. The melding of brightness and darkness. The marriage of light and dark.

Truth be told I can only do my best and I've fallen. I've sunk so low and I've flown high and finally I have found the middle. The middle of emotion and thought where the noise of the past and the panic of the future are at the moment silenced.

In this moment I am alive and I am grateful for it. In this moment the word is gratitude. So with every breath I release these words

Thankful.

Humble.

Beautiful.

Glory.

Love.

Desire.

For November it all  comes back to one word. Gratitude. Gratitude for the things I have been given, for the things taken away, and the things coming. Gratitude for the people who enter my life stay awhile and fly away. It's always so and it always will be.

When the time is right I will fly away and somebody else will come and take my place. Before I go I want to say that I am grateful.

Grateful for this wonderful past, for this glorious present and what the future holds.

Here and now I am thankful.

She's Not Just a Another Pretty Face

(For Liisa)

When you meet Liisa Frei the first thing that hits you is that she's not just pretty face. She's a mother of six. She's an amazing grandmother to three. She's a volunteer. She's a Realtor and businesswoman. She's an Artist. She's a Boston Marathon finisher. She' a type of woman that you would classify as STRONG.

But even strong people are susceptible to nature. On Sept. 10th an unusually strong rain storm caused the 93 year old Santa Clara dike to breach and spew mud and water through out the community below. In  path of the dike's water ramapage was Liisa's family business Dutchman Market a small convince store. In a matter of minutes red clay like mud and water destroyed the whole interior of the building.

The last few years have not been the best years ever for the Frei's family. Liisa's husband battled colon cancer and they just recently they lost their dream home. Liisa's attitude has always been Let's push on through it. Cause she' the type of person to open up her house to her gymnastic coach during the last year of his life when he had nobody else to turn to.Or when her nephews were having serious issues with school she allowed them to live with them till they were able to get things figured out.

Liisa is the type of woman that you want on your committees, your son's softball team and most importantly you want her to be your friend. Cause even with all of the craziness that comes with her life she's the type that will take a few minutes to see how you are doing. She's the one you want on your committees cause to her nothing is impossible. If its something that benefits the community she is there in full force smile on hand.

After assessing the damage of her store this is what she posted on facebook:

"Thanks to all of you who helped shovel mud...and all of you who called with offers of help and support... we were literally flooded twice today once with mud and water once with loving hearts and hands...The Frei family loves you all!" 

Every status and update of this flooding she's always grateful to thank everyone and focusing on the positive even when ripping the down walls and hauling out damaged and ruined inventory each morning since the flood has been focused on thanking those who have helped or just stopped by or sent money.

Why should you care?

Because sometimes great people need help. Sometimes they need random strangers to help them to continue to provided kindness in the world. If you are in the Santa Clara area stop by. Shovel mud. Bring food. Or a generator. If you aren't close and you got some extra quarters rolling around please donate at Dutchman's fund. This account is through Paypal you can even claim it on your taxes!

Here's some pictures

The water and mud

Tables ruined 

The water was so powerful it blew the doors off.

During the flood

Please help. Even if all you can do is send positive thoughts and prayers every little bit helps. 

Here I Go Again

Let's talk about FEELINGS. 

Mainly about how I want to eat all of them. 

Has this ever happened to you? Where somebody starts screaming at you, or you are feeling sad and bored and instead of going okay lets DO something you open the fridge you raise your hands and go LET'S EAT ALL THE FEELINGS! 

No? Is it just me? 

How do you change the sudden feeling of hunger to something more? Cause I just realized that I'm tired of spending all my money on food to make me happy. I'm tired of sitting in my house with the blinds drawn and I'm tired of looking at myself and going well with this stomach I could take some amazing pregnancy shots. You know the type. Where you thrust your stomach out as far as it can go and you do the awkward hand framing moment. I'd take a picture and show you but I'm afraid that you could never get that image out of your head and one day when we are at the grocery store awkwardly picking melons our eyes would meet and we would have to hurry and turn away. 

So just when I was ready to browse maternity pants online (Jeans just have no give! Joey from Friends) I realized maybe the food baby that I'm creating is the tumor of lies, anger, resentment, frustration, lies, and boredom that I've been telling my body that I'm okay with. So there is going to be a change a brewing. I watched a video on a lumpectomy the other day in staff meeting (while it was really disgusting and oddly entertaining at the same time) I thought if I was a surgeon would I ignore all this huge tumor or would I do something to save the patient? 

I decided to save the patient. 

More tomorrow.   

Hold On

I can honestly say that this is not the best year of my life at this moment.( This is not a boo-hoo honey child kind of post btw.) I read once that the moment that when you can't look at yourself in the eye anymore it is time for you to change something. I hate change. I always joke that I'm two steps away from being on hoarders. I hold on to things. I hold on to objects longer than I should because someone I treasure gave it to me. I hold on to letters. I  hold on to tee shirts. I hold on to memories. I hold on to people longer than I should. I hold on okay. I'm like freaking Wilson Philips. I will hold on for one more day.

Because I hold on too much to the past that I forget to look forward to the future and find myself in a giant rut of sameness. I like routine but when you wake up and your life is Groundhogs Day one must make a decision. Do you accept the sameness, the comfort of the known area or do you jump off on the boat and set course to the island of uncertainty?

Yet when I look at the moments that have changed my life for the better (AKA USU, Running races, and starting this blog) have come out of pure moments of spontaneous decisions. No time for pro and cons list no moments to sit and go is this good for me? I said yes and let the consequences follow.

I've been dealing with this issue for the last three years. Do I change my life? Is there room for another moment of spontaneous decisions?  If so where and what do I do?  I wish I could turn my life over to all those well meaning people who say this is what you need to do with yourself and say here's your chance here's three months for you to make all the changes perfect the flaws that you see within me. Go ahead. I'll sit right here.

Sad thing is though I'm not in a Zac Efron movie. I will not be 17 Again. Nor do I really want to be. Here's what I'm proposing to do. I had an a amazing AH-HA moment.  One of those moments that makes you sit up, the hairs on your arms tingling with a little bit and you sit up and go okay!  I learned from the Oprah preacher from her life class about honesty. Her cohost was Martha Beck who talked about being honest with ourselves. Apparently our bodies don't like to hold on to secrets and lies. It seems our brains get occupied on these thoughts and bury them deep with in us. So the secrets lodge themselves in us the lies sprout little fat cells and become the cancer of self doubt attacking all the positive thoughts, the happiness and soon the conversation that we have within us gets muted.


After this whoo whoo aha moment I realized that I had to focus on three areas in which would allow me to have a real conversation with myself they are 1. The Physical  2. The Spiritual 3. The Mental. I'm not going to publish what those individual goals are. but those are the areas I'm changing.

Apparently I'm having a Good Bye to Sandra Dee moment.

Sunshine on my Shoulders

You know you are going to have a good morning when you wake up and you find yourself belting "SUNSHINE! ON MY SHOULDERS MAKE ME HAPPY!" cause I figure that's what every body in my apartment complex wants to hear at 5:15 in the morning. Why am I so full of song this morning? I'm not sure. I blame the Suave peppermint shampoo. I'm pretending that I live in London and hell. Cause it's so smoggy and hot. What can I say? I've been very bored.

Last night was an epic fail on being a productive human being. Since I'm TV free I don't watch all the fancy TV shows (In Color!) but once in a grey moon when I'm doing laundry suddenly I get sucked into some wonderfully trashy reality show. Last night's down fall was "Project Runway".

Project Runway and I go way back to my Sophomore year in college when Bravo used to do  these all day marathons on Friday nights. Now I wish I could say that my Friday nights were full of crazy adventures (most were) however some nights I just wanted to wear my fat pants eat a pint of ice cream and get in bed. I loved it. Loved the dramatic contestants who would design these truly outrageous outfits and be all "No you notice me! I'm an artist!" I found myself saying make it work to my roommates and co workers. The years went by and I lost the free cable and found myself in the cold dark world of being a grown up.

So last night as I was doing the laundry at my grandparent's house after spending all day lounging at the pool I turned on tele-vision and there to my wonder and horror was "Project Runaway." Worse still it was a marathon. Oh goodness there went my day. I had started off with good intentions full of plans to clean and organize and work on creating world peace. Yet instead I spent 4 hours watching crazy artist freak out when they had to design clothes for real people.

Oh reality TV how I have a special place in my heart for you. So now as I prepare myself for work I hear Tim Gunn in the back of my head going "Make it Work." Make me work indeed Mr Gunn.