I’m BAAA-AAACK!!!

And this time I’m typing from home. I will, more than likely, write about my experience at UCLA Medical Center one day soon but right now I’m bored with that and I would rather talk about MEEEE!!!

I’m officially a crazy old lady so my lifelong dream of becoming old enough to do silly stuff and be considered cute instead of nuts has finally come true. The nursing staff told my daughter that I was “pleasantly confused”. I guess that’s a nice way of saying “nutty as a fruit cake”. When I first came around after the stroke, I was frightened by everything because I didn’t recognize any of it.

But, after a while I realized that I was in a hospital so I sort of just assumed that the aliens were nice aliens and I decided to go along with the program. Since I’m pretty much just following the fates into a confused state that seems seems to be calling me closer and closer, I have no idea what type of blog posts people will be finding when they come here in the future. I suppose it’ll be as though I’m Charly from Flowers for Algernon and no one will know if tomorrow holds a witty Irish chick, a dithering idiot or some combination of the two.

And as batty as I may become, I will STILL make more sense than a hospital that has “Neuro-psychiatric Center” on the front door, “Stroke Unit” on the door to the wing, my NAME on the door to my room AND a promise of confidentiality. I don’t get that at all but maybe it’s me so I’ll just leave it alone until I have more to offer the entire botheration than my verbal wrath.

Confusion is feared by most people but once you adjust, it’s actually rather interesting. The smallest stuff has been fascinating me, like the thing in the bed that looks like a phone, has voices coming out of one side and lots of buttons but you can’t call anyone with it except the nurse.

Oh, and forgetting a few months of your life is exactly like time travel. If you don’t remember what happened since you went to bed on your last birthday which was several months ago, you have, for all intents and purposes, travelled into the future. It’s not something you’d welcome arbitrarily into your life…but it IS time travel nonetheless. Actually, it was space travel as well, after all, it was June and I was in Atlanta…now I’m in Los Angeles and I don’t remember how I got here although once I was told that I took a plane, I DID remember that my dog had flown with me.

I guess it’ll all clear up eventually…it did after the first stroke. I was right smack dab in the middle of singing The Happy Birthday Song to my niece when I suddenly forgot the words to the song. Or, I would need a cup and know what a cup looked like but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what the heck one was called. Words would elude me and like the trips through space and time, you never see it coming. Who would foresee such a curse? No one expects to forget words that you use every single day of your life. Think about the repercussions of that…you could be in rush to order french fries, to get to an appointment or to have an orgasm and suddenly you might forget the word “faster”.

But it’s not all bad, actually there are several other positive things about confusion that are underrated my most people:

1. Lack of responsibilities like driving, babysitting and chopping vegetables.

2. Automatic approval for most government health plans.

3. Appreciation for the phrase, “Once an adult, twice a child.”

4. This is the time in life that you are allowed to fart nilly-willy and not see quite as many aghast faces.

5. If caught loitering, committing vagrancy or trespassing, you’ll avoid jail and go straight to the nearest hospital.

6. As soon as you GET to the hospital, they’ll give you the good drugs.

7. Confused people have absolutely NO interest it smoking, doing drugs or drinking. They exist in a permanent altered state of consciousness. Confusion is one helluva trip dudes!

8. After you spend some time staring at the idiot box, you realize that swings and long walks are much more fun.

9. Of course…if you walk long enough, you get a ride home from the sheriff’s department. If you’re lucky, you could even get a ride back in a helicopter!

10. You fully appreciate John Lennon while NOT under the influence of pot.

Imagine.

Well, I’m sure there are more but one of the bad things abut this entire sordid debacle is the fact that I can’t type anymore. Well, I can but it would probably be quicker to use a pen. This has taken me a LONG FRICKING TIME and I feel like assisting gravity in her efforts to keep the sofa on the floor. See ya!

Slumber-bereft eyes, sandpapered and pricked by nocturnal vigil; the chambers of the mind become labyrinthine with cerebral dislocation; I am half-waked, not asleep, only partly here.

Sluggish and slow I perambulate through the familiar corridors of thoughts and home, performing each habitual function adequately, automatically; not well, not badly.

Sleep is of vital importance.

You had best not forget that.

Writing can be hard.

Sometimes an idea comes and you can ’stream of consciousness’ it straight out. It can be as simple as opening a window and letting it in.

Of course then there are times when there isn’t an idea and it can be hard to get going. So prevalent and legendary this that it has a name and legend all of its own. Defined as it is. Writer’s block.

The concept is extended across mediums and the artists indulged further. As long as you are writing something creative you are covered. Or are you?

What about worker’s block?

It is a question I have thought about a bit having long since sold my soul, abandoning previous artistic incarnations for wage slavery.

There can be days in the working environment where things are not forthcoming. No inspiration. No flow. Nothing.

Can I not even claim writer’s block when writing for work? Some of the project documentation and proposals I have produced are about as creative as anything I have ever otherwise excreted.

But of course in the professional environment there is no chance of pleading ‘blockage’.

It doesn’t wash.

The best out you can hope for is some solid procrastination, a limp excuse and to live to fight another day.

Still, we need to know. I know what I shall testify next time.

It gets my attention when a trademark dispute makes the mainstream news.  In the case of Porsche suing Crocs in Germany, the newscasters on the 24-hour news stations had a grand time making fun of Porsche for filing this lawsuit.  Both companies are using the trademark CAYMAN.  But Porsche is using it for an ultra-luxury ultra-sports car, and Crocs is using it for the beach shoes that inspire strong opinions from people who seem to have something against bright-colored rubber with charms adorning feet.   The threshold question in a trademark infringement suit is whether likelihood of confusion exists.  Whether you love or hate Crocs, you are unlikely to be confused between rubber footwear and a sleek sportscar.

My husband and I had our honeymoon on the Cayman Islands, and I’ll tell you, it wasn’t much of a place to drive.  In fact, it’s the only place where I’ve ever driven on the left side of the road, because the driving was so easy and slow that I had no fear.  So in my opinion, CAYMAN for beach shoes is suggestive, CAYMAN for a sports car, arbitrary at best.

Defcon 4: “W.T.F.?”

Defcon 3: “What the fuck?”

Defcon 2.5 “What in the fuck?” (The “in” adds gravity.)

Defcon 2: “Tha’ fuck?”

Defcon 1: “Fuck?”

I mean, really. Fuck, man? i’-ta’ fuck?

I go away for a month, come back, and shit’s all fucked up. What happened here? Either Hope is being slandered horribly, or call me shocked and blindsided. She always seemed like a great person. I just can’t imagine her cheating on her husband. I will have another epistemic crisis, a collapse of confidence what little sanity the world seems to have, if this seemingly heroic woman turns out to have bitten faildirt in such a primal, unambiguously nefarious way.

Please clue me in, because I’m shocked. ‘Fuck happened here, people?

Having another bad day. Feeling very emotional, nearly in tears just listening to music or reading. I don’t want to be this way anymore. I can’t feel like this anymore without going really mad. I don’t want to feel like this and I’m sick of merely existing and not feeling anything but crap and worthless. It’s impossible to know how this feels unless you’ve experienced it yourself. Even if close family members have depression, you will never really know how they feel because they will hide the worst from you, even when they try to be as honest as they can. They will hide things from you so you won’t worry and that you won’t be shocked and think they’re freaks. I can’t handle this anymore, I need help.

I want to do a study abroad class this summer–it’s been a HUGE thing for me since I found out about the opportunity to do so through this program. However, I’m looking at spending about 5000 to do so.

I found out about a program that will take me to New Zealand for about half the cost if I’m doing it for CEU’s instead of credits–not that I’d actually take that option–but they are already full.

So, do I hold off a year and apply for a summer internship that will give me about $3000-5000 for the summer or go on one of the other study abroad trips (England or Rome)?

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and I should be happy, but I’m not.  I might just seclude myself tomorrow.  I don’t feel like celebrating anything anyway.  I’m bored and I don’t know what can make me enjoy life.  Things would be easier for if I just killed myself.  I’m not going to kill myself though.  That would just make my family upset and I can’t hurt them like that.  I’m just confused right now.

It’s hard to keep positive really when everything just seems to go awry. It’s hard to focus when there are so many things to focus on. It gets more difficult to keep yourself motivated day in and day out, giving everything you have everyday. As you lay on your bed, you ponder whether everything’s worth it or what’s the point of actually asking anymore. Your tired mind tries to look for answers but at the end of the day, it just shuts off and then you fall into a deep slumber. The day ends with no apparent answer to the questions you wish you had the answers to. The sun rises and so do you. You still feel the fatigue and you just force yourself to move and lug your tired body (and mind) to what have you. It helps that you can keep a smile when with other people. It helps that there are people who could give you a smile, but once the moment passes and when the reality of every darn thing sets in, the smile just fades. Good for a picture which captures this single moment of bliss and is able to live for quite a long time. Good for it ’cause it fades for what seems like forever. But such is not true for one’s life. In a snap of the finger, everything could crumble and at the same time everything could seem like the most perfect of days.

There is no moment wherein you don’t check on the time by taking out your cell or looking at your wristwatch or just simply asking your friend beside you. You remember that you have a meeting to go to, an errand to run, a pile of work that needs to be finished. But even with this fast-paced life, you make time for whatever little time you have to at least enjoy a moment of that day with friends and those little quirks you enjoy. Sometimes you just want to express the happiness you’re feeling and announce it to the whole world but a lot of the times you just want to hide what you’re really feeling, fearing that noone would really understand what you’re going through and most of the time you’re right. You realize that you have to do it on your own. You realize that this life of yours is only worth living if you are the one in control, but then that’s the hard part about it because that’s when you see that your life now seems out of your control. Now, you feel lost, confused and tired.

The day starts with you trudging along the path, and maybe weighing the options of saying yes or no. But the day ends with you left wondering whether you made the right decisions. It’s a cycle and you know that, but you just can’t help yourself. You decide to find reprieve in what seemingly feels like control, but really it’s just the same old spiral.

I felt like a pain in the ass to both of my parents. A hot potato that mom wanted to cuddle but dad didn’t want to touch. It felt weird not being loved in stereo.

how many more tears
would you have me fall down my face?
how many more tears
do I have to hide from your sight?

how much more anger
would you want me to feel?
how many more gasps
of despair do I have to hold inside?

I get so angry, that I cry
then I hate that I cry these tears
I can’t continue to feel
so many emotions all at once

For now, I choose to live in this misery
against all good advice
For now, I endure the pain
against all that’s right for me

Because I believe you when you say
you will make a change
Because I want to feel again
what we once had

It’s back … fun with headlines!

Spotted (ha ha) today in wikiHow:

How to Make Luggage Easier to Spot

(click here for the real story)

What comes to your mind?

Here’s what came to ours:

Tuesday November 24, 2009 By Kevin Morrow

Now social conditioning to me merely means how the mind sees reality. How you grow up and the environment you live in determines the values put inside of your mind. It does this until you decide to be in charge. Social conditioning structures things like how we view marriage, sex, relationships, and boundaries of what is acceptable and not acceptable.

The difference between a girl that is your friend and a “girlfriend” is a social label. It’s a conditioning of the mind to recognize the difference between a casual and a not so casual “friend.” What I’m getting at is these things get downloaded into our mental programs of reality.

One of my girlfriends and I got along way better after the energy of a “label” was taken away in our interactions. The label puts the mind into separation, which is a separation from love. Think about this, if you have a conversation with a married person you may automatically close of doors to certain forms of love because you feel that persons love is reserved for one person.

I’m not talking about sex here, or intimate things of that nature. I’m talking about closing the doors to potential mind healing because you hear the label married, and assume that you have to close yourself of to certain types of love.

This is not the case, people in perfect love are responsible for their actions and would be open to all forms of love instead of closing them self off to the possibility. Again I’m not talking about sex, I’m talking about communication.

It’s just been socially conditioned into the minds and it takes an element of freedom away. When freedom is no longer free, things become uncomfortable. You can still talk to a married person and share energy, but that doesn’t mean you have to sleep with them. Sex is not love anyway. Sex is to reproduce, and that’s it. It is viewed as fun because it is the representation of union. Love separated and then combined. It’s an attempt to reconnect with perfect love through the body.

Ever notice though that sex is more mental? Love is not sex, but sex can be love. It’s the separation of mind that creates the labels and creates illusion through its “perceived” separation from love.

Do you know why sex is one of the most dominant urges of the human experience? The reason is it’s a material attempt to reconnect with G-D and perfect love. Separation and union, separation and union, just like the mind has done with LOVE.

WHY DO PEOPLE GET HURT OVER BREAKUPS?

People get hurt over breakups because they don’t understand love. They are trying to make something perfect that cannot be if it’s not perfect love. In order to have perfect love your mind cannot have separation from love.

The mind is creating a social conditioning image of love through the eyes of the EGO. So you build up all these expectations of how “”PERFECT” something should be, and then when it’s not “PERFECT” your expectations are shattered. When expectations don’t live to what you see, your EGO get’s pissed. The only way to support a separation from perfect love is to make you see it through foggy classes.

So you chase something you can’t really see, and you keep chasing because you really think your seeing it. Like a cat chases the light of a flashlight across the floor. The cat can never actually catch the light, because what it is actually seeing is not what it thinks it’s seeing.

When you label yourself as only giving your love to one person, you severely restrict yourself. Once again I’m not talking about sex. The spirit which is PERFECT LOVE doesn’t need sex, and probably experiences orgasmic energy all the time because it’s not separated from reality.

Now if you flip the script and dedicate yourself to be intimately in love with yourself, out of perfect love, then situations of perfect love will be yours to experience. EXACTLY how you believe them to be possible.

Now back to social conditioning

If you look to the outside world to figure out what love is, all you will see is fear. Things in the world pass away, therefore fear will be in the outside world. When you get married you say “Till death do us part.” Strong statement, but death can be of the mind as well. But death can only be of the mind that isn’t real.

Anything real will last, anything not real will pass away. Real love has no boundaries. You see this sometimes in mother child interactions. There are mothers that have unconditional love for their children no matter what they do in life. They see them through perfect love vision.
Nothing can destroy perfect love, but illusions can make it seem that way.

The thing that ego fears worth is death. All EGO is, is the separation from perfect love. So when you fear love, you are fearing the death of love, not love itself. Just remember that love cannot die.

<

I’ve written in the past about what comes first – the chicken or the egg – the girl or her shoe collection.  There has also been a brief investigation into whether or not your fertility rate can increase going to IKEA and if you’ve looked at the people there you know it can.  The only way more protruding bellies could be there, is if IKEA actually sold a protruding belly, though they might call it Boolah or something equally cool. 

When I teach my class on Educational Psychology I tell my students that both the environment and evolution matter in what a person does and who they become. This video however may introduce a new influencing factor to the nature or nurture debate. 

She will purposefully spill liquid onto the floor only to immediately come by to clean up the mess with a towel.  Yes, what you are thinking is correct.  She MAKES a mess to CLEAN the mess.  The equivalent in the animal kingdom would be a group of explorers discovering a pride of lions eating a Caesar salad with forks.  Completely unexpected and unexplainable.  Where does our daughter get ideas like this, what have we done that might have influenced it.  I can say with some confidence that nothing she observes relates to this and nothing about us as parents says additional cleaning is good.

These are the quagmires, questions and confusions that parents face, ones that have no ‘a-parent’ reason what-so-ever.  Ones that no one can answer.  Ones that once you have kids and read these stories, you nod your head in understanding though you understand nothing at all.

I DON’T GET IT!

Why in the world, does everything have to be so difficult to explain. Why people insist on using complicated terminology and coding when really… You could just say what you mean! Life is hard enough without people making it harder on themselves. Communication is one of the biggest and hardest lessons to learn, and we go and make it ten times more aggravating to figure out?! Since when did that make sense??????

Example:

Power of attorney preamble:

I,  Jane Doe, hereby appoint  Mr. Shark McGee  as my attorney in fact to act in

my capacity to do every act that I may legally do through an attorney in fact. This power shall be

in full force and effect on the date below written and shall remain in full force and effect until 

(enter date) or unless specifically extended or rescinded earlier by either party. 

BEFORE ME, the undersigned authority, on this  day of  (enter date)

(enter year) personally appeared to me (Enter witness/notary name) well-known to be the

person described in and who signed the Foregoing, and acknowledged to me that he executed

the same freely and voluntarily for the uses and purposes therein expressed. 

WITNESS my hand and official seal the date aforesaid. 

                                    _____________(signature of witness/notary)____________

                                                    NOTARY PUBLIC

Translation aka “Layman’s Terms” :

I, Jane Doe,  give my human rights and decision-making rights over to Shark McGee if I no longer have the ability to care for myself, or if  I become insane. This contract is to be considered active from this date forward or until this contract is no longer valid by whatever circumstance occurs.

I, (witness’s name), have been present for the signing of the above contract and am signing to prove that both parties were aware of the document they were signing and were in agreement to its terms.

(Jane Doe Signature)

(Shark McGee Signature)

(Witness/Notary’s signature)

It’s easier to say what you mean rather than fill a paper with useless filler words. Be straight and to the point, because that leaves less room for miscommunication. Not everyone went to legal school, not everyone understands legal terms, and it has been proven that people who can’t understand a clear point in a document, usually skip over it, or don’t pay as much attention to the statement, where if something is clearly written,  it’s not going to be looked over.

But this is just my opinion. I’m a word person, I like words, I like to sound competent in my writing…however… there is a line between intelligent and just plain boring, or worse… INEFFECTIVE.

Comments, opinions?

Until later my friends,

Kymlee

•“All We Are” Matt Nathanson “I kept falling over/I kept looking backward/I went broke believing/That the simple should be hard” • “Turn to Stone” Ingrid Michaelson “Let’s go to sleep with clearer heads/And hearts to big to fit our beds/And maybe we won’t feel so alone/Before we turn to stone”

• “Gravity” Sara Bareillis “Set me free, let me be/I don’t want to fall another moment on to your gravity/Here I am, and I stand so tall/I’m just the way I’m supposed to be.”

• “Quequ’un M’a Dit” Carla Bruni

• “Crash and Burn” Savage Garden “When you feel all alone/ a loyal friend is hard to find/ you’re caught on a one way street/with monsters in your head/ when hopes and dreams are far away/You feel like you can’t face the day” • “Rain” “its hard to know when to give up the fight/Some things you want will just never be right/ its never rained like it has tonight before”

• “Twenty four” Switchfoot “All of my symphonies/With twenty-four parts /Life is not what I thought it was /Twenty-four hours ago/Still I’m singing ‘Spirit, take me up in arms with You/ I’m not copping out /Not copping out “

• “You’re Not Alone” Meredith Andrews “With heartache your closest friend/and Everyone else long gone/you had to face the music on your own/But there is a sweeter song that calls you home singing/you’re not alone, for I am here/let me wipe away your every tear.”

• “Naked as we Came” Iron & Wine

• “Jueves” La Oreja de Van Gogh

• “Lonely Tonight” Matt Wertz

• “I am still Running” Jon Foreman “In my darkest fears the rights become thewrongs/ I am still running, I am still running I am still running I am still running “

• “Close Your Eyes” Dave Barnes

• “Brandy Alexander” Feist

• “Sober” Pink “I don’t want to be that girl that has to fill the silence/The quiet scares me cuz it screams the truth” • “May Angels Bring you In” Jimmy Eat World

• “Untitled” Kira Haddock “I want something right to go wrong, I need something wrong to go right”

• “Heard the World” OAR “Holding my breath tight, trying to keep my head on right./There’s a chill in the air, nobody could care /How you’re caught up in the fight of your life.”

• “Silent All These Years” Tori Amos

The latest iPhoto release has some sort of face recognition and it’s still fairly crude. It’s also fairly confrontational. I selected a photograph of myself and watched a decade of images of my own face appear on screen. On some I weighed ten kilo’s less, on some I weighed ten kilo’s more. On all of them I had smoother skin and less wrinkles. Shocking. And the hair! I’m glad digital photography was not around in the eighties or I would have killed myself out of sheer embarassment.

iPhoto had some surprising suggestions. It thought I was BF’s middle-aged male friend. It thought BF was an ex-lover. I wondered what it’ll do when I process Dog… But best yet, it thought my mate Ike was a fluffy dessert (served at de Bazaar, Rotterdam).