Lilac Colored Glasses

This meme, I can’t remember who tagged me or where. Possibly Facebook, but I’m not sure. Anyway, if you noticed the silence from here, it’s due to some severe stress this week. Things aren’t great at work. My self confidence on every level is very low and on top of all of it, I was on a train home to Gent on Thursday night and the electric cables above the train snapped and came down on top of the train. I was even in the top part so I got to see all the sparks and scary stuff and then sit for 3 hours with the other thousand passengers that were stranded while the train company figured out a way to evacuate all of us. Point being? No writing. No time for self reflection. But I don’t want you to miss me, so I pulled this meme out of my draft folder for you. If you’re interested, please consider yourself tagged.

Three names I go by:
1. Korie
2. Clio
3. Alethia

Three jobs I’ve had:
1. Drive thru cashier
2. in home elderly care
3. child care

Three places I have lived:
1. Pittsburgh, PA
2. Indiana, PA
3. Gent, BE

Three Favorite Drinks
1. Latte
2. Mint Tea
3. Boston iced tea

Three TV shows I watch:
1. NCIS
2. Criminal Minds
3. Bones

Three places I have visited:
1. Cologne, Germany
2. Auckland, New Zealand
3. Flores, Guatemala

People who phone me regularly:
1. my mom
2. CB
3. …that’s it. I’m lame.

Three of my favorite foods:
1. shrimp
2. potatoes
3. olives

Thank you all so much for your kind words, suggestions and encouragement on my last post. Sometimes I’m truly astounded by your capacity to not slap me and tell me to shut the hell up when I wax emo all over the place. I will respond to each of you personally, I just want to give everyone a well though out response as opposed to a blanket “thnxkbai”.

And now I shall gank a meme-y questionnaire type thing from Jientje because I haven’t done one in a while and I’m too busy being distracted by the new sparkly I found yesterday.

1. Who was your FIRST date? My first date without parental accompaniment was with Elmer when I was 13 or 14. I think we went to a movie…that really bad one with Cindy Crawford and Billy Baldwin.

2. Do you still talk to your FIRST love? Yes, occasionally. My first love is currently in grad school in New York and I’m very lucky to still have him as a friend.

3. What was your FIRST alcoholic drink? Ew, gawd, it was a sip of nasty old beer from some random cup at a block party when I was about ten *shudders*

4. What was your FIRST job? Cashier at Long John Silvers. Yarrr matey!

5. What was your FIRST car? My first car was a green 1997 Pontiac Sunfire

Mine was a 4 door

6. Where did you go on your FIRST ride on an airplane? I believe it was to Las Vegas, but I was an infant so my mom would know for sure.

7. Who was your FIRST best friend & do you still talk? My first best friend was Alisha. We took very different paths in life and the last time I spoke to her was almost 5 years ago when her father passed away. I think our mothers may occasionally bump into each other and say hello, but that’s about it.

8. Whose wedding did you attend the FIRST time? My cousins Steve and Holly when I was 13 or so.

9. Tell us about your FIRST roommate. Ugh, do I really have to? She was this theatre major a year older than me who was biracial and also half Jewish/half Christian but she chose whichever religion/race suited her needs at the time and that’s what she’d say she was. She rarely, if ever, bathed so our room stunk like BO. She took my clothing without permission and never washed it, left baby oil all over the door knob and a patina of nasty over everything else. She kept odd hours and often woke me up at 3 am cause she’d forgotten her keycard in our room. Oh and she told me the dorm I was in was full of anti semites and basically had me terrified to speak to anyone for the first semester I was in school. Granted I got a 4.0 that semester but I also moved the hell out during holiday break.

10. If you had one wish, what would it be (other than more wishes)? I would wish for the ability to speak every language in the world (fluently…none of this partial fluency b.s.)

11. What is something you would learn if you had the chance? To play guitar and piano

12. Did you marry the FIRST person you were in love with? No I didn’t, nor will I, but I will be marrying the man that makes me a complete person.

13. What were the first lessons you ever took and why? I think I was in gymnastics when I was very young, like 3, but I dunno why…cause toddlers need exercise too?

14. What is the first thing you do when you get home? Say hello to the cats.

Prior to my tumble down the stairs, I was planning to come back to my blog with a little song I heard recently. It’s an easy going, simple little tune and while CB and I do get a chuckle over it’s schlageriness (made that one up myself), it’s been stuck in my head ever since I decided it’d be a good “end of hiatus” tune.

However, I thought it best to tell you about what happened Monday and I couldn’t see a good place to segue into a Dutch schlageresque song. It’s kind of hard to stay upbeat when you feel so beat up.  Much of my physical pain is subsiding (though my wrist is hurting more) and the longer I’m able to sit in one place, the more I’ve made the mistake of reading the news.

I usually avoid the news because it depresses me and considering the month I’ve had, I don’t need to be more depressed, but this week I found myself clicking around the headlines and reading about things like the Maori protest in Auckland, the court’s decision to uphold Prop.8, the GOP trying to find ways to deny the first ever Hispanic woman from a place in the Supreme Court, and Israel’s Knesset trying to pass a law to imprison anyone who denies Israel is a Jewish state.

What most of it boils down to is discrimination, for one reason or another and it really makes me feel sick to read the comments of the “Joe the Plumbers” out there who find any reason they can to put down those who are different than them. I can’t say I know much about council seats in New Zealand, but the disgusting amount of racism in the comments blew me away.  And I won’t even get started on Prop. 8 cause that’s just asking for trolls. But again, the comments I saw? I can’t understand how people justify some of their own heinous opinions. These people are minorities who protested peacefully for their rights to be represented as human beings and they were mocked for “pissing people off by wasting their time in traffic”.

Are you kidding me?

I doubt that the African Americans who no longer have to drink from separate water fountains feel as though the Million Man March was a waste of time.
I doubt that the women who vote on every election day think that the suffragettes were lazy or whiny for demanding to be treated as equals in society.

Point is, the world is really bumming me out today. So before I limp off to rest my rear (and back and arm and toes), I’m going to do my best to stay positive and upbeat, and in doing so, I’d like to offer you all a happy little song to be lodged in your heads (disclaimer: I never said the song is actually any good, but it is upbeat and chipper).

Heb je even voor mij (loose translation: do you have a minute for me) – Frans Bauer

My lovely bloggy friend Jientje is running a weekly theme on her blog right now and she’s calling it…you guessed it…”A Thousand Words in Idioms”. What it is is alphabetically finding idioms and taking a picture to go along with each one. Jientje started last week with A and B but I’m a week behind so I’m doing A-D this week.

So here we go!

A rolling stone gathers no moss. I’ve never been 100% sure how to explain this one…I guess it means keeping yourself active (physically, mentally, etc.) is a good thing. Cause growing moss just isn’t cool.

Baksteen in de maag. This one is Dutch. An expression here is that all Belgians have a “baksteen in de maag,” which translates to a “brick in the belly.” It means that every Belgian wants to own a house. It is very very true.

Curiosity killed the cat. I guess some people think curiosity is a bad thing? But no worries, these cats are just sleeping.

Dark horse. A dark horse is an unknown or mysterious person.

Next week I’ll be bringing you E and F. For other idioms, click on over to Heaven is in Belgium!

My temper has been set to “simmer” for months now and it really doesn’t take much added heat for the proverbial pot to boil over. Most of the anger is usually aimed at myself, but sadly I tend to take it out all too often on CB. Lately I’ve thought a lot about my behavior in general and I realized how unfair I was being. I promised CB that I would try harder to have a better attitude.

It’s not coming to me very easily.

Today for example, everything was fine. I took my bike for a checkup at the rental place (the tires were half flat so I had to walk it there which took 45 minutes, but I could ride it back so that was good), stopped at some interims (appointment tomorrow at 10:30) and came home. I was taking laundry out of the dryer when CB came down and started rummaging through the fridge. I told him to make a pizza and we could share. He started the microwave/oven combo preheating and asked me to call him down when the pizza was done.
When the oven was heated I put the pizza on the little removable round rack and folded the laundry while it baked. When it was done I called up to CB but he had forgotten about the pizza and had started playing a computer game. I figured I’d eat downstairs then take the rest of the pizza up for CB with the laundry.

So I put an oven mitt on my right hand, picked up the rack and placed it on the top of our little two range burner. One of the little legs of the rack wasn’t totally on the range lid though, so the rack tipped and the pizza slid down behind the range.
And I, in all my wisdom, grabbed the 400° (220°celsius) oven rack with my bare hand and the gooey pizza with the oven mitt.
Much fumbling resulted in me angrily hurling rack and pizza into the sink and then scraping molten cheese from the oven mitt with the rough edge of a knife. Seething, I cleaned everything up while a voice in my head taunted me for being so clumsy and fucking things up; then I threw some crackers, spread and yogurt on a plate for CB, grabbed the pile of laundry and schlepped it all upstairs (dropping a pair of socks on the way).
I was furious and my first instinct was to yell at CB-blame him for starting a game rather than cooking his own damn pizza. I found myself thinking: “If he had half a brain he’d've known to come help me…”

And that’s when I stopped myself.

All those angry thoughts and words- the accusations I threw at myself for fucking everything up, the assumption that CB should be psychic and magically know I needed some help, the withering remarks about intelligence that were clinging to my tongue- those were my dad’s words from about 15 years ago, before he got the help and meds that worked for him.
So when I stormed in, kicking the mostly closed office door open, arms full of laundry, I did manage to explain about the pizza. And okay, I was still angry and yelling. But I did finish off by saying, “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself. Now leave me alone!” before slamming the door between us.

…it’s a work in progress…

sigh

Oh, and so as not to eclipse Ruprecht’s guest post (with prize), go check it out!