I believe I should have migrated all 3 of my dedicated readers over to my new home, but just in case, come visit me over here from now on: http://soulspeak23.wordpress.com/

this move enables me to be able to post from work now, so hopefully, there'll be more to read shortly!

And since we're all here, I just wanna say thanks for thinking that what comes out of my brain is worth reading!

I had an e-mail waiting for me when I got to work. The only words on it were these:
If you could make one miracle happen in your life, what would it be?

My response was so visceral, so instantaneous, and so absolutely clear that it nearly knocked me out of my chair. It was like I didn’t even have to consciously THINK about it. It was just there already. And I guess it shouldn’t come as such a surprise to me, because it’s not as though I’ve never thought about it before. I just never thought about it in terms of a miracle.

My one miracle in life would be for me and HH to be able to create a baby together. Difficult, seeing as we’re both women and all, but something I wish for with all my heart, nonetheless. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that we will HAVE kids. I just really wish that I didn’t have to use DNA from a stranger in order to do so. And I’m fully aware that any kid raised by us, will inherit our behaviors and habits and such, but I just would love to be able to carry a baby that came out with HH’s eyes in their little face. Or to have her carry a baby that came complete with a tiny bubble butt, like me.

I guess it just bothers me that any features our child will have, that didn’t come from whichever one of us carried them, will be found on some stranger out in the world. Some man will be out there, who has my son’s eyes or my daughters nose and he won’t even know about it.

I guess I’ve come to terms with this, to an extent and I’m positive that I’m going to love those kids to the fullest of my ability no matter what. But I guess there will always be that part of me that mourns over the fact that my DNA + HH’s DNA will never = baby.

But hey, it’s my miracle, and I’ll wish for it if I want to!

So my friend xisting4me and I like to challenge each other to blog assignments sometimes. She usually gets my challenges done in a matter of hours, and I make her wait around for weeks. Cause that’s just the kind of procrastinator that I am. But on this particular challenge, I wasn’t simply being lazy. I was attempting to answer her challenge honestly while hanging on to some semblance of my pride. After much and careful consideration, I’ve realized that it can’t be done. So I’ll just answer honestly and let my pride have the day off.

Her challenge looks like this: How many people can you look through on your facebook friends and delete because you don’t talk to them regularly, you don’t really need them knowing stuff about your life, you added them because they asked or you haven’t talked to them in years? I did it and deleted 138 people. It was a scary thought. So why did you put them there to begin with?

At the time of this posting, I have 249 friends to my name on FB. I will say that I have had real world contact at some point in my life with all of my friends on there, but admittedly, not for quite some time with many of them. Do I absolutely need all of them? Nope. Have I spoken to half of these people in the last year? Probably not. Do I leave them there anyway? You betcha.

So that was the easy part. But now we get to the why part. Why did I add people who I haven’t spoken to in years and most likely are not going to be starting up a new relationship with anytime soon? Because they remembered me. Remembered me enough to either friend me or accept my friend request. And right here is where my pride just hung it’s “Out for lunch” sign. Because I am not proud of this, but I have lived much of my life thinking of myself as a very forgettable person. As though once I was physically out of someone’s life, that I also popped right out of their memory altogether. And so, when someone from my past pops up and recognizes and remembers me, I guess it makes me feel good, in some strange, psychologically-unhealthy way. It makes me feel like I made a difference in someone else’s life.

One particularly heart-wrenching incident of this was when a girl I had gone to 3rd grade with friended me. She had moved away in the middle of the school year and had left her address with the class in case anyone wanted to be penpals (remember those?!?). I had written her a letter at the time, but never got a response and it went long forgotten. When she friended me, she added a note telling me that I was the only one from the class who had written to her after she moved, but that something had happened to the envelope and she lost my return address, so she never got to write back to me. She told me that she had always felt bad about not being able to write back to the one person who had written to her.

I don’t know exactly what it was about this situation, but I was literally brought to tears. I had affected this person in some way so much so, that 20 years later, she was so happy to have found me just to say thank you for a letter that, to be honest, I don’t recall writing. But it was something. I had made a difference and someone remembered.

And I guess, to be fair, I have to give a part 2 as to the why. And part 2 is that on most days, I feel like I have no friends. I guess I have no everyday friends, people who you talk to all the time and know everything about you. I mean, I do have some very good friends out there, but we don’t see each other or talk all that often. We’re more like those kinds of friends who you can not see for a long time, but when you do, it’s like you just saw them yesterday. I have lots of those. I guess I’m missing some BFF’s, as cheesy as that sounds. Someone to vent to when I’m pissed at HH or something. And I guess the feeling of knowing things about other people from what they post on FB, makes me feel closer to them somehow. Like I can turn to HH and be like, “Oh, So-and-So is having a baby soon” or “So-and-So just posted a picture of their new haircut” or something.

I guess, when it all boils down, it helps me to not feel so lonely. But now that I’ve gone over the brink into the realm of pathetic, I’m going to stop and consider the challenge completed.

It’s got to be a bad day when my only peaceful moment happened on a New York City 1 train at 8:45 in the morning, right? What’s that, you say? A peaceful moment on a train, you say? Why, yes, actually, and I can’t believe it either.
I was doing my usual “ignore everyone and read my book” routine this morning. And I’ve learned over the years to be able to pay attention to where we are and read at the same time. So between Rector St. and Chambers St., the train came to a halt and basically powered down. And the trains run on electricity, so once they stop, there’s really no noise factor. We got a garbled announcement having something to do with a stalled train in front of us and to please have patience. Now, there were probably 40 other people on my train car. And as soon as the announcement guy shut up, it was complete and utter silence. No one was speaking, no one was tapping, no one was moving at all. I could hear a faint tinny iPod somewhere at the other end of the car, but that was IT. Complete and utter peaceful silence on a NYC subway car, during rush hour. I should have known then that the rest of my day would have no choice but to be filled with complete and utter shit. Which it absolutely was, and it’s not over yet so I’m not gonna write about it right now. Maybe tomorrow.

***NOTICE - Read the post below this first, so you know whats going on. - NOTICE***

So, after purchasing my headphones, I was just uncomfortable walking around with that much cash, so I put it in the bank. Seems reasonable, right?

I get home, rockin out in my new Sony's and HH notices them so I told her I bought something for myself! Yay! She's proud. Then we're thinking of ordering some food for dinner, so she asks me if I have any cash on me. I say no. She said, "I KNOW you didn't pay $200 for those headphones." So I put my head down, and admit that I put the rest in the bank.

She stares at me for a few minutes and then says, "I SHOULD SLAP THE SHIT OUT OF YOU! HOW OFTEN DOES IT HAPPEN THAT YOU HAVE JUST EXTRA MONEY LYING AROUND AND I TELL YOU TO PLEASE SPEND IT ON YOURSELF?!?! NEVER! UUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHRRRHHHHH!"

So I calmed her down, by telling her that with the money in the bank, I can ORDER whatever I want. Which was a new bag for her. She just sighed.

I did some side work with a friend over the weekend. We painted 4 rooms in an apartment. And while I’ve always done painting in our own apartment many times before, it was always on our own time, not an 8-4 schedule in which we try to get as much done as possible. So, to say I was tired at the end of the day would be a SEVERE understatement. My friend joked that I would sleep like a cannon ball that night, and he did not lie. I have a vague recollection of thinking how comfy my bed was at around 9:15pm, on a Saturday, and then it was 13 hours later. I slept for a full 13 hours. I can’t even tell you the last time that happened. And I woke up sore as hell. Knees, arms, shoulders, all of it, just pain. I really need to get crackin’ at the gym. I truly have a newfound respect for the people of the world who are in the business of physical labor.

But alas, with work, comes money. Cold, hard cash, to be exact. And when payment came on Monday in the form of a couple of crisp $100 bills, well, I just didn’t know what to do. My first instinct was to throw it into the credit card that I just put concert tickets on, and I said as much to HH. And she looks at me. She shakes her head.

HH – Do your knees still hurt?
Me – Yeah.
HH – So you earned that money, right?
Me – Yeah
HH – So why don’t you spend it on yourself?
Me – But. Um. No. It’s ok. I don’t have to do that. I’ll just pay off bills.
HH – PLEASE! Just do SOMETHING for yourself for a change!
Me – Um, Ok.

So yeah, I don’t know how to do that thing where you do something for yourself. Doing things for other people, this I know. HH told me last week that she hasn’t been to a lot of concerts and that she would like to go to some. We now have tickets to at least 3 concerts, 2 of which are huge, we have plans for another 2 and are waiting on tickets to go on sale for another one. She says she wants something, and I make sure she gets it. That’s how I roll. But if I want something, even if I NEED something, I am so reluctant to get it. For any number of reasons: The money could be better spent elsewhere. I just want that, I don’t really need it. But I could buy something for HH instead! Always an excuse to NOT do something for myself.

I don’t know what is wrong with me. I go so far over and above the expected for HH, it’s not even funny. I’ve had a cake flown in, overnight, from a bakery in Ohio, because they made a traditional Hungarian cake that she hadn’t tasted since she left Hungary. I’ve kidnapped her, coordinating with her work for the time off, to surprise her with a weekend in a B&B in New Hope, PA. I had a tiny leopard tortoise (yes, a live, rare animal) shipped to my work from California so I could surprise her with him, for her birthday. And yet, I’ll turn down buying myself a new pair of slippers, cause “Nah, the one’s I have are really fine.” (So what if they’ve caused me to fall down the steps? Twice.)

So, in light of this, I went and bought myself new headphones for my iPod today. Cause the one’s I had were frayed and starting to get static-ish. And I spent a whopping $25 on them. Which is a veritable SPLURGE for me! They weren’t the cheapest ones available! I swear, they weren’t. I even considered cheaper ones, but then went back and got the Sony’s. I’ve got like $175 left now. To spend on me. And I don’t know what to do with it.

So here is a list of things that I want, but will most likely NOT go out and get for myself:

- A new hairdo and color that will make me look and feel good
- Another tattoo
- A new watch
- Window tint on my car
- A new ring
- Kitchen gadgets of any variety (https://www.titanpeelersale.com/)
- A new spring jacket
- Gym clothes
- A new phone (but that’ll have to wait till I’m eligible for a new one)
- A new iPod
- Lilith Fair tickets (though, I swear, I’m gonna try and get some of those!)

My hand. OUTSIDE my vehicle. Cause it's 72 degrees!! AND, it was only March 18th, which is technically still winter! But not for long!
Happy Spring Everyone!

P.S. Please excuse the horrendous line of traffic behind me. It wasn't my fault!