Life (or something like that)

I get up this morning at about 6:40, which is a bit later than I usually start my day. I have my coffee and get ready to go to work. I leave for work at about 7:50 and today the 10 minute drive takes me 20 minutes for some reason. I get to work and realize I am the first one in the kitchen this morning. That is unusual—usually there are at least a couple other people working by the time I arrive. So I turn on the lights and ovens and start cutting up chicken and vegetables. Other than the humming of the oven's hood fan thing, it's super quiet in the kitchen. I both really like the quiet and feel a little spooked to be alone in there all by myself. But I put myself in the zone and focus on what I am cooking. I realize while cutting the chicken that I am not really thinking about anything, and I wonder if I should be thinking about life or something. Then I decide that I like having the ability to not think about anything and just work. So I just work. Hours go by and I get things cooked, portioned, labeled, and put in the walk in cooler. Cleaning up the kitchen takes a solid hour to an hour and a half. I label and put away the leftover food, wash loads of dishes, and take the trash out to the dumpster. I think about the week when I was trying to lift a heavy bag of trash into the dumpster and the bag broke at the bottom and trash fell all over me. It was gross. Anyways, I go back inside to sweep and mop the floor. It's a lot of work. But I feel proud of it.

After leaving the kitchen I drive across the street to drop food off at a client's house. I often drop food off there before heading home. The client is a sweet elderly gentleman who is quite spunky and spry. He definitely has a young soul. I want to be like him when I am older. He always kisses me on the cheek and talks talks to me for a while. Today it is raining when I go to drop his food off, so he tells me to pull up to the garage. I should have known where this was going…he has been wanting to show me his red corvette for weeks...and today is apparently the day! Haha. So he takes the cover off of his bright red, brand-spanking-new, corvette. I can tell he is really excited to show it off. It's adorable. He has me sit inside the car on the passenger side and as soon as he opens the door I am immediately bombarded with new car/new leather smell. He then climbs in the drivers seat and pushes the start engine button and proceeds to rev the engine a few times. Then for the next 10 minutes he shows me all the neat little features the car has. I find it fairly impressive, and that is coming from someone who isn't really into cars. At all. Although, I did learn a lot about cars and wheelies and "burnout" when I nannied for Nicky, because he was all into that kind of stuff. Anyway, the gentleman asks me what kind of cars I like, and I say, "the reliable kind. The kind that you know will start in the morning." He laughs and asks me about my sweet ride—which I proudly say is a  2001 Honda CRV that hasn't had working AC since March of this year. He is amazed that I would drive a car without air-conditioning, and I tell him I built a lot of character over the summer.

After a bit, we climb out of the car and he pops the hood of the car to show me the engine. At least I think that is what we were looking at. I'm not really sure…all I know is that everything under that hood is so clean you could eat off of it. He tells me some facts about the car and I nod and smile. He then asks how much of the information I am going to remember, and I say, probably about 25% but that it is still interesting. We finally say goodbye, and he tells me that he enjoys my weekly visits.

I drive home and I feel light. Light as in, happiness mixed with contentment. Sure, my hands are covered with burns and dry as heck because I wash them in scalding water 500 times a day. And my nails have never been such a tattered mess...i'm actually kind of concerned about how much of a beating they're taking. I was also worried last week that I was on the verge of straining my wrist because of how much scrubbing of pot and pans, lifting of massive industrial sized mixing bowls, pots filled with sugar syrup, and cleaning I do now. I have always had weak wrists, and it had been aching for a few days. My body is not used to this much physical work every day. Apparently nannying is more sedentary than I realized. When I get home, I realize that I have enough energy to go running. This is literally the first day since I started either of my jobs in the past three months, that I have had the energy to exercise after getting off of work. So I run. It's a good run, too. Then I shower, because I am covered in grease and food particles, and now a layer of sweat—it's real cute.

Then I leave for Target. Obviously. Because…Target. But as I am driving down the road in my neighborhood, I see a man hunched over in the grass next to the sidewalk. He has his knees drawn up to his chest and his hands over his ears. He is rocking back and forth slightly and there are what appear to be empty cans of beer scattered around him.

My heart stops for a minute. Then it hurts a lot—my heart, that is. I feel frustrated for being a woman, because I can't stop my car and do anything. That would be really unsafe. But I hate just driving past him. It feels so cold. I wonder if he has a more severe mental illness. I wonder if drinking helps him. I wonder what kind of emotional, mental, and physical pain he lives in every day. I pray for him. I really pray for him. Because if that was me on the side of the road, I would hope someone would really pray for me—and for more than five seconds.

I think about the brokenness of life. And I ask God to be with that man. To hold him, to love him, to comfort him. Seeing things like that bothers me on many levels. It bothers me because it is a human in suffering. It bothers me because that is a human being in pain. It bother me because I understand on some level, some amount of addiction and mental illness and how you can't always control it and how it can mess with you. It bothers me because I am afraid of that being me. It grieves me, because I know I used to ignore people like that. I used to think of them as half humans because I didn't know how to even begin to process seeing something like a man rocking back and forth on the side of the road with their hands over their ears surrounded by beer cans. It was similar to how I would dehumanize the homeless people standing in the street medians. I didn't view them as real humans,  as even worth eye contact, because if I acknowledged that they were fully human and had souls precious to God, then I had to acknowledge that there was a level of brokenness in the world that I didn't know how to handle. I wasn't taught how to handle that kind of thing. So the only way I could not be bothered by those situations, and specifically by situations involving those who are mentally ill, was to pretend like I didn't see it…like they weren't really there, or that they weren't really humans…because, I couldn't handle knowing a human being was in a situation like that. So I would ignore it. Because I couldn't handle it.

I'm not saying I can handle it now. But now…I am trying to acknowledge that it is there. The broken, the suffering, the mentally ill. And now I know…I know that those people are human being with souls. Souls that deserve to be acknowledged and given dignity and respect.

So as my heart was heavy for the man I saw, as it hurt and broke for him, I had to remind myself that Jesus is not sitting up in heaven, distant and unaffected by that man's pain. He cares more for him than I possibly ever could. He is nearer to him than I possibly could ever be. And I can trust the broken, hurting, and suffering souls to God. If only I could actually do that. But it is hard to do when I don't see these people being comforted.

Well, I went to Target, got the things I needed (and obviously all the things I didn't need) and came home, ate dinner, and in-between writing this all I am watching the new Muppets TV show, because today ended on a heavy note and I now need to come back up.

I know, this post is very…unlike me. It's not what or how I typically write on here. It isn't polished or funny or witty. It won't attract anyone. Heck, it doesn't even attract me really. But it was my day and I wanted to write about it for some reason. And as someone once said, "Better to write for self and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." Or something like that.

So, I tonight I write for self. You're welcome, America.

The Trials And Triumphs Of Online Dating

(More Like Just Trials) 

1. When you see your "Most Compatible Matches" for the day and it makes you lose all faith in humanity. 

                                        And love. And facial hair ever being attractive. Your pick: Stalker Lover or Serial Killer? Choices choices…

2. The heartfelt answers

                                                                                               Just makes those panties drop.

                                                                                            Then there are the short and…sweet?

I mean…I could get on board with this last one, I suppose?

3. The Classic Profile Cover Photo With a Guy Holding a Large Bass. 

You men know who you are and all the ladies know what I am talking about. I think guys forget that they are trying to attract women, not prove their hunting/fishing prowess to other men. Exhibit A: a man standing next to a truck full of dead furry animals. Yes, that is indeed a truck filled with dead. furry. animals. I am genuinely puzzled…do men think that ladies are over here being like, "Oh baby. Let me get me get a piece of that action!"

Dear men, when a lady is looking through your pictures, she subconsciously trying to see if she can see herself in the life you are showing her. So when we see a picture of you standing proudly in some sort of garage with dead animals…our instincts are telling us what they told those poor animals: run.

4. When you keep getting matched with all the cute boys. Maybe? 

                                                                                                         Who knows.

                                                                                             It's all just so mysterious….

5. When They Tell You What You Already Knew

   Yes, sad human being. You will indeed be alone forever.

                                                                                 

Snowball Effect

As I turned on my computer today I realized that it had been a while since I had been on Pinterest. (Because Pinterest is totally lame these days.)

So I logged on to Pinterest and the first thing I saw was a picture of a hamburger that someone recently pinned.

I clicked on picture of said burger because, well, it's a picture of a delicious hamburger. Of course I am going to click on it.

But do you know who eats hamburgers? People do, that's who.

Consequently, clicking on the picture of a hamburger then led to pictures of people eating hamburgers.

But since eating a hamburger is the quintessential family gathering food of choice, I was then led to pictures of families eating hamburgers together.

Then it happened. I innocently enough clicked on a picture of a dad putting ketchup on his child's hamburger.

Then boom.

My screen is filled with pictures of fathers playing with their children and holding their babies. Oh my god the babies.

So. Many. Babies.

So many dads holding their babies. Picture after picture of fathers playing with their kids and spending time with their daughters and fishing with their sons.

So many sweet moments.

And then my ovaries exploded.

Seriously. I don't know what it is. Maybe it is part of being a girl. Maybe it is my age. Maybe it is just me. (It's not just me. It's not just me, right??) But I can scroll through picture after picture of babies for a solid 40 minutes. That's a really long time. But they're just so damn adorable. It's more than that, though. It's the fact that I now find joy in shopping for tupperware. Like, all things dishes and tupperware related just excites the hell out of me. I don't know if it's normal to find joy in buying plastic containers. But I do.

As I was thinking about this today, I realized that maybe it's about what the tupperware represents.

Because you see, when I look at tupperware, I don't see square plastic containers. I see organization and order. I visualize where these containers would be stored in the kitchen of my adorable future house. Then I think about what I would be putting in the containers. And obviously that would be the food I would be buying and cooking for my family. Oh, did you say family? Well let me just take that thought and run an emotional marathon with it. Family…ok, so that would be my husband and two kids. The kids would be about six and three years old at this point. Boy and girl, obviously. And I would put their lunches for school in the smaller square tupperware…. Wait, kids going to school? Packing lunches? Doing mom-ish type things? Having my life feel like it has some sort of purpose and rhythm and order and…oh…order.

That is what I am longing for.

Order is what I am longing for during this season of life where everything seems to be up in the air. When nothing is set in stone. When it is still just me trying to figure out what the heck I am doing or supposed to be doing and when I'm not sure what my role in life is right now. When I don't know if I am being productive enough in my day-to-day life or living with enough purpose. When I can't visualize what the next ten years (heck, the next ten days) might look like because when I look into the future and it is all…just very blank.

Tupperware represents the idea of a future that I am hoping for. It represents having something known, something concrete and solid. It represents having someone that you're navigating the unknowns of life with. It represents the hope of having little kids with sticky fingers and lunch boxes that have to be bleached for the 20th time because it has a funny smell (again) because the tupperware container leaked or just because there has never been a lunch box that didn't have a funky smell.

So when I see tupperware, I see life. I see a future. And I think that maybe if I buy that container…maybe I'll get that life too.