Grocery shopping

I love going to the grocery store and shopping.  I like walking up and down the aisle.  I like comparing prices.  I like pushing my cart along.  I like seeing what is on sale.  I can spend hours in the grocery store.

For me, someone that has loads of food issues, I view the grocery store as a place that offers me hundreds and hundreds of opportunities to make good or bad choices.   

The grocery store also reminds me of how very lucky I am to live where I live and have access to the resources available.  Even when I lived in New York, the neighborhood I lived in didn't have a lot of grocery stores.  It was difficult to have access to fresh fruit and vegetables.  I am indeed lucky to be where I am.

Home-Coming

This weekend is homecoming weekend here at Dartmouth.  It is a big deal around here.  A giant wooden bonfire is built in the center of the green and then burnt down as the first-year class runs around it.  It is very Lord of the Flies.  All sorts of alums come back to campus for this weekend.  For some alums it is a tradition that they share with their children.  They watch this fire burn and go to the football game and return to this campus and feel as though they have come home.

This is a strange weekend for me because as an alum the expectation would be that I am enthralled with this tradition and that I am eager and excited to see people that I haven't seen in over 10 years and didn't care all that much about.  Or that I am eager to come "home" to Dartmouth.  It was never true for me.  When I left, I never felt this gravitational pull to return to my alma mater.  In fact, it is still a strange experience for me that I am back here at all.

Working here, this weekend is chaos and hard work.  Our office is responsible for building the giant wooden structure and getting the students organized.  This weekend is also full of worry because sometimes students do stupid things and get into trouble.  There is so much hoopla happening that I worry on big weekends.

What is nice though is that my former students come back and I get to see them.  Our office hosts an alumni reception during this time where we invite our old students back to say hello and catch-up.  I was able to see some of my favorite students.  Students that are doing amazing things with their lives and that are working hard on discovering who they are outside of college and finding their place in this great big world.  They give some of the best hugs and are beautiful reminders of why this work is so important.  These are students that I worked with for years as they navigated through the many land-mines of young adulthood and the craziness of college.  They are wonderful.

All this homecoming discussion has made me think about home and where I feel at home.  It is strange that I actually call the Upper Valley home these days and I don't mean it ironically.  I feel at home here.  I have moved around so much in my life that I don't know if location actually has anything to do with home.  I am at home here because I have been lucky enough to find people that I love and that care about me.  This place is quickly filling with good memories that are replacing the negative ones from my days as a student.  Working here at Dartmouth has allowed me to heal the person I was and find home.

I also have come to realize that I carry home around with me.  Home is curled up with a glass of wine with my BFF.  Home is my mom and my niece and the laughter.   Home is SLTP and the Collis Center.  Home is the satisfaction of a job well done.  Home is karaoke and table one.  Home is all of the joy, laughter, hope, tears and pain of life and a life well-lived. 

A Clean House

I generally find that my house gets messier as my mind gets more cluttered.  My house is now clean!

Clean house = decluttered mind. 

At least in theory.

Regardless, it makes me happy that my house is clean. 

Warm Fuzzies...

Yesterday was a wonderful day of warm fuzzies...

I received an incredible email from a former student.  She has been having some challenges and we spent some time on the phone discussing them.  She sent me a beautiful email.  She said:

I just wanted to thank you again for being in my life and for looking out for me.


There are so many people in my own life that do this for me.  It is lovely and humbling to know that I have an impact on someone else's life.  It is also a bit hard for me to manage.  I get uncomfortable and squirrelly with compliments and thanks.  Yet another thing I am working on being better about.  I am thankful that I can be a part of her life and that she allows me to be a piece of her world.  I feel eternally grateful for my students and the small role I get to play in their lives and the amazing lessons they teach me.

I got to see another SLTP friend.  We had coffee.  We laughed.  We talked.  We cared for each other.  It was another reminder of the amazing connections and heart-lines that are in my life.  These moments of meaningful connections.  Times when we reach out to the people that matter to us and connect.  In those moments are past shared experiences and future anticipated moments and the very precious present.  Sometimes I am amazed at the number of people in my life that I see rarely and yet are so deeply connected to my life and who I am so genuinely happy to see.  These people fill me with love and joy.

Last night I arrived home and checked my mail.  In my mailbox was an envelope from the lovely SH and inside it was full of SLTP-style WARM FUZZIES!  Thank you for the heart-touch.

Pondering...

I haven't posted since Monday night, not because of a lack of joy in my life or even because of a lack of time...I haven't posted because I have been questioning myself.  This is not a new thing for me.

I have been wondering if this blog is a form of dishonesty in my life.  Isn't that ridiculous?  Everything I have posted has been true but I keep wondering am I "looking to hard for joy in my life".  It is one of those moments of me getting in my own way.  Actively seeking joy and happiness has really helped me feel better.  I need to be okay with celebrating the joy because it doesn't mean that I am ignoring the unhappy moments or in a stage of denial but rather it is keeping me from dwelling on those negative moments.

Sometimes I need to just remind myself to get out of my own way...I deserve to have happiness and laughter and joy.  Life includes all the ugly bits but there are so many really beautiful pieces too.

OMG - Jesse Spano

My last post made me think of Jesse Spano from Saved by the Bell because Elizabeth Berkeley was in Showgirls and that made me think of my favorite Jesse Spano scene, in fact my favorite scene from Saved By the Bell.  So I immediately needed to find it on you tube because I immediately needed to see it and enjoy it.  Since I am wide awake, why shouldn't I?



I remember this scene so vividly from my childhood and it was so dramatic.  I remember relating to Jesse Spano way to much.  She always needed to be perfect and get good grades and make it all happen.  I understood.  My friend MdS and I would always re-enact this dramatic scene when things got a bit rough here in our adult loves.  Ah, I loved the over-dramatized acting of 90s teenage drama/comedy.  For some reason this also made me think of 90210 episode where they hold the rally to let Donna graduate.  "Donna Martin graduates!  Donna Martin graduates!"



Ah, they don't make television like they used to....LOL

"Awful" things that I love

Tonight I worked the Ke$ha concert sponsored by our programming board.  Her concert was certainly entertaining.  I don't have a gauge on how talented or not she is based on this concert BUT I do know that I really like her music.  It is completely auto-tuned.  The lyrics are questionable at best.  Stepping back and observing myself singing along to EVERY lyric, I know that I should not enjoy it...and yet, I do.  It is how I feel about a lot of pop music.  I can't really articulate why I like it so much, I just do.  This got me thinking about other "awful" things that I like.  These are things that I have questioned my enjoyment of on many different levels - personally, professionally, culturally, sociologically, societally.  I can articulate the reasons that perhaps enjoying the thing is "wrong" or "strange" yet I love it anyways.  Some of the things I thought of were:

1) Slim Jims & other processed meats - I don't want to know what kind of meat is in these things.  I really like slim jims.  I enjoy Spam.  I have eaten many sandwiches made from "potted ham".  Vienna sausages are delicious.  This could be a remnant left from childhood.  The processed meats were cheap and filling, so we always had some on hand.  Vienna sausages were a cheap stand in for breakfast sausages.  Spam made excellent burgers and a can of potted ham could make a few sandwiches.  While, my financial situation is somewhat better, I have never lost the taste for these processed meats regardless of the nutritional hazards.  I also really enjoy those Macho Man Randy Savage commercials about Slim Jims - "step into a Slim Jim"  - HAHAH



2) The movie Showgirls - I really shouldn't admit this in a public forum but sitting here in my apartment at 2:47am, the idea of the movie Showgirls is cracking me up.  It is absolutely the worst movie ever created but really the best movie for that very reason.  When I was a teenager my friends and I would watch this movie over and over and over again.  Sometimes we would turn off the volume and we would make up our own dialogue.  There are so many ridiculous scenes in the film.  Poor Jesse Spano...this movie ruined her career

3) Trashy romance novels - Love them!  They are predictable and gendered but I love them.  I particularly love the ones set in Regency England.  Give me a naughty lord and a randy duchess and I am hooked.  There is something slightly more subtle about the romance novels set in regency england. I love a good double entendre and these books are full of them.  While equally ridiculous to me it feels like there is a little more subtlety than in contemporary romance novels.

4) Pop culture tv shows - One of my secret desires has always been to be a commentator on one of those pop culture shows.  I wanted to be on any number of the Vh1 shows - "I love the 80s, 90s, 00s....part 1 and part deux! or Greatest One Hit Wonders or Greatest celebrity quotes or Worst celebrity baby names (seriously Pilot Inspektor or Jermajesty).  I wanted to be on these shows and wanted to say snarky comments.  I still do... I would spend endless hours watching the marathons.  Ah, one of the things I truly miss about not having cable television any more.

5) Food Network Challenge shows - I am obsessed with the pastry chef and their ability to design and decorate a cake, sugar sculpture or fruit tower in 8 hours.  I love it.  I am amazed at their talent.  I think they are so creative.  Admittedly, there is a small part of me that also wonders if they will be able to transport their masterpiece from the kitchen to the table without it breaking.  Ah the suspense...the drama....the cake!