Ramblings

• If you are going to have a black family participate in a reality show, don't allow them to have the last name Black...it just makes for tacky (yet hella funny) television.
• If you are going to get into an arugument with a threa year old, be prepared for the name calling. Things like "You, You YOU--FELLA" and "You mean chimney" give a whole new meaning to the sticks-and-stones bit.
• Yesterday it was 104 degrees in the shade, today we are coasting in the high seventies. This is why weather people in Texas will never be out of a job.
• I had a cocktail with my lunch today. It's just been one of those...years. It reminded me of when I worked in corporate america actually. We had these really horrible pre-lunch meetings twice a week and more often than not, beers would be ordered at lunch after the event. Which just made me think, I don't really need a job to be a part of the rat race, only enough cash to purchase a drink when the universe demands it.

Rita Re-cap
Rita, Rita, Rita...problematic indeed. The birthday weekend was less exciting than we had planned in so many ways. I still made the trip up to Dallas to be with Rachel which was fabulous, unfortunately no one else did. The Coldplay concert was great and hanging out with Rach and her family is always nice. The other big plans were nixed even though there was no rain in Dallas or Austin and Ginger managed to sleep right through the hurricane. Don't get me wrong, I have seen the news and know that there are millions of people who were not so lucky. It's selfish of me to wish we still could have partied together, if only so Ginger could have worn the birthday beads, but we'll make up for it I'm sure and I am glad that everyone I know is doing well after the scary last few days.

Everything is back to normal now, except for the 104 degree weather (yeah, in September!) and the fact that Sarah is apparantly reading the blog now and trying to correct written wrongs in my comments section. But other than that, all is well, and I like that,

Don't Rain on My Parade
Mother nature has a lot of explaining to do. This weekend was set to be a major birthday party extravaganza which has been in the planning for months. I'm talking two concerts, some honky tonkin', airpline rides to get here and hundreds of car miles logged by the seven participants. But now, hurricane Rita has decided to take Texas hostage leaving us with Y2K-like water purchasing and free sandbag delivery to all those in the area who request it.

As of today, the official start to the party weekend, one friend has gone in to panic mode and refuses to leave her "husband" and her dogs, one has left her home in Houston to drive north to Dallas (not only a designated evacuation area but also home of the party weekend)only to be met with the possiblity of a three hour trip transformed into a twenty hour highway gridlock situation. She's shacking up with her boyfriend in his 4th story apartment instead. The rest of us are basically on hold until we can figure out how bad it's going to get. And I am left with the decision to hold on to the hotel room just in case, or go ahead and give it up to some poor Rita evacuee--I know what the answer shoule be but, but....

This weekend will be nothing if not interesting.

A Treasure Hunt in Two Parts
Part One: History
I have never really been what one would call a history buff. I appreciate learning about the past as much as the next person and have been known to even get a couple of historical questions correct on Jeapordy before. But if asked right now the exact date the constitution was signed I will admit I have no idea. (But I would totally Google the answer later!) I memorized important dates in history for tests but as soon as I left the classroom, so did their calendar significance. People and places I remember better, I can recall important people from the Alamo and lots of people involved with the civil rights movement. Talent, I know.

My lack of historical brilliance always leaves me in awe of those who know all of the details. Remembering founding fathers and when presidents served in offices--that's a pretty cool talent. So I was more than intrigued when the movie National Treasure came out last fall. I just got around to seeing it a couple of days ago and it was so cool! Not only is there buried treasure but there are all of these clues hidden in the important historical landmarks in the United States. I watched it with the intensity of a Streisand movie because I couldn't wait to see how it ended and how all of the pieces fit together. I even rewound it a couple of times to see if I had missed some clues along the way. And at the end, when they finally discover the treasure, I was grinning from ear to ear.**

Part Two: The DVD
Now you might think that once the movie ended the fun would stop, but you would be wrong! Bonus features play a major part in my at-home movie watching experience. I have become spoiled by that particular part of a DVD and have, on many an occasion, scoffed out loud when reading the back of the case and realizing that good extra material is lacking. And I am not ashamed to admit that I spent no less than two hours, including internet secret searching time, trying to find all of the hidden treasures on this DVD. You think the regular extras are all you are going to get, but then these secrets clues pop up at the end of each feature and lead you to more clues. And because I don't have my personal Ghostwriter around to help me decipher clues, I had to use my good friend the internet because I was having a little bit of trouble. But it was all so much fun. I learned about secret codes throughout history and about real life treasure hunters and all kinds of other cool stuff.

I am telling you know, if this master's degree thing proves to be a waste of my life's fortune, I'm becoming a treasure hunter. Or, at the very least, Nicolas Cage's side-kick in the sequal.

**Oh relax, I didn't ruin the ending. We all know that if Nicolas Cage is going on a treasure hunt, he's coming out of it with some gold in his pocket or else the movie ain't worth watching. Besides, how he gets there is the best part anyway.

Balancing Act
It's seems so perfectly Zen, to say that one has achieved balance. The closest I have ever come to balance in my life in any sense is the tale end of my New York life when I could pay my bills on time and still afford to buy a drink at the theater bar during intermission. It's such an overwhelming and exhausting task to find a point in your life when the good and the bad aren't jockeying for position but instead sitting side by side without one feeling jealous that the other has a leg up. It almost seems cliche at this point to blame it on my severe case of the mid-twenties, then again, it also seems so easy and so accurate. I'm supposed to feel this off-kilter, this uneasy and anxious. But aren't these supposed to be the "best year's of my life?" Or was that senior year of high school? I forget. Actually, I don't think I ever knew.

I'm eating too much and excercising too little. I'm being financially frugal yet not making any money to reinflate the draining budget. I'm close to my family again but spend all day alone. I am awake in plenty of time to watch Oprah but sleep too late to catch Ellen.

Balance, it is obviously missing.

I have always imagined forty to be my perfect year. The age at which all grown-up things would be realized and the balance of life would be somewhat secure. I would have a husband, perhaps a child and a job. No, not a job, a career. My girlfriends and I would take vacations together to reconnect and send cards on birthdays and holidays with cute pictures of flowers or young girls playing dress up who remind us of our childhoods, the inside flap filled with words of wisdom from those who have managed to find balance. But forty is still fifteen years away. That's a lot of time to spend pondering your stay in limbo.

That's why I am trying to figure it out now. I'm working on balancing the stress with the carefree, the yeses with the no ways and the possibilities with the may-be-possible-laters. I still catch myself feeling envious or jealous of those I know who seem to have a handle on the balancing act. I think it's pretty natural to wish that our lives were like theirs or, at the very, least that their lives were much more like ours.

So I'm not really anywhere close to being blissful in my own balance, I'm all adrift without one of those little donut things to hold on to. But I'm working on it, and that task in itself is a lesson in the beauty of balance.