rejected

I'm in a very bad place right now. Just feeling very rejected by all of humanity. Feeling like an alien in your own apartment is not fun. My dad told me this morning that my grandpa died last night. I'm ok with this, he was 92 and he had been really sick for the last couple of months. His actual death was a surprise because he had been stable, wasn't hooked up to any tubes or anything, we figured we had a few more months at the very least. But his nurse came in to give him his meds and he was lying on the floor of his bathroom. They believe he had a heart attack. It seems like he probably went pretty easily, so that's a comfort. I feel bad for my dad though (his son). I know he was caught off guard like all of us, even though we feel we don't have the right to be surprised since he was ill. And old. I called my dad today to say I was sorry and he had to work to keep his voice normal. This has nothing to do with my first couple of sentences. I'm not upset over his death. I mean I am, in the sense that it's upsetting when we lose someone; the idea that you will never see them again, never talk to them, etc. But he wasn't really himself for a while, and we weren't super close, so I'm not destroyed like people normally are. I just feel for my dad. But I started this paragraph talking about something else. Something infinitely more self-centered and petty. I don't feel like really getting into it right now, but I always feel like a reject in this world, like people think I'm too weird to relate to. And most of the time I can go through life not caring, or ignoring it, or convincing myself that it doesn't matter, but sometimes I just get so tired of that. I just want to be accepted and appreciated and treated like a fucking human being with as much value as anyone else. And tonight is one of those nights. So I was sitting here crying over myself and thinking "there is no one I can talk to to make it feel better." I could call my ex, because we're still friends and he's the one person that I really feel like myself around. But it's late, and it wouldn't be right anyway. I don't have a close friend, I couldn't call my parents. I don't believe in god, so I can't pray or imagine that there's a guy with a white beard looking down from his cloud thinking, "oh my child, my peace I give to you." And I was thinking, maybe there is life after death and my grandpa is recently passed, so maybe he could come sit with me. And as much as I would probably be scared out of my brain if I saw a "ghost", and as much as my grandpa of all people would be an awkward comforter for me, I was wishing for him to show up in my room and understand. And then I was thinking, "oh and then I could believe in an afterlife and God, and be happy and normal, and have meaning in my life and all that." But he didn't come. So I flipped channels on the tv, fruitlessly hoping that there would be some sort of sign from heaven in the late night talk shows and infomercials. Of course, no. Maybe he's busy reuniting with Grandma.

Seckel Pears

Can we talk about Seckel Pears for a minute? I just discovered these little guys a couple of weeks ago, and I'm in love. They're amazing. They are sweeter than normal pears, seemingly always ripe, and just the right size. A normal pear is too big for me, especially if I just want a snack, or if I want to be hungry enough to eat again in the next 5 hours. But these little guys are perfect. Just a few bites of heaven and you're done! Or...ready for the next one. How mundane can this blog get? A post dedicated to pears? Really? Well, you obviously haven't tried these nuggets of paradise. Mundane, perhaps, but this is my life bitch! Deal with it.

Orchid

Y'all, I gotta change my little profile blurb. My orchid died. How did this happen?? I bought it like a month and a half ago, and my co-worker bought one at the same time so that we could go through it together. The woman at the flower shop told us to water them like once or twice a month and then spray them once a week. Every other thing we read told us to water them once a week. But the flower shop lady stressed that it should be once or twice a month because everyone drowns theirs. So that's what we did. And what happened? They shriveled up and died. Throwing away a dead plant is so sad. But looking at one every day is even worse.

Bloopers

Bloopers. We need more of them. Every time I rent a video, I check the "specials features" section. And 95% of the time, there are no bloopers. Outtakes, gag real, whatever you want to call them. Why not?? Every movie HAS bloopers. Why can't they just tack them onto the dvd? Is it that hard? I love bloopers. Maybe even more than the movies themselves. So every movie should have them. And I mean every movie. We're talking Schindler's List here. Ok, maybe out of respect, we could skip the Holocaust movies. But that would be a large exception.

100 Ideas

...stolen from somewhere else.

1. Go for a walk. Draw or list things you find on the the sidewalk. 2. Write a letter to yourself in the future. 3. Buy something inexpensive as a symbol for your need to create, (new pen, a tea cup, journal). Use it everyday. 4. Draw your dinner. 5. Find a piece of poetry you respond to. Rewrite it and glue it into your journal. 6. Glue an envelope into your journal. For one week collect items you find on the street. 7. Expose yourself to a new artist, (go to a gallery, or in a book.) Write about what moves you about it. 8. Find a photo of a person you do not know. Write a brief bio about them. 9. Spend a day drawing only red things. 10. Draw your bike. 11. Make a list of everything you buy in the next week. 12. Make a map of everywhere you went in one day. 13. Draw a map of the creases on your hand, (knuckles, palm) 14. Trace your footsteps with chalk. 15. Record an overheard conversation. 16. Trace the path of the moon in relation to where you live. 17. Go to a paint store. Collect 'chips' of all your favorite colors. 18. Draw your favorite tree. 19. Take 15 minutes to eat an orange. 20. Write a haiku. 21. Hang upside down for five minutes. 22. Hang found objects from tree branches. 23. Make a puppet. 24. Create an outdoor room from things you find in nature. 25. Read a book in one day. 26. Illustrate your grocery list. 27. Read a story out loud to a friend. 28. Write a letter to someone you admire. 29. Study the face of someone you do not like. 30. Make a meal based on a color theme. (i.e. all white). 31. Creat a museum of very small things. 32. List the smells in your neighborhood. 33. List 100 uses for a tin can. 34. Fill an entire page in your jounral with small circles. Color them in. 35. Give away something you love. 36. Choose an object, draw the side you can't see. 37. List all of the places you've ever lived. 38. Describe your favourite room in detail. 39. Write about your relationship with your washing machine. 40. Draw all of the things in your purse/bag. 41. Make a mini book based on the theme, "my grocery list". 42. Create a character based on someone you know. Write a list of personality traits. 43. Recall your favorite childhood game. 44. Put postcards of art pieces/painting on the inside of your kitchen cupboard doors, so you can see them everyday (but not become deaf to them.) 45. Draw the same object every day for a week. 46. Write in your journal using a different medium (brush & ink, charcoal, old typewriter, crayons, fat markers. 47. Draw the individual items of your favorite outfit. 48. Make a useful item using only paper & tape. 49. Research a celebration or ritual from another culture. 50. Do a temporary art installation using a pad of post it notes & a pen. 51. Draw a map of your favorite sitting spots in your town/city. (photocopy it and give it to someone you like.) 52. Record all of the sounds you hear in the course of one hours. 53. Using a grid, collect various textures from magazine and play them off of each other. 54. Cut out all media for one day. Write about the effects. 55. Make pencil rubbings of six different surfaces. 56. Draw your garbage. 57. Do a morning collage. 58. List your ten most important things, (not including animals or people.) 59. List ten things you would like to do every day. 60. Glue a photo of yourself as a child into your journal. 61. Trasform some garbage. 62. Write an entry in your journal in really LARGE letters. 63. Collect some 'flat' things in nature (leaves, flowers). Glue or tape them into your journal. 64. Physically alter a page. (i.e. cut a hole, pour tea on it, burn it, fold it, etc.) 65. Find several color combinations you respond to in public. Document them using swatches, write where you found them. 66. Write a journal entry describing something "secret". Cut it up into several pieces and glue them back in scrambled. 67. Record descriptions or definitions of subjects or words you are interested in, found in encyclopedias or dictionaries. 68. Draw the outline of an object without looking at the page. (contour drawing). 69. What were you thinking just now? write it down. 70. Do nothing. 71. Write a list of ten things you could to do. Do the last thing on the list. 72. Create an image using dots. 73. Do 3 drawings at different speeds. 74. Put a small object in your left pocket (or in a bag), Put your left hand in the pocket. Draw it by feel. 75. Create a graph documenting or measuring something in your life. 76. Draw the sun. 77. Create instructions for a simple everyday task. 78. Make prints using food. (fruit and vegetables cut in half, fish, etc.) 79. Find a photo. Alter it by drawing over it. 80. Write a letter using an unconventional medium. 81. Draw one object for twenty minutes. 82. Combine two activities that have not been combined before. 83. Write about your day in an encyclopedic fashion. (i.e. organize by subject.) 84. Write a list of all the things you do to escape. 85. Cut a random shape out of several layers of a magazine. Make a collage out of the results. 86. Write an entry in code. 87. Make a painting using tools from the bathroom. 88. Work with a medium that is subtractive. 89. Write about or draw some of the doors in your life. 90. Make a postcard that has some kind of activity on it. 91. Divise a journal entry using "layers". 92. Divise an entry using "layers". 93. Write your own definition of one of the following concepts, sitting, waiting, sleeping (without using the actual word.) 94. List 10 of your habits. 95. Illustrate the concept of "simplicity".