Breakfast with Baba

I went to breakfast with my grandpa this morning. We started it off with a Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity at IHop and then went to sit at the beach for a little while so we could enjoy the sunshine.

I resolve to...

I must start by making it clear that I am not big on New Year's Resolutions. I find it humorous that people think they can change their lifestyle simply by making it a resolution. I don't know anyone who has ever said, "I quit (insert vice here) on New Year's and I hasn't been a problem since". I do think it is important to stay in tune with yourself, to note your areas for improvement and work continually towards those things. What can it hurt right? Even if it is all for not, at least we'll know the areas we should be focusing on to make our lives and those who love us lives better.

1. Stop Cyber Stalking: I am guilty of it and I am not ashamed to admit it! I cyber stalk. I look up people on the Internet, I search for people on Facebook, I even Google people unnecessarily. I have a need to know how people's lives are going, I compare their accomplishments to mine and I silently weigh who is "winning". I am a shameless coveter. I covet other people's lives and undoubtedly romanticize their reality. I sometimes have to remind myself that nothing I see online, no pictures, no relationship status is a true barometer of happiness. I can't tell how happy someone's life is by their profile on Facebook. What is more important is living my life and finding happiness in my reality.

2. Walk Away From the Sugar and No one Gets Hurt: I have a long standing love affair with sugar, and though it has dramatically decreased over the years it still exists. When I was younger I would eat ice cream for breakfast and a Snickers for lunch. I once became a vegetarian because I thought the only other food group was candy and nothing seemed greater than eating sugar for 3 "square" meals a day. I would eat bags of candy I would visit Cold Stone twice a day. I was a sugar binger and I did it with reckless abandon and no fear of judgement. The biggest tole that candy has on me is not weight gain but terrible fatigue. I have to imagine that my fatigue is attributed at least somewhat to my mass consumption of sugar as a child and my bouts with sugar that I still have today. I am a huge believer in balance and I think that with a healthy balance of sugar in my life I will reap a lot of rewards. I am however worried about how Candy Corn will fare with their huge loss in their profit margin.

3. Patience is a Virtue I Hear: I have no patience. When I make my mind up that I want something and if it is within my power I will get it...if it isn't within my power I will pout. I don't know where I missed out on learning patience but I did. I am pretty sure there are lots of pearls of wisdom in this task. I think learning patience will mean not making purchases of items that I end up re-selling on Ebay a few months later, not eating as much candy, not wasting today just to get to tomorrow and not feeling so rushed to get through every task and feeling so restless all the time.

4. Take A Hike: I need to walk Jack and Charlie more. I have bouts where I walk them every day and feel so good about it and then it seems to fall away. It doesn't make much sense either because it makes me so happy to see them happy and walks make them both so very happy. Jack and Charlie deserve to take walks, to sniff all there is to sniff around the neighborhood and to show their cute fuzzy faces to the neighbors.

5. Get My Groove Back: Moving, a new job any sort of big change breaks up your groove and I have had many big changes this year. My workouts have gone from 5 days a week to 1... if I am lucky. I use to read about 30 books a year and now I am down to 0 in the past3 months. I need to get back into my groove and begin working out like I use to and pick up a good book to read.

6. Grow: I want to always be learning and growing in some way. Whether it be by taking an art class, volunteering or reading I want to be sure that I am always challenging myself and becoming better.

7. Show More Love: I am lucky to have great friends, a wonderful family and someone I love very much in my life. Somedays I think I am great at showing love and other days I know I could do better. I want everyone in my life to never doubt how much I love them, how proud I am of them and how much I value their place in my life.

I think I could list a couple more (not sure if that is a good thing) but I will stop at 7. 7 is a lucky number and 10 is too many to remember and be able to focus on. Happy New Year everyone hope it is a great year for us all!

Contractions

The good thing about breakups is that eventually the pain fades away. No matter how heart wrenching and painful the pain fades. One minute you're crying uncontrollably and the next you're filled with hope. Hopeful for what tomorrow has in store for you. The hard part is you can never time those moments. You can't tell if the time when you're in a work meeting is going to be the moment that you feel hope or the moment you're going to be overcome by desperation. Desperation so intense that anybody who makes eye contact with you can send you into hysterics.

When going through a break up, your feelings are not your own. They belong to the moment and the moment is as unpredictable as a teenager on prom night. And for everyone the breakup recovery time is different because it's not a science, it's an art form. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could log on to a website, complete a survey and get a compiled analysis based on our responses to how long we can expect to mourn over our failed relationship:

Were you married...add 70 days
Did he cheat...add 37 days
If you were together for more than a year...add 50 days
If you weren't the one to end the relationship...add 45 days
Did he turn out to be a complete pussy....subtract 22 days

Total Mourn Time: 180 Days

Someone once told me that it takes twice the time you were with someone to finally get over them. I'm not sure how much truth there is in that statement but I do think that recovery time is in direct correlation with how honest you are with your emotions. You can be stuck in anger, resentment or rage in order to help yourself get over a relationship...and for many anger may sustain their emotional safety for years. Or you can be honest with your emotions and embrace them as they come.

If you feel SAD...cry.
If you feel MAD...yell.
If you feel HOPELESS....eat...don't ever underestimate the healing powers of foods covered in salt, butter or sugar and all things dipped in ranch dressing.

Anger is a powerful thing, but it isn't real. Anger isn't the pure emotion it's the reaction that we get when we feel sad, scared and hopeless. I'm guilty of moving to anger. In past relationships anger was my dear close and trusted friend. When I went through a break up it would carry me with such ease that I would sail from one relationship to the next. Thinking to myself, "Well clearly I wasn't in love with that person, because if I was, how the heck could I be doing so well right now?"

But in the end it always caught up with me. I even got back together with some ex's because once my anger high crashed me into the ground of sadness all my true emotions bubbled back up. Instead of realizing that these were skeleton memories I thought they meant I still loved the guy...so I got back together with him only to find myself in the midst of repeat break up months later. It was like some really messed up torturous Groundhog Day.

Don't get me wrong, there have been a few relationships I regret walking away from and wonder what would have happened had I stayed. But the truth is, and forgive me for sounding like a stitched grandma pillow, everything happens for a reason. Should I have stayed I may have never learned all I have about relationships at this point in my life.

I was just in a relationship with someone I thought I knew. The truth is that I met him, fell in love with him and four months into the relationship things began to fall apart. He stopped being the sweet person I was in love with and began to become resentful and quick tempered. The scary thing is that people change over the years. Someone you knew for years and years may do something so out of left field that it leaves you feeling like you never knew them at all...but inherently if the love is there I have to trust that it will see you through.

If I am going to continue to be honest with myself I would have to say I knew there were red flags throughout the relationship but instead of running away, like I have a tendency to do, I stayed and tried to work on it. I spent months on a recon mission trying to find the man I fell in love with. But as the great and wise Oprah always says...trust your gut, and I publicly apologize to you now Ms. Winfrey, I did not take your infinite wisdom.

In all my past relationships I've always known when my gut was telling me to walk away. Somehow my gut knew better than I that my dating journey wasn't over yet. I still had places to go, guys to kiss and guys to regret...I still had bars to visit, places to dance and movies to go to.

Relationships have so much to do with timing. I've met people that I could picture myself settling down with only to find that he was still in the, "I would rather go to a club or bar than watch Netflix with you and BBQ on Friday night" phase. I am starting to think that relationships have much more to do with timing than with love. If the fate and timing gods smile upon your courtship...then maybe you get lucky and your paths stay crossed and time won't lead you astray.

I have digressed from my initial point. Breakups are hard...they are harder than hard...they are torture. They turn you upside down, they make you fear things you never found scary before like listening to the radio, going to certain restaurants, eating certain foods, traveling to certain locations, seeing certain pictures.

The world suddenly becomes saturated with couples...suddenly it seems like everyone is getting married or having babies or finding someone wonderful....everyone except you. But I find comfort when I try to realize that I am mourning the death of the relationship, the loss of something I thought life had in store for me. In my current situation (and many of the ones before) I am starting to realize that my pain isn't that much about losing them, it's about losing what I thought they meant to my life.

I am in day three and I have to say my breakup contractions are growing further and further apart. My empty house seemed less scary this morning and I can only hope that tomorrow it's even less so. Maybe next weekI will be able to look at his picture without getting a lump in my throat and hopefully next month I can go to a somewhere we use to go to together without feeling like I have rubber bands around my stomach.

And maybe...just maybe in a few months time I will be able to smile back at that one guy and begin a new chapter using all I have learned in this relationship to make the next journey better.

My Family

I really like this picture. It was taken in front of Mission Viejo Country Club where we spent a lot of time when I was growing up. My grandma would play tennis there everyday and we would spend family holidays there as well. I like this picture because my mom looks so beautiful and happy. My grandmother is in her tennis outfits and it reminds me of how active she once was. My dad is in this picture too and since my parents divorced when I was 2 years old I don't have many pictures with all of us together. Not to mention the fact that my brother and I look so cute!!

Happy Birthday Gammie!

This Sunday was Father's Day which is a great day, but I was most excited about the fact that is was also the same day as my grandmother's 90th birthday! My grandmother is one of my most favorite people in the world and I think that everyone should have someone as wonderful as her to bless their lives.

My grandmother - "Gammie" - is unique in every sense of the word. She had never been like other grandmothers. She drove a cherry red camero up until she was in her early 80's, she wore leather skirts and stiletto heels, she wore fancy clothes and would "burn rubber" in the school parking lot when she would pick my brother and I from elementary school. She never cooked, baked or sewed. She was the grandma who people would mistake for my mom because she looked so young and acted so vibrant....everyone always wanted her to be their grandmother but I was the lucky one!

Yesterday was an amazing day because a week ago she fell at home and broke her hip. The whole family was worried that she would spend her 90th birthday in the hospital. But true to her determined spirit she was back home where we celebrated her birthday. She was in great spirits and said it was her best birthday yet...happy birthday Gammie looking forward to an even better b-day next year!

I am HOT...HOT...HOT

My grandmother's 90th birthday is in June and my mom, brother and I thought it would be a great idea to create a picture album for her filled with family memories throughout the years. I was visiting my mom over Memorial Day weekend and we spent a few hours digging through old pictures to include in the album. In our picture hunt I came across an old school picture...which as you can clearly see is the early mark of my hotness.

I strongly believe the biggest fear for a child is the day they learn they need glasses or braces. These things are like the scarlet letter of elementary school. Kids who are cursed with four eyes or a metal mouth, no matter how easily they fit in before, find themselves cast out of the "in crowd" and quickly make their way to the end of the line at the polar opposite of "coolness". As a kid I was blessed with naturally straight teeth but horribly messed up eyesight. No matter how many carrots I chowed down on I saw the fuzzy lines of the blackboard grow even fuzzier until that fateful day when my teacher sent me home with a note addressed to my mom...which under strained squinted eyesight I knew read, "Stacy needs glasses".

The way my mom tells the story...I was the one who picked out my glasses and insisted on the huge pink frames. The way I tell it...my mom did not do her proper motherly duty in damage control. To add to insult my eyesight was so bad that my glasses were bi-focals and so thick that if I looked into the afternoon sun I would surely burn off all my eyelashes.

I wore glasses for about 4 years until the wonderful day when my wishes were answered and my mom allowed me to graduate from nerdy four eyes to a full fledged contact lens wearer. I couldn't ditch the glasses soon enough. The scars were almost healed although not forgotten. In those 4 years I endured countless name calling...suffered the brunt of many punchlines and was even asked out by the most popular boy in school as a result of a painful dare by his friends.

Being cursed with huge pink glasses...which over the years varied from huge pink glasses to huge navy blue glasses and varying shades between...actually brought me quite a few blessings. I wasn't ever one of the pretty girls that the boys wanted to go out with. I could never rely on my looks to get me by on anything. I couldn't bat my eyelashes to get my way...even though they were quite noticeable as they were magnified to ten times their normal size. I couldn't depend on the idea that guys would always be falling at my feet...that was my good friend Tania who held that curse. But I did spend those 4 years (between the tears of course) relying on my sense of humor and my ability to make people smile. I couldn't cherish my good looks so I cherished my good character and sensitivity. Looking the way I did forced me to dig deeper than what I looked like to others and focus on how I was to others. I didn't have the magnetism of looks to draw people in so I had to draw them in through other means. I got my friends through a far deeper connection.

No matter how many years pass between my "glasses years" and today I always feel like if I remember who I was back then...the little girl with huge glasses...I am able to see the world more clearly...and that is a blessing in itself.